Category: Nostalgia

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Uncanny X-Men Marvel Masterworks volume 1


By Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Bill Mantlo, Dave Cockrum, Bob McLeod, Sam Grainger, Frank Chiaramonte & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3702-3 (TPB) 978-0-7851-1192-4 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless Mutant Masterpieces for all Blockbuster Comics Addicts… 9/10

In the autumn of 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Scott (Cyclops) Summers, Bobby (Iceman) Drake, Warren (Angel) Worthington, Jean (Marvel Girl) Grey and Hank (The Beast) McCoy: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier. The teacher was a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants dubbed Homo Superior; considered by many who knew him as a living saint.

After nearly eight years of eccentrically spectacular adventures the mutant misfits virtually disappeared at the beginning of 1970, during another periodic downturn in superhero comics sales. Just like the closing years of the 1940s, mystery men again faded away as supernatural mysteries and traditional genre themes once more dominated the world’s entertainment fields.

Although their title returned at the end of the year as a cheap reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the ongoing Marvel universe, whilst the bludgeoning Beast was opportunistically transformed into a scary monster to cash in on the horror boom. Then, as sales of the spooky stuff subsequently waned in 1975, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas green-lighted a bold one-shot as part of the company’s line of Giant-Size specials and history was made…

This fabulous compendium collection (available in luxurious hardcover, trade paperback and eBook editions) is perfect for newbies, neophytes and even old lags nervous about reading such splendid yarns on fragile but extremely valuable pulp paper. It celebrates the revival and unstoppable march to market dominance through the exuberant and pivotal early stories: specifically, collectively and cumulatively spanning May 1975 to August 1976 via Giant Size X-Men #1, and issues #94-100 of the definitely “All-New, All-Different” X-Men.

Tracing the reinvigorated merry mutants from young, fresh and delightfully underexposed innovations to the beginnings of their unstoppable ascendancy to ultimate comic book icons, in their own title and through an increasingly broad clutch of guest shots, the epic voyage begins with a classic mystery monster mash from Giant Size X-Men #1.

Len Wein & Dave Cockrum (the much-missed latter then a very red-hot property following his stint reviving DC’s equally eclectic fan-fave super-team Legion of Super-Heroes) detail in ‘Second Genesis!’ how the original squad -all but then-new Avengers recruit The Beast – have been lost in action. With no other choice Xavier is forced to scour Earth and the Marvel Universe for replacements…

To occasional foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire is added a one-shot Incredible Hulk adversary dubbed The Wolverine, but the bulk of time and attention is lavished upon original creations Kurt Wagner, a demonic-seeming German teleporter codenamed Nightcrawler; African weather “goddess” Ororo Monroe – AKA Storm; Russian farm boy Peter Rasputin who turns into a living steel Colossus and bitter, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who is cajoled into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird. The second epic introductory chapter ‘….And Then There Was One!’ reintroduces battered, depleted but unbowed team-leader Cyclops who swiftly drills the newcomers to a semblance of readiness before leading them into primordial danger against monolithic threat ‘Krakoa… the Island That Walks Like a Man!’

Overcoming the phenomenal terror of a rampaging rapacious mutant eco-system and rescuing the “real” team should have led to a quarterly Giant-Size sequel, but so great was fan response that the follow-up adventure was swiftly reworked into a 2-issue tale for a rapidly reconfigured comic book which became a bimonthly home to the new team. X-Men #94 (August 1975) began ‘The Doomsmith Scenario!’ – plotted by editor Wein, scripted by Chris Claremont and with Bob McLeod inking man-on-fire Cockrum – in a smart Armageddon-thriller with a newly pared-down strike-squad deprived of Sunfire and still-recuperating Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, Havok (Scott’s brother Alex) and magnetic Lorna Dane.

The neophytes are called in by Beast to stop criminal terrorist Count Nefaria starting an atomic war. The insidious mastermind has seized control of the US Norad citadel with a gang of artificial superhumans and accidentally escalated a nuclear blackmail scheme into an inescapable countdown to holocaust. Thus, the untrained, unprepared mutants are the only hope of saving the world in epic conclusion ‘Warhunt!’ (inked by Sam Grainger).

One of the new team doesn’t make it back…

X-Men #96 saw Claremont take full charge of the writing (albeit with plotting input from Bill Mantlo) for ‘Night of the Demon!’ Here, guilt-wracked Cyclops blames himself for the loss of his teammate, and in his explosive rage accidentally unleashes a demonic antediluvian horror from Earth’s primordial prehistory for the heroes-in-training to thrash. The infernal Nagarai would periodically return to bedevil mankind, but the biggest innovation in this issue was the introduction of gun-toting biologist/housekeeper Moira MacTaggert and the first inklings of the return of implacable old adversaries…

A long-running, cosmically-widescreen storyline began in #97 with ‘My Brother, My Enemy!’ as Xavier – tormented by visions of interstellar war – tries to take a vacation, just as Havok and Lorna (finally settling on superhero nom de guerre Polaris) attack: apparently willing servants of a mysterious madman using Cyclops’ old undercover alter ego Eric the Red. The devastating conflict segues into a spectacular 3-part yarn, as pitiless robotic killers return under the hate-filled auspices of mutant-phobic Steven Lang (and his mysterious backers in Project Armageddon). The action opens with #98’s ‘Merry Christmas, X-Men… the Sentinels Have Returned!’…

With coordinated attacks capturing semi-retired Marvel Girl plus Wolverine, Banshee and Xavier, Cyclops and the remaining mutant heroes co-opt a space shuttle and storm Lang’s orbital HQ to rescue them in ‘Deathstar Rising!’ (inked by Frank Chiaramonte): another phenomenal all-action episode. The saga concludes on an agonising cliffhanger with the 100th issue anniversary tale. ‘Greater Love Hath No X-Man…’ (with Cockrum inking his own pencils) sees new X-Men apparently battle the original team before overturning Lang’s monstrous schemes forever. However, their catastrophic clash destroys the only means of escape and, as a gigantic solar flare threatens to eradicate the satellite-station, their only chance of survival means certain death for another X-Man…

To Be Continued…

With even greater excitement and innovation to follow in succeeding issues, these superb comics classics revolutionised a moribund genre and led directly to today’s ubiquitous popular cultural landscape where superheroes are as common as cops, cowboys, monsters or rom-com Romeos. They even made it into movies without looking ridiculous…

Extras include an introduction by Claremont; issue covers by Gil Kane, Cockrum, Marie Severin, Sal Buscema & Rich Buckler; Kane’s cover for eventual all-reprint Giant-Size X-Men #2; Cockrum’s designs for The Outsiders (a Legion of Super-Heroes 5-page spin-off pitch rejected by DC); character designs for Phoenix, Colossus & Nightcrawler; the cover to F.O.O.M.  #10 and caricatures of the X-Men creative team by Marie Severin; House ads and original art pages, roughs and covers by Kane & Cockrum completing the perfect primer/introduction to the New X-Men phenomenon.

The immortal epics compiled here are available in numerous formats but for a selection that will survive the continual re-readings of the serious, incurable fan there’s nothing to beat the sturdy and substantial full-colour feel of these Marvellous Masterwork editions.
© 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Jack Staff: Everything Used to Be Black and White


By Paul Grist (Dancing Elephant/Image Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-5824-0335-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

Just like many aging Brits & gits, I forget things and yesterday I missed a birthday. September 9th 1960 should be best known as the natal debut of cartoon paragon Paul Grist. Read this – and absolutely the book and its three sequels – to learn why.

Growing up a comic fan in 1960s -1970s Britain was an oddly schizophrenic situation. Not only were we bombarded and enthralled by our own weirdly eclectic mix of TV stars, Dying Empire jingoism and military bluster, fantastic anti-establishment fantasy, science-fiction and sport yarns – all augmented by the sheerly inspired, madcap anarchy of gag strips that always accompanied such adventure serials in our anthology weeklies – but from 1959 on, we also had unfettered access to exotic worlds and thinly veiled cultural imperialism of US comic books, bulk-imported as ballast in cargo ships and readily available in glorious full colour…

And don’t even get me started on the precious few, but always exotic and classy European wonders like Tintin, Lucky Luke and Asterix, simultaneously filtering into the funnybook gestalt constantly brewing in our fevered little heads. All this pictorial wonderment tended to make us young strips disciples a tad epicurean in our tastes and broad-minded, eccentric synthesists about our influences…

I’ve followed Paul Grist’s work since the small press days of Burglar Bill and St. Swithin’s Day, and his brilliantly refined design sense and incisive visual grasp of character made his interpretations of Grendel, Judge Dredd and other commercial properties excellent examples of why individuality always trumps house style. However, when he writes his own material, he steps into a creator class few can touch, always blending and refining key elements of genre and shared public consciousness into a stunningly inviting new nostalgia. For another perfect example check out what he accomplished with hard-boiled detective archetypes in his splendid Kane (see Kane: Welcome to New Eden among others)…

Grist established his own company, Dancing Elephant Press, to produce the kind of works big-time publishers lacked the imagination to support and in 2002 returned to the childhood delights of superhero comics with the creation of Jack Staff, who began life as a proposed Union Jack story for Marvel.

