Category: Environmentalism

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Retrograde Orbit


By Kristyna Baczynski (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-42-4 (PB/Digital edition)

Great storytelling never goes out of style and the basis of all drama is examination of the human condition (albeit sometimes in extraordinary circumstances). Somehow, that’s even more true when your characters aren’t human at all.

Author and illustrator Kristyna Baczynski hails from the Pennines of Yorkshire, by way of the Carpathians of the Ukraine. That’s not at all germane here but it does sound incredibly romantic; conjuring up all manner of deep-seated preconceptions about windy moors and bleak moody peaks. Preconceptions, aspirations, dreams and that old devil hope are what this book is about…

In a faraway star system, a little girl grows up as a refugee and immigrant. Flint finds it hard to adapt to life on mining colony world Tisa and, even though she has no real memories of the place, feels the call of her homeworld Doma – long-abandoned due to a geological or maybe industrial toxic detonation. No one at school cares or understands and her mother and grandmother never want to talk about it…

Years pass but those feelings of something missing don’t. Days pass, Flint acts out like any teen and then inevitably graduates into a mining job, but the something-missing still plagues her. Moments pass as she collects memoirs and mementoes of her lost world and grows increasingly colder and duller.

… And then a message is received from the supposedly dead, barren planet. Flint now has a purpose and a goal, and nothing will stand in her way…

This lyrical and uplifting yarn offers a beautifully understated and moving glimpse at the power of place in our lives, using science fiction themes and trappings to pick apart the most primitive and fundamental longings to which humans are subject. It also reminds us that there’s always hope…

A glorious celebration of humanity’s constant follies and greatest assets, this tale is certain to be a beloved touchstone for every lover of great stories.
© Kristyna Baczynski 2018. All rights reserved.

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Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter


By Oscar Zárate (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-07-2 (HB/Digital edition)

Oscar Zárate was born in Argentina in 1942. After studying architecture he worked in advertising until 1971, at which time, like so many other countrymen, he migrated to Europe. Restarting his life and career, his design and painting jobs were augmented from 1977 onwards by illustrating histories of scientific and political luminaries (the …For Beginners and Introducing… series). This led to his adapted literary graphic novels Othello (1983) and Dr. Faustus (1986). A year later he collaborated with Alexei Sayle on Geoffrey the Tube Train and the Fat Comedian and in 1991 the award-winning A Small Killing, written by Alan Moore. He also produced socially active comics strips for Fleetway’s Crisis magazine.

A creator of intellect, passion and sensitivity, Zárate has always delivered far more than expected and in his latest magnum opus advances the potential of graphic biography by combining the avowed popular rediscovery of outsider English Master Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter with a compelling (hopefully, largely fictionalised) drama. The players are three modern day artistic apprentices, devout and dedicated yet adrift and floundering in their own highly personalised searches for integrity and eternal truths. Ultimately, they all finally find ways forward by looking back to a rebel genius inexplicably sidelined by history…

Arturo, Sarah and Fred are all mature-student artists who meet up at a weekly life drawing class in London. Each is passionate about their pastime but cannot escape the crippling pressures their regular lives bring. Arturo is from Argentina and still carries self-inflicted scars of betrayal and failure, as well as the shame of having escaped terror at the cost of his family. It makes him seem gruff, distrusting, weary and cynical …

Architect and imminent grandmother-to-be Sarah is crippled by a different kind of guilt: perpetually wracked by how she is not good enough at anything she does. This recently remanifested when her greatest friend from art school reached out after decades of silence and separation. Back then, Sarah had abandoned and ghosted her on the cusp of success and greatness and has ever since writhed in the torment of debilitating guilt only Catholicism can (self) inflict.

Poor Fred is perhaps the most troubled: an honest, fair-minded worker who accidentally uncovered high levels of tax fraud at work. Even after losing his job because of it, he is still being pilloried: on one side pursued by a journalist who wants him to become a whistle-blower and on the other by a gang of heavies his former bosses hired to ensure his silence…

For nearly a year the trio have gradually become friends, discussing art in after-class pub sessions. Now Fred has become an impassioned zealot with a new love. He’s discovered an 18th century genius who changed the shape of English watercolour painting and then simply vanished from public view and memory.

It’s an injustice Fred is determined to set right…

The story of Thomas Girtin is woven throughout their cumulative tale. He is an intriguing mystery and shining exemplar whose gradually reconstructed history inspires each modern-day acolyte to change the course of their own life. Arturo finds strength from the tragically ill-starred artist’s resolve and courage at a time of widespread and earthshaking political unrest: an outright proudly rebel republican in an avidly monarchist nation, despising, decrying and working against the patronage system that supported his work and kept him in luxury.

Sarah finds inspiration in the driven quest for an almost-mystical connection to Nature and a higher truth. Young Girtin was a contemporary, rival and friend of latterday English icon JMW Turner, and at the turn of the 18th century was rapidly growing in renown. Already recognised as a groundbreaking pioneer outselling his old schoolmate in the cutthroat and exploitative art scene of the day, Girtin never rested, but continually strove to capture the fundamental revelations of reality.

That all ended with his early death in 1802, aged 27. Crucially for Sarah, in his search for the truth of time and the cosmos, Girtin martyred himself: dying due to his own obsessive compulsion to capture the elements in all their ferocious fury and restorative glories…

As for Fred, Girtin’s life increasingly becomes his own. Resurrecting and redeeming the lost painter’s reputation and sharing his mastery with the world becomes his reason for living, driving him to make a pilgrimage in Girtin’s footsteps and thereafter reorder the course of his own remaining years…

The twinned stories are subtly and smoothly presented by Zárate using two different styles of illustrative painting; mixing modern-day pastel tones with stark, sepia-tinted historical episodes that reveal – in his and his characters’ eyes at least – who Girtin was and how he lived, thrived and died.

As this monumental tome unfolds and tellingly argues for Girtin’s popular revival and reassessment, the most convincing asset in that campaign are the beautiful original Girtin works. The reproductions of his greatest triumphs – “View near Beddgelert”, “Estuary of the River Taw, Devon”, “Storiths Heights” and his undisputed masterpiece “The White House at Chelsea” – are judiciously folded into the text and include a selection of large gatefold images.

This is a book about Art and a story of artists, operating on the principle that what we see which moves us, we need to share. Once the story’s done here, that can be easily first facilitated by reading erudite and engaging endpiece ‘Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) An Afterword’ by Dr Greg Smith, (Senior Research Fellow, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) and the attendant Acknowledgements, Permissions, and copious Bibliography sections.

You can always check him out yourself. There are many places online to see Girtin’s work, and even a few museums, if you’re pushy. Then go tell a like-minded friend.
© Oscar Zárate 2023. All rights reserved.

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Moomin volume 7 – The Complete Lars Jansson Comic Strip


By Lars Jansson (Drawn & Quarterly)
ISBN: 978-1-77046-062-1 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-77046-554-1

Tove Jansson was one of the greatest literary innovators and narrative pioneers of the 20th century: equally adept at shaping words and images to create worlds of wonder. She was especially expressive with basic components like pen and ink, manipulating slim economical lines and patterns to realise sublime realms of fascination, whilst her dexterity made simple forms into incredibly expressive and potent symbols and, as this collection shows, so was her brother…

Tove Marika Jansson was born into an artistic, intellectual, basically bohemian Swedish family in Helsinki, Finland on August 9th 1914. Father Viktor was a sculptor and mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson a successful illustrator, graphic designer and commercial artist. Tove’s brothers Lars – AKA “Lasse” – and Per Olov became respectively an author/cartoonist and art photographer. The family and its close intellectual, eccentric circle of friends seems to have been cast rather than born, with a witty play or challenging sitcom as the piece they were all destined to inhabit.

After extensive and intensive study (from 1930-1938 at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, the Graphic School of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and L’Ecole d’Adrien Holy and L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris), Tove became a successful exhibiting artist through the troubled period of the Second World War.

Brilliantly creative across many fields, she published the first fantastic Moomins adventure in 1945. Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (The Little Trolls and the Great Flood or latterly and more euphoniously The Moomins and the Great Flood) was a whimsical epic of gentle, inclusive, accepting, understanding, bohemian misfit trolls and their strange friends…

A youthful over-achiever, from 1930 to 1953 Tove worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for Swedish satirical magazine Garm: achieving some measure of notoriety with an infamous political sketch lampooning the Appeasement policies of European leaders by depicting Hitler in nappies. She was also highly in-demand for many magazines and children’s books, and had started selling comic strips as early as 1929.

Moomintroll was her signature character. Literally.

The lumpy, big-eyed, gently adventurous romantic goof began life as a spindly sigil next to her name in her political works. She called him “Snork” and claimed she had designed him in a fit of pique as a child – the ugliest thing a precocious little girl could imagine – as a response to losing an argument with her brother about Immanuel Kant.

The term “Moomin” came from her maternal uncle Einar Hammarsten who attempted to stop her pilfering food when she visited, warning her that a Moomintroll guarded the kitchen, creeping up on trespassers and breathing cold air down their necks. Snork/Moomin filled out, became timidly nicer – if a little clingy and insecure – acting as a placid therapy-tool to counteract the grimness of the post-war world.

Initially The Moomins and the Great Flood made little impact, but Jansson persisted – as much for her own edification as any other reason – and in 1946 Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland) was published. Many commentators regard the terrifying tale a skilfully compelling allegory of Nuclear Armageddon. You should read it now… while you still can…

When it and third illustrated novel Trollkarlens hatt (1948, Finn Family Moomintroll or occasionally The Happy Moomins) were translated into English in 1952, their instant success prompted British publishing giant Associated Press to commission a newspaper strip about her seductively sweet and sensibly surreal creations.

Jansson had no misgivings or prejudices regarding strip cartoons and had already adapted Comet in Moominland for Swedish/Finnish paper Ny Tid. Mumintrollet och jordens undergäng – Moomintrolls and the End of the World – was a popular feature, so she readily accepted the chance to extend her eclectic family across the world. In 1953, The London Evening News began the first of 21 Moomin strip serials to captivate readers of all ages.

Jansson’s involvement in the cartoon feature ended in 1959, a casualty of its own success and a punishing publication schedule. So great was the strain that towards the end she recruited brother Lars to help. He then took over, continuing the strip until 1975. His tenure as sole creator continues here…

Liberated from the strip’s pressures, Tove returned to painting, writing and other creative pursuits: making plays, murals, public art, stage designs, costumes for dramas and ballets, a Moomin opera and 9 more Moomin-related picture-books and novels, as well as 13 books and short-story collections strictly for grown-ups.

