Category: Crime Comics

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Spider-Man Noir book 2: Eyes Without a Face


By David Hine & Carmine Di Giandomenico, with June Chung (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4450-2

When fictional heroes and villains become really popular – to the point where fans celebrate their births and deaths and dress up like them at the slightest opportunity or provocation – eventually a tendency develops to explore other potential character facets that the regular, cash-cow continuity might normally prohibit.

DC invented a whole company sub-strand of “Imaginary Stories” and Marvel asked “What If…?”, sharing glimpses of alternate realities. Even television series got into the act with shows like Star Trek, Roswell and Stargate SG-1 offering coolly jarring, different takes on their established stars and scenarios.

The nasty little gem of alternate continuity on view today stems from Marvel’s intriguing experiment of 2009 wherein many of their biggest stars were reconfigured and set back in time: populating a universe drenched in the tone, lore and ephemera of pulp fiction and Film Noir. This iconic 1930s milieu was a grim and grimy land where shiny gleaming super-powered heroes were replaced by stark, paranoid, deeply flawed and self-serving individuals just trying to get by as best they could…

Spider-Man Noir: Eyes Without a Face is a sequel to an initial “origin” yarn and benefits from not having to explain or differentiate the so-similar seeming stars from the bastions of the regular continuity.

It ran as a 4-issue miniseries from February to May 2010, offering a glimpse into a moody world with no heroes, only varying shades of villainy. Nevertheless it still provides a satisfying slice of suspenseful entertainment for Fights ‘n’ Tights fans in search of something genuinely edgier than their regular fare. After all, the big draw for the jaded is that these folks might actually die and stay that way…

What You Need to Know: living in Depression-era New York City, the nephew of liberal activists Ben and May Parker was bitten by a strange tropical spider, developing rather strange attributes. The hot-headed radical used those newfound abilities and the files of reporter/extortionist Ben Urich to bring down the corrupt Mayor and his audacious criminal partner Norman Osborn AKA The Goblin.

Sadly the clearing-out of the town’s most powerful individuals only allowed a whole new echelon of murderous scum to come to the fore.

Now a junior photojournalist for the crusading Daily Bugle, Peter Parker moonlights as the trench-coated, wall crawling mystery man dubbed the Spider-Man, striving to keep the streets clean and give the little guys a break in an uncaring world of callous giants…

It all begins ‘Around Midnight’ in September 1933. The Spider-Man has prowled the dark streets for eight months but despite his best efforts crime is still rampant. Local Bureau of Investigation Chief Agent Jean De Wolfe is running out of informants as new underworld supremo Crime Master exerts growing control over the mobs, aided by his taciturn enforcer “The Sandman”.

When the Arachnid Avenger discovers a theatre full of slaughtered crooks he heads straight for his paramour and occasional ally Felicia Hardy, hopeful that she’s overheard something at her Black Cat Nightclub – a speakeasy regarded as neutral territory by crooks and cops alike.

She is less than forthcoming… at least with information…

Heading home to the Bowery Welfare Center in the grey morning light, Peter meets old friend and fellow agitator Robbie Robertson. The hothead is sounding off about new President Franklin Roosevelt and questioning how his proposed New Deal reforms will affect the situation of black people in America…

The brilliant and passionate young man works for the city’s segregated newspaper The Negro World and knows how things really work. Furthermore, Robbie shares with his old marching comrade suspicions that the government have something covert going on with prominent biologist Dr. Otto Octavius on Ellis Island. Being “a coloured”, Robbie has been refused an interview. Perhaps Peter could use his Bugle credentials to facilitate the matter?

Three days later the journalists are being greeted – albeit with exceeding different degrees of warmth – by the researcher’s assistant Curtis Connors before being ushered into a lab where wheelchair-bound and severely handicapped Octavius is finishing up appallingly sadistic experiments on a number of primates…

As they return to Manhattan, Robertson declares that something even worse is going on and resolves to go back for a look without the scientist’s Aryan-seeming minders tagging along. He doesn’t share his suspicions that the doctor’s passion for mind-control surgeries might be connected to a rash of disappearances of black citizens from Harlem…

‘Night Music’ follows escalating gang conflict as Crime Master tightens his stranglehold on the mobs and the Spider-Man spectacularly raids Harlem nightspot Seventh Heaven to discover what manager Fat Larry claims is just a faked-up dungeon room for clients with “exotic tastes”. It smells like the real thing to Peter…

Later, as Parker gloats over his first scoop for the Bugle, Robbie’s dad comes knocking. His proud, brilliant, too-inquisitive boy has gone missing…

Introducing his prospective daughter-in-law Gloria, the elder Robertson explains Robbie had been looking into reports of missing blacks and a possible white supremacy movement in New York. He was especially concerned about inroads into the government and possible links to Nazi Germany…

Having been roundly abused by the police when they tried to report him missing, the desperate family have come to Peter hoping he might have an idea.

He has only one and immediately rushes out to a nightclub in Harlem.

Elsewhere in town Octavius’ supplier of raw material and suitable test subjects is being carpeted by his clandestine backer Josef Ansell. Crime Master has no interest in the theories of the American Nazi party but revels in the power of his new position. He is not happy to hear his boss screaming over his performance and failure to deal with the Spider-Man.

Later, in the devil’s doctor’s fortress of obscene science, Octavius and Josef debate theories of racial purity and controlling the sub-human races through the creepily dispassionate butcher’s radical new surgical discovery. Today we call it lobotomising…

Berlin favours simply eradicating the lower orders but Octavius is convinced his scheme is better. Surely it’s more economically sensible to simply remove the capacity for rebellion and employ the sub-humans as tractable, ever-obedient slaves?

Considering the argument won he turns his attention back to Robbie, trussed up but awake on an operating table…

The Spider-Man, meanwhile, has reached Seventh Heaven to check out that dungeon again only to walk into a trap. Leading the overconfident army of thugs are Crime Master and his hulking Sandman, a brute seemingly oblivious to pain or injury…

Acting on a tip, De Wolfe and his team break in just in time to save the ambushed arachnoid from being beaten to death. As ‘Blues in the Night’ further unfolds, the battered vigilante shares his knowledge of the Negro disappearances and profound belief that Otto Octavius is behind them.

Still reeling, Peter then goes to Felicia for comfort and medical assistance but she can’t minister to him for long. She has a very important client coming who doesn’t like to share. However when she inadvertently questions her mystery high-roller about the Harlem abductions she tips her hand and the Crime Master sadistically makes her regret nosing into his business…

With his shielding veils of respectability and political secrecy tearing all around him, Josef frantically prepares to up stakes and relocate to somewhere more isolated and less troublesome like Tuskegee, Alabama, but the vengeful Arachnid is already deep within the Ellis Island facility and has seen what’s been done to Robbie…

The horrific pot of bubbling hatreds boil over in ‘Endless Night’ as obsessed Octavius rails against his backers whilst Crime Master and his goons ignore his protestations and get rid of the “livestock” and evidence of the doctor’s “scientific breakthroughs”.

By the time the Spider-Man joins the fight the supremacist thug and theoretician have almost killed each other but that doesn’t prevent the outraged avenger exacting his own measure of vengeance…

If he had known what Crime Master had left of Felicia, The Spider-Man might not have gone so easy on the monsters…

Bleak, gutsy, galvanising and trenchantly effective, this excellent period thriller by scripter David Hine & illustrator Carmine Di Giandomenico offers a stunningly suspenseful serving of dark drama and gripping action which would work equally well even if you had never heard of Marvel’s wondrous wallcrawler.

This pocketbook sized collection also includes a covers gallery by Di Giandomenico with variants by Dennis Calero as well as original art pages of variant options, inked art shot prior to the digital colouring stage and an extended script excerpt by Hine & Fabrice Sapolsky from issue #1, illustrated with character design sketches by Di Giandomenico.
© 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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A Treasury of Victorian Murder Compendium II


By Rick Geary (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-907-6

Master cartoonist Rick Geary is a unique presence in both comics and true crime literature. His compelling dissections – in the form of graphic novel reconstructions – of some of the most infamous and groundbreaking murder mysteries since policing began never fail to beguile or entertain.

