Comic Strip Classics – Page 23

September 11, 2016September 7, 2016

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 12: 1959-1960

By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-876-2

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

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, dramatised Dark Ages backdrop. The weekly-unfolding epic followed the life of a refugee lad driven from his ancestral Scandinavian homeland of Thule who grew up to roam the world, attaining a paramount position amongst the heroes of fabled Camelot.

Foster wove his complex epic romance over many 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, thereby enchanting generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

The strip spawned films, an animated series and all manner of toys, games, books and collections. Prince Valiant was – and is – one of the few adventure strips to have run continuously from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (more than 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 latest luxuriously oversized (362 x 264 mm) full-colour hardback re-presents pages spanning January 4^th 1959 to 25^th December 1960 (individual pages #1143-1246) but before proceeding, clears the palate for adventure with Neal Adams’ erudite, illustration-strewn Introduction ‘Learning to Love Hal Foster’.

At the other end of this titanic tome Brian M. Kane continues to explore the master’s commercial endeavours with a lavish exhibition of stunning colour and monochrome illustrations revealing the rugged outdoors life through ‘Hal Foster’s Advertising Art: Johnson Outboard Motors’, but captivating as they are, the real wonderment is, as ever, the unfolding epic that precedes themâ€¦

What Has Gone Before: Having brought Christianity to Thule and repelled an invasion of England by Saxons and Danes, Val was despatched by Arthur Pendragon to Cornwall to root out treacherous local kings. Helping true love find its natural course, Valiant acquired a canny new squire in the form of homely yet brilliant Alfred of Lydney. The Prince cleared up the Cornish conspiracy – almost at the cost of his sacrosanct honour – and returned to Camelot after making the acquaintance of the most beautiful horse in the worldâ€¦

Possessing the red stallion almost caused another war with the Northmen, after which Val returned to his Scandinavian homeland of Thule to reconnect with his family once more.

The reunion was brief, joyous and bittersweet, as the absent father saw how much his children had grown and realised the painful cost of a life of duty. He bid son Arn farewell as the lad was shipped off to enter the household of regal ally King Hap-Atla even as that ruler’s heir became foster-son and page to Valiant’s sire King Aguar.

Peaceful days were few and when a regal summons came from Camelot, the family again took ship. This time the call was for dutiful wife Aleta who blithely entered a hornets’ nest when aging Queen Guinevere was gravely offended by the young beauty’s popularity with the Courtiers and plotted to win an imagined war of favouritesâ€¦

Valiant was elsewhere employed, leading Arthur’s armies against Danes and Saxons occupying Kent and Sussex. With war brewing again, Val sidelined aging Alfred in favour of young, vigorous and keen martial assistants Edwin and Claudius – a kind act he would later regret, as he did his brief and costly sojourn in the thieves’ paradise called Londonâ€¦

Back in Camelot, a war of wills and clash of personalities between Queens Guinevere and Aleta was settled by most remarkable means, but Valiant still found little time for rest. His beloved friend Gawain had vanished and the trail led straight into the wilds of unruly Walesâ€¦

Employing Welsh knight Sir Ian Waldoc as guide and following an unearthly vision provided by largely-vanished mage Merlin, Valiant went westwards disguised as a troubadour, eventually fetching up at the forbidding castle of terrible King Oswick and his five beautiful daughtersâ€¦

This twelfth knight’s collation resumes as jongleur Cid ingratiates himself at Oswick’s court, offsetting suspicions by feigning a paralysing love for strong liquor whilst scouting out the location of the captive Gawain.

Valiant finds his old comrade pent in a high tower at the very top of the castle, and forms a most dangerous and ingenious scheme involving guile, subterfuge, split-second timing, daredevil acrobatics and the elder chevaliers’s uncanny knack of enchanting womenâ€¦

With Gawain free once more, the old pals and friendly rivals opt to compete in the Hamlin Garde tournament, but before they can even begin, Val falls foul of a sadistic noble named Coth whose bruised pride leads him to attempt murder most foul through vile assassins.

The monster also has intentions upon heiress Lady Alice of Hamlin, but has not noticed how much Val resembles that noble maid’s preferred suitor Kerwinâ€¦

As the tourney plays out many men fall – Coth’s hired killers less noticeably than most – and the villain’s plans to destroy Kerwin fail once Val replaces the young suitor in mortal combat against the murderous malefactorâ€¦

With justice triumphant and true love secured, Gawain and Valiant spend calm but provender-poor days roaming the vast Salisbury Plain, and the younger man revels in teaching his civilised elder the tricks peasants use to feed themselves: tactics learned whilst the Prince was a boy growing up in coastal marshes. Unimpressed, Gawain instead cajoles their way into the retinue of a Great Lady’s passing baggage-train and thus embroils them in another saga of thwarted romanceâ€¦

Impoverished Count Rathford has been forced to betroth his daughter Joan to Hume, heir to the House of Amesbridge to save his estate and dependent vassals. His headstrong child, however, has fallen in love with a lowly squire and plans to elope with him. When the â€œpeasant’sâ€ true station is revealed, however, rather than joy, Joan erupts in incandescent fury at being gulled and events take an even stranger turn after the estranged lovers both fall under Gawain’s reluctant care: the boy as his new squire and she as a far-from-devoted chattelâ€¦

Joan’s ever-increasing ire is only expended when the strange party reaches Camelot and artful Queen Aleta takes Joan under her wingâ€¦

Happy to avoid further domestic contention of any sort, Valiant undertakes a commission from King Arthur to wipe out a nest of outlaws plaguing the lands of the Earl of Lithway. Accompanied by former bandit-turned-forester Hugh the Fox, the canny Prince makes his way to the beleaguered demesne only to discover the situation is not what has been reported.

The Earl claims his tithes to Arthur were stolen by the errant woodsmen, but the men in the forest tell a different story: one of tyranny, torture, dispossession and oppressionâ€¦

Acutely aware of evil when he sees it, Val determines to set the situation aright and see justice and order return to Lithwayâ€¦

With Aleta increasingly aggrieved at Valiant’s wanderlust and neglect, tensions boil over in the apartments of the Prince of Thule, but it is not enough to stop her husband again heading out on a Royal Quest: perhaps the most crucial in Camelot’s troubled historyâ€¦

In recent years the Knights of the Round Table have become obsessed with the search for the Holy Grail. Now Arthur, seeing his best and bravest constantly lost or maimed in search of it, charges Valiant with proving once and for all whether the story of the sacred cup is fact or mythâ€¦

The search takes Val the length and breadth of the nation, consulting wise men and wizards and eventually brings him to the Mendip hills in search of an island called Avalon. En route he exposes a cave troll as a broken-limbed victim of man’s cruelty and learns the poor soul once lived in Avalon, a marshy island housing three hills, Wearyall, the Great Tor and Glastonburyâ€¦

Guided there by grateful, maimed Och, Valiant finds a Papal mission from Rome building a cathedral, and learns from a lay brother the official story of the Grail, but before he can question further the encampment is attacked by cruel raider chieftain Timmera the Terribleâ€¦

Barely fighting off the marauder’s forces, the clerics immediately begin repairing the damage caused to their holy project, but Valiant resolves to help them by ending the predator threat forever. In this he is aided by Och, who was once the raider’s body-slaveâ€¦

With the stunted man’s inside information, Val easily infiltrates Timmera’s fortress and brings down the monster’s army from within. On returning to Avalon, Valiant finds an old acquaintance from Ireland in charge of the reconstruction. The man now known as St. Patrick is happy to tell all he knows about the Holy Grail and the questor at last realises what he must tell Arthurâ€¦

Heading back, the warrior liberates a captive castle and finds time to play a splendid prank upon Gawain, but upon conferring with Arthur immediately sets off again to battle invading Angles and Saxons rather than attempt reconciliation with Aletaâ€¦

The war is brief and brutal and almost costs the prince his life. It takes a brush with near death to finally bring him and Aleta together again, and in the weeks that follow it is decided that the family will return to Thule for his recuperation. That period of painful inactivity completed, with son Arn in tow, the entire clan then head for Aleta’s ancestral kingdom in the Misty Isles, with Viking reiver Boltar providing escort to protect against the pirates of the Mediterraneanâ€¦

Sadly, even in this sunny paradise peril dogs the family as rival ruler Thrasos makes clear his intention to add Aleta’s islands to his growing empire. The new Alexander, however, has never encountered as savvy a strategist as Aleta or canny tacticians like Valiant and Boltar and his dreams of a Mediterranean empire explosively founder against the devious ploys and armed might of the northern warriors, with even the elements conspiring to send Thrasos to the dustbin of historyâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

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 shatteringly dark violence.

Lush, lavish and captivating lovely, it is an indisputable landmark of comics fiction and something no fan should miss.
Â© 2015 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties Â© 2015 their respective creators or holders. This edition Â© 2015 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

September 7, 2016September 5, 2016

Women are from Venus, Men are Idiots â€“ A Close to Home Collection

By John McPherson (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-74079-739-2

Hc: 78 pgs Andrews McMeel Publishing; 01 edition (12 Jan. 2011) Dims: 135 x 135 mm

Although in something of a decline these days, for nearly 200 years gag-panels and cartoon strips were the universal medium of wit, satire, mirth and cultural exchange.

