Category: Mature Reading

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Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set Up


By Peter O’Donnell and Jim Holdaway (Titan Books)
ISBN: 987-1-84023-658-2 (2007) 978-0-90761-037-3 (1985)

The year 1963 was a big one for the world of entertainment. Go look it up.

Comics and strips particularly enjoyed an explosive renaissance and here we’re saying “well done!” to one of the most astounding characters in fiction: one long overdue for another moment to shine. Happy anniversary Modesty (and Willie)!

Infallible super-criminals Modesty Blaise and her lethally charming, compulsively platonic, equally adept partner Willie Garvin gained fearsome reputations whilst heading underworld gang The Network. Then, at the height of their power, they retired young, rich and still healthy. With honour intact and their hands relatively clean, they cut themselves off completely from careers where they made all the money they would ever need and far too many enemies: a situation exacerbated by their heartfelt and – for their professions – controversial conviction that killing was only ever to be used as a last resort.

When devious British Spymaster Sir Gerald Tarrant sought them out, they were slowly dying of boredom in England. That wily old bird offered them a chance to have fun, get back into harness and do a bit of good in the world. They jumped at his offer and began cleaning up the dregs of society in their own unique manner. The self-appointed crusade took decades…

From that tenuous beginning in ‘La Machine’ (the first tale in this collected volume) the dynamic duo went on to crush the world’s vilest villains and most macabre monsters in a perpetual succession of tense suspense and inspirational action that lasted for more than half a century.

The inseparable associates debuted in The Evening Standard on 13th May 1963 and, over the passing decades, went on to star in some of the world’s most memorable crime fiction, all in approximately three panels a day.

Creators Peter O’Donnell & Jim Holdaway (who had previously collaborated on Romeo Brown – another lost strip classic equally as deserving of its own archive albums) crafted a timeless treasure trove of brilliant pictorial escapades until the illustrator’s tragic early death in 1970, whereupon Spanish artist Enric Badia Romero (and occasionally John Burns, Neville Colvin & Pat Wright) assumed the art reins, taking the partners-in-peril to even greater heights.

Holdaway’s version has been cited as a key artistic influence by many comic artists.

The series was syndicated world-wide and Modesty starred in numerous prose novels; short-story collections; several films; a TV series pilot; a radio play; an original American graphic novel from DC; an audio serial on BBC Radio 4 as well as nearly 100 comic adventures.

The strip’s conclusion came in 11th April 2001 edition of The Evening Standard. Many papers around the world immediately began running reprints and further new capers were conceived, but British newspaper readers never saw them. We’re still waiting…

The pair’s astounding exploits comprise a broad blend of hip adventuring, glamorous lifestyle and cool capers: a melange of international espionage, crime, intrigue and even – now and again – plausibly intriguing sci fi or supernaturally-tinged horror genre fare, with ever-unflappable Modesty and Willie the canny, deadly, yet all-too-fallibly human defenders of the helpless and avengers of the wronged…

We have UK publisher Titan Books to thank for collecting the saga of Britain’s Greatest Action Hero (Women’s Division), although they haven’t done so for a while now…

Fist seen in 1985, this initial volume introduced Modesty and her right-hand man, retired super-criminals now bored out of their brains. Enter stiff, by the book spook Sir Gerald Tarrant, head of a nebulous British spy organization who recruits her by offering her excitement and a chance to get some real evil sods. From that tenuous beginning in ‘La Machine’ – where the reinvigorated duo dismantle a global assassination enterprise, the focus moves on to ‘The Long Lever’ as our stars seek to save a Hungarian defector who has been inexplicably abducted by his former bosses.

The drama concludes with the ‘Gabriel Set-up’ as the purely platonic power couple scotch a sinister scheme by a criminal mesmerist…

Also included in this monochrome masterwork are ‘In the Beginning’ – a strip produced in 1966 as an origin and introduction to bring newly subscribing newspapers up to speed on the characters – plus text features ‘Blaise of Glory (part 1)’ by Mike Patterson and ‘Girl Walking’ by O’Donnell himself.

The tales are stylish and engaging spy/crime/thriller fare in the vein of Ian Fleming’s Bond stories (the comic version of which Titan also reprinted) and art fans especially should absorb Holdaway’s beautiful crisp line work, with each panel being something of a masterclass in pacing, composition and plain good, old-fashioned drawing.

The beauty of Modesty Blaise is not simply the timeless excellence of the stories and the captivating wonder of the illustration, but that material such as this can’t fail to attract a broader readership to the medium. Its content could hold its own against the best offerings of television and film. All we have to do is keep the stuff in print…
© 2004-2017 Associated Newspapers/Solo Syndication.

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Lone Wolf volume 5: Black Wind


By Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima, translated by Dana Lewis (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-506-8 (TPB/digital edition)

Best known in the West as Lone Wolf and Cub, the vast Samurai saga created by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima is without doubt a global classic of comics literature. An example of the popular Chanbara or “sword-fighting” genre of print and screen, Kozure Okami was first serialised in Weekly Manga Action from September 1970 until April 1976. It was an immense and overwhelming Seinen (“Men’s manga”) hit…

The tales prompted thematic companion series Kubikiri Asa (Samurai Executioner) which ran from 1972-1976, but the major draw – at home and, increasingly, abroad – was always the nomadic wanderings of doomed noble Ōgami Ittō and his solemn, silent child.

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) and 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 infamously still in Hollywood pre-production…

The several thousand pages of enthralling, exotic, intoxicating narrative art produced by these 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 and movies these stories have inspired around the globe are 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 even children’s cartoon shows such as Samurai Jack are direct descendants of this astounding achievement of graphic narrative. The material has become part of a shared world 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 tankōbon-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 cautionary warning ‘A Note to Readers’ – on stylistic interpretation – this moodily morbid monochrome collection truly gets underway, keeping many terms and concepts western readers may find unfamiliar. Therefore this edition offers at the close a Glossary providing detailed context on the term used in the stories…

Set in the era of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the saga concerns a foredoomed wandering killer who was once the Shōgun’s official executioner the Kōgi Kaishakunin: 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 thanks to the machinations of the treacherous, politically ambitious Yagyū Clan, the Emperor ordered Ogami to commit suicide. Instead he rebelled, choosing to be a despised Ronin (masterless samurai) assassin, pledged to revenge himself until all his betrayers were dead …or Hell claimed him.

His 3-year-old son, Daigorō, also chose the path of destruction and thus they together tread across the grimly evocative landscapes of Japan, one step ahead of doom, with death behind and before them…

Unflinching formula informs early episodes: the acceptance of a commission to kill an impossible target necessitates forging a cunning plan where relentless determination leads to inevitable success. Throughout each episode plot is underscored with bleak philosophical musings alternately informed by Buddhist teachings in conjunction with or in opposition to the unflinching personal honour code of Bushido…

That tactic is eschewed for a simple commission in opening tale ‘Trail Markers’ as Yagyū leaders plot how to remove the wanderer without incurring the severe penalties built into the social caste system. The disgraced ronin is protected by his own lowly status and a promise of truce unless he returns to Edo but has still found ways to frustrate clan ambitions. The situation has already cost dozens of proud warriors who foolishly sought out the Lone Wolf. And now the Emperor wants to investigate Yagyū activities…

With pressure mounting, schemers Yagyū-Sama and Ozunu agree to orchestrate a duel between Ōgami and infallible swordsman Yagyū Gunbei-Sama…

Using the wolf’s own complex graphic signalling system, the ploy unfolds, luring the assassin to a certain shrine where instead of another commission, he meets the man he supposedly cannot defeat: the one who should have been the Shōgun’s executioner in his stead.