His unblinking eye has, of late, been examining the last hundred years or so in his Treasury of XXth Century Murder series, but Geary first began his graphic assignations with Mankind’s darker aspects in a delicious anthologised tome entitled A Treasury of Victorian Murder in 1987. That initial volume and three of the eight that succeeded it (Jack the Ripper, The Fatal Bullet and The Beast of Chicago) were re-issued in 2012 as a splendidly morbid monochrome deluxe hardback – because, after all, bloody murder is always a black and white affair…

At last, more of his most compelling past triumphs have been gathered into a second blockbusting 400 page black-&-white hardback to delight fans of the genre and, without a shadow of a doubt, make new converts out of the as yet unconvinced…

Combining a superlative talent for laconic prose, incisive observation and meticulously detailed pictorial extrapolation with his fascination with the ruthless propensities of humans throughout history, Geary’s forensic eye has scoured police blotters, newspaper archives and even history books to compile more irresistibly infectious social sins and felonious infractions.

Moreover, his unique cartooning style is the perfect medium to convey the starkly factual narratives in a memorable, mordant and undeniably enjoyable manner. Each epic endeavour is accompanied by an Introduction and scholarly Bibliography, with most adaptations also offering splendidly informative maps and diagrams to set the stories firmly in place.

Starting off this catalogue of crime is The Borden Tragedy, dissecting the wealth of details surrounding one of the most infamous – if not mythic – crimes ever perpetrated.

In Fall River, Massachusetts on August 4th 1892, prosperous self-made man Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby were found slain inside their own home. Death in both cases was caused by multiple axe blows.

Rather than his later neutral narrative stance, here Geary illustrates the “first-hand account” of an acquaintance of youngest daughter Lizzie Borden who, after much inept investigation and public speculation, was settled upon by the authorities as the likeliest suspect.

The various suppositions, theories, scandals and gossip-points are scrupulously examined as she stands trial for the crimes – a case muddled by a subsequent axe-murder whilst Lizzie was in custody – and follows her through the much-protracted case, past her acquittal to her eventual death in 1927…

The graphic re-enactment is accompanied by a copious photo and text section featuring a wealth of ‘Press Clippings of the Time’ as well as a reproduction of ‘Borden’s Indictment’ and The Boston Advertiser article on her eventual “Not Guilty” verdict. The Mystery of Mary Rogers concerns the assault and murder of a New York City cigar shop girl which mesmerised the citizenry in 1841. Such was the furore that author Edgar Allen Poe appropriated the events for his C. Auguste Lupin tale The Mystery of Marie Roget: a rather unwise move since he knew the deceased and opened himself up to loudly-voiced suspicions of complicity…

The facts are that on the 28th July 1841, a number of well-to do citizens left stifling Manhattan Island for the Jersey Shore and discovered the body of the “Segar Girl” floating in the Hudson; battered, strangled and with her hands tied across her chest.

A hasty autopsy and even quicker inquest, held under insultingly cavalier circumstances, produced no culprits or suspects but somehow managed to throw suspicion on everyone from the men who pulled her out of the water to her drunken suicidal fiancé and even her own mother…

A talking point for all and sundry from the highest society paragon to the lowliest street trash, her death produced ever-more scandalous revelations and groundless lewd rumours – all scrupulously explored by Geary – over the next few years but the case remains unsolved still…

The Saga of the Bloody Benders began in largely unsettled Kansas, in the period immediately following the American Civil War, after a family of German-speaking immigrants settled near the Osage Trail. There they built a General Store-&-Hotel equidistant between the nascent townships of Cherry Vale, Parsons and Thayer.

By the time they vanished four years later, provably ten but probably many, many more travellers and settlers had been robbed and murdered. Thereafter, the insalubrious Benders simply vanished from the sight of man…

Geary, with supreme style and dry wit, presents the facts and the best of the rumours in his inimitable cartoon style to create yet another unforgettable masterpiece of Gothic whimsy.

The Case of Madeleine Smith focused on the true and scandalous secret affair between Emile L’Anglier, a low-born French clerk, and prim, proper, eminently respectable Miss Madeleine Smith, daughter of a wealthy Scottish merchant.

The slow poisoning of the Gallic Romeo led to a notorious trial in the 19th century and the eventual verdict shocked everyone and satisfied nobody….

The entrancing chronicle of carnage and venality concludes with the epic account of The Murder of Abraham Lincoln, covering the 62 days from 4th March to May 4th 1865 when actor John Wilkes Booth and a band of like-minded Confederate patriots schemed to murder the President (and other Northern politicians they held responsible for the destruction of the South), and how their wild plot came to startling, implausible fruition…

Following the Inauguration Ceremony for his second Term of Office, the normally fatalistic and security-disparaging President Lincoln was troubled by unease, disquiet and dreams of assassination, possible generated by the sack-full of death threats stored by his Secretary John Hay.

Elsewhere Secessionist sympathiser Booth was planning a blow for revenge and personal immortality but increasingly found his co-conspirators a disappointing bunch. Driven and desperate, he persevered for his cause…

All the many players are scrutinised in Geary’s careful examination and the peculiar circumstances which left Lincoln vulnerable are counterbalanced by insights and minutiae provided into his less-than-fanatical killers.

Only one of the many assassinations planned by the Secessionist cabal came to anything, and following the foul deed, grisly death-watch and post mortem, Geary’s depiction of the bold but inept manhunt which followed is capped by Booth’s satisfyingly dramatic end, leaving nothing but the artist’s masterful summing up to ask the questions nobody has answered yet and leave us all with the certain knowledge that this too is a murder still largely unsolved…

These compelling cold cases are a perfect example of how graphic narrative can be so much more than simplistic fantasy entertainment, and such merrily morbid murder masterpieces as these should be mandatory reading for every mystery addict and crime collector.

Such seductive storytelling, erudite argument and audacious drawing produce an irresistible dash and verve which makes for unforgettable reading: Geary is a unique talent in the comic industry, as much for his style as his subject matter and methodology in telling tales. Always presenting both facts and the theories – contemporary and modern – with chilling graphic precision, captivating clarity and devastating dry wit, he attacks criminology’s greatest mysteries with a force and power even Oliver Stone would envy.
© 1997-2007, 2015 Rick Geary.

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The Question: Pipeline


By Greg Rucka, Cully Hamner, Laura Martin, Dave McCaig & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3041-8

The Question, as created by Steve Ditko, was Vic Sage, a driven, obsessed journalist who sought out crime and corruption irrespective of the consequences. The Charlton Comics “Action-Hero” was purchased by DC – along with a host of other cool and quirky outsiders – when the B-List company folded in 1983, and became the template for the compulsive loner Rorschach when Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons first drafted the miniseries which would become the groundbreaking Watchmen.

An ordinary man pushed to the edge by his upbringing and obsessions, Sage used his fists and a mask that made him look faceless to get answers (and, consequently, justice) whenever normal journalistic methods failed.

After a few minor successes around the DC universe Sage got a job in the town where he grew up. Hub City (purportedly based on East St. Louis) was a hell-hole, the most corrupt and morally bankrupt municipality in America. When Sage started cleaning house as The Question he was promptly killed, rescued and resurrected by the inscrutable Shiva – “World’s Deadliest Assassin”.

Crippled, he journeyed into the wilderness to be healed and trained by O’Neil’s other legendary martial arts creation, Richard Dragon.

Eventually a new type of hero returned to Hub City, philosophically inquisitive rather than merely angry and frustrated, but still cursed with a drive to understand how and why things universally go bad. Aligning himself with his old intellectual mentor and sounding board Professor Aristotle Rodor, Sage set about cleaning up “The Hub” and finally getting a few answers…

Spinning out of DC’s 52 (2006-2007) and Countdown to Final Crisis (2007-2008) mega-series, disgraced Gotham City cop Renee Montoya was groomed to take up the faceless mask and obsessions of the shadowy hero as Sage slowly succumbed to cancer.

First as his disciple and then as his heir (and after being masterfully schooled in martial arts by Richard Dragon) she took up Sage’s quest and was soon drawn into a secret war with the passionate adherents of a malign gospel of All Things Evil alternatively known as the Books of Blood or the Crime Bible.

This legendary tome was said to counter all that is good in the world and justify and codify all that is wrong. Driven by a need to understand the evils she fights and stop the spread of this monstrous belief, the new Question hunted down the remaining copies of the book and the distinct factions which protected them and promoted the terrible teachings.

