Category: Mature Reading

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Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Who is Miles Morales?


By Brian Michael Bendis & Sara Pichelli (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-503-1

When the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man died writer Brian Michael Bendis and Marvel promised that a new hero would arise from the ashes…

Marvel’s Ultimates imprint began in 2000 with a new post-modern take on major characters and concepts to bring them into line with the tastes of 21st century readers – apparently a wholly different market from those baby-boomers and their descendents content to stick with the precepts sprung from founding talents Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee… or simply those unable or unwilling to deal with the five decades (seven if you include the Golden Age Timely tales retroactively co-opted into the mix) of continuity baggage which saturated the originals.

Eventually even this darkly nihilistic new universe became as continuity-constricted as its ancestor and in 2008 the cleansing event “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which excised dozens of super-humans and millions of lesser mortals in a devastating tsunami which inundated Manhattan courtesy of mutant menace Magneto.

In the aftermath Peter Parker and his fellow meta-human survivors struggled to restore order to a dangerous new world.

Spider-Man finally gained a measure of acceptance and was hailed a hero when he valiantly and very publicly met his end during a catastrophic super-villain confrontation…

This collection (re-presenting the introductory teaser from Ultimate Comics Fallout #4 – August 2011 – and the follow-up Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Who is Miles Morales? #1-5) introduces a new and even younger Arachnid Avenger and describes how, just like his predecessor, a troubled boy learned the painful price of misusing the unique gifts fate had bestowed…

The epic opens with a skinny kid having the poor taste to parade around town in a cheap imitation costume of fallen hero Spider-Man encountering and somehow defeating vicious super-villain The Kangaroo before the revelations begin by spinning back to the recent past where manic industrialist Norman Osborn repeats the genetic experiment which first gave Peter Parker his powers (see Ultimate Spider-Man volume 1: Power and Responsibility) via artificially-mutated spider bite.

Unfortunately the deranged mastermind didn’t expect a burglar to waltz in and accidentally carry off the new test subject as part of his haul…

When grade-schooler Miles Morales got into the prestigious and life-changing Brooklyn Visions Academy Boarding School by the most callous of chances, the brilliant African American/Latino boy quickly and cynically realised that life is pretty much a crap-shoot and unfair to boot. Feeling guilty about his unjust success and sorry for the 697 other poor kids who didn’t get a chance, he snuck off to visit his uncle Aaron.

The visit had to be secret since his uncle was a “bad influence”: a career criminal dubbed The Prowler. Whilst there, a great big spider with a number on its back bit Miles and he began to feel very odd…

For a start he began to turn invisible…

Suddenly super-fast and strong, able to leap huge distances and fade from view, Miles rushed over to see his geeky pal Ganke, a brilliant nerd already attending Brooklyn Visions. Applying “scientific” testing the boy also discovers Miles can deliver shocking, destructive charges through his hands. When Miles goes home Ganke did more research and deduced a connection to the new hero Spider-Man; pushing his friend towards also becoming a costumed crusader.

However, after Miles assisted during a tenement fire, saving a mother and baby, shock set in and he decided never to use his powers again…

Time passed: Miles and Ganke had been roommates at the Academy for almost a year when news of a major metahuman clash rocked the city. The troubled Miles headed out and was a bystander at the scene of Spider-Man’s death.

Seeing a brave man perish so valiantly, Miles was once more consumed by guilt: if he had used his own powers when they first manifested he might have been able to help; to save a truly great hero…

As part of the crowd attending Parker’s memorial Miles and Ganke talked to another mourner, a girl who actually knew Parker. Gwen Stacy offered quiet insights to the grieving child which altered the course of his life forever: “with great power comes great responsibility…”

Clad in a Halloween Spidey costume borrowed from Ganke, Miles took to the night streets for the first time and stopped the Kangaroo from committing murder…

His third night out the exhilarated boy encountered the terrifying and furiously indignant Spider-Woman who thrashed and arrested him, dragging him to Government agency S.H.I.E.L.D where Hawkeye, Iron Man and master manipulator Nick Fury coldly assessed him.

However, before they could reach a decision on Miles’ fate, the murderous Electro broke free of the building’s medical custody ward and went on a rampage.

Despite defeating all the seasoned heroes the voltage villain was completely unprepared for a new Spider-Man: especially as the boy had a whole extra range of powers including camouflage capabilities and an irresistible “venom-strike” sting…

As Miles considered the full implications of his victory, Fury imparted a staggeringly simple homily: “With great power…”

Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli have crafted a stirring new chapter which is both engaging and intriguing and the volume also contains a gallery of alternate covers by Marko Djurdjevic and Pichelli.

Tense, breathtaking, action-packed, evocative and full of the light-hearted, self-aware humour which blessed the original Lee/Ditko tales, this is a controversial but worthy way to continue and advance the legend that Fights ‘n’ Tights addicts will admire and adore…
A British Edition ™ & © 2012 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. and published by Panini UK, Ltd. All rights reserved.

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The Best of Fat Freddy’s CAT books 1 & 2


By Gilbert Shelton with Dave Sheridan, Paul Mavrides & Lieuen Adkins (Knockabout)
ISBN: 0-86166-009-9 & 0-86166-014-5   Omnibus 978-0-86166-161-9

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers shambled out of the Underground Commix counter-culture wave in 1968; initially appearing in Berkeley Print Mint’s Feds ‘n’ Heads, and in Underground newspapers before creator Gilbert Shelton and a few friends founded their own San Francisco based Rip Off Press in 1969. This effective collective continued to maximise the madness as the hilarious antics of the “Freaks” (contemporary term for lazy, dirty, drug-taking hippy folk) captured the imagination of the more open-minded portions of America and the world (not to mention their kids)…

In 1971 Rip Off published the first compilation: The Collected Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers – which has been in print all around the planet ever since – and soon assorted underground magazines and college papers were joined by the heady likes of Rip Off Comix, High Times, Playboy and numerous foreign periodicals in featuring the addictive adventures of Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas T. Freakears and Fat Freddy Freekowtski (with his cat): simpatico metaphorical siblings in sybaritic self-indulgence.

