Category: Satire/Politics

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Growing Old with B.C. – A 50 Year Celebration


By Johnny Hart (Checker BPG)
ISBN: 978-1-905239-63-4 (HB) 978-1-933160-68-9 (PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

John Lewis Hart was born in Endicott, New York in 1931, and his first published cartoons appeared in military newspaper Stars and Stripes while he served with the US Air Force during the Korean War. On returning to Civvy Street in 1953, he sold a few gags to The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers Weekly and elsewhere, but had to earn a living as a general designer.

In 1958, for some inexplicable reason, caveman jokes were everywhere in magazines and comics (even latterly creeping onto TV and into movies). Despite all the dawn-age foofaraw, General Electric draughtsman and still-wannabe cartoonist Johnny Hart hadn’t sold a single one. He also desperately wanted to create a syndicated newspaper strip but couldn’t think of an idea.

And then one of his co-workers said why not do a strip feature one about Cavemen? Just like Alley Oop, but different…

Hart took a good look at the state of the world, and especially the people around him, and the wryly outrageous social commentarians supporting and harassing our hapless nebbish leading man B.C. quickly took shape…

The concept sold instantly to the New York Herald-Tribune Syndicate and the strip – starting today in 1958 – rapidly became a global hit, with the first of 41 collected editions (Hey! B.C.) released in 1959. In 1964 Hart started collaborating with fellow cartoonist Brant Parker on a new strip. The Wizard of Id also became a monster hit. The features won Hart an astounding hoard of awards over the years: making him one of only 4 American cartoonists to produce two strips appearing contiguously in more than 1000 newspapers.

Hart died of a stroke on April 7th 2007. He was working at his drawing board. Brant Parker passed away eight days later.

Hart became a devout Christian during the mid-1980s – something which increasingly and controversially manifested in later strips – but his urgent need to preach and share took a long time to impact the trenchant, whimsically surreal wit and primal byplay of his primordial playpen.

B.C. is a modern everyday kind of guy: a general purpose ordinary slob just getting by, but he has some odd and interesting friends breaking up the monotony of the pre-civilised world. These include self-proclaimed genius Peter, superstitious misogynist Wiley, proto-prime nerd Clumsy Carp, pre-human missing-link Grog, uber-sarcastic Curls and rakish lady-killer Thor.

Apparently, all of them are based on actual people – life-long friends of Hart’s – and their candid reminiscences provide a charming and poignant insight into the life of one of the most revered and successful cartoonists of modern times.

Other materialised regulars include a variety of talking beasts and inanimate objects: chatty, snappy dinosaurs; ants and ant-eaters; clams, snakes; turtles; birds and an apteryx – but I’m guessing they never had analogues with day-jobs in Eisenhower’s America…

This magnificent tome – available in hardcover, paperback and digital editions – offers a decade-by-decade selection of the best and most memorable B.C. strips, supplemented by a listing of its many awards, and comes stuffed with photographs and observations. It is a most delightful commemoration of a truly great and very funny strip.

Hart died during the finishing stages of this book’s creation, making this the best way to celebrate his achievements. His legacy of brain-tickling, absurdist lunacy will never date, and creative anachronism has never been better used to raise a smile or an eyebrow in this lush collection of timely and timeless fun.
B.C. © 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc. B.C. © 1958-2006 John L. Hart Family Limited Partnership.

Today in 1914 writer Leo Dorman was born, as was fellow Superman stalwart Curt Swan in 1920. In 1929 Alejandro Jodorowsky came along, with today also greeting modern myth makers Nelson De Castro/“Nelson” in 1969 and Leah Williams in 1988.

Big day for strip launches too. As well as BC, we all started loving Richard F. Outcault’s The Yellow Kid in 1985, Lee Falk’s The Phantom in 1936 and Jack Williamson & Lee Elias’ Beyond Mars in 1952.

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HM Bateman: The Man Who… and Other Drawings


By H.M. Bateman; edited by John Jensen (Methuen 1983)
ISBN: 978-0-41332-360-9 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times but also emphasised for comedic effect.

On February 15th in 1887, Henry Mayo Bateman was born in New South Wales. He was however, raised in England, attending Forest Hill House School and Goldsmith’s College (Institute, as was). He also studied with John Hassall and later at the Charles Van Havenmaet Studio from 1904-07. He was a great fan of Comic Cuts and Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday, and his first cartoons were published in 1903 in Scraps. Bateman was skilled and gifted in both illustrative and comedic drawing and agonised over his career path before choosing humour. Mercifully, he was too frail for military service in 1914 and so his gifts were preserved for us all to share. He died in Gozo, Malta on February 11th 1970, having spent his final years in steadfast (often hilarious) battle with the Inland Revenue…

Bateman’s most memorable series of cartoons was ‘The Man Who…’ These were lavish set pieces, published as full colour double-page spreads in The Tatler, perpetually lampooning the English Manner by way of frenzied character reactions to a gaffe or inappropriate action from a blithely oblivious central participant. Bateman’s unique strength came from extending his training as a caricaturist into all his humorous work, a working philosophy that the artist equated with drawing people as they felt rather than how they looked.

He was also a British pioneer of cartoons without text, depending on beautifully rendered yet powerfully energetic and vivacious interpretations of people and environment to make his always funny point. He was a master of presenting a complete narrative in a single image.

In reviewing the 14 collections published during his lifetime and such collections as the volume at hand, or the excellent The Best Of H M Bateman 1922-1926: The Tatler Cartoons (1987), I was particularly struck by the topicality of the work as well as the sheer wonder of the draughtsmanship. Find if you can ‘The Man Who asked for a second helping at a City Company Dinner’, wherein 107 fully realised Diners and waiters, all in full view, have 107 different and recognizable reactions to that gauche request. It is an absolute masterpiece of comic art – as are all the rest. In a world where the next fad is always the most important, it is vital that creators such as Bateman remain unforgettable and unforgotten. I pray to the cartoon gods that somewhere soon some museum retrospective on British culture will rescue this genius from ill-deserved (temporary) obscurity and generate one last curated collection for us to revel in…
Text ©.1983 John Jensen/Methuen. Illustrations © 1982, 2007 Estate of H M Bateman.

For further explorations and illumination please check out HM Bateman – Official Cartoons & Artwork.

Also today, Golden Age comics artist Nina Albright (Miss Victory, Black Venus) was born, as was Belgian star Willy Vandersteen (Spike and Suzy) in 1913 and Disney Duck artist William Van Horn in 1939.

Art Spiegelman was born in 1948, and Marc Hansen (Ralph Snart, Weird Melvin, Doctor Gorpon) in 1963, whilst in 1965, Morrie Turner launched Wee Pals, America’s first strip with a racially diverse cast. In 1987, Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales ended a run begun in the early 1950s. We also lost today veteran Canadian artist Jack Sparling in 1997, and two Italian Bonelli/Tex Willer stalwarts: Vincenzo Monti in 2002 and Fabrizio Busticchi in 2017.

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Shorts


By Milo Manara, translated by Tom Leighton (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-087416-060-4 (HB)

For some folks the graphic novel under review here will be unacceptably lewd, even “dirty”. If that’s you, please stop here and come back tomorrow when there will something you’ll approve of but which will surely offend somebody else.

It’s another amatory Final Countdown moment and possibly a last chance to impress that significant one this year so let’s maturely and contemplatively review a rather quirky, philosophical – and typically unattainable – tome by one of the world’s greatest graphic eroticists. Originally translated into English from the French edition Courts Métrages by Catalan in 1989, it’s another inexplicably Out-of-Print graphic gem desperately in need of an English language release.

Maurilio “Milo” Manara (born September 12th 1945) has always been a puckish intellectual and whimsical craftsman with a dazzling array of artistic skills ranging from architecture, product design, filmmaking & animation, painting and of course an elegant, refined, clear-clean line style with pen and ink. He is best known for his wry, controversial and generally sexually explicit material – although that’s more an indicator of our comics market than any artistic obsession. He’s even drawn the X-Men – but mostly the women…

After studying painting and architecture he began crafting comics for money in 1969, beginning with Fumetti Neri series Genius, and thereafter working on the magazine Terror. His life’s goal came in 1971 as he began his “adult” career (see what I did there?) illustrating Francisco Rubino’s Jolanda de Almaviva which led, four years later, to his first major work and success. Originally released as Lo Scimmiotto, The Ape was a bold, bawdy reworking of the Chinese tales of the Monkey King.

By the end of the seventies he was working for the vast Franco-Belgian market where he is still regarded as an A-list creator. It was while creating material for Charlie Mensuel, Pilote and L’Écho des savanes that he created his signature series HP and Giuseppe Bergman for A Suivre.

As the 80’s staggered to a close he wrote and drew, in his characteristic blend of raunchy burlesque and saucy slapstick, the eccentric selection of satirical, baroque tales gathered here as a barbed and penetrating assault on modern media and bastardized popular cultural, which were increasingly being used to cloak capitalist intrusions and commercial seductions.

In these absurdist, voyeuristic, fourth-wall breaking, intellectually-challenging, exceedingly sexy monochrome vignettes, Manara highlights the diminishing divisions between Art and Selling, with tales intended to make your head throb as much as your nethers.

