Comic Strip Classics – Page 30

December 12, 2015December 10, 2015

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

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

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

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips. These pictorial features were, until relatively recently, extremely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as a powerful weapon to guarantee and even increase circulation and profits. From the earliest days humour was paramount; hence our umbrella terms â€œFunniesâ€ and of course â€œcomicsâ€.

Despite the odd ancestor or precedent like Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs (comedic when it began in 1924; gradually moving from mock-heroics to light-action into full-blown adventure with the introduction of Captain Easy in 1929) or Tarzan and Buck Rogers – which both debuted January 7^th 1929 as adaptations of pre-existing prose properties – the vast bulk of strips produced were generally feel-good humour strips with the occasional child-oriented fantasy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be (hopefully) Continuedâ€¦

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

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

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

December 10, 2015December 7, 2015

The Boy Commandos volume 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 25, 2015December 18, 2015

Batman: the Dark Knight Archives volume 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 12, 2015October 8, 2015

Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1968-1969

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

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

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

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

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

Yet somehow the strip never achieved the circulation it deserved, even though the Sundays were eventually given a new lease of life when DC began issuing vintage stories in the 1960s for Batman 80-page Giants and Annuals. The exceedingly high-quality all-purpose adventures were ideal short stories and added an extra cachet of exoticism for young readers already captivated by simply seeing tales of their heroes that were positively ancient and redolent of History with a capital â€œHâ€.

Such was not the case in the mid-1960s when, for a relatively brief moment, mankind went bananas for superheroes in general and most especially went â€œBat-Madâ€â€¦

The Silver Age of comicbooks revolutionised a creatively moribund medium cosily snoozing in unchallenging complacency, bringing a modicum of sophistication to the returning genre of masked mystery men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, from the time when the Gotham Guardians could do no wrong comes a second superb compilation re-presenting the bright and breezy, sometimes zany cartoon classics of Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder, augmented by a wealth of background material, topped up with oodles of unseen scenes and background detail to delight the most ardent Baby-boomer nostalgia-freak.

The fun-fest opens with more informative and picture-packed, candidly cool revelations from comics historian Joe Desris in ‘A History of the Batman and Robin Newspaper Strip: Part 2′; stuffed with behind-the-scenes set photos, communications between principal players like Bob Kane and the Producers, clippings and glorious unpublished pencils from strip illustrator Joe Giella as well as newspaper promotional materials, and is followed by compulsive pictorial essays on ‘Newspaper Strip Trivia’ and ‘Batman/Superman Crossovers’, more unpublished or censored strips and a note on the eclectic sources used to compile this collection before the comics cavorting continueâ€¦

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Continued, Bat-Fansâ€¦

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

Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1968-1969 is the second in a set of huge (305 x 236 mm) lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the Caped Crusaders, and a welcome addition to the superb commemorative series of Library of American Comics which has preserved and re-presented in luxurious splendour such landmark strips as Li’l Abner, Tarzan, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates, Bringing Up Father, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and many other cartoon icons.

If you love the era, the medium or just graphic narratives, these stories are great comics reading, and this is a book you simply must have.
Â© 2014 DC Comics. All rights reserved. Batman and all related characters and elements â„¢ DC Comics.

September 25, 2015September 24, 2015

The Broons and Oor Wullie: The Fabulous Fifties

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

ISBN: 978-0-85116-678-4

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

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

Both the boldly boisterous boy and the gregariously engaging working class family were co-created by journalist, writer and Editor Robert Duncan Low in conjunction with DC Thomson’s greatest artist Dudley D. Watkins and, once strips began to be collected in reprint editions as Seasonal Annuals, those yuletide tomes alternated stars and years right up to the present day.

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

In 1936 his next brilliant idea was the Fun Section: an 8-page pull-out comic strip supplement for Scottish national newspaper The Sunday Post. The illustrated accessory launched on 8^th March and from the very outset The Broons and Oor Wullie were unchallenged starsâ€¦

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An undeniable, rock-solid facet of Scots popular culture from the very start, the first Broons Annual (technically Bi-Annual) appeared in 1939, alternating with Oor Wullie (although, due to wartime paper restrictions, no annuals at all were published between 1943 and 1946) and for millions of readers a year cannot truly end without them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 10, 2015September 9, 2015

Dick Tracy: The Collins Casefiles volume 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 11, 2015August 10, 2015

Superman the Silver Age Dailies volume 2: 1961-1963

By Jerry Siegel, Wayne Boring, Curt Swan &Stan Kaye with Otto Binder, Leo Dorfman, Edmond Hamilton, Bill Finger & Robert Bernstein (IDW Publishing Library of American Comics)

ISBN: 978-1-6137-7923-1

It’s indisputable that the American comicbook industry – if it existed at all – would have been an utterly unrecognisable thing without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s unprecedented invention was fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation and quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form.

