Humour – Page 106 – Now Read This!

March 9, 2013March 7, 2013

Batman: Knight and Squire

Batman - Knight and Squire
By Paul Cornell & Jimmy Broxton with Staz Johnson (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3071-5

British Dynamic Duo Knight and Squire first appeared in the cheerfully anodyne, all-ages 1950s – specifically in a throwaway story from Batman #62 (December 1950/January 1951) – as ‘The Batman of England!’

Earl Percy Sheldrake and his son Cyril returned a few years later as part of seminal assemblage ‘The Batmen of All Nations!’ (Detective Comics #215 January 1955) – a tale retrieved from the ranks of funnybook limbo in recent times and included in Batman: Black Casebook – with sequel ‘The Club of Heroes’ appearing in World’s Finest Comics #89, July-August 1957. That one’s reprinted in Showcase Presents World’s Finest volume 1.

The characters had languished in virtual obscurity for decades before fully entering modern continuity as part of Grant Morrison’s build-up to the Death of Batman and Batman Incorporated retro-fittings of the ever-ongoing legend of the Dark Knight dynastyâ€¦

They floated around the brave New World for awhile with guest shots in places like Morrison’s JLA reboot and Battle For the Cowl before finally getting their own 6-issue miniseries (December 2010 – May 2011), courtesy of scripter Paul Cornell and artist Jimmy Broxton (with some layout assistance from Staz Johnson), who rather bit the hand that fed them by producing a far from serious, but captivating quirky and quintessentially English frolicsome fantasy masterpiece.

It all begins, as most things boldly British do, down the pub. However The Time in a Bottle is no ordinary boozer but in fact the favourite hostelry for the United Kingdom’s entire superhuman community: the worthy and the wickedâ€¦

Hero and villain alike can kick back here, taking a load off and enjoying a mellow moment’s peace thanks to a pre-agreed truce on utterly neutral ground, all mystically enforced by magics and wards dating back to the time of Merlinâ€¦

As the half-dozen chapters of ‘For Six’ open it’s the regular first Thursday of the month – and that’s an in-joke for Britain’s comics creator community – with the inn abuzz with costumed crusaders and crazies, all determined to have a good time.

Cyril Sheldrake, current Earl of Wordenshire and second hero to wear the helm and mantle of The Knight, sends his trusty sidekick Beryl Hutchinson – AKA The Squire – to head off a potential problem as established exotics Salt of the Earth, The Milkman, Coalface, The Professional Scotsman and the Black and White Minstrels all tease nervous newcomer The Shrike.

He’d do it himself but he’s chatting with Jarvis Poker, the British Jokerâ€¦

The place is packed tonight in honour of visiting yank celebrity Wildcat, and a host of strange, outrageous and even deadly patrons all bustle about as Beryl chats to the formerly cocky kid who’s also getting a bit of grief because he hasn’t quite decided if he’s a hero or villain yetâ€¦

She’s giving him a potted history of the place when the customary bar fight breaks out but things take an unconventionally dark turn and an actual attempted murder occurs. It would appear that two of these new gritty modern heroes have conspired to circumvent Merlin’s pacifying protectionsâ€¦

Each original issue was supplemented with a hilarious text page which here act as chapter breaks, so after ‘What You Missed If You’re A Non-Brit’ (a glossary of national terms, traits, terminology and concepts adorned with delightful faux small ads), the tale continues as Beryl and Cyril spend a little down-time in rural Wordenshire where the local civilians tackle the insidious threat of The Organ Grinder and his Monkey so as not to bother the off-duty Defenders.

However the pair do rouse themselves to scotch the far more sinister schemes of inter-dimensional invader Major Morris and the deadly Morris Menâ€¦

That’s supplemented by the far-from-serious text feature ‘What Morris Men are Like’â€¦

The saga then kicks into high gear with the third instalment as Britain’s Council for Organised Research announces its latest breakthrough.

C.O.R.’s obsessively romantic Yorkist Professor Merryweather had no idea that her DNA reclamation project would lead to a constitutional crisis after she reconstituted Richard III, but it seems history and Shakespeare hadn’t slandered the Plantagenet at all. The wicked monarch was soon fomenting rebellion, using his benefactor’s technology to resurrect equally troublesome tyrants Edward I, Charles I, William II and the ever-appalling King John and even giving them very modern superpowersâ€¦

Of course Knight, Squire and her now besotted not-boyfriend Shrike were at the vanguard of the British (heroic) Legion mustered to fight for Queen and Country and repel the concerted criminal uprisingâ€¦

Following a history lesson on ‘Cabbages and Kings’, Beryl invited the Shrike back to the Castle for tea, teasing and some secret origins, but things went typically wrong when Cyril’s high tech armour rebelled, going rogue and attacking them all.

The text piece deals with ‘Butlers and Batmen’ before it all goes very dark when lovable celebrity rogue Jarvis Poker gets some very bad news from his doctor and a terrifying follow-up visit from the real Joker.

The CampCriminal was desperately concerned about his national legacy but GothamCity’s Harlequin of Hate is just keen on increasing his ghastly and frankly already astronomical body-count. First on the list is that annoying Shrike kid, but the American psycho-killer has big, bold, bizarre plans to make the UK a completely good guy-free zoneâ€¦

Broken up with a two-part ‘The Knight and Squire Character List’, it all culminates and climaxes with a spectacular and breathtaking showdown after the malevolent Mountebank of Mirth goes on a horrendously imaginative hero-killing spree that decimates the Costumed Champions of Albion: a campaign so shocking that even Britain’s bad-guys end up helping to catch the crazed culpritâ€¦

Rewarding us all for putting up with decades of â€œGor, blimey guv’norâ€ nonsense in American comics whilst simultaneously paying the Yanks back for all those badly researched foggy, cobbled-rooftops-of-London five minutes from Stonehenge stories which littered every aspect of our image in the USA, this witty, self-deprecating, action-packed and deucedly dashing outing perfectly encapsulates all the truly daft things we noble Scions of Empire Commonwealth love and cherish about ourselves.

Stuffed with surreal, outrageous humour, double entendres, quirky characters, catchphrases and the comedy accents beloved by us Brits – Oh, I say, Innit Blud? – and rife with astonishingly cheeky pokes at our frankly indefensible cultural quirks and foibles, this is the perfect book for anyone who loves grand adventure in the inimitable manner of Benny Hill, Monty Python and the Beano.

Also included are covers and variants from Yanick Paquette & Michel Lacombe and Billy Tucci & HiFi, plus a wealth of working art, character designs and sketches by Jimmy Broxton and an unpublished spoof cover in tribute to the immortal Jarvis Pokerâ€¦

Buy this book. It’s really rather good. Oh, go on, do: you know you want toâ€¦
Â© 2011, DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

March 7, 2013March 5, 2013

Madwoman of the Sacred Heart

By Jodorowsky & Moebius, translated by Natacha Ruck & Ken Grobe (Sloth Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-908830-01-2

Here’s a modern masterpiece of comics creativity at last available to English-speaking audiences, one of the most intriguing and engaging works by two creative legends of sequential narrative. To some people, this superb piece of thought provoking fiction might be shocking or blasphemous however, so if you hold strong views on sex or religion – especially Christianity – stop right now, spare yourself some outrage and come back tomorrow.

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comics writer, world traveller, philosopher and spiritual guru, born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929. He is most widely known for his films Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Sante Sangre, The Rainbow Thief and others, as well as his vast comics output, such as Anibal 5, (created whilst living in Mexico) Le Lama blanc, Aliot, The Meta-Barons, Borgia and more, co-created with some of South America and Europe’s greatest artists. His nigh decade-long collaboration with Moebius on the Tarot-inspired adventureÂ The Incal (1981-1989) completely redefined and reinvented what comics could aspire to and achieve.

Best known for his violently surreal avant-garde films, loaded with highly-charged, inspird imagery blending mysticism and â€œreligious provocationâ€ and his spiritually informed fantasy and science fiction comics, Jodorowsky is also fascinated by the inner realms and has devised his own doctrine of therapeutic healing: Psychomagic, Psychogenealogy and Initiatic massage. He still remains fully engaged and active in all these creative areas today.

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in the suburbs of Paris in 1938 and raised by his grandparents. In 1955 he attended the Institut des Arts AppliquÃ©s where he became friends with Jean-Claude MÃ©ziÃ¨res who, at 17, was already selling strips and illustrations to magazines such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Spirou. Giraud apparently spent most of his time drawing cowboy comics and left after a year.

In 1956 he travelled to Mexico, staying with his mother for eight months, before returning to France and a full-time career in comics, mostly westerns such as Frank et Jeremie for Far West and King of the Buffalo, A Giant with the Hurons and others for Coeurs Valliants in a style based on French comics legend Joseph â€œJijÃ©â€ Gillain.

Giraud spent his National Service in Algeria in 1959-1960, where he worked on military service magazine 5/5 Forces FranÃ§aises and, on returning to civilian life, became JijÃ©’s assistant in 1961, working on the master’s long-running (1954-1977) Western epic Jerry Spring. A year later, Giraud and Belgian writer Jean-Michel Charlier launched the serial ‘Fort Navajo’ in Pilote #210, and soon its disreputable, anti-hero lead character Lieutenant Blueberry became one of the most popular European strips of modern times. In 1963-1964, Giraud produced strips for satire periodical Hara-Kiri and, keen to distinguish and separate this material from his serious day job, first coined his pen-name â€œMoebiusâ€.

