Category: Adventure

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan® of the Apes volume 1


By Edgar Rice Burroughs, adapted by Roy Thomas, Pablo Marcos, Oscar González & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 987-1-50673-236-7 (HB) eISBN: 987-1-50673-335-7

This book includes historical Discriminatory Content.

Beginning with the October 1912 number, Tarzan of the Apes was serialized in anthological pulp magazine The All-Story before being collected into the world famous novel first released in June 1914. It and sequel tales were thereafter constantly adapted into plays, films and newspaper strip form: that last one beginning on January 7th 1929, and illustrated by Hal (Prince Valiant) Foster. A truly spectacular full page Sunday strip began on March 15, 1931, with artwork by Rex Maxon and carried on by some of the greatest illustrators in the business. United Feature Syndicate distributed the strip, which carried new Sunday material until 2002. The Daily strip had ended new material on 29th July 1972, when Russ Manning quit it to concentrate on the Sunday feature and Tarzan books for Europe. From 2003 even the Sundays switched to offering reprints of early classics – due more to the parlous state of US strips and newspapers than a loss of interest in the hero…

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fantasy epic has been a hugely appreciated and acclaimed property for more than a century. The character has enjoyed countless novel releases (23 official sequels by ERB and many “rogue” tales by others) in every language and in every medium of expression – even a bunch of ballets!

The jungle man is (arguably) a public domain figure these days, spawning a number of hotly-contested crossover team-ups and “unauthorised” exploits. Just over a decade ago, his story was celebrated and commemorated by a return to basics as we’ll see in this review.

As already stated, very soon after his prose debut, Tarzan became a multimedia sensation and global brand. More novels and many, many movies – all created or at least sanctioned by Burroughs and his family – followed. The American comic strip arrived in 1929, followed by a radio show in 1932, and the Ape-Man inevitably carved out a solid slice of television and comic book markets too, once those industries were established. His comic book exploits have been with us since the start: initially gathering newspaper strips until Dell Four Color Comic #134 (February 1947) began a run of original material spanning Dell, Gold Key, Charlton, DC, Marvel, Blackthorne, Malibu, Dark Horse and Idaho Comics Group that is still unfolding.

… And that’s just the USA: Tarzan has been a global byword for adventure for most of the last hundred years, with many countries contributing to the oeuvre if not the canon. In Britain for a while in the 1950s, Michael Moorcock steered the course of Tarzan’s Adventures…

The book look today focuses on a compilation of the latest entertainment platform to go ape. As revealed in the ‘Introduction by Roy Thomas’ the formation of EdgarRiceBurroughs.com led to Thomas and Tom Grindberg reviving and expanding the Ape-Man’s canon via a webcomic – Tarzan: The New Adventures. Those online strips soon spawned a second string to the bow…

The parent company wanted more and Thomas’ solution was to re-adapt Burroughs’ original books as Foster had done in 1929, but by judicious editing of Tarzan of the Apes and its follow-ups, create at last a definitive, fully chronological biography of the immortal hero’s journey from birth to …whenever…

Thus he scoured the 24 canonical novels for revelatory moments, braiding them into a tapestry tracing the wild boy’s development over 127 Sunday instalments based on the material’s many flashback moments. Moreover, the feature would benefit from the experience of Peruvian master artist Pablo Marcos (James Bond 007, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Conan, Tales of the Zombie, Secret Society of Super-Villains) and designer/computer colour painter Oscar González.

By way of introduction, this version of Tarzan of the Apes opens in a bar where Edgar Rice Burroughs meets with a man with an extraordinary tale to tell…

It – and ‘Tarzan of the Apes: A Classic Adaptation’ – begins in 1888 as, following a shipboard mutiny, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke and his wife Lady Alice are marooned on the African coast. At least they have their possessions, including books for their soon-to-be-born baby…

Against appalling odds they persevere, with Greystoke building a fortified cabin to shelter them from marauding beasts – particularly curious and savage apes roaming the region. Despite the birth of a son, eventually the jungle wins and the humans die. However, their son is saved by a grieving she-ape who adopts the infant to replace her own recently dead “Balu”…

Here the saga diverges, as incidents latterly revealed in short stories comprising ERB’s 6th book Jungle Tales of Tarzan are intercut with the ongoing adaptation. Tragic circumstance leads to the wild boy discovering he can swim whilst further moments see the foundling exercise his growing intellect and penchant for practical jokes against older apes like bullies like Tublat and Kerchak before the origin resumes. As the ugly hairless freak thrives under mother Kala’s doting attentions, he grows strong but increasingly aware of his differences. He only discovers the how and why after years of diligent effort when – through sheer intellectual effort and the remnants of his father’s books and papers – the boy teaches himself to read and deduces that he is actually a “M-A-N”…

These lone forays to the abandoned cabin also lead to a major rite of passage as the boy is attacked by a berserk gorilla and almost perishes in the process of making his first kill…

No sooner has Kala nursed him back to health than Tublat attacks her and the “the hairless one” (the meaning of the term “Tarzan”) scores his second magnificent bloody triumph…

The tale within a tale continues as the boy rises to prominence amongst his hirsute kin. Through observation, imagination and ingenuity he invents a lasso, creates warm protective clothing and masters the beasts of his pitiless environment: most by force but some – like the elephants (“Tantor”) by friendly mutual cooperation…

When cannibalistic natives settle in the area Tarzan has his first contact with creatures he correctly identifies as being M-E-N like him. The situation leads to the greatest tragedy of his life, as one of M’Bonga’s tribe kills beloved, devoted Kala, teaching Tarzan the shock of loss and bestowing an overpowering hunger for revenge – which he inflicts on the whole tribe with chilling ruthlessness. The punitive actions grant him mastery of another infallible weapon: a hunting bow and poisoned arrows…

Weekly instalments adapt more vignettes from Jungle Tales, beginning with ‘Tarzan’s First Love’, detailing how the adolescent is increasingly drawn to fetching young she-ape Teeka. Incomprehensibly, no matter what he does, the young maiden just isn’t interested in her ardent pink admirer yet somehow sees his friend Taug as ideal…

Clearly, the heart wants what the heart wants and Tarzan understands: even nobly saving his rival from the M’Bonga’s relentless hunger for bushmeat. They call Tarzan “Forest-Devil”, and ‘The Capture of Tarzan’ follows, revealing how overconfidence leads to his downfall but also how his relationship with elephants saves him.

Reworkings continue in ‘The Battle for the Balu’ as Teeka & Taug become incomprehensibly aggressive after the birth of their first balu, and build in ‘The God of Tarzan’ with the ever-curious jungle wonder overdosing on his dead dad’s books and suffering a brain-expanding religious experience. As a result, a search for divinity takes him all over his savage kingdom and into clashes with beasts and men…

Next comes ‘Tarzan and Black Boy’ (often retitled ‘Tarzan and the Native Boy’) with the young outsider experiencing paternal yearnings. After abducting a small human boy and learning guilt, folly and shame, the Ape-Man gains his first human arch-enemy by spoiling greedy fetish-man Bukuwai the Unclean’s scam to impoverish the distraught mother of his kidnapped prize Tibo…

To Be Continued

Supplemented by Creator Biographies of Thomas, Marcos and Gonzalez, this tome is a fascinating addition to the pictorial annals of the Ape-Man and a monument to romantic fantasy, wild adventure and comics creativity no lover of the medium, character or genre can do without.
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan® of the Apes © 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2022 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks Tarzan®, Tarzan of the Apes™ and Edgar Rice Burroughs® are owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. and used with permission. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks Golden Age Sub-Mariner volume 2


By Bill Everett, Allen Simon, Carl Pfeufer, Mickey Spillane, Art Gates, Gustav “Gus” Schrotter, Justin Dewey Triem, Ray Houlihan, Kermit Jaediker & others (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2247-0 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. Lots of it, generated at moments of fervent if not rabid anti-German and anti-Japanese patriotic fervour. Everybody on all sides was doing the same at the time but that’s no excuse, and if you can’t tolerate overtly racist depictions despite their historical context and social grounding, this might be a Marvel masterwork to stay well away from.

Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner was the second super-star of the Timely Age of Comics – but only because he followed cover-featured Human Torch in the running order of October 1939’s Marvel Comics #1. He has however enjoyed the most impressive longevity of the company’s “Big Three”: which also includes the Torch and Captain America…

After a brief re-emergence in the mid-1950’s, the Marine Marvel was only successfully revived in 1962 as an unbeatable force and foe in Fantastic Four #4. Once again he appeared as an antihero/noble villain, and has been prominent in the company’s pantheon ever since. In-world, the hybrid offspring of a water-breathing Atlantean princess and American polar explorer is a being of immense strength and intelligence, highly resistant to physical harm, able to fly and thrive above and below the waves.

Created by young Bill Everett, Namor technically predates Marvel/Atlas/Timely Comics entirely, but first captured public attention as one half of the “Fire vs Water” headliners in anthological Marvel Comics after it became Marvel Mystery Comics with the second issue. His elementally apposite co-star was The Human Torch, but Namor had originally been seen – albeit in a truncated version – in monochrome freebie Motion Picture Funnies: a promotional giveaway handed out to moviegoers earlier that year. Swiftly becoming one of Timely’s biggest draws, Namor won his own title at the end of 1940 (cover-dated Spring 1941) and was one of the last super-characters to go at the end of the first heroic age.

In 1954, Atlas (as the company was then known) revived the Big Three and Everett returned for an extended run of superb horror and Red-baiting fantasy tales, but the time or approach wasn’t right for superheroes and the title sank again. As before, Subby was the last character to be cancelled, as rumours of a possible TV series kept his title afloat…

When Stan Lee & Jack Kirby used Fantastic Four to reinvent superheroes in 1961 they cannily revived the angry amphibian as a troubled, amnesiac, decidedly more regal and grandiose antagonist: one understandably embittered at the loss of his subsea realm (seemingly destroyed by American atomic testing). He also became the dangerous bad-boy romantic interest: besotted with golden-haired Sue Storm. She couldn’t make up her mind about him for decades…

Nomad Namor knocked around the budding Marvel universe for years, squabbling with assorted heroes like The Avengers, X-Men and Daredevil before reuniting his scattered people and securing his own series as part of “split-book” Tales to Astonish beside fellow antisocial antihero The Incredible Hulk. From there both went on to become cornerstones of the modern Marvel Universe.

