Category: Crime Comics

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Bernet


By Jordi Bernet & various, edited by Manual Auad (Auad Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-96693-812-8 (HB)

In anticipation of the impending Legend Testers collection from Rebellion Studios expected next week, here’s a glance at a translated treat from a bygone era confirming why you should adore this graphic genius as much as I do. It’s well worth the search and I’ll be cribbing from it heavily when I get around to the turbulent time troubleshooters themselves…

When you’re a life-long thrill-starved kid enchanted by comics, the first stage of development is slavishly absorbing everything good, bad and indifferent. Then comes the moment that you see subtle nuances which inexplicably makes some features favourites whilst others become simply filler.

I first recognised Jordi Bernet’s work on UK thriller serial The Legend Testers… and by “recognised” I mean the very moment I first discerned that somebody actually drew the stuff I was mesmerised by, and that it was better than the stuff either side of it. This was 1966 when British comics were mostly monochrome and never had signatures or credits, so it was years before I knew who had sparked my interest.

Jordi Bernet Cussó was born in Barcelona in 1944, son of a prominent, successful humour cartoonist. When his father died suddenly Jordi, aged 15, took over his father’s strip Doña Urraca (Mrs. Magpie). A huge fan of Alex Raymond, Hal Foster and especially expressionist genius Milton Caniff, Jordi yearned for less restrictive horizons and left Spain in the early 1960s and moved into dramatic storytelling.

He worked for Belgium’s Le Journal de Spirou, and Germany’s Pip and Primo, before finding a home in British weeklies. Bernet worked for UK publishers between 1964 and 1967, and as well as the Odhams/Fleetway/IPC anthologies Smash, Tiger and War Picture Library, also produced superb material for DC Thomson’s Victor and Hornet. He even illustrated a Gardner Fox horror short for Marvel’s Vampire Tales #1 in 1973, but mainstream America was generally denied his mastery (other than a few translated Torpedo volumes and a Batman short story) until the 21st century reincarnation of Jonah Hex which he truly made his own…

His most famous strips include thrillers Dan Lacombe (written by his uncle Miguel Cussó), Paul Foran (scripted by José Larraz) the saucy Wat 69 and spectacular post-apocalyptic barbarian epic Andrax (both with uncle Cussó again). When fascist dictator Franco died, Bernet returned to Spain and began working for Cimoc, Creepy and Metropol, collaborating with Antonio Segura on the sexy adult fantasy Sarvan and the dystopian SF black comedy Kraken, and with Enrique Sánchez Abuli on the gangster and adult themes tales that have made him one of the world’s most honoured artists. These culminated on the incredibly successful crime saga Torpedo 1936.

This magnificent commemoration of his career thus far spans those years when he first echoed his father’s style through to the sleek minimalist, chiaroscuric, emphatic line economy that drills into readers hindbrains like hot lead from a smoking 45. Also on view, as well as the violence there’s ample example of his sly, witty (and just as hot!) sex comedy material. Bernet is an absolute master of the female form and his adult material – created with Carlos Trillo – such as Custer, Clara De Noche and Cicca is truly remarkable and unforgettable.

This glorious deluxe hardback gathers together a vast quantity of covers; book illustrations; sketches; drawings, pin-ups &studies; advertising work and that Batman stuff, with a separate chapter on Bernet’s Beauties, a biography (which could, I must admit, have done with one last proof-read before going to press) and full checklisting of his works and awards. There are heartfelt artistic contributions and tributes from some of his vast legion of fans: Will Eisner, Joe Kubert, Jordi Langaron, Carlos Nine, Josep M. Bea, Luca Biagnini, Al Dellinges, Josep Toutain, Eduardo Risso, Horacio Altuna, Carlos Gimenez, Sergio Aragonés, Carlos Trillo, Juan Gimenez and Hobie MacQuarrie, but the true delights here are the 16 complete stories – Torpedo 1936, Sarvan, Custer, Clara De Noche and Kraken – as well as westerns, war stories, comedies and crime thrillers.

This is an incredible tribute to an incredible creator, and one no artist with professional aspirations can afford to miss, but parents be warned – there’s lots of nudity and violence beautifully depicted here – so be sure to read it yourselves first. Just in case…
All art and characters © 2009 their respective copyright holders. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1955, sleek design master/airbrush aviation nut Ken Steacy was born, and we lost master craftsmen Victor (Redbeard, Buck Danny) Hubinon in 1979 and Bernard Krigstein in 1990. If you read nothing else by “Krig”, go find “Master Race” (Impact Comics #1, April 1955) and learn something important…

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The Phantom: The Complete Newspaper Dailies volume 1 1936-1937


By Lee Falk & Ray Moore: introduction by Ron Goulart (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-932563-41-5 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are plenty of comics-significant anniversaries this year, and this guy is probably right at the top of the birthday cake. As next month sees his 90th anniversary here’s tasty reminder of why he is considered one of our industry’s landmark figures.

For such a long-lived, influential series, in terms of compendia or graphic novel collections, The Phantom has been very poorly served by the English language market (except in Australia where he has always been accorded the status of a pop culture god). Numerous companies have sought to collect the strips – one of the longest continually running adventure serials in publishing history – but in no systematic or chronological order and never with any sustained success. At least the former issue began to be rectified with this initial curated collection from Archival specialists Hermes Press. This particular edition is a lovely large hardback (albeit also available in digital formats), printed in landscape format, displaying two days strip per page in black & white with ancillary features and articles in dazzling colour where required.

Born Leon Harrison Gross, Lee Falk created the Jungle Avenger at the request of his King Features Syndicate employers who were already making history, public headway and loads of money with his first strip sensation Mandrake the Magician. Although technically not the first ever costumed champion in comics, The Phantom’s instant popularity made him the prototype paladin as he was the first to wear a skin-tight body-stocking and have a mask with opaque eye-slits…

“The Ghost Who Walks” debuted on February 17th 1936 in an extended sequence pitting him against an ancient global confederation of pirates. Falk wrote and drew the daily strip for the first two weeks before handing over illustration to artist Ray Moore. A spectacular and hugely influential Sunday feature began in May 1939. In a text feature stuffed with sumptuous visual goodies like movie posters; covers for comics, Feature and Little Big Books plus many kinds of merchandise, Ron Goulart’s eruditely enticing ‘Introduction: Enter the Ghost Who Walks’ tells all you need to know about the character’s creation before the vintage magic begins with ‘Chapter 1: The Singh Brotherhood’.

American adventurer Diane Palmer returns to the USA by sea, carrying a most valuable secret making her the target of mobsters, sleazy society ne’er-do-wells and exotic cultists. Thankfully, she seems to have also attracted an enigmatic guardian angel who calls himself the Phantom…

Successive attacks and assaults endanger the dashing debutante, and she learns an ancient brotherhood of ruthless piratical thieves wants her secret, but that they have been opposed for centuries by one man. Kidnapped and held hostage at the bottom of the sea, Diana is saved by the mystery man who naturally falls in love and eventually shares an incredible history with her…

In the 17th century a British sailor survived an attack by pirates, and – washing ashore on the African coast – swore on the skull of his murdered father to dedicate his life and that of his descendants to destroying all pirates and criminals. The Phantom fights crime and injustice from a base deep in the jungles of Bengali, and throughout Africa is known as the Ghost Who Walks. His unchanging appearance and unswerving war against injustice have led to him being considered an immortal avenger by the credulous and the wicked. Down the decades, one hero after another has fought and died in an unbroken family line, and the latest wearer of the mask, indistinguishable from the first, continues the never-ending battle. And he’s looking to extend the line and the legend…

In the meantime, however, there’s the slight problem of Emperor of Evil Kabai Singh and his superstitious armies to deal with…

‘Chapter 2: The Sky Band’ (originally published from 9th November 1936 to April 10th 1937) finds the mystery avenger caught in love’s old game as a potential rival for Diana’s affections materialises in the rather stuffy form of career soldier Captain Meville Horton: a decent, honourable man who sadly knows when he’s outmatched, unwanted and in the way. Mistakenly determined to do the right thing too, our masked mystery man concentrates on destroying a squadron of thieving aviators targeting the burgeoning sky clipper trade: airborne bandits raiding passenger planes and airships throughout the orient. Initial efforts infuriatingly lead to the Phantom’s arrest: implicated in the sky pirates’ crimes, before escaping from police custody with the aid of his devoted “pygmy witch doctor” Guran and faithful Bandar tribe allies, he’s soon hot on the trail of the real mastermind…

Upon infiltrating their base, he discovers the airborne brigands are all women, and that his manly charms have driven a lethal wedge between the deadly commander and her ambitious second in command Sala…

A patient plaything of the manic Baroness, The Phantom eventually turns the tide not by force but by batting his invisible eyes and exerting his masculine wiles upon the hot-blooded – if certifiably psychopathic – harridan, unaware until too late that his own beloved, true-blue Diana is watching. When she then sets a trap for the Sky Band, it triggers civil war in the gang, a brutal clash with the British army and the seeming end of our hero, triggering Diana’s despondent decision to return alone to America…

‘Chapter 3: The Diamond Hunters’ opened on April 12th 1936 and revealed how the best laid plans can go awry. In Llongo territory, white prospectors Smiley and Hill unearth rich diamond fields but cannot convince or induce local tribes to grant them mineral rights to the gems they consider worthless. Like most indigenous Africans, they’re content to live comfortably under the “Phantom’s Peace” and it takes all the miners’ guile – including kidnapping a neighbouring chief’s daughter and framing the Llongo; gunrunning and claiming the Ghost Who Walks has died – to set the contented residents at each other’s throats. Recovering from wounds, the Phantom is slow to act, but when he does his actions are decisive and unforgettable…

With the plot foiled and peace restored, Smiley flees, only to encounter a returned Diana who has acted on news that her man still lives. Seeing a chance for revenge and profit, Smiley kidnaps “the Phantom’s girl”, provoking his being shunned by all who live in the region, a deadly pursuit and spectacular last-minute rescue. Smiley’s biggest and last mistake is reaching the coast and joining up with a band of seagoing pirates…

At least he is the catalyst for Diana and The Ghost finally addressing their romantic issues…

To Be Continued…

‘Afterword: For Those Who Came in Late…’ then sees editor Ed Rhoades offer his own thoughts on the strip’s achievements and accomplishments.

Stuffed with chases, assorted fights, torture, blood & thunder antics, daredevil stunts and many a misapprehension and coincidence – police and government authorities clearly having a hard time believing a pistol-packing masked man with a pet wolf might not be a bad egg – this a pure enthralling excitement that still packs a punch and plenty of sly laughs.
© 2010 King Features Syndicate, Inc.: ® Hearst Holdings, Inc.; reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Today in 1907, astounding illustrator Bruno (Doom Patrol, Teen Titans) Premiani was born, as was artist and inker Chic (Nemesis, Batman, all the best 1960s Thor, X-Men and FF stories) Stone in 1923.

In 1975 Archie co-creator Bob Montana died; and the day is infamous in the UK as the last day Buster was published. Kidding. Nobody noticed because we’d all stopped buying it. We are really sorry now though…

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Showcase Presents Robin The Boy Wonder


By E. Nelson Bridwell, Ed Hamilton, John Broome, Leo Dorfman, Gardner F. Fox, Cary Bates, Mike Friedrich, Frank Robbins, Denny O’Neil, Bob Haney, Elliot Maggin, Bob Rozakis, Ross Andru, Curt Swan, Sheldon Moldoff, Pete Costanza, Chic Stone, Gil Kane, Irv Novick, Murphy Anderson, Dick Dillin, Rich Buckler, Bob Brown, Mike Grell, A. Martinez Al Milgrom & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1676-4 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As previously mentioned, there are a lot of comics anniversaries occurring in this otherwise dreadful year. The ultimate and original sidekick is probably the most significant of DC’s representatives, and indeed there have been a few intriguing collections released to celebrate the occasion. This one, however, is probably the best but remains criminally out of print, if not utterly unavailable…

Robin the Boy Wonder debuted in Detective Comics #38 (cover dated April 1940 and on sale from March 6th). Co-created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger & Jerry Robinson, he was a juvenile circus acrobat whose parents were murdered by a mob boss. The story of how Batman took the orphaned Dick Grayson under his scalloped wing and trained him to fight crime has been told, retold and revised many times over the decades and still regularly undergoes tweaking to this day.

Grayson fought beside Batman until 1970 when, as an indicator of those turbulent times, he flew the nest, becoming a Teen Wonder college student. His creation as a junior hero for younger readers to identify with has inspired an incomprehensible number of costumed sidekicks and kid crusaders, and Grayson continued in similar innovative vein for the older, more worldly-wise readership of America’s increasingly rebellious youth culture.

The first Robin even had his own solo series in Star Spangled Comics from 1947 to 1952, a solo spot in the back of Detective Comics from the end of the 1960s – a position he alternated and shared with Batgirl – and a starring feature in anthology comic Batman Family. During the 1980s he led the New Teen Titans, initially in his original costumed identity but eventually in the reinvented guise of Nightwing, all while re-establishing a (somewhat turbulent) working relationship with his masked mentor.

