Category: Humour

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Private Beach


By David Hahn (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80749-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Epic and Intriguing… 8/10

Most of these reviews follow a strict formula. Say something to prove how clever I am, offer a smidgen of background and context, list the contents, précis the story in the book and then urge you to buy it.

That’s not just going to work with this astoundingly beguiling collection, gathering a cherished personal project from Montana-based artist and writer David Hanh, who first came to mass popular attention with Bite Club, Robin, Fables, Batman: The Ultimate Training Guide and Lucifer; before gaining more acclaim and career traction on Ultimate X-Men, The Escapist, Marvel Adventures: The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, as well as his 2011 creator-owned series All Nighter.

His most recent successes include Erfworld and Batman ’66 Meets the Man From UNCLE…

In 1995 at Antarctic Comics, Hahn had begun an oddly quirky, semi-surreal slice-of-life drama with distinct overtones of Twin Peaks and the witty, sleek flavours of Love and Rockets. It was entitled Fun and Perils in the Trudyverse but became Private Beach when the increasingly overworked creator transferred the series to Slave Labor Graphics. That latter revision comprises the seven issues (released between February 2001 to December 2002) collected and reprinted in this splendid monochrome tome. Of course, the pot is infinitely sweetened for long-term devotees with an all-new 30-page concluding chapter plus many pages of pictorial and text extras.

Following an Introduction from Jeff Parker and Preface by Hahn we are ushered into the beguiling life of affably ordinary but enchantingly engaging wage-slave Trudy Honeyvan and her interesting pal Sharona Cupkey – but that’s only after a brief scene-setting aside from God…

‘Slappy’ opens in 1978 where teen Trudy sees something strange in the night sky, and thereafter begins a lifelong relationship with the numeral 8. Moving to now, forthright adult and crappily employed clerical drone Miss Honeyvan heads to the beach with Sharona to acerbically pass judgement on movies, culture and the other sun-worshippers whilst watching a celebrity seal being returned to the wild.

It is a memorable moment for all the wrong reasons…

Everyday weirdness begins to mount in ‘Doors Opening’ as strangers and old friends all uniformly take on a fresh significance and Trudy is offered a bizarre second job in new nightclub Heaven’s Rift. Then there are the visions and the impossible messages on Trudy’s cherished Magic Eightball…

‘Land of Sam’ focuses on outer entourage Siobhan Cupkey, Sam Murphy and Junior Watkins as a succession of petty, minor and increasingly bizarre events threaten Trudy’s coolly cynical, socially-aware mellow, after which ‘Three Wishes’ finds our increasingly off-kilter star moving towards making a life-altering decision…

The pressures of Sharona’s soul-crushing nursing job, Sam’s disability and Junior’s lack of direction are explored in ‘Wednesday as Usual’ whilst Trudy adds to her growing collection of tension-boosting written warnings from persons unknown before breaking down in ‘Gears Shifting’; destroying her eightball, enduring a mind-altering experience and surviving a life-threatening criminal encounter…

When her dire clerical job abruptly ends, Trudy surrenders to whatever the universe is trying to tell her and hires out to drive a classic car across America to its new owner. All geared up to start ‘Counting Horizons’, she nervously agrees to turn the job into a road trip by inviting Sharona and Siobhan to share the tedium. Before too long all the encircling oddity and ominous events converge in bloody tragedy and a confrontation with something incredible…

It was 14 years before fans and addicts were to receive the incredible answers to the sly parade of astounding events which are shared here in ‘CHAPTER 8’. Happily, it was worth every moment as a horrifying confrontation explains what has been going on around Trudy since 1978 and sets her on a most unique and dangerous path.

I, for one, couldn’t be more content and if you are reading these adventures for the first time you are in for the ride of your life…

Supplementing the grand progression is a collection of Beach Shorts from Hanh and his friends, starting with a traumatic formative moment ‘Alone’, after which Trudy and Sharona suffer traffic jams and introspection in ‘Boxed’.

‘Mall Watching in the Trudyverse with Trudy and Sharona’ dates from 1994 and depicts the friends in gobby, declarative mode whilst ‘Faithless’ – illustrated by Mike Worley in a delightful Archie Comics pastiche – displays the abiding patience Sharona applies to her patients every day.

The perils of casual encounters are explored in Hahn’s experimental vignette ‘Inklings’ before the author shares ‘7 Things About the Movies That Make Me Want to Vomit’, and invites David Membiela, John Kissee & Ray Villarosa to show Sam Murphy’s contemplative mood in ‘Footwork’.

Trudy and Sharona then blend pop-cultural hot-dogging with the ancient art of shopping in ‘Mabel & Gloria’ before this marvellous confection concludes with a ‘“Sharona and Trudy” Pin-up’ by Kerry Callan and a ‘“Pie Fan” Pin-up’ from Hahn & Chad Smith.

Blending the easy female camaraderie of Walking and Talking with the existentialist unease of Blue Velvet or the latest iteration of Westworld – sweetened by stunning black-&-white art and breathtakingly smart dialogue – Private Beach is a captivating tale to ponder and savour over and over again.
© 2016 by David J. Hahn. Foreword © 2016 by Jeff Parker. All rights reserved.

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Taxes, the Tea Party and Those Revolting Rebels: A History in Comics of the American Revolution


By Stan Mack (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-697-6

It has long been a truism of the creative arts that the most effective, efficient and economical method of instruction and training has been the comic strip. Advertising mavens have, for over a century, exploited the easy impact of words wedded to evocative pictures, and public information materials frequently use sequential narrative to get hard messages over quickly and simply.

Additionally, since World War II, carefully crafted strips have been constantly used as training materials in every aspect of adult life from school careers advice to various branches of military service – utilising the talents of comics giants as varied as Milton Caniff, Will Eisner (who spent decades producing reams of comic manuals for the US army and other government departments), Kurt Schaffenberger and Neil Adams.

These days the educational value and merit of comics is a given. Larry Gonick in particular has been using the strip medium to stuff learning and entertainment in equal amounts into the weary brains of jaded students with such tomes as The Cartoon History of the Universe, The Cartoon History of the United States and The Cartoon Guide to… series (Genetics, Sex, Computers, Non-Communication, Physics, Statistics, the Environment and more).

Japan uses a huge number of manga text books in its schools and universities and has even released government reports and business prospectuses as comic books to get around the public’s apathy towards reading large dreary screeds of public information.

So do we, and so do the Americans. I’ve even produced one or two myself, back in my freelancing years…

Here the medium has been used by an acclaimed master to comprehensively recapitulate the most pivotal period in the history of democracy in a manner both inviting and astoundingly effective – as is clear by the pages of testimonials from satisfied teachers…

Former art director for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Stan Mack is also a writer, artist and cartoonist with a long history of turning strips into documentary, commentary and reportage: see for example his controversial Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies (Village Voice), Stan Mack’s Out-takes (Adweek) and books like Fight for Freedom, Hard Time, Janet & Me, The Road to Revolution, and The Story of the Jews: A 4,000-Year Adventure.

In 1994 he released a stunningly addictive pictorial treatment of those convoluted times, characters and events which explosively combined to create the libertarian utopia of the United States of America. The recently re-released saga examined background and context, laid out key events and the causes of them: tracing the tricky path from sidelined and dissatisfied colonial possession to new nation and it was done with wit, understanding and a determined effort to demystify and desanctify the affair, undoing two centuries of spin and revisionism…

It all starts with a charming Introduction, explaining the origins of this superb monochrome hardback tome (164 mm x 240 mm) and tale: laying out the ground rules for use and the ethos behind the project.