Way back then though, after his illustrious debut in Marvel Comics #1, a Sub-Mariner solo vehicle launched in Spring 1941. The first 4 issues are gathered in Marvel Masterworks Golden Age Sub-Mariner volume 1: available in print and digital formats. This second compilation reprints Sub-Mariner Comics #5-8 (cover-dated Spring Winter 1942) and sees excitement build but quality inevitably drop as key creators were called up to serve in various branches of America’s war machine. The shock-stuffed vintage wonderment is preceded by a fact-filled Introduction from frequent Subby scribe and comics historian Roy Thomas, sharing context, backstory and tales of the replacement bullpen all finny fun-fans will appreciate. This titanic tome also incorporates most of the rousing in-situ ads and editorial pages seen in the original releases…

Following that critical appraisal and further details on possible unattributed contributors, a cover by Al Gabriele & George Klein ushers us into Sub-Mariner Comics #5, which opens on a monochrome frontispiece house ad for early Marvel Mystery Comics heroes…

Then different times slap readers in the face like a wet kipper as ‘Sub-Mariner Raps the Japs in the Pacific’: a simple saga of punitive carnage by Everett, Allen Simon and assorted unknown assistants, wherein the sea sentinel designs a new kind of attack submersible and unleashes it on the dastardly foe. When the foe sinks it, Namor unleashes hands-on vengeance…

Previously – in Sub-Mariner Comics #1 – Namor had declared war on the perfidious Nazis after a fleet of U-Boats depth-charged his underwater Antarctic home city. The Avenging Prince immediately retaliated in a bombastic show of super-power. Here in the weeks after Pearl Harbor and with anti-Japanese sentiment on high, the antihero switched attention to the Pacific Theatre of War. For most of these stories as Everett’s contributions diminished, he and other lead artists used a string of assistants culled from the comic book “Shop” outfits. Sadly, with no accurate records, best guesses for uncredited past contributors include Charles Nicholas (nee Wojtkoski), Witmer Williams, Ben Thompson, Sam Gilman, George Mandel, Mike Roy, Al Fagaly & Jimmy Thompson and more. I’ve added a few guesses of my own but we may never know who and where…

The publishers having omitted a Remember Pearl Harbor! Public Service Announcement, we pick up with a second 20-page Subby saga (attributed to Allen Simon but possibly drawn by Syd Shores with Simon inking) which seizes on headlines to depict how ‘Sub-Mariner Smashes an Uprising in Manila!’: savagely smashing the invaders whilst rescuing a female US spy from the conquered islands and featuring a cameo by General Douglas MacArthur…

These deluxe editions include those mandatory text features comics were compelled to run to maintain their postal status (an arcane system allowing publishers to procure large postal discounts as “second class mail”) so next comes prose fable ‘Tight Spot’ by Mickey Spillane. The author was an actual fighter pilot and flight instructor lending authenticity to the tale of a trainee pilot forced to make an emergency landing only minutes into his first lesson…

Following ‘Don’t Delay Another Second!’ (an ad for Captain America’s Sentinels of Liberty club), Gustav “Gus” Schrotter – or possibly Kermit Jaediker & Al Gabriele – delivers another 20-page gothic chiller starring The Angel.

Although dressed like a superhero, this dashing do-gooder was a blend (knock-off would be more accurate but unkind) of Leslie Charteris’ The Saint, Richard Creasey’s The Toff and The Lone Wolf (Louis Vance’s urbane two-fisted hero who was the subject of 8 books and 24 B-movies between 1917 and 1949).

One marked difference was the quality of the Angel’s enemies: his foes tended towards the arcane, the ghoulish, the ugly and just plain demented…

The globe-trotting paladin also seemed able to cast a giant shadow in the shape of an angel -. not the greatest aid to cleaning up the scum of the Earth, but he seemed to manage…

In ‘The House of Evil Dreams’ the dapper dilettante saves US agent Dorothy Ray from oriental mesmerist Hutsu, who employs a murderous cult of Morpheus-worshipping sleepwalkers to destroy America’s defenders…

Cartoonist Art Gates closes the issue’s comics content with another ‘Pop’s Whoppers’ – a jolly comedy feature starring an inveterate windbag beat-cop – who here foils escaped convicts despite himself…

Cover-dated Summer 1942 Sub-Mariner Comics #6 sported an Alex Schomburg cover and offered a monochrome frontispiece house ad for its heroes prior to Carl Pfeufer (with Everett) sidelining the “Jap-rapping” to confront other purveyors of skulduggery. ‘The Missing Finger Mystery’ finds him undercover at a Canadian lumber camp after discovering a body inside a tree and resolving to track down the killers and their victim, before – following Marvel Mystery Comics ad ‘Not a Weak Link Among ‘Em!’ – Namor returns to the war in ‘Sub-Mariner Fights the Periscope Peril!’ Here Pfeufer limns a savage clash as the finny fury discovers the Japanese are using randomly-scattered fake pericopes to distract convoy protection ships and takes immediate and excessively violent action to scuttle the scheme, after which Spillane resorts to fantasy as sailor assesses his narrow escape from ‘The Sea Serpent’…

‘At it Again!’ proclaims another clash between Sub-Mariner and The Human Torch, prior to Schrotter – or maybe Jaediker & Gabriele – taking on The Angel in ‘Death Sees a Doctor!’ The macabre and forewarned assassination of a dentist sets the costumed investigator on the trail of deadly medical extortionists using modified body parts as murder weapons…

Gates’ ‘Pop’s Whoppers’ sees the braggart pay for bigging up his achievements at “The African Olympics”, before another Sentinels of Liberty ad, and back cover promo of Timely’s Next Big Thing – Terry Toons comics – ends the affair.

Three months later Sub-Mariner Comics #7 (Fall 1942 with the cover by Allen Simon & Frank Giacoia) opens with an ad for Young Allies and All Winners Comics in advance of Pfeufer & Simon delineating ‘Piracy on the Ocean’s Bottom!’ Here Sub-Mariner battles mad scientist The Doctor who has found a way to revive the dead and is sinking and plundering US vessels with giant squid, robots and his enslaved horde of zombie buccaneers…

A Human Torch ad leads into a bloody clash (body counts in Timely tales were frequently in three figures!) as The Angel faced ‘The Firing Squad!’ Attributed to Schrotter, the grim crime caper saw disgraced soldier/recently released convict Danny Poll recruit a cadre of gangsters and drill them into being his personal robbery, murder & revenge squad. Police were helpless against their ruthless tactics and even the cherubic champion could not save everyone who fell under their sights…

Justin Dewey “J.D.” Triem delivered prose murder mystery ‘Mercy Flight’ as ingenuity and a model plane saved two men from cruel death, after which Sub-Mariner discovers ‘Death ‘Round the Bend!’ (Pfeufer & A Simon) when hunting lost treasure and a ghostly Mississippi river boat and encountering generations of criminal masterminds…

‘Pop’s Whoppers’ by Gates sees the smug flatfoot and his newest partner embroiled in a practical joke war with the local street urchins, before this session ends with a Terry Toons #2 ad and more plugs for Captain America and his Sentinels…

Schomburg’s cover for Sub-Mariner Comics #8 (Winter 1942) is followed by an official Treasury Department ad for war bonds, prior to Pfeufer’s opening but untitled ‘Sub-Mariner’ saga, as the marine marvel witnesses the murder of a lighthouse keeper/American agent by traitor The Knife. Determined to avenge the crime, Namor secretly enlists in the US Marines, following clues from boot camp on Parris Island to an occupied Pacific atoll, until he nails the killer and incidentally sinks an entire Japanese fleet of warships…

Ad ‘They’re At it Again’ plugs the next fire vs water clash of heroes before Sub-Mariner initiates ‘The Setting of the Rising Sun’ (Pfeufer) by protecting and eventually rescuing the crew and gear of a shot-down US blimp. Along the way Namor faces brainwashing boffin Dr. Suki and battles his legion of P.O.W. zombies before ending the vile threat…

Anonymous Prose thriller ‘Tommy’s Taken for a Ride’ reveals how a raw recruit on leave is robbed and finds new friends and romance in recovering his cash, after which cartoon great Ray Houlihan starts his kids feature ‘Tubby and Tack’ with a brace of tales seeing the playful lads enjoying a Saturday and then buying war bonds in advance of The Angel battling a true madman with a ‘Genius for Murder!’ Scripted by Kermit Jaediker with Schrotter art, the saga sees frustrated, failing author Caleb Crane reinvent himself as master criminal The White Carnation in an attempt to add veracity to his manuscripts. His gift for crime and pitiless arrogance turns the city on its head and almost defeats the mighty Angel.

One last Houlihan ‘Tubby and Tack’ tale sees the kids waste a perfect day trying to find friends to enjoy it with, to close this sargasso of lost sagas. Don’t fret though, there’s plenty more where these came from…

As a special bonus, this collection also shares candid photos of the creators from a 1969 reunion, even more house ads in various stages of completion, pencil roughs for those ads and 12 pencil pages of story layouts.

Many early Marvel Comics are more exuberant than qualitative, but this compendium, even if largely devoid of premier league talent, is a happy exception. Offering high-octane – albeit uncomfortably jingoistic and culturally enmired in its time – action and adventure, this is a vibrant vigorous, historically unvarnished read as well as a forgotten treasure Fights ‘n’ Tights fans will find irresistible.
© 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents Bat Lash


By Sergio Aragonés, Denny O’Neil, Len Wein, Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, George Moliterni, Dan Spiegle & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2295-6 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

By 1968 the glory days of comic books as a cheap mass-market entertainment form were over. Spiralling costs, “free” alternatives like TV or radio and an increasing inability to connect with mainstream markets were leaving the industry to the mercy of dedicated fan-groups with specialised, even limited, interests and worse of all, becoming increasingly dependent on genre-trends to sustain sales.

Editorial Director and 30-year veteran Carmine Infantino looked for ways to bolster DC business (already suffering a concerted decline thanks to the seemingly unstoppable rise of Marvel Comics) and returned to old publisher’s maxim “do something old, and make it look new”. Although traditional cowboy yarns (which had dominated both large and small screens since the 1950s) were also in decline, fresh spins like The Wild, Wild West (1965-1969) and Italian Spaghetti Westerns were popular, and would be far easier and less problematic to transform into comics material than the burgeoning Supernatural themes which would soon come to dominate the next half-decade – but only once the repressive and self-inflicted Comics Code was re-written and publishers acknowledged that comics weren’t just for kids anymore…

Thus Spanish/Mexican cartoonist (and occasional actor) Sergio Aragonés Domenech was asked by Infantino and Editor Joe Orlando to add unique contemporary twists to a cowboy hero they had jointly concocted with the aid of legendary comics maestro Sheldon Mayer. Although many hands had already stirred the plot, irrepressible Aragonés – in collaboration with dialogue-provider Denny O’Neil – remade their world-weary, lonely saddle-tramp archetype into a something completely fresh and original… at least in comic book terms…

The result was a apparently amoral wanderer with an aesthete’s sensibilities, a pacifist’s expressed good intentions and the hair-trigger capabilities of a top gun-for-hire… all played for sardonic, tongue-in-cheek laughs…

Roguish, sexually promiscuous and always getting into trouble because his heart was bigger than his charlatan’s façade, Bat Lash caroused, cavorted and killed his way across the West – including Mexico – in one Showcase try-out and seven bi-monthly issues spanning October/ November 1968 through October/November 1969 before so-so sales and a terribly turbulent marketplace finally brought him low.

A lost masterpiece of the era and a splendid variation on traditional western fare, Bat Lash’s original exploits are criminally uncelebrated and – as far as I know – only available in this slim (a mere 240 pages) monochrome tome. It gathers all the ahead-of-their-times yarns plus later revivals from DC Special Series #16 plus the short run from the back of fellow cowboy antihero Jonah Hex.

