Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 1: 1937-1938


By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-141-1

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Ideal for anybody who ever dreamed or wondered… 10/10

Rightly reckoned one of the greatest comic strips of all time, the nigh-mythical saga of a king-in-exile who became one of the greatest warriors in an age of unparalleled heroes is at once fantastically realistic and beautifully, perfectly abstracted – an indisputable paradigm of adventure fiction where anything is possible and justice will always prevail. It is the epic we all want to live in…

On one thing let us be perfectly clear: Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant is not historical. It is far better and more real than that.

Possibly the most successful and evergreen fantasy creation ever conceived, Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur launched on Sunday 13th February 1937, a glorious weekly, full-colour window not onto the past but rather onto a world that should have been. It followed the tempestuous life of a refugee boy driven by invaders from his ancestral homeland of faraway Thule who persevered and, through tenacity, imagination and sheer grit, rose to become one of the mightiest heroes of the age of Camelot.

As depicted by the incredibly gifted Foster, this noble scion would, over the years, grow to mighty manhood amidst a heady sea of wonderment; roaming the globe and siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes whilst captivating and influencing generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

There have been films, cartoon series and all manner of toys, games and collections based on the feature – one of the few newspaper strips to have lasted from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (over 4000 episodes and counting) and even in these declining days of newspaper cartooning it still claims over 300 American papers as its home.

Foster produced the strip, one spectacular page a week until 1971, when, after auditioning such notables as Wally Wood and Gray Morrow, Big Ben Bolt artist John Cullen Murphy was selected to draw the feature. Foster carried on as writer and designer until 1980, after which he fully retired and Murphy’s son took over scripting duties.

In 2004 Cullen Murphy also retired (he died a month later on July 2nd) and the strip soldiered on under the extremely talented auspices of artist Gary Gianni and writer Mark Schultz and latterly Thomas Yeates, conquering one more exotic land by making it onto various web locations.

This exquisite oversized hardback volume (362 x 268mm), reprints in glorious colour – spectacularly restored from Foster’s original Printer’s Proofs – the princely pristine Sunday pages from February 1937 to December 25th 1938: those formative forays of an already impressive tale which promised much and delivered far more than anybody might have suspected during those dim and distant days…

Before the drama begins, however, Brian M. Kane offers an informative picture and photo-packed potted history of ‘Harold Rudolf Foster: 1892-1982’ after which Fred Schreiber conducts ‘An Interview with Hal Foster’ – first seen in Nemo: The Classic Comics Magazine in 1984.

Moreover, after the superb Arthurian epic exploits of the quintessential swashbuckling hero which follows, this initial collection is rounded off by Kim Thompson’s discourse on the many iterations of reprints over the years and around the world in ‘A History of Valiants’…

The actual action-packed drama commences in distant Scandinavia as the King of Thule, his family and a few faithful retainers dash for a fishing boat, intent only on escaping the murderous intentions of a usurper’s army.

Their voyage carries them to the barbarous coast of Britain where they battle bands of wild men before securing a safe retreat in the gloomy fens of East Anglia. After many hard battles they reach an uneasy détente with the locals and settle into a harsh life as regal exiles…

The young Prince Valiant was but five years old when they arrived and his growing years in a hostile environment toughen the boy, sharpen his wits and give him an insatiable taste for mischief and adventure.

He befriends a local shepherd boy and together their escapades include challenging the marauding ancient dinosaurs which infest the swamp, battling a hulking man-brute and bedevilling a local witch. In retaliation the hag Horrit predicts that Val’s life would be long and packed with incredible feats but always tainted by great sorrow.

All that, plus the constant regimen of knightly training and scholarly tuition befitting an exile learning how to reclaim his stolen kingdom, make the lad a veritable hellion, but everything changes when his mother passes away. After a further year of intense schooling in the arts of battle, Valiant decides to leave the Fens and make his way in the dangerous lands beyond…

Whilst sparring with his boyhood companion, Val unsuspectingly insults Sir Launcelot who is fortuitously passing by. Although the hero is sanguine about the cheeky lad’s big mouth, his affronted squire attempts to administer a stern punishment but is rewarded with a thorough drubbing. Indeed, Launcelot has to stop the Scion of Thule from slitting the battered and defeated man’s throat.

Although he has no arms, armour, steed or money, Valiant swears that he will become a Knight…

Luck is with the Pauper Prince. After spectacularly catching and taming a wild stallion his journey is interrupted by the gregarious paladin Sir Gawain, who shares a meal and regales the boy with tales of chivalry and heroism. When their alfresco repast is spoiled by robber knight Sir Negarth who unfairly strikes the champion of Camelot, Val charges in and Gawain regains consciousness to find the threat ended, Negarth hogtied and his accomplice skewered…

Taking Val under his wing, wounded Gawain escorts the boy and his prisoner to Camelot but their journey is delayed by a gigantic dragon. Val kills it too – with the assistance of Negarth – and spends the rest of the trip arguing that the rogue should be freed for his gallantry…

He is still stoutly defending the scoundrel at his trial before King Arthur, and is rewarded by being appointed Gawain’s squire. Unfortunately Val responds badly to being teased by the other knights-in-training and finds himself locked in a dungeon whilst his tormentors heal and the Knights of the Round Table ride out to deal with an invasion of Northmen…

Whilst the flowers of chivalry are away, a plot is hatched by scheming Sir Osmond and Baron Baldon. To recoup gambling debts they intend to capture and ransom Gawain, but have not reckoned on the dauntless devotion and ruthless ingenuity of his semi-feral squire.

Easily infiltrating the bleak fortress imprisoning the hero, Val liberates his mentor through astounding feats of daring and brings the grievously wounded knight to Winchester Heath and Arthur…

As Gawain recuperates, he is approached by a young maiden. Ilene is in need of a champion and, over his squire’s protests, the still gravely unfit knight dutifully complies. Val’s protests might have been better expressed had he not been so tongue-tied by the most beautiful girl he has ever seen…

The quest to rescue Ilene’s parents is delayed when an unscrupulous warrior in scarlet challenges them, intent on possessing the lovely maiden. Correctly assessing Gawain to be no threat, the Red Knight did not live long enough to revise his opinion of the wild-eyed boy who then attacked him…

Leaving Ilene and the re-injured Gawain with a hermit, Valiant continues on alone to Branwyn Castle, recently captured by an “Ogre” who is terrorising the countryside. Through guile, force of arms and devilish tactics he then ends the threat forever.

This is an astonishing tour de force of graphic bravura that no fan could ever forget. Aspiring cartoonist Jack Kirby certainly didn’t: he recycled Val’s outlandish outfit used to terrorise the Ogre’s soldiers as the visual basis for his 1970s horror-hero Etrigan the Demon…

Having successfully routed the invaders and freed Ilene’s family, Val began earnestly courting the grateful girl. His prophecy of lifelong misery seemed assured however, when her father had to regretfully inform him that she was promised to Arn, son and heir of the King of Ord…

Even before that shock could sink in, Valiant was called away again. Ailing Gawain had been abducted by the sorceress Morgan le Fey, who was enamoured of the knight’s manly charms…

When Val confronts her she drugs him with a potion and he endures uncounted ages in her dungeon before affecting his escape. Weak and desperate, the lad makes his way to Camelot and enlists Merlin in a last-ditch ploy to defeat the witch and save his adored mentor…

In the meantime events have progressed and Val’s bold plans to win Ilene are upset when invitations to her wedding arrive at Camelot. Initially crushed, the resilient youth determines to travel to Ord and challenge Prince Arn for her hand.

Their meeting is nothing like Val imagined but, after much annoying interference, he and the rather admirable Arn finally begin their oft-delayed death-duel only to be again distracted when news comes that Ilene has been taken by Viking raiders…

What follows is another unparalleled moment of comics magnificence as Valiant sacrifices everything for honour, gloriously falls to superior forces, wins possession of Flamberge (the legendary Singing Sword which is brother to Excalibur) and is captured and reunited with Ilene… only to lose her again to the cruellest of fates…

After escaping from the Vikings and covering himself with glory at the Lists in Camelot – although he doesn’t realise it – the heartsick, weary Prince returns to his father in the melancholy Anglian fens, again encountering ghastly Horrit and nearly succumbing to fever.

When he recovers months later he has a new purpose: he and his faithful countrymen will travel to Thule and rescue the nation from the cruel grip of the usurper Sligon.  Unfortunately during the preparations Valiant discovers the countryside has been invaded by Saxons and is compelled by his honour to race to Camelot and warn Arthur…

To Be Continued…

Prince Valiant is a hurtling juggernaut of action and romance, blending hyper-realistic fantasy with sardonic wit, and broad humour with unbelievably stirring violence, all rendered in an incomprehensibly lovely panorama of glowing art.

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring, Foster’s magnum opus is a World Classic of storytelling, and this magnificent deluxe edition is something no fan can afford to be without.

If you have never experienced the majesty and grandeur of the strip, this breathtaking premium collection is the best possible way to start and will be your gateway to a staggering world of wonder and imagination…

All comics material © 2009 King Features Syndicate except Tarzan page, © 2009 ERB Inc. All other content and properties © 2009 their respective creators or holders. All rights reserved.

Treasury of Mini Comics volume 1


By many and various, edited by Michael Dowers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-657-7

The act of stringing pictures and/or words together is something almost everybody has done at some stage of their lives. It’s a key step in the cognitive path of children and, for an increasing number of us, that compulsive, absorbing euphoria never goes away. Whilst many millions acquiesce to the crushing weight of a world which stifles the liberation of creation, turning makers into consumers, a privileged, determined few carry on: drawing, exploring, and in some cases, with technology’s help, producing and sharing.

Michael Dowers loves the concept of crafting and disseminating Mini Comics and his last book Newave!- The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980’s described and reproduced hundreds of examples: spotlighting with enticing, encouraging exuberance those driven artisans who came out of the “anything goes” 1960s and 1970s Underground Commix movement still craving a vehicle of personal expression.

These creators aren’t in it for the money and, in the era before computers, they found enough time to write, draw and compile artwork (small press people are notoriously generous, contributing work at the drop of a hat) before laboriously photocopying, cutting, folding, stapling and then distributing the miniscule marvellous results.

Just by way of definition: most mini comics were home-produced pamphlets using borrowed – or when necessary paid for – print processes. The most popular format was an 8½ x 11inch sheet, folded twice, and printed at local copy-shops (or clandestinely churned out on school/work repro systems like early Xerox, Photostat, Mimeo or Spirit Banda machines) on letter – or any other sized – paper.

Because they weren’t big, they were called “mini commix”. Inspired, no?

Now this superb sequel tome – another massive brick of fun (8500 monochrome pages, 178x127mm) – offers another trip through forty years of free-thinking, self-determined free expression and technological developments. Many of the key figures in the creation and steady proliferation of this uniquely eloquent people’s medium are included here, not only through examples of their groundbreaking work, but also through statements, interviews and fond reminiscences.

Nobody who wanted to and had access to any kind of reproductive technology ever resisted making their own comics, and content comes from all over the North American continent, covering everything from superhero spoofs, monster-mashes, autobiography, recreational drug, religious, spiritual and philosophical diatribes and polemics, surreal experimental design and just plain fun stories, chatter and gags: all as sexually explicit, violent, political or personally intimate as their creators wanted them to be…

It all starts with Michael Dowers, himself the force behind not only this compilation but also Brownfieldpress and Starhead Comix, whose Introduction leads into ‘The Story of Quoz in Leonard Rifas’s Own Words’ after which the breakthrough Quoz #1 (1969) is reprinted in its quirky absurdist entirety.

Justin Green lays claim to having created the winning format of mini comics in his reprinted blog ‘Statement…’ before his groundbreaking Spare Comic? and inspirational Underground Cartooning Course (both from 1972) show us all how it should still be done…

Gary Arlington is highlighted firstly through an interview he gave to Comics Journal (#264) reporter Patrick Rosenkranz and his uplifting Awake! mini from 1972, followed by the delightfully morose adventure of Johnny Hangdog in Useless (1980) by Jim Siergey, and Larry Rippee’s comically macabre Skeletoons #18 from 1979.

Dowers’ interview of Richard Krauss (midnightfiction.com) is followed by the latter’s first self-publication Bar Fly Theater from 1979 and Bug Infested Comics: a 2008 collaboration with Bob Vojtko, after which Dickhead #1 by Clark Dissmeyer & Par Holman (1982) elaborates on the tricky life of a blue-collar talking penis…

Tales from the Inside was inmate Macedonio M. Garcia’s description of a convict’s existence, tellingly realised here in issues #1 and 3 from 1981 and 1982 (assisted by a script from inmate Melander), after which minor legend Matt Feazell of Not Available Comics describes his prolific career and re-presents The Amazing Cynicalman and Board of Superheroes #1 (1981 & 1994).

Another major player who crossed over into mainstream funnybooks was Matt Howarth whose beguiling The League of Mikes from 1983 took the lid off the collectors’ mentality and still rings true today, Steven L. Willis’ Brave New Nazis of the Inland Empire (1985) savages fascists with excoriating mirth, whilst Nukemare by Donald Russell Roach (1983) combines Cold War paranoia with glittery science fiction hope.

‘The Story of Outside In’ details an extensive collaborative effort which spanned 1983-2003 as a succession of editors and publishers shepherded an ambitious idea and made a little history.