Thereafter the fact-packed fun unfolds in section one ‘1761-1775 Monarchy and Mobs’ which covers – in smart, snappy, efficiently short and phenomenally memorable vignettes – ‘1761 The Writs of Assistance’ and ‘1763 The Colonies’ setting the scene whilst the heinous money-making schemes of English bean-counting Prime Minister George Grenville (whose swingeing taxes and tariffs kickstart the rebellion) are seen in action through ‘1764 Sugar Act’ and ‘1765 Stamp Act’ before his successor ramped up the grief with ‘1767 Townsend Duties’ resulting in ‘1770 Boston Massacre’…

Thus we come to the truth about the ‘1773 Boston Tea Party’, and the ‘1774 1st Continental Congress’ before at last shedding blood at ‘1775 Lexington & Concord’…

Throughout the chapter and the book Mack is scrupulous in pointing out that all the talk of equality, liberty and self-determination only applies to white males, not slaves (or freed Africans), Indigenous people and women; the results of which we are still living through and something that still needs addressing…

The second section then counts down ‘1775-1781 Redcoats & Guerrillas’, ‘1775’s ‘2nd Continental Congress’, ‘Bunker Hill’, ‘George Washington’ and the potential escalations at ‘Ticonderoga/Canada’ as well as 1776’s ‘Declaration of Independence’, before following the war from ‘Long Island to Trenton’.

A catalogue of battles follows: ‘1777 Saratoga’ and ‘1778 Valley Forge’; ‘1779 Trouble at Home’, ‘1781 West Point’ before examining ‘1780 War in the South’ and ‘1781 Yorktown’.

The third and final section explores how the war was won but victory led only to factional infighting: a cold war for hearts and minds between Federalists and Constitutionalists such as Washington, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison Jr. on one side and conservative Anti-Federalists on the other. Seeing as all the familiar names are on one side; guess who won?

Apparently each faction was as concerned with wealth as well-being and freedom…

In ‘1782-1789 Profit & Virtue’ explores the changing state of world trade with the new nation, as the architects of America focussed on consolidation in ‘1782 The Confederation’, almost having their work undone by ‘1786 Shay’s Rebellion’ finally leading to ‘1786 Constitutional Convention’ and ultimately the ‘1789 Bill of Rights’…

Potently enthralling, beguiling succinct and astoundingly matter-of-fact, Mack offers an eyes-wide-open account of events and motives that make this book an absolute must-have for any student, political exponent or tub-thumping pub expert.

And it’s bloody well drawn and rather funny too…
© 1994, 2012 Stan Mack.

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The Broons and Oor Wullie: The Sensational Sixties


By Dudley D. Watkins & various (DC Thomson)
ISBN: 978-0-85116-712-8

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Evergreen Seasonal Traditions Celebrated and the ideal last minute gift… 10/10

Published eternally in perfect tandem, The Broons and Oor Wullie are two of the longest running newspaper strips in British history, having appeared almost continuously in the Scottish Sunday Post since their dual debuts in the March 8th 1936 edition.

Both the boisterous boy and the gregariously engaging inner city clan were co-created by writer and Editor Robert Duncan Low in conjunction with Dudley D. Watkins; a man who would become DC Thomson’s greatest – and signature – artist.

Three years later the strips began being collected in reprint editions as Seasonal Annuals; alternating stars and years right up to the present day and remaining best-sellers every single time.

Low (1895-1980) began at the publishing monolith as a journalist, rising to the post of Managing Editor of Children’s Publication and launching, between 1921 and 1933, the company’s “Big Five” story-papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur.

In 1936 his next brilliant idea was the Fun Section: an 8-page pull-out comic strip supplement for Scottish national newspaper The Sunday Post. The illustrated accessory launched on 8th March and from the very outset The Broons and Oor Wullie were its unchallenged stars…

Low’s shrewdest move was to devise both strips as domestic comedies played out in the charismatic Scottish idiom and broad unforgettable vernacular. Ably supported by features such as Auchentogle by Chic Gordon, Allan Morley’s Nero and Zero, Nosey Parker and other strips, they laid the groundwork for the company’s next great leap.

In December 1937 Low launched the DC Thomson’s first weekly pictorial comic. The Dandy was followed by The Beano in 1938 and early-reading title The Magic Comic the year after that.

War-time paper shortages and rationing sadly curtailed this strip periodical revolution, and it was 1953 before the next wave of cartoon caper picture-papers. The Topper started the ball rolling again (with Oor Wullie in the logo and masthead but not included amongst the magazine’s regular roster) in the same year that Low & the great Ken Reid created Roger the Dodger for The Beano…

Low’s greatest advantage was his prolific illustrator Dudley Dexter Watkins, whose style, more than any other, shaped the look of DC Thompson’s comics output until the bombastic advent of Leo Baxendale shook things up in the mid-1950s.

Watkins (1907-1969) had started life in Manchester and Nottingham as an artistic prodigy. He entered Glasgow College of Art in 1924 and it wasn’t long before he was advised to get a job at Dundee-based DCT, where a 6-month trial illustrating boys’ stories led to comic strip specials and some original cartoon creations.

Percy Vere and His Trying Tricks and Wandering Willie, The Wily Explorer made him a dead cert for both lead strips in the Sunday Post‘s proposed Fun Section and, without missing a beat, Watkins later added The Dandy‘s Desperate Dan to his weekly workload in 1937, eventually including The Beano‘s placidly and seditiously outrageous Lord Snooty seven months later.

Watkins soldiered on in unassailable homely magnificence for decades, drawing some of the most lavishly lifelike and winningly hilarious strips in illustration history. He died at his drawing board on August 20th 1969. For all those astonishingly productive years he had unflaggingly drawn a full captivating page each of Oor Wullie and The Broons every week, and his loss was a colossal blow to the company.

DC Thomson’s chiefs preferred to reprint old Watkins episodes of the strips in both the newspaper and the Annuals for seven years before a replacement was agreed upon. The Dandy reran Watkins’ Desperate Dan stories for twice that length of time.

An undeniable, rock-solid facet of Scots popular culture from the very start, the first Broons Annual (technically Bi-Annual) appeared in 1939, alternating with the first Oor Wullie book a year later (although, due to wartime paper restrictions, no annuals at all were published between 1943 and 1946) and for millions of readers no year can truly end without them.

This particular commemorative collection is tinged with sadness as the strips included here – probably written by David Donaldson, Iain Reid and some anonymous others – are perhaps the very best of Watkins’ astounding career, as well as his last.

So What’s the Set Up?: the Brown family inhabit a tenement flat at 10 Glebe Street, in the timelessly metafictional Scottish industrial everytown of Auchentogle (sometimes Auchenshoogle); based on the working class Auchenshuggle district of Glasgow. As such it’s an ideal setting in which to tell gags, relate events and fossilise the deepest and most reassuring cultural archetypes for sentimental Scots wherever in the world they might actually be residing. And naturally, such a region was the perfect sounding board to portray all the social, cultural and economic changes that came after the war…

The adamant, unswerving cornerstone of the family feature is long-suffering, ever-understanding Maw, who puts up with cantankerous, cheap, know-it-all Paw, and their battalion of stay-at-home kids. These comprise hunky Joe, freakishly tall Hen (Henry), sturdy Daphne, gorgeous Maggie, brainy Horace, mischievous twins Eck and the unnamed “ither ane” plus a wee toddling lassie referred to only as “The Bairn”.

Not officially in residence but always hanging around is sly, patriarchal buffoon Granpaw – a comedic gadfly who spends more time at Glebe Street than his own cottage and constantly tries to impart his decades of out-of-date, hard-earned experience to the kids… but do they listen?