The greatest strength of Bat Lash stories was that they took well-worn plots and added a sardonic spin and breakneck pace to keep them rapidly rattling along. It also didn’t hurt that the majority of the art was supplied by cruelly under-appreciated graphic genius Nick Cardy, whose light touch and unparalleled ability to draw beautiful women kept young male readers (those who bothered to try the comic) glued to the pages.

The drama begins with Showcase #76 (cover-dated August 1968 and on sale from 13th June) and eponymous introduction ‘Bat Lash’ by Aragonés, O’Neil and Cardy, in which flower-loving nomad Batton A. Lash wanders through the town of Welcome in search of a fancy feed, only to meet a gang of thugs and mystery poisoner in the process of driving out the entire populace. No “Suthun Gen’leman” (and isn’t that a term now loaded with all the wrong cultural connotations!?) – no matter how far he might have fallen – could evuh allow such a situation to proceed…

A little over two months later – leading me to conclude the Editorial Powers-That-Be were a mite overconfident with their western wonder – Bat Lash #1 hit the stands on August 20th, sporting a cover-date of October/November 1968/January 1969. It resumed and expanded the episodic, eccentric hi-jinks in ‘Bat Lash… We’re A-comin’ Ta Get You’, as the laconic Lothario narrowly escapes being lynched, only to stumble into the murder of a monk carrying part of a treasure map to Spanish gold. Is it his finer instincts seeking retribution for the holy man, the monk’s stunningly attractive niece or the glittering temptation of Spanish gold that prompts the rootin’ tootin’ action intervention that follows?

In #2 (released on October 29th 1968, cover-dated December 1968/December 1969 and plotted and limned by Cardy with Denny doing words) ‘Melinda’s Doll’ opens with a shotgun wedding, explores the impossible as the drifter becomes unwilling guardian to a little girl orphaned by gun-runners and brilliantly climaxes with shockingly unexpected poignancy and calamitous gunplay…

A radical departure – even for this offbeat series – occurs in ‘Samantha and the Judge’ (#3 by Aragonés, O’Neil & Cardy) when the easy-going Epicurean, whilst reluctantly trying out the temporary role of Deputy Sheriff, encounters a hanging judge who believes he is a Roman Emperor. Thankfully Bat has uncompromising lady deputy Samantha Eggert on his side, after which ‘Bat Lash in Mexico!’ (Aragonés, O’Neil & Cardy) sees our mild-mannered meanderer slope across the border and stumble straight into a revolutionary crisis in issue #4. Soon embroiled in an assassination plot, Lash needs all his wits and a big bunch of luck and guile in a tale as much gritty as witty wherein he truly displays hidden emotional depths to the rambling man…

Still in Mexico for #5, the impish creative team pit our dashing rogue against his near-equal in raffish charm and gunplay when he meets a deadly but charming bandito in ‘Wanted: Sergio Aragonés!’ Of course, they are both outmatched and overwhelmed by the delightfully deadly Senorita Maribel…

Mike Sekowsky pencilled most of issue #6 for Cardy to ink: a dark, tragic origin tale of ‘Revenge!’ revealing the anger and tears behind the laughter as Lash meets again swindler Preacher Ricketts and kills him for causing the death of his family. Only after being arrested for murder and subsequently on the run does Lash realise his sisters Bitsy and Melissa are still alive and sets out to find them…

Bat Lash #7 offers a final family foray as ‘Brothers’ (Aragonés, O’Neil & Cardy) sees our far-from-heroic protagonist on the trail of a younger sibling he had also believed dead for a decade. Sadly, Billy Lash is amnesiac and deeply traumatised by the actions of Preacher Ricketts and has become a ruthless bounty hunter. His current quarry is a total stranger and wanted man called Bat Lash…

And that’s where it was left until 1978 when giant sized anthology comic DC Special Series (#16) produced a Western-themed issue for which O’Neil and artist George Moliterni crafted a slick, sly murder-mystery set in San Francisco. Here an older if not wiser Batton Lash is getting by as a professional gambler until the idyllic life disappears, enveloped in a deadly war between Irish gangs and Chinese immigrant workers.

The compelling, enjoyable yarn eventually led to a 4-issue run as back-up in Jonah Hex #49-52 (June – September 1981) wherein our charming chancer wins a New Orleans bordello in a riverboat card game. Despite numerous attempts to eliminate him, Lash eventually takes full possession of the Bourbon Street Social Club. Is he that hungry for lazy luxury and female companionship, or is it perhaps that Bat knows a million dollars in Confederate gold was hidden there in the dying days of the Civil War and never found?

Scripter Len Wein and the incomparable Dan Spiegle continued and concluded this utterly under-appreciated character’s solo exploits in fine style; which only leaves it to you to hunt down this brash and bedazzling book or – if you are a truly passionate quality-fun-starved fan – bombard DC’s editors with (polite) requests and enquiries until they are convinced to give the foppishly reluctant gunslinger a comprehensive curated compilation he so deserves…

Enchanting, exciting, wry and wonderful, this is a book for all readers of fanciful fun fiction and a superb example of comics’ outreach potential.
© 1968, 1969, 1978, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Moon Mullins: Two Adventures


By Frank H. Willard (Dover)
ISBN: 978-0-4862-3237-9 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

An immensely popular newspaper strip in its day and a remarkably long-lived one, Moon Mullins grew out of gentle if bucolically rambunctious Irish immigrant ethnic humour to become THE comedy soap opera (one of the very first of its kind) that absolutely everybody in America followed.

Create by Frank Willard – a 2-fisted, no-nonsense type with a cracking ear for dialogue, an unerring eye for swingeing social faux pas and an incorrigible sense of fun – the strip debuted on June 19th 1923. Willard wrote and drew both monochrome dailies and sparkling Sunday colour segments until his death in 1958, whereupon his assistant Ferdinand “Ferd” Johnson (who started working with Willard scant months after the strip’s launch, and continued there even whilst working on his own strips Texas Slim and Lovey-Dovey) assumed complete authorship until his own retirement in 1991 – a gloriously uninterrupted tenure of 68 years.

The feature was marketed around the globe by the mighty Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate, and recounted daily the rowdily raucous, ribald, hand-to-mouth lowbrow life and tribulations of Moonshine Mullins, lovable rogue and unsuccessful prize-fighter who was just getting by in tough circumstances…

The doughty rapscallion spent his time in bars, on the streets (sometimes the gutters) and most tellingly at the pokey boarding house of Emmy Schmaltz, located at 1323 Wump Street. Mullins was amiable and good-natured, liked to fight, loved to gamble, was slick with the ladies and had the worst friends imaginable…

He also had an iconic little brother, named Kayo, who was the visual prototype for every one of those tough-kid heroes in Derby hats (“bowlers” to us Brits) and tatty pants populating Simon & Kirby’s early work.

Brooklyn and Scrapper and all those other two-fisted, langwitch-manglin’ cynical, sassy tykes took their cues from the kid in the funny papers who so often had the very last word. The other mainstay of the strip was lanky landlady Emmy; a nosy interfering busybody with inflated airs and graces and a grand line in infectious catchphrases.

Other enticing regulars included Uncle Willie – Moon’s utterly dissolute bad relation; saucy, flighty flapper (Little) Egypt – our hero’s occasional girlfriend and a dead ringer for silent film sensation Louise Brooks (and, incomprehensibly, Emmy’s niece), plus Mushmouth – a black character who will make modern readers wince with social guilt and societal horror. However, to be fair, in this strip which celebrated and venerated working class culture, he was always another unfortunate schmuck on the wrong side and far more a friend than foil, stooge or patsy.

One final regular was affluent Lord Plushbottom, whose eye for the ladies – especially Egypt – constantly brought him sniffing around the boarding house. At the period of the tales in this volume he is a jolly English bachelor, completely unaware that a spidery spinster has set her cap for him. In 1933, after a decade of hilarious pursuit, she finally got her man…

Surprisingly still readily available as a paperback book (surely, if ever anything was crying out to be suitably and permanently digitally archived it’s vintage strips like these!), Moon Mullins: Two Adventures is still readily available and reprints two marvellous extended romps originally reformatted from newspapers and released in 1929 and 1931 by Cupples & Leon – a publishing company which specialized in reprinting popular strips in lush, black-&-white tomes; very much a precursor of both comic books and latterday graphic novels.

In the first yarn Mullins is given a car in payment for $30 he foolishly lent Emmy’s ne’er-do-well brother Ziggy, utterly unaware that the vehicle is stolen. This is a delightful shambolic, knockabout sequence with striking slapstick and clever intrigues resulting in the entire cast behind bars at one time or another.

It should be remembered that the cops in these circumstances and during those tough days were always everybody’s enemy and fools unto themselves…

The second tale describes how Plushbottom treats Emmy and Egypt to a Florida holiday, unaware that he’s also paying for Moon and Mushmouth to join them on a brilliantly inventive and madcap road-trip…

Each adventure is delivered via the incredibly difficult method of one complete gag-strip per day combining to form an over-arching narrative… and they’re all wonderfully drawn and still funny. If you’re a fan of classic W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers and other giants of vintage screwball comedy you must see this stuff…

Moon Mullins was one of the key foundational strips in the development of both cartooning and graphic narrative: hugely influential, seditiously engaging, constantly entertaining and perfectly drawn. With such a wealth of brilliant material surely, it’s only a matter of time until some sensible publisher with a sense of history releases a definitive series of collected editions?
© 1929, 1931 The Chicago Tribune. All rights reserved.

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Cinebook Recounts Battle of Britain


By Bernard Asso, illustrated by Francis Bergése, coloured by Frédéric Bergése (“FB/ Bérik”) and translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-84918-025-2 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Originally titled Le Bataille d’Angleterre and first seen in the UK as Biggles and The Battle Of Britain, the material in this album all sprang out of the continent’s decades-long love affair with the plucky British (Polish, French, Dutch, Belgian, Indian, etc et al) aviator of “History’s Darkest Days”.

Biggles has been huge all over Europe longer than I’ve been alive, particularly in Holland, Germany, Belgium and France, which makes it doubly galling that apart from a big run of translations in India, only a short-lived Swedish interpretation of his comic book exploits (see W.E. Johns’ Biggles and the Golden Bird ) and a paltry few from the Franco-Belgian iteration licensed by British outfit Red Fox in the mid-1990s – which included the original iteration of very volume – have ever made the move back to Blighty…

Hopefully some enterprising publisher will be willing to brave the Intellectual Property Rights minefield involved and bring us all more of those superb graphic adventures one day…

Happily, as this tome is more documentary than drama and the Air Ace doesn’t feature on the revised pages at all, Cinebook have twice released this fine, visually erudite mini epic by historian Bernard Asso and the utterly compelling Francis Bergése.

Like so many artists involved in aviation stories, Bergése (born in 1941) started young with both drawing and flying. He qualified as a pilot whilst still a teenager, enlisted in the French Army and was a reconnaissance flyer by his twenties. Aged 23 he began selling strips to L’Étoile and JT Jeunes (1963-1966), after which he produced his first air strip Jacques Renne for Zorro. This was swiftly followed by Amigo, Ajax, Cap 7, Les 3 Cascadeurs, Les 3 A, Michel dans la Course and many others.

