Category: Drama

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Leonard & Larry 4: How Real Men Do It


By Tim Barela (Palliard Press)
ISBN: 978-1884568060 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content employed for comedic and dramatic effect.

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-aware-if-not-actually-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 most organised religions and minor theological hate-groups 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 pious 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 even 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 big success, included in many successive issues and in 1992 became the solo star of Gay Comix Special #1.

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 rival publication Frontiers. The lovely 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. Final compendium How Real Men Do It was released by Palliard Press in 2003, and follows the convoluted, constantly crossing paths of the vast cast until the strip’s painfully abrupt demise…

As previously stated, as well as featuring a multi-generational cast, Leonard & Larry was a strip that progressed in real time, with characters all aging and developing accordingly. The episodes were never 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, instalments and extended sequences cover various couples’ home and work lives, perpetual parties, physical deterioration, social gaffes, rows, family revelations, holidays and even events like earthquakes and ever imminent anti-gay legislation and even fanciful prognostications.

Following an Introduction from Ron Jackson Suresha and the standard recaps, the highly strung hilarity continues much as it always has…

Leonard Goldman and Larry Evans live together in relatively calm, happily and expressively snide happiness, despite vast family circles and friend groups all at odds with each other. As well as an overwhelming panoply of real life travails and traumas, their existences are complicated by redoubling dreams, weird events and increasingly odd fantasy and dream manifestations, such the ghosts of composers Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his bitter frenemy Johannes Brahms who plague many cast members: acting always as the vanguard of even odder occurrences to come…

The interwoven family tapestry is primarily a comedy of manners, played out against social prejudices and changing attitudes to gay life, but also delivers shocking moments of drama and tension and heartwarming sentiment set in and around West Hollywood. The extensive L&L clan comprise Goldman’s formidable, eternally unaccepting mother Esther – who still ambushes him with blind dates and nice Jewish girls – and Mr. Evans’ ex-wife Sharon: mother of Richard and David (the sons of their 18-year marriage).

Whilst still in school Richard knocked up and wed classmate Debbie, making the scrappy loco parentals and Leonard unwilling grandparents years (decades even!) before they were ready. By this stage the oldsters equally adore baby Lauren and little brother Michael…

Maternal grandparents Phil and Barbra Dunbarton are ultra conservative and stridently Christian, spending much time fretting over all those unsaved souls… and their own social standing. They’re particularly concerned over role models and whatever horrors the grandkids are exposed to whenever the gay guys babysit. Their appearances are always some of funniest and most satisfying as the deviant clan expands exponentially, as in this edition when some of Phil’s own youthful indiscretions are exposed, thanks to one of Larry’s cherished and long hoarded 1970’s gay porn magazines that he refused to throw away…

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 and passing trade who all carry secrets of their own.

David also adds to grandparental burden after he and his bestie Collin help their lesbian roommate Nat get pregnant with the net result that our freaked out oldsters become grandfathers yet again…

The store is also the meeting point for many other couples in Leonard & Larry’s eccentric orbit. Close friend and flamboyant former aerospace engineer Frank Freeman lives with acclaimed concert pianist Bob Mendez and is saddled with a compulsive yen for uniforms. It’s previously come in handy whenever Bob’s sex-crazed celebrity stalker Fiona Birkenstock breaks jail to re-kidnap him, but almost every acquaintance brings fresh wonders to the mix.

L&L’s friends and clients all enjoy expanded roles this time, offering other perspectives on LA life, as the cast broadens ever wider, to include a wave of faded starlets, B-movie actors, workmen, contractors and ever more aggressive anti-gay activists…

Larry’s other store 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. That extremely long-running plot thread comes to a most satisfactory conclusion here after Merle comes out in the most spectacular stunt TV sitcoms have ever seen, but also brings fresh perils when Merle’s scheming PA Vicky decides to add poor timid Jim to the list of gay men she’s attempted to cure with her bodily allure and ruthless manipulations…

Jim, by the way, was the original and central focus of the overly-critical dead composers’ puckish visits, but now has to share them with so many others. He’s not sorry about that…

As the demanding ghost composers play pranks on more of the minor cast members, their wild games and snarky comments are always balanced by the slow panic of ever-kvetching aging-averse Larry who is painfully refusing to adapt to being a doting grandad/perennial babysitter while observing his failing facilities. Even the local Gym for “his people” don’t want him: apparently hairy men are so last decade. Larry does, however, find some new lease on life when Leonard has the kitchen redone and he meets the burly contractors toiling hard and stripped down to their skivvies in the fierce Melrose summer heat…

Ex-wife Sharon remains a prime source of hilarious woe having been recently “knocked up” at one of Leonard & Larry’s frequent dinner parties thanks to fine wine and their only straight acquaintance (classical violinist Gene Slatkin). Their brief encounter originally sparked incomprehensible jealousy and primeval macho ownership behaviour in Larry, but now his nights attending her geriatric pregnancy have made him an unpaid babysitter for yet another family addition…

As the Millennium approaches, Larry gets extremely house proud and increasingly voyeuristic, but all hopes for “easy eyefuls” and schemes to arrange for good-looking, similarly minded pretty men to move in next door are disasters, leading to shame, humiliation, Leonard’s sustained mockery, minor injury and the world’s worst case of manifest “be careful what you wish for”…

After losing his safe comfy show, Texan star Merle joins the cast of a Sesame Street knock-off where he learns puppets, puppeteers and kids’ entertainers are a breed unto themselves…

With younger players taking centre stage, the author takes every opportunity to spike not just anti-gay bigots but take on good old-fashioned racism and dated ideas too, such as granddaughter Lauren’s inappropriate underwear moment or via gleefully potent pokes at American fundamentalism, as when the “Christian Coalition” relentlessly pursue anti-gay marriage legislation Proposition 22 and seeks to “turn” Larry’s Lauren into a propaganda spouting angel of good…

The series ended on an accidental cliffhanger as Good God-fearing Christians bought the building complex David lived in and started evicting tenants. Just the ones with same-sex roommates of course…

That was where it all ended back then, but see below for an update…

Leonard & Larry was a traditional 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 semblance of dignity. Populated by adorable, appetisingly fully fleshed out characters, the strip was always about finding and then being yourself. It remains an irresistible slice of gentle whimsy to nourish the spirit and beguile the jaded palate. 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?
How Real Men Do It © 2002, 2004 Palliard Press. All artwork and strips © 2002-2004 Tim Barela. All rights reserved Introduction © 2003 Ron Jackson Suresha.


After decades of waiting, the entire ensemble epic was made available again courtesy of Rattling Good Yarns Press. Hefty hardback uber-compilation Finally! The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection (ISBN: 978-1-955826-05-1) was released in 2021, reprinting the entire saga – including cartoon afterword ‘…Meanwhile Twenty Years Later’ to catch readers up on what happened when the strip shut down. It’s a little smaller in page dimensions (216 x 280mm) and far harder to lift, but it’s Out There if you want it…

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War Picture Library: The Iron Fist


By Hugo Pratt, Val Holding, W. Howard Baker, A. Carney Allen & various (Rebellion Studios/Treasury of British Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-83786-200-9 (HB/Digital Edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

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

Pratt was a consummate storyteller with a unique voice and a stark expressionistic graphic style that should not work, but so wonderfully does: combining pared-down, relentlessly modernistic narrative style with memorable characters, always complex whilst bordering on the archetypical. After working in Argentinean and – from 1959 – English comics like UK top gun Battler Briton, and on combat stories for extremely popular digest novels in assorted series such as War Picture Library, Battle Picture Library, War at Sea Picture Library and more – Pratt settled in Italy, and later France. 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 feature Capitan Cormorand, detective feature Lucky Star O’Hara, and moody South Seas saga Una Ballata del Mare Salato (A Ballad of the Salty Sea). When that folded in 1970, Pratt remodelled one of Una Ballata’s characters for French weekly Pif Gadget before eventually settling in with the new guy at 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 Pratt found rich thematic pickings in the ubiquitous mini-books like Super Picture Library, Air Ace Picture Library, Action Picture Library and Thriller Picture Library: half-sized, 64-page monochrome booklets with glossy soft paper covers containing lengthy complete stories of 1-3 panels per page. These were regularly recycled and reformatted, but the stories gathered here – from War Picture Library #25 (September 1959), #62 (August 1960) & #133 (February 1962) – have only appeared once… until now…

Resurrected and repackaged by Rebellion Studios for their Treasury of British Comics imprint, eponymous opener The Iron Fist is a blistering tale of tank combat scripted by Val Holding, who served in the Parachute Regiment before becoming a War Picture Library stalwart. He also wrote air ace Paddy Payne and became Fleetway’s Managing Editor: Juvenile Publications in 1961.