The sensorial incursion commences with ‘Commercial’, as a typical couch-potato is inexorably drawn into the Casanovan drama he’s watching. However, the drama’s TV-contained characters are impeded in their roles by the intrusive presence of the sponsor’s unsavoury product: adult diapers…

All of these yarns are visually influenced by iconography of the Great Arts, like Luciano Pavarotti and Fellini, and ‘Blue Period’ details the ruthless nature of commercialism as a photographic director goes to extraordinary lengths to reproduce a Picasso painting for an album cover. Sadly, under normal conditions, the human body just don’t bend that way…

‘X3’ offers to reveal your sex-portrait with a brief questionnaire survey carried out by aliens well-versed in the techniques of abduction and probing whilst ‘John Lennon’ delightfully describes what happened after the master musician got to Heaven before ‘Acherontia Atropos’ plays a very dark prank on a cameraman who signs up to film a genuine snuff-movie…

‘Untitled’ returns to the role of unsatisfied Casanova as the legendary lover suffers an unquantifiable loss and surreal challenge to his life-style, whilst ‘The Last Tragic Day of Gori Bau & the Callipygian Sister’ sinisterly shows the dark side of “underage” explorations and pubescent curiosity when a trio of kids invoke feelings and powers they are not equipped to cope with. This comes from a far less sensitive time and might well be the most emotionally triggering tale here, so please read with care and your eyes and conscience open…

Our allegorical ambuscade concludes with the calamitously comedic surreal science fiction yarn ‘And’ as an Earthman and an Arcturian escape from a dying planet thanks to the power of a book which writes itself and predicts the future. If only the incredible chronicle had a spell-checker too…

Delineated in Manara’s beautifully rendered, lavish linework this explicit, daringly deep and sexually charged selection makes intriguing points of social and creative commentary in an utterly seductive and fascinating manner, but even at its most raunchy, funny and challenging this tome is first and foremost a work of sublime pictorial entertainment desperately worthy of a new edition.
© 1989 Milo Manara/Staletti, agent, Paris. English Language edition © 1989 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

Today in 1877 strip cartoonist Sidney “The Gumps” Smith was born as was Bud Blake (Tiger) in 1918 and letterer Danny Crespi in 1926. We lost The New Yorker stalwart Gluyas Williams in 1982 and the astounding Ron Embleton (Wrath of the Gods, Stingray, Biggles, Look and Learn, World of Wonder, Oh Wicked Wanda, those images in the closing credits of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons).

The day also saw the beginning of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant in 1937, Leo Baxendale’s The Bash Street Kids in The Beano in 1954 and the last Peanuts strip by Charles M. Schulz in 2000.

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Bluecoats volume 19 Drummer Boy


By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin, with Leonardo; translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-177-4 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times but also emphasised for dramatic and comedic effect.

Devised by Louis “Salvé” Salvérius & Raoul Cauvin – who scripted the first 64 volumes until retirement in 2020 – Les Tuniques Bleues (or Dutch iteration De Blauwbloezen) began as the 1960s ended: created to soften the blow of losing Lucky Luke when that mild-mannered maverick megastar defected from Le Journal de Spirou to arch-rival periodical Pilote. From the start, the substitute strip was popular: swiftly becoming one of the most-consumed bande dessinée series in Europe. After stints by the Jose-Luis Munuera/BeKa writing partnership, it is now scribed by Kris and up to 68 volumes…

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. Born in 1936, Lambil is Belgian and, after studying Fine Art in college, joined publishing giant Dupuis in 1952 as a letterer. Arriving on Earth two years later, scripter Cauvin was also Belgian and (prior to joining Dupuis’ animation department in 1960) studied Lithography. He soon discovered his true calling was comedy and began a glittering, prolific writing career at LJdS. In addition, he scripted dozens of long-running, award winning series including Cédric, Les Femmes en Blanc and Agent 212: clocking up 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 and – as of ten minutes ago – Lambril, at 87, is still drawing the Boys in Blue…

The Bluecoats are long-suffering protagonists Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch: worthy, honest fools in the manner of Laurel & Hardy; ill-starred US cavalrymen defending a vision of a unified America during the War Between the States – well, at least one of them is…

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. Subsequent exploits are set within the scant timeframe of the Secession conflict, but – like today’s tale – occasionally range far beyond the traditional environs of the sundered USA, dipping into and embracing actual events (also like today’s tale), tackling genuine, thoroughly researched moments of history…

Blutch is an everyday, 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 at every opportunity, he’s you or me – except at his core he’s smart, principled, loyal and even heroic… if no easier option presents itself. Chesterfield is a big, burly professional fighting man: a proud career soldier of the 22nd Cavalry who devoutly believes in patriotism and esprit-de-corps of The Army. Brave, bold, never shirking his duty and hungry to be a medal-wearing hero, he’s quite naïve and also loves his cynical little pal. Naturally, they quarrel like a married couple, fight like brothers and 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, in which both find themselves pretty much fish out of water…

On offer this time is a rather more straightforward and trenchant outing with characters rather than settings providing most of the humour. Coloured as ever by Vittorio Leonardo, Les Tuniques Bleues – Drummer Boy was serialised continentally in Le Journal de Spirou #2720-2730, before becoming the 31st album in 1990, and now Cinebook’s 19th translated Bluecoats book.

As already hinted, it differs somewhat from the majority of tales, which tread a fine line between comedy and righteous anger, so if you share these books with younger kids, best read it first. However, biting wit and sardonic comedy are curbed for a mostly moving message here as a battlefield policy decision divides the old comrades and unleashes calamity and catastrophe. It begins in polemical mode as the aftermath of another battle leaves corpses and cripples underfoot (on both sides) and colonels and generals (ditto) unable to ascertain why their great plans and bold strategies just don’t work.

As always the casualty lists provoke a drive for new recruits, the one area where Union forces can outdo the Confederacy. As Chesterfield & Blutch indulge a rare quiet moment in a nearby town, they dispassionately watch the hundreds of poor folk, recent immigrants, unemployed men and thirsty ne’er-do-wells signing up, but only until Blutch spots a very young boy in the queue. Chesterfield cannot understand his pal’s towering outrage as Blutch tries everything to get the so-determined kid out of the line and away from the meatgrinder of imminent slaughter. What lands the little rebel in the guardhouse, however, is the patriotic Sergeant “taking care” of the problem by rushing the waif to the front of the line and personally signing him up.

At war with each other for the rest of the tale, Blutch – as chuck wagon commissary server – provides most of the laughs from this point on, as even the madmen running the 22nd Cavalry and Union top brass can find no suitably bellicose role for the plucky orphan in their ranks. Thus little Pucky Potts is made company drummer boy as both sides build up for the next – deciding – pitched battle.

Only that’s not quite how things work out, as the Rebs somehow anticipate every move and stratagem before delivering a stinging defeat. It keeps happening and eventually even the Generals work out what Blutch has already deduced. Pucky is a spy for the other side…

Refusing to let any child be killed for this stupidity, the corporal pulls out all the stops and even makes up with his old ally to ensure that the travesty of an underage execution will not happen. First, though, he has to stop being thrown in the guardhouse and get Chesterfield to talk to him…

Again highlighting not only divisions and disparities of officers and enlisted men but also of the American class structure – particularly the inherent racism driving rich and poor players on all sides – Drummer Boy is another disturbingly edgy epic that makes fun from the very worst of human endeavour. Shocking, powerful and hard-hitting as well as funny, thrilling, beautifully realised and eminently readable, this is one of finest Bluecoats yarns in the entire canon and best kind of war-story/Western. it appeals to the best, not worst, of the human spirit and hopefully that means you. © Dupuis 1990 by Lambil & Cauvin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2025 Cinebook Ltd.

Today in 1912 Mexican cartoonist German Butze (The Supersabios) was born, with Bringing up Father follow-up artist Zeke Zekley arriving three years later, and Danish multi-talented Peter Snejbjerg not joining us until 1963.

In 1977 Us cartoonist Ben Batsford (Billy’s Uncle; Doings of the Duffs; Little Annie Rooney; Frankie Doodle; Mortimer and Charlie) died, as did gekiga mangaka Jiro Taniguchi (Icaro; A Distant Neighorhood; The Summit of the Gods; A Journal of My Father) in 2017.

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Barnaby volume 1: 1942-1943


By Crockett Johnson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-522-8 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Here is one of those books that’s worthy of two reviews, so if you’re in a hurry…

Buy Barnaby now – it’s one of the most wonderful strips of all time and this superb hardcover compilation and its digitised equivalent have lots of fascinating extras. If you harbour any yearnings for the lost joys of childish glee and simpler, more clear-cut world-ending crises, you would be crazy to miss this…

However, if you’re still here and need a little more time to decide…

As long ago as August 2007 I started whining that one of the greatest comic strips of all time was criminally out of print and in desperate need of a major deluxe re-issue. So – as if by the magic of a fine Panatela – Cushlamocree! – Fantagraphics came to my rescue.

Today’s newspapers – those that still cling on by ink-stained fingernails – have precious few continuity drama or adventure strips. Indeed, if a paper has any strips, as opposed to single panel editorial cartoons at all, chances are they will be of the episodic variety typified by Jim Davis’ Garfield or reruns of old favourites like Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts.

You can describe most of these as single-idea pieces with a set-up, delivery and punchline, rendered in sparse, pared-down-to-basics drawing style. In that at least, they’re nothing new. Narrative impetus comes from the unchanging characters themselves, and a building of gag-upon-gag in extended themes. The advantage to the newspaper was obvious. If readers liked a strip it encouraged them to buy the paper. If one missed a day or two, they could return fresh at any time having, in real terms, missed nothing.

Such was not always the case, especially in America. Once upon a time the Daily “funnies” -comedic or otherwise – were crucial circulation builders and sustainers, with lush, lavish and magnificently rendered fantasies or romances rubbing shoulders beside, above and across from thrilling, moody masterpieces of crime, war, sci-fi and mundane modern melodrama. Even the legion of humour strips actively strived to maintain an avid, devoted following.

…And eventually there was Barnaby which in so many ways bridged the gap between Then and Now…

On April 20th 1942, with America at war for the second time in 25 years, liberal New York tabloid PM (a later iteration of which – The New York Star – launched and hosted Walt Kelly’s wonderful Pogo) began running a new, sweet strip for kids which happened to be the most whimsically addicting, socially seditious and ferociously smart satire since the creation of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner… another utter innocent left to the mercy of scurrilous worldly influences…

Crockett Johnson’s outlandish regimented 4-panel daily was the brainchild of a man who didn’t particularly care for comics, but who – according to preeminent strip historian Ron Goulart – just wanted steady employment. David Johnson Leisk (October 20th 1906 – July 11th 1975) was an ardent socialist; passionate anti-fascist; gifted artisan and brilliant designer who had spent much of his working life as a commercial artist, Editor and Art Director.

Born in New York City, he was raised in the outer borough of Queens (when it was still semi-rural and apparently darn-near feral), very near the slag heaps which would eventually house two New York World’s Fairs in Flushing Meadows. Leisk studied art at Cooper Union (for the Advancement of Science and Art) and New York University before leaving early to support his widowed mother. This entailed embarking upon a hand-to-mouth career drawing and constructing department-store advertising. He supplemented that income with occasional cartoons to magazines such as Collier’s before becoming an Art Editor at magazine publisher McGraw-Hill. He also began producing a moderately successful, “silent” strip called The Little Man with the Eyes.

