Category: Historical

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Charley’s War – The Definitive Collection volume 3: Remembrance


By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-621-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Uncompromising and Unmissable… 10/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

The Great War officially ended today in 1918. 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 and process, if not understand today. Charley’s War evocatively and emotionally depicts not only the mud and mire, military madness and mass mortality of that conflict, but also shared with the young and impressionable the social impact on the poor and the mighty who survived into the totally different world that followed. 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 epochal feature was originally published in UK 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. It recounted, in heartrending, harrowing and often utterly surreal detail – and with amazing maturity and passion for a Boys’ Periodical – the life of an East End teen who grew up in the British Army reinforcements setting out to fight the Hun in 1916.

The strip contingent in this third stunning collection covers episodes #177-293 spanning October 2nd 1982-January 26th 1985, and closes the book on our lad’s wartime life, although the series did go on, as Charley went back to war when the Germans did in 1939…

One of the most powerful and influential characterisations of the oh-so-ironic “war to end all wars”, the comic feature was lovingly researched, lavishly limned and staggeringly authentic. Stories touched 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.

It all began  with “the Story of a Soldier in World War One” which saw 16-year-old London Bus Company worker Charley Bourne lie about his age to illegally go “over there”. Once he got there, Bourne endured unending, horror on the muddy, blood-soaked battlefield of The Somme. He also experienced the callous ineptitude and toxic entitlement of the upper class idiots running the war, most of whom believed their own men were 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. For this closing edition most of those conceits were absent, leaving room for astounding action, increasingly surreal true incidents folded into Charley’s story and mounding indignation in every script Mills submitted…

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 policemen.

When Charley and his crooked brother-in-law Oliver Crawleigh were caught in the first tank battle in history and the dreadful German response, “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 followed key historic 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 is so much shocking action – and declared to the readership (which at time of publication was categorically believed 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. He 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 hung out in pubs with the Sarge, but was caught up in enemy air raids (giving the creators room to explore the enemy side via the zealous actions of devoted family man Kapitan Heinrich von Bergmann who led 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. His view of the land he was fighting for barely survived his valiant efforts to save her and took an even bigger hit when an unscrupulous army recruiter (earning bonuses for every volunteer signed up) attempted to entrap his underaged but battle-obsessed little brother Wilf…

The second volume opened with a bold experimental diversion as, in March 1917 readers experienced the testimony of a charismatic deserter. ‘Blue’s War’ was a story within a story with the strip’s titular character reduced to an avid and appalled listener…

Set in bombed-out London Streets where Red Caps hunted deserters, Charley learns even more horrific truths about “his side”. The military police are led by a pitiless, fanatical dying-of-wounds officer The Drag Man obsessively hounding a desperate character called Blue – based on real-world “Monocled Mutineer” Percy Toplis. The knife-wielding fugitive met Charley while looking for Oiley who has graduated from thievery and looting to selling fake papers and passage abroad to military absconders …

Disgusted, but unwilling to force anyone back into the war, Charley says nothing, and hears the hows & whys of Blue’s situation – a staggering tale of combat, cruelty, bravery and more army ineptitude. Blue is an Englishman who joined the French Foreign Legion. He served with the French Army and survived the hell of Verdun (longest battle of the WWI, lasting from February 21st to December 18th 1916), commandeering the strip for months to come.

Bourne’s grudging return to the Western Front in April 1917 sees him a seasoned veteran posted to the Salient before the Third Battle of Ypres and caught up in daily skirmishes, sudden deaths, simmering feuds among his comrades and even more arrant stupidity from the Brass. 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. By May the infantry have survived heat, the Third Battle of Ypres and – by August – Passchendaele. Snell’s unit is posted to an engineering detail where Bourne and co. endure backbreaking toil as “clay-kickers”, risking cave-ins, flood, gas, explosions and Germans above them digging into their tunnels: a year-long project undermining a vast ridge of solid rock that is the enemy artillery emplacement on the Messine Ridge. The goal was the biggest manmade explosion in history… thus far. In the build-up everyone dies, but at least Snell also goes to his infernal reward, with the pitiful survivors despatched to a brutal retraining centre, bringing Charley into contact with organised deserters and reuniting him with many lost comrades. In England Oiley facilitates war-mad Wilf Bourne’s enlistment years before he is legally eligible, and Charley spends 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 in September, 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 encountering Blue 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…

This final mostly monochrome collection commences with Charley’s utterly astounding experiences as a stretcher bearer, enduring insane rules of conduct and increased enemy action whilst ferrying wounded and the dead from the battlefields. In another experimental sortie the story even switches to “the future” to follow one of the Tommies Charley saves.

The creators wallow in bizarre historical accuracy and intriguing gallows humour but such heartfelt sentimental moments are truly breathtaking. Just keep telling yourself it’s a kids’ comics and see if you believe it…

Due to shocking injustices and standard army prejudices, Charley is soon a shooting soldier again, just in time for some of the most horrific tank and cavalry battles in history. He then becomes a sniper at the same time as a fanatical corporal named Adolf Hitler starts haunting the trenches in his sights, before the scene again shifts. Interlaced with Charley’s exploits, focus shifts week-by-week to encompass the air war as seen via the illicit adventures of under-age Wilf Bourne. An extended, crushing sequence follows as the dead end kid gives everything he has to achieve his dreams of being a fighter pilot…

It’s January 1918, and Charley is accused of shooting himself in a ploy to dodge combat. The storyline involves his surviving a court martial and meeting a nurse who will – after much misunderstanding – become his “missus”. As ever Mills seeks to demonstrate how this war and this strip affected the non-combatants involved. The sequence also sees the return of arch-nemesis Snell: released from an English mental asylum to lead his old regiment, because he’s apparently the “still-useful” side of “mad as a hatter”…

Another military sidestep brings Charley’s cousin Jack into the picture, allowing a powerful and memorable exploration of the sea war, particularly the disaster of Gallipoli and sinking of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Nürnberg at the first Battle of the Falkland Islands. Somehow, this overt political act of comics subversion and antiwar protest completely escaped editors in the months after the country experienced the second one…

At last surrendering to the forces of narrative, as the war staggered to a close, Charley was back at the front facing a desperate defeated enemy now fighting for their families’ lives. Gradually re-meeting and saying farewell to almost everyone he had met along the way Charley soldiered on to the end. The vicious fighting was aided by American troops. Some were brave, valiant and good comrades-in-oppression. Others were white…

In the end, the entire war comes down to a brutal personal grudge match with Snell, who was determined to kill the peasant who had ruined his life. It happened on November 11th 1918, but even though Bourne was triumphant, Snell had the posthumous last world. It also allowed the creators to extend the strip and shine a light on another shameful episode. Although most soldiers downed arms in November 1918, in Russia the conflict continued as Tsarist White Russians battled the growing Soviet power of Red Russians. Two dozen countries – England included – sent men and resources to fight communism at a distance. And thanks to Snell, poor Charley was one of them…

What he saw and did there would shape the rest of his life…

These compilations of Mills & Colquhoun’s comic strip condemnation of the Great War (and war-mongering and profiteering in general) reaffirm 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. 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 masterpieces of subversive outrage. Included in this volume are 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 episodes 177-293. These were not the last strips to feature Charley Bourne or indeed Joe Colquhoun’s incredible art, but in Mills’ view were the true end of the dramatic arc as the soldier boy came home to his wife, and decades of poverty and unemployment… until WWII saw him return to fighting for a country that really didn’t care about its people, only prestige, status and entrenched power. The book concludes with the author’s incisive essay and pleas for more comics featuring ‘A Working Class Hero’…

Charley’s War 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 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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Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash


By Dave McKean & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-108-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Magnificent and thought-provoking… 9/10

After so many years of being sidelined and despised, sequential narrative has finally been acknowledged as one of humanity’s immortal and intrinsic art forms. That’s never been more apparent than in this astounding biographical examination of celebrated surrealist, landscape painter and war artist Paul Nash, as conceived, designed and created here by modern master of many disciplines Dave McKean.

Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash was commissioned to supplement a retrospective exhibition of Nash’s work, running at London’s Tate Gallery from October 26th 2016 to March 5th 2017. Thia was done as part of 14-18 Now: the Arts plank of Britain’s national centenary commemoration of the Great War. The project was set in motion as a result of the always wonderful Lakes International Comic Art Festival (so you should also look them up, send an effusive thank you and book early for next year’s shindig). At the time the book also came in a limited edition run of 400 signed hardbacks…

This huge (280 x 219 mm) comics chronicle is rendered in a stunning melange of styles alternatively racing and meandering in evocatively sequential manner through Nash’s nightmares and memories. Distilled from his art works, correspondence and writings, it examines the artist’s thoughts and reactions in dreamlike snippets as he comes to terms with a troubled family life, the staggering shocks of war and his lifelong striving for a clear artistic vision. These visions are filtered through a lens of mud, blood and unremitting horror which didn’t diminish after surviving life in the trenches.

Potent and evocative, this is a compelling visual poem not meant as a primer, biographical introduction or hagiography. It’s a celebration of Nash’s art and ethos, and a reminder of the pointless futility of throwing away people’s lives, delivered in styles and imagery deftly chosen for emotional impact. As such it might require you to consult a favourite search engine to grasp the subtler nuances, but any fool can see that a century on from the close of the War to end all Wars, we’ve all individually or collectively made precious little progress or changed in any significant way…

At least we can all still appreciate and be moved by beauty and horror, or art and suffering, and here, it’s definitely worth the effort.
Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash ™ & © Dave McKean. All rights reserved.

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Enemy Ace: War Idyll


By George Pratt (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-93028-965-2 (HB) 978-0-93028-978-2 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Visions of Hell to Witness Ever After… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

During the 1960s Marvel gave industry leader National (now DC) Comics an artistic and sales drubbing, overhauling their 20-year position as industry leader – but only in the resurgent genre of super-heroes. In such areas as young kids’ comics, teen-comedies and romance, the House of Ideas still lagged way behind, and in the venerable and gritty war-comics market they rated lower even than Charlton.

Admittedly, they weren’t really trying, with only the highly inconsistent Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and latterly Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders as publications of any longevity, but that didn’t stop National’s editors and creators from forging ahead: creating a phenomenal number of memorable series and characters to thrill and inform a generation very much concerned with all aspects of military life.

Enemy Ace first appeared as a back-up in issue #151 of flagship war comic Our Army at War (cover-dated February 1965): home of the already legendary Sergeant Rock. Crafted by combat comics dream-team Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert, the series told bitter tales of valour and honour from the point of view of German WWI fighter pilot Hans Von Hammer: a pure and noble old-world warrior fighting for his country in a conflict that was swiftly excising all trace of such outmoded concepts from the extremely profitable business of industrialised mass-killing.

The tales – loosely based on “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen – were a magnificent tribute to the discipline of soldiering whilst wholeheartedly condemning the utter madness of war, produced during the turbulent days of Vietnam: first conflict to be televised and contemporaneously news-packed.

They are still moving and powerful beyond belief.

As is this seminal sequel Enemy Ace: War Idyll. Delineated in moody, misty, strikingly sombre images by painter George Pratt, the story follows the quest of troubled veteran Edward Mannock, a recently returned Vietnam grunt turned photo-journalist. This is a man desperately seeking answers to imponderable questions, and great truths to cure the damage his own combat experiences have caused.

It’s 1969, and Mannock’s search takes a pivotal turn when, on a routine assignment, he discovers elderly, infirm Von Hammer. The mythic “Hammer of Hell” is dying in a German nursing home, but instantly sees that he and the distraught young man share a deep kinship, common bond and the same nightmares…

Inexplicably allowed to drop out of print in both hardback and softcover editions and still criminally unavailable in digital formats, this is an astounding, excoriatingly incisive exploration of war and its extended repercussions good and bad, and the effect that combat has on singular men. War Idyll is visceral, poetic, emotive, evocative and terrifyingly instructive: with as much impact as All Quiet on the Western Front, Goddam This War! or Charley’s War. Every child who wants to be a soldier should be made to read this book.

You don’t want me to talk about it, but you do need to experience it, and once you have you’ll want to share that experience with others, This is one of those items worth every iota of effort required to find it…
© 1990, 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The British Invasion


By Hervé Bourhis, translated by James Hogan (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1681123424 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pourquoi pas, non?… 9/10

Despite a thousand years of “not getting on”, Britain and France are neighbours who have bathed and basked in the glow of each other’s culture, arts, achievements… and failures… with remarkable constancy and consistency. For as long as each nation has existed, this peculiarly dysfunctional relationship has periodically cross-fertilised the lives and adventures and judgements of all of us. We love their stuff and apparently they’re pretty cool about ours. The strange state of affairs (oh tee hee!) has also baffled countless observers from other countries and probably always will. C’est la vie, innit?

Now and here, music writer, graphic novelist, culture vulture and avowed anglophile Hervé Bourhis (The Little Book of Rock) has encapsulated his – possibly forbidden – love for les anglaise and all their works in a fabulously eclectic years-by-year catalogue of events, achievements, style-&-fashion forays, music-&-movie moments, and less definable landmarks. Beginning in 1962, and meandering all the way to 2022, the best, worst, weirdest, and wildest pub talking points, quiz question fodder and modern minutia of pop culture have been assiduously counted and crafted into a dossier of our innate spiffiness.

These are all graphically combined with listicles, celebrity call-outs, name checks, scandals, disasters, tragic passing (and a few who are probably still feeling someone’s boots dancing on their tombs, even through six feet of well-packed Albion dirt) and all the kinds of True Brit bewilderments that provoke our always astonished amis to doff their berets, scratch their pomaded bonces and mutter “sacred blue et focquinelle”…

Joking, japing and jesting aside, this is a superbly astute, stunning researched and wittily wrought dose of weaponised memorabilia, stuffed with fun facts captivating drawn and even offers the best index I have ever seen in its ‘Britbook Playlist’ section. This is something so many boomers deserve in their wrinkled gabardine (or latex: live and let live sez me) stocking this year.

I’ve been around – if not always awake – for all of the stuff cited here, and while I can’t say it was all as much fun as what’s on show on these crisp, fab-hued pages, it does stir memories, bouts of quiet pride and an odd urge to mumble “been there, did that, gottit, mum threw it away,” and “where are they now?”

Gosh, I say! Do you think the Germans could be induced to commit their thoughts on how terrific we’ve been to paper too?
Le Britbook, © DARGUAD 2023, by Hervé Bourhis, All rights reserved. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

The British Invasion is published on November 12th 2024 and is available for pre-order now.
Most NBM books are also available in digital formats so for more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Ginette Kolinka Adieu Birkenau


By Ginette Kolinka, JDMorvan & Victor Matet, Cesc & Efa, Roger, Tal Bruttmann & various; translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-423-2 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Awful Truth That Must Be Told… 8/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

With its world-shaking reordering of society and all the consequent, still-felt repercussions of the rise of fascism and (hopefully) temporary triumph of totalitarianism, World War II – and the apparently ongoing/slowly gaining momentum third one – remain very much in people’s minds. I fear current events may well be inviting the world to revisit and reemphasise those hard learned lessons in the months and years to come…

The role of history in avoiding repeating past mistakes has never been more crucial and -thanks to brave and talented individuals and a trend for biographical and autobiographical sequential narratives – better armed than now. One chilling yet charming case in point is this testament, detailing the life and work of a Frenchwoman who survived Nazi concentration camps and enjoyed a “normal” life before latterly dedicating her last years to educating the world and preventing the reoccurrence we’re all anticipating today…

Born in February 1925, Parisian Ginette Kolinka (nee Cherkasky) enjoyed an unexceptional early life within a large, loving, non-religious Jewish family. That changed in 1940 when the Nazis took over. Fleeing across the divided nation (half under direct German administration and half under the puppet “Vichy” regime), Ginette and her kin were inevitably captured, processed through a methodically inhuman system and sent to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Birkenau. Ginette somehow survived as so very many did not and was liberated in May 1945.

She returned to France, married and remained silent about what she endured for fifty years, but was convinced by other Shoah survivors to share her experiences – particularly with school children. Kolinka became a tireless and passionate “ambassador for the memory” of those dark days and actions. Her efforts have been acknowledged with fame and numerous accolades, including a knighthood from (and eventual officer status in) the Legion of Honour, and appointment as commander of the Ordre des Palmes académiques for services to education.

Kolinka is a major force in spreading awareness of atrocity and in 2022 her life and achievements became this engaging and compelling graphic tome thanks to writers JDMorvan & Victor Matet, illustrators Cesc & Efa and colourist Roger. Rather than further précising Kolinka’s amazing story, I’ll just say that the tone seamlessly switches from sweetly engaging to appallingly chilling (and back again) with deft ease and the narrative conceit of contrasting flashbacks of Ginette’s historical recollections with a present day trip back to camp with a group of modern-day schoolchildren is shockingly effective and powerfully evocative.

Adding academic vigour and heartbreaking veracity, the tale is appended by Tal Bruttmann’s pictorial essay ‘Ginette Kolinka: A Survivor’s Story’, detailing everything from Paris under Nazi occupation to life in the camps, supplemented by photos, sketches, recovered artefacts and family memorabilia.

This tale is a potent counterpoint to the usual shock-&-bombast approach, devoting as much time to showing how far we’ve come and what we all stand to lose if those days and attitudes are allowed to resurface. Adieu Birkenau reveals how inhumanity, stupidity and simple evil can only be defeated by endurance and will. Here, we see acknowledgment of the nigh-universally disregarded contributions of women caught up in the conflict, and how the way to win against monsters is to not to be like them and never let them win.
© Éditions Albin Michel Départment bande dessinée, 2023. All rights reserved.

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Audrey Hepburn


By Michelle Botton, Dorilys Giacchetto & various, translated by Nanette McGuiness (NBM
ISBN: 978-1-68112-346-2 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-347-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Elegant Invitation to Enjoy Finer Things… 8/10

A few years back publisher NBM struck pure gold with a line of European-originated contemporary arts histories and dramatized graphic biographies. This one is a gently moving but deceptively sharp peek at one of cinema’s most beloved icons and a very human star we all think we know…

As first revealed in a candid introduction from her second son Lucca Dotti, ‘Everyone has their own Audrey’, and what follows is a sweetly beguiling account that seeks to show the crushing lack of confidence that did not hold back a young wannabe dancer who eventually took the world by storm. Her hard work, lucky breaks, hard work, captivated mentors, unwise affairs, helpful and hindering men, hard work, recurring family tragedies and sheer determination are meticulously explored as the ingenue starlet navigates the most momentous period of social change women have ever experienced.

The lonely girl’s film and stage works are deconstructed and assessed through Audrey’s own harshly judging eyes, as are her relationships, and – in the end, just like a movie – the right ending finally occurs…

This is very much a classic rags-to-riches account, fetchingly rendered by Dorilys Giacchetto (Blind Date, Storie di vittime innocenti di Mafia, Idromele), who adds by turns sparkle and poignancy to the complex, almost accidental stellar stardom of meek yet resolute Audrey Hepburn. Detailed by writer Michele Botton (Abe Sada, il fiore osceno, Bukowski, Hotel Mezzanotte, Pink Future) what we want and expect to see all show up, paving the way for surprises and twists no one could foresee…

Bracketed by a ‘Prologue’ and ‘Epilogue’ focussed on Hepburn’s real passion – her work with children for UNICEF – and summed in ‘My Audrey by Michele Botton’, this easy breezy life story also offers academic rigour in ‘Essential Filmography, Book and Documentaries’ listings, resulting in a sweet confection any fan would by overjoyed to own.
© BelloGiallo2023. © 2024 NBM for the English version.

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats so for more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Buz Sawyer volume 1: The War in the Pacific


By Roy Crane (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-362-0 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect Comics with Timeless Punch… 10/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips. Until relatively recently these pictorial features were utterly ubiquitous, hugely popular with the public and valued by publishers who used them as a sales weapon to guarantee and increase circulation and profits.

It’s virtually impossible for us to today to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. The Funnies were the most common recreation for millions: well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality. From the very start humour was paramount; hence the actual terms “Funnies” and “Comics”, and from these gag and stunt beginnings – a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and the vaudeville shows – came a thoroughly entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting on April 21st 1924,Washington Tubbs II was a breezily comedic gag-a-day strip that evolved into a globe-girdling adventure serial. Crane crafted pages of stunning, addictive quality yarn-spinning whilst his introduction of moody swashbuckler Captain Easy in the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929 led to a Sunday colour page that was arguably the most compelling and visually impressive of the entire Golden Age of Newspaper strips (as seen in Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volumes 1-4).

Improving almost minute by minute, Crane’s imagination and his fabulous visual set pieces achieved a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The influence of those pages can be seen ever since in the works of near-contemporaries such as Hergé, giants-in-waiting like Charles Schulz and comics creators including Alex Toth and John Severin.

The work was obviously as much fun to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA/United Features Syndicate’s abrupt and arbitrary demand that all its strips must be henceforward produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate their being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated – although the compelling text features in this book dedicated to his second masterpiece reveal a few more commercial and professional reasons for the jump from the small and provincial syndicate to the monolithic King Features outfit. At the height of his powers Crane just walked away from the astounding Captain Easy page, concentrating on the daily feature, and when his contract expired in 1943 he left United Features to create the World War II aviation strip Buz Sawyer; lured away by the grandee of strip poachers William Randolph Hearst.

The result is still one of the freshest and most engaging comics strips of all time…

Where Wash Tubbs was a brave but comedic Lothario and Easy a surly, tight-lipped he-man, John Singer “Buz” Sawyer was a happy amalgam of the two: a plain & simple, good-looking popular country-boy who went to war because his country needed him.

After the gripping and informative text feature ‘Crane’s Great Gamble’ by Jeet Heer, the strip explodes into action on Christmas Eve 1942, as new Essex Class Aircraft Carrier USS Tippecanoe steams for the Pacific Theatre of Operation carrying 100 fighter-bombers and an extremely keen pair of cartoon paladins.

Buz Sawyer is a fun-loving, skirt-chasing, musically-inclined pilot and his devoted gunner Rosco Sweeney, a bluff, simple ordinary guy – as well as one of the best comedy foils ever created.

The strip is a marvel of authenticity: picturing not just the action and drama of the locale and situation, but more importantly capturing the quiet, dull hours of training, routine and desperate larks between the serious business of killing whilst staying alive. Like contemporaries Bill Mauldin and Milton Caniff, Crane was acutely aware that all his readers had someone involved in the action and therefore felt a duty to inform and enlighten as well as entertain. Spectacular as the adventure was, the truly magical moments focus on the off-duty camaraderie and candid personal interactions that pepper the daily drama.

This beautiful archival hardback covers the entire war years of the strip from November 1st 1943 to October 5th 1945, wherein the inspired artist perfected his masterly skill with Craftint (a mechanical monochrome patterning effect used to add greys and halftones which Crane employed to add miraculous depths and moods to his superb drawing) and opens with the lovable lads shot down whilst tackling a Japanese carrier.

Marooned, their life raft washes up on a desolate desert island where they’re hunted by enemy troops and discover a marooned German farmer and his beautiful daughter. At first hostile, lovely fräulein April soon succumbs to Buz’s boyish charm. Helping Buz and Roscoe escape, the trio only make it as far as the next islet, where fellow pilot and friendly rival Chili Harrison has also been stranded since his plane went down.

Eventually rescued, the Navy fliers return to “the Tip” for training on new planes (sublimely detailed and delineated Curtiss SB2C Helldivers; in case you were wondering) in preparation for the push to Japan. Amidst spectacular action sequences, shipboard life goes on, but during a raid on an occupied island Buz and Sweeney are once more shot down. In the middle of a fire-fight they effect repairs and head back to the Tippecanoe, but not without cost. Rosco has been hit…

Sawyer’s exemplary exploits haven’t gone unnoticed and, whilst Sweeney is recovering from wounds, the titular hero is selected for a secret mission deep into enemy territory; ferrying an intelligence agent to a meeting with enigmatic underground leader the Cobra. It all goes tragically wrong and the US agent is captured. With the enemy hunting high and low for the pilot, Buz then falls back on his most infuriating ability: dropping into the willing laps of beautiful women…

‘Sultry’ is a gorgeous collaborator high in the favour of the occupying Japanese, but she too finds the corn-fed aviator irresistible. Of course, it might simply be that she’s also Cobra…

This extended epic is a brilliant, breathtaking romp blending action, suspense, romance and tragedy into a compelling thriller that carries Buz all the way to December 1944. As a result of his trials, the hero is sent back to America on a 30-day leave – enabling Crane to reveal some enticing background and invoke all the passions, joys and heartbreaks of the Home Front.

Buz doesn’t want to go, but orders are orders, so to make things a little more bearable he takes still-recuperating Sweeney with him. It isn’t that the young flier despises his origins – indeed, his civilian life is a purely idyllic American Dream – it’s simply that he wants to get the job done against the enemy. Nevertheless, with a warrior’s grace under pressure, he resigns himself to peace and enjoyment whilst his comrades soldier on. If he knew the foe he would face in his little hometown, Buz would probably have gone AWOL…

Crane’s inspirational use of the War at Home was a masterstroke: it’s not a world of spies and insidious Bundists, but just an appetising little burg filled with home comforts and proud people: the kind of place soldiers were fighting to preserve and a powerful tool in the morale-builder’s arsenal. It’s also a place of completely different dangers…

Buz is the son of the town’s doctor; plain, simple and good-hearted. In that egalitarian environment, the kid was sweetheart to the richest girl in town, and when Tot Winter‘s upstart, nouveau riche parents hear of the decorated hero’s return they hijack the homecoming and turn it into a self-serving publicity carnival.

Moreover, ghastly, snobbish Mrs. Winter conspires with her daughter to trap the lad into a quick and newsworthy marriage. Class, prejudice, financial greed and social climbing are enemies Buz and Sweeney are ill-equipped to fight, but luckily that annoying tomboy-brat Christy Jameson has blossomed into a sensible, down-to-earth, practical and clever young woman. She’s scrubs up real pretty too…

After a staggeringly smart and compelling soap opera sequence that would do Eastenders or Coronation Street proud, Buz ends up (accidentally) engaged to Tot after all. Mercifully, his leave ends and he and Sweeney must return to the war – but even then, they are disappointed to discover that they won’t immediately be fighting again.

Posted to Monterey, California, they are to be retrained for new planes and a new squadron, reuniting with rowdy rival Chili Harrison. Even so, Mrs Winter is determined to have a war hero in the clan and pursues them with Tot in tow, determined to get Buz married before he returns to the Pacific. Insights into another aspect of the military experience (Crane had almost unfettered access, consultation privileges and the grateful willing cooperation of the US Navy) are revealed to readers as the whiz-kid is suddenly back in school again; and usually in the dog-house because of his hot-dogging.

Dramatic tension divides evenly between Buz’s apparent inability to be a team-player and the increasingly insistent and insidious ploys of Mrs. Winter. Moreover, the squadron’s training commander has an uncanny ability to predict which pilots will die in training or combat and Buz’s name is high on that list…

At last the training concludes and – miraculously alive and unmarried – Buz & Sweeney ship out to the Pacific and the relatively easy task of ending the war. Part of a vast fleet mopping up island fortresses en route to Tokyo, they are soon flying combat missions, and before long, shot down once more. This time they are taken prisoner aboard an enemy submarine…

After more incredible escapes and rousing triumph, the war finishes, but Crane actually ratcheted up the tension by covering the period of American consolidation and occupation as Buz & Sweeney await demobilisation. Whilst posted to a medical facility in Melatonga, the lads and Chili meet a woman from Buz’s chequered past they had all believed long dead…

When discharge papers finally arrive (in the episode for September 9th 1945) an era of desperate struggle closes. However, with such a popular and pivotal strip as Buz Sawyer, that only means that the era of globe-girdling adventure is about to begin…

This superb monochrome hardback also offers a selection of Sunday strips in full colour. The eternal dichotomy and difficulty of producing Sunday Pages (many client papers would only buy either dailies or Sunday strips, not both) meant that some strip creators produced different story-lines for each feature – Milt Caniff’s Steve Canyon being one of the few notable exceptions. Crane handled the problem with typical aplomb: using the Sundays to tell completely unrelated stories. For Wash Tubbs he created a prequel series starring Captain Easy in exploits set before the mismatched pair had met; with Buz Sawyer he turned over the Sabbath slot to Rosco Sweeney for lavish gag-a-day romps, big on laughs and situation comedy.

Set among the common “swabbies” aboard ship, it was a lighter family-oriented feature and probably far more welcome among the weekend crowd of parents and children than the often chilling or disturbing realistically and sophisticated saga that unfolded Mondays to Saturdays.

Also included here – and spanning November 28th 1943 to 25th February 1945 in delicious full-page fold outs – are 15 of the best (many with appearances by Buz): a cheerily tantalising bonus which will hopefully one day materialise as an archival collection of their own. Whilst not as innovative or groundbreaking as Captain Easy, they’re still superb works by one of the grand masters of our art-form.

This initial collection is the perfect means of discovering or rediscovering Crane’s second magnum opus – spectacular, enthralling, exotically immediate adventures that influenced generations of modern cartoonists, illustrators, comics creators and storytellers. Buz Sawyer: War in the Pacific ranks as one the greatest strip sequences and best war stories ever crafted: thrilling, rousing, funny, moving yarn-spinning that is unforgettable, unmissable and utterly irresistible.
Strips © 2010 King Features Syndicate, Inc. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books, all other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

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Orwell


By Pierre Christin & Sébastien Verdier, with André Juillard, Olivier Balez, Manu Larcenet, Blutch, Isabelle Merlet, Juanjo Guarnido, Enki Bilal & more: translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-910593-87-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Capping what has been an already appalling month for planet Earth, (belated) news just reached us that we have lost two more of comics’ most prodigious and influential talents. You’re all busy and so am I, but we can’t let this go unremarked, so here’s a quick reminder in review form of what we can no longer enjoy and why Pierre Christin will be so missed.

We all have our heroes. One whom I apparently share with another of my most admired and revered favourites is Eric Arthur Blair, who you may know as George Orwell.

One of the most significant literary, societal, cultural and political figures of the 20th century, Orwell is also a particular fascination of comics icon Pierre Christin, co-creator of epically barbed, venerable sci fi masterpiece Valerian and Laureline. Born in Saint-Mandé on July 27th 1938, Christin studied political science at the Sorbonne and Paris Institute of Political Studies, and became a professor of French Literature at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, before penning his first barbed comics script (Le Rhum du Punch for Pilote) in 1966. Academia’s loss was literature’s gain and his stellar works have enriched us all. Christin died On October 3rd 2024.

The inveterate scholar investigator and raconteur was also – and primarily – a seditiously canny political commentator in his own right – as seen in such thought-provoking pictorial subversions as The Town That Didn’t Exist, The Black Order and The Hunting Party. He began this particular piece of literary reportage after completing a personal project investigating the world’s various functioning – if not necessarily functional – Communist regimes…

Also a writer to his core, Eric Blair was a true and ardent democratic socialist: author, critic, essayist and unflinching observer of humanity saddled with a loathing of privilege and an inescapably, embarrassingly obvious upper-class education. Blair was a solitary individual who loved people, and an angry humanist vehemently opposed to greed, stupidity, extremism, totalitarianism and oppression (equally from the Left, Right and Religious alike). He fought for his ideals during the Spanish Civil War and loathed Stalin, Hitler and probably his own and all other national leaders with equanimous passion.

The complex man’s fascinating private life is brilliantly and addictively detailed in Orwell: Old Etonian, copper, prole, dandy, militiaman, journalist, rebel, novelist, eccentric, socialist, patriot, gardener, hermit, visionary: Christin’s compelling graphic biography and appreciation primarily illustrated by Sébastien Verdier (Ultimate Agency; Le marathon de Safia; Zodiaque) with additional visual contributions from André Juillard, Olivier Balez, Manu Larcenet, Blutch, Juanjo Guarnido, Enki Bilal, colourist Isabelle Merlet and more.

Sagely divided into ‘Orwell Before Orwell’, ‘Blair Invents Orwell’ and ‘Orwellian Orwell’, with an assessment of the world ‘After Orwell’, the narrative messaging and potent documentary depictions are bolstered with adapted snatches from Orwell’s groundbreaking stories and non-fiction, plus plenty of quotes taken from the cultural witness/prophet’s diaries.

Moving, revelatory, potent and supplemented by a methodological Afterword from Christin, this is a captivating graphic triumph no fan of graphic biography or devotee of the only man to provably predict the future should be without.
Orwell © DARGAUD 2019, by Christin, Verdier. All rights reserved. English translation © 2021 SelfMadeHero.

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Yakari and Nanabozho (volume 11)


By Derib & Job, coloured by Dominque and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-177-8 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Closing what has been an already appalling month for planet Earth, (belated) news came to us yesterday that we have lost two more of comics’ most prodigious and influential talents. You’re all busy and so am I, but we can’t let the events go unremarked. Here’s a quick reminder in review form of what will be so missed, but which we can still enjoy forever…

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A World We All Want … 9/10

In 1964 children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded by Swiss journalist André Jobin (25/10/1927-08/10/2024), who then wrote for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later, he hired artist and fellow Swiss Franco-phone Claude de Ribaupierre, AKA “Derib”.

The illustrator had launched his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs): working on The Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Le Journal de Spirou. Thereafter, together they created the splendid Adventures of the Owl Pythagore before striking pure comics gold a few years later with their next collaboration.

Born in Delémont, Jobin split his time between Bande Dessinées – 39 Yakari albums and 3 for Pythagore – and his other writing editing and publishing briefs: an admirably restrained and outstandingly effective legacy to be proud of.

Derib – equally au fait with enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style yarns and devastatingly compelling meta-realistic action illustrated action epics became one of the Continent’s most prolific and revered creators with such groundbreaking strips as Buddy Longway, Celui-qui-est-nà-deux-fois, Jo (first comic to deal with AIDS), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne. They haven’t been translated into English yet, but still we patiently wait in hope and anticipation…

Yakari is considered by fans and critics to be the strip which led Derib to his deserved mega-stardom. Debuting in 1969, self-contained episodes trace the eventful, nomadic life of an Oglala Lakota boy on the Great Plains, with stories set sometime after the introduction of horses (by colonising Conquistadores) but before the coming of modern Europeans.

The series – which also generated two separate animated TV series and a movie – has notched up 42 albums thus far: a testament to its evergreen vitality and brilliance of its creators, even though originator Job moved on in 2016, replaced by Frenchman Joris Chamblain.

Abundant with gentle whimsy and heady compassion, Yakari’s life is a largely bucolic and happy existence: at one with nature and generally free from privation or strife. For the sake of dramatic delectation, however, the ever-changing seasons are punctuated with the odd crisis, generally resolved without fuss, fame or fanfare by a little lad who is smart and brave, and who can – thanks to a boon of his totem guide the Great Eagle – converse with animals…

First serialised in 1978, Yakari et Nanabozo was the fourth European album, released as the strip transferred to prestigious magazine Le Journal d Tintin, but was only translated by Cinebook in 2013, making it officially the 11th UK album. That’s not going to be a problem for chronology or continuity addicts as the tale is both stunningly simple and effectively timeless…

It begins one bright sunny day as the little wonder wanders out to the Rock of the Bear to meet his friend Rainbow. When the lad arrives there’s no sign of her, but he does meet a gigantic, extremely voluble desert hare claiming to be Trickster Spirit Nanabozho…

a statement he proves by making some astounding adjustments to the little lad’s own height.

The Great Rabbit claims to be Rainbow’s totem animal, just as Great Eagle watches over and protects Yakari. Moreover, the loopy lepine wants the lad to accompany him on a quest. Ever since a travelling tale-teller arrived in camp, recounting shocking stories of the far north where it’s so cold the bears are snowy white, headstrong Rainbow has wanted to see the amazing creatures for herself and, eager to please his protégée, the Brobdingnagian bunny agrees to help her, even supplying magic walking moccasins to reduce the hardships of the hike.

Unfortunately, the impatient tyke can’t wait for the Trickster and Yakari to join her and puts them on unsupervised. Unable to resist the enchanted slippers, Rainbow starts her trek, not knowing where she’s going or how to stop…

Now, with boy and bunny transforming into giants and tiny mites as circumstances demand, they set out to catch their impetuous friend, following the path of magic talisman ‘the Straight Arrow’ and assisted by such beneficial creatures as a night moose.

… And when they at last find Rainbow, the travellers decide that as they’ve come so far, they might as well complete the journey to the Land of the White Bears, aided by a fabulous flying canoe…

Always visually spectacular, seductively smart and happily heart-warming, Job’s sparse plot here affords Derib an unmissable opportunity to go wild with the illustrations; creating a lush, lavish and eye-popping fantasy wonderland which is breathtaking to behold, and Really Big Sky storytelling with a delicious twist in its colossal fluffy tail…

The exploits of the valiant little voyager who speaks to animals and enjoys a unique place in an exotic world is a decades-long celebration of joyously gentle, marvellously moving and enticingly entertaining adventure, honouring and eulogising an iconic culture with grace, wit, wonder and especially humour. These gentle sagas are true landmarks of comics literature and Yakari is a strip no fan of graphic entertainment should ignore.
Original edition © 1978 Le Lombard/Dargaud by Derib & Job. English translation 2013 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Black Max volume 3


By Frank S. Pepper, Ken Mennell, Alfonso Font & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-83786-102-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Astoundingly Eerie Air Ace Action… 8/10

It’s time for another sortie down memory lane for us oldsters and, hopefully a frolic down a new, untrodden path for fans of the fantastic in search of a traditionally quirky British comics experience. This compelling compilation is another stunning nostalgia-punch from Rebellion’s superb, ever-expanding Treasury of British Comics, concluding the exotic, esoteric episodic exploits of seminal shocker Black Max: another darkly sparkling gem from our crown jewels of weird kids’ comics… and yes, there’s a strong argument that the readers were as wild and whacko as the strips we loved…

This sinister selection delivers the last gasps of the unsavoury war criminal of the skies, and includes rare-for-the-era crossover with another strip star. Black Max debuted in the first issue of Thunder and more than ran the distance: surviving cancelation and merger, soaring on into Lion & Thunder which finally gave up the ghost mid-decade. This third volume carries the last wave of those stories, covering 15th January to October 21st 1972 with the aviation excitement augmented by a brace of longer yarns taken from Thunder Annual 1974.

The series was typical of the manner in which weekly comics functioned back then: devised by screenwriter, veteran editor and prolific scripter Ken Mennell (Cursitor Doom, Steel Claw, The Spider and many more), with the first episode limned by the company’s star turn for mood and mystery, Eric Bradbury (Invasion, The Black Crow, Cursitor Doom, House of Dolman, Hookjaw and dozens more). The whole kit and kaboodle was then handed off to another team to sink or swim with, which they did until 1973: a pretty respectable run for any British comic feature…

In many ways, the attrition rate of British strips bore remarkable similarities to WWI casualty figures, but this serial was well-starred. The assigned follow-up writer was Frank S. Pepper. who began his legendary comics career in 1926. By 1970, he had clocked up many major successes including Dan Dare, Rockfist Rogan, Captain Condor, Jet-Ace Logan and Roy of the Rovers to name but a very, very few. Series illustrator Alfonso Font was a 10-year veteran – mostly for overseas publications – when he succeeded Bradbury. Based in Spain, Font had worked not just for Odhams/Fleetway but on strips for US outfits Warren and Skywald and continental classics such as Historias Negras (Dark Stories), Jon Rohner, Carmen Bond, Bri D’Alban, Tex Willer, Dylan Dog, Clark & Kubrick: Spiritualists Inc., Taxi, Héloise de Montfort and more…

Episodic by nature and generally delivered in sharp, spartan 3-page bursts, by the time of these trench warfare and skyborne tales, the premise and key characters were firmly established and Pepper & Font were growing bolder and more experimental…

In 1917, Germany and her allies were slowly losing the Great War. In the Bavarian schloss of Baron Maximilien von Klorr, the grotesque but brilliant scientist/fighter ace devised a horrific way to tip the scales back in favour of his homeland. His extremely ancient family had, for millennia, enjoyed an almost affinity with bats, and the current scion had bred giant predatory versions he controlled by various means – including magic amulets and telepathy. These flew beside him to terrify and slaughter the hated English. Initially, they had been a secret weapon used sparingly, but by this juncture allied soldiers and aviators knew well this other form of death from the skies…

His schemes were imperilled and countered on a weekly basis by young British pilot Tim Wilson. Originally a performer in a peacetime flying circus, the doughty lad was possibly the best acrobatic aviator on the Western Front and his constant clashes with von Klorr and the colossal chiropterans constantly frustrated the manic monster master…

Now, with Wilson’s superiors fully aware of the fearsome bioweapons, and thanks to the peasant’s constant interference, the Baron devotes an astonishing amount of time and effort to killing the English fighter ace… when not butchering Allied fliers and ground troops in vast numbers.

The odds seemed to shift once von Klorr began mass-producing his monsters, but Wilson eventually gained the upper hand: driving “Black Max” out of his castle HQ and into a hidden facility where the vile villain retrenched and made bigger, better terrors…

As lengthy, multi-part serials became the standard, the human fliers’ private duel expanded to include many veteran English Aces, infiltrating traitors into the Royal Flying Corps, brainwashing and torturing prisoners, steering zeppelins on civilian raids, and kidnapping British animal scientist Professor Dutton to improve the strength of his killer beasts…

Always, however, the Baron is foiled by his inability to ignore or avoid Wilson: a mistake that scuttles his grand schemes and costs him dearly…

Down but never out, the Baron returns to successful strategies and familiar killing fields, but suffers another reversal when Wilson discovers his current laboratory base. With only one giant bat left and his resources exhausted, Von Klorr relocates to a deserted aerodrome to consider his options and is shocked to receive a message from his grandfather. The terrifying patriarch of the “bat clan” has knowledge spanning millennia and reveals he has unearthed an ancient potion to recreate the “great Kingbat!”

Thanks to more timely interference from Tim, the killer beast attacks both German and British lines, necessitating an unprecedented alliance of the sworn enemies. Wilson is completely ready for von Klorr to betray him, but is still taken unawares when the moment comes as they kill the rampaging terror…

Here and now, it’s mere weeks after the crisis, and business as usual in the skies over Europe. As brave men shoot at each other, Von Klorr is almost court-martialled by his own leaders, but responds by secretly unleashing his last killer bat in defiance of the generals. It leads to a shocking meeting with another German freak and outcast every bit as nefarious and deranged as the Baron. Doktor Gratz is a towering intellect and supergenius in a warped, stunted body as proved by the mighty mole machine he travels under the earth in and the whirlwind weapon he uses to smash ships from the sky. He hates the British too and knows a fellow fiend when he sees one…

Soon they are attacking the allies and making a real dent, but Herr Doktor is keeping secrets from his partner. Sadly for them, Wilson is dogging their trail and prevents Gratz gaining his true objective, whilst exposing his perfidy to the furious Baron. The upshot is a sundered alliance, but Von Klorr does regain the trust of the generals which he uses – with his grandfather’s aid – to unleash more colossal Kingbats. His scheme is incredible in its audacity: employing the monsters to sink a British naval flotilla, capture an entire experimental battleship and imprison its crew…

Once again, it’s Wilson to the rescue, infiltrating a German internment camp to spring the sailors before leading the cruiser’s recovery in the face of the very worst the Kingbats can do. Von Klorr, meanwhile, has found even more uncanny allies in the form of an ancient race of subterranean bat-men dwelling unsuspected under the French countryside. These he controls with an amulet, but the sentient horrors are more than happy to kill humans…

Nearby, opportunistic Doktor Gratz reemerges and negotiates a truce with the Baron in anticipation of killing more enemy soldiers. Soon the macabre coalition is pushing back the Allied advance and all looks very bleak, but Wilson has a plan…

Defeated again and in retreat, Black Max and Gratz launch a new terror weapon – sinister “ghost planes” – but once more their subtle trickery is exposed, but not before the human devils unleash an assassination plot against French leaders and attack Paris in force with a legion of flying monsters. The build-up of months climaxes with relentless pursuit as the Germans abandon all schemes in a vengeful effort to kill the British flier, but as chaos mounts they reach too far…

In a rare event the series came to a fitting conclusion here and although the Baron was declared dead, Gratz did very well out of these walk-on appearances: he won his own spin-off series once Black Max ended. Uncomfortably entitled Secrets of the Demon Dwarf, it ran in Lion from October 28th 1972 to March 17th 1973 (plus annual and specials) as the mad scientist accidentally stranded himself in the 1970s and sought revenge for losing two World Wars and presumably just the one World Cup. Font did some of most expressive and inventive work on the feature, but I suspect Rebellion won’t be archiving this series any time soon…

As previously stated, this closing collection also includes two complete adventures from Thunder Annual 1974: one in prose and illustrated by an artist unknown and a final furious comics foray. The text tale saw Von Klorr visiting a Serbian castle to bolster failing Austrian forces only to fail due to Tim Wilson, whilst the final flight sees the true Brit following the Baron to Africa in search of ingredients to make a potion that might save his dying Kingbats from a dire disease…

These strip shockers are amongst the most memorable and enjoyable exploits in British comics: smart, scary and beautifully rendered. This a superb example of war horror that deserves to be revived and revered.
© 1972, 1973 & 2024 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. Black Max and all related characters, their distinctive likenesses and related elements are ™ Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved.