Category: Pocket-paperback collections & prose novels

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Rogue Touch


By Christine Woodward (Hyperion)
ISBN: 978-1-4013-1102-5

It seems that the signature genre of comics – the superhero – has at last gained some degree of literary legitimacy. Even if you ignore the collected pulp exploits of Doc Savage or The Shadow, or the assorted novelisations and prose forays from funnybook publishers capitalising on the early success of series like Wild Cards with their own key brands, the timbre of modern times has allowed costumed do-gooders and crazed masterminds to finally break into “real” publishing.

Now even proper book companies have many titles that blend crime, horror, science fiction and the peculiarly comicbook cult of the Over-Man into their mainstream fare.

With that in mind here’s something a little different and probably more in tune with the tastes of female readers, Young Adults and those fans possessing only a passing familiarity with X-Men continuity.

LET ME BE SPECIFIC. THIS IS A NOVEL. THERE ARE NO PICTURES INSIDE.

In the Marvel Universe Rogue was first seen as a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: a disturbed young girl cursed with a power that stole abilities and memories from anybody who touched her skin-to-skin.

It was an ability she could not control or turn off, and any overlong fleshy contact resulted in the victim falling into a coma with their entire history and essence drained into her. Rogue then became a reluctant jailer with stolen powers and personalities locked in her head forever.

Played as a “bad-girl” and mystery woman for years, Rogue grew to become one of the most popular characters in the excessively large X-cast, winning her own miniseries where it was first revealed that as a young girl her powers manifested just as she was kissing her first love Cody Robbins…

With the boy she wanted imprisoned in her head whilst his body permanently shut down, the girl knew she was a freak and monster who must never again experience human contact…

This novel picks up a little later and never mentions any aspect of the Marvel Universe as it begins the story of 20-year old Anna Marie: a reluctant recluse working a dead-end night job at a small bakery in Jackson, Mississippi.

Always wrapped head-to-toe in many layers, the odd night owl one night sees a weird lurking man almost waiting for her. She takes steps to avoid him, the way she avoids everybody who might accidentally touch her and suffer the horrific consequences…

However the non-incident rattles her and gives boss Wendy Lee an excuse to fire her…

All but unemployable and strapped for cash, Anna Marie is forced to apply for food stamps, but waiting in line she sees the same creepy, good-looking guy. However when she challenges him she inadvertently calls attention to the fact that he’s pulling some kind of scam and security guards chase him from the building.

She sees her stalker again on the streets and realises that even in the Mississippi heat the guy is cold and really, really hungry. Without really knowing why, she gives him some of her food stamps…

Over the next few days they keep meeting and become friendlier, but James is a strange and cagy man with an accent she can’t place and the weirdest gaps in his knowledge of everyday life.

Her prospects don’t improve and one night, reduced to desperation, Anna Marie breaks into the bakery, intent on taking food to the value of the severance check she didn’t get. Tragically, Wendy Lee discovers her and in the scuffle makes contact…

Now with a young boy and an old lady stuck in her head, the horrified, guilt-ridden girl realises she has to steal a car and get out of town as soon as possible …and that’s when James drives up, offering her a ride to anywhere she wants…

Thus begins an epic and immensely engaging rollercoaster ride across America as the mismatched loners discover each other and the incredible secrets both are concealing. He prefers to be called “Touch” rather than James and has impossible gifts too. As she slowly allows herself to love the boy, “Rogue” – as he insists on calling her – is forced to accept just how much of a stranger he is… especially once the super-scientific pursuers and monster animals chasing him start to close in on her too.

He also knows far more about her than he at first let on…

Draped in the eternal allure of two kids in love and on the run, and designed to attract readers raised on Roswell High, Sookie Stackhouse, Twilight and generations of road-buddy movies, in Rogue Touch Christine Woodward successfully translates the X-Men’s memory-&-power-leeching Southern Belle into a compelling, alienated but ultimately powerful, self-reliant and triumphant woman in an increasingly fantastic and dangerous world.

Immensely readable and engaging, this is a supremely cunning and clever confection: easily affixable to Marvel’s mutant mythology should you be so inclined, but also a completely self-contained science fiction/young romance thriller that will delight the aficionados of all those so-successful alienated teen prose franchises. There’s even room and scope for a sequel or two…

™ & © 2013 Marvel and Subs. All Rights Reserved.

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Greek Mythology for Beginners


By Joe Lee (For Beginners Books)
ISBN: 978-1-934389-83-6

The heroic tales and legends of the Hellenic Golden Age have for centuries formed an integral part of educational development and the cultural and philosophical – if no longer spiritual – legacy of these stories permeates every aspect of modern society. What we don’t perhaps fully grasp, though, is how this wealth of thought and fable gripped the souls of the ancient world’s paramount aggregation of deep thinkers.

They’re just stories to you and me, but to the world-changing likes of Aristotle, Archimedes, Anaximander Epicurus, Euclid, Diogenes, Plato, Pythagoras, Sophocles, Socrates and the rest – plus those uncounted millions of ordinary citizens of that loose-knit region linked by only geography, language and of course religion – they were as real and profound as the Koran or Bible today.

All theocratic stories are devised to explain away unsolved questions and unknowable mysteries. The liturgical lessons précised here in such engaging prose style and with such effective cartooning were one disparate people’s attempt to rationalise the universe they inhabited.

The For Beginners series of books are heavily illustrated text primers: accessible graphic non-fiction foundation courses in a vast variety of subjects from art to philosophy, politics to history and more, all tackled in a humorous yet readily respectful manner. This particular volume is compiled by Joe Lee, author, cartoonist and historian with degrees from IndianaUniversity (Medieval History) and Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey’s ClownCollege…

Following an Introduction describing our debt to the Ancient world, this fun and fascinating invitation to the meat of the myths commences with a catalogue of leading participants and the intriguing creation myths of the Hellenes in Part 1: The Gods Themselves, from Chaos to Christmas – a sort of chronological introduction to the void from which everything sprang.

