Category: Fantasy

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Merry Christmas, Boys and Girls!

In keeping with my self-imposed Holiday tradition here’s another selection of British Annuals selected not just for nostalgia’s sake but because it’s my house and my rules…

After decades when only American comics and memorabilia were considered collectable or worthy, the growing resurgence of interest in home-grown material means there’s lots more of this stuff available and if you’re lucky enough to stumble across a vintage volume, I hope my words can convince you to take a punt and step out of your comfort zone.

Topping my Xmas wish-list would be further collections from those fans and publishers who have begun to rescue this magical material from print limbo in (affordable) new collections…

Great writing and art is rotting in boxes and attics or the archives of publishing houses, when it needs to be back in the hands of readers once again. As the tastes of the reading public have never been broader and since a selective sampling of our popular heritage will always appeal to some part of the mass consumer base, let’s all continue rewarding publishers for their efforts and prove that there’s money to be made from these glorious examples of our communal childhood.

Whizzer and Chips Annual 1979

By various (Fleetway)
SBN: 85037-478-2                  ASIN: B000IZ3DO2

British comics were always anthological. Even the few titles which notionally featured a solo lead like Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly or Hulk Comic carried a preponderance of ancillary series and serials. Most – whether Adventure or Humour, Pre-School or Juvenile and most importantly Boys or Girls – worked on the premise that variety was the spice of life and offered as many different characters and premises as they could cram into the page count.

That was never more ably demonstrated than in Fleetway/IPC’s ingenious comedy vehicle Whizzer and Chips which launched in October 1969 and ran – absorbing other flagging or failing kids’ humour titles – such as Knockout!, Krazy, Whoopee! and Scouse Mouse – until its own subsuming into valiant and venerable survivor Buster in October 1990, when the decline of mass-market children’s periodical publication really began to be felt.

Edited by Bob Paynter and lavishly packed with gag-features in IPC’s continual battle to steal market-share from DC Thomson’s unassailable Beano and Dandy, the first W&T appeared on Saturday 11th (dated the 18th; the off-sale date by when retailers had to have returned unsold copies for a refund/discount on the next issue), it’s innovative boast being “two comics for only sixpence” …and that’s in old money…

Chips was designed as a 16-page pull-out insert in the middle of Whizzer and the illusion was further fostered by the conceit that the graphic ranks of the “Whizz-kids” were deadly rivals of the “Chip-ites” eternally in their midst…

The comic was a splendid success, not because of the schizo-gimmick but because it was slickly professional and contained top-flight material by the company’s best comedy artists and writers; although arguably a toning down of the irreverent anarchy which predominated in earlier 1960s titles like Wham! and Pow! might have made parents a little happier to buy it too…

For a far more detailed discourse – on this and a host of other British comics – you should check out Lew Stringer’s glorious blog Blimey!… He’d also be able to tell you far more about the individual creators than I ever will, but as usual I’m going to have a bash anyway and apologize in advance for my inevitable errors and omissions.

As a hit weekly Whizzer and Chips naturally had end-of-year annuals from the earliest opportunity and this one (released at the end of 1978) was the ninth of 24, offering a wide range of old and new characters – just as you’d expect and want.

Behind that tantalising Mike Lacey cover the manic madness and mayhem begins with a delicious ‘Super Store Super Game’ (bring your own counters and dice, kids!) whilst ‘Lazy Bones’ (Colin Whittock) reveals how indolent young Bennie Bones attempts to skive off household chores again but only earned more work, after which Lacey’s ‘Sid’s Snake’ found serpentine Slippy getting into a tight spot he couldn’t slide out of.

Cliff Brown had the franchise for producing cartoon games and puzzles and begins here with the “mazing” ‘Jailbreak!’ before ‘The Magic of Films’ (Dave Jenner?) found the possessor of an enchanted tome using a manifested action hero to beat a bully before ‘Sweet Tooth’ (Trevor Metcalfe) outwitted another rampaging brute after his sugary treats. Always tardy ‘Slowcoach’ then found the perfect excuse for missing school registration…

Cover-star ‘Sid’s Snake’ – or rather his human co-conspirator – was the leader of the Whizz-Kids faction. He would organise infiltrations and “raids” onto Chips pages when not getting into tight spots or showing off to worms as in this second one-page outing, whilst the ‘Happy Families’ (by Dick Millington) spent most of their time sparring and causing domestic disasters, unlike Tom Williams’ underage ‘Tiny Tycoon’ who here transforms a little funfair into a big deal skate rink before Leo Baxendale’s pugnacious nipper ‘Champ’ turns his competitive drive to mastering the pogo stick with agonising consequences for all…

‘Super Store!’ by Bob Hill was the magical multi-storey emporium where anything could be bought, such as ghosts to stock a haunted house whilst – continuing the strangely trippy tone – ‘The Drips’ (Michael T Green perhaps?) were sentient water droplets playing mind-games with a baffled homeowner and ‘Beat Your Neighbour’ (a survivor of the merger with Knockout) revealed the depths competing families would sink to in order to be the best – in this case in making their home safe…

Uppity little madam ‘Toffee Nose’ made life hell for poor old dad when she found the garden too grubby, after which ‘Sid’s Snake’ resurfaces to show off his pugilistic skills; no doubt to provoke boy boxer ‘Shiner’ – also by Lacey – who leads off the Chips section of this book by once again disappointing his mum and copping a black eye without fighting anybody…

‘Footsie the Clown’ began as a colour strip by Leo Baxendale on the back page of Wham! and was revived here in monochrome, still being weird at the circus (by an artist I don’t recognise). Next comes Mike Brown’s bombastic ‘Super Dad’ quashing more time-wasting kids’ pranks before hard-luck lad ‘Loser’ adds his own unique spin to Shakespeare and Norman Mansbridge’s ‘Fuss Pot’ shows the proper way to shovel snow…

Cliff Brown’s ‘Treasure Island Maze!’ segues into another – cosmetically cushioned – clash for ‘Shiner’ and farmyard frenzy for ‘Footsie the Clown’ and his faithless companion Wuff the Wonder Dog whilst Reg Parlett’s rival gangs ‘Smarty’s Toffs & Tatty’s Toughs’ again fought a class war that left everyone bedraggled, beaten and in need of a break…

Following Cliff Brown’s brow-knitting puzzle ‘Two Old Grannies are in Trouble’ a TV commercial director soon regrets asking the opinion of one little girl in ‘Here’s Fuss Pot – the fussiest girl of the lot!’ after which ‘Pete’s Pockets’ disgorge a wish-granting genie as ‘Lib an’ Archie and their Magic Piano’ accidentally solve a skiers’ dilemma and ‘Loser’ wins after destroying a panting and uncovering a lost masterpiece…

‘Sammy Shrink – He’s the Smallest lad in the World’ – and one of IPC’s most well-travelled, having compactly fitted into Wham!, Pow!, Smash! and Knockout before squeezing into Whizzer and Chips.

Here Jenner portrays the mighty mite at his most pranksome before ‘Theo’s Thinking Cap’ saves the (wedding) day by finding a missing ring and ‘Belle Tent – She’s Funtastic’ proves girls can be just as destructive as boys and shouldn’t be let anywhere near a cricket pitch…

‘Shiner’ keeps his eyes un-pummelled by using his wits against a big bully before ‘Don’t Times Change!’ offers sharp comparisons of past and present parental peccadilloes whilst ‘Pete’s Pockets’ open again and suck the poor twit into a mad melee with a magician he didn’t know he had after which the landlord of ‘Harry’s Haunted House’ (Parlett) fails again to evict his ghostly tenant…

‘Shiner’s Scrap Book’ offers boxing spot-gags by Brocker and ‘Wear ’em Out Wilf’ (Mansbridge) shows the wee wrecker proving the flimsiness of pianos before ‘Little Mo Peep’ causes chaos during a seaside excursion, ‘The Toffs and the Toughs’ (Parlett) compare the relative merits of castles and tents and ‘Sammy Shrink’ (by Terry Bave and wife/scripter Sheila) reacts badly to the news that his sweetie ration is being cut…

Parlett’s ‘Belle Tent – She’s Funtastic’ finds the unladylike lass causing catastrophe at a country house after which ‘Smarty’s Toffs & Tatty’s Toughs’ resort to all-out retail war at an antiques fair and the Baves put ‘Sammy Shrink’ through icy hell at the skating rink whilst ‘Loser’ sees the dark side of scouting for badges.

