Modern Classics – Page 6

March 27, 2011March 28, 2011

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 3: 1941-1942

By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-407-8

Possibly the most successful and evergreen fantasy creation ever conceived, the Sunday page Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur launched on February 13th 1937, a luscious full-colour weekly window onto a perfect realm of fantasy and romance. The strip followed the life and adventures of a refugee boy driven by invaders from his ancestral homeland in faraway Thule who roamed the world and rose to a paramount position amongst the mightiest heroes of fabled Camelot.

Written and drawn by unsurpassed master draftsman Harold â€œHalâ€ Foster, that noble scion would grow to manhood in a heady sea of wonderment, visiting far-flung lands and siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes whilst captivating and influencing generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

There have been films, animated series and all manner of toys, games and collections based on the strip – one of the few to have lasted from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (over 3800 episodes and counting) and even in these declining days of the newspaper strip as a viable medium it still claims over 300 American papers as its home. It has even made it into the very ether with an online edition.

Foster produced the strip, one spectacular page a week until 1971, when, after auditioning such notables as Wally Wood and Gray Morrow, Big Ben Bolt artist John Cullen Murphy was selected to draw the feature. Foster carried on as writer and designer until 1980, after which he fully retired and Murphy’s son assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired (he died a month later on July 2nd) and the strip has soldiered on under the extremely talented auspices of artist Gary Gianni and writer Mark Schultz.

This third exquisite hardback volume reprints in glorious colour – spectacularly restored from Foster’s original Printer’s Proofs – the Sunday pages from January 5^th 1941 to 20^th December 1942.

After an epic clash against corrupt officials in the rapidly declining city of Rome, Valiant and fellow knights Tristan and Gawain headed for home. Splitting up to thwart their incensed pursuers, Valiant took ship on a pirate scow bound for Sicily. Now read onâ€¦

After a Dan Nadel’s erudite foreword ‘Modestly, Foster’ the action opens in the shadow of fiery Vesuvius as Val’s vessel is attacked by self-proclaimed Sea-King Angor Wrack. Even the fierce warrior-prince’s martial might is insufficient against such great odds and the boy is eventually captured and enslaved, his fabled Singing Sword confiscated by the victorious pirate.

Thus begins an astonishingly impressive chapter in the hero’s history as Val becomes a galley slave, escapes and washes up starving and semi-comatose on the lost shores of the Misty Isles. Delirious, the boy glimpses his future wife Queen Aleta when she re-provisions his boat before casting him back to the sea’s mercies. The Misty Isles are safe only because of their secret location and the noble girl has broken a great taboo by sparing the shipwrecked ladâ€¦

Replenished but lost Val drifts helplessly away but resolves that one day he will discover again the Misty Isles and the enigmatic Aletaâ€¦

Eventually he is picked up by more pirates but overwhelms the captain and takes charge. Finding himself in the island paradise of Tambelaine courting the daughters of the aged king Lamorack, Val encounters Angor Wrack once more but fails to regain the Singing Sword, precipitating an extended saga of maritime warfare and spectacular voyaging across the Holy Land from Jaffa to Jerusalem.

The vendetta results in both Angor and Val being taken by Arab slavers, but the boy nobly allows Wrack to escape whilst he battles the Bedouin hordes… Enslaved in Syria Val’s indomitable will and terrifying prowess are insufficient to his need so he seduces his owner’s daughter to effect his escape only to stumble into a marital spat between the region’s greater necromancer and his tempestuous bride.

Reaching Jerusalem Val finally regains his sword and settles all scores with Angor Wrack before determining to return to the hidden Misty Isles, but once again falls afoul of the pirates infesting the region. After incredible hardships he is reunited with Aleta but fate drags them apart again and he departs alone and despondent.

Not for long though, as he reaches Athens and meets the far-larger-than-life Viking Boltar: a Falstaff-like rogue and â€œhonest pirateâ€. Together they rove across the oceans to the heart of the African junglesâ€¦

Securing a huge fortune their dragonship reaches Gaul and Val is reunited with Gawain. After settling a succession of generational feuds between knights and defeating a seductive maniac the paladins at last return to Britain courtesy of Boltar, just in time to be dispatched by Arthur to the far North to scout Hadrian’s Wall and see if it can still keep the belligerent Picts out.

Unfortunately libidinous Gawain abandons Val and the boy is captured by the Caledonian wild-men and their new allies – a far nastier breed of Vikings intent on conquering England. Tortured almost to death the Prince is saved by the ministrations of Julian – a Roman warrior who has seemingly safeguarded the wall for centuriesâ€¦

When he is recovered Prince Valiant begins to inflict a terrible and studied revenge upon his tormentorsâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Rendered in an incomprehensibly lovely panorama of glowing art Prince Valiant is a non-stop rollercoaster of stirring action, exotic adventure and grand romance; blending realistic fantasy with sardonic wit and broad humour with unbelievably dark violence (the closing text feature ‘Too Violent for American Dog Lovers’, reveals a number of censored panels and changes editors around the world inflicted upon the saga during this period).

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring the strip is a World Classic of storytelling and something no fan can afford to miss. If you have never experienced the intoxicating majesty and grandeur of Foster’s magnum opus these these magnificent, lavishly substantial deluxe editions are the best way possible to start and will be your gateway to an eye-opening world of wonder and imaginationâ€¦

March 8, 2011March 5, 2011

Will Eisner’s New York the Big City

By Will Eisner (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 0-87816-020-5 Â Hardcover: 0-87616-019-1

William Erwin Eisner was born in 1906, on March 6th in Brooklyn, and grew up in the ghettos of the city. They never left him. After time served inventing much of the visual semantics, semiotics and syllabary of the medium he dubbed â€œSequential Artâ€ in strips, comicbooks, newspaper premiums and instructional comics he then invented the mainstream graphic novel, bringing maturity, acceptability and public recognition to English language comics.

In 1978 a collection of four original short stories in comics form released in a single book, A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories. All the tales centred around 55 Dropsie Avenue, a 1930’s Bronx tenement, housing poor Jewish and immigrant families. It changed the American perception of cartoon strips forever. Eisner wrote and drew a further 20 further masterpieces opening the door for all other comics creators to escape the funnybook and anodyne strip ghettos of superheroes, funny animals, juvenilia and â€œfamily-friendlyâ€ entertainment. At one stroke comics grew up.

Eisner was constantly pushing the boundaries of his craft, honing his skills not just on the legendary Spirit but with years of educational and promotional material. In A Contract With God he moved into unexplored territory with truly sophisticated, mature themes worthy of Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald, using pictorial fiction as documentary exploration of social experience.

Restlessly plundering his own childhood and love of human nature as well as his belief that environment was a major and active character in fiction, in the 1980s Eisner began redefining the building blocks unique to sequential narrative with a portmanteau series of brief vignettes that told stories and tested the expressive and informational limits of representational drawings on paper.

In New York the Big City he took nine themes pertaining to life in the Big Apple and pictorially extemporised combining drama, comedy, politics, adventure and fantasy: producing urban art-music from Blues to Punk, Soul to Ragtime and Gospel to sweet, hot Jazz – all with a pencil and brushes.

Many of these enticing, entrancing micro-plays are silent; but whenever necessary and apropos Eisner’s ear for idiom and inflection made miracles and his affection for the ambient sounds of the streets always underscores the harsh, happy and wholly immersive experience of living for The City.

Delivered in monochrome line and seductive grey wash tones the impressionistic voyage begins with ‘The Treasure of Avenue ‘C’‘ which explores the all-encompassing maw that is a street grating with ‘The Ring’, ‘The Money’, ‘The Weapon’, ‘The Key’ and the connective punch-line ‘The Treasure’. ‘Stoops’ similarly examines the lives that pass before the ubiquitous front steps of tenements, beginning with ‘Witnesses’, ‘Supper Time’ and ‘Home’ before concluding with a description of ‘Stoopball’.

Each individual section is preceded by a moving and expressive tone-painting of the unmistakable cityscapes, and none more powerful than the view from an â€œElâ€ train that introduces ‘Subways’. Included are ‘An Affair on the BMT Local’, ‘Theater’, ‘Art’, ‘Night Rider’, ‘Blackout’ and ‘The Last Man’. Wherever people congregate there is ‘Garbage’ and Eisner’s sly, witty but compulsively human commentary comprises a look at ‘Cans’, ‘Trash’, ‘The Source’ and ‘Waste’ whilst ‘Street Music’ more closely scrutinises the makers of the messes in ‘Love Song Fortissimo’, ‘Pianissimo’, ‘In Concert’, ‘Opera’, ‘Aria’, ‘Decibel’ and the hilarious ‘Rhythm’.

‘Sentinels’ tackles the monuments of street furniture with ‘Hydrant’, ‘Wayside’, ‘Fountainhead’, ‘Fire Alarm’, ‘Mailbox’, ‘Dead Letter’, ‘Last Minute Mail’, ‘Signal’, ‘Lamppost’, ‘Ringeleivio’, ‘Sewers’ and ‘The River’ whilst ‘Windows’ uncovers all the world’s secrets with ‘A View of Life’, ‘Crows Nest’, ‘Observer’, ‘Fire Exit’, ‘Privacy’, ‘Disposal’, ‘Peeper’, ‘Prisons’, ‘Worm’s Eye View’ and the powerfully evocative ‘Sermonette’.

‘Walls’ are everywhere and here they describe ‘Space’, define ‘Freedom’, delineate a ‘Maze’ and ‘Man’s Castle’, act as a ‘Bulletin Board’ and offer ‘Enclosure’ and ‘Escape’. Moreover ‘Walls Have Ears’, promote another kind of ‘Privacy’ and provide a unique ‘Backdrop’, before re-enacting ‘Jericho’ and becoming ultimately the ‘Last Frontier’.

In NYC everything revolves around ‘The Block’; it is ‘The Old Neighborhood’, home of the ‘Neighborhood Girl’ from ‘Our Block’ on ‘The Good Street’ where ‘Aliens’ get a particular welcome. Eventually though, the homeliest slum inevitably becomes a ‘High Rent District’ and even ‘The Belmont Avenue Gang’ has to yield to the inexorable force of ‘Gentrification’â€¦

Eisner’s elegiac fascination with city life, deep empathy with all aspects of the human condition and instinctive grasp of storytelling produced here another magnificently mortal and compellingly mundane melodrama, moving and uplifting and funny and deeply, wistfully true.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be amazedâ€¦

As ever the Medium is the Message, especially when the artefact is such a substantially solid tome delivering comics gold in beguiling, incisive black and white – and once again I’m smugging it up because my hardcover with tipped in illustrative plate has proved to have been well worth the initial investment as Will Eisner’s New York the Big City is a veritable cartoon touchstone of all that’s best about the art of cartooning.

Whether it’s your first or ten thousand and first time of reading, this is a tome every comics aficionado will treasure forever, so any edition you can get, you really, really mustâ€¦

January 31, 2011January 29, 2011

The Building

By Will Eisner (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 978-0-87816-025-9 Hardcover 0-87616-024-8

William Erwin Eisner was born in 1906, on March 6^th in Brooklyn, and grew up in the ghettos of the city. They never left him. After time served inventing much of the visual semantics, semiotics and syllabary of the medium he dubbed â€œSequential Artâ€ in strips, comicbooks, newspaper premiums and instructional comics he then invented the mainstream graphic novel, bringing maturity, acceptability and public recognition to English language comics.

In 1978 Poorhouse Press released A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories, a collection of four original short stories in comics form. All the tales centre around 55 Dropsie Avenue, a typical 1930’s Bronx tenement, housing poor Jewish and immigrant families. It changed America’s perception of strips and led to 20 further masterpieces from Eisner, consequently opening the door for creators to escape their own creative ghettos of superheroes, funny animals and other juvenilia. At one stroke comics grew up.

Eisner was a consummate creator, honing his skills not just on the legendary Spirit but with years of educational and promotional material. In A Contract With God he moved into unexplored territory with truly sophisticated, mature themes worthy of Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald, using pictorial fiction as documentary exploration of social experience.

Restlessly plundering his own childhood and love of human nature as well as his belief that environment was a major and active character in fiction, Eisner created The Building; a beguiling portmanteau saga of four lost souls and the pile of bricks and mortar that shaped their lives.

The 14-storey corner-edifice stood at a busy intersection for 80 years but New York is a hungry city and it was eventually torn down, replaced in short months by a prestigious new office complex. One day a quartet of ghosts appeared outside the gleaming new Hammond Building, invisibly waiting for something to happenâ€¦

Monroe Mensh had lived in the old building for years. One day a senseless tragedy changed his life forever and plagued with guilt, he spent his remaining days trying to atone. He never did, at least not to his own satisfactionâ€¦

Gilda Green could have had her pick of boys, but loved Benny, an unsuccessful poet. After years of waiting she settled for a dentist, security and lifelong dissatisfaction. Gilda never stopped seeing Benny; meeting for lunches and sometimes more outside the old pile as it gradually fell into disrepair. One day she didn’t keep her appointmentâ€¦

Antonio Tonatti loved music but was never good enough for the big-paying gigs. He started working construction but had an accident. He couldn’t work but the settlement provided enough to live on, so he began playing again on the street corner, just to keep occupied and to make folks feel happier. For decades and more he played. Even whilst the new building was going up he played his corner, until one day he never turned upâ€¦

P. J. Hammond came from money and was forced into the family’s Real Estate business. He hated it but eventually became an even bigger bastard than his father. He spent most of his life acquiring properties on that street but the old building eluded him for decades, forcing him into ever greater excess and expense. By the time he finally acquired it he had no capital left to exploit his victory. When he was finally forced to sell, the new owners condescended to name the new skyscraper after him. He didn’t live long enough to gloatâ€¦

One morning four ghosts waited outside the Hammond Building, hoping that fate and circumstance would give them a final opportunity to fulfil the existences their sorry lives had notâ€¦

Eisner’s elegiac fascination with city life, deep empathy with all aspects of the human condition and instinctive grasp of storytelling produced here a gloriously comi-tragic melodrama, moving and uplifting in the classic manner of such films as It’s a Wonderful Life, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir or The Enchanted Cottage.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cryâ€¦

Sometimes the Medium is the Message, especially when the artefact is a substantially solid tome delivering magical artwork in seductive, nostalgic sepia line and tone – and if, like smug old me you’re rereading a signed, numbered hardcover with tipped in illustrative plate for the umpteenth time – then you’re as near to paradise as any jaded old realist can get, but to be frank any edition of Will Eisner’s The Building that you can get, you really, really shouldâ€¦

January 7, 2011January 7, 2011

The Death of Groo the Wanderer (Marvel Graphic Novel #32)

By Sergio AragonÃ©s, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai & Tom Luth (Epic/Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-290-7

Groo is a living paradox: a brilliant fighting man and unbeatable warrior sell-sword and simultaneously the dumbest collection of organic molecules on the planet. Always hungry, he wanders because most places where he pauses burn down, wash away or crash into rubble soon after he gets there. He loves to fight and the entire world trembles at the mention of his name. They do the same when they smell him tooâ€¦

Produced in unique fashion by Sergio AragonÃ©s, wordsmith Mark Evanier, letterer Stan Sakai (creator of Usagi Yojimbo) and colourist Tom Luth, the idiot’s adventures form one of the longest running humour comicbook series in America and there seems to be no chance of stopping the creators as long as we keep buying these incredible, hilarious sagasâ€¦

Both in comic narrative and the infinitely more strenuous field of gag-cartooning Sergio AragonÃ©s has produced vast volumes of excellent work. His darkly skewed sensibilities and grasp of the cosmically absurd, wedded to a totally unique, anarchically meticulous drawing style and frankly terrifying professional discipline, have made his (usually) silent doodles a vibrant proof of the maxims that laughter is universal and a picture is worth a thousand words.

After working for years for Mad Magazine and DC’s horror titles on gag features and the occasional full comic strip, in 1981 with writer and associate Mark Evanier, AragonÃ©s produced a madcap four-page parody of the Sword-and-Sorcery genre as a contribution to the Creators Rights benefit comicbook Destroyer Duck published by Eclipse Comics.

Following a second outing in Mike Grell’s Starslayer (#5) Pacific Comics launched Groo the Wanderer in his own title. After 8 issues (December 1982-April 1984) the troubled company folded but the unsinkable barbarian (that’s a joke I’ll explain later) resurfaced in the Groo Special one-shot from Eclipse (October 1984), before finding a home at Epic Comics: Archie Goodwin’s creator-owned corner of the Marvel Universe.

AragonÃ©s first created his witless warrior in the 1970s but no publisher would take on the property unless he sold all rights – an almost universal situation in the industry until the advent of the Direct Sales market transferred power from companies and distributors to creators and consumers. After an uproarious 120 issue run at Epic, and dozens of graphic novel compilations, the witless wonder moved on to Image and Dark Horse Comics, but they haven’t completely gone belly-up yetâ€¦

This all original volume from 1987 reintroduces readers to the smelliest, ugliest, stupidest itinerant mercenary in the world. Luckily he’s also the best swordsman in creation and too thick to be harmed because when he shuffles his unshod, dirty feet into the domain of King Krag he inadvertently encounters a thoroughly nasty man with a good many reasons to psychotically hate himâ€¦

At that time the kingdom was being ravaged by a colossal dragon, but as the only man on the planet crazy enough to fight it has a huge bounty on his head, how stupid would he have to be to come and attempt to kill it? – and if you’re having difficulty answering that, either you’ve not been paying attention or Groo has found a new apprenticeâ€¦

Due to the kind of circumstance-concatenation that only happens in this series, everybody in the land of Groo-haters thinks the oaf is finally dead – even Groo – but with all the folk who have ever suffered at his hands gathered in one place they all start to realise that a world without Groo just isn’t the sameâ€¦

Fear not however: order, if not sense, is eventually restored – but only after a grand display of confusions, contusions, conflagrations, conflicts, pratfalls, pitfalls, punch-lines and punch-ups. There’s even a little room left over for a soupcon of romance (Mmmm, Soup! Mmmm, leftoversâ€¦)

Published in the extravagant, luxurious over-sized 285mm x 220mm European album format which allows even more room for the artist’s tireless tornado of visual gags and graphitti this is a masterpiece of mirth and madness that comedy addicts will love and the great strength of the series is that new readers can start practically anywhere – and still be none the wiserâ€¦

Oh yeah, that sinking thing: among his other lack of abilities Groo cannot travel by ship. He’s not sea-sick or anything – it’s just that his physical presence on a nautical apparatus of any sort causes it to sink – and this book has one of the very best riffs on that running (swimming? sinking?) gag I’ve ever seenâ€¦
Â© 1987 Sergio AragonÃ©s. All Rights Reserved.

December 13, 2010December 18, 2010

Prince Valiant volume 2: 1939-1940

By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-348-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect for everybody who ever dreamed or wonderedâ€¦ Â 9/10

Rightly reckoned one of the greatest comic strips of all time, this saga of a king-in-exile who became one of the greatest warriors in an age of unparalleled heroes is at once fantastically realistic and beautifully, perfectly abstracted – a meta-fictional paradigm of adventure where anything is possible and justice will always prevail. It is the epic we all aspire to dwell withinâ€¦

Of one thing let us be perfectly clear: Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant is not historical. It is far better than that.

Possibly the most successful and evergreen fantasy creation ever conceived, Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur launched on Sunday 13th February 1937, a glorious weekly full-colour window not onto the past but rather onto a world that should have been. It followed the life and adventures of a refugee boy driven by invaders from his ancestral homeland in of faraway Thule who rose to become one of the mightiest heroes of the age of Camelot.

Crafted by the incredibly gifted Harold â€œHalâ€ Foster, this noble scion would over the years grow to manhood in a heady sea of wonderment, roaming the globe and siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes whilst captivating and influencing generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts. There have been films, cartoon series and all manner of toys, games and collections based the strip – one of the few to have lasted from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (over 3750 episodes and counting) and even in these declining days of the newspaper strip as a viable medium it still claims over 300 American papers as its home.

In 2004 Cullen Murphy also retired (he died a month later on July 2nd) and the strip has soldiered on under the extremely talented auspices of artist Gary Gianni and writer Mark Schultz – who wrote the fascinating forward ‘Yes, He Was a Cartoonist’ which opens this second stupendous chronological collection.

This exquisite hardback volume, reprints in glorious colour – spectacularly restored from Foster’s original Printer’s Proofs – the perfectly restored Sunday pages from January 1^st 1939 to 29^th December 1940, following the extremely capable squire of Sir Gawain as he rushes to warn Camelot of an impending invasion by rapacious Saxons via the vast Anglian Fens where the Royal Family of Thule have hidden since being ousted from their Nordic Island Kingdom by the villainous usurper Sligon.

After a breathtaking battle which sees the Saxons repulsed and the battle-loving boy-warrior knighted upon the field of victory, Valiant begins a period of globe-trotting through the fabled lands of Europe just as the last remnants of the Roman Empire is dying in deceit and intrigue.

Firstly Val journeys to Thule and returns his father to the throne, narrowly escaping the alluring wiles of a conniving beauty with an eye to marrying the Heir Apparent, then bored with peace and plenty the roving royal wildcat encounters a time-twisting pair of mystical perils who show him the eventual fate of all mortals. Sobered but not daunted he then makes his way towards Rome, where he will become unwittingly embroiled in the manic machinations of the Last Emperor, Valentinian.

Before that however he is distracted by an epic adventure that would have struck stunning resonances for the readership at the time. With episode #118 (14^th May 1939) Val joined the doomed knights of mountain fortress Andelkrag, who alone and unaided held back the assembled might of the terrifying hordes of Attila the Hun which had decimated the civilisations of Europe and now gathered to wipe out its last vestige.

With Hitler and Mussolini hogging the headlines and Modern European war seemingly inevitable Val joined the Battle of Decency and Right against untrammelled Barbarism. His epic struggle and sole survival comprise one of the greatest episodes of glorious, doom-fated chivalry in literatureâ€¦

After the fall of the towers of Andelkrag, Valiant made his way onward to the diminshed Rome, picking up a wily sidekick in the form of cutpurse vagabond Slith. Once more he was distracted however, as the Huns delayed. The indomitable lad resolved to pay them back in kind, and gathered dispossessed victims of Hunnish depredations, forging them into a resistance army of guerrilla-fighters – the Hun-Huntersâ€¦

Thereafter he liberated the vassal city of Pandaris, driving back the invaders and their collaborator allies in one spectacular coup after another.

Valiant reunited with equally action-starved Round Table companions Sir Tristram and Sir Gawain to make fools of the Hun, who had lost heart after the death of their charismatic leader Attila (nothing to do with Val, just a historical fact). When Slith fell for a beauteous warrior princess, the English Knights left him to a life of joyous domesticity and moved ever on.

An unexpected encounter with a giant and his unconventional army of freaks led to the heroes inadvertently helping a band of marshland refugees from Hunnish atrocity found the nation-state of Venice before at long last after a after a side-trip to the fabulous city of Ravenna the trio crossed the fabled Rubicon and plunged into a hotbed of political tumult.

Unjustly implicated in a web of murder and double-dealing, the knights barely escaped with their lives and split up to avoid pursuit. Tristan returned to England and a star-crossed rendezvous with the comely Isolde, Gawain took ship for fun in Massilia and Valiant, after an excursion to the rim of fiery Vesuvius, boarded a pirate scow for Sicily and further adventure.

To Be Continuedâ€¦

This series is a non-stop rollercoaster of action and romance, blending realistic fantasy with sardonic wit and broad humour with unbelievably stirring violence, all rendered in an incomprehensibly lovely panorama of glowing art. Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring Prince Valiant is a World Classic of storytelling, and this magnificent deluxe is something no fan can afford to be without.

If you have never experienced the majesty and grandeur of the strip this astounding and enchanting premium collection is the best way possible to start and will be your gateway to a life-changing world of wonder and imaginationâ€¦

November 2, 2010October 29, 2010

Golgo 13 volumes 1-4

By Takao Saito, translated by Patrick Connolly (LEED Publishing)
ISBNs: 4-947538-57-0, 4-947538-59-7, 4-947538-61-9 & 4-947538-62-7

Almost from its very beginnings the Manga marketplace addressed the needs of a broad audience and adult-oriented material was always a confirmed and successful part of the Japanese publishing landscape. One of the earliest stars of this arena was the incredible, prolific Takao Saito, who began in 1969 to document the gritty adventures of the world’s greatest hitman.

Golgo 13 is a man of mystery: an ice-hearted assassin for hire who picks his assignments depending on a private code of honour: meticulous, remorseless, infallible. He never fails and is always at the heart of whatever real-world political or social scandal his creator happened upon.

The cognomen Golgo denotes hints of a Biblical connection to crucifixion site Golgotha and other Christian iconography, but is only one of this darkly Bond-like protagonist’s many names. However â€œDuke Togoâ€ – his most common pseudonym – is Japanese through and through and there is no hint of a religious sensibility (except possibly Old Testament style vengeance) – only a truly remorseless social conscience.

The strip debuted in the January 1969 issue of Shogakukan’s premier title Big Comic and has run more or less continually ever since, with compilation sales topping 200 million copies, with attendant immensely popular films, anime, TV series and video game adaptations. Golgo’s monthly strip adventures have been collected into 155 tankobon editions (the term means discrete or stand alone edition, but the manga industry has adopted the term to describe a collected book length volume irrespective of whether or not the story within concludes).

In 1986 just as the western world was beginning to franchise and translate selected manga properties LEED Publishing and Vic Tokai Electronics Corporation repackaged a selection of Golgo 13 tales into four spectacularly addictive English language editions to promote one of the aforementioned games, but regrettably failed to capture the attention of the sci-fi and superhero besotted comics buying public. In 1991 LEED tried again in conjunction with Viz Media via a three issue miniseries entitled Golgo 13: The Professional, but once more the super-assassin failed to hit his mark.

A couple of years ago they tried again as part of the Viz Signature imprint, and here the jury is still outâ€¦

Takao Saito was born in 1936 and grew into a tough kid and brilliant storyteller. Eschewing a boxing career he began working in the relatively new field of Manga in 1955 with the adventure strip Baron Air, displaying a love of gritty adventure and science fiction over the next fifteen years. He formed Saito Production in 1960 and in 1971 he began a second career as a teacher of the comic arts.

The four volumes covered here show creator and character at the very peak of their game. The first ‘Into the Wolves’ Lair: The Fall of the Fourth Reich’ includes a fold-out â€œdossierâ€ on Golgo 13 before launching into a stunning 120 page saga as the Israeli intelligence service Mossad hire the unstoppable hitman to invade and destroy an impregnable fortress in Buenos Aires where the implacable mastermind behind the Nazi holocaust has engineered a new army of fascist psychopaths to once more menace humanity.

A hallmark of Saito’s process is the meticulous attention to detail and the tension-building way his protagonist plans every mission: as engrossing a factor as the inevitable explosive culmination of each mission. The preparation pays off when the one man death squad blazes effortlessly through the Nazi’s final Festung but even so there’s one last surprise in storeâ€¦

This 17 chapter epic is balanced with a shorter, five part, but no less topical tale. ‘Fighting Back‘ is set in Afghanistan during the then on-going Soviet Occupation, and details a specialist Russian force hunting the assassin who killed the General-Director of Military Political Affairs with an impossible 1km rifle shot through the windscreen of a moving armoured vehicleâ€¦

Tough and dedicated soldiers, the soldiers track the killer through the rocky passes and isolated villages until they make a huge mistake and catch himâ€¦

Book 2, ‘Galinpero’ is set in the Amazon River Basin and sees the enigmatic anti-hero accept a commission from a dead man. Agreeing to hunt down a pack of government-sponsored diamond miners-come-slavers using the natives to enrich themselves before slaughtering all witnesses, once more G13’s careful planning and apparent insanity lead to a particularly mordant demonstration of cosmic justice spectacularly appeased.

The killer’s technical proficiency is displayed in ‘110Âº: The One-Ten Angle’ as Golgo is hired to kill the man who raped and murdered a Saudi Arabian princess. When her distraught father discovers the culprit is the Crown Prince (the victim’s own cousin) he tries to cancel the hit and suppress a scandal, even sending his own assassins after the mercenary mastermind. Securing the prince deep within the imperial palace he feels secure that nothing can reach the tarnished target – but G13 never failsâ€¦

Crafty, sly and deftly understated, this gripping thriller combines modern geo-political double-dealing with the most ancient of motives and actionsâ€¦

‘Ice Lake Hit’ leads off the third volume and finds â€œDuke Togoâ€ hunting Moose in the arctic Northwest Territories of Canada. When he makes an impossible shot it quickly attracts the suspicions of the Game Warden and local Mounties, but the visitor’s real prey are more than capable of shooting backâ€¦

In a veritable bloodbath the story of a CIA traitor and a Soviet spy-ring emerges, but as ever careful planning and uncanny skill are more than a match for mere guns and numerical superiorityâ€¦

The second tale deals with the legal and illicit trade in horsemeat to Japan and sees a motorbike-riding G13 stalking a gang of modern rustlers terrorisingTexas. ‘Machine Cowboy’ finds Togo employed by a widow whose one true love was taken from her, andÂ even if the cops are reluctantly prepared to investigate the murder of her ranch foreman they won’t do anything to find the killers of her beloved steed Whitey – but Golgo 13 willâ€¦

Produced for adults, all these tales are casually steeped in nudity, torture and brutal graphic violence, but the content and heartfelt outrage Saito imbues this tale with make it easily the most disturbing story many readers will ever experience.

The final volume is also an ecological nightmare scenario. ‘The Ivory Connection’ begins when unchecked elephant poaching in Uganda prompts members of the World Wildlife Fund to hire G13 to cull the offending culprits (and wouldn’t it be nice to think that all our past donations were as sensibly used?). The trail leads from British mercenaries through African civil wars to the medicine monsters of the Chinese triads, but as ever the ice-man has just the plan to handle all his oppositionâ€¦

This book ends with ‘Scandal! The Unpaid Reward’ and pits Togo against a West German kingmaker who wants his political rival not only dead but his victim’s party utterly humiliated and discredited. Set at the height of the Cold War this tense thriller perfectly illustrates why, if you hire the world’s greatest assassin, it’s imperative to pay him what you promised once he’s accomplished his missionâ€¦

Like most tankobon editions each volume in this too-brief series (which reads from left to right in the Western manner), begins with a painted colour section which devolves into two tone (black and red) before eventually resolving into standard monochrome for the bulk of each book, but readers of British comics shouldn’t have any problems with that, and these savage, addictive, so very clever and compelling tales are worth a little time and effort. Track him down: you won’t regret itâ€¦
Â© 1986, 1987 Saito Production Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

October 24, 2010October 24, 2010

Twin Spica volumes 1 & 2

By Kou Yaginuma, translated by Maya Rosewood (Vertical)
ISBNs: 978-1-934287-84-2 & 978-1-934287-86-6

The mystery and imagination of space travel, so much a component of immediate post-World War II industrial society, returns in all its resplendent wonder and glory in this freshly translated new manga series from young talent Kou Yaginuma who first stormed to public attention with the poignant short story ‘2015 Nen no Uchiage Hanabi’ (‘2015: Fireworks’, published in Comics Flapper magazine, June 2000) before turning the subject, themes and characters into a longer epic combining hard science and fiction with lyrical mysticism and traditional school days growth pangs

2024AD: Asumi Kamogawa is a teenaged girl who has always dreamed of going into space. From her earliest moments the lonely child has gazed up at the stars with her imaginary friend Mr. Lion, staring at the heavens, and especially at the twinkling glow of Virgo and the alluring binary star Spica. An isolated, serious child, she lives with her father, a labourer who once worked for the consortium which built the space rockets for Japan’s Space Program.

In 2010, when Asumi was a year old the first Japanese space launch ended in complete disaster when the ship, dubbed ShishigÅ (â€œThe Lionâ€), exploded and crashed to earth on the city of Yuigahama. Hundreds of people were killed and injured, including Asumi’s mother. Maimed and comatose, she took years to die and the trauma broke her grieving husband and utterly traumatised the infant Asumi.

In response to the disaster Japan founded an astronaut and space sciences training school and as the first volume opens Asumi discusses with her imaginary friend the best way to tell her dad that she has secretly taken the entrance exam. Tomoro Kamogawa is a no fan of the space program, having lost his wife, his engineering job and his pride to the race for space. He has raised his daughter alone by working two and often three menial jobs at a time for over a decade.

The problem is taken out of her hands when he opens her results letter and sees that she has been accepted for the next intake for the Tokyo National Space School. After initial resistance he surprises Asumi by not only allowing her to go, but also by giving her all his savings to pay her expenses. Arriving in Tokyo, Asumi moves into the dilapidated campus dormitory with a few other students too poor to live in private lodgings. A further surprise comes when she discovers that Shinnosuke Fuchuya, the boy who teased and bullied her all through school, has also been accepted for the Astronaut course. When questioned he grunts that he’d rather do anything other than run the family fireworks shopâ€¦

The course is heavily over-subscribed so the candidates are winnowed out by spending the first week in an adaptability stress test: three to a room, in complete isolation, taking mental and physical tests to determine how they would cope with conditions similar to an extended stay in a space capsule. Tiny Asumi (only four feet, eight inches tall) is placed with the jolly Kei Oumi and chilly, acerbic Marika Ukita whilst Fuchuya’s team is cursed with spooky, ultra-cool style-icon Shu Suzukiâ€¦

It quickly becomes clear that the tutors are being devious and the tests are actually designed to measure not just their survival capabilities but also their ability to get on in a crisis. As the week progresses tempers fray and Asumi suffers a flashback to the aftermath of The Lion’s crashâ€¦

Only thirteen teams make it through the test. However, even though she is a survivor, worse is to come for the young Asumiâ€¦

This first volume includes that painfully powerful and wistful tale‘Fireworks: 2015’, the first of five introductory stories the artist produced for Seinen (manga for older readers; mostly males aged 18-30) publication Comics Flapper. Asumi is a troubled little girl: always running away and even stealing the ashes of her mother, who has just died after years in a coma following the crash of the space rocket onto Yuigahama city.

On her travels the little girl meets a man with a lion’s head, who seems to know her teacher Suzinari. Deeply concerned for Asumi, Suzinari also has problems of her own. She still desperately misses her fiancÃ©, who piloted The Lion and died in the tragic explosion five years previouslyâ€¦

‘Asumi’ is another prequel tale, showing the miserable, melancholic period immediately following the disaster. Bullied in elementary school the little stargazer runs away and gets lost in the wild woods, before chief miscreant Fuchuya heroically saves her from drowning. But were the people Asumi met just hallucinations of an oxygen-starved brain or something far more meaningful and miraculousâ€¦?

The first book ends with the vignette ‘Another Spica’ wherein wannabe manga artist Yaginuma is working part-time on a soft-drink stand one Christmas when he sees a little girl who twinkled like the stars and a man with a lion’s headâ€¦

The second volume follows space cadet Asumi as she adjusts to life in Tokyo: moving into women’s dorm â€œThe Seagullâ€, making friends, starting classes and scraping by on her meager funds. An assiduous student, she nevertheless incurs the hostility of the astrophysics lecturer Professor Sano. Unknown to her Sano has bad history with her father and will seemingly do anything to thwart her dreamsâ€¦

Asumi is far smaller than all the other candidates and though determined to succeed in the arduous physical and mental training incurs real problems in the swimming classes due to her near-drowning as a child. Moreover her size means she will need a custom-made pressure suit – giving Sano an opportunity to force her out by citing budget restrictions.

When this doesn’t work he steps up his campaign and really turns the screw on the unsuspecting Asumi, revealing a shocking secret about her fatherâ€¦

This volume also contains prequel stories of Asumi’s early life and in ‘Campanella’s Forest‘ (referencing author Kenji Miyazawa’s novel Night on the Galactic Railroad) and exploring the past of the astronaut who piloted The Lion and highlighting Suzinari’s relationship with him. Meanwhile, Asumi has got lost again and stumbled upon something wonderful in the woodsâ€¦

Tomoro Kamogawa is the tragic star of ‘Our Stars, Leaf Stars’. In the wake of the Lion disaster Asumi’s father was assigned by the corporation who built the ship to head the reparations committee. Guilt-wracked and himself bereaved, the devastated engineer had to visit and apologize to each and every survivor or victim’s grieving family. Meanwhile, little Asumi has found a new friend: another little girl forever scarred by the crash.

And as always the faithfully attendant Mr. Lion looks sadly on â€¦

The volume concludes with a second ‘Another Spica’ episode as the cartoonist relates the time he worked in a shopping mall and had to dress up in a monkey suit, as that girl and that lion-headed guy simply looked on and mockedâ€¦

Twin Spica ran for eight enchanting years (September 2001 to August 2009): sixteen full volumes tracing the path of Asumi and her friends from starry-eyed students to fulltime astronauts and the saga spawned both anime and live action TV series.

This delightful comicbook epic has everything: plenty of hard science to back up the savvy extrapolation, a believable, likable cast, an enduring mystery, tender moments, isolation and teen angst, dawning true friendships, all wrapped up in a joyous coming-of-age drama with supernatural overtones and gobs of pure sentiment.

This tale reinvigorates the magical allure of the Wild Black Yonder for a new generation and is a treat no imagineer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to missâ€¦

These books are printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format.

October 22, 2010October 24, 2010

Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 3

By The Hernandez Brothers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-379-8

A year goes by like 365 days when you’re waiting for something really special and very often the anticipation is far headier than the eventual pay-off. Mercifully in the case of Love and Rockets: New Stories such in not the case, as the third annual volume proves to be the best yet, combining eccentric drama, bright fantasy, captivating whimsy and appalling human frailty into a package of stunning graphic intensity.

In the 1980s a qualitative revolution forever destroyed the clichÃ©d, stereotypical ways different genres of comic strips were produced and marketed. Most prominent in destroying the comfy pigeonholes we’d built for ourselves were three guys from Oxnard, California; Jaime, Mario (occasionally) and Gilberto Hernandez.

Love and Rockets was an anthology magazine featuring slick, intriguing, sci-fi tinted hi-jinx of punky young things Maggie and Hopey – las Locas – and heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasies from the rural Central American paradise of Palomar. The Hernandez Boys, gifted synthesists all, enthralled and enchanted with incredible stories that sampled a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from Comics, TV cartoons, masked wrestlers and the exotica of American Hispanic pop culture to German Expressionism. There was also a perpetual backdrop displaying the holy trinity of youth: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll – for which please hear alternative music and punk rock.

The result was dynamite. Mario only officially contributed on rare occasions but the slick and enticing visual forays by Jaime explored friendship and modern love whilst destroying stereotypes of feminine attraction through his fetching coterie of Gals Gone Wild and Gilberto created the hyper-real landscape of Palomar: a playground of wit and passion created for the extended serial Heartbreak Soup, in the quicksilver form of a poor Latin-American village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast. The denizens of Palomar still inform and shape the latest tales from Beto both directly and as imaginative spurs for unassociated stories.

Everything from life death, adultery, magic, serial killing and especially gossip could happen in Palomar’s meta-fictional environs, as the artist mined his own post-punk influences in a deceptively effective primitivist art style which blended the highly personal mythologies of comics, music, drugs, strong women, gangs, sex and family using a narrative format that was the graphic equivalent to the literary discipline of Magical Realism.

Winning critical acclaim but little financial success the brothers temporarily went their own ways but a few years ago creatively reunited to produce these annual collections of new material in their particularly peculiar shared or rather, intermittently adjacent pen-and-ink universes.

This third volume commences with Gilbert’s ‘Scarlet by Starlight’ a multi-perspective narrative that appears at first to be a science fictional fable before evolving into something far more disturbing. On a distant world, a team of three earthling explorers are becoming far too intimate with the primitive yet buxom anthropoids that populate the planet and as the human relationships break down, unwise new bonds are formed with unpleasant and even harrowing resultsâ€¦

Savage and sexually explicit, this exploration of drives and desires takes a further step into forbidden territory when the explorers return homeâ€¦

Maggie Chascarrillo – star of las Locas – takes centre stage in Jaime’s ‘The Love Bunglers Part One’, a lonely middle-aged lady, still looking for her life’s path and still an unsuspecting object of desire to the men who flock around her. But who is that particularly dangerous-looking bum stalking her?

The central portion again features Gilbert’s newest fascination: the young, rebellious and dangerously pneumatic underage Latina spitfire dubbed â€œKillerâ€ – actually the juvenile character Dora Rivera – granddaughter of Palomar’s formidable Matriarch Luba (see Luba and Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 2) grown to a far more dangerous age.

As seen in the previous volume, Killer, who is slowly making her way into the exotic B-movie arena that fascinated and overwhelmed her Aunt Fritz (See also High Soft Lisp and The Troublemakers) is a highly strung creature on the verge of losing all her remaining innocence and in ‘Killer*Sad Girl*Star’ is considering remaking one of her aunt’s strangest movies whilst becoming involved in a senseless tragic crimeâ€¦ or is she?

Maggie’s turbulent childhood is revealed in Jaime’s startling and truly disturbing ‘Browntown’ as the Chascarrillo family move to a new city where both parents and all four kids undergo differing ordeals which reshape them forever. A note of warning: There are some heart-rending situations of child-abuse here that, although artistically valid and even necessary, are also genuinely upsetting, so please remember that this is a book strictly for mature readers.

The harrowing revelations of ‘Browntown’ lead directly into ‘The Love Bunglers Part Two’ as many of the mysteries set up in the first chapter are thrown into stark relief by the events from Maggie’s past, leading to a surprisingly warm-hearted conclusion to this deceptively hard-hitting book.

Stark, challenging, charming and irresistibly seductive, Love and Rockets: New Stories is a grown up comics fan’s dream come true and remains as valid and groundbreaking as its earlier incarnations – the cutting edge of American graphic narrative.

October 4, 2010October 3, 2010

Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

By Moto Hagio, translated by Matt Thorn (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-377-4

It’s Great Big Gift Giving Season: Win’s Christmas Recommendation: 10/10

Girls’ comics have always taken a secondary role in publishing – at least in most countries. In Japan this was the case until a new wave of female artists and writers stormed the male bastions in the 1970s transforming a very much distaff niche into a viable, autonomous marketplace, consequently reshaping the entire manga landscape in the process. At the forefront and regarded as part of a holy trinity of astoundingly gifted and groundbreaking creators is Moto Hagio. The other two, if you’re in the mood to Go Googling (and of course, other search engines are available) are Keiko Takamiya and Yumiko Oshimaâ€¦)

This lovely hardback collection presents ten of her best short stories gleaned from a career than spans more than forty years, over which time she and her revolutionary compatriots created whole genres, advanced the status of fantasy, horror and science fiction tales, reinvented and perfected the shÅjo (â€œgirl’s storyâ€) form, and introduced a degree of literacy, symbology, authority and emotional depth to the medium that has gone on to transform comics in Japan and globally.

Editor, translator and cultural ambassador Matt Thorn has contributed an informative historical treatise on Japan’s comic world and those revolutionary comics creators (thoroughly annotated) as well as providing a far-reaching, moving and engrossing interview with the artist and academic herself.

Although her most popular works are generally science fictional (another arena where she broke new ground in such sagas as ‘They Were Eleven!’, ‘Marginal’ and ‘Otherworld Barbara’), socially probing human dramas like ‘Mesh’ and ‘A Savage God Reigns’ explored previously forbidden realms of psycho-sexual and abusive family relationships with such deft sensitivity that they served to elevate manga from the realm of cheap escapism to literature and even Great Art – a struggle we’re still waging in the Westâ€¦

This volume traces her beginnings through more traditional themes of romance, but with growing success came the confidence to probe into far darker and more personal subjects, so whereas my usual warnings are about pictorial nudity and sexual situations, here I’m compelled to say that if your kids are smart enough the contextual matter in these tales might be a tad distressing. It is all, however, rendered with stunning sensitivity, brilliantly visual metaphors and in truly beautiful graceful tones and lines.

The comics section (which is re-presented in the traditional front-to-back, â€œfloppedâ€ manner) begins with ‘Bianca’ from 1971: a wistful reminiscence and disguised disquisition on creativity wrapped in the tragic story of a childhood companion whose parents separated, whilst ‘Girl on Porch with Puppy’ (1971) is a disquieting cautionary tale about disobedient little girls who don’t try to fit in and ‘Autumn Journey’ from the same year is a complex mystery concerning a young man trying to meet his favourite author – as well as a painful exploration of families growing up apart.

‘MariÃ©, Ten Years Late’ from 1977 is a heartbreaking example of a â€œSophie’s Choiceâ€ as a lonely, frustrated artist discovers the truth behind the breakup of a perfect friendship which twisted three lives whilst the eponymous science fictional ‘A Drunken Dream’ (1980) describes a doomed reincarnating romance which has spanned centuries and light-years. This is the only full colour story in a generally monochrome volume.

Moto Hagio is one of a select band of creators credited with creating the â€œboy’s loveâ€ sub-genres of shÅnen–ai and Yaio: sensitively homoerotic romances, generally created by women for women and now more popularly described as BL (as opposed to Bara – gay manga created by men for men) and this lyrical, star-crossed fantasy is a splendid example of the form.

‘Hanshin: Half-God’ (1984) is a disturbing, introspective psychological exploration of Hagio’s favoured themes of familial pressure and intolerance, described through the lives of anther girls’ comic favourite; twin sisters. The siblings here however are conjoined: Yucy is a beautiful angelic waif whilst her monovular other Yudy is an ugly withered homunculus.

The story is told by ugly Yudy whose life is changed forever by an operation to separate them. This incredibly moving tale adds barbed edges and ground glass to the ugly ducking fairytale and cannot fail to shock and move the readerâ€¦

From the same year comes the longer romantic tale ‘Angel Mimic’ as a failed suicide eventually evolves into a slim chance of ideal love, which poesy leads into the harrowing tale of rejection that is ‘Iguana Girl’.

Although couched in fantasy terms this tale of contemporary Japanese family life follows the life of Rika, an ordinary girl whose mother thinks she is a monster, and how that view warps how the child perceives the world throughout her life.

‘The Child Who Comes Home’ (1998) again examines rejection but uses the memory of a dead son and brother to pick open the hidden scabs of home and hearth – or perhaps it’s just a sad ghost story to clear the palate before this superb commemoration ends with the elegiac and almost silent, solitary pantomime of 2007’s ‘The Willow Tree’ which shows yet another side of family loveâ€¦

Abuse of faith and trust. Love lost or withheld. Isolation, rejection, loss of purpose: all these issues are woven into a sensuously evocative tapestry of insightful inquiry and beautiful reportage. These tales are just the merest tip of a cataclysmic iceberg that invaded the stagnant waters of Girls’ comics and shattered their cosy world forever. The stories grew up as the readers did; offering challenging questions and options not pat answers and stifling pipedreams.

Until the day our own comics industries catch up at least we have these stories – and hopefully many more from the same source. Sequels please, ASAP!

September 8, 2010September 7, 2010

The Groo Garden

Both in comic narrative and the infinitely trickier field of gag-cartooning Sergio AragonÃ©s has produced uncountable volumes of excellent work. His darkly skewed sensibilities and death-grip on the cosmically absurd, wedded to a totally unique drawing style and frankly terrifying professional discipline have made his (usually) silent doodles a vibrant proof of the maxims that laughter is universal and a picture is worth a thousand words.

After working for years for Mad Magazine and DC’s horror titles on gag features and the occasional full comic strip in 1981, with writer and associate Mark Evanier, AragonÃ©s produced a madcap four-page parody of the Sword-and-Sorcery genre as a contribution to the Creators Rights benefit comicbook Destroyer Duck published by Eclipse Comics.

AragonÃ©s had first created his witless warrior in the 1970s but no publisher would take on the property unless he sold all rights – an almost universal situation in the industry until the advent of the Direct Sales market transferred power from companies and distributors to creators and consumers.

The character is arguably the most successful creator-owned property of the American comic-book market, and this seventh volume (of 27 thus far) collects issues #25-28 (March-May 1987) from the Epic incarnation, with the itinerant idiot fully established in a capacious and vast feudal landscape of wizards, warriors, wild women and weird beasts. With a burgeoning supporting cast, AragonÃ©s and his co-conspirators have plenty of wonky, misshapen leg-room to experiment with narrative and visual merry-makingâ€¦

For the slow of mind however let me recapitulate:

Groo is the smelliest, ugliest, stupidest unluckiest mercenary in the world – but he’s also the best swordsman in creation and far too stupid to be harmed. He is always hungry and wanders because most places he pause in burn down, wash away or crash into rubble soon after he arrives. He loves to fight and entire nations and navies reel at the mention of his name. Of course they do the same when they stand downwind of him tooâ€¦

The volume opens with ‘Divide and Conquer’ as the unemployable oaf has something similar to an idea and quite effectively foments unrest between relatively peaceful kingdoms in the hope that somebody will hire him to quell the unrest – with the usual catastrophic results, whilst two sinister sorceresses who really should know better are forced to employ the him again in ‘Arba Dakarba’, shrinking the wandering warrior to the size of his own intellect to steal a wishing amulet.

‘Spies’ places Groo in the background as The Sage and The Minstrel are captured by an army and accused of espionage. To forestall their executions the pair entertain the Commanding General with stories of the worst soldier in existence, but unlike Scheherazade, no tale of Groo can ever have a happy – or safe – ending. Then this chronicle concludes with ‘The Gourmet Kings!’ as the ever-ravenous reaving rover’s always empty stomach leads him to gainful employment and chef-stealing. Naturally the whole affair leads to an excess of chopping, slicing and dicing all aroundâ€¦

Marvelously cynical, wildly witty and stunningly silly Groo is the comic that people who hate comics read: brilliantly tongue-in-cheek, sharply sarcastic and devastatingly self-deprecating. An irresistible humour tour-de-force astoundingly scribed and illustrated by jesters who don’t know when – or how – to stop. New readers can start practically anywhere – and still be none the wiserâ€¦

The unstoppable brain-donor (Groo, not Aragones or even wordsmith Evanier, letterer Stan Sakai or colourist Tom Luth) has since rambled on to shut down Image Comics and now threatens to finish off Dark Horse, but as they haven’t completely gone belly-up yet there’s still plenty of material for you to track downâ€¦
Â© 1987, 1994 Sergio AragonÃ©s. All Rights Reserved.

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