He didn’t use it again until 1975 when he joined Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Philippe Druillet – all rabid science fiction fans – to become the founders of a revolution in narrative graphic arts as â€œLes Humanoides Associesâ€. Their groundbreaking adult fantasy magazine MÃ©tal Hurlant utterly enraptured the comics-buying public and Giraud again wanted to utilise a discrete creative persona for the lyrical, experimental, soul-searching material he was producing: series such as The Airtight Garage, The Incal (with Alejandro Jodorosky) and the mystical, dream-world flights of sheer fantasy contained in Arzachâ€¦

To further separate his creative bipolarity, Giraud worked inks with a brush whilst the futurist Moebius rendered with pens. Both of him passed away on March 10^th 2012.

Jodorowsky and Moebius’ second groundbreaking co-creation was originally released in three albums from Les HumanoÃ¯des AssociÃ©s as La Folle du SacrÃ© CÅ“ur (1992), Le PiÃ¨ge de l’irrationnel (1993) and Le Fou de la Sorbonne (1998) before the saga was collected into one massive, ecstatic and revolutionary volume in 2004.

The company’s American arm Humanoids, Inc. translated it into English in 2006, which forms the basis for this comprehensive new edition from fledgling British publisher Sloth Comics.

Professor Alan Mangel is a world-renowned aesthete, deep thinker and chief lecturer at the celebrated Sorbonne. As such he is the focus of much student attention – particularly female – but none as fervent as that of the insular, fanatically bible-bashing Christian and deeply disturbed Elisabeth.

When the teacher’s shrewish wife Myra denounces, shames and impoverishes him at the moment of his greatest triumph, the arrogantly cerebral, proudly austere, violently chaste and determinedly sexually abstinent Mangel loses the awed respect of his once doting students and disciples who shun his once overcrowded classes and even mock and assault him.

Only Elisabeth remains devoted to him but she has designs both carnal and divine on the aging, flabby, secular, lapsed and born-again Jew. To make matters worse, when she throws herself at him and is repulsed, this awakens the philosopher’s own lustful youthful libido which takes form as a gadfly ghost constantly urging him to indulge in acts of vile debauchery and rampant lust.

Eventually the pressure is too great and Mangel agrees to meet Elisabeth at the Church of the Sacred Heart. The journey there is awful: even the universe seems set against him as rude taxi-drivers, a mad old lady tramp and even dogs further humiliate the broken old man.

In the holiest part of the church Elisabeth again attempts to seduce the long sterile and wilfully impotent Alan, explaining that her researches have revealed him to be the biblical Zacharias reborn, destined to impregnate her with a son: the Prophet John who would in turn herald the rebirth of Jesusâ€¦

Again the rational scientist baulks at her words but Elisabeth promises a miracle and when Mangel’s horny, ghostly other self â€œpossessesâ€ him the dotard loses control and finally gives the mad girl what she’s been begging forâ€¦

Plagued with shame and remorse, still tormented by his inner letch and broke, Mangel resumes lecturing and slowly rebuilds his reputation until one day Elisabeth returns, her nude body declaring her to be forever the property of Alan Zacharias Mangel. She is three months pregnant with the sterile man’s baby and has already recruited the St. Joseph who will help them fulfil their sacred missionâ€¦

The divinely-dispatched protector, a drug addict and petty criminal previously called Muhammad, already has a line on The Mary: she’s his girlfriend Rosaura, currently imprisoned in a secure mental hospital. She’s also in a comaâ€¦

Dragged against the will he no longer seems capable of exerting, Mangel experiences his latest ongoing tribulation when St. Joseph breaks The Mary out with the aid of a gun and his distressed guts give way to what will be, for all of the chosen ones, an uncomfortable and prolonged period of stress-related explosive diarrhoeaâ€¦

Against all his rational protests and worries, things just seem to keep falling into place for the pilgrims. Rosura is no longer comatose, and they get away without a single problem – if you don’t count the olfactory punishment the Professor’s rebellious innards are repeatedly inflicting upon them allâ€¦

â€œMaryâ€ is the most ravishing creature he has ever seen, but as crazy as her friends. When she cavorts naked in a field during a midnight thunderstorm, frantically imploring God to impregnate her with the second Jesus, Mangel’s lustful ghost again overtakes him and he surreptitiously copulates with the wildly bucking lascivious loonâ€¦

The next day reality hits hard when he reads of two nurses executed when the comatose daughter of an infamous Columbian drug baron was abducted from a certain institutionâ€¦

The second chapter opens with the four fugitives hiding out in a lavish seaside house and Mangel – as always – arguing with both his priapic phantom and rationalist conscience. His so impossibly, imperturbably, persuasive companions are untroubled: they are simply passing the days until the birth of John the Baptist and the Second Coming of Christâ€¦

The next crisis is pecuniary as the lavish spending of the trio soon exhausts the Professor’s funds and they are reduced to their last 100 franc noteâ€¦

Elisabeth is unconcerned and simply places a bet with it. Operating under divine guidance the horse race wins the quartet three and half million Francs, but before the reeling rationalist can grasp that, there’s another insane development as Mary/Rosaura declares herself to be the Androgynous Christ – both male and female – reborn and made manifest to save us all.

She still looks devastatingly all-woman however, and when she kisses the old fool and sends him back to the Church of the Sacred Heart to â€œobtainâ€ a vial of holy Baptismal oil, he goes despite himself, arguing all the way with his imaginary sex-obsessed younger self.

It’s another humiliating and deranged debacle. The famous house of worship is hosting an ecumenical convention of argumentative theologians of all religions and that self-same crazy woman is still there, claiming to be God and challenging them all.

After driving them away she even tries to have sex with the bewildered fallen philosopher who barely escapes with the stolen oil. The worst of it all is that, based on recent evidence, Mangel can’t even say with any certainty that the ill-smelling harridan isn’t telling the truthâ€¦

Driving back through the fleshpots of the city with his ghost tempting him every inch of the way, the weary savant is dragged back to appalling reality by a newspaper headline declaring that the police have a witness in the murder/abduction of Rosaura Molinares, daughter of the most wanted drug trafficker on Earth.

However, when the nigh-unhinged thinker reaches his sanctuary from reason, the true believers already know. They taped the TV news and show him the witness describing a completely different killer: El Perro, chief hitman of Pedro Molinares‘ Medellin Cartelâ€¦

With the last foundations of precious logic crumbling, Mangel reaches an emotional tipping point and when The Androgynous Christ demands he make love to her, the old fool submits to stress – and his ever-horny spectral alter ego – by surrendering to his lusts. Before long he is in the throes of a bizarre, eye-opening, life-altering four-way love session with all the mad people he has wronged in his head and heartâ€¦

The epiphanic moment is rather spoiled when the wall explodes and a cadre of mercenaries working for a rival cartel burst in, looking for Rosaura’s father. They’re followed by the Columbian Secret Service, also hunting the drug lord and quite prepared to kill everybody to find him.

â€¦And they in turn are ambushed by American DEA agents who slaughter everybody in their sights in their desperation to capture Molinares’ daughter and her weirdo friends. The illegally operating Yanks drag their captives to a submarine waiting offshore just as French police hit the beach and El Perro attacks the sub, spectacularly rescuing the quartet and transporting them to safety by helicopter and cargo planeâ€¦

The concluding chapter opens with all of France astonished by the kidnapping of its most beloved thinker, even as in a Columbian Garden of Eden a newly-enlightened and happy Mangel and his heavily pregnant Elisabeth prepare for the birth of The Child.

The Androgynous Christ too has changed and grown, easily converting the hard-bitten drug gangsters into a holy army of believers in the redeemer Jesusaâ€¦

Top dog Pedro Molinares is dying from cancer and his devoted army are fully, fanatically in tune with Jesusa’s plans, especially after an impossible blood miracle seemingly proves their new leader’s earthbound divinity. Equally astounded, Mangel too reaches a spiritual crisis as he accompanies Elisabeth deep into the jungle to give birth.

Mangel’s journey and ultimate transformation at the hands of rainforest shaman DoÃ±a Paz then lead to even more astonishing revelations, changes and shocks that I’m just not prepared to spoil for you…

Controversial, shocking, challenging, fanciful, enchanting and incredibly funny, this a book you must read and will always remember.
â„¢ Les HumanoÃ¯des AssociÃ©s, SAS, Paris. English version Â© 2011 Humanoids, Inc., Los Angeles. All rights reserved.

March 5, 2013March 4, 2013

Agent Gates and the Secret Adventures of Devonton Abbey (a Parody)

By Camaren Subhiyah & Kyle Hilton (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-4494-3434-2

Parody has been a major staple of the comics and cartooning world ever since the days of Hogarth and Cruickshank, so it’s marvellous to see that our colonial cousins are keeping the home fires burning in this sublimely over the top tribute to blockbuster British Television export Downton Abbey, which mingles devastatingly wry observation with outrageously surreal exaggeration to top-hole effect.

I’m not actually a follower or fan of the source material but I know great art and witty writing when I see it, and this supremely daft delight certainly rings both those bellsâ€¦

The aristocratic Crawhill family has occupied stately Devonton Abbey for centuries and now – in April 1914 – the current Earl Richard is master of a house that consists of his unfortunately American wife Cora, wilful daughters Margaret, Cynthia and Flora. Also firmly in residence is his formidable mother the Dowager Countess Viola; an acid-tongued basilisk who knows all the family’s secrets and is the true ruler of the richly furnished and well-upholstered roost.

Below stairs, although head butler Mr. Larson runs the estate’s affairs, lamed valet and under-butler Jack Gates is also privy to much that goes on and is far more important that most realiseâ€¦

With the winds of a Great War mustering on the idyllic horizon, unscrupulous German Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow pays a formal visit. The filthy Boche spy and warmonger is well aware that Devonton and its faÃ§ade of foppish, old-world primness and decadence conceals the clandestine HQ of the British Empire’s Secret Intelligence Service and their exotic super-powered operatives, but has not reckoned on the sheer pluck and determination of the bionic Agent Gates, nor his mysterious handler Agent Heraâ€¦

Still, all does not goes as anybody planned and the mad Hun expires before disclosing any useful intelligence. The covert operatives continue blithely on preparing for the visit of Austro-Hungarian Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand, unaware that traitors and agents of the Kaiser have penetrated into the very heart of the household.

Lord Richard and Lady Cora are far more concerned with prestige, aristocratic rivalries, maintaining the proper niceties regarding their property and their deucedly useless daughters â€“ all far too wrapped up in their silly â€œcausesâ€ such as animal husbandry, parties, any husbandry, marrying cousins, the estate Petting Zoo, Trousers For Women and such dÃ©classÃ© tosh and taradiddle – to concentrate on the things that truly matter.

Happily above and below stairs Lady Viola and Gates are on the case, ensuring the succession of Devonton and safety of the nation by bringing in new if not actually blue bloodâ€¦

A touch of Bullshot Crummond, a dash of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and just a hint of Blackadder, not to mention heaping helpings of Richard Hannay and his illustrious True Brit ilk, all served up with lashings of superbly silly hijinx inform this brilliant bash at the award-winning show, with Steampunk plotlines working in perfect tandem with deliriously funny and absurdist stabs and japes involving the perfectly rendered cast of that most proper of serials.

If you love the show enough to see it successfully spoofed or just love outstanding comedy adventure this is a pictorial billet doux to a bygone era that you won’t want to missâ€¦
Â© 2013 Kyle Hilton and Camaren Subhiyah. All rights reserved.

March 2, 2013March 1, 2013

Booyah!

By Loran, translated by FNIC (Sloth Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-908830-00-5

The Continent has long been the home of superbly crafted, challenging comics fare – unbelievable amounts of it in all manner of styles and genres – and English readers have suffered for decades due to the paucity of decent translations to our churlish mother tongue.

That’s not to say that what we have seen (especially recently with the advent of the wonderful Cinebook line of European classics) hasn’t been wonderful; it’s simply that there’s so very much we still haven’tâ€¦

Thus I’m delighted to welcome a new company into the Anglo-arena with this gloriously anarchic offering from cartoon wild-man Laurent Crenn AKA Loran and his horrifically hilarious Bouyoul, who’s jumped the Pond and had his passport stamped – in blood – as the cute and cuddly catastrophe-in-action Booyah!

Loran’s work was first seen in Anus Horibilis, working with co-founders Fred and Jean-Louis Marco, producing the shocking shenanigans of not only this effervescent, well-meaning pariah but also Captain Caca, Gringo Malo and Les Rangers de l’Espace and latterly at Atelier du PrÃ©au and Le Cycliste.

The little devil’s – Bouyoul, not Loran’s – second swing at fame is covered in this delicious initial translated collection and commence with ‘Happy Birthday’ as the well-intentioned green gargoyle hosts a celebration for the local kids, before his customary lack of fine coordination and impulse control, combined with sheer bad luck, turn the joyous anniversary into a bloodbath that is many attendees’ lastâ€¦

A little old lady, her cat ‘Domino’ and Booyah’s determination to prove he’s not a monster all conspire to ruin the emerald atrocity’s day before ‘Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Scream’ reveals a disastrous, savage and surreal encounter with the master of dreams which clearly shows why neither of them should be trusted as babysitters, whilst the short, sharp ‘Interlude’ features a silent exploit that proves the amiable horror is no fisherman’s friendâ€¦

The rest of this supremely engaging, perilously poor taste comedy of terrors features the epic extravaganza ‘Night of the Living Dead Scout Zombies from Hell’ as a troupe of pious lads and their redoubtable guardian Father Barnaby come upon Booyah asleep in the woods. After an initial misunderstanding where the aged cleric tries to exorcise â€œthe demonâ€ and dies of a heart attack, the affable abnormality takes charge of the cub pack and tries to lead them out of the wilderness. Tragically the earth where they first bury poor old Barnaby is a secret testing ground for a new genetically modified crop – one the scurrilous MonsanlysÂ© Corporation are only just discovering has some rather terrifying side-effectsâ€¦

By the time Booyah gets the scouts to the edge of the forest he’s lost two more kids to tragic, explosively explicit accidents. They too have rejoined the bosom of the earth and the kingdom of heaven. As darkness falls the soil is ruptured by ghastly vegetable zombies sporting the standard super-infectious bite and soon the green goon and his last two charges (no longer good clean-living Christian boys, alas) are fighting for all they’re worth to suppress the horticultural horrors who have decimated the National Scout Jamboreeâ€¦

Outrageously off-kilter, starkly sardonic and brutally hysterical, Booyah is the absolute antidote to anodyne touchy-feely cartoon capers, and if you love your comedy dark and your fantasy unexpurgated and splashed with spurting gut-bustingly jovial gore, this manically inventive immature-readers-only hoot (think of The Simpsons‘ Itchy and Scratchy with the kid gloves off) is definitely worth a few moments of your time.
Â© 2011 La Martiniere. English translation Â© 2011 Sloth Publishing, Ltd.

February 24, 2013February 25, 2013

Hellraisers – a Graphic Biography

By Robert Sellers & JAKe (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-906838-36-2

I’m a sucker for comics biographies, and when I saw this superbly engaging and imaginative one on the shelves of my local library I just couldn’t resist a peekâ€¦

Robert Sellers is a former stand-up comedian and current film journalist with prose biographies of Sting, Tom Cruise, Sean Connery and the Monty Python phenomenon to his name, as well a regular contributor to periodicals and magazines such as The Independent, Empire, Total Film, SFX and Cinema Retro. He has also been seen on TV.

In 2009 he published a magnificent history of brilliance and excess in his â€œLife and Inebriated Times of Burton, Harris, O’Toole and Reedâ€ in 2011 in collaboration with prestigious illustrator, designer and animator JAKe (How to Speak Wookiee, cartoon series Geekboy, Mighty Book of Boosh, The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land and so much more, both singly and with the studio Detonator which he co-founded). The artist keeps himself to himself and lets his superb artistry do all the talking.

Self-adapted from his prose history of the iconic barnstorming British film and theatre legends Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and Peter O’Toole, Sellers here transformed Hellraisers into a pictorial feast, featuring the unique lives of a quartet of new wave, working class thespian heroes – more famed for boozing and brawling than acting – into a masterful parable and celebration of the vital, vibrant creative force of rebellion, interpreted with savage, witty style in ferociously addictive and expressive monochrome cartoon and caricature by the enigmatic artist.

Working on the principle that a Hellraiser is â€œa person who causes trouble by violent, drunken or outrageous behaviourâ€ and cloaked in the guise of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the salutary fable opens as another drunken reprobate is thrown out of another pub. It’s Christmas Eve at the Rose & Crown of Broken Dreams and Martin should be home with his wife and son.

After again disgracing himself the pathetic drunk staggers back, shaking with DT’s and unexpunged rage to his loving but scared family, only to pass out. He is awoken by his hellraising father who drank and smoked himself to death seven years agoâ€¦

Told that he has one last chance to save himself, Martin is warned that he will be visited by four spirits (no, not that sort) who will regale him with the stories of their lives and fates and failures and triumphs â€¦

What follows is a beguiling journey of bitter self-discovery as Burton, Harris, Reed and O’Toole (still alive but part of the visitation of â€œspooky buggersâ€ since it’s just a matter of time, my dear boy) recount their own sodden histories, experiences and considerations in an attempt to turn the neophyte around.

They’re certainly not that repentant, however, and even proud of the excesses and sheer exuberant manly mythology they’ve made of their livesâ€¦

Managing the masterful magic trick of perfectly capturing the sheer charismatic force and personality of these giants of their craft and willing accomplices in their own downfalls, this superb saga even ends on an upbeat note, but only after cataloguing the incredible achievements, starry careers, broken relationships, impossibly impressive and frequently hilarious exploits of debauchery, intoxication and affray perpetrated singly and in unison by the departed, unquiet soused soulsâ€¦

Filled with the legendary exploits and barroom legends of four astoundingly gifted men who couldn’t stop breaking rules and hearts (especially their own), blessed or cursed with infinitely unquenchable thirsts for the hard stuff and appetites for self-destruction, this intoxicating and so very tasty tome venerates the myths these unforgettable icons promulgated and built around themselves, but never descends into pious recrimination or laudatory gratification.

It’s just how they wereâ€¦

Sellers has the gift of forensic language and perfectly reproduces the voices and idiom of each star even as JAKe perfectly blends shocking historical reportage with evocative surreal metafiction in this wonderful example of the power of sequential narrative.

Clever, witty and unmissable.
Â© 2010 Robert Sellers and JAKe. All rights reserved.

February 12, 2013February 12, 2013

Marvel Romance Redux

By various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2090-2

Trust me: when you get to my age, Love is Funny.