As described in ‘Outside In Introduction‘ by Rick Bradford, Steve Willis conceived and produced issues #1-14 of a invitational mini which sought to print self-portraits by the movement’s many artisans (further described herein with a canny, funny strip of the book’s early days by Willis) before Dowers, Edd Vick & Hall Hargit and Bruce Chrislip recount their own tenures at the top.

A complete Outside In contributor list covering #1-50 follows, plus Hargitt’s primer Outside In-formation, before Brad W. Johnson’s Wurst Funnies (1986) returns us to strip sampling with a selection of sausage-inspired cartoon capers.

Dowers then interviews Tim Corrigan of C&T Graphics, after which Serious Comics #14 and 15 (1985) highlights the nigh legendary Mightyguy (a long-running minor success of the mid-1980s “Black & White Explosion”) and, from the same year, David Miller’s No More Bottled Milk! explores less commonplace comicbook themes…

Break out mini comics star Colin Upton reveals all to Dowers before his Self-Indulgent Comics #10 and 2008 Diabetes Funnies leads into Acid Man Society (1989) by Robert Pasternak, whilst Glenn & David Lee Ingersoll’s The Davey Thunder Jack Lightning Show: The Ugly Dog of Heaven is followed by Roberta Gregory’s Devolution.

A John Porcellino Interview is augmented by a selection of his short works spanning 1983-1993, comprising ‘I Wrote My Own Pink Slip!!’, ‘Smells Like Teen Bullshit’, ‘In der Nacht die welt dreht sich das Oberste zuunterst’ and ‘Night Time’, after which a heartfelt commemoration of the life, works and contribution of Dylan Williams (1970-2011) is delivered by Tom Spurgeon.

This tribute to mini comics’ “great synthesizer”, a major publishing force and founder of Puppy Toss and Sparkplug Comics, is followed by his own stunning Horse #1 and an assortment of other strips.

Eric Reynolds contributes Broken Picture Tube Theatre  (1994), featuring ‘The Brady Lush’, ‘Barry Williams is Johnny Bravo‘ and other TV-triggered spoofs, whilst the bawdy Zelda Zonk’s Hyper Revue Folies Album (1993) comes courtesy of Quimby World Head Quarters and Molly Kiely, and is followed by the shockingly sordid Asphalt Aneurism #21 by Blair Wilson from 1994.

The mammary madness of Jim Blanchard’s Teat Warp #1 from the same year is counterpoised by 1995’s Moldy Fig (and other Sufi stories) by C. Cilla, whilst Jim Woodring & David Lasky’s sublime Jesus Delivers offers some sage advice to the overly zealous spiritual seekers to end this section.

Dowers’ Marc Bell Interview is followed by the beguiling sci-fi fable ArbeiteesEiner Industrium Dokument den Marc Bell ut Rupert Bottenberg (1996) and the documentary Yeast #6 by Ronald J.M. Regé Jr., before a Leela Corman Interview segues into her mordant 1997 Valentine and Karl Wills’ paean to childhood perversity Jessica of the Schoolyard in “Jessica’s Good Deed”.

Further of the period’s exemplars include Onsmith’s The Rouge Knuckle Gang, Cowboys Getting Racked by Travis Millard, the dark yet anthropomorphically lovely Kids These Days by M. Campos, Nate Beaty’s Mixtape (2006), I’m the Devil by Peter Thompson from 2007 and Fiona Smyth’s The Wilding from 2008…

The Carrie McNinch Interview by Dowers is backed up by her graphic journal You Don’t Get There From Here (#11, spanning December 15th 2008-March 23rd 2009) after which the Funchicken.com duo Mark Todd & Esther Pearl Watson are both interviewed,  prior to his Bad Ass booklet and her Bike Repair Kit which portray the infinite variety of American person-hood. Then after fantastical Rudy, Vasilios Billy Mavreas’s Year in a Cone explores the graphic outer limits of imagination whilst No Exit by Andy Singer offers a humorous glimpse at Yankee obsessions such as sport, pets and the justice system…

#Noah van Scriver’s autobiographical Complaints (2010) descibes his own painfully restricted life and Sadist Science Teacher (Kelly Froh, 2010) continues in a similar journalistic vein, whilst the anonymous members of gimmeshelterpress reveal the build up of Bad Energy (2010), before Max Clotfelter’s Hole Show #1 and Marc Palm’s Hole Show #2 opt for a science fictional setting for their round-robin exercise in graphic collaboration to end the immense collected display of narrative virtuosity.

However this massive monochrome collection still holds a few more delights and, after the list of Artist Website Addresses, a full colour section reprints David Heatley’s Yesterday comic strip diary (from 5/11 to 6/10 2003), Night Terrors by Laura Wady, Fiona Smyth’s The Parkdale Gyre and a selection of equally enhanced full-hued covers by Krauss, Vojtko, Beaty & Rippee for Bug Infested Comics, Mixtape and Skeletoons.

The pioneering craftsmen who simultaneous started a self-printing movement and – now – tradition led inexorably to today’s thriving Alternative/Small Press publishing industry as well as the current internet comics phenomenon, and thus this book has incredible appeal on an historical basis.

However, that’s really not the point: the real draw of this compilation is that creativity is addictive, good work never pales or grows stale and the great stories and art here will make you keen to have a go too.

I’ve done it myself, for fun – even once or twice for actual profit – and it’s an incredible buzz (I should note that I am still married to a wife not only tolerant but far more skilled and speedy in the actual “photocopy, cut, fold, staple” bit of the process and willing, if not keen, to join in just so she might occasionally be with the compulsive dingbat she married…)

The sheer boundless enthusiasm and feelgood reward of making comics celebrated in this astoundingly vast, incredibly heavy and yet still pocket-sized hardback is a pure galvanic joy that will enchant and impel every fan of the art-form: as long as they’re big enough to hold a pencil, old enough to vote, and strong enough to lift this book.
Treasury of Mini Comics volume 1 © 2013 Michael Dowers and Fantagraphics Books. All contents © 2013 their respective creators or authors. All rights reserved.

Thunderbirds – the Comic Collection


By Alan Fennell, Scott Goodall, Frank Bellamy, John Cooper, Eric Eden, Graham Bleathman & various (Egmont)
ISBN: 978-1-4052-6836-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: 10/10 because it just is.

Stand By For Frothing!
Growing up in 1960’s England was the best of all possible worlds for a comic lover. As well as US imports you were treated to some frankly incredible weekly publications, and market bookstalls sold second-hand comics for at least a third of their cover price. We also had some of the greatest artists in the world working on some of the best licensed properties around. A perfect example is the TV – primarily Gerry Anderson – anthology comic TV Century 21.

For British kids of a certain vintage – it varies from eighty to four and three quarters – the Anderson experience is a large and critical component of the DNA of childhood. The TV episodes, toys, bubblegum cards, movies and especially the comic strips all irresistibly evoke and re-manifest the thrill and fevered anticipation of juvenile ecstasy in the millions of kids who enjoyed the weekly rush of mind-boggling, mouth-watering adventure – even decades after the initial hit.

Thus this latest glossy compilation, collecting some of the greatest strips in comics history is probably going to leave a lot of people gurgling in delight as they revisit or – if they’re incredibly lucky – see for the first time a spectacular panorama of futuristic fantasy thrills, spills and chills.

TV Century 21 (the unwieldy “Century” was eventually dropped) was patterned after a newspaper – albeit from 100 years into the future – and this shared conceit carried avid readers into a multimedia wonderland as television and comics fed off each other.

The incredible illustrated adventures were often supplemented with colour stills taken from the shows and photos also graced all text features and fillers which added to the unity of one of the industry’s first “Shared Universe” products. Even the BBC’s TV “tomorrows” were represented in a full-colour strip starring The Daleks.

The first issue launched on January 23rd 1965, instantly capturing the hearts and minds of millions of children and further proving to British comics editors the unfailingly profitable relationship between TV shows and healthy sales.

Filled with high quality art and features, printed in gleaming photogravure, TV21 featured such strips as Fireball XL5, Supercar and Stingray as well as a strange series about a posh future lady spy and her burglar chauffeur.

In an attempt to be topical, the allegorically Soviet and terribly totalitarian state of Bereznik was used in many strips, acting as an overarching, continuity-providing bad guy. Behind numerous plots and outrages, the TomorrowTerrorState constantly schemed against the World Government (for which read “The West”) in an eerily advanced Cold War espionage scenario which augmented the aliens, aquatic civilizations, common crooks and cataclysmic disasters that threatened the general well-being of the populace.

Although Thunderbirds did not premiere on TV until September of that year (with Frank Bellamy’s incredible strip joining the comic’s line-up in January 1966 with #52) Lady Penelope and Parker (subtitled as and promising “Elegance, Charm and Deadly Danger”) had been running since issue #1.

The aristocratic super-spy was promoted to her own spin-off, top-class photogravure publication in January 1966 – just as Anderson’s newest creations launched into super-marionated life: their comics exploits becoming the big draw in the already unmissable TV21.

All that is further explained in an expansive ‘Introduction’ before the procession of weekly wonderment – two staggeringly intoxicating pages every seven days! – begins in this massive (290 pages, 297x222mm) full-colour luxury hardback.

It all begins with the thirteenth adventure, which ran from #141-146 (30th September to November 4th 1967, scripted by Scott Goodall and illustrated by Frank Bellamy) and details how an avaricious madman intends splitting Persia in two with ‘The Earthquake Maker’.

The unforgettable alien invader story ‘Visitor from Space’ (#147-154) follows, with one of the most memorable monsters in comics history stealing the show on every page, after which ‘The Antarctic Menace’ (6th January-17th February 1968, #155 to 161) begins a brand new year with the same tried and true thrills as the Tracy boys are called in to save the day after the Australia-Antarctica highway is sabotaged!

‘Brains is Dead’ (#162-169, running until 13th April) features the skulduggery of the sinister Hood in a deadly game of industrial espionage, after which artist Graham Bleathman provides a captivating glimpse at those longed-for technical details with double-page cutaway spreads and single page strip sequences ‘Thunderbird 1 Technical Data’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 1’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 2’ and ‘Thunderbird 2 Technical Data’.

The suspenseful strip stories resume with ‘The Space Cannon’ (Goodall & Bellamy, from TV21 #170-172 April 20th to May 4th 1968) as the team have to stop a continually firing neutron cannon that’s crashed into the Thames, whilst follow-up yarn ‘The Olympic Plot’ by Howard Elson & Bellamy (#173-178) finds the great games – held in the crater of Vesuvius – disrupted not only by a lake of fire but also a madman digging up a pirate treasure hidden since the 17th century…

TV21 #184-187 (27th July-17th August 1968) offered ‘Devil’s Crag’ (Goodall & Bellamy) and saw International Rescue save a lost schoolboy; a spectacular visual extravaganza that belies its deceptively simple plot, after which ‘The Eiffel Tower Demolition’ (#188-191) goes dreadfully wrong and Scott and Virgil find themselves endangered by thieves and saboteurs…

Bleathman returns with more pictorial top secrets in ‘Specifications of Thunderbird 3’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 3’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 4’ and ‘Specifications of Thunderbird 4’ after which Goodall & Bellamy expose ‘The Nuclear Threat’ (TV21 #192-196, 21st September-19th October 1968) of an out-of-control drone ferrying atomic weapons to their intended deep sea dumping ground, whilst the ‘Hawaiian Lobster Menace’ (#197-202) outrageously reveals a plot to turn tasty crustacean treats into explosive anti-personnel weapons…

‘The Time Machine’ (December 7th 1968 to January 11th 1969) used by Jeff and Scott Tracy malfunctioned in a most unfortunate manner, whilst from #209-217 a more domestic disaster saw ‘The Zoo Ship’ which foundered off Tracy Island lead to crewmen trapped aboard ship and savage beasts loose on shore with our harried heroes trying to save lives whilst keeping their secrets safe from the ever insidious Hood…

Bleathman has more artistic innovations to display in ‘Specifications of Thunderbird 5’, ‘The Construction of Thunderbird 5′, ‘This is Tracy Island’ and ‘Tracy Island’ giving us all the detail and data we desire before ‘City of Doom’ (Goodall as “Spencer Howard” & Bellamy from #218-226, 22nd March to May 17th) finds a top secret, ultra-futuristic Andean science metropolis endangered by a wild nuclear reaction…

Scripted by Goodall or (perhaps John W. Jennison?), ‘Chain Reaction’ ran in TV21 and TV Tornado #227-234, May 24th-12th July 2069) wherein the Tracy team had to stop an out of control 50,000-ton space freighter from impacting in the middle of San Francisco – and that’s just the start of an epic calamity which threatened to destroy the entire Pacific Rim…

There’s a big jump here to October 1968 for ‘The Big Bang’ by Geoff Cowan & John Cooper, possibly explained by the fact that once Bellamy left the strip, his cruelly underrated replacement rendered the strip in black and white. When Fleetway revived the Anderson franchise in the early 1990s the comics featured artwork from TV21 supplemented with new original material from another generation of fans and creators, but as Thunderbirds was far and away the biggest hit, some of Cooper’s strips were reprinted with the artist at last getting the chance to colour his efforts.