When they pulled the plug, Grist, unable to let a good idea go and now freed of the usual creative restraints that come from playing with other people’s toys, went wild and produced a purely British take on the superhero phenomenon that is simultaneously charming, gripping and devilishly clever. I usually go into laborious (most would say tedious) detail about the events in these graphic novel reviews but this first Jack Staff collection (gathering the first 12 issues) will be an exception as Grist’s captivating style here (based on and mimicking the anthology format of British Weeklies such as Lion and Valiant) means each issue feels like seven stories in one. As my intention is to convince to buy this book I’m sacrificing detail for brevity… you lucky people.

In a nondescript British city Becky Burdock is a feisty girl reporter for trashy newspaper The World’s Press. Opening gambit ‘Yesterday’s Heroes’ finds her hunting down a serial killer scoop on the “Castletown Slasher”, when she accidentally stumbles onto the identity of Jack Staff (Britain’s greatest costumed hero since WWII, and a man missing since the 1980s).

It happens when local builder John Smith saves her from a collapsing billboard, precipitating memories of wartime international superhero team The Freedom Fighters and a battle against a centuries-old vampire. It also strangely involves British Q Branch (investigating un-rational or weird crimes) and US superhuman Sgt. States, Jack Staff’s opposite number and another seemingly immortal patriotic hero.

Marvel Zombies will rightly identify this tale has echoes of the Roy Thomas & Frank Robbins Baron Blood storyline from 1970s title The Invaders, and if Marvel had been more accommodating this would indeed have been a classy sequel to that saga. However they missed their chance and this magically tongue-in-cheek pastiche is the magnificent result and our gain.

There are still superhumans in this world such as heroic Tom Tom, the Robot Man and villainous Doc Tempest, and even mortal champions like Albert Bramble and his son Harold who battle dark forces as vampire hunters, but even they cannot prevent Becky becoming a victim of the killer stalking the city. John Smith is clearly reluctant to rejoin the masked hero community but events keep pushing him until he uncovers an international conspiracy of sanctioned atrocity that naturally gets hushed up by the powers that be…

These stories are rife with references and cameos from 50 years of popular culture, and not just comics. Us Brits love television and thinly disguised TV icons such as Steptoe and Son, Dad’s Army and The Sweeney ferociously jostle alongside purely comic stars such as Captain America and Dr. Strange and members of our own uniquely bizarre periodical pantheon including Robot Archie, Zip Nolan, Kelly’s Eye, Jason Hyde, Adam Eterno and even relatively real people such as Alan Moore and Neal Gaiman.

A far larger part is played by incomparable poacher turned gamekeeper The Spider in second story-arc ‘Secrets, Shadows and the Spider!’ as things go quirkily cosmic after Becky Burdock, Vampire Reporter and the increasingly intriguing Q cops stumble into real X Files territory and we get some welcome background into recent history when a 1960s super-criminal starts stealing again.

Or does he? The Spider never shot anybody before…

The mystery is cleared up when elderly Alfred Chinard (it’s a partial anagram – work it out…) hires builder John Smith and springs a trap on his old foe before they notionally team up to stop the real thief. Of course, it doesn’t really go Jack’s way and he’s literally left holding the bag. After a full-length Q adventure ‘Quotations’ involving a meta-fictional serial killer, ‘Out of Time’ rounds out the book (and don’t forget there are three sequels…).

Here, Victorian showman and escapologist Charlie Raven (a canny reworking of period masterpiece Janus Stark) enters the picture, encountering a Dorian Gray-like mystery and losing a battle to a foe who consumes time itself. As a result, charismatic Raven endures an Adam Adamant moment and ends up in 21st century Castletown, where his enemy is still predating the human populace. Also causing trouble is Ben Kulmer – the invisible bandit known as The Claw (and lovingly homaging Ken Bulmer, Tom Tully & Jesús Blasco’s astounding antihero The Steel Claw).

When that nice Mr. Chinard turns up again the stage is set for a spectacular time-rending chronal clash involving the entire expansive cast that is spectacular, boldly bewildering and superbly satisfying.

The stark yet inviting monochrome design, refined, honed and pared down to minimalist approachability has an inescapable feeling of Europe about it. If ever anyone was to create a new TinTin adventure, Grist would be the ideal choice to draw it. Not because he draws like Hergé, but because he knows his craft as well as Hergé did. However, I’m deliriously happy that he has so brilliantly assimilated the essences of cherished keystones of my beloved comics-consuming past and given them such a vital and compelling fresh lease of life.

Thrilling, funny, fabulous. Buy this Book!
™ & © Paul Grist. All rights reserved.

Today in 1952 writer Gerry Conway was born, as was Alison Bechdel in 1960. We’ve done some but hardly all of their many works and we’ll be adding to that list soon.

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Blondie: The Bumstead Family History/Blondie: The Complete Bumstead Family History


By Dean Young, and Melina Ryzik (Thomas Nelson/Rutledge Hill Press, U.S.)
ISBN: 978-1-4016-0322-9 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

Normally I leave newspaper strip reviews for a weekend, but this is one birthday we just can’t miss. Please remember, just because you don’t read something don’t mean it ain’t popular…

Like Dagwood’s legendary sarnies, Bumstead family functions go on forever. Yesterday we learned how Chic Young’s strip Blondie began on September 8th 1930 and just kept going. The feature was inherited and carried on in 1973 by his family, chiefly son Dean with a select group of collaborators. Dean considers himself the guardian of a legacy as much as continuer of a phenomenon. In 2007, after the 75th anniversary, commemorative curated celebration Blondie: the Bumstead Family History was released to mark the occasion, and with the feature still going strong this remastered (even enjoying fancy-schmancy External hyperlinks, no less!) “Complete” edition invites a look at what he’s done to keep things fresh as much as safeguard generations of readers’ fond memories.

Combining short lavishly illustrated articles with a wealth of published strips – each attached to general topics – the raucous revery begins with ‘Chapter One: The Bumstead Family Album’, incorporating historical overviews and the traced evolutions of ‘Blondie’ and eternal, often inanimate inamorata ‘Dagwood’; firstborn son/current teen icon ‘Alexander’ (who first appeared on April 15th 1934) and his sister ‘Cookie’ who Dagwood feels is far too popular with boys). Faithful, longsuffering house mutt ‘Daisy’ gets her own section, as does abusive Boss/archnemesis ‘Mr. Dithers’, next-door-neighbours ‘The Woodleys’ (AKA Herb & Tootsie), long-suffering mailman ‘Mr. Beasley’ and cheeky, always underfoot kid/voice of a fresh generation ‘Elmo Tuttle’…

The early days of the unshakable relationship are scrutinised in ‘Chapter Two: Getting Married’, tracing love’s rocky road through turbulent fast-changing times and a hugely successful publicity gimmick of young Dagwood going on extended hunger strike to force his adamant parents to allow him to wed! A massive publicity coup, the convoluted month-long storyline led to rowdy nuptials in February 1933 and is swiftly and sensibly followed by chapters on ‘Family Life’, as the couple become a nuclear unit, demographic and breadwinning paean to domesticity as ‘Dagwood at Work’ reveals what a decent man endures to bring home the bacon – and pickles and bratwurst and olives and pastrami and turkey and chicken, and salmon and lettuce and pumpernickel and lox and…

Courting middle American controversy, not to say media attention and a little homemaker wrath, ‘Blondie Goes to Work’ saw the tireless and capable stay-at-home mom and neighbour Tootsie ultimately turn those life skills into joyously fulfilling independence by starting their own catering business. This was only in 1991 and this pic-packed chapter also deals with the ridiculous amounts of outrage the world-shaking leap into the 20th century seemed to trigger in the heartland. Naturally, Dagwood was completely supportive: who else could test the new dishes and delights the girls kept inventing…

‘Chapter Six: Favourite Strips’ reviews some of the countless gags to have riffed on the series’ core themes – eating, sleeping, making and living and eating – whilst focussing on Dean Young’s constant efforts to keep the strips relevant and contemporary whilst the major industry event that evolved out of ‘The 75th Anniversary’ is described in detail. To celebrate the milestone in 2005, Dean and King Features organised a massive crossover that included VIPs like President Bush and other real-world notables as well as most of the nation’s major strips and creators wishing the happy couple all the best.

