Category: Drama

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Last Gender: When We Are Nameless volume 1 (of 3)


By Rei Taki translated by Rose Padgett (Vertical/Kodansha)
ISBN: 978-1-6472191-4 (Vertical tank?bon PB) Digital edition 978-1-68491-721-1

A woman goes into a bar.

That’s usually shocking enough for Japanese fiction, but in Rei (Tada Ooki na Neko ni Naritai, Love-Kyo: Kateikyoushi ga xx Sugite Benkyou Dokoro ja Nai) Taki’s deft exploration of sexual diversity, it’s merely the start of a well-intentioned, honest appraisal of what infinite variety in human experience and being actually means. The tale is especially extraordinary as it comes from a country and culture currently involved in a (very polite and restrained) war of past and future and tradition vs. change, where gender and gender roles have always been cast in stone and a hot button topic…

After a short stand-alone try-out tale was reworked and developed (which is included at the end of this edition), Last Gender: Nani Mono demo nai Watashi-tachi debuted in 2022. Its brief interlocking vignettes eventually filled three volumes, employing a picaresque format – in many ways thematically similar to US sitcom Cheers – to peruse those people who generally inhabit the margins of society… either through choice or more often than not due to fear and shame.

In such a strictly formalised society those judgements are most likely to be self-inflicted and imagined, and painfully concrete and condemnatory, as we will see…

Chapter 1 opens with one person’s candid ruminations on what is gender before ‘Welcome to BAR California’ finds nasty, preachy gossip and media scandalmongering hanging in the air as assistant manager Yo prepares to open up for the evening. Checking bottles are full, glasses clean, rooms ready and restocked and all lube, fresh underwear and condom dispensers are full, they are soon distracted by a nervous and curious young woman. She has come in to the venue where “all are welcome” carrying her husband’s membership card and very much wanting to know what it exactly entitles her spouse to…

An explanation of facilities, by-laws, responsibilities, duties and potential rewards – further clarified by a new friend – results in Manami addressing her prior pre- and mis-conceptions, and signing up to discover lots more she didn’t know about herself…

With frequent subtle reminders, asides and dissertations on what staff and patrons consider constitutes gender, sexualities statuses, consent and suitable behaviour, the vignettes continue with ‘An Orchid Blooming in the Fog’. Transgender bisexual Ran shares with Yo early unhappy encounters (incidentally providing us with mindboggling factual detail on insurance cover and finance for gender affirmation surgery in Japan), and happy-go-lucky, persistently pally pansexual Mao adds his own unique perspective and past moments. Ultimately his benign attentions and upbeat manner manifest more revelations of his own unsettled life and its pressures…

The forces of expectation and tradition shaping Mao are more closely monitored in ‘Family of Mannequins’ even as stolid salaryman Sawada Masanori and college girl Amiru debut with their own individual flavours of difference. It’s a risky road to travel but bigender Sawada will only really be content once his wife and child can understand how and why he is also Marie and that will only happen if they can affirm their ‘True Love’, whilst the student still struggles to accept that any boundaries exist…

Amiru steps into the spotlight for closing episode ‘Aromantic Fairy Tale’ delving deeper into her innate belief that sex and love have nothing to do with each other and explaining how all the stories society train us with need to be re-examined if not revoked. Of course, nothing has worked yet to stop her yearning for “the one”, and some of the test candidates have been a bit extreme to say the least. Just look at Yukihiro, with his odd provisos and props… and just what is the secret he shares with only Yo?

To Be Continued…

Filling up this initial tome are ‘Translation Notes’, house ads, a featurette on sex bars and how the clientele adopts aliases in ‘BAR California’s Back Yard #1’ as well as an afterword from Rei Taki, prior to that aforementioned ‘Prototype Story: A Self For All Seasons’ showing how the initial explorations of spousal abuse and similar reasons for such sex bar venues was dialled down for a more subtle and forensic investigation of the people who need them…

There are – even by manga standards – fairly explicit and frequent sex scenes amidst all the character interplay, and the occasionally blunt yet potent evaluations, clarifications and reiterations of gender issues, minorities and status through the lens of Japanese frankness can be a bit breathtaking if we westerners aren’t braced. Nonetheless, Last Gender: When We Are Nameless is a compelling and intriguing foray into gender & sexual diversity, pansexuality, propensities, individuality and autonomy that needs to be seen by anyone still breathing and still dating. Over to you then…
© 2021 Rei Taki. English translation © 2022 Rei Taki. All rights reserved.

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Century’s End – The Black Order Brigade & The Hunting Party


By Enki Bilal & Pierre Christin translated by Edward Gauvin (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-681-0 (HB/Digital edition)

With the world hard set for imminent and dramatic political upheaval and with old scores shaping up to be settled one way or another in the months to come, here’s a portentous and captivating double bill of comics realpolitik from two of our art form’s grandmasters which have lost none of their bite but only become more relevant with the advantage of historical hindsight…

Born in Belgrade in 1951 Enes “Enki” Bilal broke into French comics in 1972 with Le Bal Maudit for Pilote. Over the decade he grew in skill and fame, achieving English-language celebrity once his work began appearing in Heavy Metal magazine. Although best known and most lauded for self-scripted fantasy The Nikopol Trilogy (comprising Gods in Chaos, The Woman Trap & Cold Equator) and his Hatzfeld Tetralogy (The Dormant Beast, December 32, Rendezvous in Paris & Four?) he has spread his creative net far and wide.

A multi-award winning megastar, Bilal has crafted gripping thrillers and academic tales like Phantoms of the Louvre beside his signature bleakly beguiling, ferociously contemplative fantasy tales like Exterminator 17, Magma, Julia & Roem and many, many more. However, throughout his career, Bilal has incessantly explored the history and political themes of his lifetime – especially with frequent collaborator Pierre Christin.

To my mind and despite the impact of their initial trilogy Légendes d’Aujord’hui/Legends of Today (The Cruise of Lost Souls, Ship of Stone, The Town That Didn’t Exist) the duo hit a particular high with their Fins de Siècle sequence which has been comfortably curated here by Titan Comics into single volume Century’s End.

As if writing one of the most successful and significant comics series in the world – Valerian and Laureline – was not enough, full-time academician Pierre Christin still found time over the years to script science-fiction novels, screenplays and a wide selection of comics, starting in 1966 with Le Rhum du Punch with Valérian co-creator Jean-Claude Mézières.

Born in 1938 and a graduate of the Sorbonne before becoming a political science and French literature lecturer, Christin (The Hardy Agency, A Magic Circle,  Le Long Voyage De Léna) has produced many stellar graphic sagas with such artistic luminaries as Jacques Tardi, Raymond Poïvet, Annie Goetzinger, Françoise Boucq, Jijé and more, but whenever he worked with Bilal (beginning in 1975 with the exotic and surreal The Cruise of Lost Souls, the results have never been less than stunning and always make for compulsive reading.

The Black Order Brigade

First released in 1979, Les Phalanges de l’orde noir details in piquant detail and with knowing irony the last hurrah of a group of aging survivors: the defeated remnants of a leftist volunteer battalion of the International Brigade, who fought fascism together during the Spanish civil war. When their murderous opposite number – the titular “Black Order Brigade” – come out of the shadows to unite modern neo-fascist terror groups by sparking a wave of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings and bloody atrocities, British newspaper editor Pritchard starts phoning all the survivors of his unit.

Resolved to finally avenge their fallen comrades and complete their sworn duties, the oldsters – ranging from priests and judges to retired gangsters – drop everything and go undercover: crisscrossing Europe to hunt down and exterminate the old foe and the new generation of monsters they seek to inspire.

Of course, time has not spared either side and the hunt quickly assumes the weight of crushing nostalgia, taint of frustrated dreams and ultimately a stink of farce, all seasoned by occasional bursts of merciless bloodshed as their counterparts undertake a campaign of terror calling the police of dozen nations down on all their balding grey heads…

The extended months-long season of hiding and frustrated assaults takes a heavy toll on the vengeful nemeses and when the final confrontation comes the chance of any survivors coming home is scant indeed…

A captivating travelogue of Europe still recovering from festering old wounds, the story unfolds slowly and with mesmerising detail, exhibiting a balance of tension and Dad’s Army surreal black comedy that beguiles but never forces a full suspension of belief…

The Hunting Party was published in 1983 as Partie de chasse, with the setting and locale stemming from Bilal’s desire to do something set in his eastern European birthlands. Playing out at the height of Cold War tension, when the Soviet old guard was falling to age, infirmity and the ambition of their subordinates, it is for many their best collaboration, exploring idealism, guilt, regret and human nature, all of which have never been more coldly and clearly depicted…

As the Soviet system begins to crack, ten old men of the Party gather at an exclusive Polish estate for an extended winter holiday of reminiscing and shooting. Stars and survivors in their own Warsaw Pact countries, these guests are all linked in deed and indebted to one charismatic man who still stands red and proud amidst the icy landscapes…

He is legendary figure and hard-line apparatchik Vassili Alexandrovich Chevchenko, who has given his long life to the pursuit of the Communist ideal, but is now a doomed man: partially paralysed and rendered mute by a stroke, he is being slowly sidelined by the Politburo which is again repurposing itself, as it has so many times during Chevchenko’s life.