Bergése laboured as a jobbing artist on comedies, pastiches and WWII strips until 1983 when he was offered the plum job of illustrating venerable, globally syndicated strip Buck Danny. In the 1990s the seemingly indefatigable Bergése split his time, producing Danny dramas and Biggles books. He retired in 2008.

In this double-barrelled dossier delight from 1983, his splendidly understated, matter-of-fact strip illustration is used to cleverly synthesise the events following the defeat at Dunkirk to the Battle of Britain (1940) and the eventual turnaround in May 1941. By combining and counterpointing the efforts of (in)famous figures like Churchill, Hitler, Douglas Bader and Goering with key tactical players such as Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Adolf Galland and Mölders, an intimate tapestry unfolds. Additional drama is effected in the fact-packed narrative by mixing actual tales of individual valour in the skies with the actions and experiences of invented winged warriors Leutnant Otto Werner and True Brit Flight Lieutenant James Colby, as both struggle to survive in the skies over England.

The saga deals with the early days of terrifying air duels, later Blitz bombings, Albion’s logistical trials and eventual triumphs with factual expertise, but also affords a human face on each side of the conflict…

The latter half of the book shifts time and focus as Asso & Bergése detail The Bombing of Germany (1943-1945) paying especial attention to Air Chief Marshal Harris’ controversial tactic of “Terror Bombing” and its effects on allies and enemies – and innocents.

Here narrative voice Colby transfers to Britain’s Bomber Command, swopping Hurricanes and Spitfire for Lancasters, Halifaxes and B-17 Flying Fortresses. Major Werner is also present as the Allies’ campaign slowly destroys the Nazi War Machine and the embattled Ace graduates from prop-powered Focke-Wulfe and Messerschmitt vehicles to the first jet powered planes – but too late…

Cunningly converting dry history into stellar entertainment, Asso & Bergése brilliantly form statistical accounts and solid detail into powerful evocative terms on a human scale that most children will easily understand, whilst reminding us even this war had two sides, and was never just “us” or “them”…

Whilst arguably not as diligent or accurate as a school text (my opinion differs…), Cinebook Recounts: Battle of Britain (part of a graphic history strand making distant events come alive that includes The Falklands War and The Wright Brothers) delivers a captivating and memorable introduction to the events no parent or teacher can afford to miss, and no kid can fail to enjoy.
© Editions du Lombard (Dargaud- Lombard SA), 2003 by Marazano & Ponzio. English translation © 2007, 2010 Cinebook Ltd.

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The Michael Moorcock Library – Elric volume 3: The Dreaming City


By Roy Thomas & P Craig Russell with Tom Orzechowski (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78585-334-0 (HB/Digital edition)

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

Some stories just never grow stale or feel out-of-step. Here is a particular favourite both in prose and comics form that you can find and adore.

The third volume in a proposed complete Michael Moorcock Library of comics adaptations (and prose novels), this is – chronologically at least – the first tale of the doomed king, despite being one of the last adventures penned by Moorcock in the initial prose cycle of stories (he returned to the character years later, as all great authors do to all great characters).

It’s been given an archival polish and pictorial upgrade and is re-presented here in a superb hardcover tome complete from ‘Introduction: Conan, Elric, and Me’ from original adapter Roy Thomas, sharing his history with and undying love of the dark prince…

Elric is an icon and milestone of the Sword & Sorcery genre and one of the first and best of the “last rulers of a pre-human civilization” trope. The austere distant Melnibonéans he rules and leads to destruction are an ancient race of cruel, arrogant sorcerers: dissolute creatures in a slow, decadent decline after millennia of dominance over Earth.

An albino, Emperor Elric VIII, was the 428th of his line: physically weak and of a brooding, philosophical temperament, caring for nothing save his beautiful cousin Cymoril, even though her brother Prince Yrrkoon openly lusted for both his throne and intended bride.

Elric never wanted to rule, it was merely his duty. Crucially, he was the only one of his race to see the newly-evolving race of Man as a threat to the Empire. Thanks to earlier/later canonical tales told (for which see Michael Moorcock Library – Elric volume 1) he owns – or is possessed by – a huge black sword dubbed Stormbringer: a magical blade that steals the souls of all who fall to it and feeds their life and vitality to the albino.

The Dreaming City was the first Elric story Moorcock released, published in pulp periodical Science Fantasy #47 (June 1961). A sensational instant hit, the Last Emperor became the vanguard of a modern revival of the weird fantasy form and an inadvertent foundation stone for the new-born role-playing game market. Its transition to comics began as an adaptation by Roy Thomas & P. Craig Russell: released as a the second Marvel Graphic Novel in 1982.

In this beautifully realised (fully visually remastered for this edition), Elric has been recently usurped and ousted by Yrrkoon. The vile rival also cast Cymoril into an enchanted sleep and holds her hostage. Faustian-like, the albino has entered into a devil’s bargain with assorted human rulers and reivers and now promises to guide an armada of ships in an all-out attack on the deviously fortified island citadel of Immyr, determined to raze the city and eradicate his entire race if that what’s necessary to rescue his beloved…

The pact sees the doomed monarch burn many bridges with old friends, primordial mystic allies of his lost throne and especially his new human allies such as Count Smiorgan, Yaris, King Naclon and Fadan of Lormyr, but Elric is content to destroy the entire world to free his beloved and punish his nemesis…

Thanks to Elric the shaky alliance succeeds in spectacular manner, but Yrrkoon (carrying Stormbringer’s sister sword Mournblade) is easily his master in treachery and deceit, and the rescue mission goes horribly wrong, leaving the Last True Emperor despondent, broken and alone in world he no longer fits, and despised by the surviving humans he abandoned to the vengeful dragon-riding Melnibonéans…

Much like the original prose tale this adaptation has become a milestone of the comics genre: a resplendently flamboyant, deliciously elegant, savagely beautiful masterpiece blending blistering action and glittering adventure with deep, darkly melancholic tone of the cynical, nihilistic, Cold-War mentality and era which spawned the original stories.

Here is an iconic and groundbreaking landmark of fantasy fiction and a must-read-item for any fan…
© 2016 Michael & Linda Moorcock. All characters, the distinctive likenesses thereof, and all related indicia are ™ & © Michael Moorcock and Elric Inc. Elric: The Dreaming City is © 1981, 1982 Roy Thomas and P Craig Russell.

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Marvel Masterworks: Mighty Thor volume 17


By Len Wein, Roy Thomas, Bill Mantlo, Walter Simonson, John Buscema, Jim Starlin, Val Mayerik, Virgilio Redondo, Rudy Nebres, Tony DeZuñiga, Tom Palmer, Chic Stone & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0972-7 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Once upon a time, disabled physician Donald Blake took a vacation in Norway, and stumbled across an alien invasion. Pursued and trapped in a cave, he found an ancient walking stick which, when struck against the ground, turned him into the Norse God of Thunder! Within moments, he was defending the weak and smiting the wicked.

Months swiftly passed, with the Lord of Storms tackling rapacious extraterrestrials, Commie dictators, costumed crazies and cheap thugs, but these soon gave way to a legion of fantastic foes and incredible, mythic menaces across a vast kaleidoscope of cosmic worlds where he battled with an growing cast of stalwart immortal warriors at his side…

Whilst the ever-expanding Marvel Universe had grown increasingly interconnected as it matured through its first decade – with characters literally tripping over each other in New York City – the Asgardian heritage of Thor and the soaring imagination of Jack Kirby had most often drawn the Thunder God away from mortal realms into stunning, unique astronomically distant landscapes and scenarios, but the late 1970s and encroaching 1980s saw him frequently returning to earth and Asgard as seen in these tales encompassing “Winter 1977” whilst primarily spanning cover-dates January to December 1978: a power-packed compilation re-presenting rousing sagas from The Mighty Thor #267-278 plus a brace of adult-oriented tales from Marvel Preview #10.

Before the cosmic catastrophe kicks off, passionate myth-maker Roy Thomas offers another revelatory, reminiscing Introduction, revealing his reasons for taking on The Thunderer at that time, after which action and drama resume with the final collaborations of Len Wein and illustrator Walter Simonson, whose combined efforts had already shaken the title out of its conceptual doldrums…

After All-Father Odin was kidnapped by aliens and drained like a battery until he died, he was rescued, resurrected and restored to an Asgard riven by conspiracies and conquered by Loki, Enchantress and The Executioner. Thor faced ultimate weapon The Destroyer before triumphantly saving everything and now in issue #267 (January 1978 by Wein, Simonson & DeZuñiga) we see the hero bound ‘Once More, To Midgard!’, following a rare moment of filial fondness, rather than the usual arguments with Dad.

Thor has been missing for quite some time and his absence has left Don Blake’s life in tatters until old colleague Dr. Jacob Wallaby arranges a job with Stark International’s Free Clinic. That good deed only leads to more chaos as deranged would-be super-criminal Damocles ruthlessly raids the hospital’s radiation lab in search of synthetic cobalt to power his new super-gun…

Before Blake can react, the smash-&-grab attack is over, leaving furious Thor to pursue the murderous madman, aided by Damocles’ guilt-fuelled sibling Bennett Barlow, who pays a heavy price for his civic service in concluding conflict ‘Death, Thy Name is Brother!’

The concentration on Earthly scale and situations continues in #269 as ‘A Walk on the Wild Side!’ sees a mysterious mastermind contract mechanistic mercenary Stilt-Man to secure a certain high-tech package. A raft of deadly upgrades prove pointless when the Thunder God stumbles upon the heist in the skies above Manhattan, but Thor has far more trouble facing the plotter’s power-packed partner Blastaar in middle chapter ‘Minute of Madness… Dark Day of Doom!’ The triptych of terror terminates in Thor #271 as – with the aid of Tony Stark, Nick Fury (I), S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Avengers – the Storm Lord confronts the true architect of destruction and imminent global domination in orbit ‘…Like a Diamond in the Sky!’ This epic includes cameos from Shang-Chi, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Human Torch, Nova, Daredevil and many more Marvel stalwarts, serving as big celebratory send-off for Wein & Simonson, as well signalling a major change of direction.

In #272 Thomas returned, with John Buscema & Tom Palmer illustrating ‘The Day the Thunder Failed!’ as the hero shares moments of humiliating childhood defeat with a crowd of kids. These incidents were all adapted from classical mythology and served as an appetiser to a mega-saga in the making, as TV reporter Harris Hobbs (who visited Asgard way back in Journey into Mystery #123) reappears, making Thor an offer he cannot help but refuse…

Still channelling tales from the Eddas – specifically about how Ragnarok would end the reign of the Aesir/Asgardians – #273 is set ‘Somewhere… Over the Rainbow Bridge!’ Although the journalist’s pleas to film a TV special in the Home of the Gods is sternly rebuked and rejected, wicked banished Loki has his own plans and smuggles in Harris and an entire film crew, triggering the beginning of the long-prophesied end…

If you haven’t actually read the original myths go do that. It will make you appreciate these clever riffs on the theme so much more as the secret history of Asgard and Odin’s plots are exposed in #274. With Loki on the loose, the story of how the All-Father sacrificed his eye to fiery seer Mimir for knowledge of the future is revealed, as are the dirty bargains Odin made to forestall inevitable, inescapable doom.

