Category: Graphic Novels

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks The Incredible Hulk volume 3: Less Than Monster, More Than Man


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Bill Everett, Gil Kane, John Buscema, Mike Esposito, John Romita, Jerry Grandenetti, John Tartaglione, Sam Rosen, Art Simek, Ray Holloway & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4903-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Their stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before, but today I’m once more focusing on format before Fights ‘n’ Tights – or is that Rags ‘n’ Shatters?

The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line was designed with economy in mind: re-presenting classic tales of Marvel’s key characters by the founding creators in chronological order in cheaper, editions on lower quality paper and – crucially – are physically smaller (152 x 227mm or about the dimensions of a B-format paperback book). Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but they’re perfect for kids and if you opt for the digital editions, that’s no issue at all…

Bruce Banner was a military scientist caught in the world’s first gamma bomb detonation. As a result of ongoing mutation, stress and other factors cause him to transform into a giant green monster of unstoppable strength and fury.

After an initially troubled debut run, the Gruff Green Giant finally found his size 700 feet and a format that worked, becoming one of young Marvel’s most popular features. After his first solo-title folded, The Incredible Hulk shambled around a swiftly-coalescing Marvel Universe as guest star and/or villain du jour until a new home was found for him.

This tome gathers the evergreen marvels and Hulky bits from Tales To Astonish #75-91: spanning January 1966-May 1967, and seeing the nomadic antihero established as a continuity-wide global fugitive and universal “Bête Vert” whilst his agonised human half became a man of misfortune and constant sorrow…

Way back then, the trigger for the Hulk’s second chance was a reprinting of his origin in the giant anthology comic book Marvel Tales Annual #1. It was the beginning of the company’s inspired policy of keeping early tales in circulation, which did so much to make fervent fans out of casual latecomers. Thanks to reader response, “Ol’ Greenskin” was awarded a back-up strip in a failing title. Giant-Man Hank Pym was the star turn in Tales to Astonish, but by mid-1964 his strip was visibly floundering. In issue #59 the Master of Many Sizes was used to introduce his forthcoming co-star in a colossal punch-up, setting the scene for the next issue wherein the Green Goliath’s co-feature began.

Here – scripted throughout by Stan Lee – the second chapter of the man-monster’s career truly takes off in power-packed intrigue-laded short episodes which resume with The Gamma Goliath freshly returned from space and having survived a clash with the lethal Leader.

TtA#75’s ‘Not all my Power Can Save Me!’ (Kirby layouts under Mike Esposito finishes) sees the Hulk helplessly hurled into a devastated dystopian future, before in ‘I, ‘Against a World!’ (with pencils by Gil Kane moonlighting as “Scott Edward”, but still working from Kirby roughs), the devastation is compounded by a doom-drenched duel with time-lost Asgardian immortal The Executioner.

A true milestone occurred in Tales to Astonish #77 when the tragic physicist’s dread secret is finally exposed. Magnificently illustrated by John Romita (the elder, and still over Kirby layouts), ‘Bruce Banner is the Hulk!’ concludes the time-travel tale and reveals the tragic horror of the scientist’s condition to the military and the general public after teenager Rick Jones at last buckles under months of psychological pressure from Army Major Glenn Talbot and obsessed General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross…

It didn’t make The Hulk any less hunted or haunted, but at least now the soldiery were in an emotional tizzy whilst trying to obliterate him.

With #78, Bill Everett began a brief but brilliantly evocative run as penciler (Kirby remaining on layouts throughout). To his very swift and last regrets, megalomaniacal military scientist Dr. Zaxon tries to steal the Gamma Monsters’s bio-energy in ‘The Hulk Must Die!’ Before his body is even cold, follow-up ‘The Titan and the Torment!’ propels the fugitive gargantuan into a bombastic battle against recently Earth-exiled Olympian man-god Hercules.

Fighting a pitiless war with fellow subterranean despot Mole Man, not-so-immortal Tyrannus resurfaced in ‘They Dwell in the Depths!’ Regarding the monster as a weapon of last resort, he abducts the man-brute to Subterranea, but still loses his last battle after which The Hulk returns topside and shambles into a plot by insidious cabal The Secret Empire in #81’s ‘The Stage is Set!’ That convoluted mini-epic touched upon a crossover saga that spread into a number of other Marvel series, especially Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Sub-Mariner. Here, however, the monster is targeted by the Empire’s hired gun Boomerang as they strive to steal the military’s new Orion missile…

As the epic unfolded ‘The Battle Cry of The Boomerang’, ‘Less Than Monster, More Than Man!‘, and ‘Rampage in the City!’ wove strings of subplot into a gripping whole which indicated to the evolving reader just how close-knit the Marvel Universe was. Obviously such tight coordination between series caused some problems as art for the final episode is credited to “almost the whole blamed Bullpen” (which to my jaded eyes is mostly Jerry Grandenetti). During that climax the Hulk marauds through the streets of New York City in what I can’t help but feel is a padded, unplanned conclusion…

Everything’s back on track for #85, however, as John Buscema & John Tartaglione step in to illustrate ‘The Missile and the Monster!’ as yet another spy diverts the experimental Orion rocket onto the city. The obvious discomfort the realism-heavy Buscema experienced with the Hulk’s appearance has mostly faded by second chapter ‘The Birth of… the Hulk-Killer!’, although the return of veteran inker Mike Esposito to the strip also helps. As General Ross releases a weapon designed by the Leader to capture the Grim Green Giant, the old soldier has no inkling what his rash act will lead to, nor that Boomerang is lurking behind the scenes to make things even hotter for the Hulk…

Issue #87’s concluding episode ‘The Humanoid and the Hero!’ depicts Ross’ regret as the Hulk-Killer expands his remit to include everybody in his path before Gil Kane returns for #88 as ‘Boomerang and the Brute’ shows both the assassin and the Hulk’s true power.

Tales to Astonish #89 once more sees the Hulk become an unwilling weapon as a nigh-omnipotent alien subverts and sets him to purging humanity from the Earth. ‘…Then, There Shall Come a Stranger!’, ‘The Abomination!’ and ‘Whosoever Harms The Hulk…!’ comprise a taut and evocative thriller-trilogy which also includes the origin of the malevolent Hulk counterpart (Gamma-suffused spy Emil Blonsky who would play such a large part in later tales of the ill-fated Bruce Banner)…

With covers by Kirby, Gene Colan, Giacoia, Everett, Kane, & Colletta and most certainly “To Be Hulk-inued…” these titanic tales are somewhat hit-and-miss, with visceral thrillers and plain dumb nonsense running together, but the enthusiasm and sheer quality of the awesome artistic endeavours should go a long way to mitigating most of the downside. These are – even at their worst – full-on, butt-kicking, “breaking-stuff” thrillers to delight the destructive eight-year-old in everyone. Hulk Smash(ing)!
© 2023 MARVEL.

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Popeye volume 3: The Sea Hag & Alice the Goon (The E.C. Segar Popeye Sundays)


By Elzie Crisler Segar with Bong Redila & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-884-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

Popeye first embarked in the Thimble Theatre comic feature on January 17th 1929. The unassuming newspaper strip had launched on 19th December 1919: one of many cartoon funnies to parody and burlesque the era’s silent movie serials. Its more successful forebears included C.W. Kahles’ Hairbreadth Harry and Ed Wheelan’s Midget Movies/Minute Movies – which Thimble Theatre replaced in William Randolph Hearsts’ papers.

All these strips employed a repertory company of characters playing out generic adventures based on those expressive cinema antics. Thimble Theatre’s cast included Nana and Cole Oyl, their gawky, excessively excitable daughter Olive, diminutive-but-pushy son Castor and Olive’s sappy, would-be beau Horace Hamgravy. The series ticked along nicely for a decade: competent, unassuming and always entertaining, with Castor and Ham Gravy (as he became) tumbling through get-rich-quick schemes, frenzied, fear-free adventures and gag situations until September 10th 1928, when explorer uncle Lubry Kent Oyl gave Castor a spoil from his latest exploration of Africa. It was the most fabulous of all birds – a hand-reared Whiffle Hen – and was the start of something truly groundbreaking…

Whiffle Hens are troublesome, incredibly rare and possessed of fantastic powers, but after months of inspired hokum and slapstick shenanigans, Castor was inclined to keep Bernice – for that was the hen’s name – as a series of increasingly peculiar circumstances brought him into contention with ruthless Mr. Fadewell, world’s greatest gambler and king of the gaming resort dubbed ‘Dice Island’. Bernice clearly affected and inspired writer/artist E.C. Segar, because his strip increasingly became a playground of frantic, compelling action and comedy during this period…

When Castor and Ham discovered everybody wanted the Whiffle Hen because she could bestow infallible good luck, they sailed for Dice Island to win every penny from its lavish casinos. Big sister Olive wanted to come along, but the boys planned to leave her behind once their vessel was ready to sail. It was 16th January 1929…

The next day, in the 108th episode of that extended saga, a bluff, brusquely irascible, ignorant, itinerant and exceeding ugly one-eyed old sailor was hired by the pathetic pair to man the boat they had rented, and the world was introduced to one of the most iconic and memorable characters ever conceived. By sheer surly willpower, Popeye won readers’ hearts and minds: his no-nonsense, rough grumbling simplicity and dubious appeal enchanting the public until, by tale’s end, the walk-on had taken up residency. He would soon make Thimble Theatre his own…

The Sailor Man affably steamed onto the full-colour Sunday Pages forming the meat of this curated collection. This paperback prize is the third of four designed for swanky slipcases, and will present Segar’s entire Sunday canon. Spiffy as that sounds, the wondrous stories are also available in digital editions if you want to think of ecology or mitigate the age and frailty of your spinach-deprived “muskles”…

Son of a handyman, Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8th December 1894. His early life was filled with solid, earnest blue-collar jobs that typified his generation of cartoonists. Young Segar worked as a decorator/house-painter, played drums to accompany vaudeville acts at the local theatre and when the town got a movie house played for the silent films. This allowed him to absorb staging, timing and narrative tricks from close observation of the screen, and these became his greatest assets as a cartoonist. It was whilst working as a film projectionist, he decided to draw for his living, and tell his own stories. He was 18…

Like so many from that “can-do” era, Segar studied art via mail: in this case W.L. Evans’ cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio – from where Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster would launch Superman upon the world. Segar gravitated to Chicago and was “discovered” by Richard F. Outcault (The Yellow Kid, Buster Brown), arguably the inventor of newspaper comics. Outcault introduced Segar around at the prestigious Chicago Herald and soon – although still wet behind the ears – Segar’s first strip Charley Chaplin’s Comedy Capers debuted on 12th March 1916. Two years later, Elzie married Myrtle Johnson and moved to Hearst’s Chicago Evening American to create Looping the Loop. Managing Editor William Curley saw a big future for Segar and promptly packed the newlyweds off to the Manhattan headquarters of the mighty King Features Syndicate.

Within a year Segar was producing Thimble Theatre for The New York Journal. In 1924, Segar created a second daily strip. The 5:15 was a surreal domestic comedy featuring weedy commuter/would-be inventor John Sappo and his formidable, indomitable wife Myrtle (!).

A born storyteller, Segar had from the start an advantage even his beloved cinema couldn’t match. His brilliant ear for dialogue and accent shone out from the admittedly average melodrama adventure plots, adding lustre to stories and gags he always felt he hadn’t drawn well enough. After a decade or so – and just as cinema caught up with the introduction of “talkies” – he finally discovered a character whose unique sound and individual vocalisations blended with a fantastic, enthralling nature to create a literal superstar.

Incoherent, plug-ugly and stingingly sarcastic, Popeye shambled on stage midway through ‘Dice Island’ and once his very minor part played out, simply refused to leave. Within a year he was a regular. As circulation skyrocketed, he became the star. In the less than 10 years Segar worked with his iconic sailor-man (from January 1929 until the artist’s untimely death on 13th October 1938), the auteur constructed an incredible metaworld of fabulous lands and lost locales, where unique characters undertook fantastic voyages, spawned or overcame astounding scenarios and experienced big, unforgettable thrills as well as the small human dramas we’re all subject to. They also threw punches at the drop of a hat…

This was a saga both extraordinary and mundane, which could be hilarious or terrifying – frequently at the same time. For every trip to the rip-roaring Wild West or lost kingdom, there was a brawl between squabbling neighbours, spats between friends or disagreements between sweethearts – any and all usually settled with mightily-swung fists and a sarcastic aside.

