Category: Adventure

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The Campbells volume 1: Inferno & volume 2: The Formidable Captain Morgan


By José Luis Munuera, coloured by Sedyas translated by Emma Wilson (Europe Comics)
Digital Editions – No ISBNs:

Arrr an’ Wot Ho! It be anuvver International Talk Like a Pirate Day once morrrre, me Hearties! That gives me license to act like a complete berk whilst plugging a suitably themed graphic yarn. This ‘un be a real cracker, too…

As heavily influenced by a certain Disney movie franchise as continental Europe’s long-standing affection for the genre, and exhibiting a deft hand with the traditions and history of light-hearted freebooting romps, Inferno is the introductory salvo in a convoluted yet engaging family saga about a most unconventional bunch of buccaneers.

Crafted by Andalusian comics veteran José Luis Munuera (No Hay Domingos en el Infierno, Merlin, Walter le Loup, Spirou et Fantasio, P’tit Boule et Bill) who has been delighting readers since his debut in 1996, the epic voyage of discovery commences here with smart, snappy episodes introducing an extremely large cast of roguish characters. First up are devious rapscallion “Captain” Carapepino and his trusty dogsbody Haggins. A very minor player with huge aspirations, this smooth talker is off burying his first chest of treasure on a sun-kissed tropical island when he is ambushed and hijacked by the infamous – and long-missing – Captain Campbell.

Through a most cunning ploy, the pirate’s pirate (with two young daughters at his side) appropriates the gem-strewn chest and smugly paddles away to another paradisiacal atoll…

The next vignette sees the wonder family man at ease in his luxurious haven on Garden Island, patiently watching teenaged Itaca explode again as her obnoxiously bratty sister Genova reads excerpts from someone’s secret – stolen – diary…

Despite always acting out and indulging in outrageous feats of derring-do, the well-educated, ultra-fit kids love each other and desperately miss their mother.

Out in the briny depths, formidably ferocious Captain Inferno terrorises victims and his own men. A man of dark moods and soaring ambition, he is haunted by visions of a dead woman who comes to him often, repeating three horrifying predictions that he cannot escape. His night terrors are suppressed but not abated by the arrival of unctuous Carapepino who shares that encounter with the sea terror’s most despised enemy… and husband of the ghost who plagues him!

The Campbells might be sea-wolves but they are most unconventional ones. Amongst those who love them most are the inhabitants of the Isle of Bakaloo: a leper colony the family regularly visit with supplies of food, books and other life-easing essentials. On this latest jaunt, the canny corsairs bring along the latest chest of valuables: after all, what normal, superstitious rogues would risk their scurvy skins amongst the unclean and diseased?

Some days later, the family visit fiercely neutral township Bahia Cambalanche, Port Franc. Here all hawks of the seas can meet to trade, carouse and fence their stolen booty. Here and now, Itaca and Genova reluctantly attend lessons arranged by their father.

Right here, right now, Carapepino and a press gang provided by Inferno attempt to abduct the girls only to be beaten back by their unbridled fury and the late intervention of gorgeous teenager Blond Luca. Itaca is instantly smitten by the glorious hero, blithely unaware that her saviour is a pawn in a dastardly long con…

The deception blossoms soon after as Garden Island is invaded by Carapepino’s borrowed forces. Nevertheless, the trio of Campbells fight free, humiliate the craven dogs and make a bold escape to a new sanctuary. In the interim, Inferno has not been idle. By ruthless manipulation and scurrilous deals, he has ingratiated himself with English nobility – and Campbell’s oldest enemies – in order to have himself admitted to the top flight of the corrupt aristocracy. Invested as Baron of England, with a warrant to hunt all shipping but British vessels, Inferno moves quickly to consolidate power and replace the crown’s agents with his own people…

The Campbells have relocated to Bakeloo Island where Itaca broods over Luca’s betrayal as her father worries about her unexplained distress. Father is also blithely oblivious to passionate and sustained adoration of indigenous lovely Nutel-La, but the practical islander finally makes a big impression by suggesting that the devoted dad needs to have “the talk” with his manifestly-maturing older daughter…

Having lost yet another ship, Carapepino and his surviving crew at last link up with former employer Baron Inferno, just in time to become his first detainees as the freshly ennobled provincial ruler moves into his new Governor’s Palace.

The interloper eases gracefully to the head of the aristocratic pack, gleaming in fine clothes, sparkling with newfound power and respectability. After all, aren’t these rich privileged fools just another gang of self-proclaimed predators? Especially shockingly blunt and ruthlessly amoral Lady Helvetia, who becomes his boon companion and more…

When the revels end, the Baron’s mind races back decades to the docks of London where he and his bold, inventive, loyal brother picked pockets and sought to escape their monster of a father. How far they have come since then. How far they have drifted apart…

To Be Continued…

Volume 2: The Formidable Captain Morgan

The seagoing saga resumes with more revelations as 2017’s Les Campbell – 2. Le redoutable pirate Morgan arrives to further the fun-filled furore. As Itaca and Genova find fresh ways to perk up their sisterly rivalry, the younger girl asks about the mother she doesn’t remember. That tricky conversation sparks a flashback to when the bold Campbell brothers first tried to recruit a band of cutthroats to serve under them…

Elsewhere, Dad is having similar reveries of the mere slip of girl he met one day and how Nancy was the most capable streetfighter he had ever seen. Sadly, his reminiscences are interrupted by increasingly forward Nutel-La who can also handle herself when not concentrating on him…

Beneath the grandiose and byzantine Piranese Palace, new governor Inferno entertains former allies in his dungeons until impressionable Lady Sophia of Hollowside brings Carapepino what should be his last meal. She’s actually there to spring her wicked lover, but that was before his flunky Haggins ate the key to the cell…

Another flashback sees the brothers prospering as pirates until again encountering premiere privateer “The Formidable Captain Morgan”. That masked worthy has been regularly poaching their prizes and the older Campbell has had enough…

Back in their present, the girls’ father warms to his willing island girl and discovers a lost connection, whilst at the Piranese Palace, Lady Sophia sparks a frantic chase after finally springing Carapepino and Haggins…

Then he recalls how they all first met scurrilous Carapepino who promised them Captain Morgan, and how his brother reacted to seeing Nancy. That was the moment siblings became rivals, and then competitors. Nevertheless, still resolved to destroy mysterious masked marauder Morgan, the Campbell brothers laid a trap…

Today on the Bakeloo, Nutel-La and Itaca trade unhappy stories about the disappointing men in their lives as Baron Governor Inferno starts emptying dungeons and filling gibbets even as Carapepino’s cohort make a most incredible getaway.

Soon after, the Campbell clan cautiously go shopping. As Itaca returns to her beloved bookshop, treacherous guilt-ridden Luca resurfaces and in the resulting confrontation loses something truly precious…

Meanwhile, father Campbell meets an old friend and is ambushed. Despite valiant resistance down he goes, unleashing another memory: how the trap for Captain Morgan proved successful, what he learned and how his life forever changed…

To Be Continued…

Only currently available in English in digital editions, The Campbells is a fabulously engaging rollercoaster of whimsical but ferocious thrills and fun, as good as the first Pirates of the Caribbean film and far more entertaining and satisfying than the rest of that franchise… or most other cinematic corsair fare.

Combining smart and constant laughs with bombastic action, an enticing generational war, murder mystery and heartbreakingly winning characters – goodies and baddies! – the series goes from strength to strength. These first two volumes are captivating from the outset, with hyper-kinetic Marcinelle School-derived art grabbing the attention and dragging readers along as though caught in a bow wave. The raffish gags subtly counterbalance a strong, complex family-based conflict and just the merest hint of supernatural menace lurks in the shadows.

