Category: Humour

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Lucky Luke volume 48: Dick Digger’s Gold Mine


By Morris, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-208-9 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Lucky Luke was created in 1946 by Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (AKA “Morris”). For years we believed it was for Le Journal de Spirou Christmas Annual (L’Almanach Spirou 1947), before being launched into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880’ on December 7th 1946. However, eventually it came to light that the strip actually debuted in the multinational weekly comic mid-year, but sans a title banner and only in the French-language edition.

Doughty, rangy, and dashingly dependable, the cowboy is an implacably even-tempered do-gooder who can “draw faster than his own shadow”, amiably ambling around the mythic, cinematically realised Old West, enjoying light-hearted adventures on his petulant, stingingly sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. Ever since that natal moment, his exploits in Le Journal de Spirou – and, from 1967, in rival periodical Pilote – have made the sharpshooter a legend of stories across all media and monument of merchandising.

Working solo with occasional script assistance from his brother Louis, Morris produced 10 albums worth of affectionate and thrilling sagebrush parody before formally uniting with René Goscinny, who became regular wordslinger with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie), which commenced in LJdS on August 25th 1955.

They literarily rode together on another 44 albums whilst Luke attained dizzying heights of superstardom. The partnership continued when the six-gun straight-shooter switched teams, transferring to Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote with La Diligence (The Stagecoach). When Goscinny died, Morris continued both singly and with fresh collaborators. The dream team’s last ride was 1986’s La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires/The Ballad Of The Daltons and Other Stories.

Morris briefly went solo again before inviting an inspiring passel of legacy creators to step in: luminaries like Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, who all took their own shots at the lovable lone rider. Morris died in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus an assortment of sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas. Since 2016 Julien Berjeaut, AKA Jul (Silex and the City) has handled the tall tale telling…

Lucky is one of the top-ranked comic characters in the world, having generated 94 albums (if you count spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, and artist’s specials) with sales well north of 300 million in 33 languages. That renown has translated into a mountain of merchandise, toys, games, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions. No theme park yet, but you never know…

Our taciturn trailblazer’s travails draw on western history as much as movie mythology and regularly interact with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk as he re-explores and refines key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions and interpretations. As previously hinted, the happy wanderer is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire… but not in this primal, heavily cartoon-short-influenced outing…

We Brits first encountered Lucky Luke in the late 1950s, syndicated to weekly comic Film Fun, and again in 1967 in Giggle, where he blazed trails as Buck Bingo. In all these venues – as well as in numerous attempts to capitalise on the English-language success of Tintin and Asterix albums from Brockhampton and Knight Books – Luke had his trademark cigarette hanging insouciantly from his lip, but in 1983 Morris – no doubt amidst both pained howls and muted mutterings of political correctness gone mad – substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, which garnered him an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organization. However, in this restored remastered but still prototypical collection, Lucky doesn’t smoke at all although violence and booze consumption are pretty constant. If that’s a problem, stop here and seek out another, later Lucky lark…

This collection re-presents the contents of the first album, released in 1949 as La Mine d’or de Dick Digger/Dick Digger’s Gold Mine. Gathering strips from Spirou #478-502) the serial unrolls in a riotous concatenation of fast-paced, rollercoaster rapid gag sequences like the screwball US animated features that inspired it, as Lucky helps recover the much-coveted map to a lost payload, causing great grief to the eponymous miner until our hero returns it to the true owner.

The album also includes a second serial romp. Le Journal de Spirou #505 (18th December 1947) began the third adventure, by which time the Lonesome Cowboy was clearly here to stay. Running until #527 (May 20th 1948) ‘Lucky Luke’s Double’ completed that landmark first compiled album: another riotous slapstick chase and comedy of errors as our hero is constantly mistaken for deadly desperado Mad Jim, much to the profit of minor crooks Stan Strand and Tiny Charley Chick. After much rowdy behaviour and larcenous hijinks, thanks to Jolly Jumper, justice and decency triumph in the end…

These youthful, prototypical and formative forays of an indomitable hero offer grand joys in the wry tradition of near-contemporary cinema classics like Destry Rides Again or Laurel & Hardy’s Way Out West – perfectly understandable as Morris was a devout fan of the immortal bumblers and their gentle but astonishingly imaginative action-slapstick capers. Superbly executed by a master storyteller these tales are a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for modern kids who might have missed the allure of a Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2014 Cinebook Ltd.

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Ginseng Roots


By Craig Thompson (Faber)
ISBN: 978-0-571-38661-1 (HB)

This is one of those reviews where I try quite hard not to say too much about the content, because it’s a sin and a form of theft to deprive readers of the joy of it unfolding just for them. You could and should just go buy this now and save time, but if I can’t convince you of that here, please read on and think again…

In no way a sequel to his landmark masterpiece Blankets but every inch and ounce as compelling, engaging and important, Ginseng Roots sees auteur Craig Thompson return to what you or I would deem an incredibly harsh – nigh-dystopian – childhood to craft another incredibly engaging paean of love and fond wonder to his home, his family and his extraordinary life.

In a book encompassing biographical revelation, philosophical rumination and religious re-exploration we see the auteur share incredibly candid events from his profession and career. Wrapped up in a most engaging, amusing and occasionally distressing tutorial on the history and global cultural significance of Ginseng, we see Thompson return to Wisconsin. The Thompson kids were raised in a fundamentalist Christian household, with the Rapture anticipated any day now, but it wasn’t all bad. They were loved, if ruled hard, and here we see how that panned out, as well as the transformative power of comics via a broad, deep and astonishingly informative yarn viewed through the ruminative lens of the Thompson family’s recollections of being child labourers for local farmers growing American Ginseng in the 1980s.

The way it all worked is unpicked with remarkable even-handedness, as the man who became a major force in his field of graphic narrative expression revisits those formative days before embarking on a quest to learn all he can of the How and Why of it all. This involves returning home before ultimately crisscrossing the world with little brother Phil to research a new graphic novel undertaken in the light of potentially losing all he could be to an inexorable physical decline: one destined to take away his self-defining ability to draw…

When first released in July 2003, Blankets started slowly before achieving monumental international fame and near-unanimous critical approval from comics’ Great & Good & Fabled. If you have a favourite author or artist they probably loved the book – and rightly so.

Taking 3½ years to create, Blankets won 3 Harvey Awards, 2 Eisners, 2 Ignatz Awards and a France’s Prix de la Critique. Translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Greek, German, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Korean, Hungarian, Slovenian, Estonian, Serbian and Greek, it was latterly published in 17 foreign editions (so far) and kept on winning glittering prizes and acclaim. It’s also won a YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults prize: listed as one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top Ten Graphic Novels of All Time. You can expect Ginseng Roots to do as well or better, even if young love and tragic foredoomed passions have been downplayed in favour of the inexorable march of time, unsatisfied injustices, midlife crises and failing faculties.

Reading this, you will learn all about a wonder herb, global trade, Chinese medicine, Big Agriculture & pesticides, many flavours of immigrant workers, exploitation and corporate ruthlessness, the economic history of many nations, the narcotic tendencies of comic books of grade school kids, and so much about human nature, that you’ll probably laugh, cry and get angry quite a lot…

Originally released in serialised instalments by Uncivilized Book (between 2019 -2023, as Covid ravaged the US and the world) just as Craig Thompson was confronting presumed career burnout, impostor syndrome and the loss of his ability to draw, the fascinating pictorial discourse is divided into 12 chapters beginning with ‘Real Ginseng Runs’, as Craig, Phil and their sister Sarah reunite at the parental homestead and trade tales of the old days. The reminiscences blend with flashback and flashforwards in ‘Sister Species’ as the story of Ginseng from America expands, with ‘Broad Stripes’ covering the history of Wisconsin – especially the region around Marathon – and growth of Ginseng trading: its use by First Nations before colonisation, white/French and Christian exploitation after that, and eventually an unshakeable connection to Asian nations that bought it from Wisconsin’s farmers and entrenched rivalry with its clearly inferior Canadian competition…

Interviews with old friends and former employers begins in ‘Rock(s) & Roll(ie)’, augmented by modern convolutions in ‘MAGGA’ (Make American Ginseng Great Again!) and ‘Good Seed Sinks’, before Craig’s declining health is more extensively explored in ‘No More Cartoons’. This leads to a vast expansion of purpose that culminates in fact finding missions all over “the orient” and the undertaking of a major literary project as expanded upon in ‘Father Abraham’, ‘Dark Night of the Soil’ and ‘Insam Respects’, before all that global and historical interconnection is pulled together as one big ‘Red Thread’, and laid to bed in grand ‘Agricultural Appreciation’…

So much better read than read about, this marvellously moving memoir and ruminatory treatise is backed up with full contextual ‘Notes’, genuinely evocative ‘Acknowledgments’ and bonus art from the little brother/willing accomplice and henchman on a ‘Phil(er) Page’ and closes with an extended cartoon ad for Craig’s other books – debut tome Good-bye Chunky Rice, Blankets, Carnet de voyage, Habibi and Space Dumplins. You should sample them too and Faber has them all in print for just that purpose.