Johnson had divorced his first wife in 1939 and moved out of the city to Connecticut, sharing an oceanside home with student (and eventual bride) Ruth Krauss: always looking to create that steady something, when, almost by accident, he devised a masterpiece of comics narrative. However, if his friend Charles Martin hadn’t seen a prototype Barnaby half-page lying around the house, the series might never have existed. Happily, Martin hijacked the sample and parlayed it into a regular feature in prestigious highbrow left-leaning tabloid PM simply by showing the scrap to the paper’s Comics Editor, Hannah Baker.

Among her other finds was a strip by cartoonist Theodor Seuss Geisel (who called himself “Dr. Seuss”) which would run contiguously in the same publication. Despite Johnson’s initial reticence, within a year Barnaby had become the new darling of the intelligentsia…

Soon there were hardback book collections, talk of a radio show (in 1946 it was adapted as a stage play), accolades and rave reviews in Time, Newsweek and Life. The small yet rabid fanbase ranged from politicians and the smart set such as President and First Lady Roosevelt, Vice-President Henry Wallace, Rockwell Kent, William Rose Benet and Lois Untermeyer to cool celebrities like Duke Ellington, Dorothy Parker, W. C. Fields and legendary New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

Of course, those last two might only have been checking the paper because the undisputed, unsavoury star of the cartoon show was a scurrilous if fanciful amalgam of them both…

Not since George Herriman’s Krazy Kat had a scrap of popular culture so infiltrated the halls of the mighty, whilst largely passing way over the heads of the masses or without troubling the Funnies sections of big circulation papers. Over its 10-year run – from April 1942 to February 1952 – Barnaby was only syndicated to 64 papers nationally, with a combined circulation of just over 5½ million, but it kept Crockett (his childhood nickname) & Ruth in relative comfort whilst America’s Great & Good constantly agitated on the kid’s behalf.

This splendid collection opens with a hearty appreciation from Chris Ware in the Foreword before cartoonist and historian Jeet Heer provides critical appraisal in ‘Barnaby and American Clear Line Cartooning’, after which the captivating yarn-spinning takes us from April 20th 1942 to December 31st 1943.

There’s even more elucidatory content after that, though, as education scholar and Professor of English Philip Nel provides a fact-filled, picture-packed ‘Afterword: Crockett Johnson and the Invention of Barnaby’. Dorothy Parker’s original ‘Mash Note to Crockett Johnson’ is reprinted in full, and Nel also supplies strip-by-strip commentary and background in ‘The Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder & Marching Society: a Handy Pocket Guide’…

The real meat (and no rationing here!) begins in the strip itself and starts when ‘Mr. O’Malley Arrives’. This saga ran from 20th to 29th April 1942, setting the ball rolling as a little boy wishes one night for a Fairy Godmother and something strange and disreputable falls in through his window…

Barnaby Baxter is a smart, ingenuous and scrupulously honest pre-schooler (4-year-old to you) whose ardent wish is to be an Air Raid Warden like his dad. Instead he is “adopted” by a short, portly, pompous, mildly unsavoury and wholly discreditable windbag with pink wings.

Jackeen J. O’Malley, card carrying-member of the “Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns and Little Men’s Chowder and Marching Society” (although he hasn’t paid his dues in years) installs himself as the lad’s Fairy Godfather. A lazier, more self-aggrandizing, mooching old glutton and probable soak (he certainly frequents taverns but only ever raids the Baxter’s icebox, pantry and humidor, never their drinks cabinet) could not be found anywhere.

Due more to intransigence than evidence – there’s always plenty of physical proof whenever O’Malley has been around – Barnaby’s father and mother adamantly refuse to believe in the ungainly, insalubrious sprite, whose continued presence hopelessly complicates the sweet boy’s life. The poor parents’ greatest abiding fear is that Barnaby is cursed with Too Much Imagination…

In fact, this entire glorious confection is about our relationship to imagination. This is not a strip about childhood fantasy. The theme here, beloved by both parents and children alike, is that grown-ups don’t listen to kids enough, and that they certainly don’t know everything.

Despite looking like a complete fraud – he never uses his magic and always wields one of Pop’s stolen cigars as a substitute wand – O’Malley is the real deal, he’s just incredibly lazy, greedy, arrogant and inept. He does (sort of) grant Barnaby’s wish though, as his midnight travels in the sky trigger a full air raid alert in ‘Mr. O’Malley Takes Flight’ (30th April-14th May)…

‘Mr. O’Malley’s Mishaps’ (15th – 28th May) offer further insights into the obese ovoid elf’s character – or lack of same – as Barnaby continually fails to convince his folks of his newfound companion’s existence, before the bestiary expands into a topical full-length adventure when the little guys stumble into a genuine Nazi plot with supernatural overtones in the hilariously outrageous ‘O’Malley vs. Ogre’ from 29th May through 31st August.

‘Mr. O’Malley’s Malady’ (1st – 11th September) dealt with the airborne oaf’s brief bout of amnesia, even as Mom & Pop, believing their boy to be acting up, take him to a child psychologist. However, ‘The Doctor’s Analysis’ (12th to 24th September) doesn’t help…

The war’s effect on the Home Front was an integral part of the strip and ‘Pop vs. Mr. O’Malley’ (25th September – 6th October) and ‘The Test Blackout’ (7th – 16th October) see Mr. Baxter become chief Civil Defense Coordinator despite – not because of – the winged interloper, but not without suffering the usual personal humiliation. There is plenty to go around and, when ‘The Invisible McSnoyd’ (17th – 31st October) turns up, O’Malley gets it all.

The Brooklyn Leprechaun, although unseen, is O’Malley’s personal gadfly: continually barracking, and offering harsh, ribald counterpoints and home truths to the Godfather’s self-laudatory pronouncements. In ‘The Pot of Gold’ (2nd – 20th November) perpetually taunting and tempting JJ to provide a treasure trove of laughs.

When Barnaby wins a scrap metal finding competition and is feted on radio, O’Malley co-opts ‘The Big Broadcast’ (21st – 28th November) and brings chaos to the airwaves, but once again Mr. Baxter won’t believe his senses. Pop’s situation only worsens after ‘The New Neighbors’ (30th November – 16th December) move in and little Jane Shultz also starts candidly reporting Mr. O’Malley’s deeds and misadventures…

Barnaby’s faith is only near-shaken when the Fairy Fool’s constant prevarications and procrastination mean Dad Baxter’s Christmas present arrives late. The Godfather did accidentally destroy an animal shelter in the process, so ‘Pop is Given a Dog’ (17th – 30th December) which brings a happy resolution of sorts. A perfect indication of the wry humour that peppered the feature is seen in ‘The Dog Can Talk’ – which ran from 31st December 1942 to 17th January 1943. New pooch Gorgon can indeed converse – but never when parents are around, and only then with such overwhelming dullness that everybody listening wishes him as mute as all other mutts…

Playing in an old abandoned house (don’t you miss those days when kids could wander off for hours, unsupervised by eagle-eyed, anxious parents; or were even able to walk further than the length of a garden?) serves to introduce Barnaby & Jane to ‘Gus, the Ghost’ (18th January – February 4th) which in turn involves the entire ensemble with ration-busting thieves after they uncover ‘The Hot Coffee Ring’ (5th – 27th February). Barnaby is again hailed a public hero and credit to his neighbourhood, even as poor Pop Baxter stands back and stares, nonplussed and incredulous…

As Johnson continually expanded his gently bizarre cast of Gremlins, Ogres, Policemen, Spies, Ghosts, Black Marketeers, Talking Dogs and even Little Girls (all of whom can see O’Malley), the unyieldingly faithful little lad’s parents were always too busy and too certain that the Fairy Godfather and all his ilk are unhealthy, unwanted, juvenile fabrications.

With such a simple yet flexible formula Johnson made pure cartoon magic. ‘The Ghostwriter Moves In’ (1st – 11th March) finds Gus reluctantly relocating to the Baxter abode, where he’s even less happy to be cajoled into typing out O’Malley’s odious memoirs and organising ‘The Testimonial Dinner’ (12th March – 2nd April) for the swell-headed sprite at the Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder & Marching Society clubhouse and pool hall…

With the nation urged to plant food crops, ‘Barnaby’s Garden’ (3rd – 16th April) debuts as a another fine example of the things O’Malley is (not) expert in, whilst ‘O’Malley and the Lion’ (17th April – 17th May) finds the innocent waif offering sanctuary to a hirsute circus star even as his conniving, cheroot-chewing cherub contemplates his own “return” to showbiz, after which ‘Atlas, the Giant’ (18th May – 3rd June) wanders into the serial. At only 2-feet-tall, the pint-sized colossus is not that impressive… until he gets out his slide rule to demonstrate that he is, in fact, a mental giant…

‘Gorgon’s Father’ (4th June – 10th July) turns up to cause contretemps and consternation before disappearing again, before Barnaby & Jane are packed off to ‘Mrs. Krump’s Kiddie Kamp’ (12th July – 13th September) for vacation rest and the company of “normal” children. Sadly, despite the wise matron and her assistant never glimpsing O’Malley and Gus, all the other tykes and inmates are more than happy to associate with them…

Once the kids arrive back in Queens – Johnson had set the series in the streets where he’d grown up – the Fairy Fathead shows off his “mechanical aptitude” on a parked car with its engine wastefully running… and breaks the idling getaway car just in time to foil a robbery…

Implausibly overnight he becomes an unseen and reclusive ‘Man of the Hour’ (14th – 18th September) before preposterously translating his new cachet into a political career by accidentally becoming patsy for a corrupt political machine in ‘O’Malley for Congress!’ (20th September – 8th October). This strand gave staunchly socialist cynic Johnson ample opportunity to ferociously lampoon the electoral system, pundits and even the public. Without spending money, campaigning – or even being seen – the pompous pixie wins ‘The Election’ (9th October – 12th November) and actually becomes ‘Congressman O’Malley’ (13th – 23rd November), with Barnaby’s parents perpetually assuring their boy that this guy was not “his” Fairy Godfather”…

The outrageous satire only intensified once ‘The O’Malley Committee’ (24th November – 27th December 1943) began its work – by investigating Santa Claus – despite the newest, shortest Congressman in the House never actually turning up to do a day’s work. Of course that can’t happen these days…

Raucous, riotous sublimely surreal and adorably absurd, the untrammelled, razor-sharp whimsy of the strip is instantly captivating, and the laconic charm of the writing well-nigh irresistible, but the lasting legacy of this groundbreaking feature is the clean, sparse line-work that reduces images to almost technical drawings: unwavering line-weights and solid swathes of black that define space and depth by practically eliminating it, without ever obscuring the fluid warmth and humanity of the characters. Almost every modern strip cartoon follows the principles laid down here by a man who purportedly disliked the medium…

The major difference between then and now should also be noted, however. Johnson despised doing shoddy work, or short-changing his audience. On average each of his daily, always self-contained encounters built on the previous episode without needing to re-reference it, and offered three to four times as much text as its contemporaries. It’s a sign of the author’s ability that the extra wordage is never unnecessary, and often uniquely readable, blending storybook clarity, the snappy pace of Screwball comedy films and the contemporary rhythms and idiom of authors like Damon Runyan.

