Category: Adventure

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DC Finest: Sgt. Rock: The Rock of Easy Co.


By Robert Kanigher, Bob Haney, Joe Kubert, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, Russ Heath, Jerry Grandenetti, Irv Novick, Mort Drucker, Jack Abel & various
ISBN: 978-1-79950-809-0 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Sgt Rock and the “combat-happy Joes” of Easy Company are one of the great enduring creations of US comic books. The gritty metarealism of Robert Kanigher’s ordinary guys in life-&-death situations compellingly captured the imaginations of generations of readers, young and old, for decades. So pervasive is this icon of comics combat, that’s it’s hard to grasp that Rock is not an immortal industry prototype like Superman, Batman,Wonder Woman or the original Captain Marvel – with us since the earliest moments of the industry – but was, in fact, a rather late addition to and child of the Silver Age of Comics.

This trade paperback compendium collects the tentative first step and early days in the character’s evolution from G.I. Combat #68 and compiles his subsequent missions in Our Army At War #81-122, covering January 1959 through September 1962: a period wherein the American comic book market was undergoing a staggering revolution in style, theme and quality.

The majority of the stories come courtsey of Kanigher & Joe Kubert at their creative peak, occasionaly supplemented by some of the best artists in the business, and we open after a stunning Jerry Grandenetti cover (first of many) with G.I. Combat #68. There lurked a quiet, moodily unassuming fable of an anonymous boxer who wasn’t particularly skilled but simply refused to be beaten. When ‘The Rock!’ enlisted in the US Army, however, the same Horatian qualities attained mythic proportions as he held back an overwhelming Nazi attack by sheer grit and determination, remaining bloody but unbowed on a field littered with dead and broken men.

Dubbed “Rocky”, the character returned as a sergeant in the April Our Army at War (#81), again facing superior German forces as ‘The Rock of Easy Co.!’ in a brief but telling vignette from Bob Haney, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito before finally winning a personal and extremely individualistic identity as Sgt. Rock in the next issue. This was Haney’s Mort Drucker-illustrated ‘Hold Up Easy!’: another harsh and declarative mini-epic which saw hard-luck heroes Easy Company delayed and then saved by callow replacements who eventually came good…

Firmly entrenched now, Our Army at War #83 (June 1959) saw the true launch of the immortal everyman hero in Kanigher & Kubert’s ‘The Rock and the Wall!’, a tough-love, battlefield tutor shepherding his men to competence and survival amidst the constant perils of war. This time the grizzled nomcom meets a rival for his men’s admiration in the equally impressive Joe Wall…

Irv Novick illustrated ‘Laughter on Snakehead Hill!’ as the embattled dogfaces of Easy fight to take a heavily-fortified citadel before OAAW #85 introduces the first continuing cast member in Kubert-limned ‘Ice Cream Soldier!’ Here Rock assuages a fearful replacement’s jangled nerves with tales of another hopeless “green apple” who grew into his job. This ploy of incorporating brief past-action episodes into a baptism of fire scenario would play over and over again, and never got old…

Haney returned in #86 to script ‘Tank 711’ for Kubert as the terse topkick educated another newbie in combat etiquette. Kanigher then described the taking of “No-Return-Hill” and the initiation of four more raw recruits in ‘Calling Easy Co.!’ after which Grandenetti illustrated a brace of tales in #88 and 89: ‘The Hard Way’, in which Rock suffers a shocking crisis of confidence and ‘No Shot from Easy!’ wherein the indomitable sergeant is forced to give his toughest ever order…

OAAW #90 offered classic Kubert as ‘3 Stripes Hill!’ revealed how Rock won his stripes, after which the traditionally anthological Our Army at War offered three complete Sgt. Rock sagas in #91, beginning with ‘No Answer From Sarge!’ as the NCO risks everything to drag a recruit out of a crippling funk; ‘Old Soldiers Never Run!’ where he must weigh an old man’s pride against Easy’s continued existence, and the Haney-scripted tragic fable of a sole-surviving Scottish soldier in ‘The Silent Piper!’

OAAW #92 saw Kanigher & Kubert tackle battlefield superstitions in ‘Luck of Easy!’, before ‘Deliver One Airfield!’ introduces Zack Nolan, a son of privilege who must learn teamwork the hard way whilst #94’s ‘Target… Easy Company’ pits the unit against a German General determined to eradicate the increasingly high-profile heroes. Issue #95 debuted charismatic, ambitious Bulldozer Nichols who wants Rock’s rank and position in ‘Battle of the Stripes!’, after which ‘Last Stand for Easy!’ sees our still-in-charge topkick compelled to relinquish his lead-from-the-front position, after which ‘What Makes a Sergeant Run?’ finds him again sharing his hard-earned war wisdom with the young and the hapless.

Haney penned ‘Soldiers Never Die!’ in #98, with Rock forced to overcome his team’s trauma at losing a beloved comrade, whilst Kanigher described ‘Easy’s Hardest Battle!’ in #99, with the weary warrior recalling instances which all qualified, before once more triumphing over insurmountable odds and adding one more clash to the list. The Stalwart Sergeant risked everything to save a broken replacement in #100’s ‘No Exit for Easy!’ and repeated the task in ‘End of Easy!’ as a parachute drop goes tragically awry, before #102’s ‘The Big Star!’ concedes the consequences of depending on a young man utterly unsuited for combat…

‘Easy’s Had It!’ in #103 was another Haney contribution, exploring what happens when Rock is wounded and the company has to fight without their guiding light and lucky talisman, after which Kanigher assumed regular scripting duties beginning with #104 and ‘A New Kind of War!’ portraying the grizzled vet totally outgunned by a valiant nurse who refuses to retreat and never surrenders. In #105 a ‘TNT Birthday!’ has Rock worried about the underage kid who somehow got past all the instructors to join Easy under terrifying fire, whilst ‘Meet Lt. Rock!’(illustrated by Novick) sees the resolutely dedicated noncom forcibly promoted… until he manages to undo the horrifying prospect, after which #107’s ‘Doom Over Easy!’ again sees the savvy soldiers in his care afflicted by crippling superstition…

Having already contributed a few covers, the superb Russ Heath drew his first Rock strip in OAAW #108 as ‘The Unknown Sergeant!’ sees the squad pass through a French village with a statue of a WWI Yank “doughboy” bearing an uncanny resemblance to their own indomitable leader, and provoking some very uncomfortable historical hallucinations before Kubert’s return in #109’s ‘Roll Call of Heroes!’ This signals a dose of grim reality as Rock recalls his own deadly baptism of fire and lost comrades, after which a green Lieutenant almost provokes mutiny and murder until he learns the rules of Combat Arithmetic in ‘That’s An Order!’

‘What’s the Price of a Dogtag?’ is painfully answered in the occupied streets and on seemingly deserted beaches in #111, before ‘Battle Shadow!’ focuses on the burgeoning supporting cast in a blisteringly explosive extravaganza heralding a bold move. Now African American soldier Jackie Johnson takes centre stage (in a remarkable early example of comic book affirmative action) for a memorable last-stand moment in ‘Eyes of a Blind Gunner’ (#113, cover-dated December 1961).

The incessant toll of lost comrades hits hard in ‘Killer Sergeant!’, whilst civilian survivors and partisans who comprise ‘Rock’s Battle Family!’ help him survive the worst the war can throw at him. This tale features a cameo from French Resistance star Mademoiselle Marie (as usually seen in Star- Spangled War Stories ) – before the ragged warrior finds himself all alone when answering #116’s ‘S.O.S. Sgt. Rock!’ to save lost comrade Ice Cream Soldier…

Next comes a dramatic tale of three hopelessly square pegs who finally find their deep, round holes in #117’s traumatic saga of ‘The Snafu Squad!’ before we see ‘The Tank vs. the Tin Soldier!’ – magnificently illustrated by Heath – wherein movie idol Randy Booth is mustered into Easy Company but spends all his snobbish energies trying to get out again. By the time he learns how to be a real soldier, his moment in the limelight has turned from cinematic melodrama to Greek tragedy…

The artist most closely associated with Rock is Joe Kubert, who illustrated #119’s memorable fable ‘A Bazooka for Babyface!’ wherein another kid who lied about his age makes it to the Front, but doesn’t fool the indomitable noncom. Of course, by the time the fighting dies down enough to send him back, the Babyface is a seasoned combat veteran…

Kubert superbly limned the majority of stories in this volume, such as #120’s ‘Battle Tags for Easy Co.!’, which deployed brief vignettes to illustrate how squad stalwarts Ice Cream Soldier, Bulldozer and Wild Man earned their nicknames, before showing the latest raw recruit why the Sarge was called Rock, after which ‘New Boy in Easy!’ (#121) introduces a chess-obsessed replacement who takes a lot of convincing that war is no hobby and men aren’t mere pawns…

This narrative device of incorporating brief past-action episodes into a baptism of fire scenario played over and over again in Sgt. Rock and never got old. Here it brings us to a natural pause as OAAW #122 reveals the ‘Battle of the Pyjama Commandoes!’, comprising more portmanteau tales as assorted Easy Joes recuperate in a field hospital… until Germans break through and the weary wounded must pick up their weapons again…

Robert Kanigher at his worst was a declarative, heavy-handed and formulaic writer, but when writing his best stuff – as he does here – remains an imaginative, evocative, iconoclastic and heart-rending reporter and observer of the warrior’s way and the unchanging condition of the dedicated and so very human ordinary foot-slogging G.I.

With superb and iconic combat covers from Kubert, Grandenetti, and Heath fronting each episode, this battle-bible is a visually perfect compendium and a certain delight for any jaded comics fan looking for something more than flash and dazzle. A perfect example of true Shock and Awe from an era when US soldiers were welcome almost everywhere; these are stories all comics fan and combat collector must see.
© 1960, 1961, 1962, 2026 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1907 Belgian graphic god Georges Prosper Remi – “Hergé” was born. In 1915 George (Sad Sack) Baker arrived, as did comics scripter Maxine Fabe (DC genre anthologies, Lois Lane) in 1943, and Colombian inker Carlos Garzon (Star Wars) and Filipino illustrator Steve Gan (Star-Lord, Conan, Dracula, Skull the Slayer) in 1945, with Stephanie Williams popping by in 1988.