Spawning an impossible army of imitators and variations within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and wish-fulfilment which epitomised the early Man of Steel grew to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East sucked in 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.

In comicbook terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming the shape of the fledgling funnybook industry, the Man of tomorrow relentlessly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media. Although we all think of Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as the epitome and acme of comicbook creation, the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1 the Man of Steel became a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse.

We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men, Avengers and their hyperkinetic kind long ago outgrew their four-colour origins and are now fully mythologized modern media creatures instantly familiar in mass markets, across all platforms and age rangesâ€¦

Far more people have seen or heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comicbooks. His globally syndicated newspaper strips alone reached untold millions, and by the time his 20^th anniversary rolled around at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial regular, starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons, two films and a novel by George Lowther.

He was a perennial sure-fire success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his future were three more shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark and Smallville), a stage musical, a franchise of blockbuster movies and an almost seamless succession of games, bubblegum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen actâ€¦

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the last century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail that all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and often the planet â€“ it was seen by millions, if not billions, of readers and generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books. It also paid better.

And rightly so: some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture.

Mutt and Jeff, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped their humble tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar.

Most still doâ€¦

So it was always something of a risky double-edged sword when a comicbook character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint the strips in cheap accessible form?) to became a genuinely mass-entertainment syndicated serial strip.

Superman was the first original comicbook character to make that leap â€“ about six months after as he exploded out of Action Comics – but only a few have ever successfully followed. Wonder Woman, Batman (eventually) and groundbreaking teen icon Archie Andrews made the jump in the 1940s and only a handful like Spider-Man, Howard the Duck and Conan the Barbarian have done so since.

The daily Superman newspaper comic strip launched on 16^th January 1939, supplemented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5^th of that year. Originally crafted by such luminaries as Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring) the mammoth task soon required the additional talents of Jack Burnley and writers like Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz.

The McClure Syndicate feature ran continuously until May 1966, appearing at its peak in more than 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers, boasting a combined readership of more than 20 million. Eventually artists Win Mortimer and Curt Swan joined the unflagging Boring & Stan Kaye whilst Bill Finger and Siegel provided stories, telling serial tales largely separate and divorced from comicbook continuity throughout years when superheroes were scarcely seen.

Then in 1956 Julie Schwartz kicked off the Silver Age with a new Flash in Showcase #4 and before long costumed crusaders began returning en masse to thrill a new generation. As the trend grew, many publishers began to cautiously dabble with the mystery man tradition and Superman’s newspaper strip began to slowly adapt: drawing closer to the revolution on the comicbook pages.

As Jet-Age gave way to Space-Age, the Last Son of Krypton was a comfortably familiar icon of domestic modern America: particularly in the constantly evolving, ever-more dramatic and imaginative comicbook stories which had received such a terrific creative boost when superheroes began to proliferate once more. The franchise had actually been cautiously expanding since 1954 and in 1961 the Caped Kryptonian could be seen not only in Golden Age survivors Action Comics, Superman, Adventure Comics, World’s Finest Comics and Superboy but also in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane and Justice League of America.

Such increased attention naturally filtered through to the far more widely-read newspaper strip and resulted in a rather strange and commercially sound evolutionâ€¦

This second expansive hardback collection (spanning August 1961 to November 1963) opens with a detailed Introduction from Sidney Friedfertig, explaining the provenance of the strips; how and why Jerry Siegel was tasked with retuning recently published yarns from the comicbooks; making them into daily 3-and-4 panel black-&-white continuities for the apparently more sophisticated and discerning newspaper audiences.

This frequently required major rewrites, subtle changes in plot, direction and tone and, on occasion, merging more than one story into a seamless new exploit to excite and generally amuse sensible, mature grown-ups.

If you’re a veteran fan, don’t be fooled: the tales retold here might seem familiar but they are not mere rehashes: they’re variations and deviations on an idea for an audience perceived as completely separate from kids’ comics. Even if you are familiar with the original comicbook source material, the adventures presented here will read as brand new, especially as they are gloriously illustrated by Wayne Boring (with a little occasional assistance from Curt Swan) at the very peak of his artistic powers.

After years away from the feature Boring had replaced his replacement Curt Swan at the end of 1961, regaining his position as premiere Superman strip illustrator to see the series to its eventual conclusion.

