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Superman: The Golden Age Dailies 1944 to 1947 (volume 2)


By Alvin Schwartz, Wayne Boring & the Superman Studio (IDW/Library of American Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-68405-197-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The American comic book industry – if it still existed at all – would be utterly unrecognisable without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s unprecedented invention was first fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation, and gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. Spawning an army of imitators and variations within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and wish-fulfilment epitomising the early Man of Steel grew to encompass cops-&-robbers crimebusting, socially reforming dramas, sci fi fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East sucked in America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous, dashing derring-do.

From the outset, in comic book terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming the shape of the fledgling funnybook biz, the Man of Tomorrow irresistibly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media. Although we all think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as epitome and acme of comics creation, the truth is that very soon after his springtime debut in Action Comics #1 the Man of Steel was a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse. We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Avengers and their hyperkinetic kind long ago outgrew four-colour origins to become fully mythologized modern media creatures familiar in mass markets, across all platforms and age ranges…

In the last century and even more so in this one, far more people have seen and heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comic books. These globally syndicated newspaper strips alone were enjoyed by countless millions, and by the time his 20th anniversary rolled around, at the very start of what we call the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial star, headlined 17 astounding animated cartoons, become a novel attraction (written by George Lowther) and helmed two feature films. He had then seamlessly segued into the next Big Thing – television. His first smash 8-season live-action show was but the first of many, making Superman a perennial sure-fire success for toys, games, food, puzzle and apparel manufacturers all over the planet.

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the previous century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and often the world – a strip feature could be seen by millions if not billions of readers and was generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic books. It also – at the start! – paid better, and rightly so. Some of the most enduring, entertaining characters and concepts of all time were devised to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of the best became cornerstones of a global culture. Mutt and Jeff, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped humble, tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar. Most still do…

The daily Superman newspaper strip launched on 16th January 1939, swiftly augmented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th of that year. Originally crafted by luminaries like Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring), the mammoth task soon required additional talents like strip veteran Jack Burnley and writers including Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz. The McClure Syndicate feature ran continuously until May 1966, appearing, at its peak, in over 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers: a combined average readership of more than 20 million. Eventually, Win Mortimer & Curt Swan joined the unflagging Boring & Stan Kaye, whilst Bill Finger and Siegel also provided stories, telling serial tales largely divorced from comic book continuity throughout years when superheroes were scarcely seen.

This second volume of the Library of American Comics collection continues the vast reprint program begun in the Sterling/Kitchen Sink softcover editions which ceased production in 1999. All of that material – and these books too – are long overdue for re-release and digital editions. Here, however, the never-ending battle resumes with Siegel & Shuster and their helpers ceding control to new creators, but still addressing the World War the USA was close to ending. These sorties in “the never-ending battle” occur over episodes #31-46, pages #1815 through 2594, and publication dates October 30th 1944 to April 26 1947.

We open with an Introduction by Sidney Friefertig, discussing the changes from conflict to reconstruction and sharing why and how the strip aroused the ire of military intelligence and the FBI after casually stepping on the toes of the ultra-top-secret Manhattan Project. All they had wanted was to explore how atomic energy might affect the Action Ace. Also in review is the Man of Tomorrow’s post-war evolution via new scribe (and later poet, novelist and essayist) Alvin Schwartz (1916-2011) in the ever-evolving social stewpot of Metropolis and an increasingly smaller world.

With the majority of material credited to Schwartz (Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Tomahawk, Newsboy Legion, Slam Bradley, House of Mystery, A Date With Judy, Buzzy, Bizarro) and increasingly the sole province of artist Wayne Boring, the compilation kicks off with Episode 31 (strips #1815-1844 as seen between October 30th and December 2nd 1944) and the dilemma of ‘Superman’s Secret Revealed!’ as “World’s Richest Girl” Aline Wail announces her betrothal to the Man of Steel. Nobody is more despondent than Lois Lane or more surprised than Clark Kent, but by the time this genuine teletype typo is spotted, the story has gone global and Aline’s actual fiancé Aubrey Jones has been outed by frantic reporters – including Lois – as the superhero; thanks to a concatenation of accidents and misconceptions…

Sadly, inveterate gambler Aubrey needs to keep the deception going if he’s to pay off his bookies, and plans to cash in by suing Lois and the Daily Planet, until the real Superman steps in to divert and dispel the mounting media madness…

‘Lois Lane, Millionaire’ (strips #1845-1904, December 4th 1944 – February 10th 1945) then details how a murderous lawyer Homer G. Clutch and his virtual slave Mortimer attempt to procure the feisty journalist’s unsuspected inheritance of $3,000,000 from recently departed Grand-uncle Phineas Lane. Of course, to get the cash, Lois must marry within 10 days of receiving the official letter of notification, and account executor Clutch has many ways of intercepting the pay-out. Moreover, when Clark breaks the story, his scoop makes Lois the target of every other chancer and ne’er-do-well in town. They also all make it onto Clutch’s to-do list before Superman – and ironical fate – end Lane’s dreams of idle indolence…

Mundane crime gives way to wild fantasy next as ‘The Obnoxious Ogies’ (#1905-1946, February 12th – March 31st 1945) are annoying heard but not seen. When the invisible fairy pranksters attach themselves to Superman they make his life – and Clark’s – a cacophony of chaos until the Metropolis Marvel concocts something even these puckish pranksters cannot cope with…

Spanning April 2nd to June 23rd, strips #1947-2018 reveal ‘The Science of Superman’ as intractable intransigent physics Professor Ebenezer Duste refuses student Gil Gilmore his degree because the callow youth used clearly fictious examples of a Man of Tomorrow’s power set in his thesis. With his future career and current romance endangered the kid enlists Superman himself but even he cannot convince the sage of his authenticity, until at the height of a spiralling campaign of bizarre stunts, Duste finally finds his opinions shaken by attentive widow Prunella Busby who has her own way of winning an argument…

When a Daily Planet cooking contest prize goes to elderly spinsters Annabelle and Amelia, they parlay the reception into a longed-for meeting with Superman, inadvertently drawing the cataclysmic attention of Extra-Dimensional prankster Mr. Mxyztplk in ‘A Recipe for Disaster’ (June 25th – August 25th, strips #2019-2072)

Eager to impress, the sprite embarks on a career as a chef to win their attention/annoy the pants off his arch enemy and scare all Metropolis witless. It takes all Superman’s ingenuity and large helping of cunning from the old biddies before the Myxy can be convinced to go home again…

Lois finally finds herself ‘Engaged to Superman’ (#2073-2138, August 27th – November 10th) but when she insists that Clark be Best Man it triggers a wave of popular resentment among the city’s women, who protest in the streets and literally strike a blow for romance. As if that weren’t bad enough, mob chief Gaunt suspends all operations until after the wedding, planning to curb Superman’s anti-crime activities by threatening his bride. First, though, he has to marry Lois and the unhappy couple keep postponing the big day…

Domestic screwball comedy gives way to more traditional dramatic fare when Superman must save the Daily Planet – and Clark’s reputation – after a disgruntled employee publishes implausible predictions that Superman must make come true in ‘Phoney Prophecies’ (#2139-2198, November 12th 1945 to January 19th 1946) after which ‘Lois Lane, Editor’ (January 21st – April 6th, strips #2199-2264) confirms her courage, capability and ingenuity when high powered crooks seek to end her crusading crime reporting by seeking to buy her off with a major promotion. However, staunch and valiant, Miss Lane subverts the plot and makes The Daily Sphere a certified success before exposing the villains and negotiating a most rewarding return to the Planet…

A fantastic crimewave heralds the return of super-science bandit Lex Luthor (AKA Dr. Phineas Hackensack) between April 8th and June 1st (#2265-2312) as the villain unleashes ‘The Red Plague’ as a means of getting Superman into his lab and subjecting to a battery of horrific tests all designed to end his life. When all else fails he turns the Man of Steel into a living atomic bomb but once again tastes bitter defeat, after which ‘The Golden Scam’ (June 3rd – July 20th, #2313-2354) sees super conman J. Phineas Foxtrap gulled by his own greed and lose another fortune after selling fake gold bars to suckers with Superman’s approval. Of course, thanks to maverick atomic boffin Dr. Al Kemist, this time the ingots are completely genuine and vile trickster gets a taste of his own medicine…

In ‘Labors of Love’ (#2355-2378; July 22nd to August 17th) Superman again resolves to propose to Lois, but his heartfelt efforts are continually sabotaged by Mr. Mxyztplk, who spitefully decides that she’s actually the only girl in creation fit to be his mate. Cue crazed chaos, calamity and just a little carnage….

The trend towards whimsy and intellectual challenges continued when Lois is ordered to edit the Planet’s “Advice to the Lovelorn” column. She consequently asks our hero to cure a lazy dockside bum of being old, useless and unemployed in ‘Superman Finds a Job’ (#2379-2432; August 19th – October 2nd. He triumphs by inspiring aging wastrel Sam Brodie to discover his true calling and at last take the wrinkly hand of not-so-patient lady love Miss Tillie Crockett, but it’s a close call and takes all his super-wits and a lot of dumb luck…

Pure wickedness informs ‘The Prankster’s Peculiar Premonitions’ (#2433-2462; October 21st – November 23rd) as the lethal Joker-wannabe feigns clairvoyance and prophecy to humiliate Superman and plunder the city, before a war of aerial signwriters breaks out in ‘Sky Pirates’ (November 25th 1946 to January 4th 1947 and instalments #2463-2498) with a rogue pilot instigating a cunning crime wave of the air.

‘Portrait of a Crime’ (January 6th – February 8th; #2499-2528) introduces devious painter Pierre Laguerre who seeks to remove the Man of Steel from action by the strangest of methods, prior to the book concluding on a potent note of social relevancy.

‘Juvenile Delinquency’ (#2529-2594; February 10th to April 26th 1947) finds privileged brat Stanton Gladstone team up with dead-end kid Nicky Darrow to run wild, have fun and teach their respective families a lesson in parenting. However, rowdy rebellion escalates to felony and possibly murder when veteran criminals lead by top thug Big Jim step in to exploit the situation. Now Superman must not only punish the irredeemably wicked but save what remains of the boys’ tarnished innocence…

These yarns offer timeless wonders and mesmerising excitement for lovers of action and fantasy. The raw-boned early Superman is beyond compare and if you can handle the warts of the era or just crave simpler stories from less angst-wracked times, the adventures gathered here are ideal comics reading, and this a book you simply must see.
© 2018 DC Comics. All rights reserved. Superman and all related names, characters and elements are ™ DC Comics.

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DC Finest: Aquaman – The King of Atlantis


By Robert Bernstein & Ramona Fradon, with Jack Miller, Joe Millard, Otto Binder, George Kashdan, Bob Haney, Nick Cardy, Kurt Schaffenberger, Curt Swan, Jim Mooney, Sheldon Moldoff, Stan Kaye, Charles Paris & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-77952-989-3 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

It’s a big year for comics anniversaries, and we can’t let this guy go unmentioned. This epic compilation is one of the long-awaited DC Finest editions: full colour continuations of their chronolgically curated monochrome Showcase Presents line, delivering “affordably priced, large-size (comic book dimensions and generally around 600 pages) paperback collections”. Whilst primarily and understandably concentrating on superheroes, later releases will also cover genre selections like horror and war books, and themed compendia. Sadly, they’re not yet available digitally, as were the last decade’s Bronze, Silver & Golden Age collections, but we live in hope…

Aquaman is that oddest of comic book phenomena: a survivor. One of the few superheroes to carry on in unbroken exploits since the Golden Age, the Sea King has endured endless cancellations, reboots and makeovers in the name of trendy relevance and fickle fashion but has somehow always recovered: coming back fresher, stronger and more intriguing. He’s also one of the earliest comic champions to make the jump to cartoon TV stardom…

Created by Mort Weisinger & Paul Norris, Aquaman began his reign in in the wake of and in response to Timely Comics’ barnstorming antihero Namor the Sub-Mariner. The watery latecomer debuted in More Fun Comics #73 (November 1941) beside fellow born survivor Green Arrow. Strictly second-string for most of his career, the Marine marvel nevertheless swam on far beyond many stronger features, rendered with style by Norris, Louis Cazeneuve, John Daly, Charles Paris, and ultimately young Ramona Fradon, who took over drawing in 1954.

The Fifties Superhero Interregnum saw Fradon (countless genre anthology tales, The Brave & The Bold, Metamorpho, Fantastic Four, Super Friends, Plastic Man, Freedom Fighters, Brenda Starr, SpongeBob Comics) assume full art chores, by which time Aquaman was settled like a barnacle in a regular Adventure Comics back-up slot, offering slick, smart and extremely genteel aquatic action. She was to draw every single adventure until 1960, making the feature one of the best looking if only mildly thrilling hero strips of the era.

By then, Aquaman had settled into a nice regular back-up slot in Adventure Comics that Fradon drew without missing a beat until 1961: indelibly stamping the submersible stalwart with her unique blend of charm and sleek competence. Month after month, page by page the hero inexhaustibly solved maritime mysteries, crushed nautical naughtiness, wandered and time-travelled, rescuing fish and people from subsea disaster, solving whatever crimes he came across and generally promoting American paternal niceness.

In 1956, Showcase #4 rekindled the reading public’s imagination and slowly but surely spawned a fresh zest for costumed crimebusters. As well as re-imagining its lost Golden Age stalwarts, National/DC undertook to update and remake its hoary survivors. Records are incomplete, sadly, so we don’t always know who wrote what, but this compilation definitely gathers a wealth of Aquaman strips from Adventure Comics #229-284 (October 1956-May 1961), plus short yarns from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #12 (October 1959), Action Comics #272 (January 1961), Detective Comics #293-300 (July 1961- February 1962) and World’s Finest Comics #125 (May 1962), plus the longer stories from Showcase #30-33 (January/February to July/August 1961), and at long last those from Aquaman #1-3 (cover-dated January/February -May/June 1962)…

Without preamble we dive right into a quartet of sagas by an author unknown, with Adventure Comics #229 revealing how the Sea King spends time in crime-infested Canadian waters and auditions a number of sea creatures to seeking to be ‘Aquaman’s Undersea Partner’, after which smugglers use a stolen shrinking ray to briefly turn the hero into ‘The Tom Thumb Aquaman’ prior to being his being perplexed and endangered by a computor’s prediction of ‘Three Fates for Aquaman’.

Although a citizen of the world, the Marine Marvel was American by default, decent by choice and patriotic by inclination, always helping law men and peacekeepers. Thus AC #232 (January 1957) wryly describes how the Sea King is asked to boost recruitment by joining a US ship’s crew incognito in ‘Aquaman Joins the Navy!’
Aquaman endured public scorn and mockery after comedy impersonator Wackyman used high tech mecahnical sea creatures to lampoon the hero. However, the reasons for the skits of ‘The Sea Clown’ were far from innocent, after which Jack Miller tapped into UFO fever, revealing how aliens from Pluto demand the Sea King fill ‘The Super-Aquarium’ with his “finny friends” before an unknown writer made him ‘The Show-off of the Sea’, ruining an actor’s TV big break… but for the very best of reasons.

In Adventure #236 Otto Binder detailed a battle against a crooked shipping magnate who unleashed ‘The Iceberg of Doom’ before four more uncredited tales swiftly ensued. Chemical pollution was the reason behind Aquaman’s brutal cruelty in ‘The Secret of the Sea King’, a plot to mine shipping lanes was crushed in ‘The Floating Doom’, and ‘The Voyage of the Good Ship Aquaman’ finds the big hearted hero helping an elderly rescue ship skipper before #240 reveals how he helps a children’s author complete ‘The Alphabet Book of the Sea!’ whilst Miller wrote ‘The Mutiny Against Aquaman’ wherein a crooked lawyer poisons his sea pals to facilitate cheating a young man out of an inheritance…

Editorial wisdom at the time decreed comics were ephemeral throway fodder that not even the readership cared about, so many themes and plots resurfaced over the course of months. In ‘The Amazing Feats of Aqua-Melvin’ another, different clown is tranfused with the hero’s blood and develops similar powers, but not the acumen to realise he’s being conned by crooks, whilst in 243 ‘Aquaman’s Amazing Bets!’ the Sea King teaches a gambler/conman a lesson before Robert Bernstein breaks hearts by unleashing ‘The Copy Cat Creature!’ – a fabulous loving beastie from primeval times that adores Aquaman but is simply too big and boisterous to allowed to live in the modern world

In #245, George Kashdan introduces ‘The Sorceror of the Sea’ who outpowers the watery wonder, just as he’s trying to put modern pirates out of business, before we visit ‘The Town That Went Underwater’ where an apparently obsessed Aquaman is determined to make every inhaitant visit his new underwater theme park. Of course, there is deadly reason behind his antics…

Miller detailed ‘Aquaman’s Super Sea-Squad!’ next as his top-trained fish pals help stave off nuclear disaster and a month later wrote how he became ‘The Traitor of the Seven Seas!’: allowing aliens to abduct his beloved sea creatures, after which Bernstein described how aseries of head blows turn the hero evil and greedy. Luckily, faithful octopus Topo is amatch for the piratical Barnacle Gang exploiting the sea change in ‘Wanted: Aqua-Crook!’

For Adventure Comics #250, Joe Millard & Fradon delivered ‘The Guinea Pig of the Sea’ as the Sea King is abducted by a well-intentioned but obsessive researcher fed up with waiting for a moment in the hero’s hectic schedule to open up, prior to being catapulted into the future to find Earth ‘A World Without Water!’ – and remember at this juncture Aquaman needed water every 60 munutes or he would die…

Millard gave way to Miller for a salty tale of Aquaman’s plight as ‘The Robinson Crusoe of the Sea’ (Adventure Comics #252, September 1958), when a chemical spill renders the Sea King allergic to seawater, offering a charming sequence of crisis management stunts by Topo…

Now an affable, dedicated seagoing nomad with a tendency to find trouble, Aquaman braves ‘The Ocean of 1,000,000 B.C.’ (by Bernstein in AC #253, October 1958) after swimming through a time warp, helping a seashore-dwelling caveman against a marauding dragon before finding his way back to the future, in time to end ‘The Menace of the Electric Man’ – a rare dark drama by Miller involving an escaped convict who gains deadly voltaic powers…

Three from Berstein begin with whimsical fantasy ‘Aquaman’s Double Trouble!’ as too many crises at once lead to sea God Neptune stepping in for the hero whilst in ‘The Ordeal of Aquaman!’ crooks maroon the hero in an “arid desert” only to discover how water aware the hero is, prior to battling a crook surgically altered and modified to become ‘The Imitation Aquaman!’

Miller wrote a brace of action tales beginning with #258’s ‘The Incredible Fish of Doctor Danton!’ as Aquaman and a young scientist battle sea beasts mutated by atomic radiation, before the hero is cast out of his body by a crook and must take psychic residence in a fish before ending up ‘The Octopus Man!’ and regaining his own form…

As the Silver Age took true hold, the Sea King’s initial revamp began in Adventure Comics #260 (May 1959) with Bernstein & Fradon’s ‘How Aquaman Got His Powers!’ with the Sea King interfering in US naval manoeuvres to keep Atlantis safe from discovery and harm. From here on, the hero’s nebulous origin – offspring of a union between a human (American) lighthouse keeper and refugee from the embargoed undersea city – was expanded upon and filled out. Eventually, all the trappings of the modern superhero manifested: themed hideout, steadfast sidekick and even supervillains! Moreover, greater attention was paid to continuity and the concept of one shared universe…

In #261, Bernstein pits the hero against a deranged lion tamer in ‘Aquaman Duels the Animal Master!’, and has him launch ‘The Undersea Hospital!’ for ailing sea creatures a month later, before Miller has the hero bring democracy and fair elections to an island nation in AC #263’s ‘The Great Ocean Election!’ prior to Bernstein taking us to New Venice (a US city with canals not roads) where ‘Aquaman and His Sea-Police!’ teach rude and uncaring malefactors how to use boats properly and not litter their submerged marine metropolis…

For Adventure #265 (October 1959) he & Fradon exposed ‘The Secret of the Super Safe!’ detailing a plan to keep the subsea stalwart in soggy isolation whilst dealing with a counterfeiter and blackmailers, before an early crossover heralded Aquaman’s entrance into the wider DC universe.

DC supported the popular 1950s Adventures of Superman TV show with a number of successful spin-off titles. Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #12 (October 1959) featured ‘The Mermaid of Metropolis’ wherein the plucky “news hen” suffers crippling injuries in a scuba-diving accident. On hand to save her is Aquaman and a surgeon who turns her (without her permission or even knowledge!) into a mermaid so she can live a worthwhile life without legs beneath the waves…

I know, I know: but just accepting the adage “Simpler Times” often helps me at times like this. In all seriousness, this silly story by Bernstein is a key moment in the development of DC’s shared universe continuity. The fact that it’s drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger – one of the most accomplished artists ever to work in American comics – makes it even more adorable, for all its silliness; and you can’t make me change my mind…
As National/DC began cautiously remodelling its superhero survivors, amongst the first to feel the benefits were Green Arrow and the Subsea Sentinel. The program included a new origin and expanded cast for each and here (AC #266, November 1959) Bernstein & Fradon tested the waters as ‘Aquaman Meets Aquagirl!’ This offered more information on fabled modern Atlantis whilst testing the waters (Sorry! Not sorry) for a possible sidekick. Remember, in those days the Sea King spent most of his time explaining things to an octopus…

In Adventure Comics #267 the editors tried a novel experiment. At this time the title starred Superboy plus two back-up features – generally Aquaman and Green Arrow. That issue’s seagoing saga ‘The Manhunt on Land!’ saw villain Shark Norton trade territories with GA’s foe The Wizard. A rare crossover with both parts written by Bernstein; the heroes worked the same case with the Sea King facing Norton under open skies whilst the Emerald Archer pursued his foe beneath the waves in his own exploit. Illustrated by the great Lee Elias, ‘The Underwater Archers!’ was a fitting climax to the test, but sadly the arrow portion of the show didn’t make it into this tome, being apparently six pages too many…

In the next issue’s ‘The Adventures of Aquaboy!’ we saw the early years of the Sea King, and following that, permanent sidekick Aqualad was introduced in #269 (February 1960) as Bernstein & Fradon completed the refit by introducing permanent junior partner ‘The Kid from Atlantis!’: a young, purple-eyed outcast from the forbidden city possessing the same powers as Aquaman but terrified of fish… at least until the Sea King applies a little firm but kindly psychology. By the end of the tale the little guy has happily adapted and would help patrol the endless oceans – and add a child’s awestruck perspective to the mix – for nearly a decade thereafter.

With Bernstein & Fradon firmly in control, in quick succession came birthday surprise ‘The Menace of Aqualad!’ (which premiered the Aqua-Cave), battle against mad scientist Captain Noah who was happy to trigger ‘The Second Deluge!’ in his quest for riches, and first proper supervillain ‘The Human Flying Fish!’: a convict rebuilt by a different mad scientist to be Aquaman’s evil counterpart and superior. After all that the heroes took a breather from evil to swim ‘Around the World in 80 Hours!’ only to face constant peril as all Earth’s seagoing crooks used their planned course as a killing ground…

Miller introduced spoiled rich brat Dale Conroy who spends millions to become the hero’s ‘Aqua-Queen!’ in #274, prior to intriguing mystery ‘The Interplanetary Mission!’ in Adventure Comics #275. This was published mere months after the Justice League of America debuted in The Brave and the Bold #28, wherein aliens ask for Aquaman’s help on a rescue mission in space. They are, in fact, human crooks seeking an irresistible weapon and hoping to dupe the bush league hero: securing Kryptonite by to use against Superman. The Man of Steel did not appear, but nets of shared continuity were being gradually interwoven. Heroes would no longer work in assured solitude…

It was back to business as usual for ‘The Aqua-thief of the Seven Seas!’ as Aquaman must clear his name after being framed for stealing a chest full of diamonds, whilst a topical global sporting event prompts the Sea King to organise ‘The Underwater Olympics’ – even though he has ulterior motives that involve more Kryptonite and secret plans. In #278, poor ‘Aqualad Goes to School!’, before proving he has no real need of education, after which cautionary tale ‘Silly Sailors of the Sea!’ see the seagoing heroes give wayward boat joyriders a lesson in responsibility. All of these light pieces were setting the scene for a really Big Event…

Cover-dated January/February 1961, Showcase #30 saw Jack Miller & Fradon vastly expand upon the origin of Aquaman in full-length epic ‘The Creatures from Atlantis!’ Here extra-dimensional creatures conquer the sunken civilisation and Aquaman and Aqualad infiltrate the forbidden city to save the so-superior beings who had always shunned them. From this point on, fanciful whimsy would be downplayed in favour of character-driven drama.

The epic reimagination is followed by another prototype team-up as seen in Action Comics #272 (January 1961) ‘Superman’s Rival Mental Man!’: a clever criminal-sting yarn by Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan & Stan Kaye, centring around Lois’ unsuspected talents as a comic strip artist and career sidestep. Typically, her success as a cartoon creator somehow causes her invention “Mental Man” to come to life and woo her… or does he?

Back in Adventure Comics #280 ‘The Lost Ocean!’ finds the sea sentinels fighting a giant Jurassic centipede to save their favourite TV show before offering more of the same in Showcase #31 (March/April 1961). Second full-length try-out ‘The Sea Beasts from One Million B.C.’ is a wild romp of fabulous creatures, dotty scientists and evolution rays presaging a new path for the Sea King, as Miller scripted the debut Aquaman yarn for comics veteran Nick Cardy. He would visually make Aquaman his own for the next half-decade.

Adventure Comics #282 then delivered tense thriller ‘One Hour to Doom!’ Inked by Charles Paris, this was Fradon’s last Aqua art job for nearly a year and a half, revealing how the heroes survive being trapped on land and away from life-sustaining water, before Showcase #32 (May/June 1961) offered another spectacular epic as Miller & Cardy pull out all the stops for ‘The Creature King of the Sea!’: an action-packed deadly duel against a monstrous villain with murder in mind.

It segued into ‘The Charge of Aquaman’s Sea Soldiers!’, drawn by Jim Mooney in Adventure #284, with the salty stars and their finny legions battling Professor Snark’s scheme to convert Earth’s ocean to fresh water. With this tale the series upped sticks for a new home, replaced by Tales of the Bizarro World. Aquaman and Aqualad were headed to the hind end of Detective Comics, beginning with #293 (July 1961) where they needed only six pages to solve Miller & Cardy’s mystery of ‘The Sensational Sea Scoops’ uncovered by a reporter tracking a submarine pirates. All this time the artist – who had initially altered his drawing style to mirror Fradon – had been gradually reverting to his natural humanistic mode. By the time of fourth Showcase outing ‘Prisoners of the Aqua-Planet’ (#33), the Sea King was a rugged, burly He-Man, and his world – no matter how fantastic – now had an added edge of realism to it, even in this wild romp as the heroes are pressganged into an interplanetary war and shanghaied to a distant water-world…

Detective #294’s deceptively displayed ‘The Fantastic Fish that Defeated Aquaman’ whilst DC #295 saw our heroes defy ‘The Curse of the Sea Hermit’ (Kashdan script), before a new month exposed ‘The Mystery of Demon Island!’ by Miller and the unflagging Cardy. To accompany his more realistic art, and perhaps in honour of their new home, stories became – briefly – less fantasy oriented. ‘Aqualad, Stand-In for a Star’ – (#297 by Miller & Batman regular Sheldon Moldoff) was a standard hero-in-Hollywood crime caper, before Cardy returned to draw #298’s‘The Secret Sentry of the Sea’ – encompassing security duty at a secret international treaty signing…

The next month saw another milestone. After two decades of continuous adventuring the Sea King finally got a comic book of his own. Aquaman #1 (January/February 1962) was a 25-page fantasy thriller introducing one of the most controversial supporting characters in comics lore. Pixie-like Water-Sprite Quisp was part of a strange trend for cute imps and elves who attached themselves to far too many heroes of the time, but his contributions in ‘The Invasion of the Fire-Trolls’ and succeeding issues were numerous and obviously carefully calculated and considered…

The wanderer’s residency in Detective Comics was coming to an end. In #299 the sea scions taught an old blowhard a lesson in tall-tale telling whilst #300’s relic theft-&-recovery case ‘The Mystery of the Undersea Safari!’ was the last Aqua-caper before he moved again, this time to World’s Finest Comics. However, prior to that, his own second issue appeared. ‘Captain Sykes’ Deadly Missions’ is a lovely-looking thriller with fabulous monsters and a flamboyant pirate blackmailing the Sea King into retrieving deadly mystical artefacts.

The World’s Finest run started with #125’s ‘Aquaman’s Super-Sidekick’ by Miller & Cardy as the junior partner briefly becomes an unstoppable uncontrollable pintsized powerhouse before Aquaman #3 closes this compilation in grand style and full-length thrills as ‘The Aquaman from Atlantis’ offers more exposure for the lost city in a tale of traitors, treasures and time-travelling bandit who accidentally takes Aquaman back to the era of swords, sandals and strange creatures…

The 72 adventures gathered here encompass and embrace a period of renewal, taking Aquaman from peripatetic back-up bit-player to his own comic book and the brink of TV stardom. The stories were intentionally undemanding fare, ranging from simply charming to simply bewildering examples of all-ages action to rank alongside the best the company offered at that time. That’s what made them ideal templates for tales of later TV-spawned iterations like Super Friends, Batman: The Brave and the Bold and especially landmark sixties icon The Superman/Aquaman Hour. Comics writers from those years include the abovementioned Bernstein, Binder, Miller, Millard, Kashdan, as well (possibly) as Bob Haney, Edmund Hamiliton, Jerry Coleman and other DC regulars. However at the start the art was always by Fradon, whose captivatingly clean economical line always made the pictures something special…

DC has a long history of gentle, innocuous yarn-spinning with quality artwork. Fradon’s Aquaman is one of the most neglected runs of such universally-accessible material, and it’s a sheer pleasure to discover just how readable they still are. When the opportunity arises to compare her astounding work to the best of a stellar talent like as Nick Cardy, this book becomes a true fan’s must-have item and even more so when the stories are still suitable for kids of all ages. Even though it’s not complete and not available digitally yet, this is a landmark moment for all lovers of pure cartooning brilliance and all-ages adventure storytelling. Why not treat the entire family to a seaside spectacle of timelessly inviting adventure?
© 1956-1962, 2024 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Neill Cameron’s Donut Squad: Take Over the World (Book 1)


By Neill Cameron & various (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-340-0 (Digest TPB)

Do You Like Donuts?

Only you can truly answer that question, but if you’re undecided, and dangerously unaware of the ramifications of indecision, rabid raconteur and art fiend Neill Cameron has many arguments you might want to consider before deciding, all jam-packed into a manic new compendium of strips, activities and artificially-sweetened exploits starring a bargain box of comics champions cherrypicked from modern British periodical treasure trove The Phoenix.

Since debuting in 2012 and just like The Beano, Dandy and other perennial childhood treasures, the wonderful weekly has masterfully mixed hilarious comedy with enthralling adventure serials… and frequently in the same scintillating strip. Everybody strapped in? Got your snacks? Then let’s go…

Crafted by Cameron (Mega Robo Bros, Freddy, Tamsin of the Deep, How to Make Awesome Comics, Pirates of Pangea), a unique team of toothsome adventurers convene here as ‘Meet the Squad!!’ cuts down confectionary crusaders dark horse Sprinkles, accident prone Jammyboi, Chalky (the ghost of a murdered Victorian Donut), violent vigilante Justice Donut, nerve-wracked Anxiety Donut, piratical Caramel Jack! (he’s a little bit salty!), Dadnut & Li’l Timmy, and utterly unknowable Spronky! who each individually regale us with short adventures liberally seasoned with lashings of ads for Donut Squad merch like T-shirts, mugs and orbital death-rays. Also probably not really available are fancy dress costumes, hats and giant pants, but you never know…

Although ruggedly individualistic, the assorted vignette stars all seem to work towards a communal conclusion as we explore many ‘Donut Mysteries’, examine ‘Rejected Donut Flavours’ and question the verities of existence in repeated ‘Ask your Father with Dadnut & Li’l Timmy’ episodes. Certainty of a greater world to come is verified via exploits of spectral phenomenon ‘The Cursed Donut’ whilst a reason for living is offered in ‘Meet the Donut Squad Babies! Basically the same but cuter!!’

Life is short and full of surprises so sometimes old friends simply don’t hang around. When Jammyboi shockingly makes his exit, the prospect of cleaner hands and unstained furnishings evaporates with the introduction of much messier messroom treat Choccy-plops – a revelation just crying out for more mirthful merch announcements. Oooh! Tea towels!

With the addition of ‘Sweetum! The Sweetest Donut of all!’ a narrative undercurrent starts carrying all later vignettes in the same direction, starting with ‘New Season! New Donut Flavours’ before Sprinkles details a tasty masterplan at the ‘Secret Donut Squad Meeting!’ outlining his efforts to enlist human converts and enrol them in the ‘Donut Squad Legion of Enthusiasm!’ The program is supplemented by all the latest ‘Conspiracy Theories!’ and the DSLoE ‘Code of Conduct’…

Briefings on ‘Rare Donut Varieties’ are interrupted by an incursion by secret archfoes/sworn enemies the ‘Bagel Battalion’ (Private Plainbagel, Sergeant Sesameseed and Platoon Commander Poppyseed), but before everything gets too heavy we pause to peruse the wonders of ‘Donut Park’.

Sadly, such commercial distractions lead to more subversive assaults by the relentless foe, offering ‘New Bagel Flavours’ and prompting an arms race resulting in retaliatory experiments with ‘New Cheesier Donuts’…

The carb-shot cold war hots up with a wave of ‘Bagel Battalion merchandise’ including ads for themed thermal vests, ties and protractor & compass sets garnishing counterintelligence sallies such as ‘Ask your Bagel father’. Initially wrongfooted, the sweet & sugary contingent can only resort to more theme park ads, even as ‘How to draw donuts’ features are swiftly counterbalanced by ‘How to draw bagels’ until all consumer confidence is shattered…

A public backlash begins, leading to a breaking of the doughy fourth law and some gutter crawling – and sniping – as ‘Anxiety Donut Has to Go on an Adventure!’, circumventing more mesmerising ads, and inadvertently spying on the Bagels before reporting back on their ‘Battle readiness’…

Inevitably war boils over between the baked goods factions. The horrors culminate in the creation of an horrific ‘Bagel Battalion Metabomb’ and, after the deployment of all comestibles, tanks, skateboards and battle dinosaurs, the opposing forces calamitously clash. Cosmic destruction is only narrowly averted and when the powdered sugar settles we learn ‘Hooray! The Donut Squad is Victorious!’ and are not really surprised by a follow-up press release confirming ‘Hooray! The Donut Squad Have Taken Over the World!’…

Smart, witty, laugh out loud weird and utterly bonkers, this seemingly piecemeal treat cunningly connects a whole bunch of stuff kids love without knowing why, but which totally bewilder us oldsters and keeps us in our place. Breezy eccentric and captivating, the sugar rush is counterpointed with a selection of Donut related artistic activities extracted from ‘The Phoenix Comic Club’, including drawing ‘Basic Shapes!’, adding ‘Flavour!’, ‘Personality!’, ‘Expression!’, ‘Poses’, ‘Extras!’, ‘Characters!’ and all aspects of ‘Storytelling!’

This manic missive then closes with a welcome extract from Cameron’s Mega Robo Bros just in case your kid is the only one who hasn’t read it yet. And don’t let anyone read it whilst eating…

Moreover, as all the best books and movies say: DONUT SQUAD WILL RETURN…
Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2025. All rights reserved.

Neill Cameron’s Donut Squad: Take Over the World! is scheduled for UK release on May 8th 2025 and is available for pre-order now.

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Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volume 4 (1941-1942)


By Roy Crane with Leslie Turner (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-677-5 (Tabloid HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

The fourth and final collection of Roy Crane’s groundbreaking, trailblazing Sunday strip completes a quartet of comics compilations no lover of high adventure, action comedy and visual narrative excellence should be without.

Our industry and art form evolved from phenomenally popular newspaper strips born of the first four decades of the 20th century: monolithically powerful circulation-boosting features which could, until relatively recently, dictate success or failure in America’s cutthroat newspaper business. The daily cartoon stories were immensely addictive and thus regarded as invaluable by publishers who used them as a sales weapon to ensure consumer loyalty, increase sales and maximise profits. Many a pen-pushing scribbler became a millionaire thanks to their ability to draw pictures and spin a yarn…

With hundreds of 24-hour TV channels, streaming services, games and apps on demand now, it’s impossible for us to grasp the overwhelming allure of the comic strip in America and the wider world. From the Great Depression to the end of World War II, with no domestic television, radio coverage far from comprehensive and movie-shows a weekly treat at best for most, entertainment was generally garnered from those ubiquitous newspaper comic sections. Funny Pages were a universally shared, communal recreation for millions. Entire families were well-served by an astounding variety of features of spectacular graphic and narrative quality.

From the outset humour was paramount – that’s why they’re called “Comics” – but eventually anarchic baggy-pants clowning, cruelly raucous, racially stereotyped accent humour and gag-&-stunt cartoons palled, evolving into a thoroughly unique entertainment hybrid that was all about the dynamics of panels and pages. At the forefront of the transformation was Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs. It utilised a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous movie serial antics, fabulous fantasy and old fashioned vaudeville shtick, but also added compellingly witty and authentically true dialogue and a breathtaking sense of day-to-day progression – in short, serial continuity. There were also plenty of lovely women; what we used to call “something for the dads”…

What separated Crane from his close contemporaries and competitors – who were making similar advancements in the new art form – was that he was blending the fun with stirring, contemporary rollercoaster, implausible heroic action…

Washington Tubbs II began as a typical gag-a-day strip on April 21st 1924, bearing marked similarities to confirmed family favourite Harold Teen (by Crane’s pal and contemporary Carl Ed). Young Wash was a short, feisty and fiercely ambitious shop clerk permanently on the lookout for fortune and fame, but cursed with an eye for the ladies. Gradually his peripatetic wanderings moved from embarrassing gaffes towards mock-heroics, into full-blown – but still light-hearted – action and ultimately rip-roaring, decidedly dangerous hazardous trials, ordeals and exploits. This graphic evolution eventually demanded the introduction of a he-man sidekick to handle the fights the kid was getting into but seldom won. Thus enter moody, swashbuckling heroic prototype Captain Easy in the landmark episode for May 6th 1929…

Slap-bang in the middle of a European war, fast-talking, garrulous Tubbs saved a taciturn, down-on-his-luck, enigmatic fellow American from a cell and a perfect partnership was formed. They became inseparable: comrades-in-arms, roving the globe in search of treasure, lambasting louts and fighting thugs to rescue a stunning procession of wondrous women in assorted modes of distress…

The edgily capable, utterly dependable “Southern Gen’leman” was something previously unseen in Funnies: a raw, square-jawed hunk played dead straight rather than as the mock-heroic buffoon/music hall foil cluttering strips like Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond. Moreover, Crane’s seductively simple blend of cartoon exuberance, combining faux-straight illustration with “bigfoot” cartooning (here carefully mimicked and even surpassed by his assistant and creative successor Leslie Turner) was a far more accessible and powerful medium for fast-paced adventure story-telling than the beautiful but stagy style favoured by artists like Hal Foster on Tarzan or Prince Valiant and Alex Raymond with Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim. Tubbs & Easy were much closer to the surreal, absurdly action-packed Popeye or V. T. Hamlin’s comedy caveman Alley Oop: full of vim, vigour and vinegar and seldom sombre or serious for long…

The overall effect was electrifying – and a host of young cartoonists used the strip as their bellwether: Floyd Gottfredson, Milton Caniff, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and especially an impressionably admiring Joe Shuster…

After several abortive attempts at a Sunday feature starring his little warrior, Crane eventually settled on the burly sidekick as his potential star and Captain Easy launched on July 30th 1933. The content was unflinching exotic action: blistering two-fisted yarns set before the two buddies’ first meeting.

This fourth and final fabulous volume covers December 22nd 1940 to July 11th 1943, bringing to a close Crane’s association with the strip. He had abandoned the feature to NEA, joining William Randolph Hearst’s King Features to produce Buz Sawyer – a strip he would own and have creative control over. Turner continued both the daily Wash Tubbs and Sunday Captain Easy (with his own assistants) until his retirement in 1969.

This blockbuster collection opens with an Introduction from Michael H. Price tracing potential candidates as basis for the surly Southerner in ‘Roy Crane and the Man Who was Easy’ before the increasingly eccentric and comedic final pages, a goodly proportion of which were produced during the critical period just before America finally entered WWII.

The material is significant for one salient point – Tubbs and especially Easy are scarcely seen after hostilities commenced. The reason was obvious: all true patriots wanted to defend their country and the heroes enlisted…

The hilarious action begins with the reintroduction of comedy foil Lulu Belle: a homely, cigar-chomping hillbilly lady who had been a circus strongwoman and undisputed Female boxing champion for fifteen years. She had married serial bigamist and all-round bounder C. Hollis Wallis before going home heartbroken to her family, but as they just saw her as a meal ticket too, she was overjoyed when Tubbs & Easy wandered by the old homestead.

Soon she was accompanying them to Guatemala, following an out-of-date advert for workers at a wildcat oil field. Arriving eight years too late, the trio are gulled into joining a bandit gang run by savage and sultry Teresa Grande; a Latin spitfire who’s the most dangerous killer in the country. She, however, is smitten with Easy’s manly charms, and redeems herself at terrible cost when her gang try to steal sacred relics from a remote village and its ancient temple.

Homeless and broke as usual, the plucky Americans then walk to the coast and find passage on a ship run an eccentric who keeps pet tigers. The voyage goes as you’d expect and the trio end up shipwrecked somewhere off Cuba, only to be stalked by a wild Wolf Girl: a lost child marooned and grown wild as she matured in the jungle…

After numerous close shaves and hilarious escapades, Easy captures and partially tames the bestial lass, entrusting her to the care of a vacationing American psychologist, whilst Lulu Belle secures a job as cook in a dingy waterfront dive. It’s there that she meets and is romanced by Easy’s brutal arch-enemy Bull Dawson, and inadvertently lures Wash and the Captain aboard the rogue’s ship. Brokering a tenuous peace, she convinces her friend to work on the “reformed” Dawson’s new job: a jungle reclamation project near the Panama Canal. It’s all a big con, though. The treacherous pirate is actually building a secret landing-field for agents of a certain foreign power and when Wash and Easy uncover the truth the fists and fireworks fly…

Returned to the USA, heartbroken, lovelorn Lulu is taken in by the ambitious schemes of a millionaire who somehow finds the unprepossessing lady irresistible. Of course Akron O. Spratly also has plans to boost the war effort by extracting much-needed rubber from frogs…

After much outrageous flummery and hilarious misadventure Lulu is left even sadder, if no wiser, just as the now partially civilised Wolf Girl returns. She has escaped her collegiate captors and is running wild in the big city: her immense physical strength and speed causing much unladylike chaos in Gentlemen’s clubs, the circus, on sports fields and at the Zoo. She also displays amazing talent for acquiring pretty sparkly items like watches and jewellery…

A very different type of girl appears next as obnoxious ten-time married billionaire Horatio Boardman swears off women again and hires Easy to make sure the pledge sticks. Sadly, local mobsters are determined to introduce the World’s Eighth Richest Man to Baby Doll, a sexily appealing ingénue with the rapacious heart of a viper…

That screwball set-up was good for three months-worth of laughs before Lulu again takes centre stage when a boastful beautician is suckered into a bet that he can make any woman so lovely that she will be photographed in the newspapers…

Reduced to simple straight man by Lulu, Easy soon took third place as the boxing broad accidentally acquired a manic and capacious ostrich named Lucille. The big bird’s astounding appetite led to Lulu becoming the indentured slave of a shady farmer who first had her work off the giant’s gannet’s destructive binges and then sold his guilt-wracked toiler on to other men in need of fields ploughed, clothes washed and chores done… until the outraged Easy came back and dealt with the vile trafficker…

Stony broke but free once more, Lulu then roped Easy in on a culinary affair as she opened a diner in the worst place possible, just as her ne’er-do-well family palmed off a young cousin onto her. Augustus Mervin Gasby was a locust in human form, and his astonishing appetite seemed fit to bust the desperate pair… until the former-soldier-of-fortune found something that the shambling oaf could do really well…

A panoply of ludicrous sporting endeavours eventually led Gus into the Navy whilst on the Home Front Easy and Lulu went fishing and subsequently exposed a huge dope-smuggling ring in one of the last rousing adventure episodes, after which the tone switched back to screwball comedy with the re-emergence of C. Hollis Wallis who weaselled into town in search of another woman to marry and fleece. He wasn’t particularly picky and despite Lulu keeping a weather eye – and occasionally a couple of clenched fists – on him, the louse breezed through a few options before settling upon one eminent prospect who lived in a mansion with many oil-wells attached.

He had no idea she was only the cook…

A secondary plot began mid-stream as Zoot-suit gangster William “Trigger Boy” Scramooch got out of the State Pen and moved into Lulu’s boarding house. Ever prey to poor judgement, she took a shine to him whereas for Easy it was disgust at first sight…

Horning in on Wallis’ potential windfall, Trigger Boy planned a kidnap and tricked Lulu into doing his dirty work. Big mistake…

More single page gags follow, including a clever patriotic sequence where Lulu buys a big gas-guzzling automobile and leads the nation by her sacrificial example after which Easy makes his last appearance (28th February 1943) serving to reintroduce another old pal.

Magician, ventriloquist and escapologist Lonny “the Great” Plunkett pops up once more, pranking the cops and again becoming a target of crooks in dire need of illicit safecracking expertise. Lulu is a natural partner for the sharp guy and together they scotch the hoods’ plan, after which romance blooms again when 600-pound gorilla Roy Boy decides only she can be his ideal mate. When he’s frustrated in his amorous endeavours he smashes out of his cage and rampages like a hairy tornado through town…

The comic capers conclude on a high humour note with a return to C. Hollis Wallis’ ongoing marital scam, which escalates into brilliant farce before the loathsome little Lothario gets what’s coming to him…

Ending this final titanic (with pages 380mm high x 270mm wide) luxury hardback tome is a full-colour correction from volume 3, another hand-painted colour-guide strip by Crane and Rick Norwood’s ‘Transition’: an illustrated article explaining just where Tubbs & Easy went when they faded from Turner’s Sunday pages…

Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips is a magnificent undertaking: gathering in a wonderfully accessible form one of the most impressive, funny, exciting and influential comic strips of all time, in books that cannot help but inspire awe and affection. Captain Easy is perhaps the most unsung of all great pulp heroes and his spectacular, rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventures should be just as familiar to lovers of classic adventure as Tintin, Doc Savage, Allan Quatermain, Scrooge McDuck and even Indiana Jones.

These astounding masterpieces are quite unforgettable: fanciful, entertaining and utterly irresistible. How can you possibly pass up the chance to experience the stories that inspired the giants of action adventure?

Captain Easy strips © 2013 United Feature Syndicate, Inc. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books, all other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

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Bunny vs Monkey: The Whopping World of Puzzles!


By Jamie Smart, with Sammy Borras (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-350-9 (Digest HB)

Bunny vs Monkey has been the hairy/fuzzy backbone of The Phoenix since the very first issue back in 2012: recounting a madcap vendetta gripping animal arch-enemies in an idyllic arcadia masquerading as more-or-less mundane but critically endangered English woodlands.

Concocted with gleefully gentle mania by cartoonist, comics artist and novelist Jamie Smart (Fish Head Steve!; Looshkin; Max and Chaffy, Flember), his trendsetting, mindbending multi award-winning yarns have been wisely retooled as graphic albums available in digest editions such as this one.

The tail-biting tension and animal argy-bargy began yonks ago after an obnoxiously annoying little anthropoid plopped down in some serene British woodland, in the wake of a disastrous local space shot. Crashed down in Crinkle Woods, scant miles from his launch site, lab animal Monkey reckoned himself the rightful owner of a strange new world… despite every effort to dissuade him by reasonable, rational, sensible, genteel, contemplative forest resident Bunny. No amount of patience, propriety or good breeding on the part of the laid-back lepine could curtail, contain or control the incorrigible idiot ape.

A keen rivalry arose between them, as the ape intruder crudely made himself at home, and to this day Monkey remains a rude, noise-loving, chaos-creating, troublemaking lout intent on building his perfect “Monkeyopia” – with or without the aid of evil supergenius ally Skunky or their “henches” Metal Steve and Action Beaver. Problems are exacerbated by other unconventional Crinkle creatures, like Pig, Weenie, Ai, Lucky, Le Fox. Mad scientist Skunky’s intellect and cavalier attitude to life presents as a propensity for building extremely dangerous robots, Brobdingnagian bio-beasts and sundry other super-weapons…

Here the mundane multi-coloured – albeit rendered here in multifarious shades of mystifying monochrome tones – manic war of nerves and mega-munitions is pettishly paused for a session of traditional entertainment and activities as the entire cast amble ‘To the Woods’ and into a fun-filled framing comic tale. Exploring and ending up somewhere never seen before, our cuddly combatants mutually discover and take charge of a ramshackle and abandoned “lost” fun-fair. Their ingrained competitive lunacy sees all involved revive old rides but also -and this is where you come in – refit and revamp games and puzzles stalls, seeking to make it a holiday fun ride for all…

Cue a selection of character-themed quizzes, puzzles, tests of skill and imagination and other pen and paper activities, Part One of which focuses on reconditioned ‘Games Stalls’. We open with the titular attention-seeking simian lout. His odd-one-out conundrum ‘I am Monkey’ leads to self-explanatory ‘Bunny’s Cross Words’ and more esoteric wordplay in ‘Action Beaver’s Bibblesearch’, ‘Weenie’s Wall of Words’, and ‘Ai’s Speedy Wordswitches’ before naughty wordsearch ‘Monkey’s Too Rude!’ brings us to pencil-driven ‘Metal E.V.E.’s Hall of Mirrors’, ‘Spaces for Faces’ and ‘Embiggening for Beginners’…

Riddles and enigmas abound next in ‘Codewords with Le Fox’ after which traversing the ‘Amazing Mud Maze’ will afford a pause to assess ‘Who Will Win? Only You Can Decide’ prior to Part Two commencing with ‘Costume Conundrums!’ and paper-folding foolishness for ‘Fortune-Telling Monkey’ and his ‘Laugh of Truth’ before ‘Bunny’s Would You Rather?’ poses challenging questions in advance of really AARRRRD! stuff in ‘Name That Pirate with Weenie and Pig’ and ‘Talk Like a Pirate’, before again asking ‘Who Will Succeed? Only you can decide!’

Part Three contains culinary calamities and chewy comestibles aplenty, all bedecking assorted ‘FoodStalls’. Learn how to deal with ‘Candyfloss Quiffs’ and identify ‘Weenie’s Cake a Difference’ whilst cowering in glee over ‘Cookery Corner: Wobbleberry Buns’. Having cooked but not burned, we wonder ‘What’s That Smell?’, ‘What’s That Noise?’ and ‘Who’s in the Loo?’ and reassess how ‘Only One Will Succeed!’ before Part Four brings us to a House of Horror uncovering Skunky’s private lab wherein lurks ‘Skunky’s Monster Maker’, ‘House of Horror’, and ‘The All-Seeing Eye!’

Should you need to take breath ‘Skudoku’ and ‘Badgoku’ are available as are ‘Metal E.V.E.’s Hints and Tips’ and ‘Skunky’s Number Puzzle’ just before a barrage of life-challenging decisions await those tackling adventure quiz ‘None of the Fun of the Fair’…

The comic story resumes and concludes in traditional shocking vulgar fashion before the last survivors stagger up to the bit with all the ‘Answers’…

Daft, compulsively addictive, dangerously read-out-loud-able and fearfully unputdownable, this cutting edge retro-treat is the perfect gift for anyone with crayons, paper and too many kids.
Text and illustrations © Fumboo Ltd. 2024. All rights reserved.

Bunny vs Monkey: The Whopping World of Puzzles! will be published on March 27th 2025 and is available for pre-order now.

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Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volume 3 1938-1940


By Roy Crane with Leslie Turner (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-529-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The comics industry evolved from newspaper strips and these circulation-boosting pictorial features were, until relatively recently, utterly ubiquitous, hugely popular with the public and regarded as invaluable by publishers who used them as an irresistible sales weapon to guarantee consumer loyalty, increase sales and ensure profits. Many a scribbler became a millionaire thanks to their ability to draw pictures and spin a yarn.

It’s virtually impossible for us to today to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. The Funnies were the most common recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality. From the very start humour was paramount… that’s why we call them “funnies” or “comics”, after all. From these gag and stunt beginnings, blending silent movie slapstick, outrageous antics, fabulous fantasy and vaudeville shows, came a thoroughly unique entertainment hybrid: Royston Campbell Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting on April 21st 1924 Washington Tubbs II was a comedic gag-a-day strip not entirely dissimilar from confirmed family favourite Harold Teen (by Crane’s friend and contemporary Carl Ed). Tubbs was a diminutive, ambitious young shop clerk when the strip began, but gradually he moved into mock-heroics, then through harm-free action into full-blown, light-hearted rip-roaring adventures with the introduction of pioneering he-man, moody swashbuckling prototype Captain Easy in the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929.

As the tales became increasingly more exotic and thrill-drenched, the globe-trotting little dynamo clearly needed a sidekick who could believably handle the combat side of things, and thus in the middle of a European war Tubbs liberated a mysterious fellow American from a jail cell and history was made. Before long the mismatched pair were inseparable comrades; travelling the world, hunting treasure, fighting thugs and rescuing a bevy of startlingly comely maidens in distress…

The 2-fisted, bluff, completely capable and utterly dependable, down-on-his-luck Southern Gentleman was something not seen before in comics: a raw, square-jawed hunk played straight rather than the buffoon or music hall foil of such classic serials as Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond. Crucially, Crane’s seductively simple blend of cartoon exuberance and compelling page-design was a far more accessible and powerful medium for action story-telling than the static illustrative style favoured by artists like Hal Foster (just starting to make waves on the new Tarzan Sunday page).

While we’re thinking of Edgar Rice Burroughs, it’s difficult to re-read the phrase “Southern Gentleman” these days without pausing to consider how much of that term originally denoted chivalric do-gooder, rather than Defender of Slavery, to most readers. Frankly, I’m not sure Crane gave a moment’s thought to political or social implications, although his heroes never made any distinction between races and treated all characters equally, even back then. Their only motivations were getting rich honestly and helping folks in trouble. These stories come from a long time ago, so just read along with a sense of historical perspective, please…

Tubbs and Easy were easily as exotic and thrilling as the Ape Man but rattled along like tempestuous Sailor Man Popeye, full of vim, vigour and vinegar, as attested to by a close look at the early work of the would-be cartoonists who followed the strip with avid intensity: Floyd Gottfredson, Milton Caniff, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and especially young Joe Shuster…

After a couple of abortive attempts starring his little-guy hero, Crane bowed to the inevitable and created a full colour Sunday page dedicated to his increasingly popular hero-for-hire. Captain Easy debuted on 30th July 1933, in madcap, two-fisted exploits (originally) set before his first fateful meeting with Tubbs.

The third terrific tome of a stupendous 4-volume set covers May 22nd 1938 to December 15th 1940 and opens with a Foreword by Rick Norwood contrasting storylines in Daily and Sunday iterations whilst re-presenting a number of Crane’s illustrated articles on life in Mexico, after which R.C. Harvey’s Introduction provides some historical context and speculates on a potential real-life inspiration for the enigmatic Captain. There’s also a long-overdue appreciation of the artist’s friend, silent partner and eventual successor in ‘Easy Does it… And So does Leslie Turner’. Initially hired to provide Crane time and breathing room from the punishing seven day a week deadlines, from 1937 Turner increasingly took responsibility for the Sunday strip after the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate ordered Crane to drop his cherished full-page experimental designs.

When he first began the Sunday page in 1933, Crane’s creativity went into overdrive: an entire page and sharp vibrant colours to play with had clearly stirred his imagination. The results were wild visual concoctions which achieved a timeless immediacy and made each instalment a unified piece of sequential art. The effect of the pages can be seen in so many comic and strips since – even in the works of such near-contemporaries as Hergé and giants-in-waiting like Charles Schulz. The pages were a clearly as much of a joy to create as to read but the commercial argument ran that the company couldn’t sell a feature which client periodicals were unable to cut-up and reformat to suit their own needs. In 1943 the former assistant inherited the black-&-white Daily feature after Crane quit NEA to produce his creator-owned Buz Sawyer strip for William Randolph Hearst’s King Features syndicate.

Once Crane was gone, Turner took Wash & Easy into ever more comedic regions, crafting the strip until his retirement in 1969 after which other writers and artists carried the Captain until the feature was ended in 1988. But that’s largely immaterial as here the superb high-adventuring is seen in its absolute prime…

As seen in Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volume 2, after a spectacular string of solo adventures the solitary soldier of fortune at last met Tubbs whilst jugged in a jail cell in a Ruritanian European kingdom. He had been framed in an espionage plot. Risking life and diminutive limb to save his pal, Wash also rescued sultry spitfire Ruby Dallas who promptly entangled them in her own unfortunate tale of woe. Witness to a murder in America, she had been on the run ever since because the killer was a prominent millionaire with too much to lose. Once the trio escaped murderous cutthroats, slavers and assassins, they soon settled his hash…

The story picks up here with the lads again looking for jobs and passage home. Opportunity knocks in the form of an animal collector in need of a crew, but when his tiger gets loose on the boat everybody jumps overboard. Washing up on the isolated island of Koolyhow where an American entomologist and his female assistant are hunting the legendary doodle-bug, the boys sign on as helpers. They are soon embroiled in burgeoning madness gripping local governor Sergeant Major Gaspe Shalayli, and further complicating matters is a lost temple full of ancient treasures and a cute furry creature called a Swink. The gluttonous little anteater takes a shine to Wash and has a capacity for finding trouble or creating chaos exponentially greater than his new owner’s…

With bugs and Swink – christened “Bennie” – the triumphant Americans reach Singapore only to be targeted by grifters Sadie and Dipper, who believe their latest marks have the temple jewels (actually confiscated by the local government). Tricking their way onto the flying boat carrying Wash and Easy home, the crooks cause a crash leaving Sadie and our heroes stranded on a desolate island inhabited by the extremely civilised descendants of piratical bandits. The place is a utopian paradise with only one rule: nobody ever leaves…

Of course Easy, Wash & Bennie do, in a stolen sail boat which promptly starts sinking, leaving the voyagers in dire straits. They’re almost saved by a passing vessel but the pirates aboard The Typhoon gleefully ignore their plight and sail on…

Frantically bailing, they reach land just as Cap’n Robbins sinks and plunders a trading ship. Once again in hot water, Wash & Easy rescue Mona Milson – stranded survivor of a previous shipwrecking – and return her to her grateful father on yet another Pacific paradise, only to find the furious Robbins waiting for them. He’s just agreed to transport the old gent, his family and, most importantly, his life savings to Honolulu…

Unable to dissuade old man Milson, the boys book passage with him and Mona and, after days of outrageous hijinks as the voracious and disaster-prone Bennie makes life hell for the pirates, expose and capture the villains. With reward money in their pockets Wash & Easy (and the Swink) finally get back to America and begin a search for gainful employment which highlights a return to gag-filled short stories. The ever-ravenous Swink is a popular sensation, prompting his owners to buy a travelling medicine show truck. Whilst touring the country they discover the elixir they’re peddling has genuine restorative powers whilst encountering a succession of conmen, women, thieves, scheming women, bandits and determinedly marriage-minded women – some of whom even steal the fabulous, potentially invaluable Bennie. A martyr to crazy, hungry critters, Wash improbably inherits a hippo named Kittie.

It’s just one disaster after another…

Feeling they’ve outlived their welcome Wash & Easy go adventuring again, accidentally ending up in Peru, where dauntless Mary Lancaster is searching for her lost father. She enlists their help to enter the forbidden Lost Canyon region where they discover not only the missing archaeologist but a lost race of Indians who still practise human sacrifice. The humans only escape by trading their lives for Bennie, but as they make their forlorn way back to civilisation, the indomitable Swink catches up to them, having proved too smart for the Andeans. Packing the Lancasters off home, but too short of funds to accompany them, our heroes are soon clapped in jail for vagrancy, where they meet magician, ventriloquist and escapologist “the Great Plunkett”: an inveterate prankster who joins them as stowaways on a steamer back to the USA. Once there, Plunkett’s gift for opening safes makes him a target for opportunistic mobsters – until his new friends step in…

Big changes were underway at this time and Turner was increasingly yielding the focus on his titular stars to explore an array of new and returning supporting characters – presumably to allow Crane more leeway, if not exclusivity – on Tubbs and Easy. However with January 21st 1940’s episode, the boys were back, as Easy became a freelance spy-hunter/crimebuster in a nation progressively, inevitably marching towards war. The tone was still light and humorous, but the writing was on the wall…

After stopping spies, Easy tracked down escaped convict Killer Beck, exposed the murder of a Chinese servant and captured America’s Most Wanted female-impersonating conman. That led to his being hired to safeguard a new aviation weapon from a veritable army of foreign agents and the diabolical Mata Hari Z-1. Defeating her led to Easy and Wash being marooned in a vast jungle of cactus in the Western American desert where they stumbled onto a gang of ruthless counterfeiters before tackling train-stealing gunrunners in Mexico.

More short yarns bracket a concerted re-lightening of mood as the lads are hired by arrogant, flighty heiress and aspiring film star Honey Darling who uses them to stage dangerous, headline-grabbing stunts, before they’re hired to recover a yacht and rescue the passengers after the Captain loses control of it in a rigged card game. The mission goes slightly awry and leaves the boys, heiress Ginger Nelson, her chaperone aunt and some of the more nefarious crewmen shipwrecked. Amongst the saved luggage is the 12th biggest diamond in the world.

… And then the murders start happening…

Nevertheless Easy & Tubbs again save the day, but on returning stateside, the surly Soldier of Fortune is made the basis of a bet between two wealthy men. One wagers that any man can be made afraid, but the other believes Easy disproves the notion. Of course, neither has asked him to participate, and after the hero is tricked into a haunted house the trouble really begins as the mountaintop dwelling is invaded by bandits wanting their perfect hideout back…

After discovering the only thing that frightens Easy, this compelling cartoon carnival ends with the heartwarming tale of newsboy Buddie Burns who turns his passion for detecting into a successful anti-crime campaign – with a little help from a certain South’un Gen’leman…

Also included here are examples of original artwork and this colossal luxury hardback compilation (pages 380 x 270mm) even offers an extra colour tear-sheet plus a full hand-coloured page by Crane, used by print processors as a guide to produce finished instalments.

This volume also heralds the irrepressible humour which Turner would increasing bring into the feature and the stories – although still action adventures – abound with breezy, light-hearted banter, outrageous situations, hilarious slapstick and outright farce: a sure-fire formula modern cinema directors plunder to this day.

Captain Easy was the grandfather of Indiana Jones, Flynn (the Librarian) Carsen and Jack (Romancing the Stone) Cotton, clearly setting the benchmark for all of them. Happily, Crane’s rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventure trailblazer fell into hands every bit as talented and the huge pages in this stupendous chronicle, crackling with fun and excitement, provide the perfect stage from which to absorb and enjoy the classic tale-telling of another sublime master raconteur.

This is storytelling of impeccable quality: unforgettable, spectacular and utterly irresistible. These tales rank alongside the best of Hergé, Tezuka, Toth and Kirby and unarguably fed the imaginations of them all as they still should for today’s comics creators. Now that you have the chance to experience the strips that inspired the giants of our art form, how can you possibly resist?
Captain Easy strips © 2012 United Feature Syndicate, Inc. This edition © 2012 Fantagraphics Books, all other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

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Mac Raboy’s Flash Gordon volume 4


By Mac Raboy & Don Moore, Dan Barry & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-156971-979-9 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

By almost every metric, Flash Gordon is the most influential comic strip in the world. When the hero debuted on Sunday January 7th 1934 (Happy Birthday Flash!) with equally superb Jungle Jim running as a supplementary “topper” strip, it was a slick, sophisticated answer to Philip Nolan & Dick Calkins’ revolutionary, ideas-packed, inspirational, but quirkily clunky Buck Rogers (which also launched on January 7th – albeit in 1929) with two fresh elements added to the wonderment: Classical Lyricism and Poetic Dynamism. The newcomer became a weekly invitation to stunningly exotic glamour and astonishing beauty.

Where Buck merged traditional adventure with groundbreaking science concepts, Flash reinterpreted fairy tales, hero epics and mythology, draping them in the spectacular trappings of contemporary futurism, with the varying “rays”, “engines” and “motors” of modern pulp sci fi substituting for trusty swords and lances. There were also plenty of those too – and exotic craft and contraptions stood in for galleons, chariots and magic carpets. Look closely, though, and you’ll see cowboys, gangsters and of course, contemporary flying saucer fetishes adding flourish to the fanciful fables. The narrative trick made the far-fetched satisfactorily familiar – and was continued with contemporary trends and innovations by Austin Briggs and Don Moore before Mac Raboy (with Moore and Robert Rogers) took over the Sunday strips for a groundbreakingly modern yet comfortably familiar tenure lasting from 1948 to 1967.

The sheer artistic talent of Raymond, his compositional skills, fine linework, eye for clean, concise detail and just plain genius for drawing beautiful people and things, swiftly made this the strip that all young artists swiped from literally all over the world. When original material comic books began a few years later, many talented kids used Gordon as their model and ticket to future success in the field of adventure strips. Almost all the others went with Raymond’s stylistic polar opposite: emulating Milton Caniff’s expressionist masterwork Terry and the Pirates (and to see one of his better disciples check out Beyond Mars, limned by the wonderful Lee Elias).

Flash Gordon began on present-day Earth (which was 1934, remember?) with a wandering world about to smash into our planet. As global panic ensued, polo player Flash and fellow passenger Dale Arden narrowly escaped disaster when a meteor fragment downed their airliner. They landed on the estate of tormented genius Dr. Hans Zarkov, who imprisoned them in the rocket-ship he had built. His plan? To fly the ship directly at the astral invader and deflect it from Earth by crashing into it! Thus began a decade of sheer escapist magic in a Ruritanian Neverland: a blend of Camelot, Oz, John Carter of Mars and a hundred other fantasy realms promising paradise yet concealing vipers, ogres and demons, all cloaked in a glimmering sheen of sleek scientific speculation. Worthy adversaries such as utterly evil yet magnetic Ming, emperor of the fantastic wandering planet; myriad exotic races and shattering conflicts offered a fantastic alternative to drab and dangerous reality for millions of avid readers around the world.

With Moore handling the bulk of scripts, Alex Raymond’s ‘On the Planet Mongo’ ran every Sunday until 1944, when the artist joined the Marines. On his return, he forsook wild imaginings for sober reality by introducing gentleman gumshoe Rip Kirby. The public’s unmissable weekly appointment with wonderment perforce continued under the artistic auspices of Austin Briggs – who had drawn the monochrome daily instalments since 1940.

In 1948, eight years after beginning his career drawing for the Harry A. Chesler production “shop”, comic book artist Emmanuel “Mac” Raboy took over illustrating the Sunday page. Moore remained as scripter and began co-writing with the new artist. Raboy’s sleek, fine-line brush style – heavily influenced by his idol Raymond – had made his work on Captain Marvel Jr., Kid Eternity and especially Green Lama a pinnacle of artistic quality in the early days of the proliferating superhero genre. His seemingly inevitable assumption of Flash Gordon’s extraordinary exploits led to a renaissance of the strip and in a rapidly evolving post-war world, it became once more a benchmark of timeless, hyper-realistic quality escapism which only Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant could match.

This fourth and final 276-page paperback volume – printed in stark monochrome, landscape format and still criminally out-of-print/long overdue for a fresh edition – spans December 16th 1962 through December 31st 1967 – by which time successor Dan Barry was already adding his artistic contributions to the final chapter (from December 24th). After one last informative appraisal of Raboy in Bruce Jones’ Introduction ‘Walking with Giants’ it’s time for one last blast-off as the adventure resumes with already-in-progress thriller ‘Sons of Saturn’… Sequence SO91 had begun on October 21st 1962 and cliffhangerly closed the previous volume barely weeks in. It resumes here with the episode for December 16th and carries on until January 20th 1963 revealing how the hitherto unsuspected super-civilisation thriving in the clouds of the Sixth Planet is revealed when an Earth probe provokes its current overlord to determine human nature and resource by sending super-criminal outcast Baldr to plague, punish and test them. That results in the indestructible giant breaking into Flash’s ship and going on a rampage, but ultimately alien force proves no match for human – i.e. Flash Gordon’s – ingenuity and the embattled visitors accidentally initiate a sudden and very permanent regime change…

Running from January 27th to April 14th pure cold war paranoia shapes sequence S092. ‘The Force Dome’ sees well-meaning Professor Howe build a perfectly impenetrable protective energy barrier and convince the authorities to let him run a live test by shielding all of Metropole City. When Howe dies suddenly the experiment goes awry and the generators can’t be switched off. Thankfully, Flash and Zarkov are on site and able to avert the crisis before all the air under the city-sized bubble is used up…

It’s back to the beyond next as (S093: 21/4/63 – 14/7/63) finds our hero further testing the bounds of Earth’s recently-developed Faster-Than-Light technologies, with Flash despatched to a far star system to discover what happened to an off-line ‘Star Beacon’ that has stopped providing subspace navigation data. That all sounds quite technical, but it’s just a plot device to enable Flash & Co to wryly clash with cunning alien primitives after which it’s back to Earth and the Himalayas to rescue explorer Bill Penrose from fabled monsters (S094: 21/7/63-17/11/63). However, as Flash digs deeper, he learns these ‘Yeti’ are actually robots employed by extraterrestrial resource bandits to steal uranium, resulting in an epic battle beneath the Earth, before returning to space and a new station orbiting Jupiter. Set on Earth’s newly-constructed interstellar transit station, sequence S095 (24/11/63 to 15/3/1964) sees Dale and Flash accidentally in loco parentis to Miki – an extremely impulsive ‘Boy From Another World’ …and his disruptively radioactive pet Zhlubb…

The furore builds as the star waifs suddenly go missing just as interplanetary bandit trio the Breen Brothers invade the station whilst Flash is testing Zarkov’s latest super-ship, triggering a monumental and manic battle beyond the stars. When the shooting stops and with Miki restored to his parents, Flash finally boosts off in the new FTL vessel, destined for a colony world that has called for help by sending back all its women and children. In truth, the castaways’ return is a bid by aliens on a dying world who seek to inveigle tribute and rations for their starving civilisation by holding the male human colonists hostage.

Backed up by colonist Kitty Corum and rash, overconfident Star Patrol Special Service recruit Dino, Flash’s test ride becomes a rescue/diplomatic mission to the ‘Dark Sun of Dragor’ (S096: 22/3/ to 7/19/64): a most unconventional confrontation that culminates in the death of a star system, followed by a brief diversion. Spanning 26th July to November 8th, sequence S097 sees a family of giant, shapeshifting aliens crash on Earth and their colossal child faces typical panic and bigotry until Dale steps in to salve tensions and save ‘The Chameleon’, prior to sheer arrogance almost destroying the world’s hopes of halting chaotic storms caused by solar flares and securing reliable ‘Man-Made Weather’ (S098: 15/11/64 – 2/14/February 65). The problem is a clash of wills between abrasive Dr Franz Graf and Zarkov, but eventually the meteorological fireworks spark a world-saving inspiration…

Another mountaintop yarn finds Flash and junior shuttle pilot Wally Green captive of the ‘Lost Tribe of the Andes’ (S099: February 21st to 13th June), facing the bellicose descendants of Spanish conquistadors shielded from progress for hundreds of years and ultimately duelling dastardly power-hungry despot-in-waiting El Mono, before a return to modern civilisation brings the first Moon’s Fair and a transport nightmare when the best pilot in space gets involved in transporting Michelangelo’s David to the exhibition site. It all results in ‘The Greatest Art Theft’ (SI00: June 20th – October 10th) as petty tyrant/organised crime overlord Baron Borgaz purloins the masterpiece for his private orbital fiefdom and is vain enough to allow Flash entrance to search his sinister, thug-&-monster-stuffed citadel…

Next comes a yarn older British fans might recognise as part of the 1967 digest series World Adventure Library: a line that also included Mandrake the Magician, The Phantom, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Batman. Here Flash plays space cop in pursuit of devious disguise artist/thief Merlyn, who swindles his way across the solar system and even escapes Gordon’s justice… but not his fate or just deserts in year spanning comedic change-of-pace ‘Con Man in Space’ (SI01: 17/10/1965 to 30/01/1966). It’s followed by ‘A Visit From Mercury’ (February 6th to June 5th ’66 and another tale reprinted in the UK) as a trip to erupting volcano Vesuvius allows “impervium”-clad Flash, Dale & Zarkov to enter a undiscovered base deep in the magma, where visitors fleeing the first rock from the sun are hiding. Sheltered from geological upheaval and basking in Earth’s warmth, they’re ultimately restored to their point of origin with Earth’s aid, but only after Gordon deals with flaming recidivist usurper Janj…

Old-style mystery and monster hunting shapes survival saga ‘Death World’ (SI03: 12/06 – 23/10/66) as Flash and a Space Agency Survival Corps squad led by Sikh commander Singh are despatched to learn what caused the disappearance of an entire human colony and rise of a swathe of killer beasts. What they discover changes lives and the annals of bio-science, before Flash tangles with another low-orbit lowlife when ‘The Duke of Naples’ (SI04: 30th October 1966 – April 2nd 1967) reinstitutes privateering, slave-taking and gladiatorial combat on his private space station in his passionately plutocratic desire to return humanity to feudalism, after which big science engineering finds Flash and Zarkov mediating war between grudge-bearing Madame Mimi Duclos and martinet Godfrey Ledge as each attempts to seize control and complete construction of ‘The Moon Launcher’ (April 9th to July 16th). The ion launch platform is an obvious and permanent boon to human space expansion, but the project takes on desperate urgency after explorers on Pluto encounter trouble and the acceleration launcher offers the only possibility of getting a rescue ship to them in time.

The bitter war between the project chiefs sparks industrial strife, worker mutiny and even criminal changes against Flash’s new best pal Pancho, but sooner rather than later the job is done and Gordon (plus fugitive stowaway Pancho) are rocketing into infernal darkness and Raboy’s last adventure.  Sequence SI06 spans 23/7/1967 to 7/1/1968 (with Dan Barry taking over on December 24th) as the voyagers find the lost explorers but are ‘Captured on Pluto’ by super-advanced aliens playing mindgames and conjuring fantastic worlds and beings in a cosmic scaled romp deeply redolent of 1964 Star Trek pilot episode The Cage…

To Be Continued… by other hands

Each week as he toiled on the strip, Raboy produced ever-more expansive artwork filled with distressed damsels, deadly monsters, incredible civilisations, increasingly authentic space hardware and locales, and all sorts of outrageous adventure that continued until the illustrator’s untimely death in 1967. Perhaps it was a kindness. He was the last great Golden Age romanticist illustrator and his lushly lavish, freely-flowing adoration of perfected human form was beginning to stale in popular taste. The Daily feature had already switched to the solid, chunky, He-Manly burly realism of Dan Barry and Frank Frazetta, but here at least the last outpost of ethereally beautiful heroism and pretty perils still prevailed: a dream realm you can visit as easily and often as Flash, Dale & Zarkov popped between planets, just by tracking down this book and the one which preceded it…
© 2003 King Features Syndicate Inc. ™ & © Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Batman: The Golden Age volume 2


By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, George Roussos & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-6808-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Batman: The Golden Age volume 2 is another paperback-format feast (there’s also a weightier, pricier and more capacious hardback Omnibus available) re-presenting our anniversarial Dark Knight’s earliest exploits. Set out in original publishing release order, it forgoes glossy, high-definition paper and reproduction techniques in favour of a newsprint-adjacent feel and the same flat, bright-yet-muted colour palette which graced the originals. Those necessary details dealt with, what you really need to know is that this is a collection of Batman tales depicting how the character grew into the major player who would inspire so many: developing a resilience to survive the stifling cultural vicissitudes coming decades would inflict upon him and his partner, Robin.

With the majority of material crafted by Bill Finger and illustrated by Bob Kane, there’s no fuss, fiddle or Foreword, and the book steams straight into mesmerising mysterious action, re-presenting astounding cape-&-cowl classics and iconic covers from Detective Comics #46-56, Batman #4-7 and the Dynamic Duo’s stories from World’s Best Comics #1 and World’s Finest Comics #2-3: cumulatively covering all groundbreaking escapades from December 1940 to November 1941…

Plunging right into perilous procedures, Detective #46 (Kane with regular embellishers Jerry Robinson & George Roussos) features the return of Batman’s most formidable fringe scientific adversary as the heroes must counteract the awesome effects of ‘Professor Strange’s Fear Dust’, after which #47 delivers drama on a more human scale in ‘Money Can’t Buy Happiness’. This action-packed homily of parental expectation and the folly of greed leads into Batman #4 (Winter 1941) which opens with a spiffy catch-all visual resume prior to ‘The Joker’s Crime Circus’, plus the piratical plunderings of ‘Blackbeard’s Crew and the Yacht Society!’. ‘Public Enemy No.1’ tells a gangster fable in the manner of Jimmy Cagney’s movie Angels With Dirty Faces, and ‘Victory For the Dynamic Duo’ involves the pair in the treacherous world of sports gambling.

Detective Comics #48 finds the lads defending America’s bullion reserves in ‘The Secret Cavern’, and they face an old foe when ‘Clayface Walks Again’ (Detective Comics #49, March 1941), as the deranged horror actor resumes his passion for murder and re-attempts to kill Bruce Wayne’s old girlfriend Julie. DC #50 pits Batman & Robin against acrobatic burglars in ‘The Case of the Three Devils’, leading neatly into Batman #5 (Spring 1941). Once again, Joker plays lead villain in ‘The Riddle of the Missing Card’, before the heroes prove their versatility by solving a quixotic crime in Fairy Land via ‘The Book of Enchantment’.

‘The Case of the Honest Crook’ follows: one of the key stories of Batman’s early canon. When a mugger steals only $6 from a victim, leaving much more behind, his trail leads to a vicious gang who almost beat Robin to death. The vengeance-crazed Dark Knight goes on a rampage of terrible violence that still resonates in the character to this day. The last story from Batman #5 –‘Crime does Not Pay’ – once again deals with kids going bad and their potential for redemption, after which World’s Best Comics#1 (Spring 1941 – destined to become World’s Finest Comics with its second issue) offers an eerie murder mystery concerning ‘The Witch and the Manuscript of Doom’. With most stories still coming from unsung genius Finger and art chores shared out between Kane, Robinson & Roussos, the team got a new top contributor as Fred Ray signed on to produce fantastic World’s Finest covers that offered the only venue to see the Gotham Gangbusters operating beside the Metropolis Marvel.

Sordid human scaled wickedness informs ‘The Case of the Mystery Carnival’, ‘The Secret of the Jade Box’ and ‘Viola Vane’ (Detective #51, 52 and 53 respectively): all mood-soaked crimebusting set-pieces featuring fairly run-of-the mill thugs, serving as perfect palate-cleansers for ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Remember!’ from WF #2: a powerful character play and a chilling conundrum that still packs a punch today.

‘Hook Morgan and his Harbor Pirates’ finds the Dynamic Duo cleaning up the docks whilst the quartet from Batman #6 (‘Murder on Parole’, ‘The Clock Maker’, ‘The Secret of the Iron Jungle’ and ‘Suicide Beat’) offer a broad range of yarns encompassing a prison-set human interest fable to the hunt for a crazed maniac to racket busting and back to the human side of being a cop. Detective #54 heads back to basics with spectacular mad scientist thriller ‘The Brain Burglar’, after which a visit to a ghost town results in eerie romp ‘The Stone Idol’ (Detective #55) before World’s Finest #3 launches a classic villain with the first appearance of one of Batman’s greatest foes in ‘The Riddle of the Human Scarecrow’.

The volume ends with a grand quartet of tales from Batman #7. ‘Wanted: Practical Jokers’ again stars the psychotic Clown Prince of Crime, whilst ‘The Trouble Trap’ sees our heroes crushing a spiritualist racket before heading for Lumberjack country to clear up ‘The North Woods Mystery’.

The last story is something of a landmark case, as well as being a powerful and emotional melodrama. ‘The People Vs. The Batman’ finds Bruce Wayne framed for murder and the Dynamic Duo finally sworn in as official police operatives. They would not be vigilantes again until the grim ‘n’ gritty 1980s…

Kane, Robinson and their compatriots created an iconography which carried Batman well beyond his allotted life-span until later creators could re-invigorate it. They added a new dimension to children’s reading… and their work is still captivatingly accessible.

Moreover, these early stories set the standard for comic superheroes. Whatever you like now, you owe it to these stories. Superman gave us the idea, but inspired and inspirational writers like Bill Finger refined and defined the meta-structure of the costumed crime-fighter.

Where the Man of Steel was as much Social Force and juvenile wish-fulfilment as hero, Batman and Robin did what we ordinary mortals wanted to do most: teach bad people the lessons they richly deserved…

These are tales of elemental power and joyful exuberance, brimming with deep mood and addictive action. Comic book heroics simply don’t come any better.
© 1940, 1941, 2017 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents Ghosts


By Leo Dorfman, Murray Boltinoff, John Broome, Jack Miller, Joe Samachson, George Kashdan, Bob Haney, Richard E. Hughes, Carl Wessler, Tony DeZuñiga, Jim Aparo, Sam Glanzman, Carmine Infantino, Sy Barry, Frank Giacoia, John Calnan, Bob Brown, George Tuska, Wally Wood, Curt Swan, Ruben Moreira, Irwin Hasen, Leonard Starr, Jerry Grandenetti, Nick Cardy, Ramona Fradon, Art Saaf, Michael William Kaluta, Jack Sparling, Win Mortimer, Ernie Chan, Buddy Gernale, Nestor, Quico & Frank Redondo, Alfredo Alcala, Gerry Talaoc, Nestor Malgapo, E.R. Cruz, Rico Rival, Abe Ocampo, Ernesto Patricio & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-836-1 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Perfect Serving of Spectral Wonderment… 8/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Happy Dia de los Muertos! Let’s wind down our own Halloween celebrations and enjoy the more life-affirming Day of the Dead with a fabulously appropriate tome…

DC Comics came relatively late to funnybooks’ phantom-peril party, only bowing to the inevitable hunger for horror and mystery in the early 1950s. Comparatively straight-laced anthology The House of Mystery (cover-dated December 1951/January 1952) started the ball rolling with a gradual pick up that stopped dead after a hysterical censorship scandal and governmental witch-hunt created a spectacular backlash. It resulted in the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulatory rules. Horror titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, even though the appetite for suspense was still high. Nevertheless, in 1956 National/DC added sister title House of Secrets which 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 finally overtook them. When that bout of 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 liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Worlds Beyond, a resurrection of spooky comics was a foregone conclusion…

The chilling comeback resumed with The House of Mystery in 1968, and soon supernatural mystery titles dominated the marketplace, DC began a steady stream of launches along narrowly differing thematic lines. There was gothic horror romance title Sinister House of Secret Love, combat iteration 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…

Originally released on St Valentine’s Day 2012, this sadly sole and singular monochrome encyclopaedia of the uncanny collects the first 18 issues of Ghosts, covering like a shroud September/October 1970 to September 1973. Lead scripter and supernatural enthusiast Leo Dorfman produced most of the 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 horror stories for DC and Gold Key titles.

The thrills and chills begin with a graphic ‘Introduction’ from Tony DeZuñiga – probably scripted by editor Murray Boltinoff – prior to ‘Death’s Bridegroom’ (Dorfman & Jim Aparo) exposing a conniving bluebeard conman who finally picked the wrong girl to bilk and jilt. Sam Glanzman illustrated a fearsome tale of a shipbuilder slain while sabotaging a Nazi U-Boat before returning as a vengeful ‘Ghost in the Iron Coffin’, after which John Broome, Carmine Infantino & Sy Barry’s ‘The Tattooed Terror’ offers a slice of Golden Age anxiety (from Sensation Mystery #112, November 1952) with a career criminal seemingly haunted by his betrayed partner. Broome, Infantino & Frank Giacoia then relived ‘The Last Dream’ (Sensation Comics #107, December 1951-January 1952) as a 400-year old rivalry results in death for a 20th century sceptic, and this initial issue ends with a Western mystery in ‘The Spectral Coachman’ by Dorfman & DeZuñiga.

The second issue opens with a predatory ghost-witch persecuting a Carpathian village in Dorfman, John Calnan & George Tuska’s ‘No Grave can Hold Me’, whilst ‘Mission Supernatural’ (limned by Bob Brown & Wally Wood) reveals a WWII secret perpetually plaguing a modern English airport. A brace of revered reprints begin with light-hearted romp ‘The Sorrow of the Spirits’ from HoM #21 (December 1953, Jack Miller, Curt Swan & Ray Burnley) wherein a plague of famous phantoms attempt to possess their descendants’ bodies and ‘Enter the Ghost’ (Joe Samachson & Ruben Moreira, HoM #29, August 1954) finds an actor endangered by a dead thespian jealous of anyone recreating his greatest role…

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

Dorfman & DeZuñiga visited 17th century Scotland for #3’s opening occult observation, wherein a sea-born princess demands her child back from a wicked Laird in ‘Death is My Mother’, after which ‘The Magician who Haunted Hollywood’ (George Kashdan & Leonard Starr, HoM #10, January 1953) reveals how actor Dick Mayhew may have been aided by a deceased escapologist when playing the starring role in the magician’s biopic…

Drawn by Calnan, ‘The Dark Goddess of Doom’ reveals how a statue of Kali deals with the ruthless collector who stole her, after which anonymously authored ‘Station G.H.O.S.T.’ (limned by Moreira for HoM #17, August 1953) discloses how a man’s scheme to corruptly purchase a house haunted by his ancestor goes weirdly awry, before Tuska draws the saga of a WWII pilot who crashes into a desert nightmare and fatefully meets a ‘Legion of the Dead’. Following a reprinted fact-file on ‘Ghostly Miners’, Jerry Grandenetti depicts how a French landowner who unwisely disturbs a burial ground meets ‘The Screaming Skulls’…

Ghosts #4 starts with a 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) reveals some truth about fabled, haunted Cibola as the first reprint reveals ‘The Man Who Killed his Shadow!’ Crafted by Miller, Swan & Burnley for HoM #16 (July 1953) it tells how a murdered photographer reaches from beyond the grave for justice. Thereafter, Ernie Chan limns ‘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 shine again with ‘The Legend of the Black Swan’ (HoM #48, March 1956) wherein three sceptical US students in Spain have an eerie encounter with doomed 17th century sailors before concluding on ‘The Threshold of Nightmare House’ with Calnan & Grandenetti illustrating inevitable doom for a woman haunted by her own ghost…

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

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

With Ghosts #6, page counts dropped from 52 to 32 pages and reprints were curtailed in favour of new material. Proceedings begin with Dorfman & Saaf’s cautionary tale of an avaricious arcane apothecary when ‘A Specter Poured the Potion’, before ‘Ride with the Devil’ (Calnan) tells of a most unexpected lift for an unwary hitchhiker whilst ‘Death Awaits Me’ (Grandenetti) exposes an eerie premonition marking the bizarre death of dancer Isadora Duncan. A rare DC outing for mercurial comics genius Richard E. Hughes illustrated by Sparling closes this slimline edition with ‘Ghost Cargo from the Sky’, 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) as a bullying Australian sheep farmer falls foul of aborigines he’d abused, whilst President in waiting Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the latest VIP to learn the cost of ignoring a Fakir’s warning in the Saaf-illustrated ‘Touch not my Tomb’.

Calnan 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 #8, as a succession of heirs learn the downside of an inheritance which perforce included a mummified corpse inside a grand chronometer, but Glanzman’s ‘The Guns of the Dead’ shows a far more beneficial side to spectres as US marines are saved by their unstoppable – deceased – sergeant in 1944. Lovingly limned by the wonderful Nestor Redondo, ‘Hotline to the Supernatural’ recounts cases of supernatural premonition, whilst ‘To Kill a Tyrant’ (Quico Redondo) implausibly links the incredible last hours of Rasputin to the so-necessary death of Stalin decades later…

Ghosts #9 begins with Calnan’s ‘The Curse of the Phantom Prophet’ as an Indian holy man continues 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) then details the indomitable determination of a crushed US tank that shouldn’t have been able to move at all, and Grandenetti’s ‘The Spectral Shepherd of Dartmoor’ shows how a long-dead repentant convict still aids the weak and imperilled in modern Britain. Events end on an eerie note as vacationers see horrific apparitions but discover ‘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’ – from Dorfman & Win Mortimer – details attempts by Harry Houdini, Mackenzie King and Aldous Huxley to send messages from the vale of shades before storytelling resumes in #10 with the Gerry Talaoc/Redondo Studio limned tale of a Vietnamese Harbinger of Doom in ‘A Specter Stalks Saigon’. Increasingly, superb Filipino artists took on art chores for the ubiquitous Dorfman’s scripts, such as ‘The Ghost of Wandsgate Gallows’ by Ernie Chan, detailing the inevitable fate of an English noble who hires and then betrays 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 handles horrific saga ‘The Hell Beast of Berkeley Square’, which for decades slaughtered guilty and innocents alike in prosperous Mayfair…

Ghosts #11 opened with Eufronio Reyes (E.R.) Cruz’s contemporary thriller wherein Nazi war criminals recovering long-hidden loot finally pay for their foul crimes in ‘The Devil’s Lake’, before Chan sketches a subway journey where the ‘Next Stop is Nowhere’. Graphic master Grandenetti visually captures ‘The Specter Who Stalked Cellblock 13’ (of San Quentin), and Brown returns to illustrate how a church organ killed anyone who played it in ‘The Instrument of Death’ before Sparling charts the sinister coincidences of ‘The Death Circle’ dictating that every US President elected in a year ending in zero dies in office. Of course, not everyone today is happy that the myth has been debunked…

Issue #12 featured ‘The Macabre Mummy of Takhem-Ahtem’ (Calnan): more a traditional monster-mash than purportedly true report, after which Grandinetti’s ‘Chimes for a Corpse’ sees 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 open issue #13 with ‘The Nightmare in the Sandbox’ detailing a war of voodoo practitioners in Haitian garden, whilst Calnan’s ‘Voice of Vengeance’ depicts macabre marionette vengeance on an embezzling official who silences their maker. ‘Have Tomb, Will Travel’ (Talaoc) sees contract killers using a scrapyard to lose their latest corpse discover their brand-new car comes with his unquiet spirit as an angry extra as Nestor Redondo depicts the inexplicable experience of lost GIs spending a night in a castle that isn’t there and learning ‘Hell is One Mile High’…

In #14, an heirloom wedding dress that comes with a curse doesn’t stop Diane Chapman marrying her young man in Gernale’s ‘The Bride Wore a Shroud’, whilst ‘Death Weaves a Web’ (Kashdan & Chan) sees a bullying uncle live to regret destroying his little nephew’s spider collection – but not for long. Talaoc’s ‘Phantom of the Iron Horseman’ finds a young train driver and host of passengers saved from disaster by the spirit of his disgraced grandpa before the issue ends with a catalogue of global portents warning of the appalling 1966 Aberfan tragedy 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) reveals the ghastly fate of the American who sold out the valiant defenders to the Mexican attackers. Alcala lent his prodigious gifts to the Balkan tale of a corpse collector who abandons morality and to profit from his sacred trust in ‘Who Dares Cheat the Dead?’ and Rico Rival delineates a gripping yarn wherein a corrupt surgeon is haunted by the hit-and-run victim he’d silenced in ‘Hand from the Grave’.

Ghosts #16 has a Spanish “gypsy” cursed to see ‘Death’s Grinning Face’ whenever someone is going to die, in a stirring thriller from Rival, and Glanzman again displays 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 delineates Napoleon Bonaparte’s services to France after the Little Corporal dies to become ‘The Haunted Hero of St. Helena’.

Issue #17 finds a phantom lady saving flood-lost children in Dorfman & Alcala’s moving ‘Death Held the Lantern High’ after which editor Murray Boltinoff & Talaoc reveal ‘The Specters Were the Stars’ as a film company tries to capture the horror of the 1920 Ulster Uprising, whilst Kashdan & Calnan expose the seductive allure and inescapable power of traditional Roma 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 still luring white men to his watery ‘Graveyard of Vengeance’, centuries after his death, whilst Abe Ocampo details the unlikely ‘Death of a Ghost’ at the hands of a very smug inventor who has just moved into a haunted mansion. Frank Redondo describes 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 Ernesto Patricio & Talaoc’s ‘Death Came Creeping’ as a visiting Egyptian merchant and his unique pet stop a sneak thief’s predations in an age-old manner…

These turbulent terror-tales captivated readers 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. 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 (sadly, still only available in monochrome and paperback) is a treat fans of fear and fantastic art should readily take to their cold, dead hearts…
© 1971, 1972, 1973, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Gary Gianni’s MonsterMen and Other Scary Stories


By Gary Gianni with William Hope Hodgson, Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Percival Landon: lettered by Sean Konnot & Todd Klein (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-480-7 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-50670-481-4

This book includes some Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

The tradition of extraordinary individuals banding together or even acting individually to confront night terrors and supernatural predators probably extends further back than even Gilgamesh or Beowulf. However, it really came to the fore once bards and skalds were rendered obsolete by cheap printing, mass literacy and pulp publishing. Action, crime, weird science and the supernatural all became strange bedfellows in service to monthly (sometimes fortnightly) blood-&-thunder adventures, with the best of the bunch still sneaking out the odd exploit nearly a century later…

The sublime stuff of legend in both story and illustrations has beguiled many a latecomer (Chaykin, Steranko, Wrightson and Kaluta first come to mind) but the absolute doyen of those that followed is Gary Gianni. Born in the Windy City in 1954, he graduated from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1976 and subsequently worked as a courtroom sketch artist, in network television and as an illustrator for the Chicago Tribune before breaking into comics with modern Classics Illustrated adaptations of Tales of O. Henry and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.

This led him to Dark Horse Comics’ licensed titles with stints on The Shadow and Indiana Jones (…and the Shrine of the Sea Devil), with other strip work including Tarzan, Tom Strong and Batman. In 2004 he replaced John Cullen Murphy, becoming the third official artist on Prince Valiant, limning the epic Sunday feature until March 25th 2012. His book illustration work includes Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn: The Last King, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Ray Bradbury’s Nefertiti-Tut Express and Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road.

Always busy and much in demand, Gianni nevertheless managed to create a number of linked serial sorties concerning a mystery-solving ghostbusters, most of which originally appeared in the back of Hellboy titles (specifically Hellboy Christmas Special, Wake the Dead, The Wild Hunt #5-6, Almost Colossus), plus a solo one-shot The MonsterMen: The Skull and the Snowman. The other material filling this scare package all come from The Dark Horse Book of Monsters; the Dead; Hauntings & Witchcraft…

Set in the golden-hued yet shadowy environs of America’s pulp past, the tales are witty, elegant thematic pastiches of rip-roaring thriller-chiller masterworks – including early Batman yarns – and are preceded by a whimsical ‘Foreword by Gary Gianni’ and effusive ‘Introduction by Michael Chabon’.

The far too few exploits of The MonsterMen open with ‘Silent as the Grave’ as first seen in Hellboy: Wake the Dead #1-5, revealing a secret organisation who insert themselves in weird events such as the disappearance of actress Julia Adler, strange murder of her lover and inexplicable appearance of ghost images on the latest rushes of maverick director Larry St. George. Doggedly pursued by savvy reporter Sunset Lane, the famed movie maven has a dark unpleasant personal pestilence, but uses it for good, like battling occult whacko monster-wrangler Crulk beside sartorial nightmare/immortal mystic warrior monk Benedict(us) of the Venerable Guild of Corpus Monstrum. The pair are almost insufficient when the fiendish forces behind the plot go on the attack.

Almost…

A shorter, lighter yarn follows in ‘Autopsy in B-Flat’ (Hellboy: Almost Colossus#1-2) as, whilst laboriously exhuming a suspect, Benedict is regaled by an old exploit of his comrade: a tropical island mystery involving monstrous, seductive creatures and pirates who can’t stay dead, that nearly proves his distracting end during the current case…

‘A Gift for the Wicked’ (Hellboy Christmas Special) finds the odd couple cleaning an old dark house of unwanted tenants at the supposedly happiest time of the year – albeit with a little festive assistance – before ‘The Skull and the Snowman’ sees Sunset Lane despatched from a Tibetan Lamasery, carrying a cursed object to the Corpus Monstrum, just as Crulk returns to bedevil Benedict, begging aid to escape marauding Puttyfoons dogging his misshapen steps…

As reality goes wild and the modern metropolis roils under ancient satanic scourgings, all parties converge on the skull (still trying to get out of Tibet) and the power it promises. The quest draws out a legion of terrors and concludes with shocking revelations about two of the world’s most infamous monsters…

The comics cavorting concludes with a staggeringly eccentric and beautiful horror romp as ‘O Sinner Beneath Us’ (Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #5-6) channels Little Nemo in Slumberland in a classic unearthly child tale, with new recruits Sunset and Crulk taking pole positions for a wild chase for the salvation of innocence and retrieval of the ghastly Mustacchio Demoniac…

The Other Scary Stories section of this timeless terror tome offers classic pulp horror prose spectacularly illustrated and illuminated by Gianni, opening with a masterful vignette by William Hope Hodgson as ‘The Gateway of the Monster’ details the crushing fears and tragic outcomes generated by a haunted room in an English country house… and what celebrated spirit photographer Carnacki the Ghost Breaker must endure to end the appalling threat it poses…

It’s followed by the author’s stand-alone nautical tale ‘A Tropical Horror’, detailing the last voyage of the SS Glen Doon out of Melbourne, relentlessly and systematically stripped of its crew by a sea thing both ravenous and pitiless.

Wry, sardonic humour infuses a seductive tale of a powerful woman who takes what she wants in Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘Mother of Toads’, before Robert E. Howard’s horror western ‘Old Garfield’s Heart’ proves he wasn’t all about bulging thews and swinging swords. He could mix a mood as well as any horror master and inspire some potent illustration too…

Wrapping up the bedtime reading is one last period ghost story of haunted houses and murderous rooms imaginatively illuminated, as ‘Thurnley Abbey’ by Percival Landon, all sealed down with a lavishly illumined ‘Biography’.

Madcap, frenzied, skilfully constructed and just plain fun, MonsterMen and Other Scary Stories is stuffed with astounding imagery, packed with incidental iniquities such as zombie cowboys, squid corsairs, abominable snowmen, spectral skulls, movie phantoms, dark dragons and flabby flying demons, all delivered in snippets of smartly nostalgic nonsense. This is kids’ stuff for adults and there’s simply not enough of it, so get what there is while you can, fright fans!
Gary Gianni’s MonsterMen and Other Scary Stories™ © 1996, 1997, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2017 Gary Gianni. Introduction © 2012, 2017 Michael Chabon. All rights reserved. All other material ™, © or ® respective holders and owners.