Don’t wait for a print release, scour the electric oceans and salvage these books and the rest of the series…
© DUPUIS – MUNUERA 2017. All rights reserved.

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The Complete Dickie Dare


By Milton Caniff (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 0-93019-322-9 (HB)  978-0-93019-321-8 (PB)

Despite being one of the greatest and most influential cartoonists in world history, Milton Caniff wasn’t an overnight sensation. He worked long and hard before he achieved stellar status in the comic strip firmament, before Terry and the Pirates brought him fame, and Steve Canyon secured his fortune.

The strip which brought him to the attention of legendary Press Baron “Captain” Joseph Patterson – in many ways co-creator of Terry – was an unassuming daily fantasy feature about a little boy who was hungry for adventure…

Caniff was working for The Associated Press as a jobbing cartoonist when a gap opened in their strips department. AP was an organisation that devised and syndicated features for the thousands of regional and small-town newspapers which couldn’t afford to produce cartoons, puzzles, recipes and other fillers that ran between the local headlines and regional sports.

Over a weekend, Caniff came up with Dickie, a studious lad who would read a book and then fantasize himself into the story, taking faithful little dog Wags with him. The editors went for it and Dickie Dare premiered on July 31st, 1933.

Caniff wrote and drew the feature for less than 18 months before moving on, although his excellent but unappreciated replacement Coulton Waugh steered the series until its conclusion two decades later.

The first day-dream was with Robin Hood, followed by a frantic, action-packed visit with Robinson Crusoe and Friday, battling hordes of howling savages and scurvy pirates. Rugged combat gave way to fantastic mystery when the tyke perused Aladdin, resulting in a lavish and exotic trip to a very fabled Far East. This segment closed near Christmas, and when his father read Dickie the story of the Nativity, Caniff began his long personal tradition of creating seasonally topical strips.

A visit to Bethlehem ended on Christmas morning, and one of Dickie’s Christmas presents then triggers his next excursion, when he starts reading of General George Armstrong Custer…

King Arthur next, followed by Captain Kidd the Pirate, but by then Caniff was chafing under the self-imposed limitations of his creation. He believed the strip had become formulaic and there was no real tension or drama in mere dreams. In a creative masterstroke, he revised the strip’s parameters, and by so doing produced the prototype for a masterpiece.

On May 11th, 1934, Dickie met a new uncle: globe-trotting author and two-fisted man-of-action Dan Flynn, and one week later the pair embarked on a Round-the-World trip. Caniff had moved swiftly, crafting a template that would become Terry and the Pirates.

The wide-eyed, nervy All-American Kid with adult pal ultra-capable adventurer, whilst a subject of much controversy and even ill-advised and outright scurrilous modern disparagement, was a literary archetype since before Treasure Island. Adapting that relationship to comic strips was commercially sound: a decision that hit a peak of popularity with the horde of sidekicks/partners who followed in the wake of Robin the Boy Wonder six years later.

No sooner have Dickie & Dan taken ship for Africa than the drama begins, when the restless kid uncovers a hidden cargo of smuggled guns. Aided by feisty Debutante Kim Sheridan and sailor Algy Sparrow, our heroes foil the scheme, but not before Dickie is captured by Kuvo, the Arab chieftain awaiting those weapons.

Pursued by French authorities, Kuvo retreats to a desert fortress where Kim, disguised as a slave-girl, rescues the lad, only to be caught herself. The full-tilt action peaks to a splendid conclusion before the boys, with Algy in tow as their butler, head for Tunis only to stumble across a plot to use a World War I U-Boat for ocean-going piracy…

This long adventure (beginning September 13th) is a thoroughly gripping yarn encompassing much of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as the boys escape pirates and aid the Navy in hunting them down. There’s buckets of action and an astonishing amount of tension, but the tale ends a tad abruptly when Caniff, lured away by Patterson, simply drops the feature and Coulton Waugh takes over the storyline from the next Monday (3rd December).

With no break in the tale Waugh rapidly (in 14 episodes) wraps up the saga. He even has Dickie home by Christmas.

From the New Year the strip would chart new waters with Waugh at the helm, aided (and briefly replaced whilst he wrote his seminal book on Comics and also when he was producing the strip Hank for the New York magazine PM) by assistant and spouse Odin Burvik.

Dickie Dare eventually ended its run in October 1957 with the now adult adventurer beginning a new career as a US Navy Cadet.

Although usually dismissed as a mere stage on the road to his later mastery – and certainly long before Caniff and sometime studio partner Noel Sickles made their chiaroscurist breakthroughs in line-art that revolutionised the form – these early tales delighted and enthralled readers. Full of easy whimsy and charm, the strip evolved into a rip-roaring, all-ages thriller, full of wit and derring-do, in many ways an American answer to Hergé’s Tintin.

They deserve to be appreciated on their own merits and are long overdue for reappraisal in new collections.

At least this edition is still readily available but Dickie Dare is long overdue for rediscovery by the mass-market – and streaming services! – so while we’re at it, let’s see some of the work that the criminally under-valued Waugh originated too.
Artwork originally © 1933-1934 The Associated Press. Other contents this edition © Richard Marschall All rights reserved.

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The Rocketeer & The Spirit: Pulp Friction


By Mark Waid, Paul Smith, Loston Wallace, J Bone, Bob Wiacek & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-881-4 (HB/Digital edition)

The American comics industry has generated its fair share of immortal heroes. However, whilst everyone is familiar with household names such as Flash Gordon, Superman, Dick Tracy or Popeye, there are also timeless champions who pretty much remain hallowed names only to the in-crowd and cognoscenti: characters who had their shot at global mega-stardom but for some reason never caught on with the masses. Guys like The Spirit and The Rocketeer…

Will Eisner was a pivotal creative force who helped shaped the entire medium of comics. From 1936 to 1938 he worked as a jobbing cartoonist in the studio-stable known as the “Eisner-Eiger Shop”, creating strips for both domestic and foreign markets.

As Willis B. Rensie he created and drew the opening instalments of a huge variety of characters ranging from funny animal to historical sagas, Westerns, Detectives, aviation action thrillers… and superheroes… lots of superheroes.

In 1940, Everett “Busy” Arnold, of Quality Comics, invited Eisner to take on a new challenge. The Register-Tribune newspaper syndicate wanted a 16-page weekly comicbook insert to be given away with the Sunday editions. Eisner created three strips which would initially be handled by him before two were handed off to his talented assistants.

Bob Powell inherited Mr. Mystic whilst distaff detective Lady Luck first fell into the capable hands of Nick Cardy (nee Nicholas Viscardi) and later the inimitable Klaus Nordling.

Eisner kept the lead for himself, and over the next dozen years masked detective The Spirit grew into the most impressive, innovative, imitated and talked-about strip in the business. In 1952, the venture folded and Eisner moved into commercial, instructional and educational comics, working extensively for the US military in manuals and magazines like P*S, the Preventative Maintenance Monthly, and generally left comics books behind.

In the wake of “Batmania” and the 1960s superhero craze, Harvey Comics released two giant-sized reprint editions with some new material from Eisner. These led to a brace of underground compilations and a slow but inexorable rediscovery and revival of the Spirit’s fame and fortune, via black-&-white newsstand reprint magazines.

Warren Publishing collected old stories, occasionally adding painted colour from contemporary luminaries like Rich Corben, but from #17 the title reverted to Kitchen Sink, who had produced those first two underground collections.

Eisner found himself re-enamoured with graphic narrative and discerned that there now existed a willing audience eager for new works. From producing new Spirit covers for the magazine – something the original newspaper insert had never needed – he became increasingly inspired. American comics were evolving into an art-form and the restless creator finally saw a place for the kind of stories he had always wanted to tell.