Her path eventually pitted her against the secret master of the “Dark Faith”: the immortal Vandal Savage, believed by many to be the human species’ first murderer…

Collecting the stunning back-up series from Detective Comics #854-865 (August 2009 to July 2010) this globe-girdling saga of corruption and depravity by writer Greg Rucka, illustrator Cully Hamner and colourists Laura Martin and Dave McCaig begins in the aftermath of that apocalyptic confrontation, with Montoya and “Tot” Rodor ensconced in their desolate lighthouse on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

They are looking for a new case; sorting through emails from a “help-offered” website they’d set up when a particular message catches Renee’s eye.

Hector Soliz is an illegal immigrant who has been searching for his sister ever since she went missing. He foolishly trusted the “coyote” who originally smuggled him into America to do the same for Louisa, but never took into account that, for men like Varga, pretty young girls have a value far beyond simple cargo to be smuggled across a closed border…

Taking the case, Renee is soon breaking into the flesh peddler’s home and dealing harshly with Varga’s brutal thugs where she finds a bed with chains and a camera set-up…

After undergoing some especially intense enquiries the coyote gives up the name of the man he eventually sold Louisa to: millionaire shipping exporter Gordon Chandless.

Breaking into the businessman’s palatial HQ isn’t much harder, but overconfidence soon costs The Question dearly as she is surprised and overpowered by hulking bodyguard Mr. Bolt and his handy tasers…

Unable to get any answers from his faceless captive, Chandless opts for her quiet removal, but by the time The Question escapes a watery death-trap and returns in a very bad mood, the wily human trafficker is already gone…

Painfully aware that she’s tracking an evil enterprise of vast proportions, Renee uses Tot’s data-mining skills to track the mogul of misery to his luxury Hollywood lair and goes in blazing, disdainful of his army of heavies. They might be utterly unable to stop the implacable Question, but two of them are capable enough to kill their own boss at the clandestine command of his master…

Despite being back at square one in regard to the criminal hierarchy, Renee does now have a location on a certain container vessel ready to ship out with a new cargo of slaves. Righteous indignation, cold fury and a lucky intervention by the FBI soon finds all of the victims safe and free – including little Louisa Soliz…

‘Pipeline: Chapter Two’ moves the story on as The Question continues her crusade to destroy the trafficking empire, slowly and violently working her way up the chain of scumbags and crushing individual enterprises whilst inexorably zeroing in on the major player behind the network of sin and misery…

Of course such costly interventions prompt the mystery leader to fight back, and during her raid on a top-of-the-range hot car franchise the bad guys retaliate with a devious and deadly ambush of their own. That’s when Montoya’s secret weapon makes her presence known and the crooks all end up maimed or worse at the hand of the relentless unforgiving Huntress…

Helena Bertinelli was mob royalty but, following a massacre considered an occupational hazard in “The Family” line of work, she disappeared. The only survivor of a major hit, she trained to become a masked avenger ruthlessly punishing all gangsters whilst sticking up for innocent ordinary folk. She especially despises those who prey on children…

Huntress and the Question continue busting rackets all across the world, methodically dismantling the network as they climb the ladder to the big boss, and finally provoke an overwhelming response in the form of super-assassin Zeiss.

It was all part of a far deeper plan conceived by the vengeful vigilantes who promptly co-opt the mercenary killer to give up his unassailable paymaster. Their tactics however revolt Tot and the elderly scholar resigns.

Undeterred but now deprived of crucial technical support, the determined duo head for Gotham City where Helena introduces The Question to the top-secret leader of the all-female super-team known as the Birds of Prey. Former GCPD detective Montoya cannot believe that Commissioner Gordon‘s mousey dweeb daughter Barbara was once Batgirl and is now covert anti-crime mastermind “Oracle”…

Her irresistible cyber-probing soon has the dynamic duo invading an underworld server-farm in Odessa which – after the studied application of maximum force – provides a money trail to the Pipeline overlord. However when they sneak onto Oolong Island they walk straight into a trap…

The rogue state is the ultimate expression of Capitalism: peopled by criminals and the mad scientists of many nations, it maintains its precarious independence by selling proscribed technologies to anyone with money, proudly free from the annoying oversight of law or hindrance of morality…

President-for-Life Veronica Cale starts by torturing her captive heroes but after debating with The Question soon sees that the most profit doesn’t necessarily stem from staying bought…

Before long, Montoya and Bertinelli are on the final stretch: sneaking into Syria and invading the stronghold of the man who has turned humans into commodities and exported sin and horror on a global scale.

Unfortunately the wickedest man alive is ready and waiting for them…

The cataclysmic final confrontation is as much theosophical debate as brutal beat-down and in the final reckoning the allies must become enemies for the best possible reasons before finding anything approaching an acceptable answer to their dilemmas…

Moody, fast-paced, challenging and astoundingly action-packed, this stylish trade paperback edition also offers a hugely engaging ‘Sketchbook’ section from Cully Hamner offering developmental peeks into his evolution of the characters, a fascinating eight pages of layouts and roughs and some of his amazing set designs for story-locations which will delight and amaze all lovers of comic art.

Compelling and breathtaking, Pipeline exposes the dark underbelly of mainstream Fights ‘n’ Tights comics and proves that you don’t need graphic excess to tell hard-hitting tales or captivate lovers of adventure blockbusters.
© 2009, 2010, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Green Mansion volume 1: Assassins and Gentlemen


By Bodart & Vehlmann, translated by Elaine Kemp (Cinebook Expresso)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-53-3

The French are generally considered more passionate than us Brits and always eager to dole out grandiose appellations and epithets about creators, but at least they’re very seldom wrong in their acclamations. Young writer Fabien Vehlmann was only born in 1972 yet his prodigious canon of work (published from 1998 to the present) has earned him the soubriquet of “the Goscinny of the 21st Century”

Vehlmann entered the world in Mont-de-Marsan and grew up in Savoie, studying business management before taking a job with a theatre group. In 1996, after entering a writing contest in Spirou, he caught the comics bug ands two years later published – with illustrative collaborator Denis Bodart – a quirky, mordantly dark and sophisticated portmanteau period crime comedy entitled Green Manor.

The episodic, blackly funny tribute to the seamy underside of Victoriana appeared only sporadically until 2005 (and was revived in 2011), whilst the author spread his wings with a swathe of other features such as Wondertown (art by Benoît Feroumont) and the hugely popular children’s thriller Seuls (with artist Bruno Gazzotti) before undertaking a high-profile stint on veteran all-ages adventure strip Spirou et Fantasio.

Vehlmann has continued to craft enticing and engaging tales for kids (Samedi et Dimanche) but is equally adept on more mature fare like Sept psychopathes (with Sean Phillips). He even briefly drew his own strip Bob le Cowboy…

His partner in crime on Green Manor was Denis Bodart, who studied at the Saint Luc academy in Brussels before taking up teaching. He soon resorted to a life in comics, debuting in 1985 with Saint-Germaine des Morts (scripted by Streng) for publishing house Bédéscope.

Three years later he co-created – with writer Yann (Yannick Le Pennetier) – Célestin Speculoos for Circus and Nicotine Goudron for l’Écho des Savanes whilst becoming a jobbing freelance comics artist with work regularly appearing in Spirou and elsewhere.

Following his highly acclaimed turn here he moved on to succeed Jean-Maire Beuriot as artist of Casterman’s prestigious Amours Fragiles.

The premise is both deliciously simple and wickedly palatable. As this book opens in the infamous Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital in 1899, prominent Dr. Thorne is seeking to interview the inmate known as Thomas Below.

That poor unfortunate had served as a domestic in a Gentleman’s Club for his entire life but became violently delusional mere days before retirement. Now as Thorne questions the madman deep in the bowels of “Bedlam”, the savant realises the sorry soul before him believes he is Green Manor incarnate. He has certainly been privy to all that strange place’s secrets, surprises and hushed-up scandals…

Hesitantly Below begins telling tales of rich, powerful and ostensibly honourable men at their most excessive and unbearable…

What follows is a macabre menu of short tales beginning with ‘Delicious Shivers’ wherein a roomful of The Great and the Good gather around aged patriarch Dr. Byron on an October night in 1879. The respected physician poses an intriguing challenge to the assemblage: “can there be a murder without a victim or a murderer?”

Most of the men gathered have dark hearts and cunning minds and Sir Foswell rises to the challenge with his story of a noted aristocrat who erased an unwise early marriage – and “disappeared” his unwanted bride – by dint of bloodshed, money and influence.

