Category: Mature Reading

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Barbarella volume 1 & Barbarella and the Wrath of the Minute Eater (volume 2)


By Jean-Claude Forest, adapted by Kelly Sue DeConnick (Humanoids)
ISBN: 978-1-59465-533-3 (HB/Digital edition vol. 1) 978-1-59465-104-5 (HB/Digital edition vol. 2): 978-1-64337-883-1 (TPB combined 2 vols)

Europe’s post-war fascination with science fiction and baroque space opera arguably all stems from the innocently raunchy antics of a starry-eyed gamin holding forthright, ultra-modern views on sexual politics. Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella stimulated public acceptance of socially-inclusive futuristic themes in an era of Cold War and Atomic Anxiety: one that coincided with a highly publicised “sexual revolution” that was simultaneously beloved of and excoriated by screaming pundits and headline writers.

…And it all occurred just as France was locked into a momentary but absolute obsession with “sex kitten” Brigitte Bardot…

France’s love affair with speculative fiction actually goes back – at least – to the works of Jules Verne and maybe even as far as Cyrano de Bergerac’s posthumously published fantasy stories L’Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune (The Other World: or the States and Empires of the Moon) and Les États et Empires du Soleil (The States and Empires of the Sun). They were first released in 1657 and 1662.

Happily for us, European comic iterations have always been groundbreaking, superbly realised and deeply enjoyable…

Proudly Parisian Forest (1930-1998) was a graduate of the Paris School of Design who began selling strips while still a student. His Fleche Noire (Black Arrow) feature opened a career illustrating for newspapers and magazines like France-Soir, Les Nouvelles Littéraires and Fiction throughout the 1950s. This was whilst producing Charlie Chaplin-inspired comic series Charlot and being chief artist for Hachette’s sci fi imprint Le Rayon Fantastique.

For this last client, Forest also produced illustrations and covers for translations of imported authors A. E. Van Vogt, Jack Williamson, and others.

Thus in 1962, with headlines trumpeting liberation and armageddon in the home and for the family, Forrest created Barbarella in V-Magazine. The innocently super-charged sex icon quickly took country and world by storm, generating an explosion of like-minded SF Bandes Dessinées features. Her first collected album was released by Editions Eric Losfeld in 1964, with further tales released until 1982. Those later stories were illustrated by Daniel Billon and the entire canon has never been out of print for long.

Forest never looked back, subsequently creating Baby Cyanide and more serious fare like Hypocrite; the Verne-inspired Mysterious Planet; La Jonque fantôme Vue de l’Orchestre and Enfants, c’est l’Hydragon qui Passe. He also found time to script for other artists: Les Naufrages du Temps (translated as Castaways in Time or Lost in Time) with Paul Gillon in 1964; Ici Meme for Jacques Tardi, and occult detective series Leonid Beaudragon for Didier Savard. These have been inexplicably all-but-ignored by English language publishers since the 1980s. If you read French, however, all are available in print and digitally…

The First Lady of Space sparked a Franco-Belgian fantasy mini-boom – classic series like Méziéres & Christin’s Valérian, Greg & Eddy Paape’s Luc Orient and Philippe Druillet’s Lone Sloane among so many others – thereby triggering the creation of dedicated periodical touchstone Métal hurlant in 1974.

At that time Forest was still finding new worlds for Barbarella to conquer, even though outside the Continent the concept was pretty much hijacked by Roger Vadim’s 1968 movie adaptation.

Here, however, we’re concentrating on Forest’s comics, as re-adapted and translated by Kelly Sue DeConnick (Bitch Planet, Pretty Deadly, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Castle, Avengers). The stories then and now are very much in the manner of every British newspaper strip leading lady since Jane (so, see also Axa, Danielle, Amanda, Scarth, George and Lynn, et al) and follow the plot of classic Flash Gordon strips…

Barbarella volume 1 finds a free, independent young woman, self-willed and over 21, curiously and confidently wandering away from Earth: taking to space to find a new lover, having had more than enough of her old one…

Now she’s having guilt-free relations with any rational and consensual creature, mechanism or being she wants to, but abruptly finds her travels interrupted when her ship breaks up over planet Lothion. The world is divided into a number of autonomous city states where her ever-intimate introduction procedure for new cultures provides moments of baffled bewilderment and deadly danger…

Tumbling into a war between exploitative horticultural aristocrats and their too-slowly expiring, no-longer required serfs, she finds a solution to the crisis and escapes to clash with a cosmic desert jellyfish, before leading space-crash survivors to relative safety before an eerie encounter with deadly beautiful Medusa…

Attrition takes its toll, and ultimately, only Barbarella and hunky stud Dildano make a desert crossing to a bizarre underground forest, where the feudal Olopiades harvest sunlight to battle underground terrors and a hunting-obsessed madmen regards everyone else as potential trophies…

More subterrine voyaging – beside untrustworthy Martian companion Klill – deposits her in Yesteryear, where history-besotted minor royalty take an instant dislike to the free-spirited Earthling libertine – who is almost murdered by spoiled princesses…

Frantic flight brings them to the outskirts of wicked city Sogo, where aging Earth scientist Durand (originally Durand Durand pop trivia fans!) acquaints them with the perils of its lethal defensive labyrinth. Here bizarre outcasts huddle to escape the dread perversion of the vile Black Queen who rules all and courts utter chaos…

Allied to blind angel Pygar and other noncommittal rebels, Barbarella’s innate innocence is key to deposing the debauched tyrannical sovereign and ending her paranoid reign of terror…

 

Second volume Barbarella and the Wrath of the Minute Eater began as 1974’s Les Colères du Mange-Minutes which finds the cosmic nomad voyaging across the void as owner/manager of a travelling show of bizarre beasts and beings: Circus Delirium.

Amongst her exotic menagerie of exhibits is cunning water-breathing humanoid Narval whose revelations regarding a time and space warping device masks his sinister secret agenda.

Despite protestations of faithful clown Bill, Narval’s sly manipulations gradually convince Barbarella to traverse cosmic barriers and take their “astronef” vessel to the interface between the normal cosmos and a region of reality where time itself runs differently. In the heart of that weird destination lies chronally adrift planet Spectra…

It is another world of vastly disparate sectors, where Barbarella makes more friends and lovers, constantly becomes embroiled in political and revolutionary strife, experiences the inexplicable and indescribable and generally wrecks another planet’s cultural identity, replacing it with something new.

Supreme amongst them is Narval himself, who seeks to mutate into a more superior form and subsequently conquer many planets…

On this occasion, sleeping with the enemy is a tactic that finally fails our peace-loving wonder and in the end Barbarella fails her own philosophy, by taking the abhorrent but necessary steps to stop him…

Unquestionably a comics landmark, yet expounding a few questionable swinging Sixties attitudes us folk from the future might take exception to, these wild voyages reshaped our fictions if not our consensual reality, and are a canon of celestial wonders everyone should see at least once.

In 2020, Humanoids released a trade paperback edition combining both albums in one single commemorative volume.

© 2014, 2015, 2022 Humanoids’, Inc., Los Angeles (USA). All rights reserved.

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Lady Killer volume 1


By Joëlle Jones, Jamie S. Rich, Laura Allred & various (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-757-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

1962 was a strangely portentous and memorable year.

We all nearly died in a Cuban-based mushroom cloud; the United States Supreme Court ruled mandatory prayers in public schools were unconstitutional; The Beatles released their debut single Love Me Do and Vivian Vance became the first person to portray a divorcée on a US TV series (The Lucy Show).

Elsewhere, paragon of femininity and American First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took television viewers on an intimate tour of the White House.

Way back then in a cosy era of prim, proper and perfectly contented wives and mothers, Josie Schuller is a bit of an oddball – although you’d never know it to look at her. In all ways she certainly looks like she always fitted in…

In a boldly thrusting consumer culture when men wear hats and smoke at work (and everywhere else), proper ladies are pliable, pliant, obedient and admirable deferential “homemakers” whose appearance and conformity are paramount. Sadly, Josie is shamefully keeping a secret from hubby Gene, their two adorable kids and especially her nosy live-in mother-in-law.