Thus this, his second original yarn from TV21 & Joe 90 #5-8 (25th October-15th November 1969), involving smuggled diamonds and a boy trapped on a building both sinking and about to explode…

The endeavours of the Tracy clan then conclude with ‘The Mini Moon’ (Richard O’Neill & Cooper (TV21 & Joe 90 #22-28, 21st February to April 4th 1970) as a roving planetoid menaces Earth and Brains, Alan and Gordon have to blow it up while it’s still far enough away to pose no extinction-level threat…

Happily there’s still plenty for fans to enjoy as, after Bleathman’s revelatory ‘The Secrets of FAB 1’ and Creighton-Ward Stately Home’, the adventures of Lady Penelope and her invaluable manservant Parker begin with ‘Mr. Steelman’ by Alan Fennell & Eric Eden. Originally seen in TV Century 21 #1-11, January 23rd to April 3rd 1965, this is a complex thriller involving espionage and a deadly robot, after which Bellamy handles ‘The Isle of Arran Riddle’ (#35-43, September 18th to November 13th 1965) wherein the Honourable Lady Creighton-Ward attempts to solve an ancient puzzle and inherit a fabulous ruby.

Eden returned for ‘The Vanishing Ray’ (#44-51) as the stately spy was mysteriously sent a torch that turned objects transparent, unaware that the wicked Hood was hot on its trail.

The deadly games end with ‘The Enemy Spy’, illustrated by the legendary Frank Hampson from the July 1965 Lady Penelope Summer Extra, wherein an idle glance at the TV news sets Her Ladyship on the trail of Bereznik’s top assassin…

But of course the real treasure is the phenomenal and unparalleled work of Frank Bellamy, whose fantastic design, drawing and painted colour (which holds up rather well here, despite the limitations of modern print technology to accommodate the subtleties of the photogravure process) steals the show – and usually one’s breath away!

The work of Bellamy and his successors are a cherished highpoint of British comic-making. Crisp, imaginative writing, great characters and some of the very best science-fiction art of all time make this a must-have book for just about anybody with a sense of adventure and love of comics. It doesn’t get better than this.
Thunderbirds ™ and © ITC Entertainment Group Limited 1964, 1999, 2013. Licensed by ITV Ventures Limited. All rights reserved.

Heroic Tales: The Bill Everett Archives volume 2


By Bill Everett and others, edited and complied by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-600-3

Thanks to modern technology there is a superabundance of collections featuring the works of too-long ignored founding fathers and lost masters of American comic books. A magnificent case in point is this second superb chronicle revisiting the incredible gifts of one of the greatest draughtsmen and yarn-spinners the industry has ever seen.

You could save some time and trouble by simply buying the book now rather than waste your valuable off-hours reading my blather, but since I’m keen to carp on anyway feel free to accompany me as I delineate just why this tome needs to join the books on your “favourites” shelf.

He was a direct descendent and namesake of iconoclastic poet and artist William Blake. His tragic life and awe-inspiring body of work – Bill was possibly the most technically accomplished artist in US comicbook industry – reveals how a man of privilege and astonishing pedigree was wracked by illness, an addictive personality (especially alcoholism) and sheer bad luck, nevertheless shaped an art-form and left twin legacies: an incredible body of superlative stories and art, and, more importantly, saved many broken lives saved by becoming a dedicated mentor for Alcoholics Anonymous in his later years.

William Blake Everett was born in 1917 into a wealthy and prestigious New England family. Bright and precocious, he contracted Tuberculosis when he was twelve and was dispatched to arid Arizona to recuperate.

Thus began a life-long affair with the cowboy lifestyle: a hard-drinking, smoking, tall-tale telling breed locked in a war against self-destruction, described in the fact-filled, picture-packed Introduction by Blake Bell which covers ‘The Early Years of Comics: 1938-1942’, ‘The Birth of Marvel Comics’ and ‘The Comic Book Production System’, before ‘The Heroes’ precedes a full-colour selection of incredible prototypical adventure champions with a brief essay on the set-up of Centaur Comics, Novelty Press, Eastern Color Printing, Hillman and Lev Gleason Publications…

Accompanied by the covers for Amazing Mystery Funnies volume 2 #3, 5 and 6 (March, May & June 1939, Centaur) are three outer space exploits of futuristic trouble shooter Skyrocket Steele, whilst Tibetan-trained superhero Amazing-Man offers a transformative triptych of titanic tales spanning war-torn Europe, augmented by the covers to Amazing-Man Comics #9-11 February-April 1940.

Everett’s deeply held western dreams are covered next with a brace of rootin’ tootin’ yarns starring Bull’s-Eye Bill from Novelty Press’ Target Comics #3-4 (April & May 1940) whilst from #7-9 (August-October 1940), the author smoothly switched to sophisticated suspense with master of disguise The Chameleon crushing contemporary criminals in scintillating escapades from Target Comics’ answer to The Saint, the Falcon and the Lone Wolf.

Thanks to his breakthrough Sub-Mariner sagas Everett was inextricably linked to water-based action, and Eastern Comics hired him to create human waterspout Bob Blake, Hydroman for the bimonthly Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics. Here, spanning issues # 6-9 (May-November 1941, with the covers for #6 and 7), are four spectacular, eerie, offbeat exploits, covering an extended battle against foreign spies and American Fifth Columnists, after which Red Reed in the Americas! (created by Bob Davis & Fitz) offers the first two chapters in a political thriller wherein a college student and his pals head South of the Border to fight Nazi-backed sedition and tyranny in a stunning tour de force first seen in Lev Gleason’s Silver Streak Comics #20 & 21 (April & May 1942).

A section of Miscellaneous and text illustrations follows, blending Western spot drawings with the eye-catching covers from Amazing Mystery Funnies volume 2 #18, Target Comics #5 and 6, Blue Bolt (vol. 1 #11, vol. 2 #1, 2 and 3) and Famous Funnies #85.

The Humorous and More describes Everett’s forays into other markets: niche sectors such as licensed comics, comedy and romance, and even returns to pulp and magazine illustration as he strove to stay one step ahead of a constantly shifting market and his own growing reputation for binges and unreliability.

‘What’s With the Crosbys?’ is a superbly rendered gossip strip from Famous Stars #2 (1950, Ziff-Davis) whilst a stunning monochrome girly-pin-up of ‘Snafu’s Lovely Ladies’ (from Snafu #3 Marvel, March 1956), and the cover of Adventures of the Big Boy #1 (also Marvel, from the same month) lead into the Back Cover of Cracked #6 (December 1958, Major Magazines) and other visual features from the Mad imitator as well as the colour cover to less successful rip-off Zany (#3, from March 1959).

Everett’s staggering ability to draw beautiful women plays well in the complete romance strip ‘Love Knows No Rules’ (Personal Love #24, November 1953 Eastern Color), and this section concludes with a gritty black and white title page piece from combat pulp War Stories #1, courtesy of Marvel’s parent company Magazine Management, September 1952.

The Horror concentrates on the post-superhero passion for scary stories: an arena where Bill Everett absolutely shone like a diamond. For over a decade he brought a sheen of irresistible quality to the generally second-rate chillers Timely/Atlas/Marvel generated in competition with genre front-runners EC Comics. It’s easy to see how they could compete and even outlive their gritty, gore-soaked competitor, with such lush and lurid examples of covers and chillingly beautiful interior pages…

Following a third informative background essay detailing his life until its cruelly early end in 1973, a choice selection of his least known and celebrated efforts opens with tale of terror ‘Hangman’s House’ (Suspense #5, November, 1950): a grim confrontation with Satanic evil, followed by futuristic Cold War shocker ‘I Deal With Murder!’ and a visit to a dark carnival of purely human wickedness in ‘Felix the Great’ (both culled from Suspense #6, January 1951).

Adventures into Weird Worlds #4 (Spring 1952) offered a laconic, sardonic glimpse into ‘The Face of Death’, whilst from the next issue (April 1952) ‘Don’t Bury Me Deep’ tapped untold depths of tension in a moodily mordant exploration of fear and premature burial. Hard on the heels of the cover to Journey Into Unknown Worlds #14 (December 1952) comes one of its interior shockers as ‘The Scarecrow’ helped an aged couple solve their mortgage problems in a most unusual manner.

The Marvel madness then concludes with a cautionary tale of ‘That Crazy Car’ from Journey into Mystery #20, December 1954, concluding a far too brief sojourn amidst arguably Everest’s most accomplished works and most professionally adept period.

This magnificent collection ends with a gallery of pages and one complete tale from the end of his career; selected from an even more uninhibited publisher attempting to cash in on the adult horror market opened by Warren Publishing with Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella.

Skywald was formed by industry veteran Israel Waldman and Everett’s old friend Sol Brodsky, tapping into the burgeoning black and white market with mature-reader and supernatural magazines Hell-Rider, Crime Machine, Nightmare, Psycho and Scream. Offered an “in” Everett produced incredible pin-ups (included here are three from Nightmare (#1, 2 & 4, December 1970-June 1971), ‘A Psycho Scene’ (Psycho #5, November, 1971) a stunning werewolf pin-up from Psycho #6 and one of revived Golden Age monstrosity ‘The Heap’ from Psycho #4.

Most welcome, however, is a magnificent 10-page monochrome masterpiece of gothic mystery ‘The Man Who Stole Eternity’ from Psycho #3, May, 1971.

Although telling, even revelatory and concluding in a happy ending of sorts, what this book really celebrates is not the life but the astounding versatility of Bill Everett. A gifted, driven man, he was a born storyteller with the unparalleled ability to make all his imaginary worlds hyper-real; and for nearly five decades his incredible art and wondrous stories enthralled and enchanted everybody lucky enough to read them.

© 2013 Fantagraphics Books. Text © 2013 Blake Bell. All art © its respective owners and holders. All rights reserved.
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect for art lovers, Marvel Zombies and addicts of pure comics magic… 9/10

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 7: 1949-1950


By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-645-4

Arguably the most successful comic strip fantasy ever conceived, Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur launched as a Sunday page feature on February 13th 1937, a luscious full-colour weekly window onto a perfect realm of perfect adventure and romance.

The strip followed the life and exploits of a refugee boy driven by invaders from his ancestral homeland in Scandinavian Thule who grew up to roam the world and rose to a paramount position amongst the mightiest heroes of fabled Camelot.

Written and drawn by sublime master draftsman and storyteller Harold “Hal” Foster, the epic followed the little princeling through decades of thrilling exploits as he matured into a clean-limbed warrior and eventually family patriarch through a heady sea of wonderment, visiting far-flung lands and siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes whilst captivating and influencing generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

There have been films, animated series and all manner of toys, games and collections based on the strip – one of the few to have lasted from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (over 3900 episodes and counting) – and even in these declining days of the newspaper narrative strip as a viable medium, it still claims over 300 American papers as its home. It has even made it into the very ether with an online edition.

Foster ceaselessly produced the strip, one enchanting page per week until 1971 when, after auditioning such notables as Wally Wood and Gray Morrow, Big Ben Bolt illustrator John Cullen Murphy was chosen to succeed him as illustrator. Foster continued as writer and designer until 1980, after which he retired and Cullen Murphy’s daughter Mairead took over colouring and lettering whilst her brother John assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired (he died a month later on July 2nd) and the strip has since soldiered on under the extremely talented auspices of artists Gary Gianni and latterly Thomas Yeates, with Mark Schultz scripting.

Restored from Foster’s original Printer’s Proofs, this seventh spectacularly luxurious oversized (362 x 264mm) full-colour hardback volume reprints the pages from January 2nd 1949 to 31st December 1950 (#621 to 725 if you’re counting).

What has Gone Before: after an extended sojourn in an incredible New World, Valiant and Aleta have brought their newborn son back to Britain and sought out the warrior’s old comrade Prince Arn to be the child’s Godfather. Val is astounded that the bluff solitary hero is also a husband and currently searching for Godparents for his own newborn son and heir…

Before the Dark Ages delights resume, latest illuminator Thomas Yeates delivers a remarkable introductory essay discussing ‘The Long Shadow of Hal Foster’ and the innumerable artists who owe him a creative debt, after which the never-ending saga picks up with the Princes and their families travelling back to fabled Camelot for a double Christening, presided over by King Arthur himself…

Soon however duty calls again and Valiant, Sir Gawain and hapless, bumbling hedge-wizard Oom Fooyat are dispatched to the wilds of Wales to investigate a nest of vile black magic. Seamlessly blending thrills and grandeur with broad comedy, Foster delivers an enchanting light-hearted romantic romp wherein level-headed Val exposes the macabre happenings at Illwynde Castle and plays matchmaker to more than one of his faithful retinue…

Job done and the fief secure, Gawain and the Prince of Thule return to Camelot, picking up en route a boy with chivalric intentions and the determined courage of a lion. The enigmatic Geoffrey is desperate to win his spurs, but when Valiant introduces the lad to Aleta, the prospective page boy is gripped by a ferocious, life-changing, all consuming crush…

Whilst the well-meaning kid perpetually embarrasses himself in his drive to impress his master’s wife, Arthur despatches Valiant and a small band of knights to Scotland to inspect the wall which keeps the northern savages at bay. Aleta then attempts to keep Geoffrey out of trouble by ordering the puppy to follow and keep her husband safe…

It’s an unlucky decision: as Valiant and his inspection force discover when they see that Hadrian’s Wall has been breached and hundreds of Picts are ravening southward…

Confronted with an impossible situation the Prince again resorts to unconventional tactics and traps the huge barbarian army on the English side whilst sending Geoffrey back to Camelot with a message for Arthur… and to save the hero-struck boy from dying in the unwinnable battle to come…

