Category: Feminism & Sexual Politics

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The Mental Load – A Feminist Comic


By Emma, translated by Una Dimitrijevic (Seven Stories Press)
ISBN: 978-1-60980-918-8 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-60980-919-5

It’s never been a fair world, although until relatively recently (if our choice of leaders can be seen as contrarily evidential) that’s a situation we all apparently aspire to create and maintain. Simultaneously in that nebulous “recent” period, many have sought to address imbalances between the roles and burdens of men and women in a civil and cohesive society, but the first problem they all hit was simply how to state the problems in terms all sides could understand. We have a lot more names and concepts to utilise now in discourse, but the difficulties don’t seem to have diminished at all…

In 2010, software engineer Emma had a revelation and first joined the public debate: crafting and curating a book of strips reflecting upon social issues impacting women, from long hours to workplace politics and getting on with partners… and how unfair and unjust the world was.

The daughter of two mathematicians from Troyes – in the North-eastern region of France – she studied computer science, grew older and lived like most adults: work, fun (when possible), relationships, family. Things changed after she had her first child…

At age 30 she became an avowed feminist, having been compelled to closely observe and re-assess her life in society even as she discovered the concept of “collective intelligence”. Her approach to formalising her thoughts was to identify and deftly dissect components of behaviour – hers and everyone else’s – and the result was The Mental Load. This was her term for all the unacknowledged, unpaid, incessant, invisible crap (mostly thanks to men, absolutely to partners in relationships, but also to many other women) that comprises and comes with almost every relationship.

Those observations were translated into activism, initially as self-published and distributed pamphlets, and in 2016 she started adding cartoons and drawings to the mix. The extreme positive response led her to launch cartoon blog Emmaclit, focussing on issues of racism, capitalism and police violence as well as feminism, following up a year later with sister webcomic Fallait demander (“You only had to ask”) which first posited the notion of an inescapable relational imbalance… a mental load…

In the webcomic, Emma used her own domestic and work life to provide biographical examples of how an unfair, unspoken – and often unrecognised – distribution of labour and responsibility falls on women in even the most equitable and ostensibly harmonious heterosexual relationships. The material went viral and struck a global chord…

Delivering her thoughts as a series of pictorial essays/lessons, Emma convincingly and compellingly argues that the vast majority of the overwhelming, relentless, inescapably burdensome life-tonnage had somehow settled on one side of the bed in most households…

The book – and sequel The Emotional Load (strips from them subsequently appeared in British newspaper The Guardian) – caused something of a commotion and as much trollish kickback as you’d expect from all the usual (and usually wrong) places…

Because a large proportion of humans who won the gender (genital?) lottery don’t really give a damn about other people’s woes – especially if the food keeps coming and the appropriate drawers magically refill with clean clothes and groceries – I fear there’s a segment of truly needy folk who will never benefit from this selection of treatises, anecdotes, statistics and life-changing stories.

Nevertheless, since many guys are genuinely clueless and baffled but willing to adapt, maybe enough of us will give change and thought a chance, even at this late stage. It’s certainly clear that there’s quite some way to go yet…

Best of all, most women reading this will realise that it’s not just them feeling the way they do and may even risk starting a conversation with their significant others, or at the very least, start talking to other women and organising together…

Working in the manner of the very best observational stand-up comedy, Emma forensically identifies an issue and dissects it, whilst offering advice, suggestions and a humorous perspective. Here that’s subdivided into a dozen comical chapters, preceded by an autobiographical context-setting Introduction, before ‘You Should’ve Asked’ finds sexism and discrimination at work heaped upon anyone bold enough to use their legal right to maternity leave, whilst cataloguing who does what around the house in terms of cooking, cleaning, provisioning, time managing, general “adulting”, noticing and remembering stuff needs to be cooked and cleaned, and providing clear-cut alternatives even an old geezer like me could understand, As always telling examples are offered…

‘Violence of the Oppressed’ offers a non-establishment view of 2016s protests against the dismantling of the French Labor Code and citizens’ rights, supplemented by a history of how women got them in the first place, followed by shocking facts about childbirth experiences and time-saving tactics of some medical practitioners in ‘The Story of My Friend C.’

What guys have always claimed they can’t control is carefully explored in ‘The Male Gaze’ and more fully explored in ‘Show Me That Bosom’ (via a deliciously barbed allegory of a land where bared breasts are mandatory).

‘The Wonderful Tale of Mohamed’ singles out one case to detail the treatment of immigrants and brown people in general. It examines what happens when police can use terrorism threats as justification for overreaction, whilst ‘The Wait’ explores individual freedoms and action in committed relationships with specific attention to Emma’s own life and who usually gets left holding the baby. ‘Work!’ then lays out a possible solution and alternatives to the rat race roles if only we ensure time and resources could be more evenly distributed. There’s also plenty of revelations on the way women have messed up the value of the work market…

Other than making men uncomfortable, ‘Check Your Pussy!’ then offers a public service announcement on knowing oneself for all women, setting out actual facts – and even biological route maps! – before social iniquity returns in the form of another exposé on police treatment of non-whites after the death of ‘Just Another Guy from the Hood’…

The ultimate male shield is the concept of “banter” and most effective weapon is the concept of “just kidding”. Both get a well-deserved and thoroughly effective kicking in ‘Chill Out’ before – to celebrate a year of the blog – Emma opted to share a formulative experience that triggered her late-found militancy. The upshot was personal anecdote ‘The Holidays’: describing her bout of childbirth and how it changed her life in all the ways absolutely no one had warned her about…

Now a full-time cartoonist, broadcaster and columnist, Emma continues to poke and probe an unfair world, but this subversively smart, amusingly addictive, slickly convincing, plausibly rational discussion of the way things should not be is undoubtedly a high point in her work and our communal advancement. It may still be a largely male-centric society, but amidst the many moments that will have any decent human weeping in empathy or raging in impotent fury, there are decisive points where a little knowledge and a smattering of honest willingness to listen and change could work bloody miracles…

Buy this book, learn some stuff. Be better, and please accept my earnest apologies on behalf of myself and my entire gender.

Dial it down and literally Man Up guys!
© 2017 by Emma. English translation © 2018 by Una Dimitrijevic. All rights reserved.

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Wonder Woman: The Golden Age volume 1


By William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7444-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

We can’t get too far into a month of comics by and/or about women without acknowledging the greatest role model of all time…

Wonder Woman was famously created by polygraph pioneer William Moulton Marston – apparently at the behest of his formidable wife Elizabeth – and illustrated by Harry G. Peter in a well-intentioned attempt to offer girls a positive and forceful role model. Her spectacular launch and preview (that’s the comic book superstar, not Mrs. Marston) came in one of the company’s most popular publications: an extra feature inside All Star Comics #8, home of the immortal Justice Society of America.

One month later the Perfect Princess gained her own series – including the cover-spot – in new anthology title Sensation Comics, and was a huge and instant hit. She won her own eponymous title in late Spring of that year (cover-dated Summer 1942).

Using the nom de plume Charles Moulton, Marston scripted all the Amazing Amazon’s many and miraculous adventures until his death in 1947, whereupon Robert Kanigher took over the writer’s role. Venerable co-creator H.G. Peter illustrated almost every WW tale until his own death in 1958.

