Category: Graphic Novels

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Batman: The Collected Adventures volume 2


By Kelly Puckett, Mike Parobeck & Rick Burchett (DC Comics/Titan Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-56389-124-3 (DC)                   978-1-85286-563-6 (Titan)

As re-imagined by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, Batman: The Animated Series aired in America from September 5th 1992 until September 15th 1995. The TV cartoon series – ostensibly for kids – revolutionised the image of the Dark Knight and happily fed back into the print iteration, leading to some of the absolute best comicbook tales in the hero’s many decades of existence-year publishing history.

By employing a timeless visual style (dubbed “Dark Deco”), the show mixed elements from all iterations of the character and, without diluting the power, tone or mood of the premise, re-honed the grim avenger and his team into a wholly accessible, thematically memorable form that the youngest of readers could enjoy, whilst adding shades of exuberance and panache that only most devout and obsessive Batmaniac could possibly object to.

The comicbook version was inevitably prime material for collection in the newly-emergent trade paperback market and this long out-of print second volume – published in America by DC and by Titan Books in Britain – gathered issues #7-12 of The Batman Adventures all-ages comicbook (originally published from to April -September 1993) in a stunning, no-nonsense furore of family-friendly Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy.

After a mere half-dozen superb stories the comicbook adventures took a step towards total sublimity when rising star Mike Parobeck assumed the pencilling duties.

Although his professional comics career was tragically short (1989 to 1996 when he died, aged 31, from complications of Type 1 Diabetes) Parobeck’s gracefully fluid, exuberant and purely kinetic fun-fuelled animation-inspired style revolutionised superhero action drawing and sparked a resurgence in kid-friendly comics and merchandise at DC and elsewhere else in the comics publishing business.

Following an ‘Introduction by Bruce Timm’, accompanied by a wealth of series concept sketches, the stories – all divided into three chapters scripted by Kelly Puckett and inked by Rich Burchett – begin with ‘Raging Lizard!’ which sees shady pro wrestler Killer Croc face a long dark night of the soul in ‘Requiem for a Mutant!’ when he’s scheduled to fight Masked Marauder – a grappler who humiliated and broke him in their last match…

Batman meanwhile is searching for Chicago mobster Mandrake who’s planning on taking over Gotham by ousting reigning crime czar Rupert Thorne in ‘Eye of the Reptile!’ and naturally all those trajectories converge in the third act for a major throw-down ‘Under the Waterfront!’…

In issue #8 ‘Larceny, My Sweet’ begins with the hunt for an unstoppable thief who can ‘Break the Bank!’ with his bare hands, whilst TV reporter Summer Gleeson divides her time between chasing scoops and being romanced by a dashing stranger in ‘Love’s Lost Labours’. Sadly when the Gotham Gangbuster ends the crime-wave he also exposes a monstrous old foe and ends the affair of ‘Beauty and the Beast!’

In #9 ‘The Little Red Book’ everyone is chasing holds all Thorne’s dirty secrets and Commissioner Gordon is presiding over a ‘Gangster Boogie!’ with the cops and entire underworld looking to win out over ‘The Big Boss’. It takes all Batman’s energy and wits to bring the diary to District Attorney Harvey Dent for the beginning of ‘Rupert’s Reckoning!’…

‘The Last R?ddler Story’ describes ‘Nygma’s Nadir!’ as the perpetually frustrated Prince of Puzzles considers retirement. Dispirited because the Caped Crusader always solves his felonious games, the villain is convinced by his faithful hench-persons to give it one more try in ‘Days of Wine and Riddles!’

How upset would Eddie Nygma be if he knew Batman isn’t even aware of him, absorbed as he is in apprehending the infamous trio Mastermind, Mr. Nice and The Perfesser in ‘Triumph or Tragedy …?

‘The Beast Within!’ features obsessed scientist Kirk Langstrom who believes he, is uncontrollably transforming into the monstrous Man-Bat in the ‘The Sleeper Awakens!’ The truth is far more sinister but incarcerated in ‘G.C.P.D.H.Q!’ neither the chemist nor his beloved Francine can discern ‘The Awful Truth!’ Happily Batman plays by his own rules…

This fabulous foray into classic four-colour fun finishes with a shocking shift in focus as young Barbara Gordon makes a superhero costume for a party in ‘Batgirl: Day One!’ and stumbles into a larcenous ‘Ladies Night’ when the High Society bash is crashed by Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy.

With no professional help on hand, Babs has to act as ‘If the Suit Fits!’ and tackle the bad girls herself… but then Catwoman shows up for the frantic finale ‘Out of the Frying Pan!’…

Breathtakingly written and iconically illustrated, these stripped-down rollercoaster-romps are the ultimate Bat-magic, and this is a collection every fan of any age and vintage will adore.

Pure, unadulterated delight – so keep kicking and agitating for new editions now!
© 1993, 1994 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Rogue Touch


By Christine Woodward (Hyperion)
ISBN: 978-1-4013-1102-5

It seems that the signature genre of comics – the superhero – has at last gained some degree of literary legitimacy. Even if you ignore the collected pulp exploits of Doc Savage or The Shadow, or the assorted novelisations and prose forays from funnybook publishers capitalising on the early success of series like Wild Cards with their own key brands, the timbre of modern times has allowed costumed do-gooders and crazed masterminds to finally break into “real” publishing.

Now even proper book companies have many titles that blend crime, horror, science fiction and the peculiarly comicbook cult of the Over-Man into their mainstream fare.

With that in mind here’s something a little different and probably more in tune with the tastes of female readers, Young Adults and those fans possessing only a passing familiarity with X-Men continuity.

LET ME BE SPECIFIC. THIS IS A NOVEL. THERE ARE NO PICTURES INSIDE.

In the Marvel Universe Rogue was first seen as a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: a disturbed young girl cursed with a power that stole abilities and memories from anybody who touched her skin-to-skin.

It was an ability she could not control or turn off, and any overlong fleshy contact resulted in the victim falling into a coma with their entire history and essence drained into her. Rogue then became a reluctant jailer with stolen powers and personalities locked in her head forever.

Played as a “bad-girl” and mystery woman for years, Rogue grew to become one of the most popular characters in the excessively large X-cast, winning her own miniseries where it was first revealed that as a young girl her powers manifested just as she was kissing her first love Cody Robbins…

With the boy she wanted imprisoned in her head whilst his body permanently shut down, the girl knew she was a freak and monster who must never again experience human contact…

This novel picks up a little later and never mentions any aspect of the Marvel Universe as it begins the story of 20-year old Anna Marie: a reluctant recluse working a dead-end night job at a small bakery in Jackson, Mississippi.

