Category: Dinosaurs!

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DC Finest: The Flash – The Human Thunderbolt


By Robert Kanigher, Carmine Infantino, Joe Kubert, John Broome, Gardner F. Fox, Frank Giacoia, Joe Giella, Murphy Anderson & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-77952-836-0 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

This is another of the first tranche of long-awaited DC Finest editions: colour continuations of their chronologically curated monochrome Showcase Presents line, delivering “affordably priced, large-size (comic book dimensions and generally around 600 pages) paperback collections” highlighting past glories. Whilst primarily concentrating on the superhero pantheon, there will also be genre selections including horror and war books, and themed compendia such as the much anticpiated gathering of early ape stories (brace yourself for DC Finest: The Gorilla World in July!).

Sadly, they’re not yet available digitally, as were the last decade’s Bronze, Silver and Golden Age collections, but we live in hope…

The Silver Age of US comics is formally and forever tied to Showcase #4 and the rebirth of The Flash. The epochal issue was released in the late summer of 1956 and from it stems all today’s print, animation, games, collector cards, cosplay and TV/movie wonderment. No matter which way you look at it, the renaisance began with The Flash, but it’s an unjust yet true fact that being first is not enough: it also helps to be best and people have to notice. MLJ’s The Shield beat Captain America to the news-stands by over a year yet the former is all but forgotten today.

The US industry had never really stopped trying to revive superheroes when Showcase #4 was released. Readers had already been blessed – but were left generally unruffled by – such tentative precursors as The Avenger (February-September 1955); Captain Flash (November 1954-July 1955) and a full revival of Timely/Marvel’s 1940s “Big Three” – Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and aforementioned Captain America (from December 1953 to October 1955). Both DC’s own Captain Comet (December 1953-October 1955) and Manhunter from Mars (November 1955 until May 1969, and almost the end of superheroes again!) had come and been barely noticed. What made the new Fastest Man Alive stand out and stick was… well, everything!

Once DC’s powers-that-be decided to seriously try superheroes once more, they moved pretty fast themselves. Editor Julie Schwartz asked office partner, fellow editor and Golden-Age Flash scripter Robert Kanigher to recreate a speedster for the Space Age: aided and abetted by Carmine Infantino & Joe Kubert, who had also worked on the prior incarnation. The new Flash was Barry Allen, a forensic scientist simultaneously struck by lightning and bathed in exploding chemicals from his lab. Supercharged by the accident, Barry (a lifelong fan of comic books) took his superhero identity from his favourite childhood reading – and now his notional predecessor. Once upon a time there was a fictional scientist named Jay Garrick who was exposed to the mutagenic fumes of Hard Water and became the “fastest man alive”…

Wearing a sleek, streamlined bodysuit (courtesy of Infantino – a major talent approaching his artistic and creative peak), Barry became point man for the spectacular revival of a genre and an entire industry. This splendidly tempting full colour paperback sublimely displays Infantino’s talents and the tone of those halcyon times. These tales have been gathered many times but still offer punch, clarity and the ineffably comforting yet thrilling timbre of those now-distant times. Conversely, you might be as old as me and it was only the day before yesterday. This is what a big book of comics ought to feel like in your eager hands…

Collecting all four try-out issues (Showcase #4, 8, 13 & 14) – and the bombastic, trendsetting continuance into his own title (The Flash volume 1, #105-123) the contents span cover dates October 1956 to September 1961 with the high-speed thrills beginning in Showcase #4’s ‘Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt!’ Scripted by Kanigher, it sees Barry endure electrical metamorphosis and promptly go on to subdue bizarre criminal mastermind and “Slowest Man Alive” Turtle Man, after which ‘The Man Who Broke the Time Barrier!’ – scripted by the brilliant John Broome – finds the newly-minted Scarlet Speedster batting a criminal from the future. A furious fight and battle of wills sees Allen accomplish the impossible by returning penal exile Mazdan to his own century, proving the new Flash was a protagonist of keen insight and sharp wits as well as overwhelming power.

These are all slickly polished, coolly sophisticated short stories, introducing a comfortingly ordinary, suburbanite superhero and firmly establishing the broad parameters of his universe. Showcase #8 (June 1957) opens with another Kanigher tale. ‘The Secret of the Empty Box’ is a perplexing if pedestrian mystery, with veteran Frank Giacoia returning as inker. However, the real landmark is Broome’s thriller ‘The Coldest Man on Earth’. With this yarn he confirmed and consolidated the new costumed character reality by introducing the first of a Rogues Gallery of memorably outlandish but stylish supervillains. Unlike the Golden Age, modern superheroes would face predominantly costumed foes rather than thugs and spies. Bad guys would henceforth be as memorable as the champions of justice. Captain Cold would return time and again even as Broome went on to create every single member of Flash’s pantheon of classic super-foes….

Joe Giella inked both tales in Showcase #13 (April 1958). Kanigher’s ‘Around the World in 80 Minutes!’ demonstrates Flash’s versatility as he tackles atomic terrorists, battles Arabian bandits, counters an avalanche on Mount Everest and scuttles submarine pirates in the specified time slot. Broome’s ‘Master of the Elements!’ then premiers bizarre bandit Mr. Element, utilising the periodic table as his formidable, innovative arsenal…

Showcase #14 (June 1958) opens with Kanigher’s eerie ‘Giants of the Time-World!’: a masterful fantasy thriller and a worthy effort to bow out on as Barry and journalist girlfriend Iris West encounter extra-dimensional invaders with the strangest life-cycle imaginable. The issue closed with a return engagement for Mr. Element, sporting a new M.O. and identity: Doctor Alchemy. ‘The Man Who Changed the Earth!’ is a classic crime-caper with serious psychological underpinnings as Flash struggles to overcome the villain’s latest weapon, mystic transmutational talisman the Philosopher’s Stone. When the Scarlet Speedster graduated to his own title, Broome became lead writer, supplemented by Gardner Fox. Kanigher would return briefly in the mid-1960s and later write many tales during DC’s ‘Relevancy’ period…

Taking its own sweet time, The Flash #105 launched with a February/March 1959 cover-date – so it was out for Christmas 1958 – and opened with Broome, Infantino & Giella’s sci-fi chiller ‘Conqueror From 8 Million B.C.!’ before introducing yet another money-mad super-villain in ‘The Master of Mirrors!’

The next issue premiered one of the most charismatic and memorable baddies in comics history. Gorilla Grodd and his hidden race of telepathic super-simians instantly captured fan attention in ‘Menace of the Super-Gorilla!’ Even after Flash soundly thrashed the hairy hooligan, Grodd promptly returned in the next two issues. Presumably this early confidence was fuelled by DC’s inexplicable but commercially sound pro-Gorilla editorial stance. In those far-ago days for some reason any comic with a substantial simian in it spectacularly outsold those that didn’t; here the tales are also packed with tension, action and challenging fantasy concepts.

By way of encore there is also ‘The Pied Piper of Peril!’: a mesmerising musical criminal mastermind, stealing for fun and attention rather than profit…

The Flash #107 led with the ‘Return of the Super-Gorilla!’ by Broome, Infantino & Giella: a multi-layered fantasy taking our hero from the (invisible) African city of the Super-Gorillas to the subterranean citadel of antediluvian Ornitho-Men, before closing with ‘The Amazing Race Against Time’, featuring an amnesiac who could outrun the Fastest Man Alive in a desperate collaborative dash to save all of creation from obliteration. With every issue the stakes got higher whilst the dramatic quality and narrative ingenuity got better!

Frank Giacoia inked #108’s high-tech death-trap thriller ‘The Speed of Doom!’ with trans-dimensional raiders stealing fulgurites (look it up, if you want) before Giella returned for ‘The Super-Gorilla’s Secret Identity!’, wherein Grodd devises a scheme to outwit evolution itself by turning himself into a human…

The next issue saw ‘The Return of the Mirror-Master!’ with the first in a series of bizarre physical transformations that increasingly became a signature device in Flash stories, whilst the contemporary Space Race provided an evocative maguffin for a fantastic undersea adventure in the ‘Secret of the Sunken Satellite’. Here Flash befriends an unsuspected subsea race on the edge of extinction whilst enquiring after the impossible survival of an astronaut trapped at the bottom of the sea for days after splashdown. The Flash #110 was a major landmark, not so much for the debut of another worthy addition to the burgeoning Rogues Gallery in ‘The Challenge of the Weather Wizard’ (inked by Schwartz’s incredibly versatile artistic top-gun Murphy Anderson) but for the introduction of Wally West, who in a bizarre and suspicious replay of the lightning strike that created the Vizier of Velocity became a junior version of the Fastest Man Alive. Inked by Giella, ‘Meet Kid Flash!’ debuted the first teenage sidekick of the Silver Age (cover dated December 1959-January 1960 and just pipping Aqualad who premiered in Adventure Comics #269’s February off-sale date).

Not only would Kid Flash begin his own series of back-up tales in the very next issue (a sure sign of the confidence the creators had in him) but he would eventually inherit the mantle of the Flash himself – one of the few times in comics where such torch-passing actually stuck.

Anderson inked #111’s ‘The Invasion of the Cloud Creatures!’, which successfully overcomes its frankly daft premise to deliver a taut, tense sci-fi thriller nicely counterpointing the first solo outing for Kid Flash in ‘The Challenge of the Crimson Crows!’ This folksy parable has small-town kid Wally use his new powers to rescue a gang of kids on the slippery slope to juvenile delinquency. Perhaps a tad paternalistic and heavy-handed by today’s standards, in the opening months of 1960 this was a strip about a boy heroically dealing with a kid’s real dilemmas. The occasional series would concentrate on such human-scaled problems, leaving super-menaces and world-saving for team-ups with his mentor…

Flash #112 – ‘The Mystery of the Elongated Man!’ – introduced an intriguing super-stretchable newcomer to the DC universe, who might have been hero or villain in a beguiling tantaliser, after which Wally tackled juvenile Go-Karters and corrupt school contractors in the surprisingly gripping ‘Danger on Wheels!’

Mercurial maniac The Trickster premiered in #113’s lead tale ‘Danger in the Air!’ whilst the second-generation speedster took a break so his senior partner could defeat ‘The Man Who Claimed the Earth!’: a full-on cosmic epic wherein ancient alien Po-Siden seeks to bring the lost colony of Earth back into the galaxy-spanning Empire of Zus. Next, Captain Cold and Murphy Anderson returned for ‘The Big Freeze!’, as the smitten villain turns Central City into a glacier just to impress Iris West. Meanwhile, her nephew Wally saves a lad unjustly accused of cheating from a life of crime when the despondent student falls under the influence of the ‘King of the Beatniks!’

Flash #115 offered another bizarre transformation, courtesy of Gorilla Grodd in ‘The Day Flash Weighed 1000 Pounds!’, and when aliens attempt to conquer Earth, the slimmed-down champion needs ‘The Elongated Man’s Secret Weapon!’ as well as the guest-star himself to save the day. Once again Anderson’s inking gave over-taxed Joe Giella a breather whilst taking art-lovers’ breath away in this beautiful, fast-paced thriller. The big science concepts kept coming and #116 introduced‘The Man Who Stole Central City!’ with a seemingly fool-proof way to kill the valiant hero, requiring both time-tinkering and serious outwitting to thwart, before Kid Flash returns in ‘The Race to Thunder Hill!’: a father-son tale of rally driving, but with car-stealing bandits and a young love interest for Wally to complicate the proceedings.

‘Here Comes Captain Boomerang’ (inked by Anderson), introduces a mercenary Australian marauder who turns a legitimate job opportunity into a criminal career in what is still one of the most original origin tales ever concocted to lead off #117 before ‘The Madcap Inventors of Central City’ sees Gardner Fox (creator of the Golden Age Flash) join the creative bullpen with a perhaps ill-considered attempt to reintroduce 1940s comedy sidekicks Winky, Blinky and Noddy to the modern fans. The fact that you’ve never heard of them should indicate how well that went although the yarn, illustrated by Infantino & Giella, is a fast, witty, enjoyably silly change of pace.

The Flash #118 highlighted the period’s (and DC’s) obsession with Hollywood in ‘The Doomed Scarecrow!’ (Anderson inks); a sharp, smart thriller featuring a minor villain with a unique reason to get rid of our hero, after which Wally West and a friend must spend the night in a haunted house for Kid Flash chiller ‘The Midnight Peril!’ In #119, Broome, Infantino & Anderson relate the adventure of‘The Mirror-Master’s Magic Bullet!’, which our hero narrowly evades, before ‘The Elongated Man’s Undersea Trap!’ introduces the stretchable sleuth’s new spouse Sue Dibny (née Dearbon) and sinister alien subsea slavers in a mysterious and stirring tale.