Spanning December 1941 – February/March 1943, this superb full-colour compilation (also collects that seminal debut from All Star Comics #8, and her every iconic adventure from Sensation Comics #1-14 and Wonder Woman #1-3, plus the first outing in anthological book of (All) Stars Comics Cavalcade.#1

Naturally, we begin with ‘Introducing Wonder Woman’…

On a hidden island of immortal super-women, an American aviator crashes to Earth. Near death, US Army Intelligence Captain Steve Trevor is nursed back to health by young Princess Diana. Fearing her growing obsession with the man, her mother Queen Hippolyte reveals the hidden history of the Amazons to the child. Diana learns how her people were seduced and betrayed by men but rescued by the goddess Aphrodite on condition that they thenceforward isolate themselves from the rest of the world and devote their eternal lives to becoming ideal, perfect creatures.

However, after Trevor explains the perfidious spy plot which accidentally brought him to the Island enclave, divine Athena and Aphrodite appear, ordering Hippolyte to assign an Amazon warrior to return with the American to fight for freedom and liberty.

Hippolyte diplomatically and democratically declares an open contest to determine the best candidate and, despite being forbidden to participate, Diana enters and wins. Accepting the will of the gods, the worried mother outfits her in the guise of Wonder Woman and sends her out to Man’s World…

A month later the story continued where the introduction had left off. Sensation Comics #1 declares ‘Wonder Woman Comes to America’, seeing the eager immigrant returning the recuperating Trevor to the modern World. She also trounces a gang of bank robbers and falls in with a show business swindler…

One major innovation here is the newcomer buying a secret identity: that of lovelorn Army nurse Diana Prince, elegantly allowing the Amazon to be close to Steve whilst enabling the heartsick medic to join her own fiancé in South America…

Even with all that going on, there was still room for Wonder Woman and Captain Trevor to bust up a spy ring attempting to use poison gas on a Draft induction centre, before Steve breaks a leg and ends up in hospital again, where “Nurse Prince” is assigned to tend him…

Sensation #2 introduced deadly enemy agent ‘Dr. Poison’ in a cannily crafted tale which also debuted the most radical comedy sidekicks of the era…

The plucky fun-loving gals of the Holliday College for Women and their chubby, chocolate-gorging Beeta Lamda sorority-chief Etta Candy would get into trouble and save the day in equal proportions for years to come: constantly demonstrating Diana’s – and Marston’s – philosophical contention that girls, with correct encouragement, could accomplish anything that men could…

With War raging and in a military setting, espionage and sabotage were inescapable plot devices. ‘A Spy at the Office’ finds Diana arranging a transfer to the office of General Darnell as his secretary so that she can keep a closer eye on the finally fit Steve. She isn’t there five minutes before uncovering a ring of undercover infiltrators amongst the typing pool and saving her man from assassination.

Unlike most comics of the period, Wonder Woman employed tight continuity. ‘School for Spies’ in #4 sees some of those fallen girls murdered by way of introducing inventive genius and Nazi master manipulator Baroness Paula von Gunther. She employs psychological tricks to enslave girls to her will and sets otherwise decent Americans against their homeland.

Even Diana succumbs to her machinations… until Steve and the Holliday Girls crash in…

America’s newest submarine is saved from destruction and cunning terrorists brought to justice in ‘Wonder Woman versus the Saboteurs’ before issue #6 has the Amazing Amazon accepting a ‘Summons to Paradise’ to battle her immortal sisters in Kanga-riding duels before receiving her greatest weapon: an unbreakable Lasso of Truth which compels and controls anyone who falls within its golden coils.

It proves quite handy when Paula escapes prison and uses an invisibility formula to wreak havoc on American coastal defences…

‘The Milk Swindle’ is pure 1940s social advocacy drama, with homegrown racketeers and Nazi von Gunther joining forces to seize control of America’s milk supply with the incredibly long-sighted intention of weakening the bones of the country’s next generation of soldiers.

Closely following in Sensation #8 is ‘Department Store Perfidy’ wherein the Amazon goes undercover in the monolithic Bullfinch emporium to win better working conditions and fair pay for the girls employed there.

There was a plethora of surprises in #9 with ‘The Return of Diana Prince’ from South America. Now Mrs Diana White, the young mother needs her job and identity back until her inventor husband can sell his latest invention to the US army. Luckily, Wonder Woman and an obliging gang of saboteurs help to expedite matters…

The next major landmark was the launch of the Amazon’s own solo title. The first quarterly opens here a text feature on the Amazon’s pantheon of godly patrons in ‘Who is Wonder Woman?’ after which comic action commences with a greatly expanded revision of her first appearance in ‘A History of the Amazons: The Origin of Wonder Woman’. This precedes a beguiling mystery tale as ‘Wonder Woman Goes to the Circus’ wherein Diana solves the bizarre serial murders of the show’s elephants before Paula von Gunther rears her shapely head again in ‘Wonder Woman versus the Spy Ring’ wherein the loss of the Golden Lasso almost causes her demise and ultimate defeat of the American Army…

The issue ends with ‘The Greatest Feat of Daring in Human History’ as Diana and Etta head for Texas, only to become embroiled in a sinister scheme involving Latin Lotharios, lady bullfighters, lethal spies and a Nazi attempt to conquer Mexico…

Back in Sensation Comics #10 (October 1942) ‘The Railroad Plot’ celebrates Steve and Wonder Woman’s first anniversary by exposing a sinister plan devised by Japanese and German agents to blow up New York using the labyrinth of subway tunnels under the city, whilst ‘Mission to Planet Eros’ debuts the Princess’ long line of cosmic fantasy exploits. The Queen of Venus requests Diana’s aid in saving an entire planetary civilisation from gender inequality and total breakdown, before ‘America’s Guardian Angel’ – from Sensation #12 – sees the Warrior Princess accepting an offer to play herself in a patriotic Hollywood movie, only to find the production infiltrated by the insidious Paula and her gang of slave-girls…

Preceded by an illustrated prose piece about ‘The God of War’, Wonder Woman #2 comprises a 4-part epic introducing the Astounding Amazon’s greatest enemy in ‘Mars, God of War’. He apparently instigated a World War from his HQ on the distant red planet but chafes at the lack of progress since Wonder Woman entered the fray on the side of the peace-loving allies. He now opts for direct action, no longer trusting his earthly pawns Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito…

When Steve goes missing, Diana allows herself to be captured and ferried to Mars. Here she starts disrupting the efficient working of the war-god’s regime and fomenting unrest amongst the slave population, before rescuing Steve and heading home to Earth. ‘The Earl of Greed’, one of Mars’ trio of trusted subordinates, takes centre stage for the second chapter, with orders to recapture Steve and Diana at all costs.

As the duo attempt to infiltrate Berlin, Greed uses his influence on Hitler to surreptitiously redirect the German war effort, using Gestapo forces to steal all the USA’s gold reserves…

With Steve gravely injured, the Amazon returns to America and whilst her paramour heals, uncovers and foils the Ethereal Earl’s machinations to prevent much-needed operating funds from reaching Holliday College, where young girls learn to be independent free-thinkers…

With Greed thwarted, Mars dispatches ‘The Duke of Deception’ to Earth, where the spindly phantom impersonates Wonder Woman and frames her for murder.

Easily escaping from prison, the Princess of Power not only clears her name but also finds time to foil a Deception-inspired invasion of Hawaii, leaving only ‘The Count of Conquest’ free to carry out Mars’ orders.

