Category: Pocket-paperback collections & prose novels

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Batman: Terror of the High Skies


By Joe R. Lansdale, illustrated by Edward Hannigan & Dick Giordano (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN: 0-316-17765-2   ISBN-13: 978-0-316-17765-8

We parochial comics fans tend to think of our greatest assets in purely graphic narrative terms, but characters such as Superman, Spider-Man and especially Batman have long-since grown beyond their origins and are now fully modern mythological creatures who inhabit a mass of medias and even age ranges.

A case in point is this superbly rowdy, rollicking and rousing boy’s own adventure which was released in the early 1990s as part of the perennial drive to get kids reading…

Terror of the High Skies was written by the brilliant and prolific Texan Joe R. Lansdale, whose credits range from novels to screenplays and cartoons to comicbooks in genres as broad as horror, comedy, westerns, crime-thrillers, fantasy science fiction and all points in between, and he is as adept at challenging adult audiences as he is beguiling – far harder to impress – young readerships…

The tale begins as young Toby Tyler slowly adjusts to life in Gotham City after growing up in Mud Creek East Texas. One night as his parents play host to old friend – and Police Commissioner – Jim Gordon, Toby hears a cat in distress and climbs out of his bedroom window onto the roof of his building, only to find a flying galleon heaving-to and the infamous Joker capering about in the guise of a movie pirate.

Toby’s a big fan of films and keeps up to date on the news, so when the Mountebank of Mirth makes the kid walk the plank off the roof he hears some clues that will eventually lead to the Clown Prince’s defeat…

It’s also where he first meets the daring Dark Knight as Batman swoops out of the darkness to save him before confronting the Joker and his gang of plundering sky-pirates…

Already deeply involved in solving taunting card-clues to the villain’s future crimes, Batman comes close to ending the case right there, but the wily Harlequin of Hate hastily escapes and embarks on a campaign of pirate-themed plundering, unaware that the plucky Toby has deduced where and when he will strike next…

With the focus very much on the valiant boy – just as young Jim Hawkins is the narrative voice of “Treasure Island” – readers are treated to a splendid adventure as Toby is allowed to join Batman’s search for the Joker in a fantastic chase that encompasses a visit to the Batcave, meeting and rescuing his favourite horror-film actor, “stowing away” aboard the floating marauder, facing a (mechanical) sea monster and eventually foiling a spectacular scheme to unleash a wave of madness on the unsuspecting city…

Bold, fast-paced and engaging; delivered very much in the manner of Batman the Animated Series (for which Lansdale wrote a number of episodes), this delightful prose escapade is also graced with eight breathtaking full-page action-illustrations by Batman veterans Ed Hannigan & Dick Giordano and would make a perfect primer for younger fans to begin their – hopefully – life-long love affair with reading…
© 1992 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Published under license from DC Comics.

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The Fantastic Four Collectors Album & The Fantastic Four Return (Paperbacks)


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & various (Lancer)
“ISBNs” 72-111 and 72-169

Here’s a final brace of Swinging Sixties “Pop-Art” compendia celebrating the meteoric rise of the Little House that Stan, Jack and Steve Built, which will probably be of interest only to inky-fingered nostalgics, fan fanatics collectors and historical obsessive pickers, but as I’m all of them and it’s my party:

Far more than a writer or Editor; Stan Lee was also a master of entrepreneurial publicity generation and his tireless schmoozing and exhaustive attention-seeking was as crucial as the actual characters and stories in promoting his burgeoning line of superstars.

In the 1960s most adults, especially many of the professionals who worked in the field, considered comic-books a ghetto. Some disguised their identities whilst others were “just there until they caught a break”. Stan and creative lynchpins Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko had another idea – change the perception.

Whilst Kirby and Ditko pursued their respective creative credos and craft, waiting for the quality of the work to be noticed, Stan pursued every opportunity to break down the ghetto walls: college lecture tours, animated shows (of frankly dubious quality at the start, but always improving), foreign franchising and of course getting their product onto mainstream bookshelves in real book shops.

There had been a revolution in popular fiction during the 1950s with a huge expansion of affordable paperback books, and companies developed extensive genre niche-markets, such as war, western, romance, science-fiction and fantasy.

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 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 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, and it’s easy to assume that Marvel’s resized book collections were just another company cash-cow, part of their perennial “flood the marketplace” sales strategy, but it’s just not true.

Lee’s deal with Lancer to publish selected adventures in handy paperback editions had begun a year earlier with The Fantastic Four Collectors Album. Other comics publishers – National/DC, Tower Comics and Archie – were just as keen to add some credibility and even literary legitimacy to their efforts, but were caught playing catch-up in the fresh new marketplace.  Moreover, when Lancer began releasing Marvel’s Mightiest in potent and portable little collections it was simple to negotiate British iterations of those editions.

Except for the FF – as far as I can ascertain neither of the books on display here ever had a UK edition.

A word about artwork here: modern comics are almost universally full-coloured in Britain and America, but for over a century black and white was the only real choice for most mass market publishers – additional (colour) plates being just too expensive for shoe-string operations to indulge in. Even the colour of 1960s comics was cheap, and primitive and solid black line, expertly applied by master artists, was the very life-force of sequential narrative.

These days computer enhanced art can hide a multitude of weaknesses – if not actual pictorial sins – but back then companies lived or died on the illustrating skills of their artists: so even in basic black and white (and the printing of paperbacks was as basic as the accountants and bean-counters could get it) the Kirbys and Ditkos of the industry exploded out of those little pages and electrified the readership.

