Category: Horror Stories

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The Chronicles of Legion volume 1: Rise of the Vampires


By Fabien Nury, Mathieu Lauffray, Mario Alberti, Zhang Xiaoyu & Tirso , translated by Virgine Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-093-1

We’ve all been in love with vampires since the golden age of Victorian Gothic and it’s taken the undead in some extremely odd directions (I personally draw the line at sparkly, immortal kissy-face boy-toys, but to each his own)…

Thankfully our European cousins have a more sanguine view of such matters and innate respect for tradition even when they reinterpret the old classics. Prolific writer Fabien Nury (Stalin’s Death: A Real Soviet History, Once Upon a Time in France, The Master of Benson Gate, Necromancy as well as the epic Je Suis Légion with John Cassaday) began in 2011 a generational saga which put a new spin on the legend whilst keeping a steady eye on the tone of what has gone before…

Les Chroniques de Legion was illustrated by round-robin art-team Mathieu (Star Wars, Long John Silver) Lauffray, Mario (Nathan Never, Morgana, assorted DC covers) Alberti, the enigmatic Zhang Xiaoyu & Tirso Cons (Eye of the Devil, Le Manoir murmurs) and opens here (in good old English) in 1476 as barbaric warlord Vlad Tepes finally falls before the overwhelming armies of the invading Moslem horde.

His stubborn Transylvania a crushed and broken province, the infamous leader had been dragged from the arms of his favourite concubine and beheaded by exultant general Selim Bey. Working for the invaders, Vlad’s despised and treacherous brother Radu knew that the story was not over yet…

As the victorious Turk ravished his despised enemy’s beloved, Dracula’s implacable sibling rival was too late to stop his brother’s malign blood invading the Moslem’s body and eating his devout mind. In an instant Selim Bey’s was gone, overwritten by the undying Impaler…

Nor could Radu not stop the horror escaping and after “Selim” murdered the Sultan and vanished, the Transylvanian turncoat endured all the anger and hatred of the Ottomans. Of course since his blood was just as accursed as Vlad’s, Radu’s story didn’t end with his body’s death either…

In 1521 Vlad was on the move once more, inhabiting the body of Gabriella Del La Fuente. This recent orphan was travelling to the New World, contracted to marry the audacious conquistador Hernan Torres. A flower of the aristocracy, her perfect beauty was only marred by the strange red mark on the back of her neck – a blemish shared with her recently-departed father Victor and a long-dead Turk named Selim Bey…

She had no idea Radu had reached the Americas first and transformed them to a hell of his own devising. The other brother had sustained his own arcane life by equally esoteric means, only in his case the intellect was scattered and diminished by the swarm of rats who consumed him for the longest time…

In Russia in 1812, an undying warrior sprit was wearing French Hussar Armand Malachie. As Napoleon’s broken armies fled before the vengeful Cossacks, he convinced his faithful subordinates Kholya, Stern, Hartmann and Feraud to desert with him. Detouring to the Wallachian Mountains they hunted for valuable loot Armand had heard about: the Lost Treasure of Vlad Dracula Tepes…

It was all a lie. The true reason for the diversion was that Dracula sensed far-distant Radu had allowed an unprecedented atrocity to be created and the time had come to end their infinitely extended vendetta forever…

London, 1887: elderly lawyer Morris Webster contacts friendless, antisocial clerk and gambling addict Victor Douglas Thorpe with an offer that will forever liberate the morose wastrel and ne’er-do-well from the drudgery of his impoverished Whitechapel life.

For reasons inexplicable, Thorpe has been selected by immensely rich aristocratic recluse Lord Byron Cavendish to inherit all his lands and properties… upon successful conclusion of a personal interview, of course…

To Be Continued…

Lavishly presented in an oversized (211 x 282mm) full-colour hardback, evocatively illustrated and told through contiguous strands in many concurrent times, this epic, intoxicatingly absorbing horror mosaic depicts a constant battle between two remorseless foes inextricably linked by blood to grip and delight lovers of all things dark and demonic…
The Chronicles of Legion and all contents © Éditions Glénat 2011. Translated edition © Titan Comics, 2014.

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The Tower Chronicles: DreadStalker


By Matt Wagner & Simon Bisley (Legendary Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-93727-836-6

In The Tower Chronicles: Geisthawk, FBI agent Alicia Hardwicke first encountered a strangely compelling masked bounty hunter named John Tower who filled a rather select niche in the broad spectrum of law-enforcement and peacekeeping services. This odd enigma helped people with highly specialised problems: things cops and feds and government refused to even acknowledge the existence of…

After having her eyes opened and seeing what Tower – “the Geisthawk” – did with vampires and ghosts and even stranger supernal threats, Alicia started skipping work and letting her day job slide to join him on his bizarre cases, but she could never crack his carefully guarded façade of secrets nor ascertain the reason for his relentless, thankless and generally unrewarding crusade.

The concept was created by Thomas Tull (whose Legendary Pictures is responsible for the latest Batman/Dark Knight movies as well as The Hangover, Man of Steel and 300) and comics veteran Matt Wagner – presumably as a prime concept for the new hero’s own monster-bashing film franchise…

This slim and sinister spooky sequel volume collects The Tower Chronicles: DreadStalker #1-6 (spanning August 2014 to January 2015) wherein Wagner, illustrator Simon Bisley and colourist Ryan Brown ramp up the tension whilst revealing a few of the horror-hunter’s darkest secrets.

The saga begins in the frozen wilds of Northern Ontario where a couple of thrill-seeking teenagers stumble upon a very hungry Wendigo. Their immediate gory consumption is narrowly averted by Tower and Hardwicke but, after the rescue and inevitable bloody battle, the FBI agent realises her sullen partner seems more interested in ransacking the beast’s lair that attending to a shellshocked survivor…

Elsewhere creepy cultists “The Brotherhood of the Rose” know far more about Tower than he would like, and confer on how to deal with the DreadStalker and give the first hints to his true motivations. Apparently magic calls to magic and supernatural terrors tend to confiscate eldritch artefacts. Somewhere there are objects Tower wants and his constant despatching of dire hidden horrors gives him unmatched opportunities to search for such spoils…

The Brotherhood also covet such articles and, now that Tower has allied himself with Hardwicke, they believe they have the potential to exert a little leverage…

In the Washington DC office Alicia is using the Bureau’s vast resources to look into Tower’s past but her investigations are beginning to return impossible results. She is also starting to draw attention from her superiors, and terms like “negligence”, “obsession” and “reassigned” are being used by her furious boss…

In his lonely citadel Tower broods. He is actually centuries old and has carried a grievous wound of the heart for that entire time. All his searching and ransacking of monsters’ dens is for one sublime purpose but his quest seems as far from success now as it always has. …And on the other side of a looking glass, a beautiful, mournful woman waits for him… Determined to get some concrete answers, Hardwicke confronts Tower’s elderly lawyer Romulus Barnes and wrangles an incredible story from the attorney of how the taciturn troubleshooter saved a young law student’s son from demonic doom in return for a lifetime of legal servitude…

A most insidious villain, Martin Castle spearheads a cabal of entrepreneurs dubbed “The Château Group” and, when not selling genetically augmented heirs to shady sheiks, he and they harbour patient dreams of acquiring the world. However, Castle’s machinations mask a vile and increasingly debilitating secret…

Some answers – for the reader at least – are forthcoming as Tower resurfaces in New Mexico, hunting an avian monstrosity. Scaling the high cliffs to its nest, Jean Latour‘s mind cannot help but wing back to the First Crusade when as one of nine Christian warriors dedicated to liberating the Holy Land he co-founded The Knights Templar in 1119 Anno Domini.

He recalls how the crusaders’ initial vows of piety, poverty, chastity and charity gradually eroded as their ranks grew and their coffers swelled, and how his life changed forever when he rescued the heathen maiden Nadira from Christian soldiers determined to stop her from praying at the mosque they had converted to a barracks…

In New Mexico Tower’s reveries are curtailed when the appalling Thunderbird attacks, only to fall after an horrific battle to the DreadStalker’s accumulated centuries of martial prowess. The net result is only more disappointment as the slaughtered beast’s nest reveals many artefacts but nothing of any use to the immortal warrior.

When Tower drags his battered, pain-wracked body back to his car, Alicia is waiting…

Still refusing to share, he drives off and Hardwicke reluctantly goes to plan B, applying the federal screws to another member of Tower’s support network. Raf is the genius who builds the uniquely devastating ordnance employed by the Geisthawk to expunge assorted creatures of the night but his tale of how the un-aging man exorcised his unquiet mother only adds to Alicia’s growing sense of unease…

As Mr. Castle undergoes radical surgery in Austria to alleviate an unpleasant arcane infirmity, further gathered strands at last force Agent Hardwicke to accept the impossible: her silent partner is possibly hundreds of years old and has been holding back a horde of horrors for all that time…

The man himself is in Colorado, dealing with a werewolf incursion in a brutally efficient manner before heading on to Ireland. En route he calls Alicia who probably scuppers her own career to join him, blithely unaware that the Brotherhood and Castle are both using her to track Tower. Neither organisation really wants the monster hunter, but they really need the prizes he’s likely to find…

After a cataclysmic battle with a ghastly Gaestlych, Tower finally relents and shares his story with Alicia, but the revelations give her no joy or satisfaction…

To Be Continued…

Fast-paced and astoundingly action-packed, this slight but satisfying romp is tailor-made for transferral to large or small screen as companion or rival to Constantine, True Blood and Supernatural, but The Tower Chronicles primarily offers comics fans a spectacular rollercoaster of straightforward beastie-bashing in the grand traditional manner beloved of Fights ‘n’ Tights enthusiast everywhere.
© 2015 Legendary Comics LLC and Matt Wagner. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Zombies Vs. Army of Darkness


By John Layman, Fabiano Neves, Fernando Blanco, Sean Phillips & various (Marvel/Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4243-0

Swiftly catching a cultural wave to become one of modern Marvel’s most popular niche-franchises, a canny blend of gratuitous violence, sharp wit and arrant buffoonery led to the Marvel Zombies taking the comics-reading world by storm in the mid-2000s.

So big was the concept that, like a flesh-eating infection, it even escaped the confines of corporate continuity to engender an inter-company crossover with another hugely popular horror franchise…

In one of the many Marvel universes an intruder from beyond brought an extra-dimensional curse to one tragic reality: a pestilence that without exception instantly turned the infected (for which read “bitten”) victims into ravenous, undead eating machines.

Confronted by wave after wave of valiant superheroes, “patient zero” defeated them all and his all-conquering contagion spread exponentially as defenders fell to rise as voracious monsters. Before a day was out a chain-reaction of hungry terror had devastated the world, leaving its costumed champions nothing more than the apex predators atop a rapidly diminishing food source…

Ash Williams – as played onscreen by actor Bruce Campbell – is the implausible demon-killing star of the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness movies devised by Sam Raimi. A horny, misogynistic oaf and charmless goon, he is nonetheless chosen by fate to destroy all “deadites”: ravening evil ghosts intent on ending all life, spawned by a malignant, malevolent sentient tome known as The Necronomicon.

For a total butthole, Ash is surprisingly competent at his job…

Dark Horse Comics produced the first Evil Dead comicbook series in 1992 and Dynamite Entertainment picked up the license in 2004 with dark and daft miniseries Army of Darkness: Ashes 2 Ashes. It led to 2005’s Army of Darkness: Shop Till You Drop (Dead) and Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator before an on-going series was commissioned in 2006.

Considering his predilection for gory, sardonic splatter-tainment, the dimension-hopping, time-jumping Ash was a dead cert to visit Marvel’s funerary fun house…

This slim and sinister inter-company chronicle collects Marvel Zombies Vs. Army of Darkness #1-5 (May – September 2007), courtesy of scripter John Layman and illustrators Fabiano Neves with Fernando Blanco, Sean Phillips and colourist June Chung all contributing to the mix.

Unusual for such intersecting universe imbroglios, the events of this yarn are “in-continuity”, occurring during, contiguous with and affecting the tragic happenings seen in ‘Marvel Zombies: Dead Days’: even offering key story points not revealed in the exclusively Marvel tales…

It begins after Ash arrives on Earth in the hours before the infection first hits. A no-nonsense blue-collar kind of guy, the Deadite Destroyer can take demonic monsters and time-travel in his stride but is flabbergasted to see grown men in tights beating each other up.

Watching Daredevil battle super-villain Thunderball the nonplussed wanderer is unable to discern who is good and who evil but his amazement is suspended after the wicked spirit of the Necronomicon appears and taunts him with a prophecy… “This world will die and an army of the dead will rise”…

Stuck in a world of costumed clowns, Ash decides to go straight to the top and seeks out Avengers Mansion, but the assembled heroes refuse to believe his warnings of doom. Being dumped in a lake by the Scarlet Witch only serves to jog his memory however and he recalls his last moments before arriving in this fruity, steroid-infested madhouse…

He was dead and about to enter Heaven when a costumed maniac attacked, biting the deceased, turning them into flesh-eating horrors and wrecking the entire Afterlife. Ash escaped back to the lands of the living, but the creature followed him…

The heroes are leaving to investigate reports of a monster when Ash finds them again, and Colonel America orders Spider-Man to take the raving lunatic away for his own safety. By the time the traveller convinces the Wallcrawler that he isn’t crazy, the damage has been done. Almost all of the World’s Mightiest Heroes are ravening undead horrors and Ash is ‘Earth’s Mightiest Zero’…

Stunned, the late-arriving webspinner is easy meat for the Star-Spangled zombie, leaving Ash helpless before a hungry rabble of former heroes…

Events kick into grisly top gear in ‘Marvel Team-Ups’ as Spider-Man, frantically fighting the hunger that’s killing him, whisks Ash to temporary safety before fleeing, leaving the extra-dimensional demon killer all alone until seeming kindred spirit The Punisher shows up.

The man with the skull on his chest doesn’t care about undead monsters: he’s busy killing a few living ones like The Kingpin, Hammerhead and The Owl…

Once his current job is completed however he comes around to Ash’s way of thinking, but his confrontational manner of only dealing with things head on soon ends his usefulness. The vigilante does however leave Ash with a lot of serious ordnance, which the cocky Mr. Williams uses to save hot babe Dazzler from imminent death by superhero bite…

Ash is convinced that the Necronomicon is summoning Deadites to this Earth and, after informing her that an evil magic book is behind all the grief, Dazzler takes him to the home of Doctor Strange, reasoning that if the chronicle of chaos is to be found anywhere it will be in the library of Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme…

They are too late: ‘Night of the Livid Dead’ finds Ash meeting again the Scarlet Witch (now the only still-breathing Avenger) and encountering his Marvel Earth counterpart as well as a flesh-eating humanoid duck named Howard, but the mystic they’re seeking is long gone.