Breaking all the rules of knighthood for the noblest of reasons, Geoffrey speedily delivers his message and is astounded when Aleta rushes off to join Valiant in Scotland. Again disregarding consequences and probably relinquishing forever his dream of knighthood, the boy follows her northwards…

Their arrival precipitates an unexpected and nigh-miraculous end to the war, but Valiant is close to death. After tending his hurts Aleta decides that she will take her husband back to his Scandinavian homeland, and dispatches the now-exhausted Geoffrey back to Camelot to inform her handmaiden Katwin and nurse Tillicum to obtain a ship and meet her with baby Arn at the village of Newcastle…

Despite dreading the judgement awaiting him at Court, the boy thunders back and, after arranging for his wounded master’s (wonderful wife’s) wishes to be carried out, surrenders himself to his fate…

Of course the King is no fool and a great respecter of honour and courage. He summarily condemns the boy to banishment: for a year and a day Geoffrey must not set foot on English soil…

Mind in a whirl the redoubtable boy is taken to a barge secured by Katwin and sails to Caledonia with the family party to a reunion with Valiant and Aleta…

Soon the group are headed to Thule, bolstered by the bombastic reappearance to boisterous far-larger-than-life Viking Boltar: a Falstaff-like rogue and “honest pirate” not seen since volume 3…

The excitable old rogue ferries the extended family to Val’s cold homeland – with a few unplanned, profitable but dangerous stops along the way – but soon finds himself smitten by the love bug too…

One mystery has been solved, however, as a chance meeting with an old cleric discloses the faithful squire to be actually called Arf, forced from his home when his father Sir Hugo Geoffrey took a new young bride who didn’t want an annoying stepson underfoot. Now she is gone and the boy can return home if he wishes…

Eventually the expanded party reaches the chilly castle of King Aguar and settles in to a long period of snowbound rest and recuperation – until boisterous Jarl Egil makes an inappropriate advance on Aleta and hotheaded Arf dashes to her defence…

Soon the encounter has escalated and Valiant is forced into an utterly unnecessary duel of honour which can only end in pointless tragedy…

Happily the repentant Arf finds a way to satisfy honour all around but the King is plagued by a knotty problem wit cannot solve. Aguar has been seriously considering converting his Norse realm to Christianity, but the many devout missionaries roaming the land are cantankerous idiots all preaching their own particular brand of faith – when not actively fighting each other.

Thus in Spring, he tasks the fully fit Valiant with an embassage to Rome to ask the Pope to send priests and teachers who actually carry the true and official Word of God. Restless and eager Val promptly sets out, accompanied by Arf, the doughty Rufus Regan and new comrade Egil. Their mission coincides with the planting season when Aguar’s men return to their homes to sow the crops for the coming year…

No sooner have they departed however than vassal king Hap-Atla, seething from an old slight delivered to his deceased sire, rebels and besieges Arguar’s castle. With manpower dangerously depleted the situation looks grim until wily Aleta takes control of the situation and scores a devastating victory that contravenes all the rules of manly warfare.

Unseen for three months, Valiant and his companions at last reappear as they land in Rouen to begin the arduous overland trek to the HolyCity. The journey is full of short bursts of violence and outrageous incidents as, since Rome fell to the Vandals, Europe has become a seething mass of lawless principalities.

Most of these improvised kingdoms are run by brigands or worse, all seeking to fill their coffers at any unwary traveller’s expense…

In one unhappy demesne the quartet dethrone a robber baron and nearly end up married to his daughters (young Arf particularly caught the imagination of the decidedly dangerous and ambitious teenager Ollie), whilst in another Val gets hold of an alchemist ruler’s horrific black powder and is almost blown to smithereens.

Eventually however they arrive at the castle of welcoming noble Ruy Foulke and enjoy a pleasant night’s rest – only to awaken and find the place under attack by heinous villain Black Robert and his savagely competent forces…

To Be Continued…

Also included in this striking compendium is an intoxicating glimpse at the author’s virtuosity in ‘“See America First”: Hal Foster’s Union Pacific Paintings’, a series of painted advertising landscapes compiled and discussed by Brian M. Kane.

Rendered in a simply stunning panorama of glowing visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a non-stop rollercoaster of boisterous action, exotic adventure and grand romance; blending human-scaled fantasy with dry wit and broad humour, soap opera melodrama with shatteringly dark violence.

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring, the strip is a World Classic of fiction and something no fan can afford to miss. If you have never experienced the intoxicating grandeur of Foster’s magnum opus these magnificent, lavishly substantial deluxe editions are the best way possible to do so and will be your gateway to an eye-opening world of wonder and imagination…

Prince Valiant © 2013 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties © 2013 their respective creators or holders. All rights reserved.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Ideal for anybody who ever strived or dreamed or wished… 10/10 

The Daniel Clowes Reader: A Critical Edition of Ghost World and Other Stories, with Essays, Interviews and Annotations


By Daniel Clowes, with Ken Parille & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-589-1

One of the greatest assets of the comics medium is the ostensibly straightforward nature of its storytelling. With pictures wedded to text, what you see is so clearly what you get. So whenever a master creator regularly, consciously and deliberately subverts that implicit convention the result might be occasionally obscure or confusing, but always utterly engrossing.

At the forefront of comics storytelling for nearly three decades, Daniel Clowes is, for many, an acquired taste. However, once he’s in your brain there’s certainly no shaking the things he can do with pen and ink, motive, character and the special kind of targeted situational magic that inhabits the world of pictures and words in static harmony.

Born in Chicago in 1961, Clowes began his career as a cartoonist with humour magazine Cracked before creating uniquely skewed short comic tales for Fantagraphics. His first piece debuted in Love and Rockets # 13 (September 1985), an introductory prelude to his retro-chic detective magazine Lloyd Llewellyn which launched soon after, running in various incarnations for three years.

In 1989 he created personal anthology vehicle Eightball and began producing a variety of tales – short and serial-length – spanning a range of topics and styles investigating all aspects of cartoon narrative from autobiography to social satire, nostalgic absurdist media-fuelled yarns to surreal, penetrating human dramas, all viewed through the lens of iconic popular cultures and social motifs.

All that material has since been collected in assorted albums with two, Ghost World and Art School Confidential, successfully adapted into critically acclaimed feature films.

His experiences in Hollywood combined with deep-seated childhood influences of noir movies and comicbooks combined and resulted in David Boring – another powerful literary comics statement.

The author is rightly renowned as a founding force in Graphic Novel publishing (a term he actually despises); instrumental in breaking the ghetto walls which had constrained the medium in English-speaking countries since the inception of the comicbook industry by creating popular stories of interest to a general audience of adults and helping the art become a recognised art form.

Now The Daniel Clowes Reader cements that idea by presenting a large body of selected classic works augmented with a profusion of scholarly articles and features, both as salute to Clowes’ achievements and an inexpensive introduction to many of the creator’s most impressive tales.

Subtitled Ghost World, Nine Short Stories and Critical Materials – Comics About Art, Life, Adolescence and Real Life, the book is compiled and edited by Literature Professor and reviewer Ken Parille, with contributions from a host of industry journalists and scholars.

The volume, packed with heavily illustrated text features, opens with an Introduction section offering thoughts and quotes from a multitude of sources in ‘Daniel Clowes on…’, followed by ‘An Aesthetic Biography of Daniel Clowes’ and a formal, informative ‘Introduction to the Daniel Clowes Reader’.

Section I: Ghost World, Girls and Adolescence offers ‘Daniel Clowes’ Introduction from Ghost World Special Edition’ before the entire tale is reproduced cover-to-cover.

In an uncanny comics-style coincidence, I was actually  in the process of completing a much-postponed review of Ghost World when this new edition arrived so, in the interests of brevity and the certain assurance that it needs a fuller appreciation, I’m breaking my own rules by not properly covering the astonishing breakthrough novel here and now.

Come back in a couple of weeks for the full Monty, but for the present just be aware that the story concerns two young slackers Enid and Rebecca who shamble through and survive a climactic change in their lives and circumstances – after which hanging out, talking music, making fanzines and being generally post-ironic no longer grip their attentions quite so forcefully…

Following the two-tone tale is a host of thoughtful and impressive essays and features on it, opening with comprehensive ‘Annotations for Ghost World’ compiled by the author and Parille, after which a full Ghost World Index precedes ‘An Interview with Daniel Clowes’ by Joshua Glenn from 1990.

Adele Melander-Dayton reveals ‘How Ghost World Made Me Brave’, Pamela Thurschwell examines ‘The Ghost Worlds in Modern Adolescence’ through the lens of the tale and Parille conducts a panel-specific literary dissection in ‘Close Reading Clowes’ Dialogue: “You’ve grown into a very beautiful young woman.”’

Kaya Oakes looks at a peculiar 1990s fad in ‘Literature at the Xerox Machine: The Rise of the Zine’ and small-press mogul Gilmore Tamny recalls the story of ‘Wiglet: An Introduction and Excerpts’ in a nostalgia-filled fillip…

The iconic lead character is expanded and probed via ‘Enid’s Bookshelf: Ghost World and Its Precursors with Poems by Russell Edson and Cartoons by Ann Roy’ and ‘Enid’s Record Player: Patience and Prudence and The Ramones’ before ‘Where Are They Now?: An Afterlife for Enid and Rebecca…’ returns a decade later in a fourth-wall bending brace of obfuscatory full-colour strips created for the Ghost World Special Edition in 2008.

This opening sally then closes with a great big ‘Cartooning Glossary for Ghost World and Other Comics’.

Section II:  Short Stories, Boys and (Post) Adolescence marries a number of pivotal Clowes’ quasi-autobiographical tales with more searching literary inquisitions. “Blue Italian Shit” and “Like a Weed, Joe”: The Inner Life of Young Clowes sets up the illuminating monochrome strips – both starring official Clowes stand-in Rodger Young.

Over many years the artist has frequently adopted all manner of cartoon glove-puppets and dummies to act as spokesmodel and mouthpiece for satire, observation and reflection…

‘Blue Italian Shit’ (from Eightball #13, 1994) is narrated by Rodger the old social misfit, recalling his life as an 18-year old virgin in 1979, whilst ‘Like a Weed, Joe’ (Eightball #16, 1995) finds a younger Young in 1974, suffering from what might be first love and simultaneously hanging out with bad influence/white trash Bemis, a best friend he has no affection for but who is at least more fun than his dementia-challenged, daily diminishing grandparent and guardians…

Both episodes are fully annotated and followed by ‘Clowes on Rodger Young, Gender and Autobiography: Excerpts from Five Interviews’ and Scott Saul’s “Etc., Etc.”: the Post-Punk Ballad of Rodger Young (the name was appropriated from a song about a real WWII war-hero who was killed in 1943), before another article by Pirelle introduces the next two strips in this section.

‘“The Party” and “Buddy Bradley in Who Would You Rather Fuck: Ginger or Mary Ann?”: Daniel Clowes vs. The Ironic Hipster’ concentrate on more contemporary sallies.

Rendered in full colour, ‘The Party’ (Eightball #11, 1993) is again cruelly, destructively autobiographical: revealing a harshly self-castigating inner monologue during a celebration both unwanted and unwelcome, whilst in monochrome one-pager ‘Buddy Bradley in Who Would You Rather Fuck: Ginger or Mary Ann?’ (Eightball #13, 1994), Clowes borrows characters from colleague cartoonist Peter Bagge to lampoon commercialism in the “Slacker Generation” with devastating effect.

This is followed by a generalised discussion of Clowes’ unique viewpoint in Against Groovy by Joshua Glenn, further thoughts on commercialism in society in “Me Worry?”/“U Buy”: Clowes and Advertising in the 1990s, before ‘“Black Nylon”: Super-Beings and Psychic Battles’ discusses the artist’s most impenetrable yarn (reproduced in full from Eightball #18 (1995).

‘Black Nylon’ is a dreamy, scary, laconic, terse superhero/noir/psychodrama that should be read not debated, but is followed by a six-stage argument ‘Decoding “Black Nylon”’ and extensive scene-by-scene commentary by Parille.

Section III: Comics, Artists and Audiences develops ideas on the interdependent relationships that inform the creator’s efforts and rewards, and opens with ‘“Daniel G. Clowes®™ in Just Another Day”: Truth, Lies and Autobiography’ before the eponymous strip (from Eightball #5 (1991) mercilessly skewers the 1990s fad for introspective self-expression and, following more annotations, preloads the next strip with the brief discourse ‘“Introduction”: Superheroes, Satire and Sympathy’.

The cartoon tale ‘Introduction’ (from a revised collected edition of the graphic novel Pussey! in 2006) traces Clowes’ career trajectory through comics reader to art-school and beyond, in one of his most forthright and direct autobiographical strips, fully annotated by Parille.

The cartoonist’s unhappy relationship with vocational art training and his days at Pratt Institute is further dissected in ‘“Art School Confidential”: The Cartoonist as Undercover Cop’ before all the horrors and parasites are hilariously, graphically exposed in the full-colour Mad magazine inspired ‘Art School Confidential’ (Eightball #7, November 1991).