Sadly nowadays, after centuries of pre-eminence, the cartoon has been all but erased from printed newspapers – as indeed the physical publications themselves have dwindled in shops and on shelves – but thanks to the same internet which is killing print media, many graphic gagsters and drawing dramatists have enjoyed a resurgence in an arena that doesn’t begrudge the space necessary to deliver a cartoon in all its fulsome gloryâ€¦

Moreover, no matter how we trumpet the sales of the latest hot comicbook or collection, we purveyors of sequential narrative have to admit that we can’t get anywhere near the reach of the creators of strips such as Dilbert, Prince Valiant or Doonesbury, whose daily readership might be numbered in millions, if not billions.

Mainstream cartooning remains an unmissable daily joy to a vast, frequently global readership whose requirements are quite different from those of hard-core, dedicated comic fans, or even that ever-growing base of intrigued browsers just starting to dip their toes in the sequential narrative pool.

Even those stuck-up holdouts who have pointedly â€œnever read a comicâ€ have certainly enjoyed strips or panels: a golden bounty of brief amusement demanding no commitment other than a moment’s close attention. Truth be told, it’s probably in our genesâ€¦

And because that’s the contrary nature of things, those gags now get collected in spiffy hardback books like this one (and also in online editions) to enjoy over and over againâ€¦

With that in mind, here’s a long-delayed peek at a (relatively) recent strip celebrating all the traditional values of family life – boredom, resentment, acrimony, distrust, jealousy, etc – with verve and a keen eye for the surprise spit-take and involuntary belly-laughâ€¦

Close to Home was created by John McPherson in 1992, after the mechanical design engineer and part-time cartoonist had spent a few years moonlighting: selling cartoons to periodicals as prestigious and varied as The Saturday Evening Post, Campus Life, Yankee, Christianity Today and others.

Delivered in the manner and style of Gary Larson’s The Far Side, McPherson’s daily cartoon panel was originally released through Universal Press Syndicate to 50 client papers, which has grown to 700 since the syndicate merged with online provider Uclick in 2009. The new entity – Universal Uclick – consequently absorbed United Feature Syndicate to become America’s largest Press Syndicate; marketing original print, online and mobile device material including lifestyle/opinion columns, strips, cartoons, puzzles and other content.

McPherson’s feature derives its name from its broad subject matter, casting a barbed and wickedly humorous eye on the unchanging travails which perennially hit â€œClose to Homeâ€ such as marriage, kids, employment, domestic duties, school life, sports and health. In this particular volume – one of dozens including Dangerously Close To Home, The Silence of the Lamberts and The Scourge of Vinyl Car Seats – the subject is sex and relationships, raging from the eternal battle between husbands and wives, getting back on that dating horse, boys and your daughters and the tricky hurdles of geriatric connubialityâ€¦

Grippingly grotesque, impressively irrepressible, remarkably even-handed and laugh-out-loud hilarious, Women are from Venus, Men are Idiots is a solid and rewarding example of an art form that we must not lose and one guaranteed to deliver delight over and over again to seasoned romantics who wear their scars with pride.
Â© 2010 by John McPherson. All rights reserved.

September 4, 2016August 30, 2016

Mandrake the Magician: The Hidden Kingdom of Murderers – Sundays 1935-1937

By Lee Falk & Phil Davis (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-572-8

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because We Believe in Magicâ€¦ 9/10

Considered by many as the first superhero, Mandrake the Magician debuted as a daily newspaper strip on 11^th June 1934. An instant hit, it was soon supplemented by a full-colour Sunday companion page which launched on February 3^rd 1935.

Creator Lee Falk actually sold the strip 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. With his 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 the moodily magnificent Phantom – spawned an actual comicbook subgenre with his first creation. Most publishers of the Golden Age boasted at least one (and usually many more) nattily attired wonder wizards amongst their gaudily-garbed pantheons; all roaming the world making miracles and defeating injustice with varying degrees of stage legerdemain or actually sorcery.

Characters such Mr. Mystic, Ibis the Invincible, Sargon the Sorcerer, and an assortment of â€œâ€¦the Magicianâ€ such as Zanzibar, Zatara, Kardak and so many, many more 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 stalwart regular of the Australian Women’s Weekly, and also became a cherished star in the UK, Italy and Scandinavia.

Over the years he has been a star of radio, movie chapter-serials, a theatrical play, television and animation as part of the cartoon series Defenders of the Earth. With that has come the usual merchandising bonanza of games, toys (including magic trick kits), books, comics and moreâ€¦

Falk worked on Mandrake and â€œThe Ghost who Walksâ€ until his death in 1999 (even on his deathbed he was laying out one last story) but he also found time to become a playwright, theatre producer and impresario, as well as an inveterate world-traveller.

A man of many talents, Falk drew the first few weeks himself before uniting with the sublimely imaginative cartoonist Phil Davis whose sleekly understated renditions took the daily strip – and especially these expansive full-page Sunday offerings – to unparalleled heights of sophistication; his steady assured realism the perfect tool to render the Magician’s mounting catalogue of wondrous miraclesâ€¦

Those in the know are well aware that Mandrake was educated at the fabled College of Magic in Tibet, thereafter becoming a suave globe-trotting troubleshooter, always accompanied by his faithful African friend Lothar and beautiful companion (eventually, in 1997, his bride) Princess Narda of Cockaigne, solving crimes and fighting evil. Those days, however, are still to come as the comics section opens in this splendidly oversized (315 x 236 mm) full-colour luxury hardback with ‘The Hidden Kingdom of Murderers’ (which ran from February 3^rd to June 2^nd 1935) as the urbane Prince of Prestidigitation and his herculean man-servant are approached by members of the international police to help expose a secret society of criminals and killers acting against the civilised world from their own hidden country.

After officer Duval is assassinated, Mandrake and Lothar – accompanied by panther woman Rheeta and surviving cop Pierce – embark upon a multi-continental search which after many adventures eventually takes them a desolate desert region where they are confronted by bloody-handed Bull Ganton, King of Killers.

With the master murderer distracted by Rheeta, Mandrake easily infiltrates the odious organisation and quickly begins dismantling the secret society of two million murderers. By the time Ganton wises up and begins a succession of schemes to end Mandrake, it’s too lateâ€¦

That deadly drama concluded, Mandrake and Lothar head to India to revisit old haunts and end up playing both peacemaker and cupid in the ‘Land of the Fakirs’ (running from June 9^th to October 6^th).

When Princess Jana, daughter of Mandrake’s old acquaintance Jehol Khan is abducted by rival ruler Rajah Indus of Lapore, the Magician ends his mischievous baiting of the street fakirs to intervene. In the meantime Captain Jorga – who loves Jana despite being of a lower caste – sets off from the Khan’s palace to save her or die in the tryingâ€¦

After many terrific and protracted struggles, Mandrake, Lothar and Jorga finally unite to defeat the devious and duplicitous Rajah before the westerners set about their most difficult and important feat; overturning centuries of tradition so that Jorga and Jana might marryâ€¦

Heading north, the peripatetic performers stumble into amazing fantasy after entering the ‘Land of the Little People’ (13^th October 1935 to March 1^st 1936), encountering a lost race of tiny people embroiled in a centuries-long war with brutal cannibalistic adversaries. After saving the proud warriors from obliteration, Mandrake again plays matchmaker, allowing valiant Prince Dano to wed brave and formidable commoner Derina who fought so bravely beside themâ€¦

With this sequence illustrator Davis seemed to shake off all prior influences and truly blossomed into an artist with a unique and mesmerising style all his own. That was perfectly showcased in the loosely knit sequence (spanning 8^th March to 23^rd August 1936) which followed, as Mandrake and Lothar returned to civilisation only to narrowly escape death in an horrific train wreck.

Crawling from the wreckage, our heroes help ‘The Circus People’ recapture and calm the animals freed by the crash and subsequently stick around as the close-knit family of nomadic outcasts rebuild. Mighty Lothar has many clashes with jealous bully Zaro the Strongman, culminating in thwarting attempted murder, whilst Mandrake uses his hypnotic hoodoo to teach sadistic animal trainer Almado lessons in how to behave, but primarily the newcomers act as a catalyst, making three slow-burning romances finally burst into roaring passionate lifeâ€¦

Absolutely the best tale in this tome and an imaginative tour de force which inspired many soon-to-be legendary comicbook stars, ‘The Chamber into the X Dimension’ (30^th August 1936 to March 7^th 1937) is a breathtaking, mind-bending saga which begins when Mandrake and Lothar go searching for the missing daughter of a scientist whose experiments have sent her literally out of this world.

Professor Theobold has discovered a way to pierce the walls between worlds but his beloved Fran never returned from the first live test. Eager to help – and addicted to adventure – Mandrake and Lothar volunteer to go in search of her and soon find themselves in a bizarre timeless world where the rules of science are warped and races of sentient vegetation, living metal, crystal and even flame war with fleshly humanoids for dominance and survival.

After months of captivity, slavery, exploration and struggle our human heroes finally lead a rebellion of the downtrodden fleshlings and bring the professor the happiest news of his long-missing childâ€¦

Concluding this initial conjuror’s compilation is a whimsical tale of judgement and redemption as Mandrake uses his gifts to challenge the mad antics of ‘Prince Paulo the Tyrant’ 14^th (March 14^th – 29^th August 1937).

