Category: Comedy

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Lucky Luke volume 21 The 20th Cavalry


By Morris & Goscinny, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-016-0 (PB Album/Digital edition)

Doughty, dashing and dependable cowboy “good guy” Lucky Luke is a rangy, implacably even-tempered do-gooder able to “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic Old West, having light-hearted adventures on his petulant and somewhat sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper.

The taciturn trailblazer regularly interacts with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk in tales drawn from key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions, and interpretations…

Over decades, his exploits have made him one of the top-ranking comic characters in the world, generating upwards of 85 individual albums (excluding the many spin-off series) with sales totalling in excess of 300 million in 30 languages thus far. That renown has led to a mountain of merchandise, aforementioned tie-in series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan), plus toys, computer games, animated cartoons, a plethora of TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions.

No theme park yet, but you never know…

The brainchild of Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (“Morris”) and first officially seen in Le Journal de Spirou’s seasonal Annual L’Almanach Spirou 1947, Luke sprang to laconic life in 1946, before inevitably ambling into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880’ on December 7th 1946.

Working solo until 1955, Morris produced nine albums of affectionate sagebrush spoofery before teaming with old pal and fellow trans-American tourist Rene Goscinny. When Rene became his regular wordsmith, Luke attained dizzying, legendary, heights starting with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie) which began serialisation on August 25th 1955. In 1967, the six-gun straight-shooter switched sides, joining Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote for La Diligence (The Stagecoach).

Goscinny co-created 45 albums with Morris before his untimely death, whereupon Morris soldiered on both singly and with other collaborators. He died in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus numerous sidebar sagebrush sagas crafted with Achdé, Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, all taking their own shot at the venerable vigilante…

Lucky Luke has history in Britain too, having first pseudonymously amused and enthralled young readers during the late 1950s, syndicated to weekly anthology Film Fun. He later rode back into comics-town in 1967 for comedy paper Giggle, using nom de plume Buck Bingo.

Morris & Goscinny’s 18th coproduction, Le Vingtième (or Le 20ème) de cavalerie was originally serialised in Le Journal de Spirou #1356-1377 before becoming the 27th album release in 1965. It’s a wickedly barbed spoof of Hollywood’s output (especially John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy) in regard to Western soldiering and its often decidedly one-sided view of the US’s Indian wars. If you’re a fan of those flicks, you’ll see caricatures of plenty of favourite stars such as Randolph Scott and Victor McClaglen…

The plot is one you’ll know – by cultural osmosis – if not actual repeated viewings as, deep in Wyoming territory, Chief Yellow Dog’s recent treaty signing with representatives has led to confusion, hostility and potential bloodshed. The stated commitments involved white settlers passing through unmolested in return for not killing all the buffalo, but that’s suddenly stopped happening, leaving Fort Cheyenne’s garrison and particularly commander Colonel McStraggle in dire straits and quite a quandary…

With settlers prevented from crossing Indian land, tensions are mounting and in Washington DC the movers and shakers once again request the aid of a seasoned, unbiased and seemingly infallible troubleshooter…

By-the-book warrior Colonel McStraggle is proud of his achievements with the 20th Cavalry regiment, but is also a stickler for protocol and the “Army way”. He is not keen on the new “scout” foisted upon him, but is even less happy with the appalling progress of his son Grover – a lowly trooper who must prove his worthiness on a daily – if not hourly – basis with dear old dad micromanaging every moment…

Along with a typically quotidian cast including savvy Chinese laundryman Ming Foo, a fanatical old Irish sergeant and a Greek chorus of complaining soldiers who have seen it all before, more unusual if temporary occupants of Fort Cheyenne include stranded and obnoxious hat maker Jeremiah Bowler…

Tempers are simmering everywhere, but the biggest problem Lucky can see is that somebody is supplying the Indians with guns and booze. When he visits the angry natives and meets proudly villainous deserter Derek Flood, our hero realises that just stopping the renegade won’t end the crisis. The old leader is even being pushed into war by his own braves and fellow/rival chiefs Crazy Coyote of the Sioux and Sick Eagle of the Arapaho.

The real problem is that – apart from McStraggle and Yellow Dog – everyone apparently wants a fight and won’t back down until they get one…

When the two leaders finally agree to parley, the ceremony is sabotaged and the Chief arrested over Lucky’s protests.

Now it’s time for the time-honoured siege of the fort, and desperate ride for reinforcements and horrendous slaughter unless Luke can change the script in time…

A deliciously wry and loving homage to classical western cinema, The 20th Cavalry revels in its classic set-piece slapstick and witty wordplay: poking gentle fun at the fundamental components of the genre and successfully blending tradition with action to deliver a major victory for fun…

Here is another wildly entertaining all-ages confection by unparalleled comics masters, affording an enticing glimpse into a unique genre for today’s readers who might well have missed the romantic allure of an all-pervasive Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Goscinny & Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2009 Cinebook Ltd.

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Gomer Goof volume 5: Goofball Season


By Franquin & Delporte, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-462-5 (PB Album/Digital edition)

Like so much in Franco-Belgian comics, it started with Le Journal de Spirou. The magazine debuted on April 2nd 1938, with its engaging lead strip created by Rob-Vel (François Robert Velter). In 1943, publishing house Dupuis purchased all rights to the comic and its titular star, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm for the redheaded kid’s exploits. Ultimately the publisher, and editorial office would become characters in their own periodicals…

In 1946 Jijé’s assistant André Franquin was handed creative control of the Spirou strip. He gradually switched from short gag vignettes to extended adventure serials, introducing a broad, engaging cast of regulars and in 1952 created phenomenally popular wonder-beast The Marsupilami. Debuting in Spirou et les héritiers, this critter grew into a spin-off star of screen, plush toy stores, console games and albums in his own right. Franquin continued crafting increasingly fantastic tales and absorbing Spirou sagas until his resignation in 1969.

Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd 1924. Drawing from an early age, the lad only began formal art training at École Saint-Luc in 1943. When the war forced the school’s closure a year later, he worked at Compagnie Belge d’Animation in Brussels, where he met Maurice de Bévére (AKA Lucky Luke creator “Morris”), Pierre Culliford (“Peyo”, of The Smurfs and Benny Breakiron) and Eddy Paape (Valhardi, Luc Orient). All but Peyo signed on with Dupuis in 1945.

Franquin began as a jobbing cartoonist and illustrator, producing covers for Le Moustique and scouting magazine Plein Jeu. During those early days, Franquin and Morris were tutored by Jijé: the chief illustrator at LJdS. He transformed them – and fellow newbie Willy Maltaite (AKA “Will” – Tif et Tondu, Isabelle, Le jardin des désirs) – into a smoothly functioning creative bullpen known as La bande des quatre or “Gang of Four”. They would revolutionise Franco-Belgian comics with their prolific and engaging “Marcinelle school” style of graphic storytelling…

Jijé handed Franquin all responsibilities for the flagship strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriqué (#427, June 20th 1946) and eager office junior ran with it for two decades; enlarging the feature’s scope and horizons until it became purely his own. Almost weekly, fans met startling new characters like comrade/rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor and Merlin of mushroom mechanics the Count of Champignac…

Spirou & Fantasio were reimagined as a globetrotting journalist team: visiting exotic places, exposing crimes, exploring the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of bizarre and exotic arch-enemies.

Throughout all that revolutionary reinvention, Fantasio was still a full-fledged reporter for Le Journal de Spirou and had to frequently pop back to the Dupuis office. Sadly, lurking there – or was it just in the artist’s head? – was an accident-prone, smugly big-headed office junior in charge of minor jobs and dogs-bodying. Franquin dubbed him Gaston Lagaffe…

There’s a long history of fictitiously personalising those mysterious back room creatives and all the arcane processes they indulge in to make our favourite comics, whether it’s Stan Lee’s Marvel Bullpen or DC Thomson’s lugubrious “Mr. Editor” and underlings at The Beano and Dandy. Let me assure you that it’s a truly international practise and the occasional asides on text pages featuring well-meaning foul-up/office gofer Gaston (who debuted in #985, cover-dated February 28th 1957) grew to be one of the most popular components of the comic, whether as short illustrated strips or in faux editorial reports in text-feature form.

On a strictly personal note, I still think current English designation Gomer Goof (this name comes from an earlier, abortive attempt to introduce the character to American audiences) is unwarranted. The quintessentially Franco-Belgian tone and humour doesn’t translate particularly well (la gaffe translates as “blunder” not “idiot”) and the connotation contributes nothing here. When he surprisingly appeared in a 1970s UK Thunderbirds annual as part of an earlier syndication attempt, Gaston was rechristened Cranky Franky. Perhaps they should have kept that one or, best of all, his original designation…

In terms of actual schtick and delivery, older readers might recognise beats of Benny Hill and Jacques Tati in timeless elements of all-consuming, grandiose self-delusion, and spot recurring situations from Some Mothers Do Have ’Em or Mr Bean. It’s all sublimely set up surreal slapstick, paralysing puns, infernal ingenuity and warped invention, with pomposity lampooned, slovenly sloth celebrated and no good deed going noticed, rewarded or unpunished…

As previously stated, Gomer makes his living (let’s not dignify or mis-categorise what he does as “work”) at the Spirou editorial offices: occasionally reporting to go-getting journalist Fantasio, when not complicating the lives of office manager Léon Prunelle and other staffers. He generally ignores the minor design jobs like paste-up, “gofer-ing” and office maintenance he’s paid to handle as well as editing readers’ letters… the official reason why fan requests and suggestions are never answered…

Gomer is lazy, peckish, opinionated, ever-ravenous, impetuous, underfed, forgetful and eternally hungry, with his most manic moments all stemming from “inventing” labour-saving follies, cutting work corners (often load-bearing walls) and stashing or illicitly consuming contraband food in the office…

This causes constant clashes with his co-workers and his smugly superior attitude comfortably extends to police officer Longsnoot and fireman Captain Morwater. However, the office oaf remains eternally easy-going and incorrigible. Only two questions are really important here: why does Fantasio keep giving him one last chance, and what can gentle, beguiling, flighty, impressionable, utterly lovelorn secretary Miss Jeanne possibly see in the self-opinionated idiot?

This 8th collection of strips culled from the pages ofLe Journal de Spirou was originally released in 1970 as Gaston – Lagaffe nous gâte and became Cinebook’s fifth translated tome. It contains more short cartoon tales and rapid-fire all-Franquin comics gags in single-page bursts, with additional mirth contributed by frequent comic confrère Yvan Delporte – Spirou’s editor-in-chief from 1955-1968 and constant ideas man for not only the Goof, but also Idées noires, Isabelle, The Smurfs and many more.