Today in 1949 Warren Tufts’ sublime western newspaper strip Casey Ruggles began, and in 1962 we lost Dixie Dugan co-creator John H. Striebel.

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Garth: The Cloud of Balthus (volume 1)


By Frank Bellamy & Jim Edgar, with John Allard (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-0-90761-034-2 (Album TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Frank Alfred Bellamy (21st May 1917 – 5th July 1976) is one of British Comics’ greatest comics artists. In the all-too-brief years of his career he produced magnificent, unforgettable visuals for Eagle, TV21, Radio Times (Doctor Who) before taking over The Daily Mirror newspaper strip Garth in 1971. He turned that long-running yet meandering and occasionally lacklustre strip into a magnificent masterpiece of unmissable adventure fantasy, with eye-popping, mind-blowing monochrome art other artists were proud to boast they swiped from. However, after only 17 stories, Bellamy died suddenly in 1976; and it’s absolutely criminal that his work isn’t in galleries, let alone in permanent collected book editions.

Bellamy was born in 1917 but didn’t begin comic strip work until 1953: the Monty Carstairs strip for Mickey Mouse Weekly. From there he moved on to Hulton Press and drew features starring Swiss Family Robinson, Robin Hood and King Arthur for Swift, the “junior companion” to Eagle. In 1957, he moved on to the star title, producing standout, innovative work on a variety of strips, beginning with a biography/hagiography of Winston Churchill. ‘The Happy Warrior’ was followed by ‘Montgomery of Alamein’, ‘The Shepherd King – the story of David’ and ‘The Travels of Marco Polo’, from which Bellamy was promptly pulled only a few months in. As Peter Jackson took over the back page historical adventure, Bellamy was on his way to the front cover and The Near Future.

When Hulton were bought by Odhams Press there soon manifested irreconcilable differences between Frank Hampson and the new management. Dan Dare’s creator left his superstar baby and Bellamy was tapped as replacement – although both Don Harley & Keith Watson were retained as Frank’s assistants. For a year Bellamy produced “The Pilot of the Future”: redesigning the entire look of the strip at management’s request, before joyfully stepping down to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition.

For his entire life Frank Bellamy had been fascinated – almost obsessed – with Africa. When asked if he would like to draw a big game hunter strip he didn’t think twice and Fraser of Africa debuted in August 1960, a single page per week in the prestigious full-colour centre section. Fraser of Africa was an artistic landmark and Bellamy’s techniques of line and hatching, in conjunction with sensitive, atmospheric colours, and even his staging and layout of pages, led to majestic Heros the Spartan and eventually the bravura creativity displayed in Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet strips for TV21, before he opted for the strictures of monochrome and a single tier of 3-4 panels a day…

British Superman Garth first appeared in The Daily Mirror on Saturday, July 24th 1943, the creation of professional cartoonist Steve Dowling and BBC radio producer Gordon Boshell, at the behest of the editor who wanted an adventure strip to complement their other comic strip features: Buck Ryan, Belinda Blue Eyes, Just Jake and immortal, demi-immoral, morale-boosting Jane.

A blond giant and physical marvel with no memory of who he was, Garth washed up on an island shore and into the arms of a pretty girl… Gala. Nonetheless, he saved the entire populace from a brutal tyrant and a legend began. Boshell never had time to write the series, so Dowling – already producing successful family strip The Ruggles – scripted Garth until a new writer could be found. Don Freeman dumped the amnesia plot in ‘The Seven Ages of Garth’ (which ran from September 18th 1944 until January 20th 1946) by introducing imposing jack-of-all-sciences Professor Lumiere, whose subsequent psychological experiments regressed the burly hero back through some past lives.

In the next tale ‘The Saga of Garth’ (January 22nd 1946 – July 20th 1946) the origin was revealed. As an infant, “Garth” had been found floating in a coracle off the Shetlands and adopted by a kindly old couple. When full grown he became a Navy Captain until he was torpedoed off Tibet in 1943…

Freeman continued as writer until 1952 (‘Flight into the Future’ was his last tale), and was briefly replaced by script editor Hugh McClelland (who only wrote ‘Invasion From Space’) until Peter O’Donnell took over in February 1953 with ‘Warriors of Krull’. O’Donnell penned 28 adventures until resigning in 1966 to devote more time to his own strip: a little something called Modesty Blaise. His place was taken by Jim Edgar; a short-story writer who also scripted such prestigious newspaper strips as Matt Marriott, Wes Slade and Gun Law.

Dowling retired in 1968 and his long-time assistant John Allard took over the strip until a suitable permanent artist could be found. Allard completed ten complete tales until Frank Bellamy began a legendary run with the 13th instalment of ‘Sundance’ (which ran from 28th June to 1 October 11th 1971). Allard remained as background artist and assistant until Bellamy took full control during ‘The Orb of Trimandias’.

One thing Professor Lumiere had discovered and which gave this strip its distinctive appeal even before the fantastic artwork of Bellamy elevated it to dizzying heights of graphic brilliance, was Garth’s involuntary ability to travel through time and re-experience past and future lives. This simple concept lent the strip an unfailing potential for exotic storylines and fantastic exploits, pushing it beyond its humble beginning as a British response to Siegel & Shuster’s American phenomenon Superman.

The tales in this criminally out of print monochrome tome begin with the aforementioned ‘Sundance’ as mighty Garth is drawn back to 1876 to relive his life as an officer of George Custer’s 7th Cavalry on the eve of the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

The time-tossed titan has a brief but passionate love affair with Indian maiden Falling Leaf before dying valiantly for his beliefs and their love. It is an evocative, powerful tale that totally captures the bigotry, arrogance and futility of the White Man and the tragic demise of the Indian way of life…

Then eponymous epic ‘The Cloud of Balthus’ shows the potent but simple elegance of the narrative concept sustaining Garth. Whilst vacationing in the Caribbean our hero becomes embroiled in an espionage plot involving freelance super-spies and a US space station, but even that is mere prelude to fantastic adventure and deadly terrors when he and delectable, double-dealing companion Lee Wan are abruptly abducted by nebulous energy beings in a taut, tension-fraught thriller.

‘The Orb of Trimandias’ plunges Garth back in time to Venice of the Borgias, when/where he becomes again English Soldier-of-Fortune Lord Carthewan: a decent man battling an insane and all-powerful madman for the secret of a supernaturally potent holy relic. This gripping, exotic yarn is replete with flamboyant action, historical celebrities, sexy men and women and magnificently stirring locales. It’s a timeless treasure of adventure that has the added fillip of briefly reuniting Garth with his star-crossed true love, ethereal Space Goddess Astra.

This lovely volume (long overdue for re-issue – at least in digital form if no other way is possible) concludes with a high-octane gothic horror story.

‘The Wolfman of Ausensee’ sees Garth as a rather reluctant companion of movie starlet Gloria Delmar on a shoot at the forbidding Austrian schloss (that’s a big ugly castle to you) of a playboy whose family was once cursed by witches. Despite the title giving some of the game away, this is still a sharp and savvy spook-fest comparing well to the best Hammer Horror films that no doubt inspired it, and just gets better with each rereading.

Garth is the quintessential British Action Hero: strong, smart, fast and good-looking with a big heart and nose for trouble. His back-story granted him all of eternity and every genre to play in, and the magnificent art of Frank Bellamy also made his too-brief tenure a stellar one.

Comic-strips seldom get this good, and even though this book and its sequel are still relatively easy (if not cheap) to come by, it is still a crime and an utter mystery that all these wonderful tales have been out of print for so long.
© 1984 Mirror Group Newspapers. All rights reserved.

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Garth: The Women of Galba (volume 2)


By Frank Bellamy & Jim Edgar (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-0-90761-049-6 (Album TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

A bold and daring blond giant and physical marvel, Garth was Britain’s answer to the blockbusting sensations of Superman, with the added advantage that the feature was officially aimed at adults rather than kids of all ages.

Originally released in 1985, this second Titan Books collection of Garth’s Frank Bellamy era spans 7th September 1972 to 25th October 1973 with the artist shown at the absolute peak of his powers, and opens with eerie chiller ‘The People of the Abyss’ wherein Garth and subsea explorer Ed Neilson are taken prisoner by staggeringly beautiful (what other kind are there?) naked women who drag their bathyscaphe to a city at the bottom of the Pacific. The undersea houris are at war with horrendous aquatic monstrosities and urgently need outside assistance, but even that incredible situation is merely prelude to a tragic love affair with Cold War implications…

Next up is eponymous space-opera romp ‘The Women of Galba’, wherein an alien tyrant learns to rue the day he abducted a giant Earthman to fight and die as a gladiator. Exotic locations, spectacular action and oodles more astonishingly beautiful females make this an unforgettable adventure for what the editors of the era still believed was a strip only grown men read…

‘Ghost Town’ is another western tale, and a very special one. When Garth, vacationing in Colorado, rides into abandoned mining outpost “Gopherville”, he is irresistibly drawn back to a past life as Marshal Tom Barratt who lived, loved and died when the town was a hotspot of vice and easily-purloined money. When Bellamy died suddenly in 1976 this tale – long acknowledged as his personal favourite – was rerun until Martin Asbury (who painted both Titan Book album covers here) was ready to take over the strip.

The final adventure re-presented here – ‘The Mask of Atacama’ – sees Garth & Lumiere in Mexico City. Whilst sleeping, the blonde colossus is visited by the spirit of Princess Atacama (also beautiful, of course) who escorts him through time to vanished Aztec city Tenochtitlan where, as the Sun God Axatl, Garth attempts to save their civilisation from the voraciously marauding Conquistadores of Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano (as shortened for these brief 3-panel strip episodes to far more manageable Hernan Cortés)…

Tragically, neither Garth nor the Princess have reckoned on the jealousy of the Sun Priests and their High Priestess Tiahuaca…

Adding extra value to this volume are a draft synopsis and actual scripts for ‘The Women of Galba’, all liberally illustrated.. There has never been a better comic adventure strip than Garth as drawn by Bellamy: a daily rip-roaring romp combining action, suspense, glamour, mystery and the uncanny in a seamless blend of graphic wonderment. In recent years, the comic strip colossus has fallen from memory as well as favour, but I’m still fervently praying that one day, Garth (and while I’m dreaming, Jeff Hawke too) will make the jump to curated complete archive editions. Go on, make on old man happy why don’t you? There’s certainly a grateful, appreciative and vast audience waiting…
© 1985 Mirror Group Newspapers/Syndication International. All Rights Reserved.

