Category: Romance

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Moomin volume Ten – The Complete Lars Jansson Comic Strip


By Lasse Lars Jansson (Drawn & Quarterly)
ISBN: 978-1-77046-202-1 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-77046-557-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: the Personification of Good Will at Every Season… 9/10

Tove Jansson was one of the greatest literary innovators and narrative pioneers of the 20th century: equally adept at shaping words and images to create worlds of wonder. She was especially expressive with basic components like pen & ink, manipulating economical lines and patterns into sublime realms of fascination, whilst her dexterity made simple forms into incredibly expressive and potent symbols. So was her brother…

Tove Marika Jansson was born into an artistic, intellectual and rather bohemian Swedish family in Helsinki, Finland on August 9th 1914. Patriarch Viktor was a sculptor and mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson a successful illustrator, graphic designer and commercial artist. Tove’s brothers Lars AKA “Lasse” and Per Olov became – respectively – an author and cartoonist, and an art photographer. The family and its close intellectual, eccentric circle of friends seems to have been cast rather than born, with a witty play or challenging sitcom as the piece they were all destined to inhabit. After extensive and intensive study (from 1930-1938 at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Graphic School of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and L’Ecole d’Adrien Holy and L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris), she became a successful exhibiting artist through the troubled years of WWII.

Brilliantly creative across many fields, she published her first Moomins fable in 1945. Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (The Little Trolls and the Great Flood – latterly and more euphoniously The Moomins and the Great Flood) was a whimsical epic of gentle, inclusive, accepting, understanding, bohemian misfit trolls and their strange friends…

The term “Moomin” came from maternal uncle Einar Hammarsten who tried to stop Tove pilfering food when she visited by warning that a Moomintroll guarded the kitchen, creeping up on trespassers and breathing cold air down their necks… you can check out our other reviews such as Christmas Comes to Moominvalley for how the critter made a mega franchise and proto-mythology. Here and now, let’s discuss how Lars got involved…

Exponentially more popular with each successive book, global fame loomed. In 1952 Finn Family Moomintroll/The Happy Moomins was translated into English to great acclaim, prompting British publishing giant Associated Press to commission a daily newspaper strip starring the seductively sweet & sensibly surreal creations. Jansson had no misgivings or prejudices about strip cartoons as she had already adapted Comet in Moominland for Swedish/Finnish paper Ny Tid.

Mumintrollet och jordens undergäng/Moomintrolls and the End of the World was hugely popular and she welcomed the chance to extend her eclectic family’s range. In 1953, The London Evening News began the first of 21 Moomin strip sagas which captivated readers of all ages. Tove Jansson’s involvement in the cartoon ended in 1959, a casualty of its own success and the punishing publication schedule. So great was the strain that she had already recruited brother Lars to help. He quietly took over, continuing the feature until its close in 1975. His tenure as sole creator officially began with the sixth collection in this series and reaches its penultimate volume here…

Liberated from cartooning pressures, Tove returned to painting, writing and other pursuits: generating plays, murals, public art, stage designs, costumes for dramas and ballets, a Moomin opera and 9 more Moomin-related picture-books and novels, as well as 13 books and short-story collections strictly for grown-ups. She died on June 27th 2001, with awards too numerous to mention, and her face on the national currency…

Lars Fredrik Jansson (October 8th 1926 – July 31st 2000) was almost as amazing as his sister. Born into that astounding overachieving clan 12 years after Tove, at 16 he started writing – and selling – his own novels (nine in all). He also taught himself English as there weren’t enough Swedish-language translations of books available for his voracious reading appetite. In 1956 at his sister’s request he began co-scripting the Moomin strip: injecting his own witty whimsicality to ‘Moomin Goes Wild West’. He had been Tove’s English language translator and sense-reader from the start, seamlessly converting her Swedish into text and balloons even the British could grasp. In 1959, when her contract with The London Evening News expired, Lars officially took over, having spent the interim period learning to draw and perfectly mimic his sister’s art style. He had done so in secret, assisted and tutored by their mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson. From 1961 to strip’s end in 1974, Lars was sole steersman of trollish tabloid tails (I fear that could be much misconstrued these days…).

“Lasse” was a man of many parts. Other careers included aerial photographer, professional gold miner, writer and translator. He was basis and model for ultimate cool kid Snufkin and his Moomins exploits were subtly sharper than his sister’s version: far more closely in tune with the quirky British sense of humour. Nevertheless, his whimsically wry sense of wonder was every bit as compelling. In 1990, long after the original series, Lasse began a new career, working with Dennis Livson (designer of Finland’s acclaimed Moomin World theme park) as producers of anime series The Moomins and, with daughter Sophia Jansson in 1993, on new Moomin strips…

Moomintrolls are easy-going free spirits: polite modern bohemians untroubled by hidebound domestic mores but under Lars, increasingly diverted and distracted by societal pressures. Moominmama is warm, kindly tolerant and capable, if perhaps overly concerned with propriety and appearances, whilst her devoted spouse Moominpappa spends most of his time trying to rekindle his adventurous youth or dreaming of fantastic journeys. Doting, darling son Moomintroll is a meek, dreamy boy with a big imagination and confusing ambitions who adores – and so moons over – permanent houseguest the Snorkmaiden. That impressionable, flighty gamin prefers to play things slowly whilst awaiting somebody potentially better…

A wonderfully whimsy driven affair, this 10th and final monochrome moon melange delivers serial strip sagas #38 to 41, and commences with Lars still totally in charge as panic grips the sheltered valley-dwelling community. This is thanks to something supernally sinister and quite unknown pops by for the mass mess deemed ‘Moomin and the Vampire’…

The parable on uncontrolled hysteria sees the dozy denizens driven mad by an assumed monster in their midst and begins following a normal day of big game hunting in the small Scandinavian valley. When rumour of an undead horror haunting the fir forests and charming cottages, the usual miscommunications and madnesses leave everyone in a tizzy, tracking or hiding from the unseen doom. All poor placid Moominmama sees is a tiny fuzzy flying creature in need of a feed and a place to rest, but it probably best not to share the secret of her new guest with all her excitable neighbours…

Up next and a swingeing assault on popular cultures comes ‘Moomin and the TV’, as the reclusive Moomins go shopping for anew sideboard and are pressured into purchasing a top of the line television set…

Despite initial resistance and treating the box as a giant wooded chest, eventually the family succumb to the shows and ads perpetually erupting from it, but that’s as nothing to the chaos caused as the friendly visits from everyone else in Moominvalley – even passing strangers! -threaten to overwhelm even Moominpapa’s legendary hospitality and deplete the mythic capacity of ‘Mama’s larder and pantry…

And my gosh, the rubbish they all watch!

A delicious poke at town planning, social crusaders, local politics and property developers follows as ‘The Underdeveloped Moomins’ finds the big white darlings helping a dedicated but unemployed and under-appreciated Assessor of Under-Developed Areas feel fulfilled. She knows her gifts, specialisms and training can readily bring these primitive, happy valley-folk into the top echelon of progressive go-getting modern citizens, and the Moomins are happy to help, no matter how miserable all these new-fangled ideas, gadgets and schemes make everyone…

The wonderment comes to a close with a whiff of prognostication and prophecy as winter draws on in ‘Moomin and Aunt Jane’. When glamourous but generally useless Romantic poet Wispy moves in next door, he accidentally and then intentionally beguiles flirtatious dreamer Snorkmaiden, just as a little old lady haunts the chilly community. Perpetually predicting frozen doom and deadly privation, she starts to snaffle any potentially useful kit – other people’s blankets, firewood, food, skis, stores. As young Moomin and the maiden again perform their standard jealousy dance, ‘Pappa finally listens to the busy biddy and is convinced the extremely cold end of days is coming. As he begins his own excessive doomsday-prepper precautions, Wispy and Snorkmaiden elope with Moomin in cold pursuit, and the crisis goes into overdrive as prim, officious Moomin Aunt Jane invites herself to stay. Not even faking deadly illness can deter this dowager do-gooding know-it-all and she has no time for silly biddies, puling poets, vacuous romance or any sort of nonsense..

Finishing the fabulous Finnish saga in a cloud of confusion with a domestic dramedy in the best Ealing Comedy traditions of anything with Dame Magaret Rutheford in it, this is the ideal end to a cartoon era…

This compilation again closes with a closer look at the creator in ‘Lars Jansson: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get to Work’ courtesy of family biographer Juhani Tolvanen, extolling his many worthy attributes…

These are utterly, adorably barbed tales for the young, laced with that devastating observation and razor-sharp wit which enhances and elevates only the greatest kids’ stories into classics of literature. These tomes – both Tove & Lars’ – are an international treasure trove no fan of the medium – or carbon-based lifeform with even a hint of heart and soul – can afford to be without.
© 2015 Solo/Bulls, except “Lars Jansson: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get to Work” © 2011/2015 Juhani Tolvanen. All rights reserved.