Inspector Darcroft then proffers a case whereby there was no discernable murderer although the victim was most certainly gunned down at close range…

As the heated banter builds, events take a very dark turn once Byron informs them that he has personally caused such an impossible crime to be committed. To the shocked silence of the throng he describes how the administration of an extremely slow-acting poison in the drinks of some, many or all of those gathered may or may not kill an unspecified number of them at some unguessable time in the future…

Of course he might just be jesting to win a point but nobody goes home complacently that night…

‘Post-Scriptum’ then describes the lethal intellectual duel between dashing young Detective Johnson and aged Sir Alfred Montgomery in August 1882, after the latter defies the policeman to stop him killing a young woman. The rules of the competition are quite strict and the noble believes he has succeeded in committing a perfect crime, but although the noble correctly considers himself a cunning planner his character judgement leaves much to be desired…

Weary and frustrated police Inspector Gray‘s decades-long hunt for a serial killer ends in shock and castigation when he arrives at an astounding conclusion one gloomy night at the Club in September 1882.

That worthy’s too-late grasp of an impossible ‘Modus Operandi’ subsequently leads to glorious triumph but also a most surprising outcome and response from a fellow clubman and confidante…

The most baroque and arcane yarn in this collection involves another intellectual game and imaginative wager placed in March 1893, when two connoisseurs of crime determine to commit the most artful murder of all time. Their target must be none other than author and criminologist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and to make things interesting the offending weapon must be ’21 Halberds’…

In April 1872 Lord Denton invited young artist Eric Kaye into the Green Manor Club to repair a damaged painting by the great lost genius Jason Sutter. However the dazzled dauber became obsessed with the story behind the austere family portrait – especially the tragic beautiful daughter who suddenly vanished from history – depicted in ‘Sutter 1801’ but his fervent enquiries led to the resolution of a decades old mystery, murder most foul and eventual banishment as his only reward.

Proud and undaunted, Kaye patiently devised a most exquisite vengeance…

The catalogue of upper class skulduggery concludes with ‘The Ballad of Dr. Thompson’ and a most arcane and uncanny murder mystery which begins in 1878 when great friends Professor Ballard and Thompson bid each other a drunken goodnight on the club steps.

Only one of them makes it home safely and when the other’s corpse is found stuffed into a grandfather clock the police investigations soon lead to the most insane of conclusions…

Wry, witty, wickedly funny and sublimely entertaining, Assassins and Gentlemen offers a superbly rewarding peek at High Society and low morals which will delight and astound lovers of clever crime fiction and classy comics confabulations.
Original edition © Dupuis 2005 by Vehlmann & Bodart. All rights reserved. English translation 2008 by Cinebook Ltd.

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XIII volume 1: The Day of the Black Sun


By William Vance & Jean Van Hamme, coloured by Petra (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-039-9

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

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

Immediately clicking with the public, by 1976 he had also branched out into novels and screenwriting. His big break was the monumentally successful fantasy series Thorgal for Tintin magazine. He then 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 beside the seemingly unassailable Hergé and Uderzo.

William Vance is the comics nom de plume of William van Cutsem, who was born in 1935 in Anderlecht. 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 art is a classical blend of meticulous realism, scrupulous detail and spectacular if 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 later Pilote and Tintin).

Constantly working on both serials and stand-alone stories, Vance’s most acclaimed work is his collaboration with fellow Belgian Van Hamme on a contemporary thriller based on Robert Ludlum’s novel The Bourne Identity…

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

The series was a monumental hit in Europe – although publishing house Dargaud were initially a little slow to catch on – 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 thriller of unrelenting mood, mystery and mayhem begins as The Day of the Black Sun (originally Le jour du soleil noir) opens on a windswept, rocky shore where retired Abe‘s quiet day of fishing is ruined after he reels in a body…

The shocking catch is still alive despite being shot in the head, and as Abe’s wife Sally examines the near-corpse she finds a key sewn into his clothes and the Roman numerals for thirteen tattooed in his neck. The area is desolate and remote and the fisherman has already gone for the only medical assistance he can think of: an alcoholic surgeon struck off for operating whilst inebriated…

After a tense, makeshift and rushed procedure ends in miraculous success, the three conspirators agree they can never tell anyone. Old Martha performed a miracle in saving the presumably shipwrecked stranger, but if the authorities ever find out she would face jail for practicing without a license.

There is a further complication. The gunshot victim – a splendid physical specimen clearly no stranger to action or violence – has suffered massive and probably irreversible brain trauma. Although now sound in body he has completely lost his mind. His language skills, social and reflexive conditioning and muscle memories all remain intact, but every detail of his personal life-history has been utterly erased…

Some time later as Martha explains all this to the swiftly recuperating stranger – whom Abe and Sally have named “Alan” after their own dead son – his lost past life explosively intrudes when contract killers invade the remote beach house with guns blazing…

Terrifying skills he has no conception of immediately surface and Alan lethally counters the attack, but too late to save anybody but himself and Martha…

In the aftermath Alan finds a photo of him and a young woman on one of the hitmen and, with Martha’s help, traces the picture to nearby metropolis Eastown. Desperate for answers and certain that more killers must be coming, the human question mark heads off to confront unimaginable danger and hopefully find the answers he so urgently needs…

Eager to find the mystery woman he was clearly intimate with, Alan tracks the photograph to the offices of the local newspaper, which brings him to the attention of a less than honest cop who recognises the amnesiac and makes sinister plans…

The woman in the photo is Kim Rowland, a local widow officially listed as a “missing person”. When Alan goes to her house he finds the key he was carrying fits the front door…

Inside is a scene of devastation, but a thorough search utilising gifts he was unaware he possessed turns up another key and a note warning someone named “Jake” that “The Mongoose” has found her and she’s going to disappear…

As he continues his probing Alan/Jake is ambushed by the dirty cop and newspaper Editor Wayne. Gloating Lieutenant Hemmings calls him “Shelton” and demands the return of a large amount of money the baffled amnesiac has no memory of.

Thinking fast, Alan/Jake/Shelton guesses that the new key he found is for a safe-deposit box and bluffs the thugs into taking him to the biggest bank in town…

The bank manager there also knows him as Mr. Shelton and happily escorts him to his private room, but when Hemmings and Wayne examine the briefcase left in Shelton’s deposit box a booby trap goes off. Taking advantage of the confusion their prisoner snatches up the case and expertly escapes from the bank despite the institution rapidly initiating lockdown procedures…

Later in a shabby hotel room the agonised amnesiac considers the huge amount of cash in the case and not for the first time wonders what kind of man he used to be…

Preferring motion to inactivity, Alan prepares to leave and stumbles into a mob of armed killers about to bust into his room. In a blur of lethal activity he escapes to the roof with the thugs in hot pursuit and stumbles into another group led by a man addressed as Colonel Amos…

The chilling executive calls his captive “Thirteen”, claiming to have previously dealt with his predecessors XI and XIII over something called the “Black Sun case”…

The Colonel also very much wants to know who Alan is, but has a few shocking facts already at his disposal. The most sensational is a film of the recent assassination of the American President which clearly shows the lone gunman to be none other than the now-appalled Thirteen…

Despite Alan’s heartfelt conviction that he is not an assassin, Amos continues to accuse his memory-wiped captive of being an employee of a criminal mastermind. The Security Supremo wants the man in charge but fails to take Alan’s forgotten instinctive abilities into account and is taken completely by surprise when his prisoner rashly leaps out of a fourth floor window…

Impossibly surviving the plunge and subsequent pursuit, the frantic fugitive heads for the only refuge he knows, but by the time he reaches Martha’s beachside house trouble has beaten him there…

Another band of murderers is waiting; led by a mild-seeming man Alan inexplicably calls The Mongoose. The smug killer expresses surprise and admiration: he thought he’d killed Thirteen months ago…

Tragedy follows an explosion of deadly violence as the agonised amnesiac goes into instinctive action. The henchman are mercilessly despatched – although too late to save Martha – but The Mongoose escapes, promising dire revenge…

With nothing but doubt, confusion and corpses behind him, the mystery man regretfully hops a freight train west and heads toward into an uncertain future…

And so began one of the most compelling and convoluted mystery adventures ever conceived, with subsequent instalments constantly taking the questing Thirteen two steps forward, one step back as he encountered a world of pain and peril whilst tracking down the 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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Gotham Central book 2: Jokers and Madmen


By Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, Stephen Gaudiano, Greg Scott, Brian Hurtt & various(DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2521-6

There are two names synonymous with Gotham City, USA.

