Category: Adventure

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From the Files of… Mike Hammer: The Complete Dailies and Sundays


By Mickey Spillane & Ed Robbins: edited by Max Allan Collins (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-025-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Frank Morrison Spillane was Brooklyn born on March 9th 1918 and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He started writing in High School and, after trying a wide variety of jobs, joined a production shop in 1940, where he worked on articles for magazines (“slicks”), pulps and – thanks to a connection to Joe Gill (Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker and more horror, war and science fiction tales than you can imagine) – comic books.

Spillane wrote dozens of text fillers (usually the only place you could sign your own name) for Funnies Inc. who supplied Timely Comics, Fawcett, National/DC and more, but also crafted comics tales too, including Blue Bolt, Captain Marvel, Batman, Captain America and Sub-Mariner. A rough, tough guy, and already qualified pilot, he enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, but his expertise denied him the combat he craved and relegated him to the despised role of Army Air Corps flight instructor, stationed in Mississippi.

Married in 1945, he found employment scarce when peace broke out and turned his 1942 comic creation Mike Lancer P.I. (latterly Mike Danger) into a rough, tough, vulgar and compelling paragon of toxic masculinity. The 1947 novel I, The Jury was written in 9 days and, on the suggestion of Ray Gill (brother of Joe), offered to EP Dutton. They published it in hardback which sold moderately that year. One year later the paperback edition sold six and a half million copies in the US alone, was translated everywhere, kicked off a detective boom in film and books, and created both an iconic character and arguably an entire subgenre. Spillane died in July 2006.

Love him or loathe (and people have always fallen pretty equally on either side) Mike Hammer changed the world of entertainment. Apparently based on Texas Ranger Mike Hamer (who killed Bonnie & Clyde in 1934), Hammer is hard-boiled and smart but also brutally violent, mercurial and misogynistic. His hatred for criminality borders on psychosis and in his later books viciously anti-communist. Despite respecting law and cops he considers both a constant impediment to justice. He carries a Colt 45 M1911A1 and has a distinctly modern relationship with his secretary Velda – who might well be a harder man than him. His best pal is NYPD Homicide Captain Pat Chambers…

Spillane wrote 13 Hammer novels between 1947 and 1996: a tiny fraction of a frankly heroic output, with the canon further extended in later years by crime maven and comics marvel Max Allen Collins – a close friend and associate who added 30 more to the tally. Working from Spillane’s notes, he posthumously extended Spillane’s Hammer canon by writing a further 13 Hammer novels and 17 other characters from the author’s notes…

Collins (Dick Tracy, Batman, Ms. Tree, Wild Dog, Mike Danger, Nathan Heller, Mallory, Nolan & Quarry series, The Road to Perdition) also edited and curated this epic collected archival edition, gathering another controversial Hammer spin-off but one of the anti-hero’s few failures…

We open with his Foreword ‘Mickey and Me’ and informative Introduction ‘From the Files of… Mike Hammer’ relating history and building context in heavily illustrated features sharing novel dustjackets, posters and lobby cards from some of the many movies, logos, designs and original art from the strip, all augmented throughout by promotional ads.

The short run was distributed by Phoenix Features Syndicate from 1953-1954: written by Spillane, Joe Gill and illustrator Ed Robbins, narrated like the books, in first person by Hammer. The reason for the minor league management was to keep authorial control out of the hands of timid censorious editors but it proved the strip’s undoing…

Originally compiled by Ken Pierce Books as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer – The Comic Strip volume 1 (The Sudden Trap and Other Stories) & 2 (The Dark City and Other Stories), this edition maintains their layout of up to 4 dailies per page and opens with ‘Half-Blonde’ as the grim gumshoe stumbles over a pretty singer, witness – or culprit – to senseless murder. Inserting himself into the case, Hammer is shot, beaten and lied to but still unearths a long-buried secret to expose high society schemes of embezzlement and casual execution…

Whilst recovering from the latest bullet wounds incurred in the line of duty, Mike discovers dark deeds in the hospital and intercedes on behalf of ‘The Bandaged Woman’ who doesn’t officially exist; bringing down a diabolical doctor happy to butcher and torture patients to mollify his own monstrous child and maximise his personal fortune. Hammer’s cure is suitably efficient and comes in a single treatment…

The strip was full of raw, violence, barely concealed sex and comparatively shocking violence for America’s prime family entertainment medium, which made the subject of ‘The Child’ a charged one as Hammer is gulled by one gangster inro saving a little girl from another mob of kidnappers. When he learns he’s been made a patsy and the actual bereaved parent is President Eisenhower things get really nasty in the name of patriotism…

Hammer was never a conventional hero and the stories always pushed boundaries. Emotional turmoil rages through ‘Another Lonely Night’ after best pal Pat callously makes Mike bait to draw out mob killers and sits back as a procession of assassins seek to rub him out. At least the wounded warrior can always depend on pistol-packing Velda…

Newspapers used seasons as key sales points and everybody worked a ‘Christmas Story’ angle. For Hammer it took a typically bleak turn as – after arguing with Velda – Mike sets out to catch a crook on Christmas Eve: the busiest day of the year for grifters, grafters, pickpockets and buttonmen. Although apparently proving his point, Hammer had to ultimately concede that there is such a thing as the spirit of the season…

The dailies wrapped up with an epic ideological challenge as Hammer is targeted by the greatest criminal in America and forced to hunt an even worse public enemy in ‘Adam and Kane’. Facing three generations of sheer evil, Mike suffers a psychological freeze and is helpless against the truly diabolical son of aged Adam Shaver.

That “Napoleon of Crime” retired when he found true love but the fruit of it was even more evil and Adam now wants the toughest man in New York to bring him down for the sake of all.

Despite being physically outmatched and intellectually dwarfed, Hammer’s biggest handicap is his own fear until gloating Kane attacks other innocents under Mike’s protection. From then on, the gloves are off…

Sundays began on May 17th 1953 and there were only three before reader complaints ended the run and both strips. It began in full colour splendour with ‘Comes Murder!’ as Hammer discovers a young couple who have been gulled and roughed up by pro gambling racketeers. Incensed, Mike goes after slick Art Selton and meets his match and a major setback in the mobster’s busty blonde “assistant”. Overpowered but undaunted, he changes tack and quickly realises he’s not the only one after Selton. All he has to do is stir things up and stand back, but it helps if you know who’s actually calling the shots…

Crime never rests and when Hammer takes a short country break he meets a ghost in ‘The Sudden Trap.’ His astonishment at seeing the wife of gang boss Al Quinn two years after she died in a car crash and hubby dearest collected a million-dollar insurance pay out obsesses the PI, and his bullish investigations soon have everyone gunning for him. Luckily, local reporter Miss Hayes (no first name; just loads of diminishing “terms of affection”!) backstops him as he crashes from one wrong conclusion to the next until the many murderous fiends who want the revenant dead again are caught and the incredible truth is exposed…

The series concluded with ‘Dark City’ as traumatised Korean War vet Buddie and his sister Eve hire Mike to keep her safe from unknown assailants. Whilst doing the job, Hammer learns that he’s been lied to again. However, before he can confront them, the shamus is compelled by sheer decency to rescue her from abductors.

The scene of her being tortured is extremely graphic even by modern standards, leading to artist Robbins being accused of doing what no man could… killing Mike Hammer…

The story was wrapped up rapidly with our hero exposing the siblings’ scam in two-fisted style and the dream was over…

At its best the strip was evocative and extremely competent as well as being true to its times and its tenets. For those who admired Hammer’s oeuvre they comprise a lost treasure…

Closing this collection is behind-the-scenes feature ‘Restoring Mike Hammer’ by Daniel Herman revealing how the scattered and distressed remnants of the series were saved for publication.

Then come more objects of interest in ‘Mike Hammer and Pop Culture’ delivering poster and book cover art, extracts from comic spoofs ‘My Gun is the Jury! By Melvie Splane’ (Panic! #1 1954) and Mad Magazine’s parody of the 1980’s TV show (illustrated by Sam Viviano), candid photos and more.

Certainly not everybody’s shot of rye, From the Files of… Mike Hammer: The Complete Dailies and Sundays is a glimpse at a global icon at his visual peak: one you can take or leave but never ignore if you love exploring the annals of crime fiction.
© 2013 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC.

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Sam Hill™: In the Crosshairs


By Tom DeFalco, Greg Scott, Janice Chiang & Art Lyon coloured by Anne-Marie Ducasse, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Dark Circle Comics/Archie)
No ISBN: Digital edition

At the height of America’s Film Noir era of the early 1950s – and following the game changing emergence of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer in 1947 – comics concocted a flurry of lonely, tarnished knights. Like their literary and cinematic equivalents, they solved crimes and unravelled mysteries employing varying degrees of excessive violence, street savvy and frankly a high degree of manly misogyny.

We’ll be seeing the prime offender in action at the end of this week and I’ll be back with Hammer’s greatest disciple – Johnny Dynamite – in the not too distant future. Today, though, it’s the turn of a revived reincarnation of one of the gumshoe’s earliest imitators.

Swiftly moving to exploit the trend, recently rechristened Archie Comics (nee MLJ) launched sidebar imprint Close-Up, Inc. to carry the semi-sordid shenanigans of titular tough guy Sam Hill.

That series (boasting five or more adventures per comic) ran to seven issues in 1951 before shutting down until another century. The writer(s?) remain undisclosed to this day, but the majority of the casebook was illuminated by company A-Lister Harry Lucey (Archie, Betty & Veronica, The Hangman, Madame Satan).

For more broadminded modern times, the character was revived by Archie’s modern mature reading imprint Dark Circle. Enjoying a very contemporary setting and milieu, the enquiry agent is reinvented by scripter Tom DeFalco (Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, Fantastic Four, Spider-Girl, The Phantom), illustrator Greg Scott (X-Files, Area 51, Black Hood, Steve McQueen, Wolverine), colourist Art Lyon & letterer Janice Chiang also suffered from company hesitancy, and the presumably traditional print-designed tales ultimately surfaced as a digital only compilation. Thankfully, the material itself is eminently readable genre fare that fills a gap between mature material like Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips’ Criminal, Jason Aaron & R.M. Guéra’s Scalped or Azzarello & Risso’s 100 Bullets and all-ages crimebusting fare such as Max Allan Collins’ CSI comic adaptations, Marvel’s Cops: The Job (Larry Hama, Joe Jusko & Mike Harris) or Robert Loren Fleming & Ernie Colón’s Underworld from DC.

So, in the cosy manner of a post-watershed TV show, ‘The Case of the Willful Widow’ sees a now late middle-aged veteran sleuth hired to discreetly retrieve a sex-tape lost by or stolen from recently bereaved cougar Mrs. Clare Wentworth.