The busybody biddy has her suspicions though: a strange man is always hanging around, trying to talk to Josie when no one’s looking, and Mother Schuller suspects the shameful worst…

Her nasty mind might be relieved to know that her daughter-by-marriage is not cheating on her beloved boy, but merely indulging in a little freelance work on the side… although of course, even that would reflect badly on the breadwinner and Man of the House.

No, it’s not illicit sex that’s endangering this perfect union. Our deceitful little minx is just a covert assassin and really, really good at her job…

Unfortunately, Josie wants to leave the business, but her increasingly obnoxious handler Peck and his boss Stenholm keep piling on the pressure: forcing Josie to take on more and more contracts, with no regard to the happy home-life she wants to preserve.

Eventually, the devotedly domestic death-dealer decides that her dreams mean nothing to her employers and – after she’s despatched to dispatch another lady similarly seeking to quit the lethal game – Josie realises that if she ever gets to retire, she’s going to have to remove the organisation that owns her…

Devised and illustrated by Joëlle Jones (Catwoman, Wonder Girl, Mr. Higgins Come Home, Supergirl: Being Super, Fables), scripted by Jamie S. Rich (Ares & Aphrodite, Cut My Hair, Archer Coe and the Way to Dusty Death, It Girl and the Atomics, Justice League: Endless Winter) and coloured by Laura Allred, this wickedly witty satirical blow for femininity and feminism collects issues #1-5 of Lady Killer from January-May 2015.

By mischievously mauling the virginal, compliant stereotypes handed down to us from the heydays of Doris Day, Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet – by way of Mad Men and Bullet Train – the creators have crafted a fast-paced high-octane period thriller which is a true joy to behold.

Bedded in with a wealth of additional material including an Introduction from crime-writer Chelsea Cain, roughs, working studies, faux contemporary ads, cover-&-variants gallery and commentary from the creators in a stylish Sketchbook section, this taut, timeless and tantalising thriller is packed with pots of action and swathes of suspense delivered with electric Élan and perilous panache to delight every reader who loves their comedy black and their body-counts high.

Read this quietly and make no fuss, and if you’re all good boy and girls and others, I’ll let you in on the shocking sequels…
Lady Killer ™ & © 2015 by Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich. All rights reserved.

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The Quest for the Time Bird


By Serge Le Tendre & Régis Loisel, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger (Titan Comics)
ISBN 978-1-78276-362-8 (HB/Digital Edition)

Like much European art and culture, French language comics (I’m controversially including Belgium and Swiss strips in this half-baked, nigh-racist, incomprehensibly sweeping statement) often seem to be a triumph of style over content.

That doesn’t mean they’re bad – far from it – simply that sometimes the writing and plotting isn’t as important to the creators and readers as the way it looks on a page and in a book, and complex characterisation isn’t always afforded the same amount of room that scenery, players, fighting or sex gets.

When you combine that with their reading public’s total refusal to be shocked by nudity or profanity, it becomes clear why so few of the 80-odd years of accumulated, beautifully rendered strips ever got translated into English – until now…

Beginning in the mid-1980s and having exhausted most of the all-ages options like Tintin, Asterix, Lucky Luke and Iznogoud, there was a concerted effort to bring a selection of the best mature-targeted European comics to an English-speaking (but primarily American) audience, with mixed results. Happily, that paucity of anglicised action and adventure has been relegated to the dust-bin of history in this century and we’ve all wised up a bit since then.

One of the most beguiling and intriguing of those bande dessinée serials was released by NBM between 1983 and 1987 as a quartet of splendidly fanciful fantasy albums (Ramor’s Conch, The Temple Of Oblivion, The Reige Master and The Egg Of Darkness) under the umbrella title Roxanna and the Quest for the Time Bird.

These eye-catching albums merrily married sword-&-sorcery in the manner of Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal with the sly raciness and wry wit of early Carry On films and unmatchable imagination of top-rank artists with no artificial restrictions.

Eventually, the entire saga was retranslated, remastered and re-released in a humongous (246 x 325 mm) full colour hardback packed with pulchritudinous peril, astonishingly exotic locales and vast variety of alien races all mashed together killing time until the end of the world…

That imminently endangered orb is the eccentric realm of Akbar; first glimpsed in French as La Quête de l’oiseau du temps: integrale cycle principal by writer Serge Le Tendre (Les Voyages de Takuan, Mister George, TaDuc) & Régis Loisel (Peter Pan, Le Grand Mort, Magasin General). However, before that there was also a pithy prototype version crafted by the collaborators in 1975 for the magazine Imagine and that’s also included in this splendid compilation in all its stark monochrome glory – but only in the original French so keep your phrase book or translation App handy…

The mystique and mystery open with Ramor’s Conch, introducing us to a land of many cultures, creatures and magics as the astonishingly adept and confidant Pelisse (restored to her original Gallic appellation) struggles through hostile territory to reach and recruit Bragon, the Greatest Knight in the World (and quite possibly her father) to capture the mystically mythic Time-Bird.

Opting to ignore the obviously still sore subject of the affair between the aged warrior and her mother, Pelisse wants to concentrate on preventing the destruction of the planet at the hands of a legendary mad god imprisoned within the Conch. The dark deity is prophesied to escape millennia of imprisonment in nine days’ time but there’s still a chance to save everything…

Crotchety aged Bragon takes a lot of persuading, even though he once loved Pelisse’s mother. Sorceress-Princess Mara is the only chance of holding back onrushing Armageddon. She has a spell from an ancient book that will rebind Ramor but it requires more than nine days to enact. What she needs is more time, and if she can use the fantastic fowl to mystically extend her deadline, all Akbar will be saved.

…But someone has to fetch it for her…

Of course, the noble knight eventually acquiesces, but is utterly unable to prevent the annoying teenager from accompanying him. Whether it’s because she may be his daughter or simply because this rather plain-faced lass has the sexiest body on the planet and the mind of a young girl (which here translates as a devastating blend of ingénue maiden and tart-in-training) and not one whit of a sense of self-preservation, he can’t decide…

Despite and not because of her constant cajoling, he “decides” to keep her with him as they set out on their desperate quest, the first step of which is to steal the Conch itself from a teeming desert city of lusty religious maniacs who haven’t even seen a woman in months.

After much derring-do and snide asides they succeed, acquiring a breast-obsessed inept masked young warrior in the process. It’s a comic, so you’ll probably notice anyway, but Pelisse’s chest is unfeasibly large and inviting and heaves most continually and quite distractingly according to almost everyone she meets…

Even though he’s clearly hopeless, Pelisse has formed a peculiar romantic attachment to him – but only as long as he never shows his face and remains an object of enticing, enigmatic mystery…

Bragon too is keeping a very close eye on him and their surroundings as they have also attracted a relentless stalker in the burly shape of deadly Bulrog: a former squire and pupil of the old knight, employed by fanatical cultists to ensure Ramor is liberated…

Second chapter The Temple of Oblivion sees a rather fraught reunion between Bragon and Mara as the knight deposits the painfully-recovered Conch and takes a party to the aforementioned temple to translate runic clues which will lead to the location of the Time-Bird.

With the chronal creature safely in custody they can literally stop the clock until Mara is able to re-confine the nearly-free mad god, but the arduous trek pushes the questers to their emotional and physical limits and a dark edge creeps into the tale as they again succeed, but only at the cost of their latest companion…

Sorely troubled, Bragon, Pelisse and her masked warrior head to their next destination, with only seven days remaining…

Riga finds them slogging through jungles strikingly similar to French Indo-China, gradually nearing their goal but unknowingly stalked by weird vulture-like beings. The scabrous, rapacious beasts are led by a puissant warrior of indeterminate vintage who has honed his phenomenal combat skills for decades. He has become an obsessive hunter, dedicated to dealing out death as a spiritual experience.

Over the course of four days much is revealed about Bragon and Bulrog – now a (dis)trusted member of the team – and confirmation comes that everything is not as it seems with the irresistible (and so-off-limits) Pelisse or her far-distant, ever-more-impatient mother.

