Older kids – Page 36 – Now Read This!

May 27, 2014

The Chimpanzee Complex volume 2: The Sons of Ares

By Richard Marazano & Jean-Michel Ponzio, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-015-3

Cinebook began publishing The Chimpanzee Complex in 2009 (and we reviewed it here) with the beguiling and enigmatic ‘Paradox’ which introduced the world of tomorrow to a bizarre and baffling cosmic conundrum.

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 dragooned into joining a top-secret investigation of the incredible passengers, leaving behind in Florida her troubled and too-often neglected daughter Sofia.

Legendary heroes 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 starmen it was only days since their mission beganâ€¦

On learning that history recorded their triumphant return and unremarkable deaths years later they went ballistic: exhibiting what Freeman described as the traumatic shock response peculiar to space voyagers categorised by NASA as â€œthe Chimpanzee Complexâ€â€¦

The spacers don’t know what happened to â€œtheirâ€ third astronaut Michael Collins (if he ever existed). Three heroes landed to be fÃªted by the world in 1969, but now two of them sit as prisoners in a world that terrified them.

Nobody can explain who or what they might be and no tests science can devise are sufficient to disprove their incredible storyâ€¦

Compelled to work under Presidential favourite and Top Brass Military Spook Konrad Stealberg, Freeman uncovered even more questions but no answers in her subsequent interviews, until the enigma-nauts finally began to exhibit gaps in memory.

As her best friend NASA bureaucrat Robert Conway struggled to look after the increasingly wayward Sofia, Konrad’s questioning team were presented with another shocking mystery after Armstrong and Aldrin suddenly expired: somehow becoming deteriorated cadavers overnightâ€¦

Soon Helen was (only partially) reluctantly piloting a mission to the moon in the mothballed and hastily reconditioned shuttle meant 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 unhappy and apprehensive as Helen with 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 lunar surface when the modern astronauts found the pressure-suited corpses of Aldrin and Armstrong deep in a concealed fissure even as, high above, a vintage Command Module was intercepted by their converted shuttle.

The stellar relic contained Collins’ corpse and an intercepted, decades-old Russian distress call the mission pilot had recorded. The message had been sent by Commies from Marsâ€¦

It transpired that NASA has never had the American monopoly on spaceflight: the military had been running a clandestine, parallel program from the very start, funded by siphoning a portion of NASA’s operating budget at the personal instigation of ex-Nazi rocket pioneer Werner von Braunâ€¦

Moreover, the 66-year old Russian distress message in the capsule’s primitive computers proved that the Soviets had also been far more committed to space exploration than history books had recordedâ€¦

Stealberg took charge, unveiling interplanetary hibernation chambers and turning the now-militarised shuttle-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 as her ship slowly voyaged to Mars and an appointment with the truth, whatever it might beâ€¦

The drama recommences in The Sons of Ares as, in October 2035, an increasingly off-the-rails Sophia argues and acts out with Robert Conway whilst in interplanetary space the fourth month of the journey finds American astronauts Paul Dupree and Mark Lawrence taking their boring turn awake for monitor duty whilst their comrades endure resource-saving but life-shortening hibernationâ€¦

The monotony is suddenly broken by a freak radiation storm and only one of the terrified explorers makes it to the ship’s shielded area in timeâ€¦

In Florida Robert is acutely conscious of his failings as a surrogate parent to Sophia, but Helen is blissfully unaware of the personal crisis when the slumbering crew rouse from cold sleep to find Paul insane and Mark missingâ€¦

In reporting the situation to Earth, Helen again misses – or perhaps avoids – a chance to speak to Sophia who is gradually coming to terms with the possibility that she might never see her mother againâ€¦

As the shuttle at last establishes Mars orbit, Paul is locked up for his own safety and the suspicious voyagers’ peace of mind. Konrad then shares the intel gathered by his agents on Earth whilst they slept. The Soviet clandestine Cosmonaut project began in 1963, headed by space pioneer Yuri Gagarin – whose death had been faked to facilitate his smooth transition to commander of their Mars shot.

Expecting a monumental propaganda coup, the Kremlin simply said nothing when contact was lost with Gagarin’s mission, preferring stolid rhetoric to incontrovertible proof of failure. Now with so many inexplicable events inevitably leading to the Red Planet, Stealberg expects Helen and her team to find all the answers with the Russians’ bodies on the dust surface.

He couldn’t be more wrongâ€¦

Locating a base at the polar cap, Konrad dispatches the heavily armed crew to the site even as on Earth, Sophia runs away from home. However even whilst experiencing her greatest desire – walking on another world – Helen can’t help but worry about Paul, doped up and locked into the isolation chamber of the otherwise empty Shuttleâ€¦

Whilst Robert frantically searches for Sophia on Earth, the astronauts are astounded to discover the primitive landing site and corpses they expected are, in actuality, a thriving, efficient facility, stuffed with botanical wonders and manned by the very strong and vital cosmonauts who had landed there in the1960s.

After an initial exchange of hostilities – and gunfire – friendly contact is established and another incredible saga unfolds. Russians Vladimir and Borislav have lost all sense of time in the â€œtwelve yearsâ€ since they landed and Commander Gargarin, having discovered a strange tunnel in a Martian glacier, has been absent for most of that period. They only know he’s still alive because food keeps vanishingâ€¦

Stealberg, seeing uncomfortable similarities in the agelessness of the cosmonauts and the duplicate Armstrong and Aldrin on Earth, sedates the Russians, who constantly ramble about the nature of reality, but Helen’s interest is piqued and, with Kurt’s assistance, she sneaks off into the glacier tunnel to find Gagarinâ€¦

When she succeeds it only leads to more baffling conundrums. The First Man in Space perpetually stares into the unyielding ice-wall, seemingly unsurprised by Helen’s reports on the Apollo returnees, the impossible time-differentials and the fall of the Soviet Union.

He merely ruminates on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and whether such a subatomic phenomenon could apply to larger constructs – such as human beings – in a constant and simultaneous state of being and non-being: a â€œprobability of presenceâ€â€¦

They also talk about children they will probably never see againâ€¦

As Helen returns to the greenhouse module, the Russians are planning more armed resistance but Stealberg has an even more pressing problem. Much to Helen’s astonished disbelief, he’s found Gagarin’s sixty-years-dead corpseâ€¦

As Vladimir and Borislav attack, setting fire to the modules, the Americans fall back to their vehicle, dragging the hysterical Helen, who had promised her very much alive Yuri Gagarin a ride homeâ€¦

The tension increases when they re-enter the orbiting Shuttle: Paul has vanished and no trace can be found of him. Thoroughly rattled, Konrad orders an immediate return to Earth, with increased watches for every day of the trip.

May 2036: on Earth Robert has tracked down Sophia and they both eagerly await Helen’s return at Cape Canaveral. However as the Shuttle nears Earth it suddenly vanishes from all tracking systems. Aboard the vessel Helen and Kurt experience the horror of seeing their home planet vanish. Unable to brake the shuttle and with no world in view, they rejoin the others in cold sleep, not knowing when they will next awaken or even if they will still be in their solar system when they do.

Helen’s last conscious thoughts are of the daughter she may never see againâ€¦

This astounding hard-science mystery tale steps boldly and confidently into the realm of chilling metaphysics, as the human wide-eyed wonderment gives way to uncanny uncertainty if not outright terror, as Marazano’s pared-down-to-the-bone script is realised with stunning clarity by Ponzio to produce a soaring amalgam of passion, intrigue, and paranoia.

The Chimpanzee Complex is a tale no lover of fantasy and suspense must miss.
Â© Darguad, Paris, 2008 by Marazano& Ponzio. All rights reserved. English translation Â© 2009 Cinebook Ltd.

May 7, 2014September 3, 2017

Valerian and Laureline volume 5: Birds of the Master

By MÃ©ziÃ©res & Christin, with colours by J. Goffard and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-152-5

ValÃ©rian is the most influential straight science fiction comics series ever drawn – and yes, that includes even Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Dan Dare and Judge Dredd.

Although to a large extent those venerable strips defined or re-defined the medium itself, anybody who has seen a Star Wars movie or that franchise’s overwhelming tsunami of homages, pastiches and rip-offs has been exposed to substantial doses of Jean-Claude MÃ©ziÃ©res & Pierre Christin’s brilliant imaginings (which the filmic phenomenon has shamelessly plundered for decades): everything from the character and look of alien races and cultures to the design of the Millennium Falcon and even Leia‘s Slave Girl outfit â€¦

Simply put, more humans have experienced and marvelled at the uniquely innovative, grungy, lived-in authentic futurism and light-hearted swashbuckling rollercoaster romps of MÃ©ziÃ©res & Christin than any other cartoon spacer.

ValÃ©rian: Spatio-Temporal Agent launched in the November 9^th 1967 edition of Pilote (#420) and was an instant hit. In 1977 the fervour surrounding Greg & Eddy Paape’s Luc Orient and Philippe Druillet’s Lone Sloane, combined with ValÃ©rian’s popularity, led to the creation of adult graphic sci-fi blockbuster MÃ©tal Hurlant.

ValÃ©rian and Laureline (as the series became) is a light-hearted, wildly imaginative time-travelling, space-warping fantasy steeped in wry, satirical, humanist action and trenchant political commentary, starring – in the early days at least – an affable, capable yet unimaginative by-the-book cop tasked with protecting the official universal chronology by counteracting paradoxes caused by incautious time-travellers.

When ValÃ©rian travelled to 11^th century France in the initial tale Les Mauvais RÃªves (‘Bad Dreams’ and still as yet unavailable in English), he was rescued from doom by a fiery, capable young woman named Laureline whom he brought back to 28^th century Galaxity: super-citadel and administrative capital of the Terran Empire,.

The indomitable lass subsequently trained as a Spatio-Temporal operative and began accompanying him on all his missions.

Every subsequent ValÃ©rian romp was initially serialised weekly until the 13th ‘The Rage of Hypsis’ concluded, after which further yarns were solely published as all-new graphic novels. Tragically the whole spectacular saga resolved and ended in 2010.

Birds of the Master originally ran in Pilote #710-720 (June 14^th to September 16^th 1973) and follows the constantly bickering couple as they are drawn into an eerie space Sargasso and marooned on a planetoid that has become a cemetery for spaceships.

Swept away by a tidal wave over a colossal waterfall, they are drowning amidst beds of kelp when a motley band of fisherfolk – comprised of many different species – haul the Spatio-Temporal agents aboard a ramshackle boat. In the skies high above, a vast cloud of malevolent birds circle, the same incredible creatures which had brought down their astroship.

Compelled to join in gathering the seaweed, they soon learn that the crop is destined for a mysterious unseen overlord dubbed The Master and the critically circling ugly avians are his enforcers: violent creatures that inflict madness with a biteâ€¦

The workers are nothing but slaves and bitterly discontented recent arrival SÃ¼l takes it upon himself to teach Valerian and Laureline what they need to know to stay alive as the cargo is torturously shipped across the bleak, unforgiving and forlorn terrain. As they go they observe an entire society all dedicated to providing vast amounts of food for the hidden overlord.

At the central gathering point where assorted food items from a hundred different sources are reduced to a liquid mass dubbed â€œKlaarâ€ one of the starving toilers cracks, seeking to consume a morsel of the Master’s provender, and is immediately set upon by the Birds of Madness. Furious SÃ¼l breaks too and, dashing to the worker’s aid, is also attacked. Cautious Valerian can barely stop his partner using her concealed ray-weapons in a futile attempt to save themâ€¦

When the Birds are done the battered survivors can barely speak and one believes he can fly whilst SÃ¼l is left a babbling, aggressive shadow of his former self.

With the Klaar safely dispatched through a complex system of pipes to a distant hidden destination, the emaciated workers fall upon the spilled scraps before hurling the latest victims of the birds into the Pit of Crazies. Despite being thoroughly beaten in the melee, our heroes follow and join SÃ¼l in a peculiar enclave of deranged beings, each manifesting their own brand of bewilderment but all sharing the same strange and disturbing speech impedimentâ€¦

Valerian and Laureline are again viciously attacked when they seek aid from the â€œsaneâ€ slaves so instead opt to follow the pipeline with the most ambulatory of the insane, heading deep into increasingly inhospitable country to confront the hidden cause of all their woes.

At first frantically followed by the outraged slave force, the strange crew eventually outdistance their pursuers as they continue deep into the harsh and barren wastelands until they are attacked by the ever-circling birds. As a result the Spatio-Temporal agents are also infected by the speech-wrecking madnessâ€¦

Pressing on regardless, the raving rovers follow an eerie glowing mist and at last face the appalling and hideous creature which has lured, trapped and enslaved so many sentient beings, only to be subjected to an overwhelming psychic assault that no single mind – sane or otherwise – could resist.

Happily, it had never faced anyone as ingenious as Laureline and her desperate plan enables the assembled â€œLooniesâ€ to fight back and drive the Master off-planet and into the depths of spaceâ€¦

With the creature’s pernicious influence dispelled, the voyagers feel their senses returning and return to the settlements where the slaves have descended into a food-fuelled debauch. Surprisingly, however, once Valerian and Laureline have freed and repaired their astroship from the stellar graveyard, only SÃ¼l wants to leave with themâ€¦

Expansive, thrilling, funny, clever and holding back one last wry twist in the tale, The Birds of the Master might be one of the lesser galactic classics of this superb series, but it still packs a gripping narrative punch and some of the most impressive artwork ever to grace sci-fi comics.
Â© Dargaud Paris, 1973 Christin, MÃ©ziÃ©res & Goffard. All rights reserved. English translation Â© 2013 Cinebook Ltd.

May 2, 2014May 5, 2014

The Chimpanzee Complex volume 1: Paradox

By Richard Marazano & Jean-Michel Ponzio, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-002-3

One thing French comics creators excel at is challenging, mind-blowing, astoundingly entertaining science fiction. Whether the boisterous, mind-boggling space opera of Valerian and Laureline, the surreal spiritual exploration of Moebius’ Airtight Garage or the tense, tech-heavy brooding of Orbital, our Gallic cousins always got it: the genre is not about tech or monsters; it’s about people encountering new and uncanny ideasâ€¦

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 AngoulÃªme and debuted in bande dessinÃ©e in the mid 1990s. Although an extremely impressive artist and colourist when illustrating his own stories (Le Bataillon des LÃ¢ches, Le Syndrome d’Abel), he is best known for his collaborations with other artists such as Michel Durand (Cuervos), Marcelo Frusin (L’ExpÃ©dition) 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 ChimpanzÃ© – the trilogy under discussion here – the daring duo have also produced the taut, intricate social futurism of Genetiksâ„¢ and high-flying paranoic cautionary tale Le Protocole PÃ©lican.

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 dessinÃ©e 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.

Cinebook began publishing The Chimpanzee Complex in 2009 with the beguiling and enigmatic ‘Paradox’ which introduces the world to a bizarre and baffling cosmic conundrum.

February 2035: experienced but frustrated astronaut Helen Freeman is still reeling from the latest round of cutbacks which have once again mothballed NASA’s plans to send an expedition to Mars. The young mother is resigned to living an Earthbound life in Florida with the daughter she has neglected for so long, but just as she tentatively begins to repair her relationship with young, headstrong Sofia her world is again turned upside down when a call comes from her ex-bosses.

Bowing to the inevitable despite Sophia’s strident objections, she and her old boss Robert Conway are whisked away under the tightest of security conditions to a US aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean under the draconian control of Top Brass Spook Konrad Stealberg.

Here they learn that, days previously, an unidentified object splashed down from space and was recovered by divers.

The artefact was the Command Module of Apollo 11 and it carried the still-living Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin: legendary heroes and the first men to walk on the moon. Baffled and bewildered, the recovered astronauts have steadfastly refused to speak to anybody except NASA representativesâ€¦

Helen is the first to get any information from them, and whilst Stealberg’s technician’s check every bolt, wire and component of the capsule, she and Robert carefully quiz their greatest idols. When the lost astronauts learn they have been in space for 66 years they are horrified. When they learn that history records they returned safely and died unremarkably years later they go ballistic: exhibiting what Freeman describes as the traumatic shock response peculiar to space voyagers categorised by NASA as â€œthe Chimpanzee Complexâ€â€¦

Impatient martinet Stealberg has harder questions: if – as every test they can think of indicates – these men are the real thing, who or what landed on Earth all those decades ago?

And most importantly, when they were feted by the world in 1969, was third astronaut Michael Collins one of us or one of â€œthemâ€?

Exerting military privilege he peremptorily kicks Conway out whilst press-ganging Helen onto his staff, and transfers mystery men and their capsule to his ultra secure Red Hills Creek Base in Coloradoâ€¦

Helpless but conflicted, Freeman plays along, enjoining Robby to explain and take care of Sofia. If she had been angry before, the daughter’s reaction to this further enforced absence from a mother she feels doesn’t want her will be terribleâ€¦

Events move very fast at the paranoid levels of the Military-Industrial complex, and as Helen continues her interviews with the biologically perfect astronauts she begins to discover inconsistencies and memory-lapses in their stories.

That’s enough for Stealberg to initiate other, harsher procedures but before they can be implemented Helen is awoken from fantastically real dreams of exploring Mars to a new crisis: Armstrong and Aldrin are dead. From the state of their corpses they have been for decadesâ€¦

In Florida Robby is still trying to assuage Sofia’s feelings, telling her that Mum will be home soon. There’s no chance of that, however, as Stealberg has moved on with his plans and arranged a private meeting with the President.

The result is the re-commissioning of the completed but mothballed Mars exploration shuttle with the intention of revisiting the site of the Apollo moon landings. As NASA’s top flier and an expert on the Mars vehicle Helen is going tooâ€¦ whether she wants to or not.

Twelve days later, amidst massive public uproar and speculation at the ludicrous cover story for the sudden moon-shot, Helen and her crew are introduced to the rest of the exploration team and she realises with horror that her professional career is based on a lie.

NASA has never had an American monopoly on spaceflight: the military had been running a clandestine, parallel program since the very start, funded by siphoning the Agency’s operating budget and personally instigated by ex-Nazi rocket pioneer Werner von Braunâ€¦

The launch is televised around the world, trumpeted as a final shakedown flight before closing the costly space program forever. Aboard the blazing javelin, Helen and close companion Aleksa ponder the coincidence of heading for the moon in the week they were originally scheduled to take off for Mars, but are more concerned that mission leader Stealberg has filled the shuttle with mysterious, classified containersâ€¦

All too soon the vehicle establishes orbit over the moon and a Lander touches down on the most hallowed site in the history of technology.

It’s a huge shock: the paraphernalia left by the missions doesn’t match the records and there is a strange trail of footprints. Following them the terrified explorers discover the mummified, space-suited, long dead bodies of Armstrong and Aldrin, even as high above pilot Kurt matches velocities with a piece of space junk and discovers the Apollo 11 Command Moduleâ€¦with Collins’ corpse in itâ€¦

Moreover, there’s a recorded distress message in the primitive computers: a 66-year old Russian cry for aid originating from Marsâ€¦

And that’s when Stealberg reveals his biggest secret, summoning booster rockets and a second-stage shuttle from deep orbit whilst breaking out the cryogenic coffins that will keep the crew alive as they travel on to Mars and an appointment with the truth, whatever it might beâ€¦

This is a stunning hard-science magical mystery tale, dripping with wide-eyed wonder, leavened by solid, reassuring cynicism in Marazano’s economical script and brought to intoxicating life by the hyper-realism of Ponzio. A deft blend of intrigue, hope, paranoia and abiding curiosity, The Chimpanzee Complex is a tale no lover of fantasy and suspense should ignore.

April 29, 2014May 5, 2014

Young Romance 2: the Early Simon & Kirby

By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby,restored by Chris Fama & edited by Michael GagnÃ© (Fantagraphics Books)

ISBN: 978-1-60699-732-1

As the popularity of flamboyant escapist superheroes waned after World War II, newer yet more familiar genres such as Crime and Horror came to the fore in American comics, as audiences increasingly rejected upbeat fantasy for grittier, more sober older themes in mass entertainment.

Some, like Westerns and Funny Animal comics, hardly changed at all, but gangster and detective tales were utterly radicalised by the temperament of the post-war world.

Stark, uncompromising, cynically ironic novels and socially aware, mature-themed B-movies that would become categorised as Film Noir offered the new civilian society a bleakly antiheroic worldview that often hit too close to home and set fearful, repressive, middleclass parent groups and political ideologues howling for blood.

Naturally the new forms and sensibilities seeped into comics, transforming good-natured, two-fisted gumshoe and Thud-&-Blunder cop strips of yore into darkly beguiling, even frightening tales of seductive dames, big pay-offs and glamorous thugs.

Sensing imminent Armageddon, the moral junkyard dogs bayed even louder as they saw their precious children’s minds under seditious attackâ€¦

Concurrent to the demise of masked mystery-men, industry giants Joe Simon & Jack Kirby – who were already capitalising on the True Crime boom – famously invented the comicbook Romance genre with mature, beguiling, explosively contemporary social dramas that equally focussed on the changing cultural scene and adult-themed relationships. They also, with very little shading, discussed topics of a sexual natureâ€¦

Beginning with the semi-comedic prototype My Date for Hillman in early 1947, S & K plunged in full force with Young Romance #1 in September of that year for Crestwood Publications: a minor outfit that had been creating interesting but not innovative comics since 1940 as Prize Comics.

Here, however, following Simon’s plan to make a new market out of the grievously uncatered-for older girls of America, they struck gold with stories addressing the serious issues and hazards of relationshipsâ€¦

Simon & Kirby presaged and ushered in the first American age of mature comics – not only with the creation of the Romance genre, but with challenging modern tales of real people in extraordinary situations – before seeing it all disappear again in less than eight years. Their small stable of magazines produced for the loose association of companies known as Prize/Crestwood/Pines blossomed and wilted as the industry contracted throughout the 1950s.

Not since the invention of Superman had a single comicbook generated such a frantic rush of imitation and flagrant cashing-in. Young Romance #1 was a monumental hit and the team swiftly expanded: releasing spin-offs Young Love (February 1949), Young Brides and In Love under a unique profits-sharing deal that quickly paid huge dividends to the creators and their growing studio of specialists as well as the publisher.

All through that turbulent period comicbooks suffered impossibly biased oversight and hostile scrutiny from hidebound and panicked old guard institutions such as church groups, media outlets and ambitious politicians.

A number of tales and titles garnered especial notoriety from those social doomsmiths and when the industry buckled and introduced a ferocious Comics Code, it castrated the creative form just when it most needed boldness and imagination. Comics endured more than a decade and a half of savagely doctrinaire self-imposed censorship until changing society and plummeting profits forced the art form to adapt, evolve or die.

Those tales from a simpler time, exposing a society in meltdown and suffering cultural PTSD, are mild by modern standards of behaviour but the quality of art and writing make those pivotal years a creative highpoint long overdue for a thorough reassessment.

In 2012 Fantagraphics released Young Romance: the Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics and that superb compilation, unable to do justice to the sheer volume of breakthrough material, has happily spawned this magnificent sequel, dedicated to the master creators’ first bold experiments with their astonishingly adult new genre.

Fictionalising â€œTrue Crime Casesâ€ was tremendously popular at the time, and of the assorted outfits that generated such material nobody did it better than S&K. That technique of first-person confession also naturally lent itself to the just-as-hard-hitting personal sagas of a succession of archetypal women and girls who populated their new comicbook smash.

Although their output as interchangeable writers/pencillers/inkers (possibly aided by Joe’s brother-in-law Jack Oleck in the story department) was prodigious and astounding, other hands frequently pitched in, so although these tales are all credited to S & K, art-aficionados shouldn’t be surprised to detect traces of Bill Draut, Mort Meskin, Al Eadeh, George Roussos or other stalwarts lurking in the backgroundsâ€¦

‘Introduction: A New Comic Book Genre Begins’ by Bill Schelly scrupulously traces the trajectory of the innovation and its impact on the industry before the shocking revelations begin with ‘I was a Pick-Up!’ from Young Romance #1 (September/October1947).

Here discontented teenager Toni Benson relates the circumstances that led to her being dumped by a sleazy rich kid in an underworld dive and of the sullied knight who saved her from a nasty end, whilst from the same issue ‘Misguided Heart’detailed how factory worker June Collins was slowly seduced by sleazy owner’s son Karl Barton until shy, self-effacing blue-collar Sherman could stand it no longerâ€¦

Story length varied from seven to fifteen pages and ‘Marriage Contract!’(YR #3, January/February 1948) took a gloriously expansive time to detail how destitute but proud slum-dweller Kitty Burke escaped parental pressure if not poverty by refusing to wed the career criminal her dad brokered for her, eventually finding happiness with a decent man prepared to honestly work his way to success, whilst the 8-page ‘Her Best Friend’s Sweetheart!’from the same issuetook a more light-hearted tone to detail how a soldier’s buddy sneakily put the moves on the girl he was supposed to be watching overâ€¦

Young Romance #4 revealed how excessively hard to please Nancy Hunter finally and painfully learned she would never find true love by only being a ‘Blind Date!’after which a brace of yarns from Young Romance #5 (May/June 1948) begins with ‘I Fell in Love With My Star Pupil!’:a fascinating study in small-town prejudice which found newly qualified teacher Mary Temple slandered, shunned and censured by petty, dirty minds in rural Pinesville when she began teaching an illiterate full-grown man the knowledge he needed to better himself. ‘Gold Digger’thensaw spoiled, avaricious Rusty Taylor taken down a peg or two when the boys she’d been exploiting brought in a ringer to teach her a much-needed lessonâ€¦

Simon & Kirby took much of their tone if not content from the movie melodramas of the period such as Smash-Up; the Story of a Woman or Johnny Belinda and Noir romances like Blonde Ice or Hollow Triumph and, unlike what we might consider suitable for romantic fiction today, their comicbook stories crackled with tension, embraced violent action and oozed unsavoury characters and vicious backstabbing, gossiping hypocrites.

‘Disgrace!’in #6 featured coal miner’s daughter Katie Markos who despised the raw brutal violence of boxing which offered her brother his only escape from poverty, but she was horrified at the relentless attraction she felt for his next opponent â€œKillerâ€ Grantâ€¦

The creators were not afraid of complex plots either. ‘War Bride’,the first of two selections from Young Romance #7 (September/October 1948), saw French miss Janine Arday brought to America to marry her man, only to see him die on the docks as she debarked.

Stuck without a man to guarantee her citizenship, she desperately accepted a pre-proposal from wealthy French Ã©migrÃ© Aristide Renault but after moving onto his estate found herself increasingly attracted to freewheeling idler Tony, son of the housekeeper Mrs. Cummings.

This tale would be considered mature even by today’s sophisticated standardsâ€¦

The second tale reversed the standard format as male confessor Frank Craig revealed ‘I Stole for Love!’and catalogued the foolish thoughts which forced him to embezzle funds for a devoted bride who only wanted him, not useless trinketsâ€¦

A couple from Young Romance #8 lead with ‘Love or Pity’wherein eager bride-to-be Ginny Harlan finds her perfect life destroyed by vicious gossip when her brother is erroneously implicated in mail fraud. Happily her man Ken is a decent straight shooterâ€¦

By contrast ‘Love Can Strike So Suddenly’offers a lavish exotic adventure wherein manipulative, ambitious Evie injects herself as a chaperone into her older sister’s life: accompanying the serious Ann on a business trip to India organised by dreamy tycoon Warren Wright.

The kid’s aplomb and composure swiftly dissipate once she meets the unflappable pilot/guide Bascomb Fuller who preferred the moody soubriquet â€œDeadeyeâ€â€¦

‘Was Love to be My Sacrifice!’ from Young Romance #9 (January/February 1949) took a hard look at careers as Chris Lorraine increasingly rebelled at being one half of a sister-act – the part that wanted nothing to do with her mother’s ruthless dream of stardom by proxy. Despondent, frustrated Chris was far more interested in marriage to their long-suffering agent Samâ€¦

With Young Romance a runaway success, the first spin-off debuted in February 1949 and from Young Love #1 comes the complex and intriguing ‘The Man I Loved Was a Woman-Hater’wherein vacationing Karen Nelson was saved from drowning by a reclusive artist who promptly ignored her thereafter. Unable to leave well enough alone she soon discovered a manipulative vixen who still had a ferocious financial and moral hold upon the surly but magnificent Pete Lewisâ€¦

Young Romance #10 (March/April 1949) provides two more challenging melodramas beginning with ‘This Man I Loved was a Mama’s Boy!’as Julie Decker finally meets her prospective mother-in law and realises how completely under her thumb brilliant young doctor Orin Fleming truly is.

It takes a deadly family joyride with her wild, juvenile delinquent brother-in-law-to-be before everybody is horrifyingly shaken out of their cloying, smothered rolesâ€¦

‘Unwanted!’meanwhile focuses on a young girl fresh out of prison unwillingly drawn back towards her old life by controlling boyfriend and gangster Joe Crane.

When a well-meaning bank clerk steps in to save her, the bandit plans a savage revengeâ€¦

This sublime ride back to a time of hungry hearts and dark desires ends with ‘Too Wise for Romance!’from Young Love #2 wherein a star-struck but luckless performer descends into a tawdry life as a bar-hostess and taxi-dancer, blithely unaware that the boy she casually spurned has never forgotten herâ€¦

Augmenting this parade of earthy fantasy is a beguiling feature ‘About the Restoration’ needed to compile this full-colour wonder and ‘Biographies’ of the canny creatives involved.

This is an extremely engaging, strikingly powerful and thoroughly addictive collection of great stories by brilliant masters of the comics arts and one no lover of the medium should missâ€¦

April 26, 2014April 25, 2014

Dirty Pair: Biohazards

By Toren Smith & Adam Warren (Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 1-56060-008-X (softcover), 1-56060-007-1 (hb), 1-900097-04-4 (UK edition)

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a genuine international collaboration that merged the best of Japanese and American sensibilities to create something genuinely appealing and tremendously fun.

In a fast and furious future of 2141AD, intergalactic proliferation of human civilisation has led to a monumental bureaucracy, greater corruption and more deadly criminals preying upon the citizens of the United Galactica.

Thus the constant need for extra-special Trouble Consultants: pan-planetary private paramilitary police employed by the 3WA (or Worlds Welfare Work Association) to maintain order in hotspots across the sort-of civilised universeâ€¦

Kei and Yuri are team #234, officially designated â€œThe Lovely Angelsâ€ after their sleek and efficient starship. They are lethal, capable and infallible. Whenever they are deployed, they strike fast and hard and never failâ€¦

â€¦Although the collateral damage they propagate is completely unimaginable and usually causes client worlds to regret ever asking for their aid in the first placeâ€¦.

Much to the crisis agents’ disgust and chagrin, the universe knows them best as The Dirty Pair and planetary authorities have to be in the most appalling straits to let them helpâ€¦

The concept was conceived for light novels by Japanese author Haruka Takachiho (Crusher Joe) in 1985 and quickly made the jump to TV, movie and OVA anime, but there was no comics/manga iteration (until over a decade later), inspiring Adam Warren and Toren Smith of Manga translation company Studio Proteus to approach independent publisher Eclipse Comics with an idea for a comicbook miniseriesâ€¦

The result was Biohazards; 4 issues (December 1988 to April 1989)of licensed light-hearted, manic murder and monstrous mayhem which was then swiftly collected in a brash and breezy graphic album. The many reprintings from the franchise’s successors Dark Horse in the USA and Manga Books in the UK heralded a blistering run of wry and raucous adventures that still read as well today as they did when the Japanese comics experience was seen as a rare, quaint and exotic oddityâ€¦

In ‘Biohazard’ the deadly babes are going about their lawful but excessively violent business – subsequently and of course unintentionally devastating a colossal space station and killing fifty civilians – when a call comes from Alex Goldin, Security Director of corporate paradise Pacifica.

He has a thorny problem to manage: a brutally efficient theft of personality-preserving bio-construct Brainchips and tissues samples, plus the loss of a full-grown clone, is only the latest skirmish between rival bioengineering industrialists Kelvin O’Donnell and Abraham Streib.

The escalating battle between magnates too powerful to censure compels the obsequious and duplicitous Goldin to tread softly. Both men are massive wealth-creators: master-makers of bio-weapons, body augmentations and innovative medicines, but he still doesn’t want anything incurable or unkillable loose on his streets if their economic struggle continues.

The organo-industrialists are both experts in skirting what rules and regulations exist and officially test their wares on their private manufacturing moons but you never knowâ€¦

The situation is particularly tenuous at present because O’Donnell, thanks to the unfortunate lab accident, is a space-chipmunk.

â€¦Or rather the brainchip encoding his personality currently resides in a Whelan’s Pseudo-Fuzzy in the possession by Streib. When cyborg chief enforcer M97 destroyed O’Donnell’s almost matured Adonis-like new body in the raid, the triumphant genegineer couldn’t resist an opportunity to gloat. After all, with no spare chips, no proper body to put them in and O’Donnell on a leash, surely Streib has finally wonâ€¦

Triumphant Streib is actually no better off. After similar bioagent â€œmisfortunesâ€ over the years of their rivalry, his organic head is now stuck on a robot body whilst his organics are so messed up he can’t be cloned or brainchipped.

Tracking O’Donnell’s chip to Streib’s private estate, Goldin has called on 3WA and is now stuck with Kei and Yuri. In the final assessment he needs someone from outside the system to rescue O’Donnell’s brainchip and genetic material from Streib without starting a horrific WMD war that will end life on Pacificaâ€¦

What could possibly go wrong?

With their enigmatic, electronics-warping alien super-cat Mughi the girls easily infiltrate the vast compound just in time to find Streib employing horrific techno-organic warbeasts to hunt O’Donnell.

Employing the catastrophic violence they are renowned for, the Dirty Pair easily lay waste to the human soldiers and rapacious mechanoids, but rather than turn the little Fuzzy over to Goldin they are cajoled and are convinced by the little cutie to take him to his own lab where he has himself transferred into one of his own trademarked warbeasts.

And up until then the case had been practically catastrophe-freeâ€¦

‘Complications’ occur when Kei sees the body O’Donnell will eventually return to and gets all girly-fluttery and romantically entangled; allowing herself to be convinced that they should take Streib down for good.

It’s not hard to get Yuri to agree and soon Lovely Angels and wrathful warbeast are breaking into Streib’s main lab citadel.

As the girls convincingly crush all resistance O’Donnell discovers a deliciously illegal bioagent weapon which will prove his rival’s downfall – even in Pacifica’s courts – and asks Yuri to hold onto it as they escape, but in the resultant firefight the canister is breached and she is doused in something very nastyâ€¦

Luckily, rather than a disease or toxin it’s â€œonlyâ€ a chemical to enhance aggression and violence and ‘Outbreak’ finds Yuri descending into a berserker mode even more dangerous than her regular state; ruthlessly efficient and wildly careless of consequences. Manically outfighting the army and air force despatched to stop them, she and the astounded Kei and O’Donnell soon completely destroy a major population centre before escaping M97 and his fanatically pursuing cohortsâ€¦

With Yuri fully recovered from the combat craziness, the Angels decide to take the battle to the arrogantly gloating and seemingly unimpeachable Streib, infiltrating his industrial moon Telek and ultimately reducing it to slag and space dust and free-floating bio-bombs in their own inimitable style.

However there are two more surprises in store: a rather predictable last stab from the stylishly indefatigable M97 and a more personal heartbreak bombshell for Kei once Goldin gets his hands on O’Donnellâ€¦

Both incredibly information-dense and astonishingly action-packed, this cool, light-hearted cyber-punk space opera romp is a solidly satisfying slice of Sci Fi magic that will delight all fans of tech-heavy blockbusters, and the book comes with an afterword by co-author Toren Smith – heavily illustrated with Adam Warren sketches – detailing the love of hard science and social extrapolation which flavoured and textured the creators’ trans-Pacific interpretation of Haruka Takachiho’s concept.

The digest-sized (210 x 150mm) UK edition has the tag line â€œin the tradition of Red Dwarfâ€ and that assessment is not a million miles from the truth, as long as you factor in sexy death-dealing ingÃ©nues, wry socio-political commentary, very skimpy costumes and oodles of cartoon carnage.

Fun and frolics future-style: you know you want itâ€¦

April 21, 2014April 21, 2014

Blake and Mortimer volume 17: The Secret of the Swordfish Part 3 – SX1 Strikes Back!

By Edgar P. Jacobs, coloured by Philippe BiermÃ© & Luce Daniels translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-174-7

After three years of stunning intrigue mystery and action, E.P. Jacobs’ groundbreaking saga of a battle for world peace and universal liberty concluded in a spectacular duel below the Earth and in the skies of the embattled world.

The saga concludes in SX1 Strikes Back!: a tension-drenched race against time as

Blake, Mortimer and the shattered dregs of Great Britain’s military forces prepare for a last ditch strike using the Professor’s greatest inventions to win freedom for the oppressed peoples of the worldâ€¦

Brussels-born Edgar P. Jacobs was a prodigy who drew from an early age and was besotted by music and the performing arts – especially opera. After graduating commercial school in 1919, he rejected safe office work and instead avidly pursued his passions drama on his graduation.

A succession of odd jobs at opera-houses (which included everything from scene-painting to set decoration and even performing as both an acting and singing extra) supplemented private performance studies, and in 1929 Jacobs won an award from the Government for classical singing.

His dream of operatic glory was crushed by the Great Depression, and when arts funding dried up following the global stock market crash he was forced to pick up whatever dramatic work was going, although this did include more singing and performing. He moved into illustration in 1940, with regular work for Bravo magazine and some jobs for short stories and novels, and when the occupying Nazi authorities in Belgium banned Alex Raymond’s quintessentially All-American Hero Flash Gordon Jacobs famously took over the syndicated strip to complete the saga.

His ‘Stormer Gordon’ lasted less than a month before being similarly embargoed by the Occupation dictators, after which the man of many talents simply created his own epic science-fantasy feature in the legendary Le Rayon U, a milestone in both Belgian comics and science fiction adventure.

During this period Jacobs and Tintin creator HergÃ© got together, and whilst creating the weekly U Ray strip the younger man began assisting on Tintin, colouring the original black and white strips of The Shooting Star (originally run in newspaper Le Soir) for an upcoming album collection.

By 1944 Jacobs was performing similar duties on Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, King Ottokar’s Sceptre and The Blue Lotus. He was also contributing to the drawing too, working on the extended epic The Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun.

Following the Liberation, publisher Raymond Leblanc convinced HergÃ©, Jacobs and a few other comicstrip masters to work for a new venture. Founding publishing house Le Lombard, Leblanc also commissioned Le Journal de Tintin, an anthology comic with editions in Belgium, France and Holland, edited by Herge and starring the intrepid boy reporter plus a host of newer heroes.

Beside HergÃ©, Jacobs and writer Jacques van Melkebeke, Le Journal de Tintin featured Paul Cuvelier’s ‘Corentin’ and Jacques Laudy’s ‘The Legend of the Four Aymon Brothers’.

Laudy had been a friend of Jacobs’ since their time together on Bravo, and the epic thriller serial ‘Le secret de l’Espadon’ starred an English Military Intelligence officer closely modelled on Laudy, who worked with bluff, gruff British Boffin: Captain Francis Blake and Professor Philip Mortimerâ€¦

The premiere serial ran from issue #1 (26^th September 1946 to September 8^th 1949) and cemented Jacobs’ status as a star in his own right. In 1950, with the first 18 pages slightly redrawn, The Secret of the Swordfish became Le Lombard’s very first album release with the concluding part published three years later. The volumes were reprinted nine more times between 1955 and 1982, supplemented in 1964 by a single omnibus edition.

HergÃ© and Jacobs purportedly suffered a split in 1947 when the former refused to grant the latter a by-line on new Tintin material, but since the two remained friends for life and Jacobs continued to produce Blake and Mortimer for the weekly comic, I think it’s fair to say that if such was the case it was a pretty minor spat. I rather suspect that The Secret of the Swordfish was simply taking up more and more of the diligent artist’s time and attentionâ€¦

In 1984 the story was repackaged for English translation as three volumes as part of a push to win some of the lucrative Tintin and Asterix market, but failed to find an audience. The venture ended after seven magnificent if under-appreciated volumes.

Cinebook has been publishing the later Blake and Mortimer tales since 2007 and recently completed a triptych of the very first adventureâ€¦

In The Incredible Chase and Mortimer’s Escape a hidden cabal in the Himalayas launched a global Blitzkrieg at the command of Basam-Damdu, malign Emperor of Tibet. The warlord’s arsenal of technological super-weapons were wielded by an army of the world’s wickedest rogues – such as diabolical Colonel Olrik – and their lightning sneak almost accomplished all his ambitions in one fell swoop.

Happily, English physicist Philip Mortimer and MI5 Captain Francis Blake were aware of the threat and when the attack came they narrowly escaped destruction in a devastating bomber raidâ€¦

Mortimer’s breakthrough Golden Rocket launched just as Olrik’s bombers attacked and easily outdistanced the rapacious Empire forces, leaving ruined homes behind them as they flew into a hostile world now brutally controlled by Basam-Damduâ€¦

Seeking out British Middle East resistance forces, the fugitives’ flight ended prematurely when the Rocket crashed in the rocky wilds between Iran and Afghanistan. Parachuting to safety, Blake and Mortimer survived a host of perils and escaped capture more than once as they slowly, inexorably made their way to the distant rendezvous, before meeting British-trained native Sergeant Ahmed Nasir.

The loyal Indian had served with Blake during the last war and was delighted to see him again, but as the trio laboriously made their way to the target site, Olrik had already found it and seized their last hopeâ€¦

Using commando tactics the heroes escaped in the Colonel’s own Red-Wing super-jet, but were again shot down – this time by friendly fire as anti-Lhasa rebels saw the stolen plane as an enemy targetâ€¦

Surviving this crash too, the trio were ferried by the apologetic tribesmen to the enemy-occupied town of Turbat and sheltered by a friendly Khan administrator. However a faithless servant recognised the Englishmen and the Britons were ambushedâ€¦

Sending Nasir away, Blake tried valiantly frantically to save Mortimer whilst a platoon of Empire soldiers rapidly mounted the stairs to their exposed roomâ€¦

Mortimer’s Escape saw the heroes initially avoid capture and flee Turbat, which was torn apart by a furious spontaneous rebellion but, unknown to the fugitives, the spy Bezendjas was hard on their heels. Moreover with the city in flames and fighting in every street the callous Colonel Olrik abandoned his own troops to pursue Nasir, Blake and Mortimer into the wastes beyond the wallsâ€¦

After days of relentless pursuit they reached the rocky coastline where Blake realised that he had lost precious plans and documents he have been carrying since they fled Englandâ€¦

Knowing that somebody must reach the British resistance at their hidden Eastern base, the comrades split up, with Blake and Nasir going onwards whilst Mortimer returned for the plans. Finding them was sheer good fortune, but being found by Olrik’s troops was not. Despite a Horatian last stand the scientist was taken prisonerâ€¦ but only after first successfully hiding the priceless documentsâ€¦

Months later Olrik was called to account by Basam-Damdu’s ruling council, increasingly incensed with the Colonel’s lack of progress in breaking the captive scientist and even more infuriated by a tidal-wave of sabotage and armed rebellion throughout their freshly-conquered territories.

Olrik’s realised that his days as an agent of the Yellow Empire might be numberedâ€¦

Given days to make Mortimer talk, the Colonel returned to his base just as another rebel raid allowed Nasir to infiltrate the HQ. Blake was also abroad, having joined British resistance forces in the area.

A British submarine was roving the area, launched from a vast atomic-powered secret installation under the Straits of Hormuz, where the Royal Navy were preparing for a massive counter-attack. With daring raids freeing interned soldiers all the time, the ranks of scientists, technicians and soldiers were swelling dailyâ€¦

Meanwhile, Nasir was working to free Mortimer, who was still adamantly refusing to talk of the mysterious â€œSwordfishâ€ Olrik’s agents continually heard rumours ofâ€¦

When devious Doctor Sun Fo arrived to interrogate him, the Professor explosively escaped into the fortress grounds during an earth-shattering storm. Trapped in a tower with only a handgun, he was determined to sell his life dearly, but was rescued by Blake and Nasir in a Navy Helicopter.

Using the storm for cover the heroes evaded jet pursuit and a naval sweep to link up with the British sub and escape into the nightâ€¦

The final chapter opens with a stunning reprise of past events – cunningly compiled from a succession of six full page illustrations and presumably original covers from the weekly Le Journal de Tintin – after which a daring commando raid liberates a trainload of British prisoners.

Brought to a fabulous subterranean secret base, the assorted scientists and engineers discover an underground railway, factory, armaments facilities and even an atomic pile, all furiously toiling to complete the mysterious super-weapon dubbed â€œSwordfishâ€.

The former prisoners all readily join the volunteers, blithely unaware that supremely capable scoundrel Olrik is amongst them in a cunning disguise.

Days pass and as preparations for the Big Push produce satisfactory results, a series of disastrous accidents soon leads to one inescapable conclusion: there is a saboteur in the citadelâ€¦

Eventually Olrik becomes overconfident and Mortimer exposes the infiltrator in a crafty trap, but after a fraught confrontation the Colonel escapes after almost causing a nuclear catastrophe. Fleeing across the seabed, the harried spy narrowly avoids capture by diver teams and even a hungry giant octopusâ€¦

The flight takes its toll upon Olrik and he barely reaches land alive. Luckily for him Bezendjas had been checking out that region of coastline and finds the exhausted villain trapped in his stolen deep-sea diver suit. After a lengthy period the dazed desperado recovers and delivers his hard-won information. Soon Imperial forces are converging on the British bastionâ€¦

As air and sea forces bombard the rocky island and sea-floor citadel, Olrik dispatches crack troops to break in via a concealed land entrance, resulting in a staggering battle in the depths of the Earth.

They were almost in timeâ€¦

After months of desperate struggle, Mortimer and his liberated scientists have rushed to complete the incredible Swordfish: a hypersonic attack jet with uncanny manoeuvrability and appallingly destructive armament.

Astoundingly launched from beneath the sea, the sleekly sinister plane single-handedly shoots the Empire jets out of the skies before sinking dozens of the attacking naval vessels. Ruthlessly piloting SX1 is Francis Blake; and even as he wreaks havoc upon the invading force he is joined by SX2 – a second equally unstoppable super-jetâ€¦

Soon the Yellow Empire is in full retreat and a squadron of Swordfish is completed. With the once-occupied planet in full revolt, it’s not long before Lhasa gets a taste of the flaming death it callously inflicted upon a peaceful, unsuspecting and now most vengeful worldâ€¦

They were only just in time: the insane and malignant Emperor was mere moments away from launching a doomsday flight of atomic missiles to every corner of the planet he so briefly ownedâ€¦

Gripping and fantastic in the truest tradition of pulp sci-fi and Boy’s Own Adventures, Blake and Mortimer are the very epitome of dogged heroic determination; always delivering grand, old-fashioned Blood-&-Thunder thrills and spills in timeless fashion and with astonishing visual punch. Despite the epic body count and dated milieu, any kid able to suspend modern mores and cultural disbelief (call it alternate earth history or bakelite-punk if you want) will experience the adventure of their livesâ€¦ and so will their children.

This Cinebook edition also includes a fascinating illustrated essay ‘Jacobs: 1946, The Swordfish, starting point of a masterful work’ first seen in The World of Edgar P. Jacobs, a tantalising preview of new adventure The Oath of the Five Lords (by Yves Sente & AndrÃ© Juillard) plus a biographical feature and chronological publication chart of Jacobs’ and his successors’ efforts.

April 16, 2014April 21, 2014

Blake and Mortimer volume 16: The Secret of the Swordfish Part 2 – Mortimer’s Escape

By Edgar P. Jacobs, coloured by Philippe BiermÃ© & Luce Daniels translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-161-7

Belgian Edgard FÃ©lix Pierre Jacobs (March 30th 1904-February 20th 1987) is rightly considered to be one of the founding fathers of the Continental comics industry. Although his output is relatively modest compared to most of his iconic contemporaries, the landmark serialised epic he created practically formed the backbone of the straight action-adventure comic in Europe, and his splendidly adroit yet roguish and thoroughly British adventurers Blake and Mortimer, conceived and realised for the very first issue of Le Journal de Tintin in 1946, swiftly became an crucial staple of post-war European kids’ life, in exactly the same way that Dan Dare was in 1950s Britain.

Edgar P. Jacobs was born in Brussels, a precocious child who was always drawing but was even more obsessed with music and the performing arts – especially opera. He attended a commercial school but loathed the idea of office work and instead avidly pursued the arts and drama on his graduation in 1919.

A succession of odd jobs at opera-houses (scene-painting, set decoration and even performing as both an acting and singing extra) supplemented his private performance studies, and in 1929 Jacobs won an award from the Government for classical singing.

His dreamed-of operatic career was thwarted by the Great Depression. When arts funding suffered massive cutbacks following the global stock market crash, he was compelled to pick up whatever dramatic work was going, although this did include more singing and performing.

Jacobs switched to commercial illustration in 1940, winning regular work in the magazine Bravo, as well as illustrating short stories and novels. He famously took over the syndicated Flash Gordon strip when the occupying German authorities banned Alex Raymond’s quintessentially All-American Hero and the publishers desperately needed someone to satisfactorily complete the saga.

Jacobs’ ‘Stormer Gordon’ lasted less than a month before being similarly embargoed by the Occupation dictators, after which the man of many talents simply created his own epic science-fantasy feature in the legendary Le Rayon U, a milestone in both Belgian comics and science fiction adventure.

During this period Jacobs and Tintin creator HergÃ© got together, and whilst creating the weekly U Ray strip, the younger man began assisting on Tintin, colouring the original black and white strips of The Shooting Star (originally run in newspaper Le Soir) for an upcoming album collection.

After the war and liberation, publisher Raymond Leblanc convinced HergÃ©, Jacobs and a few other comicstrip aristocracy to work for his proposed new venture. Founding publishing house Le Lombard, Leblanc also commissioned Le Journal de Tintin, an anthology comic with simultaneous editions in Belgium, France and Holland, edited by HergÃ© and starring the intrepid boy reporter plus a host of newer heroes.

Beside HergÃ©, Jacobs and writer Jacques van Melkebeke, Le Journal de Tintin featured Paul Cuvelier’s ‘Corentin’ and Jacques Laudy’s ‘The Legend of the Four Aymon Brothers’.

Laudy had been a friend of Jacobs’ since their time together on Bravo, and the first instalment of the epic thriller serial ‘Le secret de l’Espadon’ starred a bluff, gruff British scientist and an English Military Intelligence officer (who was closely modelled on Laudy): Professor Philip Mortimer and Captain Francis Blakeâ€¦

The initial storyline ran from issue #1 (26^th September 1946 to September 8^th 1949) and cemented Jacobs’ status as a star in his own right. In 1950, with the first 18 pages slightly redrawn, The Secret of the Swordfish became Le Lombard’s first album release with the concluding part published three years later. These volumes were reprinted nine more times between 1955 and 1982 in addition to a single omnibus edition released in 1964.

In 1984 the story was reformatted and repackaged for English translation as three volumes with additional material (mostly covers from the weekly Tintin added to the story as splash pages) as part of a push to win some of the lucrative Tintin and Asterix market here, but failed to find an audience and ended after seven magnificent if under-appreciated volumes.

Now happily Cinebook has finally released the tale – albeit after publishing many later adventures first – and this second instalment carries the tale of the struggle against world domination to next epic levelâ€¦

Although all the subsequent Blake and Mortimer sagas have been wonderfully retranslated and published by Cinebook in recent years, this initial epic introductory adventure and its concluding two volumes remained frustratingly in the back-issue twilight zone, possibly due to their superficial embracing of the prevailing prejudices of the time.

By having the overarching enemies of mankind be a secret Asiatic â€œYellow Perilâ€ empire of evil, there is some potential for offence – unless one actually reads the books to find that any presumed racism is countered throughout by an equal amount of â€œgoodâ€ ethnic people and â€œevilâ€ white folk, so please if you have any doubts please quell them and get these booksâ€¦.

Here and now, however, let’s recap The Incredible Chase, wherein a clandestine clique in the Himalayas launched a global Blitzkrieg at the command of Basam-Damdu, malign Emperor of Tibet. The warlord ruled a secret cabal of belligerent conquerors, whose arsenal of technological super-weapons were wielded by an army of the world’s wickedest rogues such as the diabolical Colonel Olrik who dreamed of ruling the entire Earth, and his sneak attack almost accomplished all his schemes in one fell swoop.

Happily however, English physicist Philip Mortimer and MI5 Captain Francis Blake were aware of the threat and were already racing to finish the boffin’s radical new aircraft at a hidden British industrial complex.

When the attack came the old friends swung into immediate action and narrowly escaped destruction in a devastating bomber raidâ€¦

The Golden Rocket launched just as Olrik’s bombers attacked and easily outdistanced the rapacious Empire forces, leaving ruined homes behind them as they flew into a hostile world now brutally controlled by Basam-Damduâ€¦

Seeking to join British Middle East resistance forces, the fugitives’ flight ended prematurely when the Rocket crashed in the rocky wilds between Iran and Afghanistan. Parachuting to safety, Blake and Mortimer survived a host of perils and escaped capture more than once as they slowly, inexorably made their way to the distant rendezvous, before meeting a British-trained native Sergeant Ahmed Nasir.

Using commando tactics to infiltrate the enemy camp and stealing the villainous Colonel’s own Red-Wing super-jet, the heroes made their way towards a fall-back point but were again shot down – this time by friendly fire as anti-Lhasa rebels saw the stolen plane as an enemy targetâ€¦

Surviving this crash too, the trio were ferried in relative safety by the apologetic tribesmen to the enemy-occupied town of Turbat and sheltered by a friendly Khan administrator. However the man’s servant, a spy of the Empire-appointed Wazir, recognised the Englishmen and Nasir realised far too late the danger they all facedâ€¦

Sending his loyal Sergeant away, Blake tried valiantly frantically to save Mortimer whilst a platoon of Empire soldiers rapidly mounted the stairs to their exposed roomâ€¦

The frantic action resumes here in Mortimer’s Escape with soldiers bursting into an empty chamber before being themselves attacked by the Khan. After a bloody firefight the Englishmen emerge from their cunning hiding place and flee Turbat, which has been seized by a furious spur-of-the-moment rebellion.

Unknown to the fugitives, the devious spy Bezendjas is hard on their heels and soon finds an opportunity to inform Olrik. With the city in flames and fighting in every street the callous colonel abandons his own troops to pursue Nasir, Blake and Mortimer into the wastes beyond the wallsâ€¦

On stolen horses the heroes endure all the ferocious hardships of the desert but cannot outdistance Olrik’s staff-car. After days of relentless pursuit they reach the rocky coastline and almost stumble into another Empire patrol, and whilst ducking them Blake almost falls to his doom. Narrowly escaping death, the trio continue to climb steep escarpments and it is dusk before the Intelligence Officer realises that he has lost the precious plans and documents they have been carrying since they fled Englandâ€¦

Realising that somebody must reach the British resistance at their hidden Eastern base, the valiant comrades split up. Blake and Nasir continue onwards whilst Mortimer returns to the accident site. Finding the plans is a stroke of sheer good fortune, immediately countered by an ambush from Olrik’s troops.

Despite a Herculean last stand the scientist is at last taken prisoner but only after successfully hiding the lost plansâ€¦

Three months later Olrik is called to account in the exotic city-fortress of Lhasa. Basam-Damdu’s ruling council are unhappy with the Colonel’s lack of progress in breaking the captive scientist, and even more infuriated by a tidal-wave of sabotage and armed rebellion throughout their newly-conquered territories. Even Olrik’s own spies are warning him that his days as an agent of the Yellow Empire might be numberedâ€¦

Given two days to make Mortimer talk, the Colonel returns to his base in Karachi just as another rebel raid allows Nasir to infiltrate the Empire’s HQ. Blake is also abroad in the city, having joined British forces in the area.

With less than a day to act, the MI5 officer rendezvous with a British submarine and travels to a vast atomic-powered secret installation under the Straits of Hormuz, where the Royal Navy are stoically preparing for a massive counter-attack on the Empire. With raids liberating interned soldiers all the time, the ranks of scientists, technicians and soldiers are swelling dailyâ€¦

Meanwhile, Nasir has begun a desperate plan to free Mortimer, who is still adamantly refusing to talk of the mysterious â€œSwordfishâ€ Olrik’s agents continually hear rumours ofâ€¦

Aware of his danger and the Sergeant’s efforts, Mortimer instead cunningly informs Nasir of the lost plans’ location, even as the impatient Emperor’s personal torturer arrives from Lhasaâ€¦

Always concerned with the greater good, Blake and a commando team secure the concealed plans and are met by Nasir who has been forced from Karachi after realising the spy Bezendjas has recognised him. It appears that time has run out for their scholarly comradeâ€¦

Mortimer, however, has taken fate into his own hands. When the devious Doctor Sun Fo begins his interrogation, the Professor breaks free and escapes into the fortress grounds during an earth-shattering storm. Trapped in a tower with only a handgun, he is determined to sell his life dearly, but is rescued by Blake and Nasir in a Navy Helicopter.

Using the storm for cover the heroes evade jet pursuit and an enemy naval sweep to link up with a British sub and escape into the nightâ€¦

To Be Concludedâ€¦

Gripping and fantastic in the best tradition of pulp sci-fi and Boy’s Own Adventures, Blake and Mortimer are the very epitome of True Brit grit and determination; always delivering grand, old-fashioned Blood-&-Thunder thrills and spills in tried and true timeless fashion and with staggering visual verve and dash. Despite the high body count and dated milieu, any kid able to suspend modern mores and cultural disbelief (call it alternate earth history or bakelite-punk if you want) will experience the adventure of their livesâ€¦ and so will their children.

This Cinebook edition also includes a tantalising preview of the next volume as well as excerpts from stand-alone adventure S.O.S. Meteors, plus a biography feature which offers a chronological publication chart of Jacobs’ and his successors’ efforts and a handy comparison and chronological publishing order of the Cinebook releases.

April 2, 2014

xxxHolic Omnibus volume 1

By Clamp, translated & adapted by William Flanagan and lettered by Dana Hayward (Kodansha Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61262-591-1

After beginning as an eleven-strong Â dojinshi (self publishing or amateur) group in the late-1980s, Kuranpu – AKA CLAMP – eventually stabilised as primarily writer ÅŒkawa Nanase and artists Igarashi Satsuki, Nekoi Tsubaki & Â Mokona (Apapa), whose seamless collaborations on such series as Tokyo Babylon, Clamp Detective School, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, X, Legal Drug, Chobits and many more revolutionised Japanese comics in the 1990s.

Beginning solidly in the shÅjo marketplace, the collective quickly began challenging the established forms and eventually produced material for far more mature and demanding readerships. The sales of their 26 different titles to date in collected tankÅbon volumes far exceeds 100 million copies.

This monolithic 560 page monochrome magnum opus re-presents the first three volumes of one of their most memorable mystic sienen (made for male readers) masterpieces; one that broke boundaries in Japan by interacting and crossing over a number of the collective’s other ongoing series: specifically Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle which we know as Cardcaptor Sakura.

xxxHolic ran from 2003 to 2011, at first sporadically serialised in Kodansha’s Young Magazine before finding a regular home (from June 2010 to its conclusion in February 2011) in Bessatsu ShÅnen Magazine.

The epic 19 volume saga has been seen previously in English translation – in America from Del Rey Manga and Tanoshimi in the UK – and naturally there are a wealth of film and TV anime, OVAs, games, light novels and all the other connected media spin-offs available starring the lead characters.

And in case you were wondering the xxx doesn’t stand for sex: in Japanese culture the triple cross merely denotes â€œfill in the blankâ€â€¦

The madcap mystery begins when excitable student Kimihiro Watanuki is driven into the wards surrounding a strange shop. He has always had a slight problem he doesn’t like sharing: Watanuki sees spirits. Not just ghosts but all types of supernatural manifestation. In fact something inexplicable and nasty actually chased him into the mystic fence around YÅ«ko Ichihara‘s eccentric little emporium where he is confronted by two creepy little children Moro and Maruâ€¦

The eccentric proprietrix then smugly claims it was â€œhitsuzenâ€ – a naturally fore-ordained event – that brought him and before he can stop her proceeds to read his fortune. Her shop offers divination and stocks curios but her game is granting wishes and the slickly manipulative YÅ«ko swiftly and easily tricks the harassed lad into expressing his desire to be rid of his gift.

In her world services cost and although she instantly grants his wish YÅ«ko explains it will only occur after he had paid for itâ€¦ with an unspecified amount of lowly indentured servitudeâ€¦

Thus he becomes an unpaid skivvy, cook and cleaner at the little shop of wonders, sorting the assorted artefacts (many of which are portentous icons in other CLAMP tales) and being lectured by the sublimely arrogant witch. Moreover she keeps adding lessons, losses, breakages and other stuff to his accountâ€¦

He soon gets an inkling of a deeper game when a customer comes in with a wish and tries to play false with the witch. Despite repeated warnings the client continues to lie and Watanuki eventually sees with his spirit vision the ghastly consequence of being untrue to oneself and YÅ«ko â€¦

His onerous service is punctuated with days at the Cross Private School, but one day after he talks to cute Himawari Kunogi and instantly falls in love, YÅ«ko warns of bad tidings aheadâ€¦

The lad still doesn’t trust his new boss – with good reason – but after a forthright lecture on the effects and responsibilities of predestination and of all kinds of divination, she takes him on a magical shopping trip and enigmatic errand to meet another potential customer.

A troubled housewife is addicted to social media and wants to be cured of her computer compulsion, but didn’t know how to proceed. When the exotic woman and her goofy servant turn up unannounced on her doorstep she is willing to do whatever YÅ«ko prescribes but utterly unprepared for the consequencesâ€¦

One rainy day Watanuki’s culinary and other gifts are particularly tested when the hard-drinking sorceress entertains guests from another dimension – (Syoaran and Sakura from the aforementioned CardCaptor series) in desperate need of sanctuary and something only her constantly moaning apprentice can retrieve from the shop’s capacious and sinister back roomsâ€¦

The pair of deceptively cute, animated artefacts he finds are then split up, with one accompanying the guests back to their own realm whilst YÅ«ko retains its twin â€œMokonaâ€ for future emergenciesâ€¦

One day a delightful picnic with Himawari is too soon ended because Watanuki has to go back to YÅ«ko, who needs him to have his fortune told by a true expert. However, always working to her own agenda, the witch first treats him to the indulgences of a slick and lovely charlatan before introducing him to the innocuous real thingâ€¦

Watanuki’s chances with Himawari take another beating when classmate Shizuka DÅmeki falls under YÅ«ko’s influence. He is tall, clever, good-looking and a star of the archery club, but the witch is more interested in his hidden spiritual powers – and the fact that he makes Watanuki feel furious and inadequate at the same time.

She invites all three of them to a mid-summer ghost-story party at a certain troubled houseâ€¦

The spooky soiree goes exactly as the sorceress intended and turns terrifyingly real when malignant forces only Watanuki can detect attack. However DÅmeki – who can see nothing amiss – is able to destroy them with his own gift – a hereditary psychic exorcism power- if his rival tells him where to fire his imaginary arrowsâ€¦

With Himawari now part of YÅ«ko’s circle, Watanuki is constantly furious at both his mistress and the suave, couldn’t-care-less archer-rival, but as summer turns to autumn he slowly learns to make peace with and even grudgingly accept the archer’s presence.

After another encounter with the Sakura heroes the schoolboys are inadvertently drawn into an even scarier team-up when YÅ«ko despatches them to investigate a school where female students meddled with â€œAngel-Sanâ€ prophecy magic (like western Ouija board games) and called up something uncontrollableâ€¦

The Witch doesn’t bother to accompany them but does insist Watanuki wear a pair of magic animal ears so she can talk to him from the comfort of he couch. It also makes him look like a complete idiotâ€¦

The entire school is a deadly trap for the unprepared lads but their valiant efforts call forth an unsuspected protective spirit to cleanse the building. Tragically the archer is slightly wounded saving Watanukiâ€¦

Now Himawari is certain to pick himâ€¦

As things get back to abnormal another client turns up to have her wish fulfilled but is too arrogant to listen to the seller’s advice. Before long the kids are just too late to prevent a ghastly chain of tragedy caused by her cocky misuse of a genuine mummified Monkey’s Pawâ€¦

This monumental compilation concludes with a delightful seasonal short as the still loudly complaining but slowly acclimatising Watanuki finally sees the miraculous side of his gift when he meets and befriends a Kitsune (fox spirit) street food vendor and his delightful cubâ€¦

Expansive, enthralling and wickedly funny, xxxHolic is a glorious romp combining whimsy and horror that will delight lovers of fantasy in all forms.

This Omnibus edition is punctuated throughout with text features including ‘Honorifics Explained’, ‘Artifacts and Miscellany’ ‘Translation Notes’, background commentary on crossover guest stars and other CLAMP classics in ‘Past Works’, cultural notes on ‘Ghost Stories in the Summer’, ‘Protective Spirits and Ancestor Worship’ and much more.

xxxHolic Omnibus volume 1 Â© 2003-2004 CLAMP. Shigatsu Tsuitachi CO., LTD./Kodansha. English translation Â© 2014 CLAMP. Shigatsu Tsuitachi CO., LTD./Kodansha. All rights reserved.
This book is printed in the traditional ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.

March 18, 2014March 17, 2014

Usagi Yojimbo book 7: Gen’s Story

By Stan Sakai (Fantagraphics)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-304-1

Usagi Yojimbo (which translates as â€œrabbit bodyguardâ€) first appeared as a background character in Stan Sakai’s anthropomorphic comedy The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper and Hermy, which premiered in 1984 amongst the assorted furry ‘n’ fuzzy folk 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 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 nameâ€¦

Although the deliriously peripatetic and expansive period epic stars sentient animals and details the life of a peripatetic Lord-less 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 tenets of Bushido. Â 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.

This evocative and enticingly seventh black-&-white blockbuster collects yarns from Fantagraphics’ Usagi Yojimbo comicbook volume 1, #32-38 plus an extra attraction from funny animal anthology Critters #38, offering a selection of complete adventures tantalisingly tinged with supernatural terror and drenched in wit, irony and pathos.

Following a lavish and laudatory Introduction from Groo-some co-worker Sergio AragonÃ©s, the historical drama resumes as the restless, roaming Miyamoto encounters street performer ‘Kitsune’ whose beguiling beauty and dexterity with spinning tops turns many a head.

Of course whilst everybody’s gaping in astonishment the foxy lady is picking their pocketsâ€¦

The philosophical wandering warrior takes it in his stride but when crooked gambler Hatsu‘s customary conniving tricks provoke a bloody fight in an inn, Kitsune is forced to show the still blithely unaware bunny her other – far more lethal skills – to save their livesâ€¦

‘Gaki’ (literally â€œHungry Ghostâ€) then delightfully skips backs to the bunny’s boyhood as a Bushido disciple of master warrior Katsuichi, wherein that venerable warrior teaches his fractious student a valuable and terrifying lesson in staying alert, after which ‘Broken Ritual’ (from a plot by AragonÃ©s) offers a magnificent ghost story of honour regained.

It begins when the Yojimbo wanders into a village of terrified peasants cowering from the nightly horrors of a spectral warrior. The unhappy revenant is General Tadaoka, an old comrade of Usagi’s and, as the story of the defeated soldier’s frustrated attempt to commit Seppuku comes out, the heart-sore hare realises what he must do to give his deceased friend peaceâ€¦

Once, Miyamoto Usagi was simply the son of a small-town magistrate who had spent years learning the Way of Bushido from his stern, leonine master: not just superior technique and tactics, but also Katsuichi’s creed of justice and restraint which would serve the Ronin well throughout his turbulent life.

Mere months after graduating, Usagi was personally recruited by the personal bodyguard of Great Lord MifunÄ—. The young man advanced quickly and was soon a trusted bodyguard too, serving beside the indomitable Gunichi. It was a time of great unrest and war was brewingâ€¦

In his third year of service the Lord’s castle was attacked by Neko Ninja assassins and, although the doughty heroes managed to save their master, the Lord’s wife Kazumi and heir Tsuruichi were murdered. Realising ambitious rival Lord Hikiji was responsible, MifunÄ— declared warâ€¦

The epic conflict ended on the great Adachigahara plain when MifunÄ—’s general Todo switched sides and the Great Lord fell. At the crucial moment Gunichi also broke, fleeing to save his own skin and leaving the helpless Usagi to preserve the fallen Lord’s head – and honour – from shameful desecrationâ€¦

The next tale here returns to the days after that tragic betrayal and finds the hunted Usagi hiding in the wild forest known as ‘The Tangled Skein’ and taking shelter in the hut of an old woman. The crone was in fact a demonic Obakemono and, easily overpowering the fugitive, was set to devour Usagi when dead MifunÄ— returned to repay his most faithful servant for his unswerving loyaltyâ€¦

This is followed by an extended contemporary tale featuring old frenemy ‘Gen’ and the title tale of this tome.

When the irascibly bombastic, money-mad bounty-hunter and conniving thief-taker bites off more than he can chew, he is lucky Usagi is there to rescue him. Whilst the roguish rhino is recovering from severe wounds, however, the Ronin is approached by a haughty but destitute noblewoman and is drawn into ‘Lady Asano’s Story’ and her quest for vengeance against the traitor who destroyed her clan and family.

The Yojimbo is looking for a way to let her down gently when the dowager recognises GennosukÃ© as the lost son of her most trusted generalâ€¦

The bitter bounty hunter wants nothing to do with her but when the traitor Oda – now the town magistrate – arrests the lady and Usagi learns of his companion’s awful upbringing in ‘Sins of the Father’ he decides to help even if Gen won’t.

The attempt fails and he is captured, compelling the rhino to get involved in ‘Lady Asano’s Revenge’: an epic final confrontation of Shakespearean proportionsâ€¦

The sober, weary pair of itinerants then trek to another village in time for more trouble and ‘The Return of Kitsune’. The shady entertainer has been plying her trade and accidentally stolen a very dangerous letter: one detailing a proposed rebellion and scheme to profiteer from the crisis. Now she in hiding from the mercenaries of a hugely powerful and influential merchantâ€¦

However after the ill-starred trio savagely end the threat in typical bloodletting fashion a hidden faction springs a galling surprise on the weary victorsâ€¦

‘The Last Ino Story’ ends the story section of this volume with a tale of brooding emotional drama and features the return of the Blind Swordspig; a blood-spilling porcine outlaw with a huge price on his head whose incredible olfactory sense more than compensates for his useless eyes.

Although Ino was a ruthless, blood-spilling villain he valiantly helped Gen in a desperate crisis, and the thief-taker returned the favour by leading everyone to believe his profitable quarry had perished.

Now, after fighting their way out of a vicious bandit ambush, the bounty hunter and his bunny buddy discover the swine has simply settled down as an innocuous farmer, but his violent past will not leave him be. Ino is dying of an infected arrow wound and his frantic young wife Fujiko begs them to save him any way they canâ€¦

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 the perfect comics epic: a monolithic magical saga of irresistible appeal that will delight devotees and make converts of the most hardened hater of â€œfunny animalâ€ stories.

March 14, 2014March 13, 2014

Zombre – a Borderline Press Undead Anthology

By various, edited by Will Vigar (Borderline Press)
ISBN: 978-0-9926972-2-8

Yes I know what you’re thinking: not more bloody zombies. Well, yes, but you’re right and you’re wrongâ€¦

In recent years the theme of voracious, flesh-eating undead horrors unceasingly shambling after the world’s remaining breathers has been transcendent in most areas of the entertainment arts (I don’t recall seeing an opera yet, but surely there’s one happening somewhere?) but as with every all-encompassing trope, there’s always room – and a sheer necessity – for a fresh take if you’ve got imagination, ingenuity and the stomach for itâ€¦

First in a proposed line of themed anthologies from new British publisher Borderline Press, Zombre offers just such a welcome reappraisal of the formula courtesy of a truly international gathering of quirkily independent creators.

In his introduction ‘Undead Letter Office’ Editor Will Vigar gives you fair warning of what’s in store after which the E.P. Rodway eases your passage into another world with ‘Lurch (A Poem)’ before the comicbook carnivores commence their danse macabre in a sweet succession of (mostly) monochrome misadventuresâ€¦

Mal Earl strikes first with a wry and crafty dig at the modern world – and isn’t all horror fiction social commentary? – with ‘Battenburg’ wherein a highly motivated media lawyer tracks down the world’s first Zombie and offers him a dealâ€¦

Richard Worth & James Firkins then slip in reams of real world horror to their medical report on ‘The Importance of Correctly Identifying the Undead’, and ‘Imaginary Kingdom’ by Jay Eales & Krzysztof Ostrowski offers a savvy suggestion of how we’ll fight back once the Zombie Apocalypse occurs.

Kel Winser examines the dangers of the salacious, hedonistic club scene and reveals the gruesome consequences of contracting ‘Hepatitis Z’, after which Joanna Sanecka & Dennis Wojda steal the show with their smart and surreal paean to the restorative power of Jazz and especially ‘Charlie Parker’, and Nick O’Gorman concentrates on guilt and PTSD affecting former brain munchers after they are treated and become ‘The Cured’â€¦

‘Post’ displays Nathan Castle’s visual dexterity in a wordless exercise in survival after Armageddon, whilst David Metcalfe-Carr offers a poignant vision of true love derailed and the solace of religion in ‘Old Bill’ after which madness reigns in the indescribably bizarre and delightfully surreal cartoon saga ‘Seth & Ghost Versus The Zombeasts’ by Jamie Lewis.

‘Live and Let Live’ by Matthew Smyth superbly describes a bad night for the living and unborn in Belfast before we head 60 odd million miles due up and deep into metaphysical country for a mindbending battle between a band of immortal space monks and ‘Nazi Zombies on Mars’ (Gord Drynan & Adam Steel), whilst ‘Long Overdue’ by Phil Buckenham, treads more plebeian paths in the sordid tale of a grasping landlord who pushed a romantic young man too farâ€¦

‘Lunchtime’ by Peter Clack hilariously details how the teachers at St. Gove’s Academy deal with new kid Otto (who’s a bit of a biter), whilst forlorn, hopeless tragedy tinges Baden James Mellonie & Richard Whitaker’s tale of a survivor who’s forced to stop being a ‘Family Man’, after which hilarious and outrageous satire (you might call it blasphemy) informs Nigel Lowry’s ‘So, This One Day in Judea’ as a resurrected messiah suggests to his disciples that he’s now a cool zombieâ€¦

MilÃµs KÃ»ntz examines existential enigmas through combative stickmen zombies in ‘Zennui’, Mitz reveals the dangers of undead dinosaurs and the delights of the nattily nubile ‘Nursapocalypse’ and Andrew Cheverton beguilingly challenges the destructive allure of nostalgia and the meaning of Punch & Judy in ‘The End of the Pier Show’.

Si Spencer & Ash Fielder savagely serve up a dose of urban dissent when a bunch of ‘Zeddlers’ confront prejudice and media intolerance against them by holding a demo exposing â€œpreferential treatment for the livingâ€, Paul B. Rainey mixes genres to tell a knob joke about rebuilt homunculus ‘Dick Stein’ and Kim Winter expansively brings things to a close with a world-weary, sadly wistful argument for the monsters in ‘Belonging’â€¦

With covers by Tom Box, Frontispieces by Sarah Hardy, pin-ups by Ramzi Musa, Kelvin Green & Buckenham and a copious biographical catalogue of creators, Zombre breathes new life into a wilting sub-genre, thanks largely to its inspirational use of small press, Indie and European stalwarts.

Smart, scary, sad, funny, thought-proving and sometimes just plain strange, this is a book that will amaze and delight casual horror fans and comics cognoscenti alike

Zombre Â© 2014 Borderline Press. All rights reserved. All individual stories and material Â© their respective creators.
Borderline Press Books are available from selected retail outlets or direct from http://borderline-press.com/Shop

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