Category: Science Fiction

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Calling Dick Tracy! volume 1


By Mike Curtis, Joe Staton & various (Rabbit Hole)
ISBN: 978-0-930645-11-0 (digital edition)

Time for another anniversary celebration. Dick Tracy is 95 in five months’ time, so here’s a superb collection crying out for revival in either physical or digital forms. Another time to agitate against the publishing powers-that-be, I think…

All in all, comics have a pretty good track record for creating household names. We could play the game of picking the most well-known fictional characters on Earth – usually topped by Sherlock Holmes, Mickey Mouse, Superman Batman & Tarzan – and supplement the list with Popeye, Blondie, Charlie Brown, Tintin, Spider-Man, Garfield, and – not so much now, but once, most definitely – Dick Tracy…

At the height of the Great Depression cartoonist Chester Gould sought fresh strip ideas. The story goes that as a decent guy incensed by the exploits of gangsters like Al Capone (who monopolised front pages of contemporary newspapers) the doughty doodler settled upon the only way a normal man could fight thugs: Passion and Public Opinion.

Raised in Oklahoma, Gould was a Chicago resident who hated seeing his home town in the grip of such wicked men, with far too many honest citizens beguiled by the gangsters’ charisma. He decided to pictorially get it off his chest with a procedural crime thriller that championed the ordinary cops who protected civilisation.

He took his proposal –“Plainclothes Tracy” – to Captain Joseph Patterson, the legendary newspaperman and strips Svengali whose golden touch had already blessed strips like The Gumps, Gasoline Alley, Little Orphan Annie, Winnie Winkle, Smilin’ Jack, Moon Mullins and Terry and the Pirates among others. Casting his experienced eye on the work, Patterson promptly renamed the hero Dick Tracy, whilst also revising his love interest into steady, steadfast girlfriend Tess Truehart. The daily series launched on October 4th 1931 through Patterson’s own Chicago Tribune Syndicate, growing quickly into a phenomenon and monumental hit, with all the attendant media and merchandising hoopla that follows. Bolstered by toys, games, movies, serials, animated features, TV shows et al, the strip soldiered on, influencing generations of creators and entertaining millions of fans. Gould unfailingly wrote and drew the strip for decades until retirement in 1977.

The legendary lawman was a landmark creation who influenced not simply comics but the entirety of American popular fiction. Its signature use of baroque villains, outrageous crimes and fiendish death-traps pollinated the work of numerous strips (most notably Batman), shows and movies since then, whilst the indomitable Tracy’s studied, measured use – and startlingly accurate predictions – of crimefighting technology and techniques gave the world a taste of cop thrillers, police procedurals and forensic mysteries such as CSI decades before the modern fascination took hold.

As with many creators in it for the long haul, the revolutionary 1960s were a harsh time for well-established cartoonists. Along with Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon, Gould’s grizzled gangbuster especially foundered in a social climate of radical change where popular slogans included “Never trust anybody over 21” and “Smash the Establishment”. The strip’s momentum faltered, perhaps as much from a move towards trendy science fiction (Tracy went off-Earth into space and the character Moon Maid was introduced) as from those improbable, Bond-movie-style villains or perceived “old-fashioned” attitudes. Even the introduction of more minority and women characters – and hippie cop Groovy Groove – couldn’t stop the rot. However, the feature soldiered on regardless…

When Gould retired in 1977, 29-year old author Max Allen Collins (Road to Perdition, Nathan Heller, Mike Mist, Ms. Tree, Batman) won the prestigious role as scripter, promptly taking the series back to its crime-busting roots for a breathtaking run, ably assisted by Gould as consultant with his chief artistic assistant Rick Fletcher promoted to full illustrator. After 11 years, Collins was removed in 1992 and replaced by Mike Kilian – who apparently worked for half the up-&-coming novelist’s price – until his death in October 2005. Dick Locher took over story & art, with assistant Jim Brozman assuming drawing duties from March 2009. On January 19th 2011, Tribune Media Services announced Locher’s retirement and replacement by a new team. That’s where this digital-only book begins…

Atoudingly versatile and unbelievably prolific artist/inker Joe Staton (E-Man, Mike Mauser, The Avengers, Incredible Hulk, Green Lantern, Legion of Super-Heroes) has been an integral part of American comic books since the early 1970s and in later years made kids comics his metier. During a spectacular run on licensed classic Scooby Doo, he and series scripter Mike Curtis (Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Shanda the Panda) discovered a mutual love for Dick Tracy and – mostly for their own amusement – created a tribute strip entitled Major Crime Squad.

How that landed them the duty of continuing the ultimate cop’s official adventures is addressed in introductory text feature ‘Publisher’s Note – aka “The Dick Tracy vs. Major Crime Squad Caper”’ by Steve Tippie (VP of Licensing, TMS News & Features, LLC) before a stunning chronological re-presentation of all-new classics begins. Preceding those comic capers are more text-based insights and revelations: a Foreword by Mike Gold; former sheriff Curtis’ ‘How We Got the Job’ (supplemented by samples done in 2005 when they first tried to take on the strip) and Staton’s ‘Waiting For Dick Tracy’…

Next up is a brief visual refresher course of ‘Tracy and His Allies’ and the most nefarious of the repeat offenders in a ‘Rogues Gallery’ before the unending war on crime resumes in ‘Flyface and The Fifth Return’.

The strip has sadly long passed its heady glory days of mass sales, but that’s more about the death of print periodicals than this material. It still appears in a number of papers and as a potent online presences which means every episode is in full colour, with half-page Sunday strips still offering extras such as the ‘Crimestoppers Textbook’. One welcome addition is full credits so we can thank Shelley Pleger and Shane Fisher for their inks, colours and lettering. When Staton retired in October 2021, Pleger drew the feature, which these days is limned by Charles Ettinger…

The plot here sees the long separated traditional squad fully reunited to combat right wing terrorism and gradually reintroduced to the fanciful gadgets and controversial space tech after Tracy’s inventor pal Diet Smith gets in touch. A disgruntled former employee has stolen plans for his energy-beam weapon “Thor’s Hammer”…

After selling it to old lags Flyface and The Fifth – who kidnap officer Lizz Worthington to set a trap for their old nemesis – events spiral out of control, but only the wicked pay the final price this time…

Longtime comedic characters B.O. Plenty and his wife Gravel Gertie then resurface, celebrating the birth of their second child – the ugliest boy on Earth! – before falling foul of a manipulative foodie TV celebrity who sees a chance to own the airwaves with the stomach-churning infant in ‘Flakey Biscuits Makes the Dough’. Sadly, her bribing gifts to the couple include a shipment of cocaine being secretly couriered by her assistant Hot Rize, and soon bodies start dropping as the city’s top drug lord seeks to recover his missing product. Once Tracy realises what’s what, it’s all over bar the shooting…

‘Doubleup and the Scarlet Sting’ features the making of a movie starring a fictional superhero and depicts how childhood fan and modern-day gangster Doubleup barges in: infiltrating the cast to shakedown the production. Soon he’s too involved and after murdering his girlfriend all that’s left is being caught facing real-world justice…

At this time alternate Sunday extra ‘Tracy’s Hall of Fame’ (celebrating police officers) began, days before an officially deceased and clearly incorrigible arch enemy reappeared in ‘B-B Eyes and Honeymoon’. When Tracy’s adopted son Junior goes undercover to investigate a video piracy ring, the case quickly drags in the old cop’s granddaughter too, after Honeymoon Tracy tries to help out and almost dies because of her enthusiasm and lack of training.

