Category: Graphic Novels

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Captain America by Ed Brubaker volume 1


By Ed Brubaker, Steve McNiven, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Mark Morales, Jay Leisten, Matteo Buffagni, Justin Ponsor, Laura Martin & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5708-3 (HB) 978-0-7851-5709-0 (TPB) 978-0-7851-8271-9 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

One of the key moments in Marvel Comics history occurred when the Mighty Avengers recovered a tattered body floating in a block of ice (#4, March 1964) and resurrected the World War II hero Captain America. With this act bridging the years back to Timely & Atlas Comics – begun with the return of the Sub-Mariner in Fantastic Four #4 – Marvel confirmed and consolidated a solid, concrete, potential-packed history and created an enticing sense of mythic continuance for the fledgling company that instantly gave it the same cachet and enduring grandeur of market leader National/DC.

It’s just that rich heritage and history which informs and embellishes this grand old fashioned Fights ‘n’ Tights romp by Ed Brubaker and artists Steve McNiven, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Mark Morales, Jay Leisten & Matteo Buffagni which originally featured in the first five issues of volume 5 of the Captain America monthly comic book (cover-dated September 2011 to February 2012).

After too long on the sidelines and officially off-duty, Steve Rogers had again taken up the uniform and shield of the Star Spangled Avenger but was all too soon forced to confront his tragic past when his WWII ally and lover Peggy Carter passed away. Whilst attending her funeral with fellow veterans Nick Fury and “Dum Dum” Dugan the trio are targeted by a sniper and plunged back into long unfinished business…

Back in 1944, Peggy and the so-much-younger warriors were in Paris to destroy an advanced weapons facility operated by Nazi technocrat Baron Zemo and resurgent rapidly rebuilding conquest-cult Hydra. With the aid of costumed crusader Agent Bravo and Jimmy Jupiter (nee Jankovicz) – a boy with the ability to enter dreams and travel to a dimension where wishes became reality – the Allied operatives infiltrated the factory, but the mission went terribly wrong, leaving Jimmy a comatose vegetable and Bravo trapped within a timeless meta-realm with no hope of return.

Now, somehow Bravo is back on Earth and working with a new Hydra Queen. Equipped with incredible, nigh-impossible new armaments and teamed up with the heir of Zemo, the vengeful veteran wants to destroy Cap & Fury; romance/abduct Rogers’ current girlfriend Agent 13 and wreak vengeance on the world which had callously forgotten him…

As part of that ambition Bravo recruits long-forgotten Cap adversary Lyle Dekker: a Nazi scientist and certified lunatic who had long harboured a festering hatred for the Red, White & Blue champion. After Rogers had thawed out in modern times, Dekker tried to assassinate Captain America and take his place by having his own mind permanently transferred into an 18-foot tall Cap robot dubbed The Ameridroid.

When that manic automaton attacks now it is but the prelude to Bravo’s masterstroke: exiling Rogers to Jimmy Jupiter’s fantasy dimension and a darkly irresistible, seductive faux existence Rogers could never dream of escaping, all whilst merging the Dream Dimension with the plane of mundane reality to create a new kind of American nation Bravo alone would control…

Of course, the outcast maniac has no conception of what a true hero and living symbol will endure to make the world – any world – right and must soon face his personal nemesis in a duel for all reality. Victory comes as it always does to the just and righteous, but Rogers is belatedly faced with staggering consequences in the celebratory aftermath…

To Be Continued…

In 2012 a Panini/Marvel UK trade paperback edition was released as Captain America: American Dreamers (ISBN: 978-1-84653-505-5) which also included a gallery of alternative covers by Art Adams, Olivier Coipel, Neal Adams, Dale Eaglesham, John Romita Sr. and Salvador Larroca, as well as anniversary and Movie variant edition covers which are sadly omitted here. However whichever version you see this is a superbly fast-paced, action-packed romp: a thrilling and immensely entertaining confection to delight old aficionados, impress newcomers and make fresh fans for the immortal and original Sentinel of Liberty.
© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Today in 1907 arch stylist Jesse Marsh (Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Brothers of the Spear) was born, as was fellow Tarzan illustrator Ruben Moreira (also Casey Ruggles, Rip Hunter -Time Master, Roy Raymond – TV Detective, Reef Ryan, Her Highness and Silk) in 1922. Five years later Italian master creator Guido Buzzelli (Angélique in the Daily Mirror, Zil Zelub, L’uomo del Bengala, Tex Willer) arrived, followed in 1938 by mega star writer Pierre Christin (Valerian and Laureline, The City That Didn’t Exist, The Black Order Brigade, La voyageuse de la petite ceinture, The Hunting Party). That same year welcomed Writer/Artist/Letterer/Editor/Publisher Bill Peason (Witzend, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents) with artist Ernie Chan (everything from Batman to Conan to Secret Society of Super-Villains) born in 1940 and Singaporean illustrator Foo Swee Chin (A Lost Stock of Children, Mince, Chimney 25, Zeet, Nightmares & Fairy Tales, MuZz) arriving in 1977.

In 2005 we lost venerable Dutch veteran Marten Toonder (Tom Puss) with Portuguese illustrator Carlos Roque (Angélique, Wladimyr) dying a year later and Mad magazine mirth maven Stan Hart departing in 2017.

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Superman The Golden Age Sundays volume 2 1946-1949


By Alvin Schwartz, Wayne Boring & various (IDW/Library of American Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-109-1 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times..

After years wallowing in obscurity most of Superman’s newspaper strip exploits were at last made available to aficionados and the curious newcomer in tomes such as this one, compiled under the auspices of the Library of American Comics. Sadly, that bounty has dried up and the books are becoming as rare as the original strips. Hopefully the whole canon will one day make it into digital editions. Until then though, we fortunate ones can share what we have, like this epic transitional selection seeing the close of a Golden era in advance of a fresh, bold, daringly Atomic Age…

The comic book industry would be utterly unrecognisable without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s bold and unprecedented invention was fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation and quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. The Man of Tomorrow was shamelessly copied, adapted by countless inspired writers and artists for numerous publishers, spawning an incomprehensible army of imitators and variations within three years of his summer 1938 debut.

Yes, 88 YEARS… and still counting!

The intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and visceral wish-fulfilment expressed by the newborn Action Ace swiftly expanded to encompass cops-&-robbers crimebusting, socially reformist dramas, science fiction and fantasy, romance and comedy; and – once war in Europe and the East engulfed America – absorbed and reinforced patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and dashing derring-do. Superman was master of the world and whilst transforming and dictating the shape of the fledgling funnybook industry, relentlessly expanded into all areas of entertainment media.

We might think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as the epitome and acme of comic strip creation, but the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1 the Man of Steel was a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Sherlock Holmes, Popeye and Tarzan. Diehard comics fans regard our purest, most enduring icons in primarily graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, The Hulk and their hyperkinetic ilk long ago outgrew four-colour origins to become fully mythologized modern media creatures, instantly recognised in mass markets across all platforms and age ranges. Far more people have viewed or heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comics.

His globally syndicated newspaper strips reached untold millions, and by the time of his 20th anniversary – at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics – he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial regular and starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons, as well as two films and a novel by George Lowther. Superman was a perennial wellspring for toys, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his future were many more shows, a stage musical, a ton of blockbuster movies and near-seamless succession of games, bubblegum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even superdog Krypto has got in on the all screens act. However, in his formative years the moving picture option was simply an expensive novelty for most. The Action Ace achieved true mass market fame through a different medium: one not that far removed from his print origins.

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for most of the last century newspaper strips were the Holy Grail American cartoonists/graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and frequently the world – they might be seen by millions if not billions of readers and were generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic books. At that time it also paid far better, and rightly so. Some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture. Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Blondie, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped humble, even tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar. Some still do…

Superman was the first comic book character to make that leap; about six months after exploding out of Action Comics. The daily Superman strip launched on 16th January 1939, augmented from November 5th of that year by a full-colour Sunday page. Originally crafted by Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring), the mammoth task soon required the additional artistic gifts of Jack Burnley and ancillary writers Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz. The McClure Syndicate feature ran uninterrupted until May 1966, and at its peak appeared in over 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers with a combined readership surpassing 20 million. For most of the post-war years, Boring & Stan Kaye limned the spectacular Sundays (latterly supplemented by Win Mortimer & Curt Swan). The majority of strips from 1944 to 1958 were written by largely unsung, nigh-forgotten scribe Alvin Schwartz.

Born in 1916, Schwartz was an early maestro of comic books, writing Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel, and for many other titles and companies. Whilst handling the Superman strip he freelanced on Wonder Woman and other superheroes as well as DC’s genre titles such as Tomahawk, Buzzy, A Date with Judy and House of Mystery. After numerous and ever-escalating clashes with new Superman Editor Mort Weisinger, Schwartz quit comics for commercial writing: selling novels, essays, documentaries and docudramas for the National Film Board of Canada. He worked miracles in advertising and market research, developing selling techniques like psychographics and typological identification. A member of the advisory committee to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, he died in 2011.

After too many years wallowing in obscurity most of Superman’s newspaper strip exploits are finally available to aficionados and the curious newcomer in tomes such as this one compiled under the aegis of the Library of American Comics.

Showcasing Schwartz & Boring in their purest prime, these Sundays (numbered as Pages #354 to #520, collectively spanning August 11th 1946 to October 16th 1949) depict an almost omnipotent Man of Steel in domestically-framed tales of emotional dilemma, pedestrian criminality and surreal situations rather than muscle-flexing bombast, faux angst and bludgeoning action. Here humour, wit, mystery, fashion, satire and wonder reign supreme.

Following affable appreciation of the creators and the times in Mark Waid’s ‘An Introduction’ and a selection of contemporaneous Superman comic book covers in ‘A Wayne Boring Gallery’ the weekly wonderment recommences in all its vibrant glory. Sadly, the serials are untitled, so you’ll just have to manage with my meagre synopses of individual yarns…

Kicking off is a beguiling domestic dilemma as Lois Lane is overwhelmed looking after a neighbour’s boy whilst preparing to collect her sternly formidable, imminently visiting Aunt Matilda. Snowed under mounting physical and mental loads, she ropes in Superman to backstop her, only to discover there are many tasks – like baking a cake whilst watching a boisterous brat – that even the miraculous Man of Steel cannot manage…

Next up and beginning with Page 358 (September 8th 1946) the Action Ace faces criminal mastermind Tom Catt who plunders Metropolis in “Curiosity Crimes” dependent on the victims’ own innate nosiness. After a cascade of cat & mouse clashes the cunning crook ultimately falls because he didn’t follow his own advice about obtrusive inquiry and foolhardy felines…

More distracting nonsense results after social thinktank The Skeptics prove by rational debate that Superman doesn’t exist and seek to legally end the fraud being perpetrated upon the world. It takes a number of impossible tasks diligently performed by our hero before the cranky coots are convinced to change their minds, after which Page 371 (December 8th 1946) briefly returns the Man of Tomorrow to his war years and wish-fulfilling Superman’s Service for Servicemen scheme as he helps demobbed G.I. Steve Kennedy adapt to peacetime, work woes and officious in-laws making life intolerable…

Keeping our frame of reference domestic, a new year and fresh sequence (Page 375, January 5th 1947) saw the invulnerable hero hounded by an indefatigable go-getting salesman from Dynamic Insurance. Elmer Doolittle’s career – and future wedded bliss – depend on selling Superman a policy. Luckily, the goal never actually specified what kind of policy…

March 9th (Page 384) signalled a return to fantastic fantasy as an invisible beast causes havoc in the heartlands and farmers call for help to bring the “Nosuch Animal” to brook. Sadly, when Superman intervenes the unseen terror loses its camouflage gift and is exposed as a living example of a dinosaur… a Paleomatzoball. Moreover, this rampaging colossus loves rough handling and develops a disastrous romantic attachment to the Man of Steel before our embarrassed involuntary swain devises a timely solution to their mutual problem…