This day in 1915 Henry Sunday page illustrator Don Trachte was born, followed two years later by British legend Frank Bellamy (Fraser of Africa, Dan Dare, Garth, Heros the Spartan, Thunderbirds) and Mancunian émigré Lee Elias (Beyond Mars, Black Cat, Flash, Green Arrow, Eclipso, Luke Cage, Human Fly, Goblin, Rook) in 1920.

In 1943 French writer-artist Jean-Claude Fournier (Spirou and Fantasio, Bizu) was born as was writer/publisher Gary Reed (Sherlock Holmes, Deadworld, Saint Germaine, Baker Street, Caliber Comics) in 1956.

We lost pioneering Canadian cartoonist and animator Vital Achille Raoul Barré in 1932 and in 1977 gained a UK animal icon when Gnasher’s Tale (by David Sutherland) began, launching the manky mutt into his own Beano series detailing his life as a puppy before being adopted by Dennis the Menace…

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The Spider’s Syndicate of Crime vs Spider-Boy (volume 4)


By Jerry Siegel & Reg Bunn with John Burns, Geoff Campion and various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-83786-560-4 (Album TPB/Digital edition), 978-1-83786-685-4 (Webshop Exclusive edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Another triumph of Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics line, The Spider’s Syndicate of Crime vs. Spider-Boy is the latest offering in what I pray will be a complete revival of the UK’s most marvellous vintage comics fantasies (bring on Thunderbolt the Avenger, Smoke Man, Tri-Man, Gadget Man & Gimmick Kid and even the Phantom Viking… we can take it!).

Gathering material from peerless weekly anthology Lion, originally spanning May 27th to October 7th 1967 and including material from a later reprinting (Lion December 8th 1973), this collection also includes a prose done-in-one yarn from Lion Annual 1970 to complete another wildly whacky superhero romp as only the cocreator of Superman could envision it…

Mystery criminal genius and eventual superhero The Spider debuted on June 26th 1965 and reigned supreme until April 26th 1969. He has periodically returned in reprints and occasional new stories ever since. As first introduced by Ted Cowan (Paddy Payne, Adam Eterno, Robot Archie) & William Reginald Bunn.

“Reg” was an absolute master of his field and much beloved. His other work in comics (like Robin Hood, Buck Jones, Black Hood, Captain Kid and Clip McCord) spanned 1949 to his death in 1971 as, once the industry found him, he was never without work. Reg died on the job and is still much missed. For The Spider there was the ultimate accolade as, after opening on 2 pages per episode, the feature kept winning a bigger page count. Even so, lots had to happen in short order and Bunn never stinted or short-changed his audience. Played out for months at breakneck rollercoaster pace, each monochrome episode positively bulged with imaginative ingenuity, manic combats and crazy inventions peppering wide-eyed British kids with a bizarre conception of the USA…

Originally The Spider was man of unbelievably colossal vanity: a moody malcontent super-scientist whose goal was to be acclaimed the greatest criminal of all time. A flamboyantly wicked narcissist, he began his public career by recruiting crime specialists – scurvy, skeevy safecracker Roy Ordini and genteelly timid evil genius inventor Professor Pelham – prior to a massive gem-theft from America’s greatest city. He was foiled by cruel luck and resolute cops Gilmore &Trask: crack detectives cursed with the job of catching the arachnid archfiend. Cowan scripted the first two serialised sagas before handing over to comics royalty: Jerry Siegel (Superman, Superboy, The Spectre, Doctor Occult, Slam Bradley, Funnyman, The Mighty Crusaders, Starling), who had been forced to look elsewhere for work after an infamous dispute with DC Comics over the rights to the Man of Steel. His supervision of UK arachnid amazement began just as Britain and the entire, but somehow less fab & groovy, world succumbed to “Batmania”…

In case you’re not old, that term covers a period of global hysteria sparked by the 1966 Batman TV show, when the planet went crazy for superheroes and an era dubbed “camp” saw humour, satire, and fantastic psychedelic whimsy infect all categories of entertainment. It was a time of peace, love, wild music and radical change, and I believe there were lots of drugs being experimented with at the time…

British comics were always especially vulnerable to any passing trend or zeitgeist, and a host of more conventional costumed crusaders sprang up in our traditionally unconventional pages. Scripted by the godfather of the genre – and an inveterate humourist – The Spider remained an utterly arrogant sod even as he skilfully shifted gears without a squeak to become a superhero. Battling in rapid succession The Exterminator, Crime Incorporated, The Silhouette, Dr. Mysterioso, The Android Emperor, The Infernal Gadgeteer, The Crook From Outer Space, an evil Genie, transdimensional monstrogs and immortal Queen Lana of Valley of the Doomed he starts here as global figure of approbation and acceptance, only to see all his glittering glories plucked away…

As previously stated, the strip had grown ever more popular, and by the time of this epic encounter demanded a full 5 pages per episode, in a periodical where 1 or 2 pages a week was the norm. Another masterclass of illustrative wonderment displaying Bunn’s incredible gift for visualisation, the lengthy campaign finds The Spider, Pelham & Ordini targeted by honest greed, dastardly ambition and cruel misunderstanding as the tale in this tome reconnects with normal(ish) Good, Evil and Vengeance. Here The Spider duels a deadly criminal scientist only to find himself distracted and diverted by a young and ferocious deadly doppelganger…
When criminal inventor Sylvester Jenkins (DO NOT call him “Silly”) teams up with Fury Gang boss “Turk” Dobbs, the first results are a wave of super-powered bandits such as The Bolt and insulting defeat by The Spider and his crew. In response Jenkins murders Dobbs (who coined the “Silly” moniker) and frames the hero for it. With the Spider on the run and unable to clear his name, let alone face a rush of mutated mobster/monsters, the situation grows truly complicated as a brilliant but vicious teenager wearing stolen Spider gear hunts and humiliates the great hero time and again.

Outfought, outmanoeuvred and on the run, the prospects are dire after Jenkins recruits Spider-Boy and orchestrates his following forays against the despised fallen hero, until the kid learns a bitter truth and shares a tragic secret that changes everything…

A far darker and more traditionally motivated tale, the delivery still rockets along with wild invention as incidental dangers pile up: horrors such as trigger-happy cops, Jenkins’ relentless monster experiments, naturally-occurring rival bio-terrors, rampaging bug-bots, flying castles, mutated circus and zoo animals and a climactic showdown in a lost city of super technologies, before all the truths come out and justice is served…

The Extras section then offers a rare treat from a later era, as – when the serial was truncated and re-run in 1973 – the editors opted to commission a new final episode and alternate conclusion; scripted by an unknown writer but illustrated by John Burns as seen in Lion December 8th 1973. It’s followed by text thriller ‘The Spider Meets the Fly’. Illustrated and written by hands unknown for Lion Annual 1968 this yarn pits the Spider and Co. against a world-conquering science villain and his volcano-dwelling army of high-tech assassins… with the usual results, and is accompanied by the book’s original full-colour frontispiece highlighting the clash as painted by Geoff (Battler Britton, Captain Condor, Typhoon Tracy, The Spellbinder, D-Day Dawson) Campion.

This titanic tome confirms that the King of crime crushes is still top of the heap and should find a home in every kid’s heart and mind, no matter how young they might be, or threaten to remain. Batty, baroque and often simply bonkers, The Spider proves that although crime does not pay, it can offer a huge amount of white-knuckle fun…
© 1967, 1969, 1973 & 2025 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1777 English caricaturist and illustrator Richard Newton was born, followed in 1903 by Jimmy Olsen, Captain Marvel artist Pete Costanza; Ralph Reese (Solomon Kane, Witzend, One Year Affair) in 1949, and Argentine cartoonist Maitena Burundarena (Mujeres Alteradas) in 1962.

In 2017, comic book chameleon Rich Buckler (Deathlok, Fantastic Four, All-Star Squadron, Batman, Superman vs Shazam, Red Circle Comics) died.

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Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives volume 1


By Bill Everett and others, edited and complied by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-488-7 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Thanks solely to modern technology and diligent research by dedicated fans, there is a sublime superabundance of collections featuring the works of too-long ignored founding fathers and lost masters of American comic books these days. A magnificent case in point is these curated chronicles (available in both print and digital formats) revisiting and yet barely touching upon the incredible gifts and achievements of one of the greatest draughtsmen and yarn-spinners our industry has ever seen.

You could save some time and trouble by simply buying them now rather than waste your valuable off-hours reading my preposterous blather and piffle, but since I’m keen to carp on anyway feel free to accompany me as I delineate just why these tomes need to join the books on your “Favourites” shelf.

The star under scrutiny here was a direct descendent and namesake of iconoclastic poet and artist William Blake. Bill was quite possibly the most technically accomplished artist in the US comic book industry and his tragic life and awe-inspiring body of work reveal how a man of privilege and astonishing pedigree was wracked by illness, addictive personality traits (especially alcoholism) and sheer bad luck, but nevertheless shaped an art-form. Bill Everett left twin legacies: an incredible body of superlative stories and art, and, more importantly, he redeemed many broken lives by becoming a dedicated mentor for Alcoholics Anonymous in his later years.

William Blake Everett was born in 1917 into a wealthy and prestigious New England family. Bright and precocious, he contracted tuberculosis at age twelve and was dispatched to arid Arizona to recuperate. This chain of events began a life-long affair with the cowboy lifestyle: a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, tall-tale-telling breed locked in a hard-to-win war against slow self-destruction.

All this and more is far better imparted in a scholarly, fact-filled, picture-packed Introduction by Blake Bell in Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives volume 1. This covers the development of the medium in ‘The Golden Age of Comics’; the history of ‘Bill Everett the Man’ and how they came together in ‘Centaur + Funnies Inc. = Marvel Comics #1’. The essay also includes an astounding treasure trove of found images and original art, including samples from 1940s Sub-Mariner, 1960s Daredevil and 1970s Black Widow stories, amongst many others.

