Category: Crime Comics

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Robin: Year One – the Deluxe Edition


By Chuck Dixon, Scott Beatty, Javier Pulido, Robert Campanella, Lee Loughridge, Sean Konot & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7764-2 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes some Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Robin the Boy Wonder debuted in Detective Comics #38 – which despite its April 1940 cover-date was first snatched off newsstands across the USA from March 6th – until they all sold out. Happy Birthday, Boy Wonder! and congratulations on sparking an entire comics subgenre and inspiring so many heroes to indulge in innocuous child endangerment in our favourite entertainment medium and so many others…

Devised by Bob Kane, Bill Finger & Jerry Robinson, Robin was a juvenile circus acrobat whose parents were murdered by a mob boss in a savage display of ruthless public barbarity. The story of how Batman took 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. This 25-year-old version remains one of the best as well as arguably the least in need of toxic levels of suspended disbelief…

In the original pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, Grayson fought beside Batman until 1970 when, as an indicator of those socially 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 1947-1952 (mostly collected as two DC Archive volumes), 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 mentor Batman.

This Deluxe Edition compiles Robin: Year One #1-4, cover-dated December 2000 to April 2001: an enthralling embellishment of early Golden Age adventures topped up with modern sensibilities and a few supervillains to provide that peculiar kind of “fan-service” comic book devotees demand.

It begins in Blackgate prison with recent acquisition Joe Minette expressing his extreme unhappiness with being busted by a little kid in pixie boots. The brutal thug wants his notional partner Two-Face to do something about it, but seemingly legit intermediary Louis soon realizes his bifurcated boss is spiralling again: locked onto the idea that his lone adversary “The Bat” is now a tag-team of two…

In the avenues and alleyways, more and more miscreants are reporting a gaudily-garbed sparrow who flits like a bird and hits like a hammer, unaware that the nightly crime thwarting is simply on-the-job training for Batman’s newest weapon. In the Batcave, however, faithful family retainer Alfred Pennyworth is concerned at how happy and keen recently orphaned Dick Grayson appears. The boy seems to have accepted the death of his parents’ killer “Boss” Zucco and a prospective career bringing similar scum to justice, but how can the boy possibly be so well adjusted?

As the much travelled lad adapts to life in one – admittedly palatial – place, across town Mr. Pak meets professional henchperson Dormouse and his leader Jervis Tetch. The Mad Hatter is a subcontractor, using his mind control technology to assemble a unique package for a very prestigious and discriminating client. Visiting dignitary President Generalissimo Singh Manh Lee has a thing for little white girls, but unfortunately the Hatter has his own exacting aesthetic standards to fulfil, and has only programmed and prepped eight of the ten originally contracted for…

When another goes missing from Dick’s high school it’s game on…

Police Captain James Gordon is a father and far from happy that his clandestine costumed ally has brought a child into their personal war on crime. However, eventually accepting that it’s as much therapy for the victim as tactical advantage for the Batman, he’s prepared to let it pass, at least until the little girls are all found…

However it’s as a callow schoolboy that Grayson finds a crucial lead, before blotting his copybook by suiting up to rescue the victims and confront the exposed Generalissimo whilst spectacularly lowering the boom and nabbing his first supervillain. The pushback from austere-but-really-trying mentor Bruce is not at all what the Boy Wonder anticipated…

After more humdrum daily/nightly deeds of derring-do and clashes with minor mooks like Killer Moth, Firefly, Cluemaster and even hulking brute Blockbuster, the kid’s next formative crisis crops up as Two-Face makes the enigmatic junior partner his special project and means of keeping detested Batman in his proper place…

It begins with the modern Janus abducting a judge and staging a show trial to punish all those he holds responsible for the murder of his civilian half Harvey Dent as a prelude to capturing Robin and inflicting physical and psychological torments on his ultimate nemesis’ “second”…

Scarred and broken, Robin is no longer a feature of the night skies. Acting on toxic and malicious “information received” Gordon now acts on a promise he made himself and goes after the Dark Knight for reckless endangerment, child abuse and more. As Grayson comes out of his coma, his first thought is to get back into action, only to learn Bruce has benched him for life. Recuperating but shellshocked, the indomitable boy makes the best of his so-much-lessened life, enduring depression whilst dutifully soldiering on as civilian schoolboy. He does however secretly prepare for a change of heart and call back to action. That comes during a regular checkup with in-the-know family physician Leslie Thompkins, when Dr. Victor Frieze – Mister Freeze – ruthlessly raids the hospital blood bank. In his eagerness to stop the death toll mounting, a masked Grayson saves the day but only at the cost of more lives…

Finally pushed too far and convinced of his own utter worthlessness, Grayson runs away from home, but his time on the streets is cut short after Two-Face breaks out and Minette hires League of Assassins hitter Shrike to settle all his outstanding accounts…

As Batman hunts all the murderous players, he is distracted by the loss of his partner, unaware that the acrobat is not only a target of assorted super freaks but has also been “adopted” by Shrike and added to a most elite training cadre and is picking up skills the Dark Knight would never dream of teaching to children…

Inevitably all the vengeance-hungry murderers’ various schemes converge with Grayson right in the middle. But deep in the shadows, Batman has found him and accepted that theirs is an eternal, fated partnership…

An astounding and breathlessly fun-filled revision by Chuck Dixon (Batman, Robin, Bane, G.I. Joe, The Punisher, The Simpsons, Birds of Prey, Spongebob Squarepants, The Hobbit, Iron Man, Green Lantern, Superman), brought to boundless life by Javier Pulido (Ninjak, Human Target, She-Hulk Star Trek, Jessica Jones, Amazing Spider-Man) & Robert Campanella, the saga herein contained also comes with the artist’s gorgeous ‘Robin: Year One Sketchbook’ of character studies, roughs, layouts and fully pencilled pages, cover roughs and pencils more.

Short and so very, very sweet, this is thrilling romp Fights ‘n’ Tights fans will adore and a paean of pure superhero joy and grace any action/adventure admirer will covet.
© 2000, 2001, & 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Birds of Prey volume 1


By Chuck Dixon, Jordan Gorfinkel, Gary Frank, Jennifer Graves, Matt Haley, Sal Buscema, Stefano Raffaele, Dick Giordano, Greg Land & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5816-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Truly groundbreaking at the time, the exploits of the Birds of Prey recount the missions and lives of a rotating team of female crimefighters led by Barbara Gordon, the computer genius and omega level coder known to her inner circle as Oracle. Child of Gotham City Police Commissioner James Gordon, her own career as Batgirl was ended when the Joker blew out her spine during a terrifying kidnap attempt. Trapped in a wheelchair, she hungered for justice and sought new ways to make a difference in a very bad world…

Reinventing herself as a covert information-gatherer for Batman’s clique of avengers and defenders, she made herself an invaluable resource for the entire superhero community, but in the first of these collected tales Babs undertakes a new project that will allow her to become an even more effective crusader against injustice…

This volume contains the numerous one-shots, specials and miniseries that successfully introduced an eye-popping, mindblowing blend of no-nonsense bad-girl attitude and spectacular all-out action which finally convinced timid editorial powers-that-be of the commercial viability of a team composed of nothing but female superheroes. Who could possibly have guessed that some readers would like effective, positive, clever women kicking evil butt, and that boys would follow the adventures of violent, sexy, usually underdressed chicks hitting bad-guys – and occasionally each other? Or even eventually spawn their own TV series and sub-genre?

Gathered here, Black Canary/Oracle: Birds of Prey #1, Birds of Prey: Revolution, a pertinent section of Showcase ’96 #3, Birds of Prey: Manhunt #1-4, Birds of Prey: Revolution #1, Birds of Prey: Wolves #1 and Birds of Prey: Batgirl #1 (collectively spanning cover-dates June 1996 through February 1998) comprise a breathtaking riot of dynamic, glossy crimebusting, heavily highlighting the kind of wickedness costumed crusaders generally ignored back then: white collar and thoroughly black-hearted…

Opening tale ‘One Man’s Hell’ is written by Chuck Dixon and illustrated by Gary Frank & John Dell: set at a time when veteran martial arts crime-crusher Black Canary (AKA Dinah Laurel Lance) was slowly going to hell after the death of her long-time lover Oliver Queen. Of course, he got better a few years later (don’t they all?).

Broke, uncontrolled and hellbent on self-destruction, the increasingly violent, adrenaline-addicted heroine is contacted by a mysterious unseen presence and dispatched to a third world country to investigate a series of “terrorist attacks” that always seem to profit one unimpeachably benevolent philanthropist. With nothing left to lose, the Canary undertakes a tragically brutal mission and gains an impossibly valuable prize: purpose.

Peppered with an intriguing array of guest-stars and villains, this socially-conscious high-octane thriller established the Canary as one of the most competent and engaging combatants of the DCU and a roving agent of conscience and retribution more than capable of tackling any villainous scum clever enough to stay below regular superhero radar: a reputation enhanced in the sequel ‘Revolution’. Here Dixon, Stefano Raffaele & Bob McLeod craft a superbly compelling tale from a time when Oracle is no more than a rumour to everybody but Batman and Dinah Lance – and even they only get “intel” and advice from an anonymous voice over phone, by text or via radio-jewellery in a mysteriously provided new combat Canary uniform. Here Dinah and her silent partner track a human trafficking ring to failed state Santa Prisca and stumble into a dirty campaign by American interests to topple the standing dictator. Not for long…

When the venerable Showcase try-out title was revived in the 1990s it was as a monthly anthology highlighting old, unemployed characters and tapping into events already originated, rather than offering wholly new concepts. It swiftly becoming a place to test the popularity of DC’s bit players, with a huge range of heroes and team-ups passing through its eclectic pages. This made it a perfect place to trot out the new team for a broader audience who might have ignored the one-shots with girls on the cover…

Showcase ’96 #3 cover-starred Black Canary and Lois Lane, featuring a frantic collusion between the reporter, the street fighter and the still “silent partner” Oracle in a tale scripted by series editor Jordan B. Gorfinkel, laid out by Jennifer Graves and finished by Stan Woch. ‘Birds of a Feather’ sees Superman’s then Girlfriend and the Birds taking out a metahuman gangmaster who enslaves migrant workers to work in Metropolis’ secret sweat shops. Punchy and potent, the tales led to a 4-issue miniseries introducing a new wrinkle in the format – pairing Oracle and the Canary with an ever-changing cast of DC’s women warriors.