I can’t see that happening with many modern artists deprived of their slick paper and multi-million hued colour palettes…

This first stellar volume from the utterly on-form Lee, Kirby & Dick Ayers opened with a couple of second appearances as the deadly Doctor Doom allied with a reluctant but gullible Sub-Mariner to attack our quirky quartet in ‘Captives of the Deadly Duo!’ (FF #6, 1962)

In this first Marvel super-villain team up Prince Namor‘s growing affection for the team’s female member forced the sub-sea stalwart to save his foes from dire death in outer space – but only after Doom tried to kill him too…

That superb classic was actually split into two sections and interrupted by a quick recap of the origin, cobbled together from #1 and #11…

The Fantastic Four saw maverick scientist Reed Richards summon his girl-friend Sue Storm, their friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother Johnny before heading off on their first mission. In a flashback we discover they are driven survivors of a private space-shot which went horribly wrong when Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding. They crashed back to Earth where they found that they’d all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks…

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible, Johnny Storm could turn into living flame and tragic Ben turned into a shambling, rocky freak. Shaken but unbowed they vow to dedicate their new abilities to benefiting mankind…

After a series of stunning solo pin-ups by Kirby & Joe Sinnott, ‘The Impossible Man’ also from #11 (February 1963) followed; depicting a bizarre, baddie-free yet compellingly light-hearted tale about a fun-seeking but obnoxiously omnipotent visitor from the stars who only wants to have fun, and could only be “defeated” by boredom…

Following Super Skrull and Molecule Man pin-ups, ‘The Mad Menace of the Macabre Mole Man!’ (Lee, Kirby & Chic Stone from issue #31, October 1964) saw the uncanny underground outcast try once more to conquer the surface world in a stunning tale which balanced a loopy plan to steal entire streets of New York City with a portentous sub-plot featuring a mysterious man from Sue’s past. Presumably to avoid confusion a rather fractious spat over jurisdiction with the Mighty Avengers was excised from this edition…

To complete the graphic wonderment this initial outing ends with pin-ups of the Hate Monger and the dastardly Diablo as well as a house ad for the burgeoning Marvel Comics Line…

The Fantastic Four Return (Guest Star Sub-Mariner) was the penultimate Marvel/Lancer edition, released in 1967 and opening with ‘The Final Victory of Dr. Doom!’ from Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1964, by Lee, Kirby & Stone) and saw the mysterious monarch of Latveria brazenly attack the quartet only to suffer his most galling defeat, after which ‘Side-by-Side with Sub-Mariner!’ brought the aquatic anti-hero one step closer to his own series when the team lent surreptitious aid to the embattled undersea monarch against the hordes of deadly sub-sea barbarian Attuma in a blistering battle yarn by Lee, Kirby & Stone from FF #33 (December 1964).

‘Calamity on the Campus!’ (FF #35 February 1965 by the same creative team) saw the heroes visit Reed Richard’s old Alma Mater in a tale designed to pander to the burgeoning college fan-base Marvel was cultivating, but the rousing yarn that brought back Diablo and introduced the monstrous homunculus Dragon Man easily stands up as a classic on its own merits, full of spectacular action and even advancing the moribund romance between Reed and Sue to the point that he would actually propose in the months to come…

This superb book only boasts one pin-up but it is a classic shot of the mighty and regal Sub-Mariner by Kirby & Stone…

As someone who bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years – including the constantly recycled reprints in British weeklies from the mid-sixties to the 1980s – I have to admit that the classy classic paperback editions have a charm and attraction all their own even if they are heavily edited and abridged and rather disturbingly printed in both portrait and landscape format…

If you’ve not read these tales before then there are certainly better places to do so (such as the pertinent Essential or Marvel Masterwork volumes) but even with all the archaic and just plain dumb bits these books are still fabulous super-hero sagas with beautiful art that will never stale or wither, and for us backward-looking Baby-boomers these nostalgic pocket tomes have an incomprehensible allure that logic just can’t tarnish or taint…
© 1966 and 1967 Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved.

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The Mighty Thor! Collector’s Album – US and UK editions


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & various (Lancer/Four Square)
“ISBNs” 72-125 (Lancer) & 1918 (Four Square)

Here’s another brace of Swinging Sixties “Pop-Art” compendiums celebrating the meteoric rise of the Little House that Stan, Jack and Steve Built which will probably be of interest only to incurable nostalgics, consumed collectors and historical nit-pickers, but as I’m all of them and it’s my dime…

Far more than a writer or Editor; Stan Lee was also a master of entrepreneurial publicity generation and his tireless schmoozing and exhaustive attention-seeking was as crucial as the actual characters and stories in promoting his burgeoning line of superstars.

In the 1960s most adults, especially many of the professionals who worked in the field, considered comic-books a ghetto. Some disguised their identities whilst others were “just there until they caught a break”. Stan and creative lynchpins Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko had another idea – change the perception.

Whilst Kirby and Ditko pursued their respective creative credos and craft, waiting for the quality of the work to be noticed, Stan pursued every opportunity to break down the ghetto walls: college lecture tours, animated shows (of frankly dubious quality at the start, but always improving), foreign franchising and of course getting their product onto mainstream bookshelves in real book shops.

There had been a revolution in popular fiction during the 1950s with a huge expansion of affordable paperback books and companies developed extensive genre niche-markets, such as war, western, romance, science-fiction and fantasy.

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 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 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, and it’s easy to assume that Marvel’s resized book collections were just another company cash-cow, part of their perennial “flood the marketplace” sales strategy, but it’s just not true.

Lee’s deal with Lancer to publish selected adventures in handy paperback editions had begun a year earlier and the other funnybook publishers – including National/DC, Tower Comics and Archie – also desperate to add some credibility and even literary legitimacy to their efforts as well as increased profits these forays onto the world’s bookshelves – were caught playing catch-up in the fresh new marketplace.

Moreover, when Lancer began releasing Marvel’s Mightiest in potent and portable little collections it was simple to negotiate British iterations of those editions – although they were not as cheap and had far shorter page-counts – since thanks to Lee’s international expansion drive the characters, creators and stories were already very familiar to British readers, appearing both in Odhams‘ weekly comics Wham!, Pow!, Smash!, Fantastic and Terrific, but also (since 1959) in black and white monthly anthologies comicbooks published by Alan Class which had been bundling up reprinted material from a variety of American companies including Charlton, Tower, I.W., Gold Key, Archie, ACG and others.

As I’ve already mentioned US and UK editions vary significantly. Although both re-present – in truncated, resized monochrome – early Marvel tales, the British Four Square editions are a measly 128 pages, as opposed to the 176 page Lancer editions: necessitating missing stories and odd filler pages. Moreover the UK books are fronted by deliberately garish and poorly drawn “cartoony covers” instead of the American art by Ditko and Kirby, as if the publishers were embarrassed by the content…

Still, considering how many different prose publishing houses have chance their arm on such projects over the years, their editors must also have believed there was money to be made from comics too…

Also it’s impossible to deny that the book editions were fun, thrilling and just, plain cool…

In 1966 The Mighty Thor! Collectors Album was the fourth release from Lancer, with the British edition debuting a year later and although the US and UK editions are quite similar the latter frustrating omits an entire story – the concluding chapter of a two-part story!

Also glaringly omitted from both editions was the origin so in case you’re not au fait with the modern legend here’s a quick recap just for you…

Lonely, crippled American doctor Donald Blake took a vacation in Norway only to encounter the vanguard of an alien invasion. Trapped in a cave, Blake found a gnarled old walking stick, which when struck against the ground turned him into the Norse God of Thunder!

Within moments Thor was defending the weak and smiting the wicked and as the months swiftly passed rapacious extraterrestrials, Commie dictators, costumed crazies and cheap thugs gradually gave way to a terrifying parade of fantastic worlds and incredible, mythic menaces…

A word about artwork here: modern comics are almost universally full-coloured in Britain and America, but for over a century black and white was the only real choice for most mass market publishers – additional (colour) plates being just too expensive for shoe-string operations to indulge in. Even the colour of 1960s comics was cheap and primitive and solid black line, expertly applied by master artists, was the very life-force of sequential narrative.

These days computer enhanced art can hide a multitude of weaknesses – if not actual pictorial sins – but back then companies lived or died on the illustrating skills of their artists: so even in basic black and white (and the printing of paperbacks was as basic as the accountants and bean-counters could get it) the Kirbys and Ditkos of the industry exploded out of those little pages and electrified the readership.

I can’t see that happening with many modern artists deprived of their slick paper and multi-million hued colour palettes…

The mystic mayhem opens with ‘The Mighty Thor Battles… The Lava Man!’ (from the landmark Journey into Mystery #97, October 1963, by Lee, Kirby and Don Heck) wherein an invader from the core of the planet invades the surface world just as a rift between Thor and his father Odin was established when the Lord of Asgard refused to allow his son to love Blake’s mortal nurse Jane Foster.

This acrimonious triangle was a perennial sub-plot that fuelled many attempts to humanise Thor, because already he was a hero too powerful for most villains to cope with…

That titanic tussle was followed by ‘Giants Walk the Earth!’ (Lee, Kirby & Chic Stone, from Journey into Mystery #104, May 1964) the revolutionary saga where, for the first time, Kirby’s imagination was given full play as trickster god and wicked step-brother Loki tricked Odin into visiting Earth, only to release ancient elemental foes Surtur and Skagg, the Storm Giant from Asgardian bondage and bid them kill the All-Father….

This staggering cosmic clash saw noble gods bestriding the Earth, battling demonic evil in a new Heroic Age and this greater role for the Asgardian supporting cast set the scene for a far grander, more epic feel.

Also from JiM #97 comes the premiere instalment of a spectacular back-up series. ‘Tales of Asgard – Home of the mighty Norse Gods’ gave Kirby a place to indulge his fascination with legends. Initially adapting classic tales but eventually with all-new material particular to the Marvel pantheon, he built his own cosmos and mythology, which underpinned the company’s entire continuity. This first saga, scripted by Lee and inked by George Bell (AKA George Roussos) outlined the birth of the gods, the origin of the world and the creation of the World Tree Yggdrasil.

The British edition then concludes with ‘The Stronger I Am, the Sooner I Die!’ from JiM #114, March 1965, which began a two-part tale introducing a new villain of the sort Kirby excelled at, a vicious thug who suddenly lucked into overwhelming power, courtesy of the ever-scheming God of Evil.

Crafted by Lee, Kirby & Stone it saw Loki imbue hardened felon Crusher Creel with the magical ability to duplicate the strength and attributes of anything he touched and subsequently go on a brutal and frenzied rampage…

However, if you’d stuck with the American edition you’d also enjoy the senses-shattering finale as Thor demonstrated not just his power but also his wits in a blockbusting demonstration of ‘The Vengeance of the Thunder God’ (inked by Frank Giacoia as the pseudonymous Frankie Ray, which originally appeared in issue #115 from April 1965)…

As someone who bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years – including the constantly recycled reprints in British weeklies from the mid-sixties to the 1980s – I have to admit that the glossy classic paperback editions have a charm and attraction all their own even if they are heavily edited and abridged and rather disturbingly printed in both portrait and landscape format…

If you’ve not read these tales before then there are certainly better places to do so (such as the pertinent Essential or Marvel Masterwork volumes) but even with all the archaic and just plain dumb bits these books are still fabulous super-hero sagas with beautiful art that will never stale or wither, and for us backward looking Baby-boomers these nostalgic pocket tomes have an incomprehensible allure that logic just can’t tarnish or taint…
© 1966 and 1967 Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved.