Now, as Sif leads home the long-missing goddesses of Asgard, mortal cameraman Roger “Red” Norvell beholds the Thunder God’s raven-haired beloved and is gripped by uncontrollable desire. Another prerequisite of The End then occurs as Loki orchestrates the death of Balder in ‘The Eye… and the Arrow!’…

‘A Balance is Struck!’ in #275 when Odin uses all his power to suspend the dying God of Light in a timeless state, pausing the countdown to Ragnarok. Loki meanwhile uses ancient spells and his step-brother’s Belt of Strength and Iron Gloves (created when the Prince was a child to help control and wield mighty Mjolnir) to become a new, very different Thor. The newcomer even seizes the mystic hammer from its enraged rightful owner as he beats the thunder god and abducts Sif…

Declaring in #276 ‘Mine… This Hammer!’, Red is barely aware he has killed his best friend for power. Loki and Death Goddess Hela meanwhile rouse all Asgard’s enemies to march on their hated foes. A ‘Time of the Trolls!’ seems to indicate the end has finally come, but the forces of evil are not the only devious schemers with an endgame in mind, and a monstrous plan is exposed whereby the All-Father has attempted to cheat the powers of prophecy and trick Ragnarok by creating a false Thor to die in the true saviour of Asgard’s place. All it required was timing, boldness and a few necessary (albeit unwilling) sacrifices…

With veteran Thor inker Chic Stone applying his stylish lines, #278 heralds ‘At Long Last… Ragnarok?!’ as all plots and perils converge with reality – the Nine Realms portion of it at least – battling doom to a draw as the apocalypse is deferred a while longer – but only after another tragic, valiant and ultimately futile demise. In the aftermath, the trueborn son of Odin cannot stand what has been done in his name and sunders all contact with his scheming sire…

To Be Continued…

That split would lead to an even more momentous and spectacular saga (which begins in the next volume) but this titanic tome ends on a rare treat stemming from the period’s growing love-affair with fighting fantasy. Cover-dated Winter 1977, Marvel Preview #10 was a monochrome magazine in Marvel’s mature-oriented line: free of Comics Code scrutiny and ostensibly the strictures of shared continuity. Although MP was an anthology/showcase title, other periodicals in the Marvel Magazine Group included off-kilter features like Howard the Duck, Rampaging Hulk and Tomb of Dracula.

Thor the Mighty almost joined that elite roster in 1975, and almost three full issues were prepared for a barbarian Thunder God vehicle before the plug was pulled. As a result, much material was sitting in drawers when the decision came to use one lead tale and a thematic back-up in the try-out title. Another story had already been modified and published as Thor Annual #5 (for which see Marvel Masterworks Thor #15)…

Behind a painted Ken Barr cover, frontispiece by Jim Starlin and illustration plates from Virgilio Redondo and Rudy Nebres, ‘Thor the Mighty!’ was scripted by Wein, with art by Starlin & DeZuñiga. The tale told of a time long past when Odin sent his rowdy sons Thor and Loki on a quest to secure a mystic Crystal of Blood threatening to erase all existence. The mission pitted his sons against seductive sorceresses, trolls ogres, giants, dragons and – as ever – each other…

The lusty yarn was backed up by an exploit of Hercules The Prince of Power when he was still half-human and sailing with Jason as an Argonaut. Here – courtesy of Bill Mantlo & Val Mayerik – the shipmates faced constant, mythologically-tinged peril on ‘The Isle of Fear!’ – but nothing like the political intrigue engineered by corrupt sponsor King Kreon of Pylos…

Augmenting this potent volume is the letters page editorial from Thor #272, house ads and a blockbusting original art gallery, beginning with Simonson sketches, layouts, pencils, fully inked covers, splash and story-pages (9 in all) and ditto for 14 pages from John Buscema, plus two more each from Starlin and Mayerik. There are also a double-page pin-up spread by young John Romita Jr. from F.O.O.M. #21 (Spring 1978) and an un-inked pencil art by Rich Buckler: a cover channelling the mighty Jack Kirby…

The tales gathered here may lack the sheer punch and verve of the early years but certainly prove that after too long calcified, the Thunder God was again moving to the forefront of Big Idea Comics Storytelling. Fans of ferocious Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy will find this tome still stuffed with intrigue and action, magnificently rendered by artists who, gifted and dedicated to making new legends. This a definite must-read for all fans of the character and the genre.
© 2018 MARVEL.

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Showcase Presents Hawkman volume 2


By Gardner F. Fox & Murphy Anderson, Bob Haney, Dick Dillon, Arnold Drake, Raymond Marais, Robert Kanigher, Denny O’Neill, Johnny Craig, Chuck Cuidera, Gil Kane, Sid Greene, Joe Giella, Joe Kubert & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1817-1 (TPB)

After fighting long and hard to win his own title it was such a pity that time and fashion seemed to conspire against the Winged Wonder…

Katar Hol and his wife Shayera Thal were police officers on their own highly advanced planet of Thanagar. They originally travelled to Earth from the star system Polaris in pursuit of a shape-changing spree-thief named Byth but stayed to study Earth police methods in the cultural metropolis of Midway City. This all occurred in the wonderful ‘Creature of a Thousand Shapes’ in The Brave and the Bold #34 (cover-dated February/March 1961), but the public was initially resistant and it was three years and many further issues, guest-shots and even a back-up feature in Mystery in Space before the Winged Warriors finally won their own title.

Cover-dated April/May 1964, Hawkman #1 signalled the beginning of a superb run of witty, thrilling, imaginative and hugely entertaining science fiction, crime-mystery and superhero adventures that captivated the devoted but still painfully small audience. All those wonderful stories can be found in Showcase Presents Hawkman volume 1, and hopefully one day in proper full-colour archival editions both paper and pixel forms.

Until then there’s this second, concluding Showcase volume, reprinting in crisp efficient monochrome Hawkman (volume 1) #12-27, Brave and the Bold (volume 1) #70, The Atom (volume 1) #31 and avian portions of last-ditch combination-comic The Atom and Hawkman #39-45, spanning cover-dates February/March 1966 to November 1969.

All-out action and sci fi thrills and spills recommence with a large-scale cosmic epic that originally debuted in Hawkman #12. ‘The Million-Year-Long War!’ is pure Gardner Fox bravura storytelling, recounting how a Thanagarian exploration team awakens two aliens determined to kill each other even after eons of suspended animation. That reawakened enmity drove them both to possess all Thanagar, turning Hawkman’s homeworld into one huge weapon. As usual Fox’s imaginings are gloriously illustrated by Murphy Anderson (Superman, Atomic Knights, The Spectre, Captain Comet, Adam Strange, Korak, Son of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Buck Rogers) – as they would be until Julie Schwartz surrendered editorial control with issue #22.

Hawkman #13 offered startling time-bending saga ‘Quest of the Immortal Queen!’ wherein a Valkyrie from Earth’s far future opted to add the Winged Wonder to her seraglio of lusty warriors plucked from history. Happily, wife Shayera strenuously objects and is both smart and tough enough to sort things out. Fox’s treatment of female characters was highly unique for those pre-feminist times: all his heroines – a large number of them wives, not wishy-washy “girlfriends” – were capable, intelligent and most importantly, wholly independent and autonomous individuals.

Hawkgirl was written as every bit her husband’s equal. The Hawks had one of the most subtle and sophisticated relationships in the business. Like Sue and Ralph Dibney (Elongated Man & wife) Katar and Shayera were full partners (both couples clearly influenced by Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man movies) and the interplay between them was always rich in humour and warmth.

As a sign of the times, super-secret criminal conspirators C.A.W. (Criminal Alliance of the World) returned to seize control of the ‘Treasure of the Talking Head!’ This ancient computer was built before the birth of Christ and held all the world’s knowledge, and was a hard-won prize prior to the Pinioned Paladins facing a fantastic monster in ‘Scourge of the Human Race!’: an encounter revealing the true history of humanity when the last surviving specimen of Homo Sapiens’ earliest rival for mastery of the planet attempts to reverse evolution…

Hawkman #16’s ‘Lord of the Flying Gorillas!’ was a dimension-hopping sequel to issue #6 (‘World Where Evolution Ran Wild’): an incredible Lost Worlds romp combining secret history, fantastic fantasy and DC’s fabled fascination with apes and simians of every sort, whilst #17’s ‘Ruse of the Robbing Raven’ changed pace with a clever costumed crook caper. The issue also contained the first short back-up tale in over a year – another science-based whodunnit entitled ‘Enigma of the Escape-Happy Jewel Thieves!’

Hawkman then guest-starred – and clashed – with Batman in The Brave and the Bold #70 (February/March 1967). ‘Cancelled: 2 Super-Heroes’ was by Bob Haney, EC legend Johnny Craig & Charles “Chuck” Cuidera depicting the usually comradely crimebusters at each other’s throats due to the machinations of a manic millionaire who collected secret identities. Later that month in his own title the Winged Wonder teamed with Adam Strange against malevolent Manhawks to locate the ‘World That Vanished!’ The planet in question was Thanagar and when it went, it took beloved Shayera with it…

This colossal tale concluded in the next issue with the action-packed ‘Parasite Planet Peril!’ after which the Avian Ace joined his old ally in The Atom #31 for ‘Good Man, Bad Man, Turnabout Thief!’ (Fox, Gil Kane & Sid Greene) to battle a phantom super-criminal hidden within the brain of an innocent man. Katar Hol returned to home ground for Hawkman #20’s ‘Death of the Living Flame’: a classy anthropological tomb-raiding yarn and the introduction of a new and persistent foe in ‘Lion-Mane… the Tabu Menace!’

The alien-infected leonine marauder was back in the very next issue but ‘Attack of the Jungle Juggernaut!’– a typically classy thriller for Fox &Anderson – was their swan song. Admin trading saw them bowing out as Julius Schwartz moved to more important titles and – with #22 – George Kashdan took over Hawkman’s editorial reins. He tapped his go-to guys Haney, Dick Dillin & Cuidera to continue the adventures of the Winged Wonders in a market increasingly indifferent to costumed characters.

‘Quoth the Falcon… Hawkman Die!…’ certainly hit the ground running in a tale of extraterrestrial-induced paranoia and civil unrest, resulting in Hawkman revealing his secret identity and alien heritage to an increasingly hostile and intolerant Earth…

In #23 ‘The Hawkman from 1,000,000 B.C.!’ delivered another dark, moody tale wherein a mad scientist’s time-plundering ray inflicts dinosaurs, ancient warriors and an amnesiac Hawkman on the shell-shocked citizens of Midway City. Arnold Drake scripted alien invasion epic ‘The Robot-Raiders from Planet Midnight!’ and Haney resurfaced for ‘Return of the Death Goddess!’ offering Shayera Thal’s brief but ghastly possession by the ghost of the mythical Medusa…

The writing was on the wall by June-July 1968 and the prophetically entitled ‘Last Stand on Thanagar!’(#26  scripted by Raymond Marais), was a rushed inconsequential affair preceding final tale ‘…When the Snow-Fiend Strikes!’ which ended Hawkman’s solo career with a muddled tale of Communist agents and Yetis in the Himalayas.