An explanation of Chaos is followed in close order by the potted histories of Ouranos and Gaea, the original Eros, The Titans, the Children of Heaven and Earth and The Twelve Olympians – each given their own biography and modus operandi.

This extensive listing of the beings and creatures Greeks prayed to and feared is complemented by The Cavalcade of Other Deities in which we learn of the Other (minor) Gods, such as The Muses, The Fates, The Graces, Dionysus, Demeter, Pan, Adonis, Aeolus, Antaeus, Asclepius, Ate, Attis, Boreas, Charon, Chiron, Eos, Eris, The Gorgons, Harmony, The Harpies, Helios, The Horae, Hypnos, Phantasos, Iris, Nemesis, Nike, Pegasus, The Pleiades, Priapus, Proteus, Selene, Silenus, Thanatos, Tyche and Zephrus.

If you battled your way through that odd yet oddly familiar list you might now have some inkling just how much our world is still informed and coloured by theirs…

There are even more surprises when we learn of The Nonhumans: Centaurs, Dryads, Naiads, Nereids, Nymphs, Oceanids, Oreads, Satyrs, Sileni, Sirens and of course that lethally querulous Egyptian immigrant The Sphinx…

Part II: the Stories that Inform deals with many of the most famous episodes, divided into logical categories for easier assimilation.

The Allegories covers the educationally enriching salutary histories of Pandora, Eros (the second) and Psyche, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion and Galatea, Narcissus and Echo, tragic Daphne, Persephone, Phaeton, donkey-eared Midas, Atalanta, and the brilliant craftsmen Daedalus and Icarus – all episodes redolent with warnings and punishments we simultaneously find apt and arbitrary.

Overweening Moral: Gods are unpredictable and destiny inescapable…

Next come the assorted stirring sagas of The Heroes. Mined voraciously by all modern media, the convoluted histories of Perseus, Bellerophon, Theseus, Jason, Oedipus and Heracles (with a complete rundown on those fabled Twelve Labours from slaying the Nemean Lion to stealing the Golden Apples of the Hesperides), these stories are still beloved and retold: just check out the next Percy Jackson film (…Sea of Monsters) or the burgeoning sub-genre spawned by the remade Clash of the Titans.

And just so’s you know: the Kraken was a Norse, not Hellenic, sea-terror…

This section concludes with an extensive yet abbreviated tour of The Epics of Homer. The Iliad and The Odyssey are a bedrock source for much contemporary prose, poetry and entertainment and you are the poorer if you have not read one of the many excellent translations of these epics…

This engaging appreciation ends with Part III: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Modern World as the incomprehensible influence of Greek thought and spirituality is traced through the rise and fall of Rome, suppressed by Christianity and taken up, shorn of theocratic force and impetus but charged with logical aesthetics by the artists and wise men of The Renaissance.

Thereafter the influence is seen in Neo-Classicism, the philosophical soul-searching of Nietzsche and intellectual probing of Freud (who coined such common if rather inappropriate modern terms as “Oedipus Complex” and “Narcissism”).

Fans should be on particularly solid and familiar ground for the last essay as Popular Culture examines Gods and Monsters in ‘Books’, ‘Comics’ and ‘Movies’ before the author wraps things up in his heartfelt and enticing ‘Conclusion’.

Short, sweet, clever and captivating, this is a delicious entrée into the pervasive, fantastic world of Greek myth and the subtler subtext of our times, and would well suit older kids (who have at least seen cartoon representations of naked men and women before) with an interest in grand stories and amazing adventures…
Text and illustrations © 2013 Joe Lee. All rights reserved.

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Man of Steel – the Official Movie Novelization


By Greg Cox (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78116-599-7                  E-book edition ISBN: 978-1-78116-600-0

As you might have noticed, there’s another Superman movie hitting big screens at the moment and, as is the norm, the movie blockbuster comes with all the usual attendant extras.

Released a week after the premiere of Man of Steel, the Official Movie Novelization recapitulates that tale in an absorbing 320 page paperback – sadly sans any illustrations – for fans of a literary bent, duly expanding the breathtaking visual experience in the adroit, incisive way specialist author Greg Cox has made his own.

Don’t take my word for it: check his adaptations of films such as the Underworld trilogy, Daredevil, Ghost Rider or The Dark Knight Rises, comics series such as Infinite Crisis, Countdown, Final Crisis amongst others, as well as his legion of cult media tie-ins and comics-related books…

Spoiler Alert: since almost everybody alive knows the mythos of Superman by now and the whole point of this latest movie is to reinterpret, reinvigorate and reinstate that legend, I’m going to manfully restrain myself from outlining the plot of this engaging prose package in anything but the vaguest detail, in case you haven’t seen the stunning visual tour de force yet.

Krypton dies and scientific rebels Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van send their newborn son to another world to escape its destruction. However a goodly portion of film and book concentrate on the fabulous, uncanny and war-torn planet where Jor-El struggles with former friend and desperate terrorist General Zod as each strives to preserve Krypton in their diametrically opposed ways, so you won’t be reading about the child of two worlds until chapter seven…

A ship lands in Kansas, years pass and strange, anonymous miracles occur…

A young reporter begins to chart these odd occurrences.

Another star-craft is found, buried millennia-deep in polar ice…

And one day a ghastly extraterrestrial war-craft comes to Earth, full of deadly super-beings hunting someone called Kal-El…

Full of sly in-joke nods to previous comics, film and TV iterations and littered with those arcane snippets of lore beloved by seasoned fans, this engaging yarn, based on the original screenplay by David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, adds some depth to the frantic on-screen spectacle and will delight every Superman that loves to curl up with a good book.

© 2013 DC Comics. MAN OF STEEL and all related characters and elements ™ and © DC Comics.

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Superman


By Otto Binder, Jerry Coleman, Bill Finger, Edmond Hamilton, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye (Four Square/New English Library)
ISBN: 1757

I’ve often bored anyone who would listen about the mini-publishing revolution during the “Camp” superhero-crazed 1960s, which first saw previously denigrated four-colour comic stories migrate from cheap, flimsy pamphlet to the stiffened covers and relative respectability of paperback bookshelves.

I can’t express the sheer nostalgic elation these mostly forgotten fancies still afford (to me at least) so, just because I want to, here’s one that probably qualifies as one of my absolute top three, just in time to cash in on the new Superman film.

Silver Age readers – we just thought of ourselves as “kids” – buying Superman, Action Comics, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, World’s Finest Comics and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (not forgetting Superboy, Adventure Comics and Justice League of America) would delight every time some fascinating snippet of information leaked out. We spent our days filling in the impossible blanks about incredible alien worlds (America as much as Krypton) through the enthralling, thrilling yarns in those halcyon treasures. But somehow when the tales appeared in proper books it made the dream realms a little more substantial; and perhaps even real…

The Man of Steel has proven to be all things to all fans over his 75-year existence and, with the character currently undergoing yet another radical overhaul, these fabulous gems of charm and joy and wholesome wit are more welcome than ever: not just as a reminder of grand times past but also as an all-ages primer for wonders still to come…

At the time this British edition of the New American Library edition was published, the Action Ace was enjoying a youthful swell of revived interest. Thanks to the TV Batman-led boom in superheroes generally and a highly efficient global licensing push, Superman was starring in a new television cartoon show, enjoying a rampant merchandising wave and had even secured his own Broadway musical: all working to keep the Last Son of Krypton a vibrant icon of modern, Space-Age America.

Although we might think of Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s iconic invention as the epitome of comicbook chic, the plain truth is that within months of his landmark 1938 launch in Action Comics #1, Superman had already grown into a multimedia star. Far more people have enjoyed the Man of Steel than have ever read his illustrated exploits and yes, that does include the globally syndicated newspaper strips which have existed since 1939.

By the time his 25th anniversary rolled around he had been a regular on radio, appeared in an eponymous novel by George Lowther and stunned audiences in a series of astounding animated cartoons.

In 1948 and 1950 he starred in a brace of live-action movie serials (Superman and Atom Man vs. Superman) before graduating to a full-length feature in 1951’s Superman and the Mole Men which led in turn to a groundbreaking and long-running television series.

He was a perennial success for toy and puzzle manufacturers and, after six seasons of The Adventures of Superman, an almost seamless succession of TV cartoons began with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966.

In his future were more TV shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark and Smallville), a franchise of stellar movies and, once they’d been invented, computer and video game incarnations. Even super-dog Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

This terrific little black and white paperback pocket book – part of National Periodical Publications’ on-going efforts to reach wider reading audiences – surfaced in 1967 during the “Camp” superhero craze, re-presenting five reformatted Superman stories culled from the archives illustrated by signature illustrator Wayne Boring and all inked by regular collaborator Stan Kaye.

At this time many American comics publishers used the “Batman Bounce” to get out of their ghetto and onto “proper” bookshelves, however understandably DC concentrated most of their efforts on comics compilations and prose novels starring the Dynamic Duo…

The wholesome intrigue and breathtaking fantasy commence here with ‘The Invulnerable Enemy’ written by Otto Binder, and originally seen in Action Comics #226 (March 1957) wherein archaeologists uncovered the statue of a giant gladiator. Further excavation revealed the colossus to be a petrified alien crashed to Earth in ages past. When the Man of Steel brought the unmoving artefact to Metropolis an incredible accident caused by Lex Luthor brought the giant back to life.

The revived relic went on a rampage of destruction with powers even Superman could not cope with until, forced to use wits instead of muscles, the harried hero solved his dilemma and returned the marooned monolith to his proper place…

During the 1950s, even as his comicbook back-story was expanded and elaborated, the Metropolis Marvel had settled into a remarkably ordered existence. Nothing could really hurt him, nothing ever changed, and sheer excitement seemed in short supply. With the TV show concentrating on action, DC’s Comics Code-hamstrung scripters increasingly concentrated on supplying wonder, intrigue, imagination, a few laughs and, whenever possible, drama and pathos…

‘Superman’s 3 Mistakes!’ (by Edmond Hamilton from Superman #105, May 1956) provided both personal revelation and tense suspense when ClarkKent received an anonymous letter which declared that the writer knew his secret. Forced to review his past for cases which might expose evidence of his alter ego, Kent carefully excised all errors but could not learn the identity of his potential blackmailer until a second post-dated letter surfaced…

Superman #127 (February 1959) saw the debut of a hugely popular returning menace in ‘Titano the Super-Ape!’ The chimpanzee had mutated into a gigantic ape with Kryptonite vision after being shot into space, and upon his return caused massive destruction with only Lois Lane able to sooth savage ravages.

Again the Man of Might had to resort to brains not brawn to solve the crisis in a true classic of the period, courtesy of Binder, Boring & Kaye’s sublime treatment which combined action and sentiment to superb effect in a memorable homage to King Kong.