The “peace dividend” delivered by the end of the war is scrutinised next as Clark visits Boom Town and sees how a former manufacturing mecca was infiltrated and overrun by mobsters, gamblers and racketeers once the military – and their trustworthy, well-trained police – were transferred elsewhere. When the entrenched thugs begin attacking the municipality’s new law enforcement recruits, the Man of Steel steps up to school the neophytes and ensure crime never pays there again…

Circuses were a big draw and popular pastime of the postwar years and from Page 400 (June 29th) Superman & Lois were lured into that limelight when swindlers targeted Cap’n Tobey’s Mammoth Carnival. When the doddering owner is gulled into promising the world that the Metropolis Marvel is his new top attraction, Superman naturally helps out by showing up, but his good deed only allows a cartel of gangsters to use his scheduled performances as opportunities to try new ways to assassinate the Action Ace… with no appreciable result…

Next (from 28th August) two more former G.I.’s enlist the Man of Steel in a business venture, hoping his promotion of their new hot dog line (“Teenie Weinies”) will ensure success, Sadly, the enthusiastically spectacular super sales campaign only lands our hero with a lawsuit for restraint of trade when established fast food rivals cry unfair competition against their own brand of “Yankie Frankies”! Ordered to cease and desist, our hero still manages one stellar and out of this world act of promotion before capitulating…

One of the earliest examples of a recurring Silver Age Superman trope comes next as Page 414 (October 5th 1947) sees exotic nuclear radiation (another increasing popular maguffin of the forthcoming Atomic Age) accidentally reduce the mighty Man of Tomorrow to the size and relative age – but thankfully not intellect or emotional development – of an infant. Unable to appear as Clark, “Superbabe” recruits vagabond Edward Benton who resembles his adult self to impersonate Kent until a remedy is found, only to see the double fall for Lois and attempt to steal his civilian life and wed her under false pretences. Unable to operate as hero or tolerate the loss of Lois, the Caped Kryptonian risks a deadly potential cure, sabotages Lois’ wedding day and risks exposing his greatest secret to stop the mad escapade…

After that soap opera scandal carries us over the Holiday season, accidental time travel – beginning with February 22nd 1948’s Page 434 – sees Superman stranded in the past and ensnared by the irresistible wiles of seductive, lethally ambitious Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. Thankfully, former beau Mark Antony is able to break her spell before the Man of Tomorrow returns to today, just in time to foil an impending Martian invasion (May 2nd – July 18th over Pages 444-455) by impersonating an “ordinary human” abducted to their testing labs…

He even acts as a matchmaker for their lonely leader before returning to Earth and his strangest encounter yet after he’s “adopted” by talking dog Angus who needs a safe, secure home for his homeless human orphan kid pal Nicky Nichols. Of course, once he’s over the shock and disbelief, Superman is delighted to provide them and even reunite Nicky with his missing-but-not-dead mother… once he’s stopped every grifting chancer’s exploitative schemes to make money out of the mouthy mutt…

Another extraordinary tyke turns up on Page 467 (October 10th) as radical theorists of The Educational Improvements Association attempt to hothouse a 3-year old prodigy with plenty of weird notions of her own. “Smartypants” is granted absolute freedom to do whatever she wants, with the Man of Steel sworn to make every wish come true. The result is utter anarchy (with unleashed dinosaurs!) and total chaos until the harassed, embattled boffins convene for a swift rethink before resorting to tried-&-trusted rearing methods…

November 28th (Page 474) saw Superman in whimsical mood as he puckishly teaches a rug salesman a lesson by making his smarmy, smug sales patter about magic carpets come true for downtrodden shopper Geoge Paley. Sadly, the prank goes exponentially awry as an ever-escalating war for possession of George’s flying rug breaks out, resulting in violence, loss of livelihood and litigation. Once he’s done settling all the crises he’s sparked, the Action Ace resolves to quit playing practical jokes…

Far-flung fantasy follows from Pages 484 to 493 (February 6th – April 10th 1949) as Superman gathers Amazon jungle flora for the Metropolis Botanical Society and stumbles upon a fabulous golden sword, a potent legend and a long-hidden civilisation in the Lost Valley of Ru. Holding the antique blade, the Man of Steel inadvertently fulfils an ancient prophecy and must marry the socially reforming Queen. That’s not what tyrannical nobles led by Baron Akhar want, and his machinations to thwart the prophecy and marry her himself – as well as the monarch’s embarrassing infatuation with the mighty caped stranger – lead to confusion, crisis and civil war before our hero can fix everything and flee back to the outer world’s relative calm…

The next serialised saga (Pages 494-505, April 17th to July 3rd) offers another human-interest drama given a super-powered spin as, having learned nothing, Superman hires a double to stand in for him at all onerous public functions he’s too polite to refuse. Sadly, affable, honest mimic Mike is soon innocently complicating the Action Ace’s double lives to the point of imminent calamity and when the hapless doppelganger is kidnapped, panic ensues following wildfire rumours of the hero losing his powers. Realising the jig is up, Superman takes drastic action…

Concluding this final Golden Age collection, Pages 506-520 (July 10th – October 16th 1949) detail a bizarre fantasy wherein Superman emulates the travels of Lemuel Gulliver in a story within a story. To cheer up a love-crushed youngster, the Metropolis Marvel recounts his travails on a distant heavy-gravity world where his powers fluctuated and he faced miniscule warriors and lumbering giants, overthrew a tyrant before brokering peace and even arranging a love match between representatives of each side!

The Golden Age Superman: – Sunday Pages 1946-1949 – was the last of two huge (312 x 245 mm), lavish, high-end twinned hardbacks re-presenting the Man of Steel’s exploits during WWII and the immediate aftermath. They were a welcome addition to the superb commemorative series of Library of American Comics which preserved in luxurious splendour such landmark strips as Lil Abner, Tarzan, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and many of the abovementioned cartoon icons. It’s an unimaginable joy to see these neglected Superman stories again, offering a far more measured, domesticated and comforting side of one of America’s most unique contributions to world culture. It’s also a pure delight to see some of the most engaging yesterdays of the Man of Tomorrow. Join me, see for yourself and agitate for the entire library to be released in digital editions…
© 2014 DC Comics. All rights reserved. SUPERMAN and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics.

Today in 1883, Edwin Balmer – journalist/fantasist/author/co-creator of the Speed Spaulding sci fi strip – was born. The day also saw the deaths of groundbreaking cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland, Gertie the Dinosaur, Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend) in 1934 and Reg’lar Fellers, It’s A Great Life If You Don’t Weaken, Wide Awake Willie creator Gene Byrnes in 1974.

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Tiny Titans volume 4: The First Rule of Pet Club…


By Art Baltazar & Franco with Geoff Johns & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2892-7 (TPB), 978-1-4012-4528-3 (Digital edition)

DC’s Cartoon Network imprint was a potent and fun-filled bastion of children’s comics in America and consolidated the link between TV and 2D jollies and thrills with stunning interpretations of television landmarks like Ben 10, Scooby Doo, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory and others. The comics line also generated truly exceptional material based on screen iterations of their proprietary characters such as Teen Titans Go!, Legion of Super Heroes, Batman: Brave and the Bold and Krypto the Super Dog as well as original material like Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam!, which were merely indistinguishable in tone and content.

Arguably the imprint’s finest release was a series ostensibly aimed at early readers but which quickly became a firm favourite of older fans – and a multi-award winner too. Superbly mirroring the magical wonderland inside a child’s head where everything is happily mixed up together, Tiny Titans became a sublime nostalgia-weaponised antidote to continuity cops and slavish fan-boy quibbling by reducing the vast cast of successive Teen Titans animated series, the greater boutique of mainstream comic books and, eventually, DC’s entire Universe to little kids and their parents/guardians in the wholesome kindergarten environment of Sidekick City Elementary School – a scenario spring-loaded with in-jokes, sight-gags and beloved yet gently mocked paraphernalia of generations of strip readers and telly-watchers…

Art Baltazar and co-creator Franco (Aureliani) mastered a witty, bemusingly charming style of storytelling that just happily rolls along, with assorted characters getting by, trying to make sense of the great big world and just coincidentally having “Adventures in Awesomeness”. The method generally involves stringing together smaller incidents and moments into an overall themed portmanteau tale and it works astoundingly well. Rounding up issues #19-25 and spanning cover-dates October 2009 – April 2010 of the magically madcap, infinitely addictive all-ages mini-masterpiece, this fourth volume begins on a romantic note by looking at the kids ‘Deep in Like’.

After a handy and as-standard identifying roll-call page, ‘Imagine Me and You…’ finds scary blob Plasmus and tiny winged Bumblebee brightening up each other’s drab day, before a similar cupid moment affects The Brain and best-est pal M’sieu Mallah, even as diligent overachiever Robin (accompanied by faithful Bat-hound Ace) finds his earnest attempts to finish his homework disturbed by a succession of pesky young ladies including Starfire, Batgirl & Duella all caught up in a ‘Like Triangle’. ‘Dates’ then sees Bumblebee & Plasmus inadvertently causing chaos during an afternoon movie monster mash – and even in the ‘Intermission’ – after which a sly sight gag for us oldies highlights the company’s many Wonder Girls in ‘Jump Rope’.

DC’s hallowed anthropoid obsession is highlighted in ‘New Recruits’ when Beast Boy chairs a meeting of the Titans Ape Club before regular feature The Kroc Files depicts ultimate butler Alfred, roguish reptilian star Kroc and Plasmus each demonstrating ‘How to Enjoy a Lollipop’ in their own signature manner. The issue closes with a word puzzle whilst the next promises to disclose The Hole Truth about Raven: beginning with a daybreak disaster at ‘Home with the Trigons’. Raven’s dad is an antlered, crimson transdimensional devil-lord as well as a teacher at Sidekick Elementary, so when he oversleeps, his sorceress scion gets him to work on time by simply opening a few wormholes. Of course, leaving those dimensional doors around is just asking for trouble…

Meanwhile, it’s washday at Wayne Manor, but Alfred won’t let Robin, Beast Boy or Aqualad go down ‘To the Batcave’. Sadly, even the dapper domestic can’t withstand united pester-power and eventually gives in… and learns to regret it. Following a perplexing maze game-page, the All Pet Club Issue! launches as Starfire and mean sister Blackfire write home for their beloved critters Silky & Poopu, so they can go to the oh-so-secret social event, whilst can-do kid Cyborg actually builds himself a brace of chrome companions in ‘Pet-Tronics’…

With ‘Club Hoppin’, the entire school gathers with their accommodatingly and uniquely compatible pets to interview potential new members – specifically tongue-tied-&-thunderstruck Captain Marvel Junior and his fuzzy pal Hoppy, the Marvel Bunny. With so many members, the club must find roomier quarters, leading to a painful tryst for Beast Boy and Terra in ‘Meanwhile, on the Moon…’

There’s a brilliant vacuum-packed bonus pin-up of the Tiny Titans in space by Franco before ‘Hot Dogs, Titans, & Stretchy Guys!’ presents the kids back on solid ground and wrapped up with the DCU’s many flexible fellows as ‘Offspring into Action’ introduces Plastic Man’s excitably boisterous bonny boy. Then, ‘Just Playing and Bouncing’ sees Bumblebee spend some time with the diminutive Atoms Family but lose control of their Teeny-Weeny, Super Duper Bouncy Ball and accidentally get Plastic Man, Offspring, Elongated Man and Elastic Lad all wound up, before helplessly watching it bowl over Principal Slade and Coach Lobo in ‘Coffee Dog Latte’.

Thankfully, Robin has exactly the right gimmick in his utility belt to set things straight, but can’t stay long as he’s en route to his Bird Scouts meeting where potential new members Hot Spot and Flamebird are trying out for Hawk, Dove, Raven & Talon. Distressingly, when shiny Golden Eagle turns up, the girls all want to make him the new leader…

The semi-regular ‘Epilogue’ page often supplies one more punch-line to cap each themed issue and this one leads directly into a convoluted and confounding Elastic Four pin-up/cover which in turn precedes a spookily uproarious tale of Bats, Bunnies, and Penguins in the Batcave! Oh My!...

