Older kids – Page 43 – Now Read This!

January 2, 2013January 5, 2013

R.E.B.E.L.S. volume 1: the Coming of Starro

By Tony Bedard, Andy Clarke, Claude St. Aubin, Scott Hanna & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-4012-2589-6

Once upon a time, DC’s vast pantheon of characters was sensibly scattered, segregated and wholly distinct: separated and situated on a variety of alternate Earths which comprised Golden Age hold-overs, contemporaneous Silver Age stars and later-created heroes. Further Earths were subsequently introduced for every superhero stable the company scooped up in a voracious and protracted campaign of acquisition over the decades. Charlton, Fawcett, Quality Comics and others characters resided upon their own globes, occasionally meeting in trans-dimensional alliances and apparently deterring new readers from getting on with DC.

Latterly, when DC retconned their entire ponderous continuity following Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985-1986, ejecting the entire concept of a multiverse and re-knitting time so that there had only been one world literally festooned with heroes and villains, many of their greatest characters got a unique restart, with the conceit being that the characters had been around for years and the readership were simply tuning in on just another working day.

Of course now the multiverse concept is back and not confusing at all (no! seriously?) but whatever the original reasons, that dramatic 1980s refit did provide for some utterly astounding and cleverly cohesive storiesâ€¦

In the aftermath of that event, the hero-packed planet Earth was targeted by a coalition of alien races and endured a full-on Invasion which was repulsed by the indomitable resistance of the World’s assembled heroes and villains and a few selected extraterrestrial allies. When the cosmic dust settled a few of these stayed together and formed cops-for-profit outfit dubbed L.E.G.I.O.N., led by a lying, scheming, manipulative obsessive super-genius bastard named Vril Dox: notional son of the villainous super-villain Brainiac of Colu and one of the most superciliously smug creatures in creation.

Overcoming all odds and the general distaste of his own chief lieutenants, Dox moulded his organisation into a force for justice and peace in the universe, with over 80 client worlds happily prospering, until his own son Lyrl – whilst still a baby – usurped control of the organisation: hunting Vril and his core agent team across the universe as desperate R.E.B.E.L.S. ruthlessly pursued by their own intergalactic commercial police force.

By the end of that run of comicbooks in 1996, order and the status quo were fully restored and the Licensed Extra-Governmental Interstellar Operatives Network went back to scrupulously and competently doling out all the peace and security solvent worlds could affordâ€¦

All that background is largely superfluous to the enjoyment of this latest iteration of the splendidly wry and cynical sci fi adventure series as history repeated itself in 2008, and another cosmic event forced DC’s assorted space sentinels into action again. Adam Strange, the Omega Men, Captain Comet and Dox’s L.E.G.I.O.N. again came to the fore and their intergalactic exploits again began to impinge on the fate of this island Earthâ€¦

Collecting the first six issues of the revived R.E.B.E.L.S. comicbook series concocted by scripter Tony Bedard, the superbly intoxicating action begins in ‘The Future is Now’ (illustrated by Andy Clarke) as a fugitive Vril Dox crashes on Earth fleeing from a team of bounty hunters.

To ensure no further insurrections by greedy – or worse yet, moralistic – employees, the 10^th Level Intellect had largely replaced all his annoyingly autonomous agents with robotic units, but that had simply enabled some bright spark to co-opt his entire intergalactic army – again! – and Dox was now a target for assassination by L.E.G.I.O.N.’s new owner, as well as many of the criminals and warlords the Coluan had previously antagonisedâ€¦

Within mere moments of reaching our embattled world Dox, hotly pursued by monstrous alien powerhouse Tribulus, its cyborg controller Getorix, super-psychic Skwaul and former elite L.E.G.I.O.N.-ary Amon Hakk, is confronted by Supergirl, keen on stopping the sheer carnage caused by the invaders’ battles.

Freshly returned from an extended stay in the 31^st century, the teenaged Kryptonian had been turned into the unwitting receptacle of a message from Dox’s distant descendent Brainiac 5, conveying data and specifications for Vril to construct a precursor brigade of the Legion of Super-Heroes to combat an imminent threat to the universeâ€¦

Dox, contrary as ever, was more impressed with the files on the LSH’s terrifying enemiesâ€¦

Elsewhere the outlaw warriors dubbed the Omega Men had learned of Dox’s predicament and become aware what a powerful, if untrustworthy, ally he would makeâ€¦

The action resumed at the South Pole as the ousted Coluan cop and the Girl of Tomorrow defeated the alien hunters and turned the nigh-mindless Tribulus into ‘The First Recruit’. Dox then fled Earth in search of fresh cannon-fodder for his future-foretold team and exploited rather than allied himself with the Omega Men before heading to a lost colony of Amerindian ex-slaves for his next target.

Nearly a millennium before, an entire tribe of Native Americans had been stolen and dumped on the distant world Starhaven where they had evolved into the Anasazi, winged trackers of immense power and sensitivity. Now Dox arrived and offered to give a weak and feeble outcast the gifts fate and feeble genetics had denied her. However, even though he kept his word, the thing that Wildstar became had good reason to regret her devil’s bargainâ€¦

‘A World of Hurt’ saw the new R.E.B.E.L.S. take the battle to the usurped L.E.G.I.O.N. hierarchy; along the way picking up old comrade and dedicated Dox-hater Strata – a woman of living stone and high moral standards – plus energetic new recruit Bounder.

Just as the robotic forces now commanded by artificial life-form and ambulatory computer server Silica begin mercilessly eradicating anybody connected with the Coluan’s old organisation, the utterly dispensible Omega Men attack L.E.G.I.O.N.’s HQ on Maltus and destroy the traitorous living computer which had taken over the organisation.

Covertly despatched by the manipulative Dox, the Omegans have inadvertently handed back control of the rent-a-cops to Dox, but in the digital woman’s corpse the victors find the first clues as to the real threat: an eerie starfish creature capable of controlling anything it possesses. Tragically, before they can react another Starro beast arrives – wearing the body of a brutal alien war goddess named Astrid Storm-Daughterâ€¦

With Claude St. Aubin & Scott Hanna taking over the art chores, ‘From Beyond’ kicks the already fast-paced thriller into maximum overdrive as Amon Hakk, Getorix and Skwaul are rescued from earthly imprisonment by Durlan shapeshifter Ciji, unaware that Dox is no longer the problemâ€¦

On Maltus, the surviving Omega Men narrowly escape the new threat but discover the entire planet – the most populous in the galaxy – has been taken: each citizen wearing a Starro seed and contributing their enslaved psychic resources to a hidden masterâ€¦

Meanwhile in another part of space the aggressive space faring hive-culture known as the Dominators are also under attack by the Starro slaves. However this is unlike any previous incursion by the frequently occurring stellar starfish: there’s an implacable devouring consciousness behind the assaults. Even the inimical, scientifically sadistic Psions are scared – as evidenced by their rescuing of their greatest enemies the Omega Men â€“ and propose an alliance to defeat a threat that is pouring into our galaxy from a cosmic hole into another existenceâ€¦

As ‘The Stars We Are’ opens, in the strategically crucial Xylon Expanse a vast subspace rift is disgorging a host of ships and super-powered slaves into one of the most populous areas of the galaxy – and a centre of L.E.G.I.O.N. influence. Even as the Dominator’s mighty empire falls in hours, Astrid Storm-Daughter attacks Dox’s ship just as Ciji’s forces arrive. With all sentient life threatened, this initial collection concludes with the superb ‘Dominator’ as Dox again pulls an intellectual rabbit out of his hat and traps the entire invasion force – and their space rift – behind an impenetrable, quadrant-wide force field. Locked within an inescapable, parsecs-wide box of force, the terrifying humanoid master of the Starros is safely contained in a relatively small buffer zone and prevented from all further expansion.

Of course stuck on the wrong side of the fence with him are Dox, his unwilling newfound enemies-turned-allies and billions of potential slave-sentients on hundreds of sitting-duck worldsâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

With a spectacular cover gallery by Andy Clark, Ed Benes, Rob Hunter, Kalman Andrasofszky, this slim tome offers a deliciously intoxicating blend of space opera and cosmic Fights ‘n’ Tights action that will push every button for fans of staggering science fiction thrills, cut with sharp, mature dialogue and sublimely beautiful artwork. Plain and simple rip-roaring, rollercoaster rocket riding fun that no devotee of the genres should missâ€¦

December 15, 2012December 13, 2012

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes volume 1

By Christopher Yost, Scott Wegener Patrick Scherberger & Sandu Florea (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5619-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: proper old-fashioned action-adventure for every age of Fights ‘n’ Tights fanâ€¦ 9/10

Since its earliest days Marvel has always courted the youngest comicbook audiences. Whether through animated movie or TV tie-ins such as Terrytoons Comics, Mighty Mouse, Super Rabbit Comics, Duckula, assorted Hanna-Barbera and Disney licenses and a myriad of others, or original creations such as Tessie the Typist, Millie the Model, Homer the Happy Ghost, Li’l Kids or even Calvin, the House of Ideas has always understood the necessity of cultivating the next generation of readers.

These days, however, accessible child-friendly titles are on the wane and with Marvel the publisher’s proprietary characters all over screens large and small, the company usually prefers to create adulterated versions of its own pantheon, making that eventual longed-for transition to more mature comics as painless as possible.

In 2003 the powers that be created a Marvel Age line which updated and retold classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and combined it with the remnants of its failed manga-based Tsunami imprint, which was also intended for a junior demographic. The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures with core titles transformed into Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man with all-original yarns replacing the reconstituted classics. More titles followed, including Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes, Hulk and The Avengers and these all ran until 2010 when they were cancelled and supplanted by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man which carried on the newly-established continuities.

Never the success the company hoped, Marvel Adventures was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to Disney XD television shows, thereafter designated â€œMarvel Universe cartoonsâ€, using the television shows to reinterpret key moments of the heroes’ stellar history whilst creating a new generation of readers to be hopefully funnelled into the increasingly archaic-seeming world of paper entertainments.

All the same, these tales are an intriguing and perhaps more culturally accessible means of introducing character and concepts to kids born sometimes two, three even four generations removed from those far-distant 1960s-originating events, and this initial volume of the barnstorming adventure ensemble Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes collects the contents of the first four issues from 2010, scripted by the parent cartoon’s chief writer Christopher Yost.

In short, terse, self-contained and immensely enjoyable romps aimed at kids of 10 and up (parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the level of violence contained in here might not be what everybody considers â€œAll-Agesâ€ action), the greatest champions of the Marvel Universe regularly assemble to save the world from every imaginable menace – and sometimes each otherâ€¦

The wonderment begins with ‘Adaptation’, illustrated by Scott Wegener which sees freshly thawed WWII hero Captain America coming to terms with life in the 21^st century by thrashing international mercenaries Batroc’s Brigade before he and Thor are summoned to aid the team against a bizarre android capable of mimicking their powers, abilities and skills. This is followed by a lower key yarn as Hawkeye and the Black Panther swallow their differences and learn to ‘Trust’ one another in battle against deadly demoness Whiplash in a short, sharp shocker limned by Patrick Scherberger.