This broad ranging easy on the eye monochrome compilation covers the period from Julie Schwartz’s captivating reinvigoration of the Dynamic Duo in 1964 until 1975 with Robin-related stories and material from Batman #184, 192, 202, 213, 227, 229-231, 234-236, 239-242, 244-246, 248-250, 252, 254 and portions of 217; Detective Comics #342, 386, 390-391, 394-395, 398-403, 445, 447, 450-251; World’s Finest Comics #141, 147, 195, 200; Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #91, 111, 130 and Justice League of America #91-92.

The wonderment begins with the lead story from Batman #213 (July-August 1969) – a 30th Anniversary reprint Giant – which featured an all-new retelling of ‘The Origin of Robin’ courtesy of E. Nelson Bridwell, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, perfectly reinterpreting that epochal event for the Vietnam generation. After that, the tales proceed in (more or less) chronological order, covering episodes where Robin took centre-stage.

First up is ‘The Olsen-Robin Team versus… the Superman-Batman Team!’ (from World’s Finest #141, May 1964, by Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan & George Klein). In a stirring blend of science fiction thriller and crime caper, the underappreciated sidekicks fake their own deaths to undertake a secret mission even their adult partners must remain unaware of – for the very best of reasons of course. A sequel from WF #147 (February 1965) delivers an engaging drama of youth-in-revolt as ‘The New Terrific Team!’ quit their assistant roles to strike out on their disgruntled own. Naturally there’s a perfectly reasonable – if incredible – reason here, too…

Detective Comics #342 (August 1965) featured ‘The Midnight Raid of the Robin Gang!’ by John Broome, Sheldon Moldoff & Joe Giella, wherein the Boy Wonder joins a youthful gang of costumed criminals, after which Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #91 (March 1966) delivers ‘The Dragon Delinquent!’ (Leo Dorfman & Pete Costanza) as Robin and the cub reporter, unknown to each other, both infiltrate the same biker gang with potentially fatal consequences.

‘The Boy Wonder’s Boo-Boo Patrol!’ – originally a back-up in Batman #184 (September 1966, Gardner Fox, Chic Stone & Sid Greene), shows the daring lad’s star-potential in a clever tale of thespian skulduggery and classic conundrum solving, before ‘Dick Grayson’s Secret Guardian!’ (Batman #192, June 1967, Fox, Moldoff & Giella) depicts his physical prowess in one of comic books’ first instances of the exo-skeletal augmentation gimmick.

‘Jimmy Olsen, Boy Wonder!’ (SPJO #111, June 1968, by Cary Bates & Costanza) finds the reporter trying to prove his covert skills by convincing the Gotham Guardian that he was actually Robin, whilst that same month in Batman #203 the genuine article tackles the ‘Menace of the Motorcycle Marauders!’ (Mike Friedrich, Stone & Giella) consequently learning a salutary lesson in the price of responsibility…

Cover-dated April 1969, Detective Comics #386 featured the Boy Wonder’s first solo back-up in what was to become his semi-regular spot for years. ‘The Teen-Age Gap!’ (as described by Friedrich, Andru & Esposito) depicts a High School Barn Dance which only narrowly escapes becoming a riot thanks to his diligent intervention, after which Gil Kane & Murphy Anderson assume the art-chores with #390’s ‘Countdown to Chaos!’ (August 1969), bringing the series stunningly alive. Friedrich concocted a canny tale of corruption and kidnapping leading to a paralysing city ‘Strike!’ for the Caped kid to spectacularly expose and foil in the following issue.

Batman #217 (December 1969) was a landmark in the character’s long history as Dick leaves home to attend Hudson University. Only the pertinent portion from ‘One Bullet Too Many!’ by Frank Robbins, Irv Novick & Dick Giordano is included here, closely followed by ‘Strike… Whilst the Campus is Hot’ (Detective #394 from the same month, by Robbins, Kane & Anderson) as the callow freshman stumbles into a campus riot organised by criminals and radical activists, forcing the now Teen Wonder to ‘Drop Out… or Drop Dead!‘ to stop the seditious scheme…

Detective #398-399 (April & May 1970) ran a 2-part spy-thriller with Vince Colletta replacing Anderson as inker. ‘Moon-Struck’ has lunar rock samples borrowed from NASA apparently causing a plague among Hudson’s students until Robin exposes a Soviet scheme to sabotage the Space Program in ‘Panic by Moonglow’. The 400th anniversary issue (June 1970) finally teamed the Teen Wonder with his alternating back-up star in ‘A Burial For Batgirl!’ (Denny O’Neil, Kane & Colletta): a college-based murder mystery which again heavily references the political and social unrest then plaguing US campuses, but which still finds space to be smart and action-packed as well as topical, before chilling conclusion ‘Midnight is the Dying Hour!’ wraps up the saga.

Never afraid to repeat a good idea, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #130 (July 1970) sees Bob Haney & Murphy Anderson detail the exploits of ‘Olsen the Teen Wonder!’ as the boy reporter again apes Batman’s buddy – this time to infiltrate an underworld newspaper – whilst World’s Finest #195 (August 1970) finds Jimmy & Robin targeted for murder by the Mafia in ‘Dig Now, Die Later!’ by Haney, Andru & Esposito. Simultaneously in DC #402 ‘My Place in the Sun’ (Friedrich, Kane & Colletta), embroils Grayson and fellow Teen Titan Roy Speedy Harper in a crisis of social conscience, before our scarce-bearded hero wraps up his Detective run with corking crime-busting caper ‘Break-Out’ in the September issue.

Robin’s romps transferred to the back of Batman, beginning with #227 (December 1970) and ‘Help Me – I Think I’m Dead!’ (Friedrich, Novick & Esposito) as ecological awareness and penny-pinching Big Business catastrophically collide on the campus, beginning an extended epic seeing the Teen Thunderbolt explore communes, alternative cultures and the burgeoning spiritual New Age fads of the day. Inked by Frank Giacoia ‘Temperature Boiling… and Rising!’ (#229, February 1971) continues the politically-charged drama, albeit uncomfortably interrupted by a trenchant fantasy team-up with Superman sparked when the Man of Steel attempts to halt a violent campus clash between students and National Guard.

Crafted by Friedrich, Dick Dillin & Giella, ‘Prisoners of the Immortal World!’ (WFC #200, February 1971), has brothers on opposite sides of the teen scene abducted with Robin & Superman to a distant planet where undying vampiric aliens wage eternal war on each other. A return to more pedestrian perils in Batman #230 (March 1971) sees ‘Danger Comes A-Looking!’ for our young hero in the form of a gang of right-wing, anti-protester jocks and a deluded friend who prefers bombs to brotherhood, courtesy of Friedrich, Novick & Dick Giordano. ‘Wiped Out!’ (#231, May 1971) then offers an eye-popping end to the jock gang whilst #234 sees a clever road-trip tale in ‘Vengeance for a Cop!’, when a campus guard is gunned down forcing Robin to track the only suspect to a commune. ‘The Outcast Society’ has its own unique system of justice, but eventually the shooter is apprehended in the cataclysmic ‘Rain Fire!’ (#235 & 236 respectively).

The Collective experience blooms into psychedelic and psionic strangeness in #239 as ‘Soul-Pit’ (illustrated by new penciller Rich Buckler) finds Grayson’s would-be girlfriend, “Jesus-freaks” and runaway kids all sucked into a telepathic duel between a father and son, played out in the ‘Theatre of the Mind!’ before exposing the ‘Secret of the Psychic Siren!’ and culminating in a lethal clash with a clandestine cult in ‘Death-Point!’ (Batman#242, June 1972). After that eerie epic we slip back a year to peruse the Teen Wonder’s participation in one of the hallowed JLA/JSA summer team-ups, beginning in Justice League of America #91 (August 1971) and ‘Earth… the Monster-Maker!’, as Supermen, Flashes, Green Lanterns, Atoms and a brace of Hawkmen from two separate Realities simultaneously and ineffectually battle an alien boy and his symbiotically-linked dog (sort of) on almost identical planets a universe apart. There’s still time to painfully patronise the Robins of both until ‘Solomon Grundy… the One and Only!’ gives everyone a brutal but ultimately life-saving lesson on acceptance, togetherness, youthful optimism and lateral thinking…

Elliot Maggin, Novick & Giordano then set ‘The Teen-Age Trap!’ (Batman#244, September 1972), with Grayson mentoring troubled kids – and finding plenty of troublemakers his own age – whilst ‘Who Stole the Gift from Nowhere!’ is a delightful old-fashioned change-of-pace mystery yarn. However, ‘How Many Ways Can a Robin Die?’ by Robbins, Novick, Dillin & Giordano (Batman #246, December 1972) is actually a Dark Knight story with Teen Wonder helpless hostage throughout, whereas #248 opens another run of solo stories with ‘The Immortals of Usen Castle’ (Maggin, Novick & Frank McLaughlin) wherein another deprived-kids day trip turns into an episode of Scooby-Doo, Where are You? The ‘Case of the Kidnapped Crusader!’ (pencilled by Bob Brown) then puts the Student Centurion on the trail of an abducted consumer advocate and ‘Return of the Flying Grayson!’ (Maggin, Novick & McLaughlin from #250) painfully reminds the hero of his Circus past after tracking down pop-art thieves.

Batman #252 (October 1973) sees Maggin, Dillin & Giordano’s light-hearted pairing of Robin with a Danny Kaye pastiche for charming romp ‘The King from Canarsie!’, before ‘The Phenomenal Memory of Luke Graham!’ (#254 January/February 1974 and inked by Anderson) causes nothing but trouble for the hero, his college professors and a gang of robbers…

It was a year before the Teen Wonder’s solo sallies resumed with ‘The Touchdown Trap’ in Detective Comics #445 as new scripter Bob Rozakis and artist Mike Grell catapulted our hero into a 50-year-old college football feud that refused to die, whilst ‘The Puzzle of the Pyramids’ (#447 and illustrated by A. Martinez & Mazzaroli) offers another clever crime conundrum. This eccentrically eclectic monochrome compendium concludes with an action-packed, chase-heavy human drama by Al Milgrom & Terry Austin as ‘The Parking Lot Bandit!’ & ‘The Parking Lot Bandit Strikes Again!’ (DC #450-451, August & September 1975), giving the titanic teen one last chance to strike a bit of terror into the hearts of evil-doers…

These stories span a turbulent and chaotic period for comic books: perfectly encapsulating and describing the vicissitudes of the superhero genre’s premier juvenile lead: complex yet uncomplicated adventures drenched in charm and wit, moody tales of rebellion and self-discovery, and rollercoaster, all-fun romps. Action is always paramount, and angst-free satisfaction is pretty much guaranteed. These cracking yarns are something no fan of old-fashioned Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction should miss.
© 1964-1975, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1922, Belgian auteur Marc Sleen was born. We still haven’t seen English versions of his Nero yet, but have slavishly and repeatedly begged you all to tune in to the oeuvre of Ronald Searle, who left us all far less today in 2011.

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What I Did


By Jason, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-414-6 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Absurdly Enchanting Comics Capers… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic, comedic and ironic effect.

Born in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known by enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume Jason. The shy & retiring auteur first took the path to cartoon superstardom in 1995, once debut graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award. From 1987 he had contributed to alternate/indie magazine KonK while studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo’s Art Academy.

From there he took on Norway’s National School of Arts and, on graduating in 1994, founded his own comic – Mjau Mjau. Constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-mined anthropomorphic minimalism, Jason cited Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring & Tex Avery as primary influences. He moved to Copenhagen, working at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) & Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Books of Magic, Batman: Detective 27). Jason’s efforts were internationally recognised, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas. He won another Sproing in 2001 – for self-published series Mjau Mjau – and in 2002 turned nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels. He won even more major awards.

His breadth of interest is wide & deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, literature art history and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. Jason’s puckish, egalitarian mixing & matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time. Over a succession of tales he has built and re-employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes distilled from movies, childhood yarns, historical and literary favourites. These all role-play in deliciously absurd and surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. Latterly, Jason returned to such “found” players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and even has a whole bizarre bunch of them “team-up” or clash…

As always, visual/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued (or even, as here, silently pantomimic) progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a pared back stripped-down interpretation of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity augmented by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

A master of short-form illustrated tales, many Jason yarns have been released as snappy little albums perfect for later inclusion in longer anthology collections like this one which gathers a triptych of his very best. The majority of tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality. They are, as warned, largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comedic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes

This sterling hard cover compilation gathers ‘Hey, Wait…’, ‘Sshhhh!’ and ‘The Iron Wagon’ which first appeared in Mjau Mjau between 1997 & 2001, and if you’re keeping score, the reviews and illustrations are taken from the 2018 second edition…

The volume opens with an eerie and glorious and wildly funny paean to boyhood friendships – in the manner of the movie Stand By Me – as young Bjorn and Jon enjoy a life of perfect childhood until a tragic accident ends the idyll and reshapes them forever. Life, however, goes on, but for one of the lads it’s an existence populated forever onwards with ghosts and visions…

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, using the beastly and unnatural to gently pose eternal questions about basic human needs in a soft but relentless quest for answers. That you don’t ever notice the deep stuff because of the clever gags and safe, familiar funny-animal characters should indicate just how good a cartoonist he is…

‘Sshhhh!’ is a delightfully evocative romantic melodrama created without words: a bittersweet extended tale of boy-bird meeting girl-bird in a world overly populated with spooks and ghouls and skeletons but afflicted far more harshly by missed chances, loneliness and regret.