Johnson managed this miracle by typesetting narration and dialogue and pasting up the strips himself – primarily in Futura Medium Italic, but with effective forays into other fonts for dramatic and comedic effect. No sticky-beaked educational vigilante could claim Barnaby harmed children’s reading abilities by confusing the tykes with non-standard letter-forms (a charge levelled at comics as late as the turn of this century), and the device also allowed him to maintain an easy, elegant, effective balance of black & white which makes the deliciously diagrammatic art light, airy and implausibly fresh and accessible.

During 1946-1947, Johnson surrendered the strip to friends as he pursued a career illustrating children’s book such as Constance J. Foster’s This Rich World: The Story of Money, but eventually he returned, crafting more magic until he retired Barnaby in 1952 to concentrate on books. When Ruth graduated she became a successful children’s writer and they collaborated on four tomes – The Carrot Seed (1945), How to Make an Earthquake, Is This You? and The Happy Egg – but these days Crockett Johnson is best known for his seven Harold books, which began in 1955 with the captivating Harold and the Purple Crayon.

During a global war with heroes and villains aplenty, where no comic page could top the daily headlines for thrills, drama and heartbreak, Barnaby was an absolute panacea to the horrors without ever ignoring or escaping them.

For far too long, Barnaby was a lost masterpiece. It is influential, groundbreaking and a shining classic of the form. It is also warm, comforting and outrageously hilarious. You are diminished for not knowing it, and should move mountains to change that situation.

I’m not kidding.

Liberally illustrated throughout with sketches, roughs, photos and advertising materials as well as Credits, Thank You and a brief biography of Johnson, this big book of joy will be a welcome addition to 21st century bookshelves – especially yours.
Barnaby and all its images © 2013 the Estate of Ruth Kraus. Supplemental material © 2013 its respective creators and owners.

Today in 1940 science fiction author and Buck Rogers scripter Philip Francis Nowlan died as did fellow pulp star and DC comics writer Edmond Hamilton in 1977. Birthdays include Editor/writer Dian Schutz (1955), Love and Rockets superstar Gilbert Hernandez (1957) and superhero artist Ron Frenz (1960).

In 2003 Ryan North launched his Dinosaur Comics webcomic dodging so much tribulation print stuff endures. For example legendary French magazine Charlie Mensuel launched today in 1969, closed today in 1986 and merged with Pilote to form Pilote et Charlie which ran for only 27 issues before dying in 1988 – but in July.

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Iznogoud volume 1: The Wicked Wiles of Iznogoud


By René Goscinny & Jean Tabary, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-46-5 (Album TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

It’s anniversary time again! Today in 1962 something smart and wildly wicked first appeared, and just hung around. Please read on…

For the greater part of his too-short lifetime (1926-1977) René Goscinny was one of (if not The) most prolific, most-read writers of comic strips the world had ever seen. He still is.

Among his most popular comic collaborations are Lucky Luke, Le Petit Nicolas and, of course, Asterix the Gaul, but there were so many others, such as the dazzling, dark deeds of a dastardly usurper whose dreams of diabolical skulduggery perpetually proved to be ultimately no more than castles in the sand…

Scant years after the Suez crisis, the French returned to those hotly-contested deserts when Goscinny teamed with sublimely gifted Swedish émigré Jean Tabary (1930-2011). He numbered Richard et Charlie, Grabadu et Gabaliouchtou, Totoche, Corinne et Jeannot and Valentin le Vagabond amongst his other hit strips but found a moment to detail the innocuous history of imbecilic Arabian (im)potentate Haroun el-Poussah. However, it was the strip’s villainous foil, power-hungry vizier Iznogoud who stole the show – possibly the conniving little imp’s only successful coup…

The notion of the series apparently came from a throwaway moment in Les Vacances du Petit Nicolas, but – once it was fully formed and independent – Les Aventures du Calife Haroun el Poussah was created to join the roster in Record, with the first episode appearing in the January 15th 1962 issue. An assured if relatively minor hit, the strip jumped ship to Pilote – a picture-packed periodical created and edited by Goscinny – where it was artfully refashioned into a starring vehicle for the devious little ratbag who had increasingly been hogging all the laughs and limelight.

Like all great storytelling, Iznogoud works on multiple levels: for youngsters it’s a comedic romp with adorably wicked baddies invariably hoisted on their own petards and coming a-cropper, whilst older, wiser heads revel in pun-filled, witty satires and astoundingly wry yet accessible episodic comic capers. Just like our Parliament today. That latter aspect is investigated in this collection of short episodes…

This same magic formula (no, I’m being figurative, not literal) made its more famous cousin Asterix a monolithic global success and – just like the saga of the indomitable Gaul – our irresistibly addictive Arabian Nit was originally adapted into English by master translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge, who made those Franco-Roman Follies so very palatable to British tastes. Always, deliciously malicious whimsy is heavily dosed with manic absurdity, cleverly contemporary cultural critiques and brilliantly delivered creative anachronisms which serve to keep the assorted escapades bizarrely fresh and hilariously inventive. However, like so many comics inventions, the series grew beyond its boundaries…

The retooled series launched in Pilote in 1968, quickly growing into a massive European hit, with 31 albums to date (carried on by Tabary’s children Stéphane, Muriel & Nicolas after his passing in 2011); his own solo comic; a computer game; animated film, TV cartoon show and a live-action movie.

When Goscinny died in 1977, Tabary started scripting his own sublimely stylish tales (from the 13th album onwards), gradually switching to book-length complete adventures, rather than the compilations of short, punchy vignettes which typified the collaborations.

In October 1974, whilst the shifty shenanigans were unfolding to the delight of kids, its sand-struck star began moonlighting. Pulling double duty as a commentator and critic of real-world politics and social issues in French newspapers the little wart scored a side hustle with a sidebar series that began as a statement and grew into a separate second career for the vindictive viper. Some oiks, like sand, just get everywhere…

So, what’s it all about?

Iznogoud is Grand Vizier to Haroun Al Plassid, Caliph of Ancient Baghdad, but the conniving little shyster has loftier ambitions – or as he is always shouting it – “I want to be Caliph instead of the Caliph!”…

The vile vizier is “aided” – and that’s me being uncharacteristically generous – in his endeavours and schemes by bumbling assistant Wa’at Alahf, and in this first album they begin their campaign with ‘Kissmet’, wherein pandemonium ensues after a talking frog is revealed as an ensorcelled Prince who can only regain human form if smooched by a human being.

Iznogoud sees an opportunity if he can only trick the simple-minded Caliph into puckering up; unfortunately but typically, the little rotter forgets that he’s not the only ambitious upstart in Baghdad…

‘Mesmer-Eyezed’ finds him employing a surly stage hypnotist to remove the Caliph whilst ‘The Occidental Philtre’ sees him employ a flying potion obtained from a lost, jet-lagged western sorcerer, each with hilarious but painfully counter-productive results.

Tabary drew himself into ‘The Time Machine’ wherein a comic artist desperate to meet his deadlines falls foul of a mystical time cabinet. However, when he meets the vizier, that diminutive dastard can clearly see its Caliph-removing potential… to his eternal regret…

Soon after in ‘The Picnic’ Iznogoud takes drastic action, luring Haroun Al Plassid into the desert, but as usual his best-laid plans really aren’t, before we conclude with ‘Chop and Change’ as our indefatigable villain obtains a magic goblet that can switch the minds of any who drink from it, forgetting that Caliphs are important people who employ food-tasters…

Snappy, fast-paced slapstick and painfully delightful word-play abound in these mirthfully infectious tales and the series is a household name in France; said term has even entered French political life as a description for a certain type of politician: over-ambitious, unscrupulous – and usually short in stature…

Eight albums were originally translated into English during the 1970s and 1980s without really making any little impact here, but once Cinebook’s revival the vile Vizier finally caught on in a superb sequence of gloriously readable and wonderfully affordable comedy epics that found an appreciative audience among British kids of all ages. That said, it’s been a while since the last one, but perhaps that’s the setting not the stories…
© 1967 Dargaud Editeur Paris by Goscinny & Tabary. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1905, the last episode of Gustave Verbeek’s The Upside Downs ran in the New York Herald and in 1924 writer Stan Kay (Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Sad Sack, Fraggle Rock, The Muppets) was born. Practically yesterday, writer Scott Snyder (American Vampire. Batman. Justice Leafue) was born in 1976 whilst ten years later we lost Alfred Bestall of Rupert Bear fame.

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Jonah Hex: Welcome to Paradise


By John Albano, Michael Fleischer, Tony DeZuñiga, Doug Wildey, Noly Panaligan, George Moliterni, José Luis García-López & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2757-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Western stories are shaped by an odd duality. The genre can almost be sub-divided into two discrete halves: the sparkly, shiny version that dominated kids’ books, comics and television for decades, as typified by Zane Grey stories and heroes such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry… and the other stuff. That kind of cowboy tale – grimy, gritty, excessively dark – was done best for years by Europeans in such strips as Jean-Michel Charlier’s Lieutenant Blueberry or Bonelli & Galleppini’s Tex Willer which gradually made their way into US culture through the films of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. Jonah Hex is the USA’s greatest example of the latter sort…

DC (or National Periodicals as it then was) had generated a stable of clean-cut gunslingers since the collapse of the super-hero genre in 1949, with such dashing – and highly readable – luminaries as Johnny Thunder, The Trigger Twins, Nighthawk, Matt Savage and dozens of others in a marketplace that seemed insatiable in its voracious hunger for chaps in chaps. However, all things end, and by the early sixties, sagebrush stalwarts had dwindled to a few venerable properties. As the 1960s closed, thematic changes in the cinematic Cowboy filtered through to a comics industry suffering its second superhero sundown in twenty years. Although a critical success, the light-hearted Western series Bat Lash couldn’t garner a solid following, but DC, urgently pursuing a genre readers would warm to, retrenched and revived an old title, gambling once again on heroes who were no longer simply boy scouts with sixguns.