For years romance comics were a solid staple of Marvel and most other publishing houses. It’s also a truism that girls are pickier than boys – just look at your own track record with the opposite sex or gender of your predisposition (and yes, I know that’s a cheap shot, but it’s also hard to contest!) – so most of those titles, whilst extremely limited in the stories they offered, were generally graced with some of the best artwork the industry could offer.

Those love-starved chicks might be happy to absorb the same old perpetually regurgitated characters and plot pablum but they definitely, defiantly wanted it all to look the best it possibly couldâ€¦

Having accepted that the art for comics aimed at females has always been of a higher standard and observed that many of Marvel’s greatest illustrators have secretly toiled in the tear-sodden Hearts and Flowers mines, in recent years wisely cynical Editorial heads at The House of Ideas realised that even though the tales might be dull, dated, sexist and largely objectionable to Modern Misses, with a hefty dose of irreverence, a touch of tongue-in-cheek and a heaping helping of digital Tippex, much of that fallow material could be profitably retuned and recycled for today’s shallow crowd of callow youths.

Moreover, if you tap some of the funniest and most imaginatively warped scribes currently working in the industry you might even make that mushy stuff accessible to the jaded, worldly-wise, nihilistic, existentialist, and oh-so-lonely post-Generation X voidoids who think love is for cissiesâ€¦

Thus in 2006 Marvel Romance Redux was to blame for five issues of raucous and occasionally ribald mockery that took the hallowed love comicbook to new depths, resulting in this deliciously offbeat confection a year later. Behind new covers by Keith Giffen, Pond Scum & Christina Strain, Amanda Conner & Jimmy Palmiotti, Greg Land, Kyle Baker and Frank Cho, 21^st century sentiment met timeless 1950s, 1960s and 1970s artwork in a bizarre but highly successful marriageâ€¦

The fist issue was subtitled But I Thought He Loved Me and opened with ‘President Stripper’ (rescripted by Jeff Parker from ‘I Do My Thingâ€¦ No Matter Whom it Hurts’) by John Buscema & Romita Sr., revealing how a daring Go-Go dancer heartbreakingly failed to find happiness using her daring moves and raunchy routines to run America.

Roger Langridge then twisted the words of ‘I Mustn’t Love You, My Darling!’ illustrated byÂ Dick Giordano & Vince Colletta to the tragic cautionary tale of a tattooed temptress who had to cover up the fact that ‘I Was Inked by Sparky Hackworth!’â€¦

‘The Summer Must End’ by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Colletta became under John Lustig, the sordid saga of a savage sexy relationship-wrecker in ‘I Was a Beach Blanket Barbarian!’ whilst Jimmy Palmiotti retained the title of Kirby’s ‘If Your Heart I Breakâ€¦!’ but shifted the cause for the end of the affair to the unpalatable fact that hunky beddable Matt was a hopeless comicbook geekâ€¦

The first issue then closed with ‘Hit or Miss’ as Giffen transformed Lee, Gene Colan & Jim Mooney’s bittersweet ‘The Boy Who Got Away’ fable into a war of words and weapons between rival hot assassinsâ€¦

Guys & Dolls opened with ‘The Dinner Demon’ as Parker rewrote diner love story ‘One Day a Week’ by Jim Starlin & Jack Abel into a creepy tales of greed and Satanism, whilst Lustig took the already outrageous ‘Please Don’t Let Me Be aâ€¦ Spinster!’ by Don Heck & Colletta, and concocted a modern parable of a girl who knew that money made the world go around in ‘Love Ain’t Cheapâ€¦Especially at these Prices!’

Sixties college affair ‘Formula for Love!’ by Jean Thomas, Colan & Bill Everett was seamlessly evolved into a yarn of faux feminism and dangerous psychobabble under Zeb Wells, whilst Palmiotti also kept the original title of Lee, Buscema & Romita Sr.’s ‘I Love Himâ€¦ But He’s Hers!’ but happily messed with our heads in an account of petty jealousy and government conspiraciesâ€¦

‘Love Isn’t in the Cards for Me’ from Lee, Buscema & Frank Giacoia became, under Frank Tieri ‘A (Former Child) Star is Born!’ and showed just what a poor ambitious girl would endure to secure a man with moneyâ€¦

Love is a Four-Letter Word started with the magically surreal ‘Hot Alien Love’ (Jeff Parker making over Lee & Buscema & Colletta’s ‘Another Kind of Love’) as Gail – a dedicated agent of Homeworld Security – falls for the kinky tricks of an extraterrestrial Casanova, before Michael Lieb & Giffen introduced ‘Buffy Willow, Agent of A.D.D.’ (formerly ‘He Never Said a Word’ by Colan) as possibly Freedom and Democracy’s most inept honey-trap, and Joe R. Lansdale refitted Kirby & Colletta’s ‘By Love Betrayed’ into ‘Mice and Money’ wherein a hunky guy finally broke up gal-pals with the strangest tastes imaginableâ€¦

‘Love Me, Love my Clones!’ was originally ‘Jilted!‘ by Jean Thomas, Heck & Romita) until Paul Di Fillipo added his own ideas on buying the ideal bespoke companion, whilst Peter David converted ‘Someday He’ll Come Along’ by Heck & Colletta into the death-affirming ‘They Said I wasâ€¦ Insane!’

â€¦And â€œTheyâ€ were right.

Robert Loren Fleming opened Restraining Orders are for Other Girls with the utterly hilarious ‘Too Smart to Date!’ (originally ‘The Dream World of Doris Wilson’ by Kirby & Al Hartley), after which ‘Callie Crandall: Co-Ed Campus Undercover Cutie’ laid out her Federally-mandated lures for radicals and subversives as Lieb overhauled Dick Giordano & Colletta’s ’50’s filler ‘No Dates for the Dance’.

The art team was one of the most prolific of the period and Fred Van Lente turned their ‘The Only Man for Me’ into ‘Psycho for You’ which showed the upside of stalking and celebrity religious cults, whilst Kyle Baker performed similar duties on their ‘A Teenager Can also Love’, turning simple romance into psychedelic horror in ‘My Magical Centaur!’

Kirsten Sinclair then wrapped it all up by upgrading Kirby & Colletta’s ‘Give Me Back My Heart!’ into a fable of crime and obsession in ‘Give Me Back My Heart! (Dame Mi Carozan)’â€¦

I Should Have Been a Blonde devoted much of its content to adapting a full length tale of Marvel’s secret star Patsy Walker (of Patsy & Hedy and a number of spin-off titles most Marvel Zombies refuse to acknowledge the existence of). Under the sinister influence of Peter David, ‘Patsy’s Secret Boyfriend’ by Lee & Sol Brodsky became the uproariously self-censorious and rudely self-referential ‘Patsy Loves Satan’, sublimely supplemented by ‘Hedy’s Uncomfortable Fanmail’ and ‘Patsy Walker’s Battlesuits!’

Also included to balance the passionate madness was ‘The Language of Love’, wherein Matthew K. Manning converted Giordano & Colletta’s ‘The Last Good-By’ into a good old-fashioned laugh at immigrants’ expense, before Lustig wrapped it all up by turning Gary Friedrich, Colan & Giordano’s ‘As Time Goes By’ into a bizarro tale of superstar possession as a pretty film fan became ‘The Girl With Bogart’s Brain!’

Yes, it’s pretty much a one-trick pony but it is an endlessly amusing one and the tendency towards wry comics-insider gags is far outweighed by the plethora of absurd, surreal, sly outlandish and wickedly risquÃ© spoofs and devastating one-liners.

Moreover, the art is still stunningâ€¦

Daft, pretty and compellingly witty, this is a lovely antidote to the wave of mawkish sentiment doled out in motion picture RomComs and a welcome rare chance to see some of the industry’s greatest graphic talents’ most sidelined artistic triumphs.
Â© 2006, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

February 11, 2013February 8, 2013

Showcase Presents Secrets of Sinister House

By Jack Oleck, Frank Robbins, Sheldon Mayer, Robert Kanigher, Tony DeZuniga, Alex Toth, Mike Sekowsky, Alex NiÃ±o, Sergio AragonÃ©s & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2626-8

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

Implacably vested in World War II, these Overmen swept all before them until the troops came home. As the decade closed, however, more traditional themes and heroes resurfaced and eventually supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

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

As well as Western, War and Crime comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, but gradually another of the cyclical revivals of spiritualism and a public fascination with the arcane led to a wave of impressive, evocative and shockingly addictive horror comics.

There had been grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in mystery-man garb and trappings (the Spectre, Mr. Justice, Sgt. Spook, Frankenstein, The Heap, Sargon the Sorcerer, Zatara, Zambini the Miracle Man, Kardak the Mystic, Dr. Fate and dozens of others), but these had been victims of circumstance: The Unknown as a power source for super-heroics. Now the focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering, the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on the increasingly popular bandwagon, with B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launching the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948, although their Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon.

The book and comics publisher had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 but didn’t follow-up with a regular series until 1951. Classics Illustrated had already secured the literary end of the medium with child-friendly comics adaptations of the Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

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

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

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

Stories were soon dialled back from uncanny spooky phenomenon yarns to always marvellously illustrated, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles and eventually straight monster-busting Sci Fi tales which dominated the market until the 1960s.

That’s when super-heroes – which had begun to revive after Julius Schwartz began the Silver Age of comics by reintroducing the Flash in Showcase #4 – finally overtook them.