It all begins in ‘Ice to Meet Ya!’ when Wayne Manor’s extraordinarily if not excessively large penguin population get into a turf war with the house rabbits, displacing the Batcave’s regular inhabitants in ‘Driving Me Batty’. The conflict escalates in ‘All in the Batman Family’ before Robin gets a rather stern admonition from his senior partner to put things right… or else.

Happily, ever-so-cute & capable Batgirl is willing to lend a hand. Unfortunately, so too are the kids she’s baby-sitting (Tim & Jason: you’ll either get that or you won’t, bat-fans) and impishly infuriating Batmite. With even Batcow helping out, things soon start calming down, but ‘Meanwhile, at the Titans’ Treehouse…’ not all of the fugitive Bat-bats have heard the good news…

Once your ribs have stopped hurting you can then enjoy a Tiny Titans Aw Yeah Pin-up from Franco before ‘The All Small Issue!’ opens with assorted big kids accidentally drinking ‘Milk! Milk!’ from the Atoms’ fridge and shrinking away to nearly nothing. Good thing the Atomic nippers think to call their dad, who’s with fellow professional dwindlers Ant, Molecule and substitute Atoms Adam & Ryan (another in-continuity howler targeting old fogey fans) for a Team Nucleus meeting…

That compressive cow-juice causes more trouble in the ‘Epilogue’ before a Blue Beetle puzzle clears the mind in advance of an outrageous ending as ‘Superboy Returns!’ in a fairly cosmic crossover – and requiring some additional scripting by Geoff Johns.

When Conner Kent shows up, all the girls are really impressed and distracted, whilst – across town – Speedy is trading a lot of junk he shouldn’t be touching to Mr. Johns’ Sidekick City Pawn Shop and Bubblegum Emporium in ‘Brightest Day in the Afternoon!’ When Starfire & Stargirl then buy the seven different coloured “mood rings” from the shop, they and BFFs Duella, Batgirl, Wonder Girl, Terra and Shelly, are turned into Green, Red, Yellow, Orange, Blue, Violet and Indigo Lanterns! Soon, the Tiny Titans are up in the air again and annoying The Guardians of the Universe and their super-serious Green Lantern Corps.

It all ends well, though, in an Emerald ‘Epilogue’ and a lavish pin-up of a posse of pistachio-painted interplanetary peacekeepers…

Despite being ostensibly aimed at super-juniors and TV kids, these wonderful, wacky yarns – which marvellously marry the heart and spirit of such classic strips as Peanuts, The Perishers or Calvin and Hobbes with something uniquely mired and marinated in pure comic-bookery – are deliciously hilarious tales no self-respecting or self-indulging joy-lover should miss: accessible, entertaining, and wickedly intoxicating. Go mellow out with some kids’ stuff, now, okay? Why should they have all the fun?
© 2009, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1948 cartoon gadfly Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) was born, followed in 1950 by scripter and gamed developer Bill Kunkel (Doorway to Nightmare, Vigilante, Marvel Team-Up, Richie Rich). In 1942, Italian artist Giove Toppi died. He was the first cartoonist to draw Mickey Mouse in comics.

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Captain America: Hail Hydra!


By Jonathan Maberry, Sergio Cariello, Tom Scioli, Phil Winslade, Kyle Hotz & Graham Nolan, Chris Sotomayor, Bill Crabtree, Chris Chuckry, Dan Brown, Ian Hannin & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: ?978-0-7851-5127-2 (TPB) ?978-1-30236-799-2 (Digital Edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Everything changed for a little company called Marvel when, in issue #4 of The Avengers, the assembled heroes found the body of US Army Private Steve Rogers floating in a block of ice and consequently resurrected World War II hero Captain America. With this act bridging the years to Timely/Atlas Comics (which had in fact begun with the revival of Sub-Mariner in Fantastic Four #4), Marvel instantly acquired a comforting longevity and potential-packed pre-history: lending an enticing sense of mythic continuance to the fledgling company that instantly gave it the same cachet and enduring grandeur of market leader National/DC.

In 2010, after years of conflicting continuity and with a movie in the offing, Marvel updated and sought to rationalise those pivotal events and early future-shocked days in our contemporary world with stunning re-interpretation Captain America: Man Out of Time before repeating the operation with another generational miniseries: this time scripted by Jonathan Maberry tracing the returned Sentinel of Liberty as he fought an extended campaign against a fearsome and undying foe that had begun even before he knew of his enemy’s existence.

Captain America: Hail Hydra! focuses on five crucial skirmishes fought over the Red, White and true Blue hero’s long years of valiant service, wherein he continually – albeit periodically – clashed with an organisation of insidious evil and astounding ambition. Each issue was dutifully depicted by a different artist in a knowing pastiche of the relevant era.

Illustrated by Sergio Cariello and colourist Chris Sotomayor, the action opens in 1944 as Captain America and youthful partner Bucky work behind enemy lines, helping German anti-Nazi freedom fighter Trude Lohn smash a plot by the baroquely bonkers, certifiably mad Doctor Geist, who has discovered how to reanimate the dead. During the apocalyptic struggle against the resurrected corpses of Das Aufertehungs Korps, Cap is injected with Geist’s unholy Lazarus serum and although the triumphant trio succeeded in depriving Hitler of an undead army, they have no idea of the sinister scientist’s greater scheme, the ancient society he actually toils for or what effect his devil drugs will have on America’s greatest warrior…

Tom Scioli pictured the second instalment in vivid tribute to Jack Kirby, wherein more historical flashback hints into the history of the cult that would become Hydra are interspersed with Cap’s first days as an Avenger following his half-century enforced hibernation. After surprisingly reuniting with now geriatric Trude, he and his new comrades clash with Nazi war criminal Baron Strucker and Geist’s unliving army, only to be thoroughly overmatched and outmanoeuvred. The deranged doctor seemed more interested in gathering blood samples from Cap and Thor than winning the battle he had instigated…

A few years later (just after modern day Captain America Sam Wilson got his first flying outfit and was learning to prowl the skies, if you’re counting) the plan becomes clearer when the Sentinel of Liberty, partner in crime-fighting The Falcon, and African Avenger Black Panther face an army of zombies seeking to steal the fabled Elixir of Life from hidden Wakandan repository of knowledge the Grotto of Solomon. Lavishly rendered by Phil Winslade, with colours from Chris Chuckry & Dan Brown, the spectacular clash is also lightly dusted with further glimpses of the order’s historic attempts to gather arcane knowledge and artefacts pertaining to their mysterious goal.

That is ultimately revealed to be the conquest of death and ascension to godhood via their Infinitas Agenda – and the history of Spanish alchemist Dr Garibaldi, who would shepherd the project over hundreds of years…

For a brief period the US government replaced the Star-Spangled Avenger with a less single-minded and independent agent compelling Steve Rogers to create the identity of “The Captain”. Here Kyle Hotz & Dan Brown delineate an adventure from those turbulent times as the unencumbered hero tackled Geist’s latest monstrosity beside Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. to get one step ahead of Hydra. However, after thwarting a terrifying attack on the heart and soul of America, Rogers is forced to consider not only what Geist is truly after but also what his devilish serum might have made of Captain America that fateful night back in 1944…

Graham Nolan and colourist Ian Hannin close the macabre saga in captivating style as Rogers, now Director of the Avengers, and original partner Bucky Barnes (formerly Soviet assassin Winter Soldier and the current Captain America) enlist a garrison of guest-stars as they home in on Strucker and Geist just as their incredible seven-thousand year scheme reaches its shocking culmination. Even the World’s Mightiest Heroes are hard-pressed to overcome the incredible beings Hydra has at long last birthed…

This extended yarn does have some niggling plot flaws but nothing so flagrant that it disrupts the overall flow of action and delicious flavour of nostalgia; so unless you’re a dedicated, nit-picking devotee the striking art and rollicking rollercoaster thrills and chills should carry the day nicely, providing a solid dose of immortal, enticing entertainment

Fast-paced, epic in scope and rocketing from one full-on spectacle to the next, via ingenious but faithful infilling of established canon, makes Captain America: Hail Hydra! a striking saga that will make many fresh fans for Marvel’s eternally evergreen old soldier.
© 2011 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All rights reserved.

Today in 1890 pioneering strip cartoonist Carl Ed (Harold Teen) was born, sharing the day with Canadian author & illustrator Russ Jones (founding editor and creator of Creepy magazine) in 1942 and cartoonist, fandom founder Steve Stiles in 1943.

The day also saw the loss of two major talents – Lucky Luke creator Morris (Maurice de Bévère) in 2001 and UK adaptions all-star Angus Allan (Stingray, Thunderbirds, Garth, DangerMouse, The Six Million Dollar Man, Logan’s Run, Charlie’s Angels) in 2007.

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Richard Dragon: Kung-Fu Fighter: Coming of the Dragon!


By Dennis J. O’Neil, David Anthony Kraft, Bob Haney, Mike W. Barr, Leopoldo Durañona, Jim Starlin, Alan Weiss, Jack Kirby, Ric Estrada, Jim Aparo, Alex Saviuk Wally Wood, Jack Abel, Al Milgrom, D. Bruce Berry, Vince Colletta & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0810-2 (HC) 978-1-7795-1240-6 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The mysterious martial arts of “The East” have always fascinated western readers and writers. Adventurers, detectives and mystery men like Sexton Blake, Batman, Doc Savage, The Spider and The Shadow drew much of their history and arsenal from the arcane Orient, and even intellectual acme Sherlock Holmes occasionally employed the scientific combat system of “Baritsu” – actually a mixed martial art called Bartitsu which developed between 1898-1902. Moreover, every secret agent worth their salt was au fait with assorted “chop sockey” techniques: generally disparaging them while delivering a visually enticing signature blow…

Putting aside references in assorted newspaper strips, the first specialist martial arts comic book star was Judo Joe: a young American raised in Japan who used his training for the benefit of all. Three issues were released between August and December 1953. The work of Dr Barney Cosneck and illustrator Paul W. Stoddard, it set the tone of the genre as well, devising an enduring feature of most early strips in illustrated lessons on specific moves and techniques to let them all break bones in the security of their own bedrooms. Kids! DO try this at home… but not on the cat. That what little brothers are for…

Comics in the 1960s were highly spiced with judo and karate users, with by far the most accurate forms employed by Charlton Comics champions Sarge Steel (#1 December 1964, by Pat Masulli & Dick Giordano) and WWII costumed combatant Judomaster (first seen in Special War Series #4, November 1965): both benefitting from the specialist Kung Fu knowledge and artistic skills of Frank McLaughlin – an actual judoka who had studied martial arts for years.

Gold Key simply exploited licensing power. Television’s The Green Hornet ran 26 episodes from September 1966 to March 1967 and their comics adaptation (3 issues from February to August 1967) played up the combat skills of the antihero/vigilante’s chauffeur and partner Kato. You’ll recall, I’m sure, that he was played by young Bruce Lee, who was in very large part responsible for the popularisation of martial arts in the west… especially after graduating to film roles.

When the big boom began in the early 1970s, Charlton were again quick off the mark: launching their own knock-off of hugely popular TV series Kung Fu. Running 18 issues, Joe Gill & Warren Sattler’s Yang debuted with a November 1973 cover-date, recounting the life of a Chinese wanderer in the 1870s wild west. It spawned sequel/spin-off House of #1-6, July 1975 – June 1976) by Korean comics creator Sanho Kim and remains a visual highpoint to this day… if you can find it. Marvel really reaped the benefits of the zeitgeist with Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu in Special Marvel Edition #15 (cover-dated December 1973) and a flood of follow-ups including Iron Fist, Sons of the Tiger, Daughters of the Dragon and White Tiger. As ever – and despite teenager Jim Shooter introducing Karate Kid to the Legion of Super-Heroes back in 1966 (Adventure Comics #346, July) – ever-cautious DC were late to the party, even though one of their key writers was also the co-author of a Kung Fu novel…

…And Karate Kid? As the martial arts boom was subsiding, DC awarded him his own solo series, set primarily in the 20th century: 15 bi-monthly issues running from March/April 1976 to July/August 1978. He travelled through time and across realities, but never met the stars of this particular title…

The Seventies had begun with a downturn in superhero sales and a resurgence of traditional genre comic tales. A few years in, a new genre emerged: one blending eastern philosophy and personal combat systems with a real-world growth in organised crime – especially drug (and human) trafficking. Popular fiction responded with a wave of lone wolf vigilantes like Mack (The Executioner) Bolan and martial arts icon Remo Williams: The Destroyer, as gritty hardboiled crime thrillers evolved and genres began to mash up…

Riding his own wave of comic success and celebrity from Batman, Justice League of America, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Superman, former Marvel trainee/intern turned journalist Dennis J. O’Neil teamed up with editorial cartoonist James R. Berry to write a prose thriller for this burgeoning market. Under the pen-name Jim Dennis, they detailed the life path of teen thug Richard Drakunovski after finding friends and life direction with a martial arts sensei. Kung Fu Master, Richard Dragon: Dragon’s Fists was released in 1974 and ultimately pitted the hero against evil industrialist Guano Cravat…

With a phenomenon unfolding around them, DC finally joined the parade of warriors by having O’Neil adapt the book, expanding the premise and adding significantly to their pantheon of stars in the process: not so much with the leading man but through his potential-packed supporting cast.

Spanning April/May 1975 to November 1981, this fast and furious compendium collects Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter #1-18; a team-up from The Brave and the Bold #132, plus a closing note from DC Comics Presents #39. In keeping with the tone of the genre and time, these stories are tersely underwritten and potently action driven, but racial and gender issues are ubiquitous and fully expressed in the terms of the times.

The first issue was cover-dated April/ May 1975 and on sale from January 30th, with opening episode ‘Coming of a Dragon!’ credited to “Jim Dennis” and illustrated by comics legend Leopoldo Durañona. Here it was revealed how a teenager’s attempt to burgle a dojo in Kyoto, Japan was foiled by its head teacher O-Sensei. The venerable ancient easily mastered the violent thief and then invited to him to change his life path. Richard Dragon spends the next seven years mastering countless forms of Kung Fu, higher education and his own raging nature, forming a lifelong bond with his fellow pupil – African American Ben Turner – and seeking to become a physically and ethically “Superior Man”…

The idyllic period ends the day unctuous freelance spymaster Barney Ling shows up. He runs acronymic organisation G.O.O.D. and begs the legendary O-Sensei to aid him in stopping a world-class human trafficker. Instead, the master sends his students against an army of brutes and monsters…

Artistic stability was not an option as O’Neil was partnered in swift succession with Jim Starlin, Alan Weiss & Al Milgrom for second exploit ‘A Dragon Fights Alone’. Wounded but triumphant, Dragon and Turner return to Japan only to be targeted by the hired thugs of a hidden enemy. The attack comes in the wake of a tearful graduation, as they seek to aid O-Sensei’s goddaughter Carolyn Woosan. This results in them all heading for San Francisco, where mercenary The Swiss had orchestrated her uncle’s death whilst searching for a deadly secret. When the freshly-debarked adventurers investigate, Ben is shot and Carolyn taken…

It clearly took some time to assign an art-team as Jack Kirby & D. Bruce Berry limned third instalment ‘Claws of the Dragon!’ as an enraged hero hunts The Swiss and trounces an army of assassins, thanks in no small part to his secret weapon – a jade claw allowing him to focus all his knowledge and fury and become a beast of battle…

Crushed by their continuing failure to rescue Carolyn, Dragon & Ben reluctantly accept help from Ling and G.O.O.D. Marshalling resources and infiltrating a suspect dojo, Dragon accepts that there is ‘A Time to be a Whirlwind!’, and again overcomes all physical opposition, but once more fails Carolyn, this time forever. This shattering clash signalled the start of artistic stability as Ric Estrada took over pencilling, augmented by master inker Wallace Wood.

Sandra Woosan debuted in #5, a woman who would become a major player in DC continuity. Cover-dated December 1975-January 1976, ‘The Arena of No Exit!’ introduced lethal Lady Shiva: a conflict-addicted swordswoman seeking bloody redress for her murdered sister. She was working for grotesque super arms-dealer Guano Cravat (the secret mastermind behind The Swiss), but rejected her current assignment to kill Dragon after fighting him and realising that staying in his orbit would generate all the murderous duels her killer’s heart hungered for without betraying her tarnished and diminished ethical code…

In later years she would evolve into the most dangerous assassin on Earth: a major opponent of Batman, Robin, assorted Batgirls, Black Canary, the Birds of Prey and many others.

After foiling Cravat’s scheme, Dragon and Shiva are rewarded by Ling with magnificent matched swords: katana crafted by an 18th century master smith. However, it’s just a ploy to sweeten them up. G.O.O.D. needs them to recover a “misplaced” nuke on a volcanic island: one ruled by a modern pirate with an obsessive fixation on fighting with swords. He calls himself Slash…

The spectacular conclusion of ‘Island of the Inferno’ leads to a confrontation with occasional Batman and Wonder Woman evil scientist Doctor Moon, who uses Cravat’s money to transform mere humans into surgically-augmented, programmable super-warriors in #7’s ‘Command: Slay the Dragon!’ All this time, Ben has been healing and teaching at the dojo he runs with Dragon, but his life is about to change after becoming romantically entangled with promising student Janey Lewis. When she and other students are attacked by Moon’s thugs, Dragon & Shiva retaliate but are almost killed by Moon’s colossal cyborg Topper. Almost…

Another old foe resurfaces in #8, striking at his despised enemies by murdering more dojo students and rendering our hero temporarily sightless, facilitating his scheme to ‘Slay the Blind Dragon’ after which Estrada inks his own pencils in #9 as Barney Ling returns to reveal that the recent dojo attacks are masking a hidden plot to assassinate Ben. The manipulative G.O.O.D. guy offers to reveal all, but only if all three kung fu fighters carry out a few errands for him…

Thus Turner, Shiva & Dragon depart for tropical San Lorenzo to stop a monster ravaging the tourist destination – a thieving mutated killer known as ‘The Preying Mantis’ – prior to Ben discovering he’s inherited millions in prime timberland! He heads north, with his allies in tow and finds that the lumberjacks are definitely killers… and are embezzling all the profits. They have already murdered Turner’s sister, leaving him as guardian of an unsuspected nephew (also called Ben) and their leader Hatchett tries everything possible to destroy the nosy snoopers in ‘The Human Inferno!’ (inked by Jack Abel). However, the assassination attempts only slow, but do not cease…

Cover-dated September 1976, #11 offers a change of pace and scripter, as David Anthony Kraft joins Estrada & Abel in a byzantine futuristic spy conspiracy that begins ‘When Strikes the Samurai!’ After being targeted by a disappearing Japanese warrior, the trio are despatched to Communist China to secure an object dubbed the Tiger Tally which in turn could unlock the secrets of bewildering Project Moon Age Daydream. The mission results in a trail of dropped bodies before ‘A Dragon Defiant’ is subjected to a duplication device resulting in him literally beating himself up before thwarting rival maniacs Telegram Sam and Madame Sun…

Back in the USA for #13, the drama intensifies with O’Neil & Estrada’s reunion, as Ben is poisoned and Dragon & Shiva carve their way through a murderous legion ‘To Catch an Assassin!’ and secure the antidote. When that proves fruitless, detective work leads them to The League of Assassins and a desperate quest for their chief deviser of toxins. Viper makes his potions in the wilds of Mongolia – perilously close to the Soviet Russian border – and the countdown quest allows no time for restraint, which only grants Shiva opportunity to do the work she loves without being held back…

With Turner’s death imminent, we pause for a diversionary team-up as The Brave and the Bold #132 (February 1977 by veteran writer Bob Haney & ultimate guest star artist Jim Aparo) enquires ‘Batman – Dragon Slayer??’ When Denny O’Neil succeeded Murray Boltinoff as B&B editor, it resulted in this rather forced tale of duelling fight stylists after a publicity-shy billionaire sought to repay an imagined debt to good Samaritan Dragon by leaving him a mysterious bequest…

Back in his own title, Dragon’s quest for a cure takes him back to China to find the O-Sensei. At that time, unknown to all, his former master was Dr. Moon’s prisoner, so Richard & Shiva’s mission generates massive mayhem and an inconclusive duel with ‘The Man Who Studied with Bruce Lee’: a gullible yet proficient martial arts purist who had learned all the celebrity’s “lost secrets”…

The clash might have been pointless, but the rescued O-Sensei cures Turner, who pursues his relationship with Janey to the point of asking her father for permission to wed. Tragically, at that moment in #15, ‘The Axeman’ attacks shipyard Security Chief Luke Lewis and his adored daughter is fatally caught in the crossfire. Crushed and broken inside, Ben hunts the killer with Dragon at his side, uncovering shocking betrayal that intensifies his fury into mania. Exploiting all their resources, they follow to the top of the world in #16, where ‘The Doom Seer’ – outrageous, tyrannical madman Professor Ojo (later to become a Green Lantern nemesis!) – pits them and Lady Shiva against outlandish martial arts skaters and an arsenal of scientific terrors before #17’s ‘The Final Victim’ provides a spectacular conclusion, but no resolution…

Richard Dragon: Kung-Fu Fighter finished with #18, but ‘The Secret of the Bronze Tiger’ set up decades’ more stories. Bereft, Turner had vanished and was presumed killed battling Ojo, whilst Dragon sank into despair and dissolution. Finally, Shiva dragged him out to investigate a mysterious masked martial artist and illegal fight club. Dragon was stunned to discover Ben was the Tiger – who retained all his skills but was apparently a ruthless criminal with no memory or scruples…

This storyline was later picked up and expanded upon in future Batman tales involving Ra’s Al Ghul’s League of Assassins and sinister splinter group Demonfang (whose leader was ancient killer The Sensei) and resulted in Bronze Tiger becoming an integral part of the Suicide Squad in post-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe. In that rebuilt continuity, Shiva & Dragon were crucial to the development of The Question (Vic Sage) and other martial arts-based characters, emphasising the ripple-effect of “the Superior Man” on an entire heroic universe.

Here, however, there’s an epilogue of sorts as DC Comics Presents #39 (November 1981, by Mike W. Barr, Alex Saviuk & Vince Colletta) discloses ‘Whatever Happened to Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter?’ Having retreated to the peace of a Shaolin monastery, Dragon is called back to the outside world to save mind-controlled Bronze Tiger from the person who had truly been responsible for most of their perils and hardships all along…

With covers by Dick Giordano, Wiess, Milgrom, Estrada & Colletta, Jose Delbo, Ernie Chan, Aparo & Rich Buckler, and including Who’s Who character profiles of Dragon, Bronze Tiger & Lady Shiva, this compendium is very much of its time, but still offers universal thrills and spills whilst providing crucial context to all devotees of DC’s overarching multiversal continuity. Very much the Superior Read of the Superior Fan…
© 1975, 1976, 1977, 1981, 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1910, cartoonist/animator and legend maker William Hanna was born, sharing the date with inking legend Mike Esposito in 1927; French mythmaker Marcel “Gotlib” Gotlieb (Gai-Luron, Superdupont, Les Dingodossiers, Rubrique-à-Brac, Hamster Jovial, co-founder of L’Écho des savanes & Fluide Glacial) in 1934; writer/artist John K. Snyder III (Fashion in Action, Grendel, Suicide Squad, Doctor Mid-Nite, Mr E, The Duckberg Times, 8 Million Ways to Die) in 1961, artist Richard Case (Doom Patrol, Sensational Spider-Man The Sandman) in 1964 and illustrator/storyteller Colleen Coover (Small Favors, Banana Sunday, Bandette, X-Men: First Class) in1969.

It’s a big day for colourists with Peter Steigerwald born in 1974, Brian Reber in 1975 and Matt Wilson in 1980; and also saw the deaths of arguably Chile’s greatest cartoon humourist Rene Rios Boettiger (Condorito) in 2000 and, in 2006, the utterly irreplaceable British man of letters (and thought balloons and caption boxes) Tom Frame.

