The Odd Comic World of Richard Corben


By Richard Corben & various (Warren Adult Fantasy)
ISBN: 84-85138-21-X

Richard Corben flowered in the independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a globally revered, multi-award winning creator. He is most renowned for his mastery of the airbrush and his delight in sardonic, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales.

Although never a regular contributor to the comicbook mainstream, the animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist is one of America’s greatest proponents of sequential narrative: an astoundingly accomplished artist with an unmistakable style and vision.

Violent, cathartically graphic and often blackly hilarious, his infamous signature-stylisation always includes oodles of nudity, ultra-extreme explicit violence and impossibly proportioned male and female physiques – and nobody should be disappointed as there’s plenty of all that in here.

From a time when graphic novels and book-bound comics collections were almost unheard of, this quirky, racy collection opens after an effusive introduction by Will Eisner with ‘The Dweller in the Dark’ (co-written with Herb Arnold) – an early exploration of the artist’s fascination with and facility for depicting lost civilisations. Rain-forest dwellers Bo Glan and Nipta break tribal taboo to explore a dead city, and learn pain and sorrow when they fall foul of rapacious, invading white men and ancient things far worse…

‘Razar the Unhero’ (written in 1970 by Arnold as “Starr Armitage”) is a dark and sexily violent spoof with a deprecating edge, deliciously lampooning the Sword and Sorcery epics dominating paperback bookshelves of the day whilst the silly, saucy ‘Mangle, Robot Mangler’ does the same to classic comicbook hero Magnus with a sexy, seditious rabbit-punch parody.

‘How Howie Made it in the Real World’ jumps wholeheartedly into adult science fiction territory with a sinister gore-fest for unwary space-tourists whilst ‘For the Love of a Daemon’ – opening the full-colour section of this volume and showing the first hints of the artist’s later airbrush expertise – returns to traditional fantasy themes for a boisterous black comedy of Barbarians and mega-hot naked babes in distress.

The1973 collaboration with Doug Moench ‘Damsel in Dragon Dress’ is a gleeful witches’ brew of fantasy, fairytale foible and a curious cautionary tale about the unexpected dangers of drug abuse, whilst worlds-within-worlds alien romance ‘Cidopey’ conceals a tragic twist as well as the artist’s softer and more contemplative side.

The final tales in this collection are both from 1972. ‘Space Jacked’ blends Corben’s mordant sense of humour with a darkly cynical streak in the twisty-turny tale of an outer space Bonnie and Clyde who think they might be Adam and Eve, and ‘Going Home’ closes the show in a contemplative, poignant manner as the last man of Earth bequeaths the universe far better caretakers…

Mad, moody and magnificent, these early exotic episodes are too-long overdue for a proper re-evaluation but until some publisher finally wises up, at least there’s a still a goodly number of older editions just waiting to be found and treasured…
© 1971-1977 Richard Corben/Warren Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved.

Congress of the Animals


By Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-437-5

As with every true art form, some practitioners in the world of comics simply defy easy categorisation and their works are beyond most reviewers and critics’ skills (mine certainly). Some are just so pedestrian or so mind-numbingly bad that one simply can’t face writing about them. Others are so emphatically wonderful that no collection of praise and analysis can do them justice.

At the pinnacle of the funnybook pyramid is Jim Woodring, in a position he has maintained for years and clearly appears capable of holding for years to come. Woodring’s work is challenging, spiritual, philosophical, funny, beautiful and extremely scary. Moreover, even after reading that sentence you will have absolutely no idea of what awaits you the first time you read any of it, or indeed – even if you’re a long term devotee – when opening a new silent masterpiece novel such as Congress of the Animals. Cartoonist, Fine Artist, toy-maker and artistic Renaissance Man Jim Woodring’s eccentric career has delighted far too small an audience since his first mini-comics in 1980. No matter that you may have avidly adored his groundbreaking Fantagraphics magazine series Jim (1986); its nominal spin-off Frank (of which the latest volume Weathercraft won The Stranger 2010 Genius Award for Literature), Tantalizing Stories, Seeing Things or the more mainstream features such as his Star Wars and Aliens tales for Dark Horse, you will still have no idea how you will respond to his next work.