Even with the comics component concluded, there’s more informational extras to enjoy as Curtis offers ‘Dick Tracy vs. the Villains: A Comparison’ and we meet the current creators in ‘Joe Staton’s Bio’, ‘Mike Curtis’ Bio’ and ‘Team Tracy Bios’ to close this initial casebook – hopefully the first of many.

Dick Tracy has always been a fantastically readable feature and this potent return to first principles is a terrific way to ease yourself into his stark, no-nonsense, Tough Love, Hard Justice world. Comics just don’t get better than this.
© 2013 TMS News & Features, LLC. All rights reserved.

On this day in 2003, Jerry Bittle’s redneck-ribbing strip Geech appeared for the final time, but the date is shared by a host of birthday boys and girls including French illustrator Paul Léonnec in 1842; publisher Clay Geerdes in 1934; Argentinian Lucho Olivera (Nippur de Lagash, Gilgamesh the immortal) in 1942 and undying legend Barry Windsor-Smith in 1949. Stan (Usagi Jojimbo) Sakai arrived in 1953; both Mark (Breathtaker, Tug & Buster, Sandman) Hempel and Publisher Terry Nantier in 1957 and mangaka Tomoko Ninomiya (Nodame Cantabile) in 1969.

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Garth: The Cloud of Balthus (volume 1)


By Frank Bellamy & Jim Edgar, with John Allard (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-0-90761-034-2 (Album TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Frank Alfred Bellamy (21st May 1917 – 5th July 1976) is one of British Comics’ greatest comics artists. In the all-too-brief years of his career he produced magnificent, unforgettable visuals for Eagle, TV21, Radio Times (Doctor Who) before taking over The Daily Mirror newspaper strip Garth in 1971. He turned that long-running yet meandering and occasionally lacklustre strip into a magnificent masterpiece of unmissable adventure fantasy, with eye-popping, mind-blowing monochrome art other artists were proud to boast they swiped from. However, after only 17 stories, Bellamy died suddenly in 1976; and it’s absolutely criminal that his work isn’t in galleries, let alone in permanent collected book editions.

Bellamy was born in 1917 but didn’t begin comic strip work until 1953: the Monty Carstairs strip for Mickey Mouse Weekly. From there he moved on to Hulton Press and drew features starring Swiss Family Robinson, Robin Hood and King Arthur for Swift, the “junior companion” to Eagle. In 1957, he moved on to the star title, producing standout, innovative work on a variety of strips, beginning with a biography/hagiography of Winston Churchill. ‘The Happy Warrior’ was followed by ‘Montgomery of Alamein’, ‘The Shepherd King – the story of David’ and ‘The Travels of Marco Polo’, from which Bellamy was promptly pulled only a few months in. As Peter Jackson took over the back page historical adventure, Bellamy was on his way to the front cover and The Near Future.

When Hulton were bought by Odhams Press there soon manifested irreconcilable differences between Frank Hampson and the new management. Dan Dare’s creator left his superstar baby and Bellamy was tapped as replacement – although both Don Harley & Keith Watson were retained as Frank’s assistants. For a year Bellamy produced “The Pilot of the Future”: redesigning the entire look of the strip at management’s request, before joyfully stepping down to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition.

For his entire life Frank Bellamy had been fascinated – almost obsessed – with Africa. When asked if he would like to draw a big game hunter strip he didn’t think twice and Fraser of Africa debuted in August 1960, a single page per week in the prestigious full-colour centre section. Fraser of Africa was an artistic landmark and Bellamy’s techniques of line and hatching, in conjunction with sensitive, atmospheric colours, and even his staging and layout of pages, led to majestic Heros the Spartan and eventually the bravura creativity displayed in Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet strips for TV21, before he opted for the strictures of monochrome and a single tier of 3-4 panels a day…

British Superman Garth first appeared in The Daily Mirror on Saturday, July 24th 1943, the creation of professional cartoonist Steve Dowling and BBC radio producer Gordon Boshell, at the behest of the editor who wanted an adventure strip to complement their other comic strip features: Buck Ryan, Belinda Blue Eyes, Just Jake and immortal, demi-immoral, morale-boosting Jane.

A blond giant and physical marvel with no memory of who he was, Garth washed up on an island shore and into the arms of a pretty girl… Gala. Nonetheless, he saved the entire populace from a brutal tyrant and a legend began. Boshell never had time to write the series, so Dowling – already producing successful family strip The Ruggles – scripted Garth until a new writer could be found. Don Freeman dumped the amnesia plot in ‘The Seven Ages of Garth’ (which ran from September 18th 1944 until January 20th 1946) by introducing imposing jack-of-all-sciences Professor Lumiere, whose subsequent psychological experiments regressed the burly hero back through some past lives.

In the next tale ‘The Saga of Garth’ (January 22nd 1946 – July 20th 1946) the origin was revealed. As an infant, “Garth” had been found floating in a coracle off the Shetlands and adopted by a kindly old couple. When full grown he became a Navy Captain until he was torpedoed off Tibet in 1943…

Freeman continued as writer until 1952 (‘Flight into the Future’ was his last tale), and was briefly replaced by script editor Hugh McClelland (who only wrote ‘Invasion From Space’) until Peter O’Donnell took over in February 1953 with ‘Warriors of Krull’. O’Donnell penned 28 adventures until resigning in 1966 to devote more time to his own strip: a little something called Modesty Blaise. His place was taken by Jim Edgar; a short-story writer who also scripted such prestigious newspaper strips as Matt Marriott, Wes Slade and Gun Law.

Dowling retired in 1968 and his long-time assistant John Allard took over the strip until a suitable permanent artist could be found. Allard completed ten complete tales until Frank Bellamy began a legendary run with the 13th instalment of ‘Sundance’ (which ran from 28th June to 1 October 11th 1971). Allard remained as background artist and assistant until Bellamy took full control during ‘The Orb of Trimandias’.

One thing Professor Lumiere had discovered and which gave this strip its distinctive appeal even before the fantastic artwork of Bellamy elevated it to dizzying heights of graphic brilliance, was Garth’s involuntary ability to travel through time and re-experience past and future lives. This simple concept lent the strip an unfailing potential for exotic storylines and fantastic exploits, pushing it beyond its humble beginning as a British response to Siegel & Shuster’s American phenomenon Superman.