As an added bonus the covers of the issues those adapted stories came from have been included as a full, nostalgia-inducing colour galleryâ€¦

The astounding everyday entertainments by Siegel & Boring commence with Episode #123 from August 14^th to September 16^th 1961 revealing how timid Clark Kent mysteriously excelled as a policeman whilst wearing a legendary old cop’s lucky tin star in ‘The Super Luck of Badge 77!’: a yarn based on an adventure of the same name by Otto Binder & Al Plastino from Superman #133 (November 1959).

‘Superman’s Hunt for Clark Kent’ (September 18^th to 5^thNovember and first seen in Superman #126 January 1959, by Binder, Boring & Stan Kaye) then detailed how a Kryptonite mishap deprived the Man of Tomorrow of many of his memories and left him lost in Metropolis trying to ferret out the secret of his other identity after which Episode #125 – running from November 6^th-December 23^rd – saw the restored Clark as ‘The Reporter of Steel’ (originally a Binder, Boring & Kaye yarn from Action Comics #257, October 1959) after Lex Luthor very publicly inflicted the mild-mannered journalist with unwanted superpowers, setting suspicious Lois Lane off on another quest to prove her colleague was actually the Caped Kryptonian.

‘The 20^th Century Achilles’ ran Christmas Day 1961 through January 20^th 1962, adapted from an Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan & Kaye thriller in Superman #148 (October 1961) which detailed how a cunning crook held the city hostage to his apparent magical invulnerability whilst ‘The Man No Prison Could Hold’ (January 22^nd – February 24^th by Bill Finger, Boring & Kaye from Action Comics #248, in January 1959) saw Clark and Jimmy Olsen captured by a Nazi war criminal using slave labour to construct a mighty vengeance weapon. Unbeknownst to all the Man of Steel had good reason to foil every escape attempt and stay locked upâ€¦

An old-fashioned hard lesson informed the Kryptonian Crimebuster’s short sharp shock treatment of ‘The Three Tough Teenagers’ which ran from February 26^th to March 31^st, based on a Siegel & Plastino collaboration contemporaneously appearing in Superman #151 (February 1962) at the same time. Perhaps the headline-grabbing nature of youth in revolt was too immediate to resist? Usually timing discrepancies in publication dates could be explained by the fact that submitted comicbook stories often appeared months after they were completed, but here it feels like neither iteration of the franchise was willing to surrender sales-garnering topicalityâ€¦

Swan illustrated portions of the Siegel/Boring strip version of ‘The Day Superman Broke the Law’ (2^nd to 28^th April) from the original by Finger & Plastino from Superman #153 May 1962, which saw the hero fall foul of a corrupt city councilman rewriting ordinances to hamper him after which the hero became ‘The Man with the Zero Eyes’ (running 30^th April to June 2^nd from an uncredited tale in Superman #117, November 1957 and first limned by Plastino) as a space virus caused uncontrollable super-freezing rays to blaze from his eyes.

Spanning 4^th – 23^rd June ‘Lois Lane’s Revenge on Superman’ grew out of a comedy tale by Siegel, Swan & George Klein in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #32 (April 1962). Here however there’s a dark edge to the story as the frustrated journalist revels in humiliating her ideal man after a magic potion turns him into a baby whilst ‘When Superman Defended his Arch-Enemy’ – published from 25^th June to August 4^th as adapted from Action Comics #292 and released in September 1962) by writer unknown & Plastino saw the Metropolis Marvel acting as defence Counsel for the ungrateful mad scientist after the fleeing maniac dismantled a sentient mechanoid on a world of machine intelligencesâ€¦

Appearing daily from 6^th August to September 8^th ‘Lois Lane’s Other Life’ retold Siegel, Swan & Klein’s tale from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #35 (August 1962) as the daring doll changes her appearance to go undercover but subsequently loses her memory after which ‘The Feud Between Superman and Clark Kent’ from September 10^th to 27^th October (originally by Hamilton & Plastino in Action Comics #292, October 1962) saw the two halves of the hero separated by Red Kryptonite. Sadly the goodness and nobility are all in the merely human Clark part and he must stay out of his merciless alternative fraction’s murderous clutches until the effect wears offâ€¦

As first conceived by Siegel, Swan & Klein in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #38 (January 1963) ‘The Invisible Lois Lane’ – which filled newspaper pages between October 29^th and December 1^st – was more comedy than drama but here the undetectable investigator quickly sees her quarry switch from Clark to Superman and it takes super-ingenuity to convince her otherwiseâ€¦