Opening in October 1942 at the Battle of El Alamein, The Iron Fist traces the service of Corporal Johnny Gray, driver Tug Wilson and radio operator Ken Byrne: “tank jockeys” who, after losing their Sherman tank in opening chapter ‘Out of Action’, are ordered to ferry a prototype of the next generation A.F.V. (Armoured Fighting Vehicle) across the desert at the height of the battle.

Commanded by taciturn, draconian Lieutenant Carson, the lads have no idea that they’re also field testing the colossal war chariot in second chapter, ‘Enter Goliath’…

The trek is a shocking ‘Fight for Survival’, with bloody encounters with German troops and fighter planes supplemented by an infinite variety of natural hazards from heat and sheer exhaustion to dry quicksand!

Gradually warming to their bleakly uncommunicative but strategically superior officer, the team eventually discover Carson’s personal stake in the colossal XT-Eight their lives depend upon and once the mission is successfully completed are all despatched to different postings…

All four are reunited in ‘Beach of Death’ as their combined experiences make them the best qualified instructors of a new tank squadron preparing for D-day, and once that balloon goes up, nothing as trivial as rank can stop them from joining the action on the ground, ultimately culminating in a deadly duel with German cavalry counterpart Panzer Tanks in final chapter ‘Battle of Giants’…

Scripted by W. Howard Baker, the blistering motorised military action is supported here by ‘Stronghold’ from WPL #62 (August 1960): a taut tale of personal enmity and potential murder. Author and journalist Arthur Atwill William “Bill” Baker was born in Cork on October 3rd 1925, not long after the partition and foundation of the nation of Ireland. Despite that, he fought for Great Britain in WWII and after becoming a globetrotting freelance foreign correspondent in the immediate aftermath, moved to and settled in London. He became an editor for Panther books, and wrote many Sexton Blake novels (where he created his secretary Paula Dane) before becoming the franchise editor in 1955. As the Controlling Group Editor at Fleetway, he launched the Air Ace Picture Library line whilst continuing to write content and full stories for War Picture Library. When Fleetway axed Sexton Blake in 1963 Baker acquired all rights and continued the series as an independent publisher under his Howard Baker Books imprint until 1969. Whilst writing genre novels under a bunch of pen names he also embarked on the massive task of reprinting the entire run of classic boys story-paper The Magnet (home of Billy Bunter) but died just short of his epic goal in 1991, having published 1520 of the 1683 issues in hardback collections.

Delivered in pithy, tension-packed chapters ‘First Action’, ‘No-Man’s Land’, ‘Path of Peril’ and ‘The Lucky Coin’, Stronghold is set during the siege of Cassino in 1944, where British Royal Engineers Lance Corporal Tug Wilson (no relation) and sapper Jack Barker fall foul of brutal spiteful Sergeant Burke after a mine sweeping mission goes tragically wrong. As a result, the grudge-bearing thug makes their life hell over succeeding months of bitter fighting even as he terrorises and causes the deaths of his own unit. Increasingly unstable, Burke even “removes” Private Ron Williams after becoming convinced the cheery chap’s good luck piece has made him immune to enemy fire…

The crisis point comes when Burke accidentally leads his remaining troops behind the German lines just as the dramatic end of the siege begins…

Closing accounts here is ‘The Big Arena’ from War Picture Library #133 (February 1962) scripted by A. Carney Allen with Pratt delivering some of his most boldly experimental visuals. Something of an enigma to us today, A. Carney Allen wrote many stories for War Picture Library and Battle Picture Library, and performed similar duties for DC Thomson’s rival line Commando Picture Library – and that’s about all I can tell you about him although as the ripping yarn here concerns Anzac soldiers and feels a little more rowdy that the company’s usual fare, it isn’t hard to speculate that he might have originally come from Oz or New Zealand…

Back in Afrika with Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the crosshairs, The Big Arena features the Second/Ninth Battalion of the Empire, as represented by unruly scamps and veteran killers Lofty Lucas and Chub Doolan. After ‘Over the Hill’ depicts a particularly spectacular clash against Rommel’s tanks and ground troops, the triumphant “Diggers-from-Down-Under” are fully geared up for the leave they’ve been promised, and when again denied it – for the very best of reasons – by platoon commander Lieutenant Brodie, Lucas & Doolan go Absent With Out Leave, determined to find a bar in distant Sidi Barrani and get drunk. Of course the other lads appreciate their feelings and instantly aid and abet their malfeasance…

Things immediately go wrong as ‘Fateful Encounter’ finds the boys bar fighting with other Anzac and Empire soldiers with even military police turning a blind eye until new spit & polish replacement Provost Sergeant Drummond has them arrested and personally drives them to their fate before a military court. That’s when a German counterattack catches them in the open and triggers a ‘Storm in the Desert’. Forced into a broad detour and another campaign-crushing pitched battle, the Diggers unite in a common purpose and find gallantry under fire carries its own rewards…

Packed with powerful, exhilarating action and adventure and exactly what you’d expect from a kids’ comic crafted to sell in the heyday of UK war films commemorating the conflict their parents lived through, this is another bombastic artistic triumph and offers at the end the original eye-catching painted covers: two by Giorgio De Gaspari (War Picture Library #25: September 1959 – ‘The Iron Fist’ & WPL #62: August 1960 –‘Stronghold’) plus one from Biffignandi (War Picture Library #133: February 1962,‘The Big Arena’).

Potent, powerful, genre-blending and irresistibly cathartic, these are brilliant examples of the British Comics experience. If you are a connoisseur of graphic thrills and dramatic tension – utterly unmissable.
© 1959, 1960, 1962, 2021 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954


By Alex Toth, Mike Peppe & various, edited by Greg Sadowski (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-408-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Alex Toth was a master of graphic communication who shaped two different art-forms and is largely unknown in both of them. He died on this day in 2006.

Born in New York in 1928, the son of Hungarian immigrants with a dynamic interest in the arts, Toth was something of a prodigy. After enrolling in the High School of Industrial Arts he doggedly went about improving his skills as a cartoonist. His earliest dreams were of a strip like Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, but his uncompromising devotion to the highest standards soon soured him on newspaper strip work when he discovered how hidebound and innovation-resistant the family-values based industry had become whilst he was growing up.

Aged 15 he sold his first funnybook works to Heroic Comics and, after graduating in 1947, worked for All American/National Periodical Publications who would amalgamate and evolve into DC Comics. He pursued his craft on Dr. Mid-Nite, All Star Comics, The Atom, Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder, Sierra Smith, Johnny Peril, Danger Trail and a host of other features and on the way dabbled with newspaper strips (see Casey Ruggles: the Hard Times of Pancho and Pecos)… and found that nothing had changed…

Ceaselessly seeking to improve his own work, he never had time for fools or formula-hungry editors who wouldn’t take artistic risks. In 1952 Toth quit DC to work for Thrilling Pulps publisher Ned Pines who was retooling his prolific Better/Nedor/Pines nested comics companies (Thrilling Comics, Fighting Yank, Doc Strange, Black Terror and dozens more) into Standard Comics: a comics house targeting older readers looking for sophisticated, genre-based titles.

Beside fellow graphic masters Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, Art Saaf, John Celardo, George Tuska, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito and particularly favourite inker Mike Peppe, Toth set the bar high for a new kind of story-telling: wry, restrained and thoroughly mature. This quiet revolution took place in a wave of short-lived titles dedicated to War, Crime, Horror, Science Fiction and especially Romance…

After Simon &Kirby invented love comics, Standard – through artists like Cardy and Toth and writers like the amazing and unsung Kim Aamodt – polished and honed the ubiquitous fare of the nascent comics category, delivering clever, witty, evocative and yet tasteful melodramas: heart-tuggers both men and women could enjoy.

