Category: Mystery

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The Invisible Guest in Moominvalley


By Tove Jansson, adapted by Cecilia Davidsson & A. Haridi, illustrated by Filippa Widlund, translated by A. A. Prime (Macmillan Children’s Books)
ISBN: 978-1-5290-1027-5 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-5290-5764-5

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Fabulous Family Fable … 9/10

Tove Jansson was one of the greatest literary innovators and narrative pioneers of the 20th century: equally inspired in shaping words and making images to create whole worlds of wonder. She was especially expressive with basic components like pen and ink, manipulating slim economical lines and patterns to realise sublime realms of fascination, whilst her dexterity made simple forms into incredibly expressive and potent symbols and, as this collection shows, so was her brother…

Tove Marika Jansson was born into an artistic, intellectual and rather bohemian Swedish family in Helsinki, Finland on August 9th 1914. Patriarch Viktor was a sculptor and mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson a successful illustrator, graphic designer and commercial artist. Tove’s brothers Lars – AKA “Lasse” – and Per Olov became – respectively – an author, cartoonist and art photographer. The family and its close intellectual, eccentric circle of friends seems to have been cast rather than born, with a witty play or challenging sitcom as the piece they were all destined to inhabit.

After extensive and intensive study (from 1930-1938 at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, the Graphic School of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and L’Ecole d’Adrien Holy and L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris), Tove became a successful exhibiting artist through the troubled period of the Second World War. Brilliantly creative across many fields, she published the first fantastic Moomins adventure in 1945. Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (The Little Trolls and the Great Flood or latterly and more euphoniously The Moomins and the Great Flood) was a whimsical epic of gently inclusive, acceptingly understanding, bohemian misfit trolls and their rather odd friends…

A youthful over-achiever, from 1930-1953 Tove had worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the Swedish satirical magazine Garm: achieving some measure of notoriety with an infamous political sketch of Hitler in nappies that lampooned the Appeasement policies of European leaders in the build-up to WWII. She was also an in-demand illustrator for many magazines and children’s books, and had started selling comic strips as early as 1929.

Moomintroll was her signature character. Literally.

The lumpy, gently adventurous big-eyed romantic goof began life as a spindly sigil next to her name in her political works. She called him “Snork” and claimed she had designed him in a fit of pique as a child – the ugliest thing a precocious little girl could imagine – as a response to losing an argument with her brother about Immanuel Kant.

The term “Moomin” came from her maternal uncle Einar Hammarsten who attempted to stop her pilfering food when she visited, warning her that a Moomintroll guarded the kitchen, creeping up on trespassers and breathing cold air down their necks. Snork/Moomin filled out, became timidly nicer – if a little clingy and insecure – acting as a placid therapy-tool to counteract the grimness of the post-war world. The Moomins and the Great Flood didn’t make much of an initial impact but Jansson persisted, probably as much for her own edification as any other reason, and in 1946 published second book Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland).

Many commentators believe the terrifying tale a skilfully compelling allegory of Nuclear Armageddon. In truth, an undercurrent of bleak anxiety and the dangers of imminent unwanted change underpins all of her Moomin tales, subtly addressing the fact that the world is a wonderful but also scary, dangerous place beyond our control, and why we should value friends and family and always welcome the needy and all strangers.

You should read it now… while you still can. When it and third illustrated novel Trollkarlens hatt (1948, Finn Family Moomintroll AKA sometimes The Happy Moomins) were translated – to great acclaim – into English in 1952, it prompted British publishing giant Associated Press to commission a newspaper strip about her seductively sweet and sensibly surreal creations. Jansson had no misgivings or prejudices about strip cartoons and had already adapted Comet in Moominland for Swedish/Finnish paper Ny Tid. Mumintrollet och jordens undergäng. Moomintrolls and the End of the World was a popular feature so Jansson readily accepted the chance to extend her eclectic family across the world. In 1953, The London Evening News began the first of 21 Moomin strip sagas which promptly captivated readers of all ages. Jansson’s involvement in the cartoon feature ended in 1959, a casualty of its own success and a punishing publication schedule. So great was the strain that towards the end she recruited brother Lars to help. He took over, continuing the feature until its end in 1975.

Liberated from the strip’s pressures, Tove returned to painting, writing and other creative pursuits: generating plays, murals, public art, stage designs, costumes for dramas and ballets, a Moomin opera and nine more Moomin-related picture-books and novels, as well as 13 books and short-story collections strictly for grown-ups.

Tove Jansson died on June 27th 2001. Her awards are too numerous to mention, but just think: how many artists get their faces on the national currency?

Whenever such a creative force passes on, the greatest tragedy is that there will be no more marvels and masterpieces. Happily, so tirelessly prolific was Tove that her apparently endless bounty bequeathed plenty of material for later creators and collaborators to pick over. One such example is this glorious picture book, part of a series using her characters and adapted from her short story The Invisible Child from prose anthology Tales from Moominvalley.

The entire generationally familiar cast are present for this comforting parable about an abused and neglected child welcomed into the bustling, tempestuous Moomin clan, and how silent unseen Ninny slowly adapts and recuperates. With warmth, patience and understanding the child is allowed to become her new self, not cured or fixed, but just better…

Heartwarming with a hidden edge and hiding plenty of impact to balance the fun and charm, this is solidly engaging picture tale is adapted by Cecilia Davidsson (Utvandrarna, Invandrarna, Leva lite till, mucho Moomins adaptations) & A. Haridi, with Jansson’s unique imagery translated by prolific comics star/book illustrator Filippa Widlund (många pixiböcker/Pixi Books, Bojan series, The Buoy and the Tow Truck). As a narrative it is utterly compelling, and carries a message always worth repeating.

Witty, thrilling, sentimental and moving, The Invisible Guest in Mooninvalley is every youngster’s perfect introduction to sequential narratives, and a beguiling reminder to oldsters why we love them…
Entire contents © Moomin Characters™. All rights reserved.

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Edifice


By Andrzej Klimowski (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-25-6 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Christmas treat for Sentimentalists Who Can’t Switch Their Brains Off …9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

Born in London in 1949 of proudly Polish heritage (me too!), Andrzej Klimowski studied at St. Martin’s School of Art in London and the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. A world-renowned designer, poster maker, illustrator, writer, political satirist, filmmaker and graphic novelist (go check out collaborations and adaptations like The Master and Margarita, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robot and Behind the Curtain or solo efforts The Depository, The Secret and Horace Dorlan), he was Head of Illustration at the Royal College of Art until they promoted him to Professor Emeritus. With his wife Danusia Schejbal, Klimowski still produces graphic art and profound works like this book. You probably didn’t see his retrospective at the National Theatre, London, but you really should have.

At least you can compensate by falling in love, in awe and in wonder at this dark wry, twisty exploration of human nature and polite foibles at Christmas…

Set in the iconic and dankly expressionistic city of Engelstadt (City of Angels!), a broad, socially disparate group congregate in and around one certain building. Each has a remote, compartmentalised life, full of secrets and desires, but occasionally the so-civilised residents grudgingly get together. It’s the done thing after all, and who would be so churlish as to decline an invitation from formidable matriarch Lady Dendrite poised at the peak and at the top of this heap?

However, strange events are unfolding in run-up to that much-anticipated soiree. All those isolated, iconic lives (a domestic, her kid, a strange foreigner, clerics, pontificating professor, hero/victim, love interest and a monster… just like some bleak game of Cluedo!) are about to intrude and burst in upon each other… at least if sudden disappearances and odd phenomena outside the tall straight walls don’t upset everyone’s plans…

Comfortingly macabre, and unravelling at its own mesmeric, seductive pace, Edifice is a captivating visual treat, a sinister social comedy of errors if not terrors and a puzzle-game/trick played on and for you. This is a purely pictorial extravaganza you will either love or hate, but should not ignore.

(PS. I loved it.)
© Andrzej Klimowski, 2024. All rights reserved

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The Outer Space Spirit: 1952


By Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer & Wally Wood & various (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 978-0-87816-007-5 (HB) 978-0-87816-012-9 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Lost Classic …10/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

In keeping with the dolorous nature of this time of year I’m concentrating on a few missed opportunities so here’s a graphic novel that was let slip by and rests in some nebulous limbo waiting for someone like me to say: why don’t we reprint this?

It is pretty much accepted today that Will Eisner was one of those pivotal creators who shaped America’s comic book industry, with most of his graphic works more or less permanently in print – as they should be. However, although the story can be found as part of the also ultra-rare Spirit Archive volume 24, this classy monochrome volume from much-missed independent publisher Kitchen Sink in 1983, released in both hardback and softcover, is by far a better reading experience.

Sometimes the Medium is the Message, especially when the artefact is a substantially solid tome delivering magical artwork in crisp, breathtaking black & white which details – not only in the reprinted strips but also sketches, incidental artwork and author’s breakdown layouts – the last and most striking saga of one of the world’s greatest fantasy characters. From 1936 to 1938, Eisner worked as a jobbing cartoonist in the comics production firm known as the Eisner-Eiger Shop, creating strips for both domestic US and foreign markets. Under pen-name Willis B. Rensie, he created and drew opening instalments for a huge variety of characters ranging from funny animal to historical sagas, Westerns, Detectives, aviation action thrillers… and superheroes… lots of superheroes…

In 1940, Everett “Busy” Arnold, head honcho of the superbly impressive Quality Comics outfit, invited Eisner to take on a new challenge. The Register-Tribune newspaper syndicate wanted a 16-page weekly comic book insert to be given away with the Sunday editions. Eisner jumped at the opportunity, creating three strips which would initially be handled by him before two of them were handed off to his talented assistants. Bob Powell inherited Mr. Mystic and distaff detective Lady Luck fell into the capable hands of Nick Cardy (then still Nicholas Viscardi) and later, the inimitable Klaus Nordling.

Eisner kept the lead feature for his own playground and over the next 12 years The Spirit became the most impressive, innovative, imitated and talked-about strip in the business. However, by 1952 he had more or less abandoned it for more challenging and decidely more profitable commercial, instructional and educational strips, working extensively for the US military in manuals and magazines like P*S, The Preventative Maintenance Monthly, and generally leaving comics books behind. Gathered here are last newspaper sections (July 27th through October 5th 1952), plus scripts for what would have been the final three sections of The Outer Space Spirit.