‘The Man Who Hunted Superman’ – December 3^rd 1962 to January 19^th 1963 – originally appeared as Boy of Steel blockbuster ‘The Man Who Hunted Superboy’ (by Leo Dorfman & George Papp in Adventure Comics #303, December 1962) and found Clark subbing for a prince in a Ruritanian kingdom, complete with adoring and compliant princess bride, until the Action Ace could topple a highly-placed usurper and save the kingdom whilst ‘Superman Goes to War’ January 21^st to February 23^rd (initiated by Hamilton, Swan & Klein in Superman #161, May 1963) sees Lois and Clark on an film-set sponsored by the US military and inadvertently caught up in a real but unconventional alien invasionâ€¦

From February 25^th to April 20^th Red K stripped our hero of his powers leaving ‘The Mortal Superman’ forced to fake it due to an unavoidable prior engagement in a terse reinterpretation of the Dorfman & Plastino yarn seen in Superman #160, April 1963.

The Man of Steel for good and sound patriotic reasons allowed himself to be locked up for the alleged murder of Clark Kent in ‘The Trial of Superman’ between 22^nd April and May 25^th, later seen in its original format in Hamilton & Plastino’s thriller from Action Comics #301, June 1963.

Hardworking obsessive editor Perry White loses his memory and falls into the clutches of criminals who use his investigative instincts to uncover Earth’s greatest secret in ‘The Man who Betrayed Superman’s Identity’ – 27^th May to July 6^th – as adapted from Dorfman, Swan & Klein’s suspenseful romp in Action Comics #297, February 1963, whilst with adult sensibilities fully addressed, genuine tragedy and pathos pushes Siegel & Boring’s reinterpretation of ‘The Sweetheart that Superman Forgot’ running from 8^th July to August 17^th into the heady heights of pure melodrama as Superman loses his astounding powers, memories, and use of his legs; loving and losing a girl who only wanted him for himself.

In one of the most adult of stories of his canon, the hero recovers his lost gifts and faculties and has no notion of what he’s lost and who waits for him forever alone: a depth of emotion the author could only dream of approaching in the Plastino-illustrated original version which appeared in Superman #165, November 1963).

Painfully locked into the un-PC, sexist comedy tropes of the era, from August 19^th – September 14^th comes ‘Superman, Please Marry Me’ wherein a novelty record of Lois purportedly begging her ideal man to give in makes the reporter’s life a living hell in a â€œtweaked-for married-readersâ€ yarn based on ‘The Superman-Lois Hit Record’ by Siegel, Swan & Klein from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #45 (November 1963) after which ‘Dear Dr. Cupid’ – based on Siegel & Kurt Schaffenberger’s light-hearted turn from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #45, (November 1963), which ran from September 14^th to October 12^th â€“ details how the news-hen’s surprising and unsuspected gift for doling out advice as an Agony Auntie leads to a series of disturbing gifts from an unexpected admirerâ€¦

This epic chronicle concludes with ‘The Great Superman Impersonation’ from October 14^th to November 23 1963 and based on Robert Bernstein & Plastino’s Action Comics #306, (cover-dated November 1963) with Clark kidnapped by foreign agents who want to pass him off as the Man of Tomorrow in order to take over a Central American republic: big mistake, especially as Superman is in a playful moodâ€¦

Superman: – The Silver Age Dailies 1961-1963 is the second of three huge (305 x 236 mm), lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the Man of Steel and a welcome addition to the superb commemorative series of Library of American Comics which has preserved and re-presented in luxurious splendour such landmark strips as Li’l Abner, Tarzan, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and many of the abovementioned cartoon icons.

July 17, 2015July 16, 2015

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 11: 1957-1958

By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-828-1

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

Prince Valiant provided action, adventure, exoticism, romance and a surprisingly high quota of laughs in its engrossing depiction of noble knights and wicked plunderers played out against a glamorised, dramatised Dark Ages backdrop. It followed the life of a refugee boy driven from his ancestral homeland in Scandinavian Thule who grew up to roam the world, attaining a paramount position amongst the heroes of fabled Camelot.

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

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

Foster soloed on the feature alone until 1971 when John Cullen Murphy (Big Ben Bolt) succeeded him as illustrator with Foster continuing 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, since when the strip has soldiered on under the auspices of many extremely talented artists such as Gary Gianni, Scott Roberts and latterly Thomas Yeates with Mark Schultz (Xenozoic) scripting.

