Category: Dinosaurs!

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The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire volume 1


By Mike Butterworth & Don Lawrence & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-755-8 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

For British – and Dutch – readers of a certain age and prone to debilitating nostalgia, The Trigan Empire (or The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire to give it its ponderous full title) was only ever about two things: boyish wish-fulfilment and staggeringly beautiful art.

The strip was created by Senior Group Editor Leonard Matthews and given to the editor of Sun and Comet to develop and continue. A trained artist, Mike Butterworth became writer of many historical strips such as Buffalo Bill, Max Bravo, the Happy Hussar, Battler Britton and Billy the Kid – and latterly a crime and gothic romance novelist with more than 20 books to his pen names.

Based in equal part on cinematic Sword & Sandal/Biblical epics and the space age fascination of a planet counting down to a moonshot, for the saga Butterworth combined his love of the past, a contemporary comics trend for science fiction and that long-established movie genre of manly blockbusters to construct a vast sprawling serial of heroic expansionism, two-fisted warriors, wild beasts, deadly monsters and even occasionally the odd woman.

The other primary influence on the series was the fantasy fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs (especially John Carter of Mars and Pellucidar) but without his concentration on strong and/or blatantly sexy women – usually as prizes for his heroes to save. In the formative days of the Trigan Empire, ladies dressed decorously, minded their manners and were dutiful wives or nurses… unless they were evil, vindictive or conniving…

The compellingly addictive, all-action thematic precursor to Warhammer, Civilisation and Warcraft might have been a short run venture had it not been for the art. The primary illustrator was Don Lawrence (Marvelman, Wells Fargo, Billy the Kid, Karl the Viking, Fireball XL5, Maroc the Mighty, Olac the Gladiator, The Adventures of Tarzan, adult comedy strip Carrie and his multi-volume Dutch magnum opus Storm), who painted each weekly instalment.

Initially he used watercolours before switching to quicker-drying gouaches, rendered in a formal, hyper-realistic style that still left room for stylistic caricature and wild fantasy, and one that made each lush backdrop and magnificent cityscape a pure treasure. Other, later artists included Ron Embleton, Miguel Quesada, Philip Cork, Gerry Wood and Oliver “Zack” Frey, as the strip notched up 854 weekly instalments, beginning in September 1965 and only ending in 1982. Along the way, it had also appeared in Annuals and Specials and become a sensation in translated syndication across Europe.

Even after it ended – and, thanks to these collections, it has recently resumed! – the adventure continued: in reprint form, appearing in the UK in Vulcan and across the world; in two Dutch radio plays; collected editions sold in numerous languages; a proposed US TV show and numerous collected editions from 1973 onwards. Surely someone must have a movie option in process: if only Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis were still around, we could completely close the creative circle…

Lawrence (17th November 1928 – 29th December 2003) inspired a host of artists such as Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons, but as he worked into the 1990s, his eyesight was increasingly hindered by cataracts and he took on and trained apprentices such as Chris Weston and Liam Sharp (who offers his own potent reminiscences in the Introduction to this first archival volume from Rebellion Studios’ Treasury of British Comics). Sharp collaborated with the venerable artist on his last Storm stories…

Inescapably mired in powerful nostalgia, but also standing up remarkably well on its own merits, this first collected volume re-presents the series from its enigmatic opening in high-end tabloid weekly magazine Ranger, combining comics with a large selection of factual features. The fantasy soon began to steal the show and was the most noteworthy offering for the entirety of the publication’s 40 week run, spanning 18th September 1965 to 18th June 1966. It then carried over – with a few other choice strips – into Look and Learn, beginning with #232: remaining until the magazine closed with #1049 (April 1982).

Ranger had been a glossy, photogravure blend of traditional comic anthology strips and educational magazine, and when it folded, the only publication able to continue The Trigan Empire in its full grandeur was Look and Learn…

One of our most missed publishing traditions is the educational comic. From science, history and engineering features in the legendary Eagle to a small explosion of factual and socially responsible boys and girls papers in the late 1950s to the heady go-getting heydays of the 1960s & 1970s, Britons always enjoyed a healthy sub-culture of comics that informed, instructed and revealed – and that’s not even counting all the pure sports comics!

Amongst many others Speed & Power, Treasure, World of Wonder, Tell Me Why, and Look and Learn spent decades making things clear, illuminating understanding and bringing the marvels of the changing world to our childish but avid attentions with wit, style and – thanks to the quality of the illustrators involved – astonishing beauty. Look and Learn launched on 20th January 1962: brainchild of Fleetway Publications’ then Director of Juvenile Publications Leonard Matthews. The project was executed by editor David Stone (almost instantly replaced by John Sanders), sub-editor Freddie Lidstone and Art Director Jack Parker.

For 20 years it delighted children, and was one of the country’s most popular children’s weeklies. Naturally there were many spin-off tomes such as The Look and Learn Book of 1001 Questions and Answers, Look and Learn Book of Wonders of Nature, Look and Learn Book of Pets and Look and Learn Young Scientist as well as utterly engrossing Christmas treat tradition The Look and Learn Book and – in 1973 – The Look and Learn Book of the Trigan Empire: the serial’s very first hardback compilation.

Strangely, many, many kids learned stuff they didn’t think they cared about simply because it filled out the rest of that comic that carried the Trigan Empire…

In this tome we review 25th June1966 through 17th May 1968, encompassing Ranger #1-40 and Look and Learn #232-331: subdivided for your convenience into 13 chapter plays of what we oldsters absorbed as one continuous unfolding procession of wonder…

Depicted with sublime conviction and sly wit, it begins with ‘Victory for the Trigans’ (18th September 1965 – 29th January 1966) as fishermen in the Florida swamps witness a spaceship crash. All aboard are dead, and after, the global news cycle wearies of the story, the craft is reduced to a sideshow attraction whilst scholars meticulously investigate its technology, dead voyagers and a huge set of journals written in an indecipherable language. No one succeeds and eventually, no one cares…

All except student Richard Peter Haddon, who spends the next half century looking for the key and – at age 70 – cracks the code, subsequently translating the history of a mighty race of aliens so very like earthmen…

From then on the scene switches to distant twin-sunned world Elekton, where numerous kingdoms and empires-in-waiting jostle for dominance. In many ways it’s like Earth a few thousand years before the birth of Christ… except for all the monsters, skycraft and ray guns…

In the wilds and wastes between the nations of Loka, Tharv, Davelli and Cato, brutish far-ranging tribes of nomadic Vorg hunt and clash and live brief free lives, until three brothers decide existence could be so much more…

Driven, compelling and charismatic, notional leader Trigo has a dream and convinces his siblings Brag and Klud to ask their people to cease following roving herds of beasts and settle by a river where five hills meet. Before long they have raised a city and begun the march to empire. Of course, all those defiant libertarians were initially resistant to becoming civilised, but that ended after the more advanced Lokans began hunting them for sport from their flying ships…

By the time Loka’s King Zorth finally gets around to conquering Tharv and formally annexing the lands of Vorg in his plan to become global dictator, Trigo has begun building his city and invited refugees from Tharv to join him. Amongst the many displaced survivors of Lokan atrocity is Peric – an architect and philosopher generally acclaimed as the smartest man alive. He is cared for by his daughter Salvia. Both will play major roles in the foundation of the Trigan Empire…

When Zorth at last turns to consolidation by taking Vorg, his air, sea and land forces are met by an unbeatable wall of death and history is rewritten. It comes at great cost, most notably to Trigo as victory is almost snatched from him when brother Klud attempts to murder him, seize power and betray their people to the Lokans…

With an empire established, one translated book ends, and Professor Haddon’s life’s work moves on to what we’ll call ‘Crash in the Jungle’ (5th February – 19th February 1966), introducing young warrior/pilot Janno. The son of Brag, he is childless Trigo’s nephew and heir apparent: enjoying many dynamic adventures as an imperial troubleshooter whilst being groomed for rule. Here, still wet behind the ears, the lad crashes in the plush rainforests of Daveli, befriends Keren – son of a formerly antagonistic aboriginal chieftain – and facilitates their alliance with the ever-expanding Trigan Empire. When Janno returns to pilot training, Keren is beside him and will be his constant companion in all further exploits…

Planetary chaos erupts next as ‘The Falling Moon’ (26th February – 28th May 1966) reshapes Elekton’s political map. When Gallas impacts sister moon Seres, the cosmic collision sends the satellite smashing into Loka where – forewarned – Zorth seeks to relocate his power base and entire populace by seeking sanctuary in Trigo’s city. Once admitted and welcomed, the Lokans bite the hand that shelters them by seizing the city. Valiant Brag manages to save wounded Trigo, but they are captured and enslaved by desert raiders of the Citadel…

As Janno and Keren escape to mount a futile resistance to the Lokans, slave worker Trigo foils an assassination and earns the gratitude of the Citadel king, who lends him a band of warriors to retake his own city. When they link up with Janno & Keren, Zorth’s defeat and doom are assured…

Time moves differently on Elekton and many events seem telescoped, but as the strip jumps to a new home, continuity manifests in ‘The Invaders from Gallas’ (4th June – 18th June) in Ranger before continuing in Look and Learn #232-237 from 25th June to 30th July 1966. As the fallen moon cools, aliens dwelling inside emerge to attempt the conquest of their new world via their mind control techniques. With the Trigans crazed and killing each other, only a deaf man holds the key to their survival…

Look and Learn #238-242 (6th August – 3rd September 1966) featured ‘The Land of No Return’ – which sees Janno accidentally sent along the River of Death (a rather cheeky “tribute” to Burroughs’ Mars stories), debunking an insidious religious belief that had for millennia curtailed life for Elekton’s elderly whilst ending a cult of elder-abusing slavers…

‘The Revolt of the Lokans’ (L&L #243-255, 10th September – 3rd December 1966) returns to the exiled former-conquerors who poisoned and deranged Trigo before retaking his city. Thankfully, Keren and Peric find a way to restore order to the city and its ruler, after which #256-264 (10th December 1966 – 4th February 1967) detail ‘War with Hericon’ as Trigo marries Lady Ursa, sister of King Kassar: ruler of the aloof, distant empire (a visual melange of Earth’s Persian and Byzantine kingdoms).

