Category: Mature Reading

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Bread & Wine – An Erotic Tale of New York


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.