Eisner subsequently began crafting some of the most telling and impressive work the industry had ever seen: first in limited collector portfolios and, in 1978, with groundbreaking sequential narrative A Contract With God: thereby jumpstarting our modern comics phenomenon of graphic novels…

Although his output was far smaller and life far shorter, Dave Stevens had an equally revolutionary effect on the industry: his lush and lavish illustration style influencing a generation of artists as his signature retro-futurist character The Rocketeer became the first breakout star of the Independent Comics movement that stemmed from the creation of the comic book Direct Sales Market.

Due to Stevens’s legendarily uncompromising artistic vision – and consequent slow page rate – very few of The Rocketeer’s period exploits appeared before the artist’s death from Hairy Cell Leukaemia in 2008. Since then, diverse hands have added to the canon, as with the miniseries collected in this slim but stunning edition.

Just in case these vintage adventurers are new to you, The Spirit used to be Denny Colt: Central City’s greatest detective and criminologist. After apparently dying in battle with a vile master-villain, Colt opted to remain officially dearly departed to battle evil in a semi-official capacity. The masked enigma was covertly aided by girlfriend Ellen Dolan and her father, the Police Commissioner of that crime-ridden metropolis.

Cliff Secord is an itinerant West Coast pilot who – circa 1938 – found a fantastic jetpack outfit and stumbled into a succession of criminal plots and capers. With the eventual permission of the flight engine’s inventor – one of the greatest heroes of that or any other era – Cliff still finds himself regularly battling bad guys as The Rocketeer. When that’s not occupying his time, he’s busy looking for work or being given the run-around by his star-struck, fame-obsessed, trouble-magnet girl Betty…

Team-ups are part-and-parcel of comics and both heroes have had their share of cataclysmic and catastrophic clashes with the valiant giants of the period and the industry. This yarn however – a 4-issue miniseries by Mark Waid originally spanning July to December 2013 – concentrates as much on humour as bombastic action. It begins on the East Coast in February 1941 as business executives and government men meet to decide the future of the Next Big Thing…

Alderman Cunningham is stridently opposed to letting business cartels control the new medium and argues that, just like with radio, public airwaves must not be owned by any individual or corporation seeking to monopolise recently invented Television…

Mere hours later an early morning fashion shoot on a California beach is ruined when beautiful Betty finds the idealistic politician’s mangled corpse. When the stiff is identified as Cunningham, Commissioner Dolan and Spirit are baffled. How could the victim have travelled more than 3000 miles in one night? Determined to investigate, they book passage on a transcontinental plane, having reluctantly crumbled before the forceful Ellen who demands to join them and see Hollywood…

In Los Angeles, Cliff Secord is still ignored by traumatised Betty. He mopes dejectedly until grizzled old mechanic Peevy points out that whoever killed the Alderman might also want to silence the girl who found the body…

Nearby, a very wealthy entrepreneur places a coast-to-coast call to The Spirit’s greatest enemy to discuss his incredible new invention, the pursuance of their plans and how to stop a certain masked interloper from interfering…

Said hero – still wearing his mask – is stiffly staggering off a plane at Chaplin Field with his equally exhausted cross-country companions. In a weary, unguarded moment he mentions Betty. Learning of the “slip”, an already paranoid Cliff panics and, assuming a masked killer has come for his girl, dons his rocket-man suit to attack…

After a spectacular battle, Ellen finally manages to convince both testosterone-soaked mutton heads they are on the same side, and a tentative alliance forms …at least until Spirit interviews Betty and the flighty starlet finds she’s in love – or thereabouts – with the hunky masked cop.

Illustrator Paul Smith gives way to Loston Wallace & Bob Wiacek as chapter two opens with the fractious, clueless allies heading for the LA Morgue and Cunningham’s cadaver. Elsewhere, television wizard Benedict Trask and The Octopus debate how best to get Betty out of the picture and deal with interlopers meddling in their affairs. Their solution is unique and everything would have worked out swell if not for inveterate tinkerer Peevy who has built his own prototype TV receiver and intercepted something he shouldn’t have…

The villains respond in typical manner but their big mistake is believing planes sent to strafe Peevy’s hangar are enough to stop Rocketeer and The Spirit…

With J Bone stepping in for the final two chapters, the high-octane tale ramps up to top gear as Cliff travels to Central City with The Spirit and the Dolans. All they have to do is find Betty, expose Trask and the Octopus’ sinister scheme, uncover their treacherous connections to a certain Fascist foreign power, prevent America’s airwaves being subverted and save President Roosevelt from assassination by television in a rocket-paced, breathtaking rollercoaster ride that delivers non-stop thrills and chills…

Accompanied with an Introduction from Denis Kitchen, filling in all necessary back-story on the characters, and visually embellished by sketches and a large cover gallery by Darwyn Cooke, Smith, Jordie Bellaire, Bone and Chris Samnee, Pulp Friction is a no-nonsense fun-filled frolic to delight lovers of the good old days of Thud and Blunder…
© 2014 The Rocketeer Trust and Will Eisner Studios, Inc. The Rocketeer is a registered trademark of, and all related characters, their distinctive likenesses and indicia are trademarks of The Rocketeer Trust. All Rights Reserved. The Spirit © 2014 Will Eisner Studios, Inc. The Spirit and Will Eisner ™ & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc. ® in the US Patent and Trademark Office. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman: Infinite City


By Mike Kennedy & Carlos Meglia (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1401200664 (DC US TPB) 978-1845760731 (Titan Books UK HB)

This original graphic novel is a lightweight but lovely piece of fluff that sees investigative reporters Mr and Mrs Kent-Lane tracking down the source of a devastating super-gun, only to be sucked into a strange time-warped dimension. There they are embroiled in a civil war between greedy, slimy, power hungry industrialist Jesden Tyme and the robotic Mayor, who turns out to be a download of the consciousness of Superman’s long dead biological father Jor-El…

Lavishly illustrated in the manner of an animated feature film, the European-flavoured stylizations of Argentinean Carlos Meglia (December 11 1957-August 15 2008: Irish Coffee, Bet Your Life, Star Wars) may not be to everyone’s taste but maybe you should just persist and be open to the new…

The plot from Mike Kennedy (Lone Wolf 2100, Star Wars: Underworld and the deeply under-appreciated Ghost/Batgirl, among others) lacks any real punch or originality of its own, relying on clichéd and oft-rehashed tropes, but there’s still bunches of wit and wonder to find over this particular rainbow. Moreover, the dialogue is sharp and effective, and some of the interplay between Lois and Clark is simply delightful. If you want a “done-in-one” delight starring comic books’ oldest power couple, this could be what you’re looking for.

There’s also a hardback British edition available should you want your reading unbending as well as pretty…
© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mac Raboy’s Flash Gordon volume 2


By Don Moore & Mac Raboy (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-911-4 (TPB)

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 the 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), two fresh elements were 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. The narrative trick made the far-fetched satisfactorily familiar – and it was initially continued by Mac Raboy and Don Moore in their run of Sunday strips.

Look closely, though, and you’ll see cowboys, gangsters and of course, flying saucer fetishes adding contemporary flourish to the fanciful fables in this second superb volume which is long overdue for a fresh edition.

