Comic Strip Classics – Page 34

March 4, 2014March 29, 2014

The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror!

By Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Mort Meskin and various (Titan Books)
ISBN13: 978-1-84856-959-1

After too many years left languishing, there’s some magnificent vintage Jack Kirby material around these days, and the latest in Titan Books’ splendidly sumptuous Simon & Kirby Library gathers that iconic coupling’s groundbreaking contributions to the genre of mystery, suspense and the supernatural.

His collaborations with fellow industry pioneer Joe Simon always produced dynamite concepts, unforgettable characters, astounding stories and huge sales no matter what genre avenues they pursued (they actually invented the Romance comicbook), blazing trails for so many others to follow and always reshaping the very nature of American comics with their innovations and sheer quality.

Comicbooks started slowly in 1933, until the creation of superheroes like Superman unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and invented a new genre. Implacably vested in the Second World War, the masked mystery man swept all before him (very occasionally her or it) until the troops came home and older genres supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Although new kids kept up the buying, much of the previous generation also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought more mature themes in the reading matter. The war years altered the psychology of society and a more world-weary, cynical reading public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything. Their chosen forms of entertainment – film and prose as well as comics – increasingly reflected this.

Western, War and Crime comics, madcap teen comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, the aforementioned love comics appeared in 1947 and pulp-style Science Fiction began to spread, but gradually another global revival of spiritualism and interest in the supernatural (possibly provoked by the monstrous losses of the recent conflict, just as had happened in the 1920s following WWI) led to a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and even shocking horror comics.

There were grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in costumed hero trappings (the Spectre, Mr. Justice, The Heap, Frankenstein, Sargon the Sorcerer, Zatara, Dr. Fate and dozens of others), but these had been victims of circumstance: the Unknown as power source for super-heroics.

Now the focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering, the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on the monumentally popular juggernaut, but B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launched the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948, although Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon whose impressive single issue release Eerie debuted and closed in January 1947. They wised up late and launched a regular series in 1951.

By this time Classics Illustrated had already long milked the literary end of the medium with adaptations of the Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

It was at this time that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby identified another â€œmature marketâ€ gap for the line of magazines they autonomously packaged for publishers Crestwood-Prize-Essenkay to supplement Headline Comics, Justice Traps the Guilty, Police Trap, Young Romance and their other anthologies. They too saw the sales potential for spooky material, resulting in the superb and eerily seminal Black Magic (launched with an October-November 1950 cover-date) and the boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams in1952.

Marvel had jumped on the bloody bandwagon early but National/DC Comics only reluctantly bowed to the inevitable, launching a comparatively straight-laced short story title that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

Soon after, however, a hysterical censorship scandal led to witch-hunt Hearings (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time) which panicked most comics publishers into adopting a castrating straitjacket of self regulatory rulesâ€¦

Just like today, America back then cast about wildly looking for external contaminants rather than internal causes for a perceived shift in social attitudes and youthful rebellion, happily settling on bloodthirsty comics about crime or horror, drenched in unwholesome salacious sex, as the reason their children were talking back, acting up and staying out.

S&K didn’t do those kinds of comicbooks but they got tarred – and metaphorically feathered too – in the media-fuelled frenzyâ€¦

This striking full-colour hardback begins with the essay ‘That Old Black Magic’ by series editor Steve Saffel, delineating the history of the title and tone of the times whilst ‘Simon and Kirby’s Little Shop of Horror’ describes the working of the small but prolific studio of rotating artists who augmented the output of the named stars: creators such as Mort Meskin, Bill Draut, Martin Stein, Ben Oda, George Roussos, Vic Donahue, Bill Walton, Jim Infantino, Bruno Premiani, John Prentice, Jerry Grandenetti and moreâ€¦

With a vast output across many titles, S&K simply couldn’t produce every story and many yarns here are ghosted by other hands, although each and every one does begin with a stunning Kirby splash panel.

As with all their titles, Simon & Kirby offered genre material tweaked by their own special sensibilities. Black Magic – and the Mort Meskin-inspired The Strange World of Your Dreams – eschewed cheap shocks, mindless gore and goofy pun-inspired twist-ending yarns in favour of dark, oppressive suspense soaked in psychological unease and inexplicable unease: tension over teasingâ€¦

The stories presented fantastic situations and too frequently for comfort there were no happy endings, pat cosmic justice or calming explanations: sometimes the Unknown just blew up in your face and you survived or didn’tâ€¦ and never whole or unchanged.

The compendium of black cartoon cavortings commences with ‘Last Second of Life!’ (from volume 1 #1, October-November 1950) wherein a rich man obsessed over what the dying see at the final breath, but learned to regret the unsavoury lengths he went to finding out, after which ‘The Scorn of the Faceless People!’ (#2 December 1950-January 1951) relates the meaning behind a chilling nightmare. It’s not hard to believe this one must have prompted the creation of the spin-off Strange World of Your Dreams. Issue #2 also provided a chilling report on a satanic vestment dubbed ‘The Cloak!’ whilst an impossible love in the icy wastes of Canada ended with ‘A Silver Bullet for Your Heart!’ in #3 (February-March 1951).

Issue #4 provided ‘Voodoo on Tenth Avenue’ as a disgruntled wife went too far in her quest to get rid of her man, whilst in #5 ‘The World of Spirits’ recounted the uncanny predictions of Emanuel Swedenborg in a brief fact feature before #6 described psychic connection and a ‘Union with the Dead!’ and a ravaged mariner survived meeting ‘The Thing in the Fog!’ (#7) – an encounter with the legendary Flying Dutchmanâ€¦

Black Magic #8 (December 1951-January 1952) detailed the sacrifice a woman made to save her man from ‘Donovan’s Demon!’ (mostly illustrated by Bob McCarty) whilst ‘Dead Man’s Lode!’ (#10 March 1952 – the series now being monthly) related a ghostly experience in an old mine and ‘The Girl Who Walked on Water!’ in #11 showed the immense but fragile power of self-beliefâ€¦

Meskin & Roussos illustrated #12’s ‘A Giant Walks the Earth!’ as a downed pilot lost his best friend to a roving colossus in India, after which the utterly chilling and unforgettable ‘Up There!’ kicks off three stories from the landmark 13^th issueâ€¦

That saga of a beguiling siren of the upper stratosphere is followed by ‘A Rag – a Bone and a Hank of Hair!’ (Meskin) and a pile of trash that learned to love, whilst ‘Visions of Nostradamus!’ (by Al Eadeh) tracked and interpreted the prognosticator’s predictions.

‘The Angel of Death!’ in #15 detailed a horrific medical mystery and ‘Freak!’ (#17, possibly by Bill Draut) exposed a country doctor’s deepest shame.

Black Magic #18 (November 1952) is another multi-threat issue. ‘Nasty Little Man!’ gets my vote for scariest horror art job of all time and saw three hobos discover to their everlasting regret why you shouldn’t pick on short old men with Irish accents.

Then ‘Come Claim My Corpse’ (Martin Stein?) offers a short, sharp, shocker wherein a convict discovers too late the flaw in his infallible escape plan, before an investigator tracing truck-wreckers learns of ‘Detour Lorelei on Highway 52’ (McCarty)â€¦

‘Sammy’s Wonderful Glass!’ in #19 (December 1952) outlined the tragic outcome of a retarded lummox whose favourite toy could expose men’s souls, after which two shorts from #20 (January 1953) follow.

‘Birth After Death’ retold the true story of how Sir Walter Scott‘s mother survived premature burial, whilst ‘Oddities in Miniature: The Strangest Stories Ever Told!’ offered half a dozen uncanny tales on one page.

Issue #21 provided ‘The Feathered Serpent’ in which an American archaeologist uncovers the truth about an ancient god, #22 (March 1953) slipped into sci-fi morality play mode with the UFO yarn ‘The Monsters on the Lake!’, and ‘Those Who Are About to Die!’ from #23 sketched out the tale of a painter who could predict imminent doomâ€¦

A brace of tales from #24 – May 1953 – begin with a scholar who attempts to contact the living ‘After I’m Gone!’, complemented by the half page fact feature ‘Strange Predictions’ (Harry Lazarus) after which ‘Strange Old Bird!’ is the first of three stories from the (again bimonthly) Black Magic #25 (June-July 1953).

In this gently eerie thriller a little old lady gets the gift of life from her tatty old feathered friend, whilst ‘The Human Cork!’ precis’ the life of the literally unsinkable Angelo Faticoni , before a man without a soul escapes the morgue to become ‘A Beast in the Streets!’

There’s a similar surfeit of sinister riches from #26, beginning with ‘Fool’s Paradise!’ wherein a cheap bag-snatcher makes a deal with the devil, after which ‘The Sting of Scorpio!’ sees a rude sceptic wish she’d never taunted a fortune teller, whilst ‘The Strange Antics of the Mystic Mirror!’ terrified nurses in a major metropolitan hospital and ‘Demon Wind!’ (Kirby inked by Premiani) finds a brash Yankee learn not to mock the justice system of primitive native peoplesâ€¦

‘The Cat People’ (#27) mesmerised and forever marked an unwary tourist in rural Spain, and the same issue exposed a seductive Scottish supernatural shindig hosted by ‘The Merry Ghosts of Campbell Castle’, whilst #28 saw an unwilling organ donor return to take back his property in ‘An Eye For an Eye!’ after which the same issue revealed with mordant wit how a mummy returned to make his truly beloved ‘Alive After Five Thousand Years!’â€¦

From an issue actually cited during the anti-comicbook Senate Hearings, ‘The Greatest Horror of Them All!’ (#29 March-April 1954) told a tragic tale of a freak hidden amongst freaks, before Black Magic #30 revealed the appalling secret of ‘The Head of the Family!’ (Kirby & Premiani) whilst #31 provided both alien invasion horror ‘Slaughter-House!’ and the cautionary tale of a child raised by beasts in ‘Hungry as a Wolf!’ (Ernie Schroeder).

‘Maniac!’ from #32 is another artistic tour de force and a tale much â€œhomagedâ€ in later years, detailing how a loving brother stops villagers taking his simple-minded sibling away, and the Black Magic section concludes with a terrifying fable of atomic radiation and mutated sea creatures in ‘Lone Shark’ from #33 November-December 1954.

With the sagacious, industry-hip, quality-conscious Simon & Kirby undoubtedly seeing the writing on the wall, their uniquely macabre title was wisely cancelled in 1954, not long before the Comics Code came into effect. A bowdlerised version was relaunched in 1957, long after they had dissolved their partnership and moved into different areas of the industry.

However the eerie treats don’t end as a short but sublime sampling from their other mystery title is appended here.

‘We Will Buy Your Dreams‘ discusses the features and stories from abortive and revolutionary title The Strange World of Your Dreams, a title inspired by studio-mate Mort Meskin’s vivid night terrors. The premise involved parapsychologist Richard Temple explaining and analysing storied nightmares and pictorially dramatising dreams sent in by readers.

The too short comics section then begins with ‘Send Us Your Dreams’ from #1 (August 1952), a â€œtypicalâ€ insecurity nightmare and the chilling ‘I Talked with my Dead Wife!’, whilst #2 (September-October) provided a trio of traumen tales: ‘The Girl in the Grave!’ a scary wedding scenario in ‘You Sent Us This Dream!’ and ‘Send Us Your Dreams’ in which Dr. Tempe describes the extent of self preservation imageryâ€¦

‘The Woman in the Tower!’ came from #3 (November-December) and detailed typical symbolism whilst ‘You Sent Us this Dream’ from the same issue explains away a nightmare climb up an unending towerâ€¦

Capping off everything is a spectacular Cover Gallery reprinting Black Magic #1 through #33 plus a stunning unpublished cover, and performs the same service for The Strange World of Your Dreams #1-4, and includes the unpublished #5 just to make our lives utterly complete.

The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror! is a gigantic compendium of classic dark delights that perfectly illustrates the depth and scope of their influence and innovation and readily displays the sheer bombastic panache and artistic virtuosity they brought to everything they did.