‘Manhunt’ has Dixon again scripting a breakneck, raucous thriller which begins ‘Where Revenge Delights’ (illustrated by Matt Haley & Wade Von Grawbadger) wherein the Birds’ pursuit of a philandering embezzler/scam-artist leads them to heated conflict and grudging alliance with The Huntress – a mob-busting vigilante even Batman thinks plays too rough…

She also wants the revoltingly skeevy Archer Braun (whom she knows and loathes as “Tynan Sinclair”) but her motives soon seem a good deal more personal than professional…

The two regular agents cautiously agree to cooperate, but the mix gets even headier after Selina Kyle invites herself to the lynching party in ‘Girl Crazy’ (enjoying additional inking from John Lowe). Over the strident objections of the never-more-helpless and frustrated Oracle, Canary consents. Braun, it seems, is into bigger, nastier crimes than anyone suspected and has made the terminal error of bilking the notorious Catwoman…

Fed up with Babs shouting in her ear, Canary goes offline, subsequently getting captured by Braun, ‘The Man That Got Away’ (inked by Cam Smith) and clearly a major threat. He might even be a secret metahuman…

Shanghaied to a criminal enclave in Kazakhstan for the stunning conclusion ‘Ladies Choice’ (with art by Sal Buscema, Haley & Von Grawbadger) Canary is more-or-less rescued by the unlikely and unhappy pairing of Catwoman & Huntress, but none of them is ready or able to handle Braun’s last surprise – Lady Shiva Woosan – the world’s greatest martial arts assassin.

Birds of Prey: Revolution (#1, February 1997, limned by Stefano Raffeale & Bob McLeod) then switches locale back to Caribbean rogue state/playground of the evil idle rich Santa Prisca, where the Canary trusts the wrong allies but still manages to shut down a human trafficking ring and drug-peddling general with delusions of grandeur.

Cover-dated October and illustrated by Dick Giordano & Wayne Faucher, one-shot Birds of Prey: Wolves #1 sees long-festering tensions over suitable targets seemingly split the core duo. However, after separately stopping Eastern European mobsters and a gang of high-tech home invaders, the heroes realize that flying solo is for the birds and they are better together, before the action and adventure pause after the long-awaited Birds of Prey: Batgirl #1 (February 1998, with art by Greg Land & Drew Geraci). The launch proper offers a baffling mystery, with a somehow fully physically functional Batgirl battling beside Black Canary to end the threat of the mindbending Mad Hatter and a host of Batman’s most vicious foes. All is obviously not as it seems, but the true nature of the spellbinding threat is almost too much for cerebral savant Oracle. Almost…

To Be Continued…

These rollercoaster rides of thrills, spills and consistently beautifully edgy, sardonic attitude finally won the Birds their own regular series. It quickly became one of DC’s best and most consistently engaging superhero adventure series of the nineties and Noughties and has manifested some type of team for readers ever since. This opening salvo is both landmark and groundbreaking and is still a fantastically fun adventure to delight any comics Fights ‘n’ Tights follower.
© 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2015 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Yoko Tsuno volume 10: Message for Eternity


By Roger Leloup translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-251-5 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

On 24th September 1970, indomitable intellectual adventurer and “electronics engineer” Yoko Tsuno commenced her career in Le Journal de Spirou via a cartoony “Marcinelle style” 8-page short entitled ‘Hold-up en hi-fi’. Two more followed (‘La belle et la bête’ and ‘Cap 351’), serving as precursors for her first full-length adventure, Le trio de l’étrange as serialised in proper full-sized regular LJdS beginning on May 13th 1971. She is still delighting readers and making new fans 31 albums later, in astonishing, action-packed, astoundingly accessible adventures numbering amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created.

Her globe-girdling mysteries and space-&-time-spanning epics are devised by multitalented Belgian maestro Roger Leloup who, in 1953, started his own solo career after working as a studio assistant and technical artist on Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin.

Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of an unstoppable wave of comics and strips revolutionising European comics. Very early in the process, he switched from loose illustration to the mesmerising nigh-photo realistic Ligne Claire style that is a series signature. The result is a compelling cannon of compellingly told, superbly imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of any individual yarn may seem – unswervingly grounded in hyper-realism with settings, if not scenarios, all underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles.

The long-overdue sea change in gender roles and stereotyping heralded a wave of clever, competent, brave and formidably capable female protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals and not romantic lures and ornamental booby traps: elevating all Continental comics in the process. Such endeavours are as engaging and empowering now in Miss Tsuno’s 55th anniversary year as they ever were.

As already stated, her first outings (STILL unaccountably unavailable in English) were mere introductory vignettes before epic authenticism took hold in 1971 when the unflappable troubleshooter met valiant but excitable pals Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen, and properly hit her stride. Following on from that epic of extraterrestrial intrigue, Tsuno’s case books would expand to include explosive exploits and espionage affairs in exotic corners of our world, sinister deep-space sagas and even time-travelling jaunts. Of the 31 European bande dessinée albums to date, 19 have been translated into English thus far, albeit – and ironically – none of them are available in digital formats…

Message pour l’éternité was first serialised in Spirou #1882-1905 (9th May-17 October 17th 1974) and became the fifth album compilation a year later. A skilfully-conceived suspenseful mystery thriller, it reached us as Cinebook’s tenth translated chronicle. It all begins as ever-restless ferociously perfectionist Yoko masters a new hobby.

After gliding high above Brittany, she fortuitously sets down in a field adjacent to a vast telecommunications complex. Offered a tour of the space-probing facility, Yoko learns from one of the chatty scientists of a fantastic “ghost message” recently picked up by satellites: a Morse code signal from a British plane lost in 1933. Bizarrely, the signal is somehow still being regularly broadcast…

When Yoko tries to arrange to have her glider picked up and sort out her own departure, a mysterious Englishman offers her a lift in his private helicopter. Naturally, he has an ulterior motive: as an employee of the company which originally insured the lost flight, he’s looking for someone with certain precise qualifications to trace the downed craft and recover the fortune in jewels it was carrying. Her fee will be suitably astronomical too…

It transpires that his firm has known where the plane went down for some time, but logistical and geographical difficulties have prevented them from undertaking any kind of recovery mission – until now. Moreover, although they have now started the process, the petite engineer is physically superior to any of the candidates the company are currently working with. Cautiously accepting the commission, Yoko starts planning, but even before Pol & Vic can join her the following day, strange accidents and incidents begin imperilling her life…

The boys are understandably reluctant but that attitude turns to sheer frustration and terror after someone tries to shoot down Yoko as she practises in her glider, but it only makes her more determined to complete the job.

Two weeks later the trio are heading to the daunting Swiss fortress the company uses as a base when another spectacular murder attempt almost ends their lives. Tsuno remains undeterred, but not so Vic & Pol, especially after learning that two of her fellow trainees have recently died in similar “accidents” in the mountains. Carrying on regardless, she is introduced to the fantastic glider-&-launch system that will take her to the previously unattainable crash site and starts finessing her landing technique in a fantastic training simulator.

Eventually more details are provided and the real story unfolds. The Handley-Page transport they’re seeking was conveying diplomatic mail from Karachi to London in November 1933, but vanished in a storm over Afghanistan. Decades later, a satellite somehow picked up a broken radio message stating it had landed – somewhere…

The businessman the trio cheekily refer to as “Milord” identifies himself as Major Dundee, a spymaster from Britain’s Ministry of Defence, and explains how a shady American former U2 pilot approached the British government, claiming to have spotted the downed ship during a clandestine overflight of Soviet territories. He also provided purloined photos showing the plane in the centre of a vast circular crater on the Russo-Chinese border, but subsequent reconnaissance flights have revealed nothing in the hole.

Thus a decision was taken to make a physical assessment, even though the already inaccessible site is deep in hostile – if not actual – enemy territory. Since then it has become clear that an unidentified agent or group is acting against the recovery project, probably intent on retrieving the ship’s mysterious but valuable cargo for a foreign power. Events spiral out of control when a traitor in the training team attempts to kill Yoko and “Operation Albatross” is rushed to commencement before the unknown enemy can try again…

Within a day lone pilot Tsuno is transported in a most fantastic and speedy manner around the world before her space-age glider prototype is secretly deployed over the enigmatic crater. Narrowly avoiding patrolling Soviet jets, Yoko deftly manoeuvres into a mist-covered chasm and plunges into one of the most uncanny experiences of her life.

