Category: Mature Reading

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Young, Talented… Exploited!


By Yatuu, translated by FNIC (Sloth Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-908830-02-9

Much as we’d like to think otherwise, the world of work is no longer possessed of purely national characteristics. These days we all slave under a universal system that sidesteps borders in the name of global corporate philosophy. Thus this stunning glimpse of one French woman’s frustrated struggle against modern employment practise is one that’s being repeated all over the planet every day.

This time however, Capitalism picked on the wrong person because Yatuu has enough spark, gumption and talent to fight back…

When Cyndi Barbero graduated from college and began looking for a job, all she was offered were unpaid internships. Eventually, she took one, still believing the mantra everyone with a job repeated: “if you work hard enough they may offer a permanent position”.

The work-placement role ran its legally-mandated course and she was promptly replaced by another sucker. After the third time it happened she began to blog (www.yatuu.fr/en) about and share her experiences, venting her opinions on such a manifestly unfair system and derive a soupçon of justifiable payback…

Just in case you’re unaware: an Intern takes a position in a company to learn the ropes, develop good working habits and establish contacts in order to make them more employable. The system used to work even though most kids ended up doing scut-work and never really learning anything.

These positions are unpaid and in recent times most employers realised that they could get free low grade temporary labourers and thereby cut their own running costs. Using, abusing and discarding the seemingly endless supply of optimistic hopefuls has become an accepted expense-control measure at most large businesses…

I know of only one large company where Interns are paid – and that’s only because the CEO put his foot down and insisted…

This subtly understated, over-the-top manga-styled, savagely comedic exposé tracks the exhilarated graduate’s progress from college to the world of no work through ‘At the End of the First Internship’ via ‘At the End of the Second Internship’ to ‘At the End of the Third Internship’ when even she began to smell a rat.

That didn’t daunt her (much) and, after much soul-searching, she took her dream job at a major Ad Agency. At least it would have been, were she not the latest addition to a small army of Interns expending their creative energies for insane hours, no thanks or acknowledgement and at their own financial expense…

From ‘Some Words Get Instant Reactions at Interviews’ through her ‘First Day’ – via memorable digressions on expected behaviour and hilariously familiar vignettes of types (I spent 30 years as an advertising freelancer and I think I’ve actually gone drinking with many of these guys’ British cousins…) – to the accepted seven-days-a-week grind of ‘This Place is Great because You Learn to Laugh on Cue’ and ‘Nothing Out of the Ordinary’, Yatuu grew accustomed to her voluntary slavery… although her barely-suppressed sense of rebellion was unquenchable.

Amongst so many short pithy lessons we see and sympathise with ‘Intensive Training’, observe ‘The Pleasure of Feeling Useful’ and realise there’s ‘Nothing to Lose’, before an intriguing game of office ‘Dilemma’ explores whether to have lunch with the Employees or Interns and what to do if asked to do ‘Overtime’…

As much diary as educational warning, this collection reveals how the hapless ever-hopeful victim developed survival strategies – such as finding a long-suffering workmate prepared to lend a floor, couch or bed for those frequent nights when the last train leaves before you do…

Mostly however, this addictive collection deals with the author’s personal responses to an untenable but inescapable situation for far too many young people: revealing insane episodes of exhaustion, despondency and work (but not job)-related stress, such as too many scary midnight cab rides home, constant nightmares and grinding daily insecurity.

What’s amazing is that it’s done with style, bravery and an astonishing degree of good-natured humour – especially when dealing with ‘The Idea Thief’, planning ‘Retaliation’ or perfecting ‘The Ultimate Revenge Technique!!!’…

Collected as Moi, 20 Ans, Diplômée, Motivée… Exploitée, Yatuu’s trenchant cartoon retaliations have recently been published in English and make for fascinating reading. Although it really should be, you probably won’t find Young, Talented… Exploited! discussed in any school Careers lessons or part of any college Job seminar and it’s almost certainly banned from every employers’ Orientation and Training package, but that’s just a sign of how good it is.

Best get your own copy and be ready for the worst scams, indignities and excesses that the Exploiters and Bosses will try to spring on you…

At least once you’ve paid for it you can be assured that it will deliver on its promise…
© 2013 Yatuu & 12bis. English translation and layout © 2013 Sloth Publishing, Ltd.

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Misery City


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

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 if the gang…

Misery City is a dark, bleak and ferociously introspective comic that relates the cases of Max Murray, a dowdy, down-at-heel shamus walking 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 geography lesson…

Following an effusive Foreword from arch-stylist Sam Keith and an Introduction from big-league writer J. M. de Matteis, the first five issues of the comics series unfold in this pocket novel package: a stark, unrelenting procession of grimly trenchant case-files starring a shabby private eye just trying to get by uncovering other people’s secrets and make some sense of the most pitiless town in creation.

Of course he has a few secrets of his own…

The black parade begins on the ‘Night of the Corpse’ when the world-weary Max is attacked by a giant skeleton and has to use 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 had the serious hots for her 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 that he’s out he’s wasting no time in sending a plague of devils to get some payback…

As a host of demonic clowns hunt the private detective, Max has found Pakita’s man. Seeing the faithless dog with another woman drives him crazy though and the shamus goes ballistic, beating the cheating Dick to a pulp. Appalled and repentant, Max then heads over to Pakita’s place to apologise and 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 PI is no dumb palooka. His secret vice is reading and his 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’ finds him taking the Hell train to the worst part of MiseryCity for a surveillance job.

Horny as usual, Max is disappointed to discover what the owner of that sexy French voice on the phone looks like, but still agrees to check out the old abandoned timber-framed family house the tearful widow fears property developers want.

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

When he enters the ramshackle old pile a colossal zombie fiend attacks Max 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 and settling 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…

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

Potent targeted vulgarity and a brusque, verbally confrontational narrative style gives Kostas Zachopoulos’ manic scripts a supremely savage edge, whilst the freakish, surreal Horror-Noir milieu is perfectly captured by illustrator Vassilis 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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The End


By Anders Nilsen (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 987-1-60699-635-5

Cheryl Weaver and Anders Nilsen were a couple. They were engaged and together forever and then in 2005 she died.