This tremendous hardcover is a worthy, welcome introduction to their unique comics contributions, but there’s loads left still to see so let’s have some more pleaseâ€¦

January 29, 2014January 28, 2014

E.C. Segar’s Popeye volume 6: â€œMe Li’l Swee’Peaâ€

By Elzie Crisler Segar, with Doc Winner (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-483-2

Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8^th December 1894. His father was a handyman, and the boy’s early life was filled with the kinds of solid, dependable blue-collar jobs that typified his generation of cartoonists. He worked as a decorator and house-painter and also played drums; accompanying vaudeville acts at the local theatre.

When the town got a movie-house he played for the silent films, absorbing all the staging, timing and narrative tricks from keen observation of the screen. Those lessons would become his greatest assets as a cartoonist. It was while working as the film projectionist, aged 18, that he decided to become a cartoonist and tell his own stories.

Like so many others he studied art via mail, in this case W.L. Evans’ cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio, before gravitating to Chicago where he was â€œdiscoveredâ€ by Richard F. Outcault – regarded by most as the inventor of newspaper comic strips with The Yellow Kid and, later, Buster Brown.

The celebrated cartoonist introduced him around at the prestigious Chicago Herald. Still wet behind the ears, Segar’s first strip, Charley Chaplin’s Comedy Capers, debuted on 12^th March 1916. In 1918 he married Myrtle Johnson and moved to William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago Evening American to create Looping the Loop, but Managing Editor William Curley saw a big future for Segar and packed the newlyweds off to New York, HQ of the mighty King Features Syndicate.

Within a year Segar was producing Thimble Theatre, which launched December 19^th 1919 in the New York Journal. It was a pastiche of movie-inspired features like Hairbreadth Harry and Midget Movies, with a repertory cast to act out comedies, melodramas, comedies, crime-stories, chases and especially comedies for vast daily audiences. The core cast included parental pillars Nana and Cole Oyl, their lanky highly-strung daughter Olive, diminutive-but-pushy son Castor and Olive’s plain and simple occasional boyfriend Horace Hamgravy (later known as just Ham Gravy).

In 1924 Segar created a second daily strip The 5:15: a surreal domestic comedy featuring weedy commuter and would-be inventor John Sappo and his formidable wife Myrtle (surely, no relation?) which endured – in one form or another – as a topper/footer-feature accompanying the main Sunday page throughout the author’s career, even surviving his untimely death, eventually becoming the trainee-playground of Popeye’s second great stylist Bud Sagendorf.

A born storyteller, Segar had from the start an advantage even his beloved cinema couldn’t match: a brilliant ear for dialogue and accent which boomed out from his admittedly average adventure plots, adding lustre and sheer sparkle to stories and gags he always felt he hadn’t drawn well enough. After a decade or so – and just as cinema caught up with the invention of â€œtalkiesâ€ – he finally discovered a character whose unique sound and individual vocalisations blended with a fantastic, enthralling nature to create a literal superstar.

Popeye the sailor, brusque, incoherent, plug-ugly and stingingly sarcastic, lurched on stage midway through the protracted continuity ‘Dice Island’, (on January 17^th 1929: see E.C. Segar’s Popeye volume 1: â€œI Yam What I Yam!â€) and, once his part was played out, simply refused to leave.

Within a year he was a regular and, as the strip’s circulation skyrocketed, he gradually took his place as the star. The strip title was changed to reflect the fact and most of the tired old gang – except Olive – consigned to oblivion â€¦

The Old Salt clearly inspired his creator. The near decade of thrilling mystery-comedies he crafted and the madcap and/or macabre new characters with which he furiously littered the strips revolutionised the industry, laid the groundwork for the entire superhero genre (sadly, usually without the leavening underpinnings of his wryly self-aware humour) and utterly captivated the whole wide world.

These superb oversized (375 x 268 mm) hardback collections are the ideal way of discovering or rediscovering Segar’s magical tales, and this sixth and final mammoth compendium augments the fun with another an insightful introductory essay from Richard Marschall exploring ‘The Continuity Style of E. C. Segar: Between â€œMeanwhileâ€ & â€œTo Be Continuedâ€‘ and closes with an absorbing end-piece essay describing the globalisation of the character in ‘Licensing and Merchandising Move to Center Stage of the Thimble Theatre: Popeye Fisks his way into American Culture‘ plus a 1930 magazine feature graphically revealing the Sailor Man’s natal origins and boyhood in ‘Blow Me Down! Popeye Born at Age of 2, But Orphink from Start’ scripted by unknown King Features writers but gloriously and copiously illustrated by Segar himself.

As always the black-&-white Daily continuities are presented separately to the full-colour Sunday’s, and the monochrome mirth and mayhem – covering December 14^th 1936 to August 29^th 1938 12th – begins with an all new adventure ‘Mystery Melody’ wherein Popeye’s disreputable dad Poopdeck Pappy is haunted and hunted by the sinister Sea Hag whose ghastly Magic Flute is employed to lure the old goat back into the clutches of the woman he loved and abandoned years agoâ€¦

The tension and drama grows in the second chapter ‘Tea and Hamburgers’ when the Hag approaches another old flame – J. Wellington Wimpy – and uses the reprobate’s insatiable lust (for food) to help capture Poopdeck. The plan works, but not quite as the sinister sorceress intendedâ€¦

In ‘Bolo vs Everyone!’ events escalate completely beyond control as the Hag’s primordial man-monster attacks and the grizzled mariner ends the fight in his own inimitable manner, whilst mystic marvel Eugene the Jeep (a fantastic 4^th dimensional beast with incredible powers) uses his gifts to temporarily settle the Sea Hag’s hashâ€¦

A decided change of pace began with the next storyline. ‘A Sock for Susan’s Sake’ showcases Popeye’s big heart and sentimental nature as he takes a destitute and starving waif under his wing: buying her clothes, breaking her out of jail and going on the run with her.

His kind-hearted deeds arouse deep suspicions about his motives from friends and strangers alikeâ€¦

It’s a tribute to Segar’s skills that the storyline perfectly balances social commentary and pathos with plenty of action (that sock in question is not footwear) and non-stop slapstick comedy. Their peregrinations again land Susan and the Old Salt in jail – for vagrancy – but the wonderfully sympathetic and easily amused Judge Penny really makes the prosecution work hilariously hard for a conviction in ‘Order in the Court!’â€¦

Naturally, jealous Olive gets completely the wrong idea and uses the Jeep to track down her straying beau in ‘Who is That Girl?’ leading to the discovery of the ingÃ©nue’s origins and the restoration of her stolen fortune – a case calling for the return of ace detective and former strip star Castor Oylâ€¦

The grateful child and her father burden Popeye with a huge reward but as he has his own adequate savings at home he gives it all – with some unexpected difficulty – away to â€œWiddies and Orphinksâ€â€¦

In the next sequence the Sailor Man has reason to regret that generosity as, on returning to his house, he finds his hard-earned â€œTen Thousing dollarsâ€ savings have been stolenâ€¦

Most annoyingly he knows Poopdeck has taken it but the old goat won’t admit it, even though he has a new diamond engagement ring which he uses to bribe various loose young (and not so young) women into going out gallivanting with him and sowing ‘Wild Oats’ â€¦

When Popeye first appeared he was a rough, rude, crude and shocking anti-hero. The first Superman of comics was not a comfortable paragon to idolise but a barely human brute who thought with his fists and didn’t respect authority. Uneducated, opinionated, short-tempered, fickle (whenever hot tomatoes batted their eyelashes – or thereabouts – at him), a gambler and troublemaker, he wasn’t welcome in polite societyâ€¦and he wouldn’t want to be.

He was soon exposed as the ultimate working class hero: raw and rough-hewn, practical, but with an innate and unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not, a joker who wanted kids to be themselves – but not necessarily â€œgoodâ€ – and somebody who took no guff from anyone.

As his popularity grew he somewhat mellowed. He was always ready to defend the weak and had absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows. He was and will always be â€œthe best of usâ€â€¦ but the shocking sense of unpredictability, danger and comedic anarchy he initially provided was sorely missed. So in 1936 Segar brought it all back again in the form of Popeye’s 99-year old unrepentantly reprobate dadâ€¦

The elder mariner was a rough, hard-bitten, grumpy brute quite prepared and even happy to cheat, steal or smack a woman around if she stepped out of line, and once the old Billy goat (whose shady past possibly concealed an occasional bit of piracy) was firmly established, Segar set Popeye and Olive the Herculean and unfailingly funny task of civilising the old sodâ€¦

They returned to their odious chore here as Pappy’s wild carousing, fighting and womanising grow ever more embarrassing and lead to the cops trying – and repeatedly failing – to jail the senior seaman.

Poopdeck finally goes too far and pushes one of his fancy woman fiancÃ©es into the river. At last brought to trial, he pleads ‘Extenuvatin’ Circumsnances’â€¦

The final full saga began on 15^th November 1937 as ‘The Valley of the Goons (An Adventure)’ saw Popeye and Wimpy drugged and shanghaied. Even though he could fight his way back home, Popeye agrees to stay on for the voyage since he needs money to pay lawyers appealing Pappy’s prison sentence. He quickly changes tack, however, when he discovers the valuable cargo they’re hunting is Goon skins! The Cap’n and his scurvy crew are planning to slaughter the hapless hulking exotic primitives for a few measly dollarsâ€¦

After brutally driving off the murderous thugs, Popeye – and the shirking Wimpy – are marooned on the Goons’ isolated islandâ€¦

The barbaric land holds a few surprises: most notably the fact that the natives are ruled over by Popeye’s dour old pal King Blozo (formerly of Nazilia) who, with his idiot retainer Oscar, is calling all the shots. It’s a happy coincidence as Wimpy’s eternal hunger and relentless mooching have won him a death sentence and he’s in imminent danger of being hangedâ€¦

All this time Olive, guided by the mystical tracking gifts of the Jeep, has been sailing the seven seas in search of her man and she beaches her boat just as Popeye begins to get the situation under control. In doing so he unfairly earns the chagrin of the island’s unseen but highly voluble sea monster Georgeâ€¦

Shock follows shock as the eerie voiced unseen creature is revealed as the horrendous Sea Hag who re-exerts her uncanny hold (some illusions but mostly the promise of unlimited hamburgers) upon Wimpy and tries to make him the ‘Bride of George’â€¦

In the middle of this tale Segar fell seriously ill with Leukaemia and his assistant Doc Winner assumed responsibility for completing the story: probably from Segar’s notes if not at his actual direction.

Although Winner’s illustrations carry ‘Valley of the Goons’ to conclusion, this tome excludes the all-Winner adventure ‘Hamburger Sharks and Sea Spinach’ before resuming with the May 23^rd instalment by the apparently recovered Segar.

‘King Swee’Pea’ saw the feisty baby – who had been left with Popeye – become the focus of political drama and family tension when he was revealed to be heir to the Kingdom of Demoniaâ€¦

After a protracted tussle with that nation’s secret service and bombastic kingmaker F.G. Frogfuzz Esquire, the Sailor Man has himself appointed regent and chief advisor and, taking most of the cast with him, relocates to the harsh land where only Ka-babages grow.

Popeye soon finds that his mischievous little charge has started to speak: increasingly crossing and contradicting his gruff guardian and others, much to the annoyance of blustering bully King Cabooso of neighbouring (rival) nation Cuspidoniaâ€¦

Before long another unique crisis manifests in ‘Rise of the De-Mings’ as smug and sassy subterranean critters begin devastating the Ka-babage crop even as Swee’Pea and Caboosa escalate their war of insultsâ€¦

Sadly, although coming back strongly, within three months Segar had relapsed. The adventures end here with his last strip and a prÃ©cis of Winner’s eventual conclusionâ€¦

Segar passed away six weeks after his final Daily strip was published.

The full-colour Sunday pages in this volume run from 20^th September 1936 to October 2^nd 1938, a combination of Star turn and intriguing footers.

After an interlude with a new wry and charming feature – Pete and Patsy: For Kids Only – the artist settled once again upon an old favourite to back up Popeye.

