Category: Crime Comics

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Mandrake the Magician: Fred Fredericks Sundays volume 1 – The Meeting of Mandrake and Lothar


By Lee Falk & Fred Fredericks (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-692-6 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Time for another Birthday briefing as we exploit the month of mystery and imagination to celebrate 90 glorious years for another Golden Age stalwart…

Regarded by many as comics’ first superhero, Mandrake the Magician debuted as a daily newspaper strip on 11th June 1934 – although creator Lee Falk had sold the strip almost a decade previously. Initially drawing it too, Falk replaced himself as soon as feasible, allowing the early wonderment to materialise through the effective understatement of sublimely solid draughtsman Phil Davis. An instant hit, Mandrake was quickly supplemented by a full-colour Sunday companion page from February 3rd 1935.

Falk – as 19-year-old college student Leon Harrison Gross – had sold the strip to King Features Syndicate years earlier, but asked the monolithic company to let him finish his studies before dedicating himself to it full time. Schooling done, the 23-year-old born raconteur settled into his life’s work, entertaining millions with astounding tales. Falk also created the first costumed superhero in moodily magnificent generational manhunter The Phantom, going on to spawn an entire comic book subgenre with his first creation. Most Golden Age publishers boasted at least one (and usually many) nattily attired wizards in their gaudily-garbed pantheons: all roaming the world(s) making miracles and crushing injustice with varying degrees of stage legerdemain or actual sorcery.

Characters like Mr. Mystic, Ibis the Invincible, Sargon the Sorcerer, and an assortment of  “…the Magician”’s like Zatara, Zanzibar, Kardak proliferated ad infinitum: all borrowing heavily and shamelessly from the uncanny exploits of the elegant, enigmatic man of mystery gracing the world’s newspapers and magazines. In the Antipodes, Mandrake was a suave and stalwart regular of Australian Women’s Weekly and became a cherished icon of adventure in the UK, Australia, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Spain, France, Turkey and across Scandinavia: a major star of page and screen, pervading every aspect of global consciousness.

Over many decades he has been a star of radio, movie chapter-serials, a theatrical play, television and animation (as part of series Defenders of the Earth). With that has come the usual merchandising bonanza of games, toys (including magic trick kits), books, comics and more…

Falk worked on Mandrake and “The Ghost who Walks” until his death in 1999 (even on his deathbed, he was laying out one last story), but also found a few quiet moments to become a renowned playwright, theatre producer and impresario, as well as an inveterate world-traveller. After drawing those first few strips Falk united with sublimely polished cartoonist Phil Davis, whose sleekly understated renditions took the daily strip, and especially the expansive full-page Sunday pages (collected in companion volume The Hidden Kingdom of Murderers), to unparalleled heights of sophistication. Davis’ steadfast, assured realism was the perfect tool to render the Magician’s mounting catalogue of spectacular miracles. Soon the Magician was a major star of page & screen, pervading all aspects of global consciousness as hinted at in a furore of fact features and massed memorabilia treats, beginning with introductory essay ‘The Real Mandrake the Magician’. This discusses real-life stage magician Leon Mandrake – who shared the evocative sobriquet in the mid-20th century – as revealed courtesy of his son Lon. Next on the bill is an appreciation of Davis’ inspired replacement as illustrator, in ‘Fred Fredericks – My Mandrake Artist’ by Andreas Erikson, with incisive exploration of Harold “Fred” Fredericks, who took over art production when Davis died and who ultimately assumed full creative duties when Falk himself passed on in 1999. This briefing covers that his tenure and includes his prodigious pre- and post-Mandrake comics work.

Those in the know are well aware that Mandrake was educated at the fabled College of Magic in Tibet, thereafter becoming a suave globe-trotting troubleshooter. Always and everywhere he was accompanied by African partner-in-crimefighting Lothar and, from early on, capable companion (eventually, in 1997, bride) Princess Narda of Cockaigne. Together they solved mysteries and fought evil. Those exploits took the close-knit team literally everywhere, and the strips section of this luxury monochrome landscape hardback opens on ‘Traveler’s Tale’ which ran from March 21st to August 22nd 1965 and saw the last episodes illustrated by Davis, before his death in 1964 from a heart attack.

The saga sees Mandrake in the arctic, where iceberg-watching leads to the recovery of an apparent alien in a survival capsule. A physical and mental marvel, while slowly awakening Opolo deduces not just the English language but also that he’s been in hibernation for 60,000 years. He goes on to reveal that he’s actually from Earth, albeit part of a space-faring race that preceded Homo Sapiens. He’s also pining for his estranged true love Adrana, and Mandrake is happy to help him find her and the long buried civilisation they both came from and are the last survivors of…

Incredibly, along the way, the magician also solves an ancient murder mystery and plays cupid to the reunited survivors, before seeing them abandon their birthworld for the stars…

Always well in tune with contemporary zeitgeists – like sci fi and spy fi – Falk dipped into the growing well of supervillains monopolizing book shelves and airwaves by next reviving Mandrake’s personal arch-nemesis as ‘The Cobra Returns’ (August 29th 1965 – April 3rd 1966). The sinister savant was once Mandrake’s tutor at The College of Magic and here begins a globally destabilising assassination spree, provoking crime busting agency Inter-Intel to call in the Magician and his crew to consult. Sadly, the ploy only makes the perfidious plotter turn his full murderous attentions on our heroes, in an escalating series of attacks that ultimately end in a spectacular showdown and apparent end of the evil one…

With global stability secured, organised crime goes wild, and the miracle trio are kept busy helping the good guys crack down on mobsters in ‘The Underworld vs. Inter-Intel’ (April 10th – August 7th 1966), after which ‘The Astro Pirates’ (August 14th – December 25th 1966) highlights a modern spin on an old racket…

When bold bandits begin holding up airliners in the stratosphere they foolishly pick a jet carrying Narda, and a fully-engaged Mandrake and Lothar spare no effort to end the sinister sky-jinks, after which – inspired by the “Great Northeast Blackout” of November 5th 1965 – Falk & Fredericks fill us in on ‘The Blackout Caper’ (January 1st – April 23rd 1967), as a mad scientist teams up with mobsters to use darkness and chaos to get rich quick and fulfil even nastier nuclear ambitions but underestimate the power of the mighty magician…

Fredericks was a liberal and civil rights proponent, and had for months been subtly changing the “happy, loyal native” appearance of the African globetrotter to match the acts and character Falk had been crafting for years. The process was completed with a reboot of their first adventure together spanning April 30th – September 24th. ‘The Meeting of Mandrake and Lothar’ relates how the practically superhuman prince of reclusive kingdom “the 12 Nations” joins Mandrake in stopping crazed fugitive Mad Dog Dill, before abdicating all monarchical responsibilities to fight evil everywhere. However, returning to the present, shocks abound as Lothar agrees to helm his people’s transition to democracy by becoming their president, just as Mandrake and Narda are targeted by a manic gambler turned master-villain.

‘The Game of Chance’ (October 1st 1967 – February 11th 1968) soon sees Lothar return to aid in the comeuppance of devious blackmailer, kidnapper and influence-peddler Baron Chance and, prior to a resurgence of full-on fantasy, returns in ‘Invasion of the Babu’ (February 18th – July 21st 1968). No stranger to space adventure, Mandrake and Co are best friends with Magnon and Carola, Emperor and Empress of the Central Galaxy and benign rulers of one million worlds. The humans were there when the potentates had their baby Nardraka, and, as dutiful “godparents”, pull out all the stops when the toddler princess is abducted by barbaric invaders the Baboos.

Sadly for them, the apelike alien aggressors make a string of mistakes, beginning with hiding the hostage on even more barbaric Earth, continuing with trying to outsmart Mandrake and closing with believing Nardraka is “just” a stupid little female…

With one crisis resolved, Mandrake barely survives the renewed attentions of the Baron as ‘Second Chance’ (July 28th – November 3rd 1968) sees the magician and Inter-Intel hunt the murderous malefactor to his hidden island fortress and strike a major blow against organised crime, after which ‘The All or Nothing Hunt’ (November 10th 1968 – March 30th 1969), heralds the arrival of alien gamblers Alpha and Beta, who have made the mage their next obsession. Hiding a planet-eradicating bomb on Earth, the wagerers expect the wonder wizard to traverse the globe, deciphering clues to deactivate it. Of course, the extraterrestrials don’t play fair, but Mandrake isn’t playing at all…

No good deed goes unpunished, however, and ‘The Galactic Rumble’ (April 6th – September 7th 1969) reveals that Alpha and Beta are intergalactic crime lords with millions of thugs now indulging in an intergalactic gang war Magnon’s military and peacekeepers are helpless to stop. Isn’t it time to call in some consultants with the know-how to fight them on their own terms?