Fat Freddy’s Cat quickly became a star in his own right: tiny “topper” strips (separate mini adventures which accompanied the main story) in the newspapers that supplemented the Freaks’ antics became single page gags and eventually bloomed during the 1970s into full-blown extended exploits of the canny, cynical feline reprobate in his own series of digest-sized comicbooks The Adventures of Fat Freddy’s CAT…

Much of the material consisted of untitled quickies and short strips concocted by Shelton (with assistance from Dave Sheridan, Paul Mavrides and Lieuen Adkins) and eventually the little yarns were collected by UK Publisher Knockabout as a brace of oversized – 297x212mm – black and white comic albums and as mass-market b-format paperbacks in their Crack Editions imprint. In 2009 the entire canon was collected as The Fat Freddy’s CAT Omnibus.

These tales are wicked, degenerate, scatologically vulgar, sublimely smutty and brilliantly funny in any format but perhaps their raw anarchic, sly hysteria is best enjoyed in the giant tomes I’m highlighting here.

Book one opens with a dozen or so six panel strips and a single pager produced between 1971 and 1978, before the hilariously whacky epic ‘Chariot of the Globs’ (written by Adkins with art by Shelton & Sheridan) reveals how the imperturbable puss saved alien explorers from a hideous fate, followed by another fifty shorts covering every topic from mating to feeding, talking to humans and especially how cats inflict revenge…

Shelton and Sheridan then disclose the horrors of ‘Animal Camp’ wherein the irrepressible feline was dumped by Fat Freddy in a Boarding Kennel run by Nazi war criminals where pets were converted into clothing and pet food or else used in arcane genetic experiments!

Naturally the brainy beast had to lead a rebellion and break-out…

Amidst the remaining sixty-plus shorts comprising talking cockroaches, drug-fuelled excess, toilet training and drinking, fighting, mating and outsmarting humans, lurks one last lengthy treat from 1980, ‘The Sacred Sands of Pootweet… or the Mayor’s Meower’, a splendidly raucous political satire based on the tale of Dick Whittington.

When a religious hard-liner overthrows the oil-rich nation and former US satellite of Pootweet, Fat Freddy attempts to scam the Supreme Hoochy-Coochy by using the cat to clean up kingdom’s rodent problem. Only trouble is that the pious and poor Pootweet populace have no vermin problem (even after Freddy callously tries to manufacture one), only sacred, unblemished, undesecrated sands which the cat – in dire need of a potty-break – heads straight for…

The second volume is blessed with another seventy-odd scurrilous, scandalous and supremely hilarious short gags ranging from half to two pages, intoxicatingly interlaced with longer comedic classics such as the untitled tirade against modern newspaper strips which “guest-stars” such luminaries as Mary Worth, Doonesbury, Kronk, Andy Capp, Peanuts and a heavenly host of cartoon cats from Garfield to Fritz to Felix…

Also included are the devious and satirical 1973 spy-spoof ‘I Led Nine Lives!’ recounting the days when the fabulous feline worked for the FBI, ‘Fat Freddy’s CAT in the Burning of Hollywood’ from 1978 wherein the sublimely smug and sanguine survivor of a million hairy moments regales his ever-burgeoning brood of impressionable kittens with how he and his imbecilic human spectacularly flamed out in the movie biz and a truly salutary tale for all fans and readers…

Following the innocent – but so enjoyable – shredding of Fat Freddy’s comic collection and the expiration of his ninth life, ‘Paradise Revisited’ (1983 and illustrated by Paul Mavrides) finds the Marvellous Moggy in heaven again: but even though the place is packed with famous felines it’s not all catnip and celebration…

Despite the hippy-dippy antecedents and stoner presentiments, Shelton is always a consummate professional. His ideas are enchantingly fresh yet timeless, the dialogue is permanently spot-on and his pacing perfect. The stories, whether half-page quickies, short vignettes or full blown sagas, start strong and relentlessly build to spectacular – and often wildly outrageous, hallucinogenic yet story-appropriate – climaxes.

Anarchically sardonic and splendidly ludicrous, the madcap slapstick and sly satire of Gilbert Shelton is always an irresistible, riotously innocent tonic for the blues and these tales should be a compulsory experience for any fan of the comics medium.
© 1983, 1984, 2009 Gilbert Shelton. All rights reserved.

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Kramers Ergot volume 8


By various, edited by Sammy Harkham (PictureBox)
ISBN: 978-0-98458-927-2

Since the 1980s when “Underground” creators and cartoonists of adult and mature English-language comics first began to find mainstream and popular acceptance by re-branding themselves as alternative or Avant Garde, there have periodically emerged groundbreaking anthologies which served to disseminate the best of the best in challenging sequential art. Following on the groundbreaking heels of Raw and its descendants, Kramers Ergot launched as a 48-page mini-comic in 2000 and grew into a vari-format, anything goes visual and intellectual banquet before suspending publication with #7 in 2008 with a hugely proportioned (536x414mm) 96-page deluxe hardback starring sixty of the art form’s most beguiling pantheon of stars.

Now founding father Sammy Harkham returns with another stunning array of top-notch new creations and a smattering of sublime vintage material in a gloriously accessible 240-page clothbound B-format hardback that once more brandishes the sharpest of cutting edges at fans of the medium at its most uncompromising…

The magic begins with the abstract and glittering Overture by Robert Beatty, after which Washington Punk musician Ian F. Svenonius (Nation of Ulysses, Weird War and Chain and The Gang) contributes a fascination and informative essay on the shape of American arts with Notes on Camp part 2.