Popeye was the first Superman of comics and ultimate working-class hero but he was not a comfortable one to idolise. A brute who thought with his fists, lacking respect for authority, he was uneducated, short-tempered and – whenever hot tomatoes batted their eyelashes (or thereabouts) at him – fickle: a worrisome gambling troublemaker who wasn’t welcome in polite society… and wouldn’t want to be. However, the mighty marine marvel may be raw and rough-hewn,  but he is fair and practical, with an innate and unshakable sense of what’s right and what’s not: a joker who wants kids to be themselves – but not necessarily “good” – and someone who takes no guff from anybody. Always ready to defend the weak and with absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows, he was and will always be “the best of us”…

Preceding the vintage views, this tome offers another sublime and compellingly whimsical cartoon deconstruction, demystification and appreciation in ‘Allegro in C Hag Minor’ – An Introduction by Bong Redila’ wherein the multi award winning Filipino American cartoonist (Meläg, Borderline) explores the sparking relationship of the witch and her hairy pal…

There is more than one Popeye. If your first thought when you hear the name is the cheerful, indomitable sailor in full Naval whites always biffing a hulking great beardy-bloke and mainlining tinned spinach, that’s okay. The Fleischer Studios and Famous Films animated features have a vivid brilliance and spontaneous energy of their own (even the later, watered-down anodyne TV versions have some merit) and they are indeed all based on the grizzled, crusty, foul-mouthed, bulletproof, golden-hearted old swab who shambled his way into the fully cast and firmly established newspaper strip Thimble Theatre on January 17th and simple wouldn’t leave. But they are really only the tip of an incredible iceberg of satire, slapstick, virtue, vice and mind-boggling adventure.

This third collection of Segar’s Sunday Colour comics masterpiece spans December 3rd 1933 to February 16th 1936, opening with his magnum opus ‘Plunder Island’ in full, unexpurgated totality, with the epitome of stirring sea-sagas taking up the first six months of that time (ending with the July 15th 1934 instalment). It all kicks off when Popeye’s old shipmate Salty Bill Barnacle invites him to go adventuring in search of fabled Plunder Island, land of stolen treasure, little suspecting that the ghastly villainous Sea Hag who rules it has reared her homely head once more and is very close…

With her new gang of deadly henchmen – including brutal Mister Skom and the monstrous Goon – she kidnaps nerve-wracked Professor Cringly: an aged scholar who knows the lost island’s location. Is Popeye’s latest voyage over before it has begun…?

Gathering a bunch of decidedly dubious amateur Argonauts – including but not exclusively comprising – J. Wellington Wimpy, diner owner Rough-House, “Gobbler” George W. Geezil and private cop G.B. Gritmore, Olive Oyl, Salty Bill and Popeye give chase. It seems hopeless until the Witch of the Seas makes her big mistake and sends her monstrous mute Goon to take hostages. The uncanny creature returns with the indomitable sea salt and inexplicably irresistible Wimpy. The latter’s heretofore unsuspected amatory attractions promptly turn the gruesome heads of both the Hag and her mute minion – who is apparently a rather decent if unprepossessing mother answering to Alice…

In this sinister saga Segar’s second greatest character creation – morally maladjusted master moocher Wimpy – gradually takes over, threating Popeye’s star status with shameful antics and scurrilous schemes. Among so many timeless supporting characters, craven mega moocher Wimpy stands out as the utter antithesis of feisty big-hearted Popeye, but unlike any other nemesis I can name, this black mirror is not an “emeny” of the hero, but his best – maybe only – friend…

The Mr. Micawber-like coward, moocher and conman debuted on 3rd May 1931 as an unnamed referee officiating a bombastic month-long bout against pugilist Tinearo. He struck a chord with Segar who made him a (usually unwelcome) fixture. Eternally ravenous and always soliciting (probably on principle) bribes of any magnitude, we only learned the crook’s name in May 24th’s instalment. The erudite rogue uttered the first of many immortal catchphrases a month later. That was June 21st – but “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” – like most phrases Everybody Knows, actually started as “Cook me up a hamburger, I’ll pay you Thursday”. It was closely followed by my personal mantra “let’s you and him fight”…

Sunday Pages followed a decidedly domestic but rowdily riotous path, increasing given over to – or more correctly, appropriated – by the insidiously oleaginous grifter: ever hungry, intellectually stimulating, casually charming and usually triumphant in all his mendicant missions. Whilst continuing Popeye’s pugilistic shenanigans, the strips moved away from him hitting quite so much to alternately being outwitted by the unctuous beggar or saving him from the vengeance of furious eatery-owner Rough-House and fellow daily diner Geezil. The soup-slurping cove began as an ethnic Jewish stereotype, but like all Segar’s characters soon developed beyond his (now so very offensive) comedic archetype into a whole person with his own story and equally unique voice. Geezil was the most vocal advocate for murdering the insatiable sponger…

Fair warning: this was an era of casual racial stereotyping completely acceptable and indeed a key component of cartooning and all mass entertainment. Segar sinned far less than most: his style was more character-specific, and his personal delight was playing with accents and how folk interacted. Geezil wasn’t just a Jewish stock figure of fun, but as fully rounded as any of nearly 50 supporting cast members could be within page/panel count constrictions.

Wimpy was incorrigible and unstoppable – he was even a rival suitor for Olive’s unappealing affections whenever food or money (for food) was in play. He grew from Segar’s love and admiration of comedian W.C. Fields. A mercurial force of nature, the unflappable mendicant is the perfect foil for Popeye. Where the sailor is heart and spirit, unquestioning morality and self-sacrifice, indomitable defiance, brute force and no smarts at all, Wimpy is intellect and self-serving greed, freed from ethical restraint and devoid of impulse-control.

Wimpy literally took candy from babies and food from the mouths of starving children, yet somehow Segar made us love him. He is Popeye’s other half: weld them together and you have an heroic ideal… (and yes, those stories are all true: Britain’s Wimpy burger bar chain was built from the remnants of a 1950s international merchandising scheme seeking to put a J Wellington Wimpy-themed restaurant in every town and city).

Rollercoaster adventure, thrills, chills and raucous riotous comedy have never been better blended than in Plunder Island, but when the victorious crew return home, the fun doesn’t stop as we see the bitter aftermath and how our various treasure-seekers dispose of or lose the fabulous wealth they’ve won. Wimpy simply and rapidly eats his way through most of his, whilst Popeye once again gives his cash away, prompting a return to prize fighting against a succession of increasingly scary and barely human opponents. One such man-mountain is Kid Nitro with Wimpy again playing extremely partial referee. When the unscrupulous umpire bets all he has left against Popeye, the Sailor Man pauperises the cheat just by being his valiant self…

For a while, unrelated gag sequences (fights and romantic tiffs) keep the ball rolling every sabbath before mighty “infink” Swee’pea makes his Sunday debut on 28th October 1934 (after being initially introduced in the daily strip: see E.C. Segar’s Popeye volume 3: “Let’s You and Him Fight” ). Adopted by Popeye, he became the focus of many outrageous episodes allowing audiences to comfortably decompress before the next Big Story. These gag exploits see Popeye dally with “High Sassiety” and inadvertently turn effete, spoiled rich child William Bankley into wholesome fun-loving little tough guy Bill whilst honing in on Wimpy’s appetite, ruthless scavenging of pets and livestock and duck hunting antics.

They culminate in appalling excess consumption and his mooching never ends: permanently predating on Rough-House and the distressed cobbler and leading to a shocking sequence of strips where – driven mad by Wimpey’s relentless mooching – the shoemaker kills his despised nemesis with burgers garnished with rat poison…

That aforementioned approaching epic then mines western themes as the cast (plus prodigal brother Castor Oyl) head west to Slither Creek (April 14th to August 25th 1935) as gold prospectors, with Wimpy lost in the desert, undergoing incredible – and well-deserved – hardships as Swee’Pea perpetually proves the benefits of a spinach-&-milk diet. Somehow, the sunny sojourn leaves Wimpy rolling in gold when they return home. As Popeye goes back to battling bulky boxers and sparring with Olive, the temporarily wealthy, eternally empty Wimpy buys his own diner in the ultimate expression of blind optimism and sheer folly. Eventually, the master beggar triumphs over all and gets to eat his fill… and must deal with the consequences of his locust-like consumption…

These tales are as vibrant and compelling now as they’ve ever been, comprising a classic of graphic literature only a handful of creators have ever matched. Segar famously considered himself an inferior draughtsman – most of the world disagreed and still does – but his ability to weave a yarn was unquestioned, and grew to astounding and epic proportions in these strips. Week by week he was creating the syllabary and lexicon of a brand-new artform: inventing narrative tricks and beats that generations of artists and writers would use in their own creations. Despite some astounding successors, no one ever bettered Segar.

Popeye is five years shy of his centenary and deserves his place as a global icon. How many comics characters are still enjoying new adventures 95 years after their first? These volumes are a perfect way to celebrate the genius and mastery of E.C. Segar and his brilliantly flawed superman. These are tales you’ll treasure all of your life and superb books you must not miss.

Popeye volume 3: The Sea Hag & Alice the Goon is copyright © 2023 King Features Syndicate, Inc./™Hearst Holdings, Inc. This edition © 2023 Fantagraphics Books Inc. Segar comic strips provided by Bill Blackbeard and his San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. “Allegro in C Hag Minor” © 2023 Bong Redila. All rights reserved.

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Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 01 – 10th Anniversary Edition


By John Wagner, Pat Mills, Kelvin Gosnell, Peter Harris, Malcolm Shaw, Charles Herring, Gerry Finlay-Day, Robert Flynn, Joe Collins, Carlos Ezquerra, Mike McMahon, Ian Gibson, Massimo Belardinelli, Ron Turner, John Cooper, Bill Ward, Brian Bolland & various (Rebellion/REBCA)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-332-1 (HB/Digital edition)

Britain’s last great comic icon can be described as a combination of the other two, combining the futuristic milieu and thrills of Dan Dare with the terrifying anarchy and irreverent absurdity of Dennis the Menace. He’s the longest-lasting adventure character in our rather meagre comics stable, having been continually published every week since February 1977 when he kicked off in the second issue of science-fiction anthology 2000AD – and now that The Dandy’s gone, veterans Korky the Cat and Desperate Dan might one day be overtaken in the comedy stakes too…

However, with at least 52 2000AD episodes a year, annuals, specials, a newspaper strip (in the Daily Star and The Metro), Judge Dredd Megazine, numerous reprinted classic comics collections, some rather appalling franchised foreign comic book spin-off titles, that adds up to a phenomenal amount of material, most of which is still happily in print.

Judicial Review: Dredd and dystopian ultra-metropolis Mega-City One – originally posited as 21st century New York – were formulated by a very talented committee including Pat Mills, Kelvin Gosnell, Carlos Ezquerra, Mike McMahon and others, with major contributions from legendary writer John Wagner who has written the largest portion of the canon under his own name and several pseudonyms.

Joe Dredd is a fanatically dedicated law enforcer dubbed a Judge in the super-city, where hundreds of millions of citizens idle away their days in a world where robots are cheaper, more efficient and frequently crazier than humans, where jobs are both beloved pastime and treasured commodity. Boredom is at epidemic proportions and almost everybody is just one askance glance away from mental meltdown. Judges are peacekeepers who maintain order at all costs: investigating, taking action and trying all crimes and disturbances to the hard-won equilibrium of the constantly boiling melting pot. Justice is always immediate…

Dredd’s world is a polluted and precarious Future (In)Tense, with all key analogues for successful sci fi (as ever a social looking-glass for the times it’s created in) situated and sharply attuned to a Cold War Consumer Civilisation. The ravaged planet is split into political camps with post-nuclear holocaust America locked in a slow death-struggle with Sov Judges of the old Eastern Communist blocs. Eastern lawmen are militaristic, oppressive and totalitarian – and that’s by the US Judges’ standards – so just imagine what they’re actually like. Judges are necessary fascists in a world permanently on the edge of catastrophe, and sadly, what far too many readers never realised is the strip is a gigantic satirical black comedy with oodles of outrageous, vicarious cathartic action.