His scheme is simple: through personal puppet Mussolini, the Count tries to physically overpower the Amazing Amazon with a brutal giant boxing champion, even as Italian Lothario Count Crafti attempts to woo, seduce and suborn her. The latter’s wiles actually worked, too, but capturing and keeping her are two different things entirely and after breaking free on the Red Planet, Diana delivers a devastating blow to the war-machine of Mars…

This issue ends with a sparkling double page patriotic plea when ‘Wonder Woman Campaigns for War Bonds’…

Sensation Comics #13 (January 1943) claims ‘Wonder Woman is Dead’ when a corpse wearing her uniform is discovered, and the astounded Diana Prince discovers her alter ego’s clothes and the irreplaceable magic lasso are missing…

The trail leads to a diabolical spy-ring working out of Darnell’s office and an explosive confrontation in a bowling alley, whilst ‘The Story of Fir Balsam’ in #14 presents a seasonal tale concerning lost children, an abused mother and escaped German aviators. All was happily resolved around a lonely pine tree, after which the Immortal Warrior celebrated her next publishing milestone…

The 1938 debut of Superman propelled National Comics to the forefront of their fledgling industry and a year later the company was licensed to produce a commemorative comicbook celebrating the opening of the New York World’s Fair.

The Man of Tomorrow prominently featured on the appropriately titled New York World’s Fair Comics among such four-colour stars as Zatara, Butch the Pup, Gingersnap and The Sandman. In 1940 another abundant premium emerged with Batman and Robin added to the roster, and the publishers felt they had an item and format worth pursuing commercially.

The spectacular card-cover 96-page anthologies had been a huge hit: convincing editors that an over-sized anthology of their pantheon of characters, with Superman and Batman prominently featured, would be a worthwhile proposition. Thus, the format was retained for a wholly company-owned, quarterly high-end package, retailing for the then-hefty price of 15¢.

Launching as World’s Best Comics #1 in Spring 1941, the book morphed into World’s Finest Comics from #2, beginning a stellar 45-year run which only ended as part of the massive clear-out and decluttering exercise that was  Crisis on Infinite Earths. During the Golden Age, however, it remained a big blockbuster bonanza of strips to entice and delight readers…

At this time National/DC was in an editorially-independent business relationship with Max Gaines that involved shared and cross promotion and distribution for the comicbooks released by his own outfit All-American Publications. Although technically competitors if not quite rivals, the deal included shared logos and advertising and even combining both companies’ top characters in the groundbreaking All Star Comics as the Justice Society of America.

However, by 1942 relations between the companies were increasingly strained – and would culminate in 1946 with DC buying out Gaines, who used the money to start EC Comics.

All-American thus decided to create its own analogue to World’s Finest, featuring only AA characters. The outsized result was Comics Cavalcade…

Cover-dated December 1942-January 1943 – and following Frank Harry’s gloriously star-studded cover to Comic Cavalcade #1 – Wonder Woman’s fourth regular star slot began with the company superstar solving the ‘Mystery of the House of the Seven Gables’ (as ever the fruits of Marston & Peter’s fevered imaginations) wherein Diana Prince stumbles upon a band of Nazi spies. All too soon, the Amazing Amazon needs the help of some plucky youngsters to quash the submarine-sabotaging brutes…

Wonder Woman #3 then dedicates its entirety to the return of an old foe; commencing with ‘A Spy on Paradise Island’ as the undergrads of Holliday College for Women – and Etta Candy – are initiated into some pretty wild Amazon rites on Paradise Island. Sadly, the revels inadvertently allow an infiltrator to gain access and pave the way for an invasion by Japanese troops…

Naturally Wonder Woman and the Amazons prevail on the day but the sinister mastermind behind it all is exposed and strikes back in ‘The Devilish Devices of Baroness Paula von Gunther’.

Whilst the on-guard Amazons build a women’s prison that will be known as “Reform Island”, Wonder Woman – acting upon information received by the new inmates – trails Paula and is in time to crush her latest scientific terror: an invisibility ray…

‘The Secret of Baroness von Gunther’ offers a rare peek at a villain’s motivation when the captured super-spy reveals how her little daughter Gerta has been a hostage of the Nazis for years and remains a goad to ensure the genius’ total dedication to the German cause… Naturally, the Amazing Amazon instantly determines to reunite mother and child at all costs after which ‘Ordeal by Fire’ confirms the Baroness aiding Diana and Steve in dismantling the spy network and slave-ring the Nazis had spent so long building in America… but only at great personal and physical cost to the repentant Paula…

Much has been posited about subtexts of bondage and subjugation in Marston’s tales – and, to be frank, there really are lots of scenes with girls tied up, chained or about to be whipped – but I just don’t care what his intentions (subconscious or otherwise) might have been: I’m more impressed with the skilful drama and incredible fantasy elements that are always wonderfully, intriguingly present: I mean, just where does the concept of giant war-kangaroos come from?

Exotic, baroque, beguiling and uniquely exciting, these Golden Age tales of the World’s Most Famous female superhero are timeless, pivotal classics in the development of comic books and still provide lashings of fun and thrills for anyone looking for a great nostalgic read. If that’s you, you know what you need to do…
© 1941, 1942, 1943, 2017 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Fruit of Knowledge – The Vulva vs. The Patriarchy


By Liv Strömquist, translated by Melissa Bowers (Virago)
ISBN: 978-0-349-01072-4 (B/Digital edition)

We’re going to be using grown-up words today and there’s stuff discussed and depicted here that many strident, officious (and mostly male) people simultaneously deny, deny access to, denigrate and demonise. They even dare to police how actual possessors & users of these body parts may employ or maintain them. Those guys won’t like this book at all.

If that’s you, Go Away. There’s nothing for you to see here and you’ll only get upset. If that’s not you, but you know where they live or hang out, there’s no law that prevents you from buying a copy and sending it to them. Just a thought…

If you know anything about female anatomy, all this will be funny, frightening, glaringly obvious and even enlightening. However, if you’re male – or really, really repressed and/or religious to a fundamental degree – you might want to stop here and pretend this book doesn’t exist.

Wars are fought with intolerant attitudes, economics and misinformation far more than with guns, bombs, knives or deadly chemicals. Oddly enough, that latter arsenal has been used far more than you might imagine: by an ostensibly well-meaning parochial and explicitly patriarchal establishment intent on suppressing women in every walk of life.

In 1978, Liv Strömquist was born in Lund, Sweden. After studying political science, she rekindled an early interest in comics and fanzines to explore topics that gripped her. A cartoonist and radio presenter, she is dogged, diligent, meticulous and devastatingly hilarious when exploring themes important to her. Her first graphic enquiry was 2005’s Hundra procent fett (Hundred Percent Fat) and she’s since followed up with another 10 books, as well as articles and features for newspapers, magazines, assorted media platforms …and comics. She leans left, despises hypocrisy and champions socio-political iniquities like income inequality and gender-determined disempowerment. She does it with scrupulously researched facts translated into cruelly hilarious satirical cartoons.

A ferocious truth-speaker incensed by injustice, in 2014 Strömquist released Kunskapens frukt, an historical exploration of taboos surrounding women’s bodies. It was a global sensation translated into a dozen languages and arrived in English as Fruit of Knowledge.

In a string of carefully constructed comic polemics, she explores, elucidates upon and demystifies the biology of women, how power-seeking groups and individuals have suppressed female autonomy, how male-led societies suppress knowledge, stifle debate, and use shame and gaslighting techniques to keep females downtrodden, destabilised and totally dependent at every level. We’ve even twisted science and history to the cause: excising the very terms needed to efficiently debate the problem…

Guided by a curating avatar, a journey of rediscovery begins with Chapter 1: a history lesson discussing the quirks, insane beliefs and perpetrated atrocities of ‘Men Who Have been Too Interested in the Female Genitalia’…

A staggering listicle of ignorance, arrogance and criminal callousness, this section details beliefs and actions of prominent personages who dictated how women should be. I’m staying vague on detail for reasons of taste, but our countdown begins with the socially-applauded misdeeds of John Harvey Kellog and Dr. Isaac Baker Brown before spending lots of time with mega-misogynist St. Augustine.

