Category: Horror Stories

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Blackhawk Album #1


By Dick Dillin, Chuck Cuidera, Jack Kirby, Sheldon Moldoff, George Roussos, Mort Meskin, Nick Cardy, Frank Frazetta, Bill Ely, Bob Brown & various (Strato Publications)
No ISBN:

Here’s another long-lost oddity of the eccentric and exotic British comics market that might be of passing interest to curio collectors and unrepentant comics nerds like me.

The early days of the American comicbook industry were awash with both opportunity and talent and those factors happily coincided with a vast population hungry for cheap entertainment.

The new medium of comicbooks had no acknowledged fans or collectors; only a large, transient market open to all varied aspects of yarn-spinning and tale-telling – a situation which publishers believed maintained right up to the middle of the 1960s. Thus, in 1940 even though America was loudly, proudly isolationist and more than a year away from any active inclusion in World War II, creators like Will Eisner and publishers like Everett M. (“Busy”) Arnold felt Americans were ready for a themed anthology title Military Comics.

Nobody was ready for Blackhawk.

Military #1 launched at the end of May 1941 (with an August cover-date) and included in its gritty, two-fisted line-up Death Patrol by Jack Cole, Miss America, Fred Guardineer’s Blue Tracer, X of the Underground, The Yankee Eagle, Q-Boat, Shot and Shell, Archie Atkins and Loops and Banks by “Bud Ernest” (actually aviation-nut and unsung comics genius Bob Powell), but none of these strips, not even Cole’s surreal and suicidal team of hell-bent fliers, had the instant cachet and sheer glamour appeal of Eisner and Powell’s “Foreign Legion of the Air” led by the charismatic Dark Knight of the airways known only as Blackhawk.

Chuck Cuidera, already famed for creating the original Blue Beetle for Fox, drew ‘the Origin of Blackhawk’ for the first issue, wherein a lone pilot fighting the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 was shot down by Nazi Ace Von Tepp; only to rise bloody and unbowed from his plane’s wreckage to form the World’s greatest team of airborne fighting men…

This mysterious paramilitary squadron of unbeatable fliers, dedicated to crushing injustice and smashing the Axis war-machine, battled on all fronts during the war and – once the embattled nations had notionally laid down their arms – stayed together to crush international crime, Communism and every threat to democracy from alien invaders to supernatural monsters, consequently becoming one of the true milestones of the US industry.

Eisner wrote the first four Blackhawk episodes before moving on and Cuidera stayed until issue #11 – although he triumphantly returned in later years. There were many melodramatic touches that made the Blackhawks so memorable in the eyes of a wide-eyed populace of thrill-hungry kids. There was the cool, black leather uniforms and peaked caps. The unique, outrageous – but authentic – Grumman F5F-1 Skyrocket planes they flew from their secret island base and of course their eerie battle-cry “Hawkaaaaa!”

But perhaps the oddest idiosyncrasy to modern readers was that they had their own song (would you be more comfortable if we started calling it an international anthem?) which Blackhawk, André, Stanislaus, Olaf, Chuck, Hendrickson and Chop-Chop would sing as they plummeted into battle. (To see the music and lyrics check out the Blackhawk Archives edition but just remember this catchy number was written for seven really tough leather-clad guys to sing while dodging bullets…

Quality adapted well to peacetime demands: superheroes Plastic Man and Doll Man lasted far longer than most of their Golden Age mystery man compatriots and rivals, whilst the rest of the company line turned to tough-guy crime, war, western, horror and racy comedy titles.

The Blackhawks soared to even greater heights, starring in their own movie serial in 1952. However the hostility of the marketplace to mature-targeted titles after the adoption of the self-censorious Comics Code was a clear sign of the times and as 1956 ended Arnold sold most of his comics properties to National Publishing Periodicals (now DC) and turned his attentions to becoming a general magazine publisher.

Most of the purchases were a huge boost to National’s portfolio, with titles such as GI Combat, Heart Throbs and Blackhawk lasting uninterrupted well into the 1970s (GI Combat survived until in 1987), whilst the unceasing draw and potential of characters such as Uncle Sam, the assorted Freedom Fighters costumed pantheon, Kid Eternity and Plastic Man have paid dividends ever since.

The “Black Knights” had also been a fixture of the British comics reprint industry since the early 1950s, with distributor-turned publisher Thorpe & Porter releasing 37 huge (68-page, whilst the US originals only boasted 36 pages) monochrome anthologies to entrance thrill-starved audiences under their Strato imprint.

This commodious British collection combines a flurry of tales featuring the Air Aces, balanced out by an assortment of mystery and science fiction tales from DC’s wide selection of weird adventure anthologies (primarily culled in this instance from September and October 1957) and kicks off with the contents of (US) Blackhawk #117 and ‘The Fantastic Mr. Freeze’ wherein the paramilitary aviators battle a chilling criminal maniac with a penchant for cold crimes before tackling smugglers masquerading as Vikings in ‘The Menace of the Dragon Boat’.

‘How Not to Enjoy a Vacation’ was seen in many places; a Public Service feature probably written by Jack Schiff and definitely illustrated by Rueben Moreira, followed by prose poser ‘I Was a Human Missile’, relating a technician’s account of when he was trapped during the test firing of a missile – and how he escaped – after which ‘The Seven Little Blackhawks’ become the targets of a ruthless mastermind exploiting their fame and reputations to plug his new movie…

Regrettably most records are lost so scripter-credits are not available (likely candidates include Ed “France” Herron, Arnold Drake, George Kashdan, Jack Miller, Bill Woolfolk, Jack Schiff and/or Dave Wood) but the art remained in the capable hands of veteran illustrators Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera: a team who meshed so seamlessly that they often traded roles with few any the wiser…

Moreover although broadly formulaic, the gritty cachet, exotic crime locales, Sci Fi underpinnings and international jurisdiction of the team always allowed great internal variety within the tales…

Here however the uniformed escapades pause as House of Mystery #67 (October 1957) offers the sorry saga of ‘The Wizard of Water’ – a scurvy conman who accidentally gets hold of King Neptune’s trident as drawn by Bill Ely – and, after an always-engaging ‘Science Says You’re Wrong’ page and text terror tale ‘The Mummy’s Revenge’, counts down ‘Five Days to Doom’ (illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff from House of Mystery #66, September 1957) wherein a printer discovers a seemingly-prophetic calendar and uses it to track down aliens planning to destroy Earth.

‘The Legend of the Golden Lion’ (HoM #67 again and illustrated by George Roussos) then described a Big Game Hunter’s confrontation with a leonine legend of biblical pedigree whilst from the same issue the ever-excellent Bob Brown depicted a weird science-tinged crime caper about ‘The Man Who Made Giants’ before the Blackhawks soared back into action battling ‘The Bandit with a Thousand Nets’ – yet another audacious costumed thief with a novel gimmick (from Blackhawk #118, October 1957).

That issue also provided ‘The Blackhawk Robinson Crusoes’ wherein the Pacific Ocean proved to be the real enemy when an accident marooned the Aviators as they hunted the nefarious pirate Sting Ray, followed by much-reprinted western classic ‘The Town Jesse James Couldn’t Rob’ limned by Frank Frazetta and itself a reprint from Jimmy Wakely #4.

Text feature ‘From Caveman to Classroom’ charted the history of map-making after which Blackhawk #118 continues to completion as ‘The Human Clay Pigeons’ found the entire squadron helpless targets of international assassin/spymaster the Sniper, leaving the rest of this collection to astound and amuse with more genre-specific tales such as the Roussos illustrated psychological crime thriller ‘Sinister Shadow’ from House of Mystery #66 Sept 1957.

Also in that issue is Jack Kirby’s eerie mystery of best friends turned rivals ‘The Thief of Thoughts’, Moldoff’s jungle trek chiller ‘The Bell that Tolled Danger’ and Mort Meskin & Roussos’ tragic supernatural romance ‘The Girl in the Iron Mask’.

Rounding out the collection are selections from House of Mystery #64 (July 1957) beginning with Nick Cardy’s irony-drenched riff on the curse of Midas wherein a criminal subjects himself to ‘The Golden Doom’ – pausing briefly for Jack Miller’s prose expose of mind-readers ‘A Clever Code’ (from HoM #66) and another Public Service ad with teen star Binky explaining ‘How to Make New Friends’ (Schiff & Bob Oksner) – before Bill Ely delivers a murderous revelation regarding ‘The Artist Who Painted Dreams’.