Most important of all, the sheer artistic talent of Alex 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. When original material comic books began a few years later, literally dozens of talented kids used Gordon as their model and ticket to future success in the field of adventure strips. Almost all the others went with Milton Caniff’s expressionist masterpiece 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. Hans 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 doing the bulk 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 second 260-page paperback volume, produced in landscape format and printed in stark black-&-white (although one or two strips appear to have been scanned from printed colour copies) covers May 17th 1953 to February 23rd 1958, and opens with a scholarly Introduction on ‘Comic Strip Godfathers’ from Bruce Jones before the previous volume’s cliffhanger is addressed…

With a new spaceship, far-flung travellers Flash, Dale and Zarkov set off for Earth but are forced to land on the Moon where a secret human base had been established. For unknown reasons Dr. Stella and her thuggish aide Marc detain and delay them, but after an increasing number of close shaves and mysterious accidents, a little digging by our heroes reveals that they are the unwitting guests of ruthless space pirates…

After expediently dealing with the planetary privateers, our heroes head for Earth, and are promptly seconded to spearhead an urgent exploratory expedition to a newly discovered satellite body. Suitably dutiful, they hurtle off into the void again…

‘(Life on) Titan’ ran from 14th June to September 20th 1953: detailing how the little world is populated by giants. However, after capturing one of the hulking inhabitants, Zarkov concludes that the truth is far stranger than the Earthmen could have imagined…

The tireless boffin then builds a single-seater spaceship and requires Flash to take a test run out to Jupiter’s moon ‘Callisto’ (27th September 1953 to 17th January 1954). A sudden illness causes a crash and Flash awakens in care of elderly hermit Phylo, who cunningly embroils the dauntless troubleshooter in his own struggle against invisible psychic dictator The Mind…

After overthrowing the hidden tyrant, the indomitable Earthman heads home and actually enjoys a little rest before an ancient mystery unfolds in ‘Flash Gordon and the Thanatos’ (17th January-2nd May).

After archaeologist Dr. Sark finds incontrovertible evidence of a prehistoric atomic blast in the Libyan desert, our ever-inquisitive action man uncovers an alien in a bottle but is too late to save Dale from being abducted by the mind-bending survivor of an antediluvian starship crash…

Dashing in pursuit as his beguiled beloved heads off-world, Flash is drawn into the parallel dimension of Cortinus where god-like beings dwell. They welcome intruders from fondly-remembered Earth, but are sadly unaware that one of the visitors carries the malevolent spirit of their outcast brother Loki. Once freed, the villain proudly boasts how he influenced and dominated many bellicose humans such as Alexander, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan, and now intends ruling two realms for his own benefit and amusement. Sadly, nigh-omnipotent Loki vastly underestimates the ingenuity and resolve of his mortal opponents…

In a ship donated by head deity Zustra, Flash and Dale re-cross the dimensional divide, arriving in deep space to encounter a scene of horrific barbarity at an Observatory Station. When the ‘Outlaw of the Asteroids’ (9th May-25th July) took the outpost’s oxygen, the crew almost died in hibernation. After reviving the deep-frozen scientists, our adventurers set off after the ruthless bandit and discover the reason for his heinous theft was both noble and desperate. The bandit perishes for his sins, but not before leaving young space orphan Pebbles with the only humans he can trust…

By the time Flash, Dale and Pebbles reach Earth the next exploit is already well underway as a seed of ‘The Star Tree’ (1st August-17th October) survives a meteor crash in the Amazon and immediately propagates itself in fertile soil. By the time our bold wanderers accidentally land in the region, it has transformed into an arctic wilderness where a gigantic plant voraciously consumes every living thing its grasping branches can seize…

The vegetable invasion is no accident, and as Flash leads the frozen rain forest’s indigenous inhabitants in spirited resistance, cold-blooded aliens appear. They lived on Earth when it was a giant ice ball and after eons on Pluto want their original world back! They would have succeeded too, had not one of the invaders found his heart warming to the plight of the disputed world’s current tenants…

With that threat ended normality returns, but soon after packing Pebbles off to boarding school Flash, Zarkov and many other unsuspecting Earth folk are shanghaied by eerie metal globes and transported to ‘The Lonely Planet!’ (24th October 1954 to 9th January 1955)…

Here, Herculean extraterrestrial barbarians and wily midgets conspire and compete to find fresh fodder for gladiatorial contests, before, with the aid of a usurped king, Flash upsets the unlikely alliance and overthrows the twisted regime. However, just as the liberated Earthlings enter home orbit, their always-embattled birthworld is attacked by insectoid Antomni who require a fresh colony to exploit. The bug beings expect little resistance as they possess the power of Time Migration…

The invaders travel millions of years ‘Into the Past’ (16th January-27th March) to prevent the evolution of humanity but accidentally catch Flash and Zarkov in their temporal backwash, allowing our heroes to inspire a band of Nearly humans to exterminate the insectoids before returning to their proper time and place…

Restless Zarkov then organises an exploratory expedition to ‘Venus’ (3rd April -19th June) where Flash and Dale find a feudal civilisation in turmoil beneath the planet’s impenetrable cloud layers. Before long, they are assisting scientific prodigy Viko and his fellow exiled “Mistiks” in overturning oppressive, superstition-ruled authorities and introducing rational enlightenment to the Second Planet from the Sun…

Next, Africa is beset by a strange sleeping plague. Investigations reveal the source is escaped gasses from an unsuspected ‘City Within the Earth’ (26th June – 28th August). The accident causes toxic oxygen to contaminate the subterranean metropolis of Centra, and when its bravest warriors surface to investigate, a concatenation of misfortunes compel them to take Flash captive. Imprisoned and soon to become the treasured possession of flamboyant Princess Amara, Gordon is rescued by indomitable Dale who braves the depths and deadly air to save her man and seal off the underworld forever…

‘The Dark Planet’ (4th September – 6th November) has lurked undetected at the edge of the solar system for all of humanity’s history, but that occlusion ends when murderers Stragg, Rust and Tula are exiled from their advanced culture on the distant world of Ur and dumped on the frigid world. When Flash, Dale and Zarkov’s planetary mapping mission brings them to the bleak outpost, they are ambushed by the killers who then steal their ship. The aliens have never encountered human cunning though, and are soon back where they started and engaged in a lethal duel for control of the ship and their liberty…

Human trafficking underpins ‘Station Crossroads’ (13th November 1955 – 15th January 1956) as our heroes stumble upon a scheme to kidnap and sell human technicians to scientifically backward aliens. The vile human mastermind behind the plot operates out of Earth’s most popular orbital rest-stop, but before the slavers are crushed Flash discovers a close friend is deeply involved in the abductions…

When Gordon discovers a hidden base at Earth’s North Pole is being used by aquatic aliens, he is embroiled in an ‘Arctic Adventure’ (22nd January-March 25th) where unscrupulous Earthmen use the freezing waters as a cost-free fish-farm to grow giant monsters for mysterious offworlders to consume…

After a far-distant world experiences an atomic accident, the aftermath produces a voracious ‘Radioactive Man’ (1st April – 3rd June) who can only exist by absorbing deadly fallout. The authorities’ solution is to blast the mutant into the void where, after years of lonely travel, atomic exile Djonn Toth lands on planet Rota just as Flash and Dale pay a visit.

Before long the humans’ vast troubleshooting experience is employed to frustrate Toth’s efforts to enslave the population and consume all their radium.

When the fantastic wonder planet’s eccentric orbit again intersects with Earth, Flash, Dale and Zarkov ‘Return to Mongo’ (10th June 1956- 13th January 1957) after six years. However, their proposed sightseeing trip inevitably involves them in an icily arctic cold war between Wolf Men and Walrus Men, a face-off with would-be supreme tyrant Gant, and clashes with leather-winged Dactyl Men. This leads to capture by arrogant cloud dwellers of Paxora where robot duplicates intent on conquest end Mongo’s most secretive sub-culture.

Upsetting the artificial men’s plan eliminates all but one of the inimical automatons, but ‘Rok’ (13th January – 10th March) is like no android the Earthlings have ever encountered before: patronising protector and unstable enemy in one. Despite safeguarding them through Mongo’s wildest regions, the mechanoid’s ultimate aims remain unclear and his manner of demise most unexpected…

Brought to the edge of civilisation Flash, Dale and Zarkov enter a spaceship race, intent on winning a craft able to take them home to Earth, but the ‘Suicide Run’ (17th March-19th May) almost proves their undoing, as most other competitors indulge in sabotage and subterfuge of every sort to secure the glittering prize…

Eventually victorious, our heroes ‘Escape from Mongo’ only to be lured into ‘The Space Tomb’ (26th May – 14th July) of the Gatherer: a nebula-dwelling desperado who wants to imprison them beside a legion of other valiant explorers in his vast Sargasso of Space.

After outwitting the deranged collector, the humans resume their homeward flight but are again diverted, this time by ‘The Space Genie’ (21st July-1st September): a fearsome yet affable, lethally literal-minded being who brings them to planetary paradise Superba. The inhabitants are not pleased: they only just survived the Genie’s last visit and used all their ingenuity and wish-making ability to get rid of the interstellar pest…

The odyssey home is then interrupted by a string of short interconnected adventures (‘Space Voyage/Strange World/The Wheel Men’: spanning 8th September to 24th November) detailing clashes with space moths, elastic primitives and woman-stealing whirling dervishes engaged in all-out war with sky-residing Gyromen. After brokering a lasting peace between these eccentric extraterrestrials, the humans finally reach Earth in a borrowed flying saucer only to fall prey to ‘The Mystery of the Lonely Crowds!’ (1st December 1957 through January 12th 1958). A telepathic plague of depression and rapidly-spreading isolation has an otherworldly cause but is not intended to be a menace. It still culminates in tragedy, however…

This non-stop rollercoaster ride concludes with the merest start of ‘Missiles from Neptune’ (19th January 1958 to the cliffhanging last page of February 23rd) as the Tyrant of Neptune decides to impress the captive populace. This he does by testing his latest Weapons of Interplanetary Destruction against the Earth, prompting Flash to go and discourage him…

Every week that he toiled on the strip, Mac Raboy produced ever-more expansive artwork filled with distressed damsels, deadly monsters and all sorts of outrageous adventure that continued until the illustrator’s untimely death in 1967.

Perhaps that was a kindness. Raboy was the last great Golden Age romanticist illustrator: his lushly lavish, freely flowing adoration of the perfect 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 prevailed, and you can visit as easily and often as Flash and Dale popped between planets, just by tracking down this book and the ones which followed…
© 2003 King Features Syndicate Inc. ™ & © Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Wandering Island


By Kenji Tsuruta, translated by Dana Lewis (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-079-3 eISBN: 978-1-63008-771-5

Kenji Tsuruta was born in 1961 and studied optical science, intending to pursue a career in photography, but instead made the jump to narrative storytelling as manga artist, designer, book illustrator and anime creator. A lifelong fan of “hard science” science fiction authors like Robert A. Heinlein and the comic works of Tetsuya Chiba and Yukinobu Hoshino (Saber Tiger), after years producing self-published doujinshi whilst working as an assistant to established manga stars, 25-year-old Tsuruta began selling his own works in 1986. His short fantasy serial Hiroku te suteki na uch? ja nai ka (What a Big Wonderful Universe It Is) was published in Kodansha’s Weekly Morning magazine.

Soon after, he began Sprits of Wonder: a dazzling scientific romance of gently colliding worlds. It ran in both Weekly Morning and monthly magazine Afternoon between 1987 and 1996, before making a smooth transition to animated features and an award-winning TV series. Dark Horse Comics published the first translated episodes as a 5-issue monochrome miniseries in 1995-6.

After that the artist pretty much moved out of the manga business, to focus on science fiction illustration and character design; a field of endeavour where he won many awards.

Then on July 13th 2010 Wandering Island debuted in Kodansha’s anthological Manga Box AMASIA before being serialised in Afternoon. The first collection was released in October 2011 and Dark Horse began English language editions in July 2016.

The slow-moving, elegiac saga was Mr. Tsuruta’s first major narrative work since the century turned: a beguiling and enticing modern-day mystery set against a fascinating geological backdrop in a fascinating cultural backwater…

Like Great Britain, Japan is composed of numerous islands, many located in areas far beyond commercially viable air routes. To cater to those small communities, independent pilots act as postmen, delivery specialists and rapid freight-hauliers. Freewheeling Mikura Amelia flies an old Fairey Swordfish on her rounds, enjoying a pretty idyllic life as she hops from cetacean research station to trading post to fishing village delivering whatever needs moving for whatever fee she can get.

She used to work with her grandfather Brian Amelia in the family Air Service, but now it’s just her and the cat Endeavour. Her parents moved back to civilisation when the old man died but Mikura loves the freedom of the skies and can’t let go of her grandfather’s great obsession…

Amongst his effects was an undelivered package with her name on it for Is. Electriciteit – which she translated as Electric Island. There are some fables about the place, but most people think it’s a myth…

Mikura, armed with a keen mind, decades of detailed logs and a strange yearning, becomes as obsessed as her mentor with the mystery. Old Brian vanished trying to find the island, but his logs have entries written after he seemingly perished.

… And then one day Mikura actually sees the perpetually shifting, cloud-cloaked atoll – complete with small town – but cracks up trying to land there. She’s rescued by a passing freighter but the frustration of being so close is agonising and unbearable…

Slowly healing, she gets back to work and starts to doubt her own memories, but somehow cannot let go. Eventually she puzzles out its secret: Electric Island moves around the Pacific in a complex and convoluted three-year cycle. The answer only points to more puzzles, especially after she learns of a friend of Brian’s who shared his fixation: her old English teacher who was actually a brilliant geophysicist…

Another quick trip and one last revelatory interview and at long last Mikura is flying off to a long-awaited rendezvous with the unknown…

To be Continued…

Accompanied by text feature ‘Notes on Wandering Island’, detailing the specifics of floating islands, the antecedents of the series and Tsuruta’s history, Wandering Island is a superbly welcoming introduction into what promises to be a sublime treat for every lover of untrammelled wonder…
© 2011 Kenji Tsuruta/Kodansha Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Superman: The Third Kryptonian


By Kurt Busiek, Dwayne McDuffie, Fabian Nicieza, Rick Leonardi, Renato Guedes, José Wilson Magalhaés, Dan Green & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1987-1 (TPB)

After interminable page counts and the preponderant never-ending angst of hyper-mega-ultra-braided multi-part cross-overs, it’s quite nice to pick up an – admittedly slim – endeavour of more modest means and intent: to wit, a book with a couple of stories that actually begin, occur and end.

Collecting Action Comics #847, Superman #668-670 and Superman Annual #13, this tome actually has three yarns to delight, beginning with Kurt Busiek, Rick Leonardi and Dan Green’s mini-epic wherein every survivor of lost Krypton on Earth, including Power Girl, Clark and Lois’ adopted son Chris (don’t fret, it’s all explained in the story) and even Krypto are targeted for destruction by brutal space pirate Amalak, hungry to take vengeance for the misdeeds of the long dead “Kryptonian Empire”.

Imagine how the irate rogue reacts upon discovering that – unbeknownst to all – an actual survivor of that long-dead galactic aggressor-state has been living secretly on Earth for years…

Good old-fashioned romp though it is, the real meat of this tale was an adjustment and rewriting of Kryptonian history for the post-Smallville/Superman Returns generation. As the disparate continuities of TV, Cinema and comic books were massaged closer to overarching homogeneity, the best of the old was retrofitted to the new. This is an uncomplicated adventure thriller with nostalgic overtones that has a lot to recommend it.

