Category: Romance

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The Last Queen


By Jean-Marc Rochette, translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-19-5 (HB)

In conjunction with scripters such as Jacques Lob, Matz, Oliver Bocquet, Bejamin Legrand and others, painter/illustrator Jean-Marc Rochette (Altitude, Bestiaire des alpes, Les loup, Les Aventures Psychotiques de Napoléon et Bonaparte, Le Transperceneige/Snowpiercer sequence) rapidly became one of the key bande dessinée artists to watch.

In 2022 he confirmed that status and surmounted it with the release of La Dernière Reine: a self-contained naturalist epic which quickly garnered many major awards. It was named “Book of the Year” by Lire Magazine Littéraire and Elle Magazine, was radio station RTL’s Grand Prix for Comics winner and was an Official Selection of the lauded Angoulême Festival 2023.

As can be seen in this new translation from SelfMadeHero, even in English, it’s a bloody good read.

Rendered in moody colour washes and stark line, The Last Queen took Rochette three years to complete and explores all the passions of its creator: love of wilderness, scaling mountains, contemplative solitude and the balance between humanity and nature.

Those fascinations are expressed here in the millennial history and last gasp of a clan of red-headed outsiders living on the Vercors Massif of the French Prealps since neolithic times. Often regarded as witches, the ancestors of doomed outcast Édouard Roux have lived with and in the wilds throughout history. His kind enjoyed a particular affinity for the great bears that were indisputable masters of the range for all of time, until as a child he witnesses the end of the last mighty monarch of the peaks.

As the 19th century closed, a she-bear dubbed “the Last Queen” is killed by a shepherd and her carcass gloatingly desecrated by villagers. The other kids cruelly call little Édouard “son of the bear” and say vile things about his mother, but he’s used to it.

When war comes in 1914, Roux marches off and is a hero of the Somme trenches. All it costs is the lower part of his face…

In 1920, the despondent pensioned-off warrior is on his uppers: a despised, pitiable gueule cassée – “broken face” – shrouding his disfigurement and shame beneath a sack-like hood. He is but one of thousands…

When Roux hears of a woman artist who helps injured soldiers, he travels to Paris and meets Jeanne Sauvage who builds a new lower face for Roux based on the visage of a Greek god. Based on actual sculptor and proto-feminist Marie Marcelle Jane Poupelet, Sauvage has been making supple, lifelike masks for France’s defaced heroes and – refusing payment he cannot afford – does the same for Édouard.

Soon they are lovers and she introduces him to her circle of artist friends in Montmartre …more dangerously disruptive outsiders in a world increasingly governed by inconspicuous wealth, covert prestige and urbane uniformity: one that simultaneously tolerates, despises and exploits them all.

When the city life grinds them down and spits them out, Roux takes Jeanne to the mountains and shows her the secrets of the massif and a long-held family secret: stone age cave paintings and a neolithic carved bear lost from human knowledge for hundreds of years. The bounty of wonders inspire her great artistic breakthrough but Jeanne’s creative triumph is swindled from her by the elegant, cultured elite of modern civilisation. She and Édouard retreat from the emerging world for a timeless natural idyll that is paradise on Earth, but their days of true happiness are already numbered…

Uncompromising, deeply poignant and painfully sad, this is a saga of love and extinction: a testament to the passing of the past, with raw nobility lost to greed, crushing conformity and rise of mass mediocrity. It’s a struggle with no room for mercy or grace allowed for the unconventional or out-of-step. A paean to the fading call of the wild, uncomfortable or troublesome heritage, these lovers’ loss encapsulates and symbolises so many small wonders destroyed by progress, with revenants and outsiders pushed beyond even the few oases of fringe and margins not taken from them yet…

In a world that has no place for so much any longer, The Last Queen is a powerful call to cherish and preserve what can so easily die and never be regained…
La Dernière reine © Casterman, 2022. All rights reserved.

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Trent volume 8: Little Trent


By Rodolphe & Léo, coloured by Marie-Paule Alluard, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-398-7 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Continental audiences adore the mythologised American experience, both in Big Sky Wild Westerns and crime dramas of later eras. They enjoy a profound historical connection to the northernmost parts of the New World, generating many great graphic extravaganzas…

Born in Rio de Janeiro on December 13th 1944, “Léo” is artist/storyteller Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira Filho. Upon attaining a degree in mechanical engineering from Puerto Alegre, in 1968 he became a government employee for three years until forced to flee Brazil because of his political views. Whilst military dictators ran the homeland he lived in Chile and Argentina before illegally returning in 1974. He worked as a designer and graphic artist in Sao Paulo whilst creating his first comics art for O Bicho magazine, and in 1981 migrated to Paris to pursue a career in Bande Dessinée. He worked on Pilote and L’Echo des Savanes as well as handling advertising and graphic design jobs, until the big break when Jean-Claude Forest (Bébé Cyanure, Charlot, Barbarella) invited him to draw stories for Okapi.

This brought regular illustration work for Bayard Presse and, in 1988, Léo began his association with scripter/scenarist Rodolphe D. Jacquette – AKA Rodolphe. Prolific and celebrated, Léo’s writing partner had been a giant of comics since the 1970s: a Literature graduate who left teaching and running libraries to create poetry, criticism, novels, biographies, children’s stories and music journalism.

On meeting Jacques Lob in 1975, Jacquette expanded his portfolio: writing for many artists in magazines ranging from Pilote and Circus to à Suivre and Métal Hurlant. Amongst his most successful endeavours are Raffini (with Ferrandez) and L’Autre Monde (with Florence Magnin), but his triumphs in all genres and age ranges are far too numerous to list here.

In 1991 “Rodolph” began working with Léo on a period adventure of the “far north” starring a duty-driven loner. Taciturn, introspective, bleakly philosophical and relentlessly driven, Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant Philip Trent premiered in L’Homme Mort, forging a lonely path through the 19th century Dominion. He starred in eight moving, hard-bitten, love-benighted, beautifully realised albums until 2000, with the creative collaboration sparking later fantasy classics Kenya, Centaurus and Porte de Brazenac…

Cast very much in the pattern perfected by Jack London and John Buchan, Trent is a man of few words, deep thoughts and unyielding principles who gets the job done whilst stifling the emotional turmoil boiling within him: the very embodiment of “still waters running deep”.

As Petite Trent in 2000, Little Trent was the 8th and final saga to date, offering a marked change in fortune. After years of second-guessing, procrastination and prevarication, he had finally won and wed the love of his life and now basked in connubial bliss – until the opening of this tale.

Years previously, the lovelorn peacekeeper had saved Agnes St. Yves (but not her beloved brother) and was given a clear invitation from her, albeit one he never acted upon. In the interim, Agnes met and married someone else. As before, Trent was unable to save the man in her life when banditry and destruction manifested during an horrific murder spree. The ball was again in Philip’s court and once more he fumbled it through timidity, indecision and inaction. He retreated into duty, using work to evade commitment and the risk of rejection…

Now even though he has fulfilled his dream and won the woman he loves, she is still missing.

It’s not a problem he can fix. Agnes has been called away with her mother to minister to a dying relative in Europe. She might be gone as much as eight months and Trent cannot shake the conviction that it will be much longer…

Nevertheless, duty always calls and the Mountie resolutely buries himself in his next case: protection duty for a mother and child he must escort to the Pacific coast – despite every effort of the estranged husband to stop them.