‘Changing Faces’ is a packed page tracking the evolution and constant revision of the artist’s past works after which ‘“Ugly Girls”: Looking at Ugly to Find Beauty’ discusses Clowes’ antipathy to manufactured, commercial, cosmeticised, socially-acceptable standards of beauty, before the stunning monochromatic – and annotated – cartoon diatribe ‘Ugly Girls’ (Eightball #8 1992) leads into a lengthy and far-reaching discussion by Anne Mallory and Parille regarding ‘Urban Romanticism, Mad Magazine and the Aesthetics of Ugly (1986-1998)’

‘Six Comic Strips about the “Artistic Triangle: Artist, Art and Audience’ precedes and deconstructs the following short pieces ‘King Ego’ (Eightball #12 1993), ‘Man-Child’, ‘Tom Pudd’, ‘Wallace Wood’ and ‘You’ (all from Twentieth Century Eightball 2002) whilst the extended ‘Justin M. Damiano’ (The Book of Other People, 2008) excoriates the isolating role of critic/reviewer…

‘Modern Cartoonist’ (originally an insert pamphlet from Eightball #18 1997), is Clowes’ manifesto – don’t call it a mission statement – a powerful pictorial/typographic polemic preceded here by the illuminating Modern Cartoonist: The Truth about Comics (again copiously annotated) and leads quite naturally into large tell-all feature Worlds on Paper: An Interview with Daniel Clowes on His Creative Process by Darcy Sullivan as well as A Daniel Clowes Chronology and a list For Further Reading…

This is another of those too-rare productions that shouldn’t really be reviewed, just read, with themes of adolescence, maturity, the quest for self and the impending end of life delivered via a landscape of comics, film noir, mock-heroics – and the irreducible knowledge that families make individuals – resulting in a truly personal experience for every reader.

It’s also a solid acknowledgement that only kids’ comics are for kids these days, and confirmation that the medium of cartooning in the English language has at last reached the lofty pinnacle of music, literature and film: popular commercial fields and forms of expression which can encompass and generate, trash, mediocrity and pure capital A Art…

All images and materials © 2013, Daniel Clowes, except where otherwise expressly held by individual copyright holders and used here by permission. The Daniel Clowes Reader: A Critical Edition of Ghost World and Other Stories, with Essays, Interviews and Annotations is © 2013 Ken Parille. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All rights reserved.

Zippy: the Dingburg Diaries – June 2010-January 2013 (Zippy Annual volume 11)


By Bill Griffiths (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-641-6

Starting life as a subversive and broadly comedic underground cartoon in 1971, Bill Griffith’s absurdist commentary on American society has since grown into such a prodigious and pervasive counter-culture landmark that it’s almost a bastion of the civilisation it constantly scrutinises and castigates.

Almost: there’s still a lot of Americans who don’t like and certainly don’t get Zippy the Pinhead…

Legendarily based on the microcephalic Schlitzie from Tod Browning’s controversial 1932 film “Freaks” and P.T. Barnum’s carnival attraction Zip the Pinhead, Griffith’s Muu-Muu clad genial simpleton first appeared in Real Pulp Comix #1 (March 1971) and other scurrilous home-made counter-culture pamphlet publications before winning a regular slot in the prominent youth culture newspaper The Berkley Barb in 1976.

Soon picking up syndication across America and the world, Zippy “dropped in” during the ultra-conservative Reagan years when, in 1985, King Features began syndicating the strip, launching it in the San Francisco Examiner.

Zippy’s ruminations and Dadaist anti-exploits have expanded over the years to include his own nuclear family and cat, and a peculiar cast of iconic regulars such as embodiment of rampant callous Capitalism Mr. The Toad, the star’s antithetical brother Lippy (conceptual and ideological opposite in the grand tradition of Happy Hooligan‘s sibling Gloomy Gus, and thus the epitome of the average mainstream US citizen), tired, ink-fingered Griffy – analogue of the cartoonist and even God the creator him/her/them/itself…

The strip follows few conventions although it is staggeringly well-rendered in a bewildering variety of styles. Plot-lines and narratives, even day-to-day traditional gags are usually eschewed in favour of declamatory statements of bizarre, quasi-philosophical and often surreal concept-strings that resemble word (and occasionally picture) association or automatic writing, all highlighting the ongoing tsunami of globalisation as experienced by every acme of our modern culture.

Be it the latest fad in consumer electronics or celebrity fashion and “newsfotainment” the brightly caparisoned denizens of Dingburg USA – an entire town of quaint, genteel, broadly identical like-minded complacent pinheads and happily American consumers – simply lap it all up …

The strip is the home of the damning non-sequitur and has added to the global lexicon such phrases as “Yow!” and “Are we having fun yet?” as the Dingburgers go about their appointed courses, following fads, consuming junk food and drinking Valvoline (kids – do not try this at home or anywhere else!)

Being free of logical constraint and internal consistency, Zippy’s Daily and Sunday forays against The Norm can encompass everything from time travel, talking objects, shopping lists, radical philosophy, caricature, majorly dead minor celebrities, packaging ingredients, political, social and metaphysical ponderings, toy crazes, vintage TV show memories and even purely visual or calligraphic episodes. It is weird and wonderful and not everybody gets it – even those of us who been friends of Zippy’s for years…

This latest volume – featuring material published between June 2010 and January 2013 – is broken into chaptered segments beginning with Dingburg: a free-associating batch of stand-alone instalments acting as travelogue and extended tour of the odd old home town and reintroducing the everyday folk who live there through such appealing situations as ‘Dingamajig’, ‘Dancing with the Czars’, ‘Totally Zygomatic’ or ‘Kitty, Kitty Bang-Bang’…

This is followed by a selection of skits and sketches dealing with the community’s Big Issues such as Beatniks, Bowling, Laundry & Food. Here ‘Like, The End’, ‘Bongos!!’, ‘Come Loaf with Me…’ and ‘Crossing the Fowl Line’ inevitably lead to ‘Percolating’, ‘Downers’ and ‘Cracking the Zip Code’ for ‘Persons of Pinterest’ after which follows a number of vignettes delineating the low character of that Bachtrian Bounder Mr. The Toad via such revelatory episodes as ‘Oversaxed’, ‘A Jab at Rehab’, ‘And He Really Memes It’, ‘Banana Oil Well’ and ‘Living the Toad Code’.

As you might suspect, Sunday Color highlights the bigger, bolder, un-monochromed escapades and focuses far more on Zippy and his immediate family. Nonetheless even you won’t be expecting such intriguing experiences as ‘Let a Smile be your Umbrella’, ‘Zippy Receives a Fraudulent Email’ or ‘Zippy’s Three States of Grace…’ Mister, Miss or Mrs. Smartypants…!

More astute readers might gain a smidgen of insight into our dullard star in Zippy Solowith more brief but illuminating strips such as ‘Hook, Line and Thinker’, ‘High Wired’, ‘Goretex Happens’, ‘Backpacking in Bushmillerland’ or ‘Up Stares, Down Stares’ and glean the making of the man from tales of the pinhead as a boy in the pastiche-frenzied Little Zippy with ‘Does Cute Commute?’, ‘Learn, Zippy, Learn’, ‘No Adult Supervision’, ‘Pre-Pubescent Pugilist’ and ‘Science Infliction’…

Art, Music & Comics concentrates on the finer things of Dingburg life with glimpses into and instruction on ‘Schnozznostication’, ‘Paleosputnik’, ‘Artache’, ‘Zippy Tone’, ‘Cartoona Obscura’ and playing ‘Peace Accordion’ ‘With a Song in my Brain’ as well a revealing the results of the Annual Best Currently Unpublished Daily Comic Strip of the Past Award…

Zerbina & Other Relationships explores the private life of that very public woman who is Zippy’s good lady wife via ‘No Semolina’, ‘A Whiter Shade of Newsprint’, ‘Crossing the Borderline Personality’ and ‘Love in the Time of Flatulence’ amongst other kiss-and-tell moments.

Roadside devotes time and space to the eponymous protagonist’s peregrinations the length and breadth and especially width of America, fixating briefly upon ‘Square Root Beer’, ‘Breakfast with Mr. Johnson’ and ‘Love in the Outback’…

God is always there and this section recounts some of His revelatory interactions with Dingburg regulars ‘Per Diem’. ‘His Favorite Band? Genesis’. He likes ‘Playing Canasta with the Universe’, debating ‘Religious Thimbleism’ and performing tricks like ‘Abracadingburg’.

This massive manic missive from the edge ends with some longer, continued Stories such as an octet of awesomeness entitled ‘The Eightest Stories Ever Told’ before tracing the history of Dingburg from 1840 (‘The Pedantic Era’) to 1958 (‘Before Youtube’), learning Zippy’s automotives tastes in ‘Car Toon’ 1 through 5 and closing with the gritty saga of the Dingburg Normalium “where misfits and difficult citizens are kept”…

Existential ripostes, spiritual revelations, social gaffes and cultural belly-flops are a daily occurrence in Zippy town where the collected musings of America’s most engaging Idiot-Savant are incontrovertibly the perfect cult-strip for jaded smart folks. This latest volume finds cretin and creator on absolute top form and if you like this sort of stuff you’ll adore another heaping helping of it.

Aren’t you having Fun Yet?
© 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Bill Griffith. All rights reserved.

Asterix and the Great Divide, Asterix and the Black Gold, Asterix and Son


By Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Orion Books and others)
ISBNs: 978-0-75284-773-3, 978-0-75284-774-0 and 978-0-75284-775-7

Alberto Aleandro Uderzo was born on April 25th 1927, in Fismes, on the Marne, son of Italian immigrants. As a child reading Mickey Mouse in Le Pétit Parisien he dreamed of becoming an aircraft mechanic and showed artistic flair from an early age. Albert became a French citizen when he was seven and found employment at 13, apprenticed to the Paris Publishing Society, where he learned design, typography, calligraphy and photo retouching.

When WWII broke out he spent time with farming relatives in Brittany and joined his father’s furniture-making business. Brittany beguiled and fascinated Uderzo: when a location for Asterix’s idyllic village was being mooted the region was the only choice.

In the post-war rebuilding of France Uderzo returned to Paris and became a successful artist in the country’s burgeoning comics industry. His first published work, a pastiche of Aesop’s Fables, appeared in Junior, and in 1945 he was introduced to industry giant Edmond-François Calvo (whose own masterpiece The Beast is Dead is long overdue for a new edition…).

The tireless Uderzo’s subsequent creations included the indomitable eccentric Clopinard, Belloy, l’Invulnérable, Prince Rollin and Arys Buck. He illustrated Em-Ré-Vil’s novel Flamberge, worked in animation, as a journalist and illustrator for France Dimanche, and created the vertical comicstrip ‘Le Crime ne Paie pas’ for France-Soir. In 1950 he illustrated a few episodes of the franchised European version of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Jr. for Bravo!

An inveterate traveller, the prodigy met Rene Goscinny in 1951. Soon fast friends, they decided to work together at the new Paris office of Belgian Publishing giant World Press. Their first collaboration was in November of that year; a feature piece on savoir vivre (how to live right or gracious living) for women’s weekly Bonnes Soirée, after which an avalanche of splendid strips and serials poured forth.

Jehan Pistolet and Luc Junior were created for La Libre Junior and they produced a western starring a Red Indian who eventually evolved into the delightfully infamous Oumpah-Pah. In 1955 with the formation of Édifrance/Édipresse, Uderzo drew Bill Blanchart for La Libre Junior, replaced Christian Godard on Benjamin et Benjamine and in 1957 added Charlier’s Clairette to his portfolio.

The following year later, he made his debut in Tintin, as Oumpah-Pah finally found a home and a rapturous audience. Uderzo also drew Poussin et Poussif, La Famille Moutonet and La Famille Cokalane.

When Pilote launched in 1959 Uderzo was a major creative force for the new magazine collaborating with Charlier on Tanguy et Laverdure and launching with Goscinny a little something called Asterix…

Although Asterix was a massive hit from the start, Uderzo continued working on Les Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure, but soon after the first adventure was collected as Ast̩rix le gaulois in 1961 it became clear that the series would demand most of his time Рespecially as the incredible Goscinny never seemed to require rest or run out of ideas.

By 1967 the strip occupied all Uderzo’s time and attention, so in 1974 the partners formed Idéfix Studios to fully exploit their inimitable creation. When Goscinny passed away three years later, Uderzo had to be convinced to continue the adventures as writer and artist, producing a further ten volumes until 2010 when he retired.

After nearly 15 years as a weekly comic strip subsequently collected into compilations, in 1974 the 21st tale (Asterix and Caesar’s Gift) was the first to be published as a complete original album before being serialised. Thereafter each new release was a long anticipated, eagerly awaited treat for the strip’s millions of fans…

According to UNESCO’s Index Translationum, Uderzo is the tenth most-often translated French-language author in the world and the third most-translated French language comics author – right after his old mate René Goscinny and the grand master Hergé.

More than 325 million copies of 34 Asterix books have sold worldwide, making his joint creators France’s best-selling international authors. There is even the tantalising yet frightening promise of a new volume sometime this October by replacement creative team Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad…

One of the most popular comics features on Earth, the collected chronicles of Asterix the Gaul have been translated into more than 100 languages since his debut, with twelve animated and live-action movies, TV series, assorted games, toys, merchandise and even a theme park outside Paris (Parc Astérix, naturellement)…

So what’s it all about?

Like all the best stories the premise works on more than one level: read it as an action-packed comedic romp of sneaky and bullying baddies coming a cropper if you want or as a punfully sly and witty satire for older, wiser heads. We Brits are further blessed by the brilliantly light touch of master translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge who played no small part in making the indomitable little Gaul so very palatable to English tongues.