The aged politician’s serried career has been one of surrendering self and sacrificing personal desire to serve the State, and now he has gathered his closest colleagues about him for one last diverting weekend of vodka, chess, hunting and history…

As festivities proceed the silent grandee is plagued with red-handed recollections of things he has done and the love he chose to sacrifice for the sake of the Dream. His internal colloquy is balanced by the naïve questions and attitudes of the young and anonymous French Communist hired to translate for the other interloper among the old Comrades – reforming go-getter Sergei Shavanidze, who has been appointed Chevchenko’s successor and can’t wait to start pruning dead wood and outmoded beliefs…

The entire history of the Movement is examined via the personal reminiscences of these creaking remnants of the system recalling past glories, old horrors and narrow escapes, but the bemused and bewildered Frenchman has no inkling as he absorbs the secrets of their socialist past of the part he will unwittingly play in its future…

This mesmerising, beguiling and utterly chilling thriller methodically skins the hide from an idealistic dream and spills the dark hot guts of guilt, arrogance and the pursuit of power in a sublime example of graphic narrative’s unique facility to tell a story on a number of levels.

The diptych of political Götterdämmerungs is supplanted by a forthright, extensive and highly informative ‘Interview with Enki Bilal and Pierre Christin’ conducted by Benoît Peeters, adding clarity and a light close to these ponderous but exceptional slices of cartoon reality that no serious student of the medium or lover of human drama can afford to miss.
Century’s End and all contents ™ & © Casterman.

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Barking (New Edition)


By Lucy Sullivan (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-76-9 (HB/Digital edition) 978-1783528806 (2020 Unbound HB)

You might not think it, but there’s a lot of guts and inner fortitude demanded of making your inner worlds real – especially in autobiographical comics. In 2020 animator Lucy Sullivan released her first graphic novel: “an exorcism” detailing a deepening depression and personal mental health crisis and the concomitant failings of our overstretched, cash-starved health services in one of the most potent, powerful and damning explorations ever seen of the plight of in-need individuals in a “money-first-& foremost” health system.

Barking set new critical standards for a growing subgenre of candid and intimate experiential biographies and after being lost in the global commercial convulsions of Covid-19, returns here in a new edition that will hopefully find the major audiences the book always deserved.

Rendered in staggeringly expressive stark monochrome artwork capturing a spiky mood of mania and madness and pitched as a chilling horror story, it’s set between a life-altering period of days (October 25th to November 5th, if you’re wondering) and begins with ‘Hounded’ as a terrified young woman flees from a monstrous black dog.

Desperate and defeated, she finds a bridge and seeks surcease in suicide, but as reality and her inner world converge and congeal, she is picked up by indifferent cops who apparently have far more important things to do, and dumped on a standard 72-hour hold under the Mental Health Act in ‘Commit to Me’. The dog is with her all the way, as is a gang of scary men and a cacophony of voices that never let her rest. Never mind, there are plenty of readily doled out drugs for that in the ‘Rot Box’…

Alix might be in isolation but she’s not alone. Her passengers are delighted to keep telling her how bad and weak and useless she is. ‘Prone to Trouble’, she hears again how nobody wants her and why she lost her only friend. As treatment and assessments – dispassionate yet still somehow judgemental – continue, Alix enters the enforced society of fellow inmates/guests/ patients in ‘Just a (Rumination) Phase’, learning some harsh lessons pitched as vague threats and religious paternalism, all before being left to make her own recovery as best she can.

Between flashbacks, hallucinations and potentially lethal ward-companions her slipping back to ‘Unembodied Diamonic’ visions is inevitable. Fears that drive her regain their power and medical indifference, casually “phoned-in” care, too many drugs and economically driven treatments like group therapy and enforced isolation don’t deal with the personal demons. Nor do suggested cure-alls offered by her fellow inmates, but only war with Alix’s ever-present visions and in-situ inner tormentors in ‘Prognostication’, ‘Call of the Void’ and ‘Bruising the Fool’ before a gradual breakthrough and notional resumption of “normal service” augurs a return to stability and equilibrium during ‘Life Under Saturn’…

A Foreword by comics doyen Nick Abadzis details how the project first materialised – and his involvement in it – precedes the tale itself and is mirrored by the author’s revelatory Afterword at the back. This describes how Sullivan’s allegorical extrapolation of a very low point also seeks to address greater issues surrounding this country’s growing mental health problems and our literally insane simultaneous starvation of funding required to fix the rot. It’s supplemented by a wonderfully uplifting, self-deprecating Postscript for this new edition describing the understandably shaky course of a creative project about fear, isolation and incarceration that was published during a global lockdown…

Also crucially germane here is a copious Acknowledgements section, underscoring how vital human contact and collaborative input is: not just in story-making but in all aspects of living in the modern world…

A visually disturbing and emotionally shocking exploration of how grief and depression self-destructively feed on each other and how the fix for spiralling mental chaos is not getting a grip but getting help, Barking is not just a worthy and necessary read, but one that will stay with you forever.

© Lucy Sullivan, 2020. All rights reserved.

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Leonard & Larry 3: Extracts From the Ring Cycle at Royal Albert Hall


By Tim Barela (Palliard Press)
ISBN: 978-1-88456-805-3 (Album PB)

We live in an era where Pride events are world-wide and commonplace: where acceptance of LGBTQIA+ citizens is a given… at least in all the civilised countries where dog-whistle politicians, populist “hard men” totalitarian dictators (I’m laughing at a private dirty joke right now) and sundry organised religions are kept in their generally law-abiding places by their hunger for profitable acceptance and desperation to stay tax-exempt, scandal-free, rich and powerful.

There’s still too many places where it’s not so good to be Gay but at least Queer themes and scenes are no longer universally illegal and can be ubiquitously seen in entertainment media of all types and age ranges… and even on the streets of most cities. For all the injustices and oppressions, we’ve still come a long, long way and it’s and simply No Big Deal anymore. Let’s affirm that victory and all work harder to keep it that way…

Such was not always the case and, to be honest, the other team (with religions proudly egging them on and backing them up) are fighting hard and dirty to reclaim all the intolerant high ground they’ve lost thus far.

Incredibly, all that change and counteraction happened within the span of living memory (mine, in this case). For English-language comics, the shift from illicit pornography to homosexual inclusion in all drama, comedy, adventure and other genres started as late as the 1970s and matured in the 1980s – despite resistance from most western governments – thanks to the efforts of editors like Robert Triptow and Andy Mangels and cartoonists like Howard Cruse, Vaughn Bode, Trina Robbins, Lee Marrs. Gerard P. Donelan, Roberta Gregory, Touko Valio Laaksonen/“Tom of Finland” and Tim Barela.

A native of Los Angeles, Barela was born in 1954, and became a fundamentalist Christian in High School. He loved motorbikes and had dreams of becoming a cartoonist. He was also a gay kid struggling to come to terms with what was still judged illegal, wilfully mind-altering psychosis and perversion – if not actual genetic deviancy – and an appalling sin by his theological peers and close family…

In 1976, Barela began an untitled comic strip about working in a bike shop for Cycle News. Some characters then reappeared in later efforts Just Puttin (Biker, 1977-1978); Short Strokes (Cycle World, 1977-1979); Hard Tale (Choppers, 1978-1979) plus The Adventures of Rickie Racer, and cooking strip (!) The Puttin Gourmet… America’s Favorite Low-Life Epicurean in Biker Lifestyle and FTW News. Four years later, the cartoonist unsuccessfully pitched a domestic (AKA “family”) strip called Ozone to LGBTQA news periodical The Advocate. Among its proposed quotidian cast were literal and metaphorical straight man Rodger and openly gay Leonard Goldman… who had a “roommate” named Larry Evans…

Gay Comix was an irregularly published anthology, edited at that time by Underground star Robert Triptow (Strip AIDs U.S.A.; Class Photo). He advised Barela to ditch the restrictive newspaper strip format in favour of longer complete episodes, and printed the first of these in Gay Comix #5 in 1984. The remodelled new feature was a huge success, included in many successive issues and became the solo star of Gay Comix Special #1 in 1992.

Leonard & Larry also showed up in prestigious benefit comic Strip AIDs U.S.A. before triumphantly relocating to The Advocate in 1988, and – from 1990 – to its rival publication Frontiers. The lads even moved into live drama in 1994: adapted by Theatre Rhinoceros of San Francisco as part of stage show Out of the Inkwell. In the 1990s their episodic exploits were gathered in a quartet of wonderfully oversized (220 x 280 mm) monochrome albums which gained a modicum of international stardom and some glittering prizes. This third compendium compiled by Palliard Press between 1996 -2000, follows Domesticity Isn’t Pretty and Kurt Cobain & Mozart Are Both Dead, whilst paving the way for last volume (to date) How Real Men Do It.