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

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

Nobody much cared about gangster titles but, as the liberalisation coincided with yet another bump in public interest in supernatural themes, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious â€œno-brainer.â€ Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillersâ€¦

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all spooky comics came back to quickly dominate the American funnybook market for more than half a decade. DC led the pack by converting The House of Mystery and Tales of the Unexpected into mystery-suspense anthologies in 1968 and resurrected House of Secrets a year earlier.

However horror wasn’t the only classic genre to experience renewed interest. Westerns, war, adventure and love-story comicbooks also reappeared and, probably influenced by the overwhelming success of the supernatural TV soap Dark Shadows, the industry mixed a few classic idioms and invented gothic horror/romances. The mini-boom generated Haunted Love from Charlton, Gothic Romances from Atlas/Seaboard and from undisputed industry leader National/DC Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love and Sinister House of Secret Love.

The 52-page Sinister House of Secret Love launched with an October/November 1971 cover-date, offering book-length graphic epics in the manner of gothic romances such as Jane Eyre, before transforming into a more traditional anthology package as Secrets of Sinister House with #5 (June/July 1972) and reducing to the traditional 36-page format with the next issue. The format remained until its cancellation with #18 in June/July 1974.

In keeping with the novel enterprise, the dark, doomed love stories were extra-long affairs such as the 25-page Victorian period chiller ‘The Curse of the MacIntyres’ (by Mary Skrenes & Don Heck) which opened issue #1 and recounted how recently-bereaved Rachel lost her scientist father and fell under the guardianship of her cousin Blair. Moving into his remote Scottish castle she readily befriended Blair’s son Jamie but could not warm to the dwarfish cousin Alfie.

As the days and weeks passed however she became increasingly disturbed by the odd household and the family’s obsessive interest in â€œmutationsâ€â€¦

There was even room for a short back-up and the Jane Eyre pastiche was nicely balanced by a contemporary yarn of hippies in love. Undying passion and ghostly reincarnation in ‘A Night to Remember – A Day to Forget!’ by an unknown author, effectively illustrated by John Calnan & Vince Colletta.

Editor Joe Orlando and scripter Len Wein closely collaborated on the Tony DeZuniga limned ‘To Wed the Devil’ in the next issue, wherein beautiful, innocent Sarah returns to her father’s estate and discovers the place to be a hotbed of Satanism where all the old servants indulge in black magic rituals.

Moreover her father is forcing her to abandon true love Justin and wed the appalling and terrifying Baron Luther Dumont of Bohemia to settle an outstanding debt. This grim bodice-ripper tale saw the return of Victorian devil-busting duo Father John Christian and Rabbi Samuel Shulman who appeared far too infrequently in succeeding years (see also Showcase Presents the House of Secrets volume 1 and Showcase Presents the Phantom Stranger volume 2) whose last-minute ministrations saved the day, quelled an unchecked evil and of course provided the obligatory Happy Ever Afterâ€¦

Sinister House of Secret Love #3 was the most impressive of these early issues and ‘Bride of the Falcon’ was a visual feast from Alex Toth, Frank Giacoia & Doug Wildey, as author Frank Robbins detailed a thoroughly modern-day mystery. American proof-reader Kathy Harwood answers one of the Lonely Hearts ads in her own magazine and finds herself in Venice, Italy, trapped on the isolated Isola Tranquillo with the tragic, scarred and lovelorn heartsick Count Lorenzo Di Falco and his paralysed mother.

Something isn’t right, though, and as the wedding day approaches, a series of inexplicable deaths occurs. Soon, the romance-obsessed dreamer realises she is in deadly danger. Luckily, poor but handsome gondolier Roberto has constantly refused her demands that he stop bothering herâ€¦

The gripping psychological thriller is supplanted by prose ghostly romance ‘Will I Ever See You Again’ illustrated by Jack Sparlingâ€¦

‘Kiss of the Serpent’ by Mary DeZuniga, Michael Fleisher & Tony DeZuniga in #4 takes us to Bombay (you can call it Mumbai if you’re feeling modern and PC) where freshly orphaned teacher Michelle Harlinson has taken a job arranged by her uncle Paul.

Dazed by loss and the sheer exoticism of India, she is soon drawn into a terrible vendetta between her gorgeous wealthy employer Rabin Singh and his jealous brother Jawah. But as the American finds herself falling under the seductive sway of Rabin, she uncovers a history of murder and macabre snake-worship that can only end in more death and heartbreakâ€¦

With the next extra-sized issue the title became Secrets of Sinister House (June/July 1972), and Lynn Marron, Fleisher, Mike Sekowsky & Dick Giordano produced the eerie ‘Death at Castle Dunbar’ where modern American Miss Mike Hollis is invited to the desolate Scottish manse to complete a history of Clan Dunbar. However most of the family and staff are inexplicably hostile, even though they are unaware of the writer’s true agendaâ€¦

Mike’s sister Valerie was married to the Laird Sir Alec and apparently drowned in an accident. The author is even more convinced when, whilst snooping in the darkened midnight halls, she meet’s Val’s ghostâ€¦

Certain of murder, Mike probes deeper uncovering a deeply-concealed scandal and mystery, becoming a target herself. However when there are so many suspects and no one to trust, how long could it be before she joins her sibling in the spirit world?

In #6 the transition to a standard horror-anthology was completed with the introduction of a schlocky comedic host/raconteur along the lines of Cain, Abel and the Mad Mod Witch.

Charity offered her laconic first ‘Welcome to Sinister House’ (presumably scripted by Editor Orlando and illustrated by the astonishingly gifted Michael Wm. Kaluta), before pioneering industry legend Sheldon Mayer – who would briefly act as lead writer for the title â€“ replaced romance with mordant terror and gallows humour by asking ‘When is Tomorrow Yesterday?‘ (art by Alfredo Alcala) for a genre-warping tale of time-travelling magic and medicine.

‘Brief Reunion!’ by John Albano, Ed Ramos & Mar Amongo showed a hitman the inescapable consequences of his life, and veterans Robert Kanigher & Bill Draut showed a murdering wife that Karma was a vengeful bitch in ‘The Man Hater’.

Issue #7 began with ‘Panic!’ by Mayer and the sublimely talented Nestor Redondo, who together taught a mobster’s chiselling bookkeeper a salient lesson about messing with girls who know magic, Sergio AragonÃ©s opened an occasional gag feature of ‘Witch’s Tails’ and Mayer & June Lofamia futilely warned a student taking ship for America ‘As Long as you Liveâ€¦ Stay Away from Water!’

Sam Glanzman then illustrated Mayer’s twice-told tale of ghostly millennial vengeance in ‘The Hag’s Curse and the Hamptons’ Revenge!’ before cartoonist Lore Shoberg took a turn at the ‘Witch’s Tails’ to end the issue.

‘The Young Man Who Cried Werewolf Once Too Often’ illustrated by Draut in #8 found a most modern manner of dealing with lycanthropes, after which Maxene Fabe & Ruben Yandoc’s ‘Playing with Fire’ saw a bullied boy find a saurian pal to fix all his problems and E. Nelson Bridwell & Alex NiÃ±o again featured a wolf-man â€“ but one who mistakenly believed lunar travel would solve his dilemma during a ‘Moonlight Bay’â€¦

Secrets of Sinister House #9 showed what could happen if impatient obnoxious neighbours were crazy enough to ‘Rub a Witch the Wrong Way!’ (Mayer & Abe Ocampo), and Kanigher & Rico Rival revealed ‘The Dance of the Damned’, wherein an ambitious ballerina learned to regret stealing the shoes and glory of her dead idol, before Jack Oleck & Rival depicted obsessive crypto-zoologists learning a hard lesson and little else whilst hunting ‘The Abominable Snowman’â€¦

In #10 Steve Skeates & Alcala’s ‘Castle Curse’ saw a family torn apart by vulpine heredity, whilst Gerry Taloac’s ‘The Cards Never Lie!’ saw a gang turf war end badly because nobody would listen to a fortune teller, and a greedy hunchback went too far and learned too much in his drive to surpass his magician master in ‘Losing his Head!’ by Larry Hama, Neal Adams & Rich Buckler.

Following another Kaluta ‘Welcome to Sinister House’, Fabe & Yandoc crafted a period tale of greedy adventure and just deserts in ‘The Monster of Death Island’, after which all modern man’s resources were unable to halt the shocking rampage of ‘The Enemy’ (by persons unknown). More AragonÃ©s ‘Witch’s Tails’ then preceded an horrific history lesson of the 18^th century asylum dubbed ‘Bedlam’ by John Jacobson, Kanigher & NiÃ±o and generations of benighted, deluded exploited soulsâ€¦

Sekowsky & Wayne Howard led off in #12 with the salutary tale of a greedy, ruthless furrier who became to his horror ‘A Very Cold Guy’, after which Oleck & NiÃ±o explored ‘The Ultimate Horror’ of a hopeless paranoid whilst, following more AragonÃ©s ‘Witch’s Tails’, Bridwell & Alcala adapted W. F. Harvey’s classic chiller of ravening insanity ‘August Heat’.

Shock and awe was the order of the day in #13 when giant animals attack a horrified family in the decidedly deceptive ‘Deadly Muffins’ by Albano & Alcala, whereas Oleck & NiÃ±o wryly combined nuclear Armageddon and vampires in ‘The Taste of Blood’, before Albano & Jess Jodloman wrapped everything up with a nasty parable about great wealth and prognostication in ‘The Greed Inside’.

