Lucky Luke volume 59 – Bride of Lucky Luke


By Morris & Guy Vidal, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-305-5 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Doughty, dashing and dependable cowboy “good guy” Lucky Luke is a rangy, implacably even-tempered do-gooder able to “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic Old West, having light-hearted adventures on his petulant and rather sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. Over nine decades, his exploits have made him one of the top-ranking comic characters in the world, generating nearly 90 individual albums and spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, with sales totalling upwards of 300 million in 30 languages. That renown has translated into a mountain of merchandise, toys, games, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions. No theme park yet, but you never know…

Originally the brainchild of Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (AKA “Morris”) Lucky only truly expanded to global dominance via his 45 volume collaboration with superstar scripter René Goscinny (from Des rails sur la Prairie/Rails on the Prairie beginning August 25th 1955 to La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires/The Ballad Of The Daltons And Other Stories in 1986).

On Goscinny’s death, Morris worked alone again and with others, founding a posse of legacy creators including Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, all taking their own shots at the venerable vigilante. Morris soldiered on both singly and with these successors before his passing in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus numerous sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas.

The taciturn trailblazer draws on western history as much as movie mythology and regularly interacts with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk in tales drawn from key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions, and interpretations. As previously hinted, the sagebrush star is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire…

Cinebook’s 59th Lucky Luke album was officially the frontier phenomenon’s 54th individual European exploit, originally seen au continent in 1985 as La Fiancée de Lucky Luke by Morris and jobbing scripter Guy Vidal – journalist, screenwriter, Editor-in-Chief of Pilote and author of books and comics such as Les Gringos, Une Éducation algérienne, Médecins sans frontières and many more.

Regrettably, in many places this yarn is a painfully dated monument to the sexist attitudes of the era it was written in. The book has been translated as Bride of Lucky Luke (occasionally Lucky Luke’s Fiancée) and here comes with an apologetic preface from the editors asking for a little understanding and forbearance.

I suspect these will become increasingly common in future with long-lived stars, as modern sensibilities clash with social and culturally outmoded material crafted for popular consumption over everchanging decades…

While we’re carping there’s an odd frisson of campaigning change throughout reviving a barely cooled hot button of the era. From inception, Luke laconically puffed on a trademark roll-up cigarette which hung insouciantly and almost permanently from his lip. However, in 1983 Morris – amidst pained howls and muted mutterings of “political correctness gone mad” –  substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, thereby garnering for himself an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organisation. Here however, although Lucky still chaws that barley stalk, most other characters still abuse tobacco in its assorted forms, drawing pointed remarks from one of the tale’s most powerful characters, primly dragging her reformist civilising nonsense into the land of unreconstructed, unsavoury he-men…

In scenes reminiscent of the Navy’s pleas in South Pacific, the tale opens in typical frontier town Purgatory where they ain’t got dames women are absent and pioneers are reverting to loutish, unwashed barbarism.

In St Louis – where US civilisation officially ends – the situation is exacerbated by an oversupply of single, marriageable women, compelling civic authorities to organise wedding wagon trains to ship willing wives-to-be to eager, not particularly picky bachelors. The process is fraught with peril and takes a terrible toll on wagon-masters and guides, so these powers that be want Lucky Luke to lead the next trek out…

Teaming up with old pal Hank Bully (The Stagecoach), Luke eventually agrees: ferrying fifteen spinsters of variable vintage – one of whom is not what they seem – across the prairies: overcoming natural hazards, the country’s previous occupants, freshly-imported villainy and a multitude of stereotypical him-versus-her cliches (especially about cooking, clothes, “queer fear” and driving) before some moments of novelty appear.

Strident Jenny O’Sullivan might want a husband, but she also has ironclad principles and spends much time lecturing anyone who can’t get away on the perils of strong drink and tobacco. That zeal even persists after she’s kidnapped by the nefarious Daltons. However, when the wagons arrive in Purgatory, one of the prospective husbands is unavailable – having been arrested – and Lucky is gulled/compelled to step in and agree to wed her. It’s that or take her back to St Louis…

Grasping the wrong end of the stick, Averell, Jack, William and devious, diminutive yet dominant Joe swoop and snatch, but soon learn they have saved their greatest enemy from a life of domestic drudgery, startling cooking and daily uplifting lectures. Happily for them, Lucky always puts duty before everything and rescues the most vicious and feared outlaws in America before finding a solution to his own dilemma and reuniting Jenny and her contracted spouse/consort…

Then he can go back to being as lonesome a cowboy as humanely possible…

Happily Lucky Luke also cherishes the old ways and is ready to set things right his way…

Augmented by a reproduction of an actual certificate of Holy Matrimony stemming from the widespread historical practise of catalogue weddings, Bride of Lucky Luke vacillates between being a wickedly wry exploration of the battle of the sexes and cheap misogyny, which can work for most readers but isn’t ideal for young readers to absorb unquestioningly. Nevertheless, the art and many of the gags do work on more mature levels so bear in mind that in Europe, this series is not strictly kids’ stuff. The yarn revels in classic set-piece slapstick and witty wordplay: poking fun at the fundamental components of the genre and relationships, whilst successfully embracing tradition with wild action.

Fine for older kids possessing some perspective and social understanding – and probably still safer than most Laurel and Hardy films or whatever TikTok clip the waifs of the coming generation can still access, these early exploits follow the grand old tradition of Destry Rides Again or Cat Ballou, superbly executed by a master visualist, commemorating the romantic allure of a Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1985 by Morris & Vidal. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2016 Cinebook Ltd.

Surrounded – America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832


By Wilfrid Lupano & Stéphane Fert, translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-348-6 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-349-3

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

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

The best way to obfuscate the past is to tell everyone it never happened and pray nobody goes poking around. So much you never suspected has been brushed under a carpet and erased by intervening generations proceeding without an inkling. Entire sections of society have been unwritten in this manner but always there have been pesky troublemakers who prod and probe, looking for what’s been earmarked for forgetting and shining a light on the history that isn’t there.