This latest spellbinding, luxuriously oversized (362 x 264 mm) full-colour hardback collection re-presents pages spanning January 6^th 1957 to 28^th December 1958 (#1039-1142) but before proceeding, clears the palate for adventure with Brian M. Kane’s erudite, illustration-strewn Introduction ‘Pal Palenske [M]ad man’, detailing the incredible career and achievements of Foster’s inspiration: designer, illustrator, equine enthusiast and ingenious PR pioneer Reinhold Heinrich Palenske.

At the other end of this titanic tome Kane curates a lavish exhibition of stunning colour and monochrome illustrations revealing ‘Hal Foster’s Advertising Art: Business and Industry’, but captivating as they are, the real wonderment is, as ever, the unfolding epic that precedes themâ€¦

What Has Gone Before: Having brought Christianity to Thule and been instrumental in halting an invasion of Saxons and Danes in England, Valiant has been despatched by Arthur Pendragon to Cornwall in search of traitorous local kings, under the pretence of attending the wedding of young knight William Lydney.

During the festivities Valiant uncovered a terrible miscarriage of justice and acquired a new squire. Unknown to Lydney and his bride Gwendolyn of Berkeley, their homely old steward Alfred was actually the knight’s elder brother and true lord of the manor.

Rather than shame his handsome sibling and a woman they both love, the noble retainer has chosen to leave his home and wander the world as Val’s servantâ€¦

With a domestic debacle averted Valiant resumes his true mission and travels to Tintagel to discover that the suspect local lords have banished all Round Table Knights from their domains even as rumours abound of Northern raiders being welcomed into the Cornish Kingdomsâ€¦

Stymied, Alfred offers a solution to their dilemma and, shaving his new master’s head, transforms the pretty prince into an itinerant Palmer, roaming the countryside exhorting warriors to take up crusading in the Holy Land. As grizzled veteran and zealot Sir Quintus, the noble spy rises in the esteem of the traitor-kings whilst wily Alfred learns the true situation from the garrulous servant class at the strongholds of Launceston and Restormel, but when their trek takes them to the heart of the conspiracy they find King Och Synwyn to be an utterly different kind of plotter: arrogant, devious and a sadistic psychopath who has mustered a horde of Dane, Saxon and Viking raiders into an alliance to take England by storm.

Utterly appalled by the task he faces, Valiant ritually forswears his sacrosanct honour and apparently pledges himself to the mad king; determined to corrupt himself to destroy the maniac’s plansâ€¦

The task is made easier as Och Synwyn needs field commanders for his army, but once â€œQuintusâ€ is installed, he begins the old game of divide and conquer; briefing against the quarrelsome northern freebooters tenuously united against Arthur whilst inciting the deviant king to begin heavily taxing his barbarous allies in advance of all the looting they will profit fromâ€¦

Before too long the uneasy alliance is at war with itself and all too soon the western threat is ended, but rather than rejoice Valiant is heavy-hearted as he makes his way back to Camelot, knowing that his triumph came at cost of his knightly virtue and he is no longer worthy of a seat at the Round Tableâ€¦

His mood briefly lifts when passing mysterious Stonehenge where he meets a Druid priestess and is beguiled by the most beautiful horse in the worldâ€¦

Pressing onwards he reports his success to Arthur and resigns, but is astonished by an incredible gesture from his comrades which restores his besmirched honour and allows him to make peace with his conscienceâ€¦

Still ill at ease, Valiant leaves the fabulous citadel and returns to Salisbury Plain, resolved to own the magnificent red stallion he glimpsed. The quest is epic and extraordinary and the beast is a proven man-killer, but eventually the wrangler’s uncharacteristically gentle methods and patience win the day and the steed. Sadly that only causes more problems as the son of the man killed by the magnificent â€œArvakâ€ demands the beast be killed and will only be deterred by a joust to the deathâ€¦

Horseflesh causes more trouble when Alfred meets Sir Gawain‘s squires Pierre and Jex and the idle pranksters train Valiant’s other steed Mayflower to perform a succession of hilarious tricks. If only the unknowing prince had not decided to sell the beast to boorish, arrogant Saxon chieftain Halgar the Thunderer during a tense conference designed to ease tensions between the English and the constantly encroaching Northmenâ€¦

It takes all the hero’s charm and guile to prevent a fresh war erupting and as soon as the crisis passes Valiant decides it’s time he headed home to Thule to reconnect with his family once moreâ€¦

The reunion is brief, joyous and bittersweet. The wanderer sees how much his children have grown and considers the cost of a life of duty: only just in time to bid his son Arn farewell as the lad is shipped off to enter the household of regal ally King Hap-Atla even as that ruler’s king becomes foster-son become and page to Valiant’s sire King Aguar.

