Category: Adventure

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Spirou and Fantasio volume 7: The Rhinoceros’ Horn


By André Franquin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-224-9

Spirou (whose name translates as both “squirrel” and “mischievous” in the Walloon language) was created by French cartoonist François Robert Velter under the pen-name Rob-Vel for Belgian publisher Éditions Dupuis in response to the phenomenal success of Hergé’s Tintin for rival outfit Casterman.

The legendary title was launched on April 21st 1938 with a rival red-headed lad as the lead of an anthology weekly comic which bears his name to this day.

The character began life as a plucky bellboy/lift operator employed by the Moustique Hotel (a reference to publisher’s premier periodical Le Moustique) whose improbable adventures with his pet squirrel Spip eventually evolved into high-flying surreal comedy dramas.

Spirou and his associates have spearheaded the magazine for most of its life, with a phalanx of truly impressive creators carrying on Velter’s work, beginning with his wife Blanche “Davine” Dumoulin who took over the strip when her husband enlisted in 1939.

She was assisted by Belgian artist Luc Lafnet until 1943 when Dupuis purchased all rights to the feature, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (“Jijé”) took the helm.

In 1946 Jijé‘s assistant André Franquin assumed the reins, gradually sidelining the short, gag-like vignettes in favour of longer epic adventure serials, introducing a wide and engaging cast of regulars and eventually creating a phenomenally popular magic animal dubbed Marsupilami to the mix (first seen in Spirou et les héritiers in 1952 and now a spin-off star of screen, plush toy store, console games and albums all his own).

He crafted increasingly fantastic tales and absorbing Spirou sagas until he resigned in 1969.

He was succeeded by Jean-Claude Fournier who updated the feature over the course of nine stirring adventures which tapped into the rebellious, relevant zeitgeist of the times with tales of environmental concern, nuclear energy, drug cartels and repressive regimes.

By the 1980s the series seemed outdated and without direction: three different creative teams alternated on the feature, until it was at last revitalised by Philippe Vandevelde – writing as Tome – and artist Jean-Richard Geurts AKA Janry, who adapted, referenced and in many ways returned to the beloved Franquin era. Their sterling efforts consequently revived the floundering feature’s fortunes and resulted in fourteen wonderful albums between 1984 and 1998.

As the strip diversified into parallel strands (Spirou’s Childhood/Little Spirou and guest-creator specials A Spirou Story By…) the team on the main vehicle were succeeded by Jean-David Morvan & José-Luis Munuera, and in 2010 Yoann & Vehlmann took over the never-ending procession of amazing adventures…

Cinebook have been publishing Spirou & Fantasio’s exploits since October 2009, mainly translating Tome & Janry’s superb pastiche/homages of Franquin, but for the fifth episode (The Marsupilami Thieves), they reached all the way back to 1952 and the second appearance of the adorable wonder-beast by the great man himself.

With that brave experiment clearly having paid dividends they repeated the experiment here, but with times and taste having changed so radically felt the need to issue a heartfelt warning and carefully considered apologia regarding some content of The Rhinoceros’ Horn…

I’ll précis it here: it was sixty years ago and our attitudes to hunting, minorities and especially the modern obscenity of killing for ivory and horn have thankfully changed. Please read this book with that in mind. The publishers, of course, phrased it much better…

André Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd 1924. Drawing from an early age, the lad only began formal art training at École Saint-Luc in 1943. When the war forced the school to close a year later, he found animation work at Compagnie Belge d’Animation in Brussels where he met Maurice de Bevere (Lucky Luke creator “Morris”), Pierre Culliford (Peyo, creator of The Smurfs) and Eddy Paape (Valhardi, Luc Orient).

In 1945 all but Peyo signed on with Dupuis, and Franquin began his career as a jobbing cartoonist and illustrator, producing covers for Le Moustique and scouting magazine Plein Jeu.

All during those early days Franquin and Morris were being tutored by Jijé who was the main illustrator at Spirou. He turned the youngsters and fellow neophyte Willy Maltaite AKA Will (Tif et Tondu, Isabelle, Le jardin des désirs) into a perfect creative bullpen known as the La bande des quatre or “Gang of Four” who revolutionised Belgian comics with their prolific and engaging “Marcinelle school” style of graphic storytelling.

Jijé handed Franquin all responsibilities for the flagship strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriquée, (Spirou #427, June 20th 1946) and the lad ran with it for two decades, enlarging the scope and horizons until it became purely his own.

Almost every week fans would meet startling new characters such as comrade and rival Fantasio and crackpot inventor the Count of Champignac. Along the way Spirou and Fantasio became globe-trotting journalists, continuing their exploits in unbroken four-colour glory.

The heroes travelled to exotic places, uncovering crimes, revealing the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of exotic arch-enemies such as Zorglub and Zantafio. This particular tale saw the debut of one of the first strong, capable female characters in European comics; rival journalist Seccotine (renamed Cellophine for this translation).

In a splendid example of good practise, Franquin mentored his own band of apprentice cartoonists during the 1950s. These included Jean Roba (La Ribambelle, Boule et Bill), Jidéhem (Sophie, Starter, Gaston Lagaffe) and Greg (Bruno Brazil, Bernard Prince, Achille Talon, Zig et Puce), who all worked with him on Spirou et Fantasio.