Today in 1921, Heart of Juliet Jones & Blondie artist Stan Drake was born. Why not treat yourself to a rarer delight such as Kelly Green volume 1: The Go-Between? In 1951, Bill Mantlo was born, and in 1964, Brant Parker & Johnny Hart’s Wizard of Id strip debuted. Three years later in France, Jean-Claude Mézières & Pierre Christin’s Valérian and Laureline began utterly revolutionising sci fi. In 1993 star penciller/ editor Ross Andru died. All of the above make multiple appears in Now Read This! so just go wild in that search box…

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Mermaid Saga VIZ Signature Edition volume 1


By Rumiko Takahashi, translated by Rachel Thorn & lettered by Joanna Estep (VIZ Media)
ISBN: 978-1-97471-857-3 (Tankobon TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Rumiko Takahashi is one of the most successful and globally lauded comics creators of all time and indisputably the best-selling woman in the field (as of 2017, over 200 million volumes – and always rising – of her assorted inventions in print) with countless accolades and awards to her name. That makes the recent unavailability of her works in translation – in print or pixels – utterly incomprehensible to me. At least at last that situation is being remedied…

Born in 1957, she enrolled in a manga school whilst at university and began producing Doujinshi (self-published stories) in 1975, under the tutelage of Manga genius Kazuo Koike. She sold her first professional story 3 years later: award-winning science fiction comedy Urusei Yatsura (34 volumes). Her next big series was rom-com Maison Ikkoku (15 volumes) and she continued both series simultaneously until 1987, whilst also producing a vast array of extremely popular short stories and mini-series.

In 1984, she tried something new: an occasional sequence of interlinked gothic-love horror short-stories that would become known as the Mermaid Saga – appearing at uneven intervals over the next decade. Ten years later, Viz Communications began collecting and translating the nine graphic novelettes for the English speaking world, and this volume (from 2020) re-presents and remasters the first three fishy tales in a stunning display of visual virtuosity and macabre menace as part of a paired and glorious Viz Signature Edition.

‘A Mermaid Never Smiles’ (Parts 1 & 2) begins in a remote rural village in modern Japan as beautiful maiden Mana calls out petulantly to her servants. Meanwhile miles away, a derelict young man wanders aimlessly, searching for something. His name is Yuta and there’s something odd about him…

Mana’s attendants are all women and they are waiting for something. When one performs a unique sacrifice the assembled harridans decree Mana is ready at last for her great purpose…

When Yuta stumbles into the village he is swiftly killed by the old ladies… but doesn’t stay dead for long. Escaping from his grave, Yuta confronts the women and rescues far-from-grateful Mana, who has no idea she has been farmed like a veal calf by her “servants” with but one purpose…

On the run, Yuta explains the legend of Mermaids: eating their flesh can, if one is fortunate, impart immortality and invulnerability. More common is a slow transformation into ghastly monsters, called “Lost Souls”. Most likely, though, is a swift, exceedingly painful death from the malignant meat…

Years previously, Yuta had unwittingly consumed mermaid flesh and has spent half a lonely millennium seeking a cure to his lonely un-aging existence. An old wise woman told him the only solution was to find a live mermaid and ask her for a method to end his interminable life. However, he has cause to regret his wish when he discovers that all the old women here are aged and near-decrepit mermaids and that poor Mana has been bred for years as a means by which they can regain lost youth.

Horrified and reluctantly heroic, Yuta knows he must foil the plan at all costs – but it won’t be easy or pretty…

Also divided into Parts 1 & 2, second story ‘The Village of the Fighting Fish’ takes us back centuries to Feudal Japan and two island communities at war. Eking out their harsh existence with occasional piracy, the fisher-folk of Toba are being slowly squeezed by their ruthless rivals on Sakagami Island. Moreover, the Tobans’ headman is dying and his valiant daughter O-Rin is having difficulty filling his sandals and continuing his legacy and leadership…

She thinks nothing of it when a dead body washes up: that’s just a sign of the times, but when the corpse comes back to life, the sinister, manipulative wife of the Sakagami chieftain seeks him out. It appears she, too, is hunting for a mermaid, just like un-killable stranger Yuta…

With a ruthless agenda of her own, Isago stirs the bubbling pot of tension until war is inevitable, just as restless wander Yuta dares to dream that he might risk loving again, but once more the terrible lure of mermaid flesh and supernatural longevity prove to be more curse than blessing and horrifying bloodshed is the inevitable result…

We return to more-or-less contemporary Japan as Mana & Yuta find an isolated village near deep woods and stop their incessant wandering for one night. However, the naive lass is utterly unaware of the modern world and walks into a near fatal accident. Rushed to the local cottage hospital, the severely injured girl mysteriously goes missing, and when Yuta discovers the woodland called the ‘Mermaid Forest’ he fears the worst. His frantic investigations uncover yet another tragic family destroyed by the mermaid mystique which has tainted so many lives…

Kindly old Dr. Shiina has kept a sinister secret for decades and now, through captive undying Mana, hopes to correct an ancient wrong. Sadly, no-one who has tasted mermaid flesh ever exists or even ends happily, and as Yuta hopelessly battles yet more Lost Soul horrors, our undying hero knows that this time will be no different…

In the aftermath he restless wanderers Yuta & Mana move on, only to stumble into another toxic immortality trap as ‘Dream’s End’ leaves them in the middle of a 40-year duel between a colossal monster mutated by tasting sea-siren flesh and an aging hunter maimed by the beast and rabid for revenge. To world-weary Yuta the case seems clear-cut, but when rampaging Big-eyes shows Mana a softer side, the positions of stalker and prey look far less cut and dried…

Closing this tome is two-part drama ‘Mermaid’s Promise’ as the immortal man comes again to Misaki village to find a sprawling growing metropolis. When he was last here he loved – and left – a maid in dire straits: a broken vow that still plagues him. Tragically, his betrayal turns out to be wasted tears as abandoned Nae is still alive… sort of.

As Mana & Yuta roam the bustling city dubbed Crimson Valley, they are targeted by the big boss of the region, a man with many dark secrets – and loyal thugs – who has also changed a great deal since he vied with Yuta for Nae’s hand sixty decades previously. Killing his rival, ancient Eijiro continues his project of excavating the entire surrounding hills and forests, seeking the ashes of a mermaid. They once enabled his “fiancée” to stay Nae fresh, young, vital. Hopefully another dose will stop her being soullessly, murderously psychotic…

These bleak supernatural tales of jealousy, twisted love and dark devotion are brooding and oppressive epics of understated horror, beautifully realised and movingly effective. One of the best mature manga series ever produced, it can – and should – be read by kids too, but please be aware Japanese social conventions regarding casual nudity are not the same as ours and if you don’t want them seeing naked bodies you should read something else.
TAKAHASHI RUMIKO NINGYO SERIES Vol. 1, 2 © 2003 Rumiko TAKAHASHI. All rights reserved.

Today in 1930 Leo Baxendale was born. We did him just recently, so scroll back to October 20th.

In 1948 master of horror and Swamp Thing co-creator Bernie Wrightson joined the world. You can learn all about him through Frankenstein Alive, Alive – The Complete Collection.

And in 1990 the last issue of UK laughter generator Whizzer and Chips – which had begun the fun way back in 1969 – hit the shelves and spinner racks. You can still get a taste of it all (mostly toffees, liniment, perished rubber and sweaty feet) via Whizzer and Chips Annual 1979.

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Yoko Tsuno volume 20: The Gate of Souls


By Roger Leloup, coloured by Studio Leonardo & translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-160-6 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

On September 24th 1970, “electronics engineer” Yoko Tsuno first began her troubleshooting career as an indomitable intellectual adventurer. Bon anniversaire, ma brave cherie!

Her debut in Le Journal de Spirou was realised in “Marcinelle style” cartoonish 8 page short ‘Hold-up en hi-fi’ and although she is still delighting readers and making new fans to this day, for a while it looked as if she wasn’t going anywhere soon. Thankfully, her astonishing, astoundingly accessible exploits were revised and she quickly evolved into a paragon of peril: helming a highpoint of pseudo-realistic fantasies numbering amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created. Her globe-girdling mystery cases and space-&-time-spanning epics are the brainchild of Belgian maestro Roger Leloup who launched his own solo career in 1953 whilst working as studio assistant/technical artist on Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin.