As previously stated, as well as featuring a multi-generational cast, Leonard & Larry is a strip that progressed in real time, with characters all aging and developing accordingly. The strips are not and never have been about sex – except in that the subject is a constant generator of hilarious jokes and outrageously embarrassing situations. Triumphantly skewering hypocrisy and rebuking ignorance with dry wit and superb drawing, episodes cover various couples’ home and work lives, constant parties, physical deterioration, social gaffes, rows, family revelations, holidays and even events like earthquakes and fanciful prognostications.

Following an Introduction from Animation historian Charles Solomon and Lief Wauters potted history of the strip ‘The Life and Times of Leonard & Larry’, a ‘Leonard & Larry Timeline’ provides a crucial curated recap in copious detail, including reintroducing the vast Byzantine, deftly interwoven cast, with past highlights and low points and reminds readers that this strip passes in real time and the players are aging just like we are…

Star couple Leonard Goldman and Larry Evans live together despite vast family circles and friend groups all apparently at odds with each other. The feature also prominently and increasing plays with fantasy as dream manifestations – or are they actual ghosts? – of composers Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his bitter frenemy Johannes Brahms plague cast members: acting as a vanguard for even odder occurrences to come…

This family saga is primarily a comedy of manners, played out against social prejudices and grudging gradual popular acceptances, but it also has shocking moments of drama and tension and whole bunches of heartwarming sentiment set in and around West Hollywood.

The extensive Leonard & Larry clan comprise the former’s formidable unaccepting mother Esther – who still ambushes him with blind dates and nice Jewish girls – and the latter’s ex-wife Sharon and the sons of their 18-yeat marriage Richard and David. Teenaged Richard recently knocked up and wed equally school-aged Debbie, making the scrappy couple unwilling grandparents years (decades even!) before they were ready. The oldsters adore baby Lauren but didn’t need to relive all that aging trauma when Debbie announced there would soon be an older sister…

Maternal grandparents Phil and Barbra Dunbarton are ultra conservative and stridently Christian, spending a lot of time fretting over Debbie and Lauren’s souls and their own social standing. They’re particularly concerned over role models and what horrors she and her brother Michael are being exposed to whenever the gay guys babysit. Their appearances are always some of funniest and most satisfying as the deviant clan expands exponentially in this volume…

David Evans is as Queer as his dad, and works in Larry’s leather/fetish boutique store on Melrose Avenue. That iconic venue provides loads of quick, easy laughs and many edgy moments thanks to local developer/predatory expansionist Lillian Lynch who still wants the store at any cost. It’s also the meeting point for many other couples in Leonard & Larry’s eccentric orbit. Their friends/clients enjoy greater roles this time, offering other perspectives on LA life.

Flamboyant former aerospace engineer Frank Freeman lives with acclaimed concert pianist Bob Mendez and is saddled with an compulsive yen for uniforms. It comes in handy again when Bob’s sex-crazed celebrity stalker Fiona Birkenstock breaks jail to re-kidnap him – at least until she switches affection to a certain celebrity judge sentencing her…

Larry’s other employee is Jim Buchanan whose alarming dating history stabilised when he met a genuine cowboy at one of L & L’s parties. Merle Oberon was a newly “out” Texan trucker who added romance and stability to Jim’s lonely life. Sadly, it got complicated in other ways once Merle became a Hollywood soap star and his agents, managers and co-star convinced him his career needed Oberon back in that closet…

Jim, by the way, is the original and central focus of the overly-critical dead composers’ puckish visits…

Also catching attention this time are heated discussions on the supernatural as the ghost composers graduate from dream-based plot device to active participants, playing pranks on many more of the minor cast members. Their games re balanced with ever-kvetching aging-averse Larry painfully adapting to being a doting grandad/perennial babysitter. Jim and Merle meanwhile engage a psychic to exorcise their haunt housemates, blithely unaware that she’s an undercover tabloid hack looking for a juicy exposé…

Younger players take centre stage, offering the author opportunity to spike not just anti-gay bigots but take on good old-fashioned racism too, even delivering a gleefully potent poke at American fundamentalism when the “Christian Coalition” relentlessly pursues good old white, Texan celebrity Merle to be the face of their next “decency campaign” and just won’t take no for an answer…

A surprisingly hard-hitting – if deviously velvet-gloved – storyline sees Jim discovering he was adopted: in fact the child of an unwed catholic girl exploited by the Irish Church’s baby-selling scandal (you really should look up Ireland’s Mother & Baby Homes). Reeling and despondent, his downward spiral is resolved by Merle who secretly arranges a trip to Ireland and a family reunion no-one wanted but everyone benefitted from…

David is Larry’s gay son and not expected to cause chaos and consternation, but that ends when he and his bestie Collin help their lesbian roommate Nat get pregnant and our freaked out oldster contemplates becoming a grandfather yet again…

That hilariously potent arc is compounded when ex-wife Sharon attends one of their frequent dinner parties and gets off with the still-sore former spouse’s only straight acquaintance (classical violinist Gene Slatkin). The liaison sparks incomprehensible jealousy and primeval macho ownership behaviour in Larry, but it’s so much worse when he learns the result is geriatric pregnancy and his becoming an unpaid baby sitter for another family addition…

Extended saga ‘The Baby Shower’ finds the entire conflicted and in many parts intolerant extended family in one room and scoring points As first Sharon and then Nat go into labour it sparks fourth wall shenanigans as Larry again has a meltdown and flees from the hospital, archenemy Mike the midwife, all semblance of parental responsibility and general biological “ickiness”.

The feature provides plenty of moments of wild abandon too, such as when Larry loses a friend’s beloved dog and finds an enormous python with a very full stomach, fun with tarantulas and a startling dream sequence wherein grandkids (7-year-old Lauren and 3-year-old Michael) take over “creating” strip a few times, ultimately confirming grampy’s crazed conviction that he’s nothing but a character in a comic strip crafted by a sadist. Further hallucinogenic riffs – including cowboy antics and a rebellion of Barbie dolls – leads finally to a major emotional growth spurt and Larry’s return to the hospital just in time to join the happy events…

Leonard & Larry is a traditionally domestic marital sitcom/soap opera with Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz – or more aptly, Dick Van Dyke & Mary Tyler Moore – replaced by a hulking bearded “bear” with biker, cowboy and leather fetishes and a stylishly moustachioed, no-nonsense fashion photographer. Taken in total, it’s a love story about growing old together, but not gracefully or with any dignity. Populated by adorable, appetising fully fleshed out characters, Leonard & Larry was always about finding and then being yourself and remains an irresistible slice of gentle whimsy to nourish the spirit and beguile the jaded. If you feel like taking a Walk on the Mild Side now this tome is still at large through internet vendors. So why don’t you?
Excerpts from the Ring Cycle in Royal Albert Hall © 2000 Palliard Press. All artwork and strips © 2000 Tim Barela. All rights reserved The Life and Times of Leonard & Larry © 2000 Lief Wauters.

After decades of waiting, the entire ensemble is available again courtesy of Rattling Good Yarns Press. Sublimely hefty hardback uber-compilation Finally! The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection was released in 2021, reprinting the entire saga – including rare as hens’ teats last book How Real Men Do It (978-1955826051). It’s a little smaller in page dimensions (216 x280mm) and far harder to lift, but it’s Out There if you want it…

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Spider-Man Newspaper Strips volume 1: January 3rd 1977 – January 28th 1979

4 images (2 covers + 1 illo and a spare combined covers if the preferred don’t match up)


By Stan Lee & John Romita, with Frank Giacoia & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-8561-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s been a year since we lost genial giant John Romita. His work and life were inextricably woven into the Marvel canon: permeating and supporting the entire company’s output from top to tail, from before the House of Ideas even existed to the stellar Sixties to right now…

By 1977 Stan Lee had all but surrendered his role as editor and guiding light of Marvel Comics for that of a roving PR machine to hype-up the company he had turned into a powerhouse. In that year two events occurred that catapulted Marvel’s standout, signature character into the popular culture mainstream. One was the long-anticipated debut of The Amazing Spider-Man live action TV show (a mixed blessing and pyrrhic victory at best) whilst the other, and one much more in keeping with his humble origins, was the launch of a syndicated newspaper strip with the same hallowed title.

Both mass-audience outreach projects brought the character to a wider audience, but the latter offered at least a promise of editorial control – a crucial factor in keeping the wondrous wallcrawler’s identity and integrity intact. But even this closely-aligned creative medium dictated some tailoring of the Merry Marvel Madness before the hero was a suitable fit with the grown-up world of the “Funny Pages”.