Ash and his new team do however convince the other tormented tomes in the library to tell them where the Necronomicon is currently located and, leaving scenes of escalating horror behind them, the mortals fly to Latveria to confront a foreigner with the unlikely name of Doctor Doom…

By the time they get there the plague has gone global and the Balkan kingdom is under siege: possibly the only place on Earth where humans still live – and only then behind the straining force-fields of Castle Doomstadt.

‘The Book of Doom’ opens with the Iron Dictator disregarding Ash’s warnings of infernal invasion in favour his own conclusions of a simple pan-dimensional virus, before dumping him in the pens where a breeding stock of humans is cached, ready to repopulate Earth after Doom inevitably destroys the zombie hordes.

Unconvinced by his captor’s arrogant assurances, Ash busts out and meets Scarlet Witch on her way to the dictator’s library. Soon they are interrogating the Devil Doctor’s copy of the Necronomicon and Ash discovers he been played from page one…

Reeling with despair and defeat he then releases a hot chick in a glass tube who calls herself Amora the Enchantress, blissfully unaware that she is both an evil goddess and a plague-carrying zombie Doom has been experimenting on…

The tale and the world comes to an explosive, blood-drenched end in concluding chapter ‘The Stalking Dead’ wherein an army of undead heroes converge on Latveria, but not before Ash and Doom pull a minor rabbit out of their combined hats, ferrying the last humans to a place of other-dimensional safety. The hapless Deadite Hunter, however, is less lucky and lands in a dimension with a monster problem even he hasn’t encountered before…

Fast-paced, irreverent, raucous and gorily outrageous, this laugh-out-loud saga of no-guts-and-less-glory will sit well with readers hungry for immature entertainment and all comicbook completists, and comes with a splendid gallery of covers-&-variants by Arthur Suydam, recreating eight classic scenes from Marvel history. Also included are those inspirational originals by John Byrne, Terry Austin, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Carmine Infantino, Ross Andru, Dick Giordano, Jim Lee, Jim Starlin and Frank Miller.

© 2007, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. All Marvel characters, names and distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Marvel Characters, Inc. Army of Darkness and all characters, names and distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Orion Pictures ™ & © 1993-2009 Orion Pictures Corporation, Inc. All rights reserved. Licensed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. to Dynamic Forces Inc. Dynamite, Dynamic Entertainment & its logo ™ & Dynamic Forces Inc. Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Zombies: the Complete Collection volume 1


By Mark Millar, Robert Kirkman, Reginald Hudlin, Greg Land, Sean Phillips, Francis Portela, Mitch Breitweiser & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-8538-3

Swiftly catching a cultural wave to become one of modern Marvel’s most popular niche-franchises, the canny blend of gratuitous measured sarcasm and arrant cosmic buffoonery compiled here traces all the early appearances of the deadly departed, flesh-eating superheroes from an alternate universe which wasn’t so different from the one we all know – at least until a dire contagion killed every ordinary mortal and infected every super-human upon it…

This mammoth volume re-presents the first appearances of those chompy champions as seen in Ultimate Fantastic Four #21-23 and #30-32, Marvel Zombies #1-5, Marvel Zombies: Dead Days #1 and Black Panther volume 4 #28-30 (plus material from Marvel Spotlight: Marvel Zombies/Mystic Arcana collectively spanning September 2005 to October 2007) and leaps into sinister high gear following Robert “The Zombie Guy” Kirkman’s informative introduction ‘Marvelous Zombies’…

In many ways a highly entertaining one-trick pony, these tales all depend on a deep familiarity with the regular Marvel pantheon, a fondness for schlock horror and the cherished tradition of superheroes beating the stuffings out of each other.

This time however, it’s for keeps, with beloved icons actually eating the stuffings out of each other – and just about everyone else – until only a handful of living breathing folk remain, desperately seeking a cure or a way to escape their universe without bringing the hunger plague with them…

It all begins with the first chronological appearance of the brain-eaters: a bleak and subtle exploit which appeared in Ultimate Fantastic Four #21-23. This team is a retooled version of the Lee/Kirby stalwarts created as part of the Marvel Ultimates imprint which began in 2000.

After Marvel’s near-demise in 1996, the new management oversaw a thoroughly modernising refit of key properties: fresher characters and concepts to appeal to a new generation of “ki-dults” – perceived to be a potentially separate buying public from those readers content to stick with the various efforts that had gradually devolved from the Founding Fathers of the House of Ideas.

This super-powered quartet are part of a corporate think-thank tasked with saving the world and making a profit, and in ‘Crossover’ by Mark Millar, Greg Land & Matt Ryan, wünderkind Reed Richards is contacted by a smarter, older version of himself offering the secrets of trans-dimensional travel.

Defying his bosses and comrades, Reed translates to the other Earth only to find he’s been duped by adult, zombie versions of the FF, looking for fresh fields to infect and people to digest…

Breaking free, young Richards discovers a devastated, desolate New York populated solely by manic monster superheroes, all eager to eat one of the last living beings on the planet. Suddenly rescued by Magneto, Reed meets other survivors as they prepare for their last hurrah. Offering them a chance to escape, Reed is blissfully unaware that he’s already allowed the Zombie FF to invade the still living world he came from…

Culminating in a bombastic battle on two planes of reality and a tragic heroic sacrifice, this creepy chronicle ends with the zombie FF imprisoned on Ultimate Earth…

The concept evolved into a franchise in February 2006 with the launch of 5-part miniseries Marvel Zombies, by Robert Kirkman & Sean Phillips, which returned to the infected alternate Earth to detail the final fall of humanity and the improbable things that happened next…

With the living all gone or infected, Earth’s former heroes and villains are at a loss. Fighting and bickering whiles away time but since nothing can kill them and only living flesh will sate their hunger for even a second, all hope seems lost until a strange glowing alien on a surfboard appears in the sky…

Unaware that Giant-Man has keeping a stash of live humans (including former friend Black Panther) to eat in secret and one piece at a time, the zombies are united by Colonel America and Iron Man into an army to capture and consume the cosmic skyrider.

As the living ruin who was the Panther escapes and fortuitously unites with Magneto’s remaining mutant acolytes, the Silver Surfer falls to a happily distracted army of zombies who devour him and somehow absorb his cosmic energies. But as they finish, the planetary devourer Galactus arrives, demanding to know where his herald is…

The star god eats entire planets to survive but even he has never encountered hunger such as possesses the zombies. Hundreds of the massed undead launch themselves at him and although he destroys many he cannot kill them all…

As Earth’s remaining human and mutants form an uneasy alliance and flee to a hidden sanctuary, Galactus readies himself to consume Earth but is unprepared for the ingenuity of the zombie Avengers who turn the tables and eat the eater.

Now the whole universe is at risk since Iron Man, Hulk, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Giant-Man and Spider-Man – fuelled by Galactus’ limitless cosmic energy – can travel from planet to planet to assuage their unceasing appetites…

Following a few tantalising snippets culled from intervening UFF issues with the undead quartet describing what they’ll do when – not if – they get loose, the saga finally explodes into high gear in ‘Frightful’ from Ultimate Fantastic Four #30-32, by Millar, Land, Ryan & Mitch Breitweiser.

Here the Ultimate Universe Dr. Doom enacts a subtle plan to crush his arch-rival Reed Richards, but the imprisoned, lab-rat zombie FF have their own agenda: one which includes escaping and eating every living thing on the planet…

A far more serious tale of revenge and obsession, this yarn is a real chiller in a volume far more silly than scary and culminates in an unlikely sacrifice to save the world from the one person nobody expected to give a damn……

Events take a lighter tone if not turn when events on the original Marvel Earth impinge on the zombieverse.