Accompanied by the covers (that’s the case for most of the titles that follow: Everett was fast and slick and knew just how to catch a punter’s eye) for Amazing Mystery Funnies vol. 1 #1, 2, 3a, 3b and vol. 2 #2 (August 1938 – February 1939, from Centaur) are a quartet of rousing but muddled interstellar exploits starring sci fi troubleshooter Skyrocket Steele. These are followed by a brace of anarchic outer space shenanigans starring futuristic wild boy Dirk the Demon culled from Amazing Mystery Funnies (vol. 1 #3a and vol. 2 #3; November 1938 & March 1939 respectively).

The undisputed star and big draw at Centaur was always Amazing-Man who was a Tibetan mystic-trained orphan, adventurer and do-gooder named John Aman. After many years of dangerous, painful study that young man was despatched back to civilisation to do good… for a relative given value of “good”…

Aman stole the show in monthly Amazing Mystery Comics (#5-8, spanning September -December 1939) as seen in the four breakneck thrillers re-presented here and opening with ‘Origin of Amazing-Man’ followed by an untitled sequel episode with the champion saving a lady rancher from sadistic criminals; ‘Amazing-Man Loose’ (after being framed for various crimes) and a concluding instalment wherein the nomadic hero abandons his quest to capture his evil arch rival ‘The Great Question’ and instead heads for recently invaded France to combat the scourge of Nazism…

As previously stated, Everett was passionately wedded to western themes and for Novelty Press’ Target Comics he devised an Arizona-set, rootin’ tootin’ cowboy crusader called Bull’s-Eye Bill. Taken from issues #1 & 2 (February & March 1940), ‘On the trail of Travis Trent’ and ‘The Escape of Travis Trent’ has our wholesome yet hard-bitten cowpoke battling the meanest, most determined owlhoot in the territory. Accompanying the strips is an Everett-illustrated prose piece attributed to “Gray Brown” entitled ‘Bullseye Bill Gets his Moniker’.

Thanks to his breakthrough Sub-Mariner sagas, Everett became inextricably linked to water-based action adventures and immensely popular, edgy heroes. That’s why Eastern Comics hired him to create human waterspout Bob Blake, Hydroman for their bimonthly anthology Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics.

Here – spanning issues #1-5 and August 1940 to March 1941- are five spectacular, eerily offbeat exploits, encompassing ‘The Origin of Hydroman’ and covering his patriotic mission to make America safe from subversion by “oriental invaders”, German saboteurs and assorted ne’er-do-wells, after which a Polar Paladin rears his frozen head. Sub-Zero Man debuted in Blue Bullet Comics vol. 1 #2 cover-dated July 1940. He was a Venusian scientist stranded on Earth who, through myriad bizarre circumstances, became a chilly champion of justice. Everett is only credited with the episode ‘The Power of Professor X’ (vol. 1 #5, October 1940) but also included here are the cover of vol. 1 #4 and spot illustrations for the prose stories ‘Sub-Zero’s Adventures on Earth’ and ‘Frozen Ice’ (from Blue Bullet Comics vol. 1 #2 and vol. 2 #3).

The Conqueror was another quickly forsaken Everett creation: a Red, White & Blue patriotic costumed champion debuting in August 1941’s Victory Comics #1. Daniel Lyons almost died in a plane crash but was saved by cosmic ray bombardment which granted him astounding mental and physical powers in ‘The Coming of the Conqueror’. He promptly moved to Europe to “rid the world of Adolf Hitler!” with Everett’s only other contribution being the cover of issue #2 (September 1941). Accompanied by a page of original artwork from Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics #12 (May 1941), The Music Master then details how dying violinist John Wallace was saved by mystic musical means and becomes a sonic-powered superman righting injustices and crushing evil…

Rounding out this initial cavalcade of forgotten wonders are a selection of covers, illustrations and yarns which can only be described as Miscellaneous (1938-1942). These comprise the cover to the 1938 Uncle Joe’s Funnies #1; procedural crime thriller ‘The C-20 Mystery’ (from Amazing Mystery Funnies vol. 2 #7, June 1939) and ‘The Story of the Red Cross’ from True Comics #2 (June 1938). The cover for 1941’s Dickie Dare #1 is followed by a range of potent images from text tales beginning with three pages for ‘Sheep’s Clothing’ (Funny Pages vol. 2 #11, November 1940); a potent pic for ‘Birth of a Robot Part 2’ (Target Comics vol. 1 #6, July 1940); two pages from ‘Death in a Box’ courtesy of Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics #5 (March 1941) and two from ‘Pirate’s Oil’ in RFHC #13 (July 1942), before the unpublished, unfinished 1940 covers for Challenge Comics #1 and Whirlwind Comics #1 bring the potent nostalgia to a close.
© 2011 Fantagraphics Books. Introduction © 2011 Blake Bell. All art © its respective owners and holders. All rights reserved.

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Heroic Tales: The Bill Everett Archives volume 2


By Bill Everett and others, edited and complied by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-600-3 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The second visit to the works of Bill Everett also opens with a fact-filled, picture-packed Introduction by Blake Bell which covers ‘The Early Years of Comics: 1938-1942’, ‘The Birth of Marvel Comics’ and ‘The Comic Book Production System’, before ‘The Heroes’ precedes a selection of astounding, astonishing prototypical adventure champions accompanied a brief essay on the set-up of Centaur Comics, Novelty Press, Eastern Color Printing, Hillman and Lev Gleason Publications.

Augmented by covers for Centaur’s Amazing Mystery Funnies vol. 2 #3, 5 & 6 (March, May & June 1939) are three outer space exploits of futuristic troubleshooter Skyrocket Steele, whilst Tibetan-trained superhero Amazing-Man offers a transformative triptych of titanic tales spanning war-torn Europe, augmented by covers to Amazing-Man Comics #9-11 (February-April 1940).

Everett’s deeply held sagebrush sentiments are served with another brace of barnstorming Bull’s-Eye Bill from Target Comics #3-4 (Novelty Press, April & May 1940) whilst from #7-9 (August-October 1940), the author smoothly switched to sophisticated suspense as master of disguise The Chameleon cunningly crushed contemporary criminals in scintillating escapades from Target Comics’ answer to The Saint, The Falcon and The Lone Wolf.

Everett’s other aquatic adventurer – Eastern Comics’ human waterspout Bob Blake, Hydroman returns next, as seen in Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics # 6-9 (May – November 1941, with Bill’s covers for #6 & 7): four spectacular, eerily, offbeat exploits, covering an extended battle against foreign spies and American Fifth Columnists, after which Red Reed in the Americas! (created by Bob Davis & Fitz) offers the first two chapters in a political thriller wherein a college student and his pals head South of the Border to fight Nazi-backed sedition and tyranny in a stunning tour de force first seen in Lev Gleason’s Silver Streak Comics #20 & 21 (April & May 1942).

A section of Miscellaneous and text illustrations follows, blending Western spot drawings with eye-catching covers from Amazing Mystery Funnies vol. 2 #18; Target Comics #5 & 6; Blue Bolt (vol. 1 #11, vol. 2 #1, 2 &~ 3) and Famous Funnies #85. The Humorous and More then details Everett’s forays into other markets: niche sectors such as licensed comics, comedy and romance, and even  a return to pulp and magazine illustration as he strove to stay one step ahead of a constantly shifting market and his own growing reputation for binges and unreliability.

‘What’s With the Crosbys?’ is a superbly rendered gossip strip from Famous Stars #2 (1950, Ziff-Davis) whilst a stunning monochrome girly-pin-up of ‘Snafu’s Lovely Ladies’ (from Marvel’s Snafu #3, March 1956), and the cover of Adventures of the Big Boy #1 (also Marvel, from the same month) lead into the back cover of Cracked #6 (December 1958, Major Magazines) and other visual features from that Mad magazine mimic, as well as the colour cover to less successful imitator Zany (#3, from March 1959). Everett’s staggering ability to draw beautiful women plays well in the complete romance strip ‘Love Knows No Rules’ (Personal Love #24, November 1953 Eastern Color), before this section concludes with a gritty monochrome title page piece from combat pulp War Stories #1, courtesy of Marvel’s parent company Magazine Management, and cover-dated September 1952.

The Horror concentrates on our post-superhero passion for scary stories: an arena where Bill Everett absolutely shone like a diamond. For more than a decade he brought a sheen of irresistible quality to the generally second-rate chillers Timely/Atlas/Marvel produced in competition with genre frontrunners EC Comics. It’s easy to see how they could compete and even outlive their gritty, gore-soaked competitor, with such lush and lurid examples of covers and chillingly beautiful interior pages…

Following a third informative background essay detailing his life until its cruelly early end in 1973, a choice selection of his lesser known or celebrated efforts opens with tale of terror ‘Hangman’s House’ (Suspense #5, November, 1950),; a grim confrontation with Satanic evil, followed by futuristic Cold War shocker ‘I Deal With Murder!’ and a visit to a dark carnival of purely human wickedness in ‘Felix the Great’(both from Suspense #6, January 1951).

Adventures into Weird Worlds #4 (Spring 1952) offered a laconic, sardonic glimpse into ‘The Face of Death’, whilst from the following issue (April 1952) ‘Don’t Bury Me Deep’ tapped untold depths of tension in a moodily mordant exploration of fear and premature burial. Hard on the heels of the cover to Journey Into Unknown Worlds #14 (December 1952) comes one of its interior shockers as ‘The Scarecrow’ helps an aged couple solve their mortgage problems in a most unusual manner. The Marvel madness concludes with a cautionary tale of ‘That Crazy Car’ from Journey into Mystery #20, December 1954, concluding a far too brief sojourn amidst arguably Everest’s most accomplished works and most professionally adept period.

This magnificent collection ends with a gallery of pages and one complete tale from the end of his career; selected from an even more uninhibited publisher attempting to cash in on the adult horror market opened by Warren Publishing with Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella.

Skywald was formed by industry veteran Israel Waldman and Everett’s old friend Sol Brodsky, tapping into the burgeoning black-&-white, mature-reader market with supernatural flavoured magazines Hell-Rider, Crime Machine, Nightmare, Psycho and Scream. Offered an “in”, Everett produced incredible pin-ups (included here are three from Nightmare (#1, 2 & 4, December 1970-June 1971); ‘A Psycho Scene’ (Psycho #5, November, 1971); a stunning werewolf pinup from Psycho #6 and one of revived Golden Age monstrosity ‘The Heap’ from Psycho #4. Most welcome is a magnificent 10-page monochrome masterpiece of gothic mystery ‘The Man Who Stole Eternity’ from Psycho #3 (May, 1971).