These comic tales are strictly for adults but allow us all to look at the world through wide-open young eyes. This is especially true of the final tale in this collection – a slyly beguiling adaptation of a classic detective story from 1909, but enhanced to a macabre degree by the easy cartooning, skilled use of silence and moment and a two-tone colour palette.

As you’d expect of a classic “Scandi-crime drama” ‘The Iron Wagon’ is a clever, enthralling and deeply dark mystery yarn originally written by Stein Riverton, and has the same quality of cold yet harnessed stillness which makes the Swedish television adaptations of Henning Mankell’s Wallander so superior to those English-language interpretations. Here, the stylised artwork is delivered in formalised page layouts; solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity are augmented here by stunning Deep Red overlays to enhance the Hard Black and Genteel White he usually prefers.

In the coastal retreat of Hvalen a desperate author is haunted by ghosts and nightmares. However, the townsfolk are all too engrossed with the death of the game warden on the Gjaernes Estate to notice or care. The family seems cursed with constant troubles. First the old man was lost at sea, now the murder of Warden Blinde just as he was betrothed to Hilde Gjaernes blights the farm. People are talking, saying it’s all the fault of the long dead grandfather who lost his fortune and life dabbling with weird inventions…

Even now, sensitive souls still hear his accursed Iron Wagon roaring through the night, presaging another death in the village…

Luckily there are more sensible folk abroad to summon a detective from Kristiania (Oslo), but Asbjørn Krag is not the kind of policeman anybody was anticipating and as the young writer becomes enmired in the horrific unfolding events, he realises that not only over-imaginative fools hear things.

In the depths of the night’s stillness he too shudders at the roaring din of the Iron Wagon…

Moody, suspenseful and utterly engrossing, this would be a terrific yarn even without Jason’s superbly understated art, but in combination the result is pure dynamite.

This collection – despite being “merely” early works – resonates with the artist’s signature themes and shines with his visual dexterity. It’s one of Jason’s very best and will warm the cockles of any fan’s heart.
All characters, stories, and artwork © 2010 Jason. All rights reserved.

Today in 1900 cartoonist Otto Soglow was born; he’s most revered for The Little King strip. Someone else utterly neglected by modern comics publishers is wartime patriot and Anglo-Canadian creator Jon Stables AKA Jon St. Ables (get it?) who carried most of the creative workload at Maple Leaf Comics until it closed down in 1946. As he was born in 1912, he had to find other artistic outlets until his death in 1999. And he did.

A year earlier (in 1998, okay?) we lost the astounding Joe Orlando. The editor who saved DC in the late 1960s through his horror comics revival was also a superb illustrator, gag-guy and story-man, as you could see in Judgment Day and Other Stories or any of the superb DC horror comics editions we’ve covered over the decades.

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New Gods by Jack Kirby


By Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, Vince Colletta, Don Heck, D. Bruce Berry, Greg Theakston, Mike Thibodeaux & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-8169-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Monumental Masterpieces… 9/10

Today in 1970 American comic books changed forever. On December 1st newsstands saw Superman meet the counterculture head on courtesy of Jack Kirby in a title like no other ever before. It was only one crucial component part of a bold experiment that quite honestly failed, but still undid and remade everything. That was Forever People #1 and it was followed on December 22nd with New Gods #1, as the world just kept on changing…

When Jack Kirby returned to the home of Superman in 1970 he brought with him one of the most powerful concepts in comic book history. The epic grandeur of his Fourth World saga grafted a complete new mythology onto and over the existing DC universe and blew the developing minds of a generation of readers. If only there had been a few more of them…

Starting in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, where he revived his 1940s kid-team The Newsboy Legion, introduced large-scale cloning in the form of The Project and hinted that the city’s gangsters had extraterrestrial connections, Kirby moved on to a main course beginning with The Forever People, intersecting where appropriate with New Gods and Mister Miracle to form an interlinked triptych of finite-length titles that together presented an epic mosaic. Those three groundbreaking titles collectively introduced rival races of gods, dark and light, risen from the ashes of a previous Armageddon to battle forever… and then their conflict spreads to Earth…

Kirby’s concepts, as always, fired and inspired contemporaries and successors. Gods of Apokolips & New Genesis became a crucial keystone of DC continuity and integral foundation of that entire fictional universe, surviving the numerous revisions and retcons which periodically bedevil long-lived comics fans. Many major talents dabbled with the concept over decades and a host of titles have come and gone starring Kirby’s creations. That’s happening now even as I type this…

As previously stated, the herald of all this innovation had been Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, which Kirby had used to lay groundwork since taking it over with #133. There readers first met Darkseid, Intergang, The Evil Project and so much more, but it was also used as an emotional setup for a fascinating notion that had seldom if ever previously troubled the mighty, generally satisfied and well situated Man of Tomorrow…

After The Forever People #1, crossovers with DC mainstays were dropped in favour of a tense new normal. Those kids were Kirby’s way of depicting how conflict affected peripheral players and dragged them in and down, but the next and most important component was seeing the seasoned soldiers do their work. New Gods would focus on the war itself…

Cover-dated February/March 1971 and on sale 55 years ago today, the premiere issue infamously opened with an ‘Epilogue’ and closed with a ‘Prologue’ as Kirby & inker Vince Colletta declared that ‘Orion Fights for Earth!’

We learned that (relatively) soon after creation began gods were born, lived and died – primarily by warring with each other. When the Old Gods died in a cosmos-shaking conflagration their perfect primal world was sundered. When the chaos cooled the fragments had congealed into two new but lesser planets: the dark vicious globe of Apokolips and gleaming noble orb New Genesis. Over millennia another generation of superior beings of might and majesty populated the spinning spheres, but sadly, a tragic trait New Gods shared with their progenitors was a capacity for destruction and taste for conflict. Denizens of both worlds always and inevitably find new ways to end each other’s immortal lives.

The tale proper begins on joyous, spiritual New Genesis years after the latest all-out war with Apokolips ceased. Mighty Orion arrives in paradisical Supertown where divine patriarch Highfather communes with cosmic mystery The Source. The metaphysical conduit despatches the turbulent, ever-anxious wolf in their fold to the antithetical diabolical hell-world, only to find despot Darkseid gone and – against all treaties – captive humans from Earth being “examined” for signs of the tyrant’s dream. For both races the basic tool is Mother Box: sentient circuitry connected to The Source and a lifelong cyber-symbiotic companion, able to communicate, advise and manipulate the physical world.

The lord of Apokolips wants to do away with all that and rule everything personally. Furthermore he has decided this means controlling an irresistible, intangible ultimate weapon. The “Anti-Life Equation” is a cheat code for totalitarianism: the instant negation of choice and free will, and anyone using it would command all that lives. Darkseid’s obsessive search for it had led him to Earth and now he had kidnapped a cross-section of humans to test his extraction methodology. That he is gone and his realm is governed by Mass Control Units means the Evil One has found his key to success…

After batting his way into the world, against Parademons, Darkseid’s Dog Cavalry and assorted terror weapons, Orion frees the mortals before New Genesis God of Knowledge Metron delivers advice and a message. Thus after outwitting and outfighting vile brute Kalibak the Cruel the peaceful God of War uses a matter-transmitting Boom Tube to return them all to Earth…

However, Darkseid and his elite warrior caste are waiting for him. They have already infiltrated Earth through its criminal class and begun testing humanity in search of the unique mind holding the Equation. Apparently, a sufficient amount of instilled terror should shake it loose…

‘O’ Deadly Darkseid!’ then confirms that there are no civilians in war as – after fighting off a savage ambush on arrival and confronting Darkseid himself – Orion drafts the shaken, rescued hostages as his point men and intel unit. Private eye Dave Lincoln, secretary Claudia Shane, aging insurance salesman Victor Lanza and student Harvey Lockman are scared but resolved to help their world however possible, even as the transplanted tyrant sees his forces scattered all over Earth, applying a range of schemes to make humanity scream and shatter and give up that equation.

As New Genesis’ comrades volunteer for the fight on this isolated island Earth, the call to arms comes in Lincoln’s backyard as God of Depravity DeSaad triggers his gigantic Fear Machine and feeds off the paralysing horror it generates. However, thanks to sentient miracle computer Mother Box, his innate personal power and the blockbusting Astro-Force Orion commands, the initial skirmish is easily won…

Dwelling in spaces far beyond the physical and mundane, New Gods are subject to forces beyond mortal understanding. One of them is the embodiment of cessation who personally calls for each of them as they perish. NG #3 opens with glorious, jovial innocent God of Illumination Lightray barely escaping his moment with the great shadow (again thanks to coldly methodical Metron) as ‘Death is the Black Racer!’ finds the spirit derailed and deposited on Earth.

Throughout the overlapping clashes and conflicts there is undeniable indications that even the gods are being moved and shaped by even greater forces that have larger plans in motion. Thus the macabre soul collector inexplicably nests within the immobile form of paralysed Vietnam veteran Willie Walker, and – apparently inadvertently – derails a plot by Apokolips-backed mob Intergang to destroy all communications in Metropolis and create even more chaos and panic…

Orion’s shattering counterattacks segue straight into issue #4 as New Genesis suffers its first casualty. In response, ‘The O’Ryan Gang and the Deep Six!’ sees him and his reluctant human allies tracking down an Intergang device that frustrates and negates Mother Boxes before stumbling into a staggering and diabolical plan to render Earth’s oceans off limits to humanity…

With Mike Royer replacing Colletta as inker, ‘Spawn’ sees Orion captive of six subsea Apokolyptians who warp sea life and grow an unstoppable marine mutant monster. Meanwhile, Kalibak arrives in Metropolis hungry for vengeance and bloodletting. The various players and cosmic factions are angling towards a catastrophic confrontation, but in Metropolis at least, some of the poor endangered mortals are seeking to take charge of their own destinies…

At this juncture, DC comic books expanded to 52 pages and as well as Golden Age reprints, “Kirby’s Korner” ran short background vignettes of upcoming characters and cosmic guest stars. Here, inked by Colletta, ‘The Young Gods of Supertown Introducing Fastbak!’ focuses on Supertown, where a rowdy juvenile speed freak constantly tests himself and the patience of peacekeeping Monitors but finds there are some things even his miraculous tech cannot outrace…

Cover-dated January 1972, New Gods #6 launched ‘The Glory Boat!’ a complex and tragic morality tale and metaphor for fractured Vietnam era society wherein father and his peace-nik son clashed over duty and morality in war time as Lightray joins Orion to destroy or subvert the colossal horror devised by the Deep Six leading to a shocking secret exposed concerning the increasing out-of-control Orion…

Before that though, New Gods #7 finally revealed how it all began for the heirs of those first gods. When the primal Godworld sundered into gleaming New Genesis and sulphurous Apokolips the beings who eventually populated them were constant foes and rivals. After untold eons of sniping and acrimony, however, a young prince of the dark world sought to overthrow his mother and seize power. However, when ambitious Darkseid engineered a fresh war with New Genesis it started with the inadvertent murder of Avia, wife of New Genesis leader Izaya the Inheritor. As a result the conflict grew without let-up or rules, Darkseid and his bellicose uncle Steppenwolf had underestimated the ingenuity and ferocity of the Light Gods and the resulting conflict almost destroyed both worlds as the ancient enemies harnessed all the destructive capabilities of the universe.

Teleporting tanks, energy-generators, bio-toxic agents and genetic monsters wreaked havoc at ground level in personal combat, but entire solar systems also died. The planetary opposites were in peril of extinction as escalating science – and emotionless even-handed researcher Metron – found increasingly catastrophic ways to destroy. Gravity-bombs, sun-sized lasers and precision-aimed asteroids almost ended all factions forever. Mercifully, war-weary visionary Izaya found solace in the mystical Source, and badly rattled Darkseid agreed to a hastily-brokered truce before the gods once more extinguished themselves.

A pause in fighting was agreed, allowing both sides to regroup and, in the case of New Genesis at least, seek other paths. To seal ‘The Pact!’ Darkseid and newly renamed Highfather traded their young sons as hostages to the tenuous peace process…

Kirby & Royer’s staggering cosmic spectacle is accompanied by another history lesson as backup feature ‘The Young Gods of Supertown! Vykin the Black!’ finds the Forever People’s science-nerd neatly expunging one monstrous results of the last war’s bio-bombs beneath the savaged crust of New Genesis after which NG #8 returns to the present and increasing resistance by one Metropolis cop to the foreign super-conflict imported to his turf. ‘The Death Wish of Terrible Turpin!’ sees Orion coming to terms with Lightray learning that he the son of Darkseid even as his despised half-brother Kalibak rips the city apart in a deadly deranged display of wounded honour demanding satisfaction…

When Orion brutally reacts to the challenge, nobody expected the doughty earthman to settle the issue for them…

The issue closes with another peep at the past in self-explanatory clash ‘The Young Gods of Supertown: Fastbak Returns in Beat the Black Racer!!’ whilst in New Gods #9, Kirby exposes a darker side to the Good Gods as ‘The Bug!’ details how they ruthlessly deal with “lesser beings” infesting New Genesis since the last war. However, as seen through the eyes of insectoid colony scout Forager, the pests are a sentient species with their own culture and imperatives. Unfortunately it’s one easily manipulated by Darkseid’s flunky Mantis who Boom Tubes them all to Metropolis in search of newer, safer conquests in concluding chapter

‘Earth – the Doomed Dominion!’ Here, Orion & Lighray barely repel a mass colonisation only to discover a shocking secret about Forager…

The Fourth World was a huge risk and massive gamble for an industry and company that was a watchword for conservatism. It was probably incredibly tough for editors and publishers to stop themselves interfering, and they often didn’t. With numbers low, and spooky stories proliferating everywhere, Kirby was pressured to drop the weird stuff and concentrate on old standards. Despite promises of support and complete autonomy, the King had already surrendered much to get his dream rolling. Crushing deadlines and ridiculous expected monthly page counts were one thing, but management had no understanding of what he was planning and promotion was non-existent. Thus, inevitably the series and its interlinked companions failed to find sufficient sales to keep on until the planned conclusion. Nobody in comics argued with numbers so New Gods #11 was the last, with the core title cancelled before Kirby could complete his grand experiment.