In this instance that partnership includes a brace of comedic text “reports” from the comic magazine’s editorial page in an emphatic and outlandish Look behind the scenes: detailing in two parts ‘The Wonderful World of the Goofophone’ in two revelatory instalments offering insight into the remarkable instrument/atrocity weapon. His devastating musical contraption – also known as the truly terrifying Brontosaurophone – again disrupts commerce, glass, flora, fauna, the environment and most other organic life in earshot…

The techno-nonsense resumes with a chilling and literally shocking advance in scarecrow development, interspersed with the inventor’s crippling intermittent bouts of ailments, bugs and occupational sloth and ennui, only held at bay by another war over parking tickets with officer Longsnoot. The motorised monstrosity Gomer calls his car is an appallingly decrepit and dilapidated Fiat 509 auto(barely)mobile. It is desperately in need of his many well-meant attempts to counter its lethal road pollution emissions. It’s also the main reason he always has the sniffles or wears some kind of bandage, plaster or splint…

Here, Miss Jeanne is further beguiled by Gomer’s solution to broken zips, but less sanguine at his innovations in broaching walnuts: a repeating theme that over weeks shakes buildings, wrecks bowling balls and derails public transport…

Even when she finally gets the big fool alone in the country, all he can think of is playing his infernal musical howitzer. The results would make any sane man question the inventor’s green credentials and ability to hear in human ranges…

There’s a greater role for neighbouring architects/engineers Gutsy & Irongrip who briefly and painfully experience the power of the Goof after he mistakenly misses the door to the Spirou offices. They would probably have paid a fortune for the phenomenal hyper-elastic building material that emerged from his latest home bakery sessions…

More fruitless attempts to sort the mag’s mail and park his beloved car fall foul of air pollution, poor weather and wandering attention: only confirming that cars, chemistry sets and snow do not belong together. Moreover, his unceasing efforts to modernise and automate the office and studio (despite violent resistance and panicked pleas) still fall short of his own high standards and expectations.

The world is simply not ready for the kind of doors, telephones, executive toys, and entertainment systems his febrile mind can conceive of…

All that brainwork naturally exhausts a fellow and many instances here show how a brief nap might be misunderstood as sheer laziness. It’s just like his many well-meaning attempts to mollify ever-outraged financier De Mesmaeker (in-joke analogue of fellow creator Jidéhem – AKA Jean De Mesmaeker): the explosively irate businessman whose ever-failing efforts to get his contracts signed somehow render him a constant and unfortunate victim of the Goof’s particular brand of misfortune…

At least birds and beasts love Gomer, although being followed by a flock of massed avians, a herd of horses and the giant fly he created does upset those around him. Perhaps it’s his quest to invent a completely natural-scented air freshener?

Whatever the cause – or short-term effects –  nothing can long deter the young wonder from his dream of making the world a different – if not actually “better” – place.

This volume ends with a controversial cartoon that raised the ire of The French National Natural Gas Distribution Company/Gaz de France when first seen in the seventies. The corporations PR team had taken legal umbrage to some of Franquin’s satires and demanded redress in print. He complied, but in a way that only inspired even more cartoon calumny and commentary…

Far better enjoyed than précised or described, these strips allowed Franquin to flex whimsical muscles and even subversively sneak in some satirical support for his beliefs in pacifism and environmentalism. However, at their core the gags remain supreme examples of all-ages comedy: wholesome, barbed, daft and incrementally funnier with every re-reading.

Have you started Goofing off yet?
© Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 2009 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2019 Cinebook Ltd.

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Popeye volume 2: Wimpy and His Hamburgers (The E.C. Segar Popeye Sundays)


By Elzie Crisler Segar with Kevin Huizenga & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1- 68396-668-5 (TPB/digital edition)

Popeye embarked in the Thimble Theatre comic feature with the instalment for January 17th 1929. The strip was an unassuming vehicle that had launched on 19th December 1919: one of many newspaper cartoon funnies to parody, burlesque and mimic the era’s silent movie serials. Its more successful forebears included C.W. Kahles’ Hairbreadth Harry or Ed Wheelan’s Midget Movies/Minute Movies – which Thimble Theatre replaced in media mogul William Randolph Hearsts’ papers.

All the above-cited strips employed a repertory company of characters playing out generic adventures based on those expressive cinema antics. Thimble Theatre’s cast included Nana and Cole Oyl, their gawky, excessively excitable daughter Olive, diminutive-but-pushy son Castor and Olive’s sappy, would-be beau Horace Hamgravy.

The series ticked along nicely for a decade: competent, unassuming and always entertaining, with Castor and Ham Gravy (as he became) tumbling through get-rich-quick schemes, frenzied, fear-free adventures and gag situations until September 10th 1928, when explorer uncle Lubry Kent Oyl gave Castor a spoil from his latest exploration of Africa.

It was the most fabulous of all birds – a hand-reared Whiffle Hen – and was the start of something truly groundbreaking…

Whiffle Hens are troublesome, incredibly rare and possessed of fantastic powers, but after months of inspired hokum and slapstick shenanigans, Castor was inclined to keep Bernice – for that was the hen’s name – as a series of increasingly peculiar circumstances brought him into contention with ruthless Mr. Fadewell, world’s greatest gambler and king of the gaming resort dubbed ‘Dice Island’.

Bernice clearly affected and inspired writer/artist E.C. Segar, because his strip increasingly became a playground of frantic, compelling action and comedy during this period…

When Castor and Ham discovered that everybody wanted the Whiffle Hen because she could bestow infallible good luck, they sailed for Dice Island to win every penny from its lavish casinos. Big sister Olive wanted to come along, but the boys planned to leave her behind once their vessel was ready to sail. It was 16th January 1929…

The next day, in the 108th episode of the saga, a bluff, brusquely irascible, ignorant, itinerant and exceeding ugly one-eyed old sailor was hired by the pathetic pair to man the boat they had rented, and the world was introduced to one of the most iconic and memorable characters ever conceived.

By sheer surly willpower, Popeye won readers hearts and minds: his no-nonsense, grumbling simplicity and dubious appeal enchanting the public until, by the end of the tale, the walk-on had taken up full residency. He would eventually make Thimble Theatre his own…

The Sailor Man affably steamed onto the full-colour Sunday Pages forming the meat of this curated collection covering March 6th 1932-November 26th 1933. This paperback prize is the second of four that will contain Segar’s entire Sunday canon: designed for swanky slipcases. Spiffy as that sounds, the wondrous stories are also available in digital editions if you want to think of ecology or mitigate the age and frailty of your spinach-deprived “muskles”…

Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8th December 1894, son of a handyman. Elzie’s early life was filled with the solid, earnest blue-collar jobs that typified his generation of cartoonists. The younger Segar worked as a decorator and house-painter, and played drums accompanying vaudeville acts at the local theatre and – when the town got a movie house – he played for the silent films. This allowed him to absorb the staging, timing and narrative tricks from close observation of the screen, and would become his greatest assets as a cartoonist. It was whilst working as the film projectionist, aged 18, he decided to draw for his living, and tell his own stories.

Like so many from that “can-do” era, Segar studied art via mail: in this case W.L. Evans’ cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio – from where Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster would launch Superman upon the world. Segar gravitated to Chicago and was “discovered” by Richard F. Outcault (The Yellow Kid, Buster Brown), arguably the inventor of newspaper comics.

Outcault introduced Segar around at the prestigious Chicago Herald and soon – still wet behind the ears – Segar’s first strip Charley Chaplin’s Comedy Capers debuted on 12th March 1916. Two years, Elzie married Myrtle Johnson and moved to Hearst’s Chicago Evening American to create Looping the Loop. Managing Editor William Curley saw a big future for Segar and promptly packed the newlyweds off to the Manhattan headquarters of the mighty King Features Syndicate.

Within a year Segar was producing Thimble Theatre for the New York Journal. In 1924, Segar created a second daily strip. The 5:15 was a surreal domestic comedy featuring weedy commuter/would-be inventor John Sappo …and his formidable, indomitable wife Myrtle (!).

A born storyteller, Segar had from the start an advantage even his beloved cinema couldn’t match. His brilliant ear for dialogue and accent shone out from his admittedly average melodrama adventure plots, adding lustre to stories and gags he always felt he hadn’t drawn well enough. After a decade or so – and just as cinema caught up with the introduction of “talkies” – he finally discovered a character whose unique sound and individual vocalisations blended with a fantastic, enthralling nature to create a literal superstar.

Incoherent, plug-ugly and stingingly sarcastic, Popeye shambled on stage midway through ‘Dice Island’ and once his very minor part played out, simply refused to leave. Within a year he was a regular. As circulation skyrocketed, he became the star.

In the less than 10 years Segar worked with his iconic sailor-man (January 1929 until the artist’s untimely death on 13th October 1938), the auteur constructed an incredible meta-world of fabulous lands and lost locales, where unique characters undertook fantastic voyages spawned or overcame astounding scenarios and experienced big, unforgettable thrills as well as the small human dramas we’re all subject to.

This was a saga both extraordinary and mundane, which could be hilarious or terrifying – frequently at the same time. For every trip to the rip-roaring Wild West or lost kingdom, there was a brawl between squabbling neighbours, spats between friends or disagreements between sweethearts – any and all usually settled with mightily-swung fists.

Popeye is the first Superman of comics, but he was not a comfortable hero to idolise. A brute who thought with his fists, lacking all respect for authority, he was uneducated, short-tempered and – whenever hot tomatoes batted their eyelashes (or thereabouts) at him – fickle: a worrisome gambling troublemaker who wasn’t welcome in polite society… and wouldn’t want to be.

The mighty marine marvel is the ultimate working-class hero: raw and rough-hewn, practical, with an innate and unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not, a joker who wants kids to be themselves – but not necessarily “good” – and someone who takes no guff from anybody. Always ready to defend the weak and with absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows, he was and will always be “the best of us”…

This current tranche of reprinted classics concentrates on the astounding full-page Sunday outings (here encompassing March 6th 1932 to November 1933, but sadly omits the absurdist Sappo toppers. You’ll need to track down Fantagraphics’ hardback tabloid collections from a decade ago to see those whacky shenanigans…

Since many papers only carried dailies or Sundays, but only occasionally both, a system of differentiated storylines developed early in American publishing, and when Popeye finally made his belated sabbath day move, he was already a well-developed character.

Ham and Castor had been the stars since Thimble Theatre’s Sundays since the ancillary feature began on January 25, 1925; they all but vanished once the mighty matelot stormed that stronghold. From then on, Segar concentrated on gag-based extended dramatic serials Mondays to Saturdays, leaving family-friendly japes for Sundays: an arena perfect for the Popeye-Olive Oyl modern romance to unfold. With this second volume, however, we get to play with Segar’s second greatest character creation: morally maladjusted master moocher J Wellington Wimpy…

Preceding the vintage views, this tome offers a lovely laudatory comic strip deconstruction, demystification and appreciation in ‘“Segar’s Wimpy” – An Introduction by Kevin Huizenga’. The experimental fabulist (Glen Ganges in The River At Night, Comix Skool USA, Riverside Companion) probes everything from how different illustrators handle the human dustbin to how Wimpy’s eyes are drawn…

When the wondrous weekend instalments began last volume, we saw Ham Gravy gradually edged out of romancing Olive. From there onwards, done-in-one gag instalments outlined an unlikely but enduring romance which blossomed (withered, bloomed, withered some more, hit cold snaps and early harvests – you get the idea…) as Olive alternately pursued her man and dumped him for better prospects.