Compellingly told, sublimely imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of an individual yarn – always firmly grounded in hyper-authentic settings underpinned by solidly-constructed, unshakably believable technology and unswerving scientific principles, Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of a wave of strips revolutionising European comics. Early in the journey, he switched from loose illustration to a mesmerising, nigh-photo realistic style that is a series signature. The long-overdue sea-change in gender roles and stereotyping he led heralded a torrent of clever, competent, brave and formidable women protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals and not romantic lures. That consequently elevated Continental comics in the process. Such endeavours are as engaging and empowering now as they ever were, none more so than the travails of masterful Miss Tsuno.

Her first outings (oft-aforementioned, STILL unavailable Hold-up en hi-fi, and co-sequels La belle et la bête and Cap 351) were introductory vignettes prior to epic authenticity taking a firm grip in 1971 when the unflappable problem solver met valiant but lesser (male) pals Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen. Instantly hitting her stride in premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange (in LJdS’s May 13th edition), from then on, Yoko’s efforts encompassed explosive exploits in exotic corners of our world, spy and crime capers, time-travelling jaunts and sinister deep-space sagas such as this one. There are 31 European bande dessinée albums to date, with 21 translated into English thus far, albeit – and ironically – none of them available in digital formats…

Initially serialised in LJdS #3033 to 3044, spanning May 29th to 14th August 1996, La Porte des âmes became Europe’s 21st collected Yoko Tsuno album at year’s end. Following chronologically from The Astrologer of Bruges, it returns our terrestrial troubleshooters to their friends in the sky with another momentous visit with the prodigiously reconstructing Vineans.

In a disturbingly philosophical, metaphysically-tinged caper the Earthlings – including Yoko’s adopted daughter Morning Dew and Mieke (Pol’s fiancée from the 16th century) – all toil in deep space beside the disaster-prone lethally pragmatic alien colonists with their most trusted ally when another echo from the distant past changes lives and destines once again.

Their constant guide and companion is Khany: the competent, commanding single mother who combines parenting her toddler Poky and the humans with saving worlds, leading her people, averting continual cosmic catastrophe and – with Yoko – recovering lost knowledge. Frequently that stems from attempts to restore a moral compass to those ancient survivors ruthlessly rebuilding their fallen civilisation and permanently undermining and gaslighting the upstarts who slept out the apocalypse on another planet. Progress is slow and regularly results in uncovered, long forgotten threats that might end the racial resurrection in flaming instants…

In their initial adventure together, Yoko, Vic and Pol had discovered an enclave of dormant aliens hibernating for eons in Earth’s depths. After saving the sleepers from robotic/AI subjugation, the humans occasionally helped the refugees (who had fled their planet two million years previously) to rebuild their lost sciences. Ultimately, the humans accompanied the Vineans on their return to their natal star system and (wrongly presumed) long-dead homeworld. In the years Vineans slept, primary civilisation collapsed, and the world they strive to reclaim is much changed, with isolated pockets of inhabitants evolved beyond recognition. As the re-migrants gradually restore a decadent, much-debased civilisation and culture, the human trio become regular guests and helpers against sabotage, political intrigue and simple skulduggery…

And as seen here, it’s not just people they must beware of…

On a previous visit Yoko had established a unique psychic link with ancient mech-intellect Queen Hegora: one granting her certain technophilic abilities. A later excursion saw her bonded with an equally antediluvian child-rearing toy robot. “Myna” and her kind were constant sentient companions to young children – until parents abruptly deemed them all too smart and dangerous, before subsequently banishing them to distant asteroid. Now that last relic is hastily consulted as another time-lost probe soars back into Vinean territory from out of history and the (currently) unknown…

A constant cause of contemporary strife is piecemeal rediscovery of ancient beings who have endured due to the Vinean practise of digitally encoding living persons into automatons. Now a space salvage effort is interrupted by a probe from the deep past, and the excited explorers confront the possibility of being able to finally penetrate the fabled mysteries of occluded and forbidden lost colony Ultima. Their actions precipitate shocking and tragic discoveries which expose the downside of immortality.

Deadly strife begins as the discoverers plunge down to the revealed world and find another survivor outpost divided into factions indulging in an unending war of technologies and philosophies. An imminent crash and collision makes allies of advance scout Yoko and a bold indigenous pilot named Litsy, and soon the human learns that here vassals are forced to carry the personalities of other deceased servants. Servitude is eternal with useful, knowledgeable “souls” digitally impressed upon successive bodies. All the lower orders can anticipate is forced reincarnation and losing themselves bit by bit to someone else’s soul’s past history…

In a society where biology and mechanisms are less valuable than knowledge and experience, the newcomers are soon caught up in a devilish scheme challenging and undermining the very nature and fine print definition of life on Ultima, as they expose a long unfolding plot by rebel Isora who currently inhabits a menial flying droid. She illicitly made copies of her soul before committing suicide and now she ruthlessly seeks to recover and reunite her fractured personalities in a fresh – and stolen – body. This is over and despite violent objections of its original occupier Ethera, and once morally-outraged Yoko fully grasps the complexities of the situation she is prepared to do whatever is necessary to end this ghastly refinement of intellectual slavery…

Ultimately, overwhelming institutionalised digital malevolence proves inadequate in the face of Yoko Tsuno’s passionate humanity, bold imagination and quick thinking, but her success comes at great cost and cannot truly be called a triumph. Moreover, as the weary explorers return to established Vinean borders, Isora delivers a chilling message revealing nothing is settled yet…

Blending rocket-paced action with shattering suspense and byzantine twists, this deviously twisted, terrifying plausible battle with bigotry is superbly mesmerising, proving once more how smarts and combat savvy are pointless without compassion. As always, the most potent asset of this edgy outer space dramas is its astonishingly authentic setting, as ever benefitting from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail.

The Gate of Souls is a magnificently tense all-action psycho- thriller, taut and compelling, and surely appealing as much to fans of blockbuster space opera as ordinary general purpose comic addicts.

Original edition © Dupuis, 1996 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation © 2025 Cinebook Ltd.

Today in 1972, talented wee nipper Jock was born. You can remind yourself how good an artist he is by looking at Green Arrow Year One – The Deluxe Edition.

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Athos in America


By Jason, coloured by Hubert, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-478-8 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic, comedic and ironic effect.

Born in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known globally by his enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume Jason. The shy & retiring draughts-scribe started on the path to international cartoon superstardom in 1995, once first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award. Prior to that, he had contributed to alternate/indie magazine KonK whilst, from 1987, studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo’s Art Academy, before going on to Norway’s National School of Arts. After graduating in 1994, three years later he founded his own comic book Mjau Mjau, citing Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring & Tex Avery as primary influences, and constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-mined anthropomorphic minimalism.

Moving to Copenhagen Jason worked at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) and Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Books of Magic, Starman, Batman: Detective 27). His efforts were internationally noticed, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas. He won another Sproing in 2001 – for self-published series Mjau Mjau – and from 2002 turned nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels, and won even more major awards.

Jason’s breadth of interest is wide and deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, literature and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. This puckish and egalitarian mixing and matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time. Over a succession of tales Jason built and constantly re-employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes of movies, childhood entertainments, historical and literary favourites. These all role-play in deliciously absurd and surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. In latter years, Jason returned to such “found” players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and even has a whole bizarre bunch of them “team-up” or clash…

As always, visual/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued, or even as here silently pantomimic progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a pared back stripped-down interpretation of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, and thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity augmented by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

The majority of his tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality: largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on those inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes.

This perfect example of his oeuvre is something of a prequel and available as a sturdily comforting hardback or exalted eBook edition: a mild torrent of subtle wonderment that opens with understated crime thriller ‘The Smiling Horse’, wherein the last survivor of a kidnap team endures decades of tense anticipation before their victim’s uncanny avenger finally dispenses long-deferred justice.

Jason then examines his own life, career and romantic failings with harsh, uncompromising detail in ‘A Cat from Heaven’ whilst B-Movie Sci Fi informs ‘The Brain That Wouldn’t Virginia Woolf’ as a scientist spends years killing women whilst looking for a body that won’t reject the mean-spirited, constantly carping head he keeps alive in his laboratory, before ‘Tom Waits on the Moon’ inexorably draws together a quartet of introspective, isolated loners into a web of fantastic horror. Still they spend too much time thinking not doing so they get what they deserve…

A cunning period gangster pastiche rendered in subdued shades of red and brown, ‘So Long, Mary Anne’ depicts a decent woman helping a vicious escaped convict flee justice. After they snatch a hostage, the “victim” soon begins to exert an uncanny influence over the desperate killer, but is she just wicked or is there a hidden agenda in play?

Most welcome attraction here is eponymous final story ‘Athos in America’. This is a fabulously engaging “glory days” yarn, acting as a prequel to the author’s spellbinding graphic romp The Last Musketeer. That epic detailed the final exploit of the dashing Athos, who met his end bravely and improbably after 400 years of valiant adventure. But what was he doing in the years before that tragic denouement?