Woodring grows rather than constructs surreal, abstract, wild, rational, primal cartooning: a clean-lined, solidly ethereal, mannered blend of woodblock prints, Robert Crumb, Dreamscapes, religious art and monstrous phantasmagoria. His stories are a logical, progressional narrative – usually a non-stop chase from one invention to the next – clouded with multiple layers of meaning but totally devoid of speech or words, supremely dependent on the intense involvement of the reader as fully active participant.

Congress of the Animals is another vertiginous vehicle following dog-faced Frank and his regular crew of irregular types in a manic fable of dangerous arrogance, casual self-deceit and painful reparations, insane exploration of dire and dreadful alternate dimensions and even the first inklings of what might one day be True Love and always without a single word of dialogue or description. Here, the drawn image is always king…

Clearly Woodring’s work is not to everyone’s taste or sensibilities – otherwise why would you need me to plug his work – and as always, his drawings have the perilous propensity of repeating like cucumber and making one jump long after you’ve put the book down, but he is an undisputed master of graphic narrative and an innovator always making new art to challenge us and himself. And, of course, he makes us love it and leaves us hungry for more…

All art-forms need such creators and this glorious hardback monochrome tome could well change your reading habits for life.

Go on, aren’t you tempted, tantalized or terrified yet? What about curious, then…?

© 2011 Jim Woodring. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

Grimjack: Demon Knight


By John Ostrander & Flint Henry with an introduction by Roger Zelazny (First Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-91541-970-8

Grimjack originally appeared during the American comic industry’s last great flourishing in the 1980’s. Created by playwright John Ostrander and Young Turk Tim Truman as a back-up feature for Mike Grell’s Starslayer, the series ran in issues #10-18 before graduating to its own title at First Comics. It almost survived the company’s demise more than a decade later. In a crowded marketplace, and almost irrespective of who was doing the drawing, this hard-boiled-detective/fantasy action strip was a watchword for quality entertainment.

The ’80s were a fantastic time for comics creators and consumers. It was like an entire new industry opening up within the original, moribund mainstream; the proliferation of the Direct Sales market and dedicated specialist retail outlets allowed new companies to start experimenting with format and content, whilst punters had a bit of spare cash to play with. Moreover much of the “kid’s stuff” stigma had finally dissipated – the country was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be an actual art-form…

Consequently many new companies began competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown accustomed – or resigned – to getting their four-colour kicks from DC, Marvel Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material had been slowly creeping in but by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse and First among others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads into traditional markets.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Chicago-based First Comics was an early frontrunner, with Frank Brunner’s Warp, Starslayer and Jon Sable from Mike Grell and Howard Chaykin’s iconic American Flagg!, as well as an impressive line of comicbooks targeting a more sophisticated audience.

In 1984 they followed Marvel and DC’s lead with a line of impressive, European-styled over-sized graphic albums featuring new, out-of-the-ordinary comics sagas (see Time2, Time Beavers, Mazinger or Beowulf to see just how bold, broad and innovative the material could be)…

John Gaunt is a perpetually reincarnating warrior-mercenary calling himself Grimjack: a combination private eye, Ronin and problem-solver-of-last-resort, just scratching out a living in the fantastic pan-dimensional city of Cynosure. This incalculably vast metropolis intersects with every place in the multiverse at one time or another and the strangest of the strange inhabit its core regions.

All manner of beings constantly rub shoulders (if they have them) with gods, monsters, robots and things less quantifiable in a cruelly capitalistic commercial wonderland where the laws of physics can change from house to house but the law of supply and demand is utterly inviolable…

In his long lives Gaunt has been many things, but first and foremost he is a hero of the Demon Wars – a period in Cynosure’s history when the city overlapped the assorted regions of Hell and unspeakably vile devils from a host of infernos ran amok in the metropolis until the valiant Demon Knights drove them off forever.