The shocking influence of “sexologist” John Money is outdone by the combined results of the instigators of Europe and America’s witch trials (including an outrageous game of “hunt the devil’s teat/clitoris”), before aristo fetish slaver Baron George Cuvier mixes kink with racism to a degree that shaped decades of followers. Top dishonours go to those who exhumed Queen Christina of Sweden’s 300-year old corpse in an attempt to prove that the incredibly effective and pioneering monarch had been a “pseudo-hermaphrodite” – AKA Man – all along…

The appalling litany of deranged anti-female delusion is not simply cited for comedic effect (much of it is actually stomach churning to read) but is used to prove Strömquist’s argument that the aggregated efforts of “Men” shaped today’s unjust system: from toxic medical attitudes regarding “women’s issues” to the nonsense-&-prejudice minefield of gender attribution/reassignment policies to the eternal verity that women only exist for men’s use…

Crushing pressure to conform and excel is tackled in ‘Upside-Down Rooster Comb’: showing how women and girls are deprived of knowledge of themselves and groomed to believe their most intimate parts are sub-standard, ugly, unhygienic, freakish and utterly unacceptable.

In discussing a rise in labial plastic surgery, we see how men from every walk of life dictate what women must look like. There is special, prolonged, recurring an hilarious focus on how NASA airbrushed out a human vulva in images on the 1972 Pioneer space probe, and how successive male experts “proved” the female state of being (and attendant reduced self-esteem) was subordinate and dependent on male primacy…

The philosophical, negativistic macho clap trap of Jean-Paul Sartre, Stig Larsson and others is balanced by the views of psychologist Harriet Lerner, but in the end science and school books confirm that the world believes women are there for men to put things in…

It wasn’t always so though, and Strömquist’s masterstroke is a formal lesson on anatomy, supported by thousands of years of art proudly “putting the Vulva on display.” Starting with the Greek myth of Demeter, an almost sidelined fuller history of civilisation follows, citing how women “exposing” themselves remained a component of life everywhere well into the 1800s…

Because there aren’t shocks enough yet, ‘AAH HAA’ re-examines female orgasm, revealing how much even the most supportive and in-tune bloke has been misinformed and misled, and how that elusive “Big O” was cynically reclassified and deemphasised. God and his earthly representatives don’t do well in this chapter, and there’s a stunning parade of quotes from medical men down the ages showing how we all slowly switched from “did the earth move?” to “what’s wrong with you?”…

Throughout, but especially here, historical anecdotes back up the argument. If the thought of woman after woman being maimed or killed by male intransigence is likely to upset you, suck it up: it’s the least anyone can do to expiate centuries of accumulated and unwarranted sexual privilege…

A whimsical peek at a potential matriarchy and more revelatory biology regarding the clitoris heralds a full colour reworking of the Judaeo-Christian creation story in ‘Feeling Eve – or: In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens’. Interview excerpts illustrate women’s eternal concerns: uncovering intimate moments of shame, fear, guilt, menstruation, masturbation, assault, body image and general ego-sabotage…

The book confronts head-on the uncomfortable occurrence we’ve all been programmed to shy away from in ‘Blood Mountain’: challenging adamant yet unshakably coy assumptions that make period products so gosh-darned profitable via some inspired role swapping, targeted historical trawling, a catalogue of nasty myths, modern psychoanalytic theories, episodic exposés of the magic power of blood from “down there”, reports of male PMS from ancient Greece, the revolting habits of Sigmund Freud and fellow period fan Dr. Wilhelm Fliess and examples and depictions of the “red flowering” from as far back as 15,000 years ago…

All that climaxes with a hard look at manufacturers’ obsession with “freshness” and “cleanliness” and how many of their “hygiene” products are killing the planet, all backed up by evaluations of fairy tales through the lens of menstruation rituals…

Fierce, funny and thoroughly thought-provoking, Fruit of Knowledge is acute, astute and magnificently uplifting: challenging and negating centuries of divisive bias and propaganda by asking women to be their own person. This is a book to arm and unite everyone everywhere in accepting that women’s biology and sexuality has never been the business of any man or organisation.
© Liv Strömquist. Original Swedish edition 2014 Ordfront/Galago. Translation © 2018 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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The Provocative Collette


By Annie Goetzinger, translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-170-3 (HB)

Publisher NBM struck pure gold with their line of European-created contemporary arts histories and dramatized graphic biographies. This one is one of the very best but is tragically still only available in physical form. Hopefully that oversight will be addressed soon as it is a most enticing treat: diligently tracing the astoundingly unconventional early life of one of the most remarkable women of modern times.

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (January 28th 1873 – August 3rd 1954) escaped rural isolation and stagnation via an ill-considered marriage but, by sheer force of will and an astonishing gift for self-expression, rose to the first rank of French-language (and global) literature through her many novels and stories. The one you probably know best is Gigi, but you should really read a few more such as La Vagabonde or perhaps The Ripening Seed…

For her efforts she was elected to the Belgian Royal Academy in 1935 and France’s Académie Goncourt a decade later. She became its President in 1949, the year after she was nominated for a Nobel Prize. Her grateful country also celebrated her as Chevalier (1920) and Grand Officer (1953) of the Légion d’honneur.

Colette’s relentless search for truths in the arena of human relationships – particularly in regard to women’s independence in a hostile and patronising patriarchal society – also led her to pursue freedom of expression through dance, drama, acting & mime, in film and as a journalist.

The fact that – for most of her early life – men controlled her money also prompted her far-reaching career path until she finally managed to win control of her own destiny and coffers…

Our drama unfolds in 1893 as 20-year-old Sidonie-Gabrielle readies herself for her wedding to prestigious and much older music journalist Henry Gauthier-Villars. The great man is celebrated nationally under his nom de plume “Willy”.

That’s also the name under which he will publish his wife’s first four, hugely successful Claudine novels whilst pocketing all the profits and attendant copyrights…

Eventually breaking free to live a life both sexually adventurous and utterly on her own terms, Colette never abandoned her trust in love or reliance on a fiercely independent spirit. And she shared what she believed about the cause of female liberty with the world through her books and her actions…

This bold, life-affirming chronicle was meticulously crafted by the superb and much-missed Annie Goetzinger (18th August1951 – 20th December 2017). Tragically it was her last in a truly stellar career. The award-winning cartoonist, designer and graphic novelist (The Girl in Dior, The Hardy Agency, Félina, Aurore, Marie Antoinette: Phantom Queen, Portraits souvenirs series) supplied here sumptuous illustration perfectly capturing the complexities and paradoxes of the Belle Epoque and the wars and social turmoil that followed. Her breezy, seductively alluring script brings to vivid life a wide variety of characters who could so easily be reduced to mere villains and martinets, but instead resonate as simply people with their own lives, desires and agendas…

The scandalous escapades are preceded by an adroit and incisive Preface from journalist and author Nathalie Crom: and bookended with informative extras such as ‘Literary References’, and full ‘Chronology’ of the author’s life, plus potted biographies of ‘Colette’s Entourage’: offering context and background on friends, family and the many notables inevitably gathered around her.

Additional material includes a suggested Further Reading and a Select Bibliography.

A minor masterpiece honouring a major force in the history and culture of our complex world, this book should be at the top of the reading list for anyone who’s thought “that’s not fair” and “why do I have to?”

The Provocative Colette is a forthright and beguiling exploration of humanity and one you should secure by any means necessary.
© DARGAUD 2017 by Goetzinger. All rights reserved. © 2018 NBM for the English translation.

