Category: Satire/Politics

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Creepy Presents Alex Toth


By Alex Toth, with Archie Goodwin, Gerry Boudreau, Rich Margopoulos, Roger McKenzie, Doug Moench, Nicola Cuti, Bill DuBay, Steve Skeates,Leopoldo Durañona, Leo Summers, Romeo Tanghal, Carmine Infantino & various (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-692-1 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-63008-194-2

Once upon a time the short complete tale was the sole staple of the comic book profession, where the intent was to deliver as much variety and entertainment fulfilment as possible to the reader. Sadly, that particular discipline is all but lost to us today.

Alex Toth was a master of graphic communication who shaped two different art-forms and is largely unknown in both of them.

Born in New York in 1928, the son of Hungarian immigrants with a dynamic interest in the arts, Toth was a prodigy and, after enrolling in the High School of Industrial Arts, doggedly went about improving his skills as a cartoonist.

His earliest dreams were of a strip like Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, but his uncompromising devotion to the highest standards soon soured him on the newspaper market when he discovered how hidebound and innovation-resistant that family-values-obsessed industry had become whilst he was growing up.

At age 15, he sold his first comic book works to Heroic Comics and, after graduating in 1947, worked for All American/National Periodical Publications (who would amalgamate and evolve into DC Comics) on Dr. Mid-Nite, All Star Comics, Green Lantern, The Atom, Johnny Thunder, Sierra Smith, Johnny Peril, Danger Trail and a host of other two-fisted fighting features.

On the way he dabbled with newspaper strips (see Casey Ruggles: the Hard Times of Pancho and Pecos) and confirmed that nothing had changed…

Constantly aiming to improve, he never had time for fools or formula-hungry editors who wouldn’t take artistic risks. In 1952 Toth quit DC to work for “Thrilling” Pulps publisher Ned Pines who was retooling his prolific Better/Nedor/Pines companies (Thrilling Comics, Doc Strange, Fighting Yank, Black Terror and others) into Standard Comics: a comics house targeting older readers with sophisticated, genre-based titles.

Beside his particularly favourite inker Mike Peppe and fellow graphic artisans Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, Art Saaf, John Celardo, George Tuska, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, Toth set an incredibly high bar for a new kind of story-telling. In a cavalcade of short-lived titles dedicated to War, Crime, Horror, Science Fiction and especially Romance, the material produced was wry, restrained and thoroughly mature. After Simon & Kirby invented love comics, Standard, through artists like Cardy and Toth and writers like amazing, unsung Kim Aamodt, polished and honed the genre, routinely turning out clever, witty, evocative and yet tasteful melodramas and heart-tuggers both men and women could enjoy.

Before going into the military, where he still found time to create a strip (Jon Fury for the US Army’s Tokyo Quartermaster newspaper The Depot’s Diary) ,Toth illustrated 60 glorious tales for Standard; as well as some pieces for EC and others.

On his return to a different industry – he didn’t much like – Toth split his time between Western/Dell/Gold Key (Zorro and movie/TV adaptations) and National (assorted short pieces, superhero team-ups, Hot Wheels and Eclipso): doing work he increasingly found uninspired, moribund and creatively cowardly.

Before long he moved primarily into television animation: character and locale designing for Space Ghost, Herculoids, Birdman, Shazzan!, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? And Super Friends among so many others. He returned sporadically to comics, setting the style and tone for DC’s late 1960’s horror line in House of Mystery, House of Secrets and especially The Witching Hour, whilst illustrating more adult fare in Warren’s Creepy, Eerie and The Rook.

In the 1980s he redesigned The Fox for Red Circle/Archie, produced stunning one-offs for Archie Goodwin’s Batman and war comics (whenever they offered him “a good script”) and contributed to landmark/anniversary projects like Batman: Black and White. His later, personal works included European star-feature Torpedo and magnificently audacious Bravo for Adventure!: both debuting at the publishing company owned by Jim Warren.

Alex Toth died of a heart attack at his drawing board on May 27th 2006.

The details are fully recounted in Douglas Wolk’s biographically informative Foreword, as are hints of the artist’s later spells of creative brilliance at DC, the growing underground movement and nascent independent comics scene. Whilst working for Warren (intermittently and between 1965 and 1982) Toth enjoyed a great deal of editorial freedom and cooperation. He produced 21 starkly stunning monochrome masterpieces – many self-penned or written by fellow legend Archie Goodwin – and all crafted without interference from the Comics Code Authority’s draconian and nonsensical rules.

They ranged from wonderfully baroque and bizarre fantasy to spooky suspense and science fiction yarns, limited only by the bounds of good taste… or at least as far as horror tales can be. The uncanny yarns appeared in monochrome anthologies Creepy (# 5-7, 9, 75-80, 114, 122-125, 139) and Eerie (2, 3, 64, 65 and 67), affording the master of minimalism time and room to experiment with not only a larger page, differing styles and media, but also dabble in then-unknown comics genres.

Those lost Warren stories were gathered into this spectacular oversized (284 x 218 mm) hardback compendium (and eBook): part of a series of all-star artist compilations including Corben, Wrightson, Ditko and more – hereafter an appreciative Foreword from critic and historian Douglas Wolk.

The terror treats open with the short shockers from Creepy and – moodily rendered in grey wash-tones –‘Grave Undertaking’ comes from #5 (October 1965). Scripted by Goodwin, the period piece relates the shocking comeuppance of a funeral director who branches out into providing fresh corpses for the local medical school, after which December’s #6 offers insight into ‘The Stalkers’, as a troubled soul seeks psychoanalytic help for hallucinations of aliens plaguing him…

Prophetic visions play a part in ‘Rude Awakening!’ (#7, February 1966) as a guy flees omens of being gutted by a madman, before Toth reverted to his minimalist line style for ‘Out of Time’ (#9, June). Here a murderous mugger seeks sanctuary for his latest crime and ends up making a devil’s bargain…

A long absence ended in November 1975 as Creepy #75 heralded a wealth of new stories from Toth, beginning with Gerry Boudreau’s crime-thriller ‘Phantom of Pleasure Island’ wherein a mob-owned San Diego funfair is plagued by a sinister sniper. Private Eye Hubb Chapin is on the case, but his dogged determination to find the killer opens a lot of festering sores his client should have left well alone…

Spectacularly experimental and powerfully stark, ‘Ensnared!’ (scripted by Rich Margopoulos for #76, January 1976) is another paranoiac psychodrama with science fiction underpinnings, before Toth begins writing his own stories in Creepy #77 (February). A wash-&-tone tour de force depicting the strange fate of missing air mail pilot ‘Tibor Miko’ in 1928…

March’s issue #78 continued the tonal terrors with another 1920s tale exposing the stunning secret of a celluloid icon in ‘Unreeal!’ before we storm into Indiana Jones territory with ‘Kui’ (#79, May) wherein a couple of anthropologists make the holiday find of a lifetime on a deserted tropical island.

This tranche of Toth treats ends with ‘Proof Positive’ from June’s issue #80 wherein a gang of fraudulent patent lawyers and their ruthless honeytrap pay the ultimate price for gulling the wrong inventor. When Toth returned in January 1980 his first story was another chilling collaboration with old pal Goodwin. Rendered in overpowering scratchy line and solid blacks, Creepy #114’s ‘The Reaper’ details how a virologist with six months to live decides he’s not dying alone and leaving a world of idiots behind him…

Issue #122 (October 1980) found Toth inking veteran illustrator Leo Durañona for the Roger McKenzie-scripted civil war yarn ‘The Killing!’ Here a Northern raiding party occupying a mansion endure conflicting passions of lust and vengeance before death inevitably settles all scores.

Doug Moench writes, Leo Summers draws and Toth inks & tones ‘Kiss of the Plague!’ (#123, November 1980) as a welter of grisly murders slowly subtracts inhabitant of a seemingly accursed house, after which ‘Malphisto’s Illusion’ (#124, January 1981) finds Nichola Cuti, Alexis Romero (AKA Romeo Tanghal) & Toth explaining in grisly detail just how a stage magician pulls off his greatest trick. #125’s ‘Jacque Cocteau’s Circus of the Bizarre’ (McKenzie, Carmine Infantino & Toth) maintains the entertainment motif with a short shocker about a freak show like no other…

Toth’s last Creepy gig was another Goodwin collaboration. Issue #139 (July 1982) again featured the master’s moodily macabre tone painting in a grim, post-apocalyptic rumination on ‘Survival!’

Toth’s tenure on companion anthology Eerie #2 was relatively brief, beginning with the second issue (March 1966). ‘Vision of Evil’ was the first of two Goodwin tales limned in tone and bold line, revealing the fate of an overly-arrogant art collector who wouldn’t take no for an answer, whilst #3’s ‘The Monument’ (May 1966) saw an equally obnoxious architect accidentally engineer his own doom by stealing ideas from an old idol…

Eerie #64 offered intolerance, fear and sentiment in equal measure in ‘Daddy and the Pie’ (written by Bill DuBay). In Depression-era America a very alien stranger is made welcome by one hard-up family despite the barely repressed hostility of his neighbours…

A very modern monster’s exploits comprise the end of this stupendous collection as Steve Skeates pens a wry tale of serial killers and doughty detectives in old London town. ‘The Hacker is Back’ (#65 April) depicts a maniac’s return to slaughter after a decade’s hiatus and leads to an inconclusive resolution before ‘The Hacker’s Last Stand!’ (#67 August) finds forces of law and order overwhelmed by a killing spree unlike any other…

This voluminous volume has episodes which terrify, amaze, amuse and enthral: utter delights of fantasy fiction with lean, stripped-down plots and a mordant tone which lets the art set the tone, push the emotions and tell the tale, from times when a story could end sadly as well as happily and only wonderment was on the agenda, hidden or otherwise.

These stories display the sharp wit and dark comedic energy which epitomised both Goodwin and Warren, channelled through Toth’s astounding versatility and storytelling acumen: another cracking collection of his works not only superb in its own right but also a telling affirmation of the gifts of one of the art-form’s greatest stylists.

This is a book serious comics fans would happily kill, die or be lost in a devil-dimension for.
Creepy, the Creepy logo and all contents © 1965, 1966, 1975, 1976, 1980. 1981, 1982, 2015 by New Comic Company. All rights reserved.

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Chronicles of Fear – Tales of Woe


By Nathalie Tierce (Indigo Raven)
ISBN: 978-1-7341874-5-8 (PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Cruel Truths for Crazy Days… 9/10

Allying words to pictures is an ancient, potent and – when done right – irresistibly evocative communications tool: one that can simultaneously tickle like a feather, cut like a scalpel and hit like a steam-hammer. As such, repeated visits to a particular piece of work will even generate different responses depending on the recipient’s mood. If you’re a multi-disciplined, muti-media artist like Nathalie Tierce, fresh challenges must be a hard thing to find, but rewards for successfully breaking new ground are worth the effort… and the viewer’s full attention.

Tierce is a valued and veteran creator across a spectrum of media, triumphing in film and stage production for everyone from the BBC to Disney and Tim Burton to Martin Scorsese. She has crafted music performance designs for Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Rolling Stones, all the while generating a wealth of gallery art, painted commissions and latterly, graphic narratives such as Fairy Tale Remnants and Pulling Weeds From a Cactus Garden.

Perpetually busy, she still finds time to stop and stare; thankfully, human-watching is frequently its own reward, sparking tomes like this slim, enthrallingly revelatory package forensically dissecting human nature in terms of cultural landmarks as scourged by the inescapable mountain of terrors large, small, general and intensely personal.

On show in this portable night gallery are stunning paintings in a range of media, rendered in many styles and manners whilst channelling the artist’s own fear-mongering childhood entertainer-influences. These include Edward Gorey, Maurice Sendak, Heinrich Hoffman (Der Struwwelpeter) and other dark fairy tales, as well as compellingly mature comic creators such as Aline Kominsky Crumb & R. Crumb, Will Eisner and Claire Bretecher.

The artworks explore shades of anxiety, alienation, frustration, longing, disappointment, despondency, hopelessness, instant gratification, loss of confidence, purposelessness, racism, toxic masculinity, neurosis, death and loneliness by suborning cultural touchstones like Popeye, Donald Duck and other Disney icons, mass-media mavens like Bowie and King Kong, beloved childhood toys and even modern lifestyle guru Homer Simpson.

Bracketed by revelatory insights and sharing context in Introduction and Biography, the pictorial allegories When Shock and Horror Collide, Forest Nymph, Capitolina and the Dubious Superhero, The Genie and the Swimmer, Bad Fishing Trip, Slapstick Brawl, Undateable, Crazy Rooster Man, Strange Leader, My Favorite Aliens, The Queen of Hearts Goes Shopping, Acrobat, Fear of Death, Running, What Killed the Dodo?, The Bore, 3am, Pussy Cat, Barfly, Alice in Waitingland (my absolute personal favourite!), Beginning and End, Rascal Dog, Spiraling, Lonely Soldier, Homer Gone Bad, Jittery and utterly appalling endpiece Bathtime, connecting forensic social observation with everyday paranoias we all experience. The result is a mad melange of bêtes noire and unsettled icons du jour, with each condemnatory visual judgement deftly wedded to frankly terrifying texts encapsulating contemporary crisis points, delivered as edgy epigrams and barbed odes.

Chronicles of Fear – Tales of Woe is a mordantly mature message of mirth-masked ministrations exposing the dark underbellies we’re all desperately sucking in and praying no one notices.

A perfect dalliance for thinking bipeds at the end of civilisation, aimed at victims of human nature with a sharp eye and unforgiving temperament – and surely, isn’t that all of us?
© 2023 Indigo Raven. © 2023 Nathalie Tierce. All rights reserved.

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Suburban Nightmares: The Science Experiment


By Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas, John Van Bruggen & various (NBM)
ISBN: 978-0-91834-880-7 (Album PB)

Anticipating the imminent release – and upcoming review of Michael Cherkas’ Red Harvest – I thought I’d put in a plug/request for another of the stunningly different comics he and his creative partners pioneered in the antediluvian 80s and neurotically self-absorbed 90s. Here you go…

During the vast expansion of opportunity and outpouring of innovation that graced comics during the 1980s, much of the “brain-rotting trash” or “silly kid’s stuff” stigma that had plagued the medium was finally dispelled. America started catching up to the rest of the world: acknowledging sequential narrative as an actual Capital “A” Art Form, and their doors opened wide open for foreigners to make a few waves too…

One of the era’s most critically acclaimed and inescapably intoxicating features sprang from semi-Canadian Renegade Press which set up shop in the USA at the start of the black & white comics bubble in 1984. They quickly established a reputation for excellence, offering a strong line of creator-based properties including some genuinely remarkable series such as Ms. Tree, Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, Flaming Carrot, Normalman, and a compulsively backwards-looking Cold War/UFO/paranoia-driven delight: The Silent Invasion.

That last was a stunningly stylish conspiracy saga, bolting 1950s domestic terrors (invasion by Reds; invasion by aliens; invasion by new ideas…) onto Film Noir chic: and employing 20-20 hindsight to produce phenomenally fresh, enticing delights for the so-similar Reagan era. From here and now, it’s never seemed more distressingly likely that politics, if not all history, is cursed to repeat certain cycles and strategies…

The series was collected in four monochrome tomes, re-presenting the lead story wherein inspired co-creators Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock concocted a cunning confection combining all the coolest genre elements of classic cult sci-fi, horror, spy, conspiracy theory, crime, romance and even situation comedies…

Of equal if not greater interest (to me at least) were the ancillary back-up tales utilising the same milieu and themes. These proved popular enough to springboard into their own short-lived title and ultimately two collections of their own…

Recently, just as the world teetered even further and faster on the edge of a multiple-choice test of imminent dooms – and with America once more enduring internecine struggle amongst the citizenry, corruption, cover-ups at every level of government and the press under attack from the people and traditions it seeks to inform and safeguard – The Silent Invasion was remastered, revised, re-released and continued in a quartet of so-collectible tomes…

1950s America was a hugely iconic and paradoxical time. Incomparable scientific and cultural advancements, great wealth and desperate, intoxicating optimism inexplicably arose amidst an atmosphere of immense social, cultural, racial, sexual and political repression with an increasingly paranoid populace seeing conspiracy and subversive attacks in every shadow and corner of the rest of the world.

Such an insular melting pot couldn’t help but be fertile soil for imaginative outsiders to craft incisive, evocative tales dripping with convoluted mystery and taut tension, especially when wedded to the nation’s fantastic – and ongoing – obsessions with rogue science, flying saucers, gangsterism and conspiracies…

They were also ridiculously obsessed with hot babes and bust sizes, but that’s not really a mystery, is it?

In 1983 the temptation for a little mischief was clearly too much for the USA’s less panicky northern neighbours, and Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas & John Van Bruggen brilliantly mined the era for these stunning, stylish and clever yarns, subsequently pulling off the impossible trick of re-capturing a fleeting zeitgeist…

This first superbly oversized and inexplicably out-of-print monochrome tome (a whopping 280 x 205mm) gathers that stand-alone support material from The Silent Invasion and Suburban Nightmares comic books. Hancock, Cherkas & Van Bruggen playfully swap jobs and – with a few invited guests – pilfer and homage other stylisations and forms to produce a wicked wealth of twisted tales and shocking stories that will, even now, astound fans of classic genres cited above…

The macabre, mirth, mood and menace commences with eponymous 4-part thriller ‘The Science Experiment’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks & letters from Cherkas) set in the early 1950s boom years, wherein an idyllic new town built on the edge of an operational government atomic bomb testing site slowly reveals its terrible secret…

In ‘Welcome to Green Valley’, the latest ultra-modern planned community in Nevada accepts new school science teacher Sam Donaldson and his wife Ruth with open arms. They’re the perfect nuclear family, with son Rusty already making friends at Hoover High and another baby on the way. Soon, they’re all getting on famously with everybody – or at least the adults are…

However, soon after flirtatious neighbour Theresa Morrow confides to Ruth that she’s also expecting, the poor thing has a minor fall. When the concerned Donaldsons warn the doctor, they receive the tragic but impossible news that Theresa has inexplicably died… and was “never pregnant”…

In the shadow of a fresh mushroom cloud, ‘An Ill Wind blows in Green Valley’ finds bereft Barry Morrow turning to drink whilst Sam meets Hospital Administrator Dr. Stewart Carver: a keen fan and follower of the regular nuclear spectacle occurring 50 miles beyond his office window…

Still unsettled, Sam heads for the local library and checks out some books about radiation, unaware that by doing so he’s made it onto a very special secret list…

His concern increases after inadvertently learning his predecessor at Hoover High consulted the same tomes before mysteriously quitting and disappearing, but it’s Principal Daniels who panics when Donaldson finds that some of old Charlie Simmer’s notes and journals are languishing at school secretary Madge’s house…

Too busy and wrapped up to help Rusty with his science project, Sam goes to Madge’s house only to find she’s been burgled. Although the place has been ransacked, all that’s missing are Simmer’s journals, but before he can process it all, Barry attacks him, accusing Donaldson of having an affair with Theresa…

‘Dark Secrets of Green Valley’ sees Sam barracked by Principal Daniels, another atomic apologist who can’t contemplate any thought that radioactive fallout might be harmful. As Ruth has an ante-natal check-up, Carver confronts Sam, accusing him of scaremongering, and confides that the hospital has been running a government-sponsored survey into radiation. For years.

And has decreed atomic tests as categorically harmless…

Sam is unconvinced, especially as he has noticed how few young kids live in the bustling town. Obsessing over the fact that the Hospital’s huge maternity unit has only one baby in it, he leaves with Ruth, but all such thoughts are driven from him when Barry tries to run them down in the parking lot…

Horrific answers come in the shocking conclusion when now rational and repentant Barry meets Sam: explaining his own part in a shocking conspiracy to cover up what radiation does to foetuses and the outrageous, draconian steps taken by a panicking government desperate not to lose face… especially after spending so much building their City of Tomorrow…

The mysteriously low conception rate is explained at last, but when Sam points out how Barry is still deluding himself and underestimating the lengths Carver has gone to, ‘The Fate of Green Valley’ inevitably culminates in a welter of blood and death…

After the compelling tension and trauma of the title tale, ‘Be Home Before it gets Dark!’ (scripted by Hancock and printed from Van Bruggen’s unlinked pencils) switches tone if not time-period. Here a little lad desperate to prove his bravery stays out late with the big kids and learns that sometimes there really are monsters in the night…

‘Buster Takes a Nap’ describes problems occurring when a provident, prudent and friendly family promise too many friends and neighbours a place in their brand-new bomb shelter. Of course, they’ll never really have to honour those pledges, will they?

With Cherkas tackling all the art chores, ‘The Inheritance’ recounts a little lad’s tale of the scary man next door. We all know about those grouches: shouting, cursing, destroying kid’s toys and digging the gardens in the middle of the night, but this one is REALLY mean. Perhaps that’s why so many kids run away from home and are never seen again?

Stanley Morrison was ‘Just another Joe’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks Cherkas): a decent, loyal American in suburban Apple Hill who sold insurance and spent his spare time denouncing colleagues and neighbours to the FBI for un-American activities. Surely it’s just coincidence that they all happen to be more successful or popular than him? Of course, a guy like that is really hard to live with, but his abused, long-suffering wife is a decent, loyal American too…

Veteran inker Bob Smith joined Van Bruggen & Hancock for the paranoid tribute to the earth-shattering advent of Rock ‘n’ Roll as Mrs. Ellen Nelson ruminates on why her son is acting so weird. What makes him hide in his room for hours at a time? Might it be Martian abduction, atomic mutation, government meddling, commie mind-manipulation or something even worse ‘For all we Know’?

Bob Nevin always took the 7:13 train to his job in the city but his tidy, happy life began to instantly and inexplicably unravel the day he caught ‘The Seven-Thirty-Three’ – a surreal and chilling homage to The Twilight Zone, pencilled by Cherkas & inked by Van Bruggen, whilst edgily sardonic ‘Suburban Blight’ sees the illustrators trading places to recount all-out war between a man and the dandelions that desecrate his otherwise perfect lawn…

This superbly incisive and trenchant initial collection concludes with Hancock & Cherkas’ fantasy ‘June 1953’, wherein diligent, hard-working Larry Hillman doesn’t come home one night. When he turns up a day later, Larry is a changed man. Inexplicably happy, calm and friendly, he quits his job, ignores all responsibilities and begs his family to come with him when the aliens who abducted him return in a month to take them all to the perfect world of Alpha Centauri…

Crafted in a boldly adventurous range of visual styles and long overdue for revival, these beguiling and enthralling Suburban Nightmares (and the follow-up from 1996) comprise a sublimely witty gateway to an eerily familiar yet comfortably exotic era: one no fan of thriller fiction can afford to ignore.
Suburban Nightmares: The Science Experiment © 1990 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. Other stories © 1986, 1987, 1988 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. All rights reserved. NBM Publishing.

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The Philosopher, The Dog and the Wedding


By Barbara Stok, design & colours by Ricky van Duuren: translated by Michele Hutchison (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: (978-1-914224-09-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s long been a truism of the creative arts that the most effective, efficient and economical method of instruction and informational training is the comic strip. If you simply consider the medium’s value as a historical recording and narrative system, the process encompasses cave paintings, hieroglyphs, pictograms, oriental prints, Stations of the Cross, the Bayeux Tapestry and so much more: and pretty succinctly covers the history of humanity…

For well over a century and a half, advertising mavens exploited the easy impact of words wedded to evocative pictures, whilst public information materials frequently used sequential narrative to get hard messages over quickly and simply. In a surprisingly short time, the internet and social media restored and enhanced the full universal might of image narratives to transcend language. Who doesn’t “speak” emoji?

Since World War II, strips have been used as training materials for every aspect of adult life from school careers advice to various disciplines of military service – utilising the talents of comics giants as varied as Milton Caniff, Will Eisner (who spent decades producing reams of comic manuals for the US army and other government departments), Kurt Schaffenberger and Neil Adams. The educational value and merit of comics is a given.

The magnificent Larry Gonick in particular uses the strip medium to stuff learning and entertainment in equal amounts into weary brains of jaded students with his webcomic Raw Materials and such seasoned tomes as The Cartoon History of the Universe, The Cartoon History of the United States and The Cartoon Guide to… series (Genetics, Sex, The Environment et al). That’s not even including his crusading satirical strip Commoners for Common Ground, and educational features Science Classics, Kokopelli & Company and pioneering cartoon work with the National Science Foundation. He never stops: his most recent books are Hypercapitalism: The Modern Economy, Its Values, and How to Change Them and The Cartoon Guide to Biology. Gotta Get ‘Em All…

Japan has employed manga textbooks in schools and universities for decades and even releases government reports, documents and business prospectuses in comics formats to get around the public’s apathy towards reading large dreary volumes of information. So do we and everybody else. I’ve even produced the occasional multi-panel teaching-tract myself. The method has also been frequently used to sublimely and elegantly tackle the greatest and most all-consuming preoccupation and creation of the mind of Man…

Like organised religion, the conceptual discipline dubbed Philosophy has had a tough time relating to modern folk and – just like innumerable vicars in pulpits everywhere – advocates and followers have sought fresh ways to make eternal questions and subjective verities understandable and palatable to us hoi-polloi and average simpletons.

In 2021 award-winning Dutch artist Barbara Stok (Barbaraal Tot Op Het Bot, De Omslag, Vincent) translated her interest in the discipline, history and one particular groundbreaking, revolutionary deep thinker to produce De filosoof, dehond en debruiloft and it was published by Nijgh &Van Ditmas, Amsterdam).

Born in Groningen in 1970, Stok was a journalist who studied at The Hague’s Fotoacademie School of Photography before moving into editorial cartooning and illustration in the 1990s. With Maaike Hartjes and Gerrie Hondius she pioneered a generation of female cartoonists using the art form to speak about their lives. Most of her personal work was amusingly autobiographical, working out her life’s big questions via strips. Inevitably, pondering life & death and right &wrong led her to other older investigators and after taking some formal philosophy courses – five years’ worth – she created a history of the astounding and incredibly bold and brave Hipparchia. Since 2020 Stok has taken on a regular gig: creating the strip Jan, Jans en de Kinderen for women’s weekly Libelle.

Delivered in her sublimely accessible child-like primitivist/Niavist style and preferred anecdotal episodic narrative format, The Philosopher, The Dog and the Wedding explores the life and status of women in 4th century (BCE) Greece through the thoughts and experiences of Hipparchia, daughter of a wealthy lumber-merchant in Maroneia, and long overdue to be profitably married off.

As seen in ‘eudaimonia/happiness’, she is given far too much liberty: being able to read, allowed full access to her father’s large library and indulged in her habit of eavesdropping on the philosophical debates of men. Naturally, this leads to her developing a keen mind and opinions of her own, but she can only share them with the house dogs…

After only a few embarrassments, she is bundled off to Athens where her brother Metrocles studies Philosophy with all the greatest thinkers of the Age of Alexander the Great. Wealthy silver mine owner Leandros has a son Kallios who needs a wife, and if she behaves herself and acts like a decent daughter should, she can bind the two families together…

In ‘paracharassein/deface the currency’ her education truly begins. A thrilling and revelatory mental readjustment comes from her apparent resignation to stay in her place, but only after after encountering a homeless tramp who is sublimely content and intellectually brilliant. Crates is the chief proponent of a radical offshoot of the Cynical movement: called by those who don’t mock him and rubbish his teachings as “the new Socrates”…

Distracted but still devout, Hipparchia endures: trying her best to follow family interests and convince Kallios’ family that she is worthy, but the gorgeous glittering prize – an Olympic javelin contender – doesn’t own a single book.

Always accompanied by a male slave, she goes through the traditional motions, buying clothes, learning the secrets of cosmetics and making herself as valuable as she can, but constantly encounters Crates, living his perfect life of poverty and thought. Her distraction proves advantageous, however, when Metrocles almost quits school and she begs Crates to talk him round…

The vagabond is respected by many: a student of the great Diogenes. Its why the Cynic school philosophers are called “Dogs”…

Successfully negotiating Leandros’ conditions, Hipparchia becomes the official fiancée in ‘physis/nature’ and begins learning her expected duties, but chafes at the utter lack of intellectual stimulation. When her brother buys Crates’ book of thoughts, she cannot stop herself reading it. Soon she’s listening in on the students debating in the men-only areas of the house and craving more…

Philosophers at that time could expound anywhere, and men would gather to listen, debate, contend and contribute. On her way to another fitting spree, Hipparchia joins a heated debate despite her social standing (“seen but never heard in public”) and it’s all her slave can do to extricate her from a dangerous situation. It’s worth it though, to hear Crates speak…

Frustrated and guilty as her brother bawls out the negligent slave, a crux moment occurs as she looks over Metrocles’ library and finds a scroll written by a woman. Perictione was Plato’s mother and her thoughts were clearly worth preserving…

Soon she embarks on a dangerous plan, and finds a way to join the male crowds and even openly debate with Crates…

As the marriage proceedings roll on, Hipparchia’s social sins and personal transgressions mount in ‘autarkeia/self-sufficiency’ before culminating in a ‘parrhèsia/freedom of speech’ crisis, the landmark resolution of ‘askêsis/training’ and a new beginning in ‘ataraxia/inner peace’…

This story of a powerful woman defining female empowerment and the fight for personal truth is delivered in a potent and accessible manner that beguiles fully as much as Hipparchia and Cratus’ logic and example convinced and challenged the literally patriarchal system of ancient Greece. Augmented by an impassioned ‘Afterword’ and detailed, copious and comprehensive ‘Notes’ to aid comprehension and provide context, this is a visual delight and telling hammer-blow of reasoned debate which should be compulsory reading for all.
© 2021 Barbara Stok. English translation © 2022 by Michelle Hutchison. All rights reserved.

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The Bluecoats volume 16: Sallie


By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook).
ISBN: 978-1-80044-089-0 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Devised by Louis “Salvé” Salvérius & Raoul Cauvin – who scripted the first 64 volumes until his retirement in 2020 – Les Tuniques Bleues (Dutch-language iteration De Blauwbloezen) debuted at the end of the 1960s: created to supplant the irreplaceable Lucky Luke when that laconic maverick defected from weekly anthology Le Journal de Spirou to rival publication Pilote.

From the start, the substitute strip was hugely popular: swiftly becoming one of the most popular bande dessinée series in Europe. It is now scribed by Jose-Luis Munuera and the BeKa writing partnership and up to 66 tomes…

Salvé was a cartoonist in the Gallic big-foot/big-nose humour manner, and after his sudden death in 1972, successor Willy “Lambil” Lambillotte gradually moved towards a more realistic – but still overtly comedic – tone and look. Lambil is Belgian, born in 1936 and, after studying Fine Art in college, joined publishing giant Dupuis in 1952 as a letterer.

Born in 1938, scripter Cauvin was also Belgian and – before entering Dupuis’ animation department in 1960 – studied Lithography. He soon discovered his true calling was comedy and began a glittering, prolific writing career at Le Journal de Spirou. In addition, he scripted dozens of long-running, award winning series including Cédric, Les Femmes en Blanc and Agent 212: totalling more than 240 separate albums. Les Tuniques Bleues alone has sold over 15 million copies… and counting.

Cauvin died on August 19th 2021, but his vast legacy of barbed laughter remains.

Here, designated The Bluecoats, our long-suffering protagonists are Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch: worthy, honest fools in the manner of Laurel & Hardy; hapless, ill-starred US cavalrymen defending America during the War Between the States.

The original format offered single-page gags set around an Indian-plagued Wild West fort, but from second volume Du Nord au Sud, the sad-sack soldiers were situated back East, perpetually fighting in the American Civil War.

All subsequent adventures – despite often ranging far beyond the traditional environs of the sundered USA and taking in a lot of genuine and thoroughly researched history – are set within the timeframe of the Secession conflict.

Blutch is your run-of-the-mill, whinging little-man-in-the street: work-shy, mouthy, devious and ferociously critical of the army and its inept orchestrators and commanders. Ducking, diving, deserting whenever he can, he’s you or me – except at his core he’s smart, principled and even heroic… if no easier option is available.

Chesterfield is big and burly, a professional fighting man and proud career soldier of the 22nd Cavalry who devoutly believes in patriotism and the esprit-de-corps of the Military. He’s brave, never shirking his duty and hungry to be a medal-wearing hero. He also loves his cynical little pal so naturally, they quarrel like a married couple, fight like brothers yet simply cannot agree on the point and purpose of the horrendous war they are trapped in. That situation again stretches their friendship to breaking point in this cunningly conceived instalment. Coloured by Vittorio Leonardo, Les Tuniques Bleues – Sallie was released continentally in 2018 as the 62nd book, and became Cinebook’s 16th translated Bluecoats album. It is not like the majority of these tales, which tread a fine line between comedy and righteous anger, and if you share these books with younger kids, read it first on your own. Preferably with tissues and your comfort-amplifying food or beverage of choice. Sallie is another incident based on a true story of the war, but if you can refrain from looking up Sallie Ann Jarrett until you finish, it will be to your benefit.