Always wrapped head-to-toe in many layers, the odd night owl one night sees a weird lurking man almost waiting for her. She takes steps to avoid him, the way she avoids everybody who might accidentally touch her and suffer the horrific consequences…

However the non-incident rattles her and gives boss Wendy Lee an excuse to fire her…

All but unemployable and strapped for cash, Anna Marie is forced to apply for food stamps, but waiting in line she sees the same creepy, good-looking guy. However when she challenges him she inadvertently calls attention to the fact that he’s pulling some kind of scam and security guards chase him from the building.

She sees her stalker again on the streets and realises that even in the Mississippi heat the guy is cold and really, really hungry. Without really knowing why, she gives him some of her food stamps…

Over the next few days they keep meeting and become friendlier, but James is a strange and cagy man with an accent she can’t place and the weirdest gaps in his knowledge of everyday life.

Her prospects don’t improve and one night, reduced to desperation, Anna Marie breaks into the bakery, intent on taking food to the value of the severance check she didn’t get. Tragically, Wendy Lee discovers her and in the scuffle makes contact…

Now with a young boy and an old lady stuck in her head, the horrified, guilt-ridden girl realises she has to steal a car and get out of town as soon as possible …and that’s when James drives up, offering her a ride to anywhere she wants…

Thus begins an epic and immensely engaging rollercoaster ride across America as the mismatched loners discover each other and the incredible secrets both are concealing. He prefers to be called “Touch” rather than James and has impossible gifts too. As she slowly allows herself to love the boy, “Rogue” – as he insists on calling her – is forced to accept just how much of a stranger he is… especially once the super-scientific pursuers and monster animals chasing him start to close in on her too.

He also knows far more about her than he at first let on…

Draped in the eternal allure of two kids in love and on the run, and designed to attract readers raised on Roswell High, Sookie Stackhouse, Twilight and generations of road-buddy movies, in Rogue Touch Christine Woodward successfully translates the X-Men’s memory-&-power-leeching Southern Belle into a compelling, alienated but ultimately powerful, self-reliant and triumphant woman in an increasingly fantastic and dangerous world.

Immensely readable and engaging, this is a supremely cunning and clever confection: easily affixable to Marvel’s mutant mythology should you be so inclined, but also a completely self-contained science fiction/young romance thriller that will delight the aficionados of all those so-successful alienated teen prose franchises. There’s even room and scope for a sequel or two…

™ & © 2013 Marvel and Subs. All Rights Reserved.

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Superior Spider-Man: A Troubled Mind


By Dan Slott, Humberto Ramos, Ryan Stegman, Victor Olazaba & Cam Smith (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-538-3

Over the years the Wondrous Wallcrawler has undergone many evolutions, refits and even backsliding revisions, but his latest evolution – springing out of the landmark Amazing Spider-Man #700 – is certainly the most radical character change of all the MarvelNOW! relaunches.

In that issue the personality of Peter Parker died and Doctor Otto Octavius took over his body, becoming a wholly Superior Spider-Man.

Parker’s mind had been transferred into the rapidly failing body of the super-villain where, despite every desperate effort, in the end he perished with and within that decrepit, expiring frame. Now Octopus is permanently installed in the Amazing Arachnid’s body and living Peter’s life, albeit with a few minor but necessary alterations, upgrades and improvements…

The situation is not completely intolerable. At the moment of the villain’s greatest triumph Parker forced Octavius to relive and experience every moment of tragedy and sacrifice that made Spider-Man the champion he was.

From that emotional turmoil came understanding and the villain reformed, swearing to live the rest of his stolen life in tribute to his enemy; honestly endeavouring to carry on Spider-Man’s self-imposed mission and equally guided by the binding principle that “with great power comes great responsibility”…

However the megalomaniac within proved hard to suppress and the new web-spinner incessantly worked to prove himself a better man: augmenting the hero’s gadgets and methodology with millions of spy robots to patrol the entire city at once, adding advanced weaponry to the suit and even acting pre-emptively rather than merely reacting to crises.

Otto went back to college because he was appalled Parker had no doctorate and even tried to rekindle his new body’s old relationship with Mary Jane Watson.

The new, ultra-efficient Spider-Man has become New York’s darling and even Mayor J. Jonah Jameson has embraced the Web-spinner, all but appropriating the wallcrawler as a deputy – to the utter incredulity of an imperceptible phantom of Peter Parker lurking within the deepest recesses of the overwritten mind of Spider-Man…

The helpless ghost is an unwilling passenger, unsuspected by Octavius but increasingly privy to the villain’s own barely-suppressed memories. Moreover, some of Parker’s oldest friends are beginning to suspect something hinky is happening.

Police CSI Officer and ex-girlfriend Carlie Cooper knew of Peter’s incredible secret life and is increasingly reminded of the last time Spider-Man fought Doc Ock, when the killer broke her arm. He also claimed then that he was Peter trapped in the villain’s body…

Everybody accepts Spider-Man has changed. Not only is he more efficient these days, but he’s far more brutal too. Giving bad-guys like Boomerang and the Vulture the thorough thrashings they so richly deserve plays really well with the public and, after a deadly hostage siege, the hero’s status with city cops peaked after the Amazing Arachnid executed the sociopathic perpetrator Massacre…

Written by Dan Slott, A Troubled Mind collects issues #6-10 of The Superior Spider-Man (released March-July 2013) and continues following the author’s introductory summation ‘Superior Minds’.

Humberto Ramos & Victor Olazaba illustrated ‘Joking Hazard’ which sees prankster villains Jester and Screwball win vast popular acclaim for their “harmless” public humiliations of the rich and powerful – such as Mayor Jameson.

Even though the pair are actually using their internet site to phish financial details from the millions of viewers who access their posts, the world loves them – but not the new Spider-Man, who horrifically overreacts to being made to look a fool…

Meanwhile, as Parker and new romantic interest Anna Maria Marconi negotiate the obstacles to Peter obtaining his doctorate – a mission not helped by the candidate’s innate smug arrogance – the Avengers are becoming extremely concerned about their young comrade’s erratic behaviour, whilst in the shadows a new Hobgoblin carefully lays plans to conquer the city…

The multi-part ‘Troubled Mind’ then commences with ‘Right Hand Man’ as Robin Hood villain Cardiac returns, still stealing technology to treat patients who can’t afford medical care. With a little girl in desperate need of advanced brain scanning, the rogue raids an impound facility and liberates a device devised by the dead madman Otto Octavius. He cannot understand why former frenemy Spider-Man seems to take the theft so personally…

The ghost of Peter Parker later feels a swell of hope when the Avengers forcibly arrest his stolen body and subject it to a battery of tests. Sadly, the Avengers in ‘Proof Positive’ don’t include geniuses like Tony Stark or Henry Pym, and cannot properly interpret the data their machines provide.