To be fair, Popeye always vacillated between ignoring her and moving mountains to impress her. Since she always kept her options open, he spent a lot of time fighting off – quite literally – her other gentlemen callers. A mercurial creature, the militantly maidenly Miss Oyl spent as long trying to stop her beau’s battles (a tricky proposition as he spent time ashore as an extremely successful “sprize fighter”) as civilise her man, yet would mercilessly batter any flighty floozy who cast cow eyes at her devil-may-care suitor…

In those formative episodes, Castor became Popeye’s manager and we revelled in how originally-philanthropic millionaire Mr. Kilph moved from eager backer to demented arch enemy paying any price to see Popeye pummelled. The sailors’ opponents included husky two-fisted Bearcat, Mr. Spar, Kid Sledge, Joe Barnacle, Kid Smack, Kid Jolt, The Bullet, Johnny Brawn, an actual giant dubbed Tinearo and even trained gorilla Kid Klutch.

None were tough enough and Kilph got crazier and crazier…

History repeated itself when a lazy and audaciously corrupt ring referee was introduced as a passing bit player. The unnamed, unprincipled scoundrel kept resurfacing and swiping more of the limelight: graduating from minor moments in extended, trenchant, scathingly witty sequences about boxing and human nature to speaking – and cadging – roles…

Among so many timeless supporting characters, mega moocher J. Wellington Wimpy stands out as the complete antithesis of feisty big-hearted Popeye, but unlike any other nemesis I can think of, this black mirror is not an “emeny” of the hero, but his best – maybe only – friend…

As previously stipulated, the engaging Mr. Micawber-like coward, moocher and conman debuted on 3rd May 1931 as an unnamed referee officiating a bombastic month-long bout against Tinearo. He struck a chord with Segar who made him a (usually unwelcome) fixture. Eternally, infernally ravenous and always soliciting (probably on principle) bribes of any magnitude, we only learned the crook’s name in the May 24th instalment. The erudite rogue uttered the first of many immortal catchphrases a month later.

That was June 21st – but “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” – like most phrases everybody knows, actually started as “Cook me up a hamburger, I’ll pay you Thursday”. It was closely followed by my personal mantra “lets you and him fight”…

Now with a new volume and another year, we open with more of the same. The romantic combat between Olive, Popeye and a string of rival suitors continues, resulting in the sailor winning a male beauty contest (by force of arms), and brutally despatching a procession of potential boyfriends.

As hot-&-cold Olive warms to the moocher, there’s more of Wimpy’s ineffable wisdom on show, as he reinvents himself as the final arbiter of (strictly negotiable) judgement…

Whether it’s her beaux or who’s hardest hit by government policies – sailors like Popeye or restaurant owners like Rough-House – Wimpy has opinions he’s happy to share… for a price.

Mr. Kilph turns up again, arranging a bout between Popeye and his new million-dollar robot, but even with Wimpy officiating, the sailor comes up trumps. The moocher briefly becomes our matelot’s best pal, but blows it by putting the moves on Olive after tasting her cooking…

Another aspect of Popeye’s complex character is highlighted in an extended sequence running from May 29th  through July 17th1932, one that secured his place in reader’s hearts.

The sailor was a rough-hewn orphan who loved to gamble and fight. He was proudly not smart and superhumanly powerful, but he was a big-hearted man with an innate sense of decency who hated injustice – even if he couldn’t pronounce it.

When starving waif Mary Ann tries to sell him a flower, Popeye impetuously adopts her, inadvertently taking her from the brutal couple who use her in a begging racket.

Before long the kid is beloved of his entire circle – even Olive – and to support her, Popeye takes on another prize fight: this time with savage Kid Panther and his unscrupulous manager Gimbler…

He grows to truly love her and there’s a genuine sense of happy tragedy when he locates her real and exceedingly wealthy parents. Naturally Popeye gives her up…

That such a rambunctious, action-packed comedy adventure serial could so easily turn an audience into sobbing, sentimental pantywaists is a measure of just how great a spellbinder Segar was. Although rowdy, slapstick cartoon violence remained at a premium – family values were different then – Segar’s worldly, socially- probing satire and Popeye’s beguiling (but relative) innocence and lack of experience keeps the entire affair in hilarious perspective whilst confirming him as an unlikely and lovable innocent, albeit one eternally at odds with cops and rich folk…

Following weeks of one-off gags – like Olive improbably winning a beauty contest and a succession of hilarious Wimpy episodes (such as cannily exposing himself to score burgers from embarrassed customers and ongoing problems with sleep-eating) – a triptych of plot strands opens as Miss Oyl engages a psychiatrist to cure Popeye of fighting, even as the sailor discovers Wimpy has such an affinity with lower life forms that he can be used to lure all the flies and sundry other bugs from Rough-House’s diner…

The third strand has further-reaching repercussions. Popeye has been teaching kids to fight and avoid spankings which has understandably sparked a riot of rebellion, bad behaviour and bad eating habits. Now, distraught parents need Popeye to set things right again…

Naturally it goes too far once the hero-worshipping kids start using the sailor-man as a source of alt-fact schooling too…

We constantly see softer sides of the sailor-man as he repeatedly gives away most of what he earns – to widows and “orphinks” – and exposes his crusading core with numerous assaults on bullies, animal abusers and romantic rivals, but when the war of nerves and resources between Wimpy and Rough-House inevitably escalates, Popeye implausibly finds himself as “the responsible adult”.

That means being referee in a brutal and ridiculous grudge match settled in the ring, with all proceeds going to providing poor kids with spinach. The bout naturally settles nothing but does have unintended consequences when the moocher is suddenly reunited with his estranged mother after 15 years…

Tough men are all suckers for a sob story and even Rough-House foolishly amplifies the importance and regard people supposedly feel for the now-homeless little old lady’s larcenous prodigal. It’s a move the moocher can’t help but exploit…

As the Sunday Pages followed a decidedly domestic but rowdily riotous path, the section was increasing given over to – or more correctly, appropriated – by the insidiously oleaginous Wimpy: an ever hungry, intellectually stimulating, casually charming and usually triumphant conman profiting in all his mendicant missions.

Whilst still continuing Popeye’s pugilistic shenanigans , the action of the Sunday strips moved away from him hitting quite so much to alternately being outwitted by the unctuous moocher or saving him from the vengeance of the furious diner-owner and passionately loathing fellow customer George W. Geezil. The soup-slurping cove began as an ethnic Jewish stereotype, but like all Segar’s characters swiftly developed beyond his (now so offensive) comedic archetype into a unique person with his own story… and another funny accent. Geezil was the chief and most vocal advocate for murdering the insatiable sponger…

Wimpy was incorrigible and unstoppable – he even became a rival suitor for Olive Oyl’s unappealingly scrawny favours – and his development owes a huge debt to his creator’s love and admiration of comedian W.C. Fields.

A mercurial force of nature, the unflappable mendicant is the perfect foil for common-man-but-imperfect-hero Popeye. Where the sailor is heart and spirit, unquestioning morality and self-sacrifice, indomitable defiance, brute force and no smarts at all, Wimpy is intellect and self-serving greed, freed from all ethical restraint or consideration, and gloriously devoid of impulse-control.

Wimpy literally took candy from babies and food from the mouths of starving children, yet somehow Segar made us love him. He is Popeye’s other half: weld them together and you have an heroic ideal… (and yes, those stories are all true: Britain’s Wimpy burger bar chain was built from the remnants of a 1950s international merchandising scheme seeking to put a J Wellington Wimpy-themed restaurant in every town and city).

The gags and exploits of the two forces of human nature build riotously in 1933, ever-more funny and increasingly outrageous.

Having driven Rough-House into a nervous collapse, plundered farms, zoos and the aquarium and committed criminal impersonation and actual fraud, Wimpy then relentlessly targets the cook’s business partner Mr. Soppy: bleeding him dry as visiting royalty Prince Wellington of Nazilia…

Even being run out of town and beaten so badly that he’s repeatedly hospitalised can’t stop his crafty contortions. He does, however, discover a useful talent: musical gifts that all but enslave his audiences…

Eventually, the master beggar triumphs over all and gets to eat his fill… and must deal with the consequences of his locust-like consumption…

Popeye seems unable to stop him. Half the time he’s helpless with laughter at the moocher’s antics, and when not. there are his major prize fights with 500lb wrestler Squeezo Crushinski and human dinosaur Bullo Oxheart. Naturally Wimpy is referee for both those clashes of the titans and makes out like a bandit…

The only real pause to the seeming dominance of the schemer is when he falls for new diner waitress Lucy Brown. She’s currently spending all her time with manly stud Popeye, but a quiet word with Olive Oyl should have cleared Wimpy’s path.

Should have, but didn’t, and in truth results in Popeye and Olive opening their own eatery in competition with Rough-House, leading to a ruthless cutthroat culinary cold war with the polite parasite reaping the spoils…

The laugh-out-loud antics seem impossible to top, and maybe Segar knew that. He was getting the stand-alone gag-stuff out of his system: clearing the decks and setting the scene for a really big change….

These tales are as vibrant and compelling now as they’ve ever been and comprise a world classic of graphic literature that only a handful of creators have ever matched. Within weeks (or for us, next volume) the Thimble Theatre Sunday page changed forever. In a bold move, the dailies blood-and-thunder adventure serial epics traded places with the Sunday format: transferred to the Technicolor “family pages” splendour where all stops might be pulled out…

Segar famously considered himself an inferior draughtsman – most of the world disagreed and still does – but his ability to weave a yarn was unquestioned, and grew to astounding and epic proportions in these strips. Week after week he was creating the syllabary and graphic lexicon of a brand-new art-form: inventing narrative tricks and beats that generations of artists and writers would use in their own cartoon creations. Despite some astounding successors in the drawing seat, no one has ever bettered Segar’s Popeye.

Popeye is fast approaching his centenary and well deserves his place as a world icon. How many comics characters are still enjoying new adventures 94 years after their first? These volumes are the perfect way to celebrate the genius and mastery of E.C. Segar and his brilliantly flawed superman. These are tales you’ll treasure for the rest of your life and superb books you must not miss…
Popeye volume 2: Wimpy and His Hamburgers is copyright © 2022 King Features Syndicate, Inc./™Hearst Holdings, Inc. This edition © 2022 Fantagraphics Books Inc. Segar comic strips provided by Bill Blackbeard and his San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. “Segar’s Wimpy” © 2022 Kevin Huizenga. All rights reserved.

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The Complete Peanuts volume 7: 1963-1964



By Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Books/Canongate Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-723-0 (HB) 978-1683960058 (US PB) 978-1847678140 (UK HB)

Peanuts is unequivocally the most important comic strip in the history of graphic narrative. It is also the most deeply personal. Cartoonist Charles M Schulz crafted his moodily hilarious, hysterically introspective, shockingly philosophical surreal epic for half a century: 17,897 strips from October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000. He died from the complications of cancer the day before his last strip was published…

At its height, the strip ran in 2,600 newspapers, translated into 21 languages in 75 countries. Many of those venues are still running perpetual reprints, as they have ever since his death. In his lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy artist a billionaire.

None of that really matters. Peanuts – a title Schulz loathed, but one the syndicate forced upon him – changed the way comics strips were received and perceived: proving cartoon comedy could have edges and nuance as well as pratfalls and punchlines.