The old plane is certainly gone. The floor of the crater is oddly cracked, and at its centre stands a strangely burned and blackened monolith. There are uncharacteristic animal bones everywhere and, at one end of the vast cavity, there is a primitive but large graveyard…

When the astounded adventurer explores further she is ambushed by her treacherous fellow trainee who has raced after her by conventional means and parachuted into the bizarre basin. However, his original plans have changed drastically since arrival, and despite the machine gun he wields, he needs Yoko’s help. He’s already located the Handley-Page – somehow manually dragged under an unsuspected overhang in the crater – but is mortally afraid of what he describes as the “tiny people” infesting the terrifying impact bowl…

As the unlikely allies head towards the perfectly preserved plane, the truth of the terrifying homunculi is shockingly revealed when they meet the last human survivor of the downed Diplomatic Flight, discovering to their extreme cost the uncanny, ultimately deadly atmospheric anomaly which has kept the plane a secret for decades and turned the crater into a vast geological radio set…

When the dust settles, Yoko realises she is trapped in the subterranean anomaly. With all her escape plans rendered useless she must align herself with the bizarre sole survivor and his bestial, rebellious servants. However, she absolutely refuses to give up on the recovery mission. Of course that doesn’t mean that she has to trust anything the old relic in the hole or Major Dundee has said. With that in mind, Tsuno lays her own plans to settle matters…

As always, the most potent asset of these breathtaking dramas is the astonishingly authentic and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship and storytelling, which superbly benefits from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail, honed through years of working on Tintin. With this sleekly beguiling tale, Yoko proved that she was a truly multifaceted hero, equally at home in all manner of dramatic milieus and able to hold her own against the likes of James Bond, Modesty Blaise, Tintin or any other genre-busting super-star: as triumphantly capable pitted against spies and crooks as alien invaders, weird science or unchecked force of nature…

This is a splendidly frenetic, tense thriller which will appeal to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy or devious espionage exploit and is a perfect introduction to a shockingly uncelebrated action star.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1973, 1979 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2015 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Showcase Presents The Elongated Man


By John Broome, Gardner Fox, John Broome, Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, Irv Novick, Gil Kane, Neal Adams, Mike Sekowsky, Sid Greene & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1042-2 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are a bunch of comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. As a feverish fanboy wedged firmly in the past, I’m again abusing my privileges here to carp about another brilliant vintage book, criminally out of print and not slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

Once upon a time, American comics editors believed readers would become jaded if any characters were over-used or over-exposed. To combat that potential danger – and for sundry other commercial and economic reasons – they developed back-up features in most of their titles. By the mid-1960s the policy was largely abandoned as resurgent superheroes sprang up everywhere and readers just couldn’t get enough – but there were still one or two memorable holdouts.

In late 1963 Julius Schwartz took editorial control of Batman and Detective Comics and finally found a place 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 seemed to give certain people increased muscular flexibility. Intrigued, Dibny isolated and refined the chemical additive until he had developed a serum which granting him the ability to stretch, bend and compress his body to an incredible degree. Then Ralph had to decide how to use his new powers…

A quirky chap with his own small but passionate band of devotees, in recent years the perennial B-lister became a fixture of the latest Flash TV series, but his many exploits are still largely uncollected in any format. The only archival asset is this charming, witty and very pretty compilation gathering his debut and guest appearances from Flash issues #112, 115, 119, 124, 130, 134, and 138 (spanning cover-dates April/May 1960 to August 1963) plus the Stretchable Sleuth’s entire scintillating run from Detective Comics #327-371 (comprising May 1964 to January 1968).

Designed as a modern take on Jack Cole’s immensely popular Golden Age champion Plastic Man, Dibny debuted in a cunningly crafted crime caper by John Broome, Carmine Infantino & Joe Giella. Flash #112 went on sale February 25th 1960, cover featuring ‘The Mystery of the Elongated Man!’ He was presented as a mysterious, masked yet attention-seeking elastic do-gooder, of whom the Scarlet Speedster was nonetheless highly suspicious…

Proving himself virtuous, Dibny returned in #115 (September 1960, inked by Murphy Anderson) when aliens attempt to conquer the Earth and the Vizier of Velocity needs ‘The Elongated Man’s Secret Weapon!’ as well as the guest-star himself to save the day. In Flash #119 (March 1961), Flash rescues the vanished hero from ‘The Elongated Man’s Undersea Trap!’, thereby introducing vivacious and deadly smart Sue Dibny as a newlywed “Mrs Elongated Man”) in a stirring saga of subsea alien slavers by regular creative team Broome, Infantino & Giella. The threat was again extraterrestrial with #124’s alien invasion thriller ‘Space-Boomerang Trap!’ (November 1961), featuring an uneasy alliance between the Scarlet Speedster, Elastic Investigator and sinister rogue Captain Boomerang, who naturally couldn’t be trusted as far as you could throw him. Ralph collaborated with Flash’s junior partner in #130 (August 1962) only just defeating the wily Weather Wizard when ‘Kid Flash Meets the Elongated Man!’ before bounding back into action with – and against – the senior speedster in Flash #134 (February 1963). Seemingly allied with Captain Cold in ‘The Man Who Mastered Absolute Zero!’, Dibny excelled in an epic thriller that almost ended his heroic career…

Gardner Fox scripted ‘The Pied Piper’s Double Doom!’ in Flash #138 (August 1963), a mesmerising team-up seeing both Elongated Man and the Monarch of Motion enslaved by the sinister Sultan of Sound, before ingenuity and justice ultimately prevailed. Soon after, when a back-up spot opened in Detective Comics (previously held by Martian Manhunter since 1955 and only vacated because J’onn J’onzz was promoted to lead feature in House of Mystery), Schwartz had Ralph slightly reconfigured becoming a flamboyant, fame-hungry, brilliantly canny globe-trotting private eye solving mysteries for the sheer fun of it.

Aided by his equally smart, thoroughly grounded wife, the short tales were patterned on classic Thin Man filmic escapades of Nick and Norah Charles, blending clever, impossible crimes with slick sleuthing, all garnished with the outré heroic permutations and frantic physical antics first perfected in Plastic Man. These complex yet uncomplicated sorties, drenched in fanciful charm and sly dry wit, began in Detective #327 (May 1964) with ‘Ten Miles to Nowhere!’ (by Fox & Infantino, who inked himself for all early episodes). Here Ralph, who had publicly unmasked to become a (regrettably minor) celebrity, discovered someone had been stealing his car every night and bringing it back as if nothing had happened. Of course, it had to be a clever criminal plot of some sort…

A month later he solved the ‘Curious Case of the Barn-door Bandit!’, debuting his direly distressing signature trademark of manically twitching his expanded nose whenever he detects “the scent of mystery in the air”. Then he heads for cowboy country to unravel the ‘Puzzle of the Purple Pony!’ and play cupid for a young couple hunting a gold mine in #329.

Ralph & Sue were on an extended honeymoon tour, making him the only costumed hero without a city to protect. On reaching California, Ralph is embroiled in a ‘Desert Double-Cross!’ when hostage-taking thieves raid the home of a wealthy recluse, after which Detective #331 offered a rare full-length story in ‘Museum of Mixed-Up Men!’ (Fox, Infantino & Joe Giella) as Batman, Robin and Ralph unite against a super-scientific felon able to steal memories and reshape victims’ faces. Returned to his solo support role in #332, the Ductile Detective then discovers Sue has been replaced by an alien in ‘The Elongated Man’s Other-World Wife!’ (with Sid Greene joining as new permanent inker). Of course, nothing is as it seems…

‘The Robbery That Never Happened!’ occurred when a jewellery store customer suspiciously claims he had been given too much change, before ‘Battle of the Elongated Weapons!’ (#334) concentrates on a crook who adapts Ralph’s Gingold serum to affect objects, after which bombastic battle it’s back to mystery-solving as EM is invited by Fairview City to round up a brazen bunch of uncatchable bandits in ‘Break Up of the Bottleneck Gang!’ While visiting Central City again, Ralph is lured to the Mirror Master’s old lair and only barely survives ‘The House of “Flashy” Traps!’ before risking certain death in the ‘Case of the 20 Grand Pay-off!’ after replacing Sue with a look-alike – for the best possible reasons – but without her knowledge or permission…

Narrowly surviving his wife’s wrath by turning the American tour into a World cruise, Ralph tackles the ‘Case of the Curious Compass!’ in Amsterdam, by foiling a gang of diamond smugglers before returning to the US to ferret out funny-money pushers in ‘The Counterfeit Crime-Buster!’ Similarly globe-trotting creator John Broome returned to script ‘Mystery of the Millionaire Cowboy!’ in Detective #340 (June 1965) with Ralph and Sue stumbling onto a seemingly haunted theatre and finding crooks at the heart of the matter, and ‘The Elongated Man’s Change-of-Face!’ (Fox, Infantino & Greene) finds a desperate newsman publishing fake exploits to draw the fame-fuelled hero into investigating a town under siege, before ‘The Bandits and the Baroness!’ (by Broome) has our perpetually vacationing couple check in at a resort where every other guest is a Ralph Dibny, in a classy insurance scam yarn heavy with intrigue and tension.

A second full-length team-up with Batman filled Detective Comics #343 (September 1965, by Broome, Infantino & Joe Giella). ‘The Secret War of the Phantom General!’ is a tense action-thriller pitting the hard-pressed heroes against a hidden army of gangsters and Nazi war criminals determined to take over Gotham City. Having broken Ralph’s biggest case, the happy couple head for the Continent and encounter ‘Peril in Paris!’ (Broome, Infantino & Greene) after Sue goes shopping as an ignorant monolingual American and returns a few hours later a fluent French-speaker…

Fox’s ‘Robberies in Reverse!’ boasts a baffling situation wherein shopkeepers start paying customers, leading Ralph to a severely skewed scientist’s accidental discovery, whilst #346’s ‘Peephole to the Future!’ (Broome) sees Elongated Man inexplicably develop the power of clairvoyance. It sadly clears up long before he can use it to tackle ‘The Man Who Hated Money!’ (Fox) starring a bandit who destroys every penny he steals.

‘My Wife, the Witch!’ was Greene’s last inking contribution for a nearly a year: a Fox thriller wherein Sue apparently gains magical powers whilst ‘The 13 O’Clock Robbery!’ – with Infantino again inking himself – sees Ralph walk into a bizarre mystery and deadly booby-trapped mansion, before Hal Jordan’s best friend seeks out the Stretchable Sleuth to solve the riddle of ‘Green Lantern’s Blackout!’ – an entrancing, action-packed team-up with a future Justice League colleague. ‘The Case of the Costume-made Crook!’ then finds Ralph ambushed by a felon using his old uniform as an implausible burglary tool.