Now as they face off, Gunbei relives the haughty error that cost him the exalted position of Kōgi Kaishakunin and learns to his eternal but brief regret that whilst he might be as good as he ever was, his opponent has grown even better. Moreover, Yagyū spies watching also take note and make more plans…

At this time bounty hunting was commonplace and ‘Executioner’s Hill’ sees the terrifying but currently unemployed Zodiac Gang use their deserved notoriety to terrorise a village whilst looking for fresh prey. Tragically for them, they recognise the “wolf with baby carriage” and overconfidently assume numerical advantage, a strategic geographical position, their own skills and Daigorō as a hostage will be sufficient to bag the biggest prize of their lives…

They were wrong.

When not expediting commissions the father and son vanished into the unnoticed common population invisible to the nobility. A moment of peace and therapeutically hard but honest work is abruptly curtailed when – whilst toiling to plant rice in paddies beside simple but happy villagers – the able-bodied stranger is pressganged by the local lord to build levees in advance of an expected flood…

Like a ‘Black Wind’ (one unexpected and out of season) the act has unforeseen consequences as the aristocrats – incensed by a highborn man demeaning himself (and all nobles) by digging in the dirt beside commoners – deploy warriors to avenge the shameful act and instead fall like harvested crops…

Every role in Japanese society was strictly proscribed and formalised. Certain executed persons were suitable candidates for O-Tomeshi when headless corpses would be used to test and sanctify swords. The swordsmen capable of holding the post were reputed to be as proficient with the sword as the Kōgi Kaishakunin…

As the investigation of the Yagyū’s role in Ōgami Ittō’s disgrace proceeds, the honourable Yamada Asaemon is ordered by shogunate Wakadoshiryori officials to look into the affair. However, ‘Decapitator Asaemon’ is disquieted by the final codicil of his mission: whatever the truth, the shameful behaviour of the Lone Wolf must end with his death…

The court is alive with intrigue and even before he has found his target, Yamada Asaemon is being hunted by Ura-Yagyū assassins…

Their sinister trap catches only one man of honour…

This medieval masterpiece closes with another convoluted tale of duty sullied as ‘The Guns of Sakai’ finds Inoue Geki – commander of Ōsaka castle’s rifle detachment – covertly hiring the nomadic assassin to kill one of the gunsmiths in his employ after discovering Shichirōbei has been making firearms for the rival Western Han.

The job is no simple affair. Somehow the well-set and protected traitor has exposed every spy set on his trail and the dutiful commander is desperate. He’s also not being completely straight with the Lone Wolf, but Ōgami is well aware of the fact and has a plan and ulterior aim of his own: possession of the experimental supergun he knows the master smith and his acolytes have perfected…

Set in a fiercely uncompromising world of tyranny, intrigue, privilege and misogyny, these episodes are unflinching and explicit in their treatment of violence – especially sexual violence – although this collection has the dubious distinction of being rape-free. Still plenty of slaughter though, and an astounding body-count…

Whichever English transliteration you prefer – Wolf and Baby Carriage is what I was first introduced to – Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima’s grandiose, thought-provoking, hell-bent Samurai tragedy is one of those too-rare breakthrough classics of global comics literature. A breathtaking tour de force, these are comics you must not miss.
Art & story © 1995, 2001 Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima. Cover art © 2001 Frank Miller. All other material © 2001 Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Worry Doll


By Matt Coyle (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80616-7 (PB/Digital edition)

In the comics biz it’s far too infrequent that something truly different, graphically outstanding and able to subvert or redirect the medium’s established forms comes along. Sadly, when it does we usually ignore it whilst whining that there’s nothing fresh or new in view. That’s certainly the case with this sublime chiller first released internationally in 2016 and still not globally infamous…

Actually, Matt Coyle’s astounding Worry Doll was initially unleashed – after six years of work on the dark epic – by Mam Tor in 2007 to sink from the collective audience’s sight after causing but the barest of ripples.

To be fair, British-born, Australia-based Coyle (see also, if you can, his mordant, socio-political satire Registry of Death) did win the 2007 Rue Morgue Award for Best Comic Book Artist for his incredible photo-realistic line-art on Worry Doll, but the innovative delivery of one of the creepiest tales in comics history never garnered the acclaim it deserved in our superhero/sci-fi saturated toy, TV and film license-loaded entertainment arena.

Then, thanks to Dover Books’ Comics & Graphic Novels division, another lost classic of the art form won a second chance to shine…

A soft-cover monochrome landscape affair; enigmatic observations and conversations are delivered in the oldest format of pictorial narrative, with blocks of text on one page balanced by an illustrated panel or sequence of images on the facing folio. Via this venerable mechanism, a most distressing story unfolds…

A happy home becomes a charnel scene of slaughter and in the aftermath, amidst the bloody remains of a recently-despatched family, a trio of beloved mannequins intended to assuage anxiety take on ghastly animation and leave in search of answers – or perhaps just different questions?

Furtively making their way across familiarly picturesque and simultaneously terrifying country, the dolls increasingly depend on the kindness of strangers, until their nightmare road-trip is eventually subsumed in someone else’s story. As our perspective shifts, we get clues that other hands are working these puppets and the story is not as it seems nor quite done yet…

Spooky and subversive, blending classic noir mood and tone with storybook quests and psychologically daunting introspection, Worry Doll operates on multiple layers of revelation, both in the staggeringly detailed illustration and the prose accompaniment; constantly offering hints and forebodings, if not answers…

With a Foreword from comics author and filmmaker Shaun Tan (The Lost Thing, The Red Tree, The Arrival, Cicada) who sagely deconstructs the journey and Coyle’s virtuosity with line and form, this is a complex, engaging and ominously beautiful masterwork no true lover of comics or addict of sinister suspense can afford to miss.
© 2007 by Matthew Coyle. Foreword © 2016 by Shaun Tan. All rights reserved.

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House of Mystery: Room & Boredom


By Matthew Sturges, Bill Willingham, Luca Rossi & various (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-401220792 (TPB)

I suspect we’re on the cusp of another periodic global wave of interest in supernatural suspense fiction. Even if we’re not, there’s a lot of superb comics of that genre that should be reviewed and revisited. Here’s one that hasn’t been seen for a dozen years; long overdue for a digital edition…

Re-imagined under the impressive Vertigo umbrella, one of DC’s most venerable titles returned after years in limbo as a tribute to Something Old cunningly disguised as Something New. Apart from a brief period in the Bat-crazed super-heroic mid-1960s when the Martian Manhunter and the ineffably quirky Dial H for Hero seized control, House of Mystery was an anthology title telling tales of mystery and imagination in the tasteful, sedate manner of its parent company.

The series launched with a December 1951/January 1952 cover-date and ran for 321 issues, before finally folding in October 1983. When superheroes fell out of favour at the end of the 1960s, a little deft retooling made it one of DC’s top selling titles.

Here, however, at a place where realities meet – or at least overlap – a ramshackle house of indeterminate size, shape and age sometimes stands. In its own capacious grounds the unique structure offers a welcome to the star-crossed and time-lost souls of infinity. The lower floor has been converted into a welcoming hostelry.

