Category: Dinosaurs!

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The X-Men Omnibus volume 1


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Werner Roth, Alex Toth, Jack Sparling, Paul Reinman, Dick Ayers, John Tartaglione, & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3289-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Incomparable Strangers Bearing Gifts … 9/10

In 1963 things really took off for the budding Marvel Comics as Stan Lee & Jack Kirby expanded their diminutive line of action titles, putting a bunch of relatively new super-heroes (including hot-off-the-presses Iron Man) together as the Avengers, launching a decidedly different war comic in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and creating a group of alienated heroic teenagers who gathered together to fight a rather specific, previously unperceived threat to humanity.

Those halcyon days are revisited in this splendid but weighty compilation: gathering from September 1963 to April 1967, the contents of X-Men #1-31, pertinent letters pages, sundry historically pertinent extras and a trio of Introductions by Lee and Roy Thomas culled from previous Marvel Masterworks collections.

Issue #1 introduced Cyclops, Iceman, Angel and the Beast: very special students of wheelchair-bound telepath Professor Charles Xavier who has dedicated his life to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants dubbed Homo Superior. The story opens as the students welcome newest classmate Jean Grey, a young woman with the ability to move objects with her mind. No sooner has the Professor explained their mission than an actual Evil Mutant, Magneto, single-handedly takes over American missile base Cape Citadel. Seemingly unbeatable, the master of magnetism is nonetheless driven off – in under 15 minutes – by the young heroes on their first mission…

It doesn’t sound like much, but the gritty dynamic power of Kirby’s art, solidly inked by veteran Paul Reinman, imparted a raw energy to the tale which carried the bi-monthly book irresistibly forward. With issue #2, a Federal connection was established in the form of FBI Special Agent Fred Duncan, who requests the teen team’s assistance in capturing a mutant who threatens to steal US military secrets in ‘No One Can Stop the Vanisher!’.

These days, young heroes are ten-a-penny, but it should be noted that these were Marvel’s first juvenile super-doers since the end of the Golden Age, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that in this tale of a terrifying teleporter the outmatched youngsters need a little adult supervision…

Issue #3’s ‘Beware of the Blob!’ displays a rare lapse of judgement as proselytising Professor X invites a sideshow freak into the team only to be rebuffed by the fully felonious mutant. Impervious to mortal harm, The Blob incites his carnival cronies to attack the hidden heroes before they can come after him, and once again it’s up to teacher to save the day…

With X-Men #4 (March 1964) a thematic sea-change occurs as Magneto returns, leading ‘The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!’ Intent on conquering a South American country and establishing a political powerbase, he ruthlessly dominates Mastermind, Toad, Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch, who are very much unwilling thralls in the bombastic struggle that follows. From then, the champions-in-training are the prey of many malevolent mutants.

As well as beginning letters page ‘Let’s Visit the X-Man’, #5 reveals ‘Trapped: One X-Man!’ as an early setback in that secret war sees Angel abducted to Magneto’s orbiting satellite base Asteroid M, where only a desperate battle at the edge of space eventually saves him, after which ‘Sub-Mariner Joins the Evil Mutants!’

The self-explanatory tale of gripping intensity is elevated to magical levels of artistic quality as the superb Chic Stone replaced Reinman as inker for the rest of Kirby’s tenure. The issue also incorporates a stunning ‘Special Pin-up page’ starring “Cyclops” before genuine narrative progress is made in ‘The Return of the Blob!’ as their mentor leaves on a secret mission, after appointing Cyclops team leader. Comedy relief is provided as Lee & Kirby introduce Beast and Iceman to a Beatnik-inspired “youth scene” whilst a high action quotient is maintained courtesy of a fractious teaming of Blob and Magneto’s malign brood…

Another and very different invulnerable mutant debuted in ‘Unus the Untouchable!’: a wrestler with an invisible force field who attempts to join the Brotherhood by offering to bring them an X-Man. Also notable is the first real incident of “anti-mutant hysteria” after a mob attacks Beast – a theme that would become the cornerstone of X-Men mythology – and added delight ‘Special Pin-up page – ‘The Beast’.

X-Men #9 (January 1965) is the first true masterpiece of this celebrated title. ‘Enter, The Avengers!’ reunites the youngsters with Professor X in the wilds of Balkan Europe, as deadly schemer Lucifer seeks to destroy Earth with a super-bomb, subsequently manipulating the teens into an all-out battle with the awesome Avengers. This month’s extra treat is a Marvel Masterwork Pin-up of ‘Marvel Girl’.

This is still a perfect Marvel comic story today, as is its follow-up ‘The Coming of Ka-Zar!’: a wild excursion to Antarctica, featuring the discovery of the Antediluvian Savage Land and a modern incarnation of one of Marvel/Timely’s oldest heroes (Kazar the Great was a pulp Tarzan knock-off who migrated to comics pages in November 1939’s Marvel Comics #1).

Dinosaurs, lost cities, spectacular locations, mystery and action: it never got better than this…

After spectacular starts on most of Marvel’s Superhero titles (as well as western and war revamps), Kirby’s increasing workload compelled him to cut back to just laying out most of these lesser lights whilst Thor and Fantastic Four evolved into perfect playgrounds and full-time monthly preoccupations for his burgeoning imagination. The last series Jack surrendered was still-bimonthly X-Men wherein an outcast tribe of mutants worked clandestinely to foster peace and integration

His departure in #11 was marked by a major turning point. ‘The Triumph of Magneto!’ sees our heroes and the Brotherhood both seeking a fantastically powered being dubbed The Stranger. None knew his true identity, nature or purpose, but when the Master of Magnetism finds him first, it signalled the end of his war with the X-Men…

With Magneto gone and the Brotherhood broken, Kirby relinquished pencilling to others, providing loose layouts and character design only. Alex Toth & Vince Colletta proved an uncomfortable mix for #12’s tense drama ‘The Origin of Professor X!’: opening a 2-part saga introducing Xavier’s half-brother Cain Marko and revealing that simplistic thug’s mystic transformation into an unstoppable human engine of destruction.

The story concludes with ‘Where Walks the Juggernaut’: a compelling, tension-drenched tale guest-starring The Human Torch, most notable for the introduction of penciller Werner Roth (as “Jay Gavin”). He would be associated with the mutants for the next half decade. His inker for this first outing was the infallible Joe Sinnott.

Roth was an unsung industry veteran, working for the company in the 1950s on star features like Apache Kid and the inexplicably durable Kid Colt, Outlaw, as well as Mandrake the Magician for King Features Comics and Man from U.N.C.L.E. for Gold Key. As with many pseudonymous creators of the period, it was DC commitments (mostly romance stories) that forced him to disguise his moonlighting until Marvel was big enough to offer full-time work.

From issue #14 and inked by Colletta, ‘Among us Stalk the Sentinels!’ celebrated the team’s inevitable elevation to monthly publication with the first episode of a 3-part epic introducing anthropologist Bolivar Trask, whose solution to the threat of Mutant Domination was super-robots that would protect humanity at all costs. Sadly, their definition of “protect” varied wildly from their builder’s, but what can you expect when a social scientist dabbles in high-energy physics and engineering?

The X-Men took the battle to the Sentinels’ secret base only to became ‘Prisoners of the Mysterious Master Mold!’ before crushing their ferrous foes with ‘The Supreme Sacrifice!’ Dick Ayers had joined as inker with #15, his clean line blending perfectly with Roth’s crisp, classicist pencils. They remained a team for years, adding vital continuity to this quirky but never top-selling series. X-Men #17 dealt with the aftermath of battle – the last time the US Army and government openly approved of the team’s efforts – and the sedate but brooding nature of ‘…And None Shall Survive!’ enabled the story to generate genuine apprehension as Xavier Mansion was taken over by an old foe who picked them off one by one until only the youngest remained to battle alone in climactic conclusion ‘If Iceman Should Fail..!’

Lee’s last script was ‘Lo! Now Shall Appear… The Mimic!’ in #19: the tale of troubled teen Cal Rankin who possesses the ability to copy skills, powers and abilities of anyone in close proximity. Scripting fell to Thomas in #20, who promptly jumped in guns blazing with ‘I, Lucifer…’: an alien invasion yarn starring Xavier’s arch-nemesis plus Unus the Untouchable and Blob. Most importantly, it revealed in passing how Professor X lost the use of his legs.

With concluding chapter ‘From Whence Comes Dominus?’, Thomas & Roth completely made the series their own, blending juvenile high spirits, classy superhero action and torrid soap opera with beautiful drawing and stirring adventure.

At this time Marvel Comics had a vast and growing following among older teens and college kids, and the youthful Thomas spoke and wrote as they did. Coupled with his easy delight in large casts, this increasingly made X-Men a welcoming read for any educated adolescent …like you or me…

As suggested, X-Men was never one of young Marvel’s top titles but it found a dedicated following, with the frantic, freakish energy of Kirby’s epic dynamism comfortably transiting into the slick, sleek attractiveness of Roth as the fierce tension of hunted, haunted juvenile outsider settled into a pastiche of college and school scenarios so familiar to the students who were the series’ main audience.