A belligerent bee cause ‘Footsie the Clown’ to lose his sense of humour, ‘Theo’s Thinking Cap’ helps a kid get into an air-show and ‘Pete’s Pockets’ unleash a dragon at the cinema before ‘Sammy Shrink’ has fun with snow and none with ice cream whilst ‘Shiner’ proves the superiority of British boxing to the kung fu of a new (Korean) bully in town and ‘Beat Your Neighbour’ reveals the danger of high-impact competitive gardening before Baxendale’s ‘Champ’ tries karate… with smashing results…

There’s more eerie insanity when ‘The Drips’ decide to practice their practical jokes inside gumboots and umbrellas and the assorted gags of ‘Sid’s Snake Smiles’ give way to vintage hi-jinks as ‘Jumbo and Jet!’ sees a boy and his elephant attempt to lay crazy paving.

A new boomerang soon makes ‘Champ’ the most unpopular kid at the funfair and the ‘Beat Your Neighbour’ dads clash over whose son can get smartest quickest even as animal crackers in a ‘Vet Set’ neatly lead to a final dose of ‘Sid’s Snake’ silliness with the reptile deciding to emulate the action of a space-hopper…

The weekly comic usually sported an adventure serial to balance the mirth and here ‘Whizz Wheels’ – with art from Ron Turner – details another exploit of bicycle prodigy Tommy Wheels who stood up to a bullying newcomer in town and accidentally exposed a vast bike theft ring.

It’s back to the funny stuff as ‘Rotten Egghead – He’s Just Got to Win!’ find the inventive poor sport building a tank to win a snowball fight whilst the ‘Happy Families’ fall out over television programmes and ‘Tiny Tycoon’ finds a fortune marketing animal skateboards and artificial goalkeepers.

‘Lazy Bones’ learns that looking up his ancestors is conducive to a quiet nap and the ‘Beat Your Neighbour’ regulars take up fishing with the usual bellicose results after which Wham!‘s veteran cave-boy ‘Glugg – He’s First in Everything’ have a few problems with his breakfast egg before ‘Sweet -Tooth’ needs heavy machinery to retrieve his latest batch of stolen treats…

Brown offers one more diversionary puzzle in ‘Two Astro-Twits are trying to get to the Moon!’ and the ‘Super Store!’ vends a cut-price golf course to deflate the town swells and snobs before this years festival of fun concludes with a last ‘Lazy Bones’ lesson as his visit to a Free School soon has him begging to get back to his own humdrum class…

Weirdly timeless amusements and evergreen cartoon magic make this tome a terrific treat for youngsters as well as the nostalgia-besotted oldsters like me: this is well worth a second read and an absolute delight if you’re seeing it for the first time…
© IPC Magazines Ltd. 1978

Victor Book for Boys 1975

By many and various (DC Thomson)
Retroactively awarded ISBN: 978-0-85116-077-1

If you grew up British anytime after 1960 and read comics you probably cast your eye occasionally – if not indeed fanatically – over DC Thompson’s venerable standby The Victor.

The Dundee based publisher has long been a mainstay of British popular reading and arguably the most influential force in our comics industry. Its strong editorial stance and savvy creativity has been responsible for a huge number of household names over the decades, through newspapers, magazines, books and especially its comics and prose-heavy “story-papers” for Girls and Boys.

That last category – comprising Adventure, Rover, Wizard, Skipper and Hotspur – pretty much-faded out at the end of the 1950s when the readership voted overwhelming with their pocket money in favour of primarily strip-based entertainments…

Cover-dated 25th January The Victor premiered in 1961 as a (mostly) comic strip package, running for 1657 weekly issues until finally folding in November 1992. Absorbing in its time fellow publications Wizard, Hotspur, Scoop, Buddy, Champ and Warlord, it was very much the company’s flagship title for action tales and as such had its own immensely popular run of Christmas Annuals.

The Victor Book for Boys began in 1964 and resulted in thirty stout and stunning hardcover editions over the years. As with the comic iteration the content was based on classic “Boys Own” adventure material encompassing fantasy, war, science fiction, sports stories, period drama and everything in between.

This particular edition opens with historical fact feature ‘The Age of the Ironclad’ and follows up with war comic strip ‘The Pigeon That Won the V.C.’, detailing how avian messenger Winkie was responsible for the rescue of four downed airmen in 1942; pressing on with perennial favourite ‘The Tough of the Track’ illustrated by Peter Sutherland.

Alf Tupper ranked high amongst the company’s grittily realistic pantheon of ordinary stars: a perpetually grimy, soot-stained, incorrigibly working class true sportsman who ran for pride and honour, not gain or prestige.

Here he has a nasty clash with rich, spoiled running rival Nigel Fenton who tries to hit Alf with his sports-car even as his equally vile father is attempting to fix a traction engine competition. When Alf allies with Colonel Fenton‘s most feared opponent, sparks fly, steam explodes and both generations of bad men learn a much deserved lesson…

This is followed by another exploit of the magnificent ‘Morgyn the Mighty’. The “strongest man in the world” first appeared in The Rover in 1928 in prose form, transferred to The Beano in 1938 (drawn by Dudley Watkins) and, after visiting the reborn comics version of Rover, rocked up in The Victor in 1963.

Here the wandering, loincloth-clad wonder man (drawn by Ted Kearnon, perhaps) is in the Himalayas and uncovers the secret of the legendary Yetis, after which ‘The Ruffies and the Tuffies’ (by George Martin and recycled from The Beezer where they were The Hillies and the Billies) comedically continue their frantic feuding before another WWII yarn depicts a plucky Home Guard hero using ‘The Drainpipe Destroyer’ (the formidable Northover Projector) to quash a burglary by Black Marketeers.

Following a general knowledge ‘Quick Quiz’, ‘The Jalopy with a Jinx’ reveals how a young man uses a vintage car to foil a modern jailbreak before ‘Killer Kennedy R.N.’ triumphantly trades his motor torpedo boat for a German bomber after being captured at sea and Queen’s Messenger Peter Hazard runs into a little trouble in modern Afghanistan and has to recover precious papers and treasures before completing his ‘Escape from the Red Assassin’…

‘Night run to Fort Luton’ offers a prose yarn about a motorbike despatch rider in WWII Britain, followed up by sports feature ‘Goal!’, a fact-file on rescue procedures entitled ‘Guardians of the Mountains’ and comedy capers from Michael Barratt in a reprint of ‘Tall Tales from Toad-in-the-Hole’: a Topper revival/reprint featuring a little village cut off from progress since the time of Cromwell and poorly adjusting to modern developments such as the unfortunate bill-poster of this episode…

‘Splashdown to Danger!’ finds a modern British salvage vessel on site when a space capsule plunges into the ocean and quickly embroiled in a sinister scheme by leftover Nazi rocket scientists before ‘The Sea Shall Not Have Them!’ describes contemporary air-sea rescue procedures.

Next up is an example of fabulously engaging, long running comedy adventure ‘The Hammer Man’ superbly illustrated by Richard Terry “Ted” Rawlings. Set in the 15th century the strip detailed the rise of blacksmith Chell Puddock whose services to King Henry V saw the commoner elevated to the knighthood as the most peculiar noble of all time…

Here it’s 1415 and he’s still a commoner on the battlefields of France, but his valiant deeds make him many noble friends as he unhorses a rogue English knight, single-handedly breaches the stubbornly impregnable castle of St. Pol and defeats the terrifying Wolf of Picardy in single combat…

Another light-hearted comedy drama was ‘Fred Kay’s Crazy Railroad’ (art by Josep Marti) which described the exploits of a determined British transport sergeant and his crew of misfits and rejects who constructed a makeshift transport line in Burma in 1944. This time his immediate problem is a load of unstable dynamite a pushy American Colonel wants anywhere but where he is…

‘Gorgeous Gus’ (by Bert Vandeput?) was English aristocrat the Earl of Boote who owned and played for First Division Redburn Rovers. When the team travelled to Buenos Aires for an international fixture, Sportivo’s scurrilous director tricks Gus into a polo match and dislocates his shoulder, thinking that it will keep the Rover’s star player out of the game.

Devious Don Juan has no concept of True Brit grit…

Prose skit ‘Chipper’s Time Machine’ reveals why you should never buy a time/space engine from the back of a market stall and ‘Sports Quiz’ tests your knowledge on a wide variety of subjects before Rawlings turns in a typically robust and rambunctious job dramatising the incredible career of Nova Scotian Negro William Hall V.C. who was born the ‘Son of a Slave’ in 1827 and became one of the Royal Navy’s greatest heroes…

‘The Ruffies and the Tuffies’ then briefly suspend hostilities to appear on a TV show whilst ‘It’s a Funny Old World!’ offers crazy clipping of strange –but-true events before ‘The Flying Cowboy’ joins the British Royal Flying Corps in 1916 to show the Boche how things are done back home on the range…

‘Tall Tales from Toad-in-the-Hole’ sees an aged dotard experience the terrors of modern heating before our learning experience kicks in again with optical shenanigans in ‘Your Eyes Tell you Lies!’ whilst ‘Build a Battle Gun’ offers patterns and instructions for the budding model-maker.