Tove Jansson died on June 27th 2001. Her awards are too numerous to mention, but just consider: how many modern artists get their faces on the national currency?

Lars Fredrik Jansson (October 8th 1926 – July 31st 2000) was just as amazing as his sister. Born into that astounding clan twelve years after Tove, at 16 he started writing – and selling – novels (nine in total). He also taught himself English because there weren’t enough Swedish-language translations of books available for his voracious reading appetite.

In 1956, he began co-scripting the Moomin newspaper strip at his sister’s request: injecting his own brand of witty whimsicality to ‘Moomin Goes Wild West’. He had been Tove’s translator from the start, seamlessly converting her Swedish text into English. When her contract with The London Evening News expired in 1959, Lars Jansson officially took over the feature, having spent the interim period learning to draw and perfectly mimic his sister’s cartooning style. He had done so in secret, with the assistance and tutelage of their mother Signe. From 1961 to the strip’s end in 1974, he was sole steersman of the newspaper iteration of trollish tails.

Lasse was a man of many parts: other careers including writer, translator, aerial photographer and professional gold miner. He was the basis and model for the cast’s cool kid Snufkin…

Lars’ Moomins was subtly sharper than his sister’s version and he was far more in tune with the quirky British sense of humour, but his whimsy and wry sense of wonder was every bit as compelling. In 1990, long after the original series, he began a new career, working with Dennis Livson (designer of Finland’s acclaimed theme park Moomin World) as producers of Japanese anime series The Moomins and – in 1993 with daughter Sophia – on new Moomin strips…

Moomintrolls are easy-going free spirits: natural bohemians untroubled by hidebound domestic mores and most societal pressures. Moominmama is warm, kindly tolerant and capable but perhaps overly concerned with propriety and appearances, whilst devoted spouse Moominpappa spends most of his time trying to rekindle his adventurous youth or dreaming of fantastic exploits.

Their son Moomin is a meek, dreamy boy with confusing ambitions. He adores their permanent houseguest the Snorkmaiden – although that impressionable, flighty gamin much prefers to play things slowly whilst hoping for somebody potentially better to come along…

The seventh oversized (310 x 221 mm) monochrome hardback compilation gathers serial strip sagas #26-29, and opens with Lars firmly in charge and puckishly re-exploring human frailties and foibles via a sophisticate poke at the shifting political climate…

Craftily casting cats among pigeons, 26th escapade ‘Moomin the Colonist’ finds armchair adventurer Moominpappa resenting the advent of the annual hibernation and rashly listening to his bookish boy, who has been reading about colonisation…

Soon he has packed up the family and a few close friends and set out to conquer fresh fields and pastures new. With Mymble and Little My, Mrs Fillyjonk, her daughters and a cow in tow, the eager expansionists head off across the frozen land and don’t stop until they reach a tropical desert island where they start setting up a new civilisation combining the best of the old world with lots of fresh ideas on how society should be run…

Sadly, their neighbours from back home have sneakily copied the Moomin movement and before long the new continent is embroiled in a passive-aggressive, slyly competitive struggle for control, with scurrilous reprobate Stinky and his pals playing the bad guys behind the Palm Tree Curtain…

Following the mutual collapse of colonialism, outrageous satire gives way to wicked sarcasm as ‘Moomin and the Scouts’ recounts how energetic Mr Brisk’s passion for the outdoor life, badges and bossing children envelopes the instinctively sedentary Moomins and unleashes all kinds of disruptive chaos. With scouts running wild amongst the trees it just seems easier to join them rather than seek to beat them and let nature disrupt the movement from within…especially after Moomin starts hanging around with Miss Brisk’s Girl Guides and the generally dismissive Snorkmaiden feels oddly conflicted…

The perils of property and stain of status upsets the orderly life of the clan when Moominpappa unexpectedly comes into a major inheritance in ‘Moomin and the Farm’. Grievously afflicted by a terrible case of noblesse oblige, the family uproot themselves and retire to stately Gobble Manor to perpetuate the line of landed gentry on a modern working arable and pastoral estate.

Adapting to wealth and property is one thing and even accommodating the legion of ancestral ghosts is but another strand of Duty, but the effort of taking on and even perpetuating centuries of unearned privilege proves far too weighty a burden for all concerned… before the increasingly untenable situation typically corrects itself…

Back in their beloved house and rearranging furniture, a dropped chest disgorges an ancient map and triggers another wild dreamers’ quest in ‘Moomin and the Gold-fields’…

Unable to refuse adventure when it’s dangled in front of their exuberant noses, father and son are soon trekking the wilds and digging random holes thanks to the supremely unclear chart, and before long the entire valley is afflicted with gold rush fever.

With law, common decency and even good manners abandoned to greed as the sedate dell becomes a boisterous and sordid boom town, all Moominmama can do is maintain her dignity and wait for the madness to pass…

This deceptively barbed and edgy compilation closes with ‘Lars Jansson: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get to Work’ by family biographer Juhani Tolvanen, extolling his many worthy attributes and more besides…

These are truly magical tales for the young, laced with the devastating observation and razor-sharp mature wit which enhances and elevates only the greatest kids’ stories into classics of literature. These volumes – both Tove and Lars’ – comprise an international treasure trove no fan of the medium – or carbon-based lifeform with even a hint of heart and soul – can afford to be without.
© 2012 Solo/Bulls except “Lars Jansson: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get to Work” © 2011, 2012 Juhani Tolvanen. All rights reserved.

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The Phantom: The Complete Sundays Archive Volume Three 1945-1949


By Lee Falk, Ray Moore & Wilson McCoy: introduction by Daniel Herman (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-100-7 (HB/Digital edition)

Born Leon Harrison Gross, Lee Falk created the Ghost Who Walks at the request of his King Features Syndicate employers who were already making history, public headway and loads of money with his first strip sensation Mandrake the Magician. Although technically not the first ever costumed champion in comics, The Phantom became the prototype paladin to wear a skin-tight body-stocking and the first to have a mask with opaque eye-slits…

The generational champion debuted on February 17th 1936, in an extended sequence pitting him against an ancient global confederation of pirates. Falk wrote and drew the daily strip for the first two weeks before handing over illustration to artist Ray Moore. The spectacular and hugely influential Sunday feature began in May 1939.

For such a long-lived, influential series, in terms of compendia or graphic collections, The Phantom has been quite poorly served in the English language market (except for the Antipodes, where he has always been accorded the status of a pop culture god). Many companies have sought to collect strips from one of the longest continually running adventure serials in publishing history, but in no systematic or chronological order and never with any sustained success. That began to be rectified when archival specialists Hermes Press launched their curated collections…

This third edition is a lovely and large (229 x 330 mm) landscape hardback/digital tome, displaying a complete full colour Sunday per page. Released in March 2016, its 208 pages are stuffed with sumptuous visual goodies like panel and logo close-ups, comics covers and lots of original art and opens with publisher Daniel Herman’s ‘Introduction: The Sunday’s Continue…’ recapping all you need to know about the feature and disclosing how Wilson McCoy assumed the illustrator’s role from Ray Moore – and why nobody knows exactly when he did…

For those who came in late: 400 years previously, a British mariner survived an attack by pirates, and – after washing ashore on the African coast – swore on the skull of his father’s murderer to dedicate his life and that of his descendants to destroying all pirates and criminals. The Phantom fights evil and injustice from his fabulous lair deep in the jungles of Bengali. Throughout Africa and Asia he is known as the “Ghost Who Walks”…

His unchanging appearance and unswerving war against injustice led to his being considered an immortal avenger by the uneducated, credulous and wicked. Down the decades, one heroic son after another has inherited the task, fought and died in an unbroken family line, with the latest wearer of the mask indistinguishable from the first and proudly continuing the never-ending battle.

In his first published exploit the Phantom met and fell for wealthy American adventurer Diane Palmer and his passion for her was soon reciprocated and returned and she became a continuing presence in both iterations of the series as ally, partner, sounding board, a means of reader identification and naturally a plot pawn and perennial hostage to fortune.

Almost every saga featured powerful, capable and remarkably attractive women as both heroes and villains, and in opening tale ‘Queen Pera the Perfect’ (running from December 9th 1945 to March 17th 1946), Diana saw the tables turned…

The aforementioned ruler of remote but rich Karola was constrained to find a husband, and so sent her fanatical minions into the world to find a man worthy of her. They returned with a musical genius, celebrated fighter pilot, champion pugilist and cinema’s greatest lover, but wherever they went they heard legends of an incredible superman…

After The Phantom repeatedly refuses her men’s offer, and gives her stern lesson in manners, she responds by having him imprisoned in her dungeons until he sees sense, and this time it’s his true love who has to save the day…

Spanning March 24th to August 4th 1946, ‘King of Beasts’ sees the liberated champion retuned to Bengali in time for Diana to be unjustly imprisoned. A priceless pearl necklace has been stolen from a maharajah and nobody believes the story of who actually took it: not the police and certainly not American mobster Poison Ivy and his boys…

When The Phantom tries to engineer a jailbreak, he’s caught too and charged with being an accomplice, only for the true thief to free him and Diana by sending a pickpocketing monkey to unlock their cell. In the ensuing flight, Diana is snatched by the mobsters, who don’t believe a word about a hidden mastermind using trained beasts to burgle. That all changes when a trained troop of elephants bust into the bank and porcupines empty a packed casino for their masked master…

With chaos unleashed, The Phantom retrenches and calls in his own equine ally and canine corps. Mighty steed Hero and lupine assistant Devil soon track down the King of Beasts who is far from what anyone expected. However even after he’s handled, there’s still increasingly murderous Poison Ivy to deal with…

Another female fury debuts in ‘The Scarlet Sorceress’ (August 11th – December 22nd) as a royal visit to the Deep Woods of the Bandar People introduces little Princess Valerie and her grandfather the Rajah of Volara. The child will soon become a pawn in a wicked plot…

When the princess of neighbouring kingdom Wogu falls ill, a devious manipulator “prophesies ” that only golden-haired Valerie’s blood can save the ailing waif, prompting a kidnapping and a frantically fast response from the Ghost Who Walks. Not all the monstrous forces set against him can slow the Phantom, but after exposing the witch as a charlatan, the hero discovers that he’s fighting not a villain but another victim. Soon, however, his efforts save all involved and pacify two kingdoms…

December 29th 1946 to June 29th 1947 finds The Phantom once more battling to save Diana after the filthy rich and spoiled Potentate of Ptjar Prince Pepe abducts her to be his very best bride. Law and reason mean nothing to the repulsive despot and by the time the hero reaches the distant kingdom, she is beyond even the Ghost’s reach. His only recourse is to play Pepe’s game and in a dozen days complete ‘The 12 Tasks’ conceived to frustrate and humiliate the hero. However, wit and ingenuity married to his mighty physicality make short work of the impossible – such as capturing an invulnerable giant bandit, emptying a river of carnivorous fish, banishing every shark in the bay or stopping all crime for 24 hours – and despite Pepe’s cheating equivocations the final task changes the nation forever and for the better…

