Category: Best of British

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The Definitive Charley’s War volume 1: Boy Soldier


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

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Continued…

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

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

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

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

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Battle of Britain War Picture Library


By Ian Kennedy & various (Rebellion/Treasury of British Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-779-4 (HB/Digital edition)

This book contains Discriminatory Material produced during less enlightened times.

By official reckoning – the UK’s at least – The Battle of Britain (10th July – 31st October 1940), began 83 years ago today. German historians consider it to have kicked off in July 1940: one part of a long, continuous campaign that proceeded from until 11th May 1941 when the Wehrmacht changed their failed tactics.

Whatever your opinion, the aerial operation has become a major touchstone for UK culture – like Boudicca or Abolition of the Monasteries – constantly cited, used and abused by dog whistle demagogues, political hacks, chancers and charlatans, all seeking a rabid reactionary unthinking response or quick debating point scored, pissing on the truth value. It was a time of unified dogged, true heroism under pressure on the entire nation’s part.

It has also become a keystone and foundation of our entertainment fiction: the bedrock and basis of every type of tale from gratifying adventure and shocking fantasy to inspirational romance and cathartic comedy. The Battle of Britain has naturally also been made a crucial core component of British comics. Just like the artist celebrated here…

Born in 1932, Ian Kennedy went to Clepington Primary School and attended Dundee’s Morgan Academy before landing his first job at the town’s major employer – just pipping the city’s Marmalade makers. If you look that up you’ll find I’ve just been absolutely hilarious…

Taken on in 1949 as a trainee illustrator for the art department of DC Thomson & Co, Kennedy always claimed his first work was filling in black squares on crossword puzzles for the publisher’s paper The Sunday Post (home of The Broons and Oor Wullie and many other singular classics). He soon graduated to drawing strips – mostly war and especially air combat stories – and by 1953 was also freelancing for the Scottish company’s major English competitor Amalgamated Press (latterly Odhams/Fleetway/IPC). Kennedy could be seen on serials in weeklies Knockout, Hotspur, Wizard, Buster and others, as well as illustrating longer standalone sagas for both publishers’ digest lines in titles such as Thriller Picture Library and Air Ace Picture Library.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s he diversified, favouring fantasy themes and generating many classic science fiction sagas for DCT’s new digest Starblazer, all whilst continuing his historical flights of fancy in Commando (War Stories in Pictures), Fleetway Picture Library, War Picture Library et al. Kennedy also exploited his aviation expertise outside comics from the 1980s, in magazines, books and by producing spectacular covers for RAF Leuchars Air Show programmes, even whilst winning his greatest fame with high profile strips and licensed adaptations in Eagle, Battle Picture Weekly, Wildcat, Star Lord, 2000 A.D. and more. The work included Tiger Taggart, Typhoon Tennyson, Blake’s 7, Dan Dare, Judge Dredd, Time Quake, M.A.S.K., M.A.C.H. 1, Invasion, Ro-Busters and countless others.

Generally uncredited throughout his career in the pages of weeklies like Victor, Buddy and the rest, he was most recognisable for his covers – which graced 2000 A.D., Eagle, Star Lord, Tornado Starblazer and especially Commando (for which he painted over 1600 – many after his official retirement in 1997). Ian Kennedy finally laid down his brushes in February 2022…

Two of his very best tales are on view here, but I sadly can’t be as forthcoming on their writers. Even the editors have no credible data on those anonymous stalwarts instead with the biographies at the back namechecking potential candidates/regular contributors Tom Tully, E.W. Evans, Douglas Leach, Gordon W. Brunt, Edward G. Cowan, V. Stokes, R.P. Clegg, James Hart Higgins, Syd J. Bounds, R. Wilding and A. Carney Allan as potential contributors.

Reprinted here are the contents of Air Ace Picture Library #65 & #182 with Kennedy detailing a brace of ripping yarns set in the skies above Blighty in their finest, most fiery hours.

At the end of the mission are the original covers in a full colour painted ‘Gallery’ with #65’s (August 1961) ‘Steel Bats’ followed by its reprint in AAPL #428 (as ‘Cat’s Eyes’), bolstered by the one-&-only AAPL #182’s original cover sortie from February 1964. Resolved not to spoil the fun I’m finally being brief and saying only that opener ‘Steel Bats’ (Air Ace Picture Library #65, August 1961) follows the trials and travails of pitiful novice fighter pilot Flight-Lieutenant Bill Mitchell from hopeless screwup in ‘Chapter1: The Rebel’ through an ignominious, unwanted ‘Transfer Granted’ to night fighter training school. When personal tragedy forces Mitchell to capitalise on an unsuspected natural advantage, Bill and new pal Gunner Wilton become ‘Two Up!’ and darlings of the Brass, but they also inspire ire in night fighter Squadron Leader Esmond Furness… until ‘Mitch’s Private War’ boils over into the bigger conflict and confirms his value, valour and ultimate victory over the real enemy… the bombers blasting London…

‘“Never Say Die” Wapiti’ is another – and rather more mischievous – fish out of water yarn, first seen in February 1964’s Air Ace Picture Library #182. Here, the poor discipline of young pilots is exemplified by Pilot-Officer Stan Perkins whose excessive eagerness and impatience flying Spitfires during the Battle of Britain results in near-catastrophe and his becoming a ‘Sacked Pilot!’

Summarily banished from operations and speedily transferred to “X planes station”, the despondent flier finds it a veritable aircraft graveyard dubbed “Misery Farm” by the other dangerous failures who explain he’s on a dummy field packed with obsolete kit designed to make “Jerries” waste fuel and ordnance. Stan is even more galled to learn he’s the new Commanding Officer…

Resolved to rejoin the Real War, Perkins and like-minded new friend/accomplice Flynn and hapless scavenging engineer Flight Sergeant Foley convert a discarded but serviceable Great War biplane, rendering it airworthy again. Sadly they only end up ‘Chased by a Bomb!’ on the maiden voyage! ‘Under Arrest!’, Stan believes himself doomed to spend his war on the ground and behind bars, but uncanny circumstances conspire to keep the mavericks flying: absconding with the biplane to perpetrate an ‘Unofficial Air Raid’ over France… just as the most important commando mission of the war is going wrong.