More than half of the canon occurs on Uderzo’s beloved Brittany coast, where, circa 50 B.C., a small village of cantankerous, proudly defiant warriors and their families resisted every effort of the mighty Roman Empire to complete the conquest of Gaul. The land had been divided by the conquerors into the provinces of Celtica, Aquitania and Amorica, but the very tip of the latter just refused to be pacified…

The remaining epics occur in various locales throughout the Ancient World, where the Garrulous Gallic Gentlemen visited every fantastic land and corner of the civilisations that proliferated in that fabled era…

When the heroes were playing at home, the Romans, unable to defeat the last bastion of Gallic insouciance, futilely resorted to a policy of absolute containment. Thus the little seaside hamlet was permanently hemmed in by the heavily fortified garrisons of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium.

The Gauls couldn’t care less: daily defying the world’s greatest military machine simply by going about their everyday affairs, protected by the magic potion of resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits of the diminutive dynamo and his simplistic, supercharged best friend Obelix…

Firmly established as a global brand and premium French export by the mid-1960s, Asterix the Gaul continued to grow in quality as Goscinny & Uderzo toiled ever onward, crafting further fabulous sagas; building a stunning legacy of graphic excellence and storytelling gold. Moreover, following the civil unrest and nigh-revolution in French society following the Paris riots of 1968, the tales took on an increasingly acerbic tang of trenchant satire and pithy socio-political commentary…

By the time this edition was released Goscinny had been gone for three years and Uderzo soldiered on alone…

Asterix and the Great Divide was the 25th volume, released in 1980 as Le Grand Fossé, which was in many ways something of departure and a stylistic compromise.

In another Gaulish village internecine strife is brewing. Political rivals Cleverdix and Majestix have split the sleepy hamlet down the middle with an election for chief which ended in a dead tie. They then made the figurative literal by having a huge trench dug through the centre of town, cutting the place in two, with the population resolved into uncompromising Leftists and stubborn Rightists…

It’s a tragedy in many ways, with friends and families split into feuding camps, but the most heartrending separation concerns dashing Histrionix, son of Leftist Cleverdix and his one true love Melodrama, daughter of Majestix. Their warring sires refuse to concede or compromise and that simmering Cold War has frustrated their children’s happiness forever…

The lover’s pleas cannot move either deadlocked party leader and the intolerable situation is further exacerbated by the insidious, coldly calculating advisor to Majestix who secretly eggs on the old warrior for his own purposes.

Wily toady Codfix‘s latest idea is to get their Roman overlords to intervene, installing Majestix as sole ruler by force. In return Codfix would be given Melodrama in marriage. Of course that would make him next in line for the ruler’s position. Codfix is both patient and ambitiously far-sighted…

When Melodrama learns of the plan she immediately informs Histrionix and the prince tells Cleverdix – who knows full well he cannot resist the overwhelming might of the Romans. The former soldier then remembers an old war-buddy who still successfully resists the conquerors. His name is Vitalstatistix…

As Histrionix heroically dashes to the village of Indomitable Gauls – he does everything heroically – Codfix has gone to the local garrison with his request. Centurion Umbrageous Cumulonimbus however, has his own problems: discipline is lax and the soldiers are grumbling because of the menial chores they are forced to perform. Codfix has the perfect solution. If the Romans put Rightist Majestix in charge they could take the pacified Leftists as slaves…

In the meantime Histronix has returned with Vitalstatistix’ best men. Asterix, Obelix and Getafix the Druid are discussing the matter with Cleverdix when Roman soldiers arrive. Codfix however has overstepped himself and underestimated the nobility of Majestix…

The doughty Rightist refuses to let any Gaul be enslaved – even political opponents – so the uncaring Romans grab him and his followers instead. Impressed with his rival’s integrity, Cleverdix accepts Asterix’ offer of assistance and our heroes infiltrate the garrison as volunteer slaves using an elixir that revitalises the body but causes a touch of amnesia…

Having fun by exploiting these new Romans’ ignorance of their true identities, the heroes feed the imprisoned Gauls soup fortified with the Druid’s strength potion before Asterix and Obelix lead a mass breakout which soon finds the prisoners back in their divided hamlet but no closer to an amicable resolution.

And both sides know that the Romans will soon come, eager for revenge…

Codfix has wisely stayed with the garrison and found the last of Getafix’ elixir, left behind during the liberation. When he sneaks back into the village he also discovers a fresh batch of power-potion whipped up in advance of the impending attack and steals it.

The next day the Gauls wake to find the invaders marching upon them, fortified by the elixir which has erased the punishing memory of their recent defeat, and super-charged by the power potion.

Left with nothing but Obelix and Gaulish courage, the villagers unite to fight and fall with honour but are astonished when a bizarre series of transformations wrack the potion-powered Romans. It takes a long time to become a Druid and apparently the first thing you learn is to never mix potions…

Codfix has used the distraction to kidnap Melodrama. Demanding ransom and safe passage he has not reckoned on Histrionix’ determination, Asterix’ ingenuity or Obelix’ strength and – after a climactic confrontation involving our luckless Pirates – gets what’s coming to him…

With the Romans routed and Codfix suitably punished, Cleverdix and Majestix settle their differences with a traditional Gaulish duel after which someone else becomes chief of the reunified village. The former divide is transformed into an appropriate symbol of their unity and life goes on happily…

Asterix and the Great Divide was devised by Uderzo as a critique on current affairs and metaphorical attack on the Berlin Wall which had, since 1961, split the city physically, Europe symbolically and the world ideologically. His earnest tale was more dramatic and action-oriented than previous Asterix fare, with the regulars frequently reduced to subordinate roles, but for all that there are still cunning laughs and wry buffoonery in welcome amounts.

 

Asterix and the Black Gold (L’Odyssée d’Astérix) debuted in 1981 and again saw Asterix and Obelix undertake a long voyage into the unknown, rife with bold adventure and underpinned by topical lampooning and timeless swingeing satire.

The 26th saga begins with a brace of wild boar demonstrating that they were canny opponents for the voracious Obelix. Whenever the gigantic Gaul spotted these particular pigs in his daily hunts they would evade him by leading him to the nearest Roman patrol. The only thing Obelix loved more than eating pork was bashing Romans…

Back in RomeJulius Caesar is livid. He’s just received news that the insufferable, indomitable Gauls have been training wild boars to lead Roman patrols into Gaulish ambushes…

The raging ruler’s continued attempts to end the aggravating resistance always fail and in a fit of fury he charges his chief of the Roman Secret Service M.I.VI (geddit?) with ending his galling Gallic grief – or else…

M. Devius Surreptitius has just the man for the job. Dubbelosix is of Gaulish-Roman extraction and has, by persistence and deviousness, qualified as a Druid. He is charming, wily, debonair and comes with a host of cunning hidden gadgets – and he’s also the spitting image of Sean Connery…

Dispatched on a mission to stop the French resisting, Dubbelosix is secretly working with his boss M to supplant Caesar, but also harbours ambitions to rule Rome alone …but first he has to destroy the infernal Gauls. His chance comes almost as soon as he arrives in that little village…

Getafix is in a near-panic. The Druid has been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Phoenician merchant Ekonomikrisis who is bringing a vital ingredient for the magic potion which keeps the Romans at bay. When the ship at last arrives and the peddler apologises for forgetting the fabled rock oil, the highly strung Getafix has a fit and passes out.

Luckily a young Druid dubbed Dubbelosix is passing and, after a minor skirmish with a Roman patrol, accompanies Asterix and Obelix back to their comatose friend…

The spy might be a double agent but he knows his stuff and soon cures the ailing Getafix, who explains that the generally useless black ooze from the Middle East is vital to the potion: without a fresh supply they are all doomed.

When Asterix and Obelix – and faithful hound Dogmatix, of course – volunteer to obtain some of the crucial rock oil, Dubbelosix insists on going with them. But as they commandeer the Phoenician’s ship for the emergency mission, Getafix clandestinely warns Asterix to watch the too-good-to-be-true young Druid…

Expediting matters by selling off Ekonomikrisis’ wares at prices nobody – even Pirates – dares refuse, our heroes make their way to Mesopotamia, unaware that Dubbelosix, using his unique messaging service, has briefed Caesar and M to stop the ship at all costs.

After a succession of military vessels are sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean by the joyfully belligerent Gauls, the Ruler of the World is forced to change tactics and blockade all ports to prevent Asterix and Obelix from disembarking.

With time running out, Ekonomikrisis eventually sneaks the Gauls and Dubbelosix ashore in distant Judea and the trio travel overland to Jerusalem where they are befriended by the locals who have no love for the Romans. The oppressors are always just one step behind the voyagers, though. It is as if someone is telling them every time they alter their plans…

After a memorable night in a village called Bethlehem, the Hebrews’ attempt to smuggle the Gauls into Jerusalem is sabotaged by Dubbelosix. However the Middle Eastern garrisons have never seen fighters like Asterix and Obelix and the doughty heroes escape, leaving the scurrilous double agent behind.

With time running out at home and no word of the fate of their friends the Gauls are hidden by friendly merchants, and learn that the Romans have seized and burned all the rock oil in the city – and probably the entire region. Their only chance to secure some of the previously worthless black goo is to get it from the source – in Babylon, where it just seeps out of the ground…

Assisted by brave, helpful guide Saul ben Ephishul (a loving visual tribute to Uderzo’s deeply-missed partner René Goscinny, who was Jewish) Asterix and Obelix undertake another perilous journey into the deep desert, frolicking in the Dead Sea and encountering a procession on fanatical tribes all warring on each other for long-forgotten reasons in a savage lampoon of modern Middle East strife…

Eventually though, the Gauls are completely lost; waterless and without hope under the scorching sun. However when little Dogmatix starts digging in the sand, the resultant oil gusher provides more than enough to buoy up their hopes and they battle on to rendezvous with Ekonomikrisis for a frantic return to Gaul.

Unfortunately, Dubbelosix has tracked them down again and has one last trick to play…

This return to the style and format of classic collaborations features hilarious comedy set-pieces, thrilling drama and a bitingly gentle assault on the madness of keeping ancient feuds alive, the intransigence of religious tensions and the madness of recurring oil crises; lampooning ideologies and dogmas whilst showing how great it is when people can just get along.

Fast, furious and funny-with-a-moral, this is one of the artist/author’s very best efforts and even manages a double-shock ending…

 

Asterix and Son was released in 1983, the 27th saga and another unconventional step off the well-worn path as it touched on a rather touchy subject…

One particularly fine morning in the Village of Indomitable Gauls Asterix and Obelix awake to discover someone has left a baby in a basket on their doorstep. Nonplussed and bewildered they try to care for the infant – much to the horror of the local cows who would be delighted to provide sustenance if milked in a normal manner – but human tongues in the village are beginning to wag…

Things only get worse after the feisty tyke develops a taste for magic potion and somehow keeps finding new supplies of it…

Determined to clear his name and find the boy’s real parents, Asterix begins his investigations at the four Roman Garrisons, even as Crismus Cactus, Prefect of Gaul begins a suspiciously sudden emergency census of the local villages…

Hyper-charged on potion, the baby keeps getting out and following Asterix and Obelix, who discover that the Romans seem to be looking for one child in particular…

After a painful encounter with our heroes, Crismus Cactus retires to his villa where a VIP from Rome is waiting. Marcus Junius Brutus is Caesar’s adopted son and is most insistent that the mystery baby is found and turned over to him – even if he has to raze all Gaul to achieve his aim…

The infant in question is still causing trouble for the villagers and Brutus marshals an army near the isolated hamlet, successfully confirming the child’s location with a rather inept spy. The kid’s treatment of the intruder prompts Asterix to seek out a nanny, but as the village women are still suspicious and condemnatory, he hires a rather unsavoury stranger named Aspidistra for the task…

This causes even more vicious tongue-wagging amongst the Gaulish women, who assume the worst of both her and Asterix. Inexplicably nobody notices the ferocious childminder’s astonishing resemblance to the Prefect of Gaul…

Unfortunately once Crismus has successfully infiltrated the village he can’t get out again, and spends a punishing time amusing the infant horror until his nerve breaks. Out of patience, Brutus then attacks with the full might of Rome, torching the village and bombarding it with catapults.

As the men tank up on potion and counterattack, the village women head for the beach, but Brutus, willing to sacrifice his entire army, is waiting and grabs the baby…

As soon as the Roman Legions are crushed Asterix and Obelix return and discover what has occurred. Filled with rage they set off in deadly pursuit and save the child just in time for his real mother and father to arrive. Two of the most powerful people in the world, they are extremely angry with somebody…

Laced with a dark and savage core, this rollicking rollercoaster ride combines tragedy with outrageous slapstick, transforming historical facts into a compelling comedy-drama that is both delightful and genuinely scary in places…

Stuffed with sly pokes and good-natured joshing, featuring famous caricatures to tease older readers whilst the raucous, bombastic, bellicose hi-jinks and fast-paced action astounds and bemuses the younger set, these tales all celebrate the spectacular illustrative ability of Uderzo and prove that the potion-powered paragon of Gallic Pride was in safe and steady hands.

If you still haven’t experienced this sublime slice of French polish and graphic élan there’s no better time than now…
© 1980-1983 Goscinny/Uderzo. Revised English translation © 2002 Hachette. All rights reserved.

