Category: Best of British

By Sydney Jordan & Willie Patterson (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-597-2

Finally back in print – and in Titan’s spiffy Deluxe hardback format – is this superb collection of strips from the only serious rival to Dan Dare in either popularity or quality, not just in Britain but in the entire world.

Sydney Jordan began his saga of the thinking man’s hero in the Daily Express on February 2nd 1954, writing the first few adventures himself. In 1956 his old school friend and associate Willie Patterson moved from Scotland to London and helped out with the fifth adventure ‘Sanctuary’, and scripted the next one ‘Unquiet Island’, whilst sorting out his own career as a freelance scripter for such titles as Amalgamated Press’s Children’s Encyclopaedia, Caroline Baker – Barrister at Law and eventually Fleetway’s War Picture Library series.

He continued to supplement and assist the artist intermittently (Jordan was never comfortable scripting, preferring to plot and draw the strips – another confederate of the time was Harry Harrison who wrote the ninth tale ‘Out of Touch’, which ran from October 10th 1957 – April 5th 1958) until, with the fourteenth tale, he assumed the writing chores on a full-time basis and began the strip’s Golden Age. He would remain until 1969.

‘Overlord’ began on February 10th 1960. In it, British Space Scientist Jeff Hawke meets for the first time a character who would become one of the greatest villains in pictorial fiction: Chalcedon, galactic criminal and would-be Overlord of Space.

When an alien ship crashes into the Egyptian desert, it reveals that two huge fleets of spaceships are engaged in a running battle within the Solar System, and the Earth is directly in their path. After interminable babble and shilly-shallying at the UN, Hawke convinces the authorities to let him take a party to the warring factions in the hope of diverting them from our poor, endangered world. What he finds is not only terrifying and fantastic but, thanks to Jordan’s magical illustration and Patterson’s thrilling, devastatingly wry writing, incredibly sophisticated and very, very funny.

Running until June 20th, it was followed by a much more traditional and solemn yarn. ‘Survival’ (21-June to December 12th 1960) follows the events of an interplanetary prang that severely injures Hawke’s assistant Mac Maclean. Repaired – and “improved” by the penitent extraterrestrials that caused the accident – Mac rejoins the Earth crew, but is no longer one of them. Moreover they are all still marooned on a desolate asteroid with no hope of rescue, and must use all their meagre resources to save themselves. This gritty tale of endurance and integrity was mostly illustrated by fellow Scot Colin Andrew as Sydney Jordan was busily preparing art for a proposed Jeff Hawke Sunday page, which never materialised, although that art was recycled as the eighteenth adventure ‘Pastmaster’.

It was a return to Earth and satirical commentary with the next tale ‘Wondrous Lamp’. Running from 13th September 1960 to 11th March 1961 it begins in second century Arabia when an alien survey scout crashed at the feet of wandering merchant Ala Eddin, briefly granting him great powers before his timely comeuppance. Nearly two thousand years later the ship – which looks a bit like a lamp – precipitates a crisis when its teleportation circuits lead to an invasion by a couple of million of the universe’s toughest warriors…

This brilliantly quirky tale, like all the best science-fiction, is a commentary on its time of creation, and the satirical view of Whitehall bureaucracy and venality, earthbound and pan-galactic, is a dry and cynical delight, which is as telling now as it was in the days before the Profumo Affair.

Chalcedon returns for the final tale in this volume. ‘Counsel For The Defence’ (13th March -2nd August 1961) sees Hawke and Maclean press-ganged into the depths of Intergalactic Jurisprudence as the Overlord, brought to Justice at last, chooses the Earthman as his advocate in the upcoming trial. Naturally he has a sinister motive and naturally nothing turns out as anybody planned or expected it to, but the art is breathtaking, the adventure captivating and the humour timeless.

Jeff Hawke is a revered and respected milestone of graphic achievement almost everywhere except its country of origin. Hopefully this latest attempt to reprint these gems will find a more receptive audience this time, and perhaps we’ll even get to see those earlier stories as well.

© 2007 Express Newspapers Ltd.

By (Pelham Books/Rainbird)
ISBN: 0-72071-456-7

Jane is one of the most important and well-regarded comic strips in British, if not World, history. It began on December 5th 1932 as Jane’s Journal: Or The Diary of a Bright Young Thing, a frothy, frivolous gag-a-day strip in the Daily Mirror, created by the cartoonist Norman Pett. Originally a series of panels with cursive script embedded to simulate a diary page it switched to the more formal strip frames and balloons in late 1938, around the time scripter Don Freeman came on board.

Jane’s secret was skin. Even before war broke out there were torn skirts and lost blouses aplenty, but once the shooting started and Jane became an operative for British Intelligence her clothes came off with terrifying ease. She even went topless when the Blitz was at its worst.

Pett drew the strip, famously using first his wife and then actress and model Christabel Leighton-Porter until May 1948 when his assistant Michael Hubbard assumed full control of the feature (prior to that he had drawn backgrounds and male characters). Hubbard carried the series, increasingly a safe soap-opera and less a racy glamour strip to its conclusion on October 10th 1959.

Jane’s war record is frankly astounding. As a morale booster she was reckoned worth more than divisions of infantry and her exploits were cited in Parliament and discussed by Eisenhower and Churchill. Legend has it that The Mirror‘s Editor was among the few who knew the date of “D-Day” so as to co-ordinate her exploits with the Normandy landings. In 1944, on the day she went full frontal, the American Service newspaper Roundup (provided to US soldiers) went with the headline “JANE GIVES ALL” and the sub-heading “YOU CAN ALL GO HOME NOW”. Christabel Leighton-Porter toured as Jane in a services revue – she stripped for the boys – during the war and in 1949 starred in the film The Adventures of Jane.

Since there still isn’t a definitive collection of this fabulous strip (although the occasional brief tome has slipped out over the years) I’ve chosen to review this slim gem that was originally released in 1983 to tie-in with a BBC TV series starring Glynis Barber. It features “Hush-Hush House” from 1940 (incidentally the adventure adapted as the aforementioned TV show) wherein the simple ingénue becomes a British agent and is sent to a code-breaking site where a spy is causing havoc, and also “Nature in the Raw”, a gentle mystery with genteelly salacious artwork from 1951, drawn by the criminally underrated Hubbard.

Although the product of simpler, if more perilous times, the innocently saucy adventures of Jane, patient but dedicated beau Georgie-Porgie and especially her intrepid Dachshund Count Fritz Von Pumpernickel are landmarks of our artform, not simply for their impact but also for the plain and simple reason that they are superbly drawn and great to read. Let’s hope that one day that fact will be acknowledged with a definitive reprinting.

© 1983 Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

By Pat Mills & Hunt Emerson (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-85286-011-1

The most successful comic strips depend more on the right villain than any hero or combination of protagonists, so this quirky little oddment was better placed than most for success. Created by British legends Pat Mills and Hunt Emerson this strident, polemical satire puts the boot in on the appalling tactics and philosophies of the third term Thatcher government with savagely hilarious art and stunningly biting writing.

The concept is simple now but groundbreaking in 1987. The reader is to be Prime Minister Maggie who, by reading sections of the book and selecting a choice of action at the end of each chapter is directed to another page to experience the ramifications of that decision. The objective is to win another election, and the method is to make only vote-winning decisions – thus the multiple-choice page-endings. The intention is not to win the game, obviously.

This powerful piece of graphic propaganda may have dated on some levels but the home-truths are still as pertinent. Even as Maggie and her demented pack of lap-dogs wriggled and squirmed on Mills and Emerson’s pen-points, their legacy of personal gain was supplanting both personal and communal responsibility to become the new norm. Today’s Britain is their fault and this book still reminds us of a struggle too few joined and a fight we should have won, but didn’t.

It’s still really, really funny though…

Text and concept © 1987 Pat Mills. Illustrations © 1987 Hunt Emerson. All Rights Reserved.

By Jamie Delano & David Lloyd (Marvel)
ISBN13: 978-1-85400-288-4

This (regrettably!) one-off sequel to Night Raven: The Collected Stories (ISBN13: 978-1-85400-557-3), although the second comic-strip adventure, actually followed a long and impressive run of prose tales that appeared in a huge variety of Marvel UK titles throughout the 1980s, written by such luminaries as Alan Moore and Jamie Delano, and eerily illustrated by some of Britain’s top artists. This utilisation of such a pulp-fiction style character in a modern equivalent of the originating genre was very fitting and those stories will hopefully be gathered together in a collection one day.

House of Cards is set in those fabled gangster days and tells a complex tale of tragic love and futile vengeance. Night Raven – who gets an origin of sorts here – is fascinated by the nearly-fallen-flower Inez Pearl. In the Depression-era Big City a girl does whatever she has to, but although in love with Soldier Jack, a charismatic Trigger-man for Tall Saul’s mob, she has remained mostly clean. That’s all going to change once she sings in Tall Saul’s Speakeasy, though…

When corrupt Congressman Harry Chase decides he wants Inez, Tall Saul orders Soldier Jack to lend the politician his girlfriend, precipitating a savage clash that devastates the underworld and leaves no winners, and even the enigmatic Night Raven is helpless to affect the outcome of this star-crossed melodrama.

The writing of Jamie Delano is in the modern florid, faux-poetic style and as such seems almost untrue to its pulp origins, which worked on a staccato rhythm of tough, clipped prose. Nevertheless it does work and the subtly washed-out, painted artwork by David Lloyd more than compensates for any perceived failing. The dreamy, muted tones belie the intensity of the events and make the action and the sad, still moments all the more powerful. This is a beautiful book to look at and one you should own.

A Prestige-format, comic-book sized edition was also released in 1992.

© 1991, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Steve Parkhouse, David Lloyd & John Bolton (Marvel)
ISBN13: 978-1-85400-557-3

In the good old days comic stories were pithy and punchy, (like the all-but-dead and much-missed prose short-story) relying on mood and action rather than excessive exposition and breast-beating pseudo-poetry to enthral their readers. A perfect example would be the three page instalments of pulp-noir magic created by Steve Parkhouse and David Lloyd for the weekly Hulk comic produced by Marvel UK in 1979.

Gathered in this volume and coloured (the originals were captivating in stark, moody black and white) they outline the earliest adventures of Night Raven, a helmeted, trench-coating wearing vigilante who stalked the grimy streets and alleys of Prohibition-era America dealing out fearsome personal justice to a succession of low-life hoods and thugs. Lloyd masterfully illustrated Night-Time in the City, Blind Justice, Gang Rule, In the Frame, The Assassin and Scoop before leaving the strip, but his replacement was another British star on the rise.

The Dragon is an eerie drama of the mythic Chinese Tongs that resonates with Parkhouse’s long fascination with all subjects Oriental, powerfully realised by John Bolton, in the days just before he made it big with King Kull, Marada the She-Wolf and Classic X-Men.

Clean, simple and irresistibly compelling these action vignettes serve to show how far we’ve come since the 1970’s, and sadly just how much we’ve lost in telling comic stories. But at least we can still see how it should be done…

©1979, 1990, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

(GARTH ANNUAL 1975)

By Jim Edgar & Frank Bellamy (IPC)
No ISBN

This wonderful Softcover book was released whilst the amazing Frank Bellamy was still alive and astounding fans with his phenomenal illustration and design on the Mirror’s long-running time-travelling adventure strip (for fuller background you could Google ‘Garth’ or even check out our own archives for Garth: The Cloud of Balthus – ISBN: 0-90761-034-X or The Mirror Classic Cartoon Collection – ISBN: 0-948248-06-8).

This large tome is printed on thick newsprint and if you’re at all moved by the physical nature of comics as artefact, as well as the power of the work itself, the texture and even smell of such an item is as effective a time travel method as any used by our burly hero. Also, for some reason the art just seems to look better on off-white, gritty paper rather than the admittedly more durable slick and shiny stock favoured these days.

So if you can track down this book – and there are still a few out there – you can luxuriate in the majesty of Bellamy and Jim Edgar’s masterful, sexy thrillers with the first collection of The Orb of Trimandias, Ghost Town, The Cloud of Balthus, Women of Galba, Sundance (which Bellamy inherited from artist John Allard three weeks in) and Wolfman of Ausensee. I will digress and admit that the all-original cover created for this last story was a major factor in reviewing this annual. It’s a sight every comic art fan ought to be familiar with.

© IPC Magazines 1974.

(THUNDERBIRDS COMIC ALBUM VOLUME 2)

By Frank Bellamy, with Steve Kite & Graham Bleathman, edited and compiled by Alan Fennel (Ravette Books/Egmont)
ISBN: 1-85304-407-5

This second collection of adventures culled from the pages of TV 21 once again features the magical artwork of Frank Bellamy in three more fantastic adventures of the original International Rescue team. Written by Alan Fennell, these thrillers for all ages capture the energy and wonderment of the original Gerry Anderson puppet shows without the budgetary restrictions that always dog fantasy shows, and mercifully the colour reproduction of the photogravure artwork is infinitely better in this volume than in its predecessor (Thunderbirds … To The Rescue, ISBN: 1-85304-406-7).

The Space Mirror is a deep space thriller featuring an orbital platform used to melt the polar ice-caps; Operation Depthprobe sees a sabotaged fuel-rocket seconds from destroying its launch facility; and The Atlantic Tunnel features the devilish Hood whose machinations nearly end not only a new transport system but also the lives of Brains and Alan Tracy.

Augmented by cutaway technical features on Thunderbirds 3, 4 and 5, this fabulous comic album is a superb example of the quality of those old British comics and especially the brilliance of Frank Bellamy. There will never be a greater argument of the necessity for a new and permanent collection of his strips and illustrations.

© 1991 ITC Entertainment Group Ltd. Licensed by Copyright Promotions Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84576-323-8 ISBN-13: 978-1-84576-323-7

The fourth instalment of the magnificent anti-war comic strip picks right up from the cliffhanging ending of the previous volume and shows the hairbreadth escape of boy-soldier Charley Bourne and his mum from the Silvertown munitions factory targeted by a Zeppelin bombing London, before launching into the experimental narrative of the eponymous ‘Blue’.

Writer Mills fully exercised his own political and creative agendas on this First World War series, and as his own commentary relates, was always amazed at what he got away with and what novelties his editors pulled him up on. Firstly, for a weekly war comic like Battle it was rare to allow the hero time away from the action, but here Charley spent the entire story on leave – although hardly safe or sound. Secondly, although unwittingly embroiled in the black market trade in new identities for deserters by his unscrupulous brother-in-law, the hero’s humanity compels him to side against the dictates of patriotism and duty.

Most importantly, whilst aiding the escape of Blue – an Englishman serving with the French Army in the living Hell of Verdun – the episodes become depictions of Blue’s War: A story within a story with the strip’s lead character reduced to an avid and appalled listener.

The horrors of Verdun (the longest single battle in history), related by a British rebel (based on the real-world ‘Monocled Mutineer’ Percy Toplis) wrapped in a tense flight from Military Police and the fearsome ‘Drag Man’ (a obsessive hunter of Deserters) through the eerie streets of a bombed out London, makes for one of the most sophisticated and adult dramas ever seen in fiction, let alone the pages of a kid’s war comic. It is compelling, emotionally draining and dauntingly earnest. But it works.

Lifted to dizzying heights of excellence by the phenomenal artwork of Joe Colquhoun, ‘Blue’s Story’ is a masterpiece of subversive outrage within the greater marvel that is Charley’s War. I pray it never becomes a film or TV series, but I’d bribe Ministers to get these wonderful books onto the National Curriculum.

© 2007 Egmont Magazines Ltd. All Rights Reserved

(Stingray comic album volume 2)

By Ron Embleton, with Steve Kite, written, edited and compiled by Alan Fennel (Ravette Books/Egmont)
ISBN: 1-85304-457-1

This album from the early 1990s (when Gerry Anderson’s unforgettable creations enjoyed a popular revival on TV and in comics publishing) reprints three unforgettable strip thrillers from the legendary weekly comic TV21. Launching in late January 1965, TV Century 21 (its full title – the unwieldy “Century” was eventually dropped) captured the hearts and minds of millions of children in the 1960s.

Filled with high quality art and features, printed in glossy photogravure, TV21 featured such strips as Fireball XL5, Lady Penelope (Frank Bellamy’s Thunderbirds did not begin until the second year of publication), Supercar and Stingray. Anderson’s epic submarine series featured a crack team of aquanauts pitted against a bizarre and malevolent plethora of beings who lived beneath the waves. The BBC were represented by a full-colour strip starring The Daleks.

Although the reproduction leaves something to be desired, ‘The Monster Jellyfish’, ‘Curse of the Crustavons’ and ‘the Atlanta Kidnap Affair’ – all written by Alan Fennell – are cracking fantasy rollercoaster rides full of action and drama and illustrated with captivating majesty by the incredible Ron Embleton.

He supplemented his lush colour palette and uncanny facility for capturing likenesses with photographic stills from the TV shows, and whether for expediency or artistic reasons the effect on impressionable young minds was electric. This made the strips “more real” then and the effect has not diminished with time. This is a superb treat for fans of all ages, and this series is also long overdue for a deluxe collected edition.

© 1992 ITC Entertainment Group Ltd. Licensed by Copyright Promotions Ltd. All Rights Reserved.