The strip action wraps up with a tale of ‘Kenny Carter’s Kayo Kids’ as the dedicated boxing coach takes under his wing a brace of constantly battling troubled twins who only want to fight each other before the tome steams to close with another spread detailing more amazing vessels from ‘The Age of the Ironclad’.

Divorcing the sheer variety of content and entertainment quality of this book from simple nostalgia may be a healthy exercise but it’s almost impossible. I’m perfectly happy to luxuriously wallow in the potent emotions this annual still stirs. It’s a fabulous thrill-packed read from a magical time and turning those stiffened two-colour pages is always an unmatchable Christmas experience… happily one still relatively easy to find these days.

You should try it…
© DC Thomson & Co., Ltd., 1974.

Batman Storybook Annual

By various and Mick Anglo (World Distributors)
No ISBN

Before American publishers began exporting directly into the UK in 1959 our exposure to their unique brand of fantasy came from licensed reprints. British publishers/printers like Len Miller, Alan Class and others purchased material from the USA – and occasionally Canada – to fill 68-page monochrome anthologies – many of which recycled those same stories for decades.

Less common were the flimsy, strangely coloured pamphlets reprinting the same stuff, produced by Australian outfit K. G. Murray and exported and distributed here in a rather sporadic manner. They also produced sturdily substantial Christmas Annuals which had a huge impact on my earliest years (I strongly suspect my adoration of black-&-white artwork stems from seeing supreme stylists like Curt Swan, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson uncluttered by cheap, flat colour).

The first Batman Annual came out in 1960, but in the heyday of “Batmania” two separate publishers were releasing hardback Holiday Editions. This delightful oddment comes from just after Batmania ruled the Earth, thanks to the power of the Adam West/Burt Ward Batman TV show. Another publisher had the rights to reprint the current crop of DC comic strips – which bore only superficial resemblance to the TV iteration anyway – but World Distributors secured a license to publish prose books directly based on the screen escapades…

British comics have always fed heavily on other media and as the popularity of television burgeoned during the 1960s – especially children’s shows and cartoons – those shows increasingly became a staple source for the Seasonal Annual market. There would be a profusion of stories and strips targeting not simply readers but young viewers and more and more often the stars would be American not British…

After three seasons (perhaps two and a half would be closer) the overwhelmingly successful Batman TV show ended in March, 1968. It had clocked up 120 episodes and a movie since the US premiere on January 12th, 1966 and triggered a global furore for all things zany and mystery-mannish.

At this time DC, Dell/Gold Key, Marvel and Charlton all had limited overseas licenses – usually in dedicated black-&-white anthologies. Another factor to consider was the traditions of the UK market. American comics had been primarily picture-strip based since the 1930s, but British weeklies had been providing Boy’s and Girl’s “papers” that were prose-based for all that time and longer.

DC Thompson persevered with illustrated text periodicals until well into the 1960s and every British company continued to shave costs by padding comics and annuals with text stories and features well into the 1970s.

Seasonal annuals provided a vital sales peak of the publishing year and a guaranteed promotional push (see Alan Clark’s superb The Children’s Annual for further details). Any comic worth its salt needed a glossy hardback on the shelves over the Christmas period, but they didn’t have to be picture-packed…

Not yet, at least. In future years various outfits would publish DC and Marvel Annuals: mostly full colour reprint strip extravaganzas with a little UK-originated material, but in the 1960s the prose tradition was still worth pursuing – especially if another company had the licences to publish strips but had neglected to secure rights to storybooks and text tales…

Thus this peculiar and delightful novelty: a comfortingly sturdy 96 page parcel of bold illustrations, games, puzzles and prose stories featuring the Dauntless Dynamic Duo in exceedingly British, goggle-box inspired tales of skulduggery and derring-do, flavoured with the OTT wackiness of the TV show at its madcap height.

This was the last of four; released in 1969 by Manchester-based World Distributors. The company was formed by Sidney, John and Alfred Pemberton after WWII and their main business was licensed Annuals; usually released in Autumn for the Christmas trade and ranging over the decades from Doctor Who to Star Trek to Tarzan, as well as choice selections of comics properties like Fantastic Four, Superman and The Phantom. They became World International Ltd in 1981 but changing market conditions put them out of business by the end of the decade.

This entire package – like most of their 1960s offerings – was produced in the cheap and quirky mix of monochrome, dual-hued and weirdly full-coloured pages which made the Christmas books such a bizarrely beloved treat. As for the writers and artists of the material your guess is, sadly, as good as or better than mine, but it was certainly generated by the wonderful Mick Anglo’s publishing/packaging company Gower Studios and therefore offered a delightfully eclectic mix of material far more in keeping with the traditionally perceived interests of British boys than the suited-&-booted masked madness which usually followed in the Caped Crusader’s scalloped wake.

The madcap all-ages mayhem opens with ‘The Archer Hits the Target’ wherein the Caped Crusader escapes an bizarre bowman’s death-trap through a liberal application of “batdope” after which the ‘The Riddler Riddles’ provide a page-full of wicked brainteasers. ‘The Joker Laughs Last’ but still fails in pulling off a million-dollar bank raid and we take a quick break by enjoying some arcane natural history facts in featurette ‘How Odd!’

An invasion of animated umbrellas presages ‘The Penguin’s Biggest Flap’ but once he’s properly thumped a brace of divertissements begins with more gags in ‘The Caped Crusader’s Conundrums’ and ends with speed records quiz ‘Fast, Faster, Fastest’ after which the Gotham Gangbusters scupper a modern buccaneer and leave ‘No Plunder for the Pirate’…

A fact-file on ‘Queer Birds’ then leads into gripping board-game ‘Catch the Joker’ (still got those counters and dice?) whilst a sartorially superior super-crook meets his match when ‘Batman Buttonholes the Gent’ after which the not-so-Dark Knight offers a lecture on natural gimmicks and animal adaptations in ‘Crime Fighters, Please Note’.

‘Bus Ride – by Water’ is a photo-feature on hovercraft and ‘Know your Sports’ tests your knowledge on games before the Bird Bandit bounces back in ‘A Parry for the Penguin’, kidnapping Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara before a second seductive board-game pits the Caped Crimebusters against the Fowl Felon and Mountebank of Mirth who are ‘Cruising for a Bruising’…

‘No Safety in Numbers’ examines conspiracies from Guy Fawkes to the German plot to kill Hitler via the betrayal of Jesse James, whilst ‘Sharpen your Mind’ provides another batch of riddles before we charge back into action as Batman rescues Bruce Wayne‘s Aunt Harriet from a medieval-themed malcontent in ‘A Bleak Outlook for the Black Knight’…

‘A Joke Isn’t a Joke’ offers another board-game and language-skills are tested in ‘Every Kind of Bat’ and crossword ‘Words Up and Down’ before a deadly card-based cad hits town and ‘Batman Outshines the Ace’ after which another photo-spread details the job of divers in ‘Splash! It’s the Police’ and the underwater theme concludes with ‘The Penguin’s Fishy Facts’…

‘Wiping the Smile from the Smiler’s Face’ finds Batman battling a bomb-planting maniac after which general knowledge is assessed in ‘Battle of Wits’ and the Dynamic Duo become ‘Big Game for the Catwoman’ (and her sultry Cat-Girls!) before we all suffer the corny pangs of wit from ‘The Joker Jokes’…

This quirky fun-fest then concludes on a high note (A-flat, I suspect) as ‘The Minstrel Plays it Hot’ but still falters before the keen wits and fast fists of Batman and Robin…

Odd and truly daft, this titanic tome is probably only of interest to comics completists and incurable nostalgics, but I’ll bet there are more of us than anybody suspects out there and what’s wrong with a little sentiment-soaked reminiscing anyway?
© MCMLXIX by National Periodical Publications Inc. All rights reserved throughout the world.

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Underworld


By Lovern Kindzierski & GMB Chomichuk (Renegade Arts Canmore Ltd)
ISBN: 978-1-98782-502-2

Win’s Christmas Recommendation: A Dark Delight to Savour Forever… 9/10

Ancient literary classics have always been a fertile source of inspiration for modern artists in all arenas of expression and the works of Homer have especially called out to creators of every stripe.

Comics have had their fair share of straight adaptations, lesser or greater oblique tributes and a host of imaginative reinterpretations of the proverbially blind bard’s timeless chronicles of heroism and futility, love and adversity, but Underworld adds fresh angles and even darker poetic edges to the saga of a man fighting fate and horror to return to his home…

A beguiling new foray from Winnipeg-based Lovern Kindzierski (Shame Trilogy, Agents of Law, Tarzan Le Monstre, Star Wars) and GMB Chomichuk (Infinitum, The Imagination Manifesto, Raygun Gothic, Cassie and Tonk), with seductively effective lettering by Ed Brisson, this compelling hardback is crafted in stark monotone and utilises graphic illustration and manipulated photographs to replay The Odyssey on two complementary and contrasting levels…

Following Mike Carey’s scholarly and passionate Foreword ‘The Hard Part is Coming Home Again’ the dark descent and arduous search begins as Hector Ashton breaks out of a psychiatric hospital. The golden scion of Winnipeg’s dominant political dynasty has gone badly astray. He has dabbled in corruption, excelled in drug-dealing and barely survived a catastrophic overdose.