The diplomatic love match is soured by a single sinister malcontent when Yenni – a vengeful criminal outcast of both Hericon and Trigan – foments racial unrest in both realms and lets human nature do its worst…

Janno & Keren took the lead again in ‘Revolution in Zabriz’ (#265-273, 4th February – 8th April 1967), when despatched to survey a distant mountain outpost only to uncover a plot by its governor. He uses captive labour to finance a coup to oust Uncle Trigo and take over the empire, after which ‘The Lokan Invasion’ (L&L #274-279, 15th April – 20th May) sees the brothers-in-arms stumble into a devious scheme by chemist Vannu to destroy the Trigans by contaminating their water with amnesia-inducing potions…

Vengeful retaliation is once more the pivotal factor as ‘The Revenge of Darak’ (#280-290, 27th May – 5th August) reveals how Trigan’s greatest pilot betrays his emperor and is punished with slavery in the mines. After a year, he escapes and uses his insider knowledge to drive a wedge between Trigo and Brag, poison Peric and embroil Hericon in war. Thankfully, brotherly love trumps hurt feelings and justice conquers all…

A taste of horror comes with ‘The Alien Invasion’ L&L #291-297 (13th August – 23rd September) as energy beings land on Elekton. Able to possess organic brains, the intruders work their way up the planet’s food chain until Keren, Kassar and Trigo are fully dominated, but the cerebral tyrants have not reckoned on Peric’s wit or Janno’s cunning…

The first major role for a woman comes in ‘The Reign of Thara’ (L&L #298-316, 30th September 1967 – 3rd February 1968) as the royal family is ousted by deceit and a secret society of soldiers instals the daughter of Klud in Trigo’s place. Vain, haughty and imperious, she is intended to be a puppet of secret manipulators, but proves to possess too much pride and backbone to allow the empire to fall to mismanagement and enemy incursions. Happily, the actual Royal Family have survived their well-planned dooms and returned, leading an army of liberated slaves and a fleet of pirates sworn to Trigo’s service…

During the campaign, Kern & Janno befriend a rural bumpkin, obsessed with flying, and clownish Roffa becomes their third “musketeer”, playing a major role in the concluding tale here.

Spanning Look & Learn #317-331 (10th February – 17th  May 1968), ‘The Invasion of Bolus’ sees the trio captured by rogue scientist Thulla and pressganged into joining his mission to build a ship and conquer Elekton’s inhabited moon. Unable to defy or escape, they become unwilling members in his army, before defecting to the super-advanced but pacifistic Bolans. At least the lads left a warning before lift-off: one that – eventually – reaches Trigo & Peric.

As the Trigans rush to construct a rescue vessel, Thulla brutally seizes the moon people’s city and commences the second part of his plan: building a colossal ray cannon to destroy all life on Elekton. As Trigo’s ship takes off – too late to stop devasting blasts from Bolus – Janno & Keren are forced to desperate measures to save their people from the murderous madman…

Incorporating a tantalising teaser for the next volume and creator biographies, this spectacular visual triumph is a monument to British Comics creativity: one that simultaneously pushes memory buttons for old folk whilst offering a light but beautiful straightforward space opera epic readily accessible to the curious and genre inquisitive alike.

Is that you or someone you know?
The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire is ™ Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. © 1965, 1966, 1967 & 2019 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Literally born yesterday in 1928 Stanley Lieber – AKA Stan Lee – did a whole lot and appears many times in this blog. You should go look. In 1967 groundbreaking Acme Novelty Library cartoonist Chris Ware arrived, followed two years later by sound fella P.J. Holden (2000 AD, Judge Dredd, Warhammer) who we last covered in Bad Magic – A Skullduggery Pleasant Graphic Novel.

However, TODAY in 1946, Milton Caniff’s last Terry and the Pirates episode appeared. Whilst he rose to even greater heights with Steve Canyon, George Wunder carried Terry, Pat & Co. until 1973.

In 1963 Dave McKean was born, but otherwise today is one for the “loss” column, with Raeburn van Buren dying in 1987, Disney artist Tony Strobl in 1991, Barbarella creator Jean-Claude Forest in 1998 and wonderful Don Lawrence in 2003. As always you can search our engine or find one of your own preference for more…

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The Treasury of British Comics Annual 2026


By Stephen Brotherstone, Dave Lawrence, Scott Goodall, David Roach, Chris Lowder, Keith Richardson, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, James Tomlinson, Ned Hartley, Peter Milligan, Willie Paterson, Martin Baxendale, Edison Neo, Ken Reid, Horatio Altuna, Steve White, Jesús Redondo, Henrik Salhström, Solano Lopez, Eric Bradbury, Carlos Cruz, Francisco Fuentes Man, Juan Arancio, Mervyn Johnston, Frank Langford, Ian Kennedy, Vanyo, Bret Parson, Josep Gual, Staz Johnson, James Harren & various (Rebellion Studios)
Digital only eISBN: 978-1-83786-721-9; 978-1-83786-727-1 (Webshop Exclusive)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: True Brit Comics Class… 9/10

Ooh, look! One more!

Just like the bumper seasonal hardbacks they celebrate, Treasury of British Comics Annuals blend old classics with all-new material, and although this year’s selection probably won’t last you all through 2026, it is packed with wonderful yarns that you will certainly read over and again. Combining original modern material with strips from Jag Annual 1971; Smash! November 16th 1968; Monster Fun July 5th 1975; Boy’s World February 19th – October 3rd 1964; The Birthday Book For Boys 1972; Misty February 24th 1979; Whizzer & Chips December 20th 1980; Action May 1st 1976; Wildcat Holiday Special 1989; Battle Action Force November 1st 1986; Valiant Annual 1969; Action Annual 1977; Buster December 28th 1991; Wham! Annual 1972 and Monster Fun October 2024, and kicks off with a strange team up tale fresh off the drawing/key boards of Stephen Brotherstone, Dave Lawrence & Henrik Salhström. It was lettered – like all the new material here – by Jonathan Stevenson.

‘Helmet Head & El Mestizo: “On the First day of Christmas…” ’ pairs the aging mercenary with the robot sheriff to save a frontier town – and that aforementioned ROBOT SHERIFF! – from ruthless scavengers, after which a classic tale of murderous child soldiers sees the ‘Mouse Patrol’ (by an unidentified writer and the incredible Eric Bradbury from Jag Annual 1971) still looking for their POW dads on the battlefields of North Africa in 1942. This time the three lads (Blackie Knight, Ginger Nobb & Cyril North) and their chimp chum Cleo ride their stolen tank into a Nazi super weapon test and gleefully turn it on the astounded Afrika Corps!

Presented as Original Art Archive Scans published in Smash! November 16th 1968, ‘A Short Cut Home!’ is limned by Francisco Fuentes Man and details how a nasty Earthman outsmarts himself after blackmailing gentle – but clever – aliens, after which Monster Fun July 5th 1975 supplies a Ken Reid comedy classic scripted by a mystery gagster. ‘Martha’s Monster Make-Up’ allows her to mould faces like putty and, here, get rid of a really obnoxious family guest…

Very much a main attraction, full-colour painted serial ‘John Brody and the Green Men’ ran in Boy’s World from February 19th to October 3rd 1964. Crafted by Willie Paterson & Frank Langford this is an epic African adventure in the manner of She and other fantasy movies, following the eponymous troubleshooter into a fantastic submerged kingdom and civil war against devilish priests, bloodyhanded tyrants a and a lot of undersea beasties…

It’s followed by Ned Hartley, Steve White & Stevenson’s new parody yarn ‘Imagine if Gums Was Published in Action…’ which speaks for itself – albeit rather messily – prior to Tom Tully & Ian Kennedy revealing how colour-changing ‘Kid Chameleon’ (The Birthday Book For Boys 1972) continues searching for his parents’ assassin. If not for those reptiles who had raised him in the Kalahari desert, he would have no chance…

Author unknown & Josep Gual reveal the monster-hunting surprise two girls unleash on ‘The Island’ (from Misty February 24th 1979) after which school spoof ‘Strange Hill’ (by another unknown & Martin Baxendale from Whizzer & Chips December 20th 1980) neatly shuffles us into an all-new yarn from David & Emily Roach pitting stellar sorcery savants in ‘Vanessa From Venus vs. Spellbinder’.

Thanks to another Original Art Archive Scan we get to see superspy ‘Dredger’ (by Chris Lowder & Horatio Altuna from Action May 1st 1976) settle with a KGB hit squad in all his mean, messy glory prior to James Tomlinson & Jesús Redondo Román detail why the undead don’t like space travel. ‘The Wildcat Complete: Vampire!’ was originally seen in Wildcat Holiday Special 1989, and our seasonal session adopts a rather bleak note for ‘The Fighting MaGees’ (Peter Milligan & Solano Lopez from Battle Action Force November 1st 1986) as brothers Jack and Micky endure the hell of the Gallipoli landings and are forever changed…

From Valiant Annual 1969 Carlos Cruz González and that unknown writer provide a vivid adventure for a certain inventor and his robot assistants as ‘The House of Dolmann’ face plundering pop sensations The Spectrums whilst Juan Arancio’s Original Art Archive Scans for Action Annual 1977 pit white explorers against a jungle packed with ‘The Wild Ones’…

Mervyn Johnston’s ‘Captain Crucial’ clashes with a very busy Kris Kringle courtesy of Buster December 28th 1991, whilst anonymous & Vanyo detail how ordinary folk finished off ‘The Loch Tregar Terror’ (Wham! Annual 1972). One last new yarn by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Edison Neo & Barbara Nosenzo reintroduces hairy giant robot ‘Mytek the Mighty’ in a show of brute strength and authorial foreboding before we close the fun & games with a vegan bloodbath triggered by Keith Richardson & Brett Parson’s ‘Count Carrot’ – as previously predigested in Monster Fun October 2024…

That’s all you get here, but remember this is a book you still can buy and receive instantly. The internet probably has others. You should check that out in a bit…
© 1964, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1975, 1976, 1979, 1980, 1986, 1989, 1991, 2024, 2025 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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New Gods by Jack Kirby


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

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Conan the Barbarian Epic Collection volume 1: The Coming of Conan (1970-1972)


By Roy Thomas & Barry Windsor-Smith with John Jakes, Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, Sal Buscema, Frank Giacoia, Tom Palmer, Tom Sutton, “Diverse Hands”, Marie Severin, John Romita Sr. & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2555-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because We Believe in Blockbusters… 9/10

During the 1970’s the US comic book industry opened up after more than 15 years of cautiously calcified publishing practises that had come about as a reaction to censorious oversight of its self- inflicted Comics Code Authority. This body was created to keep the publishers’ product wholesome after the industry suffered their very own McCarthy-style Witch-hunt during the 1950s.