In 1955 Рaround the time this story was collected into an album Рcontractual conflicts with Dupuis forced Franquin to sign up with rival outfit Casterman on Tintin. Here he collaborated with Ren̩ Goscinny and old pal Peyo whilst creating the raucous gag strip Modeste et Pompon.

He soon patched things up with Dupuis and returned to Spirou, subsequently co-creating Gaston Lagaffe in 1957, but was obliged to carry on his Tintin work too…

From 1959 on, writer Greg and background artist Jidéhem assisted Franquin but by 1969 the artist had reached his Spirou limit and resigned, taking his mystic Marsupilami with him…

His later creations include fantasy series Isabelle, illustration sequence Monsters and bleak adult conceptual series Id̩es Noires, but his greatest creation Рand one he retained all rights to on his departure Рis Marsupilami.

Franquin, plagued in later life by bouts of depression, passed away on January 5th 1997 but his legacy remains, a vast body of work that reshaped the landscape of European comics.

The Rhinoceros’ Horn was originally serialised in two sequences in Spirou: #764-787 (Spirou et la Turbotraction) and #788-797(La corne de rhinocéros), spanning late 1952 and early 1953 before being united in hardback album La corne de rhinocéros in 1955.

The story begins with Spirou exulting over the success of Fantasio’s latest enterprise – personal helicopters worn as backpacks – but his pal is rather down in the dumps. He’s just been dressed down by his editor on The Mosquito and warned that the paper has hired a new reporter: a real go-getting hotshot…

Dejected and desperate Fantasio determines to revive his career by staging a publicity stunt: robbing the Good Bazaar Department Store…

As the rattled reporter draws up his plans and sends a warning to the store of his intentions, a colossal explosion shakes the town. Persons unknown have blown up the nearby Turbot car plant. With even more to prove now, Fantasio proceeds…

Dragged along for the ride to photograph the stunt, Spirou and Spip reluctantly join their pal in the hare-brained venture. Landing on the roof of the emporium courtesy of the petrol-powered “Fantacopters”, they deftly break in through the fire-door, Spirou recording everything with his gigantic flash camera.

Typically the lead-footed burglars make an appalling clatter and tremendous mess but no night-watchmen confront them. They’ve all been incapacitated and tied up by real robbers…

Hearing the villains approach, the lads take refuge in a wardrobe in the bedrooms department and discover an old acquaintance already there. Behring works for Turbot and was wounded in the explosion earlier. Moreover, he’s carrying blueprints for the company’s latest advancement and the burglars in the darkened store are actually bandits trying to finish him off to get them…

Handing the boys an envelope and begging them to get it to his employer Mr. Martin, the troubleshooter loses consciousness just as the nervous heroes are challenged by a shadowy figure demanding the precious prize. It’s not the bad guys however, but Fantasio’s new journalistic nemesis…

Cellophine is already streets ahead of them: she knows of the plot to steal Turbot’s revolutionary supercar. All she needs is the address Behring muttered to secure an interview with the in-hiding Martin and her next terrific scoop…

And that’s when the gun-toting bandits make their move, demanding blueprints and rendezvous address. Thankfully Spirou is still holding the camera and super-bright flashgun…

Hilariously and calamitously fleeing for their lives through the darkened store, the boys eventually make their escape via fantacopters from the top storey, allowing Cellophine to lock the bandits up on the roof before dragging Behring to safety.

The next morning the boys are in Whistleton but Martin has already fled. His note reveals nothing, but later a sinister stranger in a café advises them to surrender the blueprints and warns them not to join Martin in Bab-el-bled in North Africa.

Ignoring him and returning home, they encounter the distressingly persistent Cellophine and Spirou clues her in. Sadly the thugs have tracked them down and overhear the plans. When the boys catch a jet liner to Africa, the heavily disguised heavies are in the seats behind them…

They villains are on their tails all though the streets of Bab-el-bled, but a wig malfunction in the Souk warns Spirou they’re being followed and another hectic chase ensues.

Thinking they’ve at last shaken their pursuers our heroes go to Martin’s house only to learn he was ambushed by the bandits…

Happily the troubled Turbot exec escaped and fled further into North Africa. He’s rushing off to the M’saragba Animal Reservation but as the boys try to follow Cellophine appears and pips them to the last spot on the plane – stowed away in the baggage hold…

Forced to follow by train, it is eight days later when Fantasio and Spirou finally reach the Reserve and yet again – as the infinitely annoying Cellophine explains – they’ve just missed Martin. He was chased into the bush by the implacable bandits…

The youngsters go after him and, later that afternoon, find him just after the thugs do. Having shot Martin, the villains are smugly gloating when the sinister stranger from the café in Whistleton appears. He’s a cop and finally has enough evidence to arrest them for blowing up the factory…

They are all too late. The harassed entrepreneur has already got rid of his portion of the plans, giving them to a native friend to hide.

As Martin is carried to hospital, Spirou and Fantasio volunteer to retrieve the accursed documents but they have not reckoned on the quirky ingenuity of the chief of the Wakukus, the vastness of the reserve and the sheer bloody-mindedness of the local flora and fauna.

After days of unpleasant and painful adventures they finally locate the tribe and, following even more nerve-wracking moments convince the chief that they too are friends of Martin. That’s when the king delivers his bombshell.

