Category: Satire/Politics

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The Complete Crumb Comics volume 15: Featuring Mode O’Day and Her Pals


By Robert Crumb and others (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-413-0

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of comics and cartooning with as many foes as fans, but his idiosyncratic, unflinching, uncompromising, controversial and always bewitching work is impossible to ignore.

Therefore if intemperate language, putative blasphemy, artfully grotesque cartoon nudity, fetishism and comedic fornication are liable to upset you, stop reading this review and don’t buy the book. Stop reading now, check out an old, archived review instead or just come back tomorrow…

In 1987 Fantagraphics began the almost impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s output.

Son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943 to a large and troubled family. After a tempestuous early life, he began working as an in-house art-drone at the American Greeting Cards Company and trading card giant Topps Publishing, married early and briefly before “dropping out” and joining the Counterculture movement, where he changed the nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and a host of others.

Within a decade the explosively reactive underground movement was gone; dissipated, disillusioned, dropped back “in” or dead, with only a few notable independent and truly dedicated publishers staying the course. Always his own harshest critic and ever-searching for artistic perfection, in 1981 Crumb convinced Ron Turner of Last Gasp to publish a new anthology of underground/alternative/cutting edge commix in a new anthology.

Weirdo – with Crumb as editor and major contributor until 1983 when he handed over the editor’s role to his “discovery” Peter Bagge (who provides a fascinating introduction and overview for the tome under review here) – was, for many of us, the last bastion of a real gone world.

With the onus of deadlines and responsibility of magazine production removed Crumb resumed his quixotic search for artistic satisfaction…

Recently re-released, this 15th softcover volume (originally published in 2001) collects Crumb’s comic strips from Weirdo #9-15, assorted gags, private commissions, freelance illustration work, album covers and other pictorial ephemera plus strips from American Splendor and Zap Comix, covering the hedonistic, greed-soaked early 1980s which were such a painful anathema to someone of the Artist’s socialist/liberal leanings.

After Bagge’s aforementioned text recollections the graphic magic begins with the Crumb contributions in Weirdo #9 (Winter 1983-1984), a stunning and meticulous frontispiece, ‘Arline ‘n’ Bob and that Thing in the Back Bedroom’ – an autobiographical account of the “joys” of parenthood crafted in collaboration with second wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb plus the first snide and sardonic appearance of Reagan-era, appalling and avaricious anti-icon ‘Mode O’Day and Her Pals’ in a barbed observation of fame-hungry wannabes and the pathetic, empty gullibility of the nouveau-riche.

More of Mode (dabbling with the chic of being a benefactor and coffee-magnate of the so-troubled Nicaraguans) and nothing else appeared in Weirdo #10 in Summer 1984 whilst #11 featured a stark and salutary updating of an old favourite in ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and a magical selection of single panel cartoons declaring ‘Love’s Like That!’

Mode stalked and blagged her way into the good graces of an ugly plutocrat with her usual lack of success or happiness in #12, but Weirdo #13 (Summer 1985) was given over to Crumb’s stunning ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ wherein the case histories of a number of “deviants” were brought to incredible grimy, sordid, evocative life as Crumb sampled the truly bizarre nature of humanity described by giant of psychology Richard Freiherr von Krafft–Ebing.

Issue #14 featured the far lighter and whimsically bombastic anti-pop (or is it simply anti-maximum decibels?) inquiry ‘Where Has It Gone, All the Beautiful Music of Our Grandparents?’ and the marvellously introspective yet light ‘Life Certainly Is Existential!’, whilst #15 opened with the surreal domesticity of ‘Comics from Other Planets Dept’, slipped comfortably into two pages of splendid ‘Gags’ and closed with a captivating ad parody.

The covers of Weirdo #9-15 (including a heartfelt ‘Parting Shot‘ at Ayn Rand), lead off the expansive central, full-colour section, which continues with record and book covers for The Klezmorim’s Streets of Gold, The Otis Brothers, Charles Bukowski’s Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Business Like Show Business, novel covers Texas Crude and The Monkey Wrench Gang; a Louis Bluie poster plus incidental illustrations and sticker art.

Back in black and white there’s a page of miscellaneous ads and illustrations from 1983, after which ‘Hypothetical Quandry’ (written by Harvey Pekar for his magnificent American Splendor on-going graphic autobiography: issue #9, if you’re keeping count) appears, showcasing Crumb’s far bolder and more liberated big-black-brush art style.

Crumb’s long creative association with author Charles Bukowski produced phenomenal results, and here, after a portrait of the writer and promotional art, follows a sequence of illustrations from Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Business Like Show Business, as well as Ken Weaver’s Texas Crude. More miscellaneous illustration art for Pepper & Stern Rare Books, The Magazine, Co-Education Quarterly and seven pages of vignettes and cameos from The Monkey Wrench Gang round out this section.

‘Constipated Chaos Consortium’ is a mind-bending jam-collaboration with fellow underground luminaries Spain Rodriguez, Bosirus Eerie, Victor Moscoso, S. Clay Wilson and Robert Williams and the first of three contributions to Zap #11 from 1985: the other two being ‘Jesus People USA’ (a hypothetical interview between a fundamentalist Christian reporter and ‘R. Crumb, Underground Pornographer and All-Around Lost Soul’) and the powerful and engaging biography of lost Blues legend (Charley) ‘Patton’.

This sublime – and key – transitional tome in the development of one of the art form’s greatest living proponents concludes with another section of miscellaneous illustrations including collaborations with wife and daughter Aline and Sophie and a poster with Dan O’Neill, Victor Moscoso and Bob Crabb.

As always this varied and impressive selection of Crumb’s craft is riddled with his often hard-to-embrace themes and emblematic declamatory and potentially offensive visual vocabulary: as always the work touches on the creator’s most intimate and disturbing idiosyncrasies regarding sex and women, both in the unsettling Abstract and the painful, side-splitting, lustful, painful and loving Concrete and, as always, the reader’s response can only be Love or Loathe…

Crumb’s subtle mastery of his art-form and obsessive need to reveal his most hidden depths and every perceived defect – in himself and the world around him – has always been a unquenchable wellspring of challenging comedy and riotous rumination. This superb series charting the perplexing pen-and-ink pilgrim’s progress is the perfect vehicle to introduce any (definitively over 18) newcomers of your acquaintance to the world of grown up comics. And if you need a way in yourself, snatch up this book and the other sixteen as soon as conceivably possible…

All material © 2011 R. Crumb and its respective owners or co-owners. All other material © 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 2001, 2011 R. Crumb. All rights reserved.