Such was not the case when the super-cop debuted in 2000AD Prog (that’s issue number to you) #2 on March 5th 1977. He was stuck at the back of the new weekly comic in a tale finally scripted – after much intensive re-hashing – by Peter Harris and illustrated by Mike McMahon & Carlos Ezquerra. The blazing, humourless, no-nonsense (there would be plenty of yes nonsense later) action extravaganza introduced a bike-riding Sentinel of Order in the cautionary tale of brutal bandit Whitey, whose savage crime spree was ended with ferocious efficiency before the thug was sentenced to Devil’s Island – a high-rise artificial plateau surrounded by the City’s constant stream of lethal, never-ending, high-speed traffic. Prog #3 saw Dredd investigate ‘The New You’ in a cunning thriller by Gosnell & McMahon wherein a crafty crook tries to escape justice by popping into his local face-changing shop, whilst #4 saw the first appearance of the outcast mutants in ‘The Brotherhood of Darkness’ (Malcolm Shaw & McMahon) as ghastly post-nuclear pariahs raid the megalopolis for slaves.

Early hints of humour began in Prog 5’s ‘Krong’ by Shaw & Ezquerra, introducing Dredd’s little-old-lady cleaner/landlady Maria, wherein deranged horror film fan/hologram salesman Kevin O’Neill – yes it’s an in-joke – unleashes a giant mechanical gorilla on the city. The issue was the first to cover-feature old Stone Face (that’s Dredd, not Kev)…

‘Frankenstein 2’ pits the Lawman against an audacious medical mastermind, hijacking citizens to keep his rich-but-aging clients in fresh, young organs, whilst #7 sees ruthless reprobate Ringo’s gang of muggers flaunting their criminality in the very shadow of ‘The Statue of Judgement’ until Dredd lowers the boom on them…

The first indications that the super-cop’s face was somehow hideously disfigured emerge in #8, as Charles Herring & Massimo Belardinelli’s ‘Antique Car Heist’ finds the Judge tracking down a murdering thief who stole an ancient petrol-burning vehicle, after which co-creator John Wagner returned in Prog 9 to begin a staggering run of tales with ‘Robots’, illustrated by veteran British science fiction artist Ron Turner. The gripping vignette was set at the Robot of the Year Show, exposing callous cruelty citizens inflicted upon their mechanical slaves as a by-product of a violent blackmail threat by a disabled maniac in a mechanical-super chair… This set the scene for an ambitious mini-saga in #10-17 as those casual injustices paved the way for ‘Robot Wars’ (alternately illustrated over the weeks by Ezquerra, Turner, McMahon & much missed arch wag Ian Gibson) wherein carpentry-robot Call-Me-Kenneth succumbs to a mecha mind meltdown to emerge as a human-hating steel Spartacus, spearheading a bloody revolution against fleshy oppressors.

The slaughter is widespread and terrible before the Judges regain control, helped in no small part by loyal, lisping Vending droid Walter the Wobot, who graduated at the conclusion to Dredd’s second live-in comedy foil…

With order restored, self-contained stories firmed up the vision of the crazed city. In Prog 18 Wagner & McMahon introduced the menace of mind-bending ‘Brainblooms’ cultivated by another little old lady/career criminal, and Gerry Finley-Day & John Cooper described the galvanising effect of a ‘Muggers Moon’ on Mega-City 1’s criminal class before Dredd demonstrated the inadvisability of being an uncooperative witness…

Wagner & McMahon then debuted Dredd’s bizarre paid informant Max Normal in #20, whose latest tip ended the profitable career of ‘The Comic Pusher’; Finley-Day & Turner turned in a workmanlike thriller as the laconic lawmaker tackles a seasoned killer with a deadly new weapon in ‘The Solar Sniper’ and Wagner & Gibson showed the draconian steps Dredd was prepared to take to bring in mutant assassin ‘Mr Buzzz’.

Prog 23 comfortably catapulted the series into all-out ironic satire mode with Finley-Day & McMahon’s ‘Smoker’s Crime’ when Dredd stalks a killer with a nicotine habit to a noxious City Smokatorium, after which Malcolm Shaw, McMahon & Ezquerra reveal the uncanny secret of ‘The Wreath Murders’ in #24. The next issue began the long tradition of spoofing TV and media fashions with Wagner & Gibson concocting lethal illegal game show ‘You Bet Your Life’ whilst #26 exposes the sordid illusory joys and dangers of the ‘Dream Palace’ (McMahon) before #27-28 offer some crucial background on the Judges themselves when Dredd visits ‘The Academy of Law’ (Wagner & Gibson) to give Cadet Judge Giant his final practical exam. Of course, for Dredd there are no half measures or easy going and the novice barely survives graduation…

With the concluding part in #28, Dredd moved to second spot in 2000AD (behind brutally jingoistic thriller Invasion) and the next issue saw Pat Mills & Gibson confront robot racism as Ku Kux Klan-analogue ‘The Neon Knights’ brutalised the reformed and broken artificial citizenry until the Juggernaut Judge krushes them.

Mills then offered tantalising hints on Dredd’s origins in ‘The Return of Rico!’ (McMahon) as a bitter criminal resurfaces after twenty years on the penal colony of Titan. The outcast wants vengeance on the Judge who had sentenced him, but from his earliest days as a fresh-faced rookie, Joe Dredd had no time for corrupt lawmen – even if one were his own clone-brother…

Whitey escapes from ‘Devil’s Island’ (Finley-Day & Gibson) in Prog 31, thanks to a cobbled-together contraption that turns off weather control, but doesn’t get far before Dredd sends him back, whilst fully automated skyscraper resort ‘Komputel’ (Robert Flynn & McMahon) becomes a multi-story murder factory that only Mega-City’s greatest Judge can counter before Wagner (as John Howard) took sole control for a series of savage, whacky escapades beginning with #33’s ‘Walter’s Secret Job’ (art by Gibson). Here the besotted droid is discovered moonlighting as a cabbie to buy “pwesents” for his beloved master…

McMahon & Gibson illustrated 2-parter ‘Mutie the Pig’: a flamboyant criminal and bent Judge, and perform the same tag-team effort on ‘The Troggies’, a debased colony of ancient humans living under the city and preying on the unwary…

Something of a bogie man for wayward kids and exhausted parents, Dredd does himself no favours in Prog 38 bursting in on ‘Billy Jones’ (Gibson) and exposing a vast espionage plot utilising toys as surveillance tools. On tackling ‘The Ape Gang’ in #39 (19th November 1977 by McMahon), the Judge graduated to lead spot whilst quashing a turf war between augmented, educated, criminal anthropoids in the unruly district dubbed “the Jungle”…

‘The Mega-City 5000’ was an illegal, murderously bloody street race the Judges were determined to shut down, but the gripping action-illustration of the Bill Ward drawn first chapter is sadly overshadowed by hyper-realist rising star Brian Bolland, who began his legendary association with Dredd by concluding the mini-epic in blistering, captivating style in Prog 41. Bolland, by his own admission, was an uncommercially slow artist and much of his later Dredd work would appear as weekly portions of large epics with others handling intervening episodes, giving him time to complete his own assignments with a minimum of pressure.

From out of nowhere in a bold change of pace, Dredd is seconded to the Moon for a 6-month tour of duty beginning in #42. His brief is to oversee the nigh-lawless colony set up by the unified efforts of three US Mega-Cities there. The outpost was as bonkers as Mega-City One and a good deal less civilised – a true Final Frontier town…

The extended epic began with Wagner & Gibson’s ‘Luna-1’, with Dredd and stowaway Walter almost shot down en route in a mysterious missile attack before being targeted by a suicide-bomb robot before they can even unpack. ‘Showdown on Luna-1’ introduces permanent Deputy-Marshal Judge Tex from Texas-City, whose jaded, laissez-faire attitudes get a sound shaking up when Dredd demonstrates he’s one lawman who won’t coast for the duration of his term in office. Hitting dusty mean streets, Dredd starts cleaning up the wild boys by outdrawing a mechanical Robo-Slinger and uncovering another assassination ploy. It seems reclusive mega-billionaire ‘Mr. Moonie’ has a problem with the latest law on his lunar turf…

Whilst dispensing aggravating administrative edicts like a frustrated Solomon, Dredd chafes to hit the streets and do real work in #44’s McMahon-limned ‘Red Christmas’. Opportunity arises when arrogant axe-murderer ‘Geek Gorgon’ abducts Walter and demands a showdown he barely lives to regret, whilst ’22nd Century Futsie!’ (Gibson) finds Moonie Fabrications clerk Arthur Goodworthy cracking under the strain of overwork: going on a destructive binge, with Dredd compelled to protect a future-shocked father’s family from Moonie’s overzealous security goons. The arc concludes in Prog 46 with ‘Meet Mr. Moonie’ (Gibson) as Dredd & Walter confront the manipulative manufacturer and uncover his horrific secret.

The feature moved to the prestigious middle spot with this episode, allowing artists to really open up and exploit full-colour centre-spreads, none more so than Bolland as seen in #47’s ‘Land Race’ as Dredd officiates over a frantic scramble by colonists to secure newly opened plots of habitable territory. Of course, there’s always someone who doesn’t want to share…

Ian Gibson illustrated 2-part drama ‘The Oxygen Desert’ (#48-49), wherein veteran moon-rat Wild Butch Carmody defeats Dredd using superior knowledge of the airless wastes beyond the airtight domes. Broken, the Judge quits and slides into despondency, but all is not as it seems…

Prog 50 debuted single-page comedy supplement Walter the Wobot: Fwiend of Dwedd – but more of that later – whilst the long-suffering Justice found himself knee-boot deep in an international interplanetary crisis when ‘The First Lunar Olympics’ (Bolland) against a rival lunar colony controlled by the Machiavellian Judges of the Sov-Cities bloc escalates into assassination and a murderous, politically-fuelled land grab. The conflict was settled in ostensibly civilised manner with strictly controlled ‘War Games’, yet there’s still a grievously high body-count by the time the moon-dust settles. This vicious swipe at contemporary sport’s politicisation was and still is bloody, brutal and bitingly funny…

Bolland illustrated a sardonic saga of ruthless bandits up for a lethal laugh in #52’s ‘The Face-Change Crimes’, employing morphing tech to change their appearances and rob at will until Dredd beats them at their own game. Wagner & Gibson crafted a 4-part epic (Progs 53-56) wherein motor fanatic Dave Paton’s cybernetic, child-like pride-&-joy blows a fuse and terrorises the domed territory: slaughtering humans and infiltrating Dredd’s own quarters before the Judge finally stops ‘Elvis, The Killer Car’.

Bolland stunningly limned a savagely mordant saga of killer bandits who hijack the moon’s air before themselves falling foul of ‘The Oxygen Board’ in #57, but only managed the first two pages of 58’s ‘Full Earth Crimes’, leaving McMahon to complete the tale of regularly occurring chaos in the streets whenever the Big Blue Marble dominates the black sky above.

It was a fine and frantic note to end on as, with ‘Return to Mega-City’, Dredd rotates back Earthside and resumes business as unusual. Readers were probably baffled as to why the returned cop utterly ignored countless crime and misdemeanours, but Wagner & McMahon provide a logical answer in a brilliant, action-packed set-up for madcap dramas to come

This first Case Files chronicle nominally concludes with Wagner & McMahon’s ‘Firebug’ from Prog 60, as the ultimate lawgiver deals with a seemingly-crazed arsonist literally setting the city ablaze. The Law soon discovers a purely venal motive to the apparent madness…

There’s still a wealth of superb bonus material to enjoy before we end, however, and kicking off proceedings is the controversial First Dredd strip (illustrated by Ezquerra) which was bounced from 2000AD #1 and vigorously reworked – a fascinating glimpse of what the series might have been. It’s followed by the eawliest Walter the Wobot: Fwiend of Dwedd stwips (sowwy – can’t wesist!) from 2000AD Progs 50-58. Scripted by Joe Collins, these madcap comedy shorts were seen as antidote to the savage, brutal action strips and served to set the scene for Dredd’s later full-on satirical lampoonery. Illustrated by Gibson, ‘Tap Dancer’ dealt with an embarrassing plumbing emergency whilst ‘Shoot Pool!’ has the Wobot again taking his Judge’s instructions far too literally…

Bolland came aboard giving full rein to his own sense of the absurd with 5-parter ‘Walter’s Brother’: a bizarre tale of evil twins, cunning frame-ups and malign muggings inevitably resulting in us learning all we needed to know about the insipidly faithful, annoying rust-bucket. Dredd then had to rescue the plastic poltroon from becoming a pirate of the airwaves in ‘Radio Walter’ before the star-struck servant finds his 15 seconds of fame as winner of rigged quiz-show ‘Masterbrain’ and this big, big book concludes with a trio of Dredd covers from Progs 10, 44 and 59, courtesy of artists Ezquerra, Kev O’Neill and McMahon.