Tasked with keeping safe the plans – now contained on a spool of microfilm – the wily Wakuku had his men capture a live rhino before drilling a hole in its horn and sealing the container within. He then released it back into the wild. He has no idea where it is now or even which of the 200 in the park it might be…

Determined to complete their mission, the lads spend months tracking and capturing the assorted beasts. The task becomes only slightly easier after they find a dipsomaniac white trader who sells them hunting gear and latterly, yellow paint so that they can tell the rhinos they’ve already checked from the ones so cunningly evading them…

It’s a backbreaking, heartbreaking and increasingly pointless task but only when their resolve crumbles and they brokenly give up and head for home do they find the prize in the very last place they looked…

Even the trip back is a tribulation, and eventually they collapse only to awake in a nice clean hospital with Martin and Cellophine offering to fill in the blanks on this baffling case…

Six weeks later the lads are recuperating at home when Behring shows up. He’s got a little reward for them from the grateful Turbot Company but, as usual, Cellophine is on hand to spoil it for Fantasio…

Stuffed with superb slapstick situations, riotous keystone kops chases and gallons of gags, this exuberant yarn is a true celebration of angst-free action, thrills and spills. Easily accessible to readers of all ages and drawn with all the beguiling style and seductively wholesome élan which makes Asterix, Lucky Luke, The Bluecoats and Iznogoud so compelling, this is another enduring comics treat from a long line of superb exploits, certain to be as much a household name as those series – and even that other kid with the white dog…
Original edition © Dupuis, 1955 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation 2014 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Hurricane Isle: The Best of Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs


By Roy Crane, edited by Rick Norwood (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-809-0

Modern comics evolved from newspaper cartoons and comic strips, and these pictorial features were until relatively recently utterly ubiquitous and hugely popular with the public. They were also highly valued by publishers who used them as an irresistible sales weapon to guarantee and increase circulation and profits.

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

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

Washington Tubbs II was a comedic gag-a-day strip not much different from family favourite Harold Teen (by Crane’s friend and contemporary Carl Ed). Tubbs was a diminutive, ambitious and bumbling young store clerk when the feature debuted on April 21st 1924, but after only three months Crane re-evaluated his little enterprise and made a few changes which would reshape the entire art form.

Having Wash run away to the circus (Crane did much the same in the name of research) the artist gradually moved the strip into mock-heroics, then through a period of gently boisterous action romps to become a full-blown, light-hearted, rip-roaring adventure series. It was the first of its kind and dictated the form for decades thereafter. Crane then sealed its immortality with the introduction of prototype he-man and ancestral moody swashbuckler Captain Easy in the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929.

As the tales gradually became more exotic and thrill-packed, the globe-trotting little dynamo clearly needed a sidekick and sounding board. After a few bright and breezy types were tried and discarded, Crane decided on one who could believably handle the combat side of things, and thus in the middle of a European war, in the fairytale kingdom of Kandelabra, Tubbs liberated a mysterious fellow American from a cell and history was made.

Before long the mismatched pair were inseparable; tried-and-true travelling companions hunting treasure, fighting thugs and rescuing a bevy of startlingly comely damsels in distress…

The bluff, two-fisted, completely capable and utterly dependable, down-on-his-luck “Southern Gentleman” was something not seen before in comics: a taciturn, raw, square-jawed hunk played completely straight rather than the previously popular buffoon or music hall foil seen in such classic serials as Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond.

Moreover Crane’s seductively simple blend of cartoon exuberance and design was a far more accessible and powerful medium for action story-telling than the somewhat static illustrative style favoured by artists like Hal Foster: just beginning to make waves on the new Tarzan Sunday page at this time.

Tubbs and Easy were as exotic and thrilling as the Ape Man but rattled along like the tempestuous Popeye, full of vim, vigour and vinegar, as attested to by a close look at the early work of the would-be cartoonists who followed the strip with avid intensity.

Floyd Gottfredson, Milton Caniff, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and especially young Joe Shuster were eager fans taking notes and following suit…

After a couple of abortive attempts starring his little hero, Crane eventually bowed to the inevitable and created a full colour Sunday page dedicated solely to his increasingly popular hero-for-hire. Captain Easy debuted on 30th July 1933, in wild and woolly escapades set before his fateful meeting with Tubbs.

Both together and separately, reprinted exploits of these troubleshooters became staples of the earliest comic books (specifically The Funnies from October 1936 and The Comics, March 1937 onwards).

With an entire page and vibrant colours to play with, Crane’s imagination ran wild and his fabulous visual concoctions achieved a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The effect of the pages can be seen in so many strips since, especially the works of such near-contemporaries as Hergé and giants in waiting like Charles Schulz. They have all been collected in the four-volume Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips.

Those pages were a clearly as much of a joy to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA Syndicate’s abruptly and arbitrarily demanding that all its strips be henceforward produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate them being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated. Crane just walked away, concentrating on the daily feature. In 1943 he quit NEA to create the wartime aviator strip Buz Sawyer, and Turner became the able custodian of the heroes’ fate.

Wash Tubbs ran until January 10th 1988.