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The Amazing Spider-Man Collectors Album (US and UK editions)


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko & various (Lancer/Four Square)
“ISBNs” 72-122 (Lancer) and 1792 (Four Square)

This is another one purely for driven nostalgics, consumed collectors and historical nit-pickers, highlighting the Swinging Sixties’ transatlantic paperback debut of the hero who would become Marvel’s greatest creative triumph…

One thing you could never accuse entrepreneurial maestro Stan Lee of was reticence, especially in promoting his burgeoning line of superstars. In the 1960s most adults, including the people who worked in the field, considered comic-books a ghetto. Some disguised their identities whilst others were “just there until they caught a break.” Stan, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko had another idea… change the perception.

Whilst the artists pursued their personal creative visions, the editorial mastermind pursued every opportunity to break down the ghetto walls: college lecture tours, animated TV shows (of frankly dubious quality at the start, but constantly improving), foreign franchising and of course getting their product onto “real” bookshelves in real book shops.

There had been a revolution in popular fiction during the 1950s with a huge expansion of cheap paperback books: companies developed extensive genre niche-markets, such as war, western, romance, science-fiction and fantasy. With fans hungry for product from their cheap ubiquitous lines, many old novels and short story collections were republished, introducing a new generation to such authors as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Otis Adelbert Kline, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and 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 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 – on the back of the “Batmania” craze – began a short-lived attempt to “novelise” their comic book stable with The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker and Captain America in the Great Gold Steal.

Far more successful were repackaged books by various publishers: reformatting their comics stories in cheap and cheerful softcovers:

Archie Comics released their Marvel knock-off restyled superheroes in the gloriously silly High Camp Superheroes, Tower collected the adventures of their big two Dynamo and No-Man, DC (then National Periodical Publications) released a number of Batman books and an impressive compendium of Superman stories and Marvel, punching far above their weight, unleashed a sextet of paperbacks featuring five of their stars: Fantastic Four (two volumes), the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, Thor and of course the Amazing Spider-Man.

Now during the heady, turbulent Sixties pulp heroics seemingly returned: imaginative “Thud and Blunder” fantasy tales that were the epitome of “cool”, and Marvel’s canny pursuit of foreign markets instantly paid big dividends.

Their characters, creators and stories were already familiar to British readers, appearing both in Odhams‘ weekly comics Wham!, Pow!, Smash!, Fantastic and Terrific and also in the black and white monthly anthologies published by Alan Class since 1959…

So when Lancer began releasing Marvel’s Mightiest in potent and portable little collections it was simple to negotiate British iterations of those editions although they were not as cheap and had shorter page counts.

A word about artwork here: modern comics are almost universally full-coloured in Britain and America, but for over a century black and white was the only real choice for most mass market publishers – additional (colour) plates being just too expensive for shoe-string operations to indulge in. Even the colour of 1960s comics was cheap and primitive and solid black line, expertly applied by master artists, was the very life-force of sequential narrative.

These days computer enhanced art can hide a multitude of weaknesses – if not actual pictorial sins – but back then companies lived or died on the draughting skills of their artists: so even in basic black and white – and the printing of paperbacks was as basic as the accountants and bean-counters could get it – the Kirbys and Ditkos and Wally Woods of the industry exploded out of those little pages and electrified the readership. I can’t see that happening with many modern artists deprived of their slick paper and 16 million colour palettes…

As I’ve already mentioned US and UK editions vary significantly. Although both re-present – in truncated, resized monochrome – startling early Marvel tales the British Four Square editions are a measly 128 pages, as opposed to the 176 page Lancer editions: necessitating missing stories and odd filler pages. Moreover the UK books are fronted by deliberately garish and poorly drawn “cartoony covers” instead of art by Ditko or Kirby, as if the publishers were embarrassed by the content…

The Amazing Spider-Man Lancer edition by Lee & Steve Ditko was published in 1966 and opens with ‘Duel With Daredevil’ (from #16, September 1964) which depicted the Wall-crawler’s first bombastic meeting with the sightless Man Without Fear as they teamed up to battle the sinister Ringmaster and his Circus of Evil.

This was followed by ‘The Origin of Spider-Man’ from the first issue (March 1963): recapping the story of how nerdy high-schooler Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider, became a TV star and failed to prevent the murder of his Uncle Ben. After a pin-up of The Burglar the tale continues, introducing gadfly J. Jonah Jameson and relating how the Amazing Arachnid saved a malfunctioning space capsule before revealing ‘The Secrets of Spider-Man!’ which combined portions of the info-features seen in Amazing Spider-Man Annual’s #1 & 2 from 1964 and 1965.

Thus far the US book and the Four Square paperback released in 1967 are all but identical – covers excluded of course – and apart from Kirby pin-up pages of the Hulk, Thor and Fantastic Four, that’s where Britain’s thrills stop dead, whereas the Lancer volume has another complete story and more in store.

From Amazing Spider-Man #13 ‘The Menace of Mysterio!’ introduced an eldritch, seemingly unbeatable bounty-hunter hired by Daily Bugle publisher Jameson to capture the misunderstood hero. Of course the stalker was a complete sham eventually revealed to be pursuing his own dark agenda, but the battle to stop him was – and still is – one of Spidey’s most spectacular exploits…

This edition ends with another brace of Ditko pin-ups – a roster of guest-stars in one, and the magnificent web-spinner at his moody best in the other…

Nowadays all these adventures are readily available in assorted colour collections or dynamic monochrome Essential Editions but for we surviving baby-boomers the sheer thrill of experiencing these books again is a buzz you can’t beat. Moreover there’s still something vaguely subversive about seeing comics in proper book form, as opposed to the widely available, larger and more socially acceptable graphic novels. Strip art might finally be winning the war for mainstream public recognition, but we’ve all lost some indefinable unifying camaraderie of outsider-hood along the way…

These paperbacks and all the others are still there to be found by those who want to own the artefact as well as the material: I suspect that whether you revere the message or the medium that carries it pretty much defines who you are and how you view comics and the world.