The unhappy usurper stole the throne of Ruritanian Dementor and promptly turned the idyllic kingdom into a scientifically created madhouse. Sadly, Paulo had no conception of what true chaos and terror were until the magician exercised his mesmeric talentsâ€¦

This epic celebration also offers a fulsome, picture-packed and informative introduction to the character – thanks to Magnus Magnuson’s compelling essay ‘Mandrake the Magician Wonder of a Generation’ – plus details on the lives of the creators (Lee Falk’ and ‘Phil Davis Biography’ features) and a marvellous Davis pin-up of the cast to complete an immaculate confection of nostalgic strip wonderment for young and old alike.
Mandrake the Magician Â© 2016 King Features Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. â€œMandrake the Magician Wonder of a Generationâ€ Â© 2016 by Magnus Magnuson.

July 11, 2016July 8, 2016

Tarzan versus the Nazis (Complete Burne Hogarth Comic Strip Library volume 3)

By Burne Hogarth with Don Garden & RubÃ©n Moreira (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78116-319-1

The 1930 and 1940s was an era of astounding pictorial periodical adventure. In the years before television, newspaper strips (and later comicbooks) were the only visually-based home entertainment for millions of citizens young and old and consequently shaped the culture of many nations.

Relatively few strips attained near-universal approval and acclaim. Flash Gordon, Terry and the Pirates and Prince Valiant were in that rarefied pantheon but arguably the most famous was Tarzan.

The full-blown dramatic adventure serial started on January 7^th 1929 with Buck Rogers and Tarzan debuting that day. Both were adaptations of pre-existing prose properties and their influence changed the shape of the medium forever.

The 1930s saw an explosion of similar fare, launched with astounding rapidity and success. Not just strips but actual genres were created in that decade, still impacting on today’s comic-books and, in truth, all our popular fiction forms.

In terms of sheer quality of art, the adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ immensely successful novels starring jungle-bred John Clayton, Lord Greystoke by Canadian commercial artist Harold â€œHalâ€ Foster were unsurpassed, and the strip soon became a firm favourite of the masses, supplementing movies, books, a radio show and ubiquitous advertising appearances.

As detailed in previous volumes of this superb oversized (330 x 254 mm), full-colour hardback series, Foster initially quit the strip at the end of a 10-week adaptation of first novel Tarzan of the Apes and was replaced by Rex Maxon. At the insistent urging of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Foster returned when the black-&-white daily expanded to include a lush, full colour Sunday page featuring original adventures.

Maxon was left to capably handle the weekday book adaptations, and Foster crafted the epic and lavish Sunday page until 1936 (233 consecutive weeks). He then left again, for good: moving to King Features Syndicate and his own landmark weekend masterpiece Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur â€“ which debuted in February 1937.

Once the four month backlog of material he had built up was gone, Foster was succeeded by a precociously brilliant 25-year old artist named Burne Hogarth: a graphic visionary whose superb anatomical skill, cinematic design flair and compelling page composition revolutionised the entire field of action/adventure narrative illustration. The galvanic modern dynamism of the idealised human figure in today’s comicbooks can be directly attributed to Hogarth’s pioneering drawing and, in later years, educational efforts.

Burroughs cannily used the increasingly popular comic strip to cross-market his own prose efforts with great effect.

This third titanic tome begins with the prolifically illustrated ‘Hogarth on Burroughs’: George T. McWhorter’s interview with the master draughtsman from 1982’s Edgar Rice Burroughs Quarterly volume 1, #1, after which the timeless adventure resumes. At this time Hogarth had assumed the writing for the strip too, with veteran collaborator Don Garden leaving to pursue other, more patriotic pursuitsâ€¦

‘Tarzan Against Kandullah and the Nazis’ (episodes #660-679; 30^th October 1943 to March 12^th 1944) is an explosive procession of coiled-spring action and crushing suspense as the Ape-Man, incessantly crisscrossing fabled, unexplored Africa returns to the lands of the Boers.

Here he discovers his old friends are being infiltrated by insidious Nazi deserters. The human monsters have seen that the tide of history is against them and instead of fighting on or surrendering are attempting to secure a desolate enclave from which they can rebuild a Fourth Reich to attack democracy again at some future dateâ€¦

Their plan is to divide and conquer: fomenting strife between the native Mogalla tribe and the isolationist Afrikaaners. After narrowly averting that blood-stained crisis, Tarzan swears to deliver a military packet for a dying Allied airman, undertaking a staggering trek across the hostile lands before anonymously completing his mission and heading back into the veldt.

His travels next bring him into contention with a baroque and murderous slave-master in ‘Tarzan Against Don Macabre’ (pages #680-699, running from 19^th March to 30^th July). After rescuing beautiful captive Thaissa from his decadent clutches, the all-conquering Ape-Man decimates the Don’s menagerie of savage beasts – everything from a ravening bull to a giant octopus – and leads a slave revolt rebellion deep within his island citadelâ€¦

Once back on the mainland there was an extended return engagement for modern history’s most popular bad guys in ‘Tarzan Against the Nazis’ (#700-731) which ran from August 6^th 1944 to March 11^th 1945). This particular clash began innocuously enough with the Jungle Lord saving albino ape Bulak from his own dark-pelted tribe, before being distracted by sadistic Arabian hunter Korojak.

The wily stalker was trapping hundreds of animals for his master Emin-Nagra but secretly mistreating his prizes for his own sick amusement until Tarzan taught him the error of his ways. Sadly, it was not a lesson which stuck and before long both Bulak and the Ape-Man were part of the booty being transported to the golden-domed city of Bakhirâ€¦

As Tarzan chafed in captivity as part of Emin-Nagra’s Circus, agents of Germany and Japan were negotiating for the oil under the cruel potentate’s pocket kingdom. They were pretty confident of a favourable deal, due to their column of storm troopersâ€¦

However, when Tarzan faced a tidal wave of starved jungle beasts in the Circus, he soon turned them into his personal army to bring down the despot. Then he turned his merciless attention to the Nazis and their nearby oil wellsâ€¦

With the war winding down in the real world, escapist fantasy became a larger part of the Sunday strip environment. ‘Tarzan Against the Gorm-Bongara Monster’ (#732-748; 18^th March to July 8^th) saw the nomadic Ape-Man encounter a lost tribe of pygmies in a primordial valley, battling against them and latterly becoming their champion against a marauding, voracious dinosaurâ€¦

His inevitable victory led directly into ‘Tarzan and The Tartars Part One’ (#749-768, July 15^th – November 25^th) wherein landless prince Kurdu begged the Ape-Man’s assistance in overthrowing a usurper and saving his oppressed kingdom. The turbulent alliance offered privation, hardship, a quest for mystic relics and – for one of the heroes at least – the promise of true loveâ€¦

This romantic epic is divided into separate chapters because from December 2^nd 1945 onwards, Hogarth was replaced as illustrator by RubÃ©n Moreira, who finished the tale from his predecessor’s scripts.

‘Tarzan and The Tartars Part Two’ (pages #769-778) concluded with the February 3^rd 1946) instalment, after which Don Garden returned to provide fresh material for Moreira. You won’t find that hereâ€¦

Hogarth was in dispute with the feature’s owners and moved to the Robert Hall Syndicate for whom he produced seminal adventure classic Drago and United Features where he created comedy strip Miracle Jones. During that time away from Tarzan, Hogarth – with Silas Rhodes – also opened the Cartoonists and Illustrators School which later evolved into the School of Visual Arts.

After his two-year hiatus, Hogarth bombastically returned to the Lord of the Jungle in 1947, midway through an ongoing story.

For the sake of convenience Garden & Moreira’s ‘Tarzan on the Island of Ka-Gor Part One’ (#840-856, April 13^th – 3^rd August 1947) is included here, setting the scene as sassy Texan heiress Dallas Doyle journeys to the home of Tarzan and his mate Jane, determined to recruit the famed Ape-Man in her search for her long-missing father.