Before all that however Wash was the affable and undisputed star of a never-ending parade of riotous daily black and white escapades and this superb hardback opens with two of them: part of a cherry-picked compilation of ten of the very best adventures of the bombastic buddies. Hopefully if this book is a hit it will lead to another complete reprinting such as the 18-volume series covering the entirety of the Wash Tubbs run – 1934-1943 and published by NBM from 1987-1992…

Before the non-stop nonsense begins author and pre-eminent comic strip historian Ron Goulart details all you need to know about the tales in ‘A History of Lickety Whop’ and editor Rick Norwood provides further background information in his copiously illustrated Introduction’ after which we’re all plunged into astounding adventure on ‘Hurricane Isle’ (which originally ran daily from February 23rd to June 6th 1928)…

At this time Wash and fellow inveterate fortune-hunter Gozy Gallup are gloating over securing an ancient map which once belonged to the dread pirate Edward Teach AKA Blackbeard!

As they research the infamous buccaneer and scrabble to find a ship to take them to their destination, they are unaware that aggrieved enemy Brick Bane – the Bandit King of Mexico – is hard on their trail and hungry for revenge. Stalking them as they journey from New Orleans to the Caribbean, he takes a nasty sea captain into his confidence and arranges for the sinister salt to hire out his ship to the treasure seekers. The skipper is unsavoury brute Bull Dawson: destined to become Tubbs’ – and later Easy’s – greatest and most implacable foe…

After travelling to the island with them Dawson, having already removed Bane, springs his trap and turns Wash and Gozy into enslaved labourers, digging with the crew to find the fabled horde. The lads soon rebel and escape into the jungle to search on their own, and also abortively attempt to steal Dawson’s ship.

The wily brute is always too much for them however and even after the boys finally locate the loot, the malicious mariner reappears to take it from them. The sadistic swine is preparing to maroon them when Bane shows up with a ship full of his Mexican bandits and a shooting war breaks out…

With bullets flying and bodies dropping, Wash and Gozy convince affable deckhand Samson to switch sides and the trio take off for civilisation with the treasure in the hold…

Money comes and goes pretty freely for these guys but by the time ‘Arabia’ (July 30th – December 12th 1928) begins they are still pretty flush and so opt for a luxurious Mediterranean cruise. Unfortunately Wash’s propensity for clumsy gaffes raises the ire of a very nasty sheik named Abdul Hoozit Hudson Bey and the affronted potentate swears vengeance when the ship docks in Tunis.

As if icing fate’s cake, when wandering through the bazaar Wash is glamoured by a pair of gorgeous eyes and inadvertently seals his doom by attempting to rescue a girl from a seraglio: Jada is not only a distressed damsel but Bey’s favourite wife…

Heeding the French authorities’ advice to leave town quickly, the lads take off on a camel caravan into the Sahara but have no idea they are heading into cunning Bey’s trap…

The fact that Jada is the favourite of the incensed chieftain saves them temporarily, but when the sheik finally finds a way to surreptitiously assassinate them, she and her devoted slave Bola dash into the deep desert to save them, and the quartet strike out for safety and freedom together.

That trek dumps them in the clutches of Bey’s great rival Abdullah Bumfellah and leads to a tribal shooting war. Happily Bola has been busy and found a Foreign Legion patrol to save the day.

And that’s when Jada drops her bombshell. She is actually a princess from a European principality, sold to Bey by her father’s Grand Vizier so that he could steal the throne. Now that she’s free again she must return to liberate her poor people. Despite having to get back to America, Wash won’t shut up about wishing he’d gone with her…

He soon gets the chance as ‘Kandelabra’ (April 11th – July 6th 1929) became the most significant sequence in the strip’s history; introducing Captain Easy in a riotous, rousing Ruritanian epic which we join after Wash reunites with Jada in the postage stamp kingdom she had been so cruelly abducted from.

Our little go-getter soon infiltrates the government and rises to the rank of admiral of the landlocked land but overplays his hand and is framed for stealing the army’s payroll. Delivered to a secret dungeon he (partially) escapes and finds a gruff fellow American who refuses to share his name but insists on being called “Easy”…

Busting out his new pal, soon Wash and the stranger are caught in a bloody revolution when the aggrieved army mutinies. Before long the Vizier’s cronies are ousted, the vile villain accidentally orchestrates his own demise and the regally restored Jada declares the birth of the continent’s newest democracy…

In ‘Desert Island’ (February 6th – June 7th 1930) Bull Dawson returns to steal Tubbs’ entire fortune, flying off across America in a bid to escape with his ill-gotten gains. The robbery becomes a nationwide sensation and we join the action as Wash and Easy frantically pursue the fugitive. Tracking him to San Francisco they continue the chase when the malign mariner takes off in a schooner with our heroes as stowaways and, before long, prisoners…

The sadistic Bull lose faces after being thrashed in a no-holds barred fight with Easy which was merely subterfuge to allow the southern soldier of fortune to pick Dawson’s pocket and recover Wash’s easily portable $200,000 in cash. As the battered thug recuperates the ship is hit by a monster typhoon which apparently leaves our heroes the only survivors aboard the shattered shards of the schooner.

The wreck fetches up on a desolate Pacific atoll where the boys soon fall into the routine of latter-day Robinson Crusoes. The isolated idyll becomes complicated when they find the place is already home to a young woman who was the only survivor of an attack by roving headhunters from Borneo.