Broome conceived ‘The Counter of Monte Carlo!’ as the peripatetic Dibnys fall into a colossal espionage conspiracy at the casino and afterward become pawns of a fortune teller in ‘The Puzzling Prophecies of the Tea Leaves!’ (Fox), before Broome dazzles and delights one more time with ‘The Double-Dealing Jewel Thieves!’ with a museum owner finding his imitation jewel exhibit is indeed filled with fakes…

As Fox assumed full scripting duties, mystic nomad Zatanna guest-stars in DC #355’s ‘The Tantalising Troubles of the Tripod Thieves!’ as stolen magical artefacts lead Ralph into conflict with a band of violent thugs, before ‘Truth Behind the False Faces!’ sees Infantino bow out on a high note as Elongated Man helps a beat cop to his first big bust and solves the conundrum of a criminal wax museum. Detective #357 (November 1966) featured ‘Tragedy of the Too-Lucky Thief!’ (by Fox, Murphy Anderson & Greene) as the Dibnys meet a gambler who hates to win but cannot lose, whilst Greene handled all the art on ‘The Faker-Takers of the Baker’s Dozen!’ after Sue’s latest art project leads to the theft of an ancient masterpiece.

Anderson soloed with Fox’s ‘Riddle of the Sleepytime Taxi!’, a compellingly glamorous tale of theft and espionage, before Ralph & Sue visit Swinging England (Detective #360 February 1967, by Fox & Anderson) for ‘London Caper of the Rockers and Mods!’ Meeting the reigning monarch and preventing warring kid-gangs from desecrating our most famous tourist traps, they head home to ‘The Curious Clue of the Circus Crook!’ (Greene). Here Ralph visits his old Big-Top boss and stops a rash of robberies following the show around the country. Infantino found time in his increasingly busy schedule for a few more episodes, (both inked by Greene) beginning with ‘The Horse that Hunted Hoods’: a police steed with uncanny crime solving abilities, and continuing in a ‘Way-out Day in Wishbone City!’ wherein normally solid citizens – even Sue – go temporarily insane and riot, after which unsung master Irv Novick steps in to delineate the mystery of ‘The Ship That Sank Twice!’

‘The Crooks who Captured Themselves!’ (#365, by Greene) recounts Ralph losing control of his powers before Broome & Infantino reunite one last time for ‘Robber Round-up in Kiddy City!’ as, for a change, Sue sniffs out a theme-park mystery for Ralph to solve. Infantino finally bowed out with the superb ‘Enigma of the Elongated Evildoer!’ (written by Fox and inked by Greene) as the Debonair Detectives thwart a thief in a ski lodge who seems to possess all Ralph’s elastic abilities. The Atom guest-starred in #368, helping battle clock-criminal Chronos in ‘The Treacherous Time-Trap!’ by Fox, Gil Kane & Greene, before iconoclastic newcomer Neal Adams illustrates poignant puzzler ‘Legend of the Lover’s Lantern!’ and Kane & Greene return for intriguing all-action ‘Case of the Colorless Cash!’. The close of the year signalled the end of an era as Fox, Mike Sekowsky & Greene concluded Elongated Man’s expansive solo stretch with delightfully dizzy lost-loot yarn ‘The Bellringer and the Baffling Bongs’ (#371, January 1968).

With the next issue Detective Comics became an all Bat-family affair. Ralph & Sue Dibny temporarily faded from view until revived as bit players in Flash and were finally recruited into the Justice League of America as semi-regulars. Their charismatic relationship and unique, genteel style have, sadly, not survived: casualties of changing comics tastes and the replacement of sophistication with angsty shouting and testosterone-fuelled sturm und drang.

Witty, bright, clever and genuinely enthralling, these smart stories from a lost age are all beautiful to look at and a joy to read for any sharp kid and all joy-starved adults. This adorable collection is a shining tribute to the very best of DC’s Silver Age and a volume no fan of fun and adventure of any age should be without. It should not, however, be the only place you can stretch out and enjoy such classic fare.
© 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Kill My Mother


By Jules Feiffer (Liveright/W.W. Norton)
ISBN: 978-0-87140-314-8 (HB/Digital edition)

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

After years as cartoonist, illustrator, pundit and educator, at age 85 Jules Feiffer returned to his primary role of comics storyteller with an intense, sublimely gripping and innovative graphic novel. Spanning 10 turbulent years, Kill My Mother is a supremely classy, passionately heartfelt tribute to Film Noir, Hollywood Babylon, sexual politics and family secrets, blending trappings of Dashiell Hammett with the tone, pacing and spark of Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder to tell an extended story of love, murder, jealousy and revenge.

It all begins in ‘Bay City Blues’. It’s 1933 and times are tough all over. At 15-years old, Annie Hannigan is cutting up, constantly leading poor, gullible sap Artie Folsom into trouble, whilst the mother she despises works all hours for dissolute, dipsomaniac, exceedingly cheap private investigator Neil Hammond. The odd arrangement developed after the shamus agreed to investigate the murder of Elsie Hannigan’s husband, whom he constantly refers to as the wrong sort of honest cop. Events take a dark turn when stylish, exceedingly tall maneater Mae Longo walks in, offering outrageous sums if the gumshoe can track down a certain someone. The photo she gives Hammond shows a woman remarkably similar to his coolly aloof new client…

Eddie “the Dancing Master” Longo is a rising star of the fight game who usually employs shady but capable gorilla Tiny Tim Gaffney to handle the more unsavoury problems in his life but Neil claims to know just how to handle him. In the course of her mean-spirited, casual rebellions, Annie gets poor Artie into real trouble when a shoplifting binge results in pursuit by a store detective far faster than he looks. A very nasty beating is only avoided when an exceptionally tall derelict in an alley lays out the private cop with her carefully concealed baseball bat. The rattled teen takes the tramp back to the dump of an apartment and cleans her up, even as Elsie – very much against her will and better judgement – is dragged by soused-as-ever Neil to the Big Fight to see the Dancing Master.

The escapade almost costs her everything…

Her drunken boss’ plan to draw his tall target out of the woodwork also involves poor Elsie and leads to a lot of pain, trouble and strife, whilst Hammond, clearly a dipsomaniac with a death wish, starts dogging mysterious client Mae instead of doing the job he was hired for.

The result is a murder unsolved and unexplained for a decade…

The concluding half of the story resumes in 1943 with ‘Hooray for Hollywood’ as we return to our cast and find them all greatly advanced. Goonish Artie is a Captain of Marines, successfully battling the Japanese in the Green Hell of the Pacific whilst Annie Hannigan is a writer and media darling. Her sensational hit comedy “Shut Up, Artie” is the most popular radio show in America and is broadcast wherever Yanks are posted. Eddie Longo made the transition to B-Movie star and Ellen, when not babysitting obstreperous grandson Sammy, is Executive Vice President of Pinnacle Studios in charge of Image Security and Maintenance. The scary indigent little Annie met in an alley has also cleaned up and moved on. Now she sings torch songs in the Reno Roost as the enigmatic Lady Veil…

Eddy hates his life. The former hard-man boxer is trapped as a song-&-dance hoofer in big, morale-boosting musicals but dreams of major stardom like glamorous He-Man Hugh Patton or even an Academy Award… but is typecast and more under the thumb of the formidable Mae than ever.

The fraught status quo changes after Annie meets the dashing Patton at the Hollywood Canteen, but her romantic elation is crushed soon after, when the sponsors call her in to discuss a crisis. A genuine war hero is suing the show, claiming his life is being made a mockery. Unless she can fix things up with her old pal Artie, the show and her career are over…

Eddie is also near breaking point and Mae calls in thuggish Gaffney as a minder. Events begin to spiral to a shocking conclusion when Longo joins a USO tour to the war-torn Pacific Islands. Patton is going too, and Annie takes the opportunity to join him, as does her mother in the role of “image maintainer”…

The first port of call is Tarawa; the hellhole where Captain Arthur Folsom is almost single-handedly repulsing the Jap advance. On the island, Artie is overseeing the building of a stage for the visiting stars whilst marvelling at the stupidity of putting on a show in a battleground still hotly contested by enemy forces. In the air above him, Ellen has a sharp confrontation with Mae Longo and “bodyguard” Gaffney. The events of ten years ago are still painfully fresh in every participant’s mind. By the time all the players debark on the island, a devious and supposedly foolproof plan to commit another perfect murder has been hatched, using the Japanese as ideal scapegoats. However, an intimate killing is far harder than mass slaughter and the scheme soon starts to unravel…

Complex, beguiling, smartly sophisticated, devastatingly witty and peppered with shockingly casual violence (as every noir thriller must be) this spectacular yarn is packed with twists and surprises, where nobody tells the truth and no one is playing on the side of the angels.

A masterpiece of cool suspense, mature ingenuity and graphic dexterity, Kill My Mother was winner of the Eisner Prize for Best New Graphic Album, took the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for Best Graphic Novel 2014 and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Vanity Fair, Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal. It remains a timeless, hearty slice of bravura storytelling that gets better with every re-reading and a fitting tribute to the talents of one of graphic narrative storytelling’s greatest masters. If you love crime yarns, comic tales, nostalgia and having your intelligence respected, this is the book for you.
© 2014 Liveright Publishing Corporation.

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Golden Age Flash Archives volume I


By Gardner F. Fox, Harry Lampert, E.E. Hibbard, Hal Sharp & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0784-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are many comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. As a feverish fanboy wedged firmly in the past, I’m still abusing my privileges here by carping about another brilliant vintage book, criminally out of print and not slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

The innovative fledgling company that became DC published the first ever comic book super-speedster and over the intervening decades has constantly added more to its pantheon of stars. Devised, created and written by Gardner Fox and initially visually realised by Harry Lampert, Jay Garrick debuted as the very first Monarch of Motion in Flash Comics #1. He quickly – how else? – became a veritable sensation. “The Fastest Man Alive” wowed readers of anthologies like Flash Comics, All Star Comics, Comics Cavalcade and other titles – as well as solo vehicle All-Flash Quarterly – for just over a decade before changing tastes benched him and most other first-generation costumed crimebusters in the early1950s.

His invention as a strictly single-power superhero created a new trend in the burgeoning action-adventure Funnybook marketplace, and his particular riff was specifically replicated many times at various companies where myriad Fast Furies sprang up including Johnny Quick, Hurricane/Mercury, Silver Streak, The Whizzer, Quicksilver and Snurtle McTurtle – the Terrific Whatzit amongst so many others…

After half a decade of mostly interchangeable cops, cowboys and cosmic invaders, the concept of human speedsters and the superhero genre in general was spectacularly revived by Julie Schwartz in 1956. Showcase #4 revealed how police scientist Barry Allen became the second hero to run with the concept. We’ve not looked back since – and if we did it would all be a great big blur…

This initial charmingly beguiling deluxe Archive (sadly not available in not-quite-faster-than-light digital) edition collects the first year and a half of publication, spanning January 1940 to May 1941 of the irrepressible Garrick’s whimsically eccentric exploits in 17 (regrettably untitled) adventures from anthology Flash Comics. These tales demonstrate an appealing rawness, light-hearted whimsy and scads of narrative experimentation starring a brilliant nerd and (ostensibly) physical sad-sack who became a social reformer and justice-dispensing human meteor.

Following a fulsome Foreword from sometime Flash scribe Mark Waid, the fast fictions commence with the debut of ‘The Fastest Man Alive’, speedily delivering in 15 pages an origin and returning cast, whilst staging a classic confrontation with a sinister cabal of gangsters. It all started years previously when student Garrick collapsed in a Midwestern University lab, only to awaken hyper-charged and the fastest creature on Earth thanks to “hard water fumes” he had inhaled whilst unconscious. After weeks recovering in hospital, the formerly-frail chemist realised the exposure had bestowed super-speed and endurance. He promptly sought to impress his sort-of girlfriend Joan Williams by becoming an unstoppable football player…

Time passed, the kids graduated and Garrick moved to New York where, appalled by rampant crime, he decided to do something about it. The Flash operates mostly in secret until one day, whilst idly playing tennis with himself, Jay meets Joan again, just as mobsters try to kill her in a drive-by shooting. Catching a storm of bullets, Jay gets reacquainted with his former paramour and discovers she is being targeted by criminal combine the Faultless Four: master criminals set on obtaining her father’s invention the Atomic Bombarder. In the blink of an eye Flash smashes the gang’s sinister schemes and defeats diabolical leader Sieur Satan, saving Joan’s life whilst revelling in the sheer liberating fun and freedom of being gloriously unstoppable…

In his sequel appearance Flash stumbles upon a showgirl’s murder and discovers that Yankee mobster Boss Goll and British aristocrat Lord Donelin plan to take over America’s entire entertainment industry with ruthless strong-arm tactics. The speedster is as much hindered as helped by “wilful, headstrong” (that’s old world coding for forceful, competent and independently-minded) Joan who begins her own lifetime obsession of pesky do-gooding right there, right then…

Everett E. Hibbard began a decade-long association with Flash in #3, when Major Williams’ Atomic Bombarder is coveted by foreign spies. The elderly boffin being framed for treason prompts Garrick to come to his future father-in-law’s aid, after which Jay & Joan smash an off-shore gambling ring graduating to kidnapping and blackmail in #4. During these early escapades, Flash seldom donned his red, blue and yellow outfit: usually operating invisibly or undercover to play super-speed pranks with merciless, puckish glee. That started changing in #5, when the speedster saves an elderly artist from hit-men to frustrate mad collector Vandal who uses murder to increase the market value of his purchases.

Flash Comics #6 saw Jay & Joan at old Alma Mater Midwestern, foiling a scheme to dope athletes seeking to qualify for the Olympics, before #7 saw a stopover in Duluth lead to the downfall of gambler Black Mike – industriously fixing motorcar races with a metal melting ray. For #8, the Vizier of Velocity tracks down seemingly corrupt contractors building shoddy, dangerous buildings only to find graft and skulduggery go much further up the financial and civic food chain, whilst in FC #9, gangsters “acquire” a scientist’s invention and the Flash finds himself battling a brigade of giant Gila Monsters. Flash #10 depicts the downfall of a political cabal in the pocket of gangster Killer Kelly and stealing from the schools they administered, before in #11, Garrick meets his first serious opponent in kidnap racketeer The Chief, whose sinister brilliance enables him to devise stroboscopic glasses to track and target the usually invisibly fast crime-crusher…

With the threat of involvement in the “European War” a constant subject of US headlines, Flash Comics #12 (December 1940) had the heroic human hurricane intervene to save tiny Ruritanian nation Kurtavia from ruthless invasion. His spectacular lightning war sees Garrick sinking submarines, repelling land armies and crushing airborne blitzkriegs for a fairy tale happy ending here, but within a year the process would become patriotic morale boosting repeated ad infinitum in every US comic book as the real world brutally intruded on the industry and nation.

Back in the USA for #13, Garrick assists old pal Jim Carter in cowboy country where the young inheritor of a silver mine is gunned down by murdering owlhoots. Jay then heads back east to crush a criminal combine sabotaging city subway construction in #14, before saving a circus from robbery, sabotage and poor attendances in #15. Throughout all these yarns Jay paid scant attention to preserving any kind of secret identity – a detail that would soon change – but as Hal Sharp took over illustrating with #16 (Hibbard presumably devoting his energies to the contents of forthcoming 64-page solo-starring All-Flash Quarterly #1: another landmark for the hero) Joan is kidnapped by Mexican mobsters aware of her connection to The Flash. Rushing to her rescue, Garrick battles a small army, not only saving his girlfriend but even reforming bandit chief José Salvez. This high-energy compilation closes with another light-hearted sporting escapade as the speedster intervenes in a gambling plot, saving a moribund baseball team from sabotage even as Jay Garrick – officially “almost as fast as the Flash” – becomes the Redskins’ (a nickname now thankfully consigned to history’s massive dustbin of insensitivity) star player to save them from lousy performances…

With covers by Sheldon Moldoff, Dennis Neville, George Storm, Jon L. Blummer, Hibbard and Sharp, this book is a sheer delight for lovers of the early Fights ‘n’ Tights genre: exuberant, exciting and funny, although certainly not to every modern fan’s taste. Of course, with such straightforward thrills on show any reader with an open mind could find his opinion changed in a flash.
© 1940, 1941, 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Golden Age Flash Archives volume II


By Gardner F. Fox, E.E. Hibbard, Hal Sharp & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0784-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The ever-expanding array of companies that became DC published many iconic “Firsts” in the early years of the industry. Associated outfit All-American Publications (co-publishers until bought out by National/DC in 1946) were responsible for the first comic book super-speedster as well as the iconic Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Atom, Hawkman, Johnny Thunder and so many others who became mainstays of DC’s pantheon of stars.

Devised, created and written by Gardner Fox and originally limned by Harry Lampert, Flash Comics #1 saw Jay Garrick debut as the very first Vizier of Velocity and quickly become a veritable sensation. “The Fastest Man Alive” wowed readers for just over a decade before changing tastes ended the first costumed hero as the 1950s opened.

This charmingly seductive deluxe Archive edition collects the Fastest Yarns Alive from Flash Comics #18-24, covering June-December 1941, plus the first two issues of the irrepressible Garrick’s whimsically eccentric full-length exploits from All-Flash Quarterly (Summer and Fall of that same fateful year). All were written by an apparently inexhaustible Gardner Fox.

After another informative Introduction from comic book all-star Jim Amash, the rollercoaster of fun and thrills gathers steam with ‘The Restaurant Protective Association’ (illustrated by Hal Sharp), with Jay and girlfriend/confidante Joan Williams stumbling upon a pack of extortionists and exposing a treacherous viper preying on Joan’s best gal-pal, after which ‘The Fall Guy’ in #19 reveals how a gang of agile fraudsters are faking motor accidents to fleece insurance companies. Both cases gave Garrick ample opportunity to display his hilarious and humiliating bag of super-speed tricks and punishing pranks to astound playful kids of the day and which still delight decades later.

Flash Comics #20 led with ‘The Adventure of the Auctioned Utility Company’ wherein Joan accidentally buys a regional power outfit and Jay uses all his energies to reconcile a feuding family whilst teaching a miserly embezzler an unforgettable lesson…

Sharp had been doing such splendid artistic service on the monthly tales because regular illustrator E. E. Hibbard had been devoting all his creative energies to the contents of a forthcoming solo title: 64-page All-Flash Quarterly #1. The epic premiere issue opened with tantalising frontispiece ‘The JSA Bid Farewell to the Flash’, celebrating the fact that the Fastest Man Alive was the third character to win his own solo comic – after Superman and Batman – and would therefore be “too busy for Justice Society get-togethers”…

Fox & Hibbard then retold ‘The Origin of the Flash’, revealing again how some years previously college student Garrick had passed out in a lab at Midwestern University, only to awaken hyper-charged and the fastest creature on Earth thanks to “hard water fumes” he inhaled whilst unconscious. After weeks in hospital, the formerly-frail apprentice chemist deduced he had developed super-speed and endurance, and promptly sought to impress his apparently unattainable sort-of girlfriend Joan Williams by becoming an unbeatable football star. Upon graduation Garrick moved to New York where, appalled by its rampant criminality, he employed his gift to fight it…

‘The Men Who Turned to Stone’ plunged readers back to the present as one of Garrick’s colleagues at Chemical Research Incorporated discovers an instant petrification process and is abducted by criminals hoping to make lots of illegal money with it. Hibbard also illustrated uncredited fun-fact featurette ‘The Flash Presents his Hall of Speed Records’ before ‘Meet the Author and Artist of the Flash’ offers an intimate introduction to the creative team, before ‘The Adventure of the Monocle and his Garden of Gems’ sees the debut of a rare returning villain with an unwise addiction to other people’s jewels, but enough brains to counter Flash’s speed, if not Jay’s courage and ingenuity.

When Flash prevents the murder of a cowboy performer in New York, ‘The Rodeo Mystery’ soon takes Jay & Joan to Oklahoma and a crooked ploy to steal a newly discovered oil well, after which the issue closes with Flash smashing a gambler trying to take over the sport of Ice Hockey in ‘Menace of the Racket King’.