If you read Beetle Baily, Hagar the Horrible, Garfield, Rose is Rose, Wizard of Id, Dick Tracy, B.C., Mother Goose & Grimm, Family Circus, Shoe, Hi & Lois, Gasoline Alley, Sally Forth, Snuffy Smith, Buckles, Baby Blues, Zits, Mutts, Curtis, Marvin, For Better or Worse, Born Loser, Dennis the Menace (theirs not ours), Cathy, Thick Thin or Bizarro you were invited and there on the day. Disney alumni and single panel editorial cartoonists got in on it and for one moment all of America enjoyed a taste of Dagwood. Most of those strips are here as well as plenty from the months-long build up and aftermath in the actual Blondie feature.

This super memoriam concludes with a look beyond the panels as ‘Forever Young’ explores the life and achievements of Murat Bernard Young, his wife and model/inspiration Athel Lindorff née Young, Dean and sister Jeanne and the many notables who pitched in and/or assisted on Blondie’s production: Alex and Jim Raymond, Stan Drake, Mike Gersher, Ray McGill, Denis LeBrun, and John Marhall & Frank Cummings

Also included in this inescapably family function are original art and sketches, dozens of candid family portraits and photos, commentary and so, so many cartoons to wallow in. If you want a simple satisfying Good Read, this is for you your kids and your grannie, but don’t forget to bring the sandwiches… and not small ones neither…
© King Features Syndicate, Inc. 2007.

Today in 1958, Jack Kirby’s Sky Masters of the Space Force newspaper strip launched.

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Star Trek: Gold Key Archives volume 1


By Dick Wood, Nevio Zaccara, Alfredo Giolitti & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-922-4 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Star Trek debuted on American televisions on September 8th 1966 and ran until June 3rd 1969: three seasons comprising 79 episodes. A moderate success, it only really became popular after going into syndication, running constantly throughout the 1970s. It was also sold all over the world, popping up seemingly everywhere and developing quite a devoted fanbase.

Being a third world country, Britain didn’t see the show until July 12th 1969 during the rocket fever surrounding the Apollo moon landings, when BBC One screened “Where No Man Has Gone Before” in black-&-white before proceeding to broadcast the rest of the series in the wrong order. “Arena” was the first episode screened in colour (November 15th 1969), but viewers didn’t care. We were all hooked anyway and many of the show’s catchphrases – many erroneous and some entirely fictitious – quickly entered the popular lexicon of the nation.

The series spawned a licensed, British-originated comic strip which ran in Joe 90, TV21 and TV21 and Valiant from the late 1960s into the 1970s. These have also been collected and I’ll get to them in the fullness of time and space.

In the USA, although there was some merchandising, things were a little less enthusiastically embraced. Even though there was a comic book – from “properties magnate” Gold Key and running for almost a decade after the show’s cancellation – authenticity at the start wasn’t really a watchword. Nor was immediacy or urgency an issue. In fact, only six issues were released during the show’s entire three-season run. Published between July 1967 and December 1968, they are all gathered in this first archive Star Trek…

Printing giant Whitman Publishing had been producing their own books and comics for decades through their Dell and Gold Key imprints, rivalling and often surpassing DC and Timely/Marvel at the height of their powers in sales and popularity. Famously Whitman never capitulated to the wave of anti-comics hysteria resulting in the crippling self-censorship of the 1950s and Dell Comics never displayed a Comics Code Authority symbol on their covers.

They never needed to: their canny blend of media and entertainment licensed titles were always produced with a family market in mind and the creative staff took their editorial stance from the mores of the filmic Hayes Code and the burgeoning television industry.

Just like the big and little screen, the product enticed but never shocked and kept contentious social issues implicit instead of tacit. It was a case of “violence and murder are fine, but never titillate”…

Moreover, the vast majority of their adventure comics’ covers were high quality photos or paintings – adding a stunning degree of veracity and verisimilitude to even the most outlandish of concepts for us wide-eyed waifs in need of awesome entertainment. The company seemed the only logical choice for a licensed comic book, and to be honest, these stories are cracking space opera yarns, even if they occupy an odd position in the hearts of older screen-dominant fans. In the UK, distribution of US comics was haphazard at best, but Gold Key Trek yarns were reprinted in our beloved and trusted hardback Christmas annuals. Nevertheless, the earliest ones bore little resemblance to what we’d seen on TV.

Our little minds were perplexed and we did wonder, but as the tales offered plenty of action and big sci fi concepts we just enjoyed them anyway.

Original British Star Trek yarns came in serialised comic-strip form, superbly illustrated and bearing a close resemblance to the source material. The feature only appeared as 2 or 3-page instalments in weekly anthologies, but was at least instantly familiar to TV viewers.

I discovered the answer to the jarring discrepancy, years later. Apparently scripter Dick Wood (a veteran writer who had worked on hundreds of series from Batman and the original Daredevil to Crime Does Not Pay and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom) had not seen the show when commissioned to write the comic book iteration, and both he and Italian artists Nevio Zaccara – and latterly Alberto Giolitti – received only the briefest of outlines and scant reference materials from the show’s producers. They were working almost in the dark…

When you read these stories, you’ll see some strange sights and apparent contradictions to Trek canon lore, but they were all derived from sensible assumptions by creators doing the very best with what meagre information they had. If you’re likely to have your nostalgic fun spoiled by wrong-coloured shirts or Lasers rather than Phasers, think alternate universe or read something else. Ultimately, you are the only one missing out…

That’s enough unnecessary apologising. These splendidly conceived all-ages tales don’t deserve or need it, and even the TV wellspring was a constantly developing work-in-progress, as fan and occasional Trek scripter Tony Isabella reveals in his Introduction ‘These Are the Voyages…’

Accompanied by the stunning photo-collage covers and endpapers (an expensive rarity at the time outside Gold Key titles) the quirky collation of cosmic questing commences with ‘The Planet of No Return’ (by Wood & Zaccaria, from #1, July 1967) as the Enterprise enters a region of space oddly devoid of life and encounters predatory spores from a planet designated Kelly-Green. This is a world of horror where vegetative life contaminates and transforms flesh whilst mindlessly seeking to constantly consume and conquer. After the survivors of the landing party escape deadly doom and return to the safety of space, there is only one course of action Captain Kirk can take…

‘The Devil’s Isle of Space’ was released with a March 1968 cover-date and found the ever-advancing Enterprise trapped in a space-wide electronic net. The technology was part of a system used by an alien race to pen death-row criminals on asteroids, where they would be (eventually) executed in a truly barbarous manner. Sadly, it’s hard not to interfere in a sovereign culture’s private affairs when the doomed criminals hold Federation citizens hostage and want Kirk to hand his ship over to them…

Bombastic. beguiling and spectacular, ‘Invasion of the City Builders’ (#3, December 1968) saw legendary Alberto Giolitti take the artistic reigns. Prolific, gifted and truly international, his work and the studio he founded produced a wealth of material for three continents; everything from Le Avventure di Italo Nurago, Tarzan, The Phantom, Mandrake, Flash Gordon, Zorro, Cisco Kid, Turok, Gunsmoke, King Kong, Cinque anni dopo, Tex Willer and dozens more. In England, the Giolitti effect enhanced many magazines and age ranges; everything from Flame of the Forest in Lion to Enchanted Isle in Tammy. His textural adeptness and gritty line-work added visual terseness and tension to the mix, as seen in his first outing here, as Enterprise crewmembers land on a planet where automated machines originally programmed to build new homes and roads have been out of control for a century. Forcing the organic population to the edge of extinction, the mechs build cities no one can live in over the soil they need to grow food. The machines seem utterly indestructible, but Mr. Spock has an idea…

Social commentary gave way to action and suspense when ‘The Peril of Planet Quick Change’ (June 1969) finds the explorers investigating a world of chimerical geological instability, only to see Spock possessed by beings made of light. These creatures use him to finally stabilise their unruly world, but once the crisis is averted, one of the luminous spirits refuses to exit the Vulcan and plans to make the body its own…

‘The Ghost Planet’ (September 1969) was fast approaching parity with the TV incarnation as Enterprise reaches a world ravaged by radiation rings. Its twin rulers are eager for the star men’s help in removing the rings, but don’t want them hanging around to help rebuild the devastated civilisation. A little quiet investigation reveals that most of the carnage is due to eternal warfare which the devious despots plan to resume as soon as the Federation ship destroys the radiation rings and leaves…

Wrapping up this initial TV treasure-trove is ‘When Planets Collide’ (December 1969): a classic conundrum involving two runaway worlds inexorably drawn to each other and mutual destruction. What might have been a simple observable astronomical event becomes fraught with peril when the Enterprise’s crew discover civilisations within each world: both of which would rather die than evacuate their ancient homes…

With time running out and lives at stake there’s only one incredible chance to save both worlds, but it will take all Spock’s brains and Kirk’s piloting skill to avert cosmic catastrophe…

Bold, expansive and epic, these are great stories to delight young and old alike and well worth making time and space for. Why not explore lost worlds and sagas of guaranteed merit via the comics wayback machine? You know the one: it’s the comic shop located on the Edge of Forever?

® and © 2014 CBS Studios, Inc. Star Trek and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Today Finnish cartoonist Lars Jansson was born today in 1926. You can see his work in Moomin Volume 9.

Today in 1937, Archie Goodwin was born: a gentle genius and still the Nicest Man in Comics, of whom you can learn more and appreciate his subtle mastery by checking Tales of the Batman: Archie Goodwin.

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Blondie and Dagwood’s America or Blondie and Dagwood


By Dean Young & Rick Marschall (Harper & Row/Arthur Barker Limited)
ISBN: 978-0-21316-830-8 (Arthur Barker UK TPB) 978-0-06090-908-6 (Harper & Row US)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of one of the most popular comic strips of all time …and probably one you thought had long ended, if indeed you thought of it at all.

For decades Blondie was the most popular – for which read most commercially successful – newspaper strip in the world. Way back in 2005, the former Blondie Boopadoop and her hapless husband Dagwood Bumstead celebrated 75 years of publication are still going strong today, both in print and online.

For such a remarkable comics mainstay, there are precious few celebratory collections and commemorations, so we went even way-er back (to 1981) to focus on this fabulously inclusive authoritative anniversary compilation. Here, I’m starting early in my campaign to commemorate their 95th anniversary – that’s tomorrow, right? – by agitating for its revision and re-release.

The Blondie strip was created by Murat Bernard “Chic” Young and promoted/distributed by King Features Syndicate. It launched on September 8th 1930, as the result of a startling game of one-upmanship between feisty cartoonist Young and King’s general manager Joe Connolly. Already a roaring success and up-&-comer due to his “Flapper” strip Beautiful Bab, Young had followed up with even bigger smash hit Dumb Dora in 1924.

He was on a fast track to stardom when the stock market crash wiped out his savings in 1929. Broke and with a new bride, he wanted a new contract for a new feature that he owned and controlled. Understandably, Management had other ideas…

However, when the artist packed up and took ship for Paris, Connelly caved and Blondie was born. She was an instant print sensation, and soon spawned 28 movies starring Penny Singleton & Arthur Lake between 1938 and 1950. They also voiced a popular radio show version (1939 – 1950) and three TV series… in 1954, 1958 and 1968-69. The Bumstead couple’s comic book adventures – reprint and new stuff – have come courtesy of a variety of publishers including Ace, Big Little Books, Harvey, King & Charlton Comics, running in place from 1936 to 1976. There was all the other usual merchandising stuff too…

In the earliest days tension was high and gag ideas limitless as rich but socially inept Dagwood Bumstead’s wealthy family tried to stop their idiot scion from marrying a low, common blonde, but in 1933, with the voracious lovestruck swain disinherited but happy, the lovers finally wed and the true magic of this everyday domestic comedy began.

Chic Young drew Blondie until his death in 1973, when his son Dean took over. The inheritor worked with many artists on the strip, including Alex Raymond and his brother Jim, Mike Gersher, Stan Drake, Denis Lebrun and John Marshall. Through it all, Blondie remained uncannily popular, appearing in more than 2,300 newspapers across 55 countries and translated into 35 languages: an audience of 290 million. In 1948 Chic Young won the Reuben Award for the strip and in 1995 the feature was honoured as one of 20 selected as part of the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative US Postage Stamps.

This still-available UK paperback edition reprints hundreds of the best strips, backed up by wonderfully chatty, informative text-pieces from the junior Young and historian Rick Marschall: offering an enchanting treat for all the family. I don’t know how easy this book is to find and of course other collections are available (most notably 2007’s Blondie: the Complete Family History, published by Thomas Nelson- ISBN-13: 978-1-40160-322-9) but I’ve never found one that featured as broad a spread of strips from this comic landmark’s incredibly long history. Good hunting, and don’t forget to bring a sandwich… and not a small one neither…

The book was initially published in the US as Blondie & Dagwood’s America, which is also still easy to get if you want…
© 1981 King Features Syndicate Inc. World Rights Reserved.

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Forever Nuts: The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff (Classic Screwball Strips)


By Bud Fisher, edited by Jeffrey Lindenblatt (NBM)
ISBN 13: 978-1-56163-502-3 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Today in 1954, Bud Fisher died. His landmark strip shaped the way cartoon humour worked for decades. Eerily, on the same day in 1955, Joe Palooka creator Ham Fisher (no relation), also died. There are even fewer collections of his work in print but one day we’ll get to what there is…

Here’s another wonderful historical treat that’s tragically lost to public gaze, once a welcome addition to a growing pool of classic strips that seemed to finally gain fan traction and be collected into accessible forms for posterity and enjoyment. Bud Fisher’s Mutt & Jeff is arguably the first comic strip to employ day to day carried-over continuity rather than individual escapades on a per diem basis.

Harry Conway “Bud” Fisher began the strip A. Mutt in 1907 as a topical topper added to the racing pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. The gimmick was to have his cartoon wastrel bet on the runners and riders of that day’s paper, with the results – good or bad – forming the bones of the next day’s strip.

When Fisher’s wittily funny side hustle took off – first at the more cosmopolitan San Francisco Examiner and then into national syndication – such a limited, local maguffin was impossible for a strip now seen all across the continent. Thus a vaudeville style comedy partner and more general topics were added to become the norm. The premise of two ordinary, average – if dumb – Joes remained the strip’s basis until it ultimately folded in 1983.

Although of undoubted historical value, the slapstick roots of these everyman characters meant that gags were its currency, and the sensibilities employed – and appealed to – were often harsh, sexist, and very often quite racist by today’s standards.

Or were they?

Undoubtedly the physical depiction of Negro, Mexican, British, French, Turkish and so many other non-W.A.S.P. Americans never deviated from the graphically stereotypical. Certainly young women were always sexy and older women were grim battle axes, whilst rich people were always fat. But I suspect that that more comedic social shorthand as wilful malice aforethought.

Certainly for every gag that portrayed stupid, slow or cowardly black people there was another when the stereotype outwitted the protagonist. For every dim blonde or dumb Hausfrau there was a female sharpie who made the boys into the goats. Could it be Fisher was just a child of his time, knew his audience and was just going for the laugh wherever it was with no thought of political or social relevance?

Perhaps Fisher or his innumerable and often anonymous ‘ghosts’ (among whom Ed Mack and latterly Al Smith were most prominent) weren’t as evolved as us?

Fisher was a notoriously “absentee” creator who regularly missed deadlines and had a string of substitutes to produce the strip for him once he became comics’ first millionaire. Occasionally he would even suspend the strip entirely. Yet the feature was never discarded by client newspapers who felt it mirrored their readerships. It was just that popular.

This volume assembles strips from 1909-1913 and is certainly not without flaws. Often the heroes are pretty unlikable when they aren’t being winningly daft or actually funny. There are moments of pure racism and sexism, but also uncharacteristic challenges to that woeful status quo of acceptable stereotypes.

One minor technical moan: there’s some unfortunate editing and some strips are repeated, and it’s not that some gags are so old you can’t tell them apart…

I know that last charge isn’t true. Despite the implications of the somewhat apologist introduction from historian Allen Holtz, Mutt & Jeff was a huge multimedia hit for nearly 80 years and they are still household names today. Moreover, read in context and on their own terms, they are still brilliantly hilarious slapstick gag strips. If you’re prepared to read with an open mind you might be pleasantly surprised.
No © invoked. Any helpful suggestions?

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Superboy: A Celebration of 75 Years


By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Bill Finger, Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein, Jim Shooter, Paul Levitz, Gerry Conway, Elliot S! Maggin, Geoff Johns, Karl Kesel, Brian Michael Bendis, Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, John Sikela, Curt Swan, Al Plastino, George Papp, James Sherman, Joe Staton, Phil Jimenez, Jerry Ordway, George Pérez, Ivan Reis, Tom Grummett, Dusty Abell, Matthew Clark, Francis Manapul, Viktor Bogdanovic, Jonathan Glapion & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-9951-4 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Superman was the initiating spark that created the superhero genre. Without him we would have no modern gods to worship. However, within a decade of his launch, creators Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster had evolved a revised a concept nearly as powerful and persistent: the sheer delight of a child no adult could dominate or control…

Ever-innovating DC’s Universe has hosted many key entertainment concepts that have done much to bring about the vibrant comics industry of today. This stunning compilation – part of a series reintroducing and exploiting the comics pedigree of veteran DC icons and concepts – is available in hardback and digital formats and offers an all-too-brief sequence of snapshots detailing how one of the most beguiling came to be, and be and be again.

Gathering material from More Fun Comics #101; Superboy #10, 89; Adventure Comics #210, 247, 271, 369-370; DC Comics Presents #87; Infinite Crisis #6; Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #233, 259; Adventures of Superman #501; Superboy (volume 2) #59; Teen Titans (vol. 3) #24, Adventure Comics (vol. 2) #2; Young Justice (vol. 3) #3 and Superman (vol. 4) #6, 10-11, it reintroduces the many heroes – and villains – who have earned the soubriquet of the Boy of Steel,. Moreover, the landmark moments are all preceded by brief critical analyses by Karl Kesel, outlining the significant stages in their development.

It begins with Part I – 1945-1961: A Boy and His Dog…

After the Man of Tomorrow made his mark as Earth’s premier champion, his originators took a long look and reasoned that a different tone could offer a fresh look. What would it be like for a fun-loving lad who could do literally anything?

The answer came in More Fun Comics #101 (cover-dated January/February 1945 but on sale from November 18th 1944) wherein Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster shared ‘The Origin of Superboy!’ This fleshed out fabled and fabulous doomed Krypton and baby Kal-El’s flight: thereby giving him accessible foster parents and a childhood full of fun and incident…

The experiment was a monster hit. The lad swiftly claimed the lead slot of Adventure Comics and – in 1949 – his own title, living a life locked 20 years behind his adult counterpart. Cover-dated October 1950, Superboy #10 originated ‘The Girl in Superboy’s Life’, with Bill Finger & John Sikela introducing Smallville newcomer Lana Lang, who instantly sees resemblances between Clark Kent and the Boy of Steel and sets out to confirm her suspicions…

Despite battling crooks, monsters, aliens, scandal and the girl next door, Superboy enjoyed a charmed and wonderful life which only got better in Adventure Comics #210 (March 1955), as Otto Binder, Curt Swan & Sy Barry introduced ‘The Super-Dog from Krypton!’ Although waywardly mischievous and dangerously playful, Krypto heralded a wave of survivors from the dead world and made the Kid From Krypton feel less lonely and unique. Every boy needs a dog…

The next tale is a certified landmark. Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) was at the cusp of the Silver Age costumed character revival, when Otto Binder & Al Plastino introduced a concept that would reshape comics fandom: ‘The Legion of Super-Heroes!’ The many-handed mob of juvenile universe-savers debuted in a Superboy tale wherein three mysterious kids invited the Smallville Sensation to the future to join a team of metahuman champions inspired by his historic feats. The throwaway concept inflamed public imagination and after a slew of further appearances throughout Superman Family titles, the LSH eventually took over Superboy’s lead spot in Adventure for their own far-flung, quirkily future-set escapades, with the Caped Kryptonian reduced to one of the crowd…

Before then, though, Adventure Comics #271 (April 1960) revealed ‘How Luthor Met Superboy!’ as Siegel & Plastino united to depict how teenaged scientist Lex Luthor and Superboy became fast friends, before the genius became deranged after a laboratory fire extinguished by the Boy of Steel caused Lex to lose his hair. Enraged beyond limit, the youthful inventor turned his talents to crime, evil and vengeance…

Robert Bernstein & George Papp introduced ‘Superboy’s Big Brother!’ in Superboy #89 (June 1961) in which an amnesiac, super-powered space traveller crashes in Smallville, speaking Kryptonese and carrying star-maps written by the Boy of Steel’s long-dead father Jor-El…

Jubilant, baffled and suspicious in equal amounts, Superboy eventually, tragically discovers ‘The Secret of Mon-El’ by accidentally exposing the stranger to a lingering, inexorable death, before desperately providing critical life-support by depositing the dying alien in the Phantom Zone until a cure could be found.

Anybody who regularly reads these reviews know how crotchety and hard-to-please I can be. Brace yourself…

The following section – Part II – 1968-1980: The Space Age – concentrates on Superboy’s Legion career. That’s not the problem because those are great stories, well deserving of their own book, but they’re wasted here while the Boy of Steel’s adventures from this period are completely neglected. That’s work by the likes of Frank Robbins, Binder, Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, Bob Brown, Wally Wood and others we don’t get to see. Poor editorial decision, that…

Calm again, so let’s see how the Boy of Tomorrow fares one thousand years from now. During this period the youthful, generally fun-loving and carefree Club of Champions peaked; having only just evolved into a dedicated and driven dramatic action series starring a grittily realistic combat force in constant, galaxy-threatening peril. Although now an overwhelming force of valiant warriors ready and willing to pay the ultimate price for their courage and dedication, science itself, science fiction and costumed crusaders all increasingly struggled against a global resurgence in spiritual questioning and supernatural fiction…

The main architect of the transformation was teenaged sensation Jim Shooter, whose Legion of Super-Heroes scripts and layouts (generally finished and pencilled by the astoundingly talented and understated Curt Swan) made the series accessible to a generation of fans growing up with their heads in the Future. Ultimately, however, as tastes and fashions shifted, the series was unceremoniously ousted from its ancestral home and full-length adventures to become a truncated back-up feature in Action Comics. Typically, that shift occurred just as the stories were getting really, really good and truly mature…

Here, tense suspense begins with Adventure Comics #369’s (June 1968) and ‘Mordru the Merciless!’ (Shooter, Swan & Jack Abel) as the Legion are attacked by their most powerful enemy, a nigh-omnipotent sorcerer the entire assemblage only narrowly defeated once before.

A sneak attack shatters the team and only four escape, using a time bubble to flee to the remote and archaic time-period where Superboy lived. With him come Mon-El (freed from the Phantom Zone after 1,000 years to become a Legion stalwart), Shadow Lass and Duo Damsel – the last remnants of a once-unbeatable team.

Mordru’s magic is stronger, though, and even the time-barrier cannot daunt him…

Disguised as mere mortals, the fugitive Legionnaires’ courage shines through. When petty gangsters take over Smallville, the teen heroes quash the parochial plunderers and opt to return to the 30th century and confront Mordru, only to discover he’s found them first. The saga concludes in #370 with ‘The Devil’s Jury!’ wherein the kids escape and hide in plain sight by temporarily wiping their own memories to thwart the Dark Lord’s probes. Against appalling odds and with only Clark’s best friend Pete Ross and Insect Queen Lana Lang to aid them, the heroes’ doomed last stand only succeeds because Mordru’s overbearing arrogance causes his own downfall. Then, when the exhausted fugitives got back to the future, they joyously learn Dream Girl and benign sorceress White Witch have undone the deluded Dark Lord’s worst atrocities…

Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and overwritten, retconned and rebooted over and over again to comply with editorial diktat and popular fashion. After disappearing from the newsstands, the team returned as Guests in Superboy, before eventually taking over the title. Deju Vu, much?

November 1977’s Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #233 sees the Krypton Kid join his teammates to thwart ‘The Infinite Man Who Conquered the Legion!’: an extra-long blockbuster battle by Paul Levitz, James Sherman & Bob Wiacek, after which issue #259 (January 1980) drops Superboy and the… to become Legion of Super-Heroes #259, subsequently ending an era. ‘Psycho War!’ by Gerry Conway, Joe Staton & Dave Hunt then sees the time-lost teen targeted by a deranged war veteran using futuristic trauma weapons, forcing his legion chums to mindwipe Kal-El and return him to his original time forever…

In the mid-1980s, DC’s editorial hierarchy felt their vast 50-year continuity was stopping them winning new readers. The solution was a colossal braided-mega series to streamline, redefine and even add new characters to the mix.

The worlds-shattering, reality-altering bombast of Crisis on Infinite Earths resulted in such spectacular commercial success, those movers-&-shakers must have felt more than justified in revamping a number of their hoariest icons for their next 50 years of publishing. As well as Superman, Flash, & Wonder Woman, many moribund and directionless titles were reconsidered for a radical revision. It didn’t all go to plan…

The background on a new Boy of Steel is covered in the essay and stories comprising Part III 1985-2006: Dark Reflection, opening with twinned tales from DC Comics Presents #87 (November 1985) by Elliot S! Maggin, Swan & Al Williamson. In ‘Year of the Comet’ Superman of Earth-1 meets and mentors teen Clark from an alternate world: one previously devoid of superheroes and alien invaders, after which ‘The Origin of Superboy-Prime’ exposes crucial differences that would make Earth Prime’s Last Son of Krypton so memorable. Events culminated in ‘Touchdown’ by Geoff Johns, Phil Jimenez, Jerry Ordway, George Pérez, Ivan Reis, inkers Andy Lanning, Oclair Albert Marc Campos, Drew Geraci, Sean Parsons, Norm Rapmund & Art Thibert, from #6 of Infinite Crisis (May 2006). Teen Clark had evolved into Superboy-Prime: one of the most sadistic, unstoppable monsters in DCU history… but here he met his end battling another kid calling himself Superboy.

That hero gets his own out-of-chronology section: Part IV 1993-2019: The New Kid detailing how he grew out of another different publishing landmark. Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superman was stripped-down and pared back to basics, grittily re-imagined by John Byrne, and marvellously built upon by a succession of immensely talented comics craftsmen, resulted in some genuine comics classics. Most significant was a 3-pronged story-arc which saw the martyrdom, loss, replacement and inevitable resurrection of the World’s Greatest Superhero in a stellar saga which broke all records and proved that a jaded general public still cared about the venerable, veteran icon of Truth, Justice and the American Way.

The dramatic events also provided a spectacular springboard for a resurgent burst of new characters who revitalised and reinvigorated more than one ailing franchise over the next decade, all exploding from braided mega-saga “Reign of the Supermen” which introduced a quartet of heroes each claiming the mantle of Superman (Don’t panic: the Real Deal Man of Steel returned too!).

The final contender for the S-shield cropped up in Adventures of Superman #501. ‘…When He Was a Boy!’ (by Kesel, Tom Grummett & Doug Hazlewood) reveals the secret history of a brash, cocky kid wearing an adaptation of the Man of Tomorrow’s outfit and claiming to be the deceased hero’s clone, recently escaped from top secret bio-factory Cadmus. After alienating everybody at the Daily Planet, the horny, inexperienced juvenile latches onto ambitious young journalist Tana Moon and falls under the spell of corrupt media mogul Vinnie Edge. Soon the kid is fighting crime live on TV to boost ratings…

Blending fast action with smart sassy humour, the clone Superboy was a breakout hit that ran for years, even infiltrating the established Superman Family. A key moment came in Superboy (volume 2) #59 by Kesel, Dusty Abell, Dexter Vines as a virtual ‘Mission to Krypton’ results in the clone finally earning a family name as Kon-El of the House of El…

In the build-up to DC’s Infinite Crisis crossover event, many long-running story-threads were pulled together ready for the big bang. Crafted by Geoff Johns, Matthew Clark & Art Thibert, ‘The Insiders Part 1’ (Teen Titans #24, July 2005) reveals how Kon-El’s belief that he was Superman’s clone is shattered after learning that half of his DNA comes courtesy of Luthor. Just as the traumatised kid is about to share the revelation with his Teen Titan team-mates, Lex activates deep psychological programming to override Superboy’s consciousness and make him evil and murderous…

From November 2009, ‘The Boy of Steel Part Two’ (Adventure Comics vol 2 #2, by Johns & Francis Manapul) offers a gentler moment as Kon-El, now living in Smallville as Conner Kent, enjoys a potentially romantic interlude with team mate Wonder Girl before jumping to May 2019 and ‘Seven Crises Part Three’ from Young Justice volume 3 #3, by Brian Michael Bendis, Patrick Gleason, Viktor Bogdanovic & Jonathan Glapion. Having skipped two universe-altering events (Flashpoint and Rebirth) the formerly erased-from-continuity Impulse has found old friend Conner living in a mystic realm as part of his quest to put his old band back together. It’s fast, furious, heart-warming and hilarious. You should really get all of this tale in its own compilation – Young Justice: Gemworld – even before I review it next year…

Wrapping up this saunter in Super-kids’ shoes is the freshest take on the concept in decades. Part V 2016 and Beyond: Like Father, Like Son offers a too short glimpse at Jon Kent, the child of Superman and Lois Lane, inserted into mainstream continuity after the New 52 Superman died. If this is making your brain hurt, don’t fret. It’s only unnecessary background for some truly exemplary comics yarns…

Superman (volume 4) #6, 10, 11 are by Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Mick Gray, Mark Morales & Christian Alamy, and firstly depict the ‘Son of Superman’ helping Dad defeat evil Kryptonian mechanoid The Eradicator before settling into outrageous action comedy beside, with and frequently against Damian Wayne: son of Bruce and the latest, most psychotic Robin yet. ‘In the Name of the Father: World’s Smallest Parts One and Two’ pits the junior odd couple against aliens, monsters and girls, but mostly each other. It’s unmissable stuff and you should expect me to wax delirious about the new Super Sons in the New Year…

Adding immeasurably to the wonderment is a superb gallery of covers by Swan with Stan Kaye & Abel, Neal Adams, Mike Grell, Dick Giordano, Eduardo Barreto, Jim Lee & Sandra Hope, Grummett, Kesel & Hazlewood, Mike McKone & Marlo Alquiza, Manapul, Doug Mahnke & Wil Quintana & Gleason with Alejandro Sanchez, Gray & John Kalisz.

Superboy has a long, proud history of shaking things up and providing off-kilter fun to offset the general angst level of superhero storytelling. Even with my petty caveats, this compelling primer of snapshots is staggeringly entertaining and a monolithic testament to the inestimable value of a strong core concept matured over decades of innovation.
© 1960, 1964, 1969, 1977, 1982, 1984, 1987, 1997, 2000, 2006, 2005, 2011, 2018, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1945 Go Nagai was born. You can meet him in our truly ancient review of Mazinger.

In 1956 Alex Raymond died today. We covered Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo volume 1: Sundays 1934-1937 recently, but this master also triumphed with Secret Agent X-9, Jungle Jim, Blondie and Rip Kirby.

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The Complete Crumb Comics volumes 1 & 2: The Early Years of Bitter Struggle & Some More Early Years of Bitter Struggle


By Robert Crumb and Charles Crumb (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-0-93019-343-0 (HB vol 1) 978-0-93019-362-8 (TPB vol 1)

ISBN: 978-0-93019-373-7(HB vol 2) 978-0-93019-362-1 (TPB vol 2)

These books employ Discriminatory Content for comedic and dramatic effect.

Immensely divisive but a key figure in the evolution of comics as an art form, Robert Crumb was born today 81 years ago. He is a unique creative force in the world of cartooning with as many detractors as devotees. His uncompromising, excoriating, neurotic introspections, pictorial rants and invectives unceasingly picked away at societal scabs and peeked behind forbidden curtains for his own benefit, but he has always happily shared his unwholesome discoveries with anybody who takes the time to look. Last time I looked, he’s still going strong…

In 1987 Fantagraphics Books began the nigh-impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s vast output. The earliest volumes have been constantly described as the least commercial and, as far as I know, remain out of print, but contrary as ever, I’m reviewing them anyway before the highly controversial but inarguably art-form enfant terrible/bête noir/shining hope finally puts down his pens forever. A noted critic of Donald Trump, he might well be hanging on just for the sheer satisfaction of outliving ol’ Taco-scabby paws…

The son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943 into a functionally broken family. He was one of five kids who all found different ways to escape their parents’ shattering problems and comics were always paramount amongst them.

As had his older brother Charles, Robert immersed himself in strips and cartoons of the day; not simply reading but feverishly creating his own. Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks and John Stanley were particularly influential, but so were newspaper artists like E.C. Segar, Gene Ahern, Rube Goldberg, Bud (Mutt and Jeff) Fisher, Billy (Barney Google), De Beck, George (Sad Sack) Baker and Sidney (The Gumps) Smith, as well as illustrators like C.E. Brock and the wildly imaginative and surreal 1930’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts.

Defensive and introspective, young Robert pursued art and slavish self-control through religion with equal desperation. His early spiritual repression and flagrant, hubristic celibacy constantly warred with his body’s growing needs…

Escaping a stormy early life, he married young and began working in-house at the American Greeting Cards Company. He discovered like minds in the growing counterculture movement and discovered LSD. In 1967 Crumb relocated to California to become an early star of Underground Commix. As such he found plenty of willing hippie chicks to assuage his fevered mind and hormonal body whilst reinventing the very nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and a host of others. The rest is history…

Those tortured formative years provide the meat of first volume The Early Years of Bitter Struggle, which, after ‘Right Up to the Edge’ – a comprehensive background history and introduction from lifelong confidante Marty Pahls – begins revealing the troubled master-in-waiting’s amazingly proficient childhood strips from self-published Foo #1-3 (a mini-comic project passionately produced by Robert and older brother Charles from September to November 1958).

Rendered in pencils, pens and whatever else was handy; inextricably wedded to those aforementioned funnybooks, strips and animated shorts cited above, the mirthful merry-go-round opens with ‘Report From the Brussels World’s Fair!’ and ‘My Encounter With Dracula!’: frantic, frenetic pastiches of the artists’ adored Mad magazine material, with Robert already using a graphic avatar of himself for narrative purposes. Closely following are the satirical ‘Clod of the Month Award’, ‘Khrushchev Visits U.S.!!’ and ‘Noah’s Ark’.

From 1959, ‘Treasure Island Days’ is a rambling gag-encrusted shaggy dog Russian Roulette experiment created by the lads each concocting a page and challenging the other to respond and continue the unending epic, after which ‘Cat Life’ followed family pet Fred’s fanciful antics from September 1959 to February 1960 before morphing (maybe “anthropomorphing”) into an early incarnation of Fritz the Cat in ‘Robin Hood’…

That laconic stream of cartoon-consciousness resolved into raucous, increasingly edgy saga ‘Animal Town’ followed here by a very impressive pin-up ‘Fuzzy and Brombo’, before a central full-colour section provides a selection of spoof covers. Four ‘R. Crumb Almanac’ images – all actually parts of letters to Pahls – are complemented by three lovely ‘Arcade’ covers, swiftly followed by a return to narrative monochrome and ‘A Christmas Tale’ which saw Crumb’s confused and frustrated sexuality begin to assert itself in his still deceptively mild-mannered work.

A progression of 11 single-page strips produced between December 1960 – May 1961 precedes 3 separate returns to an increasingly mature and wanton ‘Animal Town’ – all slowly developing the beast who would become Crumb’s first star, until Fritz bows out in favour of ‘Mabel’ – a prototypical big and irresistible woman of the type Crumb would legendarily have trouble with – before  this initial volume concludes with another authorial starring role in the Jules Feiffer/Explainers-inspired ‘A Sad Comic Strip’ from March 1962.

 

Second volume Some More Early Years of Bitter Struggle continues the odyssey after another Pahls reminiscence – ‘The Best Location in the Nation…’ describes a swiftly maturing deeply unsatisfied Crumb’s jump from unhappy home to the unsatisfying world of work. ‘Little Billy Bean’ (April 1962) returns to the hapless, loveless nebbish of ‘A Sad Comic Strip’ whilst ‘Fun with Jim and Mabel’ revisits Crumb’s bulky, morally-challenged amazon prior to focus shifting to her diminutive and feeble companion ‘Jim’.

Next, an almost fully-realised ‘Fritz the Cat’ finally gets it on in a triptych of saucy soft-core escapades from R. Crumb’s self-generated Arcade mini-comic project. From this point on, the varied and exponentially impressive breadth of Crumb’s output becomes increasingly riddled with his frequently hard-to-embrace themes and declamatory, potentially offensive visual vocabulary as his strips grope towards a creator’s long-sought personal artistic apotheosis.

His most intimate and disturbing idiosyncrasies regarding sex, women, ethnicity, personal worth and self-expression all start to surface here…

Therefore, if intemperate language, putative blasphemy, cartoon nudity, fetishism and comedic fornication are liable to upset you or those legally responsible for you, stop reading this review right here and don’t seek out the book.

Working in the production department of a vast greetings card company gave the insular Crumb access to new toys and new inspiration as seen in the collection of ‘Roberta Smith, Office Girl’ gag strips from American Greetings Corporation Late News Bulletins (November 1963 – April 1964), followed here by another Fritz exploit enigmatically entitled ‘R. Crumb Comics and Stories’ which includes just a soupcon of raunchy cartoon incest, so keep the smelling salts handy…

A selection of beautiful sketchbook pages comes next and a full-colour soiree of faux covers: letters to Pahls and Mike Britt disguised as ‘Farb’ and ‘Note’ front images as well as a brace of Arcade covers and the portentously evocative front of R. Crumb’s Comics and Stories #1 from April 1964. The rest of this pivotal collection is given over to 30 more pages culled from the artist’s sketchbooks: a vast and varied compilation ably displaying Crumb’s incredible virtuosity and proving that if he had been able to suppress his creative questing Robert could easily have settled for a lucrative career in any one of a number of graphic disciplines from illustrator to animator to jobbing comic book hack.

Crumb’s subtle mastery of his art form and obsessive need to expose his most hidden depths and every perceived defect – in himself and the world around him – has always been an unquenchable fire of challenging comedy and riotous rumination, and these initial tomes are the secret to understanding the creative causes, if not the artistic affectations of this unique craftsman and auteur.

This superb series charting the perplexing pen-and-ink pilgrim’s progress was the perfect vehicle to introduce any (over 18) newcomers to the world of grown up comics. And if you need a way in yourself, seek out these books and the other fifteen as soon as conceivably possible. Or, just perhaps, Fantagraphics could unleash them all again and include digital editions for these artistic pearls of immeasurable price…
Report From the Brussels World’s Fair!, My Encounter With Dracula!, Clod of the Month Award, Khrushchev Visits U.S.!! & Noah’s Ark © 1980 Robert and Charles Crumb. Other art and stories © 1969, 1974, 1978, 1987, 1988 Robert Crumb. All rights reserved.

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The Marvel Comics Covers of Jack Kirby volume 1: 1961-1964


By Jack Kirby, with Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, Paul Reinman, Bill Everett, George Roussos, Joe Sinnott, Chic Stone, Vince Colletta, George Klein, Sol Brodsky, Al Hartley, Stan Goldberg, Art Simek, Sam Rosen & various, Introduction by Patrick McDonnell (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-50673-246-6 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-50673-247-3

Today in 1917 on New York’s Lower East Side, Jacob Kurtzberg was born to Jewish-Austrian parents. He grew up to be one of the most influential and recognised artists in world history. The reason why can be read here.

The Marvel Comics Covers of Jack Kirby chronologically collects The King’s superhero cover art in a spectacular hardcover coffee table book which simultaneously preserves the wonderment in a digital edition, thus allowing instant enlargements of any and all bits you might have glossed over or missed before…

Preceding the massive and momentous art attack comes heartfelt appreciation from Patrick McDonnell (Mutts) in his Introduction and via collector memory ‘Echoes of the King’ by Vincent Iadevaia. At the far end of the collection there’s a succinct biography and appreciation of Jack for those of you who don’t know him as well as we declining comics stalwarts do.