It begins with our protagonists again arguing about the war and their part in it. The little man is grooming his wily steed Polka, a horse so smart it has managed to survive the entire conflict and many manic cavalry charges commanded by a callous high command and led by deranged, seemingly bulletproof Captain Stark. It quickly becomes clear that Chesterfield sees the horses and mules – all animals in fact – as nothing more than equipment: expendable, disposable and replaceable…

The northerners are gearing up for another major battle and as they bicker reinforcements arrive, Pennsylvanians of the 11th Infantry Division despatched by General Ulysses Grant himself. They are battle-hardened veterans who proudly march into camp accompanied a dog. It transpires that Sallie has been with them from the start; fighting beside them on many bloody battlefields. She quickly takes a liking to Polka and, as the soldiers all swap stories around campfires, slowly the ice around Chesterfield’s heart begins to thaw…

The Brass have no time for comradeship: they are cloistered in luxury trying to divine Confederate strategy, outguess their tactics and work out exactly where the enemy is. Ultimately, baffled as always, they resort to an old tactic and order a trustworthy man to go out and capture someone from the other side…

Chesterfield heads out at dusk towards the rebel lines, unaware until far too late that his one-man suicide mission is being covertly augmented by Sallie and – far more reluctantly – by Blutch on Polka. Astoundingly, the job is a success and thanks to the intrepid mutt, they capture Southern spy and old acquaintance Cockroach. Dragged back to camp, the enemy combatant is soon made to talk…

The next day, a flurry of activity sees Union armies confidently moving on the unsuspecting opposition and into the jaws of a disinformation-fuelled trap built from their Generals’ own arrogance and inability to improvise. With no other answer than to throw more bodies into the meat grinder, the battle devolves into a massacre and not just human casualties mount…

In the end all our heroes can do is pick themselves up, honour their fallen and reaffirm what they always knew…

Packed with true but daft anecdotes – like the story of Robert E. Lee’s chicken – and pointedly seditious polemic with moving moments, Sallie shows what war truly costs, weaponizing charm and humour, making occasional moments of shocking verity doubly powerful and hard-hitting. Funny, thrilling, beautifully realised and eminently readable, Bluecoats is the best kind of war-story and Western: appealing to the best, not worst, of the human spirit. And this one is really, really sad…
© Dupuis 2018 by Lambil & Cauvin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2022 Cinebook Ltd.

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Flood! – A Novel in Pictures


By Eric Drooker (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-729-4 (HB) 978-1-59307-676-4(PB)

Far too infrequently in comics (and everywhere else) something truly different, graphically outstanding and able to subvert or redirect our medium’s established forms comes along. Generally, when it does, we usually ignore it whilst whining that there’s nothing fresh or new in view.

Happily that’s not what happened with Eric Drooker’s Flood! – A Novel in Pictures when it was first released in 1992. A New York City native, he’s a profound and legendary left-leaning activist, thinker and creator of street art who attended Downtown Community School in the East Village and studied sculpture at Cooper Union before becoming a designer and illustrator.

His covers for The New Yorker are unforgettable, as are his ferociously expressive, eye-catching pieces in The Wall Street Journal, Heavy Metal and World War 3 Illustrated. His drawings and paintings – especially from his far too few graphic novels – were used in videos for Faith No More and Rage Against the Machine. His animated film Howl was the culmination of extensive collaboration with poet Allen Ginsberg (Illuminated Poems, Howl: a Graphic Novel).

Drooker’s political stance and creative influences make his pictorial narratives (like Blood Song: a Silent Ballad) both contentious and greatly favoured by a readership ranging far beyond the usually cloistered and comfortable confines of the traditional comics community.

He won an American Book Award, Inkpot and Firecracker Award, and the artwork for Flood! has been inducted into the Prints & Photographs Division of the American Library of Congress.

Drawing on his earliest influences and following the Depression Era-traditions of artists and printmakers such as Frans Masreel, Lynd Ward, Otto Nuckel and Giacomo Patri, Drooker’s first graphic novel was produced in linocuts and spot-colour: three discrete section chapters created between 1986 and 1992. You only need to look at the news to see that the subject matter has never been more immediate or telling…

These symbolic, spine-tingling observations and tumultuous progressions are generally dispensed without words as lone protagonists – or perhaps alienated, excluded victims – struggle to survive and find meaning in a world that just don’t care. The Man in View restlessly moves past centres of employment that shut down when you’re not looking, trudging cold, mean, directionless streets and alleys at the bottom of canyon-like skyscrapers or riding bleak subways while the pitiless skies look down and just keep spitting more and more rain…

Following a damning indictment of the modern world and warning of the social apocalypse to come from Luc Sante in his trenchant Introduction, the journey into oblivion begins with ‘Home’ as a simple worker discovers he’s no longer wanted. Slowly making his way back to the little he still possesses, he witnesses the city and his life in a new way…

That peregrination takes him below the city in ‘L’: into the tunnels trains share with lost, abandoned and forgotten people who have been reduced to their most primal elements…

‘Flood’ then brings us to a lonely garret where an artist and his cat toil to finish a treasured prospective masterpiece while the waters rise all around them. The deluge is here and everything’s about to change forever…

It’s time for one final excursion out into the submerging city…

This is a disturbing parable of immense depth and potency; made all the more effective by Drooker’s intense visualisations. We all know the consummate power of images over words, but they also impart greater liberty as the reader’s mind is free to attribute as much meaning to the narrative as their own experiences will allow. The result is sheer poetry – and what’s increasingly looking like prophecy…

Flood! – A Novel in Pictures is in its fourth edition now; the latest from Dark Horse being a deluxe (167 x 235 mm) hardback in black-&-blue-&-white which includes a revelatory conversation with the artist as first seen in Comics Journal as a much longer ‘Interview with Eric Drooker’.

Conducted by Chris Lanier and supplemented with a superabundant wealth of sketches, full pages, roughs and illustrations it adds great insight to what has gone before and sets us up nicely for Drooker’s even more impressive follow-up second work – Blood Song: a Silent Ballad. At the moment neither is available in digital editions but hope, like great art and timeless stories, springs eternal…

Terrifying, lovely and irresistibly evocative, this is a nightmare vision you must see and will always remember.
Text and illustrations of Flood! – A Novel in Pictures © 1992, 2002, 2007, 2015 Eric Drooker. All rights reserved. Introduction © 2001 Luc Sante. Comics Journal interview used with permission.

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Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comics Strips volume 1 – Through the Wild Blue Wonder


By Walt Kelly (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-869-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. was born on August 25th 1913 and started his cartooning career whilst still in High School, as both artist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. Moving to California in 1935, he joined the Disney Studio, working on shorts and features like Dumbo, Fantasia and Pinocchio… until the infamous animators’ strike in 1941.

Refusing to take a side, Kelly moved back East and began drawing comic books – primarily for Dell Comics, who had the Disney funnybook license. Despite his glorious work on such humanistic classics as the movie tie-in Our Gang, Kelly much preferred anthropomorphic animal and children’s fantasy (like Walt Kelly’s Santa Claus Adventures) and created Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum for Animal Comics #1 (cover-dated December 1942). He sagaciously retained the copyrights in the ongoing tale of two Bayou critters and their young African-American pal Bumbazine. Although the black kid soon vanished, the animal stars stayed on until 1948 when Kelly became art editor and cartoonist for hard hitting, left-leaning liberal newspaper The New York Star.

On October 4th 1948, Pogo, Albert and an ever-expanding cast began their careers on the funny pages, appearing six days a week until the periodical folded in January 1949.

Although a gently humorous kids feature, by the end of its run – included in full at the rear of this magnificent tome – the first glimmers of the increasingly barbed, boldly satirical masterpiece of velvet-pawed social commentary began to be seen…

This first of 12 volumes tracks the ascent of the scintillating, vastly influential strip; don’t believe me, just listen to Gary Trudeau, Berke Breathed, Bill Watterson, Jeff McNally, Bill Holbrook, Mark O’Hare, Alan Moore, Jeff Smith and even Goscinny & Uderzo and our own Maurice Dodd & Dennis Collins, whose wonderful strip The Perishers owes more than a little to the sublime antics of the Okefenokee Swamp citizenry…

After The Star closed, Pogo was picked up for mass distribution by the Post-Hall Syndicate and launched on May 16th 1949. A colour Sunday page debuted January 29th 1950 and both were produced simultaneously by Kelly until his death on October 18th 1973 (and even beyond, courtesy of his talented wife and family…)

At its peak the strip appeared in 500 papers in 14 countries whilst book collections (which began in 1951) number nearly 50 and have collectively sold 30 million copies. This volume includes every Star strip, the Dailies from inception to December 30th 1950, plus the Sundays – in their own full colour section – from January 29th to December 31st 1950, plus supplementary features including a Foreword from columnist Jimmy Breslin, an Introduction by biographer Steve Thompson, a week-by-week highly detailed contents section, useful guide ‘About the Sundays’ by Mark Evanier and an invaluable context and historical notes feature ‘Swamp Talk’ by the amazing R.C. Harvey.

Kelly’s genius and gift was the ability to beautifully, vivaciously draw comedic, tragic, pompous, sympathetic characters of any shape or breed and make them inescapably human and he used that gift to blend hard-hitting observation of our crimes, foibles and peccadilloes with rampaging whimsy, poesy and sheer exuberant joie de vivre. The hairy, scaly, furry, feathered, slimy folk depicted here are inescapably us, elevated by burlesque, slapstick, absurdism and all the glorious joys of wordplay – from puns to malapropisms to raucous accent humour – into a multi-layered hodgepodge of all-ages accessible delight.

In later volumes Kelly set his bestial cast loose on such timid, defenceless victims as Senator Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, the John Birch Society, Richard Nixon and the Ku Klux Clan, but he starts off small here, introducing gently bemused Pogo, boisterous, happily ignorant Albert, dolorous Porkypine, obnoxious turtle Churchy La Femme, lugubrious hound Beauregard Bugleboy, carpet-bagging Seminole Sam Fox, pompous (not) know-it-all Howland Owl and a multitude more in gags and extended epics ranging from assorted fishing trips, building an Adam Bomb, losing and finding other people’s children, electioneering, education, kidnapping, the evil influence of comic books, Baseball season, why folks shouldn’t eat each other, Western cow punchers, cows punching back, New Years Resolutions, public holidays and so much more…

The Sundays also opened with one-off gags but soon evolved into convoluted, mesmeric continued sagas such as the search for the Fountain of Youth, building a school and keeping it filled, Albert elected Queen of the Woodland by elf-like forest fauns – and why that was ultimately a very bad thing indeed…

Timeless and magical, Pogo is a true giant not simply comics, but also of world literature, and this magnificent edition should be the pride of every home’s bookshelf and digital library.
POGO Through the Wild Blue Wonder and all POGO images, including Walt Kelly’s signature © 2011 Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc. All other material © 2011 the respective creator and owner. All rights reserved.

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Gomer Goof volume 7: Gomer, Duke of Goofington


By Franquin, with Roba, Bibi and various: translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-590-5 (PB Album/Digital edition)

Like so much in Franco-Belgian comics, it all started with Le Journal de Spirou, which debuted on April 2nd 1938, with its iconic lead strip created by François Robert Velter AKA Rob-Vel. In 1943, publisher Dupuis purchased all rights to the comic and its titular star, and comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took the helm for the redheaded kid’s further exploits as the magazine gradually became a cornerstone of European culture.

In 1946, Jijé’s assistant André Franquin was handed creative control. Graduating from gag vignettes to extended adventure serials, he introduced a broad and engaging supporting cast of regulars as well as phenomenally popular wonder beast The Marsupilami. Debuting in 1952 (in Spirou et les héritiers) that critter eventually became a spin-off star of screen, plush toys, console games and albums in his own right.

Franquin crafted increasingly fantastic and absorbing Spirou sagas until a final resignation in 1969. Over two decades he had enlarged the feature’s scope and horizons, until it became purely his own. In almost every episode, fans met startling and memorable new characters like comrade/rival Fantasio, crackpot inventor Count of Champignac and even supervillains. Spirou & Fantasio evolved into globetrotting journalists visiting exotic places, exposing crimes, exploring the incredible and clashing with bizarre and exotic arch-enemies.

Throughout it all, Fantasio remained a full-fledged – albeit fictional – Le Journal de Spirou reporter who had to pop into the office between cases. Sadly, lurking there was an accident-prone, big-headed junior in charge of minor jobs and dogs-bodying. He was Gaston Lagaffe – Franquin’s other immortal creation…

There’s a long tradition of comics personalising fictitiously mysterious creatives and the arcane processes they indulge in, whether it’s the Marvel Bullpen or DC Thomson’s lugubrious Editor and underlings at The Beano and Dandy – it’s a truly international practise.

Occasional asides on text pages featured well-meaning foul-up/office gofer “Gaston” (who debuted in #985, February 28th 1957). He grew to be one of the most popular and perennial components of the comic, whether as a guest in Spirou’s cases or his own strips and faux reports on editorial pages.

In terms of actual schtick and delivery, older readers will recognise favourite beats and timeless elements of well-intentioned self-delusion as seen in Benny Hill and Jacques Tati and recognise recurring situations from Some Mothers Do Have ’Em or Mr Bean. It’s slapstick, paralysing puns, infernal ingenuity and invention, pomposity lampooned and no good deed going noticed, rewarded or unpunished…

As previously stated, Gaston/Gomer draws a regular pay check (let’s not dignify or mis-categorise what he does as “work”) from Spirou’s editorial offices: reporting to journalist Fantasio, or complicating the lives of office manager Léon Prunelle and other, more diligent staffers, all whilst effectively ignoring those minor jobs he’s paid to handle. These include page paste-up, posting (initially fragile) packages and editing readers’ letters… and that’s the official reason why fans’ requests and suggestions are never answered…

Gomer is lazy, over-opinionated, ever-ravenous, impetuous, underfed, forgetful and eternally hungry, with his most manic moments all stemming from cutting work corners and stashing or consuming contraband nosh in the office. This leads to constant clashes with colleagues and draws in seemingly unaffiliated bystanders like traffic cop Longsnoot and fireman Captain Morwater, as well as simple passers-by who should know by now to keep away from this street.

Through it all our office oaf remains eternally affable, easy-going and incorrigible. Only three questions really matter here: why everyone keeps giving him one last chance, what can gentle, lovelorn, increasingly hot Miss Jeanne possible see in the self-opinionated idiot and will angry capitalist/ever-outraged financier De Mesmaeker ever get his perennial, pestiferous contracts signed?

In 1971, Gaston – Le cas lagaffe was the ninth European compilation and in 2020 became Cinebook’s seventh translated compilation: again focussing on non-stop all-Franquin comics gags in single- page bursts, but regrettably reducing the strip count from the original 54 to 44. Here our well-meaning, overconfident, overly-helpful know-it-all/office hindrance invents more stuff making life unnecessarily dangerous. These include a carrot-shotgun to refresh and fortify rabbits as they evade hunters, personal weather control, a too-fast collapsible bike and jet-powered mail delivery system, but he also accidentally ruins his image and work-avoiding record by providing a scratch solution to keep the studio active and productive during a major power cut…

Despite resolute green credentials and leanings, Gomer is colour-bind to the problems his antiquated automobile cause, even after his attempts to soup up the fuel injection result in the world’s most potent blue dye which constantly escapes from the battered exhaust pipe as an all-consuming cobalt cloud.

Many strips feature his doomed love affair with and manic efforts to modify and mollify the accursed motorised atrocity he calls his car. Sadly, the decrepit, dilapidated Fiat 509 is more in need of a merciful execution than his many well-meant engineering interventions for countering its lethal road pollution and failure to function. Now it also confirms his outlaw status with the gendarmerie – quite literally – with many moments of floating “blue flu”…

As he concentrates of making motoring faster and more fun if not actually safer, Gomer’s big heart swells to encompass more animal pals. He adopts a feral cat and black-headed gull to accompany illicit studio companions Cheese the mouse and goldfish Bubelle, but their hyperactive gluttonous presences generate much chaos, especially whenever benighted business bod De Mesmaeker turns up with more crucial contracts for poor Prunelle to sign. Their residence even triggers a shift in work attire, with safety superseding style as a prerequisite…

Fresh strands of anarchic potential are explored during the organisation of events for Spirou creators like Lambil (Bluecoats) and Roba (Billy & Buddy), with Gomer wearing mascot costumes and paying heavily for it. Then there’s the arrival of Mr. Bacus. He’s an auditor for Dupuis, resolved to find financial fault and cut calamitous costs, but he’s far too curious for an office where the gofer stashes weird science prototypes, arcane chemical concoctions and a manic menagerie able to shred chairs and open sardine tines with a bash of the beak. At least he learns why redecorating costs are so high and frequent…

Gomer’s chum and opposite number Jules-from-Smith’s-across-the-street is a like-minded soul and born accomplice, ever-eager to slope off for a chat and a confirmed devotee of Gomer’s methods of passing the time whilst at work. He is always ready to help, as here when assisting in transporting an out-of-control cactus from Aunt Hortense’s home to the office. It doesn’t fit there either, but at least has plenty of fresh victims to puncture and terrify…

In his spare time Gomer continues his dream of revolutionising kite-flying, but again has trouble with Christmas after the office plays host to the live turkey he rescued last year…

Far better enjoyed than précised or described, these strips allowed Franquin and occasional co-scenarists and idea providers like Roba, Bibi, Michel, Yvan Delporte & Jidéhem (AKA Jean De Mesmaeker: just one of many in-joke analogues who populate the strip) to flex their whimsical muscles and even subversively sneak in some satirical support for their beliefs in pacifism, environmentalism and animal rights. These gags are sublime examples of all-ages comedy: wholesome, barbed, daft and incrementally funnier with every re-reading.

Why haven’t you Goofed off yet?
© Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 2009 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2020 Cinebook Ltd.

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Sky Masters of the Space Force: The Complete Dailies


By Jack Kirby, Dick & Dave Wood, Wally Wood & Dick Ayers (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-129-8 (HB) 978-1-61345-211-0 (TPB) 1-56685-009-6 (Pure Imagination)

Sky Masters of the Space Force was – and remains – a beautiful and eminently readable newspaper strip but one with a chequered and troubled back-story. How much so you can discover for yourself when you buy this book.

Even ever-upbeat and inspirational comics god Jack Kirby spent decades trying to forget the grief caused by his foray into the newspaper strip market during the height of the Space Race before finally relenting in his twilight years and giving his blessing to collections and reprints such as this one from Hermes Press.

Be grateful that he did because the collected work is one of his greatest achievements, even with the incredible format restraints of one tier of tiny panels per day, and a solitary page every Sunday. Decades later this hard-science space adventure is still the business!

And that’s despite the acrimonious legal manoeuvrings that poisoned the process of creating the strip from start to finish. That can of worms you can read for yourself in Daniel Herman’s forthright ‘Introduction: Jack Kirby, Wally Wood, and Sky Masters’ which precedes the astronautical adventures contained herein…

Just for context though: against a backdrop of international and ideological rivalry turned white-hot when the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik in 1957, the staid George Matthew Adams newspaper syndicate decided to finally enter the 20th century with a newspaper feature about space.

After approaching a reluctant DC Comics (then National Periodicals Publications) a deal was brokered. The project was steered by editor Jack Schiff who convinced Jack Kirby, inker Wally Wood (later replaced by Dick Ayers) and scripters/brothers Dick and Dave Wood (no relation to Wally) to begin bringing the conquest of the cosmos into our lives via an all-American astronaut, his trusty team of stalwart comrades and the philanthropic largesse of the newly-minted US Space Force (who knew Donald Trump could read back then?).

The daily strip launched on September 8th 1958 and ran until February 25th 1961; scant months before Alan Shepherd became in reality the first American in Space on May 5th.

The Sunday colour page told its five extended tales (The Atom Horse, Project Darkside, Mister Lunivac, Jumbo Jones and The Yogi Spaceman) in a separate continuity running from February 8th 1959 to 14th February 1960. They are sadly not included in this monochrome archival collection, but at least that gives us fans something to look forward to…

This tense, terse and startlingly suspenseful foray into a historical future begins with ‘The First Man in Space’ (September 8th – November 21st 1958) as Major Schuyler “Sky” Masters becomes the second man in space. Romantically involved with Holly Martin, he is hurled into orbit to rescue her astronaut father after the bold pioneer encounters, in the pitiless reaches above Earth, something too horrible to contemplate…

Human tragedy and ever-impinging fear of the unknown of that moody tale informs all the tales that follow, and as Holly Martin’s feisty brother Danny and burly Sgt. Riot join the cast (who do they remind me of?) for ‘Sabotage’ (22nd November – 7th March 1959), the quintessential components of all great comics teams are in place.

In this second encounter the stage expands enormously and a member of the vast Space Force contingent sinks into derangement: convinced colonization of the void and abandonment of Mother Earth is an unholy abomination.

That’s bad enough, but when he’s despatched as one of the six pathfinders constructing America’s first permanent orbiting space station, disaster is assured unless Sky can expose him and stop his deadly machinations…

Even as grim yet heady realism slowly grew into exuberant action and fantastic spectacle, the strip moves into high dramatic gear as woman pilot (or “aviatrix”) ‘Mayday Shannon’ (9th March – 9th May) joins the squad. The Brass have high hopes that she will prove “females” can thrive in space too. They didn’t reckon on her publicity-hungry greed and innate selfishness. Happily, the magnetic allure of the stars ultimately overcomes her bad side and Sky is on hand to deal with her ruthlessly unscrupulous manager…

A medical emergency tests the ingenuity of our dedicated spacers when project instigator and patriarch Doctor Royer is taken ill and Sky must ferry a surgeon to him in ‘To Save a Life’ (11th May – 10th June) after which the tireless Major and an unsuspected rival for Holly’s affections are stranded together on a New Guinea island of cannibals after losing control of ‘The Lost Capsule’ (11th June – 23rd September)…

During that heady meeting of ancient and modern cultures, inker/finisher Wally Wood was replaced by Dick Ayers (although the signatures remained “Kirby & Wood” for years more. Maybe the credit was for the writers?).

The incalculable terrors of space manifested with the next saga as ‘Alfie’ (24th September 1959 to 13th January 1960) carried the heroes of the New Frontier into the next decade. When young astronaut crewman Marek joins the orbiting space wheel, he begins periodically suffering bizarre fits. Every four hours for seven and a half minutes, the young American seems to channel the personality of aging East End cockney thief Alfie Higgins. With the fear that it might be some kind of infectious space madness, Sky and Riot head for London to link up with Scotland Yard in a gripping mystery drama blending jewel robbery and murder with the eerie overtones of Dumas’ Corsican Cousins…

The constant tensions of the Cold War and Space Race come to the fore in ‘Refugee’ (14th January – 19th February) as Sky and the US Space Force aid a most unlikely and improbable Soviet defector’s escape to the West…

Now a fully-trusted and dedicated member of the squad, Mayday Shannon returns to solve an astronaut’s romantic dilemma by arranging a ‘Wedding in Space’ (20th February – 20th April), before the true threat of the outer depths is tackled when Sky meets astronautical guru and maverick Martin Strickland. A tempestuous but invaluable asset of the Space program, the intellectual renegade has proof of alien life but won’t share the ‘Message from Space’ (21st April – 22nd June) unless military and civil authorities give him carte blanche to act on humanity’s behalf…

Counterbalancing such speculative sci fi aspects, the penultimate adventure is very much Earthbound and grounded in contemporary science and economics. ‘Weather Watchers’ (23rd June – 27th December) finds greedy capitalist entrepreneur Octavius Alexia realise he can make huge profits by scamming insurers if he has access to advance weather predictions afforded by the growing web of satellites orbiting the world.

To monopolise on that valuable information, he targets Mayday with the latest in espionage technologies and male honey trap J. Mansfield Sparks III. It might have all gone his way too if the woman hadn’t been so smart, and his mercenary gigolo had remained unencumbered by conscience…

The series ended in a rather rushed and rapid manner with ‘The Young Astronaut’ (28th December 1960 – 25th February 1961) wherein a new recruit proved to be too good to be true. Excelling at every aspect of the harsh training, Frederick T. “Fission” Tate had ulterior motives for getting into space. Luckily, suspicious Major Masters was right beside him on that first flight into the Wide Black Yonder…

As well as these stellar tales of stellar wonder, this volume also contains an abundance of visual extras such as a numerous covers and samples of Kirby’s contemporary comic book work, plus original art panels in a ‘Focus’ section, which almost compensates for the absence of the Sunday colour pages. Almost…

This compilation comprises a meteoric canon of wonderment that no red-blooded armchair adventurer could possibly resist, but quite honestly, I simply cannot be completely objective about Sky Masters.

I grew up during this time period and the “Conquest of Space” is as much a part of my sturdy yet creaky old bones as the lead in the paint, pipes and exhaust fumes my generation readily absorbed. That it is also thrilling, challenging and spectacularly drawn is almost irrelevant to me, but if any inducement is needed for you to seek this work out let it be that this is indisputably one of Kirby’s greatest accomplishments: engaging, beguiling, challenging and truly lovely to look upon. Now go enjoy it.

Back in 2000, Pure Imagination Publishing released The Complete Sky Masters of the Space Force, which also contains an abundance of essays; commentary and extras such as sketches and unpublished art, as well as those omitted Sunday pages, albeit printed in black and white. If you have the resources and that completist bug it’s worth hunting down, until such time as modern publishers finally catch on and print everything.

© 2017 Herman and Geer Communications, Inc. d/b/a Hermes Press. Introduction and Focus © 2017 Daniel Herman.

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Dreadstar -The Beginning


By Jim Starlin with Tom Orzechowski (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-119-9 (HB/Digital edition)

Comics’ creative renaissance began during the 1980s and resulted in some utterly wonderful strip sagas, which shone briefly and brightly within what was still considered a largely niche industry. Many passed from view as business and art form battled spiralling costs, declining readerships and the perverse and pervasive attitude of the wider world. This was an era when comics were considered the natural province of morons, mutants and farm animals (I’m paraphrasing)…

Unlike today, way back then most grown-ups considered superheroes as adolescent power fantasies or idle wish-fulfilment for the uneducated or disenfranchised, so an entertainment industry which was perceived as largely made up of men in tights hitting each other got very little approval – or even notice – in the wider world of popular fiction.

Everything changed with the advent of the Direct Sales Market for comic books (and related interests like cards, posters and toys). Benefitting from a more targeted approach to selling, specialist vendors in dedicated emporia had leeway to allow frustrated creators to cut loose and experiment with other genres – and even formats and profit from any peripheral merchandising that might accrue.

All that unleashed innovation led inescapably to today’s high-end, thoroughly respectable graphic novel market which – with suitable and fitting circularity – is now gathering and re-circulating many of the breakthrough tales from those times: not as poorly distributed hard-to-find serials and sequences, but in satisfyingly complete stand-alone books.

Marvel was the unassailable front-runner in purveying pamphlet fiction back then, outselling all competitors and monopolising the lucrative licensed properties market (like Star Wars and Indiana Jones) which once been the preserve of the Whitman/Dell/Gold Key colossus. This added to a zeitgeist which proved that for open-minded readers, superheroes were not the only fruit…

As independently published titles hit an early peak, Marvel instigated its own creator-owned, rights-friendly fantasy periodical in response to the overwhelming success amongst older readers of Heavy Metal magazine. Lush, slick and lavish, HM had even brought a fresh, music-&-literature-based audience to graphic narratives…

That response was Epic Illustrated: an anthological magazine offering stunning art and an anything-goes attitude – unhindered by the censorious Comics Code Authority – which saw everything from literary adaptations to out-world in-continuity landmarks of the Marvel’s own in-house characters like ‘The Last Galactus Story’, plus numerous serial stories which would become compelling forerunners of today’s graphic novel industry.

EI’s first issue also discretely began a soft and gradual introduction to one of the era’s biggest Indie sensations: Vanth Dreadstar…

This collection gathers a number of stories culled from an assortment of places. The saga started in Epic Illustrated (#1-9, 12 and 15; spanning Spring 1980 to December 1982), whilst tangentially diverting in 1981 to Eclipse Graphic Album Series #5 (The Price) and 1982’s Marvel Graphic Novel #3: Dreadstar – all laying groundwork for one of the most successful creator-owned comic characters of the era… and one of the most long-lived.

Re-presented here in the original monochrome or painted full-colour, with writer/artist Starlin aided and abetted by letterer by Tom Orzechowski, these tales and this edition feature art remastered by Jerron Quality Color, Mike Kelleher and Digikiore Studios.

Already a big gun thanks to his run on Captain Marvel, the engendering of mad Titan Thanos and the reinvention of Adam Warlock, Starlin cemented his cosmic creator credentials and indulged his preoccupation with death and nihilism through grandiose serialised saga Metamorphosis Odyssey.

Delivered in painted grey-tones, it began with the introduction of mighty alien wizard Aknaton: savant of ancient and benevolent race the Osirosians. These masters of the cosmos were perturbed by the advent of rapacious barbarian species the Zygoteans, slowly and inexorably conquering planets and eradicating all life in the Milky Way galaxy.

Aknaton’s people fought back on behalf of all creation, but knew that their resistance was numbered in mere millennia before the predators would triumph.

Unsettled by the prognostication, Aknaton sets out on a desperate tour of the galaxy, planting life seeds, weaving a web of possibility and even depositing an incredible sword of power in a last-ditch plan which would take a million years to complete…

The first seed flowered in the form of spiritually advanced intellectual monster ‘Za!’, whilst another blossomed into 15-year old ‘Juliet’, abducted by Aknaton from Earth in 1980 just as the Zygoteans arrived to eradicate the rest of her species.

The mage’s last living puzzle piece was butterfly-winged psychic ‘Whis’par’ whose gifts and sensitivities easily divined the dark underpinnings of Aknaton’s ambitions…

During this chapter the artwork transitioned into full-painted colour, and by the time the wizard reached war-torn ice-world Byfrexia to recruit ‘Vanth’, cosmic conflict was in full phantasmagorical flow. This emotionless resistance leader battling the Zygoteans was a man with incredible physical powers, bestowed by a magic sword he had found: the very weapon Aknaton has planted eons previously…

‘The Meeting’ between Vanth and his notional maker is interrupted by Zygotean killers, affording the wizard opportunity to assess his handiwork in action. He quickly realises the hero is far more powerful than he had intended…

Nevertheless, the quest moves on to a recently-razed paradise, but ‘Delloran Revisited’ is merely one step in a search for an ultimate weapon so long lost, so well hidden, that Aknaton has no clue to its current location…

Appraising his unique team of one final push, Aknaton enjoys ‘Sunrise on Lartorez’ before absenting himself to meet God and discuss ‘Absolution’, after which a ‘Requiem’ sounds for life as the Zygoteans find them and light the skies with ‘Nightfire’.

Forced into precipitate action, ‘Dreamsend’ turns into ‘Doomsday!’ as Aknaton’s plan finally comes into play – with cataclysmic effect…

A million years later, an energy bubble bursts in another galaxy and sole survivors Aknaton and Vanth find themselves on a rural world not much different from any other. They still have business to settle and only one will walk away from the ‘Aftermath’ of what they’ve perpetrated…

With the illustration reverting to painted monochrome, sequel The Price is set in that new “Empirical Galaxy”: one riven by unending war between intergalactic robber barons The Monarchy and omnipresent mystico-political religious order The Instrumentality. Over 200 years these instinctive enemies have taken half a galaxy each and now battle to maintain a permanent stalemate. The economies of both factions depend on constant slaughter, but never outright victory…

At the heart of that strained environment, rising Instrumentality Bishop Syzygy Darklock is drawn by arcane forces and the diabolical plotting of terrorist mage Taurus Killgaren onto a path of inescapable doom and destruction.

It begins with the demonic assassination of Darklock’s brother; leading the outraged cleric onto a path of damnation and revelation: gaining immense mystic power and wisdom but only at the cost of sacrificing everything he ever loved. He is also forced to share Killgaren’s infallible vision of the fearful future and the role a man named Dreadstar will play in the fate of the universe…

After the huge success of The Death of Captain Marvel in Marvel Graphic Novel #1, Starlin was eagerly welcomed back for the third release. Here he finally and officially launched Dreadstar as a creator-owned property that would kickstart the Epic Comics imprint into life.

The full-colour painted story focused on Vanth the man, with the immortal Cold Warrior abandoning his sword and warlike ways, and settling down to decades of family and farming on isolated agri-world Caldor with retired Instrumentality researcher Delilah.

Toiling beside its gentle gen-gineered cat-people who operate the farm planet, Vanth found a kind of contentment, which was only slightly spoiled when a bizarre being named Syzygy Darklock sets up his tent in the mountain wilderness and begins tempting the old soldier with tales of the outer world and veiled promises of great knowledge and understanding.

Vanth is with the savant when Monarchy ships attack Delilah and the cat-folk. In the wake of their casual atrocities, he renounces his vow of peace and resolves to end the stupid, commercially expedient war his way…

The drama concludes with ‘Epilogue’: one last monochrome moment first seen in Epic Illustrated #15, and designed as a bridging introduction to the hero’s regular comic book debut. Vanth and cat-man ally Oedi are trying to quietly get off Instrumentality mining colony The Rock, but Dreadstar is nigh-fatally distracted by a worker who is the very image of Delilah.

However, before he can do anything really stupid, the mine roof caves in, threatening all his ambitious plans to bring peace and stability to the Empirical Galaxy…

To Be Continued…

Bold, bombastic and potently cathartic, this is no-nonsense space opera with the just the right amount of deep thought, comforting cynicism and welcoming pop philosophy adding flavour to the action and spicing up the celestial grandeur. Above all this is smart, trenchant, timelessly uncomplicated fun for grown-up space freaks, well worth a few moments of your time…
© 2010 James Starlin. All rights reserved. Dreadstar is a registered trademark of James Starlin, and the Dreadstar logo and all characters and content herein and the likenesses thereof are also trademarks of James Starlin unless otherwise expressly noted.