Category: Mature Reading

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Lone Wolf and Cub volume 1: The Assassins Road


By Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima, translated by Dana Lewis (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-502-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Best known in the West as Lone Wolf and Cub, the epic Samurai saga created by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima is a global classic of comics literature. An example of the hugely popular Chanbara (“sword-fighting”) genre of print and screen, Kozure Okami was serialised in Weekly Manga Action from September 1970 until April 1976. It was an immense and overwhelming Seinen (“Men’s manga”) hit. Those tales quickly prompted thematic companion series Kubikiri Asa (Samurai Executioner) which ran from 1972-1976, but the major draw and main attraction – at home and, increasingly, abroad – was always the nomadic wanderings of doomed noble Ōgami Ittō and his solemn silent child Daigoro: framed by family rivals, dishonoured by the Shōgun and condemned to death by his peers. Breaching all etiquette, the court executioner refused to suicide quietly and instead opted to vengefully walk the bloody road to Meifumadō: the hell of Buddhist legend…

Revered and influential, Kozure Okami was followed after years of supplication by fans and editors by sequel Shin Lone Wolf & Cub (illustrated by Hideki Mori). The serial even spawned – through Koike’s indirect participation – science fiction homage Lone Wolf 2100 by Mike Kennedy & Francisco Ruiz Velasco.

The original saga has been successfully adapted to most other media, spawning movies, plays, TV series (plural), games and merchandise. The property is notoriously still in pre-production in Hollywood.

The several thousand pages of enthralling, exotic, intoxicating narrative art produced by the legendary creators eventually filled 28 collected volumes, beguiling generations of readers in Japan and, inevitably, the world. More importantly, their philosophically nihilistic odyssey – with its timeless themes and iconic visuals – has influenced hordes of other creators. The many manga, comics, movies, TV and animated versions these stories have inspired around the globe are utterly impossible to count. Frank Miller, who illustrated the cover of this edition, referenced the series in Daredevil, his dystopian opus Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City. Max Allan Collins’ Road to Perdition is a proudly unashamed tribute to the masterpiece of vengeance-fiction. Stan Sakai has superbly spoofed, pastiched and celebrated the wanderer’s path in his own epic Usagi Yojimbo, and children’s cartoon shows like Samurai Jack are direct descendants of this astounding achievement of graphic narrative. The material has become part of a shared global culture.

In the West, we first saw the translated tales in 1987 as 45 Prestige Format editions from First Comics. That innovative trailblazer foundered before getting even a third of the way through the vast canon, after which Dark Horse Comics acquired the rights, systematically reprinting and translating the entire epic into 28 tank?bon-style editions of around 300 pages each. Once the entire epic was translated (between September 2000 & December 2002) it was all placed online through the Dark Horse Digital project.

Following a cautionary ‘Note to Readers’ – on stylistic interpretation – this moodily magnificent monochrome missal truly gets underway, retaining many terms and concepts western readers may find unfamiliar. Therefore this lean, mean, martial edition offers at the close a Glossary providing detailed context on the term used in the stories, plus profiles of author Koike Kazuo & illustrator Kojima Goseki and the first instalment of ‘The Ronin Report’: an occasional series of articles offering potted history essays on the period of the Tokugawa Shogunate, with Tim Ervin starting the ball rolling here.

Of course, the true meat is the captivating, grimly compelling combination of revenge fable and action-adventure which opens here with intriguing episodes of stripped-down mystery, gripping intensity and galvanic bloodletting as the first tale introduces a scruffy indigent pushing a homemade bamboo pram with a 3-year-old boy in it. A banner on the contraption proclaims ‘Son for Hire, Sword for Hire’ and, as the man stoically ignores mockery and derision from louts on the road, his promotional ploy attracts the attention of four deadly men who have been warned of an assassin carrying his baby boy with him…

A basic formula informs early episodes: the acceptance of a commission to kill an impossible target necessitates the forging of a cunning plan and relentless determination leads to inevitable success: all underscored with bleak philosophical musings alternately informed by Buddhist teachings in conjunction with or in opposition to the unflinching personal honour code of Bushido…

You won’t learn it until the end of this tome, but the fore-doomed killer-wanderer was once the Shogun’s official executioner: capable of cleaving a man in half with one stroke. An eminent individual of esteemed imperial standing, elevated social position and impeccable honour, Ōgami Ittō lost it all and now roams feudal Japan as a doomed soul, hellbent for the dire, demon-haunted underworld of Meifumadō. When the noble’s wife was murdered and his clan dishonoured due to the machinations of the treacherous and politically ambitious Yagyu Clan, the Emperor ordered Ōgami to commit suicide.

Instead, he rebelled, choosing to become a despised Ronin (masterless samurai) and assassin, pledging to revenge himself on the traitors until they were all dead or Hell claimed him. His son, toddler Daigoro, also chose the way of the sword and together they roam the grim and evocative landscapes of feudal Japan, one step ahead of doom and with death behind and before them. Frequently, the infallible assassin’s best ploy is to allow himself to be captured, endure unimaginable torture and then fight his way out having slaughtered his target…

The tactic is again employed in ‘A Father Knows His Child’s Heart, As Only a Child Can Know His Father’s’, with the wolf despatching willing Daigoro to penetrate the unyielding defences of Takai Han so Papa can kill a dishonourable usurper…

Another aspect of Ōgami’s methodology emerges in ‘From North to South, From West to East’. The assassin always insists on a personal interview with every client, demanding not only who is to die, but why. Perhaps the cautious killer only wants to know the extent of what he’s getting into, but we know he’s judging: seeing whether the target deserves death… or if the client does…

The legend of the Lone Wolf and Cub quickly spreads, and when faithful guards briefly hire Daigoro to help their beloved mistress, it is with full knowledge of what the boy’s father is. In ‘Baby Cart on the River Styx’ that knowledge is crucial to Ōgami’s plan for quashing a gang turf-war before it begins, even whilst bringing down a corrupt yet untouchable lord. Shocking for us may be the accepted conceit that father is fully prepared to sacrifice son to compete the mission, fulfil his promises and uphold his word. ‘Suio School Zanbato’ sees the boy willingly become hostage to fortune so his dad can lure a swords-master – and all his honourless students – into an officially sanctioned duel, killing all without legal ramifications or repercussions.

Lyrically twisting the theme of star-crossed lovers, ‘Waiting for the Rains’ sees him befriend a dying woman even as his father stoically anticipates completing his next commission: expunging the man she so patiently awaits…

These stories are deeply metaphorical and work on multiple cultural levels most of us westerners just won’t grasp on first reading – even with contextual aid provided by the bonus features. That only makes them more exotic and fascinating. Also a little unsettling is the even-handed treatment of women in the tales. Within the confines of the notoriously stratified society depicted, women – from servants to courtesans, prostitutes to highborn ladies – are all fully rounded characters, with their own motivations and drives. The wolf’s female allies are valiant and dependable, and his foes, whether targets or mere enemy combatants in his path, are treated with professional respect by Ōgami. He kills them just as if they were men…

In ‘Eight Gates of Deceit’ the indomitable nomad is ambushed by an octet of female assassins hired by his latest client who foolishly chooses to discount the professional honour of his hireling in favour of clearing up loose ends. It’s his last mistake…

‘Wings to the Birds, Fangs to the Beast’ finds the tireless wanderer stumbling into a hot-spa village recently taken over by bandits. To their eternal cost, and despite the newcomer’s every forbearing effort, the human beasts refuse to believe the man with the baby wants no trouble…

This stunning opening collection ends with a few of the answers readers want as the scene shifts to the recent past at the Shogun’s palace in Edo for an origin. There, thanks to political manoeuvrings of ambitious nefarious Lord Yagyu, Shogun’s Executioner Ōgami Ittō has been ousted and his entire clan disgraced. With his wife Asami dead, the austere warrior outwits his opponent – who assumed honourable suicide the only option he’d left his enemy – by opting to travel ‘The Assassin’s Road’ with his baby son momentously choosing to follow him to Meifumadō or victory…

Whichever English transliteration you prefer – Wolf and Baby Carriage is what I was first introduced to – the grandiose, thought-provoking hellbent Samurai tragedy created by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima is without doubt one of those all too rare breakthrough classics of comics literature. A breathtaking tour de force, these are comics you must not miss.
© 1995, 2000 Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima. All other material © 2000 Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Cover art © 2000 Frank Miller. All rights reserved.

Today in 1916 lettering legend Artie Simek was born and in Italy in 1953 Dylan Dog cocreator Angelo Stano arrived, whilst 2000 saw the end of an era as Mad mastermind Don Martin died.

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What I Did


By Jason, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-414-6 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Absurdly Enchanting Comics Capers… 9/10

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

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

From there he took on Norway’s National School of Arts and, on graduating in 1994, founded his own comic – Mjau Mjau. Constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-mined anthropomorphic minimalism, Jason cited Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring & Tex Avery as primary influences. He moved to Copenhagen, working at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) & Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Books of Magic, Batman: Detective 27). Jason’s efforts were internationally recognised, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas. He won another Sproing in 2001 – for self-published series Mjau Mjau – and in 2002 turned nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels. He won even more major awards.

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

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

A master of short-form illustrated tales, many Jason yarns have been released as snappy little albums perfect for later inclusion in longer anthology collections like this one which gathers a triptych of his very best. The majority of tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality. They are, as warned, largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comedic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes

This sterling hard cover compilation gathers ‘Hey, Wait…’, ‘Sshhhh!’ and ‘The Iron Wagon’ which first appeared in Mjau Mjau between 1997 & 2001, and if you’re keeping score, the reviews and illustrations are taken from the 2018 second edition…

The volume opens with an eerie and glorious and wildly funny paean to boyhood friendships – in the manner of the movie Stand By Me – as young Bjorn and Jon enjoy a life of perfect childhood until a tragic accident ends the idyll and reshapes them forever. Life, however, goes on, but for one of the lads it’s an existence populated forever onwards with ghosts and visions…

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, using the beastly and unnatural to gently pose eternal questions about basic human needs in a soft but relentless quest for answers. That you don’t ever notice the deep stuff because of the clever gags and safe, familiar funny-animal characters should indicate just how good a cartoonist he is…

‘Sshhhh!’ is a delightfully evocative romantic melodrama created without words: a bittersweet extended tale of boy-bird meeting girl-bird in a world overly populated with spooks and ghouls and skeletons but afflicted far more harshly by missed chances, loneliness and regret.

These comic tales are strictly for adults but allow us all to look at the world through wide-open young eyes. This is especially true of the final tale in this collection – a slyly beguiling adaptation of a classic detective story from 1909, but enhanced to a macabre degree by the easy cartooning, skilled use of silence and moment and a two-tone colour palette.

As you’d expect of a classic “Scandi-crime drama” ‘The Iron Wagon’ is a clever, enthralling and deeply dark mystery yarn originally written by Stein Riverton, and has the same quality of cold yet harnessed stillness which makes the Swedish television adaptations of Henning Mankell’s Wallander so superior to those English-language interpretations. Here, the stylised artwork is delivered in formalised page layouts; solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity are augmented here by stunning Deep Red overlays to enhance the Hard Black and Genteel White he usually prefers.

In the coastal retreat of Hvalen a desperate author is haunted by ghosts and nightmares. However, the townsfolk are all too engrossed with the death of the game warden on the Gjaernes Estate to notice or care. The family seems cursed with constant troubles. First the old man was lost at sea, now the murder of Warden Blinde just as he was betrothed to Hilde Gjaernes blights the farm. People are talking, saying it’s all the fault of the long dead grandfather who lost his fortune and life dabbling with weird inventions…

Even now, sensitive souls still hear his accursed Iron Wagon roaring through the night, presaging another death in the village…

Luckily there are more sensible folk abroad to summon a detective from Kristiania (Oslo), but Asbjørn Krag is not the kind of policeman anybody was anticipating and as the young writer becomes enmired in the horrific unfolding events, he realises that not only over-imaginative fools hear things.

In the depths of the night’s stillness he too shudders at the roaring din of the Iron Wagon…

Moody, suspenseful and utterly engrossing, this would be a terrific yarn even without Jason’s superbly understated art, but in combination the result is pure dynamite.

This collection – despite being “merely” early works – resonates with the artist’s signature themes and shines with his visual dexterity. It’s one of Jason’s very best and will warm the cockles of any fan’s heart.
All characters, stories, and artwork © 2010 Jason. All rights reserved.

Today in 1900 cartoonist Otto Soglow was born; he’s most revered for The Little King strip. Someone else utterly neglected by modern comics publishers is wartime patriot and Anglo-Canadian creator Jon Stables AKA Jon St. Ables (get it?) who carried most of the creative workload at Maple Leaf Comics until it closed down in 1946. As he was born in 1912, he had to find other artistic outlets until his death in 1999. And he did.

A year earlier (in 1998, okay?) we lost the astounding Joe Orlando. The editor who saved DC in the late 1960s through his horror comics revival was also a superb illustrator, gag-guy and story-man, as you could see in Judgment Day and Other Stories or any of the superb DC horror comics editions we’ve covered over the decades.

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DC Finest: Green Arrow The Longbow Hunters


By Mike Grell, Sharon Wright, Dennis J. O’Neil, Lurene Haynes & Julia Lacquement, Ed Hannigan, Denys Cowan, Randy DuBurque, Ed Barreto, Tom Artis, Dick Giordano, Frank McLauglin, Rick Magyar, Klaus Janson, Tony DeZuñiga, Tom Dzon, Arne Starr, Gary Martin & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-77952-991-6 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

It’s been a big year for comic book anniversaries and next year is another one. Let’s get our congratulations in early for a change…

Debuting in More Fun Comics #73 (cover-dated November 1941 and on sale from 19th September), Green Arrow is one of very few costumed heroes to be continuously published (more or less) since the Golden Age of American comic books. On first look, the combination of Batman and Robin Hood seems to have very little going for him, but he has always managed to keep himself in vogue and on view. Probably the most telling of his many, many makeovers came in 1987, when – hot on the heels of The Dark Knight Returns – Mike Grell was given the green light to make the Emerald Archer the star of DC’s second Prestige Format Mini-Series.

Grell was a major league, much celebrated creator at the time, having practically saved the company with his Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired fantasy series Warlord. He had also illustrated many of GA’s most recent and radical tales (in Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Action Comics and elsewhere, and was a confirmed fan-favourite after well-received runs on Legion of Super-Heroes, Aquaman, Phantom Stranger, Batman and others. During the early 1980s, he had worked on the prestigious Tarzan newspaper strip and created successful genre series including Starslayer and Jon Sable, Freelance for pioneering indie publisher First Comics.

By the middle of the grim ‘n’ gritty Eighties, it was certainly time for an overhaul of the Battling Bowman. Exploding arrows yes, maybe even net or rope arrows, but arrows with boxing gloves on them just don’t work (trust me – I know this from experience!).

Moreover, in his 1960s makeover, the hero had evolved into a tempestuous, social reformer using his gifts to battle for the little guy. Now, in a cynical era of corrupt government, secret services with private agendas, drug cartels and serial killers, this emerald survivor adapted again and thrived once more. Thus, sans preamble, the action unfolds, laying a new path that would quickly lead to the hero becoming a major player at long last and, ultimately, a TV sensation.

The plot is astutely logical and still controversial, concerning a superhero midlife crisis. Weary, aging Oliver Queen relocates to Seattle, struggling to come to terms with the fact that since his former sidekick Speedy, is now a dad, he is “technically” a grandfather. With longtime significant other Dinah Lance AKA Black Canary, Ollie starts simplifying his life, but the drive to fight injustice hasn’t dimmed for either of them. As she goes undercover to stamp out a pervasive drug ring, the Arrow becomes embroiled in the hunt for a psycho-killer dubbed “The Seattle Slasher”.

As he tracks a prolific stalker butchering prostitutes, Ollie becomes aware of a second – cross-country – slayer using arrows to murder people. Infuriatingly, this travesty only comes to his attention after the “Robin-Hood Killer” slaughters a gravedigger in his new city…

Eschewing gaudy costume and gimmicks to find such unglamorous hidden monsters, Queen reinvents himself as an urban hunter relentlessly searching Seattle’s darkest corners and soon stumbles into a complex mystery leading back to World War II involving the Yakuza, CIA, corporate America and even the Vietnam war: secrets that converge and will eventually change the course of the Archer’s life…

The intricate plot effortlessly weaves around the destabilized champion and past loves, thereby introducing new character Shado, exploring and echoing themes of vengeance and family in a blending of three stories that are in fact one, yet still delivers a shocking punch even now, through its disturbingly explicit examination of torture. These issues won the miniseries much undeserved negative press when first published. Although possibly tame to modern eyes this was eye-opening stuff at the time, which is a shame, since it diverted attention from the tale’s real achievement. That was narrative quality and sophistication, as this tale is arguably the first truly mature superhero yarn in the DCU.

Across ‘The Hunters’, ‘Dragon Hunt’ and ‘Tracking Snow’ Grell crafts a gripping, action-packed mystery adventure that pushes all the right buttons, all conveyed by artwork – in collaboration with Lurene Haynes & Julia Lacquement – that was and remains a revelation. Beautifully demure yet edgily sharp as required, these painterly visuals and watercolour tones perfectly complement a terse, sparse script, offering a compulsive, compelling ride any prose thriller writer would be proud of.

