Category: Mature Reading

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The Bozz Chronicles


By David Michelinie & Bret Blevins, with John Ridgway, Al Williamson & various (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-79851-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

During the 1980s the American comics scene experienced an astounding proliferation of new titles and companies in the wake of the creation of the Direct Sales Market. With publishers now able to firm-sale straight to specialised, dedicated-retail outlets rather than overprint and accept returned copies from general magazine vendors, the industry was able to risk and support less generic titles whilst authors, artists and publishers could experiment without losing their shirts.

At the height of the subsequent publishing explosion and in response to a wave of upstart innovators, Marvel developed its own line of creator-owned properties: launching a host of idiosyncratic, impressive series in a variety of formats under the watchful, benevolent and exceptionally canny eye of Editor Archie Goodwin. The delightfully disparate line was dubbed Epic Comics and reshaped the industry.

One of the most significant hits was a winsomely engaging blend of fantasy, criminology and urban myth with a beautifully simple core concept: “Sherlock Holmes from Outer Space”. Even that painfully broad pitch-line does the series it became an unforgivable disservice…

The Bozz Chronicles was – and is – so much more. It became one of Epic’s earliest hits and sensations, and the reasons it never continued beyond its initial 6-issue run (December 1985 to November 1986) had nothing to do with poor sales…

The mesmerising mix of Victoriana, super-science and sorcery might even be considered as an early precursor if not progenitor of the visual form of the literary genre K. W. Jeter dubbed “steampunk” in 1987…

Preceded with a Foreword from Brandon Graham, Dave Michelinie’s self-deprecating Introduction ‘Blame it on Spielberg’, and fond reminiscences from originating illustrator Bret Blevins, an amazing moment in comics history repeats itself as ‘The Bozz Chronicles’ opens on Mandy Flynn. She is a fiercely independent young woman plying her trade – described then and now as the World’s Oldest – in the sooty, sordid environs of London in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Saucy, sassy, sensitive and lovely, she is bringing her latest “brief acquaintance” up to her attic abode when the incipient physical transaction is suddenly curtailed by discovery of a strange-looking foreigner trying to commit suicide in her rooms…

As her toff flees in terror, Mandy tries to talk down the intruder and realises just how strange he truly is: eight feet tall, pale yellow in complexion, with a hairless, pointy head. He is also gentle, exceptionally well-spoken, has a long tail and can fly…

Six months pass. Mandy and the creature she calls Bozz are doing exceptionally well. He still claims to be from another world and certainly acts like no human she has ever met: he cannot tell lies, communicates with animals, constantly wanders around naked and absorbs like a sponge every scrap of knowledge she can provide for him through books and journal and newspapers.

Bozz misses his home: a far-distant world of benevolent intelligences he has no chance of ever returning to: so much so that he was trying to end himself as much through boredom as loneliness. Mandy’s brilliant idea to keep him alive was to engage his prodigious intellect in puzzles. She set them up as consulting detectives based in the less than fashionable Maracot Road, using the proceeds to better her own hand-to-mouth existence in the process. The only problem is that when no challenging cases manifest, Bozz’s thoughts instantly return to ending it all…

Thankfully, just as she is preparing to hide all the sharp objects again, a truly unique mystery knocks on the door and the secretary of Lord Giles Morgan requests their help. According to the Press, Pamela Grieves’ employer – and prospective Prime Minister – recently escaped an assassination attempt. However, the loyal amanuensis was with him when it happened and claims he did not survive. In fact, after having made further discreet inquiries, Miss Grieves found her master had in fact been dead for some three years prior to the attack…

As Bozz excitedly accepts the commission, Mandy is convinced they are dealing with a madwoman, but when their client is destroyed by a bolt of lightning as soon as she leaves their office the retired demimondaine is forced to think again…

Naturally the inquiry agents’ first step is to interview Lord Giles and although the shady politician proves no help at all, Bozz gleans much useful information from the caged bird in Morgan’s study. Soon they are on the trail of an aristocratic secret society utilising vast funds and weird science to resurrect the dead in pursuit of a deadly and regressive political and economic agenda (so hard not to comment satirically here!)…

Sadly, even the alien outcast’s uncanny powers prove insufficient to stop the schemers, but Mandy has gifts of her own and beguiles a rowdy American former prize-fighter she finds in a bar to assist in the climactic final confrontation.

Besotted, punch-drunk Salem Hawkshaw then joins the detectives to handle any future physical exigencies that might occur, but despite everything he sees is never convinced his big, bemused boss is anything other than a crazy circus freak…

The new colleagues are all painfully aware that their sudden success has brought them to the attention of Scotland Yard’s most privileged operative and the notorious trio have barely caught their breath before Inspector Colin Fitzroy comes calling, deviously offering them a case the police have no interest in.

Apparently a drunk has seen demons in Park Lane…

As the shamefully-employed scion of Britain’s richest family continues trying to impress the ravishing Miss Flynn, further arcane incidents occur, ‘Raising Hell’ in the capital’s swankiest district. Before long the consulting detectives find troubled Samantha Townes, whose husband has fallen foul of the vilest black magic and his own gullibility…

Wealthy Inspector Fitzroy has more pressing problems. A rash of exceedingly orderly murders has turned up odd artefacts defying explanation by any expert Scotland Yard can muster: things that cannot possibly have been built by any craftsman on Earth…

In ‘The Tomorrow Man’ (inked by Al Williamson) a trip to the funfair does little to alleviate Bozz’s boredom, but does lead to the genteel gullible giant being gulled: lured away by a wily pack of street children who use his powers and naivety to perpetrate a crime spree.

Later, when the shady show’s owner tries to kidnap Bozz for his freak attractions, the ultimately unsuccessful attack leaves the alien blind. The kids’ ringleader Oliver brings him to underworld surgeon Dr. Paine – who runs a subterranean clinic as a sideline to pay for his researches into time travel. He sees in the stranger a perfect opportunity to advance the causes of science…

Redeemed by Bozz’s unflagging trust, Oliver at last realises the enormity of his betrayal and fetches Mandy and Salem to effect a rescue, but by the time they arrive, chronal chaos is erupting everywhere…

As engaging and enthusiastic as the tales have been until this point, ‘Were-Town!’ is (at least for history-buffs and especially Londoners) a truly stand-out moment in the series, as the ineffably marvellous British veteran John Ridgway stepped in to illustrate a pithy, punchy deep midwinter tale disclosing a hint of Mandy’s past whilst introducing her reprehensible absentee father Egan Thorpe.

We’ve always whined in Britain about how Us and Ours are represented in American productions and, despite the obviously strenuous and diligent researches Michelinie & Blevins undertook, frequently the tone of their Bozz Chronicles often smacks more of Hollywood than Cricklewood. It’s not something non-Brits will even notice, but for us aging “Cockerney Sparrers” the differences are there to be seen… and felt.