Most worrisome is the fact that strange magical trickster Fol of Dol has attached himself to the group, frustrating everybody with tantalising clues and erratically endangering all their lives whenever the whim takes him…

Of course, there’s an unspoken connection between deadly butcher Riga and Bragon, and their ultimate confrontation is shocking and final. Then, without ever feeling like the creators are treading water, the chapter closes with three days to doomsday, as our weary pilgrims uncomfortably unite with the path to the Time-Bird wide open before them…

The Egg of Darkness plays hob with synchronicity and chronology, opening many years after the events of the previous chapters, with an old man relating these adventures as a bedtime story for his grandchildren. The fantastic action is overtaken by a metaphysical detour and explosive revelations about the quest and participants, providing a spectacular shock-ending.

As with all great myth tales, the heroes triumph and fade but still leave something for imagination to chew at, as well as wiggle-room for a return…

You’ll be delighted to learn – I know I was – that Le Tendre & Loisel did indeed periodically revive their amazing creations and hopefully we’ll be seeing those sagas if time permits…

Although plotted with austere, even spartan simplicity and a dearth of subtext, the stylish worldliness of Loisel & Le Tendre in the sparse and evocative script; the frankly phenomenal illustration and sheer inventiveness of the locales of astonishing Akbar are irresistible lures into a special world of reading magic that every comics lover and fantasy fanatic should experience.

It’s not Tintin, it’s not Asterix, it is foreign and it is very good.

Go questing for it, and offer bounties to whatever gods you favour that someone will re-release, and add to this cosmic canon.
© DARGAUD 2011 by Le Tendre, Loisel.

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The Mental Load – A Feminist Comic


By Emma, translated by Una Dimitrijevic (Seven Stories Press)
ISBN: 978-1-60980-918-8 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-60980-919-5

It’s never been a fair world, although until relatively recently (if our choice of leaders can be seen as contrarily evidential) that’s a situation we all apparently aspire to create and maintain. Simultaneously in that nebulous “recent” period, many have sought to address imbalances between the roles and burdens of men and women in a civil and cohesive society, but the first problem they all hit was simply how to state the problems in terms all sides could understand. We have a lot more names and concepts to utilise now in discourse, but the difficulties don’t seem to have diminished at all…

In 2010, software engineer Emma had a revelation and first joined the public debate: crafting and curating a book of strips reflecting upon social issues impacting women, from long hours to workplace politics and getting on with partners… and how unfair and unjust the world was.

The daughter of two mathematicians from Troyes – in the North-eastern region of France – she studied computer science, grew older and lived like most adults: work, fun (when possible), relationships, family. Things changed after she had her first child…

At age 30 she became an avowed feminist, having been compelled to closely observe and re-assess her life in society even as she discovered the concept of “collective intelligence”. Her approach to formalising her thoughts was to identify and deftly dissect components of behaviour – hers and everyone else’s – and the result was The Mental Load. This was her term for all the unacknowledged, unpaid, incessant, invisible crap (mostly thanks to men, absolutely to partners in relationships, but also to many other women) that comprises and comes with almost every relationship.

Those observations were translated into activism, initially as self-published and distributed pamphlets, and in 2016 she started adding cartoons and drawings to the mix. The extreme positive response led her to launch cartoon blog Emmaclit, focussing on issues of racism, capitalism and police violence as well as feminism, following up a year later with sister webcomic Fallait demander (“You only had to ask”) which first posited the notion of an inescapable relational imbalance… a mental load…

In the webcomic, Emma used her own domestic and work life to provide biographical examples of how an unfair, unspoken – and often unrecognised – distribution of labour and responsibility falls on women in even the most equitable and ostensibly harmonious heterosexual relationships. The material went viral and struck a global chord…

Delivering her thoughts as a series of pictorial essays/lessons, Emma convincingly and compellingly argues that the vast majority of the overwhelming, relentless, inescapably burdensome life-tonnage had somehow settled on one side of the bed in most households…

The book – and sequel The Emotional Load (strips from them subsequently appeared in British newspaper The Guardian) – caused something of a commotion and as much trollish kickback as you’d expect from all the usual (and usually wrong) places…

Because a large proportion of humans who won the gender (genital?) lottery don’t really give a damn about other people’s woes – especially if the food keeps coming and the appropriate drawers magically refill with clean clothes and groceries – I fear there’s a segment of truly needy folk who will never benefit from this selection of treatises, anecdotes, statistics and life-changing stories.

Nevertheless, since many guys are genuinely clueless and baffled but willing to adapt, maybe enough of us will give change and thought a chance, even at this late stage. It’s certainly clear that there’s quite some way to go yet…

Best of all, most women reading this will realise that it’s not just them feeling the way they do and may even risk starting a conversation with their significant others, or at the very least, start talking to other women and organising together…

Working in the manner of the very best observational stand-up comedy, Emma forensically identifies an issue and dissects it, whilst offering advice, suggestions and a humorous perspective. Here that’s subdivided into a dozen comical chapters, preceded by an autobiographical context-setting Introduction, before ‘You Should’ve Asked’ finds sexism and discrimination at work heaped upon anyone bold enough to use their legal right to maternity leave, whilst cataloguing who does what around the house in terms of cooking, cleaning, provisioning, time managing, general “adulting”, noticing and remembering stuff needs to be cooked and cleaned, and providing clear-cut alternatives even an old geezer like me could understand, As always telling examples are offered…

‘Violence of the Oppressed’ offers a non-establishment view of 2016s protests against the dismantling of the French Labor Code and citizens’ rights, supplemented by a history of how women got them in the first place, followed by shocking facts about childbirth experiences and time-saving tactics of some medical practitioners in ‘The Story of My Friend C.’

What guys have always claimed they can’t control is carefully explored in ‘The Male Gaze’ and more fully explored in ‘Show Me That Bosom’ (via a deliciously barbed allegory of a land where bared breasts are mandatory).

‘The Wonderful Tale of Mohamed’ singles out one case to detail the treatment of immigrants and brown people in general. It examines what happens when police can use terrorism threats as justification for overreaction, whilst ‘The Wait’ explores individual freedoms and action in committed relationships with specific attention to Emma’s own life and who usually gets left holding the baby. ‘Work!’ then lays out a possible solution and alternatives to the rat race roles if only we ensure time and resources could be more evenly distributed. There’s also plenty of revelations on the way women have messed up the value of the work market…

Other than making men uncomfortable, ‘Check Your Pussy!’ then offers a public service announcement on knowing oneself for all women, setting out actual facts – and even biological route maps! – before social iniquity returns in the form of another exposé on police treatment of non-whites after the death of ‘Just Another Guy from the Hood’…

The ultimate male shield is the concept of “banter” and most effective weapon is the concept of “just kidding”. Both get a well-deserved and thoroughly effective kicking in ‘Chill Out’ before – to celebrate a year of the blog – Emma opted to share a formulative experience that triggered her late-found militancy. The upshot was personal anecdote ‘The Holidays’: describing her bout of childbirth and how it changed her life in all the ways absolutely no one had warned her about…

Now a full-time cartoonist, broadcaster and columnist, Emma continues to poke and probe an unfair world, but this subversively smart, amusingly addictive, slickly convincing, plausibly rational discussion of the way things should not be is undoubtedly a high point in her work and our communal advancement. It may still be a largely male-centric society, but amidst the many moments that will have any decent human weeping in empathy or raging in impotent fury, there are decisive points where a little knowledge and a smattering of honest willingness to listen and change could work bloody miracles…

Buy this book, learn some stuff. Be better, and please accept my earnest apologies on behalf of myself and my entire gender.

Dial it down and literally Man Up guys!
© 2017 by Emma. English translation © 2018 by Una Dimitrijevic. All rights reserved.

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Wandering Star


By Teri S. Wood (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80162-9 (HB/Digital edition)

The 1980s were an immensely fertile time for English-language comics and creators. In America a whole new industry grew around a boom in specialist shops as dedicated retail outlets sprung up all over the country. Operated by fans, for fans, they encouraged and emboldened a host of new creators and publishers to experiment with format, genre and content, whilst eager readers celebrated the happy coincidence that for the first time in a long time they seemed to have a bit of extra cash to play with.

Consequently, the comics-creating newcomers were soon aggressively competing for the attention and cash of consumers who no longer had to get their sequential art fix from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material started creeping in too, and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse, First and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

Most importantly, by avoiding traditional family-focussed sales points such as newsstands, and general stores, more grown-up material could be produced: not just increasingly violent or sexually explicit, but also more politically astute and intellectually challenging. And even – just occasionally – addressing classic genres with a simple maturity comic books had not been allowed to express since the Comics Code shut down EC Comics.

New talent, established stars and different thematic takes on old forms converged, finding a thriving forum hungry for something a little different. Small companies and even foreign outfits had a fair shot at the big time and many great publications came – but, almost universally, as quickly went – without getting the attention or success they warranted. The era encouraged many untried creators to take a shot and, although the surge led to a spectacular implosive bust, a few truly impressive series weathered the storm and left their mark.

One such was Wandering Star by Teri S. Wood who soldiered on to create a true epic. After self-publishing for years, in 2016 the entire 21-issue odyssey was collected in a monumental and prestigious hardback edition. We all hoped it would belatedly transform the tale from beloved cult classic to the pioneering trail blazer of comics science fiction it deserves to be. We’re not there yet, but the book is still available if you want to come late to the party…

Resa Challender started out as most cartoon aspirants did back then; selling strips to fan press publications (Amazing Heroes), progressing to a regular series gig at one of the smaller companies (Rhudiprrt: Prince of Fur for MU Press) and all the while looking for a signature concept to cement inevitable stardom.

For Teri/Resa that was proudly self-professed space opera Wandering Star, which she originally self-published in 1988 (Happy 35th, kiddo!) without appreciably troubling the comics-buying masses…

That original exuberant, raw-edged first episode is included in the copious Bonus Material section at the back of this book, accompanying an Afterword from Carla Speed McNeil (and I will get around to covering her fabulous Finder series soon…), plus a 30-page full-colour section displaying a vibrant gallery of covers and promotional prints created during the series’ original run from 1993-1997 …and again Happy Anniversary!!

Nearly 500 pages earlier Maggie Thompson starts the ball rolling with her reminiscence-rich Foreword, recalling the author’s early days and connection to Comics Buyers Guide, which Wood expands upon in her own fact-filled Introduction.

When she was ready, Teri S. Wood returned to her 30-page draft of Wandering Star and severely retooled it. The result then launched through her own Pen and Ink Comics for 11 issues of a loudly touted 12 issue maxi-series, before being picked up Sirius Press who took away all the administrative hassles and let her get on with writing and drawing it until its actual conclusion with #21.

I called this a space opera, and it qualifies in the truest sense of the term. The story of an Earthling stuck at a hostile pan-species university overcoming alien prejudice and – with a small group of allies – becomes instrumental in stopping a vast intergalactic war is the very essence of that particular genre, but Wandering Star was different then and still delights today because it avoids all the easy pit-stops and pitfalls of the trope.

There is an overwhelming threat to universal peace, there is a monstrous and dreadful cosmic personal antagonist (in the form of brutal Commander Narz) and there is a doughty, trusty crew of allies. These include blind psionic powerhouse Madison, energy being Elli, wise old veteran Graikor and hateful bully-turned-staunch-comrade Mekon Dzn Appogand, plus (latterly) fellow human Joey – all frantically hurtling across the cosmos as embattled heroes trying to keep the fugitive vessel Wandering Star out of the clutches of an invading army willing and able to rip the Galactic Alliance to shreds…

From the start Wood favoured emotional involvement rather than over-used and obvious action/spectacle to engage her readership: deftly utilising the serial form to shape cast and characters, and show scary, painful, funny and ultimately intimately revelatory moments.

Stooping to an obvious if rather unfair comparison, it’s something Star Wars movies have never accomplished, and why those players are so wooden and 2-dimensional, whereas TV series like Star Trek (especially Picard and Strange New Worlds), Farscape, Firefly or Killjoys excel at making theirs authentic and believable. They use screen time for interaction, not extra action…

That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of cataclysmic cosmic conflict and ominous, last-ditch clashing, only that Wood knew from the get-go that people – no matter what shape, colour or construction – are infinitely more interesting than one more exploding planet or looming astral dreadnought. Most importantly, she knew how to use them and when to expend them for maximum impact…

It all begins on peaceful planet Machavia as history student Aldar tracks down celebrated recluse Casandra Andrews and convinces the aged Earther to share the true story of how 30 years ago a bunch of raw kids on the legendary Wandering Star saved the Galactic Alliance from the seemingly invincible, duplicitous and rapacious Bono Kiro Empire…

Potent, powerful, uplifting and breathtaking authentic, this is a war story that deals with consequences rather than simple victories and defeats.

Wandering Star is a true and pure example of sequential narrative as Art. Wood produced it practically as a labour of love; for precious little financial reward or public acclaim. She improved and gained confidence with every page and every issue and she did it because she had a story that wouldn’t let her go until she told it…

And once you read it, it won’t loosen its hold on you, either…
© 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 2016 Teri S. Wood. Foreword © 2016 Maggie Thompson. Afterword © 2016 Carla S. McNeil. All rights reserved.

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Sax Rohmer’s Dope


Adapted by Trina Robbins from the novel by Sax Rohmer (It’s Alive/IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-957-8 (HB/Digital edition)

The 1980s were a hugely fertile time for American comics-creators. An entire new industry started with the birth of the Direct Sales market and – as dedicated specialist retail outlets sprung up all over the country (operated by fans for fans) – new companies experimented with formats and content whilst eager readers celebrated the happy coincidence that everybody seemed to have a bit of extra cash to play with.

Most importantly, much of the “kid’s stuff” stigma finally dissipated. America was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be a for-real actual art-form able to handle sophisticated themes and notions…

Consequently, many new publishers were soon competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown resigned to getting their on-going picture stories from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material had been creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Capital, Now, Comico, Vortex, First, Dark Horse Comics and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Even smaller companies had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great material came – and too often, as quickly went – without getting the attention or success it warranted.

At the forefront of the revolution – and a perfect example – was Eclipse Comics who entered the arena at the start in 1981 with a black-&-white anthology magazine; quickly followed by a terrific line of genre titles crafted by the industry’s top talents and emerging superstars.

Although the bold fledglings were gone a decade later, their influence still lives on, as does much of the material they originally released: picked up, reprinted and expanded upon by more fortunate successors…

The latest long-overdue returnee is a decades-anticipated and awaited (by me at the very least) cartoon compilation of a scarce-remembered book adaptation. The inspirational original tome was a scandalous classic of crime and debauchery from a semi-mythical era, penned by Sax Rohmer …mostly remembered these days for inventing the ultimate personification of stranger-danger… Fu Manchu.

Starting its serialised run in monochrome anthology Eclipse (The) Magazine and concluding in the pages of full-colour indie anthology Eclipse Monthly, Sax Rohmer’s Dope was deftly adapted by pioneering cartoonist, historian and activist Trina Robbins, beginning in issue #2 (July 1981) and featuring in all the rest until the 8th and final one (January 1983).

Uncompleted, the saga continued and climaxed over the first three issues of Eclipse Monthly (August – October 1983) before promptly vanishing from view, despite magazine stablemates such as Ms. Tree, I Am Coyote, Ragamuffins, Masked Man and others all going on to greater success – and collected editions…

Here then at last is Trina Robbins’ lost masterpiece: a moody interpretation of a rather infamous and groundbreaking book – sensationally based on the first recorded celebrity death due to recreational drug abuse, and available as a sturdy monochrome hardback or digital edition. The stark shenanigans are preceded by an effusive Foreword from artist and publisher C. Spike Trotman, and a revelatory, reminiscing Introduction by Robbins herself, disclosing the origins of her adaptation whilst confronting head-on the dreadful truth: Dope was a book of its time, unashamedly racist (as was its author) and probably even unaware of any harmful connotation to such an attitude…

Robbins then makes a rock solid and potently valid case for why we elevated 21st centurians should read it anyway…

The astounding shocker opens in ‘London, 1919’ as sound fellow Quentin Gray meets up with fellow swells Mrs. Irvin and her raffish companion Sir Lucien Pyne before being introduced to the seductive and tantalising half-world of the High Society drugs scene; as disseminated through the machinations of ostensible perfume trader Sheikh El Kazmah…

It’s the same old story: flighty Rita Irvin has succumbed to addiction but has no more money. Yet still she baulks when the seedy dealer suggests another manner of payment…

‘Chapter Two: The Fatal Cigarette’ opens a little later when Quentin greets formidable government official Commissioner Seton (recently returned from the east where he earned the title “Pasha” for his services to the Empire). The wise authoritarian has come to view the recently expired corpse of Pyne: stabbed to death soon after Gray left him and now lying in Kazmah’s apartments. Of Rita there is no sign…

On later meeting Rita’s physician Dr. Margaret Halley, Quentin’s disquiet grows. The boldly modern young woman even demands he throw away the cigarettes Pyne gave him before she speaks further. Of course, he had no idea until she warned him that they were laced with opium…

‘Chapter Three: A Star is Born – and Falls’ relates the sad tale of rising theatrical sensation Rita Dresden and how the nightly pressures of performing were temporarily assuaged by the scheming Pyne who offered her comfort and calming chemical gifts: comforts that she soon could not do without…

Rita’s fall retroactively continues in ‘Chapter Four: Pipe Dreams’ as she is introduced into a dope ring of well-heeled degenerates: attending the “poppy parties” of Mr. Cyrus Kilfane and encountering the striking and sinister Lola Sin…

Fleeing that debauched debacle, Rita literally ran into well-meaning Monte Irvin and was almost saved.

Almost…

‘Chapter Five: Limehouse Blues’ relates how the triply-addicted (veronal, cocaine and opium) Rita decides to marry Monte but cannot shake the corrupting influence of Pyne, his circle of privileged peers and the implacable beast her addiction has become…

Even her marriage proves no bulwark and ‘Chapter Six: To the Brink’ sees the new bride drawn into a cycle of abuse and exploitation as Madame Sin and her enigmatic husband fleece the newlywed and seek to use her to expand their clientele…

Events rush towards a sordid, inevitable conclusion in ‘Chapter Seven: Mollie Gets Amorous’ as Gray, Seton and formidable Police Chief Inspector Kerry close in on the poppy club and the nefarious dealers; leading to a daring Limehouse raid in Chapter Eight: A Visit to Sin’ with shocking disclosures in ‘Chapter Nine: Above and Below’ and the exposing of even darker secrets and an intoxicating conclusion in ‘Chapter Ten: The Song of Sin Sin Wa’…

Following an in insightful Afterword from groundbreaking cartoonist Colleen Doran, Jon B. Cooke offers a wealth of background and historical context in ‘Sax, Drugs, and the Yellow Peril’: describing the nativity of Rohmer’s novel and the very real scandal of London actress and rising Society ingenue Billie Carleton whose death from a cocaine overdose rocked the Empire and beyond in 1918.

The photo-filled feature section also offers “Background Dope” sidebars on Rohmer’s ‘The Red Kerry Mysteries’, ‘Her Other Drugs of Choice’, ‘Slumming in the East End’ and ‘The Devil Doctor in Comics’ as well as a captivating ‘Trina Robbins Biographical Sketch’ and other contributors.

Potent, innovative, powerful and – in comicbook terms at least – a damned fine read, Dope is a sheer delight no lover of the graphic medium should miss and this hard-hitting stylish hardback may be the best thing you’ll buy this year.
Dope © 1981-2017 Trina Robbins. Foreword © 2017 C. Spike Trotman. “Sax, Drugs, and the Yellow Peril”, Trina Robbins bio © 2017 Jon B. Cooke. Afterword © 2017 Colleen Doran. All Rights Reserved.

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Unknown Soldier volume 1: Haunted House


By Joshua Dysart, Alberto Ponticelli & various (DC/Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2311-3 (TPB)

One of the very best concepts ever devised for a war comic, The Unknown Soldier was actually a successful spin-off, having first appeared as a walk-on in a Robert Kanigher/Joe Kubert Sgt. Rock story (Our Army at War #168, cover-dated June 1966). He won his own series in 1970, beginning with Star-Spangled Comics #151, cover-dated July 1970 and an all-Kubert affair.

The timely interventionist was a faceless super-spy and master-of-disguise whose forebears had proudly fought and died in every American conflict since the birth of the nation. This family’s last son had dedicated himself to ensuring the safety of his nation in the face of outrageous aggression from the Nazis and Japanese, and specifically the death of his own older brother in an enemy sneak attack…

The war strip grew to be one of DC’s most popular and long-lived: Star-Spangled became The Unknown Soldier in 1977 and the comic only folded in 1982 with issue #268, when sales of traditional comic books were in severe decline.

Since then the character has resurfaced numerous times – in superhero guest-shots and as a 12-issue miniseries in 1988-9; a 4-part Vertigo tale in 1997 and this ferocious politically-charged contemporary reboot which surfaced as an ongoing series in 2009. Another iteration was later revived and unsuccessfully updated as part of the 2011 “New 52” project.

With each iteration the hero moved further and further away from the originating concept, but never truly abandoned or escaped it.

As reimagined by Joshua Dysart (Violent Messiahs, Swamp Thing, Hellboy: B.P.R.D., Conan, Harbinger, Bloodshot, Goodbye Paradise) for adult imprint Vertigo Comics, the action shifts to Uganda at the beginning of this century, where almost continual tribal unrest since the fall of Idi Amin had turned the nation into a charnel house.

Especially appalling were the actions of murderous fundamentalist Christian demagogue Joseph Kony: a self-professed prophet whose “Lord’s Resistance Army” kidnapped, pressganged and brainwashed children: making killers of boys and sex slaves of girls – all forcibly indoctrinated into his religion-cloaked armed insurgency. If you’re old enough, you’ll recall a time when his atrocities were never far from our news…

Here, Dysart and illustrator Alberto Ponticelli (Dial H for Hero, Frankenstein, Come un cane, Sam & Twitch, Blade II, Alias, Blatta) co-opt those headlines as basis for a shocking tale of barbarity and duplicity set in 2002 when noted pacifist, physician and award-winning humanitarian Dr. Moses Lwanga returned to the country of his birth after decades away.

A successful refugee from Amin’s lethal reign, he has been raised in America since he was seven. After benefitting from an Ivy League education at Harvard, he intends on doing good for his benighted former countrymen. The move has already paid wonderful dividends as his first explorations won him a wife in the form of equally-accomplished local doctor Sera Christian.

Now, having endured the painful rigmarole of fundraising and gladhanding even the most well-meaning of interested parties – such as “involved and concerned” humanitarian cause-driven actress Mrs Margaret Wells – Moses is more than ready to head in-country and save actual lives.

It’s a painful, frustrating task as it’s not just modern problems causing bloodshed and carnage. The country suffers from ancient grievances underlying everything else: caused by the colonial British bundling together disparate tribes and adjacent regions into one country. When they left, eternal differences between the southern Ganda/Buganda and northern Acholi Peoples fuelled much of the brutal ambitions of all those monstrous “leaders” seeking to fill the power vacuum…

Into this morass of murder and exploitation the Lwangas plunge, setting up a field hospital in Acholiland and trying their very best. They are keenly observed by many, especially journalist Momolu Sengendo and President Museveni’s highly ineffective Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF), who are providing security for the facility which is deep in the region where Kony’s atrocities are daily occurring…

Apart from Sera, nobody is aware of the horrific, violent nightmares Moses endures nightly, and even she does not know how she figures in them…

Weeks later, the couple are struggling to cope with a continuous stream of mutilation, rape and punishment amputation cases caused by Lord’s Resistance Army units: largely autonomous groups spreading chaos and terror in the name of Jesus and Kony. One morning it all becomes too much. When a dying boy is brought in and reveals the LRA have taken his sister, Moses snaps and heads into the bush, outdistancing his extremely reluctant guards. He is easily captured and forced to watch children brutalise even younger children. Deep inside him, something breaks and a terrifyingly different man emerges: one as skilled in combat and death as Moses Lwanga is in healing…

When the smoke clears and the shooting stops, he’s subject to flashbacks of things that never happened, ongoing hallucinations and a voice in his head giving him orders…

Days later, a kind of rationality returns as he awakens with a ruined infected face swathed in bandages. They’ve been applied by an Australian nun, running a home for orphan girls in the middle of the worst place on Earth they could possibly be…

The famous doctor’s disappearance has caused dangerous waves in the outer world, and the press and the UPDF are frantically beating the bushes, but a much more measured approach is being taken by mysterious overseas interests. They have tasked the local CIA office to sort the problem and the ops on the ground “commission” – extort – veteran agent and drunken renegade Jack Lee Howl to find Moses at all costs…

The subject of all that interest is physically recovering at the convent school, but not so much in his head. That voice is telling him that neither he nor the children are safe and it’s backed up by increasingly agonising flashbacks and ever more daring insurgent forays.

Inevitably, the attack comes and broken child soldiers come looking for war brides, only to meet a force of murderous nature no amount of training could prepare them for…

Nevertheless, the bandaged terror fails and is captured by local LRA commander Lieutenant Lakut. A fanatical, remorseless monster, he recognises another when he sees one, and tries to break and recruit his captive. He would have been far wiser killing him right at the start…

As helpful-seeming old lag Howl probes Sera Lwanga for clues, in the bush Moses – or at least the passenger in his head – escapes and even more kids die as he tries to save the convent school residents, but another partial failure only tips him further way from the good man he wants to be…

By the time Howl finds him, Moses is having hallucinations – or are they recollections? – about another, far older killer with a bandaged face and no morality…

Ultimately, Moses battles his way back to Sera at an Internally Displaced Persons camp, only to lead Lakut to fresh victims. In the course of the massacre that follows, the doctor is lost to the soldier and in the aftermath of driving way the LRA, the bandaged man resolves that the only way to heal this infection is to hunt down and kill Joseph Kony himself…

To be continued…

A powerful and unforgettable tale of inhumanity made ever more shocking by its real world origins, this is a staggeringly potent comics tale long overdue for further attention. This initial tome – still cruelly out of print and unavailable digitally – was coloured by Oscar Celestini and lettered by Clem Robins, and features a variant cover by Rich Corben, augmenting regular covers by Igor Kordey whose image for US #1 won the Glyph Comics Award for Cover of the Year.

Dark, brooding, painfully true, Haunted House is a book worthy of your time and deserving of everyone’s attention.
© 2008, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Bread & Wine – An Erotic Tale of New York


By Samuel R. Delaney & Mia Wolff (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-632-4 (HB/Digital edition)

The demands of drama dictate that true love never runs smooth but that’s not the case in real life. The trade-off is that those actual romances which stand the test of time and tedium are painfully devoid of the remarkable circumstance and miraculous “gosh-wow” moments of fiction.

But this remarkable account proves That Ain’t Necessarily So…

In 1999, independent publisher Juno released a small graphic novel memoir, written by Samuel R. Delaney and illustrated by Mia Wolff (Catcher, Above and Below: the Voyages of Virgilio), recounting how a celebrated gay black literary giant, college professor and social theoretician with a mantelpiece overstocked by awards, and a teenaged daughter in tow, met and romanced one of society’s most outcast and forgotten souls.

At time of publication, they had been a couple for some years and are together still. Julia Roberts and Richard Gere won’t be in their movie and not a single dragon or muscle car will have to die…

Following an Introduction from Alan Moore, this mainstream edition reveals how “Chip” Delaney took a walk on New York’s Upper West Side, bought a book from homeless vendor Dennis Rickett and struck up a conversation with the kind of person most people refuse to acknowledge the very existence of…

In seamlessly seductive understated style, the words and pictures detail how gradually, gently, unsurprisingly they became first friends and then lovers.

In the manner of all lasting true romances, this is the history of two full equals who accidentally find each other, not some flimsy rags-to-riches Cinderella tale of predestination and magical remedies. The brilliance and position of one is perfectly complemented by the warmth, intelligence and quiet integrity of the other, and although far from smooth – or rose scented or tinted – their path to contentment was and is both tension-fraught and heart-warming.

Oh, and there’s sex: lots of rapturously visualised sex, so if you’re the kind of person liable to be upset by pictures of joyous, loving fornication between two people separated by age, wealth, social position and race who happily possess and constantly employ the same type of rude bits on each other, then go away and read something else.

In fact, as I keep on saying, just please, GO AWAY.

And that’s all the help you get from me. This lyrical, beguiling tale is embellished throughout with interwoven extracts from the poem Bread and Wine by German lyric poet Friedrich Hölderlin and realised in a mesmerising organic monochrome variety of styles by artist and Delaney family friend Mia Wolff, and you really need to have it unfold for you without my second-hand blether or kibitzing…

This is one of the sweetest, most uplifting comics love stories ever written: rich with sentiment, steeped in literary punch and beautiful to behold. Moreover, this lavish, stout and steadfast tome also includes a celebratory commentary by Chip, Dennis and Mia as well as other protagonists in the Afterword. There’s also a sketch-packed, earnest and informative interview with the creative participants.

Strong, assertive, uncompromising and proudly unapologetic, this is love we should all aspire to, and Bread & Wine is another graphic novel every adult should know.
Introduction © 2013 Alan Moore. Contents © 2013 Samuel R. Delaney & Mia Wolff. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics


By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, restored & edited by Michael Gagné (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-502-0 (HB)

Comics dream team Joe Simon & Jack Kirby presaged and ushered in the first American age of mature comics – not just with the Romance genre, but through all manner of challenging modern graphic dramas about real people in extraordinary situations… before seeing it all disappear again in less than eight years.

Their small stable of magazines – produced for a loose association of companies known as Prize/Crestwood/Pines – blossomed and wilted as the comics industry contracted throughout the 1950s.

As the popularity of flamboyant escapist superheroes waned after World War II, newer yet more familiar genres like Crime, Westerns and Horror returned to the fore in all popular entertainment media, as audiences increasingly rejected simplistic, upbeat or jingoistic fantasy for grittier, more sober themes.

Some comic book material, such as Westerns or anthropomorphic “Funny Animals”, hardly changed at all, whereas gangster and detective tales were utterly radicalised by the temperament of the post-war world.

Stark, uncompromising, cynically ironic novels, plays and socially aware, mature-themed B-movies that would be later defined as Film Noir offered post-war civilian society a bleakly antiheroic worldview that often hit too close to home and set fearful, repressive, middle-class parent groups and political ideologues howling for blood.

Naturally, these new forms and sensibilities seeped into comics, transforming good-natured, two-fisted gumshoe and Thud-&-Blunder cop strips of yore into darkly intriguing, frightening tales of seductive dames, last chances, big pay-offs and glamorous thuggery.

Sensing imminent Armageddon, the moral junkyard dogs bayed even louder as they saw their precious children’s minds under seditious attack…

Concurrent to the demise of masked mystery-men, industry giants Simon & Kirby – who were already capitalising on the rapidly growing True Crime boom – legendarily invented the genre of comic book Romance with mature, beguiling, explosively contemporary social dramas equally focussed on a changing cultural scene and adult-themed relationships. They also – with very little shading – discussed topics of a sexual nature!

After testing the waters with the semi-comedic prototype My Date for Hillman in early 1947, Joe & Jack plunged in full force with Young Romance #1 in September of that year. It launched through Crestwood Publications: a minor outfit which had been creating (as Prize Comics) interesting but far from innovative comics since 1940.

Following Simon’s plan to make a new marketplace out of the grievously ignored older girls of America, they struck gold with stories addressing serious issues, pitfalls and even genuine hazards of relationships…

Not since the invention of Superman had a single comic book generated such a frantic rush of imitation and flagrant cashing-in …although you might argue that MLJ’s Archie Andrews came close in 1942-1943.

Young Romance #1 was a monumental hit and the team acted accordingly: rapidly retooling and expanding, “S&K” released spin-offs Young Love (February 1949), Young Brides and In Love, all under a unique profits-sharing deal that quickly paid huge dividends to the publishers, creators and a growing studio of specialists.

All through that turbulent period, comic books suffered impossibly biased oversight and hostile scrutiny from hidebound and panicked old guard institutions such as church groups, media outlets and ambitious politicians. A number of tales and titles garnered especial notoriety from those conservative, reactionary doom-smiths and when the industry buckled and introduced a ferocious Comics Code, it castrated the creative form just when it most needed boldness and imagination.

Comics endured more than a decade and a half of savagely doctrinaire self-imposed censorship until swiftly changing youthful attitudes, a society in crisis and plummeting profits forced the artform to adapt, evolve or die.

Those tales all come from a simpler time: exposing a society in meltdown and suffering cultural PTSD – and are pretty mild by modern standards of behaviour – but the quality of art and writing make those pivotal years a creative highpoint well worthy of a thorough reassessment…

In 1947, fictionalising True Crime Cases was tremendously popular and profitable, and of the assorted outfits generating such material, nobody did it better than Simon & Kirby. Crucially they proved that a technique of first-person confession also perfectly applied to just-as-uncompromising personal sagas told by a succession of archetypal women and girls who populated their new comic book smash.

Their output as interchangeable writers, pencillers and inkers (aided from early on by Joe’s brother-in-law Jack Oleck in the story department) was prodigious and astounding. Nevertheless, other hands frequently pitched in, so although these tales are all credited to S&K, art-aficionados shouldn’t be surprised to detect traces of Bill Draut, Mort Meskin, Al Eadeh, George Roussos or other stalwarts lurking in the backgrounds… and minor figures and…

Michelle Nolan’s ‘Introduction’ for this rousing full-colour compilation analyses the scope and meteoric trajectory of the innovation and its impact on the industry before the new era opens with ‘Boy Crazy’ from Young Romance #2 (cover-dated November/December1947) wherein a flighty teenager with no sense of morality steals her aunt’s man with appalling consequences…

From the same issue, Her Tragic Love’ delivers a thunderbolt of melodrama as an amorous triangle encompassing a wrongly convicted man on death row presents one woman with no solution but a final one…

Scripted by Oleck, ‘Fraulein Sweetheart’ (YR #4, March/April 1948) reveals dark days but no happy endings for two German girls eking out existence in the American-occupied sector of post-war Marburg, whilst ‘Shame’ – from #5 – deals with an ambitious, social-climbing young lady too proud to acknowledge her own scrub-woman mother whenever a flashy boyfriend comes around.

Next is ‘The Town and Toni Benson’ from Young Romance #11 (contemporarily designated volume 2, #5, May/June 1949) which offers a sequel to ‘I Was a Pick-Up’ from the premiere issue (which tale is confusingly included in the sequel to this volume Young Romance 2: The Early Simon & Kirby).

Here, however, S&K cleverly build on that original tale, creating a soap opera environment which could so easily have spawned a series, as the now-newlywed couple struggle to make ends meet under a wave of hostile public scrutiny…

On a roll, the creative geniuses began mixing genres. Western Love #2 (September/October 1948) provides ‘Kathy and the Merchant of Sunset Canton!’, as a city slicker finds his modern mercenary management style makes him no friends in cowboy country – until one proud girl takes a chance on getting to know him…

‘Sailor’s Girl!’ (Young Romance #13/Vol. 3, #1, September 1949) then picks over the troubles of an heiress who marries a dauntless sea rover working for Daddy. She is absolutely confident that she can tame or break her man’s wild, free spirit…

We head out yonder once more to meet ‘The Perfect Cowboy!’ (Real West Romances # 4, October/November 1949) – at least on set – a well as the simple sagebrush lass whose head he briefly turns, before social inequality and petty envy inform brutally heavy-handed ‘I Want Your Man’ (Young Romance #21/Vol. 3 #9, May 1950).

Here a young woman of meagre means realises almost too late the cost of her vendetta against a pretty little rich girl…

In the name of variety ‘Nancy Hale’s Problem Clinic’ (Young Romance #23/Vol. 3 #11, July 1950) offers a brief dose of sob-sister advice as “treatment for the troubled heart” before the romantic rollercoaster rides resume with ‘Old Fashioned Girl’ (YR #34/Vol. 4 #10 June 1951) as a forceful young woman raised by her grandmother slowly has her convictions about propriety challenged by intriguing men and her own barely subsumed passions… Alternatively, ‘Mr. Know-It-All Falls in Love’ (Young Love #37/Vol. 7 #10, September 1952) takes a rare opportunity to speak with a male narrator’s voice as a buttoned-down control freak decides that with his career in order it’s time to marry. But who’s the best prospect?

Another of those pesky lovers’ triangles then results in one marriage, one forlorn heartbreak, war, vengeance and a most appropriate ‘Wedding Present!’ (Young Love #50/Vol. 5 #8 October 1953) before this cleverly conceived chronicle takes a conceptual diversion – after one last tale from the same issue – detailing the all-business affair of ‘Norma, Queen of the Hot Dogs’ and her (at first) strictly platonic partner…

In 1955 the Comics Code Authority began its draconian bowdlerising of the industry’s more mature efforts and Romance titles especially took a big conceptual hit. Those edgy stories became less daring and almost every ending was a happy one – at least for the guy or the parents…

Following a superbly extensive ‘Cover Gallery’ featuring a dozen of the most evocative images from those wild and free early years, The Post-Code Era re-presents the specific conditions affecting romantic relations from the censorious document, followed by a selection of the yarns S&K and their team were thereafter reduced to producing.

Even the art seems less enthusiastic for the wholesome, unchallenging episodes which begin with ‘Old Enough to Marry!’ (Young Romance #80/Vol. 8 #8, cover-dated December 1955/January 1956) wherein a young man confronts his grizzled cop dad. The patriarch has no intention of letting his son make a mess of his life…

Next, a maimed farmer tries to sabotage the budding romance between his once-faithful girlfriend and the brilliant good-looking doctor who cured him in ‘Lovesick’ from the same issue.

The following four tales all originated in Young Romance #85/Vol. 10, #1 (December 1956/January 1957), beginning with ‘Lizzie’s Back in Town’ as a strong, competent girl returns home to let Daddy pick her husband for her (no, really!).

Next, two guys fight and the winner gets the girl in ‘Lady’s Choice’ whilst another, less frenzied duel results in a ‘Resort Romeo’ marrying the girl of everybody’s dreams, even as ‘My Cousin from Milwaukee’ exposes a gold-digger before reserving her handsome relative for herself…

These anodyne antics mercifully conclude with ‘The Love I Lost!’ (Young Romance #90/Vol. 12 #3, October/November 1957) wherein another hospital case realises just in time that the man she wants is not the man she deserves…

This emotional rollercoaster is supplemented with a number of well-illustrated bonus features including ‘Why I Made this Book’, ‘Simon and Kirby’s Romance Comics: A Historical Overview’; a splendid selection of S&K’s pioneering ‘Photo Covers’ (18 in all) and a fascinating explanation of the process of artwork-rehabilitation in ‘About the Restoration’

The affairs then wrap up with the now-traditional ‘Biographies’ section.

Simon & Kirby took much of their tone – if not actual content – from movie melodramas of the period (such as Mr. Skeffington, All About Eve or Mildred Pierce and/or Noir romances like Blonde Ice or Hollow Triumph) and, unlike what we might consider suitable for romantic fiction today, their stories crackled with tension, embraced violent action and were infested with unsavoury characters and vicious backstabbing, gossiping hypocrites.

Happily, those are the tales which mostly fill most of this book, making for an extremely engaging, strikingly powerful and thoroughly addictive collection of great yarns by brilliant masters of the comics arts: and one no lover (of the medium) should miss…
Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics © 2012 Fantagraphics Books Inc. Introduction © 2012 Michelle Nolan Schelly. All rights reserved.

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Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire


By Jason Aaron, Roland Boschi, Dan Brown & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4235-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Following a downturn in superhero comics sales, the early 1970’s saw Marvel shift focus from straight costumed crusaders to supernatural and/or horror characters, with one of the most adaptable and enduring proving to be a flaming-skulled vigilante dubbed The Ghost Rider.

Carnival stunt-cyclist Johnny Blaze had sold his soul to the devil in an attempt to save his foster-father from cancer. As is always the way of such things Satan – or arch-deceiver Mephisto as he actually was – followed the letter, but not spirit, of the contract and Crash Simpson died anyway.

When the Demon Lord came for Blaze, only the love of an innocent soul saved the bad-boy biker from eternal pain and damnation. Temporarily thwarted, the devil afflicted Johnny with a condition making his body burn with the fires of Hell every time the sun went down as the lost soul periodically became the unwilling, unknowing host for outcast and exiled demon Zarathos – the Spirit of Vengeance.

After years of travail and turmoil Blaze was (temporarily) freed of the demon’s curse and seemingly retired from the hero’s life. As Blaze briefly escaped his pre-destined doom, a tragic boy named Danny Ketch assumed the role of Zarathos’ host and prison by a route most circuitous and tragic…

Over the years a grim truth emerged: Johnny and Danny were actually half-brothers and both the Higher Realms and Infernal Regions had big plans for them. Moreover, the power of the Ghost Rider had always been a weapon of Heaven, not a curse from Hell…

This riotous, rollercoaster grindhouse supernatural thriller collects the 6-issue miniseries Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire (from August 2009 – February 2010) by Jason Aaron & Roland Boschi, and featuring a host of fan-favourite villains, a variety of previous fire-headed hosts, a gaggle of grim guest-stars and assorted Spirits of Vengeance in a bombastic, Hell-for-Leathers romp which neatly concluded a long-running and unresolved saga.

It begins when usurper Archangel Zadkiel – thanks to his unwitting dupe Danny – finally achieves his appalling ambition. Ousting God, the devil becomes the new Supreme Power of the universe, but the sinister Seraph has not reckoned on a motley crew of sinners and worse, led by Blaze, who are utterly resolved to stop Him…

With covers and variants by Jae Lee, Phil Jimenez, Das Pastoras, Dustin Weaver, Greg Land and Christian Nauck, the dark drama begins when Zadkiel’s angels raid a satanic fertility lab and slaughter all its infants and children. The victims were all prospective Antichrists, but one escaped…

When Hellstorm – a fully grown, naturally conceived Son of Satan – arrives, he finds himself in a peculiar position. Having spent his entire rebellious unnatural life battling his sire, Daimon Hellstrom has no desire to aid the Evil One’s schemes, but must act since, by his murderous acts, Zadkiel is actually trying to unmake Biblical Prophecy.

God always intended for an Apocalypse to conclude His Divine Plan, but the usurper’s coup is actually beyond all concept of right and wrong. Thus the die is cast and Hellstorm must – albeit reluctantly – locate the last Earthborn heir of Hell and ‘Save the Antichrist, Save the World’…

Simultaneously, Blaze, accompanied by mystic Caretaker agent/combat nun Sister Sara, is tracking Zadkiel’s angelic agents, determined to find a door to Heaven and confront the renegade face to face. They also want to kill Johnny’s brother Danny, whose pig-headed hubris has led to Zadkiel replacing God and occupying the Vault of Heaven…

When the bikers wipe out a brace of boastful rear-guard Cherubim and learn of The Plan, they immediately change tactic, joining the hunt for missing Anton Satan (AKA Kid Blackheart) to save him from the wrath of the Pretender God…

Oblivious to the threat, Anton is exactly where you’d expect an Antichrist to be: making millions as the youngest executive at a Wall Street Hedge Fund. However, his cruel, calm arrogance is soon shaken when a Seraphic Assassin bursts in only to be eradicated by occult terrorist Jaine Cutter and her “Breathing Gun”: another player determined to restore the biblically-scheduled Armageddon.

Cutter has severely underestimated Zadkiel’s determination and sense of proportion, and drags the protesting Hell-brat straight into an angelic ambush, as far across the country someone gathers a small army of Ghost Rider villains. They already have the Orb, Blackout and The Deacon on board…

With tormenting demons replacing his lost arms, Master Pandemonium is a living doorway to Hell, but even he has no idea what true suffering is until Danny Ketch kicks his door in, looking for the shortest route to the Big Bad Boss of Gehenna…

Three days later in New York, Hellstorm explosively saves Cutter and Anton from the ruthless Flight of Angels. The self-serving kid bolts, but runs right into the newly-returned Ketch. Blaze and Sister Sara arrive moments later and all parties very reluctantly agree to suspend hostilities for a team-up in ‘Are You There, Devil? It’s Me, Danny.’

The anti-Ghost Rider Squad is growing too. Freshly signed up are Zadkiel’s own flame-headed fanatic Kowalski – AKA Vengeance – plus Scarecrow, Madcap, motorised maniac Big Wheel and a savagely sentient steam-shovel called Trull…

Thanks to Pandemonium, Ketch has met the Devil and struck a deal. In return for preserving the last extant Antichrist from Zadkiel’s forces, Satan will provide the brothers with access to Heaven and give them a shot at restoring the previously incumbent Deity…

After brutally working out their operational differences in time-honoured fashion, Johnny and Danny at last unite just as ‘The Brothers Ghost Rider’ are bushwhacked by Big Wheel and Trull (an alien mind-force which can possess any mechanical contrivance: tractor, bulldozer, chainsaw, etc…

The catastrophic clash brings the boys to a temple which is a gateway to the Eternal Realm, but thanks to Blackout they miss their chance to use it…

Meanwhile, in a hidden location the secret sacred order of Gun Nuns prepare for their last battle…

‘Here Comes Hell’ starts in the Jasper County Sheriff’s holding cell where Scarecrow and Madcap have just slaughtered all other occupants. Outside, Hellstorm, Sara, Jaine and obnoxious Anton enter the too-quiet town, seeking safety and a useable satanic sanctuary to stash the kid in.

Zadkiel’s converts are waiting for them and a deadly duel ensues. In the melee, Anton shows his true colours: attacking Sara and allying with Master Pandemonium even as Vengeance and the Orb lead an army of killer angels, demons and zombie bikers against primed-for-martyrdom Gun Nuns protecting a fully operational highway to Heaven…

‘Sole Reigning Holds the Tyranny of Heaven’ sees triumphant, power-drunk Zadkiel remodelling Paradise to his own gory tastes and fitfully rewriting snippets of Creation when the Ghost Riders storm in through the nun’s gate…

Meanwhile on Earth, more blockbusting battles break out as Hellstorm and Cutter suspend their truce and renew their personal vendetta. Elsewhere, Kid Blackheart brutally uncovers Sister Sara’s impossible hidden destiny as a living portal to Heaven, and uses her to transport battalions of demons to conquer Kingdom Come…

The occult overdrive rockets to a cataclysmic conclusion as Zadkiel personally smashes the invading Spirits of Vengeance in ‘If You Can’t Lower Heaven, Raise Hell’. With the streets of Heaven knee-deep in blood, even a pep talk from his own dead wife and kids cannot keep Blaze battling against the new Omniscience, but when the Legions of Hell attack and Danny incites all previously expired Ghost Riders to rise, Johnny sees one last chance to make things right…

Fast, frantic, irreverent, satirically funny, violently gratuitous and clearly not afraid to be daft when necessary, this is a fabulously barmy, two-fisted eldritch escapade that will reward any fans of raucous road thrillers, magical monstrosity tours and Marvel’s monster continuity.
© 2009, 2010, 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.