The tradition is key to noble life throughout Christendom, but again Valiant realises how much he has missedâ€¦

Mirth comes to the fore thereafter as Arn moves into Hap-Atla’s palace and begins a tortuous love-hate relationship with his new lord’s spiteful, mischievous and prank-addicted daughter Frytha.

Back in Vikingsholm, Aguar is injured in a fall and forced to send Valiant in his stead to the five-yearly Council of Kings. Unfortunately many of the rulers at the conference believe the last-minute substitution is a sign of weakness and ambush the Thule delegation, proving a sequence of spectacular battles and Valiant’s epic overland trek back to safety.

â€¦And after that there’s vengeance taken and betrayers brought to bookâ€¦

Peaceful repose never lasts long and when a regal summons arrives from Camelot, the family again take ship. This time however the call is primarily for dutiful wife Aleta who gracefully enters a hive of hornets as aging Queen Guinevere takes offence at the young beauty’s popularity with the Courtiers and plots to end the imagined war of favourites.

Her husband meanwhile is busy with martial matters. Arthur has at last decided to move in force against the Danes and Saxons occupying Kent and Sussex. War is brewing again and as the warriors prepare, Valiant briefly retires aging squire Alfred in favour of two young, vigorous and keen martial assistants: Edwin and Claudius.

The former is an especial favourite of Aleta and her boisterous twin daughters Karen and Valetaâ€¦

With Valiant as field commander the campaign is bloody but overwhelmingly successful but ultimate victory comes at an incomprehensibly high personal price. Moreover after saving thriving mercantile metropolis London from the marauding northmen, Val’s weary forces experience a nasty lesson in capitalism run rampant and basic ingratitude. Of course the Prince has an insurmountable counterargument to employâ€¦

Back in Camelot the war of wills between Guinevere and Aleta is settled by the most remarkable of intercessionaries by the time the victors return, but Valiant has little time to rest. His beloved comrade Gawain has vanished and the trail leads into the wilds of unruly Wales. Employing Welsh knight Sir Ian Waldoc as guide and following an unearthly vision provided by largely vanished mage Merlin, the tireless champion heads westward disguised as a troubadour, eventually fetching up at the forbidding castle of terrible King Oswick and his five beautiful daughtersâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

A mind-blowing panorama of visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a tremendous procession of boisterous action, exotic adventure and grand romance; blending epic fantasy with dry wit and broad humour, soap opera melodrama with shatteringly dark violence.

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

July 2, 2015July 1, 2015

Asterix and the Picts

By Jean-Yves Ferri & Didier Conrad, translated by Anthea Bell (Orion Books)
ISBN: 978-1-4440-1167-8

Asterix began life in the last year of the 1950s and has become part of the fabric of French life. His adventures touched billions of people all around the world for five and a half decades and for all of that time his astounding adventures were the sole preserve of originators Rene Goscinny and/or Albert Uderzo.

After nearly 15 years as a weekly comic serial subsequently collected into book-length compilations, in 1974 the 21^st saga – Asterix and Caesar’s Gift – was the first to be released as a complete original album prior to serialisation. Thereafter each new album was an eagerly anticipated, impatiently awaited treat for legions of devotees, but none more so than this one, created by Uderzo’s handpicked replacements – scripter Jean-Yves Ferri (Fables Autonomes, La Retour Ã la terre) and illustrator Didier Conrad (Les Innomables, Le PiÃ¨ge Malais, Tatum) – who landed the somewhat poisoned chalice after he retired in 2009.

Happily the legacy is in safe hands, and this first book at least has been meticulously overseen by Uderzo every step of the wayâ€¦

Whether as an action-packed comedic romp with sneaky, bullying baddies getting their just deserts or as a punfully sly and witty satire for older, wiser heads, the new tale is just as engrossing as the established canon and English-speakers are still happily graced with the brilliantly light touch of translator Anthea Bell who, with former collaborator Derek Hockridge, played no small part in making the indomitable little Gaul so palatable to English sensibilities.

As you already know, half of the intoxicating epics are set in various exotic locales throughout the Ancient World, whilst the rest take place in and around Uderzo’s adored Brittany where, circa 50 B.C., a little hamlet of cantankerous, proudly defiant warriors and their families resisted every effort of the mighty Roman Empire to complete the conquest of Gaul.