Before going into the military, where he still found time to create a strip (Jon Fury for the US army’s Tokyo Quartermaster newspaper The Depot’s Diary), Toth illustrated 60 glorious tales for Standard; as well as a few rare pieces for EC and others. On his return – to a very different industry on the defensive against public antagonism, and one he didn’t much like – Toth split his time between Western/Dell/Gold Key (Zorro and many movie/TV adaptations) and National/DC (assorted short pieces, Hot Wheels and Eclipso): illustrating scripts he increasingly found uninspired, moribund and creatively cowardly. Soon, after drawing X-Men #12 (cover-dated May 1965) over Jack Kirby’s layouts, Toth moved primarily into TV animation. At Hanna-Barbera from 1964 on he designed and storyboarded for shows such as Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Herculoids, Birdman, Shazzan!, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Sealab 2020, Fantastic Four and Super Friends amongst many others.

He returned sporadically to comics, setting the style and tone for DC’s late 1960’s horror line in House of Mystery, House of Secrets and especially The Witching Hour, as well as illustrating more adult fare for Warren’s Creepy, Eerie and The Rook. In the early 1980s Toth redesigned The Fox for Red Circle/Archie, produced stunning one-offs for Archie Goodwin’s Batman and war comics (whenever they offered him a “good script”) and contributed to landmark or anniversary projects like Batman: Black and White.

His later, personal works included Torpedo (look for a fully updated review of the series here soon!) and the magnificently audacious Bravo for Adventure!

Alex Toth died of a heart attack at his drawing board on May 27th 2006.

After reprinting an extensive informative and almost exhaustive interview with the artist from Graphic Story Magazine – conducted by Vincent Davis, Richard Kyle and Bill Spicer in 1968 – this fabulous full colour chronicle then reprints every scrap of Toth’s superb Standard fare beginning with impressive melodrama in ‘My Stolen Kisses’ from Best Romance #5 (February 1952), after which light-hearted combat star Joe Yank nearly lost everything to ‘Black Market Mary’ in the debut issue of his own title (#5 March 1952).

Perhaps a word of explanation is warranted here: due to truly Byzantine commercial and promotional considerations, all Standard Comics premiered with issue #5, although the incredibly successful Romance comics were carried over from their earlier Better Comics incarnations such as New Romances #10 (March 1952) for which Toth illustrated the touching ‘Be Mine Alone’ and the parable of empty jealousy ‘My Empty Promise’ from #11.

The hilarious ‘Bacon and Bullets’ offered a different kind of love in Joe Yank #6 (May) – a very pretty pig named Clementine – after which witty 3-pager ‘Appointment with Love’ (Today’s Romance #6 May) provides a charming palate cleanser before the hard-bitten ‘Terror of the Tank Men’ from Battlefront #5 (June 1952) offers a more traditional view of the then-raging Korean War.

‘Shattered Dream!’ (My Real Love #5 June) is an ordinary romance well told whilst ‘The Blood Money of Galloping Chad Burgess’ (The Unseen #5 June 1952) reveals the sheer quality and maturity of Standard’s horror stories, with ‘The Shoremouth Horror’ (Out of the Shadows #5) from that same month proving Toth to be an absolute master of terror and genius at the pacing and staging needed to scare the pants off you in pictorial form…

‘Show Them How to Die’ (This is War #5 July) is a superbly gung-ho combat classic whilst the eerie ‘Murder Mansion’ and ‘The Phantom Hounds of Castle Eyne’ – both from the August cover-dated Adventures into Darkness #5 – again demonstrate the artist’s uncanny flair for building suspense. The single pager ‘Peg Powler’ (The Unseen #6 September) is reprinted beside the original artwork – which makes me wish the entire collection was available in black & white – after which the highly experimental ‘Five State Police Alarm’ (Crime Files #5) displays the artist’s amazing facility with duo-tone and craft-tint techniques before salutary saga ‘I Married in Haste’ (Intimate Love #19, September) offers a remarkably modern view of relationships.

Science Fiction was the metier of Fantastic Worlds #5 which provided both contemporary ‘Triumph over Terror’ and futuristic fable ‘The Invaders’ to finish off Toth’s September commissions after which ‘Routine Patrol’ and ‘Too Many Cooks’ offer two-fisted thrills from This is War #6 (October). ‘The Phantom Ship’ is a much reprinted classic chiller from Out of the Shadows #6, with October also releasing the extremely unsettling ‘Alice in Terrorland’ from Lost Worlds #5.

Toth only produced four covers for Standard, and the first two, Joe Yank #8 and Fantastic Worlds #6, precede ‘The Boy Who Saved the World’ from the latter (November 1952) after which service rivalry informed ‘The Egg-Beater’ from Jet Fighters #5. The cover of Lost Worlds #6 (December) perfectly introduces the featured ‘Outlaws of Space’, after which the single-page ‘Smart Talk’ (New Romance #14) perfectly closes the first year and sets up 1953 to open strongly with ‘Blinded by Love’ from Popular Romance #22 January) in which the classic love triangle has never looked better…

This was clearly Toth’s ideal year as ‘The Crushed Gardenia’ from Who is Next? #5 shows his incredible skills to their utmost in one of the best crime stories of all time. ‘Undecided Heart’ (Intimate Love #21 February) is a delightful comedy of errors whilst both ‘The House That Jackdaw Built’ and ‘The Twisted Hands’ from Adventures into Darkness #8 perfectly reveal the artist’s uncanny facility for building tension and anxiety. The cover to Joe Yank #10 is followed by splendid aviation yarn ‘Seeley’s Saucer’ from March’s Jet Fighters #7, whilst the clever and racy ‘Free My Heart’ (Popular Romance #23, April) adds new depth to the term “sophisticated” and ‘The Hands of Don José’ (Adventures into Darkness #9) is just plain nasty in the manner horror fans adore. ‘No Retreat’ (This is War #9 May) offers more patriotic combat, but ‘I Want Him Back’ (Intimate Love #22) depicts a far softer, more personal duel whilst ‘Geronimo Joe’ (Exciting War #8 May) proves that in combat there’s no room for rivalry…

Toth was rapidly reaching the acme of his design genius as ‘Man of My Heart’ (New Romances #16 June), ‘I Fooled My Heart’ (Popular Romance #24 July – and reprinted in full as original art in the notes section) and both ‘Stars in my Eyes’ and ‘Uncertain Heart’ from New Romances #17 (August) saw him develop a visual vocabulary to cleanly impart plot and characterisation simultaneously. He often stated he preferred these mature, well-written romance stories for the room they gave him to experiment and expand his craft, and these later efforts prove him right: especially in the moving ‘Heart Divided’ (Thrilling Romances #22) and compelling ‘I Need You’ (September’s Popular Romances #25).

‘The Corpse That Lived’ (Out of the Shadows #10) is a historically based tale of grave-robbing, whilst deeply moving ‘Chance for Happiness’ (Thrilling Romances #23 October) is as powerful today as it ever was. ‘My Dream is You!’ (New Romances #18) turned fresh eyes on the old dilemma of career vs husband and far darker love is depicted in ‘Grip on Life’ (The Unseen #12 November), before true love actually triumphs in ‘Guilty Heart’ (Popular Romance #26). Another ‘Smart Talk’ advice page ends 1953 (New Romances #19) and neatly precedes an edgy affair in ‘Ring on Her Finger’ (Thrilling Romances #24 January 1954), after which ‘Frankly Speaking’ from the same issue leads to terrifying period horror in ‘The Mask of Graffenwehr’ (Out of the Shadows #11).

February saw a fine crop of Toth tales, beginning with charming medical drama ‘Heartbreak Moon’ (Popular Romance #27), spooky mining mystery ‘The Hole of Hell’ (The Unseen #13), 1-page amorous advisory ‘Long on Love’ (Popular Romance #27), lesson in obsession ‘Lonesome for Kisses’ and two more advice pages – ‘If You’re New in Town’ and ‘Those Drug Store Romeos’ – from Intimate Love #26. These last stories were eked out in the months after Toth had left, having been drafted and posted to Japan. However, even though he had (presumably) rushed them out whilst preparing for the biggest change in his young life, there was no loss but a further jump in artistic quality.

