Comic Strip Classics – Page 24

February 4, 2016February 3, 2016

Modesty Blaise: Ripper Jax

By Peter O’Donnell & Enric Badia Romero (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78329-858-7

Modesty Blaise and her lethally adept, knife-throwing, compulsively platonic partner Willie Garvin gained fearsome reputations as infallible super-criminals heading underworld gang The Network before retiring young, rich and healthy. With honour intact and their hands relatively clean, they cut themselves off completely from careers where they made all the money they would ever need and far too many enemies – a situation exacerbated by their heartfelt conviction that killing was only ever to be used as a last resort.

When devious British Spymaster Sir Gerald Tarrant sought them out they were slowly dying of boredom in England. The wily old bird offered them a chance to have fun, get back into harness and do a bit of good in the world. They jumped at his offer and have been cleaning up the dregs of society in their own unique manner ever since â€¦

From that tenuous beginning in ‘La Machine’ (see Modesty Blaise: the Gabriel Set-Up) the dynamic duo went on to crush the world’s vilest villains and most macabre monsters in a perpetual storm of tense suspense and inspirational action for nearly forty yearsâ€¦

The inseparable associates debuted in The Evening Standard on 13^th May 1963 and over the passing decades went on to star in some of the world’s most memorable crime fiction, all in approximately three panels a day.

Creators Peter O’Donnell & Jim Holdaway (who had previously collaborated on Romeo Brown – a lost strip classic equally deserving of its own archive albums) produced a timeless treasure trove of brilliant graphic escapades until the illustrator’s tragic early death in 1970, whereupon Spanish artist Enric Badia Romero (and occasionally John Burns, Neville Colvin and Pat Wright) assumed the art reins, taking the partners-in-peril to even greater heights.

The series has been syndicated world-wide and Modesty has starred in 13 prose novels and short-story collections, several films, a TV pilot, a radio play, an original American graphic novel from DC and nearly one hundred comic strip adventures until the strip’s conclusion in 2001.

The serial exploits are a broad blend of hip adventuring lifestyle and cool capers, combining espionage, crime, intrigue and even – now and again – plausibly intriguing sci fi and supernaturally tinged horror genre fare, with ever-competent Modesty and Willie canny, deadly, yet all-too-fallibly human defenders of the helpless and avengers of the wrongedâ€¦

Reproduced in stark and stunning monochrome – as is only right and fitting – Titan Books’ superbly scrupulous chronological serial re-presentations of the ultimate trouble-shooters resume here, with O’Donnell & Romero offering four more masterpieces of mood mystery sand mayhem only pausing for intriguing Introduction ‘Modest Morality’: an insightful overview of the wonder woman’s ethics and motivation from author and incurable fan-addict Simon Barnes (How to be a Bad Birdwatcher, The Sacred Coombe, Ten Million Aliens).

The suspenseful dramas open with Ripper Jax (originally run in The Evening Standard from May 4^th to October 2^nd 1995), wherein Modesty and Willie repay an old blood-debt to psychometricist and antiquarian bookseller Mr. Haley. The old gentleman has a daughter who’s a bit of a wild child and now she’s been kidnapped by psychotic, knife-throwing gang boss Ripper Jax.

The thoroughly nasty flesh-peddler is after two million pounds hidden by a thief who is beyond his usual means of coercion and persuasion, but for a man who can find things by mental divination all things are possibleâ€¦

Naturally the Dynamic Duo leap to the distraught dad’s defence, but a little pre-raid intelligence-gathering around the villain’s medieval castle in Ireland not only reveals the huge odds arranged against them but also that it might not be a simple abduction and trade that’s going onâ€¦

Moreover, Jax soon knows the troubleshooters are coming but doesn’t care. He’s always wanted to test his knives and skill against the legendary bladesman Willie Garvinâ€¦

The scene shifts to the antipodes for The Maori Contact (3^rd October 2^nd 1995 – March 1^st 1996) as Willie helps some old friends finish a magnificent, hand-carved traditional Waka. The 100-foot native war-canoe is the crowning triumph of British sculptor Jason Nash and his wife Carol, but they have no idea of the problems brewingâ€¦

In London, Modesty is just learning from Jason’s uncle Sir Gerald Tarrant that Carol has inherited millions of pounds from a crazy relative she had no notion of, even as Willie and Jason foil an abduction attempt which leaves one kidnapper dead and poor hubby with blood on his handsâ€¦

Rushing out on the first jet to New Zealand, Modesty and Tarrant are unaware that Carol’s sole rival for the inheritance is already on his way ahead to them, having hired one of the few criminal organisations in the world undaunted by the lethal reputations of Blaise and Garvin.

Not prepared to leave it at that, Carol’s unknown enemy also recruits an army of local riff raff to play back-up, but has completely underestimated the devious duo’s experience in whittling down overwhelming odds and uncanny ability to find helpful allies in the strangest placesâ€¦

A startling glimpse into Modesty’s criminal days running The Network underpins Honeygun (March 4^th to August 2^nd 1996), revealing how her life was saved by a merciless mercenary killer.

Sadly the striking Eurasian assassin was too depraved and kill-hungry to be allowed to join Modesty’s gang and left in a huff with a solemn promise that Modesty owed her a debt which would one day be called inâ€¦

Years later that obligation becomes a deadly burden when Willie and â€œthe Princessâ€ are relaxing in their Tangiers home. Modesty is spending time with her occasional paramour Dr. Giles Pennyfeather when Honeygun resurfaces, orchestrating a heist which goes bloodily awry.

Trapped in the Kasbah with the cops closing in, the sociopathic killer calls in her debt and Modesty reluctantly spirits her away before the police can swoopâ€¦

Blaise’s misgivings over the rescue are soon proved true when Honeygun kills an Israeli diplomat and his chauffeur and subsequently abducts Giles from his hospital to remove a bullet from one of her henchmen wounded in the exchange of fireâ€¦

Torn by guilt, Modesty resolves to stop Honeygun for good. Before long she and Willie have tracked the crazy killer and her increasingly anxious army of hired guns to a derelict Roman fort and begun the perilous task of extracting Giles and cutting down the odds. With the worst storm in decades brewing, Modesty has to deal with one final hiccup when her darling doctor refuses to leave without his critically injured patientâ€¦

This catalogue of compelling crookedness and catastrophic crime-busting concludes with a gripping yarn wherein Modesty and Willie rush to the rescue of old friends Dinah and Stephen Collier in the raw heart of the Guatemalan jungle.

The professor and his blind, psychic wife were working for Blaise’s occasional lover John Dall, divining potential drill sites for the billionaire’s oil company when they were taken by a gang of rebels led by the charismatic maniac Durango (August 5^th 1996 to January 3^rd 1997)â€¦

Rapidly swinging into action, Blaise and Garvin go native and attempt to infiltrate the band in the manner that’s worked so well so often, but things go south swiftly when Durango turns out to be old Network adversary Lazaya who instantly recognises them and decides to ransom them insteadâ€¦.

With everything going wrong the partners in peril have to think fast, act boldly and ruthlessly exploit every advantage to save their friends and themselves, but as always the final arbiter is a study in applied violenceâ€¦

These are incomparable capers crafted by brilliant creators at the peak of their powers; revelling in the sheer perfection of an iconic creation. Unforgettable shock and suspense-stuffed escapades packed with sleek sex appeal, dry wit, terrific tension and explosive action, the stories grow more appealing with every rereading and never fail to deliver maximum impact and total enjoyment.
Modesty Blaise Â© 2014 Associated Newspapers/Solo Syndication.

Modesty Blaise: Ripper Jax is available for pre-order now and will be published on March 4^th 2016.

December 28, 2015December 13, 2015

Rip Kirby Comic Album

By Alex Raymond, John Prentiss & Fred Dickenson (World Distributors {Manchester} Ltd)
No ISBN; ASIN: B004N6P0KM

It took the British a very long time to get the hang of American-style superheroes but we never had any trouble with more traditional genre standards, such as this quirky collection of adventures starring one of the world’s most intriguing private eyes. Another tantalising oddment of UK reprint publishing, the Rip Kirby Comic Album was probably released in 1960: a monochrome affair with soft card-covers, gathering selected yarns from the transitional period when John Prentice took over from all-star originator Alex Raymond.

Although this particular vintage item is relatively easy to find, if you’re properly interested in the armchair sleuth’s career you should seek out the recent hardback releases from IDW: the entire saga of Rip Kirby in splendid archival collector’s editions.

In the golden age of newspaper adventure strips (that’s the 1930s, OK?) Alex Raymond made Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim and Secret Agent X-9 household names all over the world, but when duty called, he dropped everything and went to war.

On his return, rather than rekindle old glories, he created (from King Features Editor Ward Greene’s concept and scripts) a new kind of private detective. The result was a rather unique individual, a demobbed marine, intellectual by inclination and sedentary by preference, who – although physically powerful – chose to use his mind rather than fists and guns to solve quandaries.

He had a steady girlfriend called Judith â€œHoneyâ€ Dorian and a seemingly mousy yet deviously competent manservant named Desmond simply sodden with hidden depths (the dapper flunky was a reformed burglar and able sidekick decades before Lady Penelope hired that guy Parker).

Remington â€œRipâ€ Kirby debuted on March 4^th 1946, to instant approbation and commercial success. Greene scripted the strip until 1952 when he was replaced by journalist Fred Dickenson. Raymond continued to illustrate the wittily urbane serial thriller until September 6^th 1956, when, aged only 46, he died in a car crash.

The hugely talented John Prentice was chosen to assume the art duties whilst Dickenson continued writing until 1986 when he retired due to ill-health, from which time Prentice did his job too. The feature finally ended on June 26^th 1999 when Prentice retired.

This reprint classic fortuitously represents that transitional tale as the opening case as ‘Rip Kirby in the Elixir of Youth’ (which was originally syndicated from 30^th July to 20^th October 1956, with Prentice taking over from October 1^st) finds aging Hollywood star Mavis Fulton raging against the inexorable ravages of time and taking it out on her makeup man.

As conman â€œDr.â€ Leon de Leon is kicked out of town for his usual charlatanry, he links up with disgraced and recently dismissed cosmetic artist Pancake Murgatroyd and both head East to New Yorkâ€¦

In the city they first target wealthy spinster Hattie Hilton for a million dollar scam. All they need is a gullible actress they can cosmetically add fifty years to before very publicly erasing those years with their bogus Fountain of Youth for foolish old ladiesâ€¦

The scheme proceeds with slow, sure success until Hattie’s butler swipes some of the miracle mixture for his own use and affably shares the benefits with Desmond. When Rip sees their silliness, he immediately leaps to the correct conclusion and quietly intervenes in Miss Hilton’s behalfâ€¦

‘Model in Trouble’ (originally entitled ‘The Fatal Photo’ and running from December 9^th 1957 to February 8^th 1958) focuses on Honey’s modelling career but deviates into deadly danger after her photographer – a notorious letch and Lothario – is murdered during a shoot.

With his girlfriend the only suspect, Rip starts nosing around and soon finds plenty of other likely candidates but things really start popping when he finds the dying shutterbug got a shot at his killerâ€¦

The high stakes thrills and chills conclude with the butler centre stage when ‘Desmond Makes a Lucky Strike’ (first serialised from 27^th May to August 10^th 1957 as ‘Casino Con’ follows the dutiful valet as he beguiles and cajoles his easygoing employer into taking a trip out west.

Awaiting them are husband-&-wife hucksters Belle and â€œStogieâ€ Nash and they soon part Desmond from his savings by convincing him there’s uranium in them thar hillsâ€¦

Rip’s response is typical: organise a few old pals on both sides of the law and set up an irresistible sting to fleece the fleecersâ€¦

This arcane album offers a perfect snapshot of one of America’s most famous fictional detectives, drawn by two of the world’s most brilliant artists. A perfect taste of the heady 1950s style, this book will suck you into a captivating world of adventure and resurgent post-war glamour all doled out with deliciously sharp dialogue, smart plotting and plenty of laughs to balance the thrills.

Your chances of tracking down this gem are rather better than you’d expect and well worth the effort if you’re an art-lover or comics curio collector, as Raymond’s and Prentice’s drawing at this size are an unparalleled delight.
Â© King Features Syndicate Inc. All rights reserved.

December 19, 2015December 18, 2015

Batman: the Dark Knight Archives volume 7

By Bob Kane, Don Cameron, Bill Finger, Joe Samachson, Alvin Schwartz, Dick Sprang, Jerry Robinson, Ray Burnley & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3744-8

Win’s Christmas Recommendation: Classically Traditional, Timelessly Wonderfulâ€¦ 9/10

Launching a year after Superman, â€œThe Bat-Manâ€ (and latterly Robin, the Boy Wonder) cemented DC/National Comics as the market frontrunner and conceptual leader of the burgeoning comicbook industry.

Having established the fantastic parameters of the metahuman with their Man of Tomorrow, the strictly mortal physical perfection and dashing derring-do of DC’s Dynamic Duo rapidly became the swashbuckling benchmark by which all other four-colour crimebusters were judged.

This eighth luxuriously lavish hardback Archive Edition volume covers another bevy of Batman adventures (#32-37 of his solo title, spanning December 1945/January 1946 through October/November 1946), with the Gotham Gangbusters resolutely returned to battling post-war perils and peacetime perfidies of danger, doom and criminalityâ€¦.

These Golden Age greats comprise many of the greatest tales in Batman’s decades-long canon, as lead writers Bill Finger and Don Cameron, supplemented by Joe Samachson, Alvin Schwartz and other – sadly unrecorded – scripters, pushed the boundaries of the medium.

On the visual side, graphic genius Dick Sprang superseded and surpassed freshly-returned originator Bob Kane (who had been drawing the Batman daily newspaper strip until its cancellation), making the feature utterly his own in all but name whilst keeping the Dauntless Double-act at the forefront of the legion of superhero stars, even as veteran contributor Jerry Robinson was reaching the peak of his illustrative powers and preparing to move on to other artistic endeavoursâ€¦

The sheer creativity exhibited in these adventures proved the creators responsible for producing the bi-monthly adventures of the Dark Knight were hitting an artistic peak that few other superhero titles could match. Within scant years they would be one of the only games in town for Fights ‘n’ Tights fans…

Following a fascinatingly fact-filled and incisive Foreword from the inestimable Roy Thomas, the all-out action begins with Batman #32 and another malevolently marvellous exploit of The Joker whose ‘Racket-Rax Racket!’ (crafted by Cameron & Sprang) finds its felonious inspiration in college-student hazing and initiation stunts, after which Finger scripted ‘Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder!’ for that man Sprang, which reprises the jaunty junior partner’s origins and reveals how the lad earned the right to risk his life every night beside the mighty Batman in a blisteringly tense first caseâ€¦

Light-hearted supplemental feature ‘The Adventures of Alfred’ provides thrills and laughs in equal measure as the dutiful butler reluctantly baby-sits a posh pooch and ends up ‘In the Soup’ after stumbling upon a gang of high society food smugglers (courtesy of Samachson & Robinson), before Cameron & Sprang spectacularly combine a smidgen of science fiction flair and a dash of historical conceit to the regular adventure mix when Professor Carter Nichols uses his hypnosis-powered time-travel trick to send Bruce and Dick to the court of Louis XIII to work with D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers in ‘All for One, One for All!’

Issue #33 was the Christmas issue for 1945 – complete with seasonal cover by Sprang – but was otherwise an all-Win Mortimer art-fest; beginning with Finger’s ‘Crime on the Wing’ wherein the Penguin popped up and began a renewed campaign of crime with his trick umbrellas, just to prove to modern mobsters that he was still a force to be reckoned with after which anonymously-scripted thriller ‘The Looters!’ found the Dynamic Duo hunting a heartless pack of human hyenas led by the Jackal, raiding cities struck by disasters natural and notâ€¦

As if that wasn’t vile enough, the shameless exploiter was also trying to steal or sabotage the invention of a dedicated seismologist who thought he’d found a way to predict earthquakes until Batman and Robin rocked the Jackal’s worldâ€¦

The issue ended with a similarly uncredited Holiday treat as ‘The Search for Santa Claus’ saw three broken old men redeemed by the season of goodwill.

After selflessly standing in for Saint Nick, an innocent man who’d spent 25 years in jail, an over-the-hill actor and a millionaire framed and certified insane by his unscrupulous heirs all found peace, contentment and justice after encountering those industriously bombastic elves Batman and Robinâ€¦

Three quarters of issue #34 was crafted by Finger & Sprang, beginning with ‘The Marathon of Menace!’ as an old man who’d dedicated his life to speed records organised a cross-country race across America with enough prize cash to interest crooks – and the ever-vigilant Gotham Gangbusters – after which an insufferable chatterbox deafeningly returned in ‘Ally Babble and the Four Tea Leaves!’; in which the chaos-causing manic maunderer consults a fortune teller and accidentally confounds a string of dastardly desperadoesâ€¦

Robinson then limned an anonymous but timely tale as ‘The Adventures of Alfred: Tired Tracks’ found the veteran valet stumbling upon a gang of opportunistic thieves before the issue ends with Finger & Sprang detailing ‘The Master Vs. the Pupil!’

Here the Batman tests his partner’s progress by becoming the quarry in a devious manhunt, but Robin’s early confidence and success take a nasty nosedive after an embarrassing gaffe which proves the danger of too much successâ€¦

Finger, Bob Kane & Ray Burnley crafted the lion’s share of Batman #35, beginning with the landmark ‘Nine Lives has the Catwoman!’ wherein the slinky thief finally emerged as the Dark Knight’s premier female foil.

Escaping prison and going on a wild crime spree, the feline felon convinces the world – and possibly the Caped Crusaders – that she cannot die, after which the equally auspicious and influential ‘Dinosaur Island!’ finds our heroes performing a sociology experiment in a robotic theme park, only to find the cavemen and giant beasts co-opted by a murderous enemy looking to become king of the criminal underworld by orchestrating their deathsâ€¦

An author unknown then scripted the whimsical exploits of ‘Dick Grayson, Author!’ (art by Kane & Burnley) as the young daredevil deems comicbook stories too unrealistic and is offered the opportunity to write some funnybook dramas which would benefit from actual crime-fighting experience. Of course, all that typing and plotting are harder than they lookâ€¦

Kane & Burnley also illustrated all the Batman tales in #36, beginning with Alvin Schwartz’s ‘The Penguin’s Nest!’ wherein the podgy Bird of Ill-Omen started imperilling his new, successful – and legitimate – restaurant venture by committing minor misdemeanours just to get arrested. Unsure of what he’s up to, the Masked Manhunters spend an inordinate amount of time and energy keeping him out of jug until they finally glean his devious, million-dollar schemeâ€¦

When Hollywood’s top stuntman suffers a head injury on set and begins acting out his assorted past roles in the real world, the panicked studios call in Batman to be a ‘Stand-In for Danger!’ (Cameron, Kane & Burnley), whilst ‘The Adventures of Alfred: Elusive London Eddie!’ (with Robinson art) sees the mild-mannered manservant ferreting out a British scallywag gone to ground in Gotham after which the issue ends on a spectacular high with another terrific time-travel trip.

‘Sir Batman at King Arthur’s Court!’ – courtesy of Finger, Kane & Burnley – sees our compulsive chrononauts crisscrossing fabled Camelot and battling rogue wizards to verify the existence of the enigmatic Round Table legend dubbed Sir Hardi Le Noirâ€¦

This stunning and sturdy compilation closes with the all-Robinson, all anonymously scripted #37, beginning with ‘Calling Dr. Batman!’ wherein the wounded crimebuster is admitted to hospital and uncovers dark doings and radium robbery.

As if that wasn’t enough a very sharp nurse seems to have suspicions regarding the similarity of the masked celebrity’s wounds to those of a certain millionaire playboyâ€¦

Batman and Robin are back in Tinseltown to solve a dire dilemma as ‘Hollywood Hoax!’ has them hunting thieves and blackmailers who have swiped the master print of the latest certified celluloid smash, after which the dauntless derring-do ends with a magnificent clash of eternal adversaries when ‘The Joker Follows Suit!’

Fed up with failing in all his felonious forays, the Clown Prince of Crime decides that imitation is the sincerest form of theft and begins swiping the Dark Knights gimmicks, methods and gadgets; using them to profitably come to the aid of bandits in distressâ€¦

Accompanied as always by a full creator ‘Biographies’ section, this superb collection of comicbook classics is another magnificent rollercoaster ride back to an era of high drama and breathtaking excitement: a timeless, evergreen delight no addict of graphic action can ignore.
Â© 1945, 1946, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

December 17, 2015December 16, 2015

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Archives volume 2

By Wally Wood, Steve Ditko, Dan Adkins, John Giunta, Gil Kane, Reed Crandall, Mike Sekowsky, Steve Skeates & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-970-6

The history of Wally Wood’s immortal comics masterpiece is convoluted, and once the mayfly-like lifetime of the Tower Comics line folded, not especially pretty: wrapped up in legal wrangling and lots of petty back-biting. None of that, however, diminishes the fact that the far-too brief run of The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves was a benchmark of quality and sheer bravura fun for fans of both the still-reawakening superhero genre and the popular media’s spy-chic obsession.

In the early 1960s the James Bond movie franchise was going from strength to strength, with action and glamour utterly transforming the formerly understated espionage vehicle. The buzz was infectious: soon A Man like Flint and Matt Helm were carving out their own piece of the action even as television shanghaied the entire bandwagon with the irresistible Man from U.N.C.L.E. (which premiered in September 1964), bringing the whole genre inescapably into living rooms across the world.