One of the first genres revisited was Horror/Mystery comics and from that sprang pulp masterpiece Conan the Cimmerian, via a tale in anthology Chamber of Darkness #4, whose hero bore no little thematic resemblance to the Barbarian. It was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry (Windsor-) Smith, a recent Marvel find, and one who was gradually breaking out of the company’s all-encompassing Jack Kirby house-style.

Despite some early teething problems – including being cancelled and reinstated in the same month – the comic book adventures of Robert E. Howard’s brawny warrior became as big a success as the revived prose paperbacks which had heralded a world flowering in tales of fantasy and the supernatural.

After decades away, the brawny brute recently eventually to the aegis of Marvel. Designated “the Original Marvel Years” (due to the character’s sojourn with other publishers/intellectual properties rights holders), this bombastic tome of groundbreaking action fantasy yarns re-presents the contents of Conan the Barbarian #1-13 plus that trailblazing short story, cumulatively spanning cover-dates April 1970 to January 1972. Digitally remastered and available as a trade paperback or eBook, these are the absorbing arcane adventures that sparked a revolution in comics and a franchising empire in my youth, and are certainly good enough to do so again. They are also astonishingly readable…

The drama begins most fittingly after a glimpse at a classic map of ‘The Hyborean Age of Conan’ plus an accompanying quote I’m sure every devoted acolyte already knows by heart, after which that precursor romp sets the scene.

Set in modern America, ‘The Sword and the Sorcerers!’ primes the pump with the tale of a successful writer who foolishly decides to kill off his most beloved character Starr the Slayer: a barbarian so beloved that he has taken on a life of his own and is determined to do whatever is necessary to keep it…

After that we are catapulted back in time approximately 12,000 years into a forgotten age of terrors and wonders as scripter Thomas broadly follows Howard’s life path for young Conan of Cimmeria, beginning with the still teenaged warrior’s meeting with a clairvoyant wizard who predicts a regal destiny in ‘The Coming of Conan’ (inked by Dan Adkins), through brief but brutal enslavement in ‘The Lair of the Beastmen’ (Sal Buscema finishes), before experiencing a minor Ragnarok and witnessing ‘The Twilight of the Grim Grey God!’

An aura of lyrical cynicism grows to balance the wealth of mystical menaces and brooding horror as the wanderer becomes a professional thief and judge of human foibles in ‘The Tower of the Elephant’. Conan’s softer side is revealed in CtB #5 after meeting bewitching ‘Zukala’s Daughter’ (Frank Giacoia inks) and liberating a wizard-plagued town. Buscema returned for ‘Devil Wings over Shadizar’, wherein the warrior lad tackles a welter of antediluvian terrors, with both Adkins & Sal B applying their pens and brushes to expose ‘The Lurker Within’ – based on Howard’s magnificent chiller The God in the Bowl – after which tomb raider Conan crushes zombies and dinosaurs in ‘The Keepers of the Crypt’ (inked by Toms Palmer & Sutton)…

Thomas’s avowed plan was to closely follow Conan’s established literary career from all-but-boyhood to his eventual crowning as King of Aquilonia, adding to and adapting Howard’s prose works and that of his posthumous collaborators on the way. This agenda led to some of the best, freshest comics of the decade. The results of (not-yet-Windsor-) Smith’s search for his own graphic style led to unanimous acclaim and many awards for the creative duo.

By issue #9 the character had taken the comics world by storm and any threat of cancelation was long gone. ‘The Garden of Fear’ – adapted by Thomas & Smith, with inks by Sal B from Howard’s short story – features a spectacular battle with a primordial survivor in a lost valley before the wanderer returns to big city life, and learns too late to ‘Beware the Wrath of Anu!’

This god-slaying bout is mere prelude to another classic Howard adaptation, ‘Rogues in the House’: an early masterpiece of action and intrigue benefitting from a temporary doubling in page count.

‘Dweller in the Dark’ is an all-original yarn of monsters and maidens, notable because artist Smith inked his own pencils, and indications of his detailed fine-line illustrative style can be seen for the first time. An added bonus in that issue was a short back-up yarn by Thomas & Gil Kane with “Diverse Hands” called in to ink ‘The Blood of the Dragon!’: telling of a very different Hyborian hero getting what he deserves…

Fantasy author John Jakes plotted the final tale in this initial outing as ‘Web of the Spider-God’ offers a sardonic drama of the desert with the surly Cimmerian battling thirst, tyranny. pompous priests and a big, big bug in a riotous romp finished off by Thomas, Smith & Buscema.

Adding value to the treasury is a vast bonus section which includes pencilled cover art (used and unused); Thomas’ original script breakdowns as annotated by the artist; extracts from Marvelmania (the company’s first in-house fanzine); unused illustrations, house ads and Marvel bulletin items; cover roughs, concepts and finished art by Marie Severin & Gil Kane; Jakes’ plot synopsis and many pages of original art from the tales collected herein.

Also on show are cover galleries of the Marvel Books reprint paperback line and the Conan Classic comics series – all by Windsor-Smith – plus even before-&-after alterations demanded by the Comics Code Authority on the still contentious and controversial title.

These re-mastered epics are a superb way to enjoy some of US comics’ most influential and enjoyable blockbuster moments. They should have a place carved out on your bookshelf.
© 2020 Conan Properties International, LLC (“CPI”).

Herrrr–ge’s Ad–Ventures of Tinnnn–Tinn! (well, some of them) were largely drawn by Bob deMoor, who was born today in 1925, as was the wonderful Michael Zulli in 1952. Have you read The Puma Blues: The Complete Collection in One Volume?

In 1982 today, mangaka Katsuhiro Otomo saw the first episode of his astounding Akira epic published.

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Dan Dare: The 2000 A.D. Years volume 1


By Pat Mills, Gerry Finley-Day, Steve Moore, Ken Armstrong, Kelvin Gosnell, Garry Leach, Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland, Massimo Belardinelli, Ian Kennedy, Bill Nuttall, Jack Potter, Peter Knight, John Aldrich, J. Swain, Tony Jacobs, Tom Frame & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78108 349-9 (Album HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

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

If you’ll permit a personal question: How old are you?

The answer will pretty much determine your reaction to this book…

Launching on April 14th 1950 and running until April 26th 1969, Eagle was the most influential comic of post-war Britain, and possibly in our nation’s history. It was the brainchild of a Southport vicar, the Reverend Marcus Morris, who was increasingly concerned about the detrimental effects of American comic books on British children and wanted a good, solid, middle-class Christian antidote.

A huge number of soon-to-be prominent creative figures worked on the weekly, and although “Pilot of the Future” Dan Dare is rightly revered as the star, the other strips were almost as popular at the time, with many rivalling the lead in quality and entertainment value according to the mores and developing tastes of that hope-filled, luxury-rationed, fresh-faced generation.

At its peak, the original Eagle sold close to a million copies a week, but inevitably, changing tastes and a game of “musical owners” killed the title. In 1960, Hulton sold out to Odhams, who became Longacre Press. A year later they were bought by The Daily Mirror Group who evolved into IPC. In cost cutting exercises many later issues carried cheap(er) Marvel Comics reprints rather than British-originated material. It took time, but those Yankee Cultural Incursionists won out in the end. In 1969, with the April 26th issue Eagle was subsumed into cheap ‘n’ cheerful iron clad anthology Lion, eventually disappearing altogether. Successive generations have revived the title, but not the success. Never as popular, a revived second iteration ran from 27th March 1982 to January 1994 (having switched from weekly to monthly release in May 1991). Naturally when Eagle enjoyed its Second Coming the Pilot of the Future returned to his true home…

So as we celebrate 75 years of post-empire adventuresome wonderment, let’s just be clear on one thing. It’s Dan & Digby we all recall most fondly but we’ll take what we can get…

There’s precious little that I can say about Dan Dare that hasn’t been said before and better. What I will say is that everything you’ve heard is true. Vintage strips by Frank Hampson and his team of dedicated artists are a high point in world, let alone British comics, ranking beside Tintin, Asterix, Tetsuwan Atomu, Lone Wolf & Cub and the best of Kirby, Adams, Toth, Noel Sickles, Milt Caniff, Roy Crane, Carl Barks and Elzie Segar. If you don’t like this stuff, there’s probably nothing any of us can do to change your mind, and all we can do is hope you never breed…

Breakneck pace, truly astonishing high concepts underpinned by hard science balanced with nonstop action leavened with wholesome music hall larks and some of the most beautiful and powerful art ever to grace a comic page makes Hampson’s hero immortal and as much a magical experience now as it was in 1950. Many companies have kept the legend alive in curated collections over the decades, so go read this 2018 Titan edition combining material from three of their 2004-2009 hardback collections.

Now, though, we’re not taking about that guy, but seeing how he was regenerated and modified for a far different Britian under a different kind of cosh…

A wellspring of unleashed and unruly creativity, Britain’s last great comic sensation could be described as a combination of the other two, combining the futuristic milieu and thrills of Dan Dare and Eagle with the terrifying anarchy and irreverent absurdity of Dennis the Menace and his rowdy pals in Beano. In February 1977, with Britain not feeling so great a science-fiction weekly anthology was launched. The creative and editorial staff had high hopes and aspirations for 2000 A.D. but the guys paying them were simply content to ride out the movie-inspired boom and ready to cancel after the first six months to a year. They were ready for decades, but sales never dipped enough for that axe to fall, no matter what those art and story boys perpetrated…

The trendy ultra-dystopian atmosphere that had led to the creation of Mega-City One’s finest was also used to flavour the revival of the comic’s intended big gun and prime property. And his constant evolution as seen here in the weekly material from 2000 A.D. #1-23 and 28-51, plus additional action from 2000 A.D. Summer Special 1977, 2000 A.D. Sci-Fi Special 1978, 2000 A.D. Annual 1978 & Dan Dare Annual 1979.

‘Introduction – This was our Dan Dare’ by Garth Ennis recounts the Hows and some Whys of the resurrection and radicalization from steadfast pilot to “Space Hyper-Hero”. The serial episodes #1-11 (scripted by Ken Armstrong, Pat Mills & Kelvin Gosnell, with Massimo Belardinelli illustrating and letterers Bill Nuttall, Jack Potter & Peter Knight) opened in 2177 AD as freighter Sirius is ferried to a space museum. When it is suddenly destroyed by an inimical alien force emerging from Jupiter’s Red Spot, the sole survivor is its career-spacer captain Dan Dare…

The disaster brings the hardworking, diligent officer into conflict with SASA (Solar, Astronautical and Space Administration) penpusher the Solar Fleet Controller based in Lunaciti who charges Dare with negligence and tries to court martial him. After all, everyone knows there’s no life on Jupiter…

Refusing to back down, Dare explosively escapes and goes on the run, stowing away on Jupiter-bound cruiser Odyssey…

Each episode began on the prized centre spread, offering artists intriguing layout options and full colour in the otherwise monochrome periodical and here every instalment is reinforced with text feature ‘Dan Dare – My Part in his Revival’ (parts 1-9 as provided by Pat Mills to fanzine Spaceship Away).