The close of the 1960s were bad times for superheroes. Buying tastes had changed and a drop in comic sales and attendant rise of interest in supernatural themes prompted publishers to drop or amend much of the anti-horror provisions of the Comics Code Authority. Tales of mystery and imagination were returning after nearly a decade-and-a-half, but sales figures notwithstanding, Julie Schwartz had worked too hard to just let Hawkman die. Just as Marvel were converting their double-feature “split books” into solo titles, the Avian Ace was crammed into the equally-struggling Atom comic title for one last year of trying. Beginning with #39 (October/November 1968 and carrying on the numbering of the Tiny Titan’s title) The Atom and Hawkman featured some of Schwartz’s biggest creative guns, alternating short solo stories with shared adventures. The first of these was ‘Vengeance of the Silver Vulture!’: an epic clash against resurgent Mayan death-cultists written by Bob Kanigher, illustrated by Anderson & Joe Giella with cover art by Joe Kubert – who would also contribute interior art to the feature he struggled so long and hard to create.

Written by Fox, pencilled by Kubert and inked by Anderson, the Hawkman portion of #40 – ‘Man with the Inbuilt Panic Button!’ and its sequel ‘Yo-Yo Hangup in the Sky!’ from #41 – are one last splendid slice of the “Good Old Days”: an intriguing mystery about an ordinary man who suddenly develops the power of teleportation – but only from one life-threatening crisis to a greater one…

Denny O’Neil joined Dick Dillin & Sid Greene for ‘When the Gods Make Madness!’, a full-length team-up pitting heroes against Hindu gods, before Kanigher revived the Golden Age Hawkman’s greatest foe The Gentleman Ghost in 2-part saga ‘Come to my Hanging!’ and concluding clash ‘The Ghost Laughs Last’, both limned by Anderson.

The Atom and Hawkman #45 was the FINAL final issue: a revelatory psycho-drama by O’Neil, Dillin & Greene starring both heroes. It wrapped up their comic tenure and set them up with a prolonged series of further adventures to be seen in Justice League of America (a veritable lifeboat for cancelled costumed crime-fighters at that time) and later 1970s’ series like Secret Society of Super-Villains and Super Team Family.

‘Queen Jean, Why Must We Die?’ revealed the Atom’s fiancée Jean Loring was descended from aliens who had crashed on Earth in the Stone Age. Returned from sub-molecular exile, the modern-day survivors of the accident drove her insane because their hereditary rulers must be free of all care. The heroes rescue but not cure her, and this tale would provide the basis for Loring’s actions in later sagas Identity Crisis and Countdown to Final Crisis. Apart from the JLA, occasional guest-spots and back-up features in Action and Detective Comics that was it for the Winged Wonders until changing tastes and times gave them another, indeed many other, shots at the stars.

Hawkman briefly grew into one of the most iconic characters of the second superhero boom, not just for the superb art but also because of brilliant, subtle writing and incomparable imagination. These tales are comfortably familiar but grippingly timeless. Yet comics are a funny business; circumstances, tastes and fashions often mean that wonderful works are missed and unappreciated.

Don’t make the same mistake readers did in the 1960s. Together with its first volume this book captures and perfectly preserves the very essence of the Silver Age of Superheroes. Whatever your own vintage, read these astounding adventures and become a fan. It’s never too late.
© 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mac Raboy’s Flash Gordon volume 3


By Mac Raboy & Don Moore (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1569719787 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

By almost every metric, Flash Gordon is the most influential comic strip in the world. When the hero debuted on Sunday January 7th 1934 (with equally superb Jungle Jim running as a supplementary “topper” strip), it was a slick, sophisticated answer to Philip Nolan & Dick Calkins’ revolutionary, ideas-packed, inspirational, but quirkily clunky Buck Rogers (which had also launched on January 7th – albeit in 1929), with two fresh elements added to the wonderment: Classical Lyricism and Poetic Dynamism. The newcomer became a weekly invitation to stunningly exotic glamour and astonishing beauty.

Where Buck merged traditional adventure with groundbreaking science concepts, Flash reinterpreted fairy tales, hero epics and mythology, draping them in the spectacular trappings of contemporary futurism, with the varying “rays”, “engines” and “motors” of modern pulp sci fi substituting for trusty swords and lances. There were also plenty of those too – and exotic craft and contraptions stood in for galleons, chariots and magic carpets. Look closely, though, and you’ll see cowboys, gangsters and of course, flying saucer fetishes adding contemporary flourish to the fanciful fables. The narrative trick made the far-fetched satisfactorily familiar – and was continued with contemporary trends and innovations by Austin Briggs and Don Moore before Mac Raboy, (with Moore and Robert Rogers) took over the Sunday strips in a tenure lasting from 1948 to 1967.

The sheer artistic talent of Raymond, his compositional skills, fine linework, eye for clean, concise detail and just plain genius for drawing beautiful people and things, swiftly made this the strip that all young artists swiped from literally all over the world. When original material comic books began a few years later, many talented kids used Gordon as their model and ticket to future success in the field of adventure strips. Almost all the others went with Raymond’s stylistic polar opposite: emulating Milton Caniff’s expressionist masterwork Terry and the Pirates (and to see one of his better disciples check out Beyond Mars, limned by wonderful Lee Elias).

Flash Gordon began on present-day Earth (which was 1934, remember?) with a wandering world about to smash into our planet. As global panic ensued, polo player Flash and fellow passenger Dale Arden narrowly escaped disaster when a meteor fragment downed their airliner. They landed on the estate of tormented genius Dr. Zarkov, who imprisoned them in the rocket-ship he had built. His plan? To fly the ship directly at the astral invader and deflect it from Earth by crashing into it!

Thus began a decade of sheer escapist magic in a Ruritanian Neverland: a blend of Camelot, Oz and a hundred other fantasy realms promising paradise yet concealing vipers, ogres and demons, all cloaked in a glimmering sheen of sleek scientific speculation. Worthy adversaries such as utterly evil yet magnetic Ming, emperor of the fantastic wandering planet; myriad exotic races and shattering conflicts offered a fantastic alternative to drab and dangerous reality for millions of avid readers around the world.

With Moore handling the majority of the scripting, Alex Raymond’s ‘On the Planet Mongo’ ran every Sunday until 1944, when the artist joined the Marines. On his return, he forsook wild imaginings for sober reality: creating gentleman-detective Rip Kirby. The public’s unmissable weekly appointment with wonderment perforce continued under the artistic auspices of Austin Briggs – who had drawn the monochrome daily instalments since 1940.

In 1948, eight years after beginning his career drawing for the Harry A. Chesler production “shop”, comic book artist Emmanuel “Mac” Raboy took over illustrating the Sunday page. Moore remained as scripter and began co-writing with the new artist.

Raboy’s sleek, fine-line brush style – heavily influenced by his idol Raymond – had made his work on Captain Marvel Jr., Kid Eternity and especially Green Lama a pinnacle of artistic quality in the early days of the proliferating superhero genre. His seemingly inevitable assumption of Flash Gordon’s extraordinary exploits led to a renaissance of the strip and in a rapidly evolving post-war world, it became once more a benchmark of timeless, hyper-realistic quality escapism which only Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant could match. This third 260-page paperback volume – produced in landscape format, printed in stark monochrome and still criminally out-of-print and long overdue for a fresh edition – opens after a gripping and informative appraisal of Raboy in Bruce (Incredible Hulk, Arena, Silverheels, Ka-Zar the Savage) Jones’ Introduction ‘The Body Aerodynamic’. Then it’s blast-off time. again…

Sequence 68 ‘Missiles from Neptune’ began on January 19th 1958 and closed the previous cliffhanging volume barely weeks in. It resumes here with the episode for February 30th and carries on until March 9th, revealing how the oppressive Tyrant of Neptune seeks to impress and cow into submission his already-captive populace by testing deadly new Weapons of Interplanetary Destruction against hapless planet Earth.

The callous campaign prompts Flash to go and discourage him, but after superbly succeeding the conquering hero is lost in the interplanetary void and forced to build a survival nest inside an asteroid. His ingenuity as a ‘Robinson Crusoe in Space’ (16th March – 27th April) once more demonstrates the compelling power of straight, hard science storytelling (especially at a time when America was locked in a space race of its own), but it’s back to fantastic empires and extragalactic terror for his next exploit as Earth is menaced by ‘The Z Bomb Cloud’ (4th May – 15th June).

Long after a far-distant civilisation destroys itself, the deadly fallout of its doomsday weapon drifts into Earth orbit, threatening all terrestrial life. When Zarkov’s desperate plan to intercept the cloud goes wrong, someone must sacrifice themself to save us all…

Obviously, just this once it isn’t Flash, but the potent drama peaks with appropriate tragedy and sentiment anyway, before sequence S071 taps into the sheer burgeoning wonderment of the era as Flash and Dale help big game hunter Brian Farr prove the existence of uncanny unseen cryptids he calls ‘Stratosphere Beasts’ (22nd June – 17th August). These invisible beasts apparently dwell far above Earth’s highest mountain tops, so the endeavour takes the humans to the top of Everest where the unknown isn’t the only trial they face…

From 24th August to October 12th S072 told how the ace space pilot was embroiled in a commercial show-race to the outer planets. However, the ‘Rocket Derby’ is apparently less about proving whose ship is best and more about rich, spoiled obsessive competitors Morgan Bates and Babara “Bobcat” Kathryns realising how close hate is to love…

Along the way, Dale is dragged into the competition after hearing macho males telling Bobcat that space is no place for women, even as hired gun Flash suffers numerous sabotage attempts. It’s almost like there’s an unknown fifth element acting on their own agenda…

It’s back to dramatic basics for ‘Moon Wreck’ (S073, running from 19th October to December 14th) wherein Gordon attempts to rescue an arrogant playboy and his latest dalliance from a self-inflicted crash and subsequent marooning on Luna. The pilot’s every valiant effort is hampered by the autocrat’s privilege, greed, stupidity and cowardice, vain starlet’s Elyse Elan’s venality, and the deadly environment they both refuse to take seriously…

Gordon’s piloting skills land him in more trouble in ‘The Ship of Gold’ (S074: December 21st 1958 to January 2nd 1959) when he captains a transport of mining machinery and tons of cash to Mars, only to have the ship stolen out from under him with Dale trapped aboard. The evil mastermind is old college colleague Nicky Hamilton, but when the boastful villain abandons current girlfriend Jet in a ruthless attempt to loose Flash in the airless wastes of Titan, he seals his own fate and accidentally exposes a major threat to Earth in succeeding saga ‘The Skorpi’ (February 8th – April 5th)…

Left for dead, Flash and Dale fall through Titan’s surface to discover an insectoid alien invasion force. Skorpi can become copies of humans and are well advanced in a plot to infiltrate Earth, but aren’t quick enough to outwit Flash, especially once he befriends captive telepathic ET Brunn. His gigantic kind are Gorgins and with their allies The Dhreen have been battling Skorpi for 30,000 years. Together, the new pals whip up a plan to defeats this particular incursion…

Brunn then adapts a ship to Faster-Than-Light drive and accompanies Flash on a ‘Flight for Help’ (S076: April 12th – June 7th), beseeching Dhreen’s Council of Elders for military aid. Instead, the embassage is covertly targeted by their other client vassals – like Brunn’s own Gorgin race – who fear their share of aid will be diminished if the benign overlords help yet another endangered species…