Doc Ock can, however, and now realises why occasionally he feels inexplicable resistance when his angry, violent natures boils over…

With Octavius exultant and Parker’s ghost crushed, the wallcrawler tracks down Cardiac’s illegal free hospital to retrieve “his” scanner, only to feel his righteous indignation crumbling at the sight of the dying little girl the maverick surgeon is trying to help…

Consumed by guilt, the Superior Spider-Man uses the purloined scanner to perform brain surgery on the child but, after saving her, retains the scanner to perform a similar service upon himself…

‘Gray Matters’ discloses how the Avengers’ tests revealed a phantom echo of Peter’s brain patterns beneath his own freshly encoded, dominant patterns and how, with the aid of his scanner, Otto hunts down and forever erases the aggravating voice within his skull…

Now wiped forever free of that annoying shadow of conscience, the finally triumphant mad doctor can celebrate his ‘Independence Day’ (art by Ryan Stegman & Cam Smith) completely devoid of limiting considerations such as pity or humanity. Of course, the same applies to the new iterations of supervillains such as White Dragon, The Owl and Tombstone, organised by Hobgoblin as the vanguard of an unstoppable army of evil to take New York City…

More importantly, with Phantom Parker no longer incessantly, fruitlessly screaming in his head, the hero’s nearest and dearest are coming to the inescapable conclusion that there is something just plain wrong with “Peter”…

To Be Continued…

Capped off with a selection of Ramos’s design sketches in ‘Superior Insight’ augmenting a gallery of his covers, this astounding reinvention carries as standard that wonder-of-21st-century invention AR icon sections. These Marvel Augmented Reality App pages offer access to story bonuses once you download the little dickens – free from marvel.com – onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

Spider-Man has been reinvented so often it has become something of a norm, but this incarnation – for however long it lasts – is one that no fan or newbie can afford to miss: shocking, clever and impossibly addictive.

™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Love and Rockets: the Covers


By Gilbert, Jaime & Mario Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-598-3

In the 1980s a qualitative revolution forever destroyed the tired moribund, stereotypical and ghettoised ways different genres of comic strips were produced and marketed. The iconic force most evidently shattering those comfy pigeonholes we’d built for ourselves were three guys from Oxnard, California; Jaime, Mario and Gilberto Hernandez.

Love and Rockets was an anthology magazine originally self-published in 1981which featuring intriguing, adventuresome larks and wildly different comic narratives that pretty much defied classification, all wrapped up in the sheen and ephemera of LA’s Hispanic and punk music scenes.

Stories varied from slick, sci-fi-soused hi-jinx starring punky young gadabouts and their extended eccentric circle of friends – or the heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasies from the rural Central American paradise of Palomar.

Jaime Hernandez was always the most noticeable part of the graphic literary revolution: his sleek, seductive, clean black line and beautiful composition, impeccably rendered heroes and villains and the comfortingly recognisable – though thoroughly “roofied” comic book iconography – particularly appealing to readers raised on traditional Marvel and DC fare.

However his love of that material, as well as the influence of Archie Comics cartoonists (especially Sam Schwartz, Harry Lucey and Dan De Carlo), accomplished and enticing as it is, often distracted from the power of his writing, especially in his extended epics featuring of Maggie Chascarillo and Hopey Glass – AKA Maggie & Hopey, Las Locas, something never true of Gilbert, whose simplified cartooning and subtle, reined-in graphics never overwhelmed the sheer magnetic compulsion of his scripts…

The Hernandez Boys, gifted synthesists all, enthralled and enchanted with incredible stories that sampled a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from Comics, TV cartoons, masked wrestlers, the exotica of American Hispanic pop culture and even German Expressionism. There was also a perpetual backdrop displaying the holy trinity of youth: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll…

The result was dynamite. Mario only officially contributed on rare occasions but his galvanising energy informed everything – and his covers here display a fondness for those battered genres both tantalising and darkly skewed…

Jaime’s sleek, enticing visual forays explored friendship and modern love whilst destroying stereotypes of feminine attraction through his fetching coterie of Gals Gone Wild, and Gilberto created a hyper-real rural landscape macrocosm in Palomar: a playground of wit and passion and human imperfection in the quicksilver form of a poor Latin-American village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast created for his extended saga Heartbreak Soup.

Life, death, poverty, adultery, murder, boredom, magic, weird science and gossip shaped Palomar’s metafictional environs, as the artist mined his own post-punk influences in his deceptively addictive primitivist drawing style which blended his personal mythologies of comics, music, drugs, strong women, gangs, sex and family.

The denizens and survivors of Palomar still inform and shape Beto’s work, both directly and as imaginative spurs for spin-off stories.

Winning critical acclaim but little financial success, the brothers temporarily went their own ways in the mid-1990s, creating side projects and special series before creatively reuniting a few years back to produce annual collections of new material in their shared or, rather, intermittently adjacent pen-and-ink universes.

In more than three decades of groundbreaking creative endeavour, Los Bros Hernandez crafted a vast and magnificent canon of cartoon brilliance and literary enchantment and this truly spectacular art book presents all the eye-popping front and back covers from 1982-1996: fifty incredible issues which graced and lit up comic shop shelves, always looking nothing like any publication produced at the time.

This huge hardback (338x262mm) comes with a cool cover-cel overlay and re-presents each glorious, intriguing and occasionally controversial image, restored, re-mastered and de-cluttered to remove all extraneous, obfuscating text – such as barcodes and pricing information.

Moreover, also included are many pages of original pencils and inks, correction stages, production ephemera from each part of the art-to-finished-cover process, plus an extensive commentary section where Los Bros share their thoughts and intimate moments of “creators’ remorse”.

As well as the captivating magazine iterations by the guys as they mastered their craft, this astounding collection also includes 28 pages of covers from the numerous collected editions which propelled the mature creators to global comics stardom and contributed so much to the growth of today’s graphic novel market.

Mesmerising, breathtaking graphic wonderment and enticing pop art masterpieces; these incredible concoctions capture the spirit of subversive, intoxicating youthful vitality which changed the comic industry forever and comprise a truly essential catalogue of artistic excellence no lover of narrative art should miss.

