Category: Mystery

Posted on

I… Vampire!


By J.M. DeMatteis, Bruce Jones, Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, Mike W. Barr, Tom Sutton, Ernie Colon, Adrian Gonzales, Paris Cullins, Dan Day, Jim Aparo, Joe Kubert, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Tatjana Wood, Adrienne Roy & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3371-6 (TPB), 978-1-4012-5507-7 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Scary times ahead so let’s ease in to the season of mists mellow fruitfulness and spine sucking terror! with a guaranteed classic grimoire of reasonably family oriented ghoulish gore and wonder…

When superheroes entered their second decline at the end of the 1960s, four of the six surviving newsstand comic book companies (Archie, Charlton, DC, Gold Key, Harvey & Marvel) increasingly turned to horror and suspense anthologies to bolster their flagging sales. Even wholesome Archie briefly produced Red Circle Sorcery/Chillers comics, diverting a portion of their teen-comedy core gently into superb tales of witchcraft, mystery and imagination.

DC’s first generation of mystery titles blossomed at the end of the Golden Heroic Age when most comic book publishers of the era started switching to Crime, Romance, Western, Sci Fi and Horror genre anthologies to recapture an aging readership which was drifting away to other mass-market entertainments like TV and movies. Intriguingly, 1950’s TV also adopted en masse the anthological mystery tale model as seen in a wealth of repertory company anthology shows like The Veil, One Step Beyond, Tales of Tomorrow, and later, better remembered classics like The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone.

After a few tenuous attempts with supernatural-themed heroic leads in established titles (Johnny Peril in Comic Cavalcade, All-Star Comics and Sensation Comics; Dr. Terry Thirteen, The Ghostbreaker in Star-Spangled Comics) by 1951 National Comics had bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology sans recurring lead stars… which nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles. It all began on October 3rd with the launch of The House of Mystery (cautiously cover-dated December 1951/January 1952).

When a hysterical censorship muck rake led to witch-hunting hearings attacking comic books and newspaper strips (just type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time), the industry panicked and hurriedly adopted a castrating straitjacket of stringent self-regulatory rules and admonitions. Despite mystery/suspense titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority being sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock & Gore, the readership’s appetite for mystery and suspense stayed high, and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected & House of Secrets.

Supernatural thrills and spooky monsters were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, genteel, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles which nonetheless dominated the market until the end of the 1950s when the super-hero returned in force – having begun a renaissance in 1956 after Julius Schwartz reintroduced The Flash in Showcase #4. Revivals of Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom and new costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked myrmidons which even forced these dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with J’onn J’onzz, Manhunter from Mars and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and paranormal investigator Mark Merlin (latterly Prince Ra-Man) sharing space with anti-hero Eclipso in HoS. When caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties, folding with the September/October 1966 issue. House of Mystery carried on with its eccentric costumed cohort until #173, and Tales of the Unexpected endured until #104.

However, nothing combats censorship better than plunging profits, and as the Sixties ended the superhero boom busted again. With once-popular titles promptly perishing and many of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain, this real-world Crisis led to surviving publishers agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against horror (and crime) comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at the time, but as this liberalisation coincided with another bump in global public interest in all aspects of the Great Unknown, the resurrection of spooky story comics was a foregone conclusion and obvious no-brainer…

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all, House of Mystery and Unexpected switched back to tales of magic, mystery and imagination whilst already cancelled House of Secrets rose again with #81, (cover-dated August/September 1969), retooled to feed a seemingly insatiable appetite for terror and suspense…

Before long, an expansive battalion of supernatural thriller titles dominated DC’s – and competitors’ – publishing schedules again. This time, however, although the initial impetus died out by 1978, horror comics had secured a dedicated audience, soldiering on despite declines in sales into the turbulent 1980s. During that period, the venerable periodical experimented with varying formats and became a springboard for many creative careers, but never returned to established, recurring characters until the reign of publishing whiz kid Karen Berger who officially assumed control with HoM #292. Some issues earlier, a new longform miniseries (we used to call them “serials”) had debuted, detailing the exploits of a reluctant monster seeking to atone for past sins…

The full groundbreaking, tragic, idiosyncratic saga was gathered into a chilling chronicle recounting the afterlives of the bloodsucker and his human allies and re-presents here pertinent material from House of Mystery #290-291, 293, 295, 297, 299, 302, 304-319, plus a guest-shot in The Brave and the Bold #195, cumulatively spanning cover-dates March 1980 to August 1983. It opens without fanfare or preamble in ‘I… Vampire’ by co-creators J.M. DeMatteis & Tom Sutton.

In 10 tightly-packed yet smoothly inviting pages we meet English noble Sir Andrew Bennett, who died at the hands of a nosferatu during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Beloved by his fiancée Mary Seward, Bennett succumbed to her desperate pleas to be similarly infected, so that their love might last forever. Only afterwards did he realise that the transformation generally creates soulless monsters, even though, somehow, he has retained his conscience and personality…

Over four centuries, “Bloody Mary” becomes a prestigious leader of massed vampires in an insidious, influential covert global cult dubbed the Blood Red Moon. They sow chaos and destruction whilst working towards the ultimate goal of vampires ruling a world of human cattle. Heartbroken and guilt ridden, Bennett has opposed her schemes for all that time, aided by human allies such as his most recent “daywalkers”: aged Russian warrior Dimitri Mishkin and go-getting “Eighties Woman” Deborah Dancer…

Blessed with all the traditional gifts of the undead (shapeshifting, supernatural vigour, hypnosis, etc) and similarly afflicted by their weaknesses (sunlight, crucifixes, Holy Water, stakes, et al) Bennett staves off his insatiable hunger for blood by sheer willpower and the determination that he will not die until he has ended Mary’s depredations…

The introductory episode covers all that even as Mary’s minions lose another running battle with Bennett’s team but escape to instigate their latest plan…

The adventure concludes in ‘Night of the Living Undead’ as team Bennett expose and end a proposed alliance between the cult and New York’s biggest drug dealer, after which ‘The Burning’ sees the hunters scotch a scheme to infiltrate the White House once Mary affiliates with a race-hate spouting demagogue whose influential links include the KKK and US President. The closure of that case tears open old wounds, as Mishkin subsequently clashes with one of Mary’s lieutenants, only to discover a dreaded family connection in ‘Mother Love/Mother Hate’, leading to a look into how Bennett recruited him as a boy just as the 19th century became the 20th…

DeMatteis moved on after the dark heroes foil Mary’s attempt to destroy an ashram and its spiritual guru in ‘Zen Flesh! Zen Bones!’ after which Bruce Jones moves in, offering a more fanciful approach in ‘The Sun Also Burns’. Here Bennett and his human friends are ambushed and left to die in a mine. As time passes, the valiant vampire – deprived of bottled blood – must battle his irresistible thirst before abandoning them. Resolved never to endanger them again, he sets out on a solo quest for vengeance…

In HoM #302 ‘Blood Ties’ sees that lonely walkabout take him to Eudora, Kansas where odd events culminate in Bennett accidentally causing the deaths of an entire family of innocents before stumbling across a predatory circus abducting innocents for profit, and sponsored by Mary. His war against the ‘Carnival of Souls’ lasts until #304 where – with Ernie Colon substituting for Sutton – Bennett learns ‘The Night Has Eyes’ and proves that he has no pity for child stealers…

Jones then offers a lengthy saga in ‘Blood and Sand’ as the still-solo Bennett tracks Mary’s agents to Egypt in the wake of a global anti-cancer vaccine rollout that has the unexpected side-effect of making human blood toxic to the undead. Meanwhile, and for all this time, Mishkin & Dancer have been hunting for their leader, and are finally closing in…

Made unwilling allies by fate, Andrew and Mary invade a lost tomb, where the cult queen steals the time-travelling Rings of Anubis from a mystic mummy before setting off into the past to undo the creation of the vaccine. In hot pursuit, thanks to a second ring, Bennett arrives in Whitechapel, London at the height of history’s most infamous serial killer spree.

Crafted by Jones and the returned Sutton, ‘A Rip in Time’ sees all Mary’s efforts thwarted, and the ancestor of mysterious vaccine creator Dr. Barr escape unharmed, even as the vampires are hurled back into the time stream. Bennett washes ashore in Maine in November 1964, just in time to save a little girl from drowning. ‘Lovers Living, Lovers Dead’ reveals that in the present Deborah Dancer has developed a psychic link and can “see” vampires’ past actions as they happen. She is suitably horrified to observe Mary attack the child and aghast to realise that the child is herself…

After heroic intervention from Bennett saves the child, the time chase pauses as the undead knight battles a crew of revenant Nazi submariners in ‘Mirrors That Look Back’ before his pursuit resumes, depositing him and his quarry in Elizabethan England mere days before their first deaths. A bewildering succession of time-tossed doubles and mistaken identity switches culminates in a deadly ‘Witch Hunt’ with religiously enflamed peasants running riot before the chronal paradoxes dump them both back in the 20th century where new writers Dan Mishkin (no relation) & Gary Cohn concoct a ‘Manhattan Interlude’ (#310, November 1982) foe penciller Adrian Gonzales and ever-faithful Tom Sutton to render. Here Bennett encounters another vampire who has retained both soul and innocence and regretfully helps her meet her final end on her own terms…

Paris Cullins joins Mishkin & Cohn, Gonzales & Sutton for a dark peek at Deborah Dancer’s teen years in ‘By the Time We Got to Woodstock…’, revealing how she “first” stumbled into the Blood Red Moon’s schemes of conquest after losing all her friends to hippy bloodsuckers at the legendary festival, only surviving thanks to an old Russian and an eerie, red-eyed Englishman…

HoM #312 reunites the trio in time to tackle ‘The Thing in the Tunnel’ (Mishkin, Cohn, Gonzales & Sutton), a predatory beast escaped from the familiar-sounding Barr Research Laboratories and leading to a deadly clash with an enigmatic, extraordinarily long-lived (hint, hint) biologist in ‘Side Effects’, before ‘I.. Edward Trane, I… Vampire’ in #314 (illustrated solely by Sutton) sees a tragic reunion for Bennett with one of his own Victorian acolytes who fell in battle, but never fully died…

Mishkin, Cohn, Cullins & Sutton then detail an untitled exploit wherein the vampire hunters are targeted by sanctimonious religious zealots hunting the unholy. Sadly, their leader’s top aide is not only undead herself, but also Dimitri’s mother, and the Presidency is once more the glittering prize being sought…

Although the plot is foiled, the cost is high, compelling Bennett to turn eastwards, and ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’ he uncovers a KGB program to weaponize vampirism and extend the joys of eternity to the aging Politburo. The result is open warfare between Mary’s cult and a Soviet secret army, ultimately proving in ‘Blood is Thicker…’ that not all military spending is pointless, and not every hero gets to ride off into the sunset…

Despite a long run, changing times and tastes were indicating that the title and, indeed, entire genre were not a viable contemporary comics option. With the series building to climax, #318 offered another untitled yarn (with Dan Day pencilling) wherein a freshly bereaved Andrew Bennett employs stolen Soviet technology to force a final confrontation with Mary and the Blood Red Moon, resulting in his final demise and birth of a new kind of hero in climactic last episode ‘Dreams of Death’ by Mishkin, Cohn & Sutton in House of Mystery #319 (August 1983).

Aggravatingly, that big finish isn’t the end here, as there follows a solid but painfully out-of-continuity tale taken from The Brave and the Bold #195 (February 1983). For ‘Night of Blood’ (Mike W. Barr & Jim Aparo) Bennett’s perpetual hunt for Mary brings him to Gotham City after a gangster’s daughter becomes the latest victim of a vampire. Batman is firmly convinced the attacks are fake – and he’s right – until an actual magic-accursed blood drinker shows up. At least this time the standard misunderstanding doesn’t result in pointless battle before reason prevails and the mismatched heroes unite to catch the real culprits…

Graced with staggeringly compelling covers by Joe Kubert, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Aparo, Tatjana Wood & Adrienne Roy, this is a genuine slice of engaging, unorthodox and vastly entertaining horror action that predates – and probably influenced – later hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel. A hugely enjoyable edgy romp, well-scripted, imaginative and gorgeously illustrated I… Vampire is a timeless tome for all lovers of dark delight and one no arcane aficionada can afford to be without.
© 1981, 1982, 1983, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Farewell, Brindavoine


By Tardi, translated by Jenna Allen (Fantagraphics)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-433-9 (Album HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic & literary effect and to make a point.

Credited with creating a new style of expressionistic illustration subsequently dubbed “the New Realism”, Jacques Tardi is one of the greatest comics creators in the world, blessed with singular vision and adamantine ideals. A strident anti-war activist, he apparently refused France’s greatest honour because he wanted to be completely free to say and create what he wants.

Tardi was born in the Commune of Valence, Drôme in 1946, studying at École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and prestigious Parisian École Nationale Supérieure des arts décoratifs. He launched his comics career in 1969 at home of modern French comics Pilote with the series we’re looking at today, as first seen in 1972-1973. From illustrating stories by Jean Giraud, Serge de Beketch and Pierre Christian, he moved on to westerns, crime tales and satirical works in magazines like Record, Libération, Charlie Mensuel & L’Écho des Savanes, whilst graduating to adapting prose novels by Louis-Ferdinand Céline & Léo Malet.

The latter’s detective Nestor Burma was the subject of all-new albums written and drawn by Tardi once the established literary canon was exhausted, and led to the creation of Polonius in Métal Hurlant (1976) and the now-legendary Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec: an epic “gaslamp” period fantasy running in daily periodical Sud-Ouest. The series numbers 10 tomes thus far and inhabits the same pocket reality as the star of this book.

Our passionate raconteur has crafted crushingly powerful anti-war books and stories (C’était la guerre des tranchées, Le trou d’obus, Moi, René Tardi, prisonnierde guerre au Stalag IIB and others) dealing with the common soldier’s plight; written novels; created radio series; worked in movies and co-created – with writer Jean Vautrin – Le Cri du Peuple: a quartet of albums about the Parisienne revolt of the Communards.