A crafty 2-parter then resurrected Avengers villain Count Nefaria who employed illusion-casting technology and a band of other heroes’ minor foes (Unicorn, Porcupine, Plantman, Scarecrow and The Eel, if you’re wondering) to hold Washington DC hostage and frame the X-Men for the entire scheme. ‘Divided… We Fall!’ and ‘To Save a City!’ comprise a fast-paced, old-fashioned Goodies vs. Baddies battle with a decided sting in the tail. Moreover, the tale concludes with Marvel Girl yanked off the team when her parents demand she furthers her education by attending New York’s Metro University…

By the time attitudes and events in the wider world were starting to inflict cultural uncertainty on the Merry Mutants and infusing every issue with an aura of nervous tension. During the heady 1960s, Marvel Comics had a vast following among older teens and college kids, and youthful scribe Thomas spoke and wrote as they did. However, with societal unrest everywhere, those greater issues were being reflected in the comics. A watered-down version of the counter-culture had been slowly creeping into these tales of teenaged triumph and tragedy, mostly for comedic balance, but they were – along with Peter Parker in Amazing Spider-Man – some of the earliest indications of the changing face of America…

Illustrated by Roth with Dick Ayers inking, the action opens with college girl Jean visiting her old chums to regale them with tales of life at Metro University. Her departure segues neatly into a beloved plot standard – Evil Scientist Grows Giant Bugs – when she meets an embittered, recently-fired professor, leading her erstwhile comrades to confront ‘The Plague of… the Locust!’ X-Men #24 isn’t the most memorable of the canon but still reads well and has the added drama of Marvel Girl’s departure crystallizing a romantic rivalry for her affections between Cyclops and Angel: providing another deft sop to the audience as it enabled many future epics to include Campus life in the mix…

Somehow Jean managed to turn up every issue even as ‘The Power and the Pendant’ (#25, October 1966) found the boys tracking new menace El Tigre. This South American hunter was visiting New York to steal the second half of a Mayan amulet which would grant him god-like powers. Having soundly thrashed the mutant heroes, newly-ascended – and reborn as Kukulkan – the malign meta returns to Amazonian San Rico to recreate a lost pre-Columbian empire with the heroes in hot pursuit. The result is a cataclysmic showdown in ‘Holocaust!’ which leaves Angel fighting for his life and deputy leader Cyclops crushed by guilt…

Issue #27 saw the return of old foes in ‘Re-enter: The Mimic!’ as the mesmerising Puppet Master pits Calvin Rankin against a team riven by dissention and ill-feeling, before ‘The Wail of the Banshee!’ sees Rankin join the X-Men in a tale introducing the sonic-powered mutant (who eventually became a valued team-mate/team-leader) as a deadly threat. This was the opening salvo of an ambitious extended epic featuring the global menace of sinister, mutant-abducting organisation Factor Three. John Tartaglione replaced Ayers as regular inker with bright and breezy thriller ‘When Titans Clash!’, as the power-duplicating Super-Adaptoid almost turns the entire team into robot slaves before ending Mimic’s crime-busting career.

Jack Sparling & Tartaglione illustrated ‘The Warlock Wakes’ in #30 as old Thor foe Merlin enjoys a stylish upgrade to malevolent mutant menace whilst trying to turn Earth into his mind-controlled playground. and the Costumed Dramas pause for now as Marvel Girl and the boys reunite to tackle a deranged Iron Man wannabe who is also an accidental atomic time bomb in Roth & Tartaglione illustrated ‘We Must Destroy… The Cobalt Man!’

Once the stories pause the extras start with essays Dawn of the Marvel Mutants: The X-Men of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby by Jon B. Cooke and Bruce Canwell’s A Mutant By Any Other Name, supplemented by a tee-shirt design by Kirby & Stone, unused covers.

As well as original art and House ads, there are covers for reprint comics Marvel Tales #2, Marvel Super-Heroes #21-27 & 21, Amazing Adventures #1-14 (with additional bridging art by Ron Wilson, Al Milgrom &Carmine Infantino) and X-Men: The Early Years, plus previous collections’ covers by Bruce Timm, Alex Ross, Kirby, Roth & Dean White.

These tales perfectly display Marvel’s evolution from quirky action tales to the more fraught, breast-beating, convoluted melodramas that inexorably led to the monolithic X-brand of today. Superbly drawn, highly readable stories are never unwelcome or out of favour though, and it must be remembered that everything here informs much of today’s mutant mythology. These are unmissable stories for the dedicated fan and newest convert.
© 2022 MARVEL.

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Ultraman: The Official Novel of the Series


By Pat Cadigan (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-80336-245-8 (prose PB) eISBN: 978-1-80336-301-1

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Endless Rebirth and Renewal… 8/10

In Asia the Ultraman phenomenon was akin to the boom created by Superman in 1939. Devised by Eiji Tsuburaya, it began in 1966 with Ultra Q – a series of television adventures featuring humans fighting a different monster every week. Before the first season completed it was joined by follow-up TV show Ultraman which added a superheroic component. It began when a human pilot merged with a benevolent alien to battle a nonstop wave of kaiju and alien invasions. The idea was so successful and audience reaction so strong it birthed a whole new genre – Kyodai (giant) Hero – and rapidly expanded into all media arenas to become a multi-billion-dollar franchise.

By the 1980s Ultraman was the world’s third top-selling licensed character and a cultural touchstone for Japan and all points east. The character is ubiquitously popular in more than 100 countries. Constantly reinvented by Tsuburaya and his heirs ever since 1966, Ultraman was followed by 31 more TV series and spin-off heroes, plus 44 movies, 33 specials and as many miniseries. The number and variety of characters under the Ultra umbrella are truly mindboggling…

Eventually, ownership issues created a schism with a whole separate mythology/iconography growing up around a breakaway company faction of projects (more than 38 different ones) made in Thailand under the banner of Chaiyo Productions.

Oddly, despite a couple of mountains worth of merchandise and licensed product, Ultraman didn’t get into manga until 2011, but has sold millions of copies since then.

There has been a constant and sustained effort to crack western markets on the same scale. There’s aYouTube channel, and currently Netflix has an animated series whilst Marvel licensed the core concept for comic books.

Here we’re looking at a new prose interpretation – in English – of classic 1960s show material adapted and diligently updated by multi-award winning science fiction author Pat Cadigan (Mindplayers, The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi, Alita: Battle Angel). She has also written forthcoming companion title Ultraman: UltraSeven.

It all begins in deep space as a Being of Light pursues uncontrolled malign entity Bemular. The chase ends on a primitive world teeming with usable, harvestable energy and results in the benevolent creature merging with a native to save its life…

Agent Shin Hayata of the Science Special Search Party – AKA the Science Patrol – couldn’t believe his first encounter with a UFO but had no choice but to accept when he fatally crashed into a second one and was resurrected by it at the cost of the visitor’s own existence. As well as getting his life back, Shin also gained the power to turn into a colossal star warrior – albeit only for brief minutes at a time – which coincided with Earth (and usually Japan) becoming a most desirable location for monsters, extraterrestrial invaders and a host of other unlikely perils…

A decent do-gooder now plagued with all the usual superhero secret identity troubles, Shin works with his close-knit team of fellow Science Patrol operatives as the world endures first a mosrously mutated Bemular and in close order thereafter, invasion by illusion-casting Baltans, a trip to Tatara/Monster Island ruled by the ruthless Red King, primordial threat Gomorasaurus (which includes a boy sidekick in waiting) miracle-making alien Mefilas who was looking for a human who would sign over ownership of Earth and the far more prosaic but murderous Zetton…

Ultimately, however, the biggest threat of all is when another Ultra Being manifests with a solution to all Shin’s problems…

The many worlds and dimensions of Ultraman are exotic, beguiling, infinitely fascinating and constantly renewing. Whether you fancy a quick dip into decades of mystery or intend to make the fantasy a lifetime project, you can’t do better than to start right here…
© 2023 Tsuburaya Productions. All Rights Reserved.

Ultraman: The Official Novelization will be released on December 12th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

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The U-Ray (Before Blake and Mortimer vol. 1)


By Edgar P. Jacobs, coloured by Bruno Tatti, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBNs: 978-1-80044-105-7 (album PB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Once Upon A Time… 9/10

Belgian Edgard Félix Pierre Jacobs (1904-1987) is rightly considered one of the founding fathers of the European comics industry. Although his output is relatively meagre when compared to some of his contemporaries, his iconic works formed the basis and backbone of the art form across post-war Europe and far beyond. As a world rebuilt, his splendidly adroit, roguish and impeccably British adventurers Blake and Mortimer – created for the first issue of Le Journal de Tintin in 1946 – became a staple of Continental kids’ life just as Dan Dare did in Britain starting four years later.

E.P. Jacobs was born in Brussels, a precocious child who began feverishly drawing from an early age but was even more obsessed with music and the performing arts – especially opera. He attended a commercial school but – resolved never to work in an office – pursued art and drama following his graduation in 1919. A succession of odd jobs at opera-houses – scene-painting, set decoration, acting, singing as an Extra – supplemented his private performance studies. In 1929, Jacobs won a Government award for classical singing, but his dream career as an opera singer was thwarted by the Great Depression, as the art funding and performances nosedived following the stock market crash.

Picking up whatever stage work was to be had – including singing and performing – Jacobs finally switched streams to commercial illustration in 1940 and found regular employment at magazine Bravo. While illustrating short stories and novels, he famously took over the syndicated Flash Gordon strip after the occupying German authorities banned Alex Raymond’s quintessentially All-American Hero, leaving the publishers desperately seeking someone to satisfactorily complete the saga.

Jacob’s Stormer Gordon lasted less than a month before being similarly sanctioned by the Nazis, after which Jacobs created his own epic science-fantasy feature – Le Rayon U: a weekly comics milestone in both Belgian comics and science fiction adventure…

The U Ray was a huge hit in 1943 and scored big all over again a generation later when Jacobs reformatted the original and traditional “text-block & picture” material to incorporate speech balloons before re-running the entire series in Le Journal de Tintin in 1973. It was subsequently released as graphic albums beginning in 1974.

There are conflicting accounts of how Jacobs and Tintin creator Hergé formed their infamous partnership together – and why they parted ways professionally, if not socially – but as to the whys and wherefores of the split, I frankly don’t care.

What is known is this: whilst creating U Ray, one of Jacob’s other jobs was scene-painting, and during the staging of a theatrical version of Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh Hergé and Jacobs met and became friends. If the comics maestro was unaware of Jacob’s comics output before then, he was certainly made aware of it after.

Jacobs started working on Tintin, colouring the originally monochrome strips of The Shooting Star from newspaper Le Soir for a forthcoming album collection. By 1944, he was performing similar service for Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, King Ottokar’s Sceptre and The Blue Lotus. Jacobs also contributed to the illustration on extended epic The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun. His love of opera made it into the feature as Hergé, (who loathed it) teasingly created bombastic Bianca Castafiore as a comedy foil while basing a number of bit players (such as Jacobini in The Calculus Affair) on his long-suffering assistant.

After war and liberation, publisher Raymond Leblanc convinced Hergé, Jacobs and other creatives to work for his new venture. Launching publishing house Le Lombard, Leblanc also started Le Journal de Tintin: an anthology comic edited by Hergé with editions in Belgium, France and Holland starring the intrepid boy reporter and a host of newer heroes.

Beside Hergé, Jacobs and writer Jacques van Melkebeke, the weekly comic featured Paul Cuvelier’s Corentin and Jacques Laudy’s ‘The Legend of the Four Aymon Brothers’. Laudy had been a friend of Jacobs’ since they worked together on Bravo and became a model for some of his characters.

The first instalment of epic serial Le secret de l’Espadon (which eventually ran from #1, 26th September 1946 to 8th September 1949) cemented Jacobs’ status as a star in his own right: offering a wide variety of perils and menaces in stunning action thrillers blending science fiction, detective mysteries and supernatural thrillers in the timeless, universally engaging Ligne Claire style which had done so much to make intrepid boy reporter Tintin a global sensation.