The bizarrely entertaining Sappo (and the scene-and show-stealing Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle) supplemental strip returned in a blaze of imaginative wonder, as Segar also benched the cartooning tricks section which allowed him to play graphic games with his readership and again pushed the boundaries of Weird Science as the Odd Couple – and long-suffering spouse Myrtle – spent months exploring other worlds.

The assorted Saps also dabbled with robot dogs, brain-switching machines and fell embarrassingly foul of such inventions as long-distance spy-rays, anti-gravity devices, limb extending â€œStretcholeneâ€, â€œSpeak-no-Evilâ€ pills, Atom-Counters and the deeply disturbing trouble magnet dubbed â€œDream Solidifierâ€ whilst Sappo’s less scientific but far more profitable gimmicks kept the cash rolling in and the arrogant Professor steaming with outrageâ€¦

Above these arcane antics Sunday’s star attraction remained fixedly exploring the comedy gold of Popeye’s interactions with Wimpy, Olive Oyl and the rest of Segar’s cast of thousands (of idiots).

The humorous antics – in sequences of one-off gag strips alternating with the occasional extended saga – saw the Sailor-Man fighting for every iota of attention whilst his mournful mooching co-star became increasingly more ingenious – not to say surreal – in his quest for free mealsâ€¦

An engaging Micawber-like coward, cad and conman, the insatiable J. Wellington Wimpy debuted on May 3^rd 1931 as an unnamed and decidedly partisan referee in one of Popeye’s frequent boxing matches. The scurrilous but polite oaf obviously struck a chord and Segar gradually made him a fixture. Always hungry, keen to take bribes and a cunning coiner of many immortal catchphrases – such as â€œI would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger todayâ€ and ‘Let’s you and him fight’ – he was the perfect foil for a simple action hero and increasingly stole the entire show just like anything else unless it was nailed downâ€¦

There was also a long-suffering returning rival for Olive’s dubious and flighty affections: local charmer Curlyâ€¦

When not beating the stuffing out of his opponents or kissing pretty girls, Popeye pursued his flighty, vacillating and irresolute Olive with exceptional verve, if little success, but his life was always made more complicated whenever the unflappable, so-corruptible and adorably contemptible Wimpy made an appearance.

Infinitely varying riffs on Olive’s peculiar romantic notions or Wimpy’s attempts to cadge food or money (for food) were irresistible to the adoring readership, but Segar wisely peppered the Sundays with longer episodic tales, such as the saga of ‘The Terrible Kid Mustard’ (which ran from December 27^th 1936 to February 28^th 1937) and pitted the prize-fighting Sea Salt against another boxer who was as ferociously fuelled by the incredible nourishing power of Spinachâ€¦

Another extended endeavour starred the smallest addition to the cast (and eponymous star of this volume). The rambunctious tyke Swee’Pea was never an angel and when he began stealing jam and framing Eugene the Jeep (March 7^th through 28^th) the search for a culprit proved he was also precociously smart too.

The impossible task of civilising Poopdeck Pappy also covered many months – with no appreciable or lasting effect – and incorporated an outrageous sequence wherein the dastardly dotard become scandalously, catastrophically entangled in Popeye’s mechanical diaper-changing machineâ€¦

On June 27^th Wimpy found the closest thing to true love when he met Olive’s friend Waneeta: a meek, retiring soul whose father owned 50,000 cows. His devoted pursuit filled many pages over the following months, as did the latest scheme of his arch-nemesis George W. Geezil, who bought a cafÃ©/diner with the sole intention of poisoning the constantly cadging conmanâ€¦

Although starring the same characters the Sunday and Daily strips ran separate storylines, offering Segar opportunities to utilise the same good idea in different ways.

On September 19^th 1937 he began a sequence wherein Swee’Pea’s mother returned, seeking to regain custody of the boy she gave away. The resultant tug-of-love tale ran until December 5^th and displayed genuine warmth and angst amidst the wealth of hilarious antics by both parties to convince the feisty â€œinfinkâ€ to pick his favourite parentâ€¦

On January 16^th 1938 Popeye was approached by scientists who had stumbled upon an incipient Martian invasion. The invaders planned to pit their monster against a typical Earthman before committing to the assault and the Boffins believed that the grizzly old pug was the planet’s best betâ€¦

Readers didn’t realise that the feature’s glory days were ending. Segar’s advancing illness was affecting his output – there are no pages reproduced here between February 6^th and June 26^th – and although when he resumed the gags were funnier than ever (especially a short sequence where Pappy shaves his beard and dyes his hair so he could impersonate Popeye and woo Olive) the long lead-in time necessary to create Sundays only left him time to finish more 15 pages.

The last Segar signed strip was published on October 2^nd 1938. He died eleven days later.

There is more than one Popeye. If your first thought on hearing the name is an unintelligible, indomitable white-clad sailor always fighting a great big beardy-bloke and mainlining tinned spinach, that’s okay: the animated features have a brilliance and energy of their own (even the later, watered-down anodyne TV versions have some merit) and they are indeed based on the grizzled, crusty, foul-mouthed, bulletproof, golden-hearted old swab who shambled his way into Thimble Theatre and wouldn’t leave. But they are really only the tip of an incredible iceberg of satire, slapstick, virtue, vice and mind-boggling adventureâ€¦

Popeye and the bizarre, surreally quotidian cast that welcomed and grew up around him are true icons of international popular culture who have grown far beyond their newspaper strip origins. Nevertheless, in one very true sense, with this marvellous yet painfully tragic final volume, the most creative period in the saga of the true and only Sailor Man closes.

His last strips were often augmented or even fully ghosted by Doc Winner, but the intent is generally untrammelled, leaving an unparalleled testament to Segar’s incontestable timeless, manic brilliance for us all to enjoy over and over again.

There is more than one Popeye. Most of them are pretty good and some are truly excellent. However there was only ever one by Elzie Segar – and don’t you think it’s time you sampled the original and very best?
Â© 2012 Fantagraphics Books Inc. All comics and drawings Â© 2011 King Features Inc. All rights reserved.

January 27, 2014

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 8: 1951-1952

By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-699-7

The stellar Sunday page Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur debuted on 13^th February 1937, a luscious and luminous full-colour weekly window into a miraculous too-perfect past of adventure and romance, even topping creator Hal Foster’s previous impossibly popular comics masterpiece Tarzan.

The saga of noble knights played against a glamorised, dramatised Dark Ages historical backdrop as it followed the life of a refugee boy driven from his ancestral homeland in Scandinavian Thule who grew up to roam the world and attain a paramount position amongst the heroes of fabled Camelot.

Writer/artist Foster wove the epic tale over decades, as the near-feral wild boy matured into 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 hero visited many far-flung lands, siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes and utterly enchanting generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

There have been films, animated series and all manner of toys, games and collections based on Prince Valiant – one of the few adventures strips to have lasted from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (over 4000 episodes and counting) – and even here in the end times of the newspaper narrative cartoons, it continues to astound in more than 300 American papers. It’s even cutting its way onto the internet with an online edition.

Foster tirelessly crafted the feature until 1971 when illustrator John Cullen Murphy (Big Ben Bolt) succeeded him as illustrator. Foster continued as writer and designer until 1980, after which he retired and Cullen Murphy’s daughter Mairead took over colouring and lettering whilst her brother John assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired, since when the strip has soldiered on under the extremely talented auspices of artists Gary Gianni and latterly Thomas Yeates with Mark Schultz (Xenozoic) scripting.

Before the astonishing illumination of dauntless derring-do recommences, Editor Brian M. Kane discusses, in amazing detail, the incredible tales of the creator’s pre-and-early comics days as an advertising artist and the impact of his â€œMountieâ€ paintings on early 20^th century American ads in the fascinating Foreword essay ‘An Artist Nowhere Near Ordinary: Hal Foster’s Lord Greystoke of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’.

This volume of sublime strips is also balanced by another erudite Kane piece at the back: describing the now forgotten entertainments phenomenon of the Silver Lady Awards bestowed annually by the fabled, prestigious but now forgotten â€œBansheesâ€.

‘Hal Foster and the Other Woman’ reveals the story behind the story of King Features’ â€œShadow Cabinetâ€ and how Foster won his Silver Lady in1952 as well as noting many of his other testimonials such as the Rueben, the Swedish Academy’s Adamson Award and his election to our own Royal Society (for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce): an honour he shared with the likes of Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Hawkingâ€¦

This 8^th enormously entertaining and luxurious oversized (362 x 264mm) full-colour hardback volume reprints the pages from January 7^th 1951 to 28^th December 1952 (pages #726 to 829, if you’re counting) but before we proceedâ€¦

What has Gone Before: after the double christening in Camelot of his and Prince Arn of Ord‘s sons, Valiant was soon back in the saddle as an Arthurian troubleshooter, cleaning out a extortion-minded sorcerer’s den in Wales and picking up new squire Geoffrey – known affectionately as Arf – before heading North to Hadrian’s Wall and a brutally punishing and protracted siege by invading Picts.

It was nearly Val’s last battleâ€¦

When Aleta joined her dying husband he miraculously recovered. His forthright wife elected to take him back to his Scandinavian homeland so she dispatched Geoffrey to Camelot with orders for her handmaiden Katwin and nurse Tillicum to obtain a ship and meet her with baby Arn at the village of Newcastleâ€¦

Soon the group were bound for Thule, bolstered by the bombastic return of boisterous far-larger-than-life Viking Boltar: a Falstaff-like â€œhonest pirateâ€ who ferried the re-united extended family to Valiant’s harsh, cold homeland. Along the way Boltar found himself bitten by the love bug â€¦

A chance meeting with an old cleric also disclosed the truth about Arf: the faithful squire had been forced from his home when his sire Sir Hugo Geoffrey took a new young bride. She didn’t want an annoying stepson underfoot but now she was gone and the boy could return homeâ€¦ if he wanted toâ€¦

Eventually the party reached the chilly castle of King Aguar and settled in for a winter of snowy rest and recuperation – although the temperatures could not cool Arf’s hot temper and propensity for finding troubleâ€¦

Aguar, meanwhile, had been seriously considering converting his rowdy Norse realm to the peaceful tenets of Christianity, but all the missionaries roaming his lands were cantankerous idiots preaching their own particular brand of faith – when not actively fighting each other.

Therefore when spring arrived he tasked his fully recovered son with a mission to Rome, beseeching the Pope to send proper priests and real teachers of the officially sanctioned religion to spread the Word of God.

No sooner had Val, Arf, doughty Rufus Regan and new comrade Jarl Egil set off, however, than vassal king Hap-Atla – seething from an old slight delivered to his deceased sire – rebelled, besieging Aguar’s castle. With manpower dangerously depleted the situation looked grim until wily Aleta took control, scoring a stunning triumph which shockingly contravened all the rules of manly warfare.

Valiant and his companions meanwhile had landed in Rouen and trekked onwards to the HolyCity, encountering thieves, murderers and worse as Europe, deprived of the Pax Romana, had descended into barbarism: reduced to a seething mass of lawless principalities ruled by greedily ambitious proto-emperors…

In one unhappy demesne the quartet dethroned a robber-baron but almost ended up wed to his unsavoury daughters, whilst in another Val encountered an alchemist-king who had accidentally invented an explosive black powderâ€¦

Exhausted, they eventually were welcomed at the castle of benevolent noble Ruy Foulke – but their good night’s sleep was spoiled when their host was attacked by villainous overlord Black Robert and his savagely competent forcesâ€¦

This chronicle’s action commences as the visitors stoutly and resolutely defend their host against overwhelming force, with all combatants blithely unaware that Foulke’s daughter and Black Robert’s son are lovers. The youngsters almost sacrifice their lives to end the hostilities, and Valiant brokers an alliance which ends the bloodshed but has to leave quickly as his actions have deprived the invaders of much promised bootyâ€¦

On the road again they missionaries encounter roving bands of barbarian reivers and take refuge in a monastery at the foot of the French Alps. The clerics offer to guide the quartet over the mountains to Italy, but are woefully short of the protective garments made from the cold-resistant Chamois, so Valiant goes off hunting the elusive antelope.