Now, in this all-new tale, Gaunt is hired by the Office of the Chronost-Marshall to find who has interfered with the city’s chronology, unleashing a devastating time-storm. Surly, rebellious and unpleasant, Gaunt is still the only operative tough and crazy enough to brave the fourth dimensional vortex and shut down the maelstrom. Unfortunately, he never reckoned on stumbling into his own tragic past and meeting again his one true love…

As the Demon Wars reached their crescendo long ago a sorely wounded John Gaunt stumbled into a paradise dimension named Pdwyr and found brief bliss with the glorious, pacifist princess Rhian, before his companion Major Lash betrayed the entire race to the infernal hordes and watched their paradise become a last bastion of Hell…

Now Gaunt has arrived in Pdwyr once more – just after his earlier self departed – and faces the ultimate temptation: changing history to save the only woman he ever loved and the only place he ever felt at peace, or letting events unfold again in all their horrific predestined brutality…

Whatever he decides will be wrong…

The combination of cynical dry wit, mordant, bitter-edged fantasy and spectacularly imaginative action made Grimjack one of the best series of the era and the ghastly human tragedy of this epic aside is a treat no comics fan should miss. Moreover, this graphic narrative, beautifully illustrated by Flint Henry and colourist Martin Thomas, is designed with new readers in mind so there’s no reason for anyone to avoid a brutally magical encounter with a genuine original of the genre(s)…
© 1989 First Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: Little Snow White, The Three Sluggards & The Shoemaker & the Elves


Adapted by David Wenzel & Douglas Wheeler (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-130-8

The immortal German folktales gathered by historians, philologists and lexicographers Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm have been told to enthralled generations of children all over the planet for nearly two centuries – they were first collected and published in 1812 – becoming an intrinsic part of human life. However these dark and powerful parables – they all have meanings and moral, after all – became increasingly enfeebled and sanitised over the decades as parents, entertainment purveyors and educators constantly diluted the details for their own reasons.

Here scripter Doug Wheeler (Swamp Thing, Classics Desecrated) and fantasy artist Dave Wenzel (Warlords, The Hobbit) return to the source material – but not too slavishly – for a dark and luscious pre-interpretation of three of the original classics in a glorious, fully painted hardcover edition first released by NBM in 1995.

You already know the key points of ‘Little Snow White’ which takes up the lion’s share of this terrific tome, but major restorations include the fact that the little princess was only seven when the malicious and jealous queen ordered her death; that the triumphant step-mother gleefully eats the heart of a wild pig fully believing it to be Snow White’s and, after finally being murdered (three truly harrowing attempts) in the dwarves’ home, the radiant child was interred in a crystal coffin for seven years – inexplicably maturing there into a beautiful, if dead, young woman before she was finally revived.

When the Prince finally aroused her from the deathly slumber it wasn’t with a kiss either…

Good triumphed at last and evil was sadistically punished in the end, after which ‘The Shoemaker and the Elves’ provides a sweet and savoury palate cleanser in a cheerfully enchanting Christmas tale of Good Deeds rewarded after which ‘The Three Sluggards’ relates in a single captivating page how the laziest king in the world selected his ideal successor.

The original tales are so ubiquitous, so ingrained in our lives that there’s no possibility of any one version ever becoming definitive, but that’s not really the point. These particular iterations, as graphically realised by Wheeler and Wenzel, are a superb synthesis of immortal legend and comic art mastery that will enthral every reader no matter how over-familiar you think they might be. One of those perfect books that belongs on every bookshelf.
© 1995 by David Wenzel & Doug Wheeler.

Hawkmoon: the Jewel in the Skull


By Michael Moorcock, adapted by Gerry Conway, Rafael Kayanan, Rico Rival & Alfredo Alcala (First Publishing)
ISBN: 0-915419-32-7

Michael Moorcock began his career as a comics writer and editor at age 15, writing and editing such classic strips as Tarzan, Dogfight Dixon, Jet Ace Logan, Captain Condor, Olac the Gladiator and many, many other British stalwarts before making the jump to prose fiction, where he single-handedly revitalised the genre with the creation of Elric and the high-concept of the Eternal Champion.

As literary fantasy heroes began finding comicbook outlets and analogues it was only a matter of time before Moorcock’s astonishing pantheon of paladins began making inroads into the graphic adventure market. After a series of superlative adaptations of his epochal Elric epics were released by Marvel and First Publishing in the 1980s, the latter company expanded the franchise and began publishing miniseries of the darkly satirical and highly engaging History of the Runestaff.

Also part of Moorcock’s vast and expansive “Eternal Champion” shared universe, the novels comprising The Runestaff detail the struggles of an embattled and beleaguered band of heroes in a dystopic future Europe struggling to survive the all-conquering armies of decadent and fascistic superpower Granbretan. The astonishingly addictive and archly hilarious core books The Jewel in The Skull, The Mad God’s Amulet, The Sword Of The Dawn, and The Runestaff have been collected into an omnibus edition entitled The History of the Runestaff if you feel the inclination to check out the source material…

In a mischievous reversal of British comics tradition the proto-steampunk Dark Empire of Granbretan are ruthless, rapacious, all-conquering bad-guys whilst the beleaguered underdog heroes are French and the star is a German!