The tales in this criminally out of print monochrome tome begin with the aforementioned ‘Sundance’ as mighty Garth is drawn back to 1876 to relive his life as an officer of George Custer’s 7th Cavalry on the eve of the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

The time-tossed titan has a brief but passionate love affair with Indian maiden Falling Leaf before dying valiantly for his beliefs and their love. It is an evocative, powerful tale that totally captures the bigotry, arrogance and futility of the White Man and the tragic demise of the Indian way of life…

Then eponymous epic ‘The Cloud of Balthus’ shows the potent but simple elegance of the narrative concept sustaining Garth. Whilst vacationing in the Caribbean our hero becomes embroiled in an espionage plot involving freelance super-spies and a US space station, but even that is mere prelude to fantastic adventure and deadly terrors when he and delectable, double-dealing companion Lee Wan are abruptly abducted by nebulous energy beings in a taut, tension-fraught thriller.

‘The Orb of Trimandias’ plunges Garth back in time to Venice of the Borgias, when/where he becomes again English Soldier-of-Fortune Lord Carthewan: a decent man battling an insane and all-powerful madman for the secret of a supernaturally potent holy relic. This gripping, exotic yarn is replete with flamboyant action, historical celebrities, sexy men and women and magnificently stirring locales. It’s a timeless treasure of adventure that has the added fillip of briefly reuniting Garth with his star-crossed true love, ethereal Space Goddess Astra.

This lovely volume (long overdue for re-issue – at least in digital form if no other way is possible) concludes with a high-octane gothic horror story.

‘The Wolfman of Ausensee’ sees Garth as a rather reluctant companion of movie starlet Gloria Delmar on a shoot at the forbidding Austrian schloss (that’s a big ugly castle to you) of a playboy whose family was once cursed by witches. Despite the title giving some of the game away, this is still a sharp and savvy spook-fest comparing well to the best Hammer Horror films that no doubt inspired it, and just gets better with each rereading.

Garth is the quintessential British Action Hero: strong, smart, fast and good-looking with a big heart and nose for trouble. His back-story granted him all of eternity and every genre to play in, and the magnificent art of Frank Bellamy also made his too-brief tenure a stellar one.

Comic-strips seldom get this good, and even though this book and its sequel are still relatively easy (if not cheap) to come by, it is still a crime and an utter mystery that all these wonderful tales have been out of print for so long.
© 1984 Mirror Group Newspapers. All rights reserved.

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Garth: The Women of Galba (volume 2)


By Frank Bellamy & Jim Edgar (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-0-90761-049-6 (Album TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

A bold and daring blond giant and physical marvel, Garth was Britain’s answer to the blockbusting sensations of Superman, with the added advantage that the feature was officially aimed at adults rather than kids of all ages.

Originally released in 1985, this second Titan Books collection of Garth’s Frank Bellamy era spans 7th September 1972 to 25th October 1973 with the artist shown at the absolute peak of his powers, and opens with eerie chiller ‘The People of the Abyss’ wherein Garth and subsea explorer Ed Neilson are taken prisoner by staggeringly beautiful (what other kind are there?) naked women who drag their bathyscaphe to a city at the bottom of the Pacific. The undersea houris are at war with horrendous aquatic monstrosities and urgently need outside assistance, but even that incredible situation is merely prelude to a tragic love affair with Cold War implications…

Next up is eponymous space-opera romp ‘The Women of Galba’, wherein an alien tyrant learns to rue the day he abducted a giant Earthman to fight and die as a gladiator. Exotic locations, spectacular action and oodles more astonishingly beautiful females make this an unforgettable adventure for what the editors of the era still believed was a strip only grown men read…

‘Ghost Town’ is another western tale, and a very special one. When Garth, vacationing in Colorado, rides into abandoned mining outpost “Gopherville”, he is irresistibly drawn back to a past life as Marshal Tom Barratt who lived, loved and died when the town was a hotspot of vice and easily-purloined money. When Bellamy died suddenly in 1976 this tale – long acknowledged as his personal favourite – was rerun until Martin Asbury (who painted both Titan Book album covers here) was ready to take over the strip.

The final adventure re-presented here – ‘The Mask of Atacama’ – sees Garth & Lumiere in Mexico City. Whilst sleeping, the blonde colossus is visited by the spirit of Princess Atacama (also beautiful, of course) who escorts him through time to vanished Aztec city Tenochtitlan where, as the Sun God Axatl, Garth attempts to save their civilisation from the voraciously marauding Conquistadores of Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano (as shortened for these brief 3-panel strip episodes to far more manageable Hernan Cortés)…

Tragically, neither Garth nor the Princess have reckoned on the jealousy of the Sun Priests and their High Priestess Tiahuaca…

Adding extra value to this volume are a draft synopsis and actual scripts for ‘The Women of Galba’, all liberally illustrated.. There has never been a better comic adventure strip than Garth as drawn by Bellamy: a daily rip-roaring romp combining action, suspense, glamour, mystery and the uncanny in a seamless blend of graphic wonderment. In recent years, the comic strip colossus has fallen from memory as well as favour, but I’m still fervently praying that one day, Garth (and while I’m dreaming, Jeff Hawke too) will make the jump to curated complete archive editions. Go on, make on old man happy why don’t you? There’s certainly a grateful, appreciative and vast audience waiting…
© 1985 Mirror Group Newspapers/Syndication International. All Rights Reserved.

This day in 1915 Henry Sunday page illustrator Don Trachte was born, followed two years later by British legend Frank Bellamy (Fraser of Africa, Dan Dare, Garth, Heros the Spartan, Thunderbirds) and Mancunian émigré Lee Elias (Beyond Mars, Black Cat, Flash, Green Arrow, Eclipso, Luke Cage, Human Fly, Goblin, Rook) in 1920.

In 1943 French writer-artist Jean-Claude Fournier (Spirou and Fantasio, Bizu) was born as was writer/publisher Gary Reed (Sherlock Holmes, Deadworld, Saint Germaine, Baker Street, Caliber Comics) in 1956.

We lost pioneering Canadian cartoonist and animator Vital Achille Raoul Barré in 1932 and in 1977 gained a UK animal icon when Gnasher’s Tale (by David Sutherland) began, launching the manky mutt into his own Beano series detailing his life as a puppy before being adopted by Dennis the Menace…

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Crisis on Multiple Earths: The Team-Ups


By Gardner Fox, John Broome, Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, Dick Dillin, Joe Giella, Sid Greene & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0470-9 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As I’ve interminably mentioned before, I was one of the “Baby Boomer” crowd that grew up with Gardner Fox & John Broome’s tantalisingly slow reintroduction of Golden Age superheroes during the halcyon, eternally summery days of the 1960s. To me those fascinating counterpart crusaders from Earth-Two were never vague and distant memories rubber-stamped by parents or older brothers – they were cool, fascinating and enigmatically new. And for some reason the “proper” heroes of Earth-One held them in high regard and treated them with obvious deference…

It all began, naturally enough, in The Flash, flagship title of the Silver Age Revolution. After ushering in the triumphant return of the costumed superhero concept the Scarlet Speedster, with Fox and Broome at the reins, set an unbelievably high standard for superhero adventure in sharp, witty tales of science and imagination, illustrated with captivating style and clean simplicity by Carmine Infantino.