Unfolding at breakneck pace, the tale sees him gradually win over sceptical Martian martinet and ship Captain Mr. Monday just as the hostile force attacks again, hurling appalling biological units against the aghast crew. A total convert now, Monday puts all his resources into discovering who and what is behind the attacks, leading to a brain-busting away mission into the red spot and surface of supermassive world where vile invaders The Biogs are set to test the resistance of solar system races and if their potential worthiness to become fuel for them…

The result is staggering stellar warfare with the bio-beasts eventually repelled by Dare’s resistance and an astounding sacrifice by Monday…

Scene set and scenario established, the serial kicked into even higher gear when Steve Moore assumed scripting chores for ‘Hollow World’ (#12-23, illustrated by Belardinelli and lettered by Peter Knight, John Aldrich, Nuttall, J. Swain, Tony Jacob & Tom Frame). This time working spacer Dare ships out on freighter Titan 1 C., only to have the vessel captured as they escape the Milky Way galaxy and end up inside a planet inside a red sun inside the Magellanic cloud…

The culprits are the barbaric Skath and their monstrous piratical mutant ruler The Two of Verath. However the biggest shock is that they are grudgingly served by Dare’s ancient enemy The Mekon, now reduced to toiling for his own survival. The little goblin is astounded to discover how his supposedly long-dead enemy is still around and so different looking (and so will you be!) but happily sets to torturing Dare and the crew for answers.

Inevitably Dare escapes and the old enemies renew their personal war, but it’s an unequal contest as the Mekon betrays The Two, seizes control of the Skath and unleashes hell and banditry against humanity and its allies…

Although Dan and his surviving crew escape back home, they are disbelieved by SASA officialdom. The war that follows is catastrophic and results in further betrayal and death across the universe…

Gerry-Finley-Day took over with 2000 AD #28 as Dave Gibbons & Brian Bolland introduced a new supporting cast in ‘Legion’ (#283). Now an acknowledged troubleshooter and problem solver, Dare is asked by SASA to find out why so many colonists have vanished in the region dubbed “the Lost Worlds”. Accepting the commission, Dare’s first stop is rag-tag satellite Topsoil to brutally and cunningly “recruit” the most violent scum in space: fight-crazed bruisers like Great Bear, hired killers like Hit-Man and lethal survivors like cashiered pilot Polanski…

Packed aboard a deadly flying space fortress, the appalling unappealing argonauts dive into danger, pitting the crew against space bugs, malignant dust devils, seductive space sirens, vampires and cosmic slavers as they methodically catalogue what killed all those colonists across a region of the void that simply does not love mankind…

Casualties were high and the sentient terrors of ‘Greenworld’ (#34-35) cost them plenty, but did provide one new volunteer – a “monkey” dubbed Haley Junior – in advance of lengthy epic ‘Star Slayer’ (#36-51). This found the searchers clashing with an intergalactic empire of savage marauders, liberating slaves on a dozen worlds and ultimately overthrowing the terrifying Dark Lord. In the course of that cosmic quest Dan Dare scored the front cover spot every week – just like he had in the old days of the readers’ dads…

Although the mission pauses here, a section of Bonus Strips follows, supported throughout the book by numerous classic cutaway diagrams of Dare’s vehicles by Gibbons. Sadly a lot of credits have been lost, as with the untitled first tale, taken from 2000 AD Summer Special 1977 wherein Dare and his crew are hurled into an antimatter dimension by invaders seeking to make Earth fuel for a journey home, after which Belardinelli limns anonymous full colour clash with the devil ‘Dan Dare and the Curse of Mytax’ (2000 AD Annual 1978) as the spaceman outwits a meddling vicious godling who can warp reality.

From 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1978, ‘Visco’ – written and painted in grey-tones by Garry Leach (& lettered by John Aldrich) – finds Dare traversing Mars’ icy Uchronian wastes and stumbling across a lethal science project that bends minds and breaks existence… until he demonstrates what old-fashioned willpower can do…

The last two tales come from The Dan Dare Annual 1979 and begin with an untitled proper romp by writer unknown, fabulously painted by legendary illustrator Ian Kennedy.

Set on the Fortress exploring The Lost Worlds, here Dare and crew come to the aid of a planet invaded by evil invaders in the biggest starship ever encountered, and prove yet again that it’s not about size, but what you do with it…

The strip wonders close with a monochrome and anonymous treat revealing just what happened to the Pilot of the Future in his last original era clash with the Mekon. ‘Dan Dare: The 2000 A.D. Origin’ traces that final battle through to the aftermath as Earth sought to preserve something of its greatest hero, and what happened next… or at least eventually…

This initial collection then concludes with a stunning cover gallery and biographies.

Epic, bombastic and eternally gratifying, this a treat three generations (at least) can get stuck into, highlighting what made Britain Great in the least obnoxious way anyone could imagine. Come get some!
© 1977, 1978, 1979, 2015, Rebellion/AS. All Rights Reserved.

Believe it or don’t, today in 1918 cartoonist Robert Ripley debuted his fact-panel Ripley’s Believe or Not. One year later Elzie Segar launched Thimble Theatre. Boy, dem wuz the days, huh?

Here in 1952 Leo Baxendale debuted Minnie the Minx in The Beano.

Less celebratory though, in 2001 we lost arch teen cartoonist Dan DeCarlo and in 2006 Golden Age Superman, Batman and Starman illustrator Jack Burnley.

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Doctor Who: The Cruel Sea (Doctor Who Graphic Novel # 18)


By Gareth Roberts, Clayton Hickman, Mike Collins, Robert Shearman, Scott Gray, Steven Moffat, John Ross, David A. Roach, Kris Justice, Dylan Teague, James Offredi, Roger Langridge, Martin Geraghty & various (Panini Comics UK LTD)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-593-2 (Album PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless, Timebending Thrill Treats… 8/10

Doctor Who premiered on television with the first episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’ on November 23rd 1963. Within a year, his decades-long run in TV Comic began with issue #674 and the opening instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’.

On 11th October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says 17th) Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. It regenerated into a monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) and has been with us under various names ever since.

All of which only goes to prove that the Time Lord is a comic hero with an impressive pedigree…

While Panini UK collaborated with Marvel they spent a lot of effort – and time! – collecting every strip from the archives into a uniform series of oversized graphic albums, each concentrating on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer. This one gathers stories from Doctor Who Magazine (AKA DWM) #355-364 plus material from The Doctor Who Annual 2006 (as originally published between April 2005 and January 2006): all featuring the contemporary official off-screen escapades of the recently revived Time Lord as explosively played by Christopher Eccleston. Comparatively it’s rather short and the large section of bonus features will tell you why…

For the longest time this was actually the only collection of strips featuring “the Ninth Doctor” and whether that statement made any sense to you largely depends on whether you are an old fan, a new convert or a complete beginner. Back then though, this incarnation of the Galloping Gallifreyan was big news as the TV series had been left to moulder since 1989, except for a US backed one-shot pilot with Paul MgGann. His jaunt subsequently fuelled years of comics capers but when a whole new series debuted on March 26th 2005 all bets were off…

More on that astounding busy-time and how it fared after Eccleston just as abruptly quit the role is covered in detail at the back in a copious Commentary section…

We’re here for the comics though, and they start with TV scripters uniting with comics pros for serialised nostalgia in ‘The Love Invasion’ (DWM #355-357) by Gareth Roberts & Clayton Hickman, limned by Mike Collins & David A. Roach, with colours from Dylan Teague & James Offredi, and steadfast Roger Langridge filling boxes and balloons.

Here the Doctor drops new companion Rose Tyler back in swinging 1966 London for a spot of shopping only to uncover alien time meddling by a Kustollian trying to forestall Earth’s future interstellar might. It’s plan involves employing amped up dolly birds dubbed “Lend-a-Hand girls” to satisfy any desire mankind expresses with the intention of destroying the will to strive and overcome.

Of course the chronal comrades are having none of that…

Mike Collins writes and draws DWM #358’s ‘Art Attack’, with Kris Justice inking as Teague & Langridge do their usual thing for a riotous romp at following Rose’s expressed desire to see the Mona Lisa. Instead of the Paris Louvre now, the Doctor decides on the 37th century Oriel. Who wouldn’t prefer a trans-dimensional gallery containing every single art work to have survived World War V?

Sadly though, Artist-in-Residence Cazkelf the Transcendent has a masterpiece of betrayal and doom to compete and things get a bit deadly. Of course, the Doctor can be both creative and forgiving…

Screenwriter Robert Shearman joins Collins, Roach, Offredi & Langridge for eponymous epic ‘The Cruel Sea’ (DWM #359-362) wherein a 22nd century ocean cruise on the sands of Mars turns very nasty, very quickly. Although it’s a wedding party pleasure voyage for the ultra-rich, Tyler and her time tutor steam in stop the bride, an army of ex-wives and other swells being assimilated by a goopy crimson killer abiding in the gritty depths whilst getting to grips with the monster’s side of the story….

Sadly, this is tale of bad stuff, greedy stuff, stupid stuff but no good or redeeming stuff…

A winning component of The Doctor Who Annual 2006, Scott Gray, John Ross, Offredi & Langridge’s ‘Mr. Nobody’ reveals what happens when the distant reincarnation of galactic terror Shogalath is renditioned and tried for his crimes against the Vandos Imperium. Thankfully, as a (self-appointed) “Legal Representative of the Hyper-Temporal Magistrate Authority” the Doctor is glad to butt in and defend janitor Phil Tyson, but amidst all the shooting that ensues it soon seems not everyone is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but…

It can’t be British time travel without a dash of Shakespeare, so closing comic conundrum ‘A Groatsworth of Wit’ – by Gareth Roberts, Collins, Roach, Offredi & Langridge from DWM #363-364 – exposes infernal forces bolstering and supporting the Bard’s spite-riven rival Robert Greene and how the subtle sponsorship of malign extra-dimensional “Shadeys” Bloodfinger and Woodscrape affects London four centuries later. The apparent cause is Greene arriving to see who was more famous in modern times and unleashing hell when the answer does not suit him…

Cue the Doctor and Rose drawn to an escalating conflagration as Greene’s tantrum shatters barriers and allows a brace of malign monsters access to everything humans, Of course the Gallivanting Gallifreyan has a few special effects and plot twists up his leather jacket sleeve, so all’s well that ends well for most players involved, but only after a most expedient trip to the olde Globe Theatre and crucial chinwag with the upstart crow himself…

Closing the entertainment portion of the tome is a winning illustrated prose yarn by future showrunner Steven Moffat, captivatingly augmented with pictures from Martin Geraghty. ‘What I Did on My Summer Holidays By Sally Sparrow’ also originated in The Doctor Who Annual 2006 and describes how a vacationing 12-year-old schoolgirl diligently extracts the Time Lord from a most precarious trap, all thanks to a box of old photographs and rampant nostalgia…

Moving on to education and elucidation the prodigious Commentary section begins with editor Clayton Hickman detailing how Eccleston & Billie Piper made a complicated leap to the printed page in ‘Fantastic Journey – Inside the Ninth Doctor Comic Strips’, augmented by development art by Mike Collins. That’s followed by specific story notes by the individual scripters and illustrators for ‘The Love Invasion’, ‘Art Attack’, ‘The Cruel Sea’, ‘Mr Nobody’, ‘A Groatsworth of Wit’ and ‘What I Did on My Summer Holidays by Sally Sparrow’: all supplemented by roughs, sketches, designs and page layout from Collins and Ross.