These earliest stories were historically vital to the development of our industry but, quite frankly, so what? The first exploits of The Flash should be judged solely on their merit, and on those terms, they are punchy, awe-inspiring, beautifully illustrated and captivating thrillers that amuse, amaze and enthral both new readers and old devotees. The title had gelled into a comfortable pattern of two tales per issue alternating with semi-regular booklength thrillers such as the glorious example in Flash #120 (May 1961). ‘Land of Golden Giants!’ is a minor masterpiece: a fanciful science fiction drama wherein a small private expedition of explorers – including Iris, Barry and protégé Wally – are catapulted back millennia to the very moment when the primal supercontinent (or at least the parts that would become Africa and South America) begin splitting apart.

Flash stories always found a way to make cutting-edge science integral and interesting. Regular filler-features were numerous speed-themed informational pages which became a component of the stories themselves via quirky little footnotes. This collection includes them all. Peppered throughout the dramas are numerous examples of ‘Flash Facts!’, ‘Science Says You’re Wrong if You Believe…!’, ‘Amazing Speeds!’, ‘The Speed of Sound!’, ‘Fastest Creatures on Earth!’, ‘Wonders of Speed!’, ‘Comparitive Speed Records!’, ‘Jet Speedboat Ace! (Donald Campbell)’, ‘Solar System Speeds!’, ‘Our Remarkable Bodies!’ and even a few assorted ads of the era. How many fans turned a C to a B by dint of recreational reading? I know I certainly impressed the heck out of a few nuns at the convent school I attended! (let’s not visualise; simply move on)…

The Flash #121 saw the return of a novel old foe on another robbery rampage when ‘The Trickster Strikes Back!’, after which costumed criminality is counterbalanced by Cold War skulduggery in gripping, Anderson inked thriller ‘Secret of the Stolen Blueprint!’ Another contemporary zeitgeist undoubtedly led to ‘Beware the Atomic Grenade!’, a witty yarn premiering a new member of Flash’s burgeoning Rogues Gallery after career criminal Roscoe Dillon graduates from second-rate thief to global extortionist The Top by means of a rather baroque thermonuclear device…

In counterpoint, Kid Flash deals with smaller scale catastrophe in ‘The Face Behind the Mask!’ A pop star with a secret identity (based on a young David Soul who began his career as folk singer “the Covered Man” because he performed wearing a mask) is blackmailed by a villainous gang of old school friends until whizz kid Wally steps in…

Fox didn’t write many Flash scripts at this time, but those few he did were all dynamite. None more so than the full-length epic closing this tome: a tale that literally changed the scope of American comics forever. ‘Flash of Two Worlds!’ introduced the theory of alternate Earths to the continuity and, by extension, resulted in the pivotal multiversal structure of the DCU, Crisis on Infinite Earths and all succeeding cosmos-shaking crossover sagas that grew from it. And, of course, where DC led, others followed…

During a charity benefit gig Flash accidentally slips into another dimension to find that the comic book hero he’s based his own superhero identity upon actually exists. Every adventure Barry absorbed as an eager child was grim reality to Jay Garrick and his mystery-men chums on (the controversially designated) Earth-2. Locating his idol, Barry convinces the elder to come out of retirement just as three Golden Age villains – The Shade, Thinker and Fiddler – make their own wicked comeback. And above all else, Flash #123 is a great read that still stands up today.

These tales were crucial to the development of our art-form, but, more importantly they are brilliant, awe-inspiring, beautifully realised thrillers to amuse, amaze and enthral both new readers and old lags. This splendid selection is another must-read item for anybody in love with the world of words-in-pictures.
© 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 2024 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Godzilla: The Original Marvel Years


By Doug Moench, Herb Trimpe, Tom Sutton, Jim Mooney, Tony DeZuñiga, Klaus Janson, Fred Kida, Dan Green, Jack Abel, Frank Giacoia, George Tuska & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5875-6 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

What’s big and green and leaves your front room a complete mess? No, not any first world government’s policy on climate change, but (arguably) Earth’s most famous monster…

Back in 1976, although some television cartoons had introduced Japanese style and certain stars – like Astro Boy and Marine Boy – to western eyes, manga and anime were only starting to creep into global consciousness. However, the most well-known pop culture Japanese export was a colossal radioactive dinosaur who regularly rampaged through the East, crushing cities and fighting monsters even more bizarre and scary than he was.

At this time Marvel was well on the way to becoming the multimedia corporate colossus of today and was looking to increase its international profile. Comics companies have always sought licensed properties to bolster their market-share and in 1977 Marvel truly landed the big one, leading to a 2-year run of one of the world’s most recognisable characters. They also boldly broke with tradition by dropping him solidly into real-time, contemporary company continuity. The series ran for 24 guest-star-stuffed issues between August 1977 and July 1979.

Gojira first appeared in the eponymous 1954 anti-war, anti-nuke parable written and directed by Ishiro Honda for Toho Films: a symbol of ancient forces roused to violent reaction by mankind’s incessant meddling. The film was savagely re-cut and dubbed into English with young Raymond Burr inserted for US audience appeal and comprehension, with the Brobdingnagian beast inexplicably renamed Godzilla. The movie was released in the US on April 27th and – despite being a brutally bowdlerised hash of Ishiro Honda’s message and intent – became a monster hit anyway.

The King of Monsters smashed his way through 33 Japanese movies (and six & counting US iterations); and tons of records, books, games, associated merch and many, many comics. He is the originator of the manga sub-genre Daikaij? (giant strange beasts). After years away thanks to convoluted copyright issues, Marvel is regaining contact with many of its 1970/1980s licensing classics and this volume is a no-frills, simple sensation recovered from a time when the other Big Green Gargantuan rampaged across the Marvel firmament heavily (how else?) interacting with stalwarts of the shared universe as just one of the guys…

The saga is preceded by Introduction ‘“It Had to Happen” Godzilla in the Mighty Marvel Universe!’ by uberfan Karl Kesel before the compilation commences with ‘The Coming!’, courtesy of Doug Moench, Herb Trimpe & Jim Mooney, wherein the monstrous aquatic lizard with radioactive halitosis erupts out of the Pacific Ocean and rampages through Alaska.

Superspy security organisation S.H.I.E.L.D. is quickly dispatched to stop the onslaught, and Nick Fury (the original white one) summarily calls in Japanese looming-lizard experts Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi, his grandson Robert and their eye-candy assistant Tamara Hashioka. After an inconclusive battle of ancient strength against modern tech, Godzilla returns to the sea, but the seeds have been sown and everybody knows he will return…

In Japan, many people now believe that Godzilla is a benevolent force destined to oppose true evil. Young Robert is one of them and gets the chance to expound his devout views in #2’s ‘Thunder in the Darkness!’ (inked by Frank Giacoia & George Tuska) when the skyscraping saurian resurfaces in Seattle and nearly razes the place before being lured away by daring and ingenuity, S.H.I.E.L.D. style. Veteran agents Dum-Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones and Jimmy Woo are seconded to a permanent anti-lizard task force until the beast is finally vanquished, but sadly, there are also dozens of freelance do-gooders in the Marvel universe always ready to step up and when the Emerald antihero takes offence at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, he attracts the attention of the local superhero team. The Champions – a short-lived, California-based team consisting of Black Widow, Angel, Iceman, Ghost Rider and Hercules – rapidly respond in ‘A Tale of Two Saviours’ (with the lushly solid inks of Tony DeZuñiga adding welcome depth to the art). Typically, the humans spend more time fighting each other than the monster, before the beast bolts for quieter shores…

There’re only so many cities even the angriest dinosaur can trash before formula tedium sets in, so writer Moench begins his first continued story in #4 with ‘Godzilla Versus Batragon!’ (guest-pencilled by the superb Tom Sutton and again inked by DeZuñiga), wherein deranged scientist/monster mutator Dr. Demonicus enslaves Aleutian Islanders to help him grow his own world-wrecking giant horrors… until the real deal shows up. The epic encounter concludes catastrophically with plenty of collateral damage on ‘The Isle of Lost Monsters’ (inked by Klaus Janson) before ‘A Monster Enslaved!’ in #6 opens another extended epic as Trimpe returns and Godzilla – as well as the American general public – are introduced to another now commonplace Japanese innovation.

Giant, piloted battle-suits or Mecha first appeared in Go Nagai’s 1972 manga classic Mazinger Z, and Marvel did much to popularise the subgenre in their follow-up/spin-off licensed title Shogun Warriors, (based on an import toy rather than movie or comic characters, but by the same creative team as Godzilla). Here young Rob Takiguchi steals S.H.I.E.L.D.’s latest weapon – a colossal robot codenamed Red Ronin – to aid the Immense Intense Iguana when Godzilla is finally captured. Fred Kida stirringly inked the first of a long line of saurian sagas with #7’s ‘Birth of a Warrior!’ with more carnage culminating in the uneasy alliance ending in another huge fight in concluding chapter ‘Titan Time Two!’

Trimpe & Kida depicted ‘The Fate of Las Vegas!’ in Godzilla #9: a lighter-toned morality play with the monster destroying Boulder Dam and flooding the modern Sodom and Gomorrah, before returning to big beastie bashing in ‘Godzilla vs Yetrigar’: another multi-part mash-up that ends in ‘Arena for Three!’ as Red Ronin & Rob reappear to tackle both large looming lizard and stupendous, smashing Sasquatch, after which the first year ends with #12’s ‘The Beta-Beast!’ – first chapter in a classic alien invasion epic.

Shanghaied to the Moon, Godzilla is co-opted as a soldier in a war between alien races who breed giant monsters as weapons, and when the battle transfers to Earth in ‘The Mega-Monsters from Beyond!’, Red Ronin joins the fray for blockbusting conclusion ‘The Super-Beasts’ (this last inked by Dan Green). Afterwards, let loose in cowboy country, Godzilla stomps into a rustling mystery and modern showdown in ‘Roam on the Range’ and ‘The Great Godzilla Roundup!’ before the final story arc begins.

In #17 ‘Of Lizards, Great and Small’ starts with a logical but humane solution to the beast’s rampages after superhero Ant-Man’s shrinking gas is used to reduce Godzilla to a more manageable size. However, when the diminished devastator escapes from his lab cage and becomes a ‘Fugitive in Manhattan!’, it’s all hands on deck as the city waits for the shrinking vapour’s effects to wear off. ‘With Dugan on the Docks!’ then sees the aging secret agent battle the immortal saurian on more or less equal terms before the Fantastic Four step in for ‘A Night at the Museum.’

The FF have another non-lethal solution and dispatch Godzilla to a primeval age of dinosaurs in #21’s ‘The Doom Trip!’, allowing every big beast fan’s dream to come true as the King of the Monsters teams up with Jack Kirby’s uniquely splendid Devil Dinosaur – and Moon Boy – in the Jack Abel inked ‘The Devil and the Dinosaur!’, before returning to the 20th century and full size for a spectacular battle against the Mighty Avengers in ‘The King Once More’.

The story and series concluded in #24 (July 1979) with the remarkably satisfying ‘And Lo, a Child Shall Lead Them’, as all New York’s superheroes prove less effective than a single impassioned plea, and Godzilla wearily departs for new conquests and other licensed outlets.

By no means award-winners or critical masterpieces, these stories are nonetheless a perfect example of what comics should be: enticing, exciting, accessible and brimming with “bang for your buck”. Moench’s oft-times florid prose and dialogue meld perfectly here with Trimpe’s stylised interpretation, which often surpasses the artist’s excellent work on that other big, green galoot. Other than Kirby, Happy Herb was probably the most adept at capturing the astoundingly cathartic attraction of giant creatures running amok, and here he went hog wild at every opportunity…

With covers by Trimpe, Ernie Chan, Joe Rubinstein, Bobs Layton, Wiacek & McLeod and Dave Cockrum, plus bonus features including Archie Goodwin’s ‘Godzilla-Grams’ editorial page from the first issue, as well as covers to earlier compilations, letter page art by Sutton from and a text free version of this volume by painter Junggeun Yoon.

These are great tales to bring younger and/or disaffected readers back to comics and are well worth their space on any fan’s bookshelf. This is what monster comics are all about and demand your full attention.
© 2024 MARVEL.