A return to jungle warfare and tribal feuding underpins ‘The Dragon God’ (July 26th to November 16th) as Diana’s interest in an ancient Wambesi idol presages the fire-breathing saurian coming to life and demanding its worshippers kill and plunder their neighbours the Ulangi. With “The Phantom’s Peace” broken, the Ghost Walks amongst them to re-establish order and quickly discovers white instigators and recovered wartime weaponry behind the uprising, but once begun war has its own momentum and tribal grudges run deep and burn forever…

With bloodshed ended, a change of pace and tone heralds the return of an appalling duo who had previously made life miserable for The Phantom. Spanning November 23rd 1947 to May16th 1948, ‘The Marshall Sisters’ sees over-privileged brats Lana and Greta return to Africa in a ruthless no-holds barred competition to seduce and wed the mighty jungle avenger. This is after their last attempt to land the ultimate trophy husband was foiled by Diana Palmer…

When allure, deception and blackmail all fail, the hellions even try shanghaiing and blunt force trauma to achieve their aims, but lose all control when the various thugs they hire hijack the caper…

A relatively short story running from May 23rd through September 5th follows, revealing how a long-running annual sporting contest devised by the original ancestral Phantom has served to ameliorate tribal tensions for four centuries. Although its dollar value is meaningless to the competitors who strive for pride and bragging rights alone, the gem-stuffed urn that acts as ‘The Phantom Trophy’ is an irresistible prize for cop-killing fugitives Spike and Grunt.

When they rope in more scallywags to swipe the prize from the previous holders/custodians, before it can be handed over to the new champions tribal war erupts. Although The Phantom hunts the thieves he might be too late as naked greed turns the rogues against each other…

The final sequence in this volume visits ‘The Haunted Castle’ (September 12th 1948 – February 13th 1949) as Diana goes exploring alone and is propelled into wild unexplored country. As The Phantom and Devil search for her, she wanders a lost valley whose people are enslaved by sinister wizard Great Moogoo who shrinks anyone who opposes him to the size of a plaster gnome and adds them to his terrifying garden…

As the lascivious sorcerer captures her, Diana’s man has tracked her to the stone citadel and begun a one-man siege that exposes his nefarious trickery and wrecks his powerbase…

Taken from America’s immediate post-war period, these brief encounters are bold, brash, uncomplicated fare, full of despicable rogues, lost kingdoms, savage tribes, dangerous but still redeemable dames and very bad guys, but thrillingly reassuring entertainment for all that. Just remember, different times have different values. If the kind of fare you’d encounter in a 1940s Tarzan movie or cop thriller might offend, you should consider carefully before starting this…

Finally rediscovered, these lost treasures are especially rewarding as the material is still fresh, entertaining and addictively compelling. However, even if it were only of historical value (or just printed for Australians – manic devotees of the implacable champion from the get-go) surely the Ghost Who Walks is worthy of a little of your time?
The Phantom® © 1945-1949 and 2016 King Features Syndicate, Inc. ® Hearst Holdings, Inc. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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Gomer Goof volume 6: Gomer: Gofer, Loafer


By Franquin, with Michel, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-535-6 (PB Album/Digital edition)

Like so much in Franco-Belgian comics, it all started with Le Journal de Spirou, which debuted on April 2nd 1938, with its iconic lead strip created by François Robert Velter AKA Rob-Vel. In 1943, publisher Dupuis purchased all rights to the comic and its titular star, and comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm for the redheaded kid’s further exploits as the magazine gradually became a cornerstone of European culture.

In 1946, Jijé’s assistant André Franquin was handed creative control. Slowly moving from gag vignettes to extended adventure serials, Franquin introduced a broad and engaging supporting cast of regulars as well as phenomenally popular wonder beast The Marsupilami. Debuting in 1952 (in Spirou et les héritiers) that critter eventually became a spin-off star of screen, plush toys, console games and albums in his own right.

Franquin crafted increasingly fantastic and absorbing Spirou sagas until a final resignation in 1969. Over two decades he had enlarged the feature’s scope and horizons, until it became purely his own. In almost every episode, fans met startling and memorable new characters like comrade/rival Fantasio, crackpot inventor Count of Champignac and even supervillains. Spirou & Fantasio evolved into globetrotting journalists visiting exotic places, exposing crimes, exploring the incredible and clashing with bizarre and exotic arch-enemies.

Throughout it all, Fantasio remained a full-fledged – albeit fictional – Le Journal de Spirou reporter who had to pop into the office between cases. Sadly, lurking there was an accident-prone, big-headed junior in charge of minor jobs and dogs-bodying. He was Gaston Lagaffe – Franquin’s other immortal creation…

There’s a long tradition of comics personalising fictitiously mysterious creatives and the arcane processes they indulge in, whether it’s the Marvel Bullpen or DC Thomson’s lugubrious Editor and underlings at The Beano and Dandy – it’s a truly international practise.

Occasional asides on text pages featured well-meaning foul-up/office gofer “Gaston” (who debuted in #985, February 28th 1957). He grew to be one of the most popular and perennial components of the comic, whether as a guest in Spirou’s cases or his own short illustrated strips and faux editorial reports on the editorial pages.

In terms of actual schtick and delivery, older readers will recognise favourite beats and timeless elements of well-intentioned self-delusion as seen in Benny Hill and Jacques Tati and recognise recurring situations from Some Mothers Do Have ’Em or Mr Bean. It’s slapstick, paralysing puns, infernal ingenuity and invention, pomposity lampooned and no good deed going noticed, rewarded or unpunished…

As previously stated, Gaston/Gomer draws a regular pay check (let’s not dignify or mis-categorise what he does as “work”) from Spirou’s editorial offices: reporting to journalist Fantasio, or complicating the lives of office manager Léon Prunelle and other, more diligent staffers, all whilst effectively ignoring those minor jobs he’s paid to handle. These include page paste-up, posting (initially fragile) packages and editing readers’ letters… and that’s the official reason why fans’ requests and suggestions are never answered…

Gomer is lazy, peckish, opinionated, ever-ravenous, impetuous, underfed, forgetful and eternally hungry, with his most manic moments all stemming from cutting work corners and stashing or illicitly consuming contraband food in the office…

This leads to constant clashes with police officer Longsnoot and fireman Captain Morwater, yet our office oaf remains eternally easy-going and incorrigible. Only three questions are really important here: why everyone keeps giving him one last chance, what can gentle, lovelorn Miss Jeanne possible see in the self-opinionated idiot and will angry capitalist/ever-outraged financier De Mesmaeker ever get his perennial, pestiferous contracts signed?

From a reformatted edition of earlier strips that were remastered in 1987, Gaston – Le repos du Gaffeur becomes Cinebook’s sixth translated compilation: again focussing on non-stop all-Franquin comics gags in single-page bursts.

Here our well-meaning, overly helpful know-it-all/office hindrance invents more stuff that makes life unnecessarily dangerous (such as super-sticky plastic floor wax, “handchairs”, hyper-elastic paddleball bats, an anti-burglary system or his own Marsupilami onesie) and proves that even when he actually does his job – like tidying the office or bringing papers – the gods and his own ill-fortune ensure the result is chaos and calamity…

There are further catastrophic developments in the evolution of his Instrument of Musical Destruction – the truly terrifying Brontosaurophone/Goofophone. In celebration of the magazine’s 600th issue it is electrified and “improved” by modern amplifiers and features ponderously in the boy’s new band – with shocking consequences. Other G-phone inclusions vex the military and pauperise anyone with windows, watches or glasses…

We experience first-hand the appalling fallout of Gomer’s new hobby, as enraged and often wounded beachgoers are caught in the blast radius of his kite-flying, leading to the return of opposite number Jules-from-Smith’s-across-the-street.

This office junior is a like-minded soul and born accomplice, always eager to slope off for a chat: a confirmed devotee of Gomer’s methods of passing the time whilst at work. He even collaborates on any retaliations Gomer inflicts on officer Longsnoot, but here regrets becoming a guinea pig for his inventive pal’s anti-moth deterrent. Moreover, at least one bug spray delivery system finds greater purpose as a means of aerial transportation…

As summer progresses towards Christmas, there are many holiday moments, but Gomer spends most of them tinkering with his infernal congestion-powered pride-&-joy. Many strips feature his doomed love affair with and manic efforts to modify and mollify the accursed motorised atrocity he calls his car. Sadly, the decrepit, dilapidated Fiat 509 is more in need of a merciful execution than his many desperately well-meant engineering interventions to counter its lethal road pollution and failure to function…

The remainder of the volume’s picture strip pandemonium encapsulates the imbecile’s numerous clashes with a bowling ball that clearly despises him; office culinary near-misses (dubbed by lucky survivor Lebrac as “horror-cuisine”) ranging from arson-in-the-raw to political assassination attempts, as well as dabbling with radio-controlled model planes, attempts at getting rid of minor illnesses, ailments and new office innovations.

The lad does try a few moonlighting jobs, but security guard in a China shop, musical backing vocalist and personal plumber are never going to work out, whilst attempts to save and replace the Christmas turkey with crepes are equally ambitious-but-doomed…

In the recurrent saga of office and interpersonal politics, the Goof finds himself the target of increasingly arcane and ingenious pranks, and naturally retaliates in good spirit. Of course, it all gets out of hand when Lebrac introduces termites to the Goofophone and they reject it in favour of tastier fare …like bricks and mortar.

Benighted industrialist De Mesmaeker learns a hard lesson when he foolishly invests in a goof gadget and Gomer increasingly shows his softer side by adopting new pets to keep his goldfish company. Of course, wild mice, a surly blacked-headed gull and the feral cat from behind the building wouldn’t be most people’s first choices, but as they settle in the office staff quickly learn to steer clear of them…

Far better enjoyed than précised or described, these strips allowed Franquin and occasional co-scenarists Michel, Yvan Delporte & Jidéhem (AKA Jean De Mesmaeker – just one of many in-joke analogues who populate the strip) to flex their whimsical muscles and even subversively sneak in some satirical support for their beliefs in pacifism, environmentalism and animal rights. These gags remain supreme examples of all-ages comedy: wholesome, barbed, daft and incrementally funnier with every re-reading.

Why haven’t you Goofed off yet?
© Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 2009 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2020 Cinebook Ltd.

