Category: Comic Strip Classics

Posted on

Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1969-1972!


By Whitney Ellsworth, E. Nelson Bridwell, Al Plastino, Nick Cardy & various (IDW)
ISBN: 987-1-63140-263-0 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Nuggets of Nostalgia to Delight All Ages… 8/10

For nearly eight decades in America newspaper comic strips were the Holy Grail cartoonists and graphic-narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country and often the planet, winning millions of readers and accepted (in most places) as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic books, it also paid better, with the greatest rewards and accolades being reserved for the full-colour Sunday page.

So it was always something of a poisoned chalice when a comic book character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all, weren’t funny-books invented just to reprint strips in cheap, accessible form?) and became a syndicated serial. Superman, Wonder Woman, Blue Beetle and Archie Andrews made the jump soon after their debuts and many features have done so since.

Due to war-time complications, the first Batman and Robin newspaper strip was a late entry, but when the Dynamic Duo finally hit the Funny Pages, the feature proved to be one of the best-regarded, highest quality examples of the trend, both in Daily and Sunday formats.

Somehow, it never achieved the circulation it deserved, but at least the Sundays were eventually given a new lease of life when DC began issuing complete vintage stories in the Batman 80-page Giants and Annuals in the 1960s. The exceedingly excellent all-purpose adventures were ideal short stories that added an extra cachet of exoticism for young readers already captivated by simply seeing tales of their heroes that were positively ancient and redolent of History with a capital “H”.

Such was not the case in the mid-1960s when, for a relatively brief moment, mankind went bananas for superheroes in general and most especially went “Bat-Mad”. The comic book Silver Age revolutionised a creatively moribund medium cosily snoozing in unchallenging complacency, bringing a modicum of sophistication to the revived genre of mystery men.

For quite some time the changes instigated by Julius Schwartz (in Showcase #4, October 1956) which rippled out in the last years of that decade to affect all of National/DC Comics’ superhero characters generally passed by Batman and Robin. Fans buying Detective Comics, Batman, World’s Finest Comics and latterly Justice League of America would read adventures that – in look and tone – were largely unchanged from the safely anodyne fantasies that had turned the Dark Knight into a mystery-solving, alien-fighting costumed Boy Scout just as the 1940s turned into the 1950s.

By the end of 1963, however, Schwartz having – either personally or by example – revived and revitalised the majority of DC’s line (and, by extension and imitation, the entire industry) with his reinvention of the Superhero, was asked to work his magic with the creatively stalled and near-cancellation Caped Crusaders.

Installing his usual team of top-notch creators, the Editor stripped down the accumulated luggage and rebooted the core-concept. Down – and usually out – went the outlandish villains, aliens and weird-transformation tales in favour of a coolly modern concentration on crime and detection. Even the art-style itself underwent a sleek streamlining and rationalisation. The most visible change for us kids was a yellow circle around the Bat-symbol but, far more importantly, the stories changed. A subtle aura of genuine menace crept back in.

At the same time, Hollywood was in production of a TV series based on Batman and, through the sheer karmic insanity that permeates the universe, the studio executives had based their interpretation not upon the “New Look Batman” currently enthralling readers, but the wacky, addictively daft material DC was emphatically turning its editorial back on.

The Batman show premiered on January 12th 1966 and ran for three seasons of 120 episodes: airing twice weekly for the first two. It was a monumental, world-wide hit that sparked a vast wave of trendy imitation. Resultant media hysteria and fan frenzy generated an insane amount of Bat-awareness, no end of spin-offs and merchandise – including a cinema movie – and introduced us all to the phenomenon of overkill.

No matter how much we comics fans might squeal and froth about it, to a huge portion of this planet’s population Batman is always going to be that “Zap! Biff! Pow!” buffoonish costumed Boy Scout…

“Batmania” exploded across Earth and then as almost as quickly became toxic and vanished, but at its height led to the creation of a fresh newspaper strip incarnation. That strip was a huge syndication success and even reached fuddy-duddy Britain, not in our papers and journals but as cover feature of weekly comic Smash! (from issue #20 onwards).

The TV show ended in March 1968. As the series foundered and faded away, global fascination with “camp” superheroes – and no, the term had nothing to do with sexual stereotyping no matter what you and Mel Brooks might think – burst as quickly as it had boomed and the Caped Crusader was left with a hard core of dedicated fans and followers who now wanted their hero back…

That ennui also finally finished the Syndicated comic strip (at least until the 1989 Batman movie), but as this final compilation proves, by the end it was – if not a failed kidnap recovery – a mercy killing…

This third hardback compilation gathers the last hurrahs of the strip, from the time when the Gotham Guardians were being pushed out of their own series and highlights a time when contracts and copyrights proved far more potent than Truth, Justice and the American Way…

As well as re-presenting the last bright and breezy, sometimes zany cartoon classics of Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder, this tome is augmented by a wealth of background material, topped up with oodles of unseen scenes and background detail to delight the most ardent Baby-boomer nostalgia-freak as well as captivating contemporary examples of the massed merchandise the TV series and comic strip spawned – such as adhesive Adventures Stickers, and house ads from Smash!…

The fun-fest opens with more informative and picture-packed, candidly cool revelations from comics historian Joe Desris in ‘A History of the Batman and Robin Newspaper Strip: Part 3’; sharing the communications between principal players and discussing how E. Nelson Bridwell became editor and then scripter on the rapidly evolving feature.

In January 1972, growing disputes between NPP (National Periodical Publications: DC’s parent company) and the Ledger Syndicate led to the latter attempting to exclude the former from the deal. When NPP withheld the strips it was contracted to produce, LS brought in an uncredited replacement creative team and published unsanctioned “bootleg” material that infringed DC’s copyright, beginning with the January 3rd episode. By the 31st, LS was completely rogue and as well as a generating a huge drop in both story and art quality, the replacements actively worked to undo all of Bridwell’s efforts to crosspollinate the strip and comic book continuities. On April 8th the syndicate dropped DC’s copyright from the strips prior to introducing their own hero – Galexo – to the feature on April 11th.

Although Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson still occasionally appeared and the title masthead stubbornly remained attention-grabbing “Batman”, the newcomer and his sidekicks Solaria and Paul were now the panel-hogging stars.

Eventually, NPP secured their intellectual property and walked away, and the strip staggered to a natural demise without DC heroes. Full details are provided by Desris in his introduction, which also shares its ultimate fate and where the feature continued until it ended…

The Introduction also offers a wonderful taste of what might have been via the unpublished episodes by Bridwell, Al Plastino & Nick Cardy that should have run from January 3rd – 15th 1972, to counterbalance the actual published material seen at the end of the volume…

Chronologically incorporating monochrome 2-4 panel dailies and full-page full colour Sundays, the series was originally scripted by former DC editor (and the company’s Hollywood liaison) Whitney Ellsworth, who’s still in charge as we recommence with a saga that began in the previous volume, drawn as ever by Plastino.

Alfred John “Al” Plastino was a prodigious artist with a stellar career. He had been active in early comic books, with credits including Captain America and Dynamic Man before serving in the US Army. His design talents were quickly recognised and he was seconded to Grumman Aerospace, The National Inventors Council and latterly The Pentagon, where he designed war posters and field manuals for the Adjutant General’s office.

In 1948, he joined DC and soon became one of Superman’s key artists. He drew many landmark stories and, with writer Otto Binder, co-created Brainiac, The Legion of Super-Heroes and Supergirl. From 1960-1969 Plastino ghosted the syndicated Superman newspaper strip and whilst still drawing Batman, also took over Ferd’nand in 1970: drawing it until his retirement in 1989.

He was extremely versatile and seemingly tireless: in 1982-1983 he drew Nancy Sundays after creator Ernie Bushmiller passed away and was controversially hired by United Media to produce fill-in episodes of Peanuts when Charles Schulz was in dispute with the company. Al Plastino died in 2013.

The new policy of guest stars from DC’s comics pantheon made Plastino the ideal choice as the strip transitioned to a tone of straight dramatic adventure and away from the campy comedy shenanigans of the TV show…

The first week of ‘My Campaign to Ruin Bruce Wayne’ (May 31st December 25th 1969) saw spoiled snob heiress Paula Vanderbroke and her brother Paul move into Wayne Manor and announce her intention of marrying Bruce. Here, when he tells her no, Paula – despite being bankrupt – dedicates all her remaining resources to crushing him and making him sorry.

Before she’s stopped, Wayne’s latest enterprise is sunk and the entire city suffers for her wounded pride and the Caped Crusader has succumbed to life-changing injuries…

Guest starring Superman, ‘Batman’s Back Is Broken!’ (December 26th 1969 to March 19th 1970) sees the Gotham Guardian laid low with the only surgeon who could fix him stuck in Mexico and unable to fly. That hurdle – amongst many others – is surmounted by the Man of Tomorrow who the steps in to impersonate Batman while he recuperates. Part of that program involves visiting a travelling show, sparking bad memories for Robin in ‘The Circus is Still Not For Sale!’ (March 20th – September 7th) as his senior partner retrains with the Fiore Family Circus. Almost immediately, a series of accidents imperil one and all, and physical therapy must give way to investigation and deduction. What that turns up is Mafia involvement…

When Wayne moves to end the threat by purchasing the show, a hidden mastermind makes a bold move by hiring a hitman to “cancel” him, but does not realise who he’s dealing with…

Bridwell began being credited as writer with the July 22nd instalment and immediately began dialling back the humorous tone in favour of darker drama, bringing the serial to a swift conclusion. With skulduggery exposed and thwarted the writer then began a bold move…

As DC’s continuity master, Bridwell began mirroring the dynamic changes punctuating a new age of relevancy in the company’s comic books, and adapted the big break-up between Batman and Robin as Dick Grayson went off to college.

‘Everything Will Be Different’ (September 8th 1970 – January 8th 1971) saw Wayne become a social activist, using his wealth to create the “Victim’s Incorporated Program” to help those who had suffered through crime. Shutting down the Batcave and Manor to work and live in the heart of Gotham City, Wayne and Alfred retooled to help the innocent as well as punish the guilty. The first survivor of crime was recent widow Mrs Whipp whose son Jeff had run away after his father was killed. She thought he might have gone to Star City to enlist the aid of Green Arrow…

Meanwhile, Dick had settled in at nearby Hudson University, meeting scientist Dr Kirk Langstrom even as Batman joined his JLA comrade there. All three heroes’ paths converged when student radicals sought to kill the runaway in their murderous efforts to create chaos and bring down “the Establishment”.

Bridwell also began overlapping storylines and before Jeff could be saved, ‘I am… Man-Bat!’ (January 8th – 14th April 1971) saw Langstrom’s experiments mutate scholar into monster, with his frantic attempts to find a cure contributing to the plot’s failure and heroes’ triumph…

Trapped in freak form, Man-Bat stows away with Batman and Jeff, and stalks Gotham in ‘Too Many Riddles – Two Many Villains’ (15th April-October 5th 1971): inadvertently stopping The Penguin killing Batman before enlisting the Dark Knight’s aid in saving himself before further mutating and flying off in panic just as Robin meets Langstrom’s fiancée Francine Lee at Hudson U.

As they all converge on Gotham, the Bird Bandit rejoins Catwoman, Riddler and The Joker who ally with another old Bat-foe for a major coup…

Despondent Francine has found Kirk and is pondering a horrific life change, whilst an army of former Bat-foes assaults Gotham, seeking to restage the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party for profit. The sinister soiree has attracted Tweedledee and Tweedledum, The Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Killer Moth and Two-Face, but also called Batgirl out of retirement …

With Nick Cardy adding powerful moody tones to the mix, the drama built to a potent crescendo as a massive heroin deal was exposed as prompting the evil army’s antics, but in the end the assembled Bat Squad proved sufficient to the task…

The slow-boiling Man-Bat plot then overheated in ‘Hideous Newlyweds’ (October 6th – November 4th 1971) as the heroes learned of Francine’s fate after she had willing become a monster like Kirk, and the era technically ended with ‘The Secrets in Grandma Chilton’s Scrapbook’ (November 5th 1971 – January 28th 1972). Extrapolated from a character from comics, the tale revealed how a young thug inherits Chilton’s worldly goods and sees in her scrapbook that she was the mother of the man who murdered Thomas and Martha Wayne… and turned their son Bruce into Batman…

As the housekeeper of his Uncle Philip Wayne, she had reared the orphan in his formative years and deduced his secret. Now, with her death, the son of “Joe Chill” learned how his own father died because of the Dark Knight and the cycle of vengeance begins again as the young man – armed with deadly knowledge – targets Wayne and everything he loves…

We’ll never know how that so-promising, tension-drenched drama should have concluded, as pinch hitters parachuted in during the aforementioned dispute wrap up the tale on autopilot and plunge straight into feeble fable ‘Dick Grayson: Kidnapped!’ (January 29th-March 7th).

