Category: Horror Stories

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Solomon Kane volume 1: The Castle of the Devil


By Scott Allie, Mario Guevara, Dave Stewart & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-282-6 (TPB)

Although Marvel have resumed control of Robert E. Howard’s star turns, they haven’t yet re-issued all the prior efforts of the previous licensee yet. That’s a shame as this particular tome has Halloween written all over it. Until they do, why not scour shoppes and online sites for a copy. The exercise will probably do you good and who knows what else you might find?

Following on from their revitalisation – if not actual creation – of the comic book Sword and Sorcery genre in the early 1970s (with their magnificent adaptation of pulp superstar Conan the Barbarian), Marvel Comics quite naturally looked for more of the same. They found ample material in Robert Ervin Howard’s other warrior heroes such as King Kull, Bran Mac Morn and dour Puritan Avenger Solomon Kane.

The fantasy genre had undergone a global prose revival in the paperback marketplace since the release of soft-cover editions of Lord of the Rings (first published in 1954), and the 1960s resurgence of two-fisted action extravaganzas by such pioneer writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline and Fritz Lieber. This led to a generation of modern writers like Michael Moorcock and Lin Carter kick-starting their careers with contemporary interpretations of man, monster and mage. Without doubt, though, nobody did it better than the tragic Texan whose other red-handed stalwarts and tough guys such as El Borak, Steve Costigan, Dark Agnes and Red Sonya of Rogatino excelled in a host of associated genres and like milieus.

Solomon Kane debuted in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales in a gripping tale of vengeance entitled “Red Shadows”. He made seven more appearances before vanishing in 1932 as his creator concentrated on far more successful Conan. Three further tales, some epic poems and a few unfinished ideas and passages remained unpublished until 1968, when renewed interest in the author’s work prompted publishers to disinter and complete the yarns.

Apart from two noteworthy 4-colour exceptions, during the 1970s and 1980s, Marvel was content to leave Solomon Kane to monochrome adaptations of canonical Howard stories (in Dracula Lives, Savage Sword of Conan, Monsters Unleashed and other older-reader magazines), but with his transfer to the Dark Horse stable the Holy Terror flourished in broader, lavishly-hued interpretations of the unfinished snippets left when the prolific Howard took his life in 1936.

Beginning in 2008 and released as a succession of miniseries, these nearly-new adventures offer modern fans a far darker, more moody glimpse at the driven, doom-laden wanderer.

Kane is a disenfranchised English soldier of fortune in the 17th century on a self-appointed mission to roam the Earth doing God’s Work: punishing the wicked and destroying devils and monsters. With no seeming plan, the devout Puritan lets fate guide his footsteps ever towards trouble…

Expanded upon and scripted by Scott Allie from tantalisingly unfinished fragment The Castle of the Devil, this initial volume collects a 5-issue story-arc from September 2008-February 2009 and also includes a short piece which originally featured online in the digital MySpace Dark Horse Presents site in June 2008.

The drama opens as the surly pilgrim bloodily encounters bandits and an horrific wolf-beast in Germany’s Black Forest, losing his horse in the attack. Proceeding on foot he finds a boy hanging from a gibbet and cuts the near-dead body down. Soon after, he meets mercenary John Silent, another Englishman in search of fortune…

From his new companion, Kane learns local lord, Baron von Staler, has an evil reputation and will not be happy to have his affairs meddled with. The puritan doesn’t care: he wants harsh words with the kind of man who would execute children…

Despite genuine misgivings, the insufferably jolly Silent insists on accompanying his clearly suicidal countryman. Soon the pair are admitted to a bleak and terrifying Schloss built on the remains of an old abbey…

Von Staler is not the mad tyrant they had been warned of. The gracious, pious old warrior with devoted servants and a beautiful young Moorish wife welcomes them in, offering the hospitality of his hearth and charming them with his easy manner. The lord is appalled by the tale of the hanged boy, denying any knowledge of the atrocity and swears to bring the culprits to justice.

Over supper he and his bride Mahasti explain that their ill-repute is unjustly earned. The simple peasants have unfairly conflated him with the manse’s previous accursed inhabitants: a chapter of monks who murdered their own Prior two centuries past.

Vater Stuttman had been a holy man until he sold himself to Satan. His desperate brethren had been forced to entomb and starve him to contain his evil. With the church determinedly ignoring their plight, the chapter faded from the sight of Man and eventually Staler’s family had purchased the lands, building their ancestral seat upon the ruins.

The peasants however, still called it “the Church of the Devil”…

Gratified to find a man as devoted to God as himself, Kane relaxes for the first time in months, thankful to spend a night in a warm bed with people as devout as he. The truth begins to out at ‘The Dead of Night’ as Silent goes prowling within the castle and kills one of the Baron’s retainers, even as Kane’s rest is disturbed by shameless Mahasti offering herself to him…

Spurning her advances, the furious puritan leaves the citadel to wander the forest, and again encounters the colossal wolf thing. Back in his bed Silent, nursing a deep wound, dreams of beleaguered old monks and their apostate Prior…

In ‘Offerings’ the truth slowly begins to dawn on the melancholy wanderer after discourse with the strangely ill-tempered Silent. Something is badly amiss in the household, but when Kane and the Baron ride out that morning, all suspicions are stayed by the discovery of another gibbet and another boy. This one, however, is nothing but ragged scraps for the crows that festoon his corpse, and Kane’s rage is dwarfed by the ghastly uncomprehending shock and disbelief of the Baron…

The servants are not so flustered and something about their muted conversations with the master sits poorly with the morose Englishman. In the castle, Mahasti finds Silent a far more amenable prospect, happy to listen to the secrets she wants to share…

‘Sound Reasons and Evil Dictates’ offer more insights into the incredible truth about von Staler, as Kane takes his countryman into his full confidence before Silent and Mahasti ride out into the wild woods, meeting a ghost who reveals the terrifying truth about Vater Stuttman and the appalling thing the monks uncovered two hundred years past…

The demonic cadaver whispered unknowable secrets to one of that long-gone congregation and has continued for all the days and years since. Now the man who was Father Albrecht is ready to welcome it and its appalling kin back to full, ravening life in these benighted grounds…

Von Staler and Kane are arguing and, as accusations become blows, the secret of ‘The Wolf’ is at last revealed, even as faithful retainers capture Mahasti and Silent, leaving them on the gibbets as fodder for a quartet of horrors returning for their fleshly tribute in ‘His Angels of the Four Winds’. Savagely battling his way free of the castle, Kane is only in time to save one of the monsters’ victims, but more than ready to avenge centuries of slaughter and blasphemy in ‘The Chapel of the Devil’: grimly cleansing the tainted lands in the ‘Epilogue: Wanderers on the Face of the Earth’…

The art is beguiling, emphatically evocative with Mario Guevara’s pencils astonishingly augmented by a painted palette courtesy of colourist Dave Stewart, and the book is packed with artistic extras and behind-the-scenes bonuses. These include a gallery of covers and variants and ‘The Art of Solomon Kane’ with sketches and designs by the penciller, architectural shaper Guy Davis and illustrators John Cassaday, Stewart, Laura Martin & Joe Kubert. The tome terminates with that aforementioned digital vignette wherein Kane applies his own savage wisdom of Solomon to a troubled village of ghost-bedevilled souls in ‘The Nightcomers’…

Powerful, engaging and satisfactorily spooky, this fantasy fear-fest will delight both fans of the original canon and lovers of darkly dreaming, ghost-busting thrillers.
© 2009 Solomon Kane Inc. (SKI). Solomon Kane and all related characters, names and logos are ™ © and ® SKI.

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Doctor who Graphic Novel #23: The Highgate Horror


By Mark Wright, Jonathan Morris, Steve Lyons, Roger Langridge, Jacqueline Rayner, Scott Gray, David A. Roach, Mike Collins, John Ross, Adrian Salmon, Martin Geraghty, Dave Gibbons, John Ridgway, Dan McDaid & various (Panini Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-749-3 (TPB)

Somewhere in time, it’s always that moment just before the TV got turned on and the Time Lord was born. This year is the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Here’s another Timey-Wimey treat to celebrate a unique TV and comics institution in a periodical manner …

The British love comic strips, adore “characters” and are addicted to celebrity. The history of our homegrown graphic narratives includes an astounding number of comedians, Variety stars and television actors: such disparate legends as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Charlie Drake and so many more I’ve long forgotten and you’ve likely never heard of.

As much adored and adapted were actual shows and properties like Ace of Wands, Timeslip, Supercar, Pinky and Perky, The Clangers and countless more. If folk watched or listened, an enterprising publisher made printed spectacles of them. Hugely popular anthology comics like Radio Fun, Film Fun, TV Fun, Look-In, TV Comic, TV Tornado, and Countdown readily and regularly translated our light entertainment favourites into pictorial joy every week, and it was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley the day job into a licensed strip property…

Doctor Who debuted on black-&-white televisions across Britain on November 23rd 1963 with the opening episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’. Mere months later, in 1964 a decades-long association with TV Comic began: issue #674 heralding the initial instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’ by an unknown author with the art attributed to illustrator Neville Main.

On 11th October 1979, Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. Turning monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) it’s been with us – via various iterations – ever since. All proving the Time Lord is a comic star of impressive pedigree, not to be trifled with.

Panini’s UK division ensured the immortality of the comics feature by collecting all strips of every Time Lord Regeneration in a uniform series of over-sized graphic albums – although we’re still waiting for digital versions. Each time tome focused on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer, with this one gathering stories originally published in Doctor Who Magazine #484 and #489-500. Spanning March 2015 to July 2016; they star Peter Capaldi’s irascible old chrononaut the Twelfth Doctor and saucy sidekick/Impossible Girl Clara Oswald in action across the universe and every Elsewhen imaginable.

The adventures of the Grumpy Gallifreyan are – as always – described and delineated by a rapidly rotating roster of British creators who also provide a treasure-trove of background information in the Commentary section at the back. These comprise story-by-story history, background and insights from authors and illustrators, supplemented by scads of sketches, roughs, designs, production art and photos.

None of which is relevant if all you want is a darn good read. Thankfully, all imagineers involved have completed the ultimate task of any artisan – to produce engaging, thrilling, fun work which can be enjoyed equally by the callowest of neophytes and most slavishly dedicated and opinionated fans imaginable.

That feast of fun – coloured throughout by James Offredi and lettered by multi-talented Roger Langridge – opens with Mark Wright, Mike Collins & David A. Roach’s ‘Space Invaders!’ as The Doctor and Clara fetch up at an orbiting storage facility just as the owners start their latest sell-off of unclaimed items. Typically, the time-travellers are not quite quick enough to stop avid bargain-hunters opening a container of just hatched planet-eating monster eggs…

Following smart social satire is a multi-part action romp. ‘Spirits of the Jungle’ – by Jonathan Morris & John Ross – finds our stars joining an extraction mission to recover lethal intelligent weapons-tech before apparently walking into trap on a planet where the forests have their own definition of World Wide Web…

Gothic horror and vintage thrills permeate Wright, Roach & Collins’ superb chiller ‘The Highgate Horror’ wherein Clara, her immortal straight man and neophyte Companion Jess Collins experience the 1970s London cemetery by hunting vampires and satanic covens and encounter a race of ancient predators who want far worse than mere blood…

As conceived and realised by Steve Lyons & Adrian Salmon, ‘The Dragon Lord’ was a radical activist attempting to save magnificent saurians from human fun-seekers killing them for sport on a medieval-themed fantasy resort world. However, by the time our turbulent troubleshooters turn up, things have turned decidedly lethal and it looks like nobody is getting out alive…

Roger Langridge then offers an all-him treat as Harry Houdini sends out a distress call and his old chum The Doctor dutifully answers. Sometimes even fakers and charlatans have power and really resent being de-bunked by upstart human escapologists playing in the ‘Theatre of the Mind’…

A new time-bending miscreant debuts in Jacqueline Rayner, Martin Geraghty & Roach’s epic tale of persecution and justice when temporal prankster Miss Chief infiltrates Clara’s workspace. After causing havoc at Coal Hill School, said trickster drops Miss Oswald in the vicious clutches of Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, leaving The Doctor to either participate in a time duel or somehow search the whole 17th century for his missing school ma’am in a ‘Witch Hunt’ with potentially fatal and final consequences…

Our temporal tintinnabulations conclude with a splendidly appropriate anniversary party get-together of old friends – and foes – that will delight lifelong devotees without bewildering or baffling newbies or casual readers.

Written by editor Scott Gray, ‘The Stockbridge Showdown’ returns the Time Lord to the alien-beleaguered British village just as cosmic corporate conqueror Josiah W. Dogbolter thinks he’s finally leveraged the keys to time itself.

As the universe nears a shocking “Going Out of Business” sale, the wily Gallifreyan and many allies from the past 500 issues unite to teach the richest man in creation the paucity of his resources and the lesson of his life in a tale crafted by artists past and current, including Dave Gibbons, Langridge, Salmon, Dan McDaid, Ross, Collins, John Ridgway, Geraghty and Roach.

Another marvellous chronicle for casual comics readers, this is also an unmissable shelf-addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our art-form to anyone minded to give comics a proper go.
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and used under licence. Licensed by BBC Worldwide. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Daleks © Terry Nation. All commentaries © 2016 their respective authors. Published 2013 by Panini UK Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Scared to Death volumes 1 & 2: The Vampire From the Marshes & Malevolence and Mandrake


By Mauricet & Vanholme, with Lee Oaks: colours by Laurent Carpentier and translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978- 1-905460-47-2 (Album PB Vampire) 978- 1-905460-77-9 (Album PB Mandrake)

There’s a grand old tradition of scaring, empowering and entertaining kids through carefully crafted horror stories with junior protagonists, and this occasional series is one of the better modern examples.

Conceived and executed by Belgian journalist Virgine Vanholme and youthful-yet-seasoned illustrator Alain Mauricet, the Mort de Trouille series of graphic albums was launched by Casterman in 2000 resulting in five further sinister sorties until everything paused in 2004.

Whilst I’ve not been able to find out much about the author, the artist is well travelled, having worked for CrossGen, Image and DC as well as on a wide variety of features in Europe. He’s also been in David Lloyd’s magnificently wonderful digital delight Aces Weekly.

Born in 1967, Mauricet inherited the comic bug from his parents and, after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts under legendary creator Eddy Paape, began his own career aged 20: another recruit for major magazine Le Journal de Spirou. From spot cartoons he graduated to strips, creating superhero parody Cosmic Patrouille with Jean-Louis Janssens and Les Rastafioles with Sergio Salma. Following the aforementioned stateside sojourn he resumed his Franco-Belgian efforts with the strip under review here, as well as basketball comedy Basket Dunk (with Christophe Cazanove) and Boulard (with Erroc) and others.

A resident of Brussels, he also designs for computer games whilst working on a more personal graphic enterprise entitled Une Bien Belle Nuance de Rouge and in latter days worked for DC on Superman and Batman. In 2021 he released Porchery – On n’attrape pas les cochons avec des saucisses.

Back in early 2000, though, he was detailing the first of a sequence of spooky yarns starring studious Robin Lavigne and boisterous, overly-imaginative Max Mornet: a couple of lads with an infallible instinct for ferreting out the weird and uncanny. Cinebook translated Mort de Trouille: Le vampire des Marais in 2008: inviting British, Antipodean and American kids to solve the mystery of The Vampire from the Marshes, which began when the boys first snuck a peek at forensic scientist Dr. Lavigne‘s locked files…

The well-travelled medic has been called in to examine a body found in rural Deadwater Swamp: a corpse stinking of booze, drained of blood and completely covered in hundreds of tiny triangular bite marks. His son Robin and especially horror-story obsessed Max are fascinated by the case. The latter envisions all manner of ghastly and vivid vampiric scenarios, despite his more prosaic pal’s protestations. All too soon the lads are invading the (still “potential”) crime scene, recording their own findings and suppositions. They are pretty freaked out when they find a strangely slaughtered bird and completely terrified when they disturb a poacher who chases them away with murderous curses. Unbeknownst to all involved, their prying has also alerted and disturbed a clan of far more dangerous and unnatural creatures…

Soon the boys are being shadowed by an uncanny, cloaked figure. He/she/it even breaks into the Lavigne home: striving to preserve anonymity and ancient secrets from the eyes of prying, violent mankind. However, when it is noisily disturbed as it closes in on the boys, they can only thank their lucky stars that the household cat is such a noisy and vicious beast when stepped upon…

Events peak to a cursed crescendo next day after Max falls into his own hastily dug vampire trap and is taken by the noisome Nosferatu. Whilst Robin anxiously and urgently searches for his missing friend, Max is learning the tragic secret history of the bloodsuckers.

His oddly ambivalent abductor is Janus who seems rather reluctant to bleed him as a proper vampire should. The creature has, however, no problem leaving him – and freshly captured Robin when he stumbles upon them – to drown in a deep well…

Next morning, Dr. Lavigne and the cops are frantically but methodically searching the swamp for the missing boys, but only find them thanks to some unknown person leaving Max’s camera on the rim of a well…

As the frightened lads are pulled to safety, Robin’s dad questions them and goes ballistic on learning they’ve been looking through his confidential files. He also utterly trashes their ridiculous theory of vampire killers, patiently explaining the true and rational – if exceedingly grim and grisly – cause of death of the drunk in the swamp.

Chastened but undaunted and sharing an incredible secret no adults will ever believe, the boys are taken home whilst deep in the wooded mire an ancient family of incredible beings pulls up stakes and moves restlessly on to who knows where…

 

With additional art assistance from Lee Oaks, the schoolboy spook-chasers resurfaced in Scared to Death volume 2: Malevolence and Mandrake. Scholarly Robin and rowdy, horror-fan Max are still chasing every implausible rumour and probing unknowns but becoming increasing dependent – though they’d never admit it – on the wit and bravery of Robin’s brilliant little sister Sophie Lavigne…

Cinebook’s second translated selection was actually the third Franco-Belgian chiller chronicle Mort de Trouille: Maléfice et mandragora: suitably set around All Hallows Eve and posing uniquely terrifying problems for the young trouble-magnets…

It begins a little before the much-anticipated night, with Elizabeth Simon Secondary School abuzz with worries over missing student Thomas and the seemingly simultaneous arrival of oddly-attractive, exotic transfer student Emma Corpescu. She comes from Romania and Max is strangely antipathic to her at first. That soon changes, though…

Robin also feels a bit off as the newcomer blatantly insinuates herself into their lives, paying particular attention to Max. Soon, so-savvy Sophie is paying closer attention. Far more so than the idiot boys do…

She’s wise to do so: Emma is soon revealed as an ancient shapeshifting sorceress named Malevolence, who steals the youth of boys to restore her own life force… and to – one day – resurrect her properly dead sister Mandrake…

After doing desperate research online, Sophie arms herself with anti-witch tricks and gadgets and – after discovering the incredible fate of Thomas – eventually convinces her incredulous brother to stalk the wicked enchanter to her lair in Deadwater Swamp and rescue the now officially-missing Max. The poor oaf has fully succumbed to Emma’s wiles and now resides in her lair, transformed into the same uncanny form as Thomas was…

Arriving just in time, the rescuers are set for an incredible clash of wills and powers – especially Sophie, who’s borrowed a few supernatural forces for the ordeal…

Of course, good triumphs in the end, but can such seductive evil truly die?

Deliciously delivered in the manner of Goosebumps and Scooby-Doo – if not Stranger Things – these superb slices of spooky fun work classic kids’ horror tropes and style to enthral and enchant everyone who has suffered from “father knows best” syndrome and loves tall tales with devilish twists. Seamlessly mixing fear with hilarity to enthral and enchant all generations equally, these tales should be resuurected and completed for all of us in need of scary relaxation.
Original edition © Casterman, 2000 and 2003 by Mauricet & Vanholme. English translation © 2008 by Cinebook Ltd.

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H.P. Lovecraft’s The Hound and Other Stories


Adapted by Gou Tanabe, translated by Zack Davisson (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-312-1 (Tankobon paperback/Digital edition)

If you’re one of those people who’s never read a manga tale, or who’s been tempted but discouraged by the terrifying number of volumes these tales can run to, here’s a delicious feast of fantasy fables complete in one book revealing all that’s best about comics from the East in one darkly digestible big gulp.

Most manga can be characterised by a fast, raucous, even occasionally choppy style and manner of delivery but this volume of emphatically eerie adaptations is atmospheric, suitably scary and marvellously moody: just as you’d hope when recreating classic tales by the undisputed master of supernatural terror…

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was frail, troubled and remarkably ill-starred. Born August 20th 1890, he was truly afflicted with a hunger to write, but only achieved any degree of success after his death in March 1937 – following a life of desperate penury – from complications of intestinal cancer. Once he was gone, his literary star ascended, with posthumous publications making him a household name who changed the face of fiction forever.

His stories have deeply affected generations all over the world. One person particularly moved is international literary specialist Gou Tanabe who has previously adapted the works of Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekov to manga form.

Perfectly capturing the relentlessly oppressive and inescapably sombre sense of approaching fatality permeating most of Lovecraft’s potent prose, ‘The Temple’ was written in 1920 and first published 5 years later in the September issue of Weird Tales. The adaptor’s mildly updated version (migrated from WWI to WWII) originated in esteemed anthology magazine COMIC BEAM in March and April 2009: detailing the depredations of U-Boat U-29 and the doomed fools who man her.

After a particularly rewarding campaign, German Navy Commander Karl Heinrich Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein and his officers are taking the night air when they notice a dead British mariner gripping the sub’s handrail. Whilst trying to unlock the mariner’s death grip and eject the corpse, one of them salvages an ancient artefact – a small carved head – and pockets it.

From that moment, their voyage is damned…

Soon, madness and mishap grip the vessel. Death decimates the crew and inexorably the survivors drift ever deeper into depths both physical and metaphorical. When only one remains, he finds the U-boat drawn to a fantastic city and magnificent temple sunken beneath the waves. It is filled with statuary like the little head in his pocket…

Just as he raises his pistol to end the horror, the shattered sole survivor sees shining lights in the sunken edifice…

Lovecraft penned ‘The Hound’ in September 1922 and Weird Tales published it in 1924. Gou Tanabe’s chilling interpretation debuted in July 2014 in the online edition of Comic Walker. The tale is grim, grisly, exquisitely decadent and supremely shocking, detailing the extravagant excess of English gentleman grave-robbers and diabolist magical parvenus St. John and our unnamed narrator.

Bored and indolent, they renew their sordid, blasphemous hobby in a Dutch boneyard, exhuming an arcane trinket from a grave sealed for half a millennium and reap a ghastly bounty after liberating a vengeful howling horror…

After its first foray into the material world, the surviving dabbler attempts every stratagem to escape or expiate the beast, and finds some things have no use for apologies or reparations…

Concluding this first (hopefully of many) Lovecraft treasure trove is another export from Comic Walker (August 2014 this time).

‘The Nameless City’ was written in January 1921 and published 10 months later in The Wolverine. Tapping into the contemporary vogue for arcane exploratory adventure as also favoured by the likes of literary horrorist brethren Seabury Quinn, Clark Ashton Smith, and latterly August Derleth and Robert E. Howard, here Lovecraft shares the story of an itinerant western wanderer (think Indiana Jones without no sense of humour or chance in Hell) who survives Arabian deserts only to stumble upon a previously unsuspected deserted conurbation suddenly exposed by the roaring eternal winds.

Genned-up on local legends, the explorer cannot resist entering the vast metropolis. However, as he plunges deeper within, he finds thousands of boxes like a legion of coffins and realises the occupants are far from human. They may not even be dead…

Enthralling, understated and astoundingly effective, these classic tales have been reverently adapted and packaged in an inexpensive, digest-sized monochrome paperback that will delight avowed aficionados and beguile terror-loving newcomers alike.

© 2014 Gou Tanabe. All rights reserved. This English-language edition © 2017 Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

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Curses – A collection of short comics


By George Wylesol (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-75-2 (TPB)

Baltimore-based George Wylesol (Internet Crusader, 2120) is a cartoonist with lots to say and extraordinarily intriguing ways of doing so. His oeuvre channels avowed fascinations – old computer kit and livery; anxiety; a culture of graphic inundation, pervasive iconography; the nostalgic power of commercial branding and signage plus a general interest in plebian Days Gone By. Drawings of these he melds into chilling affirmations of his faith in the narrative power of milieu and environment as opposed to characters. He’s also pretty big on scaring the pants off folk…

That is especially the case in this latest tome: a retro-modernist glimpse over the shoulder at past shorter tales. This vibrant volume gathers novella Ghosts from 2017 and a section of short comics created between 2015 and 2021 uniformly exploiting his garishly macabre peccadilloes, opening with a devil’s dozen depicted as the ‘Comprehensive List of Curses’: part of a sporadic sequence of stand-alone (or are they?) images peppered throughout the pages.

Breakthrough tale ‘Ghosts’ details a worker sharing experiences wandering in a complex of tunnels under a hospital, after which 2015’s ‘The Rabbit’ macabrely plucks heartstrings (you can see them if you look) in a tale of odd relationships…

Computer game inspired ‘Castle Maker’ seductively and inevitably leads to a powerful exploration of ‘Porn’ that is nothing like you could possibly expect.

Talking heads spouting ‘Cheese’ and worse bring us a ‘List of Cursed Entities’ before ‘Worthless’ pushes the limits of visual reportage and conceptual condemnation. More far-from-random images offer a reset button as prelude to a visit to realtor purgatory via the ‘Open House’ after which ‘The Loser’ displays another way to fail yet win…

Bombarded by fresh pictorial asides, we pause to consider the void in ‘Untitled’ before a sequence of entwined episodes commences, tracing the saga of ‘The Cursed Lover’.

Set in the ghastly, internal-organ-obsessed municipality of Zujojhidi – as governed by drab routine and television prophets – Ghoul is struggling with school and his job at the meat factory. Everything changes once a stranger shows him a spirit hidden under his cloak. From that moment, Ghoul’s existence changes forever and for the worst…

Can the interest of young Mercey – whose attentions he is blithely oblivious to – divert the doomed kid from the inexorable path to apocalypse and oblivion?

Deftly manipulating realities and landscaping the liminal spaces at the boundaries of peripheral vision, Wylesol reshapes forms and formula to carve out chilling, potent suspense sagas unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Genuinely disturbing in the manner of the best psychological dramas, with plenty of scary moments and distressingly eerie characters, the coldly diagrammatical illustration and workplace-bright colour palette adds immensely to the overall aura of unease.

Compelling and compulsive, these eerie evocations are aimed right at you. Whether you duck, dodge or dive in says all you need to know of yourself and proves nothing is what it seems. This is a wild ride not to be missed.
© George Wylesol 2023. All rights reserved.

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Chronicles of Fear – Tales of Woe


By Nathalie Tierce (Indigo Raven)
ISBN: 978-1-7341874-5-8 (PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Cruel Truths for Crazy Days… 9/10

Allying words to pictures is an ancient, potent and – when done right – irresistibly evocative communications tool: one that can simultaneously tickle like a feather, cut like a scalpel and hit like a steam-hammer. As such, repeated visits to a particular piece of work will even generate different responses depending on the recipient’s mood. If you’re a multi-disciplined, muti-media artist like Nathalie Tierce, fresh challenges must be a hard thing to find, but rewards for successfully breaking new ground are worth the effort… and the viewer’s full attention.

Tierce is a valued and veteran creator across a spectrum of media, triumphing in film and stage production for everyone from the BBC to Disney and Tim Burton to Martin Scorsese. She has crafted music performance designs for Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Rolling Stones, all the while generating a wealth of gallery art, painted commissions and latterly, graphic narratives such as Fairy Tale Remnants and Pulling Weeds From a Cactus Garden.

Perpetually busy, she still finds time to stop and stare; thankfully, human-watching is frequently its own reward, sparking tomes like this slim, enthrallingly revelatory package forensically dissecting human nature in terms of cultural landmarks as scourged by the inescapable mountain of terrors large, small, general and intensely personal.

On show in this portable night gallery are stunning paintings in a range of media, rendered in many styles and manners whilst channelling the artist’s own fear-mongering childhood entertainer-influences. These include Edward Gorey, Maurice Sendak, Heinrich Hoffman (Der Struwwelpeter) and other dark fairy tales, as well as compellingly mature comic creators such as Aline Kominsky Crumb & R. Crumb, Will Eisner and Claire Bretecher.

The artworks explore shades of anxiety, alienation, frustration, longing, disappointment, despondency, hopelessness, instant gratification, loss of confidence, purposelessness, racism, toxic masculinity, neurosis, death and loneliness by suborning cultural touchstones like Popeye, Donald Duck and other Disney icons, mass-media mavens like Bowie and King Kong, beloved childhood toys and even modern lifestyle guru Homer Simpson.

Bracketed by revelatory insights and sharing context in Introduction and Biography, the pictorial allegories When Shock and Horror Collide, Forest Nymph, Capitolina and the Dubious Superhero, The Genie and the Swimmer, Bad Fishing Trip, Slapstick Brawl, Undateable, Crazy Rooster Man, Strange Leader, My Favorite Aliens, The Queen of Hearts Goes Shopping, Acrobat, Fear of Death, Running, What Killed the Dodo?, The Bore, 3am, Pussy Cat, Barfly, Alice in Waitingland (my absolute personal favourite!), Beginning and End, Rascal Dog, Spiraling, Lonely Soldier, Homer Gone Bad, Jittery and utterly appalling endpiece Bathtime, connecting forensic social observation with everyday paranoias we all experience. The result is a mad melange of bêtes noire and unsettled icons du jour, with each condemnatory visual judgement deftly wedded to frankly terrifying texts encapsulating contemporary crisis points, delivered as edgy epigrams and barbed odes.

Chronicles of Fear – Tales of Woe is a mordantly mature message of mirth-masked ministrations exposing the dark underbellies we’re all desperately sucking in and praying no one notices.

A perfect dalliance for thinking bipeds at the end of civilisation, aimed at victims of human nature with a sharp eye and unforgiving temperament – and surely, isn’t that all of us?
© 2023 Indigo Raven. © 2023 Nathalie Tierce. All rights reserved.

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A Spirou and Fantasio Adventure volume 20: The Dark Side of the Z


By Fabien Vehlmann & Yoann, designed by Fred Blanchard, colored by Hubert & translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-103-3 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Boyish hero Spirou (which translates as both “squirrel” and “mischievous” in the Walloon language) was created by French cartoonist Françoise Robert Velter AKA Rob-Vel. This was before the Second World War for Belgian publisher Éditions Dupuis in response to the phenomenal success of Hergé’s Tintin at rival outfit Casterman.

Soon-to-be legendary weekly comic Le Journal de Spirou launched on April 21st 1938 with a rival red-headed lad as lead feature in an anthology which bears his name to this day. The eponymous hero was a plucky bellboy/lift operator employed in the Moustique Hotel – a sly reference to the publisher’s premier periodical Le Moustique. His improbable adventures with pet squirrel Spip gradually evolved into far-reaching, surreal comedy dramas.

Spirou and his chums have helmed the magazine for most of its life, with a cohort of truly impressive creators carrying on Velter’s work, beginning with his wife Blanche “Davine” Dumoulin who took over the strip when her husband enlisted in 1939. She was assisted by Belgian artist Luc Lafnet until 1943, when Dupuis purchased all rights to the property, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm. In 1946, his assistant André Franquin assumed the creative reins: gradually ditching the well-seasoned short gag vignettes format in favour of epic adventure serials. He also expanded the cast, introducing a broad band of engaging regulars and eventually creating phenomenally popular magic animal Marsupilami.

Franquin was followed by Jean-Claude Fournier who updated the feature over nine stirring adventures tapping into the rebellious, relevant zeitgeist of the times: offering tales of environmental concern, nuclear energy, drug cartels and repressive regimes.

By the 1980s, however, the series seemed outdated and lacking direction, so three separate creative teams alternated on it. Eventually overhauled and revitalised by Philippe Vandevelde (writing as Tome) and artist Jean-Richard Geurts – AKA Janry – adapting, referencing and in many ways returned to the beloved Franquin era, the strip found its second wind.

Their sterling efforts revived the floundering feature’s fortunes, generating 14 wonderful albums between 1984 and 1998. As the strip diversified into parallel strands (Spirou’s Childhood/Little Spirou and Guest-Creator Specials A Spirou Story By…), the team on the core feature were succeeded by Jean-David Morvan & José-Luis Munuera. Then Yoann & Vehlmann took over the never-ending procession of amazing adventures…

Multi-award-winning French comics author Fabien Vehlman was born in 1972, began his comics career in 1996 and has been favourably likened to René Goscinny. He’s probably still best known for Green Manor (illustrated by Denis Bodart), Seven Psychopaths with Sean Phillips, Seuls (drawn by Bruno Gazzotti and available in English as Alone), Wondertown with Benoit Feroumont and Isle of 1000,000 Graves with Jason.

Yoann Chivard was born in October 1971 and was drawing non-stop by age five. With qualifications in Plastic Arts and a degree in Communication from the Academy of Fine Arts in Angers, he became a poster advertising artist whilst just dabbling in comics. His creations include Phil Kaos and Dark Boris for British Indie publications Deadline and Inkling, Toto l’Ornithorynque, Nini Rezergoude, La Voleuse de Pere-Fauteuil, Ether Glister and Bob Marone and he has contributed to Trondheim & Sfar’s Donjon.

In 2006, Yoann was the first artist to produce a Spirou et Fantasio one shot Special. It was scripted by Vehlmann…

Cinebook have been publishing Spirou & Fantasio’s exploits since 2009, alternating between the various superb reinterpretations of Franquin and earlier efforts from the great man himself.

When Jijé handed Franquin the strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriqué (LJdS #427, June 20th 1946), the new guy ran with it. Over two decades he enlarged the scope and horizons until it became purely his own. Almost every week fans would meet startling new characters like loyal comrade and rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor and Merlin of mushroom mechanics Pacôme Hégésippe Adélard Ladislas de Champignac – The Count of Champignac…

Spirou and Fantasio became globe-trotting journalists, travelling to dangerously exotic places, uncovering crimes, exploring the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of exotic arch-enemies such as Fantasio’s deranged and wicked cousin Zantafio and that maddest of scientists, Zorglub.

This old school chum and implacable rival of Champignac is an outrageous Bond-movie-tinged villain constantly targeting the Count. A brilliant engineer, his incredible machines are far less dangerous than his mind-controlling “Zorglwave” and his apparently unshakable hunger to conquer Earth and dominate the solar system from a base on the Moon…

This tale – originally in 2011 La face cachée du Z – opens with our happily argumentative chums repairing the collaterally damaged Champignac chateau yet again. Exhausted, they go to indoors to sleep… and wake up in a horrific and tawdry casino resort. Compounding the shocks are weird, painfully unpredictable tricks of gravity, as it’s apparently built only for the super-rich and on the moon!

Worst of all, explaining the transition is smugly sanctimonious old enemy Zorglub…

Still agonisingly hungry for his rival’s approval, the evil genius blathers on about his triumphs and his Great Masterwork since last seen (in volume 18’s Attack of the Zordolts): escaping from dirty, dying Earth to the stars with hot Swedish science students Astrid and Lena. Now they’ve gone off together, leaving the science troll to carve out his interplanetary empire alone.

At least, he would be, if certain funding shortfalls hadn’t forced him into bed with One-percenters who think his citadel could be the most exclusive resort off Earth…

Zorglub still needs to be the virtuous Architect of Humanity’s Future, but the people he has are nothing like the ones he wants: bold Fantasio, ingenious Spirou and brilliant ethically pristine Pacôme de Champignac…

That’s why – for the most logical and moral reasons – he drugged and abducted them…

Without question, the lunar outpost is a technological wonder, with advances and advantages even the kidnapped admire, but the beloved holy Science is being increasingly sidelined, for bigger and better gambling rooms, ski slopes, surfing beaches, sports complexes, nature sideshows and glitzy restaurants.

It does not go down well when Spirou points out that Zorglub could have cleaned up and saved Earth for less money and effort…

Further debate is forestalled when a solar flare is announced and Spirou refuses to join everyone else in radiation-shielded shelters until he recovers his wandering wild pal Spip. Locked out, our hero spectacularly finds a way to survive the cosmic storm, but it’s not for a while that we realise it’s come at a severe mutagenic cost…

The pauper lad’s suicide run across the resort’s attractions was televised and has made him a minor celebrity amongst the movie stars like Blythe Prejlowieky (who soon seduces the kid for her own shocking purposes!), overly-competitive sporting gods like Mike Adibox, faceless money-moguls and flagrantly ostentatious oligarchs such as Igor. Not so much impressed as cautious is the investors’ appointed fixer and ultimate mercenary Poppy Bronco. He’s recognized something in the survivor that bodes badly for all…

The sun starts setting on the project after Champignac chides Zorglub for the worthlessness of his achievements and surrendering of his principled dreams. It coincides with a series of potentially lethal sabotage attempts and – defined by true devotion to their precious skins – the one-percenters commandeer the transport back to Earth, with only few such as Blyth and Igor choosing to stay behind with the peons and paid staff…

Finally rid of his annoying paymasters, Zorglub then executes his long-term plans but is completely unprepared for what happens to Spirou when the lunar night begins. Bronco isn’t though and organises a monster-hunt through the abandoned resort and across the moon…

The outcome is tense, gripping unexpected and so very To Be Continued.

Rocket-paced, action-packed, compellingly convoluted and with just the right blend of perfectly blending helter-skelter excitement and sheer daftness, The Dark Side of the Z is a terrific witty romp to delight devotees of easy-going adventure, drawn with beguiling style and seductive energy. This is pure cartoon gold, truly deserving of reaching the widest audience possible.
Original edition © Dupuis, 2011 by Vehlmann & Yoann. All rights reserved. English translation 2023 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Suburban Nightmares: The Science Experiment


By Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas, John Van Bruggen & various (NBM)
ISBN: 978-0-91834-880-7 (Album PB)

Anticipating the imminent release – and upcoming review of Michael Cherkas’ Red Harvest – I thought I’d put in a plug/request for another of the stunningly different comics he and his creative partners pioneered in the antediluvian 80s and neurotically self-absorbed 90s. Here you go…

During the vast expansion of opportunity and outpouring of innovation that graced comics during the 1980s, much of the “brain-rotting trash” or “silly kid’s stuff” stigma that had plagued the medium was finally dispelled. America started catching up to the rest of the world: acknowledging sequential narrative as an actual Capital “A” Art Form, and their doors opened wide open for foreigners to make a few waves too…

One of the era’s most critically acclaimed and inescapably intoxicating features sprang from semi-Canadian Renegade Press which set up shop in the USA at the start of the black & white comics bubble in 1984. They quickly established a reputation for excellence, offering a strong line of creator-based properties including some genuinely remarkable series such as Ms. Tree, Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, Flaming Carrot, Normalman, and a compulsively backwards-looking Cold War/UFO/paranoia-driven delight: The Silent Invasion.

That last was a stunningly stylish conspiracy saga, bolting 1950s domestic terrors (invasion by Reds; invasion by aliens; invasion by new ideas…) onto Film Noir chic: and employing 20-20 hindsight to produce phenomenally fresh, enticing delights for the so-similar Reagan era. From here and now, it’s never seemed more distressingly likely that politics, if not all history, is cursed to repeat certain cycles and strategies…

The series was collected in four monochrome tomes, re-presenting the lead story wherein inspired co-creators Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock concocted a cunning confection combining all the coolest genre elements of classic cult sci-fi, horror, spy, conspiracy theory, crime, romance and even situation comedies…

Of equal if not greater interest (to me at least) were the ancillary back-up tales utilising the same milieu and themes. These proved popular enough to springboard into their own short-lived title and ultimately two collections of their own…

Recently, just as the world teetered even further and faster on the edge of a multiple-choice test of imminent dooms – and with America once more enduring internecine struggle amongst the citizenry, corruption, cover-ups at every level of government and the press under attack from the people and traditions it seeks to inform and safeguard – The Silent Invasion was remastered, revised, re-released and continued in a quartet of so-collectible tomes…

1950s America was a hugely iconic and paradoxical time. Incomparable scientific and cultural advancements, great wealth and desperate, intoxicating optimism inexplicably arose amidst an atmosphere of immense social, cultural, racial, sexual and political repression with an increasingly paranoid populace seeing conspiracy and subversive attacks in every shadow and corner of the rest of the world.

Such an insular melting pot couldn’t help but be fertile soil for imaginative outsiders to craft incisive, evocative tales dripping with convoluted mystery and taut tension, especially when wedded to the nation’s fantastic – and ongoing – obsessions with rogue science, flying saucers, gangsterism and conspiracies…

They were also ridiculously obsessed with hot babes and bust sizes, but that’s not really a mystery, is it?

In 1983 the temptation for a little mischief was clearly too much for the USA’s less panicky northern neighbours, and Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas & John Van Bruggen brilliantly mined the era for these stunning, stylish and clever yarns, subsequently pulling off the impossible trick of re-capturing a fleeting zeitgeist…

This first superbly oversized and inexplicably out-of-print monochrome tome (a whopping 280 x 205mm) gathers that stand-alone support material from The Silent Invasion and Suburban Nightmares comic books. Hancock, Cherkas & Van Bruggen playfully swap jobs and – with a few invited guests – pilfer and homage other stylisations and forms to produce a wicked wealth of twisted tales and shocking stories that will, even now, astound fans of classic genres cited above…

The macabre, mirth, mood and menace commences with eponymous 4-part thriller ‘The Science Experiment’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks & letters from Cherkas) set in the early 1950s boom years, wherein an idyllic new town built on the edge of an operational government atomic bomb testing site slowly reveals its terrible secret…

In ‘Welcome to Green Valley’, the latest ultra-modern planned community in Nevada accepts new school science teacher Sam Donaldson and his wife Ruth with open arms. They’re the perfect nuclear family, with son Rusty already making friends at Hoover High and another baby on the way. Soon, they’re all getting on famously with everybody – or at least the adults are…

However, soon after flirtatious neighbour Theresa Morrow confides to Ruth that she’s also expecting, the poor thing has a minor fall. When the concerned Donaldsons warn the doctor, they receive the tragic but impossible news that Theresa has inexplicably died… and was “never pregnant”…

In the shadow of a fresh mushroom cloud, ‘An Ill Wind blows in Green Valley’ finds bereft Barry Morrow turning to drink whilst Sam meets Hospital Administrator Dr. Stewart Carver: a keen fan and follower of the regular nuclear spectacle occurring 50 miles beyond his office window…

Still unsettled, Sam heads for the local library and checks out some books about radiation, unaware that by doing so he’s made it onto a very special secret list…

His concern increases after inadvertently learning his predecessor at Hoover High consulted the same tomes before mysteriously quitting and disappearing, but it’s Principal Daniels who panics when Donaldson finds that some of old Charlie Simmer’s notes and journals are languishing at school secretary Madge’s house…

Too busy and wrapped up to help Rusty with his science project, Sam goes to Madge’s house only to find she’s been burgled. Although the place has been ransacked, all that’s missing are Simmer’s journals, but before he can process it all, Barry attacks him, accusing Donaldson of having an affair with Theresa…

‘Dark Secrets of Green Valley’ sees Sam barracked by Principal Daniels, another atomic apologist who can’t contemplate any thought that radioactive fallout might be harmful. As Ruth has an ante-natal check-up, Carver confronts Sam, accusing him of scaremongering, and confides that the hospital has been running a government-sponsored survey into radiation. For years.

And has decreed atomic tests as categorically harmless…

Sam is unconvinced, especially as he has noticed how few young kids live in the bustling town. Obsessing over the fact that the Hospital’s huge maternity unit has only one baby in it, he leaves with Ruth, but all such thoughts are driven from him when Barry tries to run them down in the parking lot…

Horrific answers come in the shocking conclusion when now rational and repentant Barry meets Sam: explaining his own part in a shocking conspiracy to cover up what radiation does to foetuses and the outrageous, draconian steps taken by a panicking government desperate not to lose face… especially after spending so much building their City of Tomorrow…

The mysteriously low conception rate is explained at last, but when Sam points out how Barry is still deluding himself and underestimating the lengths Carver has gone to, ‘The Fate of Green Valley’ inevitably culminates in a welter of blood and death…

After the compelling tension and trauma of the title tale, ‘Be Home Before it gets Dark!’ (scripted by Hancock and printed from Van Bruggen’s unlinked pencils) switches tone if not time-period. Here a little lad desperate to prove his bravery stays out late with the big kids and learns that sometimes there really are monsters in the night…

‘Buster Takes a Nap’ describes problems occurring when a provident, prudent and friendly family promise too many friends and neighbours a place in their brand-new bomb shelter. Of course, they’ll never really have to honour those pledges, will they?

With Cherkas tackling all the art chores, ‘The Inheritance’ recounts a little lad’s tale of the scary man next door. We all know about those grouches: shouting, cursing, destroying kid’s toys and digging the gardens in the middle of the night, but this one is REALLY mean. Perhaps that’s why so many kids run away from home and are never seen again?

Stanley Morrison was ‘Just another Joe’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks Cherkas): a decent, loyal American in suburban Apple Hill who sold insurance and spent his spare time denouncing colleagues and neighbours to the FBI for un-American activities. Surely it’s just coincidence that they all happen to be more successful or popular than him? Of course, a guy like that is really hard to live with, but his abused, long-suffering wife is a decent, loyal American too…

Veteran inker Bob Smith joined Van Bruggen & Hancock for the paranoid tribute to the earth-shattering advent of Rock ‘n’ Roll as Mrs. Ellen Nelson ruminates on why her son is acting so weird. What makes him hide in his room for hours at a time? Might it be Martian abduction, atomic mutation, government meddling, commie mind-manipulation or something even worse ‘For all we Know’?

Bob Nevin always took the 7:13 train to his job in the city but his tidy, happy life began to instantly and inexplicably unravel the day he caught ‘The Seven-Thirty-Three’ – a surreal and chilling homage to The Twilight Zone, pencilled by Cherkas & inked by Van Bruggen, whilst edgily sardonic ‘Suburban Blight’ sees the illustrators trading places to recount all-out war between a man and the dandelions that desecrate his otherwise perfect lawn…

This superbly incisive and trenchant initial collection concludes with Hancock & Cherkas’ fantasy ‘June 1953’, wherein diligent, hard-working Larry Hillman doesn’t come home one night. When he turns up a day later, Larry is a changed man. Inexplicably happy, calm and friendly, he quits his job, ignores all responsibilities and begs his family to come with him when the aliens who abducted him return in a month to take them all to the perfect world of Alpha Centauri…

Crafted in a boldly adventurous range of visual styles and long overdue for revival, these beguiling and enthralling Suburban Nightmares (and the follow-up from 1996) comprise a sublimely witty gateway to an eerily familiar yet comfortably exotic era: one no fan of thriller fiction can afford to ignore.
Suburban Nightmares: The Science Experiment © 1990 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. Other stories © 1986, 1987, 1988 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. All rights reserved. NBM Publishing.

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Bad Magic – A Skullduggery Pleasant Graphic Novel


By Derek Landy, PJ Holden, Matt Soffe, Rob Jones & Pye Parr (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
ISBN: 978-000-858-5785 (TPB/Digital edition)

Have you heard of Skulduggery Pleasant? What about his biographer Derek Landy?

The latter is an occasional comics writer (All-Out Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America) who moonlights as a best-selling Irish author, thanks mostly to the addictive exploits of the former. Since 2007, Landy has detailed the training of mystic troubleshooter Valkyrie Cain by a veteran spook chooser/animated skeleton calling himself… Skulduggery Pleasant…

Other than my heartfelt recommendation, what more do you need to go get some of that? By my count there’s 15 novels thus far, with another due early next year. Technically, it was all supposed to end after three trilogies, but the only thing that can’t die or be killed is soaring success…

With snippets, novellas, sidebar stories and the like popping up when least expected (surely the best time?) it was inevitable that the haunt-hunters would migrate to comics too, and it’s fair to say that the result is a real cracker…

Scripted by Landy, limned by P.J. Holden (Rogue Trooper, Judge Dredd, Warhammer Monthly, The Moon Looked Down and Laughed, coloured by Matt Soffe and lettered by Rob Jones, the story opens in rural Termoncara, a rustic outpost that just happens to be the unsung murder capital of Ireland. Somehow, though, nobody outside seems to notice…

Inside the idyllic enclave of ordinary folk, all is not happy – especially for young Jamie, who truly regrets saying to Ethan what he did. Now Jamie’s despised: kept out of school and accused of killing his best friend. Moreover, he’s become the focus of enough hate, spite, hostility and intolerance to move mountains…

One month later, two flashy strangers arrogantly breeze into town, ruffling feathers, poking under stones and asking questions that better… beings… have died for. Soon, Valkyrie and Skulduggery are baiting and beating up a succession of racist, homophobic louts of all ages. Refusing to learn, these decent folk regularly confront them, but it’s just useful for misdirection as the strangers continue the actual task of finding out what kind of monster has turned a sleepy hamlet into the mystic equivalent of the Somme…

The root cause of all the grief is a deep mystery going back twenty years, and as the eerie investigators probe deeper and dodge multiple mundane and magical murder attempts, it becomes clear that it might be more than even Pleasant can handle…

Sadly, when they do unearth toxic, mystic agent provocateur Mr Friendly and his thuggish thaumaturgic pals, that proves all too true, but this kind of buried trauma can generate unlikely friends as well as appalling foes and in the end it’s all up to Jaimie to make a life- and reality-changing choice…

Fun, thrilling, smartly scripted and powerfully making a stand for diversity and inclusion in the face of intimidation and ignorance, even if this is your first encounter with the worlds of Skulduggery Pleasant, it one you will adore and never forget…
Text © Derek Landy 2023. Art © P.J. Holden 2023. Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy. Skulduggery Pleasant logo™ HarperCollinsPublishers. All rights reserved.

Bad Magic will be published 28th September 2023 and is available for pre-order now. If you’re of a sociable bent, there is a series of nine meet-&-greet events – such as a signing at Forbidden Planet Megastore London on 28th September and Henley Literary Festival on October 1st – so why not check out www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk for precise details, hmm?

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The Baker Street Peculiars


By Roger Langridge, Andrew Hirsh & Fred Stresing (KaBOOM!)
ISBN: 978-1-60886-928-2 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-61398-599-1

Roger Langridge is a very talented gentleman with a uniquely beguiling way of telling stories. He has mastered every aspect of the comics profession from lettering (Dr. Who) to writing (Thor: The Mighty Avenger) to illustration (Knuckles the Malevolent Nun, Zoot!). When combining his gifts – as Fred the Clown, Popeye, Abigail and the Snowman – the approbation, accolades and glittering prizes such as Eisner and Harvey Awards can’t come fast enough.

He is also a bloody genius at making folk laugh…

The Baker Street Peculiars started life as an all-ages comicbook miniseries before being gathered in a titanic detective tome and craftily references a glittering reservoir of cool concepts encompassing the mythology of Sherlock Holmes, 1930s London, cosy crime mysteries, kid gangs and rampaging monster movies. Moreover, thanks to Langridge’s keen ear for idiom and slang, every page resonates with hilarious dialogue any lover of old films or British sitcoms will find themselves helplessly chortling over – if not actually joining in with…

Blimey, Guv’ner!

Illustrated by Andy Hirsch (Science Comics: Dogs, Varmints, Adventure Time, Regular Show) and coloured by the inestimable Fred Stresing, ‘The Case of the Cockney Golem’ opens in foggy old London Town circa 1933, currently enduring an odd spot of bother. Exceedingly odd…

‘A Beast in Baker Street’ reveals that famous landmark statues are going missing. Now, with one of the bronze lions in Trafalgar Square coming to life and bolting away down Charing Cross Road – unlike the crowds rushing about in panic – three wayward tykes (and a dog) chase after it. Soon they are all embroiled in the story of a lifetime… perhaps several lifetimes…

Tailor’s granddaughter Molly Rosenberg, orphan street thief Rajani Malakar and neglected filthy rich posh-boy Humphrey Fforbes-Davenport (and his canine valet Wellington) are all out long after bedtime and keen on a spot of adventure. Having individually chanced upon the commotion, they spontaneously unite to doggedly track the animated absconder to Baker Street where they enjoy a chance encounter with a legendary investigator…

Molly is especially intrigued: she’s read every exploit of the famous consulting detective. When he roundly rubbishes their claim of moving statues – and claims to be too busy with other cases – she angrily suggests that they act as his assistants. The detective quite quickly complies, but only to conceal an incredible secret not even his fanciful new deputies could ever imagine…

As Molly’s grandpa suffers another visit from thugs running an extortion racket for the nefarious Chippy Kipper – “the Pearly King of Brick Lane” – the kids’ bizarre quest continues in ‘The Lion, the Lord and the Landlady’ after the junior sleuths meet up at 221B Baker Street. Although consoled with a fine meal, they are disappointed to find their hoped-for mentor absent.

Receiving further instructions from the great detective’s elderly cook Mrs. Hudson, the youthful team learn that Mr Holmes believes the statues are simply being stolen and that he wishes the dauntless children to post guard on Boadicea at Westminster Bridge and Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square…

Their sentinel duties bear strange fruit, however, as East End thugs perform a strange and dangerous ritual and the beloved tourist attractions come to menacing life. As the kids follow the ambulatory landmarks back to Kipper’s hideout, Molly strives to recall a story her grandfather used to tell her: a fable about a Rabbi in old Prague who used a scroll to bring a giant avenging clay statue to life…

As the colossal Chippy shares his own unique origins with his cohort of thugs and sculptures, the youngsters sneak in. Swifty captured and stuck in a dungeon, they can only watch in horror as Kipper uses ancient magic to make a new kind of monster. ‘The Old, Hard Cell’ brings the plot to a bubbling boil as the terrified tykes swallow simmering resentments and work together. Even as they escape their current predicament, elsewhere, other, more mature truth-seekers are compelled to change their stubbornly-held opinions…

Someone else with a keen eye and suspicious mind is enterprising lady journalist Hetty Jones of The Mirror. Her own patient, diligent enquiries have brought her to Baker Street in time to collaborate with the aged detective-in-charge. With all eventualities except the impossible exhausted, the grown-ups must accept the truth and soon track down the missing lion. It’s probably too late, however, as an army of animated marble and bronze artefacts rampage through London towards the East End, with only three nippers (and a dog) ready to confront them…

With Chippy Kipper in the vanguard, the chilling regiment invades Molly’s home turf but ‘The Battle of Brick Lane’ is no one-sided affair. One plucky minor has remembered the secret of the Rabbi’s Golem and conceived a daring stratagem to immobilise the monstrous invaders. As for Kipper’s human thugs, they’ve severely underestimated the solidarity of hundreds of poor-but-honest folk pushed just a bit too far, one time too many…

When the dust settles, Sherlock Holmes has one last surprise for his squad of juvenile surrogates…

Adding to the charm and cheer is a cover-&-variants gallery by Hirsch & Hannah Christenson, sketch and design feature ‘Meet the Peculiars’ and a delirious sequence of all-Langridge strips starring his unique interpretation of the Great Detective Himself in ‘The Peculiar Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’.

Reverently refencing and spoofing beloved old films and our oh-so-idiosyncratic manners and parlance with a loving ear for an incongruous laugh, The Baker Street Peculiars is a sheer triumph of spooky whimsy, reinventing what was great about classic British storytelling. Fast, funny, slyly witty and with plenty of twists, it is an absolute delight from start to finish and another sublime example of comics at its most welcoming.
™ & © 2016 Roger Langridge & Andrew Hirsch All rights reserved.