Category: Horror Stories

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Werewolves of Montpellier


By Jason, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-359-0 (HB/Digital edition)

Jason is secretly John Arne Saeterrøy: born in Molde, Norway in 1965 and an overnight international cartoon superstar since 1995 when his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize A Sproing Award.

He won another in 2001 for the series Mjau Mjau and by 2002 was almost exclusively producing graphic novels. Now a global star, he has won many more major awards from such disparate regions as France, Slovakia and the USA.

Rife with his signature surreality, this novella was first released in 2010; populated with cinematic, darkly comic anthropomorphs and featuring more bewitching ruminations on his signature themes of relationships and loneliness, viewed as ever through a charmingly macabre cast of bestial movie archetypes and lost modern chumps.

Here he focuses on the hollow life of expatriate Swede Sven, a purposeless artist who has gravitated into a stagnant, romance-lite existence in a provincial French town. Sven fritters away his days just like his close friend Audrey – another listless intellectual looking for the right lady to love.

The only thing quickening his pulse these days is the occasional nocturnal foray over the rooftops: burglarizing houses dressed as a werewolf. Unfortunately, Montpellier already has a genuine lycanthrope community and they don’t look kindly upon gauche parvenus intruding into their world with criminal cosplay…

This post-modern short-&-spooky fable unfolds in Jason’s beguiling, sparse-dialogued, pantomimic progressions delivering resonances of Hitchcock’s bubbly comedy-thrillers, quirkily blended with Bergman’s humanist sensibilities. The enchantingly formal page layouts are rendered in his minimalist evolution of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity augmented here by a stunning palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, deftly probing the nature of “human-ness” by using the beastly and unnatural to ask persistent and pertinent questions. Although the clever sight-gags are less prominent here, his repertory company of “funny-animal” characters still uncannily displays the subtlest emotions with devastating effect, proving again just how good a cartoonist he is.

This comic tale is best suited for adults but makes us all to look at the world through wide-open childish eyes. Jason is instantly addictive and a creator every serious fan of the medium should move to the top of the “Must-Have” list. Buy, borrow or even steal it if you must, but be aware that actions have consequences… even for faux monsters…
© 2010 Jason. All rights reserved.

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Brother Voodoo Marvel Masterworks volume 1


By Len Wein, Doug Moench, Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, David Anthony Kraft, Roger Slifer, Roger Stern, Scott Lobdell, Jean-Marc Lofficier, Randy Lofficier, Gene Colan, Don Perlin, Jim Mooney, Tony DeZuñiga, Ron Wilson, Marshall Rogers, Vicente Alcazar, Fred Hembeck, Geoff Isherwood & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2923-7 (HB/Digital edition)

In 1968 the consciousness-raising sporting demonstration of Black Power at the Olympic Games politicised a generation of youngsters. By this time a few comics companies had already made tentative but concerted efforts to address what were national and socio-political iniquities. Nevertheless, issues of race and ethnicity took a bloody long time to filter through to still-impressionable young minds avidly absorbing knowledge and attitudes via four-colour pages that couldn’t even approximate the skin tones of African-Americans.

As with TV and films, breakthroughs were small, incremental and too often reduced to a cold war of daringly liberal “firsts.” Excluding characters in 1940s-1950s jungle themed comic books, Marvel clearly led the field with a recurring character: historically impossible Gabe Jones, a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos – debuting in #1 (May 1963).

Technically, he was beaten to that dubious honour by DC’s Jackie Johnson. Created by Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert, the negro prizefighter joined Sgt Rock’s Easy Company in late 1961 (Our Army at War #113), but it was years before he was a regularly-seen character…

By the way, so unlikely a character was ol’ Gabe in 1963 that he was – without even consulting editor Stan Lee – helpfully re-coloured Caucasian at the printers who didn’t realise his ethnicity but just knew that he just couldn’t be non-white. Jones was eventually followed by actual black superheroes Black Panther in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966), and the Falcon in Captain America #117 (September 1969). America’s first hero or colour to helm his own title had come and gone (largely unnoticed) in a little remembered or regarded title from Dell Comics. Debuting December 1965 and created by artist Tony Tallarico & scripter D.J. Arneson, Lobo was a wild west gunslinger battling injustice just like any cowboy would.

Arguably the greater breakthrough was Joe Robertson, City Editor of the Daily Bugle: an erudite, brave, proudly ordinary mortal distinguished by his sterling character, not costume or skin tone. He debuted in Amazing Spider-Man # 51 (August 1967), proving in every panel thereafter that the world wouldn’t end if black folk and white folk shared the same spaces…

This big change slowly grew out of raised public awareness during a terrible time in US history: even worse than today’s festering social wounds and agonisingly commonplace occurrences of cops claiming to misjudge immediate life-or-death situations, perilous racial pressures and a seemingly constant, officially policy of Black Lives Not Mattering. These tragedies occur unpardonably often the UK too, so we’ve nothing to be smug about…

Britain has suffered race riots since the Sixties, leaving simmering scars that only comedians and openly racist politicians dare to talk about. Things today don’t seem all that different, except the bile and growing taste for violence is turned towards European accents, or health workers as well as brown skins, and now includes non-white sectarian aggravation too…

As the 1960s became a newer, darker decade, more positive and inclusive incidences of ethnic characters appeared in the USA, with DC finally getting an African-America hero in John Stewart (Green Lantern #87 December 1971/January 1972) – although his designation as a replacement Green Lantern might be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary.

The first DC hero with his own title was Black Lightning. He didn’t debut until April 1977, although Jack Kirby had introduced Vykin in Forever People #1, the Black Racer in New Gods #3 (March and July 1971) and Shilo Norman as Scott Free’s apprentice (and eventual successor) in Mister Miracle #15 (August 1973). A month later there was Dr. Jericho Drumm: Brother Voodoo…

It was a turbulent time culturally, but it was also a life-or-death moment for comics. The American industry was in turmoil if not meltdown, much like the youth of the nation they courted. With costs of production skyrocketing, every title had to be a success and no one seemed clear on what audiences wanted…

Superheroes had dominated for most of the 1960s: peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Traditional genres like horror, westerns, romance and science fiction returned, fed by radical trends in movie-making where another wrinkle had emerged: films by and for African American audiences. Most called them “Blacksploitation” films…

Marvel was already a pioneer in diversity. As well as a plethora of white Christian males there were pagan gods, female characters (a few but not for long), extraterrestrials, native Americans, Atlanteans and monsters spearheading their own features. Why not another black lead with roots in multiple of genres at once?

Contemporary Blaxsploitation cinema and novels had fired up commercial interests throughout America, and in that miasma of outlandish dialogue, daft outfits and barely concealed – if justified – outrage, an angry black man with a shady past and questionable morals must have felt like a sure-fire hit to Marvel’s bosses. Luke Cage, Hero for Hire launched in the summer of 1972. A year later, Black Panther finally got his own series in Jungle Action #5 and Blade: Vampire Hunter debuted in Tomb of Dracula #10 (July 1973. Surely there was room for more?

Astonishingly soon after, with the Comics Code prohibition against horror hastily rewritten (amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics), scary comics returned in force and a fresh crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began appearing on newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving Fights ‘n’ Tights titles.

In fact, the lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an avalanche of horror titles in response to the industry-wide downturn in superhero sales, that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to – albeit temporarily – bite the dust.

Almost overnight nasty monsters – both new and reprinted from the1950s (and narcotics; but that’s another story) became acceptable fare on four-colour pages. Whilst a parade of pre-code reprints made sound business sense, the creative aspect of the contemporary fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons, before risking whole new concepts on an untested public. Oddly the last Code-embargoed genre – Crime comics – never figured in this particular populist revival…

As always in entertainment, the watch-world was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible. When proto-horror Morbius debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover-dated October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of shocking superstars.

They began with a traditional werewolf and a vampire before chancing something new: a haunted biker who tapped into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the prevailing supernatural zeitgeist. Recycling an old western’s title, the all-new Ghost Rider debuted in Marvel Spotlight #5, August 1972. He had been preceded by western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the aforementioned Werewolf by Night in #2-4. From these beginnings spooky floodgates opened to such an extent there was even room for non-white stars like The Living Mummy and our star turn today…

This quirky compendium collects Brother Voodoo’s earliest exploits from a time when he was equal parts tragic outsider and in-joke laughing stock and long before he was reclaimed as a major hero and rebooted as Doctor Voodoo. These adventures from Strange Tales #169-173, Tales of the Zombie #6 &10, Marvel Team-Up #24, Werewolf by Night #38-41, Marvel Two-in-One #41, Doctor Strange #48, Moon Knight #21, Marvel Super-Heroes #1 and Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #16, 17, 20 also include extracts from Tomb of Dracula #34-37: epically spanning cover-dates September 1973 to August 1990. The mystic materials are preceded by an informative Introduction from Ron Wilson on how the series came to be and his editorial origins…

Built from an idea by then Editor-in-Chief  Roy Thomas, with defining input from Stan Lee, John Romita and eventual assigned creators Len Wein & Gene Colan, the end result was a complex and convoluted affair spread out over a number of issues. It’s also fair to say that there’s a lot of dialogue and some notions that haven’t fared well as we’ve become a more inclusive society. If you can’t temper your modern sensibilities in the face of well-meaning but dated attitudes, it might be best to look elsewhere for evidence of role models for young black readers…

Brother Voodoo was a series that took its time to tell a tale, and we need to remember that the idea was to create a hero who could have lots of adventures for as long as possible: a new Doctor Strange or Spider-Man or Daredevil, created at a moment when society and the comic industry were in utter turmoil. Lots of good ideas debuted and died unfulfilled, only to blossom again in years to come…

With their hero ready to launch, Marvel capitalised on the times as much as possible. The company had launched a wave of new titles (many of them cost-effective reprint anthologies) and restored defunct titles to crowd rival publishers off newsstands. Cover dated May 1968, Strange Tales #168 was officially the last issue of a prestigious horror book that had run from the 1951 before becoming a vehicle for The Human Torch, Doctor Strange and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the 1960s. When Marvel the top-selling brand in 1968, its numbering had carried on for Doctor Strange’s first solo title.

Cover dated September 1973, the book was revived after a 5-year hiatus as a try-out title, kicking off with Brother Voodoo who occupied #169-174, after which The Golem, classic horror reprints and Jim Starlin’s landmark reinterpretation of Adam Warlock took the magazine to its ultimate oblivion in 1975.

Enough background now: let’s get down among the dead men…

The drama commences in the eponymous ‘Brother Voodoo!’ (Wein, Gene Colan & Dan Adkins), as a UN special investigator lands in Haiti and is saved from murderous ambush by an oddly-garbed man with incredible powers, emerging from clouds of smoke amidst thunderous frenetic drum beats. Accompanied by elderly aide Bambu, the stranger escorts Dr Maitland to safety even as his mind flashes back to how it all began…

Years ago, Jericho Drumm abandoned his brother Daniel and family heritage as voodoo priests for the rationalism, wealth and acclaim of the USA. Almost 20 years later, celebrated psychologist Dr. Drumm returned to Haiti to witness his brother’s murder by magic. Daniel had taken his brother’s destined place as houngan (voodoo priest) of his people but was dying from a curse laid by evil loa (spirit)/serpent god Damballah…

Utterly disbelieving, Jericho was helpless to prevent his brother’s death and his own subsequent humiliation by Damballah, and after swallowing his civilised pride sought out Daniel’s teacher Papa Jambo to accept his fate, learn the lore and accept the onerous responsibilities of protecting the world from evil magic. Now splitting his time between his Caribbean homeland and his practice in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Dr. Jericho Drumm ministers to the world’s unknown ailments and hidden horrors…

The origin flashback extended to the next issue with a ‘Baptism of Fire!’ tracing Jericho’s accelerated course of study and triumphant battle against the loa lord. Amongst his many new gifts, the power that tipped the balance was his eerie ability to channel his dead brother’s power and soul: a chilling tactic possible because Daniel now lived within him…

We return to the present with ST #171 and learn why the UN is under attack in Haiti when ‘March of the Dead!’ (with Frank Giacoia inking Colan’s gloriously beautiful, increasingly scary pencils) sees Drumm attacked by the walking dead.

Thanks to the Comics Code, at this time the literal word “zombie” was banned in newsstand publications, compelling writers and editors to take torturous steps to do their job. Marvel’s monochrome magazines used the term with impunity and without sanction, but for the mainstream colour titles, Wein had to coin a new appellation, which is why Brother Voodoo here clashes with “zuvembies” in a graveyard. You couldn’t make it up, could you?

These specific “soulless ones” prowl at the command of sinister Baron Samedi, sabotaging much-needed industry providing jobs for the impoverished nation. The tale catapults BV into the heart of Marvel continuity as the true perpetrators are exposed as far-from-supernatural assailants and one of the MU’s greatest threats to life and liberty…

Dick Giordano inked #172 and 173 as the hero returns to Louisiana. Seeking to assist a woman targeted by mystic malevolence, in ‘Fiend in the Fog!’, police chief’s daughter Loralee Tate is singled out by voodoo villain and cult leader Black Talon and Drumm is inexorably drawn into a massive conspiracy demanding a ‘Sacrifice Play!’ and the initially unwelcome aid of local legend Mama Limbo. The spooky thrills culminate in a do-or-die battle with the Talon’s tribe and Brother Voodoo’s defeat and capture, resulting in a painful cliffhanger since the series ceased here with April 1974 episode…

Mere months later, the already drawn conclusion resurfaced in one of those aforementioned mature Marvel magazines. The Black Talon tale concluded in July’s Tales of the Zombie #6, with Doug Moench scripting Wein’s plot and Frank Chiaramonte inking Colan – who always worked best in monochrome. ‘End of a Legend!’ exposes devious duplicity and reaps a rich harvest of destruction when Drumm breaks loose and unleashes all his power…

He then appeared in New York, joining Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up #24 (August 1974) in a Wein yarn illustrated by Jim Mooney & Sal Trapani: a decidedly offbeat hero haunting the Big Apple to quash a Manhattan murder cult in ‘Moondog is Another Name for Murder’

Almost one year later, Brother Voodoo returned as Tales of the Zombie #10 delivered ‘The Resurrection of Papa Jambo!’ (March 1975, by Moench & Tony DeZuñiga) wherein Jericho Drumm’s long-departed tutor is forcibly revived by malign Dramabu, the Death-Lord. As the revered savant stalks the shanty towns of Haiti, claiming sacrificial fodder for his power-hungry new master, the harassed hero and Bambu return to their roots and make some hard decisions to save their people…

Following that yarn, Brother Voodoo joined Marvel’s own ranks of the living dead: reduced to occasional cameos and guests shots in other series. Represented here in excerpts from The Tomb of Dracula #34-37 (July to October 1975 as crafted by Marv Wolfman, Colan & Tom Palmer), the houngan visits the Brazilian Amazon, rescuing vampire hunter Frank Drake from an army of zuvembies unleashed by the Transylvanian terror. Times and tastes were changing, with superheroes again ascendent, and the horror fad fading. Soon, only The Tomb of Dracula would remain…

Lovingly realised by Moench & Don Perlin, former furry hit Werewolf by Night had ridden the storm longer than most: deftly adapting to new trends and ideas by allowing character and not plot dictate the course. An earlier arc depicting Haiti holding a cure for lycanthrope Raymond Coker was revisited and an extract here from WBN#38 (May 1976) sets up an epic intervention and unfolding wonder as Coker now requests the aid of Brother Voodoo…

Cover-dated July, Werewolf by Night #39 reveals ‘Some Are Born to the Night’ as – after being visited by a trinity of infinite beings who threaten to alter his existence forever – wild werewolf Jack Russell is hurled into a life-changing crisis. The celestial visitants are also in touch with Coker as he squats in a hut in far off Haiti, and even appear to Russell’s sister Lissa and girlfriend Topaz.

The “Three Who Are All” are manoeuvring players into a game of cosmic consequences and when Jack gets home, he finds Coker and Drumm waiting. No sooner are introductions made than another army of zuvembies attack and Russell learns that ‘Some are Born to the Night!’

Portentous proclamations of unfulfilled destinies propel the adventurers and Topaz back to Haiti where they are abducted and taken to an infernal pit nurturing a shocking travesty of life with resurrected wizard/old enemy Dr. Glitternight in charge of ‘Souls in Darkness’…

Revealed in WBN #41 as an ex-member of the gestalt once called “Five Who Are All”, the villain’s obsessive monster-making is explained before his attempts to dominate reality are spectacularly thwarted through the return of a missing fourth being and the indomitable resistance of Jack and Brother Voodoo in ‘…And Death Shall Be the Change’…

Key to their eventual triumph is the moment when Russell discovers how to transform into a werewolf fully in control of his mental faculties day or night. Returning to America, the Werewolf-by-Choice naturally became a superhero and moved to New York, but for Jericho Drumm it was time to fade into the shadows once more…

Marvel Two-in-One #41 (July 1978) sees David Anthony Kraft, Ron Wilson & Pablo Marcos close an open case where The Black Panther had vanished whilst fighting a “zombie-vampire” stalking New York’s streets and abducting prominent African Americans. Here, concluding chapter ‘Voodoo and Valor!’ sees Drumm volunteer his specialised services to Ben “The Thing” Grimm to save T’Challa, and end the crisis. The trail takes them to Uganda for a confrontation with Doctor Spectrum and far deadlier crazed killer Idi Amin…

Jumping to August 1981 and Doctor Strange #48, Roger Stern, Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin reveal how the voodoo vigilante and his passenger Daniel are possessed by minor god Damballah and require ‘The Power of Dr. Strange’ to restore them to sanity and safety, after which Moon Knight #21 (July 1982) is paid a visit by ‘The Master of Night Earth!’

Crafted by Moench, Vicente Alcazar, John Tartaglione & Bob Camp. This dark delight sees the Fist of Khonshu join Brother Voodoo in Haitian port city Mirebalais. Battling gunrunners before colliding with a thug possessed by Daniel Drumm, the lunar avenger is soon helping head off a revolution: one fought by zuvembies on zombie alligators fighting for a greedy politician with voodoo training…

May 1990 brought giant anthology Marvel Super-Heroes (Spring Special) #1 and buried deep inside Scott Lobdell, Fred Hembeck & Dell Barras detailed short done-in-one saga ‘Don’t Do that Voodoo You Do So Well’ with Drumm saving hurricane victims and unexpectedly encountering again a lost love from his youth…

Contemporaneously, Drumm scored a short back-up series in Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme (April-August 1990) seen here as ‘The Book of the Vishanti: The Mark of the Vodû! Part I-III’ as featured in issues #16-17 and 20. A way of reinventing the hero whilst revisiting and revising his origins, the serial by Roy Thomas, Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier and illustrator Geoff Isherwood, Mickey Ritter reprised the Brother’s career and legacy, whilst laying out how the history and practise of voodoo slotted into Marvel’s cosmology. and continuity.

With covers by Romita, Gil Kane, Giordano, Giacoia, Rich Buckler, Ernie Chan, Earl Norem, Palmer, Keith Pollard, Bill Sienkiewicz & Jim Lee, pages of original art by Colan, Kane and a host of forementioned inkers, this tome also offers contemporary house ads, info pages on Brother Voodoo and Black Talon from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and the 2008 cover of Essential Marvel Horror volume 2. These are supplemented by full creator biographies, ‘Introducing Brother Voodoo!’ – a heavily illustrated feature by Tony Isabella from Tales of the Zombie #2 in anticipation of his imminent debut in Strange Tales #169 and ‘Brother Voodoo Lives Again’ from TotZ #5 discussing his move out of colour comics.

Definitely not everybody’s role model or anyone’s “Great White Hope”, Brother Voodoo remains a noble experiment and intriguing concept that still offers great enjoyment and astounding art for those who like their fun challenging and off centre.

Don’t let silly prejudice make you miss out on something special…
© 2021 MARVEL.

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The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage


By Jeff Lemire, Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Chris Sotomayor, Willie Schubert & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0558-3 (HB/Digital edition)

One of DC’s best 1980s comics series was – for the longest time – out of print and unavailable digitally. It more or less still is, except for a prohibitively expensive Omnibus edition, and if you have strong arms and a big budget you should really track those stories down, whilst the rest of us wait for more reasonable trade paperbacks and eBook editions…

As devised and delivered by Steve Ditko in the 1960s – as he sank ever more deeply into the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand – The Question was Vic Sage: a driven, implacable, justice-obsessed journalist seeking out crime and corruption uncaring of the consequences.

The Charlton “Action-Line Hero” was acquired by DC when the Connecticut outfit folded and was the template for compulsive vigilante Rorschach when Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons first drafted the miniseries that would become the groundbreaking Watchmen.

The contemporary rumour-mill had it that since the creators couldn’t be persuaded to produce a spin-off Rorschach comic, DC went with a reworking of the Ditko original…

As revised by writer Denny O’Neil and illustrators Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar, Vic Sage was an ordinary man pushed to the edge by his obsessions, using his fists and a mask that made him look utterly faceless to get answers (and justice) whenever standard journalistic methods failed. After a few minor appearances around the DC universe, Sage got a job in the town where he grew up and resumed his campaign for answers…

Always more cult hero than classic crusader, The Question revival carved a unique niche for itself as “comics grew up” post Crisis on Infinite Earths and Watchmen. The character was periodically radically rebooted and reimagined, but here scripter Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, The Underwater Welder, Trillium, Black Hammer, Descender, Ascender, Gideon Falls, Essex County) returns to O’Neil’s canon to tell a revelatory tale of reincarnation, zen mystery and undying evil. The project was part of DC’s latest high end mature reader imprint Black Label: released as four single issues before becoming a spiffy hardback with a digital equivalent…

Hub City is a hell-hole, the most corrupt and morally bankrupt municipality in America. Mayor Wesley Fermin is a slick, degenerate crook, but real power resides in his Special Counsel Holden Malick, political cronies, a hand-picked gang of “heavies” and the largely corrupt and racist police force…

Originally, Sage was supported by college lecturer Aristotle “Tot” Rodor: the philosopher-scientist who created his faceless mask and other gimmicks as well as being a sounding board for theories and plans and ethical bellwether. He remains so here but is also increasingly challenging his former pupil’s motives and methods…

After being killed by Fermin’s forces The Question was revived and retrained by O’Neil’s other legendary martial arts creation, Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter . A year passed and a reenergised, faceless avenger began cleaning up Hub City…

The saga opens with the city rushing into chaos and the Question busting a brothel trafficking children to city officials. Later, when reporting the raid on his TV show, Sage ambushes former lover Myra Fermin (the mayor’s sister and oblivious City Alderman) with the fact that the Councilman he left for the cops has mysteriously been erased from all official reports. Shocked and outraged, Fermin continues deluding herself about her brother and the administration, but the damage has been done and she starts looking where she shouldn’t…

When Malick arrives to clean up the mess, Sage notices a ring the politico wears: something old and somehow deeply disturbing…

Tot is no help, but the ring sticks in Sage’s mind and eventually he uncovers a historical organisation called the Hub City Elder Society that all wore such symbols and draws some telling conclusions to today’s political elite…

Hot on the trail he moves, unaware that events are converging into a dark miracle. At the exact moment The Question uncovers an ancient den of occult ceremony, an innocent black man is gunned down by a racist cop and Myra Fermin bursts in on her beloved brother committing savage atrocities on a bound captive. The concatenation of blood climaxes as The Question finds an old faceless mask with a bullet hole through the forehead in a cavern under the city. It’s not one of his, but he is assaulted by a wave of memories and images of supernal evil when he holds it…

Barely conscious, he retreats from the underground lair into streets awash with blood as a protest march becomes a race riot. Urged by Tot to go on TV to calm the tide, all Sage can think of is finding Dragon and getting some metaphysical first aid…

What he gets is doped, as the hermit applies zen hoodoo and drugged tea, despatching the unwilling rationalist sceptic on a vision quest into the past…

Sage awakens in the wilderness that will one day be his home town, bare-footed and wearing a faceless mask…

In Hub City 1886, Viktor Szasz is a blacksmith desperately seeking to escape the vile acts he committed as a soldier fighting the Comanche, in a frontier outpost well on its way to becoming truly civilised. Silent and solitary Viktor intervenes when negro settler Irving Booker and his family are repeatedly harassed and ultimately murdered by the local priest and his devout flock. Szasz reverts to his gun-toting ways to save or avenge them but is outmatched until rescued by a red-headed Indian woman. She shares some secrets about true evil, most notably that a mystical “Man with a Thousand Faces” can only be killed by someone named “Charlie”.

Delirious and experiencing hallucinations of himself in different times, agnostic Szasz still refuses to believe in devils, which is probably why the thing in pit under the town gets the drop on him…

In 1941, Hub City private eye Charlie Sage groggily looks at his notebook, where someone has written “Man with no face” and “man with a thousand faces???”. Blaming too much booze, he cleans himself up whilst glimpsing flashes of unknown dead people and adds “red-haired woman” to the page for no reason he can think of…

When red-haired walk-in client Maggie Fuller hires him to investigate her brother Jacob’s disappearance, he has no idea it will be his last case. They are both union organisers and prime targets for the bosses and the city officials they own, and before long the shamus has annoyed all the wrong people, ending up attacked by thugs wearing fancy rings…

Even his one pal on the Police Force – veteran patrolman “Tot” – can’t help him. But does reluctantly pass him a file full of juicy potential prospects for Fuller’s absence. Still enduring staggering western visions and brutal flashforwards, Charlie becomes lost in civil violence in three eras, and succumbs to another ring-wearer ambush.

The PI awakes in a subterranean chapel in the middle of some kind of crazy black mass, meets a devil and is never seen again…

Awaking from his vision-quest, present-day Sage leaves Dragon, set on sorting his city’s real world distress: braving riot and savage, premeditated retaliation by the administration and cops hungry to put the rabble back in their place. Unable to stop the carnage with his fists, The Question instead uses mass media to deliver a stunning counterstroke, turning the tables and critically destabilising Firmin and Malick.

He also has Tot build a permanent solution to the thing in the pit under Hub City, but has gravely underestimated the horror and indeed his own childhood connection to it…

Even after overcoming the odds, the illusion of victory is tenuous and insubstantial, leaving The Question still looking for answers in all the wrong places…

This book also offers covers and a gallery of variants by Cowan, Sienkiewicz & Sotomayor, Lemire & Marcelo Maiolo; Eduardo Risso; Howard Chaykin & Gustavo Yen, Andrea Sorrentino plus Cowan & Sienkiewicz’s sketchbook section ‘Questionable Practises’ with roughs, finished pencils pages and covers, portraits, finished pre-colour inks, unused cover art and creator bios.

Combating Western dystopia with Eastern Thought and martial arts action is not a new concept, but here the problems of a society so utterly debased that the apocalypse seems like an improvement are also lensed though a core of absolutism. Is man good? Is there such a thing as True Evil? What can one man do?

Who’s asking..?

Although the creators keep the tale focused on dysfunction – social, societal, civil, political, emotional, familial and even methodological – the core motivation for today’s readers has shifted, with the horror show that is and always has been Hub City now arguably attributed to an eternal supernatural presence. Regulation masked avenger tactics don’t work in such a world, and some solutions require better Questions…
© 2019, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Morbius Epic Collection volume 1: The Living Vampire 1971-1975


By Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, Don McGregor, Gerry Conway, Mike Friedrich, Doug Moench, Gil Kane, Pablo Marcos, Ross Andru, Paul Gulacy, P. Craig Russell, Tom Sutton, Rich Buckler, Luiz Dominguez, Virgil Redondo, Mike Vosburg, Frank Robbins & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2835-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

One of the most crucial aspects defining classical horror archetypes and characters is tragedy in equal amount to fear and violence. Frankenstein’s monster and werewolves are more victims than villains and even true predators like Dracula wed desire to necessity to underpin their dark depredations. This factor was the prime driver of Marvel’s many misunderstood monster stars in the early 1970s, and none more so than doomed researcher Michael Morbius who surrendered his humanity in service of physical survival and paid the price in shame, regret and guilt every time his thirst resurged….

This century’s transition of Marvel’s print canon to every size of screen seems unstoppable and with their pioneering horror hero/villain now a film presence, the company released a wave of collections to support the release. The most comprehensive and contextually crucial are the Epic Collections revisiting his life in more or less chronological order.

This initial titanic tome re-presenting Amazing Spider-Man #101-102; Marvel Team-Up #3-4; Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1; (Adventure into) Fear #20-26; Giant-Size Werewolf by Night #4, and pertinent material from Vampire Tales #1-8, cumulatively comprising cover-dates October 1971 to April 1975. It traces the science-spawned nosferatu through debut, guest villain shots and ultimately to his time in the spotlight as a confirmed horror hero…

It all begins with The Amazing Spider-Man #101: the second chapter in an anniversary trilogy tale begun by Stan Lee, Gil Kane & Frank Giacoia which saw the wallcrawler accidentally mutate himself and gain four extra arms…

Roy Thomas takes over with ‘A Monster Called… Morbius!’ as our 8-limbed arachnid oddity desperately seeks a way to reverse his condition. Whilst hiding out in Dr. Curt Connors’ Long Island home/lab, Peter Parker stumbles across a costumed horror who drinks human blood. The newcomer has just reached shore fleeing from a ship that he left a charnel house. Making matters even worse is Connors’ sudden arrival in scaly savage form of The Lizard. Suddenly surprised and always enraged, the saurian attacks, set on killing all intruders…

Amongst the many things banned by the Comics Code Authority in 1954 were horror staples zombies, werewolves and vampires, but changing tastes and spiralling costs of the era were seeing superhero titles dropping like flies in a blizzard.

With interest in suspense and the supernatural growing globally , all publishers pushed for a return to scary comics, and the covert introduction of a “Living Vampire” in superhero staple Spider-Man led to another challenge to the CCA, the eventually revision of the Code’s horror section and a resurgent rise of supernatural heroes and titles.

For one month Marvel also experimented with double-sized comic books (DC’s switch to 52-page issues lasted almost a year: August 1971 to June 1972 cover-dates). Thus, Amazing Spider-Man #102 featured a bombastic 3-chapter blockbuster brawl beginning with ‘Vampire at Large!’ wherein the octo-webspinner and anthropoid reptile joined forces to hunt a science-spawned bloodsucker after discovering a factor in the bitey brute’s saliva could cure both part-time monsters’ respective conditions.

‘The Way it Began’ abruptly diverges from the main narrative to present the tragic tale of Nobel Prize winning biologist Michael Morbius and how be turned himself into a haunted night-horror in hopes of curing his fatal blood disease, before ‘The Curse and the Cure!’ brought a blistering conclusion: restoring the status quo and requisite appendage-count…

Gerry Conway assumed the writer’s role for the third appearance of the living (not dead; never ever undead but “Living”, okay?), breathing humanoid predator who drank blood to live, in Marvel Team-Up #3 (July 1972). Illustrated by Ross Andru & Giacoia) it saw Spidey and Human Torch Johnny Storm hunting a resurgent Morbius after he attacks student Jefferson Bolt and somehow passes on his plague of thirst.

The conflicted scientist still seeks a cure and tracks old colleague Hans Jorgenson to Parker’s college, but his now-vampiric servant Bolt wants just what all true bloodsuckers want in ‘The Power to Purge!’…

The horror was still acting the villain in MTU #4, as the Torch was replaced by most of Marvel’s sole mutant team (The Beast having gone all hairy – and solo – in another science-based workaround to publish comic book monsters who were anything but supernatural) in ‘And Then… the X-Men!’

This enthralling thriller was magnificently illustrated by Kane at the top of his game and inked by Steve Mitchell, with the webslinger and X-Men at odds while both hunting the missing Jorgenson. After the unavoidable butting of heads, the heroes united to overcome Morbius and left him for Professor Charles Xavier to contain or cure…

Sadly, as we already know, his Nobel Prize-winning research only led to the death of his greatest friend and colleague, the abandonment of his true love and an unlife sentence as a rampaging killer…

Like Hawkeye, The Punisher, Wolverine and many others, Morbius followed the classic Marvel character arc and tradition of villain-turned-hero, but he fits far more in the mould of Doctor Doom, Magneto, The Hulk and Namor the Sub-Mariner: a driven protagonist whose needs and agendas generally set him apart from and in conflict with society and civilisation. Despite his every wish and effort, Morbius is repeatedly forced to feed on humanity: a victim of his own mutated body.

As the superhero decline continued and horror bloomed, Morbius found refuge in Marvel’s black-&-white magazines. Designated mature material, these titles skated around Comics Code rules, offering adult scenes and themes and an early home for numerous horror stars, barbarians like Conan and Kull, as well as more sophisticated superhero fare for The Punisher, Mockingbird, Moon Knight and others.

Vampire Tales #1 launched in August 1973 with ‘Morbius’ as lead feature. Following the painted cover by Esteban Maroto, contents page and vintage vamp movie still, a moody monochrome shocker by Steve Gerber & Pablo Marcos details the bloodsucker’s relocation to Los Angeles and immersion in its wild night life scene as he searches for former lover Martine… Instead he became entangled with sinister swinger Carolyn: a satanic cultist looking for recruits …and victims…

Lured to a séance with spiritualist Madame Laera, Morbius is intended to feed a demon but instead turns the tables on his attackers…

The bloody predator was a constant presence there, but in this instance story-sense overrules chronology and that first outing is followed by a return to four-colour publishing with a classic monster team-up from Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1 (June 1974).

With the monster boom in full swing, Marvel during this period flooded newsstands with horror antiheroes. Morbius had already launched in his own newsstand, code-sanctioned series but is here cannily paired with another of  the Amazing Spider-Mans’s eeriest enemies in a double-length epic as ‘Man-Wolf at Midnight!’ (Conway, Kane & Mike Esposito) finds John Jameson again gripped by murderous moon-madness. Now, however, the tormented former astronaut was controlled by the Living Vampire and used to help the bloodsucker secure a possible cure for his appalling condition ‘When Strikes the Vampire!’

The saga then shifts to (Adventure into) Fear #20 (cover-dated February 1973). The title had previously hosted the macabre Man-Thing, and his/its promotion to a solo title gave Morbius opportunity to spread his own (glider) wings. Spawned by scripter Mike Friedrich and artists Paul Gulacy, Jack Abel & George Roussos, ‘Morbius the Living Vampire!’ revealed how the bloodsucker escaped X-Men captivity before moving to Los Angeles to live (whenever possible) off victims who deserved his voracious bite.

The initial tale also set up a bizarre relationship with Rabbi Krause and Reverend Daemond who sought to cure him, before one was exposed as a human devil, catapulting Morbius into intergalactic conflict that had shaped humanity over millennia.

That began in Fear #21 as ‘Project: Second Genesis!’ – by Gerber, Kane & Vince Colletta – sees Morbius ordered to consume a most remarkable little girl by Daemond. Despite his best intentions and all his moral compunctions, the vampire succumbs to temptation and attacks the child Tara only to face her super-powered future-self.

He is then reluctantly recruited by a cult of alien technologists who claim to have shepherded homo sapiens from barbarism to civilisation. These “Caretakers” are trying to create a race of supermen but are losing a secret war with Daemon.

By the time Morbius returns to the reverend’s fold however, the mage and his acolyte – Martine – have summoned cat demon Balkatar to destroy the Living Vampire…

Illustrated by Rich Buckler & Luis Dominguez ‘…This Vampire Must Die!’ finds Morbius easily overwhelmed before the victorious demon abruptly defies Daemond, bringing his foe to another realm – The Land Within – to become a very grim saviour. His kind breed but do not die and their king wants Morbius to cull the overcrowded herd by acting as an invited apex predator…

A little fan side note: this storyline fed into Gerber’s later arcs in The Defenders and Guardians of the Galaxy so continuity completists should pay close attention…

Instead the appalled vampire escapes and discovers he is on another planet, standing ‘Alone Against Arcturus!’ (Fear #23, by Gerber, P. Craig Russell & Colletta). The world has been devastated by genetic conflagration and is now populated by automatons, cyborgs and mutants who were once the same race as the Caretakers. They long only for death…

Realising the same unresolved conflict is currently unfolding on Earth, Morbius employs alien technology and volunteer “meals” to ‘Return to Terror!’ and his birthworld in #24 (October 1974, and inked by Jack Abel). Tragically the ship crash lands in front of Blade the Vampire Slayer…

Morbius has still not met an actual vampire and thinks he’s fighting a crazy man whilst Blade believes he’s facing a blood sucker from space and the brutal clash ends inconclusively. In the aftermath Morbius treks back to LA to find the war between Daemond and the Caretakers has intensified…

We now travel back to October 1973 for a run of Vampire Tales appearances starting with #2 and ‘The Blood Sacrifice of Amanda Saint!’ with Don McGregor, Buckler & Marcos revealing how a potential snack becomes an unlikely and enduring ally after devil cult Demon-Fire targets her.

Forced into the role of rescuer and defender, Morbius endures mystery, monsters, the torture of a toxic family and his own taste of American Gothic as he unceasingly defends Amanda whilst tearing apart a mystic secret society entwined around a culture in decline and modern American mythology.

The fightback begins with ‘Demon Fire!’ (#3 February 1974 and inked by Klaus Janson), moves mercilessly on to Malevolence, Maine and the ‘Lighthouse of the Possessed’ (April 1974, illustrated by Tom Sutton) to repel more monstrosities and turn back a ‘Blood Tide!’ (#5 June, Buckler & Ernie Chua/Chan)…

Morbius took a break in #6 – represented here by the cover and ‘Frontispiece’ – before we resume in Malevolence, Maine with #7, asking ‘Where is Gallows Bend and What the Hell Am I Doing There?’ before events shamble to a chilling conclusion in #8 (December 1974, limned by Mike Vosburg & Frank Chiaramonte) at ‘High Midnight’ presenting a final clash with hidden manipulators Apocalypse and Death-Flame and a return to less complex exploits in the colour comics…

The monochrome madness was supported  throughout by painted covers from JAD, Boris, & Maroto and was all augmented by essays, photo-features and material from the magazines.

Also cover-dated December 1974, Fear #25 sported a Gerber plot and Doug Moench script  for Frank Robbins & Frank Giacoia to illustrate. After briskly recapitulating the Caretakers of Arcturus storyline ‘And What of a Vampire’s Blood?’ rapidly brings events to a conclusion as Morbius’ presence triggers a premature final battle between the ancient schemers, Daemond, Martine, Tara,  and the freshly-hatched Children of the Comet, resulting in ‘A Stillborn Genesis!’ (Moench, Robbins & Giacoia in #26, February 1975) and an abrupt change of direction…

That’s for the next volume however, whilst here we enjoy a crossover clash from April 1975’s Giant-Size Werewolf by Night #4 which brings the story portion of this pulse-pounding package to a close with a long-delayed and anticipated clash with fellow hostage to macabre fortune Jack Russell.

Cursed with uncontrolled lycanthropy under a full moon, and also a California kid, he endured ‘A Meeting of Blood’ (by Moench & Virgil Redondo) after the mutated biologist tracks Martine following Daemond’s destruction and discovers a possible cure for his own exsanguinary condition.

Unfortunately, the chase brings him into savage and inconclusive combat with a certain hairy hellion and the solution is forever lost…

This initial outing comes with a wealth of extras beginning with 9 house ads from 1973-1974; editorial page ‘Mail it to Morbius’ from Fear #21; un-inked original art pages by Kane; full art originals by Gulacy & Abel, Russell, Colletta & Abel; cover art by Kane, Giacoia, John Romita Sr., and Ron Wilson.

The compendium concludes with cover reproductions of Marvel Treasury Edition #14 (1977: front by Kane & Giacoia, back by Romita Sr., plus contents page by Dave Cockrum); #18 (1978: front & back by Bob Budiansky & Chan); cover galleries of Marvel Tales – #234 (Todd McFarlane), #252 (Marshal Rogers) and 253 (Moebius & Sylvain) – Spider-Man Megazine #3-4 (Ron Frenz/Stuart Immonen), Spider-Man Strange Adventures (Steve Lightle) and Marvel Selects: Spider-Man #2-3 4 (Mike Wieringo).

Compelling, complex, dark, often daft and always fretfully poised on the tightrope between superhero shenanigans and antihero angst, Morbius is one of Marvel’s most fluid and versatile characters, and can honestly promise something to please every type of fan or casual reader. Moreover, there’s even better to come that won’t work unless you take a big bite out of this tempting tome.
© 2021 MARVEL.

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Almost Silent


By Jason, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-606-99315-6 (HB/Digital edition)

John Arne Saeterrøy, who works under the pen-name Jason, was born in Molde, Norway in 1965, and appeared on the international cartoonists’ scene at age 30 with his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) which won that year’s Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize).

He followed with the series Mjau Mjau (winning another Sproing in 2001) and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels. Now an international star, he has won seven major awards from such disparate regions as France, Slovakia and the USA.

Here the fine folks at Fantagraphics collected four of his earliest graphic novels in a superb hardback companion to the 2009 classic [Low Moon] which provides more of Jason’s surreal and cinematic, darkly hilarious anthropomorphic ruminations on his favourite themes of relationships and loneliness, viewed as ever through a charmingly macabre cast of silent movie archetypes, cinematic monsters and sad sack chumps.

Told in pantomimic progressions rather than full stories – and often as classical chase scenes reminiscent of Britain’s The Benny Hill Show – the wonderment begins with breakthrough album ‘Meow, Baby’ wherein a mummy goes walkabout from his museum sarcophagus encountering bums and gamins, vampires, aliens, angels, devils, skeletons and cops – always so many cops – in hot pursuit…

This primarily monochrome collection is called Almost Silent because it mostly is. Moreover, what dialogue appears is never informative or instructive, merely window dressing. The artwork is displayed in formalised page layouts rendered in a minimalist evolution of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity unwinding like an unending, infinite zoetrope show. These early works are collections of gags and situations more experienced than read.

A second untitled tale follows the perceived social inadequacies of males hungry for love: a werewolf, caveman – complete with courting cudgel, a Martian, Frankenstein’s monster and even Elvis. All try and die in the modern dating whirl…

The next sequence introduces cannibal ghouls and a movie-buff Travis Bickle/Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe also starving for acceptance, and continues with the bleakly comedic ‘Return of the Mummy’ and a delightfully tongue in cheek pastiche of Tintin and Blake and Mortimer entitled ‘The Mummy’s Secret’, featuring the entire ghastly cast, before ending with a fascinating selection of 3-panel gag strips.

The next featured volume is ‘Tell Me Something’: a more ambitiously visual outing that acknowledges its antecedents and influences by using silent movie dialogue cards instead of word balloons. It follows a plucky heroine as she searches for affection in all the wrong places with her Harold Lloyd-like would-be beau. Also in attendance are the usual cast of filmic phenomenons…

‘You Can’t Get There from Here’ concentrates mainly on the 1930s movie Frankenstein cast: the monsters, their equally artificial wives, their lovelorn and covetous creators and even the Igors: misshapen, wizened assistants also all seeking that one special person – or thing. Here the art is supplanted by the startling and highly effective addition of bronze inks for a compelling duo-tone effect that sits oddly well with the beast’s bittersweet search for his stolen, bespoke bride.

We conclude with a rather riotous adventure romp. ‘The Living and the Dead’ details a perfect first date interrupted by the rising of the unquiet dead and end of civilisation in the rotting teeth of carnivorous zombies on their final march – possibly the funniest and most romantic yarn in the whole book.

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, using the beastly and unnatural to ask gentle questions about basic human needs in a wicked quest for answers. That you don’t ever notice the deep stuff because of the clever gags and safe, familiar “funny-animal” characters should indicate just how good a cartoonist he is.

His comic tales are strictly for adults but allow us all to look at the world through wide-open childish eyes. He is a taste instantly acquired and a creator any fan should move to the top of the “Must-Have” list, so consider this superb hardback your guaranteed entry into his fabulous fun world…
© 2009 Jason. All rights reserved.

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One Beautiful Spring Day


By Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-555-8 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-1-68396-588-6 (slipcased HB)

There have always been uniquely gifted, driven comics creators who defy categorisation… or even description. My picks for that elite pantheon of artisans includes Kirby, Ditko, Segar, Hergé, Herriman, Will Eisner, Osamu Tezuka, Robert Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Franquin, Frank Bellamy, Basil Wolverton, Mort Meskin, Kim Deitch, Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, Eric Bradbury, Frank Hampson, Tony Millionaire, Alex Niño, Neal Adams, Richard Corben, Wally Wood and a few others who all brought something utterly personal and universally influential to their work just beyond the reviewer’s skills (mine certainly) to elucidate, encapsulate or convey.

They are all perfect in their own way and so emphatically wonderful that no collection of praise or analysis can do them justice. You just have to read their stuff for yourself.

Arguably at the top of that distinguished heap of graphic glitterati sits Jim Woodring. It’s a position he has maintained for years and appears capable of holding for generations to come.

Woodring’s work has always been challenging, funny, spiritual, grotesque, philosophical, heartbreaking, beautiful and extremely scary. Moreover, even after reading and believing that sentence you will still be absolutely unprepared for what awaits the first time you encounter any of his books – and even more so if you’ve already seen everything he’s created.

Celebrated as a cartoonist, animator, fine artist, toy-maker and artistic Renaissance man, Woodring’s eccentric output has delighted far too small and select an audience since 1980 and his official mini-comics forays. Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Woodring suffered delusions and hallucinations as a child and regularly believed his parents wanted to kill him.

These traumas seemingly sensitized and attuned him to symbolism and pictorial expression as well as opening him to assorted philosophies and belief systems. The young lad managed his “apparitions” by drawing them as strips in the waking world where he had control of them. Overcoming problems with school, drugs and alcohol, Woodring was eventually diagnosed with autism and prosopagnosia, but by then he had a discovered the power of Art.

He turned his life around through his own determination and by the inspiration of comics masters like Kirby, Ernie Bushmiller, Gil Kane and Crumb, classical fantasists such as Pieter Brueghel, Hieronymus Bosch and particularly Salvador Dali, and the animations of the Fleischer Brothers, Tex Avery and Walt Disney.

Woodring found surcease from a lifetime of punishing dreams by pictorializing nightmares and through following Buddhism, Taoism and the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta. After working as a farm labourer, garbageman and TV cartoon animator – with occasional comics side jobs like colouring the Roy Thomas/Gil Kane adaptation of the Ring of the Nibelungs, illustrating 1997’s Smokey the Bear, Friend of the Forest, and scripting stints on Aliens and Star Wars – Woodring began fully sharing the messages from his subconscious. He had begun self-publishing his autobiographical, “autojournal” comics in 1980, and seven years later was picked up by Fantagraphics Comics and thereafter all of us…

Readers who avidly adored his groundbreaking, oneirically autobiographical magazine Jim and its notional spin-off series Frank (with graphic novel Weathercraft winning The Stranger 2010 Genius Award for Literature) were joined by fans of Tantalizing Stories, Seeing Things or more mainstream features like his Star Wars and Aliens tales for Dark Horse Comics but, always, there was the promise of greater surprises in his next story…

An accomplished storytelling technician these days, Woodring grows rather than constructs solidly surreal, abstractly authentic, wildly rational, primal cartoon universes, wherein his meticulous, clean-lined, sturdily ethereal, mannered blend of woodblock prints, R. Crumb landscapes, expressionist dreamscapes, religious art and monstrous phantasmagoria all live and play …and far too often, eat each other.

His stories follow a logical, progressional proto-narrative – often a surging, non-stop chase from one insane invention to the next – layered with multiple levels of meaning yet totally devoid of speech or words, boldly assuming the intense involvement of the reader will complete the creative circuit.

This compelling collection is available digitally but works best as the spiffy vellum-cased archival paperback or limited edition boxed hardback: each iteration a superbly recomposed compilation combining earlier segments of his constantly unfolding and refolding saga, now justifiably treated as a treasured artefact… and ideal gift…

Gathered – or maybe corralled – here are the previously-published contents of Congress of the Animals, Fran and Poochytown, all deftly rearranged and supplemented by a hundred pages of new and previously unseen material.

Set in the general environs of Woodring’s wickedly warped other place – “The Unifactor” – here is a wild, weird and welcome return to a land of constant change and intense self-examination, where all motives are suspect and all rewards should be regarded as a trap. And here cheerfully upbeat Frank goes for another exceptionally eventful walk in the sunshine…

Laminating this vertiginous vehicle with an even crueller patina is lovelorn tragedy and loss as Fran adds to the ongoing tribulations of dog-faced Frank: her own perilous perambulations of innocence lost displays pride, arrogance, casual self-deceit, smug self-absorption and inflated ego as big as her former beau’s and leads to a shattering downfall just as punishing.

Put bluntly, Fran was Frank’s wonderful girlfriend and through mishap, misunderstanding, anger and intolerance he lost her. Now, no matter what he does or wheresoever he wanders with his faithful sidekicks at his side, poor Frank just can’t make things right and perfect and good again. Through madcap chases, introspective exploration and the inevitable direly dreadful meetings and menacings in innumerable alternate dimensions, True Love takes a kicking …and all without a single word of dialogue or description.

Here, the drawn image is always king, even if the queen has gone forever – or is it just a day?

Many Woodring regulars return, as both Krazy Kat-like ingénues work things out on the run through a myriad of strange uncanny places. There are absolute mountains of bizarre, devilish household appliances, writhy clawing things, toothy tentacle things and the unspeakable Thingy-things inhabiting the distressingly logical traumic universe.

Jim Woodring’s work is not to everyone’s taste or sensibilities – otherwise why would I need to plug his work so earnestly? – and, as ever, these drawings have the perilous propensity to repeat like cucumber and make one jump long after the book has been put away, but he is an undisputed master of graphic narrative and affirmed innovator, always making new art to challenge us and himself. His is a dreamscape of affable terror and he is can make us love it and leave us hungry for more.

Are you feeling peckish yet…?
© 2022 Jim Woodring. This edition © 2022 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Mesmo Delivery


By Rafael Grampá, with Marcus Penna, translated by Júlio Mairena (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-457-6 (HB) 978-1-59582-465-3 (TPB)

In an industry and art form that has become so very dependent on vast interlocking storylines, an encyclopaedic knowledge of a million other yarns and the tacit consent to sign up for another million episodes before reaching any kind of narrative payoff, the occasional short, sharp, intensely stand-alone tale is as welcome and vital as a cold beer in the noon-day desert.

Just such a salutary singleton was Mesmo Delivery, first solo English-language release of singularly gifted writer/artist Rafael Grampá, who originally devised the macabre and gritty thriller in his native Brazil back in 2008.

Picked up and translated by Dark Horse two years later, this stark and spookily effective grindhouse/trucker movie amalgam delivers dark chills, gritty black humour and eerie, compulsive mystery in equal, intoxicating amounts… and it all starts, unfolds and ends right here. No muss, no fuss, no busload of tie-ins.

Aging, raddled Elvis impersonator Sangrecco is an extremely odd deliveryman, working for a rather unique haulage business. For a start, he can’t actually drive, which is why hulking, gentle, cash-starved ex-boxer Rufo has been temporarily hired by the boss to operate the truck on a run through some very bleak bad country.

Rufo doesn’t ask questions. He just pilots that huge container rig with its mysterious and unspecified cargo – that he’s not allowed to see – to God knows where, listening to the obnoxious, pompous Sangrecco mouth off about his many, unappreciated talents.

Things take a bad turn when they break at the isolated Standart Truck Stop. The Elvis freak is too lazy to even fetch his own beer, and when Rufo takes care of business and grudgingly tries to pay, a sleazy pack of locals trick him into an impromptu street fight on a cash-bet.

The ploy is a set-up and when Rufo proves unexpectedly tough, the prize-fight gets too serious and results in a fatality – and possibly more…

Street-fighting boss tough Forceps then convinces his “townie” cronies and the other onlookers that they need to get rid of all the witnesses. And that’s when old Sangrecco reveals what his speciality is…

Stark, brutal, rollercoaster-paced and rendered with savage, exhilarating bravura, this thundering, down-and-dirty fable grips like a vice and hits like a juggernaut, providing the kind of excitement every jaded thriller fan dreams of.

Also included in this brief, slim, scary and mesmerising tome is an effusive Introduction from Brian Azzarello, pin-ups by Mike Allred, Eduardo Risso, Craig Thompson and Fábio Moon plus stunning 16-page sketch, design and commentary section ‘Making of Mesmo Delivery’.

Since Mesmo Delivery, Grampá has gone on to shine with his deliciously eccentric Furry Water as well as on such established titles like Hellblazer, American Vampire, Strange Tales and Uncanny X-Force amongst others, but this superbly visceral, raw storm of sheer visual dexterity and narrative guile is an ideal example of pared back, stripped down, pure comics creativity that no mature lover of the medium can afford to miss.
Mesmo Delivery ™ & © 2008, 2010, 2014 Rafael Grampá. All rights reserved.

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These Savage Shores


By Ram V, Sumit Kumar, Vittorio Astone, Aditya Bidikar & various (Vault Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-93942-440-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

Rapidly becoming a force to be reckoned with in western comics, award-winning writer Ram V has been making waves since 2016. I will surprise absolutely no one by revealing that Ram Venkatesan’s career actually began in his birthland of India as early as 2012, and we in the west barely noticed…

While resident in Mumbai, he created acclaimed series Aghori before moving to Britain to take a Creative Writing MA at the City of London University. Since then he’s co-created series such as The Many Deaths of Laila Starr; Ruin of Thieves; Paradiso; Blue in Green; Black Mumba and Brigands. He’s also made serious inroads into the US superhero mainstream with stints on Marvel’s Venom and DC’s Justice League Dark; Catwoman, the reinvented Swamp Thing and Batman: Gotham Nocturne.

His stellar trajectory was enhanced by two projects for America’s Vault Comics: Radio Apocalypse and – spanning October 2018 to October 2019 – 5-issue miniseries These Savage Shores. Illustrated by Sumit Kumar, coloured by Vittorio Astone and lettered by Aditya Bidikar, this brooding, violent tale of timeless love and undying monsters is an historical drama tainted with horror overtones, combining gothic pastiche with the enticing mystique of colonial India, even if the events actually occur in the years before England officially conquered the “Sub-Continent” and became the British Empire…

Most enticingly and powerfully appealing, it takes the form of a bande dessinée-styled tale with broad cross genre appeal and is tailor-made for conversion to the large or small screen…

It begins in a paradisical garden where dancer Kori teasingly tests her lover Bishan, coquettishly enquiring what he is and how he was made…

The year is 1766 and, miles distant, a sailing ship of the East India Company carries a most unwelcome cargo. Disgraced scion of English Society’s most dangerous secret, Lord Alain Pierrefont has been exiled for breaking the cardinal rule of his class: being found out…

Eternal, patient and few in numbers, vampires have infested the aristocracy for centuries, leading discreet lives of bloody privilege while literally feeding off the poor. Those humans who reluctantly share the secret also know their place and keep quiet about the occasional atrocity. However, there are some mortals who ruthlessly hunt the clandestine overlords.

When one team almost ends the slumming predator, his peers and kin have no choice but to banish him for the shameful indiscretion of continuing to feed under the shocked gaze of crowds of no longer complacently ignorant human cattle…

With the discretion that sustains them as much as blood imperilled, vampire lords convene and Count Jurre Grano is compelled to despatch his favourite offspring to the ends of the Earth. In this case it’s also a promising new outpost of expansion: the squalid, unprepossessing port of Calicut on the Malabar Coast. The prodigal is left to the dubious care of his representative Colonel James Wilson Smith: a man of vision with dreams of controlling the immensely profitable wares previously carried by the fabled Spice Road of the East…

The merchant soldier’s plan is to divide and conquer for mercantile gain by grooming child-prince Vikram of the Zamorin, but impatient, spoiled Pierrefont will not be reasoned with. Calicut is just another playground to him and Kori his next meal. However, when the vampire traps her, his last thought is that he should have paid more attention to the Prince’s hulking masked bodyguard Bishan – a being also pretending to be merely mortal…

By October 2nd 1766, vampire hunter Zachariah Sturn has reached Calicut, determined to finish his business with Pierrefont. He believes the monster has found powerful and wealthy new allies to shield him and is unaware of the vampire’s actual fate. Reporting meagre progress in a letter to his clergyman brother, Sturn lays plans to topple these obstacles, assuming the boy Vikram has already been turned into a royal vampire…

Meanwhile in Mysore, young prince Tipu (Sultan Fatah Ali Sahab Tipu, known historically as Tipu Sultan, The Tiger of Mysore) meets his father Sultan Hyder Ali, Sahab to discuss the East India Company and their blatant plans for the always-warring rival kingdoms of India. The English are already destabilising the regions and are clearly going to use Vikram of the Zamorin as their wedge for further progress. The prophetic debate is derailed when recently-rejected Smith receives word that Pierrefont is dead – permanently dead – and realizes that there will be Hell to pay once the exile’s unholy family in England learn of it…

As the Sultan attempts to parlay with the Zamorim faction, their rebellious Prince Vikram has decreed a royal hunt to catch the “man-eater” that killed Pierrefont and Bishran bids farewell to Kori. The blatant cover-up does not deter Sturn, who stalks Vikram only to discover there are other, greater monsters serving those in the power in this land…

Pierrefont’s death gives the English justification to attack Mysore, but the international crisis has dangerously personal implications too. In England, Grano has learned of his kin’s death and reacts with typically ruthless disregard for human life. As the western invaders cut inland, Hyder Ali’s pleas for aid from Vikram fall on deaf ears, but his immortal guardian Bishram agrees to help fight the English. In March 1767 as a climactic battle looms, the eternal man-beast ponders how his endless ages of existence have been briefly brightened by love for the mortal Kori, before returning to the current war. Two months later, as Wilson’s soldiers remorselessly advance, Calicut greets another ship from Britain, carrying Grano and a contingent of vampires resolved to lay down their law and avenge a slain kinsman…

The fate of a nation is decided without them, as betrayal leads to British triumph. After waiting too long, Bishan unleashes the legendary beast inside him, but now only spiteful vengeance-taking is possible…

It is too little, too late. In November, the battle-ravaged land endures more horror as freshly-turned vampires roam by night: an undead army commanded by Grano who still obsessively hunts Pierrefont’s killer. The arrogant peer underestimates Vikram and his allies, however, almost losing everything in a brutal clash at the palace gates. His forces devasted, the vampire lord nevertheless succeeds, finally learning how his progeny died, and when Bishran returns a month later, he finds the malign bloodletter has returned to England, but left behind him a keepsake: one who will also abide forever…

The spectacular conclusion comes as Bishan voyages to London for definitive confrontation with Grano: one that will change many lives and determine the future of two kingdoms…

Superbly blending a sparkling and terrible time in history with classic horror themes, dark romance with canny political machinations and stunning action, These Savage Shores is a potent examination of power in all forms and its misuses, gloriously realised by illustrator Kumar (Batman; Justice League; Man-Bat) who also provides a large and lovely gallery of covers and variants here.

Beguiling, exotic wonderment for fear-loving older readers, this is a tale of the east no one should miss.
© 2019 Ram V & Sumit Kumar. All rights reserved.

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Vimanarama


By Grant Morrison & Philip Bond (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0496-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM) starts today, running, as it does every year, from 18th July to 17th August. We’ll be dropping the occasional new and old review that might be of added significance over that period and probably beyond if I can find enough books that qualify through content or creators. Let’s start with a certifiable classic…

Superbly aided and abetted by the brilliant art of Philip Bond, Grant Morrison’s classic modern theological soap opera fantasy Vimanarama is set in and around an “open all hours” corner shop in Bradford.

Here second son Ali is fretting because his arranged bride is due to arrive any moment. His future happiness and life’s success or failure is tied to a girl he has never even met but fears that he is utterly unsuited for and will inevitably disappoint. Therefore, he really hasn’t got time to worry about the massive hole that has opened up under the shop, or brother Omar’s severe injuries from falling down it, or even that the baby has wandered into it and found a lost outpost of Atlantis.

Forced to explore the incredible ancient and remarkably well-preserved under-Earth mega-metropolis, Ali is, however, pretty impressed by the very capable and newly-arrived Sophia. His intended bride has made her own way to the shop, and also sought to find the toddler… She’s beside Ali when the savage techno-demons – who had slumbered there for millennia – awake and escape, intent on undoing creation. She helps him awaken the godly Ultrahadeen. …And she’s beautiful.

The problem is that the leader of these lordly heroes instantly loves Sophia too, which could drastically impinge on the whole saving humanity thing, as well as interfering with Ali’s now eagerly anticipated nuptials. The god-like Ben Rama is really tall, really beautiful, and, let’s not forget, a god.

How the world is saved and Ali gets what he deserves is a gloriously exuberant romp, bright, colourful and very, very funny. I haven’t heard a cool media term to pigeon-hole this sort of cross culture comic with, and I’m not going to use any form of “Bollywood” derivative. You should just read this and make one up yourself. Or, if not that, you should just read this.

This very Vedic epic was originally seen as a 3-issue miniseries in 2005 and first collected as book a year later. The story is also available as half of a graphic double bill with Morrison & Bond’s anarchically surreal social comedy Kill Your Boyfriend. When I review that soon , you can either reread the above review again or just ignore it. As ever in this Cycle of Existence, the choice is yours (although our assorted destinies are already written)…
© 2005 Grant Morrison & Philip Bond. All Rights Reserved.

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Orbital volume 3 & 4: Nomads & Ravages


By Serge Pellé & Sylvain Runberg, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-080-1 & 978-1-84918-088-7 (Album PBs/Digital Editions)

French science fiction always delivers amazing style and panache even when the underlying premise might be less than original. In Serge Pellé & Sylvain Runberg’s beautiful Orbital sequence, an initially-mismatched pair of Diplomatic Peacekeeper agents are deployed to quell incipient brushfire wars and mediate internal pressures within a vast pan-species intergalactic alliance, but the hoary “buddy-movie” format is a mere skeleton for eye-popping missions, star-spanning intrigue and intense personal interactions. These are always handled with deft wit and great imagination, never failing to carry the reader along in a blaze of fantastic fun…

What you need to know: after decades of pariah-status and intergalactic exclusion, Earth in the 23rd century has finally been allowed to join a vast Confederation of interstellar civilisations, despite grave and abiding concerns about humanity’s aggressive nature and xenophobic tendencies.

A militant “Isolationist” faction on Earth had moved from politics to horrific terrorism in the immediate run-up to humanity’s formal induction: committing atrocities both on Earth and far distant worlds where mankind had developed colonies and mining bases thanks to misused Confederation technology. Ultimately, the “Isos” failed to prevent our species’ inclusion in the pan-galactic union.

One particular and abiding Confederation concern was the way humans had treated the ancient alien civilisation of the Sandjarrs, whose world was previously invaded in Earth’s all-consuming drive for territory and exploitable resources. Subsequent human atrocities almost exterminated the stoic, pacifistic desert creatures…

Interworld Diplomatic Office operatives are assigned in pairs to troubleshoot throughout the stars, defusing crises before they become flashpoints of violence. IDO’s first human recruit Caleb Swany had been controversially teamed with Sandjarr Mezoke Izzua: a situation clearly designed as a high-profile political stunt, as was their initial mission: convincing an Earth mining colony to surrender a profitable planetary mining industry back to the aliens who actually own the moon Senestem it was situated on…

Moreover, even though Earth is a now a Confederation member, with humans well-placed in all branches of interstellar service, the Isolationist cause is still deeply cherished by many, needing only the slightest spark to reignite…

Nomades was originally released continentally in 2009, and as third translated Cinebook album Orbital: Nomads (2011) picks up soon after Caleb and Mezoke’s hard-won, brutally pragmatic solution was implemented. The Galactic Great-and-Good have since voyaged to Earth to very publicly celebrate and affirm the end of Human/Sandjarr hostilities in a series of spectacular Reconciliation Ceremonies, but the political glad-handing looks to be upstaged by another interspecies crisis…

One of the greatest benefits of induction into The Confederation has been the infusion of alien technologies which have cleansed and reinvigorated the ecosystem of long-abused and much-polluted Earth. Now however, an incident occurs in the newly restocked, again-abundant seas and mangrove swamps around Malaysia. The inexplicable death of millions of cloned and released sea species leads to a bloody clash between local human fishermen and an previously-unsuspected enclave of nomadic space-gypsies: The Rapakhun…

In Kuala Lumpur, Caleb is reminiscing with his old mentor Hector Ulrich – instrumental in brokering Earth into the Confederation and Swany into the Interworld Diplomatic Office – when news arrives of the trouble.

This will be tricky: much of mankind is still passively anti-alien, and local economies are fragile, whilst the Rapakhun are apparently no innocent angels. Many stellar civilisations despise them as shiftless, flighty wanderers who go where they please, refusing to be represented in or on Confederation Councils. Worst of all, they practice cannibalism…

By the time Caleb and Mezoke arrive on scene, events have escalated and tensions heightened to fever pitch, with a committee of human fishermen facing off against Rapakhun spokeswoman Alkuun.

The unwanted ancient tries to explain that the problem was simply an escaped Elokarn. The wanderers’ gigantic domesticated aquatic beasts have all been excessively agitated since arriving on Earth…

With the Diplomatic Agents assuring all parties that tests are underway to ascertain not only why the Elokarn went crazy but also why fish are dying off again, the situation seems contained, but when Alkuun invites the human guests to join in their holy consumption of a still-living and eager Rapakhun male, all the attendant peacemakers are physically revolted. Once seen, no amount of explanation that the willing, deeply spiritual and hugely prestigious sacrifice is meant to strengthen and invigorate the life force of Earth can offset that grisly sight…

Returning to Kuala Lumpur, Mezoke and Caleb are anxious. Although the Malaysian Navy are policing the area, the IDO agents know full well the tenuous trust humans place in any alien species, but their attention is unfortunately diverted by the sudden arrival of Caleb’s old friend Lukas Vesely.

The scrawny teen of his youth has become a hulking, good-natured member of Ulrich’s security force who seems very keen to relive the good old days. Caleb’s memories, however, can’t get past what he, little sister Kristina and Lukas used to do as teen vigilantes in Prague, mercilessly wreaking misguided vengeance upon isolationists like the ones who assassinated the Swany’s parents. In Caleb’s head, it’s just like yesterday…

In the mangrove swamps, fish are still dying, and now so are plants. When another group of fisherman get too close to the agreed-upon neutral zone, Ulrich’s forces overreact and the intruders perish, an event twisted by certain members of the outraged Malaysian Navy observers…

Despite and because of the distracting presence of Confederate supremo Evona Toot, Caleb and Mezoke are fully occupied as the delegation of Sandjarr dignitaries arrive. With a hungry pack of journalists eager to build and detonate a media-storm, the DA’s must navigate and manage the aloof, stand-offish guests of honour even though they somehow provoke fellow Sandjarr Mezoke to surly silence…

Soon, grim reports from Senestem take the shine off the supposed triumphant solution, while test results from the swamps all prove inconclusive. No contamination of any sort killed the wildlife: the culprit is some unknown form of energy…

Over gender-opaque Mezoke’s objections, Caleb seeks to downplay and even suppress the concatenation of bad news to keep the Reconciliation Ceremonies alive, until she/he/it/they reveals a shocking truth about the Sandjarr’s status prior to joining IDO…

Reports of human deaths are leaked to the populace and a “patriotic” clique in the Navy colludes to look the other way if any fishermen feel like dealing with the nomads once and for all…

By the time the IDO agents react to another human incursion, appalling bloodshed has ceased and – wading through a site of unspeakable carnage – Caleb and Mezuke decide to split up. The rapidly destabilising situation on Earth must be carefully managed, but most important is urgently sending an investigation team to the Rapakhun’s stopover world to learn exactly what the wanderers are capable of…

To Be Continued…

Fast-paced, action-packed, gritty space-opera with delightfully complex sub-plots fuelled by political intrigue and infighting elevates this tale to lofty and exotic heights, confirming Orbital as a series well worth your time and attention…

 

Ravages (Orbital volume 4) sees mismatched Diplomatic Peacekeeper agents conclude the sinister saga begun in Orbital: Nomads: subtly tweaking and deftly twisting a cunning skein of far-flung, futuristic political intrigue as the situation devolves into a full-on horror story of relentless alien terror…

Released in France in 2010, Orbital: Ravages is the fourth translated Cinebook album, picking up as Caleb and Mezoke flounder whilst a simple but tedious state function rapidly becomes an interspecies crisis…

The Galactic glitterati are on Earth to confirm the end of Human/Sandjarr hostilities in spectacular Reconciliation Ceremonies, but the cosmic bigwigs are only really concerned with how their precious Reconciliation plays out on their own worlds. The  political glad-handing looked likely to implode after Kuala Lumpur’s human fisherman clashed with a hitherto unsuspected enclave of Rapakhun: cannibalistic space gypsies…

Confederation’s technologies had cleansed and reinvigorated Earth’s gravely wounded, ecosystem, but the restocked, seas and swamps around Malaysia are suddenly blighted by the mass extinction of millions of valuable fish. Humans blame the uninvited aliens, demanding the ODI Agents forcefully intervene. Swany and Mezoke swiftly comply, promising the truth will be found and shared.

This might be tricky: much of mankind remains staunchly anti-alien, local economies are fragile and the Rapakhun’s bad reputation across Confederation space might not be simple prejudice…

With the Agents occupied babysitting the Sandjarr delegation, fish and fisherman continue to die and the Malaysian Navy can no longer be trusted. As Caleb downplays – and even tries to suppress – bad news in hope of keeping the Ceremonies alive, the situation provokes a “patriotic” Navy clique to look the other way when locals try to deal with the nomads once and for all…

Riots and bloodshed erupt and the IDO operatives realise they must know more about the Rapakhun: someone has to visit their last port of call and see what they are really capable of…

The saga resumes in Kuala Lumpur’s grimily cosmopolitan Shah Alam district where human and alien scrap-merchants work side by side, salvaging materials and tech from junked starships. As tensions rise everywhere, one greedy toiler makes a grisly discovery and dies horribly in exactly the same manner as the fishermen in the distant swamps…

Caleb – over Mezoke’s protests – is in full-spin-control mode; weaving a pack of placatory lies to the journalists of uncounted watching worlds. Unable to leave Earth mid-crisis, the IDO agents recruited enigmatic human star-pilot Nina and her secretly-sentient Neuronome ship Angus to canvas distant world Dehadato, last refuge of the Rapakhun. Before they can report back a vast riot breaks out in Shah Alam…

The Fishermen’s Quarter is ablaze, a war-zone exploding with scared and angry humans and aliens, but when Caleb, Mezoke and Hector Ulrich overfly the scene of chaos and looting, they are brought down by rioters and must fight their way out…

Thanks to IDO intervention, canny bargaining, judicious bribery by city officials and an unlikely detente between the extraterrestrial scrap merchants and the ambitious new spokesman of the Fisherman’s Federation, the situation is soon damped down and all sides again tensely wait for answers…

On Dehadato, Nina and Angus explore the Rapakhun’s last campsite, uncovering scenes of horrific devastation, even as in Kuala Lumpur, Confederation leaders – terrified the situation is becoming politically untenable – consider cutting their losses and cancelling the Ceremonies…

It takes all Caleb’s strident persuasiveness to convince them – and Mezoke – to continue the itinerary of events. However, he gets a first inkling that they might be right when he’s informed a body has been found in the city, killed in the same extreme and inexplicable manner as the various swamp casualties…

On Dehadato, Nina and Angus rescue a poacher from the folly of his actions in pursuing monstrous, colossal and officially-protected Nargovals. As the Sülfir recovers, he imparts snippets of information about the Rapakhun and an incredible beast which infested the planet before the stellar nomads left. The doughty hunter only tried for the unstoppable leviathans which killed his entire poaching team after first ensuring there were no more Varosash on Dehadato, so the primordial predator must have departed with the gypsy cannibals…

Caleb has already concluded the Rapakhun are behind his problems, but as he stalks them through the swamps, word comes from Nina that he’s wrong, and it’s probably already be too late for the planet…

At Kuala Lumpur’s biggest sports arena, thousands of avid Speedball fans – human and otherwise – are packed together; reaching a fever pitch of excitement and unaware a hideous invisible killer – the very essence of all mankind’s fear of alien monsters – is ready to consume them all. Can disunited Caleb and Mezoke and their pitifully few allies destroy the invisible rapacious threat before it ends humanity? Or maybe there’s is hope as Nina and the Sülfir think they have a plan. Risky and probably fatal, but a plan nonetheless…

Fast-paced, action-packed, gritty and spectacular, Ravages offers pure high-octane space-opera, with deliciously complex sub-plots fuelled by political intrigue and a vast unexplored canvas tantalising readers at very moment.

One of the most beguiling sci fi strips of all time, Orbital is a delight every fan of the future should indulge in…
Original editions © Dupuis 2009, 2010 by Runberg & Pellé. All rights reserved. These editions published 2011 by Cinebook Ltd.