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Willie and Joe: Back Home


By Bill Mauldin (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-351-4

Throughout World War II William Henry “Bill” Mauldin fought “Over There” with the United States Infantry whilst producing cartoons about the fighting men and for the fighting men. He told as much of the real nature of the war as his censors and common sense would allow and became an unwilling international celebrity as much because of his unshakable honesty as his incredible artistic talent.

He was in controvertibly one of the guys and American soldiers and civilians loved him for it. During his time in the service he produced cartoons for the folks back home and intimately effective, authentic and quirkily morale-boosting material for military publications 45th Division News, Yank and Stars and Stripes.

They mostly featured two slovenly “dogfaces” – a term he made his own and introduced to the world at large – giving a trenchant and acerbically enduring view of the war from the point of view of the poor sods ducking bullets in muddy foxholes and surviving shelling in the ruins of Europe.

Willie and Joe, to the dismay of much of the Army Establishment, gave an honest overview of America’s ground war. In 1945 a collection of his drawings, accompanied by a powerfully understated and heartfelt documentary essay, was published by Henry Holt and Co. Up Front was a sensation, telling the American public about the experiences of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands in a way no historian would or did. A biography, Back Home, followed in 1947.

Willie even made the cover of Time magazine in 1945, when 23 year old Mauldin won his first Pulitzer Prize. Like so many other returning soldiers, however, Mauldin’s hard-won Better Tomorrow didn’t live up to its promise…

Mauldin’s anti-war, anti-Idiots-in-Charge, anti-bigot views never changed but found simply new targets at home. However, during the earliest days of the Cold War and despite being a bone fide War Hero, Mauldin’s politically strident cartoons fell ever more out of step with the New America: a place where political expediency allowed racists to resume repressing ethnic sections of the nation now that their blood and sweat were no longer needed to defeat the Axis; a nation where women were expected to surrender their war-time freedoms and independences and become again servants and baby machines, happy to cook suppers in return for the new labour-saving consumer goods America now needed to sell, sell, sell: a nation far too eager to forget the actual war and genuine soldiers in favour of massaged messages and conformist, inspirational paper or celluloid heroes.

The New America certainly didn’t want anybody rocking their shiny new boat…

When Sergeant Bill Mauldin mustered out in 1945 he was notionally on top of the world: celebrity hero, youngest Pulitzer Prize winner in history, with a lucrative 3-year syndicated newspaper contract and Hollywood clamouring for him.

Unfortunately, the artist was as dedicated to his ideals as to his art. As soon as he became aware of the iniquities of the post-war world he went after them, using his newspaper cartoon as a soapbox, Mauldin attacked in bitterly brilliant barrages the maltreatment and sidelining of actual soldiers (during the country’s entire involvement in WWII less than 10% of military men actually fought, or even left their home country) whilst rear-echelon brass seemed to increasingly reap the benefits and unearned glory of the peace.

The ordinary enlisted men and veterans were culture-shocked, traumatised, out of place and resented by the public who blamed them disproportionately for the shortages and “suffering” they had endured. Black and Japanese Americans were reduced to second class citizens and America’s erstwhile allies demonised, whilst everywhere politicians and demagogues were rewriting recent history for their own advantage… His fondest wish had been to kill the iconic dogfaces off on the final day of World War II, but Stars and Stripes vetoed it, and the demobbed survivors moved into a world that had changed incomprehensibly in their absence…

Always ready for a fight, Mauldin’s peacetime Willie and Joe became a noose around the syndicate’s neck as the cartoonist’s acerbic, polemical and decidedly non-anodyne observations perpetually highlighted the iniquities and stupidities inflicted on returning servicemen, attacked self-aggrandising politicians, advocated such socialist horrors as free speech, civil rights and unionisation, affordable public housing and universal medical care for everybody – no matter what their colour, gender or religion. He even declared war on the Ku Klux Klan, American Legion and red-baiting House UnAmerican Activities Commission: nobody was too big. When the Soviet Union and United Nations betrayed their own ideological principles Mauldin went after them too…

An honest broker he had tried to quit early, but the syndicate held him to his contract. Trapped in a situation that increasingly stifled his creative urges and muzzled his liberal/libertarian sensibilities, he refused to toe the line and his cartoons were incessantly altered and reworked. During six years of War service his cartoon had been censored three times; now the white paint and scissors were employed by rewrite boys almost daily…

The movie Up front – which Mauldin wanted to reflect the true experience of the war – languished unmade for six years until a sappy flimsy comedy bearing the name was released in 1951. The intended screenplay by Mauldin, John Lardner and Ring Lardner Jr., disappeared, deemed utterly unsuitable and unfilmable until much of its tone reappeared in Lardner Jr.’s 1970 screenplay M*A*S*H…

As the syndicate bled clients, mostly in segregationist states, and contemplated terminating his contract, Mauldin began simultaneously working for the New York Herald-Tribune and with a new liberal outlet changed his tactics in the Willie and Joe feature: becoming more subtle and less bombastic. He still picked up the best of enemies however, adding J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to the roster of declaimers and decriers…

When his contract finally ended in 1948, neither side wanted to renew. Mauldin left the business to become a journalist, freelance writer and illustrator. He was a film actor for awhile (appearing in Red Badge of Courage with Audie Murphy among other movies), a war correspondent during the Korean Conflict and an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1956.

He only finally returned to newspaper cartooning in 1958 in a far different world and worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before moving to the Chicago Sun-Times, winning another Pulitzer and a Reuben Award for his political cartoons

He retired in 1991 after a long, glittering and properly- appreciated career. He only drew Willie and Joe four times in that entire period (for an article on the “New Army” in Life magazine; for the funerals of “Soldier’s Generals” Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall and to eulogize Milton Caniff).

This magnificent hardback companion volume to Willie and Joe: the WWII Years covers the period of work from July 31st 1945 to 31st December 1948, supplemented by a brilliant biographical introduction from Todd DePastino: a superb black and white compendium collecting the bittersweet return of the forgotten heroes as they faced confusion, exclusion, contention and disillusion: but always with the edgy, stoic humour under fire that was Mauldin’s stock in trade.

Moreover it features some of the most powerful assaults on the appalling edifice of post-war America ever seen. The artist’s castigating observations on how a society treats returning soldiers are as pertinent now as they ever were; the pressures on families and children even more so; whilst his exposure of armchair strategists, politicians and businessmen seeking to exploit wars for gain and how quickly allies can become enemies are tragically more relevant than any rational person could wish.

Alternating trenchant cynicism, moral outrage, gallows humour, sanguine observation and uncomprehending betrayal, this cartoon chronicle is an astounding personal testament that shows the powers of cartoons to convey emotion if not sway opinion.