Sparking another apparent disaster, shot down by their own side and having to fight their way back to England beside the French Resistance all appear pointless exercises in the aftermath, but on arrival Perkins and Flynn learn ‘The Escape’ has all been worth the effort…

Clever and captivating, smart and spectacular, these war stories are utterly engaging and perfectly spotlight the astounding gifts of one our art form’s most skilled exponents. Come see for yourself…
© 1961, 1964, 2020 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd.

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The Complete Johnny Future


By Alf Wallace, Luis Bermejo & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-758-9 (HB/Digital edition)

Gosh I feel inexplicably optimistic and upbeat this week and can’t imagine why. Let’s continue looking forward and back and explore one of our little industry’s best lost secret: a buried masterpiece of international cooperation that has stood the test of time…

Until relatively recently, Britain never really had a handle on superheroes. Although every reader from the 1950s on can cite a particular favourite fantasy muscle-man or costumed champion – from Thunderbolt Jaxon to Morgyn the Mighty to Marvelman, Gadget Man & Gimmick Kid to The Spider, Tri-Man and Phantom Viking to Red Star Robinson, The Leopard from Lime Street and Billy the Cat (& Katie!) and all worthy stalwarts deserving their own archived revivals! – who have populated our pages, they all somehow ultimately lacked conviction. Well, almost all…

During the heady Swinging Sixties days of “Batmania”, just as Marvel Comics was first infiltrating our collective consciousness, a little-remembered strip graced the pages of a short-lived experimental title. The result being sheer, unbridled magic…

With Scotland’s DC Thomson steadily overtaking the London-based competition (monolithic comics publishing giant Amalgamated Press) during the late 1950s & 1960s, the sheer variety of material the southerners unleashed to compete offered incredible vistas in adventure tales. Thanks to Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid’s defection to AP, they also had a wealth of anarchic comedy material to challenge the likes of The Bash Street Kids, Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx and their unruly ilk. During that latter end of the period, the Batman TV show sent the world superhero crazy just as AP finished absorbing all its local rivals such as The Eagle’s Hulton Press to form Fleetway, Odhams and ultimately IPC.

Formerly the biggest player in children’s comics, Amalgamated Press (founded by Alfred Harmsworth at the beginning of the 20th century) had stayed at the forefront of sales by latching onto every fad: keeping their material contemporary, if not always fresh or original. The all-consuming monolith had been reprinting the early successes of Marvel comics for a few years, feeding on the growing fashion for US-style action/adventure which had largely supplanted the rather tired True-Blue Brit style of Dan Dare or DCT’s Wolf of Kabul or the Tough of the Track. A key point at that time was that although both part of the Mirror Group, Fleetway and Odhams were deadly rivals…

Power Comics was a sub-brand used by Odhams to differentiate their periodicals containing reprinted American superhero material from the greater company’s regular blend of sports, war, western adventure and gag comics such as Buster, Valiant, Lion or Tiger. During this period, the strictly monochrome Power weeklies did much to popularise budding Marvel characters and their shared universe in this country, which was still poorly served by distribution of the actual American imports.

The line began with Wham! – but only after the comic was well-established. Originally created by newly-ensconced Baxendale, it had launched on June 20th 1964. Initially, the title was designed as a counter to The Beano, as was Smash! (launching February 5th 1966), but the tone of times soon dictated the hiving off into a more distinctive imprint, which was augmented by the creation of little sister Pow!

Pow! premiered with a cover date of January 31st 1967, combining home-grown funnies like Mike Higgs’ The Cloak, Baxendale’s The Dolls of St Dominic’s, Reid’s Dare-a-Day Davy, Wee Willie Haggis: The Spy from Skye and British originated thrillers such as Jack Magic and The Python with the now ubiquitous resized US strips: in this case Amazing Spider-Man, The Hulk and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. The next step was even bolder. Fantastic – and its sister paper Terrific – were notable for not reformatting or resizing the original US artwork whereas in Wham!, Pow! or Smash!, an entire 24-page yarn could be rejigged and squeezed into 10 or 11 pages, and were accompanied by British comedy and adventure strips.

These slick new titles – each with a dynamic back cover pin-up taken from Marvel Comics or created in-house by apprentice comics bods and future superstars Barry Windsor-Smith and Steve Parkhouse (see below) – reprinted US Superhero fare, supplemented by minimal amounts of UK originated filler and editorial.

Fantastic #1 debuted with cover-date February 18th 1967 (but first seen in newsagents on Saturday 11th), revealing the origin stories of Thor, Iron Man and the X-Men, but from the get-go, savvy tykes like me were as engrossed by a short adventure serial also included to fill out the page count. The Missing Link was beautifully drawn and over the following year (February 18th 1967 – February 3rd 1968) would become a truly unique reading experience…

The series began inauspiciously as a homegrown Incredible Hulk knock off. Oddly, editor and writer Alfred “Alf” Wallace crafted for the filler a tone very similar to that adopted by Marvel’s own Green Goliath when he became a small screen star a decade later…

The illustrator was the astoundingly gifted Luis Bermejo Rojo, a star of Spanish comics forced to seek work abroad after the domestic market imploded in 1956. He became a prolific contributor to British strips, working on a succession of moody masterpieces in a variety of genres. These included The Human Guinea Pig, Mann of Battle, Pike Mason, Phantom Force Five and Heros the Spartan, appearing in Girls Crystal, Tina, Tarzan Weekly, Battle Picture Library, Thriller Picture Library The Eagle, Buster, Boys World, Tell Me Why, Look and Learn and many more. Bermejo finally achieved a modicum of his long-deserved acclaim in the 1970s, after joining fellow studio mates José Ortiz, Esteban Maroto and Leopoldo Sanchez working on adult horror stories for Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella.

I’m still a big kid helplessly enmired in nostalgia, but to me his greatest moments were the year spent drawing Johnny Future…

The Missing Link – as the feature was entitled for the first 15 episodes – was disturbingly similar in tone and delivery to television’s Hulk of the 1970s. The strip’s titular protagonist was superhumanly strong, seemingly intellectually challenged and tragically misunderstood. The saga combined human-scaled drama with lost world exoticism in the manner of King Kong, as can be see seen following Steve Holland’s incisive and informative Introduction ‘Welcome to the Future!’, when the drama opens in the wilds of Africa.

A bestial man-beast roams the veldt, swamps and mountains, until great white hunter Bull Belson comes to capture him, accompanied by secretary/photographer Lita Munro. The infamous tracker sees only profit in his quarry: a mute beast who, after much frustratingly destructive behaviour, is lured into captivity by an inexplicable attraction to Miss Munro…

To be fair, she actually has the brute’s interests at heart, attempting to befriend and teach the Link on the slow voyage back to England, but on reaching London Dock, the prospective sideshow attraction is spooked by mocking labourers and shockingly breaks his bonds… and cage.

