Category: Mature Reading

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Hedy Lamarr: An Incredible Life


By William Roy & Sylvain Dorange, translated by Montana Kane (Humanoids/Life Drawn)
ISBN: 978-1-59465-619-4 (PB/Digital edition)

It’s been a man’s world almost from the start, and for so very long, most roles we’ve allowed for women have been ones that benefit us. Just why are so many female heroes young, pretty, buxom and nearly naked?

…And don’t even try to mansplain away why and how we Lords of Creation settle down with a housekeeper/mother who provides fringe benefits, comfort breaks and data storage. “Honey, do I like this?” “Darling, where are my…?”

Happily, despite all our most determined efforts, women keep on being independent, resolute, optimistic, free thinking and autonomous: constantly confounding male expectations and forcing us to gaslight, denigrate, diminish or bully them back into submission… or at least ominous silence…

It doesn’t always work, but at least whenever they achieve triumphant, spectacular highs and enjoy their own lives, it’s on their own terms – at least until some guy finds a way to make them regret it…

Let’s see an example of that as it happened to one of the most important human beings in modern history. Hedy Lamarr: La plus belle femme du monde was released in 2018: a superbly engaging, vividly realised passion project by writer, artist and documentarian William Roy (De Père en FIV, Freud, Le moment venu) and multi-disciplined illustrator Sylvain Dorange (For Justice: The Serge & Beate Klarsfeld Story, Gisèle Halimi – Une jeunesse tunisienne, Un conte de l’Estaque, Les Promeneurs du Temps, Psychotique). It quickly became one of the most important biographies of recent times. You can even read it in English or online…

Delivered in non-sequential snippets and clippings, it all slots together like a puzzle to show how, as a Viennese youngster, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler developed two life-long passions: acting and learning how things worked. The latter obsession came thanks to her beloved father Emil, a progressive, forward-looking banker who shared at every opportunity a profound love of knowledge and tinkering with his beautiful child …

Concerned by the uninvited attention their daughter’s looks were garnering, Hedwig’s parents decided to never comment on her appearance. However, as she grew from pretty child to ravishing young woman, those looks inevitably shaped her world.

As a teenager one passion dominated: so much so that the model student began taking unsanctioned truant days to pursue acting – especially in the burgeoning, high-tech film business. When her parents learned of the school absences, they granted her leeway to explore those options. Hedwig initially sought to become a script girl, but once again her beauty took her to a different destination and one moment as an “extra” opened up a whole new world…

Emil loved how she shared his fascination with how things worked, but primarily he just wanted her to be happy. Thus, Hedwig learned to roll with life’s punches – and in later life there were many – but was generally supported in her wild endeavours. She never realised how the acting lessons her father willingly paid for would lead to her becoming a notorious, global figure of infamy after a highly sexualised nude scene in 1933 drama Extase…

Just as the film was being banned in Austria, neighbouring Germany welcomed a new Chancellor. Adolf Hitler would affect the girl’s life in unimaginable ways…

Retreating from celluloid to a life of stage acting, Hedwig was pursued by astoundingly rich manufacturer and businessman Friedrich “Fritz” Mantel. Dazzled by wealth, rapt attention, and honied words, she eventually married him.

Despite her Jewish ancestry, as the wife of Mussolini’s best friend and the Third Reich’s favourite arms dealer/munitions supplier, Hedwig spent the early years of Nazism cushioned from a growing horror. Hosting dinner parties for human monsters whilst incessantly, invisibly overhearing fascinating details about the new weapons hubby was pioneering quickly paled, and Mantel’s obsessive possessiveness and controlling behaviour soon made her realise the liaison was a huge mistake.