Although telling, even revelatory and concluding in a happy ending of sorts, what these books truly celebrate is not the life but the astounding versatility of Bill Everett. A gifted, driven man, he was a born storyteller with the unparalleled ability to make all his imaginary worlds hyper-real; and for nearly five decades his incredible art and wondrous stories enthralled and enchanted everybody lucky enough to read them.
© 2013 Fantagraphics Books. Text © 2013 Blake Bell. All art © its respective owners and holders. All rights reserved.

Bill Everett was born today in 1917, as was Mad mainstay Don Martin in 1931, foundational Underground Commix publisher/empresario Don Donahue (AKA Apex Novelties) in 1942 and in 1953 both Alan Kupperberg (Blue Devil, Dragonlance) and Arthur Suydam (Cholly and Flytrap, Marvel Zombies).

Today in 2017, Oscar González Guerrero died. The Mexican comic artist, art director and educator had started taletelling in the 1950s and created Zor y Los Invencibles, Hermelinda Linda, Burrerías, Smog, Don Leocadio El Tío Porfirio, Las Aventures de Capulina and run ¡Ka-Boom! Estudio.

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Buz Sawyer volume 2: Sultry’s Tiger


By Roy Crane  & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-499-3 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips, and these pictorial features were, until relatively recently, utterly ubiquitous. Immensely information-efficient, hugely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as irresistible weapons to guarantee sales and increase circulation, the strips seemed to find their only opposition in the short-sighted local paper editors who often resented the low brow art form, which cut into advertising and frequently drew complaint letters from cranks…

It’s virtually impossible for us today to understand the overwhelming allure and power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comics sections of daily – and especially Sunday – newspapers. “The Funnies” were the most universally enjoyed recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality of graphic sagas and humorous episodes over the years.

From the very start comedy was paramount; hence our terms Funnies and Comics, and from these gag-&-stunt beginnings, a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and the vaudeville shows, came a thoroughly entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting on April 21st 1924, Washington Tubbs II was a comedic, gag-a-day strip which evolved into a globe-girdling adventure serial. Crane produced pages of stunning, addictive and influential high-quality yarn-spinning for years, until his eventual introduction of moody swashbuckler Captain Easy ushered in the age of adventure strips with the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929. This in turn led to a Sunday colour page for the good captain that was possibly the most compelling and visually imaginative of the entire era (see Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips vol 1 ).

Practically improving minute by minute, the Sunday strip benefited from Crane’s relentless quest for perfection his imaginative, fabulous compositional masterpieces achieving a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The influence of those pages can be seen in the works of near-contemporaries such as Hergé, giants-in-waiting like Charles Schulz and comic book masters like Alex Toth and John Severin ever since.

The material was obviously as much fun to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA/United Features Syndicate’s abrupt and arbitrary demand that all its strips must henceforward be produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate their being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated.

They just didn’t lift the artist any more, so Crane stopped making them.

At the height of his powers Crane just walked away from the astounding Captain Easy Sunday page to concentrate on the daily feature, and when his contract expired in 1943 he left United Features, lured away by that grandee of strip poachers William Randolph Hearst. The result was a contemporary aviation strip set in still-unfolding World War II: Buz Sawyer.

Where Wash Tubbs was a brave but largely comedic Lothario and his pal Easy a surly, tight-lipped he-man, John Singer “Buz” Sawyer was a joyous and sharp amalgam of the two: a good-looking, popular country-boy who went to war because his country needed him..

Buz was a fun-loving, skirt-chasing, musically-inclined naval aviator daily risking his life with his devoted gunner Rosco Sweeney: a bluff, brave and simply ordinary Joe – and one of the most effective comedy foils ever created. The wartime strip was – and remains – a marvel of authenticity: depicting not just the action and drama of the locale and situation but, more importantly, capturing the quiet, dull hours of training, routine and desperate larks between the serious business of killing and staying alive. However – and crucially – when the war ended the action-loving duo – plus fellow pilot and girl-chasing rival Chili Harrison – all went looking for work that satisfied their penchant for adventure and romance wherever they could find it…

Crane was a master of popular entertainment, blending action and adventure with smart drama and compellingly sophisticated soap opera, all leavened with raucous comedy in a seamless procession of unmissable daily episodes. He and his team of creative assistants – which over the decades comprised co-writer Ed “Doc” Granberry and artists Hank Schlensker, Clark Haas, Al Wenzel, Joel King, Ralph Lane, Dan Heilman, Hi Mankin & Bill Wright – soldiered on under relentless deadline pressure, producing an authentic and exotic funny romantic thriller rendered in the signature monochrome textures of line-art and craftint (a mechanical monochrome patterning effect used to add greys and halftones to the superb drawing for miraculous depths and moods) as well as the prerequisite full-colour Sunday page.

This primarily black-&-white tome contains an impressive but far too meagre selection of those colour strips – although Crane quickly came to regard them only as a necessary evil which plagued him for most of his career…

The eternal dichotomy and narrative/continuity problems of producing Sunday Pages (many client papers would only buy either Dailies or Sunday strips, but not both) meant that most creators had to produce different story-lines for each feature – Milt Caniff’s Steve Canyon being one of the few notable exceptions. Whereas Dailies needed about three weeks lead-in time, hand-separated colour plates for the sabbath sections meant finished artwork and colour guides had be at the engravers and printers a minimum of six weeks before publication. Crane handled the problem with typical aplomb; using Sundays to tell completely unrelated stories.

For Wash Tubbs he created the aforementioned prequel series starring Captain Easy in sagas set before the mismatched pair had met, whilst in Buz Sawyer he turned the slot over to Roscoe Sweeney for lavish gag-a-day exploits, packed with slapstick laughs and situation comedy. During the war years it was set among the common “swabbies” aboard ship: a far more family-oriented feature and probably better suiting the weekend crowd of parents and children than the often chilling or disturbing realistically saucy/sexy sagas that unfolded Mondays to Saturdays. A year before Steve Canyon began, Crane tried telling a seven-days-a-week yarn in Buz Sawyer (with resounding success, to my mind, and you can judge for yourself here) but found the process a logistical nightmare. At the conclusion he returned to weekday continuity whilst Sundays were restored to Roscoe with only occasional guest-shots by the named star.

This second lush, sturdily archival hardback re-presents the tense and turbulent period from October 6th 1945 to July 23rd 1947 wherein de-mobilised adrenaline addict Buz tries to adjust to peacetime life whilst looking for a job and career – just like millions of his fellow former servicemen…

Before getting out, though, he had returned home on leave and ended up accidentally engaged. Buz was the son of the town’s doctor: plain, simple and good-hearted. In that ostensibly egalitarian environment the school sporting star became the sweetheart of ice-cool and stand-offish Tot Winter, the richest girl in town. Now when her upstart nouveau riche parents heard of the decorated hero’s return they hijacked the homecoming and turned it into a publicity carnival. Moreover, the ghastly, snobbish Mrs. Winter conspired with her daughter to trap the lad into a quick and newsworthy marriage.

Class, prejudice, financial greed and social climbing were enemies Buz and Sweeney were ill-equipped to fight, but luckily, annoying tomboy-brat/girl-next-door Christy Jameson had blossomed into a sensible, down-to-earth, practical and clever young woman. She’d scrubbed up real pretty too and showed Buz that his future was rife with possibility. Mercifully soon, the leave ended and he & Sweeney returned to the war. The Sawyer/Winter engagement fizzled and died. When their discharge papers finally arrived (in the episode for September 9th 1945), the period of desperate struggle was over. However, that only meant that the era of globe-girdling adventure was about to begin…

Before the comics wonderment resumes, Jeet Heer and Rick Norwood discuss ‘The Perfectionist and his Team’. Concentrating initially on ‘After the War’, the fascinating explorations also delve deep into detail of the auteur’s troubled and tempestuous relationship with ‘Crane’s Team’ before offering ‘A Word on Comic Strip Formats’ and the censorious iniquities local newspaper editors regularly inflicted upon Crane’s work.

With all the insightful stuff over, cartoon adventure begins anew as civilian Mr. Sawyer returns home to a life of indolence before his own restless nature starts him fretting again. The old town isn’t the same. Tot has inherited her father’s millions and moved to New York and even Christy is gone; she’s away attending his old alma mater…

After a brief interlude wherein he visits the cheery Co-Ed and debates the merits of returning to college on the G.I. Bill, Buz instead opts for fulltime employment and heads to the Big Apple where Chili Harrison has a new job offer and an old flame waiting. As he turns East, Buz chooses to ignore his instincts and the huge mysterious guy who seems to turn up everywhere he goes…

In NYC, aloof, alluring Tot Winter is the cream of polite “arty” society, but her wealth and clingy new fiancé – opera singer Count Franco Confetti – are all but forgotten when “the one who got away” appears again and she finds her interest in her High School beau rekindled. Buz has moved in with Chili, blithely unaware that the strangely ubiquitous giant has inveigled himself into the apartment next door and is now actively spying on him…

Sawyer wants a job flying, but is frankly only one of hundreds of war-hero pilots looking for a position at International Airways. Moreover, his reputation as a hot-shot risk-taker makes him the last person a commercial carrier might consider. Happily, after implausibly well-connected Chili intercedes with a major player in the company, something does come up…

The truth about Buz’s hulking stalker comes out when the Maharani of Batu’s yacht docks in New York. The exotic Asian princess is one of the wealthiest women on Earth and cuts a stunning figure with her tiger on a leash. Yet when Buz first met her she was simply “Sultry”, a ferocious, remorseless resistance fighter helping him kill the occupying Japanese on her Pacific island.