‘The Best Day’ (Busiek, Fabian Nicieza, Guedes & José Wilson Magalhaés) offers sheer delight, and beautiful execution. In a quiet moment, Superman and Supergirl take the Kent clan on a picnic to the stars where we get a chance to see beloved characters interact in joy and relaxation, as the skies of a million universes aren’t collapsing around their invulnerable ears. It’s a brave, rewarding return to old ways and I still want to see more of it.

So go no further than ‘Intermezzo’ (McDuffie and Guedes), another introspective segment sliced from a longer epic, short on punching but big on emotional wallop as Jonathan and Martha Kent share secrets and reveal close-held fears as their adopted son struggles off-camera with another “Never-Ending Battle.”

It’s such gentle moments and the emotional beats that give the best adventure fiction its edge, and this book has them in delightful quantities. This is the stuff that made Superman a legend, and in this anniversary year this collection is an ideal argument for stuff like this to stage a comeback.
© 2007, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Doctor Who volume 11: Cold Day in Hell


By Simon Furman, Mike Collins, Grant Morrison, John Freeman, Dan Abnett, Richard Alan & John Carnell, Alan Grant, John Ridgway, Kev Hopgood, Tim Perkins, Geoff Senior, David Hine, Bryan Hitch, John Higgins, Lee Sullivan, Dougie Braithewaite & Dave Elliott, Andy Lanning, Martin Griffiths & Cam Smith & various (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-410-2 (TPB)

Despite the volatile vagaries of quantumly entanglementation, if you generally experience reality in a sequential manner, this year remains the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Thus there is/has been/will be a bunch of Timey-Wimey stuff on-going as we periodically celebrate a unique TV and comics institution…

The British love comic strips, adore “characters” and are addicted to celebrity. The history of our homegrown graphic narratives includes an astounding number of comedians, Variety stars and television actors: such disparate legends as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Charlie Drake and so many more I’ve long forgotten and you’ve likely never heard of.

As much adored and adapted were actual shows and properties like Whacko!, Supercar, Thunderbirds, Pinky and Perky, The Clangers and literally hundreds of others. If folk watched or listened, an enterprising publisher made printed spectacles of them. Hugely popular anthology comics including Radio Fun, Film Fun, TV Fun, Look-In, TV Comic, TV Tornado, and Countdown readily and regularly translated our light entertainment favourites into pictorial joy every week, and it was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley the day job into a licensed strip property…

Doctor Who premiered on black-&-white televisions across Britain on November 23rd 1963 with the premiere episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’. In 1964, a decades-long association with TV Comic began: issue #674 heralding the initial instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’.

On 11th October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says 17th), Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. Turning monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) it’s been with us – in various names and iterations – ever since. All of which proves the Time Lord is a comic star of impressive pedigree and not to be trifled with.

Panini’s UK division ensured the immortality of the comics feature by collecting all strips of every Time Lord Regeneration in a uniform series of over-sized graphic albums.

Each concentrates on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer and this one gathers stories originally published in the early 1990s (from Doctor Who Monthly #130-150): a time when regular illustrator John Ridgway gave way to a succession of rotating creators as part of the company’s urgent drive to cut costs – although there’s no appreciable drop in quality that I can see.

These yarns feature the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy): an all monochrome compendium that kicks off with the eponymous ‘Cold Day in Hell!’ by writer Simon Furman, Ridgway and inker Tim Perkins: a 4-part thriller featuring an attack by Martian Ice Warriors on a tropical resort planet, which leads directly into the moody, single story ‘Redemption!’ care of Furman, Kev Hopgood and Perkins.

At that time and in this book Marvel sanctioned some controversial crossovers with other Marvel UK characters. The first of these is Death’s Head: a robot bounty hunter from the Transformers comic guest-starring in Furman & Geoff Senior’s ‘The Crossroads of Time’ (DWM #135), before it’s back to sounder stuff with freak-filled 3-part Victorian Great Exhibition epic ‘Claws of the Klath!’ (Mike Collins, Hopgood & David Hine).

Fresh-faced scribe Grant Morrison wrote of charmingly different ‘Culture Shock!’ for equally neophytic ascending star Bryan Hitch to draw, before John Higgins limned Furman’s ‘Keepsake’: a classy space opera about an indigent salvage man. John Freeman & Lee Sullivan started a long association with the magazine in 2-parter ‘Planet of the Dead’ (DWM #141-142), featuring an ambitious, spooky team-up of all seven Time Lord regenerations, on a world filled with Companions who had died in their service…

Dan Abnett & Ridgway delivered ‘Echoes of the Mogor!’ (DWM #143-144) – an eerie chiller set on a mining planet where Earth workers are mysteriously dying, whilst ‘Time and Tide’ by Richard Alan & John Carnell, illustrated by Dougie Braithewaite & Dave Elliott (DWM #143-144), maroons the Doctor on a drowning world amongst aliens who don’t seem to care if they live or die…

Carnell wrote the other crossover previously mentioned, a far less well-regarded romp with imbecilic detectives The Sleeze Brothers. ‘Follow that Tardis!‘ was illustrated by Andy Lanning, Higgins, Braithwaite & Elliot, before the strip content concludes with Alan Grant’s 3-part ‘Invaders from Gantac!’, wherein a colony of alien torturers invade 1992 London by mistake in a tale as much comedy as thriller, drawn by Martin Griffiths & Cam Smith.

Supplemented with tons of text features, pin-ups, creator-biographies and commentaries, this is a grand book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form to anyone minded to give comics one more go…
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British broadcasting corporation and are used under licence. Death’s Head and The Sleeze Brothers © Marvel. Published 2009. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes volume 3


By Jim Shooter, E. Nelson Bridwell, Otto Binder, Curt Swan, George Klein, Pete Costanza, Jim Mooney & George Papp (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2185-0 (TPB)

Once upon a time, in the far future, a band of super-powered kids from a multitude of worlds took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and formed a club of heroes. One day those Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited their inspiration to join them…

And thus began the vast and epic saga of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as first envisioned by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino in early 1958, just as the revived comicbook genre of superheroes was gathering an inexorable head of steam. Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and rebooted, retconned and overwritten over and over again to comply with editorial diktat and popular whim.

This third sturdy, action-packed monochrome compendium gathers a chronological parade of futuristic delights from October 1966 to May 1968, as originally seen in Adventure Comics #349-368, and includes a Legion story from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #106 (October 1967).

During this period the Club of Champions finally shed the last vestiges of wholesome, imaginative, humorous and generally safe science fiction strips to become a full-on dramatic action feature starring a grittily realistic combat force in constant, galaxy-threatening peril: a compelling force of valiant warriors ready and willing to pay the ultimate price for their courage and dedication…

The main architect of the transformation was teenaged sensation Jim Shooter, whose scripts and layouts (usually finished and inked by veterans Curt Swan & George Klein) made the series accessible to a generation of fans growing up in the Future…

The tense suspense begins with Adventure #349’s ‘The Rogue Legionnaire!’ (Shooter, Swan & Klein) wherein Saturn Girl, Colossal Boy, Shrinking Violet, Chameleon Boy and Brainiac 5 hunt hypnotic villain Universo through five periods of Earth’s history, aided by boy-genius Rond Vidar, a brilliant scientist with a tragic secret…

This is followed by a stellar 2-parter from #350-351 scripted by E. Nelson Bridwell which restores a number of invalided or expelled members to the team. In ‘The Outcast Super-Heroes’, a cloud of Green Kryptonite particles envelope Earth and force Superboy and Supergirl to retire from the Legion just as demonic alien Evillo unleashes his squad of deadly metahuman minions on the universe.

