Category: Kids – All Ages

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Skeleton Key: the Graphic Novel – an Alex Rider Adventure


By Anthony Horowitz, adapted by Antony Johnston, Kanako & Yuzuru Takasaki (Walker Books)
ISBN: 978-1-4063-1345-2

If America is the spiritual home of the superhero, Britain is Great because of spies and detectives. Our popular literary heritage is littered with cunning sleuths and stealthy investigators from Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Campion and Lord Peter Wimsey to the Scarlet Pimpernel, George Smiley and Harry Palmer.  And Bond: James Bond…

In 2000 Anthony Horowitz produced Stormbreaker, the first of eight (and counting…) rip-snorting teen novels featuring 14 year old orphan Alex Rider: a smart, fit, sports-mad lad like any other, who suddenly discovers that his guardian Uncle Ian has also died. Moreover the deceased gentleman was apparently a spy of some distinction and had been surreptitiously teaching the lad all the skills, techniques and disciplines needed to become a secret agent…

Soon MI6 are knocking on his door…

As well as a major motion picture and video game, the books (the first three so far) have also been adapted to the comics medium; their easy blend of action, youthful rebellion and overwhelmingly comfortable 007-style pastiche winning many fans in the traditionally perilous older-boys book market. They’re really rather good…

I’m reviewing this particular graphic novel simply because it caught my eye on my last trip to the local library (how soft modern kids do have it; when I was a portly nipper you had to sneak comics into the place and read them concealed behind gigantic atlases or art books), but even though I’ve previously ignored them I can honestly say now that I’ll be seeking out the previous adaptations and eagerly waiting forthcoming ones…

Alex is a highly effective but reluctant agent, preferring the normal life of his boarding school to the clandestine machinations of espionage. However his occasional paymasters at MI6 are always looking for ways to exploit his obvious talents. A seemingly innocent offer to work as a ball-boy at the Wimbledon Tennis tournament leads to him foiling a huge gambling scam by a Chinese Triad.

Unfortunately this makes him a target for Triad vengeance, so his “boss” Mr. Crawford suggests a little trip to Cuba until the heat dies down.

Roll Credits…

Alex soon discovers he has been “borrowed” by the CIA to add camouflage to a reconnaissance mission involving Alexei Sarov, an old Stalinist Soviet general who is up to something particularly nasty with stolen atomic weapons from his isolated fortress on the Cayo Esqueleto or “Skeleton Key”.

Tasked with finding out what the old soldier is planning, the American agents at first make him less than welcome, resenting his presence and not trusting a “mere kid”, but I’m sure they changed their minds around about the moment when they got murdered…

Now the only operative in the game, Alex is soon captured by Sarov who proves to be an unbeatable opponent. Moreover he has a most unique fate planned for the boy after his plans for global annihilation are achieved: he wants to adopt him…

This is an immensely entertaining romp, hitting all the thrill-buttons for an ideal summer blockbluster, even though it’s told – and very convincingly – from the viewpoint of an uncertain boy rather than a suave, sophisticated adult. Donkin’s adaptation is sharp and witty, capturing the insecurities and verve of the young hero perfectly whilst the art by sisters Kanako & Yuzuru Takasaki is in a full-colour, computer-rendered manga style that might not please everybody but does work exceedingly well in conveying the softer moments as well as the spectacular action set-pieces.

Be warned however, even though this is a kid’s book there is a substantial amount of fighting and a large bodycount, and the violence is not at all cartoony in context. If you intend sharing the book with younger children, read it yourself first.

These books and their comic counterparts are a fine addition to our fiction tradition. Alex Rider will return… why don’t you join him?

Text and illustrations © 2009 Walker Books Ltd. Based on the original novel Skeleton Key © 2002 Anthony Horowitz. All rights reserved.

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Artemis Fowl: the Graphic Novel


By Eoin Colfer & Andrew Donkin, illustrated by Giovanni Rigano, colour by Paolo Lamanna (Puffin Books)
ISBN: 978-0-141-32296-4

I just couldn’t let Puffin Books’ 70th anniversary pass without a congratulatory comment, and this exceedingly entertaining adaptation of one of the best children’s novels (and how I wish that didn’t sound like that makes kids fiction somehow less valid than “grown up” books) of recent years is a perfect way so to do.

Puffin Books began in 1939, the brainchild of Allan Lane who had revolutionised the world four years previously with the launch of Penguin Books, successfully establishing the mass-market paperback. Despite war-time paper shortages Puffin grew from strength to strength, especially when journalist Kaye Webb took over as editor in 1961, introducing a higher rate of illustration to the books, widening the parameters of the kids market by commissioning a huge variety of new authors and in 1967 creating the world’s greatest and best book society – the Puffin Club.

If you grew up in Britain over the last fifty years you have read one of the books she was responsible for. …

Webb passed away in 1996 but her innovative influence still permeates Puffin, as can be seen in the captivating adventures of Artemis Fowl II, criminal mastermind, scion of Ireland’s greatest family of rogues and villains and probably the greatest intellect on the planet. He inherited the family business when his father mysteriously vanished on a caper, a loss from which Artemis’ mother has never recovered.

This Machiavellian anti-hero is a teenager so smart that he has deduced that fairies and mystical creatures actually exist and he spends this first book stealing their secrets to replenish the family’s depleted fortunes and fulfil his greatest heart’s desire…

His greatest ally is Butler, a manically loyal and extremely formidable hereditary retainer who is a master of physical violence. The first of the six novels published thus far is here adapted by the author and Andrew Donkin, and illustrated in a kind of Euro-manga style that won’t suit everybody but which nevertheless perfectly captures the mood and energy of the original. This lavish adventure is also interspersed with comprehensive and clever data-file pages (by Megan Noller Holt) to bring everybody up to full speed on this wild, wild world…

Fowl is utterly brilliant and totally ruthless. Once determining that the mythological realm of pixies, elves, ogres and the like are actually a highly advanced secret race which predated humanity and now dwells deep underground, he “obtains” and translates their Great Book and divines all their secrets of technology and magic.

Fowl has a plan for the greatest score of all time, and knows that he cannot be thwarted, but he not reckoned on the wit, guts and determination of Holly Short, an elf who works for the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance Force. She is the only female LEPRecon allowed to work on the surface and has had to prove herself every moment of every day…

Combining sinister mastery, exotic locales, daring adventure, spectacular high fantasy concepts and appallingly low puns and slapstick, this tale has translated extremely well to the comics medium (but that’s no reason not to read the books too) with a clever plot and characters that are both engaging and grotesquely vulgar – perfect fare for kids. I especially admire the kleptomaniac dwarf Mulch Diggum, whose species’ self-defence mechanism consists of overwhelming explosive flatulence…

Farting, fighting and fantasy are pretty much the perfect combination for kid’s fiction and boys especially will revel in the unrestrained power of the wicked lead character. This is a little gem from a fabulously imaginative creator and an unrelentingly rewarding publisher. Long may you all reign…
Text © 2007 Eoin Colfer. Illustrations © 2007 Giovanni Rigano. All rights reserved.

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Spirou and Fantasia: Adventure Down Under


By Tome & Janry, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-011-5

For most English-speaking comic fans and collectors Spirou is probably Europe’s biggest secret. The character is a rough contemporary – and bald commercial  response – to Hergé’s iconic superstar Tintin, whilst the comic he has headlined for decades is only beaten in sheer longevity and creativity by our own Beano and Dandy.

Conceived at Belgian Printing House by Jean Dupuis in 1936, a magazine targeting a juvenile audience debuted on April 21st 1938 (three and bit months before DC Thomson’s Beano, but still beaten by The Dandy which launched on 4th December 1937), it was edited by Charles Dupuis (a mere tadpole, only 19 years old, himself) and took its name from the lead feature, which recounted the improbable adventures of a plucky Bellboy/lift operator employed by the Moustique Hotel (a reference to the publisher’s chief magazine, Le Moustique). With his pet squirrel, Spip (joining the cast on June 8th 1939, he’s the longest running character in the strip after Spirou himself) he was the idea of French artist Robert Velter,  who signed himself Rob-Vel.

A Dutch language edition ‘Robbedoes’ debuted a few weeks later and ran more-or-less in tandem with the French parent comic until it was cancelled in 2005.

The bulk of the comic was taken up with cheap American imports: Red Ryder by Fred Harman, William Ritt & Clarence Gray’s ‘Brick Bradford’ and Siegel & Shuster’s landmark creation ‘Superman’ although home-grown product crept in too. Most prominent were ‘Tif et Tondu’ by Fernand Dineur (which ran until the1990s) and ‘L’Epervier Blue’ by Sirius (Max Mayeu) and they were soon joined by comic-strip wunderkind Joseph Gillain – “Jije” (during World War II Jije legendarily drew the entire comic by himself, banned US imports included, as well as assuming production of the Spirou strip where he created the current co-star Fantasio).

Except for a brief period when the Nazis closed the comic down (September 1943 to October 1944 when the Allies liberated Belgium) Spirou and its boyish star – now a globe-trotting reporter – have continued their weekly exploits in unbroken four-colour glory.

Among the other myriad major features that began within those pages are ‘Jean Valhardi’ (by Jean Doisy & Jije), ‘Blondin et Cirage’ (Victor Hubinon), ‘Buck Danny’, ‘Jerry Spring’, ‘Les Schtroumpfs’, ‘Gaston Lagaffe’ and a certain laconic cowboy named ‘Lucky Luke’.

Spirou the character (the name translates as both “squirrel” and “mischievous”) has starred in the magazine for most of its life, evolving under a series of creators into an urbane yet raucous fantasy/adventure hero with the accent heavily on light humour. With comrade and rival Fantasio and crackpot inventor the Count of Champignac, Spirou travels to exotic places, uncovering crimes, revealing the fantastic and garnering a coterie of exotic arch-enemies.

During the War when Velter went off to fight, his wife Blanche Dumoulin took over the strip using the name Davine, assisted by Luc Lafnet. Dupuis assumed control of and rights to the strip in 1943, assigning it to Jije who handed it to his assistant André Franquin in 1946. It was the start of a golden age.