Such is not the case (as gratefully acknowledged by the creators themselves in the respective, respectful Introductions) when Ridgway applied his meticulous line and copious pictorial acumen – gleaned from decades drawing a variety of British strips for everything from Commando Picture Library to Warrior to 2000AD or Doctor Who and The Famous Five – to a genuinely spooky, photographically authentic tale of deranged artists, dastardly squires and infernal paintings coming to unholy life in snow-capped rural wilds of Southeast England…

Michelinie & Blevins reunited for ‘The Cobblestone Jungle’ as Inspector Fitzroy again calls upon Bozz & Co: impelled as much by his lusty fascination with Amanda as the demands of an African king who needs the assistance of the British Empire if he is to guarantee a steady flow of diamonds from his equatorial satrapy…

Apparently, a white man had stolen the tribe’s sacred jewel and brought it to his hidden jungle playground in London. Thanks to some canny legwork from little Oliver, the detective trio track the bounder, but nobody anticipated the filched gewgaw emitting destructive death-rays…

After a spectacular battle high above the city, Bozz ends the threat, but his biggest surprise comes when the grateful king asks to thank him personally and reveals a millennia-old connection to Bozz’s extraterrestrial race…

For Mandy, Bozz, Salem and Fitzroy it all culminates in a desperate trek to the Dark Continent in search of ‘King Solomon’s Spaceship’ and the achievement of the marooned alien’s most fervent desires… until a gang of German raiders and Mandy’s own cynical self-interest ruins everything…

Rounded out by sketches and preliminary designs in a superb ‘Bonus Artwork and Cover Gallery’ from Blevins and closing with an effusive ‘Afterword by John Ridgway’, this is a magnificent moment in comics collaboration which will soon hopefully reclaim its place at the forefront of fantasy fables.
The Bozz Chronicles © 1985, 1986, 2015 David Michelinie. Introduction © 2015 David Michelinie. Foreword © 2015 Brandon Graham. Afterword © 2015 John Ridgway. All rights reserved.

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Big Ugly


By Ellice Weaver (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-66-0 (pocket HB)

We’ve all experienced something of an interpersonal revolution thanks to Covid-19 and the measures used to counter it, as well as the undeclared global depression and rising functional poverty in developed world that followed. However, it’s wise to remember that relationships between friends and especially family members are – and always have been – complex, varied and nothing like fiction would have us believe…

Most folk lead ordinary lives with forgettable days, minor affections and grudges and lots of tedium and bills. All days and everydays are not grand affairs and soaring missions undertaken by grand heroes and threatened by Machiavellian villains. Cradle to grave, it’s just carrying on until you finally stop. We grown-ups call it “life” and Mel is utterly mired in it.

Her existence is about plodding on, making ends meet, being underappreciated in her job and just getting by, but her mental and emotional loads take a big hit when brother Matt hits a pothole in his dreams and moves into her spare room.

Soon everything that was annoying and unsettling about their shared past together is slipping out, resurfacing and occupying her bandwidth: his unrealistic expectations, daft schemes, lack of attention and selfishness. It’s just like when they were kids all over again…

Mel might have been unhappy, but at least she was settled and now it’s all Upset, Change and Challenge, and Matt hasn’t let the passage of time mellow him at all. He’s no less obnoxious and pig-headed than when he first left home. Still, he has his good sides too, and it’s some comfort to feel kinship rekindled and re-share experiences. Some moments even afford a smattering of long-delayed clarity, but it’s obvious they have very different ways of being grown-ups.

They haven’t quite got to the stage where they can talk about Dad yet though, but it is good to have someone to share her decidedly rare medical condition – or perhaps rather unique kind of hypochondria? Above all, Mark is Family. Mel might be permanently peeved with him, but who else could she share such intimate concerns with. There’s certainly no one else ready to help the way Matt is…

… And thus the situation quietly slowly spirals, as Matt infuriatingly settles in, expecting and encouraging his sister to change whilst sinking back into his old selfish, foolishly ambitious patterns of behaviour and daydreams of creative superstardom. He even brings in his weird new girlfriend Jill – the one Mel technically introduced him to…

When he gets Mel to drive him and Jill across the country to a ridiculous podcast convention things get both painfully honest and truly revelatory…

Simultaneously placid and tense, painfully pedestrian and infuriatingly abstract, this darkly comedic interaction is a “Post Coming-of-Age” tale of ordinary people, afflicted like we all are with the binary condition most adults experience: the feeling that life’s leaving you behind whilst you are convincing yourself that you’ve never even caught up in the first place…

Born in Bath and based in Bristol, Ellice Weaver became a freelance illustrator after graduating from The University of West England and moving to Berlin. Past clients include The Guardian, Washington Post, New Yorker, The Times and Transport for London. A compulsive storyteller, her first graphic novel Something City was released in 2017 and awarded “Indie Comic of the Year”.

Her second full narrative outing, Big Ugly is a slyly entrancing, graphically compelling observational essay on expectation – familial, personal and professional – and how it can founder on the forge of humdrum subsistence, daily disappointment and diminishing dreams. It also reveals just how much early days and sibling support (or not) can shape and affirm, and at what price…
© Ellice Weaver, 2023. All rights reserved.

If you’re London based/adjacent – or just a bit keen – there’s a launch party for Big Ugly on 22nd June. It’s at Jam Bookshop in Hackney Rd E2 7NX and launches an art exhibition that will run until July 9th.

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The Left Bank Gang


By Jason, coloured by Hubert, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-742-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

Jason is secretly John Arne Saeterrøy: born in Molde, Norway in 1965 and an overnight international cartoon superstar since 1995 when his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won that year’s Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize).

He won another Sproing in 2001 for the series Mjau Mjau and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels. Now a global star among the cognoscenti he has won seven major awards from such disparate regions as France, Slovakia and the USA.

Now his latest novella is released, rife with his signature surreality: populated with cinematic, darkly comic anthropomorphs and featuring more bewitching ruminations on his favourite themes of relationships and loneliness, viewed as ever through a charmingly macabre cast of bestial movie archetypes and lost modern chumps.

In this full-colour tract – originally released in France as Hemingway – Jason sets his quirkily-informed imagination into literary overdrive: postulating what might have been at a moment of intense intellectual cross-pollination.

It’s Paris in the 1920s: émigrés F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway are all struggling to make their marks on the world – and most especially on the other artistic Men and Women of Destiny congregated in the enclave of creative excellence that has grown up around the Latin Quarter. Wannabe cartoonists, their own meagre efforts seem paltry and trivial in comparison to the masterful comic books produced by Faulkner or Dostoyevsky, whilst true artists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Man Ray all seem to have no trouble with their medium or message…

Worst of all, Scott thinks something is bothering Zelda: she might even be cheating on him…

The disaffected Young Turks are uniformly plagued by nightmares of the past and frustrated dreams of mediocre futures with everyday life relentlessly coming at them demanding vile money just to stay alive and keep on fruitlessly toiling.

… And then Hemingway says it: why not just rob a bank?

Blending literary pretention and modern creative mythology with the iconography and ironic bombast of Reservoir Dogs is a stroke of genius no one else could pull off. As always, this visual/verbal bon mot unfolds via Jason’s beguiling, sparse-dialogued, pantomimic progressions with enchantingly formal page layouts rendered in the familiar, minimalist evolution of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style; solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity augmented here by a stunning palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, always probing the nature of “human-ness” by using the beastly and unnatural to ask persistent and pertinent questions. Although the clever sight-gags are less prominent here his repertory company of “funny-animal” characters still uncannily depict the subtlest emotions with devastating effect, proving again just how good a cartoonist he is.

This wry mis-history lesson is strongly suggested for adults but makes us all to look at the world through wide-open childish eyes. Jason is instantly addictive and a creator every serious fan of the art form should move to the top of the Must-Have list.
All characters, stories and artwork © 2007 Editions de Tournon-Carabas/Jason. All rights reserved.

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Mingus


By Flavio Massarutto & Squaz, translated by Nanette McGuiness (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-309-7 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-310-3

Charles Mingus Jr. was born on April 22nd 1922 in Nogales, Arizona. He was a musical prodigy perpetually held back and frustrated by the response of other people to the colour of his skin. “The Angry Man of Jazz” died in January 1979, having battled all his life whilst composing and performing some of the most groundbreaking music of all time. When you hear some you will either love it or loathe it.