Offering regular breaks from the inner city turmoil and a chance to simultaneously sentimentalise, spoof and memorialise more traditional times, the family frequently repair to their But ‘n’ Ben (a dilapidated rustic cottage in the Highlands) to fall foul of the weather, the countryside and all its denizens: fish, fowl, farm-grown, temporary and touristic…

As previously stated, Oor Wullie also launched on March 8th 1936 with his own collected Annual compilations subsequently and unfailingly appearing in the even years.

The basic set-up is sublimely simply and eternally evergreen, featuring an imaginative, scruff with a weakness for mischief, talent for finding trouble and no hope of ever avoiding parental retribution when appropriate…

Wullie – AKA William MacCallum – is an archetypal good-hearted rascal with time on his hands who can usually be found sitting on an upturned bucket at the start and finish of his page-a-week exploits. His regular cast includes Ma and Pa, local copper P.C. Murdoch, assorted teachers and other interfering adults who either lavish gifts or inflict opprobrium upon the little pest and his pals Fat Boab, Soapy Joe Soutar, Wee Eck and others. As a grudging sign of changing times, in later volumes such as this, he’s occasionally caught in the company of fetching schoolgirls like Rosie and Elizabeth…

A compilation in monochrome with some full-colour pages, The Sensational Sixties was released in 1999 as part of a concerted drive to keep earlier material available to fans: a lavishly sturdy hardback (still readily available through internet vendors) offering a tantalising selection of Sunday pages from 1960 to August 24th 1959, covering every aspect of that white-hot era of rapid change, and yet all still uproariously funny even now…

Each year of selected gems commences with an atmospheric photo-clippings and news-headlines feature, book-ending every following year with a similar capsule feature of the unfolding years and usually accompanied by a colour Watkins cover or title-page from an Annual of the period.

The endless escapades of the strip stars comprise the happily standard subject-matter: galling goofs and gaffes, family frolics, sly pranks and cruel comeuppances: a regular menu of gloriously slapstick shenanigans including plumbing pitfalls, decorating disasters, fireplace fiascos, school foolishness, dating dilemmas, appliance atrocities, fashion freak-outs, bothered Bobbies, teacher tantrums, excessive exercise exploits, chore-dodging and childish pranks by young and old alike, all glimpsed through the lens of a comfortably traditional world inexorably transitioning as fashionable technology slowly altered the lives of everyone, whether they wanted it to or not…

 

Although The Beatles, political and celebrity assassinations, space races and moon-shots or Vietnam apparently played little part in the lives of our Scottish stars, contemporary dance crazes are acknowledged, as are student-hostellers, package holidays, electric blankets and long-haired, fashion-crazed boys. There’s even an increase in football-related japery in the 1966 and 1967 chapters for some reason…

Uncontested and always welcome are wry and weighted comparisons of the good old days with mere modernity, rib-tickling scenes of sledding and skating, stolen candies, Christmas revels, torn clothes, recycled comics, breakings into one’s own home, sparring school kids, ladies and lassies lost and found, harmless practical jokes and social scandals: stories intended to take our collective mind off troubles abroad and at home, and for every thwarted romance of poor Daphne and Maggie or embarrassing fiasco focussing on Paw’s cussed recalcitrance, there’s an uproarious chase, riotous squabble and no-tears scrap for the little ‘uns.

With snobs to deflate, bullies to crush, duels to fight, chips to scoff, games to win and rowdy animals (from cats to cows) to escape, the eternally affable humour and gently self-deprecating, inclusive frolics make these superbly crafted strips an endlessly entertaining, superbly nostalgic treat.

Fans of the creative process will also delight in bonus features such as unused pencilled pages of Watkins’ art and the fulsome tribute section showing the illustrator’s first and last Broons and Oor Wullie strips: simply four more of the near 3500 pages he immaculately conceived for the staunchly timeless features.

Packed with all-ages fun, rambunctious homespun hilarity and deliriously domestic warmth, these examples of comedic certainty and convivial celebration are a sure cure for post-modern glums… and you can’t really have a happy holiday without that, can you?
© D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. 1998.

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Archie Americana Series: The Best of the Seventies


By Frank Doyle, George Gladir, Dan DeCarlo, Samm Schwartz, Harry Lucey, Stan Goldberg & various (Archie Comics)
ISBN 978-1-87979-405-4

The monolith of wholesome fun that is Archie Comics had fully cemented its place in America’s popular culture scene by the 1960s. With the Youth Market an acknowledged commercial powerhouse, the red-haired archetype (and the company which created him) was known as much for animated TV shows, the pop single “Sugar, Sugar” and soon a chain of restaurants. Archie also totally dominated the comicbook humour market.

This volume – now also available as a digital download – collects a scant few of the stories from that decade; concentrating on fashions and fads such as Hot Pants, CB radio, Protest Movements, the Bicentennial, Disco, the advent of video games and even popular movie and TV sensations as well as the ever-widening divide between rebellious teens and oppressive adults.

It also delightfully shows the overwhelming power of good writing and brilliant art to captivate an audience of any age. Padding out this potently nostalgic package is a brace of House-ads from the period and a fulsome cover-gallery of iconic power and riotous wit.

The eternal verities are still in effect. Jughead Jones is still wise, weird and eternally hungry. The teachers at Riverdale High School are still hard-pressed and harassed. Archie Andrews is, as ever, that good-hearted, well-meaning boy lacking common sense. Betty Cooper is still the pretty, sensible girl next door, and glamorous Veronica Lodge is as rich, exotic and quixotic as ever, whilst the school and leisure antics of the broader cast are hip, engaging and hugely entertaining.

The eternal triangle and perfect laugh formula was first seen in 1941 and forms the basis of decades of charming, raucous, gentle, frenetic, chiding and even heart-rending comedy ranging from surreal wit to frantic slapstick, and has never been better depicted than here.

Following a poetic Introduction from actress Shirley Jones, the merriment kicks off with

‘Protest’ (Life with Archie #93, January 1970) by Frank Doyle & Samm Schwartz, seeing an ever-more frantic Archie desperate to join the national wave of teen rebellion but unable to find anything to dissent over or anyone angry enough to march with him…

George Gladir, Dan DeCarlo & Rudy Lapick regale us with Riverdale’s response to daring new fashion must-have ‘Hot Pants’ in a wry observation from Laugh #248 (November 1971) after which ‘Decisions, Decision’ (Archie #214, December 1971, by Doyle, Harry Lucey & Marty Epp) deliciously reveals how that Archie-Betty-Veronica quandary keeps going…

The anonymously crafted ‘Bubble Trouble’ (Everything’s Archie #21, April 1972, possibly Stan Goldberg pencilling?) then reveals how the garage band The Archies disprove media accusations that they are merely a bubblegum rock band with the help of a certain legendary star of Rock ‘n’ Roll…

From Archie #217 (April 1972) by Doyle, Lucey & Epp comes ‘The Late Archie Andrews!’ as desperate Principal Mr. Weatherbee goes to outrageous lengths to get the unlucky red-head to school on time, before a quartet of cool covers bridge the gap until the wackiness resumes.