Poet Rodney Taylor is the alcoholic wastrel who abused his family and utterly refuses to accept the divorce he drove his wife to seek. Due to his repeated threats the authorities have agreed to safeguard the fugitives over the wishes of the extremely violent but exceeding charming drunk. The fleeing mother and child are daughter and grandson to retired Senator Charles Priestly and if Trent can deliver them to distant Whitehorse, the bigwig’s estate household can properly protect them thereafter. The slow tedious passage by rail to Prince Rupert Sound is punctuated by constant excited questions from boisterous, hero-struck and deeply impressionable Jeremy and Trent is further distracted by a letter from Agnes which has overtaken him and waits at the Post Office in Prince Rupert, from where they will travel up river on paddle steamer Reginald…

Before Trent can read the missive from Agnes, Jeremy falls into the harbour and her precious words are soaked and ruined after the sergeant fishes him out. All Trent can make of the pulp is scraps and the phrases “wonderful news” and perhaps “expecting a happy event…”

Immediately his attitude to the pesky lad softens. Although dour and dutiful in public, Trent’s dreams are troubled, as the boy’s tireless exuberance combines with the new husband’s longing for his bride, sparking distracting notions of an heir of his own…

The journey takes a dire turn when Rodney Taylor also embarks on the Reginald playing the aggrieved husband and subtly threatening his former family. Seeking to avoid conflict, the Mountie soft peddles his responses and is caught off guard when Rodney’s initial warning and punishment provoke even greater acts of bullying and terror. When the stalker hires a band of thugs events quickly escalate and the entire ship is lost.

Still refusing to see sense or back off Rodney follows them to the very gates of the Priestly estate and Trent is forced to an action that crushes Jeremy’s hero-worshipping attitude forever.

Technically successful but feeling as if he failed, Trent makes his way home to find Agnes waiting. It has been nearly a year since they were together and her news is nothing like what her husband has imagined…

Another beguilingly introspective voyage of internal discovery, where human nature is a hostile environment, Little Trent delivers suspense, sentiment, riveting action and crushing poignancy in a compelling epic to delight all fans of widescreen cinematic entertainment. This is a sensitive contemplative graphic narrative series no fan of mature drama can afford to ignore.
Original edition © Dargaud Editeur Paris 2000 by Rodolphe & Leo. All rights reserved. English translation © 2017 Cinebook Ltd.

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Showcase Presents Teen Titans volume 2


By Mike Friedrich, Bob Haney, Neal Adams, Marv Wolfman, Robert Kanigher, Steve Skeates, Gil Kane, Wally Wood, Nick Cardy, Sal Amendola, George Tuska, Carmine Infantino, Dick Dillin, Joe Giella, Jim Aparo & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-677-1 (TPB)

Hey, Super Kids! Happy 60th Anniversary!

It’s perhaps hard to grasp these days that once kid heroes were a rarity and at the beginning of the Silver Age, often considered a liability. Now the massive Teen Titans brand – with numerous comic book iterations, assorted TV shows, movies and even an award-winning early reading version (Aw, Yeaah! Tiny Titans!) their continuance as assured as anything in our biz. Nevertheless, during the tumultuous 1960s the series – never a top seller – courted controversy and actual teenage readers by confronting controversial issues head on.

I must have been just lucky, because these stories of lost youth searching for great truths and meaning were released just as I turned Teen. They resonated especially because they were talking directly to me. It didn’t hurt that they were brilliantly written, fantastically illustrated and staggeringly fresh and contemporary. I’m delighted to declare that age hasn’t diminished their quality or impact either, merely cemented their worth and importance.

The concept of underage hero-teams was not a new one when the Batman TV show fuelled DC’s move to entrust big heroes’ assorted sidekicks with their own regular comic as a hip and groovy ensemble as dedicated to helping kids as they were to stamping out insidious evil.

The biggest difference between wartime groups like The Young Allies, Boy Commandos or Newsboy Legion and such 1950s holdovers as The Little Wise Guys or Boys Ranch and the DC’s new team was quite simply the burgeoning phenomena of “The Teenager” as a discrete social and commercial power bloc. These were kids who could be allowed to do things themselves (within reason) without constant adult aid or supervision. As early as spring 1964, Brave and the Bold #54 had tested the waters in a gripping tale by Bob Haney & Bruno Premiani in which Kid Flash, Aqualad and Robin foiled a modern-day Pied Piper.

What had been a straight team-up was formalised a year later when the heroes reunited and included Wonder Girl in a proper super-group with a team-name: Teen Titans. With the stories in this second merely monochrome print-only relic of a collected volume of those early exploits the series had hit a creative peak, with spectacular, groundbreaking artwork and fresh, different stories that increasingly showed youngsters had opinions and attitudes of their own – and often that they could be at odds with those of their mystery-men mentors…

Spanning cover-dated January 1969 to December 1971 and collecting Teen Titans #19-36, and team-up appearances from Brave and the Bold #83 & 94 and World’s Finest Comics #205, these tales cover the most significant period of social and political unrest in American history and do it from the perspective of the underdogs, the seekers, the rebels…

The wonderment begins with a beautifully realised comedy-thriller as boy bowman Speedy enlists. ‘Teen Titans: Stepping Stones for a Giant Killer!’ (#19, January/February 1969), by Mike Friedrich, Gil Kane & Wally Wood, pitted the team against youthful evil mastermind Punch who planned to kill the Justice League of America and thought a trial run against the junior division a smart idea…

Brave and the Bold # 83 (April/May 1969) took a radical turn as the Titans (sans Aqualad, who was dropped from the squad to appear in Aquaman and because there just ain’t that much sub-sea skulduggery) tried to save Bruce Wayne’s latest foster-son from his own inner demons in a tense thriller about trust and betrayal in the Haney & Neal Adams epic ‘Punish Not my Evil Son!’. TT #20 took a long running plot-thread about extra-dimensional invaders and gave it a counterculture twist in ‘Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho’, a rollicking romp written by Neal Adams, pencilled by him & Sal Amendola and inked by brush-maestro Nick Cardy – one of the all-out prettiest illustration jobs of that decade.

Exemplars of the era/symbolic super-teens Hawk and Dove join proceedings for #21’s ‘Citadel of Fear’ (Adams & Cardy): chasing smugglers, finding aliens and ramping up the surly teen rebellion quotient whilst moving the invaders story-arc towards its stunning conclusion. ‘Halfway to Holocaust’ is only half of #22, the abduction of Kid Flash & Robin leading to a cross-planar climax as Wonder Girl, Speedy and a radical new ally quash the invasion threat forever, but still leaving enough room for a long overdue makeover in ‘The Origin of Wonder Girl’ by Marv Wolfman, Kane & Cardy. For years the series – and DC editors in general – had fudged the fact the younger Amazon Princess was not actually human, a sidekick, or even a person, but rather an incarnation of Wonder Woman as a child. As continuity backwriting strengthened its stranglehold on the industry, it was finally felt that the team’s distaff member needed a fuller background of her own.

This moving tale revealed she was in fact a human foundling rescued by Princess Diana and raised on Paradise Island where super-science gave her all the powers of a true Amazon. They even found her a name – Donna Troy – and an apartment, complete with hot roommate. All Donna had to do was sew herself a glitzy new figure-hugging costume…

Now thoroughly grounded, the team jetted south in #23’s fast-paced yarn ‘The Rock ‘n’ Roll Rogue’ (by Haney, Kane & Cardy), trying to rescue musical rebel Sammy Soul from his grasping family and – by extension – his lost dad from Amazonian headhunters. ‘Skis of Death!’ (#24, November/December) by the same creative crew has the quartet holidaying in the mountains and uncovering a scam to defraud Native Americans of their lands. It was a terrific old-style tale, but with the next issue the most radical change in DC’s cautious publishing history made Teen Titans a comic which had thrown out the rulebook…

For a series which spoke so directly to young people, it’s remarkable to think that ‘The Titans Kill a Saint?’ and its radical departure from traditional superhero stories was crafted by Bob Kanigher & Nick Cardy – two of the most senior creators in the business. The emotion-charged thriller set the scene for a different type of human-scaled adventures that were truly gripping and bravely innovative. For the relatively short time the experiment continued, readers had no idea what might happen next…

While on a night out in their civilian identities, Robin, Kid Flash, Speedy, Wonder Girl, Hawk and Dove meet telepathic go-go dancer Lilith who warns them of impending trouble. Cassandra-like, they ignore her warnings and a direct result a globally revered Nobel Laureate is gunned down. Coming so soon after the deaths of John F. and Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, this was stunning stuff and in traumatised response all but Robin abandon their costumed personas and – with the help of mysterious millionaire philanthropist and mentor Mr. Jupiter – dedicate their unique abilities to exploring humanity’s flaws and graces: seeking fundamentally human ways to atone and make a difference in the world…

With Lilith beside them, they undertake different sorts of missions, beginning with ‘A Penny For a Black Star’ in which they attempt to live in a poverty-wracked inner city ghetto, where they find Mal Duncan, a street kid who becomes the first African-American in space…although it’s a one-way trip.

TT #27 reintroduced eerie elements of fantasy as ‘Nightmare in Space’ (Kanigher, George Tuska, Carmine Infantino & Cardy) sees the Titans en route to the Moon to rescue Mal, before encountering something far beyond the ken of mortal imagining. Meanwhile on Earth, Donna’s roommate Sharon stumbles upon an alien incursion. ‘Blindspot’ by Steve Skeates & Cardy was tangentially linked to another innovative saga then playing out in Aquaman’s comic book. You’ll need to see Aquaman: The Search For Mera and Aquaman: Deadly Waters for that extended delight. Both were edited by fresh-faced Dick Giordano, who was at this time responsible for the majority of innovative new material coming out of DC, even whilst proving himself one of the best inkers in the field.

Suffice to say that the Sea King’s foe Ocean Master had allied himself with aliens and Sharon became involved just as Aqualad returned looking for help. Unable to understand the Titan’s reluctance to get involved, Garth tries to go it alone but hits a snag only the original team can fix, which they do in Skeates & Cardy’s concluding chapter ‘Captives!’ However, once the alien threat is thwarted our heroes once more lay down their powers and costumes, but they have much to ponder after seeing what benefits their unique gifts can bring…

Teen Titans #30 featured three short tales, written by Skeates. Illustrated by Cardy, ‘Greed… Kills!’ is a cunning mystery exploring street and white-collar crime, whereas ‘Whirlwind’ is a Kid Flash prose novelette with art by Amendola before ‘Some Call it Noise’ (Infantino & Cardy) delivers an Aqualad solo tale in which his girlfriend Tula – AKA Aquagirl – takes a near-fatal wrong turn at a surface world rock concert.

Student politics took centre-stage in #31’s lead feature ‘To Order is to Destroy’ (Skeates, Tuska & Cardy) as the young heroes investigate a totally trouble-free campus where unhappy or difficult scholars are given a small brain operation to help them “concentrate”, whilst Hawk & Dove solo strip ‘From One to Twenty’ pits quarrelsome Don and Hank Hall against a band of murderous counterfeiters in a deft crime-caper from Skeates, Tuska & Cardy.

The creators then open up the fantasy element again with a time-travelling, parallel universe epic beginning in #32 with ‘A Mystical Realm, A World Gone Mad’ as Mal and Kid Flash accidentally change the past, turning Earth into a magical mad-scape. However, undoing their error results in a Neanderthal teenager being trapped in our time, presenting the group with their greatest challenge: educating a savage primitive and making him into a civilised modern man. Illustrated by Tuska & Cardy, ‘Less Than Human’ signalled the return of Bob Haney as main writer and triggered a gradual return of powers and costumes as the author picked up the pace of Jupiter’s grand experiment, restating it in terms that looked less harshly on comics’ bread & butter fights ‘n’ tights scenarios.

Brave and the Bold #94 (February-March 1971, by Haney & Cardy) offered potent counter-culture thrills as the team infiltrate an inner city commune to negate a nuclear bomb-plot in ‘Rebels in the Streets’, before the exigencies of publishing moved the series into the world of the supernatural as costumed heroes temporarily faded away in favour of tales of mystery and imagination. Haney, Tuska & Cardy’s ‘The Demon of Dog Island’ sees the team – including Robin who had quietly rejoined during the civilisation of cave-boy Gnarrk – desperately battling to prevent Wonder Girl’s possession by a gypsy ghost.

Skeates, Dick Dillin & Joe Giella crated ‘The Computer That Captured a Town’ in World’s Finest Comics #205 (September 1971), slyly examining racism and sexism as Superman finds the Titans trapped in a small town that had mysteriously re-adopted the values of the 1890s – a lot like middle America today but with culprits a lot easier to punch in the face…

Teen Titans #35 reiterated supernatural themes as the team travels to Verona in ‘Intruders of the Forbidden Crypt’ (Haney, Tuska & Cardy) wherein Lilith and the son of Mr. Jupiter’s business rival are drawn into a mesmerising web of tragedy: compelled to relive the doomed love of Romeo and Juliet despite all the rationalisations of modern science and the best efforts of the young heroes…

By the same creators, ‘A Titan is Born’ is a rite of passage for Mal as the everyman “token black guy” faces and defeats the murderous Gargoyle alone and unaided, before the reincarnation tragedy concludes with fate foiled in ‘The Tomb Be their Destiny’: the cover feature of #36. Filling out that issue and this book are two brief vignettes: Aqualad 3-page teaser ‘The Girl of the Shadows’ by Skeates & Jim Aparo and Haney & Cardy’s beguiling opening episode in the origin of Lilith ‘The Teen-Ager From Nowhere’. This showed a 10-year-old orphan’s first prescient exploit and the distrust it engendered, promising much more to come: a perfect place to end this second monochrome masterpiece of graphic literature.

Although perhaps dated in delivery now, these tales were a liberating experience for kids when first released. They truly betokened new empathy with independent youth and tried to address problems that were more relevant to and generated by that specific audience. That they are so captivating in execution is a wonderful bonus. This is absolute escapism and absolutely delightful and demand a fresh edition as soon as possible.
© 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mongrel


By Sayra Begum (Knockabout)
ISBN: 978-0-86166-269-2 (TPB)

Comics offer an immediate and potent method of communication that is both universally accessible and subtly intimate. You want countless characters and exotic locales? Just draw them. Need to navigate the most torturous tracks of the psyche and expose the most taciturn soul? Just fill captions and balloons with the words and tone that cut to the heart of the matter…

Somebody who got that from get-go was Sayra Begum, who first presented her life story in pictorial form in 2017. Happily, she shared it with the perceptive folks at Knockabout Comics who recognised a great work when they saw it. In her own incisive words and deft pencil work, Begum – identifying here as “Shuna” – shares what growing up meant for the child of a strict, devout and loving Bangladeshi Muslim mum only living in England until the family has enough money to retire to a mansion in her beloved homeland. It’s not an easy existence since her dad is a white man (a convert to Islam) who still remembers the freedoms of his old life. Moreover, the community treats them with polite disregard…

As seen in ‘Meet the Mongrel’, ‘Memories of Waterland’, and ‘The Forgotten Self’, Shuna and her siblings are pulled in so many directions growing up. She wants to be an artist, but her Amma is more concerned that she be ‘A Good Muslim’, believing ‘Life is a Test’ and her old ways such as ‘An Arranged Marriage’ are the only proper life to live…

For her parents, England ends at the front door and the household is pure Bangla within the walls. The lure of the outer world has already proved too much for one brother as seen in ‘My Poor Family’, ‘Suffocated’ and ‘The Disownment’ and soon Shuna too is living a secret life with an English lover mother could never approve of…

Continual contrasts with her perfect cousin in Bangladesh constantly wrack her conscience but Shuna has long capitulated to the wiles of Shaitan in her head. Life has a habit of upsetting all plans and exposing secrets and ‘Our Parallel Family’, ‘The Meeting’, ‘Judgement Day’ and ‘The Mongrel Children’ all reveal how even the harshest opinions may shift, leading to a truly romantic happy ending in ‘Goodbye Anger’ prior to a ruminatory ‘Epilogue’…

Begum weds brisk, informative line drawing with the dazzling traditional patterns of Islamic art and excesses of surrealism to weave a compelling and visually enticing tale of real people coping with ancient intolerances and the rapidly evolving family stresses of a fluid and fluctuating multicultural society. It’s all the more affecting to realise she’s bravely sharing the minutiae and intimacies of her own life to highlight a situation as old as humanity itself.

A magical story and a stunning debut, Mongrel is book you must read and one that has never been more timely or pertinent.
Mongrel © by 2020 Sayra Begum All rights reserved.

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Goodnight, Irene – The Collected Stories of Irene Van de Kamp


By Carol Lay (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-659-7 (TPB)

During the creative boom of comics in the 1980s, a vast outpouring of material found its way onto the shelves, dealing with a variety of topics and genres in a number of styles. Much of it was excellent but when the boom became a bust lots of great strips died along with the trash – of which there was an incredible and some would say disproportionate amount. Also a casualty was the spirit of innovation and expectation…

Originally published by Fantagraphics (and later Rip-Off Press) Good Girls featured two series by professional and underground cartoonist Carol Lay. Along with the tribulations of Miss Lonely Hearts – an agony aunt of sorts – was the ongoing ever more complex unfolding saga of a lost baby heiress (“Richest Woman in the World”) raised by “African Tribesmen” who practised female ritual disfigurement. Eventually the adult Irene Van de Kamp was returned to modern western society, where even her billions could not buy her acceptance and peace of mind.

Born 1952 in Whittier, Carol Lay grew up a California girl and from 1970 studied at UCLA, where amongst many revelations including “sex, drugs and Frank Zappa” she had her first encounter with graphic narrative in the form of Zap Comix. Graduating with a Fine Arts degree, she began making her own “underground commix”, which appeared in Last Gasp and Rip Off Press titles and later through Kitchen Sink Press and Fantagraphics.

That never made her rich but at least loads of advertising and commercial art jobs kept wolves from the door – as she secured a growing succession of commissions in the straight strip world for companies like Warren, Western Publishing, Eclipse, Marvel and DC Comics where she co-wrote and drew The Oz-Wonderland War. Lay graduated to newspaper strips and in 1992 created Story Minute (latterly Way Lay) for LA Weekly, progressive web site Salon.com and for international syndication. She has since written Wonder Woman novels, created storyboards and designs for film and the music industry and worked for The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Mad Magazine and more. In 2010 she began a semi-regular gig drawing The Simpsons for Bongo Comics.

Back to Irene and this cruelly out-of-print treasure. To Western eyes the rescued heiress is truly hideous. It is to the credit of the character that she endures cheerfully, eschewing any kind of corrective surgery or procedures. By her own deeply held aesthetic lights, she is beautiful and wants to remain that way.

Using the art tropes and narrative style of traditional romance comics as a vehicle, Lay examined social mores and aesthetic taboos, and especially the power of conformity to affect the most primal of emotions – Love and Desire …with a huge side order of Greed. Don’t let my pomposity fool you, though. This is a romance, and a daring, funny charming one at that.

Her skill as artist and storyteller in relating the picaresque tribulations are subtly subversive, and you will soon lose any reservations you might initially have been inflicted with. This is a landmark experiment and a wonderful example of grow-up comic literature. The initial series never reached a conclusion, and this volume also contains all-new episodes that concluded the saga of the beautiful, irrepressible and indomitable Irene after adverse publishing conditions killed Good Girls before its time.
© 2007 Carol Lay. All Rights Reserved.

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Horizontal Collaboration


By Navie & Carole Maurel, translated by Margaret Morrison (Korero Press)
ISBN: 978-1-91274-001-7 (HB)

With its world-shaking reordering of society and all the consequent, still-felt repercussions World War II remains very much in people’s minds. This translated European tale is a potent counterpoint to the usual commemorative bombast, devoting much-delayed attention to the ever-dwindling last of “The Few”. Here, as well as the valiant men, we see acknowledgment of the nigh-universally disregarded contributions of women caught up in the conflict, not to mention unsung heroes of all nations who were drawn into the horror.

Horizontal Collaboration is not about heroes. It deals with people: civilians and fugitives, women and invading occupiers: the ones who are seldom celebrated but who also confronted the triumph of global darkness, all in their own small, unnoticed way…

France was taken by the Nazi war machine in 1940: occupied and partitioned on June 22nd, with the Germans holding the industrial north and central regions whilst Marshal Philippe Pétain’s puppet protectorate Régime de Vichy was allowed to govern the south and pacified colonies such as Algeria. When France was liberated in September 1944, a wave of retaliation began against those who “cooperated” with the conquerors in all ways great and small.

A sordid time of scores (real, imagined or fabricated) settled and cruel abuses arbitrarily inflicted on guilty and innocent alike plagued France for years afterwards. The most telling indignities were perpetrated upon women – wives, mothers, sisters or strangers – accused of fraternising with or giving comfort to the enemy. Such liaisons were called “Collaboration Horizontale” and even the most nebulous or unfounded accusation carried a heavy and immediate price…

Just about now, a grandmother listens to her granddaughter unload about her current amour and her mind drifts back to the war and a secret she has never shared with anyone…

In 1942, a large apartment house on Passage de la Bonne-Graine is filled with families, all dealing with the German conquerors in their own way. Despite the change in their fortunes, they have not found any way to overcome the petty grudges and ingrained social difficulties that have always kept them at odds with each other… even before war broke out.

Surly aged crone Madame Flament is rude to everyone. She spends all her time complaining or disappearing into the cellars to feed her cats. What secret is she really hiding?

Old Camille is deemed the man of the house, but he is gentle, ineffectual and blind: blithely letting life go on around him and apparently noticing nothing. His wife is the building’s concierge. Brusque matron Martine Andrae is a snooping busybody loudly championing decency and family values, but her home life is nothing to envy and her sharp tongue scores points off family, friends and foes indiscriminately. She despises the younger women and their families in the building, especially pretty Joséphine Borgeon who makes ends meet through her theatre act. Surely, everybody knows what she really does to survive?

Also viewed with suspicion is young mother Rose. Her husband Raymond has been taken away to work for the Nazis, so his friend and neighbour Leon – a gendarme – has been keeping a “friendly” eye on her, even though his own pregnant wife Judith keeps clumsily falling and hurting herself and certainly needs proper supervision…

Strangely boyish artist Simone keeps to herself as much as she can and – originally – there was also a Jewess called Sarah Ansburg and her little son. They somehow disappeared before the Germans could find them. That must be the reason Abwehr intelligence officer Mark Dinklebauer spends so much time in the building. It couldn’t possibly be that he has fallen in love with one of the occupants, or that this most forbidden of passions is dangerously, illegally reciprocated, can it?

Crafted with deft incisiveness by media writer and historian (Mademoiselle) Navie and rendered in a beguiling style (powerfully reminiscent of Will Eisner in his later years) by seasoned illustrator/author Carole Maurel (Luisa: Now & Then, Waves, L’apocalypse selon Magda), this is a meditative but uncompromising glance at ordinary lives under relentless pressure: an ensemble piece of human drama taking as its heart and centre point an unlikely flowering of true but doomed love…

Moving, beguiling and evocatively rewarding, Horizontal Collaboration is a beautiful tragedy and potent reminder that love takes no prisoners while enslaving all it touches.
© Editions Delcourt – 2017. All rights reserved.

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What We Don’t Talk About


By Charlot Kristensen (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-91039-555-4 (TPB/digital edition)

There’s plenty wrong with the world, but most of it could probably be sorted if people got together and discussed things rationally and honestly. Some individuals, however, don’t want to change positions or even agree that there even is a problem. This book isn’t for them, and we’ll have to find more drastic ways to deal with their nonsense…

Charlot Kristensen graduated from Middlesex University in 2015 with a degree in Illustration and thereafter pursued a career in the arts. Her visual and narrative gifts are prodigious and superbly highlighted in this vibrant examination of an interracial relationship in crisis. Kristensen is of Afro-Danish descent and clearly knows what she’s talking about and how best to depict it…

Painted in lavish and mood-setting colours, What We Don’t Talk About focuses on an idyllic modern romance as (demi-autobiographical?) artist Farai accompanies her white English boyfriend Adam to Lake Windemere to finally meet his parents. The young couple have been lovers for two years now, ever since University, but her beautiful gentle musician soulmate is uncharacteristically nervous – even short-tempered – as the journey begins. Farai almost regrets the trip, even though she’s been pushing for it from the start. Her nerves and his tension dissipate on the trip north, but are all revived when she meets Charles and Martha. The look on their faces and the tone of the greeting tell Farai an old story…

In frosty diffidence, the social amenities are followed but it’s not just a barely suppressed attitude of polite condescension Farai experiences. Martha’s blunt opinions extend to all aspects of her son’s life. Although she clearly opposes Adam’s choice of career, after meeting the girlfriend, Mother now has a new problem to gnaw at…

As the weekend progresses Martha’s sneering, passive aggressive comments go from dismissive to openly hostile: mocking Farai’s clothes and denigrating the achievements of her Zimbabwean parents (a doctor and engineer respectively). It soon becomes clear that it’s not just her who’s a problem: people with funny names or difficult accents and all Muslims also fail Martha’s tests of decency and acceptable standards. The matriarch also thinks the world should be grateful for British colonialism…

And Adam? He’s loving and conciliatory but ultimately weak and keen to avoid the issue. He knows what his mum says is objectionable, offensive and just plain wrong, but can’t or won’t bring himself to say anything or rebuke his parents. He seeks to divert conversations rather than defend Farai, even employing the “just a joke” defence at a most distressing family dinner. He doesn’t seem to believe their attitudes are unacceptable or that it even matters. Farai’s seen it all before. This is a love story that cannot possibly end well…

Like a contemporary Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, this powerful graphic drama forensically picks open the sores underlying so much of modern society’s attempts to integrate and assimilate long-entrenched attitudes: revealing not just how far we’ve all come, but how far we still have to go.

Comics have always had an admirable record in addressing issues of bigotry and racial injustice, and this tale takes that to the next level with potent moving empathy displayed and seen through the eyes of someone who’s clearly “been there, done that” all too often…

That ignorance and intolerance still daily endured by so many today is perpetually ignored, diminished and dismissed by those in charge has never been more effectively shown as in this unforgettable tale. Luxuriant colours and a welcomingly accessible cartoon style subversively act to devastatingly prove that prejudice doesn’t just lurk in dark corners any more but instead proudly rears its head everywhere it can. But that just means we must slap it down more forcefully and decisively.
© 2020 Charlot Kristensen.

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Numbercruncher


By Simon Spurrier & P.J. Holden, with Jordie Bellaire (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-004-7 (HB/Digital edition)

Sometimes a story just cries out to be told – especially if your tastes run to the sentimentally cynical, soppily savage or wide-eyed yet jaded. If that’s you, Numbercruncher will confirm all your suspicions about life whilst providing a really good time.

The tale – by Simon Spurrier (Judge Dredd, X-Men: Legacy, Six-Gun Gorilla, Damn Them All, John Constantine: Hellblazer) & P.J. Holden (also your man Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Battlefields, Terminator/Robocop Skullduggery Pleasant, The Moon Looked Down and Laughed) – began as a creator-owned project in The Judge Dredd Megazine before being expanded into a 4-issue miniseries at Titan Comics: a clever, controversial confection that will confound, delight and astound lovers of metaphysical whimsy, romantic fantasy and unnecessarily extreme violence.

Like 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, Werewolf by Night (2022) and especially A Matter of Life and Death, this unearthly tale is told on two separate levels of existence, differentiated by full-colour mundanity sections and monochrome views of The Afterlife. Unlike those movies, it’s a nasty and wittily vicious piece of work; just like handy geezer Bastard Zane, AKA operative #494, employed by The Divine Calculator to enforce Karmic Accountancy and keep souls circulating through the great cosmic All.

The Universe is just numbers and God is a mean, pedantic bean-counter, only concerned with the smooth running of his Grand Algorithm. Unfortunately, it all starts to fall apart when Zane is tasked by the weaselly Big Boss with stopping an in-love but dying young mathematician from gaming the system. SuperGenius Richard Thyme in his final seconds of mortal life, has a Eureka moment and divines the true and exact nature of everything… and how to manipulate it…

Armed with that inspirational knowledge, Thyme’s soul arrives before the Writer in the Grand Ledger and wheedles another spin on the Karmic Wheel – Reincarnation.

Brilliant Richard had been utterly in love with a dippy hippy chick named Jessica Reed, and when he bargains for another chance at a life with her, the petty-minded Divine Calculator gleefully accepts the proposition. Thyme will be reborn, with all memories intact, but when this second life ends, his soul will be gainfully employed – just like Zane – by the Karmic Accountancy Agency as a collector. Standard term of employment is for eternity… unless he can convince someone to take his place. The indentured operatives call it “Recirculation”…

There is only one get-out: a “Zero-clause” which means that if Thyme can live a life completely and totally without sin, his contract becomes null and void. But who could possibly live a mortal life without the slightest transgression?

Naturally, The Accountant won’t play fair: stacking the deck so reborn Richard is unable to even get near his lost love until it’s too late. However, when Zane finally shows up in AD 2035, eagerly expecting to close the case-file and retire with Thyme taking his long-suffering place in The Register, the frustrated, cheated SuperGenius plays his own trump card…

He’d always expected to be short-changed and made his own Karmic side-deal. By selling his contract to another Accountancy operative, he had bought another life, and as psychotically furious Bastard Zane soon sees, Thyme has pulled this trick over and over again. No matter how often Richard dies, he’s already being born again somewhere else…

With the mathematician’s sold-&-resold soul promised to practically every agent in the Afterlife, Zane’s only hope of retirement rests in killing the canny lad’s each and every reincarnation whilst simultaneously slaughtering every Karmic operative who’s been suckered into a deal with the lovesick little sod… On Earth, despite perpetual setbacks, each brief existence inches Richard slowly ever closer to Jess. That should make his eventual capture inevitable – but even here the smart guy has an incredible Plan B in operation: one even the Supreme Architect of the Cosmos didn’t see coming and one which may well undo the Algorithm underpinning Everything That Is…

Poignant, funny, outrageously gory, gloriously rude and wickedly clever, this is a ferociously upbeat, hilariously dark black comedy no insufferable incurable romantic could possibly resist. Moreover, for all us dyed-in-the-wool comics freaks, there’s a host of background features included. Interspersed between a gallery of covers and variants plus unused iterations and loads of original art, roughs and sketches, an ‘Author’s Note’ explores the genesis of the tale, further expanded upon in ‘A Comic for Talking to God – an interview with Brian Truitt of USA Today’. A discussion and explanation of Jordie Bellaire’s colouring process is the focus of ‘Working Flat-Out’ and ‘Birth Placement’ details the procedure for creating a cover, before the usual Creator’s Biographies ends things on a knowledgeable note.

Love, Death, Sex, more Death, Rebirth, lots of Death and Numbers: there’s your Meaning of Life right there…
™ & © 2013 Simon Spurrier & P.J. Holden. All rights reserved.

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Glorious Summers volume 2: The Calanque 1969


By Zidrou & Jordi Lafebre, with additional colour by Mado Peña, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: Digital edition only

It’s close (OMG! LESS THAN A WEEK!) to the most stressful and commercialised event of the singleton calendar for unattached people who wish they weren’t, so let’s look at what all that amorous manoeuvring and romantic strategizing is supposed to lead to as perfectly depicted in a sublime and delightful family feast of “Happy Ever Afters”…

Until comparatively recently, comics in the English-speaking world mostly countenanced comedic or numerous adventure sub-genres (crime, superhero, horror, sci fi), with only a small but vital niche of “mundane world” ventures, usually depicted via graphic biographies and autobiographies like They Called Us Enemy, Breakwater, Love on the Isle of Dogs, Wage Slaves or Sour Pickles offering a different feel and flavour. Even historical sagas were treated as extraordinary moments with larger-than-life characters whenever possible.

What we have never had – and still largely don’t – is a comics equivalent to general fiction, drama and melodrama. That’s not so in Japan, South Korea or Europe, where a literal “anything goes” attitude has always accommodated and nurtured human-scaled, slice-of-life tales depicting ordinary people in as many quiet as extraordinary moments. Surely it can’t be that hard to tell engaging stories in pedestrian, recognisably ordinary settings? Medical traumas, love stories, school tales and family tragedies about common folk seem to play well on various-sized screens around the world, so why not in English language comics? The closest we seem to get are comedies like John Allison’s superb Giant Days (which I really must review soon)…

People being people is more than enough for Europeans. There apparently is an insatiable appetite for everyday events aimed at properly “mature readers”, joyfully sans vampires, aliens or men in tights. These even have sub-genres of their own. For example, there’s a wealth of superb material just about going on holiday. So, since our own Government-in-Absentia have ensured that it’s now all-but-impossible for any UK-based citizens to pop across and have une petite vacances in Europe, let’s stare & glare covetously at them having a good time. After all, over there holidays are an inalienable right, and they have some simply fabulous tales about a simple break. This one is probably amongst the best you’ll ever see…

An absolute exemplar of fantasy vacations made real, Glorious Summers: Southbound! (1973) was a nostalgia-drenched confection by Zidrou and regular collaborator Jordi Lafebre: a sublime example of idyllic group memory made into graphic sorcery in an everyday account utterly unafraid to temper humorous sweetness and light with real-world tragedy and suspense.

Perhaps some context is in order. Summer holidays – “Midi” – are a big deal in France and Belgium. The French divide into two tribes over the annual rest period, which generally lasts an entire month. Juilletistes only vacation in July, wielding dogmatic facts like rapiers to prove why it’s the only way to take a break. They are eternally opposed, heart, soul, and suntan lotion, by majority faction the Aoûtiens, who recharge their batteries in August whilst fully reciprocating the suspicion, disdain and baffled scorn of the early-leavers. Many European sociologists claim the greatest social division today is not race, religion, gender, political affiliation or whether to open boiled eggs from the top or the bottom, but when summer holidays begin and end…

Les Beaux Étés 1: Cap au Sud! was first in a string of family visits that began in 2015 courtesy of scripter Benoît “Zidrou” Drousie and Spanish illustrator Jordi Lafebre. Drousie is Belgian, Brussels-born in 1962 and was a school teacher prior to quitting marking books in 1990 to begin making them. His main successes include school dunce series L’Elève Ducobu, Petit Dagobert, Scott Zombi, La Ribambelle, Le Montreur d’histoires, the revival of Ric Hochet, African Trilogy, Léonardo, Shi and many more. His most celebrated and beloved stories are this memorable sequence and 2010’s Lydie, both illustrated by Lafebre.

That gifted, empathically sensitive illustrator and art teacher was born in Barcelona in 1979 and has created comics professionally since 2001, first for magazines like Mister K, where he limned Toni Font’s El Mundo de Judy. He found regular work at Le Journal de Spirou, creating the romance Always Never and collaborated with Zidrou on La vieille dame qui n’avait jamais joué au tennis et autres nouvelles qui font du bien, Lydie, and La Mondaine.

A combination of feel-good fable and powerful comedy drama, Glorious Summers depicts memories of an aging couple recalling their grandest family moments, beginning with a momentous vacation in 1973 where their four kids nearly lost their parents….

Here however, second volume The Calanque focuses on August 1969 as pregnant Maddie Faldérault (soon to deliver precociously hyperactive Paulette AKA Peaches) tries to amuse her three impatient kids whilst hubby Pierre frantically puts finishing touches to his latest comic strip. It’s a regular ritual before his month off, but this time less annoying as it’s also his first work as a named creator rather than an anonymous ghost artist for others. Apparently the world is finally ready for a four-armed cowboy gunfighter…

Their kids are immune to bedtimes and indulge in time-honoured holiday rituals like shouting, fighting and singing odd songs, before Pierre downs his brushes. Now the annual Faldérault escape from gloomy Brussels for a month in sun-drenched France can start.

Only… on the way they need to see his dad. Pépé Buelo moved to Brussels when General Franco took over Spain. He made a good life as bricklayer and husband, but now he’s on his own and a little lonely…

Eventually, the family set off with introspective toddler Louis reading, drawing and constantly sharing his far from limited knowledge of where babies come from, even as self-conscious oldest girl Jolly-Julie anxiously ponders life without bathrooms and in-betweener Nicole tells everyone they meet that mummy is going to be a mummy again. As they motor south in the dark – they left really, really late – they play their annual game of deciding where they’re going by solving riddles because planned destinations and pre-booked rooms are for wimps…

True free spirits, they pick up a hippie hitchhiker and scare him witless with their laid back attitudes – especially teasing Jolly-Julie’s reticence to use nature as a restroom. When he drops out they resume southern roaming and finally decide to camp in a shady wood for the night. In the morning the family Faldérault realise their error as elderly French couple Rufus and Ramona discover they have Belgians in the back garden…

After a few lovely days as guests who can’t politely escape, Pierre and Maddie learn that Rufus knows the perfect spot for travellers to enjoy their break, directing them to a hidden cove on the sea coast. It’s beautiful: an idyllic cliff-screened rustic paradise with a ramshackle fishing hut just ready to be temporarily occupied. Rufus even provides a guide in the form of his exuberant older brother – aging fisherman Marius.

What follows is timeless weeks of wonder and unforgettable explorations on endlessly sunny days, with local villagers taking the wanderers to heart and welcoming them to a taste of rustic heaven. Even the Americans landing on the moon or the Tour de France victory of Belgian Eddie Merckx can’t compare…

Ultimately the real world calls them back and the holidaymakers pack up for home. Awaiting them is bad news for Pierre, a new job for Maddie and a rainy grey hometown. One clear sign of normality resuming comes as they find a dog abandoned by the roadside, but brilliantly and boldly they turn that traumatic event into a lasting positive…

This tale is another beautifully rendered and realised basket of memories stitched seamlessly together. It’s funny, sweet and charming whilst delivering painful blows you never see coming. There aren’t any spectacular events and shocking crises and that’s the whole point…

If you’re British – and old enough – this series (six translated albums thus far, plus a French omnibus edition) will echo revered family sitcoms like Bless This House or Butterflies and generational ads starring the “Oxo Family”. (If that description doesn’t fit you, I pity your browsing history if you look up any of that…). The rest of you in need of an opening (but unfair) comparator could break out the Calvin and Hobbes collections and re-examine the bits with his embattled parents when the kid’s out of the picture…

Lyrical, laconic, engagingly demure, and debilitatingly nostalgic, this holiday romance is sheer visual perfection wrapped in sharp dialogue and a superbly anarchic sense of mischief. Vacations are built of moments and might-have-beens, packaged here in compelling clips making the mundane marvellous.
© 2018 -DARGAUD BENELUX (Dargaud-Lombard s.a.) – ZIDROU & LEFEBRE, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Conan the Barbarian Epic Collection volume 4: Queen of the Black Coast (1974-1976)


By Roy Thomas, Fred Blosser, John Buscema, Mike Ploog, Tim Conrad & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 1-84576-137-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

In the 1970’s, America’s comic book industry opened up after more than 15 years of calcified publishing practises promulgated by the censorious, self-inflicted Comics Code Authority: a self-imposed oversight organisation created to police product after the industry suffered its very own McCarthy-style 1950s Witch-hunt. The first genre revisited during the literary liberation was Horror/Mystery, and from those changes sprang migrated pulp star Conan.

Sword & Sorcery stories had been undergoing a prose revival in the paperback marketplace since the release of softcover editions of Lord of the Rings in 1954 and, in the 1960s, revivals of the fantasies of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, Fritz Lieber and others were making huge inroads into buying patterns across the world. The old masters had also been augmented by many modern writers. Michael Moorcock, Lin Carter and others kick-started their prose careers with contemporary versions of man against mage against monsters. The undisputed overlord of the genre was Robert E. Howard with his 1930s pulp masterpiece Conan of Cimmeria.

Gold Key had notionally opened the field in 1964 with cult hit Mighty Samson, followed by ‘Clawfang the Barbarian’ in Thrill-O-Rama #2 in 1966. Both steely warriors dwelt in post-apocalyptic techno-wildernesses, but in 1969 DC dabbled with previously code-proscribed mysticism as Nightmaster in Showcase #82 -84, following the example of CCA-exempt Warren anthologies Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella. Marvel tested the waters with barbarian villain/Conan prototype Arkon the Magnificent in Avengers #76 (April 1970) and the same month went all-out with short supernatural thriller ‘The Sword and the Sorcerers’ in their own watered-down horror anthology Chamber of Darkness #4.

Written by Roy Thomas and drawn by fresh-faced Barry Smith (a recent Marvel find who was just breaking out of the company’s still-prevalent Kirby house-style) the tale introduced Starr the Slayer who also bore no small resemblance to the Barbarian-in-waiting…

Conan the Barbarian debuted with an October 1970 cover-date and – despite early teething problems, including being cancelled and reinstated in the same month – these strip adventures of Howard’s primal hero were as big a success as the prose yarns they adapted. Conan became a huge hit: a blockbuster brand that prompted new prose tales, movies, TV series, cartoon shows, a newspaper strip and all the other paraphernalia of global superstardom.

However, times changed, sales declined and in 2003 the property found a different comics publisher, before – after decades away – in 2019 the brawny brute returned to the aegis of Marvel.

Their first bite of the cherry was retroactively subtitled “the Original Marvel Years” due to the character’s sojourn with Dark Horse Comics and other intellectual rights holders with this fourth compendium – spanning cover-dates August 1974 to February 1976 – reprinting Conan the Barbarian #43-59 plus a tale from Savage Sword of Conan #1. It highlights a period when the burly brute was very much the darling of the Comics universe and when artist John Buscema made the hero his very own.

Adaptor Thomas had resolved to follow the character’s narrative timeline as laid out by Howard and successors such as L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, expanded and padded out with other adaptions of REH and his contemporaries and – almost as a last resort – all-new adventures. Thus, content was evermore redolent of pulp-oriented episodic action rather than traditional fantasy fiction.

As we hurtle back in time approximately 12,000 years to a forgotten age of wonders, and – following the now traditional map of ‘The Hyborean Age of Conan’ plus accompanying mandatory establishing quote, the saga resumes with a riotous romp from Savage Sword of Conan #1 (August 1974).

The series had broken many moulds, including being able to sustain not just a general audience but also appropriate for Marvel’s monochrome magazine division, offering more explicitly violent and risqué fare for supposedly more mature readers. For this market he debuted in Savage Tales #1 (1971) before winning his own magazine residency. Savage Sword of Conan launched in August 1974, running 235 issues until its cancellation in July 1995. Throughout its life SSoC offered powerful stories, features on all things RE Howard and some of the most incredible artwork ever to grace comics pages. The antediluvian experience opens with #1’s lead yarn. Thomas, John Buscema & Pablo Marcos’ ‘Curse of the Undead-Man’ was adapted from Howard’s short story Mistress of Death with Conan meeting old comrade Red Sonja amongst the fleshpots of “The Maul” in Zamora’s City of Thieves before falling foul of sorcerer Costranno: a mage for whom being chopped to mincemeat is only a minor inconvenience but who still strenuously objected to being robbed and murdered…

A sequence of self-contained tales resumes in the colour newsstand Conan the Barbarian #43 (October 1974) as Thomas continues to follow Howard and de Camp’s roadmap. The saga begins with the warriors’ rapid escape from Zamora, relentlessly pursued by bounty hunters. Trouble finds them when they are taken by bat-monsters to a ‘Tower of Blood’ (inked by Erni Chan nee Chua) where the husky lout is forcibly “admired” by ancient queen-with-a-secret Uathacht and threatened by her sorcerer brother Morophla. The mage has been hiding from Conan’s sworn foe Thoth Amon for simply ages and has revolting plans for both warriors which go appallingly awry in #44’s ‘Of Flame and the Fiend!’ (collaboratively inked by “The Crusty Bunkers”). Exposed as less than human the siblings inflict a ghastly burden on Conan but aren’t sage enough to escape his and Sonja’s inevitable vengeance…

An eerily memorable change-of-pace tragedy sees the shaken and morbidly morose barbarian befriend a foredoomed bard in ‘The Last Ballad of Laza-Lanti’: agreeing to take the troubled troubadour to his place of origin and encountering yet again the horrors that lurk in the Hyborian age…

The next half year comprises a protracted and loving adaptation of prose pulp yarn Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse, originally penned by the prolific and justifiably legendary Gardner F. Fox (if anybody deserves the title of Elder God of comic books it must be He!). Here our cantankerous Cimmerian is once again embroiled in war between wizards and wades through imperilled maidens and gore galore in equal amounts, beginning with ‘The Curse of the Conjurer!’ as inked by Joe Sinnott. When the wanderer is coerced by magician Merdoramon into delivering a protective amulet to embattled Regent Themas Herklar of Phalkar, the simple mission to safeguard the ruler from his own treacherous court wizards soon proves riddled with undisclosed peril and duplicity.

En route he saves supposed witch Stefanya from burning at the stake and is diverted by her need to have him rescue her master Zoqquanor. Although a “good wizard”, the mage had linked her life force to his own and she needs to ensure his future safety. That proves tricky when they pull the comatose conjuror from his shattered castle and awaken crystal homunculus Shokkoth, and gets even harder in the Dan Adkins inked ‘Goblins in the Moonlight!’ (#47) as a R&R stopover in seemingly sedate ruins sparks an attack by more supernatural horrors…

The issue also provided a text feature on ‘Conan’s Parents’ illustrated by Tim Conrad, before the quest resumes in #48 where ‘The Rats Dance at Ravengard!’ Dick Giordano & Adkins inks) as a formative episode from Conan’s youth – with Priestess of the Wild Ursla – leads to a close shave with local warlord Torkal Moh, near death-by-rats and answers to many of the obscure machinations in play, thanks to Ursla’s latterday kinswoman Lupalina the Wolf Mistress…

With the aid of the ‘Wolf-Woman!’ Conan rescues Stefanya – revealed as a crucial pawn in the region’s politics – and topples Torkal Moh, but retrieving the Amulet in #50 unleashes ‘The Dweller in the Pool!’ whose subsequent dispatch by the Cimmerian triggers civil war, the downfall of the Phalkar’s resident magicians and the horror they served and the restoration of a long lost princess in concluding chapter ‘Man Born of Demon!’

Cover-dated July 1975 and stunningly crafted by Thomas, Buscema and Tom Palmer, Conan The Barbarian #52 signalled a turning point in the Cimmerian’s life as he signs on to fight a war with old Corinthian associate Murilo (from Conan #11): now leading a mercenary army of Condottieri dubbed the Crimson Company. He can always use a proven warrior, and also takes under his wing a street urchin/acrobat called Tara of Hanumar whom Conan had saved from an unfair fight…

Re-outfitting the almost-naked wanderer in arms and armour (and clothes!), Murilo’s band are headed to Ronnoco in anticipation of a war between states but the march almost ends in disaster when the mercenaries accidentally awaken an interred horror from antiquity in ‘The Altar and the Scorpion!’ Thanks to Conan the horror from the age of King Kull is defeated, but as the survivors depart they are unaware that a second terror was aroused… and now follows…

Frank Spinger embellished #53 as the Crimson Company reach their client city but are attacked by those inside. When the costly misunderstanding is rectified, Conan has made another enemy after displaying his feelings to arrogant autocrat Prince Vanni who ordered the assault on his comrades and refuses to allow any mercenaries inside walled city of Ronnoco.

King Belzamo is at least more diplomatic as he outlines the causes of the war with rival city-states Carnolla and Pergona and demands his hirelings’ first action: kidnapping the princess Yvonna of Pergona so she can be made to wed Vanni. However, defeating her terrifying bodyguards the ‘Brothers of the Blade!’ proves harder than anticipated and unknown to all, a dark hungry shadow is slowly consuming everything it its path…

Palmer returns in #54 as teen sole survivor Yusef brings a warning of the hungry shadow leading to Conan, Tara and Yusef ordered away to consult ‘The Oracle of Ophir!’ Their reconnaissance and information gathering is hampered by myriad mystic deterrents that culminate in the brawny barbarian battling his own deadly doppelganger and only getting away with highly suspect vague proclamations by guile not force. The party arrives back at Ronnoco (in #55) to find ‘A Shadow on the Land!’ and untold horror besieging the city, prompting Conan to go AWOL and return to the site of a previous victory. His hunch proves correct and he unleashes the one thing the shadow cannot consume, bring an abrupt universally unsatisfactory end to the war – and their pay – through political compromise and economic pragmatism…

Pausing for breath and the Jack Kirby & Joe Sinnott cover for November 1975’s Giant-Size Conan #5 (a reprint vehicle teaming our hero with Michael Moorcock’s doomed king Elric and not included here) Conan, Tara and Yusef quit the Crimson company and in CTB #56 discover ‘The Strange High Tower in the Mist!’ Inked by Pablo Marcos, the tale finds the trio bewildered by a keep apparently populated by oblivious silent ghosts and a bat monster, but seeing in not always believing…

Still sticking to Howard’s roadmap, Thomas and illustrator Mike (Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Werewolf By Night, Monster of Frankenstein, Weirdworld, Planet of the Apes) Ploog detail an ‘Incident in Argos!’ for #57 that acts as a prelude to a momentous stage in Conan’s life. Falling foul of stupid laws, city guards and sanctimonious judges, the barbarian and his teen charges face jail and punitive amputation until Conan goes wild. Separated, they escape individually just in time for the Cimmerian to reach the long-awaited beginning of Howard’s great love story…

Pulp novelette Queen of the Black Coast was published in the May 1934 Weird Tales, obliquely told of Conan’s time as infamous pirate “Amra”: plundering the coasts of Kush (prehistoric Africa) beside his first great love. The brief but tragic tale of bold buccaneer Bêlit would be expanded over the next few years in an epic storyline that ran to #100 of the monthly comic and officially launched with Conan The Barbarian #58.

Here Thomas, Buscema & Steve Gan launched ‘Queen of the Black Coast!’ as the frantic Cimmerian fugitive finds safe harbour on an outward bound Argossean trading ship caught in a surging tide. Despite barely and extremely publicly escaping a fusillade of guards’ spears, the Northborn outlaw befriends entrepreneurial Captain Tito – himself a regular loser when faced with Argos’ corrupt lawmakers and taxmen – and settles into the mariner’s life.

After visiting many fabulous ports and exotic wild places, Conan’s life changes again when the ship encounters the most feared vessel afloat. When the fighting is done only Conan remains, having made a devil’s feast of the attacking pirates. Even he cannot beat this horde of Kushite warriors but as he prepares to die fighting, the white queen of these black pillagers grants him his life. When some pirates complain, Conan is allowed to earn his place by fighting the objectors and soon settles in… as Bêlit’s prize…

This volume concludes with Thomas, Buscema & Gan’s spellbinding origin yarn as #59 reveals in the words of shaman mentor/guardian N’yaga how the woman remade herself in ‘The Ballad of Bêlit!’. Conan hears how a Shemite child whose seafaring father was king of Asgalun until murdered by Stygians who placed her uncle on the vacant throne. He marvels at her life, growing up among barbarous tribesmen of the Silver Isles where she was trained in warrior arts to best any man. With amazement the Cimmerian learns how, by facing and mastering supernal horrors and using them to destroy a jealous chieftain, the war maiden became – in the eyes of the tribes – the earthly daughter of their Death Goddess Derketa, sworn to take her vengeance on Stygians and all who deal with them…

… And Conan also realises that he loves Bêlit beyond all else, even if she may not be human…

To Be Continued…

With covers by Boris Vallejo, Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, Neal Adams, John Romita, Tom Palmer, Dick Giordano, Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott, Vince Colletta, this dark love story is also burnished by behind the scenes extras such as a more detailed map of ‘The Hyborean Age of Conan’ and world, taken from 1978’s Conan the Barbarian Marvel Treasury Edition #19 whilst #4 of the same name provides stunningly beautiful front & back covers by Barry Windsor-Smith, and text article ‘An Informal History of the Thomas/Smith Conan’.

There’s also Windsor-Smith’s watercolour Conan image and illustrated page (May) from the 1975 Mighty Marvel Calendar plus House ads, plus original Buscema unused cover art and pencil pages with equivalent inked version from Savage Sword of Conan #1. There are even pre and post CCA moderated images of Bêlit and Conan…

Stirring, evocative, cathartic and thrilling, these yarns are deeply satisfying on a primal level, and this is one of the best volumes in a superb series starring a paragon of adventure heroes. This is classic pulp/comic action in all its unashamed exuberance: an honestly guilty pleasure for old time fans and newbies of all persuasion. What more does any red-blooded, action-starved fan need to know?
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