It takes a lot of persuading, but eventually Tarzan capitulates, due in no small part to the urgings of native mystic Maker of Ghostsâ€¦

Following an old map of a diamond mine, the expedition proceeds slowly on until sneak thief Dirk Mungo and a wily river-boat skipper steal it and frame Tarzan. Thrown in jail by a corrupt police official, the Ape-Man then abandons the niceties of civilisation and breaks out, following the villains with Dallas and golden lion Jad-Bal-Ja rushing to keep upâ€¦

The trail takes them through all manner of incredible horror and culminates in an aeroplane dogfight. Surviving being shot down, the pursuers doggedly press on, until captured by pygmies who trade them to decadent priestsâ€¦

‘Tarzan on the Island of Ka-Gor Part Two’ (#857-861, August 10^th – 7^th September 1947) saw Hogarth’s spectacular re-emergence, illustrating Garden’s script as the lost senior Doyle is finally found and rescued, just as the entire lost world he ruled succumbs to volcanic destructionâ€¦

Hogarth then took sole control again for the concluding instalments. ‘Tarzan on the Island of Ka-Gor Part Three’ (#862-874, 14^th September 7^th – December 1947) swiftly wrapped up the saga as the hero saves his companions but almost loses his own life in the process. Wounded unto death, Tarzan is lost and dying and the rumours of his passing incite the various villains of the jungle lands to begin their raids and depredations again. However, saved by the tender ministrations of Manu the monkey and lumbering elephantine comrade Tantor, Tarzan soon storms back to restore his fair if heavy-handed peaceâ€¦

To Be Concludedâ€¦

These tales are full of astounding, unremitting, unceasing action with Hogarth and the other contributors spinning page after page of blockbuster Technicolor action over months of non-stop wonder and exoticism. Plot was never as important as engendering a wild rush of rapt and rousing visceral responses, and every Sunday the strip delivered that in spades.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was a master of populist writing and always his prose crackled with energy and imagination. Hogarth was an inspired intellectual and, as well as gradually instilling his pages with ferocious, unceasing action, layered the panels with subtle symbolism. Heroes looked noble, villains suitably vile and animals powerful and beautiful. Even vegetation, rocks and clouds looked spiky, edgy and liable to attack at a moment’s noticeâ€¦

These vivid visual masterworks are all coiled-spring tension or vital, violent explosive motion, stretching, running, fighting: a surging rush of power and glory. It’s a dream come true that these majestic exploits are back in print for ours and future generations of dedicated fantasists to enjoy.
Tarzan Â® and Edgar Rice Burroughsâ„¢& Â© Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All images Edgar Rice Burroughs, 2015. All text copyright Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc 2015.

July 4, 2016

Creepy Presents Steve Ditko

By Archie Goodwin, Steve Ditko, dddf & (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-216-9

Once upon a time the short complete tale was the sole staple of the comicbook profession, where the intent was to deliver as much variety and entertainment fulfilment as possible to the reader. Sadly that particular discipline is all but lost to us todayâ€¦

Steve Ditko is one of our industry’s greatest talents and one of America’s least lauded. His fervent desire to just get on with his job and to tell stories the best way he can, whilst the noblest of aspirations, has been and will always be a minor consideration or even stumbling block for the commercial interests which for so long monopolised comics production and which still exert an overwhelming influence upon the mainstream bulk of Funnybook output.

Before his time at Marvel, Ditko perfected his craft creating immaculately paced, staged and rendered short stories for a variety of companies; tirelessly honing his craft with genre tales for whichever publisher would have him, utterly free from the interference of over-intrusive editors.

Even after hitting the big time at Marvel and DC it’s a creative arena he stayed active in, and this collection gathers some of his rarest yet most accomplished examples, produced at a time when a hidebound industry was just starting to open up to new publishers and fresh themes.

After Ditko’s legendary disagreements with Stan Lee led to his quitting Marvel – where his groundbreaking work made the reclusive genius (at least in comicbook terms) a household name – he resumed his long association with Charlton Comics but also found work at Warren Publications under whiz-kid writer/Editor Archie Goodwin.

The details are fully recounted in Mark Evanier’s biographically informative Foreword, as are hints of the artist’s later spells of creative brilliance at DC Comics, the growing underground movement and nascent independent comics sceneâ€¦

The erudite and economical Mr. Evanier even finds room to describe and critique the differing art techniques Ditko experimented with during his brief tenureâ€¦

Whilst working for Warren – between 1966 and 1967 – Ditko enjoyed a great deal of editorial freedom and cooperation. He produced sixteen moody monochrome masterpieces – most written by Goodwin – and all crafted without interference from the Comics Code Authority’s draconian and nonsensical rules. They ranged from wonderfully baroque and bizarre fantasy, spooky suspense and science fiction yarns, limited only by the bounds of good tasteâ€¦ or at least as far as horror tales can beâ€¦

And whilst we’re name-checking unsung heroes, it’s only fair to reveal that all were lettered by Ben Oda or Bill Yoshida.

The uncanny yarns appeared in black-&-white magazine anthologies Creepy and Eerie, affording Ditko time and room to experiment with not only a larger page, differing styles and media, but also dabble in then-unknown comics genresâ€¦

Those lost Warren stories have been gathered into a spectacular oversized (284 x 218 mm) hardback compendium – part of a series of all-star artist compilations which also includes Rich Corben and Bernie Wrightson amongst others – and begins here with the short shockers from Creepy.

From #9 and delivered in beguiling wash-tones, ‘The Spirit of the Thing!’ starts with shadows and screams, moves on to a dying man and reveals how teacher and student battle in a mind-bending phantasmagorical other-realm for possession of the same healthy body, whilst in #10 ‘Collector’s Edition!’ returns to crisp black line art to detail an obsessive bibliophile’s hunt for a mystic tomeâ€¦ and the reason he should have left well enough aloneâ€¦

Gripping grey-tones reveal how a gullible prize-fighter is manipulated into becoming a bludgeoning ‘Beast Man!’ after which Creepy #12 saw a disturbed man turn to a psychoanalyst to cure his delusions in ‘Blood of the Werewolf!’ Of all the headshrinkers in all the worldâ€¦

Throughout his time at Marvel – and especially on Doctor Strange – Ditko had been increasingly applauded for his astounding other-dimensional scenes and depictions. In ‘Second Chance!’, that facility is especially exercised as a wise guy regrets his earlier deal with the devil before ‘Where Sorcery Lives!’ pre-empts and anticipates the 1970s Sword-&-Sorcery boom (and Ditko’s own Stalker at DC) as quintessential barbarian hero Garth battles the ghastly legions of vile necromancer Salamand the Sorcererâ€¦

Creepy #15 introduced another sword-swinging proto-Conan in ‘Thane: City of Doom!’, wherein the unwashed warrior titanically thrashes thaumic terrors but nearly succumbs to the hidden threats of a comely queenâ€¦

Goodwin did not script the last Creepy yarn for Ditko in #16. ‘The Sands that Change!’ was devised by Clark Dimond & Terry Bisson who produced the self-referential tale of a comics artist and his wife falling victim to macabre forces on a desert vacation. Although the story is pedestrian, Ditko’s choice of materials to illustrate it elevate it to one of the most memorable in his uncanny canonâ€¦

The rest of this blockbusting terror-tome re-presents Ditko & Goodwin’s Eerie efforts, starting with ‘Room With a View!’ from #3. Again rendered in claustrophobic line art, it details how a tired, obnoxious traveller insists on taking residence in a cheap suite his hotelier would do anything not to rentâ€¦

From #4 ‘Shrieking Man!’ reveals how an incurable maniac is brought back from agonising insanity by a new doctor, much to the regret of the asylum chief who caused the condition, after which ‘Black Magic’ rolls back the years to mediaeval Europe and a final battle between sorcerer and apprenticeâ€¦

An affluent but greedy jeweller learns to forever regret taking the ‘Deep Ruby!’ from a desperate hobo in Eerie #6, whilst an underworld plastic surgeon is unable to save his latest unsavoury patient from the depredations of ‘Fly!’ in issue #7.

‘Demon Sword!’ explores the darkest recesses of psychological transformation and temptation after which ‘Isle of the Beast!’ (Eerie #9) revisits the hoary Man-hunting-Men plot, but proves that you can never be too careful about who you pick as victimâ€¦

The scary sessions conclude with fantasy feast ‘Warrior of Death!’ as a barbarian warlord makes a deal with Death and learns that Higher Beings just cannot be trustedâ€¦

This voluminous volume has episodes which terrify, amaze, amuse and enthral: utter delights of fantasy fiction with lean, stripped down plots and a dark wit which lets the art set the tone, push the emotions and tell the tale, from times when a story could end sadly as well as happily and only wonderment was on the agenda, hidden or otherwise.

These stories display the sharp wit and dark comedic energy which epitomised both Goodwin and Warren, channelled through Ditko’s astounding versatility and storytelling acumen: another cracking collection of his works not only superb in its own right but also a telling affirmation of the gifts of one of the art-form’s greatest stylists.

This is a book serious comics fans would happily kill, die or be lost in a devil-dimension forâ€¦
Creepy, the Creepy logo and all contents Â© 1966, 1967, 2013 by New Comic Company. All rights reserved.

June 28, 2016June 27, 2016

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan: Burne Hogarth’s Lord of the Jungle

By Burne Hogarth with Robert M. Hodes & Skip Kholoff (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-537-5

Modern comics and graphic novels evolved from newspaper comic strips. These daily pictorial features were – until relatively recently – overwhelmingly popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as a powerful tool to guarantee and increase circulation and profits. From the earliest days humour was paramount; hence our terms of usage â€œFunniesâ€ and, of course, â€œComicsâ€.

Despite the odd ancestor or precedent like Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs (comedic when it began in 1924, but gradually moving through mock-heroics to light-action to become a full-blown adventure serial with the introduction of Captain Easy in 1929), the vast bulk of strips produced were generally feel-good laughter-makers or occasional child-oriented fantasy.

The full blown dramatic adventure serial began on January 7^th 1929 with Buck Rogers and Tarzan which both debuted the same day. Both adapted pre-existing prose properties and their influence changed the shape of the medium forever. The 1930s then enjoyed an explosion of such fare, launched with astounding rapidity and success. Not just strips but actual genres were created in that decade which still impact on today’s comicbooks and, in truth, all our popular fiction forms. In fact, your comicbooks started as reprint compilations of such newspaper circulation-fodderâ€¦

In terms of sheer quality of art, the graphic narrative iteration of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels by Canadian commercial artist Harold â€œHalâ€ Foster were unsurpassed, and the strip soon became a firm favourite of the masses. Supplemented by movies, books, a radio show and ubiquitous advertising appearances, White God of the Jungle John Clayton, Lord Greystoke soon became a meta-character. Just like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan became â€œrealâ€ to the world.