In 1950, with the first 18 pages slightly redrawn, Le secret de l’espladon V1 (The Secret of the Swordfish) became Le Lombard’s first album release, with a concluding volume published three years later. These were reprinted nine more times between 1955 and 1982, with an additional single complete deluxe edition released in 1964. The epic romp featured a distinguished duo of Scientific Adventurers: a bluff, gruff Scots/British scientist and English Military Intelligence officer (closely modelled on his comics colleague Laudy): Professor Philip Mortimer and Captain Francis Blake. They and archfoe Olrik (based on Jacobs himself) were a thematic and visual evolution of characters Jacobs created for The U Ray…

After decades of old farts like me whining, the lost gem was finally released in English translation this year – recently followed by sequel La Flèche Ardente courtesy of Jean Van Hamme, Christian Cailleaux & Etienne Shréder – and it was worth all that waiting…

In 1943 the Nazis may have banned the strikingly Aryan Flash Gordon but there was no denying the public appetite for his kind of action and so Jacobs’ next project dipped deep from that established well of romanticism and fantasy as well as borrowing heavily from US movie serial chapterplays.

In another place and time, the nations of Norlandia and Austradia are at war. The former’s chief scientist Professor Marduk has devised an ultimate weapon capable of ending the conflict but lacks the fuel source to power his mighty “U ray”. He believes the Uradium he needs can be found on the unexplored lost continent and organises an expedition to locate and secure some of the miracle ore. His prototypical party of archetypes includes his assistant Sylvia Hollis, heroic Major Walton, Lord Calder, Captain Dagon, Sergeant MacDuff and “Asiatic” manservant Adji at the head of sturdy crew, but the desperate mission to the Black Isle Archipelago is doomed from the start thanks to a spy hidden in their ranks…

After many fraught moments and sabotage attempts, the expedition finally lands in the forbidding jungles of a lost world teeming with uncanny primal beasts and savage humanoids. Soon, however, sheer misfortune, invading Austradians, deadly natural hazards and tragedy reap a heavy harvest as they trek inlands to where Marduk’s machines and charts say Uradium can be found. Thankfully, Major Walton is there to constantly counter peril of every description.

After heartbreaking effort a turning point comes when the survivors find a lost civilisation and encounter Prince Nazca and Princess Ica of the Underground City. These highly evolved beneficiaries give them the mineral they want but of course refuse to let their “guests” leave. With time running out and old and new enemies getting closer, it’s up to Walton to find a solution and escape plan…

Old world fun that cannot be denied or ignored, this album also includes tantalising teasers for the auteur’s later classics, a bibliography/publishing timeline and an informative article on Jacobs’1946 masterpiece of design The Swordfish.

Simplistic but effortlessly engaging, The U Ray is pure escapist joy to behold, and a book no serious fun-loving nostalgic can afford to miss.
Original edition © Editions Blake & Mortimer/Studio Jacobs (Dargaud-Lombard S.A.) 2023. All rights reserved. English translation © 2023 Cinebook Ltd.

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Alley Oop: The First Time Travel Adventure (Library of American Comic Essentials)


By V.T. Hamlin (IDW/Library of American Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-829-6 (Landscape HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Reliving Those Golden Days… 9/10

Modern comics evolved from newspaper strips. These pictorial features were, until relatively recently, extremely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as a powerful weapon to guarantee and even increase circulation and profits. From the outset humour was paramount; hence our umbrella terms “Funnies” and of course “comics”.

Despite the odd ancestor or precedent like Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs (comedic when it began in 1924; gradually moving from mock-heroics to light-action into full-blown adventure with the introduction of Captain Easy in 1929) or Tarzan and Buck Rogers – both debuting January 7th 1929 as adaptations of pre-existing prose properties – the vast bulk of strips produced were generally feel-good humour strips supplemented by the occasional jolly child-oriented fantasy.

This abruptly changed in the 1930s when an explosion of rollicking drama strips launched with astounding rapidity. Not only features but actual genres were created in that decade which still impact on not just today’s comicbooks but all our popular fiction.

Another infinitely deep well of fascination for humans is cavemen and dinosaurs. During that distant heyday of America’s strip-surge a rather unique real character created a rather unique and paradoxical cartoon character: at once both adventurous and comedic; simultaneously forward-looking and fantastically “retro” in the same engagingly rendered package…

Vincent Trout Hamlin was born in 1900 and did many things before settling as a cartoonist. After mustering out of the US Expeditionary Force at the end of the Great War, V.T. finished High School and then went to the University of Missouri. This was in 1920 and he studied journalism but, since he’d always loved drawing, the eager beaver took advantage of the institution’s art courses too.

Hamlin was always a supreme storyteller and lived long enough to give plenty of interviews and accounts – many impishly contradictory – about the birth of his antediluvian archetype…

As a press photographer, Hamlin had roamed the Lone Star State filming the beginnings of the petroleum industry and caught the bug for finding fossils. Whilst drawing ads for a Texas Oil company, he became further fascinated with bones and rocks as he struggled to create a strip which would provide his family with a regular income…

When V.T. resolved to chance his arm at the booming comic strip business, those fossil fragments got his imagination percolating and he came up with a perfect set-up for action, adventure, big laughs and even a healthy dose of social satire.

Alley Oop is a Neanderthal (-ish) caveman inhabiting a lush, fantastic land where dinosaurs still thrive. In fact his greatest friend and boon companion is Dinny; a faithful, valiant saurian chum who terrifies every other dinosaur in creation… as well as all the annoying spear-waving bipeds swarming about. Because Dinny is as smart and obedient as a dog, all the other cave folk – like arrogant, insecure King Guzzle – generally treat the mighty, free-thinking, disrespectful Oop with immense caution…

Unlike most of his audience, Hamlin knew such things could never have occurred, but didn’t much care: the set-up was too sweet to waste and it would prove to be the very least of the supremely imaginative creative anachronisms he and his brilliant wife Dorothy would concoct as the strip grew in scope and popularity.

Oop actually launched twice. In 1930 Hamlin whipped up primeval prototype Oop the Mighty which he then radically retooled and sold to small, local Bonnet-Brown Syndicate as Alley Oop. It debuted on December 5th 1932 and was steadily gaining traction when Bonnet-Brown foundered in the worst days of the Great Depression a year later.

Happily the strip had enough of a popular following that Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate – whose other properties included Major Hoople, Boots and Her Buddies and the aforementioned Wash Tubbs – tracked down the neophyte scribbler and offered him a regular slot in papers all over America. Thus Alley Oop re-debuted as a daily strip on August 7th 1933, swiftly reprising old stories for a far larger audience before starting new adventures. He inevitably won a Sunday colour page on September 9th 1934, the year V.T., Dorothy and new daughter Theodora relocated to affluent Sarasota, Florida.

Sadly for such a revered series with a huge pedigree – still running today, scripted by Joey Alison Sayers and drawn by Jonathan Lemon – there has never been a concerted effort to properly collect the entire epic. There have however been tantalising reprints in magazines and archive editions from Kitchen Sink, Dark Horse and IDW. This intriguing monochrome hardback (part of The Library of American Comics Essentials range) re-presents – in one day per elongated landscape page – the absolutely most crucial game-changing sequence in the strip’s history as the protagonists escaped their antediluvian environs and calamitously catapulted into the 20th century…

Supplementing the cartoon bedazzlement is a superbly informative and candidly-picture packed introduction by Michael H. Price. ‘V.T. Hamlin and the Road to Moo’ reviews the creator’s amazing life and other strip endeavours before starting his magnum opus and what the feature meant to him, before the grand adventure (Monday March 6th 1939 to Saturday March 23rd 1940) opens in a strange land a long, long way from here and now…

A little background: the cave-folk of that far-ago time lived in a rocky village ruled over by devious, semi-paranoid King Guzzle and his formidable, achingly status-conscious wife Queen Umpateedle. The kingdom was known as Moo and the elite ruling couple were guided, advised and manipulated in equal amounts by the sneaky shaman Grand Wizer, and all three constantly sought to curb the excesses of a rebelliously independent, free-spirited, instinctively democratic kibitzer. Our hero – the toughest, most honest man in the land – had no time for silly fripperies and dumb made-up rules of interfering civilisation, but he did usually give in to the stern glances and fierce admonishments of his long-suffering girl “companion” Ooola. The uneasy balance of power in the kingdom comes from the fact that Guz and the Wizer – even with the entire nation behind them – were never a match for Oop and Dinny when they got mad – which was pretty often…

The big change came when Dinny turned up with an egg: all broody and uncooperative. With Oop’s mighty pal out of sorts, the Wizer played a cruel master-stoke and declared that only the contents of the egg could cure the King’s mystery ailment, prompting a mini civil war…

After revolution and counterrevolution Oop & Ooola are on the run when they encounter a bizarre object which vanishes before their eyes. As they stare in stupefaction they’re ambushed by Guz’s men and only escape because they too fade from sight…

Somewhere in rural America in 1939, brilliant researcher Dr. Elbert Wonmug (that’s a really convoluted but clever pun) discusses with his assistant movies their camera took when they sent it into the distant past via their experimental time machine…

The heated debate about the strangely beautiful and modern-looking cave woman and her monstrously odd-looking mate are curtailed as the subjects actually materialise in the room and the absentminded professor realises he left his chronal scoop running…

Before he can reverse his mistake and return the unwilling, unwitting guests to their point of origin, the colossal mechanism catastrophically explodes, wrecking the lab and burying the astounded antediluvians in rubble.

Thanks to an unexplained quirk of temporal trans-placement, time travellers always speak the language of wherever they’ve fetched up – albeit through their own slang and idiom – so after utterly unharmed Oop digs his way out, explanations are soon forthcoming from the modern tinkerers. Before long the cave folk are introduced to the fabulous advances of 20th century America.