A guy walks into a bar… It’s America in the 1920s and the oddly-dressed Frenchman starts chatting to Bob the barman. As the quiet night unfolds the affable patron relates how he came to America to star in a movie about himself and his three greatest friends. Sadly, after he enjoyed a dalliance with the Studio’s top star, things quickly started to go wrong…

Effortlessly switching back and forth between genre, milieu and narrative pigeonholes, this grab-bag of graphic goodies again proves that Jason is a creative force in comics like no other: one totally deserving as much of your time, attention and disposable income as possible.
All characters, stories and artwork © 2011 Jason. All rights reserved.

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Blondie: The Bumstead Family History/Blondie: The Complete Bumstead Family History


By Dean Young, and Melina Ryzik (Thomas Nelson/Rutledge Hill Press, U.S.)
ISBN: 978-1-4016-0322-9 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

Normally I leave newspaper strip reviews for a weekend, but this is one birthday we just can’t miss. Please remember, just because you don’t read something don’t mean it ain’t popular…

Like Dagwood’s legendary sarnies, Bumstead family functions go on forever. Yesterday we learned how Chic Young’s strip Blondie began on September 8th 1930 and just kept going. The feature was inherited and carried on in 1973 by his family, chiefly son Dean with a select group of collaborators. Dean considers himself the guardian of a legacy as much as continuer of a phenomenon. In 2007, after the 75th anniversary, commemorative curated celebration Blondie: the Bumstead Family History was released to mark the occasion, and with the feature still going strong this remastered (even enjoying fancy-schmancy External hyperlinks, no less!) “Complete” edition invites a look at what he’s done to keep things fresh as much as safeguard generations of readers’ fond memories.

Combining short lavishly illustrated articles with a wealth of published strips – each attached to general topics – the raucous revery begins with ‘Chapter One: The Bumstead Family Album’, incorporating historical overviews and the traced evolutions of ‘Blondie’ and eternal, often inanimate inamorata ‘Dagwood’; firstborn son/current teen icon ‘Alexander’ (who first appeared on April 15th 1934) and his sister ‘Cookie’ who Dagwood feels is far too popular with boys). Faithful, longsuffering house mutt ‘Daisy’ gets her own section, as does abusive Boss/archnemesis ‘Mr. Dithers’, next-door-neighbours ‘The Woodleys’ (AKA Herb & Tootsie), long-suffering mailman ‘Mr. Beasley’ and cheeky, always underfoot kid/voice of a fresh generation ‘Elmo Tuttle’…

The early days of the unshakable relationship are scrutinised in ‘Chapter Two: Getting Married’, tracing love’s rocky road through turbulent fast-changing times and a hugely successful publicity gimmick of young Dagwood going on extended hunger strike to force his adamant parents to allow him to wed! A massive publicity coup, the convoluted month-long storyline led to rowdy nuptials in February 1933 and is swiftly and sensibly followed by chapters on ‘Family Life’, as the couple become a nuclear unit, demographic and breadwinning paean to domesticity as ‘Dagwood at Work’ reveals what a decent man endures to bring home the bacon – and pickles and bratwurst and olives and pastrami and turkey and chicken, and salmon and lettuce and pumpernickel and lox and…

Courting middle American controversy, not to say media attention and a little homemaker wrath, ‘Blondie Goes to Work’ saw the tireless and capable stay-at-home mom and neighbour Tootsie ultimately turn those life skills into joyously fulfilling independence by starting their own catering business. This was only in 1991 and this pic-packed chapter also deals with the ridiculous amounts of outrage the world-shaking leap into the 20th century seemed to trigger in the heartland. Naturally, Dagwood was completely supportive: who else could test the new dishes and delights the girls kept inventing…

‘Chapter Six: Favourite Strips’ reviews some of the countless gags to have riffed on the series’ core themes – eating, sleeping, making and living and eating – whilst focussing on Dean Young’s constant efforts to keep the strips relevant and contemporary whilst the major industry event that evolved out of ‘The 75th Anniversary’ is described in detail. To celebrate the milestone in 2005, Dean and King Features organised a massive crossover that included VIPs like President Bush and other real-world notables as well as most of the nation’s major strips and creators wishing the happy couple all the best.

If you read Beetle Baily, Hagar the Horrible, Garfield, Rose is Rose, Wizard of Id, Dick Tracy, B.C., Mother Goose & Grimm, Family Circus, Shoe, Hi & Lois, Gasoline Alley, Sally Forth, Snuffy Smith, Buckles, Baby Blues, Zits, Mutts, Curtis, Marvin, For Better or Worse, Born Loser, Dennis the Menace (theirs not ours), Cathy, Thick Thin or Bizarro you were invited and there on the day. Disney alumni and single panel editorial cartoonists got in on it and for one moment all of America enjoyed a taste of Dagwood. Most of those strips are here as well as plenty from the months-long build up and aftermath in the actual Blondie feature.

This super memoriam concludes with a look beyond the panels as ‘Forever Young’ explores the life and achievements of Murat Bernard Young, his wife and model/inspiration Athel Lindorff née Young, Dean and sister Jeanne and the many notables who pitched in and/or assisted on Blondie’s production: Alex and Jim Raymond, Stan Drake, Mike Gersher, Ray McGill, Denis LeBrun, and John Marhall & Frank Cummings

Also included in this inescapably family function are original art and sketches, dozens of candid family portraits and photos, commentary and so, so many cartoons to wallow in. If you want a simple satisfying Good Read, this is for you your kids and your grannie, but don’t forget to bring the sandwiches… and not small ones neither…
© King Features Syndicate, Inc. 2007.

Today in 1958, Jack Kirby’s Sky Masters of the Space Force newspaper strip launched.

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Blondie and Dagwood’s America or Blondie and Dagwood


By Dean Young & Rick Marschall (Harper & Row/Arthur Barker Limited)
ISBN: 978-0-21316-830-8 (Arthur Barker UK TPB) 978-0-06090-908-6 (Harper & Row US)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of one of the most popular comic strips of all time …and probably one you thought had long ended, if indeed you thought of it at all.

For decades Blondie was the most popular – for which read most commercially successful – newspaper strip in the world. Way back in 2005, the former Blondie Boopadoop and her hapless husband Dagwood Bumstead celebrated 75 years of publication are still going strong today, both in print and online.

For such a remarkable comics mainstay, there are precious few celebratory collections and commemorations, so we went even way-er back (to 1981) to focus on this fabulously inclusive authoritative anniversary compilation. Here, I’m starting early in my campaign to commemorate their 95th anniversary – that’s tomorrow, right? – by agitating for its revision and re-release.

The Blondie strip was created by Murat Bernard “Chic” Young and promoted/distributed by King Features Syndicate. It launched on September 8th 1930, as the result of a startling game of one-upmanship between feisty cartoonist Young and King’s general manager Joe Connolly. Already a roaring success and up-&-comer due to his “Flapper” strip Beautiful Bab, Young had followed up with even bigger smash hit Dumb Dora in 1924.

He was on a fast track to stardom when the stock market crash wiped out his savings in 1929. Broke and with a new bride, he wanted a new contract for a new feature that he owned and controlled. Understandably, Management had other ideas…

However, when the artist packed up and took ship for Paris, Connelly caved and Blondie was born. She was an instant print sensation, and soon spawned 28 movies starring Penny Singleton & Arthur Lake between 1938 and 1950. They also voiced a popular radio show version (1939 – 1950) and three TV series… in 1954, 1958 and 1968-69. The Bumstead couple’s comic book adventures – reprint and new stuff – have come courtesy of a variety of publishers including Ace, Big Little Books, Harvey, King & Charlton Comics, running in place from 1936 to 1976. There was all the other usual merchandising stuff too…

In the earliest days tension was high and gag ideas limitless as rich but socially inept Dagwood Bumstead’s wealthy family tried to stop their idiot scion from marrying a low, common blonde, but in 1933, with the voracious lovestruck swain disinherited but happy, the lovers finally wed and the true magic of this everyday domestic comedy began.

Chic Young drew Blondie until his death in 1973, when his son Dean took over. The inheritor worked with many artists on the strip, including Alex Raymond and his brother Jim, Mike Gersher, Stan Drake, Denis Lebrun and John Marshall. Through it all, Blondie remained uncannily popular, appearing in more than 2,300 newspapers across 55 countries and translated into 35 languages: an audience of 290 million. In 1948 Chic Young won the Reuben Award for the strip and in 1995 the feature was honoured as one of 20 selected as part of the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative US Postage Stamps.