Whilst displaying his trophy wife like a prize, and bedecking her with jewels and gems, Mantel had spent a fortune buying up and destroying every print of Extase. No man would ever cast lascivious eyes on his property ever again…

Increasingly terrified, Hedwig crafted a plan and escaped her marriage, eventually landing in London in 1937. At that time American movie mogul Louis B. Mayer – supreme dictator of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios – was there to scout out sophisticated European film talent fleeing growing social unrest…

Like so many women and girls maturing in that era, Hedwig learned to be suspicious of authority and men in powerful positions: to keep her secrets to herself whenever possible. She probably always sought assured security and never believed she had it, even at the top of a wildly fluctuating showbiz career. At least inventing kept her grounded and allowed her to find an escape that was purely personal. Mayer was a lifeline, but he too came with conditions…

In 1938, Hedy Lamarr began her tenure as a Screen Goddess with the movie Algiers. Mayer had her billed as “the most beautiful woman in the world” and changed her name to evoke that of deceased silent movie star Barbara La Marr. According to this version of her story, he also never stopped urging her to enhance her bust…

A wash of films followed, of remarkably varying quality, but work, acclaim, marriage and the heady social whirl wasn’t a satisfying existence. When war came, Hedy was eager to help. It coincided with her first meeting engineering marvel/millionaire playboy Howard Hughes. He wasn’t as impressed as others by her looks, but wanted to hear all about her inventions…

Almost as notorious as any role she played, Hedy knew many men, but had few male friends. Foremost of those she did persist with was George Carl Antheil, a “piano prodigy” who had first outraged the musical establishment in 1924 with his Ballet Mechanique score.

The Dadaist work was delivered by player-pianos working in synch with airplane engines, and Antheil had meticulously cut out the player rolls of each instrument personally, in a monumental feat of pre-computer coding and programming…

Antheil was also an acclaimed and published endocrinologist who supported his family by composing Hollywood film music, and first met Hedy Lamarr during another of her fruitless, pointless searches for a safe way to embiggen her boobs…

In the course of their friendship they discussed German torpedoes and – recalling past dinner conversations amongst Nazi bigwigs – Hedy had an idea that would have shortened the war; and did change the way all humanity communicates…

Typically, Lamarr and Antheil’s un-jammable torpedo was poo-poohed and rejected by the US Navy and a congressional committee who were astonished to notice that the project had no actual Male Scientists attached to it. It’s a good thing the inventors had every bit of the work, concept and attendant programming patented…

One admiral did helpfully suggest that she could serve her country best by selling war bonds, so she did, in record-breaking amounts…

Years passed, husbands and families came and went, and Hedy’s career devolved from megastar to TV guest celebrity to self-imposed exile. In 1960 she got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and six years later an autobiography she maintained she never wrote was released. It pretty much trashed what was left of her reputation.

It all turned around for her in 1996, when her son Anthony Loder was contacted by representatives of the burgeoning telecommunications industry. They really needed to speak to the inventors – and patent-holders – of a frequency-hopping system devised to protect torpedoes from being jammed. It was also the absolute best way to connect multiple electronic devices via radio waves”. We call it wi-fi these days…

This is an emphatic, empathetic dramatisation of a much-told tale and an inevitable, inescapable theme, but Hedy Lamarr: An Incredible Life shows not that resilience pays off, or that it all works out in the end, but that remarkable achievements cannot be buried or diminished…

After all, how many gullible kids tricked into getting their baps out change the entire world, all of human culture and get an asteroid and a quantum telescope named after them, let alone get awarded an anniversary goggle doodle and inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame, and are interred in a National Honorary grave?

Admit it, though, it was the bit about her baps that made you sit up and pay attention, right?

The struggle continues…
© 2018 La Boîte à Bulles. All Rights Reserved. This edition © 2018 Humanoids, Inc., Los Angeles (USA).

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A Treasury of Victorian Murder Compendium II


By Rick Geary (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-907-6 (Digest HB)

Master cartoonist Rick Geary is a unique presence in both comics and true crime literature. His compelling forensic dissections – in the form of graphic novel reconstructions – of some of the most infamous and groundbreaking murder mysteries since policing began never fail to beguile or entertain.

Although outrageously still unavailable digitally, for many years Geary’s unblinking eye powerfully probed the last hundred years or so in his Treasury of XXth Century Murder series. Prior to that, he first began graphically capitalising on a fascination with Mankind’s darker aspects way back in 1987, via a delicious anthologised tome entitled A Treasury of Victorian Murder.

