Category: Kids – All Ages

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Tintin and the Picaros


By Hergé and Studios Hergé, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner (Egmont)
ISBN: 978-1-40520-823-9 (album HB) 978-1-405206-35-8 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Georges Prosper Remi, AKA Hergé created an undying masterpiece of graphic literature with his serialised tales of a plucky boy reporter and entourage of iconically odd associates. Singly, and later with assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor, Roger Leloup and other supreme stylists comprising the Hergé Studio, he created 23 timeless yarns (initially episodic instalments for a variety of newspaper periodicals) which have since grown beyond their mass-entertainment roots to attain the status of High Art and international cultural icons.

On leaving school in 1925, Remi began working for conservative Catholic newspaper Le Vingtiéme Siècle where he fell under the influence of its Svengali-esque editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. A devoted Boy Scout, one year later the young artist was producing his first strip series – The Adventures of Totor – for monthly Boy Scouts of Belgium magazine. By 1928 Remi was also in charge of producing the contents of the LVS’s weekly children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtiéme.

While Remi was illustrating The Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonette – written by the staff sports reporter – Wallez required his compliant creative cash-cow to concoct a new and contemporary adventure series. Perhaps a young reporter who roamed the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues?

The rest is history…

Some of that history is quite dark: During the Nazi Occupation of Belgium, Le Vingtiéme Siècle was closed down and Hergé was compelled to move his supremely popular strip to daily newspaper Le Soir (Brussels’ most prominent French-language periodical, and thus appropriated and controlled by the Nazis). He diligently toiled on for the duration, and, following Belgium’s liberation, was accused of collaboration and even of being a Nazi sympathiser. It took the intervention of Belgian Resistance war hero Raymond Leblanc to dispel the cloud over Hergé, which he did by simply vouching for the cartoonist through words and deeds.

Leblanc provided cash to create a new magazine – Le Journal de Tintin – which he published and managed. The anthology comic swiftly achieved a huge weekly circulation, allowing Remi and his studio team to remaster past tales: excising material dictated by the Fascist invaders to ideologically shade the wartime adventures. Post-war modernising exercises also improved and updated the great tales, just in time for Tintin to become a global phenomenon, both in books and as an early star of animated TV adventure.

With the war over and his reputation restored, Hergé entered the most successful period of his artistic career. He had mastered his storytelling craft, possessed a dedicated audience eager for his every effort and was finally able to say exactly what he wanted in his work, free from fear or censure, if not his personal demons and declining health…

The greatest sign of this was not substantially in the comics tales – although Hergé continued to tinker with the form of his efforts – but rather in how long the gaps were between new exploits. The previous (22nd) romp had completed serialisation in 1967 and was duly collected as an album in 1968. It was then eight years before Tintin et les Picaros was simultaneously serialised in Belgium and France in Tintin-l’Hebdoptmiste magazine (from 16th September 1975 to April 13th 1976) but at least the inevitable book collection came out almost immediately upon completion.

Tintin and the Picaros is in all ways the concluding adventure, as many old characters and locales from previous tales make one final appearance. A partial sequel to The Broken Ear (please link to September 15, 2018) it finds operatic phenomenon Bianca Castafiore implausibly arrested for spying in Central American republic San Theodoros, with Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus eventually lured to her rescue.

Insidious Colonel Sponsz – last seen in The Calculus Affair (please link to June 13, 2019) – is Bordurian Military Advisor to the Government of usurper General Tapioca, and has used his position to exact revenge on the intrepid band who humiliated him in his own land. When Tintin & company escape into the jungles during a murder attempt they soon link up with old comrade Alcazar, now leading a band of Picaro guerrillas dedicated to restoring him to power.

Central and South American revolutions were all the rage in the 1970s and Hergé’s cast had been involved with this one on and off since 1935. With the welcome return of anthropologist Doctor Ridgewell and the hysterical Arumbayas, and even an improbable action role (kind of) for obnoxious insurance salesman and comedy foil Jolyon Wagg, the doughty band bring about the final downfall of Tapioca in a thrilling yet bloodless coup during Carnival time, thanks to a hilarious comedy maguffin (initially targeting dipsomaniac Haddock) that turns out to be a brilliant piece of narrative misdirection by the author.

Sly, subtle, thrilling and warmly comforting, this tale was generally slated when first released but with the perspective of intervening decades can be seen as a most fitting place to end The Adventures of Tintin… but only until you pick up another volume and read them again – as you indubitably will.
Tintin and the Picaros: artwork © 1976 by Editions Casterman, Paris & Tournai. Text © 1976 Egmont UK Limited. All rights reserved.

Today in 1887 Betty Boop creator Bud Counihan was born, as was Dixie Dugan creator J.P. McEvoy in 1894. In 1909 DC stalwart Jack Miller (Rip Hunter, Aquaman, Deadman) was born, and as you’ve just seen Tintin debuted today in 1929 in the first episode of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.

In 1932 the first Sunday Mickey Mouse page appeared as did UK footie mag Scorcher in 1970. Most momentously, Marvel mainstay John Buscema died today in 2002.

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Spirou and Fantasio volume 9: The Dictator and the Mushroom


By André Franquin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-267-6 (album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Another anniversary I just couldn’t leave unremarked upon. Deal with it. I’m old, morose and accursed with nostalgia.

André Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd 1924 and died on January 5th 1997. In between there were good times and bad, which he offset by creating the most incredible characters and stories, and by making people laugh and think – but mostly laugh. This is one of the very best you can find translated into English.

Adventure-seeking kid Spirou headlined the magazine he was named for from the first issue (dated April 21st 1938). He was created by French cartoonist Françoise Robert Velter using his pen-name Rob-Vel for Belgian publisher Éditions Dupuis in direct response to the success of Hergé’s Tintin for rival outfit Casterman. Originally a plucky bellboy/lift operator employed by the Moustique Hotel (a sly reference to the publisher’s premier periodical Le Moustique), his improbable exploits with pet squirrel Spip gradually grew into high-flying, far-reaching and surreal comedy dramas. That evolution was mainly thanks to Velter’s wife Blanche “Davine” Dumoulin who took over the strip when her husband enlisted in 1939 and Belgian artist assistant Luc Lafnet… at least until 1943 when Dupuis purchased all rights to the property, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm.

Our interest really begins when Jijé handed his own trainee assistant complete responsibility for the flagship strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriqué, (Le Journal de Spirou #427, June 20th 1946). Andre Franquin ran with it for two decades; enlarging the scope and horizons until it became purely his own. Almost every week fans would meet startling new characters such as comrade/rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor and Merlin of mushroom mechanics the Count of Champignac.

Spirou and Fantasio became globe-trotting journalists, travelling to exotic places, uncovering crimes, exploring the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of exotic arch-enemies such as Zorglub and Fantasio’s unsavoury cousin Zantafio. Incidentally, eerily-relevant The Dictator and the Mushroom features the second appearances of Zantafio and strong, capable, female (!) rival journalist Seccotine (renamed Cellophine for these English translations)…

Franquin, plagued in later life by bouts of depression, passed away in 1997 but his legacy remains; a vast body of work which reshaped the landscape of European comics.

Here then as originally serialised in LJdS #801-838, between 1953 and 1954 before subsequently being released on the continent in 1956 as hardcover album Spirou et Fantasio 7 – Le Dictateur et Le Champignon, this epic episode begins as globe-trotting troubleshooter Spirou and his short-tempered reporter pal Fantasio approach the isolated home of eccentric inventor Count Champignac. They are resolved to return the mischievous miracle monkey Marsupilami to its natural habitat in the jungles of Palombia…

Sadly, whilst they discuss their plan with the elderly savant, the mischievous monkey he’s been safeguarding swipes the inventor’s latest mycoprotein marvel and heads for town…

Champignac calls the gaseous form of his newest mushroom extract “metalsoft” and that’s exactly what the stuff does: reduce the solidity of iron, brass, bronze, tin or whatever to the consistency of hot wax. By the time the prankish primate has finished innocently playing with the pump dispenser, locals are in uproar and their village is practically a puddle…

With nobody in Europe objecting, the lads promptly book passage on a South America-bound cruise ship, where once again the elastic-tailed terror causes a cacophony of comedic chaos. Eventually, though, our increasingly irate and exhausted adventurers at last head in-country towards sleepy Palombia where a big surprise is waiting for them…

Thanks to Marsupilami, they are forced to travel the last ten miles to capital city Chiquito on foot and are astonished to observe the sheer number of military vehicles constantly overtaking them. In the city, an altercation with soldiers leads to their arrest and interview with new supreme dictator General Zantas. The meeting is both a huge shock and unhappy reunion…

Fantasio’s cousin Zantafio had been only a little mean and perhaps misguided when they were all first hunting for the Marsupilami, but since then has reinvented himself, graduating into a full-blown murderous megalomaniac. A cheap thug in a flashy uniform, he is determined to carve himself a bloody empire and vast wealth through the conquest of his national neighbours. Moreover, Zantafio/Zantas wants his countrymen and cousin to join him in the campaign of conquest, a horrific demand the reporters initially refuse.

Locked in jail, Spirou & Fantasio ponder how to stop the murderous scheme and realise the perfect counter to Zantas’ burgeoning war machine is Champignac’s Metalsoft. All they have to do is get a message to the inventor and have him send enough of the wonder stuff to destroy the ever-expanding army…

Thus they apparently switch sides and are soon installed as high ranking officers. Of course, Zantafio is no fool and sets his most cunning spy to watch them; just waiting for the moment when they betray themselves.

It’s not our heroes’ first rodeo either and, aware of their shadow, the lads engage in a prolonged and hilarious game of cat-&-mouse with the spook, all the while fretting that D-Day is approaching and they still haven’t been able to smuggle out a message…

A solution presents itself when go-getting journalist Cellophine makes contact. She’s been secretly covering the crisis for ages – without being caught like her mere male rivals – and offers to ferry the request for Metalsoft to Champignac ASAP…

Things aren’t all going Zantafio’s way. Even though weapons dealers are frantically auditioning their death-dealing wares for the General, Colonels Spirou & Fantasio are especially diligent and somehow able to find dangerous faults in everything on offer…

And then one night Cellophine sneaks back into Palombia with the secret weapon which will end Zantas’ dreams of empire…

Following a fantastical fight with the mushroom-gas-wielding trio battling an entire modern military, and a tense yet inconclusive showdown with Zantafio, peace and democracy break out and the boys finally complete their original mission. Having at last safely returned the Marsupilami to his natural wilderness, Spirou & Fantasio wearily head back to civilisation, content in the knowledge that the lovable little perisher is back where he belongs.

Of course, the pestilential primate has his own ideas on the matter…

Stuffed with superb slapstick situations, riotous chases and gallons of gags, but barely concealing a strongly satirical anti-war message, this exuberant yarn is a joyous example of angst-free action, thrills and spills. Easily accessible to readers of all ages and drawn with beguiling style and seductively wholesome élan, this is an enduring comics treat from a long line of superb exploits, deserving to be as much a household name as that other kid reporter and his dog…
Original edition © Dupuis, 1956 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation 2015 © Cinebook Ltd.

Today in 1941 mangaka/anime director Hayao Miyazaki (Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind) was born, and two years later so was street level/underground commix crafter Roger (Eerie, Tales of Sex and Death, Yellow Dog) Brand. In 1957 Brick Bradford cartoonist Clarence Gray died, as did André Franquin in 1997, and in 2000, master mangaka Goseki Kojima famed and missed for such wonders as Kozure Okami (Lone Wolf and Cub), Kubikiri Asa (Samurai Executioner) and Hanzo no Mon (Path of the Assassin).

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Neill Cameron’s Donut Squad: Make a Mess! (Book 2)


By Neill Cameron & various (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-358-5 (Digest TPB Standard edition), 978-1-78845-408-7 (Waterstones edition)

Had enough to eat yet? Do You Like Donuts?

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

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

Crafted by Cameron (Mega Robo Bros, Freddy, Tamsin of the Deep, How to Make Awesome Comics, Pirates of Pangea), a unique team of toothsome adventurers reconvene here in world much improved by an absence of bagels. As enny fule kno, bagels are the arch enemy of Donuts and probably all Life…

Moreover, there are fresh additions to the team we met in volume 1 (Donut Squad Take over the World! May 2nd 2025) besides commander-in-chief Sprinkles, accident prone Jammyboi, Chalky (the ghost of a murdered Victorian Donut), violent vigilante Justice Donut, nerve-wracked Anxiety Donut, piratical Caramel Jack! (he’s a little bit salty!), Dadnut & Li’l Timmy, and utterly unknowable and incomprehensible Spronky! who will make themselves known in good time…

First though we indulge in some ‘Fun Times with Sprinkles’ and the rest, prior to a passionately resolute ‘No Bagels.’ Public Service Announcement, leading us all into an extended exploit in ‘The Great Outdoors’ involving camping, campfires and being eaten by bears…

Ruggedly individualistic, the assorted flavourites (said it. Not proud.) generally work in solo vignettes that combine to make a full package but all pitch in for regular features such as the ads for merch like the ‘Official Donut Squad Camping Gear!’ which here include Tents, Backpacks and High-Power Bear Tranquiliser Guns, and are sensibly, accommodatingly backed up by ‘Hot New Donut Flavours for Summer!’ How about Piña Coladonut!, Choco Banana! or Sweat and Suncream! – or even Cool Cool Mango!, Watermellon Baller and Seagull Beaks!?

If you don’t mind me asking, how big are your nuts? Are you man enough to handle Omega Gargantunut, Gargantunut Titan, Extinction Level Gargantunut, Gargantunut: Nemesis? Steve thinks he is but significant other Janet just thinks he’s full of himself…

No matter how rich they might sound they are as nothing compared to Daddy Billions! – The Richest Donut in the World! If you’re not sure we can direct you to ‘Ask your Mother!: with Mumnut & Li’l Timmy’ episodes before meeting the new guys. These ‘Meatynuts!’ include ‘Spicyboi!’, ‘Beefychunks!’, ‘Crazy Mayonnaisey!’ and ‘Ham Alan’, who shares his extensive backstory before we explore ‘Sweet-Meat Fusion Donuts’ like ‘Chocolate-Frosted Beef’, ‘HAMnJAM!’ or ‘Caramel Sausage!’

A barrage of parental queries season ‘Great Moment’s in Donut History’ and ‘Classic of World Donut Cinema’, and intermittent silhouette games commence with ‘Name That Donut’, supported by more merch such as Donut Squad Caps!, Water Bottles!, Plutonium Enrichment Plants!, Hoodies, Cushions and Autonomous Humanoid Robots!, prior to everyone from Beefychunks to the entire afterlife getting a go at answering dear Timmy’s questions…

Regular features like ‘Donut-Related Conspiracy Theories!’ and ‘It’s Spronky!’ vie for attention with new treats like ‘Do You Like Cheese Donuts? Introducing Tasty Bob!, Nordic Helga and Camemboi!’ and ‘The Life of Michael’ plus ‘Donutiquette – DOs and DON’Ts of POLITE DONUT EATING’, ‘Extreme Donut Eating!’ and ‘Great Figures of History Who Were Secretly Donuts’..

Of course all this is fine but – following the lengthy saga of ‘The Totally Normal Humans’ – things get a bit weird and very nasty as all the long-banished Bagel Battalion break free of their extradimensional jail in THE VOID and attempt to take over the book by invading its gutters!

They succeed too…

Having whetted your appetite you’ll need to buy the book to see what happens next, but be warned, the bready brutes broke out by infiltrating the activity section at the rear, with Cameron’s ‘Phoenix Comic Club’ art classes on How to Draw ‘Sprinkles!’, ‘…Anxiety Donut!’, ‘…Justice Donut!’, ‘…Caramel Jack!’, and all the others caught up in the conflict…

Smart, witty, laugh out loud weird and utterly bonkers, this seemingly piecemeal treat cunningly connects a whole bunch of stuff kids love without knowing why, but which totally bewilders us oldsters and keeps us in our place. Devious, eccentric and captivating, the sugar rush is guaranteed and if you get toothache it’s from laughing not quantum confessions…

Moreover, as all the best books and movies say: DONUT SQUAD WILL RETURN…
Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2026. All rights reserved.

Neill Cameron’s Donut Squad: Take Over the World! is scheduled for UK release on January 1st 2026 and is available for pre-order now; or wait until next year and get it tomorrow while walking off all those donuts and bagels…

Today in 1956 Nexus co-creator and Kirby fan Steve Rude was born. In 1965 Dirty Plotte auteur Julie Doucet arrived, but the day also commemorates major losses. In 1978 graphic genius Basil Wolverton went to his long-anticipated reward, and in 2005 inimitable Maurice (The Perishers) Dodd told his last joke. While talking of newspaper strips that changed lives, December 31st 1995 also saw Bill Watterson’s final Calvin and Hobbes episode. Sigh.

You know where to look by now, so perhaps do that between all the “auld lang synes” and dry white whines.

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The Beano Book 1971


By David Sutherland, Malcolm Judge, Paddy Brennan, Ronald Spencer, Bob McGrath, Robert Nixon, Gordon Bell, Jim Petrie, many & various (DC Thomson & Co., Ltd.)
ISBN: 978-0-8511-6031-3 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

For many British fans Christmas means The Beano Book (although Scots worldwide have a pretty fair claim that the season belongs to them with collections of The Broons and Oor Wullie making every December 25th magical) and I’m highlighting this particular edition as another epitome of my personal holiday memories. As usual my knowledge of the creators involved is woefully inadequate but I’m going to hazard a few guesses in the hope that someone with better knowledge will correct me when I err.

In this little cracker are a number of David Sutherland’s Biffo the Bear strips as well as his Bash Street Kids and even a smashing action-adventure of boy super-hero Billy the Cat (I wonder if the editors distributed strips to artists in alphabetical order?). There are whirlwind tales of “fastest boy on Earth” Billy Whizz drawn by Malcolm Judge. Paddy Brennan worked as a dramatic artist for decades on General Jumbo (the heroic boy who radio-controlled an army of robot toys) and the Q-Bikes: a team of young adventurers with technologically advanced push-bikes. In this tome they trade in two wheels for four, to become the Q-Karts for an Australian adventure, whilst the aforementioned General captures a team of safecrackers in his home town.

These annuals were traditionally produced in the wonderful “half-colour” that many British publishers employed to keep costs down while adding a bit of pizazz. This was done by printing sections of the books with only two plates, such as blue/Cyan and red/Magenta. The versatility and palette range this provided was astounding. Even now this technique screams “Holidays” to me and my rapidly dwindling contemporaries.

Some Dennis the Menace strips are possibly drawn by original creator Davy Law, but are most likely the work of his style-chameleon replacement David Sutherland. They all feature his charismatic then-new co-star ‘Gnasher’ too. Woefully dated, culturally suspect but astoundingly funny, the Little Plum strips are by Ronald Spencer, I think, as are The Nibblers: an anarchic gang – and weren’t they all in The Beano? – of mice.

The 3 Bears segments are by Bob McGrath whilst Lord Snooty (one of the longest running strips in the comic’s history – a record only recently overtaken by Dennis) is the work of Robert Nixon, as is the Roger the Dodger Family Album section. There are short romps with Pups Parade (AKA the Bash Street Pups – the unlovely pets of those unlovely kids) by Gordon Bell, and exemplar of Girl Power Minnie the Minx gets her own 16-page mini-book in this annual – and who could stop her? – courtesy of the wonderful Jim Petrie, but I’ll admit to being totally stumped by Swinging Jungle Jim: a frantic boy-Tarzan strip that has sunk without trace since those faraway times.

Topped off with activity and gag-pages, this is a tremendously fun book, and even in the absence of legendary creators such as Dudley Watkins, Leo Baxendale or Ken Reid, and with a small but noticeable decline in the mayhem and anarchy quotas, there’s still so much merriment on offer I can’t believe this book is 55 years old. If ever anything needed to be issued as commemorative collections, it’s DC Thomson annuals. Perhaps as the company pursues digital reprints volumes we could anticipate entire Annual re-releases?…

Divorcing the sheer quality of this brilliant book from nostalgia is a healthy exercise, but I’m perfectly happy to simply wallow – even today – in the magical emotions this ‘almost-colourful’ annual still stirs. It’s a good solid laugh-&-thrill-packed read from a magical time (I was in my final year of primary school and a beloved, spoiled and precocious little snot with not a care in the world), and turning those stiffened two-colour pages remains an unmatchable Christmas experience.
© 1970 DC Thomson & Co., Ltd.

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck volume 5: “Christmas on Bear Mountain” by Carl Barks


By Carl Barks (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-697-3 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The Utter Acme of All-Ages Entertainment… 10/10

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901, growing up in the rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in US history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks worked as an animator at Disney’s studio before quitting in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books. With cartoon studio partner Jack Hannah (another occasional strip illustrator) Barks adapted a Bob Karp script for an animated cartoon short into the comic book Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. It was published as Dell Four Color Comics Series II #9 in October of that year and – although not his first published comics work – it was the story that shaped the rest of his career.

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

Whilst producing all that landmark material Barks was just a working guy, generating cover art, illustrating other people’s scripts when asked and contributing stories to the burgeoning canon of Duck Lore. After Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material – and a selection of other Disney strips – in the 1980s, he discovered the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed…

So potent were his creations that they inevitably fed back into Disney’s animation output itself, even though his brilliant comic tales were done for licensing company Dell/Gold Key, and not directly for the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly the animated series Duck Tales: heavily based on his comics output. Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries and epics of exploration, and this led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and sheer wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps that utterly captivated readers of every age and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions there would never have been an Indiana Jones…

Throughout his working life Barks was blissfully unaware that his work – uncredited by official policy as was all Disney’s cartoon and comic book output – had been singled out by a rabid and discerning public as being by “the Good Duck Artist”. When his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, a belated celebrity began.

In 2013 Fantagraphics Books began collecting Barks’ Duck stuff in wonderful, carefully curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes (and digital editions) that finally did justice to the quiet creator. These will eventually comprise a Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The physical copies are sturdy and luxurious albums – 193 x 261mm – that would grace and enhance any bookshelf, with volume 5 – Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: “Christmas on Bear Mountain” (for reasons irrelevant here) acting as debut release, and re-presenting works from 1947 – albeit not in strictly chronological release order.