This still-available UK paperback edition reprints hundreds of the best strips, backed up by wonderfully chatty, informative text-pieces from the junior Young and historian Rick Marschall: offering an enchanting treat for all the family. I don’t know how easy this book is to find and of course other collections are available (most notably 2007’s Blondie: the Complete Family History, published by Thomas Nelson- ISBN-13: 978-1-40160-322-9) but I’ve never found one that featured as broad a spread of strips from this comic landmark’s incredibly long history. Good hunting, and don’t forget to bring a sandwich… and not a small one neither…

The book was initially published in the US as Blondie & Dagwood’s America, which is also still easy to get if you want…
© 1981 King Features Syndicate Inc. World Rights Reserved.

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Sshhhh!


By Jason (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-497-0 (TBB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic and comedic effect.

Born this day in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known globally by his enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume. The shy & retiring draughts-scribe started on the path to international cartoon superstardom in 1995, once first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award. Prior to that, he had contributed to alternate/indie magazine KonK whilst, from 1987, studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo’s Art Academy, before going on to Norway’s National School of Arts. After graduating in 1994, three years later he founded his own comic book Mjau Mjau, citing Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring and Tex Avery as his primary influences and constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-laden anthropomorphic minimalism.

Moving to Copenhagen Jason worked at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) and Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Books of Magic, Starman, Batman: Detective 27). His efforts were internationally noticed, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas. He won another Sproing in 2001 – for self-published series Mjau Mjau – and from 2002 turned nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels, winning even more major awards.

Jason’s breadth of interest is wide and deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, high literature and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. This puckish and egalitarian mixing and matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time.

Over a succession of tales Jason built and constantly employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes of movies, childhood entertainments, historical and literary favourites. These all role play in deliciously absurd and surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. In latter years, Jason returned to such “found” players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and even has a whole bizarre bunch of them “team-up” or clash…

As always, visual/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued, or even as here silently pantomimic progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a pared back stripped-down interpretation of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, and thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity augmented by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

The majority of his tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality: largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on those inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes.

A perfect example of his oeuvre is ‘Sshhhh!’: a deliciously evocative, extended romantic melodrama created without words; the bittersweet tale of boy-bird meeting girl-bird in a world overly populated with spooks and ghouls and skeletons. The archetypes and cartoon critters are similarly afflicted by far more harsh demons: loneliness and regret.

Of course, it’s not just that. It’s also boy-bird loses girl-bird to death, other men, his own inadequacies and the vagaries of parenthood. It’s about how money fixes nothing and how Death is ever at your elbow and can be – quite frankly – a bit of a nuisance. It’s sex and death and discontentment and bloody ungrateful kids; aliens; being invisible; miserable vacations; disappointing locations: guys who are sexier than you and The Devil…

… And birds-nests…

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, always probing the nature of “human-ness” by visually invoking the beastly and unnatural to ask persistent and pertinent questions. Although clever sight-gags are less prominent here, his repertory company still uncannily display the subtlest emotions with devastating effect, proving again just how good a cartoonist he is.

This comic tale is best suited for adults but makes us all look at the world through wide-open childish eyes. Jason is instantly addictive and a creator every serious fan of the medium should move to the top of the “Must-Have” list. Don’t even wait for a physical copy, buy a digital edition ASAP, just so you can see immediately what all the fuss is about…
All characters, stories and artwork © 1998, 1999, 2008 Jason. All rights reserved.

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DC Finest: Hawkman volume 1 – Wings Across Time


By Gardner F. Fox, Bob Haney, Joe Kubert, Gil Kane, Murphy Anderson, Howard Purcell, Carmine Infantino & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-79950-250-0 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Here’s another stunning compilation from the DC Finest line: full colour chronolgically curated collections delivering “affordably priced, large-size (generally around 600 pages) paperback collections” of past glories. Whilst concentrating on the superhero pantheon, there are and will also be assorted genre selections like horror and war books, and themed compendia.  

Sadly, none of these comics classics are available digitally, as were the last decade’s Bronze, Silver and Golden Age collections, but we live in hope and keep on whining…

Not all passions are romantic: mine is to finally have all old comics forever available in curated editions. These astoundingly engaging Silver Age tales are another joyous moment of past glories revisited highlighting one of the most effective and enduring romantic crime-busting, world-saving partnerships in comics…

With a superhero revival in full swing by 1961, Editorial mastermind Julius Schwartz turned to resurrecting one of DC’s most visually arresting and iconic Golden Age characters. Once again eschewing mysticism for science fiction (the original Hawkman was a reincarnated Egyptian prince murdered by a villainous priest who just kept coming back…), Schwartz picked scripter Gardner F. Fox who had created the Golden Age great and matched him with artist Joe Kubert to construct a new and contemporary hero for the Jet/Space Age.

This titanic tome at last gathers in full colour the works and deeds of the Winged Wonders as first seen in The Brave and the Bold #34-36 & 42-44 & 51; The Atom #7; Mystery in Space #87-90 and Hawkman #1-11: cumulatively spanning February/March 1961 to December 1965/January 1966.

Katar Hol and Shayera Thal are police officers on their own planet of Thanagar. The married couple have travelled to Earth from the star system Polaris in pursuit of a spree-thief named Byth who assaulted a scientist and stole a drug bestowing the ability to change into anything. Thus the scene was set in ‘Creature of a Thousand Shapes!’ which graced The Brave and the Bold #34 (cover-dated February/March 1961) back when the title was a try-out vehicle like Showcase. Disappointments aside, the origin yarn is a spectacular work of graphic magic, with the otherworldly nature of the premise rendered captivatingly human by the passionately emphatic, moody expressiveness of Kubert’s art. It is a minor masterpiece of comic storytelling, and still a darned good read.

The high-flying heroes returned in the next issue, now “temporarily” stationed on Earth to study Terran police methods. In ‘Menace of the Matter Master’ they defeat a plundering scientist who has discovered a means to control elements and indulge in super-larceny, before ‘Valley of Vanishing Men’ takes our fully-integrated visitors from another world to the Himalayas to unlock the astounding and ironic secret of the Abominable Snowmen. Last shot in the try-out session, B&B #36 sees them defeat modern day wizard Konrad Kazlak in ‘Strange Spells of the Sorcerer!’ and, soon after, save Earth from another Ice Age whilst outwitting ‘The Shadow Thief of Midway City!’

With the 3-issue audition over, the publishers sat back and waited for the fan letters and sales figures… and something odd happened: fans were vocal and enthusiastic, but the huge sales figures that previously accompanied such reactions just weren’t there. It was inexplicable. The quality of the work was plain to see on every page, but somehow not enough people had plunked down their dimes to justify an ongoing Hawkman series.

A year later DC tried again. The Brave and the Bold #42 (June/July 1962) featured ‘The Menace of the Dragonfly Raiders’ which found Katar & Shayera returning to Thanagar just in time to encounter a bizarre band of alien thieves and the sinister hand of their oldest foe. Here was superhero action in a fabulous alien locale and the next issue maintained the exoticism – at least initially – before Hawkman and Hawkgirl returned to Midway City to defeat a threat to both worlds – ‘The Masked Marauders of Earth!’.

One last B&B issue followed (#44, October/November 1962) with two splendid and delightful short tales. ‘Earth’s Impossible Day!’ focused on Shayera’s desire to celebrate a holiday tradition of Thanagar before eerie doomsday thriller ‘The Men who Moved the World’ unearthed a lost civilisation and the return of Earth’s original occupiers seeking to move back again…

And then the Hawks vanished again. It certainly looked like this time the Schwartz magic had stumbled if not faltered. It was not, however, the end of the saga. Convinced he was right, Schwartz retrenched. Enjoying some success with his latest revival and mindful of the response when he had teamed Flash with Green Lantern in the summer of 1962, the editor had writer Fox include the Winged Wonder in The Atom #7 (cover-dated June/July 1963). An interplanetary thriller illustrated by Gil Kane & Murphy Anderson, ‘The Case of the Cosmic Camera!’ is a rocket-paced invasion rollercoaster ranging from the depths of space to Earth’s most distant past, where this new, clean-limbed version of the Avian Avenger clearly found fan-favour. In 1963 Hawkman returned! Again!

