Category: Historical

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Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years


By Reinhard Kleist, coloured by Thomas Gilke & Reinhard Kleist, translated by Michael Waaler (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-28-7 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content reproduced for literary and historical veracity.

In recent years, graphic biographies have become a major component of many publishers fare – comics and otherwise – even as high end biopics, podcasts and “tell-all” TV series have similarly gripped consumers keen to get a little closer to the New Gods: celebrities of every shape and shade and ranking.

This one – originally released in Germany by a pioneer and true master of the form – pushes the envelope on what exactly constitutes and defines documentary reportage with a sequel saga proudly, defiantly and fully uninvited, ruminating upon and deducing what might have been…

A forcefully Unauthorised tale utterly unsanctioned by the Bowie Estate, Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years is actually a sequel to, and continuance of Reinhard (Knock Out!, Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness, Nick Cave: Mercy on Me) Kleist’s 2023 release Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years. That visual odyssey explored the origins of and subsequent early race for fame that gripped music-obsessed sax-playing Bromley boy Davy Jones and how he perfected the art of reinvention. We’ll get to that first book in due time…

Here, however, a second speculative and allegorical deep dive reveals how – and possibly why – after almost self-destructing on the spoils of success and coming close to being destroyed by manipulators and exploiters, globally notorious Ziggy Stardust/David Bowie briefly eluded the pressures of fame to enjoy temporary anonymity and explore creative freedom.

Here the struggling auteur/performance artist recreates himself in a blighted, beleaguered but broadly unbowed metropolis that was a thriving symbol of unfinished wars, the byword for the end of days and paragon of life lived on the edge and in the now…

If you come to this book without prior knowledge of the history and players you might struggle with detail, but the gleefully potent, loose-limbed, energetically fantasmagoric yet understated art, careful juxtaposition of verifiable events and intense character interplay will carry most readers through the unfolding drama.

Plotwise, this broadly true tale is one that has been told many times, with only the names and locations varying. We open in Berlin at the apex of the Cold War. It’s 1976 and a burned out, dispirited Bowie is seeking somewhere he can shelter, refocus creative energies and map out a new direction in the grand show that is his life.

The relocation is aided and abetted by many long term house guests including former wife turned current goad & confidante Angie, producer Tony Visconti, PA/fixer Coco Schwab, collaborators Brian Eno, Robert Fripp and Marc Bolan, and inseparable protégé/soulmate Iggy Pop, as well as increasing untrustworthy manager Tony DeFries and others. The locale itself offers perfect inspirational distractions, including a wild club scene, non-judgemental neighbours, truly progressive new music (such as Tangerine Dream, Can and Kraftwerk), intoxicating cabaret star turned intimate associate Romy Haag, the allure of anonymity and the frisson of living on the point of the spear and at ground zero for a seemingly inevitable nuclear armageddon…

Oh, and when not cycling around a city whose thousand years of history call out to him, there’s also sex and drugs and rock & roll…

Amidst the tensions, distractions and constant philosophical musings – laced with gritty flashbacks and peppered with metaphorical fantasies and eerie appearances by space-suited conceptual b?te noir Major Tom – Bowie ponders and plays and evolves, eventually formulating a bold statement, culminating in a change of life path and musical goals as well as the artistic breakthroughs and triumphs of Low, Heroes (both 1977) and Lodger (1979)… the “Berlin Trilogy”…

With telling and informative appearances by contemporary influences/pals like John Lennon, Luther Vandross, William Burroughs (sort of), the lifechanging, alienating trauma of making and being The Man Who Fell to Earth and wry glimpses at the birth of Punk lensed against the popular tensions surrounding growing incidences of androgyny and transgender hostility, Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years is as much a potent tribute to the city and its people at a key point in history as only a Cologne-born Berliner-by-choice could tell it. It’s also a powerful reminder of those precarious times and how fashion, art and music helped us through the grimness of it all…

The tale is augmented by a Gallery of images encapsulating the man, the moments and his ever-present space-suited internal avatar…

© Text & illustration 2024 by Carlsen-Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, Germany. All rights reserved. English translation © SelfMadeHero 2025. NBM for the English translation.

LOW: Bowie’s Berlin Years is scheduled for UK release May 22nd 2025 and July 8th in the USA. Both editions are available for pre-order now.
reserved. English translation © SelfMadeHero 2023.

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Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years


By Reinhard Kleist, coloured by Thomas Gilke & Reinhard Kleist, translated by Michael Waaler (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-08-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content reproduced for literary and historical veracity.

Graphic biographies are a now a solid staple of publishers fare, just as biopics, podcasts and “tell-all” TV series similarly entice consumers eager for intimate, often salacious detail on celebrities of every shape and shade and ranking. Thanks to that apparently insatiable appetite for speculative if not actually fictionalised lifestories – officially sanctioned or otherwise – in movies like Walk the Line, Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman or shows including The Crown, Mr. Selfridge or Mr. Bates vs the Post Office, the demand for candid revelation is extremely high, especially as offering purportedly keen insights onto people and events we only think we know but presume we have a right to impinge upon is pure, primal unfettered monkey curiosity in action…

This one – originally released in Germany in 2021 by pioneer documentarian Reinhard Kleist (The Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar, The Boxer: The True Story of Holocaust Survivor Harry Haft, Castro: A Graphic Novel) – pushes the envelope on what exactly constitutes and defines reportage with the first half of an extended exploration into a world icon: an assessment that is wildly expressionistic and defiantly fully unsanctioned…

It’s probably fair to say that David Bowie spent his life (lives?) managing his own mythology and seeking to control his own story, but apparently famous people belong – at least in part – to everyone. That’s certainly the premise of this compelling rags-to-the-point-of-disaster saga, told in flashbacks and hi-octane fantasy set-pieces tracing the rise and early successes of young David Robert Jones (January 8th 1947 – January 10th 2016). Touching upon his many personas and innovations and especially exploring the sybaritic excesses, the tale carries the reader to the moments that ended Bowie’s American odyssey of near self-destruction in 1975.