At least Ooola is – thanks to the friendly advice of Wonmug’s daughter Dee – but the hulking male primitive is quickly fed up with this fragile place, all snarled up with just as many foolish rules and customs as home…

Storming off to catch and eat something he understands, Oop is suddenly whisked across country in a spectacular and hilarious rampage of destruction – in the best silent movie chase tradition – after falling asleep in a transcontinental freighttrain car. After weeks of wondering, Wonmug and the now thoroughly-acclimated Ooola read newspaper reports of a cunning and destructive “Great White Ape” and make plans to fetch their stray home. The government meanwhile have put top agent G.I.Tum on the case…

The Phantom Ape has plans of his own and, after “trapping” an aeroplane and its pilot, makes his own tempestuous way back to the isolated lab. Eventually the whole story comes out and the displaced primal pair become media sensations, just as Wonmug finally completes repairs to the time machine. Now though, Ooola – and to a lesser extent Alley – are not keen on returning to their dangerous point of origin…

Moreover, not everybody believes Elbert has actually cracked the time barrier and the next segment sees scientific sceptic Dr. Bronson demand proof. However, when he eagerly zips off to experience Moo first hand, he disappears and – after much pleading – Oop is convinced to follow him and find out what happened. When the swirling sensation ends, our hirsute hero discovers what the problem is: the machine is by no means accurate and its focus has shifted,  rematerializing outside a gigantic walled city of what we’d call the Bronze Age…

What follows is a stupendous romp of action, adventure and so many laughs as Oop and Bronson become improbable and forgotten heroes of the Trojan War, turning the so-pretty head of enchanting Helen of Troy and becoming the embattled city’s top warrior generals.

In the 20th century Wonmug is arrested for murder. Dee and his assistant Jon struggle to perfect their chronal contraption but in the end resort to busting the genius out to fix the problem and bring the time-lost wanderers back.

In a race against time that’s all soon sorted and Ooola heads for ancient Greece to save the lost boys. Unfortunately she’s picked up by besieging Greeks and, thanks to her skill with guns, mistaken for the goddess Minerva. The legendary story further unfolds with Oop & Ooola on opposite sides until wily Bronson makes a breakthrough based on his historical knowledge and they all return home in time to save Wonmug from the cops…

Soon a compact time team is established to exploit the invention – but not before Oop returns to devastated Troy to retrieve his beloved stone axe. With Bronson and Ooola in tow he then finds himself swept up in little sea voyage we know as The Odyssey…

Back in America, the team expands after college chum and genius of all knowledge G. Oscar Boom invites himself to Wonmug’s scientific party. With all contact lost, the unscrupulous rogue offers to go looking for them in the untrammelled past …providing he can take his specially tricked-out station wagon. As this stunning collection concludes Boom and a mighty hitchhiker named Hercules have just run into the missing chrononauts as they are about to enter the Amazonian wilds of the Land of Warrior Women…

Escaping the ultimately limiting confines of the strip and becoming a seasoned time travellers Hamlin made the best of all worlds for his characters: Oop and Ooola periodically returned home to Dinny and Moo but they also roamed every intriguing nook and cranny of history – even escaping planet Earth entirely. Hopefully our own future holds the prospect of more such splendid strip sagas. Fast-paced, furious, fantastically funny and bitterly barbed in the wryly acerbic manner of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges, Alley Oop is a bone fide classic of strip narrative, long overdue the respect of a complete curated chronological collection.

However, until some enlightened publisher gets around to it, by all means start digging online and in bargain bins for each – or any – of the wonderful tomes already released. It’s barely the tip of an iceberg, but we all have to start sometime…
Alley Oop © and ® 2013 United Features Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Asterix and the Griffin (volume 39)


By Jean-Yves Ferri & Didier Conrad, coloured by Thierry Mébarki, translated by Adriana Hunter (Sphere)
ISBN: 978-0-7515-8398-4 (Album HB) eISBN: 978-0-7515-8397-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Seasonal Sensations with Gallic Chill… 9/10

Whoops! Missed one!

As we saw a few days ago, Asterix le Gaulois has been around, amazing and amusing the planet since 1959 and become part of the fabric of French life. His exploits have touched billions of people all around the world.

For five and a half decades and for almost all of that time his astounding adventures were the sole preserve of originators René Goscinny and/or Albert Uderzo.

After nearly 15 years dissemination as weekly serials before invariably collected into book-length compilations, in 1974 the 21st saga – Asterix and Caesar’s Gift – was the first to be released as a complete, original album prior to serialisation. Thereafter each new tome was an eagerly anticipated, impatiently awaited treat for legions of devotees. The eager anxiety hadn’t diminished any when Uderzo’s handpicked replacements – scripter Jean-Yves Ferri (Fables Autonomes, La Retour à la terre) and illustrator Didier Conrad (Les Innomables, L’Avatar, Le Piège Malais, Tatum) – settled into the creative role on his retirement in 2009.

Whether an action-packed comedic romp with sneaky, bullying baddies getting their just deserts or a sly satire for older-if-no-wiser heads, these new yarns are just as engrossing as the established canon. As you already know, half of the epics take place in exotic locales throughout the Ancient World, whilst the alternating rest are set in and around Uderzo’s adored Brittany where, circa 50 BC, a little hamlet of cantankerous, proudly defiant warriors and their families resist every effort of the mighty Roman Empire to complete the conquest of Gaul. This one’s solidly of the former variety as our major cast members make it all the way to “barbaricum”: literally beyond the known world…

Although divided by its Roman conquerors into provinces Celtica, Aquitania and Armorica, the very tip of the last-named region stubbornly refuses to be properly pacified. Utterly unable to overrun this last little bastion of Gallic insouciance, the otherwise supreme Roman overlords are reduced to a pointless policy of absolute containment – even though the irksome Gauls come and go as they please…

Thus, a tiny seaside hamlet is permanently hemmed in by heavily fortified garrisons Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium, filled with veteran fighters who would rather be anywhere else on earth than there. The residents couldn’t care less: daily defying, frustrating and often terrorising the world’s greatest military machine by going about their everyday affairs, bolstered by magic potion brewed by resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits and strategic aplomb of diminutive dynamo Asterix… and his simplistic, supercharged best friend Obelix. And their dog…

In Rome, Julius Caesar is in need of a diversion for his sensation seeking subjects, so when geographer Cartographus claims to have discovered a fabled griffin, the Emperor funds a huge expedition to capture it via legions of soldiers and engineers. The beast resides far to the east in the icy Sarmatian wastes, but the scholar is convinced he can snare it as he has captured a Sarmatian Amazon woman to guide them. Terrifying and seductive, Kalashnikova only sees a chance to return home…

Meanwhile, the frozen lands under discussion have welcomed some familiar friends as Asterix, Obelix and canine wonder Dogmatix escort a very ill (no, no, it’s just a cold, really!) Getafix to the yurt of Fanciakuppov. That cheery shaman had visions of Roman invaders stealing his people’s sacred animal, so his old druid pal has brought a keg of magic potion to resist the incursion. There are, however, a couple of snags…

Firstly, the tribe is proudly matriarchal, with powerful warrior women doing all the fighting. They do it fantastically well, and don’t need help from foreigners – no matter how attractive they might be! – or magic. It’s a good thing too, as local conditions soon render the potion useless and Asterix has to rely on his brains and his giant pal’s innate brawn…

The big guy is quite distracted. Primarily by Dogmatix running away to become a wolf, but also by the obvious attentions of some of the amorous Amazons…

The Roman expedition is led by seasoned centurion Intrepidus, and Cartographus (who naturally has a secret agenda in play) has brought along famed venator (animal-fighting gladiator) Vainglorius, as a specialist to tame the griffin when they find it.

Army morale is low: the commanders squabble constantly, these lands are gloomy, frozen cold, steeped in legends and packed with people and things trying to kill them. Worst of all, when they should be building forts to secure their supply lines, the men are instead fighting each other for the right to guard the prisoner. Aloof, beautiful Kalashnikova disdains and discards them all… and they love it.

When the military monsters capture Fanciakuppov, he is forced to lead the smug raiders to the secret abode of the griffin, but thanks to the hit-&-run tactics of the Gaul-enhanced war women their numbers are so severely depleted, no one thinks they’ll make it back to sunnier climes…

The mission ends in spectacular failure but they do all get to see the fabulous beast before they die…

Packed with hilarious action, genuine chills, potent punning and cartooning delights, this tale provides plenty of pokes at fake news, current affairs, conspiracy theories, a certain global retail/delivery brand, and lands many wry jabs at all sides of the battle of the sexes and role of women in societies ancient and modern.

Asterix and the Griffin is a sure win and another triumphant addition to the magically mythic Gaulish oeuvre for laugh-seekers in general and all devotees of comics.
Original edition © 2021 Les Éditions Albert René. English translation: © 2021 Les Éditions Albert René. All rights reserved.

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Daydreams and Nightmares – The Fantastic Visions of Winsor McCay (second edition)


By Winsor McCay & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-569-4 (TPB/Digital editions)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Picture Perfect… 10/10

Winsor McCay was a cartoonist and animator best known for Little Nemo in Slumberland. There was of course, so much more to him and this retrospective touches on the man whilst displaying a glorious abundance of his many graphic marvels.

Born in Spring Lake, Michigan, on 26th September, 1869 (or maybe 1871 in Canada: records differ) Zenas Winsor McCay was a brilliant and hugely successful cartoonist and animator who worked on newspaper illustrations, strips and political panels from 1898 until his untimely death in 1934.

This collection (a remastered release of a 1998 celebration) offers up some sublime examples of his many oeuvres. Following a Foreword by Gary Groth and context-packed biographical preface ‘The Dream Master’ by Richard Marschall, the man himself relates what we need to know in his own words thanks to 1927 essay ‘From Sketchbook to Animation by Winsor McCay’ and a 1926 letter to fellow artisan Clare Briggs (Danny Dreamer, Mr. and Mrs.) ‘On Being a Cartoonist’ before we begin a magical trawl through a magnificent career…

Spanning 1989 to 1903 – when McCay signed with The New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett – ‘Chapter One: Early Magazine Work’ offers political broadsides, early editorial diatribes in pictorial form, social commentary and pure illustration pieces, albeit gradually trending towards his later fascination with fantastic architecture and parlous prognostications of cultural collapse, before ‘Chapter Two: Newspaper Fantasy Illustrations’ focusses on wry speculative futurism – a popular topic of periodical publication back then…

Encompassing 1904-1924, ‘Chapter Three: Midsummer Daydreams and Other Comic Strips’ offers timeless examples of his ceaseless cartoon endeavours including A Pilgrim’s Progress, Poor Jake, Midsummer Daydreams/Daydreams, It Was Only a Dream, The Dreams of a Lobster Fiend, The Faithful Employee, He’s One of Those Telephone Lobster Fiends, And Then – Kerchoo! – He Sneezed!, Everyone Has Met That Well Known Character, Mr. Duck, and Rabid Reveries but sadly omits Jungle Imps, Dull Care, The Man from Montclair, Mr. Bosh, Hungry Henrietta and It’s Nice to be Married…

On October 15th 1905 the most important children’s strip in the world debuted in the Sunday Herald but Little Nemo in Slumberland had precursors and indeed a mature-reader rival. ‘Chapter Four: Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’ explores the many variations and iterations penned (and inked) from 1904 to 1913. Tireless McCay had conjured up visions for adult readers of The Evening Telegram, initially entitled Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. The editor, wishing to distance the feature from other strips, required McCay to use a pen-name, and he complied, signing the strips “Silas”, reputedly after a local garbage cart driver.