Brutally rampaging across the city at the heart of the Swinging Sixties, the Link is hunted by the army, but no one realizes that beneath the bestial brow is a cunning brain. Hopping a freight train north, he seeks refuge in an isolated government atomic research laboratory run by Dr. Viktor Kelso and is accidentally dosed with vast amounts of transformative radiation. Unleashed uncanny forces jumpstart an evolutionary leap, turning the primitive beast into a perfect specimen of human manhood, while simultaneously sparking near-catastrophic meltdown in the machinery. It is only averted by the massive instinctive intellect of the new man. Arrested as a terrorist spy, the silent superman is very publicly tried in court and again encounters Lita.

Kelso meanwhile has deduced the true course of events. As the Link uses his prison time to educate himself in the ways of the world, the unstable scientist works on a deadly super-weapon, prompting the Link to escape jail and clear his name. With super-strength and his newly enhanced massive mind, the task is easy but he still needs Lita to complete his plan…

The series cheerfully plundered the tone of the times. The drama seamlessly morphs into and pilfers chilling contemporary science fiction tropes as Kelso’s device brings Britain to a literal standstill, leaving only the evolved outsider to thwart a staggeringly ambitious scheme.

Set on a fresh, bold openly heroic path, and despite still being a hunted fugitive, the Link creates a civilian identity (John Foster) and a costumed persona just as the nation is assaulted by ‘The Animal Man’: a psionic dictator able to control all beasts and creatures. Incredibly, that includes recently ascendant Johnny Future, with the villain only defeated through overextending himself after accidentally awakening a primordial horror from Jurassic times…

In short order, Johnny Future tackles Dr. Jarra and his killer robot; a society of evil world-conquering scientists; invention-plundering shapeshifting aliens; prehistoric giants and deranged science tyrant The Master.

Fully hitting his stride, the tomorrow man overcomes personality warping psychopath Mr. Opposite and defeats the top assassins of the Secret Society of Science – ‘The Brain, The Brute and the Hunter’, prior to saving Earth from marauding living metal and destroying Dr. Plasto’s animated waxwork killers.

… And that was that. Without warning the comic merged with sister publication Terrific and there was no more room for a purely British superhero. Here, however, there’s one final memorable delight: a 14-page, full-colour complete adventure with Johnny battling diabolical primordial revenant Disastro, as first seen in Fantastic Annual 1968, as well as a colour pin-up from Fantastic #30 (September 9th 1967).

Interest in superheroes and fantasy in general were on the wane and British weeklies were diversifying. Some switched back to war, sports and fantasy adventure yarns, whilst – with comedy strips on the rise again – others became largely humour outlets. The Complete Johnny Future is a unique beast: a blend of British B-movie chic with classic monster riffs seen through the same bleakly compelling lens that spawned Doctor Who and Quatermass. It is the social sci fi of John Wyndham trying on glamourous superhero schtick whilst blending the breakneck pace of a weekly serial with the chilling moodiness of kitchen sink crime dramas.

There was never anything quite like this before – or since – and if you love dark edges to your comics escapism you must have this amazing collection far sooner than tomorrow.
™ & © 1967, 1968, & 2020 Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Bunny vs Monkey book 8: The Impossible Pig! (paperback edition)


By Jamie Smart, with Sammy Borras (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-312-7 (Digest HB)

Britain and America were a bit preoccupied on July 4th this year and might have missed this major milestone of the Good Times returning. However, now that the happy dust has settled and before all the bunting gets packed away, lets celebrate another earthshaking milestone: the softcover escape of a truly wonderful comics read…

Bunny vs Monkey has been the hairy/fuzzy backbone of The Phoenix since the very first issue back in 2012: recounting a madcap vendetta gripping animal arch-enemies in an idyllic arcadia masquerading as more-or-less mundane but critically endangered English woodlands.

Concocted with gleefully gentle mania by cartoonist, comics artist and novelist Jamie Smart (Fish Head Steve!; Looshkin; Max and Chaffy, Flember), his trendsetting, mindbending multi award-winning yarns have been wisely retooled as graphic albums available in digest editions such as this one.

All the tail-biting tension and animal argy-bargy began yonks ago after an obnoxious little beast plopped down in the wake of a disastrous British space shot. Crashlanding in Crinkle Woods – scant miles from his launch site – lab animal Monkey believed himself the rightful owner of a strange new world, despite every effort to dissuade him by reasonable, rational, sensible, genteel, contemplative forest resident Bunny. For all his patience, propriety and good breeding, the laid-back lepine could not contain or control the incorrigible idiot ape, who to this day remains a rude, noise-loving, chaos-creating, troublemaking lout…

Problems are exacerbated by other unconventional Crinkle creatures, particularly the skunk called Skunky possessing a mad scientist’s intellect and attitude to life plus a propensity for building extremely dangerous robots, bio-beasts and sundry other super-weapons. Here – with adaptive artistic assistance from design deputy Sammy Borras – the war of nerves and mega-ordnances resumes even though everybody thought all the battles had ended. They even seemingly forgot ever-encroaching Hyoomanz…

Divided as ever into seasonal outbursts, this magnificent mass-market (and now soft-shelled) amalgamation of insanity opens in the traditional manner: starting slowly with a sudden realisation. Probably by using his fingers, Monkey has worked out that Bunny’s side has more good guys (Ai, Pig Piggerton, Weenie, Metal E.V.E. and Le Fox) than his own bad ones! Wisely rejecting Skunky’s offer to make more evildoers, the sinisterly stupid simian seeks to steal some of Bunny’s buddies: making insidious individual approaches in ‘A Big Hole’. One immediate success goes utterly unnoticed whilst those worthy stalwarts debate ways to get hapless Pig out of a giant pit before finding the ‘Tunnels’ the sweet simpleton used to get there in the first place…

First contact and a really strange day for all – including a wholly new kind of Crinkle critter – occurs in ‘Jerb-eing Unreasonable’, before Monkey commits carnage in a psychic bodysuit that can literally ‘Imagine That’: opening the doors to another Spring. At this time a certain white rabbit is pilfering carrots from an angry Hyooman, and saved by Monkey in a colossal exo-skeletal ‘Spade-O-Matic’, officially opening hostilities between bipeds and beasts…