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Rex Generations


By Ted Rechlin (Rextooth Studios/Sweetgrass Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59512-229-4 (HB)

Got your eggs yet? Some come pretty big…

I’ve never met a kid who didn’t love dinosaurs, and that gleeful fascination doesn’t fade with age or what we laughingly regard as maturity. Ted Rechlin clearly ascribes to that belief too, and has made it his life’s work, whether it’s in his 30+ books (including End of the Ice Age, Jurassic, Epsilon: a Yellowstone Wolf Story, Howl, Comicquest Time Travel Trouble or the award-winning Sharks: A 400 Million Year Journey) or superhero stuff such as freelance commissions for the likes of DC Comics, Dark Horse or Dover Publications.

Rex Generations is an incredibly informative and engaging book about family, rendered with great deftness, gleeful aplomb, and packed with the latest scientific thinking regarding arguably the most famous species of big lizard (or is that bird?) on Earth.

In case you weren’t paying attention, the clan in question is thundering great tyrannosaur Cobalt and his feisty mate Sierra, just getting by in what is nowadays Hell Creek, Montana.

This stunning full-colour hardback, however, opens in the Mesozoic bit of the Cretaceous Period, or approximately 66 million years ago on a very special night. Here our anxious apex predators proudly celebrate the hatching of four eggs, heralding the start of a new generation, after which we’ll closely follow the pack over the next decade or so. The parents teach and provide in a casually lethal environment packed with a wide variety of dangerously capable prey, rival predators and unknown perils of every description.

This is dinosaurs and natural history, not Lady and the Tramp with really big teeth, so brace yourself and your own youngsters with a little spoiler alert: not everybody present at this antediluvian nativity is going to make it…

Compelling, beguilingly educational and splendidly entertaining, T. Rex Generations is a glorious celebration of Earth’s earlier Saurian inhabitants and our enduring love affair with them. Get this read the rest and go wild!
© 2018 Ted Rechlin. All rights reserved.

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DC Finest: The Doom Patrol – The World’s Strangest Heroes


By Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, Bruno Premiani, Bob Brown, Dick Giordano, Sal Trapani, Bill Molno, Geoge Roussos & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-79950-038-3 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

This stunning compilation is part of the first tranche of long-awaited DC Finest editions: full colour continuations of their chronolgically curated monochrome Showcase Presents line, delivering “affordably priced, large-size (comic book dimensions and generally around 600 pages) paperback collections” highlighting past glories.Whilst primarily and understandably concentrating on the superhero character pantheon, there will also be genre selections like horror and war books, and themed compendia such as the much anticpiated gathering of early ape stories (brace yourself for DC Finest: The Gorilla World in July!).

Sadly, they’re not yet available digitally, as were the lst decade’s Bronze, Silver and Golden Age collections, but we live in hope…

In 1963 traditionally cautious comic book publishers at last realised superheroes were back in a big way and began reviving and/or creating a host of costumed characters to battle with and against outrageous menaces and dastardly villains. Thus, the powers-that-be at National Comics decided venerable adventure-mystery anthology title My Greatest Adventure would dip its toe in the waters with a radical take on the fad. Still, infamous for cautious publishing, they introduced a startling squad of champions with thematic roots still firmly planted in the B-movie monster films of the era that had not-so-subtly informed the parent comic.

No traditional team of masked adventurers, this cast comprised a robot, a mummy and an occasional 50-foot woman, joining forces with and guided by a vivid, brusque, domineering, crippled mad scientist. They would fight injustice in a whole new way…

Covering June 1963 to May 1965, this stunning compilation collects the earliest exploits of the “Fabulous Freaks”, gathered from My Greatest Adventure #80-85 and thereafter issues #86-102 of the rapidly renamed title, once overwhelming reader response compelled editor Murray Boltinoff to change it to the Doom Patrol. For good measure this comprehensive collection also contains an early crossover from Challengers of the Unknown #48, a team-up from The Brave and the Bold #65 and a guest shot in Teen Titans #6.

The origins and many of the earlier dramas were especially enhanced and elevated by the drawing skills of Italian cartoonist/classicist artist Giordano Bruno Premiani, whose highly detailed, subtly humanistic illustration made even the strangest situation dauntingly authentic and grittily believable.

Eponymous premier tale ‘The Doom Patrol’ was co-scripted by Arnold Drake & Bob Haney, depicting how a mysterious wheelchair-bound scientist summons three outcasts to his home through the promise of changing their miserable lives forever. Competitive car racer and professional daredevil Cliff Steele had died in a horrific pile up, but his undamaged brain had been transplanted into a fantastic mechanical body. Test pilot Larry Trainor had been trapped in an experimental plane and become permanently irradiated by stratospheric radiation, with the dubious benefit of gaining a semi-sentient energy avatar which would escape his body to perform incredible feats but only for up to a minute at a time. To pass safely amongst men, Trainor had to constantly wrap himself in unique radiation-proof bandages…

Former movie star Rita Farr was exposed to mysterious gases which bestowed a terrifying, unpredictable and, at first, uncontrollable ability to shrink or grow to incredible sizes.

The outcasts were brought together by brilliant but enigmatic Renaissance Man The Chief, who sought to mould the solitary misfits into a force for good. He quickly proved his point when a mad bomber attempted to blow up the city docks. The surly savant directed the trio of strangers in defusing it, and no sooner had the misfits realised their true worth than they were on their first mission…

Second chapter ‘The Challenge of the Timeless Commander’, sees an implausibly ancient despot seeking to seize a fallen alien vessel: intent on turning its extraterrestrial secrets into weapons of world conquest, culminating in ‘The Deadly Duel with Gen. Immortus’, wherein the Doom Patrol defeat the old devil and thereafter dedicate their lives to saving humanity from all threats.

My Greatest Adventure #81 featured ‘The Nightmare Maker’, combining everyday disaster response – saving a damaged submarine – with a nationwide plague of monsters. Stuck at base, The Chief monitors missions by means of a TV camera attached to Robotman/Steele’s chest, and quickly deduces the uncanny secret of the beasts and their war criminal creator Josef Kreutz…

Solely scripted by Drake, a devious espionage ploy outs the Chief – or at least his image, if not name – in #82’s ‘Three Against the Earth!’, leading the team to believe Rita is a traitor. When the cabal of millionaires actually behind the scheme are exposed as an alien advance guard who assumed the wheelchair-bound leader to be a rival invader, the inevitable showdown nearly costs Cliff what remains of his life…

MGA #83’s ‘The Night Negative Man Went Berserk!’ spotlights the living mummy as a radio astronomy experiment interrupts Negative Man’s return to Trainor’s body: pitching the pilot into a coma and sending the ebony energy being on a global spree of destruction. Calamity piles upon calamity when crooks steal the military equipment constructed to destroy the radio-energy creature and only desperate improvisation by Cliff and Rita allows avatar and host to reunite…

Issue #84 heralded ‘The Return of General Immortus’ as ancient Babylonian artefacts lead the squad to the eternal malefactor, only to have the wily warrior turn the tables and take control of Robotman. Even though his comrades soon save him, Immortus escapes with the greatest treasures of all time, before My Greatest Adventure #85 ends an era. It was the last issue, featuring ‘The Furies from 4,000 Miles Below’: monstrous subterranean horrors fuelled by nuclear forces. Most importantly, despite having tricked Elasti-Girl into resuming her Hollywood career, the paternalistic heroes are all pretty grateful when she turns up to save them all from radioactive incineration…

An unqualified success, the comic book was seamlessly transformed into The Doom Patrol with #86: celebrated by debuting ‘The Brotherhood of Evil’: an assemblage of international terrorist super-criminals led by French genius-in-a-jar The Brain. He was backed up by his greatest creation, a super-intelligent talking gorilla dubbed Monsieur Mallah. Diametrically opposed and with some undisclosed back story amping up tension, the teams first cross swords after Brotherhood applicant Mr. Morden steals Rog: a giant robot the Chief has constructed for the US military…

DP #87 revealed ‘The Terrible Secret of Negative Man’ after Brotherhood femme fatale Madame Rouge seeks to seduce Larry. When the Brain’s unstoppable mechanical army invades the city, Trainor is forced to remove his bandages and let his lethal radiations disrupt their transmissions…

An occasional series of short solo adventures kicked off in this issue with ‘Robotman Fights Alone’. Here Cliff is dispatched to a Pacific island in search of an escaped killer, only to walk into a devastating series of WWII Japanese booby-traps before all mysteries surrounding the leader are finally revealed in #88 with ‘The Incredible Origin of the Chief’: a blistering drama telling how brilliant but impoverished student Niles Caulder suddenly received unlimited funding from an anonymous patron interested in his researches on extending life. Curiosity drove Caulder to track down his benefactor, and he was horrified to discover the money came from the head of a criminal syndicate claiming to be eons old…

Immortus had long ago consumed a potion which extended his life and wanted the student to recreate it since the years were finally catching up. To insure Caulder’s full cooperation, the General had a bomb inserted in the researcher’s chest and powered by his heartbeat. After building a robot surgeon, Caulder tricked Immortus into shooting him, determined to thwart the monster at all costs. Once clinically dead, his Ra-2 doctor-bot removed the now-inert explosive and revived the bold scientist. Tragically, the trusty mechanoid had been too slow and Caulder lost the use of his legs forever…

Undaunted, ‘The Man Who Lived Twice’ destroyed all his research and went into hiding for years, with Immortus utterly unaware that Caulder had actually succeeded in the task which had stymied history’s greatest doctors and biologists. Now, under the alias of super-thief The Baron, Immortus captures the Doom Patrol and demands a final confrontation with the Chief. Luckily, the wheelchair-locked inventor is not only a biologist and robotics genius but also adept at constructing concealed weapons…

In DP #89 the team tackle a duplicitous scientist who devises a means to transform himself into ‘The Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Menace’ before ‘The Private War of Elasti-Girl’ finds the Miss of Many Sizes using unsuspected or acknowledged detective skills to track down a missing soldier and reunite him with his adopted son. ‘The Enemy within the Doom Patrol’ then sees shape-shifting Madame Rouge infiltrate the team and turn them against each other whilst issue #91 introduces multi-millionaire Steve Dayton.

Used to getting whatever he wants, he creates a superhero persona solely to woo and wed Rita Farr. With such ambiguous motivations ‘Mento – the Man who Split the Doom Patrol’ was a radical character for the times, but at least his psycho-kinetic helmet proved a big help in defeating the plastic robots of grotesque alien invader Garguax…

DP #92 tasks the team with a temporal terrorist in ‘The Sinister Secret of Dr. Tyme’ and features abrasive Mento again saving the day, after which #93’s ‘Showdown on Nightmare Road’ features The Brain’s latest monstrous scheme: being transplanted inside Robotman’s skull whilst poor Cliff is dumped into a horrific beast… until the Chief out-plays the French Fiend at his own game…

Creature-feature veteran Bob Brown stepped in to illustrate #94’s lead tale ‘The Nightmare Fighters’ as an eastern mystic’s uncanny abilities are swiftly debunked by solid American science. Premiani returned to render back-up solo-feature ‘The Chief… Stands Alone’, wherein Caulder eschews his deputies’ aid to bring down bird-themed villain The Claw with a mixture of wit, nerve and weaponised wheelchair, prior to DP #95 disclosing The Chief’s disastrous effort to cure Rita and Larry, resulting in switched powers and the ‘Menace of the Turnabout Heroes’. Naturally, that’s the very moment Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man picks for a return bout…

Doom Patrol #96 opens on ‘The Day the World Went Mad!’ as frantic investigations reveal a global wave of insanity is being caused by a deadly alliance of old foes The Brotherhood of Evil, alien tyrant Garguax and undying terrorist General Immortus. Cue last-ditch heroics to save everything, before that sinister syndicate attacks Earth again in #97, transforming humans into crystal zombies, spectacularly resulting in ‘The War Against the Mind Slaves’, and heralding the return of super-rich wannabee and self-made superhero Mento. The net result is a stunning showdown free-for-all on the moon, after which #98 sees both ‘The Death of the Doom Patrol’ – a grievous over-exaggeration on behalf of transmutational foe Mr. 103 who was actually compelled to save Caulder from radiation poisoning – and Bob Brown-drawn solo-thriller ’60 Sinister Seconds’, in which Negative Man must find and make safe four atomic bombs in different countries… all within one minute…

Brown handled both tales in Doom Patrol #99, starting with an old-fashioned battle against a deranged entomologist whose mechanical insects deliver ‘The Deadly Sting of the Bug Man’ before proceeding to the groundbreaking first appearance of shapeshifting juvenile delinquent ‘The Beast-Boy’. The green kid burgles then saves the team with his incredible ability to become any animal he could imagine…

An extended storyline began with #100 and ‘The Fantastic Origin of Beast-Boy’ (limned by Premiani) wherein the obnoxious kid is revealed as orphan Gar Logan: a child being slowly swindled out of his inheritance by his ruthless guardian Nicholas Galtry. The conniving accountant even leases his emerald-hued charge to scientist Dr. Weir for assorted evil experiments, but when the Patrol later tackle rampaging dinosaurs, the trail leads unerringly to Gar, who at last explains his uncanny powers…

Whilst a toddler in Africa, Logan contracted a rare disease. His scientist father tried an experimental cure which left him the colour of cabbage but with the ability to change shape at will. Now it appears that Weir has used the lad’s altered biology to unlock the secrets of evolution – or has he? Despite foiling the scheme, the team have no choice but to return the boy to his guardian. Rita, however, is not prepared to leave the matter unresolved…

The anniversary issue also saw the start of an extended multi-part thriller exploring Cliff’s early days after his accident and subsequent resurrection, beginning with ‘Robotman… Wanted Dead or Alive’. Following Caulder’s implantation of Cliff’s brain into a mechanical body, the shock drove the patient crazy and Steele went on a city-wide rampage…

Doom Patrol #101’s riotous romp ‘I, Kranus, Robot Emperor!’, sees an apparently alien mechanoid exposed with a far more terrestrial and terrifying origin, before the real meat of the issue comes from the events of the ongoing war between Galtry and the Chief for possession of Beast Boy. The tale ends on a pensive cliffhanger as the Patrol then dash off to rescue fellow adventurers The Challengers of the Unknown – but before that the second instalment of the Robotman saga sees the occasionally rational, if paranoid, Cliff Steele hunted by the authorities and befriended by crippled, homeless derelicts in ‘The Lonely Giant’.