Which is just my longwinded way of saying that completists, long-time fans and lovers of great artwork will absolutely enjoy this collection of periodical strips, as will any admirer of the stunning talents of the senior John Romita (latterly inked by the great Frank Giacoia) even though the stories are tame, bowdlerised and rather mediocre. Deprived of the support network of an overlapping Marvel Universe, they often struggled to find their wallcrawling feet and might feel a tad toned down and simplistic for readers familiar with the wider cast or long history. Those completists, however, might be keen on catching lost adventures featuring Wolverine, Doctor Strange and Daredevil, and it was always easier to import supervillains like Mysterio, The Kingpin and Doctor Doom into the alternate adventures of this Amazing Spider-Man.

Marvel Multiversal Continuity eventually caught up with the feature and it’s now designated Earth-77013 and a regular component of the “Spider-Verse” strand…

The strip was first posited and peddled around the papers in 1970 (Lee & Romita’s initial proposal and two weeks of trial continuities are included at the back of this book) but The Amazing Spider-Man only began on January 3rd 1977. It ran as a property of the Register and Tribune Syndicate until 1985, briefly switching to Cowles Media Company before becoming part of the King Features Syndicate in 1986. The strip went on hiatus following Lee’s death with the final new strip appearing on March 23rd 2019. Lee was still credited as writer even though Roy Thomas had been its ghost writer since 2000. It soon reappeared as reruns – until October 21st 2023 – before being replaced in syndicate packages by Flash Gordon.

One of the industry’s most polished stylists and a true cornerstone of the Marvel Comics phenomenon, the elder John Romita began his comics career in the late 1940s (ghosting for other artists) before striking out under his own colours, eventually illustrating horror and other anthology tales for Stan Lee at Timely/Atlas.

John Victor Romita was Brooklyn born and bred, entering the world on January 24th 1930. From Brooklyn Junior High School he moved to the famed if not legendary Manhattan School of Industrial Art, and graduated in 1947. After spending six months creating a medical exhibit for Manhattan General Hospital he moved into comics in 1949, working for Famous Funnies. A “day job” toiling at Forbes Lithograph was abandoned when a friend found him various inking and ghosting assignments, until he was drafted in 1951. Showing his portfolio to a US army art director, after boot camp at Fort Dix New Jersey, Romita was promoted to corporal, and stationed on Governors Island in New York Bay doing recruitment posters. He was allowed to live off-base in Brooklyn. During this period he started doing the rounds and struck up a freelancing acquaintance with Stan Lee at rapidly expanding genre factory Atlas Comics…

Romita illustrated horror, science fiction, war stories, westerns, Waku, Prince of the Bantu in Jungle Tales, a superb run of inviting cowboy adventures starring The Western Kid and was handed 1954’s abortive revival of Captain America and more, before an industry implosion derailed his – and many other – blossoming careers. He eventually found himself trapped in DC’s romance comics division – a job he hated – before – in 1965 – making a reluctant jump back to the resurgent House of Ideas. As well as steering the career of the wallcrawler and so many other Marvel stars, his greatest influence was felt when he became Art Director in July 1973 – a job he had been doing unofficially since 1968. He had a definitive hand in creating or shaping many key characters, such as Mary Jane Watson, Peggy Carter, The Kingpin, The Punisher, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Satana, ad infinitum. One story goes that it was Romita who suggested Gwen Stacy’s murder to Spidey scripter Gerry Conway…

Working from full scripts (not the acclaimed “Marvel Method”), Romita illustrated The Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip for its first four years, after which Stan’s brother Larry Lieber (Rawhide Kid, Ant-Man, Iron Man, Thor) took on the pencilling. Unhappy with the deadline pressures, he soon left, and was replaced by Fred (Airboy, Captain Britain) Kida who soldiered on from August 1981 to July 1986. A brief interim with Dan (Flash Gordon, Airboy, Tarzan) Barry led to Leiber’s return, and he drew the feature for the next 32 years with a variety of inkers and ghosts such as Alex Saviuk.

Since 2015 the stories have also been collected in IDW’s The Library of American Comics as The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Newspaper Comics Collection with five lavish hardback volumes released to date. This collection – available in landscape paperback and digital formats – is a modified rerelease of a hardback tome from 2008, offering extra editorial and commentary as it re-presents the first two years of the strip, with traditional single tier monochrome dailies accompanied by full-colour, full page Sunday strips. If the reader is steeped in the established folklore of the comic book Spider-Man, the serials here – solidly emphasising Peter Parker‘s personal relationships in the grand manner of strip soap opera drama – begin by introducing Dr. Doom and Dr. Octopus in heavy-handed potboilers light on action but intrinsically riffing on what has gone before in comic books.

However, for the presumed millions of neophyte readers the yarns must have been a tad confusing: presented as if all participants are already fully-established, with no development or real explanation of backstory. After the full-on Marvel villains are successively trounced, serpentine new baddie The Rattler stalks the city in search of increased powers, followed in turn by the more appropriate and understandable (for strips at least) gangster The Kingpin, who combines seditious politics with gun-toting thuggery.

Only then do the creators finally get around to a retelling of the origin, albeit one now based on that aforementioned TV show rather than the classic Lee/Ditko masterpiece. It’s safe to say that in those early years television informed the strip much (too much) more than monthly comic books.

A suitably revised Kraven the Hunter debuts next, presenting an opportunity to remove glamourous but shallow good-time girl Mary Jane Watson from the strip in favour of a string of temporary girl-friends, more in line with the TV iteration. This also signalled a reining-in of super-menaces in favour of less-fantastic or far-fetched opponents such as a middle-Eastern terrorist.

The launch of a Spider-Man movie (surely the most improbable of events!) then takes photojournalist Peter Parker to Hollywood and into a clash with a new version of deranged special-effects genius Mysterio, before Dr. Doom returns, attempting to derange our hero with robot pigeons and duplicates of Parker’s associates..

This is followed by an exceptional, emotionally-stirring run of episodes as three street thugs terrorise senior citizen Aunt May for her social security money, after which Spider-Man must foil a crazed fashion-model who has discovered his identity and blackmails him…

These drama-framed and human-scaled threats are a far more fitting use of the hero in this ostensibly more grown-up milieu – which pauses here with a protection racket romp set in the (feel free to shudder) discotheque owned by young entrepreneurs Flash Thompson and Harry Osborn, courtesy of newly-returned corpulent crimelord Kingpin…

To Be Continued…

Adding to the time capsule of arachnid entertainment is that aforementioned proposal by Lee & Romita, archival interviews with both creators conducted by John Rhett Thomas and Alex Lear plus a gallery of six Sunday title panels (used to summarise events and set the tone for readers who only read the sabbath colour strips), as well as a classic Romita pin-up page starring the artist and his greatest co-creations…

Happily, although goofy stories predominate in this oddball collection, and time has not been gentle with much of the dialogue, the stunning artwork of John Romita in his prime helps to counteract the worst of the cultural excesses. Moreover, there remains a certain guilty pleasure to be derived from these tales if you don’t take your comics too seriously and are open to alternative existences…
© 1977, 1978, 2019 Marvel. All rights reserved.

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Liebestrasse


By Greg Lockard, Tim Fish, Héctor Barros, Lucas Gattoni & various (Dark Horse/Greg Lockard-ComiXology Originals)
ISBN: 9781506724553 (TPB/Digital edition)

As we’re all mindful of D-Day, WWII and how the world changed after that, here’s a poignant fable set in those distant days about one of the things they were all fighting for – the right to love and be loved by whoever you choose…

The story opens covertly in the Land of the Free. It’s 1952 and an aging, wealthy man seeks solace and the company of “his own kind” in a very special bar…

The next day, Sam Wells visits a modern art exhibition where a brief encounter with a young man of similar tastes and disposition triggers memories and a potent flashback to an old friend. Soon after, Wells is flying to Berlin to establish new business contacts and, hopefully, relive some of the better moments of his past.

As he moves around the divided city, Wells’ mind flits back to 1932 when, as a young Mover & Shaker, he was posted to Germany to set up an overseas office for his company. For a young man of wealth and his particular proclivities, the Weimar Republic offered many opportunities and temptations. Crucially, it also allowed freedom from dangerous oversight. Nevertheless, there was also an inescapable sense of oppressive menace, especially after meeting audacious, outspoken Philip Adler and falling madly, passionately, head over heels in love.

Philip’s sister Hilde was already in the sights of the rising National Socialists for creating un-Aryan art, but his constant challenging of the party in words, and especially with his “degenerate” lifestyle, soon painted a target on all their backs, as well as on the numerous doomed-and-dancing-on-the-volcano’s-edge liberals Sam met at endless parties and in the music clubs…

As months passed, the affair intensified – as did the danger – and inevitably, the hammer fell. For Sam that meant a beating and deportation, but for Philip there was no such callous leniency. Now decades later, Wells is back and has to face Hilde again…

Set firmly in the footsteps of the Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood, Liebestrasse is a tale of regret, thwarted love and “might-have-beens ” from writer Greg Lockard and artist Tim Fish, aided and abetted by Héctor Barros on colours with Lucas Gattoni providing letters and calligraphy. Forceful, frantic, passionate and deeply moving, it is a powerful testament to the abiding power and wonder of passion but also a sobering reminder of how far we’ve come: an irrefutable argument for live and let love…
LIEBESTRASSE © 2019 Greg Expectations, LLC & Timothy Poisson. All rights reserved.