One final relationship ‘Smart Talk’ page (New Romances #20 March 1954) precedes a brace of classic mystery masterpieces from Out of the Shadows #12: ‘The Man Who Was Always on Time’ (also reproduced in original art form in the copious ‘Notes’ section at the back of this monumental book) before the graphic wonderment regrettably concludes with the cynically spooky ‘Images of Sand’ – a sinister cautionary tale of tomb-robbing…

After all that, the last 28 pages of this compendium comprise a thorough and informative section of story annotations, illustrations and a wealth of original art reproductions to top off this sublime collection in ideal style.

Alex Toth was a tale-teller and a master of erudite refinement, his avowed mission to pare away every unnecessary line and element in life and in work. His dream was to make perfect graphic stories. He was eternally searching for how to best tell a story, to the exclusion of all else. This long-ignored but still utterly compelling collection shows how talent, imagination and dedication to that ideal can elevate even the most genre-bound vignette into a paragon of form and a mere comic into high art. Get this book, absorb it all and learn through wonder and delight.
All stories in this book are in the public domain but the specific restored images and design are © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. Notes are © 2011 Greg Sadowski and the Graphic Story Magazine interview is © 2011 Bill Spicer. All rights reserved.

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Star Trek Classics volume 5: Who Killed Captain Kirk?


By Peter David, Tom Sutton, Gordon Purcell, Ricardo Villagran & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-831-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

Word came today that we’ve lost another comics giant. Peter Allen David (23rd September 1956 – 24th May 2025) wrote thousands of comics stories, including continuity-changing runs on Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk (which he wrote for 12 years), Aquaman, Supergirl, Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, Scarlet Spider, The Phantom, Young Justice, Dreadstar, X-Factor and Wolverine, as well as notable runs on countless more.

In an industry heavily reliant on adapting media properties, Peter David was the go-to guy for dozens of tie-in titles including all Star Trek books at various companies, Babylon 5, manga import Negima, Halo: Helljumper, Tron and younger reader titles like Powerpuff Girls and Little Mermaid. His television credits include Babylon 5, and animated series like Ben 10 and Young Justice, and Space Cases which he co-created with Bill Mumy.

In comics he created or co-created Spiderman 2099, Fallen Angel, Sachs and Violens, Soulsearchers and Co., SpyBoy, The Atlantis Chronicles and more.

A tireless scribe and popular culture maven, his nigh 100 books include original creations, genre and franchise spin-off  novels for all Star Trek franchises, Babylon 5, Alien Nation, Battlestar Galactica, Swamp Thing, Transformers, novelisations and adaptations, movie, biographies commentary and nonfiction.

Outspoken, ferociously liberal, minority-advocating and never, never boring, he was a master of spit-take comedy moments and crushing emotional body blows in his work, and we are all poorer for his going.

A fuller appreciation and a bunch of stuff I should have got around to reviewing long ago will follows in the weeks to come. Here, however, is a re-review of one of his very best. Go buy this, or indeed anything with his name on it. You won’t be disappointed.

The stellar Star Trek brand and franchise probably hasn’t reached any new worlds yet, but it certainly has permeated every aspect of civilisation here on Earth. You can find daily live-action or animated TV appearances constantly screening somewhere on the planet as well as toys, games, conventions, merchandise, various comics iterations generated in a host of nations and languages and a reboot of the movie division proceeding even as I type this.

Many comics companies have published sequential narrative adventures based on the exploits of Gene Roddenberry’s legendary brainchild, and the splendid 1980s run produced under the DC banner were undoubtedly some of the very finest, especially when scripted by novelist, journalist, screenwriter and all-around comics genius Peter David.

Never flashy or sensational, the series embraced the same storytelling values as the shows, movies and original prose adventures; being simultaneously strongly character- & plot-driven – and starring some of the most well-known (and well-quoted) characters in the world.

An especially fine example is this superior epic, blending spectacular drama, subtle but rational dramatic interplay and good old fashioned thrills, with the added bonus of much madcap whimsy thanks to David’s impassioned fan-pandering efforts…

The swashbuckling space-opera (originally printed in DC’s Star Trek #49-55 and boldly spanning April to October 1988) remains a devotee’s dream, pulling together many prior and ongoing plotlines – albeit in a manner easily accessible to newcomers – to present a fantastic whodunit liberally sprinkled with in-jokes and TV references for über-fans to wallow in.

Illustrated by Tom Sutton & Ricardo Villagran, it began in ‘Aspiring to be Angels’ as, following the aftermath of a drunken shipboard stag night riot (caused by three very senior officers separately spiking the punch), the Enterprise crew discover a rogue Federation ship with impenetrable new cloaking technology is destroying remote colonies in a blatant attempt to provoke all-out war with the Klingons.

At one decimated site they discover a stunted, albino Klingon child who holds the secrets of the marauders, but his traumatised mind will need patience and very special care to coax them out…

Naturally the suspicious, bellicose Klingons also investigating the atrocity want first dibs on the supposed Federation “rebels”, and political tensions mount as Kirk and his embattled opposite number Kron not-so-diplomatically spar over procedure in a ‘Marriage of Inconvenience’. Emotions are already fraught aboard Enterprise. Preparations for a big wedding are suffering last-minute problems and a promising ensign is currently being cashiered for the High Crime of Species Bigotry…

Moreover, unknown to all, a telepathic crew-member has contracted Le Guin’s Disease (that’s one of those in-jokes I mentioned earlier), endangering the entire ship. The crisis point comes with the Federation and Klingon Empire on the verge of open hostilities. Thankfully the renegade ship moves too precipitately and is defeated in pitched battle. However, when Security teams board the maverick ship what they recover only increases the mystery of its true motives and origins…

Taking advantage of a rare peaceful moment, ensigns Kono and Nancy Bryce finally wed, only to be drawn into a ‘Haunted Honeymoon’ as the Enterprise is suddenly beset by uncanny supernatural events, culminating in the crew being despatched to a biblical torture-realm resembling ‘Hell in a Handbasket’. When the effects of the telepathic plague are finally spent, normality returns for the crew, just in time for them to discover Kirk has been stabbed…

Gordon Purcell illustrates ‘You’re Dead, Jim’, with Dr. McCoy swinging into action to preserve the fast-fading life of his friend. Lost in delirium, Kirk is reliving his eventful life and is ready to just let go when Spock intervenes. With the Captain slowly recovering and categorically identifying his attacker, justice moves swiftly. The assailant is arrested and the affair seems open and shut, but ‘Old Loyalties’ deliver a shocking twist to set up a fractious reunion as Kirk’s Starfleet Academy bullying nemesis Sean Finnegan (who first appeared in beloved classic TV episode Shore Leave – as written by the legendary Theodore Sturgeon) arrives to sort everything out…

The senior officer has been sent by the Federation Security Legion to investigate the case, and what he finds in ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ (with Sutton & Villagran reuniting for the epic conclusion) is an astounding revelation upsetting everyone’s firmly held convictions, before unearthing a sinister vengeance scheme decades in the making…

Masterfully weaving a wide web of elements into a fabulous yarn of great and small moments, Peter David crafted one of his best and most compelling yarns in these pages: a tale to rank amongst the greatest Star Trek stories in any medium and one which will please fans of the franchise and any readers who just love quality comics as well as underscoring just how much poorer we are all today.
® and © 2013 CBS Studios, Inc. © 2013 Paramount Pictures Corp. Star Trek and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Spirou in Berlin


By Flix, coloured by Marvin Clifford with Ralf Marczinczik, & translated by Michael Waaler (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital only

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic and humorous effect.

Although I’ve never for a moment considered history dry or dull, I can readily appreciate the constant urge to personalise characters or humanise events and movements, especially when that job is undertaken with care, respect, diligence and a healthy amount of bravado. An excellent case in point is this superb, digital-only (still!) romp from 2018, compellingly riffing on major geopolitical events that still feel relevant right now, through the somewhat suborned antics of two of Europe’s – if not the world’s – biggest comics stars.