If you’re a cop you keep your own opinions about the Batman, and it’s pretty much unanimous that The Joker is not someone you ever want to deal with. A madman with a homicidal flair for the theatrical, the clown loves a special occasion. It’s Christmas and it’s started to snow…

One of the greatest rewards of long-lasting, legendary comicbook characters is their infinite potential for innovation and reinterpretation. There always seems to be another facet or aspect to develop. Such is the case in regard to the much-missed sidebar series Gotham Central, wherein cop show sensibilities cannily combine with the deadly drudgery of the long-suffering boys in blue patrolling the world’s most famous four-colour city.

Owing as much to shows like Hill Street Blues, Law & Order or Blue Bloods as it did to the baroque continuity of The Dark Knight, the mesmerising tales of the series combined gritty, authentic police action with furtive, soft-underbelly glimpses at what merely mortal peacekeepers have to put up with in a world of psychotic vaudevillians, flying aliens and scumbag hairballs who just won’t stay dead.

This second huge hardback volume, collecting more procedural exploits of the hard-pressed guardians of the most dangerous city in America – specifically Gotham Central #11-22 spanning November 2003 to October 2004 – begins with moodily effulgent introduction ‘Noir Town’ by crime author Duane Swiercznski and a handy double-page feature re-introducing the hardworking stiffs of First Shift, Second Shift and the Police Support team of the ‘Gotham City Police Department, Major Crimes Unit’ before the dramas start to unfold.

First up is uncharacteristic tearjerker ‘Daydreams and Believers’ by Ed Brubaker, Brian Hurtt and colourist Lee Loughridge which explores the GCPD’s strange relationship with the masked manhunter.

They all know he’s out there, but the official line is that he’s an urban myth and the Administration refuses to acknowledge his existence. Thus, civilian receptionist Stacy is the only person allowed to operate the rooftop bat-signal whenever crises occur, whilst the public are told that the eerie light is simply used to keep the cowardly, stupid, superstitious underworld cowed…

Here however we get a glimpse into the shy lamplighter’s inner thoughts as she observes the fractious byplay of the MCU regulars: all getting by thinking they’re fooling everyone else with their jealous bitching, petty sniping and tawdry clandestine affairs.

It’s all okay, though. Stacy has her own world to retreat into: one where the mighty Batman is her enigmatic but passionate lover…

The main event opens with a Yuletide shopping panic that looks to be the most memorable ever as ‘Soft Targets’ by Brubaker, Greg Rucka, Michael Lark & Stephen Gaudiano finds the entire Major Crimes Unit frantically hunting a sniper randomly assassinating citizens. Things get even nastier and more fraught when Mayor Dickerson is killed as he consults with new Police Commissioner Michael Akins.

The ruthless shooter guns down a school teacher and the medical examiner collecting her body and soon the pre-Christmas streets are deserted. The assassin then identifies himself by launching a website promoting “Batman for Mayor” and the appalled police realise just who they’re dealing with…

As Stacy turns on the roof signal her greatest wish comes true at last as the Gotham Guardian sweeps her off her feet… microseconds before a fusillade of shots would have made her the latest statistic…

As the Dark Knight vanishes into the snowy darkness after the maniac, the cops get back to their meticulous police work, tracking ballistics and hunting for the website’s point of origin. Mounting media frenzy and their own frustration lead to crippling tension and soon they are all at each other’s throats, but a potentially nasty situation is immediately curtailed by a new posting…

A live web-cam feed starts, counting down to a fresh victim somewhere in the huge terrified powder-keg metroplis…

As the cops pull out all stops to identify the building on-screen and resort to old reliables, such as violently rousting the Harlequin of Hate’s old flunkies, the scene suddenly changes. Now it shows prime media pain-in-the-neck Angie Molina as a captive of the killer clown: stashed somewhere anonymous and slowly ticking down to a bloody and show-stopping demise…

And just when things can’t get any crazier, The Joker turns himself in…

Even the insufferably cocky kook’s capture doesn’t halt the slaughter, since the proudly Machiavellian perpetrator can carry on killing by pre-programmed remote control even as he languishes in a cell…

When Lt. Ron Probson elects to go all “old school” in his interview with the loon, it only results in his own death and the clown’s escape. Stacy only avoids death a second time because Captain Maggie Sawyer shoots first – and often – and saves her questions for later…

Working a lead, Detectives Nate Patton and Romy Chandler have meanwhile found the captive reporter and realised the Joker’s convoluted, mass-murderous endgame, but even with Batman on scene they don’t all make it out…

‘Life is Full of Disappointments’ (by Brubaker and Rucka with art from Greg Scott) then focuses on disgruntled Second Shift veteran Jackson “Sarge” Davies who is still chafing at once again being passed over for promotion – especially as prissy new Day Shift commander David Cornwell has been parachuted in from outside the unit to run things…

As the squad come back from burying their dead, Sarge and partner Nelson Crowe catch a nasty case: a dead girl in a dumpster. However Stephanie Becker was no lost indigent or fun-loving party girl killed for the contents of her purse.

She worked in accounting at prestigious Washburn Pharmaceuticals and was killed with an exotic toxin. As the grizzled old-timers methodically work the case they find a succession of odd occurrences which lead them to First Shift colleagues Tommy Burke and Dagmar Procjnow, currently investigating the suspicious death of middle aged widow Maryellen Connolly, a still-warm stiff previously employed in the same office and slain the same way…

All the evidence seems to point to an unsanctioned million dollar deficit and deep Mafia involvement at the Pharma factory, but the diligent detectives keep pushing and discover a far older potential motive for the murders…

The gritty grimoire of Gotham atrocity ends with the bleakly chilling ‘Unresolved’ (by Brubaker, Lark & Gaudiano from issues #19-22) which features the reappearance of conflicted fan-favourite and all-around slob Harvey Bullock after the GCPD reopen a landmark cold case.

Marcus Driver and new partner Josie Mac are called to a hostage situation where a deranged perp continually screams about voices in his head before eating his own shotgun…

The troubled stiff was Kenny Booker – only survivor of an infamous High School bombing which shocked the city eight years previously – and the fresh tragedy compels Driver to take another look at the still unsolved mystery…

The “Gotham Hawks” were a championship school baseball team eradicated in a locker room explosion but every effort of Bullock and his squad could not pin down a single lead. However, when Marcus and Josie re-examine the accumulated evidence they find a potential link to one of Batman’s weirdest and creepiest foes.

It’s not enough and they are forced to call in the disgraced ex-cop for a consult. The move is a huge mistake as they are utterly unprepared for the fallout when Bullock talks to them.

The legendary maverick was fired after arranging the death of a killer the law couldn’t touch, and he has taken to drowning his days in booze. However this case has haunted Harvey for years and now that he sees a possible solution he goes completely off the rails in his hunger to finish things.

The trouble is that even now the facts tumbling in are increasingly pointing to a completely different culprit from the one Bullock always suspected but the fixated former lawman just won’t listen…

Going on a rampage he courts death by brutalising malevolent mobster The Penguin whilst miles away another suspect, galvanised after years of apparent anonymity, breaks out of Arkham Asylum and goes hunting…

Even after all this the true story is far more twisted than the bewildered detectives could have possibly imagined and the eventual conclusion destroys further lives and sanity and honour before the dust finally settles…

From an era when comicbook noir was enjoying a superb renaissance, these classic thrillers are masterpieces of edgy, fast-paced tension packed with layers of human drama, tension, stress and suspense.

Solid gritty police drama seamlessly blended with the grisly fantasy of the modern superhero seems like a strange brew, but it delivers knockout punches time after time in this captivating series which was the notional inspiration for the current TV sensation outlining just how Batman’s city got that way.

© 2003, 2004, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman: Going Sane


By J.M. DeMatteis, Eddie Campbell, Darren White, Joe Staton, Bart Sears & Steve Mitchell (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1821-8

An old adage says that you can judge a person by the calibre of their enemies, and that’s never been more ably demonstrated than in the case of the Batman. Moreover for most of his decades-long existence, and most especially since the 1970s, the position of paramount antagonist has been indisputably filled by the Harlequin of Hate known only as The Joker.

The epic battles between these so similar yet utterly antithetical icons have filled many pages and this slim, shocking tome (collecting stories from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #66-68 and #200 from November 1994 to February 1995 and April 2006) again proves how that unending war of wills always results in top quality Fights ‘n’ Tights entertainment.