That initial volume and 3 of the 8 that succeeded it (Jack the Ripper, The Fatal Bullet and The Beast of Chicago) were combined and re-issued in 2012 as a splendidly morbid monochrome deluxe hardback – because, after all, bloody murder is always a black and white affair…

More of his most compelling past triumphs were gathered into a second blockbusting 400-page monochrome hardback to delight fans of the genre and, without a shadow of a doubt, make new converts out of the as yet unconvinced…

Combining a superlative talent for laconic prose, incisive observation and meticulously detailed pictorial extrapolation with his gift for recounting the ruthless propensities of humans throughout history, Geary ceaselessly scoured police blotters, newspaper archives and even history books to compile more irresistibly infectious social sins and felonious infractions.

His unique cartooning style is the perfect medium to convey starkly factual narratives in a memorable, mordant and undeniably enjoyable manner. Each epic endeavour is accompanied by an Introduction and scholarly Bibliography, with most adaptations also offering splendidly informative maps and diagrams to set the stories firmly in place.

Starting off this largely ladykiller-laden catalogue of crime is The Borden Tragedy, digging through an abundance of details surrounding one of the most infamous – if not mythic – crimes ever perpetrated.

In Fall River, Massachusetts on August 4th 1892, prosperous self-made man Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby were found slain inside their own home. Death in both cases was caused by multiple axe blows.

Rather than his later neutral narrative stance, here Geary illustrates the “first-hand account” of an acquaintance of youngest daughter Lizzie Borden who – after much inept investigation and public speculation – was settled upon by the authorities as the likeliest suspect.

Many and various suppositions, theories, scandals and gossip-points are scrupulously examined as she stands trial for the crimes – a case muddled by a subsequent axe-murder whilst Lizzie was actually in custody – and the spotlight follows her through the much-protracted case, past her acquittal and to her eventual death in 1927…

The graphic re-enactment is accompanied by a copious photo and text section featuring a wealth of ‘Press Clippings of the Time’ as well as a reproduction of ‘Borden’s Indictment’ and The Boston Advertiser article on her eventual “Not Guilty” verdict.

The Mystery of Mary Rogers concerns the assault and murder of a New York City cigar shop girl which mesmerised the citizenry in 1841. Such was the furore that author Edgar Allen Poe appropriated the events for his C. Auguste Lupin tale The Mystery of Marie Roget: a rather unwise move, since he knew the deceased and thereby opened himself up to loudly-voiced suspicions of complicity…

The facts are that on the 28th July 1841, a number of well-to do-citizens left stifling Manhattan Island for the Jersey Shore and there discovered the body of the “Segar Girl” floating in the Hudson; battered, strangled and with her hands tied across her chest.

A hasty autopsy and even quicker inquest, held under insultingly cavalier circumstances, produced no culprits or suspects but somehow managed to throw suspicion on everyone from the men who pulled her out of the water to her drunken suicidal fiancée and even her own mother…

A talking point for all and sundry from the highest society paragon to the lowliest street trash, her death produced ever-more scandalous revelations and groundless lewd rumours – all scrupulously explored by Geary – over the next few years, but the case remains unsolved still…

The Saga of the Bloody Benders began in largely unsettled Kansas, during the period immediately following the American Civil War, when a family of German-speaking immigrants settled near the Osage Trail. There they built a General Store-&-Hotel equidistant between the nascent townships of Cherry Vale, Parsons and Thayer.

By the time they vanished four years later, provably ten but probably many, many more travellers and settlers had been robbed and murdered. Thereafter, the insalubrious Benders simply vanished from the sight of man…

Geary, with supreme style and dry wit, presents the facts and the best of the rumours in his inimitable style to create yet another unforgettable masterpiece of Gothic whimsy.