Gambling was also a problem in monthly Flash Comics #21 as ‘The Lottery’ (illustrated by Sharp) sees the Speedster expose a cunning criminal scheme to bilk theatre patrons and carnival-goers. Issue #22’s ‘The Hatchet Cult’ offers a rare exceedingly dark walk on the wild side as the speedster gets involved in a Chinatown Tong war and exposes the incredible secret of modern Mongol mastermind Mighty Kong…

Hibbard & Sharp collaborated on issue #23’s ‘A Millionaire’s Revenge’ wherein wealthy plutocrat Leffingwell Funk decides to avenge an imagined slight inadvertently delivered by a poor but happy man. The methodology is unique: beginning with engineering unsuspecting shoe store owner Jim Sewell’s inheritance of half a million dollars. It would have ended with leg-breaking thugs, disgrace and prison had not Jim counted Jay Garrick amongst his circle of friends…

Cover-dated Fall 1941, All-Flash Quarterly #2 (another all Fox/Hibbard co-production) kicks off with a spectacular all-action ‘Title Page’ and informative recap in ‘A Short History of the Flash’ before the creators ambitiously undertake a massive 4-chapter saga of vengeance and justice. In an era where story was paramount, this oddly time-skewed tale might jar slightly with modern continuity-freaks, spanning as it does nearly a lifetime in the telling, but trust me, just go with it…

‘The Threat: Part One – The Adventure of Roy Revenge!’ opens as brilliant young criminal Joe Connor is sentenced to ten years in jail and swears vengeance on DA Jim Kelley. The convict means it too, spending every waking moment inside improving himself educationally, becoming a trustee to foster the illusion of rehabilitation. On his release Connor befriends Kelley – who is currently pursuing a political career – and orchestrates the abduction of the lawyer’s newborn son. Years later a bold young thug dubbed Roy Revenge begins a campaign of terror against Mayor Jim Kelley which even Flash is hard-pressed to stop. When the bandit is at last apprehended, Kelley pushes hard to have the boy jailed, unaware of his biological connection to the savage youth. In the intervening years Connor had truly reformed – until his angelic wife died, leaving him to care for their little girl Ann and “adopted” son Roy. Without his wife’s influence, Connor again turns to crime and raises the stolen boy to hate his biological father…

‘The Flash Presents his Hall of Speed Records’ and ‘How to Develop Your Speed by the Flash’ break up the rolling melodrama before the saga continues in ‘The Threat: Part Two – Adventure of the Blood-Red Ray’ wherein Connor rises through ranks of the Underworld. He now plans to take over the country. Ann has grown up a decent and upstanding – if oblivious – citizen whose only weakness is her constant concealment of her bad brother Roy, who has been hiding from the law for years…

Even when the elder master criminal’s plan to destroy the Kelleys with a heat-ray is scotched by the Flash, the canny crook convinces the Speedster that he is merely a henchman and escapes the full force of justice…

‘The Threat: Part Three – The Wrecker Racket’ sees a new gang plaguing the city, led by a monstrous disfigured albino. No one realises this is Connor – who escaped custody by a method which physically ruined his body and only increased his hatred of Kelley. Locating Roy – who has since found peace in rural isolation – the malign menace again draws the young man into his maniacal schemes. When the boy nearly kills his “sister” Ann in pursuance of Connor’s ambitions, only the Flash can save the day, leading to a swathe of revelation and a shocking conclusion in ‘The Threat: Part Four – The End of the Threat’…

After that monumental generational saga this splendid selection closes with a full-on alien extravaganza from Flash Comics #24 as Garrick investigates a series of abductions and foils a madman’s plot to forcibly colonise the Red Planet. Unfortunately, when inventor Jennings and his gangster backer reach their destination with Jay a helpless prisoner, nobody expected the arid world to be already occupied by belligerent insectoids. Fox, Hibbard & Sharp’s ‘The Flash and the Spider-Man of Mars’ ends the book on a gloriously madcap, spectacular fantasy high note.

Amazing, exciting and quirkily captivating – even if not to many modern fans’ taste, the sheer exuberance, whimsical tone and constant narrative invention in these tales of a nerd who became a social crusader and justice-dispensing human meteor are addictively appealing, and with covers by Sharp, Sheldon Moldoff & Hibbard, this book is another utter delight for lovers of early Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy. Of course, with such straightforward thrills on show any reader with an open mind could find his opinion changed in a flash.
© 1941, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks presents Spider-Man volume 5: To Become an Avenger


By Stan Lee & John Romita, with Don Heck, Mike Esposito, Art Simek, Sam Rosen & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5434-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before but here we’re enjoying another example of The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller – like a paperback novel. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for digital editions, that’s no issue at all.

As well as finally introducing the romantic option who would drive much of hero’s later life, this compelling compilation categorically confirms the superstar status of the wallcrawler. Originally seen in The Amazing Spider-Man #39-46 and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3, spanning cover-dates August 1966 to December 1968, these stories herald the start of a brand new era for the Astonishing Arachnid, with Peter and an ever-expanding cast of cohorts well on their way to being household names… as well as the darlings of college campuses and the media intelligentsia.

Outcast, geeky high school kid Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and, after attempting to cash in on the astonishing abilities he’d developed, suffered an irreconcilable personal tragedy. Due to the teenager’s arrogant neglect, his beloved guardian Uncle Ben was murdered and the traumatised boy determined henceforward to always use his powers to help those in dire need. For years the brilliant young hero suffered privation and travail in his domestic situation, whilst his heroic alter ego endured public condemnation and mistrust as he valiantly battled all manner of threat and foe…

Although co-authors of the wonderment, by 1966 Stan Lee & Steve Ditko could no longer work together on their greatest creation. After increasingly fraught months the artist simply resigned, leaving Spider-Man without an illustrator. In the coincidental meantime John Romita had been lured away from DC’s romance line and given odd assignments before assuming the artistic reins of Daredevil, the Man Without Fear. Before long, Romita was co-piloting the company’s biggest property and expected to run with it.

After a period where traditional – albeit fantasy-tinged – crime and gangsterism predominated, science fiction themes and costumed crazies increasingly began to predominate. As the world went gaga for superheroes, the creators experimented with longer storylines and protracted subplots. When Ditko abruptly left, the company feared a drastic loss in quality – and sales – but it didn’t happen. For the first time since the Marvel miracle began, Lee was largely left to his own narrative devices on a major feature, without the experimental visual inspiration or plotting acumen of twin comics geniuses Kirby and Ditko. What occurred heralded a new kind of superhero storytelling…

John Romita (senior) considered himself a mere “safe pair of hands” keeping the momentum going until a better artist could be found, but instead blossomed into a major talent in his own right as the wallcrawler continued his unstoppable rise at an accelerated pace. With the scene set the new era dawns when Amazing Spider-Man #39 appeared, first of a 2-part adventure declaiming the ultimate victory of the hero’s greatest foe.

Ditko was gone and no reader knew what had happened – and no one told them. ‘How Green Was My Goblin!’ and concluding episode ‘Spidey Saves the Day! Featuring: the End of the Green Goblin!’ calamitously changed everything: describing how the archfoes learn each other’s true identities before the Goblin “perishes” in a climactic flame-fuelled showdown. It would have been memorable even if the saga didn’t feature the debut of a new artist and a whole new manner of storytelling. These issues were a turning point in many ways, and – inked by old DC colleague Mike Esposito (under the pseudonym Mickey DeMeo) – they still stand as one of the greatest Spider-Man yarns of all time.

They were also precursors to a run of classic tales from the Lee/Romita team that saw sales rise and rise. In ASM #41 and on ‘The Horns of the Rhino!’, Romita began inking his pencils. The debuting super-strong criminal spy proved a mere diversion, but his intended target J. Jonah Jameson’s astronaut son was a far harder proposition in the next issue. Amazing Spider-Man #42 heralded ‘The Birth of a Super-Hero!’, with John Jameson mutated by space-spores and going on a Manhattan rampage: a solid, entertaining yarn that is only really remembered for the last panel of the final page.

Mary Jane Watson had been a running gag in the series for years: a prospective blind-date arranged by Aunt May whom Peter had avoided – and Ditko teasingly not depicted – for the duration of time our hero had been romantically involved with Betty Brant, Liz Allen, and latterly, Gwen Stacy. Now, in that last frame the gobsmacked young man finally realises that for two years he’s been ducking the hottest date in New York!

Enthralling encore ‘Rhino on the Rampage!’ gave the leathery villain one more crack at Jameson and Spidey, but the emphasis was solidly on foreshadowing future foes and building Pete and MJ’s relationship, as seen in Amazing Spider-Man Annual # 3 and ‘…To Become an Avenger!’ Here the World’s Mightiest Heroes offer the webspinner membership… but only if he can capture The Hulk. As usual, all is not as it seems, but the action-drenched epic, courtesy of Lee, Romita (layouts), pencilled by Don Heck and inked by Esposito is the kind of guest-heavy, power-punching package that made the summer specials a child’s delight.

The monthly Marvel merriment marched on with the return of a tragedy-drenched former foe when Lee & Romita reintroduced biologist Curt Conners in ASM #44’s ‘Where Crawls the Lizard!’ The deadly B-movie inspired reptilian marauder again threatens Humanity itself and requires all of the wallcrawler’s resourcefulness and resolve to stop the savage saurian in all-action conclusion ‘Spidey Smashes Out!’

Closing this outing, ASM #46 introduced an all-new, second tier menace in the blue collar form of ambitious, seismic super-thief ‘The Sinister Shocker!’ who just wants to rob some banks and crack a few safes, but comes closer than many macabre masterminds in ending the antics of the wary webspinner. Moreover, as sinister stalker Patch (no relation to the later Wolverine alter ego) trails Peter Parker in the opening moves of a major subplot beginning to unfold, the baffled college boy can only watch in bewilderment as his attention is pulled between classmate Gwen Watson and bizarrely attentive and attention-drawing Mary Jane.