With Willie & Joe: the WWII Years, we have here a magnificent example of passion and creativity used as a weapon of social change and a work of art every citizen should be exposed to, because these are aspects of humanity that we seem unable to outgrow…

This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. Cartoons © 2011 the Estate of William Mauldin. All right reserved.

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Willie and Joe: the WWII Years


By Bill Mauldin, edited by Todd DePastino (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-439-9

During World War II a talented, ambitious young man named William Henry “Bill” Mauldin (29/10/1921 – 22/01/2003) fought “Over There” with the 45th Division of the United States Infantry as well as many other fine units of the army. He learned to hate war and love his brother soldiers – and the American fighting man loved him back. During his time in the service he produced civilian cartoons for the Oklahoma City Times and The Oklahoman, and intimately effective and authentic material for his Company periodical, 45th Division News, as well as Yank and Stars and Stripes; the US Armed Forces newspapers. Soon after, his cartoons were being reproduced in newspapers across Europe and America.

They mostly featured two slovenly “dogfaces” – a term he popularised – giving a trenchant and laconic view of the war from the muddied tip of the sharpest of Sharp Ends. Willie and Joe, much to the dismay of the brassbound, spit-and-polish military martinets and diplomatic doctrinaires, became the unshakable, everlasting image of the American soldier: continually revealed in all ways and manners the upper echelons of the army would prefer remained top secret.

Willie and Joe even became the subject of two films (Up Front -1951 and Back at the Front – 1952) whilst Willie made the cover of Time magazine in 1945, when 23 year old Mauldin won his first Pulitzer Prize.

In 1945 a collection of his drawings, accompanied by a powerfully understated and heartfelt documentary essay, was published by Henry Holt and Co. Up Front was a sensation, telling the American public about the experiences of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands in a way no historian would or did. A biography, Back Home, followed in 1947.

Mauldin’s anti-war, anti-Idiots-in-Charge-of-War views became increasingly unpopular during the Cold War and despite being a War Hero Mauldin’s increasingly political cartoon work fell out of favour (those efforts are the subject of forthcoming companion volume Willie & Joe: Back Home).  Mauldin left the business to become a journalist and illustrator.

He was a film actor for awhile (appearing in Red Badge of Courage with Audie Murphy among other movies), a war correspondent during the Korean War and, after an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1956, finally returned to newspaper cartooning in 1958.

He retired in 1991 after a long, glittering and award-studded career. He only drew Willie and Joe four times in that entire period (for an article on the “New Army” in Life magazine; for the funerals of “Soldier’s Generals” Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall; and to eulogize Milton Caniff). His fondest wish had been to kill the iconic dogfaces off on the final day of World War II, but Stars and Stripes vetoed it.

The Willie and Joe cartoons and characters are some of the most enduring and honest symbols of all military history. Every Veterans Day in Peanuts from1969 to 1999, fellow veteran Charles Schulz had Snoopy turn up at Mauldin’s house to drink Root Beers and tell war stories with an old pal. When you read Sgt. Rock you’re looking at Mauldin’s legacy, and Archie Goodwin drafted the shabby professionals for a couple of classy guest-shots in Star-Spangled War Stories (see Showcase Presents the Unknown Soldier).

This immense mostly monochrome (with some some very rare colour and sepia items) softcover compendium – 704 pages, 229 x 178mm – collects all his known wartime cartoons originally released in two hardback editions in 2008, featuring not only the iconic dog-face duo, but also the drawings, illustrations, sketches and gags that led, over 8 years of army life, to their creation.

Mauldin produced most of his work for Regimental and Company newspapers whilst under fire: perfectly capturing the life and context of fellow soldiers – also under battlefield conditions – and gave a glimpse of that unique and bizarre existence to their families and civilians at large, despite constant military censorship and even face-to-face confrontations with Generals such as George Patton, who was perennially incensed at the image the cartoonist presented to the world. Fortunately Supreme Commander Eisenhower, if not a fan, knew the strategic and morale value of Mauldin’s Star Spangled Banter and Up Front feature with the indomitable everymen Willie and Joe…

This far removed in time, many of the pieces here might need historical context for modern readers and such is comprehensively provided by the notes section to the rear of the volume. Also included are unpublished pieces and pages, early cartoon works, and rare notes, drafts and sketches.

Most strips, composites and full-page gags, however are sublimely transparent in their message and meaning: lampooning entrenched stupidity and cupidity, administrative inefficiency and sheer military bloody-mindedness whilst highlighting the miraculous perseverance and unquenchable determination of the ordinary guys to get the job done while defending their only inalienable right – to gripe and goof off whenever the brass weren’t around… Moreover Mauldin never patronises the civilians or demonises the enemy: the German and Italians are usually in the same dismal boat are “Our Boys” and only the war and its brass-bound conductors are worthy of his inky ire…

Alternating trenchant cynicism, moral outrage, gallows humour, absurdist observation, shared miseries, staggering sentimentality and the total shock and awe of still being alive every morning, this cartoon catalogue of the Last Just War is a truly breathtaking collection that no fan, art-lover, historian or humanitarian can afford to miss.

…And it will make you cry and laugh out loud too.

With a fascinating biography of Mauldin that is as compelling as his art, the mordant wit and desperate camaraderie of his work is more important than ever in an age where increasingly cold and distant brass-hats and politicians send ever-more innocent lambs to further foreign fields for slaughter. With this volume and the aforementioned Willie & Joe: Back Home, we should finally be able to restore the man and his works to the forefront of graphic consciousness, because tragically, his message is never going to be out of date…

© 2011 the Estate of William Mauldin. All right reserved.

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The Fat Ninja (GMC Collections Volume 1 #3)


By Gary Amaro, Kris Silver & various (Greater Mercury Comics)
No ISBN

The late 1980s were an incredibly fertile time for American comics-creators. It was as if an entire new industry had been born with the sudden expansion of the Direct Sales market and dedicated specialist retail outlets; new companies were experimenting with format and content and punters even had a bit of spare cash to play with.

Moreover much of the “kid’s stuff” stigma had finally abated and the country was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be a for-real and truly, actual art-form…

Consequently many starry-eyed kids and young start-up companies began competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown accustomed – or resigned – to getting their sequential narratives from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material had been creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Vortex, Capital, Now, Slave Labor, Comico, Dark Horse, First and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Even smaller companies had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great material came – and too often, quickly went – without getting the attention or success it warranted. Often utterly superb and innovative material came from the same shoestring outfits generating the worst dreck imaginable and the only way to get in on the next big thing – or better yet – something actually good was to get out and try it…

It really helped if you worked in a comic shop and got first pick before the customers arrived too…

One of the least well-known yet most fun was an unassuming spoof series entitled Fat Ninja which came out of a prolific little outfit calling itself Greater Mercury Comics from August to December 1986. The serial never completed its initial storyline, but that didn’t stop the creators Kristoffer Silver and Gary Amaro collecting the saga thus far into a daft and nifty little trade paperback that still makes me laugh decades later…

Delightfully lampooning the 1980s oriental assassin craze; the ubiquitously dark and ponderous Frank Miller Daredevil (and Wolverine) comics so successfully mined by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the groundbreaking economical graphic bravura of Dave Sim’s incredible Cerebus the Aardvark, this asinine adventure begins the unfinished epic of ‘The Galactic Refrigerator’ as a chunky, katana-wielding, preternaturally hungry silent warrior discovers to his mute horror that someone has unplugged the celestial artefact which provided the raw material for food across the universe.

Appalled and a bit peckish, the sturdy stalwart undertakes an unbelievably violent quest to restore balance and provisions to the world, encountering supernatural warriors Shadow and Flair in ‘Between Light and Darkness’ and follows them back to their immediate superior the Crimson Ninja in ‘Confrontations’. Fat Ninja then traces, via teleporting phone-booth, the reality bending culprit “Sir” to his extraordinary lair in ‘Master Evil’, from where the deadly dictator took the corpulent crusader on a quick tour of the cosmos and gave him a little philosophical testing before once more resorting to gratuitous violence in ‘Shadowplay’…

I fear we shall never learn ‘The Secret of the Hacksword’ since the series and this collection end there…

Raw, unrefined, even badly drawn in places Fat Ninja (with additional contributions from P.S. King, Emilio Soltero & Amy Amaro) is nevertheless carried along by its brash, and naively hilarious premise and decidedly likable portly protagonist, and the mere fact that I’m recommending it even though there’s no conclusion should give you some idea of just how amusing this lost oddment actually is.

A genuine original and well worth picking up if the fickle, ill-fed fates ever send a copy your way…
Fat Ninja © 19985-19986 Kristoffer A. Silver. This edition © 1990 Greater Mercury Comics. All rights reserved.

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Drought Chic – a Dry Analysis of the Water Shortage


By Shary Flenniken (Shary Flenniken)
No ISBN

I’m feeling nostalgic, thirsty and in need of a laugh all at once so here’s an intriguing self-published gem from the mid-1970s whose theme and subject matter seems to be coming back into vogue as the days seep by…

Do you remember that sweet pretty girl you admired and day-dreamed about from afar? All glowing soft focus summer afternoons and sherbet refreshers, scents of new-mown hay, tinkly bells and soaring strings? And after a lifetime you found the courage to talk to her and she swore like a trooper, cackled like a loon, pulled your hair and was all loud and boisterous and not at all serious and girly and your heart broke just a little?

Shary Flenniken’s sense of humour is like that. With her affable, underplayed, deceptively simple line drawing style (so devastating effective in the glorious Girl and her Talking Dog strip Trots and Bonnie) everything looks clean and sugary and chocolate-coated, but then you realise there’s a devastatingly sharp mind and a tungsten-tipped razor-edged scalpel sense of humour at play as you’re hit with a really spiky and heavy giant pink boxing glove…

Flenniken is a scripter/artist/editor/illustrator/screenwriter of enormous talent who contributed to and edited the funniest years of National Lampoon, has published her own books – such as the slim gem under review today – and has illustrated some of the funniest books even written by other people, with titles such as When a Man Loves a Walnut, Blood-Lust Chickens & Renegade Sheep and Nice Guys Sleep Alone.

She started out as an underground cartoonist in 1971 with the fabulously notorious Air Pirates Collective (the other bold cartoonists taking on Disney whilst preserving the classic heritage of past cartoon masters and waving the flag for free speech and the Right to Parody and Satirise were Dan O’Neill, Bobby London, Gary Hallgren and Ted Richards).

Her own drawing style is often likened to pioneering strip artists Clare Briggs (When a Feller Needs a Friend!!, Danny Dreamer, The Days of Real Sport, Mr. and Mrs, Real Folks at Home, Someone’s Always Taking the Joy Out of Life) and the laconically mordant master Harold Tucker Webster (Our Boyhood Ambitions, How to Torture Your Wife, Life’s Darkest Moment, How to Torture Your Husband and the legendary Caspar Milquetoast/The Timid Soul) – especially in the long-running(1971-1990) and aforementioned sardonic comedy masterpiece Trots and Bonnie which I simply must get around to…

In recent years Flenniken has edited Seattle Laughs: Comic Stories about Seattle and worked for DC’s Paradox Press and Mad, freelanced in Premiere, Details and The American Lawyer whilst winning critical acclaim for her adaptations of the works of Mark Twain, O. Henry and others.

Drought Chic was self-published in 1977, and this tiny tidal wave of crafty cartoons and satisfyingly salty asides resulted from close observation and experience of the global heat-wave (can you remember that Long Hot Summer of Punk in the UK?) and the perennial water paucity of America’s West Coast; extrapolating on the sage advice offered by those in power as the country all-too briefly saw the (fashionably faddy) sense in dabbling with water discipline.

Suggestions to the trend-setters of society riffed-on here include “share baths and showers”, “don’t flush toilets”, “import icebergs”, “replant your lawn with cactus” and “drink something else”… directives I’m fairly sure we’ll all be considering again in the months and years ahead.

Of course here in Britain we’ve already taken the most effective step to conserve water consumption by selling off the water utility, privatising a natural resource and pricing it out of the reach of ordinary folk…

Still, if you’re saving a little time and money as a new member of the Great Unwashed at least you can spend your grubby free hours seeking out this wry, dry and slyly sophisticated soupcon of delightful disinformation.
© 1977 Shary Flenniken. All rights reserved.

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Rick O’Shay and Hipshot: The Great Sunday Pages


By Stan Lynde (Tempo Books)
ISBN: 0-448-12522-6

Once upon a time westerns were the most popular genre in American mass entertainment, with novels, magazines, films, radio shows, TV series, comicbooks and of course newspaper strips all devoted to “Men Doin’ What They Gotta Do”: Riding Ranges, Rounding up stuff, Gun-fighting and all the other timeless iconic cultural activities we all think we know…

Over the decades hundreds of western strips have graced the pages and increased the circulation of newspapers; from singing cowboy film-star Roy Rogers to Red Ryder, Casey Ruggles, the Lone Ranger, Lance and so many more. Even staid Britain got into the act with such lost masterpieces as Buffalo Bill, Matt Marriot and Wes Slade ranking highest amongst fans around the world…

With such a plethora of material concentrated in one genre it’s no surprise that different takes would inevitably develop. Thus alongside Stagecoach, The Ox-Bow Incident, High Noon, How the West Was Won, Soldier Blue or Unforgiven there blossomed less traditional fare such as Destry Rides Again, Cat Ballou, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Evil Roy Slade or Blazing Saddles.