In case you were one of those who were asleep, surreptitiously ogling a classmate who wouldn’t even acknowledge your existence, or just carving your name into a desk or body part: on November 9th 1989, a very physical symbol of ideological separation and political gamesmanship was torn down by the “inconsequential” prisoners stuck on either side of it. Now you can be told just how that might have happened, all comfortingly translated into a compelling, lively and lovely digital edition thanks to the benevolence of collective imprint Europe Comics…

For most English-speaking comic fans and collectors, Spirou is probably Europe’s biggest secret. The character is a rough contemporary of – and crassly calculated commercial response to – Hergé’s iconic Tintin, whilst the comic he has headlined for decades is only beaten in sheer longevity and manic creativity by our own Beano and the USA’s Detective Comics.

Conceived at Belgian Printing House by Jean Dupuis in 1936, an anthological magazine targeting a juvenile audience debuted on April 21st 1938; neatly bracketed by DC Thomson’s The Dandy which launched on 4th December 1937 and The Beano on July 30th 1938. Edited by Charles Dupuis (a mere tadpole, only 19 years old, himself) it took its name from the lead feature, recounting improbable adventures of the plucky Bellboy/lift operator employed by the Moustique Hotel – a sly reference to the publisher’s premier periodical Le Moustique.

Joined from June 8th 1939 by pet squirrel, Spip (the longest running character in the strip after Spirou himself), the series was realised by French artist Robert Velter (who signed himself Rob-Vel). Dutch language edition Robbedoes debuted some weeks later, running more-or-less in tandem with the French parent comic until its cancellation in 2005.

The bulk of the periodical was taken up with cheap US imports (but no tariffs!) like Fred Harman’s Red Ryder, William Ritt & Clarence Gray’s Brick Bradford and Siegel & Shuster’s landmark Superman – although home-grown product crept in too. Most prominent were Tif et Tondu by Fernand Dineur (which ran under assorted creators until the1990s) and L’Epervier Blue by Sirius (Max Mayeu), latterly accompanied by work from comic strip wunderkind Joseph Gillain – AKA Jijé. Legendarily, during World War II Jijé singlehandedly drew the entire comic, including home grown versions of banned US imports, simultaneously assuming production of the Spirou strip and creating current co-star and partner Fantasio.

Except for a brief period when the Nazis closed the comic down (September 1943 – October 1944) Le Journal de Spirou and its boyish star – now a globe-trotting journalist – have continued their exploits in unbroken four-colour glory. Among other major features that began within those hallowed pages are Jean Valhardi (by Jean Doisy & Jije), Blondin et Cirage (Victor Hubinon), Buck Danny, Jerry Spring, Les Schtroumpfs (The Smurfs to you and me), Gaston Lagaffe/Gomer Goof and Lucky Luke.

Spirou the character (whose name translates as both “squirrel” and “mischievous”) has helmed the magazine in perpetuity, evolving under numerous creators into an urbane yet raucous fantasy/adventure hero heavily wedded to light humour. With comrade/rival Fantasio and crackpot inventor the Count of Champignac (created by Andre Franquin) Spirou voyages to exotic locales, foiling crimes, revealing the fantastic and garnering a coterie of exotic arch-enemies.

When Velter went off to fight in WWII, his wife Blanche Dumoulin took over the strip. As “Davine” and assisted by Luc Lafnet she handled everything until publisher Dupuis assumed control of and all rights to the strip in 1943, assigning it to Jijé who handed it to his assistant Franquin in 1946. It was the start of a golden age. Among Franquin’s innovations were archvillains Zorglub and Zantafio, the aforementioned Champignac and one of the first strong female characters in European comics, rival journalist Seccotine (renamed Cellophine for Cinebook’s English translations. However, his greatest creation – and one he retained on his final departure in 1969 – was incredible magic animal Marsupilami. The miracle beast had debuted in Spirou et les héritiers (1952), and is now a star of screen, plush toy store, console and albums.

From 1959, writer Greg and background artist Jidéhem assisted Franquin, but by 1969 the artist had reached his Spirou limit and resigned, taking his mystic yellow monkey with him. He was succeeded by Jean-Claude Fournier, who updated the feature over the course of 9 rousing yarns tapping into the rebellious, relevant zeitgeist of the times, telling tales of environmental concern, nuclear energy, drug cartels and repressive regimes. By the 1980s, the series seemed stalled: three different creative teams alternated on the serial: Raoul Cauvin & Nic Broca, Yves Chaland and Philippe Vandevelde (writing as Tome) and illustrator Jean-Richard Geurts AKA Janry. These last adapted and referenced the still-beloved Franquin era and revived the feature’s fortunes, producing 14 wonderful albums between 1984-1998. Since their departure, Lewis Trondheim and the teams of Jean-Davide Morvan & Jose-Luis Munuera and Fabien Vehlmann & Yoann brought the official album count to 55. In 2022, scripters Sophie Guerrive & Benjamin Abitan united with artist and Olivier Schwartz on La Mort de Spirou). There have also been dozens of specials, spin-offs series and one-shots, official and otherwise. This review concerns one of those…

As heroic Everymen, Spirou & Fantasio inhabit a broad swathe of recent history in tales ranging from wild comedic fantasy to edgy, trenchant satires. In 2018, German publisher Carlsen Verlag sought to celebrate 80 years of Spirou in a new tale by a German creator: one that would be inaugurally released in German before Dupuis published French and Dutch editions. Their choice was beloved and much-admired comics creator/children’s book author Flix (Faust, Don Quijote, Münchhausen – Die Wahrheit übers Lügen, held, Schöne Töchter, Glückskind, Der Swimmingpool des kleinen Mannes, Verflixt!).

As Felix Görmann, he was born in Münster – about 45 miles from the German-Dutch border – on 16th October 1976. He grew up with the Berlin Wall very much a part of life and reading loads of comics, particularly Franquin, Peyo, Morris and the best of Le Journal de Spirou. Drawn to humour by inclination, he experienced a major system reset at age 16 after seeing Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

Görmann resolved to be a comics creator and to that end studied Communication Design at Saarbrücken’s Saar College of Fine Arts before attending the Escola Massana in Barcelona. His rise was meteoric and his output prolific. Citing influences as diverse as Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes), Will Eisner (The Spirit, A Contract With God) and Craig Thompson (Blankets, Ginseng Roots) as well as Euro-stars from Christophe Blain (Socrate le Demi-Chien, Isaac Le Pirate) and Guy Delisle (Inspecteur Moroni, Shenzen, Pyongyang – A journey in North Korea) to countrymen Ralf König (Bullenklöten, The Killer Condom, Down to the Bone) and “Mawil”/Markus Witzel (Teufel & Pistolen, Hitman, Supa-Hasi, Lucky Luke), Flix was ultimately the first German to create new adventures for Spirou & Fantasio. It was such a well-received affair that in 2019 Spirou in Berlin won the Peng! Münchner Comicpreis. In 2022, Flix created a similarly Spirou-inspired notional follow-up. Set in 1930s Berlin, the Das Humboldt-tier sees a little girl befriend a Marsupilami kept at the Museum of Natural History. Hopefully we’ll see that someday soon…

Here however, is a glorious edgy, gleefully barbed take on past events as, at the most precarious and tumultuous moment of the 44-years-long Cold War, East German apparatchiks and master manipulators starved of all resources but putting on a deceptive public show of affluence, activate a desperate last-ditch plan. They have a bizarre scheme to shatter the global economy and gain economic dominance, and one of the West’s craziest villains to build the kit necessary to expedite it, but still need the unique expertise of the Count de Champignac to make it work.

Sadly, their supposedly seamless abduction of the mushroom mage is rumbled by regular house guests Spirou, Fantasio and Spip, who go after their friend and break/sneak/are allowed to enter into the German Democratic Republic (GDR), utterly unaware that their interference is not only anticipated but actively required…

Of course, the machinations of the Stasi – officially the Ministry for State Security (MfS) – are constantly but quietly scotched by decent East Germans like Paul & Paula, Rainier and Momo (and her army of liberated zoo animals), all working to be free from fear, liberated from lies and out from beneath crushingly brutal oppression. The ordinary East Berliners have a crucial need for their truth to be published on the other side of the Wall, but Spirou refuses to go anywhere until Fantasio and the Count are safe (PDQ)…

Wry, thrilling and sublimely whacky, this cartoon romp is a perfect, canny codicil to the comic canon, embracing the best of all Spirou sagas by wrapping the timeless tale up in a fast-paced, rollercoaster ride of subversive messaging. Total fun with verities that have never been more worth reviewing, Spirou in Berlin is a book all grown up kids need to see.
© 2018, 2019 – CARLSSEN/DUPUIS – Flix. All rights reserved.

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A Sailor’s Story


By Sam Glanzman (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-79812-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

Inexplicably, unfairly but inescapably, many truly superb creators who dedicate a lifetime to producing a volume of work are never properly rewarded for their efforts. Probably the most shamefully neglected of these hidden stars – at least in the American comic book industry – was Sam Glanzman (December 5th 1924 – July 12th 2017).

With his solid, uniquely informative and engagingly rough-hewn style, “SJG” worked since the 1940s on a variety of titles for a host of publishers, mostly genre material in war, mystery, fantasy and adventure anthologies, but also occasionally on serial characters such as Willy Schulz (The Private War of Willie Schultz), Hercules and Tarzan for Charlton; the astoundingly cool Kona, King of Monster Island for Dell, The Haunted Tank and most significantly for us here U.S.S. Stevens (DD 479) for DC. It is this last series of guardedly-autobiographical tales, derived from his tour of duty on that self-same US Navy Destroyer during WWII, that formed the basis of this superb compilation.

This criminally neglected talent quietly and resolutely generated comics magic for decades in his underplayed, effective and matter-of-fact manner and in 1987 was still improving, crafting superb narrative art without flash or dazzle, winning fans among the cognoscenti yet largely unnoticed or at least unlauded by mainstream fans when he produced a semi-autobiographical graphic novel that made many waves. Moreover, Marvel editor Larry Hama made the bold decision to publish Glanzman’s understated, unadorned, wryly elegiac account of his days as a young man aboard a Pacific Fleet Destroyer as part of the company’s Original Graphic Novel imprint…

A Sailor’s Story captivatingly related his experiences as a young man aboard the U.S.S. Stevens in a no-nonsense, highly entertaining manner, breaking fresh ground in the progress of the graphic novel as a medium for artistic expression. The book also reached a lot of buyers who wouldn’t be caught dead with a copy of Spider-Man or Conan…

It was a high point in American sequential narrative and spawned a sequel volume – an unprecedented feat for the line at a time when superheroes and licensed properties monopolised the marketplace.

Glanzman was a natural storyteller, with the ability to make dry fact entrancing and everyday events compelling. With his raw, gritty drawing style and powerful sense of colour he wove memory into magic. His depiction of shipboard life is informative and authentic, and his decision to downplay action to concentrate on character is brave and tremendously effective. He also knows how to make a reader laugh and cry… and when.

A Sailor’s Story is a moving and obviously heartfelt paean to lost days: an impassioned tribute to lost friends and comrades; a war story that glorifies life, not death, by a creator who loved the experience and loves his art-form. When you read this superb book you will too.

Utterly devoid of unnecessary melodrama and conniving faux-angst, the history lesson starts as young Sam J. Glanzman enlists one year after Pearl Harbor – as soon as he turns 18. All the orphan leaves behind him in frigid upstate New York is a friendly farmer who promises to look after his devoted dog Beauty…

What follows is a mesmerising succession of snippets and memories and observations; reminiscences pieced together into a mosaic of life afloat during wartime. Back then he learned to speak what amounted to a new language, played pranks and grew up in a pressure cooker. Along the way friends were made, and some enemies, but mostly just acquaintances: people doing the same things at the same time in the same place, but not necessarily for the same reasons and certainly with no dreams except having it all end…

Sam saw the world, the best and worst of life and survived the sailor’s greatest enemies: unseen, distant strangers trying to kill them all, mindless tedium and dire, soul-destroying repetitive routine. Eventually he found his niche – if never a decent place to sleep…

Through brief and terrifying clashes with the enemy, intimate associations and alliances aboard ship, intimate assignations ashore or on the frequent and increasingly bizarre and hilarious “Liberties” (those breaks from active duty us TV-reared landlubbers all mistakenly think of as “shore leave”), the author debunks a myth of the magic of the seas, only to recreate it, recast in terms any modern reader will instantly understand…

Eventually the war ends and long after that, so does the sailor’s service, with only the merest few of his unforgettable arsenal of memories shared…

The sheer overwhelming veracity of the episodes is utterly overwhelming. Raucously funny, ineffably sad – Beauty’s fate will break your heart or you’re not and never have been human – devoutly forgiving, patiently understanding and stunningly authentic.

This long longed-for complete edition (thank you, Dover Books!) also includes that sequel from 1989. Wind, Dreams and Dragons returned to the Pacific at the height of the war, with a specific theme in mind and, by clever use of narrative devices like Ship’s Travel Logs incorporated into the beguiling page designs, or diagrams and cutaways as part of the text, upped the emotional ante. Through astoundingly affecting intimate details (most trenchantly humorous) fondly recalled and seamlessly staged, Glanzman managed to instil an even more documentary atmosphere into his wonderfully human-scaled drama.

This is used to create a foreboding sense of dread as the crew encounter and learn to live with the then-unknown terror weapon of suicide-pilots who would become a household name to us: Kamikaze…

Combining the folksy, informative charm of the first volume with the “hurry-up-and-wait” tensions of modern warfare, delivered in an increasingly bold and innovative graphic style, Wind, Dreams and Dragons is one of the best explorations of sea-combat ever produced, seen through the eyes of an ordinary seaman. It all compellingly communicates the terror, resolve and sheer disbelief that men on both sides could sacrifice so much. This is a fitting and evocative tribute from one who was there to all those who are no longer here…

As if those back-to-back blockbusters were not enough, this oversized (279 x 210mm), fully remastered tome comes with a flotilla of extras beginning with a Foreword by Max (World War Z) Brooks and Introduction from original editor Larry Hama.

Following the colourful comics comes a star-studded ‘Tributes’ section by Glanzman’s contemporaries: moving and frequently awe-struck commemorations, appreciations, shared memories and even art contributions from Alan Barnard, George Pratt, Beau Smith (who shares a personal sketch SJG created for him), Stephen R. Bissette, Chris Claremont, Carl Potts, Denny O’Neil, Kurt Busiek, Stan Lee, Paul Levitz, Joe R. Lansdale, Walter Simonson, Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Steve Fears, Thomas Yeates, Timothy Truman, Will Franz and Mark Wheatley. There’s even a splendid photo parade entitled ‘Sam’s Scrapbook’ and a warm, impassioned ‘Afterword’ from Chuck Dixon.

Topping everything is a new 10-page hauntingly powerful monochrome USS Stevens yarn entitled ‘Even Dead Birds Have Wings’. Now all we have to do is get everyone to rediscover this lost gem.

Shockingly raw, painfully authentic, staggeringly beautiful, A Sailor’s Story is a magnificent work by one of the very best of “The Greatest Generation”: a sublimely insightful, affecting and rewarding graphic memoir every home, school and library should have.
Artwork and text © 2015 Sam Glanzman. All other material © 2015 its respective creators.

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Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years


By Reinhard Kleist, coloured by Thomas Gilke & Reinhard Kleist, translated by Michael Waaler (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-28-7 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content reproduced for literary and historical veracity.

In recent years, graphic biographies have become a major component of many publishers fare – comics and otherwise – even as high end biopics, podcasts and “tell-all” TV series have similarly gripped consumers keen to get a little closer to the New Gods: celebrities of every shape and shade and ranking.

This one – originally released in Germany by a pioneer and true master of the form – pushes the envelope on what exactly constitutes and defines documentary reportage with a sequel saga proudly, defiantly and fully uninvited, ruminating upon and deducing what might have been…

A forcefully Unauthorised tale utterly unsanctioned by the Bowie Estate, Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years is actually a sequel to, and continuance of Reinhard (Knock Out!, Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness, Nick Cave: Mercy on Me) Kleist’s 2023 release Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years. That visual odyssey explored the origins of and subsequent early race for fame that gripped music-obsessed sax-playing Bromley boy Davy Jones and how he perfected the art of reinvention. We’ll get to that first book in due time…

Here, however, a second speculative and allegorical deep dive reveals how – and possibly why – after almost self-destructing on the spoils of success and coming close to being destroyed by manipulators and exploiters, globally notorious Ziggy Stardust/David Bowie briefly eluded the pressures of fame to enjoy temporary anonymity and explore creative freedom.