The King did however, go out in style as ‘Darkseid and Sons!’ saw Kalibak and Orion battle to the death, with the Black Racer in attendance as a hidden enemy tipped the scales against the war god… until the least expected player of all incongruously rebalanced the scales and ensured the death of another major actor in the grand design…

…And that was that. New Gods and Forever People were axed although Mister Miracle carried on with a sharp change of emphasis until it too passed on. Eventually time and tastes brought sequels and, at long last, Kirby’s return to craft a proper ending… of sorts. As explained in The King Returns! the growth of an independent comics industry and dedicated system of retail stores in the 1980s sparked a wave of fan-favourite reprints in expensive formats. In 1984 The New Gods miniseries reprinted the 11 issues from 1971-1972 and concluded with the long-delayed, all-new conclusion. All concerned admitted it wasn’t what Kirby had intended at the time and was very much the product of the older wiser, creator but ‘Even Gods Must Die!’ (inked by Bruce D. Berry) spectacularly and bombastically wrapped up the saga whilst setting the scene for a new chapter. If you were a fan of any of the non-Kirby revivals of the intervening years though, there was nothing for you. This was all Jack…

Moreover, the conclusion led to a re-energised new beginning as ‘The Hunger Dogs’ by Kirby, Berry, Royer & Grek Theakston, aided by Bill Wray & Tony Dispoto, expanded the saga with a true epic in the format Kirby had always predicted would come: book-length pictorial tomes…

 Released in March 1985 as DC Graphic Novel #5, wildly experimental, deeply philosophical, potently profound parable The Hunger Dogs explored the consequences of power lost and repercussions as fascism inevitably collapses. Set on Apokolips in the aftermath of a failed prophecy (that Darkseid would die at the hands of his son in the pits of the world’s gigantic slum sector Armagetto) it traces the efforts of eternal rebel dreamer Himon and his daughter Bekka in the face of the Dark Lord’s seeming total triumph.

With victory in the eternal conflict assured thanks to New Genesis traitor Esak, Darkseid is utterly unprepared when the gutter trash “Lowlies” who blindly worship, fear and despise him rise in revolt. Led by a most unsuspected mercilessly charismatic leader, the pitiful Hunger Dogs at the base of Darkseid’s pyramid of oppression prove too much for the despot and the entire universe shifts under his quaking boots…

This handy compendium also offers bonus material including pinups of ‘Lightray!’ & ‘Kalibak the Cruel!’ from NG #4, before the ‘Mother Box Files’ gather a dozen pertinent Kirby characters as revisited by himself, Theakston and Terry Austin from assorted editions of the DC Who’s Who fact files. Here a tremendous group treatment of The New Gods and New Genesis are complimented by solo entries for Black Racer, Darkseid, the Deep Six, Forager, Highfather, Kalibak, Lightray, Metron, Orion and Steppenwolf and supported by the covers and new art from that 1984 prestige reprint New Gods series, by Kirby, Mike Thibodeaux, Royer & Berry.

Closing the wonderment are more delights in ‘The Art of Jack Kirby’, including hand-coloured original designs for Orion, Lightray, Mantis & Mister Miracle; Concept Drawings of the New Gods, plus a selection of stunning pencilled pages from the original run and long-awaited continuation and conclusion.

What more do you need to know?
© 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1984, 1985, 1986, 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1908, Italian Gian Luigi Bonelli was born; he created Tex Willer. We can’t offer the original, but perhaps a taste can be gleaned from Tex: The Lonesome Rider?

In 1951 Black Lightning and The Champions creator Tony Isabella was born, with Bill (Elementals; Fables) creator Willingham arriving five years later.

In 1974 Welsh-born Canuck Adrian Dingle died, with nobody then appreciating that his creation of Canadian woman superhero Nelvana of the Northern Lights in Triumph-Adventure Comics #1 (August 1941) actually predates the debut of Wonder Woman. Where’s her movie franchise then, eh?

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DC Finest: Green Arrow The Longbow Hunters


By Mike Grell, Sharon Wright, Dennis J. O’Neil, Lurene Haynes & Julia Lacquement, Ed Hannigan, Denys Cowan, Randy DuBurque, Ed Barreto, Tom Artis, Dick Giordano, Frank McLauglin, Rick Magyar, Klaus Janson, Tony DeZuñiga, Tom Dzon, Arne Starr, Gary Martin & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-77952-991-6 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

It’s been a big year for comic book anniversaries and next year is another one. Let’s get our congratulations in early for a change…

Debuting in More Fun Comics #73 (cover-dated November 1941 and on sale from 19th September), Green Arrow is one of very few costumed heroes to be continuously published (more or less) since the Golden Age of American comic books. On first look, the combination of Batman and Robin Hood seems to have very little going for him, but he has always managed to keep himself in vogue and on view. Probably the most telling of his many, many makeovers came in 1987, when – hot on the heels of The Dark Knight Returns – Mike Grell was given the green light to make the Emerald Archer the star of DC’s second Prestige Format Mini-Series.

Grell was a major league, much celebrated creator at the time, having practically saved the company with his Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired fantasy series Warlord. He had also illustrated many of GA’s most recent and radical tales (in Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Action Comics and elsewhere, and was a confirmed fan-favourite after well-received runs on Legion of Super-Heroes, Aquaman, Phantom Stranger, Batman and others. During the early 1980s, he had worked on the prestigious Tarzan newspaper strip and created successful genre series including Starslayer and Jon Sable, Freelance for pioneering indie publisher First Comics.

By the middle of the grim ‘n’ gritty Eighties, it was certainly time for an overhaul of the Battling Bowman. Exploding arrows yes, maybe even net or rope arrows, but arrows with boxing gloves on them just don’t work (trust me – I know this from experience!).

Moreover, in his 1960s makeover, the hero had evolved into a tempestuous, social reformer using his gifts to battle for the little guy. Now, in a cynical era of corrupt government, secret services with private agendas, drug cartels and serial killers, this emerald survivor adapted again and thrived once more. Thus, sans preamble, the action unfolds, laying a new path that would quickly lead to the hero becoming a major player at long last and, ultimately, a TV sensation.

The plot is astutely logical and still controversial, concerning a superhero midlife crisis. Weary, aging Oliver Queen relocates to Seattle, struggling to come to terms with the fact that since his former sidekick Speedy, is now a dad, he is “technically” a grandfather. With longtime significant other Dinah Lance AKA Black Canary, Ollie starts simplifying his life, but the drive to fight injustice hasn’t dimmed for either of them. As she goes undercover to stamp out a pervasive drug ring, the Arrow becomes embroiled in the hunt for a psycho-killer dubbed “The Seattle Slasher”.

As he tracks a prolific stalker butchering prostitutes, Ollie becomes aware of a second – cross-country – slayer using arrows to murder people. Infuriatingly, this travesty only comes to his attention after the “Robin-Hood Killer” slaughters a gravedigger in his new city…

Eschewing gaudy costume and gimmicks to find such unglamorous hidden monsters, Queen reinvents himself as an urban hunter relentlessly searching Seattle’s darkest corners and soon stumbles into a complex mystery leading back to World War II involving the Yakuza, CIA, corporate America and even the Vietnam war: secrets that converge and will eventually change the course of the Archer’s life…

The intricate plot effortlessly weaves around the destabilized champion and past loves, thereby introducing new character Shado, exploring and echoing themes of vengeance and family in a blending of three stories that are in fact one, yet still delivers a shocking punch even now, through its disturbingly explicit examination of torture. These issues won the miniseries much undeserved negative press when first published. Although possibly tame to modern eyes this was eye-opening stuff at the time, which is a shame, since it diverted attention from the tale’s real achievement. That was narrative quality and sophistication, as this tale is arguably the first truly mature superhero yarn in the DCU.

Across ‘The Hunters’, ‘Dragon Hunt’ and ‘Tracking Snow’ Grell crafts a gripping, action-packed mystery adventure that pushes all the right buttons, all conveyed by artwork – in collaboration with Lurene Haynes & Julia Lacquement – that was and remains a revelation. Beautifully demure yet edgily sharp as required, these painterly visuals and watercolour tones perfectly complement a terse, sparse script, offering a compulsive, compelling ride any prose thriller writer would be proud of.

The saga – weaving themes of age, diminishing potency, vengeance and family – was another major turning point in American comics and led to an ongoing series specifically targeting “Mature Readers”. Latterly, the treatment and tone herein heavily influenced and flavoured TV adaptation Arrow.

Collectively covering February to October 1988, this paperback compilation (no digital edition yet, sadly) gathers the miniseries Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, Green Arrow volume 2, #1-8, The Question #17-18, and a crossover tale told in Detective Comics Annual #1, The Question Annual #1 and Green Arrow Annual #1. Controversy notwithstanding, the comic book retooling swiftly spawned a monthly series which itself evolved into one of the best reads of the 1990s and those monthly events immediately follow…

Scripted by Grell with superbly efficient and powerfully understated art from Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano & Frank McLaughlin, the new series presented grimly realistic yarns ripped from headlines, tailored and honed for maximum impact and relevance. Sparse, spartan and devastatingly compelling, the initial episodes were constructed as two-part dramas, beginning with ‘Hunter’s Moon’ as the hunter (the series was notable in that other than on the cover, the soubriquet “Green Arrow” was never, ever used or uttered) prowls his new home. He deals harshly with thugs, gangbangers and muggers before heading home to his still-traumatised girlfriend.

As graphically depicted in Longbow Hunters, Black Canary was tortured for days before Ollie found her and, although the physical wounds have faded, Dinah is still suffering…

She’s not the only one. Police Lieutenant Jim Cameron has just heard that child-torturing sociopath Al Muncie has used his vast beer-dynasty inheritance to buy a retrial after 18 years in prison. The cops couldn’t get him for murdering all those “missing” kids back then, but one lucky 10-year-old, after days of appalling torment, escaped and testified so Muncie’s been locked up for aggravated assault ever since. Now the heartbroken cop has to tell that brave survivor she must do it all over again…

The victim grew up to be Dr. Annie Green and she’s working wonders treating Dinah, but the therapist’s own long-suppressed terrors come flooding back when Muncie – despite being in total lockdown in his palatial house on the family brewery estate – somehow hand-delivers a little souvenir of their time together…

Present when Annie freaks out and flees in panic, Ollie gives chase and finds her once more calm and resigned. On hearing the full story he makes a house-call on the maniac but cannot “dissuade” him from paying Annie another visit that night. The veteran manhunter is waiting as a masked assailant tries to break ino the doctor’s apartment, but when the intruder shrugs off a steel arrow to the chest Ollie realises something’s not right…

Part Two expands the mystery of how Muncie gets past police guards at will, but by the time the Arrow has convinced cops to raid Muncie’s den with the solution to the obsessed sociopath’s disappearing act and apparent invulnerability, the killer has already made his move. Sadly for him, once again Muncie has underestimated Annie, and her defiance buys Ollie time to intercept the hellbent human fiend. After a furious chase back to the brewery, the killer meets his fate in a most ironic manner…

A broad change of pace follows as part one of ‘The Champions’ sees Ollie abducted by US government spooks and pressganged into competing for a deadly prize. A joint space venture with the Chinese has resulted in a deadly “DNA-programmable” virus being created and – following the sudden destruction of the satellite lab where it was propagated – the only surviving sample has crashed onto remote San Juan Island. With political allies turned rivals for sole possession of a bio-agent which can be set to kill anything from wheat harvests to black or yellow or white people, open warfare would only lead to catastrophic publicity, so the political superpowers have agreed to a gladiatorial bout as the method of deciding ownership.