Wanna try and guess where I stand, True Believer…?
© 1966 and 1967 the Marvel Comics Group. All Rights Reserved.

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Freaks!


By Nik Perring, Caroline Smailes & Darren Kraske (The Friday Project/HarperCollins)
ISBN: 978-0-00-744289-8

We’ve all been in the know for years, us comics fans, but it’s only recently that the big wide world got into the whole mind-boggling realm of superpowers and scary monsters. With such self-aware and crafty shows as Misfits, Being Human, No Heroics and even US imports like as No Ordinary Family, Alphas, The Cape and numerous others, the concept of powers and abilities which take us above and beyond the norm have become as much part of common parlance as “Beam me up Scotty” and “These are not the droids you’re looking for” – and remember when grown-ups and your dad had no idea what those meant either?

Freaks! is a stunning collection of themed prose pieces ranging from compulsively brief vignettes to devastatingly effective epigrams which examine the concept of having a super-power, from the broadly literal such as ‘The Photocopier’ wherein the daughter of a lady who can duplicate herself waits impatiently for her own gift to develop, or ‘Statuesque’ wherein a passionate woman gradually petrifies herself, to far more cerebral and metaphysical forays into the weird world like the bittersweet ‘Clipped Wings’, heartrending ‘Invisible’ or piteous ‘Fifty Per Cent’…

Some are just plain creepy like ‘In her Basket’ and ‘Faulty Baby’ or gut-wrenchingly horrific as with ‘The Boner’ or ‘Damaged’…

Sometimes you can only stop and wonder if the abilities are real at all or just in your head…

Or theirs…

Blending paranormal paranoia with self-delusion and pitting incisive, instinctive intuition against genuine contemplative otherworldliness, these yarns by Carol Smailes and Nik Perring (working individually and in tandem) describe ordinary folk with uncanny gifts and extraordinary people who have mastered the mundane horrors of the world.

These 47 individual slices of kitchen sink fantasy are written with scathing wit, measured surreality, biting venom and shattering poignancy, all graced and augmented with lavish and plentiful monochrome illustrations by author/artist Darren Kraske.

If you’re looking for alien invasions or flamboyant punch-ups you’ll be left wanting, but if you fancy some exceedingly adult and mostly mature laughs and tears, a few chills and a lot of clever, thought-provoking entertainment then Freaks! is definitely the book for you.
© 2012 Caroline Smailes and Nik Perring. Illustrations © 2012 Darren Kraske. All rights reserved.

This book is part of publisher HarperCollins’ experimental Friday Project where the traditional modes of book creation are augmented by concentration on new digital technology and disciplines as well as innovative methods of acquiring, publishing, selling and promoting their product. For more details you should check out http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/about-harpercollins/Imprints/the-friday-project/Pages/The-Friday-Project.aspx
To learn more about the creators please go to http://www.carolinesmailes.co.uk/
http://nikperring.com/ and http://theargonautsalmanac.blogspot.com/
Freaks! is scheduled for release on April 12th 2012.

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The Adventures of Superman


By George Lowther, illustrated by Joe Shuster (Applewood Books)
ISBN: 978-1-55709-228-1

Without doubt the creation of Superman and his unprecedented reception by a desperate and joy-starved generation quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. Within months of his launch in Action Comics #1 the Man of Tomorrow had his own supplementary solo comicbook, a newspaper strip, overseas licensing deals, a radio show and animated movie series, plus loads ands loads of merchandising deals.

In 1942 he even made the dynamic leap into “proper” prose fiction resulting in still more historic “firsts”…

George F. Lowther (1913-1975) was a Renaissance man of radio when sound not vision dominated home entertainment. He scripted episodes of such airwave strip adaptations as Dick Tracy and Terry and the Pirates as well as the Mutual Radio Network’s legendary Adventures of Superman show.

He also wrote episodes for Roy Rogers, Tom Mix and a host of other series and serials. In 1945 he moved into television with equal success as writer, producer, director and even performer, adding a string of novels for kids to his CV along the way.

With the success of the Superman radio broadcasts a spin-off book was a sure-fire seller and in 1942 Random House released a stunning, rocket-paced history of the Man of Steel, which fleshed out the character’s background (almost a decade before such detail became part of the comics canon), described the hero’s rise to fame and even found room for a thrilling pulp-fuelled contemporary adventure in a handsome hardback lavishly illustrated by co-creator Joe Shuster. The novel was the first Superman tale not scripted by Jerry Siegel and the world’s first novelisation of a comicbook character.

That book will set you back upwards of a thousand dollars today but in 1995, Applewood Press (a firm specialising in high-quality reproductions of important and historic American books) recreated that early magic in its stunning entirety in a terrific hardback tome which included a copious and informative introduction from contemporary Superman writer Roger Stern as well as the original Foreword by DC’s Staff Advisor for Children’s literacy, Josette Frank.

The art is by Joe Shuster at the peak of his creative powers and includes the dust-jacket and 4 full-colour painted plates (all reproduced from the original artwork), a half-dozen full-page black and white illustrations and 34 vibrant and vital pen-and-ink spot sketches of the Caped Kryptonian in spectacular non-stop action, gracing a fast and furious yarn that begins with the destruction of Krypton and decision of scientist Jor-El in ‘Warning of Doom’ and ‘The Space Shi’.