All-Star Western #1 was released with an August/September 1970 cover date, packed with Pow-Wow Smith reprints. It became an all-new anthology with the second bi-monthly issue. The magazine was allocated a large number of creative all-stars, including Robert Kanigher, Neal Adams, Gray Morrow, Al Williamson, Gil Kane, Angelo Torres and Dick Giordano, all working on such strips as Outlaw!, Billy the Kid and cult sleeper hit El Diablo, combining shoot-’em-up shenanigans with supernatural chills, in deference to the real hit genre that saved comics in those dark days: horror comics.

It wasn’t until the tenth issue and introduction of a grotesquely disfigured, irascible bounty hunter created by writer John Albano & Tony DeZuñiga that the company found its greatest and most enduring Western warrior.

This superb collection of the garish gunman’s early appearances has been around for a few years, with no apparent sign of a sequel yet, so consider this another heartfelt attempt to generate a few sales and more interest – especially as the company has recently released a collection of those aforementioned 70s western treats in its DC Finest range…

Our star is the very model of the modern anti-hero. Jonah Hex first appeared in All-Star Comics #10, a coarse and callous bounty hunter clad in shabbily battered Confederate Grey tunic and hat, half his face lost to some hideous past injury; a brutal thug little better than the scum he hunted – and certainly a man to avoid…

Collecting key stories from All-Star Western #10, Weird Western Tales #14, 17, 22, 26, 29, 30 and Jonah Hex #2 & 4 (ranging from March 1972 to September 1977), the grisly gunplay begins with Albano & DeZuñiga’s ‘Welcome to Paradise’ which introduced the character and his world in a powerful action thriller, with a subtle sting of sentimentality that anyone who has seen the classic western Shane cannot fail to appreciate.

From the first bullets blazing, blistering set-up Albano was constantly hinting at the tortured depths hidden behind Hex’s hellishly scarred visage and deadly proficiency. With the next issue the comic had been re-titled Weird Western Tales (aligning it with the company’s highly successful horror/mystery books) and adventures continually plumbed the depths of human malice and depravity…

Even at the very start the series sought to redress some of the most unpalatable motifs of old style cowboy literature and any fan of films like Soldier Blue or Little Big Man or familiar with Dee Brown’s iconoclastic book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee will feel a grim sense of vicarious satisfaction and redress at most of the stories here. There’s also a huge degree of world-weary cynicism that wasn’t to be found in other comics until well past the Watergate Scandal, when America as nation lost its social and political innocence…

From Weird Western #14, ‘Killers Die Alone!’ (Albano & DeZuñiga) is a vicious tear jerker of a tale where Hex’s only friend valiantly dies to save him from the vengeance of killers who blame the bounty hunter for their brother’s death. Then comes a reckoning that is the stuff of nightmares. ‘The Hangin’ Woman’ (WWT #17) is a classy, gripping thriller wherein Hex runs afoul of a sadistic harridan ruling her hometown with hemp and hot lead before meeting an ending both ironic and much-deserved…

It was left to incoming writer Michael Fleisher (assisted at first by Russell Carley) to reveal Hex’s secrets, beginning with Weird Western Tales #22’s ‘Showdown at Hard Times’. A chance meeting in a stagecoach put a cabal of ex-Confederate soldiers on the trail of their ex-comrade for some unspecified earlier betrayal and it inevitably ended in a sixgun bloodbath, whilst creating an ominous returning nemesis for the grizzled gunslinger.

Train-robbers were the bad guys in the superb traditionally-informed caper ‘Face-Off with the Gallagher Boys!’ – scripted by Fleischer and illustrated by the inimitable Doug Wildey – after which further details of Jonah’s chequered past are revealed in #29’s ‘Breakout at Fort Charlotte’, limned by Noly Panaligan. It was the first chapter of a 2-part extravaganza that gorily concluded in #30 with ‘The Trial’ (illustrated by George Moliterni) as a battalion of Confederate veterans and former comrades-in-arms pass judgement on the man they believed to be the worst traitor in the history of the South…

Inevitably, Hex graduated from Weird Western Tales into his own solo title and the final brace of tales in this primal primer are both drawn by the magnificent José Luis García-López. In ‘The Lair of the Parrot!’, Fleischer has the doom-drenched demon-faced desperado sucked into a scheme designed by US Secret Service agent Ned Landon to infiltrate the gang of flamboyant Mexican bandit and border raider El Papagayo. Hex is none too happy when he finally realises Landon is playing both sides for personal gain, leaving the bounty hunter to the brigand’s tender mercies after framing him for murder in Texas…

The tale continues and concludes in ‘The Day of the Chameleon!’ as a disguise artist steals Hex’s identity to perpetrate even more brazen crimes at the behest of a rich and powerful man determined to destroy the bounty hunter at all costs…

Happily, Jonah has unsuspected allies determined to save him from the villain and his own prideful, stubborn nature…

With a cover gallery by DeZuñiga, Luis Dominguez and García-López, this outrageous assemblage of uncanny exploits proves Jonah Hex is the most unique character in cowboy comics: darkly comedic, riotously rowdy, chilling and cathartically satisfying. His saga is a Western for those who despise the form whilst being the perfect modern interpretation of a great storytelling tradition. No matter what your reading preference, this is a collection you don’t want to miss.
© 1972-1975, 1977, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1886 Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff “ghost” Arthur “Bugs” Baer was born, as was Blondie’s originator Chic Young in 1901. In 1908 picture story pioneer Wilhelm Busch, creator of Max and Moritz died. In 1915 the inimitable Dick Breifer was born – and you should go look at Frankenstein: The Mad Science of Dick Briefer – for what you need to know there. Writer-Artist for The Heap, GI Joe and other Golden Age standards, Ernie Schroeder was born in 1916 and in 1938 Raggedy Ann & Raggedy Andy and Mr Twee Deedle creator Johnny Gruelle died.

In 1953, Hugo Pratt & Héctor Germán Oesterheld’s Sergeant Kirk debuted in Argentinian weekly comic Misterix #225.

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Doctor Who: The Cruel Sea (Doctor Who Graphic Novel # 18)


By Gareth Roberts, Clayton Hickman, Mike Collins, Robert Shearman, Scott Gray, Steven Moffat, John Ross, David A. Roach, Kris Justice, Dylan Teague, James Offredi, Roger Langridge, Martin Geraghty & various (Panini Comics UK LTD)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-593-2 (Album PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless, Timebending Thrill Treats… 8/10

Doctor Who premiered on television with the first episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’ on November 23rd 1963. Within a year, his decades-long run in TV Comic began with issue #674 and the opening instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’.

On 11th October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says 17th) Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. It regenerated into a monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) and has been with us under various names ever since.

All of which only goes to prove that the Time Lord is a comic hero with an impressive pedigree…

While Panini UK collaborated with Marvel they spent a lot of effort – and time! – collecting every strip from the archives into a uniform series of oversized graphic albums, each concentrating on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer. This one gathers stories from Doctor Who Magazine (AKA DWM) #355-364 plus material from The Doctor Who Annual 2006 (as originally published between April 2005 and January 2006): all featuring the contemporary official off-screen escapades of the recently revived Time Lord as explosively played by Christopher Eccleston. Comparatively it’s rather short and the large section of bonus features will tell you why…

For the longest time this was actually the only collection of strips featuring “the Ninth Doctor” and whether that statement made any sense to you largely depends on whether you are an old fan, a new convert or a complete beginner. Back then though, this incarnation of the Galloping Gallifreyan was big news as the TV series had been left to moulder since 1989, except for a US backed one-shot pilot with Paul MgGann. His jaunt subsequently fuelled years of comics capers but when a whole new series debuted on March 26th 2005 all bets were off…

More on that astounding busy-time and how it fared after Eccleston just as abruptly quit the role is covered in detail at the back in a copious Commentary section…

We’re here for the comics though, and they start with TV scripters uniting with comics pros for serialised nostalgia in ‘The Love Invasion’ (DWM #355-357) by Gareth Roberts & Clayton Hickman, limned by Mike Collins & David A. Roach, with colours from Dylan Teague & James Offredi, and steadfast Roger Langridge filling boxes and balloons.

Here the Doctor drops new companion Rose Tyler back in swinging 1966 London for a spot of shopping only to uncover alien time meddling by a Kustollian trying to forestall Earth’s future interstellar might. It’s plan involves employing amped up dolly birds dubbed “Lend-a-Hand girls” to satisfy any desire mankind expresses with the intention of destroying the will to strive and overcome.

Of course the chronal comrades are having none of that…

Mike Collins writes and draws DWM #358’s ‘Art Attack’, with Kris Justice inking as Teague & Langridge do their usual thing for a riotous romp at following Rose’s expressed desire to see the Mona Lisa. Instead of the Paris Louvre now, the Doctor decides on the 37th century Oriel. Who wouldn’t prefer a trans-dimensional gallery containing every single art work to have survived World War V?

Sadly though, Artist-in-Residence Cazkelf the Transcendent has a masterpiece of betrayal and doom to compete and things get a bit deadly. Of course, the Doctor can be both creative and forgiving…

Screenwriter Robert Shearman joins Collins, Roach, Offredi & Langridge for eponymous epic ‘The Cruel Sea’ (DWM #359-362) wherein a 22nd century ocean cruise on the sands of Mars turns very nasty, very quickly. Although it’s a wedding party pleasure voyage for the ultra-rich, Tyler and her time tutor steam in stop the bride, an army of ex-wives and other swells being assimilated by a goopy crimson killer abiding in the gritty depths whilst getting to grips with the monster’s side of the story….

Sadly, this is tale of bad stuff, greedy stuff, stupid stuff but no good or redeeming stuff…

A winning component of The Doctor Who Annual 2006, Scott Gray, John Ross, Offredi & Langridge’s ‘Mr. Nobody’ reveals what happens when the distant reincarnation of galactic terror Shogalath is renditioned and tried for his crimes against the Vandos Imperium. Thankfully, as a (self-appointed) “Legal Representative of the Hyper-Temporal Magistrate Authority” the Doctor is glad to butt in and defend janitor Phil Tyson, but amidst all the shooting that ensues it soon seems not everyone is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but…

It can’t be British time travel without a dash of Shakespeare, so closing comic conundrum ‘A Groatsworth of Wit’ – by Gareth Roberts, Collins, Roach, Offredi & Langridge from DWM #363-364 – exposes infernal forces bolstering and supporting the Bard’s spite-riven rival Robert Greene and how the subtle sponsorship of malign extra-dimensional “Shadeys” Bloodfinger and Woodscrape affects London four centuries later. The apparent cause is Greene arriving to see who was more famous in modern times and unleashing hell when the answer does not suit him…

Cue the Doctor and Rose drawn to an escalating conflagration as Greene’s tantrum shatters barriers and allows a brace of malign monsters access to everything humans, Of course the Gallivanting Gallifreyan has a few special effects and plot twists up his leather jacket sleeve, so all’s well that ends well for most players involved, but only after a most expedient trip to the olde Globe Theatre and crucial chinwag with the upstart crow himself…

Closing the entertainment portion of the tome is a winning illustrated prose yarn by future showrunner Steven Moffat, captivatingly augmented with pictures from Martin Geraghty. ‘What I Did on My Summer Holidays By Sally Sparrow’ also originated in The Doctor Who Annual 2006 and describes how a vacationing 12-year-old schoolgirl diligently extracts the Time Lord from a most precarious trap, all thanks to a box of old photographs and rampant nostalgia…

Moving on to education and elucidation the prodigious Commentary section begins with editor Clayton Hickman detailing how Eccleston & Billie Piper made a complicated leap to the printed page in ‘Fantastic Journey – Inside the Ninth Doctor Comic Strips’, augmented by development art by Mike Collins. That’s followed by specific story notes by the individual scripters and illustrators for ‘The Love Invasion’, ‘Art Attack’, ‘The Cruel Sea’, ‘Mr Nobody’, ‘A Groatsworth of Wit’ and ‘What I Did on My Summer Holidays by Sally Sparrow’: all supplemented by roughs, sketches, designs and page layout from Collins and Ross.

This rocket-paced rollercoaster ride introduces and – signs off – the Ninth Doctor in splendid style, and dedicated fans can find wealth of new stories in later publishers’ outputs. None of which is relevant if all you want is a darn good read. Every creator involved here managed the ultimate “Ask” of any strip creator: to deliver engaging, thrilling, fun yarns equally enjoyable for the merest beginner and most slavishly addicted fan.

We all have our little joys and hidden passions. Sometimes they overlap and magic is made. These are superb tales of an undeniable bulwark of British Fantasy and if you’re a fan of only one medium of expression, they might make you an addict to others. The Cruel Sea is a fabulous book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for show devotees and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our art-form to anyone minded to give comics another go.

If only someone would get around to getting these tales digitised…
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv. Doctor Who logo © BBC 2013. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. © Published 2014 by Panini Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.

Today in 1933, London born US cartoonist Ashleigh (Pot-Shots) Brilliant & Argentine comic book wizard José Delbo (Mighty Samson, Wonder Woman, Transformers, Superman, Batman) were born. No relation we assume. In 1959 this date, pioneering strip cartoonist Gene Carr died as did Green Lantern originator Martin Nodell in 2006.

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Man-Thing Marvel Masterworks volume 1


By Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Val Mayerik, Gray Morrow, Rich Buckler, John Buscema, Neal Adams, Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, Jim Mooney, Frank Bolle, Chic Stone, Frank McLaughlin, Sal Trapani, Joe Sinnott, Frank Brunner, Mike Ploog & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5547-2 (HB/digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also includes some Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and literary effect.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless, Remorseless, Evergreen Scary Stuff to Make You Think… 9/10

At the end of the 1960s American comic books were in turmoil, much like the youth of the nation they targeted. Superheroes had dominated for much of the decade; peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Older genres such as horror, westerns and science fiction returned, fed by radical trends in movie-making, where the kids who had grown up with Marvel now fulfilled the bulk of their young adult entertainment needs.

Inspiration isn’t everything. In fact as Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in the wake of the losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties. The only real exception to this was the hasty hyper-generation of multiple horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in super-hero sales – a move vastly expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

The switch to supernatural stars had many benefits. Crucially it brought a new readership to Marvel comics, one attuned to the global revival in spiritualism, Satanism and all things sinisterly spooky. Almost as important, it gave the reprint-crazy company an opportunity to finally recycle old 1950s horror stories that had been rendered unprintable and useless since the Code’s inception in 1954.

A scant 15 years later the Comics Code prohibition against horror was hastily rewritten – amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics – and scary comics came back in a big way with a new crop of supernatural heroes and monsters popping up on the newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving mystery men titles. In fact lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an en masse creation of horror titles (both new characters and reprints from the massive boom of the early 1950s) that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to (temporarily, at least) bite the dust.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (and narcotics – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare on four-colour pages and whilst a parade of pre-code reprints made sound business sense, the creative aspect of the contemporary buzz for bizarre themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public. As always in entertainment, the watch-world was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible.

The first fan-sensation of the modern era, (now officially enshrined as the Bronze Age of US comic books) Swamp Thing had powerful popular fiction antecedents and in 1972 it was seemingly a concept whose time had come again. Prime evidence was the fact that Marvel were also working on a man-into-mucky, muddy mess character at the very same time. Both Swampy and the Macabre Man-Thing were thematic revisions of Theodore Sturgeon’s classic novella It, and bore notable resemblances to a hugely popular Hillman Comics star dubbed The Heap.

He/it sloshed through the back of Airboy Comics (née Air Fighters Comics) from 1943 until the end of the Golden Age, and my fanboy radar suspects Roy Thomas’ marsh-monster The Glob (Incredible Hulk #121-November 1969 & #129-June 1970) either inspired both DC and Marvel’s creative teams, or was part of that same zeitgeist. It must also be remembered that in the autumn of 1971 Skywald – a very minor player with big aspirations – released a monochrome magazine in their Warren knock-off line entitled The Heap.

For whatever reason, by the end of the 1960s superhero comics were in another steep sales decline, again succumbing to a genre boom led by a horror/mystery resurgence. A swift rewriting of the Comics Code Authority augmented the changeover and at National/DC, veteran EC comics star Joe Orlando became editor of House of Mystery and sister title House of Secrets. These were short story anthologies embracing gothic mystery scenarios, taking their lead from TV triumphs like Twilight Zone and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, but a horror themed lead meant a focus on character not plot, tragedy and empathy over twist endings and most precious of all, continuity…

No one was expecting satire and social commentary but that came along for the ride too!

Remarkably soon after the Comics Code prohibition against horror being amended, scary comics returned in force and a fresh crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began appearing on newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving Fights ‘n’ Tights titles.

In fact, the lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an avalanche of horror titles in response to the industry-wide downturn in superhero sales, that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to – albeit temporarily – bite the dust.

When proto-horror Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover-dated October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of shocking superstars. They began with a traditional werewolf and a vampire before chancing something new: a haunted biker who tapped into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the prevailing supernatural zeitgeist: the all-new Ghost Rider (in Marvel Spotlight #5, August 1972). He had been preceded by western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the aforementioned Werewolf by Night in #2-4. From these beginnings spooky floodgates opened to such an extent there was even room for non-white stars like The Living Mummy and ultimately today’s star turn…

This quirky compendium collects the earliest exploits of Marvel’s muck monster, and not at all coincidentally traces the rise of a unique comics voice. Steve Gerber was a sublimely gifted writer with a ferocious social conscience who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with dark irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed cultural criticism, a barely reigned-in imagination and boundless bizarre surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties as thinly veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity. Via material from Savage Tales #1, Astonishing Tales, #12-13, Adventure into Fear #10-19, The Man-Thing #1 & Marvel Two-In-One #1 (communally spanning May 1971 to January 1974) we’ll see how Marvel increasing became the voice of a lost and dissatisfied liberality…

The revolution begins after an erudite Introduction by authorial everyman Steve Orlando (Scarlet Witch, Wonder Woman, Ben 10, Heavy Metal Magazine), before we trudge back to very different times and the beginning of a new kind of comics experience and Marvel’s continued experiments with the monochrome, mature reader marketplace…

Ranged amidst the grittier-than-usual adult-oriented material (that meant partial nudity and more explicit violence back then) Savage Tales #1 (cover-dated May 1971) was a mixed bag of sword & sorcery, sci fi, crime and horror stories featuring Conan, Ka-Zar and more. That line-up included a powerfully enthralling horror yarn entitled ‘Man Thing!’ Scripted by Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas, it offered a fairly traditional spooky story elevated to sublime heights by Gray Morrow’s artwork. It related how government biochemist Ted Sallis was hiding out in the swamps whilst finishing a new/recreated iteration of the much-prized Super-soldier formula that had created Captain America…

Sadly, his live-in lover Ellen is an agent for the opposition and when she and her minions made a play for the formula, Ted is wounded and flees into the murky mire. To preserve the only sample of his life’s work, the desperate, possibly dying boffin injects himself with it… and the bog mingles with the mix to spawn something tragic and uncanny…

Barely conscious or sentient, a shambling muck-monster emerges, apparently set on justice or vengeance…

Savage Tales was not a success and who knows how many manic Marvelites actually saw the anthology, but creators are stubborn brutes who can’t let things lie, so some months later the muck monster shambled back via a tenuous mainstream comic book connection…

Cover-dated June 1972, Astonishing Tales #12 sees the Savage Land’s self-appointed Sovereign Ka-Zar – and morphologically unsubstantiated primaeval saber-cat Zabu – abruptly relocating to Florida in pursuit of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Barbra “Bobbi” Morse only to find that ‘Terror Stalks the Everglades!’ Here Thomas, John Buscema & Dan Adkins deftly recast the Jungle King as a freelance “consultant” for the superspy network, assisting aging biologist Dr. Wilma Calvin – who just happens to be Morse’s mentor – in tracking down a missing scientist named Ted Sallis.

What Ka-Zar doesn’t know is that the project all of them are working on is the recreation of the super-soldier serum that created Captain America and what nobody (technically) alive knows is that Sallis succeeded before he vanished. However, when Advanced Idea Mechanic agents tried to steal it. Sallis had injected himself and the chemicals reacted with the swamp’s magical energies to create a mindless shambling monster.

Readers are clued in thanks to a lovely unused interlude intended for Savage Tales #2, with Wein & Neal Adams providing a chilling recap sequence detailing the macabre Man-Thing’s previous relationship with Calvin, before back in the now, AIM attacks, trapping Ka-Zar with the bog-beast…

In AT #13 (Thomas, J. Buscema, Rich Buckler & Adkins), the mystery grows as the Jungle Lord escapes the ‘Man-Thing!’ to focus on the real monsters, subsequently routing out a traitor and defeating AIM… for now. With the attention-grabbing overlap with mainstream Marvel done for the moment the path was clear if muddy for a new horror hero to forge ahead, but what was needed was the right tone of voice…

Steve Gerber was a uniquely gifted writer who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with dark irrepressible wit, incisive introspection, barbed socio-cultural criticism, a barely reigned-in imagination and boundless bizarre surrealism. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction, especially when he couched his sardonic sorties as thinly veiled attacks on burgeoning cultural homogenisation and commercial barbarity. With Man-Thing he held up a peculiarly scummy mirror to many cordoned-off and taboo subjects and made history – and enemies – over and over again. However before him, Conway & Morrow returned, aided by Howard Chaykin as the bog beast won its own series, beginning in (Adventure into) Fear #10. Cover-dated October 1972, ‘Man Thing!’ (Say it again! Again!) saw the monster defy all odds to return an abandoned baby to a daddy who just did not want him… and would not take no for an answer…

After that conceptual interlude Gerber, Buckler & Jim Mooney opened an extended mystic parable in Fear #11 on the ‘Night of the Nether-Spawn!’ Gerber’s take was that the beast was empathic and all-but-mindless, reacting and responding to those in its vicinity, but having practically no personal volition. Here that relationship draws in teenagers Jennifer Kale and her little brother Andy who are about to get into all sorts of trouble because they stole something from their grandpa. Sadly, when you play with a magical tome belonging to an ancient cult, handed down over eons to the latest in a long line of guardian wizards, sinister stuff is likely to happen…

The upshot is that a demonic force comes looking for little Miss Kale and its evil emanations make it a painful intrusion the maddened muck monster cannot abide. With diabolical Thog the Nether-Spawn thus preoccupied battling the bonkers bog-brute all through small-town Citrusville, Andy & Jennifer are free to try to fix what they broke. All appearances and happy endings to the contrary, it’s too little, too late…

The nation’s racial tensions boiled over into Fear #12 as Gerber, Jim Starlin & Buckler discovered ‘No Choice of Colors!’ after the moss-heap slurped into a far-too-personal vendetta linking racist white sheriff Wallace Corlee and fugitive black murder suspect Mark Jackson. After initially and instinctively saving the wounded runner, Man-Thing is helpless against the literally paralysing hatred of both men: one condemned for loving the wrong shade of woman and the just other happy to have a legal reason to kill another “coloured man”…

Only after one of the enraged obsessives is no more can the swamp beast freely act against the other…

In #13, Val Mayerik begins his fruitful association with the series as – inked by Frank Bolle – ‘Where Worlds Collide!’ finds Gerber in universe-building mode: introducing Jennifer Kale’s Grandpa Joshua as high priest of a cult that has thrived secretly since Atlantis sank beneath the waves. They have safeguarded the world for eons, handing down the sacred Tome of Zhered-Na, but now Jennifer’s meddling as she innocently answered the call of her heritage has opened a portal to infernal terror that begins by taking Jen’s not-boyfriend Jaxon and opening pathways to devil-infested dimensions. When the Man-Thing follows, he finds a place where Ted Sallis is made manifest again and where Thog offers to make it permanent if the human will betray his world…

Ted’s violent refusal coincides with Joshua and the grandkids showing up and, in the flush of frantic battle and escape to consensus reality, the Kales discover Jennifer’s uncanny link to the mindless (again) monster…

Veteran Chic Stone inks #14’s ‘The Demon Plague!’ as, all over America, hate and insanity blossom. Everywhere, humans attack those nearest, dearest or even largely indifferent to them; and the deluge of violence even affects the wildlife in Florida’s swamps with Man-Thing pitilessly assaulted by everything that walks or hops or crawls or swims…

Joshua Kale soon determines that the not properly sealed dimensional portal is permitting demons to pass and possess mortals, and convenes a cult ceremony to close it from within the swamp – which just happens to be the Nexus of All Realities…

Despite best efforts the ritual goes awry and, curiously spying on them, Jennifer and the bog-beast are abducted from existence by a major mage dubbed Dakimh the Enchanter. Forced into gladiatorial actions to retain the sacred tome that only Jennifer knows no longer exists, everybody underestimates the shambling compost heap with flamethrower hands, and the Earthlings are promptly returned without giving away any more arcane secrets…

With Frank McLaughkin as guest inker this time, Gerber & Mayerik probe ‘From Here to Infinity!’ in Fear #15. With chaos gripping the entire planet, the Man-Thing seemingly killed by invading demons and no sacred tome to consult, Joshua Kale visits ancient Atlantis, seeing how mystic Zhered-Na personally dealt with the last such incursion, learning of an eternal war between divine realms – shining Therea and dark Sominus…

As the current cult leader views how his inspiration met her end, elsewhere Dakimh recruits promising potential sorceress Jennifer, revives the bog-beast and takes them both an a trans-dimensional voyage to save reality and stop the sorcerous shooting war…cat least for now and at the cost of the link to the swamp totem…

Abruptly switching tack and tone, Fear #16 ‘Cry of the Native!’ (inked by Sal Trapani) explores themes of Native American rights, ecological barbarism and callous capitalism run amok, when developer F A Schist attempts to drain the swamp and relocate its Indian occupants to facilitate his new airport complex. Complex issues of new jobs versus already broken treaties and promises lead to sabotage, riots and civil unrest, but what concerns the Kales most is how the disruption might affect the shaky barriers holding back the hungry hordes of Sominus…

This time, however, simply human pride, greed, bigotry and love of violence – all agonising felt by mindless, empathic Man-Thing – is enough to spark riot and butchery, and stall the project. In the aftermath (and with Trapani sticking around as inker) #17’s ‘It Came Out of the Sky!’ offers dark, wry parody as the bog-beast curiously opens a long-submerged space capsule buried in the hidden mire. Within is a super-powered baby sent from a world believed by one scientist/loving father to be on the imminent edge of extinction due to environmental collapse…

The capsule had fed and sustained the godlike being within for 22 years, but when Wundarr emerged to immediately imprint on the Man-Thing, nothing could convince the educationally and emotionally challenged – and fully-grown – waif that the unthinking moss-mass was not his mother. The rejection and indifference proved unbearable and the violent tantrums that resulted almost destroy the airport construction site and Citrusville…

The story notionally carries over into debuting superhero team-up book Marvel Two-In-One #1 (cover-dated January 1974) where, after a desert clash with Thanos, Fantastic Four stalwart Ben Grimm accidentally and improbably ends up in Florida for the premier issue of his own title. Crafted by Gerber, Gil Kane & Joe Sinnott, the ‘Vengeance of the Molecule Man!’ sees The Thing learn some horrifying home truths about what constitutes being a monster when battling with and beside ghastly, grotesque anti-hero Man-Thing after the essence of the reality-warping villain starts possessing bodies in the swamps

Back in Fear #18, Gerber, Mayerik & Trapani resume straight terror tropes and real-world controversy in ‘A Question of Survival!’ as a bus load of ordinary people and a drunk driver catastrophically intersect on a highway through the Everglades. Drawn to the emotional turmoil, the mire monster becomes unwilling witness and unintentional guide as the survivors learn about each other (this at a time when women and minorities were still legally second-class citizens, and pacifists & warhawks violently clashed over Vietnam) whilst trekking back to civilisation and medical treatment. Sadly, one of them really needs to be the only survivor and is not averse to more killing…

The series truly hit its innovative stride with its final appearance in (Adventure into) Fear #19 – cover-dated December 1973 – wherein Thog makes his grand move to conquer all realities and destroy the benign over-gods of Therea. That’s when Jennifer Kale officially becomes ‘The Enchanter’s Apprentice!’ (Gerber, Mayerik & Trapani) and joins another trans-planar trek as the formerly regulated realms of existence begin to collide, clash and combine. First task is to gather the heroes needful to the task and her far-from-united party rapidly expands to include tutor Dakimh, the mindless Man-Thing, a burly barbarian (Korrek, Warrior Prince of Katharta!) and a brusquely cynical talking mallard who calls himself Howard…

Hounded by Thog’s forces, their task is to traverse the twisting paths of existence and save the gods with the chase leading directly into The Man-Thing #1 (January 1974) and a world-shattering ‘Battle for the Palace of the Gods!’ Along the way, Howard is an early casualty, lost in a plunge through cascading universes and the chaos even briefly encompasses baffled heroes Daredevil and Black Widow; and all seems lost when the malign Congress of Realities smashes into seemingly undefended Therea. However, there are forces at play that are beyond even demons and devils, and the mysterious Man-Thing is their unknowing yet willing tool; and ultimately realties are rebalanced and life goes on…

With covers by John Buscema, Buckler, Morrow, Adams, Starlin, Kane, John Romita Snr., Alan Weiss, Frank Brunner, Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, Herb Trimpe & Ernie Chan, the extras in this moody tome of terror and extrospection also include – from November 1970 – Thomas’ original plot for the short story in Savage Tales #1; an original grey-toned art page by Morrow; more by Buscema & Adkins, Buckler, Mooney, Weiss, Brunner, Mayerik & McLaughlin. For your perusal, Gerber’s plot for Fear #16 follows, with lettering notes and Brunner’s cover for #17. More original art includes Romita’s cover for #18 plus interior art by Mayerik & Trapani. The cover art for #19 by Kane & Chan opens another gallery before segueing into house ads, Adams’ cover for Monsters Unleashed #3 and a cover gallery for reprint title Book of the Dead #1-3 (1993-1994) by Tennyson Smith & Morrow, and Ariel Olivetti’s cover to the 2012 Man-Thing Omnibus.

We – me especially – apply the terms milestone, landmark and groundbreaking as guarantors of quality that change the way comics are perceived and even created. It has never been more true or accurate than with these game-changing, socially aware horror yarns. These are stories you must not miss…
© 2024 MARVEL.

Today in 1894 the magnificent Elzie Segar was born. Go read some Popeye or even Thimble Theatre if you can find it.

In 1980 Berke Breathed chose the day to begin his almost-as-magnificent Bloom County strip, as we last saw in Bloom County: Real, Classy, & Compleat 1980-1989. Some of that last factoid is made up by me, but it could have happened…

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The Complete Peanuts volume 10: 1969-1970


By Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Books/Canongate Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-126-0 (US TPB) 978-0857862143 (Cannongate HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Towering Monumental Tradition Writ (and Drew) Large… 10/10

Peanuts is unequivocally the most important comic strip in the history of graphic narrative. It is also the most deeply personal. Cartoonist Charles M Schulz crafted his moodily hilarious, hysterically introspective, shockingly surreal philosophical epic for half a century: 17,897 strips spanning October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000. He died – from complications of cancer – the day before his last strip was printed.

At its height, Peanuts ran in 2,600 newspapers, in 21 languages and75 countries. Many of those venues still run it as perpetual reprints, and have done ever since “Sparky” passed. During his lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy doodler an actual billionaire at a time when that really meant something…

None of that matters. Peanuts – a title Schulz loathed, but one the syndicate forced upon him – changed the way comics strips were received and perceived: proving cartoon comedy could have edges and nuance and meaning as well as too-soon-forgotten pratfalls and punchlines.

We begin with an effusive and enthusiastic foreword from author/animator/illustrator Mo Willems (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, Knuffle Bunny, Sheep in the Big City) expressing his debt to the strip.

On the pages, this period heralds a true renaissance probably triggered by headlines in an era of swiftly shifting changes in social attitudes and rampant cultural exploration. Notionally, our focus and point of contact remains quintessentially inspirational loser Charlie Brown who, despite slowly taking a few steps behind fanciful, high-maintenance mutt Snoopy, remains squarely at odds with the mercurial supporting cast. They are still hanging out doing what at first sight seems to be Kids Stuff in an increasingly hostile and intrusive universe of perverse happenstance. Except perhaps that Lucy Van Pelt kid. She’s not like the others…

Neatly interspersed with daily doses of gloom, the Peanuts Sunday page first debuted on January 6th 1952: a standard half-page slot offering more measured fare than 4-panel dailies. Thwarted ambition, sporting failures, crushing frustration abound, alternating with Snoopy’s inner life of aviation and war stories, star gazing, shooting the breeze with bird buddies, weather woes and food fiascos. These and other signature sorties across the sabbath indulgences afforded Schulz room to be his most imaginative, whimsical and provocative…

Regular tentpole moments to relish include more Snoopy v Lucy deathmatches/ambush snogs/dance offs; Charlie Brown’s food feud with the beagle, an assortment of night terrors; Lucy’s emphatically simple solutions to complex questions; doggy dreams; the power of television; sporting endeavours and the sharply-cornered romantic triangle involving Lucy, Schroeder & Beethoven – albeit wedded to “sophisticated” fallout when pushy Frieda decides she also wants to play…

Always, gags centre on play, varying degrees of musicality, pranks, interpersonal alignments, the mounting pressures of ever-harder education, mass media lensed through young eyes and a selection of sports in their season. All are leavened by agonising teasing, naked contempt, kindled and crushed hopes, the making of baffled observations and occasionally acting a bit too much like grown-ups. However, in this tome, themes and tropes that define the entire series (especially in the wake of many animated TV specials) become mantra-like yet endlessly variable, but focus less on Charlie and more on those around him. Also, the outside grown-up world considerably encroaches, as when Lucy declares herself a “ New Feminist” although no one looking can see any difference to any presumably previously un-enlightened Miss van Pelt…

Human interactions still find the boy a pitiable outlier. Mean girl Violet, musical prodigy Schroeder, self-taught psychoanalyst/dictator-in-waiting Lucy, her brilliantly off-kilter little brother Linus and dirt-magnet “Pig-Pen” are fixtures honed and primed to generate joke-routines and gag-sequences around their signature foibles, but some early characters have faded away in favour of fresh attention-attracting players. Newcomers sidle in and shuffle off without much flurry or fanfare but in our real world the use of “Minority” characters José Peron of New Mexico and African American Franklin drew much attention and controversy – because, I guess, there will always be gits and arseholes – especially if the oblivious readers elected them…

The most significant expansion is that weird upside bird bugging the beagle gets a name – Woodstock (as revealed on June 22, 1970) – and a job as his dogsbody – secretary, actually – whilst shock near-cripples the round-headed kid when he discovers that the “little red-haired girl” he almost plucked up the nerve to talk to moves to a new city. It’s a blow he’s still reeling from when this book ends two years later, and one only Linus really understands. After all, his teacher Miss Othmar is gone after the teacher’s strike…

There is much more madcap politically-tinged material, including repeated riffs on a recently inaugurated new real-world president (Richard Milhous Nixon on January 20, 1969) as seen when Snoopy briefly becomes the most powerful mutt in the Free world after being chosen as the new Grand Beagle…

At least the Brown boy’s existential crisis/responsibility vector/little sister Sally has grown enough to become just another trigger for relentless self-excoriation. As she grows, pesters librarians, forms opinions and propounds steadfastly authoritarian views, Charlie is relegated to being her dumber, but eternally protective, big brother especially as her biggest bugbear is starting school and Charlie is such an expert on all things scholastic…

Resigned to – but far from uncomplaining about – life as a loser in the gunsight of cruel and capricious fate, the boy Brown is helpless meat in the clutches of openly sadistic Lucy. When not sabotaging his efforts to kick a football, she monetises her spiteful verve via a 5¢ walk-in psychoanalysis booth (although supply and demand economics also affects this unshakeable standard), ensuring that whether at play, in sports, kite-flying or just brooding, the round-headed kid truly endures the character-building trials of the damned.

One deliciously powerful constant that grows more abundant is the boy’s utter inability to fly that kite. Here war with wind, gravity and landscape reaches absurdist proportions, as the tree haunts Charlie Brown’s adored pastime with vicious, violent and malign venom. Moreover, other kids are aware of its growing power. After one terse musical interlude with Schroeder, Lucy lobs our reluctant lover-boy’s beloved piano into the voracious carnivorous conifer…

By now, the beagle is the true star of the show, with his primary quest for more and better playing out against an increasingly baroque inner life, wild encounters with birds, sports, dance marathons and skating trysts (especially the close-order combat called ice hockey!), philosophical ruminations, and ever-more-popular catchphrases. Here, burgeoning whimsy leads to more glimpses of the interior world: his WWI other life, peppered with dogfights against the accursed Red Baron, but also careers as an astronaut, a sports coach, a prairie dog and a detective seeking his lost mother. That tragic obscured past as an alumni of the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm leads to constant introspection… and dancing… lots and lots of dancing…

Naturally, Snoopy soon subverts all that misery and curiosity to fuel his creative side and begins the Great American Novel that will change literature forever… but that’s before the Browns go on vacation and leave the dog with the Van Pelts. Naturally, Lucy has an idea about finally fixing the pooch. It doesn’t end well…

As always, timeless episodes of play, peril, peewee psychoanalysis and personal excoriation are beards for some heavy topics. Rendered in marvellous monochrome, there are crucial character introductions, plot developments and creation of more traditions we all revere to this day. Of particular note is the growing role of Patricia Reichardt – AKA tomboy Peppermint Patty – who heartbreakingly deals with the so-early discovery that she will never be pretty or beautiful. Even Snoopy’s most concerted efforts can’t quite salve that sting…

Another trenchant continued gag-series resumes Lucy obsessive attempts to “cure” Linus of his blanket dependency by again playing him off against Grandma who will give donations to charities if the boy grows up…

Snoopy is the only force capable of challenging if not actually countering Lucy. Over these two years, her campaign to curb that weird beagle, cure her brother of blanket addiction and generally reorder reality to her preferences reaches astounding heights and appalling depths, but the dog keeps trying and scores many minor victories. As always the book opens and closes with many strips riffing on snow, food, movie-going and television – or the gang’s responses to it – becoming ever more pervasive. And as always, Lucy constantly, consistently sucks all the joy out of the white wonder stuff and the astounding variety offered by the goggle-box. Perpetually sabotaged, and facing abuse from every female in their life, Brown and Snoopy endure more casual grief from smug, attention-seeking Frieda, who champions shallow good looks over substance. At least Linus is growing: hardened inside by what happened to teacher Miss Othmar, but Lucy’s amatory ambitions for Schroeder grow ever more chilling and substantive. She will never move on…

Schulz established way points in his year: formally celebrating certain calendar occasions – real or invented – as perennial shared events: Mothers and Fathers’ Days, Fourth of July, National Dog Week strips accompanied in their turn yearly milestones like Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween/Great Pumpkin Day and Beethoven’s Birthday were joined this year by a return to another American ritual as many of the cast return to summer camp. At least there is unbridled joy when Brown’s baseball team hits a winning streak and Charlie meets his all-time sporting idol – except of course they’re not quite the boons they first appear…

Sports loom large and terrifying as ever, but star athlete Snoopy is more interested in new passions than boring old baseball or hockey. Even Lucy finds far more absorbing pastimes but still enjoys crushing the spirits of her teammates in whatever endeavour they are failing at. Anxiety-wracked Brown even steps down from the baseball team to ease his life, but that only intensifies his woes, and does nothing to help his kite wielding or football kicking…

Linus endures more disappointment in two Great Pumpkin seasons and before you know it, there’s the traditional countdown to Christmas and another year filled with weird, wild and wonderful moments…

Wrapping it all up, Gary Groth celebrates and deconstructs the man and his work in ‘Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000’, preceded by a copious ‘Index’ offering instant access to favourite scenes you’d like to see again…

Available in multiple formats, this volume guarantees total enjoyment: comedy gold and social glue metamorphosing into an epic of spellbinding graphic mastery that still adds joy to billions of lives, and continues to make new fans and devotees long after its maker’s passing.
The Complete Peanuts: 1969-1970 (Volume Ten) © 2008 Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. The Foreword is © 2008, John Waters. “Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000” © 2008 Gary Groth. All rights reserved.

Today in 1946 Lucky Luke “debuted” in the Spirou Alamanch Annual – except if you read Lucky Luke: The Complete Collection Volume One you’ll know that ain’t necessarily so…

And in 1970 the incredible Rube Goldberg shuffled off this mortal coil. It was probably one he had designed in his masterful cartoons. Go google Rueben Awards…