Ollie has his own reasons for accepting the job. For starters he doesn’t trust any government with the DNA-hunting bug, the agents who drafted him are actually Russian, not American and, most urgently, he has no doubt that he’ll be killed if he refuses to compete…

Equipped with a tracking device, Ollie is dumped on the island as a colossal storm kicks off, meeting his arrogant opposite getting off the ferry. Former CIA operative Eddie Fyers is an old foe and one of the sneakiest killers on Earth. Fyers convinces Ollie they should work together before double-crossing and leaving him to bleed out in a blizzard. The archer is saved by an archaeologist who has inadvertently picked up the lost bio-agent pod, but as Ollie argues with his rescuer over the wisdom and morality of his mission, her cabin is peppered with gunfire…

Fyers has the upper hand but suffers a sudden change of attitude when a third team ambushes him and his prisoners. It seems neither Russians nor Chinese trust their champions…

Again forced to join forces, spy and vigilante despatch the hit squad before Ollie has the very last word after finding a way to deprive everybody of the death-sample…

The hunter appeared tangentially in The Question #17-18 (June & July 1988 by Dennis O’Neil, Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar) as ‘A Dream of Rorschach’; tacitly acknowledging the debt owed to the groundbreaking series Watchmen for the revival of Steve Ditko’s obsessive faceless trouble-seeker The Question. Here journalist/crimebuster Vic Sage is chasing murder-obsessed miscreants Butch and Sundance out of Hub City. Catching a plane, he reads the graphic novel and has a vision of and conversation with the iconic sociopath whilst flying to Seattle and a chilling showdown. On arrival he is intercepted by highly suspicious, extremely overprotective and intensely impatient local hero the Arrow before they ally to catch the scum as they seek fresh kill supplies from terrorists in massive clash-concluding chapter ‘Desperate Ground’…

Determined to challenge all manners of social inequity, Grell’s next story in Green Arrow confronted the rise in homosexual prejudice that manifested in the wake of the AIDs crisis. It begins after two customers leaving Dinah’s flower shop are brutally attacked by kids ordered to “gay-bash” as part of their gang initiation. The horrific crime is further compounded when Ollie discovers Dinah’s new assistant Colin is not only a bloody-handed perpetrator but also a victim…

The Warhogs are the most powerful gang in the city, but their latest induction policy is one the Arrow cannot allow to exist any longer. Any kid refusing to join is mercilessly beaten by a ‘Gauntlet’ of thugs. Those who eagerly volunteer suffer the same treatment at their own initiation… and once you’re accepted as a Warhog, you still have to prove your loyalty by beating – and preferably killing – a “queer”…

In the shocking conclusion Ollie, having failed to make a dent through any of his usual tactics, goes straight to the top. Big boss Reggie Mandel has big plans for the Warhogs. He’s already made them a national force to be reckoned with, but when he arrives in Seattle to check on regional deputy Kebo, the Machiavellian schemer is confronted by a nut with a bow challenging him in his own crib…

The Arrow is keen to point out the strictly local Warhog policy of gay hate-crimes is not only bad for business but serves someone else’s private agenda. Reggie actually agrees with the vigilante, but before he’s prepared to take appropriate action he expects his verdant petitioner to undergo the same gauntlet any Warhog must survive before being heard…

Next comes complex collaboration ‘The Powderhorn Trail’ – written by Grell & Sharon Wright who divided the Ollie and Dinah sections between them, with Randy DuBurque illustrating Black Canary pages whilst Ed Barreto pencilled Arrow bits, with Giordano & Arne Starr inking it all. The round-robin episode sees the hunter stumbling upon a clue to drug-smuggling at his local carwash and having to explain to Dinah why he’s taking off for Alaska. Possibly coincidentally, she is approached by a casual acquaintance whose life the Canary once saved, who inadvertently tips Dinah to a string of crimes-in-the-making…

The tempestuous conclusion (by Grell, Paris Cullins, Gary Martin & Giordano) then sees Ollie solo-stalking from Anchorage to deep in the North country on the trail of not just drug dealers and high-end car thieves but also opportunistic Tong smugglers trafficking illegal, poached and utterly pointless Chinese herbal remedies under cover of the infamous Iditarod. Sometimes it’s just good and so satisfying to be a lawless vigilante…

This initial collection concludes with a Denny O’Neil martial arts epic/experimental comic book koan ‘Fables’: a crossover tale encompassing Detective Comics Annual #1, Green Arrow Annual #1 and The Question Annual #1, which will make far more sense if you read Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter: Coming of the Dragon!…

It begins in China during Japan’s invasion prior to the official start of WWII, where a truly honourable bushido warrior is shamed by his own troops and resigns his commission to become a warrior monk: the O-sensei. Years later he and his student (Lady Shiva “the most dangerous woman on Earth”) arrive in America seeking a new hero called The Batman. They have a lesson to impart but first must find him. This overture means working again with an old student named Vic Sage…

Rendered by Klaus Janson & Tony DeZuñiga, ‘The Monkey Trap’ sees the Dark Knight hunt a horrific bio-weapon stolen from arch maniac Ra’s Al Ghul and pursued by money-mad miscreant The Penguin. The quest is only accomplished after the cocky masked manhunter learns a crucial lesson from the warrior sage and incurs a monumental debt of honour…

Then ‘Lesson for a Crab’ – illustrated by Tom Artis & Tom Dzon – finds the former Emerald Archer & Black Canary embroiled in the schemes of English aristocrat Lord Kalesque who wants to be the greatest archer in the world but cannot feel secure in the title until he crushes a certain vigilante in Seattle. As Kalesque is no adherent of fair play, that can be accomplished by perpetrating a string of murders to destabilize the hunter and put him and his woman off their game. Happily, Shiva and the O-Sensei are already on their way with advice and a zen teaching that will be of great service…

The interlinked saga concludes in The Question Annual #1 (Cowan & Magyar art) with explanations and conclusions. The aged sage wants to be buried beside his Japanese wife but her family are opposed to the plan and have moved her body. Star pupil Shiva orchestrates a plan involving western heroes touched by his teachings and owing service to the O-Sensei, and her efforts culminate in ‘The Silent Parable’. Now Batman’s detective skills locate the resting place and the Americans join what seems like a cursed mission to Malaya – one that is beset by an army of assassins and string of natural disasters; and which seems to end in utter failure…

However, in the aftermath The Question deduces that fate and honour have worked their own miracles and made a suitable accommodation with the universe…

Closing the book and capping the fantasy is a linked cover triptych of the Annuals by Janson, Ed Hannigan, Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz, and rest – both fully painted and line art – are by Grell, Cowan, Sienkiewicz, Giordano, Hannigan & Tatjana Wood and suitably placed throughout…

Terse, sparse scripts, intelligent, flawed human interactions, stunning action delivered through economical and immensely effective illustration and an unfailing eye for engaging controversy make these some of the most powerful comic tales US comics ever produced, an epic of masked mystery saga no lover of the genre will want to miss.
© 1987, 1988, 2024 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

In 1911 strip writer Nicholas P. Dallis (Apartment 3-G, Rex Morgan MD) was born. Nine years later so was the fabulous Kurt Scaffenberger (Captain Marvel, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen) with Al Plastino popping in 366 days later. He was a key Superman illustrator who co-created the Legion of Super-Heroes and also drew the Batman newspaper strip (see Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1968 – 1969).

In 1953 JM DeMatteis was born, in 1961 Reginald Hudlin arrived and in 1969 Stuart Immonen, but we did lose Abie the Agent illustrator Harry Hershfield in 1974 and Uruguayan Eduardo Barreto who drew many US features including Steel Sterling, Aliens, Teen Titans, Superman, Batman and Judge Parker.

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Gil Kane’s UNDERSEA Agent


By Gil Kane, Steve Skeates, Gardner Fox & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-444-3 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Outstanding Action Adventure Comics… 9/10

April 6th 2026 marks the centenary of Gil Kane’s birth. As we might all be dead or scavenging in ruins and rubble by then, here’s a little something I was planning on adding to a month of Kane creations then…

The 1960s was the era when all assorted facets of “cool-for-kids” finally started to coalesce into a comprehensive assault on our minds – and our parents’ pockets. TV, movies, comics, bubble-gum cards and toys all began concertedly feeding off each other, building a unified and combined fantasy-land no kid could resist. The history of Wally Wood’s legendary comics Camelot is convoluted, and once the mayfly-like lifetime of the Tower Comics line folded, not especially pretty: wrapped up in legal wrangling and lots of petty back-biting. None of that diminishes the fact that the far-too brief run of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was a benchmark of quality and sheer bravura fun for fans of both a still-reawakening superhero genre and the popular media’s spy-chic obsession.

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

Before long, wildly creative narrative art maverick Wood was approached by veteran MLJ/ Archie Comics editor Harry Shorten to create a line of characters for a new distribution-chain funded publishing outfit: Tower Comics. Woody called on some pals – coincidentally many of the biggest names in the industry – to produce material in a broad range of genres; as well as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, spun-off Dynamo & NoMan and adjunct title U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent, there was the magnificent war-comic Fight the Enemy and youth-oriented comedy Tippy Teen. Samm Schwartz and Dan DeCarlo handled the comedy book – which outlasted all the others – whilst Wood, Larry Ivie, Len Brown and others crafted landmark/benchmark tales for the industry’s top talents to illustrate in truly innovative style. It didn’t hurt that all Tower titles were in the beloved-but-rarely-seen 80-Page Giant format: there was a huge amount to read in every issue!

Tapping into the Swinging Sixties’ twin entertainment zeitgeists – subsea action and spy sagas – Tower supplemented their highly popular acronymic star-turn, The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves (T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents) with a United Nations Department of Experiment and Research Systems Established at Atlantis: an aquatic narrative vehicle deploying U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent against crooks, aliens, monsters, enemy agents and the inimical forces of the environment they operated in.

Unlike its dry-land counterpart series, however, U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent began with their strong, solid stories (by D. J. Arneson, Steve Skeates & Don Segall) being illustrated in a traditional manner by industry veteran Ray Bailey – albeit with occasional stints from Mike Sekowsky, Joe Giella, Frank Giacoia, John Giunta, Frank Bolle, Manny Stallman & Sheldon Mayer.

According to this collection’s appreciative Foreword by Greg Goldstein and reiterated in Michael Uslan’s fact-filled Introduction, that old school stuff didn’t sit well with kids and in issue #3 Gil Kane moved over from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, coming aboard to inject his unique, hyper-energetic human dynamism to the watered-down project.

Just a personal aside here: Although I bow to no one in my admiration for Kane and applaud this superb hardback compilation of his UA contributions, I also adore that other stuff – especially Bailey’s workmanlike, Caniff-inspired renditions – and eagerly anticipate the day someone finally gathers the entirety of the 6-issue run in one commemorative tome…

This superb book, however – compiled in 2015 to celebrate the astounding transformation in Kane’s own artistic endeavours which sprang from his brief time at Tower – reprints the breakthrough material which led to his sudden maturation into a world-class Auteur.

At that distant time Kane was a top-rated illustrator but would soon become one of the pivotal players in the development of the US comics industry, and indeed the art form itself. Working as an artist and, after this, an increasingly more effective and influential one, he has drawn for many companies since the 1940s, stamping his unique style on superheroes, action, war, mystery, romance, movie adaptations and most importantly, perhaps, Westerns and Science-Fiction tales.

In the late 1950s he was one of editor Julius Schwartz’s key artists in regenerating the superhero. Yet by the mid-1960s, at the top of his profession, this relentlessly revolutionary and creative man felt so confined by the juvenile strictures of the industry that he dreamed of bold new ventures which would jettison the editorial and format bondage of comic books for new visions and media.

In U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent #3-6 (spanning June 1966 – March 1967) he was allowed to ink his own pencils for the first time in decades and encouraged to experiment with composition, form and layout – and write, too – and Kane discovered a graphic freedom which opened up the way he told stories and led directly to his independent masterpieces His Name is Savage and Blackmark…

(His Name Is Savage was an adult-oriented black-&-white magazine about a cold and ruthless super-spy in the Bond/Helm/Flint mould; a precursor in tone, treatment and subject matter of many of today’s adventure titles. Blackmark not only ushered in the comic book age of Sword and Sorcery, but also became one of the first Graphic Novels. Technically, as the series was commissioned by fantasy publisher Ballantine as 8 volumes, it was also envisioned as America’s first comics Limited Series.)

So what have we here? Lieutenant Davy Jones is the U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent, a skilled diver who, whilst working at the international science lab Atlantis, had an accident which gave him magnetic powers that had to be controlled and contained by a hi-tech belt. His boss is affably brilliant boffin Professor Weston, and Jones had a young, impetuous apprentice seaman as sidekick. Skooby Doolittle joined him in tackling monsters, amok experiments and a remarkable number of crooks, mad masterminds and spies who thought pickings were easier under the waves…

Kane’s contributions commence with ‘The Will Warp’ – from UA #3 and written by Skeates – wherein our dashing heroes must contend with diabolical Dr. Malevolent who has perfected a ray to control minds. Soon the vile villain has taken over Atlantis, but has not reckoned on the speed of reaction and sheer determination of Jones & Doolittle…

Skeates also scripted Kane’s tale in #4 wherein Skooby has an unfortunate lab accident and is transformed into a colossal ravening reptilian. Amidst a storm of destruction and with his best friend now an actual danger to shipping, Davy is forced to extreme measures ‘To Save a Monster’…

‘Born is a Warrior’ (#5, written by Kane’s long-time collaborator Gardner Fox) sees hero and partner go above and beyond in their efforts to overthrow an undersea invasion by aliens, before the astounding adventures conclude with a potent, extra-length tale of triumph and tragedy. ‘Doomsday in the Depths’ (#6, by Fox) finds Jones lost at sea and swept into a utopia beneath the sea floor. Trapped forever in the paradise of Antor, he finds solace in his one true love: the sumptuous scientist Elysse. Sadly, Davy is compelled to abandon the miracle city and girl of his dreams to save them all from a horrific monster. Although ultimately victorious, he cannot find his way back…

A glorious cascade of scintillating fantasy action; these yarns – accompanied by a cover gallery by Kane – hark back to a perfect time of primal, winningly uncomplicated action adventure. This is a book to astound and delight comics fans of any stripe or vintage. Is that you?
Gil Kane’s UNDERSEA Agent © 2015: UNDERSEA Agent © 2015 Radiant Assets LLC. All rights reserved.