Like the bar in Cheers, creatures from literally anywhere (many looking like characters out of the previous comic book incarnation) drop in for a brew and a chinwag, often paying their way with a novel yarn. For a select few – such as the Bartender, the Poet, the Pirate and the Drama Queen – the House is more like the Hotel California – in that they can check out any time they like, but they can never leave…

Fig Keele is an architecture student with a problem and a history. Her home fell apart and two spectral, floating horrors started chasing her. Fleeing in panic, she fortuitously found an entrance to the House, and now it won’t let her go. Surprisingly, she adapts pretty quickly to the inhabitants, but what really freaks her out is that the House speaks to her…

Writer Matthew Sturges, with sometime collaborator Bill Willingham, managed the nigh-impossible task of combining the best elements of the old within this compellingly fresh horror yarn, and even concocted a cocktail of actual mysteries to keep the pot boiling away. Strikingly illustrated by Luca Rossi, who incorporated a stylistic ghost of Bernie Wrightson into the artwork, the story of Fig and her fellow residents is punctuated by a series of very classy “pub-stories”, illustrated by some of the industry’s best and brightest talents.

The vignettes include two by Willingham; ‘The Hollows’ – a disturbing love-story by Ross Campbell – and the delightfully far-fetched ‘In Too Deep’ (from Jill Thompson), whilst Sturges scripted the remaining three ‘Spats and the Neck’ (with Zachary Baldus), ‘Familiar’ by Steve Rolston and ‘Jordan’s Tale’ by Sean Murphy.

Collecting issue #1-5 of the much-missed Vertigo comic book series, this is an enchanting blend of ancient & modern, horror & comedy and mystery & adventure, delivering a colossal portion of fearful fun for anyone old enough to handle a little sex and a smidgen of salty language: all whilst unravelling the intricacies of a great big, all-absorbing puzzle.

Just remember once you’re in, you might never want to come out…
© 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Algorithmic Reality


By Damian Bradfield & David Sánchez (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-306-6 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-307-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: You Better Watch Out, You Better Take Care… 9/10

In the modern world we are constantly watching and perpetually watched. We are society but society follows us everywhere even as it isolates us, and we cannot escape or avoid it. Are we unconscious or willing subjects of voyeuristic scrutiny or complacent participants in an increasingly intrusive overwatch culture that we really want but may not need?

This compelling graphic clarion cry wryly questions if that’s the randomly evolving progress of a wild system or somehow the gameplan of more sinister forces. Is unified technology, with all its benefits and instant gratifications the servant and builder of a truly integrated uniform and global society or just the newest means of a certain sort of predator (let’s call them “Tech-Barons”) making us all both cash cow and component consumer in a perpetually self-sustaining closed system – an internet battery farm where us chickens are both consumer AND product?

It’s clear that for many of us, our digital tools are now inescapable, essential, inimical and ultimately faithless and disloyal…

Comics are a nigh-universal, extremely powerful media that lend themselves to a host of topics and genres, but the area where it has always shone brightest is in its chimeric capacity for conveying complex arguments in a clear and compelling manner. Although daubing marks on a surface is possibly our oldest art form, the potential to ask questions, make stories and concisely communicate via that primal process remains infinitely adaptable to modern mores and as powerful as it ever was in exploring the unchanging basics of the human condition.

Narrative plus image – and the interactions such conjunctions can embrace – underpin all of our communal existence and form the primary source for how we view our distant forbears; especially as if employed by incisive, sensitive, uncompromising agents and interlocutors…

Here UK author, eminent digital pioneer, “tech exec” and lifelong comics fan Damien Bradfield posits in pictorial form some crucial and chilling questions about how and by whom, for what purpose and to what ends digital technologies have become such an inescapable and imperative force.

Casting a nervous yet knowing eye on the inept antisocial elites – Super-Rich mavericks spawned by manipulating Big Tech – Bradfield conjures up – via mordant, if not trenchant -incisiveness a sequence of ironically dystopian scenarios made chillingly clear and pervasively memorable by Spanish illustrator David Sánchez González.

Co-Founder of WeTransfer and its Chief Creative & Sustainability Officer, Damien Bradfield is also its Chief Strategy Officer, having created digital platform WePresent, co-founded digital design studio Present Plus, and formed illustration platform Kuvva. He owned an art gallery in Amsterdam and prior to all that worked for all the top advertising companies and Stella McCartney.

In 2019 he wrote The Trust Manifesto: What you Need to do to Create a Better Internet (discussing online privacy, trust and Big Data) and began by scoring a degree from the London School of Economics and Politics. You can regularly hear him on the Influence podcast…

Shaping thought and controlling information is also a deep concern for artist, designer and illustrator Sánchez: a solidly refined, intellectual draughtsman expert in restrained and understated imagery strongly influenced by Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes and Hergé. Among his most impressive and disturbing publications are Tú me has matado, No cambies nunca, La Muerte en los ojos and his illustrations for Robert Desnos’ El Destripador.

In Algorithmic Reality they combine to unleash sedately ironic speculations on where we are as a planet and where we’re going as a species in a range of wildly enchanting modern fables exploring our relationship with commerce, with particular emphasis on Short-termism, privacy, social media herd mentality, the tyranny of choice and information control. After all, isn’t Data the new fossil fuel: precious, invaluable, easily used, but so very dangerous when – not if – overexploited and misused?

Everyday tasks, major achievements, personal breakthrough and moments without merit jostle beside strange days and minor miracles in this tome, beginning with ‘Shoes’ as a visit to a store results in a sales assistant refusing to accept no sale as an outcome and doggedly stalking the failed purchaser, with confrontational encounters in the park, other stores and further inducements. By exploring how we’d react if a human vendor in the offline world behaved the same way as internet sales tools and bots do, the creators make a chilling point about pester power and the wisdom of making that first enquiry…

A search for ‘Insurance’ makes an equally distressing point about why a single simple sales transaction demands the surrender of so much apparently “necessary” extraneous personal detail just to secure a cheaper tariff after which ‘Shopping’ sees a one-off, first time buyer stumble into a sales emporium entirely patronised by shopping zombies programmed by repeated use of the system to make their needs accommodate the company’s demands…

A manifested nightmare for all collectors, ‘The Hoarder’ charts the inescapable downfall of an outlier and avowed social pervert who clings to physical objects rather than embracing digital experiences. His reluctance to abandon physical currency, books, vinyl records, polaroid photos and human interactions inevitably lead to Byron’s incarceration for “Data Avoidance” and “Health and Safety violations”…

Closing this packet of prophecy is ‘California Boomtowns Tour’, as an experience tourist takes the bus for a quick round up of all the Golden States’ boom-&-bust fads: accessing in person and a strictly curated abbreviated manner the desolate but so-picturesque remnants of gold mining, oil-drilling, Hollywood and pop music celebrity, computing and the property speculation that destroyed Silicon Valley, ending on the terrifying prospect of offworld expansion for the Next Big Things…

Being told that your personal electronics actually own you and incessantly work to make you targeted, monetizable fodder for attention-seeking, plutocratic weirdoes and faceless corporations is not new information, but seeing how masking that message works has never been more entertainingly handled than here. Bradfield and Sánchez deftly fudge and blur the line between offline and digital worlds: asking that readers look and think again.

Re-examining with wit and deadpan humour the addictive power of social media, enhanced and weaponised conformity, clandestine invasion of privacy and the appalling harmful potential of illicitly harvested, misused persona data, Algorithmic Reality demonstrates that there’s a such a thing as too much connectivity, and a little personal space is no bad thing…
Text and illustrations © 2021, 2022 Damian Bradfield and David Sánchez. All rights reserved. © 2022 NBM for the English translation.

