Category: Humour

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Lucky Luke Vol 28 The Dalton Cousins


By Morris & Goscinny, translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-076-4 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes Discriminatory Content added for comedic effect.

Created by Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (AKA “Morris”), Lucky Luke debuted in the summer of 1946, initially riding out in Le Journal de Spirou summer sans title or banner, and only in the French-language edition. The Lone Rider’s official launch came in Christmas Annual L’Almanach Spirou 1947, before beginning his first official serial – ‘Arizona 1880’ – in December 7th 1946’s multinational weekly issue.

Doughty, dashing, dependable cowboy “good guy” Lucky is a rangy, implacably even-tempered do-gooder able to “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic Old West, having light-hearted adventures on his petulant and rather sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. For 80 years (Joyeux anniversaire, Mon Brave!), his exploits have made him a top-ranking global comic character, filling more than 90 individual albums and spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, with sales upwards of 300 million copies in 30 languages. That renown 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…

Lucky’s global dominance resulted from a decades-long, 45 volume collaboration with superstar scripter René Goscinny, spanning Des rails sur la Prairie/Rails on the Prairie beginning August 25th 1955 to La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires/The Ballad Of The Daltons And Other Stories in 1986. On Goscinny’s death, Morris worked on alone again before recruiting others, to form a posse of legacy creators including Lo Hartog van Banda, Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Xavier Fauche, Benacquista & Pennac, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, all taking their own shots at the venerable vigilante. Morris soldiered on singly and with these successors before his own passing in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus numerous sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas.

His grande idée draws on western history as much as movie mythology, regularly meeting historical figures as well as even odder fictional folk in tales drawn from key themes of classic cowboy mythology – as well as some uniquely European notions or interpretations such as seen here. As previously hinted, our six-gun star is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire, but here spoofs his own antecedents and venerated movie schtick for a delicious drive down memory lane…

Goscinny had started scripting Lucky uncredited in 1955. Morris had taken nearly a decade to fill nine albums with affectionate sagebrush parody, action and Lucky Laughs, but now, with Goscinny as regular wordsmith, Luke would attain dizzying heights of super swift superstardom, commencing with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie), and following up with Lucky Luke contre Joss Jamon, (Vs. Joss Jamon) before – still anonymously – delivering a true landmark with the next storyline.

The Dalton Cousins was first enjoyed in LJdS #992 – 1013 (April 18th to September 12th 1957): a manic mirth-fest for which Goscinny performed a much-demanded act of necromancy by resurrecting a quartet of killers Lucky had already permanently dealt with, but whom readers want not dead but alive…

Serially published back in December 1954 Hors-la-loi became Morris’ 6th full album and included a strip which saw our hero meet and beat Emmett, Bill, Grat & Bob Dalton: real life badmen who had plagued the actual west during the 1890s. On those funny pages from simpler times, Lucky was hired by railroad companies to end the depredations of the desperados who had been imported into the strip, but given a comedic, yet still vicious spin. A cat & mouse chase across the wildest of wests saw Luke constantly frustrated by close calls and narrow escapes in superbly gripping movie set-pieces until, inevitably, justice claimed the killers. At the close, Morris had Lucky end the gang forever, but they and the story itself were insanely popular with fans. These owlhoots were comedy gold and ideal foils, so eventually they returned in the form of their own cousins…

From the reader response to that tale eventually came this aforementioned revival, as Goscinny’s third collaboration. When this iteration of the appalling Dalton Brothers – now and forever after Averell, Jack, William & devious, slyly psychotic, tyrannical, diminutive brother Joe – showed up, the course of the strip altered forever…

It opens on a remote farm in Arizona where four brothers mourn the loss of murderous bandits they resemble and are related to. They know they aren’t nearly good enough to fill the dead men’s boots or kill their killer… but they are willing to try their hardest to change all that. The replacement Daltons’ first attempt to settle the score is frankly embarrassing, but fortune and persistence gradually harden and hone them. They even at one stage have the heroic happy wanderer train them up to “match fitness”…

Ultimately, however, after they besiege a town and regularly succeed in theft and terrorism, Lucky is forced to take action before they become as great a menace as their dearly departed favourites ever were, but sadly, leaves it too late and is forced to resort to tricky tactics and even dividing to conquer. It’s either that or be hunted down like a dog: a role he’s just not suited for…

As much thriller as comedy romp, this yarn proved how crucial great villains are to any hero and started a western showdown that fruitfully persists and thrives to this day. These tall-to-small tales are perfect for kids with a smidgen of historical perspective and social understanding, although the action and slapstick situations are no more contentious than any Laurel and Hardy film – perfectly understandable as Morris was a huge fan of the duo. These formative forays are a grand old hoot in the tradition of Destry Rides Again or Support Your Local Sheriff, superbly executed by master storytellers, and a wonderful introduction to a unique genre for anyone who might well have missed the romantic allure of the Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Goscinny and Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2010 Cinebook Ltd.

Today in 1913, artist Tom Gill (The Lone Ranger, Bonanza, Red Warrior) was born, sharing his birthday with DC’s hyper-prolific colourists Jerry Serpe (1919) and Bob LeRose (1921). The date also saw the debut of Russell Stamm’s strip Invisible Scarlett O’Neil in 1940 and the deaths of the great Syd Shores (Captain America, Black Rider, Blonde Phantom, The Westerner) in 1973; Ozzie cartoonist Syd (Fatty Finn) Nicholls in 1977 and Industry-shaking innovator Bill Gaines (EC Comics, Mad Magazine) in 1992.

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Asterix Gift Edition: Albums 1-5: Asterix the Gaul, Asterix and the Golden Sickle, Asterix and the Goths, Asterix the Gladiator, Asterix and the Banquet


By René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo. translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Sphere)
ISBN: 978-1-40872-831-4 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book includes Discriminatory Content included for comedic effect.

Asterix the Gaul is probably France’s greatest literary export. The feisty, wily little warrior who fought the iniquities and viewed the myriad wonders of Julius Caesar’s Roman Empire with brains, bravery and (whenever necessary) a magical potion imbuing the imbiber with incredible strength, speed and vitality, is the go-to reference all we non-Gallic gallants resort to when we think of France.

The diminutive, doughty, daring darling was created at the close of the 1950s by two of our artform’s greatest masters, with his first official appearance being on October 29th in Pilote #1, even though he had actually debuted in a pre-release teaser – or “pilot” – weeks earlier. On this date in fact. Joyeux anniversaire, mon petit brave!

René Goscinny was arguably the most prolific – and remains one of the most read – writers of comic strips the world has ever known. Born in Paris in 1926, he grew up in Argentina where his father taught mathematics. From an early age René showed artistic promise. He studied fine arts and graduated in 1942. Three years later, while working as junior illustrator at an ad agency, his uncle invited him to stay in America, where he worked as a translator. After National Service in France, he returned to the States and settled in Brooklyn, pursuing an artistic career and becoming, in 1948, an assistant in a small studio which included Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Jack Davis & John Severin, as well as European giants-in-waiting Joseph Gillain (Jijé) and Maurice de Bévère (Morris) with whom from 1955-1977 Goscinny produced 46 volumes of Lucky Luke.

Goscinny also met Georges Troisfontaines, head of World Press Agency, the company that provided comics for Le Journal de Spirou. After contributing scripts to Belles Histoires de l’Oncle Paul and Jerry Spring, Goscinny was promoted to head of World Press’ Paris office. Here he met his ultimate creative collaborator Albert Uderzo. In his spare time (!), René also created Sylvie and Alain et Christine with Martial Durand (“Martial”) and Fanfan et Polo, drawn by Dino Attanasio. In 1955, Goscinny, Uderzo, Charlier & Jean Hébrad formed independent syndicate Édifrance/Édipresse, creating magazines for business and general industry like Clairon for the factory union and Pistolin for a chocolate factory. With Uderzo, René spawned Bill Blanchart, Pistolet and Benjamin et Benjamine, whilst illustrating his own scripts for Le Capitaine Bibobu.

Under nom-de-plume Agostini, he wrote Le Petit Nicholas (drawn by Jean-Jacques Sempé), and in 1956 began an association with revolutionary periodical Le Journal de Tintin, writing for various illustrators including Attanasio (Signor Spagetti); Bob De Moor (Monsieur Tric); Maréchal (Prudence Petitpas); Berck (Strapontin); Globule le Martien and Alphonse with Tibet; as well as Modeste et Pompon for André Franquin, and with Uderzo the fabulously funny adventures of inimitable Indian brave Oumpah-Pah. Goscinny also wrote for magazines Paris-Flirt and Vaillant. In 1959, Édifrance/Édipresse launched Pilote and René went into overdrive. The first issue featured re-launched versions of Le Petit Nicolas, Jehan Pistolet/Jehan Soupolet, original serials Jacquot le Mousse and Tromblon et Bottaclou (drawn by Godard), plus a little something called Astérix le gaulois: incontrovertibly the greatest achievement of his partnership with Uderzo.

When Georges Dargaud bought Pilote in 1960, Goscinny became Editor-in-Chief, still making time to add new series Les Divagations de Monsieur Sait-Tout (with Martial); La Potachologie Illustré (Cabu); Les Dingodossiers (Gotlib) and La Forêt de Chênebeau (Mic Delinx). He also wrote frequently for television, but never stopped creating strips like Les Aventures du Calife Haroun el Poussah (for Record and illustrated by Swedish artist Jean Tabary). A minor success, it was re-tooled as Iznogoud when it transferred to Pilote. Goscinny died far too young, in November 1977.

Alberto Aleandro Uderzo was born on April 25th 1927, in Fismes on the Marne, a child of Italian immigrants. As a boy reading Mickey Mouse in Le Pétit Parisien, he showed artistic flair from an early age. Alberto became a French citizen at age seven and dreamed of being an aircraft mechanic, but at 13 became an apprentice of the Paris Publishing Society, learning design, typography, calligraphy and photo retouching. When WWII came, he spent time with farming relatives in Brittany, joining his father’s furniture-making business. Brittany beguiled Uderzo: when a location for Asterix’s idyllic village was being decided upon, the region was the only choice…

In France’s post-war rebuilding, Uderzo returned to Paris to become a successful illustrator in the country’s burgeoning comics industry. His first published work – a pastiche of Aesop’s Fables – appeared in Junior and, in 1945, he was introduced to industry giant Edmond- Françoise Calvo (The Beast is Dead). Young Uderzo’s subsequent creations included indomitable eccentric Clopinard, Belloy, l’Invulnérable, Prince Rollin and Arys Buck. He illustrated novels, worked in animation, as a journalist, as illustrator for France Dimanche and devised vertical comic strip ‘Le Crime ne Paie pas’ for France-Soir. In 1950, he drew a few episodes of the franchised European version of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Jr. in Bravo!

Another inveterate traveller, he met Goscinny in 1951. Soon fast friends, they decided to work together at the new Paris office of Belgian Publishing giant World Press. Their first collaboration was in November of that year; a feature piece on savoir vivre (how to live right or “gracious living”) for women’s weekly Bonnes Soirée, after which an avalanche of strips and serials poured forth.

Jehan Pistolet and Luc Junior were devised for La Libre Junior and they produced a comedy Western starring a very Red (but not so American) Indian who evolved into Oumpah-Pah. In 1955, with the birth of Édifrance/Édipresse, Uderzo drew Bill Blanchart for La Libre Junior, replacing Christian Godard on Benjamin et Benjamine before, in 1957 adding Charlier’s Clairette to his bulging portfolio. The following year, he made his Tintin debut, as Oumpah-Pah finally found a home and rapturous audience. Uderzo also drew Poussin et Poussif, La Famille Moutonet and La Famille Cokalane. When Pilote launched in October 1959, Uderzo was its major creative force, limning Charlier’s Tanguy et Laverdure and a comedy historical strip about Romans…

Although Asterix was a massive hit from the start, Uderzo continued with Charlier on Michel Tanguy, (subsequently Les Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure), but soon after that first comedy history was collected in a single volume as Astérix le gaulois in 1961, it was clear the series would demand most of his time – especially as the incredible Goscinny never seemed to require rest or run out of ideas (after the writer’s death, the publication rate of Asterix tales dropped from two per year to one volume every 3-to-5).

By 1967, Asterix occupied all Uderzo’s time and attention. In 1974 the partners formed Idéfix Studios to fully exploit their inimitable creation, and when Goscinny passed away three years later, Uderzo had to be convinced to continue the adventures as writer and artist. Happily, he gave in and produced a further 10 tomes before retiring in 2009. According to UNESCO’s Index Translationum, Uderzo is the 10th most-often translated French-language author in the world and 3rd most-translated French language comics author – right behind his old mate René and the grand master Hergé.

So what’s it all about?

Like all the best entertainments the premise works on two levels: as action-packed comedic romps of sneaky and bullying baddies coming a-cropper for younger readers and as pun-filled, sly and witty satire for older, wiser heads, transformed here by the brilliantly light touch of master translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (who played no small part in making the indomitable little Gaul so very palatable to the English tongue).