Trouble is never far from the Prince of Thule and his frozen safari brings him into conflict with another band of invading Huns or Tartars, which only ends when the capable northerner destroys them with an avalanche.

Properly kitted out, Arf, Egil, Rufus and Val are then taken over the horrific high passes, enduring ghastly arctic conditions before they reach the other side. Young Arf suffers most, and Val has to leave his crippled squire – whose feet have frozen – at a hospice in Torino whilst the remainder of his battered party carry on to Rome.

The EternalCity has become a cess-pit of iniquity since it was sacked by the barbarians and the Missionaries are given a constant run-around by greedy and duplicitous officials until Val discovers that the Pope has removed himself from the city and established a new home in Ravenna.

Although Valiant is still denied a meeting, the Pontiff appoints a committee which agrees to send true Christian teachers to icy Thule, but before details can be finalised the Prince is called back to Torino where Arf has taken a turn for the worseâ€¦

The Squire has lost the will to live, along with his left foot, and with all his chivalric ambitions destroyed is beyond consoling. In a powerful and moving sequence Valiant patiently brings the boy back from a fatal depression and sets him upon a new path: scholar and official historian of the kings of Thule.

Since the boy cannot handle the arduous trek back to Scandinavia, Valiant sends Egil and Rufus on ahead with the Pope’s team of missionaries and teachers by the most direct route whilst he accompanies Arf in a more leisurely and roundabout journey by ship.

En route the fierce man of war helps found the Christian Mission at San Marino before he and the still emotionally fragile lad board a Genoese trader. After crossing the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), fresh passengers join them and the boy is utterly smitten by the demure charms of the beauteous Adele, daughter of wealthy Eastern lord Sieur Du Lucâ€¦

Luckily, Valiant has been schooling his former squire in the courtly skills of music and poetryâ€¦

The boy’s timorous wooing of the Mediterranean charmer pays off in a multitude of ways. His strength and confidence returns, Adele favours and returns his attentions and the amused and charmed sailors, delighted to have the burdensome (and occasionally pirate-plagued) journey eased somewhat, carve Arf a marvellous wooden leg which is so well-fashioned that he can throw away his crutches and walk as a man shouldâ€¦

When the vessel reaches England the boy takes time to reconcile with his father and introduce Adele so that the tricky and torturous process of making a marriage match may begin, whilst Valiant’s return to Camelot and joyous reunion with best friend Sir Gawain propels the two old comrades and devoted merry pranksters into an orgy of practical jokes and good-natured duels with their fellow knightsâ€¦

Sadly the riotous times end too soon, as word comes from Aguar that Val should return to Thule with the utmost speed. Arranging for Arf to meet them en route, Valiant accepts Gawain’s offer to take ship from his own island kingdom of Orkney, but although his brother-in-arms is a fine fellow, the knight’s family are another matter.

Gawain’s mother Morgause is reputed a witch, whilst her other sons Agravaine, Gaheris and vile Mordred are little better than brutes and outright villains. Moreover the men of Orkney have little love for Scandinavians, being regular recipients of savage raids from assorted Northmenâ€¦

After Gawain scotches their plan to hold Valiant for ransom, the Prince proposes ending years on enmity with a trade agreement which will make the ancient nations allies and at last sets off for Thule to receive some shocking news: during the year he has been away Aleta has given birth to twin daughters.

Although the proud father is astounded and delighted, his firstborn son is not taking the loss of star-status well – as described in a charming sequence of comedic adventures starring Prince Valiant Arn in the Days of King Arthurâ€¦

Another crisis soon occurs however as Boltar, ignorant of Aguar’s new treaty, accidentally pirates the Orkney ship transporting Adele to Thule and suffers the wrath of his king and former comrades.

Imprisoned in Aguar’s castle, the confused and indignant Boltar is secretly released by Tillicum, but the old rogue, misinterpreting her gesture of love, does her the honour of kidnapping her – just as all his romantic forebears have – and is baffled when she escapes and pulls a knife on himâ€¦

Fed up and utterly desolate, Boltar and his crew continue to their base in the Shetlands, leaving Aleta to mend fences with the King and discuss with the disconsolate nanny how best Tillicum can get her manâ€¦

Boltar meanwhile has been thoroughly tested: Thule’s ancient rivals the Danes have amassed a fleet to attack Aguar and offer his now-disgraced â€œGood Right Handâ€ a share of the spoils and glory to join his ships to their armadaâ€¦

Despite being vexed and tempted, the old pirate instead risks his life to warn Aguar of the sneak attack and after a spectacular campaign of seaborne slaughter accepts his long-delayed punishment. To keep him in line, Aguar makes Tillicum responsible for his continued good behaviourâ€¦

Idyllic weeks pass until Valiant, bored with inaction, drags his new biographer Arf into a patrol of the nation’s border, only to have them both washed away in a flash flood and forced to spend weeks fighting their way back to civilisation from the primitive northern wilderness.

There are gentler moments in the restless warrior’s life, such as the foolish wager he makes soon after his triumphant return that he can catch and train a hawk better than Aleta’s Merlin and his father’s Golden Eagle, but the days are mostly quiet in Thuleâ€¦ until at long last Rufus and Egil arrive with the Pope’s Christian missionaries.

Both have converted on the trip and Valiant and Aleta are overjoyed that their daughters Valeta and Karen can be baptised, but the task of taking the gospels to the devoutly warlike worshippers of Thor and Odin will be far from simpleâ€¦

As the European set to, lecturing and building churches, Val and Rufus become involved in a cross-border water dispute and the Prince, in a rare moment of diplomacy, furnishes a solution that prevents rather than ends bloodshed.

No such opportunity arises when he is ambushed as he returns to Aguar. The arrow that nearly ends his life is fired in error, by a serf who mistakes the prince for the local under-chief, Sigurd Holem.

Once a noble and trusted deputy of Aguar, the Fief-holder has become a cruel tyrant: enslaving his own countrymen and defying any – including his Lord’s heir – to stop him.

Determined to avenge the cruelties of Sigurd, Valiant infiltrates the monster’s impenetrable citadel and, through cunning engineering tricks, brings the entire daunting edifice crashing into ruinsâ€¦

The next few strips use the device of Arf’s growing biography to lavishly recapitulate many of Valiant’s greatest exploits, such as the overthrow of Sligon and restoration of Aguar to Thule or the haunting fate of doomed mountain outpost Andelkrag, before the tone switches again and little Arn is forced to face the stomach-churning consequences of being a â€œmighty hunterâ€ when nanny Tillicum makes him confront the results of his firing arrows at animalsâ€¦

The boy and his guardian take centre-stage in the next sequence too when Boltar returns home from another bloody and profitable voyage and jealous rivals at court attempt to humiliate the rowdy blowhard.

The plan is cruel and simple. When Tillicum rejoins her man at his home Vikingsholm she brings the wide-eyed Arn with her, where during a moment of quiet converse with Boltar the hunting-mad lad slips from her careful scrutiny and is abducted.

The kidnappers however have not reckoned on the Native American’s determination or tracking skills. After stalking them all alone for days, she rescues the boy just as the furious following Boltar catches up to her, and the conspirators have mere moments to regret their vile actionsâ€¦

And when Valiant hears of the plot, he and Boltar then deal with the rest of the plotters in similar mannerâ€¦

This volume’s stunning saga temporarily end with the opening movements of another epic extended story arc as the progress of the Christian missionaries leads Valiant – still far from a believer in the One God â€“ to be targeted by Druids and Pagan warriors determined to crush the threat to their bombastic pantheon before it can take holdâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

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

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring, the strip is a landmark of comics fiction and something no fan can afford to miss.
Prince Valiant and all comics material Â© 2014 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties Â© 2014 their respective creators or holders. This edition Â© 2014 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

January 23, 2014January 22, 2014

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 6: 1947-1948

By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-588-4

Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur launched on February 13^th 1937, a luscious full-colour Sunday newspaper strip offering wonder-struck readers safe passage into a world of noble combat, rousing adventure and thrilling romance. Year by year in real time, the strip followed the exploits of a royal exile, driven by invaders from his ancestral homeland in Scandinavian Thule, who grew up to roam the world and ascended to a paramount position amongst the mightiest heroes of fabled Camelot.

Crafted by sublime master draftsman and tale-teller Harold â€œHalâ€ Foster, â€œValâ€ matured to clean-limbed manhood in a heady sea of exotic wonderment; visiting far-flung lands and siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes whilst captivating and influencing generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

The feature has sired films, animated series and all manner of books, toys, records, games and collections based on the strip – one of too few to have lasted from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (over 4000 episodes and still forging ever onward) â€“ and, even in these declining days of newspaper narrative cartoons as a viable medium, it still claims more than 300 American papers as its home. It has even made it into the very ether via an online edition.

Foster produced the saga single-handed, one spectacular page a week from 1937 until 1971, when he began to ease up on his self-appointed workload. With the syndicate’s approval – and after auditioning the likes of Gray Morrow and Wally Wood – Big Ben Bolt illustrator John Cullen Murphy was selected to become illustrator of the feature, with Foster continuing as writer and layout designer until 1980, after which he fully retired and Murphy’s son assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired (and died a month later on July 2nd) since when the strip has soldiered on under the auspices of writer Mark Schultz and artists Gary Gianni and Tom Yeates.

This sixth magnificently oversized (362 x 268mm) full-colour hardback volume reprints the strips from January 5^th 1947 to 26^th December 1948 as Foster began a phenomenally impressive and productive run on a strip which was already regarded as one of the greatest in existence, revelling in the fact that with war-time restrictions ended, he could devote an entire colossal page to each ever-more gripping and luscious instalmentâ€¦

The introductory essay for this volume is ‘Foster of the Yukon or The Son Also Rises’ by Brian M. Kane (with Dr. Christine Ballengee-Morris), exploring the early life of the creator when he worked for the Hudson Bay Company and detailing his many connections to the Canadian wildernesses and indigenous people – as well as his prior illustration work featuring Canadian cultural themes and motifs.

Also included is a critical and scholarly overview by Native American Dr. Ballengee-Morris, discussing this collection’s material and use of First Nation characters and customs.

What Has Gone Before: Having finally wooed and been won by Queen Aleta of The Misty Isles after many fantastic hardships and spectacular trials and travails, Val and his willing prize briefly sojourned in Rome where they were wed before eventually arriving in Camelot.

Here his unconventional and strong-willed bride caused quite a commotion before foiling a seditious scheme by Mordred to humiliate Queen Guinevere and destroy Sir Launcelot.

Her tactics almost ended her own marriage, and only Aleta’s ferociously loyal, tempestuous fire-haired northern handmaiden Katwin was able to bring Valiant to his outraged sensesâ€¦

Reunited and both duly penitent, the newlyweds voyaged to winter-locked Thule, where King Aguar could meet his new daughter-in-law. It was not a peaceful homecoming and the barely-rested Val had to quell potential rebellion in fractious Overgaard whilst another brewed in the fiefdom of former ally Earl Jon.

With the doughty Prince recovering from many wounds – again – bright-and-breezy Aleta struggled to win the favour of her straight-laced and sternly formal Father-in-Law and his dour, grim-minded warriorsâ€¦

Her charm offensive began by solving Aguar’s quarrel with Jon through diplomacy and party-throwing. But even after being accepted by the family the Princess Bride had trouble adapting to the rough sports and pastimes of the chilly region – such as skiing and bear hunting – and she was delighted when the snows finally relented and the Spring thaws began.

Now, the receding snows also bring visitors to the annual parliamentary â€œThingâ€. Hostile sub-chief Gunguir and his mighty son Ulfrun, pride of the Vikings, come to pay their reluctant respects but the latter takes an instant and unhealthily obsessive interest in the golden Princess â€¦

As Val visits old friend and shipbuilding genius Gundar Harl, the nefarious Ulfrun kidnaps Aleta and, despite the heroic efforts of Katwin, sails away into the cold Atlantic seas. Nigh-drowned and with a broken arm, the handmaiden finds Valiant and alerts him to the crisis.