Before long wildly creative cartooning maverick Wally Wood was approached by veteran MLJ/Archie Comics editor Harry Shorten to create a line of characters for a new distribution-chain funded publishing outfit – Tower Comics. Woody called on some of the biggest names in the industry to produce material in the broad range of genres the company requested (as well as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and its spin-offs Undersea Agent, Dynamo and NoMan, there was the magnificent war-comic Fight the Enemy and the youth-comedy Tippy Teen).

Samm Schwartz and Dan DeCarlo handled the funny book – which outlasted all the others – whilst Wood, Larry Ivie, Len Brown, Bill Pearson, Steve Skeates, Dan Adkins, Russ Jones, Gil Kane and Ralph Reese all contributed scripts for themselves and the industry’s top talents to illustrate on the assorted adventure series.

With such a ravenous public appetite for super-spies and costumed heroes steadily rising in comic-book popularity the idea of blending the two concepts seems a no-brainer now, but those were far more conservative times, and when T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 appeared with no fanfare or pre-publicity on newsstands in August 1965, thrill-hungry readers were blown away.

It didn’t hurt either that all Tower titles were in the beloved-but-rarely-seen 80 Page Giant format: there was a huge amount to read in every issue!

All that being said the tales would not be so adored by us baby-boomer fans if they hadn’t been so superbly crafted. As well as Wood, the art accompanying the compelling, far more mature stories was by some of the greatest talents in comics: Reed Crandall, Kane, George Tuska, Mike Sekowsky, Dick Ayers, Joe Orlando, Frank Giacoia, John Giunta, Steve Ditko and others.

This second lush and lustrous hardback compilation collects T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #5-7 and the first blockbusting issue of spin-off title Dynamo – from June to August 1966 – with the superbly cool concept and characters going from strength to strength.

Following a positively passionate and insider-fact packed Foreword by Robert Klein and Michael Uslan, the stunning all-star action blast off like a rocketâ€¦

For those who came in late: When brilliant Professor Emil Jennings was attacked by the forces of the mysterious Warlord, the savant perished but UN troops salvaged some of his greatest inventions. These included a belt that increased the density of the wearer’s body until it becomes as hard as steel, a cloak of invisibility and a brain-amplifier helmet.

The prototypes were divided between several agents to create a unit of super-operatives to counter increasingly bold attacks of many global terror threats such as the aforementioned Warlord.

First chosen was affable, honest but far from brilliant file clerk Len Brown who was, to everyone’s surprise, assigned the belt and codename Dynamo. Contributing scripter Len Brown had no idea illustrator/editor Wood had puckishly changed the hero’s civilian name as a last-minute gag until the comic rolled off the pressesâ€¦

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent NoMan was once aged Dr. Anthony Dunn who chose to have his mind transferred into an android body and was then gifted with the invisibility cape. If his artificial body was destroyed Dunn’s consciousness could transfer to another android body. As long as he had a spare ready, he could never dieâ€¦

John Janus seemed the perfect UN employee: a mental and physical marvel who easily passed all the tests necessary to wear the Jennings helmet. Sadly, he was also a deep cover mole for the Warlord, poised to betray T.H.U.N.D.E.R. at the earliest opportunity. All plans went awry once he donned the helmet and became Menthor. The device awakened his mind’s full potential, granting him telepathy, telekinesis and mind-reading powers, but it also drove all evil from his mind. When the Warlord attacked with a small army and a giant monster, Menthor was compelled by his own costume to defeat the assault. What a dilemma for a traitor to be inâ€¦

A fourth super-spy was added when Guy Gilbert of the crack Mission: Impossible style T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad was required to beta-test an experimental super-speed suit. The gung-ho hyper-fast Lightning was proud to do so, even if every use of the hyper-acceleration gimmick shortened his life-spanâ€¦

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #5 again gloriously pandered to every kid’s dream as the nice guy with the power to smash was pinpointed as the weak link of the agency and subjected to a three-pronged attack by Warlord and his subterranean race in ‘Dynamo and the Golem’ by a sadly unrecorded writer with art from Crandall, Wood & Adkins. The stupendous underground duel with the monstrous mechanical was even augmented by guest walk-ons (a rare treat in the mid-1960s when most editors feared over-exposing their heroes) by other T.H.U.N.D.E.R. starsâ€¦

The modern master of a tribe of primordial men returned as ‘NoMan: In the Caverns of Demo’ (by Bill Pearson, Gil Kane, Wood & Tony Coleman) saw the invisible agent lured into a trap and temporarily lose his wonder cape. After a gloriously panoramic ‘Lightning Pin-up’ by Adkins, Steve Skeates, Mike Sekowsky & Frank Giacoia then reveal how a Nazi scientist blackmails a trusted engineer and wrecks new planes for the agency with his deadly â€œslow-downâ€ dust in ‘Lightning: Return of Baron Von Kampf’â€¦

The author of ‘Menthor vs. The Entrancer’ is unknown but the unmistakable John Giunta limns the dark tale of the mind master’s duel with a petty thief who steals a magic gem and almost conquers a country before the concluding ‘T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents: Double For Dynamo’ (Skeates, Wood, Adkins & Coleman) sees the entire team unite to tackle another plot by duplicate maker Mastermind to place his felonious android facsimiles in positions of powerâ€¦

Issue #6 opened with ‘Dynamo and the Sinister Agents of the Red Star’ (author unknown, Wood & Adkins) as the sinister Sino-spymaster introduced a devastating judo expert who could use the human powerhouse’s strength against him. Len had to use his brain (for a change) to stop the brazen theft of America’s newest super-submarineâ€¦

Skeates, Sekowsky & Giacoia had fun with a teleporting criminal in ‘Lightning: The Origin of the Warp Wizard’ and shockingly let the villain win whilst in ‘T.H.U.N.D.E.R. vs. Demo’ – illustrated by Giunta, Wood & Adkins – the vile plotter ambushed NoMan and used his stolen cape to gather tons of cash and the other Jennings devices.

The arrogant thug’s big mistake was trusting his sultry sidekick Satana, who oddly bore a grudge for that time he abandoned her to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. and the copsâ€¦

‘Menthor: The Carnival of Death’ with art by Giunta & Carl Hubbell pitted the agent against a spy who was a natural telepath. Despite tremendous odds Janus foiled an insidious assassination attempt but lost his helmet in the processâ€¦

The best tale in this issue – and probably the entire book – is ‘NoMan: To Fight Alone’ by Skeates & Ditko wherein the immortal agent is the only one capable of defying anti-democratic demagogue Mr. Image who has the power to control any and all living beings in his vicinity. Of course, NoMan is only â€œlivingâ€ is a strictly technical senseâ€¦

The final T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents inclusion is #7; a true landmark which opens with Dynamo in ‘Wanted: Leonard Brown, Code Name â€œDynamoâ€ Suspicion of Treason’ (illustrated by Wood, Adkins & Ralph Reese) with the hero on the run. Gullible Brown has been framed by the delectable Rusty (revealed as the svelte and sinister Iron Maiden; a vivacious villainess clad in figure-hugging steel who was the probable puberty trigger for an entire generation of boysâ€¦) but still manages – as much by charm and luck as skill or wit – to turn the tables and vindicate himself, after which a frantic showdown leaves Lightning possibly crippled for life after enduring ‘The Warp Wizard’s Revenge’ (Skeates, Sekowsky & Giacoia).

The years-long secret war against invaders from Earth’s core came closer to final resolution in ‘T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents: Subterranean Showdown’ – art by George Tuska – as a council of Warlords’ abduction of Dynamo leads to a shattering battle they ultimately fail to win, whilst, after a pulse-pounding Wood & Adkins ‘Iron Maiden: Pin-up’, NoMan suffers a psychological breakdown in ‘To Be or Not To Be’ by Pearson, Giunta & Sal Trapani.

Although Dr. Dunn is now a thing of plastic and wire, he is still susceptible to feminine allure and the unresolved dilemma almost costs him – and Earth – everythingâ€¦

The issue ended with a tale which blew the mind of most kids reading it in the summer of 1966. ‘Menthor: A Matter of Life and Death’ written by Adkins, with art by Ditko & Wood was an utter shock to readers who had never seen a hero die before (we were so sheltered back then; cowboys and cops only ever shot guns out of owlhoots’ hands)â€¦

When a super-agent is shanghaied to Subterraneana as bait for a trap, he does what any hero would do rather than betray his friendsâ€¦

This cathartic fun-fest concludes with the contents of Dynamo #1 as the Tower’s top draw was the first hero to get his own solo title. It began with sheer sci fi spectacle as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. spots a staging post on Luna and sends Len on what might be a one-way trip (it’s three years before the Apollo moon shots, remember?) to scotch a potential invasion from space in ‘Menace From the Moon’ by Wood & Adkins.

That astounding blockbuster is followed by a deliciously wry romp as ‘A Day in the Life of Dynamo’ (Sekowsky & Giacoia) finds the invulnerable operative harried around the world from pillar to post in pursuit of the elusive Red Dragon, the wicked Warlords, rampaging giant robotsâ€¦ and a date with the boss’ assistant Aliceâ€¦

Then Crandall, Wood & Adkins seemingly take Dynamo ‘Back to the Stone Age’: revealing the secret of Demo’s stock of cavemen and dinosaurs after the devilish villain breaks out of jail with Mastermind in tow, after which Ditko, Wood & Adkins craft another mini-masterpiece as ‘Dynamo Meets the Amazing Andor’.

Decades ago the so-very-patient Warlords stole a human baby and spent long years turning the waif into a biological superman devoid of sentiment or compassion. Sadly, when they finally unleashed their Andor on the surface civilisations, although they anticipated the dogged resistance of humanity and even the newly-constituted T.H.U.N.D.E.R., the subterranean geniuses hadn’t factored in their living weapon’s reaction to the first woman he had ever seenâ€¦

The tongue-in-cheek dramas wrap up with a bright breezy spoof as ‘Wonder Weed, Super Hero’ illustrated by Giunta, reveals how merely mortal – and mildly jealous – agent William â€œWeedâ€ Wylie is tricked by a magician/enemy agent into thinking he has powers too. Of course Weed is gullible and avaricious but nobody’s foolâ€¦

With stories all shaded in favour of fast pace, sparse dialogue, explosive action and big visuals, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was decades ahead of its time and certainly informed everything in Fights ‘n’ Tights comics which came after it. These are truly timeless comic classics which improve with every reading, and there’s never been a better time to add these landmark superhero sagas to your collection of favourites.
Â© 1966 John Carbonaro. All rights reserved. This edition Â© 2003 DC Comics.

December 12, 2015December 10, 2015

Alley Oop: the First Time Travel Adventure – Library of American Comics Essentials volume 4

By V.T. Hamlin (IDW/Library of American Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-829-6

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Primal Cartoon Funâ€¦ 10/10

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips. These pictorial features were, until relatively recently, extremely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as a powerful weapon to guarantee and even increase circulation and profits. From the earliest days humour was paramount; hence our umbrella terms 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; gradually moving from mock-heroics to light-action into full-blown adventure with the introduction of Captain Easy in 1929) or Tarzan and Buck Rogers – which both debuted January 7^th 1929 as adaptations of pre-existing prose properties – the vast bulk of strips produced were generally feel-good humour strips with the occasional child-oriented fantasy.