Stuffed with English phonetic in-jokes and puns the series is a deeply witty and sardonic critique on the times it was written in. Wicked Baron Meliadus is ruler of the fabulous duchy of Kroiden – famed today for its trams and… well, not even trams really… and the debased gods the Wicked Englander marauders worship include Aral Vilsn, Chirshil, Jhone, Phowl, Jhorg and Rhunga – sound ’em out; we’ll wait…

In this adaptation of the first novel, originally released as a four issue miniseries in1987, the wonderment begins as doughty warrior Count Brass inspects the land of the Kamarg; domains he won after destroying the previous demented, despotic incumbent. After an eventful tour Brass returns home and renews a long-standing debate with his aide and friend Bowgentle about the relative merits of the burgeoning Empire of Granbretan.

A seasoned campaigner, the Count feels the Empire’s initial depredations are acceptable if the world stands united at the end whilst the philosopher/poet feels that there’s a creeping sickness corrupting the souls of the agents of expansion. The comrades get a chance to assess for themselves when Ambassador Baron Meliadus of Kroiden arrives seeking a non-intervention pact with the tiny but powerful state Brass shepherds.

Offering every courtesy to the visiting dignitary the Count allows himself to be swayed by the Baron’s honeyed words until the Granbretanian, obsessed with Brass’ daughter Yisselda, refuses to take “no” for an answer and attempts to abduct her. After grievously wounding Bowgentle, Meliadus is soundly thrashed and sent packing by the outraged father and henceforth a state of war exists between the Empire and the Karmarg.

Frustrated and humiliated Meliadus swears an oath by the mythical Runestaff to defeat Count Brass, possess Yisselda and ravage the Kamarg. Returning to the dark heart of the Empire the Baron plots a horrible revenge, unaware of the staggering forces his incautious oath has set in motion…

His vile thoughts turn to Duke Dorian Hawkmoon von Köln, a recently captured prince who valiantly resisted the Empire’s brutal conquest of his nation. Now a broken toy of Granbretan’s debased scientists, Hawkmoon will be the perfect instrument of revenge once the devilish doctors of Londra have done with him…

Meliadus offers Hawkmoon freedom if the broken hero will infiltrate the Karmarg and steal Yisselda and the Duke agrees, but rather than accept his word Meliadus takes the precaution of having a black jewel inserted into Dorian’s skull. Not only will it relay back all the Duke sees, but should he rebel it will eat into his skull and consume his brain…

The second chapter opens with Hawkmoon’s cunningly staged epic escape and soon the Hero of Köln is welcomed into the safe haven of Count Brass’ castle. His mission well underway the princely pawn is troubled by dreams of a Warrior in Jet and Gold, but his waking hours are filled with spiritual healing as the champions of the Kamarg and especially lovely Yisselda mend his broken warrior’s soul.

Moreover Brass is not fooled for a moment and undertakes to free Hawkmoon from the influence and lethal effects of the ebony jewel…

The reprieve is temporary and the Jewel in the Skull is only rendered dormant. To completely remove its threat Hawkmoon must travel to far Hamadam in search of the wizard Malagigi, who holds the secret of neutralising the brain-devouring bauble. However, before that can be contemplated the little kingdom must face the massed armies of Granbretan under the furious command of twice-thwarted Baron Meliadus…

With a revitalised Hawkmoon commanding a troop of harrying rough-riders the impossible feat is accomplished in grand style (thanks in no small part to the powerfully imaginative illustration of Rafael Kayanan and inkers Alfredo Alcala & Rico Rival) and as the Dark Empire retreats in stunned astonishment to lick its wounds and assuage its shaken pride, the tormented Duke heads East to Turkia seeking his personal salvation.

The final chapter sees him find his destined squire/companion Oladahn (smallest of the Mountain Giants), finally meet the mysterious warrior in Jet and Gold, defeat decadent sorcerer Agonosvos the Immortal and forge a new alliance when he rescues warrior-queen Frawbra and her city from insurrection instigated by Granbretan.