Mesmerising and beautifully limned, these punchy stories of Britain’s most successful and iconic comics character are the narrative bedrock from which all the later successes of the Mirthless Moral Myrmidon derive. More importantly, they are timeless classics no comic fan can ignore – and just for a change something that you can easily get your hungry hands on. Even my local library has copies of this masterpiece of British literature and popular culture…
© 1977, 1978, 2006 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved. Judge Dredd & 2000AD are ® & ™ Rebellion.

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Batman and Superman in World’s Finest Comics: The Silver Age volume 1


By Edmond Hamilton, Bill Finger, Jerry Coleman, Curt Swan, Dick Sprang, Stan Kaye, Sheldon Moldoff, Charles Paris, Ray Burnley & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7780-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

This year marks Batman’s 85th Anniversary and we’ll be covering many old and new books about the Dark Knight over the year. However, the Gotham Guardian’s impact has been far ranging and sustained, so let’s also take a look at his part in reshaping Superman and other heroes too…

Some things were just meant to be: bacon & eggs, rhubarb & custard, chalk & cheese…

Both initially debuting as driven loners, after settling into their respective pioneering superhero niches, Superman and Batman ultimately worked together as the “World’s Finest” team for decades. They were friends as well as colleagues and their pairing made sound financial sense since DC’s top heroes (in effect, the company’s only costumed stars) could cross-pollinate and, more importantly, cross-sell their combined readerships.

This most inevitable of Paladin Pairings first occurred on the Superman radio show in 1945, and in comics the pair only briefly met whilst on a Justice Society of America adventure in All-Star Comics #36 (August/September 1947) – and even there they missed each other in the general gaudy hubbub…

Of course, they had shared the covers of World’s Finest Comics from the outset, but never crossed paths inside; sticking firmly to their specified solo adventures. For us pictorial continuity buffs, the climactic real first time was in the pages of Superman’s own bi-monthly comic (issue #76, May/June 1952), but the real birth of their partnership came in World’s Finest Comics #71 cover-dated July/August 1954 and making 2024 their official 70th Anniversary. (Yay, Teams!)

In 1952, pulp science fiction author Edmond Hamilton had been tasked with revealing how Man of Steel and Caped Crusader first met and accidentally uncovered each other’s costumed identities – whilst sharing a cabin on an overbooked cruise liner. Although an average crime-stopper yarn, it was the start of a phenomenon. Of course you’ll need to revisit the previous volume for that and other early team up tales…

With dwindling page counts, rising costs but a proven readership and after years of co-starring but never mingling, World’s Finest Comics #71 had presented Superman and Batman in the first of their official shared cases. A huge hit, the innovative partnership was one of the few superhero success stories of the 1950s and this second stunning compendium of Silver Age solid gold spans July/August 1958 to March 1961: re-presenting the lead stories from World’s Finest Comics #95-116. The astounding archive of adventure opens with a Hamilton, Dick Sprang & Ray Burnley yarn pitting the temporarily equally multi-powered and alien-entranced champions against each other in ‘The Battle of the Super-Heroes’.

A magical succession of magnificent and light-heartedly whacky classics began in WFC #96 with Hamilton’s ‘The Super-Foes from Planet X’, wherein indolent and effete aliens dispatch fantastic monsters to battle the titanic trio for the best possible reasons…

Bill Finger took over scripting with #97, incomprehensibly turning the Man of Steel on his greatest friends in ‘The Day Superman Betrayed Batman’, after which ‘The Menace of the Moonman!’ pits the heroes against a deranged hyper-powered astronaut. Then, ‘Batman’s Super-Spending Spree!’ baffles his close friends before Lex Luthor devilishly traps Superman in the newly-recovered “Bottle City of Kandor” to become ‘The Dictator of Krypton City’ – all breathtaking epics beautifully limned by Sprang & Kaye.

Sprang inked himself in rocket-paced super-crime thriller ‘The Menace of the Atom-Master’ whereas it took Curt Swan, Burnley, Sprang & Sheldon Moldoff to properly unveil the titanic tragedy of ‘The Caveman from Krypton’ in #102. Sprang & Moldoff then unveiled ‘The Secret of the Sorcerer’s Treasure’, depicting a couple of treasure hunters driven mad by the tempting power of freshly unearthed magical artefacts, after which Luthor came to regret using a hostage Batwoman to facilitate ‘The Plot to Destroy Superman!’…

After a metamorphosis which turned Clark Kent into ‘The Alien Superman’ proved not at all what it seemed to be, ‘The Duplicate Man’ in WF #106 sees the ultimate downfall of a villain who develops an almost unbeatable crime tool. He’s followed by ‘The Secret of the Time-Creature’ who encompassed centuries and resulted in one of Finger’s very best detective thrillers to baffle but never stump the Cape & Cowl Crusaders…

Jerry Coleman assumed the writer’s role with ‘The Star Creatures’ (art by Sprang & Stan Kaye); the tale of an extraterrestrial moviemaker whose deadly props were stolen by Earth crooks. Stellar cover artist Curt Swan (with Stan Kaye inking) finally made the move to interior illustrator for ‘The Bewitched Batman’, detailing a tense race against time to save the Gotham Guardian from an ancient curse, before ‘The Alien who Doomed Robin’ (Sprang & Moldoff) sees a symbiotic link between monster marauder and Boy Wonder leave the senior heroes apparently helpless – at least for a little while…

Finger, Sprang & Moldoff toured ‘Superman’s Secret Kingdom’ (#111, August 1960) in a compelling lost world yarn wherein a cataclysmic holocaust deprives the Man of Steel of his memory, necessitating Batman and Robin seeking to cure him at all costs…

The next issue – by Coleman, Sprang & Moldoff – delivered a unique and tragic warning in ‘The Menace of Superman’s Pet’ as a phenomenally cute teddy bear from space proves to be an unbelievably dangerous menace and unforgettable true friend. Bring tissues, you big babies…

In an era when disturbing or terrifying menaces were frowned upon, many tales featured intellectual dilemmas and unavoidably irritating pests to torment our heroes. Both Gotham Guardian and Man of Steel had their own magical 5th dimensional gadflies and it was therefore only a matter of time until ‘Bat-Mite Meets Mr. Mxyzptlk’: a madcap duel to determine whose hero was best with America caught in the metamorphic middle.

WF #114 saw Superman, Batman & Robin shanghaied to distant world Zoron with their abilities are reversed as ‘Captives of the Space Globes’. Nevertheless, justice is still served in the end, after which ‘The Curse that Doomed Superman’ sees the Action Ace consistently outfoxed by a scurrilous Swami with the Darknight Detective helpless to assist him…

Swan & Kaye return for #116’s thrilling monster mash ‘The Creature from Beyond’ to wrap up this volume with a criminal alien out-powering Superman whilst concealing an incredible secret…

Here are gloriously clever yet uncomplicated tales whose dazzling style still inform if not dictate the manner of DC’s modern TV animations – like the fabulous Batman: The Brave and the Bold – and the contents of this titanic tome are a veritable feast of witty, charming thrillers packing as much punch and wonder now as they always have.
© 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents: The Teen Titans volume 1


By Bob Haney, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Bruno Premiani, Nick Cardy, Irv Novick, Bill Molno, Lee Elias, Bill Draut, Jack Abel, Sal Trapani & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-677-1 (TPB)

The concept of kid hero teams was not a new one when DC finally opted to entrust their big heroes’ assorted sidekicks with their own comic. The result was a fab, hip and groovy ensemble as dedicated to helping kids as it was to stamping out insidious evil; ready to capitalise on the growing independence of modern kids.

The greatest difference between underage wartime groups like The Young Allies, Newsboy Legion and Boy Commandos or 1950s holdovers like The Little Wise Guys and Boy Explorers and the birth of the Teen Titans was quite simply a burgeoning social phenomenon popularly dubbed “Teenagers”: a whole new thing regarded as a discrete cultural and commercial force. These were kids who could – and should – be permitted to do things themselves free from constant adult “help” or supervision. This quirkily eclectic compilation re-presents landmark try-out appearances from The Brave and the Bold #54 and 60 and Showcase #59 – collectively debuting in 1964 and1965 – plus the first 18 issues of a Teen Titans solo title, running January/February 1966 to November/December 1968.

As early as the June/July 1964 cover-dated issue of The Brave and the Bold (#54), DC’s Powers-That-Be tested choppy unknown waters in a gripping tale by writer Bob Haney superbly illustrated by unsung genius Bruno Premiani. At that juncture B&B was exploring a succession of superhero combinations and ‘The Thousand-and-One Dooms of Mr. Twister’ united Kid Flash, Aqualad and Robin the Boy Wonder in a bizarre battle against a modern wizard/Pied Piper who had stolen the teens of provincial Hatton Corners. The young heroes had met in the town by chance when students there invited them to mediate a long-running dispute with the adults in charge. Hey Kids! Happy 60th Anniversary!

This element of a teen “court-of-appeal” was the motivating factor in many of the later group’s cases. One year later the lads met again for a second adventure (The Brave and the Bold #60, by the same creative team) but introduced two new elements.

‘The Astounding Separated Man’ featured more misunderstood kids – this time in coastal hamlet Midville – threatened by an outlandish monster whose giant body parts could move independently. They added Wonder Girl (not actually a sidekick, or even a person, at that time but rather a magical/digital artificial avatar of Wonder Woman as a child, but a fact writers and editors seemed blissfully unaware of) and finally earned a name: Teen Titans.

Their final test appearance came in Showcase (issue #59, cover-dated November/December 1965): birthplace of so many hit comic concepts. It was the first drawn by the brilliant Nick Cardy – who became synonymous with the 1960s series. ‘The Return of the Teen Titans’ pitted them against teen pop trio The Flips who were apparently also a gang of super-crooks… but as was so often the case, the grown-ups had got it all wrong…

One month later their own comic launched. Dated January/February 1966, TT #1 was released mere weeks before the first Batman TV show aired on January 12th. Robin was point of focus on the cover – and most succeeding ones – as Haney & Cardy produced exotic thriller ‘The Beast-God of Xochatan!’ with the youngsters acting as Peace Corps representatives in a South America-set drama of sabotage, giant robots and magical monsters.

The next issue held a fantastic mystery of revenge and young love involving ‘The Million-Year-Old Teen-Ager’ who was entombed and revived in the 20th century. He might have survived modern intolerance, bullying and culture shock on his own, but when his ancient blood enemy turned up, the Titans were ready to lend a hand…

TT #3’s ‘The Revolt at Harrison High’ capitalised on the craze for drag-racing in a tale of crazy criminality. Produced during a historically iconic era, many readers now can’t help but cringe when reminded of such daft dastardly foes as Ding-Dong Daddy and his evil bikers, and of course the hip, trendy dialogue (it wasn’t that accurate then, let alone now) is pitifully dated, but the plot is strong and the art magnificent.

‘The Secret Olympic Heroes’ guest-starred Green Arrow’s teen partner Speedy in a very human tale of parental pressure at the peak end of sporting endeavour, although there’s also skulduggery aplenty from a terrorist organisation intent on disrupting the games. In #5’s ‘The Perilous Capers of the Terrible Teen’ the Titans faced dual tasks: helping a troubled young man and capturing a super-villain called The Ant, despite all evidence indicating that they were the same person, before another DC sidekick made his Titans debut in ‘The Fifth Titan’. Here obnoxious juvenile know-it-all Beast Boy from the Doom Patrol falls under the spell of a wicked circus owner and the kids must set things right. Painfully illustrated by Bill Molno & Sal Trapani, it’s the absolute low-point of a stylish run.