© 2013 Gilbert, Jaime and Mario Hernandez. All rights reserved.
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pretty, powerful, perfect picture magic… 10/10

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Batman: The Collected Adventures volume 1


By Kelly Puckett, Marty Pasko, Ty Templeton, Brad Rader & Rick Burchett (DC Comics/Titan Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-56389-098-7 (DC),      978-1-85286-521-4 (Titan)

Batman: The Animated Series launched in America on September 5th 1992 and ran until September 15th 1995. Masterminded by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, the show revolutionised the image of the Dark Knight and led to some of the absolute best comicbook tales in his almost 75-year publishing history.

By employing a timeless visual tone (dubbed “Dark Deco”) the show mixed elements from all iterations of the character and, without diluting the power and mood of the premise, perfectly honed the grim avenger and his team into a wholly accessible, thematically memorable form that the youngest of readers could enjoy, whilst adding shades of exuberance and style that only most devout and obsessive Batmaniac could possibly find fault with.

Naturally the comicbook version was an cast-iron contender for collection in the newly-emergent trade paperback market and this long out-of print edition – published in America by DC and by Titan Books in Britain – gathered the first half-dozen all-ages epics from The Batman Adventures comicbook (originally published from October 1992 to March 1993) in a smashing, straightforward sampler of Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy.

Preceded by ‘An Introduction by Paul Dini: Batman’s Most Animated Adventures’ and accompanied by a plethora of pulsating storyboards, the action begins with ‘Penguin’s Big Score’ by Kelly Puckett, Ty Templeton & Rick Burchett.

Each story was divided into three chapters and ‘Charm School Dropout!’ found the Bird of Ill Omen taking tips on how to rehabilitate his nefarious reputation from The Joker, whilst in ‘Top of the World, Ma!’ the Foul Fowl’s new standing as a philanthropist had all Gotham agog.

The sinister scheme was finally exposed by Batman in the climactic third act ‘Power of the Press’, but the hero had no idea that the real winner was the Clown Prince of Crime…

In issue #2 ‘Catwoman’s Killer Caper’ (Puckett, Templeton & Burchett) kicked off with a gem heist before, on Joker’s urging, sultry Selina Kyle visited England’s Tower of London to swipe ‘The Family Jewels!’

In hot pursuit, the Gotham Gangbuster headed across The Pond to quell ‘Panic over Londontown’ and solved the mystery of a seemingly impossible theft in ‘Midnight Madness’ – but not before the Harlequin of Hate snatched the real prize…

All that crafty conniving culminated in ‘Joker’s Late-Night Lunacy!’ by Puckett, Templeton & Burchett, with Gotham’s airwaves hijacked and Commissioner Gordon kidnapped by the larcenous loon who made himself literally unmissable viewing in ‘A Star is Born!’

‘I Want My JTV!’ saw District Attorney Harvey Dent make it onto the Joker’s inescapable guest list, but Batman was again one step ahead of the game and lowered the boom in the explosive ‘Flash in the Pan!’

Writer Marty Pasko and penciller Brad Rader joined inker Rick Burchett for a gripping two-issue tale of terror guest starring Robin as ‘Riot Act’ describes ‘Panic in the Streets’ after a strange plague caused citizens to lose the ability to read.

Even with utter chaos gripping the city the Teen Wonder’s ‘Help on the Wing’ results in a huge step forward but when ‘Robin Takes a Fall’ the mastermind reveals himself and the drama intensifies in #4 with ‘Riot Act: Johnny Can’t Read!’ as the Scarecrow steps up his campaign to teach the slackers of the modern world a lesson….

However, the Dynamic Duo are well aware of the ‘Hi-Fi Hijinx’ at the root of the problem and, with the help of a repentant henchman, end the crisis in ‘Those Who Can’t Do!’

This initial foray into classic four-colour fun ends with a stunning change of pace as Bruce Wayne is arrested for murder in ‘The Third Door!’ Crafted by Puckett, Rader & Burchett, the cunning locked-room mystery opens with ‘The Party’s Over’ as the prime suspect details the facts of the case to young Dick Grayson, before being locked up with a mob of dangerous thugs in ‘Crime and Punishment’ leaving the kid to ferret out the real  killer in the tense conclusion ‘War and Peace’…

Compellingly written, superbly designed and spectacularly illustrated, these stripped-down rollercoaster-romps are quintessential Bat-magic, and as a host of big name bad-guys vie with timeless crime scenarios on every page, this is a book any fan of any age and vintage will adore.

Sheer, unadulterated magic – so start agitating for a new edition now!
© 1992, 1993 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Batgirl: The Flood


By Bryan Q. Miller, Lee Garbett, Pere Perez & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3142-2

Batman has gathered young allies about him since the second year of his all-consuming crusade: adopting assorted waifs or strays and training them to be the best that they can be, all for the greater good of his beloved GothamCity.

Stephanie Brown, daughter of C-list bad-guy Cluemaster, began her costumed crime-busting career as the Spoiler, secretly scotching Daddy Dearest’s schemes before graduating to a more general campaign against the city’s underworld.

Eventually, she undertook a disastrous stint as the fourth Robin: a tenure which provoked a brutal gang war which devastated Gotham and ostensibly caused her own demise under torture at the red hands of psychopathic mob boss Black Mask.

When Stephanie returned to Gotham after months in self-imposed exile, she overcame incredible obstacles – the greatest of which was her former Bat-family’s deep mistrust. Thus she inherited the role of Batgirl from Cassandra Cain, a former assassin who had revived the role after her own predecessor was crippled and forced to retire…

Barbara Gordon, the computer crusader known as Oracle, is the daughter of Gotham City’s Police Commissioner. Her own valiant vocation as Batgirl was ended after the Joker blew out her spine during one of his incomprehensible capers. Although trapped in a wheelchair, she still hungered for justice and found new ways to make a difference in a very bad world.

Reinventing herself as a cyber-world information gatherer for Batman, she wound up an invaluable resource for the entire superhero community, before putting together her own fluctuating squad of female fighters – the Birds of Prey.

She also crossed keyboards with her intellectual antithesis: a sociopathic computer hacker and ex-costumed whacko called the Calculator…

Barbara, with grudging acceptance of stand-in Dark Knight Dick Grayson, then decided to mentor Stephanie as the troublesome teen attempted to combine undergraduate studies with her compulsive mission to save lives and help the helpless…

Collecting issues #9-14 of Batgirl volume 3 (from June-November 2010), this full-on action romp scripted by Bryan Q. Miller blends grim urban adventure and deadly Weird Science with infectious wry humour, as perfectly seen in the 4-part ‘Batgirl Rising: The Flood’ (illustrated by Lee Garbett, Pere Perez and inkers Jonathan Glapion, Richard Friend, Rodney Ramos, Walden Wong).