Loving, informatively wistful and never angry or condemnatory, for such a weighty tome, Ginseng Roots is a remarkably quick and easy read, with Thompson’s imaginative and ingenious marriage of text and images carrying one along in the way only comics can. Expect his cartoon avatar of the root to be pinched and copied by ad men for some time to come…

Charming, engrossing and irresistible, this may well be Thompson’s best and most enduring book, but if fate and Ginseng will it, not his last as it is another perfect story in pictures.
This edition © 2025 by Craig Thompson. All rights reserved. Originally serialised by Uncivilized Books © 2019, 2021, 2021, 2022, 2023 by Craig Thompson.

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Take That, Adolf! – The Fighting Comic Books of the Second World War


By Mark Fertig and many & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-987-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Long the bastion of the arcane, historic, esoteric and the just plain interesting arenas of the comics experience, Fantagraphics Books here celebrates the dawn age of Fights ‘n’ Tights funnybooks with a magnificent collection of (mostly) superhero covers culled from the fraught period which most truly defined the comics industry.

Comic book covers are a potent and evocative way of assessing the timbre of an era and a captivating shortcut into worlds far removed from our own. They are also half the sum total of fun generated by narrative art and arguably an art form all their own. In this torrid tome, educator, scholar and writer Mark Fertig (Chair of Art and Art History at Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania and revered film noir expert – check out his Where Danger Lives for more populist fun) offers an erudite, wide-reaching treatise comprehensively addressing every aspect of the four-colour Home Front’s graphic endeavours in support of America’s WWII war effort.

Detailing how Jewish émigré artists’ and writers’ creative influences advocated America surrender its isolationist stance in ‘Four Color Fantasies’ and ‘Building Towards War’, Fertig then traces the development of ‘Red, White, and Blue Heroes’ such as The Shield and Uncle Sam before ‘The Coming of Captain America’ sparks the invention of ‘An Army of Captains’.

After the USA finally enters the war ‘All-Out Assault: August & September 1941’  is followed by an examination of female masked fighters in ‘She Can Do It!’ and reveals how Wonder Woman became ‘An Amazon for the Ages’.

‘Kids Can Fight Too!’ reveals the impact of junior and underage crusaders as well as the sub-genre of Kid Gangs whilst ‘Attaboy, Steamboat!’ confronts head-on the depiction of ethnic characters – both vile foreign predators and monstrous conquerors and decent Pro-democracy non-white types…

From here in the distant future, some of the appalling jingoism and racism is even more disturbing than the tortures, torments and buckets of gore liberally scattered through the images of Evil Nazis and “Japs”…

Next ‘Into the Breach’ addresses the reasons omnipotent heroes such as Superman and Captain Marvel left the actual fighting in Europe and the Pacific to ordinary mortals before ‘Pulling Together’ details the promotion of Home Front solidarity munitions manufacture and the arming of the armies of Freedom. Then Hitler repeatedly gets his just deserts (in graphic effigy at least) ‘In Der Führer’s Face!’

‘Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines!’ follows the development of more human fictional soldiers and heroes whilst ‘More Thrilling Than Fiction’ sees the beginnings of fact-based accounts of true champions such as President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower before ‘Pitch Men’ follows the numerous examples of masked warriors and kiddie-characters inciting readers to help pay for the war through selling war bonds and liberty stamps before ‘On to Victory’ celebrates the end of hostilities and the aftermath.

The fact-packed lecture is also supplemented at the back of the book by creator biographies of industry giants and iconic cover crafters Charles Clarence Beck, Jack Binder, Charles Biro, Hardin “Jack” Burnley, Reed Crandall, Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Irv Novick, Manuel “Mac” Raboy and Alex Schomburg (regarded as the most prolific cover illustrator of the period) but the true merit of this enchanting tome is the covers gathered for your perusal.

Designed to incite patriotic fervour and build morale, the awesome majority of this tome features a potent avalanche of stunning covers from almost every company, displaying not only how mystery men and superheroes dealt with the Axis of Evil in those tense times but also the valiant efforts of “ordinary fighting men” and even cartoon fantasy stars such as Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Walt Disney stars such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck…

Shopping List Alert: Feel free to skip if you must…

This book celebrates an absolute torrent of spectacular, galvanising scenes of heroes legendary and obscure, costumed and uniformed, all crushing tanks, swatting planes, sinking U-Boats and decimating enemy ranks, and unleashed before your assuredly goggled eyes by artists long forgotten, and never known as well as more familiar names. This battalion of the worthy includes Joe Shuster, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Eisner, Harry G. Peter, Jack Burnley, Frank Harry, Irwin Hasen, Al Avison, Bob Powell, Edd Ashe, Harry Lucey, Paul Gustavson, Bill Everett, Jerry Robinson, Gus Ricca, Al Gabriele, Charles Sultan, Gene Fawcette, Louis & Arturo Cazeneuve, Gill Fox, Sam Cooper, Jim Mooney, Elmer Wexler, Fred Ray, Dan Zolnerowich, Don Rico, Max Plaisted, Howard Sherman, Everett E. Hibbard, Ramona Patenaude, Pierce Rice, Harry Anderson, Lin Streeter, Dan Gormley, Bernard Klein, Stephen Douglas, Martin Nodell, Charles Quinlan, Dan Noonan, Sheldon Moldoff, Henry Keifer, Marc Swayze, Carl Buettner, Charles A. Winter, Maurice, del Bourgo, Jack Warren, Bob Montana, Bob, Fujimori, Vernon Greene, George Papp, John Jordan, Syd Shores, John Sikela, Alex Blum, Ray Ramsey, R. Webster, Harry Sahle, Mort Leav, Alex Kotzky, Dan Barry, Al Camy, Stan Kaye, George Gregg, Art Saaf, George Tuska, Alexander Kostuk, Al Carreno, Fred Kida, Ruben Moreira, Sidney Hamburg, Rudy Palais, Joe Doolin, Al Plastino, Harvey K. Fuller, Louis Goodman Ferstadt, Matt Bailey, Ham Fisher, Walt Kelly, Wayne Boring, John Giunta, Creig Flessel, Harold Delay, Lee Elias, Henry Boltinoff, L.B. Cole and George Marcoux – plus oh so many more who did their bit by providing safe thrills, captivating joy and astounding excitement for millions.

These powerful, evocative, charming, funny, thrilling, occasionally daft and often horrific images are controversial these days. Many people consider them Art with a capital ‘A’ whereas close-minded, reactionary, unimaginative, bigoted die-hard poltroons don’t.

Why not Dig back in time (For Victory!) and make your own decision?
© 2017 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. Main text © 2017 Mark Fertig. All comics covers and illustrations herein © 2017 the respective copyright holders All rights reserved.

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The Best of Eagle


By many & various including Frank Hampson, Alan Stranks & John Worsley, Harry Lindfield, John Ryan, Charles Chilton & Frank Humphris, Norman Thelwell, Edward Trice & E. Jennings, George Beardmore & Robert Ayton, Alan Jason & Norman Williams, Chad Varah, Frank Bellamy, Clifford Makin, Christopher Keyes, Peter Jackson, Peter Simpson & Pat Williams, George Cansdale, David Langdon, Ionicus/ Joshua Charles Armitage: edited by Marcus Morris (Michael Joseph Ltd./Mermaid Books)
ISBN: 978-0-71811-566-1 (tabloid HB) 978-0718122119 (tabloid TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Currently quite easily to find and well worth the effort is this upbeat pictorial memoir from the conceptual creator of arguably Britain’s greatest comic. Eagle was the most influential comic of post-war Britain, and launched on April 14th 1950, running until 26th April 1969. It was the brainchild of a Southport vicar, The Reverend Marcus Morris, who was worried about the detrimental effects of American comic-books on British children, and wanted a good, solid, Christian antidote. Seeking out like-minded creators he jobbed around a dummy to many British publishers for over a year with little success until he found an unlikely home at Hulton Press, a company that produced general interest magazines such as Lilliput and Picture Post.

The result was a huge hit that also spawned clones Swift, Robin and Girl – targeting other sectors of the children’s market – and generated radio series, books, toys and all other sorts of merchandising. The title and phenomenon also reshaped the industry, compelling UK comics colossus Alfred Harmsworth to release cheaper versions through his Amalgamated Press/ Odhams Fleetway/IPC in the far longer lived Lion (running from 23rd February 1952 to 18th May 1974) and its many companion titles such as Tiger and Valiant.