Firmly established in the heroic pantheon, the Doom Patrol surprisingly teamed with fellow outsiders The Challengers of the Unknown at the end of 1965. The crossover began in the Challs’ title (specifically #48, cover-dated February/March 1966). Scripted by Drake and limned by Brown, ‘Twilight of the Challengers’ opened with the death-cheaters’ apparent corpses, and the DP desperately hunting whoever killed them…

Thanks to the Chief, all our heroes recover and a furious coalition takes off after a cabal of bizarre supervillains. The drama explosively concluded in Doom Patrol #102, with ‘8 Against Eternity’, battling murderous shape-shifting maniac Multi-Man and his robotic allies to stop a horde of zombies from a lost world attacking humanity.

More team-ups and guest shots close this collection beginning with The Brave and the Bold #65 (May 1966), with Haney, Dick Giordano & Sal Trapani crafting ‘Alias Negative Man!’ Here Larry’s radio energy avatar is trapped by The Brotherhood of Evil and the Chief recruits speedster The Flash to impersonate and replace him… until the heroes can save their friend.

The weird wonderment pauses for now with Bill Molno & George Roussos illustrating Haney’s ‘The Fifth Titan’ from Teen Titans #6 (November/December 1966) seeing obnoxious juvenile know-it-all Beast Boy Jump ship. Feeling unappreciated by his adult mentors, the young hero wrongly assumes he’ll be welcomed by his peers. After being rejected again, he falls under the spell of an unscrupulous circus owner and the costumed kids need to set things right and set Gar free…

Although as kids we all happily suspended disbelief and bought into the fanciful antics of the myriad masked heroes available, somehow the exploits of Doom Patrol – and their strangely synchronistic Marvel counterparts The X-Men (freaks and outcasts, wheelchair geniuses, both debuting in the summer of 1963) – always seemed just a bit more authentic than the usual cape-&-costume crowd. With the edge of time and experience on my side it’s obvious just how incredibly mature and hardcore Drake, Haney & Premiani’s take on superheroes actually was. These superbly engaging, frantically fun and breathtakingly beautiful tales should be rightfully ranked amongst the finest Fights ‘n’ Tights tales ever told. Come and see what I mean…
© 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 2024 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Noggin the Nog


By Oliver Postgate & Peter Firmin (Egmont)
Noggin the King ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8152-2 (HB)
Noggin and the Whale ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8153-9 (HB)
Nogbad Comes Back ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8155-3 (HB)
Noggin and the Dragon ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8154-6 (HB)
Nogbad and the Elephants ISBN 978-1- 4052-8142-3 (HB)
Noggin and the Moon Mouse ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8141-6 (HB)
Noggin and the Storks ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8144-7 (HB)
Noggin and the Money ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8143-0 (HB)

Baby Boomers like me consider our childhoods – no matter how feted or feral, and personally privileged or dire and deprived – to have been a golden age in terms of liberty, agency and especially entertainment. That’s probably due in large part to being exposed to the gentle, life-affirming fantasy worlds of these guys.

Today celebrating a century of being splendid, Richard Oliver Postgate was a writer, puppeteer, animator and unrepentant itinerant storyteller who was born to an extremely prestigious, overachieving and drama-drenched family. He entered the world on April 12th 1925 in Hendon Middlesex and was eventually educated at Woodstock School, Woodhouse Secondary, the legendary Dartington Hall School/College and Kingston College of Art. He joined the Home Guard in 1942 but when at last called up, declared himself a Conscious Objector – just as his father had during the Great War. Court martialled and sentenced to Feltham Prison, Oliver eventually became a land-worker growing crops. After the war he worked for the Red Cross in Occupied Germany. On returning to Britain in 1948, he went to Drama School and drifted from job to job.

In 1957, whilst working as a stage manager for commercial TV company Associated Rediffusion, he observed the appalling quality of children’s programming up close and knew he could do better for the same paltry money offered. Writing Alexander the Mouse he convinced a Central School of Art tutor named Peter Firmin to draw the backgrounds for him. After moving on to short-lived deaf-viewer project The Journey of Master Ho, in 1959 the creators formalised their partnership as independent studio Smallfilms. The rest is history… and fantasy and wonder and charm and devastating nostalgia…

When not shaping the minds of 30-years-worth of kids, Postgate continued trying to save the world and refine its inhabitants. He was active in the CND movement, penning their pamphlet The Writing on the Sky and 1981 book Thinking it Through: The Plain Man’s Guide to the Bomb. In 1986, he created a 15-meter artwork for his latterday romantic partner Naomi Linnell’s book Illumination of the Life and Death of Thomas Beckett, repeating the exercise for The Triumphant Failure (about Christopher Columbus) and triptych A Canterbury Chronicle, which ended up in the city’s Royal Museum Art Gallery and Eliot College Campus…

Working when he pleased, Postgate narrated – in the calm, quietly compelling voice that became hardwired into the brains of millions – radio comedy and documentary shows, more books such as autobiography Seeing Things, and accompanied (arguably) his greatest creation Bagpuss – voted in 1999 the Most Popular Children’s Television Programme of All Time – as the plushly-stuffed purple & white cat accrued awards such as an honorary degree from the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Postgate died – hopefully properly and rightly well-contented – in Broadstairs Kent, on December 8th  2008.

Peter Arthur Firmin was born in Harwich on 11th December 1928. Following training at Colchester School of Art and National Service in the Royal Navy, he attended Central School of Art and Design in London from 1949 to 1952. A creative man of many talents and disciplines, he then worked as a stained-glass designer, jobbing illustrator and lecturer.

Whilst teaching at Central in 1957 he was targeted by audacious, up-and-coming children’s TV writer Oliver Postgate who believed (quite rightly) that clever individuals could produce high-quality kids’ viewing at reasonable cost.

After crafting backgrounds for Postgate’s Alexander the Mouse and The Journey of Master Ho, Firmin became equal partner in new venture Smallfilms, which grew in and out of a shed at the artist’s Canterbury home. The kindred spirits initially produced hand-drawn cartoons and eventually stop motion animation episodes for series including Ivor the Engine, Pingwings, The Saga of Noggin the Nog, Pogle’s Wood/The Pogles, Bagpuss, The Clangers and much more. Postgate wrote, voiced and filmed, whilst Firmin – roping in any family and friends in the immediate vicinity – drew, painted, built sets and made puppets. Their spouses were often dragooned too, if they showed useful talents like sewing or knitting…

During those early days Firmin seemed tireless. In addition to the Smallfilms job he also devised, designed and populated other kids shows such as The Musical Box and Smalltime. In 1962 with Ivan Owen he created a fox puppet for The Three Scampies. That creation soon had his own show and career as Basil Brush…

Throughout his life, Firmin continued his cartooning and illustration career. This included writing and/or illustrating a number of books including Basil Brush Goes Flying, The Winter Diary of a Country Rat, Nina’s Machines and Postgate’s Seeing Things – An Autobiography. Firmin also worked as a printmaker and engraver, designer and educator. In 1994 he was asked to create a British postage stamp and produced a magnificent offering featuring Noggin and the Ice Dragon.

Even at their most productive and overworked, Postgate & Firmin always ensured there was plenty of ancillary product such as Christmas Annuals, comic strips, spin-off books, games and puzzles for their devoted young fans. One of the most charming and enduring was a series of “Starting-to-Read” books released by Kaye & Ward between 1965 and 1973. Postgate & Firmin crafted all 8 books in a kid-friendly format gently sharing the further adventures of the Nicest Norseman of Them All…

In 2016 the octet of all ages, easy-going comedy dramas and gently humorous escapades were rereleased as superb hardcover editions perfect for tiny hands, but are now (at least thus far) out-of-print-&-hard-to-find. Starring the full TV cast and illustrated in a variety of duo-toned line-&-colour tomes, they display all the wit and subtle charm of the irrepressible Firmin whilst Postgate seductively and seditiously showed how much nicer things could be if we all tried a little harder to get on with each other.

This is the Saga of Noggin the Nog… Upon the death of his father, quiet, unassuming Noggin becomes king of the northland Viking tribe known as the Nogs. He rules with understanding and wisdom – generally thanks to his advisors: wife Nooka who hails from the far north (we’d call her an Inuit or Inuuk princess these days), bluff old codger Thor Nogson and wisdom-stuffed talking green cormorant Graculus. Despite many fantastic but necessary adventures, Noggin prefers a quiet home life with his people and his boisterous son Knut…

Noggin the King opens with bucolic pastoral scenes of the Nogs, with the good-hearted sovereign helping his people however he can. However, whilst happily repairing the roof of an old farmer, the ruler dislodges a bird’s nest. Bringing the nest and its occupants back to his castle, he cares for the fledglings and mother, pondering if he is also the King of birds in the Land of Nogs. If he is, then they are his subjects too and thus he is responsible for their safety and welfare. Riven with doubt, the King, with Nooka at his side, sets out on a short quest/ fact-finding mission to confirm his suspicions and is rewarded by the feathered kingdom with a great but grave new honour…

Noggin and the Whale features far more light-hearted aspects of kingship as the mild-mannered monarch celebrates his birthday in the usual manner: doling out gifts to all the children of his realm. This year they all get musical instruments, but when they hold an impromptu concert on a boat in the little walled harbour, the merriment is interrupted by a most insistent whale.

Every time the kids get going the cetacean surges up under the boat and eventually even placid Noggin loss his temper and orders the sea-beast to swim away. Instead it glides over to the open harbour gate and sulkily blocks the way, just as Noggish fishing boats are trying to moor up for the night. Nothing the townsfolk can do will shift the surly creature.

Suddenly Prince Knut has an idea. He realises why the whale has been acting so strangely and, after consulting with his father, commissions Royal Inventor Olaf the Lofty to create a unique present for the morose marine mammal…

Originally released in 1966, Noggin and the Dragon sees little Prince Knut and his chums pestering the royal couple to let them go on a dragon hunt. Noggin and Nooka are reluctant at first – Dragon Valley is no place for little boys and besides, the best thing to do with dragons is give them sweets and make friends – but eventually the proud parents capitulate to pester power. To ensure things go smoothly they insist doughty old warrior Thor Nogson goes with them, but as the unruly boys trek into a gathering storm, no one has any idea of the shocking surprise in store for them all…

From the same year, Nogbad Comes Back highlights the return from exile of Noggin’s wicked usurping uncle, just in time to try and spoil the King’s annual animal and vegetable show. Living up to his name, Nogbad the Bad tries to win the glittering jewel-encrusted cup for best flora and fauna by devious cheating and, when that fails, through simple shameful theft. Thankfully, Nooka is not as forgiving and kind as her husband and has been keeping a close eye on her outlaw in-law…

The next year saw two more tomes: one of which may have been a notional precursor to one of Smallfilms’ most successful franchise creations. Noggin and the Moon Mouse begins with Knut enacting an official ceremony at a water trough. Proceedings are utterly disrupted when a strange silver ball crashes down and a child-sized rodent-like creature emerges. Caught up in the excitement, the prince and his unruly pals give chase… until Queen Nooka takes charge. After admonishing the boys, she and Noggin befriend the strange visitor (who actually comes from another world) helping him gather odd household items he requires to return to the stars.