Her passing wasn’t sudden or dramatic and he had time to say goodbye. He carried on doing so for the next year, while his sketchbooks filled with questions and notions and helpless, hapless, hurt responses as he adjusted to his new, so unwanted, normal; all expressed in the form of his other reason for living – narrative graphic art.

Born in Minneapolis in 1973, Nilsen now lives in Chicago – when not travelling the world – producing such thought-provoking, award-winning comics and graphic novels as Dogs and Water, Monologues for the Coming Plague, the still-unfolding Big Questions and his heartbreaking thematic companion to this volume Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow.

Much of the material collected in this astoundingly frank and distressingly intimate hardcover memoir first appeared in the author’s therapeutic 2007 comicbook The End #1, whilst other portions of this much-expanded record originated in such disparate places as much-missed anthology Mome (Spring 2007) and even from screen-prints created in the months and years encompassing Nilsen’s slow voyage to acceptance.

The uncomfortably earnest eulogy begins with a poetic ‘Prologue’, before ‘Is That All There Is?’ wordlessly depicts an all-engulfing sense of loss and isolation, interrupted only by the text soliloquy ‘Love Story’.

The heart-rending catalogue of painful solitary moments ‘Since You’ve Been Gone I Can Do Whatever I Want To Do all the Time’ leads into inspirational prose observation with ‘I Have Two Lives’ after which the artist coolly examines the simple equation of loss and emotional paralysis with ‘Solve for X’…

Poem ‘In the Future’ and cartoon pantomime ‘Pulling a Giant Block’ precede harsh but ultimately uplifting debate in ’25 Dollars’ (originally seen in Mome as ‘It’s OK, You Have Everything You Need’) after which diagrammatic epigram ‘Eternity Analogy’ offers welcome hope and advice to fellow sufferers…

Primitivist drawing and photographic collage colourfully and philosophically combine in ‘You Were Born and So You’re Free’ before stark, simple lines return to illustrate an extensive imaginary conversation with the memory of love in ‘Talking to the Dead’ whilst print photomontages resume for the wistfully querulous ‘How Can I Prepare You for What’s To Follow?’ – created to welcome a newborn into the world…

The painful truism “life goes on” is reinterpreted in one final chat with the inevitable truth to close this memento mori in quiet contemplation with ‘Only Sometimes’…

To say this is a deeply moving book is grotesquely trite and staggeringly obtuse, but it’s also true. Every loss is always completely unique and utterly, selfishly personal, but most of us also have some capacity to empathise, share and see our own situation in the emotional disclosures of others. When it’s done as honestly, effectively and evocatively as here, the result is simply, devastatingly, unforgettably magical.

© 2013 Anders Nilsen. All rights reserved.
So much more of Nilsen’s cartoon conceptions and considerations (including outtakes from The End) can be seen at his beguiling blog the monologuist…

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Blade of the Immortal volume 1: Blood of a Thousand


By Hiroaki Samura translated by Dana Lewis & Toren Smith (Dark Horse/Studio Proteus)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-239-9

Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1970, manga master Hiroaki Samura differs from many of his contemporary colleagues in that he actually pursued classical art training before abandoning oil paints and easels for the monochrome freedom and easy license of the “whimsical drawings” industry.

He was, however, plucked from college in the early 1990s before finishing his degree, to find huge success creating the astonishing fantasy saga Mugen no JÅ«nin (The Inhabitant of Infinity) for Seinen magazine Afternoon.

The series ran from June 25th 1993 to December 25th 2012, a total of 30 volumes which spectacularly blended ubiquitous Samurai comics themes and scenarios with vengeful supernatural plots, political intrigues, existential philosophy and punk-era nihilism as the driven, murderously efficient antihero constantly deployed his outrageously eccentric arsenal of fanciful edged weapons, whilst pondering the merits of salvation and the meaning and point of living too long…

The series was picked by Dark Horse in 1996 and released as Blade of the Immortal, first as a monthly comicbook series and, from 2007 onwards, exclusively in collected graphic novel editions.

One note of caution for purists: the series’ dialogue is written in an updated, quirkily anachronistic literary style which strives for emotional veracity rather than (faux) period authenticity, so it can all be a little disconcerting at first…

Set in middle of the Tokugawa Shogunate (between 1600 and 1868AD), this first sublimely engaging volume opens with ‘About the Translation’ – a prose section explaining the translation process and the symbology of the piece – before ‘Prologue: Criminal’ introduces debased and unsavoury Ronin Manji; one-eyed outlaw and a weary killer looking for peace and redemption in all the wrong places.

The “Slayer of 100 Good Men” – including his own peace-keeper brother-in-law – Manji is currently stalking Gyobutsu “Johnny” – a mass-murderer who kills his victims whilst disguised as a priest. When a trap goes wrong the debased Ronin manfully ignores a pistol shot through his brain to finish his sacrilegious quarry.

The Ronin is no longer as other men. There are worms in his head, and as they knit his inexplicably non-fatal wound back together, Manji broods.

In his despicable past he was a cheap sell-sword who killed as he pleased. When his misdeeds brought him into conflict with his “cop” brother-in-law he also butchered him. The shock drove his sister Machi mad.

She was the only thing Manji ever cared about…

Yaobikuni has no problem with living forever – she won’t die until she’s saved every soul in Japan – and when the unkillable reprobate again meets the 800-year old nun who inflicted on him the sacred Kessen-chu bloodworms which can heal any hurt, she draws him into the old pointless discussion about salvation. Yaobikuni urges him to give up the sword, but all he wants to do is die….

Even if he could, it’s no longer an option now that he has to care for his grievously damaged Machi…

The problem is savagely solved when the vengeful brother and 20-strong gang of “Johnny” abduct her, determined to make her murderous brother pay emotionally and physically for the death of their leader.

Manji’s botched rescue attempt leaves him triumphant above a sea of corpses and utterly alone in the world…

Pushed too far, he finds Yaobikuni and offers her a deal: if he kills one thousand truly evil men she must remove the Kessen-chu and let Manji rest at last.

Despite misgivings that he’s just found another way to keep on killing, the nun agrees…

‘Conquest’ introduces young Rin, whose father Asano was targeted for slaughter by a merciless gang of anarchist thugs calling themselves the Ittō-ryÅ«.

