Category: Humour

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Collected Comics volume 1


By Ed Caruana, Landry Walker, John-Paul Bove, Erik Burnham, Jack Lawrence, Cosmo White, Bob Molesworth, Jason Cardy & various (Nickelodeon/Panini Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84653- 615-1

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: What Every Kid Craves… 8/10

Devised by young comicbook creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first appeared in a self-published black & white parody comicbook in 1984.

After spawning an explosive boom in do-it-yourself comics and changing the very nature of the industry, their concept resolved into the ideal example of successful exploitation, expanding to encompass toys, movies, games, food, apparel, general merchandising and especially television cartoons, becoming – and remaining – a globally potent franchise. There’s another movie in the cinemas even as I type this…

In 2012 the third animated TV series – rendered in extremely impressive 3D CGI – launched on Nickelodeon to tremendous world wide approval and is now up to its fourth season.

Such universally popular characters usually filter back into comics as their media stars wax and the TV show generated an Official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Magazine, packed with puzzles, posters, fact files, competitions and some extremely engaging and entertaining strips.

This bold, brassy and bombastic collection gathers the hilarious, action-packed comic chronicles from issues #2 through 13 and 15 – with a few value-added extras thrown in – and sensibly opens with a rehash of the characters’ ‘Origins’ before ‘The Need for Speed!‘ by Ed Caruana, Jack Lawrence and chief colourist Jason Cardy sets the ball rolling when a silly mistake forces romantic Donatello into the most important rescue mission of his life.

After a glitch in computer communication makes him mistakenly believe their human associate April O’Neil has confessed her love for him, in a state of euphoria he responds with a flamboyant gesture.

Unfortunately, by the time he realises the hugely embarrassing error and needs to stop a florist delivering a bonanza bouquet to her, he’s in the middle of a furious fight with the robotic Kraangs who are still insidiously contaminating New York City with the alien Mutagen concoction which had years ago turned a Ninjutsu master into a giant rat and four baby amphibians into the world’s greatest warriors…

‘Podzilla’ then finds our shell-backed saviours battling deranged nemesis and insufferable mad scientist Baxter Stockman whose latest mechanical monstrosity is proof against martial arts mastery but not inventive genius Donnie’s latest innovation. ‘Thief in the Night’ (by Erik Burnham & Bob Molesworth) then sees the quartet battling to save a “magic” sword from Mutagen-warped piscine peril Fishface whilst ‘Slug’ (by Caruana & Molesworth) pits the boys against an uncommon bank robber who accidentally steals some of the ubiquitous ooze and so very slowly reaps the consequences…

Freewheeling Michelangelo saves the day in blistering battle against feral fury Dogbreath thanks to a killer move taught him by a samurai pelican in a ‘Daydream’ (Landry Walker, Caruana & Cosmo White) after which ‘Taken’ (Caruana & Jack Lawrence) finds the turtles’ pet – un-mutated – tortoise Spike at the centre of a kidnap plot involving those incorrigible Kraangs, after which the awesome power of pizza deals a substantial blow to arch-maniac Shredder‘s plans when ‘A Slice of Luck’ (Caruana & White) pits the team against an army of enemies and ticked-off mutant alligator Leatherface…

Donatello’s new stealth wings prove more handicap than advantage when the lads invade Kraang HQ in ‘Dropzone’ (Caruana & Lawrence), but not as much as the citizens of New York after the Turtles visit a pizzeria in ‘Takeout’ (Caruana, John-Paul Bove & Ryan J. Neal)…

In ‘Number One Fan’ (Walker & White) Leonardo trade blows and fanboy trivia with Stockman when they discover a shared love of vintage TV serial Space Heroes during a cataclysmic clash at a movie premiere…

Leo and Raphael later develop an intense and extremely physical rivalry in ‘Own Worst Enemy’ (Bove & Molesworth) but rodentine Master Splinter‘s solution falls far short of the bonding necessitated during a frantic fracas against antagonistic allies Fishface and Dogbreath at a superglue factory…

‘What Goes Up…’ (Bove, Caruana & Lawrence) features a fight in a rooftop jungle hiding veggie-monster Snakeweed, after which Donnie’s latest tinker toy ‘Roboninja’ (Caruana & White) proves more foe than friend after Mikey messes with its controls, whilst in ‘Meet the Dream King’ (Walker, Caruana & Molesworth) the pestiferous Michelangelo is lost in a fabulous but lethal fantasy realm which can only be escaped through the magic of pizza…

The mutant martial arts mirth and mayhem concludes with ‘Space Captain Leo’ (Walker Caruana & White) as the incurable telly addict suffers a debilitating head injury and starts channelling the valiant Captain Ryan of the Starship Dauntless whilst tracking down the Kraangs and a vast shipment of deadly Mutagen.

His bewildered brothers in arms can barely keep up as the carnage commences…

Wrapping up the all-ages fun is a mesmerising fact-feature ‘Behind the Scenes’ which traces the development of the story pages from rough layouts to full-finished computer-coloured art and also includes a selection of ‘Concept Sketches’ revealing the evolution of Podzilla, Roboninja, Slug and The Dream King.

Fast, furious, fun-filled and funny, this reinvention of the perennial shell-backed sentinels offers a superb slice of excitement and enjoyment – and bizarrely addictive catch-phrases – that will keep kids and adults alike bouncing off the walls with eager appreciation.

Mums: You have been warned…

© 2014 Viacom Overseas Holdings, C. V. All Rights Reserved. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and all related logos and characters are ™ Viacom Overseas Holdings, C. V. Based on characters created by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman.

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Storm


By Tim Minchin, DC Turner, Tracy King & various (Orion)
ISBN: 978-1-4091-5625-3 (tpb): 978-1-4091-5209-5 (HB): 978-1-4091-5210-1(eBk)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: a cartoon bible of common sense… 10/10

The world is a magical, wondrous place stuffed with miracles and mysteries.

However there’s not one single atom of it that depends on the eldritch, mystic or supernatural and none of it – or the greater universe around it – is wrought from the efforts of supreme beings or operated on principles of forgotten lore denied us common folk.

It’s all explainable, utterly rational and absolutely subject to revision by us every time we find out or disprove something that previously has been a puzzle. To do otherwise is nothing less than a crime against humanity.

No Gods, no ghosts, no witchcraft, no magic crystals. Got it?

It’s amazing how many people haven’t and how the latest anti-science fad or fashion can cause genuine harm to the world, deprive generally sensible folk of their money and too often make dinner parties a theatre of war…

Tim Minchin is a creative whirlwind and multi-media entertainment polymath originally from Australia who performs musical stand-up comedy, composes award-winning stage musicals like Matilda and acts in hit shows like Jesus Christ, Superstar.