She never forgotten him and will ensure no other woman can have him…

Sultry moves into the penthouse adjoining Tot’s and is witness to the ploys of the Winter woman as she sidelines sleazy sneaky Confetti and makes her play for Buz. She is also a key figure in the tragic heiress’ sudden death…

Just prior to Tot’s gruesome demise, Buz had finally met the unconventional Mr. Wright of International Airways. That doughty executive had no need for pilots but wanted a quick-thinking, capable fighter who could solve problems in the world’s most troubled conflict zones. He even has a spot open for good old Roscoe Sweeney. Buz is all set for his first overseas assignment when the cops decide he’s the other prime suspect in Tot’s murder and, with Sawyer and Count Confetti in jail, Sultry tries to flee America before the truth comes out. Sweeney and the freshly exonerated Buz soon track her down, but Sultry turns the tables on them and shanghaies her erstwhile lover, imprisoning him on her yacht, determined to make him her permanent boytoy, far, far away from American …

Never short of an idea and blessed with the luck of the damned, Buz’s escape results in a terrifying conflagration and the seeming death of his obsessed inamorata… but Sultry’s body isn’t recovered…

It takes a lot of pleading to get Mr. Wright to give him another chance but, soon after, Buz & Sweeney are winging north to Greenland to stop a crazed sniper taking pot-shots at aircraft passing over the “Roof of the World”. This savage, visceral extended saga soon reveals the shooter to be a deranged leftover Nazi and his hapless attendants, but the heroes’ astonishing hunt for and capture of the Teutonic trio is as nothing compared to the harrowing trek to get them back to civilisation, especially since poor Roscoe is putty in the hands of lovely Frieda, devil-daughter of the utterly mad Baron von Schlingle.

Before Buz get the survivors home safely, he loses his plane, must forcibly trek across melting floes, get them all stranded on a iceberg and even has his pretty-boy face marred forever. Worst of all, by the time he gets back to civilisation, his job no longer exists. Mr. Wright has quit and moved on to another company…

It’s not all bad news. Wright has euphemistically become “Personnel Director” for Frontier Oil: a truly colossal conglomerate active all over Earth and now wants Buz to carry on his unique problem-solving career for his new employers.

Despite a large bump in salary, the weary war hero is undecided until he hears Christy is helping her dad in Central American nation Salvaduras in his role as a geologist for Frontier Oil. This happily ties in with an outstanding missing persons case; said vanished victim being Bill Daniels, playboy son of a prominent company executive. It takes very little to convince Wright to despatch Buz & Roscoe south of the border to investigate, opening floodgates to a spectacular epic of light-hearted romantic adventure a world apart from his previous harrowing cases. The story also saw Crane and Co. merging the Daily and Sunday strips into a single storyline (with the Sundays primarily illustrated by Schlensker) as the action boys tried to trace the missing American in a country that seems locked in fear and poverty…

After initially hitting a wattle-and-daub wall, Buz takes time off for a picnic with Christy and, after a close call with a faux Mexican bandit (in actuality a Yankee fugitive from justice with an atrocious fake accent), declares his undying love for her.

He is not rebuffed and there’s the hint of wedding bells in the air…

First, though, he and Sweeney need to finish the mission, and help comes from a brave peon who breaks the regional code of silence to put them on the trail of the mysterious Ranch of the Caves and its American émigré who rules the isolated canton with blood and terror. After romancing the daughter of vicious Don Jaime, Buz and Roscoe infiltrate the desolate fiefdom and the gang boss’ international band of thugs, discovering not only the very much alive missing playboy but an incredible lost Mayan treasure trove!

Mission accomplished, Buz returns to New York to marry Christy, only to find he’s already needed elsewhere. Christy too is having doubts, worried that she will always play second fiddle to her man’s addiction to action, whereas in truth the real problem is that trouble usually comes looking for Buz. Boarding a Frontier plane for the Yukon, Sawyer is merely a collateral casualty when the ship’s other passenger is kidnapped. The mysterious menabducting plastic surgeon Dr. Wing take their helpless hostages all the way to deepest Africa where they expect the medic to change the face of an infamous madman everybody in the world believes died in a Berlin Bunker. Tragically, the fanatics are not prepared for the physician’s dauntless sense of duty and sacrifice nor Buz’s sheer determination to survive…

The latter part of this tale describes Buz’s epic river trek with mercenary turncoat honey-trap Kitty as they flee from vengeful Nazis. However, even after reaching the coast and relative safety, the insidious reach of the war-criminals is not exhausted and one final attack looms…

Eventually, Buz returns to New York alone and wins enough time from slave driving Mr. Wright to settle things with Christy. He follows her to Nantucket Sound, but even their romantic sailboat ride turns into a life-changing adventure…

To be Continued for decades to come…

This splendid collection is the perfect means of discovering – or reconnecting with – Crane’s second magnum opus: spectacular, enthralling, exotically immediate romps that influenced generations of modern cartoonists, illustrators, comics creators and storytellers. Buz Sawyer ranks amongst the very greatest strip cartoon features ever created: rousing, enthralling, thrilling, outrageously funny and deeply moving tale-telling that is irresistible and utterly unforgettable.
Buz Sawyer: Sultry’s Tiger © 2012 Fantagraphics Books, all other material © 2012 the respective copyright holders. All Strips © 2010 King Features Syndicate, Inc All rights reserved.

Today in 1890, landmark British magazine Comic Cuts began publication. See what we started?

This date in 1928 scripter/screen writer George Kashdan (Tomahawk, Congo Bill, Tommy Tomorrow, Mysto, Magician Detective, hundreds of DC genre anthology tales, Superman/ Aquaman Hour of Adventure) as born, with Dutch creator Piet Wijn (Aram, Douwe Dabbert) coming a year later. Dave (Cerebus) Sim popped up in 1956 and Linda Medley (Castle Waiting, Justice League America, Doom Patrol, Galactic Girl Guides) in 1964.

Today saw the loss of Mutt and Jeff ghostwriter Aurthus “Bugs” Baer in 1969, ULTIMATE Batman artist Dick Sprang in 2000 and Mad’s The Lighter Side cartoonist Dave Berg in 2002.

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck by Carl Barks: volume 6 – The Old Castle’s Secret


By Carl Barks & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-653-9 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Donald Duck ranks among a small number of fictional characters who have transcended the bounds of reality to become – like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Popeye and James Bond -meta-real. As such, his origins are complex and convoluted. His official birthday is June 9th 1934: a dancing, nautically-themed bit-player in the Silly Symphony cartoon short The Wise Little Hen. However, that date is based on the feature’s release, as announced by distributors United Artists and latterly acknowledged by the Walt Disney Company. Recent research reveals the piece was initially screened at Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on May 3rd, part of a Benefit show. The Wise Little Hen officially premiered on June 7th at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, before a general release date was settled.

The animated feature was adapted by Ted Osborne & Al Taliaferro for the Silly Symphonies Sunday comic strip and thus classified by historians as Donald’s official debut in Disney comics. Controversially, though, he was also deemed to have originated in The Adventures of Mickey Mouse strip which had begun 1931. Thus the Duck has more “birthdays” than the Queens and Kings of England (plus the generally dis-United Kingdom and gradually diminishing Commonwealth) which probably explains why he’s such a bad-tempered old cuss. Today is not so much a birthday as graduation party…

Visually, Donald Fauntleroy Duck was largely the result of animator Dick Lundy’s efforts, and, with partner-in-fun Mickey Mouse, is one of TV Guide’s 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time. The Duck has his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame and has appeared in more films than any other Disney player. During the 1930s his screen career grew from background/supporting roles to a team act with Mickey and Goofy, to a series of solo cartoons that began with 1937’s Don Donald, which also introduced love interest Daisy Duck and nephews Huey, Louie and Dewey.

By 1938 Donald was officially more popular than signature company icon Mickey, especially after the brash bird’s service as a propaganda warrior in a series of animated morale boosters and information features during WWII. The merely magnificent Der Fuehrer’s Face took the 1942 Academy Award (that’s an Oscar to you and me) for Animated Short Film…

Crucially for our purposes, Donald is also planet Earth’s most-published non-superhero comics character, and has been blessed with some of the greatest writers and illustrators ever to punch a keyboard or pick up a pen or brush. A publishing phenomenon and mega star across Europe – particularly Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland – Donald & Co have spawned countless original stories and characters. Sales are stratospheric there and in the more than 45 other countries they export to. Japanese manga publishers have their own carefully-tailored iterations too…

The aforementioned Silly Symphonies adaptation and Mickey Mouse newspaper strip guest shots were trumped in 1937 when Italian publisher Mondadori launched an 18-page story by Federico Pedrocchi in comic book format. It was quickly followed by a regular serial in Britain’s Mickey Mouse Weekly. The comic was produced under license by Willbank Publications/Odhams Press and ran from 8th February 1936 to 28th December 1957.

In #67 (May 15th 1937) it launched Donald and Donna (a prototype Daisy Duck girlfriend), drawn by William A. Ward. Running for 15 weeks it was followed by Donald and Mac before ultimately settling on Donald Duck, and became a solid fixture until the magazine folded. That comic inspired similar Disney-themed publication across Europe, with Donald regularly appearing beside company mascot Mickey.

In the USA, a daily Donald Duck newspaper strip launched on February 2nd 1938, with a colour Sunday strip added in 1939. Writer Ted Karp joined Taliaferro in expanding the duck cast, adding a signature automobile, dog Bolivar, cousin Gus Goose, grandmother Elvira Coot and even expanded the roles of both distaff ducks Donna and Daisy…

In 1942, Donald’s licensed comic books canon began with October cover-dated Dell Four Color Comics, Series II #9. As Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold it was conceived by Homer Brightman & Harry Reeves, scripted by Karp and illustrated by Disney Studios employees Carl Barks & Jack Hannah. That was the moment everything changed…

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901, and raised in rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in American history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks was an animator before quitting in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books. With studio partner Jack Hannah (another future strip illustrator) Barks adapted Karp’s rejected script for an animated cartoon short into Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold, and although not his first published comics work, it was the story that shaped the rest of Carl’s career.

From then until his official retirement in the mid-1960s, Barks operated in self-imposed seclusion: writing, drawing and devising a vast array of adventure comedies, gags, yarns and covers that gelled into a coherent Duck Universe of memorable – and highly bankable – characters. These included Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Magica De Spell (1961) and the nefarious Beagle Boys (1951) to supplement Disney’s stable of cartoon actors. The greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad giga-gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the World’s wealthiest winged nonagenarian.