This rocket-paced rollercoaster ride introduces and – signs off – the Ninth Doctor in splendid style, and dedicated fans can find wealth of new stories in later publishers’ outputs. None of which is relevant if all you want is a darn good read. Every creator involved here managed the ultimate “Ask” of any strip creator: to deliver engaging, thrilling, fun yarns equally enjoyable for the merest beginner and most slavishly addicted fan.

We all have our little joys and hidden passions. Sometimes they overlap and magic is made. These are superb tales of an undeniable bulwark of British Fantasy and if you’re a fan of only one medium of expression, they might make you an addict to others. The Cruel Sea is a fabulous book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for show devotees and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our art-form to anyone minded to give comics another go.

If only someone would get around to getting these tales digitised…
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv. Doctor Who logo © BBC 2013. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. © Published 2014 by Panini Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.

Today in 1933, London born US cartoonist Ashleigh (Pot-Shots) Brilliant & Argentine comic book wizard José Delbo (Mighty Samson, Wonder Woman, Transformers, Superman, Batman) were born. No relation we assume. In 1959 this date, pioneering strip cartoonist Gene Carr died as did Green Lantern originator Martin Nodell in 2006.

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Man-Thing Marvel Masterworks volume 1


By Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Val Mayerik, Gray Morrow, Rich Buckler, John Buscema, Neal Adams, Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, Jim Mooney, Frank Bolle, Chic Stone, Frank McLaughlin, Sal Trapani, Joe Sinnott, Frank Brunner, Mike Ploog & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5547-2 (HB/digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes some Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and literary effect.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless, Remorseless, Evergreen Scary Stuff to Make You Think… 9/10

At the end of the 1960s American comic books were in turmoil, much like the youth of the nation they targeted. Superheroes had dominated for much of the decade; peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Older genres such as horror, westerns and science fiction returned, fed by radical trends in movie-making, where the kids who had grown up with Marvel now fulfilled the bulk of their young adult entertainment needs.

Inspiration isn’t everything. In fact as Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in the wake of the losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties. The only real exception to this was the hasty hyper-generation of multiple horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in super-hero sales – a move vastly expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

The switch to supernatural stars had many benefits. Crucially it brought a new readership to Marvel comics, one attuned to the global revival in spiritualism, Satanism and all things sinisterly spooky. Almost as important, it gave the reprint-crazy company an opportunity to finally recycle old 1950s horror stories that had been rendered unprintable and useless since the Code’s inception in 1954.

A scant 15 years later the Comics Code prohibition against horror was hastily rewritten – amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics – and scary comics came back in a big way with a new crop of supernatural heroes and monsters popping up on the newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving mystery men titles. In fact lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an en masse creation of horror titles (both new characters and reprints from the massive boom of the early 1950s) that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to (temporarily, at least) bite the dust.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (and narcotics – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare on four-colour pages and whilst a parade of pre-code reprints made sound business sense, the creative aspect of the contemporary buzz for bizarre themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public. As always in entertainment, the watch-world was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible.

The first fan-sensation of the modern era, (now officially enshrined as the Bronze Age of US comic books) Swamp Thing had powerful popular fiction antecedents and in 1972 it was seemingly a concept whose time had come again. Prime evidence was the fact that Marvel were also working on a man-into-mucky, muddy mess character at the very same time. Both Swampy and the Macabre Man-Thing were thematic revisions of Theodore Sturgeon’s classic novella It, and bore notable resemblances to a hugely popular Hillman Comics star dubbed The Heap.

He/it sloshed through the back of Airboy Comics (née Air Fighters Comics) from 1943 until the end of the Golden Age, and my fanboy radar suspects Roy Thomas’ marsh-monster The Glob (Incredible Hulk #121-November 1969 & #129-June 1970) either inspired both DC and Marvel’s creative teams, or was part of that same zeitgeist. It must also be remembered that in the autumn of 1971 Skywald – a very minor player with big aspirations – released a monochrome magazine in their Warren knock-off line entitled The Heap.

For whatever reason, by the end of the 1960s superhero comics were in another steep sales decline, again succumbing to a genre boom led by a horror/mystery resurgence. A swift rewriting of the Comics Code Authority augmented the changeover and at National/DC, veteran EC comics star Joe Orlando became editor of House of Mystery and sister title House of Secrets. These were short story anthologies embracing gothic mystery scenarios, taking their lead from TV triumphs like Twilight Zone and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, but a horror themed lead meant a focus on character not plot, tragedy and empathy over twist endings and most precious of all, continuity…

No one was expecting satire and social commentary but that came along for the ride too!

Remarkably soon after the Comics Code prohibition against horror being amended, scary comics returned in force and a fresh crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began appearing on newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving Fights ‘n’ Tights titles.

In fact, the lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an avalanche of horror titles in response to the industry-wide downturn in superhero sales, that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to – albeit temporarily – bite the dust.

When proto-horror Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover-dated October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of shocking superstars. They began with a traditional werewolf and a vampire before chancing something new: a haunted biker who tapped into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the prevailing supernatural zeitgeist: the all-new Ghost Rider (in Marvel Spotlight #5, August 1972). He had been preceded by western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the aforementioned Werewolf by Night in #2-4. From these beginnings spooky floodgates opened to such an extent there was even room for non-white stars like The Living Mummy and ultimately today’s star turn…

This quirky compendium collects the earliest exploits of Marvel’s muck monster, and not at all coincidentally traces the rise of a unique comics voice. Steve Gerber was a sublimely gifted writer with a ferocious social conscience who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with dark irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed cultural criticism, a barely reigned-in imagination and boundless bizarre surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties as thinly veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity. Via material from Savage Tales #1, Astonishing Tales, #12-13, Adventure into Fear #10-19, The Man-Thing #1 & Marvel Two-In-One #1 (communally spanning May 1971 to January 1974) we’ll see how Marvel increasing became the voice of a lost and dissatisfied liberality…

The revolution begins after an erudite Introduction by authorial everyman Steve Orlando (Scarlet Witch, Wonder Woman, Ben 10, Heavy Metal Magazine), before we trudge back to very different times and the beginning of a new kind of comics experience and Marvel’s continued experiments with the monochrome, mature reader marketplace…

Ranged amidst the grittier-than-usual adult-oriented material (that meant partial nudity and more explicit violence back then) Savage Tales #1 (cover-dated May 1971) was a mixed bag of sword & sorcery, sci fi, crime and horror stories featuring Conan, Ka-Zar and more. That line-up included a powerfully enthralling horror yarn entitled ‘Man Thing!’ Scripted by Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas, it offered a fairly traditional spooky story elevated to sublime heights by Gray Morrow’s artwork. It related how government biochemist Ted Sallis was hiding out in the swamps whilst finishing a new/recreated iteration of the much-prized Super-soldier formula that had created Captain America…

Sadly, his live-in lover Ellen is an agent for the opposition and when she and her minions made a play for the formula, Ted is wounded and flees into the murky mire. To preserve the only sample of his life’s work, the desperate, possibly dying boffin injects himself with it… and the bog mingles with the mix to spawn something tragic and uncanny…

Barely conscious or sentient, a shambling muck-monster emerges, apparently set on justice or vengeance…

Savage Tales was not a success and who knows how many manic Marvelites actually saw the anthology, but creators are stubborn brutes who can’t let things lie, so some months later the muck monster shambled back via a tenuous mainstream comic book connection…

Cover-dated June 1972, Astonishing Tales #12 sees the Savage Land’s self-appointed Sovereign Ka-Zar – and morphologically unsubstantiated primaeval saber-cat Zabu – abruptly relocating to Florida in pursuit of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Barbra “Bobbi” Morse only to find that ‘Terror Stalks the Everglades!’ Here Thomas, John Buscema & Dan Adkins deftly recast the Jungle King as a freelance “consultant” for the superspy network, assisting aging biologist Dr. Wilma Calvin – who just happens to be Morse’s mentor – in tracking down a missing scientist named Ted Sallis.

What Ka-Zar doesn’t know is that the project all of them are working on is the recreation of the super-soldier serum that created Captain America and what nobody (technically) alive knows is that Sallis succeeded before he vanished. However, when Advanced Idea Mechanic agents tried to steal it. Sallis had injected himself and the chemicals reacted with the swamp’s magical energies to create a mindless shambling monster.