Although the country is divided by the notional conquerors into provinces Celtica, Aquitania and Amorica, the very tip of the last named stubbornly refuses to be pacified. The Romans, utterly unable to overrun this last bastion of Gallic insouciance, are reduced to a pointless policy of absolute containment – and yet the Gauls come and go as they please. Thus a tiny seaside hamlet is permanently hemmed in by heavily fortified garrisons Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium, filled with veteran fighters who would rather be anywhere else on earth than thereâ€¦

Their â€œprisonersâ€ couldn’t care less; daily defying and frustrating the world’s greatest military machine by simply going about their everyday affairs, protected by a miraculous magic potion brewed by resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits of diminutive dynamo Asterix and his simplistic, supercharged best friend Obelixâ€¦

AstÃ©rix chez les Pictes was released in October 2013, simultaneously hurtling off British shelves as Asterix and the Picts, and opens in February with snow piled deep in the village and all around its weathered stockade. Eager to avoid the usual spats, snipes and contretemps of their fellows, doughty little Asterix and his affable pal Obelix go for a bracing walk on the beach and discover lots of flotsam and jetsam: Roman helmets, old amphorae, a huge cake of ice with a strange tattooed giant insideâ€¦

Swiftly taking their find back to their fascinated friends, the pals are informed by Getafix that the kilted fellow appears to be a Pict from distant Caledonia on the other side of the sea – another tribe ferociously resistant to Roman rule.

The find polarises the village: the men are wary and distrustful but the women seem to find the hibernating Hibernian oddly fascinating. So great is the furore over the discovery that nobody bats an eyelid when Roman census-taker Limitednumbus sidles into the village eager to list everything going on and everyone doing itâ€¦

Before long Getafix has safely defrosted the giant but the ordeal has left the iceman speechless. That only makes him more interesting to the wowed womenfolkâ€¦

A smidgeon more Druid magic gives him a modicum of voice – although very little of it is comprehensible – and before long Chief Vitalstatistix orders his mismatched go-to guys to take ship and bring the bonnie boy back to his own home, wherever it is.

â€¦And with the gorgeous tattooed giant gone, the bedazzled village women will go back to normal again. At least that’s the Chief’s fervent hopeâ€¦

After tearful farewells (from about half of the village) the voyagers head out and are soon encouraged when the Pict suddenly regains his power of speech. In fact he then can’t stop gabbing, even when the Gauls meet their old chums the Pirates and indulge in the traditional one-sided trading of blows.

The reinvigorated hunk is called Macaroon and soon is sharing his tale of woe and unrequited love even as the little boat steadily sails towards his home.

Macaroon lives on one side of Loch Androll and loves Camomilla, daughter of the chieftain Mac II. However ambitious, unscrupulous rival chieftain Maccabaeus from across the water wanted to marry her and cunningly disposed of his only rival by tying him to a tree-trunk and casting him into the freezing coastal watersâ€¦

Meanwhile in Caledonia, a Roman expeditionary force led by Centurion Pretentius has arrived and makes its way to a rendezvous with a potential ally: a chief of the Maccabees clan willing to invite the devious, all-conquering empire into the previously undefeated land of the Pictsâ€¦

Once Macaroon and his Gallic comrades reach home turf they are feted by his amazed and overjoyed clan whilst across the loch the traitor is trying to placate his own men who have witnessed the giant’s return and believe him a ghostâ€¦

Villainous Maccabaeus is only days away from becoming King of all the Picts. He even holds captive Camomilla – whom he will wed to cement his claim – and with the Romans to enforce his rule looks forward to a very comfortable future. He will not tolerate anything ruining his plans at this late stageâ€¦

Things come to crisis when Macaroon has a sudden relapse and the Druid’s remedy to restore him is lost at the bottom of a loch thanks to the playfulness of the tribe’s colossal and revered water totem â€œthe Great Nessieâ€.

When Asterix and Obelix helpfully offer to retrieve it they discover a tunnel under the loch which leads into the Maccabees fortress which is simply stuffed with lots of lovely Romans to pummelâ€¦

With the jig up and Camomilla rescued, the scene is set for a spectacular and hilarious final confrontation that will set everything to rights in the tried-and-true, bombastic grand old mannerâ€¦

Fast, funny, stuffed with action and hilarious, tongue-in-cheek hi-jinks, this is another joyous rocket-paced rollercoaster for lovers of laughs and devotees of comics to accept into the mythic canon.
Â© 2013 Les Ã‰ditions Albert RenÃ©. English translation: Â© 2013 Les Ã‰ditions Albert RenÃ©. All rights reserved.

May 28, 2015May 27, 2015

Modesty Blaise: The Killing Distance

By Peter O’Donnell & Enric Badia Romero (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78116-712-0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reproduced in stark and stunning black & white – and quite right too – Titan Books’ superb and scrupulous serial re-presentations of the ultimate strip trouble-shooters resume here with O’Donnell & Romero offering another chilling trio of tales spanning November 1992 to February 1994, each prefaced with informative prose introductions from devotee, publisher, strip historian and Mathematics Professor Rick Norwood.

