Category: Humour

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Dreamworks Dragons – Riders of Berk volume 5: The Legend of Ragnarok


By Simon Furman, Jack Lawrence, Sara Richard & various (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-080-1

DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk and its follow-up Defenders of Berk are part of one of the most popular cartoon franchises around. Loosely adapted from Cressida Cowell’s engagingly energetic children’s books, the show is based upon and set between the How to Train Your Dragon movies. Of course if you have children you are almost certainly already aware of that already.

Wowing young and old alike across the globe, the series also spawned a series of comic albums. This fifth digest-sized collection features another epic encounter scripted by the ever-enthralling Simon Furman and ably illuminated Jack Lawrence, plus a delicious solo vignette.

In case you’re not absolutely au fait with the exhilarating world of the wondrous winged reptiles: brilliant but introverted boy-hero Hiccup saved his island people from being overrun by hostile dragons by understanding them. Now he and his unruly teenaged compatriots of the Dragon Rider Academy gleefully roam the skies with their devoted scaly friends, getting into trouble and generally saving the day.

When not squabbling with each other, the trusty teens strive to keep the peace between the vast variety of wondrous Wyrms and isolated Berk island’s bellicose Viking settlers.

These days, the dragons have all been generally domesticated, and the Riders’ daily duties generally involve finding, taming and cataloguing new species whilst protecting the settlement from attacks by far nastier folk such as Alvin the Treacherous and his piratical Outcasts and – all too often – fresh horrors and menaces…

As usual, before the comic confrontations commence there’s a brace of information pages reintroducing Hiccup and his devoted Night Fury Toothless, as well as tomboyish Astrid on Deadly Nadder Stormfly, obnoxious jock Snotlout astride his Monstrous Nightmare Hookfang, portly dragon-scholar Fishlegs on ponderous Gronckle Meatlug and the dim, jovially violent twins Tuffnut & Ruffnut on two-headed Zippleback Barf &Belch. Also afforded quick name-checks are Hiccup’s dad Chief Stoick, chief armourer/advisor Gobber and insidious arch-enemy Alvin too…

Completed by the colouring wizardry of Digikore and lettering from Jim Campbell, ‘The Legend of Ragnarok’ opens with our young champions romping in the sky as, far below, village pest and incurable dragon-hater Mildew rants on about the End of Days and unavoidable coming of the all-consuming Midgard Serpent.

Gobber and Stoick don’t give much credence to his babblings about Ragnarok, but they are concerned by the recent sea-quake, and subsequent whirlpools and tidal surges. In response the Chief reluctantly orders the recall of the fishing ships and sea patrols…

Hiccup, meanwhile, has troubles of his own. He’s never yet met a dragon he couldn’t befriend but the unruly Changewing he’s currently trying to train at the academy might ruin his spotless record. Not only is she incredibly hostile, but whenever he looks into her eyes the beast hypnotises him. He’s pretty fed up with regaining consciousness in the rafters of the great hall or on the edge of cliffs…

Turbulent seas continue to batter the island and as the Berk boats come in obsessed marauder Alvin takes his chances and launches a full invasion. The bizarre conditions have also unsettled the dragons, so Hiccup and Astrid are braving the skies on watch when they spot a stampede of terrified wild saurians from other islands. As they close in, however, the roiling seas are breached by the biggest monster they have ever seen.

Can the island-sized beast possibly be the Midgard Serpent, herald of the world’s ending?

Alvin doesn’t care. It wrecked his ships and his plans so he’s considering temporarily allying with Stoick to destroy it…

As it rears above Berk, ready to smash the island to shards, learned Fishlegs identifies it as a Leviathan-class Seashocker – commonly known as a Purple Death – before rallying with the villagers, Alvin’s Outcasts and the Dragon Riders for their last battle.

Hiccup meanwhile has hatched a desperate plan involving the cantankerously mesmerising Changewing which might save them all… as long as his newest conquest plays along…

Counterbalancing the apocalyptic action is a short tale starring Astrid by Furman & Sara Richard. ‘Queen of the Hill’ finds the feisty female warrior and faithful Stormfly washed up on a mystery island and menaced by a horde of Smothering Smokebreaths. With her dragon wounded and her axe lost, Astrid has to devise a cunning way to keep the predators at bay until help comes or her companion heals…

Although ostensibly crafted for excitable juniors and TV kids, this is another sterling example of supremely smart and funny adventure-sagas no self-indulging fun-fan or action aficionado of any age or vintage should miss: compelling, enticing, and splendidly satisfying.
© 2015 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C.

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The Story of My Tits


By Jennifer Hayden (Top Shelf Productions)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-054-4

Here’s a short sharp review for an exceedingly weighty and fabulously entertaining tome. If the word “Tits” offends you in any way – GOOD! – that’s partly the point and besides, now that you’ve been sufficiently outraged you might as well read on before dashing off and buying the book…

This huge monochrome tome (198 x 203 x 28 x mm) is an agonisingly hilarious cartoon autobiography by an astonishingly funny, amazingly forthright and relentlessly brave woman dealing with far more than her fair share of misfortune. As her tale captivatingly depicts, Jennifer Hayden (Underwire, Rushes, S’crapbook) came to cartooning late after years muddling through as a commercial writer and children’s book illustrator. Her artistic epiphany came when she was dealing with a ghastly medical diagnosis and stumbled upon a fellow sufferer’s own cancer-narrative graphic journal…

Comprising a breathtaking assemblage of key moments, this quirky quilt of rib-ticklers and gut-punches opens with the author’s early days with ‘No Tits’ describing a life “flat as a board” until biology finally works its inevitable magic. It also introduces her uniquely human and utterly irresistible family…

The amiable amble towards adulthood continues in ‘Still No Tits!’ before ‘What, Tits?’ sees little Jenny’s dreams start to come true after a big change that strangely coincides with an increased awareness of Boys…

As is so often the case, life should come with a warning to be careful what you wish for as ‘What Tits!’ concentrates on college days and boyfriends, eventually introducing musician Jim who will play a major role in the decades to come. More important, however, is his wonderful mother and boisterous brothers…

Real life thunders in with ‘Sick Tits’ when Jennifer’s mum gets a devastating diagnosis and has a mastectomy. Her reaction is far from what her excitable daughter expects or understands…

With the family in turmoil ‘Tits in Philly’ sees Jenny upping stakes to get away; living with Jim until ‘Tits in Jersey’ sees them both move in with his mother. Life goes on and the lovers make a pretty good go of being just like grown-ups. Then once again cancer hits someone they both can’t do without…

‘Tits Al Fresco’ pithily observes the modern trauma of dealing with divorce and the unwholesome fallout of having to handle three “mothers”…

The long-dreaded inevitable finally happens in ‘Tender Tits’ but after the birth of their first child (hah, gotcha!) life gets even more convoluted for Jennifer and Jim with ‘Tits at Dawn’. With the extended family gradually dying away, it’s only after Jennifer’s second child and her development of ‘Mom Tits’ that years of ordinary living narrow down to the moment of her own breast-cancer diagnosis thanks to mammography and ‘Tits on Film’.

Jennifer Hayden was 43 when she made the bold decision which changed and probably saved her, and these scenes and snapshots of her life as it changed to accommodate breast cancer are some of the bravest, most poignant and blackly funniest in this journal. Her world becomes increasingly filled with doctors, counsellors, well-wishers, survivors and fellow patients. Through it all though, that big, big family is there… even if her closest acquaintances aren’t…

‘No More Tits’ shares the days of surgery and beyond, leading to an oddly circular regression to her earliest days whilst coping strategies and mundane daily adjustments vie for attention in ‘Goddess Tits’ before the contemporary world catches up and the tale moves away from us in ‘The End: UnTITled’… (although there is a heart-warming Epilogue sent from idyllic sunny ‘Titaly’…

Potent, honest, passionately matter-of-fact and phenomenally entertaining, this is a marvel of philosophical resolve and practical defiance that nobody can read without laughing, crying, getting scared and feeling lucky.
© & ™ 2015 Jennifer Hayden.

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Mega Robo Bros volume 1


By Neill Cameron with Lisa Murphy (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-83-4

In 2012 David Fickling Books launched a traditional anthology comic for girls and boys reviving the good old days of picture-story entertainment Intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in terms of delivery and Content. Each strip-packed issue of The Phoenix offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy. In the years since its premiere, the magazine has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who actually matter – the perpetually-engaged kids and parents who read it every week…

Just like the golden age of Beano, Dandy and other childhood treasures, The Phoenix masterfully manages the magical trick of marrying hilarious comedy with enthralling adventure serials… sometimes in the same scintillating strip such as the stars of this latest compilation: a mega-magnificent sci fi frolic packed into an extra-long full-colour lexicon of high-octane comedy-action.

Plunging straight into the enchanting immersive experience, we open in a futuristic London on a Monday morning. Alex and his younger brother Freddie have missed the airbus for school and dad has to take them. It’s a uniquely Sharma-family catastrophe…

In most ways the boys are typical: boisterous, fractious kids, always arguing, but devoted to each other and not too bothered that they’re adopted. It’s also no big deal to them that they were created by the mysterious Dr. Roboticus before he vanished and are considered by those in the know as the most powerful robots on Earth.

For now though it’s enough that Mum and Dad love them, even though the Robo Bros are a bit more of a handful than most kids. They live as normal a life as possible; going to school, making friends, putting up with bullies and hating homework: it’s all part of the ‘Mega Robo Routine’…

This week, however, things are a little different. On Wednesday the lads meet Baroness Farooq of covert agency R.A.I.D. (Robotics Analysis Intelligence and Defence) who is initially unimpressed but changes her mind after seeing what they do to her squad of Destroyer Mechs – all while between singing rude songs, reading comics and squabbling with each other.

Thursday is even better. As a treat, the entire family goes to Robo World where little Freddy rescues a trio of malfunctioning exhibits. The baby triceratops with dog-programming is ok, but the French-speaking deranged ape and gloomy existentialist penguin will be a handful…

And all because Mum was trying to explain how her sons’ sentience makes them different from all other mechanoids…

Friday wasn’t so good. Alex had another one of his nightmares, of the time before they came to live with the Sharmas…

With the scene exquisitely set, the drama kicks into overdrive with ‘Mega Robo School Trip’ as a visit to the museum gives a hidden menace watching the boys the opportunity to create chaos by hacking the exhibits and forcing the boys to use all their super-powers to set things right. It takes all of the Baroness’ astounding influence to hush up the incident. The boys are supposed to be getting as normal a childhood as possible, with friends and family aware that they’re artificial and sentient, but not that they are unstoppable weapons systems.

Now some malign force seems determined to “out” the Robo Bros for an unspecified but undoubtedly sinister purpose…

Even greater cloaking measures are necessary when the enemy causes a sky-train crash and the boys very publicly prevent a ‘Mega Robo Disaster’, but even they are starting to realise something big is up and Mum is a bit extraordinary herself.

Then Freddy overhears some disturbing news about another one of Dr. Roboticus’ other creations in ‘Mega Robo Full House’…

The crisis comes in ‘Mega Robo Royal Rumble’ after Gran takes Alex and Freddy to a Royal Street Party outside Buckingham Palace. When the hidden enemy hacks the giant robot guards and sets them loose on the Queen and her family, the wonder-bots have to save them on live TV beamed around the world. The secret is out…

Now the entire world is camped outside their quiet little house, so Mum has R.A.I.D. restore some semblance of the ‘Mega Robo Status Quo’ by building a super-secret tunnel system in the cellar. It’s a big day all around: Farooq is finally convinced that Alex is at last ready to join R.A.I.D. as a full-fledged operative… after school and on weekends, of course…

Freddy is far from happy to learn that he’s not invited. The Baroness still considers him too young and immature…

He quickly proves it when big brother Alex becomes the ‘Mega Robo Secret Agent’. Freddy at last shares with dad the real reason he’s acting up, but has the opportunity to redeem himself and save the day when the ‘Mega Robo Nemesis’ at last makes his move and Alex finds himself completely out of his depth. Then only Freddy can save the day… if anyone can…

Written and drawn by Neill Cameron (Tamsin of the Deep, How to Make Awesome Comics, Pirates of Pangea), this is an astonishingly engaging tale which rockets along, blending outrageous comedy with warmth, wit and incredible verve. Alex and Freddy are utterly authentic boys, irrespective of their artificial origins, and their exploits strike exactly the right balance of future shock, family fun and bombastic superhero action to capture readers’ hearts and minds. With the right budget and producer what a movie this would make!

Unmissable excitement for kids of all ages and vintage, this is a true “must-have” item.

Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2016. All rights reserved.
Mega Robo Bros will be released on June 2nd 2016 and is available for pre-order now.

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Yakari and the Great Burrow


By Derib & Job, coloured by Dominque and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-272-0

Children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded in 1964 by Swiss journalist André Jobin who then wrote for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later he hired fellow French-Swiss artist Claude de Ribaupierre who chose the working name “Derib”. He had begun his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs), working on Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Spirou. Together they created the splendid Adventures of the Owl Pythagore before striking pure comics gold a couple of years later with their next collaboration.

Launching in 1969, Yakari detailed the life of a young Sioux boy on the Great Plains; sometime after the introduction of horses by the Conquistadores and before the coming of the modern White Man.

Overflowing with gentle whimsy, the beguiling strip explores a sublimely bucolic existence at one with nature and generally free from strife. For the sake of our entertainment however the seasons are punctuated with the odd crisis, generally resolved without fame or fanfare by a little lad who is smart, compassionate, brave… and can converse with all animals…

Derib – equally excellent in both enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style yarns and with devastatingly compelling meta-realistic action illustrated action epics – went on to become one of the Continent’s most prolific and revered creators. It’s a crime that such groundbreaking strips as Celui-qui-est-né-deux-fois, Jo (the first comic on AIDS ever published), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne) haven’t been translated into English yet, but we wait in hope and anticipation…

Many of his stunning works over the decades feature his beloved Western themes, magnificent geographical backdrops and epic landscapes and Yakari is considered by most fans and critics to be the feature which catapulted him to deserved mega-stardom.

Originally released in 1984, Le Grand Terrier was the tenth European album and recently became Cinebook’s lucky 13th, but chronology and continuity addicts won’t suffer unless they are of a superstitious turn of mind since this tale is both stunningly simple and effectively timeless; offering certain enjoyment from a minimum of foreknowledge…

It all begins one bright sunny morning as the boy brave boldly follows a succession of strange arrows in the grass: a unique trail designed to lure him into a cunning mystery.

Riding four-legged friend Little Thunder, Yakari treks far across the prairie but only finds a taunting voice challenging him to return tomorrow if he thinks he’s a “real Sioux”…

The next day, as he enters a wooded area he’s pelted with little stones and furiously chases two bear cubs into a deep tunnel in the earth. It’s merely the start of a vast network of tunnels and dead-ends: an underground maze which seems to promise a slow doom. Lost and despondent, when things look their very bleakest, Yakari learns the truth when his animal friends Linden Tree the beaver, Black Mask the raccoon and little bears Huckle and Berry erupt into the subterranean chamber. The fun-loving youngsters have turned an old hibernation hole into a terrific den for adventures and prank-playing…

With Yakari a willing partner, the assorted cubs then collaborate to drive the bears’ parents crazy. It works far too well, however, and when the ponderous hairy heavyweights collide in a frenzy of frustrated pursuit, their terrific impact shakes the earth and collapses the kids’ escape tunnels…

Bolting sunwards in panic, the youngsters head for the surface… but only three of them make it…

Now it’s a frantic race against time as Yakari assembles all his beastly buddies in a mammoth rescue attempt before time and air run out…

Always visually spectacular, seductively smart and happily heart-warming, Job’s smart yet spartan script again affords Derib a splendid opportunity to go wild with the illustrations; crating a momentous, claustrophobic scenario which only makes the eventual happy ending even more unlikely until it actually happens…

The exploits of this valiant little voyager who speaks to animals and enjoys a unique place in an exotic world is a decades-long celebration of joyously gentle, marvellously moving and enticingly entertaining adventure, honouring and eulogising an iconic culture with grace, wit, wonder and especially humour.

These seductive sagas are true landmarks of comics and Yakari is a strip no fan of graphic entertainment should ignore.
Original edition © 1984 Derib + Job – Editions du Lombard (Dargaud- Lombard s.a.) English translation 2015 © Cinebook Ltd.

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The Broons: Facsimile Edition of the First Ever Broons Annual


By R.D. Low & Dudley D. Watkins (D.C. Thomson/Aurum)
ISBN: 978-0-85116-

The Broons is one of the longest running newspaper strips in British history, having appeared well-nigh continuously in Scottish periodical The Sunday Post since the March 8th edition of 1936. That same issue launched equally timeless cartoon stable-mate and icon of Hibernian tradition Oor Wullie: a mischievous wee laddie who epitomises carefree youthful excess.

Both the boisterous boy and the gregariously engaging working class family were co-created by journalist, writer and Editor Robert Duncan Low in conjunction with DC Thomson’s most celebrated cartoonist Dudley D. Watkins. Both were overnight hits and instantly unmissable so within a few short years the weekly episode strips began to be collected in reprint editions as Seasonal Annuals. Those books alternated stars and years right up to the present day.

The book under discussion here comes from 2006: a magnificent recreation of that first Broons Annual compendium as launched in 1939. It’s a sturdy hardback with monochrome interiors, crammed full of gags and wholesome family fun delivered with gleeful exuberance by masters of the comedy comics form, lavishly presented in its own card slipcase.

Low (1895-1980) began at the Scottish publishing monolith as a journalist and quickly rose to the post of Managing Editor of Children’s Publication. Between 1921 and 1933 he created the company’s “Big Five” story-papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur. These were text-base adventure weeklies liberally illustrated and 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.

As cited above this landmark illustrated accessory began on 8th March and from the very outset The Broons and Oor Wullie were its undisputed top draws…

Low’s shrewdest notion was to devise both strips as comedies played out in the charismatic Scottish idiom and broad unforgettable vernacular where – 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.

After some devious devising in December 1937 Low premiered the first DC Thomson weekly comic. The Dandy was followed by The Beano in 1938 and early-reading title The Magic Comic in 1939.

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

Watkins soldiered on in unassailable triumph 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 both strips in the newspaper and the Annuals for seven years before a replacement was agreed upon, whilst 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 Broons reflected changing times and ordinary life for generations of readers; sharing trials and triumphs and celebrating each changing year with unflagging wit, warmth and inspired, self-deprecating buffoonery. For fans outside Scotland – like me – they always conjure feeling of holidays and special moments, so on this wet Bank Holiday (it’s always raining somewhere on a public vacation day) I’m reliving a halcyon time…

So What’s the Set Up?: the multigenerational Brown family inhabit a tenement flat at 10 Glebe Street, in the timelessly metafictional Scottish industrial everytown of Auchentogle (or sometimes Auchenshoogle), based in large part on the working class Glasgow district of Auchenshuggle. 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 yes, a huge part of the laugh track comes from the gloriously rich accent humour deriving from the Scots idiom and cultural consciousness.

If it’s good enough for Sir Harry Lauder, Andy Stewart, Stanley Baxter, Bill Forsyth, Chic Murray, Billy Connolly, Craig Ferguson, Frankie Boyle, Susan Calman…

As is always the case, the adamant, unswerving cornerstone of any family feature is long-suffering, understanding Maw, who puts up with cantankerous, cheap know-it-all Paw, and a battalion of stay-at-home kids comprising 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 gruffly patriarchal clod Granpaw – a comedic gadfly who spends more time at Glebe Street than his own cottage and constantly tries to impart his decades of hard-earned but painfully outdated experience to the kids… but do they listen?

In later years they family would grow a bit better off, taking regular breaks from the inner city turmoil whilst simultaneously sentimentalising, spoofing and memorialising more traditional times at their But ‘n’ Ben (a dilapidated rustic cottage in the Highlands) but in these initial pre-war tales the range of any excursion is simply the inner city and wherever a day-trip by charabanc or steam train can take the bustling, boisterous clan…

The endless escapades of these formative strips comprise timeless subject-matter such as oldster’s teasing young ‘uns about their beaus, males thinking they know best whether its cleaning fire-grates, mopping floors or organising parties, or females jockeying for social status. You can learn the real cost of a “bargain”, the wisdom of holding your tongue and the value of one night of actual peace and quiet…

All the kids live in a comfortably secure world of playing, pranking and stopping out late, whilst neighbours are equal parts pains-in-the-necks and salts-of-the-earth. But as well as slapstick shenanigans – ranging from plumbing pitfalls, decorating disasters, fireplace fiascos, food foolishness, dating dilemmas, appliance atrocities, fashion freak-outs, party panics, bothered Bobbies, excessive exercising, chore-dodging, galling goofs, family frolics and sly jests – there’s a sense of unified purpose and progress made, with the Broons part of a proper working community.

The overall impression is that, unlike today when the phrase is no more than cynically exploitative lip-service from a crass, glib plutocracy intent on disempowering everyone poorer than themselves, folks back then were genuinely “all in it together” just to get by.

And Low and Watkins made it funny and rewarding…

Packed with all-ages fun, rambunctious hilarity and deliriously domestic warmth, this exemplary example of happy domesticity convivially celebrates a mythic lost life and time and is a sure cure for post-modern glums…
The Broons ™ and © D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. 2006.

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Dreamworks Dragons – Riders of Berk volume 4: The Stowaway


By Simon Furman, Iwan Nazif & various (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-079-5

DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk and its follow-up Defenders of Berk are part of one of the most popular cartoon franchises around. Loosely adapted from Cressida Cowell’s gloriously charming children’s books, the show is based upon and set between the How to Train Your Dragon movies. Of course if you have children you are almost certainly already aware of that already.

Having wowed young and old alike across the globe, the series has also spawned a series of comic albums and this third digest-sized collection features two stellar incendiary serpentine sagas scripted as ever by the ever-enthralling Simon Furman.

In case you’re not absolutely au fait with the exhilarating word of winged reptiles: brilliant but introverted boy-hero Hiccup saved his island people from being overrun by hostile dragons by befriending them. Now he and his unruly teenaged compatriots of the Dragon Rider Academy gleefully roam the skies with their devoted scaly friends, getting into trouble and generally saving the day.

When not squabbling with each other, the trusty teens strive to keep the peace between the vast variety of wondrous Wyrms and isolated Berk island’s bellicose Viking settlers.

These days, now the dragons have all been generally domesticated, those duties generally involve finding, taming and cataloguing new species whilst protecting village and farms from constant attacks by far nastier folk such as Alvin the Treacherous and his fleet of piratical Outcasts and, all too often, fresh horrors…

As usual, before the comic confrontations commence action takes wing there’s a brace of handy information pages reintroducing Hiccup and his devoted Night Fury Toothless, as well as tomboyish Astrid on Deadly Nadder Stormfly, obnoxious jock Snotlout and Monstrous Nightmare Hookfang, portly dragon-scholar Fishlegs on ponderous Gronckle Meatlug and the terribly dim yet jovially violent twins Tuffnut and Ruffnut on double-headed Zippleback Belch & Barf. There’s also a quick intro for big boss Stoick and chief armourer Gobber…

Eponymous epic ‘The Stowaway’ (illustrated by Iwan Nazif with the colouring wizardry of Digikore and lettering from Jim Campbell) opens with our young champions joyously training in the sky when a trading ship docks. The merchants of the Fraghen have had to fight their way through an Outcast blockade to deliver their wares, but don’t seem too badly damaged. Moreover, as well as trade-goods they bring a gorgeous lad named Hroar: a real devotee of dragons who had somehow managed to stow away on the long-ship all the way from distant Knaff…

The brawny young barbarian Adonis is gregarious, makes friends easily and says all the right things. Hiccup wishes he could like him, but there’s just something too perfect about his colleagues’ new best friend.

…And besides, Toothless clearly doesn’t trust him…

Astrid does, though, and Hroar also does everything he can to make himself liked by the other dragon riders. Nevertheless, whenever a minor spat or problem with the flying reptiles disrupts the daily routine, the stowaway is there. In fact there are a lot of little incidents. The big beasts all seem very fractious these days…

The bonny boy is popular with the adults too, particularly Hiccup’s father Stoick who pressures his son to admit Hroar to the Dragon Academy. Bowing to the inevitable, Hiccup maliciously pairs the neophyte with the ferocious Typhoomerang Torch. After far too short an interval, the boy from Knaff is showing them all up…

Convinced something untoward is going on, Hiccup starts questioning the trader crew and reaches a shocking conclusion. Sadly it’s just a shade too late as Hroar has already lured Astrid into a trap on distant Dragon Island.

Now it’s up to Hiccup and his friends to save her from a sinister villain with a secret power no dragon rider has ever seen before…

Cue spectacular climactic battle, hard-won victory and satisfying comeuppance…

Although ostensibly crafted for excitable juniors and TV kids, this is another sublimely smart and funny saga no self-indulging fun-fan or action aficionado of any age or vintage should miss: compelling, enticing, and wickedly wonderful.
©2015 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C.

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Captain Pugwash Comic Book Collection


By John Ryan (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84780-384-9

John Ryan was an artist and storyteller who straddled three distinct disciplines of graphic narrative, with equal qualitative if not financial success. The son of a diplomat, Ryan was born in Edinburgh on March 4th 1921, and undertook his military service in Burma and India. After being de-mobbed and attending the Regent Street Polytechnic from 1946 to 1948, he took up a post as assistant Art Master at Harrow School from 1948 to 1955. It was during this time that he began contributing strips to Fulton Press publications.

On April 14th 1950 Britain’s grey, post-war gloom was partially lifted with the first issue of a new comic that literally gleamed with light and colour. Avid children were soon understandably enraptured; blown away by the gloss and dazzle of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, a charismatic star-turn venerated to this day as well as a host of other spectacularly illustrated stories strips and features.

The Eagle was a tabloid-sized paper with full-colour inserts alternating with text and a range of various other comic features. “Tabloid” is a really big page and you can fit a lot of material onto each one. Deep within, on the bottom third of a monochrome page, was an 8-panel strip entitled ‘Captain Pugwash – The story of a Bad Buccaneer and the many Sticky Ends which nearly befell him’ delivered with dash and aplomb by the aforementioned Mr. Ryan.

The indefatigable artist’s quirkily effective, welcomingly spiky style also lent itself to the numerous spot illustrations required throughout the comic every week and he even found time to regularly produce ‘Lettice Leefe, the Greenest Girl in School’ for Eagle‘s distaff companion comic Girl.

Pugwash, his harridan of a wife and the useless, lazy crew of the Black Pig ran until issue #19 when the feature disappeared.

This was no real hardship as Ryan had been writing and illustrating the incomparable and brilliantly mordant ‘Harris Tweed – Extra Special Agent’; a full page (tabloid, remember, upwards of twenty cram-packed and meticulously detail-stuffed panels per huge page, per week) from The Eagle #16 onwards.

Tweed ran for three years as a full page until 1953 when it dropped to a half-page strip and was repositioned as a purely comedic venture.

In 1956 the indefatigable old salt (I’m referring to Horatio Pugwash, but it could so easily be Ryan: an unceasing story-peddler with a big family, he still found time to be head cartoonist at the Catholic Herald for four decades) made the jump to children’s picture books and animated features for television.

The not-so-scurvy seadog washed up next in A Pirate Story: a proper illustrated children’s book and the first official first Pugwash chronicle. It was originally published by Bodley Head before the budding franchise switched to children’s publishing specialist Puffin. It was the first of a vast (sorry nautical puns are contagious, they really, really Arrr!) run of children’s books on a number of different subjects. Pugwash himself starred in 21 tomes; there were a dozen books based on the animated TV series Ark Stories, as well as Sir Prancelot and numerous other inspired creations.

Ryan worked whenever he wanted to in the comic world and eventually the books and the strips began to cross-fertilise.

When A Pirate Story was released in 1957, the BBC wisely pounced on the property, commissioning Ryan to produce a series of 5-minute black-&-white cartoon episodes (86 in all from 1957 to 1968, which were later reformatted in full colour and rebroadcast in 1976). In the budding 1950s arena of animated television cartoons, Ryan developed an entirely new system for producing cheap, high-quality animations to a tremendously tight deadline.

Naturally he began with Pugwash, keeping the adventure milieu, but replaced the Captain’s shrewish wife with a tried-and-true boy assistant. Tom the Cabin Boy is the only capable member of an astoundingly affable and inept crew which included such visual archetypes as Willy, Pirate Barnabas and Master Mate (fat, thin and tall – all dim and not at all bloodthirsty) instantly affirming to the rapt, young audience that grown-ups are fools and kids do, in fact, rule.

Ryan also drew a weekly Pugwash strip in the Radio Times for eight years, before going on to produce other animated series including Mary, Mungo and Midge, The Friendly Giant and Sir Prancelot, plus adaptations of some of his many children’s books. In 1997 an all new CGI-based Pugwash animated TV series began. There was even a thematic prequel in Admiral Fatso Fitzpugwash, in which it was revealed that the not-so-salty seadog had a medieval ancestor who became England’s First Sea Lord, despite being terrified of water…

John Ryan returned to pirate life in the 1980s, drawing new Pugwash storybooks. In swift succession he released The Secret of the San Fiasco, The Battle of Bunkum Bay and The Quest of the Golden Handshake, all joyously gathered in this resoundingly ample (194 x 254 mm) full-colour paperback…

The first Pugwash storybooks were traditional in format, with blocks of text and single illustrations illuminating a particular moment. By 1982 however the entire affair had evolved into lavishly painted comic strips, with standard word balloons on splendid panoramic double-page spreads or informative and complex layouts of as many as eight panels per page.

A fitting circularity to his careers and a nice treat for us old-fashioned comic drones, this trio of tales finds the master at his most exceptional and opens with The Secret of the San Fiasco, as the somewhat shaky stalwarts of the Black Pig fetch up in not-so-scenic Bogle Bay on Scotland’s wind-lashed Atlantic coast.

Ostensibly in search of a little holiday-break, the lads are actually hunting a fabulous treasure lost since the days of the Armada, when a gold-packed Spanish galleon apparently vanished into a solid cliff-face.

Many clever, greedy people have failed to find the treasure ever since 1588, but Pugwash is certain he will succeed. However as he and the crew check into draughty Bogle Castle, they are struck by the forbidding nature of the place and the sinister aspect of the only attendant, McGroggie the caretaker. They’re not amiss in their suspicions: as he terrifies them with spooky tales they are blissfully unaware that the old scoundrel is working with Pugwash’s arch-enemy Cut-Throat Jake…

After a night of terrifying noises and spooky events the cowardly Captain, Willy, Barnabas and Master Mate are quivering wrecks but intrepid Cabin Boy Tom is on the case and has tracked down the imprisoned Laird, heard the full true story of the San Fiasco’s end and deduced the treasure ship’s final resting place.

Sadly, as he leads his shipmates to the hidden trove, Jake and McGroggie are ready to pounce, but after the villains get away Scot free, the rogues fall out as rogues so often do…

The Pugwash stories are gloriously adrift sometime in the 18th century, never too closely bound by continuity whilst benefiting from many of the most momentous moments of a deliciously pick-&-mix grasp of history.

The wily Captain next bobs up during (another) war between England and France. The Battle of Bunkum Bay sees the seedy seamen sailing to the Pajamah Islands in search of a foundered Spanish bullion ship, but said wreck is slap-bang in the middle of two warring fleets. As has been previously noted, Pugwash is good at plans and sourcing loot, but terrible at keeping secrets, and his endeavours have again been observed by Cut-Throat Jake who follows the treasure-hunters at a cautious distance.

When they all reach the Pajamah Islands, the vile buccaneer hijacks Tom’s brilliant trick to sneak between the combative fleets of British Admiral Sir Splycemeigh-Mainbrace and his French rival Admiral the Marquis de Frilly de Pommes-Frites, but just this once canny Tom has overlooked a flaw in his usually impeccable thinking…

Jake leaves the hapless heroes in a dire death-trap and sails off, only to get calamitously caught up in the middle of the legendarily embarrassing Bunkum Bay maritime disaster, allowing Tom time to save the day and lead the Captain to an unaccustomed profit on his schemes…

Closing the piratical peregrinations is The Quest of the Golden Handshake, wherein our querulous, quivering Captain finds a genuine treasure map at an auction. All too soon though, a bidding-war with nefarious nemesis Cut-Throat Jake turns into a full-blown riot in which the coveted chart is torn a-twain…

Never knowingly daunted, Pugwash and company steal Jake’s half of the map that night but on returning to the safety of the Black Pig are horrified to discover that their rival has had the same idea…

Luckily the brilliant cabin boy had anticipated the move and copied their portion of the priceless document. Heartened and enraptured by thoughts of vast wealth, the crew hastily set sail for the Americas, determined to plunder the fabled Lost Treasure of the Stinkas…

Devious Jake, however, smuggles himself and a burly accomplice aboard, planning to let Pugwash do all the heavy lifting whilst awaiting a golden moment to claim revenge and the loot…

Packed with in-jokes, glorious tom-foolery and daring adventure, the voyage to the New World in a “haunted” ship culminates in a splendid battle of (half) wits before Tom, as usual, saves the day in his quiet, competent and deucedly clever way…

Gripping, hilarious and packed with gloriously effective and educational art of the most eye-catching quality these magically wry and enchantingly smart yarns are amongst Ryan’s very best: a humorous hoard of comic gems for fans of all ages.

We don’t have that many multi-discipline successes in comics, so why don’t you go and find out why we should celebrate one who did it all, did it first and did it well? Your kids will thank you and, if you’ve any life left in your old and weary adult fan’s soul, you will too…
© 1983, 1984, 1985, 1992, 2012 the Estate of John Ryan. All rights reserved.

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Dreamworks Dragons – Riders of Berk volume 3: The Ice Castle


By Simon Furman, Jack Lawrence, Stephen Downey & various (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-078-8

DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk and its follow-up Defenders of Berk are part of one of the most popular cartoon franchises around. Loosely adapted from Cressida Cowell’s gloriously charming children’s books, the show is based upon and set between the How to Train Your Dragon movies. Of course if you have children you are almost certainly already aware of that already.

Having wowed young and old alike across the globe, the series has also spawned a series of comic albums and this third digest-sized collection features two stellar incendiary serpentine sagas scripted as ever by the ever-enthralling Simon Furman.

In case you’re not absolutely au fait with the exhilarating word of winged reptiles: brilliant but introverted boy-hero Hiccup saved his island people from being overrun by hostile dragons by befriending them. Now he and his unruly kid compatriots of the Dragon Rider Academy gleefully roam the skies with their devoted scaly friends, getting into trouble and generally saving the day.

When not squabbling with each other, the trusty teens strive to keep the peace between the vast variety of wondrous Wyrms and isolated Berk island’s bombastic Viking homesteaders.

These days, now that the dragons have all been more-or-less domesticated, those duties generally involve finding, taming and cataloguing new species or protecting the village and farms from constant attacks by far nastier folk such as Alvin the Treacherous and his fleet of piratical Outcasts and, occasionally, fresh unknown horrors…

As usual, before the action takes wing there’s a brace of handy information pages reintroducing Hiccup and his devoted Night Fury Toothless, as well as tom-boyish Astrid on Deadly Nadder Stormfly, obnoxious jock Snotlout and Monstrous Nightmare Hookfang, portly dragon-scholar Fishlegs on ponderous Gronckle Meatlug and the terribly dim yet jovially violent twins Tuffnut and Ruffnut on double-headed Zippleback Belch & Barf…

The eponymous epic of ‘The Ice Palace’ (illustrated by Jack Lawrence with the colouring wizardry of Digikore and lettering from Jim Campbell) sees the Berk islanders dealing with another deep-snow winter whilst welcoming unsavoury fur-trader Arngrim Dammen to show his wares. The skins he brings are warm, varied and fabulous, but Astrid is not impressed – until she feels the quality of the merchandise. Her earlier suspicions quickly return, though, once the trader starts asking too many questions about her dragon.

Arngrim blusters on into the small hours, drinking and telling tales to the village men, but there’s something in his manner which also makes smith and armourer Gobber anxious…

Next morning those feelings are proven right when Astrid finds Stormfly has been stolen. The village is in turmoil and the council of war fraught. The seas are vast and the number of islands the thief could head for countless. However, Gobber recalls one detail of the plunderer’s interminable tall-tales and guesses where the scoundel is headed…

As two ships full of angry warriors and Dragon Riders close on their quarry, Hiccup and Astrid take to the skies on Toothless and see a huge number of vessels all on the same heading…

Their destination is clearly Balder Bay, but the Berk longboats can’t sail straight in amongst all those clearly hostile ships. They need to sneak up somehow. Then Gobber directs them to around the island to a terrifying natural feature: a massive wall of lethal jagged icicles known as the Ice Needles…

As Hiccup’s father Chief Stoick leads the men of Berk in the daunting task of scaling the Needles, the Dragon Riders head out on a reconnaissance mission and discover an incredible castle of ice in a vast crater, with Arngrim inside preparing to make the sale of a lifetime. Unfortunately some of that stolen booty is deadly dragon eggs and they’re ready to hatch…

Ending in a fast and furious fight scene of epic proportions, this rip-roaring yarn is a tense and suspenseful action-packed delight.

Cleansing the palate after all that drama is a humour-drenched episode starring brash, testosterone-soaked Snotlout who is forced by Gobber to be a ‘Litter Sitter’ for a day.

With art by Stephen Downey, colours from John Charles and letters by Campbell, the trials of the burly brute as he watches over a rambunctious brood of baby Monstrous Nightmares is a splendid blend of slapstick and sloppy, sticky sentiment…

Despite being ostensibly aimed at excitable juniors and TV kids, this sublimely sharp tome is the kind of smart and engaging fantasy romp no self-indulging fun-fan of any vintage should miss: accessible, entertaining, and wickedly habit-forming.
© 2015 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C.

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Von Doogan and the Great Air Race


By Lorenzo Etherington (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-82-7

These days, young kids are far more likely to find their formative strip narrative experiences online or between the card-covers of specially tailored graphic novels rather than the comics and periodicals of my long-dead youth.

Once upon a time, however, the comics industry was a commercial colossus which thrived by producing copious amounts of gaudy, flimsy pamphlets covering a multitude of themes, subjects and sub-genres, all further subdivided into a range of successful, self-propagating, seamlessly self-perpetuating age-specific publications.

Such eye-catching items once generated innumerable tales, delights (and cherished memories) intended to entertain, inform and educate such well-defined target demographics as Toddler/Pre-school, Younger and Older Juvenile, General, Girls, Boys and even Young Teens. Today, sadly, Britain seems only capable of maintain a few paltry out-industry, licensed tie-ins and spin-offs for a dwindling younger readership.

Where once cheap and prolific, strip magazines in the 21st century are extremely cost-intensive and manufactured for a highly specific – and dying – niche market, whilst the beguiling and bombastic genres that originally fed and nurtured comics are more immediately disseminated via TV, movies and assorted interactive media.

There are one or two venerable, long-lived holdouts such as The Beano and 2000AD but overall the trend has been downwards for decades.

That maxim was happily turned on its head back in January 2012 when Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched The Phoenix: a traditional-seeming anthology comic weekly aimed at girls and boys between 6 and 12 which revelled in reviving the good old days of picture-story entertainment Intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and Content.

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

The Phoenix was voted No. 2 in Time Magazine‘s global list of Top Comics and Graphic Novels and is the only strip publication started in the UK in the last forty years to have reached issue #100. It is now rapidly approaching its double-century. The magazine celebrated its first anniversary by developing a digital edition available globally as a tablet app and is continually expanding its horizons.

It is, most importantly, big and bold and tremendous fun.

On the other hand, whilst comics companies all seem to have given up the ghost, in this country at least, old-school prose publishers and the newborn graphic novel industry have evolved to fill their vacated niche. With a less volatile business model and far more sustainable long-term goals, book sellers have prospered from magazine makers’ surrender, and there have never been so many and varied cartoon and comics chronicles, compilations and tomes for readers to enjoy.

Naturally The Phoenix is part of that growing market, with a superb line of graphic albums repackaging and re-presenting their Greatest Bits.

The one we’re looking at today is The Phoenix Presents… Von Doogan and the Great Air Race: a dazzling display of cartoon virtuosity and mind-mangling comic challenges composed by Lorenzo Etherington, originally seen as captivating, addictively challenging weekly instalments of The Dangerous Adventures of Von Doogan.

The serial combined captivating cartoon narrative with observational tests, logic puzzles and other kids’ favourite brain-teasers, craftily taking readers and participants on a magnificently constructed progressive voyage of adventure and discovery in 37 clue, game, maze and mystery-packed episodes.