Now he’s loose in the city: lost in the ferocious warrens of the Club District where every evil and depravity can be readily bought and where barely-human monsters abound. However, in his delusional state Hector is convinced that he is Ulysses, travelling from moment to foreordained moment in a hellish, interminable, gods-decreed voyage back to his son and long-suffering, abandoned wife Penelope, and bolstered in that armour of hallucination he is more than a match for most of the hazards that await him…

As he staggers from trial to travail to terrifying titan, it soon becomes clear that the dangers might not be mythical but they are very real.

The metropolis’s embedded drug-lords and shadowy movers-&-shakers begin arraying even deadlier forces to ensure a weak link in a chain of corruption never makes it to anyone who might listen to the eternal truths buried within his rambling quotes and perorations…

As much gritty noir-flavoured thriller as fantastic mythical escapade, Underworld overlays the classic poem’s thematic skeleton with a grimy modern visual skin of vice and violence which is chillingly authentic and masterfully evocative, but never forgets that at its core the story is about a fallen hero finding redemption through struggle…

Allegory, metaphor, delusion or vision-gift of cruel and callous gods; Hector’s odyssey is just as epic as his symbolic totem’s ever was; every bit as dangerous and, in the end, just as triumphantly well-earned…

Supported by an Afterword from the author tracing the long and winding road of Underworld‘s genesis, Creator Biographies and a wealth of sketches and designs, this is a vibrant artistic vision which deserves to be seen by the largest audience possible.
© Lovern Kindzierski, GMB Chomichuk and Renegade Arts Canmore Ltd.

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Melusine volume 3: The Vampires’ Ball


By Clarke (Frédéric Seron) & Gilson, coloured by Cerise and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-69-4

Witches – especially cute and sassy teenage ones – have a long and distinguished pedigree in fiction and one of the most seductively engaging first appeared in venerable Belgian magazine Spirou in 1992.

Mélusine is actually a sprightly 119 years old and spends her days – and many nights – working as an au pair/general dogsbody to a most ungracious family of haunts and horrors inhabiting a vast monster-packed, ghost-afflicted chateau whilst diligently studying to perfect her craft at Witches’ School…

The long-lived much-loved feature is presented in every format from one-page gag strips to full-length comedy tales, all riffing wickedly on supernatural themes and detailing her rather fraught life, filled with the demands of the appallingly demanding master and mistress of the castle and even her large circle of exceedingly peculiar family and friends.

The strip was devised by writer François Gilson (Rebecca, Cactus Club, Garage Isidore) and cartoon humorist Frédéric Seron, AKA Clarke whose numerous features for all-ages Spirou and acerbic adult humour publication Fluide Glacial include Rebecca, Les Cambrioleurs, Durant les Travaux, l’Exposition Continue… and Le Miracle de la Vie.

Under the pseudonym Valda, Seron also created Les Babysitters and as Bluttwurst Les Enquêtes de l’Inspecteur Archibaldo Massicotti, Château Montrachet, Mister President and P.38 et Bas Nylo.

A former fashion illustrator and nephew of comics veteran Pierre Seron, Clarke is one of those insufferable guys who just draws non-stop and is unremittingly funny. He also doubles up as a creator of historical and genre pieces such as Cosa Nostra, Les Histoires de France, Luna Almaden and Nocturnes and apparently is free from the curse of having to sleep…

Collected editions began appearing annually or better from 1995, with the 24th published in 2015 and another due next year. Thus far five of those have transformed into English translations thanks to the fine folk at Cinebook.

Originally released on the Continent in 1996, Le bal des vampires was the second Mélusine album and sets the scene delightfully for newcomers as the majority of the content is comprised of one or two page gags starring the sassy sorceress who makes excessive play with fairy tale and horror film icons, conventions and themes.

When brittle, moody Melusine isn’t being bullied for her inept cleaning skills by the matriarchal ghost-duchess who runs the castle, ducking cat-eating monster Winston, dodging frisky vampire The Count or avoiding the unwelcome and often hostile attentions of horny peasants and over-zealous witch hunting priests, our saucy sorceress can usually be found practising her spells or consoling and coaching inept, un-improvable and lethally unskilled classmate Cancrelune.

This sorry enchantress-in-training is a sad case: her transformation spells go awfully awry, she can’t remember incantations and her broomstick-riding makes her a menace to herself, any unfortunate observers and even the terrain and buildings around her…

At least Mel’s boyfriend is a werewolf, so he only troubles her a couple of nights each month…

This turbulent tome features the regular procession of slick sight gags and pun-ishing pranks but also features a few longer jocular jaunts such as the fate of rather rude knight in armour, a brush with what probably isn’t a poltergeist in the Library and Mel’s unfortunate experience with daunting dowager Aunt Adrezelle‘s patented Elixir of Youth…

Wrapping up the barrage of ghostly gaffes, ghastly goofs and grisly goblin gaucheries is the sordid saga of the eternal elite at their most drunkenly degenerate as poor Melusine is not only expected to organise and cater ‘The Vampires’ Ball’ but has to stick around and handle the explosive clean-up for those especially intoxicated Nosferatus who tend to forget why the revelry has to die down before dawn…

Wry, sly, fast-paced and uproariously funny, this compendium of arcane antics is a great taste of the magic of European comics and a beguiling delight for all lovers of the cartoonist’s art. Read before bedtime and don’t eat any hairy sweets…

Original edition © Dupuis, 2000 by Clarke & Gilson. All rights reserved. English translation 2007 © Cinebook Ltd.

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The Quest for the Time Bird


By Serge Le Tendre & Régis Loisel, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger (Titan Comics)
ISBN 978-1-78276-362-8

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Perfect post-Yule Spectacle… 10/10

Like much European art and culture, French language comics (I’m controversially including Belgium and Swiss strips in this half-baked, nigh-racist, incomprehensibly sweeping statement) often seem to be a triumph of style over content.

That doesn’t mean they’re bad – far from it – simply that sometimes the writing and plotting isn’t as important to the creators and readers as the way it looks on a page and in a book, and complex characterisation isn’t always afforded the same amount of room that scenery, players, fighting or sex gets.

When you combine that with their reading public’s total refusal to be shocked by nudity or profanity, it becomes clear why so few of the seventy-odd years of accumulated, beautiful rendered strips ever got translated into English – until now…

Beginning in the mid-1980s and having exhausted most of the all-ages options like Tintin, Asterix, Lucky Luke and Iznogoud, there was a concerted effort to bring a selection of the best mature-targeted European comics to an English-speaking (but primarily American) audience, with mixed results. Happily, that paucity of anglicised action and adventure has been relegated to the dust-bin of history in this century and we’ve all wised up a bit since then.

One of the most beguiling and intriguing of those bande dessinée serials was released by NBM between 1983 and 1987 as a quartet of splendidly fanciful fantasy albums (Ramor’s Conch, The Temple Of Oblivion, The Reige Master and The Egg Of Darkness) under the umbrella title Roxanna and the Quest for the Time Bird.

The eye-catching albums merrily married sword-and sorcery in the manner of Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal with the sly raciness and wry wit of the early Carry On films and the unmatchable imagination of top-rank artists with no artificial restrictions.

Now the entire saga has been retranslated, remastered and re-released in a humongous (246 x 325 mm) full colour hardback packed with pulchritudinous peril, astonishingly exotic locales and a vast variety of alien races all mashed together and killing time until the end of the world…

That imminently endangered orb is the eccentric realm of Akbar; first glimpsed in French as La Quête de l’oiseau du temps: intégrale cycle principal by writer Serge Le Tendre (Les Voyages de Takuan, Mister George, TaDuc) & Régis Loisel (Peter Pan, La Dernière Goutte, Le Grand Mort, Magasin General). However, before that there was also a pithy prototype version crafted by the collaborators in 1975 for the magazine Imagine and that’s been included in this splendid compilation in all its stark monochrome glory – but only in the original French so keep your phrase book or translation App handy…

The mystique and mystery open with Ramor’s Conch which introduces us to a land of many cultures, creatures and magics as the astonishingly adept and confidant Pelisse (restored to her original Gallic appellation) struggles through hostile territory to reach and recruit Bragon, the Greatest Knight in the World (and quite possibly her father) to capture the mystically mythic Time-Bird.