Meanwhile and maybe later, Bunny experiences ‘Mossy Mayhem’ when Skunky’s latest experiment escapes, even as Metal E.V.E ponders astral reality and rashly asks her friend to explain ‘Pig Science’…

As Monkey demands 25% more evil from his crew, he’s distracted by Metal Steve’s latest faux pas – a doomed relationship with ‘Wipey’ – and ‘Sun 2.0’ renders repercussions of Skunky upgrading the source of all light and warmth, and Action Beaver is subject to a ‘Body Swap’ after Monkey covets his apparent immunity to pain and harm. It doesn’t end well…

Once the Great Woodland Bake-off inevitably culminates in ‘Cakes and Bruises’ Monkey use a superstrength serum unwisely. As his bones mend he has a Damascus moment: deducing that being a ‘Good Monkey’ might be less harmful. He gives nobility a go… but it too doesn’t end well…

A fresh face materialises as Pig meets ‘The Visitor’: inadvertently saving Lucky the Red Panda from atomic discorporation. Sadly, the effect is only temporary and when their memories merge, Lucky is stuck in this dimension with our plucky porcine adrift in the molecular stream of the cosmos. Trapped on Earth, the stranger tries desperately to convince all and sundry she is ‘Actually Pig’, often assisted by typical distractions like marauding sprout-farting monster ‘Gruntulak!’ and a no-holds-barred campaign to elect ‘President Monkey’.

Skunky starts disassembling woodland residents: harvesting DNA to make endless duplicates in ‘All A-Clone’ but even Skunky’s science can’t handle Lucky…

As Summer starts, mad science wins again. Skunky sets a trap to prove Lucky is ‘Not Pig’ and even finds what happened to the lost one, after which Monkey manages to murder cloud-gazing in ‘Weather or Not’ and Weenie gets a shocking letter in ‘Blackmail’. With the truth about to out, ‘Pocket Pig’ finds our gentle woodland folk forming a torch-waving mob to establish their real friend’s fate, only to find Skunky has already found a way to exploit the situation. However, when he constructs a device to broach outer realms, Monkey makes a shambles of the ‘Portal Recall’…

When the awful anthropoid gets a mail-order giant robotic Chicken of Darkness, he never anticipated some assembly required and the woods are saved by ‘A Loose Nobble’, allowing good manners and better natures to resurface. Thus, all the animals contribute to ‘Lucky’s Home’ – especially Monkey with his goop gun and crushing space-sphere of doom…

Elsewhere, as Metal Steve and Metal E.V.E hold a private contest to decide the best automaton in ‘Who Will Win the War of the Robots’, Skunky’s clumsiness triggers a crop of carnivorous blooms in ‘Chomp!’ As Monkey’s alter ego “Captain Explosives” accidentally uncovers a crop of chronal crystals in ‘Time and Again’, Skunky makes a great breakthrough: a remote control for existence with a ‘Freeze Frame’ able to warp and rewind reality…

With everything on pause, ‘The Second Pigging’ heralds the return of a lost friend whose voyage to the cosmos has resulted in Complete Spiritual Enlightenment and manifestation as a Non-Corporeal Vision. Sadly, when nobody cheers, the Ultimate Pig pops off in a dudgeon, leaving Lucky to save the day and restore time in ‘Hairy Nearly’: a major turning point that upsets many participants…

In what passes for a return to normality, Monkey is possessed by the ghost of a chicken and triggers an invasion of ‘Zombies!’ just as Autumn opens with Skunky & Monkey unleashing a giant robot that is ‘Turtle-y Ridiculous’…

Former good guy Fantastic Le Fox is also possessed and proffers ‘A Warning’ of failure and worse which Monkey immediately reacts badly to even as transcendent Pig returns to make contact with and elevate ‘Prophet Beaver’. Of course, no one listens…

Monkey meanwhile has been messing with elemental forces, turning the woods into an ‘Expressionistic’ nightmare before losing patience and challenging Bunny to a duel of ‘Brain Power’. After winning by cheating, the simian sap learns a painful lesson that is only the beginning of his woes as ‘Double Bunny’ depicts a doppelganger emerging who will change the status quo in quite appalling ways…

Lost and distraught, Bunny undertakes a mission for Skunky into the bowels of the earth in search of ‘Long-Lost Flopsy’. Guess how that ends…

Drama intensifies when ‘The Impossible Pig’ returns to reality only to learn that being ‘Disappointingly Mortal’ would be better than life as a power battery for Skunky, before ‘Lucky’s Fortune’ turns the tide…

Bunny has not been right since meeting the other rabbit and with Metal E.V.E.’s aid ‘The Search is On’ for a boon companion. Only briefly interrupted by reality running wild, the hunt resumes in ‘Better Luck Next Time!’ as Le Fox’s niece arrives for some rowdy ‘Fennec Fun!’ She’s on the run and another relation isn’t far behind her…

Solitude has bitten our hero hard and nothing Monkey can do will distract ‘A Lonely Bunny’ in his morose meanderings, so the little meany challenges Impossible Pig instead, and learns real suffering in ‘Butt Then…’

When Winter arrives, Lucky sees snow for the first time, enduring cheeky hostiles chucking chilly snowballs until the wonder-pig steps up as ‘Protector’ but is tricked by Skunky who wants to depower the self-promoting saviour ‘At All Costs’…

Resolved to return to the Molecular Stream, Impossible Pig takes advice from unknowable factor Le Fox, but stumbles into a wild Christmas Party on his way to the fabulous Lake of Eternity. He also meets Lucky who wants to leave this reality just as much, but as they argue over who should take the one-way ride, a dear friend and desolate hero is already ‘Jumping the Queue’…

To Be Continued…

The agonised anxiety-addled animal anarchy might have ended for now, but there are still secrets to share: specifically detailed instructions on ‘How to Draw Lucky’ plus a preview of other treats and wonders available in The Phoenix to wind down from all that angsty furore…

The zany zenith of absurdist adventure, Bunny vs Monkey is weird, wild wit, inspired invention, stunning sentiment and cracking cartooning all stuffed into one eccentrically excellent extravagant package. These tails (tee hee!) never fail to deliver jubilant joy for grown-ups of every vintage, even those who claim they only get it for their kids. This is the kind of comic book parents beg kids to read to them. Shouldn’t that be you?
Text and illustrations © Fumboo Ltd. 2023. All rights reserved.