Today in 1914 author and batman scripter David Vern Reed was born. Thirty years so was later Brazilian comics master Léo (AKA Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira). You can find them all over this blog if you look. In 1965 the amazing Kyle Baker joined us and ditto for him.

In 1969 landmark British girls’ comic Lady Penelope ended after 204 issues, and six years later we said farewell to national treasure John Millar Watt, renowned for the strip Pop, but also a wonderful crafter of stuff for Thriller Comics Library, Robin Hood Annual, girls’ weekly comic Princess and especially Look and Learn.

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DC Finest Green Lantern (volume 2) – Earth’s Other Green Lantern


By Gardner F. Fox, John Broome, Bob Haney, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Ramona Fradon & Charles Paris, Murphy Anderson, Joe Giella, Frank Giacoia, Sid Greene & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-79950-326-2 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pure & Superhero Sensationalism… 9/10

After a hugely successful revival and reworking of Golden Age all-star The Flash, DC (National Periodical Publications as they were then) built on a resurgent superhero trend. Cover dated October 1959 and on sale from July 28th, Showcase #22 hit newsstands at the same time as the fourth issue of the new Flash comic book (#108) and once again the guiding lights were Editor Julie Schwartz and writer John Broome. Assigned as illustrator was action ace Gil Kane.

Brash, cocky test pilot Hal Jordan was in California when an alien cop crashed on Earth. Mortally wounded, Abin Sur commanded his ring – a device which could materialise thoughts – to find a replacement officer: one both honest and without fear. Scanning the planet, the wonder weapon selected Jordan, whisking him to the crash-site. The dying alien bequeathed his ring, lantern-shaped Battery of Power and his profession (patrolman of Sector 2814) to the astonished Earthman.

In 6 pages the story established characters, scenario and narrative thrust of a series that would become the spine of all DC continuity. With the concept of the superhero being re-established among the buying public, there was no shortage of gaudily clad competition. Better books thrived by having something a little “extra”. With Green Lantern that was primarily the superb scripts of John Broome & Gardner Fox and astounding ever-evolving drawing of Gil Kane (ably abetted by a string of top inkers) whose dynamic anatomy and dramatic action scenes were maturing with every page he drew. Happily, the concept itself was also a provider of boundless opportunity.

Other heroes had extraterrestrial, other-dimensional and even trans-temporal adventures, but the valiant champion of this series was also a cop: a lawman working for the biggest police force in the entire universe.

This fabulous compilation gathers Green Lantern #40-61 (October 1965 -June 1968) plus contemporary guest appearances in The Flash #168, Detective Comics #350 and The Brave and the Bold #69. It all gets started without fanfare and opens with GL #40 which went on sale on August 26th 1965.

Conceived and delivered by Broome, Kane & Sid Greene (with conceptual input as always from editor Schwartz, ‘The Secret Origin of the Guardians!’ was a landmark second only to game-changing ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ (see DC Finest: The Flash – The Human Thunderbolt) as the Emerald Gladiator with his Earth-2 counterpart Alan Scott have to stop obsessed Oan scientist Krona, whose misguided attempts to discover the origins of the universe had introduced evil into our pristine reality billions of years ago. His actions forced his immortal brethren to become protectors of life and civilisation in an unending act of group contrition – the Guardians of the Universe.

Now he was back and still asking the wrong question, with his efforts also endangering a parallel earth. Happily for creation, that world had its own vastly experienced Emerald Avenger, who pitched in, and was so good at crisis management that the Guardians offered him Hal’s job…

Simultaneously high concept and all-action, the tale became a keystone of DC cosmology and a springboard for all those mega-apocalyptic publishing events such as Crisis on Infinite Earths. It has seldom been equalled and never bettered…

Gardner Fox scribed GL #41, spotlighting twisted romance in ‘The Double Life of Star Sapphire!’ as an alien power-gem again compels Jordan’s boss/true love Carol Ferris to subjugate and marry her sometime paramour Green Lantern. Fox also wrote another cracking magical mystery to end the issue as extraterrestrial wizard Myrwhydden triggered ‘The Challenge of the Coin Creatures!’

Next came ‘The Other Side of the World!’ wherein Fox continued a long-running experiment in continuity with a superb tale of time-lost civilisations and an extra-dimensional invasion by the Warlock of Ys co-starring peripatetic quester Zatanna the Magician as perfectly pictured by Kane & Greene.

At that time the top-hatted, fish-netted sorceress appeared in a number of Schwartz-edited titles, hunting her long-missing father Zatarra: a magician-hero in the Mandrake mould who had fought evil in the pages of Action Comics for over a decade, beginning with the very first issue. In true Silver Age “refit” style, Fox concocted a young, equally empowered daughter, promoting and popularising her in guest-team ups with superheroes he was currently scripting. If you’re counting, these tales appeared in Hawkman #4, Atom #19, Green Lantern #42 and an Elongated Man back-up strip in Detective Comics #355 as well as a slick piece of back writing to include the high-profile Caped Crusader via Detective #336. It all concluded after this GL segment in Justice League of America #51. You can enjoy the entire early epic by tracking down Justice League of America: Zatanna’s Search…

The Flash shared the spotlight in #43: a high-energy tussle with a debuting tectonically terrifying new supervillain for Fox’s ‘Catastrophic Crimes of Major Disaster!’ and the next issue provide two tales – an increasing rarity as book-length epics became the action-packed norm.

Second-class postage discounts had for years dictated the format of comic books: to qualify for cheaper rates periodicals had to contain more than one feature, but when the rules were revised single, complete tales not divided into “chapters” soon proliferated. Here though are two reasons to bemoan the switch; Fox’s ‘Evil Star’s Death-Duel Summons’ and Broome’s “Jordan Brothers” adventure ‘Saga of the Millionaire Schemer!’, offering high-intensity alien supervillain action and a heady, witty comedy-of-errors mystery as Hal visits his family and is embroiled in new sister-in-law Sue’s hare-brained scheme to prove that her husband Jim Jordan is actually Green Lantern!

Crossovers were becoming increasingly common as shared continuity expanded and heroes popped up out of their regular jurisdiction. One brilliantly executed example follows…

Back in 1963 Schwartz had assumed editorial control of Batman & Detective Comics, allowing him space for a character who had been lying mostly fallow ever since his debut as a very long-legged walk-on in the April/May 1960 Flash. The Elongated Man was Ralph Dibny: a circus-performer who discovered an additive in popular soft drink Gingold which gave certain rare people increased muscular flexibility. Intrigued, Dibny isolated and refined the chemical and developed a serum granting him the ability to stretch, bend and compress his body to an incredible degree. From Detective #350 (April 1966) comes ‘Green Lantern’s Blackout!’ wherein Hal’s best friend Thomas Kalmaku seeks out the Stretchable Sleuth to solve the riddle of the hero’s abrupt disappearance – an entrancing, action-packed team-up with a future Justice League colleague by Fox & Carmine Infantino.

Scripted by Broome, Earth-2’s ring wielder returns for another power-packed pairing in Green Lantern #45’s fantasy & fisticuffs romance romp ‘Prince Peril’s Power Play’. The author raised the dramatic stakes with the hero’s first continued adventure in the following issue. GL #46 opens with Fox’s delightfully grounded crime-thriller ‘The Jailing of Hal Jordan’, before – preceded by a spectacular Kane pin-up – ‘The End of a Gladiator!’ details the murder of Sector 2814’s GL by old foe Dr. Polaris, concluding with his honour-laden funeral on Oa, home of the Guardians!

Broome was on fire at this time: the following issue and concluding chapter sees the hero’s corpse snatched to the 58th century and revived in time to save his occasional future home from a biological infection of pure evil in the spectacular triumph ‘Green Lantern Lives Again!’ Bizarrely garbed goodies and baddies were common currency at this time of incipient TV-generated Batmania, so when gold-plated mad scientist Keith Kenyon returned it was as a dyed-in-the-wool costumed crazy for Fox’s ‘Goldface’s Grudge Fight Against Green Lantern!’: a brutal clash of opposites. Sadly, Broome’s showbiz scoundrel Dazzler didn’t quite set the world afire in #49’s ‘The Spectacular Robberies of TV’s Master Villain!’ but the yarn was still a shocker, as Hal Jordan quit his job as a Coast City test pilot and went on the first of his vagabond quests across America…

Green Lantern had been the first hero to co-headline with Batman in The Brave and the Bold #59 (April/May 1965): a tale which became the blueprint of the title’s next 20 years as two colleagues joined forces for a specific case. There devious criminal scientist John Starr tricked Bruce Wayne into clearing his name and stole the Emerald Crusader’s power to fuel a chronal assault on Gotham as the Time Commander. Here and now, Win Mortimer joins scripter Bob Haney as Gotham Gangbuster and Green Knight endure a fractious reunion in B&B #69’s ‘War of the Cosmic Avenger’ (December 1966-January 1967) as John Starr repeats his tactic to unleash star-powered golem Cosmo upon the world, utterly unaware that the monster might have its own sinister agenda. Luckily, our heroes are smarter than the brilliant but bad time bandit…

With Green Lantern #50 Kane began inking his own art (probably in preparation for his forthcoming independent publications Savage and Blackmark), lending the proceedings a raw, savage appeal. The fight content in the stories was also ramped up, as seen in Broome’s murder-mystery treasure hunt ‘The Quest for the Wicked Queen of Hearts!’, complimented by an extragalactic smack-fest in Fox’s ‘Thraxton the Powerful vs Green Lantern the Powerless’, prior to Broome bringing the Emerald Crusader back to the 58th century to battle ‘Green Lantern’s Evil Alter Ego!’ in #52. Meanwhile, across the editorial aisle in The Flash #168 (cover-dated March 1967 but on sale from January 19th) Broome delivered a full-length thriller for Infantino & Sid Greene in which the Guardians of the Universe seek out the Scarlet Speedster after finding ‘One of our Green Lanterns is Missing!’ Bafflingly, as the Vizier of Velocity hunts for his missing best buddy, he is constantly distracted and diverted by a gang of third-rate thugs who have somehow acquired futuristic super weapons…

Back in GL #52, Broome & Kane have Alan Scott and comedy sidekick Doiby Dickles pop over from Earth-2 to aid against returning arch nemesis Sinestro in frankly peculiar ‘Our Mastermind, the Car!’, before finding far less outré plot or memorable foe for #53’s ‘Captive of the Evil Eye!’ wherein an alien giant stealing Earth’s atmosphere is ferociously foiled. The same issue sees Infantino & Greene step up to illustrate Broome’s thrillingly comedic Jordan Brothers back-up ‘Two Green Lanterns in the Family!’ as Hal finds employment as an investigator for the Evergreen Insurance company…

Broome & Kane reunite for positively surreal, super-scientific saga ‘Menace in the Iron Lung!’ (GL #54), with a manic shut-in orchestrating a deadly remote war against the Viridian Avenger followed by an all-out attack on the Guardians and their operatives in ‘Cosmic Enemy Number One’. The trans-galactic assassinations conclude in ‘The Green Lanterns’ Fight for Survival!’ and the appointment of a second Earthling to the now depleted Corps.

For #57, Fox scripts a sparkling Fights ‘n’ Tights duel in ‘The Catastrophic Weapons of Major Disaster!’ with the walking extinction event simultaneously tapping into and depowering the power ring before #58’s gripping psycho-thriller ‘Peril of the Powerless Green Lantern’ sees our hero seemingly suffering from debilitating combat fatigue. Sid Greene returned to inking with this yarn, staying on to embellish another continuity landmark.

In Green Lantern (volume 2 #59, March 1968) Broome introduced ‘Earth’s Other Green Lantern!’ in a rip-roaring cosmic epic of what-might-have-been. When dying Abin Sur originally ordered his ring to select a worthy successor Hal Jordan wasn’t the only candidate, but simply the closest of two. Here thanks to Guardian technology Hal sees what would have occurred if the ring had chosen his alternative Guy Gardner instead¦?

Action lovers and fans of fantasy fiction couldn’t find a better example of everything that defines superhero comics, but by the time of these later stories began DC was a company in transition – as indeed was America itself – with new ideas (for which, in comic-book terms, read “new, young writers”) granted greater headway than ever before: in turn generating an influx of new kids unseen since the very start of the industry, when excitable young artists and writers ran wild with imagination. Green Lantern #60 (April 1968), however, was an all-veteran outing as Fox, Kane & Greene introduced a fantastic new foe in ‘Spotlight on the Lamplighter!’, a power-packed, crime-busting morality play inadvertently foreshadowing a spectacular Green team-up classic in the next issue.

We end as we began for the last tale in this collection, wherein Mike Friedrich pens ‘Thoroughly Modern Mayhem!’ Mercifully the story is as wonderful as the title is not, since it cut to the quick of a problem many a kid had posited. If the power ring was so powerful why not just command it to end all evil? When the old and world-weary Emerald Crusader of Earth-2 does just that, it takes both him and his Earth-1 counterpart to remedy the shocking consequences to all of humanity…

Augmented with covers by Kane, Murphy Anderson, Jack Adler, Infantino, Greene & Joe Giella, these costumed drama romps are in themselves a great read for most ages, but when also considered as the building blocks of all DC continuity they become vital fare for any fan keen to make sense of the modern superhero experience. This blockbusting book showcases the imaginative and creative peak of Broome, Fox & Kane: a plot driven plethora of action sagas and masterful thrillers that literally reshaped the DC Universe. If you love superheroes you will never read better…
© 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 2025 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1908 key comics personage, DC editor, writer and media intermediary Whitney Ellsworth was born, and in 1970 so was Mexican maestro Humberto Ramos who has excelled on everything from Amazing Spider-Man to Young Justice.