Barnaby volume 1: 1942-1943


By Crockett Johnson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-522-8

This is one of those books that’s worthy of two reviews, so if you’re in a hurry…

Buy Barnaby now – it’s one of the most wonderful strips of all time and this superb hardcover compilation has lots of fascinating extras. If you harbour any yearnings for the lost joys of childish glee you would be crazy to miss this book…

However, if you’re still here and need a little more time to decide…

As long ago as August 2007 I whined that one of the greatest comic strips of all time was criminally out of print and in desperate need of a major deluxe re-issue. So, as if by the magic of a fine Panatella… Cushlamocree! Here it is…

Today’s newspapers have precious few continuity drama or adventure strips. Indeed, if a paper has any strips – as opposed to single panel editorial cartoons – at all, chances are they will be of the episodic variety typified by Jim Davis’ Garfield or Scott Adams’ Dilbert.

You might describe these as single-idea pieces with a set-up, delivery and punch-line, all rendered in a sparse, pared-down-to-basics drawing style. In that they’re nothing new.

Narrative impetus comes from the unchanging characters themselves, and a building of gag-upon-gag in extended themes. The advantage to the newspaper is obvious. If you like a strip it encourages you to buy the paper. If you miss a day or two, you can return fresh at any time having, in real terms, missed nothing.

Such was not always the case, especially in America. Once upon a time the Daily “funny” – comedic or otherwise – was a crucial circulation builder and preserver, with lush, lavish and magnificently rendered fantasies or romances rubbing shoulders with thrilling, moody masterpieces of crime, war, sci-fi and everyday melodrama. Even the legion of humour strips actively strived to maintain an avid, devoted following.

And eventually there was Barnaby which in so many ways bridged the gap between then and now.

On April 20th 1942, with America at war for the second in 25 years, the liberal New York tabloid PM began running a new, sweet little kid’s strip which was also the most whimsically addicting, socially seditious and ferociously smart satire since the creation of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner – another complete innocent left to the mercy of scurrilous worldly influences…

The outlandish 4-panel Daily, by Crockett Johnson, was the product of a man who didn’t particularly care for comics, but who – according to celebrated strip historian Ron Goulart – just wanted steady employment…

David Johnson Leisk (October 20th 1906-July 11th 1975) was an ardent socialist, passionate anti-fascist, gifted artisan and brilliant designer who had spent much of his working life as a commercial artist, Editor and Art Director.

Born in New York City and raised in the outer borough of Queens when it was still semi-rural – very near the slag heaps which would eventually house two New York World’s Fairs in Flushing Meadows – Leisk studied art at Cooper Union (for the Advancement of Science and Art) and New York University before leaving early to support his widowed mother. This entailed embarking upon a hand-to-mouth career drawing and constructing department-store advertising.

He supplemented his income with occasional cartoons to magazines such as Collier’s before becoming an Art Editor at magazine publisher McGraw-Hill. He also began producing a moderately successful, “silent” strip called The Little Man with the Eyes.

Johnson had divorced his first wife in 1939 and moved out of the city to Connecticut, sharing an ocean-side home with student (and eventual bride) Ruth Krauss, always looking to create that steady something when, almost by accident, he devised a masterpiece of comics narrative…

However, if his friend Charles Martin hadn’t seen a prototype Barnaby half-page lying around the house, the series might never have existed. Happily Martin hijacked the sample and parlayed it into a regular feature in prestigious highbrow leftist tabloid PM simply by showing the scrap to the paper’s Comics Editor Hannah Baker.

Among her other finds was a strip by a cartoonist dubbed Dr. Seuss which would run contiguously in the same publication. Despite Johnson’s initial reticence, within a year Barnaby had become the new darling of the intelligentsia…

Soon there were hard-back book collections, talk of a Radio show (in 1946 it was adapted as a stage play), rave reviews in Time, Newsweek and Life. The small but rabid fan-base ranged from politicians and the smart set such as President and First Lady Roosevelt, Vice-President Henry Wallace, Rockwell Kent, William Rose Benet and Lois Untermeyer to cool celebrities such as Duke Ellington, Dorothy Parker, W. C. Fields and even legendary New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

Of course the last two might only have checking the paper because the undisputed, unsavoury star of the show was a scurrilous if fanciful amalgam of them…

Not since George Herriman’s Krazy Kat had a piece of popular culture so infiltrated the halls of the mighty, whilst largely passing way over the heads of the masses and without troubling the Funnies sections of big circulation papers.

Over its 10-year run from April 1942 to February 1952, Barnaby was only syndicated to 64 papers nationally, with a combined circulation of just over five and a half million, but it kept Crockett (a childhood nickname) and Ruth in relative comfort whilst America’s Great and Good constantly agitated on the kid’s behalf.

This splendid collection opens with a hearty appreciation from Chris Ware in the Foreword before cartoonist and historian Jeet Heer provides a critical appraisal in ‘Barnaby and American Clear Line Cartooning’ after which the captivating yarn-spinning takes us from April 20th 1942 to December 31st 1943.

There’s even more elucidatory content after that, though, as education scholar and Professor of English Philip Nel provides a fact-filled, picture-packed ‘Afterword: Crockett Johnson and the Invention of Barnaby’, Dorothy Parker’s original ‘Mash Note to Crockett Johnson’ is reprinted in full, and Nel also supplies strip-by-strip commentary and background in ‘The Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder & Marching Society: a Handy Pocket Guide’…

The real meat begins with ‘Mr. O’Malley Arrives’ which ran from 20th-29th April 1942, setting the ball rolling as a little boy wished one night for a Fairy Godmother and something strange and disreputable fell in through his window…

Barnaby Baxter is a smart, ingenuous and scrupulously honest pre-schooler (four years old to you) and his ardent wish was to be an Air Raid Warden like his dad. Instead he was “adopted” by a short, portly, pompous, mildly unsavoury and wholly discreditable windbag with pink wings.

Jackeen J. O’Malley, card carrying-member of the Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns and Little Men’s Chowder and Marching Society – although he hadn’t paid his dues in years – installed himself as the lad’s Fairy Godfather. A lazier, more self-aggrandizing, mooching old glutton and probable soak (he certainly frequented taverns but only ever raided the Baxter’s icebox, pantry and humidor, never their drinks cabinet…) could not be found anywhere.

Due more to intransigence than evidence – there’s always plenty of physical proof whenever O’Malley has been around – Barnaby’s father and mother adamantly refused to believe in the ungainly, insalubrious sprite, whose continued presence hopelessly complicated the sweet boy’s life.

The poor parents’ greatest abiding fear was that Barnaby was cursed with Too Much Imagination…

In fact this entire glorious confection is about our relationship to imagination. This is not a strip about childhood fantasy. The theme here, beloved by both parents and children alike, is that grown-ups don’t listen to kids enough, and that they certainly don’t know everything.

Despite looking like a fraud – he never uses his magic and always has one of Dad’s stolen cigars as a substitute wand – O’Malley is the real deal: he’s just incredibly lazy, greedy, arrogant and inept. He does sort of grant Barnaby’s wish though, as his midnight travels in the sky trigger a full air raid alert in ‘Mr. O’Malley Takes Flight’ (30th April-14th May)…

‘Mr. O’Malley’s Mishaps’ (15th-28th May) offer further insights into the obese elf’s character – or lack of same – as Barnaby continually failed to convince his folks of his newfound companion’s existence, and the bestiary expanded into a topical full-length adventure when the little guys stumbled onto a genuine Nazi plot with supernatural overtones in the hilariously outrageous ‘O’Malley vs. Ogre’ which ran from 29th May to 31st August.

‘Mr. O’Malley’s Malady’, 1st-11th September, dealt with the airborne oaf’s brief bout of amnesia, but as Mum and Dad thought their boy was acting up they took him to a child psychologist. However ‘The Doctor’s Analysis’ (12th-24th September) didn’t help…

The war’s effect on the Home Front was an integral part of the strip and ‘Pop vs. Mr. O’Malley’ (25th September-6th October) and ‘The Test Blackout’ (7th-16th October) saw Mr. Baxter become chief Civil Defense Coordinator despite – not because – of the winged interloper, and suffer the usual personal humiliation.

There was plenty to go around and, when ‘The Invisible McSnoyd’ (17th-31st October) turned up, O’Malley got it all.

The Brooklyn Leprechaun, although unseen, was O’Malley’s personal gadfly, always offering harsh, ribald counterpoints and home truths to the Godfather’s self-laudatory pronouncements, and ‘The Pot of Gold’ (2nd-20th November) with which he perpetually taunted and tempted JJ provided a wealth of laughs…

When Barnaby won a scrap metal finding competition and was feted on radio, O’Malley co-opted ‘The Big Broadcast’ (21st-28th November) and brought chaos to the airwaves, but once again Mr. Baxter wouldn’t believe his senses. Dad’s situation only worsened after ‘The New Neighbors’ (30th November-16th December) moved in and little Jane Shultz also started candidly reporting Mr. O’Malley’s deeds and misadventures…

Barnaby’s faith was only near-shaken when the Fairy Fool’s constant prevarications and procrastination meant Dad Baxter’s Christmas present arrived late. The Godfather did accidentally destroy an animal shelter though, so ‘Pop is Given a Dog’ (17th-30th December) concluded with a happy resolution of sorts…

A perfect indication of the wry humour that peppered the feature can be seen in ‘The Dog Can Talk’ which ran from 31st December 1942 to 17th January 1943. New pooch Gorgon could indeed converse – but never when the parents where around, and only then with such overwhelming dullness that everybody listening wished him as mute as all other mutts…

Playing in an old abandoned house (don’t you miss those days when kids could wander off for hours unsupervised by eagle-eyed, anxious parents – or even able to walk further than the length of a garden?) served to introduce Barnaby and Jane to ‘Gus, the Ghost’ (18th January-4th February) which in turn involved the entire ensemble with ration-busting thieves when they uncovered ‘The Hot Coffee Ring’ (5th-27th February). Barnaby was again hailed a public hero and credit to his neighbourhood, even as poor Dad stood back and stared, nonplussed and incredulous.

As Johnson continually expanded his gently bizarre cast of Gremlins, Ogres, Ghosts, Policemen, Spies, Black Marketeers, Talking Dogs and even Little Girls, all of whom could see O’Malley, the unyieldingly faithful little lad’s parents were always too busy and too certain that the Fairy Godfather and all his ilk were unhealthy, unwanted, juvenile fabrications.

With such a simple yet flexible formula Johnson made pure cartoon magic.

‘The Ghostwriter Moves In’ (1st-11th March) found Gus reluctantly relocate to the Baxter dwelling, where he was even less happy to be cajoled into typing out O’Malley’s odious memoirs and organising ‘The Testimonial Dinner’ (12th March-2nd April) for the swell-headed sprite at the Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder & Marching Society clubhouse and pool hall…

With the nation urged to plant food crops, ‘Barnaby’s Garden’ (3rd-16th April) debuted as a another fine example of the things O’Malley was (not) expert in, whilst ‘O’Malley and the Lion’ (17th April-17th May) found the kid offering sanctuary to a hirsute circus star even as the conniving cheroot-chewing cherub contemplated his “return” to showbiz, after which ‘Atlas, the Giant’ (18th May-3rd June) wandered into the serial. At only 2 feet tall the pint sized colossus was not that impressive… until he got out his slide-rule and demonstrated that he was, in essence, a mental giant…

‘Gorgon’s Father’ (4th June-10th July) turned up to cause contretemps and consternation before disappearing again, after which Barnaby and Jane were packed off to ‘Mrs. Krump’s Kiddie Kamp’ (12th July-13th September) for vacation rest and the company of normal children.

Sadly, although the wise matron and her assistant never glimpsed O’Malley and Gus, all the other tykes and inmates were more than happy to see them…

Once the kids arrived back in Queens – Johnson had set the series in the streets where he’d grown up – the Fairy Fool was showing off his “mechanical aptitude” on a parked car with its engine wastefully running and broke the idling getaway car just in time to foil a robbery.

Implausibly overnight, he became an unseen and reclusive ‘Man of the Hour’ (14th-18th September) and preposterously translated that into a political career by accidentally becoming a patsy for a corrupt political machine in ‘O’Malley for Congress!’ (20th September-8th October).

This strand gave staunchly socialist cynic Johnson ample opportunity to ferociously lampoon the electoral system, the pundits and even the public. Without spending money, campaigning – or even being seen – the pompous pixie won ‘The Election’ (9th October-12th November) and actually became ‘Congressman O’Malley’ (13th-23rd November) with Barnaby’s parents perpetually assuring their boy that this guy was not “his” Fairy Godfather’…

The outrageous satire only intensified once ‘The O’Malley Committee’ (24th November-27th December 1943) began its work, by investigating Santa Claus, despite the newest, shortest Congressman in the House never actually turning up to do a day’s work…

Raucous, riotous sublimely surreal and adorably absurd, the untrammelled, razor-sharp whimsy of the strip is always instantly captivating, and the laconic charm of the writing is well-nigh irresistible, but the lasting legacy of this ground-breaking strip is the clean sparse line-work that reduces images to almost technical drawings, unwavering line-weights and solid swathes of black that define space and depth by practically eliminating it, without ever obscuring the fluid warmth and humanity of the characters.

Almost every modern strip cartoon follows the principles laid down here by a man who purportedly disliked the medium…

The major difference between then and now should also be noted, however.

Johnson despised doing shoddy work, or short-changing his audience. On average each of his daily encounters, always self-contained, built on the previous episode without needing to re-reference it, and contained three to four times as much text as its contemporaries. It’s a sign of the author’s ability that the extra wordage was never unnecessary, and often uniquely readable, blending storybook clarity, the snappy pace of “Screwball” comedy films and the contemporary rhythms and idiom of authors such as Damon Runyan.