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Yoko Tsuno volume 15: Wotan’s Fire


By Roger Leloup, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-536-3 (Album PB)

In 1970, indomitable intellectual adventurer and “electronics engineer” Yoko Tsuno began her career in Le Journal de Spirou. She is still delighting readers and making new fans to this day in amazing, action-packed, astoundingly accessible adventures which are amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and far-ranging comics thrillers ever created.

The globe-girdling, space-&-time-spanning epics were devised by monumentally multi-talented Belgian maestro Roger Leloup, who began his own solo career after working as a studio assistant and technical artist on Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin, beginning in 1953.

Compellingly told, superbly imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of any individual yarn may seem – always firmly grounded in hyper-realistic settings underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles, Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of a wave of strips revolutionising European comics.

That long-overdue sea-change heralded the rise of competent, clever, brave and formidably capable female protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals; elevating Continental comics in the process. These endeavours are as engaging and empowering now as they ever were, and none more so than the trials and tribulations of Miss Tsuno.

Her first outings (the still unavailable Hold-up en hi-fi, La belle et la bête and Cap 351) were mere introductory vignettes before the unflappable troubleshooter and her valiant if lesser male comrades Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen properly hit their stride with premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange in 1971 (Le Journal de Spirou’s May 13th edition)…

Yoko’s cases include explosive exploits in exotic corners of our world, sinister deep-space sagas and even time-travelling jaunts. There are 30 European albums to date but only 16 translated into English thus far, and – ironically – none of them digitally.

First serialised in LJdS #2388-2391, Le feu de Wotan hails from 1984: a compelling science crime thriller that was the 19th astounding album. It reached us Brits as Cinebook’s 15th outing, delivering dark drama, murderous mystery and enthralling intrigue…

It begins as Yoko Tsuno arrives at Eltz Castle near Koblenz. She has returned to West Germany after being contacted by an old pal with a problem. Ingrid Hallberg is one of the world’s most esteemed classical musicians and has been hired by the Richter family to examine and assess their collection of ancient musical instruments. On discovering something extraordinary, she immediately contacted her old partner in peril…

Their first encounter (see The Devil’s Organ) was strange and deadly, and now, surrounded by a daunting team of private security guards and other suspicious characters, Ingrid has called in the freelance electrical engineer to assess the castle’s “acoustic qualities”. It’s a ploy masking the fact that Ingrid has uncovered another superweapon from history…

Sneaking around to avoid the suspiciously constant attention of architecture student Franz Thaler, Ingrid shows Yoko a bizarre futuristic battery erratically emitting electrical charges and a larger, deconstructed device in an attic. When Yoko assembles it, the result looks very like a giant gun…

As a storm builds that night, Yoko learns former resident Hans Richter was an experimental physicist who died in 1930s. He built both mechanisms and it appears the briefcase-sized battery connects to the larger device: a tool that fires bolts of lightning …it’s a Death Ray!

Before they can react, Franz steals the battery and locks them in, but his frantic escape is ended when lightning is seemingly pulled from the turbulent skies into the car he’s driving…

Acting quickly, Ingrid and Yoko recover the unharmed battery from the wreck, exploiting the guards’ uncharacteristic eagerness to cover up the event. Later, searching Franz’s room for clues, Yoko finds a radio and is startled to hear from someone who was giving the dead man orders…

A complex string of anonymised instructions and directions soon leads Yoko and Ingrid across country to Wupperthal and a secret rendezvous on an automated suspended railway train. They are being closely observed and followed…

Splitting up, Ingrid follows the “sky-train” as, in the first carriage, Yoko meets Professor Zimmer: Richter’s supervisor on the “Wotan’s Fire” project. He tells her all about the endeavour and how it ultimately killed Richter. In the course of their discussions they realise that his instructions to her had been intercepted and altered. Both have stumbled into a trap set by an unsuspected third agency…

Confronted by a gunman, Yoko deftly disarms the attacker, but her escape is foiled when everyone disembarks at Oberbarmen and she find two more villains waiting. They are holding a gun to Ingrid’s head…

However, when they trade the battery for her, Yoko retains crucial computer discs. As the thieves flee, she realises it’s all as the aged professor hoped. Allying with him and tech businessman/secret agent Peter Hertzel, Yoko learns the plot was allowed to unfold thus in an effort to locate a full-scale version of Richter’s device and foil plans to terrorise the world for profit…

Hertzel pays her a small fortune to help him stop them and soon she and her trusted comrades Vic Van Steen and Pol Paris are in action again…

After deducing where and how the terrorists will strike, the troubleshooters move rapidly. With Ingrid and Zimmer along for the ride, they are soon repairing the long-abandoned bunker installation Zimmer and Richter used to perfect the original weapon: charging more super-batteries to literally fight fire with fire. It works, but almost costs another life…

The final act opens with Yoko spectacularly boarding an oil supertanker at sea to convince the captain that his vessel is about to be an example and object lesson of ruthless criminals.

Yoko’s plan is risky: using their own death ray to counter the impending attack. However, she’s not so much worried about whose gun is bigger, only that by saving the ship and crew she must kill the crooks. That’s when she risks everything on a suicidal strategy, desperate to save the terrorists from themselves…

Rocket-paced, deviously twisted and terrifying plausible, this race against time and war against greed is a superb and mesmerising thrill ride that shows not just the smarts and combat savvy of our adventuring crusader but also her aiding compassion.

As always, the most potent asset of these edgy dramas is the astonishingly authentic and hyper-realistic settings, benefitting from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail. Tourists could use these pages as an A-Z and never get lost, except in rapturous wonder…

Wotan’s Fire is a magnificently wide-screen thriller, tense and satisfying, and will appeal to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy or breathtaking derring-do.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1984 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2020 © Cinebook Ltd.

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E-Man – The Early Years


By Nicola Cuti & Joe Staton & various (First Comics Inc.)
ISBN: 978-1-61855-000-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

In 1973, superheroes were in a severe decline and the few surviving publishers in the industry were making most of their money from genre fare like war, westerns, kids cartoon and licensed titles (if they could secure them) and particularly horror stories. Such was certainly the case at Charlton Comics: a self-confessed “little company” which nevertheless always punched above its weight.

That was particularly true in terms of talent discovery, with the likes of Dick Giordano, Sam Glanzman, Steve Ditko, Roy Thomas, Denny O’Neil, Jim Aparo, Sam Grainger, Sanho Kim, Wayne Howard, Tom Sutton, Don Newton, Mike Zeck, Roger Stern, Roger Slifer, Bob Layton and John Byrne making a mark there before moving onwards and upwards.

Another major discovery was ultra-versatile cartoonist Joe Staton. He was quickly becoming a fan favourite and shared an off-kilter sense of humour with a Charlton sub-editor who moonlighted as a writer of horror and fantasy for the company’s anthologies…

Nicola “Nick” Cuti (Moonchild, Cannon, Sally Forth, Creepy, Moonie the Starbabe, The Creeper, Spanner’s Galaxy, Captain Cosmos, Starflake the Cosmic Sprite) was born on October 29th 1944. Since then, he’s been an “Underground Comix” cartoonist, animator, film maker, magazine illustrator, movie backdrop designer, novelist, editor and comics scripter.

Between 1972 and 1976 he was assistant to award-winning cartoonist – and Charlton’s general editor – George Wildman (Popeye) who wanted to test the murky waters with a new superhero. He tapped Cuti to write something a bit different and used the experimental vehicle to try-out a succession of features at the back: crafted by creators like Sutton (The Knight), Ditko (Killjoy, Liberty Belle) and Byrne (Rog-2000). Cuti wrote many of them too…

Born January 19th 1948, Joe Staton (Primus, Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, The Six Million Dollar Man, Space 1999, The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Silver Surfer, Green Lantern Corps, Guy Gardner, Legion of Super-Heroes, Millennium, All Star Comics, Power Girl, Metal Men, Doom Patrol, Plastic Man, Mike Danger and more) is a writer and incredibly versatile artist/inker who has been an integral part of American comic books since the early 1970s.

He has worked for dozens of companies, co-creating The Huntress, Killowog, The New Guardians and The Omega Men and in later years made kids comics his metier. During a spectacular run on licensed classic Scooby Doo, he and series scripter Mike Curtis (Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Shanda the Panda) discovered a mutual love for Dick Tracy and – mostly for their own amusement – created tribute strip Major Crime Squad.

That led to them being invited to handle the prestigious Dick Tracy strip (from 2011 to October 2021) but throughout that epic and varied career, Staton regularly re-partnered with Cuti on further adventures of his first triumph…

A pioneering masterpiece of superhero whimsy, E-Man tells the convoluted love story of a alien lifeform and a wonderfully capable and smart earth girl, and the weird life they make for themselves. It all began in 1973 (Happy Golden Anniversary!) in a 10-issue run that was barely noticed by the readership but which affected how many future comics creators remade the medium.

This cheerful and charming collection gathers the E-Man moments from that initial run and includes technically unpublished tales from said run, plus covers and other material from the hero’s revival as part of the Independents Publishing revolution of the 1980s.

We begin with a brace of Introductions as ‘Finding the Right Words for Joe, Nick and Alec Tronn’ by Jon B. Cooke and ‘E-Man: His Beginnings’ by Cuti contextually set the scene for an extraordinary meeting…

Cover-dated October 1973, “Collector’s Item! First Edition!!” E-Man #1 starts at ‘The Beginning’ revealing how, millions of years ago, a star exploded and released a packet of energy that had spontaneous sentience, immense curiosity and no knowledge at all. The bundle of wonder floated across the galaxies seeking intelligence but encountering none until arriving near our world just as a star-ship from Sirius attempts to attain orbit around Pluto.

Infiltrating the vessel, the energy being converts into matter, duplicating one of the robots serving the giant Brain commanding the mission and overhears how the warlike cyborg is here to test an experimental ultra-weapon on the frozen target. Sadly, curiosity proves fatal and the sudden weight increase sends the ship careening out of control and ultimately into the atmosphere of the blue-green planet third out from the sun…

Some time later, college student Katrinka Colchnzski is just finishing her evening job. She is a tough, brilliant, capable and proudly independent: paying for her degree as burlesque dancer Nova Kane when one of the lightbulbs in her dressing room begs her for help.