Here the struggling auteur/performance artist recreates himself in a blighted, beleaguered but broadly unbowed metropolis that was a thriving symbol of unfinished wars, the byword for the end of days and paragon of life lived on the edge and in the now…

If you come to this book without prior knowledge of the history and players you might struggle with detail, but the gleefully potent, loose-limbed, energetically fantasmagoric yet understated art, careful juxtaposition of verifiable events and intense character interplay will carry most readers through the unfolding drama.

Plotwise, this broadly true tale is one that has been told many times, with only the names and locations varying. We open in Berlin at the apex of the Cold War. It’s 1976 and a burned out, dispirited Bowie is seeking somewhere he can shelter, refocus creative energies and map out a new direction in the grand show that is his life.

The relocation is aided and abetted by many long term house guests including former wife turned current goad & confidante Angie, producer Tony Visconti, PA/fixer Coco Schwab, collaborators Brian Eno, Robert Fripp and Marc Bolan, and inseparable protégé/soulmate Iggy Pop, as well as increasing untrustworthy manager Tony DeFries and others. The locale itself offers perfect inspirational distractions, including a wild club scene, non-judgemental neighbours, truly progressive new music (such as Tangerine Dream, Can and Kraftwerk), intoxicating cabaret star turned intimate associate Romy Haag, the allure of anonymity and the frisson of living on the point of the spear and at ground zero for a seemingly inevitable nuclear armageddon…

Oh, and when not cycling around a city whose thousand years of history call out to him, there’s also sex and drugs and rock & roll…

Amidst the tensions, distractions and constant philosophical musings – laced with gritty flashbacks and peppered with metaphorical fantasies and eerie appearances by space-suited conceptual b?te noir Major Tom – Bowie ponders and plays and evolves, eventually formulating a bold statement, culminating in a change of life path and musical goals as well as the artistic breakthroughs and triumphs of Low, Heroes (both 1977) and Lodger (1979)… the “Berlin Trilogy”…

With telling and informative appearances by contemporary influences/pals like John Lennon, Luther Vandross, William Burroughs (sort of), the lifechanging, alienating trauma of making and being The Man Who Fell to Earth and wry glimpses at the birth of Punk lensed against the popular tensions surrounding growing incidences of androgyny and transgender hostility, Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years is as much a potent tribute to the city and its people at a key point in history as only a Cologne-born Berliner-by-choice could tell it. It’s also a powerful reminder of those precarious times and how fashion, art and music helped us through the grimness of it all…

The tale is augmented by a Gallery of images encapsulating the man, the moments and his ever-present space-suited internal avatar…

© Text & illustration 2024 by Carlsen-Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, Germany. All rights reserved. English translation © SelfMadeHero 2025. NBM for the English translation.

LOW: Bowie’s Berlin Years is scheduled for UK release May 22nd 2025 and July 8th in the USA. Both editions are available for pre-order now.
reserved. English translation © SelfMadeHero 2023.

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Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years


By Reinhard Kleist, coloured by Thomas Gilke & Reinhard Kleist, translated by Michael Waaler (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-08-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content reproduced for literary and historical veracity.

Graphic biographies are a now a solid staple of publishers fare, just as biopics, podcasts and “tell-all” TV series similarly entice consumers eager for intimate, often salacious detail on celebrities of every shape and shade and ranking. Thanks to that apparently insatiable appetite for speculative if not actually fictionalised lifestories – officially sanctioned or otherwise – in movies like Walk the Line, Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman or shows including The Crown, Mr. Selfridge or Mr. Bates vs the Post Office, the demand for candid revelation is extremely high, especially as offering purportedly keen insights onto people and events we only think we know but presume we have a right to impinge upon is pure, primal unfettered monkey curiosity in action…

This one – originally released in Germany in 2021 by pioneer documentarian Reinhard Kleist (The Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar, The Boxer: The True Story of Holocaust Survivor Harry Haft, Castro: A Graphic Novel) – pushes the envelope on what exactly constitutes and defines reportage with the first half of an extended exploration into a world icon: an assessment that is wildly expressionistic and defiantly fully unsanctioned…

It’s probably fair to say that David Bowie spent his life (lives?) managing his own mythology and seeking to control his own story, but apparently famous people belong – at least in part – to everyone. That’s certainly the premise of this compelling rags-to-the-point-of-disaster saga, told in flashbacks and hi-octane fantasy set-pieces tracing the rise and early successes of young David Robert Jones (January 8th 1947 – January 10th 2016). Touching upon his many personas and innovations and especially exploring the sybaritic excesses, the tale carries the reader to the moments that ended Bowie’s American odyssey of near self-destruction in 1975.

Visual dissection and informed deduction plays out as traditional drama as Kleist depicts the background, family, maternal disapproval, hungry ambitions and subsequent early race for fame that gripped a music-obsessed, sax-playing Bromley boy and how he evolved a tactic of personal reinvention in his incessant chase for the stars…

On the way and via formulative days of gigging and making contacts during the sixties and seventies, we meet his tragic but deeply inspirational older brother Terry, best friend Marc Bolan, future wife Angie Barnett, exploitative management sharpie Tony DeFries, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, up-&-comer Iggy Pop, groundbreaking fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto and many more people relatively famous folk. We’re on hand at the birth of Glam Rock and controversial but headline grabbing, dabbling with androgyny and “gender-bending” that led to the breakthroughs that almost destroyed him: the release of melancholic anthem of the era Space Oddity (with Major Tom consequently becoming a personal avatar haunting the singer forever after) and the birth of soul-sucking vampire Ziggy Stardust, a sybaritic alter ego who nearly consumed his creator…

As ambition, excess, and the dreamer’s love of science fiction fuel his inspiration, Bowie/ Ziggy hits America like meteor but soon the fallout starts taking its toll. Adoration and desire war with dissatisfaction and painful self-exploration and unless something Ch-Ch-Changes we will all be witness to a Rock‘n’Roll Suicide…

Arguably massaging history to explore the price of ambition and assess the cost of pursuing power, as well as the shocking threat and reward of sexual identity to society, this cautionary the tale is augmented by a Gallery of images encapsulating the man, the moments and his ever-present space-suited internal avatar…

© Text & illustration 2021 by Carlsen-Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, Germany. All rights reserved. English translation © SelfMadeHero 2023

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Good Night, Hem


By Jason (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-461-2 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic and comedic effect.

Happy Birthday Jason!

Born this day in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known globally by his enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume. The shy & retiring draughts-scribe started on the path to overnight international cartoon superstardom in 1995, once first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award. Prior to that, he had contributed to alternate/indie magazine KonK whilst, from 1987, studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo’s Art Academy, before going on to Norway’s National School of Arts. After graduating in 1994, three years later he founded his own comic book Mjau Mjau, citing Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring and Tex Avery as his primary influences and constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-laden anthropomorphic minimalism.

Moving to Copenhagen Jason worked at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) and Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Books of Magic, Starman, Batman: Detective 27). His efforts were internationally noticed, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas, and he won another Sproing in 2001 for self-published series Mjau Mjau. From 2002 he turned nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels… and won a succession of major awards.

Jason’s breadth of interest is wide and deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, high literature and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. This puckish and egalitarian mixing and matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time. Over successive tales Jason employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes of movies, childhood entertainments and historical and literary favourites. These all role play in deliciously absurd and increasingly surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. In latter years, Jason returned to these “found” players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and in Good Night, Hem, even has a whole bizarre bunch of them “team-up”…

As always, visual/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued, or even pantomimic progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a stripped-down adaptation of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, and thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity.

Good Night, Hem is a deliciously wry triptych of novellas again harnessing and displaying all that signature arbitrary surreality, only marginally restrained by the overarching conceit that it is three snapshots of real life he-man author Ernest Hemingway. That gritty scribe was previously utilised in 2006’s The Left Bank Gang wherein he and fellow glitterati-in-waiting including Ezra Pound, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others struggle with a lack of success and decide to rob a bank.