For that final year or so, the bulk of Spirit tales were produced by other hands with assistant Jules Feiffer handling the majority of scripts and diverse artists producing the art. Feiffer preferred to map out his episodes in rough pencil with word balloons and captions fully scripted: once approved by Eisner, the roughs would then be interpreted by an assigned artist for the individual episodes. The long-term plan was not to cancel The Spirit but redefine it for a new decade and expand the Eisner studio/company beyond and around it – but that’s not quite how it played out.

As seen in the scholarly introduction by Cat Yronwoode and Eisner’s own director’s commentary ‘Reminiscence’, the plans to reposition The Spirit were not welcomed by the client papers buying the strip; the creators handling the feature had different creative goals and drives and Eisner himself couldn’t quite let go of his precious baby. Even though society and comic books were wildly in love with the bold new genre of space opera/science fiction and Eisner had previously dabbled with the form in a few previous tales, a large number of Spirit clients and readers did not want any “flying saucer spacey stuff” in their Sunday funnies. Moreover, the brilliantly sardonic, existentialist and sensitively satirical Feiffer was approaching the stories in a bleak, nigh-nihilistic manner, emphasising existentialist isolation, human frailty and the passing of an era, rather than rugged he-men with hot babes in bikinis and fishbowl helmets…

After a succession of fill-in draughtsmen, Wally Wood was selected as artist: a stunningly gifted imagineer reaching unparalleled heights with his work for EC and other comic book Sci Fi publishers. Wood actually began his professional career on The Spirit in the 1940s (as a letterer) and was fantastically keen on the new project, but merciless deadlines and his overwhelming desire to surmount his own high standards soon had the saga experiencing deadline problems on top of everything else.

After text features, the first episode ‘Outer Space’ begins, preceded – as are most of strips here – by Feiffer’s meticulous and detailed script layouts. First appearing on Sunday, July 27th 1952, we see Denny Colt, The Spirit, managing a crew of convict volunteers on an American rocketship to the moon, at the insistent request of eminent space scientist Professor Hartley Skol. However, this was a new hero for an uncertain age. The tough, fun-loving, crime-fighting daredevil had become a cautious, introspective leader, feeling fully the weight of his mission and the burden of unwelcome responsibilities.

‘Mission: the Moon’ (August 3rd 1952), follows Colt, Skol and the pardoned felons onto the satellite’s barren surface and recounts the Spirit’s first victory as he heads off potential mutiny with reason, not force, before ‘A DP on the Moon’ reveals how closely Eisner still monitored the series. DP’s were “Displaced Persons” a common term in the post-war world, and when the explorers find a diary in the lunar dust, it reveals how the world’s greatest dictator and his inner circle fled to the moon to escape Allied justice. Unfortunately, they could not outrun their own paranoia and madness…

In the original script and finished art the diarist is Adolf Hitler, but the grim fate that befell his fellow Nazis was altered at the very last moment by Eisner, who felt the plot was already old hat. Swift retouching transformed Der Fuehrer into fictitious Latin American dictator Francisco Rivera and the revised version ran on August 10th 1952. It still reads pretty well, but if you look carefully, those uniforms in the background flashbacks are hauntingly familiar.

With ‘Heat on the Moon’ the deadline crunch hit, and 1½ pages of spectacular Lunar exploration by Wood abruptly segues to a “meanwhile back on Earth” scene from Eisner, featuring Chief Dolan, daughter Ellen and a criminal with a vested interest in assuring that at least one of the moon volunteers isn’t pardoned. Following their first fatality, the mission goes swiftly awry and ‘Rescue’ (the instalments now cut to only 4 pages in an attempt to fight the deadline doom) sees another body-blow to the expedition. Defeated and demoralised, Spirit decided to return the survivors to Earth…

‘The Last Man on the Moon’ depicts the launch from the moon as, on Earth, another gangster attempts to scotch the return trip. Clearly cursed, the mission suffers one more disaster as a convict sneaks away before take-off, becoming, with the September 7th episode ‘The Man in the Moon’. On September 14th the inevitable occurred and the feature was forced to run a modified reprint (‘The Amulet of Osiris’ from the late 1940s) before Wood resurfaced to illustrate the philosophically barbed ‘Return from the Moon’ on September 21st. Here Denny Colt and the remaining lunar-nauts debate the nature of reality, as Eisner steps in with the help of Al Wenzel to produce ‘The Return’, a hasty wrap-up that still found room for a close encounter with a flying saucer.

A scheduling blip saw an alternate version of the return a week later (sadly not included here) and final episode ‘Denny Colt, UFO Investigator’ ran on October 5th 1952: an inconclusive new beginning illustrated by Klaus Nordling. The strip died with that episode as Eisner, increasingly occupied with military work, and bleeding client-papers, terminated the feature.

But that isn’t quite the end: this book also includes – in various forms – what would have been the next three chapters, discovered in Eisner’s extensive file vault in the early 1980s. First is a fully lettered Feiffer layout, followed by a sequence of lettered pages prior to the art being drawn and the first (and only) typed script from assigned new creator Nordling.

Tense, suspenseful, dark and fearsomely compelling, these are the stories that signified the Spirit demise for nearly two decades, but today they stand as a mini-masterpiece of comics storytelling that was, quite simply, too far advanced for its audience. For we survivors of Cold War, Space Race and Budget-cut scientific exploration, they are a chilling and intensely prophetic examination of human nature in a Brave New World rendered with all the skill and frantic passion of some of comics’ greatest talents.

What wonders could have followed if the readers had come along with them? I don’t know, but at least we still have these tales – as soon as someone reprints them again…
© 1983 Kitchen Sink Press. © Art and stories 1983 Will Eisner. All rights reserved.

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They Shot the Piano Player – A Graphic Novel


By Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal, translated by Mediasaur (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-424-9 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Look, Listen and Learn …8/10

Comics are serious business in South and Central America, but not as much as Music is. Add to that the fact that all of us hate evil and love a mystery and the result is a captivating read. It’s also a captivating film but that’s not my point today…

As much a treatment on the power of obsession and curiosity as a (fictionalised) account of one creator’s fascination with another, They Shot the Piano Player is a lovely, tortured beast: an account of how a multi-award-winning writer, director, producer and documentarian became obsessed with the forgotten fate of a “disappeared” musician Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior and went looking for answers – albeit at one remove and using a made-up “journo” as his literary bloodhound.

The story is true. Tenório lived, loved and died through the most appalling of times, for the most stupid and venal of reasons and the world moved on. At least, until one man heard some old Bossa Nova records and decided to know more about the incredibly talented man who made them…

Delivered in a parade of vivid and captivating styles by major mainstream artist/designer Javier Mariscal, the dry obsession blossoms into a captivating murder mystery with clues unpicked and suspects followed until an awful truth about governments and power is exposed. There’s no restorative justice to be found here, just an acknowledgement of unpunished wickedness and sombre warnings that it can still happen again…

Devious, relentless and compelling, the multimedia masterwork concludes with a copious section on the how the book/film came to be. ‘Searching for Tenório’ combines Trueba’s research notes, visits and interviews across Central and South America and through generations with photos and Mariscal’s amazing art and sketches. These are subdivided into ‘The Characters’, ‘The Family’, ‘The Buenos Aires Group’, ‘Musicians’, ‘Argentina’, ‘Guest Artists’, and ‘The Tragedy’, and precede a glorious gallery of ancillary art studies from the book itself.

Reading like no other graphic biography you’ve ever seen but subtly gripping like the most potent crime fiction or UN report on war crimes, They Shot the Piano Player is a ferociously addictive read you will never forget.
© 2023, Fernando Trueba. © 2023, Javier Mariscal. Originally published as DISPARARON AL PIANISTA © 2023, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial S.A.U. Travessera de Gracia, 08021 Barcelona

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Marvel Firsts: The 1960s


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Larry Lieber, Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, Arnold Drake, Steve Parkhouse, Don Heck, Bill Everett, Dick Ayers, Gene Colan, John Buscema, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5864-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Marvel’s Most Magical… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

For most fans, the Marvel Age of Comics began with Fantastic Four #1 at the tail end of 1961, but the company itself cites Marvel Comics #1 from 1939, when the outfit was called Timely, as the big natal event. That means this year is their 85th anniversary. So with the year rapidly closing it’s time to celebrate some big-ticket compilations.

This hefty tome from 2011 isn’t one of them, but is a superb compilation of the decade which made the House of Ideas a global force and household name. It gathers the first story of each character’s own series (not necessarily the same as a debut appearance) highlighting key moments via material taken from Rawhide Kid #17, Amazing Adventures #1, Fantastic Four #1, Tales to Astonish #27, 51 & 70, Incredible Hulk #1, Amazing Fantasy #15, Journey into Mystery #83, Strange Tales #101, 110 & 135, Two-Gun Kid #60, Tales of Suspense #39, 49 & 59, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandoes #1, The Avengers #1, X-Men #1, Daredevil #1, Ghost Rider #1, Marvel Super-Heroes #12, 19 and 20, Captain Savage #1 and Silver Surfer #1, collectively covering August 1960 to May 1969 and incorporating a vast gallery of covers from other titles that came and went with such breathtaking rapidity in those days.

As stated, the company-that-became-Marvel was still going – albeit in dire straits – when Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and a select few others started their comics revolution, and these tales offer unmatched insights into how that all happened by re-presenting official first appearances. Opening in January 1960 with a selection of 16 genre covers ranging from Battle #70 to Love Romances #87 to Patsy Walker #89, the first inklings of what’s to come are seen in Rawhide Kid #17, by Lee, Kirby and inker Dick Ayers.

The Kid was one of Atlas’ older icons, having starred in his own title since 1955. A stock buckskin-clad sagebrush centurion, he was one of the first casualties when Atlas’ distribution crisis forced the company to cut back to 16 titles in the autumn of 1957. However, with westerns huge on TV and youthful rebellion a hot topic in 1960, Lee & Kirby conceived a brand-new six-gun stalwart – a teenager in fact – and launched him in the summer of the year, tidily retaining the numbering of his cancelled predecessor. It’s important to remember that these yarns aren’t trying to be gritty or authentic: they’re accessing a vast miasmic morass of wholesome, homogenised Hollywood mythmaking that generations of consumers preferred to learning the grim everyday toil, travail and terror of the real Old West, so sit back, reset your moral compass to “fair enough” and revel in simplistic Black Hats versus White Hats, with all the dynamic bombast and bravura Kirby & inker Dick Ayers could muster…

It all begins with adopted teen Johnny Bart teaching all and sundry in a cow-town named Rawhide to ‘Beware! The Rawhide Kid’ after his retired Texas Ranger Uncle Ben is gunned down by fame-hungry cheat Hawk Brown. After very publicly exercising his right to vengeance, the naive kid flees Rawhide before he can explain, resigned to living as an outlaw forevermore…

His reputation is further enhanced when he routs a masked gang robbing the ‘Stagecoach to Shotgun Gap!’ after which Don Heck delivers one of his sleekly authentic western tales when a veteran gunslinger devises a way to end his own fearsome career ‘With Gun in Hand!’ The issue closes with by Lee, Kirby & Ayers revealing how another tragic misunderstanding confirms Johnny Bart’s destiny ‘When the Rawhide Kid Turned… Outlaw!’