Here a Civil War had erupted between costumed heroes after the US government ordered all superhumans to unmask and register themselves. From that period comes ‘Good Eatin”, a light-hearted, grotesquely slapstick 3-part hoot from Black Panther #28-30 (July-October 2007).

The tale revealed how, on undead Earth, the six victorious zombies – Tony Stark, Luke Cage, Giant-Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine and the Hulk – ate Galactus and absorbed all his power. With every other food source exhausted they then ranged their entire reality for forty years, killing every thing and every person in every civilisation they could find.

Convened for a brief time as the “New Fantastic Four” of our Earth, X-Man Storm, Human Torch, Thing and the Panther went time- and dimension-hopping at just the wrong moment and ended upon a hidden citadel of the shape-shifting Skrulls just as the Galactal Zombie Diners Club discovers what just might be the last edible planet in their universe.

‘Hell of a Mess’, ‘From Bad to Worse’ and ‘Absolutely No Way to Win’ (by Reginald Hudlin & Francis Portela) comprise an action-packed, hilariously bad-taste splatter-fest to delight the thrill-seeking, grossness-engorged teenager in us all…

The story portion of this chronicle of the damned concludes with a one-shot prequel which concentrated on the tragedy of the final hours of that doomed alternity. In Marvel Zombies: Dead Days (May 2007), Robert Kirkman & Sean Phillips detailed exactly how humanity ended after Earth’s heroes all gathered to battle a super-villain from another dimension.

This intruder had unfortunately imported an extra-dimensional curse to this reality: one that turns the infected (for which read “bitten”) victims into ravenous, undead eating machines. Before a day was out a chain reaction of terror had devastated the world, leaving its costumed champions nothing more than the apex predators atop a rapidly diminishing food source…

This tome is as much art book as graphic narrative and also includes an incredible range of alternate and variant covers as well as a gallery of the landmark original covers used by zombie illustrator Arthur Suydam as the basis for the 50 new spoof and pastiche images he created: all referencing key moments from Marvel’s decades-long-history and adding so much to the project’s success.

These include Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko’s Amazing Fantasy #15 (from August 1962), Spider-Man #1 by Todd McFarlane (August 1990), Amazing Spider-Man #50 (July 1967 by John Romita Sr.), Hulk #1 by Kirby & Paul Reinman (May 1962), Avengers #4 (March 1964 by Kirby), Daredevil #179 (February 1988 by Frank Millar & Klaus Janson), X-Men #1 (September 1963, by Kirby & Sol Brodsky, Silver Surfer #1 (John Buscema, August 1968), Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961 by Kirby), Avengers #87 (April 1971 by John Buscema & John Verpoorten), the other X-Men #1 from October 1991 by Jim Lee & Scott Williams, Secret Wars #1 (May 1984, Mike Zeck & John Beatty) and so many more, all accompanied by the artist’s fascinating insights and commentary

As well as Suydam’s fiendish fifty reinterpretations there are 42 covers by Land, Matt, Frank D’Armata, Justin Ponsor, Jay Leisten, Phillips, Juan Bobillo, Kaare Andrews, David Aja, Leonard Kirk, Aaron Lopresti, Jeromy Cox, Carlo Pagulayan, Romita Sr., Ed McGuinness, Jason Keith, Richard Corben, Ariel Olivetti, David Yardin, Matt Milla, Scott Clark, Boris Vallejo, Earl Norem, Kyle Hotz and Dan Brown, all adding to the devilish dark art delights and augmenting the feature-packed prose section at the end.

Essays and snippets here include ‘Interview Excerpts from Marvel Spotlight: Robert Kirkman/Greg Land’, ‘A Gruesome Good Time: The Story of the Marvel Zombies’, ‘Whose Stomach Are You In?’, ‘Undead Again’ and ‘Life Among the Zombies’ – all by Dugan Trodglen – plus a picture-&-sketch packed expose of ‘The Crazy World of Arthur Suydam’ as explained to John Rhett Thomas, all adding to the comprehensive overbite overview of things ..

By no means to everyone’s taste, this blending of ferocious fangtastic fable with gross-out comedy mixes the sentiments of American Werewolf in London, the iconography of Shaun of the Dead and the cherished hagiography of the Marvel Universe to surprisingly engaging effect. Not for the squeamish or continuity-cherishing hardliners, there might be a loud laugh or frisson of fear awaiting the open-minded casual reader…
© 2005, 2006, 2007, 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Veil


By Greg Rucka & Toni Fejzula, with Aljoša Tomić & various (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-492-7

It’s January and the nights are long and cold. Good thing there’s plenty of scary stories and coolly creepy graphic novels to while away the midnight hours…

Written by Greg Rucka and chillingly illustrated by Toni Fejzula with additional colour work from Aljoša Tomić, Veil collects the introductory 5-issue miniseries (March to July 2014) which saw the debut of one of the more intriguing femme fatales in modern comics history…

It all begins in an abandoned, desolate subway station where a beautiful, naked and extremely confused young woman awakens on a bed of most surprised rats. Babbling incoherently but not at all scared, she makes her way above ground and finds herself in a modern Sodom and Gomorrah where her nubile helplessness soon attracts the attention of the pimps and other two-footed predators…

Big mean Vincent especially seems unable to resist his most basic urges but the victim-to-be is rescued by unlikely hero Dante who inexplicably – and unlike every other John on the street – seems compelled to shield rather than covet her…

Covering her nakedness, Dante takes her to his shabby apartment and tries to get some sense out of the girl who calls herself “Veil”. Vincent and his homies, however, are not the types to defer gratification and come looking for her with plenty of guns and bad attitudes…

It’s the last mistake of their short, violent lives but in the bloody aftermath Dante knows more than ever that, whatever she is, this girl must be protected. As they go on the run through the seedy backstreets and alleys of the city Veil seems to grow more clear-headed even as she displays ever-greater impossible abilities.

Elsewhere men wielding a different kind of irresistible power are discussing her. In the gory detritus of a satanic ritual, money-man Mr. Scarborough unwisely chides the black magician he and his consortium have hired – with apparently negligible return…

Despite apparent failure and the clear absence of the thing they paid for, insouciant Cormac remains aggravatingly untroubled. Just why is revealed after Scarborough’s thugs try to kill him for his presumed failure and the scheming wizard displays some of the other powers at his command…

The demands of ego satisfied on both sides, Cormac assures Scarborough that he will find the missing vessel of unfettered power he was hired to summon. He never actually specifies who will profit from it, though…

Back in the nasty part of town, cops have arrested Dante and Veil, but the girl’s uncanny allure compels one of them to force himself upon her as he has so many other street girls. His partner will never sleep easy again after seeing what she left of him…

With Veil vanished, the still-handcuffed Dante flees whilst in an empty, deconsecrated church Cormac works, summoning a rat familiar to scent out his target and draw it to him. If he knows that Scarborough and his billionaire business associates have sanctioned an assassination hit team to take him out, he doesn’t care…

The killer elite arrive soon after the mesmerised Veil and are on site when the mage binds her with a mystic chain, ordering her to change to her true form. The hit squad doesn’t stand a chance…

Dante meanwhile has hooked up with an old friend who has rid him of the handcuffs, if not his obsession to help the strangely compelling Veil. The poor sap isn’t that surprised when a rat bites Gabriel and something terrifying starts talking through his mouth. It seems the Devil wants his property back and is prepared to help Dante save her from the mad mortals who currently possess her…

Sharply scripted and superbly illustrated, this rocket-paced rollercoaster ride to Hell and back is a superb blend of corporate chicanery, sinister sorcery, grimy street crime, gory excess and unlikely heroism that delivers a bloodbath of spooky, sexy action even as it promises more revelations to come.

This classy full-colour hardback edition also includes a copious ‘Veil Sketchbook’ section depicting the evolution and intriguing multiple aspects of the enigmatic star to astound art lovers and all aficionados of the darkly exotic.
© 2014, 2015 Nervous Habit, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Treasury of Mini Comics volume 2


By many and various, edited by Michael Dowers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-807-6

The act of stringing pictures and/or words together is something almost everybody has done at some stage of their lives. It’s a key step in the cognitive path of children and, for an increasing number of us, that compulsive, absorbing euphoria never goes away.

Whilst many millions acquiesce to the crushing weight of a world which stifles the liberation of creativity, turning a preponderance of makers into consumers, a privileged, determined few carry on: drawing, exploring, and in some cases, with technology’s help, producing and sharing.

Michael Dowers, the force behind not only this compilation but also Brownfieldpress and Starhead Comix, adores the concept of crafting and disseminating mini comics and his books Newave!- The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980 and volume one of this series described and reproduced hundreds of examples: spotlighting with enticing, encouraging exuberance those incurably driven artisans who came out of the “anything goes” 1960s and 1970s Underground Commix movement still craving a vehicle of expressly personal expression.

Such creators aren’t really in it for the money – although a few have moved on to find a modicum of mainstream comics fame, at least – and, in an era before computers, they found time to write, draw and compile artwork (small press people are notoriously generous, contributing to projects at the drop of a hat) before laboriously photocopying, cutting, folding, stapling and then distributing the miniscule marvellous results.

Just by way of definition: most mini comics were and still are home-produced pamphlets using borrowed – or when necessary paid for – print processes. The most popular format was an 8½ x 11inch sheet, folded twice, and printed at local copy-shops (or clandestinely churned out on school/work repro systems like early Xerox, Photostat, Mimeo or Spirit Banda machines) on any paper one could lay hands on.

Because they weren’t big, they were called “mini commix”. Inspired, no?

Thanks to a seemingly inexhaustible modern appetite for such uniquely individualistic endeavours here’s a superb sequel tome – one more massive paper brick of fun (848 monochrome and colour pages, 178 x 127mm) – compiling and sharing many of the very best mini masterpieces from the 1970s to right here, right now…

Many key figures in the proliferation of this uniquely eloquent people’s medium are included here, not only through examples of their groundbreaking work, but also through statements, interviews and fond reminiscences.

If human beings have access to any kind of reproductive technology they seemingly cannot resist making copies of their own private parts or creating their own comics, and here content comes from all over the North American continent – and even beyond – covering everything from superhero spoofs, monster-mashes, robot rampages, animal antics, autobiography, recreational drugs, religious, spiritual and philosophical diatribes and polemics, surreal experimental design and just plain fun stories, chatter and gags: all as sexually explicit, violent, strident or personally intimate as their creators wanted them to be…

As usual I’ll deliver here my standard warning for the easily offended: this book contains comic strips never intended for children. If you are liable to be offended by raucous adult, political and drug humour, or illustrated scenes of explicit sex or unbelievable comedy violence, don’t buy this book and stop reading this review. You won’t enjoy any of it and might be compelled to cause a fuss.

I’ll probably cover something far more wholesome tomorrow so please come back then.

It all starts with Michael Dowers’ introduction wherein he brings the history of the sub-medium up to date and posits a connection with the legendarily scandalous “Gentlemen’s under-the-counter” publications known as Tijuana Bibles which livened up life for our forebears in the early part of the 20th century with explicit and illegal cartoon cavortings featuring famous stars of screen and newspaper strips.

That proposition is upheld and further explored following ‘The Hundred Year Old New Waver in “Damn Punks Got it Easy Today”’: a hilarious graphic diatribe (dis)courtesy of Brad W. Foster from Time Warp #3 (2007) after which a genuine, authentic and anonymous Tijuana Bible inclusion offers erotic relief to ‘The Van Swaggers’.

Then follows a batch of modern tributes and reinterpretations beginning with masked wrestler/guitarist The Crippler by Fiona Smyth (2007) and the astoundingly disturbing, politically punishing ‘Obliging Lady’ from Ethan Persoff & Scott Marshall’s The Adventures of Fuller Bush Man & John McCain (2009)…

A splendid faux pastiche of the original pamphlets, Hairy Crotch & Rim Johnson in ‘The Interview’ is an anonymous entry from 1995, whilst Lilli Loge abandons the form but ramps up the spirit for the tale of a girl and her slave in ‘A Blessing in Disguise’ from Ben & Jenny from 2009.

That same year clean-cut Euro icon Lucky Luke got homo-erotically spoofed as ‘Hunky Luke in Calamity Jack’ by Anna Bas Backer after which Antoine Duthoit (2013) plunders Jim Woodring’s style and character cast for the outrageous Spank.

From 1972 Trina Robbins delivers classic pastiche ‘Sally Starr Hollywood Gal Sleuth’ solving a “Minit Mystery” whilst Bob Conway offers classic cartoon capers ‘Out to Lunch’ and ‘Chicken Shit’ in 1980’s Tales of Mr. Fly, and David Miller & Par Holman venerate the disaffected teen outsider experience in a blast of vignettes in Punkomix #1 from 1982.

Clark Dissmeyer laments the life of a Two-Fisted Cartoonist (#1 1983) after which Steve Willis’ 1983 Sasquatch Comix #3 details a strange encounter in the wild woods and R.K. Sloane & Jeff Gaither noxiously explore a life in hell with Fresh Meat from 1985.

A genuine small press big noise reveals all in the ‘Jeff Nicholson Interview’ after which the creator’s infamous cartoon polemic Jeff Nicholson’s Small Press Tirade (1989) still proves to be astoundingly powerful and the ‘Dan Taylor Interview’ segues neatly into some of his superbly eclectic Shortoonz from 1990 and the deliciously vulgarian Unleashed #1 from 2010.

John Trubee’s 1990 Vomit! #1 is a captivating manifesto of the politically baroque and philosophically bizarre whilst from 1992 Jason Atomic’s Wongo Batonga pt. 2 gloriously celebrates the magnificent freedom of superheroic imagination in a lengthy explosion of power-packed battles before Patrick Dowers explores human diversity in Marvels of the Sideshow Freaks.

Corn Comics #1 (Marc Bell, 1993) provides a hilarious laugh-ride of bitter twisted types after which the ‘Tom Hart Interview’ precedes his wittily poignant 1993 slice-of-life saga Love Looks Left and all-star line-up J.R. Williams, Pat Moriarity & R.L. Crabb collaborate on the 1994 cautionary tale ‘Devil Stay Away From Me’.

Impishly shocking Ellen Forney & Renée French then reveal how The Exquisite Corpse Bakes a Pie (1994), after which a ‘Molly Kiely Interview’ is stunningly supplemented by her rendition of a bevy of female music and movie icons who all possessed that indefinable sense of Sass! (1995).

Jeffrey Brown’s 1998 paean to hopelessness and confusion ‘To Wenatchee’ is followed by Pshaw’s whimsical story of a little robot in The One Eyed World (1999) after which ‘Colin Upton Presents A Short Guide To the Care and Production of Mini-Comics’ provides everything anyone needs to know about making story-art stories.

Contemporary cartoon wild child Johnny Ryan 2002 exposes guilty secrets from Shouldn’t You Be Working? #5, before the ‘Souther Salazar Interview’ leads to the artist’s wide-ranging ‘In Case of Emergency Only’ (2003) and Max Clotfelter’s eerily post-apocalyptic Snake Meat #1 from 2004.

Her smartly evocative 2004 Science Fiction Affliction is preceded by an ‘Alison Cole Interview’ after which Thought Cloud Shrines from 2007 perfectly displays Theo Ellsworth’s astounding graphic imagination and meticulous penmanship; gifts shared by Lisa Hanawalt and revealed in a stunning fashion parade of freaks in Stay Away From Other People from 2008, augmented by her hilarious ’12 Things To Do When you Are Stuck in Traffic’.

Travis Millard’s ‘Sad Dad’ introduces a deucedly depressing modern pantheon in Who Let the Gods Out (2008) whilst Bobby Maddness explores a variety of baffling annoyances in Too Small Comics #2 (2010) and Esther Pearl Watson describes a ghastly future populated solely by pop stars and fashion models in Eric Parris World from 2009.

The marvellous Jim Rugg contributes a stunning and outrageous pop at America’s dumbest President and most moronic national symbol in the delirious ‘Rambo 3.5’ (2009) after which, from 2010, Donald & Daniel Zettwoch mesmerise with their incredible personal history of phone exchange technology in ‘Cut Lines and Intricate Minds’ as seen in Tel-Tales #1 and Tom Neely employs dozens of bootlegged Popeyes in a surreal spinach-fuelled Battle Royale for his Doppelgänger…

The ‘Jason T. Miles Interview’ leads naturally enough into his 2010 tale of terror ‘Dump’ from Pines 3.

The irrepressible manga marvel DJ Cat Gosshie goes through a series of adorable “totally-street” trans-Pacific short story syncopations as delineated by Harukichi in 2011 before Pakito Bolino then relates the hyperkinetic end of everything with the ‘Male of the Future’ from D.O.C. (2012)

DemonDust #10 by Bernie McGovern (2012) lyrically explores the poetry of atomic theory and human interactiveness whilst from the same year Shuttlecakes reveals the stunning dexterity and artistic facility of Susan Belle before the ‘Caroline Paquita Interview’ leads to her seductively gender-political compilation Womanimalistic #3 from 2013 to close the monochrome section of this collection.

However, following the ever-so-useful ‘Artist website and contact info’ pages, there’s even more compelling cartoon self-expression all crafted to make use of carefully considered colour, commencing with Kristyna Baczynski’s travails of a pretty kitty in ‘Nine Lives’ from 2012, Leah Wishnia’s disturbing exploration of women’s lives from Spithouse #1 (2008) and an even more distressing tale of psychological brutality from Nick Bertozzi in ‘5/4’ from 2000 before Ethan Persoff concludes the challenging cartoon content with a stunning graphic potpourri from Plastic Tales and Stories #2.

This tremendous tome features some of the host of pioneering craftsmen who worked in the self-printing movement which became today’s thriving Alternative/Small Press publishing industry as well as the current internet comics phenomenon, and this book has incredible appeal on an historical basis.

However, that’s really not the point: the real draw of such collections is that creativity is addictive, good work never pales or grows stale and the great stories and art here will make you keen to have a go too.

I’ve done it myself, for fun – even once or twice for actual profit – and it’s an incredible buzz (I should note that I am still married to a wife not only tolerant but far more skilled and speedy in the actual “photocopy, cut, fold, staple” bit of the process and willing, if not keen, to join in just so she might occasionally be with the compulsive dingbat she married…)

The sheer boundless enthusiasm and feelgood rewards of intellectual freedom from making such comics celebrated in this astoundingly vast, incredibly heavy and yet still pocket-sized hardback is a pure galvanic joy that will enchant and impel every fan of the art-form: as long as they’re big enough to hold a pencil, old enough to vote, and strong enough to lift the book.
Treasury of Mini Comics volume 2 © 2015 Michael Dowers and Fantagraphics Books. All contents © 2013 their respective creators or authors. All rights reserved.

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Greenberg the Vampire – a Marvel Graphic Novel


By J.M. DeMatteis & Mark Badger (Marvel)
ISBN: 0871350904                 ISBN-13: 978-0-8713-5090-9

During the 1980s and following the organic development of a Direct Sales Market, the American comics industry was transformed by a magical proliferation of new titles and companies.

With publishers now able to firm-sale straight to specialist retail outlets rather than overprint and accept returned copies from non-specialised shops, the comics biz was able to support less generic titles whilst creators were able to experiment without losing their shirts and even to own the concepts and characters they invented.

In response Marvel developed a line of creator-owned properties and concentrated a lot of resources into the development of high quality original graphic novels: mixing said creator-owned properties, licensed assets such as Conan the Barbarian and new proprietary Marvel Universe tales launched in extravagant over-sized packages (286 x 210mm rather than the now standard 258 x 168mm, in imitation of the European format albums of the times) which always felt and looked like far more than an average comicbook no matter how good, bad or offbeat the contents might have been.

Even the regular comicbook line upped its game, searching for material which would appeal to a broader customer-base than the provably false traditional marketing concept of an “average” teenaged boy…

From 1986 comes a quirky Marvel Graphic Novel line (#20 if you’re counting) which mixes horror fantasy with the unique comedy of New York’s Jewish community, cannily crafted by Thinking-Man’s funnybook scribe J.M. DeMatteis and lavishly painted by the inimitable Mark Badger.

Oscar Greenberg is a famous writer of horror novels and something of a recluse. He is also, since a night of diligent research went slightly awry, a vampire.

Attending a Satanist’s meeting in search of useful material, he picked up a beautiful, eager and very willing lady who later, in a fit of overly-amatory passion, gave him the wrong sort of bite and ended his life. They’ve been together ever since…

Don’t get Oscar started on Bram Stoker. For every fact the “expert” got right about vampires he got three wrong. For a start, although they all need a certain amount of blood to survive, the undead much prefer animal to human and only the deranged go around deliberately biting people – and then only until the aberrant’s night-living kin can catch and stop them.

Vamps are highly shy, deeply spiritual, intellectual folk who don’t want to be bothered or be a nuisance: it’s the only way they can face themselves in the mirror in the evening. Yes, they do reflect and you can photograph them: something Oscar has been ducking paparazzi to avoid for over a decade…

The modern-day literary hermit is in a stable, loving relationship with Denise Keaton, the bitey lady who accidentally “turned” him and most of his loving family know about his condition – all except poor frail, often confused Mama, whom he’s sure couldn’t stand the shock of learning her beloved boy had predeceased her, even if he still comes calling every chance he gets…

Oscar even hired his obnoxious wannabe-journalist nephew Morrie as his assistant, but the lad hasn’t got that much to do since Uncle Oscar is not having a good time lately. As the city reels and writhes under the escalating terror of a bloody serial killer dubbed the “New York Ripper” the master of gory fictive horror is suffering the cruellest, most long-lived bout of writer’s block ever recorded…

The frustration is killing him, so after another explosive, typewriter-trashing bout of petulance, he takes a welcome break by attending a full-family feast at Mama’s (vampires eat and drink – even garlic – the blood-drinking is strictly for medicinal purposes).

However, en route in a heavily screened limousine, Oscar spots a streetwalker who sends his mind racing back to the day of his Bar Mitzvah…

On that day in 1954 as he rehearsed for the life-changing ceremony to come, a beautiful woman appeared and made him a man in a much more pleasant and supremely physical manner, before vanishing with a promise that they would meet again…

Back in the now the dinner is going well, and doting, oblivious Mama is in her element until she has some sort of fit, screaming at a darkened window and swearing that “she” can’t have “him”. Before passing out Henrietta Greenberg‘s final whispered word is “Lilith”…

Later, as young Morrie waits in a bar for his latest flame Arlene, she becomes the latest gory incident in the Ripper’s campaign. The crushed and despondent youth is utterly unaware how the killing is connected to his own close-knit family…

Oscar meanwhile has been pushed to the edge of insanity by his inability to create and in desperation accepts a longstanding offer to write the screenplay for one of his old stories. The entire family visits the set of “The Blood of Mrs. Morris” where unctuous producer Thad Turkel introduces his captivating ingénue discovery Evie Adams and assures them all of astounding future success…

Oscar is instantly beguiled by the waif and his fall from grace is confirmed. His temperament changes: he’s angry all the time, avoids Denise and all he can think about is the starlet. He doesn’t even notice when Morrie goes crazy and Mama recognises that her grandson’s been possessed by a Dybbuk…

She may be senile sometimes, but Mama Greenberg knows things and has never been a fool. Instantly shelving a decade of maternal disapproval she aligns with “Shiksa” Denise and takes Oscar’s true love into her confidence, revealing how when her baby-boy was just a baby she managed, through love and prayer and ancient rites, to drive off an ancient evil known as Lilith as she tried to steal the child.

The profane First Woman and Mother of All Monsters laughed as she left, promising to possess him one day. Clearly that moment has arrived…

Elsewhere Oscar is fully under the spell of the sorceress who has earmarked him to provide the creative spark she needs to make the world her own, beguiling him body and soul. However as Lilith discards such old worn out toys as the Ripper and concentrates on dominating her glamoured writer, humanity’s last hope is marshalling her own forces…

With her son’s soul on the line, Henrietta Greenberg has dropped all pretence and gathered Denise, her faith and her family about her. Not even the eternal forces of rage, greed and lust will keep a son from his mother…

Poignant, moving, funny and exceptionally entertaining, Greenberg the Vampire is at once a superb light-horror parable and sardonic but sincere paean of praise to the unshakable power of Family expressed through the happily inexhaustible well of literature known as “Jewish Voices”.

As such it compellingly taps into the Jewish-American experience most famously represented by authors as varied as Philip Roth, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller or Michael Chabon and comedians/entertainers like Woody Allen, Billy Crystal, Mel Brooks and even Lenny Bruce.

Most enticing, though, is that it easily rests within the small but constantly growing sub-genre of graphic novels like The Golem’s Mighty Swing, The Big Kahn, Hereville, Maus and most clearly the epic and astounding canon of semi-autobiographical tales such as A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories, The Dreamer and Will Eisner’s New York the Big City.

An enchanting tale of timeless relevance to all people who love happy endings.
© 1986 Marvel Comics Group. All Rights Reserved.

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Scared to Death volume 1: The Vampire from the Marshes


By Mauricet & Vanholme, with colours by Laurent Carpentier and translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978- 1-905460-47-2

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 journalist Virgine Vanholme and youthful yet seasoned illustrator Alain Mauricet, the Mort de Trouille series of albums was launched by Casterman in the year 2000. There have been seven sinister sorties so far…

Whilst I’ve not been able to find out much about the author, the artist is rather well travelled, having worked for CrossGen, Image and DC in America as well as on a wide variety of features in Europe.

He’s also to be seen in David Lloyd’s magnificently wonderful digital delight Aces Weekly…

Born in 1967, Mauricet originally 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 at 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.

He now lives in Brussels, and also designs for computer games whilst working on a more personal graphic enterprise entitled Une Bien Belle Nuance de Rouge…

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…

In 2008 Cinebook picked up Mort de Trouille: Le vampire des Marais and invited British 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 and 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 quite freaked out when they find a strangely slaughtered bird but completely terrified when they disturb a poacher who chases them off 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 constantly shadowed by an uncanny, cloaked figure who even breaks into the Lavigne home as it strives to preserve its anonymity and ancient secrets from the eyes of prying, violent mankind. It is noisily disturbed as it closes in on the boys and 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 and seems rather reluctant to bleed him as a proper vampire should. The creature has, however, no problem leaving him – and the freshly captured Robin who stumbles upon them – to drown in a deep well…

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

As the frightened boys are pulled to safety, Robin’s dad questions them and goes ballistic when he learns 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…

Deliciously delivered in the manner of Goosebumps and Scooby-Doo, this is a superb slice of all-ages spooky fun in the classic mould that will enthral and enchant everyone who’s suffered from “father knows best” syndrome and loves tall tales with devilish twists.
Original edition © Casterman, 2000 by Mauricet & Vanholme. English translation © 2008 by Cinebook Ltd.

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Tales of the Mysterious Traveller


By Joe Gill, Steve Ditko, Bill Molno, Gene Colan, Charles Nicholas, Paul Reinman & various (Racecourse Press/GT Ltd.)
No ISBN

Steve Ditko is one of our industry’s greatest talents and probably America’s least lauded. His fervent desire to just get on with his job and tell stories the best way he can, whilst the noblest of aspirations, has and will always be a major consideration or even stumbling block for the commercial interests which for so long controlled all comics production and still exert an overwhelming influence upon the mainstream bulk of Funnybook output.

Before his time at Marvel, young Ditko perfected his craft creating short stories for a variety of companies and it’s an undeniable joy to be able to look at this work from a such an innocent time when he was just breaking into the industry: tirelessly honing his craft with genre tales for whichever publisher would have him, always seeking to be as free as possible from the interference of intrusive editors.

The Mysterious Traveller was one of Charlton Comics’ earliest stars. The title came from a radio show (which ran from 1943-1952) which the doggedly second-string company licensed, with a lead/host/narrator acting more as voyeur than active participant.

Standing aloof, speaking “to camera” and asking readers for opinion and judgement, he shared a selection of funny, sad, scary and wondrous human interest yarns all tinged with a hint of the weird and supernatural. The long-running show spawned a single comicbook issue published by Trans-World Publications illustrated by the great Bob Powell, cover-dated November 1948.

When revived years later and as rendered by Ditko, whose storytelling mastery, page design and full, lavish brushwork were just beginning to come into their mature full range, the Tales of the Mysterious Traveler (as the US version was styled) short stories were esoteric and utterly mesmerising. This comicbook iteration ran for 13 issues from 1956-1959…

The particular print artefact under review today is in fact a British compilation of Charlton reprints, culled not only from the nominated title but from range of genre titles for a presumably less-discerning British audience. It’s one of a line of card-cover albums and cheap pamphlets reprinting US material that proliferated in the late 1950’s before actual comicbooks began to be imported. Other volumes range from Blackhawk to Rip Kirby to Twilight Zone.

The short complete tale was once the sole staple of the comic book profession, when the plan was to deliver as much variety as possible to the reader. Sadly that particular discipline is all but lost to modern comic creators.

This undated (I’m guessing it’s from 1960) monochrome chronicle – which I’m assuming was scripted almost entirely by the prodigiously prolific Joe Gill – opens with ‘Little Boy Blue’ (TotMT#10, November 1958) detailing the unsuspected, unacknowledged sacrifice of a jazz virtuoso who saves the world after which, from the same issue ‘The Statues that Came to Life’ reveals how ancient Greek king Pellas tries to duplicate Pygmalion’s legendary feat and hires an artist to carve him a perfect wife.

However when sculptor Phidias succeeds and the marble beauty comes to life, it is not Pellas she wants…

‘The Puncher from Panhandle’ is western prose yarn by Frank Richards – which feels like it might have been written by a Brit – after which two episodes of ‘Sundown Patrol’ (frustratingly familiar – perhaps early Don Perlin – but I can’t find where it originally ran) follows a grim attrition as nine US Cavalrymen defy renegade warrior Crazy Dog‘s attempts to destroy them…

It’s followed by another Frank Richards western vignette: a tale of banditry and ‘The Man in the Flour Bag’ after which Ditko again scores with the classic sci fi shocker ‘Adrift in Space’ (Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #8, June1958). Here Captain Crewes, marooned in the void by a mutinous crew, ruminates on what brought him to this sorry fate.

Next is ‘The Half Men’ (illustrated by Bill Molno &Sal Trapani from the same issue) which sees three flawed but dauntless men voyage to a fantastic under-earth civilisation. Astute readers might recognise the tale from modern alternative comics since Kevin Huizenga tellingly redrew the entire epic for Kramer’s Ergot volume 8…

Also from MoUW #8 is a moving yarn by Gene Colan and one that I can’t identify. Colan’s moodily rendered ‘The Good Provider’ sees a married couple tested to the extreme by a wish-fulfilling bag whilst ‘Full Development’ follows the sorry path of a young man who develops mind-reading powers after the CIA recruit him…

Ditko resurfaces for ‘The Mountain That Was’ (Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #11 January 1959) with an eerie saga of climbers and snowbound monsters after which from the same source ‘Voyage to Nowhere’ (Molno & Vince Alascia) sees a wealthy man fall into a coma and undergo a startling moral transformation.

Unusual Tales #6 (February 1957) provided ‘Caveman’ (by Charles Nicholas & Jon D’Agostino?) which follows a sour-tempered wage-slave through a cathartic reversion to soul-cleansing primitivism whilst, following prose terror tale ‘Frightful Fears’ from MoUW #11, ‘Algaroba the Aerial Artist’ (Molno & Alascia, Unusual Tales #2, January 1956) poses a bizarre enigma of reincarnation and high wire artistry…

‘The Strange Return’ by Paul Reinman (MoUW #11 again) treads similar ground with the tale of a treasure hunter in Persia after which ‘The Memorable Mile’ (probably by Molno again but I can’t trace the source) details how supernatural forces come to the fore in a propaganda-drenched sporting contest…

Molno & Trapani then render ‘Not All Gold Glitters’ (Unusual Tales #6, February 1957) wherein a destitute couple are pushed to the limits of sanity when they mysteriously inherit a fortune whilst ‘Elixir’ (Molno &Trapani from MoUW #8 again) attacks medical arrogance as a disbelieving doctor throws away a miracle cure he receives in the mail…

Everything wraps up with anonymously illustrated (Maurice Whitman perhaps?) but moving ‘Willie!’ from UT #6 as a modernising boss comes a-cropper after retiring an aging craftsman and his favourite machine…

This amazingly capacious volume has episodes that terrify, amaze, amuse and enthral: utter delights of fantasy fiction with lean, stripped-down plots and simple dialogue that let the art set the tone, push the emotions and tell the tale, from a time when a story could end sadly as well as happily or portentously and only wonderment was on the agenda, hidden or otherwise.

Sadly it’s rather hard to find – but not impossible! – and, if like me, you lament that only superstar creators get their back catalogue reprinted these days but still yearn to see the efforts of the journeymen who filled the other pages of old comicbooks, collections like this are your only resort.

Little gems like this should be permanently in print or at least available online and used as a primer for any artist who wants a career in comics, animation or any storytelling discipline.
No copyright notice included so let’s assume © 2014 the current rights owner. All rights reserved.

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Cochlea & Eustachia


By Hans Rickheit (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-801-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Unseasonably Strange but Utterly Irresistible… 9/10

Hans Rickheit was born in 1973 and has been producing skilfully crafted art in many different arenas since the 1990s, beginning with self-published mini-comics before graduating to full-sized, full-length epics such as Kill, Kill, Kill and The Squirrel Machine. He has also worked in film, music, gallery works and performance art.

A Xeric award beneficiary, he came to broader attention in 2001 with the controversial graphic novel Chloe, and has since spread himself wide contributing to numerous anthologies and periodicals, creating beguiling webcomics and instigating the occasional anthology or minicomic of his own such as Chrome Fetus.

That last was the original venue for the strangely surreal binary sorority known as Cochlea & Eustachia. They first manifested in issue #5 in 2001, with obscure and occulted follow-ups in The Stranger, Proper Gander, Hoax, Typhon, Blurred Visions and Pood. Most recently they have destructively scurried and ambled through Rickheit’s webcomic pages (http://www.chromefetus.com/) and now are ready to inflict their distracting blend of ingénue iconoclasm and chaos chic through the printed page of a splendidly olde worlde graphic compilation.

A keen student of dreams, Rickheit has been called obscurantist, and indeed in all his beautifully rendered and realised concoctions meaning is layered and open to wide interpretation.

His preferred oeuvre is the recondite imagery and sturdily fanciful milieu of Victorian/Edwardian Americana which proved such rich earth for fantasists such as Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, whilst his fine, studied, meticulously clear line is a perfect, incisive counterpoint to the frequently challenging logic-bending of miasmic mystery and cosmic confusion.

In Short: pay attention, scrutinise carefully and make up your own mind…

In a shabby, battered manse peculiar contraptions and bizarre trophies of things that should never have existed – let alone be stuffed and mounted – abound.

The master of the house is another strange creature and as he awakes from a unique bier and begins to wander the rooms, unseen and undetected wanton mischief makers Cochlea and Eustachia rouse also and resume their apparently aimless peregrinations through the walls, nooks and crannies of the edifice that rests atop a sea of animal skulls…

The nubile, girl-like creatures scutter about in dream-like journeys and progressions, avoiding and yet stalking the wheelchair bound savant as he continues his labours, cultivating creatures of incomprehensible oddity…

Soon chances occur for more manufactured calamity and a wildly sedate chase ensues, resulting in capture, shocking indignity and a clash with monsters and giant robots, but as the episode escalates we are left to wonder are the elfin wanderers a binary or in fact trinary partnership?

Or is the truth – if such a thing can ever be pinned down and vivisected – something even more baroque and uncanny?

All that basically means is that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling this sinisterly absurdist confection from one of the most impressively singleminded craftsmen working in comics today, and if you are at all tempted or intrigued you must buy this splendidly slewed and offbeat chronicle.

Scary, beautiful, disturbing and often utterly inappropriate, the full-colour exploits of the masked misfit misses is accompanied by an enticing extra tale in muted monochrome as the mysterious masqueraders return to declare ‘How It Works’, after finding a possibly handsome stranger stashed in a box in a starkly surreal swamp…

Visually reminiscent of the best of Rick Geary, Jason Lutes and Charles Burns whilst being nothing like them at all, Rickheit presents a singularly surreal and mannered design; a highly charged, subtly disturbing delusion that will chill, bewilder and possibly even outrage many readers.

It is also compelling, seductive, sublimely quirky, blackly hilarious and nigh-impossible to forget. As long as you’re an adult and braced for the unexpected, expect this to be one of the best books you’ll read this decade – or any other…
Cochlea & Eustachia © 2014 Hans Rickheit. This edition © 2014 Fantagraphics Books Inc.