Opting to ignore the obviously still sore subject of the affair between the aged warrior and her mother, Pelisse wants to concentrate on preventing the destruction of the planet at the hands of a legendary mad god imprisoned within the Conch. The dark deity is prophesied to escape millennia of imprisonment in nine days’ time but there is still one chance to save everything…

Old, crotchety Bragon takes a lot of persuading, even though he once loved Pelisse’s mother. Sorceress-Princess Mara is the only chance of holding back onrushing Armageddon. She has a spell from an ancient book that will rebind Ramor but it will take more than nine days to enact. What she now needs is more time and if she can use the fantastic fowl to mystically extend her deadline all Akbar will be saved. But someone has to fetch it for her…

Of course the noble knight eventually acquiesces, but is utterly unable to prevent the annoying teenager from accompanying him. Whether it’s because she may be his daughter or simply because this rather plain-faced lass has the sexiest body on the planet and the mind of a young girl (which here translates as a devastating blend of ingénue maiden and tart-in-training) and not one whit of a sense of self-preservation he can’t decide…

Despite and not because of her constant cajoling, he “decides” to keep her with him as they set out on their desperate quest, the first step of which is to steal the Conch itself from a teeming desert city of lusty religious maniacs who haven’t even seen a woman in months.

After much derring-do and snide asides they succeed, acquiring a breast-obsessed (Pelisse’s chest is unfeasibly large and inviting and heaves most distractingly according to almost everyone she meets), inept young warrior in the process. Even though he’s clearly hopeless, Pelisse has formed a peculiar romantic attachment to him – but only as long as he never shows his face and remains an object of enticing, enigmatic mystery…

Bragon too is keeping a very close eye on him and their surroundings as they have also attracted a relentless stalker in the burly shape of deadly Bulrog – a former squire and pupil of the old knight – employed by fanatical cultists to ensure Ramor is liberated…

Second chapter The Temple of Oblivion sees a rather fraught reunion between Bragon and Mara as the knight deposits the painfully-recovered Conch and takes a party to the aforementioned temple to translate runic clues which will lead to the location of the Time-Bird.

With the chronal creature safely in custody they can literally stop the clock until Mara can re-confine the nearly-free mad god, but the arduous trek pushes the questers to their emotional and physical limits and a dark edge creeps into the tale as they again succeed, but only at the cost of their latest companion.

Sorely troubled, Bragon, Pelisse and her masked warrior head to their next destination, with only seven days remaining…

Riga finds them slogging through jungles strikingly similar to French Indo-China, gradually nearing their goal but unknowingly stalked by weird vulture-like beings. The scabrous, rapacious beast-beings are led by a puissant warrior of indeterminate vintage who has honed his phenomenal combat skills for decades, becoming an obsessive hunter, dedicated to dealing out death as a spiritual experience.

Over the course of four days much is revealed about Bragon and Bulrog – now a (dis)trusted member of the team – and confirmation comes that everything is not as it seems with the irresistible and so-off-limits Pelisse or her far-distant, ever-more impatient mother.

Most worrisome is the fact that a strange magical trickster dubbed Fol of Dol has attached himself to the party, frustrating everybody with tantalising clues and erratically endangering all their lives whenever the whim takes him…

Of course there is an unspoken connection between the deadly butcher Riga and Bragon and their ultimate confrontation is shocking and final. Then, without ever feeling like the creators are treading water, the chapter closes with three days to doomsday, our weary pilgrims uncomfortably united and the path to the Time-Bird wide open before them…

The Egg of Darkness plays hob with synchronicity and chronology, opening many years after the events of the previous chapters, with an old man relating the adventures as a bedtime story for his grandchildren. The fantastic action is overtaken by a metaphysical detour and explosive revelations about the quest and participants which provide a spectacular shock-ending. As with all great myth tales the heroes triumph and fade but still leave something for imagination to chew at, as well as wiggle-room for a return…

You’ll be delighted to learn – I know I was – that Le Tendre & Loisel did indeed periodically revive their amazing creations and hopefully we’ll be seeing those sagas very soon…

Although plotted with austere, even spartan simplicity and a dearth of subtext, the stylish worldliness of Loisel and Le Tendre in the sparse and evocative script, the frankly phenomenal illustration and sheer inventiveness of the locales of astonishing Akbar are irresistible lures into a special world of reading magic that every comics lover and fantasy fanatic should experience.

It’s not Tintin, it’s not Asterix, it is foreign and it is very good.

Go questing for it.

© DARGAUD 2011 by Le Tendre, Loisel.
Quest for the Time-Bird is available in selected shops now and available to pre-order for a December 29th 2015 internet release.

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Last of the Dragons


By Carl Potts, Denny O’Neil, Terry Austin, Marie Severin & various (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80357-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Astounding Spectacle and Lasting Amazement… 9/10

The creative renaissance in comics in the 1980s resulted in some utterly wonderful stand-alone sagas which shone briefly and brightly within what was still a largely niche industry before passing from view as the business and art form battled spiralling costs, declining readerships (Curses Be! unto those ever-more available-computer games!) and the perverse and pervasive attitude in the wider world that comicbooks were the natural province of mutants, morons and farm animals (I’m paraphrasing).

Unlike today, way back then the majority of grown-ups considered superheroes as adolescent power fantasies or idle wish-fulfilment for the uneducated or disenfranchised, so an entertainment industry which was perceived as largely made up of men in tights hitting each other got very little notice in the wider world of popular fiction.

That all changed with the rise of comics’ Direct Sales Market. With its more targeted approach to selling; specialist vendors in dedicated emporia had leeway to allow frustrated creators to cut loose and experiment with other genres – and even formats.

All the innovation back then led inexorably to today’s high-end, thoroughly respectable graphic novel market which, with suitable and fitting circularity, is now gathering and re-circulating many of the breakthrough tales from those times, not as poorly distributed serials and sequences, but in satisfyingly complete stand-alone proper books.

Marvel was the unassailable front-runner in purveying pamphlet fiction back then, outselling all its rivals and monopolising the lucrative licensed properties market (like Star Wars and Indiana Jones) which once been the preserve of the Whitman/Dell/Gold Key colossus. This added to a zeitgeist which proved that for open-minded readers, superheroes were not the only fruit…

As the Direct Sales market hit an early peak, Marvel instigated its own creator-owned, rights-friendly fantasy periodical in response to the overwhelming success amongst older readers of Heavy Metal magazine. Lush, slick and lavish, HM had even brought a new, music-&- literature based audience to graphic narratives…

That response was Epic Illustrated: an anthological magazine offering stunning art and an anything-goes attitude – unhindered by the censorious Comics Code Authority – which saw everything from adaptations of Moorcock’s Elric and Harlan Ellison novellas to ‘The Last Galactus Story’, the debuts of comicbook stars-in-the-making like Vanth Dreadstar and Cholly and Flytrap plus numerous stories which would become compelling forerunners of today’s graphic novel industry: serialised yarns of finite duration such as Rick Veitch’s ‘Abraxas and the Earthman’, Claremont & Bolton’s Marada the She-Wolf and a fabulously enchanting East-meets-West period fantasy entitled Last of the Dragons.

The story was conceived by then-newcomer Carl Potts, who plotted and pencilled the globe-trotting saga for Denny O’Neil to script, before inker Terry Austin and colourist Marie Severin finished the art for Jim Novak to inscribe with a flourish of typographical verve.

The classically stylish tale ran intermittently from Epic Illustrated #15 through #20 (spanning October 1982 to the end of 1983) and was collected in 1988 as a Marvel Graphic Novel under the Epic Comics aegis in the expansively extravagant and oversized European Album format: a square, high-gloss package which delivered so much more bang-per-buck than a standard funnybook.

Thankfully Dover have retained those generous visual proportions (their new release is a just as slick and shiny 288 x 208 mm) for this glorious new edition which begins with ‘The Sundering’: opening in slowly-changing feudal Japan of the late 19th century where aged master swordsman Masanobu peacefully meditates in the wilderness…

His Zen-like calm and solemn contemplation are callously shattered when a callow, arrogantly aggressive warrior attacks a beautiful dragon basking nearby in the sun. These magnificent reptiles are gentle, noble creatures but the foolish samurai is hungry for glory and soon wins a bloody trophy…

After the arrogant victor has left Masonobu meets Ho-Kan, a priestly caretaker of Dragons. The youth is overcome with horror and misery at the brutal sacrilege, but worse is to come. When the tearful cleric heads back to his temple home, he stumbles upon a corrupt faction of his brother-monks covertly conditioning young forest Wyrms; shockingly brutalising them to deny their true natures and kill on (human) command…

‘The Vision’ finds traumatised Ho-Kan returned to the temple too late: ambitious, reactionary monk Shonin has returned from a voyage to the outer world wrapt in an appalling revelation. He has divined that the quiescent Dragons must be used to preserve Japan from outside influence – and especially the insidious changes threatened by the encroaching white man’s world. In fact he has already been training the creatures to be his shock-troops.