The saga – weaving themes of age, diminishing potency, vengeance and family – was another major turning point in American comics and led to an ongoing series specifically targeting “Mature Readers”. Latterly, the treatment and tone herein heavily influenced and flavoured TV adaptation Arrow.

Collectively covering February to October 1988, this paperback compilation (no digital edition yet, sadly) gathers the miniseries Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, Green Arrow volume 2, #1-8, The Question #17-18, and a crossover tale told in Detective Comics Annual #1, The Question Annual #1 and Green Arrow Annual #1. Controversy notwithstanding, the comic book retooling swiftly spawned a monthly series which itself evolved into one of the best reads of the 1990s and those monthly events immediately follow…

Scripted by Grell with superbly efficient and powerfully understated art from Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano & Frank McLaughlin, the new series presented grimly realistic yarns ripped from headlines, tailored and honed for maximum impact and relevance. Sparse, spartan and devastatingly compelling, the initial episodes were constructed as two-part dramas, beginning with ‘Hunter’s Moon’ as the hunter (the series was notable in that other than on the cover, the soubriquet “Green Arrow” was never, ever used or uttered) prowls his new home. He deals harshly with thugs, gangbangers and muggers before heading home to his still-traumatised girlfriend.

As graphically depicted in Longbow Hunters, Black Canary was tortured for days before Ollie found her and, although the physical wounds have faded, Dinah is still suffering…

She’s not the only one. Police Lieutenant Jim Cameron has just heard that child-torturing sociopath Al Muncie has used his vast beer-dynasty inheritance to buy a retrial after 18 years in prison. The cops couldn’t get him for murdering all those “missing” kids back then, but one lucky 10-year-old, after days of appalling torment, escaped and testified so Muncie’s been locked up for aggravated assault ever since. Now the heartbroken cop has to tell that brave survivor she must do it all over again…

The victim grew up to be Dr. Annie Green and she’s working wonders treating Dinah, but the therapist’s own long-suppressed terrors come flooding back when Muncie – despite being in total lockdown in his palatial house on the family brewery estate – somehow hand-delivers a little souvenir of their time together…

Present when Annie freaks out and flees in panic, Ollie gives chase and finds her once more calm and resigned. On hearing the full story he makes a house-call on the maniac but cannot “dissuade” him from paying Annie another visit that night. The veteran manhunter is waiting as a masked assailant tries to break ino the doctor’s apartment, but when the intruder shrugs off a steel arrow to the chest Ollie realises something’s not right…

Part Two expands the mystery of how Muncie gets past police guards at will, but by the time the Arrow has convinced cops to raid Muncie’s den with the solution to the obsessed sociopath’s disappearing act and apparent invulnerability, the killer has already made his move. Sadly for him, once again Muncie has underestimated Annie, and her defiance buys Ollie time to intercept the hellbent human fiend. After a furious chase back to the brewery, the killer meets his fate in a most ironic manner…

A broad change of pace follows as part one of ‘The Champions’ sees Ollie abducted by US government spooks and pressganged into competing for a deadly prize. A joint space venture with the Chinese has resulted in a deadly “DNA-programmable” virus being created and – following the sudden destruction of the satellite lab where it was propagated – the only surviving sample has crashed onto remote San Juan Island. With political allies turned rivals for sole possession of a bio-agent which can be set to kill anything from wheat harvests to black or yellow or white people, open warfare would only lead to catastrophic publicity, so the political superpowers have agreed to a gladiatorial bout as the method of deciding ownership.

Ollie has his own reasons for accepting the job. For starters he doesn’t trust any government with the DNA-hunting bug, the agents who drafted him are actually Russian, not American and, most urgently, he has no doubt that he’ll be killed if he refuses to compete…

Equipped with a tracking device, Ollie is dumped on the island as a colossal storm kicks off, meeting his arrogant opposite getting off the ferry. Former CIA operative Eddie Fyers is an old foe and one of the sneakiest killers on Earth. Fyers convinces Ollie they should work together before double-crossing and leaving him to bleed out in a blizzard. The archer is saved by an archaeologist who has inadvertently picked up the lost bio-agent pod, but as Ollie argues with his rescuer over the wisdom and morality of his mission, her cabin is peppered with gunfire…

Fyers has the upper hand but suffers a sudden change of attitude when a third team ambushes him and his prisoners. It seems neither Russians nor Chinese trust their champions…

Again forced to join forces, spy and vigilante despatch the hit squad before Ollie has the very last word after finding a way to deprive everybody of the death-sample…

The hunter appeared tangentially in The Question #17-18 (June & July 1988 by Dennis O’Neil, Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar) as ‘A Dream of Rorschach’; tacitly acknowledging the debt owed to the groundbreaking series Watchmen for the revival of Steve Ditko’s obsessive faceless trouble-seeker The Question. Here journalist/crimebuster Vic Sage is chasing murder-obsessed miscreants Butch and Sundance out of Hub City. Catching a plane, he reads the graphic novel and has a vision of and conversation with the iconic sociopath whilst flying to Seattle and a chilling showdown. On arrival he is intercepted by highly suspicious, extremely overprotective and intensely impatient local hero the Arrow before they ally to catch the scum as they seek fresh kill supplies from terrorists in massive clash-concluding chapter ‘Desperate Ground’…

Determined to challenge all manners of social inequity, Grell’s next story in Green Arrow confronted the rise in homosexual prejudice that manifested in the wake of the AIDs crisis. It begins after two customers leaving Dinah’s flower shop are brutally attacked by kids ordered to “gay-bash” as part of their gang initiation. The horrific crime is further compounded when Ollie discovers Dinah’s new assistant Colin is not only a bloody-handed perpetrator but also a victim…

The Warhogs are the most powerful gang in the city, but their latest induction policy is one the Arrow cannot allow to exist any longer. Any kid refusing to join is mercilessly beaten by a ‘Gauntlet’ of thugs. Those who eagerly volunteer suffer the same treatment at their own initiation… and once you’re accepted as a Warhog, you still have to prove your loyalty by beating – and preferably killing – a “queer”…

In the shocking conclusion Ollie, having failed to make a dent through any of his usual tactics, goes straight to the top. Big boss Reggie Mandel has big plans for the Warhogs. He’s already made them a national force to be reckoned with, but when he arrives in Seattle to check on regional deputy Kebo, the Machiavellian schemer is confronted by a nut with a bow challenging him in his own crib…

The Arrow is keen to point out the strictly local Warhog policy of gay hate-crimes is not only bad for business but serves someone else’s private agenda. Reggie actually agrees with the vigilante, but before he’s prepared to take appropriate action he expects his verdant petitioner to undergo the same gauntlet any Warhog must survive before being heard…

Next comes complex collaboration ‘The Powderhorn Trail’ – written by Grell & Sharon Wright who divided the Ollie and Dinah sections between them, with Randy DuBurque illustrating Black Canary pages whilst Ed Barreto pencilled Arrow bits, with Giordano & Arne Starr inking it all. The round-robin episode sees the hunter stumbling upon a clue to drug-smuggling at his local carwash and having to explain to Dinah why he’s taking off for Alaska. Possibly coincidentally, she is approached by a casual acquaintance whose life the Canary once saved, who inadvertently tips Dinah to a string of crimes-in-the-making…

The tempestuous conclusion (by Grell, Paris Cullins, Gary Martin & Giordano) then sees Ollie solo-stalking from Anchorage to deep in the North country on the trail of not just drug dealers and high-end car thieves but also opportunistic Tong smugglers trafficking illegal, poached and utterly pointless Chinese herbal remedies under cover of the infamous Iditarod. Sometimes it’s just good and so satisfying to be a lawless vigilante…

This initial collection concludes with a Denny O’Neil martial arts epic/experimental comic book koan ‘Fables’: a crossover tale encompassing Detective Comics Annual #1, Green Arrow Annual #1 and The Question Annual #1, which will make far more sense if you read Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter: Coming of the Dragon!…

It begins in China during Japan’s invasion prior to the official start of WWII, where a truly honourable bushido warrior is shamed by his own troops and resigns his commission to become a warrior monk: the O-sensei. Years later he and his student (Lady Shiva “the most dangerous woman on Earth”) arrive in America seeking a new hero called The Batman. They have a lesson to impart but first must find him. This overture means working again with an old student named Vic Sage…

Rendered by Klaus Janson & Tony DeZuñiga, ‘The Monkey Trap’ sees the Dark Knight hunt a horrific bio-weapon stolen from arch maniac Ra’s Al Ghul and pursued by money-mad miscreant The Penguin. The quest is only accomplished after the cocky masked manhunter learns a crucial lesson from the warrior sage and incurs a monumental debt of honour…

Then ‘Lesson for a Crab’ – illustrated by Tom Artis & Tom Dzon – finds the former Emerald Archer & Black Canary embroiled in the schemes of English aristocrat Lord Kalesque who wants to be the greatest archer in the world but cannot feel secure in the title until he crushes a certain vigilante in Seattle. As Kalesque is no adherent of fair play, that can be accomplished by perpetrating a string of murders to destabilize the hunter and put him and his woman off their game. Happily, Shiva and the O-Sensei are already on their way with advice and a zen teaching that will be of great service…

The interlinked saga concludes in The Question Annual #1 (Cowan & Magyar art) with explanations and conclusions. The aged sage wants to be buried beside his Japanese wife but her family are opposed to the plan and have moved her body. Star pupil Shiva orchestrates a plan involving western heroes touched by his teachings and owing service to the O-Sensei, and her efforts culminate in ‘The Silent Parable’. Now Batman’s detective skills locate the resting place and the Americans join what seems like a cursed mission to Malaya – one that is beset by an army of assassins and string of natural disasters; and which seems to end in utter failure…

However, in the aftermath The Question deduces that fate and honour have worked their own miracles and made a suitable accommodation with the universe…

Closing the book and capping the fantasy is a linked cover triptych of the Annuals by Janson, Ed Hannigan, Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz, and rest – both fully painted and line art – are by Grell, Cowan, Sienkiewicz, Giordano, Hannigan & Tatjana Wood and suitably placed throughout…

Terse, sparse scripts, intelligent, flawed human interactions, stunning action delivered through economical and immensely effective illustration and an unfailing eye for engaging controversy make these some of the most powerful comic tales US comics ever produced, an epic of masked mystery saga no lover of the genre will want to miss.
© 1987, 1988, 2024 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

In 1911 strip writer Nicholas P. Dallis (Apartment 3-G, Rex Morgan MD) was born. Nine years later so was the fabulous Kurt Scaffenberger (Captain Marvel, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen) with Al Plastino popping in 366 days later. He was a key Superman illustrator who co-created the Legion of Super-Heroes and also drew the Batman newspaper strip (see Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1968 – 1969).

In 1953 JM DeMatteis was born, in 1961 Reginald Hudlin arrived and in 1969 Stuart Immonen, but we did lose Abie the Agent illustrator Harry Hershfield in 1974 and Uruguayan Eduardo Barreto who drew many US features including Steel Sterling, Aliens, Teen Titans, Superman, Batman and Judge Parker.

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Zorro: Matanzas


By Don McGregor, Mike Mayhew, Sam Parsons & John Costanza (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-147-2 (TPB/digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and literary effect.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Hero Romp in the classic Tradition… 8/10

One the earliest masked heroes and still phenomenally popular all over the world, “El Zorro, The Fox” was originally devised by jobbing writer Johnston McCulley in 1919 for a 5-part prose serial entitled ‘The Curse of Capistrano’. The bold enigma debuted in All-Story Weekly for August 6th, running until 6th September. The part-work was subsequently published by Grossett & Dunlap in 1924 as novel The Mark of Zorro and further reissued in 1959 and 1998 by MacDonald & Co. and Tor respectively. Famously, Hollywood glitterati Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford read the serial in All-Story – while on honeymoon! – and immediately optioned the romp’s first film release from their new production company/studio United Artists.

In 1920 and for years after The Mark of Zorro was a global movie sensation, and New York-based McCulley subsequently re-tailored his creation to match the so-different filmic incarnation. This Caped Crusader aptly fitted a burgeoning genre that would soon be peopled by the likes of The Shadow, Doc Savage and The Spider. Rouben Mamoulian’s 1940 filmic remake of The Mark of Zorro (yes, the one with Tyrone Power & Basil Rathbone) further ingrained the Fox into the world’s psyche and, as prose exploits continued in a variety of publications, Dell began a comic book version in 1949.

When Walt Disney Studios began a hugely popular Zorro TV show in 1957 (78 half-hour episodes and four 60 minute specials before cancellation in 1961), the ongoing comic book series was swiftly redesigned to capitalise on it. The mega-media corporation thus began a decades-long strip incarnation of “their” version of the character in various quarters of the world. This series and later iterations also resulted in comics and strips all over Europe from Disney, and Marvel in the USA.

During the 1990s, Topps Comics spearheaded Zorro’s return courtesy of Don McGregor & Mike Mayhew. It led to a short-lived newspaper strip (illustrated by Thomas Yeates) and also incidentally and memorably introducing a salacious “bad-girl” sidekick in the unwisely inappropriate and inadequately clad form of Lady Rawhide.

… And there were more movies, this time with an actual Hispanic (albeit a Spaniard) playing the lead role: Antonio Banderas, in case you were wondering…

In 2008 Dynamite Entertainment reintroduced the Fox courtesy of new yarns by Matt Wagner (patience, por favor, they’re coming soon…) and as part of the package excavated this lost yarn from the Topps iteration: an unpublished adventure by McGregor & Mayhew with colours by Sam Parsons and letters by industry veteran John Costanza.

Zorro: Mantanzas has a chequered history. Part of a longer storyline begun during the Topps Comic era of the 1990s, it was only completed in 2010 for the Dynamite run and released as 4-issue miniseries before being collected as a trade paperback/eBook. For all that, however, the lost episode offers a passionate, sophisticated portrayal of the quintessential champion risking his own security and happiness to thwart a macabre and complex villain: a struggle rendered even more appealing by the magnificent illustration of Mayhew & Parsons.

However: this is also an uncompromising view of a far different time and ethos. Some scenes of “man vs beast” interaction are explicit and arguably little more than beautifully executed animal cruelty. If such uncompromising scenes are likely to upset, please leave his book alone.

For the uninitiated: Don Diego de la Vega is the foppish son of a grand house in old California back when it was a Spanish Possession. He used the masked persona of señor Zorro to right wrongs, defend the weak and liberate the oppressed – particularly the pitifully maltreated natives and Indians. He thwarted the get-rich-quick schemes of a succession of military leaders and a colonial Governor determined to milk the populace of growing township Los Angeles for all they had.

Whenever Zorro struck he left his mark – a character-defining letter “Z” carved into walls, doors, faces and/or other body parts…

Diego has an entire support structure in place. Although in this iteration his stiff-necked Hildalgo father is unaware of his double life, the secret saviour has numerous assistants who do. The most important is “deaf-mute manservant” Bernardo and Jose of the Cocopahs – a native Indio chieftain who often acts as stableman, decoy and body double for the Masked Avenger. Diego also occasionally employs retired, reformed one-eyed pirate Bardoso to act as his spy amongst townsfolk and outlaws…

The generally-beleaguered settlement is basking in unaccustomed liberty after recent Zorro’s overthrow of the military governor, unaware that their new Regency Administrator Lucien Machete is a sadistic fiend with a nasty line in prosthetic weapons nursing a rabid grudge against Zorro… the man who made his replacement limb necessary.

The villain has struck up a friendship with Diego’s father Don Alejandro: an increasingly frustrated grandee who finds his son’s unseemly, unmanly behaviour more and more inexplicable and intolerable. Infuriatingly, Machete is not taking advantage of the familial rift as a ploy; he just likes the old man and despises his foppish son, blithely oblivious that the soft poltroon is the black-clad avenger who thwarted his previous malevolent depredations.

Zorro knows – but cannot prove – Machete’s credentials are forged and his claims to act as the Spanish King’s official representative are false. The Fox urgently seeks to expose the impostor before whatever vile plot he fosters can be completed. Thus he cannot let anything distract him…

The drama unfolds after Don Alejandro and Lucien attend the Matanza: an annual festival where young men show off their strength and manhood by ceremonially butchering cattle and other livestock in a gory display of horsemanship and bloodletting. Diego has naturally declined to participate or even attend, preferring to surreptitiously watch Machete. He is wise to do so, for the maniac has malicious plans to sabotage the event with a new addition to his arm’s arsenal…

Taking up position above the killing grounds, Zorro & Bernardo are in perfect position to observe proceedings but their keen surveillance is disrupted by a huge bear attracted to the site by the smell of blood. Its attack is devastating and leaves the secret champions battling for their lives. By the time they can again turn their attention to the Matanza, Lucien has done his dirty work: good men are dead or maimed and an horrific stampede is underway… Moreover, in the chaos, personal tragedy has struck the De La Vega household and Machete seems to be getting away with murder again, whilst El Zorro is painted as the blackest of monsters…

A simple tell well-told and lavishly illustrated, Zorro: Matanzas is packed with spectacular action and diabolical intrigue in the grand manner and incidentally offers a potted origin and discreet peek at the fabulous subterranean citadel covertly crafted by Diego & Bernardo to facilitate the Fox’s war on injustice.

Although more incident than main feature, this is a blistering romp every lover of human-scaled adventure will adore.
Zorro®: Matanzas, Volume One © 2014 Zorro Productions, Inc. All rights Reserved.

Today in 1897 Rudolph Dirks’ strip the Katzenjammer Kids began. It is right now the oldest comic strip still in syndication. In 1919, cartoon comedy superstar Dan (Archie, Sabrina the Teenaged Witch) DeCarlo was born, and one year later Airboy, Heap & Captain Britain illuminator Fred Kida turned up. So did western strip wonder Warren Tufts in 1925. He’s someone you really should see. Perhaps checking out Casey Ruggles: The Marchioness of Grofnek might start something?

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Orient Gateway


By Vittorio Giardino (Catalan Communications/NBM)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-041-3 (Catalan PB Album) 978-1-56163-184-1 (NBM PB Album)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pure Unobtainable Wonder… 9/10

It’s time again for me to whine about how and why some of humanity’s most impressive comics tales continually languish in English-language limbo as my loutish people seemingly refuse to open themselves to the wonders of the world. This time – AGAIN! – it’s a truly wonderful period spy drama you would think was the height of taste and fashion right now…

Born on Christmas Eve 1946, Vittorio Giardino was an electrician who switched careers at age 30. He initially worked for a number of comics magazines before his first collection – Pax Romana – was released in 1978. Giardino toiled, slowly but consistently, on both feature characters such as detective Sam Pezzo, saucy Winsor McKay homage Little Ego and cold-war drama Jonas Fink, as well as general fiction tales, producing 46 albums to date.

In 1982 he began relating the career of a quiet, bearded fellow recalled by the Deuxieme Bureau (the French Secret Service) to investigate the slaughter of almost every agent in the cosmopolitan paradise of Budapest.

The series ran in four parts in the magazine Orient Express before being collected as Rhapsodie Hongroise – Giardino’s thirteenth book… and one in no way unlucky for him. Reluctant spy Max Fridman (transliterated as Max Friedman for the English-speaking world) was dragged back into the “Great Game” in the years of uneasy peace just before the outbreak of WWII: a metaphor for the nations of Europe. Every day and with every fresh headline that becomes more relevant than ever right now…

Over the course of ten years, the masterful Italian graphic novelist crafted two more individual tales and in 1999 added a stunning triptych of albums. The three volumes of No Pasaràn! detailed a key moment during the on-going conflict in what became Republican Spain and the dying days of the Civil War which revealed many clues into the life of the diffident and unassuming hero. Three further volumes have been added to the canon (Max Fridman: Rio de Sangre in 2002, Max Fridman: Sin ilusión in 2008, and just this year Max Fridman: I cugini Meyer) so I’m declaring they are all now long past due to be revived and revisited, and revered…

Back then though, it took three years for Giardino to resume this subtly addictive pre-war drama with follow-up La Porta d’Oriente… Orient Gateway to you and me…

Summer 1938: All espionage agencies in the world know war is coming and nothing can stop it. Frantically jockeying for the most favourable position, all are seeking any infinitesimal advantage for when the balloon goes up. Recently Soviet engineer Mr. Stern has become just such a preferred asset of far too many rival organisations, so he runs, losing himself in the teeming, mysterious city of Istanbul.

Once again diffident, canny operative Max is drawn into the murky miasma of spycraft, but now, beside exotic, bewitching Magda Witnitz, is he the only one to ask why so many dangerous people want to “acquire” Stern?

…And why are they so willing to kill for him?

Subtle, entrancing and magnificently illustrated, this is a mesmerising, slow-boil thriller with all the beguiling nostalgic panache of Casablanca or Topkapi and labyrinthine twists and turns of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or even Slow Horses, which no fan of the genre, let alone comics aficionado, can afford to miss.

Giardino is a smart and confident writer who makes tone and nuance carry a tale and his art – a more representational derivation of Hergé’s Ligne Claire (clean line) – makes the lovingly rendered locations as much a character as any of the stylish operatives in a dark, doomed world on the brink of holocaust.

Although still largely an agent unknown in the English-speaking world, Max Friedman is one of espionage literature’s greatest characters, and Giardino’s work is like honey for the eyes and mind. This is another graphic novel every fan of comics or the Intelligence Game should know.
© 1986 Vittorio Giardino. All rights reserved.

Today in 1921 veteran Golden Age creator Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski (Blue Beetle and so much more) was born, He shares the date with cartoonist Joe Edwards whom we mostly know for Archie Comics series including Jughead, Betty & Veronica, Super Duck, Captain Sprocket and his private brainchild Li’l Jinx.

In 1929, jack of all trades Frank Spinger joined the party. He drew almost everything, but you must read The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist as well as Dazzler, Nick Fury, Friday Foster, Rex Morgan, M.D. or Secret Six…

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Fearless Fosdick


By Al Capp (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 978-0-87816-108-9 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also contains Discriminatory Content included for satirical and comedic effect.

Al Capp’s Li’l Abner is rightly considered one of the greatest comic strips ever created, a devastatingly satirical, superbly illustrated, downright brilliant comedic masterwork which lampooned anything and everything America held dear and literally reshaped their popular culture. Generations of readers took Capp’s outrageous inventions and graphic invectives to their hearts. Many of the strips best lines and terms entered the language, as did the role-reversing college bacchanal known as Sadie Hawkins Day. Some fictional shticks even became licensed and therefore “real” – just Google “Shmoo” and “Kickapoo Joy-juice” to see what I mean.

Apart from the satirical and funny bits you can say pretty much the same about Chester Gould’s legendary lawman Dick Tracy – a landmark creation which has influenced all popular fiction, not simply comics. Baroque villains, outrageous crimes and fiendish death-traps have pollinated the work of numerous strips, shows and movies since then, but the indomitable Tracy’s studied use – and startlingly accurate predictions – of crime fighting technology and techniques gave the world a taste of cop thrillers, police procedurals and forensic mysteries such as CSI decades before our current fascination took hold.

In August 1942 Alfred Gerald Caplin, as he didn’t prefer to be known, took a studied potshot at the cartooning game, joyously biting the hand that fed him (grudgingly and far from enough) when he introduced a frantic, barbed parody of Tracy into Li’l Abner.

As depicted by cartoonist-within-a-cartoon “Lester Gooch”, Fearless Fosdick was a deadpan, compulsively honest, straight-laced cop who worked for a pittance in a corrupt, venal crime-plagued city, controlled by shifty, ungrateful authorities – i.e. typical bosses. Fosdick slavishly followed the exact letter of the law, if not the spirit: always over-reacting, and often shooting litterbugs or Jaywalkers whilst letting bandits and murderers escape.

The extended gag began as a sly poke at strip cartoonists and syndicates whom Capp portrayed as slavering maniacs and befuddled psychotics manipulated by ruthless, shameless, rapacious exploiters. It became so popular on its own admittedly bizarre merits that Fosdick’s sporadic appearances quickly generated licensed toys and games, a TV puppet show and a phenomenally popular advertising deal for Wildroot Cream-Oil hair tonic.

The hard-hitting, obtuse he-man hero was impulsive Abner’s “Ideel” and whenever the crime-crusher appeared as a strip within the strip, the big goof aped his behaviour to outlandish degree. When Fosdick married as part of a bizarre plot, Abner finally capitulated to devoted girlfriend Daisy Mae’s matrimonial aspirations and “married up” too… even though he didn’t really want to!

Fosdick made the jump to comic books when edited reprints of the strip appeared from Toby Press, and a promotional comic – ‘Fearless Fosdick and the Case of the Red Feather’ – followed. Thus in 1956 Simon and Shuster published Al Capp’s Fearless Fosdick: His Life and Deaths which forms the basis of the classy Kitchen Sink softcover under review here.

Prefaced with an absorbing and informative introduction by award-winning crime and comics writer Max Allan Collins – who took over Dick Tracy when Gould retired – this outrageous tome relates five of the very best felonious fiascos and forensic farces beginning with ‘Introducing: AnyFace!’ from 1947, wherein Abner is hired to protect cartoonist Lester Gooch as he crafts the tale of a crook with a plastic face. The fiend is un-catchable since he can mimic anybody, constantly fooling Fosdick into shooting the wrong guy. Eventually the cop starts killing people pre-emptively – just in case – but in the “real” world as Abner gets more engrossed in the serial, Gooch, always as bonkers as a bag of badgers (because only certified loons create comics strips), is suddenly cured, casting the conclusion into desperate doubt! Confused? Good: that’s the point!

From 1950 comes ‘The Case of the Poisoned Beans’ in which madman Elmer Schlmpf randomly contaminates a tin of “Old Faithful” – the city’s most popular brand of beans. So popular are they that most shops and restaurants refuse to take them off sale and the populace won’t stop buying them. As no panic ensues and indifference rages, Fosdick begins shooting citizens who won’t stop eating the beans. Better a safe, clean police bullet than a nasty case of poison…

‘Sidney the Crooked Parrot’ (1953) was once Fosdick’s faithful pet, but living with the obsessive do-gooder turned the bird into a vengeance-crazed criminal genius. Cunningly causing Fearless to lose his job, the bird then organises a campaign of terror, but even humiliated, derelict and starving, the unswerving righteousness of the super-cop finds a way to triumph…

‘The Case of the Atom Bum’ (1951) finds the dapper detective helpless to halt depredations of a radioactive hobo who robs with impunity since the slightest wound might cause him to detonate like a thermonuclear bomb. Forced to ignore and even – shudder!! – abet the ne’er-do-well, Fosdick is going even more insane with frustrated justice – and then he snaps!

This manic monochrome monument to the Bad Old Days concludes with 1948’s utterly surreal ‘Case of the Chippendale Chair’, which begins only after certifiably cured and sane Lester Gooch is kidnapped by thugs working for the syndicate who torture him until he is crazy enough to produce Fearless Fosdick cartoons once more…

Once more demented, Gooch sets to delivering a startling saga of murder, theft and general scofflawing to sate the nation’s desire for graphic gang-busting with a new mastermind ravaging the palaces of the rich. Who can possibly be behind such brilliant crimes? (The clue is in the title…) and as Fosdick ineptly yet unerringly closes in on the culprit, collateral casualties mount. Still, isn’t justice worth a few sacrifices?

Madcap, cynical and hilariously ultra-violent, these eccentric yarns are credited with inspiring Harvey Kurtzman to create Mad comic books and the magazine it became. Capp’s creations clearly shaped decades of American comics comedy. Fosdick kept on turning up until 1972, leavening all the hillbilly high-jinks, satire and social commentary and defanging Capp’s increasingly reactionary stance and declining popularity with healthy, recreational slapstick slaughter, justifiable homicides and anticipatory cold-case clean-up. Moreover, if you’re British, you will see quite a few antecedents of our own utterly rational and reasonable supercop Judge Dredd…

If you have a taste for over-the-top hilarity and stunning draughtsmanship this is a book you must track down. Consider it a constabulary duty to be done…
Strip material © 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1990 Capp Enterprises, Inc. Introduction © 1990 Max Allan Collins. Entire Contents © 1990 Kitchen Sink Press, Inc.

Today in 1907, the first Mutt and Jeff strips by Bud Fisher were published. We already told you that in Forever Nuts: The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff (Classic Screwball Strips). In 1915 Green Lantern originator Martin Nodell was born, whilst comics presence, writer, editor and The Beat blogger Heidi MacDonald joined us in 1961, as did comics colour artist Lee Loughridge (Batman Adventures, Stumptown) in 1969.

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Chandler


By Steranko (Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc/Pyramid Books)
ISBN: 978-0-515-04241-2 (Pyramid Books)

This book contains Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Jim Steranko was born today in 1938. Can you guess what time it is?

Steranko is an artist with many strings to his bow. Whether as publisher, typographer, graphic designer, artist, writer, storyteller, historian, or musical performer he has always excelled. As magician & escapologist he found celebrity, inspiring new friend Jack Kirby to create Super Escape Artist Mister Miracle, but it’s as a comics creator the man of many talents has most memorably succeeded.

At the peak of Marvel’s first creative flowering he revolutionised the telling of graphic stories with Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. His retro-revisionist take on Captain America is reverently remembered, as is his brief meddling with mutant outriders The X-Men.

Decades after his experimental forays in Marvel’s horror and romance titles, the results are remembered – and now finally in print – as high-points in style and cinematic design.

Steranko left Marvel to pursue other interests and began publication of pop culture mainstay Mediascene Prevue, only rarely returning to the comics medium. If you’ve never seen his strip work you’ll know him by his film production concept art for blockbusters like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In the mid-1970s he linked up with comics Svengali Byron Preiss to create this fabulous experimental precursor of the graphic novel: a dynamic and vivid tribute to the hard-boiled detective and film noir genres, and something which perhaps not altogether to the tastes of fans at the time is certainly now very much in the bailiwick of contemporary comics consumers.

Alternatively entitled FICTION ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 3 in its pocket digest sized paperback iteration (as well as proper full-sized graphic novel Chandler: Red Tide), it still packs a potent visual and narrative punch.

Chandler is a private eye, in the iconic myth-country of 1940’s New York City. One night a desperate man comes looking for someone to track down his inescapable killer. Bramson Todd witnessed a mob hit and has somehow been poisoned because of it. With 72 hours to live, the walking corpse wants proactive revenge, and as well as a vast amount of money, he offers Chandler the chance to save three other witnesses from the same fate or worse…

The familiar iconography of a seedy, noble gumshoe is augmented by two-fisted action, flying bullets, sundry thugs and scoundrels, memorable, glamorous women and a ticking clock, all working to make this loving and effective pastiche a minor masterpiece…

Back then, however, a major stumbling block for many readers was the unconventional format of the book. Each folio is divided into two columns – in the manner of classic pulp prose page layouts – with each column comprising an illustration above a block of accompanying text.

Despite Steranko’s superb draughtsmanship and design skill (some spreads form extended visual continuities with 4-single frames becoming one large illustration), there is an element of separation between prose & picture that can take a little adapting to. But you should try. It’s worth it.

This is still a powerful tale, well told and worth any extra effort necessary to enjoy it. Another contender for immediate reissue, I think…

© 1976 Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc. The character Chandler © 1976 James Steranko.

Today in 1977 René Goscinny died. You must by now know where to look for him. Two years later Li’l Abner’s Al Capp passed on too, in 2007 unsung star Paul Norris died. He’s most renowned for co-creating DC’s Sea King as most recently seen in Aquaman: 80 Years of the King of the Seven Seas – the Deluxe Edition.

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Glacial Period


By Nicolas de Crécy, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM ComicsLit/Louvre: Musée du Louvre Éditions)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-855-0 (Album HB/Digital edition) 978-1-56163-483-5 (TPB)

I’m feeling waggishly topical today. Mayhap I might be getting better…

In 2005 one of the greatest museums in the world began an intriguing ongoing project with the upstart art form of comics; inviting some of the world’s most accomplished masters of graphic narrative to create new works in response to the centuries of acquired treasures residing within the grand repository of arts, history and culture.

The tales are produced in close collaboration with the forward-looking (if not security-conscious) authorities of the Louvre, and always push the envelope of what can be accomplished by master craftsman inspired by their creative antecedents and forebears. These are no thinly-concealed catalogues of exhibition contents gift-wrapped in cartoon terms to gull potential visitors off their couches and into a stuffy edifice of public culture, but vibrant and challenging comics events calculated to make you think again about what creativity and history mean…

The first of those stellar tomes, originally released as Période glaciaire, is a deluxe, lavish, oversized (286 x 222mm) hardback edition by NBM – well worth nicking but perhaps best purchased – granting readers that rarest of things… a second bite of the cherry.

Born in Lyon in September 1966 into a large family of artistic overachievers, Nicolas de Crécy was, in 1987, part of the first graduating class of students from de l’école de Bande dessinée des Beaux-Arts d’Angoulême.

After working for Studios Disney at Montreuil, he published first album Foligatto in 1991. Since then he has produced more than thirty albums; both one-off books such as Journal d’un fantôme, Escales, Plaisir de myope and La Nuit du grand méchant loup and series/serials such as Léon la came, Monsieur Fruit and Salvatore.

He is justly considered a wünderkind of French comics and his unique take on the role of the Louvre was – typically – boldly off-kilter, ingeniously amusing and fantastically sardonic…

Thousands of years from now Earth is a frozen dustheap. Scrabbling through its barren remains one day comes a turbulent group of scientists and archaeologists. The humans are a tendentious bunch, constantly bickering and pontificating on what the civilisation they are obsessed with understanding was actually like. Most have their own theories and perhaps only look now for finds to validate their views. Far more open and philosophical are the tubby talking dogs who act as frontrunners; their hyper-keen noses sniffing out areas where potential finds are buried. Especially sensitive – in every meaning of the term – is Hulk.

The rotund canine rogue can feel the tension in the party and when he sleeps (as often as possible) he has strange dreams and visions of beautiful old things. When he and official expedition leader Juliette are briefly separated from the group by a storm, the ensuing calm reveals an ancient structure freshly uncovered. Soon the humans are all over the “temple” and making grand plans. Nevertheless, the irascible mutt knows this find is mere dross and rubbish…

Another angry discussion results in top historian Paul being left behind to research/catalogue the temple whilst the others press on to uncover the fabled lost metropolis buried somewhere in this desolate region…

Hulk isn’t fooled. He sees that imperious alpha male Gregor has designs on Juliette and is slowly isolating her from the others. After she ignores the canny canine’s warnings, Hulk wanders off into the cold night and next morning impatient Gregor convinces the party to go on without him. Alone and no longer distracted, Hulk’s incredible faculties detect a faint scent and he begins to dig down.

Before long he has broken into a stone vault filled with fascinating artefacts and, as ever following his nose, the mighty mutt discovers a mesmerising maze of corridors, revealing incredible facts about the lost civilisation. Under the cold light skies above, Juliette & Gregor clash over who is truly in charge and poor studious Joseph intervenes, suffering for his chivalry. Further interpersonal violence is only prevented when the treacherously unstable landscape shifts and from the icy crust an ancient structure begins to inexorably rise…

Hysterically elated, Gregor drags stunned archaeologists into the fabled metropolis and all are astounded by the images and artefacts they find. Soon, they’re frantically hypothesising, guessing and just plain spit-balling as they plunge deeper and deeper into a still shaky, shifting edifice. Entranced and intoxicated by the panoply of pictures and statues, the humans’ imaginations are running amok.

And, from outside, Esteban calls out to them: he has spotted another glistening building forcing its way out of the snows…

The treasure trove seems unending: a final repository of ancient magnificence that leads them ever inward as the monumental mausoleum inexorably pushes upwards into dying sunlight.

Elsewhere, deep below them, Hulk is making his own explorations and encounters something uncanny and bizarre. Before long he’s conversing with the oldest statues and objets d’art in the vaults of history. The relics know the Louvre is in tectonic death throes and need his help to save all the wonderful “living” treasures that have waited here for patient millennia…

Sharing with him the true stories, mistakes and triumphs of the past races of man, dog and anxious, animated exhibits unite in a desperate attempt to save their quintessentially timeless splendours from final obliteration…

Accompanied by a formidable and informative List of Works which feature most prominently in this captivating yarn, Glacial Period is a bemusing, wide-eyed, light-hearted epic as well as an utterly engrossing, darkly charming graphic discussion on the nature and value of art and our eternal ever-changing relationship with it. It is also an entrancing, witty literal shaggy dog story in comics form that reads superbly even if you wouldn’t be caught dead in a museum, French or otherwise.

Why not give it a go and see if your cool attitude thaws after all?
© 2005 Futuropolis/Musée du Louvre Éditions. English Edition © 2006 NBM.

Today in 1920 Archie Comics artist Bob Montanna was born, and in 1958 Earth reeled from the first appearance of the Smurfs as walk-on in a Johan and Peewit strip by Peyo in Le Journal de Spirou. We covered all that in The Smurfs Anthology volume 1.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula


By Bram Stoker & Fernando Fernández (Catalan Communications/Del Rey Books)
ISBN: 978-0-34548-312-6 (Del Rey)
DLB: 18118-1984 (Catalan)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

Here a gloriously OTT example of Anglo-European collaboration long overdue for reconsideration and another go-round…

Multi-disciplinary Spanish artist Fernando Fernández began working to help support his family at age 13 whilst still at High School. He graduated in 1956 and immediately began working for British and French comics publishers. In 1958 his family relocated to Argentina and whilst there he added strips for El Gorrión, Tótem and Puño Fuerte to his ongoing European and British assignments for Valentina, Roxy and Marilyn.

In 1959 he returned to Spain and began a long association with Fleetway Publications in London, generating mostly war and girls’ romance stories. By the mid-1960’s he was experimenting with painting: selling book covers and illustrations to a number of clients. He resumed comics work in 1970, creating a variety of strips (many of which found their way into US horror magazine Vampirella), the successful comedy feature ‘Mosca’ for Diario de Barcelona and educational strips for the publishing house Afha.

Increasingly expressive and experimental as the decade passed, Fernández crafted ‘Cuba, 1898’ and ‘Círculos’ before, in 1980, beginning his science fiction spectacular Zora y los Hibernautas for the Spanish iteration of US fantasy magazine 1984. It eventually made it into English via Heavy Metal magazine as Zora and the Hibernauts.

He then adapted this moody, Hammer Films-influenced version of Dracula for the Spanish iteration of Creepy, before (working with Carlos Trillo) moving on to mediaeval fantasy thriller La Leyenda de las Cuatro Sombras. That done, he created illustration series Galería de Personajes Fantásticos, Argón, el Salvaje and a number of adaptations of Isaac Asimov tales in Firmado por: Isaac Asimov and Lucky Starr – Los Océanos de Venus.

His last comics work was Zodíaco, begun in 1989, before mounting heart problems curtailed the series and he returned to painting and illustration. He died in August 2010, aged 70.

For his interpretation of the gothic masterpiece under review here, Fernández sidelined the expansive, experimental layouts and lavish page design that had worked so effectively in Zora and the Hibernauts, opting for a moodily classical and oppressively claustrophobic, traditional page construction: trusting to his staggering mastery of colour and form to carry his luxuriously mesmeric message of mystery, seduction and terror.

The story is undoubtedly a familiar one and the set pieces are all executed with astounding skill and confident aplomb as, in May 1897, English lawyer Jonathan Harker is lured to the wilds of Transylvania and horror beyond imagining wherein an ancient bloodsucking horror prepares to move to the pulsing heart of the modern world. Leaving Harker to the tender mercies of his vampiric harem, Dracula voyages by schooner to England, slaughtering every seaman aboard the S.S. Demeter and unleashing a reign of terror throughout the sedate, complacent British countryside.

Meanwhile, in the seat of Empire, Harker’s fiancée Mina Murray finds her flighty friend Lucy Westenra fading from troublesome dreams and an uncanny lethargy which none of her determined suitors, Dr. Jack Seward, Texan Quincy P. Morris and Arthur Holmwood – the future Lord Godalming – seem capable of dispelling…

As Harker struggles to survive in the Carpathians, in Britain, Seward’s deranged but impotent patient Renfield confesses to horrifying visions and becomes greatly agitated. Freshly arrived in England, the Count is already causing chaos and disaster, as well as constantly returning to rapidly declining Lucy. His bestial bloodletting prompts her three beaux to summon famed Dutch physician Abraham Van Helsing to save her life and cure her increasing mania.

Harker survived his Transylvanian ordeal, and when nuns summoned Mina she rushed to Romania where she married him in a hasty ceremony to save his health and wits…

In London, Dracula renews his assaults and Lucy dies, only to be reborn as a predatory child-killing monster. After dispatching her to eternal rest, Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward & Morris – joined by recently returned and much-altered Harker and his new bride – resolve to hunt down and destroy the ancient evil in their midst, following a chance encounter in a London street between the newlyweds and the astoundingly rejuvenated Count…

Dracula, however, has incredible forces and centuries of experience on his side and having tainted Mina with his blood-drinking curse flees back to his ancestral lands. Frantically, the mortal champions give chase, battling the elements, Dracula’s enslaved “gypsy army” and the monster’s horrific eldritch power in a race against time lest Mina finally succumb forever to his unholy influence…

Although translation to English in the Catalan version is a little slapdash in places – a fact happily addressed in a 2005 re-release from Del Rey – the original does have the subtly enhanced benefit of richer colours, sturdier paper stock and a slightly larger page size (285 x 219mm as opposed to 274 x 211mm) which somehow makes the 1984 edition feel more substantial. Of course, this would all be irrelevant if a digital edition were available.

This breathtaking take on the oft-retold yarn delivers fast paced, action-packed, staggeringly beautiful and astoundingly exciting thrills and chills in a most beguiling manner. Being Spanish, however, there’s perhaps the slightest hint of brooding machismo, if not subverted sexism, on display and – of course – plenty of heaving, gauze-filtered female nudity which might challenge modern sensibilities.

Nevertheless, what predominates in this Dracula is an overwhelming impression of unstoppable evil and impending doom. There’s no sympathy for the devil here – this is a monster from Hell all good men must oppose to their last breath and final drop of blood and sweat…

With an emphatic introduction (‘Dracula Lives!’) from comics historian Maurice Horn, this is a sublime treatment by a master craftsman all dark-fearing, red-blooded fans will want to track down and savour.
© 1984, 2005 Fernando Fernández. All rights reserved.

Today in 1894 letterer Ira Schnapp was born. I haven’t even listed most of his work on Now Read This!, but you’ve appreciated some of it every time you saw a golden age Superman logo.

Simultaneously culturally significant and insensitive, today in 1953 saw the first appearance of Leo Baxendale’s Little Plum in The Beano. You can weigh his pros and cons for yourself with Dandy and Beano Present The Comics at Christmas or any 20th century Beano Annual we’ve reviewed.

In 1957 Rumiko Takahashi was born. We covered Mermaid Forest so long ago it’s probably time for a revisit, and we should probably do Ranma ½ while we’re at it…

In 1959 the last episode of Norman Pett’s Jane was published. It had begun in 1932, but once you’ve seen The Misadventures of Jane you’ll probably agree it was best to let her go.

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The Shadow 1941: Hitler’s Astrologer


By Dennis O’Neil, Michael William Kaluta & Russ Heath with Mike Kelleher, Mark Chiarello, Nick Jainschigg, John Wellington, Phil Felix & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-429-9 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

Russ Heath would have been 99 years old today: a master comics craftsman so few have ever heard of. I don’t think there’s even a definitive collection or a signature title to his name. He did his job masterfully and always moved on, and remains almost practically unknown. The pages of Sgt Rock original art I own are among my most treasured possessions, and every baby boomer who read US comics knew his work because of this and others like it.

Russell Heath Jr. was born in New York City on September 29th 1926 and raised in New Jersey. Influenced by cowboy artist Will James and others, Heath was self-taught and fiercely diligent, demanding authenticity of himself in all his work. This helped him break into comic books while still at High School (episodes of naval strip Hammerhead Hawley for Captain Aero Comics beginning with vol. 2, #2 in September 1942).

Eager to serve his country, Heath left Montclair High School early in 1945 for the Air Force. Whilst in the military he contributed cartoons to the Camp newspaper before shipping out. When peace broke out, he worked briefly as an ad agency gofer until in 1947 he landed a regular job with Timely Comics. Now married, Heath started working from home, drawing Kid Colt and Two Gun Kid, offerings for the dwindling superhero market and sundry horror stories and covers. He hit an early peak in the 1950s, with a wealth of western and horror features as well as co-creating Marvel Boy, limning Venus and The Human Torch during the abortive attempt to revive superheroes in 1953, whilst mostly crafting crime and romance tales,

He branched out: trying his hand on EC’s Mad and Frontline Combat, 3D comics for St. John’s and earned a reputation for gritty veracity in war and straight adventure stories (such as Robin Hood and Golden Gladiator for DC’s The Brave and the Bold). Heath started contributing to DC’s war line in early 1954, with strips in Our Army at War #23 and Star Spangled War Stories #22. It was good fit and he spent the next 15 years working with writer/editor Robert Kanigher, with whom he co-created The Haunted Tank, Losers and Sea Devils. All along he remained a stalwart of anthological compact combat yarns, but increasingly guested on and eventually took over full time illustrating prestigious Sgt. Rock.

Infamously and unjustly, many of his panels were co-opted by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein as the basis of his paintings (specifically Whaam!, Blam, Okay Hot-Shot, Okay!, and Brattata). Heath’s other contributions to American pop culture include those iconic ads for toy soldiers and a stint on Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder’s ubiquitous Playboy satire strip Little Annie Fanny. Later landmarks include launching a new Lone Ranger newspaper strip with Cary Bates in 1981, and illustrating Michael Fleisher’s infamous Death of Jonah Hex story. Eventually he moved into animation and out to the west coast, but remained in contact with his comics roots, providing occasional returns on titles such as Planet of the Vampires, Mister Miracle, Ka-Zar, The Punisher, Shadowmasters, G.I. Joe and Immortal Iron Fist among others. Having been awarded almost every award going, Heath was in semi-retirement when he died on the 23rd August 2018.

Despite adoring all that apparently unhip war and western stuff, we’re being contrary as ever and highlighting something a little different, but as it’s a special occasion you might want to also track down Hearts and Minds: A Vietnam War Story please link to 29th August 2018. Not our review, the actual book. It’s a Lost Treasure…

Here and now though let’s pop back to the early 1930s, when The Shadow gave thrill-starved Americans their measured doses of extraordinary excitement via cheaply produced pulp periodical novels and over the mood-drenched airwaves via his own radio show. Like comics once upon a time, “Pulps” were published in every style and genre in their hundreds every month, ranging from the truly excellent to the pitifully dire, but for exotic or esoteric adventure-lovers there were two stars who outshone all others. The Superman of his day was Doc Savage, whilst the premier dark, relentless creature of the night dispensing terrifying grim justice was the putative hero featured here…

Radio series Detective Story Hour (based on stand-alone yarns from Street & Smith publication Detective Story Magazine) used a spooky-toned narrator (variously Orson Welles, James LaCurto or Frank Readick Jr.) to introduce each tale. He was dubbed “the Shadow” and from the very start on July 31st 1930 was more popular than the stories he related. The Shadow rapidly evolved into a hands-on hero, solving instead of sharing mysteries and, on April 1st 1931, started starring in his own printed adventures. These were written by astonishingly prolific Walter Gibson under house pseudonym Maxwell Grant. On September 26th 1937 the radio show officially became The Shadow with the eerie mantra “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Men? The Shadow knows!” unforgettably ringing out over the airwaves.

Over the next 18 years 325 novels were published, usually at two a month. The creepy crusader spawned comic books, movies, a newspaper strip and all the merchandising paraphernalia you’d expect of a smash-hit superstar brand. The pulp series officially ended in 1949, although Gibson and others added to the canon during the 1960s when a pulp/fantasy revival gripped the world, generating reprinted classic yarns and a run of new stories as paperback novels. There are also new yarns turning up to this day…

In graphic terms The Shadow was a major player. His national newspaper strip by Vernon Greene launched on June 17th 1940, and when comic books really took off, the Man of Mystery had a four-colour title; running March 1940 to September 1949. Thanks to Robert Bernstein, Jerry Siegel, John Rosenberger & Paul Reinman, Archie Comics published a controversial contemporary reworking in 1964-1965 for their Radio/Mighty Comics imprint.

In 1973 DC acquired rights to produce a captivating, brief but definitive series of classic comics unlike any other superhero title then on the stands. DC periodically revived the venerable vigilante and after the runaway success of Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman, Howard Chaykin was allowed to utterly overhaul the vintage feature for an audience finally recognised as grown-up enough to handle more sophisticated fare. This led to further, adult-oriented iterations and one cracking outing from Marvel before Dark Horse assumed the license of the quintessential grim avenger for the latter half of the 1990s and beyond.

Dynamite Entertainment secured that option in 2011 and, whilst reissuing much of those earlier efforts, began a series of new monthly Shadow comics. A year after Chaykin and DC catapulted The Shadow into the grim ‘n’ grungy contemporary consumer arena, the dream-team that had first returned him to comics prominence reunited for a larger-than-life grand romp, ably abetted by the inking skills of master artist Russ Heath.

In the early 1970s Denny O’Neil & Michael Kaluta had produced a superb series of adventures (collected as The Private Files of the Shadow plee link to January 19th 2009), set in the mad scientist/spy/gangster-ridden ‘thirties. When they reunited to produce a Marvel Graphic novel, expectations were high, and in many ways that complex, devious yarn was the final chapter of that astounding graphic procession. Dynamite’s 2013 re-release of Hitler’s Astrologer saw the entire affair re-mastered by Mike Kelleher, finally doing justice to the colouring of Mark Chiarello, Nick Jainschigg and John Wellington – as well as letterer Phil Felix – which had not fared well under Marvel’s production processes of that earlier time.

On Easter Sunday 1941 a beautiful woman is pursued through the teeming crowds of Times Square theatre-goers by sinister thugs until rescued in the nick of time by agents of The Shadow. She is Gretchen Baur, personally despatched to America by Josef Goebbels to gather astrological data for the Reich’s Ministry of Propaganda. However, now the confused fräulein cannot understand why agents of her own government have tried to abduct her… until The Shadow reveals that she is an unwitting pawn in a deadly battle for supremacy within the Nazi Party. It all revolves around her father, Der Führer’s personal astrologer…

And thus begins a tense, intricate conspiracy thriller ranging from the bloody streets of New York through the shell-pocked skies of Europe to the very steps of Hitler’s palace in Berlin, as a desperate plan to subvert the course of the war comes up hard against a twisted, thwarted love and a decades-long hunt for vengeance…

Deliciously deranged and suitably Wagnerian in style, this action-packed mystery drama exudes period charm. Nobody has ever realised The Shadow and his cohorts as well as Kaluta, whilst Russ Heath’s sleek mastery adds weight and volume to the cataclysmic proceedings.

This sinister saga of the man in the black slouch hat with the girasol ring is another superb addition to the annals of the original Dark Knight, and one no one addicted to action and mystery should miss.

The Shadow ® & © 2013 Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. ® ™ & © Conde Nast. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1916 was born Britain’s master of mordant wit Carl Giles. Last time we shared a laugh with him was Giles: the Collection 2014, whilst in 1947 underground legend Greg Irons first checked in. Our proudest moment is reviewing his outrageous The Wyf of Bath (The Wife of Bath) please link to March 9th 2018. Good luck finding that, but his other stuff is darn good too!

In 1988 utterly urbane arcane cartoonist Charles Addams went to his – or at least somebody’s – grave. You can check him out just by scrolling back to yesterday…