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Battle Stations – War Picture Library


By Hugo Pratt & Don Avenell (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-752-7 (HB/Digital Edition)

Born in Rimini, Ugo Eugenio Prat, AKA Hugo Pratt (June 15th 1927 – August 20th 1995) was wandered the world in his early life, whilst becoming one of its paramount comics creators. His enthralling graphic inventions since Ace of Spades (whilst still a student at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts in 1945) were many and varied. His signature character – based in large part on his own exotic formative years – is mercurial soldier (perhaps sailor is more accurate) of fortune Corto Maltese.

Pratt was a consummate story-teller with a unique voice and a stark graphic style that should not work, but so wonderfully does: combining pared-down, relentlessly modernistic narrative style with memorable characters, always complex whilst still bordering on the archetypical. By placing a modern, morally ambivalent anti-hero in a period where old world responsibilities should make him a scoundrel and villain, yet keeping him true to an utterly personal but iron-clad ethical integrity that goes beyond considerations of race, class or gender, he has created a yard-stick with which we cannot help but measure all heroes. As empires fade and colonies fall Corto Maltese deals with and is moved by people, not concepts or traditions. He is also a whimsical man of action and a faithful humanist with a talent for being in the wrong place at the right time. We’ll return to him another time…

After working in both Argentinean and – from 1959 – on English comics like top gun Battler Briton, plus combat stories for extremely popular digest novels in assorted series such as War Picture Library, Battle Picture Library, War at Sea Picture Library and others – Pratt returned to and settled in Italy and later France in the 1960s. In 1967 with Florenzo Ivaldi he produced a number of series for monthly comic Sgt. Kirk.

In addition to the Western lead star, he created pirate strip Capitan Cormorand, detective feature Lucky Star O’Hara, and a moody South Seas adventure called Una Ballata del Mare Salato (A Ballad of the Salty Sea). When it folded in 1970, Pratt took one of Una Ballata’s characters to French weekly, Pif Gadget before eventually settling in with legendary Belgian periodical Le Journal de Tintin. Corto Maltese proved as much a Wild Rover in reality as in his historic and eventful career…

In Britain the ubiquitous delights of the mini-books also included Super Picture Library, Air Ace Picture Library, Action Picture Library and Thriller Picture Library: uniformly half-sized, 64-page monochrome booklets with glossy soft-paper covers and presenting complete stories in 1-3 panels per page, with yarns that were regularly recycled and reformatted. The story featured here was printed twice – as War at Sea #34, June 1963 and in War Picture Library #1078, June 1975 – with the painted covers and fascinating, well-annotated features on art changes as inflicted on the tale with each iteration making a compelling fact-feature at the end. Rebellion boss Ben Smith even offers an informative Introduction to launch the whole affair…

During his sojourn in British comics Pratt crafted all unheralded a number of mini-masterpieces like this one. Rescued and suitably repackaged by Rebellion Studios in their Treasury of British Comics imprint, Battle Stations was written by national hero and unsung legend Donne Avenell, who began his own strips career before WWII in the editorial department of Amalgamated Press – which evolved into Fleetway and eventually IPC. Avenell’s starter was anthological household name Radio Fun.

Born in Croydon in 1925, he served with the Royal Navy during the war, before returning to publishing: editing an AP architectural magazine whilst pursuing writing for radio dramas and romances under a slew of pseudonyms. He returned to comics in the 1950s, with many contributions to childhood icons like War Picture Library and Lion, directing the sagas of The Spider, The Phantom Viking, Oddball Oates, Adam Eterno and more. He co-wrote major international features like Buffalo Bill, Helgonet (The Saint) and The Phantom for Swedish publisher Semic, and devised the strip Django and Angel whilst also toiling on assorted licensed Disney strips.

In 1975, with Norman Worker, he co-wrote Nigeria’s Powerman comic which helped launch the careers of Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons. Avenell was equally at home on newspaper strips such as Axa (1978-1986, drawn by Enrique Romero), Tiffany Jones and Eartha (illustrated by John M. Burns). He also worked in television, writing series like The Saint and their subsequent novelisations. He died in 1996.

This story concerns just another small battle lost in the bigger war as three sailors on convoy escort duty in June 1942 endure the sinking of their anti-sub trawler off the coast of the USA. When the vessel they were guarding goes down too, their shipmates and the merchant marine survivors are all machined gunned in the water at the command of the German U-boat captain, and an implacable bond of undying hatred grips Stoker First Class Scully, Lieutenant Rayner and Leading Seaman Ford…

Months later, rescued, recuperated and reassigned to Light Cruiser H.M.S. Vengeful, the trio are looking for payback and clearly suffering what we today know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when their ship again encounters the ruthless enemy. A savage battle then leaves all ships gone and sailors stuck in a drifting lifeboat. Scully, Rayner and Ford are still alive, but due to the exigencies of combat they’re lost in the Atlantic with an equal number of despised Germans in the lifeboat…

What happens next is powerful, shocking and not at all what you’d expect from a kid’s comic crafted to sell in the heyday of UK war films commemorating the conflict their parents lived through.

A powerful psychological thriller that beaks the rules of comics combat, Battle Stations is

subtly subversive, straightforwardly told and startlingly compelling, far from the bread & butter war stories that sustained British comics readers for decades; and few have ever looked so good doing it. If you’re a connoisseur of graphic thrills and dramatic tension, don’t miss these salty sagas.
© 1963, 2019 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Giant


By Mollie Ray (Faber & Faber)
ISBN: 978-0-571-37419-9 (HB)

The true power of comics storytelling is its innate ability to cut through layers of language, fluff and obfuscation to impart pure meaning, feeling and response on a symbolically primal level. When a carefully constructed image hits below the strata of constructed reality the impact is devastating and lasting.

Such is absolutely the case in Giant as debutante author Mollie Ray cuts through the hindrance and drawbacks of deceptive, misunderstandable language, with all its inherent accidental barriers, to reach a universally communal level of understanding.

Using evocative design, staging and carefully crafted characters beautifully drawn, directed and positioned in the manner of classic silent movies, she relates a transformational, deeply personal crisis into a universal parable of fear, hope and in this case joyous resolution all without saying a word…

Meticulously rendered old school in ballpoint pen on cartridge paper and channelling a dire medical emergency, she shows how a loving family is stressed, stretched, almost crushed and so nearly destroyed when a youngster suddenly succumbs to a disease and resultant condition that changes everything and affects everyone.

The silent saga is every parent and sibling’s nightmare, with a resolution coming not through magic or miracles but through hard work, medical resolve, unceasing endurance, patience and understanding.

This tale is a moving and most remarkable achievement that will resonate far beyond the usual comics and graphic novel circles. Don’t wait for the inevitable animated adaptation to become a seasonal standby: buy Giant now and show all your friends… and enemies too, if you can get them to not listen…

Artwork & design by Mollie Ray. © Mollie Ray, 2024. All rights reserved.

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Planetes Omnibus volume 1


By Makoto Yukimura, adapted by Anna Wenger & Brendan Wright, translated by Yuki Johnson (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-921-2 (Omnibus TPB)

The hard, gritty mystery and imagination of space travel, so much a component of immediate post-WWII industrial society, briefly re-captivated legions of level-headed imagineers at the end of the 20th century when relative newcomer and manga debutante Makoto Yukimura  rekindled interest in near-space exploration in all its harsh and grimy glory with this inspirational “nuts-&-bolts” manga series exploring the probable rather than the possible…

Yukimura (born in Yokohama in 1976, just as the once-ambitious US space program was languishing in cash-strapped doldrums and five long years before the first space shuttle launch) began his professional life as an assistant to veteran Mankaka (“comics creator”) Shin Morimura before launching his independent career with the Planetes. Working exclusively for Kodansha, his award-winning premier Seinen series ran in Weekly Morning magazine (from January 1999 – January 2004) before being collected in four tankōbon editions. The serial easily made the jump to an anime series and the books became a multi-award-winning global sensation. Yukimura – after producing evocative one-shot Sayōnara ga Chikai node (For Our Farewell is Near) for Evening magazine – in 2005 abandoned the future for the past, to concentrate his creative energies on monolithic historical epic Vinland Saga. Serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine and Afternoon, it has thus far filled 27 rousing volumes to date…

The premise of Planetes is diabolically simply and powerfully engaging. Humanity is a questing species but cannot escape its base origins. In 2074, space travel and exploitation is commonplace but as we’ve conquered the void between Earth and the asteroid belt and prepare to explore – and ruinously exploit – the outer planets, the once-pristine void around us has become clotted and clustered with our obsolete tech and all manner of casually discarded rubbish. Even the most minute speck of junk or debris falling through hard vacuum is a high-velocity, potentially deadly missile, so to keep risk to a minimum hardy teams of rugged individualists must literally sweep the heavens free of our discarded crap.