Among Franquin’s innovations were the villains Zorglub and Zantafio, Champignac and one of the first strong female characters in European comics, rival journalist Seccotine (renamed Cellophine in this current English translation), but his greatest creation – one he retained on his departure in 1969 – was the incredible magic animal Marsupilami (first seen in Spirou et les héritiers in 1952), now a star of screen, plush toy store, console and albums all his own.

From 1959 the writer Greg and background artist Jidéhem assisted Franquin but by 1969 the artist had reached his Spirou limit and resigned, taking his mystic yellow monkey with him. He was succeeded by Jean-Claude Fournier who updated the feature over the course of nine stirring adventures that tapped into the rebellious, relevant zeitgeist of the times with tales of environmental concern, nuclear energy, drug cartels and repressive regimes.

As the series entered the 1980s it seemed to stall: three discrete creative teams alternated on the serial: Raoul Cauvin & Nic Broca, Yves Chaland and the creators of the graphic novel under review here: Philippe Vandevelde writing as Tome and artist Jean-Richard Geurts AKA Janry. These last adapted and referenced the beloved Franquin era and revived the feature’s fortunes, producing fourteen wonderful albums between 1984 and 1998. This one, ‘Adventure Down Under’ from 1985, was their second.

Since their departure Lewis Trondheim and the team of Jean-Davide Morvan & Jose-Luis Munuera have brought the official album count to fifty (there also are a bunch of specials, spin-offs and one-shots, official and otherwise)…

As Spirou and Fantasio arrive home exhausted from their latest assignment they are intercepted by Cellophine at the airport: odd things are occurring in the depths of the Outback and the always-newsworthy Count of Champignac is right at the heart of it. Instantly awake again all three fly to Australia where nefarious deeds are occurring at the desolate Albuh Opal Mine.

The crazy inventor is there on the verge of a fabulous and incredible discovery far more precious than jewels, but the ruthless miners don’t seem that impressed, although they are worried by disappearing diggers, inexplicable accidents, men driven crazy and, if some observers are to be believed, levitating aborigines…

This classy blend of thrilling mystery, weird science, light adventure and broad slapstick is a pure refreshing joy in a market far too full of adults-only carnage and testosterone-fuelled breast-beating. Easily accessible to readers of all ages and drawn with all the welcoming style and panache that makes Asterix, Lucky Luke and Iznogoud so compelling, this is a cracking read and hopefully the start of a long line of translated epics that will become as much a household name as those series – and even Tintin himself…

Original edition © Dupuis, 1985 by Tome & Janry. All rights reserved. English translation 2009 © Cinebook Ltd.

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The Hobbit


By J.R.R. Tolkien, adapted by Charles Dixon & Sean Deming, illustrated by David Wenzel (Eclipse Book)
ISBN: 1-56060-054-3-1295

I’m a great believer in art remaining true to its roots: Nobody writes a novel with the ultimate intention of it becoming a lousy movie, nor a song or symphony merely to sell the ring-tone rights (maybe these days they do – it would certainly explain why there are so many bad books and crap tunes. Just call me the last of the dewy-eyed idealists, then).

So just to keep things straight: even though I’m about to review the graphic novel adaptation – and favourably – Read the Book. Even though there’s been a stage play, a radio drama, an animated feature and (soon) a two-film franchise – Read the Book.

Every time you see something leap the creative hurdle from original artwork to another, different, separate medium: Read the Book. Or comic or play or song or…

The Hobbit was first published in 1937 to world-wide success and acclaim. It won the New York Herald-Tribune Award for best juvenile fiction, was nominated for a Carnegie Medal and is rightly considered to be a classic of World Literature. In my overblown and utterly personal opinion it completely outclasses and knocks spots off the sequel Tolkien’s publishers demanded. You ought to read that too: it’s called Lord of the Rings.

In 1989 Eclipse Comics produced a three-part prestige miniseries adapting the Hobbit, which was then collected into a successful graphic novel that helped break the then-new format out of the comics fan ghetto. Since the company’s demise the collection has been re-issued by HarperCollins (1998, ISBN: 978-0-26110-266-8) and other companies and is relatively easy to find.

I’m sticking with the original here simple because it has the wonderful painted cover by David Wenzel gracing it. The story itself, of how a sedate and sedentary little Halfling called Bilbo Baggins is cajoled by the wizard Gandalf into leaving his complacent life of middle class prosperity for the seductive lure of adventure, is as enchanting as it ever was.

The diminutive Hobbit agrees, somewhat reluctantly, to become a Thief/Burglar for 14 disinherited dwarfs who yearn to liberate their ancestral home – and treasure – from the awesome dragon Smaug, and incorporates all the fascinating ephemerals that have graced Western mythology and tale-telling for centuries. (Read the Book).

Tolkien’s text is sensitively abridged rather than adapted by Chuck Dixon and Sean Deming, who strove to retain as much of the original as possible, whilst the illustration is by turns pretty, jolly, enthralling and when the dragon, goblins, trolls and especially Gollum appear, wholesomely terrifying. Wenzel started out as a wanna-be comics artist before moving into the field of fantasy and especially children’s illustration in the 1980s where he worked with icons like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and creators like Maurice Sendak, but he returned to comics for this project: probably his greatest achievement and one he’d dreamed of for much of his career (See Middle Earth: the World of Tolkien Illustrated)…

This is a truly magical interpretation of the classic and one that any devotee will find hard to dislike. If you are a lover of traditional fantasy you should get a copy – after you’ve Read the Book.

© 1989, 1990 the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. Based on The Hobbit © 1965 by J.R.R. Tolkien. Illustration © 1989, 1990 David Wenzel. Adaptation © 1989, 1990 Charles Dixon & Sean Deming. All Rights Reserved.

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The Art of Herg̩ РInventor of Tintin: volume 2 1937-1949


By Philippe Goddin (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-724-2

Georges Prosper Remi, known all over the world as Hergé, created a genuine masterpiece of graphic literature with his tales of a plucky boy reporter and his entourage of iconic associates. Singly, and later with assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and other supreme stylists of the select Hergé Studio, he created twenty three splendid volumes (originally produced in brief instalments for a variety of periodicals) that have grown beyond their popular culture roots and attained the status of High Art.

On leaving school in 1925 he worked for the Catholic newspaper Le XXe Siécle where he fell under the influence of its Svengali-esque editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. A devoted boy-scout Remi produced his first strip series The Adventures of Totor for the monthly Boy Scouts of Belgium magazine the following year, and by 1928 he was in charge of producing the contents of Le XXe Siécle’s weekly children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtiéme.

He was illustrating The Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonette, written by the staff sports reporter when Wallez asked him to create a new adventure series. Perhaps a young reporter who roamed the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues?

The rest is history, and for such a pivotal figure who better to recount it than Philippe Goddin, friend and acclaimed expert and the man who directed the Hergé Studio research and archives for a decade?

This intermediate volume of three follows the artist’s progress week by week and year by year through the heady successes of his major creations, diarising key events, clarifying the various tasks of a jobbing periodical cartoonist and noting the key personal moments of the man’s life – such as his affair with a friend of his wife Greg and the moment he discovered his agent had been embezzling from him.

Liberally illustrated with original art, printed and retouched pages and frames, copies of the comics and magazines the strips first appeared in and many photographs this is a fascinating insight into the working process of a graphic genius. The hundreds of pencil drawing and layouts alone are priceless to anyone with aspirations of a career in comics. If only other artists had been as scrupulously meticulous in preserving the many stages of their creations!

Beginning in 1937 the chapters follow the progress and output of all five Jo, Zette and Jocko tales from The Secret Ray through to Valley of the Cobras, new Tintin from The Broken Ear and Black Island to Land of Black Gold (ten albums), and the slapstick japes of Belgian urchins Quick and Flupke (twelve volumes), plus all the revision to the previous output that kept his work fresh – and available – to his growing legion of fans.

Covering the tumultuous war years, his temporary ostracising as a “collaborator”, his depression, breakdown and return to success and popularity this is a book that no fan can be without and no would-be storyteller can fail to profit from.

Art © Hergé/Moulinsart 2009. Text © Moulinsart 2009. All rights reserved.

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Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge: A Cold Bargain – Gladstone Comic Album #24


By Carl Barks (Gladstone)
ISBN: 0-944599-24-9

Gladstone Publishing began re-releasing Barks material – and a selection of other Disney comics strips – in the 1980s and this album is one of the very best. Whilst producing all that landmark innovative material Barks was just a working guy, generating covers, illustrating other people’s scripts when necessary and contributing story and art to the burgeoning canon of Donald Duck and other Big Screen characters, but his output was incredible both in terms of quantity and especially in its unfailingly high quality.

Printed in the large European oversized format (278mm x 223mm) this fabulous delicacy reprints the contents of Uncle Scrooge #17 (1957) and adds satire and Cold War commentary to Bark’s phenomenal list of narrative attributes. When a totally new element is discovered the Mallard Magnate liquidises a large part of his fortune (One trillion dollars and six kitchen sinks!) to secure the entire supply – a ball of “Bombastium” approximately the size of a large turnip.

Moreover even if nobody knows what exactly the stuff can do everybody knows Bombastium evaporates unless it remains frozen. Terrified that his acquisition will melt before he can make a profit Scrooge drags Donald Duck and his nephews on a voyage to the South Pole to safeguard his investment but has not reckoned on the ruthless determination of the Brutopian agents he outbid to achieve it…

This is one of Barks’ greatest tales: action, comedy, tragedy, politics and old fashioned sentiment all work together to produce a superbly memorable adventure. The bored nephews make a fake Bombastium ball to freak out the adults, a lonely, love-hungry penguin adopts and tries to hatch the element, and there’s gags and travail aplenty as the tale ranges from spy-thriller to absurdist fairytale and back.

The dialogue is a pure gold (“Greetings… Rich Pig of a Duck…”) and will delight anyone old enough to remember the peculiar dialectic and rhetoric of the East/West divide.

Also included here are the precautionary one-pager ‘The Secret Book’ and ‘All at Sea’, a tale pitting the Ducks against the depredations of the scurrilous Beagle Boys from Uncle Scrooge #31 (1960). and the book ends with another sterling one-page gag strip from Uncle Scrooge #5 (1954).

From the late 1940’s until the mid-1960s Carl Barks worked in productive seclusion writing and drawing a vast array of comedic adventure yarns for kids, creating a Duck Universe of memorable – and highly bankable characters like Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), and Magica De Spell (1961) to augment the stable of cartoon actors from the Disney Studio, but his greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the star of the show wherever he goes.

Even if you can’t find this particular volume (and trust me, you really want to) Barks’ work is now readily accessible through a number of publications and outlets. No matter what your age or temperament if you’ve never experienced his captivating magic, you can discover “the Hans Christian Andersen of Comics” simply by applying yourself and your credit cards to any search engine. The rewards are there for the finding, you poor, culturally deprived pig of a fan, you…
© 1990, 1960, 1957, 1954 The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge: Back to the Klondike – Gladstone Comic Album #4


By Carl Barks (Gladstone)
No ISBN

From the late 1940’s until the mid-1960s Carl Barks worked in productive seclusion writing and drawing a vast array of comedic adventure yarns for kids, creating a Duck Universe of memorable – and highly bankable – characters like Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), and Magica De Spell (1961) to augment the stable of cartoon actors from the Disney Studio. His greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the star of this show.

So potent were his creations that they fed back into Disney’s animation output itself, even though his brilliant comic work was done for the licensing company Dell/Gold Key, and not directly for the studio.

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

Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material – and a selection of other Disney comics strips – in the 1980s and this album is one of the very best. Whilst producing all that landmark innovative material Barks was just a working guy, generating covers, illustrating other people’s scripts when necessary and contributing story and/or art to the burgeoning canon of Duck Lore.

This album is printed in the large European oversized format (278mm x 223mm) and features one of the best tales Barks ever told. Taken from Four Color Comics #456 (1953 and technically the second full story to star the multimillionaire mallard) ‘Back to the Klondike’ is a rip-roaring adventure, a brilliant comedy and even a bittersweet romance, which added huge depth to the character of the World’s Richest Duck, even whilst reiterating the superficial peccadilloes that made him such a memorable and engaging star.

Scrooge is old and getting forgetful: he can’t recall how much money he has even seconds after he’s finished counting it, nor even where his traps to locate it are hidden. After one close shave too many he finally shells out for a doctor who diagnoses “Blinkus of the Thinkus” and prescribes some pills to restore his scrupulous memory.

They work! Recalling a gold strike he made 50 years previously he drags Donald and his nephews to the Far North to recover a gold-strike he had cached five decades ago, but as the journey progresses he also recalls the rough, tough life of a prospector and the saloon-girl who tried to cheat him of his find: Glittering Goldie…

This superb yarn tells you everything you could ever need about Scrooge McDuck. It’s the perfect character tale and rattles along like an express train, sad, happy, thrilling and funny by turns, and it’s supplemented in this book with a classic Gyro Gearloose tale from 1960. ‘Cave of the Winds’ taken from Four Color Comics #1095, has Scrooge consult the feathered inventor on a perfect hiding place for his cash, but the answer is far from satisfactory… The book concludes with a short and punchy untitled tale from Uncle Scrooge #8 (1954) which has Scrooge run for City Treasurer – without spending any money…

Even if you can’t find this particular volume, Barks’ work is now readily accessible through a number of publications and outlets. No matter what your age or temperament if you’ve never experienced his captivating magic, you can discover “the Hans Christian Andersen of Comics” simply by applying yourself and your credit cards to any search engine. The rewards are there for the finding…
© 1987, 1960, 1954, 1953 The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.

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How to Draw Disney’s Mulan


By uncredited (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-038-3

I haven’t covered a “How To” book for ages and as this one’s entertaining, wonderfully fit for purpose and readily available it would well serve any budding artists and prospective animators to seek it out and absorb…

Following a brief pr̩cis of the story Рinvolving a young girl who rose to prominence in the army of legendary Ancient China Рthe instructional portion begins with Equipment and Techniques, Designing Characters Рanimal and human, comedic, villainous and heroic. Costume Design, Staging the Action and Use of Props. This large scale, slim book concludes with a test РCreating a Scene: providing a chance to use the knowledge gained to have fun and practice.

Brilliantly colourful and with clear concise instructions covering the undeniable basics that every artist of any age needs to master, such as stylisation and basic anatomy, and including detailed step-by-step breakdowns and model sheet for every major character from the films this is an indispensable aid and a tremendously inspiring introduction for the aspiring Artist of Tomorrow.
© 1998 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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E.C. Segar’s Popeye volume 4: Plunder Island


By Elzie Crisler Segar (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-169-5

There is more than one Popeye. If your first thought when you hear the name is the cheerful, indomitable sailor in full Naval whites always fighting a hulking great beardy-bloke and mainlining tinned spinach, that’s okay: The Fleischer Studios and Famous Films animated features have a brilliance and energy of their own (even the later, watered-down anodyne TV versions have some merit) and they are indeed based on the grizzled, crusty, foul-mouthed, bulletproof, golden-hearted old swab who shambled his way into the newspaper strip Thimble Theatre and simple wouldn’t leave. But they are really only the tip of an incredible iceberg of satire, slapstick, virtue, vice and mind-boggling adventure.

In the less than ten years Elzie Crisler Segar worked with Popeye, (from 17th January 19 1929, until the creator’s untimely death on 13th October 1938) he built an incredible meta-world of fabulous lands and locations, where unique characters undertook fantastic voyages and experienced big thrills as well as the small human dramas we’re all subject to: a saga both extraordinary and mundane, which could be hilarious or terrifying and was often both at the same time. For every trip to the rip-roaring Wild West or sunken kingdom there was a brawl between squabbling neighbours, spats between friends or disagreements between sweethearts – any and all usually settled with mightily swung fists.

Popeye is the first Superman of comics, but he was not a comfortable hero to idolise. A brute who thought with his fists and didn’t respect authority; uneducated, short-tempered, fickle (when hot tomatoes batted their eyelashes – or thereabouts – at him), a gambler and troublemaker, he wasn’t welcome in polite society…and he wouldn’t want to be. The sailor-man is the ultimate working class hero: raw and rough-hewn, practical, with an innate and unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not, a joker who wants kids to be themselves but not necessarily “good” and a man who takes no guff from anyone; always ready to defend the weak and with absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows. He was and will always be “the best of us”…

With this fourth magnificent hardcover collection of Segar’s comic masterpiece the Sunday Colour pages take precedence as for the first time ever his magnum opus ‘Plunder Island’ is reprinted in its full, unexpurgated totality. The selection here covers the period December 3rd 1933 to April 7th 1935, and the epitome of stirring sea-sagas takes up the first six months of that time (ending with the July15th 1934 installment). It all kicks off when Popeye’s old shipmate Salty Bill Barnacle invites him to go adventuring in search of fabled Plunder Island, land of stolen treasure, little suspecting that the ghastly Sea Hag has returned. With her new gang of deadly henchmen, including brutal Mister Skom and the monstrous Goon she kidnaps Professor Cringly – the aged scholar who knows the lost island’s location, and Popeye’s latest voyage is seemingly over before it has begun….

Gathering a bunch of decidedly dubious Argonauts, including Wimpy, Rough-house, Geezil, and private cop G.B. Gritmore, Olive, Salty Bill and Popeye swiftly gave chase, but all seems hopeless until the Witch of the Seas makes her big mistake. She sends the Goon to take hostages, and when the beast returns with the indomitable Popeye and an inexplicably irresistible Wimpy, the latter’s heretofore unsuspected attractions promptly turns the gruesome heads of both the Hag and her Goon (who is apparently a rather decent – if homely – lady named Alice…)

Roller-Coaster adventure and riotous comedy have never been better blended than in this tale, but even when the victorious crew finally returned home the fun didn’t stop. Next we see the bitter aftermath and how the various heroes dispose of or lose the fabulous wealth they’ve won. Wimpy, for example, simply and rapidly eats his way through most of his, whilst Popeye once again gives his away, prompting his return to the world of extreme prize-fighting…

Baby Swee’pea made his Sunday debut on 28th October 1934 (after being introduced in a riotous sequence in the daily strip: see E.C. Segar’s Popeye volume 3: “Let’s You and Him Fight”), becoming the focus of many outrageous gags once Popeye, Wimpy and Olive Oyl returned to their slapstick shtick, allowing the audience to decompress before the next big story…

The Sappo topper strip became even more imaginative in this period with Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle’s mad science exploits leading to ever crazier results and the regular breaking of the “fourth wall”. For the unprepared this was a strip that could regularly make your brain as well as your sides split…

The added extra feature ‘Funny Films’ (dioramic scenes through which continuous strips of cartooned “filmstrips” could be moved to create a home cinema) eventually gave way to the fascinatingly informative and entertaining ‘Popeye’s Cartoon Club’ which provided tips and encouragement to budding artists – and Segar’s approach and advice is as sound today as it ever was…

Just because he was setting the world alight with his innovative Sunday adventure serials and complete gag strips is no reason to suppose his daily feature suffered. In fact the breakneck pace seemed to inspire Segar, as in short order Popeye and his ever-expanding cast of clowns and reprobates rollicked through a memorable run of captivating tales.

The black and white dailies section here covers 11th December 1933 to 24th July 1934, and begins with the sailor-man moving to Puddleburg ‘The Laziest Town on Earth’ to run their local newspaper, accompanied by Swee’pea, Olive and Wimpy; giving the self-deprecating and wickedly trenchant Segar an opportunity to lampoon himself and his profession with the creation of B. Loony Bullony: World Famous Cartoonist…

When Olive inherits twenty million dollars, her marital prospects increase dramatically, but since one of the most ardent converts to her previously well-hidden charms is Mr. J. Wellington Wimpy, she soon realises that money isn’t everything in ‘Romances and Riches’ – especially after Popeye rescues debutante June Vanripple from drowning and becomes the unwilling toast of the “Sassiety Crowd”

This extended morality play on the evils and travails of wealth contains some of the funniest screwball comedy set-pieces of the entire 1930s (books, movies, strips, everything!) with such memorable moments as Popeye in drag (particularly a rather fetching ladies’ swimsuit), the elder Vanripple and the sailor in a wild-oat sowing contest and Olive as a singing, dancing movie star – complete with fake million dollar legs…

Another classic and beloved sequence is ‘Unifruit or White Savages’ where the shock of losing her loot sends Olive into the convulsive shock syndrome of Aspenitis and the cure is a therapeutic berry that only grows on the wacky island of Nazilia, deep in the territory of a lost tribe of hulking man-beasts…

The frantic antics and comedy continue when June and Mr. Vanripple ask Popeye to go west and crush the cowboy bandits plundering their gold mines in ‘Black Valley’ (and if you think drag is outrageous, check out Popeye in a tutu as a saloon dance-girl).

Fair warning though: this was an era where casual racial stereotyping was considered completely acceptable and a key part of cartooning. Segar sinned far less than most: his style was far more character-specific, and his personal delight was playing with accents and how folk spoke. George W. Geezil wasn’t merely a cheap Jewish stock figure of fun, but as fully rounded as any one of nearly fifty supporting cast members could be within the constrictions of page and panel count.

In ‘Black Valley’ Castor Oyl has a Negro manservant called Eclipse, who, although superficially little different in speech pattern and appearance from less-enlightened cartoonists’ portrayal of coloured people, played an active – if brief – role in proceedings. He wasn’t there for cheap easy laughs, but even so its clear Segar wasn’t comfortable with him and he wasn’t a permanent addition. He may be quite disquieting to you and I, but please try and recall the tone of the times and – even though there’s still a whole lot of prejudice still to be dealt with today – just how far we’ve come…

The old salt’s greatest “emeny” returned in another bombastic fantasy romp entitled ‘The Sea Hag’s Sister or The Pool of Youth’, wherein the vile villainess, her scurvy band of cutthroats and Alice the Goon tried to wrest control of a literal fountain of youth from her own sister and a 20, 000 year-old caveman, Toar. Unfortunately Popeye, Castor, Olive and Wimpy found themselves caught in the crossfire…

One less than wonderful “treat” can be experienced at the end of this volume: one that tormented the kids of all ages addicted to Popeye eighty years ago. ‘Popeye’s Ark’ was another spectacular six-month long adventure, wherein the sailorman decided to emulate the Biblical mariner who built “Nora’s Ark” and sail the seas in a giant vessel filled with beasts until he found the promised land of “Spinachova”. Sadly we all get to “enjoy” cliffhanging tension until the next installment as this sequence ends 12 weeks into the saga. Oh, the unrelenting tension of it all…

There is more than one Popeye: most of them are pretty good and some are truly excellent. Elzie Crisler Segar’s comic strip masterpiece features the very best of them all and you’d be crazy to deny it… or miss him.

© 2008 Fantagraphics Books Inc. All comics and drawings © 2008 King Features Inc. All rights reserved.

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E.C. Segar’s Popeye volume 3: “Let’s You and Him Fight!”


By Elzie Crisler Segar (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-962-3

There are relatively few comic characters that have entered world consciousness, but a grizzled, bluff, uneducated, visually impaired old sailor with a speech-impediment is possibly the most well known of that select bunch. Elzie Crisler Segar had been producing the Thimble Theatre daily newspaper strip since December 19th, 1919, but when he introduced a coarse, brusque “sailor man” into the ever-unfolding adventures of Castor Oyl and Ham Gravy on January 17th 1929 nobody suspected the heights that walk-on would reach.

This third magnificent collection of Segar’s immortal – certainly unkillable – clay-footed reprobate reproduces one spectacular groundbreaking epic after another as the artist, in a whirlwind of creative inspiration, took the daily strip to new heights of cliffhanging thrills and absurdity, whilst building unique and jovial character studies with the more humorous Sunday pages, generally set in the generic small seaside town of Sweethaven.

Following another erudite essay by Comics historian Donald Phelps the daily delights (stretching from June 9th 1932 to December 9th 1933) begin with a rip-snorting mystery thriller full of action, tension, scares and laughs featuring a large portion of Thimble Theatre‘s extensive cast. ‘The Eighth Sea’ finds Popeye, Castor, Olive, King Blozo of Nazilia and his idiot retainer Oscar all following the instructions of Oolong the Chinese Parrot to recover a fabulous lost treasure, aided by the incredible Merlock Jones, quick-change detective. This sinister sea saga was the one-and-only Segar tale to feature Popeye’s ultimate nemesis (in the animated cartoons at least) Bluto.