A huge number of soon-to-be prominent creative figures worked on Eagle, and although Dan Dare is deservedly revered as the star, many other strips were as popular at the time, and many even rivalled the lead in quality and entertainment value. At its peak the periodical sold close to a million copies a week, but eventually changing tastes and a game of “musical owners” killed Eagle. In 1960 Hulton sold out to Odhams, who became Longacre Press. A year later they were bought by The Daily Mirror Group who evolved into IPC. Due to multiple episodes of cost-cutting exercises, many later issues carried cheap Marvel Comics reprints rather than British originated material. It took time, but the Yankee cultural Invaders won out in the end.

In 1969 with the April 26th issue Eagle was merged into Lion, before eventually disappearing altogether. Successive generations have revived the title, but never the initial blockbuster success.

For this carefully crafted compilation Morris selected a wonderfully representative sampling of the comic strips that graced those pages of a Golden Age to accompany his recollection of events. Being a much cleverer time, with smarter kids than ours, the Eagle had a large proportion of scientific, historical and sporting articles as well as prose fiction.

Included here are 30+ pages reprinting short text stories, cut-away paintings (including the Eagle spaceship), hobby and event pages, sporting, science and general interest features – and it should be remembered that the company also produced six Eagle Novels and many and various sporting, science and history books as spin-offs between 1956 and 1960. Also on show here are many candid photographs of the times and the creators behind the pages.

Of course, the comic strips are the real gold here. Morris included 130 pages from his tenure on Eagle typifying the sheer quality of the enterprise. Alongside the inevitable but always welcome Hampson Dan Dare are selections from his The Great Adventurer and pioneering adfomercial Tommy Walls strips.

Other gems include The Adventures of P.C. 49 by Alan Stranks & John Worsley, Jeff Arnold in Riders of the Range by Charles Chilton & Frank Humphris, Chicko by Norman Thelwell, Professor Brittain Explains…’ Harris Tweed and Captain Pugwash by John Ryan, Cortez, Conqueror of Mexico by William Stobbs, Luck of the Legion by Geoffrey Bond & Martin Aitchison, Storm Nelson by Edward Trice & E. Jennings and Mark Question (The Boy with a Future – But No Past!) by Stranks & Harry Lindfield.

There are selections from some of the other glorious gravure strips that graced the title: Jack o’Lantern by George Beardmore & Robert Ayton, Lincoln of America by Alan Jason & Norman Williams, The Travels of Marco Polo by Chad Varah & Frank Bellamy, The Great Charlemagne and Alfred the Great (both by Varah & Williams).

Extracts from Bellamy & Clifford Makin’s legendary Happy Warrior and less well known The Shepherd King (King David), run beside The Great Sailor (Nelson) by Christopher Keyes, as well as The Baden Powell story (Jason & Williams) and even David Livingstone, the Great Explorer (Varah & Peter Jackson), and the monochrome They Showed the Way: The Conquest of Everest by Peter Simpson & Pat Williams makes an appearance.

The book is fabulously peppered with nostalgic memorabilia and such joys as George Cansdale’s beautiful nature pages and a host of cartoon shorts including the wonderful Professor Puff and his Dog Wuff by prolific Punch cartoonist David Langdon and Professor Meek and Professor Mild by Ionicus (illustrator Joshua Charles Armitage).

Also included is The Editor’s Christmas Nightmare by Hampson, a full colour strip featuring every Eagle character in a seasonal adventure that is still fondly remembered by all who ever saw (it and are still kicking)…

These may not all resonate with modern audiences but the sheer variety of this material should sound a warning note to contemporary publishers about the fearfully limited range of comics output they’re responsible for. But for most of us, it’s enough to see and wish that this book, like so many others, was back in print again.
Text © 1977 Marcus Morris. Illustrations © 1977 International Publishing Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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Neill Cameron’s Donut Squad: Take Over the World (Book 1)


By Neill Cameron & various (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-340-0 (Digest TPB)

Do You Like Donuts?

Only you can truly answer that question, but if you’re undecided, and dangerously unaware of the ramifications of indecision, rabid raconteur and art fiend Neill Cameron has many arguments you might want to consider before deciding, all jam-packed into a manic new compendium of strips, activities and artificially-sweetened exploits starring a bargain box of comics champions cherrypicked from modern British periodical treasure trove The Phoenix.

Since debuting in 2012 and just like The Beano, Dandy and other perennial childhood treasures, the wonderful weekly has masterfully mixed hilarious comedy with enthralling adventure serials… and frequently in the same scintillating strip. Everybody strapped in? Got your snacks? Then let’s go…

Crafted by Cameron (Mega Robo Bros, Freddy, Tamsin of the Deep, How to Make Awesome Comics, Pirates of Pangea), a unique team of toothsome adventurers convene here as ‘Meet the Squad!!’ cuts down confectionary crusaders dark horse Sprinkles, accident prone Jammyboi, Chalky (the ghost of a murdered Victorian Donut), violent vigilante Justice Donut, nerve-wracked Anxiety Donut, piratical Caramel Jack! (he’s a little bit salty!), Dadnut & Li’l Timmy, and utterly unknowable Spronky! who each individually regale us with short adventures liberally seasoned with lashings of ads for Donut Squad merch like T-shirts, mugs and orbital death-rays. Also probably not really available are fancy dress costumes, hats and giant pants, but you never know…

Although ruggedly individualistic, the assorted vignette stars all seem to work towards a communal conclusion as we explore many ‘Donut Mysteries’, examine ‘Rejected Donut Flavours’ and question the verities of existence in repeated ‘Ask your Father with Dadnut & Li’l Timmy’ episodes. Certainty of a greater world to come is verified via exploits of spectral phenomenon ‘The Cursed Donut’ whilst a reason for living is offered in ‘Meet the Donut Squad Babies! Basically the same but cuter!!’

Life is short and full of surprises so sometimes old friends simply don’t hang around. When Jammyboi shockingly makes his exit, the prospect of cleaner hands and unstained furnishings evaporates with the introduction of much messier messroom treat Choccy-plops – a revelation just crying out for more mirthful merch announcements. Oooh! Tea towels!

With the addition of ‘Sweetum! The Sweetest Donut of all!’ a narrative undercurrent starts carrying all later vignettes in the same direction, starting with ‘New Season! New Donut Flavours’ before Sprinkles details a tasty masterplan at the ‘Secret Donut Squad Meeting!’ outlining his efforts to enlist human converts and enrol them in the ‘Donut Squad Legion of Enthusiasm!’ The program is supplemented by all the latest ‘Conspiracy Theories!’ and the DSLoE ‘Code of Conduct’…

Briefings on ‘Rare Donut Varieties’ are interrupted by an incursion by secret archfoes/sworn enemies the ‘Bagel Battalion’ (Private Plainbagel, Sergeant Sesameseed and Platoon Commander Poppyseed), but before everything gets too heavy we pause to peruse the wonders of ‘Donut Park’.

Sadly, such commercial distractions lead to more subversive assaults by the relentless foe, offering ‘New Bagel Flavours’ and prompting an arms race resulting in retaliatory experiments with ‘New Cheesier Donuts’…

The carb-shot cold war hots up with a wave of ‘Bagel Battalion merchandise’ including ads for themed thermal vests, ties and protractor & compass sets garnishing counterintelligence sallies such as ‘Ask your Bagel father’. Initially wrongfooted, the sweet & sugary contingent can only resort to more theme park ads, even as ‘How to draw donuts’ features are swiftly counterbalanced by ‘How to draw bagels’ until all consumer confidence is shattered…

A public backlash begins, leading to a breaking of the doughy fourth law and some gutter crawling – and sniping – as ‘Anxiety Donut Has to Go on an Adventure!’, circumventing more mesmerising ads, and inadvertently spying on the Bagels before reporting back on their ‘Battle readiness’…

Inevitably war boils over between the baked goods factions. The horrors culminate in the creation of an horrific ‘Bagel Battalion Metabomb’ and, after the deployment of all comestibles, tanks, skateboards and battle dinosaurs, the opposing forces calamitously clash. Cosmic destruction is only narrowly averted and when the powdered sugar settles we learn ‘Hooray! The Donut Squad is Victorious!’ and are not really surprised by a follow-up press release confirming ‘Hooray! The Donut Squad Have Taken Over the World!’…

Smart, witty, laugh out loud weird and utterly bonkers, this seemingly piecemeal treat cunningly connects a whole bunch of stuff kids love without knowing why, but which totally bewilder us oldsters and keeps us in our place. Breezy eccentric and captivating, the sugar rush is counterpointed with a selection of Donut related artistic activities extracted from ‘The Phoenix Comic Club’, including drawing ‘Basic Shapes!’, adding ‘Flavour!’, ‘Personality!’, ‘Expression!’, ‘Poses’, ‘Extras!’, ‘Characters!’ and all aspects of ‘Storytelling!’

This manic missive then closes with a welcome extract from Cameron’s Mega Robo Bros just in case your kid is the only one who hasn’t read it yet. And don’t let anyone read it whilst eating…

Moreover, as all the best books and movies say: DONUT SQUAD WILL RETURN…
Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2025. All rights reserved.