‘Patch Match’ (Betty & Veronica #198, June 1972, Gladir & DeCarlo) details how Betty monopolises that Andrews boy by offering to sew onto his jacket all the cool badges he’s been collecting. Veronica of course responds with all the wealth in her arsenal but still comes out second-best…

‘Loyalville, USA’ (Archie at Riverdale High #12 December 1973, Doyle, DeCarlo & Lapick) sees Betty and Archie help out the town’s worst memorabilia vendor whilst Gladir, Goldberg & Jon D’Agostino prove there’s ‘No Fuel Like an Old Fuel’ (Pep #296, December 1974) by finding a way to save gas during an energy crisis that nevertheless lands Archie and Jughead in a storm of trouble…

Probably the most affecting tale in this collection, ‘You Came a Long Way, Baby’ (Betty & Veronica #233, May 1975, by Doyle, DeCarlo & Lapick) dramatically teaches the condescending girls how much progress in gender equality old maid Miss Grundy has been responsible for at Riverdale High. Then sadly uncredited ‘Bicentennial Banter’ (Archie’s TV Laughout #36 December 1975) sees those same lasses girls teach the boys about the female contributions and the decisive roles played by women during the American Revolution as they rehearse for a commemorative school play…

Archie’s eager fondness for CB radio is detailed in ‘Over and Out’ (Archie #256, September 1976: Doyle, Dan DeCarlo & Lapick) before more covers whet the palate for further fun which comes through an animal-free ‘Pet Parade’ (Everything’s Archie #57, June 1977).

Our gormless star naturally becomes ‘A Fool for Cool’ (Archie Giant Series/World of Archie #461 September 1977) after listening to bad advice and patterning his dating techniques on the Fonz from TV phenomenon Happy Days…

Betty & Veronica #263 (November 1977) was the original home for Gladir & DeCarlo’s ‘Video Vexation’, with the girls losing their place as the boys’ abiding passion once Pop Tate installs a computer arcade system, after which Star Wars gets thoroughly spoofed in ‘Costume Caper’ (Reggie & Me #104, April 1978) with Lapick adding his inking sheen to Gladir & DeCarlo’s smart rib-tickler.

‘Melvin’s Angels’ (Betty & Veronica #277, January 1979) by Doyle, DeCarlo & Lapick then sees Betty & Veronica undertaking a bruising mission for a mystery man on a speaker phone before the glitzy glamour-era comics celebration concludes with ‘Disco Dude’ (Laugh #343 October 1979) as a big food prize entices slovenly slowpoke Jughead to show off his amazing dance moves. Of course, his cunning plan goes disastrously awry…

These charming and comfortable yarns are a gentle delight and a much neglected area of cartoon and graphic narrative. It would benefit us all to take another long look at what they have to offer. If only to see how far fashion has not come…
© 1970-1979, 1998 Archie Publications Inc. All rights reserved.

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Small Press Sundays

Like so many others I started out in the business making minicomics, collaborating on fanzines and concocting stripzines with fellow weirdoes, outcasts and addicts. Even today, seeing the raw stuff of creativity in hand-crafted paper pamphlets – or better yet professionally printed packages which put dreamers’ money where their mouths are – still gets me going in ways which imperil my tired old heart…

So here’s a long-overdue peek at a brilliant publishing project bringing a wealth of independent graphic craft to your attention…

DiRTY ROTTEN Comics #8

By various, Edited by Gary Clap & Kirk Campbell (Throwaway Press)
No ISBN

Graphic narrative and cartooning covers a vast range of genres, formats, disciplines and tastes. Moreover, to my jaded old eyes, these days all the very best and most imaginative work seems to come from outside the pool of professional creators and publishers from what used to be called the “Small Press” …

At the moment in Britain we’re blessed with a fresh, vital and engaging wave of strip-makers and DiRTY ROTTEN Comics is periodically gathering up a wide sampling of the most impressive work and packaging it in sleek, professional-looking black-&-white books I would have killed to be printed in back in the so-cool, tech-deprived Seventies…

The brainchild of – and edited by – Gary Clap and Kirk Campbell, this splendidly broad church of graphic recollection, exploration, extrapolation and fancification is a superb snapshot of the creative vitality, welcome diversity and uncompromising inclusivity of the modern stripzine scene, and sheer heaven for an avowed sucker for all forms of black and white art such as we. I gravely mourn its passing in both film and comics media…

This particular compendium – the Autumn 2016 edition – opens with whimsical rumination in ‘Lady Masque’ by David Robertson and segues into nostalgic reflection with Henry Miller’s charming ‘Real Roman Coins’ before sliding towards comedic anarchy in ‘Journey into Stupid: Summer’ from Claude T. C. & Kyle Gerdes…

Andrew Warwick then heads into spooky M. R. James territory with ‘Insert 20 Pence’ whilst Joanna Harker Shaw waxes poetic with ‘Extract from ‘The Lesson” after which ‘Wallace’ experiences a technical itch in a comedy short from Kevin Loftus.

Maria Stoian explores domestic isolation in ‘Nighttime Routine’ whilst a child’s salient question gets a typically brusque adult answer in ‘Seabass’ by Stanley Miller.

Petitecreme’s manga-styled discursive debate on mourning in ‘It’ll Be OK’ quickly gives way to frustrating and surreal terror courtesy of Benjamin Leon’s ‘Knots’ and trenchant black humour in ‘What A Catch’ from James Gifford.

Social overload leads to a welcome moment of calm in ‘Dandelion’ by Francis M. whilst Faye Spencer displays another method of maintaining equilibrium in ‘Bile’ even as Lukasz Kowalczuk shows the world’s next owners at their unsavoury worst in ‘Hollow Earth’.

Benjamin A.E. Filby introduces us to a very human monster in ‘SANGUISUGE’ whilst Scott Wrigg nervously anticipates ‘Those Days’ and bereavement concerns inspire Rozi Hathaway’s bleak and languid ‘Sørgedag’.

Mock heroics and a search for love (or at least acceptance) concern diminutive ‘Sir Tramsalot’ in Ben Hutching’s mirthful, moving vignette, whilst Jey Levang examines the downside of immortality in ‘Amaranthine’ and Tom Mortimer considers the ramifications and necessity of population control in ‘#Neutered’.

A delicious moment of domestic veracity in depicted in ‘Maladroit’ by Josh Hicks after which Elias Bevan comments on the small press creative mill with ‘Grow Them…’ before this aggregate walk on the personal side concludes in epic style with James Wragg’s poignant mystic ‘Remembrance’…

Concise, expressive, intimate and evocative, this is a compendium with something for everybody who loves the comics medium and is well worth your time, money and impassioned support.

All content © 2016 by their respective creators.
For more information and sales details check out THROWAWAYPRESS.COM

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Yuge! – 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump


By G. B Trudeau (Andrews and McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-44948-133-9

According to one of the two frontrunners in an upcoming electoral contest somewhere over the Pond, Garry Trudeau is a “sleazeball” “third-rate talent” who draws “overrated” comic strip Doonesbury, which “very few people read.”

He lives in New York City with his wife Jane Pauley, who “has far more talent than he has.”

For those who prefer recorded facts to illiterate, made-up gibber-jabber from the terminally biased and proudly uninformed, Garry Trudeau converted his comicstrip Bull Tales – which ran in the Yale University student newspaper Yale Daily News from 1968-1970 – into a satirical, comedy commentary on politics and contemporary society. He then managed to make it one of the most popular syndicated strips in the world…

“Starring” an everyman liberal college grad, Doonesbury debuted on October 26th 1970, and consequently got to immortalise, lampoon and pass judgement on some of America’s least finest moments and personages, casting a jaundiced eye over domestic and global events and converting them into wry, trenchant comedy gold. He is despised by many conservatives and immoderates on the Right of America’s political spectrum…

Over the years, as well as amusing millions of folks over there and around the world, the strip has aroused the ire of plenty of political, sporting and media figures – you can call them celebrities if you’re so inclined – whilst winning the cartoonist acclaim, fame and praise from some quite unlikely sectors of the society he perpetually regards with his gadfly’s eye.

Trudeau’s strip was the first to win a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, and he was awarded Certificates of Achievement from the US Army for strips dealing with the first Gulf War. In 1995 he won a Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society and in 2006 was given the US Army’s Commander’s Award for Public Service for strips about his character BD‘s recovery following the loss of a leg in Iraq.

His Mental Health Research Advocacy Award came from the Yale School of Medicine for his depiction of mental-health issues facing soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Doonesbury strip proceeds in real time and his large, broad cast of regulars has aged over the decades, whilst always interacting with the causes célèbres of the moment. As such, he has made a fair few enemies by enlisting many real-world oafs and bugbears amongst his long-lived itinerary of returning characters.

Generally these flesh-&-blood interlopers are represented by an icon – such as a waffle for Bill Clinton, a lit bomb for Newt Gingrich or a Stetson (later a Roman helmet) for George W. Bush – but that’s not always the case.

One of the most vocal – if not necessarily intelligible – over the years has been Donald J. Trump (who is usually depicted as a decadent, fat old white guy) and this superb collection gathers most of the best moments of cartoon lampoonery from three decades of less than cordial interaction.

It all begins with a Preface describing a rather fractious relationship and just why “The Donald” had to become a semi-regular in a comedy feature. The moneyed bully has never been slow to react to perceived criticism, and he and his lawyers first became acquainted with Doonesbury after Trump’s original timid “Kidding, I was only kidding!” dalliance with running for President in 1987.

That came to nothing but the big wind kept blowing and Trudeau kept pointing out a life of hubris, bad taste and excess played out on the screens and in the headlines of the Land of the Free.

Divided into discrete decades, Trudeau’s razor-sharp wit and crushing comedy critiques are re-presented here in full colour, spotlighting the vaulting ambition, sordid deals, shady landlord practises, tawdry hucksterism, serial misogyny, juvenile sexual bragging, grotesque bullying and blind narcissism of “the most unqualified candidate to ever aspire to the White House” over the numerous occasions he almost ran for office before bottling out at crunch time.

Capping all that cartoon japery is this time when he finally put other people’s money where his mouth is and found himself actually in contention for the most important job in the world… one even his own bewildered, terrified party faithful don’t want him to have…

And the best of all is that Trudeau has had an unwitting collaborator for so much of this material. Most of the baffling blather on those world balloons coming out of cartoon Donald’s mouth originated with the big orange blowhard himself…

Outrageous, alarming, more informative than any cartoon collection has a right to be and side-splittingly funny, Yuge! is a devastating tool of political instruction and character assessment which even the most deplorable basket case can enjoy, because it has loads and loads of really good simple pictures in it.

Most of us in the rest of the world can’t vote in November’s election, but we can all buy this book and make it a global bestseller. That’s the only real way to make your voice heard in a modern plutocratic democracy…
™®© 2016 G. B. Trudeau. All rights reserved.

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The Broons and Oor Wullie 1939-1945: The Lighter Side of World War II


By R.D. Low & Dudley D. Watkins & various (DC Thomson)
ISBN: 978-0-85116-651-3

The Broons and Oor Wullie are, singly or in eternal conjunction, one of the longest running newspaper cartoon features in British history, having appeared continuously in Scotland’s The Sunday Post since their debut in the March 8th 1936 edition.

Both boisterous wee boy and eccentrically engaging working class clan were co-created by journalist, writer and Editor Robert Duncan Low and DC Thomson’s greatest artist Dudley D. Watkins. Once their addictively engaging strips began to be collected in reprint editions as Seasonal Annuals – with solo books or each star-feature appearing in alternate years, right up to the present day – the Broons and Oor Wullie became an international milestone, beloved by Scots far from home and all devotees of cartooning mastery.

Low (1895-1980) began at DC Thomson as a journalist, rising to the post of Managing Editor of Children’s Publication and launching, between 1921 and 1933, the company’s “Big Five” story papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur.

In 1936 his next brilliant notion was the Fun Section: an 8-page comic-strip supplement to the publishing giant’s most popular national newspaper. This illustrated accessory launched on 8th March and from the outset The Broons and Oor Wullie were its standout stars…

Low’s shrewdest notion was devising both strips as domestic comedies played out in the charismatic Scottish idiom and vernacular. Supported by features such as Auchentogle by Chic Gordon, Allan Morley‘s Nero and Zero, Nosey Parker amongst others, they laid the groundwork for the company’s next great leap. In December 1937 Low launched the very first DC Thomson weekly comic. The Dandy was cautiously followed by The Beano in 1938 and an early-reading title entitled The Magic Comic a year later.

War-time paper shortages and post-war rationing strictures curtailed this budding strip periodical revolution, and it was 1953 before the next wave of groundbreaking picture paper releases. The Topper started the ball rolling again (with Oor Wullie in the logo and masthead but not part of the magazine’s regular roster) and in that same year Low and Ken Reid created Roger the Dodger for The Beano…

Low’s greatest weapon in those early days was his prolific illustrator Dudley Dexter Watkins, whose style shaped the look of DC Thompson’s comics output until the bombastic arrival of Leo Baxendale shook things up in the mid-1950s.

Watkins (1907-1969) had started life in Manchester and Nottingham as a genuine artistic prodigy before entering Glasgow College of Art in 1924. It wasn’t long before he was advised to get a job at burgeoning, Dundee-based DCT, where a 6-month trial illustrating boys’ stories led to comic strip specials and some original cartoon creations.

Percy Vere and His Trying Tricks and Wandering Willie, The Wily Explorer made him a the only choice for both lead strips in the new Fun Section and, without missing a beat, in 1937 Watkins added Dandy‘s Desperate Dan to his weekly workload and Beano‘s placidly outrageous Lord Snooty seven months later.

Watkins soldiered on in unassailable magnificence for decades, drawing some of the most lavishly lifelike and winningly hilarious strips in comics history. He died at his drawing board on August 20th 1969.

For all that time he had unflaggingly crafted a full captivating page each for Oor Wullie and The Broons every week as well as his many comics pages. His loss was a colossal blow to the company. DC Thomson reprinted old episodes of both strips in the newspaper and Annuals for seven years before a replacement was settled upon, whilst The Dandy reran Watkins’ Desperate Dan stories for twice that length of time.

A rock-solid facet of Scottish popular culture from the start, the first Broons Annual (technically Bi-Annual) had appeared in 1939, re-presenting the best of the Sunday strips; followed and replaced with Oor Wullie the next Christmas. However, as wartime paper restrictions increasingly began to bite, no annuals were published between 1943 and 1946.

Here you have a chance to scrutinise the rare strips of the war years in a sublime collection of pages tracking the cartoon icons’ experiences as typical folk getting by in the worst of all possible times…

Need a Mission Briefing?

Most of the multigenerational Brown family inhabit a tenement flat at 10 Glebe Street, in the timelessly metafictional Scottish industrial everytown of Auchentogle (sometimes alternatively dubbed Auchenshoogle and based on working-class Glasgow district of Auchenshuggle). It was and still is an ideal setting in which to tell gags, comment on events, spoof trends and fossilise the deepest and most reassuring cultural archetypes for sentimental Scots, wherever in the world they might actually be residing.