After Batgirl saves a subway train from a crazed suicide bomber, Stephanie is drawn into her mentor’s deadly ongoing cyber-war with the Calculator.

Not only does the digital desperado bear an unhealthy grudge for his past humiliations at the hands of the enigmatic Oracle, but now, since the computer crusader harbours his own estranged and wheelchair-bound daughter Wendy, turning her against him, all bets are off…

His diabolical revenge includes not only a devastating hack-attack on Oracle’s database and systems but also, using stolen alien programming code, mind-controlling thousands of citizens. The Apokolips nanites are everywhere, turning ordinary folk into savage suicide-assassins aimed at Barbara and the new Batgirl.

Either they surrender Wendy or an army of innocents will turn the city into a charnel-house…

Forced to lethal lengths to combat the Calculator’s bloody assault, Babs goes mobile but succumbs to the mind-stealing mechanoid plague, leaving Wendy to act as Stephanie’s new partner and digital quartermaster. However since the villain’s army of thralls now include brain-bound techno-zombies like Man-Bat, Catwoman and The Huntress, the task seems impossible…

Reduced to a last-ditch frontal assault Batgirl spectacularly invades the Calculator’s base, unaware that, despite being a victim of the nanovirus, Barbara has begun her own counterattack from within the vengeful villain’s own mind…

After the main event this delightful Fights ‘n’ Tights fun-fest clears the palate with a brace of one-off yarns beginning with ‘Trust’ (illustrated by Pere Perez) detailing Stephanie’s unique response to a cocked-up bank hostage-situation perpetrated by Clayface.

The grim debacle is made excessively complicated not only because the Teen Tornado’s Person of Potential Romantic Interest (Police Detective Nick Gage) is on scene, but also -since the shape-shifting charlatan is disguised as one of the imperilled customers – because Batgirl is the one holding them all captive until she can deduce who he is…

Manic insanity rounds off this chronicle with ‘Terror in the 3rd Dimension’ (Garbett & Trevor Scott) as a civilian Girl’s Night Out with BFF Supergirl goes crazily wrong when a campus science experiment goes “boink!” and 24 Draculas from an all-night classic movie show are materialised to run riot through the city.

With obviously no peace for the wicked-hot, the World’s Finest Blondes have their work cut out doing a passable imitation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer before things return to any semblance of “normal”…

With a stunning cover gallery by Stanley “artgerm” Lau, this collection offers that rarest of modern delights for comics fans: complication-free, easily accessible thrills, chills, spills and fun, fun, fun!!!

So get some before the next angst-storm drags us all down again…
© 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Adventures Avengers volume 9: The Times They Are A’Changin’


By Paul Tobin, Matteo Lolli, Ig Guara, Casey Jones, Christian Vecchia & Sandro Ribeiro (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3832-7

Since its earliest days Marvel has always courted young comicbook audiences. Whether through animation tie-ins such as Terrytoons Comics, Mighty Mouse, Super Rabbit Comics, Duckula, assorted Hanna-Barbera and Disney licenses and a myriad of others, or original creations such as Tessie the Typist, Millie the Model, Homer the Happy Ghost, Li’l Kids or Calvin, the House of Ideas always understood the necessity of cultivating the next generation of readers.

These days, however, accessible child-friendly titles are in decline and with Marvel’s proprietary characters all over screens large and small, the company generally prefers to create adulterated versions of its own pantheon, making that eventual hoped-for transition to more mature comics as painless as possible.

In 2003 the company created a Marvel Age line which updated and retold classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and subsequently merged it with remnants of its failed manga-based Tsunami imprint, which was also intended for a junior demographic.

The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures with the core titles transformed into Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man and the reconstituted classics replaced by all-original yarns. Additional titles included Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes, Power Pack, Hulk and The Avengers, which ran until 2010 when they were cancelled and replaced by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man.

This particularly light-hearted digest-sized collection re-presents issues #32-35 of Marvel Adventures Avengers (from 2009) and offers a succession of stand-alone yarns that will delight fans with a sense of humour and iota of wit…

What You Need To Know: this incarnation of the World’s Mightiest Superheroes operates an “open-door” policy where almost every metahuman marvel might turn up for duty. However – presumably because of their TV cartoon popularity – the Wondrous Wallcrawler and Jade Juggernaut are on scene in almost every episode…

Written throughout by Paul Tobin, the fast-paced fun begins with ‘The Big Payoff’ illustrated by Matteo Lolli & Christian Vecchia, wherein the team gets a most unpleasant visit from Special Agent Clark Harvey of the Internal Revenue Service.

This weaselling civil servant is ostensibly there to collect the individual Avengers’ taxes, but it’s all a ploy to blackmail the team into forcing a bunch of defaulting villains into paying up…

Smart and deviously hilarious, the clashes between Giant-Girl, Spider-Man and Luke Cage against Whirlwind, the Web-spinner and erudite philosophical monster/political activist Oog or Man-Bull versus Iron Man are entertainment enough, but Iron Man and Giant-Girl overmatched against the Absorbing Man and the childlike Hulk convincing assassin Bullsesye to do his patriotic duty are literally priceless…

When jungle king Ka-Zar visits from the Antarctic lost world all he can think about is learning how to use a car. Sadly Wolverine, Storm, Giant-Girl, Hulk and Spidey all feel safer battling an invasion of super-Saurians unleashed by Stegron the Dinosaur Man than sitting in the same vehicle as the Lord of the Savage Land in ‘You’re Driving Me Crazy’ (art by Ig Guara & Sandro Ribeiro)…

When ancient Egyptian magicians turn time into an out of control merry-go-round, ‘Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos!’ (Lolli & Vecchia) are caught up in the assorted eras of chaos, with Ant-Man, Giant-Girl, Tigra, Storm, the Wallcrawler and Hulk frantically fighting just to keep up…

This titanic tiny tome then concludes on a romantic note in ‘Lovers Leaper’, rendered by Casey Jones, when all the female Avengers head off for a vacation break. They foolishly thought Captain America, Cage, Spider-Man, Hawkeye and Wolverine could handle things for awhile, but boys will be slobs and soon the HQ is a ghastly mess of “man-cave” madness…

Moreover, since Hawkeye now needs a date for the Annual Archer Awards, he tries an on-line dating service and manages to upload not just his but all his buddies’ information onto the site…

With seemingly every eligible lady – super-powered and not – in New York City subscribing to the Lovers Leap site, the unsuspecting heroes are soon being bombarded by an army of annoyed women who think they’ve been stood up by the utterly oblivious Avengers.

…And when they try to get the owner to remove their details, the heroes discover former French bad-guy Batroc the Leaper is in charge and unwilling to do them any favours…

Smart and fun on a number of levels, bright and breezy with lots of light-hearted action and many solid laughs, this book really offers a fabulous alternative to the regular Marvel Universe angst and agony.

Even with the violence toned down and “cartooned-up” the stories are superbly thrilling and beautifully depicted: a perfect introduction for kids and adults alike to the vast realm of adventure we all love…

In 2012 the Marvel Adventures line was superseded by specific comicbook titles tied to Disney XD TV shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories are still an intriguing and perhaps more culturally accessible means of introducing character and concepts to kids born often two generations or more away from those far-distant 1960s originating events.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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All-New X-Men volume 3: Out of Their Depth


By Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, David Lafuente & Wade Von Grawbadger (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-561-1

Following the poor choices and horrendous paths taken by assorted mutant heroes over the last few years, and following the events of Avengers versus X-Men, MarvelNOW! reshaped the continuity, taking various factors of X-iterations in truly bizarre directions.

At the dawn of the Marvel Age, some very special kids were chosen by wheelchair-bound telepath Charles Xavier. Gloomy Scott Summers, ebullient Bobby Drake, trust fund brat Warren Worthington III, insular Jean Grey and simian genius Henry McCoy were gathered up by the enigmatic Professor X – a man dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between massed humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants, no matter what the cost.

To achieve his dream he educated and trained the five youngsters – codenamed Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and The Beast – for unique roles as heroes, ambassadors and symbols in an effort to counter the growing tide of human prejudice and fear.

Over years the struggle to integrate mutants into society resulted in constant conflict, compromise and tragedy, including Jean’s death, Warren’s mutilation, Hank’s further mutation and eventually Cyclops’ radicalisation.

The formerly idealistic, steadfast and trustworthy team-leader Cyclops was even killed Xavier before eventually joining with old comrade Magik and former foes Magneto and Emma Frost in a hard-line alliance devoted to preserving mutant lives at the cost, if necessary, of human ones.

Abandoning Scott, his surviving team-mates and newer X-Men Wolverine, Storm and Kitty Pryde stayed true to Xavier’s dream, opting to protect and train the next mutant generation at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning…

When The Beast realised he was dying, he became obsessed with the notion that the still starry-eyed First Class of X-Men could bring Scott back from his doctrinaire madness and ideological race war obsession. To that end McCoy used time-travel tech in a last-ditch attempt to fix everything: risking the entire space/time continuum by bringing those valiant, callow youngsters back to the future to reason with debased, possibly deranged Cyclops.

The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than restoring Scott to reason, the confrontation simply hardened the renegade’s heart and strengthened his resolve.

Moreover, even though McCoy’s younger self cured his older iteration, young Hank and the rest of the X-Kids refused to go home until “bad” Cyclops was stopped…

The modern world changes extremely rapidly. New mutants are now appearing in increasing numbers, all with more impressive talents than ever before. Worse still, through careful orchestration and by avoiding visibly unprovoked acts of violence, Cyclops’ Extinction Squad are winning the trust and respect of many oppressed sectors of humanity: the poor, the disenfranchised and rebellious, the young…

Following a very public humiliation of the Government-sponsored Uncanny Avengers, the internecine mutant conflict heats up when Cyclops and his allies visit the Jean Grey School with a chilling proposition. Convinced of inevitable extinction at human hands, Scott proffers a place to any student wishing to join his own academy: one dedicated to training mutants to fight and survive rather than wait for mankind to turn on them…

The psychically conjoined, socially-challenged and ruthless Stepford Sisters (Celeste, Mindee and Phoebe) readily accept but nobody is more shocked than the elder Cyclops when teenaged Angel also agrees to ditch his former classmates and switch sides…

Scripted by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by Stuart Immonen with Wade Von Grawbadger, Out of Their Depth – re-presenting All-New X-Men #11-15 from May to August 2013 – picks up mere moments later as Warren’s incredible decision provokes a massive row amongst adults and students alike.

Her newly-awakened psionic abilities in overdrive and unable to filter out the thoughts and emotions boiling round her, Jean lashes out, taking control of Angel’s mind. Her arbitrary actions are countered by the Cuckoo triplets and a bloody battle looks certain to erupt between the factions until teen Scott dramatically brings them all to their senses.

With nothing resolved, the Extinction team simply teleport out with their new recruits as, a continent away, a third faction makes its move…

Shapeshifter Mystique had already attempted to seduce the naïve 16-year old Scott, but when that failed she simply moved ahead with her own scheme. Now she, feral berserker Sabretooth and illusion-projector Lady Mastermind embark on spectacular robberies, amassing a literal mountain of cash, whilst leaving “proof” that Wolverine and the time-lost X-Kids are responsible…

Back at School Jean has an educational heart-to-heart with Professor Kitty about controlling her new abilities and the ethics of using them before Wolverine leads them all after Mystique.

They don’t get far before being intercepted in ‘All-New X-Men VS Uncanny Avengers’…

The combined human/mutant team is lead by Scott’s younger brother Alex – now more than a decade older than his sibling. The search for answers and explanations is difficult: none of Cyclops’ classmates even knew he had a brother at this stage of their lives and the confrontation between the adults is fraught with tension.

Suddenly Jean’s telepathy scans the Scarlet Witch‘s thoughts and the mind-reader goes ballistic.

Wanda‘s greatest shame is the period of madness when she murdered many of her Avenger allies and used her probability magic to eradicate millions of mutants with a wish. The inadvertent revelations burn into Jean’s brain and she responds with a storm of unleashed psionic fury…

As the situation escalates, in London The Bank of England is pillaged by “The X-Men” and Captain America grudgingly allows sometime-Avenger Wolverine a chance to handle matters himself…

The torturous trail leads to a warehouse where Madame Hydra, Silver Samurai and a small army of Hydra stormtroopers are engaged in cautious, dangerous negotiations with Mystique.

The mutant’s incredibly audacious plan – and the need for untold billions in cash – is revealed, only to have the dickering disrupted by Kitty and Wolverine ambitiously ambushing everybody.

They had previously ordered the kids to stay back and keep safe but the quartet are just teenagers and thus biologically unable to follow adult instructions…

The frantic melee seesaws on a knife edge until in the midst of the chaos Jean seemingly transforms into the dreaded Dark Phoenix, and by the time the Avengers arrive the battle is over and the kids triumphant.

This is an action-packed collection of clashes and capers but is also wonderfully heavy on the light-hearted humour and hi-jinks which so distinguished the original mid-1960s run: filled with smart, plausible characterisation, delicious extrapolation plus hilarious one-liners and childish stunts…

The final tale herein, illustrated by David Lafuente, opens a whole new world of possibilities when Jean’s still-erratic telepathy leads her to discover that one of her dutiful classmates has loved her from afar for decades…

Since she arrived all she has dwelt upon is her star-crossed lovers’ destiny with Scott Summers – and how she will die.

Is it any wonder then that she takes the lead with her silently suffering young admirer? Scott too is rebelling against his future… only his response is to play hooky with the other junior X-Man and head for New York City to meet girls and have the kind of fun he never believed his powers would permit…

To Be Continued…

Out of Their Depth also includes a beautiful cover-and-variants gallery by Immonen, Leinil Francis Yu & Nick Bradshaw and the now standard 21st century add-on of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Valerian and Laureline book 4: Welcome to Alflolol


By Méziéres & Christin, with colours by E. Tranlé and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-087-0   (Dargaud edition) 2-205-06573-4

Valérian is the most influential science fiction comics series ever drawn – and yes, that includes even Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Dan Dare and Judge Dredd.

Although to a large extent those venerable strips defined and later re-defined the medium itself, anybody who has seen a Star Wars movie or that franchise’s overwhelming homages, pastiches and rip-offs has been exposed to doses of Jean-Claude Méziéres & Pierre Christin’s brilliant imaginings (which the filmic phenomenon has shamelessly plundered for decades): everything from the character and look of alien races and cultures to the design of the Millennium Falcon and even Leia‘s Slave Girl outfit …

Simply put, more carbon-based life-forms have experienced and marvelled at the uniquely innovative, grungy, lived-in authentic futurism and light-hearted swashbuckling rollercoaster romps of Méziéres & Christin than any other cartoon spacer.

The groundbreaking series followed a Franco-Belgian mini-boom in fantasy fiction triggered by Jean-ClaudeForest’s 1962 creation Barbarella.

Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent launched in the November 9th, 1967 edition of Pilote (#420) and was an instant hit. In 1977 the fervour surrounding Greg & Eddy Paape’s Luc Orient and Philippe Druillet’s Lone Sloane, combined with Valérian‘s popularity led to the creation of an adult graphic sci-fi blockbuster – Métal Hurlant.

Val̩rian and Laureline (as the series eventually became) is a light-hearted, wildly imaginative time-travelling, space-warping fantasy teeming with wry, satirical, humanist action and political commentary, starring Рin the early days at least Рan affable, capable yet unimaginative by-the-book cop tasked with protecting the official universal chronology by counteracting paradoxes caused by incautious time-travellers.

When Valérian travelled to 11th century France in the initial tale ‘Les Mauvais Rêves (‘Bad Dreams’ and still not translated into English yet), he was rescued from doom by a fiery, capable young woman named Laureline whom he brought back to 28th century super-citadel and administrative capital of the Terran Empire, Galaxity.

The indomitable lass subsequently trained as a Spatio-Temporal operative and began accompanying him on all his missions.

Every subsequent Valérian adventure until the 13th was initially serialised weekly until ‘The Rage of Hypsis’ concluded, after which further yarns were solely published as all-new complete graphic novels. The whole spectacular saga resolved and ended in 2010.

Welcome to Alflolol originally ran in Pilote #631-652 (December 1971-May 11th 1972) and follows the Spatio-Temporal agents as they depart from Technorog, a desolate industrial planet whose vast resources are crucial to the running of human civilisation. So vital in fact that Galaxity sends her best agents just to inspect it every now and then…

As the S-T agents carefully negotiate the immense forcefield and asteroid belt that envelope the harsh and ferociously capitalistic factory world, Laureline is repeatedly possessed by an uncanny force. The fit also leads the couple to an immense ship which has foundered between the rocks and energy screen.

Investigating the vessel, which is purposely open to hard vacuum, Laureline again lapses into a glowing coma and eerily drifts towards a family of incredibly powerful yet rustically affable alien primitives sitting on the hull of their ship.

Valerian, closely following behind, prevents a terrible accident to his companion and is warmly greeted by the strangers, who explains that the eldest of the beings is very ill and in her throes has locked minds with his female. If they’re not careful, both could die…

Garrulous, easygoing Argol agrees to let Valerian treat the problem, and his wife Orgal telekinetically transports the Earthlings, her entire family and their pet Gumun back to the S-T astroship in mere moments. Soon Terran technology has saved both the human and alien and Argol settles back to explain what has happened…

The wanderers are naively friendly and immensely long-lived – like all their species – and are just returning to their homeworld Alflolol from an amusing perambulation through space. However since their departure – 4,000 Earth years ago – somebody has moved in…

Despite the Governor of Technorog’s protests, Galaxity law is clear and the Alflololians must be allowed back on their planet.

However the wheedling plutocrat – secure in his job’s importance to the empire – realises he doesn’t have to hand over the keys, just make room for the five meekly polite cosmic gypsies, who simply cannot grasp the concept of business and don’t understand why anybody would put up lots of flimsy, ugly buildings and spoil the hunting……

As Valerian allows the businessmen to walk all over the aliens’ rights, Laureline goes berserk: arguing for Argol’s family and indulging in a little light-hearted sabotage because the gentle giants won’t do it for themselves…

She needn’t bother though: their mere presence and incredible abilities are enough to disrupt the Governor’s precious productivity, especially when they get bored of sterile human accommodations and return to their ancestral ranges…

The real crisis only begins when the rest of the nomadic Alflololians return: one hundred separate ships full of natives protected by law and fully entitled to reclaim their homes.

The humans aren’t leaving, however, and soon the Governor has begun herding the wanderers onto a reservation and demanding they work if they want to eat.

Big mistake…

Socially aware and crusading, this is one of the earliest comics tales to catch the 1970s wave of ecological awareness and still ranks amongst the very best to explore the social iniquities which beset indigenous peoples at a time when most European ex-empires were still divesting themselves of their colonial possessions.

The theme of Capitalism versus Native Culture and the eternal struggle between territorial imperatives, moral rights and holy profit have seldom been dealt with in such an effective, sardonic and hilarious surreal manner. Ending on an outrageous twist, the story has lost none of its wit and punch forty years later.