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Captain Carter: Woman Out of Time


By Jamie McKelvie, Marika Cresta, Erick Arciniega, Matt Milla & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4655-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Comics fans are a strange breed. We funnybook cognoscenti have always wanted lesser, non-enlightened mortals to understand why our addiction to convoluted continuity and printed pamphlets are the best of all possible worlds, but then carp and whine when the greater world catches on via a major movie franchise, and embrace what we churlishly declare is not the “right “Avengers or Batman…

We also wish more girls read X-Men and The Hulk…

Seriously though, now that superheroes are a common global currency, us paper purists just need to accept that other media not only exploit our preferred area of delight, but inevitably affect and reinforce it. After all, does it really matter when comic book stories come from, if they are as good as possible and just as entertaining as any classic in-continuity romp?

It’s not as if comics didn’t already have an in-built mechanism for incorporating outlandish elements. We call it The Multiverse…

The Marvel Cinematic Universe bound together many beloved but radically reinterpreted elements of historical comics innovation into a separate reality (more than one, actually), and here that pays off big for movie icon Peggy Carter as her subsequent solo TV series and animated What If? appearances are finally parlayed into a comic series.

Written by Jamie McKelvie (Phonogram, The Wicked + The Divine, Catwoman, Batman, Young Avengers), illustrated by Marika Cresta (Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, Power Pack, Fearless, X-Men and Moongirl) and colourists Erick Arciniega & Matt Milla, all lettered by VC’s Clayton Cowles, her debut 5-issue series (cover-dated May-October 2022) is collected here: offering a glimpse at a possible world where the super-soldier serum that created Captain America transformed not passionate idealistic kid Steve Rogers, but a potent, competent, highly trained and educated woman of the world…

Mirroring mainstream continuity, it begins with the finding and thawing of a WWII legend who supposedly perished battling arch-Nazi Baron von Strucker. Margaret “Peggy” Carter quickly adapts to the many changes of a new century: appreciating how far women – and minorities – have advanced even as ambitious men and untrustworthy governments squabble over who will control her. Some things never change…

Ultimately she agrees to work for British Intelligence, taken under the wing of Prime Minister Harry Williams, who sees her a living symbol of a go-getting country on the move again. He’s going to personally manage and supervise the career of the UK’s only superhero extremely carefully and very closely…

To that end, and over her grudging protests, he’s placed the Captain with new agency S.T.R.I.K.E. (Special Tactical Reserve for International Key Emergencies) and appointed operative Lizzie Braddock as her liaison/minder. She’s not what she at first appears to be, but then again, neither is the PM…

Before Carter can get her bearings, a string of deadly attacks hurls her back into the bloody superhero spy game when a mysteriously resurgent Hydra targets their oldest enemy and turn London into a war zone…

The hero quickly falls into old habits, living her new life on a war footing, but something just doesn’t feel right. Facing an endless barrage of missions against foes like people-smuggler Batroc, Carter slowly realises that the government has been massaging the political messages she’s been learning, and might not be acting on behalf of all the people.

A different and uncomfortable truth comes via neighbour Harley Davis: a young black girl who explains what “processing” illegal migrants and asylum seekers actually means…

Appalled and now informing herself from a variety of sources, Carter refuses to be a flashy propaganda tool any longer, provoking an immediate and lethal response from the headline-obsessed government. As bodies drop and attacks intensify, she finds a welcome ally in Tony: grandson of genius inventor (and Carter’s closest WWII comrade) Howard Stark…

He’s just as smart as grandpa and also despises tyrants and fascists…

As the government go into spin mode, blaming and framing everybody else for their sins, Carter, Stark, Braddock and Davis take the fight to them, only to discover an ancient and unholy secret aristocracy at the heart of the conspiracy, one that has been feeding on Britain’s life blood for centuries…

Now it’s time the people saw the light and our assembled heroes cleaned house…

Backed up by a cover gallery and costume/uniform designs by McKelvie, this tome includes a wealth of variant covers from Sara Pichelli & Matthew Wilson, Marvel Studios, Jen Bartel, Todd Nauck & Rachelle Rosenberg, Paco Medin & Jesus Aburtov, Marc Aspinall, Ashley Witter, and Romy Jones.

Fun, fast, furious, filled with the kind of in-joke riffs veteran fans love and telling a fresh new tale featuring a truly forceful “fighting female”, Captain Carter is also a wry and barbed political and social statement on the responsibilities of rule, and a damn fine read as well. She’s not The Captain, but she’s just as good – and maybe even better…
© 2022 MARVEL.

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No Surrender


By Constance Maud: adapted by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-406-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Triumphant Tribute to Freedom Fighters and Literary Legends… 9/10

Constance Elizabeth Maud (1857-1929) was a child of privilege: daughter of a celebrated English scholar and cleric. She was primarily educated in France and lived there or in Chelsea for most of her life. Between 1895 and 1924 she wrote numerous articles and 8 novels – of which No Surrender was the penultimate – and became a member of the 400-strong Women Writers Suffrage League.

In 1908 she joined The Women’s Social and Political Union and The Women’s Freedom League: turning her writings to the needs of the cause. Her work subsequently appeared in many periodicals, especially magazines like the Suffragist movement’s newspaper Votes For Women.

In No Surrender (published in 1911 – and again in an annotated centenary edition released by publisher Persephone in 2011), Maud incorporated actual events with fictionalised analogues of many contemporary activists participating in the struggle to craft a history and playbook of the campaign for emancipation. The book became a rallying point and recruiting tool for the movement and was used to promote the soft end of the battle for equality. It inspired countless women (and presumable many male sympathisers) with a dramatised story of how the great and good would join with the humblest workers and unite to overcome…

Maud lived just long enough to see British women secure the right to vote: in 1918 with the Representation of the People Act – which enfranchised women over 30 years old – and at last witnessing universal female suffrage established in 1928’s Act, legislating that all Britons of 21 years or above could freely vote.

The main reason why No Surrender was such an effective weapon in the war to win the vote for all is that its propaganda and polemic were disguised by readily accessible drama. Beginning in industrial hub Greyston, ‘The Mill’ tells how northern mill worker Jenny Clegg is fired up by the many injustices afflicting women’s lives: with cruelty, unfair taxation, financial neglect, legitimised maltreatment and a status of second-class citizens chaining every female to a man of the gutter…

Rebelling, she forsakes her crusading socialist love interest Joe Hopton – a successful prime mover in winning better lives and wages for male workers – and dedicates her life to winning those same rights and representation for women. Upper class Suffragist Mary O’Neill has a more refined but similarly intransigent family at ‘The Country House’ all decrying her passion for women’s suffrage. She and Jenny will become friends, allies and leading lights in the struggle, inspiring millions of women, converting men, embarrassing the authorities and challenging a society where even other women refuse to see a status quo threatened…

Both driven by ‘The Calling’, they and a growing army of allies will invade London and suffer police and legal suppression in ‘The Courtyard’ and face ‘The Magistrate’ but never stray from their course. Whether testing tactics in ‘The Routes To Battle’ or challenging their detractors through heated debate on ‘The Cart’ the socially-distanced allies never stop their work, and gradually make converts even amongst the stratified intelligentsia who enjoy the closeted luxuries of ‘The Weekend Cottage’…

The story sees numerous characters interact on many levels like a soap opera, but underpinning it all is a roster of actual protest events woven into the plot, such as ambushing a number of off-duty cabinet ministers in ‘The Church’ and then infiltrating ‘The Dinner Party’ to reinforce their message.