Falling straight into the same comedy western territory as The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw and Support Your Local Sheriff – but predating both – came one of the earliest and most successful modern gag-a-day continuity strips, blending iconic scenarios with memorable characters, playing out their daily antics against a spectacular backdrop of lavishly illustrated natural beauty.

Stan Lynde was born in Montana on 23rd September 1931, the son of a sheep farmer who grew up with a passion for comic strips. His first efforts appeared in the High School paper and after studying journalism at Montana State he served in the Navy from 1951-1955, where he created the strip Ty Foon for a Services magazine. After the Navy Lynde tried a succession of jobs and ended up in New York working for the Wall Street Journal.

Whilst there Lynde created Rick O’Shay which eventually found a home with the mighty Chicago Tribune Syndicate (home of Gasoline Alley, Terry and the Pirates and many others) launching as a Sunday page on April 27th 1958 and adding a daily black and white strip from 19th May that year.

Lynde produced the strip until 1977 when he left the Syndicate to produce another wonderful western Latigo (1979-1983). Tribune-News Syndicate owned Rick O’Shay outright and continued the feature with substitutes Marian Dern, Alfredo Alcala and Mel Keefer, but it just wasn’t the same and the strip was allowed to die in 1981.

Rick O’Shay took western conventions to sly and whimsical extremes as it followed the life of Rick, Deputy Marshal of the little town of Conniption. The series was set in the rugged Montana countryside where Lynde grew up and to which he returned as soon as the strip proved successful enough to support him.

Conniption was too small for a full Marshal and whatever order needs to be kept was easily handled by the easy-going Deputy Rick and his friend, grizzled veteran gunslinger Hipshot Percussion. Apart from drinking, fighting and gambling, the township’s most serious problem was criminally bad puns, personified in the likes of saloon owner Gaye Abandon, newspaper editor Clarion McCall, hotelier Auntie Climax, town drunk Mooch McHooch, gunsmith Cap’n Ball, banker Mort Gage, gambler Deuces Wilde and a feisty kid named Quyat Burp. The town’s spiritual needs were catered to by Reverend Jubal Lee and the local Indian tribe is led by Chief Horse’s Neck…

Eventually the dailies began spoofing contemporary events like the James Bond craze, pop music and TV shows but the Sunday episodes (such as the grand selection from 1972-1976 reprinted in this paperback sized, regrettably monochrome collection) retained their integrity and continued to spoof the Old West.

Bright and breezy slapstick rib-ticklers and laconic, tongue-in-cheek jokes involving drunks, card-games, guys joshing with each other, the malicious recalcitrance of horses and other inanimate objects plus the perennial duels of Hipshot as a succession of goofy young wannabes regularly called the old gun-hawk out to steal his rep played and replayed continuously; all set against the breathtaking geography of Montana’s “Big Sky Country”…

Lynde is still working in the western genre, producing the strip Grass Roots, new material for Swedish magazine Fantomen, assorted graphic novels and, since regaining the rights to Rick O’Shay for his own Cottonwood Publishing company, new works and chronological collections of this classic strip.

This nifty and delightful book from 1976 actually belonged to my wife until I took greedy full-possession of it: part of that glorious 1970s era of easily concealable paperback collections featuring classic strips like Peanuts, the Perishers, Mad, Broom Hilda, B.C., Wizard of Id and so many other magical ways to lose yourself whilst teachers droned on around you in interminable obliviousness.

Most of the books were even returned at the end of term, although some unscrupulous educators operated a “confiscation is forever” policy…

Fun and fulsome entertainment, this little gem won’t be easy to track down, but if giggles, guffaws and gunfights are your thing you’ll definitely want to round up the latest Rick O’Shay Cottonwood releases…
© 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 The Chicago Tribune. All Rights Reserved.

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The World of Pont

New, Revised Review

By Graham Laidler, with an introduction by Richard Ingrams (Nadder Books 1983)
ISBN: 0-90654-038-0

Graham Laidler was born in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne-on July 4th 1908, son of a prominent painter and decorator. Educated at Newcastle Preparatory school and Glenalmond in Perthshire, he was 13 when his father died and the family relocated to Buckinghamshire. Always captivated by cartooning he channelled his artistic bent into more traditionally profitable avenues to support his widowed mother and trained as an architect at the London School of Architecture from 1926-1931.

Always dogged by ill-health Laidler moonlighted as a cartoonist and in 1930 began a long-running domestic comedy strip entitled The Twiffs for the Women’s Pictorial. In 1932 he was diagnosed with a tubercular kidney and advised to live in healthier climates than ours. In August of that year he sold his first cartoon to that prestigious bulwark of British publishing Punch.

He was so popular that editor E.V. Knox took the unprecedented step of putting him under exclusive contract. With financial security established and his unique arrangement with Punch in place Laidler travelled the world and drew funny pictures, mostly of The English both at home and abroad generating 400 magnificent, immortal cartoons until his death in 1940, aged 32.

A charmingly handsome and charismatically attractive young man, Laidler visited Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, America and many other places. He won his nickname and nom-de-plume in Rome during an incident with two “Vestal Virgin” travelling companions after which he was forevermore “Pontifex Maximus”…

His greatest gift was a surgical gift for observation of social and cultural minutiae: gleaning picaresque detail and broad attitude which translated through his gently humorous graphic commentaries into simultaneously incisive and gentle, baroque and subtle picture plays encapsulating the funniest of moments on every subject pertaining to the great Enigma of Being English in Public and Getting Away with It…

His work was collected into a number of books during his lifetime and since, and his influence as humorist and draughtsman can still be felt.

Although he excelled in the strip cartoon format Pont’s true fully mastery was in telling a complete story with a single perfect drawing. His cartoons exemplified the British to the world at large and to ourselves.

During World War II the Nazis, with typical sinister efficiency, used his drawings as the basis of their anti-British propaganda when they invaded Holland, further confirming to the world the belief that Germans Have No Sense of Humour.