LoDK began in the frenzied atmosphere following the 1989 Batman movie. With the planet completely Bat-crazy for the second time in 25 years, DC wisely supplemented the Gotham Guardian’s regular stable of comicbooks with a new title specifically designed to focus on and redefine his early days and cases through succession of retuned, retold classic stories.

Three years earlier the publisher had boldly begun retconning their entire ponderous continuity via the landmark maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths; rejecting the concept of a vast multiverse and re-knitting time so that there had only ever been one Earth.

For new readers, this solitary DC world provided a perfect place to jump on at a notional starting point: a planet literally festooned with iconic heroes and villains draped in a clear and cogent backstory that was now fresh and newly unfolding.

Many of their greatest properties were graced with a reboot, all enjoying the tacit conceit that the characters had been around for years and the readership were simply tuning in on just another working day.

Batman’s popularity was at an intoxicating peak and, as DC was still in the throes of re-jigging narrative continuity, his latest title presented multi-part epics reconfiguring established villains and classic stories: infilling the new history of the re-imagined, post-Crisis hero and his entourage. The icing on the cake was a fluctuating cast of first-rank and up-and-coming creators each getting “their shot” at arguably the most paradigmatic figure of the industry.

Most of the early story-arcs were then quickly collected as trade paperbacks, helping to jump-start the graphic novel sector of the comics industry, whilst the careful re-imagining of the hero’s early days gave fans a wholly modern insight into the highly malleable core-concept.

With that in mind, 4-part psychological study ‘Going Sane’ by J.M. DeMatteis, Joe Staton & Steve Mitchell takes us back to a time when Batman was still fresh to the game and had only crossed swords with the Clown Prince of Crime twice before…

The tale starts with a murderously macabre circus-themed killing-spree in the idyllic neighbourhood of Park Ridge, exacerbated by the abduction of honest, crusading Gotham Councilwoman Elizabeth Kenner. The twin travesties weigh heavily on a far-too-emotionally involved Batman as he furiously plays catch-up, leading to a one-sided battle in front of GCPD’s Bat signal and a frantic pursuit into the dark woods beyond the city.

Driven to a pinnacle of outrage, the neophyte manhunter falls into the Joker’s devilishly prepared trap…

Caught in a horrific explosion, the Dark Knight’s shattered body is then dumped ‘Into the Rushing River’ by an unbelieving killer clown reeling in shock at his utterly unexpected ultimate triumph…

‘Swimming Lessons’ opens with Batman missing and Police Captain James Gordon taking flak from all sides for not finding The Joker or the savage mystery assailant who had murdered an infamous underworld plastic surgeon…

Under Wayne Manor faithful manservant Alfred fears the very worst whilst in a cheap part of town thoroughly decent nonentity Joseph Kerr suffers terrifying nightmares of murder and madness.

His solitary days end when he bumps into mousy spinster Rebecca Brown. Over passing days the two lonely loners find love in their mutual isolation and a shared affection for classic slapstick comedy. The only shadows blighting this unlikely romance are poor Joe’s continual nightmares and occasional outbursts of barely suppressed rage…

As days turn to weeks and then months, Alfred sorrowfully accepts the situation and prepares to close the Batcave forever. As he descends, however, he is astounded to see the Dark Knight has returned…

The mystery of Batman’s disappearance is revealed in ‘Breaking the Surface!’ as the Gotham Gangbuster slowly gets back into the swing of things, laboriously connecting the dots linking the plastic surgeon’s death and the Joker’s wherebouts.

When his broken body was carried out to the sleepy hamlet of Accord the shattered hero was ministered to by Doctor Lynn Eagles, an ex-Gothamite doubly brutalised during her time in the city. A strange relationship grew between her and the troubled man she called “Lazarus”, but his clear yearning for the loving serenity the town offered couldn’t match his inner fire and unshakable sense of duty…

The inevitable, tragic finale arrives with the ‘The Deluge!’ as Joe Kerr – fictive product of a deranged mind which simply couldn’t face life without Batman – pops like a soap bubble when confronted by his somehow-resurrected resolute nemesis.

The World’s Greatest Detective has relentlessly tracked his polar opposite to his new life, without ever knowing the Clown is no longer a threat and, with both unflinching enemies restored, their apocalyptic clash is terrible but never final…

This emotive examination of twinned lives equally deprived of peace and contentment by their own intransigent natures is followed by a more traditional but intensely gripping thriller written by Eddie Campbell and Daren White with art by Bart Sears.

‘Gotham Emergency’ opens with the Dark Knight carrying a dying Joker into the Wayne Foundation Public Hospital ER. The mass-murdering Maniac of Mirth has poisoned himself with his own laughing toxin – “Smilex” – but Batman is ferociously insistent that Doctor Natalie Koslowski desert all her other critical patients to treat the conscienceless killer.

The reason becomes apparent after a Joker-created virus attacks the hospital’s records database as well as all other civic computer systems. It’s part of a sustained assault on Gotham by the Harlequin of Hate and follows two catastrophic detonations already triggered by the dying lunatic.

The first catastrophically went off in a crowded and unsuspecting newspaper office but the second, at the Gotham Knights Stadium, quickly brought Batman and in the ensuing chaos of their combat Joker took a face-full of his own poison.

Now the already-stretched medics must struggle to save him – and his gang of suitably trounced thugs – because the caped crimebuster is convinced that somewhere in Gotham a third bomb is ticking down, hidden in another area packed with innocents: a transport hub, or school or even a hospital…

And no one is prepared for what happens after the dedicated doctors bring the homicidal Harlequin out of his near-death coma…

Perfectly portrayed at his most devious and devilish, this duel between two decidedly different shades of darkness conclusively captures the conniving essence of the Joker making this smart, rocket-paced and chillingly suspenseful extra-length epic another unmissable example the eternal struggle between two of comics’ most potent characters.

Wonderful stories, appealing art, immortal characters, satisfaction guaranteed…
© 1994, 1995, 2006, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Modesty Blaise: The Grim Joker


By Peter O’Donnell & Enric Badia Romero (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78116-711-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: unmissable comics for fans of classic blockbusting adventure… 9/10

Modesty Blaise and her lethally adept, compulsively platonic partner Willie Garvin gained their fearsome reputations as top-flight super-criminals before retiring young, rich and healthy. With their honour intact and their hands relatively clean, they cut themselves off completely from a career where they made all the money they would ever need and far too many enemies.

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 world in their own unique way 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 first appeared in The Evening Standard on May 13th 1963 and over the decades went on to star in some of the world’s most memorable crime fiction, all in three panels a day.

Creators Peter O’Donnell & Jim Holdaway (who had previously collaborated on Romeo Brown) 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, others) assumed the art reins, taking the partners in peril to even greater heights.

The series has been syndicated world-wide and Modesty Blaise has also starred in 13 prose novels and short-story collections, several films, a TV pilot, a radio play, an American graphic novel and nearly one hundred comic strip adventures until the strip’s conclusion in 2002.

The tales are a broad blend of hip and cool capers combining espionage, crime, straight adventure 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-fallible human defenders of the helpless and avengers of the wronged…

Reproduced in stark and stunning black & white – and quite right too – Titan Books’ superb and scrupulous serial re-presentations of the ultimate newspaper troubleshooters continue here with O’Donnell and Romero offering a chilling trio of tales spanning November 1992 to February 1994, each prefaced with informative prose introductions from devotee and historian Simon Ward.

The rollercoaster ride begins with eerie thriller ‘A Present for the Princess’ (originally seen in The Evening Standard from November 3rd 1992 to April 8th 1993) with Garvin deep in the emerald mining region of Montelero, near Colombia.

He is in search of raw materials to create another of his outrageously over-the-top gifts for Modesty and is prepared for trouble from the thugs and bandits who inhabit the region, but not his own partner and guide Ramon who is, after all, a former pal from their long-defunct crime combine The Network…

In England Modesty takes it easy whilst entertaining psychic researchers Steve and Dinah Collier – truly gifted individuals Tarrant wants to employ – who are happily on hand when Blaise has a nightmare premonition that Willie is in trouble.

As usual Garvin has told no one of his plans or destination and when Ramon attacked him had no hope of ever being found. However, the indomitable survivor escaped the ambush – barely – only to be washed up more dead than alive miles downriver. He was then nursed back to health by poor peon Rima: a young woman who looks astonishingly like Modesty.