This lavish full-colour extravaganza began life as Adieu Brindavoine, offering obscure, complex yet enticingly shady political intrigues; dastardly plutocratic plotters and cast-iron-&-clockwork chic in a grand mode of Victoriana & Edwardiana; and saw Tardi proclaimed in later years the “Godfather of Steampunk”. His surreally-structured, absurdist episodes and incidents – strung together in nigh-stream-of-consciousness mode – work best on the visual perceptions with dialogue used only to ensure clarity or bemuse perception…

Following a context-supplying appreciation in Benoît Mouchart’s Preface, we begin in Neuilly-Sur-Seine in May 1914, as an aged messenger braves the cluttered and controversial home of gentleman photographer Lucien Brindavoine. Surly Basil Zarkhov has a startling and potentially life-changing proposition, but is gunned down by a skylight-shattering intruder before he can share it. However, thanks to his deathbed exposition, Lucien is soon heading by steamship for Istanbul, and another risky meeting…

Constantly encountering strikingly odd individuals, Lucien is soon unwillingly partnered with effetely obnoxious intoxicated Englishman Mr. Oswald Carpleasure and hurtling across the desert towards Afghanistan in a battered motor vehicle. In their immediate future is a fantastic lost city, but the sinister gunman is in hot pursuit, with wicked Olga Vogelgesang also determined to destroy them from her deadly state-of-the-military-art biplane…


After much privation and bewilderment, Lucien finally reaches the lost Iron City and is greeted by the orchestrators of many of his woes. Learning of an incredible plutocratic plot affords him little comfort, but before long the baroque devils in nominal charge fall upon each other like deranged wolves, enabling – if not compelling – Brindavoine to flee in the most advanced passenger craft in the world…

Thanks to a breaking world war, he doesn’t get far.

Following the tale’s conclusion, a compelling comic epilogue from a previously unseen narrator (think The Rocky Horror Show) deviously adds to the confusion by “explaining” what’s happened and what will be Lucien’s ultimate fate before introducing a thematic follow-up.

‘Lambs to the Slaughter’ is set in November 1914 with deserters from all the armies involved holing up in a shattered church. Plagued by visions of perfect pasts and potential tomorrows, they are utterly unprepared for when the mad military of today finds them…

Bizarre, visually resplendent, darkly funny, evocative and deliciously challenging, Farewell, Brindavoine is a comic tour de force on every level and a sublime example of how fashion, fantasy and futurism can work miracles when woven together by a master craftsman.

This edition of Farewell, Brindavoine © 2021 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. Adieu Brindavoine © 2011 Casterman. Translation © 2021 Jenna Allen. Preface © 2021 Benoît Mouchart. All rights reserved.

Today in 1909, British strip stalwart Barry Appleby (The Gambols) was born, sharing birthday honours with groundbreaking manic maestro Robert Crumb (My Troubles with Women, Fritz the Cat, Mr Natural, The Book of Genesis) in 1943 and utterly amazing Jacques Tardi (It Was the War of the Trenches!, Nestor Burma, Griffu, Ici Même, Tueur de cafards, Tueur de cafards,) in 1946. Fellow natal newcomers include writer/editor Jack C. Harris (Kamandi, Wonder Woman, The Ray), in 1947 and letterer/typographer Ken Bruzenac (American Flagg!, E-Man, Mr Monster) in 1952.

We lost Belgian actress and that nation’s very first woman cartoonist Jeanne Hovine AKA Anne-Marie Ferrières (Nic et Nac) in 1992; French artist Raymond Poïvet (Colonel X, Guy Lebleu, Mam’zelle Nitouche, Les Pionniers de l’Espérance) in 1999; colourist Bob LeRose in 2006 and Spanish artist Roger Subirachs i Burgaya, (Vaselín y Loto, Emili Piula, Destino Gris) in 2017.

Posted on

The Shadow volume 1: The Fire of Creation


By Garth Ennis, Aaron Campbell, Carlos Lopez & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-361-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content used for dramatic effect.

Throughout the 1930s, The Shadow granted thrill-starved readers measured doses of extraordinary excitement via cheaply produced periodical novels dubbed “pulps” (because of the low-grade paper they were printed on), as well as over the mood-drenched airwaves, via his own radio show. Pulp titles were published in their hundreds every month, ranging from the truly excellent to the pitifully dire, in every style and genre, but for exotic adventure lovers there were two star characters who outshone all others. The Superman of his day was Doc Savage, Man of Bronze, whilst the foremost dark, relentless creature of the night dispensing terrifying grim justice was a mysterious slouch-hatted hero under discussion here. Originally, radio series Detective Story Hour – based on stand-alone yarns from Street & Smith publication Detective Story Magazine – used a spooky voiced narrator (variously Orson Welles, James LaCurto and Frank Readick Jr.) to introduce each tale. He was generically dubbed “the Shadow” and from the very start on July 31st1930, he was far more popular than the stories he introduced.

The Shadow swiftly evolved into a proactive force, solving instead of narrating mysteries and, from April 1st 1931 (Happy 95th anniversary, mystery-man!), starred in his own printed pulp series, written by astoundingly prolific Walter Gibson under house pseudonym Maxwell Grant. On September 26th 1937 the radio show officially became The Shadow, with the eerie slogan/mantra “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Men? The Shadow knows!” ringing out unforgettably over the nation’s airwaves.

Over the next eighteen years 325 novels were published, usually at the rate of two a month. The uncanny crusader spawned comic books, seven movies, a newspaper strip and all the merchandising paraphernalia you’d expect of a superstar brand. The pulp series officially ended in 1949, although Gibson and others added to the canon during the phantasmagorical 1960s as a pulp-fantasy revival gripped America, generating reprinted classic tales and a run of new adventures marketed as paperback novels.

As hinted above, in graphic terms The Shadow was a major player. His national newspaper strip (by Vernon Greene) launched on June 17th 1940 and when comic books took off, the Man of Mystery had his own four-colour title; running from March 1940 to September 1949. Archie Comics published a controversial contemporary comic book (1964-1965, by Robert Bernstein, Jerry Siegel, John Rosenberger & Paul Reinman) under their Radio/Mighty Comics imprint and in 1973, DC acquired the rights to produce a captivating, brief and totally definitive series of classical adventures unlike any other superhero title then on the stands.

DC periodically revived the venerable and vicious vigilante. After the runaway success of Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman, Howard Chaykin was engaged to utterly overhaul the vintage feature. This led to further, adult-oriented iterations (and even one cracking outing from Marvel) before Dark Horse assumed the license of the quintessential grim avenger for the latter half of the 1990s and beyond. Dynamite Entertainment picked up the option in 2011 and, as well as re-releasing many of those other publishers’ earlier efforts, began a series of new monthly Shadow comics.

Set in the turbulent 1930s & 1940s these were designed as self-contained story arcs, crafted by some of the top writers in the industry, each taking their shot at the immortal legend, and all winningly depicted by a succession of extremely gifted illustrators. First to fire was the incomparable Garth Ennis who muted his signature black humour for a tale screaming of unrequited injustice over six stunningly compelling episodes…

It begins with a précis of Japan’s official invasion of China in 1937 and appalling atrocities inflicted by their forces as they began building their “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere”, jumping a few years and to the docks of New York City, where a dark angel dispenses bloody judgement to a murderous band of crooked dockworkers. A little later abrasive, indolent playboy Lamont Cranston joins Washington insider Mr. Landers and his gung-ho young protégé Pat Finnegan at the Algonquin Hotel. They are meeting to discuss an imminent crisis amidst the ever-worsening situation in the East, and how the massacre at the pier was connected to it. Specifically, two of the bodies dropped at the scene were high-ranking Japanese agents…

Despite Finnegan’s outspoken distaste at involving a civilian dilettante, a tale is shared of a rare mineral that both America and Japan will do anything to obtain. Cranston agrees to lead a small party into China to secure the samples (originally dug up by prospecting American geologists before they vanished) for the Land of the Free. Of great concern is the unspecified part played by Taro Kondo: a formidable and ruthless Major in the Japanese intelligence service with whom Cranston had unsavoury dealings during his younger, less salubrious years in the East…

Cranston prepares his paramour and assistant Margo Lane for the rigours that lie ahead, but she has no conception of how much true horror and mass slaughter The Shadow has foreseen in the years to come. Whilst Finnegan travels by spartan military plane transport, Cranston & Margo escape his juvenile jingoistic fervour by taking a Pacific Clipper. However, their luxurious voyage is abruptly ended when they are attacked by Nazi agents masquerading as rich, indolent vacationers. The resulting bloodbath brings down the plane and our heroes barely survive. They also have far greater problems to worry about…

Ahead of them Kondo leads ambitious Emperor-lover and sexual deviant General Akamatsu on a tawdry trek to meet Chinese bandit Lord Wong Pang-Yan, descriptively and accurately known to all as the Buffalo. The grotesque, greedy barbarian is their only means of acquiring a rare mineral they crave, and Kondo is eager to placate his haughty, nauseated superior. After all, they know The Shadow is coming and have other plans in place to deal with him. To soothe the General’s nerves, Kondo promises he can behead the double-dealing Buffalo, just as soon as they have the enigmatic matter poetically described as the Spirit-Weapon and Fire of Creation…

Since Buffalo Wong originally offered his treasure to many nations, there are a numerous expeditions converging on the region, and when a Japanese fighter plane removes a rival Soviet military force from the game, Kondo gloats at another problem solved before returning to placate his aggravating, arrogant “superior”. It’s only a minor inconvenience to him that Cranston has survived his German allies’ attack and linked up with US agent Finnegan in Shanghai…

As the Yankees’ arrangements to use a British Navy vessel to reach Wong’s stronghold are finalised, Kondo’s assassins strike, but once again are no match for The Shadow’s mesmerism and blistering gunplay. To make a point, the Dark Avenger not only eliminates his attackers but weeds out and ends every Japanese and German agent in the city…

The delay gives Kondo’s party a healthy head start. As their sailing boat (an unpowered Junk) navigates the great river, the former smuggler/crimelord passes the time by sharing all he knows of human monster Kent Allard who was his criminal rival 15 years ago. What he doesn’t know is that the despicable rogue became the man called Cranston, but is certain that he is still the most implacable and remorseless killer on Earth…

Behind them, Finnegan, determined to prove his manhood and authority, pushes the British Commander and crew. Resolved to catch Kondo’s military detachment before they reach their ultimate destination, he sees firsthand atrocities Japanese soldiers casually inflict on “lesser” races, and in his disgust and inexperience leads the gunboat into a lethal trap only he, Margo and the insufferable Cranston survive…

Far ahead of them, Kondo and Akamatsu make their final trade with Wong – miracle mineral for gold – and the inevitable double-crossing and bloodletting begins. What none of the treacherous villains realize is that the angry, vengeful Shadow is already amongst them, cutting down soldiers and bandits like chaff as he methodically, determinedly makes his way to the true cause of all the terror. At last Kondo realises he has only one card left to play, but the monstrous future has already begun and will inevitable end in fire…

Dynamite publish periodicals with a vast array of cover variants and here a copious collected gallery highlights dozens of iconic visions from Alex Ross, Chaykin, John Cassaday, Stephen Segovia, Ryan Sook, Sean Chen, Francesco Francavilla & Jae Lee. Adding to the Bonus Material is Ennis’s script for the first issue, and gloriously gilding the lily is a mountain of powerful pencil studies by Ross and Lee.

Sardonic, brutal and deviously convoluted, The Fire of Creation is a splendid addition to the annals of the ultimate and original Dark Knight, and one no lover of action and mystery can afford to miss.
The Shadow® & © 2012 Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. ™ & © Conde Nast. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1817 trailblazing British cartoonist John Leech (Punch) was born, sharing the day with veteran Disney all-star Al Taliaferro (Donald Duck, Silly Symphonies) in 1905; illustrator Patrick Zircher (Green Hornet, Iron Man, Nightwing) in 1963; Norwegian creator Karine Haaland (Våre venner menneskene, Piray) in 1966 and US all-rounder Jason Pearson (Body Bags, Legion of Super-Heroes) in 1970.

On this day in 1983, Underground commix frontrunner Rory Hayes (Bijou Funnies, Arcade) died.

Posted on

Brothers of the Spear (Dark Horse Archive) volume 1


By Gaylord DuBois, Russ Manning, Jesse Marsh & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-821-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Situated on the West Coast, Western’s Dell/Gold Key imprints rivalled DC & Marvel at the height of their powers, and the comics licensee specialists famously never capitulated to the wave of anti-comics hysteria that resulted in the crippling self-censorship of the 1950s. No Dell or Gold Key Comic ever displayed a Comics Code Authority symbol on the cover – they never needed to…

An utterly unique visual stylist, Jesse Marsh was born on 27th July 1907 and died far too young on April 28th 1966 from diabetic complications at the height of a TV Tarzan revival he was in large part responsible for. Marsh was another Disney animator (from 1939 on) who took a sideways step, becoming a full-time narrative illustrator for the studio’s comic book licensee Whitman Publishing in 1945. Marsh jobbed around and adapted movie properties (mostly westerns like Gene Autry) until 1948 when Dell introduced the first all-new Tarzan comic book. The newspaper strip had run since 1929 and all previous funnybook releases had featured expurgated or modified reprints of those tales.

That all changed when the Ape-Man finally got his own funnybook (beginning with Dell Four Color Comic #134 (February 1947) and eventually a titular periodical. Bimonthly, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan #1 was cover dated January/February 1948. Marsh dived in, never looked back and became the go-to guy for other ERB adaptations like Jon of the Kalahari and John Carter of Mars. He naturally handled all the extra stuff in Tarzan…

Marsh was unique in the way he positioned characters in space, using primitivist forms and hidden shapes to augment his backgrounds, and as the man was a fanatical researcher, his trees, rocks, and constructions were 100% accurate. His animals and natives, especially children and women, were all distinct and recognisable; not the blacked-up stock figures in grass skirts even the greatest artists so often resorted to. He also knew when to draw big and draw small: the internal dynamism of his work is spellbinding. Perhaps that was in part due to ever-deteriorating eyesight – due to his battle with diabetes – but it also led to his hiring one of the medium’s most gifted illustrator’s just as the kid was starting out…

Back then, to accommodate US postal regulations (and tax-ratings) regarding shipping rates, comic books and magazines – as opposed to other printed matter – were defined as having a plurality of individual features, strips, pinups and supporting features. Over many decades this legal quirk happily spawned a vast variety of fact-features, prose sections, gag-pages, and crucially for us here, back-up strips in all US comics books…

The Tarzan comic was very much in the Burroughs tradition, but although most of the early ancillary pages were filled with the rich material of the world of  John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, soon the brief was expanded to cover wider wonders of jungle existence. This might be to not overexpose the character, but also due to a global uptick in similar rainforest stars like film & TV sensation Nyoka the Jungle Girl and the growing host of sultry “Jungle Queens” in comics.

Moreover, any back up strips – if popular and spun off – would be the property of Western/Dell/Gold Key. The man to generate this vast supporting cast was canny editor and staggeringly prolific scripter Gaylord DuBois.

Poet, author, novelist, biographer, avid outdoorsman and comic book/strips mastermind Gaylord McIlvaine Du Bois was born on August 24th 1899, in Winthrop, Massachusetts. There’s not much biographical data on him, as he seems to have spent every moment of his life writing. Apparently tireless, DuBois created and scripted many long-running favourites (Space Family Robinson/Lost in Space, Turok, Son of Stone, Indian Chief), as well as numerous comics-based kids’ material, ghosted many top newspaper strips, wrote Big Little Books and produced countless movie and TV comics adaptations (like Lassie, Robin Hood, Spartacus and Quentin Durward, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Andy Panda, Our Gang, Tom and Jerry, Jungle Jim,) for Dell/Gold Key. His work on licensed hits also included many Westerns like The Lone Ranger, Red Ryder, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Zane Grey’s King of the Royal Mounted, Bat Masterson, and Bonanza, and he delighted and specialised in creating long-running, appropriately-themed support strips (such as Captain Venture: Beneath the Sea, Leopard Girl, Young Hawk, Jungle Twins, Two Against the Jungle, Little Beaver, Bullet, Lotor, Owd Bob and more).

For the ever-expanding Tarzan franchise he wrote the lead, support features and everything else (including puzzles!), forging a 20-year working relationship with Marsh and carrying on his good works with his successors on Marsh’s passing. DuBois died on October 20th 1993.

Brothers of the Spear began in 1951 (Tarzan #25, cover-dated October) replacing DuBois & Marsh’s previous serial Two Against the Jungle, and commencing an epic never-ending African wilderness fantasy that would run continuously between that point and Tarzan #156 in 1966.

The brothers returned sporadically thereafter (#158, 160, 161, 202, 202). but did win their own 18-issue comic book (June 1972 to May 1982, by DuBois, Jesse Santos & Dan Spiegle). Back in Tarzan, Dubois & Spiegle provided Jungle Girl tales whenever the Brothers were absent, and when the book moved to DC Comics with #207 the Bros got their own comic book…

This archive collection – first of three and reprinting the stories from Tarzan #25-67 (October 1951 to April 1955) – comes from 2012 and is long overdue for rerelease. It opens with Foreword ‘Soul Brothers of the Spear’: a heartfelt appreciation and appraisal by legendary cartoonist Gary Panter, packed with information about the enigmatic master and well-considered opinions on what made Marsh and his pupil/assistant so similar and so different…

Born in Van Nuys, California on January 5th 1929, Russell George Manning was one of comics’ greatest stylists. He attended Los Angeles County Art Institute before joining the war effort. Serving in Japan he naturally cartooned for the local servicemen’s newspapers.

Back home in 1953, Russ joined local firm Western Publishing, doing assorted jobs for Dell before settling in with Jesse Marsh. In many ways Manning was the direct antithesis of his mentor, favouring slick presentation and sleek realism, but he too valued simple design, pared-down linework and bold use of empty space. Manning became an absolute master of his art, and is most popularly remembered now for the Star Wars newspaper strip and  Magnus, Robot Fighter, but his other triumphs were all Tarzan-related. As well as the comic book and newspaper strip (dailies from 1969-1972 and the Sundays from 1969-1979) he crafted sublime Graphic novel incarnations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s immortal Lord of the Jungle such as Tarzan: The Land That Time Forgot (most commonly seen these days in international editions; although a Dark Horse edition from the turn of this century is still around if you look hard).

We lost Manning far too soon, to cancer on December 1st 1981.

This tome covers the origins of and transitional hand-over of the supremely compelling Brothers of the Spear, sharing the advancement of two teens reared far from civilisation before set upon an epic journey of vengeance and destiny across Africa in days gone by.

Tarzan #25 cover-dated October #1951) saw the first episode, with Marsh handling the B-feature boys for the first 14 episodes. The feature never had individual chapter titles and steadily grew from 4½ to 8 (or more!) pages.

Edged with authenticity, if not realism, it began in Bechuanaland (now Botswana) when Zulu prince Natongo undertakes his manhood ritual – The Ceremony of the Spear. He is superb but matched in every way by his foster brother Dan-El, a white foundling adopted by the great chief sixteen years previously. the boys are inseparable in ability and filial affection and now that he is a man Dane-El is told how he came to the tribe. Long ago his father (a king of a fabled far country) left the infant with the Zulu chieftain for his own safety, with only a golden key. It matched a birthmark on the back of both father and son…

Apparently Dan-El is the fugitive prince of a lost tribe of white men. The mountain domain of Aba-Zulu had haunted his dreams for years and now, armed with knowledge, Dan-El sets out to find them. His beloved, brother, equal in every aspect and skill, will not let him go alone and together they set off…

The next 13 instalments saw the mighty spear-wielding warriors overcome all the dramatic standbys of the genre: like white tyrants with weapons called “guns”; embattled farmers in need of saving; lions and leopards; Arab slavers; warring tribes and other beasts either ferocious and rampaging or faithful and beloved. As they ferreted out clues to the distant destination, their trek took them through deserts, against black insurgent seeking to overturn white rule; wild savannah and across vast, pirate-plagued Lake Tanganyika,  but even with diversions and distractions like becoming embroiled in war and failing to save the most beautiful warrior princess ever born (Dell’s lack of Comics Code validation often led to quite horrific, tragic and REALISTIC body counts!), and befriending many tribes and native nations, inexorably the devoted, deathly determined siblings near the ever-calling mountains…

Fortune turns in their favour after escaping slavers. The Brothers fetch up at the foot of a vast mountain range and discover ancient tombs containing dead embalmed kings lying in state… white ones…

With the goal of Aba-Zulu reached in Tarzan #39 (December 1952), a new era of adventure and tribulation began. This episode marked the first solo outing for Manning, who continued on the strip (increasingly with his own assistant Mike Royer) until i966. In those latter days Manning was being pulled away from the Brothers, his own Magnus Robot Fighter and Captain Johner and the Aliens series and even high profile launches like Gold Key’s My Favourite Martian due to the intense scheduling conflicts of the Tarzan newspaper strips and comic book, but at this key moment all his creative efforts were expended on learning and getting better…

Now Natongo & Dan-El begin the next phase of heir eventful lives as entering Aba-Zulu they discover a land oppressed by a ruling class of witchdoctors using trickery and superstition to rule. Their leader Nagopa instituted the uprising that dethroned Dan-El’s father and the malign mage still dominates through royal puppet Han-Ool, a distant relative of Dan-El’s. The people are unhappy but too scared to react… until The Brothers of the Spear rouse old retainers like General Kongoni and valiant aide Mothibi to lead a counter rebellion and free the people.

The battle is long and hard and filled with sudden death and constant distraction.  Frustratingly over 16 years the tyranny of Nagopa’s tricks are deeply embedded in the people’s consciousness. These mental shackles are hard to shake, but at least the warriors have the support of Kongoni’s daughter Tavane and the irrefutable talisman of the golden key and Dan-El’s birthmark…

Eventually the witchdoctors are forced into retreat, but this only sees the war evolve into a campaign of assassination attempts and traps to discredit Dan-El and Natongo. And of course, this is Africa, with roaming warriors from other regions like neighbouring Obelo, wild weather, and slavers always likely to strike and further divert the cause of liberation…

Nonetheless, the Brothers persevere and triumph, feeling at last most of their work is done, but it’s just a pause allowing Nagopa to unleash all his venomous ire against capable princess to be Tavane…

To Be Continued…

Far less fanciful and more solidly grounded, this strip is a masterful rationalistic saga short on mutants and monsters but brimming with bold, cinematic adventure that should be on everyone’s revival list.
BROTHERS OF THE SPEAR™ ARCHIVE Volume 1 © 1951-1955, 2012, Classic Media LLC. Brothers of the Spear and associated character names, images and other indicia are trademarks of and copyrighted by Classic Media LLC. All rights reserved.

Today in 1899 Gaylord DuBois was born, sharing this day with artist extraordinaire Jim Aparo (The Phantom, Stern Wheeler, Phantom Stranger, Aquaman, The Spectre, Brave and the Bold, Batman) in 1932; Italian writer Max Bunker (Alan Ford) in 1939; Gasoline Alley cartoonist Jim Scancarelli in 1941 and cartoonist Keith Knight (The K Chronicles, (Th)ink, The Knight Life, Woke) in 1966.

Posted on

Corto Maltese: Under the Sign of Capricorn (A Corto Maltese USA Graphic Novel)


By Hugo Pratt, translated by Dean Mullaney & Simone Castaldi (CONG SA)
ISBN: 978-2-940552-42-9 (Digital edition), ASIN: B0BZ4YY5BK

This book include Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

Born in Rimini on June 15th 1927, Ugo Eugenio Prat, AKA Hugo Pratt, wandered the world in his early life, and became one of its paramount comics creators. His enthralling pictorial inventions since Ace of Spades (whilst still a student at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts in 1945) were many and varied. His signature character – based in large part on his own exotic formative years – is mercurial soldier (perhaps sailor is more accurate) of fortune Corto Maltese who will be celebrating 60 inglorious years of disservice in July 2027.

Pratt was a consummate storyteller with a unique voice and starkly refined graphic style that should not work, but so wonderfully does. Usually and preferably viewed in stark monochrome, his tales blended pared-down, relentlessly modernistic narrative stylism with complex and memorable characters, often bordering on pure archetypes.

By placing a modern, morally ambivalent antihero in an era where his actions and responses to old-world duties and attitudes should make him a scoundrel and villain, yet keeping him true to an utterly personal, ironclad yet chimerical ethical integrity that went beyond considerations of race, class or gender, Pratt created an adventurer yardstick against which we cannot help but measure all other heroes. There and then, as empires faded and colonies fell, itinerant Corto Maltese dealt with and was moved by people, not money, national concepts and institutions or traditions. He was ever a whimsical man of action and a faithful humanist with a gift for being in the wrong place at the right time. We’ll return to him momentarily…

After working in both Argentinean and, from 1959, on English comics and true blue characters like Battler Briton, Hugo Pratt made a name for himself. In the UK he produced weekly serial fare and especially complete stories for our (extremely popular) digest graphic novel lines including Super Picture Library, Air Ace Picture Library, Action Picture Library and Thriller Picture Library. These were half-sized, 64-page monochrome booklets with glossy soft-paper painted covers presenting complete stories in 1-4 panels per page. This was a luxury of layout and page design he would return to in his later years. Particularly suited to combat titles, Pratt worked on exotic jungle yarns for War Picture Library, Battle Picture Library, War at Sea Picture Library and more. In the mid-1960s Pratt resettled in Italy and (in 1967) produced with Florenzo Ivaldi a number of features for monthly comic anthology Sgt. Kirk. In addition to the titular Western star, Pratt created pirate strip Capitan Cormorand; detective Lucky Star O’Hara, and a moody South Seas saga called Una Ballata del Mare Salato (A Ballad of the Salty Sea) and now regarded as the first official adventure of the insalubrious mariner. When the anthology folded in 1970, Pratt moved to France and took Una Ballata’s breakout character to French weekly Pif Gadget before eventually settling in at legendary Belgian periodical Le Journal de Tintin. Corto Maltese proved as much a Wild Rover in reality as in his historic and eventful career…

The sailor was soon seen all over Europe, filling a dozen multi-translated albums. His peripatetic exploits (both short-form tales and extended sagas in black-&-white yarns) were shared in no particular order and spanned 1967 to 1989, covering the old rogue’s wanderings between the turn of the 20th century and the 1930s. Corto won international awards and his own eponymous title, running between October 1983 and July 1993. Hugo Pratt died on August 20th 1995.

In 2014, current rights owner CONG SA regenerated the dormant property with new Corto albums created by writer Juan Díaz Canales (Blacksad) & illustrator Rubén Pellejero (El silencio de Malka) generating 5 new albums thus far. A year later, US publisher IDW began releasing English language translations (repaginated & “colorized”) of prime Pratt to mixed reviews, and in 2022 Spanish parent company CONG: Hugo Pratt Art Properties started a line of curated collections as eBooks, of which Under the Sign of Capricorn is the first. It’s still in color – but sensitively done – so if you’re a graphic purist who can’t abide the hues, you might prefer to track down the mid-1980s Corto Maltese volumes from NBM that we covered way back in 2007…

Chronologically, Under the Sign of Capricorn was the third captain’s log of salty seadog sagas. It’s 1916 – one year after the events of Ballad of the Salty Sea – as we open with ‘The Secret of Tristram Bantam’ wherein Corto broods, smokes, drinks and ponders at the Java Inn, Paramaribo, in the debilitating heat of Dutch Guyana. A magnet for trouble and sucker for sob stories, despite his hostess’s warnings he adopts drunken wretch and target of bullies Professor Jeremiah Steiner and is simultaneously sought out by a runaway English schoolboy beset with dreams and premonitions…

Current possessor of certain valuable papers indicating the location of the fabled lost kingdom of Mû, young Tristram’s father was an “associate” of worldly knife-throwing Madame Java and has sought her out as a possible means of meeting his disreputable half-sister Miss Morganna Dias do Santos Bantam of San Salvador de Bahia. All this has made Tristan the unwitting subject of nefarious scrutiny from his own lawyer Milner in London, the firm’s Javanese representative Kerster, locals like voodoo queen Ogun Ferraille and assorted murderous thugs. This results in a succession of murder attempts and the sinking of Maltese’s beloved boat…

Captain Maltese has heard many ridiculous and unprofitable fables in his time but is compelled in this instance by just how many rogues and killers are trying to take the papers from his new pint-sized admirer, and with Steiner and the kid in tow sets off to solve the mystery and find Mu…

The mystery deepens in ‘Rendez-Vous in Bahia’ as Bantam’s yawl The Dreaming Boy sails for Bahia to find Morgana. She has their father’s notes about the lost continent, documents Tristan has only tantalisingly glimpsed in dreams, These are getting more compelling and engrossing as the voyagers arrive meet a native shaman and accidentally expose a convict trafficking scheme. Recently arrived big boss Milner tries to save himself by killing Tristan but instead loses his own life thanks to Corto’s skill with cards and weapons, leaving the trail apparently clear sailing from now on…

‘Chapter Three: Sureshot Samba’ sees the seekers reach Itapoa, where Corto, Tristan and Steiner meet Bocca Dorata AKA Gold Mouth: a great sorceress who raised Morgana and taught her black and white magic. The enigmatic sage somehow knows far too much about Corto’s past and origins for comfort, but nevertheless he accepts her proposal to ferry weapons and cash to Cangaceiros. There, rebel natives led by local legend Sureshot fight in the Brazilian Sertão against landholding European tycoons, murderous mercenaries, corrupted Federal Colonel Gonçalves and his requisitioned river gunboat. After all, £1000 is not to sneezed at…

Corto deals with his opponents and competes his mission with startling violences and efficiency and assures a swift brutal change in political fortunes…

Still houseguests of Gold Mouth, in ‘The Basilian Eagle’ reluctant slave liberators/freedom fighters Corto, Tristan & Steiner are caught in the backwash of the Great War. As they sail the coast seeking a wrecked Spanish galleon loaded with gold – it supposedly foundered near Marajò Island, at the mouth of the Amazon – they are trapped by global politics and international intrigue as colonial powers Great Britain and Germany square off in Brazil. Wallowing in innocent avarice, our derelict adventurers become unwitting competitors with a German Baron and apparent naval “deserters”. Enfolded in the byzantine scheme hatched by Bocca Dorata, Corto’s fate comes down to actions of rogue operatives, a double/triple agent dubbed “Jawbreaker”, overwhelming greed and gunboat diplomacy…

In earlier-set tales, Corto Maltese visited Russia and made an enemy for life of wild rogue/ spiritual anthesis Rasputin (no relation). Now that ferocious frenemy shows up in ‘So Much for Gentlemen of Fortune’ in an adventure centred on the search for fabulous pirate treasure, set in Saint Kitts in the Antilles. Still reading and rereading those papers brought by Tristam, Corto & Steiner happen upon a singular grave and a clue leading to confrontations and untenable alliances with contemporary freebooters Rasputin and Ambiguity di Poincy, all similarly in search of the amalgamated hoard of creole corsair Prying Barracuda, Calico Rackman, Agonia La Bella of Rochelle and Blackbeard Teach…

The game of double dealing leads to vast wealth and huge surprises, but in the end such friendships are doomed and savage bloodletting leaves everyone dead broke or both and Corto counting the cost of what and who he’s lost…

Concluding episode ‘The Seagull’s Fault’ lays the groundwork for more tales in a bizarre murder-mystery set on an island near British Honduras. Wounded and amnesiac, our Not-a-Hero reels on a bloody beach as his life ebbs away. As he blankly watches his totem animal fly, peck and probe, “John Smith’s” memories lie just beyond reach. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the stranger he can’t see would stop shooting at him…

It gets no clearer when lovely angel Soledad and her brutish Caribi minder arrive, as their tender ministrations in the gothic pile they call home soon prove to be barbed and double edged. If only he could remember what all this has to do with legendary pirate and merciless “Evangelist” Judas Lokäarth. Surely, though, that long-missing maniac is dead and gone?

Compelling, enticing and invitingly addictive, these bleak but witty, darkly romantic, captivatingly cosmopolitan stories will grip you and never let go. These are treasures you must unearth and cherish forever.
© 1971 Cong S.A., Switzerland. Corto Maltese® and Hugo Pratt™ © Cong S.A. Translation © 2019 Dean Mullaney and Simone Castaldi, All rights reserved.

Today in 1915 artist, inker, letterer & colourist George Roussos (Batman, Johnny Quick, Airwave, Vigilante, Superman, Starman, CrimeSuspensStories, Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Sgt Fury, Fantastic Four, Avengers et al) was born, followed in 1930 by cartoonist Bill Rechin (Out of Bounds, Crock), and in 1968 artist Jeff Johnson (Wonder Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Way of the Rat, Weapon X, Greem Lantern) and writer/filmmaker Greg Pak (City Boy, John Wick, Eternal Warrior, World War Hulk, Incredible Hercules, Firefly, Agents of Atlas).

This day marks the passing of three giants: inventor of comic books Max Gaines in 1947; British legend Dudley. D. Watkins in 1969 and Hugo Pratt in 1995.

Posted on

Master of Kung Fu Epic Collection volume 2: Fight Without Pity


By Doug Moench, Paul Gulacy, Sal Buscema, Keith Pollard, Jim Craig, Dan Adkins, Jack Abel, Pablo Marcos, Mike Esposito, Sal Trapani, John Tartaglione, Duffy Vohland, Tom Sutton & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0135-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times Comic books have always operated within outworld popular trends and fashions – just look at what got published whenever westerns or science fiction dominated on TV – so when the ancient philosophy and discipline of Kung Fu made its mark on western entertainment, it wasn’t long before all those kicks and punches found their way onto four-colour pages of America’s periodicals. Early starter Charlton Comics added Yang and House of Yang to their pioneering Judo Joe title and Frank McLaughlin’s Judomaster; DC debuted Richard Dragon and rebooted Karate Kid; Atlas/Seaboard opened (and as quickly closed again) The Hands of the Dragon and Marvel converted an already in-development proposed literary adaptation into an ongoing saga about a villain’s son…

A month after it launched, a second orient-inspired hero debuted with Iron Fist: combining combat philosophy, high fantasy and magical forces with a proper superhero mask and costume…

Although largely retrofitted for modern times, inspirational Master of Kung Fu star Shang-Chi originated with lots of tricky baggage. He kicked off in the autumn of 1973, cashing in on the contemporary West’s craze for Eastern philosophy and martial arts action that had already generated an avalanche of “Chop Sockey” movies and a controversial TV sensation entitled Kung Fu. You may recall that the lead in that cowboy-set saga was a half-Chinese Shaolin monk, played – after much publicised legal and industry agitation – by a white actor…

At Marvel, no one at that time particularly griped about the fact that Shang-Chi was designed by editor Roy Thomas and artisans Steve Englehart, Jim Starlin & Al Milgrom as a naive innocent (also half Chinese, with an American mother) thrown into tumultuous modern society as a rebellious yet involved counterpoint to his father: an insidious scheming fiend intent on global domination. Back then, securing rights to a major literary property and wrapping new comics in it was an established practise. It had worked spectacularly with Conan the Barbarian and horror stars Dracula and The Monster of Frankenstein. The same process also brilliantly informed seminal science fiction icon Killraven in War of the Worlds and plenty more…

These days we comics apologists keep saying “it was a different era”, but I genuinely don’t think anyone in the editorial office paused for a moment of second thoughts when their new Kung Fu book secured the use of one of literature’s greatest villains as a major player. Special Marvel Edition #15 (cover-dated December 1973) launched to great success, with Fu Manchu an overarching villain already a global personification of infamy.

Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward AKA Sax Rohmer’s ultimate embodiment of patronising mistrust and racist suspicion had been hugely popular since 1913’s The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu. The prime archetype for mad scientists and remorseless “Yellow Peril” threatening civilization, the character spread to stage, screen, airwaves and comics (even appropriating the cover of Detective Comics #1, heralding an interior series that ran until #28), but most importantly, became the visual affirmation and conceptual basis for countless evil “Asiatics”, “Orientals” and “Celestials” dominating popular fiction ever since. In recent years we’ve all (well, mostly all) acknowledged past iniquities and Shang-Chi has been fully reimagined, with that paternal link downplayed and ultimately abandoned – as much for licensing laws as social justice. And cultural respect, naturally…

Like most comics companies, Marvel employed plenty of “Yellow Peril” knock-offs and personifications – including Wong Chu; Plan Tzu (AKA the Yellow and latterly Golden, Claw); Huang Zhu; Silver Samurai; Doctor Sun, ad infinitum: all birds of another colour that are still nastily pejorative shades of saffron. Perhaps this is just my white guilt and fanboy shame talking. These stories, crafted by Marvel’s employees were – and remain – some of the best action comics you’ll ever encounter, but never forget what they’re actually about -distrust of the “other”. Without making excuses, I should also state that despite the casual racism suggested by legions of outrageously exotic, inscrutable lemon-hued bad guys haunting this series at every level, Master of Kung Fu did sensitively address issues of race and honestly attempt to share non-Christian philosophies and thought whilst – most importantly – offering potently powerful role models to kids of Asian origins. So at least there’s that…

Packed with stunning exotic adventure and compellingly convincing drama, this collection gathers Master of Kung Fu #29-53 and Master of Kung Fu Annual #1 (spanning June 1975 to August 1977). Written entirely by Doug Moench and primarily showcasing the developing graphic realism of Paul Gulacy, surrendering to his love of spy fiction it opens without a preamble in the middle of a mighty struggle…

Previously: the series inauspiciously launched in bimonthly reprint title Special Marvel Edition as The Hands of Shang Chi: Master of Kung Fu, but by the third issue (April 1974) became exclusively his. The origin episode introduced a vibrant, brilliant young man raised in utter isolation in the style and manner of imperial China. Reared by monks and savants, the boy was the result of a match between a physically perfect American woman and “misunderstood patriot” Fu Manchu. The boy was raised to accept that his sire was a noble hero unfairly hunted and slandered by corrupt western governments and the communist usurpers now blasphemously controlling the world’s greatest empire.

Fu’s son was schooled to respect and obey his father, trained to perfection in martial arts and designed as the ultimate warrior servant: the doctor’s devoted personal weapon against lifelong enemies Sir Dennis Nayland Smith and Doctor Petrie.

On reaching maturity, Shang – whose name means “the rising and advancing of a spirit” – was despatched to execute Petrie. However, after the obedient weapon completed his mission, he subsequently questions his entire life and the worldly benefit of killing an elderly, frail, already dying man. An emotional confrontation with Nayland Smith (who endured daily agonies from being maimed at the Devil Doctor’s command) further rattled the boy’s resolve and eventually Shang’s sublime education demanded he reassess everything his father had taught him…

After invading the villain’s New York citadel and crushing an army of freaks and monsters, Shang Chi faced his father and rejected all he stood for. The battle lines of an epic family struggle had been drawn. Banished from his cloistered childhood home and environs, the philosophically minded innocent adapted rapidly to the constant violence of the modern world. eventually accepting shelter with Nayland Smith in return for (espionage) services rendered…

Now, a turning point in his rising and advancement comes in MOKF #29 as Shang finds reason to abandon his pacifistic aspirations and get involved in western affairs after seeing firsthand the harm drugs cause, joining Nayland Smith’s team to cripple the drug trade. The unwelcome allies include veteran heavy Blackjack Tarr, and Petrie – not dead at Shang’s hand after all and subsequently rescued from his father’s clutches – working with British agent Clive Reston. He is, by his own account, a descendent of a famed “Consulting Detective” and a Double-0 operative “on Her Majesty’s Secret Service”)

The entire series was slowly morphing into a James Bond pastiche and with this mission to end effetely urbane drug dealer turned nuclear terrorist Carlton Velcro, illustrator Gulacy began a ballistic visual progression that would make him one of most watched and admired artists of the era as he referenced movie star and set pieces throughout the saga.

‘The Crystal Connection’ begins with Reston undercover at Velcro’s French coast fortress, playing heroin buyer Mr Blue until Shang & Tarr can infiltrate and secure the dope stocks. No one expected such massive defences; an army of killers led by deadly assassin Razor-Fist and a nuclear arsenal hidden below ‘A Gulf of Lions’ (#30, inked by Dan Adkins), with the pitched battle ranging far and wide as Razor Fist’s defeat leads to Shang clashing with whip-wielding panther woman Pavane before a truly explosive conclusion in ‘Snowbuster’…

‘Assault on an Angry Sea!’ was a hasty fill-in illustrated by Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito as Shang returns to London by ship and is drawn into the hunt for an undercover courier who is unaware that counteragents intend to intercept and end them. In this traditional mystery yarn, Chi finds too many suspects and can’t tell friend from foe from target, but triumphs nonetheless, before MOKF #33 resumes the Moench/Gulacy filmic fun-fest with ‘Wicked Messenger of Madness!’ This introduces seductive, conflicted agent Leiko Wu as both romantic interest and wedge between Shang Chi and his colleagues, and sees a robotic mannequin fail to assassinate Nayland Smith thanks to martial arts mastery but opens the door to a complex web of lies, double-dealing, insane artificial intelligences and a doomsday weapon.

The robot was a literal tool of missing agent Simon Bretnor, revealed far too late as narcissistic hired killer and would-be world conqueror Mordillo, who wants a space weapon using the ozone layer and sunlight to ravage sites on Earth. The plans for it are encoded in Wu’s brain, but by the time she realises her current boyfriend Bretnor is the bad guy, Leiko’s his prisoner on a manically murderous version of Fantasy Island…

As Shang & Reston race to the madly modified atoll-turned-playground-of-peril, Wu attempts to reason with the crazed Mordillo, but gets more sense from his Pinocchio-like AI robot sidekick Brynocki, who is trying to mediate a ‘Cyclone at the Center of a Madman’s Crown!’ She does, however, learn that her captor had a connection to Pavane and Velcro and now holds Chi responsible for a huge loss of face and fortune. Another spectacular conclusion comes when maniac and martial artist clash in the skies above the island as the villain briefly unleashes his stolen Solar Chute to rain destruction down on the island in ‘Death-Hand and the Sun of Mordillo’…

What feels like a reformatted leftover from the Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu era follows in #36 & 37 (January & February 1976, by Moench, Keith Pollard & Sal Trapani) with Shang entering a magical maze of mystery. He seeks to defend from ninjas and their leader Darkstrider a carnival of hapless freaks voluntarily living in ‘Cages of Myth, Menagerie of Mirrors!’ but is initially hard-pressed saving anyone from the villain who subtly weaves a ‘Web of Dark Death!’ Moench, Pollard, John Tartaglione & Duffy Vohland continue fantasy themes in Master of Kung Fu Annual #1 during a team-up with fellow transplanted warrior Iron Fist. Here Danny Rand and Shang are tricked into entering another dimension to invade ‘The Fortress of S’ahra Sharn!’ The culprit is trickster wizard Quan-St’ar, whose true goal is the destruction of immortal city K’un-Lun, but he makes one huge mistake…

At their creative peak Moench & Gulacy started an epic, ambitious, truly sophisticated and industry-changing run in MOKF #38 (March 1976). Here Shang Chi reluctantly accepts a rescue mission to extract an agent from Hong Kong, meeting lies, passion, disinformation and deadly love in ‘Cat’. Nayland Smith has again orchestrated events to satisfy his own agenda and saving Julia leads Chi into a ‘Fight Without Pity’ against an opponent who might well be his superior in combat ability… and also holds the moral high ground.

The landmark clash is simply prologue to an extended, character driven serial that opens at ‘The Murder Agency’ (#40 with Gulacy inking himself) as on-fire creators pioneer storytelling techniques later seen in Christopher Nolan’s Memento. A traitor in British Intelligence is murdering agents and the information Nayland Smith wanted from Julia should have given them vital advantage. However, as Shang again quits all “games of death and deceit” he, Tarr & Leiko Wu are attacked by (apparent) Chinese agents masquerading as “Oriental Expediters”.

After helping to defeat the attackers, Wu leaves on a similar extraction mission and suggests that the embattled operatives re-enlist disgraced former agent/current drunken sot James Larner. When they try, he’s got a new pal also boozing himself to death: lovelorn abandoned Clive Reston. That’s when another heavily-armed gang burst in guns blazing, laying down their lives simply to bait a trap the agents can’t afford to avoid…

With the spy saga solidly underway, everything suddenly screeched to a halt as a deadline crunch necessitated another fill-in moment, with Moench, Sal B & Esposito revealing a childhood moment in ‘Slain in Secrecy, and by Illusion!’ Here Shang recalls reluctant clashes with childhood companion M’nai – AKA Si Fan super-assassin Midnight – to prove Fu Manchu’s hallowed home harboured a thief and traitor…

Inked by Tom Sutton, the main event resumes in #42 in a welter of flashbacks, crosscuts and flash forwards as ‘The Clock of Shattered Time’ introduces a mechanically augmented, electrically-enhanced martial arts assassin who almost kills Chi. Shock-Wave has a strong but top-secret connection to Nayland Smith and nearly succeeds in blowing up the spy chief too…

As the MI5 mole and Shock-Wave set more bombs, MOKF #43 sees a changed and vengeful Shang win a rematch with the amplified assassin in ‘A Flash of Purple Sparks’. As Wu escorted her own living package across Europe with the Oriental Expediters chasing them all the way to an MI5 safehouse in Switzerland, Shang was waiting, but his triumph was short-lived as Leiko’s charge revealed who was behind all the deaths – and the Oriental Expediter organisation – and that, in London. another of his allies had fallen…

The drama kicked into overdrive with a long-anticipated event. Cover-dated September 1976, #44 heralded ‘The Return of Fu Manchu, Prelude: “Golden Daggers (A Death Run)”’ with the scattered British agents heading for home under a hail of gunfire and assorted ambushes. Crucially revealed now is how the Devil Doctor’s recalcitrant first-born Fah Lo Suee is at war with their father for control of his empire…

She originally debuted in third novel The Si-Fan Mysteries /The Hand of Fu-Manchu in 1917 (or fourth outing The Daughter of Fu-Manchu in 1931, depending on who you ask) and became a minor character here in Master of Kung Fu #26, but now steps into the full spotlight after Nayland Smith is finally downed… by his most trusted ally! On the back foot and losing, Fah Lo Suee seeks alliances and her brother’s aid in ‘Part One (Shang Chi): “The Death Seed!”’ while Fu Manchu is occupied with resurrecting his founding ancestor to be his new – loyal – son/enforcer.

In London, Larner saves Nayland Smith even as Reston, Shang & Wu reunite and rebuff the “daughter of the Devil”… and that’s when Clive makes a big mistake and is taken by Fah Lo Suee. Inked by Pablo Marcos, ‘Part Two (Clive Reston): “The Spider Spell!”’ splits attention between the British agent’s trial and eventual triumph and Fu resurrecting legendary warlord Shaka Kharn, before ‘Part Three (Leiko Wu): “Phantom Sand”’ details how she & Shang infiltrate a fantastic city at the north pole in advance of what’s left of the team joining them to destroy the citadel. Before that, though, the final clash between father and daughter again confirms the total mastery of the malevolent mandarin…

The true appalling scope of the Devil Doctor’s ambitions are exposed in ‘Part Four (Black Jack Tarr): “City in the Top of the World”’ as the schemer prepares to leave Earth and cull its population by 90%! Meanwhile Shang duels revived revenant Shaka Kharn, and battles his way aboard his sire’s space shuttle even as his companions destroy the base at the cost of another valiant soul in ‘Part Five (Sir Dennis Nayland Smith): “The Affair of the Agent Who Died!”’ The astounding saga – and Gulacy’s interior involvement – ends with #50 as the villain speaks for himself with his plans and perhaps his over-extended life ended for real in ‘Part Six (Fu Manchu): “The Dreamslayer!”’

Master of Kung Fu #51 saw Jim Craig join Moench & Marcos, taking over pencil duties for ‘Epilogue: “Brass and Blackness!” (A Death Move!!)’ infilling details of interments and getting back to Earth where our unhappy reluctant warrior again quits the spy world. The final tale here (#52, May 1977) is one more fill-in as Moench & Pollard reintroduce Groucho Marx knock-off Rufus T. Hackstabber who invites our baffled battler to ‘A Night at the 1001 Nights!’ in search of family (such as reprobate/WC Fields analogue Quigley J. Warmflash); riches and safety from mercenaries led by Si-Fan general Tiger-Claw.

Ernie Chan’s cover to MOKF #53 (which reprinted #20) leads into an bonus section including Gil Kane & Adkins’ covers to Savage Fists of Kung Fu tabloid collector’s edition; house ads: 10 pages of original art plus unused and modified covers. The published ones throughout were crafted by Kane, Adkins, Sal Buscema, Rich Buckler, Dave Cockrum, Marie Severin, Chan, Gulacy, John Romita Jr., Ron Wilson & Jack Abel, Al Milgrom, Esposito, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia and Klaus Janson.

In recent years, Shang Chi’s backstory has been adapted and altered. His dad was understandably reinvented as Zheng Zu, Mr. Han, Chang Hu, Wang Yu-Seng and The Devil Doctor, so, depending on your attitude, you have the ultimate choice and sanction of not buying or reading this material. If you do – with eyes wide open and fully acknowledging that the past is another place that we can and should now consign to history – your comics appreciation faculties will see some amazing stories incredibly well illustrated: ranking amongst the most exciting, visually beguiling and enjoyable in Marvel’s canon.
© 2018 MARVEL.

Today in 1987 the final issue of British toddlers weekly Playhour was published, ending a 1700+ run that had commenced on 16th October 1954, whilst on this day back in 1982 cartoonist and master of minimalism Ernie Bushmiller (Mac the Manager, Fritzi Ritz, Nancy) died.

The day saw the birth of Golden Age Superman artist Ed Dobrotka in 1917; Indian cartoonist Pran Kumar Sharma (Billoo, Chacha Chaudhary) in 1938; realist action artist Paul Gulacy (Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species, Master of Kung Fu, Batman: Prey, Black Widow, Slash Maraud, Six From Sirius, Sci-Spy, James Bond 007) in 1953; writer/Conspiracy historian Lamar Waldron (Lightrunner, M.I.C.R.A.: Mind Controlled Remote Automaton) in 1954; artist Terry Shoemaker (X-Men, Spellbound, Legion of Super-Heroes) in 1960 and “Bad Grrrl” artist Jim Balent (Catwoman, Purgatori, Vampirella, Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose) in 1963. Also blowing out candles today are Iron Man, XO Manowar, Elektra & Wolverine artist Sean Chen and quite rude Norwegian cartoonist Frode Øverli (Pondus, Riskhospitalet, Rutetid, Deep Shit Junkies) – both in 1968, and artists David Nakayama (City of Heroes, Big Hero Six, Proximity) in 1978 and Clay Mann (Magneto: Not a Hero, X-Men: Legacy, XO Manowar, Gambit, Heroes in Crisis) in 1990.

Posted on

Namor, the Sub-Mariner Epic Collection volume 5: The Invasion of New York 1972-1974


By Bill Everett, Steve Gerber, Mike Friedrich, Marv Wolfman, Howard Chaykin, Steve Skeates, Bill Mantlo, Dan Adkins, Alan Weiss, Sam Kweskin, Don Heck, George Tuska, Win Mortimer, John Tartaglione, Jim Mooney, Frank Giacoia, John Sinnott, Syd Shores, Don Perlin, Frank Chiaramonte, Frank Bolle, Vince Colletta, John Romita Sr., Gil Kane, Marie Severin, Franc Reyes & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

In his most primal incarnation (other origins are available but may differ due to timeslips, circumstance and screen dimensions) Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner is the proud, noble and usually upset offspring of the union of a water-breathing Atlantean princess and an American polar explorer. That doomed romance resulted in a hybrid being of immense strength and extreme resistance to physical harm, able to fly and thrive above and below the waves. Over decades, a wealth of creators added to the fishy tale and today’s Namor is hailed as Marvel’s First Mutant as well as the original “bad boy Good Guy”. He was created by young, talented Bill Everett, for non-starter cinema premium Motion Picture Weekly Funnies: #1 (October 1939) so – technically – Namor predates Marvel, Atlas and Timely Comics.

The Marine Miracleman first caught the public’s avid attention as part of an elementally appealing fire vs. water headlining team-up in the October 1939 Marvel Comics #1 (which renamed itself Marvel Mystery Comics from #2 onwards). The amphibian antihero shared honours and top billing with The Human Torch, having debuted (albeit in a truncated, monochrome version) in the aforementioned promotional booklet designed to be handed out to moviegoers earlier in the year. Our late-starter antihero rapidly emerged as one of the industry’s biggest draws, winning his own title at the end of 1940 (cover-dated Spring 1941).

His appeal was baffling but solid and he was one of the last super-characters to vanish at the end of the first heroic age.

In 1954, when Atlas (as the company then was) briefly revived its “Big Three” line-up – the Torch and Captain America being the other two – Everett returned for an extended run of sublimely dark, mordantly moody, creepily contemporary fantasy fables. Even so, his input wasn’t sufficient to keep the title afloat and eventually Sub-Mariner sank again. In 1961, as Stan Lee & Jack Kirby were reinventing superheroes with their Fantastic Four, they revived and reimagined the awesome, all-but-forgotten aquanaut as a troubled, angry semi-amnesiac. Decidedly more bombastic, regal and grandiose, this returnee despised humanity: embittered and broken by the loss of his subsea kingdom, which had been (seemingly) destroyed by American atomic testing. His urge for rightful revenge was infinitely complicated after he became utterly besotted with the FF’s Susan Storm…

Namor knocked around the budding Marvel universe for years, squabbling with star turns such as The Hulk, Avengers, X-Men and Daredevil before securing his own series as one half of Tales to Astonish. From there he graduated in 1968 to his own solo title again.

Cumulatively spanning cover-dates June 1972 to September 1974, this subsea selection trawls Sub-Mariner #50-72, signalling the end of another era and rising dominance of genre fare in the superhero-saturated market of that period. Also dredged up and tipped in is a tentative attempt to revive his solo star status as seen in Marvel Spotlight #27 (April 1976) just as horror-heroes began to wither away in the light of shiny space operas and resurgent superheroes as we all unwittingly bided our time until the advent of Star Wars unleashed a wave of Science Fiction sagas. Here, however, we see the triumphant glorious last hurrahs of originator Everett in salty sagas and dry land dramas…

Previously, Namor had endured months of escalating horror as old enemies including Prince Byrrah, Warlord Krang, Attuma, Dr. Dorcas and sinister shapeshifter Llyra perpetually assaulted his sunken kingdom. They were soundly defeated, but these constant clashes led to the murder of Namor’s bride-to-be Lady Dorma. He had been betrayed by his most trusted ally and, heartsick, angry and despondent, abdicated the throne, choosing to pursue the human half of his hybrid heritage as a surface dweller. The decision was fraught with more potential grief, leading to battles with surface world authorities; deranged psionic hermit Stephan Tuval and mind-tyrant Turalla; monster-maker Aunt Serr, M.O.D.O.K. and AIM. Namor seldom fought alone and initial clashes with old friends like Diane Arliss and Walt Newell (part-time undersea Avenger Stingray), Spider-Man, Daredevil and Human Torch Johnny Storm ultimately resulted in refreshed alliances, culminating in a poignant but brief reunion with his long-lost father Leonard McKenzie, a man Namor had for his entire life believed killed by Atlanteans in 1920.

When that tragic hostage to fortune was murdered by post-human horror Tiger Shark & Llyra, twice-orphaned, traumatised Namor lost his memory again, and was exploited as cannon fodder by Doctor Doom before eventually breaking free to retrench in bitter confusion and ponder his future…

Thus , a fresh start begins in #50 as Everett resurfaces to ask ‘Who Am I?’, with the bewildered amphibian reeling in confusion at the beach until his heroic instincts kick in and he saves a drowning teenager from seaweed and pollution. His actions are completely misunderstood and she savagely attacks him, before swimming off right out to sea…

Lesson learned, Namor concentrates on his own woes and sets off for Antarctica, eventually fetching up in the Ross Sea to explore the crumbling remains of the original Atlantis. His reveries are shattered when he is attacked by mutant crab creatures guarding the tomb of his beloved long-lost cousin and WWII partner in crimefighting Namora…

Confronting sinister leader Salamar the Sustainer, Namor discover a bizarre scheme to exploit the vast oil reserves under the ocean floor, and learns old foes are shaping events: treacherous cousin Byrrah and seemingly unkillable Llyra. He also meets again that abrasive teenager and discovers she is Namora’s wayward daughter…

As all hell breaks loose, former prince and newfound cousin Namorita make a break for it in a hail of blaster fire as ‘Armageddon… at Fifty Fathoms Full!’ (scripted by Mike Friedrich) exposes a scaly hidden hand behind the carnage. Byrrah is allied with the alien Brotherhood of Baddoon, who want the (radioactive!) oil reserves, albeit not for the reasons they share with the usurper. Ultimately, the aliens, Byrrah, and Salamar’s savage crab people can’t agree and the seagoing cousins are participants in a shattering showdown that results in environmental catastrophe…

Seeking to confirm Namorita’s account of how Namora died whilst dumping her with his old girlfriend Betty Dean Prentiss, Sub-Mariner cruises into a clash with ultra-nationalist Japanese mutant and future X-Man Sunfire as ‘The Atomic Samurai!’ – ever receptive to deranged patriotic ranting – falls under the sway of war criminal demagogue Dragon-Lord, last of the samurai. He plans to unleash his new Nipponese army and deadly defoliants upon America, a tactic that might destroy the oceans…

After a spectacular new incidence of the classic Golden Age “Fire vs Water” duel, Everett took full creative control for follow-up ‘…And the Rising Sun Shall Fall!’ wherein Sunfire sees sense and switches sides to save the seas, leading to all-out war in concluding half-chapter ‘Now Comes… the Decision!’,: a brief battle that leaves room in #54 for a “Mighty Marvel Mini Classic!” with Friedrich & Alan Weiss detailing how ‘Namor the First, Prince of Atlantis battles The Mer-Mutants’: a light but lovely puff piece involving a mermaid acting as a subsea honey trap for her hungry kin…

NtSM #55 sees Namor at last wave goodbye to “Nita” & Betty before revisiting Antarctica and enduring an unexpected and brutal encounter with scavenging wrecker ‘The Abominable Snow-King!’ The literally monstrous Torg’s ambition is to pit enslaved sea life against humanity but sinks once the Sub-Mariner gets involved, after which Friedrich & veteran illustrator Dan Adkins steer the abdicated Prince back to his forsaken kingdom in ‘Atlantis, Mon Amour!’ Sadly, he’s too late to stop his former subjects making a tragic fear-fuelled mistake that results in atrocity and genocide after aquatic alien refugee beg for aid…

When Everett returned he opened the doors to Marvel’s Atlas era-past with a tempestuous yarn that would eventually affect the entire continuity. ‘…In the Lap of the Gods’ reintroduced 1950s sensation Venus, whose impact would ripple out across the MU and ultimately reveal her hidden history as part of the Agents of Atlas sub-franchise.

It begins in a shattering storm as Namor rescues a lovely mystery woman stranded on a rock and stumbles into a long-running grudge match between the Hellenic gods of Love and War. A contemporary tale of dissent and unrest, the story reunites him with Namorita, who, in his absence, has become a college student and activist. Moreover, her favourite lecturer – Humanities Professor Victoria N. Starr – also has a concealed alter ego and lethal stalker: malign divinity and former pantheon mate Ares…

Having held at bay one angry god, Namor returns to Atlantis, resolved to restore the undersea nation to forefront of civilisation but his program of changes is stalled when ‘Hands Across the Waters, Hands Across the Skies…’ (Everett supervising, steering and inking dialoguer Steve Gerber & layout artist Sam Kweskin) uncovers a survivor and witness to the recent massacre of alien ambassadors by Atlanteans. Tamara of the Sisterhood claims to offer forgiveness and seek understanding, but many of the perpetrators would rather there were no testimony or recriminations to deal with. Most tellingly, the superstrong survivor and her pet monster have their own plans and soon the prince is sucked into more pointless battle…

With John Tartaglione inking Everett’s plot, Gerber & Kweskin forecast ‘Thunder Over the Seas!’, a tale of tragic miscomprehension as Namor again clashes with the surface world. As the Sub-Mariner’s new advisor, Tamara is targeted by Atlantean scout Lorvex – who is driven wild by her exotic beauty and rarity. Obsessively stalking and assaulting her, Lorvex drives her into Russian trawler nets where the rubicund refugee becomes a prized possession after the vessel and its contents are impounded by the US Coast Guard. Now Tamara is a cause célèbre and topic of heated debate at the United Nations…

Having dealt with Lorvex, Namor seeks out his new friend, and crashes into chaos as the war of words over the alien mermaid triggers the usual bellicose response amongst humans. By the time surface-dwelling Namorita summons her cousin to rescue Tamara, founding Avenger Thor has stepped in to keep the peace. Sadly it’s too late to stop ‘The Invasion of New York!’ (Everett, Gerber, Kweskin & Jim Mooney), with Lorvex exploiting the campaign to regain position and secretly abduct Tamara from UN custody. Enraged and resigned, Sub-Mariner acts decisively and violently to end the crisis, and accepts at last the fate he has been really fighting, finally accepting once more the throne and responsibilities of ruling Atlantis.

It was an open secret that Everett was dying at this time, but his Marvel friends and employers allowed him to work on until he couldn’t. Thus Sub-Mariner #61’s The Prince and the Pirate!’ – credited to Gerber, Everett, Win Mortimer & Mooney – opens with the old master pictorially revealing revelry in the subsea kingdom as Namor’s coronation ends before a new storyline starts on page 4 as Namorita and human guardian Betty Prentiss are abducted along with an entire passenger plane. The voyagers are victims of deranged geneticist Dr. Hydro who mutates them all (bar already amphibian Nita) into human-merman hybrids to populate his army of environmental conquest. When Namor tracks the ongoing abductions and invades mobile island Hydrobase to save his cousin, he is soundly defeated by the maniac’s super science. Moreover, the failed assault inspires Hydro to invade Atlantis and make it his new stronghold from which to convert the rest of humanity…

The drama plays out in #62 as Gerber, Sam Kweskin & Frank Giacoia explore ‘A Realm Besieged!’ before Tamara in Atlantis and Nita on Hydrobase thwart Hydro’s schemes; leaving the Sub-Mariner to ponder what to do with the hundreds of innocent, unwilling scaly amphibian freaks that neither Atlanteans or surface-dwellers want anything to do with…

Steve Gerber was a uniquely gifted writer who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with dark irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed socio-cultural criticism, a barely reined-in imagination and boundless bizarrely wilful surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties in thinly veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity.

With critical success Man-Thing he was holding up a mirror to many cordoned-off and taboo subjects and weaving history from scattered snippets of Marvel’s continuity. With his final stint on Sub-Mariner, Gerber expanded that universe exponentially, building by exploring pre-cataclysm history, aided by Howard Chaykin in back-up series ‘Tales of Atlantis!’ Here the first chapter – inked by Joe Sinnott – sees antediluvian, human-built Atlantis losing its war with rival superpower Lemuria and Emperor Kamuu and his bride Zartra prepare for the bloody end…

Over Everett’s posthumous plot, Gerber, Kweskin & Syd Shores produce #63 as ‘…And the Seas Shall Explode!’ sees seemingly dead Dr Hydro return to destroy the Atlanteans by triggering a volcano under their city and compelling Namor to take no chances and offer no mercy to save his subjects once and for all, Tales of Atlantis resumes as Gerber, Chaykin & Sinnott reveal how the fate of the first Atlantis is sealed by ‘Cataclysm!’ As hand-to-hand combat peaks, the city sinks beneath the seas, but its heritage is saved, carried away by missionary sorceress Zered-Na and her devout disciples; for which you need to scope out Gerber’s other contemporaneous assignments: Son of Satan in Marvel Spotlight and Man-Thing in Adventures into Fear. We’ve covered them elsewhere so feel free to scroll away in the search engines…

Here, though, and wading off at a weird tangent, Gerber, Don Heck & Don Perlin play with satire and pop culture in #64’s ‘Voyage into Chaos!’ When intolerant Atlanteans intern the aimless, despondent amphibian victims of Dr. Hydro, furious, ashamed Namor responds with a fit of fury, just as cool heads are needed to assess another astounding incursion. Soon, a quartet of strange visitors from magical dimension Zephyrland – Ariel the Musician, Ibbar the Scolar, Kabal the Wizard & Zargus the Warrior – are petitioning the Sub-Mariner to hop in their Golden Submarine and help them liberate their enslaved homeland from bestial, tone-deaf horror Virago the She-Beast. Willing and even eager to go for many reasons Namor joins them but is ambushed and defeated as soon as arrives in the land of golden meanies…

Third Tales of Atlantis episode ‘In the Wake of the Warriors!’ reveals how, five millennia later, nomadic clans of water-breathing Homo Mermanus settle in the ruins of the sunken city-continent and clash constantly, thanks to the enmity of sworn enemies Widow-Queen Elanna and King Stegor. They cannot see waves of destiny pushing their battle-hardened children towards an incredible coalition. Successive instalments ‘The Lurker in the Ruins!’ (Gerber, Mooney & Frank Chiaramonte in #65 and concluding chapter ‘The Sword in the Throne!’ inked by Sinnott in #66) ended the series abruptly as those children – destiny- touched Kamuu and Elanna’s daughter Zartra – after meeting ghosts and battling demons, unite the tribes to create the dynasty of sunken Atlantis that will lead millennia later to the coming later of Namor…

Back in the now, the series was struggling, sparking a rapid radical rebrand as Prince Namor, the Savage Sub-Mariner and #65 offering ‘The Cry of the She-Beast!’ as Gerber, Heck & Perlin detail how Virago crushes resistance at home, physically humiliates Namor and launches an attack across dimensions upon Atlantis. Her departure sparks a successful but so-costly revolution in Zephyrland and (with valiant Namor clinging to her hurtling Golden Submarine) provokes a shocking resurrection after splashing down on Earth in #66. ‘Rise, Thou Killer Whale’ (Gerber, Heck & Perlin) sees Virago driven away from Atlantis at great cost, only to stumble upon the tomb of defeated – but apparently only dormant – Orka the (humanoid) Killer Whale – who unites with a clearly kindred spirit to devastate the sunken city with an armada of crazed cetaceans…

The catastrophic clash leads to the Sub-Mariner again falling, but this time amidst toxic nerve gas dumped by surface dwellers. The chemical poisons alter his body chemistry, making it impossible to breathe air or maintain body moisture. Moreover, as the cloud of death expands currents wash it over Atlantis, plunging all within the perimeter – Virago and Orka included – into comas in landmark tale ‘Seawinds of Change!’ (Gerber, Heck & Frank Bolle).

Thankfully, whilst dying Namor heads for the surface to be found by old ally Triton of The Inhumans, who brings Namor to former foes the Fantastic Four. Smartest Man Alive Reed Richards swiftly diagnoses and rapidly constructs a bodysuit to provide constant artificial respiration – over Namor’s churlish and violent protests – and he heads home to finish his fight. Sadly, what he finds in #68 (January 1974, Mooney inks) leaves him ‘On the Brink of Madness!’ Only Tamara, Nita and Hydro’s amphibians escaped the nerve agent’s effects and now must calm down the bereft monarch. To stabilise the crisis, they relocate to vacant Hydrobase and direct Namor to a human scientist whose forcefield researches might provide a means to protect dormant Atlanteans from predators and further harm.

After seeking spiritual guidance from patron god Father Neptune, Namor sets off, but when the king without a kingdom seeks out Dr Damon Walthers, he discovers the genius’ works stolen by his assistant. Shot from the sky by neophyte supervillain Force, their initial clash is inconclusive but does draw the attention of passing student Peter Parker…

Meanwhile in Zephyrland, the war goes badly and the survivors consider calling in Sorcerer Supreme Stephen Strange…

George Tuska & Vince Colletta illustrate Prince Namor, the Savage Sub-Mariner #69 as Gerber rapidly wraps up his hanging plot threads in anticipation of a sudden cancellation. ‘Two Worlds …and Dark Destiny!’ sees Dr Strange offer aid, a pointless battle between spider hero and fishman and a final encounter with Force that leaves Namor victorious, in control of Walthers’ forcefield tech and Atlantis safely stored “under glass” until a cure can be found – an inauspicious but satisfactory stopping point. Confoundingly the series still had three issues to run with Marv Wolfman, Tuska & Colletta depicting ‘Namor Unchained!’ in #70 whilst adding further safeguards to sleeping Atlantis, until targeted by now-independent mutated fishmen grown by Dr. Dorcas under the guidance of an ambitious aquatic atrocity. The brutal duel delivers more deaths and butchery as #71 clamours ‘Comes the Pirahna!’ and the series finally sank with #72 (dated September 1974 and on sale from 18th June) as Steve Skeates, Dan Adkins & Colletta catered an alien encounter as Namor faced obnoxious humans and a lost interstellar shapeshifter in ‘From the Void It Came…’

The antihero resurfaced in Giant-Sized Super-Villain Team-Up #1 (cover-dated March 1975), revived as one half of a tag-team with fellow misunderstood autocrat Doctor Doom whilst seeking a cure for his people and his own condition. That sustained momentum led to the last tale here, a solo exploit taken from Marvel Spotlight #27 (April 1976) as Bill Mantlo & Mooney revealed ‘Death is the Symbionic Man!’ Incorporating Prime Earth’s military industrial villain Captain Simon Stryker (of alternate Earth epic Deathlok the Demolisher) the pacy yarn saw Sub-Mariner hunted for potential spare parts and powers by the messianic maniac and battling Stryker’s most deadly killer-cyborg yet…

Bonus material includes covers by Everett, John Romita, Rich Buckler, Sal Buscema, Al Weiss, Jim Starlin, Larry Lieber, Joe Sinnott, Gil Kane, Frank Giacoia, Mike Esposito, Vince Colletta, & Al Milgrom, supplemented with original art pages and personal commissions by “Wild Bill”. Also on view are House ads; the editorial page from #67 wherein Gerber explained the costume change plus Romita’s original designs for the new outfit. Special treats comprise Everett’s unused cover watercolour rough for Marvel Comics (1939) #2; the Everett cover and Franc Reyes frontispiece of Marvel Index #7b (1978); a stellar Venus pinup from Marvel Spotlight #2 (1972) and – following the announcement of Everett’s death – a visual memorial from editor and friend Thomas, limned by Marie Severin & Giacoia as it appeared in Sub-Mariner #65 (September 1973).

In comics, the best thing about “the Mighty falling” is that so often another time throws up fresh ideas and creators who will regenerate faded concepts. It a cycle as timeless and relentlessly repeating as the tides. The venerable Sub-Mariner always comes back stronger and more appetising, and you owe it to yourself to be ready for the next wave by getting to know these classics. Many early Marvel Comics are more exuberant than qualitative, but this volume, especially from an story-lover’s point of view, is a wonderful exception: historical treasures with narrative bite and indescribable style and panache that fans will delight in forever.
© 2025 MARVEL.

Today in 1923 French creator Jean Graton (Michel Vaillant) was born, sharing natal celebrations with comics genius Eddie Campbell (Alec, Bacchus, From Hell) in 1955 and colourist Christie Scheele in 1957.

Losses include cartoonist Virgil Partch in 1984; Belgian writer Henri Gillain (Il y a un sorcier à Champignac, Le Trésor d’Alaric, Nègre Blanc) in 1999; Mad mainstay Jerry DeFucchio in 2001 and Filipino artist Mar Amongo (DC anthologies, Noli Me Tangere, The Tiger’s Fang, Talons of Time) in 2005.

Posted on

Yoko Tsuno volume 21 – The Celestial Boat


By Roger Leloup, coloured by Studio Leonardo & translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-187-3 (PB Album)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

On September 24th 1970, freelance electronics engineer Yoko Tsuno first began her troubleshooting career as an indomitable intellectual adventurer. Her debut in Le Journal de Spirou was initially realised in “Marcinelle style” cartoonish 8 page short ‘Hold-up en hi-fi’ and although she is still delighting readers and making new fans to this day, for a while it looked as if she wasn’t going anywhere soon. Thankfully, her astonishing, astoundingly accessible exploits were revised and she soon evolved into a paragon of peril, helming a highpoint of amazingly authentic pseudo-realistic fantasies numbering amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created.

Tsuno’s globe-girdling mystery cases and space-&-time-spanning epics are the brainchild of Belgian maestro Roger Leloup who launched his own solo career in 1953 whilst working as studio assistant/technical artist on Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin. Compellingly told, sublimely imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of an individual yarn – always firmly grounded in hyper-realistic settings underpinned by solidly-constructed, unshakably believable technology and unswerving scientific principles, Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of a wave of strips revolutionising European comics. Early in the journey, he switched from loose illustration to a mesmerising realism that is the series’ signature. The long-overdue sea-change in gender roles and stereotyping his eastern star heralded led to a torrent of clever, competent, brave and formidable women protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals and not romantic lures. That small revolution consequently elevated Continental comics in the process.

Masterful Miss Tsuno’s first outings are sadly STILL unavailable Hold-up en hi-fi, and co-sequels La belle et la bête and Cap 351, were introductory vignettes prior to epic authenticity taking a firm grip in 1971 when the unflappable problem solver met valiant but lesser (male) pals Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen. Instantly hitting her stride in premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange (in LJdS’s May 13th edition), from then on, Tsuno’s exploits encompassed explosive errands in exotic corners of our world, spy-&-crime capers, devastating deep-space sagas and time-travelling jaunts such as this one. There are 32 European bande dessinée albums to date, with 21 translated into English thus far, albeit – and ironically – none are available in digital formats…

Initially serialised in LJdS #3138 to 3148, spanning June 29th – 12th August 1998, La Jonque céleste became Europe’s 22nd collected Yoko Tsuno album at year’s end. It finds our tireless trouble-finder back on Earth and striving to separate history from myth – and legend from harsh political truth – in a cold case of child abuse and apparent mysticism that spans a millennium…

Aboard a commercial jet, Tsuno is flying to China with adopted daughter Morning Dew when an onboard incident involving an ailing archaeologist abruptly leaves “Dew” in accidental possession of an antique doll and mysterious ivory globe. These the afflicted passenger was delivering to an unspecified address. The aged items are apparently clues to a fabulous treasure and the lost location of the “seventh tooth of the dragon” but further information is unavailable after he is seemingly struck down by an invisible force…

Attentive Yoko’s instincts and suspicions are further aroused when they disembark and officials attempt to confiscate the items. Naturally, they are deftly foiled and diverted by Ms. Tsuno’s clever misdirection. With Dew in tow, she tracks down the ailing man’s intended destination and meets fading historical scholar Professor Fung at his riverside residence. Welcomed graciously, she learns of his studies into – and reconstruction of – an ancient multi-lensed “signal device” and the accompanying legend of the lost tomb of The Emperor Zhen-Zong’s Fourth Wife.

That bizarre episode saw said emperor spend years and vast resources seeking to erase the unhappy bride from history…

Fung is delighted when Yoko hands him the ivory sphere that completes his reconstructed contraption, and – after the doll also provides hidden components – deduces that his courier’s mishandling of the “The Spheres of Yin Shi” caused his collapse and continuing malady. With the highly-polished lens in his possession, Fung demonstrates the incredible mirror-gadget to be a weapon Emperor Zhenzong employed back in 11th century Song China…

Dew & Yoko also befriend Fung’s personal doctor Lin Po. Although dedicated, she is clearly at odds with and mistrusts her prestigious patient on many issues, but gradually, cautiously she becomes embroiled in the unfolding adventure after Yoko’s sentimental heartstrings are tugged by the physician’s sharing brushed-over further details of the ancient tale of injustice cruelty and imperial abuse.

With Dew staying at Fung’s house, Yoko and Lin Po voyage by houseboat to an isolated but gloriously beautiful mountain region. Here long ago, ambition and human greed fomented rebellion and tragedy, compelling the august ruler to marry 6-year old Xin Yi for political expediency. Now, Lin Po shows Yoko the hidden tomb she accidentally stumbled upon. It contains the child-bride’s ceremonial barge and a sealed funerary urn resembling the doll of the wife. Shockingly, it somehow generates a steady heartbeat!

Fascinated, the adventurer and moved mother resolves that neither history nor imperial power will stop her from saving the Fourth Wife. Enlisting faithful pals Vic & Pol (plus the latter’s recently migrated 16th century Flanders-born fiancée Mieke) and cherished comrade Monya – from AD 3872 and possessing a time machine (see The Time Spiral),Yoko and Lin Po ready a factfinding/rescue mission and set out for “the 49th day after the Lantern Festival in the 61st year of the Song Dynasty” (March 29th 1021 CE for short) to thwart fate, cheat history and save a tragic child…

Of course, history is a deceiving liar, and the team are soon embroiled in complex local politics, armed revolt and assassination plots, with their well-intentioned but reality-risking meddling actually shaping the official (but erroneous) account they had studied in the 20th century whilst revealing – and concealing – the truth of the affair. As benevolent Imperial Counsellor Lord Chou and peasant boy Yu war with rioting peasants, bandits, river pirates and corrupt overlord Prince Wang, to save obnoxious brat Xin Yi, everyone seeks to exploit or scapegoat the Fourth Wife for personal advantage, before the crisis erupts into open warfare when Wang attempts to use a black powder and his diabolical mirror weapon to end the conflict and remove potential hostile witnesses. Thankfully, Yoko has a “dragon” of her own and the savage rebellion is quashed in record time and with the happiest ending fate will permit…

As always, the most potent asset of this historical drama is its astonishingly authentic settings, as ever benefitting from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail. The Celestial Boat is a sweeping tale of passion, deception, good intentions and indomitable human spirit: a tense yet action-packed thriller, taut and compelling, and absolutely appealing as much to fans of blockbuster fantasy epics as spectacle-starved comic addicts.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1998 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation © 2026 Cinebook Ltd.

Today in 1895 French comics star Alain Saint-Ogan (Zig et Puce, Mitou et Toti, Prosper l’ours, Monsieur Poche, Touitoui) was born, sharing birthdays with Belgian maestro Maurice Tillieux (Gil Jourdan, Félix, Marc Lebut, Tif et Tondu, Hultrasson, Yoko Tsuno, Jess Long) in 1921; artist Mark Bagley, (Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, New Warriors, Thunderbolts, Venom, Carnage) & writer Paul Dini (Zatanna, Harley Quinn, Jungle Belle, Detective Comics The Batman Adventures, Superman Adventures, Batman: Harley and Ivy, Shazam! The Power of Hope, Krypto the Superdog) both born in 1957 and scripter Dan Jolley (Aliens, Terminator, Micronauts, Purgatori) in 1971.

Posted on

Showcase Presents Martian Manhunter volume 2


By Jack Miller & Joe Certa & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2256-7 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As the 1950’s opened, comic book superheroes were nearing the lowest point of a steep decline, having given way to a steady stream of genre-based he-men and “Ordinary Joes” in extraordinary circumstances. By the time “Red-baiting”, witch-hunting Senate hearings and media investigations into causes of juvenile delinquency had finished, the industry was further depleted by the self-inflicted excision of any kind of reference to mature themes or content. The self-imposed Comics Code Authority took all the hard edges out of the industry output, banning horror and crime comics whilst leaving their ghostly, sanitised anodyne shades to inhabit the adventure, western, war and fantasy titles that remained.

US comics could have the bowdlerised concept of evil and felonious conduct, but not the simplest kind of repercussion: a world where mad scientists plotted to conquer humanity without killing anybody, and escaped imprisonment whilst cowboys shot guns out of opponents’ hands and severed gun-belts with a well-aimed bullet, without ever drawing blood. Moreover, no civil or government official or public servant could be depicted as anything other than a benevolent saint…

With corruption, venality and menace removed from the equation, comics were forced to supply suspense and tension to their works via mystery and imagination – but only as long as it all had a rational, non-supernatural explanation…

A sci fi series with cop show trappings, John Jones, Manhunter from Mars depicted the clandestine adventures of stranded alien J’onn J’onzz; an eccentric, frequently formulaic (weren’t they all?) yet never disappointing B-feature strip, it debuted in Detective Comics #225 (November 1955), at the height of America’s Flying Saucer fever. Excluding mutant adventurer Captain Comet (premiering in Strange Adventures #9, cover-dated June 1951) and beating by a year the new Flash – who launched in Showcase #4 (October 1956) – Jonzz was arguably the first superhero of the Silver Age.

Hardly evolving at all – except for finally going public as a superhero in Detective #273 (November 1959) – the police-based strip ran there until #326 (1955 to 1964), before migrating over to The House of Mystery and a whole new modus vivendi, beginning with #143. He stayed there until #173, finally fading away during the Great Superhero Cull of 1968-70.

In Showcase Presents Martian Manhunter volume 1 ‘The Strange Experiment of Dr. Erdel’ revealed how a reclusive Earth genius built a robot-brain which could access Time, Space and the Fourth Dimension, and accidentally plucked an alien scientist from his home on Mars. After a brief conversation with his unfortunate guest, Erdel succumbed to a heart attack whilst attempting to return J’onn J’onzz to his point of origin.

Marooned on Earth, the Martian discovered that his new home was riddled with the ancient and primitive cancer of Crime and, being decent and right-thinking, resolved to use his natural abilities (which included telepathy, psychokinesis, intangibility, shape-shifting, invisibility, super-strength, speed, flight, vision, super-breath, invulnerability and so many others) to eradicate the evil, To facilitate the crusade he adopted human form and became a detective, working clandestinely as an “ordinary” policeman. His only concern was the commonplace chemical reaction of fire which sapped Martians of all their mighty powers. With his name Americanised to John Jones he enlisted as a Police Detective in Middletown and worked tirelessly to improve his new home; fighting evil secretly using his inherent powers and advanced knowledge with no human even aware of his existence.

This second & final Silver Age selection reprints in moody monochrome Detective Comics #305-226 (July 1962-April 1964) and the Manhunter’s entire House of Mystery career exploits (#143-173, spanning July 1964 to March/April 1968), almost all of which were written by Jack Miller and illustrated by the indefatigable Joe Certa.

One of the longest tenures and partnerships in DC comics’ history (although creator records are sadly incomplete), Miller – and perhaps occasionally Bob Haney – produced a wealth of scripts for veteran illustrator Certa, who had previously worked for the Funnies Incorporated comics “Shop” and all over the industry. His other credits included Captain Marvel Junior and assorted genre titles for Magazine Enterprises (Dan’l Boone, Durango Kid); Lev Gleason’s crime comics, Harvey romance titles and others. At DC he drew nautical sleuth Captain Compass and genre anthology tales for such titles as Gang Busters and House of Mystery. Certa also drew the newspaper strip Straight Arrow and ghosted the long-lived boxing legend Joe Palooka. In the 1970s, he moved to Gold Key, working on mystery tales, TV adaptations and all-ages horror stories.

This traditional all-ages delight opens with ‘J’onn J’onzz vs. Futureman’ from Detective Comics #305, wherein a cop from the 30th century follows a Martian lawbreaker back to 1962 and mistakes J’onzz for his fugitive quarry. When malign B’enn B’urnzz then aligns with ruthless earth criminals, the stage is set for a spectacular super-power showdown…

In #306 crooks using fantastic robot animals are given an unexpected boost when a blazing meteor saps the Manhunter’s life force and almost augurs ‘The Last Days of J’onn J’onzz’, whilst a bewildering display of disguises and quick-changes are necessary to save John Jones’ police partner Diane Meade when the detective – ‘Alias Scarface Scanlon’ – goes undercover to expose a criminal safe-house in #307.

DC #308 revealed how a visit to a feudal European county finds the Alien Avenger embroiled in a coup and battling ancient magic on ‘The Day John Jones Vanished!’ after which he foils an alien invasion whilst wearing the form of a reclusive human in ‘The Man Who Saved Earth’ before overcoming a cunning crook with a shrinking ray in #310’s ‘The Miniature Manhunter!’ Vacationing Diane is on Jade Island when it becomes the beachhead for ‘The Invaders from the Space Warp’ (DC #311) but to defeat uncanny extra-dimensional thieves, J’onzz also needs the aid of friendly alien R’ell and his uncanny talking pet. When the war was over, however, bizarre beastie Zook is trapped in our world forever…

A new era opened in #312 as the cute E.T. became ‘J’onn J’onzz’ Pesky Partner’. Zook could change shape and generate extreme heat and cold but had the mind of a five-year old, and thus posed a frequent threat to our hero’s secret identity by slavishly trailing him as he stalked villains…

The kid learned quickly though and by #313, wherein ‘The Wizard who Conquered J’onn J’onzz’ almost killed the Martian with a stolen magic wand, Zook had adapted to a life of seclusion on Earth as J’onzz’s secret weapon. The extra-dimensional ET proves his worth in #314 when a shape-shifting Saturnian steals the detective’s identity in ‘J’onn J’onzz vs. John Jones’, and helps defeat a villain as powerful as Manhunter himself, and does so again in #315 when his uncanny senses penetrate the various identities of a crooked stage performer who is ‘The Man of 1000 Disguises!’

Bizarre mutagenic meteors were commonplace at this time and another one transferred the hero’s abilities to ‘The Bandits with Super-Powers’ in DC #316, but Zook and a now Martian-powered Diane prove up to the task of thwarting them, after which J’onzz, Diane & Zook have their hands full facing ‘The Challenge of the Alien Robots’ delivered by greedy human bandit Jasper Dowd in #317. When the terrific tyke takes a blow to the head he briefly acts as ‘J’onn J’onzz’ Enemy – Zook’ before being restored by another bash on the bonce, after which the vacationing detective strolls through a time warp and into a war of succession in mediaeval Auvergne, eventually restoring rightful ruler Prince Charles to his stolen throne as ‘J’onn J’onzz – Wizard of 1463!’.

Back in the 20th century, #320 saw Detective Jones and Zook solve ‘The Case of the Golden Eagle’ to restore a lost treasure to France, after which #321 has the Martian and his pal battling the fantastic shape-shifting threat of ‘The Cosmic Creature’, and in #322 an old Batman villain migrates from Gotham to Middletown becomes intent on being ‘The Man who Destroyed J’onn J’onzz’. Professor Arnold Hugo had enlarged his intellect – and cranium – to become a cerebral supervillain whose devices enabled him to steal the alien’s powers. However, the wily mastermind did not realised that ludicrous-looking “pet” Zook was privy to his fallen friend’s weaknesses too…

For Detective #323 Manhunter flew solo on ‘The Hobby Missions’ wherein a charity auction for his services is suborned by a vicious criminal seeking lost artefacts bestowing awesome power, whilst in #324 the hero tackles a bizarre rampaging monster and is trapped in its hideous form as ‘The Beast who was J’onn J’onzz’ until Zook intervenes. Then, a crook’s time-ray banishes the Manhunter to Ancient Greece where he helps ‘The Hero of 500 B.C.’ crush incredible creatures… until Zook saves him.

Big changes were in the air at DC, and by the end of 1963 Julius Schwartz, who had revived much of their line – and the entire industry – with his modernization of the superhero, was asked to work his magic with the creatively stalled, nigh-moribund Caped Crusader. Bringing his regular team of top-notch creators with him, Schwartz stripped down the core-concept, downplaying all the aliens, outlandish villains and daft transformation tales, bringing a cool modern take to the capture of criminals and even overseeing a streamlining rationalisation of the art style itself. The most apparent change to us kids was a yellow circle around the Bat-symbol but, far more importantly, the stories changed. A subtle aura of genuine menace had re-entered the comfortable and absurdly abstract world of Gotham City.

The “New Look” Batman debuted in Detective Comics #327 and changed the shape of the industry, but as part of the makeover the increasingly fantastical Martian Manhunter was no longer welcome in his first home. In a rare move for the time, former Bat-Editor Jack Schiff, who was taking J’onzz with him to his new post, opted to shake up everything and end the era in style. Detective Comics #326 (April 1964) saw ‘The Death of John Jones, Detective’ with the veteran cop dispatched to investigate the theft of The Idol-Head of Diabolu to discover the outré relic is actually a terrifying portal to countless trans-dimensional terrors. When it transforms its purloiner into a deadly menace, it also unleashes a dreadful beast which apparently kills the valiant cop before Manhunter can end the twin threats. However. In the aftermath the unleashed Idol-Head is lost, but swears to unleash a new menace at every first full moon, forcing the Manhunter to surrender his human identity and leave Middletown, determined to track down the mystic menace whatever the cost…

The pioneering Silver Age superhero moved to House of Mystery from #143, June 1964 – finally getting to feature on the covers – where, in keeping with the title and context of his new home, he became a wandering monster-hunter.

But don’t panic, chums, Zook came with him…

J’onzz’ new adventures began as the Idol disgorged ‘The Giant-Maker’, a beast that mutated men – and poor Zook – into rampaging colossi and freed the wicked wizard Malador from millennia of bondage until Manhunter stops the dual dangers, whilst one full moon later in HoM #144 the peripatetic skull opened a voracious spacewarp sucking people into ‘The Weird World of Gilgana’ before J’onzz plunged in to seal the breach. Next month revealed the ‘Secret of the Purple People’ as the Idol allowed metamorphic Venomee to ravage Egypt until Zook and the Martian stopped them, and #146 saw the weary wanderers find and lose the Diabolu head to fantastic cat-beast Aroo but still save Earth from life-sucking, monstrous Chulko in ‘The Doom Shadow’…

In #147 the Idol vomits forth living, malevolent musical instruments to mesmerise humans as ‘The Orchestra of Doom!’, whilst #148 unleashes ‘The Beings in the Color Rings’ to warp reality in ghastly ways. An unwary beachcomber becomes ‘The Man-Thing That Unearthed Secrets’ in #149, changing into a succession of incredible creatures compulsively retrieving lost mystic artefacts, before #150 finds artist’s brushes ensorcelled and permitted to craft ‘The Supernatural Masterpieces!’ with calamitous results. Then, ‘The Doom from Two Worlds’ splits J’onzz and Zook as the Martian confronts horrors in a trans-dimensional nightmare world whilst his pal is left to defend Earth from a rapacious fire-demon prior to HoM #152’s‘Iwangis – Creature King’ spotlighting a brutal stone giant leading an army of monsters against humankind…

There’s a brief busman’s holiday in #153 as Professor Hugo again rears his outlandish, honkin’ big head to awaken and enslave ‘The Giants Who Slept 1,000,000 Years’ and precipitate an orgy of destruction and profit, whilst in #154 convict Orry Kane uses a stolen magic looking-glass to manifest ‘The Mirror Martian Manhunter’ – a distorted, devilish doppelganger requiring the Manhunter to exercise wits as well as his powers to exorcise it…

Diabolu’s Idol-Head returned in #155, unleashing ‘The Giant Genie of Gensu’ to grant the wishes of evil men, but again comic book fashions were changing and the Manhunter was about to be relegated to a B-Feature once more. In the mid-Sixties, the whole world went crazy for costumed crusaders and every comic book publisher keenly sought new ways to repackage an extremely exciting yet intrinsically limited concept. Perhaps its ultimate expression came with the creation of teenaged everyman Robby Reed who battled crime and disaster in his little town with the aid of a fantastic wonder-tool in Dial H for Hero.

Taking the lead spot from House of Mystery #156 (January 1966), this outlandish new hero pushed J’onzz into the back half for ‘Look What Happened to J’onn J’onzz!’: a position he maintained until #173 (March-April 1968) when the comic book disappeared for a few months to re-emerge as DC’s first of many modern anthological supernatural mystery titles addressing the global growth of interest in actual horror stories. In that truncated tale a sinister snake-beast almost absorbs and consumes the Martian (irony, or what?), whilst in #157 Professor Hugo is back to mesmerise and humiliate his alien nemesis in ‘Manhunter, World’s Greatest Clown!’ HoM #158 ended the long-running and increasingly tired saga by revealing ‘The Origin of the Diabolu Idol-Head’ after plunging Manhunter back in time to Ancient Babylonia where he finally learns how to destroy it, after which J’onzz marked the occasion by returning to his roots and foiling an invasion by ‘The Devil Men of Pluto’ in #159.

Apparently helpless against rising trends, ‘Manhunter’s New Secret Identity’ debuted in #160 (July 1966) with the hero tapping into the global superspy fad and assuming the identity of a glamorous international playboy and suspected criminal to penetrate the inner echelons of sinister secret society Vulture. Soon he is popping up all over Europe, hot on the trail of mysterious leader Faceless (AKA Mr. V) and forced to undertake increasingly suspect tasks and missions threatening to compromise his ethics and integrity if not end his life…

He was almost immediately rumbled in #161 when ‘The Unmasking of Marco Xavier!’ sees him battling Vulture’s top op Abba Sulkar with only a tragic accident saving his stolen face. A devious courier mission for Xavier in #162 allows Manhunter to raid ‘The Lair of Mr. V!’ but Faceless proves to be a truly capable foe who easily eludes him, whilst in #163 an alliance between Vulture and a fugitive Mercurian results in the Martian becoming ‘The Doomed Captive!’ … until the hero’s brains triumph over the bad guys’ brawn and super-science. In #164 the undercover agent is placed in an impossible position when Faceless orders a hit on J’onn J’onzz and expects his playboy pal to carry it out. ‘Marco vs. Manhunter!’ offered a bewildering display of the hero’s disguise dexterity, whilst the next devilish ploy of Professor Hugo provides an unwelcome break as the rogue genius uses nuclear blackmail and atomic science to transform the hero into ‘The Deadly Martian’…

When the infiltration campaign had begun Zook was abandoned in America, but he pops up again in #166 after Marco is dispatched to the US to secure the secret of turning men into monsters in ‘Vulture’s Crime Goliaths!’ On arrival back in Europe, Faceless tasks his playboy pawn with ingratiating himself to the enemy. ‘Marco Xavier, Manhunter’s Ally!’ proves to be a complex and ultimately unrewarding mission whereafter Zook calls J’onzz back home to tackle the alien predations of ‘Thantos – the 3-in-1 Man!’ (#168) before ‘The Manhunter Monster!’ has our hero infiltrate Mr. V’s secret lab before becoming stuck in the form of the gang’s latest horrific bio-weapon…

Events in the real world were starting to affect comic books, and after #170’s ‘The Martian Double-Cross!’ – which saw “Xavier” wrongly deduce Manhunter’s weakness and only narrowly survive his failure – House of Mystery underwent radical remodelling to display a slightly darker tone. The writing was on the wall for exuberant, angst-free adventurers. With #171, Zook was back for good (or not) and in ‘The Martian Marauders’ the odd couple faced an expeditionary force of invaders from the Martian’s homeworld, before #172 found the hero mind-swapped and prisoner in the body of a Vulture assassin even as the killer wore his alien frame in ‘Manhunter’s Stolen Identity!’

In those distant days series ended abruptly, without fanfare and often in the middle of something – and such was the fate of Robby Reed – but for J’onn J’onzz at least, HoM#173 (March/April 1968) managed – admittedly in an abbreviated manner – to wrap up the undercover agent’s mission in the climactic and explosive ‘So You’re Faceless!’…

And that was that. The series was gone, the market was abandoning Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction, and on the horizon a host of war, western, barbarian and horror comics were emerging…

Exciting, fun, engaging and silly in equal amounts (heck, even I couldn’t resist a jibe or too and I genuinely revere these daft, nostalgia-soaked gems) J’onn J’onzz has been subsequently re-imagined many times since these innocent odysseys first ran, but never with the clearcut, unsophisticated, welcoming charm displayed here.

Although absolutely dated and definitely formulaic, these complex yet uncomplicated adventures are drenched in charm and still sparkle with innocent wit and wonder. Perhaps not to everyone’s taste nowadays, these “retro” exploits of the Manhunter from Mars are still an all-ages buffet of fun, thrills and action no fan should miss.
© 1962-1968, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1920 comics veteran Ken Bald (Dark Shadows, Dr. Kildare, Captain America, Sub-Mariner, Blonde Phantom, The Destroyer, Namora, Sun Girl, Miss America, Millie the Model, Patsy Walker) was born, joined by Italian strip star Dino Battaglia (Mark Fury, Till Eulenspiegel, Inspector Coke) in 1923 and Ziggy strip creator Tom Wilson in 1931.

In 1923 Otto Mesmer’s first strip of animated movie icon Felix the Cat premiered, as did Tom Armstrong’s still-going-strong strip phenomenon Marvin today in 1982. But the date also marks the deaths of Dutch cartoonist “WiBo” AKA Wim Boost (Volkskrant) in 2005 and Frank and Ernest creator Bob Thaves in 2006.

Posted on

Harley Quinn and the Gotham Girls


By Paul D. Storrie, Jennifer Graves & J. Bone, with Brad Rader, Rick Burchett, Patricia Mulvihill, Phil Felix & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-9971-2 (TPB) 978-1-4012-9972-9 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Harley Quinn wasn’t supposed to be a star – or even an actual comic book character. As soon became apparent, however, the manic minx always had her own astoundingly askew and off-kilter ideas on the matter… and any other topic you could name: ethics, friendship, ordnance, coffee…

Created by Paul Dini & Bruce Timm, Batman: The Animated Series aired in the US from September 5th 1992 to September 15th 1995. Ostensibly for kids, the breakthrough TV cartoon revolutionised everybody’s image of the Dark Knight and immediately began feeding back into the print iterations, leading to some of the absolute best comics tales in the hero’s many decades of existence.

Employing a timeless visual style dubbed “Dark Deco”, the show mixed elements from all eras and aspects of the character and, without diluting power, tone or mood of the premise, reshaped the grim avenger and his extended team into a wholly accessible, thematically memorable form that the youngest of readers could eagerly enjoy, whilst adding shades of exuberance, sophistication and sheer panache that only most devout and obsessive Batmaniac could possibly object to…

Harley was initially the Clown Prince of Crime’s slavishly adoring, abuse-enduring assistant in Joker’s Favor (airing on September 11th 1992) wherein she instantly captured the hearts and minds of millions of viewers. From there on she began popping up in the licensed comic book and – always stealing the show – soon graduated to mainstream DC continuity.

Along the circuitous way, Harley – AKA Dr. Harleen Quinzel – developed an outrageous support network of sorts including living bioweapon Poison Ivy and settled into a bizarre love/hate relationship with some of Gotham’s other female felons.

After a period bopping around the DCU she was re-imagined as part of the company’s vast post-Flashpoint, major makeover and appeared as part of a new iteration of The Suicide Squad. Now with numerous motion picture, TV animation and live action small screen presence all in play, let’s look back at one particularly fruitful and significant phase, At heart, Harley’s always been a cartoon glamour-puss, with big, bold, primal emotions and only the merest acknowledgement of how reality works…

Amongst the plethora of comic books generated by the original cartoon show was this smartly sassy romp featuring those aforementioned crime cuties as well some mismatched if not openly antithetical law enforcers. Crafted by Paul D. Storrie, Jennifer Graves & J. Bone, 5-issue miniseries Gotham Girls was released between October 2002 and February 2003: opening with ‘Cat’s Paw’ as super-thief Selena Kyle undertakes a commission to steal something very nasty from agricultural conglomerate Zehn Chemicals.

The Feline Felon’s still determined to open a lion sanctuary with her fee and doesn’t appreciate when the supposedly simple caper is interrupted by juvenile do-gooder Batgirl. However, as they trade kicks, punches and quips, overworked, under-appreciated and overlooked GCPD detective Renee Montoya is taking a closer look at the supposed victims and sees something dirty in the company…

Then, as Bat & Cat ferociously but inconclusively throw down all over town, the masterminds paying for the heist make their move, and it becomes clear that there’s a lot going on that needs to be properly unearthed…

‘Ivy League’ exposes murderous eco-terrorist Pamela Lillian Isley as bankrolling the caper, claiming justifiable and benevolent motives to reclaim her own property from unscrupulous, world-endangering corporate creeps. However, because her bestest pal Harley is as erratic and excitable as ever, a potential Bat/Cat/Plantgirl/Dingbat alliance is thwarted by mutual mistrust and excessive, utterly unnecessary violence. Montoya, meanwhile, is diligently following clues, interviewing greedy biologists and uncovering something at rival agri-company Kayle Corporation…

The fast-moving melee ends in leafy Robinson Park, with Batgirl holding the stolen chemical soup, until ‘Harlequinade’ sees manic, attention-starved Quinn pull a martial masterstroke, delivering the bio-booty to her disturbingly abusive gal-pal and a heavy defeat to Catwoman & Batgirl. Naturally, that’s just when solid police practice explosively brings Montoya to their secret lair for penultimate power struggle ‘I Carry a Badge!’…

Brilliant deduction and a standard-issue firearm aren’t much use against supervillains and giant carnivorous vines though, so it’s a good thing Batgirl & Catwoman have both independently tracked Harley & Ivy. With action amped to maximum, good girls and bad girls clash yet again, and sides are finally drawn for a climactic conclusion, with frustrated cop and masked vigilante hero united at last and resolved to end the chaos in ‘Bat Attitude’.

Of course, that means not just Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are going to jail…

A superbly riotous rollercoaster ride for kids of all ages, each chapter also deftly explores the interior life, history and motivations of successive stars; offering canny character building and definition most mature-reading tales would be proud to deliver.

Coloured by Patricia Mulvihill, lettered by Phil Felix and with additional layouts by Rick Burchett and Brad Rader, this classy, classically cops ‘n’ robbers riot plays very much like a 1940s movie chapter-play – albeit with outrageous gags, biting dialogue and a blend of black humour and bombastic action. A frantic, frenetic hoot, this is an absolute delight, well worth the price of admission and an irresistible treasure to be enjoyed over and over again.
© 2002, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1927, Charlton Comics editor and Popeye illustrator George Wildman was born, as  was letterer Cory Petit in 1976; both all-star creators Lee Bermejo (Batman: Noel, Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, Rorschach) and Leinil Francis Yu (Superman: Birthright, X-Men, Wolverine) in 1977 and Graphic Novelist Nate Powell (March, The Silence of Our Friends, Swallow Me Whole) in 1978.

In 1933 today Milt Caniff’s Dickie Dare strip launched, and Neal Adam’s Ben Casey folded, albeit in 1966. Ten years later Mickey Finn ended, having run continuously since Frank Leonard began it in 1936.

In 2000 we lost Lars Jansson, brother of Tove and continuer of the magnificent Moomin strip (1954 to 1975 in The Evening News and sundry other newspapers). In 2003 controversial Italian comics maestro Guido Crepax (Valentina, Emanuelle, Anita, The Man from Harlem) died, followed three years later by countryman Mario Faustinelli (Asso di Picche, The Adventures of Topo Gigio, Kolosso).