As Pont, for eight too-brief years, Graham Laidler became an icon and global herald of English life and you would be doing yourself an immense favour in tracking down his work. If you like Ealing comedies, Alistair Sim and Margaret Rutherford, St Trinian’s and the Molesworth books or the works of Thelwell or Ronald Searle, you won’t regret the search.

Unbelievably, despite his woefully small output there still doesn’t seem to be a definitive collection of his work. One again I implore any potential publisher reading this to take the hint, but until then, for the rest of us there’s just the thrill of the hunt and the promised bounty in seeking out The British Character, The British at Home, The British Carry On, Most of us are Absurd, Pont and this magical compendium The World of Pont, which comprises the perfect primer by sampling the best of his drawn divinations from his themed Punch series’ ‘The British Observed’, ‘The British at War’, ‘Popular Misconceptions’, ‘The British Woman’ and last but certainly not least, ‘The British Man’.

If you love good drawing and sharp observational wit you’ll thank me. If you just want a damn good laugh, you’ll reward yourself with the assorted works of Pont.
© 1983, 2007 the estate of Graham Laidler.

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Jak volume 15 (1983)


By Jak (Express Newspapers)
ISBN: 0-85079-133-2

The truly sad if not terrifying thing about rereading topical news cartoons this long after the fact is how distressingly familiar the subjects and hot topics still are.

For example this volume taken from 1983 features crass greed and duplicity amongst our financial elite, Prince Andrew starring in all the wrong sort of headlines, returning British soldiers, children easily subverting electronics systems designed to deny them access to things they shouldn’t see, all the wrong sorts of weather in the most inconvenient places, Sectarianism (Irish and otherwise), railways under-performing, overcharging and under the cosh, football violence and footballers peccadilloes (look it up if you must), Middle East madness, industrial action and business inaction, heat waves and water shortages, crises in Greece, controversies in definitions of rape, strangers making themselves at home in Buckingham Palace and a Tory Government that simply adored shooting off its collective mouth whilst simultaneously shooting itself in the foot…

This compendium even closes with looming public cynicism about an impending global sporting event…

Sometimes our industry is cruel and unjust. This collection of cartoons by Raymond Allen Jackson, who, as Jak, worked for thirty years as political cartoonist for London Evening Standard and its later incarnation The Standard – is one of many that celebrated his creativity, perspicacity and acumen as he drew pictures and scored points with and among the entire range of British Society.

His gags, produced daily to a punishing deadline as they had to be topical, were appreciated, if not feared, by toffs and plebs alike and were created with a degree of craft and diligence second to none. Even now, decades later, they are still shining examples of wit and talent… and they’re still bitingly funny too.

Artists like Jak who were commenting on contemporary events are poorly served by posterity. This particular volume (re-presenting a selection of single panel-gags from September 15th 1982 to August 12th 1983), like all of these books, was packaged and released for that year’s Christmas market, with the topics still fresh in people’s minds.

Decades later the drawing is still superb and despite perhaps the wry minutiae escaping a few the trenchant wit, dry jabs and outraged passion which informed these visual ripostes are still powerfully effective. And obviously human nature never changes and there’s nothing new under the sun…

It’s a terrible shame that the vast body of graphic excellence which topical cartoonists produce has such a tenuous shelf-life. Perhaps some forward looking educational institution with a mind to beefing up the modern history or social studies curricula might like to step in and take charge of the tragically untapped and superbly polished catalogue of all our yesterdays.

Clearly they’re all short of a bob or two these days and I’m pretty sure these cartoon gems could find a willing market eager to invest in a few good laughs…
© 1983 Express Newspapers Limited.

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Shorts


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

For some folks the graphic novel under review here will be unacceptably 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.

I’m in a mature and contemplative mood today, so here’s a review of a rather quirky and philosophical confection by one of the world’s greatest graphic eroticists. Originally translated into English from the French edition Courts Mệtrages by Catalan in 1989, it’s another inexplicably Out-of-Print graphic gem desperately in need of a English language release…

Maurilio Manara (born September 12th 1945) is an intellectual, whimsical craftsman with a dazzling array of artistic skills ranging from architecture, product design, painting and of course an elegant, refined, clear-clean line style with pen and ink. He is best known for his wry and always controversial sexually explicit material – although that’s more an indicator of our comics market than any artistic obsession.

His training was in the classical arts of painting and architecture before succumbing to the lure of comics. In 1969, he started his career with the Fumetti Neri series Genius, worked on the magazine Terror and in 1971 began his adult career (see what I did there?) illustrating Francisco Rubino’s Jolanda de Almaviva. In 1975 his first major work, a reworking of the Chinese tales of the Monkey King was released as Lo Scimmiotto (The Ape).

By the end of the seventies he was working for Franco-Belgian markets 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 bawdy burlesque and saucy slapstick, the eccentric selection of satirical, baroque tales gathered here as a wry 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 and exceedingly sexy black and white vignettes Manara highlights the diminishing divisions between Art and Selling, with tales intended to make your head throb as much as your nether regions…

The sensorial incursion commences with ‘Commercial’, as couch-potato is inexorably drawn into the Casanovan drama he is watching and 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 tales are visually influenced by icons of the Great Arts, such as Luciano Pavarotti and Fellini, whilst ‘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 doesn’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 and ‘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 a unquantifiable loss and surreal challenge to his life-style, but ‘The Last Tragic Day of Gori Bau & the Callipygian Sister’ sinisterly shows the dark-side of underage explorations as a trio of kids invoke feelings and powers they are not equipped to cope with…

The allegorical ambuscade concludes with the calamitously comedic surreal science fiction yarn ‘And’ as an Earthman and an Arturian 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…

Described in Manara’s beautifully rendered, lavish line-work 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.

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Asterix the Gaul, Asterix and the Golden Sickle and Asterix and the Goths


By René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Orion/Hodder-Darguad/Brockhampton)
Orion ISBNs: 978-0-75286-605-5, 978-0-75286-613-0 and 978-0-75286-615-4

Sorry, Baudelaire, Balzac Proust, Sartre, Voltaire, Zola and all you other worthy contenders; Asterix the Gaul is probably France’s greatest literary export: a feisty, wily little warrior who fought the iniquities and viewed the myriad wonders of Julius Caesar’s Roman Empire with brains, bravery and, whenever necessary, a magical potion which imbued the imbiber with incredible strength, speed and vitality.

The diminutive, doughty hero was created at the very end of the 1950s by two of the art-forms greatest masters, Ren̩ Goscinny & Albert Uderzo and even though the perfect partnership ended in 1977 the creative wonderment still continues Рalbeit at a slightly reduced rate of rapidity.

René Goscinny is arguably the most prolific and remains one of the most read writers of comicstrips the world has ever known. Born in Paris in 1926, he grew up in Argentina where his father taught mathematics. From an early age René showed artistic promise, and studied fine arts, graduating in 1942.

In 1945 while working as junior illustrator in an ad agency his uncle invited him to stay in America, where he found work as a translator. After National Service in France he returned to the States and settled in Brooklyn, pursuing an artistic career and becoming in 1948 an assistant for a little studio which included Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Jack Davis and John Severin as well as European giants-in-waiting Maurice de Bévère (Morris, with whom Goscinny produced Lucky Luke from 1955-1977) and Joseph Gillain (Jijé). He also met Georges Troisfontaines, head of the World Press Agency, the company that provided comics for the French magazine Spirou.

After contributing scripts to Belles Histoires de l’Oncle Paul and Jerry Spring Goscinny was promoted to head of World Press’ Paris office where he met life-long creative collaborator Albert Uderzo. In his spare time Rene created Sylvie and Alain et Christine with Martial Durand (Martial) and Fanfan et Polo, drawn by Dino Attanasio.

In 1955 Goscinny, Uderzo, Charlier and Jean Hébrard formed the independent Édipress/Édifrance syndicate, creating magazines for business and general industry (Clairon for the factory union and Pistolin for a chocolate factory). With Uderzo he produced Bill Blanchart, Pistolet and Benjamin et Benjamine and illustrated his own scripts for Le Capitaine Bibobu.

Goscinny clearly patented the 40-hour day. Using the nom-de-plume Agostini he wrote Le Petit Nicholas (drawn by Jean-Jacques Sempé) and in 1956 began an association with the revolutionary magazine Tintin, writing for various illustrators including Dino Attanasio (Signor Spagetti ), Bob De Moor (Monsieur Tric ), Maréchal (Prudence Petitpas), Berck (Strapontin), Globule le Martien and Alphonse for Tibet, Modeste et Pompon for André Franquin, as well as the fabulous and funny adventures of the incredible Indian brave Oumpah-Pah with Uderzo. He also wrote for the magazines Paris-Flirt and Vaillant.

In 1959 Édipress/Édifrance launched Pilote, and Goscinny went into overdrive. The first issue featured re-launched versions of Le Petit Nicolas, Jehan Pistolet/Jehan Soupolet, new serials Jacquot le Mousse and Tromblon et Bottaclou (drawn by Godard) plus a little something called Asterix the Gaul, inarguably the greatest achievement of his partnership with Uderzo.

When Georges Dargaud bought Pilote in 1960, Goscinny became editor-in-Chief, but still found time to add new series Les Divagations de Monsieur Sait-Tout (Martial), La Potachologie Illustrée (Cabu), Les Dingodossiers (Gotlib) and La Forêt de Chênebeau (Mic Delinx).

He also wrote frequently for television but never stopped creating strips such Les Aventures du Calife Haroun el Poussah for Record (first episode January 15th 1962) illustrated by Swedish artist Jean Tabary. A minor success, it was re-tooled as Iznogoud when it transferred to Pilote.

Goscinny died – probably of well-deserved pride and severe exhaustion – in November 1977.

Alberto Aleandro Uderzo was born on April 25th 1927, in Fismes, on the Marne, the son of Italian immigrants. As a child reading Mickey Mouse in Le Pétit Parisien he dreamed of becoming an aircraft mechanic and showed artistic flair from an early age. Albert became a French citizen when he was seven and found employment at 13 as an apprentice of the Paris Publishing Society, learning design, typography, calligraphy and photo retouching.

When WWII broke out he spent time with farming relatives in Brittany and joined his father’s furniture-making business. Brittany beguiled Uderzo: when a location for Asterix’s idyllic village was being decided upon the region became the only choice.

In the post-war rebuilding of France Uderzo returned to Paris and became a successful artist in the country’s burgeoning comics industry. His first published work, a pastiche of Aesop’s Fables, appeared in Junior and in 1945 he was introduced to industry giant Edmond-François Calvo (whose masterpiece The Beast is Dead is long overdue for the world’s – and my – closer attention).

Young Uderzo’s subsequent creations included the indomitable eccentric Clopinard, Belloy, l’Invulnérable, Prince Rollin and Arys Buck.

He illustrated Em-Ré-Vil’s novel Flamberge, worked in animation, as a journalist and illustrator for France Dimanche, and created the vertical comicstrip ‘Le Crime ne Paie pas’ for France-Soir. In 1950 he illustrated a few episodes of the franchised European version of Captain Marvel Jr. for Bravo!

Another inveterate traveller, the young artist met Goscinny in 1951. Soon fast friends they decided to work together at the new Paris office of Belgian Publishing giant World Press. Their first collaboration was in November of that year; a feature piece on savoir vivre (how to live right or gracious living) for women’s weekly Bonnes Soirée, after which an avalanche of splendid strips and serials poured forth.

Jehan Pistolet and Luc Junior were created for La Libre Junior and they produced a western starring a Red Indian that became the delightful and (eventually) popular Oumpah-Pah. In 1955 with the formation of Édifrance/Édipresse, Uderzo drew Bill Blanchart, for La Libre Junior, replaced Christian Godard on Benjamin et Benjamine and in 1957 added Charlier’s Clairette to his portfolio.

The following year later, he made his debut in Tintin, as Oumpah-Pah finally found a home and a rapturous audience. Uderzo also worked Poussin et Poussif, La Famillle Moutonet and La Famille Cokalane

When Pilote launched in 1959 Uderzo was a major creative force for the new magazine with the series Charlier’s Tanguy et Laverdure and a little something called Asterix…

Although Asterix was a massive hit from the start, Uderzo continued working with Charlier on Michel Tanguy, (subsequently Les Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure), but soon after the first adventure was collected as Astérix le gaulois in 1961 it became clear that the series would demand most of his time – especially as the incredible Goscinny never seemed to require rest or run out of ideas (after the writer’s death the publication rate dropped from two per year to one volume every three to five).

By 1967 the strip occupied all Uderzo’s time and attention. In 1974 the partners formed Idéfix Studios to fully exploit their inimitable creation and when Goscinny passed away three years later Uderzo was convinced to continue the adventures as writer and artist, producing a further ten volumes since then.

According to UNESCO’s Index Translationum, he is the tenth most-often translated French-language author in the world and the third most-translated French language comics author – after his old mate René Goscinny and the grand master Hergé.

So what’s it all about?

Like all entertainments the premise works on two levels: as an action-packed comedic romp of sneaky and bullying baddies coming a cropper for younger readers and as a pun-filled, sly and witty satire for older, wiser heads, transformed here by the brilliantly light touch of master translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge who played no small part in making the indomitable little Gaul so very palatable to the English tongue.

Originally published in Pilote #1-38 (29th October 1959- 4th July 1960, with the first page appearing a week earlier in a promotional issue #0, distributed on June 1, 1959), the story was set on the tip of Uderzo’s beloved Brittany coast in the year 50BC, where a small village of redoubtable warriors and their families resisted every effort of the world-beating Roman Empire to complete their conquest of Gaul. Unable to defeat these Horatian hold-outs, the Empire has resorted to a policy of containment and the little seaside hamlet is hemmed in by the heavily fortified permanent garrisons of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium.

The Gauls don’t care: they daily defy the world’s greatest military machine by just going about their everyday affairs, protected by a magic potion provided by the resident druid and the shrewd wits of a rather diminutive dynamo and his simplistic best friend…

In Asterix the Gaul this perfect scenario is hilariously demonstrated when Centurion Crismus Bonus, fed up with his soldiers being casually beaten up by the fiercely free Frenchmen, sends reluctant spy Caligula Minus to ferret out the secret of their incredible strength.

The affable resistors take the infiltrator in and dosed up with potion, the perfidious Roman escapes with the answer – if not the formula itself…

Soon after, the Druid Getafix is captured by the invaders and the village seems doomed, but wily Asterix is on the case and breaks into Compendium determined to teach the Romans a lesson. After driving them crazy for awhile by resisting all efforts at bribery and coercion, wizard and warrior seemingly capitulate and make the Romans a magic potion – but not the one the rapacious oppressors were hoping for…

Although comparatively raw and unpolished, the good-natured, adventurous humour and sheer finesse of the yarn barrels along, delivering barrages of puns, oodles of insane situations and loads of low-trauma slapstick action, marvellously rendered in Uderzo’s seductively stylish art-style. From the second saga on the unique and expanding cast would encroach on events, especially the unique and expanded, show-stealing sidekick Obelix who had fallen into a vat of potion as a baby and was a genial, permanently superhuman, eternally hungry foil to the smart little hero…

These albums are available in a wealth of differing formats, and earlier translated editions going all the way back to the first Brockhampton editions in 1969 are still readily available from a variety of retail and internet vendors – or even your local charity shop and jumble sale. Be warned though that if pure continuity matters only the most recent British publisher, Orion, has released the nearly 40 albums in chronological order – which is how I intend to review them – and are even in the process of re-releasing the tales in Omnibus editions; three tales per tome.

Also, on a purely artistic note some of the Hodder-Dargaud editions have a rather unconventional approach to colour that might require you to wear sunglasses and put blinkers on your pets and staff…

Asterix and the Golden Sickle originated in Pilote #42-74 (August 11th 1960-1961) and recounts the disastrous consequences of Getafix losing his ceremonial gold sickle just before the grand Annual Conference of Gaulish Druids. Since time is passing and no ordinary replacement will suffice to cut ingredients for magic potion, Asterix offers to go all the way to Lutetia (you can call it Paris if you want to) to find another.

As Obelix has a cousin there, Metallurgix the Smith, he also volunteers and the two are swiftly off, barely stopping to teach assorted bandits the errors of their pilfering ways but still finding a little time to visit the many roadside inns and tavern serving roast boar…

There is a crisis in Lutetia: a mysterious gang is stealing all the Golden Sickles and forcing the prices up. The druid community is deeply distressed and more worrying still master sickle-maker Metallurgix has gone missing…

Asterix and Obelix investigate the dastardly doings in their own bombastic manner and discover a nefarious plot that seems to go all the way to the office of the local Roman Prefect…

The early creative experiment was quickly crystallizing into a supremely winning format and the next epic cemented the strip’s status as a popular icon of Gallic excellence.

Asterix and the Goths ran from 1962-1963 and followed the plot-thread of the Druid Conference. As Getafix, new golden sickle in hand, sets off for the Forest of the Carnutes to compete, on the Gaul’s Eastern border savage Goths – barbarians who remained unconquered by the might of Rome – crossed into pacified Roman territory intent on capturing the mightiest Druid and turning his magic against the rule of Julius Caesar.

Although non-Druids aren’t allowed into the forest Asterix and Obelix had accompanied Getafix to its edge and as the competition round of the Conference ends in victory for him and his power-potion the Goths struck, abducting him in his moment of triumph.

Alerted by fellow Druid Prefix, the heroic pair tracked the kidnappers but were mistaken for Visigoths by Roman patrols, allowing the Goths to cross the border into Germania.

Although Romans were no threat they could be a time-wasting hindrance so Asterix and Obelix disguise themselves as Romans and invade the Barbarian lands…

Well-used to being held prisoner by now Getafix is making himself a nuisance to his bellicose captors and a genuine threat to the wellbeing of his long-suffering translator, and when Asterix and Obelix are captured dressed as Goths the wily Gauls conceive a cunning plan to end the permanent and imposing threat of Gothic invasion – a scheme that succeeded for almost two thousand years…

If, like me, you’re particularly interested (my wife calls it “sad”) in absolutely all the iterations you might also want to seek out back issues of British boys comic Ranger (1965-1966 and every one a gem!) and issues of Look and Learn immediately after the two titles merged (beginning with #232; 25th June 1966). Among the many splendid strips in the glossy, oversized photogravure weekly was an quirky comedy feature entitled ‘Britons Never, Never, Never, Shall Be Slaves!’ which featured the first appearance of Goscinny & Uderzo’s masterpiece – albeit in a radically altered state.

In these translations Asterix became “Beric”, Getafix was “Doric” and Obelix was dubbed “Son of Boadicea”. More jingoistically the entire village was editorially transported to England where a valiant population of True Brits never ever surrendered to the Roman Occupation!

Similar intellectual travesties occurred during two abortive early attempts to introduce the gutsy Gauls to America as a heavily re-edited family newspaper strip…

Asterix is one of the most popular comics in the world, translated into more than 100 languages; 8 animated and 3 live-action movies, assorted games and even his own theme park (Parc Astérix, near Paris). More than 325 million copies of 34 Asterix books have been sold worldwide, making Goscinny & Uderzo France’s bestselling international authors.

This is sublime comics storytelling and you’d be as Crazy as the Romans not to increase that statistic by finally getting around to acquiring your own copies of this fabulous, frolicsome French Folly.

© 1961-1963 Goscinny/Uderzo. Revised English translation © 2004 Hachette. All rights reserved.