The Kryptonian Cousins are mind-wiped and replaced by armoured and masked paladins Sir Prize and Miss Terious in ‘The Forgotten Legion!’ but quickly return when a solution to the K Cloud is found. With Evillo’s eventual defeat, the team discover the wicked overlord has healed one-armed Lightning Lad and restored Bouncing Boy’s power for his own nefarious purposes, and together with the reformed White Witch and rehabilitated Star Boy and Dream Girl, the Legion’s ranks grow and might swell to bursting point.

That’s a very good thing as in the next issue Shooter, Swan & Klein produce one of their most stunning epics. When a colossal cosmic entity known as the Sun Eater menaces the United Planets, the Legion are hopelessly outmatched and forced to recruit the galaxy’s most dangerous criminals to help them save civilisation.

However, The Persuader, Emerald Empress, Mano, Tharok and Validus are untrustworthy allies at best and form an alliance as ‘The Fatal Five!’, intending to save the galaxy only so that they can rule it…

Adventure #353 reveals how the Five seemingly seal their own fate through arrogance and treachery with the true cost of heroism paid when ‘The Doomed Legionnaire!’ sacrifices his life to destroy the solar parasite…

Issue #354 introduced ‘The Adult Legion!’ when Superman travelled into the future to visit his grown-up comrades – discovering tantalising hints of events that would torment and beguile LSH fans for decades to come – before the yarn concluded with #355’s ‘The War of the Legions!’ as Brainiac 5, Cosmic Man, Element Man, Polar Man, Saturn Woman and Timber Wolf, accompanied by the most unexpected allies of all, battled the Legion of Super-Villains.

The issue also included an extra tale in ‘The Six-Legged Legionnaire!’ (by Otto Binder, Swan & Klein) wherein Superboy brings his High School sweetie Lana Lang to the 30th century, where she joins in a mission against a science-tyrant as bug-based shape-shifting Insect Queen. Disaster soon strikes though when the alien ring which facilitates her changes is lost, trapping her in a hideous insectoid incarnation.

Issue #356 sees Dream Girl, Mon-El, Element Lad, Brainiac 5 and Superboy transformed into babies to become ‘The Five Legion Orphans!’: a cheeky, cunning Bridwell-scripted mystery leading into darker matters as repercussions and guilt of the Sun-Eater episode are explored and survivors of that mission are apparently haunted by ‘The Ghost of Ferro Lad!’ (#357, by Shooter, Swan & Klein), after which ‘The Hunter!’ (Shooter & George Papp) sees the LSH stalked by a murderously insane sportsman with a unique honour code.

Adventure #359 depicts the once-beloved champions disbanded and on the run as ‘The Outlawed Legionnaires!’ (Shooter, Swan & Klein) thanks to manipulations of a devious old foe, only to rousingly regroup, counter-attack and triumph in #360’s ‘The Legion Chain Gang!’.

Illustrated by Jim Mooney, and with the superhero squad once more a key component of United Planets Security, the Legion are assigned as secret service to protect alien ambassadors The Dominators from political agitators, assassins and a hidden traitor in tense thriller ‘The Unkillables!’, before ‘The Lone Wolf Legion Reporter!’ (from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #106, October 1967, by Shooter & Pete Costanza) finds the young newsman seconded to the 30th century to help with the club newspaper. Sadly, he’s far better at making news than publishing it…

The team is scattered across three worlds in Adventure Comics #362 as mad scientist Mantis Morlo refuses to let environmental safety interfere with his experiments in ‘The Chemoids are Coming!’, culminating in a lethally ‘Black Day for the Legion!’…

Shooter & Costanza then top that gripping 2-parter by uncovering ‘The Revolt of the Super-Pets!’ in #364, when the crafty rulers of planet Thanl seek to seduce the animal adventurers from their rightful – subordinate – positions with sweet words and palatial new homes.

When the isolated world of Talok 8 goes dark and becomes a militaristic threat to the UP, their planetary champion Shadow Lass leads Superboy, Brainiac 5, Cosmic Boy and Karate Kid on a reconnaissance mission which results in the cataclysmic ‘Escape of the Fatal Five!’ (illustrated by Swan & Klein). The vicious quintet then nearly conquer the UP itself: only frustrated by the defiant, last-ditch efforts of the battered heroes in blistering conclusion ‘The Fight for the Championship of the Universe!’

In grateful thanks, the Legion are gifted a vast new HQ but before the paint is even dry, a vast paramilitary force attempts to invade, slowly reconstructing planet Earth in #367’s ‘No Escape from the Circle of Death!’ (Shooter, Swan, Klein & Sheldon Moldoff), before this volume ends on a note of political and social tension as a glamorous alien envoy attempts to suborn the diminished and downtrodden female Legionnaires in #368’s ‘The Mutiny of the Super-Heroines!’

The Legion of Super-Heroes is unquestionably one of the most beloved and bewildering creations in comic book history and largely responsible for the growth of the groundswell movement that became American Comics Fandom. These scintillating, seductively addictive stories, as much as Julie Schwartz’s Justice League, fired up the interest and imaginations of a generation of readers to underpin the industry we all know today.

If you love comics and haven’t read this stuff, you are the poorer for it and need to enrich your future life as soon as possible.
© 1966, 1967, 1968, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman – The Atomic Age Sundays volume 1: 1945-1953


By Alvin Schwartz, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye (IDW/DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-262-3 (HB)

It’s indisputable that the American comic book industry – if it existed at all – would be an utterly unrecognisable thing without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s bold and unprecedented invention was fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation and quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. He was also shamelessly copied and adapted by many inspired writers and artists for numerous publishers, spawning an incomprehensible army of imitators and variations within three years of his summer 1938 debut.

The intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and triumphal wish-fulfilment which epitomised the early Man of Steel soon grew to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East also engulfed America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

In comic book terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming and dictating the shape of the fledgling funnybook industry, the Man of Tomorrow relentlessly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media. Although we all think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as the epitome and acme of comics creation, the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1 the Man of Steel became a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse.

Diehard comics fans regard our purest and most powerful icons in primarily graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Avengers and all their hyperkinetic kind long ago outgrew four-colour origins and are now also fully mythologized modern mass media creatures, instantly familiar across all platforms and age ranges…

Far more people have viewed or heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comic books. His globally syndicated newspaper strips alone reached untold millions, and by the time his 20th anniversary rolled around at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial regular and starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons, as well as two films and a novel by George Lowther.

Superman was a perennial sure-fire success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his future were three more shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark and Smallville), a stage musical, a franchise of blockbuster movies and an almost seamless succession of games, bubblegum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

However, during his formative years the small screen was simply an expensive novelty so the Action Ace achieved true mass market fame through a different medium: one not that far removed from his print origins.

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for most of the last century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers aimed for. Syndicated across country – and frequently the planet – they were seen by millions of readers and generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books. Strips also paid far better and rightly so: some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were made to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them consequently grew to be part of global culture. Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more evolved beyond humble, tawdry newsprint to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar.

Some still do…

Even so, it was always something of a risky double-edged sword when comic book characters become so popular that they swim against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint strips in cheap accessible form?) to became actual mass-entertainment – and often global – syndicated serial strips.

Superman was the first comic book character to make that leap – about six months after he exploded out of Action Comics – but only a few have ever successfully followed. Wonder Woman, Batman (eventually) and groundbreaking teen icon Archie Andrews made the jump in the 1940s with only a handful such as Spider-Man, Howard the Duck and Conan the Barbarian having done so since.

The daily Superman newspaper comic strip launched on 16th January 1939, augmented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th of that year. Originally crafted by Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring), the mammoth task soon required the additional artistic gifts of Jack Burnley and ancillary writers Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz. The McClure Syndicate feature ran from 1939 until May 1966 and at its peak appeared in over 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers: a combined readership surpassing 20 million.