Our hero is a brilliant and intrepid young explorer with a keen sense of justice and an insatiable thirst for action. Here, following his previous exploit, Von Doogan is in the World Adventurers’ Club with the profits of the Golden Monkey caper burning a hole in pocket. Realising he is incredibly bored, he seeks out a fresh a challenge and is soon off and away…

Recovering, decoding and accepting an invitation to a global Great Air Race, our hero sets out in a hurry, gathering on the way supplies, a plane and a pilot in the form of very bad waitress Abby “Ace” Poontoon.

Then it’s a mad dash to decipher routes, maps and clues en route from one clandestine destination to the next; perpetually tackling – with your help – all manner of conundra (each with a daunting icon reckoning its “impossibility level”) as our heroes zero in on the goal.

As if puzzles such as ‘Secret Sandwich’, ‘The Big Choke’, ‘Cockpit Lockout’ and ‘Blazing Maze’ aren’t enough to challenge the keenest intellectual daredevil, there’s also the knotty problem of a saboteur amongst the intrepid contestants slowing and winnowing out the competition at every stage…

‘Doogan’s Discovery’ …

Naturally we aren’t all as smart as Von Doogan or a six-year old so this spectacular colourful cornucopia comes with a page explaining ‘How the Book Works’, an expansive ‘Equipment Checklist’ and a fulsome secret section offering extra help with ‘The Clues’ and – thankfully – it all wraps up with graphically glitzy explanations in ‘The Solutions’.

There’s even a free printable download page providing your own handy dandy copy of ‘Doogan’s Danger Kit’ to stop you cutting up the one in this mesmerising manuscript of mystery.

Story! Games! Action! … and all there in the irresistible form of entertaining narrative pictures. How much cooler can a book get?
Text and illustrations © Lorenzo Etherington 2016. All rights reserved.

To find out more about The Phoenix or subscribe, visit: www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk
Von Doogan and the Great Air Race will be released on April 7th 2016.

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Yakari: the Island Prisoners


By Derib & Job translated by Erica Jeffrey (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-010-8

Children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded in 1964 by Swiss journalist André Jobin who then wrote for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later he hired fellow French-Swiss artist Claude de Ribaupierre who chose the working name “Derib”. He had begun his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs), working on Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Spirou. Together they created the splendid Adventures of the Owl Pythagore before striking pure comics gold a couple of years later with their next collaboration.

Premiering in 1969, Yakari detailed the life of a little Sioux boy on the Great Plains; sometime between the Conquistadors’ introduction of horses and the coming of modern White Men.

Stuffed with bucolic whimsy, the beguiling series celebrates the generally simple and joyous existence of noble nomads in tune with nature and free from strife. The daily toil is occasionally punctuated with the odd crisis but these are usually resolved without fame or fanfare – usually by a little lad who is smart, compassionate and valiant.

He can also converse with all animals…

Derib – equally excellent in both enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style yarns and with devastatingly compelling meta-realistic action illustrated action epics – went on to become one of the Continent’s most prolific and revered creators. It’s incomprehensible to me that such groundbreaking strips as Celui-qui-est-né-deux-fois, Jo (the first comic on AIDS ever published), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne) haven’t been translated into English yet.

Many of his stunning works over the fruitful decades featured his beloved Western themes, built on magnificent geographical backdrops and epic landscapes, with Yakari considered by fans and critics alike as the feature which primed the gun.

Released in 1983, Les Prisonniers de I’Ile was the ninth European album (and, in 2008, Cinebook’s seventh British Yakari release): as always, a splendidly stand-alone mini-epic devoid of convoluted continuity. These heart-warming adventures work perfectly read in isolation: easily accessible for young kids and/or their adult minders meeting the bold little Brave for the first time…

The suspenseful saga begins with the boy marvel, his wonder horse Little Thunder and their friend Rainbow joyously playing on a beautiful promontory cutting into a lake. When a sudden storm erupts they take refuge in a cave and are stuck there for two terrifying days.

When the lightning and rain finally subside they emerge to find the spit of land is now and island. They – and many other animals – are trapped…

As the resourceful humans gather wood to make a signal fire they discover two elk with a big problem. Their calf is stuck under a fallen tree, but the Indians and their pony horse soon devise a way to free little Birch Shoot. Then the real problems start…

After the boy and girl splint the yearling’s broken leg and construct a branch bivouac to shelter him, searchers from the tribe come looking for them in a canoe. Yakari and Rainbow opt to hide, however, determined to stay and nurse the calf back to health…

That night Yakari’s totem Great Eagle visits for a chat and warns that the boy’s instincts were good, but further conversation is curtailed when worried father Proud Antlers realises that a hungry wolverine is on the island with them. He has past experience of how the wily hunters pick off the weak or wounded members of a herd…

Yakari has never heard of or seen such a creature and the elk’s tales are truly terrifying. Nevertheless, the little Brave appoints himself the family’s bodyguard, following them everywhere

His eager vigilance almost leads to catastrophe when he accidentally crowns old beaver pal Double-Tooth after the mighty swimmer ambles onto the islet in search of rare woods to carve. Soon however with his carpentry aid they have built a stout stockade around Birch-Shoot’s shelter.

Sadly, they have all severely underestimated the predator’s cunning and the wolverine simply proceeds to build devilish traps of his own. All he needs is the right moment to strike and feast…

Gripping with just the right amount of tension, this is a compelling yarn with a deliciously apt yet unforced denouement, one that will keep everybody sweet yet still delivers a satisfying kick for happy ending addicts…

This is one of Yakari’s most rewarding exploits, showing his warm benevolence, staunch determination and total commitment to his friends of variable leg-counts; a broad, bold romp no kid of any age could resist…

The evergreen exploits of the valiant little voyager who speaks with animals and enjoys a unique place in an exotic environment is an unmissable celebration of marvellously moving and enticingly entertaining adventure, honouring and eulogising an iconic culture with grace, wit, wonder and especially warmth. These gentle sagas are true landmarks of comics literature and Yakari is a strip no fan of graphic entertainment should ignore.
Original edition © LE LOMBARD (Dargaud- Lombard s.a.) 1983, by Derib + Job. English translation 2009 © Cinebook Ltd.