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Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful


By Darryl Cunningham (Myriad Editions)
ISBN: 978-1-91240-822-1 (PB)

Just in case you missed the last few days here’s a sly reminder of what we’ve just voted to end – at least as concerns direct involvement in public life…

There are books to read, books you should read – and some, certainly, that you shouldn’t – and there are Important books. The relatively new field of graphic novels has many of the first but still boasts precious few important books yet. Thankfully, British documentarian, journalist and cartoonist Darryl Cunningham seems to specialise in the latter and apparently never rests…

It’s hard enough to get noticed within the industry (simply excelling at your craft is not enough) but when comics does generate something wonderful, valid, powerful, true to our medium yet simultaneously breaking beyond into the wide world and making a mark, the reviews from that appreciative greater market come thick and fast – so I’m not going to spend acres of text praising this forthright, potentially controversial and damning examination of Earth’s Newest (but hopefully not Last) Dark Gods – the Super Rich.

Multi-disciplined artist Cunningham was born in 1960, lived a pretty British life (didn’t we all?) and graduated from Leeds College of Art. A welcome regular on the Small Press scene of the 1990s, his early strips appeared in legendary paper-based venues such as Fast Fiction, Dead Trees, Inkling, Turn and many others.

In 1998, he & Simon Gane crafted Meet John Dark for the much-missed Slab-O-Concrete outfit and it remains one of my favourite books of the era. You should track it down or agitate for a new edition.

Briefly sidelining comics as the century ended, Cunningham worked on an acute care psychiatric ward: a period informing 2011 graphic novel Psychiatric Tales, a revelatory inquiry into mental illness delivered as cartoon reportage.

As well as crafting web comics for Forbidden Planet and personal projects Uncle Bob Adventures, Super-Sam and John-of-the-Night or The Streets of San Diablo, he’s been consolidating a pole position in the field of graphic investigative reporting; specifically science history, economics and socio-political journalism via books such as Science Tales, Supercrash: How to Hijack the Global Economy, Graphic Science: Seven Journeys of Discovery and The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality and the Financial Crisis.

This offering details the rise and pernicious all-pervasive influence of three icons of the plutocratic ideal, all while debunking such self-deluding and damaging public myths as “self-made”, “coming from nothing” and “fair and honest”…

It opens with a pictorial Introduction outlining how late 19th and early 20th century robber barons of the Gilded Age set the scene for the rise of today’s financial overlords – and how governments responded to them…

Depicted in clear, simple, easily accessible imagery, Cunningham then deconstructs carefully crafted legends and official biographies of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, energy barons Charles & David Koch and internet retail supremo/space cadet Jeff Bezos with an even-handedness I’m not sure any other investigative author could match – or would want to.

Via an avalanche of always-attributable, deftly delineated facts and reported events, the artist delivers the very opposite of hard-hitting polemic, instead massaging and lathering readers with an ocean of appetising data allowing us make up our own minds about proudly ruthless apex business predators who have controlled governments, steered populations and reshaped the planet in their quest for financial dominance.

Best of all, Cunningham even has the courage to offer bold – and serious – suggestions on how to rectify the current state of affairs in his Afterword, and (should anybody’s lawyers or tax accountants be called upon) backs up all his cartoon classwork with a vast and daunting list of References for everything cited in the book.

Comics has long been the most effective method of imparting information and eliciting reaction (that’s why assorted governments and militaries have used them for hard and soft propaganda over the last century and a half), and with Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful we finally see that force being used against today’s greatest threat to continued existence…
© Darryl Cunningham 2019. All rights reserved.

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The Thirteenth Floor vol. 01


By John Wagner, Alan Grant & José Ortiz & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN:978-1-78108-653-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Let’s pause for another shamble down memory lane for us oldsters whilst – perhaps – offering a fresh, untrodden path for younger fans of the fantastic in search of a typically quirky British comics experience.

This stunning paperback/eBook package is another knockout nostalgia-punch from Rebellion Studios’ superb and ever-expanding Treasury of British Comics, collecting the opening episodes of seminal shocker The Thirteenth Floor.

The strip debuted in the first issue of Scream and ran the distance, spanning all 15 issues from 24th March – 30th June 1984. It survived the comic’s premature cancelation and subsequent merger, continuing for a good long while in Eagle & Scream – with the remaining stories here taking us from 1st September 1984 to 13th April 1985. Although arguably the most popular – and certainly most lavishly illustrated – of Scream’s fearsome features, The Thirteenth Floor is actually the third strip to be gathered from that lost dark wellspring, preceded by Monster in 2016 and The Dracula File in 2017. Mayhap we’ll get to those in the fullness of time.

This book accomplishes its terrorising in stark, shocking monochrome but does include at the end a gallery of full-colour wraparound covers by series artist José Ortiz, and then-newcomer Brett Ewins, as well as introductory contextual notes from editor Ian Rimmer and a darkly dry history lesson from co-author Alan Grant. With regular writing partner John Wagner, he wrote all the electronically eldritch episodes as enigmatic “Ian Holland”.

Grant maintained the strip derived in part from his own time of residence on the 11th floor of a similar tower block and, having done my own time in a south London multi-story edifice, I can imagine why the sojourn was so memorable for him…

The series benefitted tremendously from the diligent mastery of its sole illustrator – sublime José Ortiz Moya: a veteran creator with a truly international pedigree. Born on September 1st 1932 in Cartagena in the Spanish region of Murcia, he started professional illustration early, after winning a comics competition in national comic Chicos. Whilst working on comics digest books and strips like Sigur el Vikingo, he gradually transitioned to the better-paying British market, beginning in 1962 by drawing newspaper strip Carolynn Baker for The Daily Express. Ortiz also worked on numerous kids’ comics here before making a wise move to America in 1974, and became a mainstay of Warren Publishing on horror magazines Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella.

In the early 1980s Ortiz returned to Spain, joining Leopold Sánchez, Manfred Sommer and Jordi Bernet in short-lived super-group cooperative Metropol, even as he worked with Antonio Segura on many long-lasting strips such as post-apocalyptic action-thriller Hombre.

Metropol’s collapse brought him back to British comics where he limned The Tower King and The House of Daemon for Eagle, strips including Rogue Trooper for 2000AD… and this macabre masterpiece…

Ortiz continued to excel, eventually settling in the Italian comics biz, with significant contributions to megastars Tex Willer, Ken Parker and Magico Vento. He died in Valencia on December 23rd 2013.