Prelude ‘Phase 1: A Stardust Sky’ begins with the death of a passenger on a commercial low-orbit spaceliner before jumping six years forward and introducing a trio of these celestial dustbin-men scooping up Mankind’s negligent castoffs and unconsidered detritus. Hachirota Hoshino is the newest, youngest member of the team, a kid who craves becoming a real astronaut and famed explorer like his dad. Dreaming of one day owing his own prestige spaceship, excitable “Hachimaki” is soon disenchanted with the dreary, dull and disgusting daily life of drudgery aboard DS-12: a sanitation/cargo ship fondly dubbed “Toybox” but little better than the discards he and his two comrades daily scoop up or destroy…

These days there’s something wrong with the sombre, stoic Russian, Yuri Mihairokov. The big man is increasingly distracted, blanking out, staring vacantly into the Wild Black Yonder as the cleaners orbit Earth at 8 kilometres per second. Events come to head when a shard of micro-debris holes their ramshackle vessel and an old timer reveals the Russian’s tragic secret.

Long ago Yuri and his wife were passengers on that shuttle and when it was holed she died. Heartbroken, her husband – one of the few survivors – returned to space to clear the deadly trash that took his wife. He never forgot her.

Years later, whilst drifting in the void the solitary heartsick astronaut sees a glitter, and her keepsake compass just floats into his hand, brought back to him by the winds of space and cruel fate. Beguiled, he falls into Earth’s gravity well and only Hachimaki’s most frantic efforts save his comrade from fiery death.

Safely back in free orbit, the Russian opens his gauntleted fist. On the compass are scratched his wife’s final thoughts as death took her – “please save Yuri”…

The poignant, bittersweet and deeply spiritual tale properly begins with ‘Phase 2: A Girl From Beyond the Earth’ wherein Hoshino slowly and impatiently recovers from a broken leg in the hospital of the moon colony Archimedes Crater City. These tales are laced with the most up-to-date space science available to author Yukimura, and the recent revelations that extended time spent in low/zero-gravity radically weakens bones and muscles was the lynchpin of this moving brush with another youngster bound irrevocably to the void.

When a doctor suggests returning to full-gravity Earth to recuperate the easy way, Hachi is in two minds and sorely tempted. His commander and fellow debris-destroyer Fee Carmichael and a grizzled 20-year both veteran pour scorn on the quitter’s option. All real astronauts know that once back on the home world few ever come back to space.

The kid is still tempted though… until he strikes up a friendship with a thin, wasted young woman. Nono has been on Luna for 12 years and dreams of blue skies and open seas, even though she will never see them. After aged Mr. Roland chooses to spend the rest of his life among the stars, Hachimaki discovers Nono’s sad, incredible secret and at last abandons all notion of forsaking the stars…

Focus stays on nicotine-fiend Fee Carmichael as she struggles to enjoy a well-deserved vice in ‘Phase 3: A Cigarette Under Starlight’ in Orientale Basin Underground City some months later. With breathing-oxygen at a premium, smokers must juggle their addiction with the dedication to life in space. Poor Fee has been Jonesing for a drag for far too long. Now though, whilst on shore-leave at a station big enough (and sufficiently civilised) to house a designated smoking area, the Toybox’s chief is still unable to indulge her vice…

Ideological terrorist group the Space Defense Fighters want to keep the void pristine and free of Mankind’s polluting influence and have been detonating bombs in outposts all over the moon. Their latest outrage targets the base’s vending machines and smoking rooms, so the authorities have sealed them all in the name of public safety. Driven near to madness, Fee snaps and lights up in public toilets, forgetting fire countermeasures and smoke detection devices are automatic, incredibly sensitive and painfully effective…

Humiliated, sodden but undeterred, she takes off for another city and a solitary snout (for any non-Brits, that’s a particularly demeaning and derogatory term for a smoke) and finds the only guy more in need of a drag than her. Of course, setting bombs is nervous work and a quick ciggy always calms his nerves…

The frustration is too much and Fee returns to her job, but the SDF’s explosive campaign has barely begun. Their next scheme is the creation of a deadly Kessler Syndrome wave (a blast or impact which changes the trajectories of free-floating orbital scrap and debris, creating even more debris/shrapnel and aiming it like a hard rain of lethal micro-missiles)…

With a commandeered satellite directed at a space station, the terrorists intend to detonate their captured vehicle and shred the habitat – which coincidentally carries the last cigarettes in space – shooting it out of the sky to create a lethal chain reaction to make high-orbit space forever unnavigable.

Unsure of her own motives, Fee uses the DS-12 to suicidally shove the stolen projectile away from the station and into Earth’s atmosphere…

Whilst she recuperates in Florida, ‘Phase 4: Scenery for a Rocket’, depicts Hachimaki bringing Yuri to visit the family home in Japan. However, the volatile lad immediately slips back into a violent sibling rivalry with younger brother Kyutaro: a rocketry prodigy even more resolved to conquer space than his surly and increasingly fanatical brother… or their absentee astronaut father Goro. Happily the steadfast Russian’s calming influence begins repairing fences between the warring Hoshino boys, although not before a series of explosive confrontations lead to Yuri finally passing on his beloved wife’s compass…

‘Phase 5: Ignition’ finds Fee, Yuri and Hachimaki reunited just in time for the junior junkman to suffer an (almost) career-ending psychological injury. Although physically uninjured by a rogue solar flare, the lad is completely isolated in the void for so long that he develops post-traumatic “Deep-Space Disorder”. If he can’t shake off the debilitating hallucinatory condition his life in space is over. Nothing experts at the supervising Astronaut Training Center do has any lasting effect, but fortunately Yuri knows just what prodding might awaken the wide-eyed, Wild Black Wonderment in his feisty little comrade…

‘Phase 6: Running Man’ has the Toybox’s weary crew visit Moon Orbital Space Port where the obsessively training Hachimaki is approached by an unctuous business type looking for his infamous dad. Werner Locksmith is head and chief designer of the Earth Development Community-sponsored manned mission to Jupiter and, unknown to the starry-eyed kid, had pegged Hachi’s father as the only man capable of piloting the innovative new vessel on the 5-year mission: one the lad would give anything to be on. Frustratingly, the elder explorer doesn’t want to go and has actually absconded from the Private/Public sector project and is currently a fugitive on the run through the vents and ducts of various moon bases…

The old rogue has had enough of space-faring: a fact he finds impossible to relate to his furious, outraged son when they accidentally meet. The old spacer intends to retire to Earth and make things right with the wife he’s abandoned so many times…

Meanwhile Locksmith has been called away. Something has gone disastrously wrong with the Jupiter ship “Von Braun”…

Above Luna as Hachi argues with his dad, another crisis crescendos as a devastating explosion rips through the station. As everybody evacuates, in the safe chill of the void, Hachi and the crew watch a phenomenal debris field emanate from the moon’s surface. The Von Braun’s experimental engines have failed and an entire lunar base has been evaporated…

Following the tragedy, ruthlessly cool Locksmith unswervingly starts to rebuild and the senior Hoshino breathes a huge sigh of relief. Hachi however is undeterred. He fanatically resumes his physical training, knowing that when the Von Braun is ready to fly, he will be ready to join it…

In ‘Phase 7: Tanabe’ stoic Yuri and harassed commander Fee acknowledge and address their comrade’s impossible dream, inducting a raw recruit to the Toybox crew and task Hachi with training her to be his (eventual) replacement. According to the ambitious spacer, however, mere girl Ai is a hopeless case, fruitlessly wasting valuable time he could be using to train and study for his application to the Jupiter Mission. Suffering mightily from having to babysit the useless girl, he only discovers her suppressed inner fire after a 50-year old space coffin is recovered from the dark expanse and provokes a bitter dispute about love, passion and man’s place in the cold, lonely universe…

Hachi’s dream comes a giant leap closer to reality in ‘Phase 8: A Black Flower Named Sakinohaka (Part 1)’ as he begins his official audition regimen for the Von Braun. He has become an emotional void with nothing but cold ambition driving him. He can’t even process the deadly constant threat posed by increased sabotage activity from the terrorist SDL: more determined than ever to keep space free of Man’s toxic presence.

Despite competing with more than 20,000 applicants, Hoshino is beginning to distinguish himself when a series of bomb blasts rock the project. Narrowly escaping death, Hachi is visited by his old friends who are horrified his obsessive and blasé attitude and apparent disregard for the pain and suffering of his rival candidates caught in the detonations. Is he truly so determined to get on the mission that all he sees are fewer competitors?