If I live long enough, I can’t wait to see what will be written about the next four years, but that’s a topic for another time…

One such team of intrepid histographic investigators are Wilfrid Lupano & Stéphane Fert. In 2020 they produced a sequential graphic narrative account of a remarkable moment of opportunity that was quashed by entrenched bigotry, selfish privilege and despicable intolerance. After far too long as a digital-only English-language edition (White All Around from Europe Comics), Blanc autour is now available in a lavish oversized hardback and new digital edition from those fine people at NBM. It opens with a context-filled Foreword before we meet servant girl Sarah Harris as she is tormented by ruffian child Feral, reading to her from an infamous new book…

Set one year after Nat Turner’s doomed black uprising of August 21st 1831 (which occurred in Southampton County, Virginia), this true tale took place in a land still reeling and terrified. Freshly minted preventative measures to control and suppress the slave population included banning black gatherings of three or more people, an uptick in public punishments like floggings, lynchings and ferocious policing – if not outright outlawing – of Negro literacy. The posthumous publishing of Thomas R. Gray’s The Confessions of Nat Turner had created a best seller that further outraged and alarmed Americans. Even in 1832, and hundreds of miles north in genteel Canterbury, Connecticut, black people were careful to mind their place. It might be a “Free State” where slavery was illegal, but even here Negros were an impoverished underclass…

Sarah, however, is afflicted with a quick, agile and relentlessly questioning mind. She craves knowledge and understanding the way her fellow servants do food, rest and no trouble from white folk. One day, fascinated by the way water behaves, Sarah plucks up her courage and asks the local school teacher to explain. Prudence Crandall is a well-respected, dedicated educator diligently shepherding the young daughters of the (white) citizenry to whatever knowledge they’ll need to be good wives and mothers, but when the brilliant little servant girl quizzes her, the teacher is seized by an incredible notion…

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

Her planned curriculum includes reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, natural and moral philosophy, history, drawing and painting, music on the piano, and the French language, and by sending it along with her intentions to Boston Abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, Crandall declares war on intolerance and ignorance in her home town. Sadly, her proud determination unleashes an unstoppable wave of sabotage, intimidation, sly exclusion, social ostracism and naked hatred against herself and her unacceptable student. She even tries to defend the move at the Municipal Assembly, before learning that only men were allowed to speak there…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surrounded – America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832 is a disturbing yet uplifting account every concerned citizen should read and remember. After all, learning is a privilege, not a right… unless we all defend and advance it…
© 2020 Dargaud Benelux, (Dargaud-Lombard S. A.) – LUPANO & FERT. All rights reserved.

Surrounded – America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832 will be published on February 11th 2025 and is available for pre-order now. For more information and other great reads see NBM Graphic Novels.

A Treasury of XXth Century Murder – Compendium II


By Rick Geary (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-333-2 (Digest TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

Rick Geary is a unique talent in the comic industry not simply because of his style of drawing but especially because of his method of telling tales. For decades he toiled as an Underground cartoonist and freelance illustrator of strange stories, published in locales as varied as Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated, Twisted Tales, Bop, National Lampoon, Vanguard, Bizarre Sex, Fear and Laughter, Gates of Eden, RAW and High Times, where he honed a unique ability to create sublimely understated stories by stringing together seemingly unconnected streams of narrative to compose tales moving, often melancholy and always beguiling.

Discovering his natural oeuvre with works including biographies of J. Edgar Hoover and Leon Trotsky and the multi-volumed Treasury of Victorian Murder series, Geary grew into a grand master and unique presence in both comics and True Crime literature. His graphic reconstructions of some of the most infamous murder mysteries recorded since policing began combine a superlative talent for laconic prose, incisive observation and meticulously detailed pictorial extrapolation, filtered through his fascination with and understanding of the lethal propensities of humanity. His forensic eye scours police blotters, newspaper archives and history books to compile irresistibly enthralling documentaries and then unleash them on a voracious never-replete readership.

In 2008 he progressed beyond Victoriana into the last century with the (hopefully still-ongoing) Treasury of XXth Century Murder series. It’s been while since anything new has emerged, but at least there are still mega-compilations such as this one, and gradually his other works are being rereleased as eBooks. If you still crave more Geary, there’s the recently-released Daisy Goes To the Moon in collaboration with Mathew Klickstein (for more of which stayed tuned)…

A Treasury of XXth Century Murder – Compendium II gathers a quartet of meticulously researched and imaginatively presented case files highlighting little-remembered scandals which seared the headlines as well as one murder that gripped the world and entered the vocabulary of humanity. They are delivered here with compelling understatement and a modicum of wry gallows wit…

In 2011 The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti exposed one of the greatest and most painful travesties of American justice in a case which took the entire world by storm in contemporary times. In 1920 a payroll robbery and double homicide in Eastern Massachusetts led to the arrest of two Italian anarchists who were either cunning, ruthless enemies of society, haplessly innocent victims of political scaremongering and judicial bigotry or – just maybe – a little of both…

The captivating capsule history opens with a selection of detailed maps of pertinent locales before ‘The Crime’ details how a bloody wages-snatch in South Braintree, Massachusetts took place on April 15th 1920. Those events are dissected with forensic care, rich in enticing extra data local police ignored when picking up two ideal suspects: immigrant left wing activists Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco.

‘The Accused’ details their personal histories, involvement with Anarchist and Socialist groups and their version of the events leading to their arrest on May 5th after which their deeply flawed trial is deconstructed in ‘The Case For the Commonwealth’: paying particular attention to the illegal manner in which the jury was convened; the nature of the witnesses and the prejudices of presiding judge and prominent anti-immigrant advocate Webster Thayer, who declared before, during and after the trial how he was going to “get those Bolshevicki bastards good and proper”  and “get those guys hanged”…

The farcical days in court, in which the defendants found themselves as much at the mercy of their own lawyer’s political agenda as the prosecution’s, and the public’s assumptions and fabrications are detailed in ‘The Case For the Defense’. They inevitably led to a guilty verdict and death sentences for both on July 14th 1921.

‘The Legal Jungle’ follows the numerous appeals, delays, public campaigns for clemency and stays of execution – paying particularly mordant attention to the unfortunate and peculiar legal convolutions of Massachusetts Law which dictated that all appeals in a case must be heard by the judge in the original case – meaning that Web Thayer was “compelled” to rule on his own judgements and directions in the case. Unsurprisingly, every appeal was overruled. He even threw out a confession by a professional gangster who came forward and admitted to committing the crime, calling him a “robber, crook, liar and thief with no credibility whatsoever”…

The graphic account closes with ‘A Global Cause’ as proceedings caught world attention, sparking a massive movement to re-examine the case; its subsequent co-opting as a cause celebre by both fascist and communist national leaders and violent anti-American protest, even riots and bombings in the streets of many countries. At least that sort of stuff can’t happen now, right?