Alternative star and social commentator ‘Jimbo’ returns in a trek across tomorrow’s wastelands in a sharp monochrome yarn from Gary Panter after which C.F. explores isolation and human relationships in the placidly eerie ‘Warm Genetic House-Test Pattern’ whilst Kevin Huizenga redraws an old Charlton Comics fantasy tale (“The Half Men” by Bill Molno & Sal Trapani and possibly scripted by the prolific Joe Gill) in the quirkily disturbing ‘Mysteries of Unexplained Worlds’…

Leon Sadler produces the first of two contributions in the colourfully pensive ‘Friendship Comic’ whilst the muted hues and jolly style of Gabrielle Bell’s ‘Cody’ successfully belies the tale’s violent underpinnings and Frank Santoro & Dash Shaw shock and stun with their chilling ‘Childhood Predators’.

‘Ain’t it So?’ is a smart cartoon by Tim Hensley and ‘Get Your Ass to Mars’ is a set of stunning art photo pieces from Takeshi Murata, whilst ‘Mining Colony X7170’ is a typically dark and savage sci fi shocker from anti-art iconoclast Johnny Ryan before

Leon Sadler returns with the expansive and picaresque ‘Goblins Orbit the Earth (I’m Here! It’s Me!)’.

Chris Cilla takes a different look at love in ‘Secret Tourist’ and ‘Barbarian Bitch’ by Anya Davidson joyously screws with all the traditions of the hoary old genre and Ben Jones plays cunning mind-games and perpetrates dire puns in his shaggy doggish and charmingly primitivist ‘The Ultimate Character 2002’ after which Editor Sammy Harkham picks up his own pens to describe the silent horror and driving melodrama of ‘A Husband and a Wife’.

‘Epilogue’ is another visual voyage from painter Robert Beatty and this tome concludes with a long lost delight.

The last contribution is a true joy for me reprinting as it does a selection from what I believe to be one of the most delicious and clever British strips ever created. ‘Oh, Wicked Wanda (Select Excerpts)’ reprints in sublime full glossy colour Ron Embleton & Frederick Mullalley’s brilliant socio-sexual satire which ran in Penthouse magazine between 1973-1980.

Journalist, editor (of left-wing magazine Tribune), columnist, novelist and political writer Mullally was hired to script the exotic, erotic adventures of Wanda Von Kreesus, the richest woman in the world, Candyfloss, her insatiable jailbait paramour and an outrageous coterie of faithful employees including an all-girl army, a mad scientist and a brutal looking thug with the soul of a poet. To illustrate he secured the talents of oil painter and comic strip veteran Ron Embleton who had astounded comic readers with his lush and vibrant strip Wulf the Briton in Express Weekly and his illustrations in Look and Learn.

Oh, Wicked Wanda! was originally a prose serial illustrated by Bryan Forbes, beginning in 1969 before becoming, in 1973, the unbelievably lavish and torrid strip reprinted here, continuing until 1980 when it was replaced by Sweet Chastity, also painted by Embleton, and scripted by Penthouse proprietor Bob Guccione.

The bored and mischievous hellion is a sexually adventurous woman from a time when sexual politics and liberation were huge issues, and therefore prime targets for low comedy and high satire. Mullally peppered his scripts with topical references (many, sadly which would escape today’s casual reader, I’m sure) and the phenomenal Embleton would depict them with hyper-realistic accuracy. Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Ted Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Fidel Castro, Lyndon Johnson, Spiro Agnew, Mao Tse-tung, John Wayne, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and even comic-strip greats like Pogo, Mutt and Jeff or Krazy Kat, all meandered through the glossy pages, a cross between a Greek Chorus and pictorial ad-libs.

Many celebrities were actively parodied, participants and classical and contemporary erotic allusions abounded; ranging from a little nymphette lounging about reading William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch to visual and verbal references to Shelley’s Leda and the Swan.

Here some of the earliest adventures are re-presented as Wanda destroys, debases, abducts and mounts (no, not necessarily that way) the obnoxiously rich and famous for her Museum of Misfits and Deviancy; consequently taking on the Mafia, the CIA and South American Nazi war criminal Martin Boorman. Her personal Mad Scientist Homer Sapiens also reveals his sordid connections to some of the 20th century’s nastiest personages…

Oh, Wicked Wanda! is still a funny, sexy read and inarguably one of the most beautiful British strips ever crafted. Hopefully this selection will lead to a new audience and a comprehensive reprinting …

As well as being a comics-lovers dream, Kramers Ergot is a book-lovers delight with excellent design and a reassuringly high-class print values. This package is something no lover of the medium can afford to miss.

All material © 2011 respective authors and owners. All rights reserved.

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Frank Brunner’s Seven Samuroid


By Frank Brunner (Image International)
ISBN: 0-943128-06-4

The 1980s were a fertile time for American comics-creators. It was as if a brand new industry had been born with the proliferation of the Direct Sales Market and dedicated specialist retail outlets; companies were experimenting with format and content and economically, times were good so punters even had a bit of spare cash to play with.

Moreover much of the “kid’s stuff” stigma had finally been invalidated and America was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be a for-real, actual art-form…

Consequently many young start-up companies began competing for the attention and leisure-dollars of fans grown accustomed – or resigned – to getting their on-going picture stories from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material had been creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse, First and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads, all supplemented by the rapid rise of a healthy plethora of comics criticism, collection and informational magazines…

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Even smaller companies had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great material came – and too often, quickly went – without getting the attention or success it warranted.