The rollicking romps begin with non-stop thrill-ride ‘Guido the Jinx’ (originally seen in The Evening Standard from February 10^th to July 5^th 1994) as Blaise and Garvin take a well-deserved vacation tracing the route of the historical Silk Road, only to have their peace and contemplation disrupted by pompous yet lovable old self-promoter Guido Biganzoli.

The legend in his own mind is now working as promoter for a movie being shot in the lonely wastes but the production has hit a snag: the male and female stuntmen are unable to work on the big-money shotâ€¦

Against their better judgement Modesty and Willie tackle the terrible â€œwaterfall dropâ€ but naturally it goes terribly wrong and they are carried away and deposited under a mountainâ€¦

Trouble always finds the dynamic duo and whilst extricating themselves from their watery tomb they discover Soviet operative and former associate Colonel Greb gravely wounded and holed up in a cave.

As they minister to him a horrific story unfolds: the old soldier was guarding a secret installation warehousing uranium when a gang of mercenaries swooped in and wiped out the garrison. Ruthless bandit Kung-Li plans to fly out the priceless contraband and sell it to who knows how many terrorist groups, or even make himself a nuclear powerâ€¦

Resolved to stop the merciless gang with nothing more than hand-made stone-age weapons, Modesty and Willie’s arsenal of destruction gets an unexpected and unlikely boost when bad penny Guido suddenly turns up once againâ€¦

After that phenomenal and bloody exploit the canny couple are called upon to save the life of Sir Gerald Tarrant from one of the world’s richest and most reclusive men in ‘The Killing Distance’ (July 6^th – November 30^th 1994) which begins as Charles B. Delaney starts issuing orders from his impregnable fortress in the Atlas Mountains. Once upon a time he was KGB chief Ivan Brodsky but due to Tarrant’s undercover endeavours at the height of the Cold War lost everything and turned CIA informant.

Sadly the â€œRed Admiralâ€ used Uncle Sam’s bottomless pockets to kickstart a huge private fortune and is now ready to use it all to kill the man who beat him in the â€œGreat Gameâ€â€¦

When the first assassination attempt fails, Willie and Modesty rush to Tarrant’s hospital bedside and fill in the gaps of Tarrant’s tale with details from their own dealings with Delaney during the period when they seamlessly ran their crime-combine The Network.

Confronted with the grim facts, the old warhorse all but gives up the ghost, forbidding his friends to further endanger themselves, but as usual he has underestimated the depth of feeling and sense of gratitude they feel for him.

Immediately Modesty begins taking apart Delaney’s organisation and imperiously foiling his follow-up attempts on Sir Gerald and herself. Before long the frustrated egomaniac is pushed into making a colossal mistake, issuing a direct challenge to the formidable female.

He will end his attempts on the British agent’s life if she can – within thirty days – break into his unassailable citadel and get within arm’s length of himâ€¦

What happens when Willie and Modesty cunningly circumvent all his guards, resources and traps and she gets within the disputed â€œkilling distanceâ€ is something the outraged oligarch could never have imaginedâ€¦

The catalogue of compelling capers concludes with ‘The Aristo’ (December 1^st 1994 to May 3^rd 1995) wherein the peril-pursuing partners visit old friends in Hong Kong and barely survive an assassination attempt by old enemy Wu Smithâ€¦

Adrift in a raft on the South China Sea they are picked up by freighter captain Miguel Camacho, currently transporting a cargo of electronics and his beloved, heavily pregnant wife Joaquina to Singapore.

Welcomed and cosseted, Modesty and Willie can’t help but worry when they hear of a modern-day pirate – a supposed British lord in his heavily armed vessel The Etonian – currently terrorising shipping in the area. After all, trouble has a tendency to find them wherever they end upâ€¦

Especially appalling are the stories of what The Aristo does with any women he takes from his nautical conquests, so when the brigand inevitably surfaces Willie and Modesty enact the most desperate gamble of their long and vivid careers with Jo and her imminent unborn the invaluable bait.

Moreover the subsequent punishments the crusading couple inflict on the vile sea-reavers are brutal and most assuredly finalâ€¦

These are incomparable capers crafted by brilliant creators at the peak of their powers; revelling in the sheer perfection of an iconic creation. Unforgettable excitement-packed escapades packed with sleek sex appeal, dry wit, terrific tension and explosive action, the stories grow more appealing with every rereading and never fail to deliver maximum impact and total enjoyment.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: