Category: Older kids

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Afterlife With Archie Book 1


By Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa & Francesco Francavilla (Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61988-908-8

For nearly three quarters of a century Archie Andrews has epitomised good, safe, wholesome fun but the company has always been a deviously subversive one.

Family friendly iterations of superheroes, spooky chills, sci fi thrills and genre yarns have always been as much a part of the publisher’s varied portfolio as the romantic comedy capers of America’s clean-cut teens.

As you probably know by now, Archie has been around since 1941, spending most of those seventy-plus years chasing both the gloriously attainable Betty Cooper and wildly out-of-his-league debutante Veronica Lodge whilst best friend Jughead Jones alternately mocked and abetted his romantic endeavours and rival Reggie Mantle sought to scuttle his every move…

As crafted over the decades by a legion of writers and artists who’ve skilfully created the stories of teenage antics in and around the idyllic, utopian small town of Riverdale, these timeless tales of decent, upstanding, fun-loving kids have captivated successive generations of readers and entertained millions worldwide.

To keep all that accumulated attention riveted, the company has always looked to modern trends with which to expand upon their archetypal storytelling brief. In times past they have cross-fertilised their stable of stars through such unlikely team-ups as Archie Meets the Punisher, Archie Meets Glee, Archie Meets Vampirella or Archie Meets Kiss, whilst every type of fashion fad and youth culture sensation have invariably been accommodated into and explored within the pages of the regular titles.

In 2013 however the publishers took a bold and controversial step which paid huge dividends and created the biggest sales sensation in the company’s history.

It all began with a variant cover for Life With Archie #23 with illustrator Francesco Francavilla (Black Beetle, Zorro, Detective Comics, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy etc.) providing a moody spoof EC zombie graveyard scene. The variant was a sensation and cognitive cogs began to turn at the editorial offices…

When playwright, TV scripter and comicbook scribeRoberto Aguirre-Sacasa- whose many successes include Say You Love Satan, The Mystery Plays, 4: Marvel Knights Fantastic Four, Nightcrawler, Big Love, Sensational Spider-Man and Glee amongst others – got involved, it wasn’t long before a strange new enterprise was hatched.

Archie Comics is no stranger to horror titles. In the 1970s the company created the sub-imprint Red Circle for anthology terror tales during a supernatural boom time, before converting the line to superhero features as the decade progressed.

They even had a resident star-sorceress in Sabrina the Teenage Witch…

However, whereas that venture was decidedly a newsstand project, the proposed 21st century endeavour took the company into uncharted waters.

When it was released, the 5-issue miniseries Afterlife With Archie was available solely through Direct Sales outlets and the first title in the company’s history to carry a parental advisory; “Rated Teen +”…

The sinister saga was an outright sensation, selling hugely and garnering phenomenal critical approval from sources as far-ranging as Salon, Fangoria, The Plain Dealer and NPR (National Public Radio) as well as all the usual comics review pundits. Each issue spawned further printings in a desperate race to keep up with demand…

I’m not going to dwell much on the plot, but suffice to say it doesn’t stray far from the time-honoured scenaria of the best sort of teen horror movies – minus the gratuitous sex and oafish dependence on guns – but it does hone all those tropes and memes to a superbly gripping point by inflicting them upon a beloved and intimately understood cast we all think we know…

It all starts one dark and ghastly midnight with Jughead hammering on the door of Sabrina’s house. A hit-and-run driver has killed the boy’s beloved pet Hot Dog and he needs her to bring him back…

Even with the arcane aid of her spooky eldritch elders the attempt fails, compelling the deeply moved Sabrina to try a spell she knows she should not and engendering for herself a most hideous punishment…

The next day, school starts out pretty much normal. Everyone is hyped about the upcoming Halloween Dance, although loud, obnoxious Reggie seems painfully preoccupied with some guilty secret and Juggie is absent…

Concerned, Archie stops in for a visit to find his friend in a bad way. The always voracious boy is weak and sickly and his arm is infected from a nasty bite. Hot Dog just sits far back in the dark under the house, growling and snarling…

That night at the Gym the party is in full swing with kids tricked out in all their innocent gory glory. As usual tensions are high between Betty and Veronica, Dilton and Chuck are furiously debating the merits of their favourite scary movies and Devil-May-Care Reggie is still acting strange…

Things take a dark turn once Jughead appears. His costume is amazing, like a scarecrow Zombie King. As yet nobody knows he’s already eaten one of the chaperones…

The shocking scenes soon start, and lifelong friends begin falling thick and fast. With no choice but to accept the impossible, Archie leads the stunned, surviving students to the fortress-like Lodge Mansion, with the inexorably growing army of infectious dead closely following…

With danger all around, tensions lead to many revelations, as years of suppressed feelings are finally exposed like raw nerves.

Although safe within the palatial citadel, the grieving Andrews boy needs to get out and discover what has happened to his parents and the rest of the town. As yet nobody is aware that one of the cowering kids is already carrying the unstoppable necromantic taint of the grave…

Bold, uncompromising, suspenseful, powerfully shocking and genuinely scary, this yarn is also astoundingly moving (there’s nobody more sentimental than a comicbook geek, but I’m not ashamed to admit that twice during this tale I teared up and had to reach for the tissues) as it takes a cast as familiar as your own family and puts them through hell and into damnation.

Literally nobody is safe and by the end of this first story-arc – comics fan or not – you will be gobsmacked and hungry for more.

Happily there is a Book 2…

This grim graphic grimoire also comes with an unholy host of extras beginning with the story behind the phenomenon in ‘Covers from the Darkside’ which talks about the genesis of the project, a full gallery of the 22 covers, variants and subsequent reprint covers by Francavilla, Tin Seeley, Andrew Pepoy, Tito Peña, Robert Hack and Jason Millet and is rounded off with ‘Sketches of the Dead’ which reproduces Francavilla’s glorious pencil layouts for much of the entire five chapter saga…

Dark gripping fun and one of the very best comicbook horror stories ever created, Afterlife With Archie is a brilliant experience no Funnybook Fan or Fear Aficionado should miss.

© 2014 Archie Comic Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The System


By Peter Kuper (PM Press)
ISBN: 978-1-60486-811-1

Artist, storyteller and activist Peter Kuper was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1958, before the family moved to Cleveland when he was six. The youngster met fellow comics fan Seth Tobocman and they progressed through the school system, catching the bug for self-publishing early. They then attended Kent State University together. Graduating, they moved to New York in 1979 and, whilst both studying at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, created the political art/comics magazine World War 3 Illustrated.

Both separately and in conjunction, in comics, illustration and through art events, Kuper and Tobocman have championed social causes, highlighted judicial and cultural inequities and spearheaded the use of narrative art as an effective means of political activism.

Many of Kuper’s most impressive works have stemmed from his far-flung travels but at heart he is truly a son of New York, with a huge amount of his work using the city as bit player or star attraction.

He created The New York Times‘ first continuing strip – Eye of the Beholder – in 1993, adapted such modern literary classics as Franz Kafka’s Give it Up! (1995) and The Metamorphosis (2003) to strip form, whilst always creating his own canon of intriguing graphic novels and visual memoirs.

Amongst the many strings to his bow – and perhaps the most high-profile – has been his brilliant stewardship of Mad Magazine‘s beloved Spy Vs. Spy strip which he inherited from creator Antonio Prohias in 1997.

In 1995 he undertook a bold creative challenge for DC’s Mature Reader imprint by crafting a mute yet fantastically expressive 3-part thriller and swingeing social commentary for Vertigo Verité. The System was released as a softcover graphic album in 1997 and has now been magnificently repackaged in a lavish hardback edition from PM Press.

Following a moving Preface from the author describing the genesis of the project, Senior News Editor at Publisher’s Weekly Carl Reid offers an effusive appreciation in ‘Bright Lights, Scary City’ before the drama begins…

As if telling a beguiling, interlinked portmanteau tale of many lives interweaving and intersecting – and often nastily ending – in the Big City without benefit of word-balloons, captions or sound effects was not challenge enough, Kuper pushed his own storytelling abilities to the limit by constructing his pages and panels from cut stencils, creating the narrative in a form akin to urban street art.

It is astoundingly immediate, evocative and effective…

A stripper is murdered by a maniac. An old, weary detective ruminates on his failures. A boy and girl from different neighbourhoods find love. A derelict and his dog eke out a precarious daily existence and a beat cop does his rounds, collecting payoffs from the crooked dealers and helpless shopkeepers he’s supposed to protect. Religious zealots harass gay men and an Asian cabbie gets grief from the white fares who despise him whilst depending on his services.

The streets rattle with subway trains below and elevated trains above.

Strippers keep dying, children go missing, love keeps going and the airport brings a cruel-faced man with radioactive death in his carry-on luggage…

There are so many million stories in The City and they are all connected through the unceasing urban pulse and incessant, unending forward motion of The System…

Clever, compulsive and breathtakingly engrossing, this delicious exercise in dramatic interconnectivity and carefully constructed symbolism is a brilliant example of how smart and powerful comics can be.

© 2014 Peter Kuper. All rights reserved.

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How the World Was – A California Childhood


By Emmanuel Guibert translated by Kathryn Pulver (First Second)
ISBN: 978-1-59643-664-0

In 1994 French cartoonist, author and storyteller Emmanuel Guibert(The Photographer, Sardine in Outer Space, The Professor’s Daughter) had a chance encounter with elderly American émigré Alan Cope.

The latter was a veteran of World War II and, as they became firm friends, shared his memories of the conflict and his own modest part in it.

Moved and inspired, the artist transformed those conversational recollections into a beguiling graphic memoir entitled La Guerre d’Alan. The first of three albums was released in 2000 – a year after Cope passed away – and debuted as English-language graphic novel Alan’s War in 2008.

Now, that immensely moving volume has been augmented by a wonderful prequel, also culled from laconic, memorable chats between a young man of artistic mien and an ordinary if contemplative old guy with a long life to recall.

This second dip into the well of the Californian expatriate’s life – originally released in France in 2010 as L’enfance d’Alan – focuses on his formative years in the Golden State as it gradually turned from rural paradise into America’s smoggy, grimy industrial and entertainment powerhouse…

Delivered in a understated yet mesmeric, matter-of-fact manner, the frankly miraculous marriage of memory and narrative art opens in full colour at the end of Alan’s life before slipping into the monochrome past…

Alan Cope was born in 1925 when California was still profoundly insular, distant and undeveloped. Here, through his graphic collaborator he shares the intimate daily details and observational minutia of a keen-eyed boy growing up in a loving family, regularly moving from place to place and generally getting by as honest, hardworking folks did in far simpler times…

Through anecdotes, opinions and intimate family secrets from three generations of the maternal Hanson and Cope lines, a gentle history of joy, tribulation and imperceptible progress unfolds, packed with magical visions of endless days, roller skating, safe and empty streets, pets and pals and pastimes.

Thus all the fascinating insights and misapprehensions of the young and impressionable boy meld into an elegant and elegiac appraisal of a time, place and way of life we are all the poorer for having lost.

Through universally mutual childhood experiences – tussles, escapades with bugs, spiders and snakes, girls, doctors, old rented houses, the ever-present wilderness, poverty, family squabbles and troubles, death and religion – Guibert traces his departed friend’s growth in a world where nothing really happened but did so with inexorable force in ways that could only be properly perceived from the distant safety of later decades.

It was life and you just got on with it…

Utterly magical and captivating in a way mere words cannot express, How the World Was is a loving paean to lost days and a disappearing way of living and thinking, steeped in evocative charm and delivered with easy approachability, gentle humour, enchanting sensitivity and remarkable panache.

Buy it now and read it regularly for as long as you live…

© 2010 Emmanuel Guibert & L’Association. All rights reserved. English translation © 2014 by First Second.

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Long John Silver volume 1: Lady Vivian Hastings


By Xavier Dorison & Mathieu Lauffray, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-062-7

British and European comics have always been much more comfortable and imaginative with period piece strips than our American cousins and far more comfortable when reinterpreting classical fiction for jaded comicbook audiences. The happy combination of familiar exoticism, past lives and world-changing events blended with drama, action and, most frequently, broad comedy has resulted in a uniquely narrative art form suited to beguiling readers of all ages and tastes.

Our Franco-Belgian brethren in particular have made an astonishing success out of repackaging days gone by and this particularly enchanting older-readers yarn forgoes the laughs whilst extending the adventures of literature’s greatest rogue into a particularly engaging realm of globe-girdling thriller.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island was originally serialised from 1881-1882 in Young Folks magazine as Treasure Island or, the mutiny of the Hispaniola, written by the pseudonymous Captain George North.

It was collected and published as a novel on May 23rd 1883 and has never been out of print since. A landmark of world storytelling it has been dramatised innumerable times and adapted into all forms of art. Most significantly the book created a metafictional megastar – albeit at best an anti-hero – as immortal as King Arthur, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan or Superman.

Almost everything the public “knows” about pirates devolves out the book and its unforgettable, show-stealing star Long John Silver…

Writer Xavier Dorison (Le Troisième Testament, Prophet, Sanctuaire, W.E.S.T.) was born in Paris in 1970 and graduated business school before moving into storytelling. He works as author, film writer, lecturer and movie script doctor. He began the award-winning Long John Silver in conjunction with Prophet collaborator Mathieu Lauffay (Oath of Amber, Axis Mundi) in 2006, with the fourth volume released in 2013.

Lauffay is also a Parisian born in 1970. He spends his days illustrating, drawing comics, crafting RPGs and working as a concept designer for movies. His art has graced such international items as Dark Horse Comics’ Star Wars franchise, games like Alone in the Dark, the album Lyrics Verdun, February 21, 1916 – December 18, 1916, Tarzan and much more…

Their continuation of the piratical prince is a foray into much darker, more mature fare which begins some years after the affair of the Hispaniola; opening in 1785 in the vast inner recesses of the Amazon.

Far upriver, the expedition of treasure-hunting Lord Byron Hastings appears to have finally foundered after years searching for the lost city of Guiana-Capac at the very moment of his greatest triumph.

Meanwhile in England, Hastings’ profligate and wanton wife Lady Vivian is pondering the shameful, daily growing evidence of her dalliance with wealthy and so-very-generous neighbour Lord Prisham. With a baby in her belly and a husband gone for three years, she is considering having Byron declared dead and a hasty remarriage…

Suddenly shattering all her plans is her despised brother-in-law who turns up at the door with an old native named Moxtechica bearing a message – and a map – apparently from her long-lost husband.

Prudish Royal Naval officer Edward Hastings delights in telling the scheming strumpet he abhors that his brother has succeeded but now needs more funds. She is to sell everything – including all the treasured family possessions, manor house and lands she brought to the marriage – to raise £100,000.

To ensure this the absentee Lord has named Edward as sole Proxy and the martinet delights in giving the high-born trollop her marching orders. He strongly urges her to confine herself to a convent and save them all further shame and disgrace…

Raging in front of her conniving maid Elsie, Lady Vivian considers a number of retaliatory tactics before settling upon the most bold and dangerous. After announcing to the stunned Edward that she will accompany him to South America and reunite with her beloved husband, the fallen noblewoman seeks out a doctor to take care of the “problem” she is – for the moment, still secretly – carrying…

Dr. Livesay is a decent god-fearing soul who has led a quiet, prosperous life since his adventures on Treasure Island. However it is not her current condition which has brought Vivian to the learned man’s door, but rather persistent tales of his scurrilous former acquaintance: a formidable, peg-legged rogue with a reputation for making life’s difficulties disappear…

Against his better judgement, Livesay capitulates to the Lady’s urgings and takes her to Bristol to meet retired sea-cook and owner of the Spy Glass tavern, John Silver.

Amidst the (alleged) former pirate’s inner circle of scary-looking confederates she relates the story of the Spaniard Pizarro‘s discovery of a City of Gold and how, centuries later, her husband has found it.

The rest of her sorry tale tumbles out and her plans to travel there with a few capable men – and the far from willing Elsie – to make the riches her own…

All she needs is for Silver and his colleagues to infiltrate Edward’s crew, seize the ship he intends to charter and complete the voyage under her command…

Livesay is outraged but, unable to convince Vivian to desist or Silver to reject her offer, the chivalrous sage joins them in a vain hope that he can keep the debased woman from mortal harm.

Edward has meanwhile commissioned a ship from the unsavoury Samir Razil. “The Ottoman” has his own plans in play but old associate Silver soon bloodily scuppers them. The sea-cook has never had any time or pity for slavers – even in the debilitated condition he strives so desperately to conceal from everyone around him…

With the Neptune now secretly under his control and having forced Lady Vivian to sign a sacrosanct Pirates Contract, the sinister scheme and the ramshackle vessel get underway with Captain Edward Hastings none the wiser. Livesay is increasingly concerned about Vivian’s pregnancy but the savage Moxtechica seems able to help her with strange brews that he concocts…

With all the players in place the Good Ship Neptune casts off into the icy channel under stormy skies, setting sail for the doom-laden Americas…

To Be Continued…

Moody, suspenseful and startlingly gripping, the further exploits of Long John Silver are a masterpiece of adventure fiction worthy of Stevenson’s masterpiece and might even convince a few more folks to actually read the original novel.
© Darguad, Paris, 2007 by Dorison & Lauffray. All rights reserved. English translation © 2010 Cinebook Ltd.

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Battling Boy: The Rise of Aurora West (Uncorrected Proof Copy)


By Paul Pope, J.T. Petty & David Rubin (First Second)
ISBN: 978-1-62672-009-1

Don’t you just love comics convention season? Here’s a splendid sneak peak at an upcoming instant classic from a modern master of comics courtesy, I’m assuming, of the publishers promotional outreach budget….

Paul Pope is undoubtedly one of the most creative and visually engaging creators working in comics these days. Since his debut in 1993 he has stunningly combined elements of European and Japanese styles with classical American fictive themes to produce uniquely tweaked tales of science fiction, fantasy, crime, comedy, romance, adventure and even superheroics.

If you’re not a fan yet, check out Sin Titulo, Batman: Year 100, Heavy Liquid, 100%, One Trick Ripoff and other mature reader titles and most especially the previous volume in his occasional series Battling Boy and its delightful supplement The Death of Haggard West…

His latest venture is aimed a general readership – Hey, Kids, This Means You! – and features a world so very similar to our own but with one big, dangerous difference…

Arcopolis City would be the perfect place to bring up kids but for one thing. Ghastly devils roam at night, causing chaos in their unrelenting quest to steal all the children.

Even the daylight hours are becoming increasingly fraught as a seemingly endless succession of horrendous behemoths and leviathans incessantly carve a swathe of mindless destruction through the bright, breezy thoroughfares…

They aren’t the worst however. The true threat is the hidden gangs of extremely smart monsters led by the likes of the sinister Sadisto who acts as a vile capo of a hellish alien underworld…

The situation only began to turn around after bemused junior deity Battling Boy was unceremoniously dumped in the harassed metropolis by his tough-love war-god dad, but this electrifying yarn is a prequel to that particular saga.

The Rise of Aurora West is set in the months before the evocative advent of the juvenile saviour, when all that stood between the howling night-haunters and their preferred prey was an aging “Science Hero” and his highly-trained but understandably cautious, rather pessimistic, teenaged daughter…

Haggard West has battled the terrors ever since they first appeared; initially beside his wife and – now that she’s old enough – his daughter Aurora.

The girl’s life is a whirl of energetic physical practice, martial arts training, detective tuition and (to maintain a safe cover) school at the prestigious St. Ignomious Prep, but she can’t help but dwell on the facts that the never-ending crusade has already deprived her of a mother and is killing her dad in slow, painful increments…

This particular evening father and sidekick are stalking a pack of hooded horrors intent on securing some strange device for disreputable squid-witch Medula. Unfortunately, after a blistering battle, the majority of the monsters make their escape with the enigmatic doodad, leaving the senior Science Hero to painfully question an unlucky captive…

It knows nothing valuable but before expiring it scrawls a strange symbol in the dirt – one which has a shocking effect on Aurora…

Back home, as formidable housekeeper, medic and trainer Mrs. Grately ministers to the battered senior West, Aurora cannot get the symbol out of her mind. Driven by instinct and distant memory she heads for the library and finds an old long-forgotten scrawl she scratched on a wall when she was only three years old. It is the same sign…

Grately fills in the details. It was a time when the monsters were only just beginning to appear and the defacing took place due to the suggestion of the toddler’s imaginary friend Mr. Wurple.

With breathtaking clarity Aurora recalls everything: the conversations with the silly phantom and how he vanished a year later… on the night the monsters killed her mother…

Agitated and obsessed, the teenager goes into a frenzy of research, tracing the symbol to an archaeological trip her family took to see the Sphinx when she was barely walking and talking. With growing horror she recalls how she stumbled upon a secret entrance into the edifice and how her parents discovered the strange mummy of an ancient hero who had died fighting monsters thousands of years ago…

She also remembers with shock how she was approached by a bizarre energy creature who begged her not to tell her folks he was there and realises that Mr. Wurple was real. Moreover ever since he “left”, Arcopolis has been a city under siege…

And thus begins the coming-of-age epic as the unsure girl becomes a resolute and dedicated hero determined to solve the disturbing enigma of her insidious imaginary companion whilst attempting to make amends for all the horrors and tragedies she might very well have unleashed on her home town, friends and family…

Scripted by Pope and J.T. Petty (Bloody Chester) with stunning art by Spanish cartoonist and illustrator David Rubin, this is a superb and moving sidebar yarn, packed with clever intoxicating mystery, astounding action, tense suspense and beguiling characters that will delight older kids, and reads even better if you’re their adult keeper or guardian.

© 2014 by Paul Pope. All rights reserved.

Battling Boy: The Rise of Aurora West will be published on September 30th 2014.

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Usagi Yojimbo book 8: Shades of Death


By Stan Sakai (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-259-7

Usagi Yojimbo (which translates as “rabbit bodyguard”) first appeared as a background character in anthropomorphic comedy The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper and Hermy, which premiered in 1984 amongst the assorted furry ‘n’ fuzzy folk in Albedo Anthropomorphics #1. He subsequently graduated to a solo act in Critters, Amazing Heroes, Furrlough and the Munden’s Bar back-up series in Grimjack.

In 1955, when Stan Sakai was two years old, his family moved to Hawaii from Kyoto, Japan. He left the University of Hawaii with a BA in Fine Arts, and pursued further studies at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design in California.

His early forays into comics were as a letterer – most famously for the inimitable Groo the Wanderer – before his nimble pens and brushes found a way to express his passion for Japanese history, legend and the filmic works of Akira Kurosawa and his peers, and transformed a proposed story about a human historical hero into one of the most enticing and impressive fantasy sagas of all time.

And it’s still more educational, informative and authentic than any dozen Samurai sagas you can name…

Although the deliriously peripatetic and expansive period epic stars sentient animals and details the life of a Lord-less wandering Samurai eking out as honourable a living as possible by selling his sword as a Yojimbo (bodyguard-for-hire), the milieu and scenarios all scrupulously mirror the Feudal Edo Period of Japan (roughly the 17th century AD by our reckoning) whilst simultaneously referencing other cultural icons from sources as varied as Zatoichi and Godzilla.

Miyamoto Usagi is brave, noble, industrious, honest, sentimental, gentle, artistic, empathetic, long-suffering and conscientious: a rabbit devoted to the spiritual tenets of Bushido.  He simply cannot turn down any request for help or ignore the slightest evidence of injustice. As such, his destiny is to be perpetually drawn into an unending panorama of incredible situations.

The title was as much a nomad as its star. This guest-star stuffed eighth monochrome masterpiece marshals yarns released by Mirage Publishing as Usagi Yojimbo volume 2, #1-6, and also offers some short tales from #7-8.

Following an evocative Introduction from legendary illustrator and Dean of dinosauria William Stout, the medieval mystery play continues with the 3-part crossover epic ‘Shades of Green’ wherein Usagi and his crusty companion Gennosuké (an irascibly bombastic, money-mad bounty-hunter and conniving thief-taking rhino with a heart of gold) are recruited by Kakera: a ratty shaman in dire need of protection from the dwindling remnants of the once-mighty Neko Ninja clan.

The former imperial favourites have fallen upon hard times since they and the Ronin Rabbit crushed the Dragon Bellow plot of rebel Lord Takamuro. Now, the bat assassins of the Komori Ninja clan are constantly harrying, harassing and actively trying to replace them in patron Lord Hikiji‘s service…

Chunin (deputy leader) Gunji believes the rodent wizard would make a mighty slave, and is scheming to usurp the new – female – clan chief Chizu whilst acquiring him…

With the Neko’s trap closing around them all, the sensei summons the spirits of four fantastic fighters to aid Usagi and Gen. The phantoms promptly posses a quartet of little Kamé (tortoises) and are reshaped into adolescent amphibian Ninja Turtles, identifying themselves as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello.

Usagi has fought beside one of their number before…

The subsequent battles go badly and eventually Gunji’s forces make off with Kakera-sensei. As Usagi leads the remaining heroes in relentless pursuit, the conniving chunin makes his move. Gunji’s attempt to assassinate Chizu is bloodily and efficiently ended by the late-arriving Rabbit Ronin who is astounded to be told by the lady he has saved that the Neko’s lethal interest in him is now at an end…

With the shaman rescued and Gunji dead, the adventure closes with the turtle spirits returned to their own place and time, leaving Gen and Usagi to follow their own (temporarily) separate roads…

‘Jizo’ then offers a delightful interlude as a grieving mother dedicates a roadside shrine to her murdered child and mysterious Karma places the killers in the path of a certain justice-dispensing, long-eared wanderer before 2-part tale ‘Shi’ leads Usagi to the assistance of a valley of poor farmers under constant attack by bullies and brigands seeking to make them leave their impoverished homes.

The thugs are secretly employed by a local magistrate and his ruthless brother who have discovered gold under the peasants land and want to extract it without attracting the attention of the local Lord’s tax collectors.

When the Ronin’s formidable opposition stalls the brothers’ scheme they hire a quartet of assassins whose collective name means “death”, but the killers are far less trouble than the head farmer’s daughter Kimie who has never seen someone as glamorous or attractive as the soft-spoken samurai…

Although there are battles aplenty for Usagi, the remorseless greed of the brothers finishes them before the yojimbo can…

A delightful silent comedy follows as ‘The Lizard’s Tale’ sees the Ronin play unwilling Pied Piper and guardian to a wandering flock of tokagé lizards (ubiquitous, omnivorous reptiles that populate the anthropomorphic world, replacing scavenger species like rats, cats and dogs in the fictitious ecosystem). The rambunctious trouble-magnets then repay the favour when the wanderer is ambushed in the snow-drowned mountains by an army of vengeful bandits…

The remainder of the stories offer elucidating glimpses of the rabbit’s boyhood. Once, Miyamoto Usagi was simply the son of a small-town magistrate sent to spend his formative years learning the Way of Bushido from a gruff and distant leonine hermit named Katsuichi.

The stern sensei taught not just superior technique and tactics, but also an ironclad creed of justice and restraint which would serve the Ronin well throughout his turbulent life.

In ‘Usagi’s Garden’ the pupil rebels against the arduous and undignified task of growing food until the lion delivers a subtle but life changing lesson, whilst in ‘Autumn’ a painful fall propels the lad into a nightmare confrontation with a monster who has trapped the changing of the seasons in a bamboo cage…

The 3-chapter fable ‘Battlefield’ then discloses a key moment and turning point in the trainee warrior’s life.

It begins when a mind-broken, fleeing soldier shatters the boy’s childish dreams of warrior glory. The fugitive is a survivor of the losing side in a mighty battle and his sorry state forces Usagi to rethink his preconceptions of war.

Eager to ram home the lesson, Katsuichi takes his student to the battlefield where peasants and scavengers are busy snatching up whatever they can from the scattered corpses. Usagi is horrified. To take a samurai’s swords is to steal his soul, but even so a little later he cannot stop himself picking up a fallen hero’s Wakizashi (short sword).

However, after concealing the blade in safe place, the boy is haunted by visions of the unquiet corpse and sneaks off to return the stolen steel soul.

He is caught by soldiers who think him a scavenger and looter. About to lose his thieving hands he is only saved by the intervention of victorious Great Lord MifunÄ—.

The noble looks into the boy’s face and sees something honest, honourable and perhaps, one day, useful…

This medieval monochrome masterwork also includes a gallery of covers to charm and delight one and all.

Despite changing publishers a few times the Roaming Rabbit has been in continuous publication since 1987, with more than 30 collections and books to date. He has guest-starred in many other series (most notably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its TV incarnation) and even almost made it into his own small-screen show.

There are high-end collectibles, art prints, computer games and RPGs, a spin-off sci-fi comics serial and lots of toys. Sakai and his creation have won numerous awards both within the Comics community and amongst the greater reading public.

Fast-paced yet lyrical, informative and funny, the saga alternately bristles with tension and thrills and often breaks your heart with astounding tales of pride and tragedy.

Simply bursting with veracity and verve, Usagi Yojimbo is a perfect comics experience: a monolithic, magical saga of irresistible appeal that will delight devotees and make converts of the most hardened hater of “funny animal” stories.

Sheer comicbook poetry by a sublime Comicbook Sensei…
Text and illustrations © 1993, 1994, 1997 Stan Sakai. All other material and registered characters are © and™ their respective owners. Usagi Yojimbo is a registered trademark of Stan Sakai. All rights reserved.

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Judgment Day and Other Stories


Illustrated by Joe Orlando, written by Al Feldstein & Jack Oleck with Ray Bradbury, Otto Binder & Bill Gaines (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-727-7

During an era of traditionally genre-inspired entertainments, EC Comics excelled in tales that both epitomised and revolutionised the hallowed, hoary themes such standard story categories utilised.

The company had started publishing in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines – presumably seeing the writing on the wall – sold the superhero properties of his All-American Comics company to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Picture Stories from the Bible.

His high-minded plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market. He augmented his flagship title with Picture Stories from American History, Picture Stories from Science and Picture Stories from World History but the worthy projects were all failing when he died in a boating accident in 1947.

As detailed in the comprehensive closing feature of this superb graphic compilation (‘Crime, Horror, Terror, Gore, Depravity, Disrespect for Established Authority – and Science Fiction Too: the Ups and Downs of EC Comics’ by author, critic and fan Ted White) his son was rapidly dragged into the company by Business Manager and unsung hero Sol Cohen who held the company together until the initially unwilling Bill Gaines abandoned his dreams of being a chemistry teacher and quickly refashioned the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comics…

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments copying industry fashions, young Bill began to closely collaborate with multi-talented associate Al Feldstein, who promptly graduated from creating teen comedies and westerns into becoming Gaines’ editorial supervisor and co-conspirator.

As they began collaboratively plotting the bulk of EC’s stories together, they changed tack, moving in a boldly impressive new direction. Their publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field, was to tell a “New Trend” of stories aimed at older and more discerning readers, not the mythical semi-literate 8-year-old all comicbooks ostensibly targeted.

From 1950 to 1955 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of crime, horror, war and science fiction and even creating an entirely new beast: the satirical comicbook…

Feldstein had started life as a comedy cartoonist and, after creator/editor Harvey Kurtzman departed in 1956, Al became Editor of Mad magazine for the next three decades …

This ninth volume of the Fantagraphics EC Library gathers a mind-boggling selection of science fiction tales – mostly co-plotted by sci-fi fan and companion-in-crime (and Horror and Comedy and…) Gaines – all illuminated by the company’s most successful alumnus: a legendary, chameleonic artist, illustrator, editor and latterly discoverer of new talent who went on to impact the burgeoning comics industry over and over again.

The Amazing work of Joe Orlando (1927-1998) has been gathered here in a fabulous bible of iconic graphic futurism: a lavish monochrome hardcover edition packed with supplementary features and dissertations; beginning with historian and educator Bill Mason’s informative and laudatory essay ‘Orlando Ascendant’.

What follows is a spectacular beguiling, amazing and frequently wryly hilarious panoply of fantastic wonders, opening with an adaptation of one of Ray Bradbury’s most famous short stories taken from his Martian Chronicles cycle. Bradbury – a huge fan of comics – had, after a tricky start (involving an unsanctioned adaptation of one of his works), struck a deal with EC that saw a number of his horror, crime and science fantasy tales transformed into quite remarkable pieces of mature strip magic.

The eerily poignant and disturbing yarn ‘The Long Years!’ was adapted by Feldstein for Weird Science #17, (January/February 1953) and detailed how a relief ship to the Red Planet found an old man and his young family. …Or rather the perfect thinking facsimiles he had built after they had died decades previously. In that same month Weird Fantasy #17 featured an all-original Feldstein/Gaines yarn.

‘In the Beginning…’ was a delightfully convoluted time-paradox tale which took flight after Earth explorers landed on a mysterious tenth planet in the solar system, after which

‘Infiltration’ (Shock SupenStories #7, February/March 1953) highlighted Cold War paranoia and repression as a plucky young woman takes up her post in Washington DC and uncovers evidence of alien enemies entrenched in the corridors of power.

Wry irony underpinned the tale of a greedy TV repairman who stumbled upon a crashedUFO and sought to make his fortune by patenting some of the unique components in   ‘Dissassembled!’ (Weird Science #18, March/April 1953), whilst simultaneously, in Weird Fantasy #18, ‘Judgment Day!’ took a powerful poke at America’s institutionalised bigotry and racism with the allegorical tale of an Earthman visiting a colony of robots who had devised a uniquely oppressive form of apartheid.

The stunningly effective story was reprinted in Incredible Science Fiction #33 (January/February 1956) as Gaines & Feldstein’s last sally and parting shot against the repressive, ever-more censorious Comics Code Authority before shutting down EC’s comicbook division for good…

‘Keyed Up!’ from Weird Science #19, May/June 1953 detailed how a drunken spacer who had accidentally killed most of his fellows came a cropper after trying to bury the evidence, whilst that month in sister publication Weird Fantasy #19 ‘Time for a Change!’ saw explorers on Pluto lethally succumb to the tempo and dangers of local rotational conditioners before ‘The Meddlers!’ (Shock SupenStories #9, June/July 1953) revealed how small-town suspicion and hostility turned a scientist into a pariah, a corpse and eventually the doom of scenic Millville…

Gaines and Feldstein were as much satirists, reformers and social commentators as entertainers and never missed an opportunity to turn a harsh spotlight on stupidity, cupidity, prejudice and injustice. They struck gold with ‘The Reformers’ (Weird Science #20, July/August 1953), which outrageously lampooned interfering star-roving blue-stocking do-gooders who discovered a planet they simply couldn’t find fault with… no matter how infernally hard they tried.

More importantly this also gave the phenomenally gifted humorist Orlando a rare opportunity to apply his subtler gifts of character nuance and comic timing.

Totalitarianism came under the hammer with ‘The Automaton’ (Weird Fantasy #20, July/August 1953) as a rebellious individual who refused to acknowledge that he was “property of the State” killed himself. Over and over and over and over again…

‘Home Run!’ (Shock SuspenStories #10 August/September 1953) saw a creature trapped on Earth go to extraordinary measures to return to Mars whilst Weird Science #21 (September/October 1953) played with the plot of the Ugly Duckling for the cruel fantasy ‘The Ugly One’.

An invisible, untouchable intruder wreaked havoc with a band of stellar prospectors in the chilling ‘My Home…’ (Weird Fantasy #21, September/October 1953), before Bradbury’s deeply moving family fable ‘Outcast of the Stars’ (Weird Science #22 November/December 1953) confirms Orlando’s artistic star quality with the subtly uplifting tale of a poor man who gives his children the most magnificent gift of all time…

In a genre where flash and dazzle were the norm, the illustrator’s deft ability to portray the subtler shades of being merely human regularly took the readers’ breath away…

Alien archaeologists reconstructed a shocking surprise when they reached Earth and reconstructed ‘The Fossil’ (Weird Fantasy #22 November/December 1953) and ‘Fair Trade’ (Weird Science Fantasy #23, Spring 1954) explored the ever-present prospect of atomic Armageddon before Feldstein adroitly adapted another pulp sci-fi author’s masterwork in ‘The Teacher from Mars’ (Weird Science Fantasy #23 June 1954).

Otto Binder had two writing careers. As Eando Binder he crafted superb short stories and classic space novels whilst as comicbook scripter using his given name he revolutionised superhero sagas as chief writer on Fawcett’s Captain Marvel, assorted icons of the Superman Family and a host of others.

Amongst the legion of publishers he worked for was EC Comics, but he had no part in the adaptation of his deeply moving tale of an alien educator facing intolerance from his human students. The magic comes purely from Feldstein’s sensitive adaptation and Orlando’s passionate drawing.

Weird Science Fantasy #25 (September 1954) offered a gem of existentialist philosophy in ‘Harvest’ wherein a robotic farmer questions his never-ending task… until he finally meets the things he’s been growing his crops for, after which Jack Oleck concocts a brace of clever yarns beginning with ‘Conditioned Reflex’ (Incredible Science Fiction #30 July/August 1955) which tells a brilliantly conceived shaggy-dog story about alien invasion and the perils of smoking before ‘Fallen Idol!’ (Incredible Science Fiction #32 November/December 1955) takes us to a post-atomic World of Tomorrow wherein a bold raid on a fallen metropolis promises to change the lives of the barbaric humans and their ambitious leader forever…

The last three stories in this titanic tome are adaptations of Binder’s astoundingly popular pulp sci-fi series starring “Human Robot” Adam Link: ten novellas written between 1939 and 1942.

As detailed in prose introductory briefing Adam Link: Behind the Scenes, the first three prose thrillers were adapted by Feldstein and Orlando at the end of the publisher’s struggle against comics censorship. Orlando returned to the feature a decade later when EC-influenced Creepy revived Adam Link, with Binder himself on the scripts. (Another graphic novel collection, another time, perhaps…?)

Here however the wonderment commences with ‘I, Robot’ (yep, Isaac Asimov didn’t coin the phrase, and was forced to use it on his own anthology of robot tales in 1950) from Weird Science Fantasy #27 (January/February 1955) which saw an erudite, sensitive mechanical man commit his origins to paper whilst waiting for a mob of outraged humans to come and destroy him…

The story continued in ‘The Trial of Adam Link’ in issue #28 (March/April) as crusading

lawyer Thomas Link struggles to clear the robot of a murder charge and win for him the right to be called human before the sequence concludes with ‘Adam Link in Business’ (Weird Science Fantasy #29 May/June 1955) as the enfranchised automaton struggles to find his place in society and is struck low by the emotion of love…

Throughout this collection, encompassing monstrous pride, overweening prejudice, terrifying power and fallen glories, Joe Orlando’s sly and subversive artistry always captured the frailties and nobility of Man and the crazy, deadly and ironically cruel, funny nature of the universe that awaited him. These stories are wonderful, subtle and entrancing and, adding final weight to the proceedings, is S.C. Ringgenberg’s biography of artistic renaissance man ‘Joe Orlando’, the aforementioned history of EC and a comprehensively illuminating ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ feature by Arthur Lortie, Tom Spurgeon and Janice Lee.

The short, sweet but severely limited output of EC has been reprinted ad infinitum in the decades since the company died. These astounding stories and art not only changed comics but also infected the larger world through film and television and via the millions of dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.

However, the most influential stories are somehow the ones least known these days.

Judgment Day is a mind-bending, eye-popping paean of praise to the sheer ability of a master of the comic art and offers a fabulously engaging introduction for every lucky stargazer fan encountering the material for the very first time.

Whether you are an aging fear aficionado or callow contemporary convert, this is a book you must not miss…

Judgment Day and Other Stories © 2014 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All comics stories © 2014 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., reprinted with permission. All other material © 2014 the respective creators and owners.

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World War One: 1914-1918


By Alan Cowsill, Lalit Kumar Sharma, Jagdish Kumar & various (Campfire)
ISBN: 978-93-80741-86-4

In 1914 following thirty years of empire building and politicking by wealthy nations, Europe was a tinderbox sitting atop a powder-keg. On June 28th in the city of Sarajevo a bomb was thrown, shots were fired and a spark set everything off…

There have been many graphic novels set in and about the Great War, but very few that have been brave enough to offer a comprehensive overview of the entire conflict. This compelling primer by writer Alan Cowsill and illustrators Lalit Kumar Sharma & Jagdish Kumar pulls off the neat trick of bullet-pointing the key events whilst simultaneously personalising the conflict through the unfolding fortunes of a number of ordinary “Tommies” who enlisted at the very start…

The account begins on The Somme in 1916 where George Smith and his brother Joe prepare to go “Over the Top”. As the attack commences he recalls how they all got there, beginning with a review of the initially botched assassination by a dying Serbian Nationalist in an inconspicuous little town in Bosnia-Herzegovina – and how German military ambition and Austro-Hungarian indignation slowly, inexorably kindled the flames of conflict on a continent enmeshed in a convoluted web of complex alliances…

The tale then switches to idyllic England where anti-German sentiment was the backdrop to the introduction of the Smith boys. Older brother Joe was part of the first wave – the British Expeditionary Force – dispatched to France in August 1914 for the hellish wake-up call that was the Battle of Mons…

Back home underage George and his pal Fred Cowsill had little problem enlisting and were soon coping with basic training as focus shifts to the Central Powers where German plans were explored and the appalling rate of attrition meant younger and younger soldiers were being ferried to the front…

And so it continues: the Smith’s experience of mud, mayhem and crippling tedium interspersed with incisive examinations and overviews of the military and political forces at play,

Whilst the boys slogged through mud, dug trenches and dodged bullets and gas, the narrative explores the role of other advantage-seeking countries such Japan, naval engagements and the supremacy of submarine combat, the war in Africa, Germany’s role in the Russian Revolution and the foolish mistakes which led America to surrender its neutrality and join the Allied Powers…

Also touched upon are the achievements of T.E. Lawrence (“…of Arabia”), Wilfred Owen, the Christmas Day football match, the creation of Tanks and development of aerial combat, the disproportionate and astounding contributions of the Australian and New Zealand contingents, the bombing of Britain, the vile executions of deserters and psychologically scarred “shellshock” victims and how, but for political intransigence, the war might have ended in 1916…

Quite understandably for a book from an Indian publisher, some long-delayed attention is paid to the crucial contributions of the Empire’s Asian soldiery, such as Sepoy Khudadad Khan Minhas (first soldier of the Indian Army to win the Victoria Cross) whom Joe meets in a field hospital, and there are some damning views of the folks at home, smugly doling out white feathers to any men they consider shirkers or cowards…

Peppered with significant factual titbits and landmarks, the report continues, following the disastrous campaigns, the technological advancements, the battles, the global involvement and implications and how, even after the Armistice, the killing continued, whilst George and his comrades fall one by one by one…

Superbly précising the entire conflict, smartly mixing factual overview with eyewitness perspective at home and abroad and never straying far from action and bloodletting, this is a captivating introduction to the “War to End All Wars” (although I might quibble on the art side and wish for a little more diligent use of photo reference in certain places) and is ably augmented by fact-features such as ‘Was it Really a World War?’ and a truly heartbreaking illustrated essay on ‘Silent Soldiers’: the astounding animals who were awarded incredible honours for their incomprehensibly valiant deeds in the human Armageddon…

© 2014 Kalyani Navyug Media Pvt Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Valerian and Laureline book 6: Ambassador of the Shadows


By Méziéres & Christin, with colours by E. Tranlé and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-178-5   (Dargaud edition) 2-205-06949-7

Valérian and Laureline is the most influential science fiction comics series ever drawn, an innovation-packed big ideas drama stuffed with wry comment and sardonic sideswipes at contemporary mores and prejudices.

Although to a large extent those venerable strips defined and later re-defined the medium itself, anybody who has seen a Star Wars movie or that franchise’s numerous homages, pastiches and rip-offs has been exposed to many doses of Jean-Claude Méziéres & Pierre Christin’s brilliant imaginings uniquely innovative, grungy, lived-in authentic futurism and light-hearted swashbuckling rollercoaster romps of Méziéres & Christin than any other cartoon spacer.

Val̩rian: Spatio-Temporal Agent debuted in Pilote #420 (November 9th 1967) and was an instant hit. It gradually evolved into Val̩rian and Laureline as the feisty sidekick developed into the equal partner Рif not scene stealing star Рin a light-hearted, fantastically imaginative time-travelling, space-warping fantasy stuffed with wry, satirical, humanist action and political commentary.

At first Valerian was an affable, capable but unimaginative by-the-book space cop tasked with protecting the official universal chronology by counteracting paradoxes caused by incautious time-travellers.

When Valérian travelled to 11th century France in debut tale ‘Les Mauvais Rêves (‘Bad Dreams’ and still not translated into English yet), he was rescued from doom by a fiery, capable young woman named Laureline. He brought her back to the 28th century super-citadel and administrative capital of the Terran Empire, Galaxity. The indomitable female firebrand trained as a Spatiotemporal operative and began accompanying him on all his missions.

Ambassador of the Shadows originally ran in Pilote from July to October 1975 and finds the wide-ranging Spatiotemporal agents assigned to an arrogant and obnoxious Terran diplomat transferring to the cosmically cosmopolitan space edifice known as Point Central.

Over the eons many races and species have converged there for commerce and social intercourse by the simple expedient of bolting their own prefabricated constructed segment to the colossal, continually expanding hodge-podge whole…

With no central authority, different species take turns presiding over the amassed multitudes via the immense Hall of Screens. However, no decent species would ever leave its own tailor-made environment…

And now it is Earth’s turn to take the lead but, as they vector in for landing, the pompous martinet they are escorting informs Valerian and Laureline of a slight modification in their orders. They are still to the Ambassador’s bodyguards but must stay extra vigilant as Earth is going to uses its term in office to bring “order and discipline” to the lackadaisical way the universe is run.

The assembled races will be invited to join a federation run – and policed – by Earth. …And just to make sure, there’s a Terran space fleet of 10, 000 warships manoeuvring just out of Point Central’s  sensor range…

Laureline is outraged but like Valerian can do nothing except acquiesce. For her pains she is put in charge of the mission’s funds – a Grumpy Transmuter from Bluxte – which can mass-excrete any currency or object of trade or barter swallowed by its always scowling other end…

All kitted-out, the trio and the living cash-machine spacewalk to Point Central but before the mission can begin an alien ambush occurs. Mystery warriors using Xoxos cocoon guns inundate the attending officers and dignitaries and only Valerian escapes plastic entombment.

As the raiders make off with the Ambassador, the Spatiotemporal Agent gives chase but is easily captured and dragged off too…

By the time Laureline breaks loose they are long gone and she is left to pick up the pieces with stiff-necked human bureaucrat Colonel Diol, Under Chief of Protocol.

Determined but with little to go on, she is cautiously optimistic when a trio of aliens come knocking. Ignoring Diol’s protest at the shocking impropriety she invites the scurrilous Shingouz into the Earth Segment. They are mercenary information brokers and claim to have been invited by the Ambassador before his abduction…

From them – and thanks to the pained efforts of the Grumpy Transmuter – she purchases a few hints and allegations as well as a map of Point Central which might lead to Earth’s secret allies in the cosmopolis…

With the constantly bleating Diol reluctantly in tow, Laureline begins a quest through the underbelly of the station, seeing for the first time the mute but ubiquitous Zools: a much ignored under-race which has been maintaining Point Central for millennia.

The Earthlings’ perambulations take them to the centaur-like Kamuniks: barbaric feudal mercenaries allied to Galaxity and appreciative of humanity’s martial prowess, and over a lavish feast – liberally augmented by another painfully exotic payment courtesy of the overworked Transmuter – the warriors steer Laureline towards potential suspects the Bagulins: low grade muscle-for-hire who frequent the tawdry red-light sector run by The Suffuss…

Despite Diol’s nigh-apoplexy the adamant and inquisitive Laureline follows the trail to the sin segment where she experiences the particular talents of the hosts: amorphous shapeshifters who can make any carnal dream come literally true.

Well into overtime now, the exhausted Grumpy buys the help of one Suffuss who smuggles the junior Spatiotemporal operative into a Bagulin party and the next link in the chain…

And so it goes as, with occasional prodding from the Shingouz, Laureline gets ever-closer to the enigmatic beings truly pulling all the strings on Point Central whilst elsewhere Valerian frees the Ambassador from a bizarre and ethereal captivity only to find the doctrinaire war-maker is undergoing a strange change of heart.

Seemingly landing their deserted ship on a paradisiacal “world with no name” they bask in an idyllic paradise and converse with noble primitives who have an uncanny aura of great power.

These beings built the first section of Point Central and ruled the universe before withdrawing from mundane material affairs, but they still maintain a watch over their creation from the shadows and won’t let any race or species to dominate or conquer their pan-galactic melting pot of space…

In a more physical portion of reality Laureline follows her final clues and reaches the strange central area where Val and the Ambassador lie dazed and confused. By the time they all return to the Earth Segment a few major changes have taken place in the governance of the immense star station but, oddly, the Ambassador doesn’t seem to mind…

Ambassador of the Shadows was the first Valerian tale to make it into English, appearing as a serial in the American Heavy Metal magazine from January to April 1984 (volume 4, #10 to Volume 5, #1).

Socially aware and ethically crusading, this is one of the smartest, most beguilingly cynical comics tales to catch the 1970s wave of political awareness and still ranks amongst the very best to explore the social aspects and iniquities of colonialism.

And of course there’s the usual glorious blend of astounding action, imaginative imagery and fantastic creatures to leaven the morality play with space-operatic fun-filled, visually breathtaking and stunningly ingenious wide-eyed wonderment…

Between 1981 and 1985, Dargaud-Canada and Dargaud-USA published a quartet of these albums in English (with a limited UK imprint from Hodder-Dargaud) under the umbrella title Valerian: Spatiotemporal Agent and this tale was the fourth release, translated then by L. Mitchell.

Although this modern Cinebook release boasts far better print and colour values plus a more fluid translation, total completists might also be interested in tracking down the 20th century edition too as it boasts a foreword by comics god Will Eisner, full creator biographies and a fascinating, insightful illustrated overview by French science fiction author and editor Daniel Riche…

© Dargaud Paris, 1975 Christin, Méziéres & Tran-Lệ. All rights reserved. English translation © 2012 Cinebook Ltd.

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The Chimpanzee Complex volume 3: Civilisation


By Richard Marazano & Jean-Michel Ponzio, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-043-6

French comics creators excel at challenging, mind-blowing, compelling science fiction. Whether boisterous, mind-boggling space opera like Valerian and Laureline, surreal meta-spiritual exploration such as Moebius’ Airtight Garage or the tense, tech-heavy veritas of Orbital, our Gallic cousins always got it: the genre is not about tech or monsters; it’s about people encountering new and uncanny ideas…

Prolific, multi-award winning Richard Marazano was born in Fontenay-aux-Roses in 1971. He initially pursued a career in science before switching to Fine Arts courses in Angoulême and debuted in bande dessinée in the mid 1990s. Although an extremely impressive artist and colourist when illustrating his own stories (Le Bataillon des Lâches, Le Syndrome d’Abel), he is best known for his collaborations with other artists such as Michel Durand (Cuervos), Marcelo Frusin (L’Expédition) and Xavier Delaporte (Chaabi) to name but a few.

His partnerships with artist Jean-Michel Ponzio are especially fruitful and rewarding. As well as Le Complexe du Chimpanzé – the trilogy under discussion here – the daring duo have also produced the taut, intricate social futurism of Genetiksâ„¢ and high-flying paranoiac cautionary tale Le Protocole Pélican.

Jean-Michel Ponzio was born in Marignane and, after a period of scholastic pick-&-mix during the 1980s, began working as a filmmaker and animator for the advertising industry. He moved into movies, designing backgrounds and settings; listing Fight Club and Batman and Robin among his many subtle successes.

In 2000 he started moonlighting as an illustrator of book covers and edged into comics four years later, creating the art for Laurent Genfort’s T’ien Keou, before writing and illustrating Kybrilon for publisher Soliel in 2005.

This led to a tidal wave of bande dessinée assignments before he began his association with Marazano in 2007. He’s still very, very busy and his stunning combination of photorealist painting, 3D design and rotoscoping techniques grace and enhance a multitude of comics from authors as varied as Richard Malka to Janhel.

Perhaps still the very best of these talented individuals’ joint efforts is The Chimpanzee Complex trilogy which concludes its English translation here with Civilisation…

When, six and a half decades after it first returned, the Apollo 11 Command Module splashed down in the Indian Ocean in February 2035, redundant NASA astronaut Helen Freeman was pressed into the top-secret investigation of the incredible passengers, deserting once again her troubled and too-often neglected daughter Sofia.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon, and nobody – including them – had any idea where they’d been for sixty-five years. For the baffled spacers it was only days since their mission began…

On learning how history had already recorded their triumphant return and unremarkable deaths years later, the legends went ballistic: exhibiting what Freeman knew as the traumatic shock response peculiar to space voyagers categorised by NASA as “the Chimpanzee Complex”…

They had no knowledge of “their” missing third astronaut Michael Collins (if he ever existed). Nobody could explain what they might be and no test science could devise was able to disprove or corroborate their incredible story…

Compelled to work under Military Spook Konrad Stealberg, Freeman’s subsequent interviews uncovered even more questions but no answers. Then one day the enigma-nauts began exhibiting memory gaps.

Whilst her best friend – NASA bureaucrat Robert Conway – left to look after her increasingly intransigent daughter, Helen and Konrad’s team were presented with another insoluble mystery when the astronauts suddenly expired: becoming decades-old corpses overnight…

Soon Helen was reluctantly piloting a mission to the moon in the mothballed but hastily reconditioned shuttle originally designed for Mars – until budget cuts scotched the project. Her trusted comrades and fellow unemployed astronauts Kurt, Alex and Aleksa were just as delighted to be back in space, but as apprehensive as Helen over the military presence and top-secret paraphernalia piled aboard.

They were even less sanguine when Stealberg and his creepy elite commandos replaced the regular crew.

En route they discovered the secret history of the 1960s Space Race: America’s black ops space program and the USSR’s clandestine and apparently failed mission to Mars.

Even bigger shocks materialised on the moon when they found the pressure-suited corpses of Aldrin and Armstrong deep in a concealed fissure. In orbit above them a vintage Command Module was intercepted by their own shuttle.

The relic contained Collins’ corpse and a decades-old Russian distress call the pilot had recorded. The message had been sent by Commies from Mars…

NASA never had an American monopoly on spaceflight: the military had run a covert, parallel program from the very start, funded by pirating portions of NASA’s budget at the personal instigation of ex-Nazi rocket pioneer Werner von Braun…

Moreover, the 66-year old Russian distress message in the capsule’s primitive computers proved the Soviets had also been far more committed to space exploration than history recorded – and just as secretive as the USA…

Mid-flight Stealberg took over, unveiling interplanetary hibernation chambers and turning the now-militarised mission towards the Red Planet. Amidst fears of what awaited them, Helen fell into cold sleep, agonising that she had again abandoned and betrayed Sophia …

When they arrived they only found greater mysteries. The Soviet attempt had been a success and a thriving base at the pole welcomed the Americans. Nothing made sense though. The Russians believed they had been there for twelve years – not six and a half decades – and mission commander Yuri Gagarin (whose death in had been faked in 1968 to facilitate his smooth transition to commander of their Mars-shot) was obsessed with a bizarre scientific hoodoo he called “probability of presence”.

His ruminations on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and whether such a subatomic phenomenon could apply to larger constructs (like human beings) in a constant and simultaneous state of being and non-being was a truly disturbing idea, but Helen had no time to debate it or their shared regrets about their abandoned Earthbound children as the other Cosmonauts had insanely decide to destroy their own base…

As she returned to the greenhouse module, Konrad presented an even more pressing problem. He had discovered Gagarin’s sixty-years-dead corpse…

As colonists Vladimir and Borislav set fire to the base modules, the Americans retreated to their vehicle, dragging the hysterical Helen, who had promised her very much alive Yuri a ride home…

The tension peaked when they got back to the orbiting Shuttle: Paul had vanished without a trace. Thoroughly rattled, Konrad ordered an immediate return to Earth, with increased watches for every day of the trip.

By May 2036, on Earth Cooper and Sophia both eagerly await Helen’s return at Cape Canaveral. However as the Shuttle approached it suddenly vanished from the tracking systems. Aboard ship Helen and Kurt saw their home planet disappear. Helpless, unable to brake and with no world in view, they rejoined the others in cold-sleep, not knowing when they would reawaken or if they’d still be in the solar system when they did.

Helen’s last conscious thoughts were of the daughter she might never see again…

The epic conclusion picks up in the Great Unknown as hibernation ends after seventy years. Only Helen and Aleksa are still alive; all the other cryo-capsules having failed at some indeterminate time.

With only finite resources and dwindling power, Helen consoles herself by catching up on messages beamed in hope and anticipation by Robbie Cooper, but is roused from her fatalistic depression by Aleksa who has made a shocking discovery.

Seeing one of the EVA suits missing, he at first believed their comrade Alex had committed suicide by walking out of the airlock. Then he saw the impossibly huge unidentified space vessel and called Helen…

Suiting up and arming themselves, they cross to the ship, Helen further encumbered by a laptop with all the messages – read and unread – from Robert stored on it. They have no idea when Alex left, or if she even tried to reach the UFO.

However as it is their only hope of survival, they make a leap into the void and after great struggle find themselves in a vast and terrifying mechanical chamber of disturbing proportions.

Alex’s abandoned gear is on the floor. She had clearly camped there for some time before vanishing into the dark, dusty cavernous interior…

Whilst they rest and consider their next move, Helen watches the last message Robbie sent from Earth. It is sixty-seven years old…

Later, Helen freaks out when they find Alex’s empty suit until Aleksa does the unthinkable and opens his own EVA garb. The enigma ship has warmth and a breathable atmosphere…

And then something pushes part of the vessel over on them…

The pair narrowly escape harm and cautiously explore the vessel, but after splitting up Aleksa is attacked again. When terrified Helen finds him he is hugging the crazed, decrepit, wizened but still alive Alex.

Mute but still vital she leads them through vaulting passageways to what they can only assume is a skeleton. A really, really big one…

Outside a viewing portal, Mars spins by above them. It’s as if they’ve come home …

However fast or far or forward humanity travels, their fears and foibles go with them and before long distrust and dread spark a final confrontation in the uncanny construct. Thus only one person makes an implausible, inexplicable escape back to Earth…

It’s 2097 and as a long-missing craft splashes down in the ocean to begin the circle anew, it becomes clear that some mysteries, like some philosophies and some family bonds, remain ineffably beyond the sphere of rational thinking…

Bold, challenging and enticingly human, this astonishing science mystery dances and darts adroitly between beguiling metaphysics and hard-wired mortal passions, easily encompassing our species’ inbuilt inescapable isolation, wide-eyed wonderment, hunger to know more and the terror of finding out, with Marazano’s pared-to-the-bone script brought to hyper-life with stunning clarity by Ponzio to produce a timeless fusion of passion, paranoia and familial fulfilment.

Do you read me? Do read The Chimpanzee Complex.

© Darguad, Paris, 2008 by Marazano& Ponzio. All rights reserved. English translation © 2010 Cinebook Ltd.