Category: Crime Comics

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Rivers of London: Body Work


By Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, Lee Sullivan & Luis Guerrero (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-187-7

Ben Aaronovitch has been delighting fantasy fans for years, mostly through his television work on others people’s creations (Dr. Who: Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield, Jupiter Moon, Casualty and numerous licensed novels and audio-books), but really came into his own in 2011 when the Rivers of London (Midnight Riot in the USA) novel was released.

A supernatural police procedural saga with its sixth volume eagerly anticipated any moment now, it features the adventures of Peter Grant; the first Metropolitan Police officer in 70 years to transfer to the Special Assessment Unit, more commonly known as “Falcon” or the “weird shit” department. This well-known secret squad deals with all the magic and spooky stuff no sensible copper will admit occurs…

Grant’s boss there is the exceptionally dapper and imperturbable Inspector Nightingale who is far older than he looks and knows an awful lot about magic. As previously stated, Grant is his first Wizard’s Apprentice in decades…

The stories authentically resonate within the actual environs and legends of the big city, and amongst the pantheon of paranormal characters most prominent are the living spirits of the rivers which run through, beneath and between the boroughs of the macabre metropolis and the Thames Valley it lurks in…

This all-new yet canonical sequentially-illustrated tale sits between the fourth and fifth prose novels; written by Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, with art by the splendid Lee Sullivan and colourist Luis Guerrero.

The eponymous ‘Body Work’ started life as a 4-part monthly miniseries in July 2015 and opens, as so many police stories do, with an attention-grabbing death. What looks like a simple drowning gets dead scary dead quick when Peter Grant ambles into the SOCO clean-up, his indefinable instincts calling him to a situation which, although still unclear, is clearly unnatural…

Soon he’s on the trail of a haunted car which should have been destroyed but has instead been broken up for parts, scattering a lethal compulsion amongst an assortment of owners all now unwitting receptacles for a pitiless centuries-old force craving death and somehow connected to water.

Before long Grant and Nightingale (with his inimitable hound familiar Toby) are tracking down leads and the eldritch elder soon uncovers links to his own greatest failure and dereliction of duty…

Fast paced, funny-&-thrilling by turn and packed with intriguing, individualistic supporting characters, Body Work is above all a solid mystery which both curious neophytes and dedicated devotees of the prose iteration will delight in solving along with our quirky cast.

Cheekily augmenting the main case are a series of blackly comedic and often surreal vignettes starring the supporting cast beginning with Tales from the Thames starring Beverley Brook in ‘Off their Trolley’ with the cheeky Naiad teaching some drunken upper-class sods a lesson about dumping trash, whilst sinister serving wench Molly stars in ‘Red Mist’ – a gory Tale from The Folly – followed by another seeing astounding canine wonder Toby triumphing over a zombie apocalypse on the ‘Night of the Living Dog’.

Aaronovitch, Cartmel, Alan Quah & Guerrero then offer a chilling and silent extended Halloween diversion in ‘Sleep No More’ and the extra duties close with a final brace of Tales from The Folly as Toby submits to his sodden fate in ‘Pursuit’ before Nightingale gets the gang together for a festive emergency in ‘Urgent Summons’.

Including a large covers and variants gallery and whimsical page of Creator Biographies, this is a splendid genre-blending yarn for lovers of cops-&-wizards fans who also love playing Dungeons and Dragnets.
Rivers of London ™ and © 2016 Ben Aaronovitch. All rights reserved.

Rivers of London: Body Work will be released on March 18th 2016

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GoodCopBadCop

GoodCopBadCop

By Jim Alexander, Luke Cooper, Gary McLaughlin & Will Pickering with an Introduction by John Wagner (Rough Cut Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-9546726-6-9

GoodCopBadCop Casebook #2

By Jim Alexander, Luke Cooper, Will Pickering & Jim Campbell (Rough Cut Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-9546726-7-6

Seasoned old lags at getting the very best out of finite resources, fresh talent and strong ideas, Jims Alexander and Campbell with their compadres at Planet Jimbot have been crafting superbly enthralling – and in this particular case, award-winning – graphic narratives for a goodly time now.

This brace of superbly chilling crime compendia were originally crafted by the team and published by Rough Cut Comics, but since the title has now reverted to the Jimbots (the first issue of the next Casebook will star in a forthcoming Small Press Sunday) it’s long past due to give the series a lingering look…

Writer Alexander’s prodigious back catalogue includes Calhab Justice and other strips for 2000AD, Star Trek the Manga and a broad variety of comics and strips for The Dandy, DC, Marvel, Metal Hurlant, and loads of other places, and here turns his conceptual spotlight on City of Glasgow Police Inspector Brian Fisher; a worthy, weary, dedicated public servant with the oddest partner an honest copper could ever imagine…

Following an effusive and thought-proving Introduction from John Wagner, the scene is set with debut ‘Report Ident: GCBC’ (art by Gary McLaughlin, lettering Jim Campbell) wherein the traditional confrontation between thoroughly-nicked ratbag and legally-hamstrung policeman takes a very dark turn after the other guy in Brian’s head gets out and conducts the remainder of an interview with an axe-murderer in a bloodily fitting manner…

‘Mrs MacPhellimey’ then sees the other Brian leak out and act in most uncharacteristic manner when confronting a little old lady with a husband-shaped patch of dirt in her garden…

This is followed by a stylish tweak on prose short story telling, wherein Fisher’s tediously dogged hunt for legendary burglar ‘the Partick Cat’ is detailed through incident reports submitted alternately by Brian and the other Brian…

Having swiftly established the conceptual set-up, ‘Three Strikes’ returns to strip format and expands the cast with the introduction of Detective Sergeant Julie Spencer, who fruitlessly attempts to get Fisher fraternising with the other officers. The motivational engine then kicks in as Brian finds a child-abductor just a little too late…

Allowing his Other to deal with the killer is the right thing to do, but afterwards the decent copper resolves that since they have at last crossed a real line, he and himself only get two more chances between them…

The prose reports continue with the hunt for that burglar turning up a rather fishy lead, after which the comics crimebusting resumes as Under Investigation’ (illustrated by Will Pickering) offers the first hint that Brian’s condition is not a complete secret.

Despite a scrupulously honest and forthright interview with the Anti-Corruption Unit, relating recent – and excessively bloody – incidents involving a nuclear submarine and a legendary local gang-boss, Fisher is given a clean sheet and pat on the back…

The text trail of the Partick Cat concludes by way of sharp observation and a treatise on the nature of Glaswegian cuisine before the gripping drama ends as every great TV cop show should, with a tensely suspenseful cliffhanger…

‘Tiny Acts of Kindness’ (with Luke Cooper handling the art) opens as Julie gets a glimpse of the other Fisher when they confront smash-&-grab specialist Ricardo Dreyfus and his family crew. Elsewhere in Clydebank, meanwhile, a macabre and grotesque serial killer is having his special kind of fun…

After the bruised and battered Ricardo lawyers up and walks, easy-going, patient DI Fisher moves on to a missing persons case which seems to lead to a local church, but the other Brian still has his mind set on dealing with the Dreyfus clan…

To Be Continued…

Following an Introduction from author Douglas Skelton, the urban Hibernian atrocities carry on in GoodCopBadCop Casebook #2 with the grim continuation and grisly conclusion of ‘Tiny Acts of Kindness’ with Luke Cooper again illuminating Jim Alexander’s stories on our Jekyll and Hyde law enforcer.