As is always the case, the adamant, unswerving keystone of any family feature is long-suffering, understanding Maw, who puts up with cantankerous, cheap, know-it-all Paw, and their battalion of stay-at-home kids – comprising in descending order of age and military preparedness – hunky, husky Joe, freakishly tall and thin Hen (Henry), sturdy Daphne, pretty Maggie, brainy Horace, mischievous twins Eck and the unnamed “ither ane” and a wee toddler referred to only as “The Bairn”.

Not officially billeted there but always hanging around is gruff patriarchal buffoon Granpaw – a comedic gadfly who spends more time at Glebe Street than his own cottage, constantly striving to impart decades of hard-earned if outdated experience to the kids…

Offering regular breaks from inner city turmoil and another chance to simultaneously sentimentalise, spoof and memorialise more traditional times, the family often repair to their But ‘n’ Ben (a dilapidated rustic cottage in the Highlands), always falling afoul of the weather, the countryside and all its denizens: fish, fowl, farm-grown and farm-folk…

In these wartime strips that formula was naturally disrupted as the entire family found different ways to contribute to the war-effort.

As able-bodied patriots, Joe and Hen instantly joined up but frequently found time to pop back to share tantalising tastes of the army game. Paw became an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) Warden – as did Granpaw – revealing exhausting nights on fire watch and days working at the ship yards, Maw worked with the Red Cross whilst the older girls joined the V.A.D. (Volunteer Aid Detachment). Was it merely joshing when their siblings reckoned it was just to meet more men in uniform…?

Even the fractious and boisterous young ‘uns found ways to “contribute”…

Oor Wullie also soldiered on, giving a splendidly childlike boost to morale with his own version of “chin up and carry on, regardless”. His basic set-up has always been sublimely simply and eternally evergreen: the lad is just an overly-imaginative, good-hearted scamp with a talent for finding trouble and no hope of ever avoiding parental retribution when it becomes appropriate…

Wullie – AKA William MacCallum – is an archetypal rascal with time on his hands. He can usually be found ruminatively sitting on an upturned tin bucket at the start and finish of his page-a-week exploits.

His regular cast includes Ma and Pa, local copper P.C. Murdoch, assorted embattled teachers, relatives and other interfering adults who lavish gifts or inflict opprobrium upon the little pest and his pals Fat Bob, Soapy Joe Soutar, Wee Eck et al.

During this period Wullie’s world was heavily populated with adults always ready to apply some corporal punishment and thuggish bullies equally eager to prove their physical superiority – a fact repeatedly explained away and apologised for by the embarrassed and more-evolved editors of our more civilised age…

The Lighter Side of World War II was released in 1997: part of a concerted drive to keep the earlier material available to fans. This lavish and sturdy hardback compilation (still readily available through internet vendors) offers a captivating selection of strips from April 30th 1939, with the conflict still brewing far away, and includes the entire war era before concluding in December 1945 as servicemen all over the Empire – including Hen and Joe – readied themselves for demobilisation and life on Civvie Street.

These mostly monochrome memos of mirth-under-fire begin with – and are periodically punctuated by – full-colour cover adaptations of early Annual frontispieces. In attendance are atmospheric and informative year-by-year photo-features, period editorial cartoons, fact pages and excerpted headlines from The Sunday Post and other newspapers of the time, all combining to create a chronological chronicle of the Second World War through warm, funny and indomitably defiant eyes…

The endless escapades begin in 1939 with a few pre-Hostilities traditional teasers starring Oor Wullie before The Broons kick off the “Big Show” with a strip from October 1st reflecting everyone’s sudden concern over food supplies and the draconian discipline of The Blackout. The situation soon becomes a new normal and the cartoon stars slip back into familiar gag territory enlivened by recurring themes such as Hen and Joe coming a cropper after getting the lasses to launder their uniforms…

Bonus feature ‘Oor Wullie’s War Effort’ offers a colourful perspective on the wee lad’s morale-boosting capers (with plenty of superbly cruel caricaturing of Axis leaders Hitler and Mussolini) and is followed by fact-filled asides revealing how a major publishing house accommodated the public drive to cut paper use and recycle whilst still plugging sales for Dandy, Beano and the rest…

Many Wullie strips dealt with the boisterous boy’s attempts to dodge school and join any branch of the Services who would take him, whilst, not to be outdone, Paw Broon became obsessed with spies, suspiciously bulging bags and foreign accents…

The New Year dawned with a comedy poem from the Oor Wullie 1940 Annual plus a photo-feature explaining how the conflict had progressed, after which the usual subject-matter – gleeful goofs, family frolics and slapstick tomfoolery – are augmented by gas-mask gags, bomb shelter shenanigans and childish war-games involving young and old alike, as well as strips addressing the perennial problem of how to throw parties under government restrictions. Moreover, you can’t spit (or polish) without hitting some posh officer in need of taking down a peg and all involved are constantly collecting scrap to Hurt the Hun…

A similar eccentric ode – ‘The Broons’ Hoose’ – culled from their 1941 Annual with attendant news-based picture-feature leads into that tumultuous year as an aura of artistic anarchy returned, with tales of good-natured poaching, calamitous make-do-and-mend moments, brief encounters with spivs, conmen and black marketeers as well as increased emphasis on making your own entertainment and growing your own food.

Every so often, however, the strips became a vehicle for public information as when Maw Broon uses her Co-Op “Divvy” to buy Government Savings Certificates. Every war brings out blowhards and know-it-alls, but the ones here always regret their windy pontificating whether the unwilling audiences contain Wullie or the Broon clan…

A selection of headlines, full-colour reproductions of the painted covers for 1941’s Broons and 1942’s Oor Wullie Annuals (the last ones until 1946) and the by-now traditional photo-piece precede a range of strips from the key year of the conflict, with rationing and privation now an accepted part of daily life.

It only made the strips more imaginative and funny as Watkins’s style matured into a mesmerising melding of smooth caricature with slickly realistic slapstick as morale-boosting sporting fixtures and brief forays into the countryside countered the grim or gloomy news in the rest of The Sunday Post. The year concludes with ‘At the Barber’s’: a Wullie strip from 1944 deconstructing the artist’s skill with line and form…

The 1943 photo-feature deals with good news from North Africa and Southern Italy and leads directly into yet more graphic goonery; but although specific events are never mentioned it’s clear that growing optimism is infecting all the cartoon characters. Many Wullie strips in particular could be happening before or after the conflict and no one would be any the wiser.

Men in uniform are far more common in the Broons segments, but here too they’re having fun, playing pranks and chasing lassies again…

‘Domestic Bliss’ is another deconstructed exploration of Dudley Watkins’ astounding facility with comedy staging and characterisation and precedes the 1944 photo-feature which concentrates naturally enough on D-Day.

What follows is a splendid succession of classic gag outings, with sweets back in stock, eggs aplenty, holiday outings, hospital visits and parties taking the attention away from the real world. Proper Toffs are regularly embarrassed again, officious policemen outraged and teachers are once more hard-pressed to keep control as Wullie returns to japes, misguided helpfulness and get rich-quick schemes, whilst the Glebe Street irregulars go back to teasing Daphne and Maggie over thwarted romances, finding new definitions for Paw’s cussedness, embarrassing Maw in front of guests and indulging in all sorts of uproarious bad behaviour…

After a selection of Sunday Post headlines from 1943-1945, the accompanying history photo concentrates on V.E. Day 1945 showing renewed exuberance, focusing on servicemen and loved ones coming home and funny business very much back getting back to normal.