Foster initially quit the strip at the end of the 10-week adaptation of the novel Tarzan of the Apes. He was replaced by Rex Maxon, but returned (at the insistent urging of Burroughs himself) when the black-&-white daily was expanded to include a lush, full colour Sunday page featuring original adventures.

Leaving Maxon to capably handle the Monday through Saturday progression of novel adaptations, Foster produced the epic Sunday page until 1936 (233 consecutive weeks) after which he momentously moved to King Features Syndicate to create his own strip landmark and weekend masterpiece. Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur launched on February 13^th 1937 and is still with us today.

Once the four month backlog of material he had built up was gone, Foster was succeeded by a precociously brilliant 25-year old artist named Burne Hogarth (1911-1996): a young graphic visionary whose superb anatomical skill, cinematic design flair and compelling page composition revolutionised the entire field of action/adventure narrative illustration.

The galvanic modern dynamism of the idealised human figure in today’s comicbooks can be directly attributed to Hogarth’s pioneering drawing and, in later years, his dedicated efforts as an educator.

When Hogarth in turn left the strip he found his way into teaching (he co-founded – with Silas H. Rhodes – the Cartoonist and Illustrators School for returning veterans which evolved into the New York School of Visual Arts) and also authored an invaluable and inspirational series of art textbooks such as Dynamic Anatomy and Dynamic Figure Drawing which influenced generations of aspiring artists.

In the early 1970s Hogarth was lured back to the leafy domain of legendary Lord Greystoke, producing â€“ with co-writer Robert M. Hodes and lettering assistant Skip Kholoff – two magnificent volumes of graphic narrative in the dazzling style that had captivated audiences more than thirty years previously. Recently both were bundled into a magnificent hardback edition by Dark Horse (also available digitally through Kindle and ComiXology) as a magnificent tribute to Hogarth’s mastery.

Tarzan of the Apes is a strong candidate for the title of first Graphic Novel. Originally released in 1972, it stunningly adapts the first half of ERB’s groundbreaking popular classic in large bold panels, vibrantly coloured, accompanied by blocks of Burroughs’ original text. The electric visuals leap out at the reader in a riot of hue and motion as they recount the triumphant, tragic tale of the orphaned scion of British nobility raised to puissant manhood by the Great Apes of Africa.

The saga follows his life as cub of loving she-ape Kala, his rise to prominence amongst his hirsute tribe and how he masters all the beasts of his savage environment. The mighty, brilliant foundling – through intellect alone and the remnants of his father’s papers – learns to read and deduces that he is a Man, but still inflicts brutal vengeance on the human tribesmen responsible for killing beloved, devoted Kala before submerging himself in the ways of the tribe.

The adaptation ends just prior to the arrival of the white woman who will reshape Tarzan’s destiny foreverâ€¦

Four years later Hogarth returned to his subject, but instead of completing his bravura interpretation of Tarzan of the Apes he instead produced an adaptation of the short tales which formed the composite novel Jungle Tales of Tarzan.

That book was a series of episodes reminiscent of Kipling’s â€œJust Soâ€ stories, set before the first fateful meeting with Jane Porter and the Ape-Man’s introduction to civilisation. Instead it related how and when the Lord of the Jungle confronted various cognitive stages in his own intellectual and physical development.

If that sounds dry, it’s not. Burroughs was a master storyteller and his prose crackles with energy and imagination. With this book he was showing how the Ape-man’s intellectual progress was a metaphor for Man’s social, cerebral and even spiritual growth from beast to human. He also never forgot that people love action and broad belly-laughs.

Hogarth was also an acclaimed intellectual and the four tales he adapted here afforded him vast scope to explore his cherished perfect temple that was the Ideal Man. The flowing organic compositions he created for his Jungle Tales of Tarzan are strengthened by the absence of colour, allowing the classicism of his line-work to create stark divisions of form and space that contribute to the metaphysical component of his subject.

The monochrome magic begins with ‘Tarzan’s First Love’ with the adolescent finding himself increasingly drawn to fetching young She-Ape Teeka. However, no matter what he did, the young maiden just wasn’t interested in her ardent, hairless admirerâ€¦

Next to enthral is a savage tale of comradeship as the human befriends mighty elephant Tantor who proves valiant and true following ‘The Capture of Tarzan’ by the local tribesmen responsible for Kala’s death, after which ‘The God of Tarzan’ sees him overdose on his dead father’s books and suffer a brain-expanding religious experienceâ€¦

The drama ends here in a riot of phantasmagoria as young Tarzan steals spoiled, cooked meat from the native villagers and endures ‘The Nightmare’.

Don’t let my effusive verbiage deter you, folks: you don’t need a dictionary to enjoy this work; all you need are eyes to see and a heart to beat faster. This is all vital, violent motion, stretching, leaping, running, fighting, surging power and glory: guaranteed to give indolent comic lovers all the thorough cardio-vascular work-out they’ll ever need…

Edgar Rice Burroughs was a genius at engaging the public’s collective imagination, whilst Hogarth was an inspired and inspirational artisan who, as well as gradually instilling his pages with ferocious, unceasing action, layered his works with subtle symbolism. Heroes looked noble, villains suitably vile and animals powerful, beautiful and deadly. Even vegetation, rocks and clouds looked spiky, edgy and liable to attack at a moment’s noticeâ€¦

This compilation is a vivid visual masterwork: a coiled-spring tension of vigorous vitality and explosive action and dream come true for every generation of dedicated fantasists to enjoy.

Magnificent, majestic, awe-inspiring, crucial comics entertainment.
Â© 1972, 1976, 2014 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All rights reserved. Tarzan Â® is owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., and used by permission.

June 6, 2016June 1, 2016

Krazy & Ignatz volume 2 1919-1921: A Kind, Benevolent and Amiable Brick

By George Herriman, edited by Bill Blackbeard (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-364-4

The cartoon strip starring Krazy Kat is unquestionably a pinnacle of graphic innovation, a hugely influential body of work which shaped the early days of the comics industry and became an undisputed treasure of world literature.

Krazy and Ignatz, as it is dubbed in these glorious commemorative collected tomes from Fantagraphics, is a creation which can only be appreciated on its own terms. It developed its own unique language – at once both visual and verbal â€“ and dealt with the immeasurable variety of human experience, foible and peccadilloes with unfaltering warmth and understanding without every offending anybody.

Sadly however it baffled far more than a fewâ€¦

It was never a strip for dull, slow or unimaginative people who simply won’t or can’t appreciate the complex multilayered verbal and pictorial whimsy, absurdist philosophy or seamless blending of sardonic slapstick with arcane joshing. It is the closest thing to pure poesy that narrative art has ever produced.

Some brief background then: Herriman was already a successful cartoonist and journalist in 1913 when a cat and mouse that had been cropping up in his outrageous domestic comedy strip The Dingbat Family/The Family Upstairs graduated to their own feature. Krazy Kat debuted in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal on Oct 28^th 1913 and mainly by dint of the publishing magnate’s overpowering direct influence spread throughout his vast stable of papers.

Although Hearst and a host of the period’s artistic and literary intelligentsia (notably but not exclusively e.e. Cummings, Frank Capra, John Alden Carpenter, Gilbert Seldes, Willem de Kooning, H.L. Mencken and Jack Kerouac) adored the strip, many local and regional editors did not; taking every potentially career-ending opportunity to drop it from the comics section.

Eventually the feature found a home in the Arts and Drama section of Hearst’s papers. Protected there by the publisher’s heavy-handed patronage the Kat flourished unharmed by editorial interference and fashion, running generally unmolested until Herriman’s death in April 1944.

The basic premise is simple: Krazy is an effeminate, dreamy, sensitive and romantic feline of indeterminate gender hopelessly in love with Ignatz Mouse: rude crude, brutal, mendacious and thoroughly scurrilous.

Ignatz is muy macho; drinking, stealing, neglecting his wife and children and always responding to Krazy’s genteel advances by smiting the Kat with a well-aimed brick (obtained singly or in bulk from noted local brickmaker Kolin Kelly). A third element completing an animalistic eternal triangle is lawman Offissa Bull Pupp, utterly besotted with Krazy, well aware of the Mouse’s true nature, yet bound by his own amorous timidity and sense of honour from removing his rival for the foolish feline’s affections. Krazy is blithely oblivious of Pupp’s dilemmaâ€¦

Also populating the ever-mutable stage are a stunning supporting cast of inspired bit players such as deliverer of babies Joe Stork, hobo Bum Bill Bee, unsavoury Don Kiyoti, busybody Pauline Parrot, pompous Walter Cephus Austridge, Chinese mallard Mock Duck, Joe Turtil and a host of other audacious characters – all equally capable of stealing the limelight and even supporting their own features. The exotic quixotic episodes occur in and around the Painted Desert environs of Coconino (based of the artist’s vacation retreat Coconino County Arizona) where the surreal playfulness and fluid ambiguity of the flora and landscape are perhaps the most important member of the cast.