Here, that situation is sidelined, as in 1925 the wastrel émigrés – now also including the likes of future screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart and artist Max Ernst – meet Hem’s exact double in the form of a man dressed as a musketeer. They have no conception that the newcomer is the actual Athos of fiction: a tragic, love benighted-immortal who has outlived his time and has never found peace or love…

The time & space conquering hero was previously seen in 2008’s The Last Musketeer (please link to 14th July 2023) and 2011’s Athos in America and soon makes his indelible mark on the Americans. He is even dragged along as Hemingway cajoles/bullies them all into joining him at the bullfighting festival in Pamplona…

In the midst of all that blood, sand, jealousy and constant sexual tension, Hem – keen to exploit Athos’ innocence and their uncanny resemblance – then asks a monumentally stupid favour…

Abandoning literary speculation for baroque adventure, the second tale marches right into brutal he-man action territory as hero-in-waiting (and his own mind) Hem hatches a plan to end World War II at a stroke. It’s August 1944 in Paris, and war correspondent Ernest Hemingway uses his contacts to assemble a do-or-die squad to accompany him on a mission into embattled Berlin to punch out Adolf Hitler. First though, comes a period of intense secret training and more opportunities for bitter romance, betrayal and lethally unruly machismo before the mission – and all its appalling consequences – are realised…

The final chapter opens in 1959 and delves deep into contemplation as Hem seeks to write his memoirs. Trapped into reminiscing about his life and those he met, whilst resident in pre-revolutionary, Mafia-run Cuba, he recalls how Athos recently reappeared. He was utterly untouched by the weight of 30 more years and asked the author to pen an introduction for his own proposed autobiography: an encounter that set the writer on a spiral of painful self-examination…

These quirky episodes are populated with cinematic, darkly comic anthropomorphs and festooned with bewitching ruminations on love, loneliness, friendship, renown, expectation and life goals viewed – as ever – through a charmingly macabre cast of bestial archetypes and socially-lost modern chumps and people you think you know.

Blending literary pretention and modern fictive mythology with the iconography and ironic bombast of Reservoir Dogs and Inglourious Basterds is a stroke of genius no one else could pull off. Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, incisively probing the nature of “human-ness” via the beastly and unnatural asking persistent and pertinent hard questions. Although smart sight-gags are less prominent here, his staff of “funny-animal” players still uncannily depict the subtlest emotions with devastating effect, proving again just how good a cartoonist he is. Effortlessly switching back and forth between genre, milieu and narrative pigeonholes, this grab-bag of graphic goodies again proves that Jason is a creative force in comics like no other: one totally deserving as much of your time, attention and disposable income as possible.
All characters, stories and artwork © 2021 Jason. All rights reserved. This edition © 2021 Fantagraphics books. All rights reserved.

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Ginseng Roots


By Craig Thompson (Faber)
ISBN: 978-0-571-38661-1 (HB)

This is one of those reviews where I try quite hard not to say too much about the content, because it’s a sin and a form of theft to deprive readers of the joy of it unfolding just for them. You could and should just go buy this now and save time, but if I can’t convince you of that here, please read on and think again…

In no way a sequel to his landmark masterpiece Blankets but every inch and ounce as compelling, engaging and important, Ginseng Roots sees auteur Craig Thompson return to what you or I would deem an incredibly harsh – nigh-dystopian – childhood to craft another incredibly engaging paean of love and fond wonder to his home, his family and his extraordinary life.

In a book encompassing biographical revelation, philosophical rumination and religious re-exploration we see the auteur share incredibly candid events from his profession and career. Wrapped up in a most engaging, amusing and occasionally distressing tutorial on the history and global cultural significance of Ginseng, we see Thompson return to Wisconsin. The Thompson kids were raised in a fundamentalist Christian household, with the Rapture anticipated any day now, but it wasn’t all bad. They were loved, if ruled hard, and here we see how that panned out, as well as the transformative power of comics via a broad, deep and astonishingly informative yarn viewed through the ruminative lens of the Thompson family’s recollections of being child labourers for local farmers growing American Ginseng in the 1980s.

The way it all worked is unpicked with remarkable even-handedness, as the man who became a major force in his field of graphic narrative expression revisits those formative days before embarking on a quest to learn all he can of the How and Why of it all. This involves returning home before ultimately crisscrossing the world with little brother Phil to research a new graphic novel undertaken in the light of potentially losing all he could be to an inexorable physical decline: one destined to take away his self-defining ability to draw…

When first released in July 2003, Blankets started slowly before achieving monumental international fame and near-unanimous critical approval from comics’ Great & Good & Fabled. If you have a favourite author or artist they probably loved the book – and rightly so.

Taking 3½ years to create, Blankets won 3 Harvey Awards, 2 Eisners, 2 Ignatz Awards and a France’s Prix de la Critique. Translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Greek, German, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Korean, Hungarian, Slovenian, Estonian, Serbian and Greek, it was latterly published in 17 foreign editions (so far) and kept on winning glittering prizes and acclaim. It’s also won a YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults prize: listed as one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top Ten Graphic Novels of All Time. You can expect Ginseng Roots to do as well or better, even if young love and tragic foredoomed passions have been downplayed in favour of the inexorable march of time, unsatisfied injustices, midlife crises and failing faculties.

Reading this, you will learn all about a wonder herb, global trade, Chinese medicine, Big Agriculture & pesticides, many flavours of immigrant workers, exploitation and corporate ruthlessness, the economic history of many nations, the narcotic tendencies of comic books of grade school kids, and so much about human nature, that you’ll probably laugh, cry and get angry quite a lot…

Originally released in serialised instalments by Uncivilized Book (between 2019 -2023, as Covid ravaged the US and the world) just as Craig Thompson was confronting presumed career burnout, impostor syndrome and the loss of his ability to draw, the fascinating pictorial discourse is divided into 12 chapters beginning with ‘Real Ginseng Runs’, as Craig, Phil and their sister Sarah reunite at the parental homestead and trade tales of the old days. The reminiscences blend with flashback and flashforwards in ‘Sister Species’ as the story of Ginseng from America expands, with ‘Broad Stripes’ covering the history of Wisconsin – especially the region around Marathon – and growth of Ginseng trading: its use by First Nations before colonisation, white/French and Christian exploitation after that, and eventually an unshakeable connection to Asian nations that bought it from Wisconsin’s farmers and entrenched rivalry with its clearly inferior Canadian competition…

Interviews with old friends and former employers begins in ‘Rock(s) & Roll(ie)’, augmented by modern convolutions in ‘MAGGA’ (Make American Ginseng Great Again!) and ‘Good Seed Sinks’, before Craig’s declining health is more extensively explored in ‘No More Cartoons’. This leads to a vast expansion of purpose that culminates in fact finding missions all over “the orient” and the undertaking of a major literary project as expanded upon in ‘Father Abraham’, ‘Dark Night of the Soil’ and ‘Insam Respects’, before all that global and historical interconnection is pulled together as one big ‘Red Thread’, and laid to bed in grand ‘Agricultural Appreciation’…

So much better read than read about, this marvellously moving memoir and ruminatory treatise is backed up with full contextual ‘Notes’, genuinely evocative ‘Acknowledgments’ and bonus art from the little brother/willing accomplice and henchman on a ‘Phil(er) Page’ and closes with an extended cartoon ad for Craig’s other books – debut tome Good-bye Chunky Rice, Blankets, Carnet de voyage, Habibi and Space Dumplins. You should sample them too and Faber has them all in print for just that purpose.

Loving, informatively wistful and never angry or condemnatory, for such a weighty tome, Ginseng Roots is a remarkably quick and easy read, with Thompson’s imaginative and ingenious marriage of text and images carrying one along in the way only comics can. Expect his cartoon avatar of the root to be pinched and copied by ad men for some time to come…

Charming, engrossing and irresistible, this may well be Thompson’s best and most enduring book, but if fate and Ginseng will it, not his last as it is another perfect story in pictures.
This edition © 2025 by Craig Thompson. All rights reserved. Originally serialised by Uncivilized Books © 2019, 2021, 2021, 2022, 2023 by Craig Thompson.