Freeing the energy creature and quickly striking up a friendship with the naïve, affably clueless being – who has unselfconsciously turned into a real stud-muffin by human standards – she is abruptly drawn into a world of insane danger when her landlord tries to kill her. It transpires that in ‘The Brain and the Bomb’ the super cerebral invader has also survived the crash and is vengefully testing hate-gas on the inhabitants…

Without hesitation Nova and the stranger seek out and stop the plot…

These tales were originally quite quirkily coloured by Wendy Fiore and are reconstructed here by Matt Webb, who also shades the cover to Original E-Man #1: a reprint series released by First Comics in October 1985 to supplement their revival of the hero. That book also revisited the second escapade of guileless alien visitor Alec Tronn as first seen in E-Man #2’s ‘The Entropy Twins’ (December 1973). Here, the Brain from Sirius unleashes a second super-weapon against E-Man and Nova: an artificially-bred loving couple who can casually manipulate the forces of order and chaos.

Stalking and befriending the childlike hero and his charming cohabitator, Michael and Juno cause catastrophic accidents which almost kill Nova, only to learn that her special friend Alec is as vengeful as any child when the things he loves are threatened…

An unused cover from 1974 accompanies article ‘The Energy and Paper Crisis’, explaining how a global power shortage both inspired and derailed a comic response. The upshot was that the story intended for the fourth issue ended up in #3, and the third followed after. The chronological anomaly is corrected here with E-Man #4 going first.

Cover-dated August 1974, ‘City in the Sand’ sees the odd couple in Egypt with exotic dancer Nova showing belly dancers how it’s done at night and pursuing her archaeological studies during the day. With Alec in tow, she unearths an ancient mystery and – thanks to E-Man – functional time machine: propelling them back millennia to uncover a link between the pharaohs and a lost colony of aliens afflicted with mad militarism and a sinister plague…

December 1985’s cover of Original E-Man and Michael Mauser #3 precedes June 1974’s E-Man #3, wherein ‘The Energy Crisis!’ blacking out America and the world leads oil baron Samuel Boar to unleash a robotic Battery to kidnap useless, over-abundant humans and turn them into a new fuel source.

When Nova vanishes, E-Man stops powering up hospitals to go looking for her. He is unaware that Nova had already engaged seedy private eye Michael – “don’t call me Mickey” – Mauser to find her fellow dancer Rosie Rhedd after she was sucked into a brick wall…

The sordid shamus became a fixture and even won his own series in Vengeance Squad….

The invasion of Boar’s citadel and clash with ‘The Battery’ is fast and furious and leads to the villain’s capture but would have shocking consequences in the fullness of time…

The tale ends with a direct plea to readers to protect the environment and “save the Earth!”. It’s a shame more kids didn’t buy this comic back then and avoid the mess we’re all in now…

Staton had been growing in skill and confidence and by this story had taken to adding what we now call easter eggs to his art. Backgrounds, minor characters and especially posters and newspapers provided a rich source of added whimsy, commentary and fun. They are a sheer delight to this day…

The Original E-Man #2 cover from October 1985 leads into November 1974’s #5 as ‘The City Swallower’ sees a day at the beach devolve into a transdimensional excursion. When Alec follows a hippy mermaid (based on contemporary and legendary fandom icon Heidi Saha) back to her realm he’s just in time to spearhead a war against a beast that consumed helpless conurbations, after which January 1986’s Original E-Man and Michael Mauser #4 cover leads to monster madness in E-Man #6.

‘Wunder-world’ – cover-dated January 1975 – sees an old enemy resurface when Alec and Nova visit a theme park, using robots, movie horrors, war machines and psychological warfare to attack the unlikely couple…

A full, illustrated list of ‘E-Man and Nova – Other Appearances’ is followed by #7’s ‘TV Man’ (March 1975) as another old enemy uses the airwaves and super-science to turn the energy- man into Nova’s worst nightmares and Mauser reappears to save the day. It’s followed by Original E-Man and Michael Mauser #5’s cover (February 1986) and heralds a really big change…

With #8’s full-length epic ‘The Inner Sun’ (May 1975) the creators brilliantly exploit the capricious, functionally implausible nature of comics books to deliver a superb slice of nonsense that begins when a giant jungle girl attacks New York. When she then busts into Mauser’s office…

Her trail leads to Samuel Boar and a primeval world under the North Pole…

Unless I’ve already convinced you to seek this book out, be warned that there’s a major spoiler ahead. Stop here if you’re going to read the actual stories. Or not. It’s your choice.

By the time E-Man gets there though, the villain has kidnapped Nova and triggered a disaster that kills her. It’s not anything to worry about as – through typically miraculous circumstances – she reconstitutes herself with the same powers as boyfriend Alec and begins her own crime crushing career…

March 1986’s cover to Original E-Man and Michael Mauser #6 is accompanied by text feature ‘Other Appearances by Michael Mauser’ before E-Man #9 (July 1975) unleashes ‘The Genius Plant’ which is foreshadow by brief ‘Prologue! History of E-Man and Nova’…

Accompanied by new cast member Teddy – a reformed evil koala – the hot couple stumble into a plot by a cabal of scientists to hyper-enhance their intellects and rule the world. After they foil that, one final cover – Original E-Man and Michael Mauser #7 (April 1986) – segues into E-Man #10 (September 1975) as Nova meets the first girl Alec met when he landed on Earth. Although initially jealous, after meeting Maisy-June Bragg, she’s with her beau all the way when what appear to be unnatural forces reduce the gentle rural bombshell into ‘The Witch of Hog Hollow’ who really needs her old “genie” to save her…

E-Man was simultaneously Charlton’s worst selling retail title but its best via direct subscription, which kept it going long after Wildman should have killed it, but at last the axe fell. When it died, there were a couple of tales still in the pipeline which eventually saw print in the company’s in-house fanzine – which was edited by Bob Layton.

Coloured by Webb, Staton’s cover for Charlton Bullseye #2 (1975) and Charlton Bullseye #4 (March/April 1976) here precede ‘…And Why the Sea is Boiling Hot’ (colour by Webb & Michael Watkins) wherein the energy-beings investigate missing shipping and discover that a ghost galleon is actually an alien artefact.

One final story – starring Nova Kane – details a stunning truth. When that exploding sun detonated way back when, it spawned more than one sentient energy-being – and courtesy of FIRST COMICS INC. – Alec’s opposite number ‘Vamfire’ finally arrives on Earth in a scary yarn coloured by Alex Wald. This frenzied female aspect is a ravenous power leech but Nova and E-Man soon find a way to dispel her “hanger-pangs”…

Biographies of Nicola Cuti and Joe Staton close this archive of sheer escapist delight: capping a glorious revisitation of sharper, smarter, funnier days in comics. However it’s not too late to tune in and get turned on to E-Man and Nova.
© 1973-1974 Charlton Comics, reprinted in Original E-Man and Mauser #1-7 © 1985-1986, First Comics, Inc. All new material © 2011, Joe Staton/First Comics, Inc.). All Rights Reserved.

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Mighty Samson Archives volume 2


By Otto Binder, Frank Thorne, Jack Sparling, Morris Gollub, George Wilson, Joe Certa, Mike Sekowsky, George Roussos & various (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-659-6 (HB)

These days all the attention in comics circles goes to big-hitters and headline-grabbing ground-breakers, but once upon a time, when funnybooks were cheap as well as plentiful, a kid (whatever their age) could afford to follow the pack and still find time and room to enjoy quirky outliers: B through Z listers, oddly off-kilter concepts and champions falling far short of the accepted parameters of standard super-types…

A classic example of that exuberant freedom of expression was the relatively angst-free dystopian tomorrow of Mighty Samson, who had a sporadic yet extended comics career of 32 issues spanning 1964 to 1982.

Although set in the aftermath of an atomic Armageddon, the story of the survivors was a blend of updated myth, pioneer adventure and superhero shtick, liberally leavened with variations of those incredible creatures and sci fi monsters the industry thrived on back then.

Comics colossus Dell/Gold Key/Whitman had one of the most complicated publishing set-ups in history, but that didn’t matter one iota to kids of all ages who consumed their vastly varied product. Based in Racine, Wisconsin, Whitman had been a crucial component of monolithic Western Publishing and Lithography Company since 1915: drawing upon huge commercial resources and industry connections that came with editorial offices on both coasts. They even boasted a subsidiary printing plant in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Another connection was with fellow Western subsidiary K.K. Publications (named for licensing legend Kay Kamen who facilitated extremely lucrative “license to print money” merchandising deals for Walt Disney Studios between 1933 and 1949). From 1938, the affiliated companies’ comic book output was released under a partnership deal with a “pulps” periodical publisher under the umbrella imprint Dell Comics – and again those creative staff and commercial contacts fed into the line-up of the Big Little, Little Golden and Golden Press books for younger children. This partnership ended in 1962 and Western had to swiftly reinvent its comics division as Gold Key.

Western had been a major player since comics’ earliest days, blending a vast tranche of licensed titles – including newspaper strips (like Nancy and Sluggo, Tarzan and The Lone Ranger), TV tie-in and Disney titles with in-house originations such as Turok, Son of Stone, Brain Boy and Kona: Monarch of Monster Isle.

Dell and Western split just as a comic book resurgence triggered a host of new titles and companies, and a superhero boom. Independent of Dell, new outfit Gold Key launched original adventure titles including Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom; Magnus – Robot Fighter; M.A.R.S. Patrol – Total War; Space Family Robinson and many more.

As a publisher, Gold Key never really “got” the melodramatic, frequently mock-heroic Sturm und Drang of the Silver Age superhero boom – although for many of us, the understated functionality of classics like Magnus and Doctor Solar or crime-fighting iterations of classic movie monsters Dracula, Frankenstein and Werewolf were utterly irresistible. The sheer off-the-wall lunacy of features like Neutro or Dr. Spektor I will reserve for a future occasion…

This second splendid full-colour hardback compilation – printed on a reassuringly sturdy and comforting grainy old-school pulp stock rather than glossy paper – gathers Mighty Samson #7-14 spanning September 1966 to May 1968, and begins with a heady appreciation by Paul Tobin (Plants vs Zombies, The Witcher, Angry Birds, Spider-Man, Bandette) in his reminiscent Foreword…

The post-dystopian wonder warrior had been anonymously created by industry giants Otto Binder & Frank Thorne in 1964. Binder was the quintessential jobbing writer. He and his brother Earl were early fans of science fiction, making their first professional sale to Amazing Stories in 1930. As “Eando Binder” their pulp-fiction and novels output continued well into the 1970s, with Otto rightly famed for his creation of primal robotic hero Adam Link.

From 1939 onwards, Otto was also a prolific comic book scripter, most beloved and revered for the invention and perfection of a humorous blend of spectacular action, self-deprecating humour and gentle whimsy as characterised by the Fawcett Captain Marvel line of titles (and later in DC’s Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen). Binder was also constantly employed by many other publishers and amongst his most memorable inventions and innovations are Timely’s Young Allies, Mr. Mind, Brainiac, Krypto the Super Dog and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

In his later life, he moved into editing, producing factual science books and writing for NASA.