Mere months later, and dated November, Mystery in Space #87 had the Pinioned Paladin in action on the cover. The anthologogical sci fi standard had been the home of interstellar adventurer Adam Strange since #53, so now Schwartz moved his Winged Wonders into a plausible back-up slot and even bestowed occasional cover-privileges. Still beguilingly written by Fox, Kubert’s dark gritty art was superseded by the clean, graceful illustration of Anderson. Crime caper ‘The Amazing Thefts of the I.Q. Gang!’ dealt with a unexpected repercussion of an Adam Strange thriller and was followed a month later by ‘Topsy-Turvy Day in Midway City!’… a whimsical flourish as the cosmic couple’s devotion and Thangarian wedding customs lead to the capture of Terran bank bandits…

With the management now on board, guest appearances to maximise profile were easier to find. Hawkman returned to The Brave and the Bold with #51 (December 1963/January 1964) to team with Aquaman and face the ‘Fury of the Exiled Creature’ in a quirky tale of monsters, magic and mayhem in sunken Atlantis written by Bob Haney and illustrated by the criminally neglected Howard Purcell. Back in Mystery in Space #89 the ‘Super-Motorized Menace!’ proved the highest tech motor cycle is still no match for ancient weapons and alien  advantages…

These brief, engaging action pieces paled before the majesty and ambition of MiS #90 which delivered a full length epic uniting teaming the Hawks and Adam Strange in a legendary End-of the-World(s) epic. Illustrated by Carmine Infantino & Anderson, ‘Planets in Peril!’ was the last Hawkman back-up. From the next month, and after three years of trying, Hawkman soared into his own title.

Cover-dated April/May 1964, Hawkman #1 is a gem by Fox & Anderson. Two of the most visually arresting chracters in comics, the Hawks also boasted one of the most subtle and sophisticated relationships in the business. Like Sue & Ralph Dibney (Elongated Man and wife) Katar & Shayera are equal partners, and both couples were influenced by the Nick & Nora Charles characters of the Thin Man movies. Like those progenitors, the interplay of the Hols at home or at work is always rich in humour and warmth. In ‘Rivalry of the Winged Wonders’ – and whilst accommodatingly recapping their origins for newcomers, the couple decide to turn their latest case into a contest – Hawkgirl (eventually more appropriately called Hawkwoman) will use Thanagarian super-science to track and catch a band of thieves, whilst Hawkman limits himself to Earth techniques and tools to solving the crime.

This charmingly witty yarn is balanced by action thriller ‘Master of the Sky Weapons’ as recentlt resurrected ancient Mayan warrior Chac threatens Earth with disinterred alien super weapons. The the second issue stuck with star-stuff as the ‘Secret of the Sizzling Sparklers!’ offered an action-packed thriller of transdimensional invasion before closing with ‘Wings across Time!’: a mystery revolving around the discovery of the flying harness of legendary figure Icarus.

With “Carter & Shiera Hall” established as archeologists at Midway City Museum and Earth’s crypto-history & -zoology offering constant story-inspiration, another criminal brain-teaser opened the third issue. However, scientific bandits proved less of a menace than ‘The Fear that Haunted Hawkman’ with inexplicable panic attacks, before ordinary thugs and an extraordinary alien owl converged to make our heroes ‘Birds in a Gilded Cage’. Hawkman #4 then opened with a tale destined to revolutionise DC comics. ‘The Girl who Split in Two!’ introduced legacy hero Zatanna, daughter of a magician who fought crime in the 1940s only to “mysteriously disappear”…

From the very first issue, and for over a decade, Zatarra was a hero in the Mandrake mould who fought evil in the pages of Action Comics. During the Silver Age, Gardner Fox had Zatarra’s young, equally gifted daughter search for the missing mage, systematcally teaming up with superheroes he was currently scripting (if you’re counting, those tales appeared in Hawkman #4, The Atom #19, Green Lantern #42, and the Elongated Man strip from Detective Comics #355). A very slick piece of backwriting latterly included the high-profile Caped Crusader via Detective #336 – ‘Batman’s Bewitched Nightmare!’. The saga concluded in Justice League of America #51’s ‘Z… As in Zatanna… and Zero Hour!’). The collected saga Zatanna’s Search is currently out of print but you can go here for our take on it…

This wide, long-running experiment in continuity proved there was a dedicated fanbase with a voracious appetite for experimentation and relatively deep pockets. Most importantly, it finally signalled an end of the period where DC heroes largely lived and battled in self-imposed worlds of their own.

Hawkman #4 back-up ‘The Machine that Magnetized Men!’ is another enthalling howdunnit  tale as the Pinioned Paladins use reason and deduction to defeat thieves who are impossible to touch. For the next issue ‘Steal, Shadow… Steal!’ was the first full-length thriller, wherein ruthless Shadow Thief Carl Sands returns seeking revenge, believing causing Earth’s next Ice Age to be an acceptable consequence of his schemes, whilst in #6, publishing fashion caught up with the Hawks…

Another epic, and one that turned DC’s peculiar obsession with gorillas into a classic adventure, ‘World Where Evolution Ran Wild!’ lures our heroes to fabled Illoral, where a scientist’s explorations and interventions have stretched Natural Selection to un-natural limits. Bold, brash and daft in equal amounts, this is a fabulous romp and seeing again the cover where Hawkman struggles for his life against a winged gorilla makes the adult me realise those DC chaps might have known what they were doing with all those anthropoid covers!

By issue #7 (April/May 1965) the world was gripped in secret agent fever as the likes of James Bond, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and a host of others snuck and sashayed across our screens. Comics were not immune,  even though spies had been a staple threat there for decades. Before Hawkman joined the gang, however, he had to deal with the rather mediocre threat posed by solar ray inspired criminal genius Ira Quimby and ‘The Amazing Return of the I.Q. Gang!’ As they were quickly returned to prison the Hawks faced the ‘Attack of the Crocodile-Men!’: a high-octane super-science thriller introducing C.A.W. – the Criminal Alliance of the World…

Another supremely captivating cover adorned #8, as the Hawks fought an ancient Roman Artificial Intelligence, built by not-so-mythical metalsmith Vulcan in ‘Giant in the Golden Mask!’, before defeating an alien Harpy who’d been buried for half a million years and promptly triggered a ‘Battle of the Bird-Man Bandits!’ as soon as she woke up…

Hawkman #9 saw The Atom as guest star when an old villain returned with a seemingly perfect revenge plan. Full-length super-thriller ‘Master Trap of the Matter Master!’ offered sheer superhero hi-jinks, after which #10 saw a playful Fox at his best in both ‘Hawkman Clips the Claws of C.A.W!’ This was another espionage drama with a delicious subplot as the Winged Wonder aids a sexy CIA agent with a big secret of her own – before solving ‘The Magic Mirror Mystery!’: a fair-play brainteaser with lots of high-flying action to balance the smart stuff.

This glorious volume closes with another superb full-length epic. Clearly designed as a so-fashionable “player on the other side”, ‘The Shrike Strikes at Midnight!’ leaving our heroes trailing a super-powered, winged bandit all over the world and on to the star system Mizar, in a gripping tale of crime, super-villainy, aliens, revolutions and even dinosaurs…

Although never the major player of his 1940s ancestor, Hawkman grew to be one of the most iconic characters of the second superhero boom, not just for the superb art but also because of a brilliantly sly, whimsically subtle writer with a huge imagination. These tales are comfortably familiar but also grippingly timeless. Thankfully, comics are a funny business; circumstances, tastes and fashions often mean that wonderful works are missed and unappreciated, but it aso means revivals are never too late. Don’t make the same mistake readers did in the 1960s. Whatever your age, read these astounding adventures and become a fan. It’s never too late.
© 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 2025 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Cannon


By Wally Wood & various, introduction by Howard Chaykin (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-702-4 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As with any historical perspective addressing popular mass-entertainments and evolving societies, a look back often finds uncomfortable material that can jar some modern sensitivities and set today’s collective hackles rising. That’s especially true of this lovely but confounding collection compiling seldom seen material by one of the industry’s greatest stars…

This is quite frankly a lovely book of beautiful work that I now find hard to recommend to a general audience. That’s more to do with how society has evolved rather than its admittedly always deeply flawed and often unsavoury content…

We all carry within us the seeds of our own destruction and probably none more so than troubled comics genius Wallace Allan Wood (June 17th 1927 – November 2nd 1981): one of the greatest draughtsmen and graphic imagineers our art form has ever produced. Woody was a master of every aspect of the business. He began his career lettering Will Eisner’s Spirit newspaper strip, readily moving into pencilling and inking as the 1940s ended and, ultimately into publishing. After years working all over the comic book and syndicated strip markets, as well as in book illustration, package-design and other areas of commercial art, he devised the legendary T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents franchise and even predated and anticipated the counter-culture’s Underground Commix phenomenon by launching in 1965s one of the first adult-oriented, independent comics: Witzend.

The troubled genius was frequently his own worst enemy. Woody’s life was one of addiction (guns, booze & cigarettes); traumatic relationships; tantalisingly close yet always inevitably frustrated financial security; illness and eventually, suicide. It was as if all the joy and beauty in his existence stayed on the pages and there was none left for real life.

