Category: Satire/Politics

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The Detective Chimp Casebook


By John Broome, Mike Tiefenbacher, Carmine Infantino, Irwin Hasen, Alex Kotzky, Gil Kane, Joe Giella, Sy Barry, Bernard Sachs & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-2165-1 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Detective stories are a literary subgenre wherein an investigation by amateur or professional (active or retired) into a legal transgression or moral/social injustice plays out before the consumer, who may or may not include themselves in the process. Like exploration and adventuring, fantasy, horror and science fiction, Detective stories blossomed in white western societies during the mid-19th century: spreading from magazines and prose novels to later forms of entertainment media such as plays, films and radio shows, with early crime puzzle solvers including C. Auguste Dupin, Judge Dee/Di Gong An, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Maigret, Father Brown, Lord Peter Wimsey, Sexton Blake and Hercule Poirot. Tales targeting youngsters generated their own sleuthing stars: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and more, sparking a subgenre especially popular on television…

Comic strips developed detective stalwarts like Hawkshaw, Dick Tracy, Charlie Chan, Kerry Drake ad infinitum: all contributing to a tidal wave of fictive crimebusters that in many ways inspired true literary legends – Philip Marlow, Sam Spade, Simon Templar, Mike Hammer and so on. Where there is such variety and richness, strange yet rewarding things may blossom, none more rewarding than those seen in graphic narratives. Gathered here is the original, seminal comics lunacy in the hirsute form of Detective Chimp: a Florida-based do-gooder who – thanks to an extremely unconventional official lawman – became assistant sheriff of a major coastal metropolis.

In later years, wit and whimsey fell prey to the all-consuming fan-drive for rationality and reason (at least in comic book science terms) and both the police primate and his comic book host Rex the Wonder Dog were given origins rationalising and explaining their mighty mentalities. You can see the first hint of that at the end of this compilation which gathers the madcap monkeyshines of an ape answering to Bobo, as first seen in The Adventures of Rex The Wonder Dog #4 and thereafter #6-46, plus a canny codicil from  DC Comics Presents #35: spanning July 1952 to September/October 1959 and including a moment of animal magic from July 1981. Also in here is material from DC Special #1, Helmet of Fate: Detective Chimp #1, Tarzan #231, 234 & 235, Amazing World of DC Comics #1 and Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #6. And while we’re at it, let’s get one thing straight: I know and you know chimpanzees are APES. The author(s) did too, but to have more fun and engage euphony I – as they did – reserve the right to use many terms associated with both primates and prosimians throughout…

We now pause for me to pontificate some more…

Boasting a March 1937 cover-date, Detective Comics #1 was the third and final anthology title devised by luckless comics pioneer Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. In 1935, the entrepreneur had seen the potential in Max Gaines’ new invention – the Comic Book – and reacted quickly, conceiving and releasing packages of all-new strips in New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine and follow-up New Fun/New Adventure (ultimately Adventure Comics) under the banner of National Allied Publications. These publications differed from similar prototype comics magazines which simply reprinted edited collations culled from established newspaper strips. However, these vanguard titles were as varied and undirected in content as any newspaper funnies page.

Detective Comics was different. Specialising solely in tales of crime and crimebusters, the initial roster included (amongst others) adventurer Speed Saunders, Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise, Gumshoe Gus and two series by a couple of kids from Cleveland named Siegel & Shuster – espionage agent Bart Regan and two-fisted shamus Slam Bradley…

Within two years the commercially inept and unseasoned Wheeler-Nicholson had been forced out by his more savvy business partners, and his company eventually grew into monolithic DC (for Detective Comics) Comics. Surviving a myriad of changes and temporary shifts of identity and aims, it’s still with us – albeit primarily as a vehicle for the breakthrough character who debuted in the 27th issue…

In the years when superheroes were in retreat and considered a bit foolish, DC concentrated on genre stars. At the end of 1951 they launched Rex the Wonder Dog (#1 cover-dated January/February 1952), based equally on Rin Tin Tin, Lassie and their own miracle mutt Streak – the original Green Lantern’s dog who had ousted Alan Scott and Co. from his own title in the dying days of the Golden Age.

Rex solved crimes, saved lives in disasters, fought dinosaurs and saved the world, but that wasn’t enough and real-world legal restrictions dictated his title required other strips to qualify for favourable postal shipping rates. In #4 (July/August 1952), a future back-up feature was trialled. Written by John Broome, drawn by Carmine Infantino and inked by Sy Barry, the tale of a little chimp who helped solve the murder of his beloved owner captivated readers. Infantino always claimed this hirsute anthropoid crimebuster was his favourite character…

In The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #4 readers were invited to ‘Meet Detective Chimp!’ in a charming comedy thriller. It was the first outing of undeniably captivating comics lunacy revealing how, when Oscaloosa Florida’s Sheriff Chase snared the killer of prominent businessman and owner of Thorpe Animal Farm, it was only with the valiant and uncanny help of a certain young chimp. He consequently adopts and deputises the beast, with Bobo thereafter acting as assistant sheriff right up until the final issue. The hairy savant also enjoyed a revival at the end of the century and fresh fame in the 21st as new generations of creators and fans rediscovered him…

Response must have been overwhelming and immediate in 1952, because mere months later ‘The Return of Detective Chimp!’ came with #6 (cover-dated November/December – and remember, this was the company that took 3 years to give The Flash his own title…). Broome again scripted the hirsute Hawkshaw – as he would almost all (I’m presuming: records are sadly incomplete) – in a delightful succession of what we would call “Cosy Mysteries”. Infantino was inked by Joe Giella as the chimp – with the aid of an enraged nesting bird – solved a family murder, restored a sabotaged will and settled a family inheritance in a wild romp setting the pattern for years to come…

Illustrated by Alex (The Sandman, Plastic Man) Kotzky, #7 settled in for the long haul and exposed ‘Monkeyshines at the Wax Museum!’, with Bobo catching the killer of amiable murder-enthusiast Len Billings, after which Irwin (Green Lantern, Wildcat, Justice Society of America, Dondi) Hasen & Giella highlighted how ‘Death Walks the High Wire!’ as the savvy simian proved a circus trapeze accident was anything but, even deputising some four-legged performers to bring the assassin to justice…

For RtWD #9 (May/June 1953), Broome, Hasen & Bernard Sachs indulged a passion for sports as Bobo saved his favourite baseball star from kidnappers in ‘Crime Runs the Bases’ before uncovering ‘Monkey Business on the Briny Deep!’ (Broome, Hasen & Giella, July-August 1953). Here, Bobo became an inveterate but dilettante hobby fanatic, exploring a different fascination each episode which would miraculously impact on the current case. This time it was sea fishing that netted cunning thieves, whilst in #11 it was horses and jockeys, as the impressionable assistant solved ‘The Riddle of the Riverside Raceway!’ (Hasen & Giella): befriending a prize steed, stymying race-fixing gangsters and collaring the FBI’s Most Wanted fugitive…

Th chimp made and lost a new friend next with Hasen & Giella limning the saga of how ‘The Million Dollar Gorilla!’ was killed by a big game hunter’s jealous love-rival before Infantino (inked by Sy Barry) embraced Bobo’s new love of Westerns in #13’s ‘The Case of the Runaway Ostrich!’. This hobby afforded the hairy half-pint much opportunity to display his roping and riding skills when corralling a rare bird rustler…

In RtWD #14 (March/April 1954, with art by Hasen & Sachs) Bobo became a Flying Fool addicted to aircraft just in time to stumble over ‘Murder in the Blue Yonder!’ and catch the killer of his flight instructor, after which Infantino settled in for the long haul as his favourite character became a lifeguard and solved ‘The Case of the Fishy Alibi!’, wherein a gambler almost pulls off the perfect crime. For #16 Bobo’s new passion for scuba diving/ spearfishing exposes a millionaire’s murderer in ‘Monkey Sees, Monkey Does!’ Two months later Bobo cracked ‘The Case of the Suspicious Signature!’ (September/October 1954) when his new passion for autograph collecting accidentally lands him in a Hollywood star’s kidnapping…

When Chase starts paying his deputy in cash as well as room-&-board and bananas, Bobo goes ape over finance with ‘The Case of Bobo’s Bankbook!’ leaving him in the right place at the right time to foil a big heist, prior to succumbing to more basic fascination in #19’s ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil!’ Bobo falls for visiting movie star Moka and takes up bodybuilding to impress her, but it proves no help at all when “The Most Famous Female Chimpanzee in the World” is kidnapped and he needs all his old skills to save the day…

With Sy Barry inking Infantino, ‘Detective Bobo… Chimp-Napped!’ sees the deputy abducted when his circus chums hit town again, just in time to thwart a jewel snatch, after which #21’s ‘The Secret of the ‘Indian’ Monkey!’ offers opportunity for dressing up when a historical pageant uncovers a treasure map and draws thieves like flies. In #22’s topical tale – inked by Giella – the chimp goes ape for sci fi stories yet still foils a cunning robbery scheme after ‘Bobo Rides a Flying Saucer!’ RtWD #23 saw Sheriff Chase’s only hobby – stamp collecting – key to solving ‘The Secret of the Spanish Castle!’ as a misdelivered letter inadvertently draws the lawgivers into a robbery/hostage situation, whilst Bobo’s temporary love of railways is the spur for ‘The Mystery of the Silver Bullet!’ when locomotive driver Mike Layton allows the chimp onto the footplate just as hijackers attack…

