Category: Historical

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Robot Archie and the Time Machine


By E. George Cowan, Ted Kearon, Mike Western & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-83786-169-9 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

British comics have always enjoyed an extended love affair with what can only be described as “unconventional” (for which feel free to substitute “weird” or “creepy”) heroes. So many stars and notional role models of our serials and strips have been outrageous or just plain “off”: self-righteous voyeur/vigilantes like Jason Hyde, sinister masterminds in the manner of The Dwarf or Black Max, arrogant former criminals like The Spider or outright racist overmen such as fearsome white ideologue Captain Hurricane…

Joking aside, British comics are unlike any other kind: having to be seen to be believed and always enjoying – especially when “homaging” such uniquely American fare as costumed crimefighters – a touch of insouciant rebelliousness…

Until the 1980s, UK periodicals employed an anthological model, offering variety of genre, theme and character on a weekly – sometimes fortnightly – basis. Humour comics like The Beano were leavened by action-heroes like The Q-Bikes or General Jumbo whilst adventure papers like Smash, The Eagle, Hotspur or Valiant always offered palate-cleansing gagsters like The Cloak, Grimly Feendish, Mowser and sundry other titter-treats.

At first glance, prior to the advent of game changers Action and 2000AD, British comics seemingly fell into fairly ironclad categories. Back then, you had genial and/or fantastic preschool fantasy; a large selection of licensed entertainment properties; action; adventure; war; school dramas, sports and straight comedy strands. Closer examination would confirm there was always a subversive merging, mixing undertone, especially in such antihero series as Dennis the Menace or our rather strained interpretation of superheroes. Just check out The Phantom Viking, Kelly’s Eye or early Steel Claw stories…

After post-war austerity, the 1950s ushered in a revolution for British comics. With printing and paper restrictions gone, a steady stream of titles emerged from companies new and old, aimed at the many different levels of childish attainment from pre-school to young adult. When Hulton Press launched The Eagle in April 1950, the very concept of what weeklies could be changed forever. That oversized prestige package with photogravure colour was exorbitantly expensive, however, and when venerable London-based publishing powerhouse Amalgamated Press retaliated, it was a far more economical affair.

I’m assuming AP only waited so long before the first issue of Lion launched (cover-dated February 23rd 1952) to see if their flashy rival periodical was going to last. Lion – just like The Eagle – was a mix of prose stories, features and comic strips and even offered its own cover-featured space-farer in Captain Condor – Space Ship Pilot. Initially edited by Reg Eves, the title ran 1156 weekly issues until 18th May 1974 when it merged with sister-title Valiant. Along the way – in the tradition of British publishing which subsumed weaker-selling titles to keep popular strips going – Lion absorbed Sun (1959) and Champion (1966) before going on to swallow The Eagle in April 1969: soon after merging with Thunder (1971). In its capacity as one of the country’s most popular and enduring adventure comics, the last vestiges of Lion only vanished in 1976 during Valiant’s amalgamation with Battle Picture Weekly.

Despite that demise, there were 30 Lion Annuals between 1953 and 1982, all benefitting from the UK’s lucrative Christmas market, combining a variety of original strips with topical and historical prose adventures; sports, science/general interest features; short humour strips and – increasingly from the 1970s – reformatted reprints from IPC/Fleetway’s back catalogue.

The Jungle Robot debuted in Lion’s first issue, created by incredible prolific E. George Cowan (Ginger Nutt, The Spider, Saber, King of the Jungle, Smokeman/UFO Agent, Nick Jolly the Flying Highwayman, Paddy Payne, Girls’ Crystal Libraries) and drawn by Alan Philpott (The Deathless Men/V for Vengeance, A Classic in Pictures, Rebels of Ancient Rome, War/Super Detective/Cowboy Comics & Picture Libraries, Look-In, Klanky). It enthralled readers for a couple of months before abruptly vanishing with the August 9th issue.

Other than an appearance in the 1955 Lion Annual that was it until January 19th 1957 when the mechanical marvel was revived and revised by Cowan & A. Forbes before veteran artist Ernest “Ted” Kearon (Spot the Clue with Zip Nolan, The Day the World Drowned, Steel Commando and DC Thomson’s Morgyn the Mighty) signed on in 1958 and soldiered on for most of the next 17-ish years. On his return the mighty mouthed mechanoid became one of the most popular and well-remembered heroes of the British scene and was successfully syndicated all across Europe and around the world. Hopefully this compilation of later material will be soon supplemented by earlier annals in the fullness of time…

Reprinting stories from Lion between 20th April 1968 to 11th January 1969 plus yarns from Lion & Valiant Special 1969 and Lion Summer Special 1970 the saga returns and -following a fulsome reminiscence and Introduction by John Reppion – the latterday ongoing adventures of explorers and troubleshooters Ted Ritchie, Ken Dale and arrogant, smug, self-absorbed yet innately paternally benevolent super-robot Robot Archie resume and take an outrageous turn…

The former Jungle Robot was once the greatest achievement of Ted’s inventor uncle Professor C. R. Ritchie: battling monsters & aliens, foiling crooks and battling disasters, but in ‘Robot Archie’s Time Machine’ – by Cowan & Kearon and running from 20th April to 29th June 1968 – the boastful ‘bot discovers the wonders and perils of spacetime after the boys inherit The Castle, a colossal inhabitable two-storey faux chess piece which can take them anywhere in history and even into the future…

The first tempestuous test drive dumps them in the 14th century and into a minor peasants’ revolt as cruel, ambitious tyrant Hugo the Black Wolf terrorises his bit of Britain, and sees the armoured interloper and his pitiful retinue as a mighty rival knight and squires. Soon the visitors are battling injustice and beloved of the peasantry, but also risking accusations of sorcery with Archie’s many electromechanical add-ons (magnets, extendible claws, jet pack etc.) and incredible strength and durability adding to his lustrous legend… as a warlock!

Hugo despatched, the voyagers seek their own time and home but a technical hitch sees them overshoot by nearly a 100 years in second saga ‘Robot Archie and the Superons’ (6th July to 2nd November 1968). Obviously influenced by TV series/movie adaptation Doctor Who: Dalek Invasion Earth 2150 AD, the extended epic finds the trio in a London resembling a rain forest and overrun with wild animals, where the surviving dregs of humanity are hunted by invading aliens inside an infinite army of mechas ranging from tiny to gigantic …until Archie and Co organise a resistance and repel the rapacious robotic rogues…

Final weekly serial ‘Robot Archie – Time Traveller’ sees the garrulous gadget admitting he cannot control The Castle as another attempt to return to 1968 deposits them all in 18th century England where the big guy is mistaken for a heroic and popular highwayman battling corrupt and unjust magistrate Sir Jeremiah Creefe, who uses The Law and the King’s Soldiery to scourge London Town and line his own coffers in the days before Christmas. But not for long; once Archie sets his mechanical mind to it…

A section of ‘Extras’ kicks off with a brace of short complete tales from the Lion & Valiant Special 1969 and Lion Summer Special 1970 respectively. The first sees the time-tossed trio fetch up on a desert island just as bunch of pirates is bury their ill-gotten gains. Sadly, Blackbeard’s pistol balls briefly blow one of Archie’s fuses and only sheer luck and attacking Spaniards save the heroes from the plank…

This romp is illustrated by magnificent Mike Western who also closes this book with a half-dozen full-colour covers, but before that one last jaunt takes the team all the way back to who knows when and a lost isle of dinosaurs, cavemen and exploding volcanoes: a breathless rollercoaster ride by an artist unknown to me…

Now part of Rebellion Publishing’s line of British Comics Classics, Robot Archie is an icon of UK fantasy long overdue for revival. I hope not much time passes before we see all the old stories back again…
© 1968, 1969 & 2024 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Night of The Devil – War Picture Library volume 3


By Hugo Pratt, Tom Tully, Gordon Sowman & various (Rebellion Studios/Treasury of British Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-903-3 (HB/Digital Edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Born in Rimini, Ugo Eugenio Prat, AKA Hugo Pratt (June 15th 1927 – August 20th 1995) wandered the world in early life, whilst becoming one of its paramount comics creators. His enthralling graphic inventions since Ace of Spades (in 1945 whilst still studying at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts) were many and varied. His signature character – based in large part on his own exotic formative years – is mercurial soldier (perhaps sailor is more accurate) of fortune Corto Maltese.

Pratt was a consummate storyteller with a unique voice and a stark expressionistic graphic style that should not work, but so wonderfully does: combining pared-down, relentlessly modernistic narrative style with memorable characters, always complex whilst bordering on the archetypical. After working in Argentinean and (from 1959) English comics like top gun Battler Briton, and on combat stories for extremely popular digest novels in assorted series such as War Picture Library, Battle Picture Library, War at Sea Picture Library and others – Pratt returned to and settled in Italy, and later France. In 1967, with Florenzo Ivaldi he produced a number of series for monthly comic Sgt. Kirk.

In addition to the Western lead star, he created pirate feature Capitan Cormorand, detective feature Lucky Star O’Hara, and a moody South Seas saga called Una Ballata del Mare Salato (A Ballad of the Salty Sea). When it folded in 1970, Pratt remodelled one of Una Ballata’s characters for French weekly, Pif Gadget before eventually settling in with the new guy at legendary Belgian periodical Le Journal de Tintin. Corto Maltese proved as much a Wild Rover in reality as in his historic and eventful career…

In Britain Pratt found rich thematic pickings in the ubiquitous mini-books like Super Picture Library, Air Ace Picture Library, Action Picture Library and Thriller Picture Library: half-sized, 64-page monochrome booklets with glossy soft-paper covers containing lengthy complete stories of 1-3 panels per page. These yarns were regularly recycled and reformatted, but the supernaturally-tinged stories gathered here – from Battle Picture Library #62 (June 1962) and War Picture Library #91 (March 1961) – have only appeared once… until now…

Resurrected and repackaged by Rebellion Studios for their Treasury of British Comics imprint, Night of the Devil is a brooding blend of mystery, revenge and supernatural doom scripted by astoundingly prolific long-serving Glasgow-born Tom Tully. His canon of classic delights include Roy of the Rovers, Heros the Spartan, Dan Dare, The Leopard from Lime Street, Adam Eterno, Janus Stark, Mytek the Mighty, Master of the Marsh, The Wild Wonders, Nipper, The Mind of Wolfie Smith, Johnny Red, Harlem Heroes, Mean Arena, Inferno, Football Family Robinson, Buster’s Ghost and countless more.