The second issue opened with ‘Obsession’ (Wegener art) as Tony Stark‘s ongoing duel with Russian rival Ivan Vanko led to another cataclysmic clash between Iron Man and the deadly Crimson Dynamo. When the collateral damage drew in the rest of the Avengers the battle seemed all but over – until Russian super-team the Winter Guard stepped in claiming prior jurisdiction.

However, even as the dispute with Titanium Man, Ursa Major, Darkstar and Vanguard escalated into all-out war with the Westerners, Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil were waiting in the wings to recruit Vanko to their vile ranksâ€¦

The back-up tale ‘Mutual Respect’ (Scherberger with Sandu Florea inks) featured an unlikely team-up between Ant-Man and the Hulk as the malevolent Mad Thinker apparently attempted to co-opt the Jade Juggernaut’s power, but as usual had actually schemes within schemes going onâ€¦

Bored Elders of the Universe the Grandmaster and the Collector visited Earth in ‘Savage’ (Wegener) planning to orchestrate a prize fight between Thor and the Hulk, and that titanic tussle of equals was offset by the brutal back-up ‘Courage’ (Scherberger) where flighty socialite the Wasp was forced to fight alone in arctic conditions to save a severely mauled Captain America from the lethal carnivorous Wendigoâ€¦

In ‘Team’ (Wegener with full page splash shots by Scherberger) the entire roster was on hand for a deadly full-length duel with the Masters of Evil and marauding giant robot Ultimo but even their incredible final victory was less trouble than satisfying the Wasp’s persistent demands for a suitable team photoâ€¦

This tasty treat also includes a wealth of covers, pin-ups, fact-packed character profiles of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Wasp, Ant-Man/Giant Man, Hawkeye, Black Panther, close associates and super-spies Nick Fury and the Black Widow and vile villains Baron Zemo, time Conqueror Kang, Baron Strucker, Asgardian god of evil Loki, Ultron, and Masters of Evil Enchantress, Crimson Dynamo and Abomination.

Even then there’s more such as technical gen on ‘Hawkeye’s Bag of Tricks’, the Thunder God’s mystic mallet ‘the Mighty Mjolnir’, Iron Man’s internal systems in ‘Breaking Down the Hud!’ and a quiz daring readers to deduce which villains’ terrible tools belong ‘In Evil Hands!’

Fast-paced and impressive, bright and breezy with lots of light-hearted action and loads of sly laughs, this book truly captures the zest and drive of both traditional comicbook and modern TV superhero shenanigans and will surely delight every unashamed fan of Costumed Dramas whatever their age or inclinationsâ€¦
Â© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

December 12, 2012December 11, 2012

Totally Mad – 60 Years of Humour, Satire, Stupidity and Stupidity

By â€œThe Usual Gang of Idiotsâ€ & edited by John Ficarra (Time Home Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-61893-030-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: a truly timeless tome bringing back a golden age of laughter – no matter how young you areâ€¦ 10/10

EC Comics began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines sold the superhero properties of his All-American Comics company to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Picture Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market.

Gaines augmented this core title with Picture Stories from American History, Picture Stories from Science and Picture Stories from World History, but the so-worthy notion was already struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947.

With disaster looming, his son William was dragged into the family business and with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen – who held the company together until the initially unwilling Bill Gaines abandoned his dreams of a career in chemistry – transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comicsâ€¦

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines and his multi-talented associate Al Feldstein settled into a bold, fresh publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a â€œNew Trendâ€ of stories aimed at an older and more discerning readership.

From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of crime, horror, war and science fiction, spawning a host of cash-in imitations and, under the auspices of writer, artist and editor Harvey Kurtzman, the inventor of an entirely new beast: the satirical comicbookâ€¦

Mad also inspired dozens of knock-offs and even a controversial sister publication, Panic.

Kurtzman was a cartoon genius and probably the most important cartoonist of the last half of the 20th century. His early triumphs in the fledgling field of comicbooks (Mad, Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat) would be enough for most creators to lean back on, but Kurtzman was a force in newspaper strips (See Flash Gordon Complete Daily Strips 1951-1953) and a restless innovator, a commentator and social explorer who kept on looking at folk and their doings: a man with exacting standards who just couldn’t stop creating.

He invented a whole new format and gave the USA Populist Satire when he transformed his highly successful full-colour comicbook baby Mad into a mainstream monochrome magazine, safely distancing the outrageously comedic publication from fall-out caused by the 1950s socio-political witch-hunt which eventually killed all EC’s other titles, and bringing the now more socially acceptable publication to a far wider, broader audience.

He pursued his unique brand of thoughtfully outrÃ© comedy and social satire with the magazines Trump, Humbug and Help!, all the while conceiving challenging and powerfully effective humour strips such as Little Annie Fannie (for Playboy), The Jungle Book, Nutz, Goodman Beaver, and Betsy and her Buddies. Seemingly tireless, he also inspired the next generation through his creations on Sesame Street and with his teaching of cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He died far too early in 1993.

â€¦And he was just one of the astonishingly gifted creators who have turned Mad into a staggeringly influential cultural phenomenon and global brand in the intervening yearsâ€¦

Just in time to be an ideal gift, and celebrating the history and progress of an institution we all grew up with if not in, Totally Mad reviews the rise and rise of the magazine with tantalising snippets of gags and features accompanied by great big buckets of captivating excerpts and illustrations from the many brilliant creators who have contributed to its success.

Be Warned: this is not a â€œbest ofâ€ collection – it would be impossible to choose, and besides there are hundreds of reprint book compilations and websites for that. This is a celebration of past and present glories and a compulsive taster for further exploration, but with very few complete storiesâ€¦

At 256 pages this huge (312x235mm) and luxurious compendium includes historical articles, hundreds of pages of amazingly funny art and cleverly barbed observations, divided by decades and augmented by hundreds of full-colour, iconic cover reproductions, referencing favourite features such as Spy vs Spy (both by originator Antonio Prohias and successor Peter Kuper), Mad Fold-Ins, Al Jaffee’s ‘Scenes We’d Like to See’, Dave Berg’s ‘The Lighter Side ofâ€¦’, ‘Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions’, ‘Mad Mini-Posters’, whilst Film and TV parodies include ‘Gunsmoked’, ‘My Fair Ad-Man’, ‘East Side Story’, ‘Flawrence of Arabia’, ‘Star Blecch’, ‘Jaw’d’, ‘Saturday Night Feeble’, ‘LA Lewd’, ‘Dorky Dancing’, and assorted mega-movie franchises ad infinitumâ€¦

Whatever your period, and whichever is your most dearly revered, it’s probably sampled hereâ€¦

Following an eccentric and loving Introduction from Stephen Colbert and Eric Drysdale -illustrated by Sam Viviano – veteran contributor Frank Jacobs provides a photo-packed profile of the magazine’s unique father-figure by asking – and answering – ‘Who Was Bill Gaines?’ after which ‘Mad in the 1950s’ recalls the Kurtzman era with brightly hued extracts from giant ape spoof ‘Ping Pong!’, ‘Superduperman!’, ‘Lone Stranger Rides Again!’, ‘Sound Effects!’, ‘Melvin of the Apes!’, ‘Mad Reader!’, ‘Bringing Back Father!’ and ‘Starchie’, highlighting the talents of Will Elder, Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, John Severin, Basil Wolverton & Bernie Krigstein, before moving into the magazine phase by spoofing advertising and popular pastimes with ‘Readers Disgust’, ‘What Makes a Glass of Beer Taste so Good?’ and more.

Arch-caricaturist Mort Drucker began his stellar run at this time as did the mildly maniacal Don Martin, whilst proven comics masters Joe Orlando, Wood, Davis and George Woodbridge reached astonishing peaks of artistic excellence with a parade of stunning covers and end-pages by Kurtzman, Kelly Freas, Norman Mingo and others proving as effective now as in your granddad’s dayâ€¦

In ‘Who is Alfred E. Neuman?’, Jacobs recounts the twisted and turbulent origins of the magazine’s iconic gap-toothed-idiot mascot after which ‘Mad in the 1960s’ highlights the rise of Television and the counter-culture whilst ‘Was Mad Ever Sued?’ finds JacobsÂ testifying to some truly daft and troubling moments in the mag’s lifeâ€¦

Some of the very best bits of ‘Mad in the 1970s’ is followed by the conclusion of ‘Who Was Bill Gaines?’ after which Davis, Dick DeBartolo & Jacobs’ legendary ‘Raiders of the Lost Art’ skit opens ‘Mad in the 1980s’ as patriotism, movie blockbusters, Hip-hop and computer games seized the public’s collective imaginationâ€¦

‘What Were the Mad Trips?’ explores a grand tradition of company holidays, after which the transitional years of ‘Mad in the 1990s’ covers Rap music, the rise of celeb culture and the magazine’s forays into a rapidly changing world. This is followed by ‘Mad After Gaines’ which details the internal adjustments that took place following the death of the hands-on, larger-than life publisher in 1992 whilst ‘Mad in the 2000s’ details the brand’s shift into the digital world, with exemplars from creators old and new spoofing medicines, newspaper strips, elections, dead phrases, celebrity causes, religion, cell-phones, man-boobs, war in Iraq, Obesity, satirical rival ‘The Bunion’, contemporary Racism and media sensations DonaldÂ Trump, whilst parodies included ‘Bored of the Rings’, ‘Sluts in the City’, ‘Spider-Sham’, and so much moreâ€¦

Current editor John Ficarra provides a suitable Afterword and this magnificent tome also includes a poster pack of a dozen of the very best covers from Mad’s epochal run.

Most of you can happily stop now, but if you’re into shopping lists here’s just a small portion of the other contributing â€œidiotsâ€ who have madr the magazine a national institution… like graft and pimples:

Sergio AragonÃ©s is represented throughout with his Mad Marginals as well as many masterful cartoons and pastiches, and writers include Vic Cohen, Tom Koch, Larry Siegel, Nick Meglin, Earl Doud, Lou Silverstone, Jacobs, DeBartolo, Arnie Kogen, Chevy Chase, Marylyn Ippolito, Max Brandel, Stan Hart, Billy Doherty, Barry Liebman, Desmond Devlin, Russ Cooper, Joe Raiola, Charlie Kadau, Robert Bramble, Michael Gallagher, Butch D’Ambrosio amongst so many others.

All-rounders both scripting and scribbling include Dave Berg, Al Jaffee, AragonÃ©s, Don Martin, John Caldwell, Paul Peter Porges, Don â€œDuckâ€ Edwing, Tom Cheney, Drew Friedman, Peter Kuper, Christopher Baldwin, Feggo and star artists making a splash range from venerable veterans such as Frank Frazetta, John Cullen Murphy and Angelo Torres to Mark Frederickson, Bob Clarke, Gary Belkin, Paul Coker Jr., Mutz, Jack Rickard, Irving Schild, Gerry Gersten, Rick Tulka, Harry North, Richard Williams, Tom Bunk, Bill Wray, Steve Brodner, Mark Stutzman, Tom Richmond, Gary Hallgrenâ€¦ the list is nigh endless.