It begins eponymously with the landmark introduction of Bark’s most enduring creation. Scrooge McDuck premiered in seasonal full-length Donald Duck yarn ‘Christmas on Bear Mountain’ (as seen in Four Color #178 December 1947): a disposable comedy foil to move along a simple tale of Seasonal woe and joy. Here a miserly relative seethes in opulent isolation, hating everybody and opting to share the gloom by tormenting his nephews Donald, Huey, Louie & Dewey by gifting them his mountain cabin for the Holidays.

Scrooge schemed, intent on terrorising them in a bear costume, but fate had other ideas…

The old coot was crusty, energetic, menacing, money-mad and yet oddly lovable – and thus far too potentially valuable to be misspent or thrown away. Undoubtedly, the greatest cartoon creation of legendary and magnificent story showman Barks, the Downy Dodecadillionaire returned often and eventually expanded to fill all available space in the tales from the scenic metropolis of Duckburg.

From the same issue a brace of one-page gags expose Donald’s views on car culture in ‘Fashion in Flight’ and annoying people looking for directions in ‘Turn for the Worse’ before ‘Donald’s Posy Patch’ (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #80, May) turns into another painfully humiliating experience as the bellicose bird tries getting rich by growing blooms…

June’s WDC&S #81 finds him and the boys prospecting and running afoul of the post-war arms and rocket-race in ‘Donald Mines his Own Business’ before Four Color #147 (May) takes them on an epic voyage of fantastic discovery to ‘Volcano Valley’ after accidentally buying an army surplus bomber.

Always looking for a quick buck, Donald and the kids turn to commercial charters: flying innocuous-seeming Major Pablo Mañana back to Central American beauty-spot Volcanovia, but they all have a devilishly difficult time getting out again. This yarn sets a solid pattern for Bark’s adventure/travelogue yarns in years to come, blending comedy, thrills, whimsy and social commentary into an irresistible treat…

July’s WDC&S #82 finds adult and juvenile ducks enjoying an ever-escalating war over who’s the best conjuror in ‘Magical Misery’ and by the time Daisy Duck deals with them, Donald is ready for a day of peace and quiet. Sadly, ‘Ring Wrongs’ (AKA ‘Vacation Time’ from August’s WDC&S #83) reveals that thanks to Huey, Louie & Dewey, he’s the target of a relentless wave of door-to-door salesmen and sees him react with typical zest and vigour…

An inappropriate experiment in hypnosis transforms Donald (mentally) into a kangaroo and prompts an ‘Adventure Down Under’ (FC #159, August) with the eventually restored Drake and his nephews compelled to become ‘roo hunters to fund return passage to Duckburg. They are mightily outmatched by Mournful Mary – Queen of the Kangaroos – until they meet some local aborigines and experience a change of heart.

Please be aware that – despite Bark’s careful research and diligent, sensitive storytelling – some modern readers could be upset by his depictions from over seven decades ago…

‘If the Hat Fits’ is a gag-page of chapeau chuckles from FC #147 (May) preceding a mid-length tale describing Donald’s efforts to master dancing in ‘The Waltz Kings’ (WDC&S #84, September) counterbalanced a month later by #85’s ‘The Masters of Melody’, wherein the boys struggle to learn playing musical instruments…

‘Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto’ is an early masterpiece originating in Four Color #159 (August 1947), with Donald and the lads in the West Indies, running a kelp boat and harvesting seaweed from the abundant oceans. After being temporarily stranded on an isolated reef, they discover monsters, a shipwrecked galleon, an ongoing abduction mystery dating back centuries and a particularly persistent phantom, all blending into a supremely thrilling and beguiling mystery that has never dated…

WDC&S #86 exposes the rise and fall of ‘Fireman Donald’, whose smug hubris deprives him of a job he’s actually good at, after which ‘The Terrible Turkey’ from #87 details the Duck’s frankly appalling efforts to secure a big bird for the Thanksgiving feast despite skyrocketing poultry prices…

Donald and Mickey Merry Christmas 1947 (cover-dated January 1948) sees the boys strive a little too late and much too hard to be ‘Three Good Little Ducks’ and ensure a wealth of swag on Christmas morning, before one final single-pager sees kitchen confusion for Donald in ‘Machine Mix-up’ (FC #178, December)…

With the visual verve done we move on to validation as ‘Story Notes’ offers erudite commentary for each Duck tale. Donald Ault relates ‘Carl Barks: Life Among the Ducks’ before ‘Biographies’ reveals why he and commentators Alberto Beccatini, Joseph Robert Cowles, Craig Fischer, Jared Gardner, Rich Kreiner, Ken Parille, Stefano Priarone, R. Fiore, and Mattias Wivel are saying all those nice and informative things. We close with provenance as ‘Where Did These Duck Stories First Appear?’ explains the somewhat byzantine publishing schedules of Dell Comics.

Carl Barks was one of the greatest exponents of comic art the world has ever seen, and almost all his work featured Disney’s characters: reaching and affecting untold millions of readers across the world and he all too belatedly won far-reaching recognition. You might be late to the party but it’s never too soon to climb aboard the Barks Express.
Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “Christmas on Bear Mountain” © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All contents © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Today in 1913 master story-man screenwriter and occasional comics author Alfred Bester was born. His visual feasts included lots of DC comics such as Green Lantern, and newspaper strips The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. You are incomplete if you haven’t read The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger, Tiger) and Who He?

In 1919 British cartoon genius Ken Reid was born so look him up here too if you need a quick giggle. 30 years later modern comics maestro everyman Paul Neary joined the party. You know him as an inker, but he was a writer, illustrator and editor without equal so google that name too when you have a moment…

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Not Quite Last-Minute Presents: Goodnight Opus, The Last Basselope & Red Ranger Came Calling

By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co.)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: To Be Read Every Christmas Until the Stars Grow Cold… 10/10 Each!

If – like me – you’re actually too busy to enjoy the season, or maybe poor, scared, fed up or otherwise disengaged, here’s a way to get it done and still derive some joy – absolutely astounding comics and cartoon wonder – all in one bunch!

 

Goodnight Opus

ISBN: 978-0-316-10853-9 (HB) 978-0-316-10599-6 (PB)

After a desperately brief and glittering career as a syndicated strip cartoonist and socio-political commentator (so often the very same function) Berkeley Breathed retired his award-winning Bloom County and Outland vehicles and became a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He lost none of his perception, wit or imagination, and actually got better as a narrative artist. He didn’t completely abandon his entrancing cast of characters and – as a happy ever after postscript – eventually revived them all for another go-round of satire and social advocacy. Yay!

This one is a story about the magic of storytelling and features universal innocent Opus the Penguin. One night, as she has done two hundred and nine times before, Granny starts to read the svelte yet uncool waterfowl his favourite bedtime book. But this night is different. Tonight, Opus’ mind wanders and he “departs the text”…

And so begins a riotous flight of Technicolor fantasy as sedate monochromatic images give way to a powerful, vibrant and surreal romp extending to the Milky Way and back, by way of animated monuments, the burned out Fairy of Sleep, and stopovers at some of the most exotic corners of the planet.

Less a story than an exuberant travelogue of Imagination, delivered in sharply lyrical rhyme, this is a book to trigger dreams and promote creativity. A perfect primer to explain how to wonder and wander…

Every kid, at any age, should have this.
© 1994 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

 

The Last Basselope – One Ferocious Story

ISBN: 978-0-316-10761-7 (HB) 978-0-590-47542-6 (PB)

Berke Breathed is no one-trick-pony and has never been limited to one specific season or holiday. He can do fun and wonder all year round. Although not a proper Christmas story, this charming, tearfully funny tale is another joyous celebration of childhood realms and regions and how little adventures can become great big ones.

It stars his best-loved characters from Bloom County and Outland: jolly, unfulfilled Opus, Bill the Cat, Milquetoast the Housebug, Ronald-Anne (her mother named her for President Reagan – because he had done so much to advance the cause of Poor Black Women) and Rosebud, the eponymous, enigmatic Basselope of the title.

Opus is a dreamer of great dreams and frustrated explorer. In his unassuming, shy way he lusts for glory and the heady wine of immortality. As everybody knows, that can only be found by Discovering Something.

Anything will do. And in the pages of the latest National Geographic Enquirer he finds his dream waiting…

Organising a safari, our fish-fuelled fool heads for the woods in back of the house in search of the most elusive beast in history; every crypto-zoologist’s Holy Grail.

How he finds The Last Basselope and what he actually learns comprises a magical journey of intense discovery into the uncharted wilds of childhood’s imagination which reveals the strength, power and character of true friendship.

This beautifully illustrated, captivating and multi-layered fable is ideal for the eternally young at heart and all those still looking for a path back to their own wonder years.
© 1994 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

 

Red Ranger Came Calling – A Guaranteed True Christmas Story

ISBN: 978-0-61371-758-8 (HB) 978-0-31610-249-0 (PB)

We sneer at sentimentality these days but in the hands of a master storyteller it can be a weapon of crippling power. This glorious fable is purportedly one told every Christmas Eve to the author by his own father before being generously shared with us in mesmerising prose and captivating illustrations.

In 1939 young Red Breathed was well on the way to becoming a snotty, cynical wiseacre. Sent to spend the Holidays with his Aunt Vy, he mooches about all day with her old dog Amelia, while lusting as only a child can after an Official Buck Tweed Two-Speed Crime-Stopper Star Hopper bicycle.

Tweed, of course, is the famous movie serial star “Red Ranger of Mars” and the only thing capable of brightening the benighted life of the woeful, unfairly exiled child. Times are tough though, and Red knows his chances of getting that bike are nonexistent, but he just can’t stop himself hoping…

On his way home one day he sees an odd, pointy-eared little man heading for the ramshackle house of that reclusive old man Saunders. Since he’s a big kid now, Red knows there’s no Father Christmas and none of that hokey magic stuff is true, but even so finds himself sneaking up to the old house that Christmas Eve night…

This is a gloriously powerful tale fully capturing and emphasising the magic of belief and tragedy of realisation, and yet still ends with a Christmas miracle and a stunning surprise ending. Get this book for the kids, get this book for yourself, but get this book – and on pain of emotional death, don’t peek at the last page until the time is right!
© 1994 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1892 artist Alfred Bestall was born. Anything else needful to know can be gleaned by visiting Rupert: A Celebration of Favourite Stories – 100 Years of Rupert Bear 1920-2020. In 1914 the day welcomed troubled genius Jack Cole who was responsible for manic innovation as packed into DC Finest: Plastic Man – The Origin of Plastic Man. It’s also – in 2011- the day we lost comic legend Joe Simon, co-creator of Captain America, Boy Commandos, Newsboy Legion and The Fly as well as inventor of Brother Power The Geek and other wild notions.

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Yakari and the Ghost Bear (volume 23)


By Derib & Job, coloured by Dominique and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-173-6 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The World We All Want … 9/10

In 1964 children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded by Swiss journalist André Jobin (25/10/1927 – 08/10/2024), who then wrote for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later, he hired artist and fellow Swiss Francophone Claude de Ribaupierre, AKA “Derib”.

The illustrator had launched his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs): working on Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Le Journal de Spirou. Thereafter, together they created the splendid Adventures of the Owl Pythagore prior to striking pure comics gold a few years later with their next collaboration.

Born in Delémont, Jobin split his time between bande dessinées – 39 Yakari albums and 3 for Pythagore – and his other writing, editing and publishing briefs: an admirably restrained and outstandingly effective legacy to be proud of.

Derib – equally au fait with enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style yarns and devastatingly compelling meta-realistic action illustrated action epics – became one of the Continent’s most prolific and revered creators with such groundbreaking strips as Buddy Longway, Celui-qui-est-nà-deux-fois; Jo (first comic to deal with AIDS): Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne. They haven’t been translated into English yet, but still we patiently wait in hope and anticipation…

Yakari is considered by fans and critics to be the strip which led Derib to his deserved mega-stardom. Debuting in 1969, self-contained episodes trace the eventful, nomadic life of an Oglala Lakota boy on the Great Plains, with stories set sometime after the introduction of horses (by colonising Conquistadores) but before the coming of modern Europeans. The series – which also generated two separate animated TV series and a movie – has notched up 42 albums thus far: a testament to its evergreen vitality and brilliance of its creators, even though originator Job moved on in 2016, replaced by Frenchman Joris Chamblain.

Abundant with gentle whimsy and heady compassion, Yakari’s life is a largely bucolic and happy existence: at one with nature and generally free from privation or strife. For the sake of dramatic delectation, however, the ever-changing seasons are punctuated with the odd crisis, generally resolved without fuss, fame or fanfare by a little lad who is smart and brave, and who can – thanks to a boon of his totem guide the Great Eagle – converse with all the beasts of the field and birds of the air…

In 1998, Yakari et l‘Ours fantôme became the 24th European album, but as always, content and set-up are both stunningly simple and sublimely accessible, affording new readers total enjoyment with a minimum of familiarity or foreknowledge required…

It’s high summer and life is slow, easy and comfortable. Yakari’s chores are few and there’s time to canoe on the river and catch up with old pals like the beaver Linden. Suddenly, however, a sudden glimpse of something unusual in the overgrown riverbank undergrowth intrigues the little wise man and leads to a fresh adventure and more new friends…

Tracking the strange sight, Yakari is disturbed at its abrupt disappearance and fears he’s found a ghost. Sleep that night is hard to find and in the morning he’s up early to seek the mystery, much to the annoyance of young chums Rainbow and Buffalo Seed, who are quite content to stay home and snooze more. A little consideration has convinced the beast-speaker that what he encountered was a polar bear far, far from home. It wouldn’t be his first…

Resolved to meet and greet the visitor, Yakari sets off by canoe, as his valiant pony Little Thunder is still asleep too and does not like early calls…

Gifted and schooled in many vital skills, the wilderness lad soon tracks his quarry, but a tense first encounter accidently leaves the spectral bruin fully exposed but totally unconscious. Plagued with guilt, Yakari fetches honeycombs and waits to formally apologise. On the big beast’s awakening, the boy realises this is no lost far-north denizen, but something even stranger…

Gradually warming to each other, the “ghost” explains that he is actually a Black Bear who was born with white fur. His mother called him Snowball, and he was alternatively teased and picked on or chased by vacuous impressionable females dazzled by his glamourous differences. Thus, fed up and impatient, Snowball left home, crossing the Rocky Mountains and following the river ever southwards…

Soon the adventurous pair are best pals, loafing, fishing and having fun, and when Yakari returns to camp he’s anticipating much more to come. He even puts off Rainbow and Buffalo Seed when they enquire if he found his ghost bear, but sadly, they are all unaware that someone else has overheard the conversation.

Taut Bow is a professional hunter who services many local tribes, but he has a problem. As he later proudly shows Yakari, the inveterate, infallible stalker adores white fur. He has killed and preserved the hides of countless animals all the “colour of winter”. Moreover, with what he’s overheard, the travelling butcher can finally complete his collection by adding a white bear skin to it. Of course, he will need Yakari’s help…

Unable to dissuade, defect or deter the fervent tracker, Yakari devises a devious scheme that is not without risk and involves some nasty sticky business with caves and bats, before ultimately finding a way to deflect Taut Bow’s obsessive attentions and move him on to other hunting grounds.

… And in the peaceful aftermath of a riotous night, spirit raven Venerable Beak delivers a telling lecture pointing out the duty and purpose of those animals chosen to live in white livery: one that changes Snowball’s attitude, destiny and future destinations…

Yakari is one of the most unfailingly absorbing and entertaining all-ages comics strips ever conceived. It should be in every home, right next to Tintin, Uncle Scrooge, Asterix, Calvin and Hobbes and The Moomins. It’s never too late to start reading something wonderful, so why not get back to nature as soon as you can?
Original edition © Derib + Job – Editions du Lombard (Dargaud – Lombard s. a.) – 2002. All rights reserved. English translation © 2025.

In 1904 the magnificent “Marge” (Marjorie Lyman Henderson Buell) was born. Did her childhood in any way affect or drive her cartoon classic Little Lulu? Sixteen years later Steve Canyon inheritor Dick Rockwell arrived himself followed by Wee Pals creator Morrie Turner in 1923.

In comic books, John Buscema was born in 1927 and Mary Marvel debuted in Captain Marvel Adventures #18, cover-dated December 11th 1942. Hate-filler Peter Bagge was born in 1957 and in 2011 the astounding Jerry Robinson died.

If you don’t fear foreigners you might care to celebrate Argentinian Carlos (Cybersix) Meglia’s natal arrival in 1957 and 1964’s auspicious advent of Frenchman Laurent Chabosy who becomes Lewis Trondheim to build bande dessinée magic such as Little Nothings volumes 1-4: The Curse of the Umbrella, The Prisoner Syndrome, Uneasy Happiness, My Shadow in the Distance.

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The Complete Peanuts volume 10: 1969-1970


By Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Books/Canongate Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-126-0 (US TPB) 978-0857862143 (Cannongate HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Towering Monumental Tradition Writ (and Drew) Large… 10/10

Peanuts is unequivocally the most important comic strip in the history of graphic narrative. It is also the most deeply personal. Cartoonist Charles M Schulz crafted his moodily hilarious, hysterically introspective, shockingly surreal philosophical epic for half a century: 17,897 strips spanning October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000. He died – from complications of cancer – the day before his last strip was printed.

At its height, Peanuts ran in 2,600 newspapers, in 21 languages and75 countries. Many of those venues still run it as perpetual reprints, and have done ever since “Sparky” passed. During his lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy doodler an actual billionaire at a time when that really meant something…

None of that matters. Peanuts – a title Schulz loathed, but one the syndicate forced upon him – changed the way comics strips were received and perceived: proving cartoon comedy could have edges and nuance and meaning as well as too-soon-forgotten pratfalls and punchlines.

We begin with an effusive and enthusiastic foreword from author/animator/illustrator Mo Willems (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, Knuffle Bunny, Sheep in the Big City) expressing his debt to the strip.

On the pages, this period heralds a true renaissance probably triggered by headlines in an era of swiftly shifting changes in social attitudes and rampant cultural exploration. Notionally, our focus and point of contact remains quintessentially inspirational loser Charlie Brown who, despite slowly taking a few steps behind fanciful, high-maintenance mutt Snoopy, remains squarely at odds with the mercurial supporting cast. They are still hanging out doing what at first sight seems to be Kids Stuff in an increasingly hostile and intrusive universe of perverse happenstance. Except perhaps that Lucy Van Pelt kid. She’s not like the others…

Neatly interspersed with daily doses of gloom, the Peanuts Sunday page first debuted on January 6th 1952: a standard half-page slot offering more measured fare than 4-panel dailies. Thwarted ambition, sporting failures, crushing frustration abound, alternating with Snoopy’s inner life of aviation and war stories, star gazing, shooting the breeze with bird buddies, weather woes and food fiascos. These and other signature sorties across the sabbath indulgences afforded Schulz room to be his most imaginative, whimsical and provocative…

Regular tentpole moments to relish include more Snoopy v Lucy deathmatches/ambush snogs/dance offs; Charlie Brown’s food feud with the beagle, an assortment of night terrors; Lucy’s emphatically simple solutions to complex questions; doggy dreams; the power of television; sporting endeavours and the sharply-cornered romantic triangle involving Lucy, Schroeder & Beethoven – albeit wedded to “sophisticated” fallout when pushy Frieda decides she also wants to play…

Always, gags centre on play, varying degrees of musicality, pranks, interpersonal alignments, the mounting pressures of ever-harder education, mass media lensed through young eyes and a selection of sports in their season. All are leavened by agonising teasing, naked contempt, kindled and crushed hopes, the making of baffled observations and occasionally acting a bit too much like grown-ups. However, in this tome, themes and tropes that define the entire series (especially in the wake of many animated TV specials) become mantra-like yet endlessly variable, but focus less on Charlie and more on those around him. Also, the outside grown-up world considerably encroaches, as when Lucy declares herself a “ New Feminist” although no one looking can see any difference to any presumably previously un-enlightened Miss van Pelt…

Human interactions still find the boy a pitiable outlier. Mean girl Violet, musical prodigy Schroeder, self-taught psychoanalyst/dictator-in-waiting Lucy, her brilliantly off-kilter little brother Linus and dirt-magnet “Pig-Pen” are fixtures honed and primed to generate joke-routines and gag-sequences around their signature foibles, but some early characters have faded away in favour of fresh attention-attracting players. Newcomers sidle in and shuffle off without much flurry or fanfare but in our real world the use of “Minority” characters José Peron of New Mexico and African American Franklin drew much attention and controversy – because, I guess, there will always be gits and arseholes – especially if the oblivious readers elected them…

The most significant expansion is that weird upside bird bugging the beagle gets a name – Woodstock (as revealed on June 22, 1970) – and a job as his dogsbody – secretary, actually – whilst shock near-cripples the round-headed kid when he discovers that the “little red-haired girl” he almost plucked up the nerve to talk to moves to a new city. It’s a blow he’s still reeling from when this book ends two years later, and one only Linus really understands. After all, his teacher Miss Othmar is gone after the teacher’s strike…

There is much more madcap politically-tinged material, including repeated riffs on a recently inaugurated new real-world president (Richard Milhous Nixon on January 20, 1969) as seen when Snoopy briefly becomes the most powerful mutt in the Free world after being chosen as the new Grand Beagle…

At least the Brown boy’s existential crisis/responsibility vector/little sister Sally has grown enough to become just another trigger for relentless self-excoriation. As she grows, pesters librarians, forms opinions and propounds steadfastly authoritarian views, Charlie is relegated to being her dumber, but eternally protective, big brother especially as her biggest bugbear is starting school and Charlie is such an expert on all things scholastic…

Resigned to – but far from uncomplaining about – life as a loser in the gunsight of cruel and capricious fate, the boy Brown is helpless meat in the clutches of openly sadistic Lucy. When not sabotaging his efforts to kick a football, she monetises her spiteful verve via a 5¢ walk-in psychoanalysis booth (although supply and demand economics also affects this unshakeable standard), ensuring that whether at play, in sports, kite-flying or just brooding, the round-headed kid truly endures the character-building trials of the damned.

One deliciously powerful constant that grows more abundant is the boy’s utter inability to fly that kite. Here war with wind, gravity and landscape reaches absurdist proportions, as the tree haunts Charlie Brown’s adored pastime with vicious, violent and malign venom. Moreover, other kids are aware of its growing power. After one terse musical interlude with Schroeder, Lucy lobs our reluctant lover-boy’s beloved piano into the voracious carnivorous conifer…

By now, the beagle is the true star of the show, with his primary quest for more and better playing out against an increasingly baroque inner life, wild encounters with birds, sports, dance marathons and skating trysts (especially the close-order combat called ice hockey!), philosophical ruminations, and ever-more-popular catchphrases. Here, burgeoning whimsy leads to more glimpses of the interior world: his WWI other life, peppered with dogfights against the accursed Red Baron, but also careers as an astronaut, a sports coach, a prairie dog and a detective seeking his lost mother. That tragic obscured past as an alumni of the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm leads to constant introspection… and dancing… lots and lots of dancing…

Naturally, Snoopy soon subverts all that misery and curiosity to fuel his creative side and begins the Great American Novel that will change literature forever… but that’s before the Browns go on vacation and leave the dog with the Van Pelts. Naturally, Lucy has an idea about finally fixing the pooch. It doesn’t end well…

As always, timeless episodes of play, peril, peewee psychoanalysis and personal excoriation are beards for some heavy topics. Rendered in marvellous monochrome, there are crucial character introductions, plot developments and creation of more traditions we all revere to this day. Of particular note is the growing role of Patricia Reichardt – AKA tomboy Peppermint Patty – who heartbreakingly deals with the so-early discovery that she will never be pretty or beautiful. Even Snoopy’s most concerted efforts can’t quite salve that sting…

Another trenchant continued gag-series resumes Lucy obsessive attempts to “cure” Linus of his blanket dependency by again playing him off against Grandma who will give donations to charities if the boy grows up…

Snoopy is the only force capable of challenging if not actually countering Lucy. Over these two years, her campaign to curb that weird beagle, cure her brother of blanket addiction and generally reorder reality to her preferences reaches astounding heights and appalling depths, but the dog keeps trying and scores many minor victories. As always the book opens and closes with many strips riffing on snow, food, movie-going and television – or the gang’s responses to it – becoming ever more pervasive. And as always, Lucy constantly, consistently sucks all the joy out of the white wonder stuff and the astounding variety offered by the goggle-box. Perpetually sabotaged, and facing abuse from every female in their life, Brown and Snoopy endure more casual grief from smug, attention-seeking Frieda, who champions shallow good looks over substance. At least Linus is growing: hardened inside by what happened to teacher Miss Othmar, but Lucy’s amatory ambitions for Schroeder grow ever more chilling and substantive. She will never move on…

Schulz established way points in his year: formally celebrating certain calendar occasions – real or invented – as perennial shared events: Mothers and Fathers’ Days, Fourth of July, National Dog Week strips accompanied in their turn yearly milestones like Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween/Great Pumpkin Day and Beethoven’s Birthday were joined this year by a return to another American ritual as many of the cast return to summer camp. At least there is unbridled joy when Brown’s baseball team hits a winning streak and Charlie meets his all-time sporting idol – except of course they’re not quite the boons they first appear…

Sports loom large and terrifying as ever, but star athlete Snoopy is more interested in new passions than boring old baseball or hockey. Even Lucy finds far more absorbing pastimes but still enjoys crushing the spirits of her teammates in whatever endeavour they are failing at. Anxiety-wracked Brown even steps down from the baseball team to ease his life, but that only intensifies his woes, and does nothing to help his kite wielding or football kicking…

Linus endures more disappointment in two Great Pumpkin seasons and before you know it, there’s the traditional countdown to Christmas and another year filled with weird, wild and wonderful moments…

Wrapping it all up, Gary Groth celebrates and deconstructs the man and his work in ‘Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000’, preceded by a copious ‘Index’ offering instant access to favourite scenes you’d like to see again…

Available in multiple formats, this volume guarantees total enjoyment: comedy gold and social glue metamorphosing into an epic of spellbinding graphic mastery that still adds joy to billions of lives, and continues to make new fans and devotees long after its maker’s passing.
The Complete Peanuts: 1969-1970 (Volume Ten) © 2008 Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. The Foreword is © 2008, John Waters. “Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000” © 2008 Gary Groth. All rights reserved.

Today in 1946 Lucky Luke “debuted” in the Spirou Alamanch Annual – except if you read Lucky Luke: The Complete Collection Volume One you’ll know that ain’t necessarily so…

And in 1970 the incredible Rube Goldberg shuffled off this mortal coil. It was probably one he had designed in his masterful cartoons. Go google Rueben Awards…

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The Most Amazing Saturday Morning Rubbish Club


By Bill Tuckey & Francisco de la Mora (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-36-2 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Family entertainment… 8/10

Are you old enough to remember, books, films and comics aimed at kids who would see players their own age finding a problem and sorting it out themselves? That’s what this fabulous yarn is, only here those plucky protagonists are all kids with conditions the world says renders them even more useless and in fact unable to act or think for themselves at all…

Writer (broadcaster, radio DJ, journalist, editor) Bill Tuckey & artist Francisco de la Mora (Frida Kahlo – Her Life, Her Work, Her Home please link to March 13th 2023) are both parents of children with special needs. Tuckey’s boys have ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and de la Mora’s lad has PVL (Periventricular leukomalacia) and both creators have brought those experiences into a grand adventure that is also a signpost for how you should all behave around those of us that need a little forethought, patience and consideration…

In a city district near a park, 11-year-olds Arthur Ballentine and Finn Gregory are already pals when they first encounter tireless fireball Uma Blanco. She’s 8 and has PVL. It leaves her with speech difficulties and cognitive deficits, but she always knows what she wants and runs rings around Arthur, who has ASD, and Finn, stuck in his wheelchair due to cerebral palsy.

They instantly unite over the way the insensitive folk (“the white people”) around them act and find purpose in the way their favourite space is becoming one huge litter trap. It’s just one aspect of the ongoing neglect slowly ruining the treasured urban green space. It’s getting less fun all the time now, as they learn from embattled park warden “the General”, lumbered with explaining why the latest council cuts mean the disabled toilets are closed from now on…

By June the kids are firm friends and resolved to do something. It begins with just picking up other people’s rubbish every Saturday, but builds before going into extreme overdrive once they discover a quiet, damaged man is living under the trees with a fox called Winchester. He’s buried himself in an underground hideout constructed secretly from other people’s cast offs…

And thus begins a quirky tale of renewal and unlikely friendships which charmingly lead to victory for the idealistic nippers, salvation for sad, strange wild engineer Richard (once the police stop being involved) and even a glorious storybook ending of sorts…

This is not polemic masquerading as entertainment. There’s a clever plot, compelling drama and a profound resolution in the offing. Of course there are plenty of incidents underlining how crap we are as society in taking care of our fellows, but it’s velvet-gloved in a welter of witty incidents and glorious characters studies of the kids and all the adults they impact and gradually convert to a better way of thinking and acting…

I don’t get to use the terms inspirational or heartwarming much when reviewing modern books and comics but when The Most Amazing Saturday Morning Rubbish Club inevitably becomes the next big British indie movie hit (like The Lady in the Van but closer to the kerb and bushes), I’ll be back to say I told you so and to plug the book all over again…
© 2025 Francisco de la Mora/Bill Tuckey. All rights reserved.