Following animator Bill Melendez’s Foreword – relating how he became the TV arm of the Peanuts phenomenon – the timeless episodes of play, peril, psychoanalysis and personal recrimination resume as ever in marvellous monochrome, with more character introductions, plot advancements and the creation of even more traditions we all revere to this day…

As ever our focus is quintessential inspirational loser Charlie Brown who, with increasingly fanciful, high-maintenance mutt Snoopy, remain largely at odds with a bombastic, mercurial supporting cast, all hanging out doing what at first sight seems to be Kids Stuff.

As always, daily gags centre on playing, musical moments, pranks, interpersonal alignments and a seasonal selection of sports, all leavened by agonising teasing, aroused and crushed hopes, the making of baffled observations and occasionally acting a bit too much like grown-ups.

However, with this tome, the themes and tropes that define the series (especially in the wake of those animated TV specials) become mantra-like yet endlessly variable. A consistent theme is Charlie Brown’s inability to fly a kite, and here the never-ending war with wind, gravity and landscape reaches absurdist proportions…

Mean girl Violet, prodigy Schroeder, self-taught psychoanalyst and world dictator-in-waiting Lucy van Pelt, her brilliantly off-kilter little brother Linus and dirt-magnet “Pig-Pen” are fixtures honed to generate joke-routines and gag-sequences around their own foibles, but some early characters – like Shermy and Patty – gradually disappear as new attention-attracting players join the mob. Here that’s thoroughly modern lad “5” and his forward-looking non-conformist family “the 95472s”…

At least Charlie Brown’s existential crisis/responsibility vector/little sister Sally has settled into being just another trigger for relentless self-excoriation. As she grows, pesters librarians, forms opinions and propounds steadfastly authoritarian views, he is increasingly relegated to being her dumber, yet always protective, big brother…

Resigned – almost – to life as an eternal loser singled out by cruel and capricious fate, the Boy Brown is helpless meat in the clutches of openly sadistic Lucy. When not playfully sabotaging his efforts to kick a football, she monetises her spiteful verve via a 5¢ walk-in psychoanalysis booth: ensuring that whether at play, in sports, flying that kite or just brooding, the round-headed kid truly endures the character-building trials of the damned…

At least she’s consistent and equally mean to all. Over these two years, her campaign to curb that weird beagle and cure her brother of his comfort blanket addiction reaches astounding heights and appalling depths – such as when she wins a school science fair by exhibiting Linus as a psychological case study.

This volume opens and closes with many strips riffing on snow, and with Lucy constantly and consistently sucking all the joy out of the white wonder stuff…

Her family ally in the Blanket War is Grandma, but that never-pictured elder’s efforts to decouple Linus from the fabric comforter that sustains him in the worst of times are becoming easier to counter, even as Snoopy’s schemes to swipe the shroud become more elaborate and effective…

Lucy also finds time to master skipping and train others in the wonders of her “jump rope”, but ultimately her unflinchingly high standards lead to accusations of “crabbiness”. The prodigy cannot, however, master the intricacies of kicking a football herself, to the woe of all around her…

Perpetually sabotaged, and facing abuse from every female in his life, Charlie Brown endures fresh hell in the form of smug, attention-seeking Frieda, who demands constant approval for her “naturally curly hair” and champions the cause of shallow good looks over substance. Even noble Snoopy is threatened, as she drags – literally – her boneless, functionally inert but still essentially Feline cat Faron into places where cats just don’t belong. When not annoying the ever-hungry, entertainment-starved beagle, Frieda constantly cajoles the unconventional hound into chasing rabbits like a real dog!

Endless heartbreak ensues once Charlie Brown foolishly lets slip his closet romantic aspirations regarding the “little red-haired girl”: a fascination outrageously exploited by others whenever the boy doesn’t simply sabotage himself…

With great effect, Schulz began assiduously celebrating more calendar occasions as perennial events in the feature: adding Mothers and Fathers’ Days, the Fourth of July and National Dog Week strips to established yearly milestones like Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween/Great Pumpkin Day and Beethoven’s Birthday.

Other notable events include persistent scholastic prevarications and a futile quest to attain that one elusive baseball bubble-gum card for Charlie’s set (Joe Shlabotnik, if you have a spare…), and the gang’s epic and sustained attempt to clean Snoopy’s labyrinthine multistorey doghouse.

At this time, the beagle was growing into the true star of the show, with his primary quest for more and better food playing out against an increasingly baroque inner life, wild encounters with birds, dance marathons, philosophical ruminations, and evermore popular catchphrases. Here, that sense of untrammelled whimsy leads to drama and rabies shots for Snoopy…

Sports injuries play a major role too, with baseball manager/pitcher Charlie Brown benched by “Little Leaguers elbow”, leading to a winning streak for the team. The event also spawns a late diagnosis of “eraserophagia” (nervous chewing of school pencil rubbers). At least the gang gamely rally round, with Linus becoming a lauded sporting superstar of the pitcher’s mound, whilst all and sundry are happy to scream at Charlie whenever he puts a pencil anywhere near his mouth…

The bizarre beagle magnified his strange interior development in all ways. Other than an extended Cold War duel for possession of the cherished comfort blanket, the manic mutt adapted to that darn cat and sundry rabbits but still made time to philosophise, eat, dance like a dervish, stand on his head, converse with falling leaves, play with sprinklers, befriend and battle birds, eat more, stoically brave the elements and discover the potent power of placards and marches…

The Sunday page had debuted on January 6th 1952: a standard half-page slot offering more measured fare than regular 4-panel dailies. Thwarted ambition, sporting failures, explosive frustration – much of it kite-related – and Snoopy’s inner life became the segment’s signature denouements as these weekend wonders afforded Schulz room to be at his most visually imaginative, whimsical and weird…

Particular moments to relish this time involve an increasingly defined, sharply-cornered romantic triangle involving Lucy, Schroeder and Beethoven; Charlie Brown’s backyard camping excursions; copious “pencil-pal” communications; poor penmanship; the power of television and decline of comic books; Lucy’s invention of “immoral” sporting tactics; an outbreak of tree-climbing in advance of the regular autumnal leaf collapse; horrendous rainfall; the growth of avian protest marches; Linus’ mural of the Story of Civilisation and eventual run for School President (with Charlie Brown as Veep!) and a new feature declaring what “Happiness Is…” at the start of each Sunday strip…

To wrap it all up, Gary Groth celebrates and deconstructs the man and his work in ‘Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000’, preceded by a copious ‘Index’ offering instant access to favourite scenes you’d like to see again…

Readily available in hardcover, paperback and digital editions, this volume guarantees total enjoyment: comedy gold and social glue metamorphosing into an epic of spellbinding graphic mastery that still adds joy to billions of lives, and continues to make new fans and devotees long after its maker’s passing.
The Complete Peanuts © 2007, United Features Syndicate, Ltd. 2014 Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. The Foreword is © 2006, Bill Melendez. “Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000” © 2007 Gary Groth. All rights reserved.

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The Art of Archie: The Covers


By various, edited by Victor Gorelick & Craig Yoe (Archie Books)
ISBN: 978-1-936975-79-2 (HB/Digital edition)

For most of us, comics mean buff men and women in capes and tights hitting each other, lobbing trees about, or stark, nihilistic genre thrillers aimed at an extremely mature and sophisticated readership of confirmed fans – and indeed that has been the prolific norm for nearly twenty years.

However, over the decades since 1933 when comic books were invented, other forms of sequential illustrated fiction genres have held their own. One that has maintained a unique position over the years – although almost now completely transferred to television – is the teen-comedy genre begun by and synonymous with a carrot topped, homely (at first just plain ugly) kid named Archie Andrews.

MLJ were a small outfit which jumped wholeheartedly onto the superhero bandwagon following the debut of Superman. In November 1939 they launched Blue Ribbon Comics, promptly following with Top-Notch and Pep Comics. The content was the accepted blend of costumed heroes, two-fisted adventure strips and one-off gags. Pep made history with its lead feature The Shield – the industry’s first superhero clad in the American flag – but generally MLJ were followers not innovators.

That all changed at the end of 1941. Even while profiting from the Fights ‘n’ Tights phalanx, Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater (hence MLJ) spotted a gap in their blossoming market and in December the action strips were joined by a wholesome, ordinary hero; an “average teen” who had invitingly human-scaled adventures that might happen to the readers, but with the laughs, good times, romance and slapstick heavily emphasised.

Pep Comics #22 introduced a gap-toothed, freckle-faced, red-headed goof showing off to the pretty blonde next door. Taking his lead from the popular Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney, Goldwater developed the concept of a youthful everyman, tasking writer Vic Bloom & artist Bob Montana with the job of making it work.

So effective and all-pervasive was the impact and comforting message the new kid offered to the boys “over there” and those left behind on the Home Front that Archie and the wholesome image of familiar, beloved, secure Americana he and the Riverdale gang represented, one could consider them the greatest and most effective Patriotic/Propaganda weapon in comics history…

It all started with an innocuous 6-page tale entitled ‘Archie’ which introduced the future star and pretty girl-next-door Betty Cooper. Archie’s unconventional best friend and confidante Forsythe P. “Jughead” Jones also debuted in that first story, as did the small-town utopia they lived in.

The premise was an instant and ever-growing hit. In 1942 the feature graduated to its own title. Archie Comics #1 was the company’s first non-anthology magazine and began an inexorable transformation of the entire company. With the introduction of rich, raven-haired Veronica Lodge, all the pieces were in play for the industry’s second Phenomenon (Superman being the first).

By May 1946 the kids had taken over and, retiring its costumed champions years before the end of the Golden Age, MLJ rebranded, renamed itself Archie Comics, and became to all intents and purposes a publisher of family comedies. This overwhelming success, like the Man of Tomorrow’s, forced a change in the content of every other publisher’s titles and led to a multi-media industry including a newspaper strip, TV, movies, pop-songs and even a chain of restaurants. Intermittently the costumed cut-ups have returned on occasion but Archie Comics now seems content to specialise in what they do uniquely best…

Our eponymous high-schooler is a good-hearted lad lacking common sense and Betty – pretty, sensible, devoted girl next door, with all that entails – loves the ridiculous redhead. Ronnie is spoiled, exotic and glamorous and only settles for our boy if there’s nobody better around. She might actually love him too, though. Archie, of course, can’t decide who or what he wants…

This never-tawdry eternal triangle has been the basis of seventy years of charmingly raucous, gently preposterous, frenetic, chiding and even heart-rending comedy encompassing everything from surreal wit to frantic slapstick, as the kids and an increasing cast of friends grew into an American institution.

Adapting seamlessly to every trend and fad, perfectly in tone with and mirroring the growth of teen culture, the host of writers and artists who have crafted the stories over the decades have made the archetypal characters of Riverdale a benchmark for youth and a visual barometer of growing up American.

Archie’s unconventional best friend Jughead is Mercutio to Archie’s Romeo: providing rationality and a reader’s voice, as well as being a powerful catalyst of events in his own right. There’s even a likeably reprehensible Tybalt figure in the crafty form of Reggie Mantle – who first popped up to cause mischief in Jackpot Comics #5 (Spring 1942).