He’s supported here by co-writer/unsung company stalwart Gordon Sowman who toiled during the 1950s & 1960s on Picture Library publications and weekly features as well as writing numerous Sexton Blake Library novels under the nom du crime Desmond Reid. He might even have written the sadly uncredited second jungle combat tale here…

A fulsome and informative Foreword from Chloe Maveal shares some more astounding real life adventures of Pratt and traces his celebrated career before we step into creepy comics combat mode with ‘Night of the Devil’ (BPL #62)…

Deep in Burma’s jungles a seven-man British Army platoon races to blow up the bridge at Taigu and slow the inexorable advance of Japanese forces. However ‘The Lieutenant’ in command is untested, arrogant and vainglorious, only seeing the task as a means to secure promotion and praise.

Ignoring the advice of tested veterans such as Lance Corporal Paddy Price and Sergeant Matt Brind, smugly superior Lieutenant Robert Salter pushes his team mercilessly and makes one costly mistake after another. When his recklessness causes his scout’s death and makes them a pinpoint target of the enemy, the remaining squad snatch a few hours’ sleep before pressing on and taking refuge in an ancient edifice far from their planned route home. ‘The Temple’ is pre-Buddhist, eerily magnificent and occupied by a single native priest dedicated to the worship of ancient Phya Yomaraj. That doesn’t save him when Salter panics and opens fire with a machine gun…

As the cleric dies vowing doom to all, the gunfire alerts the enemy outside and triggers ‘The Siege’ which gradually but spectacularly winnows the team down. Tensions aren’t eased any when Private Don Evans finds a tourist guide and mordantly reads out the history of the arcane temple and its god who is “king of the devils” and ruthless with all transgressors…

Salter is descending into madness but still hopeful of escape, triumph and glory. Despatching the Sarge and Price to complete the mission and blow up ‘The Bridge’ simply to distract encroaching waves of Japanese soldiers, he then betrays them to save his own skin. As his end approaches, Salter experiences ‘The Awakening’, but as he shakes sleep from his head and readies his team to resume the mission to Taigu something occurs and he realises it was no dream but a horrific prophecy…

A powerful psychological thriller breaking the rules of kids’ combat comics, Night of the Devil is subtly subversive, straightforwardly told and startlingly compelling, far from the bread & butter war stories that sustained British readers for decades.

Pure horror overtones are dialled down in follow-up ‘The Bayonet Jungle’. Far less overtly spooky in delivery, this catalogue of jungle warfare originated in War Picture Library #91 (March 1961) with Pratt limning a more traditional episode, albeit one similarly steeped in psychological angst. It begins as a hard-pressed, cut-off British unit in Burma is disturbed and conflicted by new replacement Jack Green. Although a capable soldier, many of his new comrades believe him a jinx because twice he has been the ‘Sole Survivor’ of in-country patrols. Minor events seem to constantly confirm those fears and superstitious squaddie Jenkins can’t stop speculating aloud despite every effort of solid soldiers Sergeant Freeman and Major Webb…

With mail drops and supply runs failing, snipers, air raids and ‘Jungle Ambush’ bedevilling the embattled survivors, the last thing they need is demoralising accidents too, but only after a Burman native working for the Japanese infiltrates the unit and leads them into an ambush at the ‘Village of Treachery’ is rationality is restored with the ‘Test of Courage’ in fighting their way out inspiring the spooked warriors to battle towards reinforcements, turn the tables on the enemy and score an explosive victory…

What happens next is powerful, exhilarating and exactly what you’d expect from a kids’ comic crafted to sell in the heyday of UK war films commemorating the conflict their parents lived through.

At the end are the original full-colour painted covers by superb Pino Dell’Orco as first seen on Battle Picture Library #62 (June 1962 ‘Night of the Devil’) and War Picture Library #91 (March 1961 ‘The Bayonet Jungle’).

Potent, powerful, genre-blending and oddly cathartic, these are brilliant examples of the British Comics experience – and if you’re a connoisseur of graphic thrills and dramatic tension – utterly unmissable.
© 1961, 1962, 2021 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All rights reserved.

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The Marquis of Anaon volumes 1 & 2: The Isle of Brac & The Black Virgin


By Vehlmann & Bonhomme, coloured by Delf: translated by Mark Bence (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-255-3 (PB Album/Digital edition Brac) & 978-1-84918-265-2 (PB Album/Digital edition Virgin)

These books include Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

In 1972 Fabien Vehlmann entered the world in Mont-de-Marsan. He was raised in Savoie, growing up to study business management before taking a job with a theatre group. His prodigious canon of pro comics work began in 1998 and has earned him the soubriquet of “Goscinny of the 21st Century”.

In 1996, after entering a writing contest in Le Journal de Spirou, he caught the comics bug and two years later – with illustrative collaborator Denis Bodart – produced a mordantly quirky, sophisticated portmanteau period crime comedy entitled Green Manor. From there on his triumphs grew to include – amongst many others – Célestin Speculoos for Circus, Nicotine Goudron for L’Écho des Savanes and major-league property Spirou and Fantasio…

Scion of an artistic family, Matthieu Bonhomme received his degree in Applied Arts in 1992, before learning the comics trade working in the atelier of western & historical strip specialist Christian Rossi. Le Marquis d’Anaon was Bonhomme’s first regular series, running from 2002-2008, after which he began writing as well as illustrating a variety of tales, from L’Age de Raison, Le Voyage d’Esteban, The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke and much more.

So, what’s going on here? Imagine The X-Files set in France in the Age of Enlightenment (circa 1720s), played as a solo piece by a young hero growing reluctantly into the role of crusading troubleshooter. With potent overtones of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Fall of the House of Usher and similar traditional gothic romances, 2001’s L’Isle de Brac was the first of 5 albums (all available in English-language paperback and digital formats) tracing the development of a true champion against darkness and human venality.

Under-employed scholar and middle class, pragmatic philosopher Jean-Baptiste Poulain is the son of a merchant, an ardent disciple of Cartesian logic and former medical student. Educated but impoverished, he accepts a post to tutor the son of the mysterious Baron of Brac. It is a career decision that will shape the rest of his life…

As he approaches the windswept, storm-battered and extremely isolated island off the Brittany Coast, Poulain cannot understand the fear and outrage in the downtrodden villagers who initially believe him to be a visiting nobleman. Taken under the wing of another passenger – an itinerant professional storyteller – the teacher-in-waiting learns that the surly peasant inhabitants secretly call their master and liege lord “the Ogre”. Moreover, Poulain is utterly astounded by how violently protective they are in regard to the village’s few children…

In an oppressive atmosphere and crushed beneath ever-mounting social tensions, the facts gradually unfold. Even as the young man endures suspicion and veiled hostility from the lowly classes, he gradually nurtures a deep appreciation for the forward-thinking, rationalist and compellingly charismatic Baron de Brac. However, when the heir – and his sole student – Nolwen is found brutalised and murdered, heightened feelings spike and Poulain painfully learns that this is not the first body to be found…

From then on, it’s hard to determine who is friend or foe and – although a trained thinker always inclined to challenge the old superstitions – the tutor increasingly ponders if unworldly forces are in play…

Conversations with the roaming mariner known only as The Storyteller lead to Poulain being attacked by some villagers – or perhaps they are merely opportunistic thieves? Barely escaping, the dazed, astounded scholar sees poor murdered Nolwen before passing out…

The baffled teacher awakes under the Baron’s care and resolves to leave at the first opportunity by any means necessary. When disturbed housemaid Ninon begs him to take her with him, an incredible secret history of unremitting horror is exposed, leading to the Baron ruthlessly hunting his fleeing employees and caging them in a hidden laboratory.

Here Poulain discovers the appalling truth of his employer. The elder savant is obsessed with unlocking all secrets of the human mind and man’s inner world, and has over many years devised pitiless experiments to test all his theories. Of course they yield the best results if carried out on unformed minds…

Trapped but not helpless, Poulain uses the tests and data de Brac has indulged and fanatically compiles against him, before escaping to expose the ghastly secret of the “ghosts” who walk the island. When the Baron and his terrifying flunkey come for him, fortune finally favours the tutor and apparently divine justice is rendered unto all…

In the aftermath, Poulain quits the island alone, as much to avoid the pitifully grateful, still fearful villagers as to resume his interrupted life in healthier climes. Sadly, he cannot outrun the obnoxious title they have bestowed upon him in their Bretagne argot: Le Marquis d’Anaon – “the Marquis of Lost Souls”…

The Black Virgin

Jean-Baptiste Poulain returned in 2003’s La Vierge Noire (with Cinebook’s translated tome released in October 2015) as his travels and compulsions bring him to isolated, snowbound Puy-Marie in the middle of Advent. Here the populace are far less diffident, actively poking into his affairs and even his luggage. Finding worthless books – and a loaded pistol – they back off and a pedlar engages him in conversation, assuming he’s here to observe the witchcraft and murder all are expecting to manifest once again on the sacred solstice…

Women have been horrendously killed at the Christmas feast for years now and a ghastly trade in sensationalistic, prurient gutter prints and memorabilia has grown up around the phenomenon of “the Demon of Puy-Marie” and its connection to the Shrine of the Black Virgin. Poulain has indeed travelled from Paris to observe the expected imminent atrocity, but does not believe the killer is a supernatural force…

Despite wanting the Christmas Eve murders stopped, the Count of Puy-Marie is far from encouraging, but does actually not forbid the scholar’s investigations, which begin in mid-December at the woodland shrine. Local priest Fra Guillaume despairs: his parishioners still believe the little relic in the woods has magical powers and even admits it is also a focus for those who still believe in the old practises of witchcraft… most notably the heathen gypsies who travel to the shrine every yuletide and are currently infesting the woods around the village. He also urges the godless rationalist to abandon his morbid unhealthy curiosity and leave things alone…

With every pauper, vendor and lord anticipating another torture/murder in the days to come, Poulain ponders again the horrid discoveries and fascinations of Baron de Brac and debates whether this might be another case of twisted human madness unleashed. If so, it is one he can end…

After using his medical knowledge to help a woman “cursed by gypsies”, he gets some of the terrified citizens onside even as sporadic incidents of blood magic denote “the Demon” is back and flexing his infernal muscles. One such incident even deprives Poulain of his most trusted and faithful companion, and his new friends readily fall back on old prejudices and condemn the homeless, impious, degenerate and debauched “Egyptians” in the forest…

When another village girl is found horrifically mutilated by the shrine days earlier than expected, the scholar fears escalation in the perpetrator’s behaviour but must first head off potential mob retaliation. With the appalled Count’s approval he visits the Roma encampment and has a most disturbing encounter with a brazen young fortune teller Sarah, who seems to know all his secrets. She rattles his intellectual composure so much that Poulain almost issues a crucial clue when her guardians Allesandro and Lucas come to blows over her gifts and reputation…

In the village tempers are still flaring and when Poulain discovers a nasty warning to back off, he only intensifies his enquiries: learning key background from the oldest woman in town that at last points him in the right direction. This in turn unearths more shocking secrets and illicit affairs that would rock the status quo if exposed…

With too much information to sift through, Poulain again despairs: even backsliding to consider a supernatural culprit, but when The Demon strikes, making him the next Christmas offering, the proximity of agonising extinction sharpens the detective’s wits. Deducing the killer’s identity, Poulain shamefully employs psychological tricks gleaned from Baron de Brac’s journals to turn the maniac’s hatred fatally, finally inward…

Vehlmann’s tight, taut authentic compellingly scripting, backed up by Bonhomme’s densely informative but never obtrusive realistic illustration delivers moody, ingenious, utterly enthralling tales of modern horror tropes imbedded in an era of superstition, class separation, burgeoning natural wonder, reason ascendant and crumbling belief: spooky crime mysteries with a troubled, self-doubting quester holding always at bay the crippling notion that all his knowledge might be trumped by the lurking unknown…

The Marquis of Anaon is a mystery milestone well-deserving of a greater audience and one no mystery maven should miss.
Original edition © Dargaud Paris 2002, 2003 by Vehlmann & Bonhomme. All rights reserved. English translations © 2015 by Cinebook Ltd.

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Charley’s War – The Definitive Collection volume 2: Brothers in Arms


By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-620-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect. If any incidence of such slurs, epithets, terms, behaviours or treatments might offend you, you really should not be reading this book or – arguably – maybe you need it more than most.

The Great War officially started today in 1914. I can’t tell you how glad I am that we got all that jingoism, racism, seductive superiority, addictive violence and nationalistic avarice out of our collective systems back then. It’s a much calmer, nicer world now, right?

Meanwhile, here’s more of the best story – bar none in any medium – to translate those appalling, internationally insane, diplomatically deranged and pointlessly self-destructive days into scenarios we can accept if not understand: evocatively and emotionally depicting not only the mud and mire and military madness and mass mortality of that conflict, but also shared with the young and impressionable its impact on the poor and the mighty who survived into the totally different world that came after. You must read it and the other two collected volumes. Message ends.

When Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun began their tale of a patriotic working-class kid who broke the rules to proudly fight for his country just in time for the disastrous Somme campaign, I suspect they had, as always, the best of authorial intentions but no real idea that this time they were making comics history.

The landmark feature was originally published in British anthology Battle (AKA Battle Picture Weekly, Battle Action, etc.). A surprise hit, the serial proper launched in #200, eventually running from January 1979 to October 1986, recounting in heartrending harrowing detail, and with amazing maturity and passion for a Boys’ Periodical, the life of an East End teenager in the British Army reinforcements setting out to fight the Hun in 1916.

The strip contingent in this second stunning collection covers episodes #87-176/1st November 1980 through 10th July 1982 and comprises one of the most powerful and influential characterisations of the oh-so-ironic “war to end all wars”. Lovingly researched, lavishly limned and staggeringly authentic, the stories touch upon many diverse aspects of the conflict and even reveal the effects on the Home Front, all delivered with a devastatingly understated dry sense of horror and cruel injustice, albeit constantly leavened with gallows humour as trenchant as that legendarily “enjoyed” by the poor trench-bound “Tommies” of the time.

In the previous book “the Story of a Soldier in World War One” followed 16-year-old London Bus Company worker Charley Bourne who lied about his age to illegally go “over there” only to discover unending, enduring horrors on the muddy, blood-soaked battlefield of The Somme. He also experienced the callous ineptitude of upper-class idiots running the war and believing their own men utterly expendable.

Military life was alternately hard and unremittingly dull – except for brief bursts of manic aggression and strategic stupidity which ended so many lives. Closely following the recorded course of the war, Mills & Colquhoun placed young Charley in the Westshire Regiment and added a rapidly changing cast constantly whittled away by various modes of combat attrition.

The weekly hellscapes showed lesser known, far from glorious sides of the conflict readers in the 1980s had never seen in any other war comic. Each episode was punctuated by a narrative device of the simple lad’s letters to his family in “Blighty” whilst also cleverly utilising reproductions of cartoons and postcards of the period.

With Boer War veteran Ole Bill Tozer as his mentor, Charley narrowly survived shelling, mudslides, digging details, gas attacks, the Trench Cat, rats, snipers, smug stupidity of commanding officers – although there are examples of good “brasshats” too – and the far too often insane absurdity of a modern soldier’s life.

On July 1st 1916 The Battle of the Somme began and Charley and his comrades were ordered “over the top”: expected to walk steadily into mortars and machine gun fire of entrenched German defenders. When his commanding officer was unable to stand the stupidity and ordered them to charge at a run, it saved the squad but ultimately led to Lt. Thomas being executed by firing squad. Charley and former musical hall ventriloquist Weeper Watkins refused to shoot him and were extensively punished by sadistic military policeman Sergeant “the Beast” Bacon over and over again…

When Charley and his crooked brother-in-law Oliver Crawleigh were caught in the first tank battle in history and the dreadful German response, chancer “Oiley” offered to pay Charley to either protect him or wound him in some minor way that would get safely back to Britain. When Charley refused, Oiley misused a tank to earn his “Blighty” passage home…

As previously stated, Charley’s War closely follows key events, using them as a skeleton to hang specific incidents upon, but this was not the strip’s only innovation. Highly detailed research concentrated more on character development than fighting – although there’s much shocking action – and declared to the readership (which at time of publication was categorically assumed to be boys aged 9-13) that “our side” was as monstrous and stupid as “the Boche.” Mills also fully exercised his own political and creative agendas on the series and was constantly amazed at what he got away with and what seeming trivialities his editors pulled him up on (more fully expanded upon in the author’s informative ‘Strip Commentary’ which concludes this edition)…

No longer a fresh-faced innocent but a weary, battle-scarred veteran, Charley and the strip marched beyond the cataclysmic Somme Campaign into the conflict’s most bloody events. Charley was wounded again and sent home, albeit via torturous routes involving amnesia and U-Boat warfare. Mills & Colquhoun delivered acerbic social criticism as the recuperating lad experienced fresh horrors when the troop ship carrying him and Bill Tozer was torpedoed…

When the perilous North Sea odyssey at last brought Charley back to Silvertown in London’s West Ham, it was in the wake of a real-world catastrophic disaster wherein 50 tons of TNT detonated at a munitions factory, killing 70 workers and injuring a further 400.

No longer comfortable around civilians and with no stomach for the jingoistic nonsense of the stay-at-homes or the lies of boastful “war-hero” Oiley, Charley hangs out in pubs with the Sarge but is caught up in enemy air raids (giving the creators room to explore the enemy side of the conflict via the zealous actions of devoted family man Kapitan Heinrich von Bergmann who leads a squadron of Zeppelins in night sorties against the hated English)…

London was under constant threat, not just from increasingly common aerial bombing raids which provoked mindless panic and destruction at the very heart of the British Empire, but also profiteering British industrialists and greedy munitions magnates who cared more for profit than the safety of their workers or even the victory of their homeland…

During one raid Charley realised his mum was still in the local works as her boss refused to sound air raid evacuation alarms because he had profits and contracts to consider. Charley’s view of the land he was fighting for barely survived his valiant efforts to save his mum and took an even bigger hit when an unscrupulous army recruiter (earning bonuses for every volunteer signed up) attempted to entrap his underaged but conflict-obsessed little brother Wilf Bourne…

This magnificent (mostly) monochrome mega-compilation resumes the saga, opening in March 1917 with another devilish deviation: the testimony of a charismatic deserter. ‘Blue’s War’ was an experimental story within a story with the strip’s titular character reduced to an avid and appalled listener…

Through eerie blacked-out bombed London Streets Red Caps (military police) hunt deserters, led by a pitiless, fanatical dying-of-wounds officer dubbed The Drag Man. He is most interested in a desperate character called Blue. The knife-wielding fugitive encounters Charley by breaking into the Bourne house. Blue is actually looking for Oiley: a cowardly spiv and petty criminal, inexplicably married to Charley’s sister Dolly. When the crook appears Charley learns the cowardly shirker has graduated from thievery and looting to selling passage abroad and fake papers to absconders from the military…

Disgusted with Oiley and his thuggish stooge Snips Parsons but unwilling to force anyone back into the war, Charley agrees to say nothing and instead asks the charismatic stranger the hows & whys of his situation. In return he hears a staggering tale of combat, cruelty, bravery and army ineptitude.

Blue is an Englishman who joined the French Foreign Legion before serving with the French Army, surviving through the hell of Verdun (longest battle of the WWI, lasting from February 21st to December 18th 1916). The astonishing revelations of this forgotten siege commandeer the strip as episodes of Blue’s War describe Verdun’s many and varied horrors as related by a true outsider hero and British rebel (and based on real-world “Monocled Mutineer” Percy Toplis).

The unfolding flashback account is counterpointed by Blue’s – and now Charley’s – tense and dramatic flight from the Drag Man and his brutal minions across the East End and culminates in the rebel’s escape and Bourne’s grudging return to the Western Front. Just before that though, Charley scuppers Oiley’s latest scam – defrauding bereaved soldiers’ mothers via a fake spiritualist – and exposes another thread of bigotry regarding munitions workers like his poor old mum, reaffirming how then and now the feature was one of the most sophisticated and adult dramas ever seen in fiction, let alone the pages of a kids’ war comic.

Mills & Colquhoun’s comic strip condemnation of the Great War (and war-mongering and profiteering in general) slips into sardonic high gear as the recuperating boy-soldier settles his affairs in London before returning to the terrifying trenches and insane warlords on both sides of No-Man’s Land….

In April 1917 he is a veteran of the front, posted to the Salient before the Third Battle of Ypres and caught up in daily skirmishes, sudden deaths, more arrant stupidity and a simmering feud as fellow early volunteers Grogan and Zippo ruthlessly bully newly conscripted troops like college graduate “Scholar” for being cowardly slackers forced to do their duty. Bourne’s efforts to stay alive and do his job become more difficult when arrogant old enemy and ruthless aristocrat Captain Snell – who thinks the war a terrific lark – returns as commanding officer and appoints Charley his manservant/dogsbody…

Snell constantly undermines and crushes the spirit of the riffraff cannon fodder under his command and loves making their lives intolerable, a practise mirrored by increasingly out-of-control Grogan. When he finally flips and dies, his pal Zippo holds Charley responsible…

By May the infantry are marching in scorching heat and the creators wallow in bizarre historical accuracy and intriguing gallows humour, capitalising on the lengthy build-up of troops which forced a long period of tedious inactivity upon the already bored soldiery. Life in the trenches was always hard and unremittingly dull: a fact reiterated here by such insanity as a cricket match played out whilst shells rain down, Tommies destroying their own equipment and a dozen other daily insanities of the military mind exposed with devastating effect.

As the Third Battle of Ypres soggily unfolds in August and the build-up to the Battle of Passchendaele intensifies, Snell’s unit is posted to an engineering detail short of manpower. Bourne and his pals endure backbreaking toils as “clay-kickers”, risking cave-ins, flood, gas, explosions and Germans above them digging into their tunnels. This push will complete a year-long project undermining a vast ridge of solid rock that is the enemy artillery emplacement on the Messine Ridge. If they don’t die, Charley and co. will pack the explosives for the biggest manmade explosion the world has ever experienced…

In the build-up to that astounding detonation almost everyone dies, but at least Snell also goes to his infernal reward, with the pitiful survivors despatched to “The Bullring” at Etaples: a brutal retraining centre testing the lower ranks to their limits whilst cossetting commissioned officers. It brings Charley into murderous contact with an organised band of deserters – the Sandbaggers – and reunites him with many lost comrades, whilst in England Oiley gets his revenge by facilitating war-mad Wilf Bourne’s enlistment years before he is legally able to. The older Bourne will spend agonised months trying to find out what happened to Wilf…

The mounting tensions, barbarous treatment and institutionalised class injustice at Etaples leads to a British army mutiny (all but written out of our historical record ever since) in September, before triggering the most shameful moments of Charley’s life when he is forced to join another firing squad…

The mutiny goes on for days, emptying stockades and allowing the settling of many old scores, but Charley’s war is even more complicated after meeting the Sandbaggers’ leader who he recognises as someone he never thought to see again. Bourne is even more astonished by the Army’s capitulation to the mutineers’ terms, and totally unprepared for inevitable retaliations. In response he transfers to the most dangerous job in the army to expiate his guilt…

To Be Concluded…

Lifted to dizzying heights of excellence by the phenomenal artwork of Joe Colquhoun – much of it in colour as the strip alternated between the prized cover spot and almost as prestigious centre-spread slot – these are masterpiece of subversive outrage within the greater marvel that is Charley’s War. Included in this volume are a full cover gallery and restored colour sections (reproduced in monochrome for earlier collections but vibrantly hued here to vivid effect) plus Mills’ amazingly informative chapter notes and commentary on the episodes.

This is a highpoint and benchmark in the narrative examination of the Great War in any artistic medium and exists as a shining example of how good “Children’s Comics” can be. It is also one of the most powerful pieces of fiction ever produced for readers of any age. I know of no anti-war story that is as gripping, as engaging and as engrossing, no strip that so successfully transcends its mass-market origins and popular culture roots to become a landmark of fictive brilliance. I’d bribe Ministers to get these wonderful books onto the National Curriculum. We can only thank our lucky stars no Hollywood hack has made it a “blockbuster” inescapably undercutting the tangibility of the “heroes” whilst debasing the message. There is nothing quite like it and you are diminished by not reading it.
© 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 & 2018 Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Charley’s War is ™ & © Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.

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The Scrapbook of Life and Death


By J. Webster Sharp (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-84-4 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content cited from historical sources and included for dramatic effect. If any incidence of such slurs, epithets, terms, behaviours or treatments might offend you, you really should not be reading this book or – arguably – maybe you need it more than most.

I don’t generally give full-on serious warnings about books, usually depending on my standard jolly and avuncular old git “watch yourself” waffle to dissuade those just looking for a hobbyhorse to dog whistle at. Here, however, is an incredibly bold but potentially deeply upsetting work of graphic literature both fiendishly fascinating and disturbingly distressing which truly needs the reader to pay attention whilst proceeding with caution…

George Cecil Ives (1st October 1867 – 4th June 1950) was an English poet, writer, pioneering penologist/criminologist, cricketer and homosexual law reform campaigner. Born in Frankfurt and living most of his life in in High Society… and Lewisham… he was also a dedicated amateur archivist. Between to 1892 – when he began college – and 1949, Ives compulsively clipped-&-saved newspaper articles that eventually filled 45 big scrapbooks. his archive material exclusively focused on “unusual and interesting” items such as murders, punishments, physical freaks, plots, melodramas, theories of crime & punishment, transvestism, homosexuality and the psychology of gender.

And cricket scores.

Ives was a lifelong covert warrior in the battle to decriminalise homosexuality and normalise sexual variance (differences?). In 1897 he founded The Order of Chaeronea (a secret society of gay people culled from upper echelons of the ruling classes) and in 1914 cofounded The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology. He was deeply invested in the study of punishment and prisons and visited many whilst compiling his vast catalogue of human oddity, eccentricity and depravity.

According to some sources the minor writer and prominent society figure was also the model for E. W. Hornung’s gentleman thief A.J. Raffles…

Here his library of vintage articles has been cherry-picked and applied to spur the incredible imagination of celebrated cartoonist J. Webster-Sharp (Fondant/Human Furnishings, Pretty Flavours, Sea Widow, Jade and her Schizophrenia), inspiring a chilling panoply of shock: a beautifully rendered catalogue of Body Horror icons, strangely compelling horrific moments of abstracted and mutated organs, mutilations, fetishism, bizarre puzzles and upsetting revelations absolutely not for the squeamish.

Webster’s book is divided into straightforward sequences of interpretative illustrations and strips generated by her responses to reading The George Ives collection. The former portraitist turned confirmed comics creator in May 2021, and uses graphic narrative as a means of therapeutic self-help. This tome offers a second section of images and tableaux revisiting the archive material in a more direct and free-wheeling manner. The resulting barrage of unsettling experiences expand upon and imply how visualising those vintage snippets impacted her own mental state and health: a brave and honest examination of psyche and self not all of us would ever consider sharing with an unknown, anonymous and potentially hostile audience…

These untitled psychosexual images and psychedelically surreal variations more deeply explore and potently depict human/animal bodies of varying ages, mythological monsters and more modernsmilestones of terror like clowns, operating theatres and autopsies and are followed by a return to basics as the comics counselling session concludes with a gallery of original prose newspaper articles and clippings, all re-rendered with chilling calligraphic expertise. They include such elucidating extra detail as ‘Youth fascinated by handkerchiefs – Detective and “This Mormon Business”’, ‘A Portsmouth scare – Mother frightened by stories of man who slashes at children’s boots’ and ‘Death Chair for “Nice Old Man” – His country home a charnel house. 100 children killed in 20 years.’…

Confronting taboos with surgical skill, an anatomist’s understanding and a detective’s passion, the auteur has crafted here an emotional experience both enticingly lovely and yet intrinsically profane, but one I fervently wish every reader could look at with open, unprejudiced eyes. The plan here is to inform not deter but of course, the choice is yours…
© J. Webster-Sharp. 2024. All rights reserved.

The Scrapbook of Life and Death is scheduled for release on September 3rd 2024 and is available for pre-order now.

If you’re London based/adjacent – or just a fan with time on your hands – there’s a launch party for an exclusive The Scrapbook of Life and Death bookplate edition on September 5th June at Gosh! Comics, 1 Berwick, London, W1F 0DR from 7-9 pm.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan® of the Apes volume 1


By Edgar Rice Burroughs, adapted by Roy Thomas, Pablo Marcos, Oscar González & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 987-1-50673-236-7 (HB) eISBN: 987-1-50673-335-7

This book includes historical Discriminatory Content.

Beginning with the October 1912 number, Tarzan of the Apes was serialized in anthological pulp magazine The All-Story before being collected into the world famous novel first released in June 1914. It and sequel tales were thereafter constantly adapted into plays, films and newspaper strip form: that last one beginning on January 7th 1929, and illustrated by Hal (Prince Valiant) Foster. A truly spectacular full page Sunday strip began on March 15, 1931, with artwork by Rex Maxon and carried on by some of the greatest illustrators in the business. United Feature Syndicate distributed the strip, which carried new Sunday material until 2002. The Daily strip had ended new material on 29th July 1972, when Russ Manning quit it to concentrate on the Sunday feature and Tarzan books for Europe. From 2003 even the Sundays switched to offering reprints of early classics – due more to the parlous state of US strips and newspapers than a loss of interest in the hero…

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fantasy epic has been a hugely appreciated and acclaimed property for more than a century. The character has enjoyed countless novel releases (23 official sequels by ERB and many “rogue” tales by others) in every language and in every medium of expression – even a bunch of ballets!

The jungle man is (arguably) a public domain figure these days, spawning a number of hotly-contested crossover team-ups and “unauthorised” exploits. Just over a decade ago, his story was celebrated and commemorated by a return to basics as we’ll see in this review.

As already stated, very soon after his prose debut, Tarzan became a multimedia sensation and global brand. More novels and many, many movies – all created or at least sanctioned by Burroughs and his family – followed. The American comic strip arrived in 1929, followed by a radio show in 1932, and the Ape-Man inevitably carved out a solid slice of television and comic book markets too, once those industries were established. His comic book exploits have been with us since the start: initially gathering newspaper strips until Dell Four Color Comic #134 (February 1947) began a run of original material spanning Dell, Gold Key, Charlton, DC, Marvel, Blackthorne, Malibu, Dark Horse and Idaho Comics Group that is still unfolding.

… And that’s just the USA: Tarzan has been a global byword for adventure for most of the last hundred years, with many countries contributing to the oeuvre if not the canon. In Britain for a while in the 1950s, Michael Moorcock steered the course of Tarzan’s Adventures…

The book look today focuses on a compilation of the latest entertainment platform to go ape. As revealed in the ‘Introduction by Roy Thomas’ the formation of EdgarRiceBurroughs.com led to Thomas and Tom Grindberg reviving and expanding the Ape-Man’s canon via a webcomic – Tarzan: The New Adventures. Those online strips soon spawned a second string to the bow…

The parent company wanted more and Thomas’ solution was to re-adapt Burroughs’ original books as Foster had done in 1929, but by judicious editing of Tarzan of the Apes and its follow-ups, create at last a definitive, fully chronological biography of the immortal hero’s journey from birth to …whenever…

Thus he scoured the 24 canonical novels for revelatory moments, braiding them into a tapestry tracing the wild boy’s development over 127 Sunday instalments based on the material’s many flashback moments. Moreover, the feature would benefit from the experience of Peruvian master artist Pablo Marcos (James Bond 007, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Conan, Tales of the Zombie, Secret Society of Super-Villains) and designer/computer colour painter Oscar González.

By way of introduction, this version of Tarzan of the Apes opens in a bar where Edgar Rice Burroughs meets with a man with an extraordinary tale to tell…

It – and ‘Tarzan of the Apes: A Classic Adaptation’ – begins in 1888 as, following a shipboard mutiny, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke and his wife Lady Alice are marooned on the African coast. At least they have their possessions, including books for their soon-to-be-born baby…

Against appalling odds they persevere, with Greystoke building a fortified cabin to shelter them from marauding beasts – particularly curious and savage apes roaming the region. Despite the birth of a son, eventually the jungle wins and the humans die. However, their son is saved by a grieving she-ape who adopts the infant to replace her own recently dead “Balu”…

Here the saga diverges, as incidents latterly revealed in short stories comprising ERB’s 6th book Jungle Tales of Tarzan are intercut with the ongoing adaptation. Tragic circumstance leads to the wild boy discovering he can swim whilst further moments see the foundling exercise his growing intellect and penchant for practical jokes against older apes like bullies like Tublat and Kerchak before the origin resumes. As the ugly hairless freak thrives under mother Kala’s doting attentions, he grows strong but increasingly aware of his differences. He only discovers the how and why after years of diligent effort when – through sheer intellectual effort and the remnants of his father’s books and papers – the boy teaches himself to read and deduces that he is actually a “M-A-N”…

These lone forays to the abandoned cabin also lead to a major rite of passage as the boy is attacked by a berserk gorilla and almost perishes in the process of making his first kill…

No sooner has Kala nursed him back to health than Tublat attacks her and the “the hairless one” (the meaning of the term “Tarzan”) scores his second magnificent bloody triumph…

The tale within a tale continues as the boy rises to prominence amongst his hirsute kin. Through observation, imagination and ingenuity he invents a lasso, creates warm protective clothing and masters the beasts of his pitiless environment: most by force but some – like the elephants (“Tantor”) by friendly mutual cooperation…

When cannibalistic natives settle in the area Tarzan has his first contact with creatures he correctly identifies as being M-E-N like him. The situation leads to the greatest tragedy of his life, as one of M’Bonga’s tribe kills beloved, devoted Kala, teaching Tarzan the shock of loss and bestowing an overpowering hunger for revenge – which he inflicts on the whole tribe with chilling ruthlessness. The punitive actions grant him mastery of another infallible weapon: a hunting bow and poisoned arrows…

Weekly instalments adapt more vignettes from Jungle Tales, beginning with ‘Tarzan’s First Love’, detailing how the adolescent is increasingly drawn to fetching young she-ape Teeka. Incomprehensibly, no matter what he does, the young maiden just isn’t interested in her ardent pink admirer yet somehow sees his friend Taug as ideal…

Clearly, the heart wants what the heart wants and Tarzan understands: even nobly saving his rival from the M’Bonga’s relentless hunger for bushmeat. They call Tarzan “Forest-Devil”, and ‘The Capture of Tarzan’ follows, revealing how overconfidence leads to his downfall but also how his relationship with elephants saves him.

Reworkings continue in ‘The Battle for the Balu’ as Teeka & Taug become incomprehensibly aggressive after the birth of their first balu, and build in ‘The God of Tarzan’ with the ever-curious jungle wonder overdosing on his dead dad’s books and suffering a brain-expanding religious experience. As a result, a search for divinity takes him all over his savage kingdom and into clashes with beasts and men…

Next comes ‘Tarzan and Black Boy’ (often retitled ‘Tarzan and the Native Boy’) with the young outsider experiencing paternal yearnings. After abducting a small human boy and learning guilt, folly and shame, the Ape-Man gains his first human arch-enemy by spoiling greedy fetish-man Bukuwai the Unclean’s scam to impoverish the distraught mother of his kidnapped prize Tibo…

To Be Continued

Supplemented by Creator Biographies of Thomas, Marcos and Gonzalez, this tome is a fascinating addition to the pictorial annals of the Ape-Man and a monument to romantic fantasy, wild adventure and comics creativity no lover of the medium, character or genre can do without.
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan® of the Apes © 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2022 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks Tarzan®, Tarzan of the Apes™ and Edgar Rice Burroughs® are owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. and used with permission. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks Golden Age Sub-Mariner volume 2


By Bill Everett, Allen Simon, Carl Pfeufer, Mickey Spillane, Art Gates, Gustav “Gus” Schrotter, Justin Dewey Triem, Ray Houlihan, Kermit Jaediker & others (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2247-0 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. Lots of it, generated at moments of fervent if not rabid anti-German and anti-Japanese patriotic fervour. Everybody on all sides was doing the same at the time but that’s no excuse, and if you can’t tolerate overtly racist depictions despite their historical context and social grounding, this might be a Marvel masterwork to stay well away from.

Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner was the second super-star of the Timely Age of Comics – but only because he followed cover-featured Human Torch in the running order of October 1939’s Marvel Comics #1. He has however enjoyed the most impressive longevity of the company’s “Big Three”: which also includes the Torch and Captain America…

After a brief re-emergence in the mid-1950’s, the Marine Marvel was only successfully revived in 1962 as an unbeatable force and foe in Fantastic Four #4. Once again he appeared as an antihero/noble villain, and has been prominent in the company’s pantheon ever since. In-world, the hybrid offspring of a water-breathing Atlantean princess and American polar explorer is a being of immense strength and intelligence, highly resistant to physical harm, able to fly and thrive above and below the waves.

Created by young Bill Everett, Namor technically predates Marvel/Atlas/Timely Comics entirely, but first captured public attention as one half of the “Fire vs Water” headliners in anthological Marvel Comics after it became Marvel Mystery Comics with the second issue. His elementally apposite co-star was The Human Torch, but Namor had originally been seen – albeit in a truncated version – in monochrome freebie Motion Picture Funnies: a promotional giveaway handed out to moviegoers earlier that year. Swiftly becoming one of Timely’s biggest draws, Namor won his own title at the end of 1940 (cover-dated Spring 1941) and was one of the last super-characters to go at the end of the first heroic age.

In 1954, Atlas (as the company was then known) revived the Big Three and Everett returned for an extended run of superb horror and Red-baiting fantasy tales, but the time or approach wasn’t right for superheroes and the title sank again. As before, Subby was the last character to be cancelled, as rumours of a possible TV series kept his title afloat…

When Stan Lee & Jack Kirby used Fantastic Four to reinvent superheroes in 1961 they cannily revived the angry amphibian as a troubled, amnesiac, decidedly more regal and grandiose antagonist: one understandably embittered at the loss of his subsea realm (seemingly destroyed by American atomic testing). He also became the dangerous bad-boy romantic interest: besotted with golden-haired Sue Storm. She couldn’t make up her mind about him for decades…

Nomad Namor knocked around the budding Marvel universe for years, squabbling with assorted heroes like The Avengers, X-Men and Daredevil before reuniting his scattered people and securing his own series as part of “split-book” Tales to Astonish beside fellow antisocial antihero The Incredible Hulk. From there both went on to become cornerstones of the modern Marvel Universe.

Way back then though, after his illustrious debut in Marvel Comics #1, a Sub-Mariner solo vehicle launched in Spring 1941. The first 4 issues are gathered in Marvel Masterworks Golden Age Sub-Mariner volume 1: available in print and digital formats. This second compilation reprints Sub-Mariner Comics #5-8 (cover-dated Spring Winter 1942) and sees excitement build but quality inevitably drop as key creators were called up to serve in various branches of America’s war machine. The shock-stuffed vintage wonderment is preceded by a fact-filled Introduction from frequent Subby scribe and comics historian Roy Thomas, sharing context, backstory and tales of the replacement bullpen all finny fun-fans will appreciate. This titanic tome also incorporates most of the rousing in-situ ads and editorial pages seen in the original releases…

Following that critical appraisal and further details on possible unattributed contributors, a cover by Al Gabriele & George Klein ushers us into Sub-Mariner Comics #5, which opens on a monochrome frontispiece house ad for early Marvel Mystery Comics heroes…

Then different times slap readers in the face like a wet kipper as ‘Sub-Mariner Raps the Japs in the Pacific’: a simple saga of punitive carnage by Everett, Allen Simon and assorted unknown assistants, wherein the sea sentinel designs a new kind of attack submersible and unleashes it on the dastardly foe. When the foe sinks it, Namor unleashes hands-on vengeance…

Previously – in Sub-Mariner Comics #1 – Namor had declared war on the perfidious Nazis after a fleet of U-Boats depth-charged his underwater Antarctic home city. The Avenging Prince immediately retaliated in a bombastic show of super-power. Here in the weeks after Pearl Harbor and with anti-Japanese sentiment on high, the antihero switched attention to the Pacific Theatre of War. For most of these stories as Everett’s contributions diminished, he and other lead artists used a string of assistants culled from the comic book “Shop” outfits. Sadly, with no accurate records, best guesses for uncredited past contributors include Charles Nicholas (nee Wojtkoski), Witmer Williams, Ben Thompson, Sam Gilman, George Mandel, Mike Roy, Al Fagaly & Jimmy Thompson and more. I’ve added a few guesses of my own but we may never know who and where…

The publishers having omitted a Remember Pearl Harbor! Public Service Announcement, we pick up with a second 20-page Subby saga (attributed to Allen Simon but possibly drawn by Syd Shores with Simon inking) which seizes on headlines to depict how ‘Sub-Mariner Smashes an Uprising in Manila!’: savagely smashing the invaders whilst rescuing a female US spy from the conquered islands and featuring a cameo by General Douglas MacArthur…

These deluxe editions include those mandatory text features comics were compelled to run to maintain their postal status (an arcane system allowing publishers to procure large postal discounts as “second class mail”) so next comes prose fable ‘Tight Spot’ by Mickey Spillane. The author was an actual fighter pilot and flight instructor lending authenticity to the tale of a trainee pilot forced to make an emergency landing only minutes into his first lesson…

Following ‘Don’t Delay Another Second!’ (an ad for Captain America’s Sentinels of Liberty club), Gustav “Gus” Schrotter – or possibly Kermit Jaediker & Al Gabriele – delivers another 20-page gothic chiller starring The Angel.

Although dressed like a superhero, this dashing do-gooder was a blend (knock-off would be more accurate but unkind) of Leslie Charteris’ The Saint, Richard Creasey’s The Toff and The Lone Wolf (Louis Vance’s urbane two-fisted hero who was the subject of 8 books and 24 B-movies between 1917 and 1949).

One marked difference was the quality of the Angel’s enemies: his foes tended towards the arcane, the ghoulish, the ugly and just plain demented…

The globe-trotting paladin also seemed able to cast a giant shadow in the shape of an angel -. not the greatest aid to cleaning up the scum of the Earth, but he seemed to manage…

In ‘The House of Evil Dreams’ the dapper dilettante saves US agent Dorothy Ray from oriental mesmerist Hutsu, who employs a murderous cult of Morpheus-worshipping sleepwalkers to destroy America’s defenders…

Cartoonist Art Gates closes the issue’s comics content with another ‘Pop’s Whoppers’ – a jolly comedy feature starring an inveterate windbag beat-cop – who here foils escaped convicts despite himself…

Cover-dated Summer 1942 Sub-Mariner Comics #6 sported an Alex Schomburg cover and offered a monochrome frontispiece house ad for its heroes prior to Carl Pfeufer (with Everett) sidelining the “Jap-rapping” to confront other purveyors of skulduggery. ‘The Missing Finger Mystery’ finds him undercover at a Canadian lumber camp after discovering a body inside a tree and resolving to track down the killers and their victim, before – following Marvel Mystery Comics ad ‘Not a Weak Link Among ‘Em!’ – Namor returns to the war in ‘Sub-Mariner Fights the Periscope Peril!’ Here Pfeufer limns a savage clash as the finny fury discovers the Japanese are using randomly-scattered fake pericopes to distract convoy protection ships and takes immediate and excessively violent action to scuttle the scheme, after which Spillane resorts to fantasy as sailor assesses his narrow escape from ‘The Sea Serpent’…

‘At it Again!’ proclaims another clash between Sub-Mariner and The Human Torch, prior to Schrotter – or maybe Jaediker & Gabriele – taking on The Angel in ‘Death Sees a Doctor!’ The macabre and forewarned assassination of a dentist sets the costumed investigator on the trail of deadly medical extortionists using modified body parts as murder weapons…

Gates’ ‘Pop’s Whoppers’ sees the braggart pay for bigging up his achievements at “The African Olympics”, before another Sentinels of Liberty ad, and back cover promo of Timely’s Next Big Thing – Terry Toons comics – ends the affair.

Three months later Sub-Mariner Comics #7 (Fall 1942 with the cover by Allen Simon & Frank Giacoia) opens with an ad for Young Allies and All Winners Comics in advance of Pfeufer & Simon delineating ‘Piracy on the Ocean’s Bottom!’ Here Sub-Mariner battles mad scientist The Doctor who has found a way to revive the dead and is sinking and plundering US vessels with giant squid, robots and his enslaved horde of zombie buccaneers…

A Human Torch ad leads into a bloody clash (body counts in Timely tales were frequently in three figures!) as The Angel faced ‘The Firing Squad!’ Attributed to Schrotter, the grim crime caper saw disgraced soldier/recently released convict Danny Poll recruit a cadre of gangsters and drill them into being his personal robbery, murder & revenge squad. Police were helpless against their ruthless tactics and even the cherubic champion could not save everyone who fell under their sights…

Justin Dewey “J.D.” Triem delivered prose murder mystery ‘Mercy Flight’ as ingenuity and a model plane saved two men from cruel death, after which Sub-Mariner discovers ‘Death ‘Round the Bend!’ (Pfeufer & A Simon) when hunting lost treasure and a ghostly Mississippi river boat and encountering generations of criminal masterminds…

‘Pop’s Whoppers’ by Gates sees the smug flatfoot and his newest partner embroiled in a practical joke war with the local street urchins, before this session ends with a Terry Toons #2 ad and more plugs for Captain America and his Sentinels…

Schomburg’s cover for Sub-Mariner Comics #8 (Winter 1942) is followed by an official Treasury Department ad for war bonds, prior to Pfeufer’s opening but untitled ‘Sub-Mariner’ saga, as the marine marvel witnesses the murder of a lighthouse keeper/American agent by traitor The Knife. Determined to avenge the crime, Namor secretly enlists in the US Marines, following clues from boot camp on Parris Island to an occupied Pacific atoll, until he nails the killer and incidentally sinks an entire Japanese fleet of warships…

Ad ‘They’re At it Again’ plugs the next fire vs water clash of heroes before Sub-Mariner initiates ‘The Setting of the Rising Sun’ (Pfeufer) by protecting and eventually rescuing the crew and gear of a shot-down US blimp. Along the way Namor faces brainwashing boffin Dr. Suki and battles his legion of P.O.W. zombies before ending the vile threat…

Anonymous Prose thriller ‘Tommy’s Taken for a Ride’ reveals how a raw recruit on leave is robbed and finds new friends and romance in recovering his cash, after which cartoon great Ray Houlihan starts his kids feature ‘Tubby and Tack’ with a brace of tales seeing the playful lads enjoying a Saturday and then buying war bonds in advance of The Angel battling a true madman with a ‘Genius for Murder!’ Scripted by Kermit Jaediker with Schrotter art, the saga sees frustrated, failing author Caleb Crane reinvent himself as master criminal The White Carnation in an attempt to add veracity to his manuscripts. His gift for crime and pitiless arrogance turns the city on its head and almost defeats the mighty Angel.

One last Houlihan ‘Tubby and Tack’ tale sees the kids waste a perfect day trying to find friends to enjoy it with, to close this sargasso of lost sagas. Don’t fret though, there’s plenty more where these came from…

As a special bonus, this collection also shares candid photos of the creators from a 1969 reunion, even more house ads in various stages of completion, pencil roughs for those ads and 12 pencil pages of story layouts.

Many early Marvel Comics are more exuberant than qualitative, but this compendium, even if largely devoid of premier league talent, is a happy exception. Offering high-octane – albeit uncomfortably jingoistic and culturally enmired in its time – action and adventure, this is a vibrant vigorous, historically unvarnished read as well as a forgotten treasure Fights ‘n’ Tights fans will find irresistible.
© 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents Bat Lash


By Sergio Aragonés, Denny O’Neil, Len Wein, Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, George Moliterni, Dan Spiegle & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2295-6 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

By 1968 the glory days of comic books as a cheap mass-market entertainment form were over. Spiralling costs, “free” alternatives like TV or radio and an increasing inability to connect with mainstream markets were leaving the industry to the mercy of dedicated fan-groups with specialised, even limited, interests and worse of all, becoming increasingly dependent on genre-trends to sustain sales.

Editorial Director and 30-year veteran Carmine Infantino looked for ways to bolster DC business (already suffering a concerted decline thanks to the seemingly unstoppable rise of Marvel Comics) and returned to old publisher’s maxim “do something old, and make it look new”. Although traditional cowboy yarns (which had dominated both large and small screens since the 1950s) were also in decline, fresh spins like The Wild, Wild West (1965-1969) and Italian Spaghetti Westerns were popular, and would be far easier and less problematic to transform into comics material than the burgeoning Supernatural themes which would soon come to dominate the next half-decade – but only once the repressive and self-inflicted Comics Code was re-written and publishers acknowledged that comics weren’t just for kids anymore…

Thus Spanish/Mexican cartoonist (and occasional actor) Sergio Aragonés Domenech was asked by Infantino and Editor Joe Orlando to add unique contemporary twists to a cowboy hero they had jointly concocted with the aid of legendary comics maestro Sheldon Mayer. Although many hands had already stirred the plot, irrepressible Aragonés – in collaboration with dialogue-provider Denny O’Neil – remade their world-weary, lonely saddle-tramp archetype into a something completely fresh and original… at least in comic book terms…

The result was a apparently amoral wanderer with an aesthete’s sensibilities, a pacifist’s expressed good intentions and the hair-trigger capabilities of a top gun-for-hire… all played for sardonic, tongue-in-cheek laughs…

Roguish, sexually promiscuous and always getting into trouble because his heart was bigger than his charlatan’s façade, Bat Lash caroused, cavorted and killed his way across the West – including Mexico – in one Showcase try-out and seven bi-monthly issues spanning October/ November 1968 through October/November 1969 before so-so sales and a terribly turbulent marketplace finally brought him low.

A lost masterpiece of the era and a splendid variation on traditional western fare, Bat Lash’s original exploits are criminally uncelebrated and – as far as I know – only available in this slim (a mere 240 pages) monochrome tome. It gathers all the ahead-of-their-times yarns plus later revivals from DC Special Series #16 plus the short run from the back of fellow cowboy antihero Jonah Hex.

The greatest strength of Bat Lash stories was that they took well-worn plots and added a sardonic spin and breakneck pace to keep them rapidly rattling along. It also didn’t hurt that the majority of the art was supplied by cruelly under-appreciated graphic genius Nick Cardy, whose light touch and unparalleled ability to draw beautiful women kept young male readers (those who bothered to try the comic) glued to the pages.

The drama begins with Showcase #76 (cover-dated August 1968 and on sale from 13th June) and eponymous introduction ‘Bat Lash’ by Aragonés, O’Neil and Cardy, in which flower-loving nomad Batton A. Lash wanders through the town of Welcome in search of a fancy feed, only to meet a gang of thugs and mystery poisoner in the process of driving out the entire populace. No “Suthun Gen’leman” (and isn’t that a term now loaded with all the wrong cultural connotations!?) – no matter how far he might have fallen – could evuh allow such a situation to proceed…

A little over two months later – leading me to conclude the Editorial Powers-That-Be were a mite overconfident with their western wonder – Bat Lash #1 hit the stands on August 20th, sporting a cover-date of October/November 1968/January 1969. It resumed and expanded the episodic, eccentric hi-jinks in ‘Bat Lash… We’re A-comin’ Ta Get You’, as the laconic Lothario narrowly escapes being lynched, only to stumble into the murder of a monk carrying part of a treasure map to Spanish gold. Is it his finer instincts seeking retribution for the holy man, the monk’s stunningly attractive niece or the glittering temptation of Spanish gold that prompts the rootin’ tootin’ action intervention that follows?

In #2 (released on October 29th 1968, cover-dated December 1968/December 1969 and plotted and limned by Cardy with Denny doing words) ‘Melinda’s Doll’ opens with a shotgun wedding, explores the impossible as the drifter becomes unwilling guardian to a little girl orphaned by gun-runners and brilliantly climaxes with shockingly unexpected poignancy and calamitous gunplay…

A radical departure – even for this offbeat series – occurs in ‘Samantha and the Judge’ (#3 by Aragonés, O’Neil & Cardy) when the easy-going Epicurean, whilst reluctantly trying out the temporary role of Deputy Sheriff, encounters a hanging judge who believes he is a Roman Emperor. Thankfully Bat has uncompromising lady deputy Samantha Eggert on his side, after which ‘Bat Lash in Mexico!’ (Aragonés, O’Neil & Cardy) sees our mild-mannered meanderer slope across the border and stumble straight into a revolutionary crisis in issue #4. Soon embroiled in an assassination plot, Lash needs all his wits and a big bunch of luck and guile in a tale as much gritty as witty wherein he truly displays hidden emotional depths to the rambling man…

Still in Mexico for #5, the impish creative team pit our dashing rogue against his near-equal in raffish charm and gunplay when he meets a deadly but charming bandito in ‘Wanted: Sergio Aragonés!’ Of course, they are both outmatched and overwhelmed by the delightfully deadly Senorita Maribel…

Mike Sekowsky pencilled most of issue #6 for Cardy to ink: a dark, tragic origin tale of ‘Revenge!’ revealing the anger and tears behind the laughter as Lash meets again swindler Preacher Ricketts and kills him for causing the death of his family. Only after being arrested for murder and subsequently on the run does Lash realise his sisters Bitsy and Melissa are still alive and sets out to find them…

Bat Lash #7 offers a final family foray as ‘Brothers’ (Aragonés, O’Neil & Cardy) sees our far-from-heroic protagonist on the trail of a younger sibling he had also believed dead for a decade. Sadly, Billy Lash is amnesiac and deeply traumatised by the actions of Preacher Ricketts and has become a ruthless bounty hunter. His current quarry is a total stranger and wanted man called Bat Lash…

And that’s where it was left until 1978 when giant sized anthology comic DC Special Series (#16) produced a Western-themed issue for which O’Neil and artist George Moliterni crafted a slick, sly murder-mystery set in San Francisco. Here an older if not wiser Batton Lash is getting by as a professional gambler until the idyllic life disappears, enveloped in a deadly war between Irish gangs and Chinese immigrant workers.

The compelling, enjoyable yarn eventually led to a 4-issue run as back-up in Jonah Hex #49-52 (June – September 1981) wherein our charming chancer wins a New Orleans bordello in a riverboat card game. Despite numerous attempts to eliminate him, Lash eventually takes full possession of the Bourbon Street Social Club. Is he that hungry for lazy luxury and female companionship, or is it perhaps that Bat knows a million dollars in Confederate gold was hidden there in the dying days of the Civil War and never found?

Scripter Len Wein and the incomparable Dan Spiegle continued and concluded this utterly under-appreciated character’s solo exploits in fine style; which only leaves it to you to hunt down this brash and bedazzling book or – if you are a truly passionate quality-fun-starved fan – bombard DC’s editors with (polite) requests and enquiries until they are convinced to give the foppishly reluctant gunslinger a comprehensive curated compilation he so deserves…

Enchanting, exciting, wry and wonderful, this is a book for all readers of fanciful fun fiction and a superb example of comics’ outreach potential.
© 1968, 1969, 1978, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Pink Floyd in Comics


By Nicolas Finet, Tony Lourenço, Thierry Lamy, Céheu, Samuel Figuiére, Alex Imé, Abdel de Bruxelles, Joël Alessandra, Gilles Pascal, Christelle Pécout, Antoine Pédron, Léah Touitou, Yvan Ojo, Toru Terada, Christopher, Antoane Rivalan, Martin Texier, Martin Trystram, Romain Brun, Will Argunas, Estelle Meyrand, Fred Grivaud, Georges Chapelle, Chandre, Kongkee, Christophe Kourita, Juliette Boutant, Afuro Pixe, Lauriane Rérolle, Pierre Vrignaud , Mathilde d’Alençon, Emmanuel Bonnet & various: translated by Peter Russella (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-336-3 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-337-0

Graphic biographies are all the rage these days and this one – originally released on the continent in 2016 – is one of the most comprehensively researched and emotionally rewarding that I’ve seen yet: part of NBM’s Music Star in Comics series guaranteed to appeal to a far larger audience than comics usually reach. It certainly deserves to and might make a perfect gift if any of us make it to the Great December fun-fest/Gig in the Sky…

If you’ve never heard of Pink Floyd there may not be much point in you carrying on past this point, but if you are open to having your mind blown visually whilst visiting wild spaces, please carry on and perhaps invest some time and effort into checking out the music too…

Still with us? Okay then…

As if cannily re-presented popular culture factoids and snippets of celebrity history – accompanied by a treasure trove of candid photographs, song lyrics, posters and other memorabilia – aren’t enough to whet your appetite, this addition to the annals of arguably the most creative and conflicted assemblage of musicians ever bundled in the back of a tour bus also offers vital and enticing extra enticements.

Author, filmmaker, journalist, publisher, educator, translator/music documentarian Nicolas Finet has worked in comics over three decades: generating a bucketload of reference works – such as Mississippi Ramblin’ and Forever Woodstock. He adds to his graphic history tally (Prince in Comics; Love Me Please – The Story of Janis Joplin 1943-1970 and David Bowie in Comics) with this deep dive into the crazed career of the ultimate cosmic explorers and rebellious cultural pioneers. His scripts of the comics vignettes compiled here are limned by international strip artists, providing vividly vibrant key moments in the band’s progress, with each augmented by photo/prose feature articles by Tony (Prince in Comics) Lourenço on chapters #1-14 and Thierry (David Bowie in Comics) Lamy for chapters #15-28.

The ever-growing show starts small and quite quietly in ‘1962-1967: Psychedelia and Light Shows’, as envisioned by Céheu with the meeting of school chums and enthusiastic Blues lovers in Cambridge. Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour and Roger “Syd” Barrett were all middle-class intellectual teens certain of succeeding in life – although no strangers to personal tragedy. However, as they progressed educationally and moved towards London – meeting Rick Wright and Nick Mason on the way – Music increasingly stole their souls…

Illustrated by Samuel Figuiére, the new band was making waves by 1965 and awash in the euphoria of first gigs by ‘1967: Dazzling Beginnings’: even taking on ardent fans Peter Jenner and Andrew King as their managers whilst they mixed fantasy, science fiction concepts and art school psychology with Avant Garde lighting effects in increasingly expansive live performances…

Alex Imé and colourist Mathilde d’Alençon depict ‘1968: A New Team’ as Mason, Waters, Wright & Syd capped off a perfect start with hit singles Arnold Layne and See Emily Play with a breakthrough album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, as creative touchstone Barratt butted heads with dogmatic recording bosses and labels. Soon drugs, pressure and his own shaky mental health would push Syd into relinquishing touch with reality…

After introducing Storm Thorgerson and design specialists Hipgnosis (a lifelong secret weapon in Floyd’s conceptual arsenal), Abdel de Bruxelles’ ‘1967-1968: Syd Barrett, A Genius Struck Down’ reveals how a Rock & Roll lifestyle irreparably damaged the fragile genius who was the soul of the group and what happened with him after he left, whilst Joël Alessandra illuminates the next stage of the band’s creative growth in ‘1969 – Pink Floyd at the Movies: MORE’…

Hungry to prove their creative worth and collaborative ethic, the unstoppable rise of the band is further explored in ‘1969 – A Record or Two’ by Gilles Pascal, whilst less happy film fun manifests in Christelle Pécout’s ‘1970 – Pink Floyd at the Movies: ZABRISKIE POINT’.

Internationally renowned, critically adored and hugely popular across the globe, a string of hit albums and monster tours are detailed (as Dave Gilmour returns to the line-up) in Antoine Pédron’s ‘1970 – A Cow and a Full Orchestra’ and ‘1971 – Welcome to Trippy Rock’ by Léah Touitou. Then Yvan Ojo shares the story of the world’s weirdest live gig in ‘1971 – A Day in Pompeii’, before Toru Terada depicts another astounding art-driven side project in ‘1972 – Pink Floyd at the Movies: OBSCURED BY CLOUDS’…

The band’s world was about to change forever, even as internal dissent heralded a moment to pause and reflect. Christopher’s oblique approach illustrates ‘1973 – A Lunar Journey in the Form of Cosmic Validation’ as 8th album The Dark Side of the Moon elevated Pink Floyd to another level of success… and pressure.

This is counterpointed by Antoane Rivalan’s flashback moment ‘1967-1994 – Hipgnosis: Music to Look At’ and further revelations regarding Thorgerson and his designers before Martin Texier focuses on what true innovators do once they’ve done everything in ‘1971-1974 – Wavering: The Household Objects’. The answer for the group was individual endeavours and looking backwards as ‘1975 – Wish You Were Here’ by Martin Trystram honoured old mate Syd, just as internal tensions were peaking…

For years deeply politicised, antiwar activist Roger Waters had been seeking to appoint himself leader of a creative collective that didn’t want one, and his campaign to take charge – which eventually ruptured the band – really began with ‘1977 – Dogs, Sheep, Pigs’ as captured by Romain Brun. Incensed by the Falklands War but creating masterpieces despite breaking childhood bonds as seen in Will Argunas’ ‘1979-1982 – The Wall’ (album, tour and movie), the inevitable occurred in Estelle Meyrand’s ‘1983 – Break Up’…

Dark days of dissolution and dispute are exposed in ‘1985 – The Great Beanpole Throws in the Towel’ by Fred Grivaud, ‘1987 – Pink Floyd Rolls the Dice Again’ by Georges Chapelle and Terada’s tour overview ‘1966-2005 – Absolutely Live’.

Reconciliatory moments triggered by time apart are seen in ‘1994 – Recapturing the Magic’ (by Chandre, coloured by Emmanuel Bonnet) as work on new album The Division Bell leads to the surviving but separate players partially reuniting for Kongkee’s ‘1996 – In the Pantheon of Rock’ before political protest movement Live 8 brought them together as seen in Christophe Kourita’s ‘1996-2005 – On the Back Burner’.

As friends and old enemies passed away with increasing frequency, their era’s end is acknowledged by Juliette Boutant in ‘2006-2012 – To its Dead, a Grateful Pink Floyd’ and Afuro Pixe’s ‘2014 – One More for the Road’, with speculative appraisal coming in ‘1967-2014 – Four Inspired Boys’ by Lauriane Rérolle and an exploration of legacy visualised in Pierre Vrignaud’s ‘2015-Infinity – Pink Floyd’s Children’…

This compelling and remarkable catalogue of cultural heritage and achievement concludes with Pink Floyd’s Discography (including all solo and off-brand releases), listings of Films, DVD, and Videos, Websites of Note, Bibliography and Recommended Reading plus a copious Acknowledgements section.

Pink Floyd in Comics is an astoundingly readable, beautifully realised treasure for comics and music fans alike: one to resonate with all who love to listen, look and fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way…
© 2022 Editions Petit as Petit. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

Pink Floyd in Comics will be published on 13th August. 2024 and is available for pre-order now. NBM books are also available in digital editions. For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Cinebook Recounts Battle of Britain


By Bernard Asso, illustrated by Francis Bergése, coloured by Frédéric Bergése (“FB/ Bérik”) and translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-84918-025-2 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Originally titled Le Bataille d’Angleterre and first seen in the UK as Biggles and The Battle Of Britain, the material in this album all sprang out of the continent’s decades-long love affair with the plucky British (Polish, French, Dutch, Belgian, Indian, etc et al) aviator of “History’s Darkest Days”.

Biggles has been huge all over Europe longer than I’ve been alive, particularly in Holland, Germany, Belgium and France, which makes it doubly galling that apart from a big run of translations in India, only a short-lived Swedish interpretation of his comic book exploits (see W.E. Johns’ Biggles and the Golden Bird ) and a paltry few from the Franco-Belgian iteration licensed by British outfit Red Fox in the mid-1990s – which included the original iteration of very volume – have ever made the move back to Blighty…

Hopefully some enterprising publisher will be willing to brave the Intellectual Property Rights minefield involved and bring us all more of those superb graphic adventures one day…

Happily, as this tome is more documentary than drama and the Air Ace doesn’t feature on the revised pages at all, Cinebook have twice released this fine, visually erudite mini epic by historian Bernard Asso and the utterly compelling Francis Bergése.

Like so many artists involved in aviation stories, 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. Aged 23 he began selling strips to L’Étoile and JT Jeunes (1963-1966), after which he produced his first air strip Jacques Renne for Zorro. This was swiftly followed by Amigo, Ajax, Cap 7, Les 3 Cascadeurs, Les 3 A, Michel dans la Course and many others.

Bergése laboured as a jobbing artist on comedies, pastiches and WWII strips until 1983 when he was offered the plum job of illustrating venerable, globally syndicated strip Buck Danny. In the 1990s the seemingly indefatigable Bergése split his time, producing Danny dramas and Biggles books. He retired in 2008.

In this double-barrelled dossier delight from 1983, his splendidly understated, matter-of-fact strip illustration is used to cleverly synthesise the events following the defeat at Dunkirk to the Battle of Britain (1940) and the eventual turnaround in May 1941. By combining and counterpointing the efforts of (in)famous figures like Churchill, Hitler, Douglas Bader and Goering with key tactical players such as Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Adolf Galland and Mölders, an intimate tapestry unfolds. Additional drama is effected in the fact-packed narrative by mixing actual tales of individual valour in the skies with the actions and experiences of invented winged warriors Leutnant Otto Werner and True Brit Flight Lieutenant James Colby, as both struggle to survive in the skies over England.

The saga deals with the early days of terrifying air duels, later Blitz bombings, Albion’s logistical trials and eventual triumphs with factual expertise, but also affords a human face on each side of the conflict…

The latter half of the book shifts time and focus as Asso & Bergése detail The Bombing of Germany (1943-1945) paying especial attention to Air Chief Marshal Harris’ controversial tactic of “Terror Bombing” and its effects on allies and enemies – and innocents.

Here narrative voice Colby transfers to Britain’s Bomber Command, swopping Hurricanes and Spitfire for Lancasters, Halifaxes and B-17 Flying Fortresses. Major Werner is also present as the Allies’ campaign slowly destroys the Nazi War Machine and the embattled Ace graduates from prop-powered Focke-Wulfe and Messerschmitt vehicles to the first jet powered planes – but too late…

Cunningly converting dry history into stellar entertainment, Asso & Bergése brilliantly form statistical accounts and solid detail into powerful evocative terms on a human scale that most children will easily understand, whilst reminding us even this war had two sides, and was never just “us” or “them”…

Whilst arguably not as diligent or accurate as a school text (my opinion differs…), Cinebook Recounts: Battle of Britain (part of a graphic history strand making distant events come alive that includes The Falklands War and The Wright Brothers) delivers a captivating and memorable introduction to the events no parent or teacher can afford to miss, and no kid can fail to enjoy.
© Editions du Lombard (Dargaud- Lombard SA), 2003 by Marazano & Ponzio. English translation © 2007, 2010 Cinebook Ltd.