Readers are clued in thanks to a lovely unused interlude intended for Savage Tales #2, with Wein & Neal Adams providing a chilling recap sequence detailing the macabre Man-Thing’s previous relationship with Calvin, before back in the now, AIM attacks, trapping Ka-Zar with the bog-beast…

In AT #13 (Thomas, J. Buscema, Rich Buckler & Adkins), the mystery grows as the Jungle Lord escapes the ‘Man-Thing!’ to focus on the real monsters, subsequently routing out a traitor and defeating AIM… for now. With the attention-grabbing overlap with mainstream Marvel done for the moment the path was clear if muddy for a new horror hero to forge ahead, but what was needed was the right tone of voice…

Steve Gerber was a uniquely gifted writer who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with dark irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed socio-cultural criticism, a barely reigned-in imagination and boundless bizarre surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties as thinly veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity. With Man-Thing he held up a peculiarly scummy mirror to many cordoned-off and taboo subjects and made history – and enemies – over and over again. However before him, Conway & Morrow returned, aided by Howard Chaykin as the bog beast won its own series, beginning in (Adventure into) Fear #10. Cover-dated October 1972, ‘Man Thing!’ (Say it again! Again!) saw the monster defy all odds to return an abandoned baby to a daddy who just did not want him… and would not take no for an answer…

After that conceptual interlude Gerber, Buckler & Jim Mooney opened an extended mystic parable in Fear #11 on the ‘Night of the Nether-Spawn!’ Gerber’s take was that the beast was empathic and all-but-mindless, reacting and responding to those in its vicinity, but having practically no personal volition. Here that relationship draws in teenagers Jennifer Kale and her little brother Andy who are about to get into all sorts of trouble because they stole something from their grandpa. Sadly, when you play with a magical tome belonging to an ancient cult, handed down over eons to the latest in a long line of guardian wizards, sinister stuff is likely to happen…

The upshot is that a demonic force comes looking for little Miss Kale and its evil emanations make it a painful intrusion the maddened muck monster cannot abide. With diabolical Thog the Nether-Spawn thus preoccupied battling the bonkers bog-brute all through small-town Citrusville, Andy & Jennifer are free to try to fix what they broke. All appearances and happy endings to the contrary, it’s too little, too late…

The nation’s racial tensions boiled over into Fear #12 as Gerber, Jim Starlin & Buckler discovered ‘No Choice of Colors!’ after the moss-heap slurped into a far-too-personal vendetta linking racist white sheriff Wallace Corlee and fugitive black murder suspect Mark Jackson. After initially and instinctively saving the wounded runner, Man-Thing is helpless against the literally paralysing hatred of both men: one condemned for loving the wrong shade of woman and the just other happy to have a legal reason to kill another “coloured man”…

Only after one of the enraged obsessives is no more can the swamp beast freely act against the other…

In #13, Val Mayerik begins his fruitful association with the series as – inked by Frank Bolle – ‘Where Worlds Collide!’ finds Gerber in universe-building mode: introducing Jennifer Kale’s Grandpa Joshua as high priest of a cult that has thrived secretly since Atlantis sank beneath the waves. They have safeguarded the world for eons, handing down the sacred Tome of Zhered-Na, but now Jennifer’s meddling as she innocently answered the call of her heritage has opened a portal to infernal terror that begins by taking Jen’s not-boyfriend Jaxon and opening pathways to devil-infested dimensions. When the Man-Thing follows, he finds a place where Ted Sallis is made manifest again and where Thog offers to make it permanent if the human will betray his world…

Ted’s violent refusal coincides with Joshua and the grandkids showing up and, in the flush of frantic battle and escape to consensus reality, the Kales discover Jennifer’s uncanny link to the mindless (again) monster…

Veteran Chic Stone inks #14’s ‘The Demon Plague!’ as, all over America, hate and insanity blossom. Everywhere, humans attack those nearest, dearest or even largely indifferent to them; and the deluge of violence even affects the wildlife in Florida’s swamps with Man-Thing pitilessly assaulted by everything that walks or hops or crawls or swims…

Joshua Kale soon determines that the not properly sealed dimensional portal is permitting demons to pass and possess mortals, and convenes a cult ceremony to close it from within the swamp – which just happens to be the Nexus of All Realities…

Despite best efforts the ritual goes awry and, curiously spying on them, Jennifer and the bog-beast are abducted from existence by a major mage dubbed Dakimh the Enchanter. Forced into gladiatorial actions to retain the sacred tome that only Jennifer knows no longer exists, everybody underestimates the shambling compost heap with flamethrower hands, and the Earthlings are promptly returned without giving away any more arcane secrets…

With Frank McLaughkin as guest inker this time, Gerber & Mayerik probe ‘From Here to Infinity!’ in Fear #15. With chaos gripping the entire planet, the Man-Thing seemingly killed by invading demons and no sacred tome to consult, Joshua Kale visits ancient Atlantis, seeing how mystic Zhered-Na personally dealt with the last such incursion, learning of an eternal war between divine realms – shining Therea and dark Sominus…

As the current cult leader views how his inspiration met her end, elsewhere Dakimh recruits promising potential sorceress Jennifer, revives the bog-beast and takes them both an a trans-dimensional voyage to save reality and stop the sorcerous shooting war…cat least for now and at the cost of the link to the swamp totem…

Abruptly switching tack and tone, Fear #16 ‘Cry of the Native!’ (inked by Sal Trapani) explores themes of Native American rights, ecological barbarism and callous capitalism run amok, when developer F A Schist attempts to drain the swamp and relocate its Indian occupants to facilitate his new airport complex. Complex issues of new jobs versus already broken treaties and promises lead to sabotage, riots and civil unrest, but what concerns the Kales most is how the disruption might affect the shaky barriers holding back the hungry hordes of Sominus…

This time, however, simply human pride, greed, bigotry and love of violence – all agonising felt by mindless, empathic Man-Thing – is enough to spark riot and butchery, and stall the project. In the aftermath (and with Trapani sticking around as inker) #17’s ‘It Came Out of the Sky!’ offers dark, wry parody as the bog-beast curiously opens a long-submerged space capsule buried in the hidden mire. Within is a super-powered baby sent from a world believed by one scientist/loving father to be on the imminent edge of extinction due to environmental collapse…

The capsule had fed and sustained the godlike being within for 22 years, but when Wundarr emerged to immediately imprint on the Man-Thing, nothing could convince the educationally and emotionally challenged – and fully-grown – waif that the unthinking moss-mass was not his mother. The rejection and indifference proved unbearable and the violent tantrums that resulted almost destroy the airport construction site and Citrusville…

The story notionally carries over into debuting superhero team-up book Marvel Two-In-One #1 (cover-dated January 1974) where, after a desert clash with Thanos, Fantastic Four stalwart Ben Grimm accidentally and improbably ends up in Florida for the premier issue of his own title. Crafted by Gerber, Gil Kane & Joe Sinnott, the ‘Vengeance of the Molecule Man!’ sees The Thing learn some horrifying home truths about what constitutes being a monster when battling with and beside ghastly, grotesque anti-hero Man-Thing after the essence of the reality-warping villain starts possessing bodies in the swamps

Back in Fear #18, Gerber, Mayerik & Trapani resume straight terror tropes and real-world controversy in ‘A Question of Survival!’ as a bus load of ordinary people and a drunk driver catastrophically intersect on a highway through the Everglades. Drawn to the emotional turmoil, the mire monster becomes unwilling witness and unintentional guide as the survivors learn about each other (this at a time when women and minorities were still legally second-class citizens, and pacifists & warhawks violently clashed over Vietnam) whilst trekking back to civilisation and medical treatment. Sadly, one of them really needs to be the only survivor and is not averse to more killing…

The series truly hit its innovative stride with its final appearance in (Adventure into) Fear #19 – cover-dated December 1973 – wherein Thog makes his grand move to conquer all realities and destroy the benign over-gods of Therea. That’s when Jennifer Kale officially becomes ‘The Enchanter’s Apprentice!’ (Gerber, Mayerik & Trapani) and joins another trans-planar trek as the formerly regulated realms of existence begin to collide, clash and combine. First task is to gather the heroes needful to the task and her far-from-united party rapidly expands to include tutor Dakimh, the mindless Man-Thing, a burly barbarian (Korrek, Warrior Prince of Katharta!) and a brusquely cynical talking mallard who calls himself Howard…

Hounded by Thog’s forces, their task is to traverse the twisting paths of existence and save the gods with the chase leading directly into The Man-Thing #1 (January 1974) and a world-shattering ‘Battle for the Palace of the Gods!’ Along the way, Howard is an early casualty, lost in a plunge through cascading universes and the chaos even briefly encompasses baffled heroes Daredevil and Black Widow; and all seems lost when the malign Congress of Realities smashes into seemingly undefended Therea. However, there are forces at play that are beyond even demons and devils, and the mysterious Man-Thing is their unknowing yet willing tool; and ultimately realties are rebalanced and life goes on…

With covers by John Buscema, Buckler, Morrow, Adams, Starlin, Kane, John Romita Snr., Alan Weiss, Frank Brunner, Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, Herb Trimpe & Ernie Chan, the extras in this moody tome of terror and extrospection also include – from November 1970 – Thomas’ original plot for the short story in Savage Tales #1; an original grey-toned art page by Morrow; more by Buscema & Adkins, Buckler, Mooney, Weiss, Brunner, Mayerik & McLaughlin. For your perusal, Gerber’s plot for Fear #16 follows, with lettering notes and Brunner’s cover for #17. More original art includes Romita’s cover for #18 plus interior art by Mayerik & Trapani. The cover art for #19 by Kane & Chan opens another gallery before segueing into house ads, Adams’ cover for Monsters Unleashed #3 and a cover gallery for reprint title Book of the Dead #1-3 (1993-1994) by Tennyson Smith & Morrow, and Ariel Olivetti’s cover to the 2012 Man-Thing Omnibus.

We – me especially – apply the terms milestone, landmark and groundbreaking as guarantors of quality that change the way comics are perceived and even created. It has never been more true or accurate than with these game-changing, socially aware horror yarns. These are stories you must not miss…
© 2024 MARVEL.

Today in 1894 the magnificent Elzie Segar was born. Go read some Popeye or even Thimble Theatre if you can find it.

In 1980 Berke Breathed chose the day to begin his almost-as-magnificent Bloom County strip, as we last saw in Bloom County: Real, Classy, & Compleat 1980-1989. Some of that last factoid is made up by me, but it could have happened…

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years Volume Nine


By Gaylord DuBois & Jesse Marsh (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-649-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Primal fantasy Adventure… 8/10

I don’t know an awful lot about Jesse Marsh, other than that he was born on 27th July 1907 and died far too young: on April 28th 1966 from diabetic complications at the height of a TV Tarzan revival he was in large part responsible for. What I do know, however, is that to my unformed, pre-fanboy, kid’s mentality, his drawings were somehow better than most of the other artists and that every other kid who read comics in my school disagreed with me.

There’s a phrase we used at 2000 AD that summed it up: “Artist’s artist”, which usually meant someone whose fan-mail divided equally into fanatical raves and bile-filled hate-mail. It seems there are some makers of comic strips that many readers simply don’t get.

It isn’t about the basic principles or artistic quality or even anything tangible – although you’ll hear some cracking justifications: “I don’t like his feet” (presumably the way he draws them) and “it just creeps me out” being my two favourites. Never forget in the 1980s DC were told by the Comics Code Authority that Kevin O’Neill’s entire style and manner of Drawing was unacceptable to American readers!

