Category: Older kids

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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 Meteorite…

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 copy…

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 on…

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 accept…

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 family…

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 wise…

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 time…

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 begun…

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 Mirka…

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 life…

The idea quickly pales. Even looked after by wise sister Rochel “Metty” 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 enjoyed…

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 forever…

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 table…

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 “the Jewish Experience” 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.

Text and illustrations © 2012 Barry Deutsch. Published by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved.

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

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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

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’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 time…

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 grabs…

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, “Chat” 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 wonder…

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 cordon…

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

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 miracle…

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. Octopus…

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 affair…

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-hire…

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 “less-unlucky” 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 mind…

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 “All-Ages Super Hero Action” and would perhaps better suit older kids…

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 “cartooned-up” 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 “Marvel Universe cartoons”, 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.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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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 everyone… 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 time… 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 “no-brainer.”

Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillers…

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 “True Tales of the Weird and Supernatural!” and challenged readers to read on if they dared…

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 20th 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 role…

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 17th 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-pic…

‘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’…

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 20th 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 17th 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 ghost…

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 future…

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 rites…

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 20th century photographer and a flighty Regency phantom who refused to let this last admirer go…

‘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 later…

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 prosperousMayfair…

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 debunked…

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 vengeance…

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’…

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 long…

‘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’…

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 prejudice…

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 manner…

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.
© 1971, 1972, 1973, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Stormbreaker – an Alex Rider Graphic Novel


By Anthony Horowitz, adapted by Antony Johnston, Kanako & Yuzuru (Walker Books)
ISBN: 978-1-4063-1877-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Ignore the telly for once and get your postprandial Yuletide blockbuster hit from this superb comics classic… 8/10

One of the most thrilling and effective additions to Britain’s pantheon of spies and detectives in recent years is no hard-hearted and suavely mature super-agent but a conflicted yet ultimately indomitable English teenager, more worried about daily drudgery and bouts of lessons-induced coma than espionage and the end of civilisation as we adults know it…

In 2000 author and TV screenwriter Anthony Horowitz released Stormbreaker, the first of nine (and counting…) breathtaking, rollicking teen novels featuring 14-year old Alex Rider: a smart, fit, sports-mad lad like any other, who suddenly discovers that his guardian Uncle Ian had been keeping incredible secrets from his only kin…

After a dull English lesson and a tense schoolyard dalliance between the boy and classmate-of-his-dreams Sabina Pleasure inBrooklandSchool,London, the all-out action begins with a spectacular chase inCornwall as a desperate man in a tricked-up sports car desperately fights to avoid high speed death. It’s a futile effort: his dogged pursuers are on motor bikes and in helicopters and, in the midst of a hail of bullets and missiles, the quarry takes time out to call his nephew Alex and apologize for letting him down again.

It’s the last call Uncle Ian will ever make…

Returning to his Chelseahome Alex Rider is greeted by his eccentric Katana-wielding housekeeper Jack Starbright. She’s made sushi and thinks she’s perfected the recipe for fugu. Alex hopes so: Puffer fish is one of the deadliest poisons known to man…

The meal is interrupted by the police with some bad news…

At the funeral, staff from the private bank Ian Rider worked for tender their condolences but they’re like no businessmen Alex has ever seen, and when he and Ms. Starbright return to the flat they find workmen moving the last of Ian’s possessions into a van. Without thinking the furious schoolboy gives chase on his pedal-bike and the breakneck pursuit leads to an excessively secure junk yard inSouth Londonwhere Alex sees all his uncle’s stuff being destroyed. When the boy examines the soon to be crushed car he finds bullets holes and an ejector seat, but is trapped when the vehicle is dropped into a mechanical crusher.

Spectacularly escaping, he is then chased by gun-firing goons. Fighting his way clear the boy follows a lead to Liverpool Street Station and is lured, all unsuspecting, to a secret high-tech installation beneath the busy railway terminus.

Alex is greeted by the efficient Mrs Jones and her supercilious superior Mr. Blunt who reveal the incredible truth. Ian Rider was a secret agent working for MI6 and murdered in the line of duty. Moreover, the deceased super-spy had been surreptitiously teaching his nephew all the skills, techniques and disciplines needed to become a secret agent – and his successor…

When Blunt’s far-from-subtle hints that Alex should join up are hotly rejected, the Machiavellian spymaster resorts to blackmail and threatens to revoke Ms. Starbright’s visa and have her deported.

Soon Alex is training with an elite military unit inWalesand quickly distinguishes himself as someone with unique problem-solving capabilities and a knack for improvisation.

The case Ian was working on is still active. Mysterious billionaire philanthropist Darrius Sayle is a Man of the People, friend of the Prime Minister and about to donate one of his new Stormbreaker personal computers to every school inBritain. But Alex’s uncle was investigating Sayle’sCornwall factory/mine complex when he was killed and the agent’s last message warned of a virus. Now Blunt wants to send Alex in as a computer nerd competition winner to scope out the nature of the threat…

Alex’s grim, enforced resignation is briefly lifted when he is sent to a toyshop to pick up a batch of high-tech gadgets from ingenious and affable MI6 quartermaster Mr. Smithers, after which it’s all stations go and “Kevin Blake” is packed off to isolated South West village Port Tallon.

He is met by Sayle’s ferocious and formidable PA Nadia Vole and escorted deep into the depths of a facility that looks more like an army base than a factory. The billionaire himself is a creepy blend of Tim Curry and Richard Branson, and his other assistant – mute failed circus knife-thrower Mr. Grin – looks like a fugitive from a horror film…

Soon “Kevin” is experiencing the full incredible power and range of the virtual realities produced by Stormbreaker kit, but his unsanctioned investigations soon uncover an unspecified secondary purpose for the schools-destined computers…

After being caught wandering “lost” in the bowels of the installation, Alex has an effusive dinner chat with American ex-pat Sayle, unaware that Ms. Vole has tracked his origins and is currently attempting to murder Jack Starbright…

Later that night in Cornwall Alex spies on a conversation between Sayle and a lethal-looking Russian named Yassen Gregorovitch and, unaware that he has been compromised, sneaks into the deepest levels of the factory and uncovers a lab modifying a biological – not digital – virus to be hidden inside every free computer destined for the nation’s classrooms…

Confronted by Gregorovitch who nonchalantly admits to killing his uncle, the boy manages to escape but is swiftly recaptured and left to die in a tank of deadly jellyfish as Sayle triumphantly flies off to London and the culmination of a petty, vindictive, genocidal vengeance scheme thirty years in the making…

Following a staggering spectacular chase back to London, Alex, with only his unlucky amour Sabina to assist him, invades the Stormbreaker launch and dramatically prevents the virus from being released. On the roof ofLondon’s tallest skyscraper they clash with the bonkers billionaire in a brutal and extremely final confrontation before the madman meets his deserved doom from a most unexpected and bewilderingly unlikely source…

With the drama done with, the stunned and shaken kids return to school, but the shadowy worlds of tradecraft and spymasters are not done with Alex Rider just yet…

This adaptation is sharp and poignant, surely depicting the sense of loss and betrayal as Alex loses so much of his innocence amidst situations of breathtaking danger and nerve-tingling excitement.

Our popular literary heritage is littered with cunning sleuths and stealthy investigators from Sherlock Holmes and Dick Barton to the Scarlet Pimpernel, George Smiley, Harry Palmer and Bond – James Bond – but the ongoing adventures of boy-hero Alex Rider seem set fair to match them all in time.

Transformed into graphic novel interpretations, the first four adventures have been recently repackaged and re-released in larger, more graphic-friendly editions: their easy blend of action, invention, youthful rebellion and engaging James Bond pastiche perfectly captured in adaptations by writer Antony Johnston and manga artists (and sisters) Kanako Damerum & Yuzuru Takasaki.

They’re well worth further investigation, but remember: even though this is a notionally a children’s book there is a lot of realistic violence and a big body-count so if you intend sharing the book with younger children, read it yourself first.

These books and their comic counterparts are a fine addition to our fiction tradition. Alex Rider will return… and so should you.
Text and illustrations © 2006 Walker Books Ltd. Based on the original novel Stormbreaker © 2000 Stormbreaker Productions Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Doctor Who Graphic Novels volume 14: The Child of Time


By Jonathan Morris, Mike Collins, David A. Roach, Roger Langridge, Martin Geraghty, Dan McDaid, Rob Davis, Geraint Ford, Adrian Salmon, & James Offredi (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-460-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: scintillating, superior sci fi for the bigger kids cluttering up the house and waiting for the TV Specials to start … 8/10

Doctor Who launched on television in the first episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’ on November 23rd 1963. Less than a year later, his decades-long run in TV Comic began with issue #674 and the premier instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’. On 11th October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says 17th) Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly, which became a monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) and has been with us under various names ever since.

All of which only goes to prove that the Time Lord is a comic hero with an impressive pedigree…

Panini is in the ongoing process of collecting every strip from its archive in a uniform series of over-sized graphic albums, each concentrating on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer. This particular one gathers stories short and long which, taken together comprise a two-year extended epic. From Doctor Who Magazine (or DWM) #421-441 (originally published between 2010-2011), this run features the strip debut of the Matt Smith incarnation of the far-flung, far-out Time Lord as well as his foremost companion Amy Pond.

None of which is relevant if all you want is a darn good read. All the creators involved have managed the ultimate task of any comics-creator – to produce engaging, thrilling, fun stories which can be equally enjoyed by the merest beginner and the most slavishly dedicated – and opinionated – fans imaginable.

With all tales written by Jonathan Morris (plus, according to the author, liberal input from editors Scott Gray & Tom Spilsbury), coloured by James Offredi and lettered by Roger Langridge, the drama kicks off in ‘Supernature’ (illustrated by Mike Collins & David A. Roach, from DWM #421-423, May-July 2010).

Arriving on a jungle paradise world The Doctor and Amy quickly discover Earthling colonists in the midst of a terrifying plague…

The humans – all convicts press-ganged and abandoned to turn the planet into a suitable home – are being transformed into uncanny mutant beasts, and even the Time Lord and his new companion are monsterised before the crisis is solved. However when they depart they take part of the problem with them…

A rare but very welcome art job for regular letterer Langridge results in a bizarre and wonderful spoof on ‘Planet Bollywood!’ when warring factions of an ancient empire – and a romantic leading man – all struggle to possess a sexy humanoid device which compels listeners to break out in song and dance routines, after which a trip to Tokyo found fresh horror in the metamorphosis of innocent – if educationally lacking – children into a deadly fifth column…

‘The Golden Ones’ (#425-428, by Martin Geraghty & Roach) is a grand old-fashioned blockbuster invasion saga with a huge body-count, valiant armed resistance by dedicated UNIT soldiers, a classic villain’s return, a brilliant scientific solution and a slew of subtle clues to the greater saga unfolding. Just who is that strange little girl who keeps popping up everywhen?

From #429 comes the literary fantasy-homage ‘The Professor, the Queen and the Bookshop’ (Rob Davis & Geraint Ford) wherein our heroes meet a reclusive writer and evacuee children Amy – and hubby-to-be Rory – encounter a strange man in an infinite shop which can travel anywhere…

It’s back to Paris in 1858 for Dan McDaid’s ‘The Screams of Death’ as aspiring but hopeless singer Cosette is taken under the wing of impresario Monsieur Valdemar and develops a voice that could shake the Opera House to its foundations. Of course, the Svengali-like Fugitive from the Future had far grander plans for his many captive songbirds until Mam’selle Pond and M’sieu le Docteur turned up to foil a mad scheme to rewrite history…

The over-arching epic takes a big step forward in #432’s ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night’ (featuring a welcome full-art outing for the splendid David Roach) as the Tardis turns up in an old people’s home staffed by robots, haunted by children and plagued by a vanishing roster of residents, whilst Adrian Salmon gets his freak on in the trippy terror-tale ‘Forever Dreaming’ (#433-434) as Amy is apparently trapped in a 1960’s seaside town with a dark secret, a phantom octopus and a host of psychedelic icons who really should be dead…

The saga swings into full acceleration with ‘Apotheosis’ (DWM #435-437 and limned by McDaid) as the Doctor and Amy land aboard a derelict space station and walk into the closing act of a galaxy-spanning war between humanity and their scheduled replacements: the awesome autonomous androids of Galatea.

Aboard the station, a cadre of warrior Space Nuns are seeking an ultimate weapon to tip the scales of the conflict, but with lethal sanitation robots everywhere and rogue time-distortion fields making each step a potential death-march, the hunt is hard-going. With everybody – even the Time Lord – hyper-aging at vastly different rates, when the Tardis then mutates into something impossible, the stage is set for a spectacular threat to all of creation to be born…

Of course, first the Machiavellian, monstrously manipulative and atrociously amoral creature calling herself Chiyoko must carry out a number of crucial appointments in Eternity to ensure the existence and consolidate the celestial dominance of ‘The Child of Time’ (with art from Geraghty & Roach from (DWM #438-441 August -November 2011).

Two years’ worth of cleverly-concocted mystery and imagination are then wrapped up in a staggering, creatively-anachronistic display of temporal hocus-pocus by scripter Morris as The Doctor, Amy and allies Alan Turing and the Bronte Sisters ward off the unmaking of time, the end of humanity and eradication of all life in the universe before the tragic finale and a happy ever after of sorts…

Dedicated fans can also enjoy a treasure-trove of background information in the 25-page  text Commentary section at the back, comprising chapter-by-chapter background, history and insights from the author and each of the illustrators, supplemented by happy horde of sketches, roughs, designs, production art and even excised material from all concerned.

We’ve all have our private joys and hidden passions. Sometimes they overlap and magic is made. This is another superb set of supremely satisfying comic strips, starring an absolute Pillar of the British Fantasy pantheon.

If you’re a fan of only one, The Child of Time should certainly spark your hunger for the other. This is a fabulous book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for devotees of the show, the ideal opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form and the perfect present for the Telly Addict haunting your house…

All Doctor Who material © BBCtv. Doctor Who logo © BBC 2012. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Doctor Who, Tardis and all logos are trade marks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence by BBC Worldwide. Published 2012 by Panini Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword


By Barry Deutsch (Amulet)
ISBN: 978-0-8109-8422-6

Win’s Christmas or Chanukah Gift Recommendation: an ideal introduction to other worlds and honest heroics, not just for girls but for everyone… 9/10

There’s fair few graphic novels dealing with “the Jewish Experience” and even some dealing with the thorny issue of Orthodoxy, but I honestly can’t think of another book that features a truly likable girl-child as a bona fide hero – and a traditional, tuchus-kicking, day-saving champion at that.

Mirka Hirschberg is an 11-year old girl in a Hassidic family. That’s not surprising: everybody in Hereville is Jewish and Orthodox. Mirka, however, is a bit of a problem child.

She’s intelligent, inquisitive, stubborn and argumentative: utterly unconvinced and unmoved by the ancient yet still thriving belief and institutionalised tradition that girls are inferior to boys and should stick to what they they’re good at.

Mirka is a rebel and a warrior at heart: she even keeps a forbidden, non-kosher book – a bestiary of monsters – under her bed…

In a family of eight girls and one boy, step-mother Fruma spends most of her time keeping house and training all the daughters on how to be proper wives and mothers, but she too is forthright and disputatious. However she’s old; wise and wily enough not to show it and make waves. Every so often she also proves that she clearly knows far more about everything than she lets on…

When Mirka cunningly gets out of knitting practise again she thinks she’s won a victory, but as they walk through the woods to school little brother Zindel points out the fallacies in his sister’s ploy, citing the disastrous time Mirka told everybody she wanted to be a monster-hunting dragon-slayer…

Suddenly they are confronted by two older boys who have been persistently bullying the baby brother. Yitzchok and Manis are bigger, older and mean, but where Zindel is cowed Mirka is defiant and when her sibling is struck she responds by bouncing a rock off the attacker’s skull.

The young thugs are furious enough to break Negiah (the rule forbidding physical contact between unrelated males and females) and give chase, but Mirka evades them and rushes deeper into the undergrowth. Soon she is lost and stumbles onto a strange, tall house she never saw before.

Hereville is small, closed and insular so an unknown tower – and exotic garden – is a huge surprise… but not as much as the eerie old woman tending a tree by floating in mid-air…

Astonished, Mirka drags Zindel and sisters Gittel and Rochel to inspect the mystery manse. Although the older girls are far more concerned with propriety and their future roles as reputable wives, Zindel is appropriately astounded. However when Mirka picks one of the fist-sized grapes on the fence, a monstrous unknown creature appears. It has hooves, huge ears, a snout and a malign gleam of intelligence in its eyes. With an horrific squeal it chases the formerly-bold thief frantically through the woods, too fast for Rochel to tell Mirka that it’s only a Pig…

It certainly isn’t.

When Mirka recovers her wits she turns and attacks the monster, but it easily beats her and wickedly knocks the breathless girl into a men-only barbecue – and another shameful flouting of the rules of tradition…

The pig isn’t done with her either, and spends the following days hunting and tormenting her: constantly eating her homework, painfully butting and even framing Mirka after it destroyed Fruma’s garden. Of course no one else ever sees the beast…

Mirka’s perpetual harping on is, however, upsetting her sisters. Constantly acting up and shaming the family is having detrimental effects on the sisters’ marriage prospects and the family reputation. So to save the honour of the Hirschbergs, Mirka sets a cunning trap…

Things don’t go quite as she planned. Although the brave lass gets a noose around the swine it easily drags her through the woods before speaking and telling the stunned girl just how much it hates her for despoiling the hidden garden and how it will forever make her pay!

Livid, Mirka attacks again and the furious battle which ensues precipitates them both into a lake. Still battling mightily, Mirka loses consciousness and thinks she sees a benevolent lady cradling her, saving her…

When she reaches the bank and struggles to safety she is still holding the rope and the equally exhausted pig calls a truce, forswearing its eternal vengeance. Free, exultant and smug, Mirka boasts of her victory to her siblings, but when Zindel goes with her to see the site of her victory they find Yitzchok and Manis tormenting the still hog-tied beast by throwing stones. The plucky boy cannot stand to see such cruelty and vainly tries to stop the bullies, but when the savagely turn on him a fighting mad Mirka beats them off with a tree branch and they flee.

Freeing the far from grateful swine, the siblings are then confronted by the strange witch who owns the pig. Refusing to be in Mirka’s debt, the hag divines the lass’ greatest wish and reveals how Mirka can win a hero’s sword worthy of a true dragonslayer…

All she has to do is defeat the highly unconventional troll who currently possesses it and after some oddly fitting advice from Fruma – who apparently knows the witch in the woods and orders her stepdaughter to never see her again – plus another screaming fight with the over-protective Zindel, in the middle of the night, Mirka sets off to win her prize…

Her contraband book and Fruma’s idle musings could not prepare her for the reality of The Troll: a bizarrely erudite terror who is guardian of a host of uncanny treasures. He readily accepts her challenge for he has not yet had breakfast – and chooses as his method of combat the worst of all tests… a knitting contest…

Readily mixing the most enviable aspects of Jewish Identity and cultural character – Family, Faith, Honour, love of debate and reverence for knowledge – with rollicking adventure, sly, surreal humour, supernatural suspense and vibrant youthful rebellion, this first adventure of the redoubtable but fallible Mirka and the Hirschberg clan is a sheer award-winning graphic narrative delight.

Fascinating and subtly informative about a culture most people know too little about, How Mirka Got Her Sword is also a superbly funny and exciting page-turner (beautifully, enchantingly illustrated by a master of the comics form) and a book girls and boys will read over and over again.

This beguiling instant-classic hardback also includes a delightful Sketchbook section disclosing the secrets of ‘Designing the Troll’ to encourage readers to become creators too…
© 2010 Barry Deutsch. Published by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved.

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Limits book 1


By Keiko Suenobu, translated by Mari Morimoto (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-93565-456-8

Travelling a little off the beaten Shōjo or “girl’s comic” path is a newly translated work by the marvellous Keiko Suenobu, whose latest series Limit has just been released byNew York publisher Vertical.

Born in KitakyÅ«shÅ«, Fukuokain March 1979, Suenobu graduated from the Universityof Tsukubabefore beginning her creative career with the school romance Happy Tomorrow, before gravitating towards darker themes of conformity, social pressure and bullying in Vitamin and the moving, controversial and award-winning Raifu – translated as Life by TokyoPop in 2006.

The author took her interest in the nastier side of school life to imaginative extremes in 2009 when Limit began serialisation in Kodansha’s Bessatsu Friend. Now this rather dark and exceptionally grim tale – which will definitely appeal to a readership far beyond the general Shōjo target-market of young girls – is available in English and might well be a future classic.

Mizuki Konno is lucky – and wise – enough to fit with the “In-Crowd” at her all-girls school. Acceptably cute and suitably smart, she has learned to make no waves and accept that the ways things work is the way things should be. The popular girls – like undisputed teen goddess Sakura Himezawa – make the rules, and the rest conform. It’s a simple matter of survival…

If you’re physically different or interested in odd things, like dumpy manga-fan and tarot reader Arisa Morishige, life can be hell. Only the strongest personalities, such as bookish, decent and determinedly wound-tight non-conformist Chieko Kamiya have any chance of standing up to the constant bitchy pressure to comply, accept and keep your place in the hierarchy of ‘A Perfect World’…

Everything changes however when Sakura’s class drives off for an extended visit to an Exchange Camp in the wilderness. Every class spends a week roughing it with nothing more than a communal scythe and their ever-present cell-phones to hold back the horrors of nature, but with this last trip of the semester things go tragically wrong.

High in the mountains the coach driver has a heart attack and the vehicle, packed with excited girls and their harried teacher, plunges catastrophically into a wooded hidden valley.

Only five girls survive, and undisputed queen of the modern world Sakura isn’t one of them…

As Konno drags the shell-shocked Haru Ichinose (Sakura’s devoted deputy, utterly unable to function without her) out of the wreckage some time later, she sees smoke from a fire. Tracking the signal they find middle-ranking Chikage Usui with her leg splinted and bandaged outside a cave. The wounded lass has been saved and succoured by the coldly efficient Kamiya, who has also scavenged everything potentially useful from the crash site.

At the back of the cave Morishige sits inside a pentagram, casting the cards…

Kamiya has brusquely taken charge, organising resources and outlining options until the girls can be found and rescued, but introspective Konno can barely grasp the strange situation and the new rules of survival. Events take an even nastier turn when the Tarot reader suddenly explodes in jubilation, claiming her prayers have been answered and her tormentors all punished…

Indifferent, ambiguous pragmatist Konno is forced to confront a new world order in ‘The Strong vs. the Weak’ as the increasingly unstable Morishige takes control.

After panicking and unsuccessfully failing to climb out of the box valley, Konno returns to find the bereft Haru attacking the former class pariah but Morishige’s big and burly frame – which brought her such cruel treatment in school – is now the most valuable asset in this new environment and moreover she has also found that wickedly lethal scythe…

The new queen easily defeats her attacker and then regales the horrified girls with a litany of all the cruel acts she saw the perfect princesses constantly inflict upon each other during their wonderful school days.

Haru is unable to accept the change of status and even refuses Konno’s overtures to become allies just as the ascendant Morishige casts the cards again and sees a future where only the strong will survive…

With food already running out, events spiral towards deadly conflict as Konno recalls better days that weren’t actually that great, only to be dragged back to reality when Morishige decides to split the remaining rations four ways. The clearly unstable would-be witch has established her own social hierarchy with the pragmatically compliant Kamiya as “Royalty”, Usui a “Commoner” and the roles of “Servant” and “Slave” still to be determined by her under ‘The Empress’ Rules’…

Haru is provisionally a Slave but since they don’t get food she must fight Konno to determine who gets the final privileged – and rewarded – role of Servant… to the death…

To Be Continued…

Rather inaccurately likened to Michael Lehmann’s 1988 cult black comedy Heathers (although perhaps influenced by Koushun Takami’s novel Batoru Rowaiaru or Kinji Fukasaku’s filmic adaptation Battle Royale) but certainly deriving much of its energising concepts from William Golding’s landmark tale Lord of the Flies, this bleak, viciously introspective and effectively chilling tale marries beautiful illustration to fearsome examination of what civilised folk consider acceptable behaviour and asks some entertainingly challenging questions.

This book – which also includes a charming glance at the author’s methodology in the mini-feature My Workroom – is printed in the traditional Japanese right to left, back to front format.
© 2012 Keiko Suenobu. All rights reserved.

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Planetes volume 1


By Makoto Yukimura, translated and adapted by Yuki Nakamura & Ann Wenger (TokyoPop)
ISBN: 978-1-59182-262-2

The hard, gritty mystery and imagination of space travel, so much a component of immediate post-World War II industrial society, once again captivated a legion of level-headed imagineers at the end of the 20th century when relative newcomer Makoto Yukimura rekindled interest in near-space exploration in all its harsh and grimy glory with this inspiring “nuts-and-bolts” manga series which explored the probable rather than the possible…

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 tankōbon volumes. The serial easily made the jump to a popular anime series and Yukimura – after producing Sayōnara 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 Shōnen Magazine and Afternoon – and filling 11 bloodcurdling volumes to date…

The premise of Planetes is devilishly simply and powerfully engaging. Humanity is a questing species but cannot escape its base origins. In 2074 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 minute 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.

‘A Stardust Sky’ begins with the death of a passenger on a commercial low-orbit space liner before jumping six years forward to introduce a trio of these celestial dustbin-men scooping up Mankind’s negligent cast-offs and unconsidered detritus.

Hachirota Hoshino is the newest member of the team, a kid who craves becoming a real astronaut and famous explorer like his dad and even dreams of one day owing his own prestige spaceship. However excitable “Hachimaki” is quickly becoming disenchanted with the dreary, dull and disgusting daily life of drudgery aboard DS-12 – a sanitation/cargo ship fondly dubbed Toybox but little better than the discards he and his two comrades daily scoop up or destroy…

These days there’s something wrong with the sombre, stoic Russian, Yuri Mihairokov.

The big man is increasingly distracted, blanking out, staring vacantly into the Wild Black Yonder as the cleaners orbit the Earth at 8 kilometres per second. Events come to head when a shard of micro-debris holes their ramshackle vessel and an old timer reveals the Russian’s tragic secret.

Long ago Yuri and his wife were on that shuttle and when it was holed she died. Heartbroken, her husband – one of the few survivors – returned to space to clear the deadly trash that took his wife, but he never forgot her.

Later, whilst drifting in the void the solitary astronaut sees a glitter, and her keepsake compass just floats into his hand, brought back to him by the winds of space. Beguiled, Yuri falls into Earth’s Gravity Well and only Hachimaki’s most frantic efforts save his comrade from a fiery death.

Safely back in free orbit, the Russian opens his gauntleted fist. On the compass are scratched his wife’s final thoughts as death took her – “please save Yuri”…

The poignant, bittersweet and deeply spiritual initial episode is followed by ‘A Girl from Beyond the Earth’ wherein young Hoshino slowly and impatiently recovers from a broken leg in the hospital of the moon colony Archimedes Crater City.

These tales are laced with the most up-to-date space science available to author Yukimura, and the recent discovery that extended time spent in low or zero-gravity radically weakens bones and muscles was the lynchpin of this moving brush with another youngster bound irrevocably to the void.

When a doctor suggests returning to full-gravity Earth to recuperate the easy way, Hachi is in two minds and sorely tempted. His commander and fellow debris-destroyer Fee Carmichael and an old 20-year veteran pour scorn on the quitter’s option. All real astronauts know that once back on the home world few ever return to space.

The lad is still tempted though until he strikes up a friendship with a thin, wasted young woman. Nono has been on Luna for twelve years and dreams of blue skies and open seas but will never see them. After aged Mr. Roland chooses to spend the rest of his life among the stars, Hachimaki learns Nono’s incredible sad secret and at last abandons all thoughts of forsaking the stars…

The focus stays on nicotine-fiend Fee Carmichael as she struggles to enjoy a well-deserved vice in ‘A Cigarette under Starlight’ in Orientale Basin Underground City a few months later. With breathing-oxygen at a premium, smokers must juggle their addiction for the weed with their dedication to life in space and poor Fee has been Jonesing for a drag for far too long. Now though, even whilst on shore-leave at a station big enough and sufficiently civilised to house a designated smoking area, the Toybox’s chief is still unable to indulge her vice.

An ideological terrorist group called the Space Defense Fighters want to keep the void pristine and free of Mankind’s polluting influence and have been detonating bombs in outposts all over the moon. Their latest outrages targeted the base’s vending machines and smoking rooms so the authorities have sealed them all in the name of public safety.

Driven near to distraction, Fee snaps and lights up in the public toilets, forgetting that smoke detection devices and fire countermeasures are automatic, incredibly sensitive and painfully effective…

Humiliated, sodden but undeterred, she takes off for another city and a solitary snout (for all you non-Brits that’s a particularly derogatory term for having a smoke) and finds the only guy more in need of a drag than her. Of course setting bombs is nervous work and a quick ciggy always calms his nerves…

The frustration is too much and Fee returns to her job but the SDF’s explosive campaign doesn’t end. Their latest scheme is the creation of deadly Kessler Syndrome wave (a blast or impact which changes the trajectories of free-floating orbital scrap and debris, making even more debris/shrapnel and aiming it like a hard rain of lethal micro-missiles)…

With a commandeered satellite directed inexorably at a space station, the terrorists intend to detonate their captured vehicle and shred the habitat – which coincidentally carries the last smokes in space – shooting it out of the sky and creating a lethal chain reaction making high-orbit space forever un-navigable…

Unsure of her own motives Fee uses the DS-12 to suicidally shove the stolen projectile away from the station and into Earth’s atmosphere…

In ‘Scenery for a Rocket’, as Fee recuperates in Florida, Hachimaki brings Yuri to visit Japan and falls back into a violent and historic sibling rivalry with baby brother Kyutaro, a rocketry prodigy even more determined to conquer space than his surly fanatical brother or their absentee astronaut father Goro…

Happily the Russian’s calming influence begins to repair fences between the warring Hoshino boys, but not before a series of explosive confrontations lead to Yuri finally passing on his beloved wife’s compass…

This first passionately philosophical and sentimentally suspenseful chronicle concludes with ‘Ignition’ as Fee, Yuri and Hachimaki reunite in time for the junior junkman to suffer an almost career-ending psychological injury. Although utterly unharmed by a rogue solar flare, the lad was completely isolated in the void for so long that he developed post-traumatic “Deep-Space Disorder”.

If he could not shake off the debilitating hallucinatory condition his life in space was over. Nothing the experts of the Astronaut Training Center did seemed to work, but fortunately Yuri knew just what prodding could awaken the wide-eyed, Wild Black Wonder in his feisty little comrade…

Tense, sensitive and moodily inspirational, these tales readily reinvigorate and reinvent the magical allure of the cold heavens for newer generations and this authentic, hard-edged and wittily rational saga is a treat no hard-headed dreamer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to miss…

This book – which also includes prose biographies of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert H. Goddard, Herman Julius Oberth & Werhner von Braun in ‘A Brief History of Modern Rocket Science’ – are printed in the traditional Japanese right to left, back to front format.
© 2001 Makoto Yukimura. All rights reserved. English text © 2003 TOKYOPOP Inc.

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Philosophy – A Discovery in Comics


By Margreet de Heer with Yiri T. Kohl (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-698-3

There’s no use denying it: Annual Gift-Giving Season isn’t far off and it’s never too early to think of the ideal item for that troublesome family/friend unit. So here’s something that might fit the bill for any argumentative soul fed up with socks, pants and pen-sets…  

It has long been a truism of the creative arts that the most effective, efficient and economical method of instruction and informational training has been the comic strip.

Advertising mavens have for over a century exploited the easy impact of words wedded to evocative pictures, and public information materials frequently use sequential narrative to get hard messages over quickly and simply. Additionally, since World War II, carefully crafted strips have been constantly used as training materials in every aspect of adult life from school careers advice to various branches of military service – utilising the talents of comics giants as varied as Milton Caniff, Will Eisner (who spent decades producing reams of comic manuals for the US army and other government departments), Kurt Schaffenberger and Neil Adams.

These days the educational value and merit of comics is a given. Larry Gonick in particular has been using the strip medium to stuff learning and entertainment in equal amounts into the weary brains of jaded students with such tomes as The Cartoon History of the Universe, The Cartoon History of the United States and The Cartoon Guide to… series (Genetics, Sex, Computers, Non-Communication, Physics, Statistics, the Environment and more).

Japan uses a huge number of manga text books in its schools and universities and has even released government reports and business prospectuses as comic books to get around the public’s apathy towards reading large dreary volumes of public information.

So do we, and so do the Americans.

I’ve even produced one or two myself.

Now the medium has been used to sublimely and elegantly tackle the greatest and most all-consuming preoccupation and creation of the mind of Man…

Margreet de Heer was born in 1972 into a family of theologians and despite some rebellious teen forays to the wild side of life – fascinatingly covered in the ‘Know My Self’ section of this fabulous graphic primer – studied Theology for 9 years at the University of Amsterdam. After graduating in 1999 she decided to become a cartoonist – and did – but also worked at the wonderful comics and cool stuff emporium/cultural icon Lambiek in Amsterdam.

Whilst there she collaborated with industry expert Kees Kousemaker on a history of Dutch comics before becoming a full-time professional in 2005, with commissions in publications as varied as Yes, Zij aan Zij, Viva Mama, Flo’, Jippo, Farfelu and NRC.Next.

In 2007 she began a series of cartoon philosophical reports for the newspaper Trouw, which prompted a perspicacious publisher to commission a complete book on this most ancient of topics. Filosofie in Beeld was released in 2010 and translated into English by NBM this year as Philosophy – a Discovery in Comics.

This gloriously accessible tome, crafted by a gifted writer with a master’s grasp of her subject, opens with the core concept ‘What is Thinking?’ examining the processes of mind through a number of elegantly crafted examples before moving onto ‘Who Do We Think We Are?’

Those paradigms of ‘Self-Awareness’, ‘Logical Thinking’, ‘Language’, ‘Symbols’, ‘Abstract Thinking’ and ‘Humor’ are captivatingly covered before the history and cognitive high points of civilisation are disclosed with ‘The Foundation of Western Philosophy’.

This potted history of ‘Dualism’ relates the life stories, conceptual legacies and achievements of ‘Socrates’ and the ‘Socratic Discourse’, his star pupil ‘Plato’ and the universal man ‘Aristotle’, all winningly balanced with a balancing sidebar autobiography in ‘Know My Self’ plus some cogent observations and a few comparisons with the Eastern philosophy of ‘Unity’…

‘Medieval Philosophy’ deals with the influence of the Christian Church on ‘Augustine’ and ‘Thomas Aquinas’, the “Great Thinkers” of early Europe, examining the warring concepts of ‘Free Will’ and ‘Predestination’ and exploring the lives of ‘Erasmus’ and ‘Humanism’, ‘Descartes’ and his maxim ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’ and ‘Spinoza’ whose consummate faith-based dictum was ‘Know Thyself’…

The charming, beguiling foundation course continues with ‘What is Reality?‘ bringing us up to the modern age with ‘And Now’ with another brilliantly clever diversion as de Heer includes the ‘Personal Philosophies’ of families and friends.

Her husband – and this book’s colourist – Yiri bases his outlook on the incredible life of outrageous comedian ‘George Carlin’, her aged friend Gerrit looks to ‘Nietzsche’, mother-in-law Yolanda modelled herself on Cambridge lecturer and intellectual ‘George Steiner’ whilst De Heer’s little brother Maarten prefers to shop around picking up what he needs from thinkers as varied as ‘Aldous Huxley’ to cartoonist ‘Marten Toonder’ as well as bravely putting her money where her mouth is and revealing her own thoughts on Life, the Universe and Everything and asking again ‘What Do You Think?’…

This is a truly sharp and witty book – and the first of a trilogy that will also deal with Religion and Science – which splendidly reduces centuries of contentious pondering, violent discussion and high-altitude academic acrimony to an enthralling, utterly accessible experience any smart kid or keen elder would be happy to experience. Clear, concise, appropriately challenging and informatively funny Philosophy – A Discovery in Comics is a wonder of unpretentious, exuberant graphic craft and a timeless book we can all enjoy.

© @2010 Uitgeverij Meinema, Zoetermeer, TheNetherlands. English translation © 2012 Margreet de Heer & Yiri T. Kohl.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect for anybody with a brain or heart… 9/10

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Eagle Strike: the Graphic Novel – an Alex Rider Adventure


By Anthony Horowitz, adapted by Antony Johnston, Kanako & Yuzuru (Walker Books)
ISBN: 978-1-4063-1877-7

One of the most thrilling and effective additions to Britain’s literary spies and detectives in recent years is not a hard-hearted and suavely mature super-agent but a troubled yet ultimately indomitable English teenager as concerned with revision, sports fixtures and girls as subversion, world domination and honey traps.

Our popular literary heritage is littered with cunning sleuths and stealthy investigators from Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Campion and Lord Peter Wimsey to the Scarlet Pimpernel, George Smiley, Harry Palmer and Bond – James Bond – but the ongoing adventures of underaged operative Alex Rider seem set fair to top them all in time.

Subsequently transformed into graphic novel interpretations, the first three adventures – reformatted in larger more art-friendly editions, repackaged and re-released, have recently been supplemented by the game-changing fourth tale, adapted as usual by Antony Johnston and sisters Kanako Damerum & Yuzuru Takasaki.

In 2000 author and TV screenwriter Anthony Horowitz produced Stormbreaker, the first of nine (and counting…) rip-snorting teen novels featuring 14-year old orphan Alex Rider: a smart, fit, sports-mad lad like any other, who suddenly discovers that his guardian Uncle Ian has also mysteriously died. Moreover the enigmatic but attentive deceased elder gentleman was apparently a spy of some distinction and had been surreptitiously teaching the lad all the skills, techniques and disciplines needed to become a secret agent…

Soon MI6 were knocking on his door…

As well as a major motion picture and video game, the books (the first four so far) have also been adapted to the comics medium; their easy blend of action, invention, youthful rebellion and overwhelmingly engaging 007 pastiche winning many fans in the traditionally perilous older-boys book market. They’re well worth further investigation…

His occasional paymasters at MI6 are always looking for ways to exploit his obvious talents but Alex, although highly skilled and naturally gifted, is at best a reluctant agent, preferring a normal life to the clandestine machinations of espionage.

Sadly trouble and duty seem unable to ignore him and whilst holidaying in France with schoolgirl friend and confidante Sabina Pleasure and her family, Alex spots Russian assassin Yassen Gregorovitch – the man who killed his Uncle Ian – and trails him.

The surveillance leads to a crowded café and an overheard suspicious phone call before reason prevails and Alex decides to leave it alone. After all, his experiences have shown that all spies are as bad as each other and he should have nothing to do with any of them.

However when he and Sabina return to Edward Pleasure’s holiday villa they find police, fire-crews, ambulances and a smouldering ruin. The place had inexplicably blown up with Sabina’s dad inside and almost caught Mrs Pleasure too…

Horrified, Alex concludes that the tragedy was all his fault. If only he had acted when he had the chance…

Unable to convince the French authorities that it was no accident, young Rider goes hunting for Gregorovitch and ambushes the assassin, determined to kill him with his own gun…

Unable to carry out his threat, Alex learns from the unexpectedly forthcoming mercenary that although the explosion was the killer’s work the boy spy was not the target…

When the Russian’s ally returns the boy is trapped, but rather than simply shoot him, Yassen gives Alex a chance of survival by making him the star in a bullfight. After initial shock Rider easily escapes the ordeal and heads towards the nearest port and England, but stops to ring a phone number he found in Gregorovitch’s possession. It is the direct line to Sir Damian Cray – beloved pop star, evergreen environmentalist and globally revered humanitarian. How can such a modern-day saint be connected to the world’s deadliest killer-for-hire?

Reaching Londonwithout incident, Alex begins researching the seemingly ageless musician. He also has a big fight with the newly returned Sabina (who can’t believe that her journalist father’s investigation of the star resulted in the explosion the French authorities claim was a gas leak) and turns to MI6 with his suspicions, but even they think he’s crazy and his manipulative sometime-boss Mr. Blunt sternly warns him off.

Utterly convinced he is right Alex storms out, unaware that Blunt is far more concerned that the boy might discover an unsuspected family connection to Yassen Gregorovitch…

Rider is determined to investigate Gray no matter what, but his disgust with adults in general and spies in particular is slightly tempered when the ingenious MI6 quartermaster Mr. Smithers surreptitiously sends him a tricked up pedal bike with a selection of useful technical “upgrades” and a bulletproof cycle-jersey…

Cray, a thinly veiled amalgam of Michael Jackson and Sir Cliff Richard, has his sublimely-manicured billionaire’s fingers in many pies and Alex tracks him down to an all-star Londonlaunch for the pop icon’s new Gameslayer computer console. Aided only by his housekeeper and former babysitter Jack Starbright, Alex infiltrates the launch party and is singled out by Cray to demonstrate the fully-immersive computer game in front of hundreds of journalists. When Alex begins to dominate the game Cray cheats and confirms beyond doubt that the musical saint not as benevolent as he seems…

A day later Alex and Miss Starbright are in Paris, tracking down the photographer who first put Sabina’s father onto Cray, but no sooner do they make contact with the terrified and apparently paranoid Marc Antonio than a heavily armed hit-squad raids the building.

Narrowly avoiding the killers after a harrowing rooftop pursuit, Alex ponders the snippets of information Antonio shared: Edward Pleasure was actually investigating Charlie Roper, a suspected NSA traitor possibly selling American secrets. However, when the reporters filmed the agent accepting a pay-off, it was neither North Korean nor Chinese officials but the world’s most famous pop star doling out the cash…

Soon, suspicious accidents and burglaries began and when Marc almost died from a bomb in his car he realised the awful truth…

Not knowing if the photo-journalist survived the latest attack, Alex heads acrossEuropeto the Dutch factory where Cray Software Technologies is building Gameslayer units and infiltrates the outrageously over-fortified facility in time to overhear Roper in conversation with Cray himself about a project Dubbed “Eagle Strike”…

The formerUSagent has just delivered a flash-drive which holds the most important and diligently guarded security codes inAmerica, but completely misjudged the moneyed musician’s playfully psychotic ruthlessness…

Reeling in shock at the horrific murder he’s just witnessed, Alex is then captured by Cray’s men and brought before the gloating popinjay. Obviously insane, the baroque megalomaniac overrules Yassen’s surprising objections and sentences the boy to death by forcing him to play in the life-sized, real-world mock-up of the Gameslayer scenario…

Overcoming fantastic threats and obstacles, Alex ultimately triumphs and escapes the game world. He then steals the flash-drive and spectacularly eludes an army of motorised, gun-toting pursuers before fleeing back toBritain, but the infuriated Cray has anticipated his further interference by kidnapping Sabina as she visits her father in hospital…

Cray demands that Rider bring the purloined codes to his Wiltshire mansion where he boastfully reveals his master-plan…

Damian Cray is a true philanthropist who loves the world and its many peoples. From his elevated, gifted position he has seen that drugs are the greatest threat to global harmony and has devised a simple plan to fix the problem. With the nuclear launch codes of the American President (a great personal friend) and the Presidential Jet he plans to steal, Cray will launch twenty five nuclear missiles at all the planet’s poppy fields and eradicate the problem forever…

And he gets far too close to complete success before Alex finally stops the manic maestro in a staggering, blockbuster sequence that would do any super-spy proud, but not before getting shot himself and discovering the awful truth about Gregorovitch and his own dead father…

In the weary aftermath of near-Armageddon, the swiftly-maturing Alex also has to come to terms with losing Sabina and keeping some secrets that even MI5 shouldn’t know…

This is another immensely intoxicating and hugely entertaining romp, hitting all the thrill-buttons for an ideal summer blockbuster, even though it’s told – and very convincingly – from the viewpoint of an uncertain boy rather than a suave, sophisticated adult.

This adaptation is sharp and poignant, depicting the unsure transition from boy to young man amidst situations of breathtaking danger and nerve-tingling excitement. The bold, do-or-die flair of the young hero is perfectly captured by the art of sisters Kanako & Yuzuru in their full-colour, computer-rendered manga style, happily handling the softer moments as well as the spectacular action set-pieces and spine-tingling interpersonal dramatic confrontations.

Be warned, however: even though this is a notionally a kid’s book there is a lot of realistic action and a big body-count so if you intend sharing the book with younger children, read it yourself first.

These books and their comic counterparts are a fine addition to our fiction tradition. Alex Rider will return… and so should you.
Text and illustrations © 2012 Walker Books Ltd. Based on the original novel Eagle Strike © 2002 Anthony Horowitz. All rights reserved.