And yes, a few years later a peculiar band of armoured woolly beasties began communicating with us all in their universally comprehensible pennywhistle pipings in a little show called The Clangers…

Nogbad and the Elephants proves there are many perks to being royal. One is wonderful presents such as the gigantic gem-encrusted, long-nosed big-eared beast presented to Prince Knut by the King of Southland. Sadly, the wonderful creature is perpetually unhappy and falls under the sway of crafty Nogbad who lures it away to steal its jewelled coat. Realising it’s been hoodwinked, the piteous pachyderm takes restorative action in its own unique manner, compelling Knut to make his first grown-up decision…

The last brace of tales originated in 1973, beginning with hilariously anti-capitalist tract Noggin and the Money. Here Court Inventor Olaf the Lofty suffers a setback in his dream to modernise the nation. Nogs have been happily soldiering on using barter and trade as long as anyone can remember, so when the big thinker creates coins as currency, he thinks he’s made life easier for everybody. Thor Nogson soon disagrees after he’s despatched to acquire eggs for the royal breakfast and meets rather a lot of resistance to this new-fangled commerce nonsense…

Wrapping up the fun is Noggin and the Storks as the King sagely deals with a minor ecological crisis. Sooty Storks have nested on the chimneys of the town for decades, using the heat of human cooking fires to warm their eggs. This year, as the birds are particularly numerous, the populace are continually being smoked out of their own homes.

Despite his people angrily petitioning Noggin to let them chase the pests away, as king of birds as well as people, the smooth sovereign seeks another, more equitable solution. Cue Olaf the Lofty, who has an idea involving an old chalk quarry, a stand of hollow trees, masses of convoluted piping, steel sheets and tons of firewood…

Serenely bewitching, engaging and endlessly rewarding (both these books and their much-missed, multi-talented originators) the works of Postgate and Firmin shaped generations of children and parents. If you aren’t among them, do yourself a great favour and track down those DVD box sets, haunt the streaming services and buy these books and anything else with their names on it. You won’t regret it for an instant.
Text © The Estate of Oliver Postgate 1965-1973. Illustrations © Peter Firmin/The Estate of Peter Firmin 1965-1973.

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Bob Powell’s Complete Cave Girl


By Gardner Fox & Bob Powell, with James Vance, John Wooley, Mark Schultz & various (Kitchen Sink/Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-700-3 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

Like every art form, comics can be readily divided into masterpieces and populist pap, but that damning assessment necessarily comes with a bunch of exclusions and codicils. Periodical publications, like pop songs, movies and the entirety of television’s output (barring schools programming), are designed to sell to masses of consumers. As such the product must reflect the target and society at a specific moment in time and perforce quickly adapt and change with every variation in taste or fashion.

The situation is most especially true of comics – especially those created before they had won any kind of credibility: primarily deemed by their creators and publishers as a means of parting youngsters from disposable cash. The fact that so many have been found to possess redeeming literary and artistic merit or social worth is post hoc rationalisation. Those creators striving for better, doing the very best they could because of their inner artistic drives, were being rewarded with just as meagre a financial reward as the shmoes just phoning it in for the paycheck. That sad state of affairs in periodical publication wasn’t helped by the fact that most editors thought they knew what the readership wanted – safe, prurient gratification – and mostly they were right.

Even so, from such swamps gems occasionally emerged…

The entire genre of “Jungle Girls” is one fraught with perils for modern readers. Barely clad, unattainable, (generally) white paragons of feminine pulchritude lording it over superstitious primitives is one that is now pretty hard to digest for most of us hairless apes, but frankly so are most of the attitudes of our grandfathers’ time.

However, ways can be found to accommodate such crystallised or outdated attitudes, especially when reading from a suitably detached historical perspective and even more so when the art is crafted by a master storyteller like Bob Powell. After all, it’s not that big a jump from fictionalised 1950s forests to today’s filmic metropolises where leather armoured (generally white) Adonises with godlike power paternalistically watch over us, telling us lumpy, dumpy, ethnically mixed losers how to live and be happy…

Sorry, I love all comics in all genres from all eras, but sometimes the Guilty Pleasure meter on my conscience just redlines and I can’t stop it. Just remember, it’s not real…

As businessmen or employees of such, editors and publishers always knew what hormonal kids wanted to see and they gave it to them. It’s no different today. Just take a look at any comic shop shelf or cover listings site and see how many fully-clad, small-breasted females you can spot. And how many equivalent male inamoratii there aren’t..

Cave Girl was one of the last entries of the surprisingly long-lived Jungle Queen genre and consequently looks relatively mild in comparison to other titles as regards suggestive or prurient titillation. Here the action-adventure side of the equation was always most heavily stressed and readers of the time could see far more salacious material at every movie house if they needed to. And the pages were so damn well drawn…

End of self-gratifying apologies. Let’s talk about Bob.

Stanley Robert Pawlowski was born in 1916 in Buffalo, New York, and studied at the Pratt Institute in Manhattan before joining one of the earliest comics-packaging outfits: the Eisner-Iger Shop. He was a solid and dependable staple of American comic books’ Golden Age, illustrating a variety of key features. He drew original Jungle Queen Sheena in Jumbo Comics plus other JG featurettes and Spirit of ’76 for Harvey’s Pocket Comics. He handled assorted material for Timely titles such as Captain America in All-Winners Comics, Tough Kid Comics plus such genre material as Gale Allen and the Women’s Space Battalion for anthologies like Planet Comics, Mystery Men Comics and Wonder Comics.

Bob was recently revealed to have co-scripted/created Blackhawk as well as drawing Loops and Banks in Military Comics, as well as so many more now near-forgotten strips: all under a variety of English-sounding pseudonyms, since the tone of the times was rather unforgiving for creative people of minority origins. Eventually the artist settled on S. Bob Powell and had his name legally changed…

Probably his most well-remembered and highly regarded tour of duty was on Mr. Mystic in Will Eisner’s Spirit Section newspaper insert. After serving in WWII, Bob came home and quit to set up his own studio. Eisner never forgave him. Powell – with his assistants Howard Nostrand, Martin Epp & George Siefringer – swiftly established a solid reputation for quality, versatility and reliability: working for Fawcett (Vic Torry & His Flying Saucer, Hot Rod Comics, Lash Larue), Harvey Comics (Man in Black, Adventures in 3-D and True 3-D) and on Street and Smith’s Shadow Comics.

He was particularly prolific in many titles for Magazine Enterprises (ME), including early TV tie-in Bobby Benson’s B-Bar-B Riders, Red Hawk in Straight Arrow, Jet Powers and the short but bombastic run of quasi-superhero Strong Man. Bob easily turned his hand to a vast range of War, Western, Science Fiction, Crime, Comedy and Horror material: consequently generating as by-product some of the best and most glamorous “Good Girl art” of the era (remember, this is pre pornhub and MTV), both in comics and in premiums strip packages for business. In the 1960s he pencilled the infamous Mars Attacks cards, illustrated Bessie Little’s Teena-a-Go-Go and the Bat Masterson newspaper strip, before ending his days drawing Daredevil, Human Torch and Giant-Man for Marvel.

This captivating compilation gathers all the Cave Girl appearances – written by equally gifted and ubiquitous jobbing scripter Gardner F. Fox – from numerous ME publications.

The company employed a truly Byzantine method of numbering their comic books so I’ll cite Thun’da #2-6 (1953), Cave Girl #4 (1953-1954) and Africa, Thrilling Land of Mystery #1 (1955) simply for the sake of brevity and completeness, knowing that it makes no real difference to your enjoyment of what’s to come.

This splendid tome includes a Biography of Bob, an incisive Introduction from Mark (Xenozoic, Superman: Man of Steel, Prince Valiant) Schultz, and an erudite essay – ‘King of the Jungle Queens’– by James Vance & John Wooley, diligently examining the origins of the subgenre (courtesy of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, William Henry Hudson’s novel Green Mansions and a slew of B-movies); its development in publishing; the effect of the phenomenon and Powell’s overall contributions to comics in a far more even-handed and informed way than I can manage…

That done, it’s time to head to an Africa that never existed for action and adventure beyond compare. Cave Girl started as a back-up feature in Thun’da #2: a primeval barbarian saga set in an antediluvian region of the Dark Continent where dinosaurs still lived. In ‘The Ape God of Kor’ the mighty primitive encounters a blonde stranger who can speak to birds and beasts, and helps her escape the unwanted attentions of a bestial tyrant. When that’s not enough to deter the monstrous suitor, Thun’da and Cave Girl have no choice but to topple his empire…

In #3, the wild woman met ‘The Man Who Served Death!’ – a criminal from the outer world whose hunger for gold and savage brutality necessitates his urgent removal from the land of the living. Cave Girl’s beloved animal allies are being wantonly slaughtered to appease ‘The Shadow God of Korchak!’ next, forcing the gorgeous guardian of the green to topple the lost kingdom’s debauched queen, after which the tireless champion tackles a trio of sadistic killers from the civilised world in ‘Death Comes Three Ways!’

A rather demeaning comedy sidekick debuted in ‘The Little Man Who Was All There!’ (Thun’da #6) as pompous “pigmy” (sorry, so sorry!!) bumbler Bobo attaches himself to Cave Girl as her protector. From there the forest monarch sprang into her own title, beginning with Cave Girl #11. ‘The Pool of Life!’ delved back in time to when a scientific expedition was wiped out, leaving little blonde toddler Carol Mantomer to fend for herself. Happily, the child was adopted by Kattu the wolf and grew tall and strong and mighty…

The obligatory origin dispensed with, the story proceeds to reveal how two white explorers broach the lost valley and reap their deserved fate after finding a little lake with mystic properties. Time honoured tables are turned when explorer Luke Hardin deduces Cave Girl’s true identity and convinces the wild child to come with him to Nairobi and claim her inheritance. Already appalled by the gadgets and morass of humanity in ‘The City of Terror!’, Carol’s decision to leave is cemented by her only living relative’s attempts to murder her for said inheritance…

En route home, her wild beauty arouses the desires of millionaire hunter Alan Brandon, but his forceful pursuit and attempted abduction soon teaches him he has a ‘Tiger by the Tail!’ before, her trek done, Cave Girl traverses high mountains and finds Alan and Luke have been captured by beast-like primitives and faces the ‘Spears of the Snowmen’ to save them both.

Even the usually astoundingly high-quality scripting of veteran Gardner Fox couldn’t do much with the formulaic strictures of this subgenre, but he always tried his best, as in Cave Girl #12 which opened with ‘The Devil Boat!’ – a submarine disgorging devious crooks in death-masks intent on plundering archaeological treasures found by Luke. Then when an explorer steals a sacred cache of rubies he learns that even Cave Girl can’t prevent his becoming ‘Prey of the Headhunters!’

Fantastic fantasy replaces crass commercial concerns as ‘The Amazon Assassins’ seeking to expand their empire ravage villages under Cave Girl’s protection. The Women Warriors have no conception of the hornet’s nest they are stirring up…

Cave Girl #13 took its lead tale from newspaper headlines as the jungle defender clashed with ‘The Mau Mau Killers!’ butchering innocents and destabilising the region, after which ‘Altar of the Axe’ features the return of those formerly all-conquering Amazons. They believe they can counter their arch-enemy’s prowess with a battalion of war elephants. Their grievous error then seamlessly segues into a battle with escaped convict Buck Maldin as ‘The Jungle Badman’ who is beaten by Cave Girl but allows greedy buffoon Bobo to claim the reward – and quickly regrets it…

Powell reached a creative zenith illustrating for Cave Girl #14 (1954), his solid linework and enticing composition augmented by a burst of purely decorative design which made ‘The Man Who Conquered Death’ a dramatic tour de force. When a series of murders and resurrections lead Cave Girl to a mad scientist who has found a time machine, she is transformed into an aged crone, but still possesses the force of will to beat the deranged meddler…

A tad more prosaic, ‘The Shining Gods’ sees a rejuvenated Cave Girl (and Luke) stalking thieves swiping tribal relics, only to uncover a Soviet plot to secure Africa’s radium, after which the queen of the jungle is “saved” by well-intentioned rich woman Leona Carter and brought back to civilisation. Happily, after poor Carol endures a catalogue of modern mishaps which equate to ‘Terror in the Town’, Cave Girl is allowed to return to her true home…

Officially the series ended there, but ME had one last issue ready to print and deftly shifted emphasis by re-badging the package as Africa, Thrilling Land of Mystery #1. It appeared in 1955, sporting a Comics Code Authority symbol. Inside, however, was still formulaic but beautifully limned Cave Girl exposing a conniving witch doctor using ‘The Volcano Fury’ to fleece natives, restoring ‘The Lost Juju’ of the devout Wamboolis before foiling a murderous explorer stealing a million dollar gem, and crushing a potential uprising by taking a fateful ride on ‘The Doom Boat’…

And then she was gone.