The Case of Madeleine Smith focused on the true and scandalous secret affair between Emile L’Anglier, a low-born French clerk, and prim, proper, eminently respectable Miss Madeleine Smith, daughter of a wealthy Scottish merchant.

The slow poisoning of the Gallic Romeo led to a notorious trial in the 19th century and the eventual verdict shocked everyone and satisfied nobody…

The entrancing chronicle of carnage and venality concludes with the epic account of The Murder of Abraham Lincoln, covering the 62 days from 4th March to May 4th 1865, when actor John Wilkes Booth and a band of like-minded Confederate diehards schemed to murder the President (and other Northern politicians they held responsible for the destruction of the South), and how their wild plot came to startling, implausible fruition…

Following the Inauguration Ceremony for his second Term of Office, the normally fatalistic and security-disparaging President Lincoln was troubled by unease, disquiet and dreams of assassination. They might have been possibly generated by the sack-full of death threats stashed away by his Secretary John Hay.

Elsewhere, Secessionist sympathiser Booth was planning a blow for revenge and personal immortality, but increasingly found his co-conspirators a disappointing bunch. Driven and desperate, he persevered for his cause…

All the many players are scrutinised in Geary’s careful examination, with the peculiar circumstances that left Lincoln vulnerable counterbalanced by insights and minutiae provided into his less-than-fanatical nemeses.

Only one of the many assassinations planned by the Secessionist cabal came to anything, and following that foul deed, grisly death-watch and post mortem, Geary’s depiction of the bold but inept manhunt which followed is capped here by Booth’s satisfyingly dramatic end, leaving nothing but the artist’s masterful summing up to ask the questions nobody has answered yet and leave us all with the certain knowledge that this too is a murder still largely unexplained if not unsolved…

These compelling cold cases are a perfect example of how graphic narrative can be so much more than simplistic fantasy entertainment, and such merrily morbid murder masterpieces as these should be mandatory reading for every mystery addict and crime collector.

Such seductive storytelling, erudite argument and audacious drawing produce an irresistible dash and verve which makes for unforgettable reading: Geary is a unique talent in the comic industry, as much for his style as his subject matter and methodology in telling tales. Always presenting both facts and the theories – contemporary and modern – with chilling graphic precision, captivating clarity and devastating dry wit, he attacks criminology’s greatest mysteries with a force and power even Oliver Stone would envy, and every true crime podcaster should admire…
© 1997-2007, 2015 Rick Geary.

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Whiteout volume 1 & volume 2: Melt – Definitive Editions


By Greg Rucka & Steve Lieber & various (Oni Press)
ISBN: 978-1-932664-70-6 (TPB vol 1) 978-1-932664-71-3 (TPB vol 2) 978-1-620104-48-4 (TPB compendium)

When done right there’s no artistic medium which can better depict the myriad intricacies of a murder-mystery than the comic strip.

These superb and seminal slices of crime fiction were the 2D debut of novelist Greg Rucka and saw up-&-coming artist Steve Lieber achieve his full illustrative potential in a gripping chiller set in a world where, despite appearances, nothing is simply black and white…

Originally released in 1998 as a 4-part miniseries from Oni Press, Whiteout introduced disgraced Deputy U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, suffering banishment to the ends of the Earth – generally known as McMurdo Station, Antarctica – following a tremendous and unforgivable screw-up during her Stateside duties.

Seamlessly filling in crucial background detail as it swiftly progresses, we learn Antarctica is an international “Neutral Zone” co-managed by the USA, Britain, Russia, Argentina, Chile, Australia and other nations. Here, mineral exploitation is forbidden by treaty, military weapons are proscribed and there are 400 men to every woman. Antarctica is a place where all Man’s basest instincts are curtailed by official accord – or at least that’s the global party line…

In the cold and isolated outpost Stetko doesn’t go out of her way to adapt, settle in or make friends. This a place where few people stay for more than a few months, whether they’re involved with the military, explorers, scientists or even dubious business types.