When the elders object, Shonin’s zealots slaughter all the protesting monks before embarking for the barbarous wilds of America where they will breed and train an army of killer lizards in the lap of and under the very noses of the enemy. Ho-Kan is one of precious few of the pious to escape the butchery and vows to stop the madness somehow…

In a meditative vision he sees Takashi: a half-breed boy whose Christian sailor father abandoned him. The juvenile outcast was eventually adopted by the Iga ninja clan and became a great fighter. Somehow he holds the key to defeating Shonin…

‘The Departure’ reveals how Ho-Kan hires the Iga to stop the corrupted killer-monks but, when he also tries to enlist Masanobu, Shonin’s acolytes capture him. Under torture all is revealed and the debauched clerics then trick the sword-master into fighting the ninjas for them. After despatching all but Takashi, the monks “invite” Masanobu to join them in the West. The elderly swordsman has no idea that the saurian beasts he guards are hopelessly degraded monsters now.

‘The Arrival’ sees the monks and their hidden cargo take ship for California, unaware that an enigmatic “half-breed” has enlisted on a ship closely following behind. Sole surviving Iga ninja Takashi is bound in his duty and hungry for vengeance. He will not be denied…

When the priests disembark on a remote bay on the American coast their intention of slaughtering the sailors and Masanobu goes badly awry when a baby dragon escapes. In the ensuing melee the aged warrior realises the true state of play and flees into the forests.

The Indian tribes of the Californian forests are helpless before the martial arts and war-dragons of Shonin, until – in ‘The Meeting’ – they encounter vengeful Takashi hot on the dragon-lords’ trail. After proving his prowess in combat by defeating the indigenous fighters he joins with the braves, stalking the monks until they encounter Masanobu who is also determined to end this dishonourable travesty once and for all…

All of which results in a tumultuous and breathtakingly spectacular climax in ‘The Decision’ as all the disparate factions collide, meeting one final time to forever decide the fate of a nation, the nature of a species and the future of heroes…

Rounding out this superb resurrection is a splendid and informative treasure trove of extra features comprising creator biographies, sample script pages, art breakdowns layouts, pencilled pages, promo art and portfolio illustrations and an effulgent, fondly reminiscent, informative Afterword from Potts – currently in the laborious process of transferring Last of the Dragons from page to screen…

In its small way, this sublimely engaging prototype martial arts fantasy did much to popularise and normalise the Japanese cultural idiom at a time of great tumult and transition in the comics business but more important than that, it still reads superbly well today.

This is a magically compelling tale for fantasy fans and mature readers: an utterly delightful cross-genre romp to entice newcomers and comics neophytes whilst simultaneously beguiling dedicated connoisseurs and aficionados renewing an old acquaintance.
© 1982, 1988, 2015 Carl Potts. All rights reserved.

Last of the Dragons will be available in shops from and on the internet outside Britain from December 16th 2015 and is available to pre-order on the UK internet for a January 29th 2016 release date.

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The Rupert Treasury


By Mary Tourtel (Purnell Books)
ISBN: 9 78-0-36106-343-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Truly British Brilliance with Universal Appeal… 9/10

There’s not a lot around these days in our field which caters specifically for little kids, their nostalgic parents and guardians whilst simultaneously introducing them to the ineluctably tactile wonders and sensorium of a high quality comics anthological experience. Once upon a time there was a whole subdivision of the publishing business dedicated to enthralling and enchanting our youngest and, hopefully, brightest but now all I can think of are The Beano and The Phoenix…

At least we still have books – old and new – to fill the gap.

Moreover, comics fans and the British in general equally adore a well-seasoned tradition and in terms of pictorial narrative and sheer beguilement there’s nothing more perfect than the hairy national treasure called Rupert.

Long before television took him, the Little Bear was part of our society’s very fabric and never more so than at Christmas when gloriously painted, comfortingly sturdy rainbow-hued Annuals found their way into innumerable stockings and the sticky hands of astounded, mesmerised children.

The ursine über-star was created by English artist and illustrator Mary Tourtel (January 28th 1874-March 15th 1948) and debuted in the Daily Express on November 8th 1920; the beguiling vanguard and secret weapon of a pitched circulation battle with rival papers the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail. Both papers had cartoon characters for kiddies – Teddy Tail in the Mail and the soon-to-be legendary Pip, Squeak and Wilfred in the Mirror.

Tourtel’s daily serial of the Little Lost Bear ran for 36 instalments and triggered a phenomenon which remains in full force to this day, albeit largely due to the diligent efforts of her successor Alfred Edmeades Bestall, MBE, who wrote and illustrated Rupert Bear from 1935 to 1965 and was responsible for the Annuals which began with the 1936 edition.

The artist originally chosen to spearhead the Express’ cartoon counterattack was already an established major player on the illustration scene – and fortuitously married to the paper’s News Editor Herbert Tourtel, who had been ordered by the owners to come up with a rival feature.

The unnamed little bear was illustrated by Mary and initially captioned by Herbert, appearing as two cartoon panels per day with a passage of text underneath. He was originally cast as a brown bear until the Express decided to cut costs and inking expenses resulting in the iconic white pallor we all know and love today.

Soon though early developmental “bedding-in” was accomplished and the engaging scenario was fully entrenched in the hearts and minds of readers. Young Rupert lives with his extremely understanding parents in idyllically rural Nutwood village: an enticing microcosm and exemplar of everything wonderful about British life. The place is populated by anthropomorphic animals and humans living together and overlaps a lot of very strange and unworldly places full of mythical creatures and legendary folk…

A huge hit, Mary’s Rupert quickly expanded into a range of short illustrated novels (46 by my count from the early 1920s to 1936, with a further run of 18 licensed and perpetually published by Woolworth’s after that. It’s from the former that the five tales in this splendid hardback commemoration are taken…

Tourtel’s bear was very much a product of his times and social class: inquisitive, adventurous, smart, helpful yet intrinsically privileged and therefore always labouring under a veiled threat of having his cosy world and possessions taken away by the wicked and undeserving.

Heretical as it might sound, like the unexpurgated fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson or the Brothers Grimm, the pre-Bestall Rupert yarns all have a darker edge and worrisome undercurrent with mysterious forces casually, even capriciously targeting our innocent star. Naturally, pluck, good friends and a benevolent adult or two are always on hand to help our hero win through…

This glorious tome – still readily available through many internet vendors and originated in 1984 – gathers a quintet of typical Tourtel tales from the book editions, packing a wealth of full colour painted, duo-hued and monochrome ink-line illustrations into his enchanting pages and opens with the all-colour adventure of ‘Rupert and the Robber Wolf’ from 1932, with the text as always delivered in a succession of rhyming couplets.

The story sees Rupert deprived of his new pocket watch by a burly vulpine bandit and, despite seeking the assistance of best pal Bill Badger, friendly mystic The Wise Old Goat, pixies, fauns and rural troubleshooter The Pedlar, ending up a prisoner of the wolf.

Happily the Old Goat and a posse of police are on hand to collar the crook and his wayward son before something really nasty occurs…

Rendered in bucolic shades of green, ‘Rupert and the Old Miser’ (first released circa 1925) finds our bear playing with a new ball which flies over a forbidding wall into a large garden. When Rupert sneaks in to retrieve his toy he encounters a range of odd and terrified creatures all suborned to the eccentric whims of the rapacious Master Raven…

When the bear is caught the ebon enchanter declares the trespasser to be his property too and sets the poor mite to work as his latest chattel.

Rupert is despondent, but help is at hand. The Little Bear’s friends have concocted a cunning plan to rescue him and when the scheme succeeds the miser meets a grisly fate chasing his fleeing new slave…

Equally verdant in its art aspects is the saga of ‘Rupert and the Enchanted Princess’ (1928) which opens with the bear snatched up by a great bird and delivered to a distant kingdom where a feudal monarch pleads with him to find his missing daughter.

Despite the scorn of the assembled knights, Rupert sets out and, with the aid of woodland creatures and a talking horse, overcomes ogres, dragons and other terrors before reversing the magic curse of three witches and returning the Princess to her doting dad…

Rendered in beautiful, clear, clean black-&-white line art ‘Rupert and the Mysterious Flight’ (1930) begins when The Prince and Princess of the Wood of Mystery send the Little Bear a fully functional aeroplane. Soon Rupert is enjoying his maiden voyage but gets lost and alights in the Land of Kinkajous, where King Toucan – after an initial fright – sets the boy a series of never-ending mystic challenges. After a number of Herculean labours are accomplished Rupert at last regains his flying machine and makes a break for freedom and home…

The fantastic voyages then conclude with the full-colour ‘Rupert and the Magic Toyman’ (1933) wherein a thrilling day enjoying a Fair and Sports Day leads to the unlucky bear being spirited away by a genial craftsman whose enticing wares mask his true nature.