Mary Milton is brave, competent and beautiful and before long the lonely pals are fierce rivals for her affections…

The situation grows dangerously intense and only stabilises when the savages return, forcing the warring suitors to stand together or fall separately…

When the brutal battle ends the westerners are in possession of a sturdy war canoe and decide to risk their lives on an epic ocean odyssey to the nearest outpost of civilisation. It is only after the voyagers are far out to sea that Wash agonisingly recalls that he left his stash of dollars behind…

The next adventure (running from June 9th – October 1930) immediately follows on as the weary travellers reach French Indo-China and, thanks to a friendly soldier, escape far inland via a mighty river. After days of travel they reach the previously hidden kingdom of Cucumbria and quickly fall foul of the toad-worshipping emperor Igbay Umbay who takes one look at Mary and decides he must have her…

Being a coward who stole the throne from his brother, the grand poobah hasn’t the nerve to simply take her and orchestrates a succession of scurvy schemes to get rid of Wash and Easy but the boys are too smart and bold to fall for them. Infuriatingly rising in power and status, aided by young prince Hilo Casino – freshly returned from college in America – the Americans finally seem be out of the Umbay’s hair after they agree to lead his armies against the supernatural rebel leader known as ‘The Phantom King’…

Despite deep misgivings “General” Easy and his aide Washington Tubbs set out on a campaign that will ravage the hidden kingdom, unseat an emperor, cost thousands of lives and lose them the girl they both love…

A year later ‘Down on the Bayou’ (March 12th – July 25th 1931) found the world-weary wanderers nearing home again only to be arrested as they approach New Orleans in a stolen plane. They were fleeing a clever frame-up in infamous Costa Grande, but without proof could only evade their US Navy captors and flee into the swampy vastness of the Mississippi Delta…

Lost for days and starving, they are picked up by vivacious gangster’s moll Jean who recruits them into a gang of smugglers and rum-runners who inhabit a huge plantation somewhere between Pelican Island and Barataria dedicated to various criminal enterprises. Tubbs and Easy are soon comfortably settled in amidst the rogues and outcasts but everything changes when Jean’s brother returns from a smuggling trip. His name is Bull Dawson…

The pirate is prevented from killing our heroes by Jean and the huge Cajun in charge of the outlaw outpost, but Dawson takes it badly and with his gang of deadly bodyguards decides to take over the whole enterprise.

A couple of murders later Bull is big boss but also oddly friendly to his most despised enemies. Maybe it’s a ploy to put them off guard, but perhaps it has more to do with the gang of Chicago mobsters who have come down to put an end to the bootlegging mavericks cutting into their profits…

The troubles and bloodshed escalate exponentially and Jean drops her final bombshell: she’s a federal agent working with the Coast Guard to smash the budding criminal empire…

Once the dust settles she has one final surprise in store. In all the years of their friendship Wash could never get his taciturn pal to talk of his past or even reveal his real name. Now the government girl gives Mr. William Lee a message which sends him rushing across country to an old plantation home. Here the astounded Wash hears all about his pal’s shocking life, sordid scandals and abandoned wife …and then he learns the truth…

Soon the impediments and lies which blighted Easy’s life are all removed and the wanderer settles in to a well-deserved retirement with the girl he always loved but could never have. Tubbs moves on, quickly reuniting with old chum Gozy Gallup…

A few weeks later the ever-restless Wash is riding a tramp steamer headed for Europe, intent on paying Jada a visit in Kandelabra but, falling foul of rustic transportation systems, ends up in the similar but so different Principality of Sneezia…

Apart from pretty girls, the tiny kingdom has only one point of interest: the world’s dinkiest railway service. Run by aged expatriate American Calliope Simpson ‘The Transalpina Express’ (August 13th – November 21st 1931) links Sneezia to sister kingdom Belchia and is the most unique and beloved (by its intoxicated customers at least) service in the world.

Wash is especially keen to learn the business since being the engineer has made octogenarian Cal the most irresistible man in two countries, fighting off adorable young women with a stick…

The lad’s greatest dream comes true when Simpson finally elopes with one of his adoring devotees and Washington Tubbs become sole operator of the Express, but his joy at all the feminine attention soon sours when Belchia and Sneezia go to war and both sides want to use his train to move men and material into combat. Of course the dilemma can only end in disaster and before long our boy is running for his life again…

There’s a big jump to the next yarn which finds Wash and Easy reunited and stowing away on the wrong-est ship imaginable. Quickly caught, they are quite understandably assumed to be part of the contingent of prisoners bound for the final destination – ‘Devil’s Island’ (June 9th – August 30th 1932)…

No sooner are they mixed in with the hopeless prison population than the planning of their inevitable escape begins, but success only leads to greater peril as they and their criminal confederates take ship with a greedy captain subject to murderous bouts of paranoia and madness…

‘Whales’ (April 24th – August 30th 1933) is probably the most shocking – to modern sensibilities – of the perennial wanderers’ exploits as Wash and Easy are drugged in a Dutch cafe and dumped aboard one of the last sailing ships to work the whaling trade.

Elderly and nostalgic Captain Folly has been convinced by psychotic First Mate Mr. Slugg to compete one last time against the new-fangled factory whaling fleets, unknowingly crewing his creaking old ship with shanghaied strangers…

The grim minutiae of the ghastly profession is scrupulously detailed as our heroes seek some means of escape but with Slugg becoming increasingly unbalanced and eventually murdering Folly, bloody mutiny soon leads to the ship foundering and both factions – or at least the survivors of each – being marooned on the arctic Alaskan ice, where naturally our heroes find the only pretty girl in a thousand square miles…

This fabulous treasury of thrills concludes with one last battle against Bull Dawson after the incorrigible monster links up with gorgeous grifter Peggy Lake, who fleeces gullible Wash of his savings and disappears into the endless green wilderness of the swamps of ‘Okefenokee’ (June 13th – July 24th 1935).

The crime leads to a massive police manhunt through the mire before the boys personally track down the villains and deliver one more sound thrashing to the malodorous malcontent and his pretty patsy…

Rounding off this superb collection is a thorough ‘Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs Episode Guide’ by Rick Norwood as well as a glorious graphic Mexican travelogue feature by Crane in ‘An Afterword in Pictures’ as well as the informative biography section ‘About the Authors’.

If I’ve given the impression that this has all been grim and gritty turmoil and drama thus far, please forgive me: Crane was a superbly irrepressible gag-man and his boisterous, enchanting serials abound with breezy, light-hearted banter, hilarious situations and outright farce – a sure-fire formula modern cinema directors plunder to this day.

Easy was the Indiana Jones, Flynn (The Librarian) Carsen and Jack (Romancing the Stone) Cotton of his day – and, clearly blazing a trail for all of them – whilst Wash was akin to Danny Kaye or our own Norman Wisdom: brave, big-hearted, well-meaning, clay-footed, irrepressible and utterly indomitable everymen… just like all of us.

This superb monochrome landscape hardback (274 x 33 x 224 mm) is a wonderful means of discovering or rediscovering Crane’s rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventure trailblazer.

This is comics storytelling of the very highest quality: unforgettable, spectacular and utterly irresistible. These tales rank alongside her best of Hergé, Tezuka and Kirby and led irrefutably to the creations of all of them. Now that you have the chance to experience the strips that inspired the giants of our art form, how can you possibly resist?
Hurricane Isle: The Best of Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs © 2015 Fantagraphics Books. All Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy Strips © 2015 United Features Syndicate, Inc. All other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

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The Mystery of the Crooked Imp – Tales of Fayt


By Conrad Mason & Neill Cameron (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-42-1

In January 2012 Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched a traditional anthology comics weekly aimed at girls and boys between 6 and 12 which revelled in reviving the good old days of picture-story entertainment intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and content.

Each issue still offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy. In the years since its premiere, The Phoenix has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who really count – the astoundingly engaged kids and parents who read it…

That same year “The Little Company that Could” also began publishing a trilogy of excellent children’s fantasy novels starring the strange denizens of a fantastic place called Port Fayt.

Conrad Mason’s enchanting saga of life’s underbelly in a bustling commercial harbour situated at the other end of the Ebony Ocean is wonderfully redolent of Sir Terry Pratchett’s sublime Discworld – both in tone and scope.

The seething dock community – shared by humans, trolls, elves, fairies, magicians and so many other sorts of fey folk and night people – is revealed though the continuing exploits of The Demon’s Watch – a pan-species band of volunteer police who do what the lackadaisical constables of the official Dockside Militia cannot or will not…

Trade is king in Port Fayt and the “Blackcoats” mustered by the dominant and immensely powerful Trading Companies are supposed to arrest pickpockets, smugglers and other business-harming riffraff, but the ordinary citizenry have far more faith in the Watch’s shark-tattooed brotherhood of bluecoats who do good because it’s right and not because they’re (badly) paid to…

Supplementing the prose novels, this superb graphic outing is magically illustrated by David Wyatt (Peter Pan in Scarlet, the Larklight Trilogy, Mortal Engines, assorted tomes of the aforementioned Mr. Pratchett and J.R.R. Tolkien amongst others) and opens with an informative background lecture in ‘Crafty Crocklewick’s Giude to Port Fayt’: a potted history complete with detailed and annotated maps of the region and its more infamous landmarks such as Manticore Playhouse, The Brig and Bootle’s Pie Shop – HQ and front office of the Demon’s Watch.

Their latest case opens one sparkling midnight when a band of desperate fairies hold up a coach and steal a very unusual human baby. It is most odd: fairies are notorious thieves but generally their preferred loot is sugar, not infants with sparkly eyes…

Next morning the child’s parents enjoy a visit from the Demon’s Watch offering assistance, but the wealthy Rattigans seem more annoyed than upset over little Clarence‘s abduction and, whilst half-ogre Captain Newton, troll brothers Frank and Paddy Bootle, ancient elf Old Jon and young magician Hal quiz them, wise and crafty young apprentice Tabitha gets the impression their maid Joanna knows more than she’s letting on…

Soon however the Watch are tracking down the carriage driver – a dwarf by the name of Whelk – but there are still a few unanswered questions to ponder. For instance: where was the baby going in a coach at midnight and why weren’t the parents with him?

For that matter why haven’t these wealthy types called in the Militia?