Many fans would disagree, however, citing #7’s ‘The Mad Mod, Merchant of Menace’ as the biggest stinker, but beneath painfully dated dialogue there’s a witty, tongue-in-cheek tale of swinging London and novel criminality, plus the return of the magnificent Nick Cardy to the art chores. It was back to America for ‘A Killer called Honey Bun’ (illustrated by Irv Novick & Jack Abel): another tale of adult intolerance and misunderstood youth, set against a backdrop of espionage in Middle America featuring a deadly prototype robotic super-weapon in the title role, whereas #9’s ‘Big Beach Rumble’ saw the Titans refereeing a vendetta between rival colleges before modern day pirates crashed the scene. Novick pencilled and Cardy’s inking made it all very palatable.

The editor obviously agreed as the artists remained for the next few issues. ‘Scramble at Wildcat’ was a crime caper featuring dirt-bikes and desert ghost-towns with skeevy biker The Scorcher profiting from a pernicious robbery spree whilst Speedy returned in #11’s spy-thriller ‘Monster Bait’ with the young heroes undercover to save a boy being blackmailed into betraying his father and his country. Twin hot-topics the Space-Race and Disc Jockeys informed whacky sci fi thriller ‘Large Trouble in Space-ville!’ with #13 a true classic as Haney & Cardy produced a seasonal comics masterpiece ‘The TT’s Swingin’ Christmas Carol!’: a stylish retelling that has become one of the most reprinted Titans tales ever. At this time Cardy’s art opened up as he grasped the experimental flavour of the times. The cover of TT #14, as well as the interior illustration for grim psycho-thriller ‘Requiem for a Titan’ are unforgettable. The case introduced the team’s first serious returning villain (Mad Mod does not count!): The Gargoyle is mesmerising and memorable. Although Cardy only inked Lee Elias’s pencils for #15’s eccentric tryst with Hippie counter-culture, ‘Captain Rumble Blasts the Scene!’ is a genuinely compelling crime thriller from a time when nobody over age 25 understood what the youth of the world was doing…

Teen Titans #16 returned to more fanciful ground in ‘The Dimensional Caper!’ when aliens infiltrate a rural high school (and how many times has that plot resurfaced since this 1968 epic?). Cardy’s art reached dizzying heights of innovation both here and in the next issue’s waggish jaunt to London in ‘Holy Thimbles, It’s the Mad Mod!’: a cunning criminal chase through Cool Britannia including a command performance from Her Majesty, the Queen!

This initial volume ends with a little landmark as novice writers Len Wein & Marv Wolfman got their big break introducing Russian superhero Starfire and setting themselves firmly on a path of teen super-team writing. ‘Eye of the Beholder’ is a cool cat burglar caper set in trendy Stockholm, drawn with superb understatement by Bill Draut, acting as the perfect indicator of changes in style and attitude that would infuse the Titans and the comics industry itself.

Although perhaps dated in delivery, these tales were a liberating experience for kids when first released. They betokened fresh empathy with independent youth and tried to address problems more relevant to and generated by that specific audience. That they are captivating in execution is a wonderful bonus. This is absolute escapism and absolutely delightful.
© 1964-1968, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks Daredevil volume 2: Alone Against the Underworld


By Stan Lee, Denny O’Neil, John Romita, Gene Colan, with Jack Kirby, Frank Giacoia, Mike Esposito, Dick Ayers, Bill Everett & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3440-8 (PB/Digital edition)

It’s another year of significant anniversaries so let’s say many happy returns for the swinging sixtieth of the rather tastelessly characterised “Sightless Swashbuckler” and latter-day meanly moody Man Without Fear Daredevil…

As the remnants of Atlas Comics grew in popularity in the early 1960s it slowly replaced its broad variety of genre titles with more and more superheroes. The recovering powerhouse that would be Marvel was still hampered by a crippling distribution deal that limited the company to 16 titles (curtailing their output until 1968), so each new untried book would have to be certain of success.

Moreover, as costumed characters were selling, each new similarly-themed title would limit the breadth of the monster, western, war, humour or girls’ comics that had been the outfit’s recent bread and butter. It was putting a lot of eggs in one basket, and superheroes had failed twice before for Stan Lee. It all worked out in the end though…

Back then, Matt Murdock was a blind lawyer whose remaining senses hyper-compensate, enabling him to perform astonishing acrobatic feats and fight like a demon. A formidable fighter for justice in both identities and a living lie-detector, he was very much a second-string hero for most of his early years.

Daredevil was nonetheless a striking and popular one, due in large part to the roster of brilliant artists who illustrated the strip. He battled thugs, gangsters, a plethora of super-villains and even the occasional monster or alien invasion, quipping and wise-cracking his way through life and life-threatening combat. His civilian life consisted of assorted legal conundra and manfully standing back while quenching his own feelings as his portly best friend and partner Franklin “Foggy” Nelson vainly romanced their secretary Karen Page, With Lee and a rotating line-up of artists plugging on, concocting some extremely engaging tales until the latest Marvel Sensation could find his feet.

That transition forms the meat of this potent compilation: part of a series of Mighty Marvel Masterworks available as kid-friendly digest paperbacks and eBooks. It traces the move from morose masked avenger to wisecracking Scarlet Swashbuckler, gathering Daredevil #12-21 (January 1965-October 1966) into one boldly boisterous package of thrills and spills.

The previous year had seen Golden Age giant Wally Wood leave his own unmistakable mark on the series but with his departure Lee turned to an old pal who had left during the harshest days of the Atlas implosion. He was to eventually become Marvel’s top – and most loyal – superstar…

‘Sightless, in a Savage Land!’ was laid out by Jack Kirby and illustrated by John Romita. The latter had worked for Timely/Atlas in the 1950s before moving to relatively steady work on National/DC’s romance comics, as well as freelance advertising. He returned to take DD on an epic quest, guest-starring Tarzan-tribute act Ka-Zar, ranging from the dinosaur-haunted Savage Land via an extended battle with high-tech pirates led by The Plunderer to Jolly Olde England-land (in #13’s ‘The Secret of Ka-Zar’s Origin!’) and ultimately to a US Early Warning Base (#14, ‘If This be Justice…!’, and with what I’m sure is some un-credited assistance from George Tuska).

With this multi-part, globe-girdling epic, Daredevil began to confirm his persona as a wisecracking one-man war on evil: a front that would carry him all the way to the grim ‘n’ gritty Frank Miller days, far, far in the future. Romita’s graceful, flamboyant style and expressiveness imparted new energy into the character (especially since Frank Ray né Giacoia had been inking the series since #14).

DD #15’s ‘…And Men Shall Call Him… Ox!’ showed the artist’s facility for explosive superhero action as the dim strongman last seen in #6 resurfaced, albeit in a new and sinister fashion as the lummox is made the subject of a macabre brain-swapping experiment…

When a certain webslinger guest-starred in #16, little did anyone suspect how soon Romita would be leaving…

‘Enter… Spider-Man!’ introduces criminal mastermind Masked Marauder who has big plans; the first of which is to get DD and the wallcrawler to kill each other. With follow-up ‘None are so Blind…’, a convoluted a sub-plot began which would lead to some of the highest and lowest moments of the early Daredevil series, beginning after the wondrous wallcrawler accuses Foggy of being the Man Without Fear! Although the webspinner quickly realizes his mistake, others present don’t…

Issue #18’s ‘There Shall Come a Gladiator!’ introduces the manic armoured villain and archetypal super-thug in a tale two-thirds scripted by legend-in-waiting Denny O’Neil. Here Foggy seeks to sway Karen by bolstering the ridiculous idea that he is Daredevil… and almost perishes as a result of his deception.

DD #19 then sees the Masked Marauder ally with Gladiator in action-packed big fight tale ‘Alone… Against the Underworld!’: a fitting farewell for Romita who was moving over to Amazing Spider-Man after Steve Ditko’s abrupt, controversial and utterly unexpected departure.

Originally tipped for a fill-in issue, Gene Colan came aboard as penciller with #20’s ‘The Verdict is: Death!’ and inked by Mike Esposito (as Mickey DeMeo). Colan’s superbly humanistic drawing and facility with expressions was a little jarring at first – since he drew Daredevil in a passable Romita imitation and everything else in his own style – but he soon settled in and this two-part revenge thriller featuring The Owl (concluding with the Giacoia, Dick Ayers & Bill Everett inked ‘The Trap is Sprung!’) is a fine beginning to his long, fabulously impressive run on the series, incorporating the Man Without Fear’s battle against his ferocious arch-foe, an army of thugs, deadly flying robots and even an exploding volcano to keep the readers on their toes…

Augmented by a pulse-pounding house ad, this classy compendium is a nostalgic delight for one and all: a truly magnificent example of Marvel’s compelling formula for success combining smart stories, human characters and magnificent illustration. If you’ve not read these tales before I strongly urge you to rectify that error as soon as superhumanly possible.
© 2023 MARVEL.

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Sandman Mystery Theatre Book One


By Matt Wagner, Guy Davis, John Watkiss, R.G. Taylor, David Hornung & John Costanza & various (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-6327-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Created by Bert Christman & Gardner F. Fox, The Sandman premiered in either Adventure Comics #40 July 1939 (two months after Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27) or two weeks earlier in New York World’s Fair Comics 1939, depending on which rather spotty distribution records can be believed.

Head and face utterly obscured by a gasmask and slouch hat; caped, business-suited millionaire adventurer Wesley Dodds was cut from the iconic masked mystery-man mould that had made pulp fictioneers The Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, The Shadow, The Spider and many more household names. Those dark red-handed heroes were also astonishing commercial successes in the early days of mass periodical publication…

Wielding a sleep-gas gun and haunting the night to battle a string of killers, crooks and spies, he was accompanied in the earliest comicbooks by his plucky paramour Dian Belmont, before gradually losing the readers’ interest and slipping from cover-spot to last feature in Adventure Comics, just as the cloaked pulp-hero avengers he emulated slipped from popularity in favour of more flamboyant fictional fare.

Possessing a certain indefinable style and charm but definitely no especial pizzazz, the feature was on the verge of being dropped when the Sandman abruptly switched to skin-tight yellow-&-purple and gained boy-sidekick Sandy the Golden Boy (Adventure Comics #69, December 1941, courtesy of Mort Weisinger & Paul Norris). All this, presumably to emulate the overwhelmingly successful Batman and Captain America models then reaping big dividends on newsstands.

It didn’t help much, but when Joe Simon & Jack Kirby came aboard with #72 it all changed. A semi-supernatural element and fascination with the world of dreams (revisited by S&K a decade later in their short-lived experimental suspense series The Strange World of Your Dreams) added moody conceptual punch to balance the kinetic fury of their art, as Sandman and Sandy became literally the stuff of nightmares to bizarre bandits and murderous mugs…

For what happened next you can check out the superb Simon & Kirby Sandman collection.

Time passed and in the late 1980s Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith & Mike Dringenberg took the property in a revolutionary new direction, eventually linking all the previous reboot elements into an overarching connective continuity under DC’s new “sophisticated suspense” imprint Vertigo. Within a few years the astounding success of the new Sandman prompted editorial powers-that-be to revisit the stylishly retro original character and look at him through more mature eyes. Iconoclastic creator Matt Wagner (Mage, Grendel, The Demon, Batman) teamed with artistic adept Guy Davis (Baker Street, B.P.R.D.) and colourist David Hornung to channel a grittier, grimier, far more viscerally authentic 1930s, where the haunted mystery man could pursue his lonely crusade with chilling verisimilitude.

The tone was darkly modernistic, with crime-busting played out in the dissolute dog-days of the Jazz Age and addressing controversial themes such as abuse, sexual depravity, corruption and racism; all presented against the rising tide of fascism sweeping the world then.

Consider this a warning: Sandman Mystery Theatre is not for kids.

This compendium collects the first three redefining story-arcs from issues #1-12 (April 1993 to March 1994) and commences after an absorbing introduction from veteran journalist, critic and pop culture historian Dave Marsh.