The toy maker is, in fact, a wicked sorcerer and his constructions are transformed animals and even a Princess…

Undaunted, Rupert organises an escape back to Princess Belinda‘s kingdom, but the Toyman has already ensorcelled the whole place into a land of marionettes. Happily, a glimmer of hope remains and the tables can be turned if only Rupert can find and recruit the valiantly heroic Moorland Will whose hunting horn can undo the magic spell…

Beautifully realised, superbly engaging fantasies such as these are never out of style and this fabulous tome should be yours, if only ass means of introducing the next generation to a perfect world of wonder and imagination.
© 1984 Beaverbrook Newspapers Limited. Artwork & text © 1984 Purnell Publishers Limited from original Mary Tourtel material.

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The Complete Adventures of Cholly & Flytrap


By Arthur Suydam with John Workman, Chris Eliopoulos & Annie Parkhouse (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-767-1

Win’s Christmas Recommendation: Merry, Manic Mayhem… 8/10

Arthur Suydam comes from an impressive American dynasty of acclaimed artists harking back to the birth of the nation, but whereas they excelled in gallery painting and architecture, their polymath descendant has divided his time, talents and energies between sequential art and music.

Probably best known (unless you’ve seen him playing with Bruce Springsteen) today as a creator of stunning Zombie art, Suydam’s other signature graphic enterprise has been the perilously peripatetic and gorily satirical burlesques of an inseparable duo of legendarily post-apocalyptic weirdoes dubbed Cholly & Flytrap.

As noted in this lavish hardcover complete collection, the illustrator, author, designer, screenwriter and composer/musician has, since the 1960s, peddled his anarchically humorous, offbeat confections in such disparate venues as Heavy Metal, National Lampoon, Penthouse Comix and Epic Illustrated (where many of these brutally madcap little graphic novellas first appeared – specifically issues #8, 10, 13, 14 and 34); comicbooks like Tarzan, Conan, Batman, House of Mystery, Walking Dead and Marvel Zombies plus movie spin-offs Aliens and Predator.

He has also produced covers for novels including Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane’s collaborative Dead Street and Game-box art for Touch the Dead. Periodically the always-busy Suydam returns to his own uniquely skewed creative projects such as Mudwogs and the mirthfully militaristic muck-ups of his bombastically bloody buddies, teasingly releasing another snippet every so often…

Lavishly grotesque, wickedly wry and surreptitiously subversive, Cholly & Flytrap is a bold blend of dryly witty pastiches combining elements of Moebius’ Arzach, the sci-fi tinged cultural iconoclasm of Vaughn Bode and a surreal anti-war temperament as pioneered by EC Comics which imbues the constant and blackly comic ultra-violence with a hauntingly tragic and educative undertone.

Long ago the space-barge Exodus II crashed on an uncharted world. After untold ages the survivors have bred but never prospered, locked as they are in the constant struggle for survival. It’s not that the planet is particularly inhospitable… it’s just that the denizens – indigenous and not – adore war-making and love killing. Gosh, it’s so very much like Earth…

In the early 1970s Cholly began life as a bat-riding warrior: an inspiration (and eventually poster advert) for the animated Heavy Metal movie, but it was mysteriously transformed into a hot chick on a pterodactyl after acceptance (this sort of inexplicable conceptual metamorphosis happens a lot in film-land), leaving Suydam with the rights to a cool-looking visual and a lot of ideas…

Time passed, Marvel started a creator-owned, rights-friendly fantasy periodical in response to the success of Heavy Metal and that reinvented bat-riding, goggles-wearing avatar of conflict started popping up. Of course, he had evolved slightly whilst the chiropteran had become a colossal, dauntingly naked, bald fat Chinese man. Cholly still rode him like a seasoned Ace, though…

Augmented by a wealth of original art studies, sketches and finished paintings, the ‘Introduction by Max Weinstein’ offers contemporary background, history and critical expression before the exigent exploits (gathered in the order of the 2004-5 repackaged reprints from Image Comics) begin with ‘Chapter 0’ (plotted by Peter Koch) as the restless wanderers haul up at their favourite restaurant for a feed. Impatience, hunger, foreign food cooked by scurrilous talking bugs and honking big guns never make for a sedate evening…

This yarn is neatly stitched together with a later tale (originally entitled ‘A Little Love, a Little Hate!’ from 1981); a frenetic chase/duel between a foul-mouthed, flying-jacketed war-hawk and his slug-like arch-enemy, which showed Cholly’s streetwise cunning in spectacular, over-the-top, take-no-prisoners fashion.

That neatly segues into extended saga ‘The Rites of Spring‘ where Suydam expanded his cast and extemporized on the concept of mortals as organic war machines in a Horatian paean of Thermopylan courage on a world where combat is the natural order.

With Cholly and faithful, mute Flytrap stubbornly holding back a veritable horde of slug-troopers and colossal war-wagons, this is a smart and lusciously graphic feast of visual violence and sassy back-chat…

‘Flightus Interuptus’ follows; an airborne tussle (possibly started before the previous tale?) wherein the high-flying Cholly, sans his humanoid steed, harasses a massive mammary zeppelin-bomber in nothing more than a primitive tri-plane pulled and supported by a brace of the planet’s autonomous, levitating anti-gravity breasts – and no, that’s not a misprint…

Shot down in the throes of victory, the adaptable aviator finds a giant bat to ride (remember kids, recycling even of ideas and art is good for any planet). Sadly the noble beast doesn’t last long before ‘The End’ sees the unseated aviator tooling around the sky with a pair of those flying hooters strapped to his appreciative feet until he encounters a monolithic monster having a furious argument with his own outrageously outspoken boy-bits. Passions aroused and tempers flaring, Cholly is witness to a conflict resolution you simply don’t see every day…

Soldier and human(ish) steed are reunited for ‘Chapter 6’ (with additional text by Bob Burden) as Cholly and a couple of fellow warriors battle slug-troopers to secure a downed freighter’s supplies and end up falling into the oddest sort of hell…

‘The Adventures of Cholly and Flytrap Part II’ commence with their explorations of the scarily Eden-like valley and its buxom, welcoming inhabitants. It’s almost a relief when the Devil pops up to deal with them, but happily Flytrap has a counter to his Final Solution…

The remainder of the comics extravaganza is dedicated to a vast and sprawling pseudo-noir pastiche entitled ‘Center City’, set in a brooding metropolis indistinguishable from 1930 New York or Chicago… except for the aliens, robots, mutants and monsters…

Vile, crippled gang-boss Emiel Luvitz runs the rackets and makes most of his money from the citizens’ gambling on his prize-fighting operation. It helps that he also owns the undisputed “Champ” – slow-witted, gigantic, super-strong Stanley Yablowski – who has never lost a bout or let an opponent live…

Cholly & Flytrap don’t care, they’re only in town long enough to scrape up some ammunition and get drunk, but when The Champ and his minders invade the dive they are patronising, things go south pretty quick.

The hulking bully wants some fun but when he forces the silent Chinaman into an arm-wrestling contest – and loses – all hell breaks loose…

Watching the brief but ferocious struggle is rival mobster and fight-promoter One-Lunger who instantly sees a way to topple Big Wheel Luvitz. Killing Cholly and shanghaiing Flytrap, the callous thug drags the protesting mute all over the world, training and building up the heartbroken yet still-resisting, silent giant into a successful, popular mystery contender who can possibly beat the Champ…

Center City soon becomes a Shakespearian nightmare as Luvitz, seeing foes all around him, begins a paranoia-fuelled campaign of terror, killing or alienating everyone around him even as One-Lunger and his over-the-hill robotic trainer Pop prepare their captive combatant for the grudge match that will settle the fate of the maddened municipality.

What nobody realises yet is that Cholly isn’t actually dead. Slowly stalking the unwary mobsters, he’s anticipating some extreme violence to get his beloved bosom buddy back…

Smart, devious and utterly compelling, this is a splendidly hilarious, wickedly gratuitous OTT tale to make Wagner or Brecht sit up and take notes…

Supplementing the graphic wonderment is a ‘Cover Gallery’, a vast portfolio of monochrome sketches, working drawings and finished paintings, a studious and multi-generational essay on ‘The Suydam Legacy in New York’ plus a photo-packed, celebrity stuffed ‘Biography’ of the dauntingly gifted Arthur…

This is a sumptuous, exuberant and entrancingly daft slab of eye-candy that will astound and delight all canny fantasists.
Cholly and Flytrap ™ & © Arthur Suydam 2015. All Rights Reserved. All other art and trademarks are the property of their individual rights holders.

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Melusine volume 2: Halloween


By Clarke (Frédéric Seron) & Gilson, coloured by Cerise and translated by Erica Jeffrey (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-34-2

Teen witches have a long and distinguished pedigree in fiction and one of the most engaging first appeared in venerable Belgian magazine Spirou in 1992.