It’s only the start of years of complex romantic interactions To Be Continued in succeeding collections…

Augmented by a brief gallery of Romita original art pages – including unused ones – this transitional tome is the just the beginning of an era when Spider-Man became a permanent and unmissable part of countless teenagers’ lives: doing so by living a life as close to theirs as social mores and the Comics Code would allow. Blending cultural authenticity with glorious narrative art, and making a dramatic virtue of awkwardness, confusion and a sense of powerlessness most of the readership experienced daily resulted in an irresistibly intoxicating read, delivered in addictive soap-opera slices, but none of that would be relevant if the stories weren’t so compellingly entertaining.

This book is Marvel and Spider-Man at their peak. Come and see why.
© 2024 MARVEL.

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Golden Age Hawkman Archives volume 1


By Gardner F. Fox, Dennis Neville, Sheldon Moldoff & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0418-1 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are many comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. As a feverish fanboy wedged firmly in the past, I’m again abusing my privileges here to carp about another brilliant vintage book, criminally out of print and not slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

Although one of DC’s most long-lived and certainly their most visually iconic character, the various iterations of Hawkman have always struggled to find enough of an audience to sustain a solo title. From his beginnings as one of the assorted second features in new anthology Flash Comics (the others being Cliff Cornwall, The King, The Whip, spoof hero Johnny Thunder and Ed Wheelan’s “Picture Novels/Minute Movies”), adding lustre to the soaraway success of the eponymous speedster helming the title, Winged Wonder Carter Hall has struggled through assorted engaging, exciting but always short-lived reconfigurations.

Over decades from ancient hero to re-imagined alien space-cop and post-Crisis on Infinite Earths freedom fighter, or the seemingly desperate but highly readable bundling together of all previous iterations into the reincarnating immortal berserker-warrior of today, the Pinioned Paladin has performed exemplary service without ever really making it to the big time. Hopefully that’s all changed now, thanks to modern movie trends…

Created by Gardner Fox & Dennis Neville, Hawkman first took to the skies in Flash Comics #1 (cover-dated January 1940, but actually on sale from November 20th 1939). He stayed there, growing in quality and prestige until the title died at the end of the Golden Age, with the most celebrated artists to have drawn the Feathered Fury being Sheldon Moldoff and Joe Kubert, whilst a young Robert Kanigher was justly proud of his later run as writer.

Together with his partner Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman, for over a decade the gladiatorial mystery-man countered fantastic arcane threats and battled modern crime and tyranny with weapons of the past before vanishing with the bulk of costumed heroes as the 1950s dawned. His last contemporary appearance was in All Star Comics #57 (1951) as official leader of the Justice Society of America, after which the husband-and-wife hellions were revived and re-imagined nine years later as Katar Hol and Shayera Thal of planet Thanagar. That was thanks to Julie Schwartz’s crack creative couple Gardner Fox & Joe Kubert – a space-age reinterpretation which even survived 1985’s winnowing Crisis on Infinite Earths. Their long career, regular revamps and perpetual retcons stalled during 1994’s Zero Hour crisis, but they’ve reincarnated and returned many times since. However, despite being amongst DC’s most celebrated and visually vibrant strips over the years, Hawkman & Hawkwoman always struggled to retain sufficient audience share to sustain their numerous solo endeavours.

This spectacular deluxe hardcover re-presentation of their formative years (collecting appearances from Flash Comics #1-22, spanning cover dates January 1940 to October 1941) opens with a fond reminiscence by artist Moldoff (Batman, Black Pirate, Sea Devils, Gang Busters, Mr. District Attorney, Moon Girl) in his Foreword before the magic begins as it should with Fox & Neville’s ‘The Origin of Hawkman’. In an first epochal episode, dashing Carter Hall is a playboy scientific tinkerer and part-time archaeologist with a penchant for collecting old, rare weapons, whose dormant memory is abruptly unlocked by an ancient crystal dagger newly purchased for his collection. Through dreams, the dilettante realises that once he had been Prince Khufu of ancient Egypt, murdered with his lover Shiera by Anubis’ High Priest Hath-Set. Moreover, with his newly returned memories, Hall realises the eternal struggle is primed to play out once more…

As if pre-destined, he bumps into equally reincarnated and recently-remembering Shiera Sanders just as a terrifying electrical menace turns New York City’s subway system into a lightning-fuelled killing field. The new couple soon deduce the deadly genius Doctor Hastor is their reborn ancient nemesis Hastor and, after fashioning an outlandish uniform and anti-gravity harness from mystic Egyptian “Ninth Metal”, Hall hunts the deranged electrical scientist to his lair. He’s just in time to save mesmerised Shiera from a second death-by-sacrifice: mercilessly ending the cycle – at least for now…

Flash #2’s ‘The Globe Conquerors’ concentrated on fantastic science as Hall & Saunders tackle a modern Alexander the Great who builds a gravity-altering engine in a ruthless quest to conquer the world, whilst ‘The Secret of Dick Blendon’ in #3 sees “The Hawk-Man” expose a wicked scheme by insidious slavers turning brilliant men into zombies for profit, to gather riches and to ferret out the secret of eternal life.

Sheldon Moldoff debuted as artist in Flash Comics #4, illustrating a splendidly barbarous thriller wherein the Winged Warrior clashes with ‘The Thought Terror’: a sinister mesmerist enslaving the city’s wealthy citizens, prior to ‘The Kidnapping of Ione Craig’ in #5 pitting the crimefighting phenomenon against “Asiatic” cultists led by legendary assassin Hassan Ibn Saddah. These killers are determined to stop a pretty missionary and secret agent from investigating distant “Araby”. Moldoff has received overly unfair criticism over the years for his frequent, copious but stylishly artistic swipes from newspaper strips – usually those of  master craftsmen Alex Raymond and Hal Foster – in his work of this period, but one look at the stunning results here as the feature took a quantum leap in visual quality should silence those quibblers for good.

Maintaining the use of exotic locales, the story extended in #6 as Hall and Ione struggle to cross burning Saharan sands to the African coast before defeating Arab slavers and their deadly ruler ‘Sheba, Queen of the Desert’ before in #7 further exploring the mystical and supernatural underpinnings of the strip. These readily lent themselves to spooky tales of quasi-horror and barbaric intensity. Generally, “The Eerie Unknown” and deluded dabblers in darkness were oft-used elements in Hawkman tales, as seen in ‘Czar, the Unkillable Man’, wherein the Avian Avenger, back in the USA and reunited with Shiera, contests a merciless golem animated by a crazed sculptor aiming to get rich at any cost. Issue #8 offered another deranged technologist as Professor Kitzoff – ‘The Sunspot Wizard’ – alters the pattern and frequency of solar blemishes to foment riot, madness and chaos on Earth… until the Winged Wonder intervenes, after which in ‘The Creatures from the Canyon’ Hawkman repels aquatic invaders living in the depths 5,000 feet below Manhattan Island after they decide to expand their ancient empire upwards…

Bidding for an old firearm at an auction in #10, Hall is inexorably drawn into a maddening murder-mystery and hunt for a lost Colorado goldmine in ‘Adventures of the Spanish Blunderers’, before ‘Trouble in Suburbia’ manifests after a hit-&-run accident draws plucky Shiera into a corrupt and convoluted property-scam. Boyfriend Carter is quite prepared to stand back and let her deal with the villains – even if Hawkman must exert some surreptitious muscle to close the case. Another murderous scam then involves an old High Society chum as ‘The Heart Patient’ reveals how a devious gold digger and a rogue doctor serially poison healthy young men to fleece them into paying for a cure, whilst in #13, ‘Satana, the Tiger Girl’ preys on admirers for far more sinister reasons: pitting Hawkman and Shiera against scientifically hybridised killer-cats…

‘The Awesome Alligator’ sees an elder god return to Earth, inspiring and equipping a lethal lunatic in a plot to conquer America with ancient secrets and futuristic super-weapons. None of those incredible threats could withstand cold fury and a well-wielded mace, however…

At this time the Pinioned Paladin usually dispatched foes of humanity with icy aplomb and single-minded ruthlessness, and such supernatural thrillers as #15’s ‘The Hand’ gave Fox & Moldoff ample scope to display the reincarnated warrior’s savage efficiency, as when he tracks down a sentient severed fist stealing and slaughtering at its inventive master’s command. In #16,‘The Graydon Expedition’ reinforces the hero’s crusading credentials after ferociously independent Shiera Saunders goes missing in Mongolia, and the Winged Wonder undertakes a one-man invasion of a fabulous lost kingdom to save her. Flash Comics #17 offered ‘Murder at the Opera’, putting the bold birdman on the trail of an arcane Golden Mummy Sect with a perilously prosaic origin and agenda, whilst #18 has him investigating skulduggery in the Yukon after the philanthropic Miss Saunders rushes north to offer aid to starving miners during ‘The Gold Rush of ’41’.

Evidently capable of triumphing in any environment or milieu, Hawkman next derailed deranged physicist Pratt Palmer in #19, when that arrogant savant attempts to become the overlord of crime using his deadly ‘Cold Light’ discoveries. One month later, ‘The Mad Bomber’ sees the Avian Ace ally with a racketeer to stop mad scientist Sathan destroying their city with remote-controlled aerial torpedoes, after which Hawkman must end the tragically terrible accidental rampage of an extraterrestrial foundling raised by a callous rival for Shiera’s affections in ‘Menace from Space’…

This high-flying compilation concludes with October 1941’s Flash Comics #22 and ‘The Adventure of the Killer Gang’, wherein stubborn Shiera witnesses a bloody hijacking and determines to make the bandits pay. Although she again helps Hawkman deal with the murderous vermin as a civilian here, big changes were in store for her…

Already in All Star Comics #5 (July 1941) she had first worn wings and a costume of her own, and in Flash Comics #24 (December 1941) she would at last become an equal partner in peril and fully-fledged hero: Hawkgirl. Sadly that’s a tale for another volume…

Exotic, engaging and fantastically inviting, these Golden Age adventures are a true high-point of the era and still offer astonishing thrills and chills. When all’s said and done it’s all about the heady rush of raw adventure, but there’s also a fabulous frisson of nostalgia here to wallow in: recapturing that magical full-sensorium burst of smell and feel and imagination-overload that finds kids at a perfect moment and provokes something visual and conceptual that almost literally blows the mind.

We re-read stories hoping to rekindle that instantly addictive buzz and constantly seek out new comics desperately hoping to recapture that pure, halcyon burst, and these lost mini-epics are phenomenally imbued with everything fans need to make that breathtaking moment happen. Hopefully DC will realise that one day soon and revive these compelling compulsive collections: either in solid form or at least as digital editions…
© 1940, 1941, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Phantom: The Complete Sunday Archive volume Four 1950-1953


By Lee Falk, Ray Moore & Wilson McCoy, with Dick Wood, Pat Fortunato, Bill Lignante, José Delbo, Sal Trapani & various (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-137-3 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes some Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

In this month of romantic anticipation and disillusionment, it’s worth remarking that every iconic hero of strips and comics has a dutiful, stalwart inamorata waiting ever so patently in the wings for a moment to spoon and swoon. Here’s another date with one of the earliest and most resolute…

Born Leon Harrison Gross, “Lee Falk” created the Ghost Who Walks 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 became the prototype paladin to wear a skin-tight body-stocking and the first to have a mask with opaque eye-slits…

The generational champion 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. The spectacular and hugely influential Sunday feature began in May 1939.

For such a long-lived, influential series, in terms of compendia or graphic collections, The Phantom has been quite poorly served in the English language market (except for the Antipodes, where he has always been accorded the status of a pop culture god). Many companies have sought to collect strips from one of the longest continually running adventure serials in publishing history, but in no systematic or chronological order and never with any sustained success. That began to be rectified when archival specialists Hermes Press launched their curated collections…

This fourth fabulous curated conclave of rain forest romances and jungle action is a lovely landscape hardback (or digital) tome, displaying alternately complete full colour Sunday episodes or crisp monochrome instalments shot from press proofs and digitally remastered. Released in March 2016, its 208 pages are stuffed with sumptuous visual goodies like panel and logo close-ups, comics covers and original art, opening with publisher Daniel Herman’s Introduction ‘The Phantom Sundays March On’. This recaps all you need to know about the ongoing feature and discloses how the advent of a woman superhero might have changed the strip’s dynamic forever…

For those who came in late: 400 years ago, a British mariner survived an attack by pirates, and – after washing ashore on the African coast – swore on the skull of his father’s murderer to dedicate his life and that of his descendants to destroying all pirates and criminals. The Phantom fights evil and injustice from his fabulous lair deep in the jungles of Bengali. Throughout Africa and Asia he is known as the “Ghost Who Walks”…

His unchanging appearance and unswerving war against injustice led to his being considered an immortal avenger by the uneducated, credulous and wicked. Down the decades, one heroic son after another has inherited the task, fought and died in an unbroken family line, with the latest wearer of the mask indistinguishable from the first and proudly continuing the never-ending battle.

In his first published exploit, the Phantom met and fell for wealthy American sophisticate Diane Palmer. His passion for her was soon reciprocated and returned and she became a continuing presence in both iterations of the series as ally, partner, sounding board, a means of reader identification and naturally a plot pawn and perennial hostage to fortune. She was also a handy conduit as the hero occasionally shared four centuries of Phantom history, hearing tales of ancestral Ghosts Who Walked in earlier eras. As was the fashion of the feature almost every saga included powerful, capable and remarkably attractive women as both heroes and villains.

However as the new ultra conservative Fifties decade progressed, that femme fatale policy was gradually but increasingly downplayed. In Falk & Wilson McCoy’s opening tale ‘The Mysterious Passenger’ (running from May 14th 1950 to July 16th 1950), Diana is wholly absent as the mysterious “Mr. Walker” and his faithful wolf companion Devil board ship for Bengali, only to be quickly framed for a huge jewel theft…

Marooned in the vast trackless ocean after jumping ship, the pair are soon hot on the trail of the plunderers and soon bring them to justice.

Evil never sleeps, however, and in the Phantom’s absence horse thieves visited his “native” stable boy Toma and stole the hero’s fabulous steed Hero. ‘The Jungle King’ (July 23rd – October 22nd 1950) proves a far harder proposition to keep than to take, though, and when Mr Walker returns and sets out to recover the wonder horse, the trail leads all over the world and ultimately to an emotional showdown with the world’s richest sportsman and racehorse owner…

A key component of the Phantom’s appeal is the weight of history built into the premise, and that’s perfectly exploited in ‘The Phantom’s Ring’ (October 29th 1950 to June 10th 1951), as the signet that has adorned the fingers of every masked champion since the first one goes missing. Recognised by educated and illiterate alike across Africa and the east, the “Death’s head” has been used to mark felons and acted as a symbol of the ghost’s power for centuries. Now a succession of ne’er-do-wells briefly possess and exploit the soft power of the trinket, but the seasoned detective and his “dog” are rapidly gaining on them and dispensing plenty of jungle justice even without the skull printing adornment. Pursuit of the ring even ends a modern pirate brotherhood – much like the one the first Phantom fought – and acts as cupid bringing a prince and a pauper together forever…

Order restored, a tale very much of its time follows as The Phantom must rescue scientist Dr Archer and his pretty daughter June from cannibal terrors ‘The Rope People’ (June 17th to November 4th 1951), by repeating the herculean tasks he (in actuality his grandfather) had performed generations ago, after which ‘Tale of Devil’ (November 11th 1951 to March 23rd 1952) finds the mighty lupine relentlessly stalked by sadistic visiting royalty with vacant spots on his palace wall and a fondness for bear baiting and other acts of organised animal cruelty.

However, Devil is beloved by Prince Hirk’s son and wife, and even before the Phantom can save his faithful hound – and after the potentate refuses to change his ways – the royal family find a way to stop him for good…

An actual feel-good tale of redemption and repentance, the saga is followed by a return to all-out action as ‘The ‘Copter Pirates’ (March 30th to July 13th 1952) finally reintroduces potential Ghost-Who-Walks-wife Diana Palmer, as she sets out to rejoin her masked man in darkest Bengali, only to be kidnapped. An unwilling spoil of war taken by thieves plundering passenger planes with helicopters, she soon overwhelms unstable lothario Drake and is able to keep him at bay until the Phantom organises an army (navy?) of local tribal fisherfolk to search hundreds of islands and spectacularly lower the boom on the aerial upstarts…

A sublime lost opportunity comes next as ‘The Female Phantom’ (July 20th – October 12th 1952) introduces one of the only woman Crimebusters in US comics of this era. Reunited with “Kit Walker”, Diana has him delve into the meticulous family chronicles to reveal how, a few generations previously, the feisty twin sister of a former Ghost Who Walked took her brother’s place to police the jungles of Bengali after he was shot battling river pirates. Girl Phantom Julie briefly substituted for Kip, saving a hostage missionary that she later married, and kept the Phantom’s Peace until the natural order was restored.

The concept obviously intrigued Falk who carried it on in sequel saga ‘Diana and the Bank Robbers’ (October 19th 1952 to February 1st 1953) wherein Diana “borrowed” Julie’s well-preserved fitted costume for a prank and was captured and entombed by ruthless bullion thieves. Discovered and rescued by super-steed Hero, Diana then let the true, many masked manhunter settle their hash and resumed her rightful place as asker of leading questions…

Closing this section of this compilation, she enquires about ‘The Chain’ (February 8th – May 24th 1953) welded to the Phantom’s throne in the Skull Cave, just in time to reinvigorate the exhausted hero whose constant attempts to forestall an impending tribal war have led him to the brink of resignation and retirement…

As the couple listen to elder Woru, they learn how a similar situation plagued the fearsome forest peacekeeper’s own father and how, after solving his crisis of confidence, escaping slavery, saving his own intended (Kit Walker’s mother-to-be) from abduction and destroying a human monster through sheer persistence, the weary victor attached the links in hopes that they would serve as a reminder for all who followed in his footsteps…

And they do…

Closing this tome ‘Focus: The Female Phantom in the Comics’ discusses the female Phantom (who never appeared again in the 1950s) and provides two tales from her resurrection in the 1960s – albeit not in family oriented strips but in those rowdily anarchic comic books.

Between 1966 and 1967 King Features Syndicate dabbled with a comic book line of their biggest stars Flash Gordon, Popeye, Mandrake and The Phantom: developed after the Ghost Who Walks had enjoyed a solo-starring vehicle under the broad and effective aegis of veteran licensed properties publisher Gold Key Comics. The Phantom was no stranger to funnybooks, having been featured since the Golden Age in titles such as Feature Book and Harvey Hits, but only as straight reformatted strip reprints. The Gold Key exploits were tailored to a big page and a young readership, a model King maintained for their own run.

Here, from the era of superhero saturation and The Phantom #20 (cover dated January 1967, scripted by Dick Wood and illustrated by Bill Lignante) ‘The Adventures of the Girl Phantom’ expands upon the strip sequence above as Julia again dons the purple leotard, mask and gun belt to counter a crime wave following Kit’s incapacitation due to fever. Although more than a match for normal bandits, poachers and evil Europeans, she almost succumbs to the sinister plots of gang boss Lamont until her ferocious jungle cat Fury comes to her aid…

Closing the extra treats is vignette ‘The Secret of the Golden Ransom’ from Charlton’s The Phantom #30 ( February 1969, by Pat Fortunato, José Delbo & Sal Trapani) as Julie and faithful (human) friend Maru face a flamboyant pirate who demands a unique payment for returning her captive brother, the “real Phantom”…

If the kind of fare you’d encounter in a 1940s Tarzan movie or noir thriller might offend, you should consider carefully before starting this book, but if you’re open to oldies with historical cultural challenges there’s a lot to be said for these straightforward and pioneering thrillers. Finally rediscovered, these lost treasures are especially rewarding as the material is still fresh, entertaining and addictively compelling. However, even if it were only of historical value (or just printed for Australians – manic devotees of the implacable champion from the get-go) surely the Ghost Who Walks and fiancée/wife-who-waits is worthy of a little of your time?
The Phantom® © 1950-1953 and 2018 King Features Syndicate, Inc. ® Hearst Holdings, Inc. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.