The darkest and most notorious moments of the cause are also featured, as Clegg, O’Neill and other notable activists of every class endure imprisonment, abuse and medical torture – but each according to their own social rank and standing in ‘The Crushed Butterfly’, ‘The Prison’ and the deeply distressing culmination of ‘The Punishment’. Always, efforts to disunite and separate rich from poor, inherently virtuous from tawdry and lowborn, fails as the core principle – that they are all women together – completely eludes the smug, hectoring, insensate elitist male oppressors, prejudiced and scared working men and the Anti-Suffrage Women’s groups populated with ladies who know and defend their privileged place in the world…

Ultimately, Jenny and Joe are united in the cause and Mary makes her own converts in ‘The Homecoming’ before the story ends with a proud rallying of all in the march to inevitable universal enfranchisement and victory in ‘The Standard is Raised’ – a rousing graphic tour de force with illustrator Sophie Rickard crafting a stunning multi-page fold-out any art fan would cry to see…

Maud’s tale was ostensibly a romance and account of families in crisis with a thinly disguised moral message like a Dickens or Thomas Hardy novel. She explored and contrasted the lives of poor working folk with gentry and aristocracy, but also scrupulously catalogued the added travails and insecurities of working women. At this time women had been successively deprived of most financial and civil rights and privileges. They had to pay taxes but enjoyed no representation under the law; could not be legal guardians of their own children or property and, if married, could not divorce whilst their husbands could. The men could also beat them, but only with cudgels of judicially-mandated size…

At the end of this hefty and substantial graphic novel there’s a chart showing when – and how incrementally – the nations of the world instituted female enfranchisement, and an Afterword by adapting creators Scarlett & Sophie Rickard (Mann’s Best Friend, A Blow Borne Quietly, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists), naming names and offering factual provenance for the incidents and characters enriching the narrative.

It also declares why – in the current environment where a citizen’s right to dissent and protest is being deviously and criminally whittled away – the principles of organised resistance and role and consequences of righteous civil disobedience must be stridently defended…

Fair minded, honestly and powerfully expressing the views of all – including those opposing universal enfranchisement (and restoration of previously-removed social and civil rights) – Maud’s words are reinvigorated here with the authorities, capitalists, police and judiciary all given a fair hearing – and generally convicted out of their own mouths.

Of particular interest to modern readers will be the opinions of women who didn’t want a vote and the low workingmen who were generally the most passionate and violent opponents of change and equality…

Powerful, enraging, engaging and even occasionally funny, this never-more-timely tale of the force of the disenfranchised with their backs to the wall and ready to fight is supremely readable and should be compulsory viewing for all – as long as we don’t force anyone to…
© 2022 SelfMadeHero. Text © 2022 Sophie Rickard. Artwork © 2022 Scarlett Rickard. All rights reserved.

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The Other History of the DC Universe


By John Ridley, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Andrea Cucchi, José Villarrubia & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-1197-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Hard-Hitting, Strong Medicine… 9/10

The evolution and assimilation of non-white, non-standard characters – defined and othered by skin colour, religion, ethnicity and who loves whom – has been in most mass media what author and screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave; Future State: The Next Batman) has described as “measured progressiveness”.

That’s especially true in comics, where incremental firsts have been applauded – and rightly so, as the industry has always been at the forefront of progressive thinking and action – but has also suffered from a tickbox mentality where true change has been slow to materialise and hard to sustain. We can say “first black superhero”, “first gay hero”, “first interracial marriage” or “first same-sex kiss” , but other than offering a glimmer of acceptance, and recognition, what has changed?

It’s certainly better than an all-white, all-male milieu where “different” equates to “lesser than”, where more than 50% of the populace and who knows how much of the readership doesn’t conform to proposed norms and are reduced to eye-candy, plot props and useless bystanders (not even competent villains who at least have agency!). For the longest time these attitudes were tacitly enshrined on funnybook pages – and not even for sinister reasons – but what appears to simply be an unconscious acceptance of an unchallenged status quo…

You can read other books or even some previous posts here from the last month for background, if you want, but here and now, I’m pointing you towards a fascinating and gripping series recently collected as an answer to that situation.

Here Ridley – with illustrators Giuseppe Camuncoli, Andrea Cucchi, José Villarrubia and letterer Steve Wands – re-examines and deconstructs DC’s record of Diversity progress via all those slow incremental steps and breakthroughs: interpreting through the eyes and attitudes of the revolutionary characters the company added but with modern sensibilities and opinions in play…

Filtered from a socio-political perspective and assessment of those times – but not in the comfortably parochial “everything’s basically fine” tones of a white, male middle class parental audience-placator – you’ll learn a different history: one told not under Comics Code Restrictions, or commercial interests sanitising culture and attitude to keep (covertly and actively) racist authorities from embargoing titles but as heroic individuals finally telling their sides of a well-known story.

Published under DC’s Black Label mature reader imprint it begins with the story of Black Lighting in Book One – 1972-1995: Jefferson Pierce. Here we see the inner workings of an African American former Olympian who became a school teacher and vigilante to save lives and how it destroyed and damaged his family, after which Book Two – 1970-1989: Karen Beecher-Duncan & Mal Duncan recounts in their words how being the tokens on a team of white privileged teen super do-gooders shaped their lives and relationship.

A far darker divergence is applied to Japanese warrior/assassin Katana in Book Three – 1983-1996: (plus the kanji for Yamashiro Tatsu), exploring the tragic Japanese widow’s reinventions from faithful wife/widow to murderous killer and lethal weapon to nurturing superhero and beyond…

The lecture continues with the tale of a Gay Latinx cop who inherited the role of DC’s most mysterious avenger in Book Four – 1992-2007: Renee Montoya, before The Question resolves into second generation angst and answers for Book Five – 1981-2010: Anissa Pierce. Here Black Lightning’s actual legacy and effect on DC continuity is reappraised through the eyes of his superhero children Thunder and Lightning, with religion and sexual orientation also coming under fire.

All we’ve seen before is summed up with no obfuscations or confusions, but you might want to reread or acquaint yourself with the original material as seen in various volumes of Black Lightning, Teen Titans, The Outsiders as well as selected continuity highpoints of Green Lantern, Batman, Cosmic Odyssey, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Death of Superman. Don’t let the reading list deter you though: you could simply plunge right in and wing it. The material, its tone and reinterpretation are carefully orchestrated and fully approachable for any level of fan from veteran adept to casual film watcher…

Ridley enacts a miraculous slice of sleight of hand here, examining simultaneously the actual published comics as accepted DC lore but also the redefining times they were created in and filling out the characters in modern terms – quite a feat of meta-realism…

The covers are by Camuncoli & Marco Mastrazzo with Jamal Campbell producing some stunning variants, but the true attraction of The Other History of the DC Universe is the knowledge that times and attitudes have changed enough that this book is even possible. Read it and see…
© 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Darwin’s Diaries volume 1-3: The Eye of the Celts, Death of a Beast & Dual Nature


By Eduardo Ocaña & Sylvain Runberg, coloured by Tariq Bellaoui, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-095-5 (v1 Album PB/Digital edition), 978-1-84918-110-5 (v2 Album PB/Digital), 978-1-84918-144-0 (v3 Album PB/Digital)

In the eternal quest to be entertained, humans have always searched far and wide. The capacity and desire to scare ourselves thus employs a vast landscape of genres and locales as well of all time and space. It also tempts us into mixing and mashing history, imagination and fanciful speculation…

Here’s a fabulously fitting idea for fantastic Scientific Romance in the grand manner of Professor Challenger, courtesy of French writer Sylvain Runberg (Conquests; Watchdogs Legion; On Mars; Orbital) and Spanish illustrator Eduardo Ocaña (Messiah Complex, Full Tilt Boogie, Les Bâtisseurs): an enthralling triptych begun in 2010 which – despite slipping off everyone’s radar – has stood the test of time.