Plots become assassination attempts, but only accidentally expose Skorpi infiltration, leading Brunn and Gordon to further corruption, exile and ultimately capture by a hidden race who dwell unsuspected in a ‘City of Glass’ (S077: June 14th to August 23rd). Condemned to death for breaking the metropolis’ sacrosanct isolation, the wanderers are only saved by lovely, sympathetic Flara, who aids the human’s escape back to the Solar system but keeps adorable Brunn by her side…

The Earthman only makes it as far as the second rock from the Sun and S078 (August 30th – November 1st) radically changes pace for a ‘Venus Mystery’ wherein human colonists face disaster as their Bajo crop is targeted by “swamp devils”. In an early lesson in green land management, crash-landed Flash aids ecologist Dirk Van Meer in proving to the furious farmers how badly wrong they have got things, what is actually to blame for all the chaos and carnage and how to fix it…

Immediate emergency over, Flash finally reaches Earth to find Zarkov impatiently waiting. Before he can catch his breath the steadfast starman is dragooned into a dangerous new experiment with cyberneticist Dr. Else Neilson having him ride along as a fallback option as she “road-tests” her ‘Robot Spaceship’ (S079: November 8th 1959 to 17th 1960). Fully automated – and what we’d call AI – the ship has human safety as its core drive, but of course, human and mechanical opinions on what exactly that means differ extensively…

Thanks in large part to Flash Gordon, spaceship technology has rapidly advanced and he is selected to pilot the first human-built FTL drive ship. The Columbus will ferry ‘The Star Miners’ (S080: January 24th – March 27th) to another star system, reap mineral wealth and set up a colony. However, the directives of chief advisor Dr. Zarkov are constantly challenged and ultimately overruled by gang-boss Mr. Birk, who can only think of glory and a big fat bonus promised for prompt completion and delivery…

Arriving on unexplored planet Karst, Zarkov again urges patience and caution, but is first sidelined and then arrested once Flash undertakes his secondary mission of exploration. By the time the hero returns the entire expedition is close to extinction and only drastic measures can save them all…

On returning to Earth, welcome shore-leave ends in catastrophe when Flash is shanghaied by “entrepreneurs” Roni and Captain Graz: kidnapped into space and ordered to pilot their ship or die. They need someone able to deliver potentially ‘Deadly Cargo’ (S081: April 3rd to June 12th) and navigate through the asteroid belt to mineral-rich big rock Juno, where a huge diamond strike has created urgent demand for explosives. It’s also a race setting competitive old rivals at each other’s throats and costs plenty of nefarious lives before Gordon gets ramshackle freighter Pollux down (relatively) safely…

Subsequent attempts to get off Juno turn wild and dangerous in ‘The Soil Divers’ (S082: June 19th – August 28th) when Flash is suckered into an ongoing resource war on the mining asteroid. Scientist Ben Corelli has devised a means of passing through solid matter, but fallen under the spell of avaricious faithless Roni and her new heavy Snapper Kaye, sparking violent conflict amongst those desperate diggers stuck using old methods of extracting mineral wealth. Soon, the attempts to seize Corelli’s breakthrough tech leads to murder and worse…

A self-aggrandising, fame-hungry documentary filmmaker obsessed with his legacy makes trouble for Dale – and therefore Flash – next. Charles Q. Charlston brings ‘Dead Worlds’ (S083: September 4th to November 20th) and lost civilisations to the masses, but has no qualms or scruples about breaking all the rules of space conduct: cheating, lying, stealing and even killing to ensure his own glory… until Gordon steps up. He and Dale are then called to the ringed planet and a reunion and to assist Brian Farr, now ‘Game Warden on Saturn’ (S084: November 27th 1960 to February 19th 1961)…

His job is currently complicated by the system’s most successful poacher – cunning sadist Von Brandt – who seeks the joy of hunting and intends making millions selling the skins of a rare indigenous lifeform. He’s also happy to excise interfering busybodies for free…

A maritime tang and epic approach flavours ‘The Trail of Orpheus’ (S085: February 26th – May 28th) when Flash joins oceanologists Henry and Veronica Weeks on a submarine to map the unique and spectacular “Devils Spring” environmental phenomenon making the watery world so hazardous to rocket ships. Their undersea voyage reveals fantastic truths about the past rulers of the planet and changes the solar system forever…

It’s a welcome return to space opera and pulp overtones as S086 sees an orbital agriculture satellite accidentally invaded by space gremlins and transformed into a ‘Death Farm in Space’ (June 4th to September 3rd) until Zarkov and Flash investigate and act, all followed by comedic whimsy as a band of backward-looking human bandits revolt against ecological progress in ‘Desert Prince’ (S087: September 10th to December 10th)…

When Earth loses the final dusty miles of once-barren Sahara to water reclamation projects, reactionary tribal chieftain Al Maarri refuses to take up farming and instead leads his raiders on a wave of sorties. The campaign of resistance culminates in his stealing a rocket ship to carry his entire bandit horde and their families to Mars where civilisation is scarce, law is poorly enforced and beautiful sandy wastes are abundant. Soon, armed with modern weapons, he’s making life difficult for genuine colonists, forcing under-resourced Flash to solve the problem creatively. That means infiltrating the tribe with the assistance of the long-suffering wives, children and oldsters the rowdy raiders forcibly dragged along with them…

Law & order was the theme of the next tale as readers gained insights into future traffic management solutions in the crowded orbital paths above Earth. The revelations came thanks to Flash visiting old pal “Ape” Rice, an officer of the ‘Spaceways Patrol’ (S088: December 17th 1961 to April 1st 1962).

Sadly, it’s not a friendly visit: Gordon works for the World Space Patrol and is on an official inspection of the Police satellite. Silly cultural satire – observing how dumb the private citizens “driving” in space are – quickly gives way to taut drama when recently-ousted national despot Generalissimo Sanre and his entourage seize the station through subterfuge, planning to blackmail the world with its arsenal of atomic weapons…

With only Flash and Ape free to act, tragedy inevitably follows the deadly fight that ensues before the planet is free from the threat of global tyranny…

The same blend of expansive wonder and human frailty permeates the saga of a blonde, blue-eyed hero found in a block of arctic ice – a tale told in full in S089, spanning April 8th through July 15th 1962. Incidentally, The Avengers #4 was released on January 3rd 1964, reintroducing Captain America to the world. I’m just saying…

Here, the ‘Living Fossil’ is found by researchers testing magnetic fields in Greenland and only involves Flash when defrosted berserker Ragnor goes on a rampage that brings him to the airfield Gordon is trying to land on. A renewed assault traps the Viking aboard (with Flash and a crew that includes handy Scandinavian scholar Eva) on a flight to Venus: a world far more in keeping with the barbarian’s culture of warriors, trolls, goblins, dwarves… and dragons…

This third astounding visit to a historical future closes with another technological nightmare and disaster-movie precursor spanning July 22nd to October 14th 1962. ‘Falling Moon’ (S090) reveals how massive artificial satellite Deepspace-One – jumping-off point for all outgoing Earth space travel – is struck by a meteor. Deflected and doomed, it slowly falls, leaving Flash only five hours to evacuate its resort contingent and find a way to save Earth from impact and atomic fallout…

As the adventures never ended, we close the collection with the opening of another exploit and pause on a moment of cliffhanging suspense. ‘Sons of Saturn’ (S091: in its original entirety running from October 21st 1962 to January 20th 1963) stops here with the December 9th episode. Prior to that point, a hitherto unsuspected super-civilisation thriving in the clouds of the Sixth Planet is revealed when an Earth probe provokes the current dictator to determine human nature and resource by sending super-criminal outcast Baldr to plague, punish and test them. That results in the indestructible giant breaking into Flash’s ship and going on a rampage…

To Be Continued…

Each week as he toiled on the strip, Raboy produced ever-more expansive artwork filled with distressed damsels, deadly monsters, incredible civilisations, increasingly authentic space hardware and locales, and all sorts of outrageous adventure that continued until the illustrator’s untimely death in 1967. Perhaps it was a kindness. He was the last great Golden Age romanticist illustrator and his lushly lavish, freely-flowing adoration of perfected human form was beginning to stale in popular taste. The Daily feature had already switched to the solid, chunky, He-Manly burly realism of Dan Barry and Frank Frazetta, but here at least the last outpost of ethereally beautiful heroism and pretty perils still prevailed: a dream realm you can visit as easily and often as Flash, Dale & Zarkov popped between planets, just by tracking down this book and the one which follows…
© 2003 King Features Syndicate Inc. ™ & © Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Definitive Charley’s War volume 1: Boy Soldier


By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-619-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

On July 27th 1914, Austrian foreign Minister Berchtold had Emperor Franz Joseph sign a Declaration of War in hopes of stealing a march on the empire’s political opponents of the Triple Entente and ensure any peace proposals would be pointless. The Great War officially began the following day…

When Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun began their tale of an impressionable lad who joins up just in time to fight in the disastrous Somme campaign, I suspect they had, as usual, the best of authorial intentions but no real idea that this time they were creating comics history. The landmark feature was originally published in British war anthology Battle (AKA Battle Picture Weekly, Battle Action, etc.). A surprise hit, the serial proper launched in #200, running from January 1979 until October of 1986.

It recounted, usually in heartrending and harrowing detail and with astounding passion for a Boys’ Periodical, the life of an East-End kid who lies about his age to enlist with the British Army reinforcements setting out to fight the Hun in 1916.

The stunning strip contingent contained within this edition – 86 weekly episodes in all – span January 6th 1979 through 25th October 1980, forming one of the most powerful and influential characterisations of the oh-so-ironic “war to end all wars” ever depicted. Lovingly researched, lavishly limned and staggeringly authentic, the saga touches upon many diverse aspects of the conflict – even the effects on the Home Front – all delivered with a devastating, sardonically understated dry sense of horror and injustice, albeit frequently leavened with gallows humour as trenchant as that legendarily “enjoyed” by the poor trench-bound “Tommies” of the time.

This magnificent (mostly) monochrome mega-compilation opens with a 4-page instalment (for much of the middle run the series came in 3-page episodes) ‘Charley’s War – the Story of a Soldier in World War One’, following 16-year-old London Bus Company worker Charley Bourne as he eagerly enlists and so-quickly graduates to unending, enduring horrors of muddy, blood-soaked battlefields, beginning with The Somme.

Military life was notoriously hard and unremittingly dull – except for brief bursts of manic aggression and strategic stupidity which ended so many lives. Closely following the recorded course of the war, Mills & Colquhoun put young Charley in the Westshire Regiment and show a rapidly changing casualty-shaped cast being constantly whittled away by various modes of combat attrition.

The weekly hellscapes show lesser-known, far-from-glorious aspects of the conflict readers in the 1970s & 1980s had never seen in any other war comic. Each strip was cunningly punctuated and elucidated by the telling narrative device of the simple lad’s letters to his family in “Blighty” whilst also cleverly utilising reproductions of cartoons and postcards from the period.

With Boer War veteran Ole Bill Tozer as his mentor, Charley narrowly survives shelling, mudslides, digging details, gas attacks, the trench cat, snipers, callous stupidity of his own commanding officers – although there are examples of good officers too – and the far-too-frequent insane absurdity of a modern soldier’s life. Slowly but irrevocably the callow, naïve boy becomes a solid, dependable warrior – albeit one with a nose for trouble and a near-divine gift for lucky escapes.

When Tozer leads a party across No-Man’s Land to capture prisoners for interrogation, new pal Ginger sustains a frankly hilarious wound in his nether regions. As a result, however, and despite the sortie establishing the inadvisability of an attack, Allied generals continue their plans for a “Big Push”. Thus, Charlie is confronted with an agonising moral dilemma when he catches a comrade trying to wound himself and get sent home before the balloon goes up. This time, grim fate intervenes before the boy soldier can make his terrible choice…

The unit’s troubles increase exponentially when arrogant, ruthless aristocrat Lieutenant Snell arrives; constantly undermining if not actively sabotaging every effort by sympathetic Lieutenant Thomas to make the riffraff cannon fodder’s lives tolerable. The self-serving toff officer takes an extremely personal dislike to Charley after the lad drops in trench mud a huge picnic hamper belonging to the rich twat…

On July 1st 1916 The Battle of the Somme begins. Like so many other unfortunates, Charley and his comrades are ordered “over the top”: expected to walk steadily into mortars and machine gun fire of entrenched German positions. Thomas, unable to stand the stupidity, cracks and commands them to charge at a run. It saves his squad but lands his men in a fully-manned German dug-out…

After ferocious fighting the lads gain a brief respite, but retreating Huns have left insidious booby-traps to entice and destroy them. Many beloved characters die before Charley, Ginger and poor shell-shocked Lonely are finally captured by “the Boche”.

As they await their fate, the traumatised veteran of 1914 reveals to Ginger and Charley the horrific events of the previous Christmas and why he so wants to die. Moreover, the sole cause of that appalling atrocity is the same Snell now commanding their own unit…

Through Charley’s signature dumb luck they escape, only to blunder into a gas attack and British Cavalry. The mounted men gallop off to meet stiff German resistance (resulting in some of the most baroque and disturbing scenes ever depicted in kids’ comics) whilst Bourne and the lads are miraculously reunited with their lost comrades. The combat carnage has not ceased, however. Awaiting orders to attack, Lt. Thomas and his embattled men are suddenly subjected to a terrific barrage. With horror the officer realises they are being shelled by their own big guns and dispatches a runner to Snell who has a functioning line to Allied HQ.

The role of messenger was the most dangerous in the army but, with no means of communication except written orders and requests, failure to get through was never acceptable. By the time Charley volunteers a dozen men have failed. With British shells still butchering British troops, Bourne resolves to test his luck as the “Thirteenth Runner”…

As previously stated, Charley’s War closely follows the war’s key events, using them as a road map or skeleton to hang specific incidents upon. This was not the strip’s sole innovation. Mills’ detailed research concentrated more on characters than fighting – although there was still plenty of heartrending action – and declared to the readership (which at time of original publication were categorically assumed to be boys between ages 9-13) that “our side” could be as monstrous as the “bad guys”.

Mills also fully exercised his own political/creative agendas in the series and was constantly amazed at what he got away with and what seeming trivialities his editors pulled him up on (more fully expanded upon in the author’s informative and detailed ‘Strip Commentary’ concluding this edition)…

With the Thirteenth Runner storyline, likable everyman Charley Bourne slowly began his descent from fresh-faced innocent to weary, battle-scarred veteran as the war reached beyond cataclysmic opening moves of the Somme Campaign into the conflict’s most bloody events. Frantically making his way to the rear positions, Charley successfully passes twelve fallen runners but only encounters more officer arrogance and Professional Soldier stupidity before the battle ends. Snell refuses to even read the message until he has finished his tea…

Helpless before aristocratic indifference, Charley angrily returns to the Front. Finding everyone apparently dead, he snaps. Reduced to a killing rage he is only dragged back to normal when Ginger, Smith Seventy and the Sarge emerge from a shattered support trench.

The lad’s joy is short-lived. Thomas is arrested for showing cowardice in the face of the enemy, and with him gone Snell commands the unit of despised disposable commoners…

Removed to the Rear to have their wounds treated, Charley and his chums meet Weeper Watkins. The former ventriloquist cries permanently. His eyes are ruined by exposure to poison gas but he is still considered fit for duty. All too soon they fall foul of sadistic military policeman Sergeant Bacon who has earned his nickname as “the Beast” over and again…

With a chance to blow off steam – like a hilarious volunteer Concert Party show – Charley and Weeper are soon in the Beast’s bad books. However, his first attempt to beat and break Bourne goes badly awry when a couple of rowdy Australian soldiers join the fray and utterly humiliate the rogue Red Cap.

Bullies are notoriously patient, however, and Bacon’s turn comes at last when Lt. Thomas is found guilty. Charley and Weeper refuse to be part of the firing squad which executes him and are punished by military tribunal, leaving them at the Beast’s non-existent mercy. Enduring savage battlefield punishments including a uniquely cruel form of crucifixion, their suffering only ends when the base is strafed by German aircraft. With sentence served and Bacon gone, Charley is soon back in the trenches, just in time for the introduction of Tank Warfare to change the world forever. A fascinating aspect of the battle is highlighted here as the strip concentrates heavily upon German reaction to the innovation. The Central Powers considered the tank an atrocity weapon in just the same way modern soldiers do chemical and biological ones.

In the build-up to the Big Push, Charley is singled out by a new replacement. Unctuous Oliver Crawleigh is a cowardly spiv and petty criminal, but he’s also married to Charley’s sister Dolly. The chancer ignobly attaches himself to the young veteran like a leech, offering to pay Charley to either protect him or wound him some minor way which will get “Oiley” safely back to Britain…

The next day the British Empire’s new landships make their terrifying debut with army infantry in close support. The effect on the Germans is astounding. In a ferociously gripping extended sequence, Mills & Colquhoun take readers inside the hellish iron leviathans as outraged Huns devote their manic utmost efforts into eradicating the titanic tin terrors. The carnage is unspeakable but soon Charley, Oiley and Smith Seventy are inside one of the lumbering behemoths, reluctantly replacing the dead crew of clearly deranged tank man Wild Eyes. The modern-day Captain Ahab drags them along for the ride, seeking a madman’s redemption for the loss of his pals, the slaughter of a town and destruction of a church…

In the quiet of the weary aftermath, Oiley deliberately puts his foot under a tank to “get a Blighty” (a wound sufficiently serous to be sent home) and attempts to bribe Charley into silence. The disgusted, exhausted teenager responds in typically cathartic manner. During this lull in the fighting, events on the German side see despised commoner and Eastern Front veteran Colonel Zeiss spurn his aristocratic Junker colleagues’ outdated notions, devising a new kind of Total Warfare to punish the British for their use of mechanised murder machines…

Charley, meanwhile, is wounded and his comrades celebrate the fact that he will soon be home safely. Naturally, things are never that simple and the callous indifference of the British army’s medical contingent – especially notorious “Doctor No” who never lets a man escape his duty – means any soldier still able to pull a trigger is sent back into battle.

Bourne returns just in time to meet the first wave of Zeiss’ merciless “Judgement Troops”, who storm British lines, slaughtering everyone – including German soldiers who get in the way – in a savage, no-holds-barred assault. The “Blitzkrieg tactics” overwhelm everything in their path. Charley and his mates reel from fresh horrors: battlefield executions, flamethrowers, experimental forms of poison gas, strafing by steel javelins and brutal, uncompromising hand-to-hand combat in their own overrun trenches before the bloody battle peters out indecisively…

Zeiss is subsequently cashiered by his own appalled superiors, but knows that one day his concepts of Blitzkrieg and Total War will become the norm…

Exhausted, battle-weary Charley is again injured, losing his identification in the process and returned eventually to England as a shell-shocked amnesiac. His mother undergoes slow torture as she receives telegrams declaring her son, missing, dead, found wounded and lost again…

Mills & Colquhoun now begin a masterful sequence that broke all the rules of war comic fiction; switching emphasis to the Home Front where Charley’s family mourn his apparent death, and work in the war industries. It’s at this time that German Zeppelin raids on British cities begin. Mills’ acerbic social criticism makes powerful use of history as our recovering boy soldier experiences the trials of submarine warfare, when the troop ship carrying him and Bill Tozer back to Blighty is torpedoed…

When their perilous North Sea odyssey at last brings Charley back to Silvertown in London’s West Ham, it is in the wake of a catastrophic disaster in which 50 tons of TNT detonate at a munitions factory, killing more than 70 workers and injuring a further 400. No longer comfortable around civilians and with no stomach for jingoistic nonsense of stay-at-homes or covert criminal endeavours of boastful “war-hero” (and secret looter) Oiley, Charley hangs out in pubs with the Sarge and reconnects with old soak/Crimean War survivor Blind Bob…

London is under constant threat, not just from greedy munitions magnates who care more for profit than safety of their workers or even victory for their homeland, but also increasingly common aerial bombing raids which provoke mindless panic and destruction at the very heart of the British Empire.

Focus here divides as Charley’s days are contrasted with the zealous mission of devoted family man Kapitan Heinrich von Bergmann who leads his Zeppelin squadron in a carefully calculated night sortie against the hated English. When Blind Bill is evicted from his rooms, Charley invites him to stay with the Bournes and the beggar’s incredible hearing (coupled with the area’s quaint air-raid listening devices) provides enough warning to seal Bergmann’s doom, but not before the airman has rained tons of explosive death on the capital…

During the bombing, Charley discovers his mum is still toiling in the local munitions works. The exploitative owner has decided not to sound his air raid evacuation alarm as he has profits and contracts to consider. Charley is not happy and dashes to get her out…

This stunning collection ends with a sharp jab at dubious practices of British recruitment officers (who got bonuses for every volunteer they signed up) as Charley stops his extremely little brother Wilf from making the same mistake he did, and teaches the unscrupulous recruiter a much-deserved lesson…

To Be Continued…

Charley’s War is a highpoint in the narrative examination of the Great War through any artistic medium and exists as shining example of how good “Children’s Comics” can be. It is also one of the most powerful pieces of fiction ever produced for readers of any age.

I know of no anti-war story that is as gripping, as engaging and as engrossing, no strip that so successfully transcends its mass-market, popular culture roots to become a landmark of fictive brilliance. We can only thank our lucky stars that no Hollywood hack has made it a blockbuster which would inescapably undercut the tangibility of the “heroes” whilst debasing the message. There is nothing quite like it and you are diminished by not reading it.

Included in this volume are a full cover gallery and restored colour sections (reproduced in monochrome for earlier collections but vibrantly hued here to vivid effect) and writer Mills’ wonderfully informative chapter notes and commentary on the episodes. Not just a great war comic, Charley’s War is a highpoint in narrative examination of the Great War through any artistic medium. I won’t belabour plot, script or even the riveting authentic artistic depictions. I won’t praise the wonderful quality. I simply state if you read this you will get it, and if you don’t, you won’t.

Let’s all make ensure that it’s NOT all over by Christmas!
© 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 & 2018 Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Charley’s War is ™ & © Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.