Each chapter preceded by its original evocative faux pulp photo cover created by Gavin Wilson and Hornung, the dark drama opens with The Tarantula, taking us to New York in 1938 where District Attorney Larry Belmont is having the Devil’s own time keeping his wild-child daughter out of trouble and out of the newspapers. Dian is gallivanting all over town every night with her spoiled rich friends: drinking, partying and associating with all the wrong people, but the prominent public servant has far larger problems too. One is a mysterious gas-masked figure he finds rifling his safe soon after Dian departs…

The intruder easily overpowers the DA with some kind of sleeping gas – which also makes you want to blurt every inconvenient truth – before disappearing, leaving Belmont to awaken with a headache and wondering if it was all a dream…

After a rowdy night carousing with scandalous BFF Catherine Van Der Meer and her latest (gangster) lover, Dian gets up with a similar hangover, but still agrees to attend one of father’s dreary public functions that evening. The elder Belmont is particularly keen that she meet a studious young man named Wesley Dodds, recently returned from years in the Orient to take over his deceased dad’s many business interests. Dodds seems genteel and effete, yet Dian finds there’s something oddly compelling about him. Moreover, he too seems to feel a connection…

The Gala breaks up early when the DA is informed of a sensational crime. Catherine Van Der Meer has been kidnapped by someone calling himself as The Tarantula…

Across town, mob boss Albert Goldman meets with fellow gangsters from the West Coast and, as usual, his useless son Roger and drunken wife Miriam embarrass him. Daughter Celia is the only one he can depend on these days, but even her unwavering devotion seems increasingly divided. After another stormy scene, the conference ends early, and the visiting crimelords are appalled to find their usually diligent bodyguards soundly asleep in their limousines…

Even with Catherine kidnapped, Dian is determined to go out that night, but when Wesley arrives unexpectedly changes her mind, much to her father’s relief. The feeling doesn’t last long, however, after the police inform him the Tarantula has taken another woman…

When a hideously mutilated body is found, Dian inveigles herself into accompanying dear old Dad to Headquarters but is promptly excluded from the grisly “Man’s Business”. Left alone, she starts snooping in the offices and encounters a bizarre gas-masked figure poring through files. Before she can react, he dashes past her and escapes, leaving her to explain to the assorted useless lawmen cluttering up the place.

Furious and humiliated, Dian then insists that she officially identify Catherine and nobody can dissuade her. Shockingly, the savagely ruined body is not her best friend but yet another victim. Somewhere dark and hidden, Van Der Meer is being tortured, but the perpetrator has far more than macabre gratification in mind…

In the Goldman house, Celia is daily extending her control over darling devoted Daddy. They still share a very special secret, but these days she’s the one dictating where and when they indulge themselves…

With all the trauma in her life, Dian increasingly finds Wesley a comforting rock, but perhaps that view would change if she knew how he spends his nights. Dodds is tormented, plagued by bad dreams. Not his own nightmares, but rather somnolent screams of nameless victims and their cruel oppressors haunt his troubled slumbers. Worst of all, these dreams are unrelenting and somehow prophetic. What else can a decent man do then, but act to end such suffering?

In a seedy dive, uncompromising Police Lieutenant Burke comes off worst when he discovers the gas-mask lunatic grilling a suspect in “his” kidnapping case and again later when this “Sandman” is found at a factory where the vehicle used to transport victims is hidden.

Even so, the net is inexorably tightening on both Tarantula and the vigilante interfering in the investigation, but Burke doesn’t know who he most wants in his nice, dark interrogation room…

As the labyrinthine web of mystery and monstrosity unravels, tension mounts and the death toll climbs, but can The Sandman stop the torrent of depraved terror before the determined Dian finds herself swept up in all the blood and death?

Of course, he does but not without appalling consequences…

Scene and scenario suitably set, John Watkiss steps in to illuminate second saga The Face (issues #5-8). Attention switches to Chinatown in February of 1938, where Dian and her gal-pals scandalously dine and dish dirt… until Miss Belmont meets again an old lover.

Jimmy Shan once worked in her father’s office but now serves as lawyer and fixer for his own people amongst the teeming restaurants, gambling dens and bordellos of the oriental district. Dian would be horrified to see Jimmy – or Zhang Chai Lao as his Tong masters know him – consorting with unsavoury criminals, and would certainly not be considering reviving her scandalous out-of-hours relationship with him. All such frivolous thoughts vanish, however, when the diners vacate the restaurant and stumble upon a severed head: a warning that the ruling factions are about to go to war again in Chinatown. As usual, white police are utterly ineffectual against the closed ranks of the enclave…

Later at a swanky charity soiree to raise money for a school, Dian meets Jimmy again and agrees to a meeting. At the same shindig she later sees Wesley, and in the course of their small talk, Dodds reveals that he recognises Shan from somewhere.

…And in Chinatown, another beheading leads to greater tension between the Lee Feng and Hou Yibai Societies. When an enigmatic gas-masked stranger starts asking unavoidable questions, he finds both Tongs denying all knowledge of the killings…

As the grisly murder-toll mounts, The Sandman’s investigations lead to one inescapable conclusion: a third party is responsible. But who, and why? Before this drama closes, Dian will learn more hard truths about the world and the money-men who secretly run it…

Issues #9-12 (December 1993-March 1994) are illustrated by R.G. Taylor, plumbing the darkest depths of human depravity in the tale of ‘The Brute’. The friendship of Dian and Wesley slowly deepens and life seems less fraught in the city, but that ends as a hulking degenerate stalks the back-alleys, killing and brutalising prostitutes and their clients…

Dodds is also on the mind of boxing promoter and businessman Arthur Reisling who’s looking for a fresh financial partner in his global exploitations. The effete-seeming scholar is hard to convince, though, unlike Eddie Ramsey. He’s a poverty-stricken pugilist and single parent desperate to make enough money to pay for his daughter Emily’s TB medicine. Riesling’s offer to him is just as scurrilous but the broken-down pug doesn’t have the luxury of saying “no”…

Eventually, with Dian in tow, Wesley accepts a party invitation from the speculator and meets his dynasty of worthless, over-privileged children. None of them seem right or well-adjusted. Later, when Eddie tries to come clean by informing the authorities of Riesling’s illegal fight events, he’s attacked by the promoter’s thugs and saved by The Sandman – at least until the colossal mystery killer attacks them both and they’re forced to flee for their lives…

As Dodds returns home to recuperate, the punishing dreams escalate to mind-rending intensity. Eddie, meanwhile, is left with no safe option and takes to the streets with Emily. His decision will lead to revolting horror, total tragedy and utter heartbreak.

The Sandman returns to his covert surveillance, silently unearthing the depths of Reisling’s underworld activities and coincidentally exposing a turbulent, dysfunctional atmosphere in the magnate’s home life to match his criminal activities. In this house, corruption of every kind runs deep and wide, and the masked avenger decides it’s time to bring his findings to Dian’s father. This time, District Attorney Belmont is prepared to listen and to act…

As murders mount and Dodds’ dreams escalate in intensity, the strands of a bloody tapestry knot together and the appalling secret of the bestial killer’s connection to Reisling is exposed; only a detonation of expiating violence can restore order…

Stark, compelling and ferociously absorbing, these bleak thrillers depict a cruel but incisive assessment of good and evil no devotee of dark drama should miss, with the period perils accompanied by a gallery of the series’ original, groundbreaking comic book photo-covers and posters by Gavin Wilson, plus later collection covers and related art from Matt Wagner, Alex Toth and Kent Wilson.
© 1993, 1994, 1995, 2016 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Justice League of America: Zatanna’s Search


By Gardner F. Fox, Murphy Anderson, Bob Kane, Joe Giella, Gil Kane, Sid Greene, Carmine Infantino, Mike Sekowsky & various, with Gerry Conway, Romeo Tanghal & Vince Colletta (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0188-3 (TPB)

The Silver Age of Comic Books changed many things, but its longest lasting revolution was in how it introduced more women and to the pantheon of costumed characters. Here in one long-neglected package is the story of a character who has never looked back, and this year celebrates sixty years of magic…

With Julius Schwartz and John Broome, writer extraordinaire Gardner F. Fox laid the foundations of all comic book continuities. He was a lifelong creator and champion of strong female characters (like Dian Belmont, Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman, Inza Nelson, Barbara –Batgirl/Oracle – Gordon and Sue Dibny), a canny innovator and one of the earliest proponents of extended storylines which have since become so familiar to us as “braided crossovers”.

A lawyer by trade, Fox began his comics career in the Golden Age toiling on major and minor features, working in every genre and for most companies. One of the second-string strips he scripted was Zatara; a magician-hero in the Mandrake mould who fought evil and astounded audiences in the pages of Action and World’s Finest Comics for over a decade, beginning with the very first issue. To be completely accurate, the latter’s premiere performance was in the one-shot World’s Best Comics #1, but whatever the book’s name, the top-hatted, suavely tailed and tailored trickster was there. Zatara fell from favour as the decade closed, fading from memory like so many other outlandish crime-crushers…

In 1956 Editor Schwartz reinvented the superhero genre, reintroducing costumed characters based on the company’s defunct costumed cohort. Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman and The Atom were refitted for a sleek, scientific atomic age, with their legendary predecessors latterly reincarnated and returned as denizens of an alternate Earth. As experiments became a trend and then inexorable publishing policy, surviving heroes like Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Aquaman and Wonder Woman were retrofitted to match the new world order.

The Superhero was resurgent and public appetite seemed inexhaustible. For their next trick Fox & Schwartz turned to the magician of yore and presumably found him wanting. Rather than condemn the mage to Earth-Two, they instead created the first “legacy hero” by having Zatara vanish from sight as precursor to debuting an unsuspected daughter, before setting her on a far-reaching quest to find him.

Zatanna premiered in 1964 in Hawkman #4 (cover-dated October/November), illustrated by the magnificent Murphy Anderson in a beguiling thriller entitled ‘The Girl who Split in Two’. Following a mystical trail and wearing a variation of Zatara’s stage garb, the plucky, impatient lass had mystically divided her body in two and travelled simultaneously to Ireland and China, but lapsed into paralysis until Hawkman and Hawkgirl answered her ethereal distress call.

Although nobody knew it at the time, the “winsome witch” appeared next as the villain in Detective Comics #336 (February 1965). ‘Batman’s Bewitched Nightmare’ saw a broom-riding old crone attacking the Dynamic Duo at the command of mutant super-threat The Outsider in a stirring yarn limned by Bob Kane & Joe Giella. Current opinion posits this wasn’t originally intended as part of the quest epic, but when the search storyline was resolved at the height of TV-inspired “Batmania” in Justice League of America #51, some slick back-writing was necessary to bring the high-profile Caped Crusader into the resolution.

Gil Kane & Sid Greene illustrated the next two chapters of the saga: firstly in ‘World of the Magic Atom’ (Atom #19, June/July 1965), wherein Mystic Maid and Tiny Titan battled Zatara’s old nemesis The Druid on microcosmic world Catamoore, and then with the Emerald Gladiator in an extra-dimensional realm on ‘The Other Side of the World!’ (Green Lantern #42, January 1966). Here the malevolently marauding, potentially Earth-dominating Warlock of Ys is overcome after a mighty struggle and compelled to reveal further clues in the trail.

The Elongated Man starred in a long-running back-up feature in Detective Comics, and in #355 (September 1966, pencilled & inked by Carmine Infantino) ‘The Tantalizing Trouble of the Tripod Thieves!’ revealed how the search for a pilfered eldritch artefact brought the sorceress closer to her goal, before the search concluded in spectacular and fabulously satisfying fashion with aforementioned JLA tale ‘Z – As in Zatanna – and Zero Hour!’ (#51, February 1967).

With art by incomparable team Mike Sekowsky & Sid Greene, all heroes who previously aided her were transported to another mystical plane to conduct a classic battle of good against evil, with plenty of cunning surprises and a happy ending for all concerned.