Masterminding the attempt is the rapacious and quite mad Meliadus, leading to a fate-drenched final confrontation…

There’s a tremendous amount of plot stuffed into each issue, often giving a feeling of ponderous density to the proceedings but it’s always leavened with plenty of action and one spectacular high concept idea after another. Whilst no substitute for Moorcock’s stunning fantasy tour de force, the graphic novel Jewel in the Skull is a bombastic and devastatingly effective adaptation that will delight all fans of fantastic fantasy.
© 1988 First Publishing, Inc and Star*Reach Productions. Original story © 1967 Michael Moorcock; used with permission.

Look-In Film Special: Clash of the Titans


By Mary Carey & Dan Spiegle (ITV Books)
ISBN: 0-900727-87-X

Comic adaptations of major motion pictures aren’t nearly as common these days as they were in the days before video, DVDs, Bluray and movies-on-demand or downloadable entertainment and I, for one, regret the loss. Today the traffic more often goes the other way as comics of all sorts and quality become grist for Hollywood’s insatiable mill…

Once funnybook versions were there to keep the film in the public’s attention before and after the fact; providing publicity pre-release and acting as mementos once the blockbuster had come and gone.

Often the printed article lacked plot accuracy as most adaptations were produced from an original shooting script and directors always change stuff about and edit in post-production (just compare Marvel’s first Star Wars adaptation to the final cinematic version), most of the gorier moments were excised or compressed and of course the whole process required the audience to participate by learning to read…

What they did often offer, however, was a chance for an artist to escape the narrow confines of comicbook genres and really flex their imaginative muscles such as in this extremely impressive – and mostly spot-on – interpretation of the 1981 Ray Harryhausen fantasy classic.

This tie-in interpretation of Clash of the Titans (the film was actually directed by Desmond Davis by the way) is a singular epic experience which displays the masterful artistry of the hugely undervalued Dan Spiegle, released in America by the monolithic Whitman Publishing under their Golden Press imprint. The script was adroitly adapted in America by Mary Carey for an over-sized edition with plenty of spectacular full-page sequences which illustrator Spiegle utilised to superb effect as he detailed the story of the demigod boy-hero Perseus.

The lad was sired by the god Zeus on mortal princess Danaё of Argos, for which her father King Acrisius tried to kill both mother and child by sealing them in a crate and throwing them into the sea. Rescued by Poseidon, they washed up on the shores of Seriphos where the baby grew to be a simple fisherman, unaware of his celestial antecedents. To punish Acrisius Zeus unleashed the Kraken, last of the terrible Titans, to destroy the entire island kingdom of Argos…

The gods are acrimonious and seldom kind. When the son of divine Thetis hunted the winged horses, Zeus transformed him into a monster. Originally promised to beautiful Andromeda, this Calibos was forever after shunned and his mother decreed that if he could not marry the princess of Joppa no man would…

As a result of the gods’ eternal squabbling, young Perseus was unwillingly dispatched to Joppa where he fell for Andromeda, battled Calibos and was manipulated into undertaking a fantastic quest to destroy the Kraken before Thetis could use it to destroy Andromeda and her people forever…

All the incredible characters and creatures are included here: vain gods and marauding monsters, bold heroes, dastardly villains, winged Pegasus, the ghastly Gorgon, the ferryman of Hell; magic weapons, three-headed dogs and annoying mechanical owls all dazzle and delight in this breathtaking magical interpretation which is still readily available – at least in its British edition.

Whilst there might be no commercial necessity for adapted comics anymore, spectacular books like this prove that there should always be a place to see our greatest artists and our favourite filmic fables working in perfect harmony.
© 1981 Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Film Co. All rights reserved.

Al Williamson Archives volume 1


By Al Williamson with an introduction by Angelo Torres (Flesk)
ISBN: 978-1-933865-29-4

Al Williamson is one of the greatest draughtsmen ever to grace the pages of comicbooks and newspaper comics sections. He was born in 1931 before his family moved from New York City to Bogota Columbia at the height of the Golden Age of syndicated adventure strips.

The lad’s passion for strips – especially Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim – was broadened as he devoured imported and translated US material as well as the best that Europe and Latin America could provide in such anthology magazines as Paquin and Pif Paf. Aged 12 Williamson returned to America and, after finishing school, found work in the industry that had always obsessed him.