This beguiling triangle edifice (plus annexe and outhouse) has been the rock-solid foundation for eight decades of comics magic. …and the concept seems eternally self-renewing and self-perpetuating…

Archie has thrived by constantly reinventing its core characters, seamlessly adapting to the changing world outside the bright, flimsy pages, shamelessly co-opting youth, pop culture and fashion trends into its infallible mix of slapstick and young romance.

Each and every social revolution has been painlessly assimilated into the mix with the editors tastefully confronting a number of social issues affecting the young in a manner both even-handed and tasteful over the years.

The cast is always growing and the constant addition of new characters such as African-American Chuck (an aspiring cartoonist), his girlfriend Nancy, fashion-diva Ginger, Hispanic couple Frankie & Maria and a host of others like spoiled wild-child home-wrecker-in-waiting Cheryl Blossom, and Kevin Keller, an openly gay young man and clear-headed advocate, capably tackling and dismantling the last major taboo in mainstream comics.

A major component of the company’s success has been the superbly enticing artwork and especially the unmistakable impact afforded via the assorted titles’ captivating covers.

This spectacular compilation (a companion and sequel to 2010s Betty & Veronica collection) traces the history and evolution of the wholesome phenomenon through many incredible examples from every decade. Augmented by scads of original art, fine art and commercial recreations, printer’s proofs and a host of other rare examples and graphic surprises no fan of the medium could possibly resist, this huge hardback (312 x 235mm) and digital delight re-presents hundreds of funny, charming, intriguing and occasionally controversial images as well as background and biographies on the many talented artists responsible for creating them.

Moreover, also included are many original artworks – gleaned from the private collections of fans – scripts, sketches, gag-roughs, production ephemera from the initial art-to-finished-cover process, plus an extensive, educational introductory commentary section stuffed with fascinating reminiscences and behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

The picture parade begins with some thoughts from the brains behind the fun as ‘It’s a Gift’ by Publisher/Co-CEO Jon Goldwater and ‘You Can Judge a Book by its Cover!’ by Editor-in-Chief/Co-President Victor Gorelick. Then ‘On the Covers’ issues guidance from cartoonist, Comics Historian and perpetrator Craig Yoe before taking us to the 1940s where ‘In the Beginning…’ details the story of Archie with relevant covers and the first of a recurring feature highlighting how later generations of artists have recycled and reinterpreted classic designs.

‘A Matchless Cover’ leads into the first Artist Profile – ‘Bob Montana’ – incorporating a wealth of cracking Golden Age images in ‘Who’s on First!’ before chapters dedicated to specific themes and motifs commence with a celebration of beach scenes ‘In the Swim’, after which artist ‘Bill Vigoda’ steps out from behind his easel and into the spotlight.

‘Deja Vu All Over Again’ further explores the recapitulation of certain cover ideas before ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll!’ examines decades of pop music and “guest” stars such as the Beatles, whilst ‘Archie’s Mechanically Inclined’ probes a short-lived dalliance with an early form of home DIY magazines.

The life of veteran illustrator ‘Al Fagaly’ leads into a selection of ‘Fan Faves’ ancient and modern before the biography of ‘Harry Sahle’ segues neatly into a selection of cheerleading covers in ‘Let’s Hear It for The Boy!’

It wasn’t long after the birth of modern pop music that the Riverdale gang formed their own band and ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, The Archies!’ focuses on those ever-evolving musical prodigies with scenes from the Swinging Sixties to the turbulent Rap-ridden 21st century, after which the history ‘Joe Edwards’ leads into a barrage of smoochy snogging scenes in ‘XOXOXO!’

Always a keen follower of fads and fashions. the Archie crowd embraced many popular trends and ‘Monster Bash!’ concentrates on kids’ love of horror and recurring periods of supernatural thrills, after which a bio of ‘Dan Parent’ leads unerringly to more ‘Celebrity Spotting!’ with covers featuring the likes of George Takei, Michael Jackson, Simon Cowell, J-Lo, Kiss, the casts of Glee and Twilight, and even President Barack Obama. all eagerly appearing amongst so very many others.

‘Art for Archie’s Sake’ dwells on the myriad expressions of junior painting and sculpture and, after the life story of the sublimely gifted ‘Harry Lucey’, ‘The Time Archie was Pinked Out!’ details the thinking behind the signature logo colour schemes used in the company’s pre-computer days.

‘Life with Archie’s a Beach!’ takes another look at the rise of teenage sand and surf culture through the medium of beautifully rendered, scantily clad boys and girls, whilst – after the lowdown on writer/artist ‘Fernando Ruiz’ – ‘Dance! Dance! Dance!’ follows those crazy kids from Jitterbug to Frug, Twisting through Disco and ever onwards…

‘The Happiest of Holidays’ highlights the horde of magical Christmas covers Archie, Betty and Ronnie have starred on whilst ‘Rhyme Time’ reveals the odd tradition of poetry spouting sessions that have been used to get fans interested and keep them amused.

A history of the inimitable ‘Samm Schwartz’ precedes a look at classroom moments in ‘Readin’, Writin’, an’ Archie – with a separate section on organised games entitled ‘Good Sports!’ – after which the life of legendary art star ‘Dan DeCarlo’ neatly leads to another selection of fad-based fun as ‘That’s Just Super!’ recalls the Sixties costumed hero craze, as well as a few other forays into Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy…

‘Let’s Get this Party Started’ features covers with strips rather than single images and is followed by a biography of ‘Bob Bolling’ before ‘A Little Goes a Long Way!’ concentrates on the assorted iterations of pre-teen Little Archie comics. This is then capped by the eye-popping enigma of teen taste as visualised in the many outfits over changing decades revealing ‘A Passion for Fashion’…

‘Come as You Aren’t’ is devoted to the theme of fancy dress parties after which the modern appetite for variant covers is celebrated in ‘Alternate Realities’ (with stunning examples from Fiona Staples, Tim Seeley and Walter Simonson amongst others) all wrapped up by the gen on artistic mainstay ‘Bob White’.

The entire kit and caboodle then concludes with an assortment of surreal, mindblowing covers defying categorisation or explanation in ‘And Now, For Something Completely Different’, proving that comics are still the only true home of untrammelled imagination: featuring scenes that literally have to be seen to be believed…

Enchanting, breathtaking graphic wonderment, fun-fuelled family entertainment and enticing pop art masterpieces, these unforgettable cartoon confections truly express the joyous spirit of intoxicating youthful vitality which changed the comic industry forever and comprise an essential example of artistic excellence no lover of narrative art should miss.

Spanning the entire history of American comicbooks and featuring vintage images, landmark material and up-to-the-minute modern masterpieces, this is a terrific tome for anybody interested in the history of comics, eternally evergreen light laughs and the acceptable happy face of the American Dream.
™ & © 2013 Archie Comics Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. All covers previously published and copyrighted by Archie Comic Publication, Inc. (or its predecessors) in magazine form in 1941-2013.

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Bluecoats: The Dirty Five


By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-004-3 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Devised by Louis “Salvé” Salvérius & Raoul Cauvin – who scripted the first 64 volumes until retirement in 2020 – Les Tuniques Bleues (or Dutch co-incarnation De Blauwbloezen) debuted at the end of the 1960s: created to replace Lucky Luke when that laconic maverick defected from weekly anthology Le Journal de Spirou to rival publication Pilote.

From its first sallies, the substitute strip swiftly became hugely popular: one of the most popular bande dessinée series in Europe. In case you were wondering, it is now scribed by Jose-Luis Munuera and the BeKa writing partnership…

Salvé was a cartoonist of the Gallic big-foot/big-nose humour school, and after his sudden death in 1972, successor Willy “Lambil” Lambillotte gradually adopted a more realistic – but still overtly comedic – tone and manner. Lambil is Belgian, born in 1936 and, after studying Fine Art in college, joined publishing giant Dupuis in 1952 as a letterer.

Born in 1938, scripter Cauvin was also Belgian and – before entering Dupuis’ animation department in 1960 – studied Lithography. He soon discovered his true calling was comedy and began a glittering, prolific writing career at Le Journal de Spirou.

In addition, he scripted dozens of long-running, award winning series including Cédric, Les Femmes en Blanc and Agent 212: more than 240 separate albums. Les Tuniques Bleues alone has over 15 million copies of its 66 (and counting) album sequence. Cauvin died on August 19th 2021, but his vast legacy of barbed laughter remains.

Here, designated The Bluecoats, our long-suffering protagonists are Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch; worthy, honest fools in the manner of Laurel & Hardy: hapless, ill-starred US cavalrymen defending America during the War Between the States.

The original format offered single-page gags set around an Indian-plagued Wild West fort, but from second volume Du Nord au Sud the sad-sack soldiers were situated back East, fighting in the American Civil War.

All subsequent adventures – despite often ranging far beyond the traditional environs of the sundered USA and taking in a lot of genuine and thoroughly researched history – are set within the timeframe of the Secession conflict.

Blutch is your run-of-the-mill, whinging little-man-in-the street: work-shy, mouthy, devious and ferociously critical of the army and its inept orchestrators and commanders. Ducking, diving, deserting whenever he can, he’s you or me – except at his core he’s smart, principled and even heroic… if no easier option is available.

Chesterfield is a big, burly professional fighting man; a proud career soldier of the 22nd Cavalry who passionately believes in patriotism and the esprit-de-corps of the Military. He is brave, never shirking his duty and hungry to be a medal-wearing hero. He also loves his cynical little troll of a pal. They quarrel like a married couple, fight like brothers but simply cannot agree on the point and purpose of the horrendous war they are trapped in: a situation that once more stretches their friendship to breaking point in this cunningly conceived instalment.

Coloured by Vittorio Leonardo, Les cinq salopards was originally serialised in Le Journal de Spirou (#2357-2368) before collection into another mega-selling album in 1984: the 33rd European release. In 2020 it was Cinebook’s 14th translated Bluecoats volume.

The Dirty Five offers a lighter touch and more adventuresome fare with the underlying horror salved by a farce-driven mission that degenerates into ridiculously surreal black comedy.

As is so often the case, the Union forces are stalemated with no advance possible. Even the 22nd Cavalry – still under the ruthless leadership of utterly deranged, apparently invulnerable Gentleman maniac Captain Stark – are helpless; reduced after countless pointless assaults to a force of three: Stark himself, Sergeant Chesterfield and poor treacherous Blutch…

With no end in sight and the infantrymen stuck in dugouts, dodging enemy artillery fire, boredom and idiotic orders, the ordinary foot soldiers are infuriatingly idle, forcing the commandeering general into a frenzy of inspiration…

What’s needed is one last push and if they have no cavalry, then volunteers must be found to repopulate the 22nd. Thus, the eager sergeant and appalled corporal are sent out amongst the civilian population to recruit a force of daring horsemen to turn the tide…

The mission has brought the pals to the edge of murder. They are at odds from the start, with the Sergeant proudly keen to recruit new warriors and convinced they will all be happy to die for their country, whilst Blutch is determined not to be the cause of more pointless deaths and maimings…

By the time they leave nearby Frogtown, they are at each other’s throats, mostly thanks to Blutch having frittered away the bribe fund of recruiting cash and “losing” all the enlistment papers signed by the suckers Chesterfield bamboozled with flowery speeches and cheap booze…

The mission is a complete fiasco but takes a decidedly dark turn when they meet a prison guard escorting a group of criminals to their executions. Chesterfield believes it’s the perfect solution to their problem and soon the still-squabbling squaddies are touring Greenbush State Prison looking for a few bad men…

There are plenty, but the job is no done deal. The first convict – a deserter – chooses to stay and be hanged than go back to serve under Stark…

In the end only, five doomed men ostensibly sign up to serve their country, but it soon becomes clear they might not be completely sincere. That’s not Chesterfield’s concern. He knows he’s done his duty once the felons are delivered to the General.

Blutch has more nuanced worries. Apart from the sheer insanity of letting loose – and even arming – religious serial killer Reverend Osgood, obsessive horse thief/cannibal Shorty Fink, karate killer Yang and the murderously psychopathic duo of blind knife thrower Rupert and his lethal human targeting system Abel there’s the purely practical problems of getting the killer quintet back to the front lines: a mammoth task that takes all the soldiers’ individual ingenuity and ultimately unity and teamwork to accomplish.

Of course, once the Bluecoats complete their mission and the Five officially join the 22nd, the real problems begin, not just for the Northern regiments but also for the Confederate forces so defiantly opposing them…

Combining searing satire with stunning slapstick, The Dirty Five mordantly manipulates the traditions of war stories to manifest a beguiling message about the sheer stupidity of war and crushing cruelty of obsessions equally effective in deprogramming younger, less world-weary audiences and even us old lags who have seen it all.

These stories weaponise humour, making occasional moments of shocking verity doubly powerful and hard-hitting. Funny, thrilling, beautifully realised and eminently readable, Bluecoats is the best kind of war-story and Western appealing to the best, not worst, of the human spirit.
© Dupuis 1984 by Lambil & Cauvin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2020 Cinebook Ltd.

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Billy & Buddy volume 8: Fetch and Carry On


By Christophe Cazenove & Jean Bastide in the style of Roba, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-070-8 (Album PB/Digital)

Known as Boule et Bill in Europe (at least in the French speaking bits – the Dutch and Flemish call them Bollie en Billie or perhaps Bas et Boef if readers first glimpsed them in legendary weekly Sjors), this evergreen, immensely popular cartoon saga of a dog and his boy first debuted at Christmas in 1959.

The perennial family favourite resulted from Belgian writer-artist Jean Roba (Spirou et Fantasio, La Ribambelle) putting his head together with Maurice Rosy: the magazine’s Artistic Director and Ideas Man, who had also ghosted art and/or scripts on Jerry Spring, Tif et Tondu, Bobo and Attila during a decades-long, astoundingly productive career at the legendary periodical.

Intended as a European answer to Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, Boule et Bill quickly went its own way, developing a unique style and personality and becoming Roba’s main occupation for the next 45 years. He had launched the feature as a mini-récit (32-page, half-sized freebie inserts) in the December 24th edition of Le Journal de Spirou.

Like Dennis the Menace in The Beano, the strip was a huge hit from the start, and for 25 years held the coveted and prestigious back-cover spot. It was even syndicated to rival publishers and became a popular feature in Le Journal de Mickey, rubbing shoulders with Walt Disney’s top stars. Older Brits might recognise the art as early episodes – retitled It’s a Dog’s Life – ran in Fleetway’s weekly Valiant from 1961 to 1965…

A cornerstone of European life, the strip has generated a live-action movie, four animated TV series, computer games, permanent art exhibitions, sculptures and even postage stamps. As with a select few immortalized Belgian comics creations, Bollie en Billie were awarded a commemorative plaque and have a street named after them in Brussels…

Large format album compilations began immediately, totalling 21 volumes throughout the 1960s and 1970s from publisher Dupuis. These were completely redesigned and re-released in 1985 when Roba moved to Dargaud and became his own editor. The standard albums (43 to date) are supplemented by a range of early-reader books for toddlers. Assorted collections are available in 14 languages, selling well in excess of 25 million copies.

Roba crafted more than a thousand pages of gag-strips in his beguiling, idealised domestic comedy setting, all about a little lad and an exceedingly smart Cocker Spaniel. Long before his death in 2006, the auteur wisely appointed successors for the strip, which has thus continued to this day. He began by surrendering the art chores to his long-term assistant Laurent Verron in 2003, and the successor subsequently took on the scripting too upon Roba’s passing. Verron was soon joined by gag-writers Veys, Corbeyran, Chric & Cucuel whilst this tome comes courtesy of new team Christophe Cazenove & Jean Bastide. In this collection Verron is present as illustrator of the “cabochons”: illustrated icons at the top of each strip. They’re what old folks like us employed before emoticons…

As Billy and Buddy, the strip returned to British eyes in 2009: stars of enticing Cinebook compilations introducing to 21st century readers an endearingly bucolic sitcom-styled nuclear family set-up consisting of one bemused, long-suffering and short-tempered dad; a warmly compassionate but constantly wearied and distracted mum; a smart but mischievous son and a genius dog who has a penchant for finding bones, puddles and trouble.

As the feature accommodates the passage of time, we see a few more mod-cons and a bigger role for girls – such as skipping sharpie Juliet – but, in essence, nothing has changed… and that’s the whole point…

Bill est un gros rapporteur! was the 37th European collection, comfortingly resuming in the approved manner and further exploring the evergreen relationship of a dog and his boy (and tortoise) for our delight and delectation. Available in paperback and digital editions and delivered as a series of stand-alone rapid-fire, single-page gags, Fetch and Carry On is packed with visual puns, quips, slapstick and jolly jests and japes: all affirming the gradual socialisation and behaviour of little Billy as measured in carefree romps with four-footed friends and an even split between parental judgements and getting away with murder…

Buddy is the perfect pet for an imaginative and playful boy, although the manipulative mutt is overly fond of purloined food, buried bones (ownership frequently to be determined), and as seen in this volume sleeping where he really shouldn’t. When not being a problem, he’s also ferociously protective of his boy, tortoise and ball.

The pesky pooch simply cannot understand why everyone wants to constantly plunge him into foul-tasting soapy water, but it’s just a sacrifice he’s prepared to make to be with Billy…

Buddy’s fondly platonic relationship with tortoise Caroline is played up in this book and his knack for clearing off whenever Dad has one of his explosive emotional meltdowns over the cost of canine treats, repair bills or the Boss’ latest impositions is dialled down, but most of the traditional themes and schemes are revisited abundantly

Our inseparable duo interact with many pals – particularly Billy’s school chum Pat – who acts as confidante and best two-legged crony in all mischief making – and at every carefree moment they all play pranks, encounter other animals, dodge surveillance, hunt and hoard (bones, toys, shoes, phones and other crucial household items), rummage in bins, wilfully and/or honestly misunderstand adults, cause accidents and cost money, with both kid and mutt equally adept at all of the above.

This time, domestic chaos is heightened by the introduction of classmate Celia’s new French Bulldog Brice. The pedigreed dog meets all the breed standards – which means he makes noises like a ruptured steam train when eating, sleeping or even just watching the others in bewilderment and becomes a cause celebre for the growing cast. A rival retriever makes his bow too: Pixel might look like a movie star mutt but he’s not a patch on mastermind Buddy…

Another much explored story strand involves Billy emulating a zookeeper, and his many attempts to train Buddy via “treat encouragement” – a system the dog instinctively distrusts and much time is spent comedically exploiting the doggy message retrieval system of widdling on lampposts…

And of course, when Buddy and Caroline aren’t futilely trying to teach Billy and Pat how to talk to human girls Celia and Hazel, hostile neighbour Madame Stick and her evil cat Corporal are a on hand to spoil all fun and frustrate their frolics…

Roba was a master of this cartoon art form and under his successors the strips remain genially paced, filled with wry wit and potent sentiment: enchantingly funny episodes running the gamut from heart-warming to hilarious, silly to surreal and thrilling to just plain daft.

This collection is exactly what fans would expect and deserve: another charming tribute to and lasting argument for a child for every pet and vice versa. Here is a supremely engaging family-oriented compendium of cool and clever comics no one keen on introducing youngsters to the medium should be without.
Original edition © Dargaud, 2016 by Cazenove & Bastide in the style of Roba © Studio Boule & Bill 2016. English translation © 2022 Cinebook Ltd.

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Bunny vs Monkey: Multiverse Mix-Up!


By Jamie Smart & with Sammy Borras (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-292-2 (Digest PB)

Bunny vs. Monkey has been a staple of The Phoenix from the first issue in 2012: detailing a madcap vendetta gripping animal archenemies amidst an idyllic arcadia masquerading as more-or-less mundane but critically endangered English woodlands.

Concocted with gleefully inspired mania by cartoonist and novelist Jamie Smart (Fish Head Steve!; Looshkin; Flember), these trendsetting, mindbending yarns have all the tail-biting tension and animal argy-bargy of a uniquely off-kilter magnum opus – not to be confused with the veritable magnificent octopus – although there’s them occasionally popping up too…

It all began yonks ago after an obnoxious little simian slapped 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 inheritor of a strange new world, despite all efforts from reasonable, sensible, genteel, contemplative forest resident Bunny to dissuade him. For all his patience, propriety and good breeding, the laid-back lepine just could not contain the incorrigible idiot ape, who was – and is – a rude, noise-loving, chaos-creating loutish troublemaker…

Problems are ever-exacerbated by other unconventional Crinkle critters, particularly a skunk – AKA Skunky – who has a mad scientist’s attitude to life and a propensity to build extremely dangerous robots and overly technological super-weapons…

Here – with artistic assistance from design deputy Sammy Borras – the war of nerves and mega-ordnances is rekindled after briefly seeming to be all over. Our unruly assortment of odd bods cluttering up the bucolic paradise had finally picked sides and sorted it all out and – with battles ended – even apparently forgot the ever-encroaching Hyoomanz…

Rather than the traditional opening and tales ranked by changing seasons, this titanic trade paperback archive of insanity offers two massive chapters subdivided into short instalments. The astounding new adventure opens in Part One and ‘Pond Life’ wherein a quiet moment of skating in the chilly evening of a New Year is going so well until our apish antagonist renews old dreams of a planet united under his rule and the banner of “Monkeyopia”.

Sadly, the banner is attached to a staff with a really pointy end… and ice is really brittle…

An epoch of bewildering calamity commences when animal alternates from a parallel universe pop in through a portal. On their home plane everyone is evil but even so, their abduction of pan–universal innocent Pig Piggerton goes terribly wrong: stranding the instigator of the ‘Pig Swap’ on the wrong realm…

Meanwhile, Skunky has temporarily got rid of his annoying Monkey mate with some pointless make-work in ‘Snow Fun’ and ‘Evil Pig’ has introduced himself to the other Crinkle critters. Of course, Monkey must prove he’s the most wicked…

With Skunky, Monkey and the transplanted Pig all menacing and recruiting minions, confused Bunny calls on everyone to again ‘Choose Your Side’, but things get a bit out of hand when Metal Steve, Metal E.V.E. and brain-battered, bewildered former stuntman Action Beaver all join in the party games…

Thankfully, Eve allies with the good guys and Bunny affirms that their prime directive is “protecting the woods at all costs”: ‘A Mammoth Task’ made even harder once Skunky and Monkey unleash giant undergrounds monsters…

Dedicated to doom and destruction, the bad boys try – and ultimately fail – to synthesize Mongolian Death molluscs in ‘With Snails & I’ and try to pluck the ‘Big Moon’ out of the night sky before clashing with Evil Pig…

The transplanted transdimensional then meets his counterpart’s best bud Weenie Squirrel and has ‘A Falling Out’ even as Monkey unleashes exploding duplicates in ‘All A-Clone’ before trying his hand at scary documentary making in ‘The Sand-Witch Project’. All that cloning around comes back to bite him in the form of ‘Monkeysaurus’

Desperate for peace and quiet, Bunny, Eve and superfast Ai seek solace and silence in the river, but find only more mad excitement when evil spies get into difficulties and require their ‘Canoooe’, unaware that temporary allies Evil Pig, Skunky and Monkey were messing with serums and animals and had ‘Gone Batty’…

When Skunky tries to upgrade obsolete robotic oaf Metal Steve, reformed Eve is trapped in his bandwidth and is transformed into ‘Eve 2.0’, whilst Evil Pig – still seeking to win over Weenie – instead subverts Steve into ‘Alan the Unicorn’…

Existence gets truly meta when godlike human beings abruptly intervene, inadvertently sharing a glimpse behind the cosmic curtains of reality and by inflicting a distressing touch of The Matrix in ‘The First Glitch’ offers our quotidian cast of layered realities a hideous glimpse of what reality really means. Thoroughly re-educated, the bad guys then lose control of another experiment, unleashing shapeshifter ‘Polymorph’ on the easily embarrassed denizens of the Woods.

Fearless and stupid, Monkey discovers a sleeping beast and refuses to listen when everyone tells him ‘Don’t Wake the Bear’…

After too long and portentous an interval, the evil doppelgangers return, banishing their counterparts across many ‘Dimensions’ before ending the multiverse itself. Only Bunny escapes and with the unlikeliest of allies begins exploring ‘The Infinite’ and – thanks to a Portable Dimension Hopper – seeks ways to restore reality and rescue his comrades from the Real World.

That means many appalling experiences including ‘Babysitting’ toddler-versions of all his friends and foes, clashing with ghosts, vampires and Halloween Dimension beings before – as ‘Grumpy Bunny’ – saving a cowboy realm from the perils of a ‘Wilder West’. Bridging warring lava and frost dimensions ‘Of Fire and Ice’ that are also infested with familiar variants of everyone he knew, the thankless quest finally pays off in a commerce dimension ruled by an ‘Office Monkey’ only too glad to be rid of the annoying anarchic duplicate pestering his people and threatening his bottom line…

When the idiot ape eats Bunny’s travel tech, the status quo starts to resettle but by then the voyagers have found a dystopian desert where civilisation has gone ‘Mad to the Max’. Happily, Skunky is there to fix the gadget and get them on their way to the Christmas Dimension, and then out of the land of ‘Ho Ho Oh No’: so lovely that no one ever leaves…

The assembled animals ultimately prove that’s not true, but only at the cost of their ship which is badly hit, leaving them ‘Doomed’ to fall between 9.7 billion dimensions until they unselfishly work together in a team up. As a result they touch down at the Very End of Existence Itself! Stuck in a formless void, only Bunny and Skunky seem able to go on and use the lack of working time to recreate useful bits of what’s been eradicated. Once they rerun ‘The Birth of Science’ it’s not too long before they’re ready to fix everything and open a portal… sparking a massive time loop…

Forewarned by déjà vu, the voyagers overreact and reality goes boink! again, dumping everyone into the dimension of excrement and causing a nasty ‘Pooey Christmas’…

It looks like a fresh beginning for all as Part Two opens with ‘A New Start’. The nice animals are having picnics and Skunky and Monkey are building better mecha-weapons, but something’s still not quite right, and when the miscreants unleash transforming terror ‘Octoplops’ the repercussions really aren’t that bad…

Still off his game, cupcake-addicted Monkey is easily exposed as a ‘Thief!’ and Weenie and Pig endure the sheer horror of losing their ‘Ducky’ to a mystery fiend, before an escaped Time Droid goes berserk and generates a ‘Looooooop’ in reality…

Thanks to Transmogrification Pants, Bunny is assaulted by fake friends he never knew in ‘Pants for the Memories’ whilst Skunky, Monkey, the Beaver and Metal Steve are stuck inside their own malfunctioning ‘Chameleotron’: a chaotic debacle that results in Monkey being sucked back into the appalling ‘Poo Dimension’ where he accidentally liberates a fearsome alternate self who is a genuine threat to everyone in Crinkle Woods…

A brief dalliance as superhero ‘Brave Bunny’ quickly palls for our genteel star and ‘Law and Order’ is brutally abused when ultra-efficient Office Monkey begins to modernise and corporatize the green paradise…

Initially set back and hindered by the workforce he has to work with, OM retrenches and debuts his polluting ‘Furps’ engine (don’t ask and don’t breathe in!) before forming a merger with Skunky…

The other critters are all enjoying ‘Lobnut Day!’ and trying to gather the most nuts, but wise up when the apish alternate dimension asset-stripper launches Monkey Corp. and seeks to put all the furry time-wasters ‘To Work’. However, by casually betraying Skunky, Office Monkey has sown the seeds of his own downfall and his ‘Streamlining’ the Woods into a modernistic business park triggers a groundswell of consumer resistance…

After losing a contest and being acclaimed ‘The Worst Inventor’ Skunky joins that rebellion, and ‘Wrong Monkey’ finds him planning to dismantle the corporate stronghold of Monkeytopia, revealing to the astounded woodlanders that the menace is not the annoying idiot they’re used to, but an extradimensional invader…

That said, the mercurial monochrome megamind recruits some alternate selves with his Time-o-tron and he and ‘Father Skunky’ plunge into the vortex void to unmake their current dire situation…

Tragically, all that multiversal mismanagement causes a few ‘Portal Problems’ and an unwise stopover at their starting point (three in one book!) prompts an unexpected self-promotion as  Office Monkey exploits the confusion to become Boss Level and ‘Takeover’ the universe…

Ejected from Reality, archnemesis Bunny is flung into the Poo Dimension where his usual enemy has become ‘King Monkey’. Implausibly, he has a plan to save the day and put everything back the way it was… more or less…

The narrative animal anarchy might have pawsed (not sorry!) for now but there’s more secrets to share thanks to detailed instructions on ‘‘How to Draw Cowboy Monkey!’, ‘How to Draw Hellcage Monkey!’ and ‘How to Draw Office Monkey!’ to wind down from all that angsty parallel peril and future-bending furore…

The zany zenith of absurdist adventure, Bunny vs Monkey is weird, wild wit, brilliantly bonkers invention, potent sentiment and superb cartooning all crammed into one eccentrically excellent package. These tails 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 parents beg kids to read to them. Shouldn’t that be you?
Text and illustrations © Jamie Smart 2023. All rights reserved.

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Marsupilami volume 6: Fordlandia


By Yann & Batem; created by Franquin, coloured by Leonardo and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-026-5 (Album PB/Digital edition)

One of Europe’s most popular and evergreen comic stars is an eccentrically irascible, loyally unpredictable, super-strong, rubber-limbed yellow-&-black ball of explosive energy with a seemingly infinite elastic tail. The mighty manic Marsupilami is a wonder of nature and icon of European entertainment invention who originally spun-off from another immortal comedy adventure strip…

In 1946 Joseph “Jije” Gillain was crafting the eponymous keystone strip for flagship publication Le Journal de Spirou when he abruptly handed off the entire kit and caboodle to his assistant André Franquin. The apprentice gradually shifted format from short complete gags to pioneer longer adventure serials, and began introducing a wide and engaging cast of new characters.

For 1952’s Spirou et les heritiers, he devised a beguiling and boisterous South American critter and tossed him like an elastic-arsed grenade into the mix. Thereafter – until his resignation from the feature – Franquin frequently included the bombastic little beast in Spirou’s increasingly exotic escapades…

The Marsupilami returned over and over again: a phenomenally popular magical animal who inevitably grew into a solo star of screen, toy store, console games and albums all his own.

In 1955 a contractual spat with Dupuis resulted in Franquin signing up with publishing rivals Casterman on Le Journal de Tintin: collaborating with René Goscinny and old pal Peyo and concocting raucous gag strip Modeste et Pompon. However, Franquin quickly patched things up with Dupuis and returned to Le Journal de Spirou. In 1957, he unleashed Gaston Lagaffe, whilst still legally obligated to carry on his Tintin strip work too and, in 1959, writer Greg and background artist Jidéhem formally began assisting him, but after ten more years the artist had reached his Spirou limit. In 1969 Franquin quit for good, taking his mystic yellow monkey with him…

Plagued by bouts of depression, Franquin passed away on January 5th 1997, but his legacy remains: a vast body of work that reshaped the landscape of European comics. Moreover, having learned his lessons about publishers, Franquin retained all rights to Marsupilami and in the late 1980’s began publishing his own adventures of the rambunctious miracle-worker…

Tapping old comrade Greg as scripter and inviting commercial artist/illustrator Luc Collin (pen-name “Batem”), he launched his new raucous comedy feature. The first of these was La Queue du Marsupilami, released in 1987 (translated by Cinebook as The Marsupilami’s Tale) by Franquin’s own Marsu Productions. Ultimately, his collaborators monopolised the art duties, and in recent years, crass commercialism triumphed again. Since 2016 the universes of Marsupilami and Spirou have reconnected, allowing the old gang to act out in shared stories again…

Fordlandia was released in November 1989: the sixth of 33 solo albums (not including all-Franquin short-story collection/volume #0 Capturez un Marsupilami), a gripping comedy action romp, bigging up the fantasy element and capitalising on both weird-but-true history and a growing cast of regular players…

Blessed with a talent for mischief, the Marsupilami is a deviously adaptive anthropoid regarded as one of the rarest animals on Earth. It inhabits the rain forests of Palombia, speaking a language uniquely its own, and has a reputation for causing trouble and instigating chaos. The species is rare and is fanatically dedicated to its young. Sometimes that extends to associates of different species…

The tale is set in the timeless but increasingly fragile teeming life-web of the Palombian rainforest, as it endures its latest environmental disaster. The current grandiose folly of the humans from Palombian capital city Chiquito is a huge dam that has dried up the Amazonian tributary of the once inaccessible Rio Huaytoonarro.

El Presidente’s pride & joy – dubbed “Huetnomor” – has triggered a domino effect for all who depend upon the river waters, from the ubiquitous piranha and crocodiles infesting it to the savage Havoca folk exploiting it, and the lost and broken degenerates of many nations hiding along its length…

Normally such projects would have failed from human malfeasance or due to the interference of the mighty Marsupilami and his extended clan, but our golden wonder is currently preoccupied by a mystery: the disappearance of his adored mate Marsupilamie …and even rival primate Mars the Black …

A creature of great empathy and primordial sensitivity, the bereft beast quickly deduces they have been taken by an old enemy: vile hunter Bring M. Backalive…

Left alone to care for their three cubs, Marsupilami’s vengeful screams alert jungle-dwelling white kids Sarah and Bip, who have been raising themselves in the green hell – with a little oversight from the Marsupilami patriarch they call “Marsu”. The human youngsters soon save the babies from drugged darts and – as enraged papa goes after the abductors – set off on a parallel investigation which takes then to disreputable shanty town and den of thieves Leyofdasaus…

It’s a canny move, as the rogues and scoundrels squatting and rotting there are currently being beguiled by a deadly glamour queen also looking for Backalive. A serial millionaire marrier, “Gringa” Rosanna Roquette is tracking down a couple of old spouses whilst ostensibly seeking the location of 20th century lost city Fordlandia.

If you’ve never heard of the place I strongly urge you to crank up your search engine of choice right now…

Also converging on the tatty township and the craven hunter is animal trainer Noah, currently helping Mars’ beastly bride Venus find her missing mate. Soon he and she are working with Sarah and Bip to save all the stolen Marsupilamis.

Marsu’s search has been plagued by misfortune. He too is closing in on Backalive and his former flunky (dissolute riverboat captain Bombonera) but cannot stop Roquette and the shabby captain teaming up and heading for the fabled missing metropolis…

Fortune finally shifts the good guys’ way when Marsu links up with Sarah, Bip, Noah and Venus. By dubious means, they then secure their own steamboat from an outcast who used to work in Fordlandia. After many more trials and tribulations, they finally confront the tawdry trapper and consequently uncover a bizarre and deranged plot by one of Rosanna’s former husbands…

Croesus Gummyfeather is convinced the world will soon suffer a second biblical flood and has been paying Backalive to gather two of every animal to stock his fabulous flying ark, and the inevitable confrontation between all aggrieved parties occurs just as the cloud-wracked heavens open…

And, as the deluge kicks off a climactic clash, back at Huetnomor, the engineers and architects wish they hadn’t skimped and grafted and cut so many corners when building the massive – but apparently soluble – hydro-megalith…

Combining astute political commentary with high octane blockbuster action and outrageous comedy antics, this tale is a superbly smart fantasy and masterfully madcap rollercoaster of hairsbreadth escapes, close shaves and sardonic character assassinations, packed to the whiskers with wit and hilarity.

These eccentric exploits of the garrulous golden monkeys are moodily macabre, furiously funny and pithily pertinent, offering engagingly riotous romps and devastating debacles for wide-eyed kids of every age all over the world.
© Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 1991 by Franquin, Yann & Batem. All rights reserved. English translation © 2021 Cinebook Ltd.

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Gomer Goof volume 4: The Goof is Out There


By Franquin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-439-7 (PB Album/Digital edition)

Like so much in Franco-Belgian comics, it started with Le Journal de Spirou. The magazine had debuted on April 2nd 1938, with its engaging lead strip created by Rob-Vel (François Robert Velter). In 1943, publishing house Dupuis purchased all rights to the comic and its titular star, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm for the redheaded kid’s exploits. Ultimately the publisher would become a character in its own periodicals publications…

In 1946 Jijé’s assistant André Franquin was handed creative control of the Spirou strip. He gradually switched from short gag vignettes to extended adventure serials, introducing a broad, engaging cast of regulars and in 1952 created phenomenally popular wonder-beast The Marsupilami. Debuting in Spirou et les héritiers, this critter grew into a spin-off star of screen, plush toy stores, console games and albums in his own right. Franquin continued crafting increasingly fantastic tales and absorbing Spirou sagas until his resignation in 1969.

Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd 1924. Drawing from an early age, the lad only began formal art training at École Saint-Luc in 1943. When the war forced the school’s closure a year later, he worked at Compagnie Belge d’Animation in Brussels, where he met Maurice de Bévére (AKA Lucky Luke creator “Morris”), Pierre Culliford (“Peyo”, of The Smurfs and Benny Breakiron) and Eddy Paape (Valhardi, Luc Orient). All but Peyo signed on with Dupuis in 1945.

Franquin began his career as a jobbing cartoonist and illustrator, producing covers for Le Moustique and scouting magazine Plein Jeu. During those early days, Franquin and Morris were tutored by Jijé, at that time chief illustrator at LJdS. He made them – and fellow newbie Willy Maltaite (AKA “Will” – Tif et Tondu, Isabelle, Le jardin des désirs) – into a smoothly functioning creative bullpen known as La bande des quatre or “Gang of Four”. They would ultimately revolutionise Belgian comics with their prolific and engaging “Marcinelle school” style of graphic storytelling…

Jijé handed Franquin all responsibilities for the flagship strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriqué (#427, June 20th 1946) and eager office junior ran with it for two decades; enlarging the feature’s scope and horizons until it became purely his own. Almost every week fans met startling new characters like comrade and rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor and Merlin of mushroom mechanics the Count of Champignac…

Spirou & Fantasio became a globetrotting journalist team, visiting exotic places, exposing crimes, exploring the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of bizarre and exotic arch-enemies. Throughout all that, Fantasio was still a full-fledged reporter for Le Journal de Spirou and had to pop into the Dupuis office all the time. Sadly, lurking there – or was it just in the artist’s head? – was an accident-prone, smugly big-headed office junior in charge of minor jobs and dogs-bodying. Franquin called him Gaston Lagaffe…

There’s a long history of fictitiously personalising those mysterious back room creatives and all the arcane processes they indulge in to make our favourite comics, whether it’s Stan Lee’s Marvel Bullpen or DC Thomson’s lugubrious “Mr. Editor” and underlings at The Beano and Dandy. Let me assure you that it’s a truly international practise and the occasional asides on text pages featuring well-meaning foul-up/office gofer Gaston (who debuted in #985, cover-dated February 28th 1957) grew to be one of the most popular components of the comic, whether as short illustrated strips or in faux editorial reports in text-feature form.

On a strictly personal note, I still think current English designation Gomer Goof (this name comes from an earlier, abortive attempt to introduce the character to American audiences) is unwarranted. The quintessentially Franco-Belgian tone and humour doesn’t translate particularly well (la gaffe translates as “blunder” not “idiot”) and the connotation contributes nothing here. When he surprisingly appeared in a 1970s UK Thunderbirds annual as part of an earlier syndication attempt, Gaston was rechristened Cranky Franky. Perhaps they should have kept that one or, best of all, his original designation…

In terms of actual schtick and delivery, older readers will recognise beloved beats of Benny Hill and Jacques Tati in timeless elements of all-consuming, grandiose self-delusion, and recognise recurring situations from Some Mothers Do Have ’Em or Mr Bean. It’s all surreal slapstick, paralysing puns, infernal ingenuity and invention, pomposity lampooned and no good deed going noticed, rewarded or unpunished…

As previously stated, Gomer makes his living (let’s not dignify or mis-categorise what he does as “work”) at the Spirou editorial offices: occasionally reporting to go-getting journalist Fantasio, complicating the lives of office manager Léon Prunelle and other staffers, generally ignoring the minor design jobs like paste-up, “gofer-ing” and office maintenance he’s paid to handle. There’s also editing readers’ letters… the official reason why fan requests and suggestions are never answered…

Gomer is lazy, peckish, opinionated, ever-ravenous, impetuous, underfed, forgetful and eternally hungry, with his most manic moments all stemming from “inventing”, cutting work corners and stashing or illicitly consuming contraband food in the office…

This leads to constant clashes with police officer Longsnoot and fireman Captain Morwater, yet the office oaf remains eternally easy-going and incorrigible. Only two questions are really important here: why does Fantasio keep giving him one last chance, and what can gentle, beguiling, flighty, impressionable, utterly lovelorn secretary Miss Jeanne possibly see in the self-opinionated idiot?

Originally released in 1969 as the sixth collection of Le Journal de Spirou strips Gaston – Un gaffeur sachant gaffer, this fourth Cinebook compilation eschews longer cartoon tales and comedic text “reports” from the comic’s editorial page to deliver non-stop all-Franquin comics gags in single-page bursts.

It begins at the New Year and here the office hindrance – as ever – invents stuff that makes life harder for everyone; amiably passes on bugs and ailments; sets driving records no one can believe or probably survive and scotches attempts by financier De Mesmaeker (in-joke analogue of fellow creator Jidéhem – real name is Jean De Mesmaeker ) the explosively irate businessman whose ever-failing efforts to get his contracts signed render him a constant foil for and unfortunate victim of the Goof…

There is also an unwelcome return for his devastating musical invention as the recurrent saga of his truly terrifying Brontosaurophone/Goofophone continues to disrupt commerce, glass, the environment and most organic life in earshot…

Set in snowy, foggy wonderlands, Gomer disastrously pioneers powered ice skating before revolutionising record keeping and book storage with his mechanical successor to ladders, prior to embarking upon an extended sequence of episodes wherein Gomer’s attempts to do away with unsightly, annoying, constantly shedding Christmas tree needles results in the birth of a monster. He should never have dabbled with glue and pressure hoses, but at least he had his Goofophone music to console him…

All too soon, though, he’s back to breaking laws physicists consider sacrosanct – such as when he began dabbling with perpetual motion technology – or upsetting traffic cops, firemen and clients. Somehow, always and in all ways, the Goof keeps letting down his colleagues and employers, like when he decided to fix the big clock on the building exterior, or tweaked the overstretched office fuse board to accommodate his new secret electric stove…

Many strips involve manic efforts to modify the motorised atrocity he calls his car: an appallingly decrepit and dilapidated Fiat 509 auto(barely)mobile desperately in need of his many well-meant attempts to counter its lethal road pollution. It’s the reason he always has the sniffles or wears some kind of bandage, plaster or splint…

At heart, though, Gomer is a Good Samaritan and champion of animals. Many strips here prove how his love of all creatures great and small trumps minor considerations like personal safety, traffic laws or city ordinances, even though his distinctly novel approach to cookery borders on criminal perversity…

This time out there’s also a deep concentration on home – and office – improvements and novel – if somewhat risky – variations on established and beloved sports all given a fresh makeover by the unique innovator, such as when he showed Prunelle and Fantasio how he had beefed up bouncy amusement “the spacehopper”…

And he should never ever have been allowed to bring his chemistry set to work…

In this volume, we meet his opposite number from across the road. Jules-from-Smith’s-across-the-street is a like-minded soul and born accomplice always eager to slope off for a chat, and a devotee of Gomer’s methods of passing the time whilst at work. He even collaborates on such retaliations as Gomer inflicts on officer Longsnoot…

Far better enjoyed than précised or described, these strips allowed Franquin to flex whimsical muscles and even subversively sneak in some satirical support for his beliefs in pacifism and environmentalism. However, at their core the gags remain supreme examples of all-ages comedy: wholesome, barbed, daft and incrementally funnier with every re-reading.

Have you started Goofing off yet?
© Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 2009 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2019 Cinebook Ltd.