One of the most overlooked but just plain fun features came from an unlikely paring of star artist Frank Brunner and a printing company based in New Zealand, which tapped into the growing zeitgeist of Japan’s burgeoning robotic warrior knights or “mecha” and the modern pulp space opera of the first Star Wars generation…

In the future the great Galactic Union succumbed to war brought about by political ambition and economic greed. At the height of the conflict a group of wise men created a small force of super-robots hardwired with the unflinching principles of ancient Earth’s noblest warriors; dedicated to preserving all innocent life and defending the oppressed; whether organic or mechanical.

These Samuroids were then bonded with the personalities of valiant volunteers whose intellects were transcribed into the awesome automatons. However after decades of constant struggle even the unceasing efforts of the puissant mechanicals were not enough to stave off an era of darkness, decline and destruction…

Two millennia later the universe is a place of chaos and anarchy dotted with small emergent enclaves of brutal feudal “civilisation” still limited to their own isolated, hostile star-systems. On the planet Ion, freedom fighter Zeta leads a band of rebels battling the rise of a new Dark Imperium. Hunted by sky-borne troops in deadly gun-ships, she falls into a cave and discovers a ponderous solitary figure: Ultek the Samuroid.

The tragic undying warrior has stood sentinel in this dark hole since he and his fellows failed in their appointed task centuries ago, contemplating the horrors he was built to prevent and all the lives he was forced to take. However his broken soul is fired up at last when the Imperium troops savagely attack, wounding Zeta.

Roused to action, Ultek destroys the monstrous thugs and joins Zeta’s cause, determined to thwart the expansionist horrors of the voracious Imperium and its mad monarch, The Mikado…

To this end he seeks out the other surviving Samuroids, who have indeed fallen low…

After millennia their quasi-mystical power-source Reiki is all but exhausted. Another mecha Sarr donates his reserves to scientists in hope of their synthesising a substitute fuel whilst Ultek returns to the stars in search of more old comrades. He finds two aboard an ancient Galaxy-Union Star Battle Wagon, converted into a vast and corrupt travelling carnival. They are unresisting slaves of its vile master, Strom Bolla…

Sark and Gorr have bartered their honour for dwindling rations of Reiki, but Ultek finds a valuable friend in the brave but inconsequential droid Toto who describes himself as an “honorary Samuroid”. With precious time passing and desperately determined to free and rehabilitate his fallen comrades Ultek joins the Carnival as a gladiator, but before he can make his move events spiral out of control when the decrepit warship is attacked by two more Samuroids Hum-Run and Dagg…

United at last the Seven Samuroid return to Ion where the rebellion has fared badly under the Mikado’s barbarous assaults and horror, glory and restored honour await them…

That or final irrevocable death and darkness…

At first this book (published in the overlarge 285 x 220mm European Album Format) might seem a creature of unlikely marriages: adapting the classic plot and ever-so-serviceable themes and motifs of Akira Kurosawa’s Shichinin no Samurai to the heavily technocratic milieu of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica is not so big a leap, but much of this sci fi romp is exceedingly dark and decidedly mature in content and Brunner’s superbly humanistic illustration is often at odds with the grubby, grimy tone and faceless  dehumanising technology and hardware of the storyline.

Stuffed with in-jokes and dry asides, this tales also skirts rather than embraces the spiritual aspects of the original Seven Samurai but does pay lip-service to the all-embracing warrior code of Bushido as well as finding room for romance and a happy ending of sorts.

All in all this is a very queer beast indeed from a time when anything seemed possible, but in the final analysis provides a huge amount of old-fashioned thrills, chills and spills, making it well worth the time and effort of fans of movie and cartoon fantasy as well as classic comics adventure.
© 1984 Frank Brunner. All rights reserved.

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New British Comics volume 3


By various (NBC)
No ISBN:

Here’s a terrific little anthology tome (the third in a very impressive series) for older readers which delivers a tremendous amount of cartoon wonder and literary entertainment. This lovely B5 format compilation gathers a selection of contemporary graphic tales and vignettes by very talented, imaginative and keen creators who aren’t quite household names yet, beginning with the delightful ‘Cindy & Biscuit Save the World (again)’ by Dan White, wherein a plucky lass and her faithful mutt tackle an alien invasion, after which Lawrence Elwick & Paul O’Connell reveal an unsuspected side of ‘Alfred Hitchcock: Master of Suspense’.

‘Ink vs Paper’ by John Miers is an edgy, multi-layered silent foray into high design and “Hai! Karate!” followed by ‘Animal Magnetism’, the first of two equally speechless jazzy adventures by Elwick & O’Connell starring ‘Charlie Parker “Handyman”…

Scathing social satire is the order of the day in the futuristic unreality show ‘Here Comes the Neighbourhood’ by Matthew Craig & Richard Johnson, whilst more traditional sci fi fare informs the excellent ‘Better Living Through Distance’ by Dave Johnson, and genuine spooky nihilism makes Craig Collins & Iain Laurie’s ‘The Quiet Burden’ the very last thing you want to read at bedtime…

‘Luvvable Lex: Dirty ‘N’ Down’ by Rob Miller offers the unique Celtic insights of a very with-it “Glesga Gangster” before ‘Wonderland’ by Wilbur Dawbarn finally confirms what you’d always feared about the fauns and that Wardrobe to Narnia… After ‘Charlie Parker “Handyman”: Skyscraper Lunch’, Van Nim breaks hearts and shatters illusions of fairytale romance in‘(crack)’.

The thrills and chills come thick and fast in the macabre western ‘Von Trapp’ by WJC and this superb sojourn in strange lands ends with ‘A Complex Machine’ wherein David Ziggy Greene exposes the ghastly, fantastic, impossible truth about reflexology, Chinese medicine and those serene but wizened old gentlemen…

Most of the most popular and impressive creators of the last thirty years broke into the paying end of the business via the Independent, Small Press or Self Publishing routes and as each of the contributors here has a website you can see more at, courtesy of the biographies section at the back, you can get in on the crest of the next wave simply by picking up the luscious little black and white book…
All work © 2011 the individual creators. All rights reserved

To obtain New British Comics check this out, or contact Rob Miller.

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100 Bullets: Decayed


By Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-384-8

Not long after Columbus landed in America, thirteen ancient European crime-families migrated to the New World and clandestinely carved up the continent in perpetuity between them. As the country grew cultured and a new nation was born the Trust embedded itself within every aspect of it.

To prevent their own greed and ambition from destroying the sweetest deal in history the Families created an extraordinary police force to mediate and act when any Trust member or faction acted against the unity and best interests of the whole. They were called the Minutemen and were always led by the kind of peacekeeper needed to keep them honest and actively cooperating – a man uniquely honest, dedicated, smart and remorseless.

Not too long ago though, some of The Trust’s current leaders decided they no longer needed overseers and acted with characteristic ruthlessness to remove them.

Betrayed Minutemen captain Agent Graves didn’t take his dismissal well and has been slowly enacting a plan to rectify that casual injustice. For years he has been appearing to various betrayed and defeated people as a “Court of Last Resort” offering answers, secrets, an untraceable handgun and 100 Bullets …

Some of those tragic beneficiaries have been revealed as Minutemen with their personalities hypnotically submerged in cover identities to hide and protect them from the Trust. Gradually they have been reawakened by Graves as he confidentially proceeds with his long range strategy… although no-one really knows what the end-game and ultimate goals are.

With this tenth volume (collecting issues #68-75 of the Vertigo comicbook and the three quarter mark of the stunning adult saga) comes another stunning ratcheting-up of suspense as even more players are removed from the game and the increasingly wary survivors consolidate their positions for the fast approaching apocalyptic finale.

Pay attention when perusing: the uncompromising co-creators have never been accused of underestimating their audience’s intelligence – or appetite for blood, sex, intrigue and ultra-violent action – and these stories need to be carefully studied: both the delightfully sparse words and the shockingly slick pictures…

After an introduction from Darwyn Cooke the ongoing drama re-opens with ‘Sleep, Walker’ and a flashback to 1962 as Axel, leader of House Nagel, is informed by young Augustus Medici that the Minuteman leader Neil Walker has died…

To replace him Medici and Javier Vasco favour the coolly capable Philip Graves, but the junior Minuteman is not so certain he will win the position or the Trust’s full acceptance…

In the present Nagel is a tired old man carried along on Medici’s ambitions and sadly realising his own time has, at last, run out…

As new Trust Warlord Lono targets death-obsessed street-fighter Jack Daw and finally reactivates the next hidden sleeper agent by almost beating him to death, another flashback reveals that some Trust members fear Graves’ Holy Grail has always been a House of his own…

The extended saga ‘A Wake’ reintroduces another capable and nefarious character as low-level enforcer Ronnie Rome hunts for the suicidal mook crazy enough to steal from his gangster boss Mimo. If only all the evidence didn’t point to Ronnie’s wild younger brother Remi…

Meanwhile Axel’s funeral points out a minor problem: as the nine remaining Trust Families swear new allegiance and solidarity to each other a contentious point of order crops up.

Lars and Anna, twins with an unhealthy affection for each other, are the heirs to House Nagel, but since there can be only one undisputed head and the twins are reluctant to choose they must be prodded at all costs into making an irrevocable decision…

Elsewhere, with all the angles weighed, Ronnie readies himself to settle with Remi, but the snotty sibling has found the case, gun and 100 bullets Graves left with the older leg-breaker…

Things turn very nasty when the real thieves are exposed, but the horrific bloodbath that results there is as nothing compared to what happens after one of the Rome boys is revealed as another dormant Minuteman…

And at the highest level of society, Lono works things out with the two potential heirs of Axel Nagel. When he’s done there’s one less House in the Trust…

This volume ends with ‘Amorality Play’ as Graves plays his game in San Francisco, offering young grill-chef and washed-up medical student Dustin his usual deal and briefcase while Lono revels in his growing clout with the Trust and messes with assorted street-punks, predators and lowlifes – just to keep his hand in and to prove what really makes humanity tick…

Wicked, clever, blackly funny and gloriously, gratuitously vicarious, this ultra-violent, sex-stuffed, profanity-packed, utterly addictive thrill ride always delivers maximum punch and every beautiful panel on every thrilling page might hold the final clue  to the grand saga unfolding before your eyes. Moreover even whilst playing scrupulously fair the creators are doing their best to shock, mislead and set you up….

Beginning as one of the best crime-comics ever produced, the series developed into a staggeringly plausible and painfully visceral conspiracy thriller of vast scope and dazzling, intricate detail. Over the months and years Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso slowly and carefully planted many seeds which grew into a tangle of disparate shoots simultaneously entwining and growing off at tangents before coming together into a perfect mosaic of mood, mayhem and murder.

If there are still any of you rush-starved story fans – grown-up, paid-up, immured to harsh language and unshaken by nudity, rudity and very violent behaviour – who haven’t seen this compulsive classic yet, get out there and grab every one of these graphic novels at all costs! You need them all and the very best is yet to come…
© 2006 Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso & DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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A Matter of Time


By Juan Gimenez (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-012-3, Del Rey edition (2005):  978-0-34548-314-0

Juan Antonio Giménez López was born in Mendoza, Argentina in 1943 and after studying industrial design attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona. Hugely influenced by Hugo Pratt and Francisco Solano López, Gimenez broke into the comics field with stories for Argentine magazines Record and Colomba before beginning his long association with European comics in such publications as Spain’s Zona 84, Comix International and 1994, France’s Metal Hurlant and Italy’s Lanciostory, L’Eternauta  and Skorpio, before gaining global fame with his scintillant Metabarons series produced in collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky.

His preferred metier is adult tales of science fiction and/or combat and Gimenez is an accredited expert on all things avionic or to do with war in the air.

In 1985 Catalan Communications collected a selection of time-travel related short stories (many of which had appeared in the American magazine Heavy Metal) usually known as the Time Paradox Tales into one glorious baroque and stunningly beautiful fantasy anthology with dark, sardonic and sublimely lyrical overtones of classic 2000AD Future Shocks or Twisted Times “sting-in-the-tale” stories…

Following a expansive and lavishly illustrated critique from Carlos Gimenez (no relation) the elegantly lush procession of exotic, eccentric eight-page excitements begins with ‘DIY’ wherein a father and son meddle with the wrong home-computer program and dad ends up a terrified touchline visitor at some of the most dangerous moments of all time and space, after which ‘Tridisex’ details the horrific fate of a couple of salacious chronal researchers who land in the right place at the right time but at the wrong size…

‘Express’ sees a dedicated time-assassin dispatched into the past to unwittingly murder himself whilst ‘Entropy’ details a tragic timeslip which causes the greatest combat aircraft of two eras to experience the closest of encounters.

‘8½’ explores the secret advantage of the fastest gunslinger of the Wild West and recounts the fate of the time-tourist who rooted for him whilst a tragic synchronicity-loop and incomprehensible paradox at last explains the great leap forward of an ancient civilisation in ‘Chronology’…

‘Residue’ takes the exercise in futility that is war to its inescapable conclusion in a lustrous four-page paean to technological advantage, bringing this magnificent artistic treat to a close on the darkest of downbeats…

Gritty, witty and ever so pretty, A Matter of Time is pure speculative gold: old-fashioned, cutting edge fantasy fun and entertainment with a satirical edge and its tongue firmly in its cheek. Perfume for the eyes so breathe deeply and jump aboard.
© 1982-1985 Juan Gimenez. English translation © 1985 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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The Desert Peach volume 4: Baby Games


By Donna Barr (Mu Press/Aeon Pubs)
ISBN: 1-883847-05-2

Donna Barr is one of the comic world’s most singular graphic raconteurs. She always constructs impeccable, fully realised worldscapes to house her stories and tells them with a style and voice that are definitely one-of-a-kind. Her most perfect creations are the Half-Horse Stinz Löwhard, and The Desert Peach, perfectly self-assured and eminently capable gay brother of the legendary “Desert Fox” and the scintillating star of this effervescent assemblage of sly, dry wit, raucous drollery and way out military madness.

Set in World War II Africa and effortlessly combining hilarity, absurdity, profound sensitivity and glittering spontaneity, the stories describe the daily grind of Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel; a dutiful if unwilling cog in the German War Machine.

However, although as capable as his beloved elder sibling Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the gracious and genteel Peach is a man who loathes causing harm or giving offence and thus spends his dry and dusty days with the ever-so-motley crew of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps, trying to remain stylish, elegant and non-threatening to the men under his command and the enemy forces around him.

The only people he really dislikes are boors, bigots and card-carrying Blackshirts…

He applies the same genteel courtesies to the sundry natives inhabiting the area and the rather tiresome British – not all of whom are party to a clandestine non-aggression pact Pfirsich has agreed with his opposite numbers in the amassed Allied Forces…

The romantic fool is also passionately in love with and engaged to Rosen Kavalier: handsome Aryan warrior and wildly manly Luftwaffe Ace…

The Desert Peach ran for 32 intermittent issues via a number of publishers and was subsequently collected as eight graphic novel collections (1988-2005). A prose novel, Bread and Swans, a musical and an invitational collection by other artists entitled Ersatz Peach were also created during the strip’s heyday. A larger compendium, Seven Peaches, collects issues #1-7 and Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collective…

Arguably the real star of these fabulous frothy epics is the Peach’s long-suffering, unkempt, crafty, ill-mannered, bilious and lazily scrofulous orderly Udo Schmidt, a man of many secrets whose one redeeming virtue is his uncompromising loyalty and devotion to the only decent man and tolerable officer in the entire German army.

This terrifyingly scarce fourth softcover collection reprints issues #10-12, and starts the ball rolling with ‘Two-Timers’ wherein the fiercely protective Pfirsich infiltrates the British positions as history’s least believable English Officer to ferret out a spy targeting his brother Erwin.

Of course to carry off the mission somebody has to be prominently visible in the German camp as the ever-so-unmissable and wickedly froufrou Desert Peach. Ein step vorwarts, (or else…) patriotic he-man and self-appointed Nazi political officer Leutnant Kjars Winzig…

Meanwhile, as the entire 469th kvetch over the Leutnant’s unlikely and unhappy performance, Pfirsich’s impossible imposture is going inconceivably well until he confronts the undercover agent over drinks in the NAAFI. Although the bold Boche succeeds in reasoning with the master-spy, a couple of Anzac non-coms (who hate Poms as much as Krauts) are not fooled, leading to a spectacular chase and frantically thrilling conclusion…

That hilarious comedy of terrors was quickly topped by a superbly delightful and trenchantly wicked adult farce in ‘Straight and Narrow’ wherein Udo, disgusted with the mockery his effeminate boss engenders amongst other German units, determines to get his boss laid by a woman – specifically the very willing and professional ladies of local bordello “The Cedars”.

Aiding and abetting this appalling scheme is Pfirsich’s one true love, wild man Luftwaffe pilot and airborne inamorata Rosen Kavalier. Even with the more than willing demimondaine Babette in on the scheme and exerting all her professional wiles it takes a chemical “additive” to finally get the ball rolling…

Of course the entire vile scheme ends badly and the Peach, crushed, disgusted and humiliated storms off. Soon after however, Babette realises that she’s now eating for two…

The reprinted material ends here with the inevitable conclusion in ‘Menschenkind – Child of the World’ as nine months after that epic night Pfirsich – still distant with his staff and boyfriend – drives away the unrepentant Ace. Kavalier storms off and visits The Cedars again, discovering a fascinating piece of news…

Although the Peach refuses to listen to his true love, cunning Udo, in on the secret, inveigles his boss into returning to his place of shame, where after another farcical misapprehension of events the Peach is finally introduced to his newborn son…

But of course even this joy is tempered by incredible problems…

To augment and complete this fabulous triptych of torrid tales there’s a new epilogue ‘Home is Where…’ set in the Peach’s declining years, wherein Pfirsich and his adult son Mani play host to a reunion of the 469th few survivors: a bittersweet vignette which delights and fearfully foreshadows tragedies yet to come…

Referencing the same vast story potential as Sgt. Bilko, Hogan’s Heroes, Oh, What a Lovely War! and Catch 22, as well as such tangential films as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Birdcage, the Desert Peach is bawdy, raucous, clever, authentically madcap and immensely engaging. These fabulous combat fruit cocktails were some of the very best comics of the 1990s and still pack the comedic kick of an embroidered landmine, liberally leavened with situational jocularity, accent humour and lots of footnoted Deutsche cuss-words for the kids to learn. Moreover, with this volume the dark bitter edges and cold iron underlying these fabulous characters and their horrific, doomed situation become increasingly apparent.

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is a must-have for any history-loving, war-hating lover of wit, slapstick, high drama and belly-laughs. All the Desert Peach books are pretty hard to find these days but if you have a Kindle, Robot Comics have just begun to release individual comicbook issues for anybody who can get the hang of all this verfluchte technical tsuris…
© 1991-1994 Donna Barr. All rights reserved. The Desert Peach is ™ Donna Barr.

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Thoroughly Ripped with the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers …and Fat Freddy’s CAT!


By Gilbert Shelton & Dave Sheridan with Paul Mavrides (Rip Off Press, Inc.)
ISBN: 978-0-89620-088-3
(1978)

Since nobody normal, god-fearing, decent and upstanding would ever dabble with  recreational pharmaceuticals, you’re probably utterly unaware of the extensive sub-culture which has grown up around the casual abuse and dastardly trafficking of narcotics – and so, of course, am I – but it must be said: those counter-culture dudes certainly know how to craft a comic tale.

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers shambled out of the Underground Commix counter-culture wave in 1968; initially appearing in Berkeley Print Mint’s Feds ‘n’ Heads, before creator Gilbert Shelton and a few friends founded their own San Francisco based Rip Off Press in 1969. This effective collective continued to maximise the madness as the hilarious antics of the “Freaks” (a contemporary term for lazy, dirty, drug-taking hippy folks) captured the imagination of the more open-minded portions of America and the world (not to mention their kids)…

In 1971 Rip Off published the first compilation: The Collected Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers – which has been in print all around the planet ever since – and soon assorted underground magazines and college papers were joined by the heady likes of Rip Off Comix, High Times, Playboy and numerous foreign periodicals in featuring the addictive adventures of Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas T. Freakears and Fat Freddy Freekowtski (and his cat): simpatico metaphorical siblings in sybaritic self-indulgence.

Always written by Shelton and, from 1974 illustrated by Dave Sheridan (until his death in 1982) after which Paul Mavrides picked up the nibs and brushes; the disjointed strips (sorry; irresistible puns are the monkey on my back) combined canny satirical cynicism, surreal situations, scatological sauciness and a terrifying grasp of human nature in staggeringly comedic episodes which cannot fail to amuse anyone with a mature sense of humour.

All the strips have been collected in various formats (in Britain by the marvellous Knockabout Comics) and have been happily absorbed by vast generations of fans – most of whom wouldn’t read any other comic.

Despite the hippy-dippy antecedents and stoner presentiments, Shelton is irrefutably a consummate professional. His ideas are always enchantingly fresh yet timeless, the dialogue is permanently spot-on and his pacing perfect. The stories, whether half-page fillers, short vignettes or full blown sagas, start strong and relentlessly build to spectacular – and often wildly outrageous, hallucinogenic yet story-appropriate – climaxes.

And they’re so very, very funny.

Freewheelin’ Franklin is the tough, street-savvy one who can pull the chicks best, Phineas T. Freakears is a wildly romantic, educated and dangerous (to himself) intellectual whilst Fat Freddy Freekowtski is us; weak-willed, greedy, not so smart, vastly put upon by an uncaring universe but oddly charming (you wish…)

One last point: despite the vast panoply of drugs imbibed, both real and invented, the Freaks don’t ever do heroin – and if that’s not a warning message I don’t know what is…

Thoroughly Ripped is a compilation first released in 1978 and revised with the 1980 edition reviewed here: a luxurious full painted-colour softcover which collects the last of Dave Sheridan’s strips and a couple of the superb early Paul Mavrides efforts in a gloriously anarchic and hilarious chronicle of cloudy-headed, anti-corporate skits and sketches.

The wit and wonderment opens with ‘Fat Freddy’s CAT in the Burning of Hollywood’ from 1978 as the sublimely smug and sanguine survivor of a million hairy moments recounts to his ever-burgeoning brood of impressionable kittens how he and his imbecilic human spectacularly flamed out in the movie biz in a classic tale written and illustrated by Shelton, after which follows a single page strip about the dangers of buying your fun from a guy in an alley…

Next up is the breakthrough “origin” saga of Phineas ‘Winter of ’59’ (produced for internationally distributed Playboy magazine in 1974) and a saucy retrospective of high times in the Fabulous Fifties and Swinging Sixties.

‘Sunday Funnies’ was a single-page spoof of super-cop Dick Tracy starring inept undercover Fed Notorious Norbert (the Nark) who returned in ‘The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and the Mysterious Visitor’ which saw the start of Dave Sheridan’s artistic endeavours in a snazzy sting operation by the dragged-up drug cop, followed by the superbly surreal ‘Ridin’ That Train’ as Fatty Freddy discovered the mixed joys of train sets and strong weed…

Much of the material consisted of untitled quickies and short strips. Freewheelin’ Franklin solos in a paranoid cautionary tale of the perils of housework, whilst Freddy and Phineas get into a bizarre battle over TV privileges after which the Fat One finally decides to get rid of the cockroach invasion blighting his life before accidentally and cataclysmically exposing corporate greed in the fire-alarm sales trade…

Preceded by a one-page tale of Phineas’ latest drug-dregs recycling invention, ‘The $29.95 SF to NYC Non-Stop Whiteline Cannonball Express’ by Shelton & Sheridan details the explosive and acerbic epic tale of the Bro’s attempt to start a trans-continental people’s vintage bus service with the usual wildly unbelievable detours and results, after which a flurry of short strips, including Freddy’s adventure in a mud wallow, Phineas’ attempt to make bees produce marijuana honey, Norbert’s latest drug scanning technology fiasco and a search for the legendary “Lost Volkswagen Cocaine Stash” leads to the lads’ latest home-growing experiment decimating their apartment block.

The Reefer Madness concludes with a yarn exposing the secret TV conspiracy to suck out our brains, how undercover cops won a Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers look-alike competition and two Mavrides one-pagers – an untitled collaboration with Sheridan detailing the wonder of “the munchies” and the disgustingly uproarious ‘Zeno’s Law’ as the Freaks attempt to legislate and police refrigerator privileges and responsibilities…

Without Shelton and the Freaks the whole sub-genre of slacker/stoner movies, from Cheech and Chong‘s assorted escapades to more modern entries such as Dude, Where’s My Car?, Supertroopers, Harold and Kumar and all the rest, good, bad or indifferent, wouldn’t exist. Whether or not that’s a good thing is up to you…

Anarchically sardonic and splendidly ludicrous, the madcap slapstick of the Freak Brothers is always an irresistible and joyously innocent tonic for the blues and these tales should be a compulsory experience for any fan of the comics medium. However, if you’re still worried about the content, which is definitely habit-forming, simply read but don’t inhale…
© 1981 Rip Off Press, Inc. Fat Freddy’s Cat © 1981 Gilbert Shelton. “Winter of ’59” © 1974 Playboy.

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Cyberpunk book 1 & 2


By Scot Rockwell, Darryl Banks & Doug Talalla (Innovation)
ASIN: B005KDE9UO & B000GG0BBQ

One of the most ambitious and intriguing cash-ins on the 1990s literary phenomenon dubbed “Cyberpunk” was this challenging and potentially excellent yarn crafted very much in the manner of William Gibson’s Neuromancer which never had the time, editorial support or fanbase to develop into what it could and should have been. The story debuted as a brace of 2-issue miniseries in 1989 before being collected in colourful but exceedingly thin tomes.

It all begins in the near future with ‘Bad Dreams’ as freelance ICEbreaker Topo AKA “the Mole” attempts to infiltrate street-gang the Plastiques before returning his addicted consciousness to the shared cyberspace arena of the “Playing Field”.

Topo despises his meat body and would spend eternity in the neural universe if possible, but when his crusading lover and occasional employer is abducted by her latest target, Roi of Quondam Mechanics the Mole needs the assistance of tech-broker Alma Matrix to balance the scales and even the odds…

Probing the Corporation’s datastore in his avatar-form proves disastrous, but Topo survives and returns to his meat-form changed on a core level into something new and with very dangerous knowledge, leading to a fantastic showdown with Roi in an apocalyptic Playing Field which is catastrophically self-destructing all around them…

Book Two ‘The Masks of Time’ opens three years later as Juno allies with a streetgang called the Hotboys to track down her missing partner Topo who has vanished into cyberspace, obsessed with exploring the farthest frontiers of the digital universe and finding at last the mythical semi-mystical “Edge” of existence.

The rescue mission is doomed from the start. The Hotboys have their own agenda, Juno is unsure of her motives and Topo, deeper than any mind has ever delved, has encountered “Cyberghosts” who reveal a whole new reality…

When Alma Matrix is attacked and forced to intervene in Topo’s extended cerebral suicide, events take a extreme turn and the Mole’s gradual apotheosis resumes; culminating in a spectacular, radical denouement which offers the best available ‘Solace’ for all the conflicted players involved…

Although plainly derivative this smart little sci fi thriller offered a classy introduction to the sub-genre for comics fans and still holds the attention better than most related works, in comics or prose. The painted art ranges from excellent to murkily average but works well within the tale’s multi-level conception and I would certainly look favourably on a “twenty-five years later” sequel should one ever be mooted…
Cyberpunk, Topo, Juno and all other prominent characters and distinctive likenesses are ™ 1989 Scott Rockwell. Story © 1989 Scott Rockwell. Art (Book 1) © 1989 Darryl Banks, (Book 2) © 1990 Doug Tallala All rights reserved.