In the early 1950s he became a star of E.C. Comics’ science fiction titles, beside kindred spirits Joe Orlando, Wally Wood, Roy G. Krenkel, Frank Frazetta and Angelo Torres, and drew Westerns Kid Colt and Ringo Kid for Atlas/Marvel. During the business’ darkest days he gravitated to newspaper strips, assisting John Prentice on Rip Kirby – another masterpiece originally created by Alex Raymond.

When comicbooks gradually recovered, Williamson drew Flash Gordon for King Comics and worked on mystery tales and westerns for DC whilst drawing such globally distributed newspaper features as Secret Agent Corrigan plus groundbreaking film adaptations of Bladerunner and Star Wars.

His stunning poetic realism, sophisticated compositions and fantastic naturalism graced many varied tales, but in later years he became almost exclusively a star inker over pencillers as varied as John Romita Jr., Larry Stroman, Rick Leonardi, Mark Bright, José Delbo and a host of others on everything from Transformers to Spider-Man 2099, Daredevil to Spider-Girl.

Al Williamson passed away in June 2010.

Flesk Publications is an outfit specialising in art books and the tomes dedicated to the greats of our industry include volumes on sequential narrative and fantasy illustration starring Steve Rude, Mark Shultz, James Bama, Gary Gianni, Franklin Booth, William Stout and Joseph Clement Coll. The guiding light behind the company is devoted and passionate art lover John Fleskes.

This initial oversized (305 x 232mm) 64 page collection of sketches, working drawings, unused and unfinished pages from one of the stellar creators of our art form stars captivating heroines, lusty barbarians, space heroes, beasts, aliens and so many wonderful dinosaurs, but also presents lesser known western scenes, science fiction tech, character sketches, duels, action sequences, nudes and glamour studies, unfinished pages from Xenozoic tales and John Carter of Mars, religious scenes and delicious unseen excerpts from Rip Kirby, as well as a glimpse into Williamson’s creative process.

The beautifully intimate glimpses of a master at work, with full colour reproduction capturing every nuance of Williamsons’ gorgeous pencil strokes, make this a book a vital primer for anybody dreaming of drawing for a living and the stirring lavish material revealed here will enthral and entice every fan of wondrous worlds and fantastic forgotten realms.

© 2010 Al Williamson. All Rights Reserved.

Jack of Fables volume 4: Americana


By Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Russ Braun, Tony Akins, Andrew Pepoy, & Steve Leialoha (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-050-5

Just so you know, Fables are fairytale, storybook and mythical beings hidden on our mundane Earth since their various magical realms fell to a sinister monstrous Adversary. Arriving hundreds of years ago (and still coming) the fantastic refugees hid their true natures from humanity and built isolated enclaves where their immortality and utter strangeness could not endanger the life of uneasy luxury they buried themselves within. Many of these elusive eternals wander the human world, but always under strict and draconian mandate to never get noticed.

In Fables: Homelands the utterly self-absorbed and absolutely amoral Jack of the Tales (basis for such legends as Beanstalk, Giant-killer, Frost, Be Nimble and many more) broke all the rules – because that’s his nature – by stealing Fabletown cash and moving to Hollywood. Once there he set up as a movie producer, created the most popular fantasy film triptych of all time.

A key tenet of the series is that the more “mundies” (that’s mortals like you and me) think about a fable character, the stronger that actual character becomes. Books, TV, songs, all feed their vitality. So when the movies based on Jack’s life ultra-charged him they also brought him much unwelcome attention. The avaricious rat-bag coined vast amounts of filthy lucre in the process, but it all led the Fabletown authorities straight to him.

In Jack of Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape our irreverent faux-hero was brought to task by the Fables Police, exiled from Hollywood and ordered to disappear, with only a suitcase full of cash to tide him over. He was also banished from all Fable properties and domains. Alone and unprotected he was soon captured by The Golden Bough, a clandestine organisation that had been hunting Fables for centuries.

Jack escaped during a mass break-out of forgotten, adulterated and abridged Fables, all fleeing from a particularly horrific fate – metaphysical and contextual neutering.

He is presently on the run from those selfsame forces (in the distractingly vivacious shape of the Page Sisters, dedicated hunters of everything Fable-ulous) and constantly seeking to restore his cash-flow as this fourth volume – collecting issues #17-21 of the monthly Vertigo comic – commences with first chapter of the eponymous ‘Americana’ as Jack reviews his simple life goals – to be the richest, most powerful and best-looking Fable in the universe – and have lots of really hot sex…

‘On Eggshells’ opens with Jack, Gary, the Pathetic Fallacy and cynical sidekick Native American Raven hiding out in a cheap motel as Hillary Page, with diminished giant Paul Bunyan and Babe (a blue ox with a remarkable imagination), zeroes in on the fugitives.

Things pick up however when Jack reassembles the shell-shocked Humpty Dumpty who has the location of a monolithic treasure drawn on fractured exterior. Such a shame a few fragments are missing, or the daring band of brothers could go directly to the mythic Fable-realm of Americana and plunder the Lost City of Cibola…

As it is, the treasure-seekers have to hop a freight-train in time-honoured legendary manner, but ghostly iron horses are few and far between, so it’s no real surprise that they catch the same one as Hillary and Company…

‘Mind the Zombies’ follows the uneasy allies’ circuitous route via steamboat to the perfectly average, undead-infested picture-perfect little town of Idyll where they meet the utterly sinister Librarian of Americana. His name is Burner, but he considers it more of a job-description…

Narrowly escaping with their legendary, literary lives Jack, Hillary and the rest resume their peripatetic journey to Cibola, unaware that Burner has set the indefatigable Leatherstocking Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo (that’s Hawkeye to you folks) on their rapidly scampering tails…

‘On the Road’ details the inevitable clash with literature’s greatest tracker and subsequent narrow escape into more trouble amidst the Ganglands of hard-boiled crime fiction. From their it’s an epic trek to the Great White North, mythical New York City and Broadway, Witch-haunted Puritan New England, the Antebellum South and the “Injun” infested Wild West, before finally reaching their ultimate goal in ‘Goldrush’ wherein Jack achieves all his ambitions, fiscal and carnal…

It’s not long before the boom is once more lowered on the obnoxious sap and Americana concludes on a chilling cliffhanger as the Bookburner vacates the United States of Fiction, intending to eradicate all the Fables still interned at the Golden Bough…

However there’s yet one more treat for fans as the metaphysical, engagingly peculiar and trouble-attracting Pathetic Fallacy takes centre-stage for ‘Gary Does Denmark’ wherein the affable, nigh-omnipotent sad-sack recounts his history with Shakespeare’s greatest work, ably hampered by our regular cast and with Jack’s evil prototype Wicked John standing in for the named star of our show…

Written by Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges, illustrated by Russ Braun, Tony Akins, Andrew Pepoy & Steve Leialoha this tome sees the series develop into a uniquely whimsical and absurdist meta-fictional delight that no fan of reading, high art or low comedy can afford to miss…

This imaginative and breathtakingly bold rollercoaster ride of flamboyant fantasy and snappy street-smarts is a supremely saucy, self-referential, darkly, funny fairytale for adults concocted with much more sly cynical humour and sex than your average funnybook – so po-faced moralistas and societal stickybeaks be warned!

Every enchanting volume should be compulsory reading for jaded imagineers everywhere – and in some as yet unreachable realm they actually are…

© 2007, 2008 Bill Willingham and DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Eye of the Majestic Creature


By Leslie Stein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-413-9

Help Wanted: Girl cartoonist seeks meaning of contemporary existence and like minded individuals to share bewilderment and revelations with.

Interests/Hobbies include: drinking, counting sand, growing stuff, antiquing for pop culture “trash”, drinking, meaningful conversations with musical instruments, playing board games with same, recreational herbal intoxicants, reminiscing about wild-times with gal-pals and old cronies, drinking, visiting difficult relatives…

After graduating from the New York School of Visual Arts Leslie Stein began producing unbelievably addictive cartoon strips in the self-published Yeah, It Is. Winning a Xeric Grant for her efforts, she started the even better comicbook Eye of the Majestic Creature, blending autobiographical self-discovery, surreal free-association, philosophical ruminations, nostalgic reminiscences and devastatingly dry wit to describe life filtered through a seductive meta-fictional interior landscape. This lady laconically tans under vastly different suns and the results are enchanting and entrancing.

This volume collects the first four issues in a dreamy, beautifully realised manner of visual mood-music – loose, flowing line-work, detailed stippling, hypnotic pattern-building and honest-to-gosh, representational line-drawing, each at the most appropriate juncture – eschewing chronological narrative for a easy, breezy epigrammatic mode of delivery.

As seen in the opening vignettes ‘The Country is Calling!’, ‘Seashell Arrives’ and ‘Someone is Yelling At Me over the Phone: You Are Disgusting!’ Larrybear is a girl deliberately and determinedly on her own, trying to establish her uniquely singular way of getting by. She has friends (most especially her talking guitar Marshmallow) interests and ambitions of a sort, but just isn’t looking for an average life, just more companions to share with …

In ‘Fun Time with “I Eat Peanut Butter Between Naps”’ the cast expands as Larrybear goes walkabout, beginning with house-sitting for some very individualistic friends…

Encountering ‘Insanity at Every Turn’ she travels across America to visit her difficult family in Chicago and very-welcome old school friends, taking in San Francisco too before settling for New York in ‘Back For More’…

Delivered in mesmerising, oversized (7½ x 11″/192 x 280mm) black & white, these incisive, absurdist, whimsically charming and pictorially intoxicating invitations into a singularly creative mind and fabulous alternative reality are a glorious rewarding cartoon experience and one no serious fan of fun can afford to miss.

© 2011 Leslie Stein. All Rights Reserved.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula


Adapted by Roy Thomas, Mike Mignola & John Nyberg (Topps/Titan Books edition)
ISBN: 978-1-85286-474-3

Vampires have never been more popular and the undisputed icon of the cult-fiction genre is indisputably Dracula. One of the best looking graphic novels ever to feature the immortal undead Count came from Topps Comics in 1992 when they produced a four part adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola’s flawed film masterpiece.

Whatever your opinions of the movie, the brutally dark story of love, reincarnation and second chances did generate an exceptionally impressive comics interpretation by master adapter Roy Thomas and moody Meisters-of-the-Macabre Mike Mignola & John Nyberg…

This stripped-down UK edition released by Titan Books opens with the prologue wherein Christian knight Vlad Dracula returns to his castle after a magnificent victory against the invading Turks in 1462, to discover that his beloved wife Elisabeta is dead. The tragic beauty committed suicide when she received a malicious message stating that her husband had been killed…

Grief-stricken, the bloody warrior Vlad turns his back on God and Man…

May 1897 and Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania following the loss of his colleague R.M. Renfield  to facilitate the voyage of aged wealthy Count Dracula to the thriving modern Metropolis of London. He stumbles into a scene of unbridled terror…

Meanwhile in the heart of the Empire his fiancée Mina Murray indulges her wildly wanton friend Lucy Westenra as the famous beauty strings along three ideal suitors, Dr. Jack Seward, Texan Quincy P. Morris and Arthur Holmwood, the future Lord Godalming.

Mina is a perfect double for the long dead Elisabeta and when Dracula, freshly arrived in England and already causing chaos and disaster, sees her he begins to seduce her. He is less gentle with Lucy and his bestial, bloodletting assaults prompt her three beaus to summon the famed doctor and teacher Abraham Van Helsing to save her life and cure her increasing mania.

Harker has survived his Transylvanian ordeal and hurriedly marries Mina in Romania. Enraged, Dracula renews his assaults and Lucy dies to be reborn as a predatory monster. After dispatching her to eternal rest, Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward and Quincy Morris, joined by the recently returned and much altered Harker and his new bride, determine to destroy the ancient evil in their midst…

Dracula however, has incredible power and centuries of experience on his side and taints Mina with his blood-drinking curse, before fleeing back to his ancestral lands. Now the mortal champions must follow and excise his awful power before Mina – now aware of her previous existence as Dracula’s wife Elisabeta – succumbs forever to his unholy influence…

Dark, moody, visually stunning and compulsively frenetic, this interpretation is a memorable and intensely fulfilling iteration on a modern myth and one that no fan can ignore.

The Titan version of this lost gem is probably the most readily available but the two Topps editions are still around if you’re persistent. The first printing also contains in its 112 pages an introduction from Coppola and an afterword by the film’s writer James V. Hart (whose other credits include screenplays for Contact, Tuck Everlasting, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Hook and Muppet Treasure Island amongst others, whilst the 120 page Previews Exclusive Edition tops that (sorry, my will was suborned by irresistible malign forces) by including a poster, behind-the-scenes glimpses at the film’s creation and cards from the spin-off Dracula Collectible Card set.
© 1993 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.