‘The Man and the Snake’ was another Bridwell & Alcala adaptation, this time depicting Ambrose Bierce’s mesmerising tale of mystery and imagination, but the original thrillers in #14 were just as good. In ‘The Roommate’ by Fred Wolfe, Sekowsky & Draut, a college romance is destroyed by a girl with an incredible secret whilst ‘The Glass Nightmare’ by Fleisher & Alcala taught an opportunistic thief and killer the reason why you shouldn’t take what isn’t yoursâ€¦

Issue #15 began with ‘The Claws of the Harpy’ (Fleisher & Sparling), wherein a very human murdering monster reaped a whirlwind of retribution, followed up with Oleck & Romy Gamboa’s proof that there are more cunning hunters than vampires in ‘Hunger’ and culminating with a surprisingly heart-warming and sentimental fable in Albano & Jodloman’s ‘Mr. Reilly the Derelict!’

Despite the tone of the times, Secrets of Sinister House was not thriving. The odd mix of quirky tales and artistic experimentation couldn’t secure a regular audience, and a sporadic release schedule exacerbated the problems. Sadly the last few issues, despite holding some of the best original material and a few fabulous reprints, were seen by hardly any readers and the series vanished with #18.

Still, they’re here in all their wonderful glory and well worth the price of admission on their own.

An uncredited page of supernatural facts opens #16, after which George Kashdan & Don Perlin proffered a tale of feckless human intolerance and animal fidelity in ‘Hound You to Your Grave’, whilst the superb Vicente Alcazar traced the career of the infamous 18^th century sorcerer the Count of St. Germain who proudly boasted ‘No Coffin Can Hold Me’ (possibly scripted by Leo Dorfman?), before Kashdan returned with newcomer Ernie Chan to recount the sinister saga of the world’s most inhospitable caravan in ‘The Haunted House-Mobile’.

Perhaps ironic in choice as lead #17’s ‘Death’s Last Rattle’ (Kashdan & the uniquely marvellous Ramona Fradon) combined terror with sardonic laughs as a corpse went on trial for his afterlife, even as an innocent living man was facing a jury for the dead man’s murder, whilst ‘Strange Neighbor’ by Howard Chaykin and ‘Corpse Comes on Time’ from Win Mortimer told classic quickie terror tales in a single page each.

To close the issue, the editor raided the vaults for one of the company’s oldest scary sagas.

‘Johnny Peril: Death Has Five Guesses’ by Kanigher, Giacoia & Sy Barry was first seen in Sensation Mystery #112 (November/December 1952) and pitted the perennial two-fisted trouble-shooter against a mystery maniac in a chamber of horrors. But was Karl Kandor just a deranged actor or something else entirely?

The curtain fell with #18, combining Kashdan & Calnan’s all-new ‘The Strange Shop on Demon Street’ – featuring a puppet-maker, marauding thugs and arcane cosmic justice – with a selection of reprints. From 1969 ‘Mad to Order’ by Murphy Anderson was another one page punch-liner and Dave Wood – as D.W. Holtz – & Angel B. Luna offered New Year’s Eve enchantment in ‘The Baby Who Had But One Year to Die’, whilst ‘The House that Death Built’, by Dorfman & Jerry Grandenetti, saw plundering wreckers rap the watery doom for their perfidy.

Once again the best was left till last as ‘The Half-Lucky Charm!’ by an unknown writer and artists Gil Kane & Bernard Sachs from Sensation Mystery #115 (May 1953) followed a poor schmuck who could only afford to buy 50% of Cagliostro’s good luck talisman and found his fortune and life were being reshaped accordinglyâ€¦

With superbly experimental and evocative covers by Victor Kalin, Jerome Podwell, DeZuniga, Nick Cardy, Kaluta, Sparling and Luis Dominguez, this long-overlooked and welcomingly eclectic title is well overdue for a critical reappraisal, and fans of brilliant comics art and wry, laconic, cleverly humour-laced mild horror masterpieces should seek out this monochrome monolith of mirth and mystery.

February 10, 2013February 8, 2013

Tales Designed to Thrizzle volume two

By Michael Kupperman (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-615-7

Sometimes words mean nothing, pictures tell every story and stuff is funny just because it is. That pretty much sums up the work of absurdist Pop Culture Pirate comedy legend Michael Kupperman, whose graphic samplings of old comics, strips and magazines fill the pages of the too-infrequent comicbook Tales Designed to Thrizzle.

Kupperman is a cartoonist who clearly loves to draw and has no difficulty isolating the innate insanity of modern living as well as the way we regard our own past – especially the not-so-important bits – which he delivers in a surreal graphic deadpan style that would turn Buster Keaton grey with envy.

He created the strips Found in the Street and Up all Night, has worked for The New Yorker, Heavy Metal, The Wall Street Journal, The Independent on Sunday, LA Weekly, The New York Times, LibÃ©ration, Fortune, Screw, Saturday Night Live and many similar reputable venues as well as in such comics as Hodags and Hodaddies, Hotwire, Snake Eyes, Zero Zero, Blood Orange and Legal Action Comics.

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 been a much in-demand illustrator for other people’s book.

In 2011 he released the astoundingly madcap Mark Twain’s Autobiography: 1910-2010, but Tales Designed to Thrizzle has always been his most personal vehicle of expression, allowing him to play his abstractedly stylish mind-games against a dizzying cultural backdrop of Men’s â€œsweat magsâ€, True Confessions pulps, cheesy old comics, B-movies, cheap advertising, and a million other bastions of low-class Americana, all given a unique twist and spin by a man whose skull is clearly too small for his brainâ€¦

After far too long an interval, this second classy hardcover collects issues #5-8 in scintillating high-energy colour and opens with ‘Mandate the Magician’ learning a lesson in karmic humility, after which the hilarious cautionary tale of ‘Fart Boobs’ teaches us all why it’s unwise to mock an alien’s name, and a swift succession of short pithy strips introduce ‘Journey into Adventure’, ‘The Librarian in the Tuna Casserole’, ‘The Hoardy Boys’ and superstar team-in-waiting Twain & Einstein who realise ‘Good Grief! Still More Wuthering Heights’â€¦

Many of the pages here are gloriously outrÃ© and absurdist graphic sight-gags: sham small ads and faux covers for comics and magazine which really shouldn’t be allowed: utterly daft delights such as ‘Remember the Past?’, ‘Ever-Approaching Grandpa’, ‘Sherlock Holmes versus Jungle Boy’, ‘Tales of the Intestinal Submarine’, ‘Johnny Exposition’ and ‘Show Me Your Weiner!’ but Kupperman is also a dab hand with words and typography as seen in his hilarious biography feature ‘Remember Them?’, the anti-melodic ‘Hum Along With your Grandkids’ and the Twain & Einstein prose vignettes ‘Albert Einstein’s Flashback Scheme’ and ‘Chasin’ the Dream’â€¦

The pairing of the separated twins – at least as he draws them â€“ clearly inspired Kupperman. After a succession of covers for Twain & Einstein comicbooks, the tale of ‘Mark Twain, Hollywood Detective’ pits the venerable satirist author and his pal the Father of Modern Physics against the seamy underworld of Tinseltown as both gumshoes and superheroes in a manic melange of genres and loving pastiche of the long-forgotten 1960s Archie superhero revival of Jerry Siegel & Paul Reinmanâ€¦

Following an inappropriate letters page and ‘The Twain Files: 1975’, ‘Buzz Aldrin’s Strange Missions’ leads inevitably into ‘Real Old-Timey Horror’, with ‘Birth of the Monkees’ and EC homage ‘Legs to Die For!’ before exposing ‘Ben Franklin: Inventor of the Bar Code’.

‘The Odd Couple of Draculas’ holds some ‘Astonishing Heroes’, the saga of ‘Gladiator & Snivolus’ and ads for ‘Weird Sandwich Magazine’ whilst the astonishing extended epic of ‘Jungle Princess’ reveals how one could balance being a White Goddess with editing a high class fashion mag, and ‘Willie Wealth – the Rich Little Rich Boy’ learns to his cost that money isn’t everything – like proteinaceous for example – before ‘All About Drainage’ takes the lid off the ultra-sexy and glamorous sewage bizâ€¦

After discovering ‘Books are Stupid’ and that ‘Women Love Men in an Apiary Hat’ the Twain & Einstein movie ‘So Boldly We Dare’ is adapted into wholesome picture form, after which ‘Cowboy Oscar Wilde’ and some important supernatural commercial messages lead to the public service announcement ‘Old People! You need Insurance!’

Cute ‘Mr. Flopears’ and his little hostage situation segues seamlessly into ‘The Ghost’ and ‘Wonder Book Junior’s â€œRide of a Lifetimeâ€’, before ‘Scary Bathtub Stories’ discloses the horrific tale of the ‘Bath of Death’ and the wondrous wares of ‘Hubert’s Shower World’, but the real thrills only arrive with the â€œBell Comicsâ€ reprint of ‘Quincy, M.E.’ – including the martial arts secrets of ‘Catare’ â€“ which crosses over (literally) into two-fisted ‘Saint Peter Comics’â€¦

Kupperman even dabbles in fumetti strips such as his photo ad for ‘Quincy’s Box of Things You Can Shout’, nicely breaking up the surrealist flow before the coroner and the first Pope slip into movie madness with ‘Quinception’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs 2 – featuring Snake ‘n’ Bacon’ and another fumetti interlude ‘A Voyage to Narnia’â€¦

‘The Hamanimal’ almost brought low a prominent citizen even as crime dog ‘McArf’ stood resolute against all scum and Twain & Einstein faced shocking revelations in ‘Family Affairs’ before more Quincy, old Saint Peter, Air War Stories and Hunchback & the Hydrant covers give way to ‘Gordon Ramsay’s Fairy Tale Toilet Kitchen Nightmares’, even more outrageous covers and the tales of ‘Buddy Baker in the 25^th Century’, ‘Billy & the Giant Gangster’ and ‘McGritte, the Surrealist Crime Dog’.