Where Nemo was a beautifully clean formal and surreal fantasy of childish imagination, Fiend displayed a creepy, subdued tension resonant with the fears and worries of its adult audience. Black, cruel and often outright sick humour pervades the series combining monstrous destruction and expressionist trauma. Even root causes of otherworldly nightmares were salutary. Each self-contained episode (18 reproduced here) and disturbing sequence of unsettling or terrifying, incredibly realistic images was the result of overindulgence; usually in late night toasted cheese treats!

Every anxiety from surreal terror to social embarrassment was grist for the fantasist’s mill and startling perspectives, bizarre transformations and uncanny scenes – always immaculately rendered – made the strip hugely successful and well-regarded strip in its day.

In 1906, American film pioneer Edwin S. Porter created a landmark 7-minute live action special-effects movie entitled The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend and the Edison company produced a cylinder recording with the same name the following year – played by the Edison Military Band. McCay himself produced four animated shorts in 1916-17: Dream of a Rarebit Fiend; Dreams of The Rarebit Fiend: The Pet, Dreams of The Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House and Dreams of The Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville, and despite his many other later successes returned to the feature sporadically over the years. Between 1923 – 1925 he revived it as Rarebit Reveries, officially attributing the strip to his son who signed the panels Robert Winsor McCay, Jr.

An artist hugely in-demand then and revered today, from 1903 to 1906 McCay invented many other all-ages cartoon works and ‘Chapter Five: Sunday Excursions’ highlights one of most enduring and inventive with 18 episodes of Little Sammy Sneeze, before the linear lunacy ends with his speculations on the world, its people and impending dystopias in ‘Chapter Six: Sermons on Paper’ with 54 stunning tableaux full-page rendered between 1913-1934, shaped by war and other disasters depicting so very many ways humanity could end and so few where we stop our species’ extinction event…

Although working far more than a century ago McCay still affects all aspects of graphic narrative produced ever since and his visions are more pertinent now than in his own lifetime. A darker side of an absolute master of our art form, this is work you must see and cannot miss.
Daydreams and Nightmares © 2005 Fantagraphics Books.

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Doctor Strange Masterworks volume 4


By Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, Gardner Fox, Barry Windsor-Smith, Archie Goodwin, Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe, Don Heck, Sam Kweskin, Frank Brunner, P. Craig Russell, Jim Starlin & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3495-4 (HB/Digital Edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Arcane Anniversary Astonishment… 9/10

When the budding House of Ideas introduced a warrior wizard to their burgeoning pantheon in the summer of 1963, it was a bold and curious move. Anthologically, bizarre adventures and menacing aliens were still incredibly popular, but most dramatic mentions of magic or the supernatural (especially vampires, werewolves and their equally eldritch ilk) were harshly proscribed by a censorship panel which dictated almost all aspects of story content – the self-inflicted Comics Code Authority.

That eldritch embargo probably explains writer/editor Stan Lee’s low key introduction of Steve Ditko’s mystic adventurer: an exotic, twilight troubleshooter inhabiting the shadowy outer fringes of society.

Within a year of Fantastic Four #1, long-lived monster-mystery anthology Strange Tales became home for the blazing boy-hero Human Torch (from #101, cover-dated October 1962), launching Johnny Storm on a creatively productive but commercially unsuccessful solo career.

In 1963, Tales of Suspense #41 saw new sensation Iron Man battle a crazed scientific wizard dubbed Doctor Strange, and with the name in copyrightable print (a long-established Lee technique: Thorr, The Thing, Magneto, The Hulk and more had been disposable Atlas “furry underpants monsters” long before they became in-continuity Marvel characters), preparations began for a truly different kind of hero.

The company had already devised a quasi-mystic troubleshooter for a short run in Amazing Adventures (volume 1 #1-4 & #6, spanning June-November 1961). The precursor was balding, trench-coated savant Doctor Droom – retooled in the 1970s as Doctor Druid when his exploits were reprinted. Psychiatrist, sage and paranormal investigator, he tackled everything from alien invaders to Atlanteans (albeit not the ones Sub-Mariner ruled). He was subsequently retro-written into Marvel continuity as an alternative candidate for Stephen Strange’s ultimate role as Sorcerer Supreme.

The man we know debuted in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963). After a shaky start, the Master of the Mystic Arts became an unmissable icon of cool counter-culture kids who saw in Ditko’s increasingly psychedelic art, echoes and overtones of their own trippy explorations of other worlds. That might not have been the authors’ intention but it certainly helped keep the mage at the forefront of Lee’s efforts to break comics out of the “kids-stuff” ghetto.

After Ditko abruptly left the company at the height of his fame and success in early 1967, the feature went through a string of creators before Marvel’s 1968 expansion allowed a measure of creative stability as the mystic master won his own monthly solo title in a neat moment of sleight of hand by assuming the numbering of Strange Tales. Thus, this enchanting full colour compilation gathers Doctor Strange #180-183 (May-November 1969) whereupon he became one of the earliest casualties of a superhero implosion heralding the end of the Silver Age. Also included are guest appearances in Sub-Mariner #22 and Incredible Hulk #126 (both 1970), prior to the sorcerer’s return in Marvel Feature #1 (December 1971) and a second bite of the cherry as star of Marvel Premiere #3-8 (July 1972 through May 1973).

Those complex, convoluted, confusing times are better explained in Roy Thomas’ Introduction before the drama resumes with #180’s ‘Eternity, Eternity!’

Previously, Dr. Stephen Strange had joined Black Night Dane Whitman and assorted Avengers in saving Earth from doom by Asgardian demons Surtur and Ymir and here – thanks to Thomas, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer – suffers nightmares and dire premonitions on New Year’s Eve before learning that the guiding spirit of creation has been enslaved by sadistic dream demon Nightmare…

After a Colan pin-up of the good doctor and his closest associates, ‘If a World Should Die Before I Wake…’ follows the mage into the dreamlands and beyond to rescue the lynchpin of reality where he is defeated and despatched to uncharted regions. In the miasma he makes an unlikely ally as concluding episode ‘And Juggernaut Makes Three!’ sees Eternity liberated, Nightmare defeated and Stephen Strange rewarded by the reality-warping over-god by being unmade and recreated in a new identity. In the minds of humanity, Dr. Stephen Sanders is nothing to do with recently outed, publicly vilified masked mystic Dr. Strange…

The radical reset was too little too late and Dr. Strange #183 (November 1969) was the final issue. In ‘They Walk by Night!’, Thomas, Colan & Palmer introduced a deadly threat in the Undying Ones, an elder race of devils hungry to reconquer the Earth.

The story went nowhere until Sub-Mariner #22 (February 1970 by Thomas, Marie Severin & Johnny Craig) as ‘The Monarch and the Mystic!’ brought the Prince of Atlantis into play, as told in a sterling tale of sacrifice wherein the Master of the Mystic Arts seemingly dies holding the gates of Hell shut with the Undying Ones pent behind them.

The extended saga then concluded on an upbeat note with The Incredible Hulk #126 (April 1970) ‘Where Stalks the Night-Crawler!’ by Thomas & Herb Trimpe, wherein a New England cult dispatches helpless Bruce Banner to the nether realms in an attempt to undo Strange’s sacrifice.

Luckily cultist Barbara Norris has last minute second thoughts and her sacrifice frees the mystic, seemingly ending the threat of the Undying Ones forever. At the end of the issue Strange retired, forsaking magic, although he changed his mind before too long as the fates – and changing reading tastes – called him back to duty.

Cover dated December 1971, Marvel Feature #1 bombastically introduced the trio of antiheroes united as The Defenders, and just how Strange resumed his mystic arts mantle was tucked into a heady 10-page thriller at the end, proving that not all good things come in large packages. Crafted by Thomas, Don Heck & Frank Giacoia, ‘The Return’ finds medical consultant Stephen Sanders back in Greenwich Village where his old Sanctum Sanctorum is home to an incredible impostor posing as his former self. It takes the intervention of his sagacious mentor The Ancient One to restore his forsaken skills before the conundrum is solved and a villain unmasked…

Back in arcane action, Dr. Strange took up residence in Marvel Premiere, beginning with #3 (July 1972) as Stan Lee, Barry Windsor-Smith & Dan Adkins employ cunning, misdirection and an ancient enemy to attack the mage in ‘While the World Spins Mad!’

That visual tour de force segued into an epic Lovecraftian homage/pastiche beginning in MP#4 when Archie Goodwin, Smith & Frank Brunner detail how Strange’s attempt to aid embattled Ethan Stoddard remove a ghastly malefic contagion from his New England hometown of Starkesboro goes awry. Shamelessly plundering Lovecraft’s literary lore for a graphic gothic masterpiece attempt leads to a severely weakened Master of the Mystic Arts ambushed by the victims he helped and offered as a sacrifice in ‘The Spawn of Sligguth!’

Written by Gardner F. Fox with art by Sam Kweskin (as Irv Wesley) & Don Perlin, and incorporating themes inspired by Robert E. Howard, the dark tale unfolds as Strange breaks free and learns that ‘The Lurker in the Labyrinth!’ is merely a herald for a greater primordial evil about to reawaken before facing another of its vanguard in #6’s ‘The Shambler from the Sea!’ (Fox, Brunner & Sal Buscema). With faithful allies Wong and Clea drawn into the weird war against now-exposed malignant mega-manipulator Shuma-Gorath, Strange’s latest triumph/close shave directs the secret heroes to Stonehenge…

Marvel Premiere #7 highlights ‘The Shadows of the Starstone!’ courtesy of Fox, P. Craig Russell, Mike Esposito Giacoia & Dave Hunt, as new players Henry Gordon and enigmatic medium Blondine join the human resistance just in time to combat latest horror Dagoth, but quickly enough to save Strange from a thaumaturgical boobytrap…

The serialised shocks pause with #8 (May 1973, by Fox, Jim Starlin, Giacoia & Hunt) as animated mansion Witch House assaults the assembled humans until Strange puts an end to the matter. Resolved to work alone he heads back to Stonehenge and employs ancient forces to defeat an army of devils and follow their trail to another world. However, even after destroying their lord he is marooned there by ‘The Doom that Bloomed on Kathulos!’…

To Be Continued…

Although the comics spellbinding ends here, there are still treats and surprises in store, beginning with the first cover to Doctor Strange #180 by Colan & Palmer. It had been lost in the post for years and required fast action to be replaced back in 1968. Also on offer are production art proofs and pre-editorial changes: a fascinating glimpse at the tricks behind the comics wonderment, and maybe the biggest Biographies section you’ve ever seen…

The Wizard of Greenwich Village has always been an acquired taste for superhero fans, but the pioneering graphic bravura of these tales and the ones to come in the next volume left an indelible mark on the Marvel Universe and readily fall into the sublime category of works done “ahead of their time”. Many of us prefer to believe Doctor Strange has always been the coolest of outsiders and most accessible fringe star of the Marvel firmament (and now we have mega-blockbuster movies to back us up, so Yar Boo Sucks to them naysayers!). This glorious grimoire is a miraculous means for fans to enter his world once more and the perfect introduction for recent acolytes or converts created by the movie iteration.
© 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Bizarro


By Heath Corson, Gustavo Duarte, Pete Pantazis, Lee Loughridge & Tom Napolitano, with Bill Sienkiewicz, Kelley Jones, Michelle Madsen, Francis Manapul, Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá, Darwyn Cooke, Raphael Albuquerque, Tim Sale, Dave Stewart & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5971-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

One of the most consistent motifs in fiction is the “Dark Opposite” or “player on the other side”: a complete antithesis of the protagonist. Rock yourself to sleep at night if you wish, listing deadly doppelgangers from Professor Moriarty to Sabretooth to Gladstone Gander…

The Caped Kryptonian’s “imperfect duplicate” Bizarro either debuted as a misunderstood freak and unwilling monster in Otto Binder & George Papp’s captivatingly tragic 3-part novel ‘The Battle with Bizarro’ (Superboy #68, cover-dated October 1958) or in the similarly titled Superman newspaper strip sequence written by Alvin Schwartz (episode 105/#6147-6242 spanning August 25th – December 13th 1958) with the latter scribe claiming that he thought up the idea months earlier. The newsprint version was certainly first to employ those eccentric reversed-logic thought-patterns and idiomatic speech impediment…

Although later played primarily for laughs, such as in his short tenure in Tales of The Bizarro World (June 1961 to Aug 1962 in Adventure Comics #285-299), most earlier comic book appearances – 40 by my count – of the dippy double were generally moving, child-appropriate tragedies, unlike here where we commemorate his 65th anniversary with possibly the funniest book of the last twenty years… at least if you’re a superhero fan.

Post Crisis on Infinite Earths, he was a darker, rarer beast, but this tale by screenwriter and comics scripter Heath Corson (Justice League: War, Nightwing/Magilla Gorilla, Super Pets: The Great Mxy-Up) & Gustavo Duarte (Monsters! & Other Stories, Guardians of the Galaxy, Dear Justice League) stems from DC’s brief New 52 continuity sidestep and refers almost exclusively to his earlier exploits and character.

Collecting 6-issue miniseries Bizarro and material from DC Sneak Peek: Bizarro #1, the saga starts as another misunderstood and deeply unappreciated visit to Metropolis – augmented by a new origin – sees the lonely, bored, eternally well-intentioned living facsimile teamed up with boy reporter Jimmy Olsen on a road-trip to “Bizarro-America” (we call it Canada)…

It’s ostensibly to prevent a disastrous super-battle but more importantly, someone suggested that the journey could provide enough candid material for a best-selling coffee table book that could liberate the eternally cash-strapped kid from his financial woes…

Jim’s certain he can handle the big super-doofus, but not so sure that applies to a pocket alien Bizarro picked up somewhere. After ‘The Secret Origin of Colin the Chupacabra’, the story truly starts with ‘Bizarro-America: Part 6’ and a weary ‘Welcome to Smallville’ where the need to fix the car leads to a clash with a dynasty of very familiar villains at King Tut’s Slightly Used Car Oasis. It all goes without incident until some other ETs give papa Tut a reality-altering staff and he seeks to achieve his great dream – selling everyone a used car…

Having navigated their way out of that bad deal, the Road Worriers further embarrass themselves in ‘Bizarro-America: Part 5’ with stopovers and pertinent guest stars in Gotham, Central, Starling and Gorilla City, before doing more of the same in Louisiana, Chicago and all points lost. Somewhere along the way they pick up a tail and in seeking to ditch their pursuers drive into Ol’ Gold Gulch: a ghost town with real spooks and a distant descendant of a legendary gunfighter. Chastity Hex is a bounty hunter too, which comes in handy when Bizarro is possessed by an evil spirit in ‘Unwanted: Unliving or Undeaded’ and a destructive rampage triggers the spectral return of great grandpa Hex as well as Cinnamon, Nighthawk, Scalphunter and El Diablo…

Another issue (‘Bizarro-America: Part 3’ if you’re still counting) and another city sees the automotive idiots catching mystic marvel Zatanna’s act in ‘Do You Believe in Cigam?’ and fresh disaster as Bizarro’s backwards brain allows him to accidentally access the sorceress’ backwards spells, prompting diversions to many, many alternate DC realities and Jimmy and Bizarro trading bodies (sort of) before order – if not sanity – is restored…

As they near their final destination, the covert shadows finally move in. A.R.G.U.S. agents Stuart “chicken Stew” Paillard and Meadows Mahalo get their X-Files on: compelling the travellers to infiltrate Area 51, but aren’t happy with the outcome once the idiots unleash every alien interned or interred there…

Ultimately the voyage concludes with ‘Bizarro-America: Part 1’ and long-deferred meeting with Superman (drawn by Tim Sale & Dave Stewart) in ‘Who Am on Last?’ The last of the Tuts returns for another stab at vengeance and high-volume marketing and as chaos reigns Colin comes up trumps, before assorted former guests coagulate as the never to be reformed Bizarro League to save the world in a way it has never been saved before.

All that’s left is to get Bizarro into Canada but there’s one last surprise in store…

This outrageous romp is punctuated with a round-robin of guest illustrators (Bill Sienkiewicz, Kelley Jones, Michelle Madsen, Francis Manapul, Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá, Darwyn Cooke, Raphael Albuquerque and more) adding to the manic madness via their signature characters, and a variant cover gallery provides more boffo yoks courtesy of Kyle Baker and Kevin Wada. Topping off the fun is an unmissable sketch section by Duarte, packed with many scenes and moments somebody was too nervous to publish…

Fast, funny, fantastic and far too long forgotten, Bizarro is a superb romp that would make a magnificent movie. Do not miss it.
© 2015, 2016 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Captain Midnight Archives volume 2: Captain Midnight Saves the World


By William Woolfolk, Leonard Frank, Leonard Starr, Dan Barry & various (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-243-5 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-62115-921-6

Created by broadcast scripters Wilfred G. Moore and Robert M. Burtt, Captain Midnight began as a star of radio serials in the days when troubleshooting All-American aviators were the acme of adventure genre heroes. The Captain Midnight Program soldiered on from 1938 to 1940 until the Wander Company acquired sponsorship rights to promote their top product: Ovaltine.

From there on, national radio syndication led to a newspaper comic strip (by Erwin L. Hess, running June 29th 1942 until the end of the decade); a movie serial (1942) and – later – two TV serials (1953 and 1954-1956) before being overdubbed, retitled and syndicated as “Jet Jackson, Flying Commando” well into the 1960s. There was a mountain of now-legendary merchandise such as the infamous Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring…

And there was a comic book franchise – one recently reinvigorated for 21st century audiences.

The hero’s basic origin related how after the Great War ended, pilot and inventor Captain Jim Albright returned home having earned the sobriquet “Captain Midnight” after a particularly harrowing mission that concluded successfully at the witching hour. He then formed a paramilitary “Secret Squadron” of like-minded pilots to continue making the world a better place – often at the covert behest of the President – using guts and gadgets to foil spies, catch crooks and defend the helpless.

Captain Midnight truly hit his stride after Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, becoming an early Home Front media sensation throughout the war years. However, his already fluid backstory and appearance underwent a radical makeover when he switched comic book horses in midstream.

This stunningly engaging collection gathers a slew of often gruesome science fiction-themed tales taken from the latter end of the Fawcett Comics run. Captain Midnight #48, 50, 52-56, 58, 60, 62, 64 and 66 collectively spanned February 1947- August 1948. As times and tastes changed, the venerable title folded with the next issue.

Following a fervent Introduction from Batton Lash discussing the career of the much-travelled, constantly evolving “Monarch of the Airways” and the telling differences between radio, screen and comic book iterations, the contents explosively unfold with a tragic dearth of credit and attributions. Much comic material from this era is criminally unattributed, but writers known to be active on Midnight at this juncture include Bill Woolfolk and Otto Binder, whilst artists look like the unflagging Leonard Frank and young legends-to-be Leonard Starr and Dan Barry.

From issue #48 ‘Captain Midnight Visits the Golden Asteroid’ sees Albright and his mechanic Ichabod Mudd piloting their newly invented rocket-ship to investigate a new stellar body only to find that the astronomer who discovered it has an ulterior and nefarious motive for getting to the stellar wanderer.

Illustrated by Frank from #50, ‘Captain Midnight Spikes the Sun Gun’ pits the modern Edison against devilish Dr. Pyrrho who has found a way to inflict destructive heat on the already sweltering citizens of the American Southwest, after which a return prospecting trip to our nearest neighbour uncovers ‘The Moon Creatures’ (Woolfolk) who aggressively resisted all attempts to human colonise Luna…

With the solar system now a regular destination for exploration, Albright began occasional sorties to the planets and picked up some new recurring foes. The first was a plundering barbarian from Pluto who raids Earth for its Uranium reserves in #52’s ‘Captain Midnight versus the Space Raider!’ (Binder & Frank). The resultant chase and recovery takes our hero to Mars and first contact with an unsuspected race also under threat of merciless assault by the murderous Jagga…

After driving the fiend off and recovering his ill-gotten gains, Midnight next encounters the ruthless Plutonian inflicting ‘Peril on Venus’ in #53. By sending him packing once again, the inventor consequently aids the long-lost last survivors of Atlantis in getting their failing colony onto an even keel in a world overrun by dinosaurs…

In #54, Midnight and Icky find yet another embattled civilisation – on Ceres. A literally golden kingdom is fending off Jagga’s bacterial onslaught and meteor bombardments. With the Air Aces’ assistance, the monster is finally driven off in ‘The Asteroid Battle’.

There’s a double dose of super-scientific spectacle in #55, beginning with Albright’s perhaps unwise invention of a monumental dirigible intended as ‘The Sky Airport’. When common thugs steal the mobile monolith and use it as a base for air raids on banks, the heartbroken genius is forced into desperate action to clear his conscience…

This is followed by another interplanetary incident as ‘Captain Midnight Finds the Lunar Lair’ and finally brings Jagga to justice in the form of a trial in Earth’s courts. Unequivocally guilty, the beast is sentenced to death by electrocution in #56’s ‘The Last Rites of Jagga’ (Frank art) but said execution proves to be a major mistake and Midnight is called upon to deliver the sentence in his own infallible scientific manner…

A new threat emerges in #58 ‘On the Planet of Peril’ when an unknown race reanimates Earth’s greatest villains and monsters. A month later ‘Captain Midnight Battles the Ice Age’ finds our interplanetary explorers on Neptune: changing that world’s climate to give its humanoid inhabitants a big step up the ladder to civilisation, whilst issue #60 sees the return of earthly arch-enemy Dr. Osmosis who terrifies and torments humanity with his explosive ‘Flying Saucers of Death’…

Captain Midnight #62 detailed the inventor’s efforts to save America’s ‘Farmers on the Moon’ from sabotage as Earth agricultural entrepreneur Jim Klaw sought to maintain his produce monopoly at all costs…

A new extraterrestrial enemy debuted in #64 as ‘Beyond the Sun’ (Frank) introduced shapeshifting tyrant Xog: a gaseous monster from Saturn who boarded America’s newest spaceships as step one in his plans for interplanetary domination. When Midnight thwarted the scheme and rescued hostage Terrans, the vile king swore vengeance…

It came in the final tale in this superbly retro rollercoaster of rocket-powered fun – from #66 with art by Frank – as Xog transforms the good Captain into sentient gas before invading Earth. Happily, even ‘Without a Body’, Albright is too much for the malign marauder and once more saves the day and the world…

With a stunning gallery of covers by Frank, Charles Tomsey, Dan Barry and Mac Raboy, plus cool mini-features such as ‘Captain Midnight’s Air Lingo’, ‘US Army Aviation Badge Insignia’ and ‘Famous Planes’, this fabulous feast of fearsome fantasy is guaranteed to satisfy the yearnings of every starry-eyed space cadet, whatever their age.
Captain Midnight Archives volume 2: Captain Midnight Saves the World! ® and © Dark Horse Comics 2014. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents Superman Family volume 3


By Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein, Jerry Siegel, Alvin Schwartz, Bill Finger, Curt Swan, Kurt Schaffenberger, Wayne Boring, Dick Sprang, Al Plastino, Stan Kaye, Ray Burnley, John Forte, George Klein, John Giunta & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-812-6 (TPB)

When the groundbreaking Man of Steel debuted in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) he was instantly the centre of attention, but even then the need for a solid supporting cast was apparent and wisely tailored for. Glamorous daredevil girl reporter Lois Lane premiered beside Clark Kent and was a constant companion and foil from the outset.

Although unnamed, a plucky red-headed, be-freckled kid started working for Clark and Lois from Action Comics #6 (November 1938) onwards. His name was used in Superman #13 (November-December 1941), having already been revealed as Jimmy Olsen due to being a major player on The Adventures of Superman radio show from its debut (April 15th 1940).

As somebody the same age as the target audience for the hero to explain stuff to (all for the listeners’ benefit), he was the closest thing to a sidekick the Action Ace ever needed…

When the similarly titled television show launched in the autumn of 1952 – preceded a year earlier by landmark B-movie Superman and the Mole Men – it was another immediate sensation and National Periodicals began cautiously and judiciously expanding their revitalised franchise with new characters and titles.

During the 1950s/early 1960s, being different in America was a Very Bad Thing. Conformity was sacrosanct, even in comicbooks, and everybody and everything was meant to keep to its assigned and intended role: for the Superman family and cast, that meant a highly strictured code of conduct and parameters. Daily Planet Editor Perry White was a stern, shouty elder statesman with a heart of gold, Cub Reporter Jimmy was a brave and impulsive, unseasoned fool – with a heart of gold – with Lois brash, nosy, impetuous and unscrupulous in her obsession to marry Superman although she too was – deep down – another possessor of an Auric aorta. Moreover, although Clark was a Man in a Man’s World, his hidden alter ego meant that he must never act like one…

Yet somehow even with these mandates in place the talented writers and artists assigned to produce their wholesomely uncanny exploits managed to craft tales both beguiling and breathtakingly memorable – and usually as funny as they were exciting.

First to fill a solo title were the gloriously charming, light-hearted escapades of that rash, capable but callow photographer and “cub reporter”. Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #1 launched in 1954 with a September-October cover date, the first spin-off star of the Caped Kryptonian’s rapidly expanding multi-media entourage.

As the decade progressed the oh-so-cautious Editors tentatively extended the franchise in 1957 just as the Silver Age of Comics was getting underway, and it seemed that there might be a fresh and sustainable appetite for costumed heroes and their unique brand of spectacular shenanigans. Try-out title Showcase, which had already launched The Flash (#4) and Challengers of the Unknown (#6), followed up with a brace of issues entitled Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane in #9 and 10, before swiftly awarding the “plucky news-hen” a series of her own; in actuality her second, since for a brief while in the mid-1940s she had held a regular solo-spot in Superman.

At this time Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane was one of precious few titles with a female lead and – in the context of today – one that gives many 21st century fans a few uncontrollable qualms of conscience. Within the confines of her series the valiant and capable working woman careered crazily from man-hungry, unscrupulous schemer through ditzy simpleton to indomitable and brilliant hero – often all in the same issue – as the exigencies of entertaining children under the strictures of the Comics Code all too often played up the period’s astonishingly misogynistic attitudes.

The comic was clearly intended to appeal to the family demographic that made I Love Lucy a national phenomenon and Doris Day a ditzy latter day saint, so many stories were played for laughs in that same patriarchal, parochial manner; a “gosh, aren’t women funny?” tone that appals me today – but not as much as the fact that I still love them to bits.

It helps that they’re mostly illustrated by the wonderfully whimsical Kurt Schaffenberger.

Jimmy fared little better: a bright, brave but naive kid making his own way in the world, he was often butt of cruel jokes and impossible circumstances; undervalued and humiliatingly tasked in a variety of slapstick adventures and strange transformations.

This third cunningly conjoined chronologically complete compendium collects the affable, all-ages tales from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #35-44, March 1959-April 1960 and Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #8-16, April 1959-April 1960. It commences with the Man of Steel’s Go-To Guy in three tales drawn by the wonderful Curt Swan.

Probably fuelled by television (syndicated reruns kept the Superman family at the forefront of childish viewing habits) Jimmy’s comic was highly popular for over two decades, blending action, adventure, wacky comedy, fantasy and science fiction in the gently addictive, self-deprecating manner scripter Otto Binder had perfected in the 1940s and early 1950s at Fawcett Comics on the magnificent original Captain Marvel (you can call him Shazam!).

As the feature progressed, one of the most popular plot-themes (and most fondly remembered and referenced today by most Baby-Boomer fans) was the unlucky lad’s appalling talent for being warped, mutated and physically manipulated by fate, aliens and even his friends…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #35 (March 1959) opened with ‘The Menace of Superman’s Fan Mail!’, by Binder & Swan, inked by Stan Kaye. Here, the cub reporter undertakes to answer the mountain of missives for the Man of Steel: inadvertently supplying a crook with an almost foolproof method of murdering the Metropolis Marvel.

The remaining tales are inked by Ray Burnley, beginning with a rather disingenuous yarn seeing the kid repeatedly causing trouble by wearing a futuristic suit of mechanised super-armour which only made him look like ‘The Robot Jimmy Olsen!’, whilst in ‘Superman’s Enemy!’ the devoted dope overnight turns into a despicable, hero-hating wretch. However, as a veritable plague of altered behaviour afflicts Clark Kent’s friends, the Action Ace soon discerns an underlying pattern…

Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #8 (April 1959) opened with Alvin Schwartz & Kurt Schaffenberger’s ‘The Superwoman of Metropolis’, heavy-handedly turning the tables on our heroine when she develops incredible abilities and took on a costumed identity, and was instantly plagued by a suspicious Clark determined to expose her secret.

‘The Ugly Superman!’ dealt with a costumed wrestler who fell for Lois, giving the Caped Kryptonian another chance for some pretty unpleasant Super-teasing. It was written by Robert Bernstein, who unlike me can use the tenor of the times as his excuse, and pleasingly ameliorated by Schaffenberger delivering another hilarious dose of OTT comedic drama illustration. Following is a far less disturbing fantasy romp: ‘Queen for a Day!’ (Bernstein, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye) found Lois and Clark shipwrecked on an island of Amazons with the plucky lady mistaken for their long-prophesied royal saviour…

Jimmy Olsen #36 began with Binder, Swan & Burnley’s ‘Super-Senor’s Pal!’, with the boy South of the Border in the banana republic of Peccador helping a local rebel fight the dictators by masquerading as a Latino Man of Steel. Kaye inked the momentous debut of ‘Lois Lane’s Sister!’, introducing perky “air-hostess” Lucy as romantic foil and occasionally attainable inamorata for the kid, in a smart, funny tale of hapless puppy love. With Burnley inks the final tale details the cub reporter’s accidental time-trip to Krypton and ‘How Jimmy Olsen First met Superman!’

Although we all think of Siegel & Shuster’s iconic creation as the epitome of comicbook creation, the truth is that very soon after his launch Superman became a multimedia star and far more people have seen or heard the Man of Steel than have ever read him – and yes, that does include the globally syndicated newspaper strip which ran from 1939 to 1966. By the time his 20th anniversary rolled around he had been a regular on radio, starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons and two movies, and just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his future were many more, a stage musical, a stellar movie career and almost seamless succession of TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

Thus it’s no wonder tales from this Silver Age period should be draped in gaudily wholesome trappings of Tinseltown – even more so than most of celebrity-obsessed America. It didn’t hurt that editor Whitney Ellsworth was a part-time screenwriter, script editor and producer as well as National/DC’s Hollywood point man.

The Man of Tomorrow’s TV presence influenced much of Lois Lane #9: a celebrity-soaked issue scripted by Bernstein which began with artists Dick Sprang & John Forte detailing how performer Pat Boone (who just-coincidentally had his own licensed DC comic at that time) almost exposed Earth’s greatest secret in ‘Superman’s Mystery Song!’

The Silver Screen connection continued in the Schaffenberger-limned ‘The Most Hated Girl in Metropolis’, wherein Lois is framed for exposing that self-same super-secret as a ruse to get her to Hollywood for her own unsuspected This is Your Life special. That issue ended with a welcome return to fantasy/comedy as Schaffenberger introduces a lost valley of leftover dinosaurs and puny caveman Blog – ‘Lois Lane’s Stone-Age Suitor’…

In JO #37 Bill Finger, Swan & John Forte reveal the incredible truth about multi-powered Mysterio in the case of ‘Superman’s Super-Rival’, whilst Binder, Swan & Kaye expose the difficulties of frivolous Lucy Lane having ‘The Jimmy Olsen Signal Watch!’: a timepiece that kept the boy on a constant electronic leash…

This issue closes with a cunning caper wherein resident crackpot genius Professor Phineas Potter concocts a serum enabling Jimmy to reprise his many malleable antics and tangled troublemaking as ‘The Elastic Lad of Metropolis!’ (Binder, Swan & George Klein) – and almost exposing Superman’s secret identity into the bargain.

Records from the period are sadly incomplete but Bernstein probably wrote each tale in Lois Lane #10, beginning with Schaffenberger-limned classic ‘The Cry-Baby of Metropolis’, as Lois – terrified of losing her looks – exposes herself to a youth ray and temporarily turns into a baby, much to the amusement of Superman and arch-rival Lana Lang…

Schaffenberger also illustrated ‘Lois Lane’s Romeo!’ with the constantly spurned reporter finally giving up on her extraterrestrial beau. Typically, she’s then romanced by a slick, romantic European who’s was also a conniving, crooked conman. She rebounds in top crime-busting form for ‘Lois Lane’s Super-Seance!’ (Boring & Kaye): apparently endowed with psychic sight, but actually pulling the wool over the eyes of superstitious crooks.

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #38 also tapped TV connection as the lad becomes ‘The MC of the Midnight Scare Theatre!’ (Bernstein, Swan & Forte): uncovering an incredible mystery after his hoary, hokey stage act apparently scares four viewers to death…

Although by the same creators, the broad humour of ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Wedding! to Lucy has a far less ingenious explanation, but at least ‘Olsen’s Super-Supper!’ (Bernstein, Swan & John Giunta) wraps up on a high as the impecunious kid enters an eating contest and allows shady operators to try an experimental appetite-increasing ray on him. Of course, the mad scientists have an ulterior, criminal motive…

A plane crash and head wound transform Lois into a fur-bikinied wild woman in #11 of her own magazine, but – even after being rescued by Superman – ‘The Leopard Girl of the Jungle!’ (Finger & Schaffenberger) has one last task to valiantly undertake. Anonymously authored ‘The Tricks of Lois Lane!’ finds the restored reporter up to her old tricks to expose Clark as Superman, whilst ‘Lois Lane’s Super-Perfume!’ (Bernstein) seems able to turn any man into a love-slave – until the Man of Steel exposes criminal scammers behind it…

Binder, Swan & Forte crafted all of Jimmy Olsen #39, beginning with the lad stuck on another world and quickly seen as ‘The Super-Lad of Space!’, after which, back in Metropolis, his ill-considered antics lose and win and lose him again a fortune in ‘The Million Dollar Mistakes!’ Lastly, ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Super-Signals!’ see him misplace his Superman-summoning watch and forced to spectacularly improvise every time he gets into trouble…

Bernstein wrote LL #12, beginning with two Schaffenberger specials: ‘The Mermaid of Metropolis’ in which an accident dooms Lois to life underwater beside Sea King Aquaman, until Superman cures her piscoid condition, whilst in ‘The Girl Atlas!’ Lana sneakily turns herself into a super-powerhouse to corral the Man of Steel and learns what sneaky means when Lois strikes back…

Al Plastino rendered ‘Lois Lane Loves Clark Kent!’, as the reporter, believing she has incontrovertible proof of Superman’s secret, starts a campaign to entrap her unknowing colleague in wedlock…

Swan & Forte illustrated all of JO #40, beginning with Binder’s ‘The Invisible Life of Jimmy Olsen’ as our hapless chum is enmired in all manner of mischief after a gift from his best pal unexpectedly leaves him unseen but not trouble-free. ‘Jimmy Olsen, Supergirl’s Pal!’ sees the reporter temporarily struck blind, just as a crook with a grudge tries to kill him. With Superman out of touch, the Caped Kryptonian’s secret weapon Supergirl (at this time a newly-arrived, hidden trainee no one except cousin Kal-El and Krypto know of) rushes to the rescue, only to have the feisty lad disbelieve and dispute her very existence.

Bernstein then exposes ‘Jimmy Olsen, Juvenile Delinquent!’ as he goes undercover to break up a street gang and discovers Perry White’s own son is a member…

Bernstein & Schaffenberger led in Lois’ 13th issue, hilariously ‘Introducing… Lois Lane’s Parents!’ Superman had offered her a lift home to the farm of Sam and Ella Lane for a family reunion, but thanks to a concatenation of circumstances, local gossip and super-politeness, the Man of Steel quickly finds himself peer-pressure-press-ganged into a wedding.

Fair Warning: this contains Lois’ first nude scene as a proud father gets out baby albums…

From the same creative team – and in a brilliant pastiche of My Fair Lady – ‘Alias Lois Lane!’ see the indomitable inquirer undercover as sketchy floozie Sadie Blodgett in a plan to snap candid shots of a movie star. It all goes south when “Sadie” is “hired” by crooks to impersonate Superman’s girlfriend in an assassination plot bound to fail!

Next, Finger, Boring & Kaye disclose ‘The Shocking Secret of Lois Lane!’ following a tragically implausible incident forcing the journalist to cover her disfigured head in a lead-lined steel box. Thankfully, the Action Ace is around to deduce what’s really going on…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #41 opened with Bernstein, Swan & Forte’s ‘The Human Octopus!’, highlighting the lad’s negligent idiocy as he impetuously eats alien fruit and grows six more arms. However, the true effect of the space spud is far more devious…

Binder & Kaye joined Swan for ‘The Robot Reporter!’, with Jimmy using an automaton provided by Superman to do his job as he recuperates from a damaged ankle. Nonetheless, he manages to get into trouble from the comfort of his apartment. Thanks to stupid showing off, he’s then mistaken for a master fencer and catapulted into a Ruritanian adventure as ‘Jimmy Olsen, the Boy Swordsman!’ (Binder, Swan & Forte).

Binder & Schaffenberger opened LL #14 with ‘Three Nights in the Fortress of Solitude!’ as conniving journalist has contrived to isolate herself with Superman long enough to prove how much he needs a woman in his life, only to suffer one disaster after another…

Bernstein scripted ‘Lois Lane’s Soldier Sweetheart!’, revealing her warm and generous side as she helps a lonely GI attain his greatest desire. Jerry Siegel then returned to the character he created (and based on his own wife!) using still-secret Supergirl to catastrophically play cupid in ‘Lois Lane’s Secret Romance!’

Jimmy Olsen #42 started with uncredited story ‘The Big Superman Movie!’ (art by Swan & Forte), wherein the star-struck kid consults on a major motion picture. He would far rather have played himself, much to Lucy’s amusement, but ultimately the sharp apprentice journalist has the last word – and laugh. Bernstein was back for ‘Perry White, Cub Reporter!’ which has Editor and junior trading places, with power only apparently going straight to Olsen’s head, after which ‘Jimmy the Genie!’ sees something similar occur when boy reporter and magical sprite exchange roles in a clever thriller illustrated by Swan & Giunta.

Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #15 featured a landmark mystery in ‘The Super-Family of Steel!’ (Binder & Schaffenberger) which seemingly sees Lois attain her every dream. She and her Kryptonian Crimebuster first become ‘Super-Husband and Wife’, with ‘The Bride Gets Super-Powers’ as a consequence. They even have a brace of super-kids before the astounding ‘Secret of the Super-Family’ is revealed…

In Superman’s Pal #43 TV show 77 Sunset Strip got a name-check as ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Four Fads!’ (Swan & Kaye) finds the kid attempting to create a teen trend to impress Lucy, whilst as ‘Phantom Fingers Olsen!’ (Boring & Kaye) he infiltrates a gang of murderous thieves, before being adopted by ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Private Monster!’ (Siegel, Swan & Forte). After causing no end of embarrassment in Metropolis, the bizarre beast takes Jim to his home dimension where even greater shocks await…

The book’s final Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane is #16 (April 1960) opening with ‘Lois Lane’s Signal-Watch’ with Schaffenberger art on (possibly) a Siegel script. Here the Man of Steel learns to regret ever giving a woman who clearly has no idea what “emergency” means a device to summon him at any moment of day or night…

That slice of scurrilous 1950s propaganda is inexplicably balanced by a brilliant murder thriller displaying all Lois’ resilience and fortitude as she infiltrates and solves (Bernstein’s) ‘The Mystery of Skull Island’, before Siegel authors another cruel dark tragedy wherein Superman tries to cure Lois’ nosy impulses – by tricking his own girlfriend into believing she has a death stare in ‘The Kryptonite Girl!’ Of course, as all couples know, such power develops naturally not long after the honeymoon…

I love these stories, but sometime words just fail me.

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #44 completes this third monochrome monolith, starting with Halloween-styled tale ‘The Wolf-Man of Metropolis!’ (Binder, Swan & Kaye) by blending horror, mystery and heart-warming charm in a mini-classic which sees the boy cursed to hairy moon madness. Desperate for surcease his only hope is a willing maiden to cure him with a kiss. That’s followed by Siegel, Swan & Forte’s ‘Jimmy’s Leprechaun Pal!’, a magical imp who made life hell for the cub until human ingenuity outwitted magical pranksterism, after which Bernstein, Swan & Kaye crafted possibly the strangest and most disturbing yarn in this compilation as the boy went undercover as a sexy showgirl to get close to gangster Big Monte in ‘Miss Jimmy Olsen!’

As well as containing some of the most delightful episodes of the pre angst-drenched, cosmically catastrophic DC, these fun, thrilling, deeply peculiar and yes, often potentially offensive stories also perfectly capture the changing tone and tastes which reshaped comics from the safe 1950s to the seditious, rebellious 1970s, all the while keeping to the prime directive of the industry – “keep them entertained and keep them wanting more”.

Despite my good-natured cavils from my high horse here in the 21st century (or “the End of Days” as they’re more commonly known), I think these stories have a huge amount to offer funnybook fun-seekers. I strongly urge you to check them out.
© 1959, 1960, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.