A dalliance with firefighting in #25 proves ‘Where There’s Smoke – There’s Trouble!’ as Bobo joins the Junior Forest Rangers just when a couple of thieves trying to hide their loot in the woods start throwing lighted cigarettes around, and #26 sees the simian Sherlock take up Egyptology in time to solve ‘The Mystery of the Missing Mummy!’ (Giella inks) and save Chase from being entombed forever…

After months of eating premium-promotion cereal, the eager ape at last opens the pack containing ‘A Whistle for Bobo!’ and subsequently drives everyone crazy as an impromptu traffic cop… until one car packed with brigands and boodle refuses to stop. Then a string of robberies by the Goliath Gang again sees him seeking to build up his physique by using ‘Bobo’s Amazing Jungle Gym!’ That turns into bad news for the bandits…

Broome & Infantino transformed Detective Chimp into ‘The Scientific Crook-Catcher!’ (#29 September/October 1956) when the savvy simian sneaks into a symposium of savants disguised as human professor and wowing the assembled savants by tracking down quick-change disguise artist Larry the Lynx, after which a duel with a jewel thief and rendezvous with a robbing raven presents ‘A Jailbird for Bobo!’…

The special deputy met his match in a gang of boy do-gooders in ‘Clue of the Secret Seven!’ but even collaboratively collaring a brace of escaped convicts was no preparation for tackling the maritime ‘Mystery of the Talking Fish!’ (#32) after returning to diving to hunt for sunken treasure. When Bobo’s friend Alice Rogers – inheritor of the animal farm in the first adventure – needs a favour, the detective is more than happy to be companion to her new albino Guereza monkey. However, when it vanishes, Bobo attempts to impersonate a creature he has never seen, whilst seeking to find ‘The Mystery Monkey from Zanzibar!’ leads to the capture of its opportunistic abductors instead…

Infantino tested a range of stylistic innovations on Detective Chimp and excels in #34’s ‘The Case of the Chimpanzee’s Camera!’ when Bobo takes up photography and snaps a trio of paranoid thieves casing their next caper, whilst ‘Bobo’s New York Adventure!’ sees the little ape in the Big Apple, pinch-hitting for a monkey TV star and stumbling into Oscaloosa’s Most Wanted: murderous jewel thief “Dangerous Jack” Diamond…

Giella inks in #36 as ‘The Mystery of the Missing Missile!’ sees Bobo and Secret Seven pal Tommy Wheeler stymie thieves and test a new invention before the chimp takes a vacation in human guise and unearths ‘The Treasure of Thunder Island!’ In #38 he catches canny counterfeiters whilst accidentally debunking the theories of a scientist who believes he can make animals talk in ‘The Amazing Experiment of Professor Snodgrass!’

For the next case ‘Bobo Goes to Sheriff’s School!’ as Chase sends the assistant in his place to a detection and criminology seminar. It disturbs the chimp’s latest passion of collecting marbles but the substitution works out okay as the chimp outshines all human attendees and even catches a couple of robbers along the way, after which ‘Bobo the Baby Sitter!’ recovers escaped circus star Kangy (the Boxing ’Roo) and nabs a brace of thieving fugitives prior to becoming ‘Bobo – Sleuth on Skis!’ when freak weather turns Oscaloosa into a snowcapped winter playground for thieves…

Giella inks a road rage riot in #42 as hot-rod fanatic Bobo drives a kiddie stock car for the Secret Seven in a big meet, becoming ‘Demon of the Speedways!’ after his new invention allows him to pip all rivals at the post. This attracts the unwanted attention of a gang boss in need of  super-fast getaway car, but does not end well for him…

Keen on being a model citizen, Bobo resolves to ‘Stop That Litterbug!’ in #43, accidentally intercepting a scrap of paper worth millions to the desperate men who lost it, before Giella’s last inking hurrah confirms ‘Where There’s Smoke – There’s Bobo!’ as the ape’s drive to be a fireman almost costs him his real job – until he encounters crooks at a fire – after which a logical outcome of Bobo’s career comes to pass in penultimate episode ‘The Case of the Monkey Witness!’ Here the anthropoid must testify against crime boss Legs Dunne, with the mobster’s gang seeking to end him before the trial begins…

Bobo’s last case came in #46 as he joins a Little League team and becomes ‘The Chimp-Champ of Baseball!’ (September/October 1959), all while preventing a pair of crooks escaping custody.

And that was that…

To make room for resurgent superheroes, The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog folded with that issue and – other than an occasional reprint – Bobo vanished for years. The covers of most of those re-appearances are displayed at the back of this book and are listed there, but before that one last story falls under the aegis of this pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths collection.

DC Comics Presents had an occasional back-up series offering short tales of lost stars and in #35 (July 1981) Mike Tiefenbacher & Gil Kane (who had drawn the majority of exploits starring Bobo’s canine companion) revealed ‘Whatever Became of Rex the Wonder Dog?’ Here the canine marvel teamed with now-ancient and decrepit ape Bobo to solve one last mystery, inadvertently restoring themselves to youthful health and vitality for another round of action adventures…

The collection closes with gallery of images under the umbrella of ‘The Ape Files’ which include the 1969 cover to DC Special #1 (an “All-Infantino Issue”), those for Joe Kubert’s covers for Tarzan #231, 234, 235 (which carried Bobo reprints) and Amazing World of DC Comics #1: another Infantino mega montage. Brian Bolland’s preliminary pencil art for Helmet of Fate: Detective Chimp #1 is augmented by the finished full-colour piece before all the ape antics end with Infantino & Bill Wray’s page on Bobo from Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #6, a brief biography ‘About the Ape’ and similar treatment for creators Broome and Infantino.

In this century an ape solving crimes is less of a sure-fire winner – as many other hirsute DC gumshoes could attest – and Detective Chimp speaks many human tongues, consults with Batman and works with Shadowpact and for Justice League Dark: a far different beast operating on less charming levels. However, if you’re looking for daft laughs, sublime wit and astounding artwork, this is a book worth casing…
© 1952, 1952, 1952, 1952, 1952, 1952, 1952, 1952, 1968, 1974, 1975, 1981, 1985, 2007, 2023 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Moon Mullins: Two Adventures


By Frank H. Willard (Dover)
ISBN: 978-0-4862-3237-9 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

An immensely popular newspaper strip in its day and a remarkably long-lived one, Moon Mullins grew out of gentle if bucolically rambunctious Irish immigrant ethnic humour to become THE comedy soap opera (one of the very first of its kind) that absolutely everybody in America followed.

Create by Frank Willard – a 2-fisted, no-nonsense type with a cracking ear for dialogue, an unerring eye for swingeing social faux pas and an incorrigible sense of fun – the strip debuted on June 19th 1923. Willard wrote and drew both monochrome dailies and sparkling Sunday colour segments until his death in 1958, whereupon his assistant Ferdinand “Ferd” Johnson (who started working with Willard scant months after the strip’s launch, and continued there even whilst working on his own strips Texas Slim and Lovey-Dovey) assumed complete authorship until his own retirement in 1991 – a gloriously uninterrupted tenure of 68 years.

The feature was marketed around the globe by the mighty Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate, and recounted daily the rowdily raucous, ribald, hand-to-mouth lowbrow life and tribulations of Moonshine Mullins, lovable rogue and unsuccessful prize-fighter who was just getting by in tough circumstances…

The doughty rapscallion spent his time in bars, on the streets (sometimes the gutters) and most tellingly at the pokey boarding house of Emmy Schmaltz, located at 1323 Wump Street. Mullins was amiable and good-natured, liked to fight, loved to gamble, was slick with the ladies and had the worst friends imaginable…

He also had an iconic little brother, named Kayo, who was the visual prototype for every one of those tough-kid heroes in Derby hats (“bowlers” to us Brits) and tatty pants populating Simon & Kirby’s early work.

Brooklyn and Scrapper and all those other two-fisted, langwitch-manglin’ cynical, sassy tykes took their cues from the kid in the funny papers who so often had the very last word. The other mainstay of the strip was lanky landlady Emmy; a nosy interfering busybody with inflated airs and graces and a grand line in infectious catchphrases.

Other enticing regulars included Uncle Willie – Moon’s utterly dissolute bad relation; saucy, flighty flapper (Little) Egypt – our hero’s occasional girlfriend and a dead ringer for silent film sensation Louise Brooks (and, incomprehensibly, Emmy’s niece), plus Mushmouth – a black character who will make modern readers wince with social guilt and societal horror. However, to be fair, in this strip which celebrated and venerated working class culture, he was always another unfortunate schmuck on the wrong side and far more a friend than foil, stooge or patsy.

One final regular was affluent Lord Plushbottom, whose eye for the ladies – especially Egypt – constantly brought him sniffing around the boarding house. At the period of the tales in this volume he is a jolly English bachelor, completely unaware that a spidery spinster has set her cap for him. In 1933, after a decade of hilarious pursuit, she finally got her man…

Surprisingly still readily available as a paperback book (surely, if ever anything was crying out to be suitably and permanently digitally archived it’s vintage strips like these!), Moon Mullins: Two Adventures is still readily available and reprints two marvellous extended romps originally reformatted from newspapers and released in 1929 and 1931 by Cupples & Leon – a publishing company which specialized in reprinting popular strips in lush, black-&-white tomes; very much a precursor of both comic books and latterday graphic novels.

In the first yarn Mullins is given a car in payment for $30 he foolishly lent Emmy’s ne’er-do-well brother Ziggy, utterly unaware that the vehicle is stolen. This is a delightful shambolic, knockabout sequence with striking slapstick and clever intrigues resulting in the entire cast behind bars at one time or another.

It should be remembered that the cops in these circumstances and during those tough days were always everybody’s enemy and fools unto themselves…

The second tale describes how Plushbottom treats Emmy and Egypt to a Florida holiday, unaware that he’s also paying for Moon and Mushmouth to join them on a brilliantly inventive and madcap road-trip…

Each adventure is delivered via the incredibly difficult method of one complete gag-strip per day combining to form an over-arching narrative… and they’re all wonderfully drawn and still funny. If you’re a fan of classic W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers and other giants of vintage screwball comedy you must see this stuff…

Moon Mullins was one of the key foundational strips in the development of both cartooning and graphic narrative: hugely influential, seditiously engaging, constantly entertaining and perfectly drawn. With such a wealth of brilliant material surely, it’s only a matter of time until some sensible publisher with a sense of history releases a definitive series of collected editions?
© 1929, 1931 The Chicago Tribune. All rights reserved.

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Gomer Goof volume 9: Good Golly, Mr. Goof!


By Franquin, with additional texts by Delporte, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-064-7 (PB Album/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

André Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd 1924 and began his career in a golden age of European cartooning. Beginning as assistant to Joseph “Jijé” Gillain on the strip Spirou, he inherited sole control of the keynote feature in 1946, and creating countless unforgettable new characters such as Fantasio and The Marsupilami.

Franquin – with Jijé, Morris (Lucky Luke) and Willy “Will” Maltaite (Tif et Tondu) – was a co-founder of a creative force of nature dubbed La bande des quatre – “the Gang of Four” – who revolutionised and reshaped Belgian comics with their prolific and engaging “Marcinelle school” graphic style.

Over two decades Franquin enlarged Spirou & Fantasio’s scope and horizons, until it became purely his as the strip evolved into the saga of globetrotting journalists. They visited exotic places, exposed crimes, explored the incredible and clashed with bizarre, exotic arch-enemies, but throughout, Fantasio remained a full-fledged – albeit entirely fictional – reporter for Le Journal de Spirou, regularly popping back to the office between assignments. Sadly, lurking there was an arrogant, accident-prone junior tasked with minor jobs and general dogs-bodying. He was Gaston Lagaffe – Franquin’s other immortal invention…

There’s a long tradition of comics personalising fictitiously back-office creatives and the arcane processes they indulge in, whether it’s Marvel’s Bullpen or DC Thomson’s lugubrious Editor and underlings at The Beano and Dandy – it’s a truly international practise. Somehow though after debuting in Le Journal de Spirou #985 (February 28th 1957), the affable conniving dimwit grew beyond control, to become one of the most popular and ubiquitous components of the comic, whether as a guest in Spirou’s adventures or his own comedy strips and faux reports on the editorial pages he was supposed to paste up…

Initial cameos in Spirou yarns and occasional asides on text pages featured a well-meaning foul-up and ostensible office gofer Gaston who lurked amidst the crowd of diligent toilers: a workshy slacker working (sic) as a gofer at Le Journal de Spirou’s head office. That scruffy bit-player eventually and inevitably shambled into his own star feature…

In terms of schtick and delivery, older readers will recognise favourite beats and elements of well-intentioned self-delusion as seen in Benny Hill or Jacques Tati and recognise recurring riffs from Some Mothers Do Have ’Em and Mr Bean. It’s slapstick, paralysing puns, infernal ingenuity and inspired invention, all to mug smugness, puncture pomposity, lampoon the status quoi? (there’s some of that punning there, see?) and ensure no good deed going noticed, rewarded or unpunished…

As previously stated, Gaston/Gomer obtains a regular salary – let’s not dignify what he does as “earning” a living – from Spirou’s editorial offices: reporting to top journalist Fantasio, or complicating the lives of office manager Léon Prunelle and the other staffers, all whilst effectively ignoring any tasks he’s paid to handle. These officially include page paste-up, posting (initially fragile) packages, collecting stuff inbound and editing readers’ letters (that’s the official reason fans’ requests and suggestions are never acknowledged or answered)…

Gomer is lazy, over-opinionated, ever-ravenous, impetuous, underfed, forgetful and eternally hungry, a passionate sports fan and animal lover, with his most manic moments all stemming from cutting work corners, stashing or consuming contraband nosh in the office or inventing the Next Big Thing.

This leads to constant clashes with colleagues and draws in notionally unaffiliated bystanders like traffic cop Longsnoot and fireman Captain Morwater, as well as any simple passers-by who should know by now to keep away from this street.

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

In 1973 Gaston – Gaffes, bévues et boulettes was the 11th collected album (albeit rejigged in 2018 to become the 16th European compilation). It became in 2022 Cinebook’s 9th translated compilation, once more offering non-stop all-Franquin comics gags in single page bursts with some script contributions from Yvan Delporte (The Smurfs, Steve Severin, Idées noires).

Our well-meaning, overconfident, overly-helpful know-it-all office hindrance invents more stuff making life unnecessarily dangerous and continues his pioneering and perilous attempts to befriend and boost fauna and flora alike, always improving the beleaguered modern mechanised world. As he concentrates on avoiding his job, Gomer’s big heart swells to nurture his animal pals. His adopted feral cat and black-headed gull still accompany illicit studio companions Cheese the mouse and goldfish Bubelle, but their hyperactive gluttonous presences generate much chaos, especially as they have learned to work together now. Not only must Gaston face starvation on a daily basis, but even the street’s shopkeepers find themselves in a silent war of nutrition attrition…

The dreamer also fosters the belief that he is a musical prodigy only awaiting discovery, but in a wave of Christmas strips everyone else remains violently unconvinced, as they are of his painful innovations in furniture design. Gomer’s chum and opposite number Jules-from-Smith’s-across-the-street is a like-minded soul and born accomplice, ever-eager to slope off for a chat, and a confirmed devotee of Gomer’s methods of passing the time whilst at work. He is always ready to help, as here when assisting in facing the out-of-control cactus from Aunt Hortense’s home again or joining his pal’s bike racing escapade…

Sport is important to the Goof, but rugby, soccer, basketball, billiards and – technically – ice skating all prove faithless and painful masters, but such is his passion, however, that Gomer is allowed to report on one peculiar particular match he played goal keeper in, as seen in illustrated text report ‘A Match to Remember’…

Despite resolute green credentials and leanings, Gomer is colour-blind to the problems his antiquated automobile cause, even after all his attempts to soup up the antique. Many strips focus on his doomed love affair with and manic efforts to modify and mollify the accursed motorised atrocity he calls his car. The decrepit, dilapidated Fiat 509 is more in need of merciful euthanasia than engineering interventions for countering its lethal road pollution and violent and unpredictable failures to function. Here, new tweaks certainly impress passing wildlife if not obsessive gendarme Longsnoot in splendidly daft road dalliances intermixed with repeated visits to his friends at the zoo. Hint: none of them wear clothes…

Also suffering a succession of painful reversals, benighted yet fanatical business bod De Mesmaeker turns up repeatedly here with ever more crucial contracts for poor office manager Prunelle to sign and for Gomer to accidentally shred or otherwise intercept and eradicate.

A new edifice of the Establishment to undergo the Goof effect is the local Customs officer who on more than one occasion deeply regrets asking if the geek in the poisonous car has anything to declare, although brief explorations of motorcycling and yoga don’t cause that much carnage relative to the general aura of weird science prototypes, arcane chemical concoctions and the in-house manic menagerie able to shred chairs and open sardine tins with a bash of the beak. At least Gomer understands why redecorating costs are so high and frequent…

Far better enjoyed than précised or described, these strips allowed Franquin and occasional co-scenarists/idea providers like Roba, Bibi, Michel, Delporte & Jidéhem (AKA Jean De Mesmaeker: just one of many in-joke analogues who populate the strip) to flex whimsical muscles, subversively sneak in some satirical support for their beliefs in pacifism, environmentalism and animal rights and sometimes even appear in person as does poor Raoul Bluecoats Cauvin…

These gags are sublime examples of all-ages comedy: wholesome, barbed, daft and incrementally funnier with every re-reading. Why haven’t you got your Goof on yet?
© Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 2009 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2022 Cinebook Ltd.

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Deadpool Epic Collection volume 2: Mission Improbable (1994-1997)


By Joe Kelly, Ed McGuiness, Larry Hama, Christopher Golden, Jeph Loeb, Adam Pollina, Aaron Lopresti, Bernard Chang, Ben Herrera, Adam Kubert, Fabio Laguna, Kevin Lau, Pete Woods, Shannon Denton & John Fang & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-427-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

With a long, LONG awaited cinematic combo clash finally headed our way this summer and in the year a certain Canadian Canucklehead’s turns 50, expect a few cashing-in style commendations and reviews. Here’s a handy starter package to set the ball rolling…

Bloodthirsty and stylish killers and mercenaries have long made for popular protagonists: so much so they even have their own movie subgenre. Deadpool is Wade Wilson (a barely disguised knockoff of Slade Wilson/Deathstroke the Terminator: get over it – DC did): a hired killer and survivor of genetics experiments that has left him a scarred, grotesque bundle of scabs and physical unpleasantries but practically invulnerable and capable of regenerating from any wound.

The wisecracking high-tech “merc with a mouth” was created by Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza, debuting in New Mutants #97, and apparently another product of the US/Canadian Weapon X project that had created Wolverine and so many other mutant and/or cyborg super-doers. He got his first shot at solo stardom with a couple of miniseries in 1993 (see previous volume) but it wasn’t until 1997 that he finally won his own title.

This collection spans cover-dates December 1994 – October 1997, compiling the increasingly funny, furiously fight-filled Deadpool #1-9 (plus issue minus 1) as well as Wolverine #88, X-Force #47 & 56 and combination release Daredevil & Deadpool Annual 1997, with excerpted material from Wolverine Annual ‘95: all-in-all a frenetic blend of light-hearted, surreal, frays, frolics and incisive, poignant relationship drama that is absolutely compulsive reading for dyed-in-the-wool superhero fans who might be feeling just a little jaded with four-colour overload. For the sake of completeness, also included are pertinent snippets from X-Force #46, 71, 73 & 76…

Preceded by an Introduction from Joe Kelly, the cartoon violence kicks off with the First Official MU Meeting of its most stabby stalwarts. ‘It’s D-D-Deadpool, Folks!’ (by Larry Hama, Adam Kubert, Fabio Laguna & Mark Farmer) was December 1994’s Wolverine #88 wherein Wade is hunting his former girlfriend Vanessa AKA Copycat. Sadly, he’s looking in the same apartment severely-wounded X-Man Logan is searching for traces of equally missing cyborg (and Alpha Flight ally) Garrison Kane who was at that time calling himself “Weapon X”. In minted Marvel Manner, the misunderstanding leads to major violence and mass healing factor deployment…

The fractious relationship was renewed in a short from Wolverine Annual ’95 wherein Chris Golden, Ben Herrera &Vince Russell reveal ‘What the Cat Dragged In’ when Wolverine -seeking a cure for dying comrade Maverick (infected with the Legacy Virus) – accidentally liberates Wilson from a bio-lab where evil Dr. Westergaard and Slayback hold him captive. The villains wants to duplicate healing factors and soon pay heavily for their lack of ethics…

A slice of X-Force #46 and full load from #47#s ‘Breakout’ (September & October 1995 by Jeph Loeb, Adam Pollina & Mark Pennington) focuses on Deadpool’s ill-advised relationship with X-teen Siryn (Theresa Maeve Rourke Cassidy) who against her better judgement calls on the smitten merc to free her from an extremely unsafe asylum: The Weissman Institute. That bloody rescue only confirms that it’s not only the lunatics in charge of this nuthatch and in the melee mutant forces clash and Wade takes up involuntary residence…

He’s stuck there for a very long time and only let loose in ‘Crazy for You’ (X-Force #56, July 1996, by Loeb, Pollina, Bud LaRosa & Mark Morales) when mind-wiped Theresa regains lost memories and goes back to get him with teammate Shatterstar in tow. Once the true mastermind is exposed everyone makes for the exits in advance of the next big change…

Preceded by a mini-gallery of Ed McGuinness covers, at last, inevitably Deadpool claimed his own title. A new era began with extra-sized spectacular ‘Hey, It’s Deadpool!’ as Joe Kelly, McGuiness, Nathan Massengill & Norman Lee re-introduced the mouthy maniac, his “office” and “co-workers” at the Hellhouse where he picked up his contracts and also afforded us a glimpse at his private life in San Francisco. Here he has a house and keeps an old, blind lady a permanent hostage. This was never going to be your average superhero title but the creators fully leaned into the outrageous…

The insane action part of the tale comes from the South Pole where the Canadian government has a super-secret gamma weapon project going: guarded by Alpha Flight strongman Sasquatch. Now somebody is paying good money to have it destroyed, but nothing goes quite to plan…

In #2 ‘Operation: Rescue Weasel or That Wacky Doctor’s Game!’ finds the slightly gamma-irradiated hitman still mooning over lost love Siryn (I cannot emphasise this enough: the barely legal mutant hottie from X-Force) when his only friend/tech support guy Weasel goes missing, snatched by ninjas working for super-villain Taskmaster – and just when Deadpool’s healing ability is on the fritz. Deadpool #3’s ‘Stumped! Or This Little Piggie Went… Hey! Where’s the Piggy?!’ ramps up the screwball comedy quotient as Siryn convinces the merciless merc to turn his life around, which he’ll try just as soon as he tortures and slowly kills the doctor who first experimented on him all those years ago…

The turnabout storyline continues in ‘Why Is It, to Save Me, I Must Kill You?’ featuring a hysterically harrowing segment where Wilson must get a blood sample from The Incredible Hulk, before concluding in #5’s ‘The Doctor is Skinned!’ …or The End of Our First Story Arc’, wherein T-Ray – his biggest rival at Hellhouse – moves to become the company “top gun”…

Another extended story arc opens with Deadpool #6 and ‘Man, Check Out the Head on that Chick!’ as the gun (sword, grenade, knife, garrotte, spoon…) for hire accepts a contract to spring a woman from a mental asylum. Of course it’s never cut-and-dried in Wade’s World, and said patient is guarded by distressingly peculiar villainess The Vamp (who old-timers will recall changes into a giant, hairy naked telepathic cave-MAN when provoked …cue poor taste jokes by the dozen…).

The saga is briefly paused for a looming publishing event. Flashback was a company-wide publishing event wherein Marvel Stars shared an untold tale from their past, with each issue that month being numbered # -1. Deadpool’s contribution was a darker than usual tale from Kelly, Aaron Lopresti & Rachel Dodson, focusing on para-dimensional expediter Zoe Culloden. She’s a behind the scenes manipulator who has been tweaking Wilson’s life for years. ‘Paradigm Lost’ looks at formative moments from the hitman’s history and possibly reveals the moment when – if ever – the manic murderer started to become a better man…

Back at the plot (and with extra inking support from Chris Lichtner), it just gets worse in ‘Typhoid… It Ain’t Just Fer Cattle Any More or Head Trips’ as that captive chick turns out to be murderous multiple personality psycho-killer Typhoid Mary. Her seductive mind-tricks ensnare Deadpool, dragging him into conflict against the Man Without Fear in a closing episode mad-housed in Daredevil & Deadpool Annual 1997’s ‘Whomsoever Fights Monsters…’

Sadly, Typhoid isn’t easy to get rid of and Deadpool #8 (Kelly, Pete Woods, McGuiness, Shannon Denton, John Fang, Massengill & Lee) sees her still making things difficult for Wade in ‘We Don’t Need another Hero…’ with the merc forced to confront true madness… or is that True Evil?

It’s a return to lighter, but certainly no less traumatic, fare for final complete entry ‘Ssshhhhhhhhhh! or Heroes Reburned’ (with ancillary pencils by Denton) as Deadpool reclaims his pre-eminent position at Hellhouse just in time to be suckered into a psychological ambush by utterly koo-koo villain Deathtrap – clearly another huge fan of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones’ greatest hits…

Wrapping up the storytelling portion are pertinent moments from X-Force #71, 73 & 76, as crafted by John Francis Moore, Pollina, Andy Smith, Mike S. Miller, Morales, Mark Prudeaux, Rich Perrota, Walden Wong, Scott Hanna & Sean Parsons. Here dangling plot threads are addressed as Wade makes his peace with Siryn (or thinks he does) and fellow merc Domino hires out to insane assassin Arcade… with big trouble brewing for a later date…

Slowing the pace and closing this particular red ledger is a flurry of bonus features beginning with ‘Deadpool Behind the Scenes’ by Matt Idelson & Chris Carroll: outlining the creative process via ‘The Story’, ‘The Cover’, ‘If at First You Don’t Succeed…’

Next are ‘Character Design’, excerpted letters pages ‘Deadlines’; ‘Behind the Scenes: Daredevil/Deadpool ‘97’ and Behind the Scenes: Deadpool #6, 7 & 9’ from concept to finished art, and closing with articles and poster art from promo magazine Marvel Visions #12, plus house ads, trading card art (18 images by 21 different artists), even more posters and covers to earlier collected graphic novels.

Although staying close to the X-franchise that spawned him, Deadpool was always a welcome counterpoint to the constant sturm und drang of his Marvel contemporaries: weird, wise-cracking, and profoundly absurd on a satisfyingly satirical level. Now he’s bigger than God – Graeco-Roman ones at least – this titanic tome could serve as a great reintroduction to comics for fans who thought they had outgrown the fights ‘n’ tights crowd and a must have bible for film fans looking to get their funnybook freak on.
© 2022 MARVEL.

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Deadpool Corps volumes 1 & 2: Pool-Pocalypse Now and You Say You Want a Revolution


By Victor Gischler, Rob Liefeld, Marat Mychaels, Adelso Corona, Jaime Mendoza, Cory Hamscher, Matt Yackey & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4825-8 (v1 TPB/Digital edition): 978-0-7851-4827-2 (v2 TPB/Digital edition)

These books include Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

Stylish killers and mercenaries craving more than money have long been popular fictional protagonists, and light-hearted, exuberant bloodbath comics always find an appreciative audience so in anticipation of a certain movie mash up let’s look again at what those tendencies can lead to…

Deadpool is Wade Wilson : an inveterate, unrepentant hired killer who survived cancer and rogue experiments that left him a grotesque bundle of scabs, scars and physical abnormalities as well as practically immortal, invulnerable and capable of regenerating from any wound.

He is also a certifiable loon…

The wisecracking high-tech “Merc with a Mouth” was created by Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza, for New Mutants #97: another product of the Weapon X project which created Wolverine, Garrison Kane and many more mutant/cyborg super-doers. Wade got his first shot at solo stardom with a brace of miniseries in 1993 (Deadpool: the Circle Chase & Sins of the Past) but it wasn’t until 1997 that he finally won his own title, which increasingly blended fourth-wall-busting absurdist humour (a la Ambush Bug and Warner Brothers cartoons) into the mix and secured his place in Marvel’s top rank.

Since then he has become one of Marvel’s iconic, nigh-inescapable characters, perennially undergoing radical rethinks, identity changes, reboots and more before always – inevitably – reverting and resetting to irascible, irreverent, intoxicating type in the end…

Here, following events too ludicrous to mention, Wilson has linked up with a quartet of alternate Deadpools from very different alternate Earths and formed the strangest team in Marvel’s history (and yes, that includes The Pet Avengers).

Collecting Deadpool Corps #1-6 (June-November 2010) manic mayhem begins in 6-part saga Pool-Pocalyse as ‘Disrespect Your Elders’ by Victor Gischler, penciller Liefeld and inker Adelso Corona sees new comrades Wilson, strikingly buxom Lady Deadpool, errant pre-teen killer bad boy Kidpool, floating masked cranium from Marvel’s Zombiverse Headpool and a costumed mutt answering to Dogpool (or sometimes “Cujo”) hired by an Elder of the Universe. Disturbingly, The Contemplator needs them to expunge a horrific threat to creation…

From a universe preceding our Big Bang one, an unstoppable force that absorbs intelligence has manifested. Thousands if not millions of planets have succumbed to the power of The Awareness, all their sentience and independence subsumed into a slavish nullity. Protected as they are by innate, intrinsic imbecility, Contemplator tells these Deadpools to go kill it…

In a bit of a dudgeon over their selection is another Elder. The Champion is the mightiest physical specimen in existence and feels the honour of saving universal intellect should be his, but although he’s no big brain either, he just isn’t in the Wilson squad’s league…

Whizzing across the cosmos in the super ship Bea Arthur with plenty of pit-stops in the skeeviest bars, cantinas and dives for information and violent recreation, the team soon confront and readily outwit their brawny rival…

Forced to take a different tack, Champion teams up with fellow Elder The Gardener to remove his insufferable rivals, but is utterly astounded by their response. Somehow elected their leader, “Championpool” readies himself for glorious combat before again finding himself humiliatingly outsmarted by the Terran morons and stranded on a dead-end world whilst they fly off to reap all the glory…

Tracking the threat involves going undercover, drinking, beating up lots of aliens, shopping and even colluding and cohabiting with legendary star smuggler The Broken Blade, but eventually they near the end of their quest…

More a superb succession of sharp gags than a plot, the adventure follows the Crazy Corps as they bumble and smart-mouth their way across the universe until finally confronting The Awareness and despite – or rather because of – their uniquely skewed mentalities, triumph in the strangest way possible…

Rewarded with wishing rings by the exultant Contemplator, the Silly Squad stay in space where this initial compilation concludes with the bombastic ballad of ‘The Blue Buccaneer’ (illustrated by Marat Mychaels & Jaime Mendoza).

Trading on their intergalactic reputation as badasses-for-hire, the Deadpool Corps accept a commission to wipe out a pirate band wrecking interstellar commerce, necessitating Lady Deadpool going undercover in the most shocking – to her at least – of disguises, uncovering the most unexpected of old acquaintances leading the perilous privateers…

Surreal, wickedly irreverent and excessively violent in the grand Bugs Bunny/Road Runner tradition, Deadpool Corps is frat boy foolish and frequently laugh-out-loud spit-take funny: a wonderfully antidote to cosmic angst and emotional Sturm und Drang of most contemporary Fights ‘n’ Tights comics.

The saga continues in sequel volume You Say You Want a Revolution with Wade still working in unison with four Deadpools from very different parallel Earths. The bizarre concatenation of circumstances resulting in Deadpool & Co saving creation from the sentience-sucking Awareness led to them scoring a starship and set of one-use only wishing rings. Now they’re having so much fun and don’t want to go home, but as card-carrying mercenaries these unlikely champions realise you can never have enough spending money either…

Collecting Deadpool Corps #7-12 (December 2010-May 2011 by Gischler, pencillers Liefeld & Mychaels with inkers Adelso Corona & Cory Hamscher) the mayhem continues with a wickedly cruel and potently justified spoof of blockbuster movie Avatar. Framed through insanely clever fiddling with the narrative technique of flashbacks, the story sees the carnival of killer fools accepting a huge commission from the vast and unscrupulous Omega Confederation.

Paradise planet Kagan 7 is a beautiful wonderland of flora and fauna inhabited – or possibly safeguarded – by deeply spiritual, jungle-dwelling, blue-skinned warrior-race the Krook. Sadly, to cost-effectively access the planet’s mineral wealth, the Confederation had to enslave the Krook and make them miners. Now the ungrateful sods are rebelling and demanding their planet back so the Omega Board would like somebody to go and quietly remove all the ringleaders so the peons can get back to digging up all that lovely platinum…

Taking out an alien legion of mercs hired by the rebels is no problem, but the natives themselves – especially the extremely hot daughter of their bombastic king – proves too much for the Crazy Corps. Soon they are desperately bargaining for their own lives…

Said deal boils down to the Deadpools switching sides and running the revolution against the Confederation. The murderers from a multiplicity of Earths have no qualms about turning turncoat: the problems only occur after Wade starts boinking mercilessly manipulative Princess Teela, who also convinces her highly sceptical dad that to survive as an independent free world, their unspoiled Arcadian Eden needs to modernise and commercialise…

Wade’s thinking something reserved and classy, properly in tune with the environment: Hospitals, swish eateries, a complex of skyscraper hotels, spa resorts and golf courses: y’know, kind of like Las Vegas in space…

As Deadpool commences a crass telethon campaign to raise galactic awareness of the Krooks’ plight, from across the universe a tsunami of tree-huggers converge on the endangered paradise to support the latest cause celébre. Elsewhere, the Omega Confederation board decide something nasty needs to be done to the contractors who took their cash and failed to deliver. On Kagan 7, so many donations come in that the Imperial Senate recognises the new world: inducting it into the Galactic Economic Community. The first part of that procedure is to set up a Central Bank of Krook and advance several thousand tons of gold so the latest member of the club can suitably set up a proper trading profile…

Wade is so stunned with loot-shock he doesn’t even notice when Omega death-squads start shooting. Luckily, old girlfriend/legendary arms-smuggler The Broken Blade arrives to save they day whilst stocking the newborn world’s defences with her latest super-ordinance.

She’s a little less than ecstatic when she learns Wade’s been making time with a plush and primitive princess…

The social evolution of the Krook isn’t going smoothly either. Whilst Teela ruthlessly embraces everything flashy, sparkly, new and civilised, dear old dad just wants his world back the way it was before all the outworlders came. Soon father and daughter are spearheading two separate armies in a savage civil war – beamed live into quintillions of homes all over known space – and the Deadpool Corps have picked opposing sides to help keep the slaughter quotient high.

All poor Wade can think about, however, is several thousand tons of gold just waiting to be salvaged and taken back to Earth… And in the background the Omega Confederation are still looking at ways to take back their mining operation and kill everybody who defied them…

Displaying with extreme clarity how the cure can be worse than the disease, the last hurrah of the Deadpool Corps blends a minimum of plot with an overabundance of edgy gags, snappy one-liners, shtick, shlock and slapstick as the trans-dimensional terrorisers bumble, fumble stumble and smart-mouth their way across the galaxy and over a mountain of oddly-shaped corpses until finally they at last go their separate ways…

Surreal, wickedly irreverent and excessively is perfect counterattack to po-faced heroic tales and holds the secret of keeping you amused until the next movie milestone comes on line.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Lucky Luke volume 23 – A Cure For The Daltons


By Morris & Goscinny (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-034-4 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Doughty, dashing and dependable cowboy “good guy” Lucky Luke is a rangy, implacably even-tempered do-gooder able to “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic Old West, having light-hearted adventures on his petulant and rather sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. For nearly 80 years, his exploits have made him one of the top-ranking comic characters in the world, generating upwards of 85 individual albums and spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, with sales thus far totalling upwards of 300 million in 30 languages. That renown has translated into a mountain of merchandise, toys, games, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions. No theme park yet, but you never know…

Brainchild of Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (AKA “Morris”) and officially first seen in Le Journal de Spirou’s seasonal Annual L’Almanach Spirou 1947, Luke actually sprang to (un-titled) laconic life in mid-1946 in the popular periodical before ambling into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880’ on December 7th of that year.

Morris was one of “la Bande des quatre”– The Gang of Four – also comprising Jijé, Will and Franquin: leading proponents of a fresh, loosely free-wheeling artistic style known as the “Marcinelle School”. The compelling cartoon vision came to dominate Le Journal de Spirou in aesthetic contention with the “Ligne Claire” style favoured by Hergé, E.P. Jacobs and other artists in rival publication Le Journal de Tintin. In 1948 said Gang (all but Will) visited America, meeting US creators and sightseeing. Morris stayed for six years, befriended René Goscinny, scored some work at newly-formed EC sensation Mad and constantly, copiously noted and sketched a swiftly disappearing Old West.

Working solo until 1955 (with early script assistance from his brother Louis De Bevere), Morris crafted nine albums – of which today’s was #7 – of affectionate sagebrush spoofery before teaming with old pal and fellow transatlantic émigré Goscinny. With him as regular wordsmith, Luke attained dizzying, legendary heights starting with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie) which began serialisation on August 25th 1955.

In 1967, the six-gun straight-shooter switched sides, joining Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote in La Diligence (The Stagecoach). Goscinny co-created 45 albums with Morris before his untimely death, whereupon Morris soldiered on both singly and with other collaborators. He went to the Last Roundup in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus numerous sidebar sagebrush sagas crafted with Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, all taking their own shot at the venerable vigilante.

Lucky Luke has a long history in Britain, first pseudonymously amusing and enthralling young readers in the late 1950s, syndicated to weekly anthology Film Fun. He rode back into comics-town in 1967 for comedy paper Giggle, using nom de plume Buck Bingo. And that’s not counting the numerous attempts to establish him as a book star, beginning in 1972 with Brockhampton Press and continuing via Knight Books, Hodder Dargaud UK, Ravette Books and Glo’Worm, until Cinebook finally found the right path in 2006.

As so often seen the taciturn trailblazer regularly interacts with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk in tales drawn from key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions, and interpretations. That principle is smartly utilised to sublime effect in A Cure For The Daltons with the motivating spark of foreign “alienist” being based on controversial actor Emil Jannings (Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz) who won the very first Best Actor Oscar before returning to Germany to become the official state-sanctioned face of Nazi cinema and drama…

Cinebook’s 23rd Lucky Luke album has a pretty contorted not to say convoluted history. Officially the 69th individual exploit of the frontier phenomenon, it originally ran from June 23rd to August 4th 1975 in general interest magazine Le Nouvel Observateur (#554-560) and re-serialised that same year in #1-13 of Nouveau Tintin (September 16th – December 9th) before being rushed out au continent before year’s end as 44th collected album Lucky Luke: la guérison des Dalton. In 2010 in was first published in English as A Cure For the Daltons.

The plot and premise are familiar ones as snobbish, argumentative American East Coast intellectuals – this time the New York Institute of Science – invite a distinguished European authority to try their civilised tricks and tactics on the rough-&-tumble barbarians of their own untamed western frontiers. This seductively voluble wise man is Doctor Otto Von Bratwurst, a pioneer of the cerebral therapy later proponents will call psychoanalysis and he claims all criminals suffer from an illness caused by past childhood trauma: one he can remedy by talking to them…

The claim causes uproar and the loudest dissenting voice is Professor Beauregard Applejack who thinks it’s all humbug and the cure for crime comes out of a gun. As tempers flare, Bratwurst gets his way and is sent west to test his notions on truly bad men…

Weeks later in Nothing Gulch, Texas, Lucky meets a train full of cheering passengers who have all enjoyed an emotional breakthrough. As the doctor casually – almost obsessively – cures drunks and bums of their painful pasts with little chats, the cowboy escorts the savant to a certain penitentiary where the worst of the worst western malefactors are contained…

This penitentiary’s clientele include Slaughterhouse Sam, Killer Katowski and Bloody Butch, but Von Bratwurst needs to prove himself against the most intractable specimens of humanity. Happily for him, the institution is second home to the appalling Dalton Brothers. Averell, Jack, William and especially devious, slyly psychotic, dominant diminutive brother Joe are the most vicious and feared outlaws in numerous states and territories and regularly escape to make trouble.

Of course the prison is primarily staffed by shiftless idiots – and guard dog Rin Tin Can: a pathetic pooch with delusions of grandeur and a mutt vain, lazy, overly-friendly, exceedingly dim and utterly loyal to absolutely everybody. The one thing he ain’t is good at his job. As Rantanplan – “dumbest dog in the West” and a wicked parody of pioneering cinema canine Rin-Tin-Tin – the pestilential pooch became an irregular co-star before eventually landing his own spin-off series…

Here, Luke’s arrival triggers a terrifying outburst in Joe and piques the head shrinker’s interest. He sees a challenge and huge potential regards and acclaim, whilst Joe sees a chance to get free, get rich and get Lucky Luke…

As talking therapy commences, Herr Doktor can’t help but spread dissent and destabilise everyone he speaks with – including Lucky – but his apparent success goes a step too far after convincing the warden to release the Daltons into his custody. Taking them out of the pen, Von Bratwurst’s treatment and testing of his subjects intensifies on an isolated farm, with our hero increasingly suspicious and agonising over what might happen. One unanticipated surprise is how eavesdropping affects pathetic pooch Rin Tin Can and helps sort his own daddy issues…

Even he isn’t prepared for the turnabout and transformation inspired by the candid confessions of the dastardly Daltons as a sudden epidemic of lawlessness explodes from Nothing Gulch to Patos Puddle, with Luke caught off guard and desperately seeking to sort out an unprecedented crisis. Thankfully he has a true wonder dog at his side…

Wry, savvy and cruelly sardonic, this potent poke at pop psychology and cod life-coaching blends straightforward slapstick with smart satire in another wildly entertaining all-ages confection by unparalleled comics masters. A Cure For The Daltons offers another enticing glimpse into a unique genre for readers who might have missed the romantic allure of the pervasive Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1975 by Goscinny & Morris. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2010 Cinebook Ltd.

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Erased – An Actor of Color’s Journey Through the Heyday of Hollywood


By Loo Hui Phang & Hugues Micol: translated by Edward Gauvin (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-681123-38-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect. If any such use of slurs, epithets, terms, treatment or attitudes offends you, you really should not be reading this book – or maybe you need it more than most.

Cinema was the great and dominant art form of the 20th century. There have been untold tons of film books (even I’ve got one coming out later this year!) and loads of graphic biographies about movie stars and Hollywood – so many, that humanity shares a communal/mutual vision capable of supporting more subversive dalliances with those mediums. Here’s a smart and powerful biographical account employing that common ground to probe some of the deeper social issues stemming from the dominance of the fabled tinsel town Dream Factory through eras where the playing fields were never ever equal…

In 2020, Laotian-born writer Loo Hui Phang (Bienvenue Au College, Delices De Vaches, The Smell of Starving Boys) and veteran French illustrator Hugues Micol (Tumultes, Les Parques, Agughia) collaborated on European reminiscence Black-Out, describing the unseen, forgotten and retroactively redacted career of a mixed race actor who was a contemporary film phenomenon before his political ideals and subversive acts against discriminatory movie making practises led to his contributions being excised from acceptable Hollywood history.

Employing a dreamlike semi surreal narrative delivered via symbolic tableaux and straight strip art storytelling, it told the compelling, inequitable and tragic tale of a gifted entertainer who could have been America’s first black film star…

In 1936 Los Angeles, rich, famous and utterly acceptable foreign immigrant Cary Grant meets a beautiful boy orphan at a boxing gym. Taken with his looks and attitude, the transplanted Londoner takes the kid under his wing. Soon the lad is playing those always anonymous minor “ethnic roles” in epic box office masterpieces like Lost Horizon and Gone With the Wind.

Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Lena Horne, Rita Hayworth and dozens of other starlets seek his company. He is schooled by David O. Selznick and gulled by Louis B. Mayer, and in later years Paul Robeson gives him life advice as he instinctively and unwisely makes enemies like John Wayne and Senator Joseph Mc Carthy…

A truly beautiful and visual striking man, Maximus Ohanzee Wildhorse AKA – and against his own wishes – “Maximus Wyld” always turned heads in cosmopolitan, covertly egalitarian, boldly bohemian but officially segregated Hollywood. Of course, that casually collegiate acceptance never made it into the roles or onto screens where culturally-conscripted stereotypes were peddled to ignorant, scared, easily riled John Q Public. Throughout his many appearances Wyld cleverly subverted the medium, using it to propound his views on a two-tier system and diminution of his peoples: a stance that led to his downfall and even greater erasure from historical view…

He is a proud, politically radical socialist enjoying every forbidden fruit accruing to his obvious physical attractions. In the new Sodom and Gomorrah, that means intimate entrée into the twilight world of homosexuality, decadence and hedonism, and those charms and willingness to listen also make him a constant true confidante and companion to Hollywood’s most contentiously defended commodity and obviously enslaved minority – lovely women…

The tale of his not-rise and inescapable fall touches on all areas of engrained traditional white privilege. Wyld is a human melting pot and walking (tap dancing, really) metaphor: exotic, universally attractive, unconventional but morally sound and sexually ambivalent. He stems from many races (plantation negro, First Nation/“red Indian”, Chinese) previously and still subjugated and used by the transported-but-aggressively dominant European culture.

Cloaked in shamanic mysticism and force, Max’s saga unfolds with him holding another secret. Professionally lauded, but officially uncredited he is inescapably in touch with his metaphorical ancestors – particularly a Comanche medicine man, a spirit stallion, coolies and slaves – all silently reminding him his career and livelihood are built and still thrive on the desecration and degradation of his ancestors…

A totemic figure – albeit shrouded in shadow and his own judiciously-kept council – Max played a vast range of non-white characters from house slaves to African tribesmen to Tibetans to painted savages, but was constantly denied honest moments in the spotlight, just as were all marginalised peoples of that period of US history. However, his unshakable dream of being the breakout actor of color in Tinseltown never really dies. It’s taken from him.

Or it would have been if he ever really existed…

This tale is a masterfully researched and constructed faux expose: a deviously fanciful conceit acting as if this poor guy really was there. A symbolic amalgamation of so many untold stories, Erased employs the facts of past ethnic experience to make a unifying myth: telling of an Invisible Man left out of history – like how many of today’s electronics won’t register people of colour because they were calibrated by white male Silicon Valley nerds…

The deeply moving personal journey ends with a powerful ‘Epilogue 1986’ as lingering heyday survivor Rita Hayworth ruminates on Max Wyld, after which the entire affair is awarded an effusive appraisal in an Afterword by author, publisher and critic Leland Cheuk.

The major themes, issues and delivery of the tale were previous covered in I An Not Your Negro author Raoul Peck’s erudite and challenging ‘Preface’, prior to ‘Maximus Wyld: A Bibliography’ providing a selected listing of all the major movies potentially graced by his presence in advance of the main event…

So sleekly, mesmerizingly effective is the result that Erased – An Actor of Color’s Journey Through the Heyday of Hollywood won Loo Hui Phang the Grand Prize for Excellence in Non-Fiction (publication & translation) as part of the Albertine Translation Foundation project, as well as garnering the Prix René Goscinny 2021 at Angoulême International Comics Festival.

This is a mighty and memorable missal of metafiction: one no mature reader of comics or lover of film can afford to miss. Just remember – it’s not real it’s only a non-movie of a movie…
© Futuroplis / 2020. All rights reserved. © 2024 NBM for the English translation.

Erased – An Actor of Color’s Journey Through the Heyday of Hollywood is published on 16th July 2024 and available for pre-order now. NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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The Thirteenth Floor vol. 01


By John Wagner, Alan Grant & José Ortiz & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN:978-1-78108-653-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Let’s pause for another shamble down memory lane for us oldsters whilst – perhaps – offering a fresh, untrodden path for younger fans of the fantastic in search of a typically quirky British comics experience.

This stunning paperback/eBook package is another knockout nostalgia-punch from Rebellion Studios’ superb and ever-expanding Treasury of British Comics, collecting the opening episodes of seminal shocker The Thirteenth Floor.

The strip debuted in the first issue of Scream and ran the distance, spanning all 15 issues from 24th March – 30th June 1984. It survived the comic’s premature cancelation and subsequent merger, continuing for a good long while in Eagle & Scream – with the remaining stories here taking us from 1st September 1984 to 13th April 1985. Although arguably the most popular – and certainly most lavishly illustrated – of Scream’s fearsome features, The Thirteenth Floor is actually the third strip to be gathered from that lost dark wellspring, preceded by Monster in 2016 and The Dracula File in 2017. Mayhap we’ll get to those in the fullness of time.

This book accomplishes its terrorising in stark, shocking monochrome but does include at the end a gallery of full-colour wraparound covers by series artist José Ortiz, and then-newcomer Brett Ewins, as well as introductory contextual notes from editor Ian Rimmer and a darkly dry history lesson from co-author Alan Grant. With regular writing partner John Wagner, he wrote all the electronically eldritch episodes as enigmatic “Ian Holland”.

Grant maintained the strip derived in part from his own time of residence on the 11th floor of a similar tower block and, having done my own time in a south London multi-story edifice, I can imagine why the sojourn was so memorable for him…

The series benefitted tremendously from the diligent mastery of its sole illustrator – sublime José Ortiz Moya: a veteran creator with a truly international pedigree. Born on September 1st 1932 in Cartagena in the Spanish region of Murcia, he started professional illustration early, after winning a comics competition in national comic Chicos. Whilst working on comics digest books and strips like Sigur el Vikingo, he gradually transitioned to the better-paying British market, beginning in 1962 by drawing newspaper strip Carolynn Baker for The Daily Express. Ortiz also worked on numerous kids’ comics here before making a wise move to America in 1974, and became a mainstay of Warren Publishing on horror magazines Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella.

In the early 1980s Ortiz returned to Spain, joining Leopold Sánchez, Manfred Sommer and Jordi Bernet in short-lived super-group cooperative Metropol, even as he worked with Antonio Segura on many long-lasting strips such as post-apocalyptic action-thriller Hombre.

Metropol’s collapse brought him back to British comics where he limned The Tower King and The House of Daemon for Eagle, strips including Rogue Trooper for 2000AD… and this macabre masterpiece…

Ortiz continued to excel, eventually settling in the Italian comics biz, with significant contributions to megastars Tex Willer, Ken Parker and Magico Vento. He died in Valencia on December 23rd 2013.

Because of the episodic nature of the material, originally delivered in sharp, spartan 4-page bursts (eventually dropping to a standard 3), I’m foregoing my usual self-indulgent and laborious waffle: leaving you with a précis of the theme and major landmarks…

A little bit into the future (as seen from the dystopian-yet-still-partially-civilised Britain of 1984), a council tower block is equipped with an experimental computer system to supervise all the building systems and services whilst simultaneously monitoring welfare and wellbeing of tenants. Maxwell Tower (one of the names we creative contributors waggishly called the offices of IPC’s comics division at that time) looms into the rather bleak urban night.

Within, however, novel computer-controlled systems assure everyone enjoys a happy life. The servers even manifest a congenial personality offering advice and a bit of company. Dubbed “Max” by tenants, it/he – just like $%*£!! Alexa or Siri today – increasingly inserts itself into every aspect of their lives through its constantly active monitoring systems. For their own good, naturally…

Because humans are fallible and quite silly, the architects fancifully never designated a 13th floor. Cognizant of human superstition, they designed their edifice to arbitrarily transit straight from 12 to 14. A human onsite controller/concierge/handyman lives in the penthouse. His name is Jerry and everything is just hunky-dory… until one day it isn’t…

The troubles apparently begin when a mother and son move in. They are trying to make a new start after losing the family breadwinner, but are plagued by a particularly persistent and violent debt-collector. After Mr. Kemp threatens the bereaved Henderson family, he stalks into an elevator and is later found on the ground floor, having suffered an agonising and fatal heart attack. Police write it off as an accident or misadventure, but they don’t know the truth.

Over-protective Max is far more powerful than anyone suspects and can turn his lifts into a terrifyingly realistic arena of terror, judgement and retribution. He calls it his “Thirteenth Floor”…

Over weeks and months, Max detects outrages and injustices and promptly subjects assorted vandals, hooligans, burglars, bailiffs, lawyers, conmen, extortionists, shoddy plumbers, shady workmen and even a clan of problem tenants preying on their own neighbours to various impossibly realistic terrors of the damned. Equally vexatious to the monitoring “mommy-dearest” machine is the useless bureaucrat from its own housing department who treats people like subhuman trash. Max devises a very special hell for him after the uncivil servant’s lazy blunders temporarily make one of Max’s families homeless…

Sometimes punishment experiences are enough to modify behaviour and ensure silence, but too often the end result is simply another death. It happens so frequently Max is reluctantly compelled to brainwash husky tenant Bert Runch into being his agent: a mindless drone hypnotically conditioned to be Max’s arms and legs, excising incriminating evidence – or bodies – and forgetting what he’s done.

Sadly, veteran policeman Sergeant Ingram suspects something is amiss and doggedly persists in returning to Maxwell Tower over and over again, ultimately forcing the coddling computer into precipitate action…

Moreover, as Max’s actions grow increasingly bold, Jerry starts suspecting something is wrong. Checking the hardware and finding a cracked Integrated Function Module, Jerry calls in council computer experts and Max must act quickly to preserve his unsanctioned intellectual autonomy. This triggers a cascade of uncontrollable events with Max taking ever-wilder risks, and results in the tower being stormed by an army of police determined to shut down the AI murder machine…

That’s where this moody masterpiece pauses with a great big To Be Continued…

These strip shockers are amongst the most memorable and enjoyable in British comics: smart, scary and rendered with stunning imagination and skill. Don’t believe for a moment the seemingly limited set-up restricts visual impact. The macabre punitive illusions of The Thirteenth Floor incorporate every possible monster from zombies and dinosaurs to hell itself and history’s greatest villains, whilst the settings range from desert islands to the infinities of time and space. This a superb sophisticated suspense, leavened with positively cathartic social commentary that is impossible to dismiss.
© 1984, 1985 & 2018 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Disciples of the Soil


By B. Mure (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-79-0 (TPB)

Most forms of fiction depend on strong, memorable characters and heaping helpings of tension, suspense and/or action to hold the attention. You need to be really good and quite brave to try anything outside such often-infantile parameters. B. Mure is that good.

The Bristol-based artist and storyteller’s other notable work to date is the remarkable webcomic Boy Comics. You should check that out too.

In 2018, they pulled together threads and ideas from years of planning, dreaming and doodling and began building an epic fantasy saga. It started with Original Graphic Novel Ismyre, introducing an ancient city of song and tired wonders, unsettled by magical eco-terrorists and weaponised flora. Here a sculptor’s works inspired and moved the strangest of folk. This magical city was entering a period of “interesting times”…

It was followed by Terrible Means, which seemingly had little to do with the protagonists of the first, instead taking readers back to a time when wizardly green rebels Niklas, Henriett and Emlyn were simply researchers whose studies divined a growing imbalance in the natural ecosystem…

The Tower in the Sea focused on a different point in time, providing fresh insights to what was shaping up to be something vast and expansively multi-layered. Contemporary Ismyre was more dictatorship than civil metropolis, and for years gifted children had been spirited away from it by a clique of outlaw magicians: taken to a hidden island to be schooled in magical arts. That haven of learning was not proof against intrigue and plots, however, and now unscholarly events were upsetting lots of apple carts…

Fourth volume Methods of Dyeing returned us to the titular  Big City, where educational themes and macabre mysteries stoked potential scandal at staid, stolid Ismyre University. Mere moments before delivery of a much heralded lecture, visiting botanist, textile expert and master dyer Professor Detlef (of rival city-state Belsithan) was murdered. The event manifested the usual journalistic scavengers, but both the Chief of Police and University Dean were suspiciously keen to shut down sordid speculation – and all enquiries – as rapidly as possible.

That prospect was ended by a forceful Belsithan detective assuming jurisdiction and making herself extremely unwelcome in every stratum of college and city life. Her diligent, persistent investigations uncovered many secrets and suspects plus a possible motive: Detlef had accommodated beliefs of the Eco-anarchist movement that was increasingly disrupting Ismyre’s economy and politics…

Now fifth fragment Disciples of the Soil proves again how greed and arrogance lead to disaster, highlighting the perils of unchecked progress, profit motives and how disappointment in those who govern us only lasts until patience runs out.

Commerce has always been embedded in Ismyre’s bones and where there’s money there will always be politics, power and disparity – and those who oppose the abuses that come with them. The city-state is (more or less) at a stage of evolution mirroring our own industrial revolution. There is a thriving airship transport industry utilising lighter than air principles and thaumaturgy, but now a new, purely mechanistic innovation is ready to make major waves. The Prime Minister personally favours a railway service but faces dogged opposition from everywhere on almost every aspect of the iron monstrosity.

In the wilds south of the city, Engineer Ernst, his assistant Frankie and their dedicated crew have their own problems: everything from the shape of the wheels – or if there should even BE wheels! – to the metal in the tracks gouging up the countryside. The labour force are also acting up: lazy, greedily and stubbornly refusing to dig where they’re told for what they’re paid. That last objection might have some serious metaphysics backing it up however, since the regions around Ismyre are still decidedly subject to magical forces and adjacent – if not actually home – to supernatural forces that don’t like being disturbed…

With wizards, workers, gardeners, farmers, educators, naturalists, eco-terrorists and even the nuns of the Sisters of Our Lady Who Slumbers Under the Earth all opposed to the scheme, it’s no surprise the city streets are packed with protesters marching and making a fuss. With reporters poised and hungry to criticise, lampoon and embarrass her, a riot breaks out during a poorly organised press conference, and the PM sends in heavy-handed police, triggering true trouble…

Already angry at the mismanaged economy, low wages and blatant corruption at the heart of government, the plebs are spoiling for a fight and in no mood to tolerate another wasteful public purse vanity project. They kick back hard against police suppression, prompting ordinary citizen-with-a past Faustine and her kids Bram and Lou to visit old friends at the nunnery at the heart of the resistance. Inevitably, all are drawn into plans for a mass protest march that – thanks to another overreaction and “kettling” by security forces – results in terror and tragedy…

… And south of the city, the engineers and overseers finally push the navvies too far and rouse something old, powerful, much worshipped and extremely annoyed…

To Be Continued…

Floridly rendered in pencils and watercolour washes and presaged by a handy chart of ‘The Players’ Disciples of the Soil is an anthropomorphic treasure, set in a luscious, compellingly realised world of wonder. The word “tapestry” is one much overused but really fits the gradual unpicking of layers comprising this imagined history: beautiful images and strands cleverly woven together in small self-contained stories unfolding wherever you start from, yet all part of a greater whole, and promising more and clearer revelations ahead. You must read all these books but (so far) it really doesn’t matter where you start from. So it might as well be here, right?
© B. Mure 2024. All rights reserved.

Disciples of the Soil will be released on July 9th 2024 and is available for pre-order now.

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John Constantine, Hellblazer volume 1: Original Sins


By Jamie Delano, Rick Veitch, John Ridgway, Alfredo Alcala, Tom Mandrake, Brett Ewins, Jim McCarthy & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3006-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Originally created by Alan Moore during his groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing, mercurial modern wizard John Constantine is a dissolute chancer who plays with magic like an addict but on his own terms for his own ends. He is not a hero. He is not a nice person. Sometimes though, he’s all there is between us and the void…

Given his own series by popular demand, Constantine premiered at the height of Thatcherite Barbarism in Britain, during the dying days of Reaganite Atrocity in the US, to become a founding father of DC’s adult-oriented Vertigo imprint. Hard to imagine back then that we’d one day be looking back with any sense of fond nostalgia, but there you go…

This collection collects John Constantine, Hellblazer #1-9 plus crossover chapters from Swamp Thing #76-77; cumulatively spanning January – October 1988 at what was the beginning of a renaissance in comic book horror that continues to this day.

Back in 1987 Creative Arts and Liberal Sentiments were dirty words in many quarters and the readership of Vertigo was pretty easy to profile. British scripter Jamie Delano began the series with a relatively safe horror-comic plot about an escaped hunger demon, introducing us to Constantine’s unpleasant nature and odd acquaintances – such as Papa Midnite – in a tale of infernal possession and modern voodoo, but even then, discriminating fans were aware of a welcome anti-establishment political line and metaphorical underpinnings.

‘Hunger’ and ‘A Feast of Friends’ also established another vital fact. Anyone who got too close to John Constantine tended to end very badly, very quickly…

‘Going for It’ successfully equated Conservative Britain with Hell (no change there either, obviously), with demons trading souls on their own stock market and Yuppies getting ahead in the rat race by selling short. Set on Election Day 1987, this potent pastiche never loses sight of its goal to entertain, whilst making telling points about humanity, individuality and society.

Constantine’s cousin Gemma and tantalising splinters of his Liverpool childhood are revealed in ‘Waiting for the Man’: a tale of abduction and ghosts introducing disturbing Christian fundamentalists The Resurrection Crusade, and a mysterious woman known only as Zed.

America is once again the focus of terror in ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ as the Vietnam war breaks out again in rural Iowa, before we pop back to Blighty for ‘Extreme Prejudice’.

Skinheads, racism demons and more abound as Delano cannily joins up lots of previously unconnected dots to reveal a giant storyline in the making. The Damnation Army are up to something, but nobody knows who they are. Now everything’s going bad and somehow Zed and the Resurrection Crusade are at the heart of it all…

Brett Ewins & Jim McCarthy briefly replaced magnificent regular illustrator John Ridgway for the first 3 pages of ‘Ghost in the Machine’, before the beautifully restrained, poignantly humanistic stylism returns with Constantine further unravelling the Damnation plot by catching up with the Coming Thing: the cutting edge mysticism dubbed cyber-shamanism.

In Delano’s world the edges between science and magic aren’t blurred – they simply don’t exist…

Alfredo Alcala signs on as inker with ‘Intensive Care’ and the drama ramps up to a full gallop as the plans of both Crusade and Army are revealed, with the value and purpose of Zed finally exposed. All Constantine can do in response is make the first of many bad bargains with Hell…

We then take a stranger turn due to the nature of periodical publishing. The storyline in Hellblazer #1-8 ran contiguously, before converging with Swamp Thing wherein the wizard reluctantly lends his physical body to the planetary plant elemental so that the monster can impregnate its human girlfriend Abigail Arcane. Thus, in the ninth issue, there’s a kind of dissolute holding pattern in play as the weary wizard confronts ghosts of all the people he’s gotten killed to allow all the pieces to be suitably arranged. ‘Shot to Hell’ (Delano, Ridgway & Alcala) then neatly segues into Swamp Thing #76-77 for the conception of a new messiah. Sort of.

Immediately post-Alan Moore, Swamp Thing comics were sidelined by many fans. However they soon realised successor (writer-artist) Rick Veitch – aided by moody inker Alcala – was producing a stunning sequence of mini-classics well worthy of serious scrutiny. The issues built on Moore’s cerebral, visceral writing as the world’s plant elemental became increasingly involved with ecological matters.

Having decided to “retire”, Swamp Thing (an anthropomorphic plant imprinted with the personality and mind of murdered biologist Alec Holland) was charged by his ephemeral overlords in “The Green” with facilitating the creation of his/its successor. However, the ancient and agonising process was contaminated by consecutive failures and false starts, leading to a horrendous series of abortive creatures and a potentially catastrophic Synchronicity Maelstrom.

Alec, “wife” Abigail and chillingly charismatic Constantine are eventually compelled to combine forces – and some body-fluids – in ‘L’Adoration de la Terre’ (ST #76, by Veitch & Alcala) – to conceive a solution before the resultant chaos-storm destroys the Earth.

The process is not with risk – or embarrassment – but the affair is brought to a successful conclusion in ‘Infernal Tringles’ (Swamp Thing #77, Tom Mandrake pencilling) and with terrestrial order restored, the participants go their separate ways… but events have affected them all in ways that will have terrible repercussions in months and years to come…

Rounding out this so-sophisticated spook-fest is an original covers gallery by Dave McKean and John Totleben, plus an in-world exposé of Constantine in ‘Faces on the Street’ by faux journalist Satchmo Hawkins. Also included are other relics of the antihero’s sordid past such as the lyrics from Venus of the hardsell – a single from John’s aberrant punk band mucous membrane – and extracts from the magician’s medical file whilst he was held in Ravenscar Secure Psychiatric Facility…

Delivered by creators capable and satiric, but still wedded to the basic tenets of their craft, these superb examples of horror fiction – inextricably linking politics, religion, human nature and sheer bloody-mindedness as the root cause of all ills – are still powerfully engaging. Lovingly constructed, they make a truly abominable character seem an admirable force for our survival. The art is clear, understated and subtly subversive while the slyly witty, innovative stories jangle at the subconscious with scratchy edginess.

This is a book no fear-fan should be without.
© 1987, 1988, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.