It’s dull drudgery all the way… but that ends when Carrie is called out to examine a body on the ice…

The face has been horrendously removed from the brittle corpse but the remote surroundings are a mess, with multiple deep core-samples removed from the frozen wastes. Stetko wouldn’t even be involved if the body hadn’t been clad in a parka with American flags on it. Even after prying the cadaver loose from the ice, she has to wait days for it to thaw enough before the camp doctor everyone calls Furry can begin an autopsy.

More worryingly, further investigation reveals the international research expedition was supposed to comprise five men: two Americans, a Briton, an Argentinean and an Austrian. Where and who are the other four?

Sole friendly face Furry is having little luck with the body. Somebody has employed an ice hammer to make sure identification is impossible, but the diligent doc gets enough from the remains of the feet to fax off prints to the U.S. Eventually, details come back and Stetko starts searching for the killer of American citizen Alexander Keller… who is NOT one of the research team at all…

Interviewing the pilot who ferried the team out generates no leads, and days are wasted checking other bases by radio. Moreover, time is running out. With True Winter coming, most camps are preparing to shut down: ferrying all but the most essential staff back to civilisation until a slightly more hospitable Spring makes life on the ice survivable again. Once “Winter-over” begins, the killer will be impossible to find…

When she gets a call back from British-administered Victoria Station that two of the missing team are there, Carrie catches her first break by hitching on a flight ferrying Australian pilot John Haden to his next gig. Despite his easy charm and manner, Carrie knows something is not right about him…

Rendezvousing with officious administrator Lily Sharpe, Carrie refuses to wait out another impending storm. Eventually, both women venture out onto the ice to find the outlying cabin of the missing men. As they enter, they’re attacked by an axe-wielding masked man who has just killed both of her suspects in the same way Keller was dispatched…

Giving chase into the storm, Carrie is overpowered and her vital guide-wire cut. Lost in a binding whiteout with the temperature drastically dropping by the second, she is going to die mere feet from safety and will not be found for months… or at all…

As Sharpe recovers and follows, Stetko has, with Herculean determination and a deal of sheer luck, found a temporary sanctuary where she is safe if no longer sound. She never will be again…

Lost in delirium and suppressed memories, Carrie almost fights her way free from her last-minute rescuer but is at last taken to the Station’s infirmary. When fit enough to travel, the Marshal is ferried back to McMurdo by the mysterious Lily who reveals that the two remaining suspects have been spotted on the ice at Amundsen-Scott base.

As much through anger and resentment, at her boss’ insistence Carrie, with Sharpe in tow, heads after them. On reaching the far station she receives an astounding surprise on spotting “dead man” Keller in the canteen…

Sharpe, meanwhile, has the last two suspects. Or at least, their bloody, battered remains…

Keller eludes the Marshal and lies hidden in Sharpe’s plane, where he finds her gun. According to the Antarctica Treaty, all weapons are banned on the jointly-administered continent, but that’s far from being the British woman’s biggest secret sin…

Everything kicks into high gear as Keller and hidden allies mercilessly strike back before the mystery is exposed and murky motives are revealed as the stunning conclusion reveals just how dangerous trust can be in a land which scours the heart and soul every minute of every day…

Smart, cynical and intoxicatingly devious, this superb fair-play murder mystery was one of the best comics crime capers in a generation, and promptly spawned a sequel.  In Whiteout Rucka & Lieber created a powerful and determined truth-seeker wedded to a ferociously evocative and utterly distinct milieu in which to prove her worth.

Riding a wave of critical acclaim, writer and artist reunited for searing sequel Melt: another 4-issue miniseries released by Oni Press from September 1999 to February 2000 before being gathered into its own graphic novel compilation.

This dark, bleak tale begins with a quick body-bestrewn history lesson on Antarctica, from the deadly duel between Scott and Amundsen and following frantic scurry – and brief brush wars – by a host of nations hungry to possess the territory. That ceased in 1961, when Cold War caution and the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction resulted in the Antarctic Treaty.

This landmark pact saw the region designated a neutral area reserved for purely scientific research: one where all military activity was strictly prohibited.

Antarctica is still a bizarre Neutral Zone co-managed by many nations, where mineral and commercial exploitation is completely forbidden. At least officially…

In this follow-up fable, US Marshal Stetko is recuperating in New Zealand when the American embassy drags her in just so a CIA spook named James can tell her she’s going back to the ice – voluntarily or not.

The Agency monitors chatter and has discovered that a Russian science station has been destroyed by an explosion, with the loss of all 14 personnel. They believe it was no accident. Overruling Stetko’s arguments about jurisdiction, the Feds tell her she’s going to investigate, or “offer help, in the spirit of the Treaty” because – despite her naive beliefs – every nation represented officially present in Antarctica has weapons stockpiled there – even the “good guy” Americans – and Tayshetskaya Base was just such an armoury/staging ground for potential conflicts…

Weathering a tirade of threats and discounting a wealth of promised bribes, Carrie soon finds herself on a plane heading due south. At the burned-out site of the base she’s greeted – if not welcomed – by her Russian opposite number Pyotr Danilovich and his emergency team. The harassed investigator studiously knows nothing and is severely disquieted when Stetko points out that one of the burned bodies from the “accident” has a bullet hole in it.

Of course, according to the Treaty, all weapons are banned, but this isn’t like anything she’s seen before…

Leaving Pyotr desperately trying to convince himself that it’s all just a mistake and accident, Carrie wanders through burned-out wreckage and plunges through the flooring into a hidden room stuffed with crates of small arms. In a corner are three empty crates marked with the tri-foil – international symbol for radiation. The Russians had stored nukes here – and they’re gone now…

Far away, six killers race away on snowmobiles with their prizes, but have no appreciation or understanding of the ice. After crashing into a hidden crevasse there are only five…

Back at Tayshetskaya, a mysterious Russian arrives. Captain Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuchin claims to be Carrie’s official back-up and liaison: tasked by his government with giving her all the assistance she needs. He disarmingly and disingenuously adds that he’s also there to quash any embarrassing scandal…

He confirms that the killer thieves are former Speznaz: mercenaries who have seized the nukes for a client and will smuggle them out over the ice rather than through more reasonable channels. After checking in with her own bosses, Carrie is told to get them – and proof of the Russian government’s treaty-breaking – if she ever wants to leave Antarctica…

Using satellite tech, Stetko and Kuchin narrow down the mercs’ current location and set off after them on skis, but the mutually suspicious manhunters almost die in a booby trap and are buried alive in a crevasse…

Forced to trust each other for the duration, they brilliantly extricate themselves to resume the chase. They have an unsuspected ally: brutal remorseless Antarctica is gradually eroding the confidence and capability of the fleeing killers: now reduced to four cold, slowly dying men. Sadly, the ice plays no favourites and tries its damnedest to kill Carrie and her stoic companion too…

After surviving a huge storm, Carrie wakes up alone and – suspicions sadly confirmed – sets off after duplicitous Kuchin. She does not know the cagy Russian has been captured by their quarry and faces a most unpleasant end, but neither the mercs nor their intended victim realise the US Marshal has found their lost and flash-frozen comrade and now possesses the very best in freelance weaponry and camouflage…

Escalating into an inevitable, spectacularly bloody climax, this grim, gritty and stunningly gripping thriller confirms Carrie Stetko’s guts, resolve and sheer smarts in a devastating display of swift, effective, problem-solving violence and propensity to do the right thing no matter what the cost…

Sharp, hard-boiled and savagely ultra-cool, this magnificent cold-hearted intercontinental caper was a sublime second outing for one of the best female crimebusters in comics and remains a wonderful experience for mature readers to while away cold, lonely nights.

In 2017, these chilly classics were reissued in a classy compendium edition which sadly did nothing to offset the appalling 2009 movie adaptation that had followed the original comic’s release. Just remember Films are not the intended ended result of comics. Read the stories as intended and have as much fun as you can in your own head.

… And agitate for the returns of Carrie Stetko…

™ & © 1998, 1999 2007 Greg Rucka. All rights reserved.

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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.