Offering no judgement, Sam scrupulously swears not to watch it before checking out family members who might profit from Clare’s public humiliation: accumulating a few suspects in the husband’s murder, and soon finding all leads point to lethal and grudge-bearing old adversary Philip “Big Marco” Marconi…

It’s not long before this poking around confirms that there’s a double cross in play, no one is telling the truth and that Hill is marked for murder… again…

After skilfully avoiding that trap, Hill and secretary assistant Molly Barsdale relax until life gets hectic again when notorious District Attorney Nathan Geller blows his brains out. ‘The Case of the Purged Politician’ latterly exposes the playboy politico’s corrupt connections to Big Marco and results in Hill being hired to shadow the DA’s successor amidst rumours that his entire staff were on the take…

Bullets replace flying accusations and more bodies drop, and just who is clean becomes a moot point when Sam’s cop buddy Detective Rufus Stack is forced to act on behalf of the city police chief who hates Hill’s guts. When another motive becomes embarrassingly clear, the true cost of power politics is apparent to all…

Sleazy glamour seizes the Private Eye’s attention in ‘The Car, the Chorus Girl and the Killers’ with Sam paid to find missing showgirl Jenna Ray DeCarlo. Gleefully checking out nightclubs, the suave shamus learns that other, far shadier guys are also seeking her…

Once again he’s stepped on the toes of Marconi and – crucially – his heirs. Oddly, Sam’s client – mob-accountant Mr Mopely – seems more eager to locate her car than his latest squeeze, and when he’s found executed in the traditional manner, Sam realises Jenna wasn’t missing but hiding…

Big changes are happening in the Marconi family, and when what everyone is looking for falls into Hill’s unwilling hands, the P.I. is hunted by the cops and the robbers…

Set square ‘In the Crosshairs’ the investigator goes on the run but doesn’t escape unscathed, (prompting an easter egg guest-shot for Archie’s own medical hero as originally seen in Young Doctor Masters) and a spectacular trap and showdown that offers no conclusion but just a precarious détente…

Stylish, smart, sassy and classy, Sam Hill: In the Crosshairs delivers plenty of action and comfortable crime drama to please any genre fan, with DeFalco’s steadfast tributes to past glories and mob fiction superbly realised by Greg Scott’s slickly atmospheric yet understated art.
© 2015 Archie Comic Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Last of the Mohicans: Ten-Cent Manga Series volume 1


Freely adapted from the novel by James Fenimore Cooper by Shigeru Sugiura, edited & translated by Ryan Holmberg (PictureBox)
ISBN: 978-0-985195-6-6 (HB)

Those of us in the know tend to believe that Japanese comics began with Osamu Tezuka in the years following the end of World War II – and indeed in most ways that assessment is reasonable.

However, as the superbly informative article bolstering this superb tome attests, a thriving manga business has operated in Japan since the 1930s, and one of its greatest proponents was artist and author Shigeru Sugiura.

This superb monochrome hardback volume (sadly no digital delight yet) re-presents one of his greatest triumphs as the initial volume in a proposed series of “Ten-Cent Manga” collections. Translated and edited by Ryan Holmberg, it highlights lost works displaying not simply indigenous Japanese virtuosity but also the influence of cross-cultural contact and pollination with other countries.

In erudite, lavishly illustrated essay and appreciation ‘Shigeru Sugiura and his Mohicans’ he describes in fascinating and forensic detail the origins of the project, state of play in Japan pre-and-post WWII. The absorbing life and career of an artist who began as a jobbing strip cartoonist only to elevate himself to the status of Psychedelic, Surrealist Pop Art icon is one that is utterly addictive to fans of American movies and comic books.

The treatise is fully supported by documentary excerpts from the 1950s magazines and strips. Sugiura scrupulously “homaged” and swiped from: Jesse Marsh’s Tarzan, Alex Toth’s Johnny Thunder, and particularly Fred Ray’s Tomahawk. These were most commonplace amongst a wealth of graphic treasures synthesised and transformed into something fresh, vibrant and, most crucially, relevant to the entertainment-starved kids of occupied Japan.

Also included is an article by the artist himself, written in 1988 describing his life-long passion for and debt of influence to American cinema – most especially ‘Silent Movies’…

However, although scholarly and revelatory, the text portions of this singular treat pale beside the sheer exuberant energy and B-movie bravura of James Fenimore Cooper’s text…

Shigeru Sugiura (1908-2000) studied painting before becoming an art assistant to comics pioneer Suihō Tagawa (AKA Nakatarō Takamizawa). By 1933, the student was creating his own strips for the gags and Boys’ Own Adventure style comics that proliferated prior to the war.

He returned to the industry when hostilities ended, producing more of the same, but now influenced far more by the ubiquitous comic books of the occupying G.I.s than the silent Westerns and baggy-pants comedies he had voraciously consumed in his youth.

Shigeru Sugiura blended comedy/action stories for children and achieved great success throughout the 1950s, based on well-known characters such as ninja Sasuke Sarutobi or adapted Chinese classics like Journey to the West, furthermore including modern themes like wrestling, science fiction and even movie sensation Gojira/Godzilla to his fun-filled weekly pages in a most prolific and influential career.

…And Westerns; he did lots of rootin’ tootin’ shoot ’em up cowboy stories…

Sugiura (very) loosely adapted Last of the Mohicans in 1953 (when it was already a very familiar tale to Japanese readers) for Omoshiro Manga Bunko – a line of books presenting world classics of literature in comics form – albeit not exactly any form recognisable to literary purists…

He retired in 1958 but returned in 1970, reworking old stories and creating new pieces from the fresh perspective of a fine artist, not a mere mangaka earning a precarious living.

In 1973 he was already refining and releasing his classic tales for paperback reprints when he was approached by publisher Shobunsha to update another. The 1953 Mohicans became their latest re-released tale, slyly reworked as a wry pastiche and kick-starting Sugiura’s second career as a darling of the newborn adult manga market…

One word of warning: This is not your teacher’s Last of the Mohicans, any more than The Shining resembles Stephen King’s actual novel or the way South Pacific could be logically derived from James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific – or how anything Alan Moore wrote could be found in films like From Hell or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…

Sugiura’s updated 1973-74 iteration forms the majority of this chronicle: a fast-paced riot of non-stop adventure, greed, pride, tragedy and whacky humour wherein both heroic frontiersman Leatherstocking and noble savage Chingachgook are re-imagined as bold young lads in bad times, their desperate quest punctuated with weirdly clashing moments of slapstick, creative anachronism, cross-cultural in-jokes and plain outright peculiarity…

It all works impossibly well, beginning with the introduction of Hawkeye, ‘La Carabine Kid’: a young but doughty colonial scout and spy for the British.

The Empire is at war with the French for possession of the New World, with the Kid and his companions suffering many reverses at the brutal hands of the Mingos – a tribe allied to France. They were also responsible for reducing the mighty Mohicans to two survivors: Chief Chinga and his son Uncas.

The plot thickens when the Mingo Chief and his manic son Magua threaten to abduct Cora and Alice – daughters of British Colonel Munro – in an attempt to force the veteran soldier to surrender his command East Fort to the French. After a savage assault, Hawkeye, the Mohicans and dashing Major Duncan decide to escort the girls to the safety of Fort Henry, with the hostiles close behind…

En route they pick up itinerant preacher Father Gamut, before fighting their way on through wilderness and repeated Mingo attacks, always one step ahead of ‘Magua’s Pursuit’.

The struggle is not one-sided. The wily fugitives contrive to blow up a French fort and even link with a war party of Delas who subsequently reduce the ravening Mingos to scattered remnants – but not before the pursuers carry off ‘The Abducted Sisters’…

The scene is set for the heroes to rescue the girls and end Magua’s threat forever – but the showdown is costly with a high price to pay in ‘The Sad Ending’…

Sheer graphic escapism, spectacular storytelling and a truly different view of a time-honoured masterpiece make this an unmissable treat for all lovers of world comics.

This book is printed in ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.
© 2013 the Estate of Shigeru Sugiura. Translation and essay © 2013 Ryan Holmberg. All rights reserved.

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Invasion 1984!


By John Wagner, Alan Grant, Eric Bradbury & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 9-781-78108-675-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

For most of the industry’s history, British comics were renowned for the ability to tell a big story in satisfying little instalments. This, coupled with supremely gifted creators and the anthological nature of our publications, guaranteed hundreds of memorable characters and series seared themselves into the little boy’s psyche lurking inside most adult males.

One of the last great weeklies was Battle: a strictly combat-themed confection which began as Battle Picture Weekly, launching on 8th March 1975. Through absorption, merger and re-branding (as Battle Picture Weekly & Valiant, Battle Action, Battle, Battle Action Force and Battle Storm Force), it reigned supreme in Blighty before itself being combined with Eagle on January 23rd 1988.

Over 673 blood-soaked, testosterone-drenched issues, it carved its way into the bloodthirsty hearts of a generation, producing some of the best and most influential war stories ever.

Happily, many of the very best – like Charley’s War, The Sarge and El Mestizo – have been preserved and revisited in resilient reprint collections, but there’s still loads of superb stuff to rediscover, as typified by recent releases from Rebellion Studios (stay alert for those in days to come, chums…!).

This is nothing like any of them…

This particular combat compendium re-presents possibly the most unconventional series in the title’s eccentric history one that ran in Battle from 26th March to 31st December 1983. The entire saga is done in one book and comes with an enthused Introduction from editor and veteran scripter (Death Wish, Survivor, Real Roy of the Rovers Stuff, Comic Book Hero) Barrie Tomlinson.

What we have in Invasion 1984! is a classic end of the world/alien attack yarn in the vein of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds, published in the months leading up to the long-awaited literary moment of prophesied dystopia foretold by George Orwell. Deep stuff for a kids’ comic primarily about how their grandads were shot at by German and Japanese soldiers. However, the topic was evergreen, the fantastic elements were commonplace at this time and the actual work was left to three of the industry’s biggest guns…

Credited writer “R. Clark” was in fact John Wagner working with his regular co-scripter Alan Grant. Wagner (Bella at the Bar, One-Eyed Jack, Joe Two Beans, Roy of the Rovers, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Outcasts, Fight for the Falklands, Button-Man, The Bogie Man, Batman, A History of Violence, Darkie’s Mob, Rok of the Reds and countless more) was born in Pennsylvania in 1949, but returned to Greenock in Scotland with his war-bride mum and siblings 12 years later.

He began his professional comic career at the end of the 1960s, firstly in an editorial capacity with Dundee-based DC Thomson & Co. He became a freelance writer soon after and moved to IPC in London. With him came colleague Alan Grant…

Born in Bristol, Grant (February 9th 1949 – July 21st 2022) grew up a true Scot in the heart of Midlothian. Wayward and anarchic, after trying regular life a couple of times he began his comics career in 1967 as an editor for DC. Soon he was writing scripts – many with Wagner – and inventing characters, first for British outfits but eventually all over the world.

His triumphs include Tarzan, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Batman, Lobo, L.E.G.I.O.N., Judge Anderson, The Bogie Man, Channel Evil, Kidnapped, The Demon, Robo-Hunter, Anarky, The Loxleys and the War of 1812, Rok of the Reds and so many more.

He also contributed to amateur fanzines, encouraging and supporting new talent; adapted classic literature to comics form for major art festivals; worked in animation; organized his own comic conventions (in home village Moniaive) and self-published and ran his own publishing house Berserker Comics. In 2020, he led a community outreach project to inform about CoVID-19 via a comic book.

Handling the art was arguably Britain’s most accomplished dramatic illustrator.

The incredible and prolific career of Eric Bradbury (January 4th – 1921 – May 2001) began in 1949 in Knockout. Born in Sydenham, Kent, he studied at Beckenham Art School from 1936 and served in the RAF as a bomber rear gunner during the war. Demobbed, he worked at Gaumont-British Animation, where he met other future cartooning and comics masters Mike Western, Ron Smith, Bill Holroyd, Harry Hargreaves and Nobby (AKA Ron) Clark. When the studio closed Clark and Bradbury were hired by comics everyman Leonard Matthews at Amalgamated Press (latterly Fleetway/IPC).

Frequently working with studio mate Western, Bradbury drew strips such as Our Ernie, Blossom, Lucky Logan, Buffalo Bill, No Hiding Place, The Black Crow and Biggles. He was an “in-demand” illustrator well into the 1990s on many landmark strips including The Avenger, Cursitor Doom, Phantom Force 5, Maxwell Hawke, Joe Two Beans, Mytek the Mighty, Death Squad, Doomlord, Darkie’s Mob, Crazy Keller, Hook Jaw, The Sarge, Invasion (the 2000 AD strip), The Mean Arena, The Fists of Jimmy Chang, The Dracula Files, Rogue Trooper, Future Shocks, Tharg the Mighty and so much more…

Together this triumphant triumvirate crafted a sublimely simple but compellingly cathartic scary story of doom and resurrection, which began and proceeded in real time one year into the future…

On March 21st 1984, astronomers detect a vast fleet of city-sized extraterrestrial craft heading directly for Earth. When space shuttle Columbia is despatched to intercept and extend peaceful greetings, it is blasted to atoms…

From then on, the 3-page weekly instalments catalogue the crushing of our planetary defences, military helplessness, mass panic and displacement of humanity. Terrified and running, people are picked off by silent skeletal warriors or bombed and ray-blasted into annihilation. Once the city-ships land, increasing numbers of shattered shell-shocked humans are captured and flown away…

Amongst the panicking masses fleeing London is language professor Edward Lomax who quite sensibly packs up his wife Marion and son Mike and tries desperately to get out of the capital. As Britain’s armed forces stubbornly resist to the last, the Lomaxes strive to escape the carnage and Edward confirms his own fighting spirit by killing dozens of the intruders with their own weapons.

Ultimately, resistance proves useless and civilisation falls in days, but just when Edward is ready to give up, he and his loved ones are somehow found and rescued by an unconventional unit of brutal killers…

Modern day Dirty Dozen Storm Squad have been tasked with finding the professor by the last free remnants of the army. Plucked from the rubble of London after days of constant running and killing, Lomax and his kin are whisked to a hidden Command Bunker in Bedfordshire, where General Lapsley and Britain’s Defence Secretary (the last survivor of Parliament) put him to work finding out how the invaders communicate and devising a way to talk to them…

The task becomes increasingly urgent after even nuking occupied cities fails to slow the invaders, and Storm Squad (Major “Mad Mac” McVicker, Sergeant Dent, Corporal Cheyney, Plank, creepy Geiger, repulsive deviant Burke and the rest) are despatched to capture some live “spooks” to experiment on…

The most savagely effective killers on Earth quickly succeed – despite sustained resistance from the aliens and opportunistic interference from humans quickly returned to primal self-reliance. With the world a depleted wreck mired in constant conflict, Lomax cracks the mystery, just as Storm Squad learn first-hand what’s become of the millions taken by the Spooks. It only makes more imperative his efforts to talk to the newcomers…

His inevitable success comes at a cost and illuminate a relentless countdown. The aliens have brought a ghastly plague into the bunker that is also ravaging what remains of life on Earth…

At last aware of why they’re here and determined to secure the spooks’ universal cure for illness, Earth’s last defenders deploy for their final sortie with an ultimate weapon of their own, knowing they won’t all be standing at the end…

Bombastic, brilliantly bellicose and mischievously misusing the British Bulldog Spirit, this grim game-changing fable is a delightful response to the toxic tone of the mid-Eighties, whilst still fabulously filling the brief of a boys’ combat yarn: offering casual heroism and vicarious carnage sans any moral nuance. It’s a case of us or them and we will always choose us…

This mostly monochrome masterpiece also includes the 5 full-colour covers the short series spawned plus biographies of all involved, offering the kind of uncomplicated unshaded thrills we all secretly yearn for…
© 1983, 2019 Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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The Phantom: The Complete Sundays Archive Volume Three 1945-1949


By Lee Falk, Ray Moore & Wilson McCoy: introduction by Daniel Herman (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-100-7 (HB/Digital edition)

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

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

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

This third edition is a lovely and large (229 x 330 mm) landscape hardback/digital tome, displaying a complete full colour Sunday per page. Released in March 2016, its 208 pages are stuffed with sumptuous visual goodies like panel and logo close-ups, comics covers and lots of original art and opens with publisher Daniel Herman’s ‘Introduction: The Sunday’s Continue…’ recapping all you need to know about the feature and disclosing how Wilson McCoy assumed the illustrator’s role from Ray Moore – and why nobody knows exactly when he did…

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

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

In his first published exploit the Phantom met and fell for wealthy American adventurer Diane Palmer and his passion for her was soon reciprocated and returned and she became a continuing presence in both iterations of the series as ally, partner, sounding board, a means of reader identification and naturally a plot pawn and perennial hostage to fortune.

Almost every saga featured powerful, capable and remarkably attractive women as both heroes and villains, and in opening tale ‘Queen Pera the Perfect’ (running from December 9th 1945 to March 17th 1946), Diana saw the tables turned…

The aforementioned ruler of remote but rich Karola was constrained to find a husband, and so sent her fanatical minions into the world to find a man worthy of her. They returned with a musical genius, celebrated fighter pilot, champion pugilist and cinema’s greatest lover, but wherever they went they heard legends of an incredible superman…

After The Phantom repeatedly refuses her men’s offer, and gives her stern lesson in manners, she responds by having him imprisoned in her dungeons until he sees sense, and this time it’s his true love who has to save the day…

Spanning March 24th to August 4th 1946, ‘King of Beasts’ sees the liberated champion retuned to Bengali in time for Diana to be unjustly imprisoned. A priceless pearl necklace has been stolen from a maharajah and nobody believes the story of who actually took it: not the police and certainly not American mobster Poison Ivy and his boys…

When The Phantom tries to engineer a jailbreak, he’s caught too and charged with being an accomplice, only for the true thief to free him and Diana by sending a pickpocketing monkey to unlock their cell. In the ensuing flight, Diana is snatched by the mobsters, who don’t believe a word about a hidden mastermind using trained beasts to burgle. That all changes when a trained troop of elephants bust into the bank and porcupines empty a packed casino for their masked master…

With chaos unleashed, The Phantom retrenches and calls in his own equine ally and canine corps. Mighty steed Hero and lupine assistant Devil soon track down the King of Beasts who is far from what anyone expected. However even after he’s handled, there’s still increasingly murderous Poison Ivy to deal with…

Another female fury debuts in ‘The Scarlet Sorceress’ (August 11th – December 22nd) as a royal visit to the Deep Woods of the Bandar People introduces little Princess Valerie and her grandfather the Rajah of Volara. The child will soon become a pawn in a wicked plot…

When the princess of neighbouring kingdom Wogu falls ill, a devious manipulator “prophesies ” that only golden-haired Valerie’s blood can save the ailing waif, prompting a kidnapping and a frantically fast response from the Ghost Who Walks. Not all the monstrous forces set against him can slow the Phantom, but after exposing the witch as a charlatan, the hero discovers that he’s fighting not a villain but another victim. Soon, however, his efforts save all involved and pacify two kingdoms…

December 29th 1946 to June 29th 1947 finds The Phantom once more battling to save Diana after the filthy rich and spoiled Potentate of Ptjar Prince Pepe abducts her to be his very best bride. Law and reason mean nothing to the repulsive despot and by the time the hero reaches the distant kingdom, she is beyond even the Ghost’s reach. His only recourse is to play Pepe’s game and in a dozen days complete ‘The 12 Tasks’ conceived to frustrate and humiliate the hero. However, wit and ingenuity married to his mighty physicality make short work of the impossible – such as capturing an invulnerable giant bandit, emptying a river of carnivorous fish, banishing every shark in the bay or stopping all crime for 24 hours – and despite Pepe’s cheating equivocations the final task changes the nation forever and for the better…

A return to jungle warfare and tribal feuding underpins ‘The Dragon God’ (July 26th to November 16th) as Diana’s interest in an ancient Wambesi idol presages the fire-breathing saurian coming to life and demanding its worshippers kill and plunder their neighbours the Ulangi. With “The Phantom’s Peace” broken, the Ghost Walks amongst them to re-establish order and quickly discovers white instigators and recovered wartime weaponry behind the uprising, but once begun war has its own momentum and tribal grudges run deep and burn forever…

With bloodshed ended, a change of pace and tone heralds the return of an appalling duo who had previously made life miserable for The Phantom. Spanning November 23rd 1947 to May16th 1948, ‘The Marshall Sisters’ sees over-privileged brats Lana and Greta return to Africa in a ruthless no-holds barred competition to seduce and wed the mighty jungle avenger. This is after their last attempt to land the ultimate trophy husband was foiled by Diana Palmer…

When allure, deception and blackmail all fail, the hellions even try shanghaiing and blunt force trauma to achieve their aims, but lose all control when the various thugs they hire hijack the caper…

A relatively short story running from May 23rd through September 5th follows, revealing how a long-running annual sporting contest devised by the original ancestral Phantom has served to ameliorate tribal tensions for four centuries. Although its dollar value is meaningless to the competitors who strive for pride and bragging rights alone, the gem-stuffed urn that acts as ‘The Phantom Trophy’ is an irresistible prize for cop-killing fugitives Spike and Grunt.

When they rope in more scallywags to swipe the prize from the previous holders/custodians, before it can be handed over to the new champions tribal war erupts. Although The Phantom hunts the thieves he might be too late as naked greed turns the rogues against each other…

The final sequence in this volume visits ‘The Haunted Castle’ (September 12th 1948 – February 13th 1949) as Diana goes exploring alone and is propelled into wild unexplored country. As The Phantom and Devil search for her, she wanders a lost valley whose people are enslaved by sinister wizard Great Moogoo who shrinks anyone who opposes him to the size of a plaster gnome and adds them to his terrifying garden…

As the lascivious sorcerer captures her, Diana’s man has tracked her to the stone citadel and begun a one-man siege that exposes his nefarious trickery and wrecks his powerbase…

Taken from America’s immediate post-war period, these brief encounters are bold, brash, uncomplicated fare, full of despicable rogues, lost kingdoms, savage tribes, dangerous but still redeemable dames and very bad guys, but thrillingly reassuring entertainment for all that. Just remember, different times have different values. If the kind of fare you’d encounter in a 1940s Tarzan movie or cop thriller might offend, you should consider carefully before starting this…

Finally rediscovered, these lost treasures are especially rewarding as the material is still fresh, entertaining and addictively compelling. However, even if it were only of historical value (or just printed for Australians – manic devotees of the implacable champion from the get-go) surely the Ghost Who Walks is worthy of a little of your time?
The Phantom® © 1945-1949 and 2016 King Features Syndicate, Inc. ® Hearst Holdings, Inc. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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The Newsboy Legion by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby volume Two


By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby with Don Cameron, Joe Samachson, Ed Herron, Arturo Cazeneuve, Curt Swan, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert & others (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7236-4 (HB/Digital edition)

Just as the Golden Age of comics was beginning, two young men with big dreams met up and began a decades-long association that was always intensely creative, immensely productive and spectacularly in tune with popular tastes. As kids they had both sold newspapers on street-corners to help their families survive the Great Depression…

Joe Simon was a sharp-minded, talented guy with 5 years’ experience in “real” publishing; working from the bottom up to become art director on a succession of small papers – such as the Rochester Journal American, Syracuse Herald and Syracuse Journal American – before moving to New York City to freelance as an art/photo retoucher and illustrator. Recommended by his boss, Simon joined Lloyd Jacquet’s pioneering Funnies Inc. This was a production “shop”: a conveyor belt of eager talent generating strips and characters for numerous publishing houses eager to cash in on the success of Action Comics and its stellar attraction Superman.

Within days, Simon created The Fiery Mask for Martin Goodman of Timely Comics (now Marvel) and met Jacob Kurtzberg, a cartoonist and animator just hitting his stride with the Blue Beetle for the Fox Feature Syndicate.

Together, Simon and Kurtzberg (who went through many pen-names before settling on Jack Kirby) enjoyed a stunning creative empathy and synergy: galvanizing an already electric neo-industry with a vast catalogue of features and even sub-genres.

They produced influential monthly Blue Bolt, rushed out Captain Marvel Adventures #1 for Fawcett and – after Martin Goodman appointed Simon editor at Timely – created a host of iconic characters such as Red Raven, the first Marvel Boy, Hurricane, The Vision, Young Allies and million-selling mega-hit Captain America.

Famed for his larger-than-life characters and colossal cosmic imaginings, “King” Kirby was an astute, spiritual hard-working family man who lived through poverty, gangsterism and the Depression. He loved his work, hated chicanery of every sort and saw a big future for the comics industry…

When Goodman failed to make good on his financial obligations, Simon & Kirby jumped ship to industry leader National/DC, who welcomed them with open arms and open chequebook. The pair were initially an uneasy fit, bursting with ideas the staid company were not comfortable with and thus given two strips that were in the doldrums until they found their creative feet…

Turning both around Sandman and Manhunter virtually overnight and – once established and left to their own devices – went on to devise the “Kid Gang” genre (technically, it was “recreating” as the notion was one of the duo’s last innovations for Timely as seen in 1941’s Young Allies). The result was unique and trendsetting juvenile Foreign Legion The Boy Commandos.

The little warriors began by sharing the spotlight with Batman in flagship publication Detective Comics, but before long they won their own accompanying solo title – which promptly became one of the company’s top three sellers. Frequently cited as the biggest-selling US comic book in the world at that time – Boy Commandos was such a success that the editors, painfully aware that the Draft was lurking, green-lit the completion of extra material to lay away for when their star creators were called up.

S&K assembled a creative team that generated so many stories in a phenomenally short time that publisher Jack Liebowitz then suggested they retool some of it into adventures of a second kid gang…

Thus was born The Newsboy Legion and super-heroic mentor The Guardian…

Probably based on the Our Gang/Little Rascals film shorts (1922-1944) and pitched halfway between a surly comedy grotesques and charmingly naive ragamuffins, the Newsboy Legion comprised four ferociously independent orphans living together on the streets of “Suicide Slum” peddling papers to survive. Earnest, good-looking Tommy Tompkins, garrulous genius Big Words, diminutive, hyper-active chatterbox Gabby and feisty, pugnacious Scrapper – whose Brooklyn-based patois and gutsy belligerence usually stole the show – were all headed for a bad end until somebody extraordinary entered their lives…

Their exploits offered a bombastic blend of crime thriller and comedy caper, leavened with dynamic superhero action and usually seen from a kid’s point of view. The series debuted in Star-Spangled Comics #7, forcing Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy off the covers and to the back of the book. The Legion remained lead feature until the end of 1946 when, without fanfare or warning, issue #65 was published without them.

The lads had been ousted and replaced by solo tales of Robin, the Boy Wonder. His own youth-oriented solo series subsequently ran all the way to SSC #130 in 1952, by which time superhero romps had largely been supplanted throughout the industry by general genre tales.

This second superb collection concludes their Golden Age exploits, with tales from Star-Spangled Comics #33-64 (cover-dated June 1944 – January 1947), including every stunning cover by Kirby, Simon, Fred Ray and teenager Gil Kane all inked by Arturo Cazeneuve, John Daly, Steve Brodie, George Roussos & Stan Kaye. There’s also an informative Introduction from The Jack Kirby Collector/Two Morrows’ publishing guru John Morrow setting the scene for the fun that follows…

In the very first tale, rookie cop Jim Harper adopted a superhero alter ego to administer hands-on justice when The Law was not enough. His vigilantism resulted in the capture of an infamous kidnap ring. Newspapers dubbed the mysterious hero the Guardian of Society and sold like hotcakes on all street corners, making money for even the poorest junior entrepreneurs.

Harper initially had no intention of repeating his foray into vigilantism but when he caught Tommy, Big Words, Gabby and Scrapper shoplifting, his life changed forever. The tough little monkeys were headed for reform school, but he made an earnest plea for clemency on their behalf and the judge appointed him their responsible adult: their “guardian”.

“The Newsboy Legion” were set on a righteous path, but their suspicions were aroused. Frustratingly, no matter how hard they tried, the boys could never prove that their two Guardians were the same guy…

With tales of the war declining in popularity, Star Spangled Comics #33 opens this concluding compilation with ‘The Case of the Bashful Bride!’ Regular illustrator Arturo Cazeneuve limns a fast-paced but uncredited yarn as gangster Sloppy Sam seemingly hangs up his gat after marrying into money. The nosy kids simply can’t accept the transformation and their poking around soon uncovers a cunning plot, cruel criminality and just a hint of hilarious hoity-toity crossdressing behind the scheme…

Naturally, by the time they’re in over their heads, Harper has again swapped his badge and gun for golden helmet and shield to wrap up the case…

The boys’ lives were peppered by dozens of get-rich-quick notions that inevitably uncovered crimes and unleashed chaos. In ‘From Rags to Ruin!’ (#34, by Cazeneuve, July 1944), Gabby discovers the power of positive thinking and talks himself into a high-paying executive position at an insurance company. His dream sours after discovering he’s the figurehead – and fall guy – for a protection racket. Time to call in some old pals…

Still calling himself Eli Katz, future superstar Gil Kane illustrated #35’s ‘The Proud Poppas!’ as the Newsboys adopt a homeless orphan fleeing a cruel and repressive institution. Peter wants to be an artist and gleefully moves into the Boys’ orbit – and shack – but his rightful carers desperately want him back and ruthless kidnappers now know who he is and where he’s hiding…

Cazeneuve returned for ‘The Cowboy of Suicide Slum!’ as grizzled former western sheriff Hawkeye Hawkins of Howlin’ Gulch comes Back East to see the sights. The Legion are all beguiled by his tall tales and before long hip-deep in trouble after they convince the ornery coot to display his talents by going after local gang boss Little Dodo…

After saving a swell from bullies in the slum, Scrapper is offered an apprenticeship by the city’s top gem cutter in ‘Diamonds in the Rough!’ However, as a business prone to criminality, the benefactor expects the fisty firebrand to protect his hands and quit fighting…

When workmen fixing waterpipes trigger a crude oil gusher in Suicide Slum, everybody wants to cash in whilst the toffs in swanky Doughbilt Apartments don’t want their views ruined by derricks. Into that bubbling cauldron of trouble come opportunists; crooks too, so it’s not long until The Guardian and the Legion discover what’s actually going on in ‘Roll Out the Barrels’…

Steve Brodie begins inking Cazeneuve in #39’s ‘Two Guardians Are a Crowd!’ (December 1944) as a crooked doppelganger plays hob with the hero’s reputation and the boys’ conviction of Harper’s double life – until the inevitable face-off – after which notorious thief Danny the Dip bids ‘Farewell to Crime!’ by writing a tell-all memoir. When the kids get involved, it’s exposed as less a confession and more perjury and blame-shifting, leading to the Guardian getting truth – and justice – his way…

When a criminal set fires and create street accidents to tie up first responders in ‘Time Out for the Guardian!’, cop Harper is among the injured. Mistakenly diagnosed with a broken leg, he uses the mistake to convince his wards that the superhero is another guy when they go after the culprits. However, they are just young, not idiots…

In #42, the Legion discovers ‘The Power of the Press!’ when they produce a grassroots periodical going after crooks at ground level. It’s good enough to get them framed by malign mastermind The Undertaker until good old Jim steps in, before the boys test their musical chops in a (naturally fixed and wildly comedic) barbershop quartet singing competition designed to expose the ‘Trials of a Tenor!’

Misguided philanthropy and unthinking privilege steer Ethelreda Winkle and her nephew Cuthbert when the daft dowager sets up an institute to elevate the poor by teaching them proper manners in ‘Etiquette Comes to Suicide Slum!’ With thieves flocking in to improve their chances of better scores, Harper asks the Newsboys to get with the program and learns all is not as seems, after which ‘Crime Gets Clipped!’ finds the lads setting up a …news-gathering “clipping service” and catching a vain bigshot plundering the city’s banks…

‘Clothes Make the Criminal!’ finds the kids on the trail of crooks using a selection of stolen uniforms and costumes to commit outrages before Jim and the boys again prove they have the right stuff…

With George Roussos inking Cazeneuve, ‘The Triumph of Tommy!’ sees the bold Newsboy gunned down by a robber. To recuperate, he’s carted off to Camp Woko-ni-to (“for underprivileged children of the slums”) by his doctor, and when his comrades visit, it sparks another fight when Tommy spots the thug who shot him laying low. Meanwhile, The Guardian has been following another trail and pops up just when he’s most needed…

‘Booty and the Blizzard!’ is one of the few stories we know the writer of. Don Cameron scripts for Cazeneuve & Roussos as an icy cold snap cuts off Suicide Slum and the industrious boys shovel out a network of tunnels for fellow residents trapped behind ten feet of hard-packed snow. Too bad it’s also an ideal escape route for wily bank bandits, until the Guardian learns to ski…

The same creative team measure out ‘One Ounce to Victory!’ as a scrap paper drive gets hyper-competitive when the Newsboys compete with rival news peddlers the Hawker Street Hawks. As if bitter enmity isn’t enough, the effort is made more dangerous after recently released convict Tightlips Leo hides the map to his stashed loot in one of those collected paper piles and resorts to murderous means to retrieve it…

Cover-dated November 1945, Star Spangled #50 features Joe Samachson, Joe Kubert & Roussos adding a flash of film fantasy in ‘The Leopard Man Changes his Spots!’ Here the boys help a meek movie star specialising in monsters channel his inner hero and escape the clutches of a racketeering mobster.

Another industrious enterprise transforms into a means of corralling crooks when the boys start a second-hand apparel business. Naturally, any way to help poor folk advance draws cunning connivers with a perfidious plan, but ‘The Style Show of Suicide Slum’ (Cameron & Kubert) also triggers a wicked comedy of errors when the ugliest jacket on Earth (concealing a fortune in stolen cash) is inadvertently passed from one ungrateful recipient to the next…

Cameron, Cazeneuve & Brodie reunite for #52’s ‘Rehearsal for a Crime!’ as Gabby breaks into an abandoned theatre and mistakes a practise run for robbery for a new play pre-debut. When he comes back with his pals they are all captured and it’s up to Harper to seek them out, shut them down and save the day…

Kirby returned in the next issue where Gabby won a jingle contest – and $500 – and pursued a career in rhyme as ‘The Poet of Suicide Slum!’ (script by Cameron and inked by Brodie). His delusions and propensity for naming gangsters and their plans in his odes soon made him a target for early immortality… until The Guardian applied his own brand of two-fisted criticism…

Another acknowledgement of the rise in western themes informs ‘Dead-Shot Dade’s Revenge!’ (by an uncredited writer, Kirby & Brodie) as a spiky relic of pioneer days drives his “prairie schooner” into Suicide Slum. He’s come 2000 miles in pursuit of Gaspipe Gosser, who stole Dade’s life savings, and it’s all The Guardian can do to stop the old coot shooting him dead like a dawg just to see him drop…

Happily, Gosser’s guilt triggers a pre-emptive strike that gives the hero all he needs to put the thug away, after which Curt Swan & Jack Farr depict how ‘Gabby Strikes a Gusher!’ He had been tending his vegetable garden when he discovered oil, but just as he looks into setting up a company, the thugs who originally stole the stuff came calling…

Cooking for the Newsboys was done on a strict rota basis, with dealer’s choice the prime consideration. When Gabby accidentally came into possession of oysters dropped by fleet-footed Willy Wetsell, he thought it solved his problem of what the gang would eat that night.

Instead, each mollusc contained a superb, huge fully processed Arabian pearl and Jim Harper realised that this ‘Treasure of Araby’ (art by Kirby & Ray Burnley) was far more than chance and not in the least lucky…

Kirby & John Daly limned Star Spangled Comics #57’s cunning shocker as mobster Snake Huggins resolved to fix the interfering brats for good. His plan was to hit him at his weakest point and resulted in ‘A Recruit for the Legion!’ but wealthy Timothy Tuck was not what he seemed and proved a far bigger threat that he looked…

Kirby handled exotic diversion ‘Matadors of Suicide Slum!’ as the boys befriend elderly janitor Perez and hear rousing tales of his glory days in the bullrings of Mexico. Coincidentally, Yankee businessmen are trying to bring the bloody sport to Suicide Slum, leading to a decades-delayed concluding duel between the man and his nemesis El Diabolo. Only, it’s not quite as they recalled or any onlooker quite expected…

From sentimental slapstick, we turn to criminal mystery in Kirby’s Daly inked ‘Answers, Inc.!’ (#59, August 1946) wherein Tommy cashes in on an unsuspected gift for solving riddles, puzzles and general knowledge quizzes. Although he’s smart, he’s still a kid though and when a cunning cove poses a pithy conundrum, Tommy hands over a method for a foolproof heist. Happily, jaded, cynical Jim Harper is on hand to ask his own difficult questions whilst The Guardian is ready to answer them…

Ed Herron, Swan and Stan Kaye then detail a whimsical winner as Scrapper seeks to become ‘Steve Brodie Da Second!’ to one-up friendly rivals the Boy Commandos. The Brodie in question is not the inker, but the turn of the century sportsman who claimed to have survived jumping off the East River Bridge. Here, however, Scrapper’s idiotic emulation ends when he jumps right into a gangster’s secret submarine, and silly season stunt escalates to front page crime caper…

Swan & Kaye then continued the new trend for stunts as Guardian’s pursuit of a crook leads to a syndicate dictating the demise of him and the Newsboy Legion under the pretence of sponsoring them in ‘The Great Balloon Race!’ across America, after which ‘Prevue of Tomorrow’ sees a mysterious stranger spark chaos by handing out papers offering news from 24 hours into the future. Of course for our heroes forewarned is simply forearmed…

Brodie inked Swan on penultimate outing ‘Code of the Newsstand!’ as the boys visit Chinatown just as Harper enters the enclave to find escaped convict Stiletto Mike. Of course, they are first to find the felon but it’s The Guardian who has the last word… and punch.

Cover-dated January 1947, Star Spangled Comics #64 closed the Newsboy Legion’s eclectic run with ‘Criminal Cruise!’ wherein Swan & Brodie had the kids literally sailing off into the sunset after winning an all-inclusive holiday to the South Seas. Naturally, trouble followed with lost tickets, stowaways and a gang of jewel thieves spicing up the voyage…

And that was that for almost 25 years, until Kirby brought them back in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #133 (October 1970), spearheading his mega revitalisation of DC’s continuity – but let’s talk of that another day…

There is a glorious abundance of Jack Kirby material available these days: true testament to his influence and legacy, with this magnificent and compelling collection in collaborations with fellow pioneer Joe Simon being another gigantic box of delights perfectly illustrating the depth, scope and sheer thundering joy of the early days of comics. Funny, thrilling and ideally accessing simpler days, this is a treat every fan should enjoy and share.
© 1944, 1945, 1946, 2017 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

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Mega Robo Bros: Next Level


By Neill Cameron, with Abby Bulmer (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-294-6 (TPB)

Mighty in metal and potent in plastic, here’s another solid gold all-ages outing from Neill (Tamsin of the Deep, Pirates of Pangea, How to Make Awesome Comics, Freddy) Cameron’s marvellous purpose-built paladins. However, the rambunctious Mega Robo Bros find that even they can’t fight progress adventures and growing pains – in more adventures balancing frantic fun with portents of darker, far more violent days to come…

It’s still the Future!

In a London far cooler than ours, Alex and his younger brother Freddie Sharma are generally typical kids: boisterous, fractious, eternally argumentative yet devoted to each other, and not too bothered that they’re adopted. It’s really no big deal for them that they were meticulously and covertly constructed by the mysterious Dr. Roboticus – before he vanished – and are considered by those in the know as the most powerful – and only fully SENTIENT – robots on Earth.

Dad is just your average old guy who makes lunch and does a bit of writing, but when not being a housewife, Mum is a bit extraordinary, herself – surprisingly famous and renowned robotics boffin Dr. Nita Sharma harbours some shocking secrets of her own…

Life in the Sharma household tries to be pretty normal. Freddie is insufferably exuberant and over-confident, whilst Alex is at the age when self-doubt and anxiety hit hard. Moreover, the household’s other robot rescues can also be problematic…

Programmed as a dog, baby triceratops Trikey is ok, but French-speaking deranged ape Monsieur Gorilla can be mighty confusing, whilst gloomily annoying, existentialist aquatic fowl Stupid Philosophy Penguin hangs around ambushing everyone with quotes from dead philosophers…

The boys have part-time but increasing insistent jobs as super-secret agents, although because they weren’t very good at the clandestine part, almost the entire world knows of them. Generally, however, it’s enough for the digital duo that their parents love them, even though they are a bit more of a handful than most kids. They all live as normal a life as possible: going to human school, playing with human friends and hating homework. It’s all part of their “Mega Robo Routine”, combining dull human activities, actual but rare fun, games-playing, watching TV and constant training in the combat caverns under R.A.I.D. HQ.

Usually, when a situation demands, the boys carry out missions for bossy Baroness Farooq: head of government agency Robotics Analysis Intelligence and Defence. They still believe it’s because they are infinitely smarter and more powerful than the Destroyer Mechs and other man-made minions she usually utilises.

Originally published in UK weekly comic The Phoenix, this revised, retooled and remastered saga opens with the lads feted as global heroes.

After defeating a reject robot rebellion sparked by artificial life activist The Caretaker, the Bros battled monstrous, deadly damaged droid Wolfram and learned that he might be their older brother…

Over the course of that case they learned that fifteen years previously Mum was a young, pretty and brilliant roboticist working under incomparable (but weird) pioneering genius Dr. Leon Robertus. whose astounding advances had earned him the unwelcome nickname Dr. Roboticus. Maybe that was what started pushing him away from humanity…

After months, Robertus to let her repurpose his individually superpowered prototypes into a rapid-response team for global emergencies. Mum used to be a superhero, leading manmade Rapid Response team The Super Robo Six!

While saving lives with them she first met crusading journalist/future husband Michael Mokeme who proudly took her name when they eventually wed…

Robertus was utterly devoid of human empathy but – intrigued by the team’s acclaim and global acceptance – created a new kind of autonomous robot. Wolfram was more powerful than any other construct, and was equipped with certain foundational directives allowing him to make choices and develop his own systems. He could think, just like Alex and Freddy can! Only, as it transpired, not quite…

When Robertus demoted Nita and made Wolfram leader of a new Super Robo Seven, the result was an even more effective unit, until the day Wolfram’s Three Directives clashed during a time-critical mission. Millions of humans paid the price for his confusion and hesitation…

In the aftermath, R.A.I.D. was formed. They tried to shut down Robertus and decommission Wolfram, but the superbot rejected their judgement, leading to a brutal battle, the robot’s apparent destruction and Roboticus escaping…

As the boys absorbed their “Secret Origins”, Wolfram returned attacking polar restoration project Jötunn Base. It covered many miles and was carefully rebalancing the world’s climate, when Wolfram took it over: reversing the chilling process to burn the Earth and drown humanity…

Alex and Freddy were ordered to stay put and not help by Baroness Farooq, but rebelled. By the time the Bros reached Jötunn Base, Wolfram has already ruthlessly crushed a RAID force led by their friend Agent Susie Nichols. After also failing to stop their determined and utterly unreasonable brother, thoughtful, kind contemplative Alex found a way to defeat – and perhaps, destroy – his wayward older brother and save the world…

Here, the boys are seen adapting to a new normal. Their exploit has made them global superstars and whilst immature Freddy is revelling in all the attention Alex is having trouble adjusting: not just to the notoriety and acclaim, but also the horrifying new power levels he achieved to succeed and also the apparent onset of robot puberty…

A collection of shorter, interlinked exploits, Next Level opens with the turbocharged lads attending another Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. Mum has cleverly dodged the affair, leaving Dad and Grandma policing Stupid Philosophy Penguin and Freddy’s increasingly outrageous behaviour in front of the Queen. Anxious and upset, Alex hides in a spectacularly-appointed toilet and finds the Crown Prince doing likewise. Before long, he’s comparing notes on duty and expectation: sharing his feelings of guilt and grief to perhaps the only other kid on Earth who could be expected to comprehend…

Chapter 2 finds the Bros back at R.A.I.D. HQ, breezing through the usual training programs. To stop Wolfram, the boys had to be upgraded with safety protocols rescinded and they are now almost too powerful. That’s proved the moment they let go against the latest droid weapon and reduce it to more budget-busting spare parts in seconds. That’s when Dr. Sharma’s assistant Zahra Abdikarim has a rather brilliant idea, involving force fields and holograms…

Freddy’s dangerous boredom levels are soon decreased via a training regime that resembles a giant video game…

Another day and another first as Freddy foils an actual bank robbery by an actual exo-suited supervillain and stumbles into an even more insidious crime scheme: copyright infringement!

Whilst grandstanding for the crowds after the bust, the little lout sees a street seller hawking extremely sophisticated robot toy knock-offs of him and his brother. Suspicious and worried, Alex and still-recuperating Agent Susie (working from her hospital bed by telemetric tech) trace the toys to Toymakr Industries and clash with a ruthless narcissistic entrepreneur with no respect for law and life. Not only has he stolen their images and reputations, but also weaponised the little dolls and constructed “upgraded” doppelgangers of the real deal…

Cue huge robot-on-robot carnage…

Chapter 4 takes a more introspective tone as Alex’s PTSD trauma manifests as horrific bad dreams and his parents look into therapy and quickly hit a huge biological snag. Although the boys have literally grown from babies and physically change like humans, they are still mechanical not organic and most counselling strategies just won’t work on them. Thankfully Mum is a genius and finds another way to get Alex the help he so badly needs…

Introspection turns to action when the Bros are called in by the Metropolitan Police to help solve a string of impossible robotics/computer company robberies. With Susie in a tricked-out wheelchair, the boys rapidly uncover a cunning, ludicrous yet deadly scheme by an old foe…

A different kind of crisis manifests next as the Mega Robo Bros experience the dubious joys of camping, on and organised kids-only Outbound Adventure trip. It’s the first time away from home – other than for Earth-saving – for both boys and neither is keen to spend time in a strange camp with boys they don’t know. It’s a life-changing experience for all concerned…

After many close calls, Chapter 7 finally hosts the wedding of Susie Nichols and Zahra Abdikarim, but of course the brides’ big day acts as a magnet for chaos and one particular old enemy. Happily, Baroness Farooq is astoundingly adept at anticipating any possible contingency and the Bros are delighted to hand out a hearty hammering to the party crasher in the bombastic feelgood final chapter…

Crafted by Cameron and colouring assistant Abby Bulmer, this rip-roaring riot isn’t quite over yet: offering charming activity pages on ‘How To Draw Cuddle-Bots!’ and ‘How To Panda’ (both Cute and Angry!), as well as delivering a whacky brace of Bonus Comic! capers with ‘Monsieur Gorilla in Les Vacances de M. Gorilla’ before Alex & Freddy play ‘Legend of Heroes’ with catastrophic results…

Exceedingly engaging excitement and hearty hilarity is balanced here with poignant moments of insecurity and introspection, affording g thrills, chills, warmth, wit and incredible verve. Alex and Freddy are utterly authentic kids, irrespective of their origins, and their antics strike exactly the right balance of future shock, family fun and superhero action to capture readers’ hearts and minds. What movies these tales would make!

Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2023. All rights reserved.
Mega Robo Bros Next Level will be released on May 4th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

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Superman vs. the Revenge Squad!


By Karl Kesel, David Michelinie, Jerry Ordway, Louise Simonson, Roger Stern, Jon Bogdanove, Sal Buscema, Tom Grummett, Stuart Immonen, Ron Lim, Tom Morgan, Paul Ryan, Brett Breeding, Klaus Janson, Dennis Janke, Jose Marzan Jr., Denis Rodier& various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-487-9 (TPB)

The Man of Steel celebrates 85 years of continuous publication this year. His existence dictated and defined the entire US Comic book industry, but in this anniversary year, what’s most remarkable is how little of the truly vast variety of his exploits and achievements DC Comics currently consider worthy of us seeing…

Here’s another thrilling snapshot exemplifying an era of superb creativity following Superman’s 1987 reboot in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths. If you’re counting, the tale first appeared – in whole or in part – in Adventures of Superman #539, 542, 543, Action Comics #726, 730, Superman: Man of Steel #61 & 65 and Superman: Man of Tomorrow #7, cumulatively spanning October 1996 to February 1997.

By extracting pertinent episodes from a selection of sub-plots as well as entire episodes, a tag team of creators – writers Karl Kesel, David Michelinie, Jerry Ordway, Louise Simonson and Roger Stern in close conjunction with artists Jon Bogdanove, Sal Buscema, Tom Grummett, Stuart Immonen, Ron Lim, Tom Morgan, Paul Ryan, Brett Breeding, Klaus Janson, Dennis Janke, Jose Marzan Jr. & Denis Rodier – constructed a crafty and exciting romp pitting the Metropolis Marvel against a peculiar array of particularly irate enemies, all unknowingly working for a mysterious mastermind who was far from what he appeared…

The action commences with ‘Dopplegangster’ wherein a clone from the top-secret Cadmus Project intercepts a high-tech intruder and is infected with a hideous condition which brings all the long-suppressed and submerged evil of conventionally bred progenitor to the surface.

The invader is Misa, a spoiled, fun-loving, metahuman brat with incredible futuristic devices who had previously plagued Superman and the Project. Here, however, her skirmish with the re-grown Floyd “Bullets” Barstow has profound and lasting effects: accidentally transforming him into a troubled paranoid soul who might suddenly transform at any moment into a brutal Anomaly: armed with elemental shape-changing powers and unhindered any shred of conscience at all.

Meanwhile in Metropolis, Superman has his hands full defending the city and shuffling his new job as Editor of The Daily Planet, whilst venerable boss Perry White recovers from lung cancer and subsequent chemotherapy. Clark’s burden gets no easier when living weapons-platform Barrage returns in ‘Arms’, determined to kill Police Chief Maggie Sawyer whom he blames for the loss of his right limb. Moreover, anarchic troublemaker Riot – a raving loon who generates living duplicates every time he is struck – also pops up to make mischief and mayhem in ‘Losin’ It’.

‘Hero or Villain?’ concentrates on the history of Lex Luthor, providing insight and oversight to the multi-billionaire inventor who is currently under arrest and awaiting trial, even as alien superwoman Maxima frets and festers in her futile quest to find a suitable mate.

The Man of Steel was her first choice and he refused her (often violently) many times. Once again she tries to have her way with him and the forceful rejection sends her straight into the influence of someone who is gathering a team to destroy the Caped Kryptonian forever…

A unified assault begins in ‘The Honeymoon’s Over’ as Riot, Misa, Anomaly and Barrage meet Maxima and take their communal shot at the mutual enemy in ‘President of the United Hates’.

There is something not quite right about their enigmatic, shadowy leader and besides, what strategic genius would put five incompatible, uncontrollable egomaniacs in the same team and expect them to have a ghost of a chance against Superman?

The final, spectacular battle inevitably goes awry for the rogues in ‘Losers’, and as the dust settles all the evidence points to only one possible culprit for the Revenge Squad’s campaign of terror. But is it really that clear-cut?

Although a little disconnected in places – the storyline ran simultaneously and concurrently with another extended saga (collected in Superman Transformed!) and the excision of irrelevant pages doesn’t lend itself to a seamless and smooth read – this tale perfectly exemplifies the brilliant blend of cosmic adventure, fights ‘n’ tights action, soap opera drama and sheer enthusiastic excitement that typified the Superman franchise of this era.

This kind of close-plotted continuity was a hallmark of the 1980s-1990s Superman, and that such a strong tale could be constituted from snippets around the main story is a lasting tribute to the efficacy and power of the technique. Superman vs. the Revenge Squad! is a delightfully old-fashioned fun-fest that will delight fans of The Legend and followers of the genre alike. It should really be a part of everyone’s Krypton Chronicles, and DC are missing a trick not making it so…
© 1996, 1997, 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Power of Shazam! Book One: In the Beginning


By Jerry Ordway, Peter Krause, Mike Manley, Curt Swan, Mike Parobeck, Rick Burchett, Kurt Schaffenberger, Glenn Whitmore& various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-9941-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in the summer of 1938. Created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, the character proved extremely popular across many disparate media, sparking a new kind of hero and story form. You’re here right now because of him…

Another of the most venerated and loved characters in American comics was created by Bill Parker & Charles Clarence Beck for Fawcett Publications as part of a wave of opportunistic creativity that followed that successful launch of Superman. However, although there were many similarities in the early years, the “Big Red Cheese” moved swiftly and solidly into the arena of light entertainment and even broad comedy, whilst – as the 1940s progressed – the Man of Tomorrow increasingly left whimsy behind in favour of action and drama.

At the height of his popularity, Captain Marvel hugely outsold Superman but, as the decade progressed and tastes changed, sales slowed. When an infamous copyright infringement suit filed in 1941 by National Comics was settled the Captain and his crew – like so many other superheroes – disappeared to become fond memories for older fans.

A syndication success, he was missed all over the world. In Britain, where a reprint line had run for many years, creator/publisher Mick Anglo had an avid audience and no product, so transformed Captain Marvel into atomic agent Marvelman, continuing to thrill readers into the 1960s.

Decades later, American comics experienced another superhero boom-&-bust, and the 1970s dawned with a shrinking industry and wide variety of comics genres servicing a base that was increasingly dependent on collectors and fans rather than casual or impulse buyers. National Periodicals/DC Comics needed sales and were prepared to look for them in unusual places.

Since the court settlement with Fawcett in 1953, they had pursued the rights to Captain Marvel and his spin-offs. Now, though the name itself had been claimed by Marvel Comics (via a quirky robot character published by Carl Burgos and M.F. Publications in 1967), the publishing monolith opted to tap into that discriminating if aging fanbase.

In 1973, riding a wave of national nostalgia on TV and movies, DC brought back the entire beloved cast of the Original Captain Marvel crew in their own kinder, weirder universe. To circumvent the intellectual property clash, they named the new title Shazam! (…With One Magic Word…) referencing the memorable trigger phrase used by myriad Formerly Fawcett-Marvels to transform to and from mortal form… a word that had entered the idiom and language due to the success of the franchise the first time around.

He’s been a star in DC’s firmament ever since, but one who’s endured much rejigging, refurbishment and narrative refinement, even if the fundamentals have never varied…

Homeless orphan and thoroughly good kid Billy Batson was selected by an ancient wizard to battle injustice with the powers of six gods/legendary heroes. By speaking aloud the wizard’s name – itself an acronym for the six patrons Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury – Billy would transform from scrawny boy to brawny (adult) warrior Captain Marvel: dispensing justice and mercy with the forgiving grace of an innocent child…

There have been many enjoyable, effective and fittingly contemporary treatments, but perhaps the very best was one fully embracing the original  tone: successfully recapturing the exuberance and charm – albeit layered with a potent veneer of modern menace.

It began with Jerry Ordway’s 1994 re-imagining in an Original Graphic Novel: based as much on the 1941 movie serial as the forceful yet fun comics of Bill Parker, Otto Binder, C.C. Beck, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Pete Costanza and their cohort of creative colleagues…

That groundbreaking yarn and the series it spawned became a thriving, vibrant cornerstone of DC Continuity. This reprint edition combines the OGN and first dozen issues (cover-dated March 1995-February 1996) of that series, each with a lovely painted Ordway cover. Adding to the appeal is a short but sweet contemporary treat from young readers title Superman & Batman Magazine #4, a new Introduction from Ordway and a swathe of extras at the end…

With Ordway doing everything but the lettering (that’s courtesy of John Costanza) the epic reboot opens in Egypt, where archaeologists Charles “CC” Batson and his wife Marilyn lead the prestigious Sivana Expedition in a search for knowledge and antiquities.

That doesn’t precisely fit with orders given to the sponsor’s ruthless representative Theo Adam, who has his own instructions regarding certain treasures. When the Batsons uncover the lost tomb of unknown dignitary “Shazam”, tensions boil over and murder occurs.

The historians had left their son in America with Charles’ brother, but taken their toddler Mary with them. After the bloodshed ends, both she and Adam have vanished without trace.