Long ago the grandfather of their leader Anotsu Kagehisa had been shamefully and unjustly expelled from Asano’s Mutenichi– ryÅ« fencing Dojo, and the grandson had resolved to destroy all such schools and the socially stratified, arrogantly smug advocates of privilege who populated them.

Gathering an army of similarly aggrieved, like-minded rebels and outcasts, Anotsu murdered many Swords-masters: destroying their legacies and accumulating a powerful army before seeking his ultimate triumph over a despised ancestral enemy…

After ending Rin’s father, Anotsu gave her mother O-Toki to his men, but told them to leave the little girl alone.

Rin never saw her mother again and now, aged sixteen, the last sword of the Mutenichi- ryū School was in the metropolis of Edo looking for payback. What she found was a jolly little nun who suggested she seek out a maimed-and-mangy, mean-looking Ronin to act as her bodyguard…

They didn’t hit it off. Manji was condescending and patronising and wanted her to prove her contention that the members of Ittō-ryÅ« were genuinely evil before he subtracted them from his target tally of 1000 human monsters…

Reaching an agreement of sorts the pair join forces, unaware that Rin has been followed by Anotsu’s macabre lieutenant Kuroi Sabato. The deranged psycho-poet has been sending taunting verses to the girl ever since that fateful night, whilst secretly treasuring his keepsake of her mother O-Toki all these lonely years…

Now he’s ready for Rin to complete a ghastly set of horrific personalised trophies but the satanic stalker has never met – or killed – anyone like Manji before…

The eerie epic closes here with ‘Genius’ wherein the decidedly odd couple seek aid and assistance from an old friend of Rin’s father. Retired samurai Sōri has dedicated his remaining years to becoming an artist, but still struggles to master the tricky discipline of “sword-painting”. The uncouth Manji can barely contain his scornful taunts, especially as the artist seems unwilling to assist a lady in distress, apparently far more concerned with the trivial problem that he can never get the reds right in his compositions…

Of course the revenant Ronin has no idea that once Sōri was The Shogun’s Ninja …

More of Anotsu’s psycho-killer goons have followed Rin and Manji to the painter’s lodgings however, looking for the blade-wielding girl genius who killed the lethally adept Kuroi. When they attack the sleeping Rin they soon discover to their everlasting regret the mettle of her allies…

In the stillness after the slaughter, Rin and Manji move on to continue their vendetta against the Ittō-ryū, but Sōri regretfully remains behind to pursue his art.

At least now he knows what pigments suit him best…

‘An Interview with Hiroaki Samura’ and a selection of cover illustrations from the comicbook iteration complete this viscerally brutal, staggeringly beguiling first volume of mythic martial mastery…

Although crafting other works such as the western Emerald, romantic comedies, erotic works and horror stories such as Night of the Succubus and Bradherley’s Coach, Blade of the Immortal is undoubtedly Mr. Samura’s signature creation – so far – and a truly unparalleled delight for fans of not just manga but for all lovers of dark fantasy.
© 1996, 1997 Hiroaki Samura. All rights reserved. English translation rights arranged through Kodansha Ltd. New and adapted artwork & text © 1996, 1997 Studio Proteus and Dark Horse Comics Inc. All other material © 2000 Dark Horse Comics Inc. All rights reserved.

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Tales from The House of Mystery


By Jack Oleck, illustrated by Berni Wrightson (Warner Paperback Library)
ISBN: 0-446-75226-6- 095

When superheroes entered their second decline in the early 1970s, four of the six surviving newsstand comicbook companies (Archie, Charlton, DC, Gold Key, Harvey and Marvel) relied increasingly on horror and suspense anthologies to bolster their flagging sales. Even wholesome Archie briefly produced Red Circle Sorcery/Chillers comics and their teen-comedy core moved gently into tales of witchcraft, mystery and imagination.

DC’s first generation of mystery titles had followed the end of the first Heroic Age when most comicbook publishers of the era began releasing crime, romance and horror genre anthologies to recapture the older readership which was drifting away to other mass-market entertainments like television and the movies.

As National Comics in 1951, the company bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology – which nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles – with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

When a hysterical censorship scandal led to witch-hunting hearings attacking comicbooks and newspaper strips (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time) the industry panicked, adopting a castrating straitjacket of stringent self-regulatory rules and admonitions.

Even though mystery/suspense titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, the appetite for suspense was still high, and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected and House of Secrets.

Supernatural thrillers and spooky monster stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, genteel, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles which nonetheless dominated the market until the 1960s when the super-hero returned in force – having begun a renaissance after Julius Schwartz reintroduced the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956.

Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a host of other costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked myrmidons which even forced the dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and Mark Merlin – later Prince Ra-Man – sharing space with anti-hero Eclipso in House of Secrets.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties, folding with the September-October 1966 issue. House of Mystery carried on with its eccentric costumed cohort until #173 and Tales of the Unexpected to #104.

However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits, and at the end of the 1960s the superhero boom busted again, with many titles gone and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain too…

This real-world Crisis led to the surviving publishers of the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at the time, but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Great Unknown, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious “no-brainer.”

Thus with absolutely no fanfare at all House of Mystery and Unexpected switched to scary stories and House of Secrets rose again with issue #81, (cover-dated August-September 1969); retasked and retooled to cater to a seemingly insatiable public appetite for tales of mystery, horror and imagination … Before long a battalion of supernatural suspense titles dominated DC and other companies’ publishing schedules again.

Simultaneously and contiguously, there had been a revolution in popular fiction during the 1950s with a huge expansion of affordable paperback books, driving companies to develop extensive genre niche-markets, such as war, western, romance, science-fiction, fantasy and horror…

Always hungry for more product for their cheap ubiquitous lines, many old novels and short stories collections were republished, introducing new generations to fantastic pulp authors like Robert E. Howard, Otis Adelbert Kline, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and many others.

In 1955, spurred on by the huge parallel success of cartoon and gag book collections, Bill Gaines began releasing paperback compendiums culling the best strips and features from his landmark humour magazine Mad and thus comics’ Silver Age was mirrored in popular publishing by an insatiable hunger for escapist fantasy fiction.