Originally seen in Pilote #1-38 (29th October 1959 – 4th July 1960, with the first page appearing a week earlier in a promotional issue #0 distributed from June 1st 1959), the story is set in the year 50 BC (never BCE!) on the outermost tip of Uderzo’s beloved Brittany coast. Here a small village of redoubtable warriors and their families frustrate every effort of the immense but not so irresistible Roman Empire to complete the conquest of Gaul.

Unable to defeat these Horatian hold-outs, the Empire resorts to a policy of containment, leaving the little seaside hamlet hemmed in by heavily fortified permanent garrisons – Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium. The Gauls don’t care: they daily defy the world’s greatest military machine by just going about their everyday affairs, protected by a magic potion provided by the resident druid and the shrewd wits of a rather diminutive dynamo and his simplistic best friend…

In Asterix the Gaul, this immaculate comedy-drama scenario is hilariously demonstrated when Centurion Crismus Bonus – fed up with his soldiers being casually beaten up by the fiercely free pre-Frenchmen – sends reluctant spy Caligula Minus to ferret out the secret of their incredible strength. The affable insurgents take the infiltrator in and, soon dosed up with potion, the perfidious Roman escapes with the answer – if not the formula itself…

Soon after, wise, wily Druid Getafix is captured by the invaders and the village seems doomed, but crafty Asterix is on the case. Breaking into Compendium and resolved to teach the Romans a lesson, he drives them crazy for ages by resisting all efforts at bribery and coercion, until abruptly wizard and warrior seemingly capitulate. They make the Romans a magic potion – but not the one the rapacious oppressors were hoping for…

Although comparatively raw and unpolished, the good-natured, adventurous humour and sheer energy of the yarn barrels along, delivering barrages of puns, oodles of insane situations and loads of low-trauma slapstick action, all marvellously rendered in Uderzo’s seductively stylish bigfoot art-style. From the second saga on, the unique and expanding cast would encroach on events, especially the unique and expanded, show-stealing sidekick Obelix – who had fallen into a vat of potion as a baby – and became a genial, permanently superhuman, eternally hungry foil to our little wise guy…

Asterix and the Golden Sickle originally unfolded in Pilote #42-74, recounting disastrous consequences after Getafix loses his ceremonial precious metal blade just as the grand Annual Conference of Gaulish Druids is beginning. Since time is passing and no ordinary replacement will suffice to cut ingredients for magic potion, Asterix offers to go all the way to Lutetia (you can call it Paris if you want) to find another one.

Since Obelix has a cousin there – Metallurgix the Smith – he volunteers for the trip too and the punning pair are swiftly away, barely stopping to teach assorted bandits the errors of their pilfering ways, but still finding a little time to visit many roadside inns and taverns serving traditional roast boar. There is concurrently a crisis in Lutetia: a mysterious gang is stealing all the Golden Sickles and forcing prices up. The Druid community is deeply distressed and, more worrying still, master sickle-maker Metallurgix has gone missing too. When Asterix and Obelix investigate the dastardly doings in their own bombastic manner they discover a nefarious plot that seems to go all the way to the office of the local Roman Prefect…

The early creative experiment was quickly crystallizing into a supremely winning format of ongoing weekly episodes slowly building into complete readily divisible adventures. The next epic cemented the strip’s status as a popular icon of Gallic excellence.

Asterix and the Goths ran from 1962-1963 and followed a dangling plot-thread of the Druid Conference as Getafix, brand new sickle in hand, sets off for the Forest of the Carnutes to compete. However, on Gaul’s Eastern border savage Goths – fierce barbarians who remain unconquered despite the might of the Empire – have crossed into pacified Roman territory. These hairy louts are intent on capturing the mightiest Druid and turning his magic against the rule of Julius Caesar…

Although non-Druids aren’t barred from the forest, Asterix & Obelix had accompanied Getafix to its edge, and as the Conference competition round ends in victory for him and his power-potion, the Goths strike, abducting the old boy in his moment of triumph. Alerted by fellow Druid Prefix, our heroic duo track the kidnappers, but are mistaken for Visigoths by Roman patrols, allowing the Goths to cross the border into Germania. Although Romans are no threat, they can be a time-wasting hindrance, so Asterix & Obelix disguise themselves as Romans to invade the Barbarian lands…

By now well-used to being held prisoner, Getafix is making himself a real nuisance to his bellicose captors and a genuine threat to the wellbeing of his long-suffering Goth-appointed translator. Thus when Asterix & Obelix are captured dressed as Goths, they concoct a cunning plan to end the ever-present threat of Gothic invasion – a scheme that continues successfully for almost two thousand years…

Asterix the Gladiator ran across Pilote #126 to 168 (1963) with the canny rebel and increasingly show-stealing pal despatched to the heart of the Roman Empire on an ill-conceived mission of mercy. When Prefect Odius Asparagus seeks to give Julius Caesar a unique gift, he decides upon one of the indomitable Gauls giving his occupying forces such a hard time. Thus, he has village Bard Cacofonix abducted and bundled off to Rome. Although in two minds about losing the raucous harpist, pride wins out and the villagers mount a rescue attempt, but after thrashing the Romans again they discover that their lost comrade is already en route for the Eternal City…

Assigned to retrieve the missing musician, Asterix & Obelix hitch a ride on a Phoenician galley operated under a bold new business plan by captain/general manager Ekonomikrisis. On the way to Italy the boys first encounter a band of pirates who would become frequent guest-stars and perennial gadflies. The pirates were a creative in-joke between the close-knit comics community: Barbe-Rouge/Redbeard was a buccaneering strip created by Charlier & Victor Hubinon also appearing in Pilote at the time.

As Asterix & Obelix make friends among the cosmopolitan Roman crowds, Caesar has already received his latest present. Underwhelmed by his new Bard, the Emperor re-gifts Cacofonix to the Circus Maximus, to be thrown to the lions just as his chief of Gladiators Caius Fatuous is “talent-spotting” two incredibly tough strangers who would make ideal arena fighters…

Since it’s the best way to get to Cacofonix, our heroes join the Imperial Gladiatorial school; promptly introducing a little Gallic intransigence to the tightly disciplined proceedings. When the great day arrives, the lions get the shock of their lives and the entertainment-starved citizens of Rome experience a show they will never forget…

As always, the good-natured, comedic situations and sheer finesse of the yarn rattles along, delivering barrages of puns, oodles of insane situations and loads of low-trauma slapstick action, marvellously rendered in Uderzo’s expansive, authentic and continually improving big-foot art-style.

Asterix and the Banquet comes from Pilote #172-213 (also 1963), inspired by the Tour de France cycle race. After being continually humiliated by the intractable Gauls coming and going as they please, Roman Inspector General Overanxius instigates a policy of exclusion, building a colossal wall around the little village, determined to shut them off from their country and the world. Modern world leaders might get a clue from this book, here – if they read books. Even books with pictures…

Incensed, Asterix bets the smug Prefect that Gauls can go as and wherever they please and to prove it invites the Romans to a magnificent feast where they can sample fresh culinary delights from various regions. Breaking out of the stockade and through the barricades, A & O gather produce from as far afield as Rotomagus (Rouen); Lutetia (Paris, where they also picked up a determined little mutt who would eventually become a star cast-member); Camaracum (Cambrai) and Durocortorum (Rheims), whilst easily evading or overcoming the assembled patrols and legions of man-hunting soldiers. However, the heroes don’t reckon on the corrupting power of the huge – and growing – bounty on their heads and some Gauls are apparently more greedy than patriotic…

Even with Asterix held captive and all the might of the Empire ranged against them, Gaulish honour is upheld and Overanxius, after some spectacular fights, chases and close calls, is made to eat his words (and a few choice Gallic morsels) in this delightful, bombastic and exceedingly clever celebration of pride and whimsy.

Astérix is one of the most popular comics in the world, translated into 111 languages, with a host of animated and live-action movies, games and even his own theme park (Parc Astérix, near Paris). Approaching 400 million copies of 41 Asterix books and spin-off volumes have been sold worldwide, making Goscinny & Uderzo France’s bestselling international authors. This is sublime, supremely enjoyable comics storytelling and you’d be as Crazy as the Romans not to increase those statistics by finally getting around to acquiring your own copies of this fabulous, frolicsome French Folly. This collection is a great way to enjoy that legacy of legends but be aware that – weighing over a kilo – you might want to top up on magic potion before picking it up…
© 1961-1965 Goscinny/Uderzo. Revised English translation © 2004 Hachette. All rights reserved.

Today in 1907, Disney animator/Gold Key artist & scripter George Waiss (Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, Junior Woodchucks, Looney Tunes, Porky Pig) was born, followed in 1919 by Argentinean Golden Age artist Arturo Cazeneuve (Seven Soldiers of Victory, Newsboy Legion, Blue Beetle).

Despite ushering in the age of Immortal Asterix this day in 1959, we lost cartoonist/writer/artist and creator of Millie the Model Ruth Atkinson in 1997 and pioneering strip cartoonist Martha B. “Marty” Links (Emmy Lou, Bobby Sox) in 2008.

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Superman: The Golden Age Dailies 1947 to 1949 (volume 3)


By Alvin Schwartz, Wayne Boring, Jack Schiff, Win Mortimer & various (IDW/Library of American Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-68405- (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The American comic book industry – if it still existed at all – would be utterly unrecognisable without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s unprecedented invention was first fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation, and gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. Spawning an army of imitators and variations within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and wish-fulfilment epitomising the early Man of Steel grew to encompass cops-&-robbers crimebusting, socially reforming dramas, sci fi fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East sucked in America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous, dashing derring-do.

From the outset, in comic book terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming the shape of the fledgling funnybook biz, the Man of Tomorrow irresistibly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media. Although we all think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as epitome and acme of comics creation, the truth is that very soon after his springtime debut in Action Comics #1 the Man of Steel was a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse. We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Avengers and their hyperkinetic kind long ago outgrew four-colour origins to become fully mythologized modern media creatures familiar in mass markets, across all platforms and age ranges…

In the last century and even more so in this one, far more people have seen and heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comic books. These globally syndicated newspaper strips alone were enjoyed by countless millions, and by the time his 20th anniversary rolled around, at the very start of what we call the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial star, headlined 17 astounding animated cartoons, become a novel attraction (written by George Lowther) and – by the time of the last stories in this tome – had helmed two feature films. He had then seamlessly segued into the next Big Thing: television. Soon his first (of 8) smash-hit live-action tv seasons would start his next great media conquest, making Superman a perennial sure-fire success for toys, games, food, and puzzle and apparel manufacturers all over the planet.

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the last century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country (and frequently the world) a strip feature could be seen by millions if not billions of readers and was generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic books. It also – at the start! – paid better, and rightly so. Some of the most enduring, entertaining characters and concepts of all time were devised to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of the best became cornerstones of a shared global culture. People across the Earth had a communal context thanks to thrilling to the same comics; and Mutt and Jeff, Buck Rogers, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped humble, tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar. Most still do…

The daily Superman newspaper strip launched on 16th January 1939, swiftly augmented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th of that year. Originally crafted by Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & crucially Wayne Boring), the mammoth task soon required additional talents like strip veteran Jack Burnley and writers including Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz. The McClure Syndicate feature ran continuously until May 1966, appearing, at its peak, in over 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers: a combined average readership of more than 20 million. Eventually, Win Mortimer & Curt Swan joined the unflagging Boring & Stan Kaye, whilst Bill Finger and Siegel also provided stories, telling serial tales largely divorced from comic book continuity throughout years when superheroes were scarcely seen.

This third volume of the Library of American Comics collection continues the prodigious and formidable reprint program begun in the Sterling/Kitchen Sink softcover editions which ceased production in 1999. All of that material – and these books too – are long overdue for re-release and digital editions. Here, however, WWII is well and truly over and the decidedly different demands of peacetime and reconstruction have given way to an era of hectic prosperity, but still see our hero and his regular cast tested and beset by domestically endangering perils and conundrums only a Man of Steel could handle…

We open with another Introduction by Sidney Friefertig, discussing the changes from conflict to reconstruction and detailing why and how poet-turned-thriller writer Alvin Schwartz (1916-2011) became the key writer of the feature as well as sharing contextual, behind-the-scenes moments before our cosy but never-ending battle resumes.

These sequences came six days a week, comprising episodes #47-61, pages #2595 through 3338, and publication dates April 28 1947 to September 3rd 1949. With the material credited to Schwartz (Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Tomahawk, Newsboy Legion, Slam Bradley, House of Mystery, A Date With Judy, Buzzy, Bizarro) and the sole pictorial province of illustrator Wayne Boring, the compilation kicks off with and a bizarre “manhunt” to solve the dilemma of ‘Who is Miss Whisper?