This abruptly changed in the 1930s when an explosion of rollicking drama strips were launched with astounding rapidity. Not only features but actual genres were created in that decade which still impact on not just today’s comicbooks but all our popular fiction.

Another infinitely deep well of fascination for humans is cavemen and dinosaurs. During that distant heyday of America’s strip-surge a rather unique real character created a rather unique and paradoxical cartoon character: at once both adventurous and comedic; simultaneously forward-looking and fantastically â€œretroâ€ in the same engagingly rendered packageâ€¦

Vincent Trout Hamlin was born in 1900 and did many things before settling as a cartoonist. After mustering out of the US Expeditionary Force at the end of the Great War V.T. finished High School and then went to the University of Missouri. This was in 1920 and he studied journalism but, since he’d always loved drawing, the eager beaver took advantage of the institution’s art courses too.

Hamlin was always a supreme storyteller and lived long enough to give plenty of interviews and accounts – many impishly contradictory – about the birth of his antediluvian archetypeâ€¦

As a press photographer Hamlin had roamed the Lone Star State filming the beginnings of the petroleum industry and caught the bug for finding fossils. Whilst drawing ads for a Texas Oil company, he became further fascinated with bones and rocks as he struggled to create a strip which would provide his family with a regular incomeâ€¦

When V.T. resolve to chance his arm at the booming comic strip business, those fossil fragments got his imagination percolating and he came up with a perfect set-up for action, adventure, big laughs and even a healthy dose of social satireâ€¦

Alley Oop is a Neanderthal (-ish) caveman inhabiting a lush, fantastic land where dinosaurs still thrive. In fact his greatest friend and boon companion is Dinny; a faithful, valiant saurian chum who terrifies every other dinosaur in creationâ€¦ as well as all the annoying spear-waving bipeds swarming about.

Because Dinny is as smart and obedient as a dog, all the other cave folk – like arrogant, insecure King Guzzle – generally treat the mighty, free-thinking, disrespectful Oop with immense cautionâ€¦

Unlike most of his audience, Hamlin knew such things could never have occurred but didn’t much care: the set-up was too sweet to waste and it would prove to be the very least of the supremely imaginative creative anachronisms he and his brilliant wife Dorothy would concoct as the strip grew in scope and popularity.

Oop actually launched twice. In 1930 Hamlin whipped up primeval prototype Oop the Mighty which he then radically retooled and sold to small, local Bonnet-Brown Syndicate as Alley Oop. It debuted on December 5^th 1932 and was steadily gaining traction when Bonnet-Brown foundered in the worst days of the Great Depression a year later.

Happily the strip had won enough of a popular following that the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate – whose other properties included Major Hoople, Boots and Her Buddies and the aforementioned Wash Tubbs – tracked down the neophyte scribbler and offered him a regular slot in papers all over America.

Alley Oop re-debuted as a daily strip on August 7^th 1933, swiftly reprising his old stories for a far larger audience before moving on to new adventures and inevitably winning a Sunday colour page on September 9^th 1934, the year V.T., Dorothy and new daughter Theodora relocated to affluent Sarasota, Florida.

Sadly for such a revered series with a huge pedigree – still running today scripted by Carole Bender and drawn by her husband Jack as both Sunday and daily feature – there has never been a concerted effort to properly collect the entire epic. There have however been tantalising outbursts of reprints in magazines and short sets of archive editions from Kitchen Sink, Dark Horse and IDW’s Library of American Comics.

This uniquely intriguing monochrome hardback (Part of The Library of American Comics Essentials range) re-presents – in the form of one day per elongated landscape page – the absolutely most crucial and game-changing sequence in the strip’s 80-year history as the protagonists escaped their antediluvian environs for the first time and were calamitously catapulted into the 20^th centuryâ€¦

Supplementing the cartoon bedazzlement is a superbly informative and candid-picture packed introduction by Michael H. Price. ‘V.T. Hamlin and the Road to Moo’ reviews the creator’s amazing life and other strip endeavours before starting his life’s work and what the feature meant to him, after which the grand adventure – spanning Monday March 6^th 1939 to Saturday March 23^rd 1940 – opens in a strange land a long, long way from here and nowâ€¦

A little background: the cave-folk of that far-ago time lived in a rocky village ruled over by devious, semi-paranoid King Guzzle and his formidable, achingly status-conscious wife Queen Umpateedle. The kingdom was known as Moo and the elite ruling couple were guided, advised and manipulated in equal amounts by the sneaky shaman Grand Wizer. All three constantly sought to curb the excesses of a rebelliously independent, instinctively democratic kibitzer and free-spirit Oop.

Our hero – the toughest, most honest man in the land – had no time for the silly fripperies and dumb made-up rules of interfering civilisation, but he did usually give in to the stern glances and fierce admonishments of his long-suffering girl â€œcompanionâ€ Ooola. The uneasy balance of power in the kingdom comes from the fact that Guz and the Wizer – even with the entire nation behind them – were never a match for Oop and Dinny when they got madâ€¦ which was pretty oftenâ€¦

The big change began when Dinny turned up with an egg and became broody and uncooperative. With Oop’s mighty pal out of sorts, the Wizer then played a cruel master-stoke and declared that only the contents of the egg could cure King Guz of a mystery ailment and prompted a mini civil warâ€¦

After revolution and counterrevolution Oop and Ooola are on the run when they encounter a bizarre object which vanishes before their eyes. As they stare in stupefaction they are ambushed by Guz’s men and only escape because they too fade from sightâ€¦

Somewhere in rural America in 1939, brilliant researcher Dr. Elbert Wonmug (that’s a really convoluted but clever pun) discusses with his assistant the movies their camera took when they sent it into the distant past via their experimental time machineâ€¦

The heated debate about the strangely beautiful and modern-looking cave woman and her monstrously odd-looking mate are soon curtailed as the subjects actually materialise in the room and the absentminded professor realises he left his chronal scoop runningâ€¦

Before he can reverse his mistake and return the unwilling, unwitting guests to their point of origin, the colossal mechanism catastrophically explodes, wrecking the lab and burying the astounded antediluvians in rubble.

Thanks to an unexplained quirk of temporal trans-placement, time travellers always speak the language of wherever they’ve fetched up – albeit through their own slang and idiom – so after Oop digs his way out utterly unharmed, explanations are soon forthcoming from the modern tinkerers. Before long the cave folk are welcomed to all the fabulous advances of the 20^th centuryâ€¦

At least Ooola is – thanks to the friendly advice of Wonmug’s daughter Dee – but the hulking male primitive is quickly getting fed up with this fragile place, all snarled up with just as many foolish rules and customs as homeâ€¦

Storming off to catch and eat something he understands, Oop is suddenly whisked across country in a spectacular and hilarious rampage of destruction – in the best silent movie chase tradition – after he falls asleep in a transcontinental freight train. After weeks of wondering Wonmug and the now thoroughly-acclimated Ooola read newspaper reports of a cunning and destructive â€œGreat White Apeâ€ and make plans to fetch their stray home. The government meanwhile have put top agent G.I.Tum on the caseâ€¦

The Phantom Ape however has plans of his own and, after â€œtrappingâ€ an aeroplane and its pilot, makes his own tempestuous way back to the isolated lab.

Eventually the whole story comes out and the displaced cave-folk become media sensations just as Wonmug finally completes his repairs to the time machine. Sadly Ooola – and to a lesser extent Alley – are not keen on returning to their dangerous point of originâ€¦

Moreover, not everybody believes Elbert has actually cracked the time barrier and the next segment sees scientific sceptic Dr. Bronson demand first hand proof. However when he eagerly zips off to experience Moo first hand he disappears and – after much pleading – Oop is convinced to follow him and find out what happenedâ€¦

When the swirling sensation ends our hirsute hero discovers what the problem is: the machine is by no means accurate and its focus has shifted. He has rematerialised outside a gigantic walled city of what we’d call the Bronze Ageâ€¦

What follows is a stupendous romp of action, adventure and laughs as Oop and Bronson become improbable and forgotten heroes of the Trojan War, meeting and enchanting Helen of Troy and becoming the embattled city’s top warrior generals.

In the 20^th century Wonmug is arrested for murder. Dee and his assistant Jon struggle to perfect the machine but in the end resort to busting the genius out to fix the problem and bring the time-lost wanderers back. In a race against time that’s all soon sorted and Ooola heads for ancient Greece to save the lost boys.

Unfortunately she’s picked up by the besieging Greeks and, thanks to her skill with guns, mistaken for the goddess Minervaâ€¦

The legendary story further unfolds with Oop and Ooola on opposite sides until wily Bronson makes a breakthrough based on his historical knowledge and they all return home in time to save Wonmug from the copsâ€¦

Soon a compact time team is established to exploit the invention – but not before Oop returns to devastated Troy to retrieve his beloved stone axe and – with Bronson and Ooola in tow – finds himself swept up in little sea voyage we knows as the Odysseyâ€¦

Back in America the team expands after old college chum and genius of all knowledge G. Oscar Boom invites himself to Wonmug’s scientific party. With all contact lost the unscrupulous rogue offers to go looking for them in the untrammelled past, providing he can take his specially tricked-out station wagonâ€¦

As this stunning collection concludes Boom and a mighty hitchhiker named Hercules have just run into the missing chrononauts as they are about to enter the Amazonian wilds of the Land of Warrior Womenâ€¦

To Be (hopefully) Continuedâ€¦

Having escaped the ultimately limiting confines of the strip and becoming a seasoned time travellers Hamlin had made the best of all worlds for his characters: Oop and Ooola periodically returned home to Dinny and the cave folk of Moo but they also roamed every intriguing nook and cranny of history ands even escaped planet Earth entirely and hopefully our own future holds the prospect of more such splendid strip sagasâ€¦

Fast-paced, furious, fantastically funny and bitterly barbed in the wryly acerbic manner of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges, Alley Oop is a bone fide classic of strip narrative, long overdue the respect and honour of a complete chronological collection.

However until some enlightened publisher gets around to it, by all means start digging on line and in bargain bins for each – or any – of the wonderful tomes already released. It’s barely the tip of an iceberg but it’s a startâ€¦
Alley Oop Â© and Â® 2013 United Features Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.

December 10, 2015December 7, 2015

The Boy Commandos volume 1

By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Ideal for fanboys, superhero purists and lovers of sheer comic exuberanceâ€¦ 9/10

Just as the Golden Age of comics was kicking off two young men with big hopes met up and began a decades-long association that was always intensely creative, immensely productive and spectacularly in tune with popular tastes.

Joe Simon was a sharp-minded, talented gentleman with five years experience in â€œrealâ€ publishing, working from the bottom up to art director on a succession of small newspapers such as the Rochester Journal American, Syracuse Herald and Syracuse Journal American before moving to New York City and a life of freelancing as an art/photo retoucher and illustrator. Recommended by his boss, Simon joined Lloyd Jacquet’s pioneering Funnies Inc., a comics production â€œshopâ€ generating strips and characters for a number of publishing houses eager to cash in on the success of Action Comics and its stellar attraction Superman.