It begins with a dismembered body in the river: apparently not that rare an occurrence in Glasgow. DS Julie Spencer is handling the recovery as Fisher is elsewhere.

When the Dreyfus boys turn over a local supermarket, Brian is waiting and happily lets the other Detective Inspector make the arrests… eventually…

Spencer is furious at his solo showboating but soon gets to the nub of the problem: why was Bruce Dreyfus floating in neat sections rather than on the raid with Ricardo and Uncle William?

A quiet chat with their Aunt Morag soon sets them on the trail of a rather odd cleric at the church and his connection to Russian orphans. Not long after, freshly severed fingers start turning up in the post…

And that’s where I’m stopping. The convoluted mystery cleverly unwinds with chilling complexity, loads of twisty-turny surprises and a succession of shocking moments, so if you don’t read these books you’ll have to wait for some media clever-clogs to turn this into a movie or preferably a BBC FOUR late-night Scandi-style drama serial…

You’ll thank me for it in the long run…

Prose Incident Reports – alternately submitted by Brian and Brian – serve to clear the palates whilst offering more thoughts on Glasgow’s gastro-culture and providing fascinating – and scarily hilarious – peeks into Fisher’s early life.

Before he was a quietly effective Detective, Brian Fisher learned his trade in the mounted police division and spent many educational hours doing community policing for the Violence Reduction Unit, visiting schools where the kids were more ruthlessly ferocious than any full-grown bad guy…

The Cops-&-Horrors show closes with a startling turning point as Julie at last sees the other Brian in full flow ‘Twisting the Knife’ (Pickering art) with a wounded suspect. When she quite naturally reports her observations to the Chief Superintendent, she is terrified and astounded by his response…

This deftly underplayed, chillingly believable and outrageously black-humoured serial is a magnificent addition to the annals of Tartan Noir: smart, compelling, compassionate and fiercely engaging. If you like your crime yarns nasty and your heroes deeply flawed, GoodCopBadCop is a series you must not miss.
All characters and distinctive names and likenesses thereof are © Planet Jimbot and used under license by Rough Cut Comics.

Planet Jimbot has a splendid online shop so why not check it out?

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Modesty Blaise: Ripper Jax


By Peter O’Donnell & Enric Badia Romero (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78329-858-7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reproduced in stark and stunning monochrome – as is only right and fitting – Titan Books’ superbly scrupulous chronological serial re-presentations of the ultimate trouble-shooters resume here, with O’Donnell & Romero offering four more masterpieces of mood mystery sand mayhem only pausing for intriguing Introduction ‘Modest Morality’: an insightful overview of the wonder woman’s ethics and motivation from author and incurable fan-addict Simon Barnes (How to be a Bad Birdwatcher, The Sacred Coombe, Ten Million Aliens).

The suspenseful dramas open with Ripper Jax (originally run in The Evening Standard from May 4th to October 2nd 1995), wherein Modesty and Willie repay an old blood-debt to psychometricist and antiquarian bookseller Mr. Haley. The old gentleman has a daughter who’s a bit of a wild child and now she’s been kidnapped by psychotic, knife-throwing gang boss Ripper Jax.

The thoroughly nasty flesh-peddler is after two million pounds hidden by a thief who is beyond his usual means of coercion and persuasion, but for a man who can find things by mental divination all things are possible…

Naturally the Dynamic Duo leap to the distraught dad’s defence, but a little pre-raid intelligence-gathering around the villain’s medieval castle in Ireland not only reveals the huge odds arranged against them but also that it might not be a simple abduction and trade that’s going on…

Moreover, Jax soon knows the troubleshooters are coming but doesn’t care. He’s always wanted to test his knives and skill against the legendary bladesman Willie Garvin…

The scene shifts to the antipodes for The Maori Contact (3rd October 2nd 1995 – March 1st 1996) as Willie helps some old friends finish a magnificent, hand-carved traditional Waka. The 100-foot native war-canoe is the crowning triumph of British sculptor Jason Nash and his wife Carol, but they have no idea of the problems brewing…

In London, Modesty is just learning from Jason’s uncle Sir Gerald Tarrant that Carol has inherited millions of pounds from a crazy relative she had no notion of, even as Willie and Jason foil an abduction attempt which leaves one kidnapper dead and poor hubby with blood on his hands…

Rushing out on the first jet to New Zealand, Modesty and Tarrant are unaware that Carol’s sole rival for the inheritance is already on his way ahead to them, having hired one of the few criminal organisations in the world undaunted by the lethal reputations of Blaise and Garvin.

Not prepared to leave it at that, Carol’s unknown enemy also recruits an army of local riff raff to play back-up, but has completely underestimated the devious duo’s experience in whittling down overwhelming odds and uncanny ability to find helpful allies in the strangest places…

A startling glimpse into Modesty’s criminal days running The Network underpins Honeygun (March 4th to August 2nd 1996), revealing how her life was saved by a merciless mercenary killer.

Sadly the striking Eurasian assassin was too depraved and kill-hungry to be allowed to join Modesty’s gang and left in a huff with a solemn promise that Modesty owed her a debt which would one day be called in…

Years later that obligation becomes a deadly burden when Willie and “the Princess” are relaxing in their Tangiers home. Modesty is spending time with her occasional paramour Dr. Giles Pennyfeather when Honeygun resurfaces, orchestrating a heist which goes bloodily awry.

Trapped in the Kasbah with the cops closing in, the sociopathic killer calls in her debt and Modesty reluctantly spirits her away before the police can swoop…

Blaise’s misgivings over the rescue are soon proved true when Honeygun kills an Israeli diplomat and his chauffeur and subsequently abducts Giles from his hospital to remove a bullet from one of her henchmen wounded in the exchange of fire…

Torn by guilt, Modesty resolves to stop Honeygun for good. Before long she and Willie have tracked the crazy killer and her increasingly anxious army of hired guns to a derelict Roman fort and begun the perilous task of extracting Giles and cutting down the odds. With the worst storm in decades brewing, Modesty has to deal with one final hiccup when her darling doctor refuses to leave without his critically injured patient…

This catalogue of compelling crookedness and catastrophic crime-busting concludes with a gripping yarn wherein Modesty and Willie rush to the rescue of old friends Dinah and Stephen Collier in the raw heart of the Guatemalan jungle.

The professor and his blind, psychic wife were working for Blaise’s occasional lover John Dall, divining potential drill sites for the billionaire’s oil company when they were taken by a gang of rebels led by the charismatic maniac Durango (August 5th 1996 to January 3rd 1997)…

Rapidly swinging into action, Blaise and Garvin go native and attempt to infiltrate the band in the manner that’s worked so well so often, but things go south swiftly when Durango turns out to be old Network adversary Lazaya who instantly recognises them and decides to ransom them instead….

With everything going wrong the partners in peril have to think fast, act boldly and ruthlessly exploit every advantage to save their friends and themselves, but as always the final arbiter is a study in applied violence…

These are incomparable capers crafted by brilliant creators at the peak of their powers; revelling in the sheer perfection of an iconic creation. Unforgettable shock and suspense-stuffed escapades packed with sleek sex appeal, dry wit, terrific tension and explosive action, the stories grow more appealing with every rereading and never fail to deliver maximum impact and total enjoyment.
Modesty Blaise © 2014 Associated Newspapers/Solo Syndication.

Modesty Blaise: Ripper Jax is available for pre-order now and will be published on March 4th 2016.

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I.R.$. volume 2: Blue Ice


By Vranken & Desberg, coloured by Coquelicot and translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-74-8

As I’ve frequently stated before, the most appealing aspect of European comics is the sheer breadth of genres, styles and age-ranges their efforts address and the audiences support.

Thus this quirky but exceedingly readable, deviously all-action Franco-Belgian thriller-series with a tantalising twist offers a deliciously different spin on the tried-and-true trope of the driven mystery-man superspy.

The unlikely champion of these sagas is a civil servant with the US government, which once upon a time started employing super-cool, infallibly effective special agents to go after the type of tax-dodger well beyond the reach of the law. These days, perhaps every nation should have one…

Belgian writer Stephen Desberg is one of the bestselling comics author in France. He was born in Brussels in 1954, son of an American lawyer (the European distribution agent for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer) and a French mother. Stephen began studying law at Université Libre de Bruxelles but dropped out to follow a winding path into the comics biz.

He began with plots and eventually scripts for Will (Willy Maltaite) on Tif et Tondu in Spirou, growing into a reliable jobbing creator on established strips for younger readers before launching his own in the Stéphane Colman illustrated Billy the Cat (a funny animal strip, not the DC Thomson superhero series).

Thereafter came 421 with Eric Maltaite, Arkel (Marc Hardy), Jimmy Tousseul (with Daniel Desorgher) and many others. During the 1980s he gradually redirected his efforts to material for older readerships (see for example The Garden of Desire) and in 1999 he created contemporary thriller IR$, with historical drama Le Scorpion added to his catalogue of major hits a year later.

Bernard Vranken was an award winning artist by the time he was fifteen. A year later he was working for Tintin. Whilst studying architecture at Saint-Luc he took some comics courses by legendary illustrator Eddy Paape at St. Gilles and his true career-path was set. Vranken was crafting short stories for A Suivre when he met Desberg and in 1996 they collaborated for the first time on epic romance Le Sang Noir. Three years later they traded love for money and launched I.R.$.…

The premise is simple and delicious, and Cinebook’s second translated English edition from 2009 once again doubles the bang for your buck by combining the third and fourth European albums – Blue Ice and Narcocratie – into one compelling compilation.

Blue Ice (originally released in 2001) opens with stylish American bean-counter Larry B. Max relaxing in his palatial home. The quiet start offers the observant reader a few hints into Larry’s past – and motivations – before he renews his odd, long-distance, anonymous relationship with favourite chat-line girl Gloria Paradise.

Larry hates complications in his life but there’s just something about her voice and attitude…

A little later he attends a piano rehearsal and promises his little sister he’ll be there for the recital on Friday. It’s just asking for trouble…

Meanwhile downtown, three very bad men are meeting excessively violent ends and at Los Angeles airport an American passenger from Mexico triggers a wave of security alerts. Typically, though, just too late for the inattentive security staff to do more than watch him spectacularly disappear into the city leaving two dead agents behind…

Later at DEA HQ, a high level meeting of numerous Federal agencies convenes to discuss Ryan Ricks. During his tour in Vietnam Ricks began managing the money of his platoon-mates and used it to make a killing on the Stock Exchange.

Slightly wounded, he then shipped out for home and was eagerly pursued by finance houses who saw he had a unique gift for using money and making it. He settled in at a major tobacco company and started creating wealth.

They didn’t notice – or perhaps care – that Ricks was making side-deals, nor that being utterly amoral he went where the money was to be easily found: terrorist nations…

When the IRS found out he was using dirty cash to make the company more money – and making himself fabulously rich at the same time – Ryan was fired. He claimed to have no understanding of why terrorist money was bad but profits from giving people cancer was good…

Ricks was a man ahead of his time. Even before the Cold War ended he was saying that New Capitalism would be beyond any laws and consequently followed that philosophy to its logical extreme. Specialising in creating off-shore accounts, he became the world’s greatest money-launderer and devised an international network for tax evasion.

That’s when Larry Max first encountered him, but the wily finance wizard simply vanished and a swathe of alphabetised American agencies has been waiting for him to turn up ever since…

Now twelve years later he’s back in USA so scores can be settled and pride regained. Some of the bigwigs however are unconvinced. With so many major players in the Monterrey Cartel gunned down in the street, the feds would rather concentrate on a clearly-brewing turf war than some nebulous cash-converter.

Late-arriving Larry is “only” a tax collector, not a true cop, but he can’t help wondering why they all think the events are unconnected…

Consulting his own researches, Mr Max coolly exposes a traitor in the cross-agency conclave and predicts things are going to get very dramatic for the Monterrey Cartel, but is fobbed off with only two agents to assist him. Hanson‘s shadowy spook-show has access to covert satellite surveillance and phone monitoring whereas Ella Hidalgo of DEA is a stone killer everybody call “Blue Ice”.

She’s going to be useful once the lead starts flying…

Across the border the prediction has already come true. Dion Monterrey, the aged, untouchable head of the clan, has begun cleaning house, eradicating all dissent before heading to LA for the most important meeting of his life…

Aided by cutting-edge covert spy technology, the hunt for Ricks moves into high gear and it’s not long before Larry and Hildalgo are quietly closing in on their target. Then a second traitor inadvertently tips his hand too soon and the astounded IRS agent has the key piece of information he needs to complete the puzzle…

Ultimate harbinger of unfettered Free Enterprise Ricks has returned to America because he’s acting as facilitator for the deal of the ages: selling off one of world’s biggest drugs cartels…

Larry is not satisfied. The facts just don’t add up and as he ponders the mystery and sweats the details Ricks is closing the deal and Dion is ensuring there’s no one left to contest the sale…

With every party understandably edgy the final handover is set to occur on the roof of a luxury shopping mall. With the fanatical Ricks describing the way business will be conducted in the until-now inefficiently managed, under-exploited market of modern coke consumption, the good guys quietly close in. They have all grossly underestimated the guile and paranoia of their targets though and soon the entire scene is a hellish firefight of lethal proportions…

As ever, the end result is a pile of bodies, massive collateral damage and Ricks a ghost in the wind, but this time Larry is on his tail…

Without a pause for breath the story concludes in Narcocracy as Max arrives in Tijuana, just as the next move in Ricks’ grand strategy goes live: acquisition and expansion…

Before dawn breaks in the seedy hell-hole many of the proud cartel hold-outs opposing the new order are gone and the game plan is clear. It’s not a consolidation or merger Ricks and his mystery backers have in mind for the already lucrative drug trade, it’s a hostile takeover…

The only fly in the ointment is a certain white-haired American who implacably follows the money magician everywhere and is proving utterly impossible to kill…

Help comes from a most unexpected quarter as the Mexican Federal Bureau of Narcotics picks up the taxman, claiming he’s about to blow a massive sting operation. Larry keeps his thoughts to himself as meets the country’s top brass and warns them of Rick’s current ambitious activities. After all, money talks, this is a country notorious for corruption and the wizard of wealth-creation has more cash than any other crook in the world…

Soon he is partnered up with the Bureau’s top investigators and chasing his elusive quarry but even though Larry knows a trap is waiting to spring somewhere he’s not quite sure when or who’s going to. Moreover, behind all the criminal double-dealing and staggering slaughter, he can perceive the kind of chicanery that only real, Harvard-style business types are capable of. All he has to do is find out who and prove it…

Inevitably the hammer falls and bodies begin to drop and just for a moment it looks like someone’s going to miss a piano concert…

Complex, fast-paced, suspenseful and incredibly violent, this yarn is pure movie blockbuster: a sleek, lean and lithe action-fest to seduce any devotee the thriller genre.

IR$ is a splendidly effective, stylishly gritty thriller series that will delight fans of modern mayhem in all its literary and artistic forms.

Only death and taxes are inescapable, and Larry B. Max offers either or both in one suavely, economical package…
Original edition © 1977 Editions du Lombard (Le Lombard/Dargaud SA) 2001-2002 by Desberg &Vrancken. English translation 2008 © Cinebook Ltd.

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The Adventures of Blake and Mortimer: The Affair of the Necklace


By Edgar P. Jacobs, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-037-5

Pre-eminent fantasy raconteur Edgar P. Jacobs devised one of the greatest heroic double acts in fiction: pitting his distinguished scientific adventurers Professor Philip Mortimer and Captain Francis Blake against a broad variety of perils and menaces in a sequence of stellar action thrillers which merged science fiction scope, detective mystery suspense and supernatural thrills. The magic was made perfect through his stunning illustrations rendered in the timeless Ligne claire style which had made intrepid boy-reporter Tintin a global sensation.

The Doughty Duo debuted in the very first issue of Le Journal de Tintin (26th September 1946): an ambitious international anthology comic with editions in Belgium, France and Holland. The magazine was edited by Hergé, with his eponymous star ably supplemented by a host of new heroes and features for the rapidly-changing post-war world…

L’affaire du collier – the partnership’s ninth drama-drenched epic escapade – was originally serialised in 1965 and forms the last leg of a trilogy of tales set in France. It was subsequently collected in a single album two years after the conclusion and became Cinebook’s seventh translated treat as The Affair of the Necklace in 2009.

Of more interest perhaps is the fact that it is the only straight crime-caper; shunning the regulation science fictional tropes in favour of a suspenseful mystery and breakneck action thriller…

The story itself draws upon a legendary historical scam which rocked France in the 1780s and has fascinated storytellers ever since: haunting films and television, fascinating authors from Dumas to Maurice Leblanc (Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief) to Goethe and even featuring in manga such as The Rose of Versailles.

In 1772 Louis XV asked Parisian jewellers Boehmer and Bassange to create a matchless necklace for his mistress Madame du Barry. The magnificent adornment took so long to complete, the king died and was succeeded by his heir Louis XVI and although the jewellers offered the finished piece – which had not been paid for – to Marie Antoinette numerous times, she refused it – citing the money could be better spent on warships.

Her refusals – probably because she despised Du Barry and didn’t want her cast-offs – laid her open to claims of defrauding the artisans and further tarnished the Queen’s shaky reputation.

When a Bastard-Royal confidence trickster got involved and scammed everybody from the jewellers to the government, the doomed trinket destroyed a Bishop, defanged court magician Cagliostro, scandalised the aristocracy, enraged the public and arguably hastened the fall of the Royal House of Bourbon and sparked the French Revolution.

The necklace itself reputedly ended up in England where it was broken up and its hundreds of individual gems separately sold off…

You don’t need any of that immensely complex background for this jaunt though, which begins with modern France ablaze at the news that the infamous adornment has been found – complete and entire – by British collector Sir Henry Williamson who shockingly plans to give it to the young Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom!

Not-all-that-bothered are Professor Mortimer and Captain Blake, back in Paris to give evidence at the trial of infamous criminal and arch-enemy Colonel Olrik. However, that mission is foiled when the Master of Evil boldly escapes from a sealed prison van en route to court.

Despite quickly deducing the rogue’s methods, the Englishmen are at a loss and cooling their heels when Olrik cheekily challenges them to catch him, but with no clues they instead attend the swank soirée held by Sir Henry where he intends to take possession of the infamous Queen’s Necklace from Frances’ greatest jeweller Duranton-Claret who has been repairing and cleaning the long-lost treasure.

The inveterate thrill-seekers eagerly agree and are lost in the social swirl when the unthinkable happens: a landslip in the notorious catacombs below Paris cause the gem-smith’s high security cellar-vault to collapse into the subterranean maze beneath the City of Lights…

Ever in the thick of action, Mortimer braves the disaster scene and quickly discerns it was explosion not accident which caused the chaos. He even returns with the salvaged jewellery case but the ponderous chain of glittering gems is missing; replaced by a taunting note from Olrik…

After agreeing with top cop Commissioner Pradier to keep the theft quiet, all concerned are astounded to find the morning newspapers full of the crime of the century: Olrik himself has contacted them to boast of it…

Duranton is a nervous wreck: his reputation is destroyed and the phone in his palatial house will not stop ringing with rabid reporters constantly pestering him for a comment. Things take a darker turn when Olrik’s chief heavy Sharkey leads a bold raid to abduct the terrified jeweller. Thankfully Blake and Mortimer are on hand to drive off the attackers and are forced to repeat the feat when the thugs later return with Olrik taking personal charge.

This time the intrepid investigators and Duranton’s valiant butler Vincent are hard-pressed and forced into a last-stand firefight before the police arrive. When those reinforcements counterattack the crooks vanish with disturbing ease and familiarity into the catacombs beneath the house…

As the harassed jeweller’s behaviour becomes more paranoid and erratic, the Englishmen’s suspicions are aroused: if Olrik already has the fabulous treasure, why is he still hounding the Duranton? Thus thanks to a covert wiretap supplied by the ever-efficient Pradier, a sordid story is revealed and an unsuspected connection to Olrik exposed…

Both the jeweller and Olrik know the master criminal only got away with a glass copy of the Queen’s Necklace but as the double-dealing Duranton tries to flee the country, he only avoids the police cordon: wily Olrik and brutal Sharkey are extraordinary criminals, easily snapping up the fugitive and spectacularly beating the cops at their own game – but not before the little gem-smith hides the real necklace in a place only he can access…

The action and suspense spiral as Sharkey is captured. Helpfully leading the authorities into the Byzantine tunnels below Paris he easily gives them the slip, but whilst the police wait for municipal tunnel experts to arrive and take charge of the hunt, Blake and Mortimer strike off on their own. Soon they are hopelessly lost in the terrifying labyrinth…

With their torches failing, the partners in peril at last discover the secret of how the mobsters are able to move so confidently through the uncounted miles of deadly tunnels and track them to their fortress-like lair before reuniting with Pradier’s forces and instigating a blistering showdown…

When the shooting ends our heroes are frustrated to discover that Olrik has escaped and taken the much sought-for necklace with him. Of course, the rogue also has a big surprise in store…

Swift-paced, devilishly devious and gritty, grimly noir-ish, this tale shows the utter versatility of our heroes as they slip seamlessly into a straight cops-&-robbers set-piece, building to an explosive conclusion with a tantalising final flourish, resulting in another superbly stylish blockbuster to delight every adventure addict.

This Cinebook edition also includes excerpts from two other Blake & Mortimer albums plus a short biographical feature and publication chart of Jacobs’ and his successors’ efforts.
Original edition © Editions Blake & Mortimer/Studio Jacobs (Dargaud-Lombard S. A.) 1967, 1991 by E.P. Jacobs. All rights reserved. English translation © 2009 Cinebook Ltd.

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Blackhawk Album #1


By Dick Dillin, Chuck Cuidera, Jack Kirby, Sheldon Moldoff, George Roussos, Mort Meskin, Nick Cardy, Frank Frazetta, Bill Ely, Bob Brown & various (Strato Publications)
No ISBN:

Here’s another long-lost oddity of the eccentric and exotic British comics market that might be of passing interest to curio collectors and unrepentant comics nerds like me.

The early days of the American comicbook industry were awash with both opportunity and talent and those factors happily coincided with a vast population hungry for cheap entertainment.

The new medium of comicbooks had no acknowledged fans or collectors; only a large, transient market open to all varied aspects of yarn-spinning and tale-telling – a situation which publishers believed maintained right up to the middle of the 1960s. Thus, in 1940 even though America was loudly, proudly isolationist and more than a year away from any active inclusion in World War II, creators like Will Eisner and publishers like Everett M. (“Busy”) Arnold felt Americans were ready for a themed anthology title Military Comics.

Nobody was ready for Blackhawk.

Military #1 launched at the end of May 1941 (with an August cover-date) and included in its gritty, two-fisted line-up Death Patrol by Jack Cole, Miss America, Fred Guardineer’s Blue Tracer, X of the Underground, The Yankee Eagle, Q-Boat, Shot and Shell, Archie Atkins and Loops and Banks by “Bud Ernest” (actually aviation-nut and unsung comics genius Bob Powell), but none of these strips, not even Cole’s surreal and suicidal team of hell-bent fliers, had the instant cachet and sheer glamour appeal of Eisner and Powell’s “Foreign Legion of the Air” led by the charismatic Dark Knight of the airways known only as Blackhawk.

Chuck Cuidera, already famed for creating the original Blue Beetle for Fox, drew ‘the Origin of Blackhawk’ for the first issue, wherein a lone pilot fighting the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 was shot down by Nazi Ace Von Tepp; only to rise bloody and unbowed from his plane’s wreckage to form the World’s greatest team of airborne fighting men…

This mysterious paramilitary squadron of unbeatable fliers, dedicated to crushing injustice and smashing the Axis war-machine, battled on all fronts during the war and – once the embattled nations had notionally laid down their arms – stayed together to crush international crime, Communism and every threat to democracy from alien invaders to supernatural monsters, consequently becoming one of the true milestones of the US industry.

Eisner wrote the first four Blackhawk episodes before moving on and Cuidera stayed until issue #11 – although he triumphantly returned in later years. There were many melodramatic touches that made the Blackhawks so memorable in the eyes of a wide-eyed populace of thrill-hungry kids. There was the cool, black leather uniforms and peaked caps. The unique, outrageous – but authentic – Grumman F5F-1 Skyrocket planes they flew from their secret island base and of course their eerie battle-cry “Hawkaaaaa!”

But perhaps the oddest idiosyncrasy to modern readers was that they had their own song (would you be more comfortable if we started calling it an international anthem?) which Blackhawk, André, Stanislaus, Olaf, Chuck, Hendrickson and Chop-Chop would sing as they plummeted into battle. (To see the music and lyrics check out the Blackhawk Archives edition but just remember this catchy number was written for seven really tough leather-clad guys to sing while dodging bullets…

Quality adapted well to peacetime demands: superheroes Plastic Man and Doll Man lasted far longer than most of their Golden Age mystery man compatriots and rivals, whilst the rest of the company line turned to tough-guy crime, war, western, horror and racy comedy titles.

The Blackhawks soared to even greater heights, starring in their own movie serial in 1952. However the hostility of the marketplace to mature-targeted titles after the adoption of the self-censorious Comics Code was a clear sign of the times and as 1956 ended Arnold sold most of his comics properties to National Publishing Periodicals (now DC) and turned his attentions to becoming a general magazine publisher.

Most of the purchases were a huge boost to National’s portfolio, with titles such as GI Combat, Heart Throbs and Blackhawk lasting uninterrupted well into the 1970s (GI Combat survived until in 1987), whilst the unceasing draw and potential of characters such as Uncle Sam, the assorted Freedom Fighters costumed pantheon, Kid Eternity and Plastic Man have paid dividends ever since.

The “Black Knights” had also been a fixture of the British comics reprint industry since the early 1950s, with distributor-turned publisher Thorpe & Porter releasing 37 huge (68-page, whilst the US originals only boasted 36 pages) monochrome anthologies to entrance thrill-starved audiences under their Strato imprint.

This commodious British collection combines a flurry of tales featuring the Air Aces, balanced out by an assortment of mystery and science fiction tales from DC’s wide selection of weird adventure anthologies (primarily culled in this instance from September and October 1957) and kicks off with the contents of (US) Blackhawk #117 and ‘The Fantastic Mr. Freeze’ wherein the paramilitary aviators battle a chilling criminal maniac with a penchant for cold crimes before tackling smugglers masquerading as Vikings in ‘The Menace of the Dragon Boat’.

‘How Not to Enjoy a Vacation’ was seen in many places; a Public Service feature probably written by Jack Schiff and definitely illustrated by Rueben Moreira, followed by prose poser ‘I Was a Human Missile’, relating a technician’s account of when he was trapped during the test firing of a missile – and how he escaped – after which ‘The Seven Little Blackhawks’ become the targets of a ruthless mastermind exploiting their fame and reputations to plug his new movie…

Regrettably most records are lost so scripter-credits are not available (likely candidates include Ed “France” Herron, Arnold Drake, George Kashdan, Jack Miller, Bill Woolfolk, Jack Schiff and/or Dave Wood) but the art remained in the capable hands of veteran illustrators Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera: a team who meshed so seamlessly that they often traded roles with few any the wiser…

Moreover although broadly formulaic, the gritty cachet, exotic crime locales, Sci Fi underpinnings and international jurisdiction of the team always allowed great internal variety within the tales…

Here however the uniformed escapades pause as House of Mystery #67 (October 1957) offers the sorry saga of ‘The Wizard of Water’ – a scurvy conman who accidentally gets hold of King Neptune’s trident as drawn by Bill Ely – and, after an always-engaging ‘Science Says You’re Wrong’ page and text terror tale ‘The Mummy’s Revenge’, counts down ‘Five Days to Doom’ (illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff from House of Mystery #66, September 1957) wherein a printer discovers a seemingly-prophetic calendar and uses it to track down aliens planning to destroy Earth.

‘The Legend of the Golden Lion’ (HoM #67 again and illustrated by George Roussos) then described a Big Game Hunter’s confrontation with a leonine legend of biblical pedigree whilst from the same issue the ever-excellent Bob Brown depicted a weird science-tinged crime caper about ‘The Man Who Made Giants’ before the Blackhawks soared back into action battling ‘The Bandit with a Thousand Nets’ – yet another audacious costumed thief with a novel gimmick (from Blackhawk #118, October 1957).

That issue also provided ‘The Blackhawk Robinson Crusoes’ wherein the Pacific Ocean proved to be the real enemy when an accident marooned the Aviators as they hunted the nefarious pirate Sting Ray, followed by much-reprinted western classic ‘The Town Jesse James Couldn’t Rob’ limned by Frank Frazetta and itself a reprint from Jimmy Wakely #4.

Text feature ‘From Caveman to Classroom’ charted the history of map-making after which Blackhawk #118 continues to completion as ‘The Human Clay Pigeons’ found the entire squadron helpless targets of international assassin/spymaster the Sniper, leaving the rest of this collection to astound and amuse with more genre-specific tales such as the Roussos illustrated psychological crime thriller ‘Sinister Shadow’ from House of Mystery #66 Sept 1957.

Also in that issue is Jack Kirby’s eerie mystery of best friends turned rivals ‘The Thief of Thoughts’, Moldoff’s jungle trek chiller ‘The Bell that Tolled Danger’ and Mort Meskin & Roussos’ tragic supernatural romance ‘The Girl in the Iron Mask’.

Rounding out the collection are selections from House of Mystery #64 (July 1957) beginning with Nick Cardy’s irony-drenched riff on the curse of Midas wherein a criminal subjects himself to ‘The Golden Doom’ – pausing briefly for Jack Miller’s prose expose of mind-readers ‘A Clever Code’ (from HoM #66) and another Public Service ad with teen star Binky explaining ‘How to Make New Friends’ (Schiff & Bob Oksner) – before Bill Ely delivers a murderous revelation regarding ‘The Artist Who Painted Dreams’.

A brace of Henry Boltinoff gag pages starring ‘Professor Eureka’ and ‘Moolah the Mystic’ then segues into Bernard Baily’s macabre depiction of criminal obsession in ‘My Terrible Twin’ (HoM #64) to bring the fun to a close on a spooky high note.

These stories were produced – and reprinted here – at a pivotal moment in comics history: the last showing of broadly human-scaled action-heroes and two-fisted mystery-solvers in a marketplace increasingly filling up with gaudily clad wondermen and superwomen. The iconic blend of weary sophistication and glorious, juvenile bravado where a few good men with wits, firearms and an occasional trusty animal companion could overcome all odds was fading in the light of spectacular scenarios and ubiquitous alien encounters.

These are splendidly engaging tales that could beguile and amaze a whole new audience if only publishers would give them a chance. But whilst they won’t your best bet is to seek out books like this in specialist comic shops or online.

Go on; let your fingers do the hard work…

Despite there being no copyrights included in this tome, I think it’s safe to assume:
All material © 1957, 1958, 2015 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Rip Kirby Comic Album


By Alex Raymond, John Prentiss & Fred Dickenson (World Distributors {Manchester} Ltd)
No ISBN; ASIN: B004N6P0KM

It took the British a very long time to get the hang of American-style superheroes but we never had any trouble with more traditional genre standards, such as this quirky collection of adventures starring one of the world’s most intriguing private eyes. Another tantalising oddment of UK reprint publishing, the Rip Kirby Comic Album was probably released in 1960: a monochrome affair with soft card-covers, gathering selected yarns from the transitional period when John Prentice took over from all-star originator Alex Raymond.

Although this particular vintage item is relatively easy to find, if you’re properly interested in the armchair sleuth’s career you should seek out the recent hardback releases from IDW: the entire saga of Rip Kirby in splendid archival collector’s editions.

In the golden age of newspaper adventure strips (that’s the 1930s, OK?) Alex Raymond made Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim and Secret Agent X-9 household names all over the world, but when duty called, he dropped everything and went to war.

On his return, rather than rekindle old glories, he created (from King Features Editor Ward Greene’s concept and scripts) a new kind of private detective. The result was a rather unique individual, a demobbed marine, intellectual by inclination and sedentary by preference, who – although physically powerful – chose to use his mind rather than fists and guns to solve quandaries.

He had a steady girlfriend called Judith “Honey” Dorian and a seemingly mousy yet deviously competent manservant named Desmond simply sodden with hidden depths (the dapper flunky was a reformed burglar and able sidekick decades before Lady Penelope hired that guy Parker).

Remington “Rip” Kirby debuted on March 4th 1946, to instant approbation and commercial success. Greene scripted the strip until 1952 when he was replaced by journalist Fred Dickenson. Raymond continued to illustrate the wittily urbane serial thriller until September 6th 1956, when, aged only 46, he died in a car crash.

The hugely talented John Prentice was chosen to assume the art duties whilst Dickenson continued writing until 1986 when he retired due to ill-health, from which time Prentice did his job too. The feature finally ended on June 26th 1999 when Prentice retired.

This reprint classic fortuitously represents that transitional tale as the opening case as ‘Rip Kirby in the Elixir of Youth’ (which was originally syndicated from 30th July to 20th October 1956, with Prentice taking over from October 1st) finds aging Hollywood star Mavis Fulton raging against the inexorable ravages of time and taking it out on her makeup man.

As conman “Dr.” Leon de Leon is kicked out of town for his usual charlatanry, he links up with disgraced and recently dismissed cosmetic artist Pancake Murgatroyd and both head East to New York…

In the city they first target wealthy spinster Hattie Hilton for a million dollar scam. All they need is a gullible actress they can cosmetically add fifty years to before very publicly erasing those years with their bogus Fountain of Youth for foolish old ladies…

The scheme proceeds with slow, sure success until Hattie’s butler swipes some of the miracle mixture for his own use and affably shares the benefits with Desmond. When Rip sees their silliness, he immediately leaps to the correct conclusion and quietly intervenes in Miss Hilton’s behalf…

‘Model in Trouble’ (originally entitled ‘The Fatal Photo’ and running from December 9th 1957 to February 8th 1958) focuses on Honey’s modelling career but deviates into deadly danger after her photographer – a notorious letch and Lothario – is murdered during a shoot.

With his girlfriend the only suspect, Rip starts nosing around and soon finds plenty of other likely candidates but things really start popping when he finds the dying shutterbug got a shot at his killer…

The high stakes thrills and chills conclude with the butler centre stage when ‘Desmond Makes a Lucky Strike’ (first serialised from 27th May to August 10th 1957 as ‘Casino Con’ follows the dutiful valet as he beguiles and cajoles his easygoing employer into taking a trip out west.

Awaiting them are husband-&-wife hucksters Belle and “Stogie” Nash and they soon part Desmond from his savings by convincing him there’s uranium in them thar hills…

Rip’s response is typical: organise a few old pals on both sides of the law and set up an irresistible sting to fleece the fleecers…

This arcane album offers a perfect snapshot of one of America’s most famous fictional detectives, drawn by two of the world’s most brilliant artists. A perfect taste of the heady 1950s style, this book will suck you into a captivating world of adventure and resurgent post-war glamour all doled out with deliciously sharp dialogue, smart plotting and plenty of laughs to balance the thrills.

Your chances of tracking down this gem are rather better than you’d expect and well worth the effort if you’re an art-lover or comics curio collector, as Raymond’s and Prentice’s drawing at this size are an unparalleled delight.
© King Features Syndicate Inc. All rights reserved.

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XIII volume 2: Where the Indian Walks


By William Vance & Jean Van Hamme, coloured by Petra (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-040-5

One of the most consistently entertaining and popular adventure serials in Europe, XIII was created by Jean Van Hamme (Wayne Shelton, Blake and Mortimer, Lady S.) and illustrator William Vance (Bruce J. Hawker, Marshal Blueberry, Ramiro).

Van Hamme was born in Brussels in 1939 and after academically pursuing business studies moved into journalism and marketing before selling his first graphic tale in 1968. He is one of the most prolific writers in comics.

Immediately clicking with the public, by 1976 he had also branched out into prose novels and screenwriting. His big break was the monumentally successful fantasy series Thorgal for Tintin magazine but he cemented his reputation with mass-market bestsellers Largo Winch and XIII as well as more cerebral fare such as Chninkel and Les maîtres de l’orge. In 2010 Van Hamme was listed as the second-best selling comics author in France, ranked right between the seemingly unassailable Hergé and Uderzo.

Born in 1935 in Anderlecht, William Vance is the bande dessinée nom de plume of William van Cutsem. After military service in 1955-1956 he studied art at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts and promptly became an illustrator of biographic features for Tintin in 1962. His persuasive illustrative style is a classical blend of meticulous realism, scrupulous detail and spectacular yet understated action.

In 1964 he began the maritime serial Howard Flynn (written by Yves Duval) before graduating to more popular genre work with western Ray Ringo and espionage thriller Bruno Brazil (scripted by “Greg”). Further success followed when he replaced Gérald Forton on science fiction classic Bob Morane in Femmes d’Aujourd’hui, (and latterly Pilote and Tintin).

Although working constantly – on serials and stand-alone stories – Vance’s most acclaimed work is his lengthy collaboration with fellow Belgian Van Hamme on this contemporary thriller based on Robert Ludlum’s novel The Bourne Identity…

XIII debuted in 1984, originally running in prestigious Spirou to great acclaim. A triad of albums were rushed out – simultaneously printed in French and Dutch editions – before the first year of serialisation ended.

The series was a monumental hit in Europe but has fared less well in its many attempts to make the translation jump to English, with Catalan Communications, Alias Comics and even Marvel all failing to maximise the potential of the gritty mystery thriller.

The epic conspiracy saga of unrelenting mood, mystery and mayhem began in The Day of the Black Sun when an old man came upon a body shot and near death on a windswept, rocky shore. The human flotsam was still alive despite being shot in the head, and when Abe‘s wife Sally examined the near-corpse she found a key sewn into his clothes and the Roman numerals for thirteen tattooed on his neck. Their remote hideaway offered little in the way of emergency services, but alcoholic, struck-off surgeon Martha was able to save the dying stranger…

As he recuperated a complication became apparent. The patient – a splendid physical specimen clearly no stranger to action or violence – had suffered massive, probably irreversible brain trauma, and although increasingly sound in body had completely lost his mind.

Language skills, muscle memories, even social and reflexive conditioning all remained, but every detail of his life-history was gone…

Abe and Sally named him “Alan” after their own dead son – but the intruder’s lost past explosively intruded when hitmen invaded the beach house with guns blazing. Alan reacted with terrifying skill, lethally retaliating, but too late to save anybody but himself and Martha…

In the aftermath he took a photo of himself and a young woman from one of the killers and, with Martha’s help, traced it to nearby Eastown. Desperate for answers and certain more killers were coming, the human question mark headed off to confront unimaginable danger and hopefully find the answers he craved.

The picture led to a local newspaper, and the attention of crooked cop Lieutenant Hemmings who recognised the amnesiac but said nothing…

The woman in the photo was Kim Rowland, a local widow who had recently gone missing. Alan’s key opened the door of her house. The place had been ransacked but a more thorough search utilising his forgotten talents turned up another key and a note warning someone named “Jake” that “The Mongoose” had found her and she was going to disappear…

He was then ambushed by the cop and newspaper editor Wayne. They called him “Shelton” and demanded the return of a large amount of money…

Alan/Jake/Shelton reasoned the new key fitted a safe-deposit box and bluffed the thugs into taking him to the biggest bank in town. The staff there also knew him as Shelton, but when Hemmings and Wayne examined the briefcase in Shelton’s box a booby trap went off. Instantly acting upon the unexpected distraction, the mystery man expertly escaped and eluded capture, holing up in a shabby hotel room, pondering again what kind of man he used to be…

Preferring motion to inactivity, he prepared to leave and stumbled into a mob of armed killers. In a blur of lethal action he escaped and ran into another group led by a man addressed as Colonel Amos. The chilling executive referred to his captive as “Thirteen” and claimed to have dealt with his predecessors XI and XII on something called the “Black Sun” case…

The Colonel very much wanted to know who Alan was, and offered some shocking titbits in return. The most sensational was film of the recent assassination of the American President which clearly showed the lone gunman to be none other than the aghast Thirteen…

Despite the amnesiac’s heartfelt conviction that he was no assassin, Amos accused him of working for a criminal mastermind. The Colonel wanted the boss but failed to take Alan’s forgotten instinctive abilities into account and was astounded when his prisoner leapt out of a fourth floor window…

The frantic fugitive headed for the only refuge he knew, but by the time he reached Martha’s beachside house trouble had beaten him there. More murderers awaited; led by a mild-seeming man Alan inexplicably knew was The Mongoose. The mastermind expressed surprise and admiration: he thought he’d killed Thirteen months ago…

Following an explosion of hyper-fast violence which left the henchmen dead and Mongoose vanished but vengeful, the mystery man regretfully hopped a freight train west towards the next stage in his quest for truth…

The bewildering journey resumes in Where the Indian Walks (originally collected in Europe as Là où va l’indien in 1984) as the enigma’s search for Kim Rowland brings him to a military base where her dead husband was once stationed. His enquiries provoke an unexpected response and it takes a whole platoon to subdue him after Alan instinctively resists arrest with horrific force. Soon he is being interrogated by General Ben Carrington and his sexily capable aide Lieutenant Jones.

They claim to be from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, know an awful lot about black ops units and – eventually – offer incontrovertibly proof that the memory-challenged prisoner is in fact the deceased Captain Steve Rowland and one of their select number…

Soon after, Carrington has Jones test the returned prodigal’s trained combat abilities and once Steve beats her is made a strange offer…

The military spooks drop him off in his – Rowland’s? – home town of Southberg and clandestinely return him to his rat’s nest of a family just in time for the vultures to begin circling the dying body of paralysed patriarch Matt Rowland. Steve’s wheelchair-bound dad still exerts an uncanny and malign grip over the town, the local farmers and his own grasping, ambitious relatives. The surprise reappearance of another potential heir really sets the cat among the pigeons…

The sheer hostility of the avaricious relatives isn’t his problem, however: before Steve Rowland left town for the army he pretty much made enemies of everybody in it and even the sheriff has happily harboured a grudge all these years…

One who hasn’t is storekeeper Old Joe who shows the amnesiac some home movies that give the obsessed Thirteen the most solid clue yet to his quarry…

So stunned by the possibilities is Alan/Steve that he’s completely unprepared for the brutal murder attempt which follows. Luckily the sheriff is on hand to stop it but when the bruised and battered truth-seeker arrives back at the family mansion, Colonel Amos is waiting, applying more pressure to find the mastermind behind the President’s assassination. This time however it’s Kim he wants to question… as soon as Steve finds her…

The Forgetting Man ignores all distractions; using the scant, amassed film and photo evidence to narrow down the location of a cabin by a lake “where the Indian walks”. It has to be where Kim is hiding…

That single-mindedness almost proves his undoing as the crippled patriarch is murdered and his recently returned son superbly framed for the killing…

With Thirteen again the subject of a furious manhunt, Carrington and Jones suddenly reappear and help him reach the cabin, but when he finally confronts Kim, the anguished amnesic receives the shock of his life… just before the posse bursts in…

To Be Continued…

XIII is one most compelling and convoluted mystery adventures ever conceived, with subsequent instalments constantly taking the questing Thirteen two steps forward, one step back as he encounters a world of pain and peril whilst tracking down the and cutting through an interminable web of past lives he seemingly led…

Fast-paced, clever and immensely inventive, XIII is a series no devotee of mystery and murder will want to miss.
Original edition © Dargaud Benelux (Dargaud-Lombard SA), 1984 by Van Hamme, Vance & Petra. All rights reserved. This edition published 2010 by Cinebook Ltd.

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Resurrectionists volume 1: Near Death Experienced


By Fred Van Lente, Maurizio Rosenzweig & Moreno DiNisio (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-760-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Undying Action Adventure… 8/10

Surely everybody loves a cool crime caper yarn and here scripter Fred Van Lente (Action Philosophers, Cowboys & Aliens, X-Men: Noir, Brainboy) has conceived another riotously cracking big-picture concept that will astound fans of films and funnybooks alike.

Illustrated by Italian art émigrés Maurizio Rosenzweig (Laida Odius, Davide Golia, Clown Fatale) and colourist Moreno DiNisio (Dead Body Road), the tale is both frighteningly simple and terrifyingly complex…

Once upon a time 3000 years ago in ancient Egypt an architect named Tao finished a tomb for a dangerously ambitious priest. Unfortunately, the august cleric Herihor wanted to be Pharaoh instead of the Pharaoh and felt that the necessary precautions to ensure his ambitions in this life and the next should necessarily involve killing everyone who worked on the project, including Tao’s pregnant wife Maya…

Meanwhile in the now, former architect and current major thief Jericho Way is stealing relics to order for a mysterious client with big pockets and extremely fixed tastes. Way has no idea why the mystery man only wants Egyptian stuff or that the so-shy client is technically someone he’s known for many centuries…

With brother-thief Mac Jericho is planning to boost some scrolls from a museum, but has become annoyingly distracted by dreams of himself in another time and place. The master planner is blithely unaware that a lot of very strange and dangerous people are somehow cognizant of the changes he’s going through – after all they’ve been there before innumerable times – and are now extremely concerned about the life-decisions he’s going to be making over the next few days…

The first inkling that something is up comes after a particularly intense “dream” as Jericho realises that he can now read the ancient Egyptian scrawl on the scroll he’s just swiped…

Long ago in Herihor’s tomb, Tao, having escaped his pursuers but now hopelessly lost, settles down to die but is soon astounded to see another face. Tomb robbers – also called “Resurrectionists” – have already broken into his impregnable design but now offer him a way out and an opportunity for revenge…

And as Jericho shares his memories of those robbers with Mac, and he notes the recurring resemblances to recent acquaintances, it all becomes clear that he and his new co-crew have been working on that revenge and this robbery for a very long time indeed…

Incorporating a mystic vendetta than spans millennia and an undying love affair, this supremely engaging supernatural saga sees a gang of archetypal thieves locked in an eternal duel of wits and wills against a monster who has co-opted the Afterlife through the most devious and patient methods ever conceived.

However since the ragtag band of rogues can call upon the experiences of every person thy have been, maybe this time they’re going to pull off the Crime of the Ages and finally get vengeance and peace in equal measure…

A delicious melange of reincarnation yarn, conspiracy-thriller and all-action buddy-movie come heist-caper, this is a brilliantly conceived and executed tale with plenty of plot twists you don’t want me to reveal but which will intoxicate and astound all lovers of devious and deranged dark fantasy.
Resurrectionists © 2014, 2015 Fred Van Lente and Maurizio Rosenzweig. All rights reserved.

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Lady Killer volume 1


By Joëlle Jones, Jamie S. Rich & Laura Allred (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-757-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Wildly Witty and Nostalgically Nasty… 8/10

1962 was a strangely portentous and memorable year.

We all nearly died in a Cuban mushroom cloud; the United States Supreme Court ruled mandatory prayers in public schools were unconstitutional; The Beatles released their debut single Love Me Do; Vivian Vance became the first person to portray a divorcée on an American TV series and paragon of femininity/First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took television viewers on a tour of the White House.

Way back then in a cosy era of prim, proper and perfectly contented wives and mothers, Josie Schuller is a bit of an oddball – although you’d never know it to look at her…

In a consumer culture when men wear hats and smoke at work, proper ladies are pliable, obedient “homemakers” and appearance and conformity are paramount but Josie is shamefully keeping a secret from hubby Gene, their two adorable kids and even her nosy live-in mother-in-law. The busybody biddy does have her suspicions though: a strange man is always hanging around, trying to talk to Josie when no one’s looking, and Mother Schuller suspects the worst.

Her nasty mind might be relieved to know that her daughter by marriage is not cheating on her beloved son, merely indulging in a little freelance work on the side. The deceitful little minx is actually an assassin and really, really good at her job…

Unfortunately Josie wants to leave the business, but her increasingly obnoxious handler Peck and his boss Stenholm keep piling on the pressure to take on more and more contracts, with no regard to the happy home-life she wants to preserve. Eventually the devotedly domestic death-dealer decides that her dreams mean nothing to her employers and, after she’s despatched to dispatch another lady trying to quit the lethal game, Josie realises that if she wants to retire she’s going to have to remove the organisation that owns her first…

Devised and illustrated by Joëlle Jones, scripted by Jamie S. Rich and coloured by Laura Allred, with an Introduction from crime-writer Chelsea Cain, this wickedly witty satirical blow for femininity and feminism collects issues #1-5 of Lady Killer from January-May 2015, mischievously mauling the virginal, compliant stereotypes handed down to us from the heydays of Doris Day, Leave it to Beaver and The Lucy Show – by way of Mad Men and Red – and resulting in a fast-paced high-octane period thriller which is a joy to behold.

Bedded in with a wealth of additional material Рroughs, working studies, faux contemporary ads, cover-&-variants gallery and commentary from the creators in a stylish Sketchbook section Рthis is a taut and tantalising thriller, packed with plenty of action and suspense delivered with electric ̩lan and perilous panache, to delight every reader who loves their comedy black and their body-counts high.
Lady Killer™ © 2015 by Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich. All rights reserved.