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Thor: The Deviants Saga


By Robert Rodi, Stephen Segovia, M. Jason Paz & Jeffrey Huet & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2295-5 (TPB), 978-1-3020-1399-8 (Digital edition), 978-1-84653-511-6 (Panini UK edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

Time for another Anniversary shout out…

Jack Kirby’s The Eternals first emerged on 13th April 1976 in a title cover-dated July of that year, in a series slightly at odds with and removed from Marvel’s regular company continuity. The new mythology revealed that giant Celestial aliens had visited Earth in epochs past, gene-gineering proto-hominids into three distinct species: Human Beings; godly superbeings who called themselves Eternals and genetically unstable, ferociously aggressive but highly intelligent creatures dubbed Deviants. These subspecies had battled for ownership of Earth in wars spanning the length of human existence, but moreover the Space Gods had periodically returned to check up on their experiment…

Never a comfortable contemporary fit with the wider Marvel Universe – only S.H.I.E.L.D. ever really got involved the first time around – the series explored Kirby’s fascinations with Deities, Space and Supernature through the lens of very human observers. Once it ended and Kirby left, in the tried and trusted manner of such things other creators subsequently co-opted the concept into the regular continuity.

Over 19 issues and one Annual, the series avoided contact with Marvel continuity as modern humanity’s military, secret agencies and moneyed movers-&-shakers dealt with the politics and panic of a world-shattering event seen through the eyes of heroic rebel Ikaris, human Margo Damian, and a potent cast of Earth aliens Ajak, Sersi, Makkari, Zuras, Thena, Sprite and Druig who fought and foiled – or occasionally befriended – Deviants including Kro, Brother Tode, Ransak & Karkas, with Homo sapiens skulking running or cowering in terror in the background and under the microscope as a Celestial Fourth Host hovered above the world in a city-sized ship, pondering final judgement: a process that would take 50 years…

One of the heroes the Eternals did eventually meet with most often was the bellicose but benevolent Asgardian Storm Lord…

Lovingly remastered and skilfully refitted here by Robert Rodi and artists Stephen Segovia, M. Jason, Paz & Jeffrey Huet, the story here originated at the end of 2011 as a 5-issue miniseries and part of wave of publishing projects to support the burgeoning film franchise. It picks up on fresh elements introduced in 2007’s collection Neil Gaiman’s Eternals and opens in the ruins of Asgard as Thor discovers ancient deposed, Deviant monarch Ereshkigal has crept in and is searching through the rubble with a horde of brutal monsters…

The Deviants have also fallen on hard times and face extinction from a deadly plague, inspiring the dire, demi-demonic ex-empress to seek Asgardian tools and weapons to facilitate her return to personal power. After an inconclusive battle, Ereshkigal escapes with the Unbinding Stone of Oshemar, an apparently innocuous globe which can literally unmake reality. Utterly unaware of the power of her purloined prize, the Deviant tries and fails to usurp control from the current rulers of the Lemurian undercity which is their last refuge and home, whilst Thor – galvanised by the imminent destruction of the universe – seeks allies and the location of her hidden homeland amongst his old comrades and erstwhile allies in Olympia, cloaked Earthly citadel of his old Eternal comrades.

The city is all but deserted, with only resurrected hero Virako, master technician Phastos and “reformed” Deviants Karkas & Ransak the Reject occupying the immense mountaintop metropolis. Before the valiant band can formulate a plan, however, the city is invaded by a Deviant army led by apparently ageless and undying Warlord Kro and a cadre of elite monster warriors. After a spectacular battle the heroes are temporarily overwhelmed and Phastos captured. Critically, his incredible devices are stolen: taken in the misguided belief that they can reverse the effects of the disease devastating the Deviant population.

With the Unbinding Stone still in Ereshkigal’s meddling hands and their friend in peril, Thor and his comrades must storm the very heart of Lemuria before personal tragedy becomes universal Armageddon, but at least they have a hidden ally in the heart of the enemy – the outcast Eternal known alternatively as Gilgamesh and The Forgotten One…

Also re-entering the mix as the cataclysmic climax builds are the space-scattered, long missing other Eternals, but even if they return in time, what can anybody do against a doom-obsessed potentate possessing a device which destroys atomic bonds and has no off-switch? The only answer to is try and pray and hope to make a miracle…

A grandiose,  old-fashioned blockbuster spectacle, this rousing yarn is cannily constructed so that even first-time readers can get right into the swing of things, whilst veteran devotees will find plenty of old favourite characters and themes revisited and clarified, with the adventure rattling along to a perfect climax with the portentous promise of more to come.

Fast, furious, frantic fantasy fun for older kids of all ages and one no Fights ‘n’ Tights fanatic could possibly resist.
© 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Today in 1902 “Father of Turkish Comics” Cemal Nadir Güler was born, followed in 1919 by hyperprolific comic book scribe Joe Gill (The Phantom, Zaza the Mystic, Fightin’ Five, Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Peacemaker, Vengeance Squad, Hot Wheels, The Secret Six, every Charlton genre anthology ever) and, in 1931 Puerto Rican superstar writer/artist/editor Ernesto Colón Sierra AKA Ernie Colon (Harvey Comics, Star Comics, Manimal, Ax, The Medusa Chain, Arak, Son of Thunder, Dr Solar Man of the Atom, Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, Damage Control, The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, Vlad the Impaler). In 1937 Belgian humour cartoonist Hugo De Reymaeker AKA Hurey, Hugo and/or Fonske (De Fratsen van Jan Heibel, Anakronis), with Mike Ploog (Man-Thing, Ghost Rider, The Monster of Frankenstein, Werewolf By Night, The Spirit) arriving in 1940; master inker Tom Palmer (Doctor Strange, Avengers, Tomb of Dracula) joining in 1942 and military comics specialist Wayne Vansant (The ‘Nam, Days of Darkness, Katusha) in 1949.

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Werewolf by Night Marvel Masterworks: volume 3


By Doug Moench, Don Perlin, Virgilio Redondo, Yong Montaño, Gil Kane, Vince Colletta, Sal Trapani, & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5550-2 (HB) 978-1-3025-2941-3 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in 1970, in the wake of losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators – Steve Ditko & Jack Kirby – they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties.

The only real exception to this was a mass release of horror titles rapidly devised in response to an industry-wide down-turn in superhero sales. The move was handily expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (plus narcotics and bent coppers – but that’s another story) again became acceptable fare on four-colour pages. Whilst a parade of 1950s pre-code reprints made sound business sense (so they repackaged a bunch of those too) the creative aspect of the contemporary fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always, the watch-word was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible…

When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover-dated October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of scary stars – beginning with a werewolf and traditional vampire – before chancing something new via a haunted biker who could tap into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the supernatural zeitgeist. With its title cribbed from a classic short thriller from a pre-Code horror anthology (Marvel Tales #116, July 1953), Werewolf By Night debuted in Marvel Spotlight #2. It had been preceded by western-era masked avenger Red Wolf in #1, and followed by the afore-hinted Ghost Rider, but this hairy hero was destined to stick around for a while.

This third chillingly crackers compendium compiles more moody misadventures of a good-hearted young West Coast lycanthrope who briefly shone as an unlikely star for the entire length of a trading trend, as confirmed here by the reprinted full-colour contents of Werewolf By Night volume 1 #22-30 and Giant-Size Werewolf #2-5, collectively spanning October 1974 to July 1975.

Jack Russell is a teenager with a rare but very disturbing condition. On her deathbed, his mother revealed unsuspected Transylvanian origins to her beloved boy: relating a family curse which would turn him into a raging beast on every night with a full moon as soon as he reached his 18th birthday.

And so it began…

After many months of misunderstanding as Jack tried to cope alone with his periodic wild side, Jack’s stepfather Philip Russell reluctantly expanded the backstory, revealing how the Russoff line was cursed by the taint of Lycanthropy: every child doomed to become a wolf-thing under the full-moon from the moment they reached adulthood. Moreover, the feral blight would do the same to his little sister Lissa when she reached her own majority…

As Jack tried and repeatedly failed to balance a normal life with his monthly cycle of uncontrollable ferocity, he met eventual mentor and confidante Buck Cowan, an aging Hollywood writer who became Jack’s best friend and only confidante after the pair began to jointly investigate the wolfboy’s past. Their incessant search for a cure was made more urgent by little Lissa’s ever-encroaching birthday.

In the course of their researches they crossed swords with many monsters – human and otherwise – including off-the-rails cop Lou Hackett, who had been going increasingly crazy in his off-the-books investigation/hunt for a werewolf nobody believed in. A major if faceless foe was exposed in The Committee – a cabal of capitalists seeking to corner the monster market to boost sales who wanted to own the werewolf because he could scare the public, allowing them to create a panic-crazed sales boom – and even vampire lord Dracula.

However the biggest boost to Jack & Buck’s quest (other than Jack’s mutant girlfriend Topaz who could psionically calm the beast!) was learning from fellow lycanthrope Raymond Coker that there was a cure for their condition; sadly it was for a werewolf to kill another werewolf…

With the stage set for some truly outrageous yarn-spinning and Moench at the helm – and almost exclusively pencilled for rest of the run by the criminally underrated Don Perlin – the moonlight comics mysteries resume with the Vince Colletta inked Giant-Size Werewolf #2 as ‘The Frankenstein Monster Meets Werewolf By Night’. Roaming the streets of New York in ‘Prisoners of Flesh!’, the recently resurrected massive but mute monster hops a westbound freight train after overhearing a mystic named Danton Vayla can transplant souls into new bodies…

He arrives in Los Angeles just as Jack Russell discovers Lissa has been abducted by Vayla’s Satanist cult The Brotherhood of Baal who want ‘To Host the Beast’ before cataclysmically clashing with the monster who has only to let the diabolists sacrifice the werewolf and Lissa to gain his heart’s desire. Tragically the innately noble artificial man has far more empathy and compassion than the cultists and prefers his own sorry existence to benefiting from ‘The Flesh of Satan’s Hate!’

Werewolf By Night #22 (Moench, Perlin & Colletta) introduces crazed murder-maniac Atlas, who stalks and slays many of Buck’s movie friends. Moreover, when Russell’s periodically prowling Passenger encounters the ‘Face of the Fiend!’, Atlas beats the beast unconscious. In the morning light, bleary Jack is subsequently arrested for the latest murder…

LA detective Lieutenant Vic Northrup was a friend of deceased former foe Hackett and knows Russell is hiding something, but eventually releases the kid for lack of evidence. Picking Jack up from the station, Buck then reveals he has gleaned the inside story of Atlas and his own personal involvement in the story… just in time to become the next target…

Fortuitously, the werewolf is on hand when Atlas attacks again and the battle explodes into LA’s streets where disbelieving cops have to admit that ‘The Murderer is a Maniac!’

WBN #24 sees Buck introduces Jack to fringe scientist Winston Redditch who claims to have chemically isolated the constituents of the human psyche and thus might be able to suppress Jack’s regular bestial outbursts. Sadly, the benevolent boffin accidentally ingests the serum himself and unleashes ‘The Dark Side of Evil!’ The remorseless sadistic thug he becomes calls himself DePrayve and fights the werewolf to a standstill, giving Northrup opportunity to capture the hirsute “urban legend” which has stalked the city and drove Hackett crazy…

From #25 the art took a quantum leap in quality as Perlin – already co-plotting the stories – began inking his own pencils. When the beast busts out of custody ‘An Eclipse of Evil’ sees Redditch turning his warped attention to the lycanthrope as a potential guinea pig for further experimentation, only for both the feral fury and dastardly DePrayve to be targeted by a deranged vigilante and self-declared “protector of purity” (for which read woman abductor) calling himself The Hangman. The horrific three-way clash results in ‘A Crusade of Murder’, with Redditch hospitalised, the vicious vigilante in custody and battered, bloody-yet-unbowed Jack still free and still cursed…

Eschewing chronological order for the sake of unbroken continuity-clarity, January 1975’s Giant-Size Werewolf By Night #3 pops up here to reveal a ‘Castle Curse!’(Moench Perlin and inked by Sal Trapani) wherein Jack returns to Transylvania after receiving a monster-infested vision of former love interest Topaz in ‘Spawned in Dream… Slain in Nightmare!’ Jack drags Buck and Lissa ‘Home to Slay!’ in the Balkans, finding the old family estate under siege by pitchfork-wielding villagers who have all their worst fears confirmed when he goes hairy and gets hungry, before finally tracking down Topaz in the care – and custody – of a gypsy matriarch with an arcane agenda of her own.

The blood-crazed old witch has a tragic connection to the Russoff line and is exploiting Topaz’s recently-faded but now restored powers to enact a grisly ‘Vengeance in Death!’ upon the villagers by raising an army of zombies. The chain of events she set in motion can only end in slaughter…

Werewolf By Night #27 (March 1975) began a chilling and fantastic extended eldritch epic with the introduction of ‘The Amazing Doctor Glitternight’. Back in the USA, Jack’s feral alter ego runs loose on the isolated Californian coast and is drawn to a cave where a bizarre wizard makes monsters from what appears to be fragments of Topaz’s soul. The eerie mage is actually hunting for Topaz’s dead stepfather Taboo and will not be swayed or gainsaid, even after Jack’s uncontrollable were-beast eviscerates the weird stranger’s monstrous “masterpiece”…

The wizard intensifies his campaign in ‘The Darkness from Glitternight’, heaping horrors upon Jack and friends before capturing Lissa on her birthday and using dark magic to turn her from “simple, ordinary” werewolf into ‘A Sister of Hell’. The spectral re-emergence of Taboo proves a turning point as wolf battles demon-beast and everybody grapples with Glitternight before a ‘Red Slash Across Midnight’ seemingly results in a cure for one of the tortured Russell clan…

Slightly askance of publishing schedules but placed here for sensible reading continuity, April 1975’s Giant-Size Werewolf By Night #4 offers a long-delayed and much-anticipated clash with living vampire Morbius: beginning with ‘A Meeting of Blood’ (Moench & Virgil Redondo) with the former biologist and longsuffering haemovore tracking his old girlfriend Martine and discovering a possible cure for his own exsanguinary condition. Unfortunately, the chase also brings him into savage and inconclusive combat with a certain hairy hellion and the potential solution is forever lost…

Also included in that double-sized issue is Moench & Yong Montaño’s ‘When the Moon Dripped Blood!’, wherein Jack and Buck stumble across a group of rustic loons all-too-successfully summoning a ghastly elder god. Although great at consuming and converting human offerings and acolytes, the appalling atrocity is apparently no match for a ravening ball of furious fangs and claws…

This dose of shaggy suspense concludes with Giant-Size Werewolf #5 (cover-dated July) which shifted the cast into full-on dark fantasy mode. Scripted by Moench and illustrated by Montaño, ‘Prologue: I Werewolf’ recaps Jack’s peculiar problems before ‘The Plunder of Paingloss’ discloses how the leaders of dimensional realm Biphasia – permanently polarised between night and day – instigate a ‘Bad Deal with the Devil’s Disciple’ on Earth when demonist Joaquin Zairre kidnaps the werewolf…

With the beast dispatched though a ‘Doorway of the Dark Waters’, Jack is soon a pawn in a sorcerous war where ‘Fragile Magic’ on the world of light and darkness allows him and his allies to raid the ‘The Ark of Onom-Kra’ and expose a secret tyrant in ‘Silver Rain, Sardanus and Shadow’…

To Be Continued…

Kicking off the rather meagre bonus section and complementing the cover gallery by Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, John Romita Sr. is a selection of original art by Ron Wilson, Frank Giacoia, Perlin and Kane, topped off by an Introduction by Ralph Macchio first seen in 2018’s Werewolf By Night: The Complete Collection volume 2.

This moody masterpiece of macabre menace and aggressive animal action covers some of the most under-appreciated mindbendingly magical moments in Marvel history; tense, suspenseful and solidly compelling. If you feel the urge to indulge in a mixed bag of clawed killers, beastly bloodsuckers and moody young muses this is a far more entertaining mix than many modern movies, books or miscellaneous matter…
© 2024 MARVEL.

Today Marvel writer/editors Terry Kavanagh and Craig Anderson were born but we don’t when! Far more traditional and open, UK humourist/ cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather (Old Bill) arrived with all his papers sorted on this date in 1887, followed in 1909 by uniquely iconic creator Basil Wolverton (Spacehawk, Powerhouse Pepper, Mad Magazine, Plop!, The Bible). In 1916 comic book artist Mort Leav (The Heap) joined us, followed by Atlas artist/strip star Tony DiPreta (Joe Palooka, Rex Morgan M.D.) in 1921 and Silver Age artistic co-founder Murphy Anderson (Buck Rogers, Captain Comet, Atomic Knights, Hawkman, Flash, Adam Strange, The Spectre, Superman, Jonny Quest) in 1926.

Today in 1977 the 652nd and final issue of UK weekly Sparky was published.

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Harley Quinn’s Greatest Hits


By Scott Beatty, Kelly Puckett, Jeph Loeb, Paul Dini, Adam Glass, Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti, Rob Williams, Bruce Timm, Mike Parobeck, Jim Lee, David Lopez, Federico Dallocchio, Jock, John Timms, Sean “Cheeks” Galloway, Scott Williams, Sandra Hope, Richard Friend & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7008-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Harley Quinn wasn’t supposed to be a star – or even an actual comic book character. As would soon become apparent however, the manic minx had her own off-kilter ideas on the matter. Created by Paul Dini & Bruce Timm, Batman: The Animated Series aired in the US from September 5th 1992 to September 15th 1995. Ostensibly for kids, the breakthrough TV cartoon revolutionised everybody’s image of the Dark Knight and immediately began feeding back into the print iterations, leading to some of the absolute best comics tales in the hero’s many decades of existence.

Employing a timeless visual style dubbed “Dark Deco”, the show mixed elements from all eras and aspects of the character and, without diluting power, tone or mood of the premise, reshaped the grim avenger and his extended team into a wholly accessible, thematically memorable form that the youngest of readers could eagerly enjoy, whilst adding shades of exuberance, sophistication and sheer panache that only most devout and obsessive Batmaniac could possibly object to…

Harley was first seen as the Clown Prince of Crime’s slavishly adoring, abuse-enduring assistant in Joker’s Favor (airing on September 11th 1992) wherein she instantly captured the hearts and minds of millions of viewers. From there on she began popping up in the licensed comic book and – always stealing the show – soon graduated to mainstream DC continuity.

After a period bopping around the DCU she was re-imagined as part of the company’s vast post-Flashpoint, major makeover and appeared as part of a new iteration of The Suicide Squad. Now, with numerous motion picture, TV animation and live action small screen presence in play, it’s absolutely time to take a look at her eccentric career path…

Collecting material from Countdown to Final Crisis #10; Batman Adventures #12; Batman #613; Gotham City Sirens #7; Suicide Squad #1; Batman vol 2#13, Harley Quinn vol. 2 #21, 2015 and Harley Quinn and the Suicide Squad April Fools Special #1, the madcap mayhem commences with a 2-page potted biography of the mad miss in comics form.

Crafted by Scott Beatty & Bruce Timm, ‘The Origin of Harley Quinn’ (Countdown #10, February 2008) economically reveals how troubled psychologist Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel arrived at Arkham Asylum to analyse The Joker only to lose all distance and perspective. Fully falling under his malign spell during interviews, she became his adoring, pliable and utterly despised slave…

A classic and classy semi-solo yarn comes from Batman Adventures #12, (September 1993) where Kelly Puckett, Mike Parobeck & Rick Burchett revealed how Barbara Gordon became a masked adventurer. Student Babs makes a superhero costume for a party in ‘Batgirl: Day One!’ before stumbling into a larcenous ‘Ladies Night’ when that High Society bash is crashed by rapacious gal pals Harley Quinn & Poison Ivy. With no professional help on hand, Miss Gordon must act as ‘If the Suit Fits!’ and tackle the bad girls herself , only to see Catwoman show up for the frantic finale ‘Out of the Frying Pan!’…

A far darker if less comprehensible interpretation graced Batman #613, (May 2003 by Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee & Scott Williams) as an incessant parade of villains du jour in Bat mega-event Hush sees The Joker and Harley invade ‘The Opera’ attended by Bruce Wayne and hidden master villain Tommy Elliot. It’s visually resplendent and shockingly violent, but story content is virtually zero since the entire farrago is just an extracted episode from a far larger and more complex epic. Go read that instead or as well…

Far more satisfactory, ‘Holiday Story’ is by Dini, David Lopez & Alvaro Lopez (Gotham City Sirens #7, February 2010). Here, new housemates Harley, Ivy & Catwoman split up to celebrate Christmas in their own uniquely different ways. This tale is a candid peek into the home-life and history which turned dead-end kid Harleen into an overachieving doctor, athlete and, latterly, lunatic supervillain by introducing the inveterate slimeball who fathered her…

Hitting modern times hard, ‘Kicked in the Teeth’ comes from Suicide Squad #1 (vol. 4, November 2011), wherein Adam Glass, Federico Dallocchio, Ransom Getty & Scott Hanna put Harley, Deadshot, Black Spider, King Shark, El Diablo, Voltaic and Savant through hell and torture as mere preparation for their first mission for top spook Amanda Waller whilst ‘Tease’ (Batman vol. 2, #13, December 2012 by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV & Jock) sees Harley reunited with her maniac main man, only to once again suffer from the pernicious, vindictive whimsy and twisted love of the Joker…

‘Tug A’ War’ (Harley Quinn vol. 2, #21, December 2015 by Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti, John Timms) finds Harley Quinn a bounty hunter battling former squad-mate Deadshot and setting Hollywood ablaze as she seeks top cash-cow Sparrow Adaro. Things quickly go south when she discovers her target is no crook, simply the wayward spouse of a Showbiz bigwig who only wants his little lady back. Their twisted relationship touches Harley’s heart and she resolves to help, but the former psychologist never expected so many collateral corpses to accrue as she “fixed” the not-so-happy family…

This rough & ready compilation concludes with collaborative effort ‘Evil Anonymous’ from Harley Quinn and the Suicide Squad April Fools Special #1, 2016. Courtesy of Rob Williams, Jim Lee, Sean “Cheeks” Galloway, Scott Williams, Sandra Hope & Richard Friend this is a light-hearted, self-referential journey of discovery wherein Harley – prompted by another brush with The Joker – attempts to “cure” a number of her fellow criminal killer loons, beginning with bestial winged predator Man-Bat…

Soon, she’s reverted to a childlike state to tackle Killer Moth, Enchantress, Rat Catcher, Toyman and Poison Ivy, although things get a little out of hand when she gets Scarecrow on her couch and goes crazy serious when the Justice League step in. Nobody involved is aware of the insidious mastermind actually pulling the strings to get Harley Quinn back to where she really belongs… and is most needed…

Fast, furiously funny, often unnecessarily dark and making precious little narrative sense, Harley Quinn’s Greatest Hits is nonetheless a potent primer of Fights ‘n’ Tights furore that will give newcomers a taste of what the motley minx can do and should whet appetites for a deeper exploration of her anarchic exploits.
© 1993, 2003, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1920 Golden Age artist Al Avison (Captain America, The Whizzer, Joe Palooka, The Green Hornet, Little Dot) was born, followed by Al Wenzel (Adventure Comics, Superboy) in 1924, an Oh My Goddess creator Kosuke Fujishima in 1964. One year later the amazing Mike Parobeck (JSA, Batman Adventures) arrived, sharing the day with editor/cartoonist Jordan B. Gorfinkel (Batman: No Man’s Land, Everything’s Relative), with artists Juan Vlasco (Spider-Boy, Cable) coming in 1968 and Evan “Doc” Shaner (Strange Adventures, Flash, Aquaman) born in 1985.

In 1958 today Anthony Hern & John McLusky’s James Bond strip debuted in the UK’s Daily Express, whilst in 1978, The Walt Disney Company won its copyright infringement lawsuit against underground comix outfit the Air Pirates. In 1997 Jerry Scott & Jim Bergman’s strip Zits launched, and in 2002, the last episode of Modesty Blaise was published.

Today in 1977, legendary pioneering strip cartoonist Roy Crane (Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy, Buz Sawyer) died.

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Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice


By Len Strazewski, John Broome, Paul Levitz, Rick Burchett, Grant Miehm, Mike Parobeck, Tom Artis, Frank McLaughlin, Frank Giacoia, Arthur Peddy, Bernard Sachs, Joe Staton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0744-0 (HB) 978-1-77951-209-3 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

After the actual invention of comic book superheroes with the Action Comics debut of Superman in 1938, the most significant event in the industry’s history was the combination of individual sales-points into a group. Thus what seems blindingly obvious to us with the benefit of four-colour hindsight was proven: consumers couldn’t get enough of garishly-hued mystery men, and combining many characters inevitably increased readership. Plus, of course, a mob of superheroes is just so much cooler than one – or one-and-a-half if there’s a sidekick involved…

The creation of the Justice Society of America utterly changed the shape of the budding business and – technically – All Star Comics #3 (cover-dated Winter 1940-1941, and on sale from November 22nd 1940) was the kick-off. However, in that landmark issue, the assembled heroes merely had dinner whilst recounting recent cases and didn’t actually go on a mission together until #4 (cover-dated April 1941). With the simple notion that mighty mystery men hung out together, history was made and it wasn’t long before they started working together…

When WWII ended, superheroes gradually declined, and most companies had shelved them by 1950. That plummet in popularity led to rekindled interest in traditional genre-themed titles and characters, and it was a stripped-down team (Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom, Black Canary, Dr. Mid-Nite &Wonder Woman) who battled on in trendily tailored crime or sci fi sagas before the title abruptly changed to All Star Western with #58.

It would take a second age of superheroes to revive them, this time as the champions of a parallel universe dubbed Earth Two…

Gathered here is a near-forgotten limited series focussed on the latter days of the team’s Golden Age which originally ran in Justice Society of America #1-8 (April – November 1991), augmented by the last case of the original era from All-Star Comics#57, (February/March 1951), plus a turning point tale from Adventures Comics #466 (December 1979). They are preceded a sparkling, informative and appreciative Foreword by Golden Age aficionado and super scripter Mark Waid.

The miniseries – subtitled Vengeance from the Stars! – comprising the majority of this tome was scripted by journalist/educator/author Len Strazewski (February 16th 1955 – April 27th 2026) whose comics included Speed Racer, The Flash, Phantom Lady, Starman, The Fly, The Web, Prime, Prototype, Elven and more. It was illustrated by a rotating tag team of artists, opening as Rick Burchett draws ‘Beware the Savage Skies’. Here recently-retired mystery man Ted Knight – AKA the original Starman – is attacked in his private New Mexico observatory by incredible astral energy beings. Broken and dispirited, he is then enslaved by an old enemy who purloins his wondrous Gravity Rod before luring Jay (Flash) Garrick into a deathtrap that results in power outages across America…

The plot thickens with ‘The Sack of Gotham’ (art by Grant Miehm) as radio/television executive Alan Scott seeks to keep the lights on in his city whilst Black Canary prowls the darkened streets deterring looters and career criminals. Distracted by a museum break-in, she finds herself punching way, way up as undead monster/functional moron Solomon Grundy and a gang of very determined bandits help themselves to ancient Egyptian artefacts at the behest of a hidden client.

By the time Scott arrives as Green Lantern, the Canary has been thrashed and captured, leaving him to battle an animated star constellation dubbed Sagittarius…

Burchett inks the astoundingly talented Mike Parobeck in #3’s ‘Dead Air’, as the star thing blacks out Gotham and Scott struggles to stop it. Complications occur when Grundy – afflicted with an obsessive hatred of Green Lantern – forgets the orders from the mystery Machiavelli to attack his emerald enemy. Far away, Ted Knight learns his gleeful foe intends to conquer Earth by eradicating modern technologies and attitudes and replace them with primordial magic and tyranny…

Tom Artis & Frank McLaughlin limn #4 as ‘Evil of the Ancients’ sees reincarnating Egyptian warrior Hawkman uncovering star-themed neolithic treasures in his day job as archaeologist Carter Hall. These findings expose the history and provenance of the constellation creatures, but also trigger the arrival of another. Despite aerial valour and the US Army’s best efforts, deadly colossus Andromeda storms off with a clutch of atom bombs and only the sudden arrival of Flash prevents utter disaster. The clash resumes in ‘Double Star Rising!’ by Parobeck & Burchett, as arcane knowledge and modern engineering savvy combine to trace the stellar plunderer and incredible pyramid of power it is constructing. When the heroes try to destroy it, they are confronted with a second energy horror but find a way to defeat both at once, compelling the man behind the plot to finally take a personal hand in the fight…

Far across the country the Lantern and the Canary escape captivity in ‘Danger Flies the Skies’ (Artis & McLaughlin), thanks to some timely aid from valiant sidekick Doiby Dickles, and track west after the museum artefacts in time to reinforce Flash and Hawkman in ‘The Return of the Justice Society’ (art by Miehm & Burchett). Redeemed and reinspired, Knight once more takes up his costumed identity to end the villain’s plot in ‘Battle of the Stars!’

In the heady aftermath, the JSA ponder what the next decade will bring, unaware that political conspiracies, public paranoia and a wave of intolerance masquerading as social conformity was waiting to change the world in ways no one could anticipate…

In continuity terms, this was technically the antepenultimate adventure of the JSA, with the rousing romp slyly heralding mood swings in the heartland of Democracy. It is thus smartly supplemented by the team’s final Golden Age appearance (All-Star Comics #57) and a chilling, thematically-aligned codicil from Adventures Comics #466.

Written by John Broome and illustrated by Frank Giacoia, Arthur Peddy & Bernard Sachs, it was the JSA’s last hurrah as ‘The Mystery of the Vanishing Detectives!’ pitted them against criminal mastermind The Key. When he abducted Earth’s greatest criminologists in advance of a spectacular robbery spree, the superheroes were called in to solve the case and prevent an impending catastrophe. It took a lot of time and effort, but the JSA never fail…

The fallow period and return of the JSA was a major success of fan power in the 1960s, but that decade too ended with superheroes in decline. During the torrid, turbulent 1970s, many of the industry’s oldest publishing ideas were finally laid to rest. The belief that characters could be “over-exposed” was one of the most pernicious and long-lasting (although it never hurt Superman, Batman or the original Captain Marvel), garnered from years of experience in an industry which lived or died on that fractional portion of pennies derived each month from the pocket-money and allowances of children which wasn’t spent on candy, toys or movies.

By the end of the 1960s, comic book costs and retail prices were inexorably rising and a proportion of titles – especially newly revived horror stories – were consciously being produced for older readerships. Nearly a decade of organised fan publications and letter writing crusades had finally convinced publishing bean-counters what editors already knew: grown-ups avidly read comics too. Moreover, they happily spent more than kids and craved more, more, more of what they loved.

Explicitly: If one appearance per month was popular, extras, specials and second series would be more so. By the time Marvel Comics Wunderkind Gerry Conway left The House of Ideas, DC was willing and ready to expand its variegated line-up with some oft-requested fan-favourite characters. Paramount among these was the JSA, the first super-team and a perennial gem whose annual guest-appearances in Justice League of America and other superhero titles had become a beloved tradition and treat.

Thus in 1976 writer/editor Conway marked his second DC tenure (he had first broken into the game writing horror shorts for Joe Orlando) by reviving All Star Comics with #58. In 1951, the original title transformed overnight into All Star Western with the numbering running for a further decade for the home of cowboy crusaders like Strong Bow, The Trigger Twins, a different Johnny Thunder and Super-Chief. Now, set on Earth-Two, and in keeping with the editorial sense of ensuring a series be relevant to young readers too, Conway reintroduced the veteran team, leavened with a smattering of teen heroes forming a contentious, generation gap-fuelled “Super Squad”…

Augmented by Robin (a JSA-er since the mid-1960s and Justice League of America #55), Sylvester Pemberton/Star-Spangled Kid and a busty young thing who rapidly became the feisty favourite of a generation of growing boys: Kara Zor-L: Power Girl. Closing this collection is a short piece as she and fellow newcomer Huntress discuss how the Golden Age died. Taken from 68-page anthology title Adventure Comics 466 where Paul Levitz & Joe Staton delivered a pithy history lesson exposing the reason why the team vanished at the beginning of the 1950s, ‘The Defeat of the Justice Society!’ shows how the US Government cravenly betrayed their greatest champions. Set during early days of the McCarthy era anti-communist witch-hunts, a sham trial provoked the mystery men into voluntarily withdrawing from public, heroic life. There they stayed until the costumed stalwarts of Earth-One started the whole Fights ‘n’ Tights scene all over again…

These exuberant, rapid-paced and imaginative yarns perfectly blend the naive charm of Golden Age derring-do with cynically hopeful modern sensibilities. Here you will be reassured that no matter what, in the end our heroes will always find a way to save the day. These are classic tales from simpler times and a glorious example of traditional superhero storytelling at its finest: fun, furious and ferociously engaging, excitingly written and beguilingly illustrated. No Fights ‘n’ Tights fan should miss these marvellous sagas.
© 1951, 1979,1991, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1907, Dutch Indo painter and cartoonist Joseph Ferdinand Doeve was born, with Us comics writer Jerry Coleman (Superman, Batman) arriving in 1913; Dutch comics author Wim Booster in 1918.

This date saw the passing of artists Mike Parobeck (Batman Adventures, El Diablo, Elongated Man, Justice Society of America, The Fly) in 1996 and John Cullen Murphy (Prince Valiant) in 2004.

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The Black Panther Epic Collection volume 1 (1966-1976): Panther’s Rage


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, Billy Graham, Keith Pollard, Klaus Janson, Joe Sinnott, Klaus Janson, P. Craig Russell, Pablo Marcos, Dan Green, Bob McLeod,  Jim Mooney & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0190-5 (TPB) 978-1-3024-9321-9 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes Discriminatory Content utilised for dramatic effect.

With democracy under fire and American Civil Rights enduring active and constant attack in the Land of the Free, let’s look back on more progressive times and comics as we all stagger towards the 250th Fourth of July, shall we?

Acclaimed as the first black superhero in US comics and one of the first to carry his own series, the Black Panther’s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since he first appeared in Fantastic Four. In fact, the cat king actually attacked Marvel’s First Family as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father.

T’Challa was also the first black superhero in US comics, debuting in summer 1966. As created by Jack Kirby & Stan Lee, T’Challa, son of T’Chaka, is an African monarch whose deliberately hidden kingdom is the only known source of vibration-absorbing wonder mineral Vibranium. The miraculous alien ore – supposedly derived from a fallen meteor which struck the continent in lost antiquity – is the basis of the country’s immense wealth, enabling it to become one of the wealthiest and most secretive nations on Earth. These riches also allow the young king to radically remake his country, creating a high tech paradise even after he left Africa to fight as one of America’s Avengers.

Since time immemorial Wakanda has been an isolated, utopian wonderland with tribal resources and people safeguarded and led by a human warrior-king deriving cat-like physical advantages from secret ceremonies and a mysterious heart-shaped herb. This has ensured the generational dominance of the nation’s Panther Cult and sacrosanct hereditary Royal Family…

The “Vibranium mound” had guaranteed the nation’s status as a clandestine superpower for centuries, but in modern times increasingly made Wakanda a target for subversion, incursion and even invasion as the world grew ever smaller. This colossal compendium gathers the dynamic debut from Fantastic Four #52-53 (cover-dated July and August 1966) in advance of groundbreaking solo stories from Jungle Action (vol. 2) #6-24, collectively covering September 1973 through November 1976.

Before all that though, the innovative and unforgettable character debuted in ‘The Black Panther!’: an enigmatic African monarch whose secretive kingdom was the only source of a vibration-absorbing alien metal. These mineral riches had enabled him to turn his country into a technological marvel before he lured the FF into his savage super-scientific kingdom as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father. After battling the team to a standstill, King T’Challa revealed his tragic origin in ‘The Way it Began..!’, detailing how his father was murdered by marauding sonic science researcher Ulysses Klaw. As the monarch details how he took vengeance and liberated his people, word comes of incredible solidified-sound monsters attacking the region. Klaw has returned at last…

The cataclysmic clash that follows set the scene for the Warrior-Chieftain to guest star with numerous Marvel superstars before breaking out into the wider world, but it would years before he finally won his own solo series…

After roaming around the Marvel Universe, enjoying team-ups and saving Earth on a semi-regular basis as one “Earth’s Mightiest Superheroes”, the summer of 1973 saw the Black Panther finally become a solo star in his own series. Scripter Don McGregor opted to return the King to his people for an ambitious epic of love, death, vengeance and civil war: inventing from whole cloth and Kirby’s throwaway notion of a futuristic jungle the most unique African nation ever seen in comics or anywhere else…

Jungle Action had launched with an October 1972 cover-date: a cheap reprint vehicle for old Atlas-era Tarzan and Sheena knock-offs like Tharn, Jann and Lorna (all equally “…of the Jungle”). The fifth issue (not included here) abruptly changed tack, reprinting a Black Panther-starring saga from Avengers #62 as prelude to the start of T’Challa’s own all new adventures. These open here with # 6 and the eponymous ‘Panther’s Rage’, illustrated by Rich Buckler & Klaus Janson. The story opens with the Panther back in his contradictory homeland, stumbling upon the torture of an elderly farmer. Despite T’Challa’s best efforts, the victim dies in his arms, swearing he never lost faith in king or country…

Learning the attack is the work of brutal rebel leader Erik Killmonger, T’Challa sets all the resources of his inner court circle to finding the monster. With reports of further atrocities mounting, he all but abandons his American lover Monica Lynne to hunt the perpetrators and soon confronts his potential usurper at the potently symbolic Warrior Falls roaring above the life-sustaining River of Grace and Wisdom. The barbarous-seeming giant is not cowed by the Panther’s power or prowess and easily wins the no-holds barred battle that follows…

The initial episode is supplemented by detailed maps of Wakanda (the first fans had ever seen) before JA #7 mobilises ‘Death Regiments Beneath Wakanda’. Barely surviving his clash with Killmonger, T’Challa is nursed back to health by Monica at the Palace, even as hideously disfigured American Horatio displays his skill with snakes and poisons to his friend N’Jadaka. Known to their recruits as Venomm and Erik Killmonger, these rebel leaders plot their next attack resulting in the reptilian insurgent ambushing T’Challa when the king investigates an unsanctioned, illegal mine. This shocking atrocity is being used to siphon off raw Vibranium to pay for Killmonger’s increasingly violent and widespread attacks on the outlying population centres…

Although triumphant this time, T’Challa realises this is a many-layered war: one he might not win…

Whilst the Panther renews his powers through ancient ritual, Jungle Action #8 introduces another super-powered rebel with ‘Malice by Crimson Moonlight’ revealing a spear-wielding wonder woman invading the Royal Palace. Advisor Taku is interrogating Venomm (and gradually making inroads into turning the bitter outcast) when she attacks. Only the power of the Panther saves the servitor and prevents the brutal jailbreak from succeeding…

After maps of the hidden country and detailed plans of ‘Central Wakanda’s Palace Royale’ the saga resumes in #9 with ‘But Now the Spears Are Broken’ (spectacularly illustrated by Gil Kane & Janson) as T’Challa goes in-country to learn the effects of the power struggle on ordinary Wakandans. After saving little boy Kantu from a rhino, the king is made painfully aware that the common people view his foreign woman Monica with as much suspicion as the constantly-raiding insurgents. That feeling even penetrates to the heart of the palace. When advisor Zatama is murdered, Monica is arrested for the crime…

T’Challa is not there to protest or defend her. He has returned to Kantu’s village to investigate strange disappearances, discovering a seeming mass-rising of zombies led by skeletal maniac Baron Macabre. Once more the Great Cat is forced to ignominiously retreat…

Supreme stylist Billy Graham takes over pencilling with #10 as the Black Panther returns to the zombie nest, exposing a cunning charade beneath the deserted village as well as a super-scientific base run by a malignant, mind-warping mutant in ‘King Cadaver is Dead and Living in Wakanda!’

Accompanying the dark drama here are examples of ‘Black Panther Artistry’ – specifically, Kirby’s first designs for the hero back when he was going by provisional title ‘The Coal Tiger’ and Buckler & Janson’s initial depiction of ‘Erik Killmonger’. Due to an extremely unfavourable publishing schedule, Panther’s Rage unfolded with agonising slowness, but the lengthy wait between episodes allowed McGregor the latitude to pick and choose key events, with readers accepting that some stuff was actually occurring between issues.

By JA #11 (September 1974), the civil war had proceeded unchecked and ‘Once You Slay the Dragon!’ sees the Panther and his forces launching the long-awaited counterattack on Killmonger’s base in N’Jadaka Village. The battle is vicious and brief, introducing yet another powered lieutenant in the shape of pitiless high-tech armourer Lord Karnaj. And on the home front, T’Challa finally clears Monica and captures actual Zatama’s killer…

With Killmonger temporarily in retreat, the Panther goes on the offensive, using the rebel’s most inconsequential converts – Tayete and Kazibe – as reluctant guides to follow his ultimate nemesis to his most secret strongholds. Heading into the mountains and fabled Land of Chilling Mists, the Panther discovers a mutagenic temple… the Resurrection Altar. Employed by Killmonger to create his grotesque super-warriors, it is presided over by scientifically-spawned vampire Sombre. When T’Challa confronts them both, he is again overpowered by Erik and left for wolves to devour in ‘Blood Stains on Virgin Snow!’

  1. Craig Russell inked the next chapter as, enduring incomprehensible hardships in sub-arctic conditions, T’Challa perseveres and survives to follow Killmonger into the temperate swamps of Serpent Valley in #13. However, this is only after facing a pack of Wakanda’s white apes. To survive, the Panther must blasphemously ignore the sacred (to many of his subjects) religious aspect of the mighty carnivores and become ‘The God Killer’…

Following a Venomm pin-up, #14 then reveals ‘There Are Serpents Lurking in Paradise’ (inked by Pablo Marcos) as T’Challa clashes once more with Sombre before encountering an affable forest sprite guarding Serpent Valley. Pixie-like Mokadi asks difficult moral questions as T’Challa rushes towards his next battle with Killmonger, making him too late to stop the rebel capturing a legion of the valley’s awesome dinosaurs. The usurper even has time to leave one behind as a lethal parting gift for the embattled, exhausted Wakandan chieftain…

The endgame rapidly approaches in #15 as ‘Thorns in the Flesh, Thorns in the Mind’ (Dan Green inks) finds T’Challa still tracking his foe only to be overcome by Killmonger’s archer assassin Salamander K’Ruel. Beaten and left to be dismembered by a ravenous Pterosaur, T’Challa incredibly overcomes every challenge before – against all odds – staggering back to Monica for another bout of recuperation…

Graham inked his own pencils for the beginning of the end in #16 as T’Challa & Monica’s time of idyllic passion culminates in catastrophe when ‘And All Our Past Decades Have Seen Revolutions!’ reveals Killmonger’s origins as the vast cast converges for one final battle. That comes in #17 as an army of war-trained dinosaurs invades Central Wakanda only to be finally crushed by the Panther’s forces and Wakandan technology. The affair concludes as it began at Warrior Falls, but ‘Of Shadows and Rages’ also holds a shocking twist as the great game of kings is ultimately decided by a player no one considered of any relevance…

With its nuanced emotional interplay, extended scope and fiercely independent supporting cast, Panther’s Rage was a milestone in dramatic comics storytelling but it harboured one last punch in a gripping ‘Epilogue!’(Jungle Action#18, November 1975). Bob McLeod inked McGregor & Graham’s forceful look at the repercussions of conflict, which finds T’Challa and maimed security chief Wakabi targeted by feral woman Madame Slay: Killmonger’s ardent and unsuspected lover who believes her loss can only be assuaged by having her pack of loyal leopards eviscerate the victorious Wakandans…

Cover-dated January 1976, Jungle Action #19 premiered McGregor’s most audacious and ultimately frustrating project, with T’Challa accompanying Monica back to America. The Panther versus the Klan shifted focus from war stories to crime fiction, substituting exotic Africa for America’s poverty-wracked, troubled, still segregated-in-all-but-name Deep South for a head-on collision with centuries of entrenched and endemic racism. Illustrated by Graham & McLeod, ‘Blood and Sacrifices!’ sees Monica back with her family after her sister is murdered. All too soon T’Challa is ferociously battling a gang of purple-hooded killers who appear to have set up in opposition to the ancient but apparently not supremacist enough white-hooded Ku Klux Klan.

Moreover, both sects are determined to conceal the truth of Angela Lynne’s death, but a break comes when bumbling, well-meaning reporter Kevin Trublood stumbles into an attack on the newcomers by the strangely multi-racial Klan sect calling itself The Dragon Circle…

With neither townsfolk nor lawmen offering any welcome, T’Challa faces unbridled hostility and suspicion at every turn. He is even attacked by cops and a mob of citizens when he thwarts a knife attack on Monica. Although Sheriff Roderick Tate makes all the right noises and seems helpful, in ‘They Told Me a Myth I Wanted to Believe’, the Panther opts to pursue his own investigation before being overwhelmed by an army of white-robed Klansmen who tie him to a burning cross and leave him to die…

As Monica and Kevin puzzle out the convoluted web of mysteries, the Panther exerts all his uncanny gifts to escape becoming ‘A Cross Burning Darkly Blackening the Night!’ Later, as he recovers in hospital, Monica’s family, Kevin and Tate review the few verifiable facts of Angela’s demise before patriarch Lloyd Lynne urges T’Challa to stop looking. He only has one daughter left after all…

Nevertheless, when the Panther and Trublood invade and disrupt a Klan rally, Lloyd is right there with them…

With Buckler joining Graham on pencils and Jim Mooney alternating with McCleod on inks, Jungle Action #22 takes a bizarre turn as ‘Death Riders on the Horizon’ explores a Lynne family legend dating back to the formative days of the Klan in 1867 when old Caleb was targeted by the vile “southern knights” and their seemingly supernatural sponsor the Soul Strangler. As Monica listens to the ghastly, appallingly unjust tale, her mind fills in how T’Challa would have acted in such a hopeless situation…

JA #23 (September 1976) was a deadline missed and rapidly-sourced reprint from Daredevil #69 – represented here only by its cover and a Buckler pin-up – before this tantalising tale is unhappily cut short in final published instalment ‘Wind Eagle in Flight’ (McGregor, Buckler & Keith Pollard).The multi-layered, many-stranded plot suddenly expands as the Panther is almost killed by a mysterious new player who flies into the ever more bewildering clash between cops, Klan, Dragon Circle and Lynne family but, before the mystery could move any further, Jungle Action was cancelled…

A wholly different kind of Black Panther and utterly unrelated adventures would reappear two months later, under the auspices of returning creative colossus Jack Kirby and it would be years before the enigma of Angela’s death and the hero’s war against the Klan was resolved…

Bonus extras here include Kirby & Sinnott’s unused original art cover for FF #52, John Romita’s cover for Jungle Action #5; McGregor’s correspondence with then-fan Ralph Macchio and the author’s original working notes, plot synopses and candid contemporary photos of the close-knit creative team. Also on show: original cover art, pages and sketches by Buckler & Janson & Kane; pencils & layouts by Graham & Buckler, plus Steve Gerber’s ‘Jungle Re-Actions’ editorial feature from Jungle Action #7. Capping off the freebie joys are un-inked Buckler story pages that would have been #25…

A truly groundbreaking classic of comics narrative, Don McGregor’s Black Panther is stark, vibrant proof that the superhero genre works best when ambitious and passionate creators are given their head and let loose to get on with it.
© 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 2016 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

Today in 1917 US artist/production wizard Jack Adler was born, followed in 1935 by pioneering African American artist Billy Graham (Luke Cage, Black Panther, Sabre) and writer Mike Baron (Nexus, Badger, Flash, The Punisher) in 1949.

In 1952 today, Australia’s beloved Ginger Meggs strip creator Jimmy Bancks died, and the date also saw the debut of Judd Winick’s Frumpy the Clown strip in 1996 and launch of manga collective CLAMP’s Angelic Layer series in 1999.