He’s very smart, very funny and doesn’t believe in goblins or faith-healing.

In 2006 his 90-second diatribe ‘If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife)’ – a “refutation of the plausibility of astrology, psychics, homeopathy and an interventionist God” impressed and delighted fans. In 2008, after a close encounter with a pontificating new-agey nitwit at a party where the reasonable, rationalist Mr. Minchin politely opted not to contest a stream of bubble-headed nonsense, he took his ire and indignation and turned it into a piece of true inspiration: a beat poem, Socratic dialogue and “anthem for critical thinkers”…

It’s a very funny, edgy slice of entertaining refutation and I-wish-I’d-said-that-ism which was used as the closer for the Ready For This? Tour for more than two years.

In Britain animators/illustrators/producers Dan “DC” Turner and Tracy King saw the show and determined that at all costs they must turn that paean to logic and sense into an animation and, as described in the Introduction by Tim Minchin and the Afterword by Turner and King, after some wheeler-dealing, they did just that.

Storm became an internet sensation with three million hits on YouTube after its launch in 2011, and now the artists and Tim have completely reworked that cartoon sensation into an astoundingly compulsive and scathingly funny graphic novel which opens at an intimate soiree in North London where the narrator and his wife sit down to sup with friends and are force-fed a stream of nonsensical blather by a beautiful girl with a tattoo of a fairy.

Her name is Storm and this time the quiet man she inanely and arrogantly lectures is not going to hold his tongue…

By turns tense, barbed, hilariously evocative and furiously cathartic, this stunning visual feast delivers the barrage of scathing sense we’ve always wanted (but been too polite) to unleash on evolution-deniers, pseudo-scientists, astrological aroma-therapy advocates, vaccination-withholders, ghost-chasers and every other stripe of pontificating irrationalist in a graphic tumult of colour, line and typography that will simultaneously stun and galvanise.

This magnificent reinterpretation also includes a Foreword by Neil Gaiman, Biography pages for Minchin, Turner & King and – because it’s all about the fun – a selection of variant covers by Ricky Earl, Freya Harrison, Andy Herd, Dave “Swatpaz” Ferguson and Stuart Mason & Rachael King which might have graced the issues had this yarn been serialised as comicbooks rather than released as a complete book…

There has been and always will be a valuable and cherished place for fantasy, imagination and all the wild and woolly boggles and phantasms of a rich realm of tradition and ignorance. Indeed I believe it’s absolutely necessary for every child to be fully acquainted with all aspects of fairies and spectres and wish-fulfilling rings and lamps, but there comes a time when they must retire to a place of nostalgia and fun, regularly revisited for amusement but never, never, never used to dictate the content of school curricula, divert funds from genuine medical research or be employed as justification to persecute whole sectors of society or even one single “different” individual…

Storm is an edgy pictorial tour de force that will delight and enchant readers who love the funny and fantastic but never forget where the horizons of fantasy end and the borders of imagination begin…

Text © Tim Minchin 2014. Illustrations © Tracy King and Daniel Charles Turner 2014. All rights reserved.
Storm will be published on October 16, 2014 and available in trade paperback and eBook formats as well as in a 1000 copy Limited Edition Deluxe Hardback with extra content.

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Lobey’s The Wee Boy! – Five Lobey Dosser adventures by Bud Neill


By Bud Neill, compiled by Ranald MacColl (Mainstream Publishing)
ISBN: 1-85158-405-6

Nobody’s ever accused me of being sensitive to the tone of the times, but with all thoughts directed north of the border for so long now, I’ve decided to feature this superbly unique dose of Celtic (more properly Glaswegian) cartoon magic today.

It’s the work of a tragically near-forgotten genius of pen and brush who should rightly be a household name wherever people like to laugh and ponder the absurdity of existence, no matter what flag they fly.

William Neill – forever immortalised as “Bud” – was born in 1911 in Partick just before the family moved to Troon in Ayrshire. He was a typical kid and fell in love with the brash wonder of silent movies – most especially the rambunctious westerns of William S. Hart.

His other great drive was a love of horses, and he could always be found hanging around stables, trading odd jobs for the chance of a few minutes’ riding.

After finishing school the young artistic star won a place at Glasgow School of Art. In the late 1930s Bud briefly emigrated, working in Canada and absorbing the tricks of America’s greatest newspaper cartoonists in their creative heyday.

He served as a gunner during WWII but was invalided out and became a bus driver. These experiences led to his creating a series of pocket cartoons starring the “Caurs & Clippies” of Glasgow’s tramcar system.

By 1944 Bud was drawing for the Glasgow Evening Times: sharp, wry observational pieces starring the city and its inhabitants, characterised by a devastating and instantly enchanting use of the iconic rhythms, vernacular and argot everyone shared.

In January 1949 The Evening News began running the uniquely surreal escapades of his greatest creation. Sheriff Lobey Dosser of Calton Creek was a brilliant inspiration: the adventures of a canny wee lawman in a hauntingly typical western town populated exclusively by Scots (from Glasgow’s Calton district, presumably) living an outrageously domestic, hilariously apt inner city life all whilst tricked out in cowboy hats and six-guns…

Delving deep into the venerable, anarchic and often surreal material of music hall and pantomime, Bud crafted a supremely odd, anachronistically familiar, bizarrely inviting world of solecism masquerading as local events. The series transferred to The Sunday Mail in 1956 where it became so popular that previous, complete strip adventures were collected in instant sell-out, one shilling landscape booklets (all incredibly sought after collectors’ items these days).

Neill died in 1970 but his work steadily continued to garner fans and acquire a mythical status, so by the middle of the decade Glasgow artist and sculptor Ranald MacColl began work on a biography.

That in turn led to a series of graphic collections such as this one and eventually belated recognition for Neill and his most memorable creations.

Bud was subsequently celebrated in exhibitions, galleries and, following Glasgow’s becoming European City of Culture in 1990, two separate bronze statues (Lobey, Rank Bajin and noble steed Elfie in Woodlands Road and, in Homecoming Year 2009, The G.I. Bride and her “Wean” at Partick Station), funded by public donations, Strathclyde Passenger Transport and private sponsors.

Hard to find but so worth the effort, Lobey’s The Wee Boy! gathers the contents of five of those shilling collections in a sensibly narrative chronological – not publication or even creation – order and is packed with informative extras such as MacColl’s fascinating historical and atmospheric Introduction and a hilarious Prologue by Bud himself from 1958, before the astonishing origin of the champion of Calton Creek is revealed in ‘Lobey Dosser: His Life Story’.

On a rare quiet day the grizzled sheriff recounts his early life to a jail full of impressionable young’uns…

Once upon a time in auld Glesca a mother had one bairn too many and the precocious tyke, to spare her further hardship, put his possessions in a hanky on a stick and headed off to make his way in the world.

Although only a few months old, he rejected being fostered out to his mean Auntie Mabel and joined a merchant ship under the tyrannical Captain Blackswite, unaware that the big shouty blackguard was a pirate…

After many exciting years at sea Lobey jumped ship and was befriended by cannibals and their erudite chief Hannibal which led to more exploring, meeting monsters and other strange things before encountering a race of Oxbridge-educated white savages and happily acquiring a rare two-legged horse.

El Fideldo was to become his greatest friend and inseparable companion. Together they made their way to Mexico where the wee wanderer discovered an unsuspected talent for upholding the law and keeping the peace. After cleaning out a nest of vicious banditos the restless pair headed north and soon fetched up in Laredo, Texas where a disastrous love affair with Adoda, formidable daughter of wealthy Whisk E. Glorr, led to a clash with rustlers led by scurrilous Watts Koakin…

His heart broken – even though he had cleaned up the range – Dosser and Elfie kept heading west until they reached Arizona and first met future arch-nemesis Rank Bajin selling out the wagon train he was guiding to the local Sioux…

Rescuing the embattled settlers, Lobey decided to stay with the Scots expats as they built a town in the wilderness.  They called it Calton Creek…

Wild, imaginative and with every daily episode loaded with sight gags, striking slapstick, punishing puns, cartoon in-jokes and intoxicating vernacular, each Lobey Dosser tale was a non-stop carnival of graphic mirth and this terrific tome continues in fine fettle with ‘The Mail Robbery’ wherein nefarious Bajin attempts to incite an Indian uprising amongst the Pawnee of Chief Toffy Teeth and leaves the little lawman to die of thirst in the searing deserts. As the scorched sheriff struggles to survive, the naïve citizens are left to adapt to a protective occupation by flash Yankee G.I.s and airmen…

Sardonic and satirically cutting, the yarn also sports one of the best – and daftest – horseback chases in entertainment history…

Romance and mystery abound in ‘The Secret of Hickory Hollow’ as that Bajin scoundrel buys up the mortgage on Vinegar Hill‘s farm and tries to kick out the old coot and his substantial niece Honey Perz. The villain has got wind of a mineral resource on the property that would make a man as wealthy as the Maharaja of Baroda, or perhaps even a regional Deputy Superintendent of the Coal Board…

When Lobey organises the cash needed to pay off the outstanding loan, Bajin reluctantly resorts to the last resort and begins romancing sweet, innocent, hulking Honey…

It all looks bleak for justice until the sheriff befriends an astoundingly good-looking and wholesome uranium prospector named Hart O’Gold who quickly tickles Honey’s fickle fancy…

However nobody – including ghostly guardian Rid Skwerr – is prepared for the soviet spies behind the entire affair to jump in take over and it needs the timely intervention of mystic imp Fairy Nuff to save their accumulated hash before the Dosser can finally expose the viper in the nest…

The local natives are always up to mischief and ‘The Indian War’ kicks off when the railroad tries to lay track through Pawnee Territory just as Chief Rubber Lugs of the Blackfeet Tribe revisits an old and outstanding grudge with Chief Toffy Teeth.

The ineffectual Captain Goodenough arrives with a division of cavalry to safeguard the white citizenry but matters soon worsen, painfully exacerbated when the folk of Calton Creek take advantage of Lobey’s absence (he’s trying to negotiate with both bunches of bellicose braves) to run Rank Bajin out of town and the hooded hoodlum starts freely peddling weapons to both sides…

…And then Bajin kills Lobey and takes over the town.

…And then…

The last yarn in this monochrome tome of tall tales is the most incredible of all as ‘The “Reform” of Rank Bajin’ sees the vile villain scooting around Calton Creek doing good deeds and selling off his astounding arsenal of wicked weapons and cunning contraband. Baffled, perplexed, confused and not sure what’s going on, Lobey asks Boot Hill haunter Rid Skwerr to spy on the no-longer reprehensible Rank and even love-struck Fairy Nuff gets in on the act.

The astounding truth finally emerges: Bajin has a boy who is growing up honest, so he is selling up and returning to the family he deserted in Borstal Bluffs, Iowa to sort the shameful lad out. Knowing the tremendous vacuum his absence will leave in Calton’s exciting landscape, however, he has a recommendation for a locum arch-enemy for his arch-enemy…

Can this possibly all be true or is the beastly Bajin executing his most sinister scheme yet?

Cunningly absurdist, socially aware, humorously harnessed insanity in the manner of Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine and the immortal Goon Show, the adventures of Lobey Dosser are a brilliant example of comic strips perfectly tailored to a specific time, place and audience which magically transcend their origins to become a masterpiece of the art form.

It’s also side-splitting, laugh-out-loud, Irn Bru spit-take hilarious and really needs to be recollected for today’s audiences.

And of course that’s what I really want: a complete reprinting of these sublimely perfect spoofs.

And once you read some so will you…
© Ranald MacColl 1992. All rights reserved.

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David, we’re PREGNANT!


By Lynn Johnston (Meadowbrook Press)
ISBN: 978-0-67176-018-2

I suspect the world’s about to go into Celeb-Baby Meltdown again so here’s how I shamelessly cash in, since we can’t send nippers up chimneys or down mines anymore…

As Shakespeare would have it “the world must be peopled”, but if we must there’s always room for a little sensible advice and preparation, so here’s an old cartoon book to provide a few laughs along with all the useful tips and calming, shared experiences.

Of course it’s all actually just another excuse for me to bemoan the loss of those once-ubiquitous cheap ‘n’ cheerful gag-packed paperbacks which are now all-but-forgotten fossils of a once mighty industry; pushed to extinction by the more palatable-sounding graphic novels and trade paperback collections.

Lynn Johnston (née Ridgway) is a national treasure of Canada where her cartooning and narrative talents first came to the fore. Born in 1947 in Collingwood, she was raised in North Vancouver, attending Vancouver School of Art before beginning her career as an animator.

In 1969 she married and was working as a medical artist at McMaster University when this project began in most unlikely circumstances. As described by Dr. Murray W. Enkin in his Introduction to David, we’re Pregnant!, whilst he was attending her in the early days of her first pregnancy, she was staring up – as you apparently do – at his blank ceiling and offered to draw some cartoons to comfort and entertain her fellow mums-to-be during such necessary but rather discommoding and undignified moments.

The result was a huge success in his surgery and was transferred in 1973 to a petite cartoon book which became a huge global sensation. It spawned two sequels (Hi Mom! Hi Dad! and Do They Ever Grow Up?) and led in 1978 to her being invited by the mighty Universal Press Syndicate to create a family comic strip.

Enticed by a twenty year contract, she began the still-running For Better or For Worse, based on her own family and soon fame, through massive syndication, best-selling books, and popular TV and movies soon came knocking…

She is one of the most gifted and celebrated cartoonists in the business, with awards including a Reuben from the National Cartoonists Society, Pulitzer nominations, a Gemini Award and a basketful of Honorary Degrees and Doctorates. Johnston holds both The Order of Canada and membership in The Order of Manitoba. She has her own star on Canada’s Walk of Fame and was elected in 2008 to The National Cartoon Museum Hall of Fame.

David, we’re Pregnant! is a solid example of a lost art form: mature-themed gag-collections which were the last commercial gasp in a tradition of pictorial entertainments that began with Punch and evolved into a publishing standby of British and American life for nearly a century before fading away to loiter around bargain bins, jumble sales and junk shops…

As much social satire as self-help, this deliciously addictive art-party traces the vicissitudes of trying to get pregnant, the idiocies of first-time-fathers, “helpful” family members who’ve been there, doctors in all their glory and the shock of realising you’re going to be PARENTS…

Also raising alarm and smiles are panels on the then-revolutionary Lamaze classes, the reactions of older kids to a new sibling, pregnancy clothes, finances, food crazes, quitting smoking and the horrors of getting fat…

Through morning sickness, name selection, waiting for the first kick, expectant mothers-in-law and partners who think they’re funny to delivery and those early times of loud noises, bad smells and no sleep, this splendid tome keeps the entertainment quotient at maximum whilst delivering a bunch of trenchant and even useful home truths…

Cartooning has been magnificently served over the centuries by masters of form, line, wash and most importantly smart ideas, repeatedly poking our funny bones, pricking our pomposities, stroking our happy places and feeding our fascinations. This sort of thing used to be bread ‘n’ butter in our game, so why not find a shy, alluring little bookshelf and start filling it with marvellous evergreen material like this…

David, we’re Pregnant! is a superb example of a major artist in fiendishly clever and beguiling form, generating warmth and fun with easy charm and utter aplomb. If you find this book (or indeed any cartoon compilation) give it a try. They’re a dying breed and you really will miss them once they’re gone…
© 1975 Potlatch Publications. All rights reserved.

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The Phoenix Presents… Star Cat book 01


By James Turner (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-06-3

In January 2012 Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched a traditional-seeming weekly comic aimed at girls and boys which sought to revive the good old days of picture-story entertainment Intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and Content.

Every issue offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy and, in the years since its premiere, The Phoenix has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who really count – the astoundingly engaged kids and parents who read it…

The Phoenix was voted No.2 in Time Magazine‘s global list of Top Comics and Graphic Novels and is the only UK strip publication started in the last forty years to have passed the 100 issue mark. The magazine celebrated its first anniversary by releasing a digital edition available globally as an app and is still continually expanding its horizons.

It is, most importantly, big and bold and tremendous fun. You should subscribe today…

Moreover, whilst comics companies all seem to have given up the ghost (in this country at least), old-school prose publishers and the newborn graphic novel industry have evolved to fill their vacated niche.

With a less volatile business model and far more sustainable long-term goals, book sellers have prospered from periodical publishers’ surrender. There have never been so many and varied cartoon and comics chronicles, compilations and tomes for readers to enjoy.

This year – at long last – many of the favourite serials and series from The Phoenix joined that growing market, having been superbly repackaged as graphic albums.

One of the wildest rides in the amazing anthology is Space Cat by the astoundingly clever James Turner (Super Animal Adventure Squad, The Unfeasible Adventures of Beaver and Steve). The strip began in issue #0 and has been popping back ever since…

The premise is timeless and instantly engaging, featuring the far-out endeavours of a bunch of spacefaring nincompoops in the classic mock-heroic manner. There’s so very far-from-dauntless Captain Spaceington, extremely dim amoeboid Science Officer Plixx, an inarticulate and barely housebroken beastie dubbed The Pilot and Robot One, who quite arrogantly and erroneously believes himself one of the smartest thinkers in the cosmos.

The colossal, formidable void-busting vessel they traverse the universe in looks like a gigantic ginger tom because that is what it is: half cat, half spaceship. What more do you need to know?

If you could think of something it would probably be answered by the astoundingly accurate Space Table of Space Contents, or the brilliant and informative cartoon cutaway and info-blurb page which reveals all the interior secrets of the mighty moggy cosmic craft and its motley crew in ‘Welcome Aboard the Star Cat’…

With introductions over and readers up to speed, the wild rides begins with ‘Star Cat’ wherein the team are contacted by Chicken-with-a-mission The Space Mayor who tasks the solar swashbucklers with recapturing escaped felon Dark Rectangle before the two-dimensional tyrant can rob the Space Bank, a task only completed through sheer dumb luck and the Ginger rocket’s uncurbed predilection for Space Mice…

The sinister shape of Dark Rectangle is next seen menacing the lost planet of Inflatia where his plans to deflate the universe are foiled by the team who have mistakenly fetched up there in search of critical stores on what they think is the Ice Cream Planet in ‘The Big Let Down’ after which ‘Nub’ sees the Star Cat ferrying the cutest, most endangered creatures in the galaxy – Nubchicks – to the safety of the Space Zoo.

Unfortunately that planar potentate Dark Rectangle needs the little darlings to power his new Universe Bomb…

When a number of planets are mysteriously drained of all energy, the Space Mayor has no choice but to assign Captain Spaceington and his substandard star warriors to the case, forcing Robot One to pit his transistorised wits against ‘The Horror of Mecha Dracula’, whilst in ‘The Art of Robbery’ the nefarious Rob-Ot‘s scheme to swipe the Moona Lisa from the Space Museum of Space Art is foiled by the hapless stupidity of ever-hungry Plixx…

The mis-educated Science Officer’s addiction to cake also wrecks the space/time continuum and ticks off God after she messes up a chronal experiment with a ‘Turnip in Time’ before the good ship Star Cat is invaded by the wicked shapeshifting menace known as ‘The Thingy’ after which a mission to the far edge of space brings them all into contact with a most unpleasant omnipotent entity who tests our weird wanderers – and by extension our entire civilisation – with ‘Incorporeal Punishment’…

‘With Friends Like These, Who Needs a Nemesis?’ sees the return of Dark Rectangle when the sorely lacking Spaceington finds his ship and crew requisitioned by the obnoxious, insufferably perfect Captain Starblaze “the Bravest Captain in all of Space”.

Surely it’s not jealousy that makes Spaceington attempt to sabotage his rival’s top secret mission?

Saving the best for last, this stellar saga concludes with a mercy mission that goes awry when the monumental moggy take a shortcut through the Spooky Quadrant and the crew unwisely clash with a ghastly Space Vampyr in ‘Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself (But Fear is Really, Really Scary)…’

The Phoenix Presents… Star Cat is a spectacularly hilarious comic treat: surreal, ingenious, wildly infectious fun. No pet owner, comedy connoisseur or lover of the Wild Black Yonder could afford to miss this brilliant cartoon cat treat.
Text and illustrations © James Turner 2014. All rights reserved.

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Tales Designed to Thrizzle volume One


By Michael Kupperman (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-764-2

Sometimes words mean nothing, pictures tell every story and stuff is funny just because it is. That pretty much sums up the work of abstractedly absurdist comedy pioneer Michael Kupperman, whose oeuvre greatly consists of graphic samplings from old comics, strips and magazines – with especial focus on the advertising content of those forgotten favourites.

A beguiling agglomeration of the past’s guilty pleasures fill the pages of his far-too-infrequent comicbook kingdom Tales Designed to Thrizzle and have been sagely collected into a number of volumes you simply must have.

Kupperman is a cartoonist who clearly loves to draw and has an uncanny knack for isolating the innate insanity of modern living as well as the way we regard our own past – especially the trivial, oft-dismissed and not-so-important bits – which he serves up in a surreal graphic deadpan style that would turn Buster Keaton grey with envy.

Kupperman created the strips Found in the Street and Up all Night, has contributed pieces to The New Yorker, Heavy Metal, The Wall Street Journal, The Independent on Sunday, LA Weekly, The New York Times, Libération, Fortune, Screw and many similarly reputable magazines, as well as in such comics as Hodags and Hodaddies, Hotwire, Snake Eyes, Zero Zero, Blood Orange and Legal Action Comics amongst others.

Kupperman’s first book Snake ‘n’ Bacon’s Cartoon Cabaret (2000) led to his breaking into the heady world of adult animation and he has since illustrated many books, but Tales Designed to Thrizzle was always his best beloved vehicle, allowing him to concoct intensely stylish mind-games and display them against a dizzying cultural backdrop of “Men’s sweat mags”, True Confessions pulps, cheesy old comics, B-movies and a million other icons of low-class Americana, each and all given a unique twist and spin by a man whose head is clearly too small for his brain…

Originally released in 2009 in hardback, this new softcover edition, after a suitably off-kilter Foreword by Robert Smigel, collects the first four comically comic comicbook issues in full scintillating colour, each individual masterwork divided – because propriety is a virtue – into “Adults”, “Kids” and “Old People’s Sections”.

As such each contains a torrent of instant favourites such as the aforementioned Snake ‘n’ Bacon, The Manister (a hero who can transform into a banister), Underpants-On-His-Head Man, Cousin Granpa, Pagus (rowdy half-brother of Jesus) and many wildly misinformative fact features like Remembering the Thirties, Porno Coloring Books, Sex Blimps and Sex Holes and the inadequate meanderings of veteran weatherman Storm Cloudfront…

The great philosophical topics of our times are also tackled, such as ‘Where is Shakespeare’s Gold?’, ‘Are Comics Serious Literature?’, ‘Are You Being Worn Out by Unnecessary Foreplay?’ ‘or ‘What’s in Your Glass of Water?’…

Brash, challenging, agonisingly imaginative and always hysterically funny, Tales Designed to Thrizzle is a timely tome for every grown-up, couch-based life-form in dire need of a hearty guffaw every now and then – and much more Now than Then…
Tales Designed to Thrizzle © 2014 Michael Kupperman. This edition © 2014 Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

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The Phoenix Presents Long Gone Don Book 1: The Monstrous Underworld


By The Etherington Brothers (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-04-9

Kids love to be scared and they thrive on imaginative adventure, especially if it comes liberally dosed with oodles of wry sardonic comedy. Such being the case it’s quite understandable how Long Gone Don came to be such a popular and enduring feature of British comics phenomenon The Phoenix, where it has run almost continuously from the first issue.

Since 2012 David Fickling Books have published a traditional weekly anthology comic for girls and boys which has successfully restored the glorious heyday of picture-story entertainment; embracing the full force of modernity whilst telling old-fashioned fun and thrilling stories.

Each issue offers humour, adventure, puzzles and educational strips and material in an exultation of cartoon fun and fantasy. Since its premiere, The Phoenix has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the people who really matter – the utterly engaged kids and parents who read it…

The Phoenix was voted No.2 in Time Magazine‘s global list of Top Comics and Graphic Novels and is the only strip publication started in the UK in the last forty years to have passed the 100 issue mark. The magazine celebrated its first anniversary by developing a digital edition available globally as an app and is continually expanding its horizons…

As devilishly devised by The Etherington Brothers – Robin and Lorenzo, whose past efforts have included Malcolm Magic and Yore (in The Dandy), Monkey Nuts, Baggage and the brilliant puzzle-venturer Von Doogan – this thrilling and hilarious spooky romp stars unlucky Don Skelton, whose proper history doesn’t really begin until after an astounding concatenation of crazy circumstances leave the hapless schoolboy dead in a bowl of Oxtail Soup…

From there it’s a quick and disorienting drop into the netherest of Nether Regions where the bewildered waif discovers his unruly hair has turned milk-white and the fantastic, green-sanded landscape is dotted with familiar objects expanded to most unlikely proportions…

No sooner has he struggled out of the colossal bowl he’s splashed down into than Don is taken under the scabby wing of a rather lugubrious and excitable crow with an outrageous Spanish accent who tries to explain the unlikely situation to the stunned and incredulous lad…

Moreover the antsy avian – one Castanet, by name – strongly stresses the sense of urgency needed to get off the Arrival Plains as Brobdingnagian means of expiration tend to land with a crash every moment…

Having safely escorted the newcomer away from the region of plummeting dooms, Castanet then begins his introduction to the bizarre afterlife by taking Don to the chaotic pit of trouble dubbed Broilerdoom (“Afterlife of the Lost, the Damned and the Generally Terrifying”) where they are promptly robbed and forced to participate in a rigged election.

Don, however, manages to vote for the wrong guy, instantly setting off citywide alarms and immediately earning the undying enmity of monstrous dictator General Spode and his unctuous assistant Valush, if not the supreme dictator’s glamorous but bored consort Regina…

Soon boy and bird are being hotly pursued through the grotty avenues and alleyways by the demonic yet incompetent soldiery but are only saved when an even bigger and scarier monster called Lewd makes his terrifying entrance.

The giant outlaw and his agile assistant Safina are no fans of Spode and, after duffing up the militia, take the fugitives deep into the sordid, sprawling slums of Krapookerville where they can catch their breath in relative safety…

Their current base is an inn of iniquity named The Demon Drink where, between brawls, the outlaws give Don a quick lesson in post-life geography and geopolitics. He soon learns his companions are more rebels than rogues and have taken his miscast vote as a sign to strike against the despotic General. Don then meets the freedom fighters’ inside agent…

Seen as catalysts for change, Don and Castanet are despatched to coax the city’s Great Hero Ripley out of retirement. The person Don mistakenly voted for has become a celebrity gardener and has no intention of facing Spode again but he does suggest another potential candidate and rallying point for the masses…

Soon the entire under region is aflame with unrest and rebellion and Don has made the acquaintance of one of the underworld’s most incredible and awe-inspiring entities whilst turning said underworld upside down…

Rocket-paced, spectacular, absorbing and utterly hilarious, this uncanny adventure is conceived and rendered in a gorgeous, loving pastiche of the magnificent style of Goscinny and Uderzo, a kind of Asterix in the Underworld meets Eric the Viking.

Fast, fun and funny, Long Gone Don is a superb serving of macabre mirth no lovers of daft or dark delights can afford to miss.

Text © Robin Etherington, 2014. Illustrations © Lorenzo Etherington, 2014. All rights reserved.
To find out more about The Phoenix or subscribe, visit: www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk

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Kevin Keller: Welcome to Riverdale


By Dan Parent & Rich Koslowski (Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-936975-23-5

Following the debut of Superman, MLJ were one of many publishers to jump on the “mystery-man” bandwagon, concocting their own small but inspired pantheon of gaudily clad crusaders. In November 1939 they launched Blue Ribbon Comics, promptly following up with Top-Notch and Pep Comics. The content was the standard mix of masked champions, two-fisted adventurers, prose pieces and gags.

Not long after, Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater (hence MLJ) saw a gap in the blossoming but crowded market and in December 1941 the Fights ‘n’ Tights, He-Man crowd were gently nudged aside by a far from imposing hero; an ordinary teenager who would have ordinary adventures just like the readers, but with the laughs, good times, romance and slapstick emphasised.

Goldwater developed the concept of a youthful everyman protagonist and tasked writer Vic Bloom & artist Bob Montana with the job of making it work and, inspired by the popular Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney, their new notion premiered in Pep Comics #22. The unlikely star was a gap-toothed, freckle-faced red-headed kid obsessed with impressing the pretty blonde next door.

A 6-page untitled tale introduced hapless boob Archie Andrews and wholesomely pretty Betty Cooper. The boy’s unconventional best friend and confidante Jughead Jones also debuted in the first story as did idyllic small-town utopia Riverdale. The little tale was a huge hit and by the winter of 1942 the kid had won his own title. Archie Comics #1 was MLJ’s first non-anthology magazine and with it began a slow transformation of the entire company. With the introduction of ultra-rich, raven-haired Veronica Lodge, all the pieces were in play for the industry’s second Genuine Phenomenon…

By 1946 the kids were in charge, so MLJ became Archie Comics, retiring most of its costumed characters years before the end of the Golden Age and becoming, to all intents and purposes, a publisher of family-friendly comedies. The hometown settings and perpetually fruitful premise of an Eternal Romantic Triangle – with girl-hating best bud Jughead and scurrilous rival Reggie Mantle to test, duel and vex our boy in their own unique ways – the scenario was one that not only resonated with the readership but was infinitely fresh…

Archie’s success, like Superman’s, forced a change in content at every other publisher (except Gilberton’s Classics Illustrated) and created a culture-shifting multi-media brand which encompassed TV, movies, newspaper strips, toys and merchandise, a chain of restaurants and, in the swinging sixties, a pop music sensation when Sugar, Sugar – from the animated TV cartoon – became a global summer smash hit.

Clean and decent garage band “The Archies” has been a fixture of the comics ever since…

Archie is good-hearted, impetuous and lacking common sense, Betty his sensible, pretty girl next door who loves the ginger goof, and Veronica is rich, exotic and glamorous: only settling for our boy if there’s nobody better around. She might actually love him too, though. Archie, of course, is utterly unable to choose who or what he wants…

The unconventional, food-crazy Jughead is Mercutio to Archie’s Romeo, providing rationality and a reader’s voice, as well as being a powerful catalyst of events in his own right. That charming triangle (and annexe) has been the rock-solid foundation for seven decades of funnybook magic. Moreover the concept is eternally self-renewing…

This perennial eternal triangle has generated thousands of charming, raucous, gentle, frenetic, chiding and even heart-rending humorous dramas ranging from surreal wit to frantic slapstick, with the kids and a constantly expanding cast of friends (boy genius Dilton Doily, genial giant jock Big Moose and occasional guest Sabrina the Teenage Witch amongst many others), growing into an American institution and part of the American cultural landscape.

The feature has thrived by constantly refreshing its core archetypes; boldly and seamlessly adapting to the changing world outside its bright and cheerful pages, shamelessly co-opting youth, pop culture, fashion trends and even topical events into its infallible mix of slapstick and young romance.

Each and every social revolution has been painlessly assimilated into the mix and over the decades the company has confronted most social issues affecting youngsters in a manner both even-handed and tasteful.

Constant addition of new characters such as African-American Chuck and his girlfriend Nancy, fashion-diva Ginger, Hispanic couple Frankie and Maria and spoiled home-wrecker-in-waiting Cheryl Blossom contribute to a wide and refreshingly broad-minded scenario. In 2010 Archie jumped the final hurdle when openly gay Kevin Keller became an admirable advocate capably tackling and dismantling the last major taboo in mainstream comics.

Created by writer/artist Dan Parent and inker Rich Koslowski, Kevin debuted in Veronica #202 (September 2010), a charming, good looking and exceeding together lad who utterly bowled over the rich go-getter. She was totally smitten with him whilst he was far more interested in food, sports and hanging out with Jughead…

When Kevin finally explained to Veronica why she was wasting her time, she became his best buddy: after all they had a lot of common – stylish clothes, shopping and boys…

Immensely popular from the outset (Veronica #202 was the first comicbook in the company’s long history to go into a second printing), Kevin struck a chord with the readership and soon guest shots evolved into a miniseries before the new kid on the block inevitably won his own ongoing title.

Kevin Keller: Welcome to Riverdale collects the first four issues of the groundbreaking solo monthly and opens with handy text feature ‘Kevin Keller: Catch up with the Characters’ reintroducing the bonny lad, his dad (retired army colonel) Thomas, mum Kathy and sisters Denise and Patty.

The feature also brings newcomers up to speed on recent history before the mirth and merriment begins with ‘There’s a First Time for Everything’ from issue #1 wherein the much-travelled Army Brat finally begins settling in at Riverdale High.

In short order he is elected Class President, has his first commercial writing published and reveals a shocking secret…

For all his accomplishments Kevin has never gone on a date, and when a certain someone asks him out he turns to Betty for some confidence-boosting advice. He isn’t a complete neophyte and has had a date before, but due to his catastrophic nervousness it turned into a complete disaster…

Unfortunately Reggie overhears their huddled conversation and the self-proclaimed romance expert elects to give Kevin the benefit of his vast experience…

The exuberant preparations turns into a catalogue of horror and as more well-meaning friends get involved it looks certain that Kevin will repeat that horrific experience. Happily a few stabilising words from love-hating Jughead and an eventful morning with the remarkably understanding Colonel Keller soon restore some necessary calm and equilibrium…

The next tale moves from straight slapstick to heartwarming empathy as Class President Kevin is asked to organise a prom in ‘May I Have this Dance?’ and discovers that he has a secret admirer. Once Veronica finds out it’s not a secret for long…

As the seventies-themed fashion disaster begins to take shape, further furtive communications reveal that the clandestine wooer is someone still not fully at ease with his gender orientation, forcing Kevin to be at his most understanding and forgiving…

Contentious themes and prejudices are tackled in ‘Stranded in Paradise’ when the summer vacation begins and Kevin gets a job as a lifeguard.

The beach is the time-honoured hangout of the Riverdale kids, but when spoiled princess Cheryl Blossom and her rich Pembroke School cronies invade the space, sparks soon fly. The grubby “Townies” are challenged to a surfing contest for possession of the sands with Kevin star competitor for the home team, but he has completely underestimated the vicious tactics of loathsome homophobe Sloan…

The comics portion of this tome concludes with an international epic set at the 2012 London Olympics. ‘Games People Play’ sees Colonel Keller – who has dual British and American citizenship – invited to be a torchbearer.

Having spent four years in England, Kevin is delighted to be going back for a visit and reconnecting with old pal Brian. He doesn’t even mind when shopping-crazy Veronica inveigles an invite to join the family.

However when nominated runner Dad falls foul of London’s Underground at a crucial moment, Kevin is ready and more-or-less willing to step in for what appears to be the unluckiest and most dangerous section of the entire torch route…

Following a moving and appreciative ‘Afterword’ by Dan Parent there’s also a splendid section of ‘Official Kevin Keller Bonus Features’ including ‘Retro Fashion’ pages, ‘Kevin’s Prom Style’, ‘Kevin’s Summer Style with B & V’, ‘Kevin Keller & Friends Style’ and a triptych of ‘Unreleased Promotional Sketches’.

With a cover gallery that includes modern cartoon masterpieces and remastered classic Archie images retrofitted to suit our 21st century star, this is an superb, hilarious and magically inclusive collection for you, your kids and grandparents to enjoy over and over again…

© 2012 Archie Comics Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Phoenix Presents Gary’s Garden book 1


By Gary Northfield (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-09-4

In January 2012 Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched a traditional-seeming weekly comic aimed at girls and boys which sought to revive the good old days of picture-story entertainment Intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and Content.

Every issue offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy and, in the years since its premiere, The Phoenix has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who really count – the astoundingly engaged kids and parents who read it…

The Phoenix was recently voted No.2 in Time Magazine‘s global list of Top Comics and Graphic Novels and is the only UK strip publication started in the last forty years to have passed the 100 issue mark. The magazine celebrated its first anniversary by releasing a digital edition available globally as an app and is still continually expanding its horizons.

It is, most importantly, big and bold and tremendous fun. You should subscribe today…

Moreover, whilst comics companies all seem to have given up the ghost (in this country at least), old-school prose publishers and the newborn graphic novel industry have evolved to fill their vacated niche.

With a less volatile business model and far more sustainable long-term goals, book sellers have prospered from periodical publishers’ surrender. There have never been so many and varied cartoon and comics chronicles, compilations and tomes for readers to enjoy.

This year – at long last – many of the favourite serials and series from The Phoenix joined that growing market, having been superbly repackaged as graphic albums.

Two of them – Von Doogan and the Curse of the Golden Monkey and Bunny vs. Monkey – were selected for The Reading Agency’s prestigious Summer Reading Challenge (which began on July 12th): the first comic-books ever to have featured on the organisation’s Summer Reading Challenge List.

One of the most rewarding and captivating strips in the comic is marvellous minibeast comedy-adventure Gary’s Garden, crafted by Gary Northfield (Beano‘s Derek the Sheep, The Terrible Tales of the Teeytinysaurs).

It is the fourth fabulous release to assuredly delight and enchant young an old alike…

The premise is beguilingly simple and utterly addictive: laggard grown-up Gary, like most of us, doesn’t do as much as he should in his back yard – and the assorted birds, beasts and bugs despise him for it – but at least it means they can all live their lives in relative peace and quiet…

The occasional series began in #2, and this initial collection opens with ‘Chompy’, a rather irascible, over- imaginative but under-achieving caterpillar who here has to set straight a worm with delusions of grandeur…

‘Practice Makes Perfect!’ then peeps in on an artistically pompous spider who makes his enwrapped prey all play in his make-shift orchestra whilst an old worm whinges about the ‘Noisy Neighbours’ in the apples adjacent to his, after which ‘Spring Clean!’ sees the obnoxious garden birds wreak playful havoc with Gary’s socks and smalls as they dry on the washing line…

‘Larry Ladybird, Lord of the Jungle!’ reveals the inner dreamer of an action hero inside a little spotty bug, whilst manic squirrel Rupert kicks into overdrive in ‘Acorn Antics’ when his prospective winter larder is endangered by strong winds and vegetarian mole Thelma. Absolutely no semblance of sanity then returns as the ever-vigilant birds raid Gary’s larder for junk food after suffering a ‘Snack Attack!’…

In the pond, slow and sure Jennifer watches with poignant regret as all the tads grow their ‘First Legs’ and rush off pell-mell to join the metaphorical rat-race whilst in ‘Hide and Peek’ readers get a brilliant lesson in camouflage from a leaf bug, a butterfly and a stick…

Clearly a devotee of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Mr. Northfield then wryly spoofs the Barsoomian Chronicles, when, in a moment of inspired madness we are introduced to ‘John Ladybird, of Mars’ as the self-appointed explorer crosses dimensions, vast gulfs and a garden trampoline for the journey of a lifetime.

Sadly, Chompy is not the most appreciative of audiences for such tales of wonder…

Birds are not the kindest of characters, but they’re not as dangerous as next door’s cat. Happily ‘Podgy Pigeon’ is smart enough to make fools of them all before heroic night stalkers ‘Boris & Monroe’ enter the picture.

The fox is a veteran ninja of darkness and only occasionally wonders if he was wise to take on excitable hedgehog Monroe as his apprentice…

‘Dream On, Chompy!’ finds our voracious idiot trying to rush nature in his eagerness to join his winged brothers in the sky, whilst an elderly spider tries – and generally fails – to remind everyone to take things easily in ‘“Mornin’ Henry!”’ after which frustrated country music star ‘Terrance the Snail’ makes his noisy debut and Jennifer in the pond makes a disturbing self-discovery in ‘Last Legs’…

‘Ronald the Spider’ reveals his tap dancing gifts to a literally captive audience before it’s Flash Gordon‘s a turn for a bit of leg pulling – all six of them – in ‘Zarpovia! Pt 1’ when Professor Ladybird Zarpov discovers an incredible alien world teeming with incomprehensibly strange life in Gary’s front room…

Recruiting bold adventurers Larry Ladybird, Lord of the Jungle and John Ladybird of Mars, the trio explore the glass-sided universe in the astounding ‘Zarpovia! Pt 2’, before those masters of darkness return in ‘Boris & Monroe: Bagsie Me First’, to prove that foolhardy bravery and astonishing agility are no substitute for a little caution…

There’s acrimony and dissent at a ‘Camouflage Club’ meeting, leading to a breakaway movement, but in the interim Gary gets a barracking from the birds in ‘Nice Hat’ and wily Humphrey Housefly lives another day after two ‘Grumpy Spiders’ can’t decide on who should eat him.

The splinter group ‘Mimicry Club’ barely survives its first meeting when mickey-taking poseurs gatecrash the event, after which sensitive Ladybird Melissa develops an abiding but unhealthy affection for the coldly distant, stoic ‘Mr Leaf’ to bring a close to our beastly cabaret.

But don’t fret because there’s one last treat in store. ‘Gary’s Garden: Top Chumps’ provides 34 fascinating pictorial Score Cards (also available as free printable download pages), revealing all the silly secrets and dreams of the quirkily quotidian cast.

The Phoenix Presents… Gary’s Garden is a truly laugh-out-loud comic treat: madcap, endearing and absurdly hilarious. Don’t miss out on the perfect opportunity to get back to – or get back at – Nature by…

Text and illustrations © Gary Northfield 2014. All rights reserved.

The Reading Agency is a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. The Summer Reading Challenge encourages children aged 4 to 11 to read 6 books during the summer holiday.

Children can read whatever they like just as long as they are borrowed from the library. Every time children finish a book they get stickers and rewards and there’s a certificate for everyone who finishes. The Summer Reading Challenge is open to all school children and is designed for all reading abilities.

Visit www.readingagency.org.uk
To find out more about The Phoenix or subscribe, visit www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk.

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Cork High and Bottle Deep


By Virgil Partch, Edited by Jonathan Barli (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-664-5

Virgil Parch is possibly the greatest of those almost forgotten key men of comedy cartooning: a pervasive creative force who worked away tirelessly for years, making people laugh and slowly, steadily changing the very look and nature of the industry.

Although largely forgotten these days, Virgil Franklin Partch II (1926-2004) is probably one of the most influential and successful of all American cartoonists.

His arch, absurd, rude, sly, subtle, skewed, whacky and astoundingly unique gags, strips, stories and animated shorts were generated with machine gun rapidity from a seemingly inexhaustible well of comedy excess, which could be rendered in a variety of styles which utterly revolutionised the American publishing from the moment in 1941 that the artist switched from a Walt Disney Studio ideas-man to freelance gag-maker.

He is most well regarded for his cavalier abandonment of traditional form and anatomy. Partch is the guy who liberated gag-cartooning from the bonds of slavish attention to body detail: replacing broadly human shape and proportion with a wildly free and frenetic corporeal expressionism – perhaps even symbolism – which captivated legions of fellow artists and generations of fun-starved readers. This is the guy who made 19 fingers on one hand work…

Following 2013’s VIP – The Mad World of Virgil Partch– asuperbly comprehensive art book/biography – comes this themed collection of his most arch, dark and absurd gag panels all devoted to his favourite hobby and avocation: the heroic and determined downing of strong liquor…

This glorious pocket-sized (174 x 174mm) hardback collection gathers – in colour and black-&-white – the vast majority of his hootch-flavoured (and, perhaps, often -inspired) party favours, ranging from the antics of barflies and boozy babes to the aggravated effects of a lifetime of dedicated tippling and how to offset or escape them…

Subtitled “Amidst the stormy seas of booze, with your faithful skipper, the mad Vipper” the first section focuses on the general run of alcohol-induced visions starring blurry, cheery, dreary, maudlin and dumbfounded imbibers of every class and station as well as the long-suffering worldly-wise barkeeps who attend them; an often (literally) staggering precession of invention, surreal acceptance and inevitable regret, ranging from atrocious visual puns to bewilderingly brilliant observations.

The general carousing is followed by a steady stream of themed sections beginning with an astoundingly visually inventive succession of suggestions on The Hangover… and Some Cures, complete with a sneaky subsection of .descriptive diagnoses of particular brain seizures ranging from the ‘Thirsty-Bedouin Hangover’ to the ‘God! Is that Me? or Hallucination Case’…

Assuming you survive that, the blinding switch to full painted colour will shock you sober enough for ‘VIP Views The Drink as seen by…’; a savage selection of interested parties including The Bartender, The Wife and The Guy On the Wagon…

Digging deeper, the artist then invites you to observe fizzy, happy people at ‘Dr. Freud’s Cocktail Party’ displaying Introversion, Exhibitionism , Wish Fulfilment, Hallucination, Rejection and a host of other “isms”, after another large round of general gags and panels runs into ‘VIP’s Tips: How to Taper Off…’

Virgil Partch possessed an eternally refilling reservoir of comedy imagination and a unique visual perspective which made him a true catalyst of cartoon change, and Fantagraphics Books have once again struck pure gold by reviving, commemorating and celebrating this lost legend of cartooning.

Best of all, this is an astoundingly funny collection: a wealth of outrageously funny, deliciously barbed funny drawings and clever ideas as powerfully hilarious now as they ever were, and all brilliantly rendered by a master draughtsman no connoisseur of comedy can afford to miss.

Cheers!

© 2014 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.