Frank Thorne (June 16th 1930 – March 7th 2021) was one of the most individualistic talents in American comics and the series co-creator’s last issue opens this volume. He began his comics career drawing romance stories for Standard Comics beside legendary draughtsman Alex Toth before graduating to better-paid newspaper strips like Perry Mason for King Features Syndicate. For Dell/Gold Key he drew Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim and The Green Hornet, as well as the first few years of this seminal sci-fi classic.

A DC he did compelling work on Tomahawk and Son of Tomahawk before being hired by Roy Thomas at Marvel to illustrate his belated breakthrough strip Red Sonja. Forever-after connected with feisty, earthy, highly sexualised women, in 1978 Thorne created outrageously bawdy (some say vulgar) swordswoman Ghita of Alizarr for Warren’s adult science fantasy anthology 1984/1994 as well as such adult satirical strips as Moonshine McJugs for Playboy and Danger Rangerette for National Lampoon.

Thorne won a National Cartoonists Award for comic books, an Inkpot Award and a Playboy Editorial Award, but was still a fairly by-the-book illustrator at the time of this collection’s content. In fact, it was on Mighty Samson that he opened up and found his own unique artistic vision: one which would carry him to the forefront of stylists with the satirical and erotic works of his later years.

That’s meat for other reviews, but here he and replacement artist Jack Sparling translate Binder’s imaginings into a beguiling otherworld of action, adventure and drama suitable for most kids of all ages and a milieu perfectly in tune with any Kids TV channel today…

Mighty Samson #1 (July 1964) introduced the bombed-out metropolis of N’Yark: a dismal dangerous region where human primitives clung to the ruins, scattered into rival tribes all striving daily against mutated plants and monsters as well as less easily identified blends somewhere in between…

One day when a toddler was grabbed by a predatory plant he casually tore the terror apart with his podgy little hands. Years passed and the child grew tall and clean-limbed, and it was clear that he too was a mutant: immensely strong, incredibly fast and improbably durable…

Impassioned by his mother’s dying words – “protect the weak from the powerful, the good from the evil” – Samson became the champion of his people; battling beasts and monsters imperilling the city. Sadly, those struggles were not without cost, and when he killed an immense Liobear, it cost the young hero his right eye…

The clash proved a turning point for Samson since his wounds were dressed by a stranger named Sharmaine. She and her father Mindor were voluntary outcasts in the city: shunning contact with superstitious tribes whilst gathering lost secrets of science…

They toiled constantly to bring humanity out of its second stone age and, fired with inspiration, Samson joined their self-appointed mission: defending them from all threats as they carry out their work.

Every issue was augmented by mesmerising painted covers by master illustrators Morris Gollub or George Wilson. These covers were initially reproduced text-free on the back of each issue and probably graced many a kid’s bedroom wall way back when. You get those too, but I’d suggest scanners rather than scissors this time around…

The comics were ad free and inner side of those covers generally held monochrome single-page features supplementing the story with historical context, and the factoids. Sadly many are uncredited but when I know who, so will you…

The Altered World odyssey resumes with #7, cover-dated September 1966. ‘World of Darkness’ saw Thorne off in fine style as shattered skyscrapers in N’Yark began sinking into the ground. Investigating the trackless regions under the city, Samson and his allies encounter many horrific beings before mistakenly accusing the subsurface Undermen of waging war on the light-loving Uppermen like themselves. Before long, however, ‘The Enemy Below’ (with artistic assistance from Mike Sekowsky & George Roussos) is identified as being a threat of a wholly bestial and relentless nature, forcing an alliance and only ended by Mindor’s knowledge of pre-disaster atomic weapons…

The inner covers detail ‘The Underground World’ of 1960s subways, escalators and tunnels and hidden service structures ‘Beneath the City’ before #8 signalled a change of vision.

Drawn by Joe Certa, factual-teaser ‘The Magnetic Pole’ led and fed into Binder’s ‘The Migration Mystery’ and concluding chapter ‘The Mental Battle’ as our heroes – and every other human in N’Yark – are seized by a telepathic force pulling them northwards. Aware but unable to resist, Samson and his friends spend months gravitating towards a mineral formation (a “mental North Pole”) in the arctic: helping many others of the thousands of humans caught in the grip, before at last devising a solution that will allow them all to return home.

This tale signalled the debut of another veteran illustrator who would make the title his own.

John Edmond “Jack” Sparling (June 21st 1916-February 15th 1997) was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba but migrated young to the USA. After studying in New Orleans and at the Corcoran School of Art, he left a cartooning gig at the New Orleans Item-Tribune to create the Hap Hopper, Washington Correspondent strip for United Features Syndicate (1940) superseded in 1943 by Claire Voyant.

That strip ended in 1948 and thereafter Sparling concentrated on comic books, becoming a wandering regular whose work appeared in Classics Illustrated, Dell/Gold Key, Marvel, DC, Charlton and others on strips like Robin Hood, Captain America, Tiger Girl, Space Man, Neuro, Secret Six, Eclipso, The Day after Doomsday, Challengers of The Unknown, Unknown Soldier and more.

Ideally suited for short story and humorous fare, he worked continuously for Gold Key’s horror anthologies and was a key player when DC revived its House of Secrets and House of Mystery titles (co-creating with Bob Haney undying horror-host Cain in HoM #175).

Sparling was particularly adept on licensed properties, illustrating Bomba, Family Affair, Six Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, Welcome Back, Kotter, Adam-12, Microbots, The Outer Limits ad nauseum…

With monsters so popular, the company also debuted the Gold Key Club Comic Monster Art page: inviting readers to create their own creepy critters and send them in for publication. The first examples were dreamed up in-house but for later issues, the beasts and bogles came courtesy of the kids. A scattering of them add loony lustre to this book at intermittent moments…

Another new feature began in the following issue. Illustrated by Sparling, ‘Mighty Samson Mutant Monsters’ offered an ongoing bestiary of horrors as seen in Mindor’s notes, beginning with ‘Stone-Throwing Cactus’ and ‘Lightning Beast’…

Bracketed by fact-features ‘Guide Tour of Washington D.C.’ and ‘Washington D.C.’, #9 (cover-dated March 1967) sees the valiant trio back home long enough to discover a fully automated, still-operational bullet train connected to the nation’s former Capital. Sadly, the astounding delights of pre-collapse culture and technology leads to war with ‘The Renegade Robot’, once they debark in DC…

That’s just in time for old enemy Queen Terra of Jerz to suborn an atom-powered Secret Service mechanical bodyguard…

Ordering ‘The Metal Hercules’ to crush and enslave Samson, Terra finds the robot too much for her but still not tough enough to stop the mutant: a dilemma that drives the automaton totally off the rails…

The issue ends with another Mighty Samson Mutant Monsters moment sharing the unnatural history profile of the ‘Net-Casting Spider’

Mighty Samson #10 opens with more of the same – the ‘Heavy-Matter Eagle’ – before a wave of desperate refugees disrupting N’Yark sends the scientific investigators off exploring formerly isolated Staten Island. The lost colony has become a bizarre dichotomy: with humans living in relative luxury in fully automated skyscrapers but unwilling to go below the first three storeys which has become a vast morass on interlinked monster-filled jungle. It was a paradise until Samson’s enemy Kull invaded, driving the soft tribes-folk away, but the ‘Terror in Tallplace Town’ ends as soon as Samson puts his foot down to oust the treacherous ‘King for a Day’…

More readers’ creations segue into #11, where Mighty Samson Mutant Monster ‘Lightning-Bolt Eel’ leads into a tale of unchecked capitalism as new trader Hulko the Swapper begins price gouging both farmers in the hinterlands and N’Yark’s scavengers who until recently, bartered amicably and honestly their edible produce for the city’s salvaged raw materials like scrap iron and reclaimed tinned luxury goods. The process involved shipping goods through wild territory of the Bronx and Long Island: terra incognita festooned with terrifying carnivorous forests infested with ‘The Swamp Rats’ and even worse perils.

When the profiteer pushes too hard, Samson takes action, reclaiming the concrete pathways of the ancients and providing a smooth “Broadway” for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Hulko and his shipping protectionists are understandably unhappy with the new arrangement, but their sabotage attempts to invoke ‘Terror on the Tradeway’ have no effect on giant hero’s policy of free enterprise…

Queen Terra returns in #12 operating a reclaimed, restored and fully-armed US Coast Guard cutter, leading ‘The River Raiders’ bombarding the shore-dwelling tribes of Manhattan island and demanding to be made their empress. Happily, Samson Sharmaine and Mindor are also au fait with naval salvage and ‘The Battle of N’Yark Bay’ swiftly sinks the queen’s schemes… despite the intervention of a few aroused sea beasts formerly asleep in the deep…

The quest for security is synonymous with the search for food and power sources. In #13 Mindor meets another historical detective skilled in the ways of pre-collapse technologists, but ‘The Prophet of Zomzu’ exploits his knowledge of electricity for another kind of power. Thanks to our brawny hero, cruel science despot Merlyn the Magic Maker is the loser in ‘The Wizard’s Showdown’: liberating a tribe of gullible pawns from a ruthless master…

This second sojourn in a broken tomorrow ends with Mighty Samson #14 (May 1968) as a Mighty Samson Mutant Monster briefing on ‘Rooted Sea Serpents’ segues into a chilling and contemporary fable as fisherfolk on the island of N’Yark are threatened by the ‘Menace from Nowhere’. This is a toxic gooey mass carried by the river, polluting their waters and killing the birds and fish they hunt, as well as infuriating all the monsters in the bay.

When Mindor determines the threat is millions of tons of crude oil being forced upriver, the trio voyage south to Florida and find an abandoned automated drilling rig has recently malfunctioned, constantly pouring black poison into the Gulf Stream.

The atomically-powered station is a danger to everything but when Samson shuts it down, he finds himself trapped ‘Between Beasts and Machines’ and joins post-apocalypse Tuaregs of the trackless Miami desert to destroy the unchecked depredations of automated city Technopolis: a robot metropolis of unimaginable treasures guarded by dinosaurs!

Closing with more Gold Key Club Readers Page monsters and full creator biographies, this mighty tome might be short on logic but absolutely revels in fabulous imagination and non-stop action. These sublime yarns typify a lost era’s devotion to fantastic fun: no-nonsense, brain-boggling yarns at once self-contained, episodic, exciting, enticing and deceptively witty.