Today in 1911 Disney comics artist Paul Murray was born. We last saw his mastery in Walt Disney’s Donald Duck Volume 2: The Diabolical Duck Avenger. In 1950 Chris Claremont was born, and the magnificent Bob Haney died today in 2004. You don’t need me to tell you what they did and where to find their works.

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The Legend of Desperate Dan – 60 Years of Classic Cartoon Art


By Dudley D. Watkins, with Charles Grigg, Ken Harrison & various (DC Thomson & Co)
ISBN: 978-0-85116-657-5 (tabloid HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

It needs to be said. Scotland is an ancient and proud nation steeped in unique history, character and culture, and one that has enriched the entire world. That having been said, they all seem to have a rather odd and frequently disturbing fascination with the notion of cowboys…

A timeless case in point is an icon of action and hilarity who began life as a mere half-page feature in the very first issue of The Dandy. The rowdy roughneck (and chin, and chest and…) was first seen fleeing town on December 4th 1937, but has since mellowed, found a family and settled down, He’s still the Strongest Man on Earth and always in trouble because he doesn’t know his own strength…

As seen in the eponymous opening historical section of this colossal tome, ‘The Legend of Desperate Dan’ predates Superman’s debut and owes more to Elzie Segar’s maritime masterpiece Popeye (as seen back then in Thimble Theatre) by way of a countless stampede of Saturday morning movie two-reelers. However Desperate Dan didn’t roam too long on the range and swiftly garnered a family including formidable Aunt Aggie, super-tough nephew Danny, niece Katey, the hard-pressed Mayor, Sheriff and so forth… and lots of put-upon, shell-shocked neighbours usually caught in the catastrophic aftermath of Dan’s latest efforts to help…

Like so many of DC Thompson’s most memorable stars, the Big Guy was the brainchild of Dudley D. Watkins (1907-1969) at his most imaginative and culturally adroit. A tireless and prolific illustrator equally adept at comedy, adventure, educational and drama storytelling, Watkins’ style more than any other shaped the pre and especially postwar look and form of the Scottish publishing giant’s comics output. Yes, the company AND the cowboy…

Watkins started life in Manchester and Nottingham as an artistic prodigy prior to entering Glasgow College of Art in 1924. Before long he was advised to get a job at expanding, Dundee-based Thomson’s, where a 6-month trial period illustrating prose “Boys’ Papers” 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 the only contender for both lead strips in a bold new project conceived by Robert Duncan Low (1895-1980). Managing Editor of Children’s Publication. Between 1921 – 1933, Low launched the company’s “Big Five” story papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur. In 1936, he created the “Fun Section”: a landmark 8-page comic strip supplement for national newspaper The Sunday Post. This illustrated accessory – prototype and blueprint for every comic the company subsequently released – was launched on 8th March. From the outset, The Broons and Oor Wullie were the uncontested headliners… and both illustrated by Watkins. The other features included Chic Gordon’s Auchentogle, Allan Morley’s Nero and Zero, Nosey Parker and others. These pioneering comics laid the groundwork for the company’s next great leap. In December 1937 Low launched DC Thomson’s first weekly all-picture strip comic, The Dandy. Amidst the serried rank of funsters was a half-page western gag strip. It related the riotous outrages of a mean desperado dubbed Dan…

Dan was extremely popular and in 1939 briefly enjoyed taking up 75% of a page before expanding onto the star status of a full one. Famously, Dandy editor Alber Barnes – who hired Watkins and was the comic’s boss until 1982 – was the model for that unmissable chin. Almost everything else was made up…

This collation offers a wealth of strips, beginning with those calamity-stuffed half-pagers, filled with mighty gaffes, massive consumption and appalling comedic animal cruelty, all preceding the inevitable war contributions as the officially neutral US citizen kept finding ways to bugger up Hitler and Goebbels’ plans for Britain. Another cautionary note: back then smoking tobacco was MANLY, so Dan did it in vast and generally competitive amounts. Be warned and wary…

Monochrome trips about eating, fighting, shaving, Dan’s Girlfriend Lizzie, eating, fighting some more and getting even pause for a colour featurette on ‘The Dandy Monster Comic’ as Dan hoved further westward into Books and Annuals before the strips concentrate on the ‘War years’ with Cactusville slowly morphing in all but name into a fair-sized Scottish town as Dan inflicted ever more outlandish punishments on the weary, wary Wehrmacht…

Feature on firsts follows with ‘Desperate Dan’ shouting out to his ever expanding cast, after which post-war tales encompass a momentous trip to the North Pole; jobs; cow pie; sweet rationing; clothing for the bigger man; bank robbers; cow pie; how feeble modern buildings are; toothache for tough guys and how meat rationing impacts on the mightiest appetite ever known. Once again it’s some pretty hard sledding for us wimpy modern animal-lovers…

Covers, strips and other treats from the Christmas tomes explore Dan’s unstoppable progress and includes a spread on ‘Back Covers on Annuals’ – the cowboy’s sole province from 1954 to 1965 – before segueing into a 1950s selection as Britain, Empire & Commonwealth and Dandy underwent dramatic revision and change…

The Watkins-limned prose yarn ‘Two Desperate Tiddley-Winkers’ leads to more fifties fun with Dan no longer in any way intentionally dangerous in strips covering the star’s invulnerable hair & bristles, coal mining in the High Street; cow pie; and Dan’s utterly unique pedal bike (take one steamroller and three parts tractor…) before closing on a momentous moment of history as Dan voyages to London to see the Queen’s coronation as originally published in Dandy dated June 6th 1953…

‘The Desperate Dan Song’ – sorry, just words & pictures so you’ll need to wrangle up your own tune – leads into more strips with enhanced roles for Danny & Katey, prior to the Sixties revivals opening with ‘Annual features’ including a glance at Dan’s primordial forebear Desprit Jake.

With contemporary strips coming thick & fast the fun is closely followed by two-colour Annual larks involving li’l Dan’s photo-day at ‘Cactusville School’ whilst – happily mining a fresh seam – ‘Desperate Dan’s Schooldays’ (as illustrated by Charles Grigg and first published in the Desperate Dan Annual 1979) gives readers another bucket of whimsical back-story from the big man boyhood as the end approaches.

In 1984, the Biggest Yin made it to the front – and back – of the weekly Dandy covers, displacing Grigg’s Korky the Cat after five straight decades. Here a full colour spread celebrates an anniversary year with a quartet (octet?) of images shouting out fifty years of Desperate astonishment wonder before we unsaddle for the moment with final modern colour feature ‘The Hobbies of Desperate Dan’ as seen in the 1994 Dandy Annual and showing what the term “extreme sports” really means…

Timeless, hilarious and not nearly as tame as you thought, Desperate Dan is a pure paradigm of our lengthy comics glory – and disregard for other people’s culture. Here is a book that – if you’re properly braced and forewarned – will delight and warm your secret, stifled cartoon coloniser’s heart.
© D.C. Thomson & Co Ltd 1997.

Today in 1913 Golden Age artist Charles (Spy Smasher, et al) Sultan was born. In 1943, Metabarons artist Juan Giménez was born. You might also want to peek at A Matter of Time, before celebrating that in 1962 Darwyn Cooke (DC: The New Frontier, Batman: Ego, Parker) joined us for far too short a time.