The saga continues with the discovery of an incredible baby in a rocket-ship by farmer Eben Kent and his wife Sarah in ‘Young Clark Kent’ and the unique boy’s early days and first meeting with Perry White in ‘The Contest’.

Following ‘The Death of Eben’ the young alien refugee moved to the big city and became ‘Clark Kent, Reporter’ after which we switch to then present-day for the main event as investigative reporter and blockbusting champion of justice combine to crush a sinister plot involving spies, saboteurs, submarines and supernatural shenanigans in the classy conundrum of ‘The Skeleton Ship’ and ‘The Vanishing Captain’ which was resolved in the epic ‘Fire at Sea’, ‘Mystery of the Old Man’, ‘Attempted Murder’, ‘Enter Lois Lane’ and ‘Return of the Skelton Ship’, resulting in ‘The Unmasking’, the revelation of a ‘Special Investigator’ and an amazing ‘Underwater Battle’ before at last the wonderment ends with ‘The Mystery Solved’.

This magical book perfectly recaptures all the frantic fervour and mind-boggling excitement of the early days of action adventure storytelling and is a pulp fiction treasure as well as a pivotal moment in the creation of the world’s premier superhero. No serious fan of the medium or art-form should miss it and hopefully with another landmark Superman anniversary on the horizon another facsimile edition is on the cards. If not, at least this volume is still readily available…
© 1942 DC Comics. Introduction © 1995 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Stan Lee Presents Captain America Battles Baron Blood – a Marvel Illustrated Book


By Roger Stern, John Byrne & Josef Rubinstein (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-939766-08-6

Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby at the end of 1940, and launched in his own Timely Comics’ (Marvel’s earliest iteration) title. Captain America Comics #1 was cover-dated March 1941 and was a monster smash-hit. Cap was the absolute and undisputed star of Timely’s “Big Three” – the other two being the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner – and one of very the first to fall from popularity at the end of the Golden Age.

When the Korean War and Communist aggression dominated the American psyche in the early 1950s Cap was briefly revived – as were his two fellow superstars – in 1953 before they all sank once more into obscurity until a resurgent Marvel Comics once more needed them. When the Stars and Stripes Centurion finally reappeared he finally managed to find a devoted following who stuck with him through thick and thin.

After taking over the Avengers he won his own series and, eventually, title. Cap waxed and waned through the most turbulent period of social change in American history but always struggled to find an ideological place and stable footing in the modern world, plagued by the trauma of his greatest failure: the death of his boy partner Bucky.

After years of just ticking along a brief resurgence came about when creators Roger Stern & John Byrne crafted a mini-renaissance of well-conceived and perfectly executed yarns which brought back all the fervour and pizzazz of the character in his glory days.

This wonderful black and white mass-market digest paperback was part of Marvel’s ongoing campaign to escape the ghettoes of news-stands and find relative legitimacy in “proper” bookstores and opens with one of the most impressive tales of the comicbook’s lengthy run originally seen in Captain America #253-254 (January-February 1981).

A grave peril from the past resurfaced in ‘Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot’ when Cap was called to England and the imminent deathbed of old comrade Lord Falsworth who had battled Nazis as the legendary Union Jack in the WWII Allied superteam The Invaders. The picturesque village was undergoing a series of brutal serial murders and the aging patriarch suspected the worst. Of course nobody would take the senile and ailing old duffer seriously…

Steve found a brooding menace, family turmoil, an undying supernatural horror and breathtaking action in the concluding ‘Blood on the Moors’, which saw the return and dispatch of vampiric villain Baron Blood, the birth of a new patriotic hero and the glorious Last Hurrah of a beloved character: to this day still one of the very best handled “Heroic Death” stories in comics history.

That sinister saga is followed by ‘Cap for President’ from #250 (October 1980) as the unbelieving and unwilling Sentinel of Liberty found himself pressed on all sides to run for the highest office in the land. This truly uplifting yarn is still a wonderful antidote for sleaze and politicking whilst confirming the honesty and idealism of the decent person within us all.

If you’ve not read these tales before then there are certainly better places to do so (such as Captain America: War and Remembrance) but these are still fine super-hero tales with beautiful art that will never stale or wither, and for us backward looking Baby-boomers these nostalgic pocket tomes have an incomprehensible allure that logic just can’t fight or spoil…

© 1980, 1981, 1982 Marvel Comics Group, a division of Cadence Industries Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Star Hawks & Star Hawks II


By Ron Goulart & Gil Kane (Ace/Tempo Books)
ISBNs: 0-448-17311-5 & 0-448-17272-0

Although comicbook publishers worked long and hard to import their colourful wares to the more popular and commercially viable shelves of bookshops, newspaper strips (and episodic humour magazines like Mad) had been regular visitors since the 1950s.

By dint of more accessible themes and subjects, simpler page layouts and just plain bigger core-readerships, comedy and action periodical serials were easy to translate to digest-sized book formats and sell to a broad base of consumers. Because of this the likes of Peanuts, B.C., Wizard of Id, Broom Hilda, Rick O’Shay, Flash Gordon, Mandrake and many others were an entertainment staple of cartoon-loving, fun-hunting kids – and adults – from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Comedies and gag books far outweighed dramas however: by the 1970s the era of the grand adventure strip in newspapers was all but over, although there were still a few dynamic holdouts and even some few new gems still to come.