In 1964 Bantam Books began reprinting the earliest pulp adventures of Doc Savage, triggering a revival of pulp prose superheroes, and seemed the ideal partner when Marvel began a short-lived attempt to “novelise” their comicbook stable with The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker and Captain America in the Great Gold Steal.

Although growing commercially by leaps and bounds, Marvel in the early 1960s was still hampered by a crippling distribution deal limiting the company to 16 titles (which would curtail their output until 1968), so each new comicbook had to fill the revenue-generating slot (however small) of an existing title. Even though the costumed characters were selling well, each new title would limit the company’s breadth of genres (horror, western, war, etc) and comics were still a very broad field at that time. It was putting a lot of eggs in one basket and superheroes had failed twice before for Marvel.

As Stan Lee cautiously replaced a spectrum of genre titles and specialised in superheroes, a most fortunate event occurred with the advent of the Batman TV show in January 1966. Almost overnight the world went costumed-hero crazy and many publishers repackaged their old comics stories in cheap and cheerful, digest-sized monochrome paperbacks. Archie, Tower, Marvel and DC all released such reformatted strip books and the latter two carried on their attempts to legitimise their output by getting them into actual bookshops to this day.

Released in 1973, when the horror boom was at its peak, Tales from The House of Mystery was another attempt to breach the bookshop barrier. A prose anthology by veteran comics scripter Jack Oleck, the compendium adapted and modified, for a presumed older audience, eight short scary stories from the comics, each magnificently illustrated by DC’s top terror artist “Berni” Wrightson, who also provided a moodily evocative frontispiece starring the comic’s macabre host Cain and the stunning painted cover above.

The wry, dry shock-ending mini-epics begin with ‘Chamber of Horrors’ wherein a violently paranoid young man gets the notion that the newcomers in town are a family of vampires, after which ‘Nightmare’ reveals the uncanny fate of an obnoxious American vacationer who was determined to ruin a day-trip to Stonehenge for all those gullible over-imaginative fools on the tour bus…

‘Collector’s Item’ related how two old friends sharing a passion for coin collecting met a ghastly fate after squabbling over some particularly impressive specimens from ancient Judea, and ‘Born Loser’ proved that for some poor schmucks even magic wasn’t enough to escape a shrewish wife and the consequences of murder…

‘Tomorrow, the World’ detailed the efforts of a concerned psychiatrist who was unable to shake the convictions of his hopeless patient that a coven of witches and warlocks was about to conquer the world for Satan, whilst the bittersweet romance of ‘The Haunting’ revealed a shocking truth about the house acquired by devoted newlyweds Joel and Peggy.

Voodoo and reincarnation proved the lie to the maxim ‘You Only Die Once’ after a French plantation owner thought he had gotten away with murdering his coldly disdainful wife, and this brief box of dark delights ends on a savagely ironic and even cruel note as well-meaning social workers and doctors cure a desolated lame orphan of his foolish belief in a happy fantasy land by an ‘Act of Grace’…

By today’s standards this octet of occult thrillers might seem a little tame or dated, and the experiment clearly had no lasting effect on either comics or book consumers, but this little oddity is still a fascinating experiment that will delight comics completists, arch-nostalgics and fantasy fans alike…
© 1973 National Periodical Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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So Long, Silver Screen


By Blutch, translated by Edward Gauvin (Picturebox)
ISBN: 978-0-9851595-1-1

Cinema was the paramount art form of the 20th century and, in France more than any other country and society, the “Movie” is celebrated, venerated and critically examined as no other creation of man.

This lyrical, declamatory, harshly imaginative and lyrically introspective collection of short tales – as much stern self-analysis as autobiographical exploration – by pre-eminent cartoonist and illustrator Blutch examines the creator’s relationship to and lifelong shaping by the magic of celluloid fantasies and the mythical icons who made and populated them.

Christian Hincker was born in Strasbourg in 1967. He grew up there and studied at the famous School of Decorative Arts before beginning his spectacular career into comics after winning a competition in the magazine Fluide Glacial in 1988.

His strips for the prominent avant-garde adult comic include light humour serials Pecos Jim, Johnny Staccato and Mademoiselle Sunnymoon, whilst his features for other publishers range from adventure series such as La Lettre Américaine & Mitchum, the groundbreaking Peplum (a Gay tragedy set in Ancient Rome and based on Petronius’ Satyricon), Vitesse Moderne – his first graphic novel foray into full colour art – and his whimsical autobiography Le Petit Christian (‘The Small Christian’) amongst a host of tales.

As an illustrator and collaborator with other creators, his uniquely unassuming visual questioning has appeared in such disparate places as Libération, The New Yorker and Les Inrockuptibles as well as on strips such as Trondheim & Sfar’s Dungeon saga or Congratulations Rancho (with Jean-Louis Capron). He has even dabbled in film making with the animated short Peur(s) du noir – Fear(s) of the Dark to you and me…

In this stunning hardback edition – the prolific craftsman’s first to make the jump to English, and designed by US comicbook genius David Mazzucchelli – Hincker inserts himself Robert Crumb-like into a series of uncompromising dissertations and conversational comic dialogues about the consumption, effects of and responses to the fantasy-land of movies.

Moreover his expansive, enticing arguments are packed with character roles, cameos, walk-ons and special guest appearances by the likes of Hollywood greats such as William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Kirk Douglas, King Kong, Tony Curtis, Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Johnny Weissmuller – and Cheetah – as well as Euro-stars like Luis Buñuel, Claudia Cardinale, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Delon, Susan Travers, and probably more I don’t recognise…

‘Adieu Paul Newman’ opens the show with typical movie staging, sexual tension and even violence as the creator remarks on the passing of a legend through his interactions with the girl of his dreams and the woman who puts up with him, after which the happy faraway land of cloistered childhood is revisited through adult eyes in ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’.