Here is a triumphant early experiment in continuity that remains one of the best adventures of the Silver Age, featuring some of the era’s greatest creators at the peak of their powers. This slim volume also carries an enticing encore: following the mandatory cover gallery is a rare 10-page tale. ‘The Secret Spell!’ – by Gerry Conway, Romeo Tanghal & Vince Colletta – was only originally seen in DC Blue Ribbon Digest #5 (November-December 1980): revealing ‘Secret Origins of Super-Heroes’ and exploring the hidden history of both father and daughter in a snappily informative manner. Although a little hard to find now – and a still a prime candidate for arcane transmogrification into digital formats – this is a superlative volume for fans of costumed heroes and would make a wonderful tome to bring newcomers to the genre.
© 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1980, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Usagi Yojimbo Saga Book 1


By Stan Sakai (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-671-6(HB) 978-1-61655-609-9(TPB) eISBN: 978-1-63008-081-5

Back in 1955, when Stan Sakai was two years old, the family moved from Kyoto, Japan to Hawaii. Growing up in a cross-cultural paradise, he graduated from the University of Hawaii with a BA in Fine Arts, before leaving to pursue further studies at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design in California. His early forays into comics were as a letterer – most famously for Groo the Wanderer and the Spider-Man newspaper strip – before his nimble pens and brushes found a way to express his passion for Japanese history, legend and Akira Kurosawa films, inspirationally transforming a proposed story about a human historical hero into one of the most enticing and impressive fantasy sagas of all time.

Usagi Yojimbo (“rabbit bodyguard”) first appeared in 1984’s Albedo Anthropomorphics #1: a background character in Stan Sakai’s The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper and Hermy, and premiering amongst assorted furry ‘n’ fuzzy folk. He soon graduated to a nomadic solo act in Critters, Amazing Heroes, Furrlough and the Munden’s Bar back-up series in Grimjack. Although the expansive period epic stars sentient animals and details the life of a peripatetic Lord-less Samurai eking out as honourable a living as possible as a Yojimbo (bodyguard-for-hire), the milieu and scenarios scrupulously mirror Japan’s Feudal Edo Period (roughly 16th-17th century AD by Western reckoning) whilst simultaneously referencing other cultural icons from sources as varied as Zatoichi to Godzilla.

Miyamoto Usagi is brave, noble, industrious, honest, sentimental, gentle, artistic, empathetic, long-suffering and conscientious: a rabbit devoted to the tenets of Bushido and utterly unable to turn down any request for help or ignore the slightest evidence of injustice. As such, his destiny is to be perpetually drawn into an unending panorama of incredible situations.

Despite changing publishers a few times, the Roaming Rabbit has been in publication since 1987, with nearly 60 assorted collections of comics and at least 5 art books to date. He’s guest-starred in many other series (most notably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its TV incarnation) and even made it into his own small-screen Netflix show – albeit in a futuristic setting. There are high-end collectibles, art prints, computer games and RPGs, spin-off comics serials and lots of toys. Author Sakai and his creation have won numerous awards both within the Comics community and amongst the greater reading public… And it’s still more educational, informative and authentic than any dozen Samurai sagas you can name…

The title is as much a wanderer as its star, migrating from Fantagraphics to Mirage, Dark Horse, Radio Comix, IDW and Dark Horse again under Sakai’s own Dogu Publishing imprint. None of that matters: what you need to know is that this stuff is superb and no matter which version you see, you will be a better being for reading it…

This guest-star stuffed premiere monochrome masterpiece draws together yarns released by Mirage Publishing as Usagi Yojimbo volume 2 #1-16 and Usagi Yojimbo volume 3 #1-6

Following a fulsome Foreword from former editor Jamie S. Rich, pictorial rundown of dramatis personae in ‘Cast of Characters’ and rousing strip recap ‘Origin Tale’, an evocative Introduction from legendary illustrator and Dean of Dinosauria William Stout leads into the magnificent and ever-unfolding medieval mystery play…

It begins with 3-parter ‘Shades of Green’ wherein Usagi and crusty companion Gennosuke (an irascibly bombastic, money-mad bounty-hunter and conniving thief-taking Indian rhino with a heart of gold) are recruited by Kakera: a ratty shaman in dire need of protection from the dwindling remnants of the once-mighty Neko Ninja clan. The former imperial favourites have fallen upon hard times since they and the Ronin Rabbit crushed the Dragon Bellow plot of rebel Lord Takamuro. Now, bat assassins of the Komori Ninja clan are constantly harrying, harassing and actively seeking to supplant them in Lord Hikiji’s service…

Chunin (deputy leader) Gunji believes the rodent wizard would make a mighty useful slave, and is scheming to overthrow the new – female – clan chief Chizu whilst acquiring him…

With the Neko’s trap closing around them all, the sagacious sensei summons spirits of four fantastic fighters to aid Usagi and Gen. These phantoms promptly possess a quartet of little Kame (tortoises) and are reshaped into adolescent amphibian Ninja Turtles, identifying themselves as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello. Crucially, Usagi has fought beside one of their number before…

Subsequent battles go badly and eventually Gunji’s forces make off with Kakera-sensei. As Usagi leads the remaining heroes in relentless pursuit, the conniving Chunin makes his move. Gunji’s attempt to assassinate Chizu is bloodily and efficiently ended by late-arriving Usagi who is astounded to be told by the lady he has saved that the Neko’s lethal interest in him is now at an end…

With Kakera rescued and Gunji dead, the adventure closes with the turtle spirits returning to their own place and time, leaving Gen and Usagi to follow their own (temporarily) separate roads before ‘Jizo’ offers a delightfully gripping interlude as a grieving mother dedicates a roadside shrine to her murdered child and ineffable Karma places the killers in the path of a certain justice-dispensing, long-eared wanderer…

Next comes a brace of stories offering elucidating glimpses of the rabbit’s boyhood. Once, Miyamoto Usagi was simply son to a small-town magistrate before being sent to spend his formative years learning the Way of Bushido from gruff and distant leonine hermit Katsuichi. The stern sensei taught not just superior technique and tactics, but also an ironclad creed of justice and restraint which would serve the Ronin well throughout his turbulent life.

In ‘Usagi’s Garden’ the callow pupil rebels against the arduous and undignified task of growing food until the lion delivers a subtle but lifechanging lesson, whilst in ‘Autumn’ a painful fall propels the lad into a nightmare confrontation with a monster who has trapped the changing of the seasons in a bamboo cage…

Two-part tale ‘Shi’ sees Usagi comes to the aid of a valley of poor farmers under constant attack by bullies and brigands seeking to force them from their impoverished homes. The thugs are secretly employed by a local magistrate and his ruthless brother who discovered gold under the peasants’ land and want to extract it without attracting the attention of the local Lord’s tax collectors. When the Ronin’s formidable skills stall the brothers’ scheme they hire a quartet of assassins whose collective name means “death”. However, the killers are far less trouble than the head farmer’s daughter Kimie, who has never seen someone as glamorous or attractive as the soft-spoken defrocked samurai…

Although there are battles aplenty for Usagi, the brothers’ remorseless greed ends them before the Yojimbo can…

Delightful silent comedy follows as ‘The Lizard’s Tale’ pantomimically depicts the ronin playing unwilling Pied Piper and guardian to a wandering flock of tokagé lizards (ubiquitous, omnivorous reptiles populating the anthropomorphic world, replacing scavenger species like rats, cats and dogs in the fictitious ecosystem). The rambunctious trouble-magnets repay the favour when the wanderer is ambushed in snow-drowned mountains by vengeful bandits…

‘Battlefield’ is a 3-chapter fable sharing a key moment and boyhood turning point in the trainee warrior’s life. It begins when a mind-broken, fleeing soldier shatters the boy’s childish dreams of warrior glory. The fugitive is a survivor of the losing side in a mighty battle and his sorry state forces Usagi to rethink his preconceptions of war. Eager to ram home the lesson, Katsuichi takes his pupil to the battlefield where peasants and scavengers busily snatch up whatever they can from the scattered corpses. Usagi is horrified. To take a samurai’s swords is to steal his soul, but even so, a little later he cannot stop himself picking up a fallen hero’s Wakizashi (short sword)…

After concealing the blade in a safe place, the apprentice is haunted by visions of the unquiet corpse and sneaks off to return the stolen steel soul. Caught by soldiers who think him a scavenging looter and about to lose his thieving hands, little Miyamoto is saved by the intervention of victorious Great Lord Mifune. The noble looks into the boy’s face and sees something honest, honourable and – perhaps one day – useful…

Following an Introduction on ‘Classic Storytelling’ from James Robinson, the ronin roaming resumes with ‘The Music of Heaven’ as Miyamoto and a wandering flock of tokagé lizards encounter a gentle, pious priest whose life is dedicated to peace, music and enlightenment. When their paths cross again later, the rabbit narrowly avoids being murdered by a ruthless assassin who has since killed and impersonated holy man Komuso in an attempt to catch Usagi off guard. Evocative and movingly spiritual, this classic of casual tragedy perfectly displays the vast range of storytelling Sakai can pack into the most innocuous of tales.

More menaces from the wanderer’s past reconnect in ‘The Gambler, The Widow and the Ronin’ as a professional conman who fleeces villagers with rigged samurai duels plies his shabby trade in just another little hamlet. Unfortunately, this one is home to his last stooge’s wife, and to make matters worse, whilst his latest hired killer Kedamono is attempting to take over the business, the long-eared nomad who so deftly dispatched his predecessor Shubo strolls into town looking for refreshments…

Again forced into a fight, Miyamoto makes short work of Kedamono, leaving the smug gambler to safely flee with the entire take. Slurping back celebratory servings of sake, the villain has no idea the inn where he relaxes employs a vengeful widow and mother who knows just who really caused her man’s death…

A note of portentous foreboding informs ‘The Nature of the Viper’, opening a year previously when a boisterous, good-hearted fisherman pulled a body out of the river and nursed his amazingly still breathing catch back to health. If he expected gratitude or mercy, the peasant was sadly mistaken, as the fondling explained whilst killing his benefactor as soon as he was able. The ingrate is Jei: a veritable devil in mortal form, who believes himself a “Blade of the Gods” and singled out by the Lords of Heaven to kill the wicked. The maniac makes a convincing case: when he stalked Usagi, the monster was struck by a fortuitous – or possibly divinely sent – lightning bolt but is still going strong and keenly continuing to hunt the Ronin.

‘Slavers’ begins a particularly dark journey for our hero as Usagi stumbles across a boy in chains escaping from a bandit horde. Little Hiro explains how the ragtag rogues of wily “General” Fujii have captured a whole town: making the inhabitants harvest their crops for the scum to steal…

Resolved to save them, the rabbit infiltrates the captive town as a mercenary seeking work, but is soon exposed and taken prisoner. ‘Slavers Part 2’ finds Miyamoto stoically enduring the General’s tortures until the boy he saved bravely returns the favour – after which the Yojimbo’s vengeance is awesome and terrible…

However, even as the villagers rebel and take back their homes and property, chief bandit Fujii escapes, taking Usagi’s daish? (matched long and short swords) with him. To take a samurai’s swords is to steal his soul, and the monster not only has them but continually dishonours them by slaughtering innocents as he flees the ronin’s relentless pursuit.

‘Daish? – Part One’ opens with a hallowed sword-maker undertaking the sacred process of crafting blades and the harder task of selecting the right person to buy them. Three hundred years later, Usagi is on the brink of madness as he follows Fujii’s bloody trail, pitilessly picking off the General’s remaining killers whilst attempting to redeem those soiled dispensers of death. The chase leads to another town pillaged by Fujii where Miyamoto almost refuses to aid a wounded man… until one woman accuses him of being no better than the beast he hunts…

Shocked back to his senses, the yojimbo saves the elder’s life and in gratitude the girl Hanako offers to lead him to where Fujii was heading. ‘Mongrels’ changes tack as erstwhile ally and hard-to-love friend Gennosuke re–enters the picture. The bombastic, money-mad bounty-hunter and conniving thief-taker is on the prowl for suitably profitable prospects when he meets The Stray Dog: his greatest rival in the unpopular profession of cop-for-hire.

After some posturing and double-dealing wherein each tries to edge out the other in the hunt for Fujii, they inevitably come to blows and are only stopped by the fortuitous intervention of the Rabbit Ronin…

‘Daish? – Part Two’ sees the irascible rugged individualists form a shaky truce in their overweening hunger to tackle the General. Mistrustful of each other, they nevertheless cut a swathe of destruction through Fujii’s regrouped band, but even after furious Usagi regains his honour swords there is one last betrayal in store…

Older, wiser and generally unharmed, Gen and Usagi part company again as ‘Runaways’ delves deeper into the wanderer’s past. Stopping in a town he hasn’t visited in decades, the rabbit hears a name called out and his mind retreats to a time when he was a fresh young warrior in the service of Great Lord Mifune.