Bizarre, brilliantly off-kilter and outrageously bombastic, Binder’s myth of a rationalist Hercules battling atom-spawned Titans and devils offers stunning spectacle and thrill-a-minute wonderment from start to finish. Captivatingly limned by Thorne and Sparling, these lost gems from an era when fun was paramount and entertainment a mandatory requirement are comics the way they were and perhaps might be again…
Mighty Samson ® Volume Two ™ & © 2010 Random House, Inc. Under license to Classic Media LCC. All rights reserved. All other material, unless otherwise specified, © 2010 Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Gomer Goof volume 5: Goofball Season


By Franquin & Delporte, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-462-5 (PB Album/Digital edition)

Like so much in Franco-Belgian comics, it started with Le Journal de Spirou. The magazine debuted on April 2nd 1938, with its engaging lead strip created by Rob-Vel (François Robert Velter). In 1943, publishing house Dupuis purchased all rights to the comic and its titular star, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm for the redheaded kid’s exploits. Ultimately the publisher, and editorial office would become characters in their own periodicals…

In 1946 Jijé’s assistant André Franquin was handed creative control of the Spirou strip. He gradually switched from short gag vignettes to extended adventure serials, introducing a broad, engaging cast of regulars and in 1952 created phenomenally popular wonder-beast The Marsupilami. Debuting in Spirou et les héritiers, this critter grew into a spin-off star of screen, plush toy stores, console games and albums in his own right. Franquin continued crafting increasingly fantastic tales and absorbing Spirou sagas until his resignation in 1969.

Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd 1924. Drawing from an early age, the lad only began formal art training at École Saint-Luc in 1943. When the war forced the school’s closure a year later, he worked at Compagnie Belge d’Animation in Brussels, where he met Maurice de Bévére (AKA Lucky Luke creator “Morris”), Pierre Culliford (“Peyo”, of The Smurfs and Benny Breakiron) and Eddy Paape (Valhardi, Luc Orient). All but Peyo signed on with Dupuis in 1945.

Franquin began as a jobbing cartoonist and illustrator, producing covers for Le Moustique and scouting magazine Plein Jeu. During those early days, Franquin and Morris were tutored by Jijé: the chief illustrator at LJdS. He transformed them – and fellow newbie Willy Maltaite (AKA “Will” – Tif et Tondu, Isabelle, Le jardin des désirs) – into a smoothly functioning creative bullpen known as La bande des quatre or “Gang of Four”. They would revolutionise Franco-Belgian comics with their prolific and engaging “Marcinelle school” style of graphic storytelling…

Jijé handed Franquin all responsibilities for the flagship strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriqué (#427, June 20th 1946) and eager office junior ran with it for two decades; enlarging the feature’s scope and horizons until it became purely his own. Almost weekly, fans met startling new characters like comrade/rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor and Merlin of mushroom mechanics the Count of Champignac…

Spirou & Fantasio were reimagined as a globetrotting journalist team: visiting exotic places, exposing crimes, exploring the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of bizarre and exotic arch-enemies.

Throughout all that revolutionary reinvention, Fantasio was still a full-fledged reporter for Le Journal de Spirou and had to frequently pop back to the Dupuis office. Sadly, lurking there – or was it just in the artist’s head? – was an accident-prone, smugly big-headed office junior in charge of minor jobs and dogs-bodying. Franquin dubbed him Gaston Lagaffe…

There’s a long history of fictitiously personalising those mysterious back room creatives and all the arcane processes they indulge in to make our favourite comics, whether it’s Stan Lee’s Marvel Bullpen or DC Thomson’s lugubrious “Mr. Editor” and underlings at The Beano and Dandy. Let me assure you that it’s a truly international practise and the occasional asides on text pages featuring well-meaning foul-up/office gofer Gaston (who debuted in #985, cover-dated February 28th 1957) grew to be one of the most popular components of the comic, whether as short illustrated strips or in faux editorial reports in text-feature form.

On a strictly personal note, I still think current English designation Gomer Goof (this name comes from an earlier, abortive attempt to introduce the character to American audiences) is unwarranted. The quintessentially Franco-Belgian tone and humour doesn’t translate particularly well (la gaffe translates as “blunder” not “idiot”) and the connotation contributes nothing here. When he surprisingly appeared in a 1970s UK Thunderbirds annual as part of an earlier syndication attempt, Gaston was rechristened Cranky Franky. Perhaps they should have kept that one or, best of all, his original designation…

In terms of actual schtick and delivery, older readers might recognise beats of Benny Hill and Jacques Tati in timeless elements of all-consuming, grandiose self-delusion, and spot recurring situations from Some Mothers Do Have ’Em or Mr Bean. It’s all sublimely set up surreal slapstick, paralysing puns, infernal ingenuity and warped invention, with pomposity lampooned, slovenly sloth celebrated and no good deed going noticed, rewarded or unpunished…

As previously stated, Gomer makes his living (let’s not dignify or mis-categorise what he does as “work”) at the Spirou editorial offices: occasionally reporting to go-getting journalist Fantasio, when not complicating the lives of office manager Léon Prunelle and other staffers. He generally ignores the minor design jobs like paste-up, “gofer-ing” and office maintenance he’s paid to handle as well as editing readers’ letters… the official reason why fan requests and suggestions are never answered…

Gomer is lazy, peckish, opinionated, ever-ravenous, impetuous, underfed, forgetful and eternally hungry, with his most manic moments all stemming from “inventing” labour-saving follies, cutting work corners (often load-bearing walls) and stashing or illicitly consuming contraband food in the office…

This causes constant clashes with his co-workers and his smugly superior attitude comfortably extends to police officer Longsnoot and fireman Captain Morwater. However, the office oaf remains eternally easy-going and incorrigible. Only two questions are really important here: why does Fantasio keep giving him one last chance, and what can gentle, beguiling, flighty, impressionable, utterly lovelorn secretary Miss Jeanne possibly see in the self-opinionated idiot?

This 8th collection of strips culled from the pages ofLe Journal de Spirou was originally released in 1970 as Gaston – Lagaffe nous gâte and became Cinebook’s fifth translated tome. It contains more short cartoon tales and rapid-fire all-Franquin comics gags in single-page bursts, with additional mirth contributed by frequent comic confrère Yvan Delporte – Spirou’s editor-in-chief from 1955-1968 and constant ideas man for not only the Goof, but also Idées noires, Isabelle, The Smurfs and many more.

In this instance that partnership includes a brace of comedic text “reports” from the comic magazine’s editorial page in an emphatic and outlandish Look behind the scenes: detailing in two parts ‘The Wonderful World of the Goofophone’ in two revelatory instalments offering insight into the remarkable instrument/atrocity weapon. His devastating musical contraption – also known as the truly terrifying Brontosaurophone – again disrupts commerce, glass, flora, fauna, the environment and most other organic life in earshot…

The techno-nonsense resumes with a chilling and literally shocking advance in scarecrow development, interspersed with the inventor’s crippling intermittent bouts of ailments, bugs and occupational sloth and ennui, only held at bay by another war over parking tickets with officer Longsnoot. The motorised monstrosity Gomer calls his car is an appallingly decrepit and dilapidated Fiat 509 auto(barely)mobile. It is desperately in need of his many well-meant attempts to counter its lethal road pollution emissions. It’s also the main reason he always has the sniffles or wears some kind of bandage, plaster or splint…

Here, Miss Jeanne is further beguiled by Gomer’s solution to broken zips, but less sanguine at his innovations in broaching walnuts: a repeating theme that over weeks shakes buildings, wrecks bowling balls and derails public transport…

Even when she finally gets the big fool alone in the country, all he can think of is playing his infernal musical howitzer. The results would make any sane man question the inventor’s green credentials and ability to hear in human ranges…

There’s a greater role for neighbouring architects/engineers Gutsy & Irongrip who briefly and painfully experience the power of the Goof after he mistakenly misses the door to the Spirou offices. They would probably have paid a fortune for the phenomenal hyper-elastic building material that emerged from his latest home bakery sessions…

More fruitless attempts to sort the mag’s mail and park his beloved car fall foul of air pollution, poor weather and wandering attention: only confirming that cars, chemistry sets and snow do not belong together. Moreover, his unceasing efforts to modernise and automate the office and studio (despite violent resistance and panicked pleas) still fall short of his own high standards and expectations.

The world is simply not ready for the kind of doors, telephones, executive toys, and entertainment systems his febrile mind can conceive of…

All that brainwork naturally exhausts a fellow and many instances here show how a brief nap might be misunderstood as sheer laziness. It’s just like his many well-meaning attempts to mollify ever-outraged financier De Mesmaeker (in-joke analogue of fellow creator Jidéhem – AKA Jean De Mesmaeker): the explosively irate businessman whose ever-failing efforts to get his contracts signed somehow render him a constant and unfortunate victim of the Goof’s particular brand of misfortune…

At least birds and beasts love Gomer, although being followed by a flock of massed avians, a herd of horses and the giant fly he created does upset those around him. Perhaps it’s his quest to invent a completely natural-scented air freshener?

Whatever the cause – or short-term effects –  nothing can long deter the young wonder from his dream of making the world a different – if not actually “better” – place.

This volume ends with a controversial cartoon that raised the ire of The French National Natural Gas Distribution Company/Gaz de France when first seen in the seventies. The corporations PR team had taken legal umbrage to some of Franquin’s satires and demanded redress in print. He complied, but in a way that only inspired even more cartoon calumny and commentary…

Far better enjoyed than précised or described, these strips allowed Franquin to flex whimsical muscles and even subversively sneak in some satirical support for his beliefs in pacifism and environmentalism. However, at their core the gags remain supreme examples of all-ages comedy: wholesome, barbed, daft and incrementally funnier with every re-reading.

Have you started Goofing off yet?
© Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 2009 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2019 Cinebook Ltd.

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Captain Action: Classic Collection


By Gil Kane, Wally Wood, Jim Shooter & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1- (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-64936-046-5

These days comics are about kids of varying ages looking back. So too are toys, and baby boomers like me are particularly prone to the fabled golden age and certain “must-have” items – whether we ever actually owned them or not. An added bonus comes if those toys made it to comics and vice versa…

Back then, the ultimate acme for so many of us in the UK was – no, not the Johnny Seven multi-gun, or Man from U.N.C.L.E. briefcase – but the Captain Action nine-heroes-in-1 doll (sorry, Action Figure)… 

Once upon a time comics were considered the nigh-exlusive domain of children, with many scrupulously-policed genres and subdivisions catering to particular and stratified arenas such as fact, fantasy, adventure and humour. They were even further codified by age and gender.