Following a trio of romantic comedy covers – My Girl Pearl #7, Teen-Age Romance #77 and Life with Millie #8 – we turn to the company’s splendidly addictive men-vs-monsters anthology titles wherein Amazing Adventures #1 (cover-dated June 1961) begins a cautious experiment by launching a low-key – un-costumed – paranormal mystically empowered investigator for a short run of pre-superhero escapades. ‘I Am the Fantastic Dr. Droom!’ (Lee & Kirby with Ditko inking) finds a seemingly sedate American drawn to Tibet to learn ancient mysteries before returning home as an occult consultant after which, the cover for Linda Carter, Student Nurse #1 takes us to the big moment when everything changed…

Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961) introduces a brave new world in eponymous landmark ‘The Fantastic Four’ as maverick scientist Reed Richards summons fiancée Sue Storm, their pilot pal Ben Grimm and Sue’s kid brother Johnny before heading off on their first mission. In a flashback we discover that they are driven survivors of a private space-shot that went horribly wrong when Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding. On crashing back to Earth, they found they’d all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks.

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible, Johnny Storm could turn into living flame and tragic Ben turned into a shambling, rocky freak. Shaken but unbowed they vow to dedicate their new abilities to benefiting mankind. Crafted by Lee & Kirby with inks by George Klein & Christopher Rule, the drama intensified with ‘The Fantastic Four meet the Mole Man’, foiling a plan by another outcast who controls monsters and slave humanoids from far beneath the Earth. This summation of the admittedly mediocre plot cannot do justice to the engrossing wonder of that breakthrough issue – we really have no grasp today of just how different in tone, how shocking it all was.

Next comes Ditko’s cover to Amazing Adult Fantasy #7, preceding a throwaway vignette from another of the company’s anthological monster mags. Taken from Tales to Astonish #27 (January 1962) a 7-page short introduces Dr Henry Pym, a maverick scientist who discovers a shrinking potion and discovers peril, wonder and a kind of companionship amongst the lowliest creatures on Earth and under it. This engaging piece of fluff – which owed more than a little to the movie The Incredible Shrinking Man – was plotted by Lee, scripted by his brother Larry Lieber and stunningly illustrated by Kirby & Ayers.

The Incredible Hulk smashed right into his own bi-monthly comic and, after some classic romps by Young Marvel’s finest creators, crashed right out again. After 6 issues, the series was cancelled and Lee retrenched, making the Gruff Green Giant a perennial guest-star in other titles until such time as they could restart the drama in their new “Split-Book” format in Tales to Astonish where Ant/Giant-Man was rapidly proving to be a character who had outlived his time. Cover-dated May 1962, that first issue observes puny atomic boffin Bruce Banner, sequestered on a secret military base in the American desert and perpetually bullied by bombastic commander General “Thunderbolt” Ross as the clock counts down to the world’s first Gamma Bomb test. Besotted by Ross’s daughter Betty, Banner endures the General’s constant jibes as the timer ticks on and tension increases. At the final moment Banner sees a teenager lollygagging at Ground Zero and frantically rushes to the site to drag the boy away. Unknown to everyone, the assistant he’s entrusted to delay the countdown has an agenda of his own…

Rick Jones is a wayward but good-hearted kid. After initial resistance he lets himself be pushed into a safety trench, but just as Banner prepares to join him The Bomb detonates…

Somehow surviving the blast, Banner and the boy are secured by soldiers, but that evening as the sun sets the scientist undergoes a monstrous transformation. He grows larger; his skin turns a stony grey. In 6 simple pages that’s how it all starts, and no matter what any number of TV or movie reworkings or comicbook retcons and psycho-babble re-evaluations would have you believe that’s still the best and most primal take on the origin. A good man, an unobtainable girl, a foolish kid, an unknown enemy and the horrible power of destructive science unchecked. Written by Lee, drawn by Kirby with inking by Paul Reinman, ‘The Coming of the Hulk’ barrels along as the man-monster and Jones are then kidnapped by Banner’s Soviet counterpart the Gargoyle for a rousing round of espionage and Commie-busting…

Crafting extremely well-received monster and mystery tales for and with Stan Lee, Ditko had been rewarded with his own title. Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy featured a subtler brand of yarn than Rampaging Aliens and Furry Underpants Monsters and their ilk which, though individually entertaining, had been slowly losing traction in the world of comics ever since National/DC had successfully reintroduced costumed heroes. Lee & Kirby had responded with Fantastic Four and the ahead-of-his-time Incredible Hulk, but there was no indication of the renaissance to come when the cover of officially just-cancelled Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) highlighted a brand new and rather eerie adventure character.

The wonderment came and went in 11 captivating pages: ‘Spider-Man!’ telling the parable of Peter Parker, a smart but alienated kid bitten by a radioactive spider on a high school science trip. Discovering he has developed arachnid abilities – which he augments with his own natural engineering genius – Parker does what any lonely, geeky nerd would do when given such a gift… he tries to cash in for girls, fame and money. Creating a costume to hide his identity in case he makes a fool of himself, he becomes a minor celebrity – and a vain, self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief flees past, he doesn’t lift a finger to stop him, only to find when he returns home that his Uncle Ben has been murdered.

Crazy for vengeance, Parker stalks the assailant who made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known, to find that it is the felon he couldn’t be bothered with. Since his irresponsibility led to the death of the man who raised him, the boy swears to always use his powers to help others…

It wasn’t a new story, but the setting was one familiar to every kid reading it and the artwork was downright spooky. This wasn’t the gleaming high-tech world of moon-rockets, giant aliens and flying cars – this stuff could happen to anybody…

The tragic last-ditch tale struck a chord with the reading public and by Christmas a new comic book superstar was ready to launch in his own title, with Ditko eager to show what he could do with his first returning character since the demise of Charlton action hero Captain Atom…

The Mighty Thor was the comic series in which Jack Kirby’s restless fascination with all things Cosmic was honed and refined through his dazzling graphics and captivating concepts. The King’s examination of space-age mythology began in modest fantasy title Journey into Mystery where – in the summer of 1962 – a tried-and-true comicbook concept (feeble mortal transformed into god-like hero) was revived by fledgling Marvel to add a Superman analogue to their growing roster of costumed adventurers. JiM #83 (August 1962) saw a bold costumed warrior jostling aside the regular fare of monsters, robots and sinister scientists in a brash, vivid explosion of verve and vigour.

The initial exploit follows crippled American physician Donald Blake who takes a vacation in Norway only to encounter the vanguard of an alien invasion. Fleeing, he is trapped in a cave where he finds an old, gnarled walking stick. When in his frustration he smashes the stick into a huge boulder obstructing his escape, his puny frame is transformed into the Norse God of Thunder Mighty Thor! Plotted by Lee, scripted by Lieber and illustrated by Kirby & inker Joe Sinnott (at this juncture a full illustrator, Sinnott would become Kirby’s primary inker for most of his Marvel career), ‘The Stone Men of Saturn’ is pure dawn Marvel: bombastic, fast-paced, gloriously illogical and captivatingly action-packed. The hugely under-appreciated Art Simek was the letterer and logo designer. It was clear that they were making it up as they went along – not in itself a bad thing – and all that infectious enthusiasm shows…

Amazing Fantasy #15 came out the same month as Journey into Mystery #83 and a month later Tales to Astonish #35 – first to feature Henry Pym’s Astonishing Ant-Man costumed capers – appeared. Here you’ll find the cover to TtA #35 to mark that occasion. Hot on the heels of the runaway success of Fantastic Four, Stan & Jack spun the most colourful and youngest member of the team into his own series, hoping to recapture the glory of the 1940s when the original Human Torch was one of the company’s “Big Three” superstars. Within a year, the magic-&-monsters anthology title Strange Tales became home to the hot-headed hero: in #101, Johnny Storm started his ancillary solo career in eponymous exploit ‘The Human Torch’.

Scripted by Lieber (over a plot by brother Stan) and sublimely illustrated by Kirby & Ayers, the plucky lad investigates sabotage at a new seaside amusement park and promptly discovers Commie-conniving thanks to Red spy the Destroyer. Kirby would pencil the first few yarns before moving on, after which Ayers assumed control for most of its run, although The King generated some of the best covers of his Marvel career throughout the Torch’s tenure.

An odd inconsistency – or more likely tension- and drama-inducing gimmick – did crop up here. Although public figures in the FF, Johnny and sister Sue live part-time in Long Island hamlet Glenville where, despite the townsfolk being fully aware of her as the glamorous and heroic Invisible Girl, they seem oblivious to the fact that her baby brother is the equally famous Torch. Many daft-but-ingenious pages of Johnny protecting his secret identity would ensue before the situation was brilliantly resolved…

Despite the runway success of its new superheroes, Marvel was still offering a range of genres such as westerns. August 1962 saw the retooling of another Atlas property as Two-Gun Kid #60 (cover-dated November) introduced Eastern lawyer Matt Hawk who moved to barbarous and unruly Tombstone, Texas in ‘The Beginning of the Two-Gun Kid’ (Lee, Kirby & Ayers). After merciless and relentless bullying, the tenderfoot is mentored by aged gunslinger Ben Dancer and transforms into a powerful, ultrafast deadly accurate shootist. When Ben is driven out of town by a pack of thugs working for land baron Clem Carter, Hawk adopts a masked identity to see justice done. Don Heck limned stand-alone tale ‘The Outcast’, revealing the naked ambition of a Navajo warrior before Hawk returns to complete his origin story in ‘I Hate the Two-Gun Kid!’ as romantic interest Nancy Carter falls foul of a scheme by her stepbrother to defraud her and frame the new hero in town…

More striking covers – Modelling with Millie #21 and Amazing Spider-Man #1 – precede the debut of the next Marvel milestone in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963 and on the newsstands for Christmas 1962). Created in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and at a time when “Red-baiting” and “Commie-bashing” were national obsessions in the U.S., the emergence of a brilliant new Thomas Edison employing Yankee ingenuity and invention to safeguard the World was an inevitable proposition. Combining the cherished belief that (US) technology could solve every problem with universal imagery of noble knights battling evil and the proposition became certainty. Of course, kids thought it great fun and very, very cool.