With breakneck pace – Segar never rested on his laurels or his plots – that adventure led the voyagers back to Nazilia for ‘Long Live the King or Gold and Goofs’ and a rematch with General Bunzo and his new Mata Hari Dinah Mow – a worldly-wise vamp that even the iron-willed Popeye couldn’t resisk…

After taking a well-aimed pop at popular democracy in ‘The Great Lection’ the old sea-dog sets up his own nation in ‘Popeye: King of Popilania’ another stinging satire which saw the increasingly irrepressible J. Wellington Wimpy expand beyond the Sunday pages and join the dailies cast, almost mooching the infant country away from its idealistic founder. Popilania’s problems were multiplied by an invasion of “furiners”, “emmygrunts” and even jungle-Neanderthals in ‘Wild Men and Wild Women’ before the well-meaning reformer learned his lesson.

The trenchant social commentary and barbed satire continued when he returned to America and became ‘Star Reporter’ for The Daily Blast, a periodical edited by Castor and “blessed” with Wimpy as photographer. This led to the next big cast addition and our hero’s greatest advncement when a reader mailed Popeye a baby in ‘Me Sweet Pea.’ The “infink’s” true history and heritage pitted the sailor-man against some pretty ruthless types, and resulted in him suffering a serious brain injury in ‘Bonkus of the Konkus’ but his indomitable soul and noble heart won through as always in the turbulent desert debacle ‘Popeye’s Cure’…

The Sundays’ selection follows a decidedly more domestic but no less riotous path. Running from 9th October to 23rd November 1933, the full-colour section was increasing given over to – or more correctly, appropriated – by the insidiously oleaginous Wimpy: ever hungry, always cadging, yet intellectually stimulating, casually charming and usually triumphant in all his mendicant missions. Whilst still continuing his pugilistic shenanigans the action of the Sunday strips moved away from Popeye hitting quite so much to alternately being outwitted by the unctuous moocher, and saving him from the vengeance of Diner owner Rough-house and the passionately loathing George W. Geezil, an ethnic Jewish stereotype, who like all Segar’s characters swiftly developed beyond comedic archetype into a unique person with his own story… and another funny accent.

Wimpy was unstoppable – he even became a rival suitor for Olive Oyl’s scrawny favours – and his development owed a huge debt to his creator’s love and admiration of comedian W.C. Fields. A mercurial force of nature the moocher was the perfect foil for the common-man but imperfect champion, Popeye. Where the sailor was heart and spirit, unquestioning morality and self-sacrifice, indomitable defiance, brute force and no smarts at all, Wimpy was intellect and self-serving, rapacious greed, freed from all ethical restraint or consideration, and gloriously devoid of any impulse-control.

He literally took candy from babies and food from the mouths of starving children, yet somehow Segar made us love him. He was Popeye’s other half: weld them together and you have an heroic ideal… (and yes, those stories are true: British Wimpy burger bars are built from the remnants of a 1950s international merchandising scheme that wanted to put a J Wellington Wimpy themed restaurant in every town and city.)

The gags and exploits of the two forces of human nature build riotously during this period, ever-more funny, increasingly outrageous. The laugh-out-loud antics seem impossible to top and maybe Segar knew that. Either he was getting the stand-alone gag-stuff out of his system, or perhaps he was clearing the decks and setting the scene for a really big change. Within weeks (or for us, next volume) the Thimble Theatre Sunday page changed forever. In a bold move the blood-and-thunder serial-style adventure epics of the dailies transferred to the Technicolor splendour of the “family pages” and all stops would be pulled out…

The topper strip Sappo actually increased its page share during this period, going from two to three tiers as the unstoppable scientist O.G. Watasnozzle took the little feature into increasingly surreal and absurdist realms. On a rocket ship journey Sappo and his insufferable but long-suffering wife Myrtle experienced incredible thrills, chills and spills during an extended trip around the solar system; experiencing all the goofy wonders and embarrassments Segar’s fevered mind could concoct.

Always innovating the restless creator also began adding extra value for his fans by incorporating collector stamps, games and puzzles to his Sunday pages. In an era with no television – and indeed with only the very first prototype comic books just starting to appear – radio-shows and the Sunday pages were the home entertainment choices of most Americans. Many strips offered extras in their funny-pages and Segar excelled in creating paper-based toys and amusements. In this book alone there are stamps, play money “lucky bucks”, cartooning tips, drawing lessons and ‘Funny Films’ – dioramic scenes through which continuous strips of cartooned “filmstrips” could be moved to create a home cinema!

As an especially welcome bonus this volume concludes with an incredibly rare piece of Popeye memorabilia: one I’d heard of but never thought I’d ever see. In 1934 the Chicago World’s Fair was held in the Windy City, and for two weeks before, at the end of 1933 it was advertised and promoted in the Hearst papers with an original full-page, monochrome Popeye serial. That’s terrific enough but the extended yarn was given extra push by escaping the funny-pages ghetto to run for that fortnight in the Sports section, as Popeye and crew explored the wonders of the World’s Fair in a truly spectacular and irresistible enticing prom feature – possibly the first of its kind.

This work is among the finest strip narrative ever created: reading it should be on everybody’s bucket list, and even when you do there’s still more and better yet to come…

© 2008 Fantagraphics Books Inc. All comics and drawings © 2008 King Features Inc. All rights reserved.