Only fellow applicant and new buddy Hakimu seems to understand that any sacrifice and personal misery are worth the prize…

Soon testing reaches its final stages and Locksmith lectures the remaining candidates from the bridge of the almost completed Von Braun. Only a handful of desperate spacers will make this final cut but the big day is again delayed after Hachi confronts the insidious saboteur… and fails to stop him.

The tale resumes six months later, and the last 23 candidates await final call as ‘Phase 9: A Black Flower named Sakinohaka (Part 2)’ sees Hachi’s still-fugitive father targeted by SDL assassins and heading back to the son who disowned him. His arrival coincides with Ai Tanabe’s visit as she delivers Hachi’s belongings from Toybox, and leads to an embarrassing confusion as to her amatory status, but before things can be clarified the terrorists attack again, seeking to kill the “only man who could pilot the Von Braun”…

Fleeing via the lowest levels of Oriental Basin Underground Tunnel City, the spacer trio are more dangerous to each other than their murderous pursuers. After another devastating blast Hachi again confronts the traitor who sabotaged his last attempt to join the Jupiter mission and almost commits an unpardonable act… until gentle Tanabe talks him off the emotionally-charged metaphorical ledge. ‘Phase 10: Lost Souls’ sees Hachi successful in final training for the mission that has become his life when a lunar accident strands him and new comrade Leonov on the unforgiving surface with only hours of oxygen and a 40-kilometre walk to the nearest relief station. It would have been impossible even if the copilot wasn’t wounded with a slowly-leaking suit. By the time rescue arrives Hachi has reached the stage where he fights his saviours, frantic to prove he needs no one’s help to achieve his goals.

‘Phase 11: – what on the page translates as “Spasibo”’ (either “thank you” or “God save you”) sees recuperating Hachi return to the family home in Japan, accompanied by his penitent father, and visited by Leonov’s grateful mother. Although he doesn’t understand a word she says, the old lady still makes far more sense than his constantly warring family and, after another drunken fight with dad, events come to tragic, galvanising crisis which at last crushes the walls enclosing his traumatised head and heart…

This first passionately philosophical, sentimentally suspenseful chronicle concludes here with a moment of eerie portent when ‘Phase 12: ‘A Cat in the Evening’ sees a simulation test with crewmate Sally turn into a creepy moment of premonition after Hachimaki finds himself stalked to the point of distraction by a dead and decaying alley cat that talks philosophy and tries to kill him…

To Be Concluded…

Each chapter opens with a full colour painted section before reverting to comfortingly appropriate monochrome line art, with superb developmental sketches, pin-ups, a selection of 4-panel sidebar humour strips (‘A Four Panel Comic’, ‘Namao-san (Presumably Male)’, ‘Eat? That Thing?’, ‘Drinking Hot Coffee through a Straw’) included throughout as breaks between story phases. Should you be lucky enough, the original turn-of-the-century English-language TokyoPop editions (which have bonus features not included in the omnibus edition) are still obtainable in many comics shops.

Suspenseful, funny, thrilling and utterly absorbing, these tales perfectly capture the allure of the Wild Black Yonder for newer generations, making this authentic, hard-edged, wittily evocative epic a treat no hard-headed dreamer with eyes set firmly above the clouds should miss…
© 2015 Makoto Yukimura. All rights reserved. Publication rights for this edition secured by Kodansha, Ltd, Tokyo.

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Showcase Presents the Trial of The Flash


By Cary Bates, Joey Cavalieri, Carmine Infantino, Frank McLaughlin, Dennis Jensen, Rodin Rodriguez, Gary Martin, with John Broome & Joe Giella & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3182-8 (TPB)

Barry Allen was the second costumed champion called The Flash, and his debut was the Big Bang which (finally) triggered the return of superheroes in the Silver Age of American comic books. He followed a series of abortive remnant revivals (Stuntman in 1954 and Marvel’s “Big Three”, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and Captain America from 1953 to 1955) and a few all-original attempts such as Captain Flash, The Avenger and Strongman during 1954-1955. Although none of those – or other less high-profile efforts – had restored or renewed the popularity of masked mystery-men, they presumably piqued some readers’ consciousness, even at conservative National/DC. The revived human rocket wasn’t quite the innovation he seemed: after all, alien crimebuster Martian Manhunter had already cracked open company floodgates with a low-key launch in Detective Comics #225, November 1955.

In terms of creative quality, originality and sheer style however, The Flash was an irresistible spark. After his landmark debut in Showcase #4 (cover-dated October 1956) the series – eventually – became a benchmark by which every successive launch or reboot across the industry was measured. Police Scientist – we’d call him a CSI today – Allen was transformed by a simultaneous lightning strike and chemical bath into a human comet of unparalleled velocity and ingenuity. Yet with characteristic indolence the new “Fastest Man Alive” took three further try-out issues and almost as many years to secure his own title. When he finally stood on his own wing-tipped feet in The Flash #105 (February-March 1959) though, he never looked back.

Comics back then were a faddy and slavishly trend-dominated business, and following a manic boom for superhero tales prompted by the Batman TV show, fickle global consciousness fixated on supernatural themes and merely mortal tales, triggering a huge revival of spooky films, shows, books and periodicals. With horror ascendent again, many superhero titles faced cancellation and even the most revered and popular were threatened. It was time to adapt or die: a process repeated every few years until the mid-1980s when DC’s powers-that-be decided to rationalise and downsize the sprawling multi-dimensional multiverse the Flash had innocently sparked into existence decades previously.

Barry had been through the wringer before: in 1979’s Flash #275 his beloved wife Iris was brutally murdered and thereafter the Scarlet Speedster became a darker, grittier, truly careworn hero. Slowly over four years the lonely bachelor recovered and even found love again but a harshly evolving comics industry, changing fashions and jaded fan tastes were about to end his long run at the top. The Vizier of Velocity was still a favoured, undisputed icon of the apparently unstoppable Superhero meme and a mighty pillar of the costumed establishment, but in times of precarious sales and with very little in the way of presence in other media like films, TV or merchandise, that just made him a bright red target for a company desperate to attract attention a larger readership.

It soon became an open secret that he was to be one of the major casualties of the reality-rending Crisis on Infinite Earths. The epic maxi-series was conceived as an attention-grabbing spectacle on every level and to truly succeed it needed a few sacrifices which would make the public really sit up and take notice. With such knowledge commonplace, long-time scripter Cary Bates went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the Crimson Comet and the comic title which inspired a super-heroic revolution went out in a totally absorbing blaze of glory. This momentously massive stand-alone monochrome collection gathers all pertinent chapters of an astonishingly extended, supremely gripping serial which charted the triumphs and tragedies of the Monarch of Motion’s last months (and I think they really meant it at the time) and savoured the final moments of the paramount hero and symbol of the Silver Age.

Contained herein and spanning July 1983 to October 1985 are Flash #323-327, 329-336 and 340-350, written by Bates and pencilled by originating artist Carmine Infantino. It opens sans preamble on the day Barry is supposed to marry his new sweetheart Fiona Webb. As the nervous groom dresses for the ceremony, however, an Oan Guardian of the Universe appears with appalling news. Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash has escaped from the timeless hell the vengeful Vizier of Velocity banished him to for murdering Iris…

Inked by Rodin Rodriguez, ‘Run Flash – Run for your Wife!’ sees a distraught hero pursuing and battling his ultimate enemy all over the world as the clock ticks down, culminating in #324’s ‘The Slayer and the Slain’ (Dennis Jensen inks) with the police issuing a missing persons alert for Barry Allen. Crushed and seemingly jilted, Fiona finally gives up on her man and is leaving the church just as Zoom dashes in with Flash hard on his winged heels. The maniac boasted he would repeat himself by slaughtering his archenemy’s second love, but with femto-seconds to spare Barry goes into overdrive and grabs his foe. When the dust settles the wedding guests see Flash trying to comfort the bride-to-be, but Police Captain Darryl Frye and Detective Frank Curtis are distracted by something the speedster has not noticed: Zoom’s lifeless corpse…

The media circus begins in #325 as ‘Dead Reckoning’ sees the guilt-racked speedster go into heroic overdrive all around the world, yet somehow never quite outrunning the Press or his own remorse. As friends and allies wonder where they stand, The Flash Rogues’ Gallery come together to steal Zoom’s cadaver. Captains Cold and Boomerang, Pied Piper, Weather Wizard and Trickster actually despised the Reverse-Flash and need to desecrate his corpse for the utter embarrassment he has brought upon their association: letting himself get killed by the scarlet Boy Scout. Their heartbroken foe meanwhile has stopped running, as Barry visits Fiona in hospital. The shock of Barry’s abandonment has traumatised and perhaps even deranged her, but worse is in store. After leaving her room in his Flash persona, the hero is reluctantly arrested by Captain Frye on a charge of manslaughter…

Inked by Gary Martin, ‘Shame in Scarlet’ opens on the arrest and arraignment. The madhouse of raving pressmen and downhearted cops is just what the recently captured Weather Wizard needs to mask a bold getaway scheme and – ever dutiful – Flash eludes custody long enough to stop the rogue before surrendering himself again. Meanwhile, Fiona’s doctors refuse to believe the still-missing Barry Allen came to see her and diagnose a delusional breakdown, whilst out on the streets Frank Curtis is further distracted by teenaged Angelo Torres; a kid barely surviving in a tough gang-controlled area of Central City.