Running in strips #2595-2654 as seen between April 28th to July 5th 1947, the story depicts mounting frenzy in Metropolis after lonely millionaire at sea Jonathan Dexter experiences a crossed radio line and catches a brief snippet of conversation with a distant voice. Instantly falling inescapably in love with a person he cannot and probably will never see, he is despondent until he remembers how rich he is…

Thus when, Cinderella-style, the heartsore plutocrat uses the Daily Planet to publicise his plight and swears to endow the mystery maid with all his worldly goods, the entire female population goes crazy. Everybody loves a doomed romance but some seek to con him, some attempt to bamboozle or even supplant his absent inamorata and some – gangsters led by cunning rogue Wishbone – seek to replace Miss Whisper with a voice impersonating ringer. Clark Kent and Lois Lane are drawn to the story and Superman promises to help after the rich guy promises to pay a million to deserving charities but even after finding her, the Man of Tomorrow can’t make the quiet quarry want to marry the spoiled rich, groom-to-be…

Nevertheless, because it’s a fairy tale writ large, love does find a way…

Crafted for daily doses, these Superman snippets are torturous, convoluted and often seemingly divert in tangents to indulge in seemingly pointless but epically spectacular super-feats (such as razing an entire forest to make a really, Really big billboard). These are to pad out increasingly formulaic plots and emphasise the “Super” in the hero but also counterpoint the ongoing social commentary and essentially domestic tribulations of familiar and warmly appreciated entertainment characters being constantly put through their paces. That’s clearly seen as greed and venality abound in the next arc as Superman reels under the manic idiocies generated by ordinary people in mounting frenzy once news leaks out that the Man of Steel has agreed to safeguard humanity’s greatest desire made manifest.

Running from July 7th to September 27th, the sorry tale of ‘The Youth Serum’ (strips #2665-2732) sees chemist Dr. Ogilvie unwisely entrust his age-defeating miracle mixture to shady promoter Willie Poster who triggers a literal stampede of the vain, vainglorious and outright villainous who will do anything to roll back a few years… including bribery, fraud, theft and kidnapping Daily Planet staff to compel the Man of Steel to hand over the rejuvenation juice…

With the multi-million daily readership reckoned to be at least 50% female, encroaching domesticity was a regular plot standby but Alvin Schwartz proved able to tweak the situation in unusual ways. For ‘The Marriage Gamble’ (#2733- 2768; September 29th to November 8th) he enfolds Lois & Clark in a criminal caper wherein crooked – and ultimately near-murderous – loan sharks seek vengeance on a professional gambler by rigging a bet that one of their on-the-hook client/victims can be made to marry the first women he sees. Thanks to poor timing and fate the intended marriage material is inadvertently delayed by Lois, and helpless desperate sap Joe Deems’ unsuspecting bride-to-be becomes a certain feisty journalist…

There’s no escaping his fate – it’s death or Lois – but the mobsters have utterly underestimated Lane’s instincts and the determination of Joe’s actual fiancée Dotty… as well as Superman’s covert intervention…

Who’s chasing who is the key to next serial saga ‘The Perfect Woman’ (#2769-2828, November 10th1947 – January 17th 1948) as super-rich, supremely smart, ultra-fit and staggeringly beautiful heiress Olivia Hill finally reaches marrying age and decrees that the Man of Tomorrow is the only one worthy of her. Of course, Lois has other ideas and also senses a huge scoop as the terrified Superman struggles to escape a girl prepared to risk her own life and reputation to get her way…

Backed by money and privilege, wilful scheming rich kid Olivia seems unstoppable. All our hero’s efforts to avoid her cunning matrimonial traps come to naught as she employs fair means and foul to land the most eligible bachelor on Earth, but events take truly dark turn when master of media manipulation Hill meets ruthless gangsters who don’t play games by her rules…

Evil and mystery dominate in next exploit ’The Crime Mentalist’ (#2829-2936, January 19th – March 20th) as a shy, lonely, mild mannered bank teller survives a street incident and develops the power to psychically tune in on thieves and killers about to commit heinous acts. The cops are instantly suspicious of poor Edgar Jenkins and Clark is concerned for his safety, as Edgar apparently can’t stop himself uncovering crimes. He even exposes the venality of the learned doctors examining him and eventually Superman is forced to act as permanent bodyguard. Events come to ahead when the nation’s top crime bosses engage ruthless femme fatale Dotty Storm to vamp, distract and eliminate the nervous ninny. It works too, despite Jenkins’ gifts. He knows she’s evil but she’s also so very pretty and attentive and perhaps he can convert her from her wicked ways…

Pure whimsy and trenchant social satire manifest with ‘The Return of the Ogies’ (#2883-2936, March 22nd – May 22nd 1948) as the invisible fairy pranksters again bedevil Clark and Superman. However their escalating campaign to annoy the Metropolis Marvel – such as seeking to tell everyone his secret identity – goes weirdly awry after they lose that invisibility and become extremely popular figures perpetually pestered by the public. It looks like even Superman cannot solve this problem, but then…

After being denied a journalism award because everybody knows that the Man of Steel does all the heavy lifting in her stories, the City’s top reporter swears off male interference and undertakes a canny campaign of crimebusting and scandal-exposing in ‘Lois Lane’s Solo Adventures’. Spanning May 24th to July 3rd, strips #2937-2972 reveal just how brave and competent Lois can be on her own, especially after one piece makes a furious enemy of spoiled debutante Kim West. The brat’s idea of redress involves having two mob bosses vying for her exclusive attentions taking out contracts on the “Lane Dame”, but she’s less sanguine about her own devoted butler also trying to murder the journalist. This time Superman does not come to her assistance as the drama expands into murder and both mobs of rank-&-file thugs rebel, seeking to kill West and Lois to avoid a gang war and return to business…

With Lane back at the top of her game and even notional friends with Kim, focus switches to her rival for ‘The Millionaire Ex-Reporter Clark Kent’ (July 5th – August 14th, strips #2973-3008).

After suddenly and unwelcomely winning a fortune, Kent must act like a normal guy and quit his job just to preserve his secret identity. Moreover, all efforts to lose the wealth by acting like a rich idiot only increase it and make him the target of enterprising heiress Kim who has blown through all her own money and needs a pliable husband with plenty…

She doesn’t see Lois as serious competition but still ends up unsatisfied and unwed, before Clark goes broke, gets back to the Planet and almost meets his doom from ‘Enthor’s Paralyzing Ray’ (August 16th – October 16th; strips #3009-3062). Long before Luthor, Metropolis was terrorised by a criminal scientist who immediately quit when Superman appeared. Now having served his time, doddery figure of fun Enthor renews his malevolent career after discovering a gadget that makes the Man of Tomorrow comatose. With a beguiling romantic subplot and conclusion channelling the movie White Heat the shorter action yarn segued into a straightforward mystery as the aftereffects of Enthor’s weapon triggered ‘Clark’s Memory Lapse’ (October 18th – December 25th; #3063-3122). With bizarre reports coming, Superman is forced to reconstruct a fugue moment when the reporter apparently assaulted, abducted and held hostage an innocent man. Diligent investigation and the odd super stunt soon prove bank official Fred Camper is anything but, and that Clark was just being a hero…

It’s back to more traditional fare when Clark’s old pal Ed invents ‘The Super Elixir’ (#3123-3176; December 27th 1948 – February 26th; 1949) and gets Kent to drink it. Now publicly and officially superpowered, Clark is pursued by wannabees and crooks alike as he seeks ways to keep his friend’s family safe amidst a storm of attention and stunts that somehow incredibly peak with the reporter seemingly wresting Superman for charity and begging for a solution that will allow him to return to his quiet anonymous life…

Running from February 28th to April 23rd ‘Superman, Jailbird’ (strips #3177 – 3224) saw Canadian James Winslow “Win” Mortimer take over the illustration ushering in an era of greater whimsy and accessible comedy underpinnings. The initial outing found Superman breaking speeding laws in rural Amosville and arrested by an overly officious police constable. His thirty day jail sentence turns into a unique form of community service when gamblers try to make the hamlet the next Las Vegas, after which ‘Lois ’s Secret Identity’ (April 25th – June 25th, #3225-3278) sees her lose her Planet position and become a radio personality. Unable to abandon print, she dons a disguise and replaces herself as new ace reporter Lily Loring, competing with Kent and both her selves even as she’s targeted by murderous mobster Johnny Braxton seeking to silence one and all of her…

After accidentally injuring a bystander, Clark Kent pinch-hits for the wounded man, taking on his (then) rather-rare job in ‘Superman, Male Escort’ (June 27th – August 13th; #3279-3320. With my own super power working full out to resist that straight line (sooo mmmany jokes!) but blandly state that this sequence finds the Man of Steel soon helping lonely ladies, provoking yet another Metropolis mob of matrons and maidens demanding their moment with the miracle man, unaware that an actual mobster’s moll has plans to secure his exclusive services. Thankfully, Lois is there to make sure that doesn’t happen…

The collection and – more or less – the Golden Age era ends here with short sequence ‘Reenacting Superman’s Greatest Feats’ from August 15th to September 3rd 1949 (#3321-3238) as the Action Ace reconstructs his last month of rescues and stunts in the hopes of jogging the addled memories of literal absent-minded Professor Flagg and enabling him to recover sections of a misremembered formula. Of course, word associations and recall don’t always work according to plan…

These yarns offer timeless wonders and mesmerising excitement for lovers of action and fantasy. The raw-boned early Superman is beyond compare and if you can handle the warts of the era or just crave simpler stories from less angst-wracked times, the adventures gathered here are ideal comics reading, and this a book you simply must see.

© 2019 DC Comics. All rights reserved. Superman and all related names, characters and elements are ™ DC Comics.

Today in 1872, English cartoonist and genteelly warped brainbox W. Heath Robinson was born, with Allen Bert Christman (The Sandman, Scorchy Smith) arriving in 1915 and Dutch comics master Cees van de Weert (Ben Busy, Marco Polo) turning up in 1917.

Underground commix legend Gilbert Shelton was born in 1940, and scripter, journalist , critic & historian David Anthony Kraft came along in 1952. Artist/playwright Dean Haspiel (Billy Dogma, The Quitter)was born in 1967 and graphic auteur Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve, Sleepwalk and Other Stories, Killing and Dying).

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DC Finest: Superman – Time and Time Again


By Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, Roger Stern, James D. Hudnall, Dave Hoover, Curt Swan, Bob McLeod, Kerry Gammill, Tom Grummett, Ed Hannigan, John Byrne, Brett Breeding, Dennis Janke, Art Thibert, Scott Hanna, José Marzan, Willie Blyberg & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-79950-810-6 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

In 1986, after almost 50 years, Superman was re-imagined after Crisis on Infinite Earths. Although controversial at the start, John Byrne’s reboot of the world’s first superhero was rapidly acknowledged as a solid hit and the collaborative teams who complemented and followed him maintained the high quality, ensuring continued success. Over following years a vast, interlocking saga unfolded across a spread of titles which has only sporadically – and far too infrequently – been collected into graphic compilations.

As part of the refit, many of his more miraculous abilities were discarded. Just like his earliest days, Superman was a far from omnipotent hero, more in touch with humanity because he wasn’t so very far above it. One thing that was abandoned was his casual ability to travel through time, and that was spectacularly addressed in a sequence of tales inside the greater unfolding story contained in this collection re-presenting the “Never-Ending Battle”. This time-twisting selection collectively transpires via cover-dates November 1990 through June 1991, gathering key intra-title storylines plus a couple of choice stand-alone solo stories from Action Comics #659-666, Adventures of Superman #472-479 and Superman #49-56, and a crossover component from Starman (volume 1 #28).

No sooner had the Byrne restart stripped away most of the accreted mythology and iconography that had grown around the Strange Visitor from Another World over five glorious decades, than successive teams employed a great deal of time and ingenuity putting much of it back, albeit in terms more accessible and agreeable to a cynical, well-informed audience far more sophisticated than their grandparents ever were.

One such was a notional tip of the hat to so many memorably madcap tales revolving around both an irritating 5th Dimensional Imp and the bizarrely mutagenic mineral from Krypton which peppered and perplexed the Silver Age Superman’s life. However, the story arc here also advanced two overarching plot threads that grew from the soap opera styled stories: the imminent demise of Lex Luthor due to self-inflicted Green K poisoning and a blossoming romance between Clark Kent and dynamic fellow journalist and friendly rival Lois Lane.