Although during his time with EC Wood became the acknowledged, undisputed Master of Science Fiction art in America, he was equally adept, driven and accomplished in the production of all genres. He was a lusty man and was a pioneer of sexually explicit, ultra-violent (but always beautiful) and titillating comics where sex played a major role. Remember, even if everybody loves comics, it’s not always about superheroes and cosmic quests. Men like sexy comics and cartoons. I’m not saying that it’s right or proper to ogle women, but it is a sad fact of life and has made many publishers rich for centuries. This customer base especially likes looking at beautiful naked women and amongst so very many cartoonists over the decades, Wood was arguably the paramount exponent of the subgenre…

Remarkably and without in any way seeking to apologise for it, I can confirm that this gritty strip was made to entertain REAL-MEN!! It abounds with naked, nude, undraped and forcibly undressed women (and men, but not as many or as often as the women). Somehow less controversially it also heavily features mega violence, and both physical and psychological torture because that’s what the audience wanted. If you don’t believe me go and rewatch Goldfinger (1964) but this time watch and listen closely…

Cannon’s inbuilt misogyny is a feature not a bug with levels of abusive behaviour and conduct that seldom exceed those of any 1960-1970s Bond or Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie. There’s practically no gadgets either, but loads of fast flashy cars, planes and boats… and much sublimely rendered, awesomely accurate ordnance because that’s one thing your average GI or swabbie will spot instantly if fudged…

This cartoon series captures a moment in history that was deeply, deeply unfair to women, even if – for its time – the feature was uncharacteristically racially & socially diverse and most equitable in its treatment of African-American, Hispanic, Arabic and Asian guys. This was probably as much about the target readership – the desegrated but still mostly male US Military Service personnel – as Woody’s views on the Civil Rights movement. Wally was always utterly professional and diligent in all his work commitments and liberated from all editorial constraints, but his own experience gave the audience exactly what they wanted…

Following Howard Chaykin’s ‘Intro’ confirming the best and worst of the legends, the strip unfolds in one unbroken stream of non-stop blockbuster action heavily seasoned with geopolitical themes and contemporary headline fodder. It’s fitting to note here that Woody utilised and mentored dozens of guys who went on to their own notoriety. If you’re a fanatic, you’ll spot many of them – Pearson, Reese, Wenzel, Hama et al – as characters in the strip, but in-jokes aside, this one’s all about satisfying manly urges.

Guaranteeing sex, death and horror and NAKED WOMEN in almost every episode, Cannon by Wood and his ever-shifting studio ran from 1970-1973 in three separate editions of The Overseas Weekly: a tabloid specifically created and disseminated to US military personnel stationed overseas. He & Steve Ditko later recycled the character in an abortive indie publishing venture Heroes, Inc., which we’ll cover at the end.

John Cannon was a U2 pilot captured and tortured by the Red Chinese. Broken and turned into their assassin, he threw off the ministrations of their top brainwasher Madame Toy but suffered a psychological collapse that left him a relentless, emotionless living weapon pointed by the CIA at any target that needed killing.

His successes didn’t affect him at all but did make him a permanent target of the Chinese and Soviet governments. The latter tasked beautiful lethal killer Sue Smith to remove him by any means and at all costs, but her attempts were as frequent and futile as Toy’s, who doggedly and repeatedly seeks to recapture or kill him. Both curvaceous killers spent as much time shagging Cannon as shooting, stabbing, electrocuting, drowning, poisoning, bombing and running over the implacable agent.

Encountering and exterminating hundreds of spies Cold War spies and assassins, Cannon saves US-friendly middle-Eastern Ismiria from infiltration and insurrection; defends US ally Israel from subversion; shatters the schemes (and sleeper agent army) of Comrade Gorsk and saves Latin American San Sierra from both Red-backed rebels and the incumbent US-friendly fascist dictatorship. He even gets to save a few lives along the way, like his own Uncle Fred back in Iowa and charming conman/serial bigamist/accidental hitman Charles M. Fogarty…

At home, Cannon eradicates gangsters and spies as his conditioning begins to fade. No longer a reliable asset, he tries to retire to his old family home but trouble follows and the CIA soon re-recruit him. With Toy & Sue Smith perpetually hunting him and “cat-fighting” each other, Cannon even clashes with killer hippies in a murder commune and an ultra-conservative millionaire with his own private militia seeking to set the nation back on the Right path. John even has a couple of shots at true love and a Happy Ever After, but inevitably learns over and again that “women are just no damn good”…

Along the way he experiences every kind of action from scuba combat to aerial dogfights, and even battles a killer cyborg, He’s particularly adept at ferreting out leftover Nazis and dodges more than his fair share of atomic detonations. This is a strip very much of its time and for adults if not grown-ups, so like many of his audience, our hero even has to face up to the consequences of his actions when one paramour falls pregnant. The wedding is an utter disaster…

As much a document of art history as an expertly-targeted wank-book, Cannon comes with fascinating bonus features for comics fans, beginning a voluminous Appendix section with a brace of long lost cover paintings.

These augment the Roger Hill’s essay ‘The Overseas Weekly Discovery’ detailing the bizarre circumstance that led to the retrieval of the material forming this book, and compliments a

‘Letter by Wallace Wood’ exhorting how the industry must change. These are followed by the tamed down, general audience full-colour Cannon story by Wood & Ditko as seen by almost nobody in 1969’s Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon, and another similar but monochrome lost Wood & Ditko treat from Heroes, Inc. No. 2 (1976) once again kicking the stuffing out of stubborn Nazis by Wood & Ditko. The experience ends as it should with a fulsome and fair “Bio” of Wally Wood by J. David Spurlock.

Fast, furious and ferociously unreconstructed and sexist, this can be a hard read: one packed with pitfalls, but undeniably honest in its intent and delivery. If you like this kind of thing you’ll love it, and if you find it offensive, you’re still free enough for the moment to reject and not buy it. However, if you do feel the urge to condemn, do us all the courtesy of reading it first…
“Intro” © 2014 Howard Chaykin. “The Overseas Weekly Discovery” © 2014 Roger Hill. “Bio” © 2014 J. David Spurlock. Photos © Bhob Stewart & Paul Kirchner. All other contents © 2014 Wallace Wood Properties LLC. All rights reserved.

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Superman The Golden Age Sundays volume 1: 1943-1946


By Jerry Siegel and “DC Comics”, Wayne Boring, Jack Burnley, Stan Kaye, Ira Snappin, &various (IDW/DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-797-8 (HB)

This book includes REALLY Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times and under the madness of war.

The comic book industry would be utterly unrecognisable without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s bold and unprecedented invention was fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation and quite literally gave birth to a genre… if not an actual art form.

The Man of Tomorrow was shamelessly copied, adapted by countless inspired writers and artists for numerous publishers, spawning an incomprehensible army of imitators and variations within three years of his summer 1938 debut.

Yes, 87 YEARS… and still counting!

The intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and triumphal wish-fulfilment expressed by the early Action Ace expanded to encompass cops-&-robbers crimebusting, socially reformist dramas, science fiction/fantasy, romance, comedy and, once war in Europe and the East also engulfed America, absorbed and reinforced patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do. Superman was master of the world and whilst transforming and dictating the shape of the fledgling funnybook industry, relentlessly expanded into all areas of entertainment media.

We might think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as the epitome and acme of comic strip creation, but the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1 the Man of Steel was a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, and Sherlock Holmes. Diehard comics fans regard our purest, most enduring icons in primarily graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, The Avengers and their hyperkinetic ilk long ago outgrew four-colour origins to become fully mythologized modern media creatures, instantly recognised in mass markets across all platforms and age ranges. Far more people have viewed or heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comics.

However, his globally syndicated newspaper strips reached untold millions, and by the time of his 20th anniversary – at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics – he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial regular and starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons, as well as two films and a novel by George Lowther.

Superman was a perennial wellspring for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his future were many more shows, a stage musical, many blockbuster movies and almost seamless succession of games, bubblegum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

However, in his formative years the small screen was simply an expensive novelty for many. The Action Ace achieved true mass market fame through a different medium: one not that far removed from his print origins.

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the last century newspaper strips were the Holy Grail all American cartoonists/graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and frequently the world – they might be seen by millions if not billions, of readers and were generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic books. At that time it also paid far better, and rightly so. Some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture. Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Blondie, Charlie Brown and many more escaped humble and tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar. Some still do…

After years lost in obscurity, almost all of Superman’s early newspaper strip exploits are at last available to aficionados and the curious newcomer in tomes such as this one, compiled under the auspices of the Library of American Comics. Showcasing the tough transitional period when Shuster’s diminishing eyesight overlapped Siegel’s military service and other minds and hands increasingly steered their super-baby the full colour strips here cover episodes #184 – #353, covering May 9th 1943 to August 4th 1946.