Visual dissection and informed deduction plays out as traditional drama as Kleist depicts the background, family, maternal disapproval, hungry ambitions and subsequent early race for fame that gripped a music-obsessed, sax-playing Bromley boy and how he evolved a tactic of personal reinvention in his incessant chase for the stars…

On the way and via formulative days of gigging and making contacts during the sixties and seventies, we meet his tragic but deeply inspirational older brother Terry, best friend Marc Bolan, future wife Angie Barnett, exploitative management sharpie Tony DeFries, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, up-&-comer Iggy Pop, groundbreaking fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto and many more people relatively famous folk. We’re on hand at the birth of Glam Rock and controversial but headline grabbing, dabbling with androgyny and “gender-bending” that led to the breakthroughs that almost destroyed him: the release of melancholic anthem of the era Space Oddity (with Major Tom consequently becoming a personal avatar haunting the singer forever after) and the birth of soul-sucking vampire Ziggy Stardust, a sybaritic alter ego who nearly consumed his creator…

As ambition, excess, and the dreamer’s love of science fiction fuel his inspiration, Bowie/ Ziggy hits America like meteor but soon the fallout starts taking its toll. Adoration and desire war with dissatisfaction and painful self-exploration and unless something Ch-Ch-Changes we will all be witness to a Rock‘n’Roll Suicide…

Arguably massaging history to explore the price of ambition and assess the cost of pursuing power, as well as the shocking threat and reward of sexual identity to society, this cautionary the tale is augmented by a Gallery of images encapsulating the man, the moments and his ever-present space-suited internal avatar…

© Text & illustration 2021 by Carlsen-Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, Germany. All rights reserved. English translation © SelfMadeHero 2023

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Good Night, Hem


By Jason (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-461-2 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic and comedic effect.

Happy Birthday Jason!

Born this day in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known globally by his enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume. The shy & retiring draughts-scribe started on the path to overnight international cartoon superstardom in 1995, once first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award. Prior to that, he had contributed to alternate/indie magazine KonK whilst, from 1987, studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo’s Art Academy, before going on to Norway’s National School of Arts. After graduating in 1994, three years later he founded his own comic book Mjau Mjau, citing Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring and Tex Avery as his primary influences and constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-laden anthropomorphic minimalism.

Moving to Copenhagen Jason worked at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) and Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Books of Magic, Starman, Batman: Detective 27). His efforts were internationally noticed, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas, and he won another Sproing in 2001 for self-published series Mjau Mjau. From 2002 he turned nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels… and won a succession of major awards.

Jason’s breadth of interest is wide and deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, high literature and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. This puckish and egalitarian mixing and matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time. Over successive tales Jason employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes of movies, childhood entertainments and historical and literary favourites. These all role play in deliciously absurd and increasingly surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. In latter years, Jason returned to these “found” players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and in Good Night, Hem, even has a whole bizarre bunch of them “team-up”…

As always, visual/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued, or even pantomimic progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a stripped-down adaptation of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, and thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity.

Good Night, Hem is a deliciously wry triptych of novellas again harnessing and displaying all that signature arbitrary surreality, only marginally restrained by the overarching conceit that it is three snapshots of real life he-man author Ernest Hemingway. That gritty scribe was previously utilised in 2006’s The Left Bank Gang wherein he and fellow glitterati-in-waiting including Ezra Pound, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others struggle with a lack of success and decide to rob a bank.

Here, that situation is sidelined, as in 1925 the wastrel émigrés – now also including the likes of future screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart and artist Max Ernst – meet Hem’s exact double in the form of a man dressed as a musketeer. They have no conception that the newcomer is the actual Athos of fiction: a tragic, love benighted-immortal who has outlived his time and has never found peace or love…

The time & space conquering hero was previously seen in 2008’s The Last Musketeer (please link to 14th July 2023) and 2011’s Athos in America and soon makes his indelible mark on the Americans. He is even dragged along as Hemingway cajoles/bullies them all into joining him at the bullfighting festival in Pamplona…

In the midst of all that blood, sand, jealousy and constant sexual tension, Hem – keen to exploit Athos’ innocence and their uncanny resemblance – then asks a monumentally stupid favour…

Abandoning literary speculation for baroque adventure, the second tale marches right into brutal he-man action territory as hero-in-waiting (and his own mind) Hem hatches a plan to end World War II at a stroke. It’s August 1944 in Paris, and war correspondent Ernest Hemingway uses his contacts to assemble a do-or-die squad to accompany him on a mission into embattled Berlin to punch out Adolf Hitler. First though, comes a period of intense secret training and more opportunities for bitter romance, betrayal and lethally unruly machismo before the mission – and all its appalling consequences – are realised…

The final chapter opens in 1959 and delves deep into contemplation as Hem seeks to write his memoirs. Trapped into reminiscing about his life and those he met, whilst resident in pre-revolutionary, Mafia-run Cuba, he recalls how Athos recently reappeared. He was utterly untouched by the weight of 30 more years and asked the author to pen an introduction for his own proposed autobiography: an encounter that set the writer on a spiral of painful self-examination…

These quirky episodes are populated with cinematic, darkly comic anthropomorphs and festooned with bewitching ruminations on love, loneliness, friendship, renown, expectation and life goals viewed – as ever – through a charmingly macabre cast of bestial archetypes and socially-lost modern chumps and people you think you know.