When Wayne’s ward is snatched from college the distressed hero calls in Batgirl and Superman – but only in their plainclothes personas of Babs Gordon and Clark Kent -gratuitously along to pad out the done-by-numbers rescue…

The teen has no luck but bad and ‘Dick Grayson: Skyjacked!’ (March 8th – April 3rd 1972) then sees his passenger flight home seized by a terrorist, before the kid steps in to save himself this time…

The end comes none too soon in ‘The Duo Becomes a Trio’ (April 4th – 1972 and beyond) with Bruce and Dick recruiting mystery champion Galexo to help them put the team on a global footing. The World’s Worst dressed telepath has his own team but will join for now, beginning with the mastermind igniting volcanoes in Antarctica…

The book stops here but the strip apparently continued awhile longer in overseas papers – represented here in another 17 full pages of Batman with Robin and Galexo from Australian and Singapore papers. I found them utterly unreadable but maybe you’re tough enough to handle it…

The majority of stories in this compendium reveal how gentler, stranger times and an editorial policy focusing as much on broad humour as Batman’s reputation as a crime-fighter was swiftly turned to all-out action adventure once Batmania gave way to global overload and ennui. That was bad for the strip at the time but happily resulted in some truly wonderful adventures for die-hard fans of the comic book Caped Crusader. If you’re of a certain age or open to timeless thrills, spills and chills this a truly stunning collection well worth your attention.

Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1969-1972! concludes huge (305 x 236 mm) lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the Caped Crusaders, and is a glorious addition to the superb commemorative series of Library of American Comics which has preserved and re-presented in luxurious splendour such landmark strips as Li’l Abner, Tarzan, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates, Bringing Up Father, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and so many other cartoon icons.

If you love the era, the medium or just graphic narratives, these stories are great comics reading, and this is a book you simply must have.
© 2016 DC Comics. All rights reserved. Batman and all related characters and elements ™ DC Comics

Posted on

Sixty Years: The Beano and The Dandy – Focus on the Fifties


By Many & various (DC Thomson)
ISBN: 978-0-851-16846-3 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Scotland’s Finest Fun Factory Fancies… 9/10

Whenever we’ve faced our worst moments, humans tend to seek out old familiarities and wallow in the nostalgia of better days. Let’s see how this particular foray feels, especially as it’s still unreachable by that there newmfangled electro retrieval widgetry, but still remarkably cheap in assorted emporia and on them there interwebs… 

Released in 2004 as part of the DC Thomson Sixtieth Anniversary celebrations for their children’s periodicals division – which has more than any other shaped the psyche of generations of British kids – this splendidly oversized (299 x 205mm) 144 page hardback compilation rightly glories in the incredible explosion of ebullient creativity that paraded through the flimsy colourful pages of The Beano and The Dandy during a particularly bleak and fraught period in British history. Tragically, neither it nor its companion volumes are available digitally yet, but hope springs ever eternal…

Admittedly this book goes through some rather elaborate editing, design and paste-up permutations to editorial explaining for modern readers the vast changes to the once-commonplace that’s happened in the intervening years. Naturally the process has quietly dodged the more egregious terms and scenarios that wouldn’t sit well with 21st century sensibilities, although to my enlightened sensibilities the concentration on whacking children on the bottom does occur with disturbing frequency – the Bash Street Kids even had their fearfully expectant upraised bums as the strip’s logo for a few years!

However, viewed as a cultural and historical memoire, this is a superb comic commemoration of one of our greatest communal formative forces, with a vast number of strips and stories carefully curated from a hugely transformative period in national history.

They’re also superbly timeless examples of cartoon storytelling at its best…

Until it folded and was briefly reborn as a digital publication on 4th December 2012, The Dandy was the third-longest running comic in the world (behind Italy’s Il Giornalino which launched in 1924 and America’s Detective Comics in March 1937). The Dandy premiered on December 4th 1937: breaking the mould of traditional British predecessors by using word balloons and captions on some strips, rather than just the narrative blocks of text under the sequential picture frames that had been the industry standard.

A huge success, it was followed on July 30th 1938 by The Beano – and in concert they revolutionised the way children’s publications looked and, most importantly, how they were read.

Over the decades the “terrible twins” spawned so many unforgettable and beloved household names who delighted countless avid and devoted readers, and their unmissable end of year celebrations were graced with bumper bonanzas of the comics’ weekly stars in extended stories in magnificent hardback annuals.

During WWII, rationing of paper and ink forced the “children’s papers” into an alternating fortnightly schedule: on September 6th 1941, only The Dandy was published. A week later just The Beano appeared. The rascally rapscallions only returned to normal weekly editions on 30th July 1949, but the restrictions had not hurt sales. In fact, in December 1945, The Beano #272 became the first British comic to sell a million copies, and the post-war period saw more landmarks as the children’s division of DC Thomson blossomed over the next decade, with innovative characters and a profusion of talented cartoonists who would carry it to publishing prominence, even as the story papers died back in advance of more strip anthologies like The Topper (1953) and The Beezer (1956)…

This compilation primarily concentrates via random extracts and selected strips on the development of established 1940s stars – like Biffo the Bear (1948), Lord Snooty (1938), The Smasher (1938, but completely reinvented in 1957), Korky the Cat and Desperate Dan (both 1937), who all survived the winds of change to grow into beloved and long-lived favourites in the new era. They’re highlighted beside the most successful new characters of the fifties, including Dennis the Menace (1951), Minnie the Minx, Roger the Dodger & Little Plum (all 1953) and the Bash Street Kids (1956 or 1954 if you count prototype When the Bell Rings! as the same).

Nevertheless there’s also a wonderful selection of less well known features on view…

This superb celebration of Celtic creativity is packed literally cover-to-cover with brilliant, breakthrough strips with the mirth starting on the inside front with an outrageous 2-colour Frontispiece tableau by Leo Baxendale of When the Bell Rings!

It’s mirrored at the back of the book by a similarly hilarious spread starring Biffo by indisputable cartoonist Dudley D. Watkins …

The main event begins with Focus on the 50’s, as a full-colour Roger the Dodger page by Ken Reid and a Baxendale 2-tone Bash Street Kids strip heralds an editorial introduction, context on soapbox cart building and casting call ‘Fifties Fun-Folk’ before seguing into a tale of Tin Lizzie: a pioneering comedy strip in block-text & pic format about a mechanical housemaid and robot butler Brassribs. Starting in 1953 as a prose serial, it was remodelled as a comic drawn by Jack Prout and  Charles Grigg which presaged later mega-hit Brassneck…

With all these pages playing with the theme of “carties”, snatches of Watkins’ Lord Snooty and the 1957 iteration of The Smasher by Hugh Morren lead to an episode of ‘Charlie the Chimp’.

Limned by Charles Grigg, the feature was another comedy drama in block & pic format starring a smart but strictly realistic simian working as a porter in a boarding house…

A full-colour Korky strip by James Crighton, with the cat using his cart as a taxi, ends this section before ‘A Day in the Life of Dennis’ offers an extended collection of strips and features starring the magnificent Menace, rendered by creator Davey Law. The Bad Boy debuted in The Beano #452 (in shops from March 12th 1951) and begins with prose piece ‘Nursery Crimes – or Dennis Growing Up by Dennis’s Dad’ taken from the first Dennis the Menace Book. Its backed up by 15 strips from the era, including ‘News Boy’, ‘Doctor’s Orders’, ‘Top of the Class’ and ‘Dad in Disgrace’ before literally and figuratively shifting gear to see Korky and Biffo as “Teddy Boys” in individual full-colour fashion yarns…

Assorted snapshot strips from venerable fantasy serial ‘The Iron Fish’, illustrated by Jack Glass, lead to a Watkins moment in ‘50’s Medicine the Desperate Dan Way!’ before Baxendale’s ‘Little Plum’ enjoys his own time in the spotlight via 22 strips culled from both comics and Annuals.

Desperate Dan crops up again in episodes from 1952-1954 before “Strongman’s Daughter” Pansy Potter (by James Clark) outwits a wicked wizard whilst Paddy Brennan exults in full-colour in the debut chapter of fantasy thriller ‘Fighting Forkbeard (The Sea Wolf from Long Ago)’ wherein a dragonship full of Vikings washes up and attacks a modern fishing village…

A Baxendale Bash Street strip guest-starring Minnie the Minx opens a selection of crossovers with Biffo and others, after which Hungry Horace and Shaggy Doggy offer a glimpse at the work of Allan Morley, an old school cartoonist who had been with The Beano since #1 but was now giving way to new style and content…

Created by Ken Reid, Jonah was an accursed sailor who sank every vessel he touched and the splendid sampling of strips here leads to Watkins’ introduction of Desperate Dan’s nephew Danny and niece Katey from February 1957, and is followed by a Biffo strip showing a number of things totally banned from modern comics…

‘Guess the Date!’ and ‘50’s Housing – the Desperate Dan Way!’ plus a Korky clash with his arch enemies – The Mice – lead to examples of strips that didn’t work out with a page each for Jenny Penny (Jimmy Thompson) and Little Angel Face (by Ken Reid) before a Lord Snooty vignette from 1954 opens a section starring a certified superstar – Roger the Dodger…

Realised by Reid, the consummate con artist struts his stuff and takes his retributive punishments in a dozen strips, after which the modern medium of home entertainment is tackled in a colour Korky tale and ‘50’s Tele-Watching – the Desperate Dan Way!’ before a Morley Charlie Chutney cookery classic from 1954 acts as palate cleanser for what follows…

All that spanking endured by wayward kids is especially prevalent in a selection of manic material starring Minnie the Minx: in 28 episodes of conniving, chicanery and clobbering courtesy of Baxendale…

A brilliant blast of Biffo in colour brings us to the Bash Street Kids in all their grubby glory. Accompanied by another mini-editorial providing historical context, a slap-happy selection combines double-page tableaux of When the Bell Rings! with a surfeit of Bash Street strips and reveals how the feature evolved. The Baxendale cover to story paper Wizard #1547 (October 1955) accompanies prose tale ‘Bash Street School’ from the June 4th edition, and discloses how the tableau feature inspired comedic school stories which in turn informed a stripped-down strip version with the 16+ kid cast pared down to the 9 we know today…

The process was applied to a few DCT characters, as seen in text story ‘The Boyhood of Desperate Dan’, preceded by the cover for Wizard #1492 (September 18th 1954) and a page of prose thriller ‘Red Rory of the Eagle’ (September 1951) ranged beside the strip it became with a Jack Glass rendered episode from September 1958…

Bill Holroyd provides a 1954 tale of voracious be-kilted ‘Plum MacDuff – The Highlander Who Never Gets Enough’ and the animal antics of ‘Kat and Kanary’ – created by Grigg but probably illustrated here by Baxendale – introduces ‘50’s Tele-Watching – the Desperate Dan Way!’ and follows up with a Biffo strip from November 1956 that might just be the UK’s first infomercial; a Grigg royal rarity featuring Prince Whoopee and a Reid Roger the Dodger lark that eschews the punitive slipper for a more targeted retribution…

A sampling of fantasy drama series follows: name – and picture – checking ‘The Horse That Jack Built’, Brennan’s ‘The Shipwrecked Circus’ and Glass’ ‘The Bird Boy’ before we hit the final stretch, starting with a 1959 Smasher saga about boots, a quick appearance for ‘Cocky Sue, the Cockatoo – She’s the Brains of the Pirate Crew’ by an artist I should recognise, but don’t, and ‘50’s Transport – the Desperate Dan Way!’

With past and future in mind Lord Snooty then pre-empts the microwave oven in a wild yarn from 1954, whilst ‘Wee Davie and King Willie’ strike an early and unexpected blow for animal rights in a strip from 1957 by Ken Hunter, who also ends our comic capers with a wild & woolly double page bonanza tableau set in ‘Wee Davie’s Zoo’…

Sadly, none of the writers are named and precious few of the artists, but I’ve offered a best guess as to whom we should thank, and of course I would be so very happy if anybody could confirm or deny my supposition…

A marvel of nostalgia and timeless comics wonder, the addictive magic of this collection is the brilliant art and stories by a host of talents that have literally made Britons who they are today. Bravo to DC Thomson for letting them out for a half-day to run amok once again; can we please have more and in digital edition, too?
© DC Thomson & Co. Ltd. 2004

Posted on

The Phantom Sundays Archive volume 1 – Full-Size Newspaper Strips: 1939-1942


By Lee Falk & Ray Moore: introduction by Daniel Herman (Hermes Press)
ISBN: ?978-1-61345-081-9 (HB/Digital edition), ?978-1-61345-091-8 (Limited Edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Landmark and Lovely Comics Adventure… 9/10

Born Leon Harrison Gross, Lee Falk created the Jungle Avenger at the request of his King Features Syndicate employers who were already making history, public headway and loads of money with his first strip sensation Mandrake the Magician. Although technically not the first ever costumed champion in comics, The Phantom became the prototype paladin to wear a skin-tight body-stocking and the first to have a mask with opaque eye-slits…

The Ghost Who Walks debuted on February 17th 1936 in an extended sequence pitting him against an ancient global confederation of pirates. Falk wrote and drew the daily strip for the first two weeks before handing over illustration to artist Ray Moore. The spectacular and hugely influential Sunday feature gathered here began in May 1939.

For such a long-lived, influential series, in terms of compendia or graphic collections, The Phantom has been quite poorly served in the English language market (except in the Antipodes, where he has always been accorded the status of a pop culture god).

Numerous companies have sought to collect strips from one of the longest continually running adventure serials in publishing history, but in no systematic or chronological order and never with any sustained success. That began to be rectified when archival specialists Hermes Press began offering curated collections…

This particular edition is a lovely and large landscape hardback (but also available in digital formats), displaying a complete full colour Sunday per page. Released in May 2015, it was printed on matt paper to mimic the original newsprint experience: 160 pages measuring 310 x 430 mm, and also in a Special Limited Edition of 1000 copies, should you require your reading matter to double as an antiquarian artefact…

It’s still readily available in digital form and – stuffed with sumptuous visual goodies like movie posters, comics covers and original art – Daniel Herman’s ‘Introduction: The Phantom’s First Foray into Color’ – tells all you need to know about the character, his creators, and predecessor/co-star before the vintage magic begins…

It opens with a recapped origin: showing how 400 years previously, a British sailor survived an attack by pirates, and – washing ashore on the African coast – swore on the skull of his father’s murderer to dedicate his life and that of his descendants to destroying all pirates and criminals. The Phantom fights crime and injustice from a base deep in the jungles of Bengali, and throughout Africa and Asia is known as the “Ghost Who Walks”…

His unchanging appearance and unswerving war against injustice led to his being considered an immortal avenger by the uneducated, credulous and wicked. Down the decades, one champion after another has fought and died in an unbroken family line, with the latest wearer of the mask indistinguishable from the first and proudly continuing the never-ending battle.

‘The League of Lost Men’ spanned May 28th to October 15th 1939, detailing how a gang of white thugs led by untutored brute Twitchy began teaching rural tribes the concept of the “protection racket”. With villagers killed and entire communities aflame, the Ghost took action just as white entomologist Professor Thrush and his beautiful, dutiful daughter Helen stumbled into the army of criminals whilst searching for skull-emblazoned Death’s Head moths…

With the scientists as hostages, the Phantom was reduced to playing a waiting game, but detective work revealed his enemies comprised hundreds of convicts escaped from a foundered prison ship. Gravely outnumbered, our hero and lupine assistant Devil (that’s a wolf. Yes, in Africa. Just go with it…) employ psychological warfare, using those skull moths and combat skills in a war of attrition bringing the legion to doom or reincarceration…

International espionage and environmental terrorism informed ‘The Precious Cargo of Colonel Winn’ (October 15th 1939 March 10th 1940) as the Phantom fails to save an aging British agent and takes over his identity and mission: delivering a crucial coded message to India. As a consequence he soundly scuppers a scheme to blow up a major dam, drown hundreds of people and kill millions more through thirst…

Every saga featured powerful, capable and remarkably attractive women as both heroes and villains, but Falk & Moore went a step further with ‘The Fire Goddess’ (March 17th – July 21st 1940). Restored to Africa, the hero faced mass uprisings and the end of “The Phantom’s Peace” when the Mesabi people took up their belligerent old religion. Some diligent investigation uncovered another get-rich-quick scheme by white crooks and an elderly Mesabi seer who jointly conned and compelled a beautiful red-haired nightclub dancer into being their personal war deity.

Once the Ghost finally liberated Manna Day from her captors and inflicted his brand of justice, he assumed he’d seen the last of her but she was back immediately as ‘The Beachcomber’ (July 28th – December 29th 1940) found her rescuing deranged hobo Whitey, slowly expiring on an African shoreline.

Befriending the degenerate, she uncovered a horrific tale of injustice as her fellow American revealed how he was a fugitive: perfectly framed for murder by his own lawyer. Manna decided it was a case for her masked friend…

After dragging Whitey across the continent to the fabled Skull Cave, she convinced the hero to head for the USA where “Kit Walker” made them extremely conspicuous in New York, drawing the attention of a slick murder-for-hire mob, assassinating powerful people and duping innocents into carrying the can – just as they had with Whitey…

Infiltrating the group, Walker uses his new position to save an honest Judge before deftly dismantling the killer corporation.

Heading home, he was barely out of the judge’s house before the next escapade began as he overheard plans of ‘The Saboteurs’ (January 5th February 23rd 1941) at a railway station. With Devil beside him, The Ghost Who Walks tumbled into an escalating sequence of stunning action set-pieces involving trains, planes, automobiles – even oil pipelines and roller coasters! – as he wiped out the seditious enemy agents.

The remainder of this initial outing features movie-length extravaganza ‘The Return of the Sky Band’ (running March 2nd 1941 to February 22nd 1942). The first clash had been The Phantom’s second published case (originally published in black-&-white Daily form from 9th November 1936 to April 10th 1937): pitting the Grim Ghost against merciless aviators plundering passenger planes and cargo flights.

His crusade against cloud bandits ruthlessly raiding passenger planes and airships throughout the orient only shattered the gang – comprised solely of women – after his manly charms inadvertently drove a fatal wedge between deranged and deadly commander The Baroness and her ambitious second in command Sala…

Now as the hero reaches home, news comes of more air piracy and The Phantom volunteers his services to an embattled air clipper company. All too soon, he’s matching wits with Sala again, hunting the new Sky Band’s secret island base. And once again he ends up in jail accused of masterminding their crimes…

However, before he can escape police custody, the air pirates make a fatal error, allying with an enemy power. Very soon the women learn that they are far from the apex predators they consider themselves. When the Phantom escapes, he’s not sure if he’s shutting them down or saving them.

Sala’s deputy Margo has no doubts or qualms though, delivering their potential saviour to the enemy military, only to have the Ghost Who Walks wreak awful vengeance on their sailors as they flee in a submarine…

However, even with a secret invasion foiled and Sala and Margo arrested, the danger is not over, and their attempts to get away leads to a horrific act of sabotage as the enemy submariners also break free…

Only another unlikely alliance saves the day, and sees a return to relative stability in a world teetering on the edge of another global war…

To Be Continued…

Taken from America’s immediate pre-war period, these brief encounters are uncomplicated fare, full of lost kingdoms and savage tribes, very bad guys and fallen but still redeemable dames; but thrilling yet reassuring entertainment for all that. Finally rediscovered, these lost treasures are especially rewarding as the material is still fresh, entertaining and addictively compelling.

But, even if it were only of historical value (or just printed for Australians – who have long been manic devotees of the implacable champion) surely the Ghost Who Walks is worthy of a little of your time?
The Phantom® © 1939-1942 and 2015 King Features Syndicate, Inc. ® Hearst Holdings, Inc.; reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. Introduction © 2015 Daniel Herman.

Posted on

Mandrake the Magician®: The Complete King Years volume 1


By Lee Falk & Phil Davis, Fred Fredericks, Don Heck, Andre LeBlanc & various (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-098-7 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Vintage Magical Mystery Masterpiece… 9/10

Regarded by many as comics’ first superhero, Mandrake the Magician debuted as a daily newspaper strip on 11th June 1934 – although creator Lee Falk had first tried to sell the strip a decade previously. Initially drawing the strip too, Falk soon replaced himself, allowing the early wonderment to materialise through the effective understatement of sublime draughtsman Phil Davis. An instant hit, it was soon supplemented by a full-colour Sunday companion page which launched on February 3rd 1935.

Falk sold Mandrake to King Features Syndicate years earlier as a 19-year old college student, but asked the monolithic company to let him finish his studies before dedicating himself to the strip full time. Schooling done, the 23-year-old master raconteur settled in to begin his life’s work: entertaining millions with his astounding tales.

Falk – who also created the first costumed superhero in moodily magnificent manhunter The Phantom – spawned an entire comicbook subgenre with his first creation. Most Golden Age publishers boasted at least one (and usually many) nattily attired wizards in their gaudily-garbed pantheons: all roaming the world making miracles and crushing injustice with varying degrees of stage legerdemain or actual sorcery.

Characters such Mr. Mystic, Ibis the Invincible, Sargon the Sorcerer, and an assortment of … the Magician such as Zanzibar, Zatara, Kardak ad infinitum all borrowed heavily and shamelessly from the uncanny exploits of the elegant, enigmatic man of mystery who graced the pages of the world’s newspapers and magazines.

In the Antipodes, Mandrake was a suave stalwart regular of Australian Women’s Weekly and also became a cherished icon of adventure in the UK, Italy and Scandinavia. As seen and described in Eileen Sabrina Herman’s ‘Introduction: The Magic behind Mandrake’ the Magician was a major star of page & screen, pervading every aspect of global consciousness. This erudite appreciation also includes tantalising merchandise and memorabilia and movie posters plus original art by not just by Falk, Davis, Ray Baily, Don Heck, and Fredericks but also a stunning Phantom team-up pic from Don Newton.

Over decades he’s been a star of radio, movies, chapter-serials, a theatrical play, television animation (as part of the cartoon series Defenders of the Earth). With that came the usual merchandising bonanza of games, toys (including magic trick kits), books, comics and more…

Falk worked on Mandrake and “The Ghost who Walks” until his death in 1999 (on his deathbed he was laying out one last story), but also found a few quiet moments to become a renowned playwright, theatre producer and impresario, as well as an inveterate world-traveller. However, even he couldn’t keep up with the demand, which is where this collection comes in…

Between 1966 and 1967, King Features Syndicate dabbled with a comic book line of their biggest stars – Popeye, Flash Gordon, The Phantom and Mandrake – developed after the characters had enjoyed newsstand stardom under the broad and effective aegis of veteran licensed properties publisher Gold Key Comics.

Mandrake was no stranger to funnybooks, having featured in the David McKay Company’s 1939 Magic Comics (1939-1949 and Dell’s Four Color #752, as reformatted strip reprints and in new material. He was also a major player for child-friendly Big Little Books.

This initial archival full-colour volume gathers the pertinent contents of Mandrake the Magician #1-5, spanning September 1966 to May 1967, plus back-up material from Flash Gordon #1-3, and also includes a wealth of unseen art and candid photos.

As part of a cross-selling policy at that period, King Comics revived the ancient practise of adding short story vignettes of other stars to their publications. The Magician regularly added mystery and imagination to the line-up of Earth’s greatest interstellar explorer…

Those in the know are well aware that Mandrake was educated at the fabled College of Magic in Tibet, thereafter becoming a famous, suave globe-trotting troubleshooter: always accompanied by faithful African partner Lothar and beautiful companion (eventually, in 1997, bride) Princess Narda of Cockaigne. Together forever, they faced the uncanny, solved crimes and fought evil.

With covers by Don Heck & Mike Peppe, André LeBlanc and Fred Fredericks, all these stories are scripted by Dick Wood before Gary Poole takes over with the second story in #4. The show begins with a monochrome inside front cover feature from then-current strip artist Fred Fredericks who shared secrets of Mandrake’s mountaintop home in ‘Danger Drive to Xanadu’. Harold “Fred” Fredericks had taken over art production when Davis died in 1965, and assumed full creative duties when Falk himself passed on in 1999.

Here, however, Wood, Don Heck & André LeBlanc open festivities by detailing ‘Menace of the City Jungle!’, wherein Mandrake and Lothar volunteer to clean up a crime-infested park and its extended locality by playing hapless bait for an army of bandits and muggers. The combination of illusion, hypnotism and brute force is so successful, the duo then have to devise a scheme to stop the cops feeling slighted and inadequate!

Werner Roth & LeBlanc then expose ‘The Flying Phantom!’, as the city is plagued by an uncanny plunderer employing magic carpets and winged horses until Mandrake steps in to foil the thief and spoil the trick…

Fredericks then concludes his monochrome travelogue of ‘The House of Wonders’ for the inside back cover, after which the November cover-dated, all Wood & LeBlanc second issue opens with a truly tense sci fi drama. All Earth can hear the increasingly panicked pleas and threats of an alien space craft hurtling to its doom, but no tool of mankind seems able to see or save ‘The Spectre from Space’. Thankfully, Mandrake is around and able to apply his wisdom to the crisis…

A far more plebian police problem is solved when gangster Lucky Larry Yates opens his law-defying gamblers palace, and Mandrake is called in to exorcise ‘The Phantom Casino’…

Mandrake the Magician #3 (January 1967) addressed global politics after despondent British nuclear scientist Dr. Andrew Crane decides to save the world from itself by allowing enemy agents to use his ultimate weapon in a deterrence demonstration. Of course, foreign spies can’t be trusted and the free world needs Mandrake’s talents to save ‘The Doomsday Man’ from himself and everybody else from utter annihilation…

A sudden change of pace brings the magician and Lothar way out west to expose a rowdy ghost terrorising a frontier town. However, when brazen “bandito” Pancho Valdez proves immune to Mandrake’s gifts, the cunning conjuror simple switches to brain power to stop ‘The Terror of the Haunted Desert’…

Crime was the spur for Wood’s last outing as a magician’s convention is threatened by ‘The Black Wizard!’ who mimics the signature tricks of many magnificent showmen – until Mandrake and Lothar expose the mastermind behind the crimewave – after which Gary Poole joins LeBlanc to detail an insidious impersonator targeting High Society. This malign malcontent even puts Mandrake in jail before the magician can foil ‘The Frame-Up’… or does he?

Ray Bailey illustrated #5 (May 1967) beginning with a nautical campaign as Mandrake and Lothar spectacularly dismantle a ultra-modern pirate band in ‘Cape Cod Caper’, after which ‘The Fear Mongers’ sees warring kingdoms pacified and their (intimately related) rulers reconciled after a bizarre faux alien invasion…

Those aforementioned backup stories begin with Wood, Heck & LeBlanc’s ‘Midnight with Mandrake’ from Flash Gordon #1 (September 1966) as a gang of thieves unleashes sleeping gas on a city crowd, only to have Mandrake change it from soporific to an hallucinogen…

‘The Laughing Clown Caper’ then pits the wanderers against a malevolent mountebank seeking to wreck a rival’s career, whilst ‘The Little Giant’ sees the worldly wizard give an undersized fight promoter a psychological boost to deter local bullies and fight-fixing thugs. As an added bonus, the original art for this entire uncredited story (maybe Wood and Frank Springer?) is also included here, preceding a lavish and fascinating look at the strip and comic book career of an artistic legend as Spike Barkin conducts a copiously illustrated and informative ‘Focus: Interview with Fred Fredericks’.

This thrilling tome offers exotic locales, thrilling action, spooky chills and sheer elegance in equal measure. These stories have lost none of their impact and only need you reading them. Sprinkled liberally with original art pages, this a delicious, nostalgia-drenched triumph is perfect for the Halloween season: straightforward, captivating eerie action-adventure that has always been the staple of comics fiction. If that sounds like a good time to you, that’s Magic!
Mandrake the Magician® © 1966-1967 and 2015 King Features Syndicate, Inc.; Hearst Holdings, Inc. Reprinted with Permission. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Piracy: The Complete Series 1-7 (The EC Archives Library)


By Irv Werstein, Carl Wessler, Jack Oleck, Reed Crandall, Wally Wood, Graham Ingels, George Evans, Jack Davis, Bernie Krigstein, Al Williamson, Angelo Torres & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-700-6 (HB) eISBN 978-1-50670-967-3

Haa-Haaarr! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day and we backseat buccaneers be cunning coves ‘oo prefers to sneak up on a fellow when they most expects it, especially since precious pearls like these graphical beauties never go stale… 

Legendary imprint EC Comics began in 1944 when comic book pioneer Max Gaines sold the superhero properties of his All-American Comics company to half-sister National/DC. The Inventor of Comic Books only retained Picture Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce Educational Comics, with schools and church groups being his major target market. He latterly augmented his core title with Picture Stories from American History, Picture Stories from Science and Picture Stories from World History. Sadly, the worthy venture was already struggling when Gaines died in a boating accident in 1947.

His son William was dragged out of college and hurled into the family business where – with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen (who held Dad’s company together until the initially unwilling Bill abandoned his dreams of a career in chemistry) he transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comics…

After some tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines and his multi-talented associate Al Feldstein settled into a bold, impressive publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a “New Trend” of stories for an older and more discerning readership.

Between 1950 and 1954, EC was the most innovative, influential comics publisher in America, dominating the newly reinvigorated genres of crime, horror, war and science fiction. Moreover, under the auspices of writer, artist and editor Harvey Kurtzman, the company introduced an entirely new beast: the satirical comic book…

Kurtzman was hired to supplement the workforce on EC’s horror titles but wasn’t a fan of that genre, suggesting instead a new action-adventure title. The result was Two-Fisted Tales which began with #18 as an anthology of rip-snorting, stand-alone he-man dramas. With America deep into a military “police action” in Korea, the title quickly became a dedicated war comic, rapidly augmented by a second, Frontline Combat.

Also written and edited by Kurtzman, who assiduously laid-out and meticulously designed every story, it made for great entertainment and a unifying authorial voice but was frequently a cause of friction with his many artists. In keeping with the spirit of Gaines’ “New Trend”, these war stories were never bombastic, jingoistic fantasies for glory-hungry little boys, but rather subtly subversive examinations of the cost of conflict which highlighted the madness, futility and senseless, pointless waste of it all…

When the McCarthy-era anti-comics witch hunt of the 1950s crushed the industry and gutted EC’s output by effectively outlawing horror, crime, gore, political commentary and social criticism, Gaines & Feldstein retrenched: releasing experimental titles under the umbrella of a “New Direction”.

Kurtzman’s Mad – which had defined a whole new genre, bequeathing unto Americans Popular Satire – was reconfigured into a monochrome magazine, safely distancing the outrageously brilliant comedic publication from the fall-out caused by the socio-political witch-hunt which eventually killed EC’s other titles…

Denied a soapbox to address social ills, Gaines’ new books concentrated on intrigue, adventure and drama, informed by fresh modern fascinations: either intellectual or mass entertainment fads. Despite still featuring stunningly beautiful artwork and thoughtful writing, New Direction titles couldn’t find an audience and died within a year.

Impact, Extra!, Aces High and Valor all reflected themes of contemporary film and TV, whilst Psychoanalysis and M.D. targeted mature audiences through the growing TV phenomenon of medical drama. Incredible Science Fiction bridged the transition from old vogue to new line-up whilst also tapping movie trends. Another fad paying off big on screen had already been seen in previous Kurtzman’s adventure titles… sea-going sagas from different points in history…

Piracy set sail in the Fall of 1954 (#1 was cover dated October/November) and ran for seven bi-monthly issues before being scuttled at the end of 1955. This volume of Dark Horse’s EC Archives gathers them all, re-presenting some of the most gorgeous art of the era – or ever – but with scripts apparently curtailed by the newly-instituted Comics Code Authority and Gaines’ own sense of financial survival.

And yes, Watchmen fans, these are the stories Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons were referencing in that sub-strand of their dystopian masterpiece…

One last thing to remember: although it’s called Piracy, the series embraced all aspects of nautical fiction, from wars, whaling and the slave trade right up to contemporary commercial affairs: mixing flamboyant sea sagas with deeper, more complex and even socially crusading maritime topics intended to equate with literary highlights like CM Forester’s Hornblower yarns, Herman Melville’s classic text and even more modern fare by Jack London or Ernest Hemingway.

Before getting underway, the fraught history of the company is outlined in Grant Geissman’s informative Introduction, offering keen insights into those times and the gifted creators involved, after which Film Producer Greg Nicotero’s Foreword provides insight into Bill Gaines’ pioneering stand against censorship…

Sadly, despite diligent efforts by researchers and historians, many of these tales still have no writing credit, but that barely affects  their power to enthral as we open with a stunning Wally Wood cover. Piracy #1 opens with editorial welcome ‘Scuttlebutt’ before Reed Crandall and an author unknown detail the rise and fall of ‘The Privateer’ with patriotic Englishman Captain Ballard James gradually succumbing to temptation. Originally and exclusively targeting Spanish vessels, his battles eventually turn to personal profit not his country’s survival before he suffers a grisly, ironic comeuppance…

This collection also includes rousing house ads by EC’s finest and a particularly stirring one from Wood precedes his tale ‘The Mutineers’, with murderous marine martinet Cap’n Mathew Bollard finally driving his long-suffering crew into desperate retaliation and desertion during the last voyage of the clipper Lorna J in 1854…

Al Williamson & Angelo Torres formed a sublime artistic partnership at EC and their captivating versality is displayed in ‘Harpooned’. Also set in 1854 (for which thank the ever-beguiling concept of “only 100 years ago…”), it details how whaling bark Eben Dodge was lost due to the growing tensions between the envious first mate and a dedicated captain who assumed his only foe was the giant sea beasts they hunted together…

Prose parable ‘The Challenge’ (regarding a sea captain with an obsessive grudge against storms) and a Jack Davis-limned ad lead to the master cartoonist’s first full contribution, as ‘Shanghaied’ shares a long-anticipated reunion between a lifelong mariner and the criminal procurer who drugged and sold him into sea service a dozen years previously…

Cover-dated December 1954/January 1955, Piracy #2 opens with a Crandall cover and lead story ‘Sea Food’, wherein pirate Benjamin Medford’s ruthless predations are ended by cruel misfortune, British Naval firepower and brutal, bestial karma. Davis then returns to explore the eastern concept of ‘Kismet’ after a slave-ship’s first mate betrays his skipper and learns a lasting lesson about duty and honour…

‘Loblolly Boy’ is an historical text feature concerning tricks played on first-timers and junior seamen, after which Williamson & Torres render a modern tale of penny-pinching, deep sea treasure hunters in ‘The Shell Game’, backed up by prose piece ‘The Dive’ about a trainee’s last dry run…

The issue closes with Wood’s ‘A Fitting End’, scripted by Carl Wessler and detailing how Edmund Drummond, Master of His Majesty’s Ship Sea Gull, allows his own innate cruelty and sense of superiority to provoke shipboard unrest even as his subordinate Jack Roark discovers an unsuspected piratical family connection…

Crandall retains the cover and lead position for #3 with a compelling tale of the buccaneer who sought higher status and position than mighty ‘Blackbeard’, before ‘Scuttlebutt’ returns in the form of a letters page.

Wessler & Bernie Krigstein (one of comics’ most innovative illustrators and a commercial and gallery artist) then unite for a psychological war drama in the style of Frontline Combat as ‘U-Boat’ reveals the lethal outcome of a battle of wills between a German submarine commander and his fanatical Nazi political officer. Text tale ‘The Beast’ exposes romantic rivalry between tuna fishermen, preceding George Evans’ debut in ‘Mouse Trap’ as a 19th century sailor plucked from the seas expiates his guilt and shares his role in the ghastly fate of lost ship The Sea Spray…

Wessler & Graham Ingels then close the issue with the saga of an abolitionist white man shanghaied to serve aboard a ‘Slave Ship’ and the pact he made with its “human cargo”…

Behind Piracy #4’s Crandall cover and more ‘Scuttlebutt’ letters, that dean of realism rendered the brutal tale of Cap’n Satan – Terror of the Spanish Main. This savage, satirical yarn of the ‘Pirate Master’ details his humble origins, appalling deeds and ultimate downfall …matrimony!

‘The King’s Buccaneer’ recounts in prose the career of privateer Sir Henry Morgan, after which Wessler & Evans use the war of 1812 to frame the salutary saga of a stubborn young American midshipman who wants everything done ‘By the Book’, no matter how impractical… or suicidal…

A brace of house-ads for the entire New Direction Line segues into Ingels illustrated mystery ‘The Sheba’ with a young sea captain taking to the bitter end his vendetta against a sailing ship he believes wants to kill him. Krigstein then realises revolutionary France for us as aristocratic rival siblings in the King’s navy ruthlessly vie for prominence and position until the events of 1789 engulf them both with lethal results in ‘Inheritance’…

Krigstein’s cover for #5 (June/July 1955) precedes Crandall’s gorgeous re-examination of US patriotic icon ‘Jean Lafitte’, before another missives-packed ‘Scuttlebutt’ leads to Wessler & Ingels’ ‘Rag Doll’, wherein a sullen brute on an 1810 four-master repels a pirate raid almost singlehandedly, simply to reclaim the childhood totem hiding his darkest secret and greatest shame…

Jack Oleck scripts Krigstein on ‘Salvage’ as ruthless seaborne profiteers learn a nasty lesson about humanity, after which snippets of sea-based new stories are recycled in prose piece ‘Breakers on the Shore’, prior to Evans closing the issue with ‘The Keg’: a sinister yet uplifting saga of survival…

Krigstein’s stunning cover for penultimate issue #6 segues into Crandall’s chilling 17th century-set saga of plunder, murder and brain-shattering guilt as a drunken derelict details how he is cursed by treasures ‘Fit for a King’. Scuttlebutt letters lead to Wessler & Evans’ account of a junior officer deranged by denial of promotion and what he does to become ‘The Skipper’ before Ingels limns the story of a merciless seal trapper who destroys an arctic village’s food supply and is driven ‘Fur Crazy’…

Sir Francis Drake’s prose biography ‘Sailor for Queen Bess’ precedes Davis’ tale of South Pacific schooner master Jonathan Wade whose favourite disciplinary tactic is casting men adrift in an open boat. His inevitable breakdown leads to justice when he too is lost in ‘Solitary’…

Evans drafted the iconic last cover and Crandall told his final tale here as warring corsair captains Kemp and Valdez became ‘Partners’ in piracy just long enough to get really, truly rich… before inevitably betraying each other.

Text tale ‘Prologue’ follows a trainee submariner’s last test exercise before Wessler & Krigstein visit 1777’s New England, where a British fleet determined to take Saratoga is lured to destruction ‘Up the River’ by a terrain-savvy farmer.

Incessantly harassed by his literal fishwife spouse, a weary, poverty-stricken fishing boat skipper does a selfless good deed and is blessed with ‘John’s Reward’ in a wry, domestic drama drawn by Ingels, after which more postal praise in ‘Scuttlebutt’ leads to one final foray from Evans as ‘Temptation’ finds venerable Captain Dover and his young chief officer aboard a Charleston packet boat. Of course, a once-in-lifetime cargo of $2 million in gold and jewels would turn most heads and suspicion quickly leads to a bad life choice…

Every page here has been restored from the masterful colour guides of original colourist Marie Severin, resulting – with modern reproduction techniques – in a sequence of graphic poems of unsurpassed beauty, whilst original house ads and commercial pages from the period tantalise in a way no others could, completing a nostalgic experience unlike any other.

The New Direction was a last hurrah for the kind of literate, mature comics Gaines wanted to publish. When they failed, he concentrated on Mad magazine and satire’s gain was American comics’ loss. Now you can vicariously relive those times and trends, and I strongly suggest that whether you are an aged EC Fan-Addict or nervous newbie, this is a book no aficionado can afford to miss. Why not dig deep and secure these timeless treasures, Me Hearties?
THE EC ARCHIVES: PIRACY® & © 1954, 1955, 2019 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction © 2019 Grant Geissman.

Posted on

Frank Robbins’ Johnny Hazard: Volume One – the Newspaper Dailies 1944-1946



By Frank Robbins with an introduction by Daniel Herman (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-004-8 (HB/Digital edition)

Johnny Hazard was a newspaper strip created in the style and manner of Terry and the Pirates, but in many ways this steely-eyed hero most resembles – and indeed predates – Milton Caniff’s second masterwork Steve Canyon. Unbelievably, until 2011 this stunningly impressive, enthralling adventure strip had never been comprehensively collected in archival volumes – at least not in English – although selected highlights had appeared in magazines like Pioneer Comics, Dragon Lady Press Presents and the Pacific Comic Club.

Boston born, Franklin Robbins (9th September 1917 – 28th November 1994) was an artistic prodigy who shone from early on. At age nine he was awarded a scholarship to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and at 15, moved to New York City to attend the National Academy of Design on a Rockefeller grant. Skilled, inventive and prolific as both painter and graphic artist, he freelanced continually, even working with Edward Trumbull on the legendary murals for the NBC building and Radio City Music Hall.

Robbins created graphics for RKO Pictures, worked in advertising and magazine illustrations but never stopped painting, with work shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art and Walker Art Gallery, although he found his perfect medium of expression when invited to take over a top comic strip…

Even whilst relentlessly creating a full seven days of newspaper strips, he exhibited work at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Annual show and – after ending his comics career – retired to Mexico to end his days with a brush in his hand.

The truth is that comics changed Robbins’ life. He was a brilliant natural cartoonist whose unique artistic and lettering styles lent themselves equally to adventure, comedy and super-heroic tales, whilst his expansive raconteur’s gifts made him one of the best writers over three generations.

He first found popular fame in 1939 by taking over aviation strip Scorchy Smith from Bert (The Sandman) Christman, who had left America to fight with the Flying Tigers in China. Robbins thrived in the role and created a Sunday page for the feature in 1940.

The groundbreaking feature had been originated by John Terry before the astounding Noel Sickles replaced him: revolutionising it and – with Milton Caniff – inventing a new impressionistic style of narrative art to reshape the way comics were drawn and perceived .

Robbins remained until 1944 and was then offered high-profile Secret Agent X-9. Instead, he devised his own lantern-jawed, steely-eyed man of action.

A tireless and prolific worker, even whilst producing the daily and Sunday Hazard (with a separate storyline for each), Robbins continued freelancing as an illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post, Look, Life and a host of other mainstream magazines. He also tried comic books for the first time when Johnny Hazard won his own title in 1948-1949, just as superheroes began being supplanted by he-men, gangsters and monsters…

Robbins tried again in 1968: quickly becoming a key contributor as both artist and writer on Superboy, The Flash and The Atom, as well as a regular contributor to humour mag Plop! and DC’s mystery and war anthologies. He particularly excelled on Batman, Batgirl and Detective Comics where, with Neal Adams, he created Man-Bat, before following Michael Kaluta as artist on The Shadow.

Moving to Marvel in the 1970s, Robbins concentrated on drawing a variety of titles including Captain America, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Morbius, The Man from Atlantis, Human Fly, Power Man and The Invaders – which he co-created with Roy Thomas.

When Johnny Hazard launched on Monday June 5th 1944, he was an aviator in the US Army Air Corps. When hostilities ceased, he briefly became a freelance charter pilot and spy before settling into the of a globe-girdling, troubleshooting mystery-solver: a modern day Knight Errant. The strip ended in 1977: one more victim of diminishing panel-sizes and the move towards simplified, thrill-free, family-friendly gag-a-day graphic fodder to frame small-ads. In its time it was syndicated in nine different languages in thousands of newspapers across the world, and even scored a residency in 1950s British weekly Rocket.

This fabulous hardcover/digital series – reproduced from original King Features proofs – at long last re-presents the definitive magnum opus in fitting form: a monochrome, landscape format archival collection of the first 2 years (covering June 5th 1944 to November 11th 1945), resurrecting the Amazing Aviator in followers’ hearts and hopefully finding new fans.

The action begins with a selection of those 1948 comic book covers and an informative ‘Introduction: Frank Robbins and Johnny Hazard’ by Daniel Herman before we meet the man himself in ‘The Escape’.

Here, the reader meets coolly capable flyer Lt. Johnny Hazard and his pals Loopy and Scotty as – having escaped from a German POW camp – they break into a Nazi air field to steal a bomber and fly home. Fast-paced, sharp-tongued and utterly gung-ho, the yarn introduces a cunning, charming, happy-go-lucky lout, insouciantly ruthless and prepared at every stage to risk his own freedom and life if it means killing a few more of the enemy and sabotaging the German war effort.

His saga truly begins with the 5th July episode as the liberated and again ready-for-duty airman touches base with friendly civilians only to meet feisty, headstrong and dedicated war photographer ‘Brandy’ during an air raid. All sorts of sparks fly as a series of spectacular events continually push them together and ultimately passionate fury and disgust on both sides turns to something else amidst all the deadly missions and flaming firepower.

The romantic turning point comes when Brandy impetuously parachutes into occupied territory to get a perfect shot and Hazard – hating himself every moment – goes after her…

The strip could not keep up with the fast-moving events after D-Day (the real world Allies invaded “Fortress Europa” the day after Johnny Hazard debuted) and third story arc ‘Sun Tan and General Mariwana’ – opening on September 11th 1944 – saw the hero’s squadron transferred to the Pacific Theatre of Operations to reinforce the battle against Japan. Through ingenious means Brandy inveigles herself into the picture as recently promoted Captain Hazard and his crew undertake a top-secret mission couriering a Chinese resistance leader back to her people.

Enigmatic Sun Tan is both staggeringly beautiful and lethally dangerous… and the Japanese Secret Service’s top target. Her leaked intentions spark a byzantine assassination plot wherein an experimental tracking device is hidden in Brandy’s camera gear during a refuelling stopover in Iran…

The architect of the plot is Colonel Mariwana: a pilot disfigured in a previous clash with the freedom fighter. His maniacally relentless pursuit costs him his command but does succeed in bringing down Hazard’s plane in the Himalayas. Ultimately, the grim episode of revenge leads to mass-murder and desecration of temples before honour is avenged. The mission is completed, but at a punishing cost…

A new year reinforced the darker tone as January 31st 1945 opened the saga of ‘Colonel Kiri’, as Hazard sets up shop on an embattled army air base under constant assault by Japanese forces on the front line of occupied China. It also introduces ace wingman Captain “The Admiral” Slocum: last in an unbroken line of valiant patriotic mariners, but reduced to defending his country in the skies since his debilitating sea sickness prevents him from serving afloat like a true warrior…

The Americans are hard-pressed, targeted by a secret Japanese installation decimating the region. When Brandy is shot down while helping to evacuate Chinese refugees, she is sheltered by farmers who disguise her as one of them. She meets malign war criminal Kiri when he claims her as a “comfort woman” and triggers his fate by freeing recently captured Hazard and Slocum, who spectacularly sabotage the ghost base. In the chaos, carnage and confusion, the Americans steal a Japanese tank and head for their own lines…

The closing chapter here is a deft and delicious tribute to the characters of Damon Runyon, embodied in displaced, pool-addicted, New York gunsel ‘Side-Pocket Sam’ (August 13th to November 11th 1945).

As our heroes enjoy the destructive capabilities of their new ride they almost accidentally capture a major prize. High command officer General Ishigaki and his glamorous French “assistant” Mademoiselle Touché aren’t quick or smart enough to escape the fleeing Yanks, and none of them are able to avoid the army of Chinese bandits who scoop them up and deliver them to their slick Yankee boss.

Side-Pocket Sam is debonair, charming but utterly amoral. He knows one of his “guests” carries Japan’s failsafe game plan for World War III and – once it’s his – plans to make the deal of his life…

Tragically, he’s underestimated his enemies and his friends, enabling Johnny, Brandy and the Admiral to save the day and head for safety…

Sharp, snappy and devilishly funny repartee in the style of movies like Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday and Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night is a hallmark of these rapid fire yarns, some of the greatest comic strips in history, and that in itself can present a few problems for modern readers.

Contemporary attitudes to sexuality, gender and particularly race are far from what we find acceptable – or should even tolerate – today. That situation is further compounded by an understandably fervent patriotic tone: equal parts pure jingoism and government-sponsored morale boosting.

Every contemporary-based feature of the era participated in the war effort by shaping its content accordingly, and terms like “Jap”, “Nip”, “Kraut” and many different forms of “othering” were common parlance in both movies and comics – the two main forms of popular entertainment. These slurs became a character-defining shorthand, used without consideration and thus an indelible facet of national speech and behaviour for decades to follow.

We know better now – at least most of us do – but must accept and understand that hurtful and unjust as such terms are, they did exist and we’re doing history and our society a huge and dangerous disservice by ignoring, downplaying or worst of all self-censoring those terms and the attitudes that fed them.

In truth, Johnny Hazard was far less egregious than most: Robbins may have made Kiri and Mariwana contemptible villains, but the Japanese army (who had committed many verified real world atrocities) were given fair play and did not unnecessarily suffer from the worst propagandist nonsense used by the Allies to bolster a united war spirit.

Other ethnicities – like Chinese, Iranian, Tibetans and Italians – are treated with the full dignity of different but equal cultures and depicted as competent comrades in arms, not ignorant primitives in need of a white man’s saving graces. However, arch comedian Robbins clearly couldn’t resist playing mischievous games with accents, names and speech patterns that would do Benny Hill, Hogan’s Heroes or Charlie Chan (the opposite of) proud, so if you don’t think you’re capable of remaining historically detached, best to forgo those delights that have transcended time…

To be continued…

These exotic action-romances perfectly capture the mood and magic of a distant but incredibly familiar time; with cool heroes, hot dames and exceedingly intemperate bad-guys encountering exotic locales and stunning scenarios, all peppered with blistering tension, slyly mature humour and vivid, visceral excitement.

Johnny Hazard is a brilliant two-fisted thriller-strip too long forgotten, and this is your chance to remedy that.
© 2011 King Features Syndicate, Inc. ® Hearst Holdings Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

One Beautiful Spring Day


By Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-555-8 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-1-68396-588-6 (slipcased HB)

There have always been uniquely gifted, driven comics creators who defy categorisation… or even description. My picks for that elite pantheon of artisans includes Kirby, Ditko, Segar, Hergé, Herriman, Will Eisner, Osamu Tezuka, Robert Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Franquin, Frank Bellamy, Basil Wolverton, Mort Meskin, Kim Deitch, Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, Eric Bradbury, Frank Hampson, Tony Millionaire, Alex Niño, Neal Adams, Richard Corben, Wally Wood and a few others who all brought something utterly personal and universally influential to their work just beyond the reviewer’s skills (mine certainly) to elucidate, encapsulate or convey.

They are all perfect in their own way and so emphatically wonderful that no collection of praise or analysis can do them justice. You just have to read their stuff for yourself.

Arguably at the top of that distinguished heap of graphic glitterati sits Jim Woodring. It’s a position he has maintained for years and appears capable of holding for generations to come.

Woodring’s work has always been challenging, funny, spiritual, grotesque, philosophical, heartbreaking, beautiful and extremely scary. Moreover, even after reading and believing that sentence you will still be absolutely unprepared for what awaits the first time you encounter any of his books – and even more so if you’ve already seen everything he’s created.

Celebrated as a cartoonist, animator, fine artist, toy-maker and artistic Renaissance man, Woodring’s eccentric output has delighted far too small and select an audience since 1980 and his official mini-comics forays. Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Woodring suffered delusions and hallucinations as a child and regularly believed his parents wanted to kill him.

These traumas seemingly sensitized and attuned him to symbolism and pictorial expression as well as opening him to assorted philosophies and belief systems. The young lad managed his “apparitions” by drawing them as strips in the waking world where he had control of them. Overcoming problems with school, drugs and alcohol, Woodring was eventually diagnosed with autism and prosopagnosia, but by then he had a discovered the power of Art.

He turned his life around through his own determination and by the inspiration of comics masters like Kirby, Ernie Bushmiller, Gil Kane and Crumb, classical fantasists such as Pieter Brueghel, Hieronymus Bosch and particularly Salvador Dali, and the animations of the Fleischer Brothers, Tex Avery and Walt Disney.

Woodring found surcease from a lifetime of punishing dreams by pictorializing nightmares and through following Buddhism, Taoism and the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta. After working as a farm labourer, garbageman and TV cartoon animator – with occasional comics side jobs like colouring the Roy Thomas/Gil Kane adaptation of the Ring of the Nibelungs, illustrating 1997’s Smokey the Bear, Friend of the Forest, and scripting stints on Aliens and Star Wars – Woodring began fully sharing the messages from his subconscious. He had begun self-publishing his autobiographical, “autojournal” comics in 1980, and seven years later was picked up by Fantagraphics Comics and thereafter all of us…

Readers who avidly adored his groundbreaking, oneirically autobiographical magazine Jim and its notional spin-off series Frank (with graphic novel Weathercraft winning The Stranger 2010 Genius Award for Literature) were joined by fans of Tantalizing Stories, Seeing Things or more mainstream features like his Star Wars and Aliens tales for Dark Horse Comics but, always, there was the promise of greater surprises in his next story…

An accomplished storytelling technician these days, Woodring grows rather than constructs solidly surreal, abstractly authentic, wildly rational, primal cartoon universes, wherein his meticulous, clean-lined, sturdily ethereal, mannered blend of woodblock prints, R. Crumb landscapes, expressionist dreamscapes, religious art and monstrous phantasmagoria all live and play …and far too often, eat each other.

His stories follow a logical, progressional proto-narrative – often a surging, non-stop chase from one insane invention to the next – layered with multiple levels of meaning yet totally devoid of speech or words, boldly assuming the intense involvement of the reader will complete the creative circuit.

This compelling collection is available digitally but works best as the spiffy vellum-cased archival paperback or limited edition boxed hardback: each iteration a superbly recomposed compilation combining earlier segments of his constantly unfolding and refolding saga, now justifiably treated as a treasured artefact… and ideal gift…

Gathered – or maybe corralled – here are the previously-published contents of Congress of the Animals, Fran and Poochytown, all deftly rearranged and supplemented by a hundred pages of new and previously unseen material.

Set in the general environs of Woodring’s wickedly warped other place – “The Unifactor” – here is a wild, weird and welcome return to a land of constant change and intense self-examination, where all motives are suspect and all rewards should be regarded as a trap. And here cheerfully upbeat Frank goes for another exceptionally eventful walk in the sunshine…

Laminating this vertiginous vehicle with an even crueller patina is lovelorn tragedy and loss as Fran adds to the ongoing tribulations of dog-faced Frank: her own perilous perambulations of innocence lost displays pride, arrogance, casual self-deceit, smug self-absorption and inflated ego as big as her former beau’s and leads to a shattering downfall just as punishing.

Put bluntly, Fran was Frank’s wonderful girlfriend and through mishap, misunderstanding, anger and intolerance he lost her. Now, no matter what he does or wheresoever he wanders with his faithful sidekicks at his side, poor Frank just can’t make things right and perfect and good again. Through madcap chases, introspective exploration and the inevitable direly dreadful meetings and menacings in innumerable alternate dimensions, True Love takes a kicking …and all without a single word of dialogue or description.

Here, the drawn image is always king, even if the queen has gone forever – or is it just a day?

Many Woodring regulars return, as both Krazy Kat-like ingénues work things out on the run through a myriad of strange uncanny places. There are absolute mountains of bizarre, devilish household appliances, writhy clawing things, toothy tentacle things and the unspeakable Thingy-things inhabiting the distressingly logical traumic universe.

Jim Woodring’s work is not to everyone’s taste or sensibilities – otherwise why would I need to plug his work so earnestly? – and, as ever, these drawings have the perilous propensity to repeat like cucumber and make one jump long after the book has been put away, but he is an undisputed master of graphic narrative and affirmed innovator, always making new art to challenge us and himself. His is a dreamscape of affable terror and he is can make us love it and leave us hungry for more.

Are you feeling peckish yet…?
© 2022 Jim Woodring. This edition © 2022 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 14: 1963-1964


By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-970-7 (HB)

Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur premiered on Sunday February 13th 1937: a fabulous rainbow-colour weekly peek into a world where history met myth to produce something greater than both. Pioneering creator Hal Foster developed the feature after a groundbreaking and astoundingly popular run on the Tarzan of the Apes comic strip.

Prince Valiant offered action, adventure, exoticism, romance and a surprisingly high quota of laughs in its engrossing depiction of noble knights and wicked barbarians played out against a glamorised, dramatized Dark Ages backdrop. The never-ending story follows a refugee lad of royal blood, driven from ancestral Scandinavian homeland Thule who grows up to roam the world, attaining a paramount position amongst the fabled heroes of Camelot.

Foster wove his complex epic romance over decades, tracing the progress of a feral wild boy who became a paragon of chivalric virtue: knight, warrior, saviour, avenger and ultimately family patriarch through a constant storm of wild, robust and joyously witty wonderment. The restless champion visited many far-flung lands, siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes, enchanting generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

The glorious epic spawned films, an animated series and all manner of toys, games, books and collections. Prince Valiant was – and remains – one of the few adventure strips to have run continuously from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (well north of 4000 episodes and still going strong) – and, even here at the end-times of newspaper strips as an art form, it continues in more than 300 American papers and via the internet.

Foster soloed on the feature until 1971 when John Cullen Murphy (Big Ben Bolt) succeeded him as illustrator whilst the originator remained as writer and designer. That ended in 1980, when he finally retired and Cullen Murphy’s daughter Mairead took over colouring and lettering whilst her brother John assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired, since when the strip has soldiered on under the auspices of other extremely talented artists such as Gary Gianni, Scott Roberts and latterly Thomas Yeates & Mark Schultz.

This luxuriously oversized (362 x 264 mm) full-colour hardback (tragically, the series is still unavailable digitally) re-presents pages spanning January 6th 1963 to December 27th 1964, (individual Strips #1352 to 1455) and comes with all the regular bonus trimmings.

Comics scripting A-Lister Roger Stern (Superman; Avengers; Spider-Man; Doctor Strange; Incredible Hulk; Captain America) discusses and critically appraises the influential force of the newspaper strip on comic books in a picture packed Foreword ‘Swiping Mr. Foster: A Legacy in Four Colors’, offering many potent comparisons and shameless swipes, after which Brian M. Kane expands the argument about Valiant’s lasting influence in ‘Might for Right: A Code of Honor for Sentinels of Liberty’.

The erudite scholar returns at this tome’s close: spotlighting the glorious range of the master story teller in closing article ‘Land and Sea: Hal Foster’s Fine Art Paintings’ in a select gallery of land-and-seascapes, nature studies and illustrative tableau. Captivating as they are though, the real wonderment is, as ever, the unfolding epic that precedes them…

What Has Gone Before: following a failed and ruinous quest for the Holy Grail by the Round Table Knights, Valiant has compelled their return to Camelot and courtly duties. In the months that followed he visited the Great Tor at Glastonbury, met St Patrick and assisted a Papal mission from Rome building a cathedral there. Wars erupted and plots were foiled, and an extended familial rift with long-suffering wife Aleta was healed. A visit to Valiant’s homeland of Thule brought more combat and death and personal injury. With son Arn in tow, recuperation was concluded during a visit of the entire clan to Aleta’s ancestral kingdom in the Misty Isles, with Viking reiver Boltar escorting them to counter Mediterranean pirates and brigands…

At their destination, the family defeated a colonising invasion by rival ruler Thrasos during which the queen delivered twin daughters, to make Valiant a proud father of four. His peace was shattered when fleeing prisoners of war abducted Arn and his commoner pals Paul and Diane, forcing Valiant and Viking shipwright Gundar Harl, into frantic pursuit to prevent their being sold as slaves. By the time they caught up, Arn had already dealt with the problem…

Even with the crisis averted peace was impossible to find. When pilgrims bound for the Holy Land were shipwrecked on the Misty Isles, Val felt duty-bound to offer aid, and used his presence as escort to found a trade mission promoting the produce and wares of his island home. He also brought Arn, whose days of childhood indolence gave way to learning his place in the world…

Many rousing exploits marked their trail from Jaffa to the Dead Sea, Damascus to Baghdad before the pilgrimage ends in Aleppo where Boltar waits to ferry father and son back to a recovered and much wealthier Aleta. However, a brief period of glorious relaxation ends when King Arthur summons them to save Gaul from invading Goth hordes. With safe passage across Europe ended, England’s ruler needed his greatest hero carry a message to the Pope…

As Aleta’s forces secured a sea route to Albion, Valiant and Arn’s perilously mission drew much action but ultimately no satisfaction from the embattled Pontiff.  Undaunted, Valiant devised an alternative trade route between the Holy Father and still-imperilled Christian Britain: visiting what become Spain and France, encountering a lost land where monks were guarded by monsters, dodging Goths and ousting a usurper whilst reinstating the true ruler…

By the time the scattered family are reunited in England, the country endures a new kind of assault, as a charismatic priest is manipulated by scurrilous scholar attendants/business managers to foment a religious revolution…

After cleverly ending the near-insurrection, Val rejoined his family at the site of a church under construction near the fens where he grew up. The lure of his sire’s past beguiles Arn, who explored the boggy waterways and was soon hopelessly lost. Over tense weeks, he experienced the same privations his father had, before being rescued.

Carrying huge wealth destined for Arthur’s coffers, the family thankfully took ship for Camelot, unaware that greedy, ambitious eyes were watching…

The illuminating wonders here resume with those eyes fatally blinking. Opportunistic fellow voyager Ethwald abducts Arn by subterfuge and holds him to ransom for the treasure Valiant is safeguarding for the king. Ethwald fears the knight’s prowess but feels assured a father will do nothing to endanger his heir. He grievously underestimates the murderous wiles of enraged mother Aleta…

The majority part of this two-year tome deals with the anticipation and results of a mass invasion by Angles and Saxons, but the slowly-building saga is comprised of many shorter episodes – adventures both tragic and even broadly comedic – in its ever-expanding tapestry.

After returning to Camelot, the family are feted until Valiant is again called to defend the realm. Arn meanwhile steadily advances from Page to Novice and begins official combat training. Soon he is made a Batchelor-at-Arms and, when the vassal king of Wales dies, is drawn into war.

The former Prince Cidwic hungers for fame, glory and riches, and – deploying his Welshmen and a mercenary Pictish and Caledonian warband – besieges Carlisle in an attempt to annexe Scottish territories. The city is defended by a small contingent of cavalry and engineers led by Sir Kay, but as Arthur prepares a rescue fleet to aid them, Valiant forms and leads a unit of swift-riding messengers from the Novices and Batchelors to keep lines of communication open. The youngest recruit is Arn…

When Cidwic regroups and fortifies his position, the boy plays a crucial role in supporting Kay’s forces and the would-be conqueror’s eventual downfall. As diplomacy and reconciliation take over, Arthur rewards the lad with more responsibility: befriending new King Cuddock, Cidwic’s 12-year old son. As they bond and duty grows into true friendship, the king’s uncle Ruddah seeks to frame Arn for murdering the boy king, and learns to his eternal regret that youth does not equate to stupidity…

The plot foiled, Valiant and Arn make their slow way back to Court, partaking of the many local jousts and tourneys that filled the autumn season and served to keep fighting men in peak form. As they compete they encounter a pair of impoverished, less than noble knights whose response to defeat leaves much to be desired and exposes the sordid underbelly of professional jousting…

Upon reaching Camelot, a joyous family reunion almost ends in shame and bloodshed when cunning schemer Modred attempts to traduce Aleta’s honour and reputation by trapping her and Launcelot in a compromising situation. His vile scheme exposed, the villain flees and encounters a Saxon war party infiltrating the region around the Vale of the White Horse. The long dreaded war with the invaders is starting to happen…

War-wise Arthur deems them to be scouting the land and sends his best men to observe them, with Arn and other knights-in-training as messengers. Sadly, Owen is still starry-eyed and vainglorious, and his inexperience leads to Arn’s capture. Thankfully he is sharp-witted and well-disguised: convincing the Saxons he is a son of infamous pirate Boltar, while turning his situation to England’s advantage by learning the plans of the vast invasion force marshalling overseas. Of course his actions suggest to the keenly watching rescue party that the son of valiant has turned traitor before the boy orchestrates his escape and reports back to Arthur…

Although moving to a war footing, life at Court continues largely as before and leads to personal crisis when a grand tournament intended to hone the fighting spirit of the nation’s champions sparks intrigue, and murder…

Visiting his kinsman Launcelot, Count Brecey of Brittany finds Aleta most pleasing and determines to make her his. That she is a queen with four children he can profitably marry off when he marries her is a huge additional benefit. Used to taking whatever he wants, the overprivileged coward operates through his assassin Hugo, but that deadly killer proves no match for Valiant and his mighty warhorse Arvak, and as a web of sinister schemes unravels, Brecey is forced to abduct Aleta and run for the coast. Thanks to the efforts of his victim and her hotly-pursuing spouse and first son, the Count doesn’t get far and – when caught – compounds his villainy with the worst kind of cowardice…

As summer approaches, Arthur’s preparations intensify, and the entire Court awaits news of a vast fleet of Angles, Jutes, Danes and Saxons. Tensions mount as word comes of established colonies previously defeated by and sworn to Arthur, recant their oaths of allegiance and pick up the swords they had abandoned for peace and acceptance. The lure of imminent plunder is everywhere and the King is forced to remind is noble subjects of their promises to supply fighting men when the nation needs them.

Valiant and Gawain are despatched to Cornwall where three local kings are at war with each other and “unable” to honour their word, whilst Arn travels to North Wales where his friend Cuddock is genuinely embattled, plagued by raids of marauding Scotti. He will soon discover, the raiders are sponsored by the Saxon overlord as a distracting diversion…

Whilst one Cornish ruler is steadfast and readily provides promised forces for the army, weak, ambitious and greedy Kings Grundemede and Alrick-the-Fat need a sharp lesson in realpolitik and practical conjuring (learned long ago when young Valiant was attached to the wizard Merlin) before they grudgingly comply…

Their missions successful both the Cornish and Welsh embassages return with their new reinforcements to Camelot to make final preparations for the encroaching Saxon invasion. Thanks to Arn’s prior intelligence warlord’s colonising raiders head for Badon Hill, the perfect site for Arthur’s stout defence…

This astounding clash takes seven weeks to tell, but at the end England is barred to them for generations and the victorious armies return to their own lands. Switching from epic action to wry romantic comedy, Foster then plays with his stars as Aleta and the visiting queen of Alrick-the-Fat indulge in combat matchmaking; each seeking to wed heroic Sir Charles of Cornwall to their respective noblewoman protégés. However, their escalating wiles and schemes make a catastrophic impression on Aleta’s twins Karen and Valeta, who apply what they’ve seen to their own relentless pursuit of boy-king Cuddock, recuperating from nobly-earned wounds and far too naive to endure being the subject of the girls’ first crush…

Employing the clever conceit of lost historical scrolls, the narrative jumps forward some months and resumes with Valiant’s entire family en route to the ancestral kingdom of Thule with bombastic brigand Boltar. The voyage is interrupted by news of marauders assembled by Skogul Oderson, who has united many tribes into a formidable force to ravage Thule.

As the year ends, the far northern chieftain is spectacularly beaten. He never counted on Valiant and wilderness scout Garm organising the scattered selfish homesteaders into a lethally effective guerrilla force who slowly whittle away the raider’s numerical advantage through guile, lethally inventive use of terrain and psychological warfare…

The final instalment here presages even greater adventure as Boltar’s son and Arn discuss a return to the lost continent they had visited: a land latterly dubbed “the New World.”

To Be Continued…

A mind-blowing panorama of visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a tremendous procession of boisterous action, exotic adventure and grand romance; blending epic fantasy with dry wit and broad humour, soap opera melodrama with dark violence. Lush, lavish and captivating lovely, it is an indisputable landmark of comics fiction and something no true fan should miss.
All comics © 2015 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties © 2016 their respective creators or holders. This edition © 2016 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Buz Sawyer volume 4: Zazarof’s Revenge


By Roy Crane, with Henry G. “Hank” Schlensker & Edwin Granberry (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-975-2 (HB)

Modern comics evolved from newspaper strips: pictorial features that were, until relatively recently, utterly ubiquitous. Hugely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as a weapon to secure sales and increase circulation, strips seemed to find their only opposition in blinkered local editors who often resented the low brow art form, which cut into potential ad space and regularly drew complaint letters from cranks…

It’s virtually impossible for us today to understand the overwhelming allure and power of the comic strip – especially from the Great Depression to the end of the 1950s. With limited television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comics sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. “The Funnies” were universally enjoyed recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality of graphic sagas and humorous episodes.

From the start comedy was king; hence our terms “Funnies” and “Comics”. From these jest and stunt beginnings – blending silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and vaudeville antics – came an entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting in April 1924, Washington Tubbs II was a comedic, gag-a-day strip which evolved into a globe-girdling adventure serial. For years, Crane spun addictive high-quality pictorial yarns – until his introduction of moody swashbuckler Captain Easy ushered in the age of adventure strips with the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929.

This led to a Sunday colour page which was possibly the most compelling and visually imaginative of the entire Golden Age of Newspaper strips (see Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volumes 1-4). Improving almost minute by minute, it benefited from Crane’s relentless quest for perfection. His fabulously imaginative compositional masterpieces attained a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The influence of his pages can be seen in the works of near-contemporaries like Hergé, giants-in-waiting such as Charles Schulz or comic book masters Alex Toth, John Severin and many more.

The material was obviously as much fun to make as to read. In fact, Crane’s cited reason for surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA/United Features Syndicate’s abrupt and arbitrary diktat that all strips would henceforward be produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate their being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated.

They just didn’t lift the artist any more so he stopped making them. At the height of his powers, Crane walked away from the astounding Captain Easy Sunday page; concentrating on the daily feature until his contract expired in 1943 whereupon he left United Features: lured away by that grandee of strip poachers William Randolph Hearst.

The result was an aviator strip set in then-ongoing World War II: Buz Sawyer.

Where Wash Tubbs was a brave but largely comedic Lothario and his pal Easy a surly, tight-lipped he-man, John Singer “Buz” Sawyer was a joyous amalgam of both: a handsome, big-hearted, affable country-boy who went to war because his country needed him…

Buz was a fun-loving, skirt-chasing, musically-inclined pilot daily risking his life with his devoted gunner Rosco Sweeney: a bluff, brave ordinary Joe – and one of the most effective comedy foils ever created.

The wartime strip was – and remains – a marvel of authenticity: portraying not just action and drama of the locale and situation but crucially also capturing the quiet, dull hours of training, routine and desperate larks between the serious business of killing and staying alive. When the war ended the action-loving duo – plus fellow pilot/girl-chasing competitor Chili Harrison – all went looking for work that satisfied their thirst for action and adventure…

Crane had mastered popular entertainment tastes, blending adventure with drama and sophisticated soap opera, all leavened with raucous comedy in a seamless procession of unmissable daily episodes. He and his team of assistants – which over decades comprised co-writers Ed “Doc” Granberry, Clark Haas and Al Wenzel, and artists Hank Schlensker, Joel King, Ralph Lane, Dan Heilman, Hi Mankin & Bill Wright – soldiered on under relentless deadline pressure, producing an authentic and exotic funny romantic thriller rendered in his stark signature style as well as a prerequisite full-colour Sunday page.

This fourth stout and sturdy hardcover edition is a mostly monochrome tome re-presenting more magnificent strip shenanigans starring a dynamic All-American good guy, but now Buz is just another fading war hero: albeit admittedly a globetrotting, troubleshooting one and a newlywed husband to boot.

Having – after much kerfuffle, procrastination, intrigue, bloodshed, sexy skulduggery and delay – finally married extremely understanding childhood sweetheart Christy Jameson, our clean-cut boy-next-door then dragged her into his regularly perilous and frequently lethal working world as prime problem-solver for Frontier Oil: a company with fingers in many international pies and one most modern readers will find hard to consider “the Good Guys”…

These strips – made in collaboration with Granberry & Hank Schlensker – cover the societally turbulent period spanning July 1949 to June 1952, as America leaned hard into its dreams of Exceptionalism and enjoyed domestic boom times while embracing it’s self-appointed role as the World’s Policeman. Crane and his creative laboured long, hard, often acrimonious hours to produce each daily strip; all beguilingly rendered in black-&-white through Crane’s masterly techniques employing line art and craftint (a tricky mechanical monochrome patterning effect which added greys and halftones to produce miraculous depths and moods to the superb base drawing) but the toll was heavy on personnel and feelings.

Before the ten self-contained tales here kick off, heavily-illustrated preliminary prose piece ‘The Three of Us are a Team’ (‘remarks at the New York Banshee Society’ from transcripts donated to Syracuse University) revisits Crane’s acceptance speech on winning the 1961 Silver Lady Award as determined by a collation of contemporary communications executives. Effusive and reminiscent, it sees him give his partners all the credit for the hard work in crafting the feature…

Buz Sawyer began on November 1st 1943 and ran until 1989. Crane officially retired with the April 21st 1977 episode (dying on July 7th) while it continued under Granberry, Schlensker, Haas, Wenzel and John Celardo until cancelation on October 7th 1989.

The story resumes with an example of contemporary trends…

Chimpanzees were becoming a popular story addition for most media as the 1940s ended (just look at movies or comic books) and ‘Monkey Business’ finds our happy couple back in the USA after an African honeymoon (of sorts) which left the them owners of a young chimp named Junior…

Anticipating decades of future sitcoms, the tale details how Junior plays up during a critical dinner party/holiday weekend held by Sawyer’s boss Colonel Harrison but the resulting debacle at a swish soiree on Harrison’s palatial estate fails to impress potential business partner Mr Tidley Bragg. A cheeky excuse for manic screwball comedy and social gaffes, the chaos generates explosive hilarity, humiliation and Buz’s sacking before fate intervenes to show everyone that Junior was a boisterous blessing in disguise…

Swiftly rehired, Buz heads south, encountering ‘Revolution’ (September 19th 1949 – January 18th 1950) in a Central American republic. Frontier Oil was seeking an oil concession, but apparently their agent – Barstain – had played a double game. Before long, Buz is using his war experiences to lead a counter revolution to save democracy…

January 20th- June 17th offers a grimly chilling change of pace as ‘Buz Alone’ sees Christy and her husband on a well-earned vacation at a Florida honeymoon cottage. Tragically, danger is never far from them, and the brief idyll is shattered after a nature-watching boat trip leaves them stranded on a sandbar with no food, water, shelter or prospect of rescue.

A true champion, Buz survives a gruelling swim to the mainland and returns in a seaplane only to find three men on the sandbar and no trace of Christy. When he gets agitated, he’s accused of making it all up and – if she ever existed – doing away with the woman…

Beaten up when he tries to search their boat, Buz is left to pick up the pieces and track down Christy. In his hunger for clues, he is manipulated by a woman seeking a new husband – and someone to remove her current one – before eventually clashing with vengeful old enemy Harry Sparrow. At no time does he ever get near his missing better half…

While he flounders, a comely, capable lady with no memory is picked up on the mainland before losing herself amidst the sleazy local underworld. With the police now assisting, Buz sets out on the fresh trail, aided by trusty pal Sweeney. After more trauma and tribulation, Christy is found, but it’s not the girl Buz married yet – not by a long shot…

A return to lighter intrigue and enterprise comes when spoiled debutante ‘Diana’ (June 19th – November 24th) makes Daddy find her a job. Unluckily for Buz, Remington Chase is a bigwig at Frontier and his bored hellion of a daughter likes the idea of being Sawyer’s secretary – or at least the idea of Sawyer…

Even debonair Chili Harrison can’t sway her aim and when Buz “escapes” into work – despatched to Iron Curtain nation Sovmania just when he and Christy began looking at homes to buy – Miss Chase infuriatingly follows. Negotiating with the Soviets is tricky enough, but when it’s a US corporation demanding the communists hand back wells and refineries they illegally annexed and expropriated, Sawyer knows he can’t win and may end up mysteriously deceased. It’s no surprise to find Diana draws attention and danger like a magnet, but her response when the oppressors decide to arrest them is a life-changing revelation.

Spectacular spy games give way to a lighter interlude when Buz reunites with Christy and they babysit a parrot named ‘William Shakespeare’ (November 24th 1950-January 6th 1951). The beloved baby of a poetry professor, with an astounding talent for repeating what he hears, the bird proves to be even more trouble that their chimp was…

Clearly qualified in policing difficult customers, Buz is then assigned to locate a wandering landowner with 6,000 prime acres to lease. ‘Wish Jones’ (January 8th to April 19th) is old, homely, rich, romantic, suggestible and (suddenly) married to exotic dancer Taffy Fawn. However, he hasn’t signed the contracts Frontier needs, leaving Buz playing catch across all the love nests of the South Pacific. The fixer’s greatest asset is Taffy herself, who never thought wedded bliss and matchless wealth included so much sand, birds or bugs. His biggest problem is that even desert island paradises have crooks, radios and newspapers…

Another episode of animal husbandry catastrophes – this time a dachshund and a voracious baby heron – leads implausibly to a sojourn in ‘Alaska’ (26th April – August 22nd) with Sawyer undercover as John Singer.

While seeking a geologist’s killers, he’s also acting as courier for the Government in a serious and solid spy escapade worthy of Alfred Hitchcock with abductions, misreported deaths, murderous sailors, devious twins, fake relatives and hidden uranium reserves all in play, with Buz’s survival skills pushed to the limit before his mission is accomplished.

In dire need of relaxation, the reunited Mr & Mrs Sawyer trust to fate and pluck a name out of an atlas for a vacation. They land in a lakeside resort boasting peace and quiet but dreary ‘Doldrums’ (August 23rd – September 29th) is soon a pandemonium of envy and excitement as bored couples seek to spice up their passionless lives by emulating the infamous, glamorous newcomers…

Eponymous epic ‘Zazarof’s Revenge’ spans October 1st 1951-January 10th 1952, opening with a global sabotage campaign against Frontier, leading Buz to Switzerland where there’s no doubt of mystery man Igor Zazarof‘s guilt, but apparently no way to find or face him.

Ultimately, persistence and charm break down the villain’s obvious pawn Neri, whilst all attempts to bribe, frame, frighten or kill the American fail, leading to an extended and brutal duel to the death on a mountain peak as the only way to deal with Sawyer…

We conclude for now with home-grown bad men ‘The Hawks Boys’ (January 10th – June 19th) terrorising and sabotaging a Frontier installation in Utah. As assault escalates to murder, Buz discovers why the Hawks’ – already well-paid for the oil rights to their land – are doing everything they can to force the company to pull out. What could be worth more than oil and what won’t they do to keep their secret?

Completing this vivid vintage venture is a wry glimpse of Crane’s early days. With text written by Jeet Heer, ‘A Cartoonist’s Travels’ offers a brief gallery of cartoons about bums, hoboes, tramps and voyagers, with the artist drawing upon his own youthful experiences as an itinerant bindlestiff and drifter…

This a sublime slice of compelling comics wonder is an ideal way to discover or reconnect with Crane’s second magnum opus. Bold, daring, funny and astonishingly enthralling, these episodic exploits influenced generations of modern cartoonists, illustrators, comics creators and storytellers. The series ranks amongst the very greatest strip cartoon features ever created: always delivering comics tale-telling unforgettable, unmissable and utterly irresistible. Try it and see for yourself.
Buz Sawyer: Zazarof’s Revenge © 2016 Fantagraphics Books. All Buz Sawyer strips © 2016 King Features Syndicate, Inc. All other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

Posted on

The Cisco Kid™ 


By Rod Reed & José Luis Salinas (Ken Pierce Books) 

ISBN: 0-912277-00-9 (PB) 

As with so many classic mass-media heroes, The Cisco Kid began as charismatic villain. Created by O. Henry for short prose tale “The Caballero’s Way”, he first appeared in Everybody’s Magazine in July 1907, and was included in the author’s anthological collection Heart of the West, which was published in the same year. 

Gone but not forgotten, The Kid returned and was gradually rehabilitated via a series of 27 films spanning 1914-1950; a radio serial running from 1942-1956; a one shot comic book in 1944 and – most crucially – a TV series (the first ever shot in colour) comprising 156 episodes, which spanned 1950-1956. Those latter media milestones in particular spawned a Dell Comics series (41 issues from 1950-1958) and informed a spectacular and beautiful comic strip licensed by King Features Syndicate which ran in numerous newspapers and across the world from 1951 to 1968. 

The hero is a dashing Mexican roaming the American west like the Lone Ranger, righting wrongs for no appreciable reason or reward. His comedy sidekick Pancho is fat, jolly, and eternally anxious, but also smart, deceptively brave and extremely capable: a rare example of positive depictions of Latino characters at that time or even by most modern examples… 

In the end, every effort of so many creators across the mass-communications divide couldn’t much help as increasingly polarized views about minorities pretty much cemented a certain view of Mexican characters in American public opinion in the 1960s and 1970, but at least our guys always were heroes, not low-grade villains, and lazy language stereotyping was kept to an absolute minimum.  

Cisco and Pancho spoke floridly, but never like Speedy Gonzales…  

This strip feature, like so many beautiful examples of western adventuring, has been all but forgotten today, but holds up remarkably well in terms of modern sensibilities …and as I’ve indicated, it is so very, very beautifully drawn.  

This impossible-to-find collection comes courtesy of pioneering comics archivist Ken Pierce, whose one-man campaign to preserve the best of newspaper strips throughout the 1970 and 1980s (Abbie an’ Slats; Axa; Danielle; Fred Kida’s Valkyrie) resulted this slim single volume of monochrome daily episodes, fronted by writer Rod Reed’s evocative Introduction. Reed was a veteran golden age scripter whose best work was for Fawcett and Quality Comics, and in the five stories re-presented here (covering January 17th to May 4th 1950), he ingeniously blends traditional family entertainment/action with wry wit and a devilishly wicked sense of the absurd… 

The writing is top notch but the true joy comes from the stunning draughtsmanship and graphic empathy of the illustrator. José Luis Salinas (February 11, 1908-January10, 1985) was Argentinian, beginning as an advertising artist before moving into comics El Tony and Paginas de Columba. In 1936 he created his first strip. Hernán el Corsario in Patoruzu was followed by many more classic adventure escapades. In 1949, he began working for American enterprise King Features Syndicate, who eventually partnered him with Reed. Their partnership – and the strip – lasted eighteen years, and apparently they never ever met or even corresponded even once… 

Individual storylines very much mirror TV episodes of any western of the era – like Hopalong Cassidy, Champion the Wonder Horse; Gunsmoke, Bonanza or the aforementioned Lone Ranger – and all the usual tropes are in play, but thanks to Reed’s deft touches and Salinas’ skill, what might to us seem cliched, still sparkles with verve and vivacity… 

The dramas launches with ‘The First Story’ as the heroes help feisty rancher Lucy Baker uncover a swindle perpetrated by the local judge. His malfeasance is initially uncovered because he won’t allow “the wimmen-folk” vote on his new dam project, but all too soon it devolves into murder plots, frantic horse-chases and plenty of gunplay… 

‘The Deadly Stage Ride’ then sees the nomads save a failing stage coach company by replacing the driver and shotgun guard. Even if they had known sinister mastermind The Jagged Dagger was behind the campaign of sabotage and robbery, it would not have stopped them doing the right thing…  

Humour is paramount in ‘The Artist’ as French painter François Palette arrives, determined to capture the action and glamour of the Wild West and its great heroes – like Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and The Cisco Kid – only to become the target of a fugitive Barbary Bill: a bullying thug who didn’t like his portrait… 

The Latin Lawgivers stumble across a dying man and carry out his deathbed wish to save an innocent man from execution in ‘The Harmonica Mistake’ before this delicious but dated delight closes down with a heartwarming mystery as Cisco and Pancho aid a poor widow and her son when outlaws kidnap the family pet. It seems there’s lost loot somewhere which old Spot can track in ‘Treasure Dog’…    

Swashbuckling thrills in the flamboyant style of Errol Flynn and Gene Kelly, combining the character dynamics of Don Quixote (& Sancho Panza ) with Holmes & Watson and Batman and Robin, these merry light-adventure yarns are so very moreish, and it’s well past time one of the specialist archival outfits like Hermes Press or IDW brought them all back to us… 

The Cisco Kid™ © 1983 Doubleday & Company. Editorial content and arrangement © 1983 Rod Reed. All rights reserved.