Algorithmic Reality is scheduled for release on December 13th 2022 and is available for pre-order now. For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/. Most NBM books are available in digital formats…

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Marshal Law the Deluxe Edition


By Pat Mills & Kev O’Neill, with Mark A. Nelson & Mark Chiarello, lettered by Phil Felix, Steve Potter & Phil Oakley (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3855-1 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Ultimate Antihero Excess… 10/10

Hard to believe, I know, but not everybody likes superheroes.. Some folks actively loathe them. And then there’s Pat Mills & Kev O’Neill…

One of the greatest creative forces in British comics, Pat Mills began his career at DC Thomson. He wrote girls comics and humour strips; moved south to IPC and killed posh-comics-for-middle-class-kids stone-dead by creating Battle Picture Weekly (1975 with John Wagner & Gerry Finley-Day), as well as Action (1976), 2000AD (1977) and Starlord (1978). Along the way, he also figured large in the junior horror comic Chiller…

As a writer he’s responsible for Ro-Busters, ABC Warriors, Nemesis the Warlock, Slaine, Button Man, Metalzoic, and Requiem Vampire Knight among many, many others. That also includes Battle’s extraordinary Charley’s War (with the brilliant Joe Colquhoun): the best war strip of all time and one of the top five explorations of the First World War in any artistic medium.

Unable to hide the passions that drive him, his most controversial work is probably Third World War which he created for the bravely experimental comics magazine Crisis. This fiercely socially conscious strip blended his trademark bleak, black humour, violence and anti-authoritarianism with a furious assault on Capitalism, Imperialism and Globalisation. It even contained elements of myth, mysticism, religion and neo-paganism – also key elements in his mature work.

Some of his most fruitful collaborations happened when teamed with the utterly unique and much-missed Kevin O’Neill. In 1988 O’Neill won the singular accolade of having his entire style of drawing – not a panel, not a story, but every single mark he left on paper – banned by the USA’s dried-up-but-not-quite-dead Comics Code Authority!

Not that it stopped the rise of his remarkable and truly unique talent in later triumphs such as Serial Killer, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and of course, Marshal Law…

“Kev” was born in 1953 and, aged 16, began work as an office boy/art corrector for British weekly Buster. He worked in every aspect of the compartmentalised industry: lettering, art paste-up, logo design, colouring and more…

As the kids’ stuff began to pale, life changed in 1977, when author/editor Mills transferred him to a forthcoming, iconoclastic new science fiction comic. O’Neill became a mainstay of 2000 AD: producing covers, pinups and Future Shock short stories, whilst contributing to serials like Ro-Busters, satirical super parody Captain Klep, ABC Warriors and his personal breakthrough character Nemesis the Warlock.

From there on, America came calling in the form of DC Comics, but his efforts on edgier science fiction titles like Green Lantern and Omega Men, graphic novel Metalzoic (and Bat-Mite!) only reinforced how different he was. Happily just as his “style of drawing” was banned by the American Comics Code Authority the marketplace changed completely…

In 1987 Marvel’s creator-owned imprint Epic Comics published a 6-issue miniseries starring a hero superficially very much in the vein of Judge Dredd, but one who took the hallowed American creation of the superhero genre and gave it a thorough duffing-up, Brit-boy style. It was the wholly traditional tale of a (costumed) cop who did the Right Thing and did it His Way…

San Futuro is a vast metropolitan urban dystopia built on the Post-Big Quake remnants of San Francisco. America is recovering from another stupid, exploitative war in somebody else’s country, and – as usual – demobbed, discharged, discarded, damaged, brain-fried grunts and veterans are clogging the streets and menacing decent society. The problem is that this war was fought with artificially manufactured superheroes, who eventually came home to become a very dangerous embarrassment. Marshal Law was one of them, but now he’s a cop; angry and disillusioned but dedicated. His job is to put away bad guys, but it’s hard to tell them apart from the “good” ones. This establishing series was collected as Marshal Law: Fear and Loathing.

This hefty compilation gathers the ever-peregrinating strip as it appeared under many publishers’ banners. It gathers Marshal Law #1-6, Marshal Law: Crime and Punishment, Marshal Law Takes Manhattan, Marshal Law: Kingdom of the Blind, Marshal Law: The Hateful Dead, Marshal Law: Super-Babylon & Marshal Law: Secret Tribunal 1-2. It opens with an Introduction from comics megafan/TV personality Jonathan Ross and stunning and informative ‘Map of San Futuro’ offering a ‘Welcome to San Futuro – Home of Law and Disorder’ before ‘Fear and Loathing: A Prologue’ introduces the world’s greatest hero. Colonel Buck Kaine AKA The Public Spirit has returned from a divine, ordained mission to the stars and his example inspired a certain young man to enlist in the SHOCC (Super Hero Operational Command & Control) program that created all the now-unwanted superbeings infesting Sat Futuro and the world…

Fear and Loathing begins with ‘Stars and Strippers’ as a rapist serial killer terrorises the city, distracting weary Marshal Law from his preferred targets: degenerates, thugs and thieves like Gangreen…

Marshal Law was once a forgotten supersoldier like them, but now he’s a cop: burned-out, angry and extremely disillusioned. His job is to put away rogue masks and capes, but as bad as they are, the people he works for are worse. Some heroes like The Public Spirit have the official backing of the government and can do no wrong – which is a huge problem as the solitary Marshal is convinced that he’s also the deadly rapist/serial killer called the Sleepman…

The case powerfully and tragically unfolds with bleak black humour, grim excess and raging righteous fury in ‘Evilution’, ‘Super Hero Messiah’, ‘Conduct Unbecoming’, ‘Mark of Caine’ and ‘Nemesis’: a savage parody of beloved genre stars and motifs, and uncompromising commentary and satirical attack on privilege, prestige, US policies and attitudes, in comics and the real world. However, Fear and Loathing is also a cracking good yarn for thinking adults with mature dispositions, open minds, and who love seeing injustice punished.

In the 1989 Epic Comics one shot ‘Marshal Law Takes Manhattan’, Mills & O’Neill – with additional inks by Mark A. Nelson and colours from Mark Chiarello – went after the entire (thinly disguised) Marvel Comics pantheon, with old zipper-face dispatched to New York to extradite a war criminal – and Law’s old army trainer – The Persecutor. Unfortunately (for them), the mass killer has hidden himself amongst the inmates of “The Institute”: a colossal Manhattan skyscraper housing all the Big Apple’s native superheroes. Each and every is one a brilliant, barmy, bile-filled parody of Marvel’s Mightiest …and they don’t stand a chance against disgust and righteous indignation…

Mills & O’Neill brought their new toy to British independent outfit Apocalypse, publishers of Toxic, a short-lived (March to October 1991) but talent-heavy rival to 2000 AD. Naturally, carnage and mayhem were the result, but not before author Mills slips a few well-aimed pops at US covert practices and policies in South America under the door.

That troubled, influential periodical was originally preceded by Marshal Law Special ‘Kingdom of the Blind’ at the end of 1990, which has been slotted in here…

Although played for more overt laughs than previous tales, the vented spleen and venom displayed in this captivating yarn is simply breathtaking, with the creators putting the boot into the most popular hero of the time. The Private Eye had trained himself to fight criminals ever since his parents were murdered in front of him. For decades he made the night his own, to universal acclaim: even Marshal Law thought he was the exception that proved the rule…

When circumstances force the Marshal to question his beliefs, he uncovers a snake-pit of horror and corruption that shakes even his weary, embittered sensibilities, and makes him wonder why nobody ever questioned how one hero could get through so many sidekicks…

Second Special ‘The Hateful Dead’ – lettered by Steve Potter – began a 2-part odyssey wherein the toughest cop in San Futuro faced an undead plague after a Toxic accident (tee-hee; d’you see what they did there?) resurrects a graveyard full of dead supermen – many of them put there by Marshall Law -as well as ordinary ex-citizens to bedevil the conflicted hero-hunter. The story ended on an incredible cliffhanger… and Apocalypse went bust.