The investigation leads to insalubrious inn the Rusty Anchor but when they arrive the Watch discover Whelk expiring with a cutlass in his guts. Leaving Hal and Tabitha to tend the dying dwarf, they pursue the assailants and Tabs catches Whelk’s dying words: “the crooked imp”…

In the crowded alleyways below they confront a most motley crew of blackguards and a ferocious battle ensues until late-arriving Tabs joins in and distracts Newton enough so that the killer clowns can escape…

As the elder watchmen ponder the mysteries, downhearted Tabs prowls the market, sulking whilst buying the cakes she’s been despatched for until she encounters a frantically fleeing fairy named Spoon. The flighty fool has become the target of an obsessive and hungry seagull and is most grateful for her help in escaping the feathered fiend. She even spends a little precious time getting acquainted with the self-proclaimed “Free Fairy”…

When they part company Tabs goes back to Pie Shop and Spoon goes home where his formidable mum makes him help feed that appalling human baby they snatched for their human client…

Captain Newton meanwhile has taken his team into the seamiest dives in Port Fayt in search of information, but no one knows of a Crooked Imp. Wily old elf Jeb does know something of a band of garish thugs however. They sound like the nasty cutthroats employed by a maniacally bonkers troll gang-boss known as The Actor…

As Jeb fills them in on the monster’s likely lair – an old abandoned playhouse in the Marlinspike Quarter – the suspect is currently taking a meeting with an extremely dangerous client of his own: one nasty enough to give even a psychopathic troll pause and one who really, really wants the baby he was promised…

When the Watch tool up for a serious fight with The Actor’s crew Tabs is furious at being left behind again, but soon finds a new clue when Joanna turns up with a rather dubious ransom note for Clarence. It has been signed by the Free Fairies…

Whilst Tabs frantically hunts down Spoon, at the playhouse The Actor and his frankly terrifying employer are still engaged in heated debate when Newt and the lads storm in for a final dust-up. All manner of pointless carnage ensues but when our heroes return, bloodied, unbowed but without either Actor or Clarence, they find that Tabitha has discerned the secret of the Crooked Imp…

The Watch soon rescue Clarence and solve the case of his kidnapping, but it only leads to even greater danger as the role of the Actor and intentions of his eerie employer – as well as the ghastly Rattigans – is finally revealed. However before they can close the case the maniacs turn the tables on our heroes, capturing them all and attempting to make them walk the plank into a nest of artificial sharks. Once again it’s up to Tabs to save the day, so it’s a good thing she has Spoon and that crazy seagull on her side…

Topped off with a foreboding promise of Things to Come and a handy set of information pages on the Demon’s Watch, this boisterous blockbuster is bright, breezy and packed with pies and punch-ups: a rip-roaring mystery yarn that’s furious fun for the entire family. Grab this and prose novels The Demon’s Watch, The Goblin’s Gift and The Hero’s Tomb and surrender to Fayt…

Text © Conrad Mason 2015. Illustrations © David Wyatt 2015.
The Mystery of the Crooked Imp will be released on April 2nd 2015 and is available for pre-order now.

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The Phoenix Presents: The Pirates of Pangaea Book 1


By Daniel Hartwell & Neill Cameron (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-08-7

Why are pirates so mean? I don’t know, they just AARRRR…

In January 2012 Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched a traditional anthology comics weekly aimed at girls and boys between 6 and 12 which revelled in reviving the good old days of picture-story entertainment intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and content.

Each issue still offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy. In the years since its premiere, The Phoenix has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who really count – the astoundingly engaged kids and parents who read it…

The Phoenix was voted No.2 in Time Magazine‘s global list of Top Comics and Graphic Novels and is the only strip publication started in the UK in the last forty years to have passed the 100 issue mark. It celebrated its first anniversary by developing a digital edition available globally as an app and is continually expanding its horizons.

It is, most importantly, tremendous fun, offering not just comedic comic capers, but games, puzzles, “How-To…” pages and even adventure strips.

Crafted by Daniel Hartwell (Urban Beasts) and Neill Cameron (Mo-Bot High, How to Make Awesome Comics), by far the most engaging thriller so far featured is a sublime combination of classic endeavour and enticing fantasy which blends bold buccaneers, boldly brilliant kids, suspenseful swashbuckling escapades and gloriously gigantic dinosaurs.

The alternate-history lesson begins with twelve year old Sophie Delacourt voyaging out from England in 1717 to join her Uncle Silas, the newly appointed Governor of the lost land of Pangaea.

The huge island-continent is reputed to be the oldest land on Earth and a place primarily inhabited by colossal reptiles of the land and air. Master Bosun William takes a paternal interest in the girl, explaining the wondrous nature of the place, but nothing prepares Sophie for the experience of a colossal “long-neck” which dives under their vessel and lifts it bodily into the air.

The interior of Pangaea is a vast shifting ocean of long grass afflicted and infested with fast and deadly predators no man afoot could survive or escape, so all ships are picked up out of blue Caribbean waters then carried upon brobdingnagian beasts’ backs between the rocky high points and plateaux where humanity has built its dwellings and settlements.

The big beasts are kept docile and compliant by the administration of a herb dubbed “Snuff” and piloted by the skilful class of inland mariners known as “Snuffmen”…

Sophie has never seen anything so wonderful in her life but, as Snuffman John guides the magnificent Bessie and her formerly-seagoing burden towards the Governor’s capital city, the amazed girl catches sight of the ever-present peril which besets this latest outpost of empire.

Through the shifting verdure comes a pirate ship strapped atop a terrifying black Land Leviathan and soon the voyagers are fighting for their lives in an ‘Ambush on Pangaea’.