Within days Simon created The Fiery Mask for Martin Goodman of Timely (now Marvel) Comics and met young Jacob Kurtzberg, a cartoonist and animator just hitting his imaginative stride with the Blue Beetle for the Fox Feature Syndicate.

Together Simon and Kurtzberg (who went through a battalion of pen-names before settling on Jack Kirby) enjoyed stunning creative empathy and synergy which galvanized an already electric neo-industry with a vast catalogue of features and even genres.

At rocket-pace they produced the influential Blue Bolt, Captain Marvel Adventures #1 and, after Martin Goodman appointed Simon editor at Timely, a host of iconic characters such as Red Raven, Marvel Boy, Hurricane, The Vision, The Young Allies and a guy named Captain America.

When Goodman failed to make good on his financial obligations, Simon & Kirby jumped ship to National/DC, who welcomed them with open arms and an open chequebook. Initially an uncomfortable fit, bursting with ideas the company were not comfortable with, the pair were soon handed two failing strips to play with until they found their creative feet.

Soon after establishing themselves with The Sandman and Manhunter they were left to their own devices and promptly created comicbooks’ â€œKid Gangâ€ genre with a unique juvenile Foreign Legion entitled The Boy Commandos – who soon shared the spotlight with Batman in flagship publication Detective Comics and whose solo title was frequently amongst the company’s top three sellers.

Boy Commandos was such a success – often cited as the biggest-selling American comicbook in the world at that time – that the editors, knowing The Draft was lurking, green-lighted the completion of a wealth of extra material to lay away for when their star creators were called up. S&K and their team produced so much four-colour magic in a phenomenally short time that Publisher Jack Liebowitz eventually suggested they retool some of it into adventures of a second kid gangâ€¦ and thus was born The Newsboy Legion (and their super-heroic mentor The Guardian)â€¦

Those guys we’ll get to some other time but today let’s applaud this splendidly sturdy full-colour hardback compilation re-presenting the first ten months of the courageous child soldiers (June 1942-March 1943) as seen in Detective Comics #64-72, World’s Finest Comics #8-9, Boy Commandos #1-2 (spanning June 1942 to March 1943): a barrage of bombastic blockbusters that were at once fervently patriotic morale-boosters, rousing action-adventures and potent satirical swipes and jibes by creators who were never afraid to show that good and evil was never simply just â€œus & themâ€â€¦

Following a scholarly Introduction from respected academic Paul Buhle, the vintage thrills and spills commence with a spectacular introduction to the team as only S & K could craft it: a masterpiece of patriotic fervour which eschewed lengthy explanations or origins in favour of immediate action as ‘The Commandos are Coming!’ cleverly followed the path of a French Nazi collaborator who found the courage to fight against his country’s conquerors after meeting the bombastic military unit.

We never knew how American Captain Rip Carter got to command a British Commando unit nor why he was allowed to bring a quartet of war-orphans with him on a succession of deadly sorties into â€œFestung Europaâ€, North Africa, the Pacific or Indo-Chinese theatres of war. All we had to do was realise that cockney urchin Alfy Twidgett, French lad Pierre – later unobtrusively renamed Andre – Chavard, little Dutch boy Jan Haasen and rough, tough little lout Brooklyn were fighting the battles we would if we only had the chanceâ€¦

From the start the yarns were strangely exotic and bizarrely multi-layered, adding a stratum of myth making and fantasy to the grim and grisly backdrop of a war fought from the underdog’s position. Detective Comics #66 (which featured a stunning art-jam cover by Jerry Robinson, Simon & Kirby with Batman and Robin welcoming the team to their new home) saw the exploits of the juvenile warriors related by a seer to feudal Queen Catherine of France in ‘Nostrodamus Predicts’.

She saw and drew comfort from Carter’s attempt to place the kids in a posh boarding school only uncovered a traitor in educator’s clothing and led to a shattering raid right in the heart of the occupier’s defencesâ€¦

The locale shifted to Africa and time itself got bent when ‘The Sphinx Speaks’, revealing how a reporter in the year 3045 AD interviewed a mummy with a Brooklyn accent. The seeming madness had materialised after the Commando â€œmascotsâ€ arrived in Egypt in 1942 to liberate a strategically crucial village and discovered a Nazi radio post inside an ancient edifice. Whilst they were causing their usual corrective carnage one of the lads had a strange meeting with the rocky pile’s oldest inhabitantâ€¦

Another esoteric human interest tale began back in Manhattan where hoods Horseshoes Corona and his best pal Buttsy Baynes barely avoided a police dragnet and ‘Escape to Disaster!’ by heading out into the open ocean and straight into the sights of a U-boat. The sight of the gloating Nazis laughing as his friend perished had a marked effect on one heartless gangster.

When badly wounded Horseshoes was later picked up by Carter’s crew he immediately had a negative influence on impressionable, homesick Brooklyn but turned around his life in its final moments when the Allied ship attacked an apparently impregnable German sea baseâ€¦

Detective #68 exposed ‘The Treachery of Osuki!’ as a dogfight dumped the boys and a Japanese pilot in the same life-raft. Once they hit land the obsequious flier soon began grooming the simple island natives who saved them, but ultimately couldn’t mask his fanatical urge to conquer and kill after which an epic of East-West cooperation saw the underage warriors battling Nazis beside desperate Russian villagers at ‘The Siege of Krovka!’ determined to make the invaders pay for every frozen inch of Soviet soil in a blockbusting tale of heroism and sacrifice.

Another odd episode found contentious, argument-addicted New York cabbie Hack Hogan drafted and – protesting all the way – slowly transformed into a lethal force of nature sticking it to the Nazis in the heart of their homeland with the kids reduced to awestruck observers in ‘Fury Rides a Taxicab!’

An astounding hit, the kids also became a fixture in premier all-star anthology World’s Finest Comics with #8’s (Winter 1942-1943) ‘The Luck of the Lepparts’ wherein a cad and bounder battled to beat a curse which had destroyed three previous generations of his family of traitors. Was it fate, ill fortune or the arrival of the Boy Commandos in the Burmese stronghold he planned to sell out that sealed his fate?

That same month saw the inevitable launch of Boy Commandos #1 which explosively opened with ‘The Town that Couldn’t be Conquered!’, wherein Rip leads the lads back to Jan’s home village to terrify the rapacious occupiers and start a resistance movement, after which ‘Heroes Never Die’ fancifully finds the team in China where they meet a dying monk.

This aged sage remembers his childhood when a white pirate and four foreign boys led a bandit army against imperial oppression and has waited for their prophesised return ever since the Japanese invadedâ€¦

This period of furious productivity resulted in some of Simon & Kirby’s most passionate yet largely unappreciated material. As previously stated, Boy Commandos regularly outsold Superman and Batman during WWII, and the moody ‘Satan Wears a Swastika’ clearly shows why, blending patriotic fervour with astonishing characterisation and a plot of incredible sophistication.

When news comes of the team’s death, official scribes Joe and Jack convene with the Sandman and Newsboy Legion on how to handle the morale-crushing crisis. As the Homefront heroes debate, across the ocean the answers unravel. The confusing contretemps had begun when a quartet of wealthy little people decided that despite their medical deficiencies they would not be cheated of their chance to fight fascism. Accompanied by their tall, rangy butler, they set up as a private combat unit and plunged into the bowels of Berlin even as the real commandos were currently being run ragged by the Germans’ most deadly operative Agent Axisâ€¦

That epochal initial issue ended with a weird war story as the boys kept meeting French soldier Francois Girard who shared snippets of useful intel as they prepared for their most audacious mission: kidnapping Hitlerâ€¦

Even though the sortie eventually came up short the blow to the enemy’s morale and prestige was enormous but on returning home the codenamed ‘Ghost Raiders’ shockingly learned that for one of their number, the title was not metaphoricalâ€¦

Back in Detective #71 (January 1943) ‘A Break for Santa’ offered a stellar change of pace as the boys organised a treat for orphans and opted – even if they were cashiered for it – to rescue one lad’s dad from a concentration camp for Christmasâ€¦

The next issue saw them uncover a devilish espionage/sabotage ring operating out of a florists shop in ‘Petals of Peril’ whilst #73 revealed ‘The Saga of the Little Tin Box’ as Rip dragged the kids through hellish African jungles ahead of a cunning and supremely competent Nazi huntsman; watching them slowly psychologically unravel as they became increasing obsessed with a pointless trinketâ€¦

That mystery successfully solved, the action switched to Europe for World’s Finest Comics #9 as the kids went undercover as circus performers cautiously recruiting a cadre of operatives to strike against the oppressors from within, culminating in ‘The Battle of the Big Top!’

This stunning collection concludes with the contents of Boy Commandos #2 (Spring 1943), leading with ‘The Silent People Speak’ as two Danish brothers – one on each side of the conflict – resolve years of jealousy and hatred when the Commandos stage an incursion into their strategically crucial village, after which black comedy resurfaces as wastrel nobleman Lord Tweedbrook is drafted and his butler becomes his drill-sergeant. Happily the young lions are on hand to stop the suffering scion absconding and see the turbulent toff’s transition to fighting tiger in ‘On the Double, M’Lord!’

Another tantalising twice-told tale has Rip and the boys invade fairytale European kingdom Camelon to rescue a sleeping Queen (from magic spells or Nazi drugs?) in ‘The Knights Wore Khaki’, before this first wave of yarns culminates with a gloriously sentimental romp as the kids adopt a battered and bloody bomb crater kitten and smuggle him onto a vital mission. Things looked bad until even little â€œDodgerâ€ proves he would give ‘Nine Lives for Victory’â€¦

Although I’ve concentrated on the named stars it’s important to remember – especially in these more enlightened times still plagued with the genuine horror of children forcibly swept up in war they have no stake in – that the Boy Commandos, even in their ferociously fabulous exploits, were symbols as much as combatants, usually augmented by huge teams of proper soldiers doing most of the actual killing.

It’s not much of a comfort but at least it showed Simon & Kirby were not simply caught up in a Big Idea without considering all the implicationsâ€¦

Bombastic, blockbusting and astoundingly appetising these superb fantasies from the last â€œGood Warâ€ are a spectacular example of comics giants at their most creative. No true believer or dedicated funnybook aficionado should be denied this book.
Â© 1942, 1943, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

November 25, 2015December 18, 2015

Batman: the Dark Knight Archives volume 7

By Bob Kane, Don Cameron, Bill Finger, Joe Samachson, Jack Schiff, Alvin Schwartz, Joe Greene, Dick Sprang, Jerry Robinson, Jack Burnley & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2894-1

Win’s Christmas Recommendation: Classically Traditional, Timelessly Wonderfulâ€¦ 9/10

Launching in 1939, a year after Superman, â€œThe Bat-Manâ€ (and latterly Robin, the Boy Wonder) cemented DC/National Comics as the market frontrunner and conceptual leader of the burgeoning comicbook industry.

