Category: Comedy

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‘There’s a Lot of it About’


By Geoffrey Dickinson (Columbus Books)
ISBN: 978-0-86287-253-3

Since we’re well into the snot and sniffles season I thought I’d cheer myself up with this handy handbook of ailments and medical mis-practice from one of Britain’s best and most influential cartoonists Geoffrey Dickinson, a veteran mainstay of Punch, Time, The Financial Times and many others. This is probably his best collection of gags but his second opinion on medical matters ‘Probably Just a Virus’ is almost as good but a lot harder to find these days…

British cartooning has been magnificently served over the centuries by masters of form, line, wash and most importantly clever ideas, repeatedly poking our funny bones, pricking our pomposities and feeding our fascinations, and nothing says more about us than our rocky relationship with the beloved yet dreaded agents of the National Health Service.

Award-winning cartoonist Geoffrey Samuel Dickinson was born on May 5th 1933 inLiverpool and studied at Southport School Art (1950-1953) before graduating to the Royal Academy Schools. Set on a career as a landscape painter he taught art in Croyden, atTavistockBoysSchool and theSelhurstGrammar School until 1967.

To supplement his income he freelanced as a graphic designer and animator for the BBC and began selling gags to Punch as early as 1963.

In 1966 his famous cover for the April 15th issue of Time Magazine was deemed to have officially launched “the Swinging Sixties” and London as the capital city of cool, and a year later he took a staff position with Punch as Deputy Art Editor under the legendary Bill Hewison, but still found time to freelance, working for Reader’s Digest, Which?, Esquire, Highlife, Hallmark Cards and many more.

In 1984 Dickinsonleft the humour standard to take up a position at the Financial Times, drawing cartoons for the daily and producing illustration material for the weekend supplement. He died far too young in 1988.

Within the pages of ‘There’s a Lot of it About’ – and following a pithy introduction from much-missed master of acerbic wit Alan Coren – the fit, the fat, the festering and the foolish will all learn the truth about the health of the nation in such chapters of chilling encounters and dodgy diagnoses as ‘The Waiting-Room’, ‘In the Surgery’ and ‘Sharp Practice’, before meeting stroppy secretaries, seen-it-all sawbones and formidably starched matrons as well as the puling punks, cadaverous clerks and clerics, cocky kids, goofy old gaffers, loony little old ladies, brusque businessmen and other tedious time-wasters all abusing valuable visiting hours ‘On the Touchline’, ‘At the Barbers’ and ‘At the Dentist’…

Moreover, as well as warning of ‘Student Doctors’, ‘Showbiz Doctors’ and the ‘Bogus Doctor’, we follow fully-rounded physicians into their private lives ‘On Holiday’, ‘At the Wheel’, in the garden with ‘Doctor Greenfinger’, at the ‘Doctor’s Wedding’, over ‘The Festive Season’ and on ‘The Morning After’, before examining doctors in love undergoing ‘Affairs of the Heart’…

These kinds of cartoon collections were once ubiquitous best-sellers available everywhere, but these days are perennial library and jumble sale fare – in fact I actually found this brilliant cure-all for the blues at a Hospital charity shop – but if you ever see a Dickinson (or indeed, any cartoon collection) in such a place, do yourself a favour, help out a good cause and have a healthy horse-laugh with these all-but-forgotten masters of illustrative mirth.

They’re really good for what ails you…
© 1985 Geoffrey Dickinson. 1933-1988

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Nextwave Agents of H.A.T.E. the Ultimate Collection


By Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen & Wade Von Grawbadger (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4461-8

Even for the most dedicated fans, superhero comics can become a little samey and pedestrian, so when gifted big- name creators such as Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen decide to have a little fun with the fringes of such a ponderous continuity as Marvel’s, expectations are always understandably high.

In 2006 Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. (Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort) launched for a breathtaking and controversial 12 issue run and happily proved to be everything one could hope for…

Wry, cynically Post-Modern and malevolently mischievous, the saga borrowed shamelessly from kid’s bubblegum pop culture – especially trans-pacific animation (there was even a theme-song you could hear online and a variant issue readers could colour in to win prizes) – as well as the forgotten contents of the daftest corners of Marvel’s nigh-seventy years of existence to captivatingly satirise the genre, the medium and itself – and it was hilariously anti-globalisation, counter-Capitalist, rude, sexy and excessively ultra-violent…

H.A.T.E. is another of those numerous acronymic quasi-governmental, covert high-tech agencies dedicated to keeping us all safe in our overpriced, indolent beds – at least that was what their eccentric team of operatives initially believed.

When they discovered that their employers were in fact a fully owned subsidiary of the Beyond Corporation© and the latest iteration of diabolical terrorist cabal S.I.L.E.N.T., former Avengers Monica Rambeau (Captain Marvel II/Photon) and artificial individual Aaron (Machine Man) Stack rightly rebelled.

With ex-X-Man girl Tabitha Smith (Meltdown/Boom Boom), stroppy immortal monster-hunter Elsa Bloodstone and hyper-powered, unimaginative enigma The Captain (formerly Captain $#!£ until ostracized by all the other military-monickered mystery-men, after which Captain America punched his foul-mouthed head in and washed his mouth out with soap) in tow, they went AWOL, intending to stop their former paymasters at all costs.

Further investigation disclosed that the terrorist conglomerate was actually planning to product-test potentially lucrative BWMDs – Bizarre Weapons of Mass Destruction – on American soil and ordinary folks, so the shocked quintet promptly stole a super-ship and all the plans, determined to stop the callous campaign and take down the despicable Beyond©-ers forever…

With their increasingly deranged, suicidal and sexually outré former commander Dirk Anger in hot pursuit, the team begins its fightback in Abcess, North Dakota where the legendary giant dragon in underpants Fin Fang Foom has been awakened and… stimulated… into going on a rampage of destructive frustration…

On the streets of Abcess, hordes of Beyond©’s mass-produced vegetable warriors are attacking the citizenry and exacerbating the chaos until Elsa and The Captain intervene with their signature lack of restraint.

As property damage and general unrest spiral upwards, Monica devises an unsavoury plan and orders Aaron – a fantastic robot who despises human “fleshy ones” and has reprogrammed himself to crave vast amounts of beer – to get himself swallowed and deal with the dragon from the inside…

With no rest for the Wicked-crushers the renegade revengers then head to Sink City, Illinoiswhere brutally corrupt cop Mac Mangel has been infected with a mechanistically mutating program, transforming him into a colossal flesh and steel beast hungry to eat metal and children…

With mounting carnage everywhere, the Captain still gets distracted into an origin flashback, leaving Tabitha to deal with the Transfomer-ed Mangel in her stylishly simple yet permanent manner…

In Wyoming, the Nextwave discover a Beyond© War Garden and set about destroying the next crop of broccoli berserkers and cabbage crusaders, just as Dirk Anger and his other – still-loyal – agents of H.A.T.E. arrive in their flying citadel to unleash all the insane instruments of doom in their arsenal. However even the Drop Bears of Cuddly Koala Death, a flock of Assault Pterosaurs, Samurai Robots and Homicide Crabs cannot contain the righteous indignation of the forgotten heroes, and when Aaron counterattacks by stealing Dirk’s chic-est most secret possession the deviant Director has no choice but to retreat…

Beyond©orp’s follow-up BWMD event sees the terrorist entrepreneurs summon an extremely minor and rather young Elder God, Rorkannu, Lord of the Dank Dimension, and trade that for access to a deadly invading army of mystic behemoths that Dr. Strange fans will recognise as merciless “Mindless Ones” to decimate the town of Shotcreek, Colorado. Ready to back-up the embattled townspeople are Monica and her crew but things take a decidedly surreal turn as the monolithic marauders prove to be not all that mindless…

In the blistering last-stand battle Elsa becomes lost in fond reminiscences of her truly unique and bloody childhood, before, against all odds, the Captain stumbles onto Rorkannu and contrary to everyone’s expectations finally does something right…

When Steve Rogers became CaptainAmerica in 1941, nobody realised that a second Nazi spy stole his urine sample. Now, through most torturous and arcane paths, that last remnant of the original Super-Soldier serum has allowed the ruling elite of the Beyond© group to create whole battalions of customised metahuman champions…

When Nextwave finally track the terrorists to their inverted floating fortress they are confronted by an army of esoteric adversaries derived and developed from the misappropriated hero-pee and aligned in specifically themed teams such as The Surgery, The Vestry and The Homosexuality, but even such lethally dedicated foes as Dr. Headless, Father Pain, Dr. Nosexy, Sun King, Red Rosary and Slightly Creepy Policewoman pale into insignificance beside the reality-altering threat of Forbush-Man and his eerily familiar comrades the New Paramounts…

Once again plunged into horrifically violent combat, the Nextwave are slowly making bloody headway until the diminutive demon plunges the team into depressing and dreary alternate lives from the worst recesses of their inner visions. Sadly for Forbush-Man, nobody had ever found any evidence of intellect or imagination in Tabitha, just an overwhelming vacuity, urge to steal and need to blow stuff up…

With the end in sight the triumphant heroes invade the Beyond Corporation©’s hidden HQ State 51 just as Dirk Anger, transformed and degraded beyond imagination, arrives culminating in an even more spectacular clash before confronting the utterly macabre mastermind behind the monstrous marketing campaign of destruction; only to discover an even more bizarre kingmaker behind it all and finally bringing the hammer down once and for all…

As action comics in their purest form, the tales are laced with light-hearted lethality and superbly smutty innuendo with hints of Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman, Ben Edlund’s The Tick, Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s Marshall Law and Ambush Bug, with all the verve, panache and invention of the Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, Time Squad and Kids Next Door, all wrapped up in pithy corporate sloganeering a la Better Off Ted and Joseph Goebells…

Stuffed with in-joke extras such as the faux letters pages, sketches, the original Nextwave Pitch and the lyrics for that aforementioned theme song this is a glorious comic – in every sense of the word – and an experience no modern, fun-loving fan could possibly find fault with.

“Healing America by Beating People Up” and making us laugh by taking the piss…
© 2006, 2007, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Bone book 2: Chase that Cow


By Jeff Smith (Cartoon Books)
ISBN: 978-0-96366-9-095-4

Jeff Smith burst out of relative obscurity in 1991 and changed the comics-reading landscape with his enchanting all-ages comic-book Bone. The compelling black and white saga captivated the market and prospered at a time when an endless procession of angst-ridden, steroid-breathed super-vigilantes and implausibly clad “Bad-Grrls” came and went with machine-gun rapidity.

Born in Pennsylvania and raised in Ohio, Smith avidly absorbed the works of Carl Barks, Charles Schultz and especially Walt Kelly from an early age, and purportedly first began producing the adventures of his Boneville creations at age ten.

Whilst attending Ohio State University he created a prototype strip for the College newspaper: ‘Thorn’ was another early incarnation of his personal universe and a valuable proving ground for many characters that would eventually appear in Bone. A high school classmate became a Disney animator and Smith subsequently gravitated to the field before striking out on his own, having mastered the graceful gentle slapstick timing and high finish style which typifies his art style.

He founded Cartoon Books to self-publish 55 delightful black and white issues: a fantasy-quest yarn that owed as much to Tex Avery as J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as his personal holy trinity, Barks, Schultz & Kelly. The thrilling and fantastically funny saga progressed at its own unique pace between 1991 and 2004 and since then has been collected into nine volumes from Cartoon Books (with two further collections of prequels and side tales), reissued in colour by Scholastic Books and even reprinted in Disney Adventures magazine.

At series’ end, Smith issued a monumental one volume compilation (more than 1300 black and white pages) which Time magazine dubbed “the best all-ages graphic novel yet published” and one of the “Top Ten Graphic Novels of All Time.”

Smith has won many awards including 11 Harveys and 10 Eisners. In 2011, a spectacular 20th anniversary full-colour edition of the Brobdingnagian single volume was released, stuffed with extras and premiums. If you’ve got the dough, that’s the book to shoot for…

As you can see there are plenty of versions to opt for but – purist that I am – I’ve plumped for the original Cartoon Books collection where the action commences in Out of Boneville, which re-presents the first six episodes.

Fone Bone is a strange, amorphous, yet affably decent little guy, a thematic blend of Mickey Mouse and Asterix who had been run out of the town of Boneville along with his tall and not-so-bright cousin Smiley Bone. Well to be exact they weren’t, but their dastardly, swindling cousin Phoncible P. “Phoney” Bone was, due to the sort of financial and political irregularities, misdemeanours and malfeasances that bring down presidents – and he only was running for Mayor at the time…

After an incredibly journey the trio were separated and ended up in Lost Valley: an oasis of pastoral beauty hidden from the rest of the world. Along the way Bone was adopted by a dragon he doesn’t believe in, stalked by ghastly rat monsters and befriended by a talking leaf-insect (like a stick insect but flat, not long – and very, very chatty) called Ted.

After a harsh winter living wild in the deep forest he met the beauteous and oddly compelling human girl Thorn. It was Crush-at-First-Sight and he happily accepted an offer to stay with her and grandmother Rose Ben until he could find his lost cousins. He soon came to regret it when Phoney finally turned up and started his old tricks again…

Phoney’s insatiable drive to steal, cheat and fake a buck made life pretty uncomfortable for the besotted Fone Bone, but real trouble was actually brewing in the deep woods where an ancient evil had awoken, driving the stupid, stupid rat creatures who infested the place into a frenzy.

An incredibly old, cold war was heating up again and for the humans of nearby Barrelhaven village the stakes couldn’t be higher. The dark creatures and night-haunts were waiting for the advent of their prophesied one – a small bald creature with a star on its chest – remarkably similar to the one on Phoney’s shirt…

When the assembled horror-hordes attacked the cottage their putative chosen one was long gone…

Phoney had scented money and moved to the hamlet in search of easy marks and, as Thorn and Fone raced to warn the villagers that the beasts had risen, Gran’ma stayed behind to battle the rat things. When Bone’s “imaginary” dragon rescued the fleeing pair, they retraced their frantic steps to find the feisty old biddy had survived and overcome her attackers. Moreover, Rosie and the Dragon were old acquaintances…

As the Dragon returned to the deep woods the humans (and Bone) leave the wrecked cottage and relocate to Barrelhaven, where they find Smiley has been all along, serving drinks in the local tavern. Phoney is there too – working off a tremendous bar-tab and looking to make some easy, preferably illicit cash…

This second stunning compilation collects issues #7-12 of the comicbook and also includes the contents  of premium special Wizard Presents Bone #13½; opening with Thorn and Fone enjoying the bucolic delights of ‘The Spring Fair’.

Our diminutive love-struck hero is in heaven as he strolls with the oblivious Thorn but when her attention is diverted by hunky young travelling honey-seller Tom, Bone gets into a fight with the peddler and the girl, before storming off to find his own sticky treat by raiding a wild bee’s nest in the forest – with calamitous and hilariously painful results.

Phoney meanwhile is planning to fleece the villagers with a betting scam. For years the uncannily robust and unbeatable Gran’Ma has won the annual Great Cow Race (which seemingly consists of stampeding a herd and outrunning them to a finish line) and the riotous event has become her very own yearly moment of glory.

Now the wily rogue and his gullible patsy Smiley are taking bets against her, whilst disseminating disinformation that she is ailing and past her prime. All the smart money – chickens, goats, sheep etc. – is on a dark horse “Mystery Cow”…

And with the entire village constantly asking about her health, old Rose begins to worry and doubt herself…

‘The Map’ finds Phoney’s betting booth doing a roaring trade with all bets on the as yet unseen Mystery Cow, when the battered, bruised and mightily stung Bone comes by. Appalled to see his cousin up to his old tricks, the honey-dipped hero confronts Phoney and discovers the whole plan: even though the entire village has put all their valuables on the outsider, Gran’Ma will easily win the Great Race since the enigmatic bovine challenger will be Smiley in a cow suit…

Thorn is dreaming, seeing again a time past when mysterious cloaked figures and dragons met in a cave and considered the inevitable return of a dark and deadly menace. Sharing the dream with Bone she remembers an old chart Bone found in the Great Desert and which first led him to safety in the valley … a map she drew whilst a toddler in that cave of dragons…

‘The Mystery Cow’ opens on the day of the race, and tension in Barrelhaven is at a sullen fever pitch. Rose’s confidence is still fragile though and tavern owner Lucius – who is sweet on her – finally accedes to Phoney’s constant haranguing and agrees to bet the entire business on the race. The rest of the punters are nervous though. They’ve wagered all their worldly goods against Gran’Ma on a critter no one has ever seen and Lucius suggests that maybe they should check on it…

Given a noon deadline to produce the unbeatable cow for the town’s perusal, duplicitous, greedy Phoney is starting to see some flaws in his infallible plan and Thorn too gets a moment of cold realisation when Tom blows her off for a more pliable companion…

Downhearted, Bone has retired to the woods to read Moby Dick, but after a heart-to-heart with Ted, determines to bare his soul to Thorn in a love poem.

His mood is soon lost though when a couple of Rat Creatures turn up, wondering aloud if he is fair game or the “Small Mammal” they aren’t allowed to eat as elsewhere, with noon approaching, Phoney pulls a bold stunt and again fools the oafish villagers with the crazed, unbeatable ferocity of his Mystery Cow…

‘The Great Cow Race’ is about to start and udder-draped Smiley has his instructions to finish behind Gran’Ma, but Phoney’s greed gets the better of him when he circles back to his booth to find Lucius at last ready to bet the bar. Unfortunately the doughty old buzzard wants to place it on Rose to win – and the odds are now 100 to 1…

With vivid memories of his last tar-and-feathering, the bovine bookmaker hurtles to intercept Smiley and tell him to win at all costs and as the herd thunders by with Rose in the lead, Bone appears, running his own desperate race. At his milky heels are the two starving and stupid, stupid Rat Creatures.

Sadly where there are a couple, inevitably the entire ravenous horde soon follows – and they do, perfectly and painfully intermingling with the frantic racers just as the finish line comes into sight…

‘Retribution’ opens with the victorious Gran’Ma, Lucius and Thorn riding a cartload of building supplies back to their devastated cottage. Hidden in the back are the Bone cousins, Phoney only gradually recovering from the rough-and-ready justice he has received from the incensed villagers.

With Smiley teasing Bone about the dragon only he has seen it’s a slow and anxious journey through the dark woods, since the Rat Creatures all vanished into the forest after the race melee ended. Indeed many ancient eyes, both friendly and inimically hostile, are following the party’s progress…

As the two starving rat things who started the debacle lay low and uproariously consider the upside of quiche as opposed to raw flesh, the repair squad arrives at the cottage and begins work, whilst in the background Lucius and Rose discuss the real importance of what’s been happening, especially for Thorn…

Following a delightful poetic frolic from Bone’s frisky friends the possum kids, the book ends on a funny if foreboding note as the bombastic Lucius and ham-fisted, half-witted Smiley learn a little more about each other whilst painfully rebuilding Gran’Ma’s house ‘Up on the Roof’…

I’ve talked a lot about the influences that informed this wonderful series and there’s one more that cannot be ignored: if you squint your eyes just right you can see the charm-adjacent convolutions of Bill Watterson’s Calvin (see The Essential Calvin and Hobbes. No, really. Do. It’s utterly wonderful and so are all the other collections) sneaking in to further flavour this astounding, raucous, beguiling, child-friendly extravaganza…

Bone is a truly perfect comic tale and one that appeals to kids and adults equally. Already it is in the rarefied rank starring Tintin, Pogo, Rupert Bear, Little Nemo and the aforementioned and cherished works of Schultz, Kelly and Barks. It is only a matter of time before it breaks out of the comic club completely and becomes kin to the likes of Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, the Moomins and Oz.

If you have kids or can still think and feel like one you must have these books…

© 1995, 1996 Jeff Smith. All rights reserved.

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Star Comics All-Star Collection


By Lennie Herman, Sid Jacobson, Stan Kay, Bob Bolling, Warren Kremer, Howard Post & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4291-1

Once upon a time the American comicbook industry for younger readers was totally dominated by Gold Key with their TV and Disney licenses, and Harvey Comics who had switched from general genres to a wholesome, kid-friendly pantheon in the mid-1950s. They owned the pre-school sector until declining morals, television cartoon saturation and rising print costs finally forced them to bow out.

Gold Key suffered a slow erosion, gradually losing valuable major properties such as Popeye, Star Trek, assorted Hanna-Barbera and Warner Brothers cartoon stars and other treasures until parent company Western Publishing called it a day in 1984, whilst Harvey shut up shop in 1982 when company founder Alfred Harvey retired.

The latter’s vast archived artwork store was sold off and, with the properties and rights up for grabs, Marvel Comics (who had already secured those lost Star Trek and Hanna-Barbera rights) was frontrunner for licensing the family firm’s iconic characters, which included Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Sad Sack, Hot Stuff – the Little Devil, Wendy the Good Little Witch and many others.

When the bid failed, Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, knowing there was now a huge gap in the market, launched a cloned imprint of the Harvey stable (which would also encompass new TV and toy properties such as Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies and Fraggle Rock, Alf, Madballs, Care Bears, Thundercats, Ewoks and such like) to generate the next generation of worthy entry-level comics for entertainment-hungry young minds and concerned parents.

Marvel’s Star Comics line launched in 1985, edited by ex-Harvey head-honcho Sid Jacobson, with oddly familiar titles and an incontestably similar look and feel – achieved primarily by hiring unemployed Harvey stalwarts such as Jacobson, Lennie Herman, Warren Kremer, Howard Post and others. Millionaire prince and all-around good kid Royal Roy especially invoked the ire of the Harvey heirs who sued for copyright infringement of their astonishingly prolific Richie Rich who shone in more than 55 separate titles between his debut in 1953 and the bust of 1982.

Roy was cancelled after 6 issues – as were many Star series – in a brutal “Survival of the Funnest” publishing policy – and the suit was quietly dropped.

None of which affects the fact that those Eighties child stars were, in their own right, a superb agglomeration of all-ages fun, excitement and adventure happily recycled in this oversized digest collection from 2009.

This first volume collects that first wave of title introducing Planet Terry #1-2, Top Dog #1-3, Royal Roy #1-2 and Wally the Wizard #1-2 in a veritable nova of bubbly contagious thrills and frolics, opening with a star who was just a little lost boy in space…

Planet Terry was created by Lennie Herman (who passed away just before the big Star Comics launch) and the truly magnificent Warren Kremer – whose animation-based art style became the defining look of Harvey Comics during its happy heyday – and featured a young lad searching the universe for the parents he had never known.

Introduced in ‘The Search’ (Herman, Kremer & Vince Colletta), Planet Terry was something of a nuisance, periodically landing on alien worlds, pestering the inhabitants and asking “Has anyone seen my mother and father?” Found wandering in a life-pod which raised and educated him, the only clues Terry has to his past is a name bracelet and an empty picture frame…

However this time when he returns to the obnoxious planet Bznko Terry accidentally drives off a menace that bores folks to death with bad jokes and the inhabitants give him a junked lady robot as a reward. This proves to be a blessing in disguise as Robota inadvertently leads the lonely lad to ‘A Clue’ when they crash-land on a mining asteroid and meet aged Enoch Diggs who recognises the life-pod the infant Terry was found in…

‘Some Answers’ are forthcoming as the prospector reveals he once worked on a Confederation Cosmos Cruiser called the Space Warp where the captain’s wife was going to have a baby. Needing a sterile environment for the newborn infant, the crew placed him in the emergency life-boat, but his jubilant father accidentally triggered it whilst celebrating his son’s birth and the baby was rocketed into deep space.

Although they searched everywhere the heartbroken spacemen never located the pod and assumed Terry was lost forever…

Although Enoch can’t remember the names of Terry’s parents he suggests that another old crewman might and the re-energised searchers rush to another asteroid to find him, but instead encounter ‘The Malt Shop Menace’ and recruit another voyager when Robota saves the brutish monster Omnus who gratefully joins their decidedly odd family. Little do they know that a sinister conspiracy is at work to keep the whereabouts and secret of the Space Warp lost forever…

Issue #2 continues the quest as the family of outcasts encounter sabotage and opposition before landing their freshly repaired ship on the lost world of the Gorkels where the trio clumsily fulfil an ancient prophecy in ‘The Saga of Princess Ugly’ by Herman, Kremer & Jon D’Agostino.

In return for repairing Terry’s downed vessel, he, Robota and Omnus must rescue the kidnapped Princess battling hostile jungles, shape-shifting beasts, killer vines, a whirlpool and a volcano – all controlled by arch-villain Vermin the Vile in ‘Too Close (enough) for Comfort’ before saving the girl from ‘The Doom of the Domed City’ and discovering the final resting place of the elusive Space Warp…

Royal Roy debuted on his birthday in ‘The Mystery of the Missing Crown’ by Herman, Kremer & D’Agostino as the Prince of wealthy Ruritanian Cashalot discovers that the traditional, venerable Royal Highness Crown has gone missing on the day of his investiture. Whilst King Regal and Queen Regalia panic, super-cool bodyguard Ascot diligently investigates, and assorted resplendent relatives dither and interfere, Roy and his pet crocodile Gummy keep their heads by ‘Picking up the Scent’ and soon uncover a supernatural agency at work after ‘A Midnight Visit’ by ghostly ancestor William the Warhorse… Topping off the first issue was a snappy, snazzy short fun yarn starring the reptilian Gummy in ‘Crocadog’.

‘The Grand Ball’, scripted by Stan Kay, occupied most of Roy’s attention in the second issue as the underage but still eligible Prince took a fancy to simple commoner Crystal Clear whilst ambitious and mean social climber Lorna Loot spent all her time and considerable cash unsuccessfully attempting to beguile the boy by turning herself into a modern-day Cinderella in ‘A Strange Stranger’…

‘Maneuvers!’ saw Roy fulfil his hereditary duties by joining the Cashalot army on dawn exercises, but as ruler-in-waiting of a rich and peaceful nation, the plucky lad wasn’t too surprised to find that the entire armed forces consisted of one reluctant prince and a keen but aging general…

Top Dog featured a far more contemporary and normal situation, depicting the lives of average American boy Joey Jordan and the mutt he brought home one day. ‘The Dog-Gone Beginning’ by Herman, Kremer & Jacqueline Roettcher, revealed how, whilst looking for a lost baseball, the kid had accidentally observed a dog reading the newspaper and talking to himself.  Exposed, the canny canine begged the boy to keep his secret or all the four-footed wonder could expect was a short and painful life being poked, prodded and probed by scientists…

When the lad promises to keep his secret Top Dog agrees to come live with Joey in ‘House About a Dog, Mom?’, and whilst the boy tries to teach the pooch to bark – one of the few languages he can’t speak! – his accommodating family gradually get used to the seemingly normal dog and his boy.

However when Mervin Megabucks – the richest and meanest kid in town – overhears the pair playing and conversing, the spoiled brat refuses to believe Joey is a ventriloquist. When the junior Jordan refuses to sell, Mervin steals Top Dog as the perfect addition to his palatial high-tech house.

Even torture won’t make the purloined pooch speak again however, and when Joey stages ‘The Big Breakout’ Mervin’s mega-robots prove no match for dogged determination and the plutocrat brat is left baffled, bamboozled and dog-less…

Issue #2 exposed ‘Spies!’ when the restless dog of a thousand talents appeared to harbour a dark side. Going out on nightly jaunts, the marvellous mutt seemingly led a double life as a security guard in a Defence Plant, triple-crossing everybody by photographing military secrets for a foreign power. Of course it was really a diminutive enemy agent in a dog suit but Vladimir‘s handlers hadn’t reckoned on a real dog looking – and speaking – just like their hairy operative and they accidentally gave their purloined plans to the chatty all-American canine…

After spectacularly trapping the sinister spies without revealing his own incredible intelligence, Top Dog was framed in #3 by Joey’s best friend Larry who was feeling rejected and neglected since the Brilliant Bow-wow moved in.

With a feral hound dubbed ‘The Mad Biter’ on the prowl and attacking people it was simple to send the perspicacious pup to the Pound, where he encounters lots of bad dogs who probably deserve to be ‘Caged’, but faithful Joey hasn’t given up and after bailing his canine comrade out, the pair convince  the guilt-ridden perjurer to see the light by treating him to an impromptu midnight ‘Ghost Story’…

Even with Larry recanting his lies the neighbourhood families don’t trust Top Dog, but that all changes once the maligned mutt tracks down the real Biter and engages him in ‘A Fight to the Finish’…

The final initial entry was written and illustrated by veteran Archie Comics artist Bob Bolling (probably most famous for creating and producing the first eight years’ worth of the award-winning Little Archie spin-off series), who concocted a fabulous medieval wonderland for Wally the Wizard to play in.

In #1’s ‘A Plague of Locust’ Merlin’s older, smarter brother Marlin is having trouble with his stubbornly inquisitive apprentice. Wally wants to know everything now, has no discipline and is full of foolish ideas and misconceptions. As a scientist, Marlin has no time for silly superstitions and when the lad accidentally releases a time-travelling demon from an age-old prison the mage refuses to believe him.

Gorg however swears faithfully to repay the favour before disappearing…

Despatched to deliver a potion to King Kodger, Wally also helps a dragon save his hatchling from a deep well, only just reaches the sovereign in time and has a feed on the Royal Barge where he again fails to impress the beauteous Princess Penelope…

Meanwhile in distant Bloodmire Castle wicked plotters Vastar the Vile, his sister Sybilious the Bilious and wicked warlock Erasmo are conspiring to conquer the kingdom by unleashing a gigantic metal locust to consume all in its path…

Even the noble knights led by invincible Sir Flauntaroy are helpless before the brazen beast and Wally realises only Marlin can save them. Unfortunately the boy gets lost on route but happily for everybody the dragon and demon which the sorcerer doesn’t believe in are ready to pay their debts to the apprentice…

Sid Jacobson, Howard Post & Jon D’Agostino took over for the second issue as Wally enters the annual apprentice’s games with Marlin now suddenly transformed into a traditional magic-making mage. In fact Marlin, as a three-time champion of ‘The Magic-a-Thon!’ is secretly regretful that Wally is too inexperienced to compete, a fact his disciple discerns and tries to fix…

Desperately cramming for a week and eventually with the coaching of his proud master, Wally sets off to compete but a lovelorn barbarian accidentally cleaves the kid’s crib notes in twain, leaving the lad able to create only half-spells and materialise semi-monsters…

Undaunted Wally continues and – even after a huge storm deprives him of the demi-directions and his back-up pouch of herbs and potions – perseveres, determined to win using nothing but his wits, guts and unflagging optimism…

This clutch of classic children’s tales also includes the enchanting covers and the original house-ads that introduced the characters to the Kids in America and nearly three decades later is still a fabulous hit of intoxicating wonder and entertainment which readers of all ages cannot fail to love…

With contemporary children’s comics all but extinct these days, it’s lucky we have such timeless classics to draw upon and draw kids in with, and compilations like this one belong on the shelves of every funnybook-loving parent and even those lonely couples with only a confirmed twinkle in their eyes…
© 1985 and 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Footrot Flats Book 7


By Murray Ball (Orin Books)
ISSN: 0156-6172

New Zealand’s greatest natural wonder and National Treasure is a comic strip. Footrot Flats is one of the funniest comic strips ever created, designed as a practical antidote to idealistic pastoral fantasy and bucolic self-deception and concocted in 1975 by cartoonist and comics artist Murray Ball after returning to his New Zealand homeland, from an extended work tour of the UK and other, lesser climes.

The fantastical farm feature ran for a quarter of a century, appearing in newspapers on four continents until 1994 when Ball retired it, citing reasons as varied as the death of his own dog and the state of New Zealand politics. Such a success naturally spawned a multitude of merchandising material such as strip compendia, calendars and special editions released regularly from 1978 onwards.

Once Ball officially ceased the daily feature he began periodically releasing books of all-new material until 2000, with a net yield of 27 collections of the daily strip, 8 volumes of Sunday pages dubbed “Weekenders”, 5 pocket books and ancillary publications such as “school kits” aimed at younger fans and their harried parents.

There was a stage musical, a theme park and in 1986 a truly superb feature-length animated film. The Dog’s Tail Tale became New Zealand’s top-grossing film (and remained so until Peter Jackson started associating with Hobbits) – track it down on video or petition the BBC to show it again – it’s been decades, for Pete’s sake…

The well-travelled, extremely gifted and deeply dedicated Mr. Ball had originally moved to England in the early 1960s, becoming a cartoonist for Punch (producing Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero and All the King’s Comrades) as well as drawing numerous strips for DC Thompson and Fleetway and even concocting a regular political satire strip in Labour Weekly.

After marrying he returned to the Old Country and resettled in 1974 – but not to retire…

Ball was busier than ever once he’d bought a small-holding on the North Island to farm in his “spare time”, which inevitably led to the strip under review.

Taking the adage “write what you know” to startling, heartbreaking and occasionally stomach-turning heights, the peripatetic pencil-pusher broke most of the laws of relativity to make time for these captivatingly insane episodes concerning the highs and lows – and most frequently “absurds” – of the rural entrepreneur as experienced by the earthily metaphoric Wallace Footrot Cadwallader: a bloke never too-far removed from mud, mayhem, ferocity and frustration…

Wal is a big, bluff farmer. He likes his grub; loves his sport – Rugby, Football (the Anzac sort, not the kiddie version Yanks call Soccer) Cricket, Golf(ish) and even hang-gliding; each in its proper season and at no other, since he just wants the easiest time a farmer’s life can offer…

Wal owns a small sheep farm (the eponymous Footrot Flats) honestly described as “400 acres of swamp between Ureweras and the Sea”.

With his chief – and only – hand Cooch Windgrass (a latter-day Francis of Assisi), and a verbose and avuncular sheepdog, Wal enjoys being his own boss – as much as the farm cat, goats, chickens, livestock and his auntie will let him…

Other persons of perennial interest include Wal’s fierce and prickly little niece Janice – known to all as Pongo, the aforementioned Aunt Dolly (AKA the sternly staunch and starched Dolores Monrovia Godwit Footrot), smart-ass local lad Rangi Wiremu Waka Jones, Dolly’s pompous and pampered Corgi Prince Charles and Pew, a sadistic, inventive, obsessed and vengeful magpie who bears an unremitting grudge against Wal…

When not living in terror of the monumental moggy dubbed “Horse”, teasing the corpulent Corgi or panic-attacking himself in imagined competition with noble hunting hound Major, the Dog narrates and hosts the strip.

A cool, imaginative and overly sentimental know-all and blowhard, Dog is utterly devoted to his, for want of a better term, Master – unless there’s food about, or Jess the sheepdog bitch is in heat again. However, the biggest and most terrifying scene-stealer was that fulsome feline Horse; a monstrous and imperturbable tomcat who lords it over every living thing in the district …

One of the powerful and persistent clichés of life is that to make people laugh one truly needs to experience tragedy and, having only recently lost my own four-footed studio-mate and constant companion of 15 years, I can certainly empathise with the artist’s obvious manly distress as this otherwise magnificently hilarious collection is movingly dedicated to the uniquely charming real-world inspiration for the battered and bewhiskered juggernaut… which only makes the comedy capers contained within even more bittersweet and effective, beginning with the poem to his departed companion and the bluff, brisk photo tribute which opens proceedings…

Once again the funny businesses comes courtesy of the loquacious canine softie, taking time out from eking out his daily crusts (and oysters and biscuits and cake and lamb’s tails and scraps and chips and…) and alternately getting on with or annoying the sheep, cows, bull, goat, hogs, ducks, bugs, cats, horses and geese, as well as sucking up to the resolutely hostile wildlife and the decidedly odd humans his owner knows or is related to.

Dog – his given name is an embarrassing, closely and violently guarded secret – loves Wal but always tries to thwart him if the big bloke is trying to do unnecessarily necessary farm chores such as chopping down trees, burning out patches of scrub, culling livestock, or trying to mate with the pooch’s main rival Darlene “Cheeky” Hobson, hairdresser-in-residence of the nearest town. As is also the case with the adoring comradeship of proper blokes, Dog is never happier than when embarrassing his mate in front of others, which explains the pages extracted from Wal’s old albums, showing the man to be in various humiliating baby shots and schoolboy scrapes…

Following on is the epic adventure ‘The Invasion of the Murphy Dogs’ – barbaric hounds from a neighbouring farm only afraid of one thing…

This extra-large (262x166mm) landscape monochrome seventh volume again comes from Australian Publisher Orin Books and continues the policy of dividing the strips into approximately seasonal sequences, and after a few more all-original cartoons again opens with ‘Spring’ – the busiest season of the farmer’s year (apart from the other three) concentrates on Pew’s first attempts at avian home-making, Dog’s libido, horny farmers and hussy-hairdressers, loopy lambs, wild pigs, killer eels and cricket, as well as an extended sequence in which Wal and the Dog become involved in the local school’s curriculum and cuisine…

Once the long hot ‘Summer’ settles in, bringing fun with chicken-shearing, busy bees, a plague of carnivorous Wekas, thistles, Horse’s softer side(!) and his war with Pongo and Aunt Dolly, Hare infestations, river-rafting, Irish Murphy’s Pigs (far worse than his dogs), Cheeky’s picnic charm-offensive and the growing closeness of Rangi and Pongo…

‘Autumn’ brings piglets, scrub-burning, the revenge of dispossessed magpies, amorous bovines, fun with artificial insemination, fence-lining and back country cattle, honey-harvesting, darts and rugby, a confused ram who’d rather pursue Dolly than associate with eager ewes and Horse’s crucial role in the war against the magpies…

As ‘Winter’ again closes in, offering floods, the mixed messy joy of lambing season, mud, mad goats, whitebait fishing and footy, Wal unwisely agrees to take a class of schoolkids and their puritanical, prudish and priggish teacher on an eye-opening nature-lesson around Footrot Flats. Touched by the painful experience, the bluff cove then volunteers to coach the school’s sports and, after much humiliation, spends the rest of the book discovering how hard – and, for observers, funny – farming in a plaster cast can be…

As you’d expect, the comedy content is utterly, absolutely top-rate and the extended role played throughout by the surly star Horse all the more poignant…

Ball is one of those gifted few who can actually imbue a few lines on paper with the power of Shakespeare’s tragedy and the manic hilarity of jester geniuses such as Tommy Cooper or the Marx Brothers. When combined with his sharp, incisive yet warmly human writing the result is sheer, irresistible magic.

In the early 1990s Titan Books published British editions of the first three volumes and German, Japanese, Chinese and American translations also exist, as well as the marvellous Australian compendia reviewed here – as ever the internet is your friend…

Dry, surreal and wonderfully self-deprecating, Footrot Flats always successfully wedded together sarcasm, satire, slapstick and strikingly apt surrealism in a perfect union of pathos and down to earth (and up to your eyebrows) fun that was and still is utterly addicting, exciting and just plain wonderful.

Plant the seeds for a lifetime of laughs by harvesting this or indeed any volume and you’ll soon see a bumper crop of fun irrespective of the weather or market forces…
© 1981-1982 Murray Ball. All Rights Reserved.

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More Brilliant Advice


By Annie Lawson (Deirdre McDonald/Bellew Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-94779-224-4

British cartooning has been magnificently serviced over the centuries by masters of form, line, wash and most importantly clever ideas repeatedly tickling our funny bones whilst poking our pomposities and fascinations. However one glaring imbalance in that dishonourable tradition has only been comparatively recently addressed – the relative paucity of women gagsters…

Annie Lawson is a jobbing illustrator, animator and textiles designer/facilitator (specialising in rug-making): a sublimely inspired and dedicated creator who happily inhabits the fine-arty, wryly clever, socially aware end of the makes-you-laugh market. Since 1981 she has worked as a freelance cartoonist for Honey, The Guardian, The Observer, City Limits and others. As well as being the uniquely stylish in-house cartoonist for the ethical beauty products chain Lush and featuring heavily in their free newspaper Lush Times, she has also been the star of many gallery exhibitions and has multiple book compilations to her name.

Here her startlingly economical, pared-down and deceptively simplified strips explored what it meant to be a young intellectual feminist looking for love – or often merely a straight answer – in the eternal questing dance between men and women, mothers and daughters, BFFs, food, booze and fashions, as well as the more baffling, frustrating and intolerable aspects of less crucial aspects of modern living.

More Brilliant Advice was released in 1989, the sequel to an earlier incisive and uncompromising collection and, as well as exploring man-hunting, party etiquette, gender cues, partnership insecurities, clubbing, middle-class cash-poverty, shameful guilty pleasures, masculine weaknesses and squeamishness, also continually self-dissects and reappraises the role of the nominal self-loathing singleton dubbed ‘the Wet Lettuce’.

With frenetic energy and a scathing eye – jaundiced far too young – topics such as ‘I’ve Got to Find a way to Make a Living’, ‘Clubbing It’, ‘If You Find to your Horror that your Children are either Selfish or Raving Mad…’, ‘Drunkenness… a Bane?’, ‘Perfect Logic’, ‘My Overdraft’, ‘Irritating Foibles’ ‘Assertiveness Training’ and other perennial pithy imponderables are tackled in both abrasive, energised stick figure strips and a multitude of gloriously lavish colour pastel and paint full-pages.

Since the glass studio-door was finally shattered, many women have reenergised the field and this selection comprises a nice slice of a lesser known but still-pithily opinionated pen-smith and brush-monger whose contributions have been forgotten for far too long.

Happily still available from numerous online sources, More Bad Advice is certainly something you should take heed of…
© 1989 Annie Lawson. All rights reserved.

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Hellboy Junior


By Mike Mignola, Bill Wray, Stephen DeStefano, Dave Cooper, Hilary Barta, Pat McEown, Glenn Barr, Kevin Nowlan, Dave Stewart & John Costanza (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1569719886

Although probably best known for revitalising the sub-genre of horror-heroes via his superb Hellboy and B.P.R.D. tales, creator Mike Mignola conceals a dark and largely unsuspected secret: he has a very dry, outlandish and wicked sense of humour…

Since 1997, whenever nobody was looking, he and co-conspirator Bill Wray have concocted outrageous, uproarious and vulgarly hilarious spoof tales which might – but probably weren’t – untold yarns of the scarlet scallywag’s formative days in hell before being drawn to earth and reared as a champion of humanity against the Things of the Outer Darkness…

Moreover, they convinced those gullible fools at Dark Horse Comics to publish them, first in the Hellboy Junior Halloween Special and again in an eponymous 2-issue miniseries in 1999 which also included many scurrilous and hilarious spoofs, pastiches and pokes at a host of family-friendly favourites from parental favourite Harvey Comics: beloved icons such as Casper, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Stumbo the Giant, Baby Huey and Hot Stuff, the Little Devil…

With most of the material scripted by Wray, this appallingly rude, crude and unmissable compilation bolts all the material together and even springs for an all new feature, but begins with Bill & Mike’s painfully cruel ‘The Creation of Hellboy Jr.: a Short Origin Story’ before tucking into ‘Maggots, Maggots, Everywhere!’, an all-Wray buffet of gastric ghastliness wherein the stone-fisted imp, fed up with his meagre ration of icky bug-babies, goes looking for something better to eat. Perhaps he shouldn’t have taken restaurant advice from that sneaky Adolf Hitler, whose rancid soul Junior should have been tormenting anyway…

After that epic-monster-infested odyssey, Mignola illustrates a mordant and wry adaptation of a German folk tale in ‘The Devil Don’t Smoke’ before Stephen DeStefano outrageously illustrates the agonisingly hilarious ‘Huge Retarded Duck’ and Hilary Barta lends his stylish faux-Wally Wood pastichery to ‘The Ginger Beef Boy’, wherein a frustrated transvestite creates the son he yearned for from the ingredients of a Chinese meal…

Following a stunning pin-up by Kevin Nowlan, Dave Cooper draws ‘Hellboy Jr.’s Magical Mushroom Trip’ wherein the ever-hungry imp and his pet ant disastrously attempt to grow their own edible fungus only to end up in deep shiitake when their psychotropic crop brings them into conflict with the big boss. Fans of evil dictators might welcome the guest appearance by Idi Amin…

Implausibly based on a true story, Wray & Mignolas’s ‘Squid of Man’ details the Grim Reaper’s wager with a mad scientist endeavouring to birth a new Atlantean race from the freshly dead remnants of cephalopods, arthropods, crustaceans, fine twine and lightning, whilst ‘The Wolvertons’ details the life and loves of an Alaskan lumberjack, his multi-tentacular alien wife and their extraordinarily hybrid kids Brad and Tiffany. Wray and Pat McEown spared no effort in their passionate tribute to Basil Wolverton, cartoon king of the Grotesque, so read this story before eating…

Back in Hell, Jr. regretfully experienced ‘The House of Candy Pain’ (Wray, Barta, John Costanza & Dave Stewart), when he and fellow imp Donnie fled to Storyland and the Forbidden Forest of Festible Dwellings. They should have stuck with the shack made from steaks or Tofu Terrace, but no, they had to enter the Gingerbread House…

Following a Barta bonus pin-up, Wray does it all for the tragic tale of ‘Sparky Bear’; a cub torn from his natural environment and raised by humans as a fire-prevention spokesperson, whilst the Cooper-limned parable of ‘Somnambo the Sleeping Giant’ proves that even if your village is overrun with demons, sometimes the cure is worse than the affliction, an idea echoed in the tale of ‘Wheezy, the Sick Little Witch’ (art by DeStefano) a poorly tyke whose cute li’l animal friends could neither cure nor survive contact with…

After surviving a nasty fast-food experience in ‘Hitler’ and a mock ad for your very own Spear of Destiny, the all-new ‘Hellboy Jr. vs Hitler’ (Wray & Stewart) depicts how a the little devil couldn’t even escort the Fallen Führer to the depths of Lower Hell without screwing up and giving the mono-testicular reprobate another chance to resurrect his Reich and, after a painted Wray Halloween scene and saucy Hell’s hot-tub pin-up from Glenn Barr, the mirthful madness concludes with Mignola & Stewart’s ‘Hellboy Jr. Gets a Car’ wherein the Hadean Half-pint takes an illicit test drive in a roadster meant for a Duke of Hell. It does not end well…

This Chymeric chronicle also includes a ‘Hellboy Junior Sketchbook’ with working drawings, colour roughs and layouts by Wray, McEown & DeStefano, to top off a wildly exuberant burst of tongue-in-cheek, sardonic and surreal adult fun which is a jovially jocund and gut-bustingly gross gas for every lover of off-the-wall, near-the-knuckle fun.
Hellboy Jr. ™ and © Mike Mignola. All individual strips, art & stories © 1997, 1999, 2003 their individual creator or holder. All rights reserved.

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The World’s Greatest Middle Age Cartoons


By various, edited by Mark Bryant (Exley)
ISBN: 978-1-85015-508-9

Here’s another little dip into the vast library of cartoon comedy generated by Britain’s greatest natural resource (and still un-privatised so it belongs to us all for the moment): folks what make us laugh…

This selection comprises a nice slice of lesser known but still-pithily opinionated pen-smiths and brush-mongers, all turning a jaded and indeed long-suffering, probably myopic and squinty eye on the inescapable fate that awaits most of us. I’m assuming of course, that nobody here today has yet reached those lofty depths of “Middle Age”…

The cartoons re-presented here have been harvested from the pages of such literary colossi as Punch, The Spectator and Private Eye amongst many national and international sources and deftly display the wry, smug, elegant, frantic, resigned and obnoxious attractions of and reactions to the slow bit between adolescence and senescence which seems to revolve around cake, comfy chairs and utter bewilderment at how bad things have gotten…

In these pages you’ll first discover the heartbreak of exhausted skin, creaking bones and meandering waistlines, the joy of taking up hobbies and pastimes, the faithfulness of pets, gardening, vanity, self-delusion, impatience, futility, embarrassingly roving eyes and wandering hands, the brutal cruelty of fashion, an increasing familiarity with Doctors’ waiting rooms, unsuspected ailments, crisis after crisis, hair where it shouldn’t be and not where you’d like it, that first whiff of approaching death, grandchildren, personal “use-by dates”, how love never dies but increasingly needs a little help and especially how one can go off sarcasm…

As usual this particular book isn’t as much what I’m recommending (although if you can find a copy you won’t regret it) as the type of publication that I’m commemorating. Such life-affirming cartoons by Norman Thelwell, Gerard Hoffnung, Bill Stott, Sally Artz, Les Barton, Helen Cusack, Stidley Easel, Charles Rodriguez, Hector Breeze, Tony Husband, Clive Collins, Michael ffolkes, Donegan, David Haldane, Fleo, Grizelda Grizlingham, Bud Handelsman, Holte, Henry Martin, David Austin, Edward McLachlan, Cluff, David Myers, Ken Pyne, Viv Quillin, Bryan Reading, Heath and Roland Fiddy are sitting idly out of touch when they could be filling your bookshelves and giving your somnolent hearts a damned good, potentially invigorating laugh time and time again…
Selection © 1994 Exley Publications, Ltd. The copyright of each cartoon remains with each cartoonist or copyright holder.

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The Fanatics Guide to: Dogs


By Roland Fiddy (Exley)
ISBN: 978-1-85015-272-9

The field of British cartooning has been tremendously well-served over the centuries with masters of form, line, wash and most importantly ideas perpetually tickling our funny bones whilst poking our pomposities and fascinations.

As is so often the case many of these masters of merriment and mirth are being not-so-slowly forgotten in their own lands whilst still revered and adored everywhere else. One of our most prolific and best was a infinitely sharp tool named Roland Fiddy whose fifty year career encompassed comics, newspaper strips and dedicated gag-books such as the one I’m re-scrutinizing here; one of a “Cartoonists Dozen” (that’s eleven, with another “almost finished, just drying, in the post and trust me, well worth waiting that little bit longer for, boss”) assaulting such commonplace perennial Pandora’s Boxes of modern society as Sex, Computers, Dads, Diets, Money, Cats, Husbands, the Bed and more.

His brash, efficient and amorphously loose drawing line winnowed out extraneous detail and always zeroed straight in to the punch-line with a keen and accurate eye for shared experience and a masterfully observational sense of the absurd, whether producing one-off gags for magazines such as Punch, cartoons and strips for comics or even the far tougher discipline of daily features; winning him nearly two dozen international humour awards from places as disparate as Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and many others. His work was particularly well received in the USA, making him an international icon and ambassador of “Britishness” as valuable as Giles or Thelwell.

“Fiddy”, as he signed his work, was born in Plymouth in 1931 and educated at Devonport High School, Plymouth College of Art and Bristol’s West of England College of Art: a dedicated course of study interrupted for three years compulsory National Service which saw him join the RAF.

He had been teaching art for two years before he sold his first professional cartoon to digest men’s magazine Lilliput in July 1949. He quickly graduated to Punch, selling constantly to intellectual powerhouse editor Malcolm Muggeridge. By 1952 he was also a regular contributor of gags to populist papers the News Chronicle, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror.

His first continuity work was for the post-war British comics industry, creating Sir Percy Vere for Clifford Makins, editor of the prestigious Eagle after it was bought by Odhams from original publisher Hulton Press. He followed up the period poltroonery with an army strip entitled Private Proon for Boy’s World before settling back into his comfort zone with a weekly page of one-off gags for Ranger.

The Fun with Fiddy feature was one of the few (others included the legendary Trigan Empire) which survived the high-end comic’s inevitable absorption into Look and Learn.

In 1976 he began a decade-long stint drawing the rather anodyne Tramps (scripted by practising Christian Iain Reid) which featured jovial hoboes Percival and Cedric; an inexplicably well-regarded strip which ran seven days a week. I mention the religious aspect in case you ever see Tramps in the Kingdom: a 1979 collection of the 110-odd, faith-based episodes. To my knowledge the remaining 3000 or more everyday, secularly funny instalments haven’t ever been collected.

In 1985 Fiddy created Paying Guest for the Sunday Express (another 10 year spree) and in 1986 Him Indoors for The People. The home-grown strip market was changing and contracting however and increasingly Fiddy chose to sell gags as an international freelancer and create cartoon books.

Within these pages, available as both English or American editions and going into at least three reprintings, is a wealth of wryly good natured if obviously long-suffering observation of canine co-dependence divided into separate themes – or perhaps breeds – such as ‘Dogs are Diverse’, ‘Dogs are Domesticated’, ‘Dogs are Doted On’, ‘Dogs are Devoted’, ‘Dogs can be Difficult’, ‘Dogs Discovering that Dimensions can be Deceptive’, ‘Dogs Can be Despondent’, ‘Dogs are Dependable’, ‘Dogs Can be Devious’, ‘Some Dogs Dramatize’, ‘Some Dogs are Dangerous’ and more…

Fiddy built a solid body of irresistible, seductive and always astonishingly funny work which enjoyed universal appeal and delighted readers of all ages, appearing in innumerable magazines, comics and papers where his instantly recognisable style always stood out for its enchanting impact and laconic wit.

Other than the Fanatic’s Guide books his most impressive and characteristic collection is probably The Best of Fiddy.

Roland John Fiddy died in 1999 and we all miss him still.
© 1991 Roland Fiddy.

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Plastic Man Archives volume 1


By Jack Cole (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-468-8

Jack Cole was one of the most uniquely gifted talents of American Comics’ Golden Age, crafting landmark tales in horror, true crime, war, adventure and especially superhero genres. His incredible humour-hero Plastic Man remains an unsurpassed benchmark of screwball costumed hi-jinks: frequently copied but never equalled. As the Golden Age faded, Cole could see the writing on the wall and famously jumped into gag and glamour cartooning, becoming a household name when his brilliant watercolour gags and stunningly saucy pictures began running in Playboy with the fifth issue. Ever-restless, Cole eventually moved into the lofty realms of newspaper strips and, in May 1958, achieved his life-long ambition by launching a syndicated newspaper strip, the domestic comedy Betsy and Me.

On August 13th 1958 at the moment of his biggest break he took his own life.

The unexplained reasons for his death are not as important as the triumphs of Cole’s artistic life and this captivating paperback (reprinting a rare hardback compilation from 2004) provides a fascinating insight into a transitional moment in his artistic development.

Without doubt – and despite great successes with other heroic characters as well as in the crime and horror genres – Cole’s greatest creation was the zany, malleable Plastic Man who quickly grew from a minor B-character into one of the most memorable and popular heroes of the Golden Age and seemed to be the perfect fantastic embodiment of the sheer energy, verve and creativity of that era when anything went and comics-makers were prepared to try out every outlandish idea…

This premier deluxe hardback collection reprints the first twenty episodes of the Stretchable Sleuth’s astounding exploits from anthology title Police Comics covering the period August 1941- June 1943, culled from a time when nobody really knew the rules, creators, publishers and readers were prepared to try literally anything and by sheer Darwinian processes the cream of the crop always rose to the top…

After a fulsome Foreword by legendary comics genius Will Eisner and the appreciative Introduction ‘Plastic Man and Jack Cole’, the magic begins with the first of twenty stories, most of which originally appeared without individual titles.

The debut and origin of Plastic Man happened in the middle of Police Comics #1, a brief but beguiling six-pager which introduced mobster Eel O’Brian, shot during a factory robbery, soaked by a vat of acid and instantly, callously, abandoned by his partners in crime. Crawling away, Eel was found by a monk who nursed him back to health and proved to the hardened thug that the world was not just filled with brutes and vicious chisellers all after a fast buck.

His entire outlook altered and somehow gifted with incredible malleability (he surmises it was the chemical bath mingling with his bullet wounds), Eel decides to put his new powers to use cleaning up the scum he used to run with. Creating the identity of Plastic Man he thrashes his own gang and begins his stormy association with the New York City cops…

Police #2 saw Plas apply for a job with the cops and only to be told he could join up if he accomplished the impossible task of capturing the notorious and slippery Eel O’Brian, currently the Most Wanted crook in eight states… Ever wily, the Rubber-Band Man bided his time and won the position anyway by cracking an international dope racket (that’s illegal narcotics, kids) reaching from Canada to Chinatown, whilst in #3 he fully capitalised on his underworld reputation and connections to bust up a Pinball Racket led by a cunning crook with ears inside the Police Department itself.

‘Madame Brawn’s Crime School for Delinquent Girls’ pitted the Silly Putty Paladin against a brutal babe intent on taking over the City’s mobs, and despite getting a thorough trouncing she and her gang of gal gorillas returned in the next issue, having turned her burly hand to a spot of piracy.

Police Comics #5 (December 1942) also marked a major turning point for Plastic Man as with that issue he took the cover-spot away from fellow adventurer and failed superstar Firebrand, a position he would hold until costumed heroes faded from popularity at the end of the 1940s.

In issue #6 Plas’ burgeoning popularity was graphically reflected in a spooky mystery involving murderous disembodied hands, in #7 – as Eel – he infiltrated and dismantled the massed forces of the ‘United Crooks of America!’ whilst #8 found the hero seriously outmatched but still triumphant when he battled a colossal, city-crushing giant ‘Eight Ball!’ and its decidedly deranged inventor, and #9 reached an early peak of macabre malevolence as Plastic Man foiled a traitorous little mutant dubbed Hairy Arms in ‘Satan’s Son Sells Out to the Japs!’, a darkly bizarre thriller which saw the regular story-length jump from six to nine pages.

The carnival of cartoon grotesques continued in #10 as hayseed wannabe-cop Omar McGootch accidentally involved the Malleable Mystery-man in a Nazi plot to steal a new secret weapon, whilst #11 found Plastic Man in mortal combat with the spirit of a 17th century London alchemist whose brain was unearthed and accidentally transplanted into a wounded spitfire pilot, suddenly gaining incredible mystic powers in the process…

In Police #11 a desperate blackmailer joined forces with a criminal astrologer who predicted perpetual failure unless Plastic Man was killed, before Cole introduced his second most memorable character in #13’s ‘The Man Who Can’t be Harmed’…

Woozy Winks was an indolent slob who accidentally saved a wizard’s life and was gifted in return with a gift of invulnerability: all the forces of nature would henceforth protect him from injury or death. Flipping a coin the oaf decided to get rich quick with his power. Unable to stop him Plas was forced to appeal to his sentimentality and better nature and, once Woozy repented, was compelled to keep him around in case he strayed again…

Unlike Omar, Woozy Winks – equal parts Artful Dodger and Mr. Micawber, with the verbal skills and intellect of Lou Costello’s screen persona – would prove to be a perfect foil for Plastic Man: the lazy, venal, ethically fluid reprobate with sticky fingers who got all the best lines, possessed an inexplicable charm and had a habit of finding trouble. It was the perfect marriage of inconvenience…

As the page count jumped to 13, they were soon on the trail of Eel O’Brian himself in issue #14, but during the chase Woozy stumbled onto a slavery racket which soon foundered against his insane luck and Plastic Man’s ingenuity. In a hilarious twist Plas then let Woozy arrest him, but then escaped from under the smug cops’ very noses…

When war scientists investigated Plastic Man and Woozy’s uncanny abilities in #15 it led to murder, a hot pursuit to Mexico City and almost a new Ice Age, whilst in #16 disgruntled Native Americans organised a ‘Revolt against the USA’ and a movie cast succumbed one by one to a murderous madman in #17 before the hilarious #18 revealed what happened after ‘Plastic Man is Drafted’…

The blockbusting dilemma of all branches of the Armed Services fighting to recruit him was only solved when the President seconded Plas to the FBI, and his first case – with Woozy in tow – found the Stretchable Sleuth investigating ‘The Forest of Fear!’ in a 15 page terror-tale involving a cabal of killers and an army of animated oaks.

This initial deluxe outing ends with #20 and the ‘Woozy Winks Detective Agency’ as, with Plastic Man temporarily laid up wounded, the rotund rascal took centre stage to solve a robbery in a frantic, madcap and surreal extravaganza reminiscent of the screwball antics of the movie Hellzapoppin’ and the anarchic shtick of the Marx Brothers…

Exciting, innovative, thrilling, funny, scary and still visually intoxicating over seven decades later, Jack Cole’s Plastic Man is a truly unique creation that has only grown in stature and appeal. This is a pure comics experience that no fans should deny themselves.
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