I got Jesse Marsh. He was another Disney animator (beginning in 1939) who moved sideways – in 1945 – to become a full-time narrative illustrator for the studio’s comic book licensee Whitman Publishing. Marsh never looked back and became the go-to guy for other ERB adaptations such as John Carter of Mars.

Situated on the West Coast, Western’s Dell/Gold Key imprints rivalled DC and Marvel at the height of their powers, and the licensee famously never capitulated to the wave of anti-comics hysteria that resulted in the crippling self-censorship of the 1950s. No Dell Comics ever displayed a Comics Code Authority symbol on the cover – they never needed to…

Marsh jobbed around adapted movie properties – mostly westerns like Gene Autry – until 1948 when Dell introduced the first all-new Tarzan comic book. The newspaper strip had run since 1929 and all previous funnybook releases had featured expurgated and modified reprints of those adventures. That all changed with Dell Four Color Comic #134 (February 1947) which featured a lengthy, captivating tale of the Ape-Man scripted by Robert P. Thompson, who also wrote both the Tarzan radio show and the aforementioned syndicated strip (as you can see in Tarzan and the Adventurers).

The comic was very much in the Burroughs tradition: John Clayton, Lord Greystoke and his friend Paul D’Arnot aid a young woman in rescuing her lost father from a hidden tribe ruled over by a monster. The engrossing yarn was made magical by the simple, underplayed magic of a heavy brush line and absolutely unmatched design sense. Marsh was unique in the way he positioned characters in space, using primitivist forms and hidden shapes to augment his backgrounds, and as the man was a fanatical researcher, his trees, rocks, and constructions were 100% accurate. His animals and natives, especially children and women, were all distinct and recognisable; not the blacked-up stock figures in grass skirts even the greatest artists so often resorted to.

He also knew when to draw big and draw small: the internal dynamism of his work is spellbinding. His Africa became mine, and of course the try-out comic book was an instant hit. Marsh and Thompson’s Tarzan returned with two tales in Dell Four Color Comic #161, cover-dated August 1947. This was a remarkable feat: Four Colour was a catch-all title showcasing in rotation literally hundreds of different licensed properties, often as many as ten separate issues per month. So rapid a return engagement meant pretty solid sales figures…

Bolstered by a healthy and extremely popular film franchise and those comics strips, within six months, bimonthly Tarzan #1 was released (January/February 1948). It was a swansong for Thompson, but another unforgettable classic for Marsh – and the first of an unbroken run that would last until 1965: over 150 consecutive issues. Moreover there were also spin-offs featuring other ERB character adaptations and gigantic specials like the Annual that opens this collected volume.

Prior to that, the collection – reprinting material from 1953 from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan #44-46 and monumental bonus book Tarzan’s Jungle Annual #2 – opens with Foreword ‘Looking for Jesse Marsh’: a heartfelt appreciation and appraisal of the secretive genius by publisher Dan Nadel, packed with information about the enigmatic master. Then, cover-dated August 1953 and on sale from 16th July, that colossal bonus book delivers a painted cover by Morris Gollub (not featuring then current big screen Tarzan Lex Barker) in advance of a beguiling trip to an Africa that never was…

A monochrome Jungle World frontispiece revels in an idyllic quiet moment for the Ape-Man and faithful pachyderm pal Tantor, before main event ‘Tarzan in the Valley of Towers’ transports the Jungle Lord and pilot/scientist Professor Alexander MacWhirtle to a distant unexplored region in aid of a girl who sent a plea for help in a tiny parachute woven from spider-webs…

As always this yarn (and everything else including puzzles) was written by Gaylord DuBois. Editor and prolific scripter (Lone Ranger, Lost in Space, Turok, Son of Stone, Brothers of the Spear and many more) he was Marsh’s creative collaborator for nearly 20 years.

Flying into the great desert, Tarzan and “Professor Mac” soon find Heather Day laid out as a sacrifice on a towering limestone altar, left for giant carnivorous bats by debased humans who have turned themselves into flying/gliding predators in their image. The battle to overthrow the petty tyrants of the sky takes them from the highest peaks to deepest subterranean depths, but inevitably Tarzan triumphs and returns Hearther to the outer world.

Back then, entertainment was full on and informative, so this Annual was packed with fact and activity features. First up, and still all Marsh in vision, is potted travelogue ‘Jungle Trails’ augmented by a simple method for ‘Making Maps’ and a clever rebus message from Tarzan to his ‘Jungle Village’. Then it’s back to action as ‘Tarzan and the Cannibals of Kando-Mor’ finds the Ape-Man and his Waziri friend Chief Muviro traversing the fearsome Great Swamp when the party is captured by man-eating men. Their escape brings the wanders fully into Burroughs’ rich fantasy-scape as they discover another isolated and embattled outpost of lost land Pal-Ul-Don (introduced in 8th novel Tarzan the Terrible) and befriend the buffalo-worshipping Gallugos. The event is quite timely as the ever-encroaching cannibals have almost completed their extended scheme to eliminate the cow-lovers…

Almost…

Illustrated sheet music provides long-distance lessons for ‘Dancing Feet’ to cavort at a ‘Moonlight Marriage’ ceremony, whilst ‘Happy Warrior’ shares the secrets of kite-making before ‘Boy Stands by a Friend’ offers another intimate peek at the formative years of Greystoke’s African family when Boy – later called Korak – and ape pal Zorok stow away on a riverboat and nearly end up as zoo exhibits. ‘Letters from Boy’ to the readers feature next, as ‘Jungle Hunt’ details how to make an inner tube popgun and water canteens, prior to an adventure with elephants as ‘The Troubles of Tantor’ seen the herd patriarch go to extraordinary lengths to rescue wayward calves captured by angry farmers.

Picture essays detail the secrets of MacWhirtle’s plane and the domain of dinosaurs in ‘Boys Air Adventure to the Valley of Monsters’ after which a touch of old-fashioned racial profiling describes native characteristics in ‘Jungle Tribes’ and ‘Jungle Woman’ before embracing romance as final story ‘Tarzan Trails the Brothers of the Barracuda’ sees the Ape-Man reunite shipwrecked and separated young lovers by hunting down the slave traders who have seized and sought to sell her…

Wrapping up with a load of lexicons, ‘Jungle Language: Swahili-English’ and ‘Jungle Language: Ape-English’ provides illustrated dictionaries that come in handy for the puzzle pages and crossword, before monochrome endpiece ‘Jungle World’ explores the violent existence of bugs and minibeasts.

Cover-dated May 1953, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan #44 sees the Jungle Lord enjoying a quiet ride over vast hidden Pal-Ul-Don on his giant eagle Argus when he saves a tiny shepherd from a vulture as big as the mighty raptor Tarzan rides. In ‘Tarzan and the Little Spearmen’ this good deed soon sours. Coro of Saparta is grateful and desperate and happy in turn as the benevolent giant and his equally immense pal Muviro hunt down the ferocious carrion feeders who find living little people more tasty than corpses. Sadly, the interaction sparks civil war between the farming fraternity and now-unemployed spearman clan who used to defend them, especially after Tarzan teaches them the high-tech marvel of archery…

Pathos and nostalgia hit hard in second saga ‘Tarzan and the Strange Balu’ as a she-ape finds a human baby and replaces her own dead newborn with him. Poor, grieving Kalahari will not surrender the infant, leaving the Ape-Man in a double bind: finding the child’s real family and saving the mother surrogate from heartbreak…

The task is made even harder but more gratifying when Tarzan discovers vile slavers have been transporting a white woman to market…

The issue ends with a stunning pinup of Argus and a GIANT-giant vulture and contemporary house ad before ERBT #45 (June 1953) opens with ‘Tarzan and the Haunted Plantations’ wherein the Ape-Man visits old friend Chief Buto and learns his warrior comrade is plagued by devils and ghosts. A little careful investigation then reveals the fields where his people hire out as croppers are coveted by a bandit with knowledge of unexploited resources beneath that fruitful dirt, and Razan devises a sneaky scheme…

‘Boy and the Shamba Raider’ again focuses on the exploits of Korak-to-come as the kid and his pal Dombie take executive action to trap rogue water buffalo raiding crops and attacking workers. They wouldn’t have had to if the adult warriors had listened to them in the first place…

Epic fantasy follows in ‘Tarzan Returns to Cathne’ when the Jungle Man and Waziri’s Pal-Ul-Don explorations bring them into conflict with sabretooth tigers attacking the war-lions of Queen Elaine of Cathne. The staunch friend and ally is a fugitive now as her husband King Jathon is gone and usurper Timon rules. The madman is unstoppable and seeks to conquer sister city Athne, but Tarzan has other ideas and the wits to implement them…

The issues closes with another house ad and ‘Tarzan’s World’ pinup of the Dangina (Cape Hunting Dog) before we segue into final entry Tarzan #46 .

Dated July 1953 it begins with ‘Tarzan Defends a City’ as the Ape-Man and not-dead Jathon (surprise!) trek back to Cathne with super-colossal war lion Goliath, only to find the citadel under siege by crocodile-riding Terribs from the Great Swamp. Things look bleak until the Gallugos – freshly fled from the cannibal Kando-Mors – arrive and turn the muddy tide. All they want in return is land to build their new city…

Back in regular Africa, ‘Boy Faces the Fangs of the Mamba’ after Matusi witchdoctor Ungali – having failed to kill Tarzan – frames his annoying spawn Boy for theft and orchestrates a lethal trial by snake. Sadly for the villain, Ape-Man arrives just in time…

This titanic tome terminates with whimsical mystery ‘Tarzan and the Treasure of the Apes’ as brutal unscrupulous white hunters discover the great apes dubbed “mangani” are all bedecked in priceless jewels. Ruthlessly stalking the vain bedazzled beasts the safari killers even manage to wound Tarzan, before he convinces the apes to surrender their “pretty stones” in favour of something better: something edible.

The Jungle King then delivers a unique judgement that might not look like justice but truly is nothing but…

Although these are tales from a far-off, simpler time they have lost none of their passion, inclusivity and charm, whilst the artistic virtuosity of Jesse Marsh looks better than ever. Perhaps this time a few more people will “get” him…
Edgar Rice Burroughs® Tarzan®: The Jesse Marsh Years volume 9 © 1953, 2011, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. Tarzan ® Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. All rights reserved.

In 1952 Jack of all comics trades Keith Giffen was born. We haven’t reviewed Ambush Bug, Legion of Super-Heroes or his Doom Patrol yet, so why not recall gleeful glory days with Justice League International volume 1?

In 1978 screen writer and comics luminary Robert Kirkman was born. You probably know him best for Walking Dead volume 1: Days Gone Bye.

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


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

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Sludge! – 60th Anniversary edition


By E. George Cowan, Bill Lacey, Earnest “Ted” Kearon, with Geoff Campion & various (Rebellon Studios/ treasury of British Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-83786-520-8 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Murkily Macabre Merriment for All… 8/10

British comics always enjoyed an extended love affair with what can only be described as “unconventional” (for which substitute “bizarre” or “creepy”) stars. So many notional role models we grew up reading were outrageous or just plain “off”: self-righteous voyeur/vigilantes like Jason Hyde, sinister foreign masterminds like The Dwarf or Black Max, affable criminals such as Charley Peace, arrogant ex-criminals like The Spider or outright racist Overmen like manic white ideologue Captain Hurricane…

Prior to game changers Action, 2000AD and Misty, our comics fell into fairly ironclad categories. Back then, you had genial and/or fantastic preschool fantasy; many, many licensed entertainment properties; action; adventure; war (especially ones “We” were in or had started); school dramas; sports and straight comedy strands. Closer examination could confirm that there was always a subversive merging, mixing undertone, especially anarchic antiheroes like Dennis the Menace or our rather strained interpretation of costumed crime-busters. Just check out Phantom Viking, Kelly’s Eye or early Steel Claw stories…

Following post-war austerity, the otherwise bleak and restricted 1950s ushered in a comics revolution. With the UK’s printing and paper restrictions gone, a steady stream of titles emerged from companies new and old, aimed at different levels of childish attainment from pre-school to young adult. In April 1950, when Hulton Press launched Eagle the very concept of what weeklies could be changed. However, that oversized prestige package with luxurious photogravure colour was expensive, and beyond the reach of many kids. So, when London’s publishing powerhouse Amalgamated Press retaliated, it was with a far more economical affair. I’m assuming AP only waited so long before the first issue of Lion launched (cover-dated February 23rd 1952) to see if their flashy rival was going to last.

Just like Eagle, Lion mixed prose stories, features and comic strips. It even offered its own cover-featured interstellar-hero: Captain Condor – Space Ship Pilot. Initially edited by Reg Eves, Lion’s 1156 weekly issues ran until 18th May 1974, when it merged with sister-title Valiant. Along the way, as British comics always had, it subsumed weaker-selling titles to keep popular strips going. Like the sticky star featured here, Lion had absorbed Sun in 1959 and Champion in 1966; going on to acquire and ultimately swallow Eagle in April 1969. The result merged with Thunder in 1971. In its capacity as one of the country’s most popular and enduring adventure comics, the last vestiges of Lion finally vanished in 1976 when its devourer Valiant was amalgamated with Battle Picture Weekly.

Despite its mid-70s demise, there were 30 Lion Annuals between 1953 -1982, all targeting the lucrative Christmas market, combining a broad variety of original strips with topical and historical prose adventures; sports, science and general interest features; short humour strips and – increasingly in the 1970s – reformatted reprints from IPC/Fleetway’s vast back catalogue. Originally presenting a cosy façade of genial comedic antics or school follies, cheery cowboys, staunch soldiery and moonlighting light entertainment stars, before long there lurked behind and below the surface dark, often utterly deranged fantasy fare. These included marauding monsters and uncanny events upsetting our comfy status quo. Perhaps it was all just a national shared psychosis triggered by war, rationing, and nightly bombing; never forget that we also smugly rejoiced in NO SUCCESSFUL INVASION SINCE 1066, DAMMIT!

Over and again British oddness would combine with or react to long-standing familiarity with soft oppression, leading to sagas of overwhelming, imminent conquest and worse. With our benighted shores existentially threatened, entertainment sources responded with a procession of doughty resistors facing down doom from the deepest depths of perfidy and menace… especially as churned up by the scary results of foolish modern SCIENCE!

Thanks to economic vagaries and spiralling costs in publishing, the mid 1960s and early 1970s were particularly wild and desperate for comics: inspiring a wave of innovation most fondly remembered for more of those aforementioned darkly off-kilter heroes, beguiling monsters and charismatic villains.

The Sludge pretty much set a blueprint for all that…

Gathering serialised episodes from Lion 13th February to 12th June 1965, material from Lion Annual 1967, and Lion 20th December 1969 – 16th May 1970, this compilation delivers fantastic threats and menaces in a traditional weekly manner, as a pair of doughty white blokes lead humanity’s resistance to an uncanny doomsday scenario. As usual for the context of these times, atomic energy was the initial culprit of all those woes, never depicted with more pant-wettingly oppressive doom zeitgeist than right here…

‘The Sludge’ began its inexplicably vehement war against humanity in glamourous exotic Canada, created by prolific E. – for Edward – George Cowan (Ginger Nutt, The Spider, Saber, King of the Jungle, Smokeman/UFO Agent, Nick Jolly the Flying Highwayman, Paddy Payne, Girls’ Crystal Libraries) with the spooky dramas visually unfolding thanks to Bill Lacey (1917-2000). Back then, he was pretty much The benchmark indicator of a strip’s veracity and a gifted master of easy authenticity able to make the strangest concepts readily accessible. Lacey began his commercial art career as a technical illustrator for the Ministry of Aircraft before segueing neatly into comics.

At Amalgamated Press/ Fleetway he worked on prestigious Mickey Mouse Weekly, Look and Learn, Cowboy Comics Library, Super Detective Library, Battle Picture Weekly, Valiant and a bunch of Lion strips including Mytek the Mighty, Whirlpool of Weed, Sinister Island, Rat Pack and Rick Random, before widening his brief with DC Thomson gigs including Tasker, The Wilde Boys and Q-Bikes.

Back in Canada, an atomic test somehow leads to luxury liner Atlanta being boarded in mid-ocean by something shiny, sticky and incomprehensible. Hours later the utterly deserted off-course, radio-silent vessel smashes into Montreal harbour after neatly avoiding every tug and other maritime measure deployed to stop or at least slow her down. Among those watching are reporter Bill Hanley and cameraman Rick Slade, who notice that the colossal ship seems to be displaying cold, malignant eyes on its sticky, shiny hull…

Nobody listens at first, but eventually as sightings of a man-like mass moving across the city tie-in to inanimate objects – like cargo crates, cars, suspension bridges and air force fighter planes – moving on their own and attacking any human they can reach, Hanley & Slade -always on the thing’s trail – formulate a theory…

Sadly, facts are hard to corroborate. What they do know is that a self-propelled glowing blob makes everyday objects kill people. Also, when this “Sludge” vacates its current host, the solid object dissolves into goo and powder…

From there on it’s a frantic chase across the continent as newsmen chase monster and local authorities try something else to stop the inimical phenomenon. Eventually, Bill realises two things: it’s attracted to all power sources – electrical engines, oil refineries, atomic power stations – and has somehow made the reporters its prime targets for obliteration…

After weeks of spectacular set pieces and hairsbreadth escapes the end comes in traditional manner when the media men discover an unsuspected vulnerability and humanity exploits it to the full. Of course, this B-movie had a sequel in the works…

That came in full painted colour and Lion Annual 1967 where The Return of the Sludge’ sees the tiniest smidgeon of atomic goo gradually rebuild itself for another cataclysmic death spree, enhanced by the fact that it has developed immunity to its personal brand of Kryptonite…

Thankfully Bill & Rick are on the ball and on the case by the time it graduates from buses to an atomic submarine, so humanity can breathe easy again…

Next comes a rare UK comics team-up/crossover. You might want to check out Robot Archie and the World of the Future please link to 13th November 2025 before tackling this, but be assured there are plenty of cues to catch you up if that’s too long to wait. Running in Lion from 20th December 1969 – 31st January 1970, ‘Robot Archie vs The Sludge’ saw the periodical’s most popular, long-lived star testing his hard-wired wits and mechanical might against the undying goop with veteran artist Ernest “Ted” Kearon (Spot the Clue with Zip Nolan, The Day the World Drowned, Steel Commando, DC Thomson’s Morgyn the Mighty) signing on for Cowan’s sequel of sorts…

Robot Archie was for a very long time the greatest achievement of inventor Professor C. R. Ritchie. He gave the bragging ‘bot to nephew Ted Ritchie who, with explorer chum Ken Dale, made themselves useful all over the world wherever trouble happened. The arrogant, smug, self-absorbed yet paternally benevolent mechanoid lost pole position after the Prof left them The Castle. This inhabitable two-storey faux chess piece could take them anywhere in history and even into the future, and inevitably Archie commandeered it and got them all lost in spacetime…

Now – whenever that is – the humans finally think they’ve made it back home when the Castle materialises on a swanky island of rich people. A closer inspection reveals the owners are not home and events soon prove that they are in some kind of future theme park preserve. Worst of all, a ghastly walking mess that can animate objects and machines is right behind them and keen to kill. Moreover, the monster-mess has somehow subjugated a servant race of natives and even much of the flora and fauna wants the interlopers gone…

What follows is a bizarre death chase that culminates in Archie succumbing to the Sludge’s power before defeating the terror and escaping with his pals. But of course, it’s not over…

Returned to the relative peace and quiet of the timestream the trio stumble straight into sequel/continuation ‘Robot Archie – Return of the Sludge’ (in Lion 7th February through 16th May 1970) as scraps of the mucky monstrosity cling to the timeship and run amok when they finally return to their origin point and beloved home (a disused railway station in 196???).

The terror resumes when the sinister splodges are struck by lightning and grow exponentially. Soon Britain is under attack by the Sludge who possesses steam engines, power pylons, cranes, statues, every scary item in Milchester museum – from mummies to stuffed whales and dinosaur remains – and ultimately British Army tanks in its frantic zeal to destroy the robot it clearly hates even more than humanity.

Battling indomitably as always, the trio (and Earth) only survive thanks to another trick of fate…

Closing this spooky spectacular is a potent ‘Covers gallery’ of thrilling colour clashes courtesy of wonder man Geoff Campion, and the usual creator briefings.

For British, Commonwealth and European readers of a certain age and prone to debilitating nostalgia, the comic works gathered in this bombastic B-movie-tribute gig are an exciting, engaging, done-in-one delight that’s undemanding and rewarding; and a rare treat these days. If that appeals, this is what you want. What you really, really want…
© 1965, 1966, 1969, 1970 & 2025 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights reserved.

Today in 1914 Golden Age master Lou Fine was born, followed by another graphic genius in 1922 when Charles M. Schulz began day one of his formative years. That must have been useful when crafting Peanuts in later years. In 2006 superhero superstar Dave Cockrum died.