Neill Cameron’s Donut Squad: Take Over the World! is scheduled for UK release on May 8th 2025 and is available for pre-order now.

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Gorilla-Man


By Jeff Parker, Jason Aaron, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Giancarlo Caracuzzo, Jack Kirby, Bob Powell, Bob Q. Sale, Dick Ayers & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4911-8 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Apes have long fascinated comics audiences, and although Marvel never reached the giddy heights of DC’s slavish and nigh ubiquitous exploitation of the Anthropoid X-factor, the House of Ideas also dabbled in monkey business over its many years of existence.

This slim mixed-bag of a tome gathers newer adventures of happily hirsute occasional hero Ken Hale – gregarious Gorilla-Man of resurrected 1950s super-group pioneers Agents of Atlas – culled from an eponymous 2010 3-issue miniseries and supplemented with pertinent material from Avengers vs. Atlas #4, X-Men First Class #8, plus a splendid grab bag of assorted earlier interpretations culled from the company’s back catalogue of anthology horror and mystery titles: specifically Men’s Adventures #26, Tales to Astonish #28 & 30 and Weird Wonder Tales #7.

What you need to know: the Agents of Atlas comprise rejuvenated 1950s super-spy Jimmy Woo and similarly vintaged superhuman crusaders Namora (Sub-Mariner’s cousin), spurious love-goddess Venus, a deeply disturbing, extremely unhuman Marvel Boy from Uranus, primitive wonder-robot M11 and the aforementioned anthropoid avenger. As the Atlas Foundation, these veterans surreptitiously fight for justice and a free world as the nominal leaders of a clandestine crime-cult which still thinks it’s being patiently guided towards the overthrow of all governments. The real power behind the organisation however is a terrible mystical dragon named Lao…

The modern mainstream saga concentrates on ‘Ken Hale, the Gorilla-Man: The Serpent and the Hawk’ by Jeff Parker & Giancarlo Caracuzzo: exploring the anthropoid adventurer’s origins following a particularly bizarre battle against spidery cyborg Borgia Omega. In search of another action-packed mission, Hale spots a familiar face on an Atlas “wanted poster” and heads for Africa, flashbacking his past for us along the way.

It all began in Missouri in 1930 as a visiting big-shot spots something in a poor orphan kid holding his own against seven bigger boys who picked the wrong dirt-grubber to bully…

  1. Avery Wolward was a millionaire man-of-intrigue with interests all over the globe and for the next decade little Kenny became his companion and partner in a series of non-stop escapades that would make Indiana Jones green with envy. Ken learned a lot about life and loyalty, eventually discovering that Wolward owed much of his success to a mystical snake walking stick. Now that cane is in the hands of an African crime-lord calling himself Mustafa Kazun who’s well on the way to stealing an entire country and building an empire of blood…

Each miniseries issue was augmented by comedic faux email conversations between Hale and his social networking fans, and here delightfully act to buffer transitions between modern menace and reprinted monkey mystery vignettes. The first of these is ‘It Walks Erect!’, taken from 1974’s Weird Wonder Tales #7 which itself rescued the yarn from pre-Comics Code Mystery Tales #21 (cover-dated September 1954).

The story – by an unknown author but illustrated by the magnificent Bob Powell – concerns compulsive rogue surgeon Arthur Nagan whose obsession with brain transplants took a decidedly outré turn when his gorilla test subjects rebelled and wreaked a darkly ironic revenge upon him…

Slavish fanboys like me might remember Nagan as the eventual leader of arcane villain alliance The Headmen… but probably not…

Hale’s origin resumes as he and local agent Ji Banda are attacked by Kazun’s enslaved army, but that doesn’t stop the suave simian superman describing how a clash with Wolward’s arch rival Bastoc to recover an ancient bird talisman in Polynesia led the then-full-grown soldier-of-fortune to split with his mentor and enlist in the US military just before Pearl Harbor…

By the time the war ended Wolward was gone and the magnate’s daughter Lily had inherited both the family business and the walking stick…

After another message-board break, the classic ‘I Am the Gorilla Man’ (Tales to Astonish #28, February 1962, by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers) reveals how criminal genius Franz Radzik developed a mind-swapping process so that he could use a mighty ape body to commit robberies. Sadly the big brain forgot that, with its personality in a human body, the anthropoid might have its own agenda and unbridled opportunity…

The conclusion of ‘The Serpent and the Hawk’ sees Hale unite with a gorilla clan to overturn Kazun’s schemes and unlock the secret of the stick, even as his mind is firmly replaying his bad marriage to Lily, subsequent decline into drunken dissolution, recruitment by the arcane Mr. Lao, and eventual confrontation with a previous Immortal Gorilla-Man.

The role is an inherited one and a curse. To kill the undying Gorilla is to become him, and the previous victim had by this time had more than enough. Even after Hale refused to end the creature’s torment, it relentlessly followed him until it could trick the drunken mercenary into taking on the curse. However, after linking up with 1950s heroes such as Jimmy Woo and Venus, Hale found it truly liberating and grew to accept his new status…

Thus when Kazun’s true identity is revealed and the weary adventurer is offered a permanent if Faustian cure, Gorilla-Man makes the only choice a true champion can…

A final text presentation precedes Lee, Lieber, Kirby & Ayers’ ‘The Return of the Gorilla Man’ (Tales to Astonish #30, April 1962) wherein Radzik – still locked in a gorilla’s body – escapes captivity and frantically attempts to prove to scientists how smart he is.

Big mistake…

Fresh insight into Hale is provided by Jason Aaron & Caracuzzo’s ‘My Dinner with Gorilla-Man’ from Avengers vs. Atlas #4, wherein a desperate man with nothing to lose hunts down the ageless anthropoid, intent on fulfilling the ageless equation: “Kill the Gorilla and live forever”…

This is followed by a gleefully glorious romp from X-Men: First Class #8. ‘Treasure Hunters’ by Jeff Parker & Roger Cruz, finds the debut generation of Xavier’s mutants – Cyclops, Angel, Beast, Iceman & Marvel Girl – in the Congo and hunting for their missing teacher. Along the way they encounter a talking gorilla who becomes their guide, which inadvertently pulls reclusive hermit Hale out of a decades-long funk…

The collection concludes with the seminal supernatural suspense thriller that first introduced ‘Gorilla Man’ to the world. Again by an anonymous writer (possibly Hank Chapman) and limned by unique stylist Robert “Bob Q.” Sale, this evocative chiller from Men’s Adventures #26 (March 1954) offers a much grittier take on the origin, as a man terrified of dying and plagued by nightmares of fighting apes hears a crazy legend and heads for Kenya and an inescapable, horrific destiny…

Also included is a selection of 21st century covers by Dave Johnson, Leonard Kirk, Dave McCaig, Gabrielle Dell’Otto, Humberto Ramos, Edgar Delgado & Marko Djurdjevic, with the vintage frontages represented by Kirby, Lieber & Ayers.

Outrageous, over the top and never taking itself seriously, this is a riot of hairy scary fun-filled frolics and a perfect antidote to all those po-faced Costumed Dramas. I wonder if there’s a movie in this stuff?
© 1954, 2007, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Mighty Crusaders: Origin of a Super Team


By Jerry Siegel, Paul Reinman, Frank Giacoia, Joe Giella, Sam Rosen & various (Red Circle Productions/Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-87979-414-6 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

If you like your superheroes grim, gritty and ultra-serious you won’t like what follows, but honestly in the final analysis it’s not Chekhov or Shakespeare, just people in tights hitting each other, so why not lighten up and have a little fun?

In the early days of the US comic book biz, just after Superman & Batman ushered in a new genre of storytelling, a rash of publishers jumped onto the bandwagon and made their own bids for cash and glory. Many thrived and many more didn’t, relished only as trivia by sad old duffers like me. Some few made it to an amorphous middle-ground: not forgotten, but certainly not household names either…

MLJ were one of the quickest outfits to manufacture a mystery-man pantheon, following the spectacular successes of the Man of Tomorrow and Darknight Detective with their own small but inspirational pantheon of gaudily clad crusaders. Beginning in 1939 (one month after a little game-changer entitled Marvel Comics #1) with Blue Ribbon Comics #1 the MLJ content comprised a standard blend of two-fisted adventure strips, prose pieces and gag panels before, from #2 on, costumed heroes entered the mix. The company rapidly followed up with Top-Notch Pep Comics and many more. However, after only a few years Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater (hence MLJ) spotted a gap in the blossoming market and in December 1941 nudged aside their masked mystery men and action aces to make room for a far less imposing hero: an “average teen” who would have ordinary adventures like the readership, but with triumphs, romance and slapstick emphasised.

Cover dated December 1941, Pep #22 featured a gap-toothed, freckle-faced, red-headed goof who took his lead from the popular Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney. Goldwater developed the concept of a youthful everyman protagonist, tasking writer Vic Bloom and artist Bob Montana with the job of making it work. The 6-page tale introduced Archie Andrews, pretty girl-next-door Betty Cooper and his unconventional best friend and confidante Jughead Jones living in a small-town utopia called Riverdale. The feature was an instant hit and by the winter of 1942 had won its own title.