Gardner Fox didn’t write many Flash scripts at this time, but those few he did were all dynamite. None more so than the full-length epic that literally changed the scope of American comics forever. ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ (The Flash #123, cover-dated September 1961, illustrated by Infantino & Joe Giella) introduced the concept of alternate Earths to a growing continuity and by extension resulted in the multiversal structure of the DCU, Crisis on Infinite Earths and all the succeeding cosmos-shaking crossover sagas that grew from it… And of course where DC led, others followed…

During a benefit gig Flash (police scientist Barry Allen) accidentally slips into another dimension where he finds the comic-book hero he based his own superhero identity upon actually exists. Every adventure he had absorbed as an eager child was grim reality to Jay Garrick and his mystery-men comrades on the controversially named Earth-2. Locating his idol, Barry convinces the elder to come out of retirement just as three Golden Age villains, the Shade, Thinker and Fiddler, make their own wicked comeback…

Thus is history made and above all else, ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ is still a great read that can electrify today’s reader.

Fox revisited Earth-2 nine months later in #129’s ‘Double Danger on Earth!’ (inked by Murphy Anderson) as Garrick ventures to Earth-1 to save his own world from a doom comet, only to fall foul of Captain Cold and The Trickster. Another cracking thriller, as well as double Flash action, this tale teasingly reintroduced Justice Society stalwarts Wonder Woman, Atom, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Dr. Mid-Nite & Black Canary. Clearly Editor Schwartz had something in mind…

‘Vengeance of the Immortal Villain!’ from Flash #137 (June 1963, inked by Giella) was the third incredible Earth-2 crossover, and saw the Flashes unite to defeat 50,000 year old Vandal Savage and save the Justice Society of America: a tale which directly led into the veteran team’s first meeting with the Justice League of America and start of those aforementioned “Crisis” epics.

That landmark epic can be found elsewhere whilst this collection continues with the less well-known ‘Invader from the Dark Dimension!’ (Flash #151, March 1964, by Fox, Infantino & Giella): a full-length shocker wherein the demonic Shade ambitiously attempts to plunder both worlds.

Public approval was decidedly vocal and Editor Julie Schwartz used DC’s try-out magazines to sound out the next step: stories set on Earth-2 with exclusively Golden Age characters. Showcase #55 saw the initial team-up of Doctor Fate and Hourman as the Justice Society stalwarts battled the monster of Slaughter Swamp after ‘Solomon Grundy Goes on a Rampage!’ Produced by Fox & Anderson, this bombastic yarn even had room for a cameo by Earth-2’s Green Lantern, and the original text page featuring the heroes’ origins is also reproduced here.

Showcase #56 also featured “the Super-Team Supreme” (and by the same creative team supreme) in ‘Perils of the Psycho-Pirate!’ wherein ex-con Roger Hayden (cell-mate of the original JSA villain) steals the magical Masks of Medusa to go on an emotion-controlling crime-spree. Fan-historians should note that this tale is a pivotal antecedent of landmark event Crisis on Infinite Earths as well as a superbly engaging adventure in its own right. A text feature on the original Psycho-Pirate accompanies the story.

Although getting in late to the Counterpart Collaborations game, the inevitable first teaming of the Hal Jordan and Alan Scott Green Lanterns is one of the best – and arguably the second-most important – story of the entire decade. ‘Secret Origin of the Guardians!’ (John Broome, Gil Kane & Sid Greene, Green Lantern #40, October 1965) introduced renegade Guardian Krona, revealed the origin of the multiverse, showed how evil entered our universe and described how the immortal Oans took up their self-appointed task of policing the cosmos. It also shows Kane’s paramount ability to stage a superhero fight like no other. This pure comic book perfection should be considered a prologue to the aforementioned Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Still looking for an Earth-2 concept that could support its own series Schwartz, Fox & Anderson debuted the team of Starman & Black Canary in The Brave and the Bold #61 (September/October 1965): pairing the heroes against eerily translucent villain The Mist in ‘Mastermind of Menaces!’ This compelling thriller is augmented here by a text bio of Black Canary.

Although not featured in this volume, Schwartz & Fox did finally achieve their ambition to launch a Golden Age hero into his own title. After three Showcase appearances and many guest-shots The Spectre won his own book at the end of 1967, just as the super-hero craze went into a steep decline. We conclude with a back-up tale from The Spectre #7 (November/ December 1968). Fox, Dick Dillin & Greene’s ‘The Hour Hourman Died!’ is a dark, clever attempted-murder mystery that packs a book’s worth of tension and action into 9 moody pages and serves as a solid thematic reminder that the golden Silver Age of the 1960s was a creative high point that simply ended too soon, because when you start at the top the only way is down…

Still irresistible and compellingly beautiful after all these years, the stories collected here highlight the immense talent and imagination of the creators: gifts which shaped the US comics industry forever after and are still influencing not only today’s funnybooks but also the movies, TV and animated shows and movies that grew from them. These are tales and this is a book you simply must have.
© 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, 2005 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

Today in 1899, Golden Age comic book pioneer Everett M. “Busy” Arnold (Quality Comics) was born, followed in 1911 by novelist, shared continuity groundbreaker and unparalleled inspirational character creator Gardner F. Fox (Justice Society & League of America, Flash, Zatanna, Sandman, Dr, Fate, Johnny Thunder, Hawkman, Doc Savage, Red Wolf, Adam Strange, The Face, Crom the Barbarian, Skyman, Starman, Spymaster, Batman, Batgirl, and thousands of genre shorts for every company in the US, ad infinitum).

In 1936 Malfunction Junction cartoonist Malcolm Hancock was born.

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The Spider’s Syndicate of Crime vs Spider-Boy (volume 4)


By Jerry Siegel & Reg Bunn with John Burns, Geoff Campion and various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-83786-560-4 (Album TPB/Digital edition), 978-1-83786-685-4 (Webshop Exclusive edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Another triumph of Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics line, The Spider’s Syndicate of Crime vs. Spider-Boy is the latest offering in what I pray will be a complete revival of the UK’s most marvellous vintage comics fantasies (bring on Thunderbolt the Avenger, Smoke Man, Tri-Man, Gadget Man & Gimmick Kid and even the Phantom Viking… we can take it!).

Gathering material from peerless weekly anthology Lion, originally spanning May 27th to October 7th 1967 and including material from a later reprinting (Lion December 8th 1973), this collection also includes a prose done-in-one yarn from Lion Annual 1970 to complete another wildly whacky superhero romp as only the cocreator of Superman could envision it…

Mystery criminal genius and eventual superhero The Spider debuted on June 26th 1965 and reigned supreme until April 26th 1969. He has periodically returned in reprints and occasional new stories ever since. As first introduced by Ted Cowan (Paddy Payne, Adam Eterno, Robot Archie) & William Reginald Bunn.

“Reg” was an absolute master of his field and much beloved. His other work in comics (like Robin Hood, Buck Jones, Black Hood, Captain Kid and Clip McCord) spanned 1949 to his death in 1971 as, once the industry found him, he was never without work. Reg died on the job and is still much missed. For The Spider there was the ultimate accolade as, after opening on 2 pages per episode, the feature kept winning a bigger page count. Even so, lots had to happen in short order and Bunn never stinted or short-changed his audience. Played out for months at breakneck rollercoaster pace, each monochrome episode positively bulged with imaginative ingenuity, manic combats and crazy inventions peppering wide-eyed British kids with a bizarre conception of the USA…

Originally The Spider was man of unbelievably colossal vanity: a moody malcontent super-scientist whose goal was to be acclaimed the greatest criminal of all time. A flamboyantly wicked narcissist, he began his public career by recruiting crime specialists – scurvy, skeevy safecracker Roy Ordini and genteelly timid evil genius inventor Professor Pelham – prior to a massive gem-theft from America’s greatest city. He was foiled by cruel luck and resolute cops Gilmore &Trask: crack detectives cursed with the job of catching the arachnid archfiend. Cowan scripted the first two serialised sagas before handing over to comics royalty: Jerry Siegel (Superman, Superboy, The Spectre, Doctor Occult, Slam Bradley, Funnyman, The Mighty Crusaders, Starling), who had been forced to look elsewhere for work after an infamous dispute with DC Comics over the rights to the Man of Steel. His supervision of UK arachnid amazement began just as Britain and the entire, but somehow less fab & groovy, world succumbed to “Batmania”…

In case you’re not old, that term covers a period of global hysteria sparked by the 1966 Batman TV show, when the planet went crazy for superheroes and an era dubbed “camp” saw humour, satire, and fantastic psychedelic whimsy infect all categories of entertainment. It was a time of peace, love, wild music and radical change, and I believe there were lots of drugs being experimented with at the time…

British comics were always especially vulnerable to any passing trend or zeitgeist, and a host of more conventional costumed crusaders sprang up in our traditionally unconventional pages. Scripted by the godfather of the genre – and an inveterate humourist – The Spider remained an utterly arrogant sod even as he skilfully shifted gears without a squeak to become a superhero. Battling in rapid succession The Exterminator, Crime Incorporated, The Silhouette, Dr. Mysterioso, The Android Emperor, The Infernal Gadgeteer, The Crook From Outer Space, an evil Genie, transdimensional monstrogs and immortal Queen Lana of Valley of the Doomed he starts here as global figure of approbation and acceptance, only to see all his glittering glories plucked away…

As previously stated, the strip had grown ever more popular, and by the time of this epic encounter demanded a full 5 pages per episode, in a periodical where 1 or 2 pages a week was the norm. Another masterclass of illustrative wonderment displaying Bunn’s incredible gift for visualisation, the lengthy campaign finds The Spider, Pelham & Ordini targeted by honest greed, dastardly ambition and cruel misunderstanding as the tale in this tome reconnects with normal(ish) Good, Evil and Vengeance. Here The Spider duels a deadly criminal scientist only to find himself distracted and diverted by a young and ferocious deadly doppelganger…
When criminal inventor Sylvester Jenkins (DO NOT call him “Silly”) teams up with Fury Gang boss “Turk” Dobbs, the first results are a wave of super-powered bandits such as The Bolt and insulting defeat by The Spider and his crew. In response Jenkins murders Dobbs (who coined the “Silly” moniker) and frames the hero for it. With the Spider on the run and unable to clear his name, let alone face a rush of mutated mobster/monsters, the situation grows truly complicated as a brilliant but vicious teenager wearing stolen Spider gear hunts and humiliates the great hero time and again.

Outfought, outmanoeuvred and on the run, the prospects are dire after Jenkins recruits Spider-Boy and orchestrates his following forays against the despised fallen hero, until the kid learns a bitter truth and shares a tragic secret that changes everything…

A far darker and more traditionally motivated tale, the delivery still rockets along with wild invention as incidental dangers pile up: horrors such as trigger-happy cops, Jenkins’ relentless monster experiments, naturally-occurring rival bio-terrors, rampaging bug-bots, flying castles, mutated circus and zoo animals and a climactic showdown in a lost city of super technologies, before all the truths come out and justice is served…

The Extras section then offers a rare treat from a later era, as – when the serial was truncated and re-run in 1973 – the editors opted to commission a new final episode and alternate conclusion; scripted by an unknown writer but illustrated by John Burns as seen in Lion December 8th 1973. It’s followed by text thriller ‘The Spider Meets the Fly’. Illustrated and written by hands unknown for Lion Annual 1968 this yarn pits the Spider and Co. against a world-conquering science villain and his volcano-dwelling army of high-tech assassins… with the usual results, and is accompanied by the book’s original full-colour frontispiece highlighting the clash as painted by Geoff (Battler Britton, Captain Condor, Typhoon Tracy, The Spellbinder, D-Day Dawson) Campion.

This titanic tome confirms that the King of crime crushes is still top of the heap and should find a home in every kid’s heart and mind, no matter how young they might be, or threaten to remain. Batty, baroque and often simply bonkers, The Spider proves that although crime does not pay, it can offer a huge amount of white-knuckle fun…
© 1967, 1969, 1973 & 2025 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1777 English caricaturist and illustrator Richard Newton was born, followed in 1903 by Jimmy Olsen, Captain Marvel artist Pete Costanza; Ralph Reese (Solomon Kane, Witzend, One Year Affair) in 1949, and Argentine cartoonist Maitena Burundarena (Mujeres Alteradas) in 1962.

In 2017, comic book chameleon Rich Buckler (Deathlok, Fantastic Four, All-Star Squadron, Batman, Superman vs Shazam, Red Circle Comics) died.

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Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives volume 1


By Bill Everett and others, edited and complied by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-488-7 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Thanks solely to modern technology and diligent research by dedicated fans, there is a sublime superabundance of collections featuring the works of too-long ignored founding fathers and lost masters of American comic books these days. A magnificent case in point is these curated chronicles (available in both print and digital formats) revisiting and yet barely touching upon the incredible gifts and achievements of one of the greatest draughtsmen and yarn-spinners our industry has ever seen.

You could save some time and trouble by simply buying them now rather than waste your valuable off-hours reading my preposterous blather and piffle, but since I’m keen to carp on anyway feel free to accompany me as I delineate just why these tomes need to join the books on your “Favourites” shelf.

The star under scrutiny here was a direct descendent and namesake of iconoclastic poet and artist William Blake. Bill was quite possibly the most technically accomplished artist in the US comic book industry and his tragic life and awe-inspiring body of work reveal how a man of privilege and astonishing pedigree was wracked by illness, addictive personality traits (especially alcoholism) and sheer bad luck, but nevertheless shaped an art-form. Bill Everett left twin legacies: an incredible body of superlative stories and art, and, more importantly, he redeemed many broken lives by becoming a dedicated mentor for Alcoholics Anonymous in his later years.

William Blake Everett was born in 1917 into a wealthy and prestigious New England family. Bright and precocious, he contracted tuberculosis at age twelve and was dispatched to arid Arizona to recuperate. This chain of events began a life-long affair with the cowboy lifestyle: a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, tall-tale-telling breed locked in a hard-to-win war against slow self-destruction.

All this and more is far better imparted in a scholarly, fact-filled, picture-packed Introduction by Blake Bell in Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives volume 1. This covers the development of the medium in ‘The Golden Age of Comics’; the history of ‘Bill Everett the Man’ and how they came together in ‘Centaur + Funnies Inc. = Marvel Comics #1’. The essay also includes an astounding treasure trove of found images and original art, including samples from 1940s Sub-Mariner, 1960s Daredevil and 1970s Black Widow stories, amongst many others.

Accompanied by the covers (that’s the case for most of the titles that follow: Everett was fast and slick and knew just how to catch a punter’s eye) for Amazing Mystery Funnies vol. 1 #1, 2, 3a, 3b and vol. 2 #2 (August 1938 – February 1939, from Centaur) are a quartet of rousing but muddled interstellar exploits starring sci fi troubleshooter Skyrocket Steele. These are followed by a brace of anarchic outer space shenanigans starring futuristic wild boy Dirk the Demon culled from Amazing Mystery Funnies (vol. 1 #3a and vol. 2 #3; November 1938 & March 1939 respectively).

The undisputed star and big draw at Centaur was always Amazing-Man who was a Tibetan mystic-trained orphan, adventurer and do-gooder named John Aman. After many years of dangerous, painful study that young man was despatched back to civilisation to do good… for a relative given value of “good”…

Aman stole the show in monthly Amazing Mystery Comics (#5-8, spanning September -December 1939) as seen in the four breakneck thrillers re-presented here and opening with ‘Origin of Amazing-Man’ followed by an untitled sequel episode with the champion saving a lady rancher from sadistic criminals; ‘Amazing-Man Loose’ (after being framed for various crimes) and a concluding instalment wherein the nomadic hero abandons his quest to capture his evil arch rival ‘The Great Question’ and instead heads for recently invaded France to combat the scourge of Nazism…

As previously stated, Everett was passionately wedded to western themes and for Novelty Press’ Target Comics he devised an Arizona-set, rootin’ tootin’ cowboy crusader called Bull’s-Eye Bill. Taken from issues #1 & 2 (February & March 1940), ‘On the trail of Travis Trent’ and ‘The Escape of Travis Trent’ has our wholesome yet hard-bitten cowpoke battling the meanest, most determined owlhoot in the territory. Accompanying the strips is an Everett-illustrated prose piece attributed to “Gray Brown” entitled ‘Bullseye Bill Gets his Moniker’.

Thanks to his breakthrough Sub-Mariner sagas, Everett became inextricably linked to water-based action adventures and immensely popular, edgy heroes. That’s why Eastern Comics hired him to create human waterspout Bob Blake, Hydroman for their bimonthly anthology Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics.

Here – spanning issues #1-5 and August 1940 to March 1941- are five spectacular, eerily offbeat exploits, encompassing ‘The Origin of Hydroman’ and covering his patriotic mission to make America safe from subversion by “oriental invaders”, German saboteurs and assorted ne’er-do-wells, after which a Polar Paladin rears his frozen head. Sub-Zero Man debuted in Blue Bullet Comics vol. 1 #2 cover-dated July 1940. He was a Venusian scientist stranded on Earth who, through myriad bizarre circumstances, became a chilly champion of justice. Everett is only credited with the episode ‘The Power of Professor X’ (vol. 1 #5, October 1940) but also included here are the cover of vol. 1 #4 and spot illustrations for the prose stories ‘Sub-Zero’s Adventures on Earth’ and ‘Frozen Ice’ (from Blue Bullet Comics vol. 1 #2 and vol. 2 #3).

The Conqueror was another quickly forsaken Everett creation: a Red, White & Blue patriotic costumed champion debuting in August 1941’s Victory Comics #1. Daniel Lyons almost died in a plane crash but was saved by cosmic ray bombardment which granted him astounding mental and physical powers in ‘The Coming of the Conqueror’. He promptly moved to Europe to “rid the world of Adolf Hitler!” with Everett’s only other contribution being the cover of issue #2 (September 1941). Accompanied by a page of original artwork from Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics #12 (May 1941), The Music Master then details how dying violinist John Wallace was saved by mystic musical means and becomes a sonic-powered superman righting injustices and crushing evil…

Rounding out this initial cavalcade of forgotten wonders are a selection of covers, illustrations and yarns which can only be described as Miscellaneous (1938-1942). These comprise the cover to the 1938 Uncle Joe’s Funnies #1; procedural crime thriller ‘The C-20 Mystery’ (from Amazing Mystery Funnies vol. 2 #7, June 1939) and ‘The Story of the Red Cross’ from True Comics #2 (June 1938). The cover for 1941’s Dickie Dare #1 is followed by a range of potent images from text tales beginning with three pages for ‘Sheep’s Clothing’ (Funny Pages vol. 2 #11, November 1940); a potent pic for ‘Birth of a Robot Part 2’ (Target Comics vol. 1 #6, July 1940); two pages from ‘Death in a Box’ courtesy of Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics #5 (March 1941) and two from ‘Pirate’s Oil’ in RFHC #13 (July 1942), before the unpublished, unfinished 1940 covers for Challenge Comics #1 and Whirlwind Comics #1 bring the potent nostalgia to a close.
© 2011 Fantagraphics Books. Introduction © 2011 Blake Bell. All art © its respective owners and holders. All rights reserved.

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Heroic Tales: The Bill Everett Archives volume 2


By Bill Everett and others, edited and complied by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-600-3 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The second visit to the works of Bill Everett also opens with a fact-filled, picture-packed Introduction by Blake Bell which covers ‘The Early Years of Comics: 1938-1942’, ‘The Birth of Marvel Comics’ and ‘The Comic Book Production System’, before ‘The Heroes’ precedes a selection of astounding, astonishing prototypical adventure champions accompanied a brief essay on the set-up of Centaur Comics, Novelty Press, Eastern Color Printing, Hillman and Lev Gleason Publications.

Augmented by covers for Centaur’s Amazing Mystery Funnies vol. 2 #3, 5 & 6 (March, May & June 1939) are three outer space exploits of futuristic troubleshooter Skyrocket Steele, whilst Tibetan-trained superhero Amazing-Man offers a transformative triptych of titanic tales spanning war-torn Europe, augmented by covers to Amazing-Man Comics #9-11 (February-April 1940).

Everett’s deeply held sagebrush sentiments are served with another brace of barnstorming Bull’s-Eye Bill from Target Comics #3-4 (Novelty Press, April & May 1940) whilst from #7-9 (August-October 1940), the author smoothly switched to sophisticated suspense as master of disguise The Chameleon cunningly crushed contemporary criminals in scintillating escapades from Target Comics’ answer to The Saint, The Falcon and The Lone Wolf.

Everett’s other aquatic adventurer – Eastern Comics’ human waterspout Bob Blake, Hydroman returns next, as seen in Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics # 6-9 (May – November 1941, with Bill’s covers for #6 & 7): four spectacular, eerily, offbeat exploits, covering an extended battle against foreign spies and American Fifth Columnists, after which Red Reed in the Americas! (created by Bob Davis & Fitz) offers the first two chapters in a political thriller wherein a college student and his pals head South of the Border to fight Nazi-backed sedition and tyranny in a stunning tour de force first seen in Lev Gleason’s Silver Streak Comics #20 & 21 (April & May 1942).

A section of Miscellaneous and text illustrations follows, blending Western spot drawings with eye-catching covers from Amazing Mystery Funnies vol. 2 #18; Target Comics #5 & 6; Blue Bolt (vol. 1 #11, vol. 2 #1, 2 &~ 3) and Famous Funnies #85. The Humorous and More then details Everett’s forays into other markets: niche sectors such as licensed comics, comedy and romance, and even  a return to pulp and magazine illustration as he strove to stay one step ahead of a constantly shifting market and his own growing reputation for binges and unreliability.

‘What’s With the Crosbys?’ is a superbly rendered gossip strip from Famous Stars #2 (1950, Ziff-Davis) whilst a stunning monochrome girly-pin-up of ‘Snafu’s Lovely Ladies’ (from Marvel’s Snafu #3, March 1956), and the cover of Adventures of the Big Boy #1 (also Marvel, from the same month) lead into the back cover of Cracked #6 (December 1958, Major Magazines) and other visual features from that Mad magazine mimic, as well as the colour cover to less successful imitator Zany (#3, from March 1959). Everett’s staggering ability to draw beautiful women plays well in the complete romance strip ‘Love Knows No Rules’ (Personal Love #24, November 1953 Eastern Color), before this section concludes with a gritty monochrome title page piece from combat pulp War Stories #1, courtesy of Marvel’s parent company Magazine Management, and cover-dated September 1952.

The Horror concentrates on our post-superhero passion for scary stories: an arena where Bill Everett absolutely shone like a diamond. For more than a decade he brought a sheen of irresistible quality to the generally second-rate chillers Timely/Atlas/Marvel produced in competition with genre frontrunners EC Comics. It’s easy to see how they could compete and even outlive their gritty, gore-soaked competitor, with such lush and lurid examples of covers and chillingly beautiful interior pages…

Following a third informative background essay detailing his life until its cruelly early end in 1973, a choice selection of his lesser known or celebrated efforts opens with tale of terror ‘Hangman’s House’ (Suspense #5, November, 1950),; a grim confrontation with Satanic evil, followed by futuristic Cold War shocker ‘I Deal With Murder!’ and a visit to a dark carnival of purely human wickedness in ‘Felix the Great’(both from Suspense #6, January 1951).

Adventures into Weird Worlds #4 (Spring 1952) offered a laconic, sardonic glimpse into ‘The Face of Death’, whilst from the following issue (April 1952) ‘Don’t Bury Me Deep’ tapped untold depths of tension in a moodily mordant exploration of fear and premature burial. Hard on the heels of the cover to Journey Into Unknown Worlds #14 (December 1952) comes one of its interior shockers as ‘The Scarecrow’ helps an aged couple solve their mortgage problems in a most unusual manner. The Marvel madness concludes with a cautionary tale of ‘That Crazy Car’ from Journey into Mystery #20, December 1954, concluding a far too brief sojourn amidst arguably Everest’s most accomplished works and most professionally adept period.

This magnificent collection ends with a gallery of pages and one complete tale from the end of his career; selected from an even more uninhibited publisher attempting to cash in on the adult horror market opened by Warren Publishing with Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella.

Skywald was formed by industry veteran Israel Waldman and Everett’s old friend Sol Brodsky, tapping into the burgeoning black-&-white, mature-reader market with supernatural flavoured magazines Hell-Rider, Crime Machine, Nightmare, Psycho and Scream. Offered an “in”, Everett produced incredible pin-ups (included here are three from Nightmare (#1, 2 & 4, December 1970-June 1971); ‘A Psycho Scene’ (Psycho #5, November, 1971); a stunning werewolf pinup from Psycho #6 and one of revived Golden Age monstrosity ‘The Heap’ from Psycho #4. Most welcome is a magnificent 10-page monochrome masterpiece of gothic mystery ‘The Man Who Stole Eternity’ from Psycho #3 (May, 1971).

Although telling, even revelatory and concluding in a happy ending of sorts, what these books truly celebrate is not the life but the astounding versatility of Bill Everett. A gifted, driven man, he was a born storyteller with the unparalleled ability to make all his imaginary worlds hyper-real; and for nearly five decades his incredible art and wondrous stories enthralled and enchanted everybody lucky enough to read them.
© 2013 Fantagraphics Books. Text © 2013 Blake Bell. All art © its respective owners and holders. All rights reserved.

Bill Everett was born today in 1917, as was Mad mainstay Don Martin in 1931, foundational Underground Commix publisher/empresario Don Donahue (AKA Apex Novelties) in 1942 and in 1953 both Alan Kupperberg (Blue Devil, Dragonlance) and Arthur Suydam (Cholly and Flytrap, Marvel Zombies).

Today in 2017, Oscar González Guerrero died. The Mexican comic artist, art director and educator had started taletelling in the 1950s and created Zor y Los Invencibles, Hermelinda Linda, Burrerías, Smog, Don Leocadio El Tío Porfirio, Las Aventures de Capulina and run ¡Ka-Boom! Estudio.

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Upside Dawn


By Jason (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-652-4 (HB/digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic, comedic and ironic effect.

Born in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known by enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume Jason. The shy & retiring auteur first took the path to cartoon superstardom in 1995, once debut graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award. From 1987 he had contributed to alternate/indie magazine KonK while studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo’s Art Academy.

From there he took on Norway’s National School of Arts and, on graduating in 1994, founded his own comic book Mjau Mjau. Constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-mined anthropomorphic minimalism, Jason has cited Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring & Tex Avery as primary influences. He moved to Copenhagen, working at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) and Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Batman: Detective 27).

Jason’s efforts were internationally noticed, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas and he won another Sproing in 2001 – for self-published series Mjau Mjau – before in 2002 turning nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels. He won even more major awards.

Jason’s breadth of interest is wide & deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, literature, art, history and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. Jason’s puckish, egalitarian mixing & matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time. Over a succession of tales he has built and re-employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes distilled from movies, childhood yarns, historical and literary favourites. These all role-play in deliciously absurd and surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. Latterly, Jason returned to such “found” players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and even has a whole bizarre bunch of them “team-up” or clash…

As always, visual/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued, or even as here silently pantomimic progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a pared back stripped-down interpretation of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity augmented by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

A master of short-form illustrated tales, many Jason yarns have been released as snappy little albums before later inclusion in longer anthology collections. The majority of tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality even in the most comedic of moments. They are largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes. That’s a style that has never been more apropos than right here, as the more modern Art Forms bow before the onslaught and tirade of organised anti-art philosophers, socially intellectual terrorists, wandering pop stars and a lost Vulcan…

Here the auteur returns to short individual pieces – or are they? – and fondly dabbles with words, terms and aural meanings whilst opening with an understandable failure to communicate over a meal in ‘Woman, Man, Bird’ before noted cerebral French auteur/filmmaker and playfully adrift word-&-meaning warper Georges Perec is repositioned as a hardboiled gumshoe searching for a missing woman in a yarn laced with omissions, mis-hearings and misapprehensions. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a truth – any truth – ‘Perec PI’ is on the case…

A rapid pictorial transit to a peregrination through a typical life is recalled at full pelt in ‘I Remember’ after which ‘Vampyros Dyslexicoa’ dips deep into literary hinterlands in a pastiche/homage to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 Gothic novella Carmilla. However the sordid obsessions of sapphic vampire Mircalla are only the entrée to wilder scriptorial regions and a nasty case of creative anachronism as ‘Seal VII’ takes us deep into modern “Scandi” folklore when a certain Knight and Death meet up for a game in Sweden in 1357 and don’t really cotton to the notion of chess for souls…

The scenes shifts to Prague in 1919 where a certain agent of the crown abruptly quits his job and is renditioned to a strange, picturesque high-tech surveillance Village where he has to wear a blazer as ‘The Prisoner in the Castle’ prior to popping back to St Peterburg in 1865 to gorily relive the trials and tribulations of Great Russian Literature at first hand via some eccentric ‘Crime and Punishment’…

As much as Jason has played with visual meaning and manipulated derived imagery-context in his past forays, the later relater is here gripped by the confusing potentials of words and verbal meanings. Such facile surface fascinations are apparent during Leopold Bloom’s rather violent visit with the absolute master of “what did that mean” Dublin in June offers a walk with James Joyce, a leprechaun, Stephen Dedalus and Molly as we ponder stuff and not-nonsense in ‘Ulysses’. Then ‘Ionesco’ introduces random judgement to the final days of avant-garde playwright Eugène Ionesco, as a parade of bizarre celebrities and notables eulogise or defame him before he goes…

Slipping into a partial colour palette (yellow, if you care), ‘What Rhymes with Giallo?’ uses rhyming couplets to detail a sordid stabbing spree before resuming monochromatic mode as the tense future proves too much for one scientific stoic. Stress compels Mr Spock to desert the Enterprise and migrate to Montparnasse, Paris in ‘The City of Light, Forever’. It’s 1925 and he finds contentment as a minor Japanese painter (of cats) until Captain Kirk comes looking for him. If you follow Jason, this is where you start to realise that a lot of his work overlaps and intercepts itself in the strangest places…

Adding red and blue to black & white, ‘Who Will Kill the Spider?’ is a classic child’s nightmare of terror and confusion as Dad uses escalating tools and allies to deal with a bug in the bedroom who just won’t quit, after which words literally fail us in ‘One Million and One Years B.C.’: a silent science spoof of dinosaurs, cave-folk, time-travelling soldiers and stupid assumptions which leads into tribute diptych ‘EC Come…’ (a bloody tale of domestic ghouls and zombies) and ‘…EC Go’ (pointed satire of the comic company’s sublime Ray Bradbury adaptations of interplanetary First Contacts).

Then inevitably it devolves into a spoofing shot at the Sci Fi Fifties care of Curt Siodmak via Ed Wood in alien invasion ‘From Outer Space’ before ‘Etc.’ stages a celebrity-stacked movement-moment that begins in London circa 1972 as immortal musketeer Athos meets David Bowie meets a mummy meets Elvis meets Moses meets Sinatra meets Van Gogh meets Frank Zappa meets Death ad infinitum for a miasmic, abstractly construed big finish…

Visually mesmerising, this cunningly concocted Dadaist picture salad conceals underlying connections you really have to stay untuned for, referring relentlessly to modern icons and ancient shibboleths in equal measure, and perpetually sampling the feeling and furniture of war films, scary stories, true romances gone bad, Monty Python, Star Trek, a million movies, books, tunes and comics and even his own burgeoning “Jason-verse”. Upside Dawn absolutely should not be your first dip into his works, but don’t let that stop you from getting them all and getting all caught up…
All characters, stories, artwork and translation © 2022 Jason.
This edition of Upside Dawn © 2022 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All rights reserved.

Today in 1892 Scots artist and future Charlie Chaplin comics illustrator Wally Roberson was born, followed in 1912 by John Liney (who limned the Henry strip), and in 1917, Hal Seeger who wrote & drew Betty Boop and later Leave it to Binky. In 1925 eventual East German cartoonist Hannes Hegen (Mosaik) arrived, with US letterer-to be Stan Starkman (Batman, Doom Patrol, Metamorpho) coming along in 1927. 3D comics guy Ray Zone was born in 1947, the same day and year that we lost the astounding Reg Perrott, artist on Roly and Poly the Two Bear Cubs, Land of the Lost People, Whirling Around the World, Wheels of Fortune, Red Ryder, The Young Explorers, The Golden Arrow, Golden Eagle, Sons of the Sword and more, as well as becoming producer/studio manager of UK mainstay Mickey Mouse Weekly.

In 1952 Hägar the Horrible artist Chris Browne was born, as was Chester Brown (Yummy Fur, Louis Riel) in 1960 and John Arne Sæterøy/Jason in 1965.

This date in 1964 Malcom Judge’s Billy Whizz first hurtled into the hearts of Beano readers, and in 2012 marked the passing of comic book workhorse Ernie Chan (Conan, Batman, Dracula Kull, The Hulk).

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck by Carl Barks: volume 6 – The Old Castle’s Secret


By Carl Barks & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-653-9 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Donald Duck ranks among a small number of fictional characters who have transcended the bounds of reality to become – like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Popeye and James Bond -meta-real. As such, his origins are complex and convoluted. His official birthday is June 9th 1934: a dancing, nautically-themed bit-player in the Silly Symphony cartoon short The Wise Little Hen. However, that date is based on the feature’s release, as announced by distributors United Artists and latterly acknowledged by the Walt Disney Company. Recent research reveals the piece was initially screened at Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on May 3rd, part of a Benefit show. The Wise Little Hen officially premiered on June 7th at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, before a general release date was settled.

The animated feature was adapted by Ted Osborne & Al Taliaferro for the Silly Symphonies Sunday comic strip and thus classified by historians as Donald’s official debut in Disney comics. Controversially, though, he was also deemed to have originated in The Adventures of Mickey Mouse strip which had begun 1931. Thus the Duck has more “birthdays” than the Queens and Kings of England (plus the generally dis-United Kingdom and gradually diminishing Commonwealth) which probably explains why he’s such a bad-tempered old cuss. Today is not so much a birthday as graduation party…

Visually, Donald Fauntleroy Duck was largely the result of animator Dick Lundy’s efforts, and, with partner-in-fun Mickey Mouse, is one of TV Guide’s 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time. The Duck has his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame and has appeared in more films than any other Disney player. During the 1930s his screen career grew from background/supporting roles to a team act with Mickey and Goofy, to a series of solo cartoons that began with 1937’s Don Donald, which also introduced love interest Daisy Duck and nephews Huey, Louie and Dewey.

By 1938 Donald was officially more popular than signature company icon Mickey, especially after the brash bird’s service as a propaganda warrior in a series of animated morale boosters and information features during WWII. The merely magnificent Der Fuehrer’s Face took the 1942 Academy Award (that’s an Oscar to you and me) for Animated Short Film…

Crucially for our purposes, Donald is also planet Earth’s most-published non-superhero comics character, and has been blessed with some of the greatest writers and illustrators ever to punch a keyboard or pick up a pen or brush. A publishing phenomenon and mega star across Europe – particularly Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland – Donald & Co have spawned countless original stories and characters. Sales are stratospheric there and in the more than 45 other countries they export to. Japanese manga publishers have