The compartmented saga opened in Superman volume 2, #49 with ‘Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite: Part One’ by Jerry Ordway & Dennis Janke, wherein Luthor, following the death of his only “ blood heir” (Perry White Jr.), ponders mortality in a cemetery until a talking red rock bops him on the back of his big, bald head. The incensed billionaire quickly stifles his outrage as the scarlet stone resolves into cruelly devious trickster-sprite Mr. Mxyzptlk. Despite being currently preoccupied with another realm, the malign mischief-maker sees a chance to manufacture more mayhem in Metropolis with the “Red Kryptonite” he has magicked up, and promises Lex it will make Man of Steel and mortal multi-billionaire “physical equals”…

Lex activates the rock expecting to gain the powers of a god – and just possibly a new lease on his rapidly expiring life – and is furious to realise he is still just human. However, across town Superman, having defeated bionic bandit Barrage, is transporting the supervillain to metahuman penitentiary Stryker’s Island when his powers vanish and he plunges into vilely polluted Hobs Bay.

Luthor cries foul and is again visited by Mxyzptlk who pettishly teleports the drowning Action Ace to Lex’s penthouse office where the evil industrialist can see what the spell has actually wrought. After a brutal and strictly human-scaled tussle, a badly beaten, powerless Superman is ejected from Luthor’s HQ and staggers back to Kent’s home where he finds Lois waiting. The normally resolute reporter is badly shaken: Lois’ mother is dying from an apparently fatal illness and Luthor is somehow responsible…

In Adventures of Superman #472, Dan Jurgens & Art Thibert’s ‘Clark Kent… Man of Steel!’ picks up the pace with our simply human hero about to be slaughtered by lethal lummox Mammoth. Kal-El is undergoing tests into the cause of his malady conducted by scientific advisor/confidante Emil Hamilton, but when news of the giant thief’s robbery spree reaches him Superman dashes off to assist, equipped only with a hastily configured force field belt. It’s not nearly enough. In the end wits, raw nerve and a simple bluff save the day, but with no solution in sight the Metropolis Marvel must admit he needs superhuman assistance if he is to survive, but at least on the domestic front his new fragility brings him closer to Lois…

With Roger Stern, Dave Hoover & Scott Hanna in creative mode, the scene switches to Arizona where a recent acquaintance gets a phone call before ‘Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite: Part Two/A: The End of a Legend?’ (Starman vol. 1 #28) sees Stellar Sentinel Will Payton flying to Metropolis for a top secret rendezvous. A sun in human form, Payton had re-energised the Kryptonian’s cells with solar power once before when Superman’s powers were drained, but this time the sun-bath has no effect and almost fries desperate Kal-El during the process. With crime spiking, Starman sticks around to keep the peace, using his shapeshifting powers to perfectly mimic the Man of Steel. He fools Luthor who, confronted by the somehow resurgent “Superman”, furiously throws the useless Red K at him…

With the mineral in Hamilton’s hands, stringent testing proves it is only red rock with no radioactive properties and Superman must think outside the box if he is to protect his city.

… And on Stryker’s Island, another old enemy is laying lethal plans to finally end the Man of Tomorrow…

Tension mounts in ‘Breakout!’ (Action Comics #659, Stern, Bob McLeod & Brett Breeding) as Superman resorts to high-tech battle armour when murderous science-maniac Thaddeus Killgrave frees the inmates and seizes control of Stryker’s, luring Starman-as-Superman into a deadly trap the neophyte hero cannot escape from. Meanwhile, in the highest corridors of financial power, Mxyzptlk personally briefs bewildered Luthor on what’s going on…

Brave but not stupid, Superman calls in back-up for his raid on the penitentiary. Whilst cloned champion Golden Guardian and street vigilante Crimebuster handle rank-&-file felons, the armoured Action Ace heads straight for Killgrave and a blistering confrontation which is only prelude to climactic concluding chapter ‘The Human Factor’.

Superman vol. 2, #50 was a giant special by Ordway & Janke with celebratory anniversary contributions from Byrne, Curt Swan, Kerry Gammill, Breeding & Jurgens, and opens with Clark unceremoniously ejected from Lexcorp Tower, only to stumble upon the billionaire’s personal physician Dr. Gretchen Kelly acting oddly…

Heading home, the powerless hero is saved from a mutant rat by Guardian and, after seeing Crimebuster thrashing street thugs, comes to a painful conclusion. Maybe Superman isn’t necessary any more. Maybe now he can have his own life and even ask Lois to marry him…

First though, there’s a unfinished business and a simple phone call to Luthor gets that ball rolling. Offering to trade the Red K for a story, Clark inadvertently causes Lex to break the terms of his pact with Mxyzptlk, thereby negating the whole power-sapping deal.

Ticked off, petulant and impatient to get back to mischief-making in another universe, the imp makes a personal appearance in monstrous form, but loads the battle in the fully restored Action Ace’s favour just to get out of his self-imposed arcane contract quickly… but not without an astounding amount of collateral damage to Metropolis…

With the crisis over, however, Superman has made a life changing decision. Following the red-tinged resumption of his super status, the Action Ace is joined by a brace of green guest stars in ‘Rings of Fire’ (Jurgens & Thibert in AoS #473). Even as Clark & Lois announce their engagement, Superman is fretting. Unable to tell his intended of his secret life, he is quickly distracted and drawn away when unconventional Green Lantern Guy Gardner hits town looking for missing mentor Hal Jordan. Earth’s “real GL” has been captured by a monolithic alien who has stolen his emerald energies to power a long-delayed return to the distant stars. Of course, implementing that departure will eradicate half of Wyoming…

Thwarting the scheme, freeing a mesmerised Army General and defeating the alien’s thralls Psi-phon & Dreadnaught, Superman and the GLs then craft a far less destructive solution for all parties involved…

In Action Comics #660, Stern, McLeod & Breeding detail the ‘Certain Death’ that ushers in the end of an era. For years Luthor has masqueraded as a billionaire philanthropist whilst dominating Metropolis, the world and the criminal Underworld. Few knew the unsavoury truth and the cunning villain kept Superman literally at arms-length by wearing a ring made from Green Kryptonite.

Previous and subsequent stories revealed Green K radiation had gradually poisoned Luthor, initially causing the loss of his hand and eventually fatally irradiating his entire body. Now as his power and vitality wane, Luthor – knowing that his pitiful condition must inevitably become public knowledge – puts a final desperate plan into operation. During a high profile publicity stunt attempting to set a new air-speed record, the manipulative mogul apparently commits suicide in a spectacular manner: an act of defiance which only marks the beginning of a stupendous 7-year long extended plotline to be seen and resolved elsewhere…

Here a measured preamble to the titular time-bending saga begins innocuously with Ordway & Dennis Janke’s introduction of ‘Mister Z!’ in Superman #51. When an apparent immortal arrives in town and dramatically adds the hero’s mind to his library of historical souls the magical marauder severely underestimates the champion’s strength of will. After dying in combat, he swears to return… Jurgens & Art Thibert then use Adventures of Superman #474 to reveal a life-changing moment in the life of highschooler Clark; an instant of irresponsibility once ended the life of a friend and saddled the hero-in-waiting with decades of crushing guilt. Now everything changes when he comes ‘Face to Face With Yesterday’…

Laughs and thrills in equal measure follow the arrival of Plastic Man & Woozy Winks in Action #661, as Stern, McLeod & Breeding reveal how those valiant but nauseating nitwits enlist Jimmy Olsen, punch-drunk recent lottery millionaire Bibbo Bibbowski and even Superman to save the city from techno mobsters Intergang by ‘Stretching a Point!’

In Superman #52, Ordway, Kerry Gammill & Janke address mounting environmental concerns by reintroducing violent eco-maverick Toby Manning who assures us ‘The Name, Pardners, is Terra-Man…’ before ruthlessly and murderously exposing the true cause of mass toxic contamination and targeting the businesses attempting to whitewash it all…

Courtesy of Jurgens & Thibert, a big guest star bust up fills AoS #475 with ‘Sleaze Factor’ after Intergang’s “Ugly” Bruno Mannheim hires Dr Killgrave and toymaker Winslow Schott to restore and improve debauched theme park Happyland. Only after Superman investigates the increasing number of disappearing visitors does the truth of Apokolyptian terror haunting the park emerge…

Over many years, Lois and Clark had grown beyond rivalry and distanced professionalism into true workplace romance, but always the hero kept his other identity from her. That all changed in Action Comics #662 (cover-dated February 1991 and by Stern & McLeod) as after the Man of Tomorrow narrowly defeated mystic predator Silver Banshee he decided that there would no more ‘Secrets in the Night’ ‘between him and his beloved…

With Lois still reeling from shock and sustained extended deception, Ordway & Janke used Superman #53 to question ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way’ as the Caped Kryptonian agrees to escort war criminal General Marlo of Qurac to his judicial come-uppance and consequently ferret out the US military traitors who supported him but now need him silenced…

Finally after months of preparation the main event opened with the modern hero lost to Earth just as Lois needed him most. Formerly he had been able to navigate the chronal corridors with ease, but this new Man of Tomorrow was trapped in a cataclysmic and volatile temporal warp, bounced around from era to era with his abilities constantly diminishing and utterly unable to regain his home and loved ones. The eponymous, epoch-rending epic launched in Adventures of Superman #476 as Jurgens & Breeding’s ‘The Linear Man’ saw a rogue (self-appointed) protector of the Time Stream seek to forcibly return temporal refugee-turned superhero Booster Gold to the 25th century he originated from. When Superman intervenes, the battle sparks a tremendous explosion, causing Kal-El to careen through time whenever he’s caught in another explosion. Initially that’s forward into a disaster-triggered team-up with the teenaged Legion of Super-Heroes…

Each “landing” leaves him in a significant period of Earth’s history, and when a fuel storage centre detonates Superman is blasted backwards arriving in Stern & McLeod’s ‘Lost in the ‘40s Tonight’ (Action #663). Temporarily blinded but stuck in a past he read deeply about, Superman seeks out WWII icons the Justice Society of America, precipitating a meeting with that era’s first mystery men before almighty wraith The Spectre transports him not home but to ‘The Warsaw Ghetto!’ Here he becomes a temporary saviour in a soon to be mythic battle saga by Ordway & Janke in Superman #54. Perversely ending that issue is an unconnected Newsboy Legion short by Karl Kesel wherein the cloned kids, Guardian and Dubbilex seek to save top secret Project Cadmus from the ‘Attack of the D.N.Alien’ and imminent nuclear doom…

Elsewhere in time, only gigantic explosions can launch Superman back into the time stream, and one such occurs in ‘Death Rekindled’ (AoS #477, Jurgens & Breeding) when a trip to the future introduces him to another, later iteration of the Legion needing help to destroy a monstrous Sun Eater. The cataclysmic detonation of that deadly duel deposits him ‘Many Long Years Ago’ (Action #664, Stern & McLeod) to end up a Jurassic castaway until a clash with similarly-marooned time thief Chronos propels him via smallish jumps into the Pleistocene and a chronologically adrift encounter with primordial alien race the H’v’ler’ni (AKA the Host). That tussle tosses him forward to ‘Camelot’ as the Dark Ages begin, battling valiantly but in vain beside eventual All-Star Squadron paladin and Seventh Soldier of Victory Sir Justin The Shining Knight (all-Ordway in Superman #55). That issue contains more Newsboy Legion antics from Kesel as ‘Blaze of Glory!’ sees the lads and “Kirby Kritter” Angry Charlie frustrate the plans of rogue geneticist Dabney Donovan and defer atomic armageddon…

In AoS #478, Jurgens & Breeding deposit Superman with another, later Legion of Super-Heroes to confront deranged, savagely murderous Daxamite Dev-Em (another escapee from the 20th century) in brutal blockbusting finale ‘Moon Rocked’ which resets the time-shenanigans and leads to Clark’s ultimate resolution and reunion with Lois in Action #665’s ‘Wake the Dead!’ by Stern, Tom Grummett & José Marzan, wherein that crucial catching up and calming down is ruined by voodoo villain Baron Sunday unleashing dead felons on the city…

A third and final Kesel Newsboy short ends Superman #56 with a poignant peek at ‘Charlie & Company’ at home, before which James Hudnall, Ed Hannigan & Willie Blyberg had begun one last continued saga. In ‘Red Glass Part One: Breaking Up’ the Action Ace encountered an eerie crystal on the Moon before returning to an Earth endangered by his increasing berserker rages. The catalogue of atrocities mounted in Adventures of Superman #479’s ‘Red Glass Part Two: Falling Apart’ before answers and restoration of the status quo concluded the crises (for now) in Action #666’s visually stunning but conceptually weak wrap-up ‘Red Glass Part Three: Picking Up the Pieces’…

With covers by Ordway, Jurgens, Thibert, Hoover, Gammill, Breeding, Janke, Grummett, Andy Kubert & Glenn Whitmore, this strictly print-only package comprises a hugely enjoyable saga that is highly readable and cheerfully accessible for both returning and first time fans. Thrilling, funny, action-packed and exquisitely entertaining: what more could dedicated Fights ‘n’ Tights followers want?
© 1990, 1991, 2026 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Born today in 1911, Golden Age letterer and colourist Pat Gordon made her husband Dick look even better on the page as Lora Sprang. She shared her natal day with For Better of For Worse cartoonist Lynn Johnston who arrived in 1947.

UK mega weekly Buster began its 40-year run today in 1960, closing in 2000 at which moment today Bringing Up Father ended the run begun by George McManus in 1913.

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Little Paintings


By James Kochalka (Top Shelf Productions)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-017-9 (HB/Digital edition)

James Kochalka is a prolific and always entertaining giant of comics creation, whose vast, sublimely surreal, enticing works range from kid-friendly romps such as the Glorkian Warrior and Johnny Boo series, to excoriatingly honest self-examining daily journal strip American Elf and the indescribably fun SuperF**kers – and that’s my censorious edit there, not his…

The author, artist, animator. educator and rock musician is utterly wedded to the energies of creativity and this tantalizing tome gathers hundreds of mini-paintings he knocked up to sell at various conventions between 2001 and 2007. All his old familiar faces are there: cats, ghosts, robots, monsters, aliens, cats, bathrooms, birds, chicks and dudes, mushrooms, animals, landscapes and weather, cats, machines and random images, all apparently arranged in no particularly order and inviting your response. Did I mention, there are some cats?

There is a narrative here, but it’s completely generated by the viewer who can’t help but create a story around the hundreds of thumbnail paintings of gloriously hued things and folks and stuff, and a lot to read in if you’re willing to take some time. This is one of my absolute favourite go-to books whenever I need a little pictorial pick-me-up and you should share the joy.

Go on, you know you want to…
© James Kochalka 2011. All rights reserved.

Today in 1939 artist and storyteller Herb Trimpe was born (Hulk, Iron Man, Godzilla, GI Joe) as was Tom Mandrake (The Spectre, Grimjack, Martian Manhunter) in 1956. In 1967 VIP creator and future Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont James Kolchaka (American Elf, Sketchbook Diaries) joined the party.

On this date in 1872, Punch artist & illustrator Alfred Henry Forrester died, as did prolific and multi-pseudonymous French comics creator Robert Dansler/“Bob Dan” (Bill Tornade, Jack Sport, La Jonque en Flammes) in 1972, and Canadian strip cartoonist Jim Unger (Herman) in 2012.

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Casey Ruggles – A Saga of the West: King of the Horsemen/the Prophet Julius/Juan Soto (Daily Strips 1951)


By Warren Tufts & various (Western Winds Productions)
No ISBN

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The newspaper strip Casey Ruggles – A Saga of the West used that genre’s motifs and scenarios to tell a broad range of stories stretching from shoot-’em-up dramas to comedy yarns and even the occasional horror story. The titular hero was a dynamic ex-cavalry sergeant and sometime US Marshal as he made his way to California. He’d been doing that since 1849, hoping to find his fortune, but was frequently distracted and diverted by meeting historical personages like Millard Fillmore, William Fargo, Jean Lafitte and Kit Carson in gripping two-fisted action-adventures. This was the narrative engine of both features until 1950 whereupon daily and Sunday strips divided into separate tales.

Warren Tufts was a phenomenally talented illustrator and storyteller born too late. He is best remembered now – if at all and probably not in English-speaking countries – for creating two of the most beautiful western comics strips of all time: Ruggles and elegiac, iconic Lance.

Sadly, Tufts began his career at a time when the glory days of syndicated newspaper strips were gradually giving way to the television age of ostensibly free family home entertainment. Had he been working scant years earlier in adventure’s Golden Age he would undoubtedly be a household name – at least in comics fans’ homes.

Born on Christmas Day, 1925. Tufts was a superbly meticulous draughtsman with an uncanny grasp of character and a great ear for dialogue. His art was effective and grandiose in the representational manner, favourably compared to both Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and Alex Raymond. On May 22nd 1949 he began Ruggles as a full-colour Sunday page, and added to it with a black and white daily strip which began on September 19th of that year.

Tufts worked for United Features Syndicate, owners of such popular strips as Fritzi Ritz and L’il Abner, and his lavish, expansive tales were crisply told and highly engaging, but he was a compulsive perfectionist and regularly worked 80-hour weeks at the drawing board… and consequently often missed deadlines. This led him to use many assistants like Al Plastino, Rueben Moreira and Edmund Good. Established veterans Nick Cardy and Alex Toth also spent time working as “ghosts” on the series, with Cardy’s stint reproduced in this volume.

Due to a falling-out with his syndicate, Tufts left this wonderful western creation in 1954 and Al Carreño continued Ruggles until its demise in October 1955. The departure came when TV producers wanted to turn the strip into a weekly television show. Apparently UF baulked, suggesting the show would harm the popularity of the strip!?

Tufts formed his own syndicate for his next and greatest project, Lance (probably the last great full page Sunday strip and another series crying out for a high-quality collection) before moving peripherally into comic-books, working extensively for West Coast outfit Dell/Gold Key, drawing various westerns and TV show tie-ins like Wagon Train, Korak son of Tarzan, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan and a long run on the Pink Panther comic book. Eventually, he quit drawing completely, working as an actor, voice-actor and eventually in animation on such shows as Challenge of the Super Friends.

Tufts had a lifelong passion for flying, even building his own planes. In 1982 whilst piloting one he crashed and was killed.

Pacific Comics Club collected many “lost strip classics” at the start of the 1980s, including six volumes (to my knowledge) of Casey Ruggles adventures. This was the fourth stupendous monochrome volume (approximately 15 inches x 10 inches) and contains stories that highlight Tufts’ love of Western history, facility for comedy and innovative willingness to take chances in three tales from the strip’s third year.

The first is a traditional cowboy story featuring the clandestine return of an old foe. ‘King of the Horsemen’ originally ran 14th May to 23rd June 1951, and saw a mysterious “Sonoran” (in actuality Mexican bandit Joaquin Murietta) challenge all the miners in a gold town to test their riding skills against his own.

Bored and cash rich but not stupid, the gambling fools call in Marshal Ruggles to do the rough riding…

This is an engrossing, informative little gem, softly sardonic and luxuriating in the minutiae of the historical west and cowboy mythology. Art lovers will also have the joy of comparing two master realists as Tufts, ever-strapped to meet his punishing deadlines, surrendered the greater part of the tale (all the racing, chasing and action-stunting) to Cardy, keeping only the first and last weeks’ episodes for himself. This was probably to give himself a little leeway on the next adventure ‘The Prophet Julius’; a dark, clever yarn about a greedy flim-flam man and the eerie power he exerted on an isolated outpost.

Running from June 25th to August 11th 1951, the action begins with a shooting star crashing to earth, closely followed by a mesmerising soothsayer terrifying, coercing and ultimately hypnotising miners into handing over their wealth. With even Ruggles helpless, the township pull together to craft a solution no Hollywood hack has ever considered…

The six-gun thrills conclude here with another unsung innovation wherein Tufts adapted the documentary/Film Noir style prevalent in the B-Movie gangster films of the time to create a prototype graphic-novel police procedural that would do Rick Geary proud.

The predominantly Mexican Vasquez Gang terrorized the simple folk of rural California for nearly 15 years, with outlaws captured or killed only to be replaced by ever more bloodthirsty villains. ‘Juan Soto’ was one such and the pursuit of him was perfectly incorporated into a clever tale of organised man-hunting by Tufts. Soto was actually killed in a gunfight with Alameda County Sheriff Harry Morse. Here though the bandit’s increasingly obnoxious depredations draw Ruggles into a posse with five other lawmen who undertake a legendary trek through rugged country, ending in a fearsomely authentic, grimly chilling siege and showdown.

Human intrigue and fallibility, bombastic action and a taste for the bizarre reminiscent of the best John Ford or Raoul Walsh movies make Casey Ruggles the ideal western strip for the discerning modern audience. Westerns are a uniquely perfect vehicle for drama and comedy, and Casey Ruggles is one of the very best produced in America: easily a match for the usually superior European material like Tex Willer or Lieutenant Blueberry.

Surely the beautiful clean-cut lines, chiaroscuric flourishes and sheer artistic imagination and veracity of Warren Tufts can never be truly out of vogue? These great tales are desperately deserving of a wider following, and I’m still praying some canny publisher knows a good thing when he sees it…
© 1950, 1951 United Features Syndicate, Inc. Collection © Western Winds Productions. All Rights Reserved.

Yesterday in 1919 comic book scribe Robert Bernstein (Crime Does Not Pay, Superman, Superboy, Aquaman, Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, Psychoanalysis, Thor, Iron Man) was born, as was British illustrator and horrorist John Bolton (Marada, X-Men, Shame) in 1951; Brazilian Mike Deodato Jr. (Spider-Man, Dark Avengers, Wonder Woman) in 1963 and Great Briton Mark Buckingham (Fables, Spider-Man, Marvelman) in 1966.

On that date in 1994 we lost pioneering fan/journalist/historian and publisher Don Thompson, and master illustrator John Prentice (Young Romance, Fireman Farrell, Rip Kirby) in 1999.

Today in 1912, strip cartoonist Alfred Andriola (Kerry Drake) was born, followed in 1919 by both Harvey Comics artist Sid Couchey (Ritchie Rich, Little Lotta, Little Dot) and Saturday Evening Post cartoonist Irwin Caplan (Famous Last Words). In 1925 Carmine Infantino was born. Latterly, in 1957 a different world greeted German creator Walter Moers (Das kleine Arschloch) and in 1963 Michael Chabon (Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)

In 1959 on this date Frank Giacoia’s Johnny Reb and Billy Yank strip ended, whilst in 1992 Japanese collective CLAMP launched groundbreaking manga X. In 1962 US comics illustrator Victor Forsythe (Joe Jinx) died as did Spirou’s veteran art mainstay Pierre Seron (Les Petits hommes, Les Centaures, Les Petites Femmes) in 2017.

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Buz Sawyer volume 2: Sultry’s Tiger


By Roy Crane  & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-499-3 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips, and these pictorial features were, until relatively recently, utterly ubiquitous. Immensely information-efficient, hugely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as irresistible weapons to guarantee sales and increase circulation, the strips seemed to find their only opposition in the short-sighted local paper editors who often resented the low brow art form, which cut into advertising and frequently drew complaint letters from cranks…

It’s virtually impossible for us today to understand the overwhelming allure and power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comics sections of daily – and especially Sunday – newspapers. “The Funnies” were the most universally enjoyed recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality of graphic sagas and humorous episodes over the years.

From the very start comedy was paramount; hence our terms Funnies and Comics, and from these gag-&-stunt beginnings, a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and the vaudeville shows, came a thoroughly entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting on April 21st 1924, Washington Tubbs II was a comedic, gag-a-day strip which evolved into a globe-girdling adventure serial. Crane produced pages of stunning, addictive and influential high-quality yarn-spinning for years, until his eventual introduction of moody swashbuckler Captain Easy ushered in the age of adventure strips with the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929. This in turn led to a Sunday colour page for the good captain that was possibly the most compelling and visually imaginative of the entire era (see Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips vol 1 ).

Practically improving minute by minute, the Sunday strip benefited from Crane’s relentless quest for perfection his imaginative, fabulous compositional masterpieces achieving a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The influence of those pages can be seen in the works of near-contemporaries such as Hergé, giants-in-waiting like Charles Schulz and comic book masters like Alex Toth and John Severin ever since.

The material was obviously as much fun to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA/United Features Syndicate’s abrupt and arbitrary demand that all its strips must henceforward be produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate their being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated.

They just didn’t lift the artist any more, so Crane stopped making them.

At the height of his powers Crane just walked away from the astounding Captain Easy Sunday page to concentrate on the daily feature, and when his contract expired in 1943 he left United Features, lured away by that grandee of strip poachers William Randolph Hearst. The result was a contemporary aviation strip set in still-unfolding World War II: Buz Sawyer.

Where Wash Tubbs was a brave but largely comedic Lothario and his pal Easy a surly, tight-lipped he-man, John Singer “Buz” Sawyer was a joyous and sharp amalgam of the two: a good-looking, popular country-boy who went to war because his country needed him..

Buz was a fun-loving, skirt-chasing, musically-inclined naval aviator daily risking his life with his devoted gunner Rosco Sweeney: a bluff, brave and simply ordinary Joe – and one of the most effective comedy foils ever created. The wartime strip was – and remains – a marvel of authenticity: depicting not just the action and drama of the locale and situation but, more importantly, capturing the quiet, dull hours of training, routine and desperate larks between the serious business of killing and staying alive. However – and crucially – when the war ended the action-loving duo – plus fellow pilot and girl-chasing rival Chili Harrison – all went looking for work that satisfied their penchant for adventure and romance wherever they could find it…

Crane was a master of popular entertainment, blending action and adventure with smart drama and compellingly sophisticated soap opera, all leavened with raucous comedy in a seamless procession of unmissable daily episodes. He and his team of creative assistants – which over the decades comprised co-writer Ed “Doc” Granberry and artists Hank Schlensker, Clark Haas, Al Wenzel, Joel King, Ralph Lane, Dan Heilman, Hi Mankin & Bill Wright – soldiered on under relentless deadline pressure, producing an authentic and exotic funny romantic thriller rendered in the signature monochrome textures of line-art and craftint (a mechanical monochrome patterning effect used to add greys and halftones to the superb drawing for miraculous depths and moods) as well as the prerequisite full-colour Sunday page.

This primarily black-&-white tome contains an impressive but far too meagre selection of those colour strips – although Crane quickly came to regard them only as a necessary evil which plagued him for most of his career…

The eternal dichotomy and narrative/continuity problems of producing Sunday Pages (many client papers would only buy either Dailies or Sunday strips, but not both) meant that most creators had to produce different story-lines for each feature – Milt Caniff’s Steve Canyon being one of the few notable exceptions. Whereas Dailies needed about three weeks lead-in time, hand-separated colour plates for the sabbath sections meant finished artwork and colour guides had be at the engravers and printers a minimum of six weeks before publication. Crane handled the problem with typical aplomb; using Sundays to tell completely unrelated stories.

For Wash Tubbs he created the aforementioned prequel series starring Captain Easy in sagas set before the mismatched pair had met, whilst in Buz Sawyer he turned the slot over to Roscoe Sweeney for lavish gag-a-day exploits, packed with slapstick laughs and situation comedy. During the war years it was set among the common “swabbies” aboard ship: a far more family-oriented feature and probably better suiting the weekend crowd of parents and children than the often chilling or disturbing realistically saucy/sexy sagas that unfolded Mondays to Saturdays. A year before Steve Canyon began, Crane tried telling a seven-days-a-week yarn in Buz Sawyer (with resounding success, to my mind, and you can judge for yourself here) but found the process a logistical nightmare. At the conclusion he returned to weekday continuity whilst Sundays were restored to Roscoe with only occasional guest-shots by the named star.

This second lush, sturdily archival hardback re-presents the tense and turbulent period from October 6th 1945 to July 23rd 1947 wherein de-mobilised adrenaline addict Buz tries to adjust to peacetime life whilst looking for a job and career – just like millions of his fellow former servicemen…

Before getting out, though, he had returned home on leave and ended up accidentally engaged. Buz was the son of the town’s doctor: plain, simple and good-hearted. In that ostensibly egalitarian environment the school sporting star became the sweetheart of ice-cool and stand-offish Tot Winter, the richest girl in town. Now when her upstart nouveau riche parents heard of the decorated hero’s return they hijacked the homecoming and turned it into a publicity carnival. Moreover, the ghastly, snobbish Mrs. Winter conspired with her daughter to trap the lad into a quick and newsworthy marriage.

Class, prejudice, financial greed and social climbing were enemies Buz and Sweeney were ill-equipped to fight, but luckily, annoying tomboy-brat/girl-next-door Christy Jameson had blossomed into a sensible, down-to-earth, practical and clever young woman. She’d scrubbed up real pretty too and showed Buz that his future was rife with possibility. Mercifully soon, the leave ended and he & Sweeney returned to the war. The Sawyer/Winter engagement fizzled and died. When their discharge papers finally arrived (in the episode for September 9th 1945), the period of desperate struggle was over. However, that only meant that the era of globe-girdling adventure was about to begin…

Before the comics wonderment resumes, Jeet Heer and Rick Norwood discuss ‘The Perfectionist and his Team’. Concentrating initially on ‘After the War’, the fascinating explorations also delve deep into detail of the auteur’s troubled and tempestuous relationship with ‘Crane’s Team’ before offering ‘A Word on Comic Strip Formats’ and the censorious iniquities local newspaper editors regularly inflicted upon Crane’s work.

With all the insightful stuff over, cartoon adventure begins anew as civilian Mr. Sawyer returns home to a life of indolence before his own restless nature starts him fretting again. The old town isn’t the same. Tot has inherited her father’s millions and moved to New York and even Christy is gone; she’s away attending his old alma mater…

After a brief interlude wherein he visits the cheery Co-Ed and debates the merits of returning to college on the G.I. Bill, Buz instead opts for fulltime employment and heads to the Big Apple where Chili Harrison has a new job offer and an old flame waiting. As he turns East, Buz chooses to ignore his instincts and the huge mysterious guy who seems to turn up everywhere he goes…

In NYC, aloof, alluring Tot Winter is the cream of polite “arty” society, but her wealth and clingy new fiancé – opera singer Count Franco Confetti – are all but forgotten when “the one who got away” appears again and she finds her interest in her High School beau rekindled. Buz has moved in with Chili, blithely unaware that the strangely ubiquitous giant has inveigled himself into the apartment next door and is now actively spying on him…

Sawyer wants a job flying, but is frankly only one of hundreds of war-hero pilots looking for a position at International Airways. Moreover, his reputation as a hot-shot risk-taker makes him the last person a commercial carrier might consider. Happily, after implausibly well-connected Chili intercedes with a major player in the company, something does come up…

The truth about Buz’s hulking stalker comes out when the Maharani of Batu’s yacht docks in New York. The exotic Asian princess is one of the wealthiest women on Earth and cuts a stunning figure with her tiger on a leash. Yet when Buz first met her she was simply “Sultry”, a ferocious, remorseless resistance fighter helping him kill the occupying Japanese on her Pacific island.

She never forgotten him and will ensure no other woman can have him…

Sultry moves into the penthouse adjoining Tot’s and is witness to the ploys of the Winter woman as she sidelines sleazy sneaky Confetti and makes her play for Buz. She is also a key figure in the tragic heiress’ sudden death…

Just prior to Tot’s gruesome demise, Buz had finally met the unconventional Mr. Wright of International Airways. That doughty executive had no need for pilots but wanted a quick-thinking, capable fighter who could solve problems in the world’s most troubled conflict zones. He even has a spot open for good old Roscoe Sweeney. Buz is all set for his first overseas assignment when the cops decide he’s the other prime suspect in Tot’s murder and, with Sawyer and Count Confetti in jail, Sultry tries to flee America before the truth comes out. Sweeney and the freshly exonerated Buz soon track her down, but Sultry turns the tables on them and shanghaies her erstwhile lover, imprisoning him on her yacht, determined to make him her permanent boytoy, far, far away from American …

Never short of an idea and blessed with the luck of the damned, Buz’s escape results in a terrifying conflagration and the seeming death of his obsessed inamorata… but Sultry’s body isn’t recovered…

It takes a lot of pleading to get Mr. Wright to give him another chance but, soon after, Buz & Sweeney are winging north to Greenland to stop a crazed sniper taking pot-shots at aircraft passing over the “Roof of the World”. This savage, visceral extended saga soon reveals the shooter to be a deranged leftover Nazi and his hapless attendants, but the heroes’ astonishing hunt for and capture of the Teutonic trio is as nothing compared to the harrowing trek to get them back to civilisation, especially since poor Roscoe is putty in the hands of lovely Frieda, devil-daughter of the utterly mad Baron von Schlingle.

Before Buz get the survivors home safely, he loses his plane, must forcibly trek across melting floes, get them all stranded on a iceberg and even has his pretty-boy face marred forever. Worst of all, by the time he gets back to civilisation, his job no longer exists. Mr. Wright has quit and moved on to another company…

It’s not all bad news. Wright has euphemistically become “Personnel Director” for Frontier Oil: a truly colossal conglomerate active all over Earth and now wants Buz to carry on his unique problem-solving career for his new employers.

Despite a large bump in salary, the weary war hero is undecided until he hears Christy is helping her dad in Central American nation Salvaduras in his role as a geologist for Frontier Oil. This happily ties in with an outstanding missing persons case; said vanished victim being Bill Daniels, playboy son of a prominent company executive. It takes very little to convince Wright to despatch Buz & Roscoe south of the border to investigate, opening floodgates to a spectacular epic of light-hearted romantic adventure a world apart from his previous harrowing cases. The story also saw Crane and Co. merging the Daily and Sunday strips into a single storyline (with the Sundays primarily illustrated by Schlensker) as the action boys tried to trace the missing American in a country that seems locked in fear and poverty…

After initially hitting a wattle-and-daub wall, Buz takes time off for a picnic with Christy and, after a close call with a faux Mexican bandit (in actuality a Yankee fugitive from justice with an atrocious fake accent), declares his undying love for her.

He is not rebuffed and there’s the hint of wedding bells in the air…

First, though, he and Sweeney need to finish the mission, and help comes from a brave peon who breaks the regional code of silence to put them on the trail of the mysterious Ranch of the Caves and its American émigré who rules the isolated canton with blood and terror. After romancing the daughter of vicious Don Jaime, Buz and Roscoe infiltrate the desolate fiefdom and the gang boss’ international band of thugs, discovering not only the very much alive missing playboy but an incredible lost Mayan treasure trove!

Mission accomplished, Buz returns to New York to marry Christy, only to find he’s already needed elsewhere. Christy too is having doubts, worried that she will always play second fiddle to her man’s addiction to action, whereas in truth the real problem is that trouble usually comes looking for Buz. Boarding a Frontier plane for the Yukon, Sawyer is merely a collateral casualty when the ship’s other passenger is kidnapped. The mysterious menabducting plastic surgeon Dr. Wing take their helpless hostages all the way to deepest Africa where they expect the medic to change the face of an infamous madman everybody in the world believes died in a Berlin Bunker. Tragically, the fanatics are not prepared for the physician’s dauntless sense of duty and sacrifice nor Buz’s sheer determination to survive…

The latter part of this tale describes Buz’s epic river trek with mercenary turncoat honey-trap Kitty as they flee from vengeful Nazis. However, even after reaching the coast and relative safety, the insidious reach of the war-criminals is not exhausted and one final attack looms…

Eventually, Buz returns to New York alone and wins enough time from slave driving Mr. Wright to settle things with Christy. He follows her to Nantucket Sound, but even their romantic sailboat ride turns into a life-changing adventure…

To be Continued for decades to come…

This splendid collection is the perfect means of discovering – or reconnecting with – Crane’s second magnum opus: spectacular, enthralling, exotically immediate romps that influenced generations of modern cartoonists, illustrators, comics creators and storytellers. Buz Sawyer ranks amongst the very greatest strip cartoon features ever created: rousing, enthralling, thrilling, outrageously funny and deeply moving tale-telling that is irresistible and utterly unforgettable.
Buz Sawyer: Sultry’s Tiger © 2012 Fantagraphics Books, all other material © 2012 the respective copyright holders. All Strips © 2010 King Features Syndicate, Inc All rights reserved.

Today in 1890, landmark British magazine Comic Cuts began publication. See what we started?

This date in 1928 scripter/screen writer George Kashdan (Tomahawk, Congo Bill, Tommy Tomorrow, Mysto, Magician Detective, hundreds of DC genre anthology tales, Superman/ Aquaman Hour of Adventure) as born, with Dutch creator Piet Wijn (Aram, Douwe Dabbert) coming a year later. Dave (Cerebus) Sim popped up in 1956 and Linda Medley (Castle Waiting, Justice League America, Doom Patrol, Galactic Girl Guides) in 1964.

Today saw the loss of Mutt and Jeff ghostwriter Aurthus “Bugs” Baer in 1969, ULTIMATE Batman artist Dick Sprang in 2000 and Mad’s The Lighter Side cartoonist Dave Berg in 2002.

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Upside Dawn


By Jason (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-652-4 (HB/digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic, comedic and ironic effect.

Born in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known by enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume Jason. The shy & retiring auteur first took the path to cartoon superstardom in 1995, once debut graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award. From 1987 he had contributed to alternate/indie magazine KonK while studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo’s Art Academy.

From there he took on Norway’s National School of Arts and, on graduating in 1994, founded his own comic book Mjau Mjau. Constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-mined anthropomorphic minimalism, Jason has cited Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring & Tex Avery as primary influences. He moved to Copenhagen, working at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) and Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Batman: Detective 27).

Jason’s efforts were internationally noticed, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas and he won another Sproing in 2001 – for self-published series Mjau Mjau – before in 2002 turning nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels. He won even more major awards.

Jason’s breadth of interest is wide & deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, literature, art, history and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. Jason’s puckish, egalitarian mixing & matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time. Over a succession of tales he has built and re-employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes distilled from movies, childhood yarns, historical and literary favourites. These all role-play in deliciously absurd and surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. Latterly, Jason returned to such “found” players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and even has a whole bizarre bunch of them “team-up” or clash…

As always, visual/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued, or even as here silently pantomimic progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a pared back stripped-down interpretation of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity augmented by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

A master of short-form illustrated tales, many Jason yarns have been released as snappy little albums before later inclusion in longer anthology collections. The majority of tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality even in the most comedic of moments. They are largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes. That’s a style that has never been more apropos than right here, as the more modern Art Forms bow before the onslaught and tirade of organised anti-art philosophers, socially intellectual terrorists, wandering pop stars and a lost Vulcan…

Here the auteur returns to short individual pieces – or are they? – and fondly dabbles with words, terms and aural meanings whilst opening with an understandable failure to communicate over a meal in ‘Woman, Man, Bird’ before noted cerebral French auteur/filmmaker and playfully adrift word-&-meaning warper Georges Perec is repositioned as a hardboiled gumshoe searching for a missing woman in a yarn laced with omissions, mis-hearings and misapprehensions. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a truth – any truth – ‘Perec PI’ is on the case…

A rapid pictorial transit to a peregrination through a typical life is recalled at full pelt in ‘I Remember’ after which ‘Vampyros Dyslexicoa’ dips deep into literary hinterlands in a pastiche/homage to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 Gothic novella Carmilla. However the sordid obsessions of sapphic vampire Mircalla are only the entrée to wilder scriptorial regions and a nasty case of creative anachronism as ‘Seal VII’ takes us deep into modern “Scandi” folklore when a certain Knight and Death meet up for a game in Sweden in 1357 and don’t really cotton to the notion of chess for souls…

The scenes shifts to Prague in 1919 where a certain agent of the crown abruptly quits his job and is renditioned to a strange, picturesque high-tech surveillance Village where he has to wear a blazer as ‘The Prisoner in the Castle’ prior to popping back to St Peterburg in 1865 to gorily relive the trials and tribulations of Great Russian Literature at first hand via some eccentric ‘Crime and Punishment’…

As much as Jason has played with visual meaning and manipulated derived imagery-context in his past forays, the later relater is here gripped by the confusing potentials of words and verbal meanings. Such facile surface fascinations are apparent during Leopold Bloom’s rather violent visit with the absolute master of “what did that mean” Dublin in June offers a walk with James Joyce, a leprechaun, Stephen Dedalus and Molly as we ponder stuff and not-nonsense in ‘Ulysses’. Then ‘Ionesco’ introduces random judgement to the final days of avant-garde playwright Eugène Ionesco, as a parade of bizarre celebrities and notables eulogise or defame him before he goes…

Slipping into a partial colour palette (yellow, if you care), ‘What Rhymes with Giallo?’ uses rhyming couplets to detail a sordid stabbing spree before resuming monochromatic mode as the tense future proves too much for one scientific stoic. Stress compels Mr Spock to desert the Enterprise and migrate to Montparnasse, Paris in ‘The City of Light, Forever’. It’s 1925 and he finds contentment as a minor Japanese painter (of cats) until Captain Kirk comes looking for him. If you follow Jason, this is where you start to realise that a lot of his work overlaps and intercepts itself in the strangest places…

Adding red and blue to black & white, ‘Who Will Kill the Spider?’ is a classic child’s nightmare of terror and confusion as Dad uses escalating tools and allies to deal with a bug in the bedroom who just won’t quit, after which words literally fail us in ‘One Million and One Years B.C.’: a silent science spoof of dinosaurs, cave-folk, time-travelling soldiers and stupid assumptions which leads into tribute diptych ‘EC Come…’ (a bloody tale of domestic ghouls and zombies) and ‘…EC Go’ (pointed satire of the comic company’s sublime Ray Bradbury adaptations of interplanetary First Contacts).

Then inevitably it devolves into a spoofing shot at the Sci Fi Fifties care of Curt Siodmak via Ed Wood in alien invasion ‘From Outer Space’ before ‘Etc.’ stages a celebrity-stacked movement-moment that begins in London circa 1972 as immortal musketeer Athos meets David Bowie meets a mummy meets Elvis meets Moses meets Sinatra meets Van Gogh meets Frank Zappa meets Death ad infinitum for a miasmic, abstractly construed big finish…

Visually mesmerising, this cunningly concocted Dadaist picture salad conceals underlying connections you really have to stay untuned for, referring relentlessly to modern icons and ancient shibboleths in equal measure, and perpetually sampling the feeling and furniture of war films, scary stories, true romances gone bad, Monty Python, Star Trek, a million movies, books, tunes and comics and even his own burgeoning “Jason-verse”. Upside Dawn absolutely should not be your first dip into his works, but don’t let that stop you from getting them all and getting all caught up…
All characters, stories, artwork and translation © 2022 Jason.
This edition of Upside Dawn © 2022 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All rights reserved.

Today in 1892 Scots artist and future Charlie Chaplin comics illustrator Wally Roberson was born, followed in 1912 by John Liney (who limned the Henry strip), and in 1917, Hal Seeger who wrote & drew Betty Boop and later Leave it to Binky. In 1925 eventual East German cartoonist Hannes Hegen (Mosaik) arrived, with US letterer-to be Stan Starkman (Batman, Doom Patrol, Metamorpho) coming along in 1927. 3D comics guy Ray Zone was born in 1947, the same day and year that we lost the astounding Reg Perrott, artist on Roly and Poly the Two Bear Cubs, Land of the Lost People, Whirling Around the World, Wheels of Fortune, Red Ryder, The Young Explorers, The Golden Arrow, Golden Eagle, Sons of the Sword and more, as well as becoming producer/studio manager of UK mainstay Mickey Mouse Weekly.

In 1952 Hägar the Horrible artist Chris Browne was born, as was Chester Brown (Yummy Fur, Louis Riel) in 1960 and John Arne Sæterøy/Jason in 1965.

This date in 1964 Malcom Judge’s Billy Whizz first hurtled into the hearts of Beano readers, and in 2012 marked the passing of comic book workhorse Ernie Chan (Conan, Batman, Dracula Kull, The Hulk).

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck by Carl Barks: volume 6 – The Old Castle’s Secret


By Carl Barks & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-653-9 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Donald Duck ranks among a small number of fictional characters who have transcended the bounds of reality to become – like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Popeye and James Bond -meta-real. As such, his origins are complex and convoluted. His official birthday is June 9th 1934: a dancing, nautically-themed bit-player in the Silly Symphony cartoon short The Wise Little Hen. However, that date is based on the feature’s release, as announced by distributors United Artists and latterly acknowledged by the Walt Disney Company. Recent research reveals the piece was initially screened at Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on May 3rd, part of a Benefit show. The Wise Little Hen officially premiered on June 7th at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, before a general release date was settled.

The animated feature was adapted by Ted Osborne & Al Taliaferro for the Silly Symphonies Sunday comic strip and thus classified by historians as Donald’s official debut in Disney comics. Controversially, though, he was also deemed to have originated in The Adventures of Mickey Mouse strip which had begun 1931. Thus the Duck has more “birthdays” than the Queens and Kings of England (plus the generally dis-United Kingdom and gradually diminishing Commonwealth) which probably explains why he’s such a bad-tempered old cuss. Today is not so much a birthday as graduation party…

Visually, Donald Fauntleroy Duck was largely the result of animator Dick Lundy’s efforts, and, with partner-in-fun Mickey Mouse, is one of TV Guide’s 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time. The Duck has his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame and has appeared in more films than any other Disney player. During the 1930s his screen career grew from background/supporting roles to a team act with Mickey and Goofy, to a series of solo cartoons that began with 1937’s Don Donald, which also introduced love interest Daisy Duck and nephews Huey, Louie and Dewey.

By 1938 Donald was officially more popular than signature company icon Mickey, especially after the brash bird’s service as a propaganda warrior in a series of animated morale boosters and information features during WWII. The merely magnificent Der Fuehrer’s Face took the 1942 Academy Award (that’s an Oscar to you and me) for Animated Short Film…

Crucially for our purposes, Donald is also planet Earth’s most-published non-superhero comics character, and has been blessed with some of the greatest writers and illustrators ever to punch a keyboard or pick up a pen or brush. A publishing phenomenon and mega star across Europe – particularly Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland – Donald & Co have spawned countless original stories and characters. Sales are stratospheric there and in the more than 45 other countries they export to. Japanese manga publishers have their own carefully-tailored iterations too…

The aforementioned Silly Symphonies adaptation and Mickey Mouse newspaper strip guest shots were trumped in 1937 when Italian publisher Mondadori launched an 18-page story by Federico Pedrocchi in comic book format. It was quickly followed by a regular serial in Britain’s Mickey Mouse Weekly. The comic was produced under license by Willbank Publications/Odhams Press and ran from 8th February 1936 to 28th December 1957.

In #67 (May 15th 1937) it launched Donald and Donna (a prototype Daisy Duck girlfriend), drawn by William A. Ward. Running for 15 weeks it was followed by Donald and Mac before ultimately settling on Donald Duck, and became a solid fixture until the magazine folded. That comic inspired similar Disney-themed publication across Europe, with Donald regularly appearing beside company mascot Mickey.

In the USA, a daily Donald Duck newspaper strip launched on February 2nd 1938, with a colour Sunday strip added in 1939. Writer Ted Karp joined Taliaferro in expanding the duck cast, adding a signature automobile, dog Bolivar, cousin Gus Goose, grandmother Elvira Coot and even expanded the roles of both distaff ducks Donna and Daisy…

In 1942, Donald’s licensed comic books canon began with October cover-dated Dell Four Color Comics, Series II #9. As Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold it was conceived by Homer Brightman & Harry Reeves, scripted by Karp and illustrated by Disney Studios employees Carl Barks & Jack Hannah. That was the moment everything changed…

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901, and raised in rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in American history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks was an animator before quitting in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books. With studio partner Jack Hannah (another future strip illustrator) Barks adapted Karp’s rejected script for an animated cartoon short into Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold, and although not his first published comics work, it was the story that shaped the rest of Carl’s career.

From then until his official retirement in the mid-1960s, Barks operated in self-imposed seclusion: writing, drawing and devising a vast array of adventure comedies, gags, yarns and covers that gelled into a coherent Duck Universe of memorable – and highly bankable – characters. These included Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Magica De Spell (1961) and the nefarious Beagle Boys (1951) to supplement Disney’s stable of cartoon actors. The greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad giga-gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the World’s wealthiest winged nonagenarian.

Whilst producing all that landmark material Barks was also just a working guy, generating cover art, illustrating other people’s scripts when asked, and contributing stories to a burgeoning canon of Duck Lore. After Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material amongst other Disney strips in the 1980s, he discovered the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed. So potent were his creations that they inevitably fed back into Disney’s animation output, even though his brilliant comic work was done for Dell/Gold Key and not directly for the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly animated TV series Duck Tales: heavily based on his classic Uncle Scrooge tales.

Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries and epics of exploration, and this led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and sheer wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps that utterly captivated readers of every age and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions there would never have been an Indiana Jones…

During his working life Barks was blissfully unaware that his efforts (uncredited by official policy, as was all Disney’s comics output) had been recognised by a rabid and discerning public as “the Good Duck Artist”. When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, a belated celebrity began.

In 2013, Fantagraphics Books began chronologically collecting Barks’ Duck stuff in wonderful, carefully curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes and digital editions that finally do justice to the self-closeted creator. These will comprise the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The physical copies are sturdy and luxurious albums – 193 x 261mm – that would grace any bookshelf, with volume 6 re-presenting works from 1948 – albeit not in strict release order. I should also note that all Four Color issues come from Series II of that mighty anthological vehicle and all covers are by Barks.

It begins eponymously with ‘The Old Castle’s Secret’ (FC #189, June 1948) as a financial crisis in McDuck’s empire triggers a mission for Donald and the nephews: accompanying Scrooge to the ancestral pile in Scotland to search for millions in hidden treasure. Apparently the craggy citadel is haunted, but what they actually encounter is both more rationalistically dangerous and fantastically unbelievable…

Two single-page gags from the same issue follow, with ‘Bird Watching’ exposing the hidden perils of the hobby before superstition is painfully debunked in ‘Horseshoe Luck’ after which ‘Wintertime Wager’ (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #88, January) introduces annoying cousin Gladstone Gander. Amidst chilling winter snows, the miraculously lucky, smugly irksome oik invites himself over for Christmas and soon he and Donald are involved in an escalating set of ordeals that might cost the Duck his house. Thankfully, Daisy and the boys are there to solve the problem…

Gainful employment was a regular dilemma for Donald, so February’s ‘Watching the Watchman’ (WDC&S #89) finds him taking a midnight-to-daybreak job at the docks, despite being pitifully unable to alter his sleep patterns. Once again, Huey, Louie & Dewey offer outrageous assistance but this time it’s the Duck’s failure to stay awake that foils a million dollar heist. The kids are actually Donald’s rivals in ‘Wired’ (WDC&S #90, March) when all seek big bucks as telegram messengers. Sadly, millionaires are not generally friendly, welcoming or prone to giving giant gratuities…

A dedicated social climber, Donald plans a garden party in WDC&S #91 (April), but his notion of fancy dress and family solidarity utterly enrage the boys, who retaliate with manic mesmerism in ‘Going Ape’, after which March of Comics #20 finds butterfly-hunter Donald at war with avaricious lepidopterist Professor Argus McFiendy across two continents. Donald’s sharp and ruthless tactics inspire onlooker Sir Gnatbugg-Mothley to fund a safari to ‘Darkest Africa’ in search of the rarest butterfly on Earth. The daunting quest for Almostus Extinctus is frenetically fraught, astoundingly action-packed and fabulously fun-filled but please be aware that despite Barks’ careful research and diligent, sensitive storytelling some modern folk could be upset by his depictions of indigenous peoples in terms of the accepted style of those decades-distant times…

Nevertheless, the bombastic war ends with a delicious sting in the tail.

In case you were wondering: March of Comics releases were prestigious promotional giveaways tied to retail products and commercial clients like Sears, combining licensed characters from across Whitman/KK/Dell’s joint catalogue. The often enjoyed print runs topping 5 million copies per issue. Being a headliner for them was a low key editorial acknowledgement of a creator’s capabilities and a franchise’s pulling power…

In the regular comics world, Donald’s eternal war of nerves with the kids boiled over in FC #189 (June) as ‘Bean Taken’ saw his obsessive side dominant in a guessing game, a single-pager preceding another exploring the downside of sandlot baseball in ‘Sorry to Be Safe’ (FC #199, October) and standard 10-page romp ‘Spoil the Rod’ (WDC&S #92, May). Here passing do-gooder Professor Pulpheart Clabberhead seeks to stop Donald’s apparent abuse of Huey, Louie and Dewey – but only until he gets to know them…

Although the science fiction boom and flying saucer mania was barely beginning in 1948, Barks was an early advocate and ‘Rocket Race to the Moon’ (WDC&S #93, June) sees newspaper-seller Donald suckered into piloting an experimental lunar exploration ship. Sadly, Professors Cosmic and Gamma seem more concerned with a large cash-prize contest than advancing knowledge, and rival rocketman Baron De Sleezy is a ruthless schemer, but no one – not even the stowaway nephews – was prepared for what lived on the moon…

Patriotism inspires our bellicose birdbrain to enlist as ‘Donald of the Coast Patrol’ (WDC&S #94, July) but it’s his gullibility and bad temper that helps him bag a bunch of spies before true wickedness rears its downy head as ‘Gladstone Returns’ (WDC&S #95, August). The ghastly Gander was designed as a foil for Donald, intended to be even more obnoxious than the irascible, excitable film fowl and this originally untitled tale reintroduces him as a big super-lucky noxious noise every inch as blustery a blowhard as Donald. Here, both furiously boast and feud, trying to one-up each other in a series of scams that does neither any good – especially once the nephews and Daisy join the battle…

Arguably Barks’ first masterpiece, ‘Sheriff of Bullet Valley’ was the lead tale from Dell Four Color Comics #199, drawing much of its unflagging energy and trenchant whimsy from Barks’ own love of cowboy fiction, albeit seductively tempered with his self-deprecatory sense of absurdist humour. For example, a wanted poster on the jailhouse wall portrays the artist himself, offering the princely sum of $1000 and 50¢ for his inevitable capture.

Donald is, of course, a self-declared expert on the Wild West (he’s seen all the movies) so when he and the boys drive through scenic Bullet Valley, a wanted poster catches his eye and his imagination. Soon he’s signed up and sworn in as a doughty deputy, determined to catch rustlers plaguing the locals. Unfortunately for him, the good old days never really existed and today’s bandits use radios, trucks, tommy guns and ray machines to achieve their nefarious ends. Can Donald’s impetuous boldness and the nephews’ collective brains and ingenuity defeat the ruthless high-tech raiders? Of course they can…

That same issue provided a brace of short gags, beginning with ‘Best Laid Plans’ as Donald’s feigned illness earns him extra hard labour rather than a malingering day in bed, and closing with ‘The Genuine Article’, wherein suspicions of an antique’s provenance leads to disaster…

The lads’ plans to go fishing are scuppered – but not for too long – when Donald demands their caddying services in ‘Links Hijinks’ (WDC&S #96, September), but it all really goes south once Gladstone horns in and Donald’s competitive spirit overwhelms everybody…

That tendency to overreact informs ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ (WDC&S #97, October) when the nephews find a small pearl in a locally-sourced oyster and big-dreaming Donald goes overboard in exploiting the “hidden millions” presumably peppering the ocean floor, before we close with another mission for Uncle Scrooge.

To close a deal with British toff Lord Tweeksdale, McDuck must prove his family pedigree by excelling in the most “asinine, stupid, crazy, useless sport in the world”: fox hunting. Designating Donald his champion, the Downy Dodecadillionaire of Duckburg is thankfully unaware Huey, Louie & Dewey also consider themselves ‘Foxy Relations’ (WDC&S #98, November), injecting themselves covertly into proceedings with catastrophic repercussions…

The visual verve over, we move on to validation as ‘Story Notes’ offers commentary for each Duck tale and Donald Ault relates ‘Carl Barks: Life Among the Ducks’, before ‘Biographies’ explain why he and commentators Alberto Beccatini, R, Fiore, Craig Fischer, Jared Gardner, Leonardo Gori, Rich Kreiner, Ken Parille, Stefano Priarone, Francesco (“Frank”) Stajano and Mattias Wivel are saying all those nice and informative things. We close with examination of provenance as ‘Where Did These Duck Stories First Appear?’ explains the somewhat byzantine publishing schedules of Dell Comics.

Carl Barks was one of the greatest exponents of comic art the world has ever seen, and almost all his work featured Disney’s Duck characters: reaching and affecting untold millions of readers across the world and he all too belatedly won far-reaching recognition. You might be late to the party but it’s never too soon to climb aboard the Barks Express.

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “The Old Castle’s Secret” © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All contents © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
Today in 1937 Donald Duck began his solo comics career.

In 1897 journalist turned strip writer Glenn Chaffin (Tailspin Tommy) was born, as was legendary fan artist John G. Fantucchio (Rocket’s Blast Comicollector (RBCC), The Collector, The Buyer’s Guide for Comic’s Fandom, Fantastic Fanzine, Comic Crusader) in 1938, and inker, illustrator and production god John Verpoorten in 1940. A year later along came Underground Commix and Graphic Novel pioneer Jaxon AKA Jack Jackson (God Nose, Comanche Moon, The Secret of San Saba)…

The date saw the deaths of both Golden Age star/political cartoonist Gill Fox (Torchy, Plastic Man, The Spirit daily) and Disney animator and story-maker Jack Bradbury in 2004, and legendary humour artist Will Elder (Mad, Little Annie Fanny) in 2008.

In 2006, Mark Tatulli’s silent strip Li? launched today.

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The Detection Club parts 1 & 2


By Jean Harambat, coloured by Jean-Jacques Rouger translated by Allison M. Charette (Europe Comics)
eISBN: 979-1-032809-95-2 (part 1), 979-1-032809-96-9 (part 2)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and literary effect.

Apparently, everybody loves mystery to chew on. With that in mind, here’s a brace of superb cartoon conundrums from the continent, based on an unlikely but actual historical convocation.

As seen on Wikipedia, – The Detection Club was a literary society of British crime writers, founded in 1930, with the likes of G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie as early Presidents. In 1936, American émigré John Dickson Carr became the first non-Brit elected to the august body; and probably pretty snarky elitist gathering.

They did stuff, wrote stories, held events and upheld (Ronald) Knox’s Commandments which detailed the proper rules of mystery writing. The group is the basis of later media McGuffin’s such as Batman’s Mystery Analysts of Gotham City and every bunch of screen authors matched against evil geniuses everywhere…

I’m pretty sure the story here collected in two volumes by award-winning cartoonist, screenwriter, graphic novelist, historian, philosopher and journalist Jean Harambat (Les Invisibles, Ulysses, the Songs of Return, Operation Copperhead) is apocryphal, but you never know…

Originally released in 2019, our case du jour opens in a prologue, with the reciting of those Knox commandments and the confirmation of Mr. Dixon Carr at a slap-up feed at London hostelry Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese – a pub that doesn’t seem to mind the odd celebratory gunshot…

Present are President Chesterton, Dixon Carr, Christie, Sayers, Baroness Emma Orczy, Major A.E.W. Mason and Monsignor Ronald Knox himself, and – as the posh repast winds down – proceedings are somewhat disturbed by the arrival of a flying, talking robotic bird bearing a strange invitation…

Eccentric man of means Mr. Roderick Ghyll wishes the company of the sagacious society at his extraordinary domicile on April 1st. Briarcliff House is situated on a private island where Ghyll wishes to celebrate the future through his latest contrivance, therefore promising “challenges”, “enchantments” and “the renaissance of crime fiction”…

Chapter I opens with the scribes and scribblers approaching ‘An Island in Cornwall’ and still heatedly debating the motives of the mystery man. Ghyll greets them effusively before zooming off in a bizarre electric unicycle leaving them to make their way to his palatial manse: a gleaming tribute to sleek, tripped down modernism – if not actual futurism…

Apart from the domestic staff chef Alphonse, maid Madeline, implacable (not to say positively “inscrutable”) Asian manservant Fu, and stepdaughter Millicent, the only other human present is technical assistant Dr. Zumtod and Ghyll’s haughty beautiful wife Honoria. A future generation would call her a “trophy”…

The old plutocrat is a deeply unpleasant and smugly overbearing host who boasts of one more personage that the sharp-minded, brain-testing authors must meet. With smugness and great ceremony he introduces Eric: a mechanical man with more than human insight who can outwit any mortal and easily determine the culprit in any tale they might concoct…

Although challenged with the details of a string of classic novels – which Eric easily and correctly concludes with the name of the perpetrators – the writers remain insulted and unconvinced. Dixon Carr even oversteps the bounds of polite decency by probing the automaton in search of a pre-prepped dwarf or amputee and the display is halted for dinner where Ghyll continues to advocate a world filled with his “metal friends”…

The evening wears on with the usual social distractions balanced by heated argument on many topics sparked by Eric’s existence and the magnate’s pronunciations that art and literature must make way for a machine-run world. At last, the affair breaks up with the guests retiring to their assigned rooms in a state of high dudgeon…

That all ends in esteemed literary tradition, with screams and the writers breaking into Ghyll’s savagely disarrayed bedroom to discover electronic Eric inert in a chair and clear evidence of ‘The Billionaire Out the Window’. Far below, a dressing gown sinks beneath choppy waves and subsequent frantic searches result in no sign of their host…

Well-versed if not actually experienced in investigation, the writers set about interviewing the staff and then the residents. Zumtod then suggests the painfully obvious: turning Eric loose on the problem. The response is as rapid as the answer is shocking…

While waiting for the outer world to re-establish contact with the isolated isle, “Queen of Crime” Christie bonds with the presumed widow and probes the step-daughter, whilst Chesterton continues to scour the entire vicinity. He’s suspicious of everything – including whether there has been any crime at all – and rapidly unearths many unsuspected secrets even as each writer cleaves to their particular speciality, makes their own assessment and forms a personal hypothesis.

…And then a body washes ashore…

The Detection Club’s second volume begins with third chapter ‘Seven Amateur Detectives’ and an armada of late-arriving constabulary. Led by Inspector Widgeon they proceed to interview the drawing room sleuths. Mounting tensions, contrary theories and wounded pride quickly drive all concerned into fractious conflict, even as potential heir Millicent’s banished and outcast twin Watkyn re-emerges. Has he only returned because of his despised step-father’s demise or was he actually back just before it happened?

Events seemingly come to a head when Christie expounds her latest theory and provokes a minor hostage crisis until the villain is apprehended through unlikely team work. As the constabulary step in with the handcuffs however, new evidence emerges that sets the cogitators back on the murder-trail… until straightforward ratiocination leads one author to the only possible solution…

Wry, witty, and decidedly well-plotted, with smart characterisations and devastatingly sharp, catty dialogue (kudos to translator Allison M. Charette), this lively, lovely lark is also charmingly limned: a grand and glorious tribute to days gone by and superb stylists who tested our wits and expanded our entertainment horizons. This is a tale no whimsy-inclined crime fan can afford to miss.
© 2020 – DARGUAD – HARAMBAT. All rights reserved.

Today in 1911, Canuck-by-migration Ed Furness (Freelance, Commander Steel, “Canadian Whites publications” era) was born, followed by Dick Tracy collaborator Mike Curtis in 1953; Matt Feazell (Amazing Cynicalman) in 1955 and original Men in Black artist Sandy Carruthers arrived in 1962.

On this date we lost Chester Gould (Dick Tracy) in 1985 and Italian megastar artist Ferdinando Tacconi (Journey into Space and Jeff Hawke in Junior Express, Sciuscià, Susanna, Gli Aristocratici, Uomini senza gloria, L’uomo di Rangoon, Nick Raider, Dylan Dog) in 2006. Pioneering Filipino artist Tony DeZuñiga (Black Orchid, Outlaw, Jonah Hex, practically every character at DC & Marvel) died in 2012.

After 1269 weekly issues UK girls comic Mandy folded today in 1991. It had debuted on 21st January 1967.