One such was this unbelievably addictive space opera/cop procedural which debuted on October 3rd 1977. Created by novelist, comics scripter and strip historian Ron Goulart on the back of the revival in Science Fiction following the release of Star Wars (and later continued by the legendary Archie Goodwin who all-but sewed up the sci-fi strip genre at the time by also authoring the Star Wars newspaper serial which premiered in 1979)… Star Hawks was graced by the dazzlingly dynamic art of Gil Kane and blessed with an innovative format for such strips: a daily double-tier layout that allowed far bigger, bolder graphics than the traditional single bank of three or four frames.

The core premise was also magically simple: in our future, man has spread throughout the galaxy and now inhabits many worlds, moons and satellites. And wherever man goes there’s a need for policemen and peacekeepers…

Goulart began with the working title “Space Cops” but that was eventually superseded with the more dashingly euphonious and commercially vibrant Star Hawks.

In the late 1980s four comicbook-sized collections were published by Blackthorne, followed by a wonderful collectors volume from Hermes Press in 2004, but these are all now out-of-print and hard to acquire, so I’m concentrating here on the much more accessible brace of mass-market digest paperbacks released whilst the strip was still running…

Both these stirring tomes are printed in landscape format with each instalment fitting neatly onto a page: thus the black and white art (almost original publication size) is clean, crisp and tight as Book 1 steams straight in by introducing the villainous Raker and his sultry, sinister boss Ilka, hunting through the slums and ruins of alien world Esmeralda for a desperate girl plagued by dark, dangerous visions…

Enter Rex Jaxan and the ladykiller Latino Chavez, two-fisted law-enforcing Star Hawks on the lookout for trouble, who promptly save the lass from slavers only to become embroiled in a dastardly plot to overthrow the local Emperor by scurrilous arms merchants. Also debuting in that initial tale is the cops’ sexy boss Alice K. Benyon (far more than just a romantic foil for He-Hunk Jaxan), the awesome space station “Hoosegow” and Sniffer, the snarkiest, sulkiest, snappiest robo-dog in the galaxy. The mechanical mutt gets all the best lines…

Barely pausing for breath the star-born Starsky and Hutch (that’s Goulart’s take on them, not mine) are in pursuit of an appalling new weapons system developed to topple the military dictatorship of Empire 13 – the “Dustman” process. Before long however the search for the illegal WMD develops into a full-on involvement in what should have stayed a local matter – civil war…

Book 2 opens with the pair investigating the stupendous resort satellite Hotel Maximus, with Alice K. along to bolster their undercover image. On Maximus every floor holds a different daring delight – from dancing to dinosaur wrangling to Alpine adventure – but the return of the malevolent Raker heralds a whole new type of trouble as he is revealed to be an agent of the pan-galactic cartel of criminals known only as The Brotherhood.

Moreover, the Maximus is the site of their greatest coup – a plot to mind-control the universe’s richest and most powerful citizens. So pernicious are these villains that the Brotherhood can even infiltrate and assault Hoosegow itself…

Foiling the raiders Jaxan and Chavez quickly go on the offensive, hunting the organisation to the pesthole planet Selva, a degraded world of warring tribes and monstrous mutations, where new recruit Kass distinguishes himself, but the Brotherhood is deadly and persistent and new leader Master Jigsaw has a plan to destroy the Star Hawks from within…

Star Hawks ran until 1981, garnering a huge and devoted audience, critical acclaim and a National Cartoonists Society Award for Kane (Story Comic Strip Award for 1977). It is, quite simply one of the most visually exciting, rip-roaring and all-out fabulous sci-fi sagas in comics history and should be part of every action fan’s permanent collection. In whatever format you can find, these tales are a “must-have” item.
© 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981 United Features Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Stan Lee Presents Daredevil


By Stan Lee & Wally Wood (Marvel Illustrated Books)
ISBN: 0-939766-18-3

Here’s another look at how our industry’s gradual inclusion into mainstream literature began and one more pulse-pounding 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, Marvel made a concerted and comprehensive effort to get their wares into more socially acceptable formats. As the 1970s 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 continuity primers and a perfect – if fickle – alternative venue to introduce fresh readers to their unique worlds.

The dream project was never better represented than in this classy little crime-busting cornucopia of wonders with crisp black and white reproduction, sensitive editing, efficient picture-formatting and two superb epics from the first “hot run” of the very variable Man Without Fear …

Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer whose remaining senses hyper-compensate, making him an astonishing acrobat, mind-blowing martial artist and living lie-detector. Very much a second-string hero for most of his early years, Daredevil was nonetheless a striking and popular one, due in large part to the captivatingly humanistic art of such modern Michelangelos as Wally Wood, John Romita and Gene Colan.

DD fought thugs, gangsters, a variety of super-villains and even the occasional monster or alien invasion. He quipped and wise-cracked his way through life and life-threatening combat, before under the auspices of Jim Shooter, Roger McKenzie and Frank Miller, the character transformed into a dark, moody avenger and grim, quasi-religious metaphor of justice and retribution…

After a shaky start, with the fifth issue Wally Wood assumed the art chores where his lush and lavish work brought power, grace and beauty to the series. At last this mere costumed acrobat seemed to spring and dance across the rooftops and pages. Wood’s contribution to the plotting didn’t hurt either. He actually got a cover plug on his first issue.

This brilliant black and white collection begins with the Daredevil #6’s ‘Trapped by the Fellowship of Fear!’: a minor classic wherein the Sightless Swashbuckler had to defeat not only the blockbusting Ox and electric assassin The Eel but his own threat-specific foe Mr. Fear who could instil terror and panic in victims, courtesy of his deadly gas-gun…

Another villain debuted in #8’s gripping industrial espionage thriller with meek, mild Wilbur Day hiring Nelson & Murdock to retrieve the rights to a stolen technology patent from industrialist Carl Kaxton. However, the case led to a clash with a bizarre and terrifying menace in ‘The Stiltman Cometh!’ Moreover Day proved to be far more than he at first appeared…

It’s easy to assume that such resized, repackaged mass market paperback collections were just another Marvel cash-cow in their tried-and-tested “flood the marketplace” sales strategy – and maybe they were – but as someone who has bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years, I have to admit that these handy back-pocket books are among my very favourites and ones I’ve re-read most – they’re handier, more accessible and just plain cool – so why aren’t they are available as ebooks yet?
© 1965, 1982 Marvel Comics Group, a division of Cadence Industries Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Here Comes… Daredevil


By Stan Lee, Bill Everett, John Romita, Gene Colan & various (Lancer)
ISBN: 72170 ASIN: B000EQWXLE

This is one solely for chronic nostalgics, consumed collectors and historical nit-pickers… As Marvel grew in popularity in the early 1960s it gradually replaced its broad variety of genre titles with more and more super-heroes. The rapidly recovering publishing powerhouse 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 would have to fill the revenue-generating slot (however small) of an existing title.

Moreover since the costumed characters were selling, each new title would limit the breadth of genres (horror, western, war, etc). It was putting a lot of eggs in one basket, and superheroes had failed twice before for Marvel.

In the 1960s on the back of the “Batmania” craze, many comics publishers repackaged their old comics stories in cheap and cheerful digest-sized monochrome paperbacks, and it’s easy to assume that those rapidly resized, repackaged book collections of the early exploits and extravaganzas were just another Company cash-cow in their perennial “flood the marketplace” sales strategy. Maybe they were, but many funnybook publishers – including National/DC, Tower and Archie – were also desperate to add some credibility and even literary legitimacy to their efforts, and as well as increased profits these forays onto the world’s bookshelves offered the prospect of fresh new markets and a wider acceptance. Considering how many different prose publishing houses chanced their arm on such projects, their editors also believed there was money to be made from comics too…

Also it’s hard to deny that the book editions were just, plain cool…

As someone who bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years – including constantly recycled reprints in British weeklies from the mid-sixties to the 1980s – I have to admit that the sleek classic paperback editions have a charm and attraction all their own…

Most of the US Marvel collections from Lancer generated smaller (and inferior) British editions from Four Square Books but as far as I know Daredevil never crossed the pond except as a remaindered import…

Heavily abridged and edited and disturbingly printed in both portrait and landscape format, Here Comes… Daredevil was the sixth and last Lancer publication (the others being two Fantastic Four compilations and one apiece for Thor, Spider-Man and The Hulk) and touted a guest-appearance by Spidey, reprinting most of the two-part battle against the mysterious Masked Marauder from issues #16 and 17. Originally entitled ‘Enter… Spider-Man!’ and ‘None are so Blind…’ by Stan Lee, John Romita Sr. & Frank Ray Née Giacoia) the tale recounted how the cunning criminal manipulated the Wall-Crawler into attacking DD whilst his gang of futuristic cut-throats attempted to steal a new super-engine…

This is followed by ‘The Origin of Daredevil’ from issue #1, recounting how young Matt Murdock grew up in the New York slums, raised by his father Battlin’ Jack Murdock, a second-rate prize-fighter. Determined that the boy will be something, Jack extracts a solemn promise from him never to fight. Mocked by other kids and called “Daredevil”, Matt abides by his vow, but secretly trains his body to physical perfection.

One day he saves a blind man from being hit by a speeding truck, only to be struck in the face by its radioactive cargo. His sight is burned away but his other senses are super-humanly enhanced and he gains a sixth: “radar-sense”. He tells no-one, not even his dad.

Battlin’ Jack is in dire straits. As his career declined he signed with The Fixer, knowing full well what the corrupt promoter expected from his fighters. Yet his career blossomed. Unaware that he was being set up, Murdock got a shot at the Big Time, but when ordered to take a dive he refused. Winning was the proudest moment of his life. When his bullet riddled corpse was found, the cops had suspicions but no proof…

Heartbroken, Matt graduated college with a law degree and set up in business with his room-mate Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. They hired a lovely young secretary named Karen Page. With his life on track young Matt now had time to solve his father’s murder. His promise stopped him from fighting but what if he became “somebody else”…?

Scripted by Stan Lee and magically illustrated by the legendary Bill Everett (with assistance from Steve Ditko) this is a rather nonsensical yet visually engaging yarn that just goes through the motions and completely omits the dramatic denouement wherein Matt finally deals with his father’s killers…

Originally tipped for a fill-in issue, Gene Colan came aboard as penciller with Daredevil #20’s ‘The Verdict is: Death!’, inked by Mike Esposito moonlighting as Mickey Demeo. Colan’s superbly humanistic drawing and facility with expressions was a little jarring at first since he drew Daredevil in a passable Romita imitation and everything else in his own manner, but he soon settled in and this cunning two-part revenge thriller – featuring The Owl who had trapped the sightless adventurer on a hidden island overrun with robot raptors and brutal thugs – is a stunning action rollercoaster which perfectly illustrates the hero’s swashbuckling acrobatic combat style.

The spectacular battle concluded with ‘The Trap is Sprung!’ (from #21, inked by Giacoia, Dick Ayers & Bill Everett) and began the artist’s long and brilliant run on the series.

If you’ve not read these tales before then there are certainly better places to do so (such as the Essential Daredevil volume 1) but even with all the archaic and just plain dumb bits in this book these are still fine super-hero tales with beautiful art that will never stale or wither, and for us backward looking Baby-boomers these nostalgic pocket tomes have an incomprehensible allure that logic just can’t fight or spoil…
© 1967 Marvel Comics Group. All Rights Reserved.