Like the society it protected from subversion and corruption, the Comics Code Authority frowned on females disporting themselves freely or appearing able to cope without a man, and the next half-decade was one where women were either submissive, domesticated, silly objects of amusement, ornamental prizes or just plain marital manhunters. It would be the 1970s before strong, independent female characters reappeared in comic books…

Whatever your political leanings or social condition, Cave Girl – taken strictly on her own merits – is one of the mostly beautifully rendered characters in pictorial fiction, and a terrific tribute to the talents of Powell and his team. If you love perfect comics storytelling, of its time, but transcending fashion or trendiness, this is a treasure just waiting to be rediscovered.
Bob Powell’s Complete Cave Girl compilation © 2014 Kitchen, Lind and Associates LLC. Cave Girl is a trademark of AC Comics, successors in interest to Magazine Enterprises and is used here with permission of AC Comics. Introduction © 2014 Mark Schultz. “King of the Jungle Queens” essay © 2014 James Vance and John Wooley. All rights reserved.

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Vampirella Archives volume One


By Forrest J. Ackerman, Don Glut, Nicola Cuti, Bill Parente, R. Michael Rosen, Al Hewetson, Terri Abrahms, Nick Beal, Bill Warren, Richard Carnell, Jack Erman, T. Casey Brennan, Gardner F. Fox, Vern Burnett, Larry Herndon, Buddy Saunders, Doug Moench, Tom Sutton, Billy Graham, Reed Crandall, Neal Adams, Ernie Colon, Billy Graham, Mike Royer, Tony Tallarico, Jerry Grandenetti, Bill Fraccio, Dick Piscopo, William Barry, Jack Sparling, Ed Robbins, David St. Clair, Jeff Jones, Dan Adkins, Frank Bolle, Frank Frazetta, Vaughn Bodé, Ken Kelly Bill Hughes, Larry Todd & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-175-5 (HB/Digital edition) 978-1524126506 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

After years of stifling restriction, the American comic book industry finally started to break out of a self-imposed straitjacket in the mid-1960s. Kids of the Counterculture had begun creating and disseminating material relevant to their lives in self-produced “Underground Commix” whilst other publishers sought other ways around the draconian Comics Code applied to comic books.

The most elegant solution was the one chosen by Jim Warren, who had originally established himself with black & white B-Movie fan periodical Famous Monsters of Filmland and satire magazine Help! In 1965 he took his deep admiration of the legendary 1950s EC Comics to its logical conclusion: reviving the concept of anthology horror short stories and pitching them at older fans of the new generation. Of course that actually meant all us kids under 10…

Creepy was stuffed with clever, sardonic, tongue-in-cheek strip chillers illustrated by the top artists in the field (many of them ex-EC stars). Warren circumvented the US’s all-powerful Comics Code Authority – which had ended EC’s glory days and eventually their entire comics line – by publishing his new venture as a newsstand magazine. It was a truly no-lose proposition. Older readers didn’t care to be associated with “kid’s stuff” comic books whilst magazines had tempting cachet (i.e. mild nudity and a little more explicit violence) for readers of a transitional age; moreover the standard monochrome format was a quarter of the costs of colour periodicals.

Creepy was a huge and influential hit, especially among the increasingly rebellious, Rock ‘n’ Roll-crazed teen market, frequently cited as a source of inspiration for the nascent commix underground and furiously feeding on growing renewed public interest in the supernatural. In true Darwinian “Grow or Die” mode, Warren looked around for new projects, following up with companion shocker Eerie and the controversial war title Blazing Combat.

As the decade closed he launched a third horror anthology, but Vampirella was a little bit different. Although it featured the now traditional “host” to introduce and comment on the stories, this narrator was a sexy starlet who occasionally participated in stories. Before too long she actually became the hero and crowd-pulling star of her own regular feature, but that’s material for a later volume…

The other big change was that here female characters played a far more active role. They were still ornamental, prizes, victims and targets but increasingly, whether name stars or bit players, they were as likely to be the big menace or save the day. Whatever their role, though, they were still pretty much naked throughout. Some traditions must be protected at all costs.

Another beguiling Warren staple was the eye-catching painted cover fronting every issue. Here, as crafted by Frank Frazetta, Bill Hughes, Larry Todd & Vaughn Bodé, Jeff Jones & Bodé and Ken Kelly, they are the only full colour pages in an otherwise magnificently monochrome/duo-toned tome. However to be fair I must say that the reproduction on some black-&-white pages leaves much to be desired…

This massive magazine-size (216 x 32 x 279 mm if you opt for physical editions) collection gathers in their entirety the contents of the first seven issues (spanning September 1969 to September 1970). This was a crucial transitional period which saw superheroes dying out at every publishing company; replaced by a genre revival and spearheaded by a tidal wave of horror titles after the Comics Code was frantically rewritten to combat plunging sales.

This volume begins with Vampirella #1, that aforementioned painted cover and a black-&-red Frazetta frontispiece – probably scripted by Editor Bill Parente – setting the blackly humorous tone for a fearsome fangtastic fun fest. The original contents page follows – as do they all in their appropriate place. The compendium also includes every letters page and fan feature – and even nostalgia-triggering ads of the era. If you’re a modern monster fan or kit collector you’ll probably simultaneously weep and drool at the sight of these lost treasures.

The strip sensationalism begins with ‘Vampirella of Drakulon’ by Forrest J. Ackerman & Tom Sutton; introducing a planet where the rivers ran with blood and life evolved to drink it.

However, following a withering drought, Drakulon is dying. Happily for the sultry starving vampire, a ship from Earth arrives, full of people with food in their veins and a ship that can take her to where there’s plenty more.

Vampi’s role from the outset was to be another story host and for the rest of this collection that’s what she mostly is. Her role as an active adventurer didn’t properly begin for quite a while. So, here the chills continue with ‘Death Boat!’ by Don Glut & Billy Graham with the survivors of a shipwreck being picked off one by one by a bloodsucker in their midst. They perish one per night but when the mortals number just two both are still wrong about who the killer is…

Glut & master draughtsman Reed Crandall conspired on ‘Two Silver Bullets!’ as a trapper fights to save his daughter from a werewolf after which ‘Goddess from the Sea’ by Glut and Neal Adams offers a splendid treat for art-lovers: the story of a man seduced by a sea-siren was shot directly from the illustrator’s incredible pencil art. Glut & Mike Royer offer a timely Halloween warning in ‘Last Act: October!’ whilst ‘Spaced-Out Girls!’ (Glut & Tony Tallarico) sees a saucer full of saucy extraterrestrial honeys come shopping for husbands before the premier package closes with Nicola Cuti & Ernie Colon’s mindbending magical murder mystery ‘A Room Full of Changes’.

The spooky story-bonanza resumes in issue #2, opening with coming attraction featurette ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ – courtesy of Sutton – after which Vampi’s putative cousin ‘Evily’ is introduced by Bill Parente & veteran horror-meister Jerry Grandenetti. Here Drakulonian émigré and Earthly sorceress climactically clash over star-billing and bragging rights…

‘Montezuma’s Monster’ is scripted by R. Michael Rosen (incorrectly credited to Glut) and illustrated by Bill Fraccio & Tallarico in their composite identity of Tony Williamsune, detailing the fate of a treasure-hungry explorer who doesn’t believe in feathered serpents whilst ‘Down to Earth!’ by Ackerman & Royer leaves the hosting to Vampirella’s blonde counterpart Draculine as our star auditions for a film role…

That theme continues in ‘Queen of Horror!’ (Glut & Dick Piscopo) wherein a B-Movie starlet uses unique and uncanny advantages to get everything she deserves whilst Cuti & William Barry reveal the tragedy of two brothers who discover a new predatory species of inland cephalopod in ‘The Octopus’. Cuti & Colon’s ‘One, Two, Three’ then explores the power of love in a world of robots and Glut & Graham render a ‘Rhapsody in Red!’ with weary travellers fetching up at a lonely house to deliver a big surprise to the resident vampire…

The third issue augmented ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ with correspondence section ‘Vampi’s Scarlet Letters’ before ‘Wicked is Who Wicked Does’ features the return of Evily in a short shocking battle against ogres by Parente & Sutton. Al Hewetson & Jack Sparling count ‘4- 3- 2- 1- Blast Off! To a Nightmare!’ in the tale of a spaceship full of 24-hour party people who end up as hors d’oeuvres for something very nasty even as ‘Eleven Steps to Lucy Fuhr’ (by Terri Abrahms [story]; Nick Beal [adaptation] and art by Ed Robbins) sees many men drawn to a bizarre bordello and a sinister fate… until the unlikeliest of saviours takes a hand.

‘I Wake Up… Screaming!’ is an all Billy Graham affair as a frightened girl is made aware of her true nature in a sci fi chiller whilst Cuti & Piscopo mine mythology to deliver a salutary tale of fairy tale oppression and bloody liberation in ‘The Calegia!’ A cunning vampire meets his lethal match in Graham’s ‘Didn’t I See You on Television?’ after which Rosen & Sparling close the issue detailing the downfall of a vicious spoiled brat caught in ‘A Slimy Situation!’

Vampirella #4 opens on Sutton revealing past episodes of witch killing in ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales: Burned at the Stake!’ prior to Parente & David St. Clair reaching psychedelic heights in a tale of alien amazons and their deadly ‘Forgotten Kingdom’ whilst Cuti & Royer combine murder and time travel in ‘Closer than Sisters’. A city-slicker falls for a hillbilly hottie and gets sucked into a transformative shocker after trying ‘Moonshine!’ (Glut & Barry), Bill Warren & Sparling reveal the fate of a beautiful and obsessive scientist who bends the laws of God and Man ‘For the Love of Frankenstein’ and a most modern black widow asks a controlling stalker to ‘Come Into My Parlor!’ in a wry yarn by Rosen & Piscopo. Richard Carnell (story); Jack Erman (adaptation) & Sparling then close the show with a weird and nasty tale of a nobleman auditioning women for marriage in ‘Run for Your Wife!’

The fifth issue begins with the usual ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ as Sutton exposes ‘The Satanic Sisterhood of Stonehenge!’ before Glut, Fraccio & Tallarico see a greedily impatient heir speed his benefactress to her ultimate end, unheeding of her beloved pets and ‘The Craft of a Cat’s Eye’. Cavemen battle dinosaurs in an arena of ‘Scaly Death’ – a visceral treat from Glut & Graham – whilst the astounding Jeff Jones lends fine art sensibilities to the murderous saga of a girl, a guy and ‘An Axe to Grind’, after which Parente & Sutton detail the crimes of a sadistic Duke whose fate is sealed by an aggrieved astrologer and astrally ‘Avenged by Aurora’…

Glut, Fraccio & Tallarico see graves robbed and corpses consumed in neat bait-&-switch thriller ‘Ghoul Girl’ whilst T. Casey Brennan & Royer reveal the solution of a bereaved husband who finds an ‘Escape Route!’ back to his dead beloved, before Glut & Sparling end it all again via an implausible invasion from the moon in ‘Luna’.

In Vampirella #6, Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ features Dan Adkins’ graphic chat on centaurs as prelude to romantic tragedy the ‘Curse of Circe!’ as Gardner Fox & Grandenetti combine to relate how a strange sea creature offers the witch’s latest conquest his only certain method of escape. Cuti & Sparling then share a story of civil war in the land of ghosts and how love toppled ‘The Brothers of Death’ whilst ‘Darkworth!’ by Cuti & Royer shows how a stripper graduates to murdered assistant of a stage magician and pulls off her own amazing trick in the name of vengeance, after which Fox & Adkins explore the lives of the recently dead with ‘New Girl in Town!’ and Vern Burnett & Frank Bolle return to gothic roots to depict embattled humans outwitting nocturnal predators by volunteering a ‘Victim of the Vampyre!’