In England, Victoria is Queen, and her mighty nation will soon be an empire. It is, however, not at peace, and former explorer and controversial naturalist Charles Darwin is asked by Prime Minister Lord Palmerston to undertake a delicate mission in the North. It is not for his current field of expertise, but rather his early – and now – classified endeavours into the field of crypto-zoology. Not long ago, Darwin had quietly looked into the existence of mythical things: Almases, Sasquatch, Werewolves and other “clawed ones”…

The region he is despatched to is the site of railway construction, but recently the navvies, their horses and even a company of soldiers have been butchered by some beast. Darwin must go there and pacify the populace whilst ruling out any possibility that the culprit is of unknown origins…

The first minister also hints that as well as the lure of fresh knowledge, the savant should also consider that local entrepreneurial grandee Sir Howard Dickinson would be grateful enough to fund any future travels Darwin might be considering…

The scientist readily accepts – but not for the reasons expected – and is soon in York, met by forthright suffragist Suzanne Dickinson and Indian manservant Rajiv. Once ensconced in the Blue Moors hotel (her father’s latest acquisition), Darwin opens his investigation, with the suspiciously curious and hands-on Miss Dickinson always in attendance.

He finds her a superb companion. Highly educated and competent, she has been schooled in medicine and business is and acquainted with prestigious thinkers like John Stuart Mill and emancipators such as Emily Davies and Barbara Leigh Smith…

Upon examining the remains of the victims, Darwin stakes his reputation on the premise that a great tiger is loose in the wooded region. Neither his sponsors nor the striking navvies give that theory much credence, and that night, a shepherd and his dog are added to the death register. Locals begin voicing opinions that the culprits must be the weird Welsh cult led by self-professed holy man Cadell Afferson. He says he’s a druid in touch with ancient forces…

Meanwhile, Darwin’s gentlemanly facade seems to slip. When returned to the Blue Moor, he sinks into depravity, getting drunk, fighting with local bullies and availing himself of local harlot Louise Stuart. As he becomes a beast, the one he’s hunting attacks again, butchering soldiers, sabotaging the work site and apparently perishing in a massive explosion.

Suzanne is unable to refrain from commenting on the scientist’s condition when she fetches him next morning, but Darwin doesn’t care after hearing that military martinet Captain Sanders has recovered the creature’s corpse…

Originally published in 2010 as Les carnets de Darwin 1 – L’oeil des celtes, this period drama ripples with suppressed tension as it sets up a classic confrontation between man and monster to delight every thriller fan.

 

The suspense spectacularly escalates in second volume Death of a Beast (La mort d’une bête) as the press gets wind of the news that Mr. Darwin has discovered a creature previously unknown to science. Panic grips York, but rail construction recommences, thanks to the foreman’s unique methods of negotiation. As esteemed researcher and weary soldiers seek more evidence, Druid Cadell stirs the pot, warning that ancient gods will judge their actions…

Darwin believes his job nearly done, but as he dines with the Dickinsons, fresh tragedy sparks more bloodshed. When a little girl is found eviscerated, furious, terrified townsfolk turn on the druids and a brutal riot is only quashed by ruthless military intervention…

Far from that madding crowd, the scientist is amazed at his host’s familiarity with legends of shapeshifting creatures, and even more so by Suzanne’s other passion. She runs educational workshops for townswomen, teaching them to read and count and even honest trades. Her greatest joy is anticipating  the festival she and dowager Virginia Wilson have organised: Yorkshire’s first Feminist Convention…

Eventually Darwin and the soldiers are able to convince the citizens the child’s death is not due to a new beast or the Celts in the forest, but arrogant, affronted Afferson swears to take vengeance. He does possess some secret knowledge, but when he summons what really prowls the moors and forests, his mistaken belief that he is in control costs everyone dearly…

Meanwhile, in York, Darwin again gives in to his own beast and nearly dies due to it, but a horror has been roused to vicious action and whatever he truly is cannot hope to stand against it…

Blending socio-political intrigue with an immensely devious mystery where nothing is as it seems, this episode offers hints of far more at play and at stake than anyone previously suggested. Stay tuned for a big, big finish…

 

Closing chapter Dual Nature – formerly Les carnets de Darwin 3 – Double nature – moves from chilling canter to full galloping charge as fear and frenzy grip town and country, and mutilated bodies pile up. Captain Sanders informs Darwin that the investigation is done, and that Palmerston has decided the terror is the work of enemy agents set on destabilising the nation, and has sent further military personnel to mop up. Prudent and cautious, the PM has also despatched a renowned professional hunter, in case these sinister plotters instigators have indeed unleashed trained animals as part of their plan…

Sadly, effete dandy and aristocratic butcher Sir Rillons – and his entourage of privileged hangers-on – are merely the first to discover that what is actually loose is a pack of monstrous killers faster and stronger than any ever recorded before – and easily as smart as human beings…

In the aftermath of a bloody debacle, the drama reaches a messy crescendo as Darwin is abducted by the beasts and his own secret fully exposed. However, the ultra-macho monsters – distracted by and determined to crush the unnatural women demanding equal rights at their ridiculous convention – have not reckoned on uncanny hidden allies even the biologist himself is unaware that he has and ultimately, fang, claw and unnatural selection determines the outcome…

Murderous madcap mayhem and far from historically robust, this yarn is a crazily delicious feast of gory fun to charm every horror fan: a pure treat to gorge on and digest at your leisure.
© Editions du Lombard (Dargaud-Lombard SA) 2010 by Sylvain Runberg & Eduardo Ocaña. All rights reserved. English translation © 2011, 2012, 2013 Cinebook Ltd.

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Frostbite


By Joshua Williamson, Jason Shawn Alexander, Luis NCT, Steve Wands & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7134-3 (HB/Digital edition)

As you have probably noticed, Earth as we know it is doomed. It’s a tragedy of staggering proportions and a telling indictment of the suicidal greed and indifference afflicting so many humans. Ironically this fact does fuel an immense and growing genre of armageddon fiction…

Here’s a – brace yourselves! – truly chilling, utterly gripping yarn from writer Joshua Williamson (The Flash, Infinite Frontier, Justice League vs Suicide Squad, Birthright. Deathbed), illustrator Jason Shawn Alexander (Killadephia, Marvel Zombies, Empty Zone, Batman), colour-artist Luis NCT and letterer Steve Wands that superbly captures all the grim foreboding of the Last Days whilst still dangling cruel hopes of possible survival.

If you’re one of that strange breed of modern knight errant who just can’t stomach a woman – and a black one, too! – in the role as Last Action Hero, you won’t like this superb science-gone-bad, doom-watched dystopian drama, so you’ll want to go play somewhere else for validation…

Once upon a time, six scientists sought to save the world from destruction and humanity from itself. As inexorable climate change turned Earth into an uninhabitable tinderbox, they did something wondrous with cold fusion and eradicated the searing heat build-up.

However, as we all know, no good deed ever goes unpunished and their miraculous solution unleashed a new ice age that brought civilisation to its knees and human beings to the edge of extinction.

In the aftermath, as pockets of mankind sought to stay warm and eat on a desolate ice-ball world, it was revealed that the temperature inversion had brought another – even more terrifying – tribulation: a bizarre disease that slowly turned living creatures into ice. Terrified humans began isolating themselves in smaller groups, making pariahs of strangers, abhorring the blue stigma and dreading the inescapable death sentence that was “Frostbite”…

America 57 years after big freeze is an icy wind-wracked wilderness, with meagre population pockets occupying what used to be mega-cities. It’s a world of barter, exploitation and quick violence, with heating devices and drugs as the prime transferable resources. Criminals have scrambled to the top of the heap and dictate the way things are. Everyone is terrified that fraternisation also brings the cold contagion…

In Mexico City, freelance cargo-shippers Keaton and her partner Chuck Barlow accept a commission to transport a father and his daughter to what used to be Alcatraz Island. Both prospective passengers are science doctors and display obvious signs of great wealth, but broke as she is, Keaton can’t shake her suspicions of something bad in play…

Henry Bonham and his brilliant child Victoria clearly have the resources to travel in style and comfort, but instead want the secrecy of a lumbering tractor like Barlow’s pride-&-joy Icebreaker. Keaton would be even more upset if she knew who they were and who was chasing them…

When those pursuers attack, the Bonhams are separated and Keaton, on learning Henry’s secret, kills him herself. Only afterwards does she discover that it wasn’t him the pursuers wanted, but Victoria. The junior scientist has developed a cure for frostbite and is now the most valuable thing on earth…

Furious, guilt-ridden, repentant, hopeful and slowly dying, Keaton resolves to get the daughter to the Alcatraz lab before she expires, no matter who or what stands in their way. As she grows ever closer to her trek buddy, the hardest part is not confessing what she’s done and what’s she’s becoming. Although built on mutual lies, there’s a painfully doomed relationship growing that might be even more important to Keaton than saving the world or her own life…

Their voyage across the frozen south overflows with violent clashes as relentless pursuit constantly results in explosive violence, with Keaton’s prowess and ingenuity significantly reducing the numbers of humans in existence every time they are caught or intercepted.

Soon however, their only foe is Keaton’s secret and when that’s exposed, everything changes forever…

Fast-paced, smart, action-packed and tension-taut, Frostbite is a picture perfect action adventure with a flawed but indomitable hero in the same unstoppable yet fragile mould as Ripley or Sarah Connor.

Graced by a magnificent cover gallery by Alexander & NCT, this is the kind of chill affirmative action we should all enjoy.
© 2016, 2017 Joshua Williamson and Jason Shawn Alexander. All Rights Reserved.

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White All Around


By Wilfrid Lupano & Stéphane Fert, translated by Montana Kane (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital only edition

When we actually get to hear it, history is an endlessly fascinating procession of progress and decline that plays out eternally at the behest of whoever’s in power at any one time. However, don’t be fooled. It’s never about “opinions” or “alternative facts”: most moments of our communal existence generally happened one way with only the reasons, motivations and repercussions shaded to accommodate a preferred point of view.

The best way to obfuscate the past is to tell everyone it never happened and pray nobody goes poking around. So much you never suspected has been brushed under a carpet and erased by intervening generations proceeding without any inkling…

Entire sections of society have been unwritten in this manner but always there have been pesky troublemakers who prod and probe, looking for what’s been earmarked for forgetting and shine a light on the history that isn’t there.

One such team of investigators are Wilfrid Lupano & Stéphane Fert who in 2020 released a sequential graphic narrative account of a remarkable moment of opportunity that was quashed by entrenched bigotry, selfish privilege and despicable intolerance…

The translated Blanc autour is available to English-reading audiences only in a digital format thus far and opens with a context-filled Foreword before we meet servant girl Sarah Harris as she is tormented by ruffian child Feral, reading to her from an infamous new book…

Set one year after Nat Turner’s doomed black uprising of August 21st 1831 (in Southampton County, Virginia), this true tale took place in a land still reeling and terrified.

New preventative measures to control and suppress the slave population included banning black gatherings of three or more people, an increase in public punishments like floggings, lynchings and ferocious policing if not outright outlawing of negro literacy. The posthumous publishing of Thomas R. Gray’s The Confessions of Nat Turner had created a best seller that further outraged and alarmed Americans…

Even in 1832, and hundreds of miles north in genteel Canterbury, Connecticut black people were careful to mind their place. It might be a “Free State”, where slavery was illegal but even here Negros were an impoverished underclass…

Sarah, however, is afflicted with a quick, agile and relentlessly questioning mind. She craves knowledge and understanding the way her fellow servants do food, rest and no trouble. One day, fascinated by the way water behaves, she plucks up her courage and asks the local school teacher to explain.

Prudence Crandall is a well-respected and dedicated educator diligently shepherding the young daughters of the (white) citizenry to whatever knowledge they’ll need to be good wives and mothers, but when the brilliant little servant girl quizzes her, the teacher is seized by an incredible notion…

When a new term starts Sarah is the latest pupil, and despite outraged and increasingly less polite objections from the civic great and good – all proudly pro negro advancement, but not necessarily here or now – Miss Crandall is adamant that she should remain. When parents threaten to remove their children, she goes on the offensive, declaring the school open for the “reception of young ladies and little misses of color”…

Her planned curriculum includes reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, natural and moral philosophy, history, drawing and painting, music on the piano, and the French language, and by sending it along with her intentions to Boston Abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, Crandall declare war on intolerance and ignorance in her home town. Sadly, her proud determination unleashes an unstoppable wave of sabotage, intimidation, sly exclusion, social ostracism and naked hatred against herself and her negro student…

She even tried to defend the move at the Municipal Assembly, only to learn that only men were allowed to speak there…

Crandall’s response is to make her Canterbury Female Boarding School exclusively a place for a swiftly growing class of black girls. All too soon, politicians and lawmakers got involved and harassment intensified to the point of terrorism and murder. Connecticut even legislated that it was illegal to educate coloured people from out of State…

The school became another piece in the complex political game between abolitionists and slave-owing states but still managed to enhance the lives and intellects of its boarders, until 1834 when Prudence Crandall stood trial for the crime of teaching black children. When she was exonerated, the good people of Canterbury took off the kid gloves…

Although this war was never going to be won, Crandall’s incredible stand for tolerance, inclusivity and universal education was a minor miracle of enlightenment, attracting students from across America and countering the long-cherished “fact” that blacks and females had no need or even capacity for learning. Moreover, though the bigots managed to drive her out, she and her extraordinary pupils retrenched to continue the good work in another state: one more willing to risk the status quo…

This amazing story is delivered as a fictionalised drama made in a manner reminiscent of a charming and stylish Disney animated feature, but the surface sweetness and breezy visuals are canny subterfuge. Scripter Wilfred Lupano (Azimut; Little Big Joe; Valerian & Laureline: Shingouzlooz Inc.; The Old Geezers; Vikings dans la brume) and illustrator Stéphane Fert (Morgane; Axolot; Peau de Mille Bêtes) deploy a subtle sheen of beguiling fairy tale affability to camouflage their exposure of a moving, cruel and enraging sidebar to accepted history: one long overdue for modern reassessment.

The creators also wisely leaven the load with delightful, heart-warmingly candid moments exploring the feelings and connections of the students, and balance tragedy with moments of true whimsy and life-affirming fantasy: but please beware – it does not end well for all…

The book also includes an Afterword by Joanie DiMartino – Curator of the Prudence Crandall Museum – tracing in biographical snippets, the eventful lives, careers and achievements of eleven of the boldly aspirational scholars of the Crandall School’s first class.

White All Around is a disturbing yet uplifting story that every concerned citizen should read and remember. After all, learning is a privilege, not a right… unless we all defend and advance it…
© 2021 DARGAUD BENELUX, (Dargaud-Lombard s. a.) – LUPANO & FERT. All rights reserved. English translation © 2009 Cinebook Ltd.