Archie Comics #1 was the company’s first solo-star magazine and with it began a gradual transformation of their entire output. With the introduction of rich, raven-haired Veronica Lodge, all the pieces were in play for the comic book industry’s second Genuine Phenomenon (as influential, if not so all-pervasive, as Superman). By 1946 the kids had taken over, and MLJ renamed itself Archie Comics: retiring its superheroic characters years before the end of the Golden Age to become, to all intents and purposes, a publisher of family comedies. Its success, like Superman’s, changed the content of every other publisher’s titles, spawning a multi-media empire generating TV shows, movies, apparel, and even a chain of restaurants. In the swinging sixties the pop hit Sugar, Sugar (a tune from their animated TV show) became a global smash and wholesome garage band The Archies has been a fixture of the comics ever since.

Nonetheless the company had by this stage blazed through a rather impressive legion of costumed champions – such as The Shield: America’s first patriotic superhero, predating Captain America by 13 months. A select core of these lost titans would communally form the backbone of numerous future superhero revivals, most notably during the “High-Camp”, “Marvel Explosion”, “Batmania” frenzied swinging Sixties…

Archie Comics had tentatively, and with a modicum of success, tried out new characters – Lancelot Strong: The Shield, The Fly and The Jaguar – when DC first began bringing back costumed champions in the late 1950’s and used the titles to cautiously revive some of their own Golden Age stable in the early 1960s. However, it wasn’t until superheroes became a global craze, fuelled as much by Marvel’s unstoppable rise as the Batman TV show, that the company committed to a full return of costumed craziness, albeit by what seemed to be mere slavish imitation…

The comedy specialists simply couldn’t take the venture seriously though and failed – or perhaps refused – to imbue the revitalised wonder people with drama and integrity to match the superficial zaniness. I suspect they just didn’t want to. As harmless adventures for the younger audience, the efforts of their “Radio Comics” imprint manifested a manic excitement and uniquely explosive charisma all their own, with hyperbolic scripting by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel touching just the right note at exactly the key moment for a generation of kids…

It all began when The Fly (originally created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby) was reborn as Fly-Man to milk the growing camp craze. He began incorporating mini-revivals of forgotten heroes such as The Shield, Comet and Black Hood in his highly imitative pages. With the addition of already-well established sidekick Fly-Girl, an oddly engaging, viable team was formed. Thus – for a couple of truly crazy years – Archie Comics rolled out their entire defunct pantheon for an exotic effusion of multicoloured mayhem before fading back into obscurity…

Here, then, is a deliciously indulgent slice of sheer backward-looking bluster and bravado from 2003 when the House of Wholesome Fun stuffed a selection of Silver Age appearances into a brace of slim – and still sadly overlooked – compilations. The Mighty Crusaders: Origin of a Super-Team collects the three tenuous team-ups from Fly-Man #31-33 (May – July 1965) plus the first issue of spin-off Mighty Crusaders (November 1965) which finally launched the extremely quarrelsome champions as an official squad of evil eliminators…

The wacky wonderment begins with a history lesson and loving appreciation in a ‘Foreword by Michael Uslan and Robert Klein’ before those first eccentric inklings of a new sensation are re-revealed in Fly-Man #31. As previously stated, Jerry Siegel provided baroquely bizarre, verbally florid scripts, deftly parodying contemporary storytelling memes of both Marvel and National/DC: plenty of pace, lots of fighting, a whirlwind torrent of characters and increasingly outrageous expository dialogue.

The artist was veteran illustrator Paul Reinman who had been drawing comics since the dawning moments of the Golden Age. His credits included Green Lantern, Sargon the Sorcerer, The Atom, Starman and Wildcat. He drew The Whizzer, Sub-Mariner and Human Torch at Timely and for MLJ produced strips in Blue Ribbon Comics, Hangman, Jackpot, Shield-Wizard, Top-Notch and Zip Comics involving such early stars as Black Hood, The Hangman and The Wizard. He even found time to illustrate the prestigious Tarzan syndicated newspaper comic strip. Reinman excelled at short genre tales for Atlas in the 1950s and became a key inker for Jack Kirby on the Hulk, Avengers and X-Men as the King irrevocably reshaped the nature of comics storytelling in the early 1960s…

Here he uses all that Fights ‘n’ Tights experience to depict ‘The Fly-Man’s Partners in Peril’ as criminal mastermind The Spider (nee Spider Spry) broke out of jail to attack his old enemy, only to have all his cunning traps spoiled by alien-equipped tech-master The Comet and, in second chapter ‘Battle of the Super-Heroes’, by The Shield and man of mystery Black Hood (whose irrepressible sidekick at this time was a miraculous robotic horse dubbed Nightmare)…

Caustically christening his foes The Mighty Crusaders, the villain attempts to ensnare them all in ‘The Wicked Web of the Wily Spider!’ but ultimately fails in his plot. The story ends with our heroes hotly debating whether they should formally amalgamate and swearing that whatever occurred they would never call themselves by the name The Spider had coined…

Two months later they were back in Fly-Man #32, battling an incredible psionic dictator from long-sunken Atlantis. With Fly-Girl “adding glamour” but unable to quell the boys’ fractious natures, the still un-designated team clash with many monstrous manifestations of ‘Eterno the Tyrant’ before confronting the time-lost terror and banishing him to trans-dimensional doom…

One final try-out appeared in Fly-Man #33 (September 1965) as boisterous bickering boils over into outright internecine warfare between ‘Fly-Man’s Treacherous Team-Mates’, all ably assisted by the evil efforts of vile villain The Destructor. The sort-of team had been recently joined by two more veterans climbing back into the superhero saddle, but both The Hangman and The Wizard subsequently succumbed to rapacious greed as the Fly Guys gathered billions in confiscated loot and tried to steal the ill-gotten gains for themselves…

Finally in November 1965 Mighty Crusaders #1 premiered (by Siegel & Reinman with a little inking assistance from Frank Giacoia & Joe Giella). ‘The Mighty Crusaders vs. the Brain Emperor’ sees the heroes bowing to the inevitable after incredible aliens attack at the bilious bidding of an extraterrestrial megamind who could enslave the most determined of individuals with the slightest wrinkling of his see-through brow. However, the mental myrmidon proves no match for the teamwork of Earth’s most experienced crime-crushers…

Also included in this captivating chronicle is a splendidly strange cover gallery by Reinman.

The heroes all but vanished in 1967, before impressively resurfacing in the 1980s (albeit as a straight dramatic iteration) under the company’s Red Circle imprint, but again failed to catch a big enough share of the reading public’s attention. Archie let them lie fallow – except for occasional revivals and intermittent guest-shots in regular Archie comedy titles – until 1991, when they licensed its entire cape-&-cowl cohort to superhero specialists DC Comics for a magically fun, all-ages iteration (and where are those star-studded curated collections, huh?!).

Impact Comics was a vibrant, engaging and fun all-ages rethink that really should have been a huge hit but was again incomprehensibly unsuccessful. When the line folded in 1993 the characters returned to limbo until called for one more collaborative crack at the big time in 2008, briefly incorporating Mighty Crusaders & Co into DC’s own maturely angst-ridden and stridently dark continuity – with the usual overwhelming lack of success.

In 2012 Archie began reinventing their superhero credentials with a series of online adventures under the aegis of a revived Red Circle subdivision, beginning with a second generation of The Mighty Crusaders (reinforced by traditional monthly print versions six months later) and latterly The Fox: new costumed capers emphasising fun and action which were equally welcoming to inveterate fanboys and eager newcomers alike, so there’s still hope for the crazy gang to make good…

Jerry Siegel’s irreverent, anarchic pastiche of Marvel Comics’ house-style utilising Archie’s aged pantheon of superheroes is one of the daftest yet most entertaining moments of superhero history, and the sentiment and style of these tales has become the basis of so much modern kids animation, everything from Powerpuff Girls to Batman: Brave and the Bold to Despicable Me. That tells me these yarns urgently need to be reissued because at last the world is finally ready for them…

Weird, wild and utterly over the top! This is the perfect book for jaded veterans or wide-eyed neophytes in love with the very concept of costumed heroes. C’mon, prove me wrong…
© 1965, 2003 Archie Comics Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Lucky Luke volume 47: Outlaws


By Morris, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-201-0 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Doughty, rangy,and dashingly dependable cowboy Lucky Luke is an implacably even-tempered do-gooder who can “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic, cinematically realised Old West, having light-hearted adventures on his petulant and stingingly sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. Over nine decades, his exploits in Le Journal de Spirou (and from 1967, in rival periodica Pilote) have made the sharp shooter a legend of stories across all media and monument of merchandising.

Working solo with occasional script assistance from his brother Louis, Morris – AKA Maurice de Bévère – produced 10 albums worth of affectionate and thrilling sagebrush parody before formally uniting with René Goscinny, who became regular wordslinger with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie), which commenced in Le Journal de Spirou on August 25th 1955.

They literarily rode together on another 44 albums as Luke attained the dizzying heights of superstardom. The partnership continued when the six-gun straight-shooter switched teams, transferring to Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote with La Diligence (The Stagecoach). After Goscinny died, Morris continued both singly and with fresh collaborators. The dream team’s last ride was 1986’s La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires/The Ballad Of The Daltons and Other Stories.

Morris worked alone again before inviting an inspiring passel of legacy creators to step in. These included Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and others, who all took their own shots at the lovable lone rider. Morris died in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus many sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas. Since 2016 Julien Berjeaut, AKA Jul (Silex and the City) has handled the tall tale telling…

Lucky is one of the top-ranked comic characters in the world, having generated 94 albums (if you count spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, and artist’s specials) with sales totalling north of 300 million in 33 languages. That renown has translated into a mountain of merchandise, toys, games, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions. No theme park yet, but you never know…

Our taciturn trailblazer’s travails draw on western history as much as movie mythology and regularly interacts with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk re-exploring and refining key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions and interpretations. As previously hinted, the happy wanderer is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire… but not this time…

We Brits first encountered Lucky Luke in the late 1950s, syndicated to weekly comic Film Fun, and again in 1967 in Giggle where he blazed trails as Buck Bingo. In all these venues – as well as numerous attempts to capitalise on  the English-language success of Tintin and Asterix albums from Brockhampton and Knight Books – Luke had his trademark cigarette hanging insouciantly from his lip, but in 1983 Morris – no doubt amidst both pained howls and muted mutterings of political correctness gone mad – substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, which garnered him an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organization. In this restored remastered edition, the dogend is restored, so if that’s a problem, stop here and seek out another, later Lucky lark…

First published continentally in December 1954, Hors-la-loi was the 6th European album and an all Morris affaire comprising two short serials. Eponymous lead strip ‘Outlaws’ originally ran in LJdS #701-731 from September 20th 1951 to April 17th 1952, with our hero hired by the railroad companies to end the depredations of Emmett Bill, Grat and Bob Dalton: real life badmen who plagued the region during the 1890s, imported into the strip and given a comedic, but still vicious spin.

A cat & mouse chase across the wildest of wests sees Luke constantly frustrated by close calls and narrow escapes in superbly gripping movie set-pieces until, inevitably, justice claims the killers. At the close of this yarn, Morris had Lucky end the gang forever, but they and the story itself were insanely popular with fans. The villains were comedy gold and ideal foils for Lucky, so eventually they returned in the form of their own cousins, but we’ll tell that tale another time and place.

Actually, lets do some of it right now…

A certified Christmas must-have item, Lucky Luke album Outlaws also carried ‘Return of the Dalton Brothers’ – as first seen in LJdS #755-764 (October 2nd – December 4th 1952). Here, fraudster Bill Boney campaigns to become sheriff of a prosperous frontier town by claiming to be the killer of those infamous owlhoots. He is an absolute “wrong ‘un” but seems utterly unstoppable… until Lucky orchestrates a brief and equally fake resurrection of the bandit brothers. A little rampage and faux lynching and Boney learns a lesson that the townsfolk will never forget…

From the response to that tale eventually came the aforementioned revival, as Goscinny’s third collaboration introduced Les Cousins Dalton in issues #992-1013 (1957) of Le Journal de Spirou. When this iteration of the appalling Dalton Brothers – Averell, Jack, William and devious, slyly psychotic, tyrannical diminutive brother Joe showed up, the course of the strip altered forever…

These youthful forays of an indomitable hero offer grand joys in the wry tradition of Destry Rides Again and Support Your Local Sheriff, superbly executed by a master storyteller: a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for modern kids who might well have missed the romantic allure of the Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2014 Cinebook Ltd.

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Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volume 4 (1941-1942)


By Roy Crane with Leslie Turner (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-677-5 (Tabloid HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

The fourth and final collection of Roy Crane’s groundbreaking, trailblazing Sunday strip completes a quartet of comics compilations no lover of high adventure, action comedy and visual narrative excellence should be without.

Our industry and art form evolved from phenomenally popular newspaper strips born of the first four decades of the 20th century: monolithically powerful circulation-boosting features which could, until relatively recently, dictate success or failure in America’s cutthroat newspaper business. The daily cartoon stories were immensely addictive and thus regarded as invaluable by publishers who used them as a sales weapon to ensure consumer loyalty, increase sales and maximise profits. Many a pen-pushing scribbler became a millionaire thanks to their ability to draw pictures and spin a yarn…

With hundreds of 24-hour TV channels, streaming services, games and apps on demand now, it’s impossible for us to grasp the overwhelming allure of the comic strip in America and the wider world. From the Great Depression to the end of World War II, with no domestic television, radio coverage far from comprehensive and movie-shows a weekly treat at best for most, entertainment was generally garnered from those ubiquitous newspaper comic sections. Funny Pages were a universally shared, communal recreation for millions. Entire families were well-served by an astounding variety of features of spectacular graphic and narrative quality.

From the outset humour was paramount – that’s why they’re called “Comics” – but eventually anarchic baggy-pants clowning, cruelly raucous, racially stereotyped accent humour and gag-&-stunt cartoons palled, evolving into a thoroughly unique entertainment hybrid that was all about the dynamics of panels and pages. At the forefront of the transformation was Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs. It utilised a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous movie serial antics, fabulous fantasy and old fashioned vaudeville shtick, but also added compellingly witty and authentically true dialogue and a breathtaking sense of day-to-day progression – in short, serial continuity. There were also plenty of lovely women; what we used to call “something for the dads”…

What separated Crane from his close contemporaries and competitors – who were making similar advancements in the new art form – was that he was blending the fun with stirring, contemporary rollercoaster, implausible heroic action…

Washington Tubbs II began as a typical gag-a-day strip on April 21st 1924, bearing marked similarities to confirmed family favourite Harold Teen (by Crane’s pal and contemporary Carl Ed). Young Wash was a short, feisty and fiercely ambitious shop clerk permanently on the lookout for fortune and fame, but cursed with an eye for the ladies. Gradually his peripatetic wanderings moved from embarrassing gaffes towards mock-heroics, into full-blown – but still light-hearted – action and ultimately rip-roaring, decidedly dangerous hazardous trials, ordeals and exploits. This graphic evolution eventually demanded the introduction of a he-man sidekick to handle the fights the kid was getting into but seldom won. Thus enter moody, swashbuckling heroic prototype Captain Easy in the landmark episode for May 6th 1929…

Slap-bang in the middle of a European war, fast-talking, garrulous Tubbs saved a taciturn, down-on-his-luck, enigmatic fellow American from a cell and a perfect partnership was formed. They became inseparable: comrades-in-arms, roving the globe in search of treasure, lambasting louts and fighting thugs to rescue a stunning procession of wondrous women in assorted modes of distress…

The edgily capable, utterly dependable “Southern Gen’leman” was something previously unseen in Funnies: a raw, square-jawed hunk played dead straight rather than as the mock-heroic buffoon/music hall foil cluttering strips like Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond. Moreover, Crane’s seductively simple blend of cartoon exuberance, combining faux-straight illustration with “bigfoot” cartooning (here carefully mimicked and even surpassed by his assistant and creative successor Leslie Turner) was a far more accessible and powerful medium for fast-paced adventure story-telling than the beautiful but stagy style favoured by artists like Hal Foster on Tarzan or Prince Valiant and Alex Raymond with Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim. Tubbs & Easy were much closer to the surreal, absurdly action-packed Popeye or V. T. Hamlin’s comedy caveman Alley Oop: full of vim, vigour and vinegar and seldom sombre or serious for long…

The overall effect was electrifying – and a host of young cartoonists used the strip as their bellwether: Floyd Gottfredson, Milton Caniff, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and especially an impressionably admiring Joe Shuster…

After several abortive attempts at a Sunday feature starring his little warrior, Crane eventually settled on the burly sidekick as his potential star and Captain Easy launched on July 30th 1933. The content was unflinching exotic action: blistering two-fisted yarns set before the two buddies’ first meeting.

This fourth and final fabulous volume covers December 22nd 1940 to July 11th 1943, bringing to a close Crane’s association with the strip. He had abandoned the feature to NEA, joining William Randolph Hearst’s King Features to produce Buz Sawyer – a strip he would own and have creative control over. Turner continued both the daily Wash Tubbs and Sunday Captain Easy (with his own assistants) until his retirement in 1969.

This blockbuster collection opens with an Introduction from Michael H. Price tracing potential candidates as basis for the surly Southerner in ‘Roy Crane and the Man Who was Easy’ before the increasingly eccentric and comedic final pages, a goodly proportion of which were produced during the critical period just before America finally entered WWII.

