Category: School Stories

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Jinx volume 1


By J. Torres, Rick Burchett & Terry Austin (Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-93697-500-6 (HC/Digital edition) 978-1-87979-491-7 (PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Despite tremendous advances in the last couple of decades, for most people, when we say comic books, thoughts STILL either turn to outrageously buff men and women in garish tights or leather hitting each other and lobbing cars about, or stark, nihilistic crime, horror or science fiction sagas aimed at an extremely mature and sophisticated readership of already-confirmed fans. For mainstream American comics that remains the norm. Over the years though (and throughout the rest of the world long ago), other forms and genres continue to wax and wane.

One US company steadfastly that held its ground against the tide for decades – supported by a thriving spin-off TV and movie franchise – was a teen-comedy powerhouse which created a genre through the exploits of carrot-topped Archie Andrews and the two girls he could never choose between – Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge. For so many years, other companies largely ignored the fact that girls read comics too and, in their slavish pursuit of the spandex dollar, lost half their potential audience. Girls simply found other ways to amuse themselves until, in the 1990s, the rise of manga painfully proved to comics publishers what Archie Comics had always known.

Ever since that pivotal moment Editors have attempted to recapture that vast missing market: creating many worthy titles and even entire imprints dedicated to material for teen/young adult audiences (since not all boys thrive on a steady diet of cosmic punch-ups and vengeful vigilantes) which had embraced European classics like Tintin and Asterix, manga material, momentous comics epics like Maus and Persepolis or abundant and prolific prose serials which produced a never-ending wave of passionate fans for everything from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian to Twilight to The Hunger Games.

Archie thrived by never abandoning its female readership and by constant reinvention of its core characters, seamlessly adapting to the changing world outside its bright, flimsy (or digitally unbreakable) pages: shamelessly co-opting pop music, youth culture and fashion trends into its infallible mix of slapstick and romance. Each and every social revolution has been painlessly assimilated into the mix (the company has managed to confront a number of major issues affecting the young in a manner both even-handed and tasteful over the years), and the constant addition of timely characters such as African-American Chuck and his girlfriend Nancy, fashion-diva Ginger, Hispanic couple Frankie & Maria and a host of others – like over-privileged home-wrecker-in-waiting Cheryl Blossom – all contributed to a broad and refreshingly broad-minded scenario. They also lead in non-sensationalised interracial romances, and in 2010 Archie jumped the final hurdle for a family-entertainment medium with the rapturously well-received introduction of Kevin Keller; an openly gay and proud young man who was a clear-headed advocate capably tackling and dismantling the last major taboo in mainstream kids’ comics.

Where once cheap, prolific and ubiquitous, comics magazines in the 21st century are extremely cost-intensive and manufactured for a highly specific – but dwindling – niche market. Moreover the improbably beguiling and bombastic genres that originally fed and nurtured comic books were increasingly being supplanted by TV, movies and assorted interactive games media.

Happily, old-school prose publishers and the graphic novel industry have different business models and more sustainable long-term goals, so the magazine makers’ surrender has been turned into a burgeoning victory, as solid and reassuringly sturdy Comics-as-Books still buck the slowly perishing pamphlet/papers trend. Publishers like Archie…

Back then Jinx was another barely-noticed landmark which saw one of the company’s venerable and long-lived child-stars given a stunning makeover and refit courtesy of a multi award-winning creative team. Writer J. Torres (Teen Titans Go!, Alison Dare, Degrassi: the Next Generation, Days Like This, Lola – a Ghost Story and others) in conjunction with celebrated artists Rick Burchett (Batman Adventures, American Flagg!, Blackhawk, Black Hood) & Terry Austin (X-Men, Superman, Batman, Cloak and Dagger) are responsible for turning adorable but venerable 1950’s 6-year old tomboy Li’l Jinx into a genuine icon of, if not role-model for, modern teenaged girls in a style and manner at once astonishingly accessible and classically captivating.

If you qualify as an Ancient One like me, you might be familiar with precocious, feisty Li’l Jinx who debuted in Pep Comics #62 (cover-dated July 1947). Created by Joe Edwards, she debuted as the publisher began dropping superheroes such as The Shield and Black Hood to specialise in kid-friendly humour features. Over the coming decades she appeared in her own title, as well as Li’l Jinx Giant Laugh-Out and assorted anthologies including Pep and Archie Giant Series Magazine. Like auteur Edwards’ own son, her birthday was on Halloween and the writer/artist put much of himself into the strip. A boisterous, basically decent, sports-loving, mischievous tyke (in the manner of our Minnie the Minx), when not romping, cavorting and tussling with other kid pals Gigi, Greg, Charley Hawse, Russ, Roz and Mort the Worry Wart, Jinx almost exclusively interacted with her long-suffering dad Hap Holliday.

Mother was seldom seen. The kid’s Christian name is lost to history: apparently so screamingly embarrassing in-world that to utter it was to invite battered ear drums and mangled limbs…

Li’l Jinx faded away gradually during the 1980s as fashionista-teenagers and Mutant Turtles supplanted pesky kid characters in Archie’s increasingly “young adult” oriented stable. However, Jinx Holliday was revived and given a thorough 21st century upgrade for a new serial in Life With Archie (#7-11, March-June 2011): a growing girl just starting big school. The former tomboy hadn’t lost all her rough edges though…

This initial volume collects the serialised story of her beginning the inescapable if deplorable process of becoming responsible – with all the scary changes that entails. After a handy ‘Cast of Jinx’ page, the dramatic comedy opens with 4-part tale ‘Little Jinx Grows up’ – as serialised in anthology title Life With Archie, with the nervous 14-year old Californian kid starting over at Rose Valley High School where she immediately falls foul of draconian martinet Principal Mr. Vernon. At least many of her oldest friends are starting too, but they all seem so changed and grown up since summer vacation…

As all attendees settle in, Jinx is oblivious to the fact that more than one of the boys she used to wrestle and play football with now considers – and treats – her very differently. She’s just starting to hate the place and its stupid rules when Greg points out the final straw: Freshman Baseball – in fact all her favourite sports – are for boys only. Former child model Gigi is typically smug about it, hinting again that it’s time Jinx began acting like a girl, but that only provokes the incensed and outraged tomboy to break another rule…

Everybody is talking about Jinx after she most publicly signs up for Football Tryouts, and neither a barracking from Mr. Vernon or some heavy-handed bullying of Greg by the senior Football squad can change her mind.

The Principal thinks he has the final word after making Jinx take a permission slip home to her dad, but after Hap Holliday absolutely refuses to let his little girl get crippled by teenaged Neanderthals, Jinx simple forges his signature…

Tryouts are a disaster, but at least Greg is honestly trying to help her. Surly Charley, however, delivers a tackle that results in her being stretchered off, and when dad is called to school all hell breaks loose. While she’s grounded and recovering, BFF Roz starts dropping hints about Greg and romance, promptly going into snoopy overdrive when a mystery caller leaves a large bouquet of flowers…

For the first time Jinx realises High School is just one big stew of frustrated hormones which only add to her worries. So preoccupied is she that, when Greg timidly asks her to a dance, she doesn’t realise what he’s saying and shoots him down without even noticing. The mystery flower-sender – covertly watching – does, however, and seethes…

Flustered, confused and determined to end the turmoil in her head, Jinx ambushes and pre-emptively kisses Greg, but the result is something neither of them nor their secret stalker expected…

The grand gesture completely destabilises Jinx who goes into a spiral of angry depression and tetchy acting-up. Baffled Hap is hopeless to cope, and – with Halloween approaching – throws himself into organising her birthday costume party: a tradition they’ve enjoyed since she was a toddler. He has no idea how much his little girl has changed and that the prospect of a party sounds like torture to her. And thus the scene is set for a showdown nobody will ever forget…

All dramatic foreboding aside, this clever, warm tale ends well and promises much more for the future. Smart, witty and intoxicatingly engaging, Jinx is a superb example of what can be accomplished in comics if you’re prepared to portray modern kids on their terms and address their issues and concerns.

Without ever resorting to overblown soap melodrama or angst-ridden teen clichés, Torres delivers a believable cast of young friends who aren’t stupid or selfish, but simply seeking to find their own tentative ways to maturity. The art by Burchett & Austin is semi-realistic and astoundingly effective.

This terrific turbulent tome includes bonus features such as a ‘Football Pinup’, J. Torres’ thoughts and commentary on the story as described in ‘The Voice of Jinx’ plus a fascinating, picture-packed peek behind the scenes in ‘The Concept Art of Jinx’. More production secrets are revealed by Editor Suzannah Rowntree, describing the project’s conception and creation in ‘The Story of Teen Jinx’, and there’s even a smart selection of one-page Short Comics treats to wrap up the fun.

‘Fitting In’, ‘It’s Complicated’, ‘Frenemy of the State’, ‘The Dating Game’ and ‘Chat Fight’ combine to prove that although they might be growing up, the cast are still kids at heart…

Compellingly funny, gently heart-warming and totally absorbingly, this book will resonate with kids and parents, offering genuine human interactions rather than repetitively manufactured atom-powered fistfights to hold your attention. It especially gives women a solid reason to give comics another try.

Sheer exuberant fun; perfectly crafted and still utterly irresistible nearly a generation later…
© 2012 Archie Comics Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Henry Speaks for Himself


By John J. Liney, edited by David Tosh (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-733-8 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Created by veteran cartoonist Carl Anderson as a silent, pantomimic gag-panel first seen on March 19th 1932, Henry was one of the most venerated and long-lived of US newspaper comics strips. The feature was developed for The Saturday Evening Post before being picked up by legendary strip advocate and proponent William Randolph Hearst. He brought it and the then-69-year-old Anderson to his King Features Syndicate in 1934 after which the first comic strip appeared on December 17th, with a full colour Sunday half-page following on March 10th 1935. The Saturday Evening Post had to content and console itself with a new feature entitled Little Lulu by Marjorie Henderson Buell. I wonder how that worked out?

Being a man of advanced years, Anderson employed Don Trachte to assist with the Sundays whilst John J. Liney performed the same role for the Monday to Saturday black and white iteration. This continued until 1942 when arthritis forced Anderson to retire. Trachte and Liney became de facto creators of the feature – although the originator’s name remained on the masthead for the next twenty years.

Liney (1912-1982) had started as a staff cartoonist on the Philadelphia Evening Ledger and began selling gag ideas to Anderson in 1936 before landing the full-time assistant’s job. After assuming the illustrator’s role in 1942, Liney took over sole writing responsibilities for the daily in 1945, continuing Henry until 1979 when he finally retired. His own name had been adorning the strip since 1970. He was also a passionate teacher and educator on comics and cartooning, with a position at Temple University. Nevertheless, he still found time to write and draw a comic book iteration of the mute and merry masterpiece from 1946 to 1961.

Major licensing monolith Western Publishing/Dell Comics had been successfully producing comic books starring animation characters, film icons and strip heroes since the mid-1930s, and when they launched their Henry – first in Four Color Comics #122 and #155 (October 1946 and July 1947) prior to his own 65 issue title from January 1948 – they successfully argued for a radical change in the boy’s make-up.

The newspaper strip had always been a timeless, nostalgia-fuelled, happily humour-heavy panoply of gags and slapstick situations, wherein the quite frankly weird-looking little bald kid romped and pranked in complete silence, with superb cartooning delivering all the communication nuance its vast international audience needed.

Now though, with children seen as sole consumers, the powers-that-be felt that little lad should be able to speak and make himself understood. Liney easily rose to the challenge and produced a sublime run of jolly, wild, weird if not often utterly surreal, endlessly inventive adventures – many of which approached stream-of-consciousness progressions that perfectly captured the ephemeral nature of kids’ concentration. He also introduced a captivating supporting cast to augment the boy, and his appealingly unattractive, forthright and two-fisted inamorata Henrietta.

This splendid collection gathers some of the very best longer tales from the comic book run in the resplendent flat primary colours that are so evocative of simpler days, beginning after a heartfelt reminiscence in the Foreword by Kim Deitch. Another pause before the comics commence comes from Editor, compiler and devotee David Tosh who outlines the history of the character and his creators in ‘Henry – the Funniest Living American’. He then goes on to explain ‘The Dell Years’ before offering some informative ‘Notes on the Stories’.

The vivid viewing portion of this collection is liberally augmented with stunning cover reproductions; all impressively embracing to the quiet lad’s silent comedy roots, a brace of which precede a beautiful double-page spread detailing the vast and varied cast Liney added to the mix. Then, from #7 (June, 1949), we discover ‘Henry is Thinking Out Loud!’ as the kid keeps his non-existent mouth shut and explores the medium of first person narrative, inner monologues and thought-balloons, all whilst getting into mischief seeking odd jobs to do…

October’s edition, Henry #9, introduced good-natured, cool but increasingly put-upon Officer Yako in ‘You Can’t Beat the Man on the Beat!’ via an escalating succession of brushes with the law, bullies, prospective clients… and darling Henrietta.

That bald boy still hadn’t actually uttered a sound, but by #14 (August 1950) had found his voice, much to the amusement of his layabout Uncle (rather suspiciously, he never had a name) who eavesdropped on the assorted kids comparing their ‘Funny Dreams’. After a quartet of covers, Henry #16 (December 1950) finds Liney playing with words as ‘Rhyme Without Reason’ reveals the entire cast afflicted with doggerel, meter, couplets and all forms poetic, with Liney even drawing himself into the madcap procession of japes and jests, whilst ‘A Slice of Ham’  #22, December 1951) cleverly riffs on Henry’s ambitions to impress Henrietta by becoming an actor. This yarn offers a wealth of Liney caricatures featuring screen immortals such as Chaplin, Gable, Sinatra and more, whilst introducing a potential rival contender for Henry’s affections in cousin Gilda…

In #24 (April 1952) Henry ‘Peeks into the Future’ by outrageously pondering on his possible careers as an adult, before plunging into Flintstone or Alley Oop territory – complete with cave city and dinosaurs – as a result of studying too hard for a history test in ‘The Stone Age Story’ from #29, February 1953.

After four more clever funny covers, growing up again features heavily with ‘Choosing Your Career’ (#45, March 1956) as the little fool road-tests a job as a home-made cab driver and accidentally slips into law enforcement by capturing a bandit. Henry #48 (December 1956) sees him attend a fancy dress party and become ‘The Boy in the Iron Mask’, before this completely charming compilation closes by reprising that sojourn in the Stone Age ‘Rock and Roll’ (#49 March 1957). Concluding the comedy capers is fond personal reminiscence ‘Henry and Me’ by David Tosh; a man justifiably delighted to be able to share his passion with us and hopefully proud that this book gloriously recaptures some of the simple straightforward sheer joy that could be found in comicbooks of yore.

Henry Speaks for Himself is fun, frolicsome and fabulously captivating all-ages cartooning that will enthral anyone with kids or who has the soul of one.
Henry Speaks for Himself © 2014 Fantagraphics Books Inc. All comics and drawings © 2014 King Features, Inc. All other material © its respective creators. This book was produced in cooperation with Heritage Auctions.

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The Terror of St Trinian’s and Other Drawings


By Ronald Searle with Geoffrey Willans, Timothy Shy & others (Penguin Modern Classics)
ISBN: 978-0-141-91285-1 (PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Time for another Birthday Briefing as we exploit our month mostly mandated to mulling over women in and of comics – by celebrating the achievements of another old white guy. However this is truly one of the good ones and absolutely a true pioneer in male/female power relationships…

Britain has a fantastic and enviable history and tradition of excellence in the arts of graphic narrative and cartooning. Whether telling a complete story or simply making a point, much of the modern world’s most innovative, inspirational and trenchantly acerbic drawing has come from British pens powered by British hearts and minds.

If you’re quietly humming Rule Britannia or Jerusalem right now, or heavy breathing and fingering a flag, pack it in. This is not the tone we want. I’m just stating a few facts.

Ronald William Fordham Searle was one of a very gifted few (in modern times I’d number Ken Reid, Leo Baxendale, Murray Ball and Hunt Emerson among them) who can actually draw funny lines. No matter how little or how much they need to say, they can imbue the merest blot or scratch of ink with character, intent and wicked, wicked will.

Born in Cambridge on March 3rd 1920, Searle studied at Cambridge School of Art before enlisting in the Royal Engineers when WWII broke out. When he was captured by the Japanese in 1942 he ended up in the infamous Changi Prison. The second St Trinian’s cartoon was drawn in that hell-hole in 1944 and it survived – along with his incredible war sketches – to see print once peace broke out. Searle was a slave-worker on the Siam-Burma Railroad (a story for another time and place) and risked his life daily both by making pictures and by keeping them.

He became a jobbing freelance cartoonist when he got home, acerbically detailing British life. Perhaps that why he moved to France in 1961 and became a globe-girdling citizen of the wider world. By the 1980s he was established – everywhere but here – as not only a cartoonist and satirist but as a film-maker, sculptor, designer, travel-writer and crafter of fascinating reportage. This man was a capital “A” artist in the manner of Picasso or Hockney and,  Scarfe and Steadman notwithstanding, he was the last great British commentator to use cartooning and caricature as weapons of social change in the caustic manner of his heroes Hogarth, Gillray, Rowlandson, Cruikshank and the rest.

This magnificent volume includes selections from assorted previous collections and includes political illustration, social commentary, arcanely mordant whimsy and some of the most surreal, sardonic and grotesque funny pictures of the 20th century. I won’t spend too much time on his other achievements as his work should be seen and his thoughts and opinions should be understood in his chosen language: Art. At least, he still has enough fans to fill the internet with all the information you could need, so go search-engining after you read this if you wish. You’ll probably be offered a digital copy of this archive there. Do yourself a big favour and buy it…

Why his creations are so under-appreciated I do not know. Why this book is physically out of print: ditto. That he will remain a relative unknown despite the clutch of movies about his St Trinian’s girls… Not if I can help it…

Anyone who considers themselves a devotee of the arts of graphic narrative should know of Searle’s work, even if not necessarily love – although how could you not? Just be aware of the tremendous debt we all owe to his vision, dedication and gifts.

This compilation traces the rise of his star following his POW years. Post-war, his mordantly funny cartoons appeared in venues such as Punch, Lilliput and The Sunday Express, and in hugely successful collections like Hurrah for St. Trinian’s!, The Female Approach, Back to the Slaughterhouse, The St. Trinian’s Story, Which Way Did He Go?,Pardong m’sieur, In Perspective and The Non Sexist Dictionary.

Searle’s work has influenced an uncountable number of other cartoonists too. His unique visualisation and darkly comic satirical cynicism in the St. Trinian’s drawings as well as his utterly captivating vision of boarding school life as embodied in the classically grotesque Nigel Molesworth quartet: influencing generations of children and adults, and even playing its part in shaping our modern national character and language.

And have I mentioned yet that his drawings are really, really funny?

This superb collection of monochrome cartoons samples choice cuts from a number of his book collections, all delivered with stunning absurdist candour and the peculiarly tragic passive panic and understated warmth that only Searle could instil with his seemingly wild yet clearly-considered linework.

Fronted by an impassioned Introduction from fan and proper grown up journalist/columnist Nicholas Lezard, this paperback and digital collection offers a sweet taste of dark design in haunting and hilarious images culled from a number of sources, opening (un)naturally with macabre treats from St Trinian’s: blending the comforting traditional bonhomie of a girl’s boarding school with the accoutrements of a sex dungeon, the atavists of a charnel house and the fragrant atmosphere of The Somme two days after all the shooting stopped.

Having proved that for some crime Does pay, focus shifts to Merry England, etc., where class, toil, occupations, hobbies, and the ardours of life are ferociously scrutinised before diverting into mirthful metaphysics with a damning disembodied judge dubbed The Hand of Authority…

More satirical body-blows from Souls in Torment lead delightfully to a montage of misspelled madcap moments of terror-tinged nostalgia as Molesworth extracts snippets of sheer genius from the books he co-created with Geoffrey Willans for Punch and which were subsequently released to enormous success as Down With Skool!, How to be Topp!, Whizz For Atomms! and Back in the Jug Agane.

Having fully gripped our last dose of ghastly goblin-esque girl power and brutal boy-moulding, our review of a master of graphic assassination moves on the far less solid ground of politics and satire. As I said previously, Searle was a devotee of satirist William Hogarth and in 1956 adapted the old master’s series of condemnatory cartoons (painted in 1732-34 and released as staggeringly popular engraved prints in 1735) to modern usage and characterisation. Included here in its entirety to conclude our fun, The Rake’s Progress follows the rise and fall of a number of contemporary figures – The Athlete, The Girlfriend, The Soldier, The Poet, The Trade Union Leader, The Actor, The Painter (he based this one on himself), The Don (English academic, not an American gangster but such confusion is easy to understand), The Dramatic Critic, The Doctor, The MP, The Clergyman, The Novelist, The Humourist, The Master of Foxhounds and The Great Lover – with all the excoriating venom and wit you’d expect from a master of people-watching…

Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant stuff! See for yourself, whatever side of the battle lines you cower behind.
© 1948, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1959 by Ronald Searle.
This selection © Ronald Searle 2000, 2006. Introduction © Nicholas Lezard, 2000. All rights reserved.

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Famous First Edition C-63: New Fun Comics #1


By Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Charles Flanders, Lloyd Jacquet, Dick Loederer, Adolphe Barreaux, Adolph Shusterman, Joe Archibald, Lyman Anderson, Sheldon Hubert Stark, Lawrence Lariar, Henry Carl Kiefer, Bert Salg/Bertram Nelson, Clem Gretta, Ken Fitch, Jack A. Warren, Bob Weinstein, Tom Cooper, Tom McNamara, John Lindermayer & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0119-6 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Times of hardship and sustained crisis often trigger moments of inspiration and innovation. That’s no panacea for all the hardship that correspondingly accrues but every silver lining brings a crumb of comfort, no? Perhaps we’ll see more clearly in four years’ time…

In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, print salesman Max “MC” Gaines and editor Harry I. Wildenberg devised promotional premiums for stores to give away: cheaply made small booklets that reprinted some of the era’s hugely popular newspaper strips. By adding a price sticker these freebies were transformed into a mass market fixture as seen in 1934’s newsstand retail release Famous Funnies.

Monumental corporate megalith DC Comics began as National Allied Publications in 1935, another speculative venture conceived by controversial soldier-turned writer Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. He had been writing military non-fiction and pulp adventure stories when he met Gaines and, fired up, took a shot that the new print vehicle had legs. Backing the belief invention with a shoestring venture, he set about mass-producing the print novelty dubbed comic books.

Wheeler-Nicholson’s bold plan was to sidestep large leasing fees charged for established newspaper strip reprints by filling his books with new material. Moreover, with popular strips in limited supply and/or already optioned, his solution to create new characters in all new stories for an entertainment-hungry readership must have seemed a no-brainer.

Cover-dated February 1935, and looking remarkably like any weekly comic anthology ever since, New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 blended humour with action, intrigue and suspense, combining serialized adventure strips with prose fiction, and features. Tabloid sized, and largely scripted by “The Major”, it was edited by Lloyd Jacquet (who would later helm many of DC’s rapidly proliferating imitators and rivals) with pages filled by untried creators and lesser established cartoonist lights. Issue #6 launched the careers of Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster with adventurer Henri Duval and supernatural troubleshooter Doctor Occult. Hopefully we closet comics historians will see those collected for the curious one day….

Despite initially tepid sales, the Major persevered, launching New Comics as 1935 closed. The anthology was renamed New Adventure Comics, before settling on Adventure Comics with #32 in 1938. The company was struggling when Wheeler-Nicholson’s main creditors -printer Harry Donenfeld and accountant Jack L. Liebowitz – moved in, taking more active roles in the running of the enterprise. Within two years the commercially unseasoned Wheeler-Nicholson had been forced out by his more adept business partners, just as Wheeler-Nicholson’s final inspiration neared its debut. Detective Comics was a themed anthology of crime thrillers, and when it launched (cover-dated March 1937) it was the hit the company needed. Its success signalled closure of National Allied and birth of Detective Comics Incorporated. Eventually his company grew into monolithic DC (Detective Comics, get it?) 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 #27 (May 1939). The Major was retained until 1938. Donenfeld and Liebowitz’s acumen ensured the viability of comic books and their editor Vin Sullivan inadvertently changed the direction of history when he commissioned something entirely new and unconventional by Seigel & Shuster for upcoming release Action Comics #1…

Supplemented by a wealth of ancillary articles and essays, the spark of this particular publishing revolutions is re-presented in full facsimile mode after introductory essay ‘The Start of Something Big’ by the legendary Dr Jerry G. Bails, fully supported by ‘A Second Introduction – This One by Roy Thomas’ and a reproduction of a rare insert letter from Lloyd Jaquet that came with some of the earliest copies printed…

Looking remarkably similar in format to any British weekly anthology from the 1930s to the 1970s, the comic had its first feature playing across the cover as Lyman Anderson depicted cowboy Jack Woods imperilled by a rascally bushwhacker.

Edited by Lloyd Jaquet, the inner front cover declaimed ‘New Fun Hello Everybody: Here’s the New Magazine You’ve Been Waiting For!’ before Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson & Charles Flanders debuted ‘Sandra of the Secret Service’; an elegant socialite in over her head…

The first six single page strips all came with an inbuilt star attraction. As Oswald the Lucky Rabbit an animated lepine tyke had hit cinema screens in 1927, courtesy of bright young men Walt Disney & Ub Iwerks. A year later the creators had been kicked out by Universal Pictures and got revenge by inventing Mickey Mouse. Oswald soldiered on under lesser hands until 1938 and enjoyed a strip of his own. Each 3-panel Oswald The Rabbit “topper” ran under New Fun’s new stuff, forming a sequence about ice skating and probably crafted by Al Stahl, John Lindermayer & Sheldon Hubert Stark.

Teen dating dilemmas plagued ‘Jigger and Ginger’ by Adolph “Schus” Shusterman and PI ‘Barry O’Neill’ (by Lawrence Lariar) faced Tong-&-Triad terrors before Adolphe Barreaux exposed Bobby & Binks to ‘The Magic Crystal of History’ and dumped the inquisitive kids in “4000 BC”, even as deKerosett (Henry Carl Kiefer) blended aviation and Foreign Legion licks in ‘Wing Brady – Soldier of Fortune’.

Oswald bowed out underneath the first instalment of ‘Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott’ courtesy of Wheeler-Nicholson & Flanders before Bert (Salg aka Bertram Nelson) enjoyed some judicial japery with ‘Judge Perkins’ before big sky sci fi kicked off in the Flash Gordon manner thanks to ‘Don Drake on the Planet Saro’ “presented” by Clem Gretta (Joseph Clemens Gretter & Ken Fitch) prior to Jack A. Warren introducing comedy cowpuncher ‘Loco Luke in “Nope He Didn’t Get His Man”’ and Wheeler-Nicholson & Flanders – as “Roger Furlong” – switch to illuminated prose to probe the mystery of ‘Spook Ranch’. It goes without saying, I hope, that many of these groundbreaking yarns are initial chapters of serials so don’t get too invested in what going on…

Joe Archibald taps into the varsity sports scene with comedic basketball titan ‘Scrub Hardy’ whereas Lyman Anderson plays deadly serious with the other, lesser kind of football in ‘Jack Andrews All-American Boy’ prior to the opening of a section of ads and features. Sandy beach-based bodybuilding revelations precede a prose vignette on ‘Bathysphere – A Martian Dream’ and segue into Joe Archibald’s ‘Sports’ review, a heads-up of what’s ‘On the Radio’ and ‘In the Movies’ whilst the secrets of ‘Model Aircraft’ and ‘Aviation’ lead to ‘How to Build a Model of Hendrik Hudson’s “Half Moon”’ …

Comic treats are topped up with Bob Weinstein’s maritime drama ‘Cap’n Erik’ and Tom Cooper taps into frontier history with ‘Buckskin Jim the Trail Blazer’ prior to learning and hobby craft taking over again with ‘Popular Science’, ‘Stamps and Coins’, and something for the little ladies…‘Young Homemakers’.

Tom McNamara heralds another bunch of comics with kiddie caper ‘After School’ and anonymous ‘Cavemen Capers’ take us to Barreaux’s ‘Fun Films 1st Episode: Tad Among the Pirates’ a faux cinema tale inviting readers to grab scissors and make their own stories, before New Fun’s art director Dick Loederer joins the fun with elfin romp ‘Bubby and Beevil’ and provides an untitled bottom strip to literally support a stylish penguin fantasy ‘Pelion and Ossa’ by John Lindermayer. Closing the interior amazement is another “Clem Gretta” wonder – ‘2023 Super-Police’ – leaving ads ‘New easy way to learn aviation’ and a full colour enticement for the ‘Tom Mix’ Ralston Zyp Gun (you absolutely WILL shoot your eye out!) to close the beginning of it all…

Fully supported by detailed biography ‘The Major Who Made Comics’ by granddaughter Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson and comprehensive listing ‘New Fun #1 – the Contributors’ plus reprint series overview ‘A Tabloid Tradition Continued’ and even more memorabilia bits, this is a historical artefact no serious comics fan should be without.
Famous First Edition: New Fun #1, C-63 Compilation and all new material © 2020 DC Comics. © 1935 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Biographical Essays © 2019 Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson.

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The Beano and The Dandy: Comics in the Classroom


By many & various including Dudley D. Watkins, Leo Baxendale, Eric Roberts, Alan Morley, Chick Gordon, Ron Spencer, A.G. Martin, John K. Geering and more (DC Thomson & Co)
ISBN: 978-1-84535-347-6 (HB)

My current editor informs me that it’s half term (AGAIN!?) so here’s a timeless day out revisiting a classic era of halcyon educational highlights heavy on tuck shop excesses, lethally harmful pranks and state-sponsored beatings for comedic effect – nostalgia at its most pungent and effective. And, as is so often the case in case of what old people cherish, This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Released as part of the 70th Anniversary celebrations of the comics company that has more than any other shaped the psyche of generations of children, this impressive magnificent and still readily available hardback compilation rightly glories in the incredible wealth of quality that has paraded through the flimsy pages of The Beano and The Dandy. This splendidly oversized (299 x 205mm) 144 page hardback compilation takes as its broad theme the antics of characters who have waged an incessant war against boredom and repression amidst the chalk-clouded, grubby corridors of school, risking corporal punishment, exhausted writing hands and ritual humiliation to keep us all amused and rebellious at heart.

Tragically, neither it nor its companion volumes are available digitally yet, but hope springs ever eternal…

Admittedly this book goes through some rather elaborate editing, design and paste-up permutations to editorially explain to modern readers the vast changes to the once-commonplace that’s happened in intervening years. Naturally the process has quietly dodged the more egregious terms and scenarios that wouldn’t sit well with 21st century sensibilities, although to my enlightened sensibilities the concentration on whacking children on the bottom does occur with disturbing frequency – the Bash Street Kids even had their fearfully expectant upraised bums as the strip’s logo for a few years!

However, viewed as a cultural and historical memoire, this is a superb comic commemoration of one of our greatest communal formative forces, with a vast number of strips and stories carefully curated from a hugely transformative period in national history. They’re also superbly timeless examples of cartoon storytelling at its best…

Until it folded, was briefly reborn as a digital publication in 2012, and died again, The Dandy was the third-longest running comic in the world (behind Italy’s Il Giornalino which launched in 1924 and America’s Detective Comics in March 1937). The Dandy premiered on December 4th 1937: breaking the mould of traditional UK predecessors and competitors by using word balloons and captions on some strips, rather than just the narrative blocks of text under the sequential picture frames that had been the industry standard.

A huge success, it was followed on July 30th 1938 by The Beano – and in concert they revolutionised the way children’s publications looked and, most importantly, how they were read. Over many decades the “terrible twins” spawned so many unforgettable and beloved household names who delighted countless avid and devoted readers, and their unmissable end of year celebrations were graced with bumper bonanzas of the comics’ weekly stars in extended stories in magnificent hardback annuals.

During WWII, rationing of paper and ink forced the “children’s papers” into an alternating fortnightly schedule: on September 6th 1941, only The Dandy was published. A week later just The Beano appeared. The rascally rapscallions only returned to normal weekly editions on 30th July 1949, but the restrictions had not hurt sales. In fact, in December 1945, The Beano #272 became the first British comic to sell a million copies, and the post-war period saw more landmarks as the children’s division of DC Thomson blossomed over the ten years, with innovative characters and a profusion of talented cartoonists who would carry it to publishing prominence, even as the story papers died back in advance of more strip anthologies like The Topper (1953) and The Beezer (1956)…

This compilation primarily concentrates via random extracts and selected strips on the development of established 1940s stars – like Biffo the Bear (1948), Lord Snooty (1938), The Smasher (1938, but completely reinvented in 1957), Korky the Cat and Desperate Dan (both 1937), who all survived the winds of change to grow into beloved and long-lived favourites in the new era. They’re highlighted beside the most successful new characters of the fifties -mostly school-aged if not actually school-based – including Dennis the Menace (1951), Minnie the Minx, Roger the Dodger and Little Plum (all 1953) and The Bash Street Kids (1956 or 1954 if you count prototype When the Bell Rings! as the same).

Nevertheless there’s also a wonderful selection of less well known features on view…

This superb celebration of Celtic creativity is packed literally cover-to-cover with brilliant, breakthrough strips with the mirth starting on the inside front with an outrageous 2-colour Frontispiece tableau by Leo Baxendale of When the Bell Rings! It’s mirrored at the back of the book by a similarly hilarious spread starring Biffo by indisputable cartoonist Dudley D. Watkins…

Within these suitably dog-eared pages you will find cracking examples of Alan Morley’s Old Ma Murphy, Korky the Cat, Hooky’s Magic Bowler Hat (by wonderful Chick Gordon), The Pocket Grandpas (both the 1940’s prose feature and the 1970’s strip drawn by Ron Spencer), Big Eggo, Miss Primm (Morley again), Tough Nellie Duff (“the Strong Arm School Marm”), and Billy Butter the Brainy Goat.

More substantial offerings honour Biffo the Bear (by both Dudley D. Watkins and Leo Baxendale) and Dennis the Menace, Our Teacher’s a Walrus and Lord Snooty (both by incredibly prolific Watkins), as well as Winker Watson and the unforgettable, irrepressible Dirty Dick (both illustrated by the unique Eric Roberts).

Greedy Pigg, Mr Mutt and Jammy the Sammy were all by the indefatigable A.G. Martin whilst Baxendale’s immortal Bash Street Kids, Desperate Dan (by Watkins), Whacko! And Robin Hood’s Schooldays (by Spencer again) are well represented too; but it’s the tantalising glimpses of such minor celebrities as Dopey Dinah, Bamboo Town, and Keyhole Kate that I’d like to see more of sometime.

There’s a raft of bonus features such as an article on long-lost prose stories like Jimmy the Double Dunce, and Through Fire and Flood with Bobby Trent, a complete 8 page full-colour Bananaman strip from 1985 that was given away in schools and dentists, by John K. Geering, and the unpublished final episode (#837 if you’re counting) of the Jocks and the Geordies from the Dandy.

This strip was never completed and is presented as unlettered black line art, with the artist’s script printed below: a fascinating insight for anybody seeking a career in the industry. In fact this book is a treasure trove for the aspiring pro as many strips are reproduced from original camera-ready artwork – with printers’ instructions, editor’s notes and even un-erased pencil lines on show – highly educational for those looking for secrets and details of “the process”.

Notwithstanding all that, the true magic of this collection is the brilliant art and stories by a host of talents that have literally made Britons who they are today, and bravo to DC Thomson for letting them out for a half-day to run amok once again.
© 2008 DC Thomson & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Quick & Flupke: Fasten Your Seatbelts & Under Full Sail


By Hergé, translated by David Radzinowicz (Egmont UK)
ISBN: 978-1-4052-4742-9 (PB Album Seatbelts)  978-1-4052-4743-6 (HB/Sail)

These books include Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Georges Prosper Remi – known to all as Hergé – created a genuine masterpiece of graphic literature with his tales of a plucky boy reporter and his entourage of iconic associates. Singly, and later with assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and other supreme stylists of the select Hergé Studio, he crafted 23 splendid volumes (originally produced in brief instalments for newspaper periodicals) which have since grown beyond their popular culture roots and attained the status of High Art.

Globally renowned for the magnificent Tintin adventures, Hergé also did much to return comics to the arena of mass entertainment, a position largely lost after once television, video-recording and computer games became household standards. However, the bold boy and his opinionated dog were by not his only landmark. In the years before the junior journalist finally assured him immortality Remi was a prodigious jobbing cartoonist, generating a minor pantheon of topical strips and features such as Tim the Squirrel in the Far West, The Amiable Mr. Mops, Tom and Millie and Popol Out West. Among the best of the rest were the tales of Jo and Zette Legrand and their chimpanzee companion Jocko – in much the same wholesome action vein as Tintin – and episodic, all-ages shenanigans of a pair of mischievous ragamuffins in pre-WWII Belgium.

In 2005 Egmont translated three escapades of Jo, Zette and Jocko into English – although many more are just sitting fallow out there, all foreign and unreadable to potential fans too lazy to learn French or any of a dozen other civilised languages. In 2009 the publisher tried again with two collections of the Master’s second most successful creation: Quick et Flupke, gamins de Bruxelles.

These rambunctiously subversive, trouble-making working-class rapscallions and scallywags were precursors and thematic contemporaries of such beloved British boy acts as The Bash Street Kids, Winker Watson, Roger the Dodger et al, and literally hundreds of continental strips, and for more than a decade (from January 1930 to May 1940) rivalled untouchable Tintin in popularity. They undoubtedly acted as a rehearsal room for the humorous graphic and slapstick elements which became so much a part of future Tintin tales.

Just over a decade ago Egmont had a brief stab at reviving the likely lads and it was only the general public’s deplorable lack of taste and good sense which stopped the kids from taking off again…

On leaving school in 1925, Hergé began working for Catholic newspaper Le XXe Siècle, falling under the influence of its Svengali-like editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. Remi produced his first strip series The Adventures of Totor for Boy Scouts of Belgium monthly magazine the following year, and by 1928 was in charge of producing the paper’s children’s weekly supplement Le Petit Vingtiéme.

He was unhappily illustrating L’Extraordinaire Aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Poussette et Cochonnet (The Extraordinary Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonette) – written by the staff sports reporter – when Abbot Wallez beseeched him to create a new adventure serial. Perhaps a young reporter who would travel the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues?

Having recently discovered the word balloon in imported newspaper strips, Remi decided to incorporate that innovation into his own work. He designed a strip both modern and action-packed – and heavily anti-communist. From January 10th 1929, weekly episodes of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in Le Petit Vingtiéme, running until May 8th 1930. Around this time he also developed weekly 2-page gag strips starring two working-class rascals on the streets of Brussels. They played pranks, got into good-natured trouble and even ventured into the heady realms of slapstick and surrealism: the sort of antics any reader of Dennis the Menace (ours, not the Americans’) would find fascinatingly familiar.

Officially the strip launched on January 23rd, but it only featured one half of the duo and was not truly complete until the partnership was formed with the introduction of Flupke three weeks later. Thus it’s joyeux anniversaire today lads, or Gelukkige verjaardag if you’re feeling a little Flemish…

Originally a black-&-white fixture in Le Petit Vingtiéme, the lads larked about for more than a decade until the war and mounting pressures of producing Tintin meant Hergé had to let them go. They were only rediscovered in 1985, when their collected adventures ran to a dozen best-selling albums – so there’s still plenty left out there to be translated into English…

Fasten Your Seat Belts contains a sublimely riotous celebration of childish high spirits, beginning with hosepipe pranks in ‘The Big Clean’, before a rare good deed leads to strife with ‘A Poor Defenceless Woman’ and a day ‘At the Seaside’ results in another round of fisticuffs. After that, their archfoe the policeman succumbs to the irresistible temptations of a handy catapult in ‘Everyone Gets a Turn’…

Quick – the tall one in the beret – learns to his cost ‘How Music Calms the Nerves’ and discovers the drawback of ‘Pacifism’, whilst portly Flupke tries tennis and finds himself far from ‘Unbeatable’…

‘Advertising’ proves to be a dangerous game and an annoying insect meets its end in ‘Instructions for Use’, whilst ‘Quick the Clock Repairer’ fall far short of his billing, and ‘Football’ becomes just another reason for friends to fall out. Although unwelcome ‘At the Car Showroom’, some Eskimos (you’re going to have to suspend some modern sensitivities every now and again, remember) seem happy to share in ‘A Weird Story’ whist Hergé himself turns up in ‘A Serious Turn of Events’, even as the kids are disastrously ‘At Odds’ over a funny smell in their proximity. Soon after, ‘Quick the Music Lover’ deftly deals with an annoying neighbour, Flupke goes Christmas skiing in ‘That’s How It Is’ and another good turn goes bad in ‘All Innocence’, before a sibling spat is sorted through ‘Children’s Rights’ before Quick cocks up cuisine despite possessing ‘The Recipe’…

A handy ‘Yo-yo’ causes traffic chaos and a milk run goes spectacularly awry in a buttery ‘Metamorphosis’ prior to this breezy blast from the past concluding with a cleverly appealing ‘Tale Without a Tail’.

Regrettably hard to find now (and long past time for a digital edition if not paper reissue), this book and the simple, perfect gags it contains show another side to the supreme artistry of Hergé – and no connoisseur of comics can consider life complete without a well-thumbed copy of their own…

Exactly the same holds true for sequel volume Quick & Flupke: Under Full Sail. Once upon a time in Belgium and many other places, the escapades of two mischievous scallywags rivalled the irresistibly indomitable adventurer Tintin in popularity. It wasn’t that big a deal for Hergé and his publishers as Quick & Flupke was being produced by a studio team in concurrently with the dashing boy reporter. The gag strip became a test lab for humorous graphic elements, so much a part of the future world classic that the little terrors often cameoed in the major magazine vehicle…

Running from January 10th 1929 to May 8th 1930, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in weekly instalments in Le Petit Vingtiéme, generating a huge spike in sales. Editor Wallez allowed Hergé to hire Eugène Van Nyverseel and Paul “Jam” Jamin as art assistants and naturally wanted to see a return in terms of more product. According to Remi’s later recollections  he returned from a brief, well-earned vacation to find his staff had played an office prank by announcing that he was about to launch a second weekly strip…

Briefly flummoxed, Remi rapidly concocted a strip starring a little rascal over the next few days, based largely on his own childhood and French film Les Deux Gosses (The Two Kids). The impertinent pair (or at least one of them) premiered in the January 23rd 1930 issue of Le Petit Vingtiéme. The feature became Quick & Flupke three weeks later when a pint-sized partner in peril appeared, initially answering to “Suske” before evolving into Flupke (which is Flemish for “little Phillip”)…

Unleashed weekly in 2-page monochrome exploits, two working class Brussels louts played pranks, made mischief and ventured into heady realms of slapstick and surrealism in yarns any reader of Bart Simpson would find fascinatingly familiar. Readers everywhere loved them and the strip became immensely successful, but Hergé paid it little heed, frequently only beginning each week’s episode a day or even hours before press time. The fare was rapid-fire, pun-packed, stand-alone and often fourth-wall breaking which – as eny fule kno – never gets old.

Despite being increasingly sidelined after Hergé devised The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko for Cœurs-Vaillants at the end of 1935 – so Happy 90th to them, too! – our likely lads larked about for ten years, increasingly becoming an artefact of the assistants (and latterly artist Johan de Moor) until the global war and the pressure of producing Tintin meant they had to go.

Unimpeachable urchins Quick & Flupke were rediscovered in 1985, and – after a brief TV incarnation – returned to print where their remastered, collected escapades ran to12 full-colour albums in Europe and India until 1991. As English translations, we only ever saw a couple of volumes like this oversized (221 x 295 mm) hardcover compendium: delighting us with nearly two dozen sparkling romps for laughter-starved lovers of classic comics comedy.

Hopefully, now we’ve got a burgeoning digital reading base, they will all be available for folk too lazy to learn French (or Dutch or German or…) as digital editions. These lost classics are long-overdue for rediscovery and are perfect light reading for kids of all ages.
© Hergé – Exclusivity Editions Casterman 1986, 1991. All Rights Reserved. English translation © 2009 Egmont UK Limited. All rights reserved.

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Oh My Goddess! volume 2


By Kosuke Fujishima, original translation by Dana Lewis, Alan Gleason & Toren Smith (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-457-9 (tankōbon TPB) eISBN: 978-1-62115-756-4

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times and cultures.

All over the world, college days offer plenty of opportunities for romance, comedy and comics creativity. Apparently manga always gets there first and explores avenues you never even realised existed….

Fujishima Kosuke was born in Chiba, Japan on July 7th 1964, and, after completing High School, got a job as an editor. His plans to be a draughtsman had foundered after failing to secure a requisite apprenticeship, and he instead joined Puff magazine in that administrative role. Life started looking up after he became assistant to manga artist Tatsuya Egawa (Be Free, Golden Boy, Magical Taluluto). Fujishima graduated to his first solo feature in 1986: writing and illustrating police series You’re Under Arrest until 1992. In 1988, he began a consecutive second series: a fantasy comedy that would reshape his life. Despite other series such as Paradise Residence and Toppu GP over intervening decades, Aa! Megami-sama – alternatively translated as Ah! My Goddess and Oh My Goddess! became his signature work and one that has made him a household name in Japan.

The saga began in the September 1988 issue of Kodansha’s seinen (“teen boys/young males”) periodical Monthly Afternoon and ran until April 2014, generating enough material for 48 tankōbon volumes and a supplementary series whilst spawning anime, special editions, TV series, musical albums, games and all the attendant spin-offs and merchandise mega-popularity brings. In 2020 there were 25 million physical copies of the books in circulation and an unguessable number of digital sales. It has won awards, been translated across the globe in print and on screens and has a confirmed place in comics history…

Oh My Goddess! is a particularly fine example of a peculiarly Japanese genre of storytelling combining fantasy with loss of conformity and maxed out embarrassment. In this case, and as seen in volume 1’s opening chapter ‘The Number You Have Dialled is Incorrect’, when nerdy engineering sophomore Keiichi Morisato dials a wrong number one night, he inadvertently connects to the Goddess Technical Help Line.

When captivatingly beautiful and cosmically powerful minor administrative deity Belldandy materialises in his room offering him one wish, he snidely asks that she never leave him. That rash response traps her on Earth, unable even to move very far beyond his physical proximity. Her powers are mighty, but come with many provisos and restrictions. The most immediate and terrible repercussion manifests quickly as he is ejected from his student residence for having a girl in his room…

In a structured society like Japan there’s plenty of scope for comedy when a powerful and beautiful female seemingly dotes on a barely average male, especially as Keiichi’s new girlfriend seems to all observers unwilling to ever leave his side. Captivating Belldandy’s profligate use of divine powers, utter naivety and tendency to attract chaos and calamity make the bonded pair’s search for a new home a fraught exercise, but after a few foredoomed forays the odd couple settle in a temple gifted them by a Buddhist priest. The proximity quandary is settled by Belldandy using her powers to enrol at his school, the Nekomi Institute of Technology. However, the clearly “European” newcomer can’t help but draw unwelcome attention, particularly from Keiichi’s macho, petrolhead fellow students and creepy lecturer Dr. Ozawa. The lifelong rival of Morisato’s favourite teacher “Doc” Kakuta is suspicious when all his students switch to the classes Belldandy audits and he commences a covert campaign to get rid of her…

College is a series of crucial interconnections and – other than Belldandy – Morisato is inexplicably closest to his colleagues in the Nekomi Institute of Technology Motor Club: a gang of overbearing, exploitative, bullying gearhead maniacs who gleefully spend his money, eat his food and get him into trouble. However, the earthbound divinity/clingy girlfriend’s hardwired role is to aid those in need and whenever she detects a problem she addresses it, dragging her poor partner along for the ride…

More trouble materialises as campus queen Sayoko Mishima realises the lovely new lass threatens her social supremacy and so the predatory Mean Girl sets her destructive sights and wealth on stealing Belldandy’s hapless chump of a “boyfriend”. The goddess is fully aware of the interloper’s mystical bad mojo and takes kind, gentle but firm retaliatory action when necessary. Sadly, Sayoko is determined, inspired and relentless.

With chaos following him everywhere, increased angst occurs after Morisato finally finds the nerve to move beyond the painfully platonic life sentence he’s locked into. Of course, books like Going Steady for Dummies get him no closer to even kissing his goddess, and their first stab at an intimate dinner date is a disaster. It’s further compounded when constant financial shortfalls force him to accept his little sister Megumi into his secrets and inner circle. Miss Morisato is a gossip spreader and imaginative tale teller. What family furore she will make of him living with a gorgeous exotic foreigner cannot be imagined. She causes chaos from the start: bearing enough cash to tide them over – but only if Keiichi boards her for a week while she takes some important entrance exams. There’s no way the kid won’t expose Belldandy’s supernatural nature to the world, but what big brother should have fretted over was the actual tests, as Megumi aces her exams and is admitted to Nekomi Tech, right beside him… and his goddess.

This second volume gathers Chapters 10-16 where, having adapted to being inextricably linked to a naïve, beautiful goddess, you’d think life would settle down for our socially inadequate misfit student. However,  things keep getting more complicated for Keiichi. His college society are determined to prove them their dominance: swiping his cash and getting him into trouble. In ‘An Honest Match’ they arbitrarily settle his money woes by signing him up to an art class: one run by scheming Sayoko, who seeks to crush his spirit by making him and Belldandy nude models, exposed to everyone’s judging gaze. The goddess has other ideas…

The impossible romance of that first kiss edges closer to reality on a gentle day out together in ‘This Life is Wonderful’ before manic mundanity returns in ‘Love is the Prize’ as the Nekomi cycle club pressgang Morisato into competing in a dangerous race with rivals of the Ushikubo University Motorcycle Club – with Belldandy as an unofficial prize! – before events precipitate a ‘System Force Down’ on a 4-day Nekomi beach retreat as Belldandy’s powers run amok. Unbeknownst to her, the fault has been divinely manufactured by her wayward, oft-demoted, even more powerful older sister Urd, who uses the crisis to visit Earth and scope out Morisato. Intrigued by what she finds the salacious, sex-obsessed  meddler makes him her pet project, but the scheme backfires and she too ends up stuck in the world of mortals with oh-so-lucky Keiichi in ‘Oh My Older Sister!’

Her bombastic nature erupts to the fore during the Nekomi Campus festival where Urd manipulates events and people to star a war to confirm ‘I’m the Campus Queen’, but she’s met her match in Sayoko, who participates in a cheesy beauty/talent contest and drags poor Belldandy unto the line of fire too. By the time the furore ends it’s the anniversary of Morisato’s careless wish and ‘What Belldandy Wants Most’ finds him – and her – in contemplative mood. Eager as always to advance the relationship he wants to get her a ring, but must first earn enough to buy one. The result is almost constant humiliation and many near-death experiences as he takes a number of jobs to fund the gift, but at least the reward is worth the effort…

To Be Continued…
This mainly monochrome compendium is peppered with brief full colour sections and – as is also traditional – the main story is augmented by mini features. Goddess Side Story ‘Oh My Manga Artist!’ offers 4-panel gag strips ‘The Shield’, ‘The Trap’ and ‘The Paper’, a selection of ‘Letters to the Enchantress’ from the US series’ original comic book incarnation and ‘Editor’s Commentary on Vol. 2’: another expansive collection of factoids detailing significant cultural clues that might bypass most readers.

Decades after it began Oh My Goddess! remains a beguiling, engaging and eminently re-readable confection, at once frothy fun and entrancing drama. Think of it as a Eastern take on Bewitched or I Dream of Genie, especially as the painfully awkward forbidden romance develops: one that both mortal and immortal protagonists are incapable of admitting to. Throw in the required supporting cast of friends, rivals, insaniacs, petrol-heads, weird teachers and interfering entities, and there’s almost too much light-hearted fun to be found in this bright and breezy manga classic.
© 2006 by Kosuke Fujishima. All rights reserved. This English language edition © 2006 Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

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Surrounded – America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832


By Wilfrid Lupano & Stéphane Fert, translated by Montana Kane (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-348-6 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-349-3

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

As and when we actually get to hear it, history is an endlessly fascinating procession of progress and decline playing out eternally at the behest of whoever’s in power at any one time. However, don’t be fooled. It’s never about “opinions” or “alternative facts”: most moments of our communal existence generally happened one way with only the reasons, motivations and repercussions shaded to accommodate a preferred point of view.

The best way to obfuscate the past is to tell everyone it never happened and pray nobody goes poking around. So much you never suspected has been brushed under a carpet and erased by intervening generations proceeding without an inkling. Entire sections of society have been unwritten in this manner but always there have been pesky troublemakers who prod and probe, looking for what’s been earmarked for forgetting and shining a light on the history that isn’t there.

If I live long enough, I can’t wait to see what will be written about the next four years, but that’s a topic for another time…

One such team of intrepid histographic investigators are Wilfrid Lupano & Stéphane Fert. In 2020 they produced a sequential graphic narrative account of a remarkable moment of opportunity that was quashed by entrenched bigotry, selfish privilege and despicable intolerance. After far too long as a digital-only English-language edition (White All Around from Europe Comics), Blanc autour is now available in a lavish oversized hardback and new digital edition from those fine people at NBM. It opens with a context-filled Foreword before we meet servant girl Sarah Harris as she is tormented by ruffian child Feral, reading to her from an infamous new book…

Set one year after Nat Turner’s doomed black uprising of August 21st 1831 (which occurred in Southampton County, Virginia), this true tale took place in a land still reeling and terrified. Freshly minted preventative measures to control and suppress the slave population included banning black gatherings of three or more people, an uptick in public punishments like floggings, lynchings and ferocious policing – if not outright outlawing – of Negro literacy. The posthumous publishing of Thomas R. Gray’s The Confessions of Nat Turner had created a best seller that further outraged and alarmed Americans. Even in 1832, and hundreds of miles north in genteel Canterbury, Connecticut, black people were careful to mind their place. It might be a “Free State” where slavery was illegal, but even here Negros were an impoverished underclass…

Sarah, however, is afflicted with a quick, agile and relentlessly questioning mind. She craves knowledge and understanding the way her fellow servants do food, rest and no trouble from white folk. One day, fascinated by the way water behaves, Sarah plucks up her courage and asks the local school teacher to explain. Prudence Crandall is a well-respected, dedicated educator diligently shepherding the young daughters of the (white) citizenry to whatever knowledge they’ll need to be good wives and mothers, but when the brilliant little servant girl quizzes her, the teacher is seized by an incredible notion…

When the new term starts Sarah is the latest pupil, and despite outraged and increasingly less polite objections from the civic great and good – all proudly pro-Negro advancement, but not necessarily here or now – Miss Crandall is adamant that she must remain. When parents threaten to remove their children, the schoolmarm goes on the offensive, declaring her establishment open for the “reception of young ladies and little misses of color”…

Her planned curriculum includes reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, natural and moral philosophy, history, drawing and painting, music on the piano, and the French language, and by sending it along with her intentions to Boston Abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, Crandall declares war on intolerance and ignorance in her home town. Sadly, her proud determination unleashes an unstoppable wave of sabotage, intimidation, sly exclusion, social ostracism and naked hatred against herself and her unacceptable student. She even tries to defend the move at the Municipal Assembly, before learning that only men were allowed to speak there…

Crandall’s response is to make her Canterbury Female Boarding School exclusively a place for a swiftly growing class of black girls. All too soon, politicians and lawmakers get involved and harassment intensifies to the point of terrorism and murder. Connecticut even legislates that it is illegal to educate “colored people” from out of State…

The school becomes another piece in the complex political game between abolitionists and slave-owing states but still manages to enhance the lives and intellects of its boarders, until 1834 when Prudence Crandall stands trial for the crime of teaching black children. When she is exonerated, the good people of Canterbury take off the kid gloves…

Although this war was never going to be won, Crandall’s incredible stand for tolerance, inclusivity and universal education was a minor miracle of enlightenment, attracting students from across America and countering the long-cherished “fact” that blacks and females had no need – or even capacity – for learning. Moreover, though the bigots managed to drive her out, Crandall and her extraordinary pupils retrenched to continue the good work in another state: one more willing to risk the status quo…

This amazing story is delivered as a fictionalised drama made in a manner reminiscent of a charming and stylish Disney animated feature, but surface sweetness and breezy visuals are canny subterfuge. Scripter Wilfred Lupano (Azimut; Little Big Joe; Valerian & Laureline: Shingouzlooz Inc.; The Old Geezers; Vikings dans la brume) and illustrator Stéphane Fert (Morgane; Axolot; Peau de Mille Bêtes) deftly deploy a subtle sheen of beguiling fairy tale affability to camouflage their keen exposure of a moving, cruel and enraging sidebar to accepted history: one long overdue for modern reassessment.

The creators wisely leaven the heavy load with delightful, heart-warmingly candid moments exploring the feelings and connections of the students, and balance tragedy with moments of true whimsy and life-affirming fantasy: but please beware – it does not end well for all…

The book includes an Afterword by Joanie DiMartino – Curator of the Prudence Crandall Museum – tracing in biographical snippets, the eventful lives, careers and achievements of eleven of the boldly aspirational scholars of the Crandall School’s first class.

Surrounded – America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832 is a disturbing yet uplifting account every concerned citizen should read and remember. After all, learning is a privilege, not a right… unless we all defend and advance it…
© 2020 Dargaud Benelux, (Dargaud-Lombard S. A.) – LUPANO & FERT. All rights reserved.

Surrounded – America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832 will be published on February 11th 2025 and is available for pre-order now. For more information and other great reads see NBM Graphic Novels.

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Mega Robo Bros Book 8: Final Form


By Neill Cameron & various (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-337-0 (Digest TPB)

Mightily momentous in metal and powerfully potent in plastic, here’s the ultimate upgrade of this solid gold all-ages sci fi saga from Neill Cameron (Tamsin of the Deep, Pirates of Pangea, How to Make Awesome Comics, Freddy) as originally published in UK weekly comic The Phoenix. Purpose-built paladins, the mecha-miraculous Mega Robo Bros have previously learned that even they can’t punch out intolerance or growing pains in electronic exploits balancing frantic fun with portents of darker, violent days to come…
One last time then… It’s still The Future!… but maybe not for much longer…

In a London far cooler but just as embattled as ours, Alex and his younger brother Freddy Sharma are still fooling themselves that they are typical kids: boisterous, fractious, perpetually argumentative yet devoted to each other. They’re not too bothered that they’re adopted. It’s really no big deal for them that they were meticulously and covertly constructed by mysterious Dr. Roboticus before he vanished, and are considered by those “in the know” as the most powerful and only fully SENTIENT robots on Earth. Sadly, recent events have severely challenged those notions…

Life in the Sharma household aimed to be normal. Dad is just your average old guy who makes lunch and does a bit of writing (he’s actually an award-winning journalist), but when not being a housewife, Mum is pretty extraordinary herself. Surprisingly famous and renowned robotics boffin Dr. Nita Sharma harbours many shocking secrets all her own. Little Freddy was insufferably exuberant and overconfident, and Alex had reached an age where self-doubt and anxiety hit hard and often.
The family’s other robot rescues were also problematic. Programmed to be dog-ish, baby triceratops Trikey was ok, but eccentric French-speaking ape Monsieur Gorilla could be tres confusing, whilst gloomily annoying, existentialist aquatic waterfowl Stupid Philosophy Penguin ambushed everyone with quotes from dead philosophers…

Crucially, the boys were part-time super-secret agents, but because they weren’t very good at the clandestine bit, almost the entire world knew of them. Nevertheless, the digital duo’s parents loved them, making life as normal as possible: sending them to human school, encouraging human friends as part of their “Mega Robo Routine”, combining dull human activities, actual but rare fun, games-playing, watching TV when not training in the combat caverns under R.A.I.D. HQ. When situations demanded, the lads undertook missions for bossy Baroness Farooq: head of British government agency Robotics Analysis Intelligence and Defence. The boys were told it’s because they were infinitely smarter and more powerful than the Destroyer Mechs and other man-made minions R.A.I.D. utilises. Now though, everything has changed and old lessons are subject to re-examination…

The saga reopens and concludes with the global heroes’ reputations ruined. After defeating menaces like Robot 23 and thwarting a rebellion sparked by artificial life activist The Caretaker, the Bros repeatedly battled monstrous, deadly damaged droid Wolfram and learned he might be their older brother. Eventually, they had to destroy him, leaving Alex traumatised by guilt and wracked by PTSD…

Over the course of that case they learned that fifteen years previously their brilliant young roboticist Mum worked under incomparable but weird genius Dr. Leon Robertus. His astounding discoveries earned him the nickname Dr. Roboticus. Perhaps that’s what initially pushed him away from humanity. Robertus allowed Nita to repurpose individually super-powered prototypes into a rapid-response team for global emergencies. Their Mum had been a superhero, leading manmade The Super Robo Six. Whilst saving lives with them, she met crusading journalist Michael Mokeme. He proudly took her name when they wed…

Robertus was utterly devoid of human empathy but – intrigued by the Seven’s acclaim and human acceptance – created a new kind of autonomous robot. More powerful than any previous construct, Wolfram was equipped with foundational directives allowing him to make choices and develop his own systems. He could think, just like Alex and Freddy can. Only, as it transpired, not quite…
Robertus demoted Nita and made Wolfram leader of a new Super Robo Seven, resulting in an even more effective unit… until Wolfram’s Three Directives clashed during a time-critical mission and millions of humans paid the price for his confusion and hesitation. In the aftermath, R.A.I.D. was formed and they sought to shut down Robertus and decommission Wolfram. When the superbot rejected their judgement, a brutal battle ensued causing Wolfram’s apparent destruction. Roboticus also disappeared…

Ultimately Wolfram returned, attacking vast polar restoration project Jötunn Base. Covering many miles it was carefully rebalancing the world’s climate, when Wolfram took it over: reversing the chilling process to burn Earth and drown humanity. Ordered by Baroness Farooq to stay put, Alex and Freddy rebelled, but by the time the Bros reached Jötunn, Wolfram had crushed a R.A.I.D. force led by their friend Agent Susie Nichols. After also failing to stop the attacker, kind, contemplative Alex found a way to defeat – and perhaps, destroy – his wayward older brother and save humanity…

Their exploit made the Bros global superstars. Freddy revelled in the attention but Alex could not adjust to the acclaim and horrifying new power levels he attained to succeed… and also the apparent onset of robot puberty. As anti-robot hysteria and skilfully orchestrated human intolerance brought violent incidents everywhere, friction between Alex and Freddy grew: petty spats driving a wedge between them. With hate group “Humanity First” agitating to destroy all robots, their spokesman named the Bros a threat to mankind. The Baroness – in a bid to promote inclusivity – ordered the Bros to appear on TV show Mega Robo Warriors -but it was another trap. As Freddy delightedly trashed an army of warbots, his self-control slipped and Alex realised his sibling’s hostile attitudes and violent overreactions had been building for some time…

When a Humanity First protest at Tilbury Port became a full-on meat vs metal riot, Freddy lost control, attacking humans trashing helpless droids. What might have happened next was thankfully forestalled when all the robots – even R.A.I.D.’s police drones – were corrupted by the pernicious “Revolution 23” virus, and Wolfram appeared, offering oppressed machines sanctuary in Steelhaven: a utopia of liberated mechanoids claiming independence from humanity.…

When Alex dodged his troubles for a day to go out with human friends Taia and Mira and – under duress – Freddy, their trip to Camden Lock was spiced up by holographically incommunicado Crown Prince Eustace (Alex’s best pal and next king of Britain). The trip also provided a huge prize when Mira found a junked bot and worked out the secret of Revolution 23 Malware. More importantly, common people began to turn against Humanity First’s fanatics…

Thanks to Mira’s discovery, the battling Bros had a lead on the mastermind behind all their current woes, but Freddy’s emotional problems reached a point where he couldn’t be talked down. Fired by uncontrollable fury, the younger bot hot-headedly streaked into a trap designed by their most cunning and patient foe. Seized by rage and madness, Freddy began razing London, and Alex was forced to stop him…

Now the final chapter opens in The Global Robotics Court, Alexandria, Egypt, where Mum shares her records of rearing the robot babies she adopted after Roboticus first dropped from sight, making an impassioned plea to save her boys from being destroyed. Against all odds she triumphs, but the boys don’t appreciate it. To keep them alive, Nita Sharma is forced to neuter their powers, reducing them to the same physical and intellectual levels as humans of their equivalent ages. Alex is almost relieved, despite an instant increase in bullying from former school classmates, but Freddy is inconsolable and furious. To compound the agony, his mechanical menagerie – even Stupid Philosophy Penguin – are confiscated by R.A.I.D.

Trapped and impotent as Wolfram’s robot refugees square up for war with humanity, the Sharmas retrench and try to make a new life for themselves. It’s helped slightly by Freddy’s new kitten (a real, organic one) and news that Mum is making a human sibling for the Bros, but the loss of powers, pals like Prince Eustace (commanded to stay away from the controversial robot people) and the ability to help anyone in trouble weighs heavily on Alex and increasingly drives Freddy to more violent acts.

As they are at their lowest ebb, the sadistic arch-nemesis who has secretly manipulated them and orchestrated all the Bros’ woes strikes. Capturing the boys, he reveals their true origins and seeking to complete his grand experiment, tortures Alex with words, moral challenges and the death of his parents… and all of London! The fiend has, however, utterly underestimated his victims, and not counted on the fact that his sentient toys have made many true friends in their short lives: beings willing to risk their own organic and/or mechanoid lives for Alex and Freddy…

In the end it’s a battle of wills and ideologies with Alex and Freddy overcoming their origins and programming to defeat true evil and build a better world for everyone and everything to live together in…

Interweaving real world concerns, addressing issues of gender and identity with great subtlety and in a way kids can readily grasp, this epic yarn has always blended fantasy, action and humour with superb effect. Excitement and tension greatly outweigh hilarity here however, with poignant moments of insecurity and introspection resulting in life-altering thrills, chills, and spectacular action scenes. Alex and Freddy are utterly authentic kids, irrespective of their origins, and their antics and anxieties strike exactly the right balance of future shock, family fun and superhero action to capture readers’ hearts and minds. What movies these tales would make – and now the saga is done let’s hope that jump comes soon!
Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2024. All rights reserved.

Mega Robo Bros Final Form will be released on February 13th 2025 and is available for pre-order now.

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Ducoboo volume 5: Lovable Dunce


By Godi & Zidrou, coloured by Véronique Grobet, translated by Mark Bence (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-311-6 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for comedic effect.

If you’re currently experiencing offspring overload, fear not! The Back to School countdown has begun!

School stories and strips about juvenile fools, devils and rebels are a lynchpin of western entertainment and an even larger staple of Japanese comics – where the scenario has spawned its own numerous wild and vibrant subgenres. However, would Dennis the Menace (ours and theirs), Komi Can’t Communicate, Winker Watson, Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, Power Pack, Cédric or any of the rest be improved or just different if they were created by battle-scarred, shell-shocked former teachers rather than ex-kids or current parents?

It’s no surprise the form is evergreen: schooling (and tragically, sometimes, sufficient lack of it) takes up a huge amount of children’s attention no matter how impoverished or privileged they are, and their fictions will naturally address their issues and interests. It’s fascinating to see just how much school stories revolve around humour, but always with huge helpings of drama, terror, romance and an occasional dash of action…

One of the most popular European strips employing those eternal yet basic themes and methodology began in the last fraction of the 20th century, courtesy of scripter Zidrou (Benoît Drousie) and illustrator Godi. Drousie is Belgian, born in 1962 and for six years a school teacher prior to changing careers in 1990 to write comics like those he probably used to confiscate in class. Other mainstream successes in a range of genres include Blossoms in Autumn, Petit Dagobert, Scott Zombi, La Ribambelle, Le Montreur d’histoires, African Trilogy, Shi, Léonardo, a superb revival of Ric Hochet and many more. His most celebrated and beloved stories are the Les Beaux Étés sequence (only available digitally in English as Glorious Summers) and 2010’s sublime Lydie, both illustrated by Jordi Lafebre.

Zidrou began his comics career with what he knew best: stories about and for kids, including Crannibales, Tamara, Margot et Oscar and, most significantly, a feature about a (and please forgive the charged term) school blockhead: L’Elève Ducobu…

Godi is a Belgian National Treasure, born Bernard Godisiabois in Etterbeek in December 1951. After studying Plastic Arts at the Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels he became assistant to comics legend Eddy Paape in 1970, working on the strip Tommy Banco for Le Journal de Tintin whilst freelancing as an illustrator for numerous comics and magazines. He became a Tintin regular three years later, primarily limning C. Blareau’s Comte Lombardi, but also working on Vicq’s gag strip Red Rétro, with whom he also produced Cap’tain Anblus McManus and Le Triangle des Bermudes for Le Journal de Spirou in the early 1980s. Godi soloed on Diogène Terrier (1981-1983) for Casterman prior to moving into advertising cartoons and television. He cocreated animated TV series Ovide with Nic Broca, only returning to comics in 1991 to collaborating with newcomer Zidrou on L’Elève Ducobu. The strip began in Tremplin magazine (September 1992) before transferring to Le Journal de Mickey, with collected albums starting in 1997: 28 so far in a raft of languages. When not immortalising modern school days for future generations, Godi diversified, co-creating (in 1995 with Zidrou) comedy feature Suivez le Guide and game page Démon du Jeu with scripter Janssens. That series spawned a live action movie franchise and a dozen pocket books, plus all customary attendant merchandise paraphernalia.

English-speakers’ introduction to the series (5 volumes only thus far) came courtesy of Cinebook with 2006’s initial release King of the Dunces – in actuality the 5th European collection L’élève Ducobu – Le roi des cancres. The indefatigable, unbeatable format comprises short – most often single page – gag strips like you’d see in The Beano, involving a revolving cast; well-established albeit also fairly one-dimensional and easy to get a handle on. Our star is a well-meaning, good natured but terminally lazy young oaf who doesn’t get on with school. He’s sharp, inventive, imaginative, inquisitive, personable and not at all academical. Today he’d be SEN, banished as someone else’s problem, relegated to a “spectrum” or casually damned by diagnoses such as ADHD, but back then, and at heart, he’s just not interested: a kid who can always find better – or certainly more interesting – things to do…

Dad is a civil servant and Mum left home when Ducoboo was an infant. It’s no big deal: Leonie Gratin – the girly brainbox from whom he constantly and fanatically copies answers to interminable written tests – only has a mum. Ducoboo and his class colleagues attend Saint Potache School and are mostly taught and tested by ferocious, impatient, mushroom-mad Mr Latouche. The petulant pedagogue is something of humourless martinet, and thanks to him, Ducoboo has spent so much time in the corner with a dunce cap on his head that he’s struck up a friendship with the biology skeleton. He (She? They!) answer to Skelly – always ready with a crack-brained theory, wrong answer or best of all, a suggestion for fun and frolics…

Released in 2001, Europe’s sixth collected album Un amour de potache became another eclectic collation of classic clowning about that begins with another new term. Mr. Latouche is hard in, training for the trials to come whilst Ducoboo does his utmost to keep fresh young innocents away from the sinister scholastic hellhole. Here, many strips address burgeoning personal technologies as the wayward lad tests aids like earbuds and smartpens but finds nothing cleverer than his teacher or Leonie…

An extended riff on the kinds of comics and magazines – and free gift premiums – kids consume leads to the cheater retrenching and re-exploring tried-&-tested ways of sneaking answers, before Leonie stumbles into new avenues to exploit and educational toys to distract the big oaf with.

Thanks to Skelly, at least anatomy class is a breeze, but when Ducoboo looks for specialist cadavers for use in his other lessons, Latouche loses his cool – and his esteemed position. Inevitably, the pressure proves too great. Sadly, when teacher has a breakdown, the school replaces him with surly cleaning lady Mrs. Mop, who employs extraordinary methods our bad boy cannot overcome…

With swipes at modern methodology and mercantile means – such as teaching-by-photocopy and growing class sizes – a long section on Christmas holidays, festivities and just rewards leads to a new year and more of the same, as times tables, history and poetry increasingly impinge on Ducoboo’s dreary supposedly free days. Nevertheless, he still finds time to defend Leonie from a bully before life goes topsy-turvy with the arrival of a pretty new girl. She’s also called Leonie Gratin, lives in the same house as his educational fount of knowledge wellspring and has just had – reluctantly – her first maternally funded and fuelled makeover…

When that chaos and confusion concludes, mysteriously returned original Leonie agrees to visit a museum with her engaging oaf and again discovers that there are depths he hasn’t plumbed yet: gifts that come in handy when term end approaches and Latouche plans to upgrade the testing/exams and parental reports side of his job.

As summer comes at last the kids enjoy markedly different vacations and activities, but Ducoboo’s take a wild turn as his desperate dad hires a private tutor and accidentally becomes a sort of teacher’s pet himself. It’s clearly a common condition as, far, far away, Leonie succumbs to a holiday urge and finally tries to honestly communicate what she really feels about her truly aggravating classmate…

Despite the accidental and innocent tones of stalking and potential future abuse, these yarns are wry, witty and whimsical: deftly recycling adored perennial childhood themes. Ducuboo is an up-tempo, upbeat addition to a genre every parent or pupil can appreciate and enjoy. If your kids aren’t back from – or to – school quite yet, why not try keeping them occupied with Lovable Dunce, and again give thanks that there are kids far more demanding than even yours…
© Les Editions du Lombard (Dargaud- Lombard s.a.) 2001 by Godi & Zidrou. English translation © 2016 Cinebook Ltd.