The daily Superman newspaper comic strip launched on 16th January 1939, supplemented by the full-colour Sunday page from November 5th of that year. Initially crafted by Siegel & Shuster and an ever-growing studio – Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring – the mammoth, relentless task required the additional talents of luminaries like Jack Burnley and writers Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz, especially as the draft deprived DC and McClure of those talented gentlemen. Managed by the McClure Syndicate, the feature ran continuously from 1939 until May 1966, appearing at its peak in more than 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers, boasting a combined readership of more than 20 million. When the Christopher Reeve Superman film franchise began, a second newspaper strip did too, starting in 1978 as The World’s Greatest Superheroes before becoming simply Superman. It folded in 1985. The combined series totalled almost 12,000 newspaper strips, but I strongly suspect that no matter how good the new movie is, the parlous state of newspaper publishing won’t be able to support a fresh tabloid iteration. I would love to be wrong…

For most of the war years Wayne Boring and Jack Burnley handled the visuals. Seigel was called up in 1943, as were Sikela and Nowak, and scripts were anonymously generated in-house at DC. When Burnley began his Starman comic book series, Boring (working for DC/National, not Shuster’s Superman Studio) was back on Sundays, with inker Stan Kaye signing up for the long haul, reinforced by steadfast Ira Snappin filling narrative boxes and word balloons throughout.

For reasons covered in previous collections, Superman was generally stuck on the home front as ordinary US fighting men proudly got blown up and maimed, but as the war progressed, those high-minded and pragmatically framed (editorial) edicts began to slip. Let’s face it, even the youngest readers knew Superman could have ended the conflict in hours but, like USO tours, the Man of Steel’s job was entertainment not solutionising. Thus, at least initially, content remained carefully curated tales of emotional dilemmas, romances and pedestrian criminality rather than muscle-flexing bombast, utilising mystery, fashion, wit and satire as substitutes for bludgeoning action…

Following affable appreciation in ‘An Introduction’ by Mark Waid, weekly wonderment commences in all its vibrant glory at the height of hostilities. Sadly, individual serial stories are untitled, so you’ll just have to manage with my meagre synopses of individual yarns; and it’s important to note that during this time Seigel finally left for boot camp and a number of often anonymous scribes were pulled in to take his place…

We open with Burnley rendering a serial saga as 4F reporter Clark Kent is assigned to follow and write on the experience of “Model Air Cadet” Dave Cooper as he progresses through training. Naturally, the proposed series presents a perfect opportunity for spies to deliver a shattering propaganda coup, but even after sneaky Nazi uber-strategist Eyeglasses takes charge of a sustained but continually failing campaign of sabotage, character assassination, framing and attempted murder, somehow Dave gets ever nearer to his goal of serving his country as an American Airman without ever knowing how much Superman helped…

With Boring at the drawing board a whole new concept took over the Sunday strip from August 15th as the Action Ace – responding to mail from servicemen overseas – sets up wish-fulfilment service ‘Superman’s Service for Servicemen’.

Apparently based on genuine GI letters from service people reading the strip wherever they were stationed, the following weeks and months found the hero scanning a postcard and then making a wish come true. These included flying soldiers across the world to get the most out of 24-hours passes; playing cupid; chasing off Home Front wolves and solving other “Dear John…” crises; checking for infidelity (he even helps WACs confirm that their far-deployed lovers are staying true!); crushing an invasion of sabotage-intent Gremlins infesting Metropolis and getting one Pacific-stranded soldier home in time for Christmas… and the birth of his first child…

Ranging far and wide, Superman delivers a kangaroo to an officer’s little girl; delivers late or lost mail to every stranded warrior; helps women decide which branch of the auxiliary services they should volunteer for; tracks down four separated pals lost on different missions; handles the KP duties for an entire army camp; supplies a busload of burlesque entertainers for joy-strapped GIs; assuages nervous mothers’ concerns on the lack of luxury in service barracks; criss-crosses oceans to facilitate marriages; retrains square pegs in over their heads; mediates service legal disputes; helps one lonely soldier enlist his pet pooch and much, much more…

Naturally, any enemy shipping, aviation, ordnance or personal encountered during these humanitarian sorties did not fare well at the mighty hands of the Man of Steel, such as a second sneak attack of 200 Japanese bombers seeking to ambush embattled troops and a similar land-based assault on our boys. Eventually as newspaper time catches up with real-world events, Superman acts as escort to flighty Sally Wilshire as she witnesses first-hand the D-Day landing and beyond…

Sadly, not included here is an oddment of publishing history and doctrine that will hopefully make it to future editions. In 1943, McClure – concerned that circulation might dip if Superman did not appear regularly – urged DC to create a spin-off feature. The abortive result was Lois, Lane, Girl Reporter. Intended as filler for emergencies, a trial run of 12 strips ran above Superman Sunday pages in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, sporadically between  October 24th 1943 and February 27th 1944, but are not seen here…

Back on the Superman Service, the ultimate expression of the service was when the Wonder of the Age astoundingly grants the wish of arrogant Japanese Major Saki Sukiyaki, and turns a planned propaganda triumph for the foe into a spectacular victory for democracy…

After more than a year, as the war staggered to its conclusion, continuity drama returned to Superman, albeit still laced with contemporary themes. Strip #263 (November 12th 1944) began a tale exploring the traumas of being demobilised as Clark encounters old pal Elmer Kronk, whose casual reaction to a string of near-lethal accidents is most disturbing…

Reinstating Superman’s service for servicemen – with a side-order of civilian reintegration – took the feature into the last year of the conflict with the emphasis very much on mopping up and going home, but boasts one last bizarre hurrah spanning #279-282 (March 4th – 25th 1945) as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and rest of the insane inner circle use the service to invite the literal Übermensch to a conference where he can take up his natural place as one of them…

Then Lois exploits her relationship for a private service. Having been a volunteer ambulance driver, she wants the Action Ace to visit and cheer up disabled servicemen. That’s easy enough to accomplish but the hero runs with the idea and organises an entire support organisation from those women no longer employed as war workers, but it’s a big job with some weird turns in store. Before long the Man of Tomorrow is finally battling Japanese soldiers in the skies over the Pacific, before heading home to help a young man struggling with uninformed parents and a massive case of “battle fatigue”, and another poor soul who somehow mislaid the army’s cash payroll…

Although the war against Japan ended with unconditional surrender on August 14th 1945 – and officially on September 2nd – preprepared stories kept coming that kept affairs on a strictly martial note. In #306 (September 9th) the failing militarists instigated a scheme to create their own superman with crudely hilarious (by 1940s standards) results, before Superman played matchmaker to a marriage-hungry war-hero seeking a “Dream Girl” to wed…

A sign of changed times came at last with episode #317 (November 25th 1945) as a thematic reset looked forward by looking back. Here, a much enhanced and expanded origin saga began with Jor-El & Lara accepting doom on Krypton, infant Kal-El’s flight to Earth, childhood in Smallville and Clark’s first days at the Daily Planet and nights as Superman…

Clearly the stars were his destination, and the new year brought a new direction. With #326 (27th January 1946) a return to contemporaneity saw the deep thinker Professor Vern build a Rocketship and drag Lois to Saturn with him. Thankfully, when the voyage inevitably hits trouble, Superman is able to follow and rescue them from a thousand perils and the solicitude of oppressive mega civilisation Suprania. It’s a close-run thing though, as fabulous High Queen Arda really likes the Kryptonian and isn’t married at the moment…

A return to Earth in every way prompts a human-scaled story of mystery, murder and romance amongst circus folk as the Man of Tomorrow must navigate a happy course between rivals Sadface the Clown and high wire artist Breakstone as they bring acrimony and woe to Warnum & Wailey’s 3-ring extravaganza whilst battling without let or restraint for the love of comely aerialist Carlotta…

Happily, Lois & Clark are there to adjudicate, referee, spot the deathtraps and reap the headlines in a Big Top thriller comprising episodes #339-353 (28th April – 4th August 1946)…

Although that one concludes on a happy note, generally it’s all To Be Continued…

Superman: The Golden Age Sunday Pages 1943-1946 is the first of three huge (312 x 245mm), lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the earliest and always transitional Man of Tomorrow. It’s an inexpressible joy to see these “lost” stories, offering a far more measured, domesticated and comforting side of America’s most unique contribution to world culture. It’s also a pure delight to see some of the hero’s most engaging yesterdays. Join me and see for yourself…
Superman ™ & © 2013 DC Comics. All rights reserved. The Library of American Comics is a trademark of The Library of American Comics LLC. All rights reserved. SUPERMAN and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics.