Category: Comedy

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Explorer – The Mystery Boxes


By various, edited by Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet)
ISBNs: HB 978-1-4197-0010-1   PB 978-1-4197-0009-5

Here’s another superb entry into the burgeoning Young Adults graphic novel market that offers a wonderful alternative to Fights ‘n’ Tights furores and interminable extended storylines that will appeal to fans of the art form and fantasy freaks alike.

Edited by Kazu Kibuishi who created the impressive sorcerous saga Amulet, this captivating anthology collection offers seven thought-provoking and decidedly different tales by a coterie of animators and comics-creators all turning their fertile imaginations and illustrative talents to expanding and elucidating upon the core concept of an enigmatic container…

The wonderment begins with a spooky fable by Emily Carroll wherein a solitary and much put-upon girl discovers a very special doll and far more than she bargained for ‘Under the Floorboards’…

‘Spring Cleaning’ by Dave Roman & Raina Telgemeier is a wry and jolly escapade with lazy Oliver finally picking up his toys and discovering a puzzle box he didn’t know he owned. When he tries to sell the thing online all manner of very strange and insistent people start making outrageous and impossible offers…

Jason Caffoe follows a more tradition route as his young warrior overcomes all manner of fantastic odds to win ‘The Keeper’s Treasure’. Of course not everybody agrees on what constitutes fabulous wealth…

‘The Butter Thief’ by Rad Sechrist sees a little girl discover her grandmother’s ineffable wisdom and magical practicality after freeing a thieving spirit from a kitchen trap and undergoing a startling metamorphosis whilst ‘The Soldier’s Daughter’ (by Stuart Livingston with Stephanie Ramirez) reveals the true cost of vengeance as young Clara picks up her murdered father’s sword and mission. Mercifully a mysterious stranger shows her another path in his enthralling cask of wonders…

Johane Matte & Saymone Phanekham display stunning comic timing and astounding fast-paced imagination in the wicked tale of ‘Deet’; a much-maligned junior intergalactic shipping clerk dealing with workplace bullying in the most effective manner conceivable after which editor Kazu Kibuishi brings the perplexing odyssey of a spectacular close with ‘The Escape Option’ as a troubled boy finds an incredible artefact and is presented with an impossible, life-changing, world altering choice…

These dark, beguiling, funny and enticing adventures blend traditional story elements with an inspired eye for the contemporary kid’s broad spectrum of fascinations: warriors, aliens, robots, cartoon animals, rocket-ships, monsters, isolation, alienation, magical quests and glorious battles; all delivered with sly wit and breathtaking exuberance to create a splendid portmanteau rollercoaster ride of laughter, tears, terrors and triumphs.

This a perfect introduction or reintroduction to comics for kids of all ages looking for something beyond the ordinary and hopefully the start of a long line of thematic sequels…

Explorers is scheduled for a March 2012 release in the UK but available for pre-order now in both hardback and paperback editions.

Cover and The Escape Option © 2012 Kazu Kibuishi. Under the Floorboards © 2012 Emily Carroll. Spring Cleaning © 2012 Dave Roman & Raina Telgemeier. The Keeper’s Treasure © 2012 Jason Caffoe. The Butter Thief © 2012 Rad Sechrist. The Soldier’s Daughter © 2012 Stuart Livingston. Whatzit © 2012 Johane Matte. Published by Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams. All rights reserved.

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Earthling!


By Mark Fearing, with Tim Rummel; coloured by Ken Min (Chronicle Books)
ISBNs: HB 978-0-81187-106-8   PB 978-1-45210-906-0

In the past I’ve banged on about the dearth of good comics for kids – as opposed to the vibrant and thriving children’s prose book markets or the slavish and impenetrable dead-end niche-genres and daunting cross-marketing of contemporary comicbooks – and at last, some interesting developments in strip-book publishing look like setting that imbalance to rights…

Earthling! is the first graphic novel by animator Mark Fearing (with some initial creative input from TV producer Tim Rummel) and tells the tale of solitary, nerdy lad Bud, dragged by his astronomer dad to the literal middle of nowhere to take up residence at the vast Von Lunar Radio Telescope Array in the dry wilds of New Mexico.

The place is weird and a little spooky, but with his Mum gone and his father preoccupied with work Bud’s getting used to coping on his own…

The real trouble starts the next morning when he dashes for the school bus. Late and in the middle of a storm Bud inadvertently stumbles into the wrong vehicle and finds himself stuck on a malfunctioning intergalactic shuttle taking a bunch of alien students to Cosmos Academy where all the kids in the Galactic Alliance are educated.

Being the new kid in school is always bad news, but when you’re the only one of your species…

Luckily geeky pariah Gort GortGort McGortGort takes Bud under his wing and steers him through the worst of the culture shock, but the human’s urgent desire to go home is countered by one overwhelming fact: Earth is the most feared planet in the Galaxy, its inhabitants are despised and reviled by every sentient race in creation and its spatial coordinates are a closely guarded secret…

Thinly disguised as a sporty, athletic Tenarian, Bud tries desperately to fit in and luckily fellow outcast Gort is determined to help him return home, but the Academy is almost as dangerous as an Earth school.

There are jocks and bullies and cliques everywhere, the cool sapients run everything and snarky sarcasm is a deadly threat at all times. Although there are some decent and friendly teachers, the robots, rogue or escaped science experiments and especially the cafeteria make daily life an incredible and potentially lethal prospect.

Moreover, Principal Lepton and his administration are brutal bureaucrats with an excessive punishment regime (this is one deep-space satellite school you do not want to be “expelled” from) who have a pretty cavalier attitude to student safety – or even survival – and a hidden agenda which involves using Academy resources to build super-weapons for use against Bud’s lost or hidden home-world…

Gradually though, the boy adjusts, even finding an unexpected flair for the terrifying null-gravity sport of ZeroBall, which is lucky as Gort has deduced that the immensely prestigious championship Tournament is being held tantalisingly close to the diabolical Planet Earth – close enough that a stolen space-pod could reach it, if by some miracle Bud’s team qualified for the finals…

Funny, thrilling, wildly imaginative and utterly engrossing, Earthling! blends elements of Tom Brown’s Schooldays with Joe Dante’s Explorers and Harry Potter’s best bits with the anarchic wit of Rocko’s Modern Life or Camp Lazlo to produce a delightfully compelling adventure yarn with endearing characters and a big, big payoff.

This is a book any sharp, fun-loving kid can – and should – read… and so should the rest of you…

Earthling! is scheduled for release in the UK February 2012 but available for pre-order right now in both hardback and paperback editions.

© 2012 by Mark Fearing. All rights reserved.

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The Bodyssey


By Richard Corben & Simon Revelstroke (Catalan Communications/Fantagor Press)
ISBNs: Signed/numbered Limited Edition 0-8741 603-2-4, softcover 978-0-8741 603-2-1
1993 Fantagor edition 978-0-96238-418-9

Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest proponents of graphic narrative: an animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist, springing from the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in comics storytelling with his own unmistakable style and vision. He is renowned for his mastery of airbrush and captivatingly excessive anatomical stylisation and infamous for delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror and beguiling eroticism in his fantasy and science fiction tales.

Always garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe, he was regularly collected in luxurious albums even as he fell out of favour – and print – in his own country. This particular hilarious adult saga developed in response to a stunning 8-plate art portfolio ‘Scenes from the Magic Planet’ from 1979. After serialisation in Heavy Metal #97-102 in 1985, the complete scandalous graphic novel epic was first released in December 1986 and re-published by the artist’s own Fantagor Press company in 1993.

The necromancer Hunghoul has run off (flown actually in a fantastic cloud machine) with Pilgor the Barbarian’s faithless wife Smegmella and the obliviously cuckolded hero is hunting them through the skies but their inevitable death duel doesn’t go well and the hero is dumped into the oceans far below.

Washed ashore in a strange country the massively-thewed champion becomes an object of imminent affection for an undulating Pudenda Beast until rescued by a reptile man named Ytgna – a scurrilous creature with plans of his own which sorely need a mighty muscled dupe and puissant fighter…

The wily lizard enlists the lovelorn hero in his own a quest to locate and liberate the amply pulchritudinous Ammora, and soon their search brings them to the fleshpot quarter of cesspit city Foulmouth where Pilgor catches the eye and steamier regions of androgynous Succulus Agripper, the Brothel Queen of the degenerate metropolis. Being a healthy upstanding chap Pilgor violently refuses the unwholesome unwelcome advances, effecting a spectacular escape and making another implacable, powerful and unforgiving enemy…

Eventually Ytgna and Pilgor locate their quarry – or so they think – but she proves to be far more than they bargained for and the searchers find themselves unwelcome guests of the formidable Amazons of Tumeschia and about to lose their he-man standings until a giant comatose goddess awakes and an extremely phallic giant titan invades. And that’s when the still most-piqued Agripper and his army turn up…

Meanwhile at Castle Bilious the first bloom of love is fading for Hunghoul and Smegmella so the wizard is happy to turn his attention back to Pilgor – who is still keen on exercising bloody vengeance upon them.

With the Amazons and Agripper hard on his heels and the nasty necromancer waiting for him the witless warrior is heading inexorably for a spectacular, eye-popping climax…

I’ve only got the signed and numbered limited edition so the remaining pages might not be in either of the softcover editions, but if you can, ensure you find a copy which ends the saucy fantasy extravaganza with the original portfolio plates from 1979.

In magnificent textured monochrome grey-tones and washes ‘Pilgor Discusses Politics with his Friends’, ‘Hunghoul’s Guards’, ‘Ytgna and his Faithful Ammora’, ‘Machola Seeks a Remembrance’, ‘Uncle Hunghoul Collects a Titbit’, ‘Pilgor Works his Work’, ‘Pilgor drops in at Dinnertime’ and ‘Pilgor’s and Ammora’s Happy Ending’ cap off the wry and whimsically debauched fantasy in a wave of sheer artistic excellence.

Like the cross between the World’s smuttiest Conan story and “Carry On, Barbarian!” this tale perfectly epitomises Corben’s unique visual style, love of the dark and scathingly sharp sense of humour. Combine that with humanity’s apparently insatiable hunger for sex, nudity, monsters and magic and this book becomes another utterly unmissable indulgence…
© 1986, 1993 Richard Corben. All rights reserved.

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The Desert Peach volume 4: Baby Games


By Donna Barr (Mu Press/Aeon Pubs)
ISBN: 1-883847-05-2

Donna Barr is one of the comic world’s most singular graphic raconteurs. She always constructs impeccable, fully realised worldscapes to house her stories and tells them with a style and voice that are definitely one-of-a-kind. Her most perfect creations are the Half-Horse Stinz Löwhard, and The Desert Peach, perfectly self-assured and eminently capable gay brother of the legendary “Desert Fox” and the scintillating star of this effervescent assemblage of sly, dry wit, raucous drollery and way out military madness.