As he readies his pursuit the wounded tigress also informs him that his stolen wife is pregnant and that she must be there when they rescue herâ€¦

As he sails ever westward Ulfrun begins to realise his mistake. His purloined prize shows no fear, refuses him all things and even begins to win over his rough Viking warriorsâ€¦

Val and a hand-picked crew are in full pursuit in Gundar’s most advanced sailing ship, utilising the mariner’s greatest invention – a sextant – to follow the abductors. Never out of sight for long, the followers push Ulfrun further and further west and north, past Greenland and into uncharted waters. After weeks of cat-and-mouse sailing with common sailors on both vessels contemplating mutiny, Valiant’s vessel inexorably closes in until a huge sudden storm finally separates stalkers and quarryâ€¦

Days later, in the following calm Val’s ship reaches a strange shore where he finds evidence of Ulfrun’s survival: a native village devastated by the Viking’s men. Hot to pick up the trail again he nevertheless finds time to administer aid to the survivors before following the Raiders’ boat into this NewFoundLandâ€¦

The pursuit is easy if slow. As Ulfrun’s Dragon-ship sails ever onwards, finding a vast mainland and constantly attacking the red-skinned natives’ settlements for provisions. Val and Gundar patiently follow their crimson wake, always stopping to offer assistance and consequently gaining allies who will allow him first crack at the murderous invader.

Eventually just as they reach a vast inland sea (Lake Ontario) the pressure proves too much and, after killing a mutinous shipmate, Ulfrun attacks Aleta even as Val’s ship heaves into view. The Prince’s men, supplemented by Native allies, ferociously attack but in the melee Ulfrun and two of his subordinates flee deep into the wild green interiorâ€¦

The chase is manic and a final confrontation inevitable. On a mighty cliff vengeance is taken and justice served, but even as Val deals with Ulfrun Aleta has managed to talk his men into surrenderingâ€¦

His passion for slaughter slaked, Valiant convinces the aggrieved Red Men to let all the surviving Raiders board their Dragon-ship and try to return to their homes. In one last betrayal, however, the Vikings raid Gundar’s vessel, stealing food stores and his invaluable sextant before setting off downriver towards Newfoundland. They never made it back to Europeâ€¦

Valiant and Aleta meanwhile have decided to winter in this strange yet inviting country and, with their faithful retinue and new feather-wearing native friends, prepare for the cold season by hunting, fishing, exploring and building a peculiar dwelling of felled logs.

As the sagacious Tribal Chiefs observe the golden woman in their midst a strange notion forms, and when a spectacularly fortuitous event occurs whilst she and Val visit the Great Falls (yep, Niagara) the savage savants decide that she is far more than humanâ€¦

Moreover the tribal women can clearly see that the â€œSun Womanâ€ is with childâ€¦

This particular section is a mesmerising change of pace in the ongoing saga, focusing on paradisiacal, humour-tinged Arcadian splendour rather than constant angst and action, and Foster’s sublime facility for illuminating the wonders of the wilds make these episodes irresistibly beguiling.

With the snows coming, the Tribes decide that the newfangled log-cabin is insufficient to Aleta’s needs and construct a magnificent birch bark Lodge to keep her in perfect comfort whilst her barbarian men can sit and shiver in their draughty wooden house. Even more insultingly, they hold a village ceremony and appoint a forbidding guardian midwife to look after the incipient’ mother’s natal needs.

Although getting increasingly annoyed at their hosts’ interfering hospitality, nobody has the nerve to gainsay the stoic and terrifying Tillicumâ€¦ not even Val himself on the morning she kicks him out of Lodge and indicates that from now on he sleeps with the other menâ€¦

Soon after, the next prince of Thule is successfully delivered and an amazed, astounded – and hung-over – happy father greets his son and proceeds to get in the way and underfoot.

Luckily for him youngest crewman Gunnar has gone missing so, saying farewell to his smiling â€œSun Womanâ€ (and her scowling servants Tillicum and Katwin), Valiant heads off into the snow-covered forests to find him.

The trail takes him to a far distant region which has never seen white skins before, just in time to save the wayward youth from the curious natives, but their hazardous trek back takes quite a while and the ice is melting on the Niagara river before they reach friends once more.

With the cold season gone Valiant and Gundar prepare to make the voyage back to Europe (even though the inventor secretly fears it impossible without his sextant) so Val takes one last opportunity to explore.

Their is precious little food around yet and to provision the ship Val, with a hand-picked squad of Northmen, joins his native pals in a prodigious canoe journey to the Great Lake Trading Center in the Land of the Huronsâ€¦

The great event is another chance to meet and exchange ideas but proceeds at its own laborious pace. Happily Val’s impatience is assuaged once he is introduced to the intriguing, bone-crunching pastime called â€œLacrosseâ€â€¦

Eventually fully-supplied the men return to the Lodge and begin preparations to leave. The little prince – to be christened Arn once they reach Camelot – has grown strong and boisterous: and would not be overly imperilled by a perilous sea voyage, but another delay has suddenly manifested. Many of the tribes that live on the great river which will carry them back to the Atlantic are in revoltâ€¦

Valiant is again outclassed as his golden bride – a master of subtle diplomacy – who devises a cunning, slaughter-free solution to the problem, but her plan almost rebounds as the natives then baulk at the though t of letting their Sun Woman go back beyond the seasâ€¦

Once that obstacle is surmounted the only remaining problem is Tillicum, who refuses to be left behindâ€¦

The homesick crew head into the unknown and their journey becomes an incredible odyssey as only a general sense of the right direction, shipwreck, icy seas and appalling storms batter the lost voyagers before the weary sailors finally fetch up on a familiar shore.

No sooner has Aleta set foot on land for a moment’s solitude than she is spotted by Hibernian king Roary Dhu who fancies making her the next queen of Irelandâ€¦

That difference of opinion leads to appropriate outrage and bloodshed before Valiant and his rapidly diminishing crew head back out to sea, but at last fortune favours them when they are intercepted by Sir Launcelot’s personal ship.

The situation in Camelot is still tense after all these months, but Val’s faithful crew are exhausted and heartsore, so he and his extended family party transfer to the new vessel, leaving his weary followers to return to their own homes in Thule with tidings of his safe return and new sonâ€¦

All Camelot is lifted by the presence of the Prince and his family, but another crisis is brewing and too soon Valiant is heading towards Cornwall to apply his lethal brand of problem-solving to murderous despotic, rebel king Tourien who, with his brutal sons Alp the Strong, Cedric the Dandy and Doorne the Slave Driver, flouts Arthur’s authority, murders his servants and believes himself utterly untouchable and beyond the monarch’s justiceâ€¦

Eschewing a large armed force Valiant decides to dismantle the renegade’s threat from the inside using duplicity, and although largely successful he still has to resort to savage force of arms before the Cornish rat’s nest is finally cleaned outâ€¦

Back in Camelot again the victorious hero’s thoughts turn to his baby’s long-delayed christening. The only possible choice for a Godfather is his boyhood rival and the child’s namesake Prince Arn of Ord but when Val journeys to the outlying principality he receives an almighty shockâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

This volume then concludes with ‘Coloring Valiant’ by in Brian M. Kane: a fascinating feature on Foster’s process to provide colour indications for the printers to work from which includes a huge and beautiful gate-fold fold-out of one of his original water-coloured pages, topped off and balanced by the published page his avid fans finally saw.

Rendered in a simply stunning panorama of glowing visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a non-stop, celebration of the human spirit in action, under torment, enduring duty and enjoying grand romance; mixing glorious historic fantasy with dry wit, broad humour with shatteringly dark violence.

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring, this is a masterpiece of fiction: a never-ending story no one should be without. If you have never experienced the intoxicating grandeur of Foster’s magnum opus these magnificent, lavishly substantial deluxe editions are the very best way to do so and will be your permanent portal to an eye-opening world of wonder and imaginationâ€¦
Prince Valiant Â© 2012 King Features Syndicate. All other articles, content and properties Â© 2012 their respective creators or holders. All rights reserved.

December 29, 2013December 28, 2013

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 5: 1945-1946

By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-484-9

Probably the most successful comic strip fantasy ever produced, Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur launched on February 13^th 1937, a luscious full-colour Sunday page offering a perfect realm adventure and romance. Year by year, in real time, the strip followed the exploits of a refugee boy driven by invaders from his ancestral homeland in Scandinavian Thule who grew up to roam the world and rose to a paramount position amongst the mightiest heroes of fabled Camelot.

As crafted by sublime master draftsman Harold â€œHalâ€ Foster, the princeling matured to clean-limbed manhood in a heady sea of exotic wonderment; visiting far-flung lands and siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes whilst captivating and influencing generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

There have been films, animated series and all manner of books, toys, records, games and collections based on the strip – one of too few to have lasted from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (over 4000 episodes and still forging ever onward) – and even in these declining days of the newspaper narrative strip as a viable medium it still claims over 300 American papers as its home. It has even made it into the very ether with an online edition.

Foster produced the strip, one spectacular page a week until 1971, when he began to ease up on his self-appointed workload. With the syndicate’s approval, after auditioning such notables as Wally Wood and Gray Morrow, Big Ben Bolt illustrator John Cullen Murphy was chosen to draw the feature. Foster continued as writer and layout designer until 1980, after which he fully retired and Murphy’s son assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired (he died a month later on July 2^nd) and the strip has soldiered on under the extremely talented auspices of writer Mark Schultz and artists Gary Gianni and Tom Yeates.

This seventh gloriously oversized full-colour hardback volume reprints the strips from January 7^th 1945 to 29^th December 1946 during which time his celebrated yet rarely seen â€œFooter stripâ€ The Mediaeval Castle was brought to conclusion.

Because of wartime paper rationing, newspapers across the country needed to fill their reduced page counts carefully. To assist their clients the syndicate dictated format-changes to most of their strip properties and Prince Valiant began to appear with an unrelated (and therefore optional) second feature, which individual papers could opt to omit according to their local space considerations.

Apparently the three-panel-per week saga starring the 11^th century family of Lord and Lady Harwood, their young sons Arn and Guy and teenaged daughter Alice – a feudal pot-boiler so popular that it spawned a couple of relatively contemporary book collections – wasn’t dropped by a single paper throughout its 18-month run from April 23^rd 1944 to 25^th November 1945, but Foster was happy to return to one epic per full page once the newsprint restrictions were lifted.

In this volume the strip sees a less than historical Christmas celebration and harsh winter turn into a fruitful spring as the bitter rivalry with neighbour Sir Gregory slowly mends, thanks in no small part to a hostage swap of their first-born sons and Alice’s romantic inclinations towards young and dashing Hubert Gregory. Of course it doesn’t hurt that their quarrelsome fathers have been called away Crusadingâ€¦

P. Craig Russell’s introductory essay ‘Jack Kirby, Hal Foster and Me’ expresses and describes Prince Valiant‘s influence on one of today’s most lauded creators, after which the magnificent main saga then resumes.

What Has Gone Before: Despite his many exploits and triumphs, restless Valiant is haunted by visions of Queen Aleta of The Misty Isles, whom he believes has bewitched him, utterly unaware that she saved his life not once but twice.

Val pays an adventure-filled to his father King Aguar – whom he has restored to overlordship of Thule, eradicating assorted bandit bands, being shipwrecked and cast away before foiling a plot to oust the aged monarch.

Once home, however, a hunting accident almost kills him and, laid up, he plays Cupid for a crippled artist and a Viking’s daughter. Once, barely recovered, he then repulses an invasion by barbarian Finns.

Never a man for peace and indolence, Val then determines to free himself of Aleta’s bewitching spell. Returning to Camelot the Prince enlists the aid of Sir Gawain and they promptly set off across Europe towards Misty Isles. In Germany they are attacked by barbaric Goths, before taking ship in Rome and being shipwrecked. The squire Beric and now amnesiac Val are marooned whilst Gawain is captured for ransom by an ambitious Sicilian noble.

As Beric sacrifices himself to save his Prince’s life, Valiant finally recovers his wits and lands on the extremely hostile Misty Islesâ€¦

Aleta, spellbinder of Val’s nightmares, has recently been ill-used by fate. Never the supernatural monster he believed, she was, however, in dire straits with a flock of suitors and her own courtiers pressing her to marry immediately and produce an heir. So it was with mixed emotions that she saw the boy she had saved burst in, snatch her up and flee the Isles with her as his rather uncomplaining prisoner.

Val, wounded, exhausted but triumphant, now has the cause of all his woes chained and at his mercy as he turns toward Englandâ€¦

After crossing a vast desert with pursuers hard on their heels the couple reach the port of Tobruch, where the local despot tries to buy Val’s hard-won prize. Somehow his hatred towards her has become something else and soon he is protecting her from bandits and numerous other perils.

She returns the favour when he is injured: nursing him through fever and even convincing a band of roving Tuaregs to escort them across Arabia. By the time the couple reach Bengasi Val is again her slave, but only realises it after a recuperative stay in the palace of the Sultan. It’s at that moment that Donardo, Robber Emperor of Saramand strikes, stealing Aleta and setting his band of brigands upon Valiant.

The villain’s biggest mistake is not ensuring Val is dead. Alone and weaponless, the Arthurian knight relentlessly tracks the thieves and deals with them mercilessly before reaching Donardo’s citadel moments too late to exact full vengeance.

Unable to liberate Aleta, he instead foments a full scale war between the Robber Emperor and his neighbours, each as wicked and untrustworthy as Aleta’s abductorâ€¦

Barbaric and time-consuming, the conflict rages, with each king secretly seeking to double-cross his temporary ally. However, whilst Val is riding a tiger by acting as the warlord of the attacking forces, Aleta takes her fate into her own hands and escapes from Donardo’s castle and is (relatively) safe when Saramand is sacked and the Emperor meets his long-delayed fateâ€¦

Leaving the devastated city, Val, reunited with his love and his legendary Singing Sword, travels to Rome, arriving just as Vandal general Genseric attacks the Eternal City. Befriended by Genseric’s employer, the former Empress Eudoxia, Val and Aleta are married there before again trying for England. To do so, they steal a ship from the victorious, blood-crazed and very drunk Vandals, heading to the relative safety of Lyon.

As they quit the vessel, a slave implores Val to free him, and the scribe Amurath joins their party. He is clearly quite taken with Aleta’s new handmaiden Cidiâ€¦

With Rome fallen every vestige of civilisation – such as safe roads – has ended and the party is soon under attack by bandits. These Val can handle, but he has no conception of the peril he faces when Cidi develops a lethally obsessive fascination for himâ€¦

When besotted Amurath stops the handmaiden from poisoning Aleta, Cidi responds by committing suicide and the heartbroken scribe changes. As the newlyweds enter Paris, he schemes to have them shamed and killed by the noble Thane Roth as they stay in his palaceâ€¦

The freed slave had underestimated Aleta however, and the sinister plan failsâ€¦

As Val and Aleta commence the last leg of their journey they meet and employ a tempestuous fire-haired northern titan named Katwin. She will be the Lady’s handmaiden in Englandâ€¦

With little trouble the party reach Camelot where Aleta soon becomes a Court favourite – despite a few hilariously compromising moments before she is formally introduced to Arthur. She soon sets tongues wagging by riding and hunting just like manâ€¦

The scandals continue after Valiant and others are despatched on a mission against the Saxons. Refusing to be separated from her husband, the headstrong Queen of the Misty Isles impersonates a knight and joins the war-partyâ€¦

Soon after, whilst hunting with Val and Gawain, she charms a band of outlaws led by charismatic Hugh-the-Fox when they are all captured for ransom. Brokering a peace and pardon from Arthur she turns the woodsmen into scouts against the ever-encroaching Jutes and Saxons of high king Horsa.

After spectacularly repulsing the invaders with â€œhisâ€ wood scouts, Val’s next adventure pits him against the treacherous Sir Modred, who seeks power by exposing Sir Launcelot‘s relationship with Queen Guinevere. To save the monarch’s shame, Aleta impetuously confesses to being the knight’s actual loverâ€¦ just as Val returns from a mission and gets the wrong ideaâ€¦

The outraged, betrayed Prince flees Camelot and only loyal Katwin is able to bring him to his senses. Reunited and both penitent, the newlyweds decide to spend winter in Thule, where Aguar can get to know his new daughter-in-law. It’s not a happy homecoming, however, and as the barely-rested Val is forced to quell a potential rebellion in Overgaard another brews in the fiefdom of Earl Jon.

Amidst the dour, grim-minded warriors, bright-and-breezy Aleta struggles to win the favour of the King – until she shows him another way to deal with his subjects’ dissatisfactionâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

This volume also includes a stellar glimpse of the storyteller’s commercial endeavours in magazines and advertising in Brian M. Kane’s informative essay ‘Foster the Illustrator’ and a discussion of the strip’s amazing, groundbreaking co-star in ‘Aleta: Water Nymph of the Misty Isles’ to wrap up the full immersion in the myriad splendours of a long-gone ageâ€¦

Rendered in a simply stunning panorama of glowing visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a constantly onrushing rollercoaster of rousing action, exotic adventure and grand romance; mixing glorious human-scaled fantasy with dry wit, broad humour with shatteringly dark violence.

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring, this is a masterpiece of fiction: a never-ending story no one should miss. If you have never experienced the intoxicating grandeur of Foster’s magnum opus these magnificent, lavishly substantial deluxe editions are the best way to do so and will be your portal to an eye-opening world of wonder and imaginationâ€¦
Prince Valiant Â© 2012 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties Â© 2011 their respective creators or holders. All rights reserved.

December 20, 2013December 19, 2013

Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volume 4 1941-1942

By Roy Crane with Leslie Turner (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-677-5

Last Minute Christmas Treat: For anyone who loves the magic of comicsâ€¦10/10

Just in time to be this year’s ultimate Christmas extravaganza, the fourth and final collection of Roy Crane’s groundbreaking, trailblazing Sunday strip completes a quartet of comics compilations no lover of high adventure, action comedy and visual narrative excellence should be without.

Our industry evolved from the monolithic popular newspaper strips of the first four decades of the 20^th century: incredibly powerful circulation-boosting features which could, until relatively recently, dictate success or failure in America’s cutthroat newspaper business.

The daily cartoon stories were immensely addictive for readers and thus regarded as invaluable by publishers who used them as a powerful sales weapon to ensure consumer loyalty, increase sales andÂ maximise profits. Many a pen-pushing scribbler became a millionaire thanks to their ability to draw pictures and spin a yarnâ€¦

With hundreds of 24 hour channels of TV, games, apps and streamed entertainment available now, it’s impossible for us to grasp the overwhelming allure of the comic strip in America and the wider world.

From the Great Depression to the end of World War II, with no domestic television, radio coverage far from comprehensive and movie-shows a weekly treat at best for most people, domestic entertainment was generally garnered from the ubiquitous comic sections of newspapers whose Funny Pages became a universally shared, communal recreation for millions of people. Entire families were well-served by an astounding variety of features of spectacular graphic and narrative quality.

From the outset humour was paramount – that’s why they’re called â€œComicsâ€ – but eventually the anarchic baggy-pants clowning, cruelly raucous, racially stereotyped accent humour and gag-&-stunt cartoons palled, evolving into a thoroughly unique entertainment hybrid that was all about the dynamics of panels and pages.

At the forefront of the transformation was Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs which utilised a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous movie serial antics, fabulous fantasy and old fashioned vaudeville shtick, but also added compellingly witty and authentically true dialogue and a breathtaking sense of day-to-day progression – in short, serial continuity.

What separated him from his contemporaries and competitors – who were making similar advancements in the new art form – was that Crane was blending the fun with stirring, contemporary rollercoaster, implausible heroic action â€¦

Washington Tubbs II began as a typical gag-a-day strip on April 21^st 1924, bearing marked similarities to confirmed family favourite Harold Teen (by Crane’s friend and contemporary Carl Ed). Young Wash was a short, feisty and ambitious shop clerk permanently on the lookout for fortune and fame, but cursed with an eye to the ladies.

Gradually his peripatetic wanderings moved from embarrassing gaffes towards mock-heroics, into full-blown – but light-hearted – action and even rip-roaring, decidedly dangerous hazardous trials, ordeals and exploits.

This graphic evolution eventually demanded the introduction of a he-man sidekick to handle the fights the kid was getting into but seldom won. Thus enter moody, swashbuckling heroic prototype Captain Easy in the landmark episode for May 6^th 1929â€¦

Slap-bang in the middle of a European war, fast-talking, garrulous Tubbs saved a taciturn, down-on-his-luck, enigmatic fellow American from a cell and a perfect partnership was formed. They became inseparable: comrades-in-arms, roving the globe in search of treasure, fighting thugs and rescuing a stunning procession of lovely ladies in assorted modes of distressâ€¦

The edgily capable, utterly dependable â€œSouthern Gen’lemanâ€ was something previously unseen in the Funnies: a raw, square-jawed hunk played dead straight rather than as the mock-heroic buffoon and music hall foil who cluttered strips like Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond.

Moreover Crane’s seductively simple blend of cartoon exuberance combining faux-straight illustration with â€œbigfootâ€ cartooning (here carefully mimicked and even surpassed by his assistant and creative successor Leslie Turner) was a far more accessible and powerful medium for fast-paced adventure story-telling than the beautiful but stagy style favoured by artists like Hal Foster on Tarzan or Prince Valiant and Alex Raymond with Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim.

Tubbs & Easy were much closer to the surreal, absurdly action-packed Popeye or V. T. Hamlin’s comedy Caveman Alley Oop: full of vim, vigour and vinegar and never sombre or serious for longâ€¦

The overall effect was electrifying – and a host of young cartoonists used the strip as their bellwether: Floyd Gottfredson, Milton Caniff, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and especially an impressionably admiring Joe Shusterâ€¦

After several abortive attempts at a Sunday feature starring his little warrior, Crane eventually settled on the burly sidekick as the potential star and Captain Easy launched on July 30^th 1933. The content was unflinching exotic action: blistering two-fisted yarns set before the two buddies’ first meeting.

This fourth and final fabulous volume covers December 22^nd 1940 to July 11^th 1943, bringing to a close Crane’s association with the strip.

He had abandoned the feature to NEA, joining William Randolph Hearst’s King Features to produce Buz Sawyer – a strip he would own and have creative control over. Turner would now continue both the daily Wash Tubbs and Sunday Captain Easy (with his own assistants) until his retirement in 1969.

This blockbuster collection opens with an Introduction from Michael H. Price tracing potential candidates for the surly Southerner in ‘Roy Crane and the Man Who was Easy’ before the increasingly eccentric and comedic final pages, a goodly proportion of which were produced during the critical period just before America finally entered WWII.

The material is significant for one salient point – Tubbs and especially Easy are scarcely seen after hostilities commenced. The reason was obvious: all true patriots wanted to defend their country and the heroes enlistedâ€¦

The hilarious action begins with the reintroduction of comedy foil Lulu Belle: a homely, cigar-chomping hillbilly lady who had been a circus strongwoman and undisputed Female boxing champion for fifteen years.

She had married serial bigamist and all-round bounder C. Hollis Wallis before going home heartbroken to her family, but as they just saw her as meal ticket too she was overjoyed when Tubbs and Easy wandered by the old homestead.

Soon she was accompanying them to Guatemala following an out-of-date advert for workers at a wildcat oil field. Arriving eight years too late the trio are tricked into joining a bandit gang run by the savage and sultry Teresa Grande; a Latin spitfire who’s the most dangerous killer in the country.

She, however, is smitten with Easy’s manly charms, and redeems herself at terrible cost when her gang try to steal sacred relics from a remote village and its ancient temple. Homeless and broke as usual, the plucky Americans then walk to the coast and find passage on a ship run an eccentric who keeps pet tigers. The voyage goes as you’d expect and the trio end up shipwrecked somewhere off Cuba only to be stalked by a wild Wolf Girl: a lost child marooned and grown wild as she matured in the jungleâ€¦

After numerous close shaves and hilarious escapades, Easy captures and partially tames the bestial lass, entrusting her to the care of a vacationing American psychologist, whilst Lulu Belle secures a job as cook in a dingy waterfront dive. It’s there that she meets and is romanced by Easy’s brutal arch-enemy Bull Dawson, and inadvertently lures Wash and the Captain aboard the rogue’s ship.

Brokering a tenuous peace, she convinces her friend to work on the â€œreformedâ€ Dawson’s new job: a jungle reclamation project near the Panama Canal. It’s all a big con, though. The traitorous pirate is actually building a secret landing-field for agents of a certain foreign power and when Wash and Easy uncover the truth the fists and fireworks flyâ€¦

Returned to the USA, the heartbroken and lovelorn Lulu is taken in by the ambitious schemes of a millionaire who somehow finds the unprepossessing lady irresistible. Of course Akron O. Spratly also has plans to extract much-needed rubber for the war-effort from frogsâ€¦

After much outrageous flummery and hilarious misadventure Lulu is left even sadder, if no wiser, just as the now partially civilised Wolf Girl returns. She has escaped her collegiate captors and is running wild in the big city: her immense physical strength and speed causing much unladylike chaos in Gentlemen’s clubs, the circus, sports fields and the Zoo. She also displays an amazing talent for acquiring pretty sparkly items like watches and jewelleryâ€¦

A very different type of girl appears next as obnoxious ten-time married billionaire Horatio Boardman swears off women again and hires Easy to make sure the pledge sticks. Unfortunately, local mobsters are determined to introduce the World’s Eighth Richest Man to Baby Doll, a sexily appealing ingÃ©nue with the rapacious heart of a viperâ€¦

That screwball set-up was good for three months worth of laughs before Lulu again takes centre stage as a boastful beautician is suckered into a bet that he can make any woman so lovely that she will be photographed in the newspapersâ€¦

Reduced to simple straight man by Lulu, Easy soon took third place as the boxing lady accidentally acquired a manic and capacious ostrich named Lucille. The big bird’s astounding appetite led to Lulu becoming the indentured slave of a shady farmer who first had her work off the giant’s gannet’s destructive binges and then sold his guilt-wracked toiler on to other men in need of fields ploughed, clothes washed and chores doneâ€¦ until the outraged Easy came backâ€¦

Stony broke but free again, Lulu then roped Easy in to a culinary affair as she opened a diner in the worst place possible, just as her ne’er-do-well family palmed off a young cousin onto her. Augustus Mervin Gasby was a locust in human form, and his astonishing appetite seemed fit to bust the desperate pair until the former-soldier-of-fortune found something that the shambling oaf could do really wellâ€¦

A panoply of ludicrous sporting endeavours eventually lead Gus into the Navy whilst on the Home Front Easy and Lulu went fishing and subsequently exposed a huge dope-smuggling ring in one of the last rousing adventure episodes, after which the tone switched back to screwball comedy with the re-emergence of C. Hollis Wallis who weaselled into town in search of another woman to marry and fleece.

He wasn’t particularly picky and despite Lulu keeping a weather eye – and occasionally a couple of clenched fists – on him he breezed through a few options before settling upon one eminent prospect who lived in a mansion with many oil-wells attachedâ€¦

He had no idea she was only the cookâ€¦

A secondary lot began mid-stream as a Zoot-suit gangster William â€œTrigger Boyâ€ Scramooch got out of the State Pen and moved into Lulu’s boarding house. Ever prey to poor judgement she took a shine to him whereas for Easy it was disgust at first sightâ€¦

Horning in on Wallis’ potential windfall, Trigger Boy planned a kidnap and tricked Lulu into doing his dirty work. Big mistakeâ€¦

More single page gags followed including a clever patriotic sequence where Lulu buys a big gas-guzzling automobile and leads the nation by her sacrificial example after which Easy makes his last appearance (28^th February 1943) serving to reintroduce another old pal.

Magician, ventriloquist and escapologist Lonny â€œthe Greatâ€ Plunkett pops up again, pranking the cops and again becoming the target of some crooks in dire need of illicit safecracking expertise. Lulu is a natural partner for the sharp guy and together they scotch the hoods’ plan, after which romance blooms again when 600-pound gorilla Roy Boy decides only she can be his ideal mate. When he’s frustrated in his amorous endeavours he smashes out of his cage and rampages like a hairy tornado through townâ€¦

The comic capers conclude on a high humour note with a return to C. Hollis Wallis’ ongoing marital scam, which escalates into brilliant farce before the loathsome little Lothario gets what’s coming to himâ€¦

Ending this final titanic (with pages 380mm highÂ x 270mm wide) luxury hardback tome is a full-colour correction from volume 3, another hand-painted colour-guide strip by Crane and ‘Transition’ by Rick Norwood: an illustrated article explaining just where Tubbs and Easy went when the faded from the pages of Turner’s Sunday pagesâ€¦

Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips is a magnificent undertaking: collecting in a wonderfully accessible form one of the most impressive, funny, exciting and influential comic strips of all time in books that cannot help but inspire awe and affection.

Captain Easy is perhaps the most unsung of all great pulp heroes and his spectacular, rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventures should be just as familiar to lovers of classic adventure as Tintin, Doc Savage, H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quatermain, Carl Bark’s Scrooge McDuck (Tales) or (yes kids) even Indiana Jones.

These astounding masterpieces are quite unforgettable: fanciful, entertaining and utterly irresistible. How can you possibly resist a chance to experience the stories that inspired the giants of action adventure?
Captain Easy strips Â© 2013 United Feature Syndicate, Inc. This edition Â© 2013 Fantagraphics Books, all other material Â© the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

December 19, 2013December 18, 2013

Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volume 3 1938-1940

By Roy Crane with Leslie Turner (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-529-7

The comics industry evolved from newspaper strips and those impossibly successful, circulation-boosting pictorial features were, until relatively recently, utterly ubiquitous, hugely popular with the readers and thus regarded as invaluable by publishers who used them as a powerful sales weapon to guarantee consumer loyalty, increase sales andÂ ensure profits. Many a pen-pushing scribbler became a millionaire thanks to their ability to draw pictures and spin a yarnâ€¦

It’s virtually inconceivable for us today to grasp the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. Before domestic television, with broadcast radio far from universal and movie-shows at best a weekly treat for most folks, entertainment was mostly derived from comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. The Funny Pages were a universally shared recreation for millions; who were well-served by an astounding variety of features of spectacular graphic and narrative quality.

From the outset humour was paramount – that’s why they’re called â€œFunniesâ€ and â€œComicsâ€. Soon the gag-&-stunt beginnings – a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous movie serial antics, fabulous fantasy and old fashioned vaudeville shtick – evolved into a thoroughly unique entertainment hybrid.

Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs combined all of the above with sharp witty dialogue and a breathtaking sense of day-to-day progression, in short serial continuity. What lifted him above all his contemporaries – who were making similar advancements in the new art form – was that Crane was blending the comedy with rousing, rollercoaster action and riotous adventureâ€¦

Debuting on April 21st 1924, Washington Tubbs II began as a typical gag-a-day strip not entirely dissimilar from confirmed family favourite Harold Teen (produced by Crane’s friend and contemporary Carl Ed). Wash was a diminutive but eagerly ambitious young shop clerk, in search of a fortune and with an eye to the ladies.

Gradually, however, he moved into mock-heroics, then through harm-free action into full-blown – but still light-hearted – rip-roaring and decidedly dangerous hazardous trials, ordeals and exploits. This evolution culminated in the savvy introduction of pioneering he-man, moody swashbuckling prototype Captain Easy in the landmark episode for May 6^th 1929.

With his daily continuities increasingly more exotic and thrill-drenched every week, the globe-trotting tiny titan clearly needed a companion who could believably handle the rough stuff, and thus in the middle of a ferocious and crazy European war Tubbs liberated a taciturn and enigmatic fellow American from a jail cell and history was made. Before long the odd couple were inseparable comrades travelling the world: hunting treasure, fighting thugs and rescuing a procession of startlingly attractive damsels in distressâ€¦

The bluff, two-fisted, edgily capable and utterly dependable down-on-his-luck â€œSouthern Gen’lemanâ€ was something previously unseen in the Funnies: a raw, square-jawed hunk played dead straight rather than the mere buffoon or music hall foil of such classic comics as Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond.

Moreover Crane’s seductively simple blend of comic exuberance and compelling semi-serious â€œbigfootâ€ cartooning was a far more accessible and powerful medium for action story-telling than the gorgeous yet static illustrative tableaux style favoured by artists like Hal Foster (who was just starting to draw attention on the new Tarzan Sunday page).

Tubbs & Easy were every bit as exotic and thrilling as the Ape Man but calamitously rattled along like the tumultuous, tempestuous fantastical Popeye: full of vim, vigour and vinegar.

The overall effect was electrifying – as attested to by a close look at the early works of the young cartoonists who followed the strip with avid intensity: Floyd Gottfredson, Milton Caniff, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and especially an impressionably admiring Joe Shusterâ€¦

After a couple of abortive attempts starring his little hero, Crane eventually bowed to the inevitable and created a long-awaited full colour Sunday page dedicated to his increasingly popular vagabond paladin. Captain Easy debuted on July 30^th 1933, in madcap, two-fisted exploits (originally) set prior to his fateful meeting with Tubbs but eventually coalescing with the Monday to Saturday feature.

The third terrific tome in this stupendous 4-volume set covers May 22^nd 1938 to December 15^th 1940 and opens with a Foreword by Rick Norwood which contrasts the storylines in Daily and Sunday iterations whilst re-presenting a number of artist Crane’s illustrated articles on life in Mexico, after which R.C. Harvey’s Introduction provides some historical context and speculates on a potential real-life inspiration for the enigmatic Captain.

There’s also a long-overdue appreciation of the artist’s friend, silent partner and eventual successor in ‘Easy Does itâ€¦And So does Leslie Turner’. Turner, at first hired to provide Crane some time and breathing room from the punishing seven day a week deadlines, increasingly took responsibility for the Sunday strip from 1937 when the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate ordered Crane to drop his beloved experimental full-page designs.

When he first began the Sunday page in 1933 Crane’s creativity went into overdrive: an entire page and sharp vibrant colours to play with had clearly stirred his imagination. The results were wild visual concoctions which achieved a timeless immediacy and made each instalment a unified piece of sequential art. The effect of the pages can be seen in so many comic and strips since – even in the works of such near-contemporaries as HergÃ© and giants-in-waiting like Charles Schulz.

The pages were a clearly as much of joy to create as to read but the commercial argument ran that the company couldn’t sell a feature which client periodicals were unable to cut-up and reformat to suit their own needsâ€¦

In 1943 the former assistant subsequently inherited the black-&-white Dailies after Crane quit NEA to produce his creator-owned Buz Sawyer strip for William Randolph Hearst’s King Features syndicate.

Once Crane was gone, Turner took Wash and Easy into ever more comedic regions, crafting the strip until his retirement in 1969 after which other writers and artists carried the Captain until the feature was ended in 1988.

But that’s largely immaterial as here the superb high-adventuring is seen in its absolute primeâ€¦

As seen in Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volume 2, after a spectacular string of solo adventures the solitary soldier of fortune at last met Tubbs whilst stuck in a jail cell in a Ruritanian European kingdom. He had been framed in an espionage plotâ€¦

Risking life and diminutive limb to save his pal, Wash also rescued sultry spitfire Ruby Dallas who promptly entangled them in her own unfortunate tale of woe. Witness to a murder in America, she had been on the run ever since because the killer was a prominent millionaire with too much to loseâ€¦

Once the trio had escaped murderous cutthroats, slavers and assassins they soon settled his hash and the story picks up here with the boys again looking for a job and passage home. Opportunity knocks in the form of an animal collector in need of a crew, but when his tiger gets loose on the boat everybody jumps overboard.

The lads wash up on the isolated island of Koolyhow where an American entomologist and his female assistant are hunting the legendary doodle-bug. Signing on as helpers they become embroiled in the burgeoning madness gripping local governor Sergeant Major Gaspe Shalayli, and further complicating matters is a lost temple full of ancient treasures and a cute furry creature called a Swink.

The gluttonous little ant-eater has taken a shine to Wash and has a capacity for finding trouble or creating chaos exponentially greater than his new owner’sâ€¦

With bugs and Swink – christened â€œBennieâ€ – the triumphant Americans reach Singapore only to be targeted by grifters Sadie and Dipper who believe their latest marks have kept the temple jewels (actually confiscated by the local government). Tricking their way onto the flying boat carrying Wash and Easy home, they cause a crash which leaves Sadie and our heroes stranded on a desolate island inhabited by the extremely civilised descendents of piratical bandits.

The place is a utopian paradise with only one rule: nobody ever leavesâ€¦

Of course Easy, Wash and Bennie do: in a stolen sail boat which promptly starts sinking, leaving the voyagers in dire straits. They’re almost saved by a passing vessel but the pirates aboard the Typhoon gleefully ignore their plight and sail on…

Frantically bailing, they reach land just as Cap’n Robbins sinks and plunders a trading ship. Again in hot water, Wash and Easy rescue Mona Milson – stranded survivor of a previous shipwrecking – and return her to her grateful father on yet another Pacific paradise, only to find the furious Robbins waiting for them.

He’s just agreed to transport the old gent, his family and, most importantly, his life savings to Honoluluâ€¦

Unable to dissuade old man Milson, the boys book passage with him and Mona and, after days of outrageous hijinks as the voracious and disaster-prone Bennie makes life hell for the pirates, expose and capture the villains.

With reward money in their pockets Wash and Easy (and the Swink) finally get back to America and begin a search for gainful employment which highlights a return to gag-filled short stories.

The ever-hungry Swink is a popular sensation, prompting his owners to buy a travelling medicine show truck, and whilst touring the country they discover that the elixir they’re peddling has genuine restorative powers as they encounter a succession of conmen, women, thieves, scheming women, bandits and determinedly marriage-minded women – some of whom even steal the fabulous, potentially valuable Bennie. A Martyr to crazy, hungry critters Wash improbably inherits a hippo named Kittie.

It’s just one disaster after anotherâ€¦

Feeling they’ve outlived their welcome Wash and Easy decide to go adventuring again, accidentally ending up in Peru, where dauntless Mary Lancaster is searching for her lost father. She enlists their help to enter the forbidden Lost Canyon region where they discover not only the missing archaeologist but a lost race of Indians who still practise human sacrificeâ€¦

The humans only escape by trading their lives for Bennie, but as they make their forlorn way back to civilisation the indomitable Swink catches up to them, having proved too smart for the Andean nativesâ€¦

Packing the Lancasters off home, but too short of funds to accompany them, our heroes are soon clapped in jail for vagrancy where they meet magician, ventriloquist and escapologist â€œthe Great Plunkettâ€: an inveterate prankster who joins them as stowaways on a steamer back to the USA.

Once there, Plunkett’s gift for opening safes makes him a target for opportunistic mobsters – until his new friends step inâ€¦

Big changes were underway at this time and Turner was increasingly yielding the focus on his titular stars to explore an array of new and returning supporting characters – presumably to allow Crane more leeway, if not exclusivity – on Tubbs and Easy. However with the instalment for 21^st January 1940, the boys were back, as Easy became a freelance spy-hunter and crimebuster in a nation progressively, inevitably marching towards war. The tone was still light and humorous, but the writing was on the wallâ€¦

After stopping spies he tracked down escaped convict Killer Beck, exposed the murder of a Chinese servant and captured America’s Most Wanted female-impersonating conman.

That led to his being hired to safeguard a new aviation weapon from a veritable army of foreign agents and the diabolical Mata Hari Z-1.

Defeating her led to Easy and Wash being marooned in a vast jungle of cactus in the Western American desert where they stumbled onto a gang of ruthless counterfeiters before tackling train-stealing gunrunners in Mexico.

More short yarns bracket a concerted re-lightening of mood as the lads are hired by arrogant, flighty heiress Honey Darling – who wants to be a movie star – and uses them to stage dangerous, headline-grabbing stunts, before the boys are hired to recover a yacht and rescue the passengers after he Captain loses control of it in a rigged card gameâ€¦

The mission goes slightly awry and leaves the boys, heiress Ginger Nelson, her chaperone aunt and some of the more nefarious crew members shipwrecked. Amongst the saved luggage is the 12^th biggest diamond in the world.

â€¦And then the murders start happeningâ€¦

Nevertheless Easy and Tubbs save the day again, but when they return stateside the surly Soldier of Fortune is made the basis of a bet between two wealthy men. One is wagering that any man can be made afraid and the other believes Easy disproves the notion.

Of course neither has asked him to participate, and after the hero is tricked into a haunted house the trouble really begins as the mountaintop dwelling is invaded by bandits wanting their perfect hideout backâ€¦

After discovering the only thing that frightens Easy, this compelling cartoon carnival ends with the heartwarming tale of newsboy Buddie Burns who turns his passion for detecting into a successful anti-crime campaignâ€¦ with a little help from a certain Southern Gen’lemanâ€¦

Also included are many examples of original artwork and this colossal luxury hardback compilation (pages 380 x 270mm) even includes an extra colour tear-sheet plus a full hand-coloured page by Crane, used as a guide by the print processors to produce the final flat-hued instalments

This volume heralds the irrepressible humour which Turner would increasing bring into the feature and the stories – although still action adventures – abound with breezy, light-hearted banter, outrageous situations, hilarious slapstick and outright farce – a sure-fire formula modern cinema directors still plunder to this day.

Captain Easy was the grandfather of Indiana Jones, Flynn (the Librarian) Carsen and Jack (Romancing the Stone) Cotton and clearly set the benchmark for all of them. Happily Crane’s rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventure trailblazer fell into hands every bit as talented and the huge pages in this stupendous chronicle, crackling with fun and excitement, provide the perfect stage from which to absorb and enjoy the classic tale-telling of another sublime master raconteur.

This is storytelling of impeccable quality: unforgettable, spectacular and utterly irresistible. These tales rank alongside the best of HergÃ©, Tezuka, Toth and Kirby and unarguably fed the imaginations of them all as they still should for today’s comics creators. Now that you have the chance to experience the strips that inspired the giants of our art form, how can you possibly resist?
Captain Easy strips Â© 2012 United Feature Syndicate, Inc. This edition Â© 2012 Fantagraphics Books, all other material Â© the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

November 30, 2013November 29, 2013

The Broons Annual 2014

By Morris Heggie & Peter Davidson (DC Thomson)
ISBN: 978-1-84535-506-7

Last-Minute Christmas Dilemmas Solved: How the Holidays Have To Be celebratedâ€¦ 10/10

The Broons is one of the longest running newspaper strips in British history, having run almost continuously in Scottish newspaper The Sunday Post since its first amazing appearance in the March 8^th 1936 edition: the same issue which launched mischievous wee laddie Oor Wullie.

Both the boisterous boy and the copiously populated, engaging working class family comedy under discussion here were created by journalist, writer and Editor Robert Duncan Low with DC Thomson’s greatest artist Dudley D. Watkins and, once the strips began to be collected in reprint editions as Seasonal annuals, those books alternated stars and years right up to the present day.

This Christmas it’s a Broons year and the latest compilation is just as packed with all-ages fun, rambunctious slapstick hilarity and comfortably gentle domestic warmth, courtesy of current custodians of mirth Morris Heggie & Peter Davison, scrupulously continuing the tradition of inviting, resplendent and amusing Scots cultural dominationâ€¦

Low (1895-1980) began at DC Thomson as a journalist, rising to the position 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 bright idea was the â€œFun Sectionâ€: an 8-page pull-out comicstrip supplement for the Sunday Post.

The clear stars were The Broons and Oor Wullie and Low’s most brilliant notion was to devise both as comedies 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 publisher’s next great leap.

In December 1937 Low launched the first DC Thomson comic weekly. The Dandy was followed by The Beano in 1938 and early-reading title The Magic Comic in 1939. War-time paper shortages and rationing curtailed the strip periodical revolution, and it was 1953 before the next wave of cartoon capers releases. The Topper started the ball rolling again in the same year that Low & Ken Reid created Roger the Dodger for The Beanoâ€¦

Low’s greatest advantage was his prolific illustrator Dudley Dexter Watkins, whose style – more than any other – shaped the look of DC Thompson’s comics 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 new Fun Section and, without missing a beat, Watkins later added The Dandy‘s Desperate Dan to his workload in 1937 and The Beano‘s placidly outrageous Lord Snooty seven months later.

Watkins soldiered on for decades, drawing some of the most lavishly lifelike and winningly hilarious strips in comics 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, so his loss was a colossal blow to the company. DC Thomson reprinted old episodes of both strips in The Sunday Post and the Annuals for seven years before a replacement was found whilst The Dandy reran Watkins’ Desperate Dan stories for twice that length of time.

Instantly an undeniable, rock solid facet of Scots popular culture, the first Broons Annual (technically Bi-Annual) appeared in 1939, alternating with Oor Wullie right up to the present day, and for millions of readers the year doesn’t end well without them.

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 and an ideal location in which to tell gags and relate events to sentimental Scots wherever they might actually be residing.

As is always the case the adamant, unswerving cornerstone of the 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, pretty Maggie, brainy Horace, mischievous twins Eck and the unnamed â€œither aneâ€ plus the wee toddler referred to only as â€œThe Bairnâ€.

Not generally in residence but always hanging around is gruffly patriarchal buffoon Granpaw – a constant addition and 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 listenâ€¦?

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 countryside and its denizens, fish, fowl and farm-grownâ€¦

Although there’s still a wealth of older editions still available and many great spin-offs and merchandise such as The Broons Days Oot Travel Guide or Maw Broon’s Cookbook, there’s no lack of quality in modern annuals and always something worth seeing in these grand tomes.

This year’s model (by Heggie & Davidson) comprises a softcover monochrome collection featuring 96 pages of gentle gags, family frolics and gloriously slapstick shenanigans including plumbing disasters, fireplace fiascos, food foolishness, dating dilemmas, appliance atrocities, fashion freak-outs, exercise exploits and childish pranks by young and old alikeâ€¦

In the town there’s a wealth of traditional problems like getting girls into Burns Night suppers, sporting specialities, pimples and plooks, grievances and dalliances with good friends, nosy neighbours and total strangers, confrontations with the constabulary and shopping shocks.

Moreover in the two years worth of strips included here all the usual holidays are honoured: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas and Hogmanay. Musical moments and pet perils abound and there are even a few landmark developments such as Grandpaw’s secret lady-friend Annieâ€¦

And whilst in the country the hunt for cheap Christmas trees cause grief, hiking gets heavy, lost strangers are welcomed, family members are temporarily mislaid, animals uproariously intrude, gardens are tended – and abused – and the legendary Scottish weather takes full advantage of the timorous mortals subjected to itâ€¦

This comfortable, nigh-unchanging bastion of happy certainty and convivial celebration of a mythic (almost) lost life and time persists in these pages despite the grudging, sneaky infiltration of such hedonistic, technological and sociological interlopers as flat-screen TVs, mobile phones, dating websites and Winnebagoes, but at least you can be certain that whenever the tawdry present does intrude on proceedings, the happy multitude of the Clan Broon can be relied upon to break, lose or rubbish the offending articleâ€¦

October 27, 2013November 2, 2013

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

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

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Ideal for anybody who ever dreamed or wonderedâ€¦ 10/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Although he has no arms, armour, steed or money, Valiant swears that he will become a Knightâ€¦

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Continuedâ€¦

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

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

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

October 22, 2013

Treasury of Mini Comics volume 1

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

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

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

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

Just by way of definition: most mini comics were home-produced pamphlets using borrowed – or when necessary paid for – print processes. The most popular format was an 8Â½ x 11inch sheet, folded twice, and printed at local copy-shops (or clandestinely churned out on school/work repro systems like early Xerox, Photostat, Mimeo or Spirit Banda machines) on letter – or any other sized – paper.

Because they weren’t big, they were called â€œmini commixâ€. Inspired, no?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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