Willie doesn’t recognise the fact though. The brutalised, battered Englishman has lost his memory…

Although his history is denied him Garvin’s deadly skills are intact and he jumps to the obvious conclusion that he is some kind of criminal. His actions disprove this notion, efficiently saving Rima from an abusive landowner and his thugs.

Although she has fallen for him the native girl knows his clouded mind is obsessed with another woman and she treks with him to the capital city Toccopina to obtain papers and possibly passage back to Britain…

At home, with Willie long overdue, Modesty has employed the Colliers and another psychic to search for him. Their endeavours have narrowed the search to the selfsame South American city. They have also resulted in an enigmatic prophecy…

Willie’s gift for card-playing has meanwhile won the wanderers a nice nest-egg but dropped him clueless amongst the city’s criminal element, most of whom have good reason to despise him.

After an old enemy recognises him, Willie is befriended by the wily conman and unknowingly “sold” to local mob boss Senor Strobel, who cunningly convinces the lethally talented amnesiac that he is an evil man wanted for murder who would only be safe if he rejoins the gang as a hit-man…

By the time Modesty arrives, Willie is safely tucked away in a fortress-like nest of bandits, where his inner self rebels from the acts he’s expected to perform. Naturally she has a plan to save her brother-in-arms and make all the guilty parties very sorry indeed…

Following that spectacular and explosive resolution, the tables are turned somewhat for ‘Black Queen’s Pawn’, a riotous African adventure yarn (April 13th – September 10th) which begins in 1834 when Ranavalona, autocratic and utterly insane queen of Madagascar, obtains a treasure guaranteed to make her immortal. She then hides it away from the eyes of mankind and, just to be sure, has every person who knew of it slaughtered…

Now one hundred and sixty years later hard times have befallen the island, as is clearly observed by veterinary surgeon Greg Lawton who has been commissioned by government officials to find a giant fossil egg.

He’s brought old chum Modesty with him, but when they reach the poverty-stricken village of Mandofo they find the place has been taken over by ruthless thugs on a treasure hunt.

The leader Koch has crossed swords with her before and convinces his murderous underlings not to kill the westerners out of hand. If she dies, nothing could stop the absent Willie Garvin hunting them down. Far better to keep her alive and on her best behaviour by holding innocent villagers hostage…

Forced into unwilling neutrality, Modesty and Greg befriend local missionary Father Brienne and discover the savage invaders are seeking Ranavalona’s legendary lost hoard for mysterious millionaire paymaster Salim. As the cleric is also Koch’s unwilling translator of ancient documents, he provides clues which enable Modesty to deduce where the treasure actually is…

The suspenseful standoff continues until Willie – acting on his own uncanny instincts – surprisingly joins the party, but with Garvin now here in front of them instead of lurking unsuspected at their heels, Koch and Salim decide to arrange a little accident.

However with the deadly détente effectively negated their targets know full well all bets are off and, after brilliantly locating the treasure for the gangsters, go on to prove just a bit smarter and more efficient in settling scores…

The addictive action concludes in a classic murder mystery which sees Modesty take a rare personal interest in a news sensation as Britain is gripped by a series of bizarre, baroque and flamboyant murders by a macabre psychopath signing himself ‘The Grim Joker’ (September 13th 1993 – February 9th 1994)…

The killer apparently devises convoluted, extremely public executions for sheer amusement but such callous slaughter for pleasure disgusts reluctant professionals such as Blaise and Garvin.

Soon they have made themselves prime targets for the maniac, unaware that the Grim Joker is not what he seems. The insanely Machiavellian exploits are in fact a cunning blind concocted by a trio of greedy brats eager to expedite an eventual inheritance.

Brothers Matthew and Mark Goodchild, along with their shared girlfriend Prudence, originally set up the crimes to divert suspicion after they decided to bump off their rich uncle, but as they carried out the string of publicity seeking murders, the thrill of achievement affected them.

Prudence especially has become intoxicated with the undertaking, and begs for more before topping their true target and retiring. Her wish is granted after Willie publicly ridicules the Grim Joker on television and arouses the righteous indignation of the brothers.

It’s all a cunning plan by the ex-Network leaders. After consulting old friend Police Inspector Brook, Modesty and Willie have correctly deduced that the crimes are the work of a team not a lone maniac, and Garvin has offered himself as a too-tempting follow-up target.

Relocating to an isolated Scottish island “for a holiday”, Willie makes himself available for his unknown foes, with Modesty concealed waiting to spring their trap.

Unfortunately they’re keeping watch for a couple of strong men, not the frail helpless girl who first washes up on the desolate death trap…

What follows is smart, chaotic and shatteringly thrill-a-minute excitement, before the dust finally settles and the final tally is taken…

These are incomparable capers crafted by brilliant creators at the peak of their powers; revelling in the sheer perfection of an iconic creation. Unforgettable romps packed with sleek sex appeal, dry wit, terrific tension and explosive action and, these stories grow more appealing with every rereading and never fail to deliver maximum impact and total enjoyment.

Modesty Blaise © 2014 Associated Newspapers/Solo Syndication.

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Kill My Mother (Advance Reading Copy)


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

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Smart, Sharp and Perfectly Put Together… 9/10

Jules Ralph Feiffer has always been much more than “just a comic-book guy” even though his credits in the field are sound and suitably impressive. As well as working with Will Eisner on The Spirit, he created his own Sunday strip ‘Clifford’ (1949-51) before settling at the Village Voice for a Pulitzer Prize winning run.

Novelist, playwright, animator, children’s book creator (why isn’t there a single word or term for those guys?), teacher and screenwriter, he turned his back on cartooning in 2000, but the 42-year run of his satirical comic strip in The Village Voice ranks as some of the most telling, trenchant, plaintive and perspicacious narrative art in the history of the medium.

The strip, originally entitled Sick, Sick, Sick, then Feiffer’s Fables, before simply becoming Feiffer was quickly picked up by the Hall Syndicate and garnered a devoted world wide following, with many collections appearing over the years since the first book in 1958.

His incisive examination of American society and culture, as expressed through politics, art, television, cinema, work, philosophy, advertising and most especially in the way men and women interact, informed and shaped opinions and challenged accepted thought for generations. They were bloody funny and wistfully sad too – and still are today.

However his creative credits extend far beyond the world of print: he was one of the playwrights on stage revue Oh! Calcutta! (with Kenneth Tynan, Edna O’Brien, Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, Samuel Beckett & John Lennon) and has created 35 plays, books and screenplays including Carnal Knowledge and Little Murders. In 1961 his animated short feature Munro won an Oscar.

In 1965 he kickstarted acedemic American comic fandom with his celebratory evaluation The Great Comic Book Heroes and in 1979 he was at the forefront of the creation of graphic novels with Tantrum before scripting Robert Altman’s much-undervalued Popeye movie (released a year later).

He has a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995, and 2004 saw him inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame and simultaneously receive the National Cartoonists Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award, and 2006 saw him awarded the Creativity Foundation’s Laureate.

Now after years as a cartoonist, illustrator, pundit and educator, at the age of 85 (having been born in the Bronx on 26th January 1929) he has returned to his primary role of storyteller with another gripping and innovative graphic novel.

…And what a yarn he’s spun…

Spanning ten turbulent years, Kill My Mother is a supremely classy tribute to Film Noir, Hollywood Babylon, sexual politics and family secrets, blending the trappings of Dashiell Hammett with the tone, pacing and spark of Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder to tell an extended story of love, murder, jealousy and revenge.

It all begins in ‘Bay City Blues’. It’s 1933 and times are tough. Fifteen year old Annie Hannigan is cutting up, constantly leading poor, gullible sap Artie Folsom into trouble, whilst the mother she despises works all hours for dissolute, dipsomaniac and exceedingly cheap private investigator Neil Hammond.

The odd arrangement developed after the shamus agreed to investigate the murder of Elsie Hannigan‘s husband, whom he constantly refers to as the wrong sort of honest cop.

Events take a dark turn when stylish, exceedingly tall man-eater Mae Longo walks in offering outrageous sums if the shamus can track down a certain woman. The photo she gives him shows a woman remarkably like his coolly aloof new client…

Eddie “the Dancing Master” Longo is a rising star of the fight game who usually employs shady and capable gorilla Tiny Tim Gaffney to handle the more unsavoury problems in his life but Neil claims he knows how to handle him…

In the course of her mean-spirited, casual rebellions Annie gets poor Artie into real trouble when a shoplifting binge results in a pursuit by a store detective far faster than he looks. A very nasty beating is only avoided when an exceptionally tall derelict in an alley lays out the private cop with her carefully concealed baseball bat…

The rattled teen takes the tramp back to the apartment and cleans her up even as Elsie, very much against her will and better judgement, is dragged by soused-as-ever Neil to the Big Fight to see the Dancing Master.

The escapade almost costs her everything…

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

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

The concluding half of the story resumes in 1943 with ‘Hooray for Hollywood’ as we return to our cast and find them all greatly advanced.

Goonish Artie is a Captain of Marines, successfully battling the Japanese in the Green Hell of the Pacific whilst Annie Hannigan is a writer and media darling. Her sensational hit comedy “Shut Up, Artie” is the most popular radio show in America and broadcast wherever Yanks are posted.

Eddie Longo has made the transition to B-Movie star and Ellen – when not babysitting her obstreperous grandson Sammy – is “Executive Vice President of Pinnacle Studios in charge of Image Security and Maintenance”…

The scary indigent little Annie met in an alley has also cleaned up and moved on. Now she sings torch songs in the Reno Roost as the enigmatic Lady Veil…

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

The fraught status quo changes after Annie meets the dashing Patton at the Hollywood Canteen, but her romantic elation is crushed soon after when the sponsors call her in to discuss a crisis.

A genuine war hero is suing the show, claiming his life is being made a mockery. Unless she can fix things up with her old pal Artie, the show and her career are over…

Eddie is also near breaking point and Mae is forced to call in the thuggish Gaffney as a minder.

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

The first port of call is Tarawa; the hellhole where Captain Arthur Folsom is almost single-handedly repulsing the Jap advance…

On the island Artie is overseeing the building of the stage for the visiting stars and marvelling at the stupidity of putting on a show in battleground still hotly contested by enemy forces. In the air above him Ellen has a sharp confrontation with Mae Longo and “bodyguard” Gaffney. The events of ten years ago are still painfully fresh in every participant’s mind.

By the time all the players debark on the island, a devious and supposedly foolproof plan to commit another perfect murder has been hatched, using the Japanese as ideal scapegoats, but intimate killing is far harder than mass slaughter and the scheme soon begins to unravel…

Complex, beguiling, smartly sophisticated, devastatingly witty and peppered with casual shocking violence as every noir thriller has to be, this is a spectacular yarn – available in both hardback and mass market paperback editions – packed with twists and surprises, where nobody is telling the truth and no-one is playing on the side of the angels.

A masterpiece of cool suspense, mature ingenuity and graphic dexterity, Kill My Mother offers a timeless, hearty slice of bravura storytelling that gets better with every re-reading.

If you love crime yarns, comic tales, nostalgia and having your intelligence respected, this is the book for you.
© 2014 Liveright Publishing Corporation.

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Modesty Blaise: The Young Mistress


By Peter O’Donnell & Enric Badia Romero (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78116-709-0

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: unmissable comics for fans of classic blockbusting adventure… 9/10

Modesty Blaise and her lethally adept platonic partner Willie Garvin were superior criminals who retired young, rich and healthy – without ever getting too dirty – from a career where they made far too many enemies.

They were slowly dying of boredom in England when British Spymaster Sir Gerald Tarrant 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 of excitement and a chance to get some really evil sods.

With that tenuous beginning in ‘La Machine’ (see Modesty Blaise: the Gabriel Set-Up) the pair embarked upon a non-stop helter-skelter thrill-ride that has pitted them against the World’s vilest villains and maddest maniacs…

The legendary femme fatale first appeared in The Evening Standard on May 13th 1963 and over the following decades went on to star in some of the world’s most memorable crime fiction, all in three panels a day.

Creators Peter O’Donnell & Jim Holdaway (who had previously collaborated on Romeo Brown – a light-hearted adventure strip from the 1950’s itself long overdue for revival and compilation) produced a treasure trove of brilliant graphic escapades until the illustrator’s tragic early death in 1970, whereupon Spanish artist Enric Badia Romero and others assumed the art reins, taking the daredevil duo to even greater heights.

Modesty has been syndicated world-wide and the partners in peril have also starred in 13 prose novels and short-story collections, several films, a TV pilot, a radio play and nearly one hundred comic strip adventures between 1963 and the strip’s conclusion in 2002.

The tales are always stylish and engaging spy/crime/thriller fare in the vein of Ian Fleming’s Bond stories (as opposed to the super-spy’s sometimes over-the-top cinema exploits) although Modesty and Willie are competent, canny, deadly, yet all-too-fallibly human.

Reproduced in stark and stunning black & white – as they should be – Titan Books’ superb and scrupulous serial re-presentations of the ultimate newspaper troubleshooter continue here with O’Donnell and perennial collaborator Romero at the top of their game in a trio of tales spanning August 5th 1991 to November 2nd 1992, each prefaced with informative prose introductions from devotee and historian Lawrence Blackmore.

The rollercoaster ride begins with eponymous thriller ‘The Young Mistress’ (originally seen in The London Evening Standard from August 5th 1991 – January 6th 1992) which delves into the thorny subject of domestic abuse and the high-stakes world of art forgery.

When Modesty and current paramour Dr. Giles Pennyfeather aid a young woman thrashed with a riding crop they are astounded when the terrified Marian Hall refuses to press charges against shady art dealer Bruce Lacey.

Not only does the sadistic bully have unsubstantiated links to the underworld but he clearly enjoys inflicting pain. However when he surprises Marian’s rescuers, his attempts to teach Modesty “a lesson” rebound on him painfully and humiliatingly. They even take his toy girlfriend away…

Safely ensconced with Modesty and Willie, Marian explains that it’s not love but fear and guilt that keep her with Lacey. The young commercial artist is a brilliant copyist and when she first began seeing the astoundingly well-connected gallery owner, he convinced her to counterfeit a valuable painting before selling it on to an unsuspecting collector.

As a participant (albeit innocently) in fraud, she is in the monster’s pocket. Moreover Lacey was intending to use Marian to forge a borrowed Rembrandt and subsequently kidnaps her and her understanding old boyfriend to ensure the talented lass’ compliance in his nefarious multi-million-dollar scheme.

Determined to end the beast’s predations and thoroughly aware that Lacey will never rest until he has subjected Modesty to the brutal tortures that push his sick buttons, Willie and Modesty undertake a convoluted sting to break his power base, but are unaware of just how vicious and violent Lacey can be.

He, of course, has completely underestimated the lengths to which Modesty will go to defend the helpless…

‘Ivory Dancer’ (January 7th – June 5th 1992) changes tack as Modesty and Willie take their feisty, horse-mad prodigy Samantha to Kentucky for a vacation with billionaire John Dall.

The equine enthusiast is an old lover of Modesty’s as well as owner of the world’s most successful and valuable race horse, but the dream holiday unfortunately coincides with a cruel attempt to kidnap the four-legged superstar by ruthless gangster Gallo.

Sadly for the murderous thugs little Sam has an almost preternatural connection with the horse and once the steed goes missing she’s hot on his trail.

…And Willie and Modesty are hard on her heels; in no mood to be gentle with thugs who steal horses and threaten children…

The addictive action concludes in a classic espionage extravaganza as ‘Our Friend Maud’ (June 8th – November 2nd 1992) reintroduces Sir Gerald’s top agent in a clever tale of brainwashing, contract killing and international intrigue.

Maud Tiller is a top operative and when occasional dalliance Willie Garvin is blanked by her in a French restaurant he simply assumes she’s undercover on a mission. However his danger-honed senses are troubled and a little quiet checking reveals that the agent has gone AWOL.

Liaising with Modesty and Tarrant, Willie soon discovers that Maud has been kidnapped by fixer-for-hire the High Contractor and deduces she is being slowly programmed to assassinate somebody important and generally untouchable…

Linking up with Modesty, the outraged Garvin tracks Maud down and with the aid of unconventional Gallic operative Code-Name: Henri proceeds to infiltrate the upper echelons of grand society to rescue his English Rose, consequently dismantling one of the most dangerous international terror rings ever to threaten world peace…

These are unforgettable stories from brilliant creators at the peak of their powers; revelling in the majesty of an iconic creation. As timeless adventure romps packed with sex appeal, dry wit and devastating tension, the stories here are more enthralling now than ever and never fail to deliver maximum impact and total enjoyment.

Modesty Blaise © 2014 All rights reserved.