Yes it is, and not even exploding stars and marauding star dragons can long slow them down…

Ending the show are ‘The Fred Fredericks Mandrake the Magician Complete Sunday Checklist (1965-2002)’, plus full biographies of Fred Fredericks and Lee Falk. This thrilling tome offers exotic locales, thrilling action, bold belly laughs, cunning crime action and sheer wonder in equal measure. Paramount taleteller Falk instinctively knew from the start that the secret of success was strong and, crucially, recurring villains to test and challenge his heroes, and make Mandrake an unmissable treat for every strip addict. These stories have lost none of their impact and only need you reading them to concoct a perfect cure for the 21st century glums.
Mandrake the Magician © 2018 King Features Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. All other material © 2018 the respective authors or owners.

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Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives volume 1


By Steve Ditko, Joe Gill, and various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60669-289-0 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Timely Tome of Terrors … 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Steve Ditko (November 2nd 1927 -c. June 29th 2018) was one of our industry’s greatest talents and probably America’s least lauded. His fervent desire was to just get on with his job telling stories the best way he could. Whilst the noblest of aspirations, that dream was always a minor consideration and frequently a stumbling block for the commercial interests which for so long controlled all comics production and still exert an overwhelming influence upon the mainstream bulk of Funnybook output.

Before his time at Marvel, the young Ditko mastered his craft creating short stories for a variety of companies, and it’s an undeniable joy to look at this work from such an innocent time. At this time he was just breaking into the industry: tirelessly honing his craft with genre tales for whichever publisher would have him, free from the interference of intrusive editors.

This first fantastic full-colour deluxe hardback – and potently punchy digital treasure trove – reprints his early works (all from the period 1953-1955), comprising stories produced before the draconian, self-inflicted Comics Code Authority sanitised the industry, and although most are wonderfully baroque and bizarre horror stories there are also examples of Romance, Westerns, Crime, Humour and of course his utterly unique Science Fiction tales, cunningly presented in the order he sold them and not the more logical, albeit far less instructive chronological release dates. Sadly, there’s no indication of how many (if any) were actually written by moody master Ditko either.  If guessing authors, I’d plump for editor Pat Masulli and/or the astoundingly prolific Joe Gill (who was churning out hundreds of stories per year) as the strongest suspects…

And, whilst we’re being technically accurate, it’s also important to note eventual publication dates of the stories in this collection don’t have a lot to do with when Ditko rendered these mini-masterpieces: Charlton paid so little, the cheap, anthologically astute outfit had no problem buying material it could leave on a shelf for months – if not years – until the right moment arrived to print. All tales and covers here are uniformly wonderfully baroque and bizarre fantasies, suspense and science fiction yarns, helpfully annotated with a purchase number to indicate approximately when they were actually drawn.

Ditko’s first strip sale was held for a few months and printed in Fantastic Fears #5 (an Ajax/Farrell publication cover-dated January/February 1954): a creepy, pithy tale entitled ‘Stretching Things’, followed here by ‘Paper Romance’ – an eye-catching if anodyne tale from Daring Love #1 (September 1953, Gilmor). A couple of captivating chillers from Simon and Kirby’s Prize Comics hot horror hit Black Magic come next. ‘A Hole in his Head’ (#27, November/December 1953) combines psycho-drama and time travel whilst more traditional tale ‘Buried Alive’ (#28 January-February 1954) is a self-explanatory gothic drama.

Stylish cowboy hero Utah Kid stopped a ‘Range War’ in Blazing Western #1 (January 1954, Timor Press), and Ditko’s long association with Charlton Comics properly began with the cover and vampire shocker ‘Cinderella’ from The Thing #12 (February 1954). The remainder of the work here was published by Charlton, a small company with few demands.

Their diffident attitude to work was ignore creative staff as long as they delivered on time: a huge bonus for Ditko, still studiously perfecting his craft and never happy to play office politics. They gave him all the work he could handle and let him do it his way…

After the cover for This Magazine is Haunted #16 (March 1954) comes ‘Killer on the Loose’: a cop story from Crime and Justice #18 (April 1954), and the same month saw him produce cover and three stories for The Thing #13: ‘Library of Horror’, ‘Die Laughing’ and ‘Avery and the Goblins’. Space Adventures #10 (Spring 1954) first framed the next cover and the witty cautionary tale ‘Homecoming’, followed by three yarns and a cover from the succeeding issue – ‘You are the Jury’, ‘Moment of Decision’ and the sublimely manic ‘Dead Reckoning’…

This Magazine is Haunted #17, (May 1954), featured a Ditko cover and three more moody missives: ‘3-D Disaster, Doom, Death’, ‘Triple Header’ and intriguingly experimental ‘The Night People.’ That same month he drew the cover and both ‘What was in Sam Dora’s Box?’ and ‘Dead Right’ for mystery title Strange Suspense Stories #18. He had another shot at gangsters in licensed title Racket Squad in Action (#11, May-June 1954), producing the cover and stylish caper thriller ‘Botticelli of the Bangtails’ and honed his scaring skills with the cover and four yarns for The Thing #14 (June 1954): ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, ‘The Evil Eye’, the utterly macabre ‘Doom in the Air’ and grisly shocker ‘Inheritance!’

He produced another incredible cover and five stories in the next issue, and, as always was clearly still searching for the ultimate in storytelling perfection. ‘The Worm Turns’, ‘Day of Reckoning’, ‘Come Back’, ‘If Looks could Kill’ and ‘Family Mix-up’ range from giant monster yarn to period ghost story to modern murder black comedies , but throughout, although all clearly by the same artist, no two tales are rendered the same way. Here is a true creator pushing himself to the limit.

Steve drew the cover and ‘Bridegroom, Come Back’ for This Magazine is Haunted #18, (July 1954), ‘A Nice Quiet Place’ and the cover of Strange Suspense Stories #19, plus the incredible covers of Space Adventures #12 and Racket Squad in Action #11, as well as cover and two stories in Strange Suspense Stories #20 (August 1954) – ‘The Payoff’ and ‘Von Mohl Vs. The Ants’ – but it was clear that his astonishing virtuosity was almost wasted on interior storytelling.

His incredible cover art was compelling and powerful and even the normally laissez-faire Charlton management must have exerted some pressure to keep him producing eye-catching visuals to sell their weakest titles. Presented next are mind-boggling covers for This Magazine is Haunted #19 (August 1954), Strange Suspense Stories #22 and The Thing #17 (both November 1954) as well as This Magazine is Haunted #21, (December1954).

The Comics Code Authority began judging comics material from October 26th 1954, by which time Ditko’s output had practically halted. He had contracted tuberculosis and was forced to return to his family in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, until the middle of 1955. From that return to work come the final Ditko Delights in this volume: the cover and a story which originally appeared in Charlton’s Mad Magazine knockoff From Here to Insanity (#10, June 1955). A trifle wordy by modern standards, ‘Car Show’ nevertheless displays the sharp, cynical wit and contained comedic energy that made so many Spider-Man/Jonah Jameson confrontations an unforgettable treat a decade later…

This is a cracking collection in its own right but as an examination of one of the art form’s greatest stylists it is also an invaluable insight into the very nature of comics. This is a book true fans would happily kill or die for.
This edition © 2009 Fantagraphics Books. All Rights Reserved

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Batman: Haunted Knight


By Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1 401-28486-2 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-1-7795-1638-1 (Deluxe HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless Seasonal Wonderment… 9/10

The creative team of Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale tackled many iconic characters in a number of landmark tales, but their reworkings of early Batman mythology – such as The Long Halloween – must certainly rank amongst their most memorable. Set during the iconic Batman: Year One scenario created by Frank Miller, and originally released as a 13-part miniseries (running from Halloween to Halloween), that epic shed new light and plenty more shadows on the early alliance of Police Captain Jim Gordon, District Attorney Harvey Dent and the mysterious vigilante Batman, to destroy the unassailable mob boss who ran Gotham City; Carmine Falcone: “The Roman…”

However, prior to that epic undertaking, the creators coproduced another All Hallows adventure; one that grew like Topsy to eventually become a triptych of Prestige One-Shot Specials under the aegis of Archie Goodwin’s most significant editorial project…

After the continuity-wide reset of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and with DC still in the throes of re-jigging its entire narrative history, a new Batman title launched, presenting multi-part epics refining and infilling the history of the post-Crisis hero and his entourage. The added fillip was a fluid cast of prominent and impressively up-and-coming creators…

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight was a fascinating experiment, even if ultimately the overall quality became a little haphazard and hit-or-miss. Most early story-arcs were quickly collected as trade paperback editions – helping to jumpstart the graphic novel sector of the comics industry – and the moody re-imaginings of the Gotham Guardian’s salad days gave fans a wholly modern insight into the ancient yet highly malleable concept.

As explained in ‘Trick or Treat’ – Editors Goodwin’s reproduced introduction from the 1996 compilation – the first Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special began life as a story-arc for the monthly series, before being cannily promoted to a single, stand-alone publication released for October 1993. Its success spawned the two sequels also included in this volume and the aforementioned Long Halloween epic. If you spring for the spiffy Deluxe Edition from 2022, there are even more secrets revealed…

Otherwise, collected in one spooky, stripped-down paperback and/or eBook compilation, those three scary stories comprise a raw and visceral examination of an obsessive hero still learning his trade and capable of deadly misjudgements as seen in initial yarn ‘Fears’.

Here, after spectacularly capturing terror-obsessed psychopath Jonathan Crane, the neophyte Caped Crimebuster leaves him to mere policemen ill-equipped to cope with the particular brand of malicious insanity cultivated by The Scarecrow…

It’s fair to say that the man behind the bat mask is distracted; still attempting to reconcile his nocturnal and diurnal activities. Young Bruce Wayne is currently floundering before the seductive and sophisticated blandishments of predatory social butterfly and matrimonial black widow Jillian Maxwell. Faithful major-domo Alfred Pennyworth, however, is not so easily swayed. Left too much to his own devices, The Scarecrow has run wild through Gotham, but when he abducts Gordon, he at last makes a mistake the Dark Knight can capitalise upon…

One year later, another Halloween brings ‘Madness’ as rebellious teen Barbara Gordon choses exactly the wrong moment to run away from home: a night when her dad’s mysterious caped pal is frantically hunting Jervis Tetch – a certified nutcase abducting runaways to attend decidedly deadly Tea Parties orchestrated by a truly Mad Hatter…

Steeped in personal nostalgia as a maniac rampages through his city, inadvertently trampling upon some of Bruce Wayne’s only happy memories (of his mother’s favourite book), the heroic pursuer almost dies at the hands of the Looking Glass Loon, only to be saved by unlikely angel Leslie Thompkins – another woman who will loom large in Batman’s future…

The final fable here pastiches that Christmas classic by Charles Dickens as ‘Ghosts’ sees a delirious Bruce uncharacteristically taking to his bed early on the night before Halloween.

After socialising with young financier Lucius Fox, eating bad shrimp and crushing baroque bird bandit The Penguin, our sick and weary playboy lapses into troubled sleep, only to be visited by three spectres…

Looking like Poison Ivy, The Joker and the corpse of Batman himself, whilst representing Past, Present and inescapable Future, these phantoms prove that only doom awaits unless the overachieving hero strikes a balance – or perhaps truce – between his two divergent identities.

Trenchant with narrative foreboding (long-time fans already know the tragedies in store for all the participants, although total neophytes won’t be left wondering) these eerily enthralling Noir thrillers by Loeb perfectly capture the spirit of the modern Batman, supremely graced with startlingly powerful images of Mood, Mystery and rampant Mayhem from the magic pencil and brush of much-missed Tim Sale, vividly augmented by the colours of Gregory Wright and lettering of Todd Klein.

Adding lustre to these moody proceedings are a gallery of prior covers culled from earlier collections as well as a Sale Batman sketch, making this one of the very best Batman books you could read.

So, do…
© 1993, 1994, 1995, 2014, 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman – The Silver Age Dailies volume 2:1961-1963


By Jerry Siegel, Wayne Boring, Curt Swan & Stan Kaye with Otto Binder, Leo Dorfman, Edmond Hamilton, Bill Finger & Robert Bernstein (IDW Publishing Library of American Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-6137-7923-1 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The American comic book industry – if it existed at all – would be an utterly unrecognisable thing without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s unprecedented invention was fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation and quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. Spawning an army of imitators and variations within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and wish-fulfilment which epitomised the early Man of Steel grew to encompass cops-&-robbers crimebusting, socially reforming dramas, sci fi fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East sucked in America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

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

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

Far more people have seen and heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comic books. His globally syndicated newspaper strips alone were enjoyed by countless millions, and by the time his 20th anniversary rolled around, at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial star, headlined a series of astounding animated cartoons, become a novel attraction (written by George Lowther) and helmed two films and his first smash, 8-season live-action television show. He was a perennial sure-fire success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and in his future were even more shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark, Smallville, Superman & Lois), a stage musical, franchise of blockbuster movies and almost seamless succession of games, bubble gum cards and TV cartoons. These started with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and have continued ever since. Even superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

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

And rightly so: some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture. Mutt and Jeff, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped their humble tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar. Most still do…

So it was always something of a risky double-edged sword when a comicbook character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all, weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint the strips in cheap accessible form?) to became a genuinely mass-entertainment syndicated serial strip. Superman was the first original comic book character to make that leap – about six months after he burst out of Action Comics – but only a few successfully followed. Wonder Woman, Batman (eventually) and groundbreaking teen icon Archie Andrews made the jump in the 1940s and only a handful like Spider-Man, Howard the Duck and Conan the Barbarian have done so since.

The daily Superman newspaper comic strip launched on 16th January 1939, supplemented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th of that year. Originally crafted by luminaries like Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring), the mammoth task required the additional talents of Jack Burnley and writers like Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz. The McClure Syndicate feature ran continuously until May 1966, appearing at its peak, in over 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers – a combined readership of more than 20 million. Eventually, Win Mortimer and Curt Swan joined the unflagging Boring & Stan Kaye whilst Bill Finger and Siegel provided stories, telling serial tales largely divorced from comic book continuity throughout years when superheroes were scarcely seen.

Then in 1956 Julie Schwartz kicked off the Silver Age with a new Flash in Showcase #4 and before long costumed crusaders began returning en masse to thrill a new generation. As the trend grew, many publishers began to cautiously dabble with the mystery man tradition and Superman’s newspaper strip began to slowly adapt: drawing closer to the revolution on the comicbook pages. As Jet-Age gave way to Space-Age, the Last Son of Krypton was a comfortably familiar icon of domestic America: particularly in the constantly evolving, ever-more dramatic and imaginative comic book stories which had received such a terrific creative boost when superheroes began to proliferate once more. The franchise had been cautiously expanding since 1954 and by 1961 Superman was seen not only in Golden Age survivors Action Comics, Superman, Adventure Comics, World’s Finest Comics and Superboy, but also in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane and Justice League of America. Such increased attention naturally filtered through to the more widely-read newspaper strip and resulted in a rather strange and commercially sound evolution…

This second expansive hardback collection (spanning August 1961 to November 1963) opens with a detailed Introduction from Sidney Friedfertig, explaining the provenance of the strips; how and why Jerry Siegel was tasked with retuning recently published yarns from comic books; making them into daily 3-&-4 panel black-&-white continuities for an apparently more sophisticated and discerning newspaper audience. This frequently required major rewrites, subtle changes in plot, direction and tone and – on occasion – merging more than one funnybook story into a seamless new exploit to excite and amuse sensible, mature grown-ups.

If you’re a veteran fan, don’t be fooled: the tales retold here might seem familiar, but they are not simple rehashes: they’re variations and deviations on an idea for a readership perceived as completely separate from kids’ comics. Even if you are familiar with the original source material, the adventures here will read as brand new, especially as they’re gloriously illustrated by Boring (with a little occasional assistance from Swan) at the very peak of his artistic powers. After years away from the feature Boring had replaced his replacement Swan at the end of 1961, regaining his position as premiere Superman strip illustrator to see the series to its eventual conclusion. As an added bonus the covers of the issues the adapted stories came from have been included as a full, nostalgia-inducing colour gallery…

The astounding everyday entertainments by Siegel & Boring commence with Episode #123 from August 14th to September 16th, 1961 revealing how meek Clark Kent mysteriously excels as a policeman whilst wearing a legendary old cop’s lucky tin star in ‘The Super Luck of Badge 77!’: based on one of the same name by Otto Binder & Al Plastino from Superman #133 (November 1959). Running in papers from September 18th to 5th November and first seen in Superman #126 (January 1959 by Binder, Boring & Stan Kaye) ‘Superman’s Hunt for Clark Kent’ details how a Kryptonite mishap deprives the hero of his memories, leaving him lost in Metropolis and trying to ferret out the secret of his other identity, before Episode #125 – November 6th to December 23rd – finds a restored Clark as ‘The Reporter of Steel’ (once a Binder, Boring & Kaye yarn from Action Comics #257, October 1959), wherein Lex Luthor very publicly inflicts the mild-mannered journalist with unwanted superpowers, setting Lois Lane off on another quest to prove her colleague is actually a Caped Kryptonian.

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

An old-fashioned hard lesson informs the Kryptonian Crimebuster’s short, sharp shock treatment of ‘The Three Tough Teenagers’ (February 26th to March 31st and based on a Siegel & Plastino collaboration contemporaneously appearing in Superman #151 (February 1962)). Perhaps the headline-grabbing nature of youth in revolt was too immediate to resist? Usually timing discrepancies in publication dates could be explained by the fact that submitted comic book yarns often appeared months after completion, but here it feels like neither iteration of the franchise was willing to surrender sales-garnering topicality…

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

Spanning 4th – 23rd June, ‘Lois Lane’s Revenge on Superman’ grew out of a comedy tale by Siegel, Swan & George Klein in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #32 (April 1962). For adults, however, there’s a dark edge apparent as the frustrated journalist revels in humiliating her ideal man when a magic potion turns him into a baby…

‘When Superman Defended his Arch-Enemy’ – published from 25th June to August 4th as adapted from Action Comics #292 (September 1962 by writer unknown & Plastino) – sees the Metropolis Marvel acting as defence Counsel for ungrateful mad scientist Luthor after the fleeing maniac dismantles a sentient mechanoid on a world of machine intelligences…

Daily from 6th August to September 8th,‘Lois Lane’s Other Life’ retold Siegel, Swan & Klein’s tale from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #35 (August 1962) as the dauntless reporter changes her appearance to go undercover but subsequently loses her memory, after which ‘The Feud Between Superman and Clark Kent’ – September 10th to 27th October, and originally crafted by Hamilton & Plastino for Action Comics #292, with a cover-date of October 1962) depicts the two halves of the hero separated by Red Kryptonite. Sadly, the goodness and nobility are all in the merely human Clark part and he must avoid his merciless alternative fraction’s murderous clutches until the effect wears off…

First conceived by Siegel, Swan & Klein (in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #38, January 1963), ‘The Invisible Lois Lane’ was more comedy than drama, but here filled newspaper pages between October 29th and December 1st as the undetectable investigator quickly sees her quarry switch from Clark to Superman. It takes super-ingenuity to convince her otherwise…

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

From February 25th to April 20th Red K stripped our hero of his powers, leaving ‘The Mortal Superman’ forced to fake it due to an unavoidable prior engagement in a terse reinterpretation of the Dorfman & Plastino yarn seen in Superman #160, April 1963. The Man of Steel, for good and sound patriotic reasons, allows himself to be locked up for the alleged murder of Clark Kent in ‘The Trial of Superman’ (22nd April -May 25th), seen later in its original format as Hamilton & Plastino’s thriller in Action Comics #301, June 1963.

Hardworking, obsessive editor Perry White loses his memory and falls into the clutches of criminals who use his investigative instincts to uncover Earth’s greatest secret in ‘The Man who Betrayed Superman’s Identity’ between 27th May and July 6th (adapted from Dorfman, Swan & Klein’s suspenseful romp in Action Comics #297, February 1963) whilst, with adult sensibilities fully addressed, genuine tragedy and pathos pushes Siegel & Boring’s reworking of ‘The Sweetheart that Superman Forgot’ – running 8th July to August 17th – to the heady heights of pure melodrama as Superman loses his powers, memories, and use of his legs; but meets, falls in love and loses a girl who only wants him for himself. In one of the most adult of stories of his canon, the hero recovers his astounding gifts and faculties but has no notion of what he’s lost and who waits for him forever alone: a depth of emotion the author could only dream of approaching in the Plastino-illustrated original version appearing in Superman #165 (November 1963).

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

The epic escapades conclude with October 14th -November 23rd 1963’s ‘The Great Superman Impersonation’ (based on Robert Bernstein & Plastino’s Action Comics #306, November 1963) with Clark kidnapped by foreign agents who pass him off as the Man of Tomorrow to facilitate the takeover of a Central American republic: big mistake, especially as Superman is in a playful mood…

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

If you love the era, these stories are great comics reading, and this is a book you simply must have – especially as there’s still no sign of any digital editions yet.
Superman ™ & © 2014 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Teen Titans: The Silver Age Volume Two


By Bob Haney, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Nick Cardy, Irv Novick, Bill Draut, Gil Kane, Wally Wood, Neal Adams, Sal Amendola & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-8517-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

In the 1960s the hallowed concept of kid hero teams was already ancient when the impending Batman TV show prompted DC to trust their big heroes’ assorted sidekicks with their own regular outlet of expression. The outcome was a fab, hip and groovy ensemble as dedicated to helping kids as they were to stamping out insidious evil. Happy 60th anniversary, youngsters!

The biggest difference between the creation of the Teen Titans and wartime groups like The Young Allies, Newsboy Legion and Boy Commandos or even 1950s holdovers that included The Little Wise Guys or Boys Ranch was quite simply that burgeoning phenomena “The Teenager”: a discrete social and commercial force that had been born in the forties but ran wild in the following decade. These were kids who could – and should – be allowed to do things themselves, without constant adult help or supervision…

This quirkily eclectic compilation re-presents the rapidly-evolving –- ending – Swinging Sixties exploits from Teen Titans #12-24, plus a guest-shot from The Brave and the Bold #83, collectively spanning November/December 1967 to November/December 1969, with originating writer Bob Haney still scripting and the accent heavily on fun. The action resumes here with twin contemporary hot-topics “The Space-Race” and “Disc Jockeys” informing whacky sci fi thriller ‘Large Trouble in Space-Ville!’ as illustrated by Irv Novick (The Shield, Batman, The Flash) & Nick Cardy (Lady Luck, Aquaman, Batman) with the gang thwarting aliens stealing Earth’s monuments.

Cardy flies solo for TT #13, producing a seasonal comics masterpiece in ‘The TT’s Swingin’ Christmas Carol!’, a stylish retelling that’s one of the most reprinted Titans tales ever. At this time Cardy’s art really opened up as he grasped the experimental flavour of the times. The cover of #14, as well as interior illustration for the grim psycho-thriller ‘Requiem for a Titan’, are unforgettable. The tale introduces the team’s first serious returning villain The Gargoyle (Mad Mod does not count!): mesmerising, memorable and madly menacing. Although Cardy only inked Lee Elias’s pencils for #15’s eccentric tryst with Hippie counter-culture, ‘Captain Rumble Blasts the Scene!’ is another genuinely unique crime-thriller from a time when nobody over age 25 understood what the youth of the world was doing…

Teen Titans #16 returned to more solid ground with superb, scene-setting thriller ‘The Dimensional Caper!’, wherein rapacious sinister aliens infiltrate a rural high-school (and how many times have you seen that plot used since this 1968 epic?). Cardy’s art reached dizzying heights of innovation both here and in the next issue’s waggish jaunt to London ‘Holy Thimbles, It’s the Mad Mod!’ (alternatively and uninspiringly retitled ‘The Return of the Mad Mod’ here). The frantic criminal chase through the first and best Cool Britannia era which unfolds even includes a command performance from Her Majesty, the Queen…

Next up is a fandom landmark – and hint of things to come – as novice writers Len Wein & Marv Wolfman got their big break with a tale introducing (Soviet) Russian superhero Starfire (latterly redubbed Red Star for the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths generation) which set them firmly on a path of teen super-team writing. ‘Eye of the Beholder’ is a cool cat-burglar/super heist yarn set in trendy Stockholm, drawn with superb understatement by comics stalwart Bill Draut (Black Magic, Girls’ Love Stories, House of Secrets, Phantom Stranger), acting as a perfect indicator of the changing style and attitude that would imminently become part of the Teen Titans and comics industry…

Maintaining the experiments with youthful authorial voices, the entertainment continues with a beautifully realised comedy-thriller as boy Bowman Speedy joins the team full-time. ‘Teen Titans: Stepping Stones for a Giant Killer!’ (#19, January/February 1969) is written by Mike Friedrich with stunning art from Gil Kane (Green Lantern, Spider-Man, Rex the Wonder Dog, Star Hawks) & Wally Wood (Cannon, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, All-Star Comics, Daredevil), pitting the team against youthful criminal mastermind Punch. He intends killing the Justice League of America, and sagely reasons that a trial run against the junior division can’t hurt…

TT #20 took the long-brewing plot-thread of extra-dimensional invaders and gave it a counterculture twist in ‘Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho’: a spectacular rollercoaster romp deftly blending teen revolt, organised crime, anti-capitalist activism, bug-eyed monsters and cruelly cunning creepy conquerors, written by Neal Adams, pencilled by him and Sal (Phoenix, Archie Comics, Batman, Star Trek) Amendola, with inks by brush-maestro Cardy – one of the all-out prettiest illustration jobs of that decade.

Cover-dated April-May 1969, team-up vehicle The Brave and the Bold # 83 then took a radical turn as, in Haney & Adams’ ‘Punish Not my Evil Son!’, the Titans (sans Aqualad, who was dropped to appear more prominently in Aquaman and because there just ain’t that much subsea malfeasance) strive to save Bruce Wayne’s latest foster-son from his own inner demons in a tense thriller about trust and betrayal…

Symbolic super-teens Hawk and Dove briefly join proceedings for #21’s ‘Citadel of Fear’ (Adams & Cardy): chasing smugglers, finding aliens and ramping up the surly teen rebel quotient whilst moving the invasion story-arc towards its stunning conclusion. ‘Halfway to Holocaust’ is only half of #22, with the alien abduction of Kid Flash and Robin leading to a cross-planar climax where Wonder Girl, Speedy and a radical new ally quash the creeps’ ambitions forever, which still left enough room for a long overdue makeover in ‘The Origin of Wonder Girl’ by Wolfman, Kane & Cardy.

For years the series – and DC in general – had fudged the fact that their younger Amazon Princess was not actually human, a sidekick, or even a person, but rather an incarnation of the adult Wonder Woman as a child. As continuity backwriting strengthened its stranglehold on the industry, it was felt that the team’s token “chick” needed a fuller background, so this moving tale reveals she is in fact a human foundling rescued by Wonder Woman and raised on Paradise Island where their super-science gave her all the powers of a true Amazon.

They even found her a name – Donna Troy – and an apartment, complete with hot roommate. All Donna has to do was sew herself a glitzy, figure-hugging new costume…

Now thoroughly grounded in “reality”, the team jet south in #23’s fast-paced yarn ‘The Rock ‘n’ Roll Rogue’ (Haney, Kane & Cardy), seeking to rescue musical rebel Sammy Soul from his grasping family and subsequently, his missing dad from Amazonian headhunters.

This volume, and an era of relative innocence, ends on ‘Skis of Death!’ by the same creators, seeing the adventurous quartet vacationing in the mountains and uncovering a scam to defraud Native Americans of their tribal lands. It’s a terrific old-style tale but with the next issue the most radical change in DC’s cautious publishing history made Teen Titans a comic which had thrown out the rulebook… and maybe one day the company will get around to compiling it and the issues that followed into a third Titan-ish Tome in this sadly unfinished sequence….

Although perhaps dated in delivery, these tales were a liberating experience for kids when first released and remain a highly entertaining experience even now. They truly betokened a new empathy with independent youth and tried to address problems that were more relevant to and generated by that specific audience. That they are so captivating in execution is a wonderful bonus. This is absolute escapism and absolutely delightful.
© 1967, 1968, 1969, 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Little Tulip


By Jerome Charyn & Françoise Boucq (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80872-7 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

Some creative teams spend all their time collaborating: crafting works that constantly remind us why we are wise to await their every effort. Other artisans only link up at agonisingly rare intervals, and when their newest works are finally finished we hungry lovers of their art can only breathe a huge sigh of relief and release.

A sublime case-in-point are the all-too-rarely seen concoctions of American crime author and graphic novelist Jerome Charyn (Johnny One-Eye, I Am Abraham, Citizen Sidel, Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories) and French illustrator Françoise Boucq (Bouncer, Sente, Jérôme Moucherot, Bouche de diable) who together created Femme du magicien/The Magician’s Wife and Billy Budd, KGB: uniquely compelling graphic novels which won popular acclaim and numerous awards all over the world.

Published in French in 2014 before – eventually – becoming available in a remastered English translation by Charyn himself, Little Tulip is a ferocious and captivating blend of bleak reverie, coming-of-age drama, noir thriller and supernatural vengeance tale, opening in New York City in 1970 where tattooist Pavel plies his trade under the admiring gaze of fascinated teen Azami. She too is enslaved to the act of drawing, and wants to know everything: how to mark the skin, the secrets of adapting past designs, where and how the master got his own skinful of stories…

The city is in a growing panic. A serial-killing rapist dubbed Bad Santa is terrorising the night: targeting late-working women like Azami’s mother, so Pavel is keeping a quiet eye on them both. He’s actually far more informed than most citizens, as his uncanny ability to draw likenesses from the barest of witness accounts makes the old man a crucial component of the cops’ war on crime.

This almost magical ability has been consistently failing in regard to Bad Santa’s killings, however, and mounting tension makes Pavel dream of his own appalling childhood…

Just after WWII ended, his artist father emigrated from Washington Heights, USA to the Soviet Union to work with legendary film-maker Sergei Eisenstein. In those constrained environs Pavel absorbed a love of drawing and hunger for creative expression that could not be crushed even when a political climate shift saw him and his family arrested as spies before being shipped off to the horrific Siberian gulag Kolyma.

The daily casual atrocities of the corrupt guards were worse than what the boy experienced at the hands of the rival criminal gangs who actually ran the prisons. Soon he was alone, but his instinct for survival and gifts as an artist set him upon a new path, creating the sacrosanct, almost-holy tattoos inmates used to define, embolden and characterise themselves.

It was not the only art Pavel learned. As he grew older he became the top gladiator of his gang: a fast, deadly warrior with a blade in pitch darkness or broad daylight…

As the killings continue in the blighted Big Apple, Pavel’s thoughts keep returning to the unceasing stream of hardships and atrocities he experienced in the camp. Slowly a grim conclusion comes to him about the nature of Bad Santa… but too late for him to save the people nearest and dearest to him…

Bleak, uncompromising, seductive and painfully authentic whilst tinged with a smear of supernatural mystery, the story of Little Tulip is an unforgettable peek into the forbidden and the profane that will take your breath away. In 2020 notional sequel New York Cannibals was released, and one day we’ll get around to that one too…

Also included in this album-sized (280 x 210 mm) full-colour paperback is a glorious selection of sketches and working drawing in an entrancing display of ‘Artwork by Françoise Boucq’ to inspire you to making your own meaningful marks on paper – or any preferred medium…
© 2014 Jerome Charyn and Françoise Boucq. © 2014 Le Lombard. Lettering © 2016 Thomas Mauer. All rights reserved.

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The Dynamite Art of John Cassaday


ISBN: 978-1-52410-936-3 (HB/Digital edition)

It’s only Wednesday and already a grim week for lost heroes. On the back of hearing of the death of wonderful James Earl Jones and undeservedly forgotten Zoot Money comes news from closer to home as we learn that John Cassaday has gone far, far too early…

Born Texan in 1971, Oklahoma-raised John Cassaday was a multi-award-winning comics artist, actor and TV director, legendary for his depictions of Ghost, Captain America, The Astonishing X-Men, Planetary, Desperadoes, I Am Legion and Star Wars as well as his unforgettable procession of covers for many companies and characters. His particularly iconic, stridently symbolist use of imagery made his work globally known, admired and sought after whilst his imagination and imagery featured in numerous animated films and poster books.

Cassaday was self-taught with a superb eye for landscape and location. It underpinned a primal understanding of the body language of evil and heroism and deep affection for the classic landmarks and groundbreakers of our somewhat simplistic genre: combining to inform the astounding visuals in this mammoth hardback (234 x 307 mm) or digital catalogue of comic and fantasy masterpieces.

In 2006 Cassaday began a long and wonderfully fruitful association with Dynamite Entertainment, generating covers for a vast pantheon of stars comprising generational household names and the best of new concepts, and many are gathered here for you to ogle…

Following context and potted history from Dynamite Publisher Nick Barrucci’s Introduction and a Foreword by comics everyman Scott Dunbier, the Gallery of Graphic Wonders opens with 100+ pages of ‘The Lone Ranger’ and includes commentary by scripters Brett Matthews and Mark Russell and editor Joe Rybandt, augmenting pencil roughs, sketches and those astounding covers (including colour variants).
Throughout, Cassaday’s own colour work is bolstered by contributions from Dean White, Laura Martin, Francesco Francavilla, Marcelo Pinto, Ivan Nunes, José Villarrubia, June Chung & Tony A?ina
Garth Ennis’ war anthology ‘Battlefields’ boasted some of Cassaday’s most engaging images, and those paintings are here supplemented by designs, working sketches and colour variants as is Project Superpowers spinoff ‘The Death-Defying ‘Devil”’, and vintage stars ‘Buck Rogers’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

‘The Complete Dracula’ boasts iconoclastic covers and commentary from co-writer Leah Moore before a return to pulp fictioneers offers additional character studies and designs for a staggering swathe of bombastic eyecatchers gracing the many series and crossover team-ups featuring ‘The Green Hornet’, ‘The Shadow’, ‘The Spider’ and ‘Doc Savage’.

Then ‘Grand Passion’ and ‘Ian Fleming’s James Bond’ artworks bring us to a selection of ‘Other Covers’ including ‘Red Sonja’, ‘The Boys’, ‘Zorro’, ‘Blackbeard: Legend of the Pyrate King’, ‘The Complete Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Project Superpowers Chapter 2’, ‘Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt’, ‘Will Eisner’s The Spirit’, ‘Kiss’, ‘John Wick’ and ‘Battlestar Galactica vs Battlestar Galactica’, and they are all simply beautiful and unmissable.

There are many books – both academic and/or instructional – designed to inculcate a love of comics whilst offering tips, secrets and an education in how to make your own sequential narratives.

There are far more intended to foster and further the apparently innate and universal desire to simply make art and do so proficiently and well, but here the emphasis is on promoting the artist’s sheer unassailable visual excitement and his treatment of a lexicon of legends. This book will delight everyone who wants to see a master in his element; showing that nobody does it better…
All properties © 2020 their respective rights holders. All rights reserved.

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The Batman Adventures volume 3


By Kelley Puckett, Paul Dini, Mike Parobeck & Rick Burchett, Michael Reaves, Bruce Timm, Matt Wagner, Klaus Janson, Dan DeCarlo, John Byrne & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5872-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

With Batman: Caped Crusader storming the air waves in this anniversary year and making old farts like me tremble all over again, let’s take a peek back at the bonanza of great comics that came out of the last animated noir fest courtesy of Bruce Timm & Co…

The brainchild of Bruce Timm, Eric Radomski & Paul Dini, Batman: The Animated Series aired in the US from September 5th 1992 to September 15th 1995. Ostensibly for kids the TV cartoon revolutionised everybody’s image of the Dark Knight and inevitably fed back into print iterations, leading to some of the absolute best comic book tales in the hero’s many decades of existence. And it’s still true today…

Employing a timeless visual style dubbed “Dark Deco”, the show mixed elements from all eras of the character and, without diluting the power, tone or mood of the premise, re-honed the grim Bat and his team into a wholly accessible, thematically memorable form.

It entranced young fans whilst adding shades of exuberance and panache that only the most devout and obsessive Batmaniac could possibly object to. A faithful comic book translation was prime material for collection in the newly-emergent trade paperback market but only the first year was ever released, plus miniseries such as Batman: Gotham Adventures and Batman Adventures: the Lost Years. Nowadays, however, we’re much more evolved and reprint collections have established a solid niche amongst cognoscenti and young readers.

This third inclusive compendium gathers issues #21-27 of The Batman Adventures, originally published between June to December 1994  plus that year’s Batman Adventures Annual: a scintillating, no-nonsense frenzy of family-friendly Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy from Kelly Puckett, Mike Parobeck & Rick Burchett and a few fellow-pros-turned-fans…

Puckett is a writer who truly grasps the visual nature of the medium and his stories are always fast-paced, action packed and stripped down to the barest of essential dialogue. This skill has never been better exploited than by Parobeck who was at that time a rising star, especially when graced by Burchett’s slick, clean inking.

Although his professional career was tragically short (1989 to 1996 when he died, aged 31, from complications of Type 1 Diabetes) Parobeck’s gracefully fluid, exuberantly kinetic, frenetically fun-fuelled, animation-inspired style revolutionised superhero action drawing and sparked a renaissance in kid-friendly material and merchandise at DC – and everywhere else in the comics publishing business.

The wall to wall wonderment begins with the compulsive contents of Batman Adventures Annual #1: a giant-sized gathering of industry stars illustrating Paul Dini’s episodic, interlinked saga ‘Going Straight’.

Illustrators Timm & Burchett set the ball rolling as jet-propelled bandit Roxy Rocket is released from prison, prompting Batman and faithful retainer Alfred to discuss whether any villains ever reform.

Apparently one who almost made it is Arnold Wesker, who played mute Ventriloquist to his malign dummy Scarface. Tragically in ‘Puppet Show’ (art by Parobeck & Matt Wagner) we see how even a good job and the best of intentions are no defence when Arnold’s new boss wants to exploit his criminal past…

Harley Quinn is insanely devoted to killer clown The Joker as Dan DeCarlo & Timm wordlessly expose her profound weakness for that bad boy as she’s released from Arkham Asylum, only to be seduced back into committing crazy crimes in just ’24 Hours’…

The Scarecrow’s return to terrorising the helpless resulted from his genuine desire to help a girl assaulted by her would-be boyfriend in the chilling, poignant ‘Study Hall’ (with art by Klaus Janson), after which ‘Going Straight’ concludes with Timm detailing how Roxy Rocket is framed by Catwoman, and Batman has to separate the warring female furies…

The melange of mayhem even came with its own enthralling encore with The Joker solo-starring in ‘Laughter After Midnight’ as the Mountebank of Mirth goes on a spree in Gotham, courtesy of artists John Byrne & Burchett…

The Batman Adventures #21 then saw Michael Reaves join Puckett to script tense thriller ‘House of Dorian’ for Parobeck & Burchett as deranged geneticist Emile Dorian escapes from Arkham and immediately turns Kirk Langstrom back into the marauding Man-Bat.

Moreover, although the Mad Doctor’s freedom is bad news for Gotham, Langstrom and Dorian’s previous beast-man Tygrus; for a desperate fugitive afflicted with lycanthropy, the insane physician is his last chance at a cure for his curse…

Dorian couldn’t care less. All he wants is revenge on Batman and Selina Kyle…

Like the show, most stories were crafted as a 3-act plays and the conceit resumes with #22 as Puckett, Parobeck & Burchett settle in for the long haul. ‘Good Face Bad Face’ sees Two-Face return; also busting out of Arkham in ‘Harvey Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’ set to settle scores with Gotham’s top mobster Rupert Thorne. His first move is to free his gang in ‘Nor Iron Bars a Cage’, but this time Batman is waiting…

Poison Ivy is back in #23, spreading ‘Toxic Shock’ and teaming up with the Dark Knight in ‘Strange Bedfellows’ to save a famed botanist/ecologist dying from a mystery toxin. ‘Fighting Poison with Poison’, she and Batman hunt for a cure, forcing the mystery assassin into more prosaic methods in ‘How Deadly Was my Valley’…

‘Grave Obligations’ sees the Gotham Guardian’s past come back to haunt him when a ninja clan invade the city. They seem more concerned with fighting each other in ‘Brother’s Keeper’ but a little digging reveals how one has come ‘From Tokyo, With Death’ in mind for Batman, and it takes a much higher authority to halt the chaos in ‘Cancelled Debts’…

An inevitable team-up graces Batman Adventures #25 as Puckett, Parobeck & Burchett reintroduce legendary ‘Super Friends’. With Lex Luthor in town and bidding against Waynetech for a military contract, a mystery bombing campaign begins in ‘Tik, Tik, Tik…’

Even as unwelcome guest Superman horns in, Batman realises his old foe Maxie Zeus might be taking the credit but is certainly not to blame for the ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Zeus!’ A little deduction and a grudging alliance with the Caped Kryptonian results in the true scheme unravelling in ‘The Gods Must be Crazy’ with Batman rejoicing in having made a powerful friend and a remorseless and resourceful new enemy…

‘Tree of Knowledge’ focuses on college students Dick Grayson and Babs Gordon as they score top marks in a criminology course. ‘Pop Gun Quiz’ sees them singled out for special study by impressed Professor Morton and on hand in ‘Careful What You Wish For’ to experience an impossible crime in the University Library. Despite all their investigations, it’s only as Robin and Batgirl that a devilish plot is exposed and crucial ‘Lessons Learned’…

The last tale in this terrific tome revisits the tragedy of Batman’s origins as ‘Survivor Syndrome’ sees an impostor risking his life on Gotham’s streets in search of justice or possibly his own death.

‘Brother, Brother’ reveals how athlete Tom Dalton’s wife was murdered and how he surrenders to a ‘Call to Vengeance’. Everything changes once the real Dark Knight takes charge of Tom and trains him to regain ‘The Upper Hand’…

With a full complement of covers by Timm, Parobeck & Burchett, plus a ‘Pin-Up Gallery’ with stunning images by Alex Toth, Dave Gibbons, Kelley Jones, Kevin Nowlan, Mark Chiarello, Mike Mignola, Matt Wagner, Chuck Dixon & Burchett – all coloured by the astounding Rick Taylor – this is another stunning treat for superhero lovers of every age and vintage.
© 1994, 2015 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie


By Anne Martinetti, Guillaume Lebeau & Alexandre Franc translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91059-311-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This year celebrates 125 years since the birth of Agatha Christie and it’s rather odd to think that someone so quintessentially English, purportedly old-fashioned and adamantly upper (middle) class can belong to the entire world, but in the case of Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan DBE it’s inescapably true.

Anointed both “Queen of Crime” and “Queen of Mystery” she remains the author of the world’s longest continually running play – The Mouse Trap – and is officially Earth’s best-selling fiction author. Moreover, she was Really Quite Good at her job and if you’re the one who hasn’t read her yet, just get on with it: you are letting the side down most dreadfully…

Her literary appeal and plotting ingenuity, as most effectively expressed throughout this pictorial perambulation via metafictional icons Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple (and many other creations (such as Tommy & Tuppence, Mr. Parker Pyne, Harlequin and Ariadne Oliver), is truly global and inspires generations of readers every day.

Such can be seen in her own fictive alter ego Ariadne Oliver and the many other depictions of the author-as-investigator, as seen in graphic novels like The Detection Club or this bold offering from France blending incontrovertible fact with rational deduction, wild extrapolation and delicious speculative fantasy on the manner of highly polished professional Fan Fic…

Agatha – La vraie vie d’Agatha Christie was co-written by author/Editor Anne Martinetti (Creams and Punishments) and author/documentarian/graphic novelist Guillaume Lebeau (Crimes on Ice). Beguilingly illustrated by Alexandre Franc (Victor et l’Ourours, Mai 68: Histoire d’un Printemps, Le Satellites, Cher Régis Debray), it was released in 2014 and made it into English as Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie two years later.

Telling tales within tales, it takes as its starting point the infamous but true “lady vanishes” incident from December 1926 and from that event weaves a mesmerising tapestry exploring the childhood and early unsettled existence of Agatha Miller and the stellar life – or lives – she ultimately made with the sweat of her brow…

That only really began after extricating herself from an extremely troubled marriage to dashing pilot-turned-failed-businessman Archibald Christie…

Although this story is awash in fact, drenched in detail and delivered with compelling charm I’m not sharing much of that with you: magnanimously opting to let readers enjoy the unfolding and infinitely re-readable glee of seeing a true world – if not real life – enigma peeled back before your very eyes, whilst all around you some of the most captivating character-play and psychological analysis ever concocted holds the attention and hopefully tickles your little grey cells…

Playfully messing with chronology we see her life and death, disappearance and rise to dominance, capacity to forward-plan, wild adventurous life and loves as well as possibly peeking within, thanks to beguiling tête-à-têtes between Agatha and her great, incisive, pitilessly unforgiving and inescapably present totemic creations…

All the compelling speculation on events, triggers and their aftermath are bolstered by a lengthy and comprehensive Appendices section, containing an extremely complete Timeline of her eventful life, backed up with a mammoth Bibliography of her many, many, so many books and plays…

A sublimely visual examination of the world’s most accomplished wordsmith, Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie pulls off the near impossible trick of using a picture book to make literature irresistible. Surely you need to see for yourself?
© Hachette Livre (Marabout) Paris 2014. All rights reserved.

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Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1968 – 1969


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

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

For more than seven decades in America the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail cartoonists and graphic-narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country and often the planet, winning millions of readers and accepted (in most places) as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books, it also paid better, with the greatest rewards and accolades being reserved for the full-colour Sunday page. So it was always something of a poisoned chalice when a comic book character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint strips in cheap, accessible form?) and became a syndicated serial strip. Superman, Wonder Woman and Archie Andrews made the jump soon after their debuts and many features have done so since.

Due to war-time complications, the first newspaper Batman and Robin strip was slow getting its shot, but when the Dynamic Duo finally hit the Funny Pages the feature quickly proved to be one of the best-regarded, highest quality examples of the trend, both in Daily and Sunday formats. Yet somehow the strip never achieved the circulation it deserved, even though the Sundays were eventually given a new lease of life when DC began issuing vintage stories in the 1960s for Batman 80-page Giants and Annuals. The exceedingly high-quality all-purpose adventures were ideal short stories and added an extra cachet of exoticism for young readers already captivated by simply seeing tales of their heroes that were positively ancient and redolent of History with a capital “H”.

Such was not the case in the mid-1960s when, for a relatively brief moment, mankind went bananas for superheroes in general and most especially went “Bat-Mad”…

The Silver Age of comic books revolutionised a creatively moribund medium cosily snoozing in unchallenging complacency, bringing a modicum of sophistication to the returning genre of masked mystery men. For quite some time changes instigated by Julius Schwartz in Showcase #4 (October 1956) had rippled out in the last years of that decade, affecting all of National/DC Comics’ superhero characters but had generally bypassed The Gotham Gangbuster. Fans buying Batman, Detective Comics, World’s Finest Comics and latterly Justice League of America would read adventures that in look and tone were largely unchanged from the safely anodyne fantasies that had transformed a Dark Knight Detective into a mystery-solving, alien-fighting costumed Boy Scout just as the 1940s turned into the 1950s.

By the end of 1963, however, Schwartz having, either personally or by example, revived and revitalised the majority of DC’s line (and by extension and imitation, the entire industry) with his reinvention of the Superhero, was asked to work his magic with the creatively stalled and near-cancellation Caped Crusaders. Installing his go-to team of creators, the Editor stripped down the accumulated luggage and rebooted the core-concept. Down – and usually out – went the outlandish villains, aliens and weird-transformation tales in favour of a coolly modern concentration on crime and detection.

Even the art-style underwent a sleek streamlining and rationalisation. The most apparent change to us kids was a yellow circle around the Bat-symbol but, far more importantly, the stories had changed. A subtle aura of genuine menace had crept back in.

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

The Batman TV show premiered on January 12th 1966 and ran for three seasons of 120 episodes, usually airing twice weekly in the first two. It was a monumental, world-wide hit and sparked a wave of trendy imitation. Resulting media hysteria and fan frenzy generated an insane amount of Bat-awareness, no end of spin-offs and merchandise – including a movie – and introduced us all to the phenomenon of overkill. No matter how much we might squeal and froth about it, to a huge portion of this planet’s population Batman is always going to be that “Zap! Biff! Pow!” buffoonish costumed Boy Scout…

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

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

However, from the time when the Gotham Guardians could do no wrong comes a second superb compilation re-presenting the bright and breezy, sometimes zany cartoon classics of Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder, augmented by a wealth of background material, topped up with oodles of unseen scenes and background detail to delight the most ardent Baby-boomer nostalgia-freak. The fun-fest opens with more informative, picture-packed, candidly cool revelations from comics historian Joe Desris in ‘A History of the Batman and Robin Newspaper Strip: Part 2’: stuffed with behind-the-scenes set photos, communications between principal players like Bob Kane and the Producers, clippings, glorious unpublished pencils from strip illustrator Joe Giella as well as newspaper promotional materials, followed by pictorial essays on ‘Newspaper Strip Trivia’ and ‘Batman/Superman Crossovers’, more unpublished or censored strips and a note on the eclectic sources used to compile this collection before the comics cavorting continue…

Dailies and Sundays were scripted by former DC editor (and the company’s Hollywood liaison) Whitney Ellsworth and initially illustrated by Kane’s long-term art collaborator Sheldon Moldoff, before inker Giella was tapped by the studio to produce a slicker, streamlined modern look – usually as penciller but ALWAYS as embellisher. Since the feature was a 7-day-a-week job, Giella often called in comic book buddies to help lay-out and draw the strip; luminaries like Carmine Infantino, Bob Powell, Werner Roth, Curt Swan and others.

In those days, monochrome Dailies and full-colour Sundays were mostly offered as separate packages and continuity strips often ran different stories for each. For Batman the strip started out that way, but by the time of the stories in this volume had switched to unified 7-day storylines.

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

Our heroes were not dead, but the crash caused the Batman to lose his memory and, whilst Robin and faithful manservant Alfred sought to remedy his affliction, Max had collected his prize and jetted off for sunnier climes. With Batman missing, neophyte crimebuster Batgirl then tracked down the heroes – incidentally learning their secret identities – and was instrumental in restoring him to action… if not quite his fully-functioning faculties.

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

The tale picks up here on January 1st 1968 with Batman held at gunpoint, patiently trying to convince supremely suggestible, wealthy whale Tyrone Koom he is not there to assassinate him as the tycoon’s new astrologer Madame Zodiac (AKA Flo Floy) was insisting she had foreseen. When her minted dupe proves incapable of murder, Flo/Zodiac takes matters into her own hands by knocking out the mighty manhunter, but despite all her and her brother’s arguments, the millionaire cannot be convinced to pull the trigger…

Instead, befuddled Koom – still thinking the masked marvel wants him dead – has Batman bundled off to an isolated island where a fully-automated, exotic palace of wonders will act as the Caped Crusader’s impregnable prison for the remainder of his life. With the hero as good as dead Pretty Boy & Flo plan to claim BG’s million dollar bounty, but have not reckoned on Blue Max horning in…

When the pilot collides with Robin (tracking his senior partner by Bat-Radio) the erstwhile enemies reluctantly join forces but cannot prevent Batman’s banishment. Moreover, in the frantic melee, the Boy Wonder suffers a broken leg. Meanwhile, lost in an endless ocean, Batman slowly adjusts to life of enforced luxury on palatial penitentiary island Xanadu, unaware that life at home has become vastly more complicated for Robin and Alfred. Not only do they believe the Cowled Crimebuster dead but Max has ferreted out their secret identities and blackmailed them into cooperating in his vengeance scheme against Pretty Boy. Max plans to prevent the young thug collecting the reward by impersonating Batman…

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

Thankfully Superman and especially Sea King Aquaman have been mobilised to help find the missing Masked Manhunter but the countdown – although slow – is unstoppable…

During this sequence the severely overworked Giella bowed out and a veteran Superman illustrator took over the pitiless illustration schedule. Alfred John “Al” Plastino was a prodigious artist with a stellar career. He had been active in the early days of comic books, with credits including Captain America and Dynamic Man before serving in the US Army. His design talents were quickly recognised and he was seconded to Grumman Aerospace, The National Inventors Council and latterly The Pentagon, to design war posters and field manuals for the Adjutant General’s office.

In 1948 Plastino joined DC and quickly became one of Superman’s key artists. He drew many landmark stories and – with writer Otto Binder – created Brainiac, Supergirl and The Legion of Super-Heroes. From 1960-1969 he ghosted the syndicated Superman newspaper strip and whilst still drawing Batman, also took over Ferd’nand in 1970, drawing it until his retirement in 1989. He was extremely versatile and apparently tireless. In 1982-1983 he drew Nancy Sundays after creator Ernie Bushmiller passed away and was controversially hired by United Media to produce fill-in episodes of Peanuts when Charles Schulz was in dispute with the company. Al Plastino died in 2013.

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

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

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

Another tense thriller then sees Aquaman return to share the spotlight, beginning with determined “dolly-bird” Penelope Candy perpetually plaguing news outlets and even pestering the Gotham Police Department in a tireless quest to be put in touch with Batman. The man in question is blithely unaware: Bruce Wayne is dealing with a small personal problem. In his infinite wisdom he intends for Robin to temporarily retire whilst young Dick Grayson completes a proper education! To that end has engaged a new tutor for the strongly-protesting Boy Wonder…

With that all acrimoniously settled, the Caped Crimebuster roars out into the night and is filmed falling to his doom in a river trying to save apparently suicidal Penny Candy…

At first the heartbroken sidekick doesn’t know Batman is still alive but has actually been drawn into a Byzantine scheme devised by Penny to find her missing father. Oceanographer Archimedes Candy disappeared after working with Aquaman on a serum allowing humans to live beneath the sea. Penny is certain someone has abducted the researcher and, after Batman contacts Robin, they have the junior crimebuster send out a radio alert for the Sea King, before impatiently trying the potion together. ‘Breathing Underwater’ (August 7th – December 15th), they set off on a sub-sea search for the missing sea scientist…

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

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

When Killer captures Bruce and discovers he also has Batman, the mobster is truly exultant. However the plan goes awry as the victim escapes the death-trap which should have resulted in the authorities finding “Killey’s” drowned body, and the subsequent relocation into Wayne Manor becomes a fraught affair.

Perhaps the villain would be less troubled if he knew that although alive, the real Wayne has once again lost his memory…

Moreover, unbeknownst to anyone, neophyte crimebuster Batgirl already knows Batman’s other identity, and her suspicions are aroused by the state of the mansion and behaviour of Bruce and his new girlfriend…

As events escalate and spiral out of control, Killer – still safely hidden behind Wayne’s face – starts to crack: stupidly antagonising the one person he thought he could always rely on…

This volume’s comics cavortings end with the opening shots of ‘My Campaign to Ruin Bruce Wayne’ (which ran from May 31st – December 25th 1969) but as only seven days of that tale unfold in this volume I think we’ll leave that for the next volume and simply say…

To Be Continued, Bat-Fans…

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

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

If you love the era, the medium or even just graphic narrative, these are great comics reading, and this is a book you simply must have.

… And maybe one day the compilers will get around to making them all available in digital edition too…
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