After two years Law jumped back across the pond to Dark Horse Comics, concluding the yarn in ‘Super Babylon’ wherein the resurgent Bad Cop quelled the return of the living dead and – just by way of collateral damage – devastated assorted superhero pantheons by ending thinly disguised versions of the Justice Society and League as well as WWII super-patriots like the Invaders and Captain America. All this happened a decade before Marvel Zombies stirred in their graves or The Walking Dead pulled on their brain-stained boots…

In addition, the creators couldn’t resist one more mighty pop at American Cold-War Imperialism that’s both utterly over-the-top and hilarious – unless you’re a Republican, I suppose…

Additionally, there’s a wicked spoof as ‘Naked Heroes by Veegee’ shares the candid snaps of a super-celeb paparazzo and the art for Marshal Law’s feature in Hero Illustrated (May 1994)…

Less contentious – unless you’re a devoted fan of the Alien movies/comics or The Legion of Super Heroes – is Secret Tribunal. Lettered by Bill Oakley, it begins with Cape Fear’ as the Marshal is deployed to an orbiting Space Station where the government grows its manufactured superbeings, just as a nasty incursion of fast-breeding carnivorous space-beasts starts ripping the immature adolescent and primarily teenaged supermen and wonder women to gory gobbets…

Even though the hero hunter is ordered to bring with him a super-team (riffing off certain Marvel mutants…), in the end the only solution is a ruthless and highly personal ‘Court Marshal’…

Supplemented by an ‘Afterword by Pat Mills’ that shares his reasons for “hating heroes” and a stunning ‘Shooting Gallery’ of covers, designs, foreign edition art, previous collection covers, retail posters, and more to augment the experience of Futuro shock, this is classically inappropriate mayhem: just who could resist it?

Mills’ incisive observation, sharp dialogue, brilliant scenarios, great characters, stunningly memorable one-liners and hilariously compelling stories full of twists and surprises are magnificently brought to life by the cruelly lush art and colours of O’Neill: an artist so crazed with the joys of creation that every panel overflows with so many visual and typographical ad-libs that you could read this book one hundred times and still find new treats to make you laugh and wince. So I’m thinking that perhaps you really should…
© 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 2013 Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill. All Rights Reserved.

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Scalped Book One Deluxe Edition (Indian Country and Casino Boogie)


By Jason Aaron & R.M. Guéra (DC Comics/Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5091-1 (HB/Digital edition)

The Western is a tricky genre to pin down: all at once infinitely re-inventible, compellingly human and shockingly mythic. The genre also enjoys a chameleonic gift for subsuming the unique memes and tropes of other forms of story-making and pitting them against each other.

There are horror westerns, space westerns, comedy westerns and – because time and location aren’t key to our definition – especially crime stories that can be fully acknowledged as being pure Cowboys and Indians…

These revelations have always been best explored in the relatively recent phenomenon of “grim & gritty” comics. Initially the preserve of Good-Guys-In-Tights savagely slaughtering really bad folk instead of arresting them, now the tarnished grime of über-realism can be seen where it belongs – in tales of darkly desperate people facing their greatest challenges.

You don’t need a history degree to know that Native Americans have had a pretty crap time since Europeans colonized their country. However, in recent decades lip-service and guilt have been turned into some minor concessions to the most disadvantaged ethnicity in the USA, and contemporary Federal mandates allowing gambling on officially designated Indian Lands have meant a cash bonanza for various tribes on reservations throughout the country. The Indians are getting rich.

Well, some of them are…

Disenchanted son of a 1970s Native American activist, Dashiell Bad Horse ran away from the desolate squalor of the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation as soon as he turned fifteen. Now he’s back and although there’s a snazzy new casino operating, “the Rez” is still a hell-hole: a sordid Demilitarized Zone where his people subsist in crushing poverty, still prey to every self-destructive social toxin money or favours can buy or bestow.

Reluctantly Dash takes a job with the Sheriff’s department, but he knows he’s actually just another leg-breaker for current Tribal Leader and fully-installed crime boss Lincoln Red Crow. Still, whilst wiping out rival drug and booze gangs for his brooding boss, he’s slowly growing closer to the all-powerful Indian Godfather…

The job even provides a number of tantalising, too-tempting fringe benefits, which facilitate Bad Horse finally getting to really know the former rebel who was once his mother’s closest ally in the all-but-forgotten freedom movement of the 1970s.

That’s good. After all, that’s why the FBI planted him there in the first place…

As concocted by writer Jason Aaron and potently limned by R.M. Guéra, this slow-boiling saga is seedy, violent, overtly sexual and ferociously compelling: a darkly brutal, modern-day Western Noir.

The oddly familiar yet fiercely exotic locale and painfully unchanging foibles of people on the edge make this tale an instant classic and the increasingly impressive writing of Jason Aaron kicks into compellingly high gear in the second half (originally issues #6-11 and then the Casino Boogie collection) of the dark and nasty crime series.

The Prairie Rose Indian Reservation is a desolate forgotten hellhole run by gangsters and housing nothing but broken people. The biggest boss is Lincoln Red Crow, former Indian Rights activist who runs all the rackets from his own casino. Everybody else thinks it’s a community venture and they’re all going to be rich.

Dashiel Bad Horse was always trouble, and escaped as soon as he could. He was the son of Red Crow’s fellow militant Gina, but since he came back and started working as a sheriff and leg-breaker for the big boss, events have started to turn against the crimelord.

Gina is the last real rebel, and Red Crow is as just as much an oppressor as the White Man ever was. How would the fallen rebel react if she knew that her son is working for both of the forces she sees as destroying her people? It’s a good thing no one knows Dash Bad Horse is an undercover FBI agent. But is it still a secret?

Moving beyond gripping Noir drama with the introduction of a shaman called Catcher, the saga moves into even more convoluted plots and schemes as Red Crow’s plans near fruition. The Big Boss stands to win or lose everything at this critical juncture, but is Catcher just another booze-raddled Indian or does he really see Visions? Can Red Crow really accept the White’s way of Sex, Power and Money, or is he as tied to his roots as even the poorest, dumbest dirt-grubber on the Rez?

Complex, atmospheric and disturbingly graphic in execution, this is a thriller with a powerful social message underpinning the action and drama, and goes from strength to strength. This is one of the best adult comic series produced in the last thirty years and one you should see for yourselves.

Augmenting the experience is a broad selection of promo images, covers and cover sketches by Jock and Jason Aaron’s full script for issue #1.

Scalped Book 1 is a brutal warning shot in an uncompromising thriller hitting hard, hitting often and hitting home. Best of all, it’s just the opening salvo in an epic sequence of compulsive confrontations and unwrapped mysteries so why not hold on to your hat and jump right in?
© 2007 Jason Aaron & Rajko Miloševi?. All Rights Reserved.

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Haunt of Horror: Lovecraft


By H.P. Lovecraft adapted by Richard Corben with Jeff Eckleberry (MARVEL MAX)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3287-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Richard Corben was one of America’s greatest proponents of graphic narrative: an animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist, who sprang from the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in graphic narrative storytelling with his own unmistakable style and vision.

He is equally renowned for his mastery of airbrush, captivatingly excessive anatomical stylisation and delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales. In later years he has become an elder statesman of horror and fantasy comics lending his gifts and cachet to such icons as John Constantine, Hulk, Hellboy, Punisher and Ghost Rider as well as new adaptations and renditions of literary classics by the likes of William Hope Hodgson, and the master of gothic terror Edgar Allan Poe.

Corben never sold out and American publishing eventually caught up, finally growing mature enough to accommodate him – due in no small part to his own broad and wickedly pervasive influence…

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, Corben graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 and found work as an animator. At that time, the neutered comic books of the Comics Code Authority era were just starting to lose disaffected, malcontent older fans to the hippy-trippy, freewheeling, anything-goes publications of independent-minded creators across the continent. These folks were increasingly making the kind of material Preachers and Mummy and their Lawyers wouldn’t approve of…

Creativity honed by the resplendent and explicitly mature 1950s EC Comics, Carl Barks’ perfectly crafted Duck tales and other classy early strips, a plethora of young artists like Corben responded with numerous small-press publications – including Grim Wit, Skull, Slow Death, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor – which featured shocking, rebellious, sexed-up, raw, brutal, psychedelically-inspired cartoons and strips blending the new wave of artists’ unconventional lifestyles with their earliest childhood influences… honestly crafting the kind of stories they would like to read.

Corben inevitably graduated to more professional – and paying – venues. As his style and skills developed, he worked for Warren Publishing in Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and outrageous adult science fiction anthology 1984/1994. He also famously coloured some strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

Soon after, he was producing stunning graphic escapades for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as multi-million-selling album Bat Out of Hell. He never stopped creating comics but preferred personal independent projects or working with in-tune collaborators such as Bruce Jones, Jan Strnad and Harlan Ellison.

In 1975, Corben approached French fantasy phenomenon Métal Hurlant and quickly became a fixture of its American iteration Heavy Metal, cementing his international reputation in the process. Garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe, he was been regularly collected in luxurious albums even as he seemingly fell out of favour – and print – in his own country. Through it all he never strayed far from his moss-covered roots.

Corben died in 2020.

This particular tome gathers a 2007 return to adaptations of classic literary horror canon. First published as a 3-issue limited series, it features adaptations of poems and stories by an undisputed master of supernal terror: H.P. Lovecraft. The tales are radical reworkings of the troubled author’s works, rendered in line and gray-tones, and each sequential narrative reinterpretation is accompanied by its original prose iteration.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in August 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island and his life in New England was one of gradual loss and despair. His father was institutionalised when he young, and a comfortable life of wealth ended when his grandfather died. Enduring privation, he lost his mother to another asylum in 1919. He married in 1924 after moving to New York, where his writing for Weird Tales and other pulp fiction magazines drew acclaim – and even acolytes – but little by way of commercial security.

He returned to New England in 1926 and wrote ever more fevered and chilling tales of weird science, fantasy and horror fiction. In the next 11 years he penned some of the most disturbing stories in literature, centred around his belief in Civilizational decline and Cosmicism: affirming the insignificance of humanity and its ultimate fragility and inability to endure in a harsh, unforgiving universe.

He is best remembered today for his Cthulhu Mythos: an elder god cosmology as seen in The Call of Cthulhu and other stories.

Lovecraft died in 1937 as a result of stomach cancer.

This selection of speculative meanderings opens with ‘Dagon’, as an ailing and oppressed marine researcher records how a close call with a German U-boat catapulted him onto a lost isle of monsters and ancient artefacts, and forever marked him as prey for an indescribable horror. The original prose vignette follows, after which ‘The Scar’ tells of betrayal and abandonment as a young man opts to save himself but not his companion from hellish plants: – a grisly episode eerily expanded upon from the poem ‘Recognition’ as collected in the tome Fungi from Yuggoth.

From the same book comes both the poem ‘A Memory’ and chilling icy exploration as Jack searches the desolate region that claimed his father and finds a relic that that dooms him via fatal family connection to lost and malign cultists of Shub Niggurath…

The second issue began with ‘The Music of Erich Zann’, as an impoverished student recalls how long ago he lived in a hilltop hovel where an elderly fellow boarder played bizarre melodies that shook the world and summoned arcane atrocities before – again bordered by a text version – another extract from Fungi from Yuggoth finds a flood survivor desperately searching for her lost love in the body-packed detritus of ‘The Canal’…

Sticking with the bulletins from Yuggoth, ‘The Lamp’ focuses on an unexpected and angry archaeological breakthrough that is alive and hungry after four millennia, before the final issue opens with extended scary satire ‘Arthur Jermyn’ and thereafter its primary text ‘Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family’. In a wry change of pace, it traces – via his proud descendants -the history and heritage of a gentleman explorer and anthropologist who in 1750 discovered a lost kingdom and injected some new blood into an old, old race.

Of course the miscegenation has resulted in some few throwbacks and anomalies in the hallowed English lineage since then…

Another ravening predator inhabits ‘The Well’ foolishly dug by southern farmer Seth Atwood, one using love and thirst to draw in victims, and our last glimpse of the outer dark comes through ‘The Window’ of a desolate old house as an orphan son returns to discover what took his parents 25 years ago…

A potent and evocative peep into the nastiest places in creation, this collection also includes ‘Cover Sketches’ and ‘Promotional Images’, plus a selection of inked pages prior to the application of the cloaking grey tones.

Infamous for his dark, doom-laden horror stories, Lovecraft was a pioneer of the subgenre of supernal, inescapable terror and under Corben’s imaginative scrutiny, the grim gloomy odes and yarns take on a whole new level of distressing dissonance. This compelling collection of classic chillers is a modern masterpiece of arcane abomination and inhuman horror no shock addict of mystery lover will want to miss.
© 2020 MARVEL.

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Essential Tales of the Zombie volume 1


By Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, Stan Lee, Kit Pearson, Marv Wolfman, Tony Isabella, Chuck Robinson, Chris Claremont, Don McGregor, Doug Moench, Gerry Conway, Lin Carter, John Albano, Gerry Boudreau, Len Wein, Carla Joseph, Kenneth Dreyfack, Carl Wessler, David Anthony Kraft, Larry Lieber, John Warner,  Tony DiPreta, Bill Everett, John Buscema, Tom Palmer, Pablo Marcos , Dick Ayers, Tom Sutton, Syd Shores, Gene Colan, Dick Giordano, Winslow Mortimer, George Tuska, Ralph Reese, Vincente Alcazar, Bill Walton, Enrique Badia, Rich Buckler, Vic Martin, Ron Wilson, Ernie Chan, Russ Heath, Frank Springer, Alfredo Alcala, Dan Green, Michael Kaluta, Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia, Virgilio Redondo, Yong Montano, Tony DeZuñiga, Rudy Nebres, Boris Vallejo, Earl Norem & various (Marvel)
ISBN 0-7851-1916-7 (TPB)

Inspiration isn’t everything. In fact, as Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in the wake of the losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding established concepts and properties. The only exception was an en masse creation of horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in super-hero sales – a move expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

The switch to sinister supernatural stars brought numerous benefits. Most importantly, it drew a new readership to comics: one attuned to a global revival in spiritualism, Satanism and all things spooky. Almost as important, it gave the reprint-reliant company opportunity to finally recycle old 1950s horror stories that had been rendered unprintable and useless since the code’s inception in 1954.

Spanning August 1973 to March 1975, this moody monochrome tome collects Tales of the Zombie #1-10, plus pertinent portions of Dracula Lives #1-2 but – despite targeting the more mature monochrome magazine market of the 1970s – these stories are oddly coy for a generation born before  video nasties, teen-slasher movies or torture-porn, so it’s unlikely that you’ll need a sofa to hide behind…

The chillers commences with ‘Zombie!’ illustrated by unsung legend Tony DiPreta: one of those aforementioned, unleashed 1950s reprints which found its way as cheap filler into the back of Dracula Lives #1 (August 1973). In this intriguing pot-boiler criminal Blackie Nolan runs for his life when the man he framed for his crimes animates a corpse to exact revenge…

A few months earlier, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas had green-lit a new mature-reader anthology magazine starring a walking deadman, based on a classic 1953 Stan Lee/Bill Everett thriller published in Menace #5.

Cover-dated July 1973, Tales of the Zombie #1 contained a mix of all-new material, choice reprints and text features to thrill and chill the voodoo devotees of comics land. The undead excitement began with ‘Altar of the Damned’ by Thomas, Steve Gerber, John Buscema & Tom Palmer, introducing wealthy Louisiana coffee-magnate Simon Garth as he frantically breaks free of a voodoo cult determined to sacrifice him.

He is aided by priestess Layla who usually earns her daily bread as his secretary. Sadly, the attempt fails and Garth dies, only to be brought back as a mighty, mindless slave of his worst enemy Gyps – a petty, lecherous gardener fired for leering at the boss’ daughter…

Next comes a retouched, modified reprint of the aforementioned Everett ‘Zombie!’ yarn, adapted to depict Garth as the corpse-walker rampaging through Mardi Gras and inflicting a far more permanent punishment on the ghastly gardener, after which Dick Ayers limned ‘Iron Head’ as a deep sea diver take a decidedly different look at the native art of resurrection…

‘The Sensuous Zombie!’ is a cinematic history of the sub-genre and ‘Back to Back and Belly to Belly at the Zombie Jamboree Ball!’ delivers an editorial tribute to Bill Everett.

after which Kit Pearson, Marv Wolfman & Pablo Marcos expose the secret of ‘The Thing From the Bog!’ before Tom Sutton applies a disinterred tongue to his cheek for the blackly comic story of ‘The Mastermind!’.

Gerber, Buscema & Syd Shores the saga of Simon Garth in ‘Night of the Walking Dead!’, as the murdered man’s daughter loses the arcane amulet which controls the zombie to a psychotic sneak thief…

Dracula Lives #2 introduces ‘The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans!’ (Thomas, Gene Colan & Dick Giordano relates the Lord of Vampires’ clash with undying mistress of magic Marie Laveau (tenuously included here as the charismatic bloodsucker strides past the recently deceased Garth on a crowded Mardi Gras street) before Tales of the Zombie #2 unfolds in its gory entirety.

Gerber & Marcos led off with ‘Voodoo Island!’ as daughter Donna Garth takes ship for Port-Au-Prince, determined to learn all she can about the dark arts, whilst the shambling cadaver of her father is drawn into the nefarious affairs of criminal mastermind Mr. Six. By circuitous means, mindless but instinct-driven Garth also ends up in Haiti – just as a madman turning women into giant spiders decides Donna is an ideal test subject…

Luckily, the former coffee-king’s best friend Anton Cartier is a resident – and expert in Voodoo lore…

‘Voodoo Unto Others’ by Tony Isabella & Winslow Mortimer tells a grim but affecting tale of the law of the Loa, whilst ‘Acid Test’ by Stan Lee & George Tuska is another 1950’s thriller culled from Marvel’s vaults, followed by a text feature by Isabella trumpeting the company’s “next big thing” with ‘Introducing Brother Voodoo’…

It was back to contemporary times with stunning graveyard re-animator yarn ‘Twin Burial’ by Chuck Robinson & Ralph Reese, balanced by Colan classic ‘From Out of the Grave’ after which Chris Claremont asks in expansive prose piece, ‘Voodoo: What’s It All About, Alfred?’

Gerber & Marcos conclude their Garth saga in ‘Night of the Spider!’ before TotZ #3 sees the Zombie still lurching around Haiti in ‘When the Gods Crave Flesh!’, encountering a manic film director and his histrionic starlet wife who want to expose Voodoo to the judgemental celluloid eye of Hollywood.

Bad, bad, bad idea…

Claremont scripted a prose shocker next, contributing part 1 of ‘With the Dawn Comes Death!’ – illustrated with stock movie stills – before ‘Net Result’ offers another Atlas-era DiPreta delight, after which Isabella & Vincente Alcazar excel with an epic of samurai-against-dragon in ‘Warrior’s Burden’.

Don McGregor’s ‘The Night of the Living Dead Goes on and on and on’ provides in-depth analysis of the movie that restarted it all, and Bill Walton limns Fifties fear-fest ‘I Won’t Stay Dead’ before Doug Moench & Enrique Badia deliver a period piece of perfidious plantation peril in ‘Jilimbi[s Word’.

‘Tales of the Zombie Feature Page’ closes the issue with a Gerber interview and critique of George A. Romero’s film Codename: Trixie – which we know today as The Crazies – before Tales of the Zombie #4 (March 1974) opens with ‘The Law and Phillip Bliss’ as the mystic Amulet of Damballah irresistibly draws Garth back to New Orleans at the unwitting behest of a down-and-out with a grudge…

Another movie feature by McGregor follows, examining the spooky overtones of then-current Bond flick Live and Let Die, after which Gerry Conway, Rich Buckler, Vic Martin & Mortimer crafted a comic strip film-thriller in ‘The Drums of Doom!’

Fantasy author Lin Carter explores modern supernatural proliferation in ‘Neo-Witchcraft’ before ‘Courtship by Voodoo’ (Isabella & Ron Wilson) recounts Egyptian romantic antics, and Moench & Mortimer disclose the downside of desecrating graves in ‘Nightfilth Rising’.

John Albano & Ernie Chua (nee Chan) tell a tragic tale of ‘Four Daughters of Satan’ before ‘The Law and Phillip Bliss’ concludes in cathartic slaughter of high-priced lawyers, whilst ‘The Zombie Feature Page’ highlights the work and life of artist Pablo Marcos.

‘Palace of Black Magic!’ then sees Phil Glass lose the amulet – and control of Garth – to Mr. Six with the Zombie becoming a terrifying weapon of sinister Voodoun lord Papa Shorty, until his new master’s own arrogance lead to carnage and a kind of freedom for the Dead Man Walking. Issue #5 continues with Moench’s filmic tribute article ‘White Zombie: Faithful Unto Death’ and a Russ Heath Atlas classic ‘Who Walks with a Zombie?’

The concluding instalment of Claremont’s article ‘With the Dawn Comes Death!’ precedes text infomercial ‘Brother Voodoo Lives Again’ and new western horror saga ‘Voodoo War’ by Isabella, Shores & Ayers, and TotZ# 5 ends on a gritty high with ‘Death’s Bleak Birth!’: a powerful supernatural crime thriller by Moench & Frank Springer.

Tales of the Zombie #6 (July) opens with a handy update of events thus far before launching into Gerber & Marcos’ ‘Child of Darkness!’ wherein the anguished ambulatory remains of Simon Garth interrupt a Voodoo ritual and encounter once more the Mambo Layla, who tries in vain to save him before his death and revivification. Even together, they are unprepared for the vicious thing lurking in the swamp’s deepest recesses…

Gerry Boudreau explores the genre’s history by critiquing Hammer Films’ ‘The Plague of the Zombies’, followed by a hilarious photo-feature on Zombie/blacksploitation movie ‘Sugar Hill’ and Claremont’s article on all things undead ‘The Compleat Voodoo Man’.

Brother Voodoo initially ran in Strange Tales #169-173 (September 1973-April 1974) but ended on a cliffhanger. It finishes here in Moench, Len Wein, Colan & Frank Chiaramonte’s ‘End of a Legend!’ as the Man with Two Souls finally defeats Voodoo villain Black Talon.

Carla Joseph’s ‘The Voodoo Beat’ rounds up a selection of movies and books then available regarding all things Cadaverous and Fetishy before Moench & Alfredo Alcala provide a fill-in tale in ‘The Blood-Testament of Brian Collier’ wherein Garth shambles into a High Society murder-mystery, followed by a Village Voice article by Kenneth Dreyfack on ‘Voodoo in the Park’, notable for comics fans because it’s illustrated by future great Dan Green.

Moench & Mortimer’s comics featurette ‘Haiti’s Walking Dead’ and Claremont’s book review ‘Inside Voodoo’ take us the issue end and ‘A Second Chance to Die’ – a classy short thriller by Carl Wessler & Alcala.

Tales of the Zombie #8 (November) opens with a similar frontispiece feature by Isabella & Michael Kaluta ‘The Voodoo Killers’ before Gerber & Marcos return with ‘A Death Made of Ticky-Tacky’ as Garth and Layla finally reach New Orleans and fall foul of bored urban swingers seeking a different kind of good time. ‘Jimmy Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’ offers a chilling prose vignette from David Anthony Kraft, liberally illustrated by Kaluta.

‘Night of the Hunter’ by scripter Larry Lieber and artists Ron Wilson, Mike Esposito & Frank Giacoia sees a corrupt prison guard realise he’s tortured and killed the wrong black man, when the victim’s brother turns up straight from the sinister heart of Haiti…

‘Tales of the Happy Humfo’ is another Claremont voodoo article, spiced up with Kaluta drawings after which Alcala again closes show down with ‘Makao’s Vengeance’: a slick jungle chiller scripted by Kraft.

The first issue of 1975 opens with Isabella & Mortimer’s ‘Was He a Voodoo-Man?’, after which the author scripted stunning Zombie headliner ‘Simon Garth Lives Again!’, illustrated by Virgilio Redondo & Alcala, and Claremont & Yong Montano contribute second chapter ‘A Day in the Life of a Dead Man’ (Alcala inks) before Isabella & Marcos conclude the Garth extravaganza with ‘The Second Death Around’.

As an added bonus Moench & Alcala also designed a swampy slaughter-party in ‘Herbie the Liar Said it Wouldn’t Hurt!’…

Tales of the Zombie #10 (March 1975) leads with a Brother Voodoo tale by Moench & Tony DeZuñiga, wherein the Lord of the Loa struggles to prevent ‘The Resurrection of Papa Jambo’ because the scheduled Simon Garth saga had been lost in the post at time of printing). Bringing up the rear were medical nightmare ‘Eye For an Eye, Tooth For a Tooth’ by Conway, Virgilio Redondo & Rudy Nebres and Wessler, John Warner & Alcazar’s death-row chiller ‘Malaka’s Curse!’ with Sutton’s macabre ‘Grave Business’ the last seen treat…

By this time the horror boom was beginning to bust, and the advertised 11th issue never materialised. An all-reprint Tales of the Zombie Super-Annual was released that summer, with only its cover reproduced here.

Peppered with vivid Zombie pin-ups by Marcos & Sutton, and covers by Boris Vallejo and Earl Norem, this intriguing monochrome compendium – although a bit dated – contains what passed for Explicit Content in the mid-1970s, so although the frights should be nothing for today’s older kids, the occasional nipple or buttock might well send them screaming over the edge.

However, with appropriate mature supervision I’m sure this groovy gore-fest will delight many a brain-eating fright fan, until Marvel get around to properly reviving this tragic revenant’s roots and earliest recorded revels.
© 1973, 1974, 1975, 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Shaft: A Complicated Man


By David F. Walker, Bilquis Evely & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-757-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

For decades Black consumers of popular entertainments had far too few fictive role models. For the English-speaking world that began changing in the turbulent 1960s and truly took hold during the decade that followed. A lot of the characters developed at that time came from a cultural phenomenon called “Blaxploitation” (other spellings are available). Despite being criticised for their seedy antecedents, stereotypical situations and violence, these films and books were the first mass-market examples of minority characters in leading roles, rather than as mere fodder or flunkies.

One of the earliest movie icons of the genre was a man called Shaft.

The landmark film was scripted by journalist and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection; High Plains Drifter) from his own 1970 novel. He authored six more between 1972 and 1975, with his timeless urban warrior starring in numerous films and a TV series. Eighth novel Shaft’s Revenge was released in 2016, written by David F. Walker.

Amongst his many gifts Walker numbers writing comics (Occupy Avengers; Cyborg; Red Sonja and many more) and in 2014 he was invited to write a long-overdue comics iteration… Illustrated by Bilquis Evely and coloured by Daniela & Miwa (Walker lettered the series himself), the comic book took its look, settings and tone primarily from the novels rather than the Richard Roundtree films. The first 6-chapter story-arc was collected as Shaft: A Complicated Man and offers some intriguing love overdue backstory. In all the detective’s prior appearances, no mention was made of his past, but here Big John gets a proper Origin…

Following an Introduction by educator and author Shawn Taylor, the saga – which won the 2015 Glyph Comics Award for Story of the Year – begins in December 1968. John Shaft is a former marine and veteran of the Vietnam war who’s come home and is trying to find his place in the world. An indomitable fighter, he’s using boxing as his big chance, but when he refuses to throw a fight, he incurs the wrath of both local black gang boss Junius Tate and the district’s mafioso overlord Sal Venneri.

Proud and resolute, but no fool, Shaft wins his bout, and accepts brutal punishment from Tate’s conflicted leg-breaker Bamma Brooks before vanishing from the cloistered island-within-an-island known as Harlem…

Just drifting, Shaft briefly goes to college before the call of adventure finds him joining private detective agency National Investigation & Security Services. His first job is as a plainclothes guard and “undercover negro shopper” at a fancy department store…

While on duty he meets pretty Arletha Havens and finds a reason to stop drifting and start planning. Before long, he’s seeing a bright future together.

That all goes to hell when thugs bust into their apartment looking for a hooker named Marisol Dupree and her pimp Jimmy Style…

With Arletha hostage, Shaft is forced to accompany one of the abductors back to Harlem for the first time in years, hunting the missing woman and a package she’s holding: something someone really important wants back. In fact, Marisol’s mystery treasure has big city money men in a panic and all the criminal factions in Harlem at each other’s throats, but Shaft’s immediate problem is simply staying alive…

After surviving a savage gunfight dropping five bodies in an alley, he returns home to find Arletha’s body and resolves that somebody – maybe everybody – is going to pay…

All on his own again, the coldly furious avenger finds his true calling, tracking down Marisol, methodically putting the pieces together in a chilling city-wide web of graft, favours, murder and money before ensuring the guilty parties pay the ultimate price…

Comprising a devious, byzantine wasps’ nest of civic corruption, crooked cops, warring mobsters and treacherous allies, played out against a tragic backdrop of true love forever lost, Shaft’s first case is a superb crime thriller no fan of the genre should miss and comes with a bevy of bonus features. These include character designs; unused illustrations by Walker & John Jennings; script excerpts; in-production art pages and a covers and variants gallery by Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ivan Nunes, Francesco Francavilla, Michael Avon Oeming, Ulises Farinas, Matt Haley, Sanford Greene, Nacho Tenorio & Sergio Mora.

It even comes with a toe-tappingly cool playlist to track down and enjoy whilst reading…
Shaft is ™ & © 2015 Ernest Tidyman. All rights reserved.