A particular and popular recurring theme was tapping into the guaranteed and hopefully mutual sales boost offered by licensing and cross-marketing. West Coast outfit Dell/Gold Key had early on specialised in out-industry licensing deals and adaptations…

Many titles depended on a media celebrity like Howdy Doody, Charlie Chaplin or Mickey Mouse and in America that eventually spread to the marketing of products also aimed at kids… such as sweets, cartoons and toys…

By the end of that era, comics for kids were almost exclusively released as a minor strand of a major maketing strategy. That comics like Thundercats, Micronauts, Transformers, Rom and G.I. Joe were actually good and entertaining on strictly strip terms was a happy coincidence and thanks solely to the diligent pride and efforts of the creators involved. Sadly, it also led to publishers intensifying efforts to add a toy component to their own properties. Hands up anyone out there who owns a Spider-mobile, Batboat or Supermobile…

For DC, that trend really began in 1968. Although the company – known as National Periodical Publications back then – had long benefitted from creating comics adventures of movie stars like Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis or Dale Evans and shows such as Gang Busters, A Date with Judy and Mr. District Attorney, they had stayed away from the toy biz – unless you count two issues of Showcase (#53 & 54 Novenber/December 1964 and January/February 1965) that unofficially tied-in to Hasbro’s release of the first G.I. Joe line.

Then, just as costumed superheroes boomed, peaked and began an inexorable die-back, an old connection resurfaced…

In 1964 inventor and promotions wizard Stan Weston devised a way to sell dolls to boys: a dilemma that had stumped toymakers for centuries. He devised an articulated mannequin that would represent all branches of the military and could be aurmented by add-on uniforms and equipment. He called it an “action-figure” and sold the notion to Hasbro, who marketed it with great and lasting success as G.I. Joe (in Britain it was rebranded Action Man).

With his remuneration, Weston – whose promotions company Leisure Concepts had secured representation rights to DC, Marvel and King Features characters – devised a similar boys toy figure designed to ride the then-current global superhero wave triggered by the Batman TV show. “Captain Magic” was not only a superhero in his own right but could also transform into other superheroes via costumes and masks purchased seperately…

Released in waves, these alter egos included Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Spider-Man, Captain America, Sgt. Fury, The Phantom, 2 different Lone Rangers, Tonto, Steve Canyon, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and the Green Hornet.

Weston sold this concept to Hasbro’s rival Ideal Toy Company who went all-out in producing and marketing the range. It launched in 1966, redesignated Captain Action…

A huge success, an expansion line in 1967 introduced a kid sidekick, pet panther, villains, an Action-Cave, secret lairs, a super car and lots of other paraphenalia. Latterly, distaff partner Lady Action was joined by doll versions (“Super Queens”) of Wonder Woman, Mera, Supergirl and Batgirl…

The line was an early casualty of the downturn in superheroes and discontinued in 1968. It has, however, cemented itself in popular memory, with the core character returning on many occasions. He now enjoys a new marketing company seeking to rebuild the brand, Since 2005, Catain Action Enterprises have been testing the waters and some of their efforts can bee seen as ads and addenda throughout the book…

However, back at the height if the craze that DC link led to Editor in Chief Mort Weisinger commissioning a comic book tie-in. It turned out to be one of the most lovely, powerful, experimental and maturely sophisticated titles of the era and – finally – all the legal loopholes have been circumvented so you can see it at last …or if you’re truly blessed, once again…

Weisinger tapped his youngest writer – teenager Jim Shooter – and teamed him with veterans on the potentially colossal project. Miracle-working editor Julie Schwartz was in charge, and Wally Wood started the ball rolling artistically, but the real revelation came after replacement penciller Gil Kane took over the writing…

Born Eli Katz and a pre-WWII infant immigrant from Latvia, Kane was one of the pivotal players in the development of the American comics industry, and indeed of the art form itself. Working as an artist, and an increasingly more effective and influential one, he drew for many companies from the 1940s onwards, tackling superheroes, crime, action, war, mystery, romance, animal heroes (Streak and Rex the Wonder Dog!), movie adaptations and, most importantly perhaps, Westerns and Science Fiction tales.

In the late 1950s he became one of Schwartz’s key artists in regenerating and rebooting the superhero concept. Yet by 1968, at the top of his profession, this relentlessly revolutionary and creative man felt so confined by the juvenile strictures of the industry that he struck out on bold new ventures that jettisoned the editorial and format bondage of comic books for new visions and media.

His Name Is Savage was an adult-oriented black & white magazine about a cold and ruthless super-spy in the James Bond/Matt Helm/Man Called Flint mould; co-written by friend and collaborator Archie Goodwin. It was very much a precursor in tone, treatment and subject matter of many of today’s adventure titles.

His other venture, Blackmark (1971, and also with Goodwin), not only ushered in the comic book age of Sword and Sorcery, but also became one of medium’s first Graphic Novels. Technically, as the series was commissioned by fantasy publisher Ballantine as eight volumes, it was also envisioned as America’s first comic Limited Series.

Before them, though, there was Captain Action…

Edited by Schwartz with covers by Irv Novick, Wood, Kane & Dick Giordano, the entire DC run is collected here, preceded by a fulsome and informative Introduction from Mark Waid.

Unable to play with the toy’s major attraction – multiple super-personalities – Shooter & Wood instead went with classical drama for issue #1’s ‘Origin of Captain Action!’: revealing how archaeologist Clive Arno and his assistant Krellik uncover a chest of coins left in antiquity by incredible superbeings remembered by humanity as gods.

These coins allow the holder to access the incredible powers of countless deities, but the temptation proves too much for the scheming assistant.

However, when he tries to steal them, an ancient failsafe painfully prevents him…

Driven away, the scoundrel is then found by the coin vindictively created by primal God of Evil Chernobog: one which imparts astounding magical abilities and feeds his hatred. As Arno designs a costumed identity to help the world via the coins, Krellik spies on and steals his thunder, resolved to taint the project before it even begins…

Returning to America, Arno learns ‘Where the Action is’ from his son Carl, as Krellik plunders museums dressed in Arno’s proposed uniform. A swift chase then results in a cataclysmic clash and brief cameo by Superman…

Trailing his enemy, the true Captain cannot stop Krellik obtaining more deadly artefacts of the lost gods. As the first issue ends he is savagely beaten and apparently defeated before he’s even started …

With Kane pencilling Shooter’s script and Wood inking, the saga concludes in #2 as ‘The Battle Begins!’ with the victorious villain repeatedly failing to appropriate the power coins: stymied by the remarkably astute and valiant Action Boy. When Krellik’s frustration boils over and he starts wrecking the city, our recently returned hero goes all out and at last overcomes in ‘Captain Action’s Reactions!’ Kane was eager to stretch his creative muscles in a period of great change and challenge and Schwartz was happy to oblige…

Although already distressingly high in drama and calamity, the series went into overdrive with #3 as the toy company’s preferred archfoe debuted. A blue skinned humanoid with an exposed brain. Dr Evil was fleshed out as Kane wrote and pencilled ‘…And Evil This Way Comes!’, revealing how a catastrophic earthquake in San Francisco caused hundreds of deaths and triggered an evolutionary aberration in the laboratory of Dr. Stefan Tracy…

The Nobel Laureate was also Arno’s father-in-law and both were united in grief over the death of his daughter (and Arno’s wife) Kathryn. They also shared an abiding love for Carl Arno.

All that seemed over when Tracy was elevated to the status of a futureman resolved to similarly improve mankind, no matter how many perished in the process…

The most telling consequence of the quake is the loss of all but a handful of power coins. Action Boy is given the superspeed inducing Mercury artefact, whilst his dad keeps the tokens of Zeus, Hercules and Heimdall (rationalising why the Captain needs cool tools like his supercar the Silver Streak), and they deploy to save lives in the aftershocks.

They are hindered and countered by Tracy/Dr. Evil: using his devices to amplify the natural disaster. His deed almost kills his grandson, until a fast-fading final shred of humanity hampers his deeds and hold back his damning hand…

The act is his last as a human being and allows the Captain a desperate chance to drive him away…

From this issue on a letters page – Action Line – was included, and they are reprinted from here on.

Kane went even more deeply into mature themes with #4 as ‘Evil at Dead World’s End!’, sees the hyper-evolved savant drawn across the universe to a dying planet peopled with beings just like him. Well, not quite: these beings are at the end of existence on a dying planet, worn out by eons and resolutely awaiting death. Dr. Evil refuses to let them go, inspiring their brief rejection of well-earned rest with the promise of a fresh young world: Earth. To offset his son-in-law’s interference, the mind master distracts the hero with a trio of rampaging monsters and cruel resurrection of dead Kathryn. The alluring spectre then implores her husband to forsake life and join her in the beyond…

The high impact dramas were far from what any kid might expect, and the series closed on an even more shocking premise as ‘A Mind Divided’ revealed a nation torn apart by a racist demagogue inciting insurrection and racial purity: a campaign polarising America’s youth and encapsulated in a single father’s descent into madness. Captain Action might be able to rescue victims, stop bombers, break up riots and beat uniformed thugs but saving a twisted soul from self-inflicted tragedy was beyond even the reach of gods…

Now, rush out and buy the Captain Action Parachute Mortar, kids…

The comics material closes with text and letters page Action Line and a reader competition – ‘The Two Faces of Dr. Evil’ – before even more avarice-inspiring found-features fill out the Captain Action Gallery.

The comics stories preceding this section were packed with ads for old and new Cap merch in the gaps originally filled by DC comics releases (some contemporarily crafted by Michael Polis) for dolls/action figures, toys, accessories, costumes, “Captain Action Action Facts!”, card & board games, choco bars, breakfast cereal, freezer pops and vintage comic book house ads and TV promos for the franchise.

Here however are full-page delights such as paintings of Captain Action; toy ads from the comics for Action Boy, Dr. Evil. Lady Action and pages from the Captain Action Yellow Book by Murphy Anderson, Kurt Schaffenberger, & Chic Stone, plus astondingly lovely original art pages and pencil art by Kane & Wood.

Although Captain Action couldn’t sustain a readership or toy-buying clientele, DC would dabble again and again with related topics (like Alex Toth & Neal Adams’s sublime Hot Wheels comic in 1970, MASK, Masters of the Universe, and DC in-house properties Mego Superheroes and Kenner’s Super Powers action figures) and publishing properities now make a large paart of every successful comics company…

The 1960s was the era when all the assorted facets of “cool-for-kids” finally started to coalesce into a comprehensive assault on our minds and our parents’ pockets. TV, movies, comics, bubble-gum cards and toys all began concertedly feeding off each other, building a unified and combined fantasy-land no kid could resist. That nostalgic force has never been more wonderfully expressed than in the stories in this book and you would be mad to miss it.
Captain Action: Classic Collection © & ™ 2022 Captain Action Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.