You’ve probably never heard of her, but Dorothy Woolfolk shattered a bunch of glass ceilings and was DC’s first woman editor. We lost her today in 2000, but her legacy lives on.

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The JSA All Stars Archives volume 1


By John Wentworth, Ken Fitch, Bill O’Connor, Sheldon Mayer, Charles Reizenstein, Bill Finger, Stan Aschmeier, Bernard Baily, Ben Flinton & Leonard Sansone, Howard Purcell, Hal Sharp, Irwin Hasen & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1472-2 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Golden Aged but Evergreen Enjoyment …8/10

In the JSA’s anniversary year, here’s yet another DC classic collection long overdue for revival and digital return. Until then – and if you can find it – this hardback will make a perfect present for you or yours…

After the actual invention of the comic book superhero – indisputably Action Comics’ debut of Superman in June 1938 – the most significant event in the industry’s history was the combination of individual sales-points into a group. Thus what seems blindingly obvious to us with the benefit of four-colour hindsight was proven: consumers couldn’t get enough of garishly-hued mystery men and combining a multitude of characters inevitably increases readership. Plus, of course, a mob of superheroes is just so much cooler than one… or one-and-a-half if there’s a sidekick involved…

The creation of the Justice Society of America in 1941 (with copies of All-Star Comics #3 going on sale today waaay back then) utterly changed the shape of the budding business. However, before that team could unite they had to be popular enough to qualify, and this superb hardcover sampler gathers the debut adventures of a septet of beloved champions who never quite made it into the first rank but nonetheless scored enough to join the big team and maintain their own solo spots for much of the Golden Age of American Comics.

Whilst most favoured 1940s stalwarts all won their own DC Archive collections (some even making it into digital modern editions this century), this particular tome bundles a bunch of lesser lights – or at least those who never found as much favour with modern fans and revivalists – and features the first 5 appearances of 7 of the JSA‘s “secondary” mystery men: all solid supporting acts in their own anthology homes but who were potentially so much more…

Gathered here are short, sharp, stirring tales from Flash Comics #1-5; Adventure Comics #48-52; All-American Comics #19-29 and Sensation Comics #1-5, collectively spanning January 1940 to May 1942. They are preceded a sparkling, informative and appreciative Foreword by Golden Age aficionado and advocate Roy Thomas… himself enjoying an anniversary today so a very happy 85th birthday to you, sir!

The vintage vim & vigour begins with a character equally adored and reviled in modern times. Johnny Thunderbolt – as he was originally dubbed – was an honest, well-meaning, courageous soul who was also a grade A idiot. However, what he lacked in smarts he made up for with sheer luck, unfailing pluck and the unconscious (at least at first) control of an irresistible magic force.

The series was played for action-packed laughs, but there was no getting away from it: Johnny was, quite frankly, a simpleton in oblivious control of an ultimate weapon. At least his electric genie was more plausible than an egomaniacal orange-toned cretin in control of America’s nuclear arsenal…

John Wentworth & Stan Aschmeier introduced the happy sap in ‘The Kidnapping of Johnny Thunder’ from January 1940’s Flash Comics #1: a fantastic origin detailing how, decades previously, the infant seventh son of a seventh son in America was abducted by priests from mystical island Badhnisia. The child was to be raised as the long-foretold wielder of a fantastic magical weapon, all by voicing the eldritch command “Cei-U” – which sounds to western ears awfully like “say, you”…

However, ancient enemies on neighbouring isle Agolea started a war before ceremonial indoctrination could be completed and at age seven the lad, through that incomprehensible luck, returned to his parents to be raised in relative normality of the Bronx. Everything was fine until Johnny’s 17th birthday, when the rite finally came to fruition and – amid bizarre weather conditions – Badhnisians cultists intensified the search for their living weapon.

By the time they tracked him down, he was working in a department store and had recently picked up the habit of blurting out the phrase “say you.” It generally resulted in something very strange happening. One example being a bunch of strange “Asiatics” attacking him and being blown away by a mysterious pink tornado…

Pattern set, each month Johnny looked for gainful employment, stumbled into a crime or crisis where his voluble temperament resulted in an inexplicable unnatural phenomenon that solved the problem but left him no better off. It was a winning theme that lasted until 1947, by which time the Force had resolved into a wisecracking thunderbolt-shaped humanoid genie, while Johnny was ousted from his own strip by sexy new crimebuster Black Canary.

Flash Comics #2 featured ‘Johnny Becomes a Boxer’. Upon stepping in to save a girl from bullies, Johnny somehow convinces vivacious Daisy Darling to be his girlfriend. He then becomes Heavyweight Champion, leading to his implausibly winning a fixed bout in #3’s ‘Johnny versus Gunpowder Glantz’. Only now, Daisy refuses to marry a brute who lives by hitting others. The solution came in ‘Johnny Law’ when kidnappers attempt to abduct Daisy’s dad. Following his sound thrashing of the thugs, and at his babe’s urging, Johnny then joins the FBI. This tantalising taste of times past concludes with ‘G-Man Johnny’ (#5 May 1940) as the kid’s first case involves him in a bank raid and results in his own dad being taken hostage…

Although he eventually joined the JSA, and despite affable, good-hearted bumbling carrying him through the war, shifting peace-time fashions found no room for a hapless hero anymore, and when he encountered a sultry masked female Robin Hood who stole from crooks, the writing was on the wall. Nevertheless, fortuitously imbecilic (and remarkably Millennial in outlook and prospects) Johnny Thunder is fondly regarded by many modern fans, still having much to say and a decidedly different way of saying it…

Ken Fitch & Bernard Baily’s Hourman was a far more serious proposition. He actually had a shot at stardom and began by supplanting The Sandman as cover feature in Adventure Comics #48 (March 1940). Here, his exploits run through #52 (July) establishing the unique and gripping methodology which made him such a favourite of later, more sophisticated fans.

In an era where origins were never as important as action, mood and spectacle, ‘Presenting Tick-Tock Tyler, the Hour-Man’ begins with a strange classified ad offering assistance to any person in need. Chemist Rex Tyler had invented Miraclo: a drug super-energising him for 60 minutes at a time, and his first case sees him help a wife whose man is being dragged back into criminal endeavours by poverty and bad friends. Then ‘The Disappearance of Dr. Drew’ finds Tyler locating a missing scientist kidnapped by thugs before ‘The Dark Horse’ has the Man of the Hour crush a crooked, murderous bookie who swipes both horse and owner before a key race. Mad science and a crazy doctor employing ‘The Wax-Double Killers’ adds scary thrills and supervillain cachet for our timely hero to handle, and ‘The Counterfeit Hour-Man’ concludes the offerings here as he again defeats Dr. Snegg in a scurrilous scheme to frame the hooded hero.

Hourman always looked great and his adventures developed into tight and compulsive affairs, but as simply another strong, fast, tough masked guy, he never caught on and eventually timed out at the beginning of 1943 with Adventure #83.

Our third second string star is Calvin College student Al Pratt: a diminutive but determined kid fed up with being bullied by jocks. Al remade himself by effort and willpower into a pint-sized, two-fisted mystery man ready for anything. One of the longest lasting Golden Age greats, The Mighty Atom was created by writer Bill O’Connor and rendered by Ben Flinton & Leonard Sansone. He debuted in All-American Comics #19 and, after an impressive run there, transferred to Flash Comics in February 1947. The Atom sporadically appeared until the last issue – #104, cover-dated February 1949 – and made his final bow in the last JSA tale (All Star Comics #57) in 1951.

The cases here span AAC #19-23 (October 1940 – February 1941), beginning by ‘Introducing the Mighty Atom’ as the bullied scholar hooks up with down-&-out trainer Joe Morgan, whose radical methods soon have the kid at the very peak of physical condition and well able to take care of himself. However, when Al’s hoped-for girlfriend Mary is kidnapped, the lad eschews fame and potential sporting fortune to bust her loose, thereafter opting for clandestine extracurricular activities….

The Atom sported a costume for his second adventure, going into ‘Action at the College Ball’ to foil a hold-up before tackling ‘The Monsters from the Mine’ – actually enslaved victims of a scientific maniac intent on conquest. The college environment offered plentiful plot opportunities and in ‘Truckers War’ the hero crushes hijackers who bankrupt a fellow student and football star’s father. These episodes conclude with ‘Joe’s Appointment’ as Al’s trainer is framed for spying by enemy agents and needs a little atomic assistance…

Although we think of the Golden Age as a superhero wonderland, the true watchword was variety. Flagship anthology All-American Comics offered everything from slapstick comedy to aviation adventure on its four-colour pages and one of the very best humour strips featured semi-autobiographical exploits of Scribbly Jibbet: a boy who wanted to draw.

Created by actual comics wonderboy Sheldon Mayer, Scribbly: Midget Cartoonist debuted in AAC #1 (April 1939) and built a sterling rep for himself beside star reprint features including Mutt and Jeff and all-new adventure serial Hop Harrigan, Ace of the Airways. However, when contemporary fashions demanded a humorous look at mystery men, in #20 (November 1940) Mayer’s comedy feature evolved into a delicious spoof of the trend as Scribbly’s formidable landlady Ma Hunkel decided to do something about crime in her neighbourhood… so she dressed up as a husky male masked hero.

‘The Coming of the Red Tornado’ sees her don cape, woollen longjohns and a saucepan for aN identity-obscuring helmet to crush gangster/kidnapper Tubb Torponi. The mobster had made the mistake of snatching Ma’s terrible nipper Sisty and Scribbly’s little brother Dinky (who would later become her masked sidekicks), so Ma was determined to see justice done…

An ongoing serial rather than specific episodes, the dramedy concluded in ‘The Red Tornado to the Rescue’, with irate, inept cops deciding to pursue the mysterious new vigilante, with the ‘Search for the Red Tornado’ only making them look (more) stupid. With the scene set for outrageous parody ‘The Red Tornado Goes Ape’ pits the parochial masked manhunter against a zoo full of critters before the superb, sublime silly selection ends with ‘Neither Man nor Mouse’ (All-American Comics #24) with the hero apparently retiring and crime resurging – until Dinky & Sisty become crime- crunching duo The Cyclone Kids…

A far more serious and sustainable contender debuted in the next AAC issue, joining the growing horde of grim masked avengers. Delivered by Charles Reizenstein & Aschmeier in All-American Comics #25 (April 1941), ‘Dr. Mid-Nite: How He Began’ reveals how surgeon Charles McNider is blinded by criminals but subsequently discovers he can see perfectly in darkness. Becoming an outspoken criminologist, the maimed medico devises blackout bombs and other night paraphernalia to also wage secret war on gangsters, aided only by his new pet owl Hooty…

After bringing his own assailant to justice, the good doctor smashes river pirates protected by corrupt politicians in ‘The Waterfront Mystery’ and rescues innocent men blackmailed into serving criminals’ sentences in jail in ‘Prisoners by Choice’ (#27, illustrated by Howard Purcell). With Aschmeier’s return, Mid-Nite crushes aerial wreckers using ‘The Mysterious Beacon’ to down bullion planes and then smashes ‘The Menace of King Cobra’: a secret society leader lording it over copper mine workers.

The Master of Darkness also lasted until the era’s end and appeared in that last JSA story. Since his 1960s return he’s become one of the most resilient and mutable characters in DC’s pantheon of Golden Age revivals, whereas the next nearly-star was an almost forgotten man for decades. Of course his nineties reboot successor is a big shot screen star now…

When Sensation Comics launched (on sale from November 5th 1941) all eyes were rightly glued to uniquely eye-catching Wonder Woman who hogged all the covers and unleashed a wealth of unconventional adventures every month. However, like all anthologies of the era, her exploits were balanced by other features. Sensation #1-5 (cover-dates January to May 1942) also featured a pugnacious fighter who was the quintessence of manly prowess and a quiet, sedate fellow problem-solver who was literally a master of all trades.

Crafted by Reizenstein & Hal Sharp, ‘Who is Mr. Terrific?’ introduced physical and mental prodigy Terry Sloane who so excelled at everything he touched, that by the time of the opening tale he was planning his own suicide to escape terminal boredom. Happily, on a very high bridge he found Wanda Wilson, a girl with the same idea. By saving her, Sloane found purpose: crushing the kinds of criminals who had driven her to such despair…

Actively seeking out villainy of every sort, he performs ‘The One-Man Benefit Show’ after thugs sabotage performers, travels to the republic of Santa Flora to expose ‘The Phony Presidente’ and helps a rookie cop pinch an “untouchable” gang boss in ‘Dapper Joe’s Comeuppance’. Sloan’s last showing here sees him at his very best, carefully rooting out political corruption and exposing ‘The Two Faces of Caspar Crunch’…

Closing out this stunning hardback extravaganza is another quintet from Sensation #1-5, this time by Bill Finger & Irwin Hasen: already established stars for their work on Batman and Green Lantern.