That’s the facts. Anything else you need can be found on Wikipedia or in countless books written about – or by – him…

That kind of dry data isn’t what this celebration is about. Instead, journalist and author Flavio Massarutto and magazine illustrator/educator/graphic novelist Pasquale Todisco – AKA Squaz (Toutes les obsessions de Victor, Diabolik, Pandemonio) – have successfully captured the feeling and flavour of the man and his music, crafting visual cuts of key moments to make a conceptual album of his embattled existence and lasting legacy.

‘Track 1: Eclipse’ focuses on 1940 and a Hollywood backlot where extras in a cheap jungle picture discuss the appalling conditions in their other job. Once more, Charlie advocates merging their union with a white one…

The man is driven. Nothing in life keeps him from the world of words and music inside his head for long…

‘Track 2: Pithecanthropus Erectus’ finds him in New York City in 1956, meeting music critic Nat Hentoff and sharing his ideology and inspiration. It’s taken from the latest release for the astounding Charlie Mingus Jazz Workshop. Two years later and jobbing composer and film scorer Mingus almost yields to commercial pressures in ‘Track 3: Nostalgia in Times Square’…

An activist and resister all his life, the small victories against institutionalised racism start to build as the performer makes waves at the Antibes Juan-les-pins Festival 1960 in ‘Track 4: What Love’. The seduction of the senses crafted throughout comes in waves of limited-colour palette comic snippets, blending reportage with fantasy sequences and is here augmented by Squaz’s reproductions of classic Mingus record sleeve designs.

Here The Clown, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Dynasty and Blues and Roots bring us to the height of the Civil Rights revolution as ‘Track 5: Fables of Faubus’ depicts the response to Arkansas State Governor Orval Faubus closing schools to black students…

With war officially declared, the relentlessly impassioned and driven musician pushed ever deeper into music and social justice before ‘Track 6: Self-portrait in Three Colors’ details how it all proved too much. However, after referring himself to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric assessment, Mingus was caught in racist red tape and only barely escaped an illegal lobotomy…

One of the jazz man’s greatest sins in the eyes of supremacists was miscegenation. Mingus’ relationships with white women (he married two of them) was apparently fed by a drive to unite eternally divided polarities and is addressed in metaphor via ‘Track 7: The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady’, after which ‘Track 8: Passions Of A Man’ jumps to the end days when inevitable fame and success were marred by declining health.

Unable to perform on his beloved bass, Mingus moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico for treatment and ultimately surrendered to “Lou Gehrig’s Disease” (ALS). The hallucinogenic end is pictured with grace and wonder before a posthumous scattering of his ashes in the Ganges, all seen through the eyes of his widow Susan Mingus (née Graham)…

The lasting importance of the man is seen from a child’s perspective in ‘Track 9: Epitaph’ before the soul of Mingus is displayed in ‘Bonus Track: Sophisticated Lady’. Harking back to 1972, it shows a true and perfect moment as a concert at Yale is disrupted by a hoax bomb threat. With the hall evacuated and cops trying to hustle him out, Mingus ignores everything and keeps on playing…

Accompanying the conceptual wild ride, an author’s Afterword shares Massarutto’s take on the project and this volume also includes suggestions for further enjoyment in what ‘To Read’, ‘To Hear’ and ‘To See’…

Just like its subject matter, Mingus follows a radical muse, eschews fact and formula and takes us into the heart and soul of a giant, both scary and almost beyond understanding.

This intensely personal assessment and interpretation is less a biography and more a heartfelt paean of appreciation, channelling and exploring the hard, harsh tone of troubled times where talented, dogged souls fought for recognition and survival in a world determined to exploit and consume them.
© 2021 Coconino Press. © 2021 Flavio Massarutto, Squaz. © 2023 NBM for the English version.

Mingus will be published in August 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats so for more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Darkly She Goes


By Hubert & Vincent Mallié, coloured by Bruno Tatti & Clémentine Guivarc’h: translated by L Benson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-313-4 (HB) eISBN 978-1-68112-314-1

Hubert Boulard was born on January 21st 1971 in Saint-Renan, Brittany. Graduating from the École régionale des beaux-arts d’Angers in 1994, he began his far too short comics career as  artist for seasoned pros such as Éric Ormond, Yoann, Éric Corberyan, Paul Gillon and others. He was also highly regarded as a colourist, and in 2002 became a triple threat by writing for many top artists.

He began with Legs de l’alchimiste – limned by Herve Tanquerelle – followed by Yeaux Verts for long-term collaborator Zanzim and Miss Pas Touche/Miss Don’t Touch Me – rendered by Kerascoët and many more. Awards piled up as he steered 14 internationally renowned and celebrated series, including Les Ogres-Dieux and Monsieur désire?

An activist by nature, in 2013 Hubert helmed and contributed to groundbreaking collective graphic volume Les Gens normaux, paroles lesbiennes gay bi trans: released to coincide with France’s national debate on legalizing same sex marriage and a factor in the proposal becoming law…

His last book was with artist Zanzim: posthumously published in June 2020 soon after his death. Still unavailable in English, Peau d’homme comedically explores gender and sexuality at the height of Europe’s Europe’s medieval religious intolerance and social stratification.

Hubert frequently utilised such eras of “blood and iron” as a backdrop, and Darkly She Goes again confronts modern perceptions and standards via an adventure-based scenario readily recognisable to adults and children alike.

Epic in scope and spectacular in content, the tale is illustrated by Vincent Mallié: a two volume saga entitled Ténébreuse. It was published after the author’s passing and is combined here into one monumental tome.

Born in Paris in 1973, Mallié initially studied economics and history before joining an atelier in 1992 to learn about comics and graphic design. Whilst working as a storyboarder in 1996, he created – with schoolmate Joël Parnotte – a short story that grew into the popular Hong Kong Triad series.

They followed up with sci fi romp Les Aquanautes before Vincent collaborated with Jér?me Félix on L’Arche (2003-2007). Later endeavours include Le Grande Mort with Régis Loisel (2007-2019), reviving and enhancing established serial La Quête de l’Oiseau du Temps (with Loisel & Serge le Tendre) and more.

His staggeringly potent imagery here is augmented by the painterly gifts of Bruno Tatti and latterly Clémentine Guivarc’h, combining to build a painfully authentic feudal world where blood and mud and steel and sinew believably share space with fantastic beasts, sorcery and deviltry of all kinds…

The story opens as disgraced knight Arzhur drunkenly clashes again with former comrades, before being patched up by his inexplicably faithful squire Youenn. Despite the warrior’s best efforts to destroy himself, his life is about to change radically as he has been singled out by a trio of cunning witches…

They have a quest for Arzhur to fulfil: a noble deed that can’t help but expiate his past sins and redeem his reputation – maybe even restore his fortune too. All he must do is save a captive princess from imprisonment in a dark, dank dungeon. Fame, wealth and honour can be his again…

Sadly, the salvation- and honour-obsessed paladin is being played for a sucker, and after blazing in and butchering a dragon, discovers the fair maiden is very much there of her own free will. In fact, Arzhur has slaughtered Princess Islen’s protector, a noble creature keeping her from being seduced and suborned by three mystic hags. They seek to use the captive exile’s inherent power for their own dark designs…

As the fallen knight escorts his unwilling prize back to her father King Goulvan, her story – couched in grief-stricken tones and fiery terms – reveals how Islen’s supernatural mother Meliren was once the undisputed Queen of Evil. She raised a simple man to the highest estate in the land but his elevation could not offset her dark nature or schemes. The unholy marriage spawned a child, but their warring natures soon drove them apart and war broke out over custody of the princess. Thanks to a magic sword and Islen herself, Meliren was destroyed, but after her defeat, her mystic forces transferred to her child, manifested as a terrifying Butterfly Crown and ability to control beasts.