Blending literary pretention and modern fictive mythology with the iconography and ironic bombast of Reservoir Dogs and Inglourious Basterds is a stroke of genius no one else could pull off. Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, incisively probing the nature of “human-ness” via the beastly and unnatural asking persistent and pertinent hard questions. Although smart sight-gags are less prominent here, his staff of “funny-animal” players still uncannily depict the subtlest emotions with devastating effect, proving again just how good a cartoonist he is. Effortlessly switching back and forth between genre, milieu and narrative pigeonholes, this grab-bag of graphic goodies again proves that Jason is a creative force in comics like no other: one totally deserving as much of your time, attention and disposable income as possible.
All characters, stories and artwork © 2021 Jason. All rights reserved. This edition © 2021 Fantagraphics books. All rights reserved.

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Alice in Cryptoland – Bitcoin, NFT and Other Curiosities


By Nicolas Balas, Daniel Villa Monteiro, translated by Margaret Morrison (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-355-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-356-1

This book also includes some Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and literary effect.

Sequential narrative is a nigh-universal, overwhelmingly powerful medium fluent in a host of topics and genres, but the area where it has always shone brightest is in its chimeric capacity to convey complex arguments, positions and states in a clear and compelling manner. Although daubing marks on a surface is possibly our oldest art form, the potential to ask questions, make stories and concisely communicate via that primal process remains infinitely adaptable to modern mores and as powerful as it ever was in exploring the unchanging basics of the human condition.

Narrative plus image – and the interactions such conjunctions can embrace – underpin all of our communal existence and form the primary source for how we view our distant forbears; especially as if employed by incisive, sensitive, uncompromising agents and interlocutors…

That’s never been more apparent than in this short sweet deep dive into one of the most controversial of new modern innovations.

Crafted during the Covid lockdowns and released on the continent in 2023, using the avatar of a cute and appealing young woman disaffected with the contemporary financial, governmental and environmental status quo, writer/educator Daniel Villa Monteiro and animator/illustrator Nicolas Balas jointly outline the pros & cons of cryptocurrencies, addressing the history, development, advantages and pitfalls of Bitcoin, Non Fungible Tokens, Blockchain and other trade/pecuniary artefacts of the digital age in a staggeringly accessible manner that even I could grasp.

Just before coronavirus is set to change human society forever, art student Alice receives an inheritance from her grandmother. Constantly harassed by her “breadhead” banker/financier dad on how best to invest the nest egg, self-aware, system-suspicious, rebellious Alice eventually discovers alternate currency Bitcoin and after some trepidation dives into a new world. As an artist, she thinks visually, using cartoons and graphics to enhance her understanding of this brand new world and even explain what she’s doing to her little brother. The results are so effective that soon she is sharing her images and online tutorials with other curious pre-converts, becoming well known to advocates of digital economy and is on the cusp of a promising new career.

If only she can completely convince herself that it’s all safe and secure…

Warm, beguiling and immensely straightforward Alice in Cryptoland is a charming and readily comprehensible argument for its subject that puts understanding of a bewildering subject first and foremost, not only in its context-rammed ‘Foreword’ and utterly crucial ‘Glossary of Terms’ but also on every lovely welcoming cartoon page.

Why not invest some of your actual capital resources on something that could end your dependence on it?

Originally published as Alice au pays des cryptos by Editions du Faubourg, © 2023. All rights reserved. © 2025 NBM for the English translation.
Scheduled for UK release on 13th May, Alice in Cryptoland is available for pre-order now.

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Ginseng Roots


By Craig Thompson (Faber)
ISBN: 978-0-571-38661-1 (HB)

This is one of those reviews where I try quite hard not to say too much about the content, because it’s a sin and a form of theft to deprive readers of the joy of it unfolding just for them. You could and should just go buy this now and save time, but if I can’t convince you of that here, please read on and think again…

In no way a sequel to his landmark masterpiece Blankets but every inch and ounce as compelling, engaging and important, Ginseng Roots sees auteur Craig Thompson return to what you or I would deem an incredibly harsh – nigh-dystopian – childhood to craft another incredibly engaging paean of love and fond wonder to his home, his family and his extraordinary life.

In a book encompassing biographical revelation, philosophical rumination and religious re-exploration we see the auteur share incredibly candid events from his profession and career. Wrapped up in a most engaging, amusing and occasionally distressing tutorial on the history and global cultural significance of Ginseng, we see Thompson return to Wisconsin. The Thompson kids were raised in a fundamentalist Christian household, with the Rapture anticipated any day now, but it wasn’t all bad. They were loved, if ruled hard, and here we see how that panned out, as well as the transformative power of comics via a broad, deep and astonishingly informative yarn viewed through the ruminative lens of the Thompson family’s recollections of being child labourers for local farmers growing American Ginseng in the 1980s.

The way it all worked is unpicked with remarkable even-handedness, as the man who became a major force in his field of graphic narrative expression revisits those formative days before embarking on a quest to learn all he can of the How and Why of it all. This involves returning home before ultimately crisscrossing the world with little brother Phil to research a new graphic novel undertaken in the light of potentially losing all he could be to an inexorable physical decline: one destined to take away his self-defining ability to draw…

When first released in July 2003, Blankets started slowly before achieving monumental international fame and near-unanimous critical approval from comics’ Great & Good & Fabled. If you have a favourite author or artist they probably loved the book – and rightly so.

Taking 3½ years to create, Blankets won 3 Harvey Awards, 2 Eisners, 2 Ignatz Awards and a France’s Prix de la Critique. Translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Greek, German, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Korean, Hungarian, Slovenian, Estonian, Serbian and Greek, it was latterly published in 17 foreign editions (so far) and kept on winning glittering prizes and acclaim. It’s also won a YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults prize: listed as one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top Ten Graphic Novels of All Time. You can expect Ginseng Roots to do as well or better, even if young love and tragic foredoomed passions have been downplayed in favour of the inexorable march of time, unsatisfied injustices, midlife crises and failing faculties.

Reading this, you will learn all about a wonder herb, global trade, Chinese medicine, Big Agriculture & pesticides, many flavours of immigrant workers, exploitation and corporate ruthlessness, the economic history of many nations, the narcotic tendencies of comic books of grade school kids, and so much about human nature, that you’ll probably laugh, cry and get angry quite a lot…

Originally released in serialised instalments by Uncivilized Book (between 2019 -2023, as Covid ravaged the US and the world) just as Craig Thompson was confronting presumed career burnout, impostor syndrome and the loss of his ability to draw, the fascinating pictorial discourse is divided into 12 chapters beginning with ‘Real Ginseng Runs’, as Craig, Phil and their sister Sarah reunite at the parental homestead and trade tales of the old days. The reminiscences blend with flashback and flashforwards in ‘Sister Species’ as the story of Ginseng from America expands, with ‘Broad Stripes’ covering the history of Wisconsin – especially the region around Marathon – and growth of Ginseng trading: its use by First Nations before colonisation, white/French and Christian exploitation after that, and eventually an unshakeable connection to Asian nations that bought it from Wisconsin’s farmers and entrenched rivalry with its clearly inferior Canadian competition…

Interviews with old friends and former employers begins in ‘Rock(s) & Roll(ie)’, augmented by modern convolutions in ‘MAGGA’ (Make American Ginseng Great Again!) and ‘Good Seed Sinks’, before Craig’s declining health is more extensively explored in ‘No More Cartoons’. This leads to a vast expansion of purpose that culminates in fact finding missions all over “the orient” and the undertaking of a major literary project as expanded upon in ‘Father Abraham’, ‘Dark Night of the Soil’ and ‘Insam Respects’, before all that global and historical interconnection is pulled together as one big ‘Red Thread’, and laid to bed in grand ‘Agricultural Appreciation’…

So much better read than read about, this marvellously moving memoir and ruminatory treatise is backed up with full contextual ‘Notes’, genuinely evocative ‘Acknowledgments’ and bonus art from the little brother/willing accomplice and henchman on a ‘Phil(er) Page’ and closes with an extended cartoon ad for Craig’s other books – debut tome Good-bye Chunky Rice, Blankets, Carnet de voyage, Habibi and Space Dumplins. You should sample them too and Faber has them all in print for just that purpose.

Loving, informatively wistful and never angry or condemnatory, for such a weighty tome, Ginseng Roots is a remarkably quick and easy read, with Thompson’s imaginative and ingenious marriage of text and images carrying one along in the way only comics can. Expect his cartoon avatar of the root to be pinched and copied by ad men for some time to come…

Charming, engrossing and irresistible, this may well be Thompson’s best and most enduring book, but if fate and Ginseng will it, not his last as it is another perfect story in pictures.
This edition © 2025 by Craig Thompson. All rights reserved. Originally serialised by Uncivilized Books © 2019, 2021, 2021, 2022, 2023 by Craig Thompson.

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Take That, Adolf! – The Fighting Comic Books of the Second World War


By Mark Fertig and many & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-987-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Long the bastion of the arcane, historic, esoteric and the just plain interesting arenas of the comics experience, Fantagraphics Books here celebrates the dawn age of Fights ‘n’ Tights funnybooks with a magnificent collection of (mostly) superhero covers culled from the fraught period which most truly defined the comics industry.

Comic book covers are a potent and evocative way of assessing the timbre of an era and a captivating shortcut into worlds far removed from our own. They are also half the sum total of fun generated by narrative art and arguably an art form all their own. In this torrid tome, educator, scholar and writer Mark Fertig (Chair of Art and Art History at Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania and revered film noir expert – check out his Where Danger Lives for more populist fun) offers an erudite, wide-reaching treatise comprehensively addressing every aspect of the four-colour Home Front’s graphic endeavours in support of America’s WWII war effort.

Detailing how Jewish émigré artists’ and writers’ creative influences advocated America surrender its isolationist stance in ‘Four Color Fantasies’ and ‘Building Towards War’, Fertig then traces the development of ‘Red, White, and Blue Heroes’ such as The Shield and Uncle Sam before ‘The Coming of Captain America’ sparks the invention of ‘An Army of Captains’.

After the USA finally enters the war ‘All-Out Assault: August & September 1941’  is followed by an examination of female masked fighters in ‘She Can Do It!’ and reveals how Wonder Woman became ‘An Amazon for the Ages’.

‘Kids Can Fight Too!’ reveals the impact of junior and underage crusaders as well as the sub-genre of Kid Gangs whilst ‘Attaboy, Steamboat!’ confronts head-on the depiction of ethnic characters – both vile foreign predators and monstrous conquerors and decent Pro-democracy non-white types…

From here in the distant future, some of the appalling jingoism and racism is even more disturbing than the tortures, torments and buckets of gore liberally scattered through the images of Evil Nazis and “Japs”…

Next ‘Into the Breach’ addresses the reasons omnipotent heroes such as Superman and Captain Marvel left the actual fighting in Europe and the Pacific to ordinary mortals before ‘Pulling Together’ details the promotion of Home Front solidarity munitions manufacture and the arming of the armies of Freedom. Then Hitler repeatedly gets his just deserts (in graphic effigy at least) ‘In Der Führer’s Face!’

‘Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines!’ follows the development of more human fictional soldiers and heroes whilst ‘More Thrilling Than Fiction’ sees the beginnings of fact-based accounts of true champions such as President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower before ‘Pitch Men’ follows the numerous examples of masked warriors and kiddie-characters inciting readers to help pay for the war through selling war bonds and liberty stamps before ‘On to Victory’ celebrates the end of hostilities and the aftermath.

The fact-packed lecture is also supplemented at the back of the book by creator biographies of industry giants and iconic cover crafters Charles Clarence Beck, Jack Binder, Charles Biro, Hardin “Jack” Burnley, Reed Crandall, Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Irv Novick, Manuel “Mac” Raboy and Alex Schomburg (regarded as the most prolific cover illustrator of the period) but the true merit of this enchanting tome is the covers gathered for your perusal.

Designed to incite patriotic fervour and build morale, the awesome majority of this tome features a potent avalanche of stunning covers from almost every company, displaying not only how mystery men and superheroes dealt with the Axis of Evil in those tense times but also the valiant efforts of “ordinary fighting men” and even cartoon fantasy stars such as Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Walt Disney stars such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck…

Shopping List Alert: Feel free to skip if you must…

This book celebrates an absolute torrent of spectacular, galvanising scenes of heroes legendary and obscure, costumed and uniformed, all crushing tanks, swatting planes, sinking U-Boats and decimating enemy ranks, and unleashed before your assuredly goggled eyes by artists long forgotten, and never known as well as more familiar names. This battalion of the worthy includes Joe Shuster, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Eisner, Harry G. Peter, Jack Burnley, Frank Harry, Irwin Hasen, Al Avison, Bob Powell, Edd Ashe, Harry Lucey, Paul Gustavson, Bill Everett, Jerry Robinson, Gus Ricca, Al Gabriele, Charles Sultan, Gene Fawcette, Louis & Arturo Cazeneuve, Gill Fox, Sam Cooper, Jim Mooney, Elmer Wexler, Fred Ray, Dan Zolnerowich, Don Rico, Max Plaisted, Howard Sherman, Everett E. Hibbard, Ramona Patenaude, Pierce Rice, Harry Anderson, Lin Streeter, Dan Gormley, Bernard Klein, Stephen Douglas, Martin Nodell, Charles Quinlan, Dan Noonan, Sheldon Moldoff, Henry Keifer, Marc Swayze, Carl Buettner, Charles A. Winter, Maurice, del Bourgo, Jack Warren, Bob Montana, Bob, Fujimori, Vernon Greene, George Papp, John Jordan, Syd Shores, John Sikela, Alex Blum, Ray Ramsey, R. Webster, Harry Sahle, Mort Leav, Alex Kotzky, Dan Barry, Al Camy, Stan Kaye, George Gregg, Art Saaf, George Tuska, Alexander Kostuk, Al Carreno, Fred Kida, Ruben Moreira, Sidney Hamburg, Rudy Palais, Joe Doolin, Al Plastino, Harvey K. Fuller, Louis Goodman Ferstadt, Matt Bailey, Ham Fisher, Walt Kelly, Wayne Boring, John Giunta, Creig Flessel, Harold Delay, Lee Elias, Henry Boltinoff, L.B. Cole and George Marcoux – plus oh so many more who did their bit by providing safe thrills, captivating joy and astounding excitement for millions.

These powerful, evocative, charming, funny, thrilling, occasionally daft and often horrific images are controversial these days. Many people consider them Art with a capital ‘A’ whereas close-minded, reactionary, unimaginative, bigoted die-hard poltroons don’t.

Why not Dig back in time (For Victory!) and make your own decision?
© 2017 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. Main text © 2017 Mark Fertig. All comics covers and illustrations herein © 2017 the respective copyright holders All rights reserved.

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High Command – The Stories of Sir Winston Churchill and General Montgomery


By Frank Bellamy & Clifford Makins (Dragon’s Dream)
ISBN: 978-9-06332-901-3 (PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Inexcusably absent as we commemorate the achievements and sacrifices of earlier generations are these twin neglected classics of British comic strip art, crafted by one of the world’s most talented narrative illustrators. These wonderful biographical series originally ran in Eagle, the most influential comic of post-war Britain, which launched on April 14th 1950, astounding readers weekly until 26th April 1969.

It was the brainchild of a Southport vicar, the Reverend Marcus Morris, who was at that time concerned over the detrimental effects of American comic books on British children. He posited a good, solid, thoroughly decent Christian-inspired antidote and sought out like-minded creators. After jobbing around a dummy to numerous British publishers for over a year with little success, he eventually found an unlikely home at Hulton Press, a company producing adult general interest magazines like Lilliput and Picture Post. The result was a huge hit, spawning clones Swift, Robin and Girl (targeting other demographic sectors of the children’s market), as well as radio series, books, toys and all other sorts of merchandising.

An incredible number of soon-to-be prominent creative figures in many arenas of media worked on the weekly, and although Dan Dare is deservedly revered as the star, many other strips were as popular at the time, often rivalling the lead in quality and entertainment value. As was the trend of the times, the content combined fact with fiction, stressing learning and discernment equally with adventure, thrills and fun…

At its peak, Eagle sold close to a million copies a week, but before changing tastes and “musical owners” killed the title. In 1960, Hulton sold out to comics megalith Odhams, who then became Longacre Press. A year later they were bought by The Daily Mirror Group who evolved into IPC. And so it goes in publishing…

In cost-cutting exercises, many later issues carried (relatively) cheap and oh-so-trendy Marvel Comics reprints rather than British originated material. It took time, but the Yankee cultural Invaders won out in the end. With the April 26th 1969 issue Eagle merged with Lion, and eventually disappeared altogether. Successive generations have revived the prestigious glamour-soaked title, but never its success.

From its glorious Reithian heyday (“Educate, Elucidate and Entertain”) came a brace of brief biographical serials devoted to two men crucial to the war effort that had imperilled the readership’s forebears, and these were originally collected into a classy album by Dragons Dream in 1981.

The first half was reprinted in 2014 as a slim, scarcely seen paperback and hardcover album from Uniform. The Happy Warrior: The Life Story of Sir Winston Churchill as Told Through the Eagle Comic of the 1950’s (ISBNs 978-1-90650-990-3 for the HB and 978-1929154340 for the softcover) came with a scholarly commentary from Richard M. Langworth CBE, but we’re long overdue for the combined volume to resurface.

If you can, go for the High Command edition, but in whatever form you can devour the life story of Sir Winston Churchill and the quiet general (both scripted by Clifford Makins), beginning with the icon of Bulldog Spirit.

Originally titled The Happy Warrior, the prestigious full-page back cover feature (running from October 4th 1957 to September 1958) was Frank Bellamy’s first full colour strip. He followed up with Montgomery of Alamein (Eagle volume 13, #10-27, spanning March 10th to 7th July 1962), delivering twice the punch and more revelatory design in 2-page colour-spreads that utterly spellbound readers, whether they were war fans or not.

Churchill himself approved the early strips and was rumoured to have been consulted before the artist began the experimental layouts that elevated Bellamy from being merely a highly skilled representational draughtsman into the trailblazing innovator who revolutionized the comic page in features like Doctor Who and Garth. The tireless experimenter also began the explorations of the use of local and expressionistic colour palettes that would result in the extraordinary Fraser of Africa, Heros the Spartan and deservedly legendary Thunderbirds strips.

The Churchill story follows the great man from his early days at Eton through military service in Cuba as a war correspondent, and into politics. Although a large proportion deals with World War II – and in a spectacular, tense and thrilling manner – the subtler skill Bellamy displays in depicting the transition of dynamic, handsome man of action into burly political heavyweight over the weeks is impressive and astonishing. It should be mentioned, though, that this collection doesn’t reproduce the climactic, triumphal last page, a portrait that is half-pin-up, half summation and all hagiography.

Bernard Law Montgomery’s graphic biography benefited from Bellamy’s burgeoning expertise in two ways. Firstly, the page count was doubled, and the artist capitalized on this by producing groundbreaking double page spreads that worked across gutters (the white spaces that divides the pictures). This allowed him to craft even more startling page and panel designs.

Secondly, Bellamy had now become extremely proficient in both staging the script and creating mood with colour. This strip is pictorial poetry in motion.

Makins doesn’t hang about either. Taking only three episodes to get from school days in Hammersmith, army service in India and promotion to Brigade Major by the end of the Great War, Monty’s WWII achievements are given full play, allowing Bellamy to create an awesome display of action-packed war comics over the remaining 15 double-paged episodes. There really hasn’t been anything to match this level of quality and sophistication in combat comics before or since.

If you strain you might detect a tinge of post-war triumphalism in the scripts, but these accounts are generally historically accurate and phenomenally stirring to look at. If you love comic art you should hunt these down, or at least pray that somebody, somewhere has the sense to reprint this work.

© 1981 Dragon’s Dream B.V. ©1981 IPC Magazines Ltd.

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Lucky Luke volume 47: Outlaws


By Morris, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-201-0 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Doughty, rangy,and dashingly dependable cowboy Lucky Luke is an implacably even-tempered do-gooder who can “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic, cinematically realised Old West, having light-hearted adventures on his petulant and stingingly sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. Over nine decades, his exploits in Le Journal de Spirou (and from 1967, in rival periodica Pilote) have made the sharp shooter a legend of stories across all media and monument of merchandising.

Working solo with occasional script assistance from his brother Louis, Morris – AKA Maurice de Bévère – produced 10 albums worth of affectionate and thrilling sagebrush parody before formally uniting with René Goscinny, who became regular wordslinger with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie), which commenced in Le Journal de Spirou on August 25th 1955.

They literarily rode together on another 44 albums as Luke attained the dizzying heights of superstardom. The partnership continued when the six-gun straight-shooter switched teams, transferring to Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote with La Diligence (The Stagecoach). After Goscinny died, Morris continued both singly and with fresh collaborators. The dream team’s last ride was 1986’s La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires/The Ballad Of The Daltons and Other Stories.

Morris worked alone again before inviting an inspiring passel of legacy creators to step in. These included Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and others, who all took their own shots at the lovable lone rider. Morris died in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus many sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas. Since 2016 Julien Berjeaut, AKA Jul (Silex and the City) has handled the tall tale telling…

Lucky is one of the top-ranked comic characters in the world, having generated 94 albums (if you count spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, and artist’s specials) with sales totalling north of 300 million in 33 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…

Our taciturn trailblazer’s travails draw on western history as much as movie mythology and regularly interacts with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk re-exploring and refining key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions and interpretations. As previously hinted, the happy wanderer is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire… but not this time…

We Brits first encountered Lucky Luke in the late 1950s, syndicated to weekly comic Film Fun, and again in 1967 in Giggle where he blazed trails as Buck Bingo. In all these venues – as well as numerous attempts to capitalise on  the English-language success of Tintin and Asterix albums from Brockhampton and Knight Books – Luke had his trademark cigarette hanging insouciantly from his lip, but in 1983 Morris – no doubt amidst both pained howls and muted mutterings of political correctness gone mad – substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, which garnered him an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organization. In this restored remastered edition, the dogend is restored, so if that’s a problem, stop here and seek out another, later Lucky lark…

First published continentally in December 1954, Hors-la-loi was the 6th European album and an all Morris affaire comprising two short serials. Eponymous lead strip ‘Outlaws’ originally ran in LJdS #701-731 from September 20th 1951 to April 17th 1952, with our hero hired by the railroad companies to end the depredations of Emmett Bill, Grat and Bob Dalton: real life badmen who plagued the region during the 1890s, imported into the strip and given a comedic, but still vicious spin.

A cat & mouse chase across the wildest of wests sees Luke constantly frustrated by close calls and narrow escapes in superbly gripping movie set-pieces until, inevitably, justice claims the killers. At the close of this yarn, Morris had Lucky end the gang forever, but they and the story itself were insanely popular with fans. The villains were comedy gold and ideal foils for Lucky, so eventually they returned in the form of their own cousins, but we’ll tell that tale another time and place.

Actually, lets do some of it right now…

A certified Christmas must-have item, Lucky Luke album Outlaws also carried ‘Return of the Dalton Brothers’ – as first seen in LJdS #755-764 (October 2nd – December 4th 1952). Here, fraudster Bill Boney campaigns to become sheriff of a prosperous frontier town by claiming to be the killer of those infamous owlhoots. He is an absolute “wrong ‘un” but seems utterly unstoppable… until Lucky orchestrates a brief and equally fake resurrection of the bandit brothers. A little rampage and faux lynching and Boney learns a lesson that the townsfolk will never forget…

From the response to that tale eventually came the aforementioned revival, as Goscinny’s third collaboration introduced Les Cousins Dalton in issues #992-1013 (1957) of Le Journal de Spirou. When this iteration of the appalling Dalton Brothers – Averell, Jack, William and devious, slyly psychotic, tyrannical diminutive brother Joe showed up, the course of the strip altered forever…

These youthful forays of an indomitable hero offer grand joys in the wry tradition of Destry Rides Again and Support Your Local Sheriff, superbly executed by a master storyteller: a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for modern kids who might well have missed the romantic allure of the Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2014 Cinebook Ltd.

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The Scorpion volume 1: The Devil’s Mark


By Stephen Desberg & Enrico Marini, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-62-5 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

It’s Easter. Fancy a bit of biblical epic-ness doused with saucy irreverance?

We in the English-speaking world will have to work long and hard to come anywhere near the astonishing breadth of genres present in European comics. Both in scenario and narrative content, our continental cousins have seemingly explored every aspect of time and place to tell tales ranging from comedy to tragedy, drama to farce and most especially encompassing the broad, treasure-laden churches of adventure and romance. Le Scorpion is a graphic series which embraces and accommodates all of these and more…

Belgian writer Stephen Desberg is one of the most popular and bestselling comics authors in the business. Born in Brussels, he is the son of an American lawyer (European distribution agent for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer) who married a French woman. He began studying law at Université Libre de Bruxelles, but dropped out to follow a winding path into the bande dessinée biz.

It began with plots – and eventually scripts – for Willy Maltaite – AKA “Will” – on Tif et Tondu in Le Journal de Spirou, as he grew into a reliable jobbing creator on established strips for younger readers. He ultimately launched his own with Billy the Cat (a funny-animal strip drawn by Stéphane Colman, not DC Thomson’s be-whiskered boy superhero). In quick succession came 421 with Eric Maltaite, Arkel (with Marc Hardy), Jimmy Tousseul (Daniel Desorgher) and many, many more. Throughout the 1980s, Desberg gradually redirected his efforts into material for older readerships (like The Garden of Desire and, in 1999 he originated contemporary thriller IR$, with today’s historical fantasy joining his catalogue of major hits one year later.

Enrico Marini attended the School of Fine Arts in Basle before starting his creative career. Drawn since childhood to comics and manga, he began selling his artistic skills as the 1980s ended. A stint on junior adventure strip Oliver Varèse led to Gypsy (1993-1996), after which he began collaborating with Desberg on western L’Etoile du Desert. Contiguously crafting detective serial Rapaces with Jean Dufaux, Marini teamed again with Desberg in 2000 on Le Scorpion. In 2007, the illustrator added writing to his repertoire with historical drama Les Aigles de Rome and latterly Batman saga Dark Prince Charming.

A complex historical romp in the movie style of Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers and – if you squint right – Dangerous Liaisons and Pirates of the Caribbean, The Scorpion is a devious rollercoaster of sumptuous epic intrigue laced together with cunning factual underpinnings fuelling the frantic fantasy and chilling conspiracy. This first expansive English-language Cinebook translation is available in album-sized paperback and eBook formats, bundling together the first two European tomes – La marque du diable and Le secret du pape as released in October 2000 and October 2001 – into one grand bulging behemoth of literary and pictorial gold.

The fun starts in The Devil’s Mark, opening with a fulsome flashback to the most critical moment in the mighty Roman Empire’s long and bloody history. At a place and time when nine families secretly own and rule everything, a pact is made placing all their resources – if not actual Faith – in the coming thing: an intriguing new religion to be called Christianity. The families will remain in charge and in control, but now the official face and might of Rome will not be short-lived Caesars, but rather divinely guided Popes…

Tumbling forward to the early 18th century, we see roguish conman, historian, tomb-robber and relic retailer Armando Catalano – and capable but constantly carping assistant Hussard – deftly swiping the bones of long-lost Saint Alastor. These affable scoundrels are blithely unaware that elsewhere, malign forces within the Church are mobilising to change the way the world runs, with especial significance for freewheeling faith-exploiting entrepreneurs like themselves…

The current Pope is a well-meaning, unconventional commoner set on a path of reform, but that doesn’t matter to sinister advisor Monsignor Trebaldi. Even though doctrine should make the Pope infallible – literally God’s hand and word on Earth – the militant cleric gives his allegiance to an older belief than Christianity…

“Cardinal Eagle” has decided to reinstate the direct influence of the nine families using the papacy as his tool of statecraft. That means somehow first reuniting the varied clans who have drifted into isolation and bitter rivalry over centuries. The first step has already been accomplished. Cosmopolitan Rome is now heavily policed by the Order of the Knights of Christianity: warrior monks who are the Eagle’s own paramilitary zealots and a militant faction gaining in strength despite every effort of the incumbent Pontiff to reign them in…

Devil-may-care Armando is the son of Magdalena Catalan, an infamous witch burned after “seducing a high-ranking priest away from the one true faith”. As sign and proof of his ill-begotten origins, their son bears upon his shoulder a birthmark of the devil: a scorpion signalling his diabolical origins. The brand has not stopped him becoming well-known to every rich patron desperate to possess holy relics, but now, inexplicably, it makes him Trebaldi’s personal obsession. However, after the Cardinal despatches seductive “gypsy” Mejai to assassinate Armando, her repeated attempts all fail. It is as if her target has the luck of the devil on his side…

Alerted and affronted, Armando retaliates, even breaking into an inviolable palace to have a discussion with the Pontiff, only to discover a previously-hidden connection between Trebaldi and his own long-dead mother, and that an even greater scandal and mystery have been draped around the circumstances of his birth! The war of wills escalates rapidly, and the Scorpion finally confronts the Cardinal… seemingly paying the ultimate price for his indiscretions…

The drama expands and tensions mount in The Pope’s Secret with an hallucinogenic flashback offering even more clues into the astoundingly long-planned conspiracy, via a glimpse at Armando’s early life following Magdalena’s incendiary execution. This ends abruptly as faithful Hussard rouses him from the death-like coma caused by Mejai’s latest attempt to kill them. With the Romi assassin their prisoner, our shabby heroes seek further information regarding which high-ranking churchman was Armando’s debauched father by boldly infiltrating the Eagle’s citadel. They instead discover the Cardinal has appropriated the Secret Files of the Vatican, and plans to kill the Pope and replace him…

The outlaws are horrified at this travesty and assault on reality. They frantically race back to

Rome to halt the abomination.

They almost make it…

To Be Continued…

Effortlessly blending devious plots and beguiling historical conspiracies with riotous swashbuckling adventure and non-stop, breathtaking action, this blistering, bombastic and exotically engaging period thriller gives Game of Thrones, The Name of the Rose and even frothier romps like Da Vinci’s Demons a real run for their money. The twelfth and latest volume – Le Mauvais Augure – arrived in 2019 after far too long a hiatus, so there’s plenty for fans of the genre to catch-up to and adore…
Le Marque du diable & Le Secret du pape © Dargaud Benelux (Dargaud-Lombard SA) 2000, 2001 by Desberg & Marini. All rights reserved. English translation © 2008 Cinebook.

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Rex Generations


By Ted Rechlin (Rextooth Studios/Sweetgrass Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59512-229-4 (HB)

Got your eggs yet? Some come pretty big…

I’ve never met a kid who didn’t love dinosaurs, and that gleeful fascination doesn’t fade with age or what we laughingly regard as maturity. Ted Rechlin clearly ascribes to that belief too, and has made it his life’s work, whether it’s in his 30+ books (including End of the Ice Age, Jurassic, Epsilon: a Yellowstone Wolf Story, Howl, Comicquest Time Travel Trouble or the award-winning Sharks: A 400 Million Year Journey) or superhero stuff such as freelance commissions for the likes of DC Comics, Dark Horse or Dover Publications.

Rex Generations is an incredibly informative and engaging book about family, rendered with great deftness, gleeful aplomb, and packed with the latest scientific thinking regarding arguably the most famous species of big lizard (or is that bird?) on Earth.

In case you weren’t paying attention, the clan in question is thundering great tyrannosaur Cobalt and his feisty mate Sierra, just getting by in what is nowadays Hell Creek, Montana.

This stunning full-colour hardback, however, opens in the Mesozoic bit of the Cretaceous Period, or approximately 66 million years ago on a very special night. Here our anxious apex predators proudly celebrate the hatching of four eggs, heralding the start of a new generation, after which we’ll closely follow the pack over the next decade or so. The parents teach and provide in a casually lethal environment packed with a wide variety of dangerously capable prey, rival predators and unknown perils of every description.

This is dinosaurs and natural history, not Lady and the Tramp with really big teeth, so brace yourself and your own youngsters with a little spoiler alert: not everybody present at this antediluvian nativity is going to make it…

Compelling, beguilingly educational and splendidly entertaining, T. Rex Generations is a glorious celebration of Earth’s earlier Saurian inhabitants and our enduring love affair with them. Get this read the rest and go wild!
© 2018 Ted Rechlin. All rights reserved.