In between those points reside a torrent of those visual highpoints that served to introduce new and revolutionary ways of seeing and enjoying comic books. These collectively span cover-dates November 1961 to December 1964 as seen on The Avengers #1-11; Fantastic Four #1-33; Incredible Hulk #1-5; Journey into Mystery #83-111; Strange Tales #90, 101-127; Tales to Astonish #25, 27, 35-62; Tales of Suspense #39-56, 58-60; X-Men #1-8; Amazing Fantasy #15; Amazing Spider-Man #1; Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #1-13; Daredevil # 1-4 plus Strange Tales Annual #2, Marvel Tales Annual #1, Fantastic Four Annuals #1-2, a few (far too few!) pre-Marvel genre covers including combat classic Battle #65, and a selection of monster book covers…

Inkers, colourists and letterers are not credited here, but that oversight is hopefully covered by us in the great big shopping list under the title…

Despite the too-tight brief – where are all the war, romance and particularly western and sci fi covers!? – this is a magnificent meander around the things that literally drew most of us into comics… that eye-grabbing first image. Jack Kirby was a master of electric storytelling, but he was also the god of the perfect moment and single pictures worth a thousand words. Look here and learn how and why…

© 2025 MARVEL.

Win’s First Christmas Gift Recommendation of the year!: Utter Acme of Visual Iconography… 9/10

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Jack Kirby’s The Losers


By Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry, Mike Royer & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-194-6 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Despite there being a glorious profusion of Jack Kirby material around these days, much of the best and rarest stuff is still – unforgivably – hard to access. This astounding collection of his too-brief run on DC war comic Our Fighting Forces is, for far too many, an unknown delight. You can still find it in the original 2009 hardback edition, but as far as I know, there’s neither digital nor even n trade paperback edition – in English – to satisfy the desires of fans lacking an infinite bank balance.

Famed for his larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, the King was a decent, spiritual man from another generation, and one who had experienced human horror and bravery as an ordinary grunt during World War II. Whether in the world-weary Verité of his 1950s collaborations with Joe Simon or the flamboyant bravado of his Marvel creation Sgt. Fury, Kirby’s combat comics always looked and felt real: grimy, tired, battered yet indomitable. Back in 1974, with his newest creations inexplicably not setting any sales records at DC, and while he tentatively pondered a return to Marvel, Jack took over the creative chores on a well-established, compelling but always floundering series that had run in Our Fighting Forces since 1970.

The Losers were an elite unit of American warriors cobbled together by amalgamating three pre-existing war series that had reached the end of their solo star roads. Gunner and Sarge (supplemented by “Fighting Devil Dog” Pooch) were Pacific-based Marines; debuting in All-American Men of War #67, (March 1959). They patrolled for 50 issues in Our Fighting Forces (#45-94, May 1959- August 1965), whilst Captain Johnny Cloud – Navajo Ace and native American fighter pilot – shot down his first bogie in All-American Men of War #82 (December 1960) and flew (mostly) solo until issue #115 in 1966. The final component of the Land/Air/Sea team was filled by Captain Storm, a disabled PT Boat commander (he had a wooden leg) who had his own 18-issue title from 1964 to 1967. All three series were created by DC’s comics warlord Robert Kanigher.

The characters had all pretty much passed their sell-by dates when they teamed-up as guest-stars in a Haunted Tank tale (G.I. Combat #138 October 1969), but these “Losers” found a new resonance together in the “relevant-era” and disillusioned, cynical Vietnam years and beyond, when their nihilistic, doom-laden anti-hero adventures claimed lead spot in Our Fighting Forces #123 (January/February 1970). Once again written primarily by Kanigher, these episodes were graced with art from such giants as Ken Barr, Russ Heath, John Severin, Sam Glanzman, Ross Andru and Joe Kubert. With the tagline “even when they win, they lose” the squad saw action all over the globe, winning critical acclaim and a far-too-small, passionate following.

In an inexplicable dose of company politics, discontented Kirby was abruptly given complete control of the series with #151 (November 1974). His radically different approach was highly controversial at the time, but the passage of years has granted a fairer appraisal and whilst never really in tune with the aesthetic of DC’s other war-books, the King’s run was a spectacular, bombastic and singularly intriguing examination of the human condition under the worst of all possible situations.

The combat frenzy kicks off in ‘Kill Me with Wagner’ as The Losers infiltrate a French village to rescue a concert pianist before the Nazis can capture her. The hapless propaganda pawn has one tremendous advantage – nobody knows what she looks like. As with most of this series, a feeling of inevitable, onrushing Gotterdammerung permeates the tale: a sense that worlds are ending and a new one’s coming. The action culminates in a catastrophic wave of destruction that is pure Kirby bravura…

Most of DC’s war titles sported Kubert covers, but #152 featured the first in a startling sequence of hypnotic Kirby collations – almost abstract in delivery – to introduce the team to the no-hope proposition of ‘A Small Place in Hell!’ when they find themselves the advance guard for an Allied push, but dropped in the wrong town: one that has not been cleared…

The spectacular action here is augmented by a potent 2-page Kirby fact feature: Sub-machine guns of WWII, and it should be noted and commended that this collection is also peppered with un-inked Kirby pencilled pages and roughs.

Our Fighting Forces #153 is one of those stories that made traditionalists squeak. Behind a Kirby cover, the story of ‘Devastator vs. Big Max’ veers dangerously close to science fiction, but an admittedly eccentric plan to destroy a giant German rail-mounted super-cannon isn’t any stranger than many schemes actual boffins dreamed up to disinform the enemy during the actual conflict, actually…

That yarn – with two beautiful info-pages on military uniforms and insignia – is followed by a superb parable examining personal honour. A compelling Kirby cover segues into the team’s deployment to the Pacific to remove a Japanese officer whose devotion to ‘Bushido’ inspires superhuman loyalty and resistance to surrender among his men. The means used to remove him are far from clean or creditable…

Bracketed by 2 pages on war vehicles plus a wonderful pencil cover-rough, two more on artillery pieces and the pencils for the cover to that issue, OFF #155’s ‘The Partisans!’ takes the Losers into very dark territory, before they return to America for ‘Good-bye Broadway… Hello Death!’, wherein the boys experience home-front joys of New York whilst hunting a notorious U-Boat commander. Naturally there’s more to the story than first appears…

This fast-paced thriller is complemented by a history of battle headgear and another pencilled rough. Comprising a 2-part saga concerning theft, black marketeering and espionage, #157 & 158 introduce utterly unique personage ‘Panama Fattie!’ Her criminal activities almost alter the course of the war; and conclude in the highly charged ‘Bombing Out on the Panama Canal’, with accompanying pages on ships, subs and Nazi super-planes.

Behind the last Kirby cover (#159), ‘Mile-a-Minute Jones!’ details a smaller-scaled duel. With the Losers relegated to subordinate roles, the tale of a black runner who embarrassed the Nazis at the 1936 Olympics unfolds as a forced rematch with the Nazi ubermensch he defeated back then reignites old passions on the battlefield.

Indicating that Kirby’s attentions were being diverted elsewhere, Kubert & Ernie Chan handled the last three covers of this run, but the stories remain powerful, deeply personal explorations of combat. In ‘Ivan’ (OFF #160) the squad goes undercover, impersonating German soldiers on the Eastern Front, and have an unpleasant encounter with Russian Nazi sympathizers whose appetite for atrocity surpasses anything they have ever seen before. Supplemented by a 2-page tanks feature, the drama resumes in the hellish jungles of Burma which prove an unholy backdrop for traumatic combat shocker ‘The Major’s Dream’ before the volume and Kirby’s DC war work ends in a sly tribute to his 1942 co-creation Boy Commandos.

‘Gung-Ho!’ sees a young Gunner training a band of war orphans in Marine tactics, only to find fun turn to dire necessity after Germans overrun their “safe” position. This is an optimistic, all-out action romp ending on a note of hope and anticipation, even as the King made his departure for pastures not-so-new. From OFF #163 Kanigher picked up where he left off, with artists like Jack Lehti, Ric Estrada & George Evans illustrating, as the Losers returned to their pre-Kirby style and status, with readers hardly acknowledging the detour into another kind of war.

Jack Kirby is unique and uncompromising. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind. That doesn’t alter the fact that his work from 1939 onwards shaped the entire American comics scene, affected the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour around the world for generations, and which still garners new fans and apostles from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. Jack’s work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral and deceptively deep whilst being simultaneously mythic and human.

These tales of purely mortal heroism are in many ways the most revealing, honest and insightful of Jack’s incredibly vast accumulated works, and even the true devotee often forgets their very existence. As Neil Gaiman’s introduction succinctly declaims, “they are classic Kirby” and even if you don’t like war comics, you may be in for a surprise…”

You won’t want to miss that, would you?
© 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.