Whilst producing all that landmark material Barks was also just a working guy, generating cover art, illustrating other people’s scripts when asked, and contributing stories to a burgeoning canon of Duck Lore. After Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material amongst other Disney strips in the 1980s, he discovered the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed. So potent were his creations that they inevitably fed back into Disney’s animation output, even though his brilliant comic work was done for Dell/Gold Key and not directly for the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly animated TV series Duck Tales: heavily based on his classic Uncle Scrooge tales.

Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries and epics of exploration, and this led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and sheer wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps that utterly captivated readers of every age and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions there would never have been an Indiana Jones…

During his working life Barks was blissfully unaware that his efforts (uncredited by official policy, as was all Disney’s comics output) had been recognised by a rabid and discerning public as “the Good Duck Artist”. When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, a belated celebrity began.

In 2013, Fantagraphics Books began chronologically collecting Barks’ Duck stuff in wonderful, carefully curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes and digital editions that finally do justice to the self-closeted creator. These will comprise the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The physical copies are sturdy and luxurious albums – 193 x 261mm – that would grace any bookshelf, with volume 6 re-presenting works from 1948 – albeit not in strict release order. I should also note that all Four Color issues come from Series II of that mighty anthological vehicle and all covers are by Barks.

It begins eponymously with ‘The Old Castle’s Secret’ (FC #189, June 1948) as a financial crisis in McDuck’s empire triggers a mission for Donald and the nephews: accompanying Scrooge to the ancestral pile in Scotland to search for millions in hidden treasure. Apparently the craggy citadel is haunted, but what they actually encounter is both more rationalistically dangerous and fantastically unbelievable…

Two single-page gags from the same issue follow, with ‘Bird Watching’ exposing the hidden perils of the hobby before superstition is painfully debunked in ‘Horseshoe Luck’ after which ‘Wintertime Wager’ (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #88, January) introduces annoying cousin Gladstone Gander. Amidst chilling winter snows, the miraculously lucky, smugly irksome oik invites himself over for Christmas and soon he and Donald are involved in an escalating set of ordeals that might cost the Duck his house. Thankfully, Daisy and the boys are there to solve the problem…

Gainful employment was a regular dilemma for Donald, so February’s ‘Watching the Watchman’ (WDC&S #89) finds him taking a midnight-to-daybreak job at the docks, despite being pitifully unable to alter his sleep patterns. Once again, Huey, Louie & Dewey offer outrageous assistance but this time it’s the Duck’s failure to stay awake that foils a million dollar heist. The kids are actually Donald’s rivals in ‘Wired’ (WDC&S #90, March) when all seek big bucks as telegram messengers. Sadly, millionaires are not generally friendly, welcoming or prone to giving giant gratuities…

A dedicated social climber, Donald plans a garden party in WDC&S #91 (April), but his notion of fancy dress and family solidarity utterly enrage the boys, who retaliate with manic mesmerism in ‘Going Ape’, after which March of Comics #20 finds butterfly-hunter Donald at war with avaricious lepidopterist Professor Argus McFiendy across two continents. Donald’s sharp and ruthless tactics inspire onlooker Sir Gnatbugg-Mothley to fund a safari to ‘Darkest Africa’ in search of the rarest butterfly on Earth. The daunting quest for Almostus Extinctus is frenetically fraught, astoundingly action-packed and fabulously fun-filled but please be aware that despite Barks’ careful research and diligent, sensitive storytelling some modern folk could be upset by his depictions of indigenous peoples in terms of the accepted style of those decades-distant times…

Nevertheless, the bombastic war ends with a delicious sting in the tail.

In case you were wondering: March of Comics releases were prestigious promotional giveaways tied to retail products and commercial clients like Sears, combining licensed characters from across Whitman/KK/Dell’s joint catalogue. The often enjoyed print runs topping 5 million copies per issue. Being a headliner for them was a low key editorial acknowledgement of a creator’s capabilities and a franchise’s pulling power…

In the regular comics world, Donald’s eternal war of nerves with the kids boiled over in FC #189 (June) as ‘Bean Taken’ saw his obsessive side dominant in a guessing game, a single-pager preceding another exploring the downside of sandlot baseball in ‘Sorry to Be Safe’ (FC #199, October) and standard 10-page romp ‘Spoil the Rod’ (WDC&S #92, May). Here passing do-gooder Professor Pulpheart Clabberhead seeks to stop Donald’s apparent abuse of Huey, Louie and Dewey – but only until he gets to know them…

Although the science fiction boom and flying saucer mania was barely beginning in 1948, Barks was an early advocate and ‘Rocket Race to the Moon’ (WDC&S #93, June) sees newspaper-seller Donald suckered into piloting an experimental lunar exploration ship. Sadly, Professors Cosmic and Gamma seem more concerned with a large cash-prize contest than advancing knowledge, and rival rocketman Baron De Sleezy is a ruthless schemer, but no one – not even the stowaway nephews – was prepared for what lived on the moon…

Patriotism inspires our bellicose birdbrain to enlist as ‘Donald of the Coast Patrol’ (WDC&S #94, July) but it’s his gullibility and bad temper that helps him bag a bunch of spies before true wickedness rears its downy head as ‘Gladstone Returns’ (WDC&S #95, August). The ghastly Gander was designed as a foil for Donald, intended to be even more obnoxious than the irascible, excitable film fowl and this originally untitled tale reintroduces him as a big super-lucky noxious noise every inch as blustery a blowhard as Donald. Here, both furiously boast and feud, trying to one-up each other in a series of scams that does neither any good – especially once the nephews and Daisy join the battle…

Arguably Barks’ first masterpiece, ‘Sheriff of Bullet Valley’ was the lead tale from Dell Four Color Comics #199, drawing much of its unflagging energy and trenchant whimsy from Barks’ own love of cowboy fiction, albeit seductively tempered with his self-deprecatory sense of absurdist humour. For example, a wanted poster on the jailhouse wall portrays the artist himself, offering the princely sum of $1000 and 50¢ for his inevitable capture.

Donald is, of course, a self-declared expert on the Wild West (he’s seen all the movies) so when he and the boys drive through scenic Bullet Valley, a wanted poster catches his eye and his imagination. Soon he’s signed up and sworn in as a doughty deputy, determined to catch rustlers plaguing the locals. Unfortunately for him, the good old days never really existed and today’s bandits use radios, trucks, tommy guns and ray machines to achieve their nefarious ends. Can Donald’s impetuous boldness and the nephews’ collective brains and ingenuity defeat the ruthless high-tech raiders? Of course they can…

That same issue provided a brace of short gags, beginning with ‘Best Laid Plans’ as Donald’s feigned illness earns him extra hard labour rather than a malingering day in bed, and closing with ‘The Genuine Article’, wherein suspicions of an antique’s provenance leads to disaster…

The lads’ plans to go fishing are scuppered – but not for too long – when Donald demands their caddying services in ‘Links Hijinks’ (WDC&S #96, September), but it all really goes south once Gladstone horns in and Donald’s competitive spirit overwhelms everybody…

That tendency to overreact informs ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ (WDC&S #97, October) when the nephews find a small pearl in a locally-sourced oyster and big-dreaming Donald goes overboard in exploiting the “hidden millions” presumably peppering the ocean floor, before we close with another mission for Uncle Scrooge.

To close a deal with British toff Lord Tweeksdale, McDuck must prove his family pedigree by excelling in the most “asinine, stupid, crazy, useless sport in the world”: fox hunting. Designating Donald his champion, the Downy Dodecadillionaire of Duckburg is thankfully unaware Huey, Louie & Dewey also consider themselves ‘Foxy Relations’ (WDC&S #98, November), injecting themselves covertly into proceedings with catastrophic repercussions…

The visual verve over, we move on to validation as ‘Story Notes’ offers commentary for each Duck tale and Donald Ault relates ‘Carl Barks: Life Among the Ducks’, before ‘Biographies’ explain why he and commentators Alberto Beccatini, R, Fiore, Craig Fischer, Jared Gardner, Leonardo Gori, Rich Kreiner, Ken Parille, Stefano Priarone, Francesco (“Frank”) Stajano and Mattias Wivel are saying all those nice and informative things. We close with examination of provenance as ‘Where Did These Duck Stories First Appear?’ explains the somewhat byzantine publishing schedules of Dell Comics.

Carl Barks was one of the greatest exponents of comic art the world has ever seen, and almost all his work featured Disney’s Duck characters: reaching and affecting untold millions of readers across the world and he all too belatedly won far-reaching recognition. You might be late to the party but it’s never too soon to climb aboard the Barks Express.

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “The Old Castle’s Secret” © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All contents © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
Today in 1937 Donald Duck began his solo comics career.

In 1897 journalist turned strip writer Glenn Chaffin (Tailspin Tommy) was born, as was legendary fan artist John G. Fantucchio (Rocket’s Blast Comicollector (RBCC), The Collector, The Buyer’s Guide for Comic’s Fandom, Fantastic Fanzine, Comic Crusader) in 1938, and inker, illustrator and production god John Verpoorten in 1940. A year later along came Underground Commix and Graphic Novel pioneer Jaxon AKA Jack Jackson (God Nose, Comanche Moon, The Secret of San Saba)…

The date saw the deaths of both Golden Age star/political cartoonist Gill Fox (Torchy, Plastic Man, The Spirit daily) and Disney animator and story-maker Jack Bradbury in 2004, and legendary humour artist Will Elder (Mad, Little Annie Fanny) in 2008.

In 2006, Mark Tatulli’s silent strip Li? launched today.

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Lucky Luke volume 25: The Stagecoach


By Morris & Goscinny, translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-052-8 (Album PB), 978-1-84918-519-6 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes Discriminatory Content added for comedic effect.

Lucky Luke debuted in 1946, created by Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (AKA “Morris”), initially riding out in Le Journal de Spirou that summer sans title or banner, and only in the French-language edition. The Lone Rider’s official launch came in Christmas Annual L’Almanach Spirou 1947, before beginning his first official serial – ‘Arizona 1880’ – in December 7th 1946’s multinational weekly issue.

Doughty, dashing, dependable cowboy “good guy” Lucky 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. For 80 years (Joyeux anniversaire, Mon Brave!), his exploits have made him a top-ranking global comic character, filling more than 90 individual albums and spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, with sales upwards of 300 million copies in 30 languages. That renown 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…

Lucky’s global dominance resulted from a decades-long, 45 volume collaboration with superstar scripter René Goscinny, spanning 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, forming a posse of legacy creators including Lo Hartog van Banda, Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Xavier Fauche, Benacquista & Pennac, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, all taking their own shots at the venerable vigilante. Morris soldiered on singly and with these successors before his own passing in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus numerous sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas.

Our taciturn trailblazer draws on western history as much as movie mythology, regularly meeting historical figures as well as even odder fictional folk in tales drawn from key themes of classic cowboy mythology – as well as some uniquely European notions or interpretations. As previously hinted, our sixgun star is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire, but here spoofs his own antecedents and venerated movie schtick for a delicious drive down memory lane…

Inspired by John Ford’s 1939 classic movie Stagecoach, La diligence was first serialised in weekly Le Journal de Spirou #1504 – 1525  (February 9th – July 6th 1967) – before becoming Morris & Goscinny’s 32nd album and the 47th chronological Lucky Luke album in 1968. The saga blends the usual sagebrush silliness and crop of daft characters with another actual historical figure – gentleman bandit Charles E. Boles AKA Black Bart, who robbed stage coaches really politely and left little poems to console the recently impoverished…

Preceded with a small fact feature on Boles (here called Charles E. Bolton), the comic roars along rapidly. The plot is short and sweet as Lucky is hired by Mr. Oakleaf of the Denver office of Wells Fargo & Co. to counter a transport credibility crisis. With all the firm’s trips to San Francisco falling foul of thieves and robbers, they need to prove the service is still worth using and therefore want Luke to escort a tantalising gold shipment to the west coast…

He won’t be alone. They have their best driver – Hank Bully – riding “whip” on the trip and, since every little bit helps, there will even be a few brave and/or desperate paying passengers aboard. These include prospector Digger Stubble (whose gold the coach is transporting), charming card-sharp Cat Thumbs, aspiring photographer Jeremiah Fallings, preacher Sinclair Rawler and diminutive accountant Oliver Flimsy and his truly terrifying wife Annabella.

However, the people aren’t the real worry for Lucky. As the thing is a promotional stunt to assuage public doubts, the whole fiasco has been heavily advertised and every owlhoot and gun-toting chancer knows what they are carrying and the route they’ll be taking…

After foiling the first few dozen robbery attempts and getting fed up with Wells Fargo food at the numerous staging posts en route, Lucky decides that it’s time to alter the travel plans and start doing things his way if they are all going to make it to San Francisco. It might even have worked if all the crooks had been outside the vehicle waiting for them and not actually in the coach itself…

Packed with wry digs at beloved old films and loaded with visual guest shots of esteemed stars and directors, the tale sees the rapidly-bonding voyagers overcome hostile terrain, marauding savages (not actually that savage, really), the temptations of sin and even each other to complete the trip, but that merely presents one last mystery to bedevil them. Of course, as always Lucky has it covered…

These youthful forays of an indomitable hero offer grand joys in the wry tradition of Destry Rides Again and Support Your Local Sheriff, superbly executed by a master storyteller: a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for modern kids who might well have missed the romantic allure of the Wild West that never was…

© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1968 by Goscinny and Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2010 Cinebook Ltd.

Today in 1926 comics empresario/artist/co-originator of 3D comics Norm Maurer (Three Stooges, Mighty Mouse) was born, as was writer Marv Wolfman (New Teen Titans, Spider-Woman, Tomb of Dracula) in 1946; cartoonist Margeaux – neé Andrew – Pepoy (Little Orphan Annie, Batman, Superman, Dick Tracy) in 1969.

This date in 1955 saw the last episode of Jack Williamson & Lee Elias’ Beyond Mars strip published, whereas Jim Toomey’s Sherman Lagoon launched today in 1991 and is still going strong…

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The Detection Club parts 1 & 2


By Jean Harambat, coloured by Jean-Jacques Rouger translated by Allison M. Charette (Europe Comics)
eISBN: 979-1-032809-95-2 (part 1), 979-1-032809-96-9 (part 2)

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

Apparently, everybody loves mystery to chew on. With that in mind, here’s a brace of superb cartoon conundrums from the continent, based on an unlikely but actual historical convocation.

As seen on Wikipedia, – The Detection Club was a literary society of British crime writers, founded in 1930, with the likes of G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie as early Presidents. In 1936, American émigré John Dickson Carr became the first non-Brit elected to the august body; and probably pretty snarky elitist gathering.

They did stuff, wrote stories, held events and upheld (Ronald) Knox’s Commandments which detailed the proper rules of mystery writing. The group is the basis of later media McGuffin’s such as Batman’s Mystery Analysts of Gotham City and every bunch of screen authors matched against evil geniuses everywhere…

I’m pretty sure the story here collected in two volumes by award-winning cartoonist, screenwriter, graphic novelist, historian, philosopher and journalist Jean Harambat (Les Invisibles, Ulysses, the Songs of Return, Operation Copperhead) is apocryphal, but you never know…

Originally released in 2019, our case du jour opens in a prologue, with the reciting of those Knox commandments and the confirmation of Mr. Dixon Carr at a slap-up feed at London hostelry Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese – a pub that doesn’t seem to mind the odd celebratory gunshot…

Present are President Chesterton, Dixon Carr, Christie, Sayers, Baroness Emma Orczy, Major A.E.W. Mason and Monsignor Ronald Knox himself, and – as the posh repast winds down – proceedings are somewhat disturbed by the arrival of a flying, talking robotic bird bearing a strange invitation…

Eccentric man of means Mr. Roderick Ghyll wishes the company of the sagacious society at his extraordinary domicile on April 1st. Briarcliff House is situated on a private island where Ghyll wishes to celebrate the future through his latest contrivance, therefore promising “challenges”, “enchantments” and “the renaissance of crime fiction”…

Chapter I opens with the scribes and scribblers approaching ‘An Island in Cornwall’ and still heatedly debating the motives of the mystery man. Ghyll greets them effusively before zooming off in a bizarre electric unicycle leaving them to make their way to his palatial manse: a gleaming tribute to sleek, tripped down modernism – if not actual futurism…

Apart from the domestic staff chef Alphonse, maid Madeline, implacable (not to say positively “inscrutable”) Asian manservant Fu, and stepdaughter Millicent, the only other human present is technical assistant Dr. Zumtod and Ghyll’s haughty beautiful wife Honoria. A future generation would call her a “trophy”…

The old plutocrat is a deeply unpleasant and smugly overbearing host who boasts of one more personage that the sharp-minded, brain-testing authors must meet. With smugness and great ceremony he introduces Eric: a mechanical man with more than human insight who can outwit any mortal and easily determine the culprit in any tale they might concoct…

Although challenged with the details of a string of classic novels – which Eric easily and correctly concludes with the name of the perpetrators – the writers remain insulted and unconvinced. Dixon Carr even oversteps the bounds of polite decency by probing the automaton in search of a pre-prepped dwarf or amputee and the display is halted for dinner where Ghyll continues to advocate a world filled with his “metal friends”…

The evening wears on with the usual social distractions balanced by heated argument on many topics sparked by Eric’s existence and the magnate’s pronunciations that art and literature must make way for a machine-run world. At last, the affair breaks up with the guests retiring to their assigned rooms in a state of high dudgeon…

That all ends in esteemed literary tradition, with screams and the writers breaking into Ghyll’s savagely disarrayed bedroom to discover electronic Eric inert in a chair and clear evidence of ‘The Billionaire Out the Window’. Far below, a dressing gown sinks beneath choppy waves and subsequent frantic searches result in no sign of their host…

Well-versed if not actually experienced in investigation, the writers set about interviewing the staff and then the residents. Zumtod then suggests the painfully obvious: turning Eric loose on the problem. The response is as rapid as the answer is shocking…

While waiting for the outer world to re-establish contact with the isolated isle, “Queen of Crime” Christie bonds with the presumed widow and probes the step-daughter, whilst Chesterton continues to scour the entire vicinity. He’s suspicious of everything – including whether there has been any crime at all – and rapidly unearths many unsuspected secrets even as each writer cleaves to their particular speciality, makes their own assessment and forms a personal hypothesis.

…And then a body washes ashore…

The Detection Club’s second volume begins with third chapter ‘Seven Amateur Detectives’ and an armada of late-arriving constabulary. Led by Inspector Widgeon they proceed to interview the drawing room sleuths. Mounting tensions, contrary theories and wounded pride quickly drive all concerned into fractious conflict, even as potential heir Millicent’s banished and outcast twin Watkyn re-emerges. Has he only returned because of his despised step-father’s demise or was he actually back just before it happened?

Events seemingly come to a head when Christie expounds her latest theory and provokes a minor hostage crisis until the villain is apprehended through unlikely team work. As the constabulary step in with the handcuffs however, new evidence emerges that sets the cogitators back on the murder-trail… until straightforward ratiocination leads one author to the only possible solution…

Wry, witty, and decidedly well-plotted, with smart characterisations and devastatingly sharp, catty dialogue (kudos to translator Allison M. Charette), this lively, lovely lark is also charmingly limned: a grand and glorious tribute to days gone by and superb stylists who tested our wits and expanded our entertainment horizons. This is a tale no whimsy-inclined crime fan can afford to miss.
© 2020 – DARGUAD – HARAMBAT. All rights reserved.

Today in 1911, Canuck-by-migration Ed Furness (Freelance, Commander Steel, “Canadian Whites publications” era) was born, followed by Dick Tracy collaborator Mike Curtis in 1953; Matt Feazell (Amazing Cynicalman) in 1955 and original Men in Black artist Sandy Carruthers arrived in 1962.

On this date we lost Chester Gould (Dick Tracy) in 1985 and Italian megastar artist Ferdinando Tacconi (Journey into Space and Jeff Hawke in Junior Express, Sciuscià, Susanna, Gli Aristocratici, Uomini senza gloria, L’uomo di Rangoon, Nick Raider, Dylan Dog) in 2006. Pioneering Filipino artist Tony DeZuñiga (Black Orchid, Outlaw, Jonah Hex, practically every character at DC & Marvel) died in 2012.

After 1269 weekly issues UK girls comic Mandy folded today in 1991. It had debuted on 21st January 1967.