The strips are a masterful mÃ©lange of unique experimental art, strongly referencing Navajo art forms and utilising sheer unbridled imagination and delightfully expressive language: alliterative, phonetically and even onomatopoeically joyous with a compelling musical force (â€œHe’s simpfilly wondafilâ€, â€œA fowl konspirissy – is it pussible?â€ or â€œI nevva seen such a great power to kookooâ€).

Yet for all that, the adventures are poetic, satirical, timely, timeless, bittersweet, self-referential, fourth-wall bending, eerie, idiosyncratic astonishingly hilarious escapades encompassing every aspect of humour from painfully punning shaggy dog stories to riotous slapstick.

There have been an absolute wealth of Krazy Kat collections since the late 1970s when the fondly remembered strip was generally rediscovered by a far more accepting audience and this particular compendium continues a complete year-by-year series begun by Eclipse and picked up by Fantagraphics when the former ceased trading in 1992. This specific and fabulous monochrome volume – A Kind, Benevolent and Amiable Brick – re-presents the years 1919-1921 in a reassuringly big and hefty (231 x 15 x 305 mm) softcover edition.

Within this magical atlas of another land and time the unending drama plays out as usual, but with some intriguing diversions, such as recurring tribute’s to Kipling’s â€œJust So Storiesâ€ as we discover how the Kookoo Klock works, why bananas hang around in bunches and why Lightning Bugs light up.

Joe’s natal missions go increasingly awry, disease, despair and dearth of alcoholic imbibements take their toll in the years of Prohibition, the weather thinks it’s a comedian and the value of the common brick rollercoasters from low to high and back again.

We also meet a few trans-species alternates of our triangular stars and even peer into the misty past to see Kwin Kleopatra Kat and Marcatonni Maus whilst exploring the ever-changing seasons in a constant display of visual virtuosity and verbal verveâ€¦

Frontloading Added Value to the romantic tribulations are fascinating articles and background features such as ‘A Mouse by any Other Name: Krazy and Ignatz’s Early Life Under the Stairs’ by Bill Blackbeard, intimate photo portraits and the mesmerisingly informative ‘Geo. Herriman’s Los Angeles’ by Bob Callahan.

At the far end of the tome you can enjoy some full-colour archival illustration and another batch of erudite and instructionalÂ ‘Ignatz Mouse Debaffler Pages’, providing pertinent facts, snippets of contextual history and necessary notes for the young and potentially perplexedâ€¦

Herriman’s epochal classic is a remarkable one-off: in all the arenas of Art and Literature there has never been anything like these comic strips which have shaped our industry and creators, inspired auteurs in fields as disparate as prose fiction, film, dance, animation and music whilst delivering delight and delectation to generations of wonder-starved fans.

If however, you are one of Them and not Us, or if you actually haven’t experienced the gleeful graphic assault on the sensorium, mental equilibrium and emotional lexicon carefully thrown together by George Herriman from the dawn of the 20th century until the dog days of World War II, this glorious compendium is the most accessible way to do so. Don’t waste the opportunityâ€¦
Â© 2011 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

May 21, 2016May 20, 2016

Kings Watch

By Jeff Parker, Mark Laming & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-486-2

Like so many other old fogies and devoted fanboys, I was convinced that I was going to hate this latest reconstruction of three of the oldest characters in comics. The newspaper strip triumvirate of Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician and particularly The Phantom were in many ways the blueprint for all comicbook superheroes who followed them, and as major properties had been re-imagined many times over the years, with varying degrees of reverence and successâ€¦

By most lights Flash Gordon is the most influential comic strip in the world. He debuted on Sunday January 7^th 1934 (with the superb Jungle Jim running as a supplementary â€œtopperâ€ strip) as an answer to the revolutionary, inspirational, but rather clunky Buck Rogers strip by Philip Nolan & Dick Calkins (which also began on January 7^th, five years earlier). Raymond, however, added two welcome new elements to the wonderment; Classical Lyricism and astonishingly seductive visuals.

Where Buck mixed traditional adventure and high science concepts, Flash Gordon reinterpreted Fairy Tales, Heroic Epics and Mythology, spectacularly draping them in the trappings of the contemporary future, with varying ‘Rays’, ‘Engines’ and ‘Motors’ substituting for spells, swords and steeds – although there were also plenty of those – and exotic craft and contraptions standing in for Galleons, Chariots and Magic Carpets.

Most important of all, the sheer artistic acuity of Raymond – his compositional skills, fine line-work, eye for sumptuous detail and just plain gift for drawing beautiful people and things – swiftly made this the strip that all young artists swiped from.

When original-material comicbooks began a few years later, dozens of talented kids weaned on the strip’s clean-lined, athletic Romanticism entered the field and their interpretations of Raymond’s mastery became a ticket to future success in the field of adventure strips. To be fair almost as many mimicked Milton Caniff’s expressionistic masterpiece Terry and the Pirates (and to see one of his better disciples check out Beyond Mars, illustrated by the wonderful Lee Elias) and they didn’t fare too badly eitherâ€¦

For over a decade sheer escapist magic in a Ruritanian Neverland, blending Camelot, Oz and every fabled paradise that promised paradise yet concealed hidden vipers, ogres and demons, enthralled the entire world, all cloaked in a glimmering sheen of sleek art deco futurism. Worthy adversaries such as utterly evil, animally magnetic Ming, emperor of a fantastic wandering planet; myriad exotic races and fabulous conflicts offered a fantastic alternative to the drab and dangerous real world and made their own mark on the landscape of popular cultureâ€¦

Regarded by many as the original American superhero, Mandrake the Magician debuted on 11^th June 1934 (although creator Lee Falk had originally tried to sell the strip a decade previously), illustrated with effective understatement by the superb Phil Davis.

Educated at the fabled College of Magic in the Himalayas, the suave sorcerer roamed the world with his faithful African friend Lothar and his beautiful companion (and finally, in 1997, bride) Princess Narda of Cockaigne; solving crimes and fighting evil. Star of stage, screen (large and small), radio and a thousand forms of merchandising, Mandrake has always been one of the top guns of strip comics powerhouse King Features Syndicate.

In the 17^th century a British sailor survived an attack by pirates and, washing ashore in Africa, swore on the skull of his murdered father to dedicate his life and that of all his descendents to destroying pirates and criminals. The Phantom fought crime and injustice from a base deep in the Jungles of Bengali, and throughout Africa was known as the â€œGhost Who Walksâ€; considered an immortal avenger by the credulous and the wicked. Down the decades one hero after another has fought and died in an unbroken dynastic line, in a never-ending battleâ€¦

Lee Falk created globe-trotting Jungle Avenger at the request of his publishers, who were already making history and public headway with his first strip sensation Mandrake. Although technically not the first ever costumed hero in comics, The Phantom was the prototype paladin to wear a skin-tight body-stocking, and the first to have a mask with opaque eye-slits.

He debuted on February 17^th 1936 in an extended sequence pitting him against a global confederation of pirates called the Singh Brotherhood. Falk wrote and drew the daily strip for the first two weeks before artist Ray Moore took over the illustration side. The Sundays feature began in May 1939.

Fan favourites for generations, the trio periodically made the sideways move into comicbooks, but never really teamed up until 1986 when TV cartoon series Defenders of the Earth updated and united all three and their support teams into a league resolved to save the world from alien invasion in the distant future of 2015 AD. This iteration had its own short-lived Marvel/Star Comics funny book series.

In 2013, the stars realigned again and Licensed-Properties specialist Dynamite Entertainment produced a remarkably engaging retro-futurist thriller which managed to pay due homage to the past iterations whilst opening the characters up for the latest generation of frantic fans. In the 5-issue miniseries Kings Watch scripter Jeff Parker and illustrator Marc Laming (with the invaluable assistance of colourists Jordan Boyd and letterers Simon Bowland) crafted a fast-paced, suspenseful and, most importantly, fun-filled yarn telling a big, bold, bombastic blockbuster story which also set up the three leads for new follow-up seriesâ€¦

Jeff Parker has worked in all aspects of the industry but is probably best-known for his wide variety of comics scripts, including Aquaman, Bucko, Batman ’66, Agents of Atlas, Spider-Man: 1602, X-Men: First Class, many of Paradox Press’ Big Book ofâ€¦ and moreâ€¦

British collaborator Marc Laming is an unashamed tea-drinker who has flitted hither and yon throughout the business since 1990, alighting occasionally and only to superbly render such varied projects as bits of Revolver, American Century, The Dreaming, Grindhouse, Planet Hulk, Fantastic Four, Uncanny Avengers and many others.

The story here begins with the world beguiled by lights in the sky and wracked by communal nightmares of invading monster armies. As the ancient and vile Cobra cult searches ruthlessly and relentlessly for a supernal crystal that could spell doom for Earth, in East African Bangalla, in a grandiose hermitage in California and on a palatial estate in Connecticut, three amazing individuals ready themselves to fight the battle of their livesâ€¦

Rather than have me ruin the fun for you, just thrill in anticipation to the knowledge that a thrill-addicted playboy, a broken sorcerer and sham hero crushed by the weight of years of service will somehow become the planet’s saviours after intergalactic warlord Ming the Merciless acquires the enigmatic Kings Watch artefact and unleashes the hordes of the empire of Mongo upon an unsuspecting helpless humanityâ€¦

The ever-popular Bonus Features include a full Parker script, attendant script-to-completed art production pages and a gallery of covers and variants by Laming, Adam Street and RamÃ³n K. PÃ©rez but the real prize is the superbly fast-paced action-romp which easily mixes monsters, aliens, rocket-ships, mad doctors, feisty capable women, wicked villains, exotic locales and epic battles into a ripping yarn every fan of fantasy adventure will be unable to resist.
Flash Gordon Â© 2014 King Features Syndicate, Inc. â„¢ Hearst Holdings, Inc. Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom Â© 2014 King Features Syndicate, Inc. â„¢ Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

May 1, 2016April 30, 2016

The Broons: Facsimile Edition of the First Ever Broons Annual

By R.D. Low & Dudley D. Watkins (D.C. Thomson/Aurum)
ISBN: 978-0-85116-

The Broons is one of the longest running newspaper strips in British history, having appeared well-nigh continuously in Scottish periodical The Sunday Post since the March 8^th edition of 1936. That same issue launched equally timeless cartoon stable-mate and icon of Hibernian tradition Oor Wullie: a mischievous wee laddie who epitomises carefree youthful excess.

Both the boisterous boy and the gregariously engaging working class family were co-created by journalist, writer and Editor Robert Duncan Low in conjunction with DC Thomson’s most celebrated cartoonist Dudley D. Watkins. Both were overnight hits and instantly unmissable so within a few short years the weekly episode strips began to be collected in reprint editions as Seasonal Annuals. Those books alternated stars and years right up to the present day.

The book under discussion here comes from 2006: a magnificent recreation of that first Broons Annual compendium as launched in 1939. It’s a sturdy hardback with monochrome interiors, crammed full of gags and wholesome family fun delivered with gleeful exuberance by masters of the comedy comics form, lavishly presented in its own card slipcase.

Low (1895-1980) began at the Scottish publishing monolith as a journalist and quickly rose to the post of Managing Editor of Children’s Publication. Between 1921 and 1933 he created the company’s â€œBig Fiveâ€ story-papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur. These were text-base adventure weeklies liberally illustrated and in 1936 his next brilliant idea was the Fun Section: an 8-page pull-out comic strip supplement for Scottish national newspaper The Sunday Post.

As cited above this landmark illustrated accessory began on 8^th March and from the very outset The Broons and Oor Wullie were its undisputed top drawsâ€¦

Low’s shrewdest notion was to devise both strips as comedies played out in the charismatic Scottish idiom and broad unforgettable vernacular where – supported by features such as Auchentogle by Chic Gordon, Allan Morley’s Nero and Zero, Nosey Parker and other strips – they laid the groundwork for the company’s next great leap.

After some devious devising in December 1937 Low premiered the first DC Thomson weekly comic. The Dandy was followed by The Beano in 1938 and early-reading title The Magic Comic in 1939.

War-time paper shortages and rationing sadly curtailed the strip periodical revolution, and it was 1953 before the next wave of cartoon caper picture paper releases. The Topper started the ball rolling again (with Wullie in the logo and masthead but not included in the magazine’s regular roster) in the same year that Low & the great Ken Reid created Roger the Dodger for Beanoâ€¦

Low’s greatest advantage was his prolific illustrator Dudley Dexter Watkins, whose style, more than any other, shaped the look of DC Thompson’s comics output until the bombastic advent of Leo Baxendale shook things up in the mid-1950s.

Watkins (1907-1969) had started life in Manchester and Nottingham as a genuine artistic prodigy before entering Glasgow College of Art in 1924. It wasn’t long before he was advised to get a job at burgeoning, Dundee-based DCT, where a 6-month trial illustrating boys’ adventure stories led to comic strip specials and some original cartoon creations.

Percy Vere and His Trying Tricks and Wandering Willie, The Wily Explorer made him a dead cert for both lead strips in the Sunday Post‘s proposed Fun Section and, without missing a beat, Watkins later added The Dandy‘s Desperate Dan to his weekly workload in 1937, eventually including The Beano‘s placidly and seditiously outrageous Lord Snooty seven months after.

Watkins soldiered on in unassailable triumph for decades, drawing some of the most lavishly lifelike and winningly hilarious strips in illustration history. He died at his drawing board on August 20^th 1969.

For all those astonishingly productive years he had unflaggingly drawn a full captivating page each of Oor Wullie and The Broons every week, and his loss was a colossal blow to the company.

DC Thomson’s chiefs preferred to reprint old Watkins episodes of both strips in the newspaper and the Annuals for seven years before a replacement was agreed upon, whilst The Dandy reran Watkins’ Desperate Dan stories for twice that length of time.

An undeniable, rock-solid facet of Scots popular culture from the very start, The Broons reflected changing times and ordinary life for generations of readers; sharing trials and triumphs and celebrating each changing year with unflagging wit, warmth and inspired, self-deprecating buffoonery. For fans outside Scotland – like me – they always conjure feeling of holidays and special moments, so on this wet Bank Holiday (it’s always raining somewhere on a public vacation day) I’m reliving a halcyon timeâ€¦

So What’s the Set Up?: the multigenerational Brown family inhabit a tenement flat at 10 Glebe Street, in the timelessly metafictional Scottish industrial everytown of Auchentogle (or sometimes Auchenshoogle), based in large part on the working class Glasgow district of Auchenshuggle. As such it’s an ideal setting in which to tell gags, relate events and fossilise the deepest and most reassuring cultural archetypes for sentimental Scots wherever in the world they might actually be residing. And yes, a huge part of the laugh track comes from the gloriously rich accent humour deriving from the Scots idiom and cultural consciousness.

If it’s good enough for Sir Harry Lauder, Andy Stewart, Stanley Baxter, Bill Forsyth, Chic Murray, Billy Connolly, Craig Ferguson, Frankie Boyle, Susan Calmanâ€¦

As is always the case, the adamant, unswerving cornerstone of any family feature is long-suffering, understanding Maw, who puts up with cantankerous, cheap know-it-all Paw, and a battalion of stay-at-home kids comprising hunky Joe, freakishly tall Hen (Henry), sturdy Daphne, gorgeous Maggie, brainy Horace, mischievous twins Eck and the unnamed â€œither aneâ€ plus a wee toddling lassie referred to only as â€œThe Bairnâ€.

Not officially in residence but always hanging around is gruffly patriarchal clod Granpaw – a comedic gadfly who spends more time at Glebe Street than his own cottage and constantly tries to impart his decades of hard-earned but painfully outdated experience to the kidsâ€¦ but do they listen?

In later years they family would grow a bit better off, taking regular breaks from the inner city turmoil whilst simultaneously sentimentalising, spoofing and memorialising more traditional times at their But ‘n’ Ben (a dilapidated rustic cottage in the Highlands) but in these initial pre-war tales the range of any excursion is simply the inner city and wherever a day-trip by charabanc or steam train can take the bustling, boisterous clanâ€¦

The endless escapades of these formative strips comprise timeless subject-matter such as oldster’s teasing young ‘uns about their beaus, males thinking they know best whether its cleaning fire-grates, mopping floors or organising parties, or females jockeying for social status. You can learn the real cost of a â€œbargainâ€, the wisdom of holding your tongue and the value of one night of actual peace and quietâ€¦

All the kids live in a comfortably secure world of playing, pranking and stopping out late, whilst neighbours are equal parts pains-in-the-necks and salts-of-the-earth. But as well as slapstick shenanigans – ranging from plumbing pitfalls, decorating disasters, fireplace fiascos, food foolishness, dating dilemmas, appliance atrocities, fashion freak-outs, party panics, bothered Bobbies, excessive exercising, chore-dodging, galling goofs, family frolics and sly jests – there’s a sense of unified purpose and progress made, with the Broons part of a proper working community.

The overall impression is that, unlike today when the phrase is no more than cynically exploitative lip-service from a crass, glib plutocracy intent on disempowering everyone poorer than themselves, folks back then were genuinely â€œall in it togetherâ€ just to get by.

And Low and Watkins made it funny and rewardingâ€¦

Packed with all-ages fun, rambunctious hilarity and deliriously domestic warmth, this exemplary example of happy domesticity convivially celebrates a mythic lost life and time and is a sure cure for post-modern glumsâ€¦
The Broons â„¢ and Â© D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. 2006.

April 22, 2016April 21, 2016

Krazy & Ignatz volume 1 1916-1918: Love in a Kestle or Love in a Hut

By George Herriman, edited by Bill Blackbeard (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-60699-316-3

I must admit to feeling like a fool and a fraud reviewing George Herriman’s winningly surreal masterpiece of eternal unrequited love. Although Krazy Kat is unquestionably a pinnacle of graphic innovation, a hugely influential body of work which shaped the early days of the comics industry and a paragon of world literature, some readers – from the strip’s earliest antecedents in 1913 right up to five minutes ago – just cannot â€œget itâ€.

All those with the right sequence of genes (â€œKâ€, â€œTâ€, â€œZâ€ and â€œAâ€, but not, I suspect â€œWhyâ€) are lifelong fans within seconds of exposure whilst those sorry few oblivious to the strip’s inimitable charms are beyond anybody’s meagre capacity to help.