Because of the episodic nature of the material, originally delivered in sharp, spartan 4-page bursts (eventually dropping to a standard 3), I’m foregoing my usual self-indulgent and laborious waffle: leaving you with a précis of the theme and major landmarks…

A little bit into the future (as seen from the dystopian-yet-still-partially-civilised Britain of 1984), a council tower block is equipped with an experimental computer system to supervise all the building systems and services whilst simultaneously monitoring welfare and wellbeing of tenants. Maxwell Tower (one of the names we creative contributors waggishly called the offices of IPC’s comics division at that time) looms into the rather bleak urban night.

Within, however, novel computer-controlled systems assure everyone enjoys a happy life. The servers even manifest a congenial personality offering advice and a bit of company. Dubbed “Max” by tenants, it/he – just like $%*£!! Alexa or Siri today – increasingly inserts itself into every aspect of their lives through its constantly active monitoring systems. For their own good, naturally…

Because humans are fallible and quite silly, the architects fancifully never designated a 13th floor. Cognizant of human superstition, they designed their edifice to arbitrarily transit straight from 12 to 14. A human onsite controller/concierge/handyman lives in the penthouse. His name is Jerry and everything is just hunky-dory… until one day it isn’t…

The troubles apparently begin when a mother and son move in. They are trying to make a new start after losing the family breadwinner, but are plagued by a particularly persistent and violent debt-collector. After Mr. Kemp threatens the bereaved Henderson family, he stalks into an elevator and is later found on the ground floor, having suffered an agonising and fatal heart attack. Police write it off as an accident or misadventure, but they don’t know the truth.

Over-protective Max is far more powerful than anyone suspects and can turn his lifts into a terrifyingly realistic arena of terror, judgement and retribution. He calls it his “Thirteenth Floor”…

Over weeks and months, Max detects outrages and injustices and promptly subjects assorted vandals, hooligans, burglars, bailiffs, lawyers, conmen, extortionists, shoddy plumbers, shady workmen and even a clan of problem tenants preying on their own neighbours to various impossibly realistic terrors of the damned. Equally vexatious to the monitoring “mommy-dearest” machine is the useless bureaucrat from its own housing department who treats people like subhuman trash. Max devises a very special hell for him after the uncivil servant’s lazy blunders temporarily make one of Max’s families homeless…

Sometimes punishment experiences are enough to modify behaviour and ensure silence, but too often the end result is simply another death. It happens so frequently Max is reluctantly compelled to brainwash husky tenant Bert Runch into being his agent: a mindless drone hypnotically conditioned to be Max’s arms and legs, excising incriminating evidence – or bodies – and forgetting what he’s done.

Sadly, veteran policeman Sergeant Ingram suspects something is amiss and doggedly persists in returning to Maxwell Tower over and over again, ultimately forcing the coddling computer into precipitate action…

Moreover, as Max’s actions grow increasingly bold, Jerry starts suspecting something is wrong. Checking the hardware and finding a cracked Integrated Function Module, Jerry calls in council computer experts and Max must act quickly to preserve his unsanctioned intellectual autonomy. This triggers a cascade of uncontrollable events with Max taking ever-wilder risks, and results in the tower being stormed by an army of police determined to shut down the AI murder machine…

That’s where this moody masterpiece pauses with a great big To Be Continued…

These strip shockers are amongst the most memorable and enjoyable in British comics: smart, scary and rendered with stunning imagination and skill. Don’t believe for a moment the seemingly limited set-up restricts visual impact. The macabre punitive illusions of The Thirteenth Floor incorporate every possible monster from zombies and dinosaurs to hell itself and history’s greatest villains, whilst the settings range from desert islands to the infinities of time and space. This a superb sophisticated suspense, leavened with positively cathartic social commentary that is impossible to dismiss.
© 1984, 1985 & 2018 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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V for Vendetta/V for Vendetta 30th Anniversary Edition


By Alan Moore & David Lloyd, with Tony Weare, Steve Whitaker, Siobhan Dodds & various (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-8500-5 (30th Deluxe HB) 978-1-4012-0841-7 (TPB)

Very few pieces of literature enter public consciousness and fewer still from the relatively young land of graphic narratives. Here’s one of the best that – as my dwindling days go by – looks and feels more and more like poetic prophecy than fantasy fiction…

The serial V for Vendetta began in 1982 in legendary British comics magazine Warrior: back when Britain had a covertly totalitarian, graspingly greedy government that looked like a Peppa Pig birthday party, but were at least marginally efficient and made some trains run on time and in affordable price bands…

The deviously convoluted mystery play describes a highly individualistic resistance campaign conducted by an enigmatic flamboyant and ruthless “anarchist” against a fascistic British government which had stumbled into power after a disaster (a nuclear exchange in this case) destroyed all the bigger countries.

Or does it?

This is just as much a tale of intellectual and political awakening and choosing to take action. Most events are seen (as the escalating situation unravels) through the eyes and experiences of Evey Hammond, a pathetic little nobody rescued from secret policemen – almost as an afterthought – by enigmatic rebel activist “V” during his first highly public exploit.

The sinisterly suspenseful series was originally presented Visually in starkly stunning black & white, every chapter title beginning with a “v” word. Fans of classic British strip art revelled in occasional contributions from the wonderfully gifted Tony Weare (Matt Marriot, Pride of the Circus, Savage Splendour, The Colditz Story and much, much more) who fully illustrated the chapter designated ‘Vincent’ and also assisted master stylist David Lloyd (Sláine: Cauldron of Blood, Night Raven: House of Cards, Aliens: Glass Corridor, Weird War Tales, Gangland, The Horrorist, Marlowe: The Graphic Novel, Hellblazer: Rare Cuts, War Story: J For Jenny, War Story: Nightingale, Kickback and more) in creating a masterpiece of daunting visual atmosphere throughout.

This was no mean feat as V – whilst dismantling with lethal efficiency the machineries of a totalitarian and ever vigilant State that constantly voiced its views that everything was better in the Good Old Days – declared himself the true guardian of lost and/or forgotten National Culture. This demanded a phenomenal amount of research and vital trust that the readership would pick up on some pretty obscure references, both Verbal and Visual…

The then-controversial jump to colour (I, for one, would kill for a fully monochrome director’s cut edition of this saga) following DC’s appropriation of the saga was deftly handled by Lloyd himself, with the hued back-up of much-missed Steve Whitaker and Siobhan Dodds, whilst the relentless and captivating Verbiage of Alan (Providence, Jerusalem, Lost Girls, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Illuminations, Voice of the Fire, A Small Killing, Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, Swamp Thing, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Watchmen, D.R. & Quinch ad infinitum…) Moore’s astounding scripts came courtesy of letterers Jenny O’Connor, Steve Craddock & Elitta Fell.

… And yes, pitiless the enigmatic protagonist known only as V generally adopts the seeming of ultimate anti-authoritarian rebel Guido “Guy” Fawkes. His once-common masked vulpine visage was rescued from vintage obscurity for this tale and has subsequently become a global symbol and tool of anonymity for new generations of rebels, resisters, protestors and occupiers…

The subtle shadings of the large cast and the device of telling the tale from the point of view of its villains as much as the protagonists adds vast shades of meaning to this exploration of free will and oppression, and it’s still shocking to realise that the “hero” actions are all too often indistinguishable from those of his opponents: philosophically, morally and especially physically…

The collected book was first released in the early 1990s, re-released to coincide with a (rather disappointing) movie adaptation but remains available in hardback Deluxe, Trade paperback and future-proof digital editions.

Despite temporarily reclaiming the image of good old Guy Fawkes night, this review is actually a paean of praise for our art form’s ultimate resistance tract and I strongly suggest that if you are still uninformed and unentertained, you should experience V for Vendetta as soon as Viable. Messers Moore & Lloyd made a magnificent and mighty beast which should be Viewed in all its glory, before Vile Vehement politics ends us all, and absolutely prior to any forthcoming Plebiscite, Election or Popular Vote.
© 1988, 1989, 1990, 2009, 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Barking (New Edition)


By Lucy Sullivan (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-76-9 (HB/Digital edition) 978-1783528806 (2020 Unbound HB)

You might not think it, but there’s a lot of guts and inner fortitude demanded of making your inner worlds real – especially in autobiographical comics. In 2020 animator Lucy Sullivan released her first graphic novel: “an exorcism” detailing a deepening depression and personal mental health crisis and the concomitant failings of our overstretched, cash-starved health services in one of the most potent, powerful and damning explorations ever seen of the plight of in-need individuals in a “money-first-& foremost” health system.

Barking set new critical standards for a growing subgenre of candid and intimate experiential biographies and after being lost in the global commercial convulsions of Covid-19, returns here in a new edition that will hopefully find the major audiences the book always deserved.

Rendered in staggeringly expressive stark monochrome artwork capturing a spiky mood of mania and madness and pitched as a chilling horror story, it’s set between a life-altering period of days (October 25th to November 5th, if you’re wondering) and begins with ‘Hounded’ as a terrified young woman flees from a monstrous black dog.

Desperate and defeated, she finds a bridge and seeks surcease in suicide, but as reality and her inner world converge and congeal, she is picked up by indifferent cops who apparently have far more important things to do, and dumped on a standard 72-hour hold under the Mental Health Act in ‘Commit to Me’. The dog is with her all the way, as is a gang of scary men and a cacophony of voices that never let her rest. Never mind, there are plenty of readily doled out drugs for that in the ‘Rot Box’…

Alix might be in isolation but she’s not alone. Her passengers are delighted to keep telling her how bad and weak and useless she is. ‘Prone to Trouble’, she hears again how nobody wants her and why she lost her only friend. As treatment and assessments – dispassionate yet still somehow judgemental – continue, Alix enters the enforced society of fellow inmates/guests/ patients in ‘Just a (Rumination) Phase’, learning some harsh lessons pitched as vague threats and religious paternalism, all before being left to make her own recovery as best she can.

Between flashbacks, hallucinations and potentially lethal ward-companions her slipping back to ‘Unembodied Diamonic’ visions is inevitable. Fears that drive her regain their power and medical indifference, casually “phoned-in” care, too many drugs and economically driven treatments like group therapy and enforced isolation don’t deal with the personal demons. Nor do suggested cure-alls offered by her fellow inmates, but only war with Alix’s ever-present visions and in-situ inner tormentors in ‘Prognostication’, ‘Call of the Void’ and ‘Bruising the Fool’ before a gradual breakthrough and notional resumption of “normal service” augurs a return to stability and equilibrium during ‘Life Under Saturn’…

A Foreword by comics doyen Nick Abadzis details how the project first materialised – and his involvement in it – precedes the tale itself and is mirrored by the author’s revelatory Afterword at the back. This describes how Sullivan’s allegorical extrapolation of a very low point also seeks to address greater issues surrounding this country’s growing mental health problems and our literally insane simultaneous starvation of funding required to fix the rot. It’s supplemented by a wonderfully uplifting, self-deprecating Postscript for this new edition describing the understandably shaky course of a creative project about fear, isolation and incarceration that was published during a global lockdown…

Also crucially germane here is a copious Acknowledgements section, underscoring how vital human contact and collaborative input is: not just in story-making but in all aspects of living in the modern world…

A visually disturbing and emotionally shocking exploration of how grief and depression self-destructively feed on each other and how the fix for spiralling mental chaos is not getting a grip but getting help, Barking is not just a worthy and necessary read, but one that will stay with you forever.

© Lucy Sullivan, 2020. All rights reserved.

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The Flood That Did Come


By Patrick Wray (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-53-0 (PB)

We have a proud and hard-won and passionately defended tradition in this country of using fiction and fantasy – especially those presented in the form of kids’ books – to hold up a light to cultural iniquities, political malfeasance and social dystopias. It works for Gulliver’s Travels and Animal Farm and dozens more plus a wealth of comics and graphic novels from Judge Dredd to Flook. This is one more and it’s supremely, chillingly good at what it does.

Artist, writer and musician Patrick Wray studied at the Dartington College of Art and took a long time living before crafting this telling and subtle exploration of property laws and the role of the people in how they’re governed…

Mimicking the look and narrative tone of children’s reading primers (and kids’ comics) The Flood That Did Come is set in the hilltop village of Pennyworth in the year 2036. It’s all the home little Jenny and her brother Tom know, but their happy, innocent days end when it starts to rain heavily… and never stops.