Most individual years are especially celebrated with their specific memorable and joy-inducing Christmas/Hogmanay strips and the collection concludes with Wullie’s May 13th celebration of the European war’s ending whilst The Broons episode for December 2nd 1945 shows Joe and Hen still in uniform but unable to tell the difference between home chores when On Leave and Jankers when back in Camp…

Crammed with all-ages fun, rambunctious hilarity and comfortably domestic warmth, these inspirational examples of enviable disgrace and wit under fire celebrate a mythic lost life and time are a sure cure for post-modern glums… and you can’t say fairer than that, can you?
© D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. 1997.

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Women are from Venus, Men are Idiots – A Close to Home Collection


By John McPherson (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-74079-739-2

Hc: 78 pgs Andrews McMeel Publishing; 01 edition (12 Jan. 2011) Dims: 135 x 135 mm

Although in something of a decline these days, for nearly 200 years gag-panels and cartoon strips were the universal medium of wit, satire, mirth and cultural exchange.

Sadly nowadays, after centuries of pre-eminence, the cartoon has been all but erased from printed newspapers – as indeed the physical publications themselves have dwindled in shops and on shelves – but thanks to the same internet which is killing print media, many graphic gagsters and drawing dramatists have enjoyed a resurgence in an arena that doesn’t begrudge the space necessary to deliver a cartoon in all its fulsome glory…

Moreover, no matter how we trumpet the sales of the latest hot comicbook or collection, we purveyors of sequential narrative have to admit that we can’t get anywhere near the reach of the creators of strips such as Dilbert, Prince Valiant or Doonesbury, whose daily readership might be numbered in millions, if not billions.

Mainstream cartooning remains an unmissable daily joy to a vast, frequently global readership whose requirements are quite different from those of hard-core, dedicated comic fans, or even that ever-growing base of intrigued browsers just starting to dip their toes in the sequential narrative pool.

Even those stuck-up holdouts who have pointedly “never read a comic” have certainly enjoyed strips or panels: a golden bounty of brief amusement demanding no commitment other than a moment’s close attention. Truth be told, it’s probably in our genes…

And because that’s the contrary nature of things, those gags now get collected in spiffy hardback books like this one (and also in online editions) to enjoy over and over again…

With that in mind, here’s a long-delayed peek at a (relatively) recent strip celebrating all the traditional values of family life – boredom, resentment, acrimony, distrust, jealousy, etc – with verve and a keen eye for the surprise spit-take and involuntary belly-laugh…

Close to Home was created by John McPherson in 1992, after the mechanical design engineer and part-time cartoonist had spent a few years moonlighting: selling cartoons to periodicals as prestigious and varied as The Saturday Evening Post, Campus Life, Yankee, Christianity Today and others.

Delivered in the manner and style of Gary Larson’s The Far Side, McPherson’s daily cartoon panel was originally released through Universal Press Syndicate to 50 client papers, which has grown to 700 since the syndicate merged with online provider Uclick in 2009. The new entity – Universal Uclick – consequently absorbed United Feature Syndicate to become America’s largest Press Syndicate; marketing original print, online and mobile device material including lifestyle/opinion columns, strips, cartoons, puzzles and other content.

McPherson’s feature derives its name from its broad subject matter, casting a barbed and wickedly humorous eye on the unchanging travails which perennially hit “Close to Home” such as marriage, kids, employment, domestic duties, school life, sports and health. In this particular volume – one of dozens including Dangerously Close To Home, The Silence of the Lamberts and The Scourge of Vinyl Car Seats – the subject is sex and relationships, raging from the eternal battle between husbands and wives, getting back on that dating horse, boys and your daughters and the tricky hurdles of geriatric connubiality…

Grippingly grotesque, impressively irrepressible, remarkably even-handed and laugh-out-loud hilarious, Women are from Venus, Men are Idiots is a solid and rewarding example of an art form that we must not lose and one guaranteed to deliver delight over and over again to seasoned romantics who wear their scars with pride.
© 2010 by John McPherson. All rights reserved.

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The Rocketeer & The Spirit: Pulp Friction


By Mark Waid, Paul Smith, Loston Wallace, J Bone, Bob Wiacek & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-881-4

The American comics industry has generated its fair share of immortal heroes. However, whilst everyone is familiar with household names such as Flash Gordon, Superman, Dick Tracy or Popeye, there are also timeless champions who pretty much remain hallowed names known only to the in-crowd and cognoscenti: characters who have had their shot at global mega-stardom but for some reason never caught on with the masses. Characters like The Spirit and The Rocketeer…

Will Eisner was a pivotal creative force who helped shaped the entire medium of comics. From 1936 to 1938 he worked as a jobbing cartoonist in the studio-stable known as the “Eisner-Eiger Shop”, creating strips for both domestic and foreign markets.

As Willis B. Rensie he created and drew the opening instalments of a huge variety of characters ranging from funny animal to historical sagas, Westerns, Detectives, aviation action thrillers… and superheroes… lots of superheroes…

In 1940 Everett “Busy” Arnold, head honcho of Quality Comics, invited Eisner to take on a new challenge. The Register-Tribune newspaper syndicate wanted a 16-page weekly comicbook insert to be given away with the Sunday editions. Eisner created three strips which would initially be handled by him before two were handed off to his talented assistants.

Bob Powell inherited Mr. Mystic and distaff detective Lady Luck first fell into the capable hands of Nick Cardy (née Nicholas Viscardi) and later the inimitable Klaus Nordling.

Eisner kept the lead strip for himself, and over the next twelve years masked detective The Spirit grew into the most impressive, innovative, imitated and talked-about strip in the business. In 1952 the venture folded and Eisner moved into commercial, instructional and educational strips, working extensively for the US military in manuals and magazines like P*S, the Preventative Maintenance Monthly, generally leaving comics books behind.

In the wake of “Batmania” and the 1960s superhero craze, Harvey Comics released two giant-sized reprint editions with some new material from Eisner, which lead to a brace of underground compilations and a slow but inexorable rediscovery and revival of the Spirit’s fame and fortune via black and white newsstand reprint magazines.

Warren Publishing collected old stories, occasionally adding painted colour from such contemporary luminaries as Rich Corben, but from #17 the title reverted to Kitchen Sink, who had produced those first two underground collections.

Eisner found himself re-enamoured with graphic narrative and discerned that there now existed a willing audience eager for new works. From producing new Spirit covers for the magazine (something the original newspaper insert had never needed) he became increasingly inspired. American comics were evolving into an art-form and the restless creator finally saw a place for the kind of stories he had always wanted to tell.

He subsequently began crafting some of the most telling and impressive work the industry had ever seen: first in limited collector portfolios and eventually, in 1978, with the groundbreaking sequential narrative A Contract With God and thereby jumpstarting our modern comics phenomenon of graphic novels…

Although his output was far smaller and life far shorter, Dave Stevens had an equally revolutionary effect on the industry: his lush and lavish illustration style influencing a generation of artists as his signature retro-futurist character The Rocketeer became the first breakout star of the Independent Comics movement which stemmed from the creation of the Comicbook Direct Sales Market.

Due to Stevens’s legendarily uncompromising artistic vision – and consequent slow page rate – very few of The Rocketeer’s period exploits appeared before the artist’s death from Hairy Cell Leukaemia in 2008. Since then, however, diverse other hands have added to the canon, as with the miniseries collected in this slim but stunning hardcover edition.

Just in case these vintage adventurers are new to you, The Spirit used to be Denny Colt: Central City’s greatest detective and criminologist. After apparently dying in battle with a vile master-villain, Colt opted to remain officially dearly departed and battle evil in a semi-official capacity as a masked enigma, aided by girlfriend Ellen Dolan and her father the crime-ridden metropolis’ Police Commissioner.

Cliff Secord is an itinerant West Coast pilot who – circa 1938 – found a fantastic jetpack outfit and ever thereafter stumbled into a succession of criminal plots and capers. With the eventual permission of the flight engine’s inventor – one of the greatest heroes of that or any other era – Cliff still finds himself regularly battling bad guys as The Rocketeer. When that’s not occupying his time, he’s busy looking for work or being given the run-around by his star-struck, fame-obsessed, trouble-magnet girl Betty…

Team-ups are part-and-parcel of comics extravaganzas and both heroes have had their share of cataclysmic and catastrophic clashes with the valiant giants of the period and the industry.

This yarn however – collecting a 4-issue miniseries by Mark Waid which ran from July to December 2013 – concentrates as much on humour as bombastic action and begins on the East Coast in February 1941 where business executives and government meet to decide the future of the Next Big Thing…

Alderman Cunningham is stridently opposed to letting business cartels control the new medium and argues that, just like with radio, public airwaves must not be owned by any individual or corporation seeking to monopolise recently invented Television…

Mere hours later an early morning fashion shoot on a California beach is ruined when beautiful Betty finds the idealistic politician’s mangled corpse…

When the stiff is identified as Cunningham, Commissioner Dolan and Spirit are baffled. How could the victim have travelled more than 3000 miles in one night? Determined to investigate, they book passage on a trans-continental plane, having reluctantly crumbled before the forceful Ellen who demands to join them and see Hollywood…

In Los Angeles, Cliff Secord is again being ignored by the traumatised Betty. He mopes dejectedly until his grizzled old mechanic Peevy points out that whoever killed the Alderman might also want to silence the girl who found the body…

Nearby, a very wealthy entrepreneur places a coast-to-coast call to The Spirit’s greatest enemy to discuss his incredible new invention, the pursuance of their plans and how to stop a certain masked interloper from interfering…

Said hero – still wearing his mask – is stiffly staggering off a plane at Chaplin Field with his equally exhausted cross-country companions. In a weary, unguarded moment he mentions Betty. Learning of the “slip”, an already paranoid Cliff panics and, assuming the masked killer has come for his girl, dons his rocket-man suit to attack…

After a spectacular battle, Ellen finally manages to convince the two testosterone-soaked mutton heads they are on the same side, and a tentative alliance is formed… at least until Spirit interviews Betty and the flighty starlet finds she’s in love or thereabouts with the hunky masked cop…

Illustrator Paul Smith gives way to Loston Wallace & Bob Wiacek as the second chapter opens with the fractious, clueless allies heading for the LA Morgue to examine Cunningham’s body, even as television wizard Benedict Trask and The Octopus discuss how best to get Betty out of the picture and deal with the interlopers meddling in their affairs. Their solution is unique indeed and everything would have worked out swell if not for inveterate tinkerer Peevy who has built his own prototype TV receiver and intercepted something he shouldn’t have…

The villains respond in typical manner but their big mistake is believing the planes sent to strafe Peevy’s hangar are enough to stop Rocketeer and The Spirit…

With J Bone stepping in to limn the final two chapters the high-octane tale ramps up into top gear as Cliff travels back to Central City with Spirit and the Dolans to find Betty, expose the sinister scheme of Trask and the Octopus, uncover the crooks’ treacherous connections to a certain Fascist foreign power, prevent America’s airwaves from being subverted and even save President Roosevelt from being assassinated by television in a rocket-paced, breathtaking rollercoaster ride that delivers non-stop thrills and chills…

Accompanied with an Introduction from Denis Kitchen, filling in all the necessary back-story on the iconic characters, and visually embellished by sketches and a large cover gallery by Darwyn Cooke, Smith, Jordie Bellaire, Bone and Chris Samnee, Pulp Friction is a no-nonsense fun-filled action frolic to delight lovers of the good old days of Thud and Blunder…
© 2014 The Rocketeer Trust and Will Eisner Studios, Inc. The Rocketeer is a registered trademark of, and all related characters, their distinctive likenesses and indicia are trademarks of The Rocketeer Trust. All Rights Reserved. The Spirit © 2014 Will Eisner Studios, Inc. The Spirit and Will Eisner™ Will Eisner Studios, Inc. ® in the US Patent and Trademark Office. All Rights Reserved.

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The Phoenix Presents… Lost Tales


By Adam Murphy (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910989-19-7

The educational power of comic strips has been long understood and acknowledged: if you can make material memorably enjoyable, there is nothing that can’t be taught better with pictures. The obverse is also true: comics can make any topic or subject come alive and reveal how even the most ancient or alien of cultures is just people like us wearing different hats…

The same amiable ethos and graphic versatility that made Adam Murphy’s wonderful Corpse Talk collections such a treasure to read and learn with also informs this superb collection of visualised folk tales, gathered from distant, less-frequented corners of the world; ones not generally seen in our schools or nurseries.

In 2012 Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched an anthological weekly comic for girls and boys channelling the grand old days of British picture-story entertainment. Every issue offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material: a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy.

Since its premiere, The Phoenix has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who really count – the totally engaged kids and parents who read it. Inevitably the publishers have branched out into a wonderful line of superbly engaging graphic novel compilations, the latest of which will magically broaden every reader’s fantasy landscape…

This superb compilation of tales – first seen in The Phoenix – goes beguilingly beyond mythical borders established by generations of westernised kids reared primarily on the works of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, and offers tantalising flavours far fresher to the jaded fantasy palate.

However, when you look closer, you’ll soon see that the themes, problems and solutions don’t vary that much and might well be universal…

Opening proceedings is ‘Strong Wind and Little Scabs’ which comes from the Mi’kmaq tradition of North America, detailing how a poor girl brutalised and maltreated by her older sisters becomes the wife of a god-like hero, after which ‘The Gifts of Wali Dad’ takes us to the ancient Punjab where a poor yet virtuous man finds his harmony and inner peace disrupted by too much wealth…

An old Romani legend becomes ‘Lucky Jim and the Golden Hair of the Sun’ as a vile king learns his daughter is fated to marry a simple gypsy peasant. His many scandalous attempts to thwart fate are futile and bring about his own doom, whilst a tale of avarice and guile defeated by honesty and ever sharper wits is revealed in ‘Two Merchants’, which comes from the lost Central African kingdom of Kanem-Bornu…

An honest, adoring but extremely simple peach-seller once married a beautiful and smart woman who gave him a drawing of her to keep him always happy. When he lost ‘The Picture Wife’ she was then compelled to orchestrate his rise to the heights of society in feudal Japan, before Brazil brings us a heartbreaking tragedy of sea-monsters, broken friendships and shallow, forgetful princesses which explains ‘Why the Sea Moans’…

The high price of casual ingratitude informs the Russian fable of ‘The Snow Daughter’ who was magically bestowed upon a childless old couple and this fabulous lexicon of international wonders closes far closer to home with a Scottish tale of greedy, gullible and ultimately evil landowners who covet the precious few passions of a poor crofter. Thankfully, the old farmer has wits far surpassing the money and vicious intentions of his adversaries and ‘Riben, Robin and Donald McDonald’ has a happy ending with just deserts liberally served all around…

Witty, welcoming and utterly beguiling, The Phoenix Presents… Lost Tales seductively introduces readers to the myths of a wider world, and is also a fabulously fun read no parent or kid could possibly resist.
Text and illustrations © Adam Murphy 2015. All rights reserved.

The Phoenix Presents… Lost Tales will be released on August 4th 2016 and is available for pre-order now.
Why not check out the Phoenix experience at https://www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk/ and see what Adam’s up to at http://adammurphy.com/portfolio/comics/