Wrist-wreckingly huge, eye-poppingly great and mind-bogglingly fun, this is one all the family will be happy to pore throughâ€¦ and probably fight over.
Â© 2012 E.C. Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

November 24, 2012November 23, 2012

Planetes volume 2

By Makoto Yukimura, translated and adapted by Yuki Nakamura & Anna Wenger (TokyoPop)
ISBN: 978-1-59182-509-8

These days nobody does gritty, authentic, fun hard-tech comics science fiction like the Japanese (although for sheer tight-lipped underplayed drama I’d still place Sydney Jordan’s Jeff Hawk, Frank Hampson’s Dan Dare and most of Warren Ellis’ SF work ahead of even Manga’s greatest mastersâ€¦).

The tough, no-nonsense, gritty mystery and refined imagination of space travel – so much a component of immediate post-World War II industrial society in the West â€“ began to once again captivate a legion of level-headed imagineers at the end of the 20^th century when Japanese tales first began to be translated into English. One superb exponent of that mini-boom was relative newcomer Makoto Yukimura who rekindled interest in near-space exploration in all its harsh and grimy glory with an inspiring â€œnuts-and-boltsâ€ manga series which scrupulously explored the probable rather than the possibleâ€¦

Yukimura (born in Yokohamain 1976, just as the once-ambitious American space program was languishing in cash-strapped doldrums and five long years before the first space shuttle launch) began his professional life as an assistant to veteran creator Shin Morimura before launching his independent career with the Planetes.

Working exclusively for Kodansha, his award-winning premier Seinen series ran in Weekly Morning magazine from January 1999-January 2004 and was later collected as four tankÅbon volumes. The serial easily made the jump to a popular anime series and since then Yukimura, after producing SayÅnara ga Chikai node for Evening magazine, has since 2005 abandoned the future for the past and concentrated his creative energies on the monolithic historical epic Vinland Saga – serialized in Weekly ShÅnen Magazine and Afternoon – and filling 11 bloodcurdling volumes to dateâ€¦

The grimly existential premise of Planetes is devilishly simply and powerfully engaging. Humanity is a questing species but cannot escape its base origins. In 2075 space travel and exploitation is practically commonplace but, as we’ve conquered the void between Earth and the asteroid belt and prepare to exploit the outer planets, the once-pristine void around us has become clotted with our obsolete tech and casually discarded rubbish.

Even the most minuscule piece of junk or debris falling through hard vacuum is a high-speed, potentially deadly missile and to keep risk to a minimum, hardy teams of rugged individualists have to literally sweep the heavens free of our discarded crap.

The stories revolve around youthful trashman Hachimaki Hoshino whose greatest dream is to become a true deep-space astronaut and famous explorer like his famous – if disreputable – father. The boy has his future all mapped out: a similar career-path to dear old dad will lead to fame and wealth and then he can buy his own spaceship and be really freeâ€¦

Sadly the incessantly dull toil of his deep night day-job is wearing away at the passionate, excitable Hachi who is becoming swiftly disenchanted with the whole dreary, disgusting drudgery aboard DS-12 – a standard sanitation/cargo ship fondly dubbed Toyboxâ€¦

The first episode in this stunning second volume begins with ‘Running Man’ as the Toybox’s weary crew visit Moon Orbital Space Port and the obsessively training Hachimaki is approached by an unctuous business type looking for his infamous dad. Werner Locksmith is the head and chief designer of the Earth Development Community-sponsored manned mission to Jupiter and, unknown to the starry-eyed kid, had pegged Hachi’s father as the only man capable of piloting the innovative new vessel on the five year mission: one the boy would give anything to be on.

However the elder explorer doesn’t want to go and has actually absconded from the Private/Public sector project and is currently a fugitiveâ€¦

The old rogue has had enough of space-faring: a fact he finds impossible to relate to his furious son when they meet. The old spacer intends to retire to Earth and make things right with the wife he’s abandonedâ€¦

Meanwhile Locksmith has been called away. Something has gone disastrously wrong with the Jupiter ship Von Braunâ€¦

Above Luna as Hachi argues with his dad, another crisis occurs as a devastating explosion rips through the station and everybody evacuates. In the safe chill of the void, Hachi and the crew see a phenomenal debris field emanating from the moon’s surface. The Von Braun’s experimental engines have failed and an entire lunar base has been evaporatedâ€¦

Following the tragedy the ruthlessly cool Locksmith unswervingly starts to rebuild and the senior Hoshino breathes a sigh of relief. Hachi is undeterred. He resumes his training, knowing that when the Von Braun is ready to fly, he will be ready to join itâ€¦

Acknowledging their comrade’s impossible dream, stoic Russian Yuri Mihairokov and commander Fee Carmichael have inducted by a raw new recruit to the Toybox team and tasked Hachi with training her to be his eventual replacement. According to the ambitious lad, however, Ai ‘Tanabe’ is a hopeless case, fruitlessly wasting valuable time he could be using to train and study for his application to the Jupiter Mission. Suffering mightily from having to baby-sit the useless girl, he only discovers her suppressed inner fire after a 50-year old space coffin is recovered from the dark expanse and provokes a bitter dispute about love, passion and man’s place in the cold, lonely universeâ€¦

Hachi’s dream comes a giant leap closer to reality in ‘A Black Flower named Sakinohaka Part 1’ as he finally begins his official audition for the Von Braun. The boy has become an emotional void with nothing but his cold ambition driving him. He can’t even process the deadly and constant threat posed by increased sabotage activity from the terrorist SDL; a group determined to keep space free of Man’s toxic presence.

Despite the more than 20,000 applicants, Hoshino is beginning to distinguish himself when a series of bomb blasts rocks the controversial project. Narrowly escaping death, Hachi is visited by his old friends who are horrified by the obsessed spacer’s blasÃ© attitude and apparent disregard for the pain and suffering of his rival candidates who were caught in the detonations. Is he truly so determined to get on the mission that all he sees are fewer competitors?

Only fellow applicant and new buddy Hakimu seems to understand that any sacrifice and personal misery are worth the prizeâ€¦

Soon the testing is in its final stages and Werner Locksmith lectures the remaining candidates from the bridge of the almost completed Von Braun. Only nine of the desperate spacers will make this final cut but the big day is again delayed after Hachi confronts the insidious saboteur and fails to stop himâ€¦

The tale resumes six months later as the last twenty three candidates await the final call whilst in ‘A Black Flower named Sakinohaka Part 2’ Hachi’s still-fugitive father is targeted by SDL assassins and heads back to the son who has disowned him. His arrival coincides with young Tanabe’s visit to deliver the boy’s belongings from Toybox, leading to an embarrassing confusion as to her amatory status, but before things can be fully clarified the terrorists attack again, determined to ensure the death of the â€œonly man who could pilot the Von Braunâ€â€¦

Fleeing through the lowest levels of the Moon’s Oriental Basin Underground Tunnel City the trio are more of a danger to each other than their murderous pursuers and after another catastrophic explosion Hachi again confronts the traitor who sabotaged his last attempt to join the mission and almost commits an unpardonable act until gentle Tanabe talks him off the emotionally-charged metaphorical ledgeâ€¦

‘Lost Souls’ sees the lad successfully in final training for the mission that has become his life when a lunar accident strands Hachi and new comrade Leonov on the unforgiving surface with only hours of oxygen and a 40 kilometre walk to the nearest relief station. It would have been impossible even if the co-pilot wasn’t wounded with a slowly-leaking suit.

By the time rescue arrived Hachi had reached the stage where he fought his saviours, frantic to prove that he truly needs no one’s help to achieve his goalsâ€¦

This sublime saga concludes here with ‘Ð¡ÐŸÐÐ¡Ð˜Ð‘Ðž’ (or â€œSpasiboâ€ which can be either â€œthank youâ€ or â€œGod save youâ€) as the recuperating Hachi returns to the family home in Japan, accompanied by his penitent father, and is visited by Leonov’s grateful mother. Although he doesn’t understand a word she says, the old lady still makes far more sense than his constantly warring family and, after another drunken fight with his dad, events come to tragic, galvanising crisis which at last crushes the walls around the traumatised young man’s head and heartâ€¦

Also included are working sketches, pin-ups, a bunch of four-panel sidebar humour strips ‘A Four Panel Comic’, ‘Namao-san (Presumably Male)’, ‘Eat? That Thing?’, ‘Drinking Hot Coffee through a Straw’ and prose biographies of revered and inspirational author Kenji Miyazawa and pioneer Cosmonaut Yuri Alexeyevitch Gagarin in ‘Conceptualising Space Travel’.

Suspenseful, funny, thrilling and utterly absorbing, these tales readily reinvigorate and reinvent the magical allure of the Wild Black Yonder for newer generations, and this authentic, hard-edged and wittily evocative epic is a treat no hard-headed dreamer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to missâ€¦

This book is printed in the traditional Japanese right to left, back to front format.
Â© 2001 Makoto Yukimura. All rights reserved. English text Â© 2004 TOKYOPOP Inc.

November 14, 2012November 12, 2012

Johnny Hazard – The Gold of Thal

By Frank Robbins (Pacific Comics Publications)
No ISBN

Johnny Hazard was a newspaper strip created in the style and manner of Terry and the Pirates, but in many ways the steely-eyed hero most resembles – and indeed presages – Milton Caniff’s second magnum opus Steve Canyon.

Unbelievably, until 2011 this stunningly impressive and enthralling adventure strip was never comprehensively collected in graphic novels â€“ at least in English â€“ although selected highlights had appeared in nostalgia magazines such as Pioneer Comics and Dragon Lady Press Presents.

However, sporadic compendiums of full-colour Sunday pages have popped up over the years, such as this gloriously huge (340 x 245mm) landscape tabloid produced by re-translating a collected Italian edition back into English, courtesy of the Pacific Comic Club.

Frank Robbins was a brilliant all-around cartoonist whose unique artistic and lettering style lent itself equally to adventure, comedy and superhero tales, whilst his expansive raconteur’s gifts made him one of the best writers of three generations of comics.

He first came to fame in 1939 when he took over newspaper strip Scorchy Smith (from the astounding Noel Sickles), creating a Sunday page for the feature in 1940. Robbins was then offered the high-profile Secret Agent X-9 but instead created his own lantern jawed, steely-eyed man of action.

A tireless and prolific worker, even whilst producing a daily and Sunday Hazard (usually a separate storyline for each), Robbins freelanced as an illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post, Look, Life and a host of other mainstream magazines.

In the 1960s and 1970s he moved into comicbooks, becoming a key contributor to Batman, Batgirl, Detective Comics (where he created Man-Bat with Neal Adams) and The Flash, followed Michael Kaluta on The Shadow and contributed to humour mag Plop! as well as DC’s mystery anthologies. Moving to Marvel in the early 1970s, Robbins concentrated on drawing a variety of titles including Captain America, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Morbius, Human Fly, Man from Atlantis, Power Man and The Invaders, which he co-created with Roy Thomas.

When Johnny Hazard launched on Monday June 5th 1944, its star was an aviator in the United States Army Air Corps who, when hostilities ceased, became for a while a freelance charter pilot and secret agent before settling into the bombastic life of a globe-girdling trouble-shooter, mystery-solver and modern day Knight Errant babe-magnet.

The strip ended in 1977: another victim of diminishing panel-sizes and the move towards simplified, thrill-free, family-friendly gag-a-day graphic fodder to wrap around small-ads.

With the release at long last of a dedicated collection of the black and white Daily strips, I thought I’d spotlight a few of those fabulous landscape tomes which kept the Amazing Aviator alive in fans’ hearts in the years since it ceased publication.

In a previous review remarkably similar to this one, we saw the Rangoon-based World-Wide Airline head-honcho handle a madly muddled movie crew in Mammoth Marches On, battle a Japanese war-criminal with atomic aspirations in ‘The Hunted’ and bring to book a gang of highly sophisticated plane-wrecking ‘Scavengers’ in the jungles between Vietnam and Cambodia, before heading off on his next incredible adventure which barely began before that particular collection concluded. This particular tome re-presents sequences which first appeared in American Sunday Supplements between April 19^th 1953 and July 4^th 1954, and depict a time of wild globetrotting exploits and increasingly exhilarating fantasy frolicsâ€¦

‘Ceiling Zero-Minus’ found Johnny and trusty pals Don and Cutout hired to take a new type of helicopter down into the deepest, widest hole on Earth in search of missing miners, and this sensational storyline continues with an astounding discovery as their vertical vehicle is trapped in a net nine thousand feet below the surfaceâ€¦

The unbelievable follow-up is even more amazing as the trio are taken prisoner by a Herculean giant and introduced to a fantastic subterranean civilisation built over eons by cavemen fleeing Earth’s last Ice Age.

Moreover the ambitious super-scientific overlords of the sub-city state of Namron are in the final stages of a complex and long-planned invasion of the surface world. They already have spies and fifth columnists placed in the most unsuspected placesâ€¦

With the upper lands exhausted by recent wars and divided by ideology the crucial day is fast approaching, especially as wicked dictator Nallor has captured the beautiful Princess Albaâ€¦

It transpires that the rival city of Justus has long held the subterranean tyrant’s insane ambitions in check, but with their ruler’s daughter now a hostage Nallor feels confidant enough to start his campaign, but hasn’t reckoned on the capable Hazard’s ability to make trouble. Soon the escaped surface-men are dashing the rescued Alba back to Justus through the underworld with all the unimaginably resources of the invaders at their heels, but they have not reckoned on the fact that one of them is a Namronian double-agentâ€¦

Fantastic and eerily spectacular, the fantasy epic ends with the heroes triumphant and Upper Earth saved, so seven days later it was back to rip-roaring adventure in a traditional vein with ‘Deadly Game!’ (August 30^th 1953-January 24^th 1954) as Johnny is chartered to ferry a chess master to a bizarre competition in the heart of the Burmese jungle. Little do the plucky pilot or SeÃ±or Professor Eduardo Estaban realise just how seriously enigmatic plantation owner Mr. Basil takes his gamesâ€¦

The first hint comes when the tea-farmer’s lovely young wife starts passing terrified notes, but the clincher is when Johnny discovers the bodies of previous players in the Room of Deathâ€¦

Things come to a head when the pilot then finds out what Basil is really cultivating in his vast, isolated fields and leads to a deadly duel of wits â€¦and bombs and bulletsâ€¦

The furious finale finds Hazard, Estaban and Valerie Basil fleeing a scene of deadly devastation on the packet boat of corpulent rogue Captain Shark as ‘Monkey Seeâ€¦Monkey Do!’ (running from January 31^st to May 9^th1954) draws the stunned survivors into an ancient feud. Whilst torturously returning to civilisation along the sluggishIrrawaddy, Hazard finds a stuffed monkey in the captain’s cabin – one bedecked with thousands of dollars worth of ancient jewelleryâ€¦

Years ago Shark and his thieving colleague Peter â€œThree-Eyesâ€ Lynch had fought over a treasure map which led to a lost city deep in the jungle. Ever since Three-Eyes went overboard with half the map and a bullet-hole in him, Shark has travelled the river as an itinerant courier searching in vain for his prize, but now the battle at Basil’s plantation has uncovered a hidden tributary and the unlucky passengers have no choice but to go along with the obsessed Captainâ€¦

Things take a terrifying turn when the boat is invaded by gun-toting monkeys who take them all captive and bring the vessel to that much-sought lost cityâ€¦

Three-Eyes didn’t die that night. Instead he drifted to the ancient ruin and spent long months training the anthropoids to do his bidding. All this time he’s been waiting for somebody to find the desolated ruins and provide him with a means of transporting back to civilisation the tons of gold and gems he’s been impatiently sitting onâ€¦

Things are tense enough with the wanderers as simple captives of the crazy monkey- man, but when Three-Eyes realises just how long it’s been since he touched a human woman, the situation escalatesâ€¦

Although the chivalrous pilot successfully defends Valerie, they and Estaban can only watch in horror as Shark and Lynch finally take their long-deferred dispute to its ultimate, foregone conclusionâ€¦

This volume – like its predecessor – then carries on into the next saga and ends on a tantalising cliffhanger as, after dragging his charges back to Rangoon and safety, Hazard is then hired by a climber who claims to have been the first person to actually scale Mount Everest. Surprisingly, Virgil Dale isn’t too fussed about not getting the credit for such an incredible achievement: he’s since hooked up with returning villainess/entrepreneur Baroness Flame who wants to fund an expedition to the High Himalayas and capture the beast he discovered there – ‘The Abominable Snowman!’

To be continuedâ€¦

These exotic action-romances perfectly captured the mood and magic of a distant but so incredibly familiar time; with cool heroes, hot dames and exceedingly intemperate bad-guys encountering exotic locales and stunning scenarios, all peppered with blistering tension, slyly mature humour and vivid, visceral excitement.

Johnny Hazard is a brilliant two-fisted thriller-strip and even if you can’t easily locate these fantastic full-colour chronicles, at least the prospect of an eventual new Sunday strip collection is a little closer at lastâ€¦
Â© 1953-1954 King Features Syndicate. Â© 1980 Pacific C.C.

November 4, 2012November 5, 2012

Came the Dawn and Other Stories illustrated by Wallace Wood

By Wallace Wood, Al Feldstein, Harry Harrison, Gardner Fox & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-546-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sheer, seductive dark pictorial poetry in emotionâ€¦ 10/10

EC began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines sold the successful superhero properties of his All-American Comics company – including Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman – to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Picture Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market. He then augmented his core title with three more in similar vein: Picture Stories from American History, Science and World History. The worthwhile but unsustainable project was already struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947.

His son William was eventually convinced to assume control of the family business and, with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen and multi-talented associate Al Feldstein, transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comics, consequently triggering the greatest qualitative leap forward in comicbook historyâ€¦

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines settled into a bold and impressive publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a â€œNew Trendâ€ of stories aimed at an older, more discriminating audience.

From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of science fiction, war, horror and crime. The company even added a new type of title and another genre with the creation of parody magazine Mad â€¦

This second volume of the Fantagraphics EC Library compiles a magical and groundbreaking omnibus of horrific tales and human dramas featuring the astounding artistic expertise of Wallace Allan Wood: one of the greatest draughtsmen our art form has ever produced.

Wood was actually a master of every aspect of the business. He began his career lettering Will Eisner’s Spirit strip, quickly moved into pencilling and inking and, latterly, publishing. After years working all over the comics and syndicated strip industries, as well as in legitimate illustration, package-design and other areas of commercial art, he devised the legendary T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents franchise and even created one of the first adult independent comics with Witzend in the late 1960s.

The troubled genius carried the seeds of his own destruction, however. Woody’s life was one of addiction (booze and cigarettes), traumatic relationships, tantalisingly close but always frustrated financial security, illness and eventually suicide. It was as if all the joy and beauty in his existence stayed on the pages and there was none left for real life.

Although during his time with EC Wood became the acknowledged and undisputed Master of Science Fiction art in America, he was equally adept, driven and accomplished in the production of all genres.

This powerfully effective collection concentrates on some of his best early horror, crime and suspense tales and includes all the evocative, emotionally-charged, controversial â€œPreachiesâ€ which Feldstein and Bill Gaines had devised to address hot-button issues and challenge the smugly hierarchical social status quo of post-war, triumphalist America.

These strident and still truly shocking morality plays viciously jabbed at the nation’s dark underbelly; attacking prejudice, police corruption, drug abuse, sexual attitudes, racism, institutionalised intolerance and all manners of hypocrisy. It’s no stretch to consider that these tales, more than any other childhood influence, probably shaped the resurgent liberal attitudes which blossomed as the future â€œFlower Powerâ€ generation reached their majority a decade laterâ€¦

As with the previous Kurtzman volume, the stories are re-presented here in a lavish monochrome hardcover edition, with supplementary interviews, features and dissertations, beginning with ‘Come the Stories’ by Bill Mason, which appraises the yarns included with forensic discipline. Then the pictorial parade kicks off with a rather pedestrian scam caper which sees an innocent man convinced that he’s a ravening monster in ‘The Werewolf Legend’ scripted by the prolific and ubiquitous Gardner Fox, one of Gaines senior’s greatest assets and discovery.

The illustration is by Harry Harrison & inked by Wood from Vault of Horror #12 (April/May 1950). Although Harrison found his greatest fame as a prose author in later years, he was a major player in the comics biz during the 1950s and had worked with Wood as a jobbing production team since they’d met at the Cartoonists and Illustrators school in 1948.

For Haunt of Fear #15 the trio concocted a tale of lethal legerdemain in ‘The Mad Magician’, whilst the anonymously-authored enigma of ‘The Living Corpse’ (Crypt of Terror #18) moved closer to truly supernatural shenanigans as another illusionist took things too far in pursuit of his craft.

Harrison probably scripted and certainly inked ‘The Curse of Harkley Heath’ from Vault of Horror #13, wherein a gothic triangle of greedy heirs came to unpleasant, untimely ends after a will was read, after which Wood began handling all the art chores with ‘Horror-Ahead!’ (Haunt of Fear #16, July/August 1950) when rival curio collectors’ jungle jaunt in search of shrunken skulls ended in the only way it possibly couldâ€¦

The Noir-ish new era began when Al Feldstein began scripting for Woody. ‘Death’s Double-Cross’ from the sublimely mature Crime SuspenStories #1 (October/November 1951) offers the twisted tale of a woman cheating on her husband with his twin brother in a moody masterpiece reminiscent of James M. Cain. Naturally it quickly turned into a nightmare that couldn’t end prettyâ€¦

Fox offered one last hurrah in ‘The Man from the Grave’ from Haunt of Fear #4, which saw a dissolute artist commit gruesome murder for his art and lived to regret it in desperate luxury and a relentless, compulsive paroxysm of over-work, whilst Feldstein’s

‘Terror Ride!’ (Tales From the Crypt #21) found two young lovers who soon regretted being the last couple to ride the decrepit Amusement Park’s Old Mill boat attractionâ€¦ Feldstein’s epic run of stories fill most of this tome and next appeared in Haunt of Fear #5, where Wood’s dark imagination and ability to render grotesques was expertly exploited in ‘Horror in the Freak Tent!’ wherein a cruel carnival owner who mercilessly mistreated his exotic employees eventually received a macabre measure of justiceâ€¦

Crime SuspenStories #3 then provided a fearsome farrago of betrayal and vengeance when two fugitive bandits were ‘Faced With Horror!’ after picking the wrong plastic surgeon to sort out their public notoriety problems, whilst ‘So They Finally Pinned You Down!’ from Haunt of Fear #6 followed a troubled soul who couldn’t understand why he was always stumbling over dead womenâ€¦

The macabre mayhem concluded with two tales from Tales From the Crypt #24 and 25, beginning with a classic philandering-murderer-gets-his-come-uppance tale in ‘Scared to Death!’ after which a baroque body-switching melodrama featuring a cunning crone and a lovely young thing forced a bewildered husband to conclude ‘Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today!’ â€¦

The rest of this volume is comprised of those controversial polemical passion-plays and conscience-rending human dilemmas that Gaines dubbed Preachies, opening with ‘The Guilty!’ (from Shock SuspenStories #3, June/July 1952), which saw a typical small town enflamed by the murder of a young white girl. The Sheriff knew the black kid in his jail was guilty and was as keen as the mob to spare the state the cost of a trial. He took steps to ensure it too.

â€¦And that’s when the girl’s white boyfriend confessedâ€¦

Although stridently moralising and perhaps heavy handed by contemporary standards, these stories are the very bedrock of EC’s well-deserved reputation as the crusading creators of America’s very first adult comics for mature readers. Moreover these ugly truths were gloriously draped in so very beautiful clothes, as Wood’s incredible illustration, inspired by the fiercely impassioned scripts, soared to unparallelled heights of sensitivity and gut-wrenching impact.

Shock SuspenStories #4 took the cultural campaign further in a sordid tale of the innocent witness relentlessly beaten into a ‘Confession’ by cops determined to capture a hit-and-run driver who’d killed their Lieutenant’s wife. So why then, was the grieving officer’s car all banged up and covered in bloodâ€¦?

Old-fashioned anti-Semitism fuelled the ‘Hate!’ of a quiet little town and led to the death of a family too stubborn to be warned. Imagine instigator John Smith’s surprise when his appalled mother told the entire town that he was adoptedâ€¦ and what his true origins wereâ€¦

‘Under Cover!’ in Shock SuspenStories #6 combined a campaign of punishment-floggings for miscegenation by the local Klan chapter with the end of a crusading reporter who tried to expose the scandal but tragically forgot that there might be almost anybody under those pointy hoods, whilst ‘The Bribe’ in #7 revealed how even the most honest and dedicated of civil servants could be pushed into abandoning his principles – especially with a loving daughter, her upcoming wedding and crushing society pressure hitting him so hardâ€¦

By today’s standards ‘The Assault!’ is potentially the most contentious tale here, revealing how a small town girl with salacious appetites callously protected her reputation by framing an old man for her â€œrapeâ€. In typical tone for those times, her lie ultimately caused two deathsâ€¦

‘Came the Dawn!’ from Shock SuspenStories #9 is a marvellous example of Greek tragedy in modern dress, as a lonely backwoods hermit finds a beautiful naked woman in his cabin and, after a night of mutual passion with the girl of his dreams, discovers that an inmate has escaped from the nearby asylum. Only after he’s locked her out does he discover that she’s not the only mysterious blonde lost in the forestâ€¦

Far less emotionally loaded but equally devastating is the darkly introspective ‘â€¦So Shall Ye Reap!’ (Shock SuspenStories #10) which finds a penitent, angry young man contemplating every hypocritical act of his pompously pious parents before reaching his own moment of judgement after which ‘In Gratitude’ launches a simply breathtaking attack on the nation’s double standards when a wounded soldier comes home to a hero’s welcome and turns on his friends and family when he finds out what they’ve done to the coloured man who saved his lifeâ€¦

More quirky crime-caper than social commentary, ‘Fall Guy’ (Shock SuspenStories #12) follows the doomed decade that saw decent guy Danny Jansen steal a fortune to please a greedy girl far out of his league and spend ten years in jail paying for it. Surprisingly she waited all that time for him, but wasn’t best pleased when he couldn’t remember how to retrieve his ill-gotten gainsâ€¦

A campaign of hate to drive out a man who foolishly admitted to being part-Negro ended in suicide and a sense of smug satisfaction when the bigot-in-charge boasted of his success to the local doctor in ‘Blood-Brothers’ (Shock SuspenStories #13). Imagine the vile cross-burner’s surprise when the aged medic revealed the source of the transfusion which had long-ago saved the happy hate-monger’s lifeâ€¦

‘The Whipping’ (scripted by Feldstein or Jack Oleck from Shock SuspenStories #14) returned to scandal-mongering territory, when a dutiful daughter defied her racist father and started â€œdatingâ€ an Hispanic boy. The dad certainly didn’t call it that, and the outrageous steps he and his pure-white buddies took to end the affair horrifically backfiredâ€¦

The last tale reprinted here is ‘The Confidant’ (Feldstein or Oleck again from Shock SuspenStories #15, June/July 1954) from a time when the public outcry against comics was just reaching its fevered peak. The story deals with mob-justice and sees an entire town baying for the blood of a newcomer who had murdered a young girl.

Then, when a dark stranger arrives searching for one of his children, the unofficial posse immediately jump to the wrong conclusion with tragic and irreparably consequencesâ€¦

Please forgive any deliberate vagueness on my part here: the point is to make you want to read these still poignant and shocking stories and I don’t want to devalue their impact or spoil your otherwise assured enjoymentâ€¦

A detailed history of the flawed genius is then provided by historian S.C. Ringgenberg in the prose piece ‘Wallace Wood’ after which this truly beautiful book is closed by another set of ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ by Arthur Lortie & and Bill Mason and Ted White’s ‘Crime, Horror, Terror, Gore, Depravity, Disrespect for Established Authority – and Science Fiction Too!: ‘The Ups and Downs of EC Comics: A Short History’ once more offers a comprehensive run-down of the entire EC phenomenon.

The short, sweet, cruelly limited EC back-catalogue has been revisited ad infinitum in the decades since its demise. Those amazing yarns changed not just comics but also infected the larger world through film and television to convert millions into dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.

Whether you are an aged EC Fan-Addict, just a nervous newbie, or simply a mere fan of brilliant stories and sublime art, Came the Dawn is a book no sane and sensible reader can afford to be without.

November 3, 2012November 5, 2012

Corpse on the Imjin! and Other Stories by Harvey Kurtzman

By Harvey Kurtzman & others (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-545-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: War is Hell – but never looked better or taught us moreâ€¦ 9/10

EC Comics began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines sold the superhero properties of his All-American Comics company to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Pictures Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market.

He augmented his core title with Picture Stories from American History, Picture Stories from Science and Picture Stories from World History but the worthy project was already struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947.

As detailed in the final comprehensive essay in this superb graphic collection, his son William was dragged into the family business and, with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen – who held the company together until the initially unwilling Bill Gaines abandoned his dreams of a career in chemistry – transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comicsâ€¦

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines and his multi-talented associate Al Feldstein settled into a bold and impressive publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a â€œNew Trendâ€ of stories aimed at an older and more discerning readership.

From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of crime, horror, war and science fiction and, under the auspices of writer, artist and editor Harvey Kurtzman, the inventor of an entirely new beast: the satirical comicbookâ€¦

Kurtzman was hired to supplement the workforce on the horror titles but wasn’t keen on the genre and suggested a new action-adventure title. The result was Two-Fisted Tales which began with issue #18 at the end of 1959 as an anthology of rip-snorting, he-man suspense dramas. However, withAmerica embroiled in a military â€œpolice actionâ€ inKorea, the title soon became primarily a war comic and was soon augmented by another.

Frontline Combat was also written and edited by Kurtzman, who also assiduously laid-out and meticulously designed every story – which made for great entertainment but was frequently a cause of friction with many artistsâ€¦

Moreover, in keeping with the New Trend spirit, these war stories were not bombastic, jingoistic fantasies for glory-hungry little boys, but rather subtly subversive examinations of the cost of conflict which highlighted the madness, futility and senseless, pointless waste of it allâ€¦

Kurtzman was a cartoon genius and probably the most important cartoonist of the last half of the 20th century. His early triumphs in the fledgling field of comicbooks (especially the groundbreaking Mad magazine) would be enough for most creators to lean back on but Kurtzman was a force in newspaper strips (See Flash Gordon Complete Daily Strips 1951-1953) and a restless innovator, a commentator and social explorer who kept on looking at folk and their doings: a man with exacting standards who just couldn’t stop creating.

He invented a whole new format and gave America Popular Satire when he converted his highly successful full-colour baby Mad into a black and white magazine, safely distancing the outrageously brilliant comedic publication from the fall-out caused by the 1950s socio-political witch-hunt which eventually killed all EC’s other titles.

He pursued his unique brand of thoughtfully outrÃ© comedy and social satire further with the magazines Trump, Humbug and Help!, all the while still conceiving challenging and powerfully effective funny strips such as Little Annie Fannie (for Playboy), The Jungle Book, Nutz, Goodman Beaver, Betsy and her Buddies and many more. He died far too early in 1993.

This first volume of the Fantagraphics EC Library gathers a stunning selection of Kurtzman stories in a lavish monochrome hardcover edition, packed with supplementary interviews, features and dissertations, beginning with ‘The Truth’ by cartoonist and historian R.C. Harvey, who describes in stark detail the history of Kurtzman’s EC days.

Then follows a raft of stirring sagas solely from the master’s hand, beginning with ‘Conquest’ from Two-Fisted Tales #18, which with acerbic aplomb relates the rise and fall of Spanish conquistador Juan Alvorado, whose rapacious hunger for Aztec gold led inexorably to the downfall and doom of his entire expedition. Jivaro Death’ (#19) deals with modern-day greed as two duplicitous Yankees search for diamonds in the heart of the Amazon jungle whilst T-FT #20 revealed the fate of an amnesiac buccaneer who returned from certain death to obsessively reclaim his ‘Pirate Gold’ from the men who betrayed him.

From issue #21 comes ‘Search!’ which ironically combined an Italian-American’s search for family with the devastating US assault on Anzio in 1943, after which the first selection from Frontline Combat produces an uncharacteristically patriotic clash with the North Korean aggressors in ‘Contact!’ (#2, September 1951).

‘Kill’ from T-FT #23 also takes place in Korea and details a squalid encounter between a blood-thirsty knife-wielding G.I. psycho and his soulless Commie antithesis, whilst ‘Prisoner of War!’ (FC #3) highlights the numbing, inhuman brutality of combat when American POWs attempt an escapeâ€¦

‘Rubble!’ (T-FT #24) boldly stepped into the â€œenemyâ€ shoes by highlighting the war’s casual cost to simple Korean civilians whilst ‘Air Burst!’ in FC #4 goes even further by featuring the Communist soldiers’ side of the conflict.

The eponymous ‘Corpse on the Imjin!’ (T-FT #25) is one of the most memorable, moving and respected tales of the genre: a genuine anti-war story which elegiacally traces a body’s motion down the river and exposes the ruminations of the doomed observers who see it. The sentiment is further explored in ‘Big ‘If’!’ (FC #5) as G.I. Paul Maynard sits in a shell hole and ponders what might have beenâ€¦

Kurtzman’s unique display of cartooning and craftsmanship is followed by the essay ‘Combat Duty’ wherein Jared Gardner discusses the background and usage of the other artists who worked on the author’s Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat scripts, after which ‘Marines Retreat!’ drawn by John Severin (and inked by Kurtzman from FC #1, July/August 1951) describes in microcosm the shocking American forced withdrawal from the Changjin Reservoir in December 1950 – an event which stunned and terrified the folks at home and shook forever the cherished belief in the US Marines’ invincibility – all told through the eyes of a soldier who understood too late the values he was supposed to be fighting forâ€¦

Kurtzman’s relationship with his artists could be fraught. Alex Toth, a tempestuous individualist who only drew three tales from his editor’s incredibly detailed lay-outs, famously produced some of his very best work at EC under such creative duress. The first and least was ‘Dying City!’ (T-FT #22) which found an aged Korean grandfather berating his dying descendent for the death and destruction he had brought upon his family and nation,

‘O.P.!’ was drawn by hyper-realist Russ Heath (FC #1) and once more ladled on the bleak, black irony during an annihilating trench encounter during WWI. After which Toth’s astounding aerial imagination produced in ‘Thunderjet!’ (FC #8) one of the most thrilling and evocative dogfight dramas in comics history.

This tale was an alarm-call to complacentAmericaas aUSpilot was forced to concede that his winged weapon was inferior to the ever-present Communist MIGsâ€¦

‘Fire Mission!’ (T-FT #29) was drawn by Dave Berg – an artist far better regarded for his comedy work – and lent his facility with expressions to a rather standard tale of courage discovered under fire in Korea, after which Gene Colan delineated the rift between military and civilians in the hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor in ‘Wake!’ from T-FT #30.

From the same issue ‘Bunker!’ was the first strip illustrated by Ric Estrada and described rivalry and tension between American units during a Korean offensive. Oddly enough for the times, the fact that one was comprised of Negro soldiers was not mentioned at allâ€¦

The Cuban artist then drew a chillingly macabre tale of Teddy Roosevelt and the Spanish American war of 1898 in ‘Rough Riders!’ (FC #11) after which master of comics noir Johnny Craig detailed the fate of a ‘Lost Battalion!’ in WWI (T-FT #32, March/April 1953).

‘Tide!’ was an EC debut tale for the already-legendary Joe Kubert from the same issue, and detailed a D-Day debacle and its insignificance in the grand scheme of things after which Toth’s magnificent Kurtzman-scripted swansong ‘F-86 Sabre Jet!’ (FC #12) revisited and even surpassed his Thunderjet job with a potent and beguiling reductionist minimalism that perfectly captured the disorienting hell of war in the air.

Due to illness and the increasing workload caused by Mad, Kurtzman’s involvement with war titles was gradually diminishing. Frontline Combat #14, (October 1953) provides his last collaboration with Kubert in ‘Bonhomme Richard!’, a shocking personalised account of American nautical legend John Paul Jones’ devastating duel with the British warship Serapis – as told by one of the hundreds of ordinary sailors who didn’t surviveâ€¦

This master-class in sequential excellence concludes with a salutary tale from the Civil War special Two-Fisted Tales #35 (October 1953), illustrated by Reed Crandall.Â ‘Memphis!’ blends the destructive horror of the Union’s River Fleet of Ironclad’s as they inexorably took control of the Mississippi with the irrepressible excitement of Southern kids who simply couldn’t understand what was happening to their parents and familiesâ€¦

Even with the comics extravaganza ended, there’s still more to enjoy as underground cartooning legend Frank Stack discusses the techniques and impact of Kurtzman’s astonishing covers for Two-Fisted Tales and Two-Fisted Tales in ‘Respect for Simplicity – the War Covers of Harvey Kurtzman’ which is superbly supplemented by a full-colour section representing all of them, even the seldom-seen Two-Fisted Annual 1952.

Also adding to the value is‘A Conversation with Harvey Kurtzman’ Â by John Benson, E.B. Boatner & Jay Kinney which transcribes two interviews from 1979 and 1982, as well as a full appreciation of the great man’s career in ‘Harvey Kurtzman’ by S.C. Ringgenberg.

Rounding everything off is ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ a comprehensive run-down of all involved by Bill Mason and others, and a general heads-up on the entire EC phenomenon in ‘The Ups and Downs of EC Comics: A Short History’ by author, editor, critic and comics fan Ted White.

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 have changed not just 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, as far as I can recall nobody has produced collections faithfully focussing on the contributions of individual creators, and even though the likes of me know these timeless classics intimately, this simple innovation has somehow added a new dimension to the readers’ enjoyment.

I eagerly anticipate the advent of the other volumes in this superb series and strongly suggest that whether you are an aged EC Fan-Addict or nervous newbie, this is a book no comics aficionado can afford to missâ€¦

November 2, 2012November 5, 2012

Hereville book 2: How Mirka Met a Meteorite

By Barry Deutsch (Amulet) – Uncorrected Proof copy
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0398-0

After years of disappointing experience I generally prefer to review finished copies rather than previews or proofs: there’s a lot that can change in the final stages and besides there’s far more to a book than content. How it feels, smells and even withstands handling is as crucial as the narrative wonderment inside.

Nevertheless when I was offered this proof copy (originally distributed to attendees of the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con) I jumped at the earliest opportunity to see how the uniquely engaging Mirka Hirschberg had continued on her path to heroic glory. Even in less-than-finished form I just had to see the second Hereville chronicle and discover exactly How Mirka Met a Meteoriteâ€¦

Suffice to say it was superbly satisfying and you should all be prepared to put up with me reviewing it again once I lay hands on a proper copyâ€¦

Mirka Hirschberg is an 11-year old girl in a Hassidic family. That’s not surprising: everybody in parochial, patriarchal, rural Hereville is Jewish and Orthodox. Mirka, however, is a bit different: as well as being intelligent and argumentative, the little rebel is also unconventionally forthright, stubborn and impatient. Thanks to these unfeminine quirks she has become a bona fide sword-wielding hero, the unlikely boss of a politely, cunningly carnivorous troll who is a Guardian of Wonders and grudging Frenemies with an actual witch.

Thankfully for Hirschberg family’s already shaky reputation only three of her 8 sisters (and little brother Zindel) are party to any of this shameful situation although, as usual, stepmother Fruma probably knows far more than she is letting onâ€¦

Still, Mirka’s instinctive resistance to thousands of years of tradition (which state that girls are inferior to boys and should thus remain separate from and secondary to male pursuits and occupations) always chafes. Moreover, the strict directive that females should stick to the womanly things they are born for is now harder than ever to understand or acceptâ€¦

Mirka is a warrior at heart and has many secrets to keep. She has a frivolous and forbidden book under her bed – a catalogue of fabulous beats – consorts with monsters and now has a great big sword to similarly conceal from her generally disapproving familyâ€¦

Tasked with the care and training of eight girls (and, until he’s old enough, one boy), step-mother Fruma spends most of her time keeping house and drilling her daughters on how to be proper wives and mothers, but she too is forthright, disputatious and very, very wiseâ€¦

After her duel with the troll Mirka was grounded for the longest time. With no other option she buckled down and even learned to knit – after a fashion – but her duties still bored her and she ached to find foes to fight and menaces to master.

In consequence Fruma took her aside and taught her chess, imparting a modicum of wisdom and lots to ponder to her wayward child.

The games result in Mirka being given her freedom at last, but no sooner does she explode out of the house than she again clashes with bully boys Yitzchok and Manis before wisely running off into the woods.

She searches out the troll and compels him to give her a fencing lesson, but baulks when it turns out to be hard, repetitive work. She also spitefully foments unrest between the macabre monster and the witch, but the scheme goes awry and the troll accidentally summons a meteorite which will smash the hag’s hidden house in 15 minutes timeâ€¦

Terrified and repentant, Mirka runs a desperate marathon to warn the witch. Just in time the Weird Woman disposes of the hurtling hunk of hot rock and archly assures Mirka that the exhausted girl’s problems have only just begunâ€¦

Feeling fully a victor Mirka heads home, but that feeling fades when the two bullies pounce on her and, conveniently ignoring Negiah – the rule forbidding physical contact between unrelated males and females – start to rough her up and shove dirt in her mouth. Suddenly the brutal boys are knocked silly and, turning, Mirka sees that her saviour is herself. A faster, stronger, better Mirkaâ€¦

Pushy, effusive and so very unladylike, the newcomer explains that she was originally a meteoroid sporting and having fun with her sisters in deep space until she was summoned to Earth by the troll and latterly transformed into a doppelganger of Mirka by the Witch.

Moreover, now that she’s stuck here she wants to stay and have fun – and the first step is to surreptitiously share Mirka’s lifeâ€¦

The idea quickly pales. Even looked after by wise sister Rochel â€œMettyâ€ is soon the cause of much trouble. The double is a better student and daughter and slowly insinuates herself into the household, not just doing the dull stuff well, but also taking over all the good things Mirka actually enjoyedâ€¦

Lonely, hungry and cut off from her family, Mirka is forced to take desperate action and confronts Metty. In response the meteor maid challenges the frail human to three contests: loser to leave Hereville foreverâ€¦

The battles against her new and improved double don’t go well. Metty is everything Mirka dreams of being and the forlorn, outclassed lass hates her for it. Thankfully Rochel and Zindel have a wise solution in mind, but even then the adventure isn’t over and Mirka gets taken on the ride of her life before finally getting her feet back on solid ground and safely under the full family tableâ€¦

Once again combining the most admirable aspects of Jewish Identity and cultural character – Family, Faith, Honour, Courage, Loyalty and self-deprecating Humour – with rollicking adventure and supernatural suspense, this second saga of one of the best female characters in all of fiction touches every base.

Readers will experience joy, heartbreak, alienation, redemption and action-packed sheer wonder as the ideal young rebel triumphs over adversity and becomes a far better but not different person in another superb display of graphic narrative mastery.

There are many books and graphic novels dealing with â€œthe Jewish Experienceâ€ and even some dealing with the thorny issue of Orthodoxy, but none that so adeptly show that a girl can be such a believably indomitable, tuchus-kicking, day-saving champion. Mirka is a great role model for all youngsters and hopefully the star of many more adventures in the years to come.

Hereville: How Mirka Met a Meteorite is scheduled for a November 1^st release.

November 1, 2012October 31, 2012

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man volume 2: Spectacular

By Paul Tobin, Roberto Di Salvo, Jacopo Camagni, Ronan Cliquet, Amilton Santos & Terry Pallot (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4560-8

These days however, accessible child-friendly titles are on the wane and with Marvel’s proprietary characters all over screens large and small, the company usually prefers to create adulterated versions of its own pantheon, making that eventual hoped-for transition to more mature comics as painless as possible.

In 2003 the company created a Marvel Age line which updated and retold classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and combined it with the remnants of its failed manga-based Tsunami imprint, which was also intended for a junior demographic. The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures with the core titles transformed into Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man and the reconstituted classics replaced by all-original yarns. Additional titles included Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes, The Avengers and Hulk. These iterations ran until 2010 when they were cancelled and replaced by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man which carried on the established continuities.

This digest-sized collection collects issues #5-8 of that second (2010) iteration and picks up where Spider-Man: Amazing left off. Paul Tobin continues scripting whilst 16-year old Peter Parker rounds out his first year as a reluctant – if driven – superhero: the mysterious Spider-Man.

Even after all the time he has prowled the streets and skyscrapers of New York, fighting crime and injustice, he’s still just a kid learning the ropes and pretty much in over his head all the timeâ€¦

Illustrated by Roberto Di Salvo, the drama begins with the hero battered and close to death following his savage battle with manic assassin Bullseye. Meanwhile top gang enforcer Flip is still masterfully doing his illegal job, which he hates, especially all the lying to his wife – when big boss Berto Torino calls him in for a special mission.

Somewhere Spider-Man is holed-up and helpless. If Flip can find and finish the pestiferous punk there’s a $2 million pay-off up for grabsâ€¦

Across town Peter’s girlfriend Sophia Sanduval is frantic with worry. As a mutant who can communicate with animals and a part-time operative of the Blonde Phantom Detective Agency, â€œChatâ€ has got a lot of unusual resources at her disposal, but not even Wolverine and the X-Men can help her lost and wounded boy wonderâ€¦

Happily her bestial buddies make more progress. A horde of animals locate the unconscious wall-crawler and loyally cluster around his unconscious, recuperating form in a protective cordonâ€¦

Alerted by her birds, Chat rushes across town to his side, but the brutally efficient Flip is also closing inâ€¦

By the time she reaches Peter, the Mafioso is dealing with the severely battered wall-crawler – but her animal shelterers have already performed a redemptive miracleâ€¦

In school next day the bandage-bedecked Peter Parker is properly teased and quizzed by his class-mates, especially ex-girlfriend Gwen Stacy and her controversial new beau Carter Torino (her father is a New York cop who turns a blind eye to Parker’s vigilante sideline and the boy is the unwilling heir-apparent to the city’s paramount criminal empire).

Taking it all in stride, Peter also gets a stern talking-to from Chat and Police Captain George Stacy, both urging the guilt-fuelled hero to take it easy for a while. There’s little chance of that however, when a class trip to a museum is interrupted by murderous maniac Dr. Octopusâ€¦

When the still-sub-par Spider-Man leaps painfully into the fray, the furious Chat is forced to call in a favour and reinforcements by asking morally ambivalent psionic mutant Emma Frost AKA Silencer to take a telepathic hand in the affairâ€¦

An artistic fill-in by Jacopo Camagni, Ronan Cliquet & Amilton Santos sees a hilarious training session with Wolverine and ghostly X-Man Kitty Pryde turn into a bizarre comedy of errors when the Torinos try to buy off Spider-Man, whilst protestors (pro and anti) at a mutant rights rally are attacked by gun-toting gangsters afraid of losing their jobs to super-powered thugs-for-hireâ€¦

The flirty and fearsome Silencer rears her seductive head again in the final tale (art by Di Salvo & Terry Pallot), when Chat gets all snarky after refusing to introduce the increasingly bugged Peter to her enigmatic and never-seen older sister.

Burning with curiosity, Peter has trouble keeping within his boundaries, even after Chat helps him disastrously try out a new and â€œless-unluckyâ€ heroic identity, but sparks fly when Silencer asks for their aid in taking out deadly mutant fire-starter Cinder and subsequently repays Chat by messing with Spider-Man’s obsessive mindâ€¦

These Spidey super stories are extremely enjoyable yarns, but parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the violence might not be what everybody considers â€œAll-Ages Super Hero Actionâ€ and would perhaps better suit older kidsâ€¦

Fast-paced and impressive, bright and breezy with lots of light-hearted action and loads of sly laughs, this book really sees the alternative web-spinner hitting his wall-crawling stride with the violence toned down and â€œcartooned-upâ€ whilst the stories take great pains to keep the growing youth-oriented soap opera sub-plots pot-boiling on but as clear as possible.

Never the success the company hoped, the Marvel Adventures project was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to Disney XD television shows designated as â€œMarvel Universe cartoonsâ€, but these collected stories are still an intriguing and perhaps more culturally accessible means of introducing character and concepts to kids born sometimes two generations or more away from those far-distant 1960s originating events.
Â© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

October 31, 2012October 30, 2012

Showcase Presents Ghosts

By Leo Dorfman & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-836-1

Boo! Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: a perfect slice of sinister comics spookiness for everyoneâ€¦ 8/10

American comicbooks started rather slowly until the invention of superheroes unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and established a new entertainment genre. Implacably vested in World War Two, the superman swept all before him (occasional her or it) until the troops came home and the more traditional themes and heroes resurfaced, and eventually supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Whilst a new generation of kids began buying and collecting, many of the first fans also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought older themes in their reading matter. The war years had irrevocably altered the psychological landscape of the readership and, as a more world-weary, cynical young public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything, their chosen forms of entertainment (film and prose as well as comics) increasingly reflected this.

As well as Western, War and Crime comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent. Gradually another cyclical revival of spiritualism and public fascination with the arcane led to a wave of impressive, evocative and shockingly more-ish horror comics. These spanned the range from EC and Simon & Kirby’s astoundingly mature and landmark scary fictions to grotesquely exploitative eerie episodes from pale imitators and even wholesome, family-friendly fear tales from the industry’s biggest players.

The company that would become DC Comics bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the (December 1951/January 1952) release of The House of Mystery, at the same time turning venerable anthology Sensation Comics (the magazine that had starred Wonder Woman since 1942) into a fantasy vehicle with he-men such as Jonny Peril battling the encroaching unknown with issue #107.

That conversion was completed when the title became Sensation Mystery with #110 in July 1952.

Everything changed when a hysterical censorship scandal and governmental witch-hunt created a spectacular backlash (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April- June 1954 into your search engine at any timeâ€¦ You can do that because it’s more-or-less still a free country).

The crisis was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulatory rules. Horror titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority became sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, even though the appetite for suspense was still high. For example: in 1956 National introduced the sister title House of Secrets which debuted with a November-December cover-date and specialised in taut human interest tales in a fantasy milieu.

Stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, rationalistic, fantasy-adventure vehicles which dominated the market until the 1960s when super-heroes (which had started to creep back after Julius Schwartz began the Silver Age of comics by reintroducing the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956) finally overtook them. When the cape-and-cowl craziness peaked and popped, sales began bottoming out for Costumed Dramas and comics faced another punishing sales downturn.

Nothing combats censorship better than falling profits. As the end of the 1960s saw the superhero boom end with so many titles dead and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain too, the publishers took drastic action.

This real-world Crisis led to the surviving players in the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Worlds Beyond, the resurrection of spooky stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious â€œno-brainer.â€

Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillersâ€¦

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all, spooky comics came back to quickly dominate the American funnybook market for more than half a decade. DC started by converting The House of Mystery and Tales of the Unexpected into mystery suspense mags in 1968 and followed by resurrecting House of Secrets (August-September 1969) which had been cancelled in 1966.

Soon supernatural mystery titles were the dominant force in the marketplace and DC began a steady stream of launches along narrowly differing thematic lines. There was gothic horror romance title Sinister House of Secret Love, a combat iteration in Weird War Tales and from late summer 1970 a bold new book which proudly boasted â€œTrue Tales of the Weird and Supernatural!â€ and challenged readers to read on if they daredâ€¦

This first monochrome encyclopaedia of the eerie and uncanny collects the first 18 issues of Ghosts, covering like a shroud September/October 1970 to September 1973 with lead scripter and supernatural enthusiast Leo Dorfman producing most of the series’ original material for a title he is generally credited with creating.

Dorfman was one of the most prolific scripters of the era (also working as David George and Geoff Brown) and a major scripter of comic horror stories for many DC and Gold Key titles.

The thrills and chills begin with a graphic ‘Introduction’ from Tony DeZuniga – probably scripted by editor Murray Boltinoff – before ‘Death’s Bridegroom’ (Dorfman & Jim Aparo) told of a conniving bluebeard conman who finally picked the wrong girl to bilk and jilt. Sam Glanzman illustrated the fearsome tale of a shipbuilder slain while sabotaging a Nazi U-Boat who returned as a vengeful ‘Ghost in the Iron Coffin’, after which ‘The Tattooed Terror’, by John Broome, Carmine Infantino & Sy Barry, offers a slice of Golden Age anxiety from Sensation Mystery #112 (November 1952) when a career criminal is seemingly haunted by his betrayed partner.

Broome, Infantino & Frank Giacoia then relived ‘The Last Dream’ (Sensation Comics #107, December 1951-January 1952) when a 400-year old rivalry resulted in death for a 20^th century sceptic, and this initial issue ends with a Western mystery in ‘The Spectral Coachman’ by Dorfman & Tony DeZuniga.

Issue #2 began with a predatory ghost-witch persecuting a Carpathian village in ‘No Grave can Hold Me’ by Dorfman, John Calnan & George Tuska, whilst ‘Mission Supernatural’ (art by Bob Brown & Wally Wood) revealed a WWII secret which perpetually plagued a modern English airport.

A brace of revered reprints begin with light-hearted romp ‘The Sorrow of the Spirits’ from House of Mystery #21 (December 1953, by Jack Miller, Curt Swan & Ray Burnley) wherein a plague of famous phantoms attempted to possess their descendents’ bodies whilst ‘Enter the Ghost’ (Joe Samachson & Ruben Moreira from House of Mystery #29, August 1954) found an actor endangered by a dead thespian jealous of anyone recreating his greatest roleâ€¦

With Dorfman still writing the lion’s share of the new material, DeZuniga illustrated the sorry fate of an unscrupulous diver who was seduced by the discovery of a ‘Galleon of Death’ whilst Miller & Irwin Hasen’s ‘Lantern in the Rain’ (originally from Sensation Mystery #113, January/February 1953) recounted an eerie railroad episode, and Dorfman & Glanzman reunited to tell an original tale of ‘The Ghost Battalions’ who still haunted the world’s battle sites from Gallipoli to Korea.

Dorfman & DeZuniga visited 17^th century Scotland for #3’s opening occult observation wherein a sea-born princess demanded her child back from a wicked Laird in ‘Death is my Mother’, after which ‘The Magician who Haunted Hollywood’ (George Kashdan & Leonard Starr, from HoM #10, January 1953) revealed how actor Dick Mayhew might have been aided by a deceased escapologist when he played the starring role in the magician’s bio-picâ€¦

‘The Dark Goddess of Doom’ drawn by Calnan, revealed how a statue of Kali dealt with the ruthless collector who stole her, after which the anonymously authored ‘Station G.H.O.S.T.’ (limned by Moreira from HoM #17, August 1953) disclosed how a man’s scheme to corruptly purchase a house haunted by his ancestor went weirdly awry.

Tuska drew the saga of a WWII pilot who crashed into a desert nightmare and fatefully met a ‘Legion of the Dead’, whilst after a reprinted fact file on ‘Ghostly Miners’, Jerry Grandenetti depicted the story of a French landowner who unwisely disturbed a burial ground and met ‘The Screaming Skulls’â€¦

Ghosts #4 began with the secret history of one of America’s most infamous killers in ‘The Crimson Claw’ (Tuska & cover artist Nick Cardy) before ‘The Ghostly Cities of Gold’ (Grandenetti) revealed the truth about fabled, haunted Cibola and the first reprint featured ‘The Man Who Killed his Shadow’ (Miller, Swan & Burnley, HoM #16, July 1953) wherein a murdered photographer reached from beyond the grave for justice.

Thereafter Ernie Chan drew ‘The Fanged Spectres of Kinshoro’ with a Big Game hunter pitting 20^th century rationality against an ancient Ju-Ju threat, whilst the superb team of Bob Haney, Ramona Fradon & Charles Paris had a chance to shine again with ‘The Legend of the Black Swan’ (HoM #48, March 1956) wherein three sceptical American students in Spain have an eerie encounter with doomed 17^th century sailors. This issue then concluded on ‘The Threshold of Nightmare House’ with Calnan & Grandenetti illustrating the inevitable doom of a woman who was haunted by her own ghostâ€¦

During the invasion of China in 1939 a greedy Japanese warlord met his fate – and the spirits of the Mongol warriors whose tomb he robbed. Issue #5’s lead tale ‘Death, the Pale Horseman’ (by Dorfman & Art Saaf) was followed by ‘The Hands from the Grave’ (Calnan) which somehow saved a young tourist from an early death, after which reprint ‘The Telltale Mirror’ (by an unknown author & Grandenetti from HoM #13, April 1953) showed the dread downside of owning a looking glass that reflected the futureâ€¦

Original yarn ‘Caravan of Doom’ (Jack Sparling), which told of an uncanny African warrior aiding enslaved Tommies in WWI Tanganyika, was balanced by the uncredited reprint ‘The Phantom of the Fog’ (illustrated by Moreira, from HoM #123, June 1962) wherein valiant rebels overthrow a petty dictator with the apparent aid of an oceanic apparition, before Grandenetti’s ‘The Hearse Came at Midnight’ ended the issue with spoiled college frat boys learning an horrific lesson about hazing and initiation ritesâ€¦

With Ghosts #6 the page count dropped from 52 to 32 pages and the reprint stories were curtailed in favour of all-new material. Proceedings began with Dorfman & Saaf’s cautionary tale of an avaricious arcane apothecary when ‘A Specter Poured the Potion’ before ‘Ride with the Devil’ (Calnan) told of a most unexpected lift for an unwary hitchhiker whilst ‘Death Awaits Me’ (Grandenetti) revealed the eerie premonition that marked the bizarre death of dancer Isadora Duncan.

A rare DC outing for mercurial comics genius Richard E. Hughes closed this slimline edition with ‘Ghost Cargo from the Sky’, illustrated by Sparling and exposing the incredible power of wishing to Pacific Islanders in the aftermath of WWII.

Michael William Kaluta stood in for Cardy as cover artist for #7 but Dorfman remained as writer, beginning with ‘Death’s Finger Points‘ (Sparling art) as a bullying Australian sheep farmer fell foul of the aborigines he’d abused, whilst President in waiting Lyndon B. Johnson was only the latest VIP to learn the cost of ignoring a Fakir’s warning in the Saaf-illustrated ‘Touch not my Tomb’. Calnan then closed things out with ‘The Sweet Smile of Death’ in a doomed romance between a 20^th century photographer and a flighty Regency phantom who refused to let this last admirer goâ€¦

‘The Cadaver in the Clock’ (art by Buddy Gernale) opened Ghosts #8, as a succession of heirs learned the downside of an inheritance which perforce included a mummified corpse inside a grand chronometer, but Glanzman’s ‘The Guns of the Dead’ showed a far more beneficial side to spectres when US marines were saved by their deceased yet unstoppable sergeant in 1944. ‘Hotline to the Supernatural’, lovingly limned by the wonderful Nestor Redondo, recounted numerous cases of supernatural premonition, whilst ‘To Kill a Tyrant’ (Quico Redondo) implausibly linked the incredible last hours of Rasputin to the so-necessary death of Stalin decades laterâ€¦

Issue #9 begins with Calnan’s ‘The Curse of the Phantom Prophet’ as an Indian holy man continued his war against the insolent British and rapacious white men long after his death by firing squad, ‘The Last Ride of Rosie the Wrecker’ (gloriously illustrated by Alfredo Alcala) detailed the indomitable determination of a destroyed US tank that shouldn’t have been able to move at all, and Grandenetti’s ‘The Spectral Shepherd of Dartmoor’ showed how a long-dead repentant convict still aided the weak and imperilled in modern Britain. Events end on an eerie note when vacationers see horrific apparitions but discover that ‘The Phantom that Never Was’ has created a real ghost out of a hoax disaster in a genuine chiller drawn by Bob Brown & Frank McLaughlin.

Fact page ‘Experimenters Beyond the Grave’ by Dorfman & Win Mortimer details the attempts of Harry Houdini, Mackenzie King and Aldous Huxley to send messages from the vale of shades before the storytelling resumes in #10 with the Gerry Talaoc/Redondo Studio illustrated tale of a Vietnamese Harbinger of Doom in ‘A Specter Stalks Saigon’. Increasingly a host of superb Filipino artists would take on the art chores for the ubiquitous Dorfman’s scripts such as ‘The Ghost of Wandsgate Gallows’ by Chan, which detailed the inevitable fate of an English noble who hired and then betrayed a contract killer. Although naval savant Sam Glanzman could be the only choice for the US maritime mystery ‘Death Came at Dawn’, Nestor Malgapo artfully handled the horrific saga of ‘The Hell Beast of Berkeley Square’ which for decades slaughtered guilty and innocents alike in prosperousMayfairâ€¦

Ghosts #11 opened with Eufronio Reyes (E.R.) Cruz’s contemporary thriller wherein Nazi war criminals recovering long hidden loot finally paid for their foul crimes in ‘The Devil’s Lake’, before Chan delineated a subway journey where the ‘Next Stop is Nowhere’.

Past master Grandenetti visually captured ‘The Specter Who Stalked Cellblock 13’ of San Quentin, and Bob Brown returned to illustrate the story of a church organ which killed anyone who played it in ‘The Instrument of Death’, before Jack Sparling charted the sinister coincidences of ‘The Death Circle’ which dictated that every US President elected in a year ending in zero has died in office.

Of course not everyone today is happy that the myth has been debunkedâ€¦

Ghosts #12 featured ‘The Macabre Mummy of Takhem-Ahtem’ (Calnan art) which was more a traditional monster-mash than purportedly true report, after which ‘Chimes for a Corpse’ (Grandenetti) saw a German watchmaker die for his malicious treatment of an apprentice before the always amazing Glanzman-limned ‘Beyond the Portal of the Unknown’ closed proceedings in magnificent style when French soldiers in 1915 uncover a terrible tomb and unleash a centuries old vendetta of vengeanceâ€¦

Dorfman & Brown opened issue #13 with ‘The Nightmare in the Sandbox’, which detailed a war of voodoo practitioners carried out in Haitian garden, whilst ‘Voice of Vengeance’ (Calnan) depicted the macabre vengeance of marionettes on the embezzling official who silenced their maker. ‘Have Tomb, Will Travel’ (Talaoc) sees contract killers who used a scrap yard to lose their latest corpse discover their brand new car comes with his unquiet spirit as an angry extra before Nestor Redondo depicts the inexplicable experience of two lost GIs who spend a night in a castle that isn’t there and endure ‘Hell is One Mile High’â€¦

In #14 an heirloom wedding dress that came with a curse didn’t stop Diane Chapman from marrying her young man in Gernale’s ‘The Bride Wore a Shroud’, whilst ‘Death Weaves a Web’ (by George Kashdan & Chan) found a bullying uncle live to regret destroying his little nephew’s spider collection – but not for longâ€¦

‘Phantom of the Iron Horseman’ (Talaoc) saw a young train driver and a host of passengers saved from disaster by the spirit of his disgraced grandfather and the issue ends with a catalogue of global portents that warned of the appalling Aberfan tragedy in 1966 in Cruz’s ‘The Dark Dream of Death’.

Gernale opened #15 with ‘The Ghost that Wouldn’t Die’, another case of domestic gold-digging, ectoplasmic doppelgangers and living ghosts, whilst ‘A Phantom in the Alamo’ (Carl Wessler & Glanzman) revealed the ghastly fate of the American who sold out the valiant defenders to the Mexican invaders. Alcala lent his prodigious gifts to the Balkan tale of a corpse collector who abandoned morality and began profiteering from his sacred trust in ‘Who Dares Cheat the Dead?’ and Rico Rival delineated a gripping yarn wherein a corrupt surgeon was haunted by the hit-and-run victim he’d silenced in ‘Hand from the Grave’.

Ghosts #16 told of a Spanish gypsy cursed to see ‘Death’s Grinning Face’ whenever someone was going to die in a stirring thriller from Rival, and Glanzman again displayed his uncanny knack for capturing shipboard life – and death – when after 25 years a deserter finally joins his dead comrades in ‘The Mothball Ghost’. Talaoc then delineated Napoleon Bonaparte’s services to France after the Little Corporal died and became ‘The Haunted Hero of St. Helena’â€¦

Issue #17 saw a phantom lady save flood-lost children in Dorfman & Alcala’s moving ‘Death Held the Lantern High’ after which editor Murray Boltinoff & Talaoc revealed ‘The Specters Were the Stars’ when a film company tried to capture the horror of the 1920 Ulster Uprising before Kashdan & Calnan exposed the seductive lure and inescapable power of gypsies using ‘The Devil’s Ouija’ to combat centuries of prejudiceâ€¦

This first terrifying tome terminates with Ghosts #18 and Alcala’s account of a hateful Delaware medicine chief who still lured white men to his watery ‘Graveyard of Vengeance’ centuries after his death, whilst Abe Ocampo detailed the surprising ‘Death of a Ghost’ at the hands of an very smug inventor who had just moved into a haunted mansion.

Frank Redondo described how villagers in old Austria knew young Adolf would come to a bad end because the boy had ‘The Eye of Evil’ and the spookiness at last ceases with ‘Death Came Creeping’ by Ernesto Patricio & Talaoc when a visiting Egyptian merchant and his unique pet stop an American sneak thief’s predations in an age-old mannerâ€¦

These terror-tales captivated the reading public and critics alike when they first appeared and it’s almost certain that they saved DC during one of the toughest downturns in comics publishing history. Now their blend of sinister mirth, classic horror scenarios and suspense set-pieces can most familiarly be seen in such children’s series as Goosebumps, Horrible Histories and their many imitators.

Everybody loves a good healthy scare – especially today or even on those dark Christmas nights to come – and this beautiful gathering of ethereal escapism is a treat fans of fear and fantastic art should readily take to their cold, unbeating hearts.
Â© 1971, 1972, 1973, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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