A brace of Henry Boltinoff gag pages starring ‘Professor Eureka’ and ‘Moolah the Mystic’ then segues into Bernard Baily’s macabre depiction of criminal obsession in ‘My Terrible Twin’ (HoM #64) to bring the fun to a close on a spooky high note.

These stories were produced – and reprinted here – at a pivotal moment in comics history: the last showing of broadly human-scaled action-heroes and two-fisted mystery-solvers in a marketplace increasingly filling up with gaudily clad wondermen and superwomen. The iconic blend of weary sophistication and glorious, juvenile bravado where a few good men with wits, firearms and an occasional trusty animal companion could overcome all odds was fading in the light of spectacular scenarios and ubiquitous alien encounters.

These are splendidly engaging tales that could beguile and amaze a whole new audience if only publishers would give them a chance. But whilst they won’t your best bet is to seek out books like this in specialist comic shops or online.

Go on; let your fingers do the hard work…

Despite there being no copyrights included in this tome, I think it’s safe to assume:
All material © 1957, 1958, 2015 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Ghost Stories of M. R. James


By M. R. James, illustrated by Rosalind Caldecott, selected & edited by Michael Cox (Tiger Books International)
ISBN: 978-1-85501-141-0

These days, thanks to cinema, television and latterly the internet, our deepest emotions are mostly prodded and provoked by creators through sound and most especially by visuals, but for the longest time artists got into our heads through words and pictures, letting our own imaginations do all the damage…

A truly Great British tradition is the Christmas Ghost Story and the art form – at least in its literary iteration – has never been better expressed than in the cool, dry, chillingly understated tales of scholar and cleric M. R. James.

A series of BBC TV adaptations appeared sporadically from the late 1960s onwards, thoroughly warping the unformed minds of a generation of kids like me and Mark Gatiss who, in fact, revived the tradition in 2013 with his dramatisation of The Tractate Middoth on December 25th 2013 with A Ghost Story for Christmas…

There are naturally plenty of compilations of the macabre master’s creepy canon – although as far as I’m aware, no complete collection yet – but a treasured favourite of mine, incorporating the majority of his most infamous spellbinders, is this copiously illustrated commemorative hardback from 1986 which also offers a series of superb, atmosphere-evoking yet sublimely understated pencil drawings from Rosalind Caldecott for each eerie episode.

So successful were M. R. James’ painfully small canon of stories that he has been given the honour of defining a genre. The “Jamesian” style revolves around and usually includes a familiar if bucolic setting such as an English hamlet, manorial estate or seaside town, ancient European edifices like an abbey or university library where quiet, naive bookish types finds antiquarian books or ancient artefacts and arouse the ire of something far better left dead and forgotten…

In this scholarly tome – befitting a man as well known for his educational, scholastic and ecumenical achievements as his horrorist hobby – the timeless terror tales are preceded by an epic and entrancing biography of Montague Rhodes James OM, MA, FBA (1862-1936) who, when not disturbing the dreams of a nation and empire, was a medieval researcher and latterly Provost of King’s College Cambridge and Eton College.

His life and works are here traced with meticulous precision in a photo-packed, illustration-augmented ‘Introduction by Michael Cox’ before begins a cavalcade of subdued, understated, ferociously evocative tales wherein comfortable elements of the ordinary and safely commonplace are over and again suddenly compromised by the relentless howling unknown…

The prose pilgrimage begins with ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book’ (first published in National Review, March 1895) as a student and collector of scriptural antiquities describes the close call he had when offered an illicit mediaeval manuscript volume. He had no qualms about purchasing the relic until he saw what was hidden at the back…

This is followed by the classic ‘Lost Hearts’ (debuting in Pall Mall Magazine, December 1895 and adapted into a TV masterpiece by Robin Chapman for the BBC’s Christmas top-slot in 1973) which describes how young orphan Stephen is adopted by his elderly cousin at a remote mansion. His extremely distant benefactor is obsessed with immortality but the truly disturbing problem is the frequent peripheral glimpses of a gypsy girl and Italian boy with holes in their chests…

A far more sedate yet equally sinister situation unfolds when a university museum curator acquires a rare artwork in ‘The Mezzotint’ (from Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, 1904). The local scene depicted seemingly changes whenever people look away and elements of the subtly shifting picture bear ghastly echoes of a local atrocity from years past…

From that same landmark anthology volume comes ‘The Ash-Tree’ which relates how the inheritor of an ancient and much-cursed country estate discovers to his horror the Things which have caused so much misery over the centuries and where they’ve been hiding, whilst a church historian staying at a Danish inn uncovers true terror through the uncanny appearances and disappearances of both his sometime neighbours and even room ‘Number 13’ (GSoaA, 1904) itself…

A deservedly legendary and infamous tale from GSoaA, 1904, ‘“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”’ is one of James’ most celebrated chillers which, as adapted by Jonathan Miller in 1968, set the tone and format for the BBC’s seasonal horror-offerings for decades to come.

The original prose piece concerns a stuffy, solitary academic who discovers an old whistle whilst poking about in a ruin once occupied by the Knights Templar. He then unleashes something incomprehensible and malign after he blows on it…

‘The Tractate Middoth’ (More Ghost Stories, 1911) details how a college librarian is sucked into a protracted family legal dispute over a lost book being sought by both the living and the dead whilst ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ (Contemporary Review, 1910) reveals how when the old Archdeacon dies in mysterious circumstances his successor becomes beguiled with – or is that stalked by? – a certain set of carved seats in the Cathedral…

A local scandal and subsequent court case finds the Squire accused of murdering a young girl he had been dallying with in ‘Martin’s Close’ (More Ghost Stories, 1911), but events take a strange turn after the prosecution enter into evidence the victim’s ghostly testimony, before ‘Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance’ (MGS, 1911) explains how a beneficiary’s windfall comes with a few unpleasant strings attached: specifically, a maze and Folly Temple which form part of his new estate and operate in a most bizarre and predatory fashion…

James preferred to distance himself and generally his story-narrators from the actual arcane action and this is seldom better seen than in the relatively lengthy and convoluted tale of ‘The Residence at Whitminster’ (A Thin Ghost, 1919) wherein the new modern rector at an ancient ecclesiastical home idly delves into the death of two children in 1730 and uncovers generations of tragedy locked in a simple old chest, unleashes unquiet spirits in the manse and lets loose demonic insects…

Another scholar investigating past parlous events informs ‘A Neighbour’s Landmark’ (The Eton Chronic, May 1925) wherein a visit to a friend’s country seat uncovers the reasons ancient woodland Betton Wood was dug up and ploughed over. However the eerie ghostly screams that used to emanate from it can still rattle the unwary…

‘A View From a Hill’ (The London Mercury, May 1925) then recounts how a historian on holiday visits a chum and borrows some very odd old binoculars. With them he rambles to a local beauty spot and sees something impossible and out of joint: an ancient tower and gibbet which are no longer situated on notorious local landmark Gallows Hill. …And then he sees through those ancient lenses impossible people moving with deadly purpose…

Minor classic ‘A Warning to the Curious’ was written after the Great War (The London Mercury, August 1925) and is one of James’ most bleak, chilling and hope-abandoned offerings. It tells of Paxton, an antiquarian/archaeologist on holiday in a Suffolk coastal resort who happens upon an important relic…

Unable to resist the lure of the long-lost Saxon Crown of Anglia – one of three fabled to protect the nation from invasion – he disinters and takes the artefact but is subsequently and relentlessly stalked by its sinister supernatural sentinel.

By the time Paxton unburdens himself to our narrator it is almost too late and, although he is convinced to restore the Crown to its resting place, his sin can be expiated only by occult judgement…

This sublimely supernal feast of fear and uneasy elucidation concludes with the disquieting and quasi-autobiographical ‘A Vignette’ which first appeared in The London Mercury in November 1936. It discloses how, on a quiet day in a typically idyllic English Country Garden, a sensitive young boy saw something he could not explain and felt somehow compelled to draw closer rather than run away…

This erudite edition also includes full ‘Publication Details’ of where and when the terror tales originated and where they were subsequently collected, whilst ‘Notes to the Introduction’ provide timely background to the storyteller’s eclectic life and everything ends with a tantalising ‘Select Bibliography’ to get your own antiquarian juices flowing…

Calmly disquieting, approachably uneasy and superbly scary, these are stories every fear fan should know and, whether through this illustrated item or any later collection, you must read these tales.
Copyright this edition © 1986 Nicholas Enterprises Limited. This edition published 1991 All rights reserved.

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The Magician’s Wife


By Jerome Charyn & François Boucq, with Foreword by Drew Ford (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80049-3

Although all comics evolved from products designed to appeal to a broad variety of age ranges, we have finally reached a stage in our culture where individual stories and collaborations always intended by their creators to appeal to older or intellectually select audiences are now commonplace and acceptable.

What that means in simple terms is that complex, controversial and challenging graphic narratives which have come and largely gone unheralded now have an ideal opportunity to reach the mass audiences they were intended for and who deserve them…

A sublime case-in-point is this astounding, groundbreaking and compellingly wonderful transatlantic collaboration originally released in 1986, and which shone brightly but briefly; winning immense critical acclaim and glittering prizes from the comics cognoscenti yet barely troubling the mass public consciousness within or outside our particular art form’s bubble. Now after nearly thirty years in fabled obscurity it gets another chance to become the universally lauded masterpiece it deserves to be…

La Femme du magicien by American crime author and graphic novelist Jerome Charyn (Johnny One-Eye, I Am Abraham, Citizen Sidel series, Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories) and French illustrator François Boucq (Bouncer, Sente, Bouche de diable, Billy Budd, KGB) won numerous awards at the Angoulême International Comics Festival and elsewhere and even enjoyed a rare English Language translation in 1988 before dropping out of comics consciousness. Now their breakthrough masterpiece is back, visually remastered and re-translated by Charyn himself.

Following a piquant personal reminiscence in the Foreword by Dover Editor Drew Ford and intimate insights from the author in ‘A Note to the American Reader’ the twice-told tale begins, draped in dangerous and disturbing overtones of magic realism and tracing a chillingly unique co-dependent relationship between a servant’s daughter and a mercurial, mother-oppressed young man who always wanted to make magic …

Events begin to unfold in Saratoga Springs in 1956 as a weary jockey stumbles into an eerie old house and befriends precocious little Rita, daughter of the cook/housekeeper. The florabundant old pile is redolent of suppressed hostility and perilously-pent tensions, with a macabre old harpy ruling the roost but also teems with strange sights and obscure illusions thanks to the creepy son of the house’s owner.

Edmund is a scary and charming teenager who knows lots of legerdemain and many tricks of the prestidigitator’s art…

Little Rita daily lives with a host of animals (real or imagined?) but is only truly disturbed by Edmund’s outrageous attentions. He says it’s the proper way for a magician to court his future bride…

Feeling distressingly like observers of grooming-in-action, we see the child is fascinated by his hot-and-cold attentions, making her shocking discovery of Edmund’s callous sexual dalliances with her blowsy, lumpen mother all the more hurtful…

Four years later they are in Moscow, having escaped the crushing atmosphere of the old house and the forbidding matriarch. Rita’s mum is Edmund’s Famulus Mrs Wednesday, a living prop and stage assistant enduring a barrage of humiliating transformations and subtly guided and controlled by Edmund’s harsh declarations of love as Rita wonderingly watches from the wings, gradually maturing into a beautiful young toy.

By 1962 she is the centre of attention in theatres all around the world and Edmund’s intentions have become blatant. The grand gesture comes in Paris where in an act of extraordinarily callous cruelty he demotes faithful, doting Mrs Wednesday to the role of Rita’s Dresser and makes the teenaged daughter his co-star and assistant – to the lustful appreciation of the huge theatre audiences who seem captivated by his remarkably imaginative but savagely mortifying conjuring act…

Edmund has been personally educating Rita for years, but something strange happens on stage in London in 1963 when his precious “Miss Wednesday”, in the middle of his signature shameful hypnosis game, suddenly transforms into a monstrous beast apparently beyond the magician’s control…

They married in Munich in 1967 but the wedding night was marred by Rita’s memories of what her husband used to so blatantly do with her mother. Moreover, the axis of power seems to have shifted and Rita is increasingly the one calling the shots…

The crisis comes later when Rita’s mother is found mysteriously dead and the daughter’s long-suppressed passions explode…

Some time afterward, Rita is a waitress in a New York City Diner just trying to forget. Sadly her looks make her a target for both scuzzy lowlifes and simple-minded, paternalistic protectors and only the fact that cops frequent the eatery keep her even marginally safe. Haunted by ghosts and memories, she pushes her luck one night crossing through a park and is attacked by her most persistent admirers. It’s only after she viciously fights them off that a disturbing apparition manifests…

She feels pursued from all sides – by her attackers keen on silencing her, a kindly war veteran who wants to keep her safe and a persistent if painfully familiar vision – and Rita’s life spirals out of control. When Edmund seemingly shows up, a savage monster starts slaughtering visitors to the park and peculiar French detective Inspector Verbone takes an interest in her, apparently possessing impossible secrets and arcane insights when he arrives at her ratty apartment.

When events spiral to a bloody and so very unjust conclusion, Rita flees, taking a bus to Saratoga where she finds some very familiar folk and a cataclysmic, elemental and hallucinatory climax waiting for her…

Bizarre, baroque, phantasmagorical and wickedly playful, this is a story that can’t really be deconstructed, only ridden like a maddened, stampeding horse and then pondered at leisure while your bruises heal. If you like your mysteries complex and inexplicable and your love stories dauntingly bleak and black, you really should make the acquaintance of The Magician’s Wife…
© 1987 Jerome Charyn and François Boucq. Introduction © 2015 Jerome Charyn. Foreword © 2015 Drew Ford. All rights reserved.

The Magician’s Wife will be released November 27th 2015 and is available for pre-order now. Check out www.doverpublications.com, your internet retailer or local comics-store or bookshop.

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Showcase Presents Weird War Tales volume 1


By Robert Kanigher, Bob Haney, Bill Finger, Sheldon Mayer, Jack Oleck, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, Dennis O’Neil, Russ Heath, Mort Drucker, Frank Thorne, Alex Toth, Reed Crandall, Sam Glanzman, John Severin, Howard Chaykin, Ed Davis, Frank Robbins, Nestor Redondo, George Evans, Alex Niño, Russ Heath, Neal Adams & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3694-6

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Inventive, Intense and Intoxicating… 9/10

American comicbooks just idled along rather slowly until the invention of Superman provided a flamboyant new genre of heroes and subsequently unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and imaginative generation for a suddenly thriving and voracious new entertainment model.

Implacably vested in World War II, these gaudily-attired mystery men swept all before them until the troops came home, but as the decade closed more traditional themes and heroes began to resurface and eventually supplant the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Even as a new generation of kids began buying and collecting, many of the first fans who had retained their four-colour habit increasingly sought more mature themes in their pictorial reading matter. The war years and post-war paranoia had irrevocably altered the psychological landscape of the readership and as a more world-weary, cynical young public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything, their chosen forms of entertainment (film, theatre and prose as well as comics) increasingly reflected this.

To balance the return of Western, War and Crime and imminent Atomic Armageddon-fuelled Science Fiction comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist or teen-oriented comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features sprang up, but gradually another of the cyclical revivals of spiritualism and a public fascination with the arcane led to a wave of impressive, evocative and shockingly addictive horror comics.

There had been grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in superhero trappings but these had been victims of circumstance: The Unknown as a power source for super-heroics. Now focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on an increasingly popular bandwagon, with B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launching the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948, although their Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon. The book and comics publisher had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 but didn’t follow-up with a regular series until 1951.

Classics Illustrated had already secured the literary end of the medium with child-friendly comics adaptations of The Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

If we’re keeping score this was also the period in which Joe Simon & Jack Kirby identified another “mature market” gap and invented Romance comics (Young Romance #1, September 1947) but they too saw the sales potential for spooky material, resulting in the seminal Black Magic (launched in 1950) and boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams (1952).

The company which would become DC Comics bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

After the hysterical censorship debate which led to witch-hunting Senate hearings in the early 1950s was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulation, titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, but the audience’s appetite for suspense was still high and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected and House of Secrets.

Stories were dialled back from uncanny spooky yarns to always marvellously illustrated, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles and, eventually, straight monster-busting Sci Fi tales which dominated the market into the 1960s. That’s when super-heroes – which had gradually enjoyed their own visionary revival after Julius Schwartz reintroduced the Flash in Showcase #4 – finally overtook them.

Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a growing coterie of costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked mavens which forced previously staunchly uncompromising anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character books. Even ACG slipped tights and masks onto its spooky stars.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, superheroes began dropping like Kryptonite-gassed flies. However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and, at the end of the 1960s with the cape-and-cowl boom over and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain, the surviving publishers of the field agreed to revise the Comics Code, loosening their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics.

Nobody much cared about gangster titles but, as the liberalisation coincided with yet another bump in public interest concerning supernatural themes, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious “no-brainer.”

Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillers…

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all horror comics came back and quickly dominated the American funnybook market for more the next half decade. DC led the pack: converting House of Mystery and Tales of the Unexpected into supernatural suspense anthologies in 1968 and resurrecting House of Secrets a year later.

Such was not the case with war comics. Tales of ordinary guys in combat began with the industry itself and although mostly sidelined during the capes-&-cowls war years, quickly began to assert themselves again once the actual fighting stopped.

National/DC were one of the last publishers to get in on the combat act, converting superhero/fantasy adventure anthology Star Spangled Comics into Star Spangled War Stories the same month it launched and Our Army at War (both cover-dated August 1952) and promptly repurposing All-American Comics into All-American Men of War a month later as the “police action” in Korea escalated.

They grew the division slowly but steadily, adding Our Fighting Forces #1 (November 1954) – just as EC’s groundbreaking combat comics were vanishing – and in 1957 added GI Combat to their portfolio when Quality Comics got out of the funnybook business.

As the 1950s closed however the two-fisted anthologies all began to incorporate recurring characters such as Gunner and Sarge – and latterly Pooch – from Our Fighting Forces #45 on, (May 1959), Sgt Rock (Our Army at War #83 (June 1959) and The Haunted Tank (G.I. Combat #87, April/May 1961) and soon all DC war titles had a lead star or feature to hold the fickle readers’ attention. The drive to produce superior material never wavered however, hugely aided by the diligent and meticulous ministrations of writer/editor Robert Kanigher.

In America after the demise of EC Comics in the mid-1950’s and prior to the game-changing Blazing Combat, the only certain place to find controversial, challenging and entertaining American war comics was DC. In fact, even whilst Archie Goodwin’s stunning but tragically mis-marketed quartet of classics were waking up a new generation of readers in the 1960s, the home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman was a veritable cornucopia of gritty, intriguing and beautifully illustrated battle tales presenting warfare on a variety of fronts and from many differing points of view.

Whilst the Vietnam War escalated, 1960s America increasingly endured a Homefront death-struggle pitting deeply-ingrained Establishment social attitudes against a youth-oriented generation with a radical new sensibility. In response the military-themed comicbooks from National Periodical Publishing, as it then was, became even more bold and innovative…

However the sudden downturn in superheroes at the end of the 1960s led to some serious rethinking here and although the war titles maintained and even built sales they beefed up the anthological elements.

Thus in 1971 a title combining supernatural horror stories with bombastic battle yarns in an anthological setting seemed a forgone conclusion and sure thing to both publishers and readers alike and this economically epic monochrome tome collects the contents of Weird War Stories #1-21 (cover-dated September/October 1971 to January 1974), offering a broad blend of genre mash-ups for readers with a taste for the dark and uncanny to relish.

The series launched in a 52-page format combining new material with adapted reprints featuring a veritable Who’s Who of top flight creative talent – both seasoned veterans and stars in waiting – and #1 saw Editor Joe Kubert writing and illustrating an eerie linking story entitled ‘Let Me Tell You of the Things I’ve Seen’ as a lost GI stumbles into the personification of Death (the title’s long-term narrator in various blood-stained uniforms) who tells him a few stories…

The reaper began with ‘Fort Which Did Not Return!’ by Robert Kanigher & Russ Heath as originally seen in GI Combat #86, detailing how a bomber continued its mission even after the crew bailed out and followed up with all-new ‘The Story behind the Cover’ wherein Kubert revealed how a shunned German soldier carried on his duties after death…

From Star Spangled War Stories #71 (July 1958) Bob Haney & Kubert revealed ‘The End of the Sea Wolf!’ as a sadistic U-Boat captain was sunk by one of his own earlier victims whilst SSWS #116 (August/September 1964) originally saw France Herron & Irv Novick’s ‘Baker’s Dozen’ with a fresh-faced replacement to a super-superstitious platoon battling to prove he’s not their unlucky thirteenth man…

The issue ends with that lost GI realising just who has been telling tales in Kubert’s ‘You Must Go!’…

The reprints included in these early issues were all taken from a time when supernatural themes were proscribed by the Comics Code Authority, but even so they all held fast to eerie aura of sinister uncertainty – the merest hint of the strange and uncanny to leaven the usual blood and thunder of battle books…

In Weird War Tales #2 Kubert reprised his bridging vehicle as ‘Look… and Listen…’ saw a crashed Stuka pilot meeting a ghastly stranger at a battle-torn desert oasis before ‘Reef of No Return’ (by Haney & Mort Drucker from Our Fighting Forces #43, March 1959) detailed a determined frogman’s most dangerous mission and Kanigher & Frank Thorne’s new WWI silent saga ‘The Moon is the Murderer’ proved that overwhelming firepower isn’t everything…

Kubert’s ‘Behind the Cover’ featured a prophetic dream and terrifying telegram after which ‘A Promise to Joe!’ (Kanigher & Novick, G.I. Combat #97 (December 1962-January 1963) sees a dead gunner seemingly save his friend from beyond the grave and the superb ‘Monsieur Gravedigger’ – by Jerry DeFuccio & the legendary Reed Crandall – follows the follies of a sadistic Foreign Legionnaire who pushed his comrades too far…

Cartoonist John Costanza delivers some gag-filled ‘Military Madness’ and Kubert & Sam Glanzman offer a fact-packed ‘Sgt. Rock’s Battle Stations’ about ‘The Grenadier’ before Bill Finger, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito examine a young recruit’s rite of passage and development of ‘The Face of a Fighter’ (Our Fighting Forces #25, September 1957) after which ‘Oasis’ concludes the sorry saga of that downed Aryan airman…

American Naval Aviators ditching at sea were the unwilling audience for Death’s stories as WWT #3 opens with Kubert’s ‘Listen…’

The itinerary starts with ‘Been Here Before!’ (Finger, Andru & Esposito, G.I. Combat #44 January 1957) as a soldier under fire turns his mind back to boyhood games to save the day after which we see an aerial battle and parachute drop from the perspective of ‘The Cloud That Went to War!’ (Our Fighting Forces #17, January 1957 by Dave Wood, Andru & Esposito).

More Costanza comedy from ‘The Kreepy Korps!’ precedes an early tale by relative newcomers Len Wein & Marv Wolfman, ably illustrated by Russ Heath as both cave tribes and modern soldiers battle to possess ‘The Pool’, before the artists earlier collaboration with Bob Haney reveals how ‘Combat Size!’ is all a matter of mental attitude in a tale first seen in Our Army at War #66 (January 1958).

Glanzman’s ‘Battle Album’ explains ‘Flying Guns’ after which a finny friend helps a US submarine sink an aircraft carrier in Finger & Drucker’s ‘Pilot for a Sub!’ (Our Army at War #68, March 1958) before the issue ends as Kubert sends a ‘Lifeboat’ for those tragic aviators…

The fourth issue opens with Kubert’s final linking tale as a ‘Gypsy Girl’ and her family find wounded soldier Tony after his buddy runs off to get a medic. They kindly offer to pass time with him sharing stories such as ‘Ghost Ship of Two Wars’ (Kanigher & Novick from All-American Men of War #81, September 1960) wherein an obsessed WWI pilot seemingly slips into 1944 while pursuing of his unbeatable arch-enemy the Black Ace.

‘Time Warp’ by Kanigher and Gene Colan originally appeared as ‘The Dinosaur who Ate Torpedoes!’‘ in Star Spangled War Stories #123 (October/November 1965 and part of the uniquely bizarre War That Time Forgot series), pitting US frogmen against colossal sea-going saurians, after which ‘The Unknown Sentinel’ (by author unknown & Mort Meskin from House of Mystery #55, October 1956) saves the lives of two soldiers lost on manoeuvres on America’s most famous battlefield.

Glanzman then offers one of his magnificently engaging autobiographical USS Stevens vignettes with the all-new elegiac ‘Prelude’ before Kubert wraps up his chilling drama as ‘I Know Them to be True’ sees medics arriving to find Tony a much changed man, leaving Costanza to close things down with a laugh and some ‘Military Madness’…

Weird War Tales #5 opens with Haney & Alex Toth providing the book-end tale of ‘The Prisoner’ held by Nazis in Italy. Seeking a way out he recalls tales of escape such as ‘The Toy Jet!’ (Haney & Heath from All-American Men of War #78, March/April 1960), a chilling psychological thriller about an interned pilot in North Korea, and ‘Human Trigger’ (Herron, Andru & Esposito, Star Spangled War Stories #18, February 1954) which shows how a soldier lying on a mine deftly saves his own life…

Herron & Carmine Infantino then reveal how an American spy is forced to ‘Face a Firing Squad!’ (SSWS #14, November 1953) and Norman Maurer instructs with the history of ‘Medal of Honour: Corporal Gerry Kisters’ and Willi Franz & Heath detail the victory of a ‘Slave’ in Roman times before Haney & Toth offer a final release in ‘This Is It!’

Issue #6 saw Weird War drop to a standard 36 page package and take a step into tomorrow with Haney & Toth’s battlefield test of ‘Robots’. Wolfman & Thorne expanded the theme in ‘Pawns’ as humans and mechanoids finally decided who worked for whom whilst ‘Goliath of the Western Front!’ (Herron, Andru & Esposito from SSWS #93 (October/November 1960) featured a giant mechanical Nazi and an American David who finally did for him, before Haney & Toth settled all debate with the conclusive ‘Robot Fightin’ Men’…

Wolfman & Kubert combined to provide thematic bookends for issue #7, beginning with ‘Out of Action’ with wounded GIs awaiting the worst and trading tales like William Woolfolk, Jerry Grandenetti & Joe Giella’s ‘Flying Blind’ (Our Army at War #12 July 1953) as a wounded pilot was forced to trust someone else for the first time in his life if he wanted to land his burning jet, whilst Kanigher & Kubert’s ‘The 50-50 War!’ (All-American Men of War #41, January 1957) finds sporting rivals forced to help each other after both suffer injuries on an alpine mission, with Costanza adding more much-needed levity through his ‘Military Hall of Fame’…

‘The Three GIs’ (Finger & Heath, SSWS #62, October 1957) riffs smartly on those monkeys who respectively can’t see, hear and speak and the Purple Heart yarns end with Wolfman & Kubert’s chilling ‘I Can’t See’…

From #8 editorial control switched to the mystery division under the control of Joe Orlando and with it the reprints were shelved in favour of all-original material as publication frequency graduated from six times a year to monthly.

This all German-focused issue begins with a gruesome ‘Guide to No-Man’s Land’ (probably written by assistant editor E. Nelson Bridwell and illustrated by Tony DeZuniga) before moving on to ‘The Avenging Grave’ by Kanigher & DeZuniga with SS officers learning too late the folly of desecrating the dead of WWI, whilst anonymously scripted ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill!’ – with art by Steve Harper & Neal Adams – sees more gloating Nazis facing a vengeful golem…

Kanigher & DeZuniga then return to reveal the fate of an arrogant 1916 air ace in the skies over No-Man’s Land in ‘Duel of the Dead’ before the artist’s ‘Epilogue’ wraps things up…

Weird War Tales #9 invites us to ‘Enter the Portals of War’ in an introduction drawn by Howard Chaykin, swiftly followed by a trio of Kanigher yarns illustrated by the cream of DC’s Filipino artists.

‘The Promise’ was limned by Alfredo P. Alcala, telling a tale in two eras as both Teutonic knights in 1242 and German tankers seven centuries later fail to cross frozen Lake Chud, whilst Gerry Talaoc renders the disastrous end of deathly, determined ‘Blood Brothers!’ during the American Civil War and the incomparable Alex Niño details ‘The Last Battle’ between East and West before Chaykin pops back to declare ‘Death, the Ultimate Winner’.

Sheldon Mayer & Toth open WWT #10 with a deliciously whimsical ghostly love story in ‘Who is Haunting the Haunted Chateau?’ before Raymond Marais & Quico Redondo change the tone as a Death-Camp commandant returns after the war to salvage his ill-gotten gains from ‘The Room that Remembered’ whilst Wein & Walter Simonson – on the artist’s pro comics debut – reveal how invading Nazis shouldn’t have abused the town idiot and incurred the wrath of ‘Cyrano’s Army’…

Always experimental, the creative team of Mayer, DeZuniga, Alcala, Talaoc & Niño tried their hand at a time-twisting complete adventure for issue #11. Occurring on ‘October 30′ over 99 years beginning in 1918, the tale compares the progress of an ambitious German General granted a wish for glory by a treacherous spirit of war with three ghostly Americans determined to fix a long-standing mistake whatever the cost…

DeZuniga draws the introduction to #12, featuring tales of ‘Egypt’ starting with Kanigher & Talaoc’s tale of an ancient warlord who learned to regret spitting on the ‘God of Vengeance’, whilst ‘Hand of Hell’ (Kanigher & DeZuniga) saw Anubis similarly deal with one of Rommel’s least reputable and most sadistic deputies, after which Arnold Drake & Don Perlin switch locales to Roman Britain where a centurion takes an accidental time-trip and ultimately overthrows the Druids in ‘The Warrior and the Witch-Doctors!’…

Weird War Tales #13 opens with ‘The Die-Hards’ by Jack Oleck & Nestor Redondo, with Nazis realising there are even worse killers than they haunting their latest conquered village before Drake & Niño determine that ‘Old Samurai Never Die’ when a would-be shogun offends the patron spirit of Bushido and ‘Loser’s Luck’ by Michael J. Pellowski, George Kashdan & DeZuniga details the harsh choices facing the unfortunate winners of the next, last war…

Mayer, DeZuniga & Alcala unite in #14 to tell an eerie tale of doomed love and military injustice from the days before Pearl Harbor which begins with a ‘Dream of Disaster’, incorporates a deadly flight with a ‘Phantom for a Co-Pilot’ and marines who arrive ‘Too Late for the Death March!’ before finally meeting ‘The Ghost of McBride’s Woman’ and vindicating an unsung hero…

A little boy enamoured of war’s glory learns a lesson in WWT # 15 when his dead grandfather takes him back to WWI to see how ‘“Ace” King Just Flew in from Hell’ (Drake & Perlin) after which Oleck & Talaoc reveal the doom of ‘The Survivor’ of a Viking raid which offends a sorceress, and Oleck & Alcala detail the shocking fate of a fanatical crusader who succumbs to ‘The Ultimate Weapon’ of a Saracen wise man…

Drake & Alcala describe transplant science gone mad in #16’s ‘More Dead than Alive!’, whilst the first of a Niño double bill sees him delineate ‘The Conquerors’ (scripted by Oleck) who eradicate humanity – but not the things that predate on them – before Drake’s ‘Evil Eye’ sees a little boy inflict hell’s wrath on both Allies and Axis alike.

In #17 Kanigher & George Evans disclose how a dishonourable French Air Ace is punished by ‘Dead Man’s Hands’ before Pellowski, E. Nelson Bridwell & Ernie Chan show how a murdered soldier is avenged by ‘A Gun Named Marie!‘

WWT #18 has Drake & DeZuniga sketch the brief career of ‘Captain Dracula!‘ as he marauds through (mostly) German forces in Sicily before Mayer & Talaoc reunite for the cautionary tale of a greedy German sergeant in France whose greed makes him easy prey for the ‘Whim of a Phantom!’

Drake & Talaoc started #19 with the full-length story of the agent who infiltrated the Nazi terror weapon known as ‘The Platoon That Wouldn’t Die!’ whilst #20 reverted to short stories with Oleck & Perlin’s ‘Death Watch’ of a doomed coward who should have waited one more day before deserting, Drake & Alcala’s period saga of a witchcraft vendetta in ‘Operation: Voodoo!’ followed by their Battle of Britain chiller wherein a burned out fighter pilot learns ‘Death is a Green Man’…

This blockbusting blend of military mayhem, magical melee and martial madness concludes with Weird War Tales #21 and ‘One Hour to Kill!’ by Drake & Frank Robbins wherein an American soldier is ordered to go back in time to assassinate Leonardo Da Vinci and prevent the invention of automatic weapons before Mayer & Bernard Baily show just how a foul-up GI became an unstoppable hero ‘When Death Took a Hand’…

Classily chilling, emotionally intense, superbly illustrated, insanely addictive and Just Plain Fun, this is a deliciously guilty pleasure that will astound and delight any lover of fantasy fiction and comics that work on plot invention rather than character compulsion.
© 1971, 1972, 1973, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Gabriel


By Jim Alexander, David Hill & Mick Trimble (Planet Jimbot)
No ISBN

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Home-Grown Feast of Wonders… 8/10

There’s a wonderful intensity to creator-owned comic tales which is all too often lacking in slicker projects from major outfits with all the financial resources in the world at their fingertips.

When just the right creative elements are in place it can be like seeing The Buzzcocks playing live at a sweaty, heaving college gig in 1976 but then going home to watch to “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)”, all seamlessly schmaltzed-out and over-produced to buggery by some cosmetically-enhanced, über-styled photogenic twinkie on X-Factor…

Past masters of getting the very best out of finite resources, fresh talent and strong ideas, Jim Alexander and his compadres at Planet Jimbot (whose new periodical release APP-1 will star in our next Small Press Sunday feature) have been crafting superbly enthralling graphic narratives for a wee while now and have recently added to their roster this smart, magnificently chilling – and, arguably, cheekily blasphemous – intellectual challenge to complacent Christianity…

Packaged as a slim, starkly effective monochrome trade paperback, Gabriel is an archly askew urban drama touted as “a true story taking place in an alternative Scotland”. The only noticeable difference I can see is that demons and angels are real and regularly meddle in mortal lives and matters.

…That and the fact that the Church is still supremely powerful: publicly operating its own secret service and special police force which supersedes regular Rozzers in matters both spiritual and temporal…

Writer Alexander’s prodigious back catalogue includes Calhab Justice and other strips for 2000 AD, Star Trek the Manga, GoodCopBadCop and bunches of stuff for The Dandy, DC, Marvel, Metal Hurlant, plus loads of other places and here – bolstered by carefully understated illustrator David Hill (Luther: Echoes of the Hammer) – he turns his mercurial imagination to troubled soul Stewart Gabriel: a poor sinner in another Glasgow with more than his fair share of burdens…

Stewart is an introspective, isolated chap who doesn’t want any bother but has trouble relating to his surviving relations. That’s not uncommon, but he’s also afflicted with terrible dreams of past lives and demonic darkness. Perhaps it’s all because he and his estranged wife Donna are trying to get a shameful, nigh-sacrilegious divorce…

Of course that major doctrinal misdemeanour can’t explain why he is somehow being irresistibly drawn to scenes of carnage and chaos involving the extremely excessive Saint Templar Church militia or why he’s suddenly started walking through walks, doors and other solid objects and even blinking out and rematerialising at scenes of infernal atrocity…

Glasgow is under siege these days: not just from increasingly violent protestors demanding sexual equality and abortions but also reeling from a series of savage serial killings by a particularly gruesome and determined demon.

The beast has decidedly dark “mommy-issues” and is gleefully causing a stink and slaughtering the faithful, especially if they’re partial to a little sin or hypocrisy…

In the higher ecclesiastical echelons, the synod of church leaders known as the Living Saints are fiercely debating how best to quell The Abomination’s sanguine spree and when one of their number prophetically divines Gabriel’s name in connection to the crisis and moves to have him brought in for a little inquisition, the demon is listening…

Despite the growing movement agitating for personal freedoms and responsibilities, this is still a world with no need for faith.

God is. The Devil is. Nobody is asked to believe anything because the spiritual is in fact all physical. So why does Gabriel believe there’s something going on that can’t be explained?

With chaos in the streets, events spiral to bloody climax when The Beast invades the church sanctum and confronts Gabriel, Donna and the Living Saints with a testament and revelation of his own…

First seen in the fabled 1990s thanks to much-missed pioneering publisher Caliber, this modern Mystery Play has been properly remastered for the 21st century and concludes here with an all-new palate cleansing whimsical addendum deftly illustrated by Mick (Bloodfellas) Trimble.

Set six months later, ‘I Am the Resurrection’ follows a good-natured beardy-bloke as he spends one eventful day and night washing the feet of hookers, avoiding death and giving dodgy traders in Temple Market a bit of a kicking. Naturally he ends up in jail – the regular nick, not the Templars’ stronghold – and has a remarkable interview with dying priest Father Salmon, who felt so very much better after giving the stranger the all-clear…

Things only really start to make sense after the unworldly weirdo pops by Gabriel’s place…

Smart, incisive and fictively fascinating, Gabriel builds a brilliantly enticing world before asking all the right questions and offering just enough answers to make readers hungry for a sequel.

This is another dark delight for all those who seek some intellectual meat in their reading matter, so why not break bread here and now?
Gabriel © 2015 Jim Alexander (story) and David Hill (art). I Am the Resurrection © 2015 Jim Alexander (story) and Mick Trimble (art).
Planet Jimbot has a splendid online shop so why not check out: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/244444294/gabriel-tpb

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Heart in a Box


By Kelly Thompson & Meredith McClaren (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-694-5

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Fearsome Mature Fable for the Family Season… 8/10

Let’s face it kids, Love Hurts and this mesmerising modern parable demonstrates that maxim with stunning audacity and devilish charm as author Kelly Thompson (Storykiller, The Girl Who Would be King, Jem and the Holograms) and illustrator Meredith McClaren (Hinges) take a young woman on a harsh yet educative road trip to learn a life lesson regarding ill-considered wishes and Faustian bargains…

After young Emma had her heart broken by her unforgettable “Man with No Name” she foolishly listens to an insistent stranger who promises to make the shattering pain go away forever.

He’s as good as his word, too, but within nine days Emma realises that what she feels after he’s worked his magic is absolutely nothing at all and that’s even worse than the agony of loss and betrayal which nearly ended her…

The aggravating Mephistophelean advisor – she calls him “Bob” – is still popping in however, and promptly offers her a way to can reclaim the seven shards of sentiment/soul she threw away. There will of course be a few repercussions: as much for her as those folks who have been enjoying the use of a little feeling heart ever since Emma so foolishly dispensed with it and might not want to relinquish that additional loving feeling…

But as she doggedly travels across America, hunting down those mystically reassigned nuggets of passion, she discovers not only how low she’ll stoop to recover what’s hers but also where and when all the moral boundaries she never thought she had can’t be bent, bartered or broken…

A dark delight, Emma’s literal emotional journey takes her into deadly danger, joyous cul-de-sacs and life-changing confrontations with her past and future in a clever reinvigoration of one of literature’s oldest plots and probably mankind’s most potent and undying philosophical quandaries…

Funny, sad, scary and supremely uplifting Heart in a Box is a beguiling rollercoaster ride to delight modern lovers and every grown-up too mature to ever be lonely or dependent…
© 2013, 1979 Semi-Finalist Inc. & Meredith McClaren. All rights reserved.

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Zombillenium volume 3: Control Freaks


By Arthur de Pins (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-956-4

Arthur de Pins is a British-born French filmmaker, commercial artist and Bande Dessin̩es creator whose strips Рsuch as adult comedy Peccadilloes (AKA Cute Sins) and On the Crab Рhave appeared in Fluide Glacial and Max.

In recent years his superbly arch and beautifully illustrated supernatural horror-comedy Zombillénium has become his greatest success (keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming movie!): a truly addictive comics cult classic which began in 2009 (serialised in Spirou from #3698 on) and has now filled three albums released in English thanks to Canadian publisher NBM.

Rendered with beguiling style and sleek, easy confidence, the unfolding saga details the odd goings-on in a horror theme park run by real monsters and operated by capitalistically-inclined infernal powers and, with this latest volume, we finally get to peek behind the curtain a little to see who – and what – is pulling the strings…

Zombillenium is a truly magical entertainment experience celebrating all aspects of the spooky and supernatural, where (human) families can enjoy a happy day out rubbing shoulders with werewolves and witches and all breeds of bogeyman. Of course, those enthralled visitors customers might not laugh so hard if they knew all the monsters were real, usually hungry and didn’t much like humans … except in a culinary fashion…

The inaugural volume introduced hard-working, humane Director/vampire Francis Von Bloodt, newly-reborn Aurelian Zahner (a pathetically inept thief until he expired at the park and returned transformed into a demonic indentured employee of the business) and quirky British Witch Gretchen: a young newcomer interning at the park whilst secretly advancing her own agenda.

As they individually toiled away at the vast entertainment enterprise its true nature was slowly revealed: for unwary, unlucky mortals the site is a conduit to the domain of the damned and its devilish overlord Behemoth: an intolerant horror ever-hungry for fresh souls…

For the uncanny undead workers in Zombillenium, conditions of employment worsen every day: it is one of the least profitable holiday destinations on Earth and The Board are always threatening to make sweeping changes…

Despite the incredible bargaining power of the many monster Trade Unions, the only way out of a Zombillenium contract is the True Death and a final transition to Hell; yet for some reason the shop-stewards prefer to blame Aurelian for all their woes and seem determined to drive him out.

Stuck between a rock and a hot place, Zahner gradually adapts to his new (un)life of constant sorrow and grows closer to Gretchen after she shares with him her own life-story; revealing what he has become whilst disclosing what she’s really doing at the Park. The big boob has no idea how much she left out…

The saga moves into apocalyptic high gear with Control Freaks as Gretchen’s private plot gathers pace after she makes contact with a loved one currently confined in Hell. The bold sorceress promises a seemingly impossible liberation before sneaking out, whilst in the mortal world a long-dreaded day dawns and all the arcane artisans and supernatural staff quail at some really Big News…

A Consultant has been despatched to “observe” how the park is run but everybody from Von Bloodt to the Shop-Stewards know that elite vampire Bohémond Jaggar de Rochambeau is actually here to take the business by the throat and shake things up. They have no idea just how much everything is about to change…

One of the most unfortunate aspects of the fearsome funfair is that any human who dies on Zombillenium property is instantly reborn as a monster, owned by Behemoth and compelled to work eternally in the theme park until the master takes them below. Under Francis’ governance that’s been wisely offset by a set of stringent rules, the first of which states that no employee is ever allowed to attack a human…

Jaggar has other ideas. Before long he has impetuously killed a little girl and delivered in no uncertain terms the new working time directives to Francis and the astounded staff. The Park is a pump designed to generate money for the shareholders and a steady supply of souls to Behemoth. Now the old, timid tolerant ways championed by Von Bloodt have been superseded by more robust policies which demand bigger returns on both sides of the investment…

The news is met with mixed feelings by the workforce: most are scared, appalled and resistant. For some however it’s the opportunity they’ve long argued for: a chance to feed and feast and hunt all those obnoxious yet tasty human morsels…

With isolated attacks reported all over the park Aurelian suddenly goes into a rage-fuelled meltdown and Gretchen uses his colossal rampage to trigger an evacuation of Zombillenium. Casualties are kept to a minimum even though Jaggar is openly egging on the demonically transcendent Zahner to cut loose. With the park emptied by panic, however, the cutthroat Consultant is temporarily stymied…

Unfortunately, his new business model very much piques the greedy interest of the Board and before long Francis is out and Jaggar is Director; actively encouraging the killing of unattached or unaccompanied humans, who now come in droves to the most exciting entertainment experience in the world.

It’s all too much for ambulatory Egyptian Mummy Aton who enlists the aid of change-resistant union boss Sirius Jefferson to orchestrate an inspired industrial action which closes the Park. Management’s retaliation is swift, decisive and infernally effective and, as Gretchen and Aurelian get a message from an ally in Hell, in Jaggar’s Zombillenium irrevocable lines are drawn for a final battle to win the stilled hearts and captive souls of the enslaved employees…

To Be Continued…

One of the most engaging candidates in a burgeoning category of seditiously mature and subversively ironic horror-comedies, this superb and deliciously arch tale combines pop-cultural archetypes with smart and sassy contemporary insouciance and a solid reliance on the verities of Nature, Human and not…

Sly, smart, sexy and scarily hilarious, Zombillenium achieves that spectacular trick of marrying slapstick with satire in a manner reminiscent of Asterix and Cerebus the Aardvark, whilst easily treading its own path. You’ll curse yourself for missing out and if you don’t there are things out there which will. © Dupuis 2013 by De Pins. All rights reserved.

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Something at the Window is Scratching


By Roman Dirge (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-349-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Gloriously Skewed, Marvellously Inventive… 10/10

Roman Dirge is the multi-award winning, creatively twisted auteur behind the epically eccentric and deliriously disquieting Lenore: the Cute Little Dead Girl, but like quicksand and scabs he also has a hidden, softer, side.

Way back in 1998 he first compiled a compendium of poetic paeans to the weirder side of life, death and all points betwixt; all superbly synched with a wealth of his uniquely unsettling, chillingly cute Graphic Grotesques and this has now been remastered and re-released as part of Titan Comic’s sinisterly sublime full-colour hardback line archiving his entire canon.

Scaring and simultaneously delighting kids with poetry has always been a popular sport and this turbulent tome echoes with the ghosts of such luminaries as Roald Dahl, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash and Berke Breathed (he’s not actually dead yet, but his kids stuff is so good, he’s certain to be one day…) as it exposes a host of hidden wonders ranging from single page epigrams to extended verse sagas, beginning with ‘The Coo Coo Lady’ whose love for her clock knew no bounds and was – apparently – mutual, before a brief digression reveals the secrets of making ‘Critter Pie’ after which vampiric brothers settle a long-held beef in ‘The Sideways Man’…

The eponymous ‘Something at the Window is Scratching’ details the death of a certain mythological creature and the lengths to which a guilty lad goes to adopt its orphaned child, whilst bear-loving ‘Mr. Seephis’ miscalculates the amount of mutuality they might afford him and ‘Little Lisa Loverbumps’ learns a thing or two about swimming safety…

‘Peter the Pirate Squid’ gets very little time to prosper before ‘The Ghost in the Spider’ exposes a most mismatched pair of travellers whilst ‘Pear Head Man and Bread Boy’ and

‘The Alien Ballerina’ both come and go with astounding alacrity after which we all share every parent’s nightmare – just how to deal with a dying pet – in ‘The Bunny Came Back’…

The nautical misadventure of ‘The Captain’ and the infinite recursiveness of ‘Devil Bunny’ segue neatly into a doomed love between ‘The Reindeer and the Bumble Bee’ whilst old wisdom decrees – and proves – ‘Weird Family Weird Baby’ and a salutary warning is offered by the unlucky temporary inhabitant of ‘Fly Paper’…

Negotiation and resistance both prove pointless when a little bear is drawn into the ‘Dance of the Bedbugs’ but undead performers ‘Boodini and Choobie’ don’t really care, whilst neither ‘The Guy With a Thing on his Head’ or pumpkin imperilled ‘Eddie Poe’ can muster the energy to join in with the game proposed by ‘Mr. Pork Chop’ to end this eerie epistle of eclectic eccentricity.

And don’t think scrutinising all ‘About the Author’ will give you any idea about where this kind of carton craziness comes from…

Wittily weird, gorily gregarious and darkly hilarious, these vivid verses and portentous pictures blend bleak-edged charm with absurdist abstractions and arcane attractions to create visual mood music and Goth-toned glee for the culturally sated; reprising the mordant merriment of Charles Addams’ cartoons as so readily revisited by mirthful modern macabrists like Tim Burton, Jhonen Vasquez (Squee!, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and who here provides and enthusiastic, confusiastic Foreword), Ted Naifeh & Serena (Gloom Cookie) and Jill “Scary Godmother” Thompson.

These odd odes are an unwholesome treat for kids of all ages with a taste for the richer, darker, more full-bodied flavours of life and its inevitable final consequences.

Ever so much better for you than absinthe, idolatry or unsanctioned unicorn safari …
Something at the Window is Scratching ™ & © 2015 Roman Dirge. All rights reserved.

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If You Steal


By Jason (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-854-0

Christmas Gift Recommendation: A comics lover’s dream made real… 9/10

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 that year’s Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize). He won another Sproing in 2001 for the series Mjau Mjau and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels.

A global star among the cartoon cognoscenti, he has won many major awards from all over the planet. Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, utilising the beastly and unnatural to gently pose eternal questions about basic human needs in a soft but relentless 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…

The stylised artwork is delivered in formalised page layouts rendered in a minimalist evolution of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style, solid blacks, thick outlines and settings of seductive simplicity – augmented by a deft and subtle use of flat colour which enhances his hard, moody, suspenseful and utterly engrossing Cinema-inspired world.

The superbly understated art acts in concert with his dead-on, deadpan pastiche repertoire of scenarios which dredge deep from our shared experience of old film noir classics, horror and sci fi B-movies and other visual motifs which transcend time and culture, and the result is narrative dynamite.

This latest hardback compilation collects eleven new short yarns and opens with the eponymous and eerie ‘If You Steal’, wherein cheap thug Paul perpetually risks everything and the one person who keeps him feeling alive in search of quick cash, only to lose it all in the end after which ‘Karma Chameleon’ finds a small desert community dealing with the discovery of a giant, carnivorous and extremely predatory lizard which nobody seems able to see. Good thing masturbation-obsessed boffin Dr. Howard Jones and his long-suffering daughter Julia are in town…

The deliciously wry and whimsically absurdist Samuel Beckett spoof ‘Waiting for Bardot’ then segues neatly into a dashing mystery of masked derring-do as ‘Lorena Velazquez’ eventually tires of waiting for her ideal man to finish off a necessarily interminable and horrific army of villains prior to doling out a maiden’s traditional rewards whilst a fugitive murderer narrates his own paranoia-fuelled downfall after his ‘New Face’ briefly tempts him with love and the never-to-be-achieved promise of peace and safety…

A series of six faux horror comics covers combines to relate the trials of chilling romances in ‘Moondance’ and the classic fear theme extends into a rip-roaring battle against the undead in ‘Night of the Vampire Hunter’ and ‘Polly Wants a Cracker’ follows the other unique career path of artistic legend/assassin-for-hire Frida Kahlo whilst a junkie musician pushes his luck against some very bad guys because ‘The Thrill is Gone’ before ‘Ask Not’ takes a trawl through history from Stonehenge in 2583 BC to Salon de Provence in 1554 AD (courtesy of Nostradamus) to 1960s Cuba, revealing the truth behind the assassination of JFK and Abraham Lincoln and what parts Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby actually played in that millennial plot: a parallel worlds yarn like no other…

The book ends with a stunning, deeply moving graphic examination of dementia which is both chilling and oddly-heart-warming as aging Emma deals with the scary creatures who keep taking away the names of things in ‘Nothing’, proving once more that behind the innocuous-seeming cartoons and contemporary fairy tale trappings Jason’s work is loaded with potent questions…

If You Steal resonates with Jason’s favourite themes and shines with his visual dexterity, and skewed sensibilities. disclosing a decidedly different slant on secrets and obsessions. Primal art supplemented by sparse and spartan “Private Eye” dialogue, enhanced to a macabre degree by solid cartooning and skilled use of silence and moment, all utilised with devastating economy, affords the same quality of cold, bleak yet perfectly harnessed stillness which makes Scandinavian crime dramas such compelling, addictive fare.

These comic tales are strictly for adults yet allow us all to look at the world through wide-open young eyes. They never, however, sugar-coat what’s there to see…
If You Steal is © 2015 Jason. All rights reserved.

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Zombillenium: Volume 1: Human Resources


By Arthur de Pins (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-850-5

Arthur de Pins is a British-born French filmmaker, commercial artist and Bande Dessin̩es creator whose strips Рlike adult comedy Peccadilloes (AKA Cute Sins) and On the Crab Рhave appeared in Fluide Glacial and Max. His beautifully illustrated Zombill̩nium began serialisation in Spirou #3698 (2009) and has filled three albums to date which are being released in English thanks to Canadian publisher NBM.

Rendered in a beguiling animated cartoon style, the saga features stories set in a theme park, run by the revived dead and operated for unspecified reasons by nebulous demonic powers.

Zombillenium is a truly magical entertainment experience celebrating all aspects of horror and the supernatural, where families can enjoy a happy day out rubbing shoulders with werewolves and witches and all manner of bogeymen. Of course, the customers might not laugh so much if they knew all those monsters were real, usually hungry and didn’t much like humans … except in a culinary fashion…

The first volume introduced Director Francis Von Bloodt, newly-created monster Aurelian Zahner (a former human and pathetically inept thief) and oddly secretive young British Witch Gretchen – who is “only” an intern at the park – all toiling away at a place which reeks of inhospitable working conditions.

The employees are literally little more than slaves and conditions continually threaten to get worse: Zombillenium is one of the least-profitable holiday destinations on Earth and “the Board” are always threatening to make draconian changes…

Despite the incredible power of the Zombie Trade Union, the only way out of a Zombillenium contract is the True Death and for some reason the shop-stewards blame Aurelian for all their woes and are determined to drive him out.

As Zahner adapted to his new indentured (un)life, Gretchen once shared a strict confidence with him, relating her life-story, revealing what he has actually become and explaining what she is really doing at the Park. The big boob has no idea what and how much she left out…

Human Resources begins amidst seething and escalating local troubles even as an obnoxious family find their day-trip to the park plagued by minor mishaps, missed turns and lost opportunities until they come across Aurelian out jogging. He graciously offers to guide them through the ever-shifting roads to their destination…

Little Tim’s “present” has already driven mum and dad back into their old, well-practised arguments but the lad is too busy being fabulously spooked and enthralled by the ever-so-convincing “performer” sitting beside him in the back. They’re all equally unaware of the tensions mounting in the human town just beyond the attraction.

In this region unemployment is 25% but the only even-remotely thriving concern refuses to hire anyone local. Animosity and suspicion has led to vandalism and worse, but would the ill-informed protestors even apply for jobs if they were offered? After all, the primary qualification for employment at the park is a total lack of all medically-recognised life-functions…

As Aurelian gives Tim the VIP tour, Gretchen passes by and is shocked to realise that the kid’s mum is not all she seems to be. When the surly and abrasive visitor then attacks one of the smaller employees and is taken into custody, Von Bloodt too is taken aback: he knows the bullying, bossy virago from somewhere long ago…

There’s not really time however to solve her baffling mystery though, since a fresh crisis is brewing. A few hours earlier animated skeleton Sirius Jefferson went for a bike ride and was abducted by disgruntled, unemployed skinheads. Using portions of his dismantled anatomy they have since surreptitiously invaded the complex workings under Zombillenium carrying explosives and determined to wreak havoc.

Most critical of all is that little Tim has gone missing. Despite a big search by all the staff not engaged in tracking down the saboteurs, the kid just can’t be found. Then, in a moment of aghast clarity, the Vampire-In-Charge realises exactly who his mother is and why the boy must never, ever meet radical young demon Astaroth: the prime advocate and most strident supporter the sport of human hunting, who bears an uncanny but horrifyingly explicable resemblance to the missing child…

From this point on things can only go badly, and not all Gretchen, Aurelian and Von Bloodt’s efforts might be enough to prevent chaos turning into bloody Pandemonium…

One of the most engaging candidates in a burgeoning category of seditiously mature and subversively ironic horror-comedies, this superb and deliciously arch tale will appeal to fans of such films as Hotel Transylvania and Igor and such graphic narrative classics as Boneyard, Rip M.D. and especially Melusine or The Littlest Pirate King, all of which combine pop-cultural archetypes with smart and sassy contemporary insouciance.

Sly, smart, sexy and scarily hilarious, Zombillenium achieves that spectacular trick of marrying slapstick with satire in a manner reminiscent of Asterix and Cerebus the Aardvark, whilst easily treading its own path. You’ll curse yourself for missing out and if you don’t there are things out there which will.
© Dupuis 2011. © NBM, 2014 for the English translation.