Mélusine is actually a sprightly 119 year old who spends her days working as an au pair in a vast monster-packed, ghost-afflicted chateau whilst diligently studying to perfect her craft at Witches’ School…

The long-lived feature offers everything from one-page gag strips to full-length comedy tales on supernatural themes detailing her rather fraught life, the impossibly demanding master and mistress of the castle and her large circle of exceedingly peculiar family and friends.

Collected editions began appearing annually or better from 1995, with the 24th published in 2015 and another due next year. Thus far five of those have transformed into English translations thanks to the fine folk at Cinebook.

The strip was devised by writer François Gilson (Rebecca, Cactus Club, Garage Isidore) and cartoon humorist Frédéric Seron, AKA Clarke whose numerous features for all-ages Spirou and acerbic adult humour publication Fluide Glacial include Rebecca, Les Cambrioleurs, Durant les Travaux, l’Exposition Continue… and Le Miracle de la Vie.

Under the pseudonym Valda, Seron also created Les Babysitters and, as Bluttwurst, Les Enquêtes de l’Inspecteur Archibaldo Massicotti, Château Montrachet, Mister President and P.38 et Bas Nylo.

A former fashion illustrator and nephew of comics veteran Pierre Seron, Clarke is one of those insufferable guys who just draws non-stop and is unremittingly funny. He also doubles up as a creator of historical and genre pieces such as Cosa Nostra, Les Histoires de France, Luna Almaden and Nocturnes and apparently is free from the curse of having to sleep…

Halloween was the eighth M̩lusine album, originally released in 2001, and gathers a wealth of stunning seasonally sensitive strips, making it a great place for newcomers to start as the majority of the content is comprised of one or two page gags starring the sassy sorceress who Рlike a young but hot Broom Hilda Рmakes excessive play with fairy tale and horror film conventions and themes.

When brittle, moody Melusine isn’t being bullied for her inept cleaning skills by the matriarchal ghost-duchess who runs the castle, or ducking cat-eating monster Winston and frisky vampire The Count, she’s avoiding the attentions of horny peasants, practising her spells or consoling and coaching inept, un-improvable and lethally unskilled classmate Cancrelune.

Mel’s boyfriend is a werewolf so he only bothers her a couple of nights a month…

Daunting dowager Aunt Adrezelle is always eager and happy to share the wisdom of her so-many centuries but so, unfortunately, is family embarrassment cousin Melisande who spurned the dark, dread and sinisterly sober side of the clan to be a Fairy Godmother; all sparkles, fairy-cakes, pink bunnies and love. She’s simplicity, sweetness and light itself in every aspect, so what’s not to loathe…?

This turbulent tome riffs mercilessly on the established motifs and customs of Halloween where kids fill up to lethal levels on sweets and candies, monsters strive to look their worst, teachers try to keep the witches-in-training glued top their books and grimoires even as their over-excitable students experiment most unwisely on what to do with pumpkins – including how to grow, breed or conjure the biggest ones – whilst the fearfully pious local priest and his flock endeavour to ruin all the magical fun…

Even Melisande gets in on the party atmosphere in her own too nice-to-be-true manner, lightening the happy shadows with too much sunshine and saccharine before the collection ends with the extended eponymous ‘Halloween’ wherein Melusine and Cancrelune learn the true meaning of the portentous anniversary when they inadvertently join the creaking clacking cadavers of the Risen Dead as they evacuate their graves on the special night to fight and drive away for another year the Evil Spirits which haunt humanity…

Wry, sly, fast-paced and uproariously funny, this compendium of arcane antics is a great taste of the magic of European comics and a beguiling delight for all lovers of the cartoonist’s art. Read before bedtime and don’t eat any hairy sweets…
Original edition © Dupuis, 2000 by Clarke & Gilson. All rights reserved. English translation 2007 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Resurrectionists volume 1: Near Death Experienced


By Fred Van Lente, Maurizio Rosenzweig & Moreno DiNisio (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-760-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Undying Action Adventure… 8/10

Surely everybody loves a cool crime caper yarn and here scripter Fred Van Lente (Action Philosophers, Cowboys & Aliens, X-Men: Noir, Brainboy) has conceived another riotously cracking big-picture concept that will astound fans of films and funnybooks alike.

Illustrated by Italian art émigrés Maurizio Rosenzweig (Laida Odius, Davide Golia, Clown Fatale) and colourist Moreno DiNisio (Dead Body Road), the tale is both frighteningly simple and terrifyingly complex…

Once upon a time 3000 years ago in ancient Egypt an architect named Tao finished a tomb for a dangerously ambitious priest. Unfortunately, the august cleric Herihor wanted to be Pharaoh instead of the Pharaoh and felt that the necessary precautions to ensure his ambitions in this life and the next should necessarily involve killing everyone who worked on the project, including Tao’s pregnant wife Maya…

Meanwhile in the now, former architect and current major thief Jericho Way is stealing relics to order for a mysterious client with big pockets and extremely fixed tastes. Way has no idea why the mystery man only wants Egyptian stuff or that the so-shy client is technically someone he’s known for many centuries…

With brother-thief Mac Jericho is planning to boost some scrolls from a museum, but has become annoyingly distracted by dreams of himself in another time and place. The master planner is blithely unaware that a lot of very strange and dangerous people are somehow cognizant of the changes he’s going through – after all they’ve been there before innumerable times – and are now extremely concerned about the life-decisions he’s going to be making over the next few days…

The first inkling that something is up comes after a particularly intense “dream” as Jericho realises that he can now read the ancient Egyptian scrawl on the scroll he’s just swiped…

Long ago in Herihor’s tomb, Tao, having escaped his pursuers but now hopelessly lost, settles down to die but is soon astounded to see another face. Tomb robbers – also called “Resurrectionists” – have already broken into his impregnable design but now offer him a way out and an opportunity for revenge…

And as Jericho shares his memories of those robbers with Mac, and he notes the recurring resemblances to recent acquaintances, it all becomes clear that he and his new co-crew have been working on that revenge and this robbery for a very long time indeed…

Incorporating a mystic vendetta than spans millennia and an undying love affair, this supremely engaging supernatural saga sees a gang of archetypal thieves locked in an eternal duel of wits and wills against a monster who has co-opted the Afterlife through the most devious and patient methods ever conceived.

However since the ragtag band of rogues can call upon the experiences of every person thy have been, maybe this time they’re going to pull off the Crime of the Ages and finally get vengeance and peace in equal measure…

A delicious melange of reincarnation yarn, conspiracy-thriller and all-action buddy-movie come heist-caper, this is a brilliantly conceived and executed tale with plenty of plot twists you don’t want me to reveal but which will intoxicate and astound all lovers of devious and deranged dark fantasy.
Resurrectionists © 2014, 2015 Fred Van Lente and Maurizio Rosenzweig. All rights reserved.

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Heart in a Box


By Kelly Thompson & Meredith McClaren (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-694-5

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Fearsome Mature Fable for the Family Season… 8/10

Let’s face it kids, Love Hurts and this mesmerising modern parable demonstrates that maxim with stunning audacity and devilish charm as author Kelly Thompson (Storykiller, The Girl Who Would be King, Jem and the Holograms) and illustrator Meredith McClaren (Hinges) take a young woman on a harsh yet educative road trip to learn a life lesson regarding ill-considered wishes and Faustian bargains…

After young Emma had her heart broken by her unforgettable “Man with No Name” she foolishly listens to an insistent stranger who promises to make the shattering pain go away forever.

He’s as good as his word, too, but within nine days Emma realises that what she feels after he’s worked his magic is absolutely nothing at all and that’s even worse than the agony of loss and betrayal which nearly ended her…

The aggravating Mephistophelean advisor – she calls him “Bob” – is still popping in however, and promptly offers her a way to can reclaim the seven shards of sentiment/soul she threw away. There will of course be a few repercussions: as much for her as those folks who have been enjoying the use of a little feeling heart ever since Emma so foolishly dispensed with it and might not want to relinquish that additional loving feeling…

But as she doggedly travels across America, hunting down those mystically reassigned nuggets of passion, she discovers not only how low she’ll stoop to recover what’s hers but also where and when all the moral boundaries she never thought she had can’t be bent, bartered or broken…

A dark delight, Emma’s literal emotional journey takes her into deadly danger, joyous cul-de-sacs and life-changing confrontations with her past and future in a clever reinvigoration of one of literature’s oldest plots and probably mankind’s most potent and undying philosophical quandaries…

Funny, sad, scary and supremely uplifting Heart in a Box is a beguiling rollercoaster ride to delight modern lovers and every grown-up too mature to ever be lonely or dependent…
© 2013, 1979 Semi-Finalist Inc. & Meredith McClaren. All rights reserved.