Just for fun you can enjoy a capacious section of ‘Red Warren’s Train & Bus Coloring Book’ (not recommended for the faint-hearted, weak-stomached or rationality-challenged) whilst ‘Murder, She Goat’ deals with the quite understandable concerns of stock characters when crime novelist Jessica Fetcher comes to town, after which a concerned stylist asks ‘Do You Have Thin, Wispy Pubic Hair?’ and we learn all about ‘Great Men of History: Bertrand Copillon, AKA â€œThe Scytheâ€’.

As our inevitable climax nears, we learn more secret history in ‘Moon 69: The True Story of the 1969 Moon Launch’ – with crucial testimony from President Nixon, Aldrin & Armstrong, reporters Woodward & Bernstein, Quincy and Lieutenant Columbo – before more unseemly ads and one final appearance of Twain & Einstein in ‘Homework? No Work’ brings everything to an irresponsible close.

Also containing loads more stuff I’m too nice to spoil for you and too nervous to mention in even digital print, this implausible challenging and deliciously demented box of screwy surprises is an absolute panacea for all real life’s sundry woes and downers: brash, challenging, brilliantly imaginative and always funny.

This is a book for every grown-up, occasionally immature, couch-based life-form in need of a hearty guffaw every now and then – but much more now than thenâ€¦
All characters, stories and artwork Â© 2012 Michael Kupperman. All rights reserved.

January 26, 2013January 25, 2013

American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar – New Revised Review

By Harvey Pekar, R. Crumb, Gregory Budgett, Gary Dumm, Gerry Shamray,
Kevin Brown, Susan Cavey & Val Mayerik (Ballantine Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-787-0

Before finding relative fame in the 21st century, Harvey Pekar occupied that ghastly niche so good at trapping the truly creative individual: Lots and lots of critical acclaim, and an occasional heart-breakingly close brush with super-stardom, without ever actually getting enough ahead to feel secure or appreciated.

One of those aforementioned brushes came in 1980s with the release of a couple of compilations of selected strips by mainstream publisher Doubleday that even to this day are some of his most powerful, honest and rewarding â€œliterary comicsâ€ ever seen. By mercilessly haranguing, begging and even paying (out of his meagre civil service wages and occasional wheeler-deal) any artists who met his exacting intellectual standards, Pekar all but created the comics genre of autobiographical, existentially questing, slice-of-life graphic narratives whilst eking out a mostly lonely, hand-to-mouth existence in Cleveland, Ohio.

How the irascible, opinionated, objectionable, self-educated music-mad working stiff came to use the admittedly (then) impoverished comicbook medium to make a fiercely vital social commentary on American life of the ordinary Joe is a magical journey in the plebeian far better read than read about, but I’m going to have a crack at convincing any holdouts anyway.

Moreover, by the time you’ve seen this I’m already on to my next crusadeâ€¦

This compendium combines and re-releases those seminal tomes in one big, bold edition and was released to tie-in with the award-winning 2003 indie film biography American Splendor, and opens with the superb contents of the 1985 release American Splendor: the Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, beginning by reproducing the introduction by early collaborator and modern Media Darling Robert Crumb before proceeding with a seductive welter of elegiac, confrontational, compulsive, challenging, painfully frank and distressingly honest observations that collectively changed the way English language comics were perceived, received and even created.

Rendered by Crumb, the excoriating graphic self-analysis begins with ‘The Harvey Pekar Name Story’ as the obsessive yet passive hunt for other people with the same name briefly gripped the self-confessed compulsive personality, whilst ‘The Young Crumb Story’ gave us Pekar’s take on the cartooning career of his collaborator, after which ‘A Fantasy’ again revisited the artist’s relationship with the writer: Pekar uncomfortably bragging over how he had browbeaten and gulled Crumb into drawing his scripts – and still wasâ€¦

Gary Dumm illustrated the bizarre ‘Ozzie Nelson’s Open Letter to Crumb’ (written in 1972) describing the faded TV celebrity’s snotty pep talk to the cartooning degenerate, after which Crumb returned to deliver self-abusive insight as Pekar revealed ‘How I Quit Collecting Records – and Put Out a Comic Book with the Money I Saved’.

Greg Budgett & Dumm handled many of the most searingly honest introspectives such as ‘The Day Before the Be In’, the equally forthright and painful personal history sequels ‘Awakening to the Terror of the New Day’ and ‘Awakening to the Terror of the Same Old Day’ or the nigh-spiritual rationalisations of ‘Short Weekend – a Short Story About the Cosmic and the Ordinary’â€¦

One of the most impressive facets of Pekar’s tales is the uncompromising depiction of the people he encountered in work or socially (if such a term can apply to such a self-admitted â€œjudgemental jerkâ€) and the frankly brutal way he attempts to keep narrative polish out of his graphic reportage.

Incidents such as ‘A Compliment’ or ‘Jivin’ With Jack the Bellboy as he Goes Aboutâ€¦ Hustlin’ Sides’ and ‘Jack the Bellboy and Mr. Boats’ – all illustrated by Crumb – recount episodes with co-workers undistinguished, unremarkable and free of all dramatic embellishment or grace-saving charismaâ€¦ but they are intoxicatingly real and appealing.

‘Read This’ (Budgett & Dumm) tells how even cynics can be surprised by people, whilst the Crumb-illustrated ‘Standing Behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines’ is as gently hilarious as their ‘Ridin’ the Dog’ vignette of cross-country bus travel is contemplatively reassuring.

Innovative Gerry Shamray tackled the wordy self-examination of life’s pointless frustrations in ‘An Argument at Work’ and the cathartic ‘Working Man’s Nightmare’ with aplomb and smart sensitivity, before Crumb resurfaced to draw an incredible familiar and unwelcome situation as the obnoxious ‘Freddy Visits for the Week End’. Regrettably we all have friends like himâ€¦

Pekar’s disastrous history with women was a frequent theme and ‘Ripoff Chick’ (by Budgett & Dumm again) showed why and how. The only difference between the author and most men was that he admitted up front that he wanted sex without complications or commitmentâ€¦

‘One Good Turn Deserves Another’ (Shamray) invites us to share a typically penny-pinching secret, before Dumm tackled a quirky friendship and the perils of well-intentioned matchmaking in ‘Leonard & Marie’, and ordinary folk got tied up discussing theology and politics in Shamray’s wryly related ‘Noah’s Ark’. The artist then effectively encapsulated ‘Class Antagonism’ before Jewish intellectual Pekar again examined his ethnic and cultural roots by revisiting his relationship with Old World Hebrew ‘Emil’ (Dumm & Budgett) and the danger of first-hand accounts in the Crumb-illustrated ‘The Maggies (Oral History)’ and Shamray’s death-camp memoir ‘Kaparra’â€¦

Crumb then turned in his most claustrophobic and impassioned drawing for the vibrant manifesto ‘American Splendor Assaults the Media’ after which the immensely stylish Kevin Brown limned a tale of frustrated selling out as Harvey attempted to schmooze up-and-coming movie star Wallace Shawn ‘Grubstreet, USA’, after which the first volume ended on a high of sorts with Pekar via Crumb temporarily resolving a ‘Hypothetical Quandary’.

The philosophising, reminiscing, ruminating, observing, eulogizing, questioning and fictively projecting promptly continues in From the Streets of Cleveland Comesâ€¦ American Splendor: the Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, resuming the painfully honest – and to us here and now perhaps often unsettling and disquieting – accounts of normal lives with the Crumb-crafted classics ‘Pickled Okra (Okry)’, ‘Lunch with Carmella’, ‘Rollins on Time’ and ‘Visualize, Actualize, Realize’ – all containing commonplace friendly interactions with Pekar’s African-American co-workers that would make many genteel folk wince todayâ€¦

A prospective hot date turned into a gruelling and pointless exercise in furniture moving in the Budgett & Dumm saga ‘Guerrilla Theatre: July ’74 – on the Corner’ with a punch-line not apparent until their ‘On the Cornerâ€¦ a Sequel: June 1976’, after which inker turned illustrator to relate the nostalgic revelations of young lust in the 1950s on the ‘Roller Coaster to Nowhere’, but some measure of cosmic karma was achieved decades later when Pekar finally achieve hisÂ childhood goal of owning ultra-hip and so, so cool ‘Stetson Shoes’â€¦

‘Mrs. Roosevelt and the Young Queen of Greece’ and ‘Busman’s Holiday’ by Dumm & Budgett celebrate the simple joy of guys simply sitting around shooting the breeze, whilst Crumb’s delicious treatment of Pekar’s love for old fashioned Jewish kvetching makes ‘Miracle Rabbis – a Dr. Gesundheit Story’ a minor masterpiece of comics.

‘An Everyday Horror Story’ (Shamray) then recaptures the tension and terror of Pekar’s first brush with serious illness – or so the author thought.

Always a healthy, vigorous but exceptionally excitable shouty man, Pekar got properly sick for the first time in his life and faced the very real prospect of never being able to speak again. This exceedingly gripping account perfectly presents all the fear, frustration, metaphysical pleading and moving emotional and practical support Harvey’s friends and then wife provided – and what happened nextâ€¦

‘Alice Quinn’ drawn by S. (Susan) Cavey then detailed a portentous meeting with the girl who got away before Shamray’s powerfully captivating ‘I’ll be Forty Three on Friday (How I’m Living Now)’ offers a rare moment of optimistic clarity, and Cavey’s ‘Jury Duty’ shows how even the most earnest hopes and honest ambitions can worry the bejeezus out of â€œnormalâ€ folksâ€¦

For most of his life Pekar was that rarest of creatures – an un-typical American who chose not to drive (for good, sound and to my mind admirable reasons). Thus he often spent time cadging lifts and fretting about the etiquette of returning favours to his civilian chauffeurs. In ‘A Ride Home’ (Cavey) the impatience and anxiety grew momentarily too much, whilst in Dumm’s ‘Free Ride’ a long-standing arrangement with a previously admired old Jewish guy escalated into something ferociously passive-aggressive, quite strange and impossibly worrisomeâ€¦

The same traumas afflicted Pekar when he foolishly bought his ex- wife’s automobile only to find it a cursed Jonah, which plagued him for many snowbound months in ‘Old Cars and Winter’ by Cavey. The superb and vastly underrated Val Mayerik joined the select band of artistic collaborators with the gloriously uplifting ‘A Marriage Album’, depicting life with beloved third wife with Joyce Brabner, and explored Pekar’s wild street-fighting juvenile days and later proclivities in ‘Violence’, whilst ‘History Repeats Itself’ offered a moment of resigned contemplation over teen spirits courtesy of SeÃ¡n Carroll.

Mayerik contributed a final brace of gently contemplative pieces beginning with ‘A Matter of Life andâ€¦’ which saw an older, calmer author recap his life with a little more kindness than ever before, whilst an uneventful bus ride found Pekar gleaning a wealth of down-home ‘Common Sense’ from a voluble instructor driver before this masterful meander through a truly unique mind concludes with Crumb and the perfect solution to life’s ills with ‘Mr. Boats’ Miracle Cure’â€¦

With art by individualistic collaborators who were never content to stay in their Comfort Zones but always endeavoured to make their contributions unique unto the story, and selected from a most adventurous and historically creative decade, these tales of working life, self-esteem, achievement, failure, religion, the media, Nazi atrocity, guilt, acceptable bigotry, proudly defended ignorance, friendship, aloofness and the art of understanding women are timeless slices of life’s dreary brilliance.

As a man who constantly assessed and re-examined his own creative worth and self, Harvey Pekar opened up his life to the world and changed it by being ordinary and average.

â€¦Except he never was, as this superb insight into the mind and heart of a truly original comics creator will attest. This splendid, engrossing book offers readers a chance to see the humour, confusion and frustration of being an American thinker in a world that simply doesn’t value brains and spirit anymore â€“ and I fear that’s going to be one of humanity’s eternal veritiesâ€¦

January 1, 2013January 5, 2013

Pogo: the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips volume 2: Bona Fide Balderdash

By Walt Kelly, edited by Carolyn Kelly (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-584-6

Tragically this review copy didn’t reach me in time for a Christmas recommendation, but that’s okay as books of this calibre are worth buying and reading at every moment of every day, and rather than waste your valuable time with my purely extraneous blather, you should just hit the shops or the online emporia of your choice and grab this terrific tome nowâ€¦

If you still need more though, and aren’t put off by me yet, I’m happy to elucidate at some lengthâ€¦

Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. was born in 1913 and started his cartooning career whilst still in High School, as artist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. In 1935, he moved to California and joined the Disney Studio, working on short cartoon films and such features as Dumbo, Fantasia and Pinocchio until the infamous animator’s strike in 1941.

Refusing to take sides, Kelly moved back East and into comicbooks – primarily for Dell who held the Disney funnybook license amongst others at that time.

Despite his glorious work on such popular people-based classics as the Our Gang movie spin-off, Kelly preferred and particularly excelled with anthropomorphic animal and children’s fantasy material. For the December 1942-released Animal Comics #1 he created Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum, wisely retaining the copyrights in the ongoing saga of two affable Bayou critters and their young African-American pal Bumbazine. Although the black kid soon disappeared, the animal actors stayed on as stars until 1948 when Kelly moved into journalism, becoming art editor and cartoonist for hard hitting, left-leaning liberal newspaper The New York Star.

On October 4^th 1948, Pogo, Albert and an ever-expanding cast of gloriously addictive characters began their funny pages careers, appearing in the paper six days a week until the periodical folded in January 1949.

Although ostensibly a gently humorous kids feature, by the end of its run (reprinted in full at the back of Pogo: the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips volume 1) the first glimmers of the increasingly barbed, boldly satirical masterpiece of velvet-pawed social commentary began to emergeâ€¦

When The Star closed Pogo was picked up for mass distribution by the Post-Hall Syndicate and launched on May 16^th 1949 in selected outlets. A colour Sunday page debuted January 29^th 1950 and both were produced simultaneously by Kelly until his death in 1973 (and even beyond, courtesy of his talented wife and family).

At its height the strip appeared in 500 papers throughout 14 countries and the book collections – which began in 1951 – eventually numbered nearly 50, collectively selling over 30 million copies, and all that before this Fantagraphics series beganâ€¦

In this second of a proposed full dozen volumes reprinting the entire canon of the Okefenokee Swamp citizenry, possibly the main aspect of interest is the personable Possum’s first innocently adorable attempts to run for Public Office – a ritual which inevitably and coincidentally reoccurred every four years whenever the merely human inhabitants of America got together for raucous caucuses and exuberant electioneering – but it’s also remarkable to note that by the close of this two-year period Kelly had increased his count of uniquely Vaudevillian returning characters to over one hundred. The likes of Solid MacHogany, Tammanany Tiger, Willow McWisper, Goldie Lox, Sarcophagus MacAbre, the sloganeering P.T. Bridgeport, bull moose Uncle Antler and a trio of brilliantly scene-stealing bats named Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred, amongst so many others would pop up with varying frequency and impact over the next twenty yearsâ€¦

This colossal and comfortingly sturdy landscape compilation (three-hundred-and fifty-six 184x267mm pages) includes the monochrome Dailies from January 1^st 1951 to December 31^st 1952, and the Sundays – in their own full-colour section – from January 7^th 1951 to December 28^th 1952 – all faithfully annotated and listed in a copious, expansive and informative Table of Contents. Supplemental features comprise a Foreword from pioneering comedy legend Stan Freberg, delightful unpublished illustrations and working drawings by Kelly, more invaluable context and historical notes in the amazing R.C. Harvey’s ‘Swamp Talk’ by and a biographical feature ‘About Walt Kelly’ by Mark Evanier.

In his time the satirical mastermind unleashed his bestial spokes-cast on such innocent, innocuous sweethearts as Senator Joe McCarthy, J.Edgar Hoover, the John Birch Society, Richard Nixon and the Ku Klux Clan, as well as the likes of Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson and – with eerie perspicacity – George W. Romney, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Governor of Michigan and Pa of some guy named Mittâ€¦

This particular monument to madcap mirth and sublime drollery of course includes the usual cast: gently bemused Pogo, boisterous, happily ignorant alligator Albert, dolorous Porkypine, obnoxious turtle Churchy La Femme, lugubrious hound Beauregard Bugleboy, carpet-bagging Seminole Sam Fox, pompous (doesn’t) know-it-all Howland Owl and all the rest, covering not only day to day topics and travails like love, marriage, weather, fishing, the problem with kids, the innocent joys of sport, making a living and why neighbours shouldn’t eat each other, but also includes epic sagas: the stress of Poetry Contests, hunting – from a variety ofÂ points of view – Christmas and other Public Holidays, incipient invasion, war and even cross-dressing to name but a fewâ€¦

As Kelly spent a good deal of 1952 spoofing the electoral race, this tome offers a magical, magnificent treatment of all the problems associated with grass (and moss) roots politics: dubious campaign tactics, loony lobbying, fun with photo ops, impractical tactical alliances, glad-handing, a proliferation of political promos and ephemera, how to build clockwork voters – and candidates – and of course, life after a failed run for the Presidencyâ€¦

As the delicious Miz Ma’m’selle Hepzibah would no doubt say: plus Ã§a change, plus c’est la mÃªme choseâ€¦

Kelly’s uncontested genius lay in his seemingly effortless ability to lyrically, vivaciously portray through anthropomorphic affectation comedic, tragic, pompous, infinitely sympathetic characters of any shape or breed, all whilst making them undeniably human, and he used that gift to blend hard-hitting observation of our crimes, foibles and peccadilloes with rampaging whimsy, poesy and sheer exuberant joie de vivre.

The hairy, scaly, feathered slimy folk of the surreal swamp lands are, of course, inescapably us, elevated by burlesque, slapstick, absurdism and all the glorious joys of wordplay from puns to malapropisms to raucous accent humour into a multi-layered hodgepodge of all-ages delight – and we’ve never looked or behaved betterâ€¦

This stuff will certainly make you laugh; it will probably provoke a sentimental tear or ten and will certainly satisfy your every entertainment requirement. Timeless and magical, Pogo is a giant not simply of comics, but of world literature and this magnificent second edition should be the pride of every home’s bookshelf, right beside the first one.

â€¦Or, in the popular campaign parlance of the critters involved: â€œI Go Pogo!â€ and so should you.

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