Released on his own recognizance, Flash sneaks into his own apartment where realisation of his destroyed life finally sinks in. Losing control, he trashes the place in an explosive outburst but by the time his terrified neighbours break in he has gone and the suspicion that someone has targeted the missing Police Scientist seems confirmed. Roaming the streets, the fallen hero reacts typically to Angelo fleeing from a mugging, but is soon appalled to realise he has tackled the wrong guy. Torres was chasing the real thief…

Still reeling at how far he has fallen (racial profiling!), the shellshocked speedster is barely aware he is bleeding badly (from self-inflicted wounds incurred when destroying his home), and allows a cop to take him to hospital. The good deed does not go unpunished. When he arrives, Fiona is there and suddenly flares into a state of total hysteria…

Horror piles on in ‘Burnout’ (#327, inked by Jensen) as Flash reconciles with Angelo, unaware the kid has been targeted by the malign super-gorilla Grodd as part of a convoluted vengeance scheme. Flash is also too preoccupied by his next personal crisis as the Justice League of America holds a special session to judge his actions and conduct. A nail-bitingly close vote by his crestfallen best friends will determine whether or not he can remain a member of the august group…

Flash #328 was a partial reprint exploring the Flash/Professor Zoom vendetta and is not included here, so the saga resumes with ‘What is the Sinister Secret of Simian and Son?’ (#329, with new regular inker Frank McLaughlin climbing aboard). As Grodd uses Angelo and other kids to perpetrate bold raids, in front of the maddened media’s cameras unscrupulous, publicity-hungry celebrity criminal defense attorney Nicholas D. Redik attempts to insert himself into the “Case of the Century”, claiming to be Flash’s lawyer and only chance of acquittal…

The oblivious, deeply troubled human thunderbolt has other ideas. He has already contacted “Barry’s” old friend Peter Farley to act on his behalf, blithely unaware that back home Grodd has taken over Angelo, and Fiona has succumbed to total mental breakdown…

The final confrontation with the ultra-ape begins in ‘Beware the Land of Grodd!’ (scripted by Joey Cavalieri over Bates’ plot) as Redik manipulates the media to force Flash to switch lawyers whilst Captain Frye pushes the ongoing search for still “missing” Barry to even greater heights. With all these distractions the Vizier of Velocity is easily ambushed by Grodd before Angelo, at the moment of truth in #331’s ‘Dead Heat!’, has a change of heart and mind. By a supreme effort of will the remorseful lad breaks the super-ape’s conditioning, allowing the speedster to triumph.

Returning the renegade to futuristic Gorilla City, Flash leaves the mental monster in the custody of his old comrade Solovar, returning to America just in time to hear Farley being murdered during a phone conference. Bates rejoins Infantino & McLaughlin as ‘Defend the Flash… and Die?‘ sees the Scarlet Speedster hurtle across the country to save his lawyer from a colossal explosion, although even he is not fast enough to prevent the victim incurring massive injuries. As speculation runs riot in the media that someone is targeting Flash’s defenders, old enemy Rainbow Raider takes advantage of the chaos to instigate a string of robberies, but even at his lowest ebb our hero is too much for the multicoloured malefactor…

Redik is now publicly offering to take the case for free, but Farley’s absentee business partner has already taken up her ailing associate’s celebrity caseload…

In #333, as inexplicably hostile attorney Cecile Horton confers with her inherited client, ‘Down with the Flash!’ reveals how sections of Central City have seemingly turned on their formerly adored champion. Fiona too is still drawing trouble, as a petty thug and his crazy brother break into the asylum treating her, looking for a little one-stop emergency therapy. Sadly for them, the Monarch of Motion is still keeping an eye on his tragic fiancée…

Redik then attempts to bribe and/or bully Horton off the case, but despite clearly despising her crimson client, Cecile is determined to honour Peter’s wishes and save the speedster, even as the mastermind stirring up anti-Flash sentiment is revealed in ‘Flash-Freak-Out!’ Just as the pre-trial manoeuvrings begin, the formerly supportive Mayor suddenly becomes the disgraced hero’s biggest detractor and Pied Piper’s mind-altering influence makes the hero apparently go berserk on live TV in ‘How to Trash a Flash!’, leaving even his most devoted fans wondering if their beloved champion has in fact gone crazy…

…And whilst Flash is saving the Mayor, at her secluded retreat Horton is caught in an explosive blast like the one that took out her partner…

‘Murder on the Rocks’ (#336) finds Flash arriving too late for once, but the ecstatic speedster is astounded to discover his lawyer has saved herself through quick thinking – although another woman has been killed. A tabloid reporter had been bugging the supposed “safe house” and inadvertently fallen foul of killers-for-hire. The trail of death leads forensically-trained Flash inexorably to a man whose arrogant determination to be a star in the tragedy costs him everything…

Annoyingly, the next three chapters are absent here. They would have shown how Flash finished the Piper and incurred the wrath of the Rogues who subsequently turned a hulking simpleton into programmed super killer Big Sir and unleashing him on the Scarlet Speedster. We rejoin the saga with Flash #340 as ‘Reach Out and Waste Someone!’ has the hurtling hero turn the tables on Cold, Boomerang, Weather Wizard, Trickster and Mirror Master by befriending Big Sir. Imminent danger averted, Flash surrenders himself to the courts…

After months, #341 sees proceedings finally open in ‘Trial and Tribulation!’, only for the weary defendant to discover that go-getting District Attorney Anton Slater has dropped the charges. The wily attention-seeker has abandoned his manslaughter case in favour of a charge of Second Degree Murder. With the still at-large Rogues rampaging through Central City, the opening arguments quickly and convincingly paint the stunned Flash as a cunning killer. Whilst he reels in open court, Captain Cold and Co again take control of now-docile Big Sir. When the shattered speedster leaves after his first bruising day, the Brobdingnagian brute ambushes him, wrecking his face with a massive mace…

Dazed, reeling and severely maimed, Flash flees in pure panic, leaving Sir to assault the gathered media in ‘Smash-Up!’ Barely thinking, the wounded warrior heads for Gorilla City where the super simians’ miraculous medical technology saves his life. Recovered and ready to return, Flash is certain he has made the right decision by asking Solovar to use that science to enact a certain alteration for him. On his return the Vizier of Velocity again deprograms Big Sir and the odd couple make sure the Rogues can’t hurt anyone else…

Flash #343 kicks the drama into even higher gear in ‘Revenge and Revelations!’ as the secret of why Cecile hates her crimson-clad client is exposed whilst merciless mobster monster Goldface attacks, even as – in the far future – another Flash foe escapes an unbeatable prison and heads for our present, intent on adding to the doomed hero’s historic woes. ‘Betrayal!’ in #344 was a partial reprint (Bates & John Broome, Infantino, McLaughlin & Joe Giella) which combines the first appearance and an early exploit of Kid Flash with that devoted protégé’s reluctant but devastating expert testimony under oath on the witness stand. The heartbroken lad’s damaging evidence is then compounded when Cecile makes an explosive mistake which exposes ‘The Secret Face of the Flash!’ to the courtroom and the world…

Confusion reigns in #346 as the shocking revelations are upstaged in ‘Dead Man’s Bluff!’ by reports the “victim” might not be dead. A merciless yellow-&-red blur has been seen all over Central City, attacking civilians and destroying police records. Reverse-Flash has escaped certain death many times before but as he mercilessly attacks the other Rogues – with even the Jurors narrowly escaping certain doom – it is clear that something is not right.

The trial concludes in #347’s ‘Back from the Dead!’ but even with the thoroughly thrashed Rogues and Police Captain Fry attesting the victim is still alive, more than one malign presence in the courtroom is affecting the jurors’ minds and ‘The Final Verdict!’ comes back “guilty”. However the story is not over and #349 unleashes a cascade of staggering revelations revealing clandestine agents acting both for and against the harried Human Hurricane in ‘…And the Truth Shall Set him Free!’ before the extended extravaganza of #350 declares ‘Flash Flees’ and thereafter shows the Scarlet Speedster defeating his ultimate nemesis, clearing his name and even living happily ever after… until that predestined final moment in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Staggering in scope, gripping in execution and astoundingly suspenseful, these last days of a legend make for stunning reading: a perfect example of the kind of plot-driven Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction we just don’t see enough of these days. If you feel a need for a traditionally thrilling kind of speed reading, this is a chronicle you must not miss and one DC should release in full colour and digital editions ASAP.
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