Set in World War II Africa and effortlessly combining hilarity, absurdity, profound sensitivity and glittering spontaneity, the stories describe the daily grind of Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel; a dutiful if unwilling cog in the German War Machine.

However, although as capable as his beloved elder sibling Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the gracious and genteel Peach is a man who loathes causing harm or giving offence and thus spends his dry and dusty days with the ever-so-motley crew of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps, trying to remain stylish, elegant and non-threatening to the men under his command and the enemy forces around him.

The only people he really dislikes are boors, bigots and card-carrying Blackshirts…

He applies the same genteel courtesies to the sundry natives inhabiting the area and the rather tiresome British – not all of whom are party to a clandestine non-aggression pact Pfirsich has agreed with his opposite numbers in the amassed Allied Forces…

The romantic fool is also passionately in love with and engaged to Rosen Kavalier: handsome Aryan warrior and wildly manly Luftwaffe Ace…

The Desert Peach ran for 32 intermittent issues via a number of publishers and was subsequently collected as eight graphic novel collections (1988-2005). A prose novel, Bread and Swans, a musical and an invitational collection by other artists entitled Ersatz Peach were also created during the strip’s heyday. A larger compendium, Seven Peaches, collects issues #1-7 and Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collective…

Arguably the real star of these fabulous frothy epics is the Peach’s long-suffering, unkempt, crafty, ill-mannered, bilious and lazily scrofulous orderly Udo Schmidt, a man of many secrets whose one redeeming virtue is his uncompromising loyalty and devotion to the only decent man and tolerable officer in the entire German army.

This terrifyingly scarce fourth softcover collection reprints issues #10-12, and starts the ball rolling with ‘Two-Timers’ wherein the fiercely protective Pfirsich infiltrates the British positions as history’s least believable English Officer to ferret out a spy targeting his brother Erwin.

Of course to carry off the mission somebody has to be prominently visible in the German camp as the ever-so-unmissable and wickedly froufrou Desert Peach. Ein step vorwarts, (or else…) patriotic he-man and self-appointed Nazi political officer Leutnant Kjars Winzig…

Meanwhile, as the entire 469th kvetch over the Leutnant’s unlikely and unhappy performance, Pfirsich’s impossible imposture is going inconceivably well until he confronts the undercover agent over drinks in the NAAFI. Although the bold Boche succeeds in reasoning with the master-spy, a couple of Anzac non-coms (who hate Poms as much as Krauts) are not fooled, leading to a spectacular chase and frantically thrilling conclusion…

That hilarious comedy of terrors was quickly topped by a superbly delightful and trenchantly wicked adult farce in ‘Straight and Narrow’ wherein Udo, disgusted with the mockery his effeminate boss engenders amongst other German units, determines to get his boss laid by a woman – specifically the very willing and professional ladies of local bordello “The Cedars”.

Aiding and abetting this appalling scheme is Pfirsich’s one true love, wild man Luftwaffe pilot and airborne inamorata Rosen Kavalier. Even with the more than willing demimondaine Babette in on the scheme and exerting all her professional wiles it takes a chemical “additive” to finally get the ball rolling…

Of course the entire vile scheme ends badly and the Peach, crushed, disgusted and humiliated storms off. Soon after however, Babette realises that she’s now eating for two…

The reprinted material ends here with the inevitable conclusion in ‘Menschenkind – Child of the World’ as nine months after that epic night Pfirsich – still distant with his staff and boyfriend – drives away the unrepentant Ace. Kavalier storms off and visits The Cedars again, discovering a fascinating piece of news…

Although the Peach refuses to listen to his true love, cunning Udo, in on the secret, inveigles his boss into returning to his place of shame, where after another farcical misapprehension of events the Peach is finally introduced to his newborn son…

But of course even this joy is tempered by incredible problems…

To augment and complete this fabulous triptych of torrid tales there’s a new epilogue ‘Home is Where…’ set in the Peach’s declining years, wherein Pfirsich and his adult son Mani play host to a reunion of the 469th few survivors: a bittersweet vignette which delights and fearfully foreshadows tragedies yet to come…

Referencing the same vast story potential as Sgt. Bilko, Hogan’s Heroes, Oh, What a Lovely War! and Catch 22, as well as such tangential films as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Birdcage, the Desert Peach is bawdy, raucous, clever, authentically madcap and immensely engaging. These fabulous combat fruit cocktails were some of the very best comics of the 1990s and still pack the comedic kick of an embroidered landmine, liberally leavened with situational jocularity, accent humour and lots of footnoted Deutsche cuss-words for the kids to learn. Moreover, with this volume the dark bitter edges and cold iron underlying these fabulous characters and their horrific, doomed situation become increasingly apparent.

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is a must-have for any history-loving, war-hating lover of wit, slapstick, high drama and belly-laughs. All the Desert Peach books are pretty hard to find these days but if you have a Kindle, Robot Comics have just begun to release individual comicbook issues for anybody who can get the hang of all this verfluchte technical tsuris…
© 1991-1994 Donna Barr. All rights reserved. The Desert Peach is ™ Donna Barr.

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The Complete Crumb Comics volume 3: Starring Fritz the Cat


By Robert Crumb (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-0-93019-375-1

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of cartooning with as many detractors as devotees. His uncompromising, excoriating, neurotic introspections, pictorial rants and invectives unceasingly picked away at societal scabs and peeked behind forbidden curtains for his own benefit, but he has always happily shared his unwholesome discoveries with anybody who takes the time to look…

In 1987 Fantagraphics Books began the nigh-impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s vast output and many of those engrossing compendia are now being reissued.

With the material in this third volume the isolated and secretive artist began to break into the wider world as his first great creation escaped from Crumb’s self-published minicomics and into regular paying venues…

Once again, if intemperate language, putative blasphemy, cartoon nudity, fetishism and comedic fornication are liable to upset you or those legally responsible for you, stop reading this review right here and don’t buy the book.

The son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943 into a functionally broken family. He was one of five kids who all found different ways to escape their parents’ shattering problems and comics were always paramount amongst them.

As had his older brother Charles, Robert immersed himself in the strips and cartoons of the day; not simply reading but feverishly creating his own. Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks and John Stanley were particularly influential, but also newspaper artists like E.C. Segar, Gene Ahern, Rube Goldberg, Bud (Mutt and Jeff) Fisher, Billy (Barney Google), De Beck, George (Sad Sack) Baker and Sidney (The Gumps) Smith as well as illustrators like C.E. Brock and the wildly imaginative and surreal 1930’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts.

Defensive and introspective, young Robert pursued art and slavish self-control through religion with equal desperation. His early spiritual repression and flagrant, hubristic celibacy constantly warred with his body’s growing needs…

Escaping his stormy early life, he married young and began working in-house at the American Greeting Cards Company. He discovered like minds in the growing counterculture movement and discovered LSD. In 1967 Crumb relocated to California and became an early star of Underground Commix. As such he found plenty of willing hippie chicks to assuage his fevered mind and hormonal body whilst reinventing the very nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Devil Girl and the star of this particular show, the utterly amoral, unpredictable, almost human Fritz the Cat…

The rest is history…

From this point onwards the varied and exponentially impressive breadth of Crumb’s output becomes increasingly riddled with his often hard-to-embrace themes and declamatory, potentially offensive visual vocabulary as his strips grope towards the creator’s long-sought personal artistic apotheosis and this third volume covers material created and published between 1960-1966 as the self-tormented artist began to find a popular following in a strangely changing world.

The mercurial pictorial parade is preceded by another fascinating reminiscence from life-long friend Marty Pahls describing ‘The First Girl That Came Along’…

Crumb’s early artistic style was utterly transformed by the introduction of Rapidograph mapping pens and ‘Fritz the Cat, Ace Salesman’ (August 1964) has a raw, mesmerising scratchy linearity that belies the subversive sexual undercurrent of the piece, after which the feline philanderer went hard-core in ‘Fritz Comes on Strong’ (published in satire magazine Help! #22, January 1965). From the same issue ‘Harlem: a Sketchbook Report’ displayed the artist’s gift for visual reportage.

Fritz appeared in the silent and extremely trenchant bobbysoxer strip ‘Fred, the Teen-age Girl Pigeon’ (Help! #24, May 1965), whilst ‘Fritz Bugs Out’ (Cavalier, October 1964-February 1965) found the cat misbehaving in a Bohemian college setting before setting out on an extended hippie-style vision-quest whilst three dumb-show episodes of ‘The Silly Pigeons’ (November 1964-March 1965) perfectly display the creator’s hardwired slapstick roots.

‘Bulgaria: a Sketchbook Report’ (Help! #25, July 1965) saw the artist turn his probing pens on a Cold-War alien culture after which ‘Fritz the Cat, Special Agent for the CIA’ (March-May 1965) perfectly parodied the political scene and the planet’s fascination with suave super-spies. Next up are three more, increasingly surreal, snippets from ‘The Silly Pigeons’ (Spring 1965) and a swift swipe at the modern working woman in ‘Roberta’ (Spring 1965). Working in the production department of a vast greetings card company gave the insular Crumb access to new toys and new inspiration and he would return repeatedly to the white-collar world to for inspiration and pictorial spleen-venting…

‘Fritz the Cat, Magician’ (Summer 1965, and published in Promethean Enterprises #3, 1971) is a sweetly seductive puff-piece whilst the exigencies of earning a little extra cash clearly influenced the speculative pieces ‘Guitar Models of the Future’ (Yell #3, September 1965), Topps Promotional Booklet ‘The Road to Success’ (Fall 1965), ‘Illustrations for Nostalgia Enterprises’ (Fall 1965), ‘The Heap Years of the Auto’ (intended for Nostalgia Illustrated, Fall 1965) and ‘The Small Small Businessman’ (again intended for Nostalgia Illustrated, Fall 1965): all showing Crumb’s versatility, passion for the past and imagination.

‘Punchlines for Color Cards’ features the interior messages for the artworks amongst the large Colour Section which opens here with a spectacular succession of sketches designated ‘Letter to Marty Pahls’ (covering April 4th, June 3rd, October 30th 1960, May 28th and November 5th 1961), after which two ‘Cards to Mike Britt’ (December 1963-January 1964) are followed by the wonderful covers for ‘Fritz Bugs Out’ (February 1965), ‘Agent of the CIA’ (March 1965) and ‘Roberta’ (Spring 1965).

Swiftly following are the aforementioned ‘Selected Topps Monster Greetings Cards’ (Fall 1965) and general ‘Cards for American Greetings’ (1964-1966) which close the rainbow section. Back in black and white another ‘Card to Mike Britt’ precedes the ‘Cover for Fug #1’ (Fall 1965) and the untitled group sex-romp ‘Fritz the Cat’ intended for that debut Fug, before a copious collection of ‘Greetings Cards for American Greetings’ (1964-1966) and the ‘Cover for Gooseberry’ #2 (Fall 1965) complete this meander through the Master’s formative years.

If Crumb had been able to suppress his creative questing he could easily have settled for a lucrative career in any one of a number of graphic disciplines from illustrator to animator to jobbing comic book hack, but as this pivotal collection readily proves, the artist was haunted by the dream of something else – he just didn’t yet know what that was…

Crumb’s subtle mastery of his art-form and obsessive need to reveal his most hidden depths and every perceived defect – in himself and the world around him – has always been an unquenchable fire of challenging comedy and riotous rumination and this chronicle begins to show his growing awareness of where to look.

This superb series charting the perplexing pen-and-ink pilgrim’s progress is the perfect vehicle to introduce any (over 18) newcomers to the world of grown up comics. And if you need a way in yourself, seek out these books and the other fifteen as soon as conceivably possible…
Introduction © 1988 Marty Pahls. Greetings cards © 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1988 American Greetings Corporation. Monster Greetings trading cards © 1965 Topps Bubble Gum, Inc. All other contents © 1964, 1965, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1974, 1988 Robert Crumb. All rights reserved.

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Drain Pig and the Glow Boys in “Critical Mess”


By Dan Pearce
ISBN: 0-86245-103-5

Once upon a time it was acceptable and desirable rather than just cool for entertainers to be political. Music, film, comedy and especially comics and cartoons rather than today’s obsessions with sex, parenthood and celebrity were at the forefront of social and political criticism…

From the Plutonium Age of Comics comes this scarce, all but unknown, but still readily locatable little lost gem by Dan Pearce which perfectly captured all the daily indignities and nightly horrors of the Thatcher years: the rise of untrammelled greed, the death of personal responsibility and the celebration of conscienceless self-aggrandisement…

I’m ashamed to say that I know very little of this wickedly effective dark satire, although it does look as if the saga was released in strip or magazine instalments a la Steve Bell’s Worlds of If… or Donald Rooum’s stunningly funny Wildcat series.

As ever if anyone knows more, I’d love to hear from you…

Drain Pig is a social leper and despised outcast: a full-grown talking animal who ekes out a pathetic existence living in the sewers. One dreadful night he sees the woman who raised him but when he tries to talk to her she denies him and has him arrested.

The wealthy Mrs. Berkely-Hunt is a pillar of the community and well-in with the powers that be: how could someone of her standing possibly know a scumbag like Drain Pig?

Meanwhile her daughter Mag has started a job as the newest journo for the Daily Dross and her first day is spent covering the trial of the ghastly layabout and social dreg…

She is shocked to see her mother as witness and complainant and horrified when she realises the maternal Society snob is lying in her teeth. The railroaded pig gets five years hard labour when the Judge forces a guilty verdict…

Meanwhile Mag’s scientist boyfriend Mike is travelling to Sizemould Nuclear Power station on a fact-finding mission investigating reports of leaks and mutations.

Mag forces Mummy to tell the truth: Drain Pig was once the beloved companion of a scientist who named him Danny. Her mother, still an impressionable girl herself, was named executor and guardian of the piglet’s inheritance.

Mrs. Berkely-Hunt then reveals how she grew to despise the low beast, leading to the dowager’s flushing the poor piglet down to loo to get rid of him whilst keeping his endowment for herself and making a socially advantageous marriage.

Appalled, the plucky reporter resolves to make amends but discovers to her disgust that the pitiful porker has been deliberately lost within in the prison system…

Meanwhile the secret connections between Britain’s sales of weapons-grade Plutonium and the decrepit, radiation-leaking power station are beginning to circulate and Mag is sent to cover the protesters peace-camp set up around the plant.

Whilst there she interviews Bernard Klein, the physicist who originally built Sizemould; now the spiritual leader of the movement to close it down. Amidst determined, well-intentioned campaigners and a host of four-clawed crabs, Mag learns of the “rabble’s” only success – convincing all the local unemployed not to take jobs as “glow boys” or pipe repairmen.

So faulty is the building that steam generator and water-system repairs are necessary every day, but the ruptures and escapes are so radioactive that workers can only safely be exposed to the pipes for 30 minutes a year!

Unknown to all, however, the ruthless controllers of the plant and the Ministry have worked out a perfect solution: use hardcore convicts nobody will miss as the unwitting repairmen. As long as the public is kept in the dark nobody important will care…

However when Mag glimpses the long missing Drain Pig through the security fences and armed paramilitary guards policing Sizemould, she knows something dirty is up…

With her editor rewriting and slanting her copy, the plant’s technical director in a drug-and-booze filled meltdown, Special Branch infiltrating the protest camp and bugging phones, an ambitious junior circumventing what few safety-protocols still remain in the plant and a snap inspection by Men from the Ministry (of Defence as well as Energy…), the situation looks ripe for an explosive confrontation…

And then Bernie Klein is murdered and everything starts to spectacularly unravel…

Blending Machiavellian intrigue with baroque humour and perfectly riding the popular wave of corrupt back-door deals, old boy network cronyism and vile elitism which has become the hallmark of the period, Drain Pig and the Glow Boys tells a captivating tale in compelling, evocative visual style enticingly reminiscent of the best of Underground Commix’ stars such as R. Crumb and Spain Rodriguez.

Despite being as funny as The New Statesman, mordantly surreal as Whoops, Apocalypse! and as trenchantly biting as Spitting Image, Critical Mess never caught the battered, impoverished public’s attention – although the book still has its passionate supporters to this day.

Perhaps it was because Pearce was too good at his job. Not only is this a bitingly savage satire on the times, but a well-reasoned and minutely researched assault on the idiocies and inadequacies of the Nuclear industry, “legitimate” Arms deals and exports and a blistering attack on the Press and legal system.

It’s also a superbly well-written thriller with stark overtones of David Drury’s 1985 film Defense of the Realm and the gloriously absurdist swingeing satire of Gulliver’s Travels or Animal Farm…

If this kind of honest incisive, important cartoon work appeals there are still copies to be found at incredibly reasonable prices and the author is still active, still passionate, still angry (and rightly so  after all these years) and can be found here…
© Dan Pearce 1983.

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Lucky Luke volume 2: Ghost Town


By Morris & Goscinny, translated by Luke Spear (CineBook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-12-0

It’s hard to think of one of Europe’s most beloved and long-running comics characters being in any way controversial, but when the changing times caught up with the fastest gun in the West (“so fast he can outdraw his own shadow”) and the planet’s most laconic cowboy moved with them, the news made headlines all over the world.

Lucky Luke is a rangy, good-natured, lightning fast cowboy who roams the fabulously mythic Old West, having light-hearted adventures with his horse Jolly Jumper and Rantanplan (“dumbest dog in the West” and a charming spoof of cinema canine Rin-Tin-Tin), interacting with a host of historical and legendary figures of the genre.

His continued exploits over more than 66 years have made him one of the best-selling comic characters in Europe, (78 collected books and more than 300 million albums in 30 languages thus far), with spin-off games, computer games, animated cartoon and even a plethora of TV shows and live-action movies.

He was created in 1946 by Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère – AKA Morris – for the 1947 Annual (L’Almanach Spirou 1947) of Le Journal de Spirou, launching into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880′ on December 7th 1946.

Before then, while working at the CBA (Compagnie Belge d’Actualitiés) cartoon studio Morris met future comics super-stars Franquin and Peyo, and worked for weekly magazine Le Moustique as a caricaturist (to my eyes Lucky Luke looks uncannily like the young Robert Mitchum who graced so many mid-1940s B-movie Westerns).

He quickly became one of “la Bande des quatre”, or Gang of Four, which comprised the creators Jijé, Will and his old comrade Franquin, and who were the leading proponents of the loose and free-wheeling artistic style known as the “Marcinelle School” which dominated Spirou in aesthetic contention with the “Ligne Claire” style used by Hergé, EP

Jacobs and other artists in Tintin Magazine.

In 1948 the Gang (all but Will) visited America, meeting US creators and sightseeing, and Morris stayed for six years, meeting René Goscinny, scoring some work from the newly-formed EC sensation Mad and making copious notes and sketches of the swiftly vanishing Old West. That research would resonate on every page of his life’s work.

Working alone until 1955 when he reunited with Goscinny, Morris produced another nine albums worth of affectionate sagebrush parody before, working in perfect unison, Luke attained the dizzying heights of superstardom, commencing with ‘Des rails sur la Prairie’ (Rails on the Prairie), which began in Spirou on August 25th 1955.

In 1967 the straight-shooter switched teams, transferring to Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote with ‘La Diligence’ (The Stagecoach). Goscinny produced 45 albums with Morris before his death, from when Morris continued both alone and with fresh collaborators.

Morris died in 2001 having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus the spin-off adventures of Rantanplan, with Achdé, Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac taking over the franchise, producing another five tales to date.

Moreover, apart from that very first adventure Lucky, to appropriate a quote applied to the thematically simpatico Alias Smith and Jones “in all that time he never shot or killed anyone”…

Lucky Luke first appeared in Britain syndicated in the weekly comic Film Fun and again in 1967 in Giggle where he was renamed Buck Bingo. In all these venues as well as the numerous attempts to follow the English-language successes of Tintin and Asterix albums from Brockhampton and Knight Books, Luke had a trademark cigarette hanging insouciantly from his lip, but in 1983 Morris – no doubt amidst both pained howls and muted mutterings of “political correctness gone mad” – substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, which garnered him an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organization.

The most recent attempt to bring Lucky Luke to our shores and shelves comes from Cinebook, with Ghost Town the second of the 28 (and counting) available albums, originally collected in 1965 as La Ville fantôme, the 25th adventure and Goscinny’s 16th collaboration with the artist.

As Luke rides the range he encounters two tarred-and-feathered gamblers Denver Miles and Colorado Bill. Despite instantly assessing their scurrilous natures – and of course they do try to rob him – he gives them assistance and a ride to the nearest outpost of civilisation.

That happens to be the deserted mining town of Gold Hill where they encounter an embittered old miner dubbed Old Powell who chases them off at gunpoint.

A little further on they reach Bingo Creek where they discover the mad old coot was once the victim of a gold-salting scheme (hiding gold on worthless land and getting a sucker to buy it) but stubbornly refused to quit, convinced that somewhere in his mountain the motherlode still lay hidden…

Denver and Colorado are incorrigible crooks and after Lucky exposes their fleecing of the townsfolk the bent gamblers try to backshoot him, only to fall foul of Powell’s skill with a rifle…

Eternally grateful Lucky determines to befriend and assist the irascible old coot, despite his surly protests, whilst Denver and Colorado plan the perfect revenge by attempting to steal his mine and then re-salt it before selling it to some other sucker…

To this end they try buy up the claim, have Old Powell hanged for witchcraft, frame him for cattle-rustling and even plant the stolen cash-register from the saloon in his mine.

But they haven’t reckoned on the ingenuity of Lucky Luke; a man so swift and sharp that he can outdraw his own shadow… Against the masterful wits and wicked wits of our indomitable hero the gamblers are ultimately helpless in this splendidly intoxicating blend of all-ages action, slapstick and wry cynical humour.

Although the dialogue is still a bit dry in places, this is a grand old hoot in the tradition of Destry Rides again and Support Your Local Sheriff (or perhaps Paint Your Wagon, Evil Roy Slade or Cat Ballou are more your style?) superbly executed by master storytellers and a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for modern kids who might well have missed the romantic allure of the mythical Wild West.

And in case you’re worried, even though the interior art still has our hero chawin’ on that ol’ nicotine stick, trust me, there’s very little chance of anyone craving a quick snout, but quite a high probability that they’ll want more Lucky Luke Albums…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Goscinny & Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2006 Cinebook Ltd.

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Name Droppings


By Mahood (Columbus Books)
ISBN: 978-0-86287-260-1

Another prolific but criminally all-but forgotten staple of British cartooning is Kenneth Mahood, whose darkly dry and merrily mordant panel gags were a mainstay of humour mags, cartoon-book racks and newspapers from 1949 to the end of the 1980s.

Your man was born in Belfast in 1930 and after going the usual route of jobs he didn’t want – solicitor’s Junior and Apprentice printer – the painter, collage artist and political cartoonist sold his first work to Punch in 1948 and went full-time.

He never quit “real” art and had exhibitions of paintings throughout the 1950s in Belfast London and Dublin and studied art in Paris on a CEMA scholarship. Constantly selling gags he became Assistant Art Editor at Punch (1960-1965), only surrendering the position when he became the first ever resident political cartoonist in The Times‘ history (1966-1968). He performed the same function for The London Evening Standard from 1969 to 1971 before moving over to the Financial Times and the Daily Mail in 1982, at which time he began to concentrate increasingly on his Fine Art output.

This slightly off-kilter and wittily impressive collection from 1986 could double as a rainy-day parlour-game kit as it offers cartoon images and sight-gags which the reader is asked to identify as the title of either Books, Theatre or Cinema classics and blockbusters; much like graphic charades or a prototype Pictionary, ranging from the punishingly obvious and literal to the devious, askew and outright surreal, all delivered in the artist’s signature style of heavy line, angular definition and dark tones.

It’s fun and it’s funny in equal measure and a glorious example of the wide and expansive appeal and facility of cartoon expression.

Good luck finding it though. As is the norm these days, most of Mahood’s collections – political, general or otherwise – are all out of print, although many old bookshops and charity stores have a few in their bargain bins.
© 1986 Mahood.

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Thoroughly Ripped with the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers …and Fat Freddy’s CAT!


By Gilbert Shelton & Dave Sheridan with Paul Mavrides (Rip Off Press, Inc.)
ISBN: 978-0-89620-088-3
(1978)

Since nobody normal, god-fearing, decent and upstanding would ever dabble with  recreational pharmaceuticals, you’re probably utterly unaware of the extensive sub-culture which has grown up around the casual abuse and dastardly trafficking of narcotics – and so, of course, am I – but it must be said: those counter-culture dudes certainly know how to craft a comic tale.

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers shambled out of the Underground Commix counter-culture wave in 1968; initially appearing in Berkeley Print Mint’s Feds ‘n’ Heads, before creator Gilbert Shelton and a few friends founded their own San Francisco based Rip Off Press in 1969. This effective collective continued to maximise the madness as the hilarious antics of the “Freaks” (a contemporary term for lazy, dirty, drug-taking hippy folks) captured the imagination of the more open-minded portions of America and the world (not to mention their kids)…

In 1971 Rip Off published the first compilation: The Collected Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers – which has been in print all around the planet ever since – and soon assorted underground magazines and college papers were joined by the heady likes of Rip Off Comix, High Times, Playboy and numerous foreign periodicals in featuring the addictive adventures of Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas T. Freakears and Fat Freddy Freekowtski (and his cat): simpatico metaphorical siblings in sybaritic self-indulgence.

Always written by Shelton and, from 1974 illustrated by Dave Sheridan (until his death in 1982) after which Paul Mavrides picked up the nibs and brushes; the disjointed strips (sorry; irresistible puns are the monkey on my back) combined canny satirical cynicism, surreal situations, scatological sauciness and a terrifying grasp of human nature in staggeringly comedic episodes which cannot fail to amuse anyone with a mature sense of humour.

All the strips have been collected in various formats (in Britain by the marvellous Knockabout Comics) and have been happily absorbed by vast generations of fans – most of whom wouldn’t read any other comic.

Despite the hippy-dippy antecedents and stoner presentiments, Shelton is irrefutably a consummate professional. His ideas are always enchantingly fresh yet timeless, the dialogue is permanently spot-on and his pacing perfect. The stories, whether half-page fillers, short vignettes or full blown sagas, start strong and relentlessly build to spectacular – and often wildly outrageous, hallucinogenic yet story-appropriate – climaxes.

And they’re so very, very funny.

Freewheelin’ Franklin is the tough, street-savvy one who can pull the chicks best, Phineas T. Freakears is a wildly romantic, educated and dangerous (to himself) intellectual whilst Fat Freddy Freekowtski is us; weak-willed, greedy, not so smart, vastly put upon by an uncaring universe but oddly charming (you wish…)

One last point: despite the vast panoply of drugs imbibed, both real and invented, the Freaks don’t ever do heroin – and if that’s not a warning message I don’t know what is…

Thoroughly Ripped is a compilation first released in 1978 and revised with the 1980 edition reviewed here: a luxurious full painted-colour softcover which collects the last of Dave Sheridan’s strips and a couple of the superb early Paul Mavrides efforts in a gloriously anarchic and hilarious chronicle of cloudy-headed, anti-corporate skits and sketches.

The wit and wonderment opens with ‘Fat Freddy’s CAT in the Burning of Hollywood’ from 1978 as the sublimely smug and sanguine survivor of a million hairy moments recounts to his ever-burgeoning brood of impressionable kittens how he and his imbecilic human spectacularly flamed out in the movie biz in a classic tale written and illustrated by Shelton, after which follows a single page strip about the dangers of buying your fun from a guy in an alley…

Next up is the breakthrough “origin” saga of Phineas ‘Winter of ’59’ (produced for internationally distributed Playboy magazine in 1974) and a saucy retrospective of high times in the Fabulous Fifties and Swinging Sixties.

‘Sunday Funnies’ was a single-page spoof of super-cop Dick Tracy starring inept undercover Fed Notorious Norbert (the Nark) who returned in ‘The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and the Mysterious Visitor’ which saw the start of Dave Sheridan’s artistic endeavours in a snazzy sting operation by the dragged-up drug cop, followed by the superbly surreal ‘Ridin’ That Train’ as Fatty Freddy discovered the mixed joys of train sets and strong weed…

Much of the material consisted of untitled quickies and short strips. Freewheelin’ Franklin solos in a paranoid cautionary tale of the perils of housework, whilst Freddy and Phineas get into a bizarre battle over TV privileges after which the Fat One finally decides to get rid of the cockroach invasion blighting his life before accidentally and cataclysmically exposing corporate greed in the fire-alarm sales trade…

Preceded by a one-page tale of Phineas’ latest drug-dregs recycling invention, ‘The $29.95 SF to NYC Non-Stop Whiteline Cannonball Express’ by Shelton & Sheridan details the explosive and acerbic epic tale of the Bro’s attempt to start a trans-continental people’s vintage bus service with the usual wildly unbelievable detours and results, after which a flurry of short strips, including Freddy’s adventure in a mud wallow, Phineas’ attempt to make bees produce marijuana honey, Norbert’s latest drug scanning technology fiasco and a search for the legendary “Lost Volkswagen Cocaine Stash” leads to the lads’ latest home-growing experiment decimating their apartment block.

The Reefer Madness concludes with a yarn exposing the secret TV conspiracy to suck out our brains, how undercover cops won a Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers look-alike competition and two Mavrides one-pagers – an untitled collaboration with Sheridan detailing the wonder of “the munchies” and the disgustingly uproarious ‘Zeno’s Law’ as the Freaks attempt to legislate and police refrigerator privileges and responsibilities…

Without Shelton and the Freaks the whole sub-genre of slacker/stoner movies, from Cheech and Chong‘s assorted escapades to more modern entries such as Dude, Where’s My Car?, Supertroopers, Harold and Kumar and all the rest, good, bad or indifferent, wouldn’t exist. Whether or not that’s a good thing is up to you…

Anarchically sardonic and splendidly ludicrous, the madcap slapstick of the Freak Brothers is always an irresistible and joyously innocent tonic for the blues and these tales should be a compulsory experience for any fan of the comics medium. However, if you’re still worried about the content, which is definitely habit-forming, simply read but don’t inhale…
© 1981 Rip Off Press, Inc. Fat Freddy’s Cat © 1981 Gilbert Shelton. “Winter of ’59” © 1974 Playboy.

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The Victims Guide to… The Baby


By Roland Fiddy (Exley)
ISBN: 978-1-85015-503-8

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.

As is so often the case, many of these doyens of drollery are being daily forgotten in their own lands whilst still revered and adored everywhere else. One of our most prolific and best was a chap named Roland Fiddy whose fifty-year career encompassed comics, newspaper strips and dedicated gag-books such as the item I’ve zeroed in on here; one of a half-dozen he crafted examining such passions, fascinations and obsessions as Middle Age, Air Travel and the Dentist. I’d actually intended to feature his chronicle of Christmas but I’ve had enough of that for a while and so, I’m sure, have you.

His brisk, seductively loose cartooning 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 magazine 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 an art teacher for two years when 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 the pages, of The Victim’s Guide To… the Baby (available as both English or American editions) is a sympathetic seminar and calamitous catalogue of the joys and woes of  early-child-rearing: heavy on the irony and surrealism and mercifully light on bodily functions.

After all, we all know babies do that: let’s see what other horrors and wonders they’re capable of…

The charming and effective observations include interactions with and similarities to pets, men becoming “Daddies”, the reactions of older children, fun with mirrors, cribs, playpens and maximum security cells and of course the sheer destructive potential of the little rugrats…

Fiddy built a solid body of irresistible, seductive and always funny work which had universal appeal to readers of all ages, appearing in innumerable magazines, comics and papers where his instantly accessible style always stood out for its enchanting impact and laconic wit. Other than these and the Fanatic’s Guides his most impressive and characteristic collection is probably The Best of Fiddy.

Fiddy’s cartoon books are perennial library/charity shop and jumble sale fare: if you ever see a Fiddy in such a place, do yourself a favour, help out a good cause and have a brilliant laugh with the master of mirth.
Cartoons © 1994 Roland Fiddy. Compilation © 1994 Exley Publications  Ltd.