Young princess Takani Kinuko had been promised as bride to trustworthy ally Lord Hirano and the rabbit was a last-minute replacement as leader of the “babysitting” escort column to her impending nuptials. When an overwhelming ambush eradicated the party, Usagi was forced to flee with the stuck-up brat: both of them masquerading as carefree, unencumbered peasants as he strove to bring her safely to her future husband past an army of ninjas killers.

The poignant reverie concludes in ‘Runaways – Part 2’ as valiant hero and spotless maiden fell in love whilst fleeing from pitiless, unrelenting marauders. Successful at last, their social positions naturally forced them apart once she was safely delivered.

Shaken from his memories, the ronin moves on, tragically unaware he was not the only one recalling those moments and pondering what might have been…

Originally collected as The Brink of Life and Death, an evocatively enticing third tranche of torrid tales opens with ‘Discoveries’ – a heartfelt and enthusiastic Introduction from comics author Kurt Busiek – before more epics of intrigue intermingle with vignettes of more plebeian dramas and even an occasional supernatural thriller, all tantalisingly tinged with astounding martial arts action and drenched in wit, irony, pathos and tragedy…

Far away from our nomadic star a portentous interlude occurs as a simple peasant and his granddaughter are attacked by bandits. The belligerent scum are about to compound extortion and murder with even more heinous crimes when a stranger with a ‘Black Soul’ stops them…

This is Jei and nothing good comes from even innocent association with the Blade of the Gods. Still pursuing his crusade, the monster deals most emphatically with the criminals before “permitting” orphaned granddaughter Keiko to join him…

‘Kaise’ then finds Miyamoto Usagi befriending a seaweed farmer who’s experiencing a spot of bother with his neighbours. At peace with himself amongst hard-toiling peasants, Usagi is soon embroiled in their escalating battle with a village of rival seaweed sellers – previously regarded as helpful and friendly – and quickly realises scurrilous merchant Yamanaka is fomenting discord and unrest between his suppliers to make extra profit…

In a roadside hostelry ‘A Meeting of Strangers’ introduces a formidable female warrior to the ever-expanding cast as the Lepine Legend graciously offers a fellow weary mendicant the price of a drink. A professional informer then sells Usagi out to still-smarting Yamanaka and lethally capable Inazuma has ample opportunity to repay her slight debt to the Rabbit Ronin when he’s ambushed by an army of hired brigands…

Despite – or because – it is usually one of the funniest comics on the market, occasionally Usagi Yojimbo will brilliantly twist readers’ expectations with tales that rip your heart apart. Such is the case with ‘Noodles’, as the ronin meets again street performer, shady entertainer and charismatic pickpocket Kitsune. She was plying all her antisocial trades in a new town just as eternally-wandering Usagi rolls up. The little metropolis is in uproar at a plague of daring robberies and when inept enforcers employed by Yoriki (Assistant Commander) Masuda try – and painfully fail – to arrest the long-eared stranger as a probable accomplice, the ferociously resistant rabbit earns the instant enmity of the pompous official.

Following the confrontation, a hulking, mute soba (buckwheat noodle) vendor begins to pester the still-annoyed ronin and eventually reveals he’s carrying elegant escapologist Kitsune in his baskets. Astounded, the yojimbo renews his acquaintance with her before the affable thieves go on their way, unaware that trouble and tragedy are just around the corner…

The town magistrate is leaning heavily on his Yoriki to end the crimewave but has no conception Masuda is actually in the pay of a vicious gang carrying out most of the thefts. What they all need is a convincing scapegoat to pin the blame on, and poor dumb peasant Noodles is ideal – after all, he can’t even deny his guilt…

With a little sacrificed loot planted, the gentle giant becomes a perfect patsy and before Usagi and Kitsune even know he’s been taken, the simple fool has been tried and horrifically executed. ‘Noodles Part 2’ opens as our aggrieved heroes frantically dash for the public trial and almost immediate crucifixion. Neither pickpocket nor bodyguard can save the innocent stooge: all they can do is swear to secure appropriate vengeance and a kind of justice…

In sober mien the rabbit roves on, stumbling into a house of horror and case of possession. ‘The Wrath of the Tangled Skein’ finds Usagi returning to a region plagued by demon-infested forests. Offered hospitality at a merchant’s house, he subsequently saves the daughter from doom at the claws of a demonic Nue (tiger/fox/pig/snake devil), but is almost too late and only alerted to a double dose of danger when a Bonze (Buddhist Priest) arrives to exorcise the poor child – just like the cleric already praying over the afflicted waif upstairs…

This duel with the forces of hell leads into ‘The Bonze’s Story’ as Usagi befriends the real priest and learns how misfortune and devotion to honour compelled elite samurai Sanshobo to put aside weapons and war in search of greater truths and inner peace…

Political intrigue and explosive espionage return to the fore in ‘Bats, the Cat, & the Rabbit’ as Neko ninja chief Chizu re-enters Usagi’s life, fleeing a flight of rival Komori (bat) ninjas. These winged horrors are determined to possess a scroll containing the secrets of making gunpowder and, after a tremendous, extended struggle, the exhausted she-cat cannot believe her rabbit companion is willing to simply hand it over. She soon shrugs it off, after all the Komori have fallen into her trap and quickly regret testing the purloined formula…

The peripatetic yojimbo then walks into a plot to murder Great Lord Miyagi involving infallible unseen assassin Kuroshi at ‘The Chrysanthemum Pass’. Although the valiant wanderer is simply aiding karma to a just outcome despite overwhelming odds and a most subtle opponent, this act will have appalling repercussions in days ahead…

Hunted woman and deadly adept Inazuma then proves ‘Lightning Strikes Twice’ when found – as always – at the heart of a storm of hired blades trying to kill her. However, during one peaceful moment, she makes time to share with a fellow swordsmaster the instructive tale of a dutiful daughter who married the wrong samurai. By exacting rightful vengeance upon his killer, she won the undying hatred of a powerful lord and set her own feet irredeemably upon the road of doom…

Rounding out in this epic collection are copious ‘Story Notes by Stan Sakai’, a full-colour ‘Gallery’ of the covers from both comic books and their attendant paperback compilations, annotated ‘Cover Sketches’ and designs, plus biographical data ‘About the Author’.

Fast-paced yet lyrical, informative and funny, the saga alternately bristles with tension and thrills and frequently crushes your heart with astounding tales of pride and tragedy, evil and duty. Bursting with veracity and verve, Usagi Yojimbo is the perfect comics epic: a monolithically magical, irresistibly appealing tale to delight devotees and make converts of the most hardened haters of “funny animal” stories.
Text and illustrations © 1993-1998, 2014 Stan Sakai. All rights reserved. Foreword © 2014 Jamie S. Rich. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles © 2014 Viacom International, Inc. All rights reserved. All other material and registered characters are © and TM their respective owners. Usagi Yojimbo and all other prominently featured characters are registered trademarks of Stan Sakai.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks Captain America volume 2: The Red Skull Lives


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, Jack Sparling, Tom Sutton, Frank Giacoia, Joe Sinnott, Don Heck, Dick Ayers & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4897-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

During the natal years of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s Stan Lee & Jack Kirby opted to mimic the game-plan which had paid off so successfully for National/DC Comics, albeit with mixed results. Beginning cautiously in 1956, Julie Schwartz had scored incredible, industry-altering hits by re-inventing the company’s Golden Age greats, so it seemed sensible to try and revive the characters that had dominated Timely/Atlas in those halcyon days two decades previously.

A new Human Torch had premiered as part of the revolutionary Fantastic Four, and in the fourth issue of that title the amnesiac Sub-Mariner resurfaced after a 20-year hiatus (everyone concerned had apparently forgotten the first abortive attempt to revive an “Atlas” superhero line in the mid-1950s). The teen Torch was promptly given his own solo lead-feature in Strange Tales (from issue #101 on) where, eventually (in Strange Tales #114), the flaming kid fought a larcenous villain impersonating the nation’s greatest lost hero…

Here’s a quote from the last panel…

“You guessed it! This story was really a test! To see if you too would like Captain America to Return! As usual, your letters will give us the answer!” I guess we all know how that turned out. With reader-reaction strong, the real McCoy was promptly decanted in Avengers #4 (cover dated March but on sale from January 3rd 1964… so happy belated birthday the second time around, Capster!).

After a captivating, centre-stage hogging run in Avengers, the reborn Sentinel of Liberty won his own series as half of a “split-book” with fellow Avenger and patriotic barnstormer Iron Man, beginning with Tales of Suspense #59. This cheap & cheerful second Mighty Marvel Masterworks Cap collection assembles his exploits ToS #78-94, plus a chuckle-packed prize treat from Not Brand Echh #3, spanning June 1966 to October 1967) in a kid-friendly edition that will charm and delight fans of all vintages…

Primarily scripted throughout by Lee, the drama resumes with a dynamic dive into the burgeoning spy fad of the mid-Sixties as ‘Them!’ sees Kirby return to pencilling his first sensation and Frank Giacoia assume a regular inking spot. Here the Star-Spangled Avenger teams with Nick Fury in the first of many missions as a (more-or-less) Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. His foe is an artificial assassin despatched by a new hidden agency set on world domination.

It’s followed by ‘The Red Skull Lives!’ wherein the arch nemesis returns from the grave to menace the Free World again. Initially aided by subversive technology group A.I.M. as the Star Spangled Avenger is distracted by more high-tech assassins, the nasty Nazi promptly steals their ultimate weapon in ‘He Who Holds the Cosmic Cube!’ (inked by Don Heck), setting himself up as Emperor of Earth before his grip on omnipotence finally falters in ‘The Red Skull Supreme!’ (Giacoia inks).

The dynamic dramas contained herein signalled closer links with parallel tales in other titles. Thus, with subversive science scoundrels AIM defeated by S.H.I.E.L.D. over in Strange Tales,‘The Maddening Mystery of the Inconceivable Adaptoid!’ pits Cap against one last unsupervised experiment – their artificial warrior lifeform. It is capable of becoming an exact duplicate of its victim and stalks Cap in a tale of vicious psychological warfare. Sadly, even masterfully manufactured mechanoids are apt to err and ‘Enter… The Tumbler!’ (inked by Dick Ayers) sees a presumptuous wannabe attack the robot after it assumes the identity of our hero before ‘The Super-Adaptoid!’ (with an Avengers cameo) completes the epic of breathtaking suspense and drama as the real super-soldier fights back to defeat all comers.

Such eccentric cross-continuity capers would carry the company to market dominance in a few short years and become not the exception but the norm…

‘The Blitzkrieg of Batroc!’ and ‘The Secret!’ return to the early, minimum-plot, all-action, overwhelming-odds yarns whilst apparent fill-in ‘Wanted: Captain America’ (by Roy Thomas, Jack Sparling & Sinnott) offers a lacklustre interval involving a frame-up. Lee returns as Gil Kane takes his first run on the character with extended saga ‘If Bucky Lives…!’, ‘Back from the Dead!’, ‘…And Men Shall Call Him Traitor!’ and ‘The Last Defeat!’ (TOS #88-91, with the last two inked by Sinnott) for a superb thriller of blackmail and betrayal starring the Red Skull.

The fascist felon had baited a trap with a robotic facsimile of Cap’s dead partner, triggered it with super-hirelings Power Man and The Swordsman whilst blackmailing the Star-Spangled Sentinel into betraying his country and stealing a new atomic submarine. It all turned out okay in the end though…

Closing the comics action on a spectacular high, Kirby & Sinnott detailed ‘Before My Eyes Nick Fury Died!’, ‘Into the Jaws of… A.I.M.!’ and ‘If This Be… Modok!’ as the Champion of Liberty battled a giant brain-being manufactured purely for killing…

Closing on a daft note, October 1967’s Not Brand Echh #3 hawks up Lee, Thomas & Tom Sutton’s ‘The Honest-to-Irving, True-Blue Top Secret Original Origin of Charlie America!’ as a silly but delicious amuse-bouche to end our pulse pounding revels…

These tales of dauntless courage and unmatchable adventure offer timeless thrills, fast-paced and superbly illustrated, and which rightly catapulted Captain America to heights his Golden Age compatriots Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner never regained. They are pure escapist magic. Unmissable reading for the eternally young at heart and fun-seeking.
© 2023 MARVEL.