This seventh lavish hardback Archive Edition volume covers another bombastic bevy of Batman adventures (from #26-31 of his solo title, spanning December 1944/January 1945 to October/November 1945), abandoning wartime themes and exploits as the American Homefront anticipated a return to peacetime dangers, dooms and criminalityâ€¦.

These Golden Age tales are amongst the very finest in Batman’s decades-long canon as lead writers Bill Finger and Don Cameron, supplemented by Joe Samachson, Jack Schiff, Alvin Schwartz, Joseph Greene and other sadly unrecorded scripters, pushed the boundaries of the medium whilst graphic genius Dick Sprang veteran gradually superseded and surpassed originator Bob Kane (busy drawing the Batman daily newspaper strip); making the feature utterly his own whilst keeping the Dauntless Double-Act at the forefront of the legion of superhero stars.

The sheer creativity exhibited in these adventures saw an ever-expanding band of creators responsible for producing the stories of the Dark Knight were hitting an artistic peak which only stellar stable-mate Superman and Fawcett’s Captain Marvel could match.

Following a fascinatingly fact-filled and incisive Foreword from comics historian – and leading light of the magnificent Grand Comics Database – Gene Reed, the mesmerising flash and dazzle commences with Batman #26 and ‘The Twenty Ton Robbery!’

Delivered by Cameron & Sprang it described the return of Dashing Desperado The Cavalier, whose criminal cries for attention drove him to compete against the Caped Crusaders with ever-more spectacular and pointless plunderings after which Schiff & Robinson proffered another delightfully silly comedy-caper in ‘The Adventures of Alfred: Recipe for Revenge!’

This solo exploit of the wannabe detective found the fumbling footman shopping for fancy cuisine and inadvertently saving the life of a gourmet chefâ€¦

Crafted at the end of 1944, Greene & Sprang’s ‘The Year 3000!’ was a timely allegory of recent terrors and warning to tomorrow as the usual scenario boldly switched to an idyllic future despoiled when the Saturnian hordes of Fura invade Earth and nearly crush humanity. Happily, one brave man and his young friend find records of ancient heroes named Batman and Robin and, patterning themselves on the long-gone champions, lead a rebellion which overturns and eradicates those future fascistsâ€¦

Although a touch heavy-handed in places, this first conception of the undying legacy of Batman is a stunning example of what comics do best: inspire whilst entertainingâ€¦

Cameron & Sprang close up the issue, back on solid ground and with an eye to contemporary trends as ‘Crime Comes to Lost Mesa!’ finds the Gotham Gangbusters way out west in pursuit of escaped convicts and stumbling into a lost land where pueblo Indians still live in blissful ignorance of the modern world.

Keeping it that way takes the aid of plucky native tyke Nachee, helping Batman and Robin by surreptitiously rounding up the fugitivesâ€¦

Issue #27 sported a stunning Christmas cover by Jack Burnley (equally captivating other covers in this collection are provided by Robinson or Sprang) before the Masked Manhunters were introduced to ‘The Penguin’s Apprentice’ (Cameron, Burnley & Robinson). The lad was far from keen to continue the family’s illegal traditions or indulge in nefarious business and his dreams of being an author soon ensured Batman put the Bird Bandit back in a cageâ€¦

Jerry Robinson always had a deft touch with light comedy and excelled in illustrating the sadly uncredited butler yarns remaining in this tome. ‘The Adventures of Alfred: The Pearl of Peril!’ saw the hapless manservant suckered into an ancient con-game but still coming up trumps thanks to sheer dumb luck, after which Samachson, Burnley & Robinson took Batman and Robin on a ‘Voyage into Villainy’ when a murder at The Explorers Club leads to a deadly treasure hunt through scaled-down replicas of Earth’s most inhospitable environments with a hidden killer waiting to pounce at any momentâ€¦

Another of the annual â€œChristmas Batmanâ€ tales wraps up the issue (why on Earth DC has never released a paperback collection of this phenomenally rich seam of Festive gold I’ll never understand) as ‘A Christmas Peril!’ by Cameron & Robinson follows the downward progress and overnight redemption of appallingly callous boy-millionaire Scranton Loring, who learns – almost too late – the joy of giving and inadvisability of trusting bankers and financial advisers, thanks to the timely intervention of a couple of self-appointed (masked) Santa’s Helpersâ€¦

Batman #28 leads with ‘Shadow City!’ (Cameron & Robinson) wherein The Joker concocts a wild scheme involving a floating urban street where gamblers and other wealthy risk-takers can indulge their dark passions safe from legal oversight – until the Dynamite Detectives deduce the truth of his vanishing villageâ€¦

Another anonymous Robinson-rendered romp follows as ‘The Adventures of Alfred: The Great Handcuff King!’ reveals how the bumbling butler’s attempts to familiarise himself with manacles accidentally ensnares an unwary thuggish miscreant, after which the mild-mannered manservant almost ends the career of ‘Shirley Holmes: Policewoman!’ by inadvertently exposing the undercover cop to criminals in a tense Batman thriller by Finger & Robinson.

This issue ends on a redemptive high note as ‘Batman Goes to Washington!’ (Alvin Schwartz & Robinson) finds the Dark Knight supporting a group of former criminals heading to the nation’s capital to argue the case for jobs for ex-offenders. Typically, some gang bosses react to the threat to their potential labour pool with murderous overkillâ€¦

Finger & Sprang opened #29 with the chilling ‘Enemy No. 1’ as a man obsessed by being first at everything turned his monomaniacal frustration to the commission of crime, after which the Unknown Writer joined Robinson returned in ‘The Adventures of Alfred: The Butler’s Apprentice!’ wherein our dapper Man Friday answers an ad to train a retainer and stumbles into another half-baked burglary plotâ€¦

Although credited here to Robinson, Don Cameron’s outrageous romp ‘Heroes by Proxy!’ is actually an all-Sprang affair, delightfully describing how down-on-their-luck private detectives Hawke and Wrenn try to save their failing business by masquerading as Batman and Robin.

Luckily their first case involves strangely embarrassed Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson who are mortified – then amused – to be burgled by bandits unknown and then coached and cosseted by these helpful but blatantly shoddy impostors of their alter egosâ€¦

The delicious hilarity successfully concluded, grim normality returns courtesy of Finger, Sprang & Charles Paris as the diabolical Scuttler devises an infallible means of purloining secret plans and foiling the law’s attempts to catch him in ‘The Mails Go Through!’â€¦

The pompous Penguin pops up again in Batman #30, undertaking a bird and umbrella themed banditry-blitz to ensure his status as emperor of crime until the determined duo send him ‘Back to the Big House!’ (Cameron & Sprang).

‘While the City Sleeps!’ (Finger & Sprang) is a revered classic of informative, socially-aware entertainment which finds the senior crime-smasher taking his ward on a nocturnal tour of the city, celebrating the people who keep a modern metropolis going. Along the way they encounter a repentant thief trying to return stolen cash and have to deal with the guilty man’s murderous compatriots who want to keep the lootâ€¦

‘The Adventures of Alfred: Alias the Baron!’ (? & Robinson) then brightens the tone as the butler is mistaken by gangsters for a British crook marked for assassination, after which Finger & Sprang introduce the most annoying character in Gotham in ‘Ally Babble and the Fourteen Peeves!’

The well-meaning, impulse-challenged blabbermouth never shuts up and when he agrees to sort out a list of petty grievances for a well-to-do, bedridden old gent, the resulting chaos allows crooks to make a killing. As events alarmingly escalate however, the Caped Crimebusters are hard pushed to decide who’s the greater menaceâ€¦

The final issue in this titanic tome is an all Robinson art-affair, beginning with the debut of quarrelsome couple ‘Punch and Judy!’ (scripted by Finger and inked by George Roussos). The wily elderly performers’ violent relationship makes them prime suspects when Bruce and Dick investigate a crooked carnival but can they possibly be involved in murder too?

‘The Adventures of Alfred: Alfred, Armchair Detective!’ was possibly written by Cameron or Samachson and hilariously depicts how an idle night spent eavesdropping on crooks results in a big arrest of burglars, whilst ‘The Vanishing Village!’ (Samachson) finds Batman and Robin in Florida, infiltrating a seemingly mobile resort hideaway for crooks on the run before Joe Greene authors the final act.

Here Robinson & Roussos depict the heroes investigating ‘Trade Marks of Crime!’ when a succession of crimes seem to indicate that some new culprit is utilising the tricks and M.O.’s of other bandits. The truth is a far more cunning and dangerous solutionâ€¦

Accompanied by a full creator ‘Biographies’ section, this sublime selection of classic comicbook action is a magnificent rollercoaster ride to a era of high drama, low cunning and breathtaking excitement and this timeless and evergreen treat is one no lover of graphic entertainments should ignore.
Â© 1944, 1945, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

October 12, 2015October 8, 2015

Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1968-1969

By Whitney Ellsworth, Joe Giella, Al Plastino & various (IDW)
ISBN: 987-1-63140-121-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sheer Nostalgic Magicâ€¦ 9/10

For more than seven decades in America the newspaper comic strip was 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 comicbook character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint strips in cheap, accessible form?) and became a syndicated serial strip. Superman, Wonder Woman and Archie Andrews made the jump soon after their debuts and many features have done so since.

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

Yet somehow the strip never achieved the circulation it deserved, even though the Sundays were eventually given a new lease of life when DC began issuing vintage stories in the 1960s for Batman 80-page Giants and Annuals. The exceedingly high-quality all-purpose adventures were ideal short stories and 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 â€œHâ€.

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 â€œBat-Madâ€â€¦

The Silver Age of comicbooks revolutionised a creatively moribund medium cosily snoozing in unchallenging complacency, bringing a modicum of sophistication to the returning genre of masked 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 Batman, Detective Comics, 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, therefore 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. Visually, the art-style itself underwent a sleek streamlining and rationalisation. The most apparent change to us kids was a yellow circle around the Bat-symbol but, far more importantly, the stories had changed. A subtle aura of genuine menace had crept back in.

At the same time Hollywood was in production of a television series based on Batman and, through the sheer karmic insanity that permeates the universe, the studio executives were basing their interpretation not upon the â€œNew Look Batmanâ€ currently enthralling readers but the rather the addictively daft material DC was emphatically turning its editorial back on.

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

No matter how much we might squeal and froth about it, to a huge portion of this planet’s population Batman is always going to be that â€œZap! Biff! Pow!â€ buffoonish costumed Boy Scoutâ€¦

â€œBatmaniaâ€ 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 the 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 â€œcampâ€ superheroes – and no, the term had nothing to do with sexual orientation 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 backâ€¦

However, from the time when the Gotham Guardians could do no wrong comes a second superb compilation re-presenting the bright and breezy, sometimes zany cartoon classics of Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder, 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.