The material is significant for one salient point – Tubbs and especially Easy are scarcely seen after hostilities commenced. The reason was obvious: all true patriots wanted to defend their country and the heroes enlisted…

The hilarious action begins with the reintroduction of comedy foil Lulu Belle: a homely, cigar-chomping hillbilly lady who had been a circus strongwoman and undisputed Female boxing champion for fifteen years. She had married serial bigamist and all-round bounder C. Hollis Wallis before going home heartbroken to her family, but as they just saw her as a meal ticket too, she was overjoyed when Tubbs & Easy wandered by the old homestead.

Soon she was accompanying them to Guatemala, following an out-of-date advert for workers at a wildcat oil field. Arriving eight years too late, the trio are gulled into joining a bandit gang run by savage and sultry Teresa Grande; a Latin spitfire who’s the most dangerous killer in the country. She, however, is smitten with Easy’s manly charms, and redeems herself at terrible cost when her gang try to steal sacred relics from a remote village and its ancient temple.

Homeless and broke as usual, the plucky Americans then walk to the coast and find passage on a ship run an eccentric who keeps pet tigers. The voyage goes as you’d expect and the trio end up shipwrecked somewhere off Cuba, only to be stalked by a wild Wolf Girl: a lost child marooned and grown wild as she matured in the jungle…

After numerous close shaves and hilarious escapades, Easy captures and partially tames the bestial lass, entrusting her to the care of a vacationing American psychologist, whilst Lulu Belle secures a job as cook in a dingy waterfront dive. It’s there that she meets and is romanced by Easy’s brutal arch-enemy Bull Dawson, and inadvertently lures Wash and the Captain aboard the rogue’s ship. Brokering a tenuous peace, she convinces her friend to work on the “reformed” Dawson’s new job: a jungle reclamation project near the Panama Canal. It’s all a big con, though. The treacherous pirate is actually building a secret landing-field for agents of a certain foreign power and when Wash and Easy uncover the truth the fists and fireworks fly…

Returned to the USA, heartbroken, lovelorn Lulu is taken in by the ambitious schemes of a millionaire who somehow finds the unprepossessing lady irresistible. Of course Akron O. Spratly also has plans to boost the war effort by extracting much-needed rubber from frogs…

After much outrageous flummery and hilarious misadventure Lulu is left even sadder, if no wiser, just as the now partially civilised Wolf Girl returns. She has escaped her collegiate captors and is running wild in the big city: her immense physical strength and speed causing much unladylike chaos in Gentlemen’s clubs, the circus, on sports fields and at the Zoo. She also displays amazing talent for acquiring pretty sparkly items like watches and jewellery…

A very different type of girl appears next as obnoxious ten-time married billionaire Horatio Boardman swears off women again and hires Easy to make sure the pledge sticks. Sadly, local mobsters are determined to introduce the World’s Eighth Richest Man to Baby Doll, a sexily appealing ingénue with the rapacious heart of a viper…

That screwball set-up was good for three months-worth of laughs before Lulu again takes centre stage when a boastful beautician is suckered into a bet that he can make any woman so lovely that she will be photographed in the newspapers…

Reduced to simple straight man by Lulu, Easy soon took third place as the boxing broad accidentally acquired a manic and capacious ostrich named Lucille. The big bird’s astounding appetite led to Lulu becoming the indentured slave of a shady farmer who first had her work off the giant’s gannet’s destructive binges and then sold his guilt-wracked toiler on to other men in need of fields ploughed, clothes washed and chores done… until the outraged Easy came back and dealt with the vile trafficker…

Stony broke but free once more, Lulu then roped Easy in on a culinary affair as she opened a diner in the worst place possible, just as her ne’er-do-well family palmed off a young cousin onto her. Augustus Mervin Gasby was a locust in human form, and his astonishing appetite seemed fit to bust the desperate pair… until the former-soldier-of-fortune found something that the shambling oaf could do really well…

A panoply of ludicrous sporting endeavours eventually led Gus into the Navy whilst on the Home Front Easy and Lulu went fishing and subsequently exposed a huge dope-smuggling ring in one of the last rousing adventure episodes, after which the tone switched back to screwball comedy with the re-emergence of C. Hollis Wallis who weaselled into town in search of another woman to marry and fleece. He wasn’t particularly picky and despite Lulu keeping a weather eye – and occasionally a couple of clenched fists – on him, the louse breezed through a few options before settling upon one eminent prospect who lived in a mansion with many oil-wells attached.

He had no idea she was only the cook…

A secondary plot began mid-stream as Zoot-suit gangster William “Trigger Boy” Scramooch got out of the State Pen and moved into Lulu’s boarding house. Ever prey to poor judgement, she took a shine to him whereas for Easy it was disgust at first sight…

Horning in on Wallis’ potential windfall, Trigger Boy planned a kidnap and tricked Lulu into doing his dirty work. Big mistake…

More single page gags follow, including a clever patriotic sequence where Lulu buys a big gas-guzzling automobile and leads the nation by her sacrificial example after which Easy makes his last appearance (28th February 1943) serving to reintroduce another old pal.

Magician, ventriloquist and escapologist Lonny “the Great” Plunkett pops up once more, pranking the cops and again becoming a target of crooks in dire need of illicit safecracking expertise. Lulu is a natural partner for the sharp guy and together they scotch the hoods’ plan, after which romance blooms again when 600-pound gorilla Roy Boy decides only she can be his ideal mate. When he’s frustrated in his amorous endeavours he smashes out of his cage and rampages like a hairy tornado through town…

The comic capers conclude on a high humour note with a return to C. Hollis Wallis’ ongoing marital scam, which escalates into brilliant farce before the loathsome little Lothario gets what’s coming to him…

Ending this final titanic (with pages 380mm high x 270mm wide) luxury hardback tome is a full-colour correction from volume 3, another hand-painted colour-guide strip by Crane and Rick Norwood’s ‘Transition’: an illustrated article explaining just where Tubbs & Easy went when they faded from Turner’s Sunday pages…

Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips is a magnificent undertaking: gathering in a wonderfully accessible form one of the most impressive, funny, exciting and influential comic strips of all time, in books that cannot help but inspire awe and affection. Captain Easy is perhaps the most unsung of all great pulp heroes and his spectacular, rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventures should be just as familiar to lovers of classic adventure as Tintin, Doc Savage, Allan Quatermain, Scrooge McDuck and even Indiana Jones.

These astounding masterpieces are quite unforgettable: fanciful, entertaining and utterly irresistible. How can you possibly pass up the chance to experience the stories that inspired the giants of action adventure?

Captain Easy strips © 2013 United Feature Syndicate, Inc. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books, all other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

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Noggin the Nog


By Oliver Postgate & Peter Firmin (Egmont)
Noggin the King ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8152-2 (HB)
Noggin and the Whale ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8153-9 (HB)
Nogbad Comes Back ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8155-3 (HB)
Noggin and the Dragon ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8154-6 (HB)
Nogbad and the Elephants ISBN 978-1- 4052-8142-3 (HB)
Noggin and the Moon Mouse ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8141-6 (HB)
Noggin and the Storks ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8144-7 (HB)
Noggin and the Money ISBN: 978-1- 4052-8143-0 (HB)

Baby Boomers like me consider our childhoods – no matter how feted or feral, and personally privileged or dire and deprived – to have been a golden age in terms of liberty, agency and especially entertainment. That’s probably due in large part to being exposed to the gentle, life-affirming fantasy worlds of these guys.

Today celebrating a century of being splendid, Richard Oliver Postgate was a writer, puppeteer, animator and unrepentant itinerant storyteller who was born to an extremely prestigious, overachieving and drama-drenched family. He entered the world on April 12th 1925 in Hendon Middlesex and was eventually educated at Woodstock School, Woodhouse Secondary, the legendary Dartington Hall School/College and Kingston College of Art. He joined the Home Guard in 1942 but when at last called up, declared himself a Conscious Objector – just as his father had during the Great War. Court martialled and sentenced to Feltham Prison, Oliver eventually became a land-worker growing crops. After the war he worked for the Red Cross in Occupied Germany. On returning to Britain in 1948, he went to Drama School and drifted from job to job.

In 1957, whilst working as a stage manager for commercial TV company Associated Rediffusion, he observed the appalling quality of children’s programming up close and knew he could do better for the same paltry money offered. Writing Alexander the Mouse he convinced a Central School of Art tutor named Peter Firmin to draw the backgrounds for him. After moving on to short-lived deaf-viewer project The Journey of Master Ho, in 1959 the creators formalised their partnership as independent studio Smallfilms. The rest is history… and fantasy and wonder and charm and devastating nostalgia…

When not shaping the minds of 30-years-worth of kids, Postgate continued trying to save the world and refine its inhabitants. He was active in the CND movement, penning their pamphlet The Writing on the Sky and 1981 book Thinking it Through: The Plain Man’s Guide to the Bomb. In 1986, he created a 15-meter artwork for his latterday romantic partner Naomi Linnell’s book Illumination of the Life and Death of Thomas Beckett, repeating the exercise for The Triumphant Failure (about Christopher Columbus) and triptych A Canterbury Chronicle, which ended up in the city’s Royal Museum Art Gallery and Eliot College Campus…

Working when he pleased, Postgate narrated – in the calm, quietly compelling voice that became hardwired into the brains of millions – radio comedy and documentary shows, more books such as autobiography Seeing Things, and accompanied (arguably) his greatest creation Bagpuss – voted in 1999 the Most Popular Children’s Television Programme of All Time – as the plushly-stuffed purple & white cat accrued awards such as an honorary degree from the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Postgate died – hopefully properly and rightly well-contented – in Broadstairs Kent, on December 8th  2008.

Peter Arthur Firmin was born in Harwich on 11th December 1928. Following training at Colchester School of Art and National Service in the Royal Navy, he attended Central School of Art and Design in London from 1949 to 1952. A creative man of many talents and disciplines, he then worked as a stained-glass designer, jobbing illustrator and lecturer.

Whilst teaching at Central in 1957 he was targeted by audacious, up-and-coming children’s TV writer Oliver Postgate who believed (quite rightly) that clever individuals could produce high-quality kids’ viewing at reasonable cost.

After crafting backgrounds for Postgate’s Alexander the Mouse and The Journey of Master Ho, Firmin became equal partner in new venture Smallfilms, which grew in and out of a shed at the artist’s Canterbury home. The kindred spirits initially produced hand-drawn cartoons and eventually stop motion animation episodes for series including Ivor the Engine, Pingwings, The Saga of Noggin the Nog, Pogle’s Wood/The Pogles, Bagpuss, The Clangers and much more. Postgate wrote, voiced and filmed, whilst Firmin – roping in any family and friends in the immediate vicinity – drew, painted, built sets and made puppets. Their spouses were often dragooned too, if they showed useful talents like sewing or knitting…

During those early days Firmin seemed tireless. In addition to the Smallfilms job he also devised, designed and populated other kids shows such as The Musical Box and Smalltime. In 1962 with Ivan Owen he created a fox puppet for The Three Scampies. That creation soon had his own show and career as Basil Brush…

Throughout his life, Firmin continued his cartooning and illustration career. This included writing and/or illustrating a number of books including Basil Brush Goes Flying, The Winter Diary of a Country Rat, Nina’s Machines and Postgate’s Seeing Things – An Autobiography. Firmin also worked as a printmaker and engraver, designer and educator. In 1994 he was asked to create a British postage stamp and produced a magnificent offering featuring Noggin and the Ice Dragon.

Even at their most productive and overworked, Postgate & Firmin always ensured there was plenty of ancillary product such as Christmas Annuals, comic strips, spin-off books, games and puzzles for their devoted young fans. One of the most charming and enduring was a series of “Starting-to-Read” books released by Kaye & Ward between 1965 and 1973. Postgate & Firmin crafted all 8 books in a kid-friendly format gently sharing the further adventures of the Nicest Norseman of Them All…

In 2016 the octet of all ages, easy-going comedy dramas and gently humorous escapades were rereleased as superb hardcover editions perfect for tiny hands, but are now (at least thus far) out-of-print-&-hard-to-find. Starring the full TV cast and illustrated in a variety of duo-toned line-&-colour tomes, they display all the wit and subtle charm of the irrepressible Firmin whilst Postgate seductively and seditiously showed how much nicer things could be if we all tried a little harder to get on with each other.

This is the Saga of Noggin the Nog… Upon the death of his father, quiet, unassuming Noggin becomes king of the northland Viking tribe known as the Nogs. He rules with understanding and wisdom – generally thanks to his advisors: wife Nooka who hails from the far north (we’d call her an Inuit or Inuuk princess these days), bluff old codger Thor Nogson and wisdom-stuffed talking green cormorant Graculus. Despite many fantastic but necessary adventures, Noggin prefers a quiet home life with his people and his boisterous son Knut…

Noggin the King opens with bucolic pastoral scenes of the Nogs, with the good-hearted sovereign helping his people however he can. However, whilst happily repairing the roof of an old farmer, the ruler dislodges a bird’s nest. Bringing the nest and its occupants back to his castle, he cares for the fledglings and mother, pondering if he is also the King of birds in the Land of Nogs. If he is, then they are his subjects too and thus he is responsible for their safety and welfare. Riven with doubt, the King, with Nooka at his side, sets out on a short quest/ fact-finding mission to confirm his suspicions and is rewarded by the feathered kingdom with a great but grave new honour…

Noggin and the Whale features far more light-hearted aspects of kingship as the mild-mannered monarch celebrates his birthday in the usual manner: doling out gifts to all the children of his realm. This year they all get musical instruments, but when they hold an impromptu concert on a boat in the little walled harbour, the merriment is interrupted by a most insistent whale.

Every time the kids get going the cetacean surges up under the boat and eventually even placid Noggin loss his temper and orders the sea-beast to swim away. Instead it glides over to the open harbour gate and sulkily blocks the way, just as Noggish fishing boats are trying to moor up for the night. Nothing the townsfolk can do will shift the surly creature.

Suddenly Prince Knut has an idea. He realises why the whale has been acting so strangely and, after consulting with his father, commissions Royal Inventor Olaf the Lofty to create a unique present for the morose marine mammal…

Originally released in 1966, Noggin and the Dragon sees little Prince Knut and his chums pestering the royal couple to let them go on a dragon hunt. Noggin and Nooka are reluctant at first – Dragon Valley is no place for little boys and besides, the best thing to do with dragons is give them sweets and make friends – but eventually the proud parents capitulate to pester power. To ensure things go smoothly they insist doughty old warrior Thor Nogson goes with them, but as the unruly boys trek into a gathering storm, no one has any idea of the shocking surprise in store for them all…

From the same year, Nogbad Comes Back highlights the return from exile of Noggin’s wicked usurping uncle, just in time to try and spoil the King’s annual animal and vegetable show. Living up to his name, Nogbad the Bad tries to win the glittering jewel-encrusted cup for best flora and fauna by devious cheating and, when that fails, through simple shameful theft. Thankfully, Nooka is not as forgiving and kind as her husband and has been keeping a close eye on her outlaw in-law…

The next year saw two more tomes: one of which may have been a notional precursor to one of Smallfilms’ most successful franchise creations. Noggin and the Moon Mouse begins with Knut enacting an official ceremony at a water trough. Proceedings are utterly disrupted when a strange silver ball crashes down and a child-sized rodent-like creature emerges. Caught up in the excitement, the prince and his unruly pals give chase… until Queen Nooka takes charge. After admonishing the boys, she and Noggin befriend the strange visitor (who actually comes from another world) helping him gather odd household items he requires to return to the stars.

And yes, a few years later a peculiar band of armoured woolly beasties began communicating with us all in their universally comprehensible pennywhistle pipings in a little show called The Clangers…

Nogbad and the Elephants proves there are many perks to being royal. One is wonderful presents such as the gigantic gem-encrusted, long-nosed big-eared beast presented to Prince Knut by the King of Southland. Sadly, the wonderful creature is perpetually unhappy and falls under the sway of crafty Nogbad who lures it away to steal its jewelled coat. Realising it’s been hoodwinked, the piteous pachyderm takes restorative action in its own unique manner, compelling Knut to make his first grown-up decision…

The last brace of tales originated in 1973, beginning with hilariously anti-capitalist tract Noggin and the Money. Here Court Inventor Olaf the Lofty suffers a setback in his dream to modernise the nation. Nogs have been happily soldiering on using barter and trade as long as anyone can remember, so when the big thinker creates coins as currency, he thinks he’s made life easier for everybody. Thor Nogson soon disagrees after he’s despatched to acquire eggs for the royal breakfast and meets rather a lot of resistance to this new-fangled commerce nonsense…

Wrapping up the fun is Noggin and the Storks as the King sagely deals with a minor ecological crisis. Sooty Storks have nested on the chimneys of the town for decades, using the heat of human cooking fires to warm their eggs. This year, as the birds are particularly numerous, the populace are continually being smoked out of their own homes.

Despite his people angrily petitioning Noggin to let them chase the pests away, as king of birds as well as people, the smooth sovereign seeks another, more equitable solution. Cue Olaf the Lofty, who has an idea involving an old chalk quarry, a stand of hollow trees, masses of convoluted piping, steel sheets and tons of firewood…

Serenely bewitching, engaging and endlessly rewarding (both these books and their much-missed, multi-talented originators) the works of Postgate and Firmin shaped generations of children and parents. If you aren’t among them, do yourself a great favour and track down those DVD box sets, haunt the streaming services and buy these books and anything else with their names on it. You won’t regret it for an instant.
Text © The Estate of Oliver Postgate 1965-1973. Illustrations © Peter Firmin/The Estate of Peter Firmin 1965-1973.