And of course there’s the usual glorious blend of astounding action, imaginative imagery and fantastic creatures to leaven the morality play with space-operatic fun-filled, visually breathtaking and stunningly ingenious wide-eyed wonderment…

Between 1981 and 1985, Dargaud-Canada and Dargaud-USA published a quartet of these albums in English (with a limited UK imprint from Hodder-Dargaud) under the umbrella title Valerian: Spatiotemporal Agent and this tale was the third release, translated then by L. Mitchell.

Although this modern Cinebook release boasts far better print and colour values and a more fluid translation, total completists might also be interested in tracking down those 20th century releases too…
© Dargaud Paris, 1972 Christin, Méziéres & Tran-Lệ. All rights reserved. English translation © 2012 Cinebook Ltd.

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The Children of Palomar


By Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 976-1-60699-625-6

In the 1980s a qualitative revolution forever destroyed the clichéd, segregated, stereotypical ways genres of comic strips were produced and marketed. Most effective in blasting the comfy funnybook pigeonholes were three young guys from Oxnard, California: Jaime, Mario and Gilberto Hernandez.

Love and Rockets was an anthology magazine (and previously a self-published comic in 1981) that broke all the rules, featuring intriguing, adventuresome larks and captivating, experimental narratives which pretty much defied classification, all cloaked in the ephemera of LA’s Hispanic and punk music scene.

Stories generally focussed on the slick, sci-fi-seasoned larks of young gadabouts Maggie, Hopey and their extended eccentric circle of friends or the heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera travails of rural Central American outpost Palomar.

The Hernandez Boys, gifted synthesists all, enthralled and enchanted with incredible stories that sampled a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from comics, cartoon shows, masked wrestlers, trashy movies and American Hispanic pop culture to German Expressionism. There was also a perpetual backdrop displaying the holy trinity of youth: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll – for which please hear mostly alternative music and punk rock.

The result was dynamite. Mario only officially contributed on rare occasions but his galvanising energy informed everything. The slick and enticing visual forays by Jaime explored friendship and modern love whilst destroying stereotypes of feminine attraction through his fetching coterie of Gals Gone Wild, whilst Gilberto mostly crafted a hyper-real microcosm in his Latinate landscape: a playground of wit, toil, passion and raw humanity in a poor village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast created for his extended epic Heartbreak Soup.

Everything from life, death, adultery, magic, monsters, murder and especially gossip could happen in Palomar’s metafictional environs, as the artist mined his own post-punk influences in a deceptively effective primitivist art style which perfectly blended a personalised mythology of comics, music, intoxicants, strong women, gangs, sex and family. The denizens of Palomar still inform and shape Beto’s work, both directly and as imaginative spurs for spin-off stories.

Winning critical acclaim but little financial success, the brothers temporarily put aside their favourite toys to work on side projects and special series before creatively reuniting a few years back to produce annual collections of new material in their particularly peculiar shared or, rather, intermittently adjacent pen-and-ink universes.

In 2006, more than a decade after the canonical Heartbreak Soup stories, Beto popped back to his leafy arcadia via a three-magazine run entitled New Tales of Old Palomar, producing a too-brief selection of elucidating tales drenched in revelation and imagination which revealed a few answers to questions we never knew we had…

In the opening act of ‘The Children of Palomar’ the denizens of the little town are going about their daily business with a little less than usual calm since a couple of abandoned wild kids have been stealing food from everyone, everywhere. The naked little nippers are incredibly fleet-footed and not even Sheriff Chelo can catch them.

Her immediate problems are solved once sporty soccer-playing Pipo decides to prove who is truly the fastest runner in town, but unfortunately, once feral foundlings Tonantzin and Diana Villaseñor have been taken in, the village has to civilise and find homes for them…

The men meanwhile have devised a scheme to make Palomar a little export money. They mean well but when the mayor and his pals decide to blow up a boulder just as the stray kids take off, it takes all Pipo’s acceleration to prevent a horrific tragedy…

Another time little boys were on the other side of “The Crack” hazing young Gato before letting him join their black shirt gang. When they got bored and left, Pintor tried to help the traumatised candidate get home but the log across the giant gorge had vanished.

Stuck and terrified they were then abducted by strangers in space suits who experimented on them. The strangers spoke a strange language but another Palomar boy named Manuel was there and he said that soon they would be made to forget everything…

The villagers meanwhile had noticed them gone and Sheriff Chelo led a search party to the gap, but when their makeshift bridge sundered, only she managed to get across. By the time she found the kids their captors were arguing and the violence only escalated when she intervened…

The entire outpost then vanished in an explosion but at least she got the boys back…

Of course, Chelo had no idea that one of the ghostly White Strangers was still alive and intensely interested…

Palomar is surrounded by huge, ancient statues and the people all know they live in a world of magic. When babosa-selling Tonantzin began seeing a ghostly chuckling “Blooter Baby”, a wise woman explained that they only appeared to girls and women who would be childless, before telling her how to get rid of it.

Instead, she and the spectre reach an accommodation and the girl learns she is not alone before gaining a mission for life…

Our picaresque peregrinations conclude some time later when diminutive Carmen thinks she feels an Earth tremor no one else noticed. She considers asking the peculiar white scientists doing their weird bird research at the edge of town but doesn’t know their language.

Everybody goes about their day until the strangers kidnap Chelo and the horrified sheriff recognises one of the “aliens” from across the gorge all those years ago. Although formidable, she succumbs to superior force and wakes up maimed but back in bed in Palomar.

Not normally an unforgiving woman, Chelo goes looking for her tormentors as soon as she’s able… and finds them…

There’s fiction, there’s Meta-fiction and then there’s Gilbert Hernandez. In addition to Love and Rockets‘ captivating tales of Palomar he has produced numerous controversial and groundbreaking volumes such as Sloth, Grip, Birdland, Girl Crazy and Julio’s Day: all distinguished by his bold, instinctive, compellingly simplified artwork and a mature, sensitive adoption of the literary techniques of Magical Realist writers like Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez.

These techniques he has sublimely amplified and, visually at least, made utterly his own. This beguiling return to his landmark, signature series has been long overdue for a deluxe edition such as this splendid hardback, and such is the quality of the accessible writing and intoxicating art that first-timers will have no trouble slipping south of the border to join the veterans and devotees in a marvellous Latin mystery and adventure…
© 2013 Gilbert Hernandez. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All rights reserved.