Soon, all of Kingsby County and the entire country are under water, with only a few high-lying hamlets remaining above water. The kids and their friends make the best of the new normal and enjoy the changes to the wildlife around them, leaving the adults to worry about the details such as being resupplied by airdrops…

One day, however, the holiday ends when a sailing boat arrives from nearby industrialised town Brooks Falls. The youngsters aboard have come to warn Pennyworth residents that the adults of their drowned conurbation are coming, armed with the latest technologies and The Law. It transpires that long ago – back in 1851 – Pennyworth was merely an outlying district of the sprawling metropolis and still remains part of the greater whole. Now that it’s the only part above water, the Mayor and council of Brook Falls intend to move their entire operation here and carry on their business as usual…

Sadly, as always when politicians and big business want something, the rights and feelings of ordinary people don’t count for much…

Simple, breezy and chilling to the core, this tale of resistance and capitulation is made all the more effective by Wray’s cunning choice of art style and faux children’s story feel. The result is reminiscent of school workshops and protest marches supplied with stencil screens, or of street-rebel print slogans and tagging-inspired found imagery and marches of solidarity and protest.

The industrial-flavoured visuals magnificently disguise the potency of the political allegory making this a tale no tuned-in, socially aware grown up looking to make changes can afford to miss.
© 2020 Patrick Wray. All rights reserved.

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Battle Stations – War Picture Library


By Hugo Pratt & Don Avenell (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-752-7 (HB/Digital Edition)

Born in Rimini, Ugo Eugenio Prat, AKA Hugo Pratt (June 15th 1927 – August 20th 1995) was wandered the world in his early life, whilst becoming one of its paramount comics creators. His enthralling graphic inventions since Ace of Spades (whilst still a student at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts in 1945) were many and varied. His signature character – based in large part on his own exotic formative years – is mercurial soldier (perhaps sailor is more accurate) of fortune Corto Maltese.

Pratt was a consummate story-teller with a unique voice and a stark graphic style that should not work, but so wonderfully does: combining pared-down, relentlessly modernistic narrative style with memorable characters, always complex whilst still bordering on the archetypical. By placing a modern, morally ambivalent anti-hero in a period where old world responsibilities should make him a scoundrel and villain, yet keeping him true to an utterly personal but iron-clad ethical integrity that goes beyond considerations of race, class or gender, he has created a yard-stick with which we cannot help but measure all heroes. As empires fade and colonies fall Corto Maltese deals with and is moved by people, not concepts or traditions. He is also a whimsical man of action and a faithful humanist with a talent for being in the wrong place at the right time. We’ll return to him another time…

After working in both Argentinean and – from 1959 – on English comics like top gun Battler Briton, plus combat stories for extremely popular digest novels in assorted series such as War Picture Library, Battle Picture Library, War at Sea Picture Library and others – Pratt returned to and settled in Italy and later France in the 1960s. In 1967 with Florenzo Ivaldi he produced a number of series for monthly comic Sgt. Kirk.

In addition to the Western lead star, he created pirate strip Capitan Cormorand, detective feature Lucky Star O’Hara, and a moody South Seas adventure called Una Ballata del Mare Salato (A Ballad of the Salty Sea). When it folded in 1970, Pratt took one of Una Ballata’s characters to French weekly, Pif Gadget before eventually settling in with legendary Belgian periodical Le Journal de Tintin. Corto Maltese proved as much a Wild Rover in reality as in his historic and eventful career…

In Britain the ubiquitous delights of the mini-books also included Super Picture Library, Air Ace Picture Library, Action Picture Library and Thriller Picture Library: uniformly half-sized, 64-page monochrome booklets with glossy soft-paper covers and presenting complete stories in 1-3 panels per page, with yarns that were regularly recycled and reformatted. The story featured here was printed twice – as War at Sea #34, June 1963 and in War Picture Library #1078, June 1975 – with the painted covers and fascinating, well-annotated features on art changes as inflicted on the tale with each iteration making a compelling fact-feature at the end. Rebellion boss Ben Smith even offers an informative Introduction to launch the whole affair…

During his sojourn in British comics Pratt crafted all unheralded a number of mini-masterpieces like this one. Rescued and suitably repackaged by Rebellion Studios in their Treasury of British Comics imprint, Battle Stations was written by national hero and unsung legend Donne Avenell, who began his own strips career before WWII in the editorial department of Amalgamated Press – which evolved into Fleetway and eventually IPC. Avenell’s starter was anthological household name Radio Fun.

Born in Croydon in 1925, he served with the Royal Navy during the war, before returning to publishing: editing an AP architectural magazine whilst pursuing writing for radio dramas and romances under a slew of pseudonyms. He returned to comics in the 1950s, with many contributions to childhood icons like War Picture Library and Lion, directing the sagas of The Spider, The Phantom Viking, Oddball Oates, Adam Eterno and more. He co-wrote major international features like Buffalo Bill, Helgonet (The Saint) and The Phantom for Swedish publisher Semic, and devised the strip Django and Angel whilst also toiling on assorted licensed Disney strips.

In 1975, with Norman Worker, he co-wrote Nigeria’s Powerman comic which helped launch the careers of Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons. Avenell was equally at home on newspaper strips such as Axa (1978-1986, drawn by Enrique Romero), Tiffany Jones and Eartha (illustrated by John M. Burns). He also worked in television, writing series like The Saint and their subsequent novelisations. He died in 1996.

This story concerns just another small battle lost in the bigger war as three sailors on convoy escort duty in June 1942 endure the sinking of their anti-sub trawler off the coast of the USA. When the vessel they were guarding goes down too, their shipmates and the merchant marine survivors are all machined gunned in the water at the command of the German U-boat captain, and an implacable bond of undying hatred grips Stoker First Class Scully, Lieutenant Rayner and Leading Seaman Ford…

Months later, rescued, recuperated and reassigned to Light Cruiser H.M.S. Vengeful, the trio are looking for payback and clearly suffering what we today know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when their ship again encounters the ruthless enemy. A savage battle then leaves all ships gone and sailors stuck in a drifting lifeboat. Scully, Rayner and Ford are still alive, but due to the exigencies of combat they’re lost in the Atlantic with an equal number of despised Germans in the lifeboat…

What happens next is powerful, shocking and not at all what you’d expect from a kid’s comic crafted to sell in the heyday of UK war films commemorating the conflict their parents lived through.

A powerful psychological thriller that beaks the rules of comics combat, Battle Stations is

subtly subversive, straightforwardly told and startlingly compelling, far from the bread & butter war stories that sustained British comics readers for decades; and few have ever looked so good doing it. If you’re a connoisseur of graphic thrills and dramatic tension, don’t miss these salty sagas.
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