Still, since every day there’s newcomers to the wonderful world of comics I’ll assume my inelegant missionary position once more and hope to catch and convert some fresh souls – or, as today’s indisputable pictorial immortal might put it, save some more â€œlil Ainjilsâ€â€¦

Krazy Kat is not and never has been a strip for dull, slow or unimaginative people who simply won’t or can’t appreciate the complex multilayered verbal and pictorial whimsy, absurdist philosophy or seamless blending of sardonic slapstick with arcane joshing. It is the closest thing to pure poesy that narrative art has ever produced.

Think of it as a visual approximation of Dylan Thomas and Edward Lear playing â€œI Spyâ€ with James Joyce amongst beautifully harsh and barren cactus fields whilst Gabriel GarcÃa MÃ¡rquez types up the shorthand notes and keeps scoreâ€¦

George Herriman was already a successful cartoonist and journalist in 1913 when a cat and mouse who had been cropping up in the corners and backgrounds of his outrageous domestic comedy strip The Dingbat Family/The Family Upstairs finally graduated to their own feature.

Krazy Kat the strip debuted in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal on October 28^th 1913 and, mainly by dint of the publishing magnate’s overpowering direct influence, spread throughout his vast stable of papers.

Although Hearst and a host of the period’s artistic and literary intelligentsia (which included Frank Capra, e.e. Cummings, John Alden Carpenter, Gilbert Seldes, Willem de Kooning, H.L. Mencken and Jack Kerouac) utterly adored the strip, many local editors -ever-cautious of the opinions of the hoi-polloi who actually bought newspapers – did not, and took every career-threatening opportunity to eject it from the comics section.

Eventually the feature found a home in the Arts and Drama section of Hearst’s vast empire of periodicals. Protected by the publisher’s patronage, the strip flourished unharmed by editorial interference and fashion, running until Herriman’s death in April 1944.

The basic premise of the eccentric enterprise is simple: in an arid, anthropomorphic region of America bordering the mighty Rio Grande dwells Krazy; an effeminate, dreamy, sensitive and romantic feline of indeterminate gender, in uncompromising total love with rude, crude, brutal, mendacious and thoroughly scurrilous, married-with-children (so very many children) bad boy Ignatz Mouse.

Ignatz is a real Man’s Muridae; drinking, stealing, cheating, carousing, neglectful of his spouse and progeny. He revels in spurning Krazy’s genteel advances by regularly, repeatedly and obsessively belting the cat with a well-aimed and mightily thrown brick (obtained singly or in bulk, generally by legitimate purchase from noted local brickmaker Kolin Kelly).

The third member of the classic eternal triangle is lawman Offissa Bull Pupp, hopelessly in love with Krazy, well-aware of the Mouse’s true nature, but bound by his own timidity and sense of honour from removing his rival for the cat’s affections. Krazy is, of course, blithely oblivious of Pupp’s true feelings and dilemmaâ€¦

Also populating the dusty environs are a stunning supporting cast of inspired anthropomorphic bit players such as Joe Stork, (deliverer of babies), the hobo Bum Bill Bee, larcenous Don Kiyoti, busybody Pauline Parrot, Walter Cephus Austridge, Chinese mallard Mock Duck, Joe Turtil and a host of other audacious characters – all capable of stealing the limelight and even supporting their own features.

The episodes occur in and around the Painted Desert environs of Coconino (based of the artist’s vacation retreat Coconino County, Arizona) and the surreal playfulness and fluid ambiguity of the flora and landscapes are perhaps the most important members of the cast.

These strips are a masterful mÃ©lange of wickedly barbed contemporary social satire, folksy yarn-telling, unique experimental art, strongly referencing Navajo art forms and sheer unbridled imagination and delightfully expressive language: alliterative, phonetically and even onomatopoeically joyous and compellingly musical (â€œHe’s simpfilly wondafilâ€, â€œA fowl konspirissy â€“ is it pussible?â€ or â€œI nevva seen such a great power to kookooâ€), yet for all that these adventures are timely, timeless, bittersweet, self-referential, fourth-wall bending, eerie, idiosyncratic and utterly hilarious escapades encompassing every aspect of humour from painfully punning shaggy dog stories to riotous silent-movie slapstick.

The Krazy & Ignatz series of collected Sunday pages was originally contrived by Eclipse Comics and the Turtle Island Foundation and taken over by Fantagraphics when the first publisher succumbed to predatory market conditions in the 1990s. Through diligence and sheer bloody determination matching Hearst’s own, the series was finally completed in 2015.

After years of scarily hand-to-mouth publishing, the entire Katty canon of magnificent Sunday pages has been collected in fabulous compilations and this first colour and monochrome volume opens with ‘And the First Shall Be the Last: A History of Kat Reprints’ and A Word from the Publisher by Kim Thompson delineating at length the eccentric orbit which finally resulted in Herriman’s masterpiece being collected in a complete, uniform, visually stunning 13 volume edition.

That’s followed by ‘The Kat’s Kreation’ from series Editor Bill Blackbeard; a fulsome, fascinating and heavily illustrated history tracing the development of the frankly freakish feline as briefly outlined above, and ‘Before He Went â€œKrazyâ€: George Herriman’s Aughts’, offering a liberal sampling of examples of the cartoonists many pre-Coconino strips and features such as ‘Lariat Pete’, ‘Bud Smith, the Boy Who Does Stunts’, ‘Rosy’s Mama’, ‘Zoo Zooâ€¦ (Goes Shopping, Entertains, And the Christmas Pie)’, ‘Alexander’ and ‘Daniel and Pansy’, spanning 1903 to 1909, with many sporting a certain prototype mad moggy in the cornersâ€¦

From there it’s a short hop to the first cautious yet full-bodied escapades from 1916, delivered every seven days from April 23^rd to December 31^st.

Within that first year, as war raged in Europe and with America edging inexorably closer to the Global Armageddon, the residents of Coconino sported and wiled away their days in careless abandon but totally embroiled within their own â€“ and their neighbours’ – personal dramas.

Big hearted Krazy adopts orphan kitties, accidentally goes boating and ballooning, saves baby birds from predatory mice and rats, survives pirate attacks, constantly endures assault and affectionate attempted murder and does lots of nothing in an utterly addictive, idyllic and eccentric way.

â€¦And gets hit with bricks. Many, heavy and always evoking joyous, grateful raptures and transports of delight from the heart-sore hard-headed recipientâ€¦

In 1917 (specifically January 7^th to December 30^th), the eternal game played out as usual and with an infinite variety of twists, quirks and reversals. However there were also increasingly intriguing diversions to flesh out the picayune proceedings, such as recurring explorations of terrifying trees, grim ghosts and obnoxious Ouija Boards, tributes to Kipling as we discover why the snake rattles, meet Ignatz’s aquatic cousin, observe an invasion of Mexican Jumping Beans and a plague of measles, discover the maritime value of â€œglowermsâ€, learn who was behind a brilliant brick-stealing campaign of crime and at last see Krazy become the Bricker and not Brickeeâ€¦

Fully in control of his medium, Herriman switched into poetic high gear as America finally entered the Great War in 1918.

With strips running from January 6^th to December 29^th, uncanny brick apparitions scotched somebody’s New Year’s resolutions, cantankerous automobiles began to disrupt the desert days, fun of a sort was had with boomerangs and moving picture mavens began haunting the region. There were deeply strange interactions with weather events, whilst music was made and occasional extended storylines began with the saga of an aberrant Kookoo Klockâ€¦

Surreal voyages were undertaken but over and again it was seen that there is literally no place like Krazy and Ignatz’s home. There was only one acknowledgement of Kaiser Bill and it was left to the missile-chucking mouse to deliver itâ€¦

And then it was Christmas and a new year and volume lay aheadâ€¦

To complete the illustrious experience and explore the ever-shifting sense of reality amidst the constant display of visual virtuosity and verbal verve this big, big book (305 x 230 mm and superbly designed by Chris Ware) ends with rare and informative bonus material such as ‘A Genius of the Comic Page’: a contemporaneous appreciation and loving deconstruction of the strip – with new illustrations from Herriman – by the astoundingly perspicacious and erudite critic Summerfield Baldwin taken from Cartoons Magazine and an oddly enigmatic biography of the reclusive creator in ‘George Herriman 1880-1944′ by Bill Blackbeard.

‘The Ignatz Mouse Debaffler Page’ then closes the show, providing pertinent facts, snippets of contextual history and necessary notes for the young and potentially perplexedâ€¦

Herriman’s epochal classic is a genuine Treasure of World Art and Literature. These strips shaped our industry, galvanised comics creators, inspired auteurs in fields as disparate as prose fiction, film, sculpture, dance, animation and jazz and musical theatre whilst always delivering delight and delectation to generations of devoted, wonder-starved fans.

If however, you are one of Them and not Us, or if you actually haven’t experienced the gleeful graphic assault on the sensorium, mental equilibrium and emotional lexicon carefully thrown together by Herriman from the dawn of the 20^th century until the dog days of World War II, this glorious parade of cartoon masterpieces are your last chance to become a human before you dieâ€¦

That was harsh, I know: not everybody gets it and some of them aren’t even stupid or soulless â€“ they’re just unfortunateâ€¦

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