Scripted by Lieber (over Lee’s plot) and illustrated by criminally unappreciated Don Heck, ‘Iron Man is Born’ see electronics wizard Tony Stark field testing his latest invention in Viet Nam when he is wounded by a landmine. Captured by Viet Cong commander Wong-Chu, he is given a grim ultimatum. Create weapons for the Reds and a doctor will remove from his chest the shrapnel that will kill him within seven days. If not…

Knowing Commies can’t be trusted, Stark and aged Professor Yinsen – another captive scientist – build a mobile iron lung (remember this was years before heart transplants and pace-makers) to keep his heart beating, equipping it with all the weapons their ingenuity and resources can secretly build. Naturally they succeed, defeating Wong-Chu, but not without tragic sacrifice…

Next was a new genre title, once again given a fresh treatment by Lee, Kirby & Ayers. Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos (May 1963) was an improbable, over-the-top WWII combat comic series similar in tone to later ensemble action movies such as The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch and The Dirty Dozen. The surly squad of sorry reprobates were the first of three teams concocted by men-on-fire Kirby & Lee to secure fledgling Marvel’s growing position as the publisher to watch. Sgt. Fury started out as a pure Kirby creation. As with all his various war comics, The King made everything look harsh and real and appalling: the people and places are all grimy and tired, battered yet indomitable.

The artist had served in some of the worst battles of the war and never forgot the horrific and heroic things he saw – and more graphically expressed in his efforts during the 1950s genre boom at a number of different companies. However, even at kid-friendly, Comics Code-sanitised Marvel, those experiences perpetually leaked through onto his powerfully gripping pages. The saga began with blistering premier ‘Sgt. Fury, and his Howling Commandoes’ (that’s how they spelled it in the storrie-title – altho knot ennyware else): a rip-snorting yarn bursting with full-page panels interrupted by ‘Meet the Howling Commandos’ – a double-page spread spotlighting the seven members of First Attack Squad; Able Company. This comprised Fury himself, former circus strongman/Corporal “Dum-Dum” Dugan and privates Robert “Rebel” Ralston (a Kentucky jockey), college student Jonathan “Junior” Juniper, jazz trumpeter Gabriel Jones, mechanic Izzy Cohen and movie heartthrob Dino Manelli.

Controversially – even in the 1960s – this battle Rat Pack was an integrated unit, with Jewish and black members as well as Catholics, Southern Baptists and New York white guys all merrily serving together. The Howling Commandos pushed envelopes and busted taboos from the very start. The first mission was a non-stop riot pitting ‘Seven Against the Nazis!’ and putting the squad through their unique paces: a ragged band of indomitable warriors taking on hordes of square-necked Nazis to save D-Day and rescue a French resistance fighter carrying vital plans of the invasion…

A low-key introduction served for the next debut as something different debuted at the back of Strange Tales #110. When the budding House of Ideas introduced a warrior wizard to their burgeoning pantheon in the summer of 1963 it was a bold and curious move. Bizarre adventures and menacing monsters were still incredibly popular but mention of magic or the supernatural – especially vampires, werewolves and their eldritch ilk – were all severely proscribed by a censorship panel which dictated almost all aspects of story content.

At this time – almost a decade after an anti-comics public campaign led to Senate hearings – all comics were ferociously monitored and adjudicated by the draconian Comics Code Authority. Even though some of the small company’s strongest sellers were still mystery mags, their underlying themes and premises were almost universally mad science and alien wonders, not necromantic or thaumaturgic horrors. That might explain Lee’s unobtrusive introduction of Steve Ditko’s mystic defender: an exotic, twilit troubleshooter inhabiting the shadowy outer fringes of rational, civilised society in one of those aforementioned monster titles.

Tales of Suspense #41 (May 1963) had seen newcomer Iron Man battle deranged technological wizard Doctor Strange, and with the name legally in copyrightable print, preparations began for a truly different kind of ongoing hero. The company had recently published a quasi-mystic precursor in balding, trench-coated Doctor Droom (later renamed Dr. Druid) and when Stephen Strange scored big, the prototype would be subsequently retro-written into Marvel continuity as an alternative candidate and precursor for the ultimate role of Sorcerer Supreme. Thus, without any preamble, our first meeting with the man of mystery comes courtesy of a quiet little chiller which has never been surpassed for sheer mood and imagination. Lee & Ditko’s ‘Doctor Strange Master of Black Magic!’ in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963) saw a terrified man troubled by his dreams approach an exceptional consultant in his search of a cure. That perfect 5-page fright-fest introduces whole new realms and features deceit, desperation, double-dealing and the introduction of both a mysterious and aged oriental mentor and devilish dream demon Nightmare in an unforgettable yarn that might well be Ditko’s finest moment…

After a period of meteoric expansion, by mid-1963 the ever-expanding Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that cemented the legitimacy of American comics’ Silver Age – the concept of putting a bunch of all-star eggs in one basket which had made the Justice League of America such a winner and inspired the moribund Atlas outfit to try superheroes again. Nearly 18 months after Fantastic Four #1, the fledgling House of Ideas had a viable stable of leading men (if only sidekick women) so Lee & Kirby assembled a handful of them and moulded them into a force for justice and soaring sales…

Seldom has it ever been done with such style and sheer exuberance. Cover dated September 1963, The Avengers #1 kicks off with ‘The Coming of the Avengers’: one of the cannier origin tales in comics. Instead of starting at a zero point and acting as if the reader knew nothing, Stan & Jack (plus inker Dick Ayers) assumed readers had at least passing familiarity with Marvel’s other titles and wasted very little time or energy on introductions.

In Asgard, God of Mischief Loki is imprisoned on a dank isle, hungry for vengeance on his half-brother Thor. Observing Earth, the wicked Asgardian espies monstrous, misunderstood Hulk and mystically engineers a situation wherein the man-brute seemingly goes on a rampage, simply to trick the Thunder God into battling the brute. When the Hulk’s sidekick Rick Jones radios the FF for assistance, devious Loki diverts the transmission and smugly awaits the outcome of his trickery Sadly, Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp also pick up the redirected SOS. As the heroes converge in the American Southwest to search for the Jade Giant, they soon realize that something is oddly amiss…

This terse, epic, compelling and wide-ranging yarn (New York, New Mexico, Detroit and Asgard in 22 pages) is Lee & Kirby at their bombastic best, but that same month they also premiered another super squad that was the hero team’s polar opposite. X-Men #1 introduced gloomy, serious Scott Summers (Cyclops), ebullient Bobby Drake AKA Iceman, wealthy golden boy Warren Worthington III codenamed Angel, and erudite, brutish genius Henry McCoy as The Beast. These teens were very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between the sprawling masses of humanity and Homo Superior: an emergent off-shoot race of mutants with incredible extra abilities.

Scripted by Lee, ‘X-Men’ opens with the boisterous students welcoming new classmate Jean Grey (promptly dubbed Marvel Girl): a young woman possessing the ability to move objects with her mind. Whilst Xavier is explaining the team goals and mission in life, actual Evil Mutant Magneto is single-handedly taking over American missile-base Cape Citadel. A seemingly unbeatable threat, the master of magnetism is nonetheless valiantly driven off by the young heroes on their first outing in under 15 minutes…

It doesn’t sound like much, but the gritty, dynamic power of Kirby’s art, solidly inked by veteran Paul Reinman, imparted a raw aggressive energy to the tale which carried the bi-monthly book irresistibly forward.

As Henry Pym matured from Ant-Man to Giant-Man, he took on a crimefighting partner in Janet Van Dyne – The Wasp. Although she almost never got a chance to solo star, with Tales to Astonish #52 (January 1964) Jan won a back-up series where she narrated horror stories like this one. Crafted by Lee, Lieber & Roussos, ‘Somewhere Waits a Wobbow!’ is a standard cautionary tale of fate and justice catching up to a crooked ne’er-do-well and is followed here by a similar new position for an alien first introduced in Fantastic Four #13. By the same team and in the same month, Tales of the Watcher launched in Tales of Suspense #49 as the omnipotent intergalactic voyeur relates ‘The Saga of the Sneepers!’ wherein predatory extraterrestrials observe Earth and make plans to conquer humanity…

As the evolved Atlas Comics grew in popularity, it gradually supplanted its broad variety of genre titles with more and more superheroes. The recovering powerhouse was still hampered by a crippling distribution deal that limited the company to 16 titles per month (which would restrict their output until 1968), so each new untried book would have to fill the revenue-generating slot (however small) of an existing title. Moreover, as costumed characters were selling, each new similarly-themed title would limit the breadth of the monster, western, war, humour or girls’ comics that had been the outfit’s recent bread and butter. It was putting a lot of eggs in one basket, and superheroes had failed twice before for Marvel.

So, Daredevil, the Man Without Fear (April 1964) might have seemed a risky venture. Yes, the artist was one of the industry’s most talented veterans, but not to the young kids who were the audience. Crucially, he wasn’t Kirby or Ditko. ‘The Origin of Daredevil’ recounts how young Matthew Murdock grew up in the slums, raised by his father Battling Jack Murdock, a second-rate prize-fighter. Determined that the boy will be something, the father extracts a solemn promise from his son that he will never fight. Mocked by other kids who sarcastically dub him “Daredevil”, Matt abides by his vow, but secretly trains his body to physical perfection.

One day he saves a blind man from being hit by a speeding truck, only to be struck in the face by its radioactive cargo. His sight is burned away forever but his other senses are super-humanly enhanced and he gains a sixth: “radar-sense”. He tells no-one, not even his dad. The senior Murdock is in dire straits. As his career declined, he signed with The Fixer, knowing full well what the corrupt promoter expected from his fighters. Yet Jack’s star started to shine again and his downward spiral reversed itself. Unaware he was being set up, Murdock got a shot at the Big Time, but when ordered to take a dive, refused. Winning was the proudest moment of his life. When his bullet-riddled corpse was found, the cops had suspicions but no proof. Heartbroken Matt graduated college with a law degree and set up in business with his room-mate Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. They hired a lovely young secretary named Karen Page and, with his life on track, young Matt now had time to solve his father’s murder…

His promise stopped him from fighting; but what if he became somebody else?

Scripted by Lee and moodily illustrated by the legendary Bill Everett (with assistance from Ditko) this is a rather nonsensical yet visually compelling yarn that just goes through the motions, barely hinting at the magic yet to come.

A cover gallery highlighting Marvel Tales Annual #1, Tales to Astonish #60 and photo mag Monsters to Laugh With #1 then leads to the return of Captain America in his own series. After his resurrection in Avengers #4, the Golden Age Cap grew in popularity and was quickly awarded his own solo feature, sharing Tales of Suspense with Iron Man. Sparsely scripted by Lee with the ideal team of Kirby & Chic Stone illustrating, ‘Captain America’ is one phenomenal fight scene as an army of thugs invades Avengers Mansion because “only the one without superpowers” is at home. They soon learn the folly of that misapprehension…

Veteran war-hero Nick Fury was reimagined in Fantastic Four #21 (December 1963) as a grizzled, world-weary and cunning CIA Colonel at the periphery of really big events in a fast-changing world. Fury’s latter-day self then emerged as a big-name star once espionage yarns went global in the wake of popular TV sensations like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The elder iteration was given a second series beginning in Strange Tales #135 (August 1965). Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. combined Cold War tensions with sinister schemes of World Conquest by a subversive, all-encompassing, hidden enemy organisation. The unfolding saga came with captivating Kirby-designed super-science gadgetry…

Kirby’s genius for graphic wizardry and gift for dramatic staging mixed with Stan Lee’s manic melodrama to create a tough and tense series which the writers and artists who followed turned into a non-stop riot of action and suspense. The main event starts with ST #135 as the Human Torch lead feature is summarily replaced by ‘Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ – which back then stood for Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division…

In the rocket-paced first episode, Fury is asked to volunteer for the most dangerous job in the world: leading a new counter-intelligence agency dedicated to stopping secretive subversive super-science organisation Hydra. With assassins dogging his every move, the Take-Charge Guy with the Can-Do Attitude quickly proves he is ‘The Man for the Job!’ in a potent 12-page thriller by Lee, Kirby & Ayers.

Originally devised by Bill Everett in 1939, Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner is the offspring of a water-breathing Atlantean princess and an American polar explorer: a hybrid being of immense strength, highly resistant to physical harm, able to fly and exist above and below the waves. Namor technically predates Marvel/Atlas/Timely Comics. He first caught the public’s attention as part of the fire vs. water headlining team in Marvel Comics #1 (October 1939 and Marvel Mystery Comics from the second issue onward), sharing honours and top billing with the original Human Torch, but he had originally been seen (albeit in a truncated black and white version) in Motion Picture Funnies: a weekly promotional giveaway handed out to moviegoers earlier in the year. Rapidly emerging as one of the company’s biggest draws, Namor gained his own title at the end of 1940 (cover-dated Spring 1941) and was one of the last super-characters to go at the end of the first heroic age. In 1954, when Atlas briefly revived its “Big Three” (the Torch and Captain America being the other two) costumed characters, Everett returned for an extended run of superb fantasy tales, but even so the time wasn’t right and the title sunk again.

When Lee & Kirby started reinventing comic books in 1961 they revived the all-but-forgotten awesome amphibian as a troubled, semi-amnesiac, and decidedly more regal, grandiose anti-hero in Fantastic Four #4. The returnee despised humanity; embittered at the loss of his sub-sea kingdom (seemingly destroyed by American atomic testing) whilst simultaneously besotted with Sue Storm. Namor knocked around the budding Marvel universe for a few years, squabbling with other assorted heroes such as the Hulk, Avengers and X-Men, before securing his own series as one half of Tales to Astonish. In 1968 the company ended its restrictive publishing commitments and expanded exponentially.

After spectacularly battling Daredevil in the Scarlet Swashbuckler’s 7th issue, Tales to Astonish #70 heralded ‘The Start of the Quest!’ as Lee, Gene Colan (in the pseudonymous guise of Adam Austin) & Vince Colletta set the Sub-Mariner to storming an Atlantis under martial law ordered by his usurping Warlord Krang. The effort is for naught and the returning hero is rejected by his own people. Callously imprisoned, the troubled Prince is freed by his oft-neglected and ignored paramour Lady Dorma, compelling him to begin a mystical quest to find the lost Trident of King Neptune which only the rightful ruler of Atlantis can hold…

More covers follow – Monsters Unlimited #1, Patsy Walker’s Fashion Parade #1, reprint anthologies Marvel Collectors’ Items Classics #1, Fantasy Masterpieces #1, Marvel Tales #3, King Size Special Marvel Super-Heroes #1 and Thor #126 (a first issue as Journey into Mystery was sensibly retitled) before a new masked-&-costumed western hero debuted in Ghost Rider #1 (December 1966). ‘The Origin of the Ghost Rider’ by Gary Friedrich, Roy Thomas, Ayers & Colletta revealed how Eastern teacher Carter Slade is shot by fake Indians and brought back from the brink of death by real ones. Saved by recently-orphaned Jamie Jacobs, Slade is healed by shaman Flaming Star who trains him in combat and gives him gifts which enable him to perform tricks of stage magic (such as night-time invisibility, image projection and bodily discorporation). Creating a glowing costume, Slade goes after the plundering white men impersonating native tribes – and who killed Jamie’s parents – as a spectral avenging spirit: “He who rides the Night Wind”…

Older fans – or their parents – might possibly recognise this hero as the western legend created by Ray Krank & Dick Ayers for Tim Holt #11 (Magazine Enterprises, 1949), later immortalised by Frank Frazetta. They are stunningly, litigiously similar and Marvel made good use of the original’s reputation and recently voided copyright ownership…

The same holds true for their next superhero addition, who crops up following another cover gallery featuring Not Brand Echh #1 and animated cartoon tie-in one-shot America’s Best (TV) Comics #1. After years as an also-ran/up-and-comer, by 1968 Marvel Comics was in the ascendant. Their sales were catching up with industry leaders National/DC Comics and Gold Key, and they finally secured a new distribution deal that would allow them to expand their list of titles exponentially. Once the stars of Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish and Strange Tales all got their own titles, the House of Ideas just kept on going.

One dead-cert idea was a hero named after the company – and one with a huge amount of popular cachet and nostalgic pedigree as well. After the DC/Fawcett court case of the 1940s-1950s, the name Captain Marvel disappeared from the newsstands, but in In 1967 – during the superhero boom and camp craze generated by the Batman TV show, publisher MLF secured rights to the name and produced a number of giant-sized comics featuring an intelligent robot who could divide his body into segments and shoot lasers from his eyes.

Quirky, charming and devised by the legendary Carl (Human Torch) Burgos who had recently worked for Marvel, the feature nevertheless could not attract a large following. Upon its demise, the name was quickly snapped up by the resurgent Marvel Comics Group.

Marvel Super-Heroes was a brand-new title: it had been giant-sized reprint comic book Fantasy Masterpieces, combining monster and mystery tales with Golden Age Timely classics. With #12, it added an all-new lead experimental section for characters without homes such as Medusa and Black Knight when not debuting new concepts like Guardians of the Galaxy, Phantom Eagle (for some reason not included here) – and, to start the ball rolling, a troubled alien spy sent to Earth from the Kree Galaxy. He held a Captain’s rank and his name was Mar-Vell.

Courtesy of Lee, Colan & Giacoia, the initial MS-H 15 page-instalment ‘The Coming of Captain Marvel!: Phase One!!’ devolved directly from Fantastic Four #64-65 wherein the quartet defeated a super-advanced robotic Sentry from a mythical alien race, only to be attacked by a high official of those long-lost extraterrestrials in their very next issue!

After defeating Ronan the Accuser, the FF heard no more from the far-from-extinct Kree, but the millennia-old empire was once again interested in Earth. Dispatching a surveillance mission, the Kree wanted to know everything about us. Unfortunately, the agent they chose was a man of conscience; whilst his commanding officer Colonel Yon-Rogg was a ruthless rival for the love of the ship’s medical officer Una. No sooner has the good captain made a tentative planet-fall and clashed with the US military from the local missile base than the first instalment ends…

Although cover-dated January 1968, Capt. Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders #1 was released in November of the previous year, and promoted a supporting character from Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos to lead status and WWII’s Pacific Theatre of War. Crafted by Friedrich, Ayers & Syd Shores, ‘The Last Banzai!’ sees US submarine commander Simon Savage placed at the head of a squad of elite (multicultural/multi-ethnic) marines to clear the way for the imminent Allied landing on the fortified atoll of Tarawa. It’s a dirty job but…

The aforementioned expansion is celebrated in the covers for Groovy #1, Captain America #100, Incredible Hulk #102, Iron Man and The Sub-Mariner #1, Iron Man #1, Sub-Mariner #1, Captain Marvel #1, Doctor Strange #169, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 and Spectacular Spider-Man #1 and cemented by the first full solo tale of one the company’s breakthrough stars. Although pretty much a last-minute addition to Fantastic Four #48-50’s ‘Galactus Trilogy’, Jack Kirby’s scintillating creation the Silver Surfer quickly became a watchword for depth and subtext in the Marvel Universe and one Stan Lee kept as his own personal toy for many years.

Tasked with finding planets for space god Galactus to consume and, despite the best efforts of intergalactic voyeur Uatu the Watcher, one day the Surfer discovers Earth, where the latent nobility of humanity reawakens his own suppressed morality; causing the shining scout to rebel against his master and help the FF save the world. In retaliation, Galactus imprisons his one-time herald on Earth, making him the ultimate outsider on a planet remarkably ungrateful for his sacrifice. The Galactus Saga was a creative highlight from a period when the Lee/Kirby partnership was utterly on fire. The tale has all the power and grandeur of a true epic and has never been surpassed for drama, thrills and sheer entertainment. It’s not included here: for that treat you’ll need to see a Fantastic Four Epic Collection or many other Marvel collections…

In May 1968, after frequent guest-shots and even a solo adventure in the back of Fantastic Four Annual #5, the Surfer finally got his own (initially double-length) title at long last.

‘The Origin of the Silver Surfer!’ is illustrated by John Buscema & Joe Sinnott, with the drama opening on a prolonged flashback sequence of the outcast’s forays on Earth and repeated examples of crass humanity’s brutal callousness and unthinking hostility, detailing how Norrin Radd, discontented soul from an alien paradise Zenn-La, became the gleaming herald of a planetary scourge. Radd had constantly chafed against a culture in comfortable, sybaritic stagnation, but when Galactus shattered their vaunted million years of progress in a fleeting moment, the dissident without hesitation offered himself as a sacrifice to save the world from the Devourer’s hunger.

Converted into an indestructible, gleaming human meteor, Radd agreed to scour the galaxies looking for uninhabited worlds rich in the energies Galactus needs to survive, thus saving planets with life on them from destruction. He didn’t always find them in time…

The stories in this series were highly acclaimed – if not really commercially successful – both for Buscema’s agonised, emphatic and lush artwork as well as Lee’s deeply spiritual and philosophical scripts. The tone was accusatory; with the isolated alien’s travails and social observations creating a metaphoric status akin to a Christ-figure for an audience that was maturing and rebelling against America’s creaking and unsavoury status quo.

The company had early learned the value of reprinting their past glories; both to update new readers and to cheaply monopolise sales points and here a gallery blends ongoing titles such as newly retitled Captain Savage and his Battlefield Raiders #5 and adult-oriented Pussycat #1 with double-sized classics compilations Tales of Asgard #1 and The Mighty Marvel Western #1 before Marvel Super-Heroes #19 (March 1969 and on the stands in December 1968) saw Tarzan analogue Ka-Zar in his first solo story ‘My Father, My Enemy!’ courtesy of Arnold Drake, Steve Parkhouse, George Tuska & Sid Greene,

Beginning as a barbarian wild man in a lost sub-polar realm of swamp-men and dinosaurs, Ka-Zar eventually evolved into one of Marvel’s more complex – and exceedingly mutable – characters. Wealthy heir to one of Britain’s oldest noble families, his best friend is a sabre-tooth tiger, his wife is feisty jungle warrior/zoologist Shanna the She-Devil and his brother is a homicidal super-scientific bandit. He is one of Marvel/Timely’s oldest heroes. Prose pulp hero Kazar predates Martin Goodman’s first foray into comics and strip incarnation Kazar the Great was in Marvel Comics #1, right beside The Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and The Angel…

Lord Kevin Plunder was perpetually torn between the clean life-or-death simplicity of the jungle and the bewildering constant compromises of modern civilisation as he guest-starred in titles as varied as X-Men, Daredevil and Amazing Spider-Man.

As this enjoyable, under-appreciated tale unfolds, many of the hero’s inconsistencies and conflicts are squared as the aristocratic outsider leaves his British castle for the Antediluvian Savage Land to investigate claims that his dead father was a scientific devil intent on using his discovery of anti-metal for evil. Tragically, his warped brother Parnival is ruthlessly determined to hide the truth for his own vile ends. A wild excursion to Antarctica follows, featuring the discovery of a lost land, dinosaurs, lost cities, spectacular locations, mystery and all-out action: it doesn’t get better than this…

Ending the astounding adventures is a tale taken from February 1969 as the industry began experiencing a downturn in superhero sales and the rise of other genres. Co-written and pencilled by Lieber with Thomas, Giacoia & Vince Colletta, ‘This Man… This Demon!’ was the last solo try-out from Marvel Super-Heroes (#20, cover-dated May) before it became an all-reprint vehicle. It restated Dr. Victor von Doom’s origins and revealed his tragic, doomed relationship with a gypsy girl named Valeria. That relationship is then exploited by demon alchemist Diablo who claims to need an ally but actually wants a new slave. The terrifying monarch of Latveria deals with the charlatan in typically effective style…

Marvel continued expanding for the remainder of the decade, but not with superheroes, as a final clutch of covers – Mad About Millie #1, Chili #1, My Love #1, Tower of Shadows #1, Chamber of Darkness #1, Our Love Story #1, Marvel’s Greatest Comics #22, Homer, the Happy Ghost #1, Peter the Little Pest #1, a revived Kid Colt Outlaw (#140), Ringo Kid #1 and Where Monsters Dwell #1 – comes full circle and highlights the publisher’s return to genre themes, after which a brief bonus section reveals Stan Lee’s original synopsis for Fantastic Four #1 and house ads from the early moments of the decade…

The 1960s was the turning point in the history of American comic books: the moment when a populist industry became a true art form. These are the tales that sparked that renaissance and remain some of the best stories and art you will ever experience. Nuff Said?
© 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Drowned Girl


By Jon Hammer (Piranha Press/DC)
No ISBN: ASIN: B002KZ8ENI

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

During the “anything goes” 1980s, the field of comics publishing expanded exponentially with new companies offering a vast range of fresh titles and ideas. To combat this upstart expansion, Marvel and DC instigated and commissioned innovative material for those freshly growing markets, with the latter cartoon colossus especially targeting readers for whom old-fashioned comic books were anathema… or at least a long-abandoned or clandestine dalliance. DC created new, mature-oriented imprints such as Vertigo and Helix, but some of the most intriguing projects came out of their Piranha Press sub-division, formed in 1989 and re-designated Paradox Press in 1993.

When DC founded the adult special projects imprint, the resulting publications and reader’s reaction to them were mixed. It had long been a Holy Grail of the business to produce “comics for people who don’t read comics” and, despite the inherent logical flaw, that’s a pretty sound and sensible plan. However, delivery of such is always problematic.

Is the problem resistance to the medium? Then try radical art and narrative styles, unusual typography and talent from outside the medium to tell your stories: you get some intriguing results but risk still not reaching a new audience whilst alienating readers already on board…

This eclectic and overwhelmingly effective tome was one of the best and simultaneously – as all you cynics might expect – one of the least appreciated…

Dick Shamus lives in New York City. Not necessarily the one you know, but one equally composed of book snippets, flickers of films and TV titbits, all filtered through the fried brains of an incorrigible addict who’s been off his prescription Lithium for far too long now.

Dick Shamus is a Private Eye. If he says so then it’s got to be true, right?

On one night so much like every other, Dick, bombed out of his gourd on his tipple of choice – embalmers’ formaldehyde with a chocolate drink chaser – picks up a useful tip about a Nazi weight-lifting club from one of his usual sources: far too few of them at all credible and none of them at all real. The drink might be the secret CIA vaccine to prevent AIDS, but it sure plays hob with the old deductive faculties…

The side of the city that only he can see informs our weary, ravaged gumshoe that there’s a connection between the Fascist health fanatics, India and the Drowned Girl – whoever she is. As his personal reality intercepts and continually collides with equally outrageous consensus realities the rest of us are stuck with, Dick is carried along by events to a tragic and disturbing rendezvous. If only he could recall who the client was…

Raw and savagely beguiling, here is a one night odyssey of a perceptually challenged shamus weaving between rich bastards, gutter-scum, gullible art-trendoids, yuppie-gentrifiers and armchair anarchists. On the way he encounters affable protester-bashing cops and a hundred other “normal” folks all in search of his dimly perceived targets – as anyone would…

This disturbing, hard-luck pilgrim’s progress is as truly thought-provoking, hard-bitten, revelatory and socially castigating as the best works of Dashiell Hammett, William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Raymond Chandler or Gabriel García-Márquez, whilst the brutally unrefined and intoxicatingly vibrant painting of author Jon Hammer (The Batman Adventures) makes this perhaps the very best psycho-detective graphic novel you’ve never read.

But all that could change if and when you too track down or dredge up The Drowned Girl…
© 1990 Jon Hammer. All rights reserved.

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The Batman Annuals volume 1 – DC Comics Classic Library


By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, France Herron, David Vern Reed, Lew Sayre Schwartz, Sheldon Moldoff, Dick Sprang, Stan Kaye, Charles Paris & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-215-8 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Nostalgia Box to Celebrate the Season… 8/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

DC’s Classics Comics Library of hardbacks was a remarkably accessible, curated collectible range of tomes, much missed by all today. One of the best of them was this wonderful aggregation of three of the most influential and beloved comic books of the Silver Age.

Originally released in June 1961, Batman Annual #1 hit newsstands a year after the startlingly successful Superman Annual #1. The big, bold anthology format was hugely popular with readers. The Man of Steel’s second Annual was rushed out before Christmas 1960 and the third came out a mere year after the first! That same month (June 1961) the first ever Secret Origins collection and this Bat-Blockbuster all arrived in shops and on newsstands. For us budding fanboys, it was like what I imagine one’s first hit of recreational narcotics must feel like…

It’s probably hard to appreciate now but these huge books – 80 pages instead of 32 – were a magical resource with a colossal impact for kids who loved comics. I don’t mean the ubiquitous scruffs, oiks and scallywags of school days who read them and chucked them away (most kids were comics consumers in the days before computer games) but rather those quiet, secretive few of us who treasured and kept them, constantly re-reading, discussing, pondering. Only posh kids with wicked parents read no comics at all: those prissy, starchy types who were beaten up by the scruffs, oiks and scallywags even more than us bookworms. But I digress…

For budding collectors these Annuals were a gateway to a fabulous lost past. Just Imagine!: adventures your heroes had from before you were even born…

Those colossal compilations of the 1960s changed comics publishing. Soon Marvel, Charlton and Archie Comics were also releasing giant books of old stories, then new ones, crossovers, continued stories, et al. Annuals proved two things to publishers: that there was a dedicated, long-term appetite for more material – and that punters were willing to pay a little bit more for it. This vast compendium reassembles the first three Batman Annuals in their mythic entirety: 21 terrific complete stories, posters, features, pin-ups, calendars and those iconic compartmentalized covers. There are also creator biographies and articles from Michael Uslan and Richard Bruning to put the entire experience into perspective, and original publication information and credits (the only bad thing about those big books of magic was never knowing “Who” and “Where”…)

The editors wisely packaged Annuals as themed collections, the first being ‘1001 Secrets of Batman and Robin’ starting the ball rolling with ‘How to be the Batman’ by Bill Finger, Lew Sayre Schwartz & Stan Kaye, wherein an amnesiac Caped Crusader must be re-trained by Robin. As always there’s a twist in this tale, before ‘The Strange Costumes of Batman’ (Edmond Hamilton, Dick Sprang & Charles Paris) highlights specialised uniforms the heroes use over their outrageous careers.

The self-explanatory ‘Untold Tales of the Bat-Signal’ (writer unknown, Schwartz and Paris) again uses past exploits to solve a contemporary case, whilst ‘The Origin of the Bat-Cave’ (Finger, Sheldon Moldoff & Paris) is only revealed by a quick time-trip back to revolutionary war days. ‘Batman’s Electronic Crime-File’ (anonymous, Sprang & Paris) is a cracking thriller confirming the Dynamic Duo’s love of cutting-edge technology. ‘The Thrilling Escapes of Batman and Robin’ (Finger, Moldoff, Kaye) concentrates on their facility at escaping traps, and excitement peaked in a dazzling display of ‘The Amazing Inventions of Batman’ (Hamilton, Sprang, Paris).

‘Batman and Robin’s Most Thrilling Action Roles’ opens with tension-packed mystery ‘The Underseas Batman’ (Hamilton, Sprang, Paris), then explores Wayne’s Scottish connections in ‘The Lord of Batmanor’ (Hamilton, assisted by his wife Leigh Brackett, Sprang & Paris) before once more tapping into the Westerns zeitgeist with ‘Batman – Indian Chief’ (France Herron, Moldoff & Kaye). ‘The Jungle Batman’ (David Vern Reed, Schwartz & Paris) is pure escapist joy and we get a then-rare glimpse of Bruce Wayne’s training in ‘When Batman Was Robin’ (Hamilton, Sprang, Paris) before returning to foiling deathtraps with ‘Batman the Magician’ (Finger, Moldoff, Paris), and this section concludes with a pivotal tale ‘Batman – The Superman of Planet X’ (Herron, Sprang & Paris): one forming a key thematic plank of Grant Morrison’s epic Batman R.I.P. storyline and later exploits.

The third Annual (which came far more frequently than once a year) featured ‘Batman and Robin’s Most Fantastic Foes’ beginning with ‘The Mad Hatter of Gotham City’ (Finger, Moldoff & Paris), special-effects bandit ‘The Human Firefly’ (Herron, Sprang, Paris) and hyper cerebral mutant ‘The Mental Giant of Gotham City’ (Hamilton, Sprang, Paris) before the Clown Prince of Crime steals the show with a squad of skullduggery specialists in ‘The Joker’s Aces’ (Reed, Schwartz, Kaye).

Eerie and hard-hitting ‘The Gorilla Boss of Gotham City’ (Reed, Schwartz, Kaye) was one of DC’s earliest Ape epics, and although gripping, ‘The New Crimes of Two-Face’ (Finger, Schwartz & Paris) starred only a stand-in for the double-dealing psychopath. ‘The Mysterious Mirror Man’ (Finger, Moldoff and Paris), however, was the genuine article and well worth a modern do-over…

For me Christmas is inextricably linked to Batman. From my earliest formative years every Yule was capped by that year’s British hardcover annual, often reprinting US comics (if somewhat imaginatively coloured) but occasionally all-new prose stories liberally illustrated and based slavishly on the Adam West/Burt Ward TV series. As I grew older and became a more serious reader and collector (the technical term is, I believe, addict) I became an avowed appreciator of regular seasonal tales appearing in Batman or Detective Comics or the “Golden Age Classics” that too infrequently graced them. Over decades some Batman’s very best adventures have occurred in the “Season of Good will” and why DC has never produced a Batman Christmas Album is a mystery even the World’s Greatest Detective could not solve…

This book might not actually contain any X-Mas exploits but it is the kind of present I would have killed (or died) for all those hundreds of years ago, so how can you possibly deny your kids the delights of this incredibly enjoyable book? And just like Train Sets, Scalextric and Quad Bikes, when I say kids of course I mean “Dads”…
© 1961, 1962, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Snow


By Benjamin Rivers (Benjamin Rivers Inc.)
ISBN: 978-0-9813495-8-9 (TPB)

Life isn’t drama. Life is ordinary: dull, repetitive, anxiety-provoking, tedious, unsatisfactory and just a bit less good than everybody else’s.

Until it isn’t…

Then we make it a story. In a story, you can mould reality into a shape you like and polish it to your own satisfaction. Then again, there are some stories which like to bend their own rules and aspire to being life-like…

If you’re a fan of high-tension thrillers or blockbuster epics, there doesn’t appear to be much going on in Snow: a miniseries-turned-graphic compilation detailing overlapping and intersecting ordinary people living and/or working on Queen Street West, Toronto. However, that either means you have a very glamorous lifestyle or that you spend too much time submerged in fiction and not enough looking and listening to what’s going on around you…

Crafted by illustrator and games developer Benjamin Rivers (who somewhat shoots my argument in the foot by having turned this comics collation into both an Indy movie and computer game), Snow falls into stark, monochrome simplicity, centring on Dana, a rather nervous young woman who works in a bookstore.

Economically, times are tough and she’s fixating on the number of shops and businesses closing in the locality. Dana doesn’t like change and she doesn’t like confrontation. Moreover, these days there’s an aura of tension everywhere – even in her former comfort zone at the store. Her co-workers are mostly okay, but old Mr. Abberline isn’t looking well and Dana can’t shift the suspicion that soon they’ll all be looking for new jobs. Even best friend Julia doesn’t get it though: it seems so easy for her to shut out such concerns and just party…

As she trudges along snowbound Queen Street to work and back, to the bar or Laundromat, Dana can’t escape an oppressive sense of impending doom. Things come to a head abruptly after overhearing an argument in a closing-down, already shuttered CD store. She could just about ignore that and go home, but after hearing the gunshot, Dana, in her unrushed, gradual manner, abandons the instincts of a lifetime and goes to investigate…

What she finds on entering the shop is the trigger to remaking her entire life, but change is so hard and comes so painfully slowly…

Appearing cautious and careful, this deceptively simple and elegant saga offers a supremely understated exploration of how folk like you and me react to shocking events and their aftermath: treating the extraordinary with the dismay and respect it deserves when it impinges on real lives. Most importantly, just like life, although there are always questions asked, we seldom get all the answers we want or need before, in the end, life just goes on…

Amongst the Bonus Material included here is the movie poster for the film adaptation, annotated creator’s notes and sketches, concept-&-character designs, an examination of the drawing process which resulted in the book’s signature visual style and the author’s reminiscent Afterword: Is It Still Snowing?, as well as a handy street guide and map of the ‘The World of Snow’.

Just like life, Snow is better experienced than fed to you second-hand or reprocessed, so please track down absorb this graphic novel if you’re looking for something a little different from what comics think of as normal…
© 2014 Benjamin Rivers. All rights reserved.

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Asterix and the Missing Scroll


By Jean-Yves Ferri & Didier Conrad, translated by Anthea Bell (Sphere/Orion Books)
ISBN: 978-1-51010-045-9 (album HB/Digital edition) 978-1-51010-046-6 (album PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Classical Way to Celebrate the Season… 9/10

Asterix the Gaul is probably France’s greatest literary export and part of the fabric of French life. The feisty, wily little warrior who fought the iniquities and viewed the myriad wonders of Julius Caesar’s Roman Empire with brains, bravery and – whenever required – a magical potion imbuing the imbiber with incredible strength, speed and vitality, is the go-to reference for all us non-Gallic gallants when we think of France.

The diminutive, doughty darling was created at the close of the 1950s by two of our artform’s greatest masters, with his first official appearance being October 29th in Pilote #1, even though he had actually debuted in a pre-release teaser – or “pilot” – some weeks earlier. Bon Anniversaire mon petit brave!

His adventures touched billions of people all around the world for five and a half decades as the sole preserve of originators Rene Goscinny and/or Albert Uderzo. After close on 15 years as a weekly comic serial subsequently collected into book-length compilations, in 1974 the 21st saga – Asterix and Caesar’s Gift – was the first released as a complete original album prior to serialisation. Thereafter each new album was an eagerly anticipated, impatiently awaited treat for legions of devotees, but none more so than this one which was created by Uderzo’s handpicked replacements – scripter Jean-Yves Ferri (Fables Autonomes, La Retour à la terre, De Gaulle à la plage) and illustrator Didier Conrad (Les Innomables, Le Piège Malais, Tatum, Spirou) – who had taken up a somewhat poisoned chalice on his retirement in 2009. And so began the further adventures of truly immortal French heroes. Happily the legacy was in safe hands, especially after this first book was meticulously overseen by Uderzo every step of the way…

Whether as an action-packed comedic romp with sneaky, bullying baddies getting their just deserts or as a punfully sly and witty satire for older, wiser heads, the new work is just as engrossing as the previously established canon, and English-speakers are still happily graced with the brilliantly light touch of translator Anthea Bell who, with former collaborator Derek Hockridge, played no small part in making the indomitable little Gaul so palatable to English-speakers around the globe.

As you surely already know, half of these intoxicating epics are set in various exotic locales throughout the Ancient World, whilst the rest take place in and around Uderzo’s adored Brittany where, circa 50 B.C., a little hamlet of cantankerous, proudly defiant warriors and their families resisted every effort of the mighty Roman Empire to complete the conquest of Gaul.

Although the country is divided by the notional conquerors into provinces Celtica, Aquitania and Amorica, the very tip of the last named regions stubbornly refuses to be pacified. The Romans, utterly unable to overrun this last bastion of Gallic insouciance, are reduced to a pointless policy of absolute containment – and yet these Gauls come and go as they please. Thus a tiny seaside hamlet is permanently cut off (in the broadest, not-true-at-all sense) by heavily fortified garrisons Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium: filled with veteran fighters who would rather be anywhere else on earth than there…

Their “confined detainees” couldn’t care less: casually frustrating and daily defying the world’s greatest military machine by simply going about their everyday affairs, untouchable thanks to a miraculous magic potion brewed by resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits of diminutive dynamo Asterix in merry conjunction with his simplistic, supercharged best pal Obelix…

Le Papyrus de César was released on October 22nd 2015, simultaneously hurtling off the shelves of many nations as Asterix and the Missing Scroll (or whatever the local language equivalent of the many nations addicted to these epics might be). Even though, as with many previous tales, it takes its momentum from satirising current affairs, the resemblances to certain unscrupulous publishing magnates and founders of information-leaking internet sites are both remarkable and – I’m sure – utterly coincidental. After all, who doesn’t like fake news and genuine censorship?

This home fixture begins away in glorious Rome where Caesar anticipates the release of his memoirs Commentaries on the War with the Gauls (or Commentarii de Bello Gallico as your granddad probably knew it). Unimaginative, forthright Caesar ended the ruminations with a final scroll detailing how he has been unable to completely end the conflict because of repeated incidents with a small village of indomitable Gauls who simply won’t accept that they’ve been conquered. He is shocked – but not averse – to the suggestion of his advisor and publisher Libellus Blockbustus who recommends that they just leave it out of the released edition…

The expurgated publication is a sensation throughout the empire, and far away in that still-unconquered enclave, life goes on as usual after publication. In fact, when the latest “newspaper” arrives the villagers are only concerned with the latest horoscopes. As myopic Wifix reads them out, aged Geriatrix takes his prediction to heart and sees “new conquests” in his future, whilst Obelix is mortally crushed by a rather specific prognostication to “avoid conflict, take stock and go easy on the roast boar”…

Asterix, who shares the same birthday as his ponderous pal, doesn’t believe in all that astrology rubbish, but cannot shake the big buffoon out of a debilitating dudgeon. Although that means things grow quiet in Gaul, back in Rome a clandestine crisis has erupted. Mute Numidian Scribe Bigdatha has taken umbrage with the massaging of the truth and, believing the public has a right to know everything, has turned whistleblower. Swiping Caesar’s 24th scroll – “Defeats at the Hands of the Indomitable Gauls of Armorica” – he has passed it on to Confoundtheirpolitix, a Gaulish “newsmonger without borders”. Fearing the scandal will affect profits and dreading what Caesar will do if he’s made to appear foolish or dishonest, Blockbustus instigates emergency measures: sending Roman secret police to arrest the scribe and newsmonger. Confoundtheirpolitix, however, has already rushed to Armorica seeking sanctuary in a certain village Romans cannot enter…

When details of the scroll’s omissions are revealed (particularly Asterix’ many exploits such as The Chieftain’s Shield, Mansions of the Gods and so on) the Gaulish villagers react in different ways – those that aren’t still fighting over the horoscope predictions at least…

The excitable Lutetian newsmonger is adamant that the contents of the scroll could topple Caesar and something must be done to preserve it, prompting Chief Vitalstatistix to affably write his own history of the war to set things right. More sensibly, Getafix suggests that since Gauls don’t appreciate writing but memorialise facts and history in their oral tradition, he should transport the potentially devastating data to the Forest of the Carnutes where Grand Druid Archaeopterix can commit the information to his mighty and phenomenal cogitative cranial chronicles…

Meanwhile word has reached Centurion Verigregarius in Totorum to get that scroll back at all costs and he surrounds the village with a cordon of his best warriors. That means nothing to the villagers, of course. In the dead of night Asterix, Getafix and faithful petite wonder-hound Dogmatix sneak out of a secret door and set out on their mission, dragging with them dolorous, downcast and decidedly pacifistic Obelix. They are unaware that they are being stalked by a crack squad of elite Roman army surveillance specialists, equipped with the latest advancement in the empire’s covert communications technology…

Back in Rome, every fresh evidence of Caesar’s delight in his new-found authorial celebrity terrifies Blockbustus more and more. With the humiliating last chapter still out there, a ruler’s reputation (and thus publisher’s life) remains balanced on a knife-edge. Succumbing to panic, the wily advisor heads for Armorica to take personal charge of the search, even as our heroes reach the fabled forest. As their stalkers fall victim to the unique and fabulous security measures of the Carnutes druids, Getafix renews old acquaintances and begins the torturous process of committing the scroll to Archaeopterix’s capacious memory…

In Totorum, deprived of all the ongoing fresh facts and breaking news, Blockbustus and Verigregarius plan a major assault on the village to retrieve the scroll they think is still there. Their cause is greatly advanced when they catch Confoundtheirpolitix outside the stockade and take him hostage. Thankfully, the embattled Gauls have a messaging system which can reach all the way to the great forest, and Archaeopterix has a power-potion of his own which will allow his guests to get back home in time to save the day…

Even Obelix gets to play, once he learns that he was read the wrong horoscope and can have as many boars and hit as many Romans as he wants. But then, Julius Caesar angrily arrives and all Tartarus breaks loose…

Fast-paced, furiously funny, stuffed with action and hilarious, contemporary swipes and timeless jibes plus a marvellously enchanting double twist ending, this is a splendid continuation of the series by creators who clearly know what they’re doing and enjoy doing it. Asterix and the Missing Scroll is an unmissable joy for lovers of laughs and devotees of comics alike and a welcome addition to the mythic canon.
© 2015 Les Éditions Albert René. English translation: © 2015 Les Éditions Albert René. All rights reserved.

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Evaristo: Deep City


By F. Solano Lopez & Carlos Sampayo (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0874160345 (Album TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

For British and Commonwealth comics readers of a certain age, the unmistakable artistic style of Francisco Solano Lopez always conjures up dark moods and atmospheric tension because he drew such ubiquitous boyhood classics as Janus Stark, Kelly’s Eye, Adam Eterno, Tri-Man, Galaxus: The Thing from Outer Space, Pete’s Pocket Army, Nipper, The Drowned World, Raven on the Wing, Master of the Marsh and a host of other stunning tales of mystery, imagination and adventure in the years he worked for British publishers.

However, the master of blackest brushwork was not merely a creator of children’s fiction. In his home country of Argentina he was considered a radical political cartoonist whose work eventually forced him to flee to more hospitable climes.

On October 26th 1928 Francisco Solano López was born in Buenos Aires. He began illustrating comics in 1953 with Perico y Guillerma for publisher Columba. With journalist Héctor Germán Oesterheld (a prolific comics scripter “disappeared” by the Junta in 1976 and presumed killed the following year) Solano López produced Bull Rocket for Editorial Abril’s magazine Misterix. After working on such landmark series as Pablo Maran, Uma-Uma, Rolo el marciano adoptive and El Héroe, López joined Oesterheld’s publishing house Editorial Frontera to become a member of the influential Venice Group which included Mario Faustinelli, Hugo Pratt, Ivo Pavone and Dino Battaglia.

López alternated with Pratt, Jorge Moliterni and José Muñoz on Oesterheld’s legendary Ernie Pike serial but their most significant collaboration was the explosively political and hugely popular allegorical science fiction thriller El Eternauta, which began in 1957. By 1959 the series had come to the unwelcome attention of the Argentinian and Chilean authorities, forcing López to flee to Spain. Whilst an exile there, he began working for UK publishing giant Fleetway from Madrid and London. In 1968 he returned to Argentina and with Oesterheld started El Eternauta II for Editorial Records, producing sci-fi series Slot-Barr (written by Ricardo Barreiro) and period cop drama Evaristo with kindred spirit Carlos Sampayo.

In the mid-1970s López was e again compelled to flee his homeland, returning to Madrid where he organised publication of El Eternauta and Slot-Barr in Italian magazines LancioStory & Skorpio. He never stopped working: producing a stunning variety of assorted genre tales and mature-reader material and erotica such as El Instituto (reprinted by Eros as Young Witches), El Prostibulo del Terror (story by Barreiro) and Sexy Symphonies: bleak thrillers Ana and Historias Tristes with his son Gabriel. He illustrated Jim Woodring’s adaptation of the cult movie Freaks and once safely home in Argentina, continued El Eternauta with new writer Pablo “Pol” Maiztegui. He even found time for more British comics with strips such as ‘Jimmy’, ‘The Louts of Liberty Hall’, ‘Ozzie the Loan Arranger’ and ‘Dark Angels’ in Roy of the Rovers, Hot-Shot and Eagle.

Francisco Solano López passed away in Buenos Aires on August 12th 2011.

Poet, critic and author Carlos Sampayo is most well-known for his grimly powerful comics collaborations with Muñoz on Joe’s Bar and Alack Sinner (both also long overdue for comprehensive re-release) as well as other contemporary classics like Jeu de Lumières, Sophie, Billie Holiday and ‘Sudor Sudaca’.

Born in 1943, Sampayo was another outspoken creative Argentinean forced to flee the Junta in the early 1970s. Travelling to Europe he found a home for his desolate, gritty, passionately evocative stories in France and Italy, working with Julio Schiaffino, Jorge Zentner and Oscar Zarate before settling in Spain. Here in 1985, he and fellow expat Solano López produced compelling anti-hero Evaristo.

The long-running serial featured a seemingly brutish ex-boxer who had risen to the rank of Police Commissioner in late 1950s Buenos Aires: a debased and corrupt city of wealth and prestige, cheek-by-jowl with appalling poverty and desperate degradation.

After a compelling introduction by Xavier Coma, the graphic odyssey begins with ‘Breaking the Ties’ as a bank hostage crisis devolves into a long-postponed grudge match when Commissioner Evaristo is confronted by old ring-rival Fournier, who has returned to finally settle an old score. As is so often the case in such long-lived hatreds, there’s a woman at the heart of it…

‘The Famous Lubitsch Case’ sees the grizzled morally ambivalent prize-fight veteran pushed by his bosses to locate a missing heiress who has either been abducted or eloped with a notorious gangster and womaniser. Unfortunately, for reasons even he can’t fathom, Evaristo seems determined to discover the truth, rather than follow the “clues” his bosses have directed him to find…

In ‘The Herman Operation’, secretive guys with German accents and connections to the Argentinean military keep disappearing and the Commissioner is no use at all. It’s like he isn’t even trying…

The hunt for a cop-killing bandit takes a long hard look at the Commissioner’s sordid past – and some dubious child-care practises by the local clergy – in ‘The Crazy Grandson’, whilst ‘Shanty Town’ catches the cops looking for a serial killer whilst a corrupt minister causes a devastating water-shortage – and riots – in the slums. As usual, Evaristo ignores his bosses and keeps looking for the “wrong” people…

As a hit-squad tasked with assassinating the troublesome cop uses what seems to be perfect leverage by kidnapping a kid claiming to be his son, Evaristo appears more concerned with an escaped lion causing ‘Terror in the Streets’ before this superb noir mini-masterpiece concludes with ‘Legend of a Wounded Gunman’ as a case from the Commissioner’s early days eerily replays itself. This this time the ending will be different…

Released in America as Deep City this oversized (277 x 206mm), 112 page monochrome collection depicts the compelling solutions found by a cop who bends all the rules just to win a modicum of justice in an utterly corrupt society: a powerfully cynical, shockingly effective series of vignettes examining freedom and equality in a totally repressive time and place devoid of hope. However at no time does the ideology overwhelm the artistry of the narrative or distract from the sheer power of the art.

This magnificent book and all the other Evaristo tales are long overdue for revival, and this series has never been more relevant. Surely some savvy publisher must take another shot at the big time for this big tale?…
© 1986 F. Solano López, Carlos Sampayo & Xavier Coma. English language edition © 1986 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.