‘The Menace of Cosmic Man’ was a sharp mystery with political overtones written by Bill Finger (Action Comics #258, November 1959) wherein an impoverished European dictatorship improbably announced it had its own all-powerful costumed champion; drawing Lois and Clark into a potentially deadly covert investigation, after which this riot of reformatted revels concludes with ‘The Menace of Red-Green Kryptonite!’ (Jerry Coleman, Action #275, April 1961).

Guest-starring Supergirl, this uncanny conundrum featured a bizarre battle between Superman and alien marauder Brainiac, whose latest weapon combined two isotopes of the deadly radioactive remnants of Krypton to produce a truly weird transformation and inexplicable behavioural changes in the embattled Man of Tomorrow…

Superman has proven to be all things to all fans over his decades of existence and, with the character currently undergoing another overhaul, these peerless parables of power and glory are more welcome than ever: not just as memorial to what has been but also as a benchmark for future tales to aspire to…

This book is probably impossible to find today – even though entirely worth the effort – but whatever format or collection you happen upon, such forgotten stories of the immortal Superman are part of our cultural comics heritage and should never be lost.

You owe it to yourself to know them…
© 1956, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1966 National Periodical Publications. All rights reserved.

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Tales from The House of Mystery


By Jack Oleck, illustrated by Berni Wrightson (Warner Paperback Library)
ISBN: 0-446-75226-6- 095

When superheroes entered their second decline in the early 1970s, four of the six surviving newsstand comicbook companies (Archie, Charlton, DC, Gold Key, Harvey and Marvel) relied increasingly on horror and suspense anthologies to bolster their flagging sales. Even wholesome Archie briefly produced Red Circle Sorcery/Chillers comics and their teen-comedy core moved gently into tales of witchcraft, mystery and imagination.

DC’s first generation of mystery titles had followed the end of the first Heroic Age when most comicbook publishers of the era began releasing crime, romance and horror genre anthologies to recapture the older readership which was drifting away to other mass-market entertainments like television and the movies.

As National Comics in 1951, the company bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology – which nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles – with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

When a hysterical censorship scandal led to witch-hunting hearings attacking comicbooks and newspaper strips (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time) the industry panicked, adopting a castrating straitjacket of stringent self-regulatory rules and admonitions.

Even though mystery/suspense titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, the appetite for suspense was still high, and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected and House of Secrets.

Supernatural thrillers and spooky monster stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, genteel, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles which nonetheless dominated the market until the 1960s when the super-hero returned in force – having begun a renaissance after Julius Schwartz reintroduced the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956.

Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a host of other costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked myrmidons which even forced the dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and Mark Merlin – later Prince Ra-Man – sharing space with anti-hero Eclipso in House of Secrets.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties, folding with the September-October 1966 issue. House of Mystery carried on with its eccentric costumed cohort until #173 and Tales of the Unexpected to #104.

However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits, and at the end of the 1960s the superhero boom busted again, with many titles gone and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain too…

This real-world Crisis led to the surviving publishers of the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at the time, but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Great Unknown, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious “no-brainer.”

Thus with absolutely no fanfare at all House of Mystery and Unexpected switched to scary stories and House of Secrets rose again with issue #81, (cover-dated August-September 1969); retasked and retooled to cater to a seemingly insatiable public appetite for tales of mystery, horror and imagination … Before long a battalion of supernatural suspense titles dominated DC and other companies’ publishing schedules again.

Simultaneously and contiguously, there had been a revolution in popular fiction during the 1950s with a huge expansion of affordable paperback books, driving companies to develop extensive genre niche-markets, such as war, western, romance, science-fiction, fantasy and horror…

Always hungry for more product for their cheap ubiquitous lines, many old novels and short stories collections were republished, introducing new generations to fantastic pulp authors like Robert E. Howard, Otis Adelbert Kline, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and many others.

In 1955, spurred on by the huge parallel success of cartoon and gag book collections, Bill Gaines began releasing paperback compendiums culling the best strips and features from his landmark humour magazine Mad and thus comics’ Silver Age was mirrored in popular publishing by an insatiable hunger for escapist fantasy fiction.

In 1964 Bantam Books began reprinting the earliest pulp adventures of Doc Savage, triggering a revival of pulp prose superheroes, and seemed the ideal partner when Marvel began a short-lived attempt to “novelise” their comicbook stable with The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker and Captain America in the Great Gold Steal.

Although growing commercially by leaps and bounds, Marvel in the early 1960s was still hampered by a crippling distribution deal limiting the company to 16 titles (which would curtail their output until 1968), so each new comicbook had to fill the revenue-generating slot (however small) of an existing title. Even though the costumed characters were selling well, each new title would limit the company’s breadth of genres (horror, western, war, etc) and comics were still a very broad field at that time. It was putting a lot of eggs in one basket and superheroes had failed twice before for Marvel.

As Stan Lee cautiously replaced a spectrum of genre titles and specialised in superheroes, a most fortunate event occurred with the advent of the Batman TV show in January 1966. Almost overnight the world went costumed-hero crazy and many publishers repackaged their old comics stories in cheap and cheerful, digest-sized monochrome paperbacks. Archie, Tower, Marvel and DC all released such reformatted strip books and the latter two carried on their attempts to legitimise their output by getting them into actual bookshops to this day.

Released in 1973, when the horror boom was at its peak, Tales from The House of Mystery was another attempt to breach the bookshop barrier. A prose anthology by veteran comics scripter Jack Oleck, the compendium adapted and modified, for a presumed older audience, eight short scary stories from the comics, each magnificently illustrated by DC’s top terror artist “Berni” Wrightson, who also provided a moodily evocative frontispiece starring the comic’s macabre host Cain and the stunning painted cover above.

The wry, dry shock-ending mini-epics begin with ‘Chamber of Horrors’ wherein a violently paranoid young man gets the notion that the newcomers in town are a family of vampires, after which ‘Nightmare’ reveals the uncanny fate of an obnoxious American vacationer who was determined to ruin a day-trip to Stonehenge for all those gullible over-imaginative fools on the tour bus…

‘Collector’s Item’ related how two old friends sharing a passion for coin collecting met a ghastly fate after squabbling over some particularly impressive specimens from ancient Judea, and ‘Born Loser’ proved that for some poor schmucks even magic wasn’t enough to escape a shrewish wife and the consequences of murder…

‘Tomorrow, the World’ detailed the efforts of a concerned psychiatrist who was unable to shake the convictions of his hopeless patient that a coven of witches and warlocks was about to conquer the world for Satan, whilst the bittersweet romance of ‘The Haunting’ revealed a shocking truth about the house acquired by devoted newlyweds Joel and Peggy.

Voodoo and reincarnation proved the lie to the maxim ‘You Only Die Once’ after a French plantation owner thought he had gotten away with murdering his coldly disdainful wife, and this brief box of dark delights ends on a savagely ironic and even cruel note as well-meaning social workers and doctors cure a desolated lame orphan of his foolish belief in a happy fantasy land by an ‘Act of Grace’…

By today’s standards this octet of occult thrillers might seem a little tame or dated, and the experiment clearly had no lasting effect on either comics or book consumers, but this little oddity is still a fascinating experiment that will delight comics completists, arch-nostalgics and fantasy fans alike…
© 1973 National Periodical Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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An Army of Frogs – A Kulipari Novel


By Trevor Pryce with Joel Naftali, illustrated by Sanford Greene (Amulet)
ISBNB: 978-1-4197-01726

We haven’t covered a straight kid’s prose novel (with the mandatory secret ingredient of loads of cool pictures) for a while now, so it’s good to break that particular duck (sorry, British Sporting metaphor – best look it up under cricket, as I’m being annoyingly clever here…) with a fascinating new series debut from NFL football-star turned author Trevor Pryce, his authorial collaborator Joel Naftali and illustrator Sanford Greene, all dedicated to addressing and rectifying a long-standing literary disparity.

These days, it’s hard enough to get any kid into reading but of late stories targeting – and of interest to – young boys have been pretty much non-existent. Back in the dark ages when we read by candlelight, there was a wealth of essentially Boy’s Only fiction, ranging from fantasies like Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky or Clive King’s Stig of the Dump to uncounted war and detective stories of Biggles, Sexton Blake and their square-jawed ilk, classroom classics such as Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Billy Bunter or Just William, tales of innumerable sporting heroes and perennial adventure landmarks like Treasure Island, Ivanhoe, Call of the Wild and so forth.

There were also loads and loads of other books and series like Narnia tales or The Hobbit but those were a bit egalitarian: equally enjoyable by most girls too – so they didn’t count…

Whilst laudable on so many levels, the increasingly generalised fiction experience over the decades left a lot of lads with no introductory boyish literary equivalent to modern men’s fiction: the Sven Hassels, Zane Greys, Alistair Macleans and Mickey Spillanes who service those particularly manly mainstays of fighting, chasing, outwitting and overpowering your properly evil enemies.

I mean these days even Daleks and Klingons are merely misunderstood and have their own valid points of view…

Seeking to tackle the problem of a whole sub-set of youngsters who just give up on reading, the creators involved here pulled off a masterful trick. This is a “boys book” girls, parents and all other softies are going to want to see too…

In the Outback of Australia Darel is a young frog who dreams of being a mighty warrior just like the vanished Kulipari Poison Frogs of legend.

When the horrendous spell-casting Spider Queen Jarrah and massed scorpion armies tried to invade and consume the lush Amphibilands long ago, those valiant heroes led the frog and turtle resistance, ultimately giving their all to save everyone from annihilation. Now everybody lives in idyllic peace, safely hidden from further assault by supreme Sergu, the Turtle King who dream-cast a mystic Veil around the oasis, masking it from all predators – especially the ever-growing, always hungry, malevolently rapacious scorpion horde.

Darel’s dream is no idle childish fantasy: although his mother was an ordinary wood frog (as is he), his father was Kulipari and heroically gave his life to save the wetland paradise from ultimate destruction during The Hidingwar.

These day’s though, nobody really cares about the old stories: safe and complacent behind the Veil, the various frog tribes carry on their dull, happy lives and don’t care to remember the bad old days…

Even Darel’s best friends Gurnagan and Coorah just play along as the frustrated would-be champion constantly practises fighting, sneaking and strategising, preparing for a day which might never come.

Just in case…

Out in the harsh desert badlands however, supreme scorpion Lord Marmoo plans to destroy the Veil forever and feast on the frogs he knows reside beyond it. To facilitate his scheme he has entered into a risky alliance with monstrous Jarrah and even recruited divisions of lizards and “sandpaper frogs” – debased mercenaries who would do anything, even betraying their own kind for profit…

One day, whilst hunting herbs for apprentice healer Coorah at the very edge of the all-concealing barrier, Darel and Gurnagan encounter a scorpion reconnaissance party ensorcelled by the Spider Queen to breach the hem of the Veil and lay the foundations of the mystic shield’s destruction. Further out, the terrified froglets can see an impossibly huge army just waiting in the shimmering sands for the fall of the wall…

Sensing his moment has come, Darel sends faithful “Gee” back to warn the village whilst he spies on the invaders but Gurnagan is quickly captured and dragged off before he can carry out his task.

With all hope resting in his pads, Darel boldly infiltrates the Scorpion Lord’s camp to save his friend, and begins an astonishing heroic odyssey that will bring his people and homelands to the brink of extinction and take him to the mythic allies needed to fulfil his inescapable destiny…

Superbly illustrated by Sanford Greene who provides maps, character studies and more than fifty fascinating fun and scary full-colour illustrations, An Army of Frogs is an enthralling and captivatingly rousing read which rattles along and will hopefully lead to a host of stirring sequels.

Text © 2013 Trevor Pryce. Illustrations © 2013 Sanford Greene. All rights reserved.

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Joe Golem and the Drowning City – an Illustrated Novel


By Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s Press)
ISBN: 978-0-312-64473-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: merry hell and utterly engrossing… 8/10

As well as being involved with some of the very best superhero yarns of the late 20th century, Legendary fantasist and comics-creator Mike Mignola has carved himself a splendid and memorable niche in the industry’s history by revitalising the sub-genre of horror-heroes via his superb Hellboy, B.P.R.D. and Lobster Johnson tales, creating his own very special dark place where thrill-starved fans can wallow in all things dire and dreadful…

Clearly he has far more ideas than he can successfully manage in one lifetime as well as a deep and abiding love for the classical supernatural thriller medium, as evidenced by this superb pastiche of the writings of horror pioneers H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth tinctured with lashings of pulp adventure flavourings in the manner of Clark Ashton Smith, Walter B. Gibson and Robert E. Howard…

You won’t remember it, but in 1925 a horrific earthquake shifted the bedrock of Manhattan and half of New York City sank 30-odd feet beneath the greasy, salty waves. The rich glitterati relocated to shiny Uptown towers with the most incredible seafront vistas whilst the less fortunate had to adapt to a life of crushing, inundating poverty and ramshackle survival, scavenging in the appalling, un-policed canals and underwater alleys of the sordidVenice that was “Downtown”.

The decades passed in this tidal backwater and the lowly ones who had no place else to go adapted, as always, to radical changes. One such was Felix Orlov, a stage conjuror who discovered over the years that he had a rare and genuine talent as a medium. Felix could speak to and for the dead but, now in his twilight years, could never leave the drowned theatre he loved. Thus he eked out a tenuous existence among the bereaved and bereft with only 14 year old Molly McHugh as his housekeeper and companion.

Years ago Orlov had saved her from the ubiquitous degenerate prowling scum dubbed Water Rats, and as his faculties diminished she had come to think of him as her father. She was certainly most useful whenever clients came seeking his unique services…

Increasingly over the last fifty years Felix had been plagued by impossible dreams of uncanny rites, shapeless monstrosities and a ghastly sacrifice, but this morning was the worst ever. All the same the old trouper brushed aside Molly’s concerns and carried on with the morning’s scheduled séance. It was the last he would ever conduct…

During contact with the Other Side something appalling and unknown gripped him, just as in the material world impossibly sturdy and terrifyingly vigorous gas-masked thugs burst into his home and kidnapped the possessed Orlov’s withered corporeal frame.

They wanted Molly too but her survival-honed instincts enabled her to escape and lead them a deadly dance through the submerged underworld of Downtown.

She had no plan except escape and was down to her last erg of energy when the mysterious hulking brute named Joe intervened, battling the pursuers and discovering that the hunters were anything but human…

Joe’s rescue of Molly was no accident: he had been dispatched by his boss to save both magician and assistant but had arrived too late. With only half his mission accomplished, the bluff, friendly giant was in no mood to deal with Molly’s very sensible suspicions. When she tried to bolt again, Joe chloroformed her…

The frantic girl awoke within a fantastic sanctum and was introduced to the world’s most famous consulting detective, a ghost-haunted genius who had worked with Scotland Yard since Victoria’s time, now keeping his feeble frame alive long after his human meat had failed by installing self-built organs powered by steam and run by clockwork.

…And magic; bleak, black magic…

The man named Simon Church had an incredible tale to tell: of a prolonged duel with a mad thaumaturgical scientist named Doctor Cocteau, an astounding threat from the outer depths of human imagination, elder gods and the harsh unpalatable truth about Molly’s missing employer and father figure…

What he didn’t tell her was the even more incredible truth about Joe, even as he sent them both off to recover the fabled mystic artefact Lector’s Pentajulum and quite possibly save all of humanity from a madman’s lethal hubris.

However Cocteau wasn’t the only driven savant with an audacious hunger for forbidden knowledge which might result in a malign, supernal invasion from things utterly beyond mortal comprehension…

Fast-paced, moody and completely captivating, this rollercoaster of tension and thrills by Mignola and long-term co-writer Christopher Golden blends the ghastly brooding chills of Cthulu with the derring-do of Indiana Jones in a boldly alternate time and place to maximum effect.

This excellent late night love-affair with a grotesque golden age rattles and roars along buoyed up with ebullient, heroic-culture distillations both refreshingly familiar yet engagingly novel, with ghosts and monsters rubbing misshaped shoulders in sunken lairs and seedy dives (sorry, couldn’t resist) as a tough-as-nails big softie and a hard-bitten slip of a girl unite to save a world not quite our own…

Described as a steam-punk adventure, the scintillating saga contained within this reassuringly square-cut, hardbound and satisfyingly rustic tome is adorned with 69 grittily monochrome full, half, third and quarter-page illustrations by the artist to comprise a joyous homage to the necromantic good old days.

Miss it at your peril, fright fans…
© 2012 Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. All rights reserved.

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Stan Lee Presents the Amazing Spider-Man volume 2


By Stan Lee & Steve Ditko, with Jack Kirby (Marvel/Pocket Books)
ISBN: 978-0-67181-444-1

Perhaps I have a tendency to over-think things regarding the world of graphic narrative, but it seems to me that the medium, as much as the message, radically affects the way we interpret our loves and fascinations. Take this pint-sized full-colour treat from 1978.

It’s easy to assume that a quickly resized, repackaged paperback book collection of the early comics extravaganzas was just another Marvel cash-cow in their perennial “flood the marketplace” sales strategy – and maybe it was – but as someone who bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years I have to admit that this compact version has a distinct charm and attraction all its own…

During the Marvel Renaissance of the early 1960’s Stan Lee & Jack Kirby followed the same path which had worked so tellingly for DC Comics, but with less obviously successful results.

This is another brilliant glimpse at how our industry’s gradual inclusion into mainstream literature began and is one more breathtaking paperback package for action fans and nostalgia lovers, offering yet another chance to enjoy some of the best and most influential comics stories of all time.

After a few abortive attempts in the 1960s to storm the shelves of bookstores and libraries, from the mid-1970s Marvel made a concerted and comprehensive effort to get their wares into more socially acceptable formats. As the decade closed, purpose-built graphic collections and a string of new prose adventures tailored to feed into their all-encompassing continuity began oh, so slowly to appear.

Whereas the merits of the latter are a matter for a different review, the company’s careful reformatting of classic comics adventures were generally excellent; a superb and recurring effort to generate back-history primers and a perfect – if perilous – alternative venue to introduce fresh readers to their unique worlds.

The dream project was never better represented than in this classy little crime-busting collection. Marvel was frequently described as “the House that Jack Built” and King Kirby’s contributions are undeniable and inescapable in the creation of a new kind of comicbook story-telling, but there was another unique visionary toiling at Atlas-Comics-as-was: one whose creativity and even philosophy seemed diametrically opposed to the bludgeoning power, vast imaginative scope and clean, broad lines of Kirby’s ever-expanding search for the external and infinite.

Steve Ditko was quiet and unassuming, voluntarily diffident to the point of invisibility, though his work was both subtle and striking.

Innovative, meticulously polished, and often displaying genuine warmth and affection, Ditko’s art and storytelling always managed to capture minute human detail as he ever explored the man within. He found heroism, humour and ultimate evil; all contained within the frail but noble confines of humanity’s scope and consciousness. His drawing could be oddly disquieting… and, when he wanted, certainly scary.

Drawing extremely well-received monster and mystery tales for Stan Lee, Ditko had been given his own title. Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy featured a subtler brand of yarn than Rampaging Aliens and Furry Underpants Monsters which, though individually entertaining, had been slowly losing traction in the world of comics ever since National/DC had successfully reintroduced costumed heroes.

Lee & Kirby had responded with Fantastic Four and the ahead-of-its-time Incredible Hulk but there was no indication of the renaissance to come when the already cancelled Amazing Fantasy #15 cover-featured a brand new and somewhat eerie adventure character.

Of course, by now you’re all aware of how outcast, geeky school kid Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and, after seeking to cash-in on the astonishing abilities he developed, suffered an irreconcilable personal tragedy and determined henceforward to always use his powers to help those in dire need…

After a shaky start The Amazing Spider-Man quickly became a popular sensation with kids of all ages, rivalling the creative powerhouse that was Lee & Kirby’s Fantastic Four and soon the quirky, charming action-packed comics soap-opera would become the model for an entire generation of younger heroes elbowing aside the staid, (relatively) old costumed-crimebusters of previous publications.

This second resized, repackaged Fights ‘n’ Tights bonanza (reprising Amazing Spider-Man #7-13 from 1963-1964) opens, after the mandatory Stan Lee Prologue, with an encore appearance of the Wall-crawler’s first super-powered foe, as a murderous septuagenarian flying bandit at first defeated his juvenile nemesis before falling to the Web-spinner’s boundless bravery and ingenuity in a spectacular duel above the city in ‘The Return of the Vulture’.

Fun and youthful hi-jinks were a signature feature of the series, as was Parker’s budding romance with “older woman” Betty Brant, a secretary at the Daily Bugle where Peter Parker worked part-time.

Such “Salad days” exuberance was the underlying drive in #8′s lead tale ‘The Living Brain!’ when an ambulatory robot calculator threatened to expose Spider-Man’s secret identity before running amok at beleaguered Midtown High, just as Parker was finally beating the stuffings out of school bully and personal gadfly Flash Thompson.

This riotous romp was accompanied by ‘Spiderman Tackles the Torch!’ (a short and sweet vignette drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Ditko) wherein a boisterous wall-crawler gate-crashed a beach party thrown by the flaming hero’s girlfriend… with explosive consequences.

Amazing Spider-Man #9 was a qualitative step-up in dramatic terms as Peter’s aged Aunt May was revealed to be chronically ill – adding to the lad’s financial woes – and the action was supplied by ‘The Man Called Electro!’ a super-criminal with grand aspirations.

Spider-Man was always a loner, never far from the dark, grimy streets filled with small-time thugs and criminals and with this tale, wherein he also quells a prison riot single handed, Ditko’s preference for tales of gangersterism began to show through; a predilection confirmed in #10′s ‘The Enforcers!’, a classy mystery where a masked mastermind known as the Big Man used a position of trust at the Bugle to organize all the New York mobs into one unbeatable army against decency.

Longer plot-strands were also introduced as Betty mysteriously vanished (her fate to be revealed in the next issue and here the next chapter), but most fans remember this one for the spectacularly climactic seven-page fight scene in an underworld chop-shop that has still never been topped for action-choreography.

The taint of tragedy again touched Parker with a magical two-part adventure ‘Turning Point’ and ‘Unmasked by Dr. Octopus!’ which saw the return of the lethally deranged and deformed scientist – complete with formidable mentally-controlled metal tentacles – and the disclosure of a long-hidden secret which had haunted poor Betty Brant for years.

The dark, doom-filled tale of extortion and excoriating tension stretched from Philadelphia to the Bronx Zoo and cannily tempered the trenchant melodrama with stunning fight scenes in unusual and exotic locations, before culminating in a truly staggering super-powered duel as only the masterful Ditko could orchestrate it.

This tension-drenched tiny tome concludes with the introduction of a new super-threat and ‘The Menace of Mysterio!’ as a seemingly eldritch bounty-hunter hired by Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson to capture Spider-Man eventually revealed his own dark agenda.

Of course the menace was only ended after another mind-boggling battle, this time through the various exotic sets and props of a TV studio…

These mini-masterpieces of drama, action and suspense immaculately demonstrated the indomitable nature of this perfect American hero, and I suppose in the final reckoning how you come to the material is largely irrelevant; just as long as you do…

These immortal epics are available in numerous formats.
© 1978 Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved.

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Superman’s First Flight


By Michael Jan Friedman & Dean Motter (Scholastic)
ISBN: 978-0-43909-550-1

We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but characters such as Batman, Spider-Man, the X-Men and Superman long ago outgrew their four-colour origins and are now fully mythologized modern media creatures instantly familiar in mass markets, platforms and age ranges.

Another captivating case in point is this beguilingly enthralling retelling of the Man of Steel’s formative journey to self-discovery retold for the very young as part of the Hello Reader early-learning program devised by Children’s publisher Scholastic.

Categorised as Level 3 (school years 1 and 2, with Level 2 being kindergarten and 1 as pre-schoolers) the story crosses that crucial divide wherein parents still read to their kids, but the little tykes are also beginning that wonderful, magical journey into literacy by themselves…

This clever, sensitive and age-appropriate retelling by Michael Jan Friedman encapsulates and addresses every maturing child’s growing feelings of potential alienation, sense of growth, self-discovery and independence by focussing on High School kid Clark Kent on the day that the solitary teen discovered why he had always felt somehow different from his classmates.

When Clark suddenly, impossibly, heard and saw a car crash from miles away, without thinking he found himself running and jumping over buildings. Arriving on the scene he tore metal doors off burning cars and outraced an explosion to save a trapped driver…

Terrified that he might be a monster he confided in his parents, who promptly shared a secret they’d been harbouring all Clark’s life. In the barn they showed the lad a tiny one-man spaceship which had crashed to Earth years ago, carrying an alien baby…

As Clark approached the capsule a hologram activated and the boy saw his birth-parents Jor-El and Lara who explained why he could perform feats no one else could…

Shocked and distraught, Clark ran away as fast as he could and before he knew it was flying high above the world. The glorious shock at last made him realise that different didn’t mean bad…

And soon the world was daily made better by a visitor from afar known as Superman…

This enthralling little adventure is a cleverly weighed introduction into the Man of Tomorrow’s past, magnificently complemented by 31 painted illustrations by gifted design guru and illustrator Dean Motter that will amaze kids and astound even their jaded, seen-it-all-before elders.

No Supermaniac could consider their collection complete without a copy of this wonderful little gem and Superman’s First Flight is the ideal introduction for youngsters to their – surely – life-long love affair with reading…
© 2000 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman’s Dark Secret


By Kelley Puckett & Jon J Muth (Cartwheel Books/Scholastic)
ISBN: 978-0-43909-551-8

We insular and possessive comics fans tend to think of our greatest assets in purely graphic narrative terms, but characters such as Superman, Spider-Man and Batman have long-since grown beyond their origins and are now fully mythologised modern media creatures instantly familiar in mass markets, platforms and age ranges.

A case in point is this beguilingly enthralling retelling of Batman’s origin intended for the very young as part of the Hello Reader early-learning program devised by Children’s publisher Scholastic.

Categorised as Level 3 (school years 1 and 2, with Level 2 being kindergarten and 1 as pre-school) the story crosses that crucial divide wherein parents still read to their kids, but the little tykes are also beginning that wonderful, magical journey into literacy by themselves…

This clever, sensitive and age-appropriate retelling by Kelly Puckett follows young Bruce Wayne as he enjoys a movie-night revival of the swashbuckling film Zorro and the life-altering encounter and tragic fate of his parents in that dank, enclosed, lightless alley behind the cinema. The loss and trauma led to the orphan becoming solitary, sad and afraid of the dark despite every effort of butler-turned-guardian Alfred until an unhappy accident turned the boy’s life around forever…

One day Bruce stayed out in the rolling grounds of Wayne Manor far too late until he suddenly realised that the sun was setting. Racing back to the bright, luminescent safety of the big house he abruptly fell through a weak patch of ground into a huge cave beneath the mansion and found himself in utter blackness.

Fighting blind panic he brushed past many tiny bats, but they didn’t scare him. However when a giant, red-eyed, leather-winged monster started towards him Bruce swung wildly at it and realised that the big bat was actually afraid of him. Something changed in him then and fear left his heart forever…

He knew that he could fight wicked things with fear and the dark as his weapons…

This enthralling little adventure is a perfectly balanced and well-gauged baptism into Batman’s world, magnificently complemented by thirty stunning painted illustrations by master of mood and mystery Jon J. Muth that will delight kids and astound even their jaded, seen-it-all-before elders.

No Batfan should consider their collection complete without a copy of this wonderful little gem and Batman’s Dark Secret is the ideal introduction for youngsters to their – hopefully – life-long love affair with reading…
© 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All Rights Reserved.