Some years later Billy Batson is a little boy living on the streets of ultra-modern art deco Fawcett City. His parents had left him with CC’s brother Ebenezer when they went away. When they never returned, the boy was thrown out as his uncle stole his inheritance. No one knows where Billy’s little sister is…

Sleeping in a storm drain, selling newspapers for cash, the indomitable kid is pretty street-savvy, but when a mysterious shadowy stranger who seems comfortingly familiar bids him follow into an eerie subway, Billy just somehow knows it’s okay to comply.

When he meets the wizard Shazam and gains the powers of the ancient Gods and Heroes he knows he has the opportunity to make things right at last. However, he has no conception of the depths evil corporate vulture Thaddeus Sivana can sink to, nor the role mystical exile Black Adam played in the fate of his parents…

Newly empowered by the wizard, Billy turns his life around, adapts to life as an underage superhero and spectacularly brings both murdering Theo Adam and his maniacal boss Sivana to justice whilst defeating his own wicked predecessor, before setting out to confront even greater challenges like finding his lost sister…

This superb and mesmerising retelling led to the most successful comic book revival Captain Marvel has yet experienced. Characters refitted there are potently realistic but the stories offer a young voice and sensibility. Moreover, the pulp adventure atmosphere conjured up by Ordway in conjunction with his sumptuous painted art and spectacular design make for a captivating experience, and his writing has never been more approachable and beguiling.

The author – with penciller Peter Krause & inker Mike Manley – would build on the tale in the series that followed: employing a cunning long-term scheme to adapt classic Golden Age tales to modern tastes under a slick veneer of retro fashion.

Before that though, Ordway, artists Parobeck & Rick Burchett, colourist Glenn Whitmore & Constanza delivered a smart vignette in Superman & Batman Magazine #4. Aimed at introducing the DCU to early readers, the comic saw Billy stumble into a museum robbery by an old enemy before saving ‘The Scarab Necklace’…

Ordway, Krause & Manley then began the long haul – in its own rather staid and timeless corner of the DCU – with The Power of Shazam! #1 as ‘Things Change’. Billy now has a job as an announcer/roving reporter for WHIZ radio and an apartment. He lives there alone, using his alter ego as his live-in “responsible adult” Uncle Eben. Billy has been sporadically mentored by the wizard who has also been fruitlessly seeking Billy’s vanished sister…

Captain Marvel has established himself as the champion of Fawcett City: defeating countless crooks, monsters and even the occasional supervillain.

A new chapter begins when one of them – IBAC – literally crashes the launch of a new Wayne-Tech facility sponsored by property speculator Sinclair Batson. The shallow sleazeball is apparently the son and heir of the real Ebeneezer Batson, but neither Billy or anyone else has ever heard of him…

Late for school again, the cousins unknowingly “meet” when the Big Red Cheese pulls Sinclair out of the skyscraper’s razed rubble. Always ready to schmooze, the speculator “rewards” the hero with an invitation to his next high society soiree…

Elsewhere, concerned school custodian Dudley H. Dudley has deduced Billy lives alone. He tries to help the scrappy little guy, interceding whenever head teacher Miss Wormwood targets the lad for “special attention”. Billy is baffled but grateful, yet has bigger problems, like IBAC and a scheming female racketeer with a hidden agenda and unknown powers…

Never one to miss a free meal, Billy attends the party as his older self: taking the opportunity to assess just what he’s missing in the mansion he grew up in and which should by rights be his. It’s an uncomfortable experience. When not fending off distant relatives who all recognise him somehow (Marvel is the spitting image of dead CC Batson) he’s being not-so-subtly hit on by ultraglamorous vamp Beautia Sivana. Thus it’s actually a relief when the wizard summons him to the Rock of Eternity to chastise him for misusing his abilities…

The confrontation is acrimonious and ends with Billy being stripped of his gifts and sent back to Earth… just as the Batson mansion goes up in flames, trapping everyone inside!

A vision of Hell ruled by demon queen Lady Blaze briefly paralyses the boy before Billy finds a way to get all the rich folk out, but in the aftermath the juvenile journalist pokes around and discovers a connection between embezzling Ebeneezer and mystic pyromaniac ‘The Arson Fiend’. Thankfully, Shazam is monitoring, and returns Billy’s powers when the flaming fury goes after the boy…

IBAC returns in TPoS! #3 as the Captain saves undercover cop Muscles McGinnis, before ‘Lost and Found!’ sees the lost sister subplot advanced by the introduction of rich Mary Bromfield. She’s a competitor in a Spelling Bee compered by Billy for WHIZ – as is perfect jock Freddy Freeman: another kid who will have a momentous impact on Batson’s life…

When adopted Mary and her devoted nanny Sarah Primm are kidnapped, super-thug IBAC again battles our hero, and the wizard realises the child he’s been searching for was under his nose all along. Moreover, if he couldn’t see her, who or what has been frustrating his efforts?

In ‘Family Values’ a staged fight between Cap and McGinnis magnifies the secret cop’s underworld standing whilst covertly providing proof of Mary’s identity. Billy then has a chat with her favourite doll as stuffed toy Mr. Tawky Tawny comes to life and joins the cast. By now, the boy takes weird happenings in his stride, but is still rattled enough to inadvertently reveal his secret identity to “Uncle Dudley”. Billy assumes the tiger’s animation was Shazam’s doing, but he couldn’t be more wrong…

When Tawky Tawny manifests to Mary, his urgings result in her saying “Shazam!” and transforming into an adult superhero in time to thrash the returned kidnappers. Tragically it’s not enough to save Nanny Primm, whose deathbed confession reveals her as Theo Adam’s sister, as well as her part in getting baby Mary back to the USA after the Batsons died…

Enraged and vengeful “Mary Marvel” goes after Adam – struck dumb by the wizard ever since he was briefly possessed by Black Adam – before regaining her composure. She then stumbles into a riot sparked by a mind-bending neo-Nazi as ‘Madame Libertine Strikes!’

In Hell, guilt-wracked Sarah Primm is being tortured by upstart Lady Blaze as part of a byzantine plot to rule all, which also includes Libertine. Escaping the justifiably angry superwoman, the racist killer returns to her grandfather’s laboratory just as he cracks open a suspended animation capsule that has kept a WWII terror alive for half a century…

As Billy and Mary are summoned to the Rock of Eternity to learn that the gifts of the gods are finite and when both use them at once their power halves, Fawcett City trembles at ‘The Return of Captain Nazi!’ As McGinnis meets the racket boss and accidentally gleans her horrific secret, the Aryan atrocity goes on a rampage. Clashing with Captain Marvel whilst robbing a bank, Nazi grievously injures Freddy Freeman and his grandfather, prompting Mary (who has a far more instinctive and effective grasp of the magic) to suggest that she and Billy further share it…

Freddy regains a modicum of health in ‘The Balance of Power’ as he also becomes a superhero: tapping into the Shazam force as Captain Marvel Junior, but his desire for revenge and rebellious nature make his a volatile ally at best…

Insight into the oddly timeless nature of Fawcett City comes in ‘After the Fall…’ (with additional art by Curt Swan) as Golden Age greats Bullet-Man, Minute-Man and Spy Smasher appear in a telling flashback detailing their last battle with Captain Nazi, and hinting at the Übermensch’s unfinished business today. The veteran heroes are still robust and spry in modern times and offer useful hints to reporter Billy, whose investigations mean he’s not around to stop the Aryan busting Theo Adam out of custody, or vengeance-mad Freddy going after them both. Worst of all with Mary powered up and soon joined by Captain Marvel, none of them are strong enough to stop the villains. With Blaze moving all her pawns into place, Captain Nazi finally completes his 50-year delayed mission, but learns that time is ruthless and unforgiving…

As the Marvels converge on the despondent fanatic and combine ‘…The Power of Shazam!’, Blaze strikes the Rock of Eternity, using a restored Black Adam to capture the wizard and drag him to Hell. For good measure, she also liberates humankind’s most pernicious spiritual predators and unleashes them to Earth…

Adam joins them there and – with the wizard gone – neither Mary nor Freddy can change back and surrender their portion of the power to Billy. The twisted nemesis savagely beats Captain Marvel: breaking limbs and leaving him near-death. As the Underworld Unleashed event impinges on these stories, Lady Blaze reveals her shocking connection to Shazam as ‘In the Beginning…’ (with additional art by Ordway) explores the origins of the wizard and all superheroes on Earth…

With the Demon Queen’s plans revealed and ultimate universal horror The Three Faces of Evil almost liberated, Tawny’s true nature is exposed, Earthbound Mary gathers allies for the final battle and the greatest sorcerer of all time is revived to join the fray…

With additional pencilling by Swan, ‘The Seven Deadly Enemies of Man’ pits a valiant team of veteran Fawcett champions against the infernal antagonists before charging off to face Blaze, with Black Adam’s pivotal power vacillating between destroying despised heroes and saving his sister Sarah from Hell…

With writer Ordway again joining Krause & Manley on illumination, it all thunders to a cataclysmic climax in ‘End Game’, as the heroes plunge into Hell, the truth about CC Batson and Fawcett City come to light and Shazam details the true extent of his manipulations of the city and its most valiant citizens. With order restored, the Marvels return just in time to expose the truth about Sinclair Batson and presage the appearance of possibly their greatest and most bizarre adversary…

A breathtaking joy from beginning to end, this superhero saga closes with those promised extras: a bevy of bonuses for everyone interested in how magic is made. These include author commentary, preliminary pencils and finished cover art for The Power of Shazam! OGN and trade paperback collection, the art deco-inspired retail poster and Ordway’s original story notes and preliminary pencils for TPoS! #8.

Much like the modern movie iteration, these comic classics triumph by remembering that fun is as important as thrills or action, and everything works best when three become one…
© 1994, 1995, 1996, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents Doom Patrol volume 2


By Arnold Drake, Bruno Premiani, Bob Brown & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-85768-077-8 (TPB)

In 1963 DC/National Comics converted a venerable anthology-mystery title – My Greatest Adventure – into a fringe superhero team-book with #80, introducing a startling squad of champions with their thematic roots still firmly planted in the B-movie monster films of the era which had for so long informed the tone and timbre of the parent title.

That aesthetic subtly shaped the progression of the strip – which took control of the title within months, prompting a title change to The Doom Patrol with #86 – and throughout a 6-year run made the series one of the most eerily innovative and incessantly hip reads of that generation. Happy 60th Anniversary, you “Fabulous Freaks”!

No traditional team of masked adventurers, the cast comprised a robot, a mummy and a 50-foot woman in a mini-skirt, united with and guided by a brusque, domineering, crippled mad scientist, all equally determined to prove themselves by fighting injustice their way…

Two relatively recent compilations are still awaiting a third and final edition to complete the reprint run, and this monochrome tome from 2010 might have to do for some time yet.

Should you be afflicted with the curse of a completist nature, Doom Patrol: The Silver Age volume 1 spans June 1963 to May 1965, re-presenting in full colour My Greatest Adventure #80-85 and Doom Patrol #86-95, whilst Doom Patrol: The Silver Age volume 2 covers June 1965-November 1966 via Doom Patrol #96-107, The Brave and the Bold #65 and Challengers of the Unknown #48. They’re both available digitally, but should you want a comprehensive read-through, that’s going to take a little more effort than we spoiled 21st Centurians are used to…

Spanning March 1966 to their radically bold demise in the September/October 1968 final issue, this quirky monochrome compilation collects their last exploits as seen in Doom Patrol #102 to 121: a landmark run that truly deserves better dissemination…

These creepy Costumed Dramas were especially enhanced by the superb skills of Italian artist Giordano Bruno Premiani, whose comfortably detailed, subtly representational illustration style made even the strangest situation frighteningly authentic and grimly believable.

As such, he was the perfect vehicle to squeeze every nuance of comedy and pathos from the captivatingly involved and grimly light-hearted scripts by Arnold Drake who always proffered a tantalising believably world for the outcast heroes to strive in.

Those damaged champions comprised competitive car racer Cliff Steele, but only after he’d had “died” in a horrific crash, with his undamaged brain transplanted into a fantastic mechanical body – without his knowledge or permission…

Test pilot Larry Trainor was trapped in an experimental stratospheric plane and become permanently radioactive, with the dubious benefit of gaining a semi-sentient energy avatar which could escape his body to perform incredible stunts …for up to a minute at a time. To pass safely amongst men, Trainor had to be perpetually wrapped in radiation-proof bandages.

Former movie star Rita Farr was exposed to mysterious gases on location. These gave her the unpredictable, initially uncontrolled ability to shrink or grow – in part or wholly – to incredible sizes.

The outcasts were brought together by brilliant, enigmatic Renaissance Man Niles Caulder who, as The Chief, sought to mould the solitary misfits into a force for good. The wheelchair-bound savant directed the trio of solitary strangers in many terrifying missions as they slowly grew into a uniquely bonded family…

Here – now firmly established in the heroic pantheon – The Doom Patrol join fellow outsiders The Challengers of the Unknown in #102’s ‘8 Against Eternity!’: battling murderous shape-shifter Multi-Man and his robotic allies as they seek to unleash a horde of zombies from a lost world upon modern humanity

Meanwhile, super-rich Steve Dayton – who had created a psycho-kinetic superhero persona Mento solely to woo and wed Rita, met outrageous, obnoxious Gar Logan. It was disgust at first sight, but neither the ruthless, driven billionaire authority figure nor wildly rebellious Beast Boy realised how their lives would soon entwine…

Whilst a toddler in Africa, Logan had contracted a rare disease. Although his scientist parents’ experimental cure beat the contagion before they died, it left him the colour of cabbage and able to change shape at will. A protracted storyline commenced in #100 wherein the secretive, chameleonic kid revealed how he was now an abused orphan being swindled out of his inheritance by his unscrupulous guardian Nicholas Galtry. The greedy, conniving accountant had even leased his emerald-hued charge to rogue scientists…

Rita especially had empathised with Gar’s plight and resolved to free him from Galtry whatever the cost…

DP #103 held two tales, beginning with a tragedy ensuing after Professor Randolph Ormsby sought the team’s aid for a space shot. When the doddery savant mutates into flaming monster ‘The Meteor Man’ it takes the entire patrol plus Beast Boy and Mento to save the day.

‘No Home for a Robot’, continues unpacking the Mechanical Man’s early days following Caulder’s implantation of Cliff’s brain into an artificial body. The shock had seemingly driven the patient crazy as Steele went on a city-wide rampage, hunted and hounded by the police. Here, the ferrous fugitive finds brief respite with his brother Randy, before realising that trouble would trail him anywhere…

DP #104 astounded everyone as Rita abruptly stopped refusing loathsome Steve to become ‘The Bride of the Doom Patrol!’ However, her star-stuffed wedding day is almost ruined when alien arch-foe Garguax and The Brotherhood of Evil crash the party to murder the groom. So unhappy are Cliff and Larry with Rita’s “betrayal” that they almost let them…

Even whilst indulging her new bride status in #105, Rita can’t abandon the team and joins them in tackling old elemental enemy Mr. 103 during a ‘Honeymoon of Terror!’ before back-up yarn ‘The Robot-Maker Must Die’ concludes Cliff Steele’s origin as the renegade attempts to kill the mystery surgeon who had imprisoned him in a metal hell… finally giving Caulder a chance to fix a long-term malfunction in Steele’s systems…

‘Blood Brothers!’ in #106 introduces domestic disharmony as Rita steadfastly refuses to be a good trophy wife: resuming the hunt for Mr. 103 with the rest of the DP. Her separate lives continue to intersect, however, when Galtry hires that elemental assassin to wipe Gar and his freakish allies off the books…

The back-up section shifts focus onto ‘The Private World of Negative Man’: recapitulating Larry Trainor’s doomed flight and the radioactive close encounter that turned him into a walking mummy. However, even after being allowed to walk amongst men again, the gregarious pilot finds himself utterly isolated and alone…

Doom Patrol #107 began an epic story-arc concerning ‘The War over Beast Boy!’ as Rita and Steve open legal proceedings to get Gar and his money away from Galtry. The embezzler responds by commencing a criminal campaign to beggar Dayton which inadvertently aligns him with the team’s greatest foes. Already distracted by the depredations of marauding automaton Ultimax, the hard-pressed heroes swiftly fall to the murderous mechanoid as Rita is banished to a barbaric sub-atomic universe…

The secret history of Negative Man resumes with ‘The Race Against Dr. Death!’ when fellow self-imposed outcast Dr. Drew draws the pilot into a scheme to destroy the human species which had cruelly excluded them both, before Larry’s ebony energy being demonstrates the incredible power it possesses by saving the world from fiery doom.

In #108, ‘Kid Disaster!’ sees Mento diminished and despatched to rescue Rita whilst Galtry’s allies reveal their true nature before ambushing and killing the entire team…

…Almost.

Despite only Caulder and Beast Boy remaining, our exceedingly odd couple nevertheless pull off a major medical miracle: reviving the heroes in time to endure the incredible attack of alien colossus ‘Mandred the Executioner!’ whilst Larry’s ‘Flight into Fear’ at the comic’s rear proves that Drew hasn’t finished with the itinerant Negative Man yet…

DP #110 wonderfully wraps up the Beast Boy saga as Galtry, Mandred and the Brotherhood marshal one last futile attack before the ‘Trial by Terror!’ finally finds Logan legally adopted by newlyweds Mr. and Mrs. Dayton. Sadly, it’s a prelude to a titanic extraterrestrial invasion in #111, which heralds the arrival of ‘Zarox-13, Emperor of the Cosmos!’

The awesome overlord and his vanguard Garguax make short work of the Fabulous Freaks and, with all Earth imperilled, an unbelievable alliance forms, but not before ‘Neg Man’s Last Road!’ ends Trainor’s tale as the alienated aviator again battles Dr. Death, before joining a band of fellow outcasts in a bold new team venture…

Unbelievably, the uneasy alliance of the DP with The Brain, Monsieur Mallah and Madame Rouge as ‘Brothers in Blood!’ in #112 results in no betrayals and the last-minute defeat of the invincible aliens.

Moreover, although no rivalries were reconciled, a hint of romance does develop between two of the sworn foes, whilst at the back, untold tales of Beast Boy begin as ‘Waif of the Wilderness’ introduces millionaire doctors Mark and Marie Logan whose passion for charity took them to deepest Africa and into the sights of native witch-man Mobu who saw his powerbase crumbling…

When their toddler Gar contracts dread disease Sakutia, the parents’ radical treatment saves their child and grants him metamorphic abilities, but as they subsequently lose their lives in a river accident, the baby boy cannot understand their plight and blithely watches them die.

Orphaned and lonely, he inadvertently saves the life of a local chief with his animal antics and is adopted, …making of Mobu an implacable, impatient enemy…

Doom Patrol #113 pits the team against a malevolent mechanoid one-man army in ‘Who Dares to Challenge the Arsenal?’ but the real drama manifests in a subplot showing Caulder seeking to seduce schizophrenic Rouge away from the lure of wickedness and malign influence of the Brotherhood of Evil.

The issue includes another Beast Boy short as ‘The Diamonds of Destiny!’ finds two thieves kidnapping the amazing boy, just as concerned executor Nicholas Galtry takes ship for the Dark Continent to find the heir to his deceased employer’s millions…

DP #114 opens with the team aiding Soviet asylum seeker Anton Koravyk and becoming embroiled in a time-twisting fight against incredible caveman ‘Kor – the Conqueror!’ whilst Beast Boy segment ‘The Kid who was King of Crooks!’ sees toddler Gar turned into a thief in Johannesburg… until his Fagin-ish abductors have a fatal falling out…

The next issue debuts ‘The Mutant Master!’: pitting the team against three hideous, incomprehensibly powerful atomic atrocities resolved to eradicate the world which had cruelly treated them. Things might have fared better had not the Chief neglected his comrades in his obsessive – and at last successful – pursuit of Madame Rouge…

Also included is ‘General Beast Boy – of the Ape Brigade!’, wherein a Nazi war criminal is accidentally foiled by lost wanderer Gar. The madman’s loss is Galtry’s gain, however, as his search ends with the crook “rescuing” Logan and taking him back to safe, secure America…

The mutant maelstrom concludes in #116 as ‘Two to Get Ready… and Three to Die!’ features Caulder saving Earth from mutant-triggered obliteration to reap his reward in a passionate fling with the cured – but still fragile – Rouge.

The wheelchair wonder seizes centre stage in #117 as his neglect drives the team away, leaving him vulnerable to attack from a mystery man with a big grudge in ‘The Black Vulture!’, before a reunited squad deals with grotesque madman ‘Videx, Monarch of Light!’ even as the Brain challenges Caulder to return his stolen chattel Rouge. Nobody thought to ask her what she wanted, though, and that’s a fatal oversight…

Tastes were changing in the turbulent late 1960s and the series was in trouble. Superheroes were about to plunge into mass decline, and the creators addressed the problem head-on in #119: embracing psychedelic counter culture in a clever tale of supernal power, brainwashing and behaviour modification leaving the DP cowering ‘In the Shadow of the Great Guru!’…

An issue later they faced a furious Luddite’s ‘Rage of the Wrecker!’ when a crazed scientist declares war on technology – including the assorted bodies keeping Cliff alive…

The then-unthinkable occurred next and the series spectacularly, abruptly ended with what we all believed at the time to be ‘The Death of the Doom Patrol!’…

Faced with cancellation, Editor Murray Boltinoff and creators Drake & Premiani wrapped up all the long-running plot threads as spurned Madame Rouge goes off the deep end and declares war on both the Brain and Caulder’s “children”…

Blowing up the Brotherhood, she attacks the city until the DP remove themselves to an isolated island fortress. Even there they are not safe and her forces ambush them…

Captured and facing death, Rouge offers mercy if they abandon their principles and allow her to destroy a village of 14 complete strangers in their stead…

At a time when comics came and went with no fanfare and cancelled titles seldom provided any closure, the sacrifice and death of the Doom Patrol was a shocking event for us youngsters. We wouldn’t see anything like it again for decades – and never again with such style and impact…

With the edge of time and experience on my side, it’s obvious just how incredibly mature Drake & Premiani’s take on superheroes was, and these superbly engaging, frenetically fun and breathtakingly beautiful stories rightfully rank amongst the very best Fights ‘n’ Tights tales ever told.

Even the mercilessly exploitative many returns of the team since can’t diminish that incredible impact, and no fan of the genre or comic dramas in general should consider their superhero education complete until they’ve seen these classics. Let’s hope DC wise up quickly and release that final volume soon…
© 1966, 1967, 1968, 2010 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.