‘This is the Story of Wildcat’ premieres one the era’s most impressive lost treasures and a genuine comic book classic in the tale of Ted Grant: a boxer framed for the murder of his best friend. Inspired by a kid’s hero-worship of Green Lantern, Grant clears his name by donning a feline mask and costume and ferociously stalking the true killers. Finger & Hasen captured everything which made for perfect rollercoaster adventure in their explosive sports-informed yarns. Mystery, drama and action unfolded unabated in sequel ‘Who is Wildcat?’ as Ted retires his masked identity to compete for the vacant world boxing title, but cannot let innocents suffer as crime and corruption befoul the city. ‘The Case of the Phantom Killers’ sees Wildcat stalk mobsters seemingly striking from beyond the grave, before his adventures alter forever with the introduction of hard-hitting hillbilly hayseed ‘Stretch Skinner, Dee-teca-tif!’ He came to the big city to be a private eye and instead became Grant’s foil, manager and crimebusting partner. The capsule comic craziness then concludes for now with a rousing case of mistaken identity and old-fashioned framing, as Wildcat saves his new pal from a murdering gambler in ‘Chips Carder’s Big Fix’…

These eccentric early adventures might not suit some modern fans’ tastes but they stand as an impressive and joyous introduction to the fantastic worlds and exploits of the World’s oldest if not always greatest superheroes. If you have an interest in the way things were or just hanker for simpler times, less complicated and angsty fun, this may well be a book you’ll cherish forever…
© 1940, 1941, 1942, 2007 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Also Today, in 1901 Roy Crane was born. His Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer all shaped the way comics evolved and deserve your attention. In 1923 Belgian cartoonist Paul (Corentin) Cuvelier was born. You can celebrate the birthday of Marjane Satrapi who joined the world in 1969 by checking out Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood & Persepolis 2 – The Story of a Return or recall the wonders of C.C. Beck who died today in 1989 just by heading to The Shazam! Archives volume 1. Better yet, you could skip my blather and just read the actual books I’m plugging…

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Lucky Luke: The Complete Collection volume 4


By Morris & René Goscinny, with Christelle & Bertram Pissavy-Yvernault: translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-169-9 (Album HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Family Thrills and Frolics No Movie Can Match… 8/10

On the Continent, the populace has a mature relationship with comics: according them academic and scholarly standing as well as meritorious nostalgic value and the validation of acceptance as an art form. Whilst tracing the lost origins of a true global phenomenon, this hardback and digital compilation celebrates the formulative early triumphs of a fictional hero who is certainly a national treasure for both Belgium and France, and it’s also timely in that this worldwide western wonder celebrates his 80th anniversary next year.

As we know him now, Lucky Luke is a rangy, good-natured, lightning-fast cowboy roaming the fabulously mythic Old West, having light-hearted adventures with his horse Jolly Jumper and interacting with archetypes, historical figures and mythic icons. His ongoing exploits have made him one of the best-selling comic characters in Europe (83 collected books plus around a dozen spin-offs and specials, totalling over 300 million albums in at least 33 languages thus far). That has generated all the usual spin-off toys, computer games, puzzles, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies that come with that kind of popularity. It has also spurred a bunch of academicians to steer studies his way and garnered a lot of learned words. Some of those you can read here, if you’re keen…

Lucky debuted in 1946, courtesy of Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (“Morris”). For decades we all believed his first appearance was in autumn release Le Journal de Spirou Christmas Annual (L’Almanach Spirou 1947) prior to being catapulted into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880’ on December 7th 1946. However, the initial volume in this superb archival series proved the value of scholarship by revealing that the strip actually premiered earlier that year in the multinational weekly comic, albeit sans title banner and only in the edition released in France.

This fourth curated outing presents – in strict chronological order – strips published between February 2nd 1956 through September 1957 with all the art and pages fully restored, rejiggled and remastered to achieve maximum contemporary authenticity and synchronicity with the original weekly serialisation. Those stories were subsequently gathered as albums The Bluefeet are Coming!, Lucky Luke vs Joss Jamon and The Dalton Cousins and there’s even a few little extras scattered about for fascinated completists.

Before all that, though, there’s a wealth of background and unseen other works to enjoy, beginning with a lost cartoon gem as an old goldminer waggishly details ‘The Thousand Uses… of a Hat’…

A precocious, westerns-addicted, art-mad kid, well off and educated by Jesuits, Maurice de Bevere was born on December 1st 1923 in Kortrijk, Belgium. A far from illustrious or noteworthy scholar – except in all the ways teachers despise – Maurice sought artistic expression in his early working life via forays into film animation before settling into his true vocation. While working at the CBA (Compagnie Belge d’Actualitiés) animation studio, “Morris” met future comics superstars Franquin & Peyo, and worked as a caricaturist for weekly magazine Le Moustique. Morris quickly became one of la Bande des quatre (Gang of Four) comprising Jijé, Will and old comrade Franquin. Each was a leading proponent of a loose, free-wheeling artistic style known as the “Marcinelle School” which came to dominate Le journal de Spirou in aesthetic contention with the “Ligne Claire” style of Hergé, E.P. Jacobs and others in Le Journal de Tintin.

Previous volumes detailed Morris’s life, career, and achievements, and here Christelle & Bertram Pissavy-Yvernault augment past pictorial essays with ‘Wanted: Lucky Luke’ exploring life after returning to Belgium after his American holiday. It was May 1955 and the artist and his family had been gone for seven years…

Back home and back at work, Morris added to his output by illustrating novels, adding editorial content like quizzes to his Lucky workload and tasting new styles with a vast range of magazine covers, an inordinate number of which were ‘Sappy Moments’ for romance magazines and periodicals…

For Flemish readers he did cartoon sports columns and generally traded as a jobbing commercial artist, but all the while, he was still watching westerns and producing cowboy wonders and other comics stuff, such as the ‘Wild West Journalism’ article he wrote and included here in full. He was also constantly chatting with one of the Europeans he’d met in the US: cartoonist and scripter René Goscinny…

Accompanied by published cartoons, covers, script pages, contemporary ads, family photos and tons of original art, the in-depth treatise focuses on artistic development and the team building that resulted in one of comics’ most fruitful double acts Goscinny.

Morris had taken nearly a decade to craft nine albums of affectionate sagebrush parody and action. Now, with Goscinny as regular wordsmith, Luke would attain dizzying heights of super swift superstardom, commencing with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie), in Le Journal de Spirou in August 1955. Before that though we enjoy a lost treat that first appeared in Risque Tout #11 (February 2nd 1956) prior to inclusion in Under A Western Sky. ‘Androcles’ details animal lover Luke’s interactions with a mistreated circus bear and proves that western justice applies equally to all…

Then the main event begins with all-Morris action as originally serialised in LJdS #938-957 (April 5th – August 16th and released in 1958 as Alerte aux Pied-Bleus/The Bluefeet are Coming!) It’s seen here with original French cover, editorial material and even ads.

A procession of linked gags sees Morris pile on and kick hard familiar themes and scenarios as the town of Rattlesnake Valley welcomes wanderer Lucky. The lone rider is just in time to save super-superstitious sheriff Jerry Grindstone from sneaky gambler/professional card cheat Pedro Cucaracha. His plans to fleece the old codger result in his painful and shameful eviction from civilisation; so naturally, the scoundrel tries to rob and blow up the bank on his way out. Chased into the surrounding desert, the scurvy Mexican then gulls the alcoholic Great Chief of the local Bluefeet Indians into laying siege to the town, tempting the old warrior with promises of unlimited booze…

Old Parched Bear is happy to oblige, and soon the town is forming a militia, telegraphing for the cavalry and erecting barricades. As food and water grow scarce profiteering proliferates, with Lucky and Jerry battening down the hatches and bolstering morale for a protracted and perilous defence of their lives and loved ones…

Against that framework of classic movie moments there are rich slapstick pickings as spies, crossdressers, raids & counter-raids and devious secret weapons all build to a bombastic finale, with Pedro and Parched Bear attempting all manner of nefarious invention to get respectively vengeance and more “firewater”…

… And then, when it’s almost too late, the Cavalry arrive… just after the deployment of late arriving support from Greenfeet and Yellowfeet branches of the family of First Nations. It can only end in catastrophe unless Lucky can contrive a solution…

Daft and Spectacular in equal amounts, this is perhaps a tale for older kids who have gained a bit of historical perspective and social understanding, although the action and slapstick situations are no more contentious than any old movie – as if that’s any help or comfort…

Rushing right on, Le Journal de Spirou #966-989 (October 18th 1956 – March 28th 1957) offered an uncredited Goscinny script as La bande de Joss Jamon and/or Lucky Luke contre Joss Jamon pitted our laconically lanky hero against a very different kind of bad guy. Again on view with original cover and ads, what we know as Lucky Luke vs Joss Jamon finds our happy wanderer facing guns, lynching, slander, a diabolical frame-up and political office, after Confederate soldiers turn their wartime skills to garnering personal profit in the years of Reconstruction that followed the American Civil War.

However, as vile as sly conman Pete the Wishy-washy, brutish Jack the Muscle, murderous Indian Joe, ruthless trickster Sam the Farmer and cardsharp Bill the Cheater may be, their combined villainy cannot match that of their ambitious scheming leader Joss Jamon. He has a dream of running the state if not the country and enough drive to make it happen…

How that doesn’t happen sees Luke battle them singly and in a wild bunch as Jamon moves into Los Palitos and frames Luke for robbery. Barely escaping the neck-stretching, Luke swears to bring back the real culprits in six months or surrender himself for the waiting noose…

The trail finds Jamon in bustling metropolis Frontier City where, after taking over businesses by making offers nobody dares to refuse, Jamon is running for Mayor. Despite physically a match for his enemies, Luke now needs to change tactics to unseat the entrenched plutocrat. That means a menace-packed war of nerves and even running as a rival candidate…

Even though election day is the farce you’d expect, and Lucky is branded an outlaw, he has one last card to play… civil dissatisfaction and unrest…

Witty, wry and cynical, this yarn is actually more socially relevant mow than it ever was when politicians at least feared the repercussions of being caught doing wrong…

Still anonymous, Goscinny also wrote closing inclusion. The Dalton Cousins was first enjoyed in LJdS #992-1013 (April 18th to September 12th 1957) and reappears here with original cover and ads. For this manic mirth-fest Goscinny performed a much-demanded act of necromancy, resurrecting a quartet of killers Lucky had already dealt with, but whom readers want not dead but alive…

Published back in December 1954 Hors-la-loi was Morris’ 6th album and included a strip which saw our hero meet and beat Emmett Bill, Grat & Bob Dalton: real life badmen who had plagued the west during the 1890s. On those funny pages, Lucky was hired by railroad companies to end the depredations of the desperados who had been imported into the strip, but given a comedic, yet still vicious spin. A cat & mouse chase across the wildest of wests saw Luke constantly frustrated by close calls and narrow escapes in superbly gripping movie set-pieces until, inevitably, justice claimed the killers. At the close, Morris had Lucky end the gang forever, but they and the story itself were insanely popular with fans. These owlhoots were comedy gold and ideal foils, so eventually they returned in the form of their own cousins…

From the response to that tale eventually came this aforementioned revival, as Goscinny’s third collaboration. When this iteration of the appalling Dalton Brothers – now and forever after Averell, Jack, William & devious, slyly psychotic, tyrannical diminutive brother Joe – showed up, the course of the strip altered forever…

It opens on a remote farm in Arizona where four brothers mourn the loss of the murderous bandits they resemble and are related to. They know they aren’t nearly good enough to fill the dead men’s boots or kill their killer Lucky Luke… but they are willing to try their hardest to change all that…

The replacement Daltons’ first attempt to settle the score is frankly embarrassing, but fortune and persistence gradually harden and hone them. They even at one stage have the happy wanderer train them…

Ultimately, however, after they besiege a town and regularly succeed in theft and terrorism, Lucky is forced to take action before they become as great a menace as their dearly departed favourites ever were…

Sadly, he leaves it too late and is forced to resort to tricky tactics of dividing to conquer. It either that or be hunted down like a dog: a role he’s just not suited for…

As much thriller as comedy romp, this yarn proved how crucial great villains are to any hero and started a western showdown that fruitfully persists and thrives to this day…

Graced with biographies of Morris and Goscinny and peppered with contemporaneous extras this is perfect for kids with a smidgen of historical perspective and social understanding, although the action and slapstick situations are no more contentious than any Laurel and Hardy film – perfectly understandable as Morris was a huge fan of the duo. These formative forays are a grand old hoot in the tradition of Destry Rides Again or Support Your Local Sheriff, superbly executed by master storytellers, and a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for anyone who might well have missed the romantic allure of the Wild West that never was…
Original edition © Lucky Comics 2022. English translation © 2025 Cinebook Ltd.
All pages & illustrations relating to The Thousand Uses of a Hat, Androcles and The Bluefeet are Coming! © Morris/Goscinny/Dupuis 2022.
All pages & illustrations relating to Horse Thieves, Lucky Luke vs Joss Jamon and The Dalton Cousins © Morris/Goscinny/Dupuis 2022.
All documents relating to Morris are © Morris/Dupuis 2022.
All documents relating to René Goscinny are © Anne Goscinny 2022 barring cited exceptions.

Today in 1948 Underground Commix cartoonist and proud pornographer Larry Welz (Yellow Dog, Captain Guts, Cherry PopTart) was born, whilst in 1992 epically long-running UK adventure weekly The Victor published its last issue.