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 2′; stuffed with behind-the-scenes set photos, communications between principal players like Bob Kane and the Producers, clippings and glorious unpublished pencils from strip illustrator Joe Giella as well as newspaper promotional materials, and is followed by compulsive pictorial essays on ‘Newspaper Strip Trivia’ and ‘Batman/Superman Crossovers’, more unpublished or censored strips and a note on the eclectic sources used to compile this collection before the comics cavorting continueâ€¦

Dailies and Sundays were scripted by former DC editor (and the company’s Hollywood liaison) Whitney Ellsworth and initially illustrated by Bob Kane’s long-term art collaborator Sheldon Moldoff, before inker Giella was tapped by the studio to produce a slick, streamlined and modern look – usually as penciller but ALWAYS as embellisher.

Since the feature was a seven-day-a-week job, Giella had often called in comicbook buddies to help lay-out and draw the strip; luminaries such as Carmine Infantino, Bob Powell, Werner Roth, Curt Swan and othersâ€¦

In those days, black-&-white Dailies and full-colour Sundays were mostly offered as separate packages and continuity strips often ran different stories for each. With Batman the strip started out that way, but by the time of the stories in this volume had switched to unified seven-day storylines.

Riding a wave and feeling ambitious, Ellsworth & Giella had begun their longest saga yet in July 1967 combining the tales of ‘Shivering Blue Max with â€œPretty Boyâ€ Floy and Flo’ wherein a perpetually hypothermic criminal pilot accidentally downed the Batcopter and erroneously claimed the underworld’s million dollar bounty on Batman and Robin.

Our heroes were not dead, but the crash caused the Caped Crusader to lose his memory and, whilst Robin and faithful manservant Alfred sought to remedy his affliction, Max had collected his prize and jetted off for sunnier climes.

With Batman missing, neophyte crimebuster Batgirl then tracked down the heroes – incidentally learning their secret identities – and was instrumental in restoring him to action if not quite his fully-functioning facultiesâ€¦

However when underworld paymaster BG (Big) Trubble heard the heroes had returned, he quite understandably wanted his money back, which forced already-broke Max back to Gotham where he gullibly fell foul of Pretty Boy whilst that hip young gunsel and twin sister Flo were enacting a murderous scam to fleece a horoscope-addicted millionaireâ€¦

The tale picks up here on January 1^st 1968, with Batman held at gunpoint, patiently trying to convince supremely suggestible, wealthy whale Tyrone Koom that he is not there to assassinate him as the tycoon’s new astrologer Madame Zodiac (AKA Flo Floy) was insisting she had foreseenâ€¦

When her dupe proves incapable of murder, Flo/Zodiac takes matters into her own hands and knocks out the mighty manhunter, but despite all her and her brother’s arguments the millionaire cannot be convinced to pull the trigger.

Instead befuddled Koom – still thinking the masked marvel wants to him dead – has Batman bundled off to an isolated island where a fully-automated, exotic palace of wonders will act as the Caped Crusader’s impregnable prison for the rest of his lifeâ€¦

With the hero as good as dead Pretty Boy and Flo plan to claim BG’s million dollar bounty, but they have not reckoned on Blue Max horning inâ€¦

When the pilot collides with Robin (who has been tracking his senior partner by Bat-Radio) the erstwhile enemies reluctantly join forces but are ultimately unable to prevent Batman’s banishment. Moreover, in the frantic melee, the Boy Wonder suffers a broken leg.

Lost in an endless ocean, Batman slowly adjusts to a life of enforced luxury on palatial penitentiary island Xanadu, unaware that life at home has become vastly more complicated for Robin and Alfred. Not only do they believe the Cowled Crimebuster to be dead but Max has ferreted out their secret identities and blackmailed them into cooperating in his vengeance scheme against Pretty Boy. Max plans to prevent the young thug collecting the reward by impersonating Batmanâ€¦

Events spiral to a grim climax when Max finally confronts his criminal enemies and Koom realises he’s been played for a fool. The dupe’s guilt-fuelled final vengeance ends all the villains at once, but not before Pretty Boy presses a destruct button that will cause Xanadu to obliterate itself in an atomic explosion.

Thankfully Superman and especially Sea King Aquaman have already been mobilised to help find the missing Masked Manhunter but the countdown – although slow – is unstoppableâ€¦

During this sequence the severely overworked Giella bowed out and a veteran Superman illustrator took over the pitiless illustration schedule.

Alfred John â€œAlâ€ Plastino was a prodigious artist with a stellar career. He had been active in the early days of comicbooks, with credits including Captain America and Dynamic Man before serving in the US Army. His design talents were quickly spotted and he was soon 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 quickly became one of Superman’s key artists. He drew many landmark stories and, with writer Otto Binder, created Brainiac, Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. 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 seemed 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.

With a new policy of introducing guest stars from the DC pantheon, Plastino was the ideal successor and as the assembled champions desperately sought to find and save their missing comrade, a new tone of straight dramatic adventure largely superseded the campy comedy shenanigans of the TV seriesâ€¦

The search for Batman had been continually hampered by the Man of Steel’s strange weakness and loss of powers, but now that the Gotham Gangbusters were reunited they concentrated their efforts on finding out why. The deductive trail soon led to bone fide mad scientist ‘Diabolical Professor Zinkk’ (which originally ran from March 19^th to August 6^th) and saw the Dynamic Duo tracking down a mercenary maniac who had found a way to broadcast Kryptonite waves and was oh-so-slowly killing Superman for a big payout from Metropolis’ mobstersâ€¦

This is a cunningly convoluted, beautifully realised and supremely suspenseful tale with the clock ticking down on a deranged and dying Metropolis Marvel with Batman and Robin hunting rogue radio-physicist Zoltan Zinkk to divine the method by which he has brought low Earth’s greatest defender. It culminates in a savage, spectacular and truly explosive showdown before the World’s Finest heroes finally triumphâ€¦

Another tense thriller then sees Aquaman return to share the spotlight and begins as determined dolly-bird Penelope Candy perpetually plagues news outlets and even pesters the Gotham Police Department in her tireless quest to be put in touch with Batman.

The man in question is blithely unaware: Bruce Wayne is dealing with a small personal problem. In his infinite wisdom he intends for Robin to temporarily retire while young Dick Grayson completes a proper education and to that end has engaged a new tutor for the strongly-protesting Boy Wonderâ€¦

With that all acrimoniously settled, the Caped Crusader roars out into the night and is filmed falling to his doom in a river trying to save apparently suicidal Penny Candyâ€¦

At first the heartbroken lad doesn’t know Batman is still alive but has actually been drawn into a Byzantine scheme devised by Penny to find her missing father.

Oceanographer Archimedes Candy disappeared after working with Aquaman on a serum to allow humans to live beneath the sea. She is convinced somebody has abducted the researcher and, after Batman contacts Robin and has the junior crimebuster send out a radio alert for the Sea King, the impatient pair then try the potion together. ‘Breathing Underwater’ (August 7^th – December 15^th), they set off on a sub-sea search for the missing sea scientistâ€¦

Of course Penny’s suspicions of foul play are all justified and before long she and Batman are reunited with Dr. Candy. Sadly that’s as captives of nefarious international smuggler Cap’n Wolf and they are nearly done to death by being abandoned on a mountain in the airy atmosphere they can no longer breathe before Aquaman arrives to settle mattersâ€¦

Even as Batman makes his way home the next adventure has started. Gangster fugitive Killer Killey devised the world’s most perfect hiding place and in ‘I Want Bruce Wayne’s Identity!’ (December 15^th 1968 – May 30^th 1969) abducts the affable millionaire so a crooked plastic surgeon can swap their faces and fingerprints. The scheme is hugely helped by the fact that Dick has been packed off with tutor Mr. Murphy and his daughter Gazelle on a world cruise whilst Alfred has used his accumulated vacation time for an extended visit to England.

When Killer captures Bruce and discovers he also has Batman the mobster is truly exultant. However the plan soon goes awry when the victim escapes the death-trap which should have resulted with the authorities finding â€œKilley’sâ€ drowned body, and the subsequent move into Wayne Manor becomes a fraught affair.

Perhaps he’d be less troubled if he knew that although alive, the real Bruce Wayne has once again lost his memoryâ€¦

Moreover, unbeknownst to anybody, neophyte crimebuster Batgirl already knows Batman’s other identity and now her suspicions are aroused by the state of the mansion and behaviour of Bruce and his new girlfriendâ€¦

As events escalate and spiral out of control, Killer, still safely hidden behind Wayne’s face – starts to crack and stupidly antagonises the one person he thought he could always rely onâ€¦

This volume’s comics cavortings end with the opening shots of ‘My Campaign to Ruin Bruce Wayne’ (which ran from May 31^st – December 25^th1969) but as only seven days of that tale unfold in this volume I think we’ll leave that for the next volume and simply sayâ€¦

To Be Continued, Bat-Fansâ€¦

The 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 comicbook 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 1968-1969 is the second in a set of huge (305 x 236 mm) lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the Caped Crusaders, and a welcome 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 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.
Â© 2014 DC Comics. All rights reserved. Batman and all related characters and elements â„¢ DC Comics.

September 25, 2015September 24, 2015

The Broons and Oor Wullie: The Fabulous Fifties

By R.D. Low & Dudley D. Watkins (DC Thomson)

ISBN: 978-0-85116-678-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: How the Holidays Must Be Celebratedâ€¦ 10/10

The Broons is one of the longest running newspaper strips in British history, having appeared continuously in Scottish newspaper The Sunday Post since their debut in the March 8^th 1936 edition: the same issue which launched mischievous, equally evergreen wee laddie Oor Wullie.

Both the boldly 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 greatest artist Dudley D. Watkins and, once strips began to be collected in reprint editions as Seasonal Annuals, those yuletide tomes alternated stars and years right up to the present day.

Low (1895-1980) began at the publishing monolith as a journalist, rising to the post of Managing Editor of Children’s Publication and launching, between 1921 and 1933, the company’s â€œBig Fiveâ€ story papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur.

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. The illustrated accessory launched on 8^th March and from the very outset The Broons and Oor Wullie were unchallenged starsâ€¦

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 launched 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 The Beanoâ€¦

Low’s greatest asset was prolific illustrator Dudley Dexter Watkins, whose wholesomely realistic style, more than any other artist’s, 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’ 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 later.

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 first Broons Annual (technically Bi-Annual) appeared in 1939, alternating with Oor Wullie (although, due to wartime paper restrictions, no annuals at all were published between 1943 and 1946) and for millions of readers a year cannot truly end without them.

So What’s the Set Up?: the multigenerational Broon 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.

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 the wee toddling lassie referred to only as â€œThe Bairnâ€.

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

Offering regular breaks from the inner city turmoil and a chance to simultaneously sentimentalise, spoof and memorialise more traditional times, the family frequently repair to their But ‘n’ Ben (a dilapidated rustic cottage in the Highlands) to fall foul of the weather, the countryside and all its denizens: fish, fowl and farm-grownâ€¦

As previously stated, Oor Wullie also debuted on March 8^th 1936 with his own collected Annual compilations subsequently and unfailingly appearing in the even years.

The basic set-up is sublimely simple and eternally evergreen, featuring an imaginative, good-hearted scruff with a talent for finding trouble and no hope of ever avoiding parental retribution when appropriateâ€¦

Wullie – AKA William MacCallum – is an archetypal good-hearted rascal with time on his hands and can usually be found sitting on an upturned bucket at the start and finish of his page-a-week exploits.

His regular cast includes Ma and Pa, local copper P.C. Murdoch, assorted teachers and other interfering adults who either lavish gifts or inflict opprobrium upon the little pest and his pals Fat Bob, Soapy Joe Soutar, Wee Eck and others. As a sign of the changing times however in this book he’s sometimes seen in the company of fetching schoolgirl Elizabethâ€¦

An enchanting compilation in monochrome with some colour, The Fabulous Fifties was released in 1998 as part of a concerted drive to keep that early material available to fans: a lavish sturdy hardback (still readily available through internet vendors and something no baby-boomer should be without as our upcoming Christmasses become less and less likely or lively!) offering a tantalising selection of Sunday pages from 1950-1959, covering every aspect of that halcyon era’s rapidly changing technological and sociological existence, and all still deliciously funny even nowâ€¦

The jolly procession of Celtic comedy commences with atmospheric photo-and news headline feature ‘New Years Day 1950 – and All Year Through’ and bookends every following year with a similar capsule feature of the unfolding decade often accompanied by a full colour Watkins cover or title page from a fifties Annual.

The endless escapades of the strip stars comprise the usual subject-matter: galling goofs, family frolics, sly pranks and cruel comeuppances: whilst the regular menu of gloriously slapstick shenanigans including plumbing pitfalls, decorating disasters, fireplace fiascos, food foolishness, dating dilemmas, appliance atrocities, fashion freak-outs, bothered Bobbies, excessive exercise exploits, chore-dodging and childish pranks by young and old alike, all seen through the lens of a comfortably traditional world inexorably altering as fashionable technology slowly creeps into the lives of everyone, welcoming or otherwiseâ€¦

Jings! The fuss when a television is obtained for the Coronation or as the advent of Hire Purchase enables a wave of unwanted home appliances to appearâ€¦

Uncontested and always welcome are wry and crafty comparisons of the good old days with mere modernity, rib-tickling scenes of sledding and skating, stolen candies, torn clothes, recycled comics, visiting circuses, sparring school kids, ladies and lassies lost and found, harmless practical jokes and social gaffes: stories intended to take our collective mind off troubles abroad, and for every thwarted romance of poor Daphne and Maggie, embarrassing fiasco focussed on Paw’s cussedness or recalcitrance , there’s an uproarious chase, riotous squabble and no-tears scrap for the little ‘uns.

With snobs to deflate, bullies to crush, duels to fight, chips to scoff, games to win and rowdy animals (from cats to cows) to escape, the timeless affable humour and gently self-deprecating, inclusive frolics make these superbly crafted strips an endlessly entertaining superbly nostalgic, unmissable treat.

So why not slip back to a time of soapbox carts, catapults, scrumping, home perm kits, teachers who used rulers for smacking not measuring, best china, full employment, sub-four minute miles, neighbours you knew by first names and trousers that fell apart or blew away?

You can even get in on the end of rationing and birth of family viewing, package holidays, airbeds, long trousers for schoolboys, hire cars, caravans, Op Art and the decline of gas lampposts, indoor wall posters, Daylight Saving Time, Duffel Coats, Sputniks and Rock ‘n’ Rollâ€¦

There are even occasional crossovers to admire with Wullie and Granpaw Broon striving to outdo each other in the â€œadorable horrorsâ€ stakesâ€¦

Packed with all-ages fun, rambunctious slapstick hilarity and deliriously domestic warmth, these unchanging examples of happy certainty and convivial celebration of a mythic lost life and time are a sure cure for post-modern glumsâ€¦ and you can’t really have a happy holiday without that, can you?
Â© D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. 1998.

September 10, 2015September 9, 2015

Dick Tracy: The Collins Casefiles volume 1

By Max Allan Collins and Rick Fletcher (Checker Books)
ISBN: 978-0-97416-642-1

All in all comics have a pretty good track record on creating household names. We could play the game of picking the most well-known fictional characters on Earth (usually topped by Sherlock Holmes, Mickey Mouse, Superman and Tarzan) and in that list you’ll also find Batman, Popeye, Blondie, Charlie Brown, Tintin, Spider-Man, Garfield, and – not so much now, but once definitely – Dick Tracyâ€¦

At the height of the Great Depression cartoonist Chester Gould was looking for strip ideas. The story goes that as a decent guy incensed by the exploits of gangsters like Al Capone – who monopolised the front pages of contemporary newspapers – he settled upon the only way a normal man could fight thugs: Passion and Public Opinion.

Raised in Oklahoma, Gould was a Chicago resident and hated seeing his home town in the grip of such wicked men, with too many honest citizens beguiled by the gangsters’ charisma. He decided to pictorially get it off his chest with a procedural crime thriller that championed the ordinary cops who protected civilisation.

He took his proposal – â€œPlainclothes Tracyâ€ – to legendary newspaperman and strips Svengali Captain Joseph Patterson, whose golden touch had already blessed such strips as Gasoline Alley, The Gumps, Little Orphan Annie, Winnie Winkle, Smilin’ Jack, Moon Mullins and Terry and the Pirates among others. Casting his gifted eye on the work, Patterson renamed the hero Dick Tracy and revised his love interest into steady girlfriend Tess Truehart.

The series launched on October 4^th 1931 through Patterson’s Chicago Tribune Syndicate and quickly grew into a monumental hit, with all the attendant media and merchandising hoopla that follows. Amidst the toys, games, movies, serials, animated features, TV shows et al, the strip soldiered on, influencing generations of creators and entertaining millions of fans. Gould unfailingly wrote and drew the strip for decades until his retirement in 1977.

The legendary lawman was a landmark creation who influenced all American popular fiction, not simply comics. Its signature use of baroque villains, outrageous crimes and fiendish death-traps have pollinated the work of numerous strips (most notably Batman), shows and movies since then, whilst the indomitable Tracy’s studied, measured use – and startlingly accurate predictions – of crime fighting technology and techniques gave the world a taste of cop thrillers, police procedurals and forensic mysteries such as CSI decades before our current fascination took hold.

As with many creators in it for the long haul the revolutionary 1960s were a harsh time for established cartoonists. Along with Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon, Gould’s grizzled gangbuster especially foundered in a social climate of radical change where the popular slogans included â€œNever trust anybody over 21â€ and â€œSmash the Establishmentâ€. The strip’s momentum faltered, perhaps as much from the move towards science fiction (Tracy moved into space and the character Moon Maid was introduced) and improbable, Bond-movie style villains as any perceived â€œold-fashionedâ€ attitudes. Even the introduction of more minority and women characters and hippie cop Groovy Groove couldn’t stop the rot but the feature soldiered on regardlessâ€¦

Max Allen Collins is a prolific and best-selling author of both graphic novels (Road to Perdition, CSI, Mike Mist, Ms. Tree) and prose thriller series featuring his crime-creations Nathan Heller, Quarry, Nolan, Mallory and a veritable pantheon of others. When Gould retired from the Tracy strip, the young author (nearly thirty!) won the prestigious role as scripter, promptly taking the series back to its roots for a breathtaking 11-year run, ably assisted by Gould as consultant even as his chief artistic assistant Rick Fletcher was promoted to full illustrator.

This splendidly enthralling monochrome paperback compilation opens with publisher Mark Thompson’s informative Introduction ‘Flatfoot’ and offers a frankly startling ‘Dick Tracy Timeline’ listing the series achievements and innovations from 1931 to 1988 before the captivating Cops-&-Robbers clashes recommence with Collin’s inaugural adventure ‘Angeltop’s Last Stand’ (3^rd January – March 12^th 1978) which rapidly sidelined all the fantastical science fiction trappings (Tracy’s adopted son Junior had married lunar princess Moon Maid) and returned to grittily ultra-violent suspense as old friend Vitamin Flintheart is targeted for assassination.

With the senior detectives assistants Sam Catchem and Lizz Worthington on the case it is soon clear that the assault is part of a plan to make Tracy suffer. Solid investigation soon turns up two suspects, relatives of old – and expired – enemies Flattop Jones and The Brow and familial revenge is revealed as the motiveâ€¦

Sadly not all the Police Department’s resources are enough to prevent aggrieved daughter Angeltop Jones and the new Brow from abducting Tracy. Tragically for the vengeful felons, the grizzled crimebuster might be old but he’s still inventive and indomitable and a cataclysmic confrontation leads to a fatal conflagration at the place of Flattop’s demiseâ€¦

The next tale featured an original Gould villain making a surprise comeback in the ‘Return of Haf-and-Haf’ (March 13^th – June 11^th) as maniac murderer Tulza Tuzon – whose left profile had been hideously scarred with acid – was released from the asylum, rehabilitated by modern psychology and groundbreaking plastic surgeryâ€¦

Of course only his face was fixed and the fiend quickly tried to murder ex-fiancÃ©e Zelda who had betrayed him to the cops a decade previously. Tracy was on hand to save her life but unable to prevent her from enacting grisly retribution on her attacker, leaving Tuzon frantically in need of fresh cosmetic repair.

Sadly the unscrupulous surgeon who fixed him on the State’s dime wanted a huge amount of clandestine cash to repeat the procedure and the stage was soon set for doom and tragedy on a Shakespearean scaleâ€¦

This first Collins collection concludes with an epic minor classic that harked back to Tracy’s first published case. ‘Big Boy’s Revenge’ (also known as ‘Big Boy’s Open Contract’ ran from 12^th June 1978 to January 2^nd 1979) and saw the unexpected return of the thinly disguised Al Capone analogue Tracy had sent to prison at the very start of his career.

Decades later Big Boy, still a member of the crime syndicate known as The Apparatus, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wants to take the cop who brought him down with him.

Ignoring and indeed eventually warring with the other Apparatus chiefs, the dying Don puts an open contract for $1,000,000 on Tracy’s head and lies back to watch the fireworks as a horde of hit-men and -women zero in on the blithely unaware Senior Detectiveâ€¦

The resulting collateral damage costs the hero one of his nearest and dearest, removes most of the strip’s accumulated sci fi trappings and firmly resets the series in the grim and gritty world of contemporary crime. The Good Guys triumph in the end but the cost is shockingly high for a family stripâ€¦

Dick Tracy has always been a fantastically readable feature and this potent return to first principles is a terrific way to ease yourself into his stark, no-nonsense, Tough-Love, Hard Justice world.

Comics just don’t get better than thisâ€¦
Â© Checker Book Publishing Group 2003, an authorized collection of works Â© Tribune Media Services, 1978, 1979. All characters and distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Tribune Media Services. All rights reserved.

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