Sophie is locked in her cabin as the corsairs’ devastating attack pillages the vessel and, when the insanely cruel Captain Brookes cries victory, making the crew walk the plank to their deaths, she is the only survivor…

The second chapter opens with the Governor’s niece imprisoned on Brookes’ land-ship, a potential goldmine in ransom for the greedy maniac. Furious and defiant Sophie is slowly befriended by brute’s cabin boy Timothy Kelsey. The lad is the tormented last survivor of a previous foray which saw the murder of his mentor and master Dr. Shaw; a naturalist who had come to the lost land to catalogue the ‘Indigenous Fauna of the Pangaean Land-Mass’.

After witnessing Brookes’ cruelty, Sophie agrees to join in the boy’s desperate plan for escape but as they make their move to fly off on the ship’s captive “Great Wing” lizard, they stumble over the Captain’s first mate.

Ten Gun Jones is also engaged in fleeing on the “Razor Beak”, but the noise of their stumbling over each other rouses the ship and the three are forced to flee together into the night amidst a hail of musket fire…

Soon the trio are hopelessly ‘Lost in the Sea of Green’ as their gravely wounded pterosaur expires just short of a high-projecting stony pinnacle. With deadly “Land Sharks” and “Belly Rippers” closing in on them all hope seems lost until an even deadlier beast pounces.

The “Tyrant” makes short work of the circling velociraptors, but its ravening hunger remains unsated. Only sheer terror carries the three fugitives to the relative safety of the rocky islet and, frantically scaling the igneous tower with the horror snapping at their heels, they all tumble into a cave to find themselves inside an abandoned pirate den…

The dusty lair has weapons, lamps, water, liquor and even brontosaur jerky; everything they might need to outwait the roaring giant outside, but after a sleepless night with Ten Gun less than forthcoming about why he was deserting Captain Brookes, Sophie conceives a dangerous idea.

After feeding the monster chunks of the dried meat liberally doused in the Snuff she found in a barrel, in an act of seeming madness Sophie drops onto the horror’s head and soon has it – or rather her – acting like a very dangerous steed…

The fearless lass then explains how an elderly servant in England taught her the secrets of horse-whispering before christening her scaly new pet “Cornflower”. Timothy is elated that they can use the Tyrant to safely cross the lethal Sea of Green to civilisation but Jones has other plans…

The enigmatic pirate’s guarded directions soon bring them to an active volcano which is in truth the neutral port used as a safe-haven by all the freebooters plying the grassy deeps. In a tavern the children learn the ‘Secrets of Raptor Rock’ and are introduced to bombastic Captain Ford, who previously planted Ten Gun in Brookes’ crew to secretly secure the second half of a disputed treasure map…

With both pieces secure the privateer immediately sets to emerald sea, but Ten Gun insists on bringing Sophie and Tim along. They have barely left the rock before Cornflower breaks out of her pen and doggedly follows…

The children are put to work and Sophie soon makes friends with Iwakian Snuffman Tak: a native Pangaean who steers the buccaneers’ bombastic brontosaur Gertrude…

The exploratory voyage comes to a sudden end after crossing the eerie “Longnecks Graveyard” when they hove into view of the fantastic plateau known in legend as “The Forbidden Isle”…

An expeditionary party is soon driving inland to a ancient temple in ‘Quest for the Golden Skull’ but upon entering, the greedy pirates are astounded to discover that the invaluable artefact they’re hunting is not a gilded human head but actually a full size tyrant’s skull cast in precious metal…

That’s when ferocious native defenders – the Kron Iwakia – ambush the party, driving them back to the relative safety of Gertrude, but the rapidly retreating raiders have no idea of what’s happened in the meantime.

Young Kelsey, resentful of being enslaved again has – more by accident than design – blown up the ship and stampeded Gertrude off into the Sea of Green just as maniacal Captain Brookes arrives intent on reclaiming his map and slaughtering everyone…

Even though the enraged Iwakians vanished when the ship began to burn, Ford’s rattled crew are no match for the nautical newcomers and things look bleak and bloody. Sophie and Kelsey desperately head back to the temple chased by Brookes’ men and death seems imminent until, from nowhere, Cornflower hurtles into action and eagerly despatches the pursuing pirates.

This prompts the Kron Iwakia to emerge from concealment to guide Cornflower and the kids back to the temple. The natives worship Tyrant lizards and after a strange ceremony deem Sophie and her reptile holy. That’s when Tim realises that the Golden Skull is not a mere ornament but battle armour for a tyrannosaur Chosen One…

With the Iwakians in close support the valiant children return to the ongoing pirate war to settle a number of old scores before taking control of their own destinies…

Superbly engaging and utterly enthralling, this astounding all-action romp is a riotous delight of astonishing adventure and this fabulous first compilation also includes many maps and crucial fact pages on the assorted dinosaurs from Dr. Shaw’s ‘Indigenous Fauna of the Pangaean Land-Mass’ – specifically ‘Sauropoda’, ‘Pterosauria’, ‘Dromaeosauridae’ and ‘Tyrannosauridae’ – all scrupulously crafted, corrected and annotated by erstwhile cabin boy and greatest living expert Timothy Kelsey…

Bright, breezy furious fun for the entire family, so don’t miss this unburied treasure…
Text © Daniel Hartwell 2015. Illustrations © Neill Cameron 2015. All rights reserved.