For the safety of all Islen removed herself from the world but the temptation of her legacy meant that ambition and fear gripped all who knew of her…

When Arzhur brings her home, instead of royal joy and rich rewards, he is cast into a dungeon whilst the King rapidly tries to marry his problem child off – preferably to someone living far, far away. Meanwhile, his second wife – fearing for her own son’s claim to the throne – seeks to convince the populace that the demon child is better off dead…

Faced with such appalling betrayal, the princess angrily taps into her power and the three witches see their dark design falling into place…

With the castle under siege by the animal kingdom, Islen liberates Arzhur and they flee, carrying with them the magic sword and invincible armour Meliren gave Goulvan, blissfully unaware of the tragic human cost of their escape…

With Clémentine Guivarc’h providing colour-art assistance, Part Two begins as the fugitives put as much distance as possible between them and the kingdom, even as the three witches actively seek to push Islen further into anger and depravity. Loathing, passion and duty have already led the princess and fallen knight into a carnal mistake and every close call with pursuers pushes her deeper into the seductive coils of sorcerous forces.

Their shaky plan is to hide in Arzhur’s rural homeland, but all too soon, the burden of the knight’s original failure and disgrace, plus his sordid past with most of the region’s young women, makes them a target of self-righteous paladins ready to believe the salacious slanders of the whispering witches.

Their tenuous sanctuary becomes a death trap when Goulvan’s armies invade and the witches possess Islen to complete their decades long plot. Ultimately, the princess must fight for her soul – and perhaps true love – in a sorcerous duel revealing how little anyone can understand – or trust – parents and learn that in life it’s always a case of devils taking the hindmost…

An epic fantasy and deadly dark fairy tale for adults, Darkly She Goes turns narrative conventions on their heads in a sharp and wry exploration of heroism, honour and self-reliance that is the perfect antidote for anodyne and saccharine bedtime stories.

Ténébreuse © 2021-2022 Dupuis – Mallié/Hubert. All rights reserved. © 2014 NBM For the English translation.

Darkly She Goes will be published on June 14th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats so for more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Beauty


By Hubert & Kerascoët, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-315-8 (Album TPB) eISBN 978-1-56163-897-0 (Kindle), 978-1-56163-896-3 (Epub), 978-1-56163-895-6 (PDF)

French comics creator Hubert Boulard died suddenly on February 12th 2020. He is criminally unknown in the English-speaking world despite an astounding canon of wonderful work. Thanks to NBM, two more gems from his supremely enticing canon can now be added to your physical or digital bookshelf…

Technically this first fantastic, cunningly subversive fable is a re-release, having first crossed the linguistic divide way back in 2008, but its message has only increased in poignancy and potency since then…

Prior to establishing himself as mononymously revered “Hubert”, Boulard was born on January 21st 1971, in Brittany’s Saint-Renan. In 1994, on graduating from the École régionale des beaux-arts d’Angers, he began his comics career as an artist for such seasoned pros as Éric Ormond, Yoann, Éric Corberyan, Paul Gillon and more. Also highly regarded as a colourist, he morphed into a triple threat in 2002, and wrote strips for others.

He began with Legs de l’alchimiste – limned by Herve Tanquerelle – following with Yeaux Verts for long-term collaborator Zanzim and Miss Pas Touche (20th July 1922) illustrated with irrepressible panache by Kerascoët (married artistic collaborators Marie Pommepuy & Sébastien Cosset) and many others. Awards started piling up as he steered 14 separate series; many of them internationally renowned and celebrated, including Les Ogres-Dieux and Monsieur désire? An activist by nature, in 2013 he helmed and contributed to groundbreaking collective graphic tract Les Gens normaux, paroles lesbiennes gay bi trans: released to coincide with France’s national debate on legalizing same sex marriage and assuredly a factor in the measure becoming law…

His final book was with artist Zanzim: posthumously published in June 2020, and as yet unavailable in English. Peau d’homme is a comedy exploring gender and sexuality at the height of medieval European religious intolerance and social stratification, and I’m sure we’ll get that here in the fullness of time.

That era of “blood and iron” – and its fantasy potential – was frequently used by Hubert as a backdrop for his stories and here is utilised in a trenchant adult fairy tale revealing the cost of attraction and the dangers of wishing. Originally published in France between 2011 and 2014 in three volumes (Reine) Beauté is a deceptively witty and barbed parable following the many tribulations – and so few joys – of a homely peasant girl whose greatest wish is granted… and how it all lays low the mighty and destroys many kingdoms.

‘Wishes Granted’ introduces slow, unhappy Coddie: skivvy and household drudge in a rural mansion: teased by children and shunned by most adults. Her tedious, onerous duties include preparing all the fish the wealthy autocrats eat, so there’s also always something of an “atmosphere” around her. Despite being kind and gentle, it’s fair to say that she’s the kind of girl only her mother loves… although first son of the house Peter always pays attention every time he sneaks down to the kitchens for a stolen snack…

The scullion’s despondent misery seemingly ends when after years of leaving presents for the fairies, she accidentally frees one from a curse. Queen Mab is adamant about paying the debt incurred and casts a spell. Henceforth, although Coddie has not changed physically, all will see her as “the very idea of beauty in woman incarnate”…

The girl is too naive to realise that Mab has an agenda of her own or even to question exactly why the sprite was imprisoned in the first place, and trouble starts as soon as she reaches home. The women are astonished and envious and men who have ignored the drudge all her life now beg and plead and throw themselves at her: even attempting to kill each other to possess her. Even sweet pudgy Peter is enthralled…

When the male villagers form a mob to take her and the women try – and fail – to mar her loveliness, Coddie flees into the woods and is rescued/slash abducted by the Lord of the region. Young Otto locks her in his castle and makes her concubine. Coddie, unsurprisingly, doesn’t mind at all, even when he arbitrarily renames her “Beauty”…

Moreover, she can’t wait to make the villagers pay for how they treated her, both before and after her wish came true, and Mab reappears with a few suggestions…

Having driven Otto away with her demands for better and more opulent gifts and presents, Beauty pushes the manse itself into ruin and when a travelling artist tragically captures what he sees, the paintings and sketches catapulted her onto a global stage. As her image enflames the passions of lords and princes across the continent, knights start killing each other and regal overlord King Maxence of the Southern Kingdom and his top advisor/sister Princess Claudine intervene. Claudine immediately sees a strategic use for Beauty, but her scheme is thwarted when her brother falls uncontrollably under the commoner’s spell.

Second chapter ‘The Indecisive Queen’ details – with chilling echoes of Marie-Antoinette – how the kitchen girl inadvertently brings down two kingdoms as Max makes her his wife and mother of a child he cannot accept as his. Queen Beauty’s interference in state matters bankrupts the kingdom, decimates the nation’s cream of chivalry and drives the king into jealousy-fuelled madness and murder.

Moreover, the moment his great rival, archenemy and brother-in-law The Boar King of the Northern Kingdom claps eyes on Beauty, he too is seized by a mania to possess her and the resultant war destroys both nations…

Escaping with her un-ensorcelled and rather plain daughter Marine, Beauty resolves to have Mab revoke her wish in ‘Ordinary Mortals’ but the price the fairy demands is far too costly. Bonded to her child, Beauty is betrayed and sold to the Boar King: notional victor in the recent war. Allowing his wife Dagmar to know of his enslaved prizes seemed like a good idea, but soon the frenzy of possessing the fairy-touched treasure grips him and enrages his queen. Again death and death and destruction are the result – especially as Princess Claudine and Otto (now an unbeatable berserker knight) constantly harass and plague the victor’s occupying forces in advance of a full revolt and liberation…

Also a prisoner, Marine sets the final fall into motion by a simple demonstration of how to discern Coddie’s appearance under Beauty’s glamour, and the Boar King’s self-destructive behaviour escalates into overwhelming madness and inevitable catastrophe.

The child was born smart and when she learned to read, soon discovered the true history of Mab, albeit not soon enough to stop The Boar King again abducting mother and daughter (from his own citadel) and locking them way where only he could see them whilst letting the kingdoms doom and damn themselves…

Ultimately, Coddie and Marine break free and turn their attentions to stopping the true threat: fairies…

The blood-soaked saga ceases with a puckish ‘Epilogue’ set decades later, as some of those troublesome artworks of Beauty finally reach another almighty potentate in a distant land. He cannot believe or forget what he sees…

Smart, charmingly cynical and hugely engaging, the epic cautionary tale is sublimely realised by visual creators probably best known in the English-speaking world for Miss Don’t Touch Me and Joann Sfar & Lewis Trondheim’s Dungeon series. However, French phenomenon Kerascoët (joint pen name of married illustrators, comics & animation artists Marie Pommepuy & Sébastien Cosset) have generated a wealth of books for all ages including Malala’s Magic Pencil, I Walk with Vanessa, Beautiful Darkness, The Court Charade, I Forgive Alex, Paper Doll Artbook and more) to further delight the wide variety of grown-up readers everywhere.
Beauté © Dupuis, 2011-2013 by Hubert, Kerascoët. All rights reserved. © 2014 NBM For the English translation.

Beauty will be published on June 14th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

For more information and other great reads please go to http://www.nbmpub.com/

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From Headrack to Claude – Collected Gay Comics of Howard Cruse


By Howard Cruse (Nifty Kitsch Press/Northwest Press)
ISBN: 978-0-578-03251-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s long been an aphorism – if not an outright cliché – that Gay comics – can we be contemporary and say LGBTQIA+? – have long been the only place in the graphic narrative business to see real romance in all its joy, pain, glee and glory.

It’s still true: an artefact, I suppose, of a society seemingly obsessed with demarcating and separating sex and love as two utterly different and possibly even opposing principles and activities. I’d like to think that here in the 21st century – at least in the more sensible, civilised parts of it – we’ve outgrown the juvenile, judgemental, bad old days and can simply appreciate powerfully moving and/or funny comics about people of all sorts without any kind of preconception.

Sadly, that battle’s nowhere near won yet and in truth it all looks pretty bleak unless you’re a fundamentalist zealot or bigot. Hopefully, compendia such as this will aid the fight, if only we can get the other side to read them…

To facilitate that, after this archive was originally self-published in 2008 it was rendered fully digital – with updates and extra material – from those wonderful people at Northwest Press. Oh, and there’s an abundance of sex and swearing on view, so if you’re the kind of person liable to be upset by words and pictures of an adult nature (such as joyous, loving fornication between two people separated by age, wealth, social position and race who happily possess and constantly employ the same range of naughty bits on each other) or sly mockery of deeply-held, outmoded and ludicrous beliefs then best retreat and read something else.

In fact, just go away: you have no romance in your soul or love in your heart.

Howard Cruse (May 2nd 1944-November 26th 2019) enjoyed a remarkable cartooning career spanning decades that overlapped a number of key moments in American history and social advancement. Beginning as a hippy-trippy, counter-culture, Underground Comix star with beautifully drawn, witty, funny (not always the same thing in those days – or now, come to think of it) strips, his work evolved over years into a powerful voice for change in both sexual and race politics. Initially as strips in magazines but ultimately through such superb collections and Original Graphic Novels as Wendel and Stuck Rubber Baby: an examination of oppression, tolerance and freedoms in 1950s America.

Since then he has become a columnist, worked on other writers’ work, illustrated an adaptation of Jeanne E. Shaffer’s The Swimmer With a Rope In His Teeth and continued his own unique brand of cartoon commentary.

Born the son of a Baptist Minister in Birmingham, Alabama, Cruse grew up amid the instinctive race-based privilege and smouldering intolerance of the region’s segregationist regime: an atmosphere that shaped him on a primal level. In the late ‘60s, he escaped to Birmingham-Southern College to study Drama: graduating and winning a Shubert Playwriting Fellowship to Penn State University.

Campus life never really suited him and he dropped out in 1969. Returning to the South, he joined a loose crowd of fellow Birmingham Bohemians; allowing room to blossom as a creator. By 1971, Cruse was drawing a spectacular procession of strips for an increasingly hungry and growing crowd of eager admirers. Whilst working for a local TV station as both designer and children’s show performer, he created a kid’s newspaper strip about talking squirrels Tops & Button, and still found time to craft the utterly whimsical and bizarre tales of a romantic quadrangle. Intended for the more discerning college crowd he remained in contact with, these strips appeared in a variety of college newspapers and periodicals and starred a very nice young man and his troublesome friends…

In 1972 the strip was “discovered” by publishing impresario Denis Kitchen who began disseminating Barefootz to a far broader audience via such Underground periodical publications as Snarf, Bizarre Sex, Dope Comix and Commies From Mars: all published by his much-missed Kitchen Sink Enterprises.

Kitchen also hired Cruse to work on an ambitious co-production with rising powerhouse Marvel Comics: attempting to bring a (somewhat sanitised) version of the counter-culture’s cartoon stars and sensibilities to the mainstream. The Comix Book was a traditionally packaged and distributed newsstand magazine that only ran to a half-dozen issues. Although deemed a failure, it provided the notionally more wholesome and genteel Barefootz with a larger audience and yet more avid fans…

As well as being an actor, designer, art-director and teacher, Cruse appeared in Playboy, The Village Voice, Heavy Metal, Artforum International, The Advocate and Starlog and countless other publications, yet the tireless story-man found the time and resources to self-publish Barefootz Funnies: two comic collections of his addictively whimsical strip in 1973.

For us, a captivatingly forthright grab-bag and memoir gathers the snippets and classics left out of previous must-have collections The Compete Wendel and Early Barefootz, with Cruse tracing his development through cartoons and strips all thoroughly and engagingly annotated and contextualised by the author himself: fondly, candidly revisited against a backdrop of the men he loved at the time.

Acting as an historical place-setter, Cruse’s informative Preface sets the ball rolling, laconically tracing his artistic career and development through domestic autobiographical strip ‘Communique’ (from Heavy Metal) to unveil home life at the time. A more detailed exploration overview of the Queer comics scene follows in ‘From Miss Thing to Jane’s World’ before the book truly begins.

For a better, fuller understanding you’ll really want to see the aforementioned Wendell and Barefootz collections, but for now we relive history in first chapter Artefacts & Benchmarks Part 1: 1969-76, blending contextualising prose recollection with noteworthy strip ‘That Night at the Stonewall’s’, advertising art, abortive newspaper strip sample, an episode of Tops & Button, and other published work, plus gay sitcom feature ‘Cork & Dork’.

An early example of advocacy comes from wry cartoon homily ‘The Passer-By’ before further reminiscences and picture extracts take us to an uncharacteristically strident and harsh breakthrough.

Preceded by explanatory sidebar ‘Backstory: Gravy on Gay’, we are formally introduced to Barefootz’s, way-out friend confidante – and openly gay hippy rebel – Headrack in ‘Gravy on Gay’: wherein – the laid-back easy-going artist is confronted with the ugly, mouthy side of modern living as voiced by obnoxious jock jerk Mort…

The march of progress continues in Artefacts & Benchmarks Part 2: 1976-80, detailing a variety of comics jobs from Dope Comix and Snarf to the semi-legitimacy of Playboy and Starlog. It also features the first meeting with life partner – and ultimately, husband – Eddie Sedarbaum before My Strips from Gay Comix 1980-90 traces his editorial career on the landmark anthology through reprints of his own strip contributions.

It begins in ‘Billy Goes Out’: recalling the joyous – or it that empty and tedious? – hedonistic freedoms of the days immediately before the AIDS crisis…

Incisive cloaked autobiographical fable ‘Jerry Mack’ takes us inside the turbulent mind of an ultra-closeted church minister in full regretful denial, after which further heartbreak is called up in devious tragedy ‘I Always Cry at Movies’ before home chores are dealt with in a manly manner in ‘Getting Domestic’.

Historical and political insight comes in ‘Backstory: Dirty Old Lovers’ before the outrageous and hilarious antics of the oldest lovers in town scandalise the Gay community in ‘Dirty Old Lovers’, whilst the thinking behind clarion call ‘Safe Sex’ is detailed in a ‘Backstory’ article prior to a straightforward examination of Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome and its effects on personal health and public consciousness…

Surreal comedy infuses the tale of a man’s man and his adored ‘Cabbage Patch Clone’ after which faux ad ‘I Was Trapped Naked inside the Jockey Shorts of the Amazing Colossal Man!’ and Matt Groening spoof ‘Gay Dorks in Fezzes’ closes this chapter to make way for Topical Strips 1983-93.

With Cruse’s particular brand of “Gay” commentary/advocacy reaching more mainstream audiences through publications like The Village Voice, a ‘Backstory’ relates the author’s ultimately unnecessary anxiety over inviting in the wider world through polemical sally ‘Sometimes I Get So Mad’ and wickedly pointed social and media satire ‘The Gay in the Street’. That oracular swipe and ‘1986 – An Interim Epilogue’ are also deconstructed by Backstory segments (the latter being a 2-page addendum created for the Australian release of ‘Safe Sex’ in Art & Text magazine) before ‘Backstory: Penceworth’ shares one of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s vilest moments.

In 1988, her government attempted to set back sexual freedom to the Stone Age (or Russia, Turkey, Nigeria and other uncivilised countries today) by prohibiting the “promotion of homosexuality”. The British law – (un)popularly known as Clause 28 – was resisted on many fronts, including benefit comic AARGH (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia). Invited to contribute, Cruse channelled Hillaire Belloc’s Cautionary Verses and excoriatingly assaulted the New Nazism with ‘Penceworth’: a charming illustrated poem like a spiked cosh snuggled inside a rainbow coloured velvet slipper…

Luxuriating in righteous indignation and taking his lead from the New York Catholic Church’s militant stance against the LGBT community, Cruse then illuminated a supposed conference between ‘The Kardinal & the Klansman in Manning the Phone Bank’ and targeted similar anti-gay codicils in America’s National Endowment for the Arts in ‘Homoeroticism Blues’…

Another Backstory explains how and why a scurrilous article in Cosmopolitan resulted in ‘The Woeful World of Winnie and Walt’ – a complacency-shattering tale in Strip AIDS USA, pointedly reminding White Heterosexuals that the medical horror wasn’t as discriminating as they would like to believe…

That theme is revisited with the kid gloves off in ‘His Closet’, after which ‘Backstory: Rainbow Curriculum Comix’ clarify how School Board rabble-rouser Mary Cummings set back decades of progress in American diversity education through her oratorical witch hunts. Cruse’s potent responses ‘Rainbow Curriculum Comix’ and ‘The Educator’ follow…

The artist’s Late Entries 2000-08 round off the historical hay ride: snippets including a full-colour rebuttal from Village Voice to Dr. Bruce Bagemihl’s study on animal homosexuality. ‘A Zoo of Our Own’ is accompanied by a fulsome Backstory and followed by wryly engaging modern fable ‘My Hypnotist’ and semi-autobiographical conundrum ‘Then There Was Claude’ before the bemused wonderment wraps up with prose article ‘I Must Be Important …Cause I’m in a Documentary (2011)’ and a superb Batman pin-up/put down…

This is a sublime and timeless compilation: smart, funny, angry when needful and always astonishingly entertaining. Read it with Pride.
© 1976-2008 Howard Cruse. All rights reserved.
For further information and great stuff check out Howardcruse.com

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From the Files of… Mike Hammer: The Complete Dailies and Sundays


By Mickey Spillane & Ed Robbins: edited by Max Allan Collins (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-025-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Frank Morrison Spillane was Brooklyn born on March 9th 1918 and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He started writing in High School and, after trying a wide variety of jobs, joined a production shop in 1940, where he worked on articles for magazines (“slicks”), pulps and – thanks to a connection to Joe Gill (Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker and more horror, war and science fiction tales than you can imagine) – comic books.

Spillane wrote dozens of text fillers (usually the only place you could sign your own name) for Funnies Inc. who supplied Timely Comics, Fawcett, National/DC and more, but also crafted comics tales too, including Blue Bolt, Captain Marvel, Batman, Captain America and Sub-Mariner. A rough, tough guy, and already qualified pilot, he enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, but his expertise denied him the combat he craved and relegated him to the despised role of Army Air Corps flight instructor, stationed in Mississippi.

Married in 1945, he found employment scarce when peace broke out and turned his 1942 comic creation Mike Lancer P.I. (latterly Mike Danger) into a rough, tough, vulgar and compelling paragon of toxic masculinity. The 1947 novel I, The Jury was written in 9 days and, on the suggestion of Ray Gill (brother of Joe), offered to EP Dutton. They published it in hardback which sold moderately that year. One year later the paperback edition sold six and a half million copies in the US alone, was translated everywhere, kicked off a detective boom in film and books, and created both an iconic character and arguably an entire subgenre. Spillane died in July 2006.

Love him or loathe (and people have always fallen pretty equally on either side) Mike Hammer changed the world of entertainment. Apparently based on Texas Ranger Mike Hamer (who killed Bonnie & Clyde in 1934), Hammer is hard-boiled and smart but also brutally violent, mercurial and misogynistic. His hatred for criminality borders on psychosis and in his later books viciously anti-communist. Despite respecting law and cops he considers both a constant impediment to justice. He carries a Colt 45 M1911A1 and has a distinctly modern relationship with his secretary Velda – who might well be a harder man than him. His best pal is NYPD Homicide Captain Pat Chambers…

Spillane wrote 13 Hammer novels between 1947 and 1996: a tiny fraction of a frankly heroic output, with the canon further extended in later years by crime maven and comics marvel Max Allen Collins – a close friend and associate who added 30 more to the tally. Working from Spillane’s notes, he posthumously extended Spillane’s Hammer canon by writing a further 13 Hammer novels and 17 other characters from the author’s notes…

Collins (Dick Tracy, Batman, Ms. Tree, Wild Dog, Mike Danger, Nathan Heller, Mallory, Nolan & Quarry series, The Road to Perdition) also edited and curated this epic collected archival edition, gathering another controversial Hammer spin-off but one of the anti-hero’s few failures…

We open with his Foreword ‘Mickey and Me’ and informative Introduction ‘From the Files of… Mike Hammer’ relating history and building context in heavily illustrated features sharing novel dustjackets, posters and lobby cards from some of the many movies, logos, designs and original art from the strip, all augmented throughout by promotional ads.

The short run was distributed by Phoenix Features Syndicate from 1953-1954: written by Spillane, Joe Gill and illustrator Ed Robbins, narrated like the books, in first person by Hammer. The reason for the minor league management was to keep authorial control out of the hands of timid censorious editors but it proved the strip’s undoing…

Originally compiled by Ken Pierce Books as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer – The Comic Strip volume 1 (The Sudden Trap and Other Stories) & 2 (The Dark City and Other Stories), this edition maintains their layout of up to 4 dailies per page and opens with ‘Half-Blonde’ as the grim gumshoe stumbles over a pretty singer, witness – or culprit – to senseless murder. Inserting himself into the case, Hammer is shot, beaten and lied to but still unearths a long-buried secret to expose high society schemes of embezzlement and casual execution…

Whilst recovering from the latest bullet wounds incurred in the line of duty, Mike discovers dark deeds in the hospital and intercedes on behalf of ‘The Bandaged Woman’ who doesn’t officially exist; bringing down a diabolical doctor happy to butcher and torture patients to mollify his own monstrous child and maximise his personal fortune. Hammer’s cure is suitably efficient and comes in a single treatment…

The strip was full of raw, violence, barely concealed sex and comparatively shocking violence for America’s prime family entertainment medium, which made the subject of ‘The Child’ a charged one as Hammer is gulled by one gangster inro saving a little girl from another mob of kidnappers. When he learns he’s been made a patsy and the actual bereaved parent is President Eisenhower things get really nasty in the name of patriotism…

Hammer was never a conventional hero and the stories always pushed boundaries. Emotional turmoil rages through ‘Another Lonely Night’ after best pal Pat callously makes Mike bait to draw out mob killers and sits back as a procession of assassins seek to rub him out. At least the wounded warrior can always depend on pistol-packing Velda…

Newspapers used seasons as key sales points and everybody worked a ‘Christmas Story’ angle. For Hammer it took a typically bleak turn as – after arguing with Velda – Mike sets out to catch a crook on Christmas Eve: the busiest day of the year for grifters, grafters, pickpockets and buttonmen. Although apparently proving his point, Hammer had to ultimately concede that there is such a thing as the spirit of the season…

The dailies wrapped up with an epic ideological challenge as Hammer is targeted by the greatest criminal in America and forced to hunt an even worse public enemy in ‘Adam and Kane’. Facing three generations of sheer evil, Mike suffers a psychological freeze and is helpless against the truly diabolical son of aged Adam Shaver.

That “Napoleon of Crime” retired when he found true love but the fruit of it was even more evil and Adam now wants the toughest man in New York to bring him down for the sake of all.

Despite being physically outmatched and intellectually dwarfed, Hammer’s biggest handicap is his own fear until gloating Kane attacks other innocents under Mike’s protection. From then on, the gloves are off…

Sundays began on May 17th 1953 and there were only three before reader complaints ended the run and both strips. It began in full colour splendour with ‘Comes Murder!’ as Hammer discovers a young couple who have been gulled and roughed up by pro gambling racketeers. Incensed, Mike goes after slick Art Selton and meets his match and a major setback in the mobster’s busty blonde “assistant”. Overpowered but undaunted, he changes tack and quickly realises he’s not the only one after Selton. All he has to do is stir things up and stand back, but it helps if you know who’s actually calling the shots…

Crime never rests and when Hammer takes a short country break he meets a ghost in ‘The Sudden Trap.’ His astonishment at seeing the wife of gang boss Al Quinn two years after she died in a car crash and hubby dearest collected a million-dollar insurance pay out obsesses the PI, and his bullish investigations soon have everyone gunning for him. Luckily, local reporter Miss Hayes (no first name; just loads of diminishing “terms of affection”!) backstops him as he crashes from one wrong conclusion to the next until the many murderous fiends who want the revenant dead again are caught and the incredible truth is exposed…

The series concluded with ‘Dark City’ as traumatised Korean War vet Buddie and his sister Eve hire Mike to keep her safe from unknown assailants. Whilst doing the job, Hammer learns that he’s been lied to again. However, before he can confront them, the shamus is compelled by sheer decency to rescue her from abductors.

The scene of her being tortured is extremely graphic even by modern standards, leading to artist Robbins being accused of doing what no man could… killing Mike Hammer…

The story was wrapped up rapidly with our hero exposing the siblings’ scam in two-fisted style and the dream was over…

At its best the strip was evocative and extremely competent as well as being true to its times and its tenets. For those who admired Hammer’s oeuvre they comprise a lost treasure…

Closing this collection is behind-the-scenes feature ‘Restoring Mike Hammer’ by Daniel Herman revealing how the scattered and distressed remnants of the series were saved for publication.

Then come more objects of interest in ‘Mike Hammer and Pop Culture’ delivering poster and book cover art, extracts from comic spoofs ‘My Gun is the Jury! By Melvie Splane’ (Panic! #1 1954) and Mad Magazine’s parody of the 1980’s TV show (illustrated by Sam Viviano), candid photos and more.

Certainly not everybody’s shot of rye, From the Files of… Mike Hammer: The Complete Dailies and Sundays is a glimpse at a global icon at his visual peak: one you can take or leave but never ignore if you love exploring the annals of crime fiction.
© 2013 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC.

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Misery City


By K. I. Zachopoulos & Vassilis Gogtzilas (Markosia)
ISBN: 978-1-905692-81-1 (TPB)

For purists every literary genre is sacrosanct – unless you can come up with a way to mix or blend them with such style, verve and panache that something new is born which feels like it’s always been one of the gang…

Lurking in the shadows since first released in 2013, Misery City is a dark, bleak and ferociously introspective tale that relates the cases of Max Murray. He’s a dowdy, down-at-heel private eye stalking the meanest streets imaginable, in a vast and ever-changing metropolis situated on the outskirts of Hell – and, no, that’s not poetic license or flowery prose, it’s a satnav instruction…

Following an effusive Foreword from arch-stylist Sam Keith and Introduction from writer J. M. DeMatteis, the first 5 issues of the original comics series unfold in this pocket novel package: a stark, unrelenting procession of grimly trenchant case-files starring a shabby, unshockable shamus just trying to get by uncovering other people’s secrets whilst making some sense of the most pitiless town in creation.

Of course, Max has a few secrets of his own…

The black parade begins on the ‘Night of the Corpse’ when the world-weary peeper is attacked by a giant skeleton and must employ his beloved and handy handgun Fat Betty to end the undead animate. Times are both tough and weird, so he doesn’t give it much thought before retiring to his dingy office to await a new client and case…

When the phone rings it’s that sexy waitress Pakita from The Bar. Max has suffered the serious hots for the hot totty simply forever, but his rising hopes take a dive when the mercurial Mexican only hires him to check up on her cheating boyfriend.

With heavy heart and azure cojones, the gumshoe goes looking, utterly unaware that an old enemy has returned seeking vengeance. Professor Ego was penned in unimaginable torment because of Murray, and now he’s out and wasting no time in sending a plague of devils to secure some payback…

As a host of demonic clowns hunt the private detective, Max finds Pakita’s man. However, catching the faithless dog with another woman drives the PI crazy, and Murray goes ballistic, beating the cheating Dick to a pulp. Appalled and repentant, he then heads over to Pakita’s place to apologise but finds her gone, snatched by his long-forgotten foe.

Answering the ‘Call of Ego’, Max heads for the horror’s Tower hideout and a brutal showdown…

Despite his shoddy appearance, this detective is no dumb palooka. His secret vice is reading, and Max’s unceasing internal monologue is peppered with quotes and allusions from poets like Dante and Tennyson. They’re the only thing comforting him as ‘A Wooden Coffin for Max Murray part I’ sees him taking the Hell train to a surveillance job in the worst part of Misery City.