For most of the post-war years, Boring & Stan Kaye illustrated the spectacular Sundays (latterly supplemented by Win Mortimer and Curt Swan). The majority of strips – from 1944 to 1958 – were written by still largely unsung scribe Alvin Schwartz. Born in 1916, Schwartz was an early maestro of comic books, writing Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel and for many other titles and companies. Whilst handling the Superman strip he also freelanced on Wonder Woman and other superheroes as well as DC genre titles such as Tomahawk, Buzzy, A Date with Judy and House of Mystery.

After numerous clashes with new superman Editor Mort Weisinger, Schwartz quit comics for commercial writing: selling novels, essays, documentaries and docudramas for the National Film Board of Canada. He worked miracles in advertising and market research, developing selling techniques like psychographics and typological identification. A member of the advisory committee to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, he died in 2011.

After too many years wallowing in obscurity most of Superman’s newspaper strip exploits are at last available to aficionados and the curious newcomer in tomes such as this compiled under the auspices of the Library of American Comics.

Showcasing Schwartz & artist Wayne Boring in their purest prime, these Sundays (numbered as pages #521 to #698 collectively spanning October 23rd 1949 to March 15th 1953) star a nigh-omnipotent Man of Steel in domestically-framed tales of emotional dilemma and pedestrian criminality rather than a parade of muscle-flexing bombast. Here humour, wit and satire comfortably replace angst and bludgeoning action.

Following an affable appreciation of the creators and the times in Mark Waid’s ‘An Introduction’, ‘A Wayne Boring Gallery’ offers a tantalising selection of contemporaneous Superman and Action Comics covers before weekly wonderment commences in all its vibrant glory. Sadly, the serials are untitled, so you’ll just have to manage with my meagre synopses of individual yarns…

Kicking off is a charming fantasy as the Metropolis Marvel is temporarily stranded in Arthurian Britain after a US government time travel experiment goes awry. Whilst living in the past he befriends and assists court magician Merlin: an old duffer whose conjuring tricks aren’t fooling anyone anymore…

The first new tale of 1950 begins on February 12th, detailing how swindler Joseph Porter cons the Man of Steel into taking his place and clearing up his problems with cops and numerous gulled victims. This includes a hilarious spoofing sequence as the hero plays un-matchmaker to a scandalously-affianced hillbilly ingenue that will delight fans of Li’l Abner…

The extended saga opening on May 28th offers another human-interest drama given a super-powered spin: two aging robber barons recalling their regulation-free heydays before embarking on a ruthless wager to see who will get “anything they wish for” first. The only limitations imposed are their imaginations and financial resources. Before long Superman is hard-pressed to keep collateral casualties to a minimum…

One of the few antagonists to transfer from funnybooks to the Funny pages was fifth dimensional prankster Mr. Mxyztplk who popped back to our third dimension and took instant umbrage to an arrogant Earth educator. Dr. Flipendale had the temerity to declare the imp a mass delusion and refused to believe or even acknowledge the escalating chaos his stark pronouncements triggered…

Strip #573 (October 22nd) offers a different take on the classic secret identity crisis as Clark is exposed as an invulnerable man to all of Metropolis. Although gangsters are convinced, Lois Lane is not, claiming the underworld is perpetrating a frame-up…

That yarn takes us to years’ end and 1951 opens on January 7th with a tale of suspicion and injustice as Clark heads back to childhood hometown Smallville to celebrate Superboy Week and encounters a young man nursing an ancient grudge. When the poison pen/rumour campaign looks set to spoil festivities, the hero’s investigations uncover a betrayed child, a framed, murdered father and nefarious clandestine misdeeds carried out by corporate rogues in the Boy of Steel’s name…

Another identity crisis bedevils Clark beginning on April 1st. A killer’s case of mistaken identity seemingly exposes the reporter as super-strong and bulletproof. Surely, he must be the indomitable Man of Steel in disguise? Not according to Professor Pinberry who believes our hapless scribe has been accidentally exposed to his new superpower ray machine, Clark is happy to grasp at the fortuitous alibi but trouble mounts after the public demands to see the machine in action again and the city’s biggest mobster goes after the gadget to make himself Superman’s equal.

Strip #609 commenced on July 1st as aged duffer Salem Cooley comes to Metropolis and enjoys the most miraculous winning streak in history. Even Superman’s astounding powers can’t keep up with the string of happy circumstances, fortuitously profitable accidents and close shaves. Everybody wants to be the old coot’s pal, so who then is behind the constant assassination attempts on superstitious Salem… and what reward could possibly tempt anyone to challenge the luckiest man alive?

September 9th saw Superman agree to write Daily Planet articles about some of his previous exploits to benefit crime prevention charities. However, when capers he cites are restaged by mysterious malefactors, the city soon turns against the Man of Tomorrow and it takes all his super-wits to uncover the mastermind behind it all and quash one of the boldest crimes in the city’s history…

To lure a crime boss out, the Action Ace agrees to be absent Metropolis for a few weeks in the next adventure (running November 18th 1951 – January 13th 1952). However, when a poverty-struck boy succumbs to disease and depression, the Man of Might opts to return undercover, inspiring the kid’s recovery by granting wishes made on a “magic wand”. The task becomes increasingly difficult after crooks get hold of the stick and the invisible hero has to play along to sustain little Teddy’s recuperation…

From January 20th, Superman plays guardian angel to former wastrel and drunken playboy Reggie de Peyster who swears he’s a reformed character. Nobody but Superman realises the trust fund brat is sincere and all the appalling, shameful scandals he’s currently implicated in are being manufactured to cut him out of a vast inheritance…

Lois Lane takes centre stage from April 6th as, after months of being sidelined, the daring reporter quits her job to find a career offering some real excitement. She’s soon assistant to private detective Mike Crain: catching crooks and bodyguarding glamourous stars, but the work seems dull and pedestrian. Of course, Lois is utterly oblivious to the fact Superman is secretly intervening: patriarchal efforts to get her back where she belongs. Ah, different times, eh?

When maverick Hollywood producer/director Hans Bower arrives in Metropolis, (from June 29th he promptly declares Clark to be his latest mega-sensational super-star. A force of nature unable to take no for an answer, Hans soon has the bewildered reporter helming his next box office blockbuster. As shooting progresses, however, Superman uncovers a covert agenda and shocking secret behind the mogul’s extraordinary actions.

Uncanny crime is the order of the day from September 21st when bizarre illusions plague Metropolis and scientist Dr. Wagonrod accuses Superman of perpetrating hoaxes and staging crises due to an undiagnosed split personality. The truth is far more devious than that…

Concluding this first Atomic Age collection, November 30th 1952 to March 15th 1953 found readers avidly watching the skies when an alien capsule fell to Earth and disgorged a succession of alien bio-weapons to test humanity. Superman was hard-pressed to defeat the army of bizarre beasts but did have one immeasurable advantage: the sage advice and input of life-long science fiction fan Sedgwick Ripple…

The Atomic Age Superman: – Sunday Pages 1949-1953! was the first of three huge (312 x 245 mm), lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the Man of Steel and a welcome addition to the superb commemorative series of Library of American Comics which has preserved and re-presented in luxurious splendour such landmark strips as Lil Abner, Tarzan, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and many of the abovementioned cartoon icons.

It’s an unimaginable joy to see these neglected Superman stories again, offering a far more measured, domesticated and comforting side of one of America’s most unique contributions to world culture. It’s also a pure delight to see some of the most engaging yesterdays of the Man of Tomorrow. Join me and see for yourself and agitate for the entire library to find time to release digital editions…
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