Larry Herndon, Fraccio & Tallarico (as Tony Williamsune) get creepily contemporary as a doctor tries to fix an overdosed patient and sends him way, way out on a ‘One Way Trip!’ before Buddy Saunders & Bolle combine adultery and attempted murder in ‘The Wolf-Man’: a wickedly scientific shocker about a very different kind of feral killer…

Vampirella #7 saw Archie Goodwin join as Associate Editor and perhaps his influence can be seen as the issue experiments with a connected theme and extended tale scripted by Nicola Cuti. Graham & Frazetta start the ball rolling by explaining ‘Why a Witch Trilogy’ and Vampirella introduces ‘Prologue: The Three Witches’ before Sutton to segues into the sad story of ‘The White Witch’ who could never feel the sunlight. Ernie Colon picks up the experimental progression as ‘The Mind Witch’ trades magic for science to expose the fate of a psychic predator, after which Graham closes the deal with ‘The Black Witch’ who thought she could conquer love but failed to realise its appalling power…

After Cuti & Sutton’s palate-cleansing ‘Epilogue: The Three Witches’, Doug Moench graduates from letter writer in #3 to scripter as ‘Plague of the Wolf’ – illustrated by Bolle – tracks a bloody serial killer’s progress under the full moon and ‘Terror Test’ offers shocking psychological thrills by Rosen & “Williamsune” with more than one sting in the tail.

In ‘The Survivor’, Saunders & Colon unite to explore a post-apocalyptic world where dedicated archaeologists still struggle to escape their bestial natures and this mammoth first compilation concludes with Rosen & Grandenetti viewing ‘The Collection Creation’ with an artist who finds the wrong kind of immortality…

Stark, surprisingly shocking and packed with clever ideas beautifully rendered, this epic tome (narrowly) escapes and transcends its admittedly exploitative roots to deliver loads of laughs and lots of shocks: a tried and true terror treat for fans of spooky doings and guiltily glamorous games.
© 2012 DFL. All rights reserved.

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Henry Speaks for Himself


By John J. Liney, edited by David Tosh (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-733-8 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Created by veteran cartoonist Carl Anderson as a silent, pantomimic gag-panel first seen on March 19th 1932, Henry was one of the most venerated and long-lived of US newspaper comics strips. The feature was developed for The Saturday Evening Post before being picked up by legendary strip advocate and proponent William Randolph Hearst. He brought it and the then-69-year-old Anderson to his King Features Syndicate in 1934 after which the first comic strip appeared on December 17th, with a full colour Sunday half-page following on March 10th 1935. The Saturday Evening Post had to content and console itself with a new feature entitled Little Lulu by Marjorie Henderson Buell. I wonder how that worked out?

Being a man of advanced years, Anderson employed Don Trachte to assist with the Sundays whilst John J. Liney performed the same role for the Monday to Saturday black and white iteration. This continued until 1942 when arthritis forced Anderson to retire. Trachte and Liney became de facto creators of the feature – although the originator’s name remained on the masthead for the next twenty years.

Liney (1912-1982) had started as a staff cartoonist on the Philadelphia Evening Ledger and began selling gag ideas to Anderson in 1936 before landing the full-time assistant’s job. After assuming the illustrator’s role in 1942, Liney took over sole writing responsibilities for the daily in 1945, continuing Henry until 1979 when he finally retired. His own name had been adorning the strip since 1970. He was also a passionate teacher and educator on comics and cartooning, with a position at Temple University. Nevertheless, he still found time to write and draw a comic book iteration of the mute and merry masterpiece from 1946 to 1961.

Major licensing monolith Western Publishing/Dell Comics had been successfully producing comic books starring animation characters, film icons and strip heroes since the mid-1930s, and when they launched their Henry – first in Four Color Comics #122 and #155 (October 1946 and July 1947) prior to his own 65 issue title from January 1948 – they successfully argued for a radical change in the boy’s make-up.

The newspaper strip had always been a timeless, nostalgia-fuelled, happily humour-heavy panoply of gags and slapstick situations, wherein the quite frankly weird-looking little bald kid romped and pranked in complete silence, with superb cartooning delivering all the communication nuance its vast international audience needed.

Now though, with children seen as sole consumers, the powers-that-be felt that little lad should be able to speak and make himself understood. Liney easily rose to the challenge and produced a sublime run of jolly, wild, weird if not often utterly surreal, endlessly inventive adventures – many of which approached stream-of-consciousness progressions that perfectly captured the ephemeral nature of kids’ concentration. He also introduced a captivating supporting cast to augment the boy, and his appealingly unattractive, forthright and two-fisted inamorata Henrietta.

This splendid collection gathers some of the very best longer tales from the comic book run in the resplendent flat primary colours that are so evocative of simpler days, beginning after a heartfelt reminiscence in the Foreword by Kim Deitch. Another pause before the comics commence comes from Editor, compiler and devotee David Tosh who outlines the history of the character and his creators in ‘Henry – the Funniest Living American’. He then goes on to explain ‘The Dell Years’ before offering some informative ‘Notes on the Stories’.

The vivid viewing portion of this collection is liberally augmented with stunning cover reproductions; all impressively embracing to the quiet lad’s silent comedy roots, a brace of which precede a beautiful double-page spread detailing the vast and varied cast Liney added to the mix. Then, from #7 (June, 1949), we discover ‘Henry is Thinking Out Loud!’ as the kid keeps his non-existent mouth shut and explores the medium of first person narrative, inner monologues and thought-balloons, all whilst getting into mischief seeking odd jobs to do…

October’s edition, Henry #9, introduced good-natured, cool but increasingly put-upon Officer Yako in ‘You Can’t Beat the Man on the Beat!’ via an escalating succession of brushes with the law, bullies, prospective clients… and darling Henrietta.

That bald boy still hadn’t actually uttered a sound, but by #14 (August 1950) had found his voice, much to the amusement of his layabout Uncle (rather suspiciously, he never had a name) who eavesdropped on the assorted kids comparing their ‘Funny Dreams’. After a quartet of covers, Henry #16 (December 1950) finds Liney playing with words as ‘Rhyme Without Reason’ reveals the entire cast afflicted with doggerel, meter, couplets and all forms poetic, with Liney even drawing himself into the madcap procession of japes and jests, whilst ‘A Slice of Ham’  #22, December 1951) cleverly riffs on Henry’s ambitions to impress Henrietta by becoming an actor. This yarn offers a wealth of Liney caricatures featuring screen immortals such as Chaplin, Gable, Sinatra and more, whilst introducing a potential rival contender for Henry’s affections in cousin Gilda…

In #24 (April 1952) Henry ‘Peeks into the Future’ by outrageously pondering on his possible careers as an adult, before plunging into Flintstone or Alley Oop territory – complete with cave city and dinosaurs – as a result of studying too hard for a history test in ‘The Stone Age Story’ from #29, February 1953.

After four more clever funny covers, growing up again features heavily with ‘Choosing Your Career’ (#45, March 1956) as the little fool road-tests a job as a home-made cab driver and accidentally slips into law enforcement by capturing a bandit. Henry #48 (December 1956) sees him attend a fancy dress party and become ‘The Boy in the Iron Mask’, before this completely charming compilation closes by reprising that sojourn in the Stone Age ‘Rock and Roll’ (#49 March 1957). Concluding the comedy capers is fond personal reminiscence ‘Henry and Me’ by David Tosh; a man justifiably delighted to be able to share his passion with us and hopefully proud that this book gloriously recaptures some of the simple straightforward sheer joy that could be found in comicbooks of yore.

Henry Speaks for Himself is fun, frolicsome and fabulously captivating all-ages cartooning that will enthral anyone with kids or who has the soul of one.
Henry Speaks for Himself © 2014 Fantagraphics Books Inc. All comics and drawings © 2014 King Features, Inc. All other material © its respective creators. This book was produced in cooperation with Heritage Auctions.

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Marvel Two-In-One Epic Collection volume 2: Two Against Hydra (1976-1978)


By Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas, Bill Mantlo, Jim Shooter, Ron Wilson, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Ernie Chan, Marie Severin, Sam Grainger, Pablo Marcos, George Roussos, John Tartaglione & various (MARVEL)
ISBN 978-1-3029-3176-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Above all else, Marvel has always been about team-ups. That concept of an established star pairing with, or battling – often both – new or less well-selling company characters was already long established when Marvel awarded their most popular hero the same deal DC had with Batman in The Brave and the Bold. Although confident in their new title, they wisely left options open by allocating an occasional substitute lead in the Human Torch. In those long-ago days, editors were acutely conscious of potential over-exposure – and since super-heroes were actually in a decline they may well have been right.

Nevertheless, after the runaway success of Spider-Man’s guest vehicle Marvel Team-Up, the House of Ideas carried on the trend with a series starring bashful, blue-eyed Ben Grimm – the Fantastic Four’s most iconic and popular member – beginning with test runs in Marvel Feature #11-12, before awarding him his own team-up title…

This second eclectic compendium gathers the contents of Marvel Two-In-One #20 & 21-36, Marvel Two-In-One Annual #1 and Fantastic Four Annual #11, covering October 1976-February 1978. And opens without preamble on a crisis in time.

Devised and delivered by Roy Thomas, John Buscema & Sam Grainger, Fantastic Four Annual #11 featured portentous time-travel saga ‘And Now Then… the Invaders!’ wherein Marvel’s First Family dash back to 1942 to retrieve a cylinder of miracle-metal Vibranium. It had somehow fallen into Nazi hands and had begun to unwrite history as a consequence…

On arrival, the team are embroiled in conflict with WWII super-team The Invaders – comprising rawer, rougher, early incarnations of Captain America, Sub-Mariner and the original, android Human Torch. The time-busting task goes well once the heroes finally unite to assault a Nazi castle where the miracle mineral is secured, but after the quartet return to their own repaired era, only Ben realises the mission isn’t completed yet…

The action carries over and continues in Marvel Two-In-One Annual #1 as, with the present unravelling around him, Ben blasts back to 1942 again in ‘Their Name is Legion!’ (Thomas, Sal Buscema, Grainger, John Tartaglione & George Roussos), linking up with Home Front Heroes The Liberty Legion (collectively The Patriot, Thin Man, Red Raven, Jack Frost, Blue Diamond, Miss America and The Whizzer) to thwart Nazi raiders Skyshark and Master Man, Japanese agent Slicer and Atlantean traitor U-Man who have united to invade America.

The battle proves so big it spills over and concludes in Marvel Two-In-One #20 (October 1976) in a shattering ‘Showdown at Sea!’: pitting the heroes against diabolical Nazi scientist Brain Drain, courtesy this time of Thomas, Sal B & Grainger.

In many collections the tale would be followed by Marvel Two-In-One #21 (November 1976), which featured a pairing with legendary pulp superman Doc Savage. This isn’t one of them.

For years the tale has been embargoed: unavailable for fans due to Marvel having no access to the Man of Bronze’s proprietary rights. To see it, you’ll want to read Marvel Two-in-One Marvel Masterworks vol. 3.

Here we jump to MTIO #22 as Ben contacts physician Dr. Don Blake, just as the Egyptian death god attacks Thor’s alter ego in ‘Touch Not the Hand of Seth!’ (Bill Mantlo, Ron Wilson & Pablo Marcos): a fantastic cosmic action-extravaganza concluded with the assistance of Jim Shooter & Marie Severin in #23’s ‘Death on the Bridge to Heaven!’…

The Thing then enjoys a far more prosaic time battling beside neophyte hero Black Goliath as a devastated downtown Los Angeles – and creators Mantlo, Shooter, Sal Buscema & Marcos – ask ‘Does Anyone Remember… the Hijacker?’

A new era opens as a much delayed and postponed team-up with Iron Fist, the Living Weapon heralds the start of writer/editor Marv Wolfman’s lengthy run on the title. Illustrated by Wilson & Grainger ‘A Tale of Two Countries!’ sees Ben and the master martial artist shanghaied to the Far East as part of a Machiavellian plan to conquer the island kingdom of Kaiwann. Naturally, they both strenuously object to the abduction…

The innate problem with team-ups was always a lack of continuity – something else Marvel had always prided itself upon – and Wolfman sought to address it by the simple expedient of having stories connected through evolving, overarching plots taking Ben from place to place and guest to guest to guest. Here the tactic begins with bustling bombast in ‘The Fixer and Mentallo are Back and the World will Never be the Same!’ (illustrated by Wilson & Marcos) uniting Ben with Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. to battle a brace of conniving bad guys trying to steal killer-cyborg-from-an-alternate-future Deathlok.

The good guys spectacularly fail and the artificial assassin is co-featured in #27 as ‘Day of the Demolisher!’ sees the now-reprogrammed killer targeting the inauguration of new US President Jimmy Carter. This time Big Ben has an alien ace up his sleeve and the hit happily fails…

The tempestuous Sub-Mariner shares the watery limelight in #28 as Ben and his blind girlfriend Alicia Masters ferry the deactivated Deathlok to a London-based boffin for further tests. When they are shot down mid-Atlantic by a mutated fish-man, Ben must battle against and beside Namor whilst Alicia languishes ‘In the Power of the Piranha!’ (Tartaglione inks). Master of Kung Fu Shang-Chi then steps in as Ben and Alicia finally land in London. Inked by Grainger, ‘Two Against Hydra’ sees aforementioned expert Professor Kort snatched by the sinister secret society before the Thing can consult him: the savant’s knowledge being crucial to Hydra’s attempts to revive their own living weapon…

As part of Marvel’s compulsive ongoing urge to protect their trademarks, a number of their top male characters had been spun off into female iterations. Thus, at the end of 1976, Ms. Marvel debuted (with a January 1977 cover-date). She-Hulk arrived at the end of 1979 (Savage She-Hulk #1 February 1980) whilst Jessica Drew premiered in Marvel Spotlight #32 as The Spider-Woman a mere month after Ms. Marvel’s launch. Her cameo appearance in Marvel Two-In-One #29 (July 1977) heralded an extended 6-chapter saga designed as a promotional lead-in to her own series.

‘Battle Atop Big Ben!’ (#30 by Wolfman, John Buscema & Marcos) has her meet the Thing as she struggles to be free of her Hydra controllers, even as a petty thieves embroil Ben and Alicia in a complex and arcane robbery scheme involving a strange chest buried beneath Westminster Abbey. Unable to kill Ben, the Arachnid Dark Angel kidnaps Alicia, who becomes ‘My Sweetheart… My Killer!’ (#31, Wilson & Grainger) after Kort and Hydra transform the helpless sculptor into a spidery monster. In #32’s ‘And Only the Invisible Girl Can Save Us Now!’ (inked by Marcos) Sue Storm joins the repentant Spider-Woman and distraught Thing in combat to cure an out-of-control Alicia. In the wings, those two robbers continue their campaign of acquisition, accidentally awakening a quartet of ancient elemental horrors…

It requires the magics of the Arthurian sorcerer Modred the Mystic to help Spider-Woman and Ben triumph over the horrors in the concluding chapter ‘From Stonehenge… With Death!’ before a semblance of normality is restored. Back to business as usual in Marvel Two-In-One #34, Ben and sky-soaring Defender stalwart Nighthawk tackle a revived and cruelly misunderstood alien freed from an antediluvian cocoon in ‘A Monster Walks Among Us!’ (Wolfman, Wilson & Marcos) before Ernie Chan joins Wolfman to illustrate a 2-part wrap-up to one of Marvel’s recently folded series.

Marvel Two-In-One often acted as a clearing-house for unresolved series and plot-lines, and #35 found Ben dispatched by the US Air Force through a Bermuda Triangle time-portal to a fantastic world of dinosaurs, robots, dinosaurs, E.T.’s and more dinosaurs. ‘Enter: Skull the Slayer and Exit: The Thing’ details the short history and imminent deaths of a group of modern Americans trapped in a bizarre time-lost land. Now marooned in the past with them, it takes the intervention of Mister Fantastic to retrieve Ben and his new friends in #36’s ‘A Stretch in Time…’, bringing this compilation to a satisfactory halt.

That yarn ends the narrative thrills and chills for now, but there’s still room for a brief gallery of original art and roughs by Jack Kirby, Frank Giacoia, Wilson, Marcos, Tartaglione, George Pérez, Joe Sinnott, Klaus Janson & John Buscema to delight and astound.

These stories from Marvel’s Middle Period are unarguably of variable quality, but whereas some might feel rushed and ill-considered they are balanced by timeless classics, still as captivating today as they always were.

Even if artistically the work varies from only adequate to superb, most fans of Costumed Dramas will find little to complain about and there’s lots of fun to be found for young and old readers. So why not lower your critical guard and have an honest blast of pure warts ‘n’ all comics craziness? You’ll almost certainly grow to like it…
© 2024 MARVEL.

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The Helltrekkers


By John Wagner, Alan Grant, Horacio Lalia, Jose Ortiz & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1786187963 (Rebellion 2000 AD)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

This book also includes Discriminatory Content included for comedic and dramatic effect.

Britain’s last great comic icon has been described as a combination of the other two, merging the futuristic milieu and thrills of Dan Dare with the shocking anarchy and irreverent absurdity of Dennis the Menace. He’s also well on the way to becoming the longest-lasting adventure character in our admittedly meagre comics pantheon, having been continually published every week since February 1977 when he first appeared in the second weekly issue of science-fiction anthology 2000AD. As such, he’s also spawned a rich world where other stars have been born and thrived…

Judge Dredd and the ever-expanding, ultra-dystopian environs of Mega-City One were devised by a creative committee including Pat Mills, Kelvin Gosnell, Carlos Ezquerra, Mike McMahon and many others, with the major contribution coming from legendary writer John Wagner, who has written the largest portion of the canon under his own and via several pseudonymous names.

In a 22nd century America, Joe Dredd is a fanatically dedicated sentinel of the super-city, where hundreds of millions of citizens idle away their days stacked like artificial cordwood in a world where robots are cheaper and more efficient than humans and jobs are both beloved pastime and treasured commodity. Boredom has reached epidemic proportions and every citizen is just one askance glance away from meltdown or blow-up. Judges are peacekeepers maintaining – actually enforcing – order and passivity at all costs: investigating, taking action and trying all crimes and disturbances to the hard-won equilibrium of the constantly boiling melting pot.

Justice is always immediate. They are necessary fascists in a world permanently teetering on the edge of catastrophe, and sadly, what far too many readers never realised is that the entire milieu is a gigantic satirical black comedy with oodles of outrageous, vicariously cathartic action. Just keep telling yourself, some situations demand drastic solutions. It’s what all politicians and world leaders do…

As hometowns go, Mega-City One does not generally engender fond feelings or happy memories, but thankfully does lend itself to all manner of stories from supernatural thrillers to cop procedurals to savagely satirical social broadsides. It’s a place where any kind of tale is begging to be told. Thus John Wagner, Alan Grant & Horacio Lalia’s Helltrekkers – a no-nonsense sci fi thriller B-feature masquerading as a future western and the first serial spin-off from the burgeoning Dredd universe (Dreddiverse?) to not focus on Judges and perps but rather the pitiful proles they pacify and push around. This tome collects the strips from 2000 AD progs 387-415. and was popular enough in its day to win a rotating spot in the comic’s coveted colour section, meaning alternating monochrome and technicolour moments of mirth and madness.

The ancillary feature was written by Alan Grant with regular writing partner John Wagner, co-scribing the voyage as enigmatic “F. Martin Candor” and visually kicked off by fantasy stalwart José Ortiz before Horacio Lalia waded in to illustrate the majority of episodes from the second onwards. This collection offers a note of gloriously gory circularity to proceedings, by closing with a brace of full colour Ortiz “Star Scan” recap features as seen in Progs #387-388 as well as a Lalia cover gallery…

José Ortiz Moya’s 60 plus year career began after he won a contest in Spanish magazine Chicos. During the 1950s, he worked on many digest strips for Editorial Maga, including Capitan Don Nadie, Pantera Negra and Jungla. Agency work saw him produce several strips for foreign publishers, particularly Britain where he illustrated Caroline Barker, Barrister at Law for The Daily Express, Smokeman and UFO Agent for Eagle magazine and The Phantom Viking in anthological top seller Lion. During the 1970s & 1980s Ortiz worked on several popular British strips including The Tower King and House of Daemon for the new Eagle, Rogue Trooper and Judge Dredd for 2000 AD and The Thirteenth Floor for Scream! This last was another stunning horror-show Ortiz co-created with Wagner & Grant.

Whilst doing all of this work on UK kid’s comics, in the US Ortiz was also working on – and is arguably best known – for illustrating stories for Warren’s horror titles, especially Eerie and Vampirella.

Born January 28th 1941, Horacio Nestor Lalia made his first professional sale in 1964 to Hora Cero, and began an association with publisher Columba a year later. After assisting Argentinian comics stars Eugenio Zoppi (Mysterix, Zig Zag, Lord Cochrane) and Alberto Breccia (The Eternaut, Ernie Pike, Sherlock Time, Mort Cinder) in 1966 Lalia started agency work for the Solano Lopez studios on strips for the UK market: generally war stories released by Fleetway. He moved on in 1968, but returned to British comics in the late 1970s, mostly Future Shock stories in 2000 AD.

In 1975 Lalia became a main illustrator for publisher Record but continued working in UK comics and elsewhere. This included for Eura in Italy, Spain’s Norma, Bastei in Germany and France’s Albin Michel whilst simultaneously contributing to Argentinian daily La Razón and Spanish publishing house Bruguera.

So as if Judges, mutants and dinosaurs aren’t enough for you, what’s this all about?

Fed up with their appalling lives in Mega-City One, a doughty band of bold pioneering families – each with their own sordid baggage and backstories – opt to escape civilisation’s dubious security and cross the “Cursed Earth” in heavily-armoured mobile homes in search of a better life and (possibly) less lethal promised land…

Led by – and unfolding via the narrated records of – Trekkmaster Lucas Rudd and assorted survivors, the tale opens with Ortiz draughting the dawn departure of 28 Radwagons carrying 111 former citizens from the city’s West Gate 13. Ignoring Judge advice, the doomed hopefuls are ready to voyage 2000 kilometres to the highly speculative – if perhaps fully fictional – “New Territories”.

Reasons for departure range from painful to tragic. The Glemps want somewhere to raise their mutant baby free from shame, whilst hillbilly criminal clan the Nebbs are getting out before the Judges finally get something actionable on them. The mutual goal lies across a nuke-ravaged, devasted radiation desert left after the war that ended civilisation. Somehow this trackless wasteland can still support life – as represented by mutant enclaves and would-be messiahs, bandit camps, fugitives from Judge justice, hermit hideaways, and the detritus of abandoned science projects. They include resurrected and reconditioned dinosaurs and other abandoned megafauna who have carried on evolving, plus all manner of fresh and interesting lifeforms and monsters guaranteed to keep the Helltrekking lively and never dull…

Veteran guide Banjo Quint rides with the Rudds – Lucas, his wife Amber and son Bud – in the lead wagon, seeking to ride roughshod on the most mismatched, unsuitable and unlikely re-settlers he’s ever seen. Unprepared idiots addicted to a dream, the waggoners are uniformly menaces to themselves and others: a perfect snapshot of why humanity is doomed. That’s confirmed on day one on reaching abandoned theme park Sauron Valley to learn that resurrected dinosaurs are magnificent and tasty. A little later their knowledge expands further as they discover T-Rexes bear grudges, hunt in packs and will stalk prey for thousands of klicks just to get more of that choice, yummy human flavour…

Family units like the Turtles, Lovejoys, Diefenakers, Jumbys, Clampeets, Zapoteks, and Koosh merge but seldom mix, and don’t associate with single seekers like utterly unprepared Mo-Pad hobbyist Rollo Peterson or proper weirdoes like circus family the Hubbles or the hippie Guppy Commune… at least outside of the increasingly common sunset mass-buryings. The Nebbs in Wagon 17 are really a menace to others and seemingly regard their fellow pioneers as an expendable emergency resource. Their selfish wayward antics cause as many fatalities as “natural” Cursed Earth threats like dino herds, radiological diseases such as Black Scab, radioactive smog, sucking patches of quick-quag, flesh-melting acid rainstorms, predatory “mutie” tribes and fugitive criminals from the Mega cities…

It’s no wonder Quint doesn’t make it far past St Louis. The halfway point, it’s only seen by 72 trekkers and as the quest stubbornly continues, that death toll inexorably mounts…

Crafted during the bleakest moments of the last third of the Cold War and unswervingly based on classic western prairie wagon train tales, albeit amped to a mordantly dark and satirically trenchant high point, the grimly attritional saga of the Helltrekkers and its frankly unexpectedly upbeat conclusion is a pure piece of politicized polemic as cathartic entertainment: subversively hilarious, frequently deeply moving and rendered with appropriately stark line and whimsical imagination.

The kind of tale that made 2000 AD such a reliably revolutionary read and anarchically rebellious outpost of dissident counter culture, this complete collection comes with a chilling realisation that maybe those days aren’t over yet…
© 1984, 1985, 2022 & 2023 Rebellion 2000 AD Ltd. All rights reserved.