Horny as always, Max is disappointed to discover what the owner of that so-sexy French voice on the phone really looks like, but nevertheless agrees to check out the abandoned timber-framed family house the tearful widow fears property developers crave…

Maybe he should have been more suspicious, but the client’s stunning daughter Josephine had turned his head and all points south…

Upon entering the ramshackle old pile, a colossal zombie fiend attacks and before he can react, the entire house explodes out of the ground and rockets into orbit. Lost in space and out of options, the gumshoe reveals a few of his own incredible survival secrets, destroying the monster (said client’s vengeful and very angry husband) in ‘A Wooden Coffin for Max Murray part II’ before escaping the timber trap to settle scores with the murderous she-devils. It appears Max is on a first name basis with the Big Boss of the Inferno, and the head man is keen on renewing a satanic acquaintance with the understandably reluctant detective…

These malign mystery yarns conclude with a stunning surprise in ‘The Last Drag of a Pocket God’ with Max dogging a phantom with astounding delusions of grandeur. However, after sending Marty “The Voice” Coronado to his final rest, an uncomfortable conversation with Pakita forces the shamus to confront his own long-suppressed thoughts: examining the illusions that keep him going on the pitiless streets of Misery City…

Potently targeted vulgarity and a brusque, verbally confrontational narrative style gives Kostas (Mister Universe, The Fang, The Cloud) Zachopoulos’ manic scripts a supremely savage edge, whilst the freakish, surreal Horror-Noir milieu is perfectly captured by frequent collaborator/illustrator Vassilis (The Biggest Bang) Gogtzilas’ astoundingly frenetic art, delivered in a melange of assorted styles.

This mean, moody and menacing chronicle is topped off with a host of powerful pin-ups and a cover art gallery to further disquiet and beguile the unwary reader.
Misery City ™ & © 2013 Kostas Zachopoulos, Vassilis Gogtzilas and Markosia Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Stumptown volume 2: The Case of the Baby in the Velvet Case


By Greg Rucka, Matthew Southworth, Rico Renzi & various (Oni Press)
ISBN: 978-1-93496-89-7 (HB) 978-1-620104-80-4 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-62010-032-5

Plenty of superhero, supernatural and sci fi comics make the jump to TV and movies these days, but not so many crime sagas. One that did came from ever-entertaining, prodigiously prolific, multi award-winning Greg Rucka.

A screenwriter (The Old Guard) and novelist (Atticus Kodiak crime sequence, Jad Bell series and a whole bunch of general thrillers), he also crafts astounding graphic thrillers like Whiteout, Queen & Country, Lazarus or The Old Guard whilst excelling on major properties and characters including Star Wars, Batman, Gotham Central (co-scripted by Ed Brubaker), Superman, Wonder Woman, Grendel, Elektra, The Punisher, Wolverine and Lois Lane. He has been a major contributor to epic events such as 52, No Man’s Land, Infinite Crisis and New Krypton.

To my mind this most engaging original comicbook concept features a non-traditional private eye barely getting by in the writer’s own backyard: Portland Oregon – AKA “Stumptown”…

The series launched in November 2009 as a 6-issue miniseries, with modern day Portland a vibrant and integral character in the story. A huge hit, the series was indefinitely extended and ran until #19. The TV show launched September 25, 2019 and was equally entertaining and initially successful, before dying after one superb season during the worst days of the pandemic.

Fronted by Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Introduction ‘On Stumptown’ and illustrated by Matthew (Savage Dragon, Ares, Infinity Inc.) Southworth and supplemental colourist Rico Renzi, the daily grind resumes with ‘The Case of the Baby in the Velvet Case’. Here we meet again Dexadrine Callisto Parios, independent private detective and sole owner/primary operative of Stumptown Investigations.

Professionally, things are on the up. “Dex” now has an actual office to work out of, but still struggles with bills, two mortgages, a gambling problem, impulse control and dangerously implacable ethics. She’s also caring for dependent brother Ansel and ignoring other people’s opinions of her bisexuality – or more likely her attitude to them shoving their noses into problems she doesn’t want to confront yet…

After a missing persons case struck far too close to home made her name, briefly secured her future and brought her to the unwelcome attention of billionaire crime-boss/legit businessman Hector Marenco, Dex hoped life would settle down to regular PI gigs: cheating spouses, lost wills and the like.

In fact, there is a lot of that, like the potentially rewarding work-pilferage job she turns down after learning it would be for one of Marenco’s shady enterprises…

Suddenly, things get complicated and crazy again when a living legend walks through the door of her new office. Miriam “Mim” Bracca is a local legend made good globally and her band Tailhook are the epitome of wild success and excess. The megastar has a unique problem though: someone has stolen her baby…

The sweet child in question is a 1977 Gibson Les Paul, perfectly restored and utterly adored. It’s her favourite guitar: more crucial to her life and wellbeing than all her internal organs combined. The sweet precious vanished during or after the last gig and she doesn’t care if it’s just lost or been stolen. Mim will pay anything to get her true and perfect soulmate back…

Parios is astounded and reminds the star that the police work for free. Bracca however, has just ended an affair with Detective Tracy Hoffman (Dex’s inside pal on the Portland Police Bureau) and resoundingly rules that out…

Swallowing a huge amount of sheer fan froth, Dex gets down to business: checking Mim’s mental state and physical dependencies. Once convinced she’s serious, it’s all about the process, and Dex looks into just how much Mim Bracca’s go-to guitar is worth on the open market before interviewing the other band members, roadies and crew. It all seems silly but straightforward: a simple case of following well-rehearsed steps until the axe is recovered or uncovered, but there are levels of betrayal, criminality and deception in play that will make this job lethally risky business…

Dex gets her first inkling visiting Mim’s personal guitar manager Fabrizio Pullano, who she finds being beaten up by manically violent and remarkably dumb skinheads prepared to torture and kill to find the guitar. Being smart and handy, she soon sends them packing, and learns she’s in the middle of a covert DEA operation. Obnoxiously abrasive agent Cathy Chase and her so-mellow associate Mike Vela try to arrest, implicate and then co-opt her…

No stranger to legal officialdom and blinkered procedures, Dex correctly assesses there’s a lot more going on than a missing instrument, and despite hot Tailhook drummer “Click” Mayes being far more open and forthcoming than he needs to be in his interview, she leaps to an obvious conclusion…

A confrontation with her client convinces her that if drugs are being smuggled on Tailhook tours, the band know nothing about it, but Dex’s notion that she’s now got it all sussed bar some legwork evaporates when she gets home and finds Ansel and neighbour Grey playing with “Baby”.

An unidentified stranger left the hot item at Her House (!) in an obvious attempt to deliver a threat and end her involvement, but a quick examination of the case proves her suspicions and Parios knows this isn’t over at all…

In fact, the return of Baby triggers a rapid spiral of manic events as Tracy Hoffman confronts her old lover, the DEA try to arrest everybody, and viciously stupid skinheads Brad and Mick burst in guns blazing and spark one of the most spectacular car chases in comics…

Insanely, when the dust settles, the mystery remains. No one admits to taking Baby in the first place and Dex has to think again…

Happily, she deduces whoactuallydunnit just in time, and is there when the drug smugglers, their skinhead clients and the enigmatic mystery supplier move to recover their product and seek redress for their trouble. With a fluid and potentially deadly standoff resulting, Parios – as always – hangs tough, thinks fast and exploits her gift for making plans on the fly…

A superbly stylish thriller perfectly exploiting the nature of Oregon myth and culture, this yarn perfectly captures a magical place and its self-appointed shop-soiled white knight. Extras include Artifacts of Stumptown – a feature on Southworth’s art process plus promo posters.

Rucka excels in capturing character in meaningful but believable ways that add to understanding whilst always advancing the plot. Ansel (a superbly positive take on a neuro-atypical character: living with Downs Syndrome but realistically rendered, sensitively realised and fully participatory) is used to great effect and, as always, serves to ground Dex’s more dangerous impulses.

…And it’s all clever, witty fast paced and superbly action-packed. If you love crime drama, detective fiction, strong female role models or just bloody great storytelling, you need to pay a visit to Stumptown.
Stumptown volume 2: The Case of the Baby in the Velvet Case ™ & © 2013 Greg Rucka & Matthew Southworth. All rights reserved.