Sacco and Vanzetti, who had always proclaimed their total innocence, were executed on August 23rd 1927, and this chilling chronicle concludes with those events, further facts and arguments that have continued to surface to this day regarding what is still a cruelly unfinished drama…

Travesty gives way to scandal in Lovers Lane – The Hall-Mills Mystery. Occurring during the “Gilded Age” of suburban middleclass America, it describes infidelity that rocked staid, upright New Jersey in 1922 and – thanks to the crusading/muckraking power of the press – much of the world beyond its normally sedate borders. Geary’s re-examination of the case begins here after a bibliography and detailed maps of ‘The City of New Brunswick’ and ‘Scene of the Hall-Mills Murders’, setting the scene for a grim tragedy of lust, jealousy, deception and affronted propriety…

The account proper commences ‘Under the Crabapple Tree’ as a well-to-do conurbation of prosperous churchgoers is rocked by the discovery of two bodies on park land between two farms. Reverend Edward W. Hall of the Church of St. John the Evangelist was found with a single fatal gunshot wound, placed beside and cradling the corpse of Mrs. Eleanor R. Mills, a parishioner and member of the choir. Her fatal injuries easily fall into the category we would now call overkill: three bullet wounds, throat slashed from ear-to-ear and her throat and vocal cords removed and missing…

‘The Victims’ are soon subject of a clumsy, botched, jurisdictionally contested investigation which nevertheless reveals Reverend Hall was particularly admired by many women of the congregation and, despite being married to a wealthy heiress older than himself, was engaged in a not especially secret affair with Mrs. Mills. This fact is confirmed by the cascade of passionate love letters scattered around the posed corpses…

The case swiftly stalls: tainted from the first by gawkers and souvenir hunters trampling the crime scene and a united front of non-cooperation from the clergyman’s powerful and well-connected family who also insist on early burial of the victims. However, the police doggedly proceed in ‘The Search for Evidence’, interviewing family and friends, forming theories and fending off increasingly strident interference from journalists.

With pressure mounting on all sides – a persistent popular theory is that the victims were killed by the Ku Klux Klan who were active in the State and particularly opposed to adultery – the bodies are exhumed for the first of many autopsies. Not long after, the youngsters who first found the bodies are re-interviewed, leading to an incredible confession which later proves to be fallacious.

It is not the only one. A local character known as “the Pig Woman” also comes forward claiming to have been present at the killing. Eventually, the police of two separate regions find themselves presiding over ‘The Case to Nowhere’: awash with too much evidence and too many witnesses with wildly varying stories which don’t support the scant few facts. In the midst of this sea of confusion a Grand Jury is finally convened and peremptorily closes after five days without issuing indictments against anybody…

‘Four Years Later’ the case is suddenly and dramatically reopened when the Widow Hall’s maid – whilst petitioning for divorce – is revealed to have received $5000 dollars to withhold information on her mistress’ whereabouts for the night of the double murder. When New York newspapers get wind of this story they unleash a tidal wave of journalistic excess that culminates in a fresh investigation and a new trial, scrupulously and compellingly reconstructed here by master showman Geary. With all actors in the drama having delivered their versions of events at last, this gripping confection concludes with a compelling argument assessing ‘Who Did It?’

This is a shocking tale with no winners, and the author’s meticulous presentation as he dissects the crime, illuminates the major and minor players and dutifully pursues all to their recorded ends is truly beguiling. Geary is a unique talent not simply because of his manner of drawing but because of the subject matter and methodology in the telling of his tales. He always presents facts, theories and even contemporary minutiae with absorbing pictorial precision, captivating clarity and devastating dry wit, re-examining each case with a force and power Oliver Stone would envy.

Famous Players – The Mysterious Death of William Desmond Taylor sees Geary again combine his gift for laconic prose, incisive observation and detailed pictorial extrapolation with his fascination for the darkness in humanity, here re-examining a landmark homicide that changed early Hollywood and led in large part to the punishing self-censorship of the Hays Commission Production Code.

In 1911, the first moving picture studio set up amidst sunny orange groves around rural Hollywood. Within a decade it was a burgeoning boom town of production companies and backlots, where movie stars were earning vast sums of money. As usual for such unregulated shanty metropolises, the new community had swiftly accumulated a dank ubiquitous underbelly, becoming a hotbed of vice, excess and debauchery. William Desmond Taylor was a man with a clouded past and a massive reputation as a movie director and ladies’ man. On the morning of Thursday, February 2nd 1922 he was found dead in his palatial home by his valet. The discovery triggered one of the most celebrated (and still unsolved) murder cases in Los Angeles’ extremely chequered history. By exposing a sordid undisclosed background of drugs, sex, booze, celebrity and even false identity, this true crime became a template for every tale of “Hollywood Babylon” and, even more than the notorious Fatty Arbuckle sex scandal, drove the movers and shakers of Tinseltown to clean up their act – or at least to sweep it out of the public gaze.

Geary examines the suspects – major and minor – and dutifully pursues all players to their recorded ends. Especially intriguing are snippets of historical minutiae and beautifully rendered maps and plans which bring all the varied locations to life (he should seriously consider turning this book into a Cluedo special edition), giving us all a fair crack at solving this notorious-yet-glamorous cold case.

Closing the police blotter is a legendary murder mystery, focusing on the Noir-informed, post-war scandal of Elizabeth Short: forever immortalised as the Black Dahlia.

Delivered as always in stark, uncompromising monochrome, the insightful deliberations diligently sift fact from mythology to detail one of the most appalling killings in modern history. Opening with the traditional bibliography of sources and detailed maps of Downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood Boulevard (1944-1946) and the body-dump site, Geary diligently unpicks fact from surmise, and clue from guesswork beginning with ‘Part One: The Vacant Lot’

Los Angeles California, Wednesday, January 15th 1947. At or around 10:AM, a mother pushes her baby’s stroller past open ground in Downtown’s Leimert Park neighbourhood. When she spots the two halves of a discarded shop mannikin lying in the grass, something makes her look again…

Soon the scene is a hotbed of activity, with cops (the notoriously corrupt LAPD of Police Chief Clemence B. Horrall) and headline-hungry reporters racing each other to glean facts and credit in a truly sensational killing. After a botched beginning, proper forensic procedure identifies the posed, much-mutilated victim and a call goes out to Medford, Massachusetts. Sadly, the distraught mother is talking to a canny, scruples-shy reporter rather than a police representative…

The victim’s life history is deftly précised in ‘Part Two: The Life of Elizabeth Short’ which describes a smalltown girl from a broken home, gripped by big dreams, a penchant for men in uniform and unsavoury morals. Described as flighty, with connections to notable underworld characters and night clubs, Elizabeth has a gift for finding Samaritans to help her out, but as detailed in ‘Part Three: Her Last Days’, with unspecified trouble following her, she walks out of the Biltmore Hotel at 10:PM on January 9th 1947. No one ever sees her again, except presumably her killer…

With attention-seekers of every stripe climbing on the accelerating bandwagon, ‘Part IV: The Investigation’ relates how Captain Jack Donahoe of Central Homicide employs 700 LAPD officers, 400 County Sheriff’s deputies, hundreds of other law-enforcement professionals and even private detectives to trace and interview hundreds of men connected with Short. In the end there are 150 suspects but not one arrest and, despite building a solid picture, Donahoe achieves nothing substantive. The case gets even further muddied and sensationalised when – just as public interest is waning – a string of anonymous letters and items of Short’s personal possessions are sent to the press by someone claiming to be the killer. Of course, those articles and knick-knacks might have already been in journalists’ possession from the first moment they identified her, long before the LAPD did…

The case remains active for years until it’s subsumed in and sidelined by a city-wide gang-war and resultant house-cleaning of corrupt cops in 1949. ‘Part V: Wrap-Up’ recaps prevailing theories – such as the fact that Short’s death might be part of a string of serial killings the police never connected together, or that she was linked to city officials with the case subsequently covered up from on high. Many more false trails and dead-end leads have come and gone in the decades since. The Black Dahlia murder remains unsolved and the LAPD case files have never been made public.

These grisly events in the tainted paradise of Tinseltown captivated public attention and became a keystone of Hollywood’s tawdry mythology. The killing spawned movies, books and TV episodes, and one tangible result. In February 1947 Republican State Assemblyman C. Don Field responded to the case by proposing a state-wide Registry of Sex Offenders – the first in America’s history. The law was passed before the year ended…

Rick Geary is a unique talent not simply because of his manner of drawing but because of the subject matter and methodology employed in telling his tales. He thrives on hard facts, but devotes time and space to all theories and even contemporary minutiae with absorbing pictorial precision, captivating clarity and devastating dry wit, re-examining each case with a force and power Sherlock Holmes would envy. He teaches with chilling graphic precision, captivating clarity and devastating dry wit, a perfect exemplar of how graphic narrative can be so much more than simple fantasy entertainment. This merrily morbid series of murder masterpieces should be mandatory reading for all comic fans, mystery addicts and crime collectors.

© 2009-2016 Rick Geary.

A Treasury of XXth Century Murder- Compendium II will be published on February 13th 2025 and is available for pre-order now. For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

Willie Nelson: A Graphic History – softcover edition


By T.J. Kirsch, Adam Walmsley, Jeremy Massie, Jason Pittman, Håvard S. Johansen, J.T. Yost, Coşkun Kuzgun, Jesse Lonergan, & various (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-332-5 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-263-2

I live a pretty blessed life these days. I love history and am addicted to comics and many of the best ones are just sent to me. The present trend is to combine both of my passions in graphic biographies – or even autobiographies. Our European cousins have pretty much collared the market on the former, with a range of personal histories featuring the great, the good and especially the extremely cool, but today we’re happily revisiting via a nifty, thrifty paperback and All-American(ish) confection that deftly hits that elusive sweet spot.

Whether you’re a fan or not of the music, you can’t deny the tenacity and enormous spirit of musician, writer, actor, filmmaker and activist Willie Nelson… the outsider’s outsider.

Utilising the talents of a group of indie artists, writer T.J. Kirsch has compiled an effective, effusive and moving monochrome testament to the troubadour’s talent, determination and resilience, which begins in 1933 in ‘Hill County, Texas’.

Rendered throughout in evocative, dried & dusty monochrome, the history begins with Coşkun Kuzgun detailing a hard life for a young boy wedded to mischief and addicted to music.

As they grew, Willie and sister Bobbie became local celebrities – but not rich ones – through performing, so he began a career in radio, using the opportunity to plug his own material. Never finding that elusive hit, Willie joined the Air Force in 1951, serving until a persistent back injury forced him out of the armed forces, just in time to stumble into matrimony. ‘A Humble Picker’ (limned by Jeremy Massie) traces that tempestuous relationship and Willie’s attempts to feed his family in and out of showbiz, before sliding back into disc jockeying and discovering marijuana…

The slow painful climb begins in Håvard S. Johansen’s ‘Country Willie’, continues in ‘Grinding Away’ (Jesse Lonergan) and culminates in professional breakthroughs and personal breakdowns in ‘Austin, Texas’ (art by Jason Pittman) as 1970 sees the true commencement of the legend…

J.T. Yost then depicts a life hard-lived but well worth the effort in ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ before the saga sparkles to a close – for now – in the all-T.J. Kirsch chapter ‘Elder Statesman’, revealing that music and legends just keep on going. That’s where the 2020 edition ended but here an ‘Epilogue’ by Kirsch catches us up, detailing the COVID days, “Sister Bobbie” Nelson’s passing and the outlaw gigs where Willie – well into his 90’s – still commands attention and applause. As of 20 minutes ago, and as far as I know, Willie’s still going strong…

Another addition is a bonus feature going behind-the-scenes into the book’s genesis and completion, complete with deleted pages, studies and sketches, embellished with creator commentary to back up original extras including Intro, Outro, Chapter and Endpaper illustrations by Adam Walmsley, ‘Bibliography’ and ‘Song Credits’ listing. This is an immensely likable pictorial testament that feels like a journey shared with a most interesting stranger. You may or may not like the music – yet – but you’ll be unable to not love the indomitable, irrepressible man.
© 2020 T.J. Kirsch. All rights reserved and managed by NBM Publishing, Inc.

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other great reads see NBM Graphic Novels

Abandoned Cars


By Tim Lane (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-341-5 (HB) 978-1-60699-3415 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

Do you remember America? It’s clearly not the place it used to be. Maybe it never was.

Tim Lane is a post-war American. His inner landscape is populated with B-Movies, Rock & Roll, junk-memorabilia, big cars with fins, old TV shows, Jack Kerouac, the seven ages of Marlon Brando, pulp fictions, young Elvis, distilled Depression-era experiences (all of them from “The Great” to the latest), black & white images on TV, loss of faith in old values, Mad Avenue propaganda, compromised ideals, frustrated dreams and waking nightmares. Lane calls that oh-so-plunderable societal gestalt and psychic landscape “The Great American Mythological Drama”, and for this first compilation of his stark, intriguing comic strips dipped deep to concoct his own striking contributions to the Great Double Martini of Life…

Many contemporaries used that shared popular culture to create new paintings and sculptures (see any of the many “lowbrow” or “pop surrealist”  tomes by Schorr, Ryden, Ledbetter et al that we’ve previously reviewed) but Lane eschewed the gallery art arena for his explorations, opting instead for the only true American medium of expression, the story, and toils bombastically in its ugly bastard offspring: Comics.

He draws in stunning monochrome: hard-edged, uncompromising and enticingly moody, and these short stories, vignettes, observations and sequential investigations are far from the usual stock of funnies. The compelling contents are culled from varied sources like Legal Action Comics, Hotwire, Typhon, Riverfront Times and Lane’s self-published magazine Happy Hour in America from 2003 to 2008, ranging from tales of dark, eccentric whimsy (‘American Cut-Out Collectibles’, ‘The Manic-Depressive from Another Planet’ and ‘The Aries Cow’) to philosophically charged musings (‘Ghost Road’, ‘To Be Happy’ and ‘The Drive Home’). There are Pop cultural pastiches (‘Outing’ and ‘Doo-Wop and Planet Earth’), fascinating autobiography and reportage (‘Spirit’ parts 1-3, ‘In My Dream’ and ‘You Are Here: the Story of Stagger Lee’) to just plain old-fashioned noir-tinted thrillers like ‘Cleveland’ and ‘Sanctuary’.

Also included are numerous untitled, enigmatic and addictive short pieces, and for my money the most evocative and powerful piece herein is an all-but-wordless, 2-page rumination on age and loss: ‘Those Were Good Years’. You’d have to be made of stone to be unmoved…

Crafting comics is clearly not a job or hobby for Lane. Serious artists have always struggled to discover greater truths through their creative response to the world, and he has obviously found his instrument in black line on white and his muse in the shabby, avuncular, boisterous, scary detritus of our everyday, blue-collar communal past. The result is stunning and highly intoxicating.

Questing, introspective, insightful, melancholic and as desperately inquiring as the young Bob Dylan, with as many questions, even fewer answers and just as much lasting, life-altering entertainment to be derived…

Why haven’t you got this book yet?… And once you’ve sorted that, why not try his 2014 graphic novel The Lonesome Go or 2020’s Toybox Americana: Characters Met Along the Way?
© 2003-2008, 2010 Tim Lane. All rights reserved.

Django, Hand on Fire: The Great Django Reinhardt


By Salva Rubio & Efa, translated by Matt Madden (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-287-8 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-288-5

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

The world has now formally and officially gone to hell in a handcart, so how about some soothing, jolly music – or at least some comics about that music?

Publisher NBM’s line of European-originated biographies never fails to delight, with this oversized luxury hardcover (also available in digital formats) one of the most engaging thus far: skilfully deconstructing – when not actually aiding and adding to – the myths and legends surrounding a top contender for the title of greatest guitar player of all time…

Django, Hand on Fire rewardingly reunites award-winning screenwriter, historian and novelist Salva Rubio (Max; The Photographer of Mauthausen) with animator/illustrator Ricard Fenandez (AKA Efa of Les Icariades; Rodriguez; L’Âme du Vin; Le Soldat). Their other collaborations are also beautiful biographies – Monet: Itinerant of Light and Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance.

Originally released in France, the translated story of Django, main de feu is preceded here by an introductory prose appraisal from Thomas Dutronc before a stunning confection of painterly images traces the life of the troubled and unfortunate Roma musician from his fraught birth in a frozen field in Belgium to his second birth and reunion with the true love he threw away and found again. That natal moment was in 1910 as his father and the other itinerant performers of their tribe were eking out a wage entertaining outworlders.

By 1922, the troupe were resident in Paris’ “Zone”: an enclave for “his sort” where social outcasts like gypsies could reside until posh folks found a use for them. The lad was cocky and troublesome, an arrogant illiterate born for mischief but blessed with astounding musical skill. His life turned around when his mama acquired a six-string banjo for him and all his energies suddenly refocussed on mastering music. Soon Django was making money – and losing it gambling – even before he was considered a man…

Still an emotional child, he became the star of a professional (adult) band but his actions and attitude lost him many friends and family and ultimately the girl who adored him: Irma AKA Naguine. She faithfully trailed in his wake as producers and record publishers tracked the young man and watched in resignation as he succumbed to the shining blonde glory of faux flower artisan Florine/Bella. Naguine left the Zone entirely when Django and the flower girl wed, but swore to return…

The musician’s meteoric rise stalled only as he awaited his first child’s birth. As they slept in their wagon, it caught fire and although Bella got out, Django was badly burned on his legs and left hand. How – driven by his formidable mother – he battled back to overcome his life-changing injuries and, by changing his style, mastered another instrument, found undying fame and finally realized where his true love lay is a fabulous (if not strictly accurate) tale to warm the heart and gladden the eyes…

The pictorial paean to persistence and testament to passion is supported by a Bibliography and Creator Biographies plus ‘Django Reinhardt, from mystery to legend… In the light of History’: a fulsome, copiously-illustrated essay detailing the author’s factual choices and path to this particular truth, categorised and examined in ‘A mythical birth’; ‘The Zone’; ‘An interloper in the world of bal-musette’, ‘J’ai deux amours: Naguine and …le jass…’, ‘The Cross of Blood…’; ‘…and the fiery flowers’; ‘Hospital for the Poor’ and ‘Hand on fire’…

Sparkling and inspirational, this is treat for every music historian and intrigued dilettante: a beguiling magic window into another world and one you should seek out tout de suite
© DUPUIS 2020 by Rubio, Efa. All rights reserved.

Walt Kelly’s Our Gang volume 1


By Walt Kelly (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN 978-1560977537 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Today is the anniversary of controversial screen pioneer Hal Roach (January 14th 1892 – November 2nd 1992), a movie man responsible for some of the best comics and newspaper strips ever made. Here’s one of the very best solely in need of rediscovery and new archival editions…

The movie shorts franchise Our Gang (latterly the Li’l Rascals) were one of the most popular in American Film history. Beginning in 1922 they featured the fun and folksy humour of a bunch of “typical kids”. Atypically though, there was always full racial equality and mingling – and the little girls were still always smarter than the boys. Romping together, they all enjoyed idealised adventures in a time both safer and more simple.

The rotating cast of characters and slapstick shenanigans were the brainchild of film genius Hal Roach who directed and worked with Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase and Laurel & Hardy amongst so many others. These brief cinematic paeans to a mythic childhood entered the “household name” category of popular Americana in amazingly swift order. As times and tastes changed Roach was forced to sell up to the celluloid butcher’s shop of MGM in 1938, and the features suffered the same interference and loss of control that marred the later careers of Stan and Ollie, the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton.

In 1942 Dell released an Our Gang comic book written and drawn by Walt Kelly who, consummate craftsman that he was, deftly restored the wit, verve and charm of the glory days via a progression of short comic stories elevating lower class American childhood to the mythic peaks of Dorothy in Oz, Huckleberry Finn or Laura Ingalls of Little House… fame.

Over the course of the first eight issues so lovingly reproduced in this glorious collection, Kelly moved beyond the films – good or otherwise – to sculpt an idyllic storyscape of games and dares; excursions; pee-wee adventures; get-rich-quick schemes; battles with rival gangs and especially plucky victories over adults, mean, condescending, criminal or psychotic.

Granted great leeway, Kelly eventually settled on his own cast, but aficionados and purists can still thrill here to the classic cast of Mickey, Buckwheat, Happy/Spanky, Janet and Froggy.

Thankfully, after far too long a delay, today’s comics are once again offering material of this genre to contemporary audiences. Even so, many modern readers may be unable to appreciate the skill, narrative charm and lost innocence of this style of children’s tale. If so I genuinely pity them, because this is work with heart and soul, drawn by one of the greatest exponents of graphic narrative America has ever produced. I hope their loss is not yours.
© 2006 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

Spirou & Fantasio volumes 14 & 16 – The Comet and the Clockmaker and The Z Rises Again


By Tome & Janry with Carlos Rocque and Stuf, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-404-5 (Album PB/Digital edition Clockmaker)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-441-0 (Album PB/Digital edition Z Rises Again)

These books include Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Apparently, there’s no time like the present!

Spirou (whose name translates as “squirrel”, “mischievous” and “lively kid” in the language of the Flemish Walloons) was created by French cartoonist François Robert Velter – AKA “Rob-Vel” – for Belgian publisher Éditions Dupuis. The evergreen youngster in red was a response to the success of Hergé’s Tintin at rival outfit Casterman. In the beginning, the character Spirou was a plucky bellboy/lift operator employed by the Moustique Hotel (an in-joke reference to Dupuis’ premier periodical Le Moustique) whose improbable adventures with pet squirrel Spip evolved into astounding and often surreal comedy dramas.

The other red-headed boy adventurer premiered on April 21st 1938 in an 8-page tabloid (in (French and/or Dutch) magazine bearing his name to this day. Fronting a roster of new and licensed foreign strips – Fernand Dineur’s Les Aventures de Tif (latterly Tif et Tondu) and US newspaper imports Red Ryder, Brick Bradford and SupermanLe Journal de Spirou expanded exponentially, adding Flemish-edition Robbedoes on October 27th 1938, boosting page counts and adding action, fantasy and comedy features until it was an unassailable, unmissable necessity for continental kids. His likeness and exploits fuelled mountains of merch, public acclaim, statues and civic art and in 2018 he got his own theme park.

Spirou and chums helmed the magazine for most of its life, with many notable creators building on Velter’s work, beginning with his wife Blanche “Davine” Dumoulin, who took over the strip when her husband enlisted in 1939. She was aided by Belgian artist Luc Lafnet until 1943, when Dupuis purchased all rights to the feature. Thereafter comic strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (“Jijé”) carried it until 1946 when his assistant André Franquin inherited the entire affair. Gradually, the new auteur retired traditional short gag vignettes in favour of longer adventure serials, introducing a wide returning cast. Ultimately, Franquin created his own milestone character. Phenomenally popular animal Marsupilami debuted in 1952’s landmark yarn Spirou et les héritiers, swiftly evolving into a scene-stealing regular and eventually one of the most significant stars of European comics.

Jean-Claude Fournier succeeded Franquin: overhauling the feature over nine stirring serial adventures between 1969-1979 by tapping into a rebellious, relevant zeitgeist in tales of drug cartels, environmental concerns, nuclear energy and repressive regimes. By the 1980s, the series seemed stalled; three different creative teams alternated on the serial: Yves Chaland, Raoul Cauvin & Nic Broca, and Philippe Vandevelde writing as “Tome & illustrator Jean-Richard Geurts – AKA Janry. These last reverently referenced the revered and adored Franquin era: reviving the feature’s fortunes over 14 wonderful albums between 1984-1998. On their departure the strip diversified into parallel strands: Spirou’s Childhood/Little Spirou and guest-creator specials A Spirou Story By…

Later teams and guests to tackle the wonder boys include Lewis Trondheim, Jean-Davide Morvan & Jose-Luis Munuera, Fabien Vehlmann & Yoann, Benoît Feroumont, Emile Bravo, Jul & Libon, Makyo, Toldac & Tehem, Guerrive, Abitan & Schwartz, Frank le Gall, Flix and many more. By my count that brings the album count to approximately 92 if you include specials, spin-offs series and one-shots, official and otherwise. Happily, in recent years, even some of the older vintages have been reprinted in French, but there are still dozens that have not made it into English yet. Quelle sodding horreur!

Cinebook have been publishing Spirou & Fantasio’s exploits since October 2009, initially concentrating on bringing Tome & Janry’s superb pastiche/homages of Franquin before dipping into the original Franquin oeuvre and latterly adding tales by some of the bunch listed above.

On January 3rd 1924, (belated bon anniversaire!) Belgian superstar André Franquin was born in Etterbeek. Drawing from an early age, he began formal art training at École Saint-Luc in 1943. When the war forced the school’s closure a year later, he found work as an animator at Compagnie Belge d’Animation in Brussels. There he met future bande dessinée superstars Maurice de Bevere (Lucky Luke-creator “Morris”), Pierre Culliford/Peyo (creator of The Smurfs) and Eddy Paape (Valhardi, Luc Orient). In 1945 everyone but Culliford signed on with Dupuis, and Franquin began his career as a jobbing cartoonist/illustrator. He produced covers for Le Moustique and scouting magazine Plein Jeu and, throughout those early days, was (with Morris) trained and mentored by Jijé. At that time main illustrator at Le Journal de Spirou, Jijé turned the youngsters and fellow neophyte Willy Maltaite – AKA Will (Tif et Tondu, Isabelle, Le jardin des désirs) – into a creative bullpen known as the La bande des quatre. This “Gang of Four” promptly revolutionised Belgian comics with their engaging “Marcinelle school” style of graphic storytelling.

Jijé handed Franquin all responsibilities for the flagship strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriquée, (LJdS #427, June 20th 1946) and the eager beaver ran with it for two decades, enlarging the scope and horizons until it became purely his own. Almost every episode, fans would meet startling new characters like comrade/rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor The Count of Champignac. Spirou & Fantasio were globe-trotting troubleshooting journalists, endlessly expanding their exploits in unbroken four-colour glory. They travelled to exotic places, uncovering crimes, capturing the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of extraordinary arch-enemies such as Zorglub and Zantafio. Along the way Franquin premiered one of the first strong female characters in European comics – competitor journalist Seccotine (Cellophine in current English translations).

In an admirable example of good practise, Franquin mentored his own apprentice cartoonists during the 1950s. These included Jean Roba (La Ribambelle, Boule et Bill), Jidéhem (Sophie, Starter, Gaston Lagaffe) and Greg (Bruno Brazil, Bernard Prince, Zig et Puce, Achille Talon), who all worked with him on Spirou et Fantasio. In 1955, a contractual spat with Dupuis led to Franquin signing up with rivals Casterman on Le Journal de Tintin, where he collaborated with René Goscinny and old pal Peyo whilst also creating raucous gag strip Modeste et Pompon. Franquin quickly patched things up with Dupuis and returned to LJdS, subsequently co-creating Gaston Lagaffe (AKA Gomer Goof) in 1957, but was still obliged to carry on those Casterman commitments too…

From 1959, writer Greg and background artist Jidéhem began regularly assisting Franquin, but by 1969 the master storyteller had reached his Spirou limit. He quit, taking his mystic yellow monkey with him. Later creations include fantasy series Isabelle, illustration sequence Monsters and bleak adult conceptual series Idées Noires, but his greatest creation – and one he retained all rights to on his departure – was Marsupilami, which – in addition to comics – has become a megastar of screen, plush toy store, console and albums.

Plagued in later life by bouts of depression and cardiac problems, Franquin passed away on January 5th 1997, but his legacy remains: a vast body of work that reshaped the landscape of European comics. The payout for all that good practise can be enjoyed here as we review hopefully happier if undoubtedly weirder days as,via the vagaries of publishing (almost as byzantine as time travel in its own way) we encounter a continued story annoyingly broken up for English readers due to an adventure published out of sequence…

Spirou & Fantasio volume 14 – The Comet and the Clockmaker

Serialised in 1984, Tome & Janry’s L’Horloger de la comète was their 4th tale together, running in Le Journal de Spirou  #2427-2448 before becoming the 36th S&F album in February 1986). In it, the valiant lad and his inseparable pal are foolishly left housesitting the wonder-packed chateau of their inspirational boffin buddy: mushroom-mutating magician Pacôme Hégésippe Adélard Ladislas, comte de Champignac AKA Count Champignac… and someone else who turns 75 this year…

In the course of the evening, the lads use the installed telescope to track a comet across the sky but are distracted by a ship crashing into the lawn. Inside it is a time traveller who is also the Count’s descendant Aurélian de Champignac. Accompanied by his faithful pet Snuffeller Timothy, Aurélian has come on a mission of extreme importance, one crucially linked throughout history by the comet’s regularly returning appearances. Sadly, his task – to gather plants and reseed the barren world of tomorrow – is made more dangerous by unsuspected and extremely sinister seeming pursuers from beyond his own lifeless era, intent on keeping the future’s status quo intact…

And then the new allies are off, triggering alarms and military responses all over the world as they head for deepest, greenest Palombia, land of lunacy and the Marsupilami. Of course, everything goes wrong and before long our dauntless saviours are not only lost in the green hell but also in time. Fetching up in Portuguese-colonised climes circa 1531 anno Domini, the regreening of Earth seems destined to fail when they crash smack in the middle of a native resistance to European expansion and an internal power-grabbing insurrection amongst the invaders. But then…

If you’re fussy, the Zordolt story which breaks up the narrative flow (volume 15: Shadow of the Z) was reviewed here, so if it makes you more comfortable stop now, go read that and return here once that affirms your particular or preferred take on reality.

Spirou & Fantasio volume 16 – The Z Rises Again

In Europe, L’Horloger de la comète was promptly followed in Le Journal de Spirou #2487-2508 by Le réveil du Z which in September 1986 became the 37th collection. A wry, satirically-charged notional sequel to Franquin’s 1960 yarn Z is For Zorglub, it sees a kind of return for the pompous, conflicted Bond-style supervillain…

Back in their present, Spirou & Fantasio strive to return to their regular lives only to discover that although they have had enough of time travel, it has not had enough of them. Scorned, derided and disbelieved at home and the editorial office, our unruly investigators are suddenly kidnapped to 2062 by Aurélian de Champignac’s assistant So-Yah, where Zorglub Junior is using his ancestor’s mind-bending technologies and mastery of Champignac’s time travel techniques to become ruler of the world…

Happily, the Count has a plan to foil the ascendant tyrant, so all Spirou & Fantasio – with Timothy the Snuffeller – have to do is liberate Aurélian from the forbidding timeless citadel where the villain’s army of ruthless Zorglmen are holding him captive until their war of chronal conquest is won…

… Oh and probably destroying the giant Zorglock device enslaving every mind and directing every life on Earth might be beneficial too…

Fast-paced, wry, edgily-barbed, compellingly convoluted and perfectly blending helter-skelter excitement with keen suspense and outrageous slapstick humour, The Z Rises Again is a terrific romp to delight devotees of easy-going adventure and a perfect counter to the riotous eco-adventure that precedes it. Read together, they comprise a superbly wild sci-fi ride any fan of the genre or just good storytelling will adore. Easily accessible to readers of all ages and drawn with the beguiling style and seductively wholesome élan that make Asterix, Lucky Luke and Tintin so compelling, these are enduring tales from a long line of superb exploits, as deserving to be a household name as much as those series.
Original editions © Dupuis, 1986 by Tome & Janry. All rights reserved. English translations 2018, 2019 © Cinebook Ltd.

The Adventures of Buck Danny volume 1: Night of the Serpent


By Francis Bergése, colours by Frédéric Bergése translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 987-1-905460-85-4 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Happy 78th Birthday flyboys…

Adding more sophisticated modern spin to period-set stories

Buck Danny premiered in Le Journal de Spirou in January 1947 and continues soaring across assorted Wild Blue Yonders to this day. The strip describes the improbably long yet historically significant career of the eponymous Navy pilot and his wing-men Sonny Tuckson and Jerry Tumbler. It is one of the world’s last aviation strips and a series which has always closely wedded itself to current affairs, from the Korean War to Afghanistan, the Balkans to Iran…

The US Naval Aviator was created by Georges Troisfontaines whilst he was Director of Belgian publisher World Press Agency and realised by Victor Hubinon before being handed to multi-talented scripter Jean-Michel Charlier, then working as a junior artist. Charlier’s fascination with human-scale drama and rugged realism had been first seen in such “true-war” strips as L’Agonie du Bismark (The Agony of the Bismarck – published in LJdS in 1946). Charlier and René Goscinny were co-editors of Pistolin magazine from 1955-1958 and subsequently created Pilote in 1959. When they, with fellow creative legend Albert Uderzo, formed the Édifrance Agency to promote the specialised communication benefits of comic strips, Charlier continued to script Buck Danny and did so until his death. Thereafter his artistic collaborator Francis Bergése (who first replaced Hubinon in 1978) took complete charge of the All-American Air Ace’s exploits, on occasion working with other creators such as Jacques de Douhet.

Like so many artists involved in aviation storytelling, Bergése (born in 1941) started young with both drawing and flying. He qualified as a pilot whilst still a teenager, enlisted in the French Army and was a reconnaissance flyer by his twenties. At age 23 he began selling strips to L’Étoile and JT Jeunes (1963-1966), after which he produced his first aviation strip – Jacques Renne for Zorro. This was followed by Amigo, Ajax, Cap 7, Les 3 Cascadeurs, Les 3 A, Michel dans la Course and many more. Bergése worked as a jobbing artist on comedies, pastiches and WWII strips until 1983, when he won the coveted job of illustrating globally syndicated Buck Danny with 41st yarn ‘Apocalypse Mission’.

Bergése even found time in the 1990s to produce episodes of a European interpretation of British icon Biggles before finally retiring in 2008, passing on the reins (control? Joystick? No definitely not that last one) to illustrators Fabrice Lamy & Francis Winis and scripter Frédéric Zumbiehl. Thus far – with Zumbiehl, Jean-Michel Arroyo & Gil Formosa all taking turns at the helm – the franchise has notched up 60 albums and a further 10 spin-off tomes…

Like all the Danny tales, this premier Cinebook edition is astonishingly authentic: a breezy and compelling action thriller originally published in 2000 as Buck Danny #49: La nuit du serpent – with colouring by son Frédéric – and blending mind-boggling detail and technical veracity with good old fashioned blockbuster adventure…

At Kunsan Airbase, South Korea a veteran US flier goes on dawn border patrol only to be hit by an uncanny light which blinds him and apparently negates all his F-16’s guidance systems. Despite best efforts, the jet crashes in the De-Militarized Zone with the North Koreans claiming a flagrant breaking of the truce… and huge publicity coup. Strangely though, downed Colonel Maxwell is still missing. The Communists don’t have him and the pilot’s tracking devices indicate he’s still out there somewhere: lost in the No Man’s land between North and South.

America’s military swings into action, resolved to rescue their man, clean up the mess and allow the Reds neither tangible nor political victory. Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson are at a Paris air show when they get the call and are soon en route to Korea for a last-ditch face-saving mission. However, as the trio prepare to join the covert rescue mission, evidence emerges, casting doubt on the authenticity of the alleged super-weapon. Meanwhile, missing man Maxwell has stumbled into a fantastic secret under the DMZ…

Fast-paced and brimming with tension and spectacular action, this is a classically conceived and constructed thriller which effortlessly plunges the reader into a delightfully dizzying riot of intrigue, mystery and suspense before its captivating conclusion.

The Adventures of Buck Danny is one long and enthralling tour of duty no comics fan, adrenaline-junkie or armchair Top Gunner can afford to miss. Bon chance, mes braves…
© Dupuis, 2000 by Bergése. English translation © 2009 Cinebook Ltd. All rights reserved.

Red Moon


By Carlos Trillo & Eduardo Risso, translated by Zeljko Medic (Dark Horse/SAF Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-447-7(HC)  eISBN: 978-1-62115-916-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Marvel’s Most Magical… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

If you like a whiff of tongue in cheek whimsy with your fantastic fairytales you might want to take a look at this superb treat from prolific and much-missed Argentinean journalist and comics writer Carlos Trillo (Topo Gigio, Alvar Mayor, El Loco Chávez, Peter Kampf, Cyber Six, Point de rupture) and terrifyingly versatile illustrator Eduardo Risso (Batman, 100 Bullets, Jonny Double, Parque Chas, Simon, Boy Vampire), starring an affable boy acrobat and a tempestuous little princess.

Los misterios de la Luna roja was originally released as a quartet of comics between 1997 and 1998 by Ervin Rustemagi?’s Balkan publishing powerhouse Strip Art Features and appears here as compiled in a stunning translated tome thanks to Dark Horse Comics. Kicking off with scene-setting epic ‘Bran the Invisible’, the supremely wry, deftly comedic action opens as junior tumbler Antolin and his showbiz mentors Crocker & Theo fetch up their travelling show in the extremely depressed and downhearted land of Burien.

Unable to raise a single smile or any sign approbation, the lad soon learns that the kingdom is in mourning. Burien’s Lord and defender has been stricken with grief since his wife Tyl died. Moreover, their daughter Moon is both bonkers and prone to violence. She also talks to (shouts at and fights with) an invisible friend…

However, after encountering the red-haired daughter of the despondent widower, Antolin is quickly forced to conclude that she’s not crazy at all. His first clue is that unseen Bran apparently predicted the acrobat’s arrival and how the orphan boy would help “Red Moon” save the land. The clincher, though, is that something undetectable keeps hitting him…

There’s no time to waste since the marauding armies of the cruel yet cowardly Lord of Leona are already making their uncontested way over the now-undefended borders…

And thus begins an epic confection with crucial quests, astounding odysseys, barbarically vile villains, fairy queens, witches, dragons and monsters all in attendance as the valiant children – and Bran – flee the invasion, uncover the incredible truth of Tyl’s fate and seek to amass a meagre but prophesied army of incredible individuals to rescue Burien and restore Moon’s father to his previous competence and glory…

The saga concludes as Antolin and Red Moon return to the troubled land of Burien resolutely accompanied by their implausibly unbeatable ‘Attack Circus’ – and a few useful Fairy trinkets – resolved to repel the vile invasion and deliver to the sadistic Leona his just deserts. Controversially, that inevitable prospect provides no Happy Ever After for Antolin, who learns in the throes of triumph for Burian that his beloved mentors Theo & Crocker were sent to certain doom by the invaders…

Thus he sets off again, following their trail into ‘The Never Kingdom’ and is soon delighted to see Moon – and (not see) Bran – following the former partner-in-peril. Braving icy wastes, horrific beasts and a population of magically-mutated monsters, the kids challenge the power of wicked crone Panta and consequently discover that the malevolent sorceress and cannibal might perhaps be the long-lost mother of foundling Antolin…

Family feeling doesn’t count for much in Panta’s world, so there are few regrets after Moon discovers the secret of reversing the witch’s transformation spells and starts putting the Never Kingdom to rights…

The fabulously engaging, deliciously trenchant frolics then wrap up with the introduction of insalubrious junior jester Patapaf – and his ventriloquistic stick Pitipif – who play a critical role in the search for ‘The Book of All Dreams’.

With peace and joy restored to his subjects, the widowed Lord of Burian remarries but his new bride is almost immediately abducted by invulnerable ogre Lamermor de Granf to ensure that her husband will duel him for the right to rule Burien. Outraged Moon can do nothing until she enjoys a fairy-sent dream and learns the smug giant has a hidden weakness. Setting off with Patapaf to find wandering showman Antolin and talking cat Blas Pascual de la Galera the little warriors invade Witch Queen Yaga’s fortress – and subconscious – to ferret out a long-occluded means to destroy Lamermor, accidentally acquiring an unlikely ally who will ensure their victory and a Happy Ending at last…

Fast, funny and filled with family-friendly action and thrills, Red Moon is a delirious double-edged delight, with knowing sophistication for adult readers working side-by-side with gloriously inventive takes on traditional tale-telling, adeptly realised by Risso’s magnificently surreal illustration.

Ideal bedtime reading for anybody and any time.
Red Moon™ & © 2005, 2006, 2014 SAF Comics. All rights reserved.