He managed this miracle by type-setting the dialogue and pasting up the strips himself – primarily in Futura Medium Italic but with effective forays into other fonts for dramatic and comedic effect.

No sticky-beaked educational vigilante could claim Barnaby harmed children’s reading abilities by confusing the tykes with non-standard letter-forms (a charge levelled at comics as late as the turn of this century), and the device also allowed him to maintain an easy, elegant, effective balance of black and white which makes the deliciously diagrammatic art light, airy and implausibly fresh and accessible.

During 1946-1947, Johnson surrendered the strip to friends as he pursued a career illustrating children’s book such as Constance J. Foster’s This Rich World: The Story of Money, but eventually he returned, crafting more magic until he retired Barnaby in 1952 to concentrate on books.

When Ruth graduated she became a successful children’s writer and they collaborated on four tomes, The Carrot Seed (1945), How to Make an Earthquake, Is This You? and The Happy Egg, but these days Crockett Johnson is best known for his seven “Harold” books which began in 1955 with the captivating Harold and the Purple Crayon.

During a global war with heroes and villains aplenty, where no comic page could top the daily headlines for thrills, drama and heartbreak, Barnaby was an absolute panacea to the horrors without ever ignoring or escaping them.

For far too long Barnaby was a lost masterpiece. It is influential, ground-breaking and a shining classic of the form. You are all poorer for not knowing it, and should move mountains to change that situation. I’m not kidding.

Liberally illustrated throughout with sketches, roughs, photos and advertising materials as well as Credits, Thank You and a brief biography of Johnson, this big book of joy is a long-overdue and very welcome addition to 21st century bookshelves – especially yours…

Barnaby and all its images © 2013 the Estate of Ruth Kraus. Supplemental material © 2013 its respective creators and owners.

Superman Chronicles volumes 1 and 2

New revised reviews

By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0764-9 & 978-1-4012-1215-5

It’s incontrovertible: the American comicbook industry – if it existed at all – would have been an utterly unrecognisable thing without Superman. His unprecedented invention and adoption by a desperate and joy-starved generation gave birth to an entire genre if not an actual art form.

Superman spawned an inconceivable army of imitators and variations, and within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of eye-popping action and social wish-fulfilment which hallmarked the early Man of Steel had grown to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East finally involved America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

Now with moviegoers again anticipating a new cinematic interpretation of the ultimate immigrant tale here’s my chance to once more highlight perhaps the most authentic of the many delightful versions of his oft-reprinted early tales.

Re-presenting the epochal run of raw, unpolished but viscerally vibrant stories by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster which set the funnybook world on fire, here – in as near-as-dammit the texture, smell and colour of the original newsprint – are the crude, rough, uncontrollable wish-fulfilling, cathartically exuberant exploits of a righteous and superior man dealing out summary justice equally to social malcontents, exploitative capitalists, thugs and ne’er-do-wells that initially captured the imagination of a generation.

The first of these oft-covered recollections of the primal Man of Steel – printed in chronological order – features the groundbreaking yarns from Action Comics #1 through #13 (June 1938 – June 1939) and his pivotal appearance from New York’s World Fair No. 1 (also June 1939) before comicbook history is made with the landmark first issue of his own solo title.

Most of the early tales were untitled, but for everyone’s convenience have been given descriptive appellations by the editors. Thus after describing the foundling’s escape from exploding Planet Krypton and explaining his astonishing powers in nine panels, with absolutely no preamble the wonderment begins with ‘Superman: Champion of the Oppressed!’ as the costumed crusader -masquerading by day as reporter Clark Kent – began averting numerous tragedies.

As well as saving an innocent woman from the Electric Chair and roughing up a wife beater, the tireless crusader worked over racketeer Butch Matson – consequently saving feisty colleague Lois Lane from abduction and worse – and outed a lobbyist for the armaments industry who was bribing Senators on behalf of greedy munitions interests fomenting war in Europe…

The next breathtaking instalment in Action #2 (July 1938) saw the mercurial mystery-man travelling to the war-zone to spectacularly dampen down the hostilities already in progress in ‘Revolution in San Monte Pt 2’ before ‘The Blakely Mine Disaster’ found the Man of Steel responding to a coal-mine cave-in to expose corrupt corporate practises before cleaning up gamblers who ruthless fixed games and players in #4’s ‘Superman Plays Football’.

The Action Ace’s untapped physical potential was highlighted in the next issue as ‘Superman and the Dam’ pitted the human dynamo against the power of a devastating natural disaster, after which in #6 canny chiseller Nick Williams attempted to monetise the hero – without asking first. ‘Superman’s Phony Manager’ even attempted to replace the real thing with a cheap knock-off but quickly learned a very painful lesson in ethics…

Although Superman featured on the first cover the staid and cautious editors were initially dubious about the alien strongman’s popular appeal and preferred more traditional genre scenes for the following issues (all by Leo E. O’Mealia and all included here).

Superman’s (and Joe Shuster’s) second cover appeared on Action Comics #7 (December 1938) and prompted a big jump in sales as a riotous romp inside revealed why ‘Superman Joins the Circus’ as the caped crusader crushed racketeers taking over the Big Top. Fred Guardineer then produced general genre covers for #8 and 9 whilst the interiors saw ‘Superman in the Slums’ working to save young delinquents from a future life of crime and depravity and latterly featured the city cops’ disastrous decision to stop the costumed vigilante’s unsanctioned interference in ‘Wanted: Superman’.

That manhunt ended in an uncomfortable stalemate…

Action #7 had been one of the highest-selling issues ever, so #10 again sported a stunning Shuster shot whilst Siegel’s smart story of ‘Superman Goes to Prison’ struck another telling blow against institutionalised injustice with the Man of Tomorrow infiltrating and exposing the brutal horrors of the State Chain Gangs.

Action Comics #11 featured a maritime cover by Guardineer as inside heartless conmen were driving investors to penury and suicide before the caped crimebuster interceded in ‘Superman and the “Black Gold” Swindle’.

Guardineer’s cover of magician hero Zatara on Action #12 incorporated another landmark as the Man of Steel was given a cameo badge declaring he was inside each and every issue, even as inside ‘Superman Declares War on Reckless Drivers’ provided a hard-hitting tale of casual joy-riders, cost-cutting automobile manufacturers, corrupt lawmakers and dodgy car salesmen who all felt the wrath of the hero after a friend of Clark Kent was killed in a hit-&-run incident.

By now the editors had realised that the debut of Superman had propelled National Comics to the forefront of the fledgling industry, and in 1939 the company was licensed to produce a commemorative comicbook celebrating the opening of the New York World’s Fair, with the Man of Tomorrow topping the bill on the appropriately titled New York World’s Fair Comics among such early DC four-colour stars as Zatara, Butch the Pup, Gingersnap and The Sandman.

Following an inspirational cover by Sheldon Mayer, ‘Superman at the World’s Fair’, by Siegel & Shuster, described how Clark and Lois were dispatched to cover the gala event giving the mystery man an opportunity to contribute his own exhibit and bag a bunch of brutal bandits to boot…

Back in Action Comics #13 (June 1939 and another Shuster cover) the road-rage theme of the previous issue continued as ‘Superman vs. the Cab Protective League’ pitted the tireless foe of felons against a murderous gang trying to take over the city’s taxi companies. The tale also introduced – in almost invisibly low key – The Man of Steel’s first great nemesis – The Ultra-Humanite…

This initial compilation concludes with a truncated version of Superman #1. This was because the first solo-starring comicbook in history actually reprinted the earliest tales from Action, supplemented with new and recovered material – and that alone is featured here.

Behind the iconic Shuster cover the first episode was at last printed in full, describing the alien foundling’s escape from exploding Planet Krypton, his childhood with unnamed Earthling foster parents and journey to the big city. Also included in those six pages (cut from Action Comics #1 and restored for Superman #1) was the Man of Steel’s routing of a lynch mob and capture of the real killer which preceded his spectacular saving of the accused murderess that started the legend…

Rounding off the unseen treasures is the solo page ‘Scientific Explanation of Superman’s Amazing Strength!’, a 2-page prose adventure of the Caped Crime-crusher, a biographical feature on Siegel & Shuster and a glorious Shuster pin-up from Superman #1’s back cover.

 

Superman Chronicles volume Two resumes the power-packed procession featuring the high- (leaping-but-not-yet) flying hero in tales from Action Comics #14-20 (July 1939-January 1940) and issues #2-3 of his 64 page solo spectaculars; cover-dated Fall and Winter 1939 respectively.

Sporting a Guardineer Zatara cover, Action #14 saw the return of the premier money-mad scientist in ‘Superman Meets the Ultra-Humanite’ wherein the mercenary malcontent switch from incessant graft, corruption and murder to an obsessive campaign to destroy the Man of Tomorrow.

Whilst Shuster concentrated on the interior epic ‘Superman on the High Seas’ – wherein the heroic hurricane tackled sub-sea pirates and dry land gangsters – Guardineer illustrated an aquatic Superman cover for #15, as well as the Foreign Legion cover on Action #16 wherein ‘Superman and the Numbers Racket’ saw the hero save an embezzler from suicide and disrupt another wicked gambling cabal.

By #16 sales figures confirmed that whenever the big guy appeared up-front issues sold out and, inevitably, Superman assumed that pole position for decades to come from #19 onwards.

Superman’s rise was meteoric and inexorable. He was the indisputable star of Action, plus his own dedicated title; a daily newspaper strip had begun on 16th January 1939, with a separate Sunday strip following from November 5th of that year, which was garnering millions of new fans. A thrice-weekly radio serial was in the offing and would launch on February 12th 1940. With games, toys, a newspaper strip and a growing international media presence, Superman was swiftly becoming everybody’s hero…

The second issue of the Man of Tomorrow’s own title opened with ‘The Comeback of Larry Trent’ – a stirring human drama wherein the Action Ace cleared the name of the broken heavyweight boxer, coincidentally cleaning the scum out of the fight game, and followed by ‘Superman Champions Universal Peace!’ wherein the hero crushed a gang who had stolen the world’s deadliest poison gas weapon, once more going up against unscrupulous munitions manufacturers.

‘Superman and the Skyscrapers’ found Kent investigating suspicious deaths in the construction industry, leading his alter ego into confrontation with mindless thugs and their fat-cat corporate boss, after which a Superman text tale ended the issue.

Action Comics #17 featured ‘The Return of the Ultra-Humanite’ in a viciously homicidal caper involving extortion and the wanton sinking of US ships and featured a classic Shuster Super-cover as the Man of Steel was awarded all the odd-numbered issues for his attention-grabbing playground.

That didn’t last long: after Guardineer’s last adventure cover – an aerial dog fight – on #18 and which masked into ‘Superman’s Super-Campaign’ as both Kent and Superman determined to crush a merciless blackmailer, Superman just appeared on the front every month from #19, which found the city temporarily in the grip of a deadly epidemic created by the Ultra-Humanite in ‘Superman and the Purple Plague’.

Only the first and last strips from Superman #3 are in this volume, as the other two were reprints of Action #5 and 6.

‘Superman and the Runaway’ however offered a gripping, shockingly uncompromising expose of corrupt orphanages, after which Lois went out on a date with hapless Clark simply because she needed to get closer to a gang of murderous smugglers. Happily his hidden alter ego was on hand to rescue her in the bombastic gang-busting ‘Superman and the Jewel Smugglers’…

This incredible panorama of torrid tales ends with ‘Superman and the Screen Siren’ from Action #20 (January 1940) as beautiful actress Delores Winters was revealed not as another sinister super-scientific megalomaniac but the latest tragic victim and organic hideaway of the Ultra-Humanite who had perfected his greatest horror… brain transplant surgery!

Although the gaudy burlesque of monsters and super-villains still lay years ahead of our hero, these primitive captivating tales of corruption, disaster and social injustice are just as engrossing and speak powerfully of the tenor of the times. The perilous parade of rip-roaring action, hoods, masterminds, plagues, disasters, lost kids and distressed damsels are all dealt with in a direct and captivating manner by our relentlessly entertaining champion in summarily swift and decisive fashion.

No continued stories here!

As fresh and thrilling now as they ever were, these endlessly re-readable epics are perfectly housed in these glorious paperback collections where the savage intensity and sly wit still shine through in Siegel’s stories – which literally defined what being a Super Hero means – whilst Shuster created the basic iconography for all others to follow.

Such Golden Age tales are priceless enjoyment at an absurdly affordable price and in a durable, comfortingly approachable format. What dedicated comics fan could possibly resist them?

As well as cheap price and no-nonsense design and presentation, and notwithstanding the historical significance of the material presented within, the most important bonus for any one who hasn’t read some or all of these tales before is that they are all astonishingly well-told and engrossing mini-epics that cannot fail to grip the reader.

In a world where Angels With Dirty Faces, Bringing Up Baby and The Front Page are as familiar to our shared cultural consciousness as the latest episode of Dr Who or Downton Abbey, the dress, manner and idiom in these near-seventy-five-year-old stories can’t jar or confuse. They are simply timeless, enthralling, and great.

Once read you’ll understand why today’s creators keep returning to this material every time they need to revamp the big guy. They are simply timeless, enthralling, and great.

© 1938, 1939, 1940, 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.