That broken fantasy realm poses its own imponderable questions now…

‘A High Wind in Jamaica’ examines the cruel trick of growing old, impotent and useless under the full and unforgiving public gaze by fixating on the brutish vitality of Burt Lancaster through his 46 years of film-making, whilst ‘A Portrait of Luchino Visconti’ provides seven views of the master’s works, and ‘Shutting You Up’ then deals with the author’s early romantic dalliances – when hot blooded teens in the comforting cinema darkness never got to see more than fifteen minutes of any film…

‘Women in Film – A Modern Olympia’ explores the harsh treatment and idolatry of women in movies with telling and evocative contributions from Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Rita Hayworth, Anne Margaret, Betty Grable, Maureen O’Sullivan and others. Blutch convincingly ruminates on how technology moved furtive solo imaginings onto walls of light, and invented democratised pornography, whilst turning women into unattainable property and sanitising if not advocating violence against them…

The querulous tirade of romantic, regretful, puzzled meditations on an incomprehensibly still-beloved addiction concludes with a seductive trip to ‘The Imaginary Museum’, and a treatise on a train (going into that inevitable tunnel) on the inescapable influence of prolific French superstar Michel Piccoli and the beloved slavery of the artist Blutch for that other art form…

Challenging, enticing and genuinely thought-provoking, this delicious cartoon voyage with a keenly enquiring companion – who has all of the questions but so few answers – is a sheer joy that no grown-up fan of graphic narratives and motion pictures can afford to miss.
© DARGAUD 2011 by Blutch. All rights reserved. Translation © 2013 Edward Gauvin.

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The Best of Neat Stuff


By Peter Bagge (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 0-930193-53-9

Having had such a great time reading Other Stuff the other day I’ve decided to finally spotlight an old and cruelly out of print tome from 1987 that I’ve been meaning to rave about for simply ages: one packed with the superb but far too seldom seen formative appearances of such landmarks of pop culture as Buddy Bradley, Junior and Studs Kirby…

Peter Bagge is prominent these days as a fiery, laser-mouthed, superbly acerbic and well-established, award-winning cartoonist, animator and musician, responsible for incredibly addictive, sharply satirical strips examining contemporary American life, but once upon a time he was just another strident, gifted jobbing cartoonist trying to make a living.

Born in Peekskill, Westchester County, New York on 11th December 1957, he was one of four kids in a ferociously Catholic military family. Like esteemed colleague Robert Crumb a generation earlier, Bagge escaped that emotionally toxic, fight-filled environment as soon as possible, moving to New York City in the mid-1970s to study at the celebrated School of Visual Arts.

He soon dropped out, however, and began working in the vibrant alternative publishing field, producing strips and panels for Punk Magazine, Screw, High Times, East Village Eye (where the first Junior strip debuted), World War Three and others.

Meeting like-minded artists he began self and co-publishing comics and when Crumb saw copies of Comical Funnies – produced with new friend John Holstrom – Bagge was offered space in and eventually the Editorship of the seminal magazine Weirdo in 1983.

He augmented his 3-year tenure there with various paying gigs at Screw, Swank, Video X, Video Games Magazine, The Rocket, Bad News and elsewhere.

In 1984 Bagge relocated to Seattle, Washington State and began his association with alternative/Independent publisher Fantagraphics. The following year his spectacularly idiosyncratic cartoon magazine Neat Stuff launched as a thrice-yearly vehicle of outrageous personal expression and societal observation. His stark, manic, topically surreal strips starring old creations like Studs Kirby, Junior, Buddy Bradleys and Girly Girl soon made him a darling of the emerging West Coast Grunge scene.

Neat Stuff – and its eventual successor Hate – quickly made Bagge a household name… at least in more progressive households…

Neat Stuff ran from 1985-1989 and was a perfect pioneering vehicle for the burgeoning graphic novel market. This early compilation came half-way through the run, dazzled for a little while and then disappeared. Even though much of the anthologised material has since been reprinted in solo editions dedicated to specific members of the eclectic cast, I for one would dearly love to see the series revived, revised and released in some sort of definitive edition…

This glorious monochrome, album-sized compendium of seldom-seen strips is stuffed with deliciously fluid drawings and razor-edged, broadly baroque comedically absurdist observations with incisive, deeply intimate questioning quandaries and observations on living. Don’t panic though: it’s much more fun than it sounds, and the constant confrontations with a changing world everybody was – and still is – increasingly out of step with make for terrifically mature reading fun…

Following Robert Crumb’s informative Introduction ‘Peter Bagge – The R. Crumb of the Eighties’, the crazed cartography begins with a selection of Studs Kirby strips starting with ‘A Few Words from Studs Kirby’, after which philosophical diatribe the quintessential Reagan-Era Oaf establishes his credentials in ‘Studs Kirby Gets Drunk by Himself’ before being sucked whole into a changing consumer society when ‘Studs Kirby Gets Cable TV’…

Girly Girl may be the little lass next door, but that’s simply one more reason to move house. The hyper-active, impulse-control challenged tyke debuted in appalling style with pals Chuckie Boy and the Goon on the Moon in ‘Uh Oh, Here Comes Girly Girl’, before springing back undaunted to take on the rise in civilian journalism (or is it just spying on people) in ‘Candid-Camera-Star-Search-Solid-Gold-This-Is-Your-Life-Lip-Sync-Contest-In-Reverse’ and then proved once and for all just why she will never be ‘Little Miss Popularity’…

Bagge’s greatest hit was always the horrifically dysfunctional traditional values family The Bradleys and these painfully hilarious early forays prove why as ‘Ye Gads, It’s The Bradleys!’ introduces drunken ogre Dad, shrewish Mom and their ghastly progeny Buddy, Babs and Butch who quickly show their true worth as ‘Mother’s Little Helpers’…

Buddy and his shiftless pal Tom take centre stage in ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Refuge’ when the worthless firstborn goes looking for old LPs at a second-hand record shop, before little Butch passes on the cruel life-coping skills he leaned from his big brother in ‘The Trickle Down Theory’

There then follows a joyously eccentric interlude as we happily focus on sheer exuberant graphic madness with a page of nine ‘Neat Stuff Trading Cards’.

Sheltered Momma’s boy Junior finally leaves the happy maternal nest – although hardly from choice – to find shelter in a far-from-innocuous boarding house in ‘The Cabbage’, where he swiftly packs in a lot of insalubrious second-hand living whilst under the scurvy wing of landlord Mr. Frank.

However ‘The Road to Manhood’ is perilous and soon Junior is going backwards not forward…

Chet and Bunny Leeway debuted in Bad News and eventually became the family stars of Adobe’s Website (see Other Stuff for details), but in the first two untitled strips here those ordinary suburbanites merely discuss domestic matters in their usual manner (kids; never, never, never try this at home – yours or anybody else’s) and assess each other’s musical gifts before Chet discovers the allure of Malls in ‘Life’s A Bitch And Then You Die’.

There’s also a selection of Miscellaneous strips included here beginning with the darkly obsessive ‘Sometimes I Feel Like I’m Going Crazy’, after which ‘Bang the Head that Does Not Bang’ discloses the truth about dads and the teens they ferry to rock concerts, and ‘Minimum Wage Love’ offers insights into mating rituals and first jobs.

It isn’t pretty and the Bitter to Sweet ratio is heavily disproportionate…

There’s more magnificently liberating graphic license on show in ‘Wheeeeee! Whoaa! Woops!!’ whilst dark meta-real revelations abound in the too-true-to-be-factual story of school pressure in ‘The Reject’ – a strip first seen in Weirdo…

Also on show: a fulsome and fascinating background feature – complete with early illustrations – in Origins – an Explanation of the Characters in Neat Stuff, as well as a peachy keen sketch and Bagge Biography to slavishly enjoy in the concluding About the Author featurette…

Bagge has always been about skewering stupidity, spotlighting pomposity and generally exposing the day-to-day aggravations and institutionalized insanities of modern life, and these strips offer a beguiling peek into his formative process: a treat no cartoon-loving shibboleth-tipping rebel should miss…
© 1987 Peter Bagge. Introduction © 1987 R. Crumb. All rights reserved.

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Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff


By Peter Bagge with R. Crumb, Alan Moore, Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Johnny Ryan, Danny Hellman, Gilbert & Jaime Hernadez, Joanne Bagge & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-622-5

You probably know Peter Bagge as the fiery, wise-mouthed, superbly acerbic cartoonist responsible for incredibly addictive, sharply satirical strips about American life that featured in such wonderful magazines as Neat Stuff and Hate, his superbly strident Buddy Bradley stories or even his forays into the more-or-less comics mainstream with such works as DC’s Yeah!

But the graphic ridiculist also has a commercial impetus, whimsical nature, politically active side (as cartoonist and societal commentator for the Libertarian publication Reason) and a secret life outside comics.

Thus this glorious compendium of seldom-seen strips from a variety of publications has been compiled by Fantagraphics, in a (mostly) full-colour softcover collection stuffed with deliciously fluid drawings and razor-sharp polemic, broadly comedic or surreal observations and, as ever, sharply incisive, highly rational and deeply intimate questioning quandaries and observations.

Bagge’s oeuvre is skewering stupidity, spotlighting pomposity and generally exposing the day-to-day aggravations and institutionalized insanities of modern urban life and these strips, from such diverse sources as his own Hate Annuals, Hate Jamboree, Weirdo, El Rios, newspapers such as The Stranger and LA Times as well as publications like Magnet Magazine, Spin, Razor, Discover, Details, Toro, Vice and software company Adobe’s website from the 1980s to the present, offer a fascinating insight into his world, working as they do under the constraints of a client’s prerequisites…

They’re still all outrageously hilarious and powerfully effective though, even when filtered through the lens of cartoon collaborators such as the sparkling pantheon featured here…

Following an extensive, detail-packed explanatory Introduction, the madness begins to unfold in a section collecting all the adventures of classy, racily moderne young broad Lovey (first seen in Hate Annual #1, 2, 4 and 5 and The Stranger from 2000-2004) beginning with ‘Gender-Bending Hyjinx’ progressing to the gloriously distasteful ‘The Gaggle and the Gimp!’ before revealing ‘The Real André’ and indulging in ‘A Party to Forget’…

The music scene gets a wry shellacking in Rock ‘n’ Roll – covering material from 1995-2012 – which opens with a string of ‘Musical Urban Legends Presents’ single-pagers from Magnet including ‘Gnomes are Real’, ‘A Winning Formula’, ‘Dinner with Brian (Part One)’, ‘The Stuff of Genius’, ‘What Price Love?’, ‘Dinner with Brian (Wilson, that is) Part 2’, ‘Little Richard in “Ménage a Whah?!”’, ‘Kiss my Baby’ and ‘Start Spreadin’ the News’ whilst ‘Man with a Vision’ lampoons youthful ambition in a smart strip which originally debuted in Spin.

The chapter then closes with a trio of Beach Boys-themed bad vibrations as ‘Murry Wilson: Rock ‘n’ Roll Dad’ appals in ‘Turn Back the Hands of Time’ (co-created with Dana Gould), meets Charles Manson in ‘Helter Skelter, My Ass’ and treats his son ‘The Meal Ticket’ just as you always suspected he did…

The promised Collaborations cover the period 1996-2002 and mostly come from Hate, finding Bagge working in various roles such as scripter of ‘Me’ illustrated by Gilbert Hernandez, and illustrator of ‘Go Ask Alice’, written by Alice Cooper and appearing in Spin.

‘Shamrock Squid: Autobiographical Cartoonist!’ was drawn by Adrian Tomine, ‘The Hasty Smear of my Smile…’ exposing the sordid life of the Kool-Aid Man was written by Alan Moore & inked by Eric Reynolds, whilst ‘Life in these United States’ was rendered by Daniel Clowes and debuted in Weirdo.

Iconoclastic Johnny Ryan drew ‘Dildobert Joins the Al-Qaeda’, the autobiographical delight ‘What’s in a Name?‘ was illustrated by Danny Hellman, sordid strip spoof ‘Caffy’ was drawn by R. Crumb, ‘Shamrock Squid in Up the Irish!’ was inked by Eric Reynolds and the hilarious ‘The Action Suits Story’ was illustrated by Jaime Hernandez.

There are a number of strips throughout the volume gleefully dissing long-time inker and collaborator Jim Blanchard in such cruel and revelatory epics as ‘Backyard Funnies’ written & pencilled by Reynolds, ‘Don’t Knock It If You Haven’t Tried It’ (written & drawn by Pat Moriarty), ‘Bleachy Blanchard’ written & drawn by Kevin Scalzo, and ‘Harassed Citizen’ written & drawn by Rick Altergott. There’s also the scathing solo effort ‘That Darn Blanchard’ in the introduction pages too…

“True” Facts covers educational (sort of) features such as biographies of scientists from Discover Magazine in 2009. These highlight Robert Brown in ‘I’ll Second That Motion’, Wallace “Gloomy Gus” Carothers in ‘It’s a Wonderful Legacy’, reveal what ‘Mendeleyev Predicts!’, heralds Joseph Priestly as ‘Phlogiston’s Last Champion!’, details Major Walter Reed’s ghastly experiments in ‘Yellow Fever Fever!’ and celebrates ancient Moslem savant Taqi al-Din in ‘Oh, What a Spin I’m In!’

From 1998 ‘So Much Comedy, So Little Time’ (from Details) exposes the festival circuit whilst the autobiographical ‘East Coast, West Coast, Blah, Blah, Blah…’ came from Road Strips in 2005 and ‘Partying with the “Dickster”‘ revealed a truth about Vice President Cheney in a 2007 strip from the LA Times… as did radio expose ‘At the End of the Day…’

‘Stuff I Know about Belgium, by Some Dumb American’, which originated in El Rios in 2010, the savagely self-excoriating ‘What Was Wrong With Us?’ from 2002, the incisive ‘Game Day with the Quarterback’s Wife’ (Toro, 2004) and ‘The Expert’ (Vice, 2006) all explore humanity’s foible-besmirched mundanity, and this collection more or less concludes with a series originally shown as entertainment content on Adobe’s homepage in 2000 before being reprinted in Hate Annual #6.

Restored and re-coloured by Bagge’s most consistent collaborator – his wife Joanne –

The Shut-Ins follows the slow seduction and fall of computer illiterates Chet and Bunny in ‘Meet the Shut-Ins’, ‘Meet Santiago’, ‘Pretty Flowers’, ‘Make the World Go Away’, ‘The Great Indoors’, ‘Withdrawal Symptoms’, ‘Life Among the Earthlings’, ‘A Short-Lived Recovery’, ‘Our Babies’, ‘Irrigation Blues’, ‘The Funeral’, ‘No Good for the ‘Hood”, ‘The Meg Ryan Factor’, ‘Oh, What a Night!’, ‘Taking Stock’, ‘Slowly He Turned’, ‘Rich, Rich, Rich!’, ‘Dot Com Casualties’ and ‘Can I Interest You in Some Fairy Dust?’

Even after all that the cartoon craziness goes on as the designers squeeze in two more lost classics –‘Crazy Exes’ from Spanish GQ in 2000 and, on the back cover, ‘Good Ol’ Posterity’ from Artforum…

Challenging, hilarious, wonderfully shocking and always thought-provoking, Other Stuff in another superbly engaging and entertaining book from a brilliantly inspired social commentator and inquisitor; impassioned, deeply involved and never afraid to admit when he’s confused, angry or just plain wrong. This wonderful use of heart, smarts and ink is one more reason why cartooning is the most potent mode of expression we possess.
© 2013 Peter Bagge, except as noted on the strips themselves. All rights reserved.

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Mesmo Delivery


By Rafael Grampá with Marcus Penna, translated by Júlio Mairena (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-465-3

In an industry and art form that has become so very dependent on vast interlocking storylines, an encyclopaedic knowledge of a million other yarns and the tacit consent to sign up for another million episodes before reaching any kind of narrative payoff, the occasional short, sharp, intensely stand-alone tale is as welcome and vital as a cold beer in the noon-day desert.

Just such a salutary singleton was Mesmo Delivery, first solo English-language release of singularly gifted writer/artist Rafael Grampá who originally devised the macabre and gritty thriller in his native Brazil in 2008.

Picked up and translated by Dark Horse two years later, this stark and spookily effective grindhouse/trucker movie amalgam offers dark chills, gritty black humour and eerie, compulsive mystery in equal, intoxicating amounts. And it all starts, unfolds and ends here. No muss, no fuss, no busload of tie-ins.

Aging, raddled Elvis impersonator Sangrecco is a very odd deliveryman working for a rather unique haulage business. For a start he can’t drive, which is why hulking, gentle cash-starved ex-boxer Rufo has been temporarily hired by the boss to operate the truck on a run through very bleak bad country.

Rufo doesn’t ask questions. He just drives the big container rig with its mysterious, unspecified cargo that he’s not allowed to see to God knows where, listening to the obnoxious, pompous Sangrecco mouth off about his many, unappreciated talents.

Things take a bad turn when they break at the isolated Standart Truck Stop. The Elvis freak is too lazy to even fetch his own beer, and when Rufo takes care of business and grudgingly tries to pay, a sleazy pack of locals trick him into an impromptu street fight on a cash-bet.

The ploy is a set-up and when Rufo proves unexpectedly tough the prize-fight gets too serious and results in a fatality – possibly two…

Street-fighting head tough Forceps then convinces his “townie” cronies and the other onlookers that they need to get rid of all the witnesses.

…Which is when old Sangrecco reveals what his speciality is…

Stark, brutal, rollercoaster-paced and rendered with savage, exhilarating bravura, this thundering, down-and-dirty fable grips like a vice and hits like a juggernaut, providing the kind of excitement every jaded thriller fan dreams of.

Also included in this slim, scary and mesmerising tome is an effusive Introduction from Brian Azzarello, pin-ups by Mike Allred, Eduardo Risso, Craig Thompson and Fábio Moon and a stunning 16-page sketch, design and commentary section ‘Making of Mesmo Delivery’.

Since Mesmo Delivery, Grampá has gone on to shine with his deliciously eccentric Furry Water as well as on such established titles as Hellblazer, American Vampire, Strange Tales and Uncanny X-Force amongst others, but this superbly visceral, raw storm of sheer visual dexterity and narrative guile is an ideal example of pared back, stripped down, pure comics creativity that no mature lover of the medium can afford to miss.

Mesmo Delivery ™ and © 2008, 2010 Rafael Grampá. All rights reserved.

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Jeremy Brood part 1: Relativity & Fantagor Presents Brood


By Richard Corben & Jan Strnad with additional designs by Stan Dresser (Fantagor Press/Longhorn Book Distribution)
ASIN: B0006F7UMU            ISBN: 978-0-96238-410-3

Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest proponents and pioneers of graphic narrative: a legendary animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist who surfed the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in pictorial storytelling with his own unmistakable style and vision. Renowned for his mastery of airbrush and anatomical stylisation – producing works of captivatingly excessive overwhelming eroticism – and infamous for delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales, Corben’s epic storytelling, violent, cathartically graphic and often blackly hilarious triumphs through the 1970s and 1980s were instrumental in making comics a mainstream medium and art form for mature readers.

Always garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe, he was regularly collected in luxurious albums even as he fell out of favour – and print – in his own country. Although most acclaimed for interpretations of classic horror literature, he is equally adept at capturing the alarming nuances of technological terror and cynical political intrigue in shocking science fiction tales such as the truncated epic spotlighted here.

In 1982 he began, with long-time collaborator Jan Strnad, a proposed series of European style square-bound albums starring a troubled star traveller, but it sadly fell victim to an economic downturn before it could find its feet. This taste of a tantalisingly uncompleted greater epic began in Jeremy Brood: Relativity and was brought to an abrupt finish in the magazine Fantagor Presents Brood (Fantagor #5, 1983). The tale has since been collected in a book in 1989 and subsequently re-released in 1998.

The original chronicle begins with a fascinating glimpse at the artist’s working process in his picture-packed ‘Illustrators Notes’ before the full Technicolor experience opens with spare-faring civil servant Brood and his horny but frustrated co-pilot Charlene receiving a sub-space transmission from Earth.

An agent on the planet Eden has sent a distress call and they are to divert there at top speed. Their civilisation is at a cultural crossroads and needs nudging in the right direction – or so planetary sociologist Bernard Finchley claims.

However due to the relativistic nature of near-light speeds, the message is three years old by the time it reaches them and their short trip to Eden will take two centuries in local time…

When they at last arrive, the promised paradise world is a hot, dry desert but, following protocol and armed with the latest tapes of the language, Brood dons a disguise and makes his way to the nearest city, leaving Char and the ship as back-up in case of trouble.

It finds him anyway and the Earthman is attacked by barbaric grotesques and has to get physical with the brutes…

In the intervening years Eden has fallen into religious fanaticism, and as Brood enters the devastated city he is found by an aged cleric who draws him towards a vast gathering. The worshippers are about to sacrifice another nubile virgin maid to Holobar – an increasingly rare occurrence as most girls wisely “disqualify” themselves at their very first opportunity – in the hope that the prophesied saviour will appear to deliver them from their oppressive all-conquering deity. As Jeremy watches in secure anonymous horror, his ancient guide Narrl hurls him into the middle of the ceremony and urges him to deflower the alien maiden or be torn apart by the mob…

Repressed WASP Brood used to have trouble getting sufficiently amorous even with his black girlfriend in the privacy of their spaceship – and she was actually the same species – so this horrific situation almost ends in disaster until the old wise man smashes the stone mask on a huge idol above the altar. Underneath, the monolith has Brood’s face…

Shocked, panicked and realising he’s been set up by a man dead for centuries, Brood at last accomplishes what he was dispatched for, encouraged in equal measure by the willing female under him and the screaming fanatics surrounding him.

Meanwhile miles distant, desert brigands mount a lethal assault on the grounded starship…

Safe for the present, Brood and his new bride Brynne are filled in by the devious alien Priest – who is also Narrl’s brother. The old connivers are the great grandsons of Finchley and a native girl, and their family has been working to build a counter-religion and messiah-cult based on Brood’s eventual arrival in the expectation that his Earth technology will allow them to overthrow the oppressive, draconian fundamentalist followers of Holobar …

Jeremy can’t think about his proposed role as rabble-rousing rebel: he’s lost radio contact with Char, and is forced to trek back to the ship. En route, however, Narrl tries to kill Brood, revealing himself to be a traitor seeking to destroy the saviour and crush the people’s hope of redemption forever. Eradiating his betrayer Brood pushes on, only to discover he is now the only Earthling on Eden…

Fantagor Presents Brood came out a year later: a special edition of Corben’s own occasional and self-published art magazine which ran a conclusion of sorts in full colour, supplemented by a black and white reprint and a new unconnected monochrome fantasy tale.

(In case you’re wondering the reprint was Razar the Unhero’ written in 1970 by Herb Arnold as “Starr Armitage”: a dark and sexily violent spoof with a deprecating edge, deliciously lampooning the Sword and Sorcery epics dominating paperback bookshelves of the day. The new tale was ‘Ogre II’, a tragic comic monster love story sequel to a yarn that ran in Warren Publishing’s 1984 #4.)

Jeremy Brood however starred in the rocket-paced all-action shocker ‘The Big Shriek!’ which picked up moments after Relativity ended…

As Jeremy buries what remains of Charlene, hordes of airborne dragon-riding Holobar zealots pass over his head heading towards the city and the (presumably) impregnated Edenite Madonna, determined to end the heretical resistance forever…

Soon the city is under shattering bombardment and all looks black until the infuriated Brood storms in, crashing his barely airworthy ship into the central square and briefly driving back in the attackers.

Retreating to the temple, Brood and Brynne prepare for their inevitable end, but the cunning far-seeing and ruthless Bernard Finchley and his devoted disciple Priest had arranged a last-ditch contingency plan, with no thought at the horrific cost their centuries-separated dupe Jeremy would be forced to pay…

Moody and trenchant, laced with sparkling irreverence and cynicism, this parable could and should have found time to fully flower but the times and trends were against it. However Corben and Strnad’s sublime acumen in depicting humanity’s primal drives and inescapable failings has never been better exemplified, and at least the 80 or so pages that were complete are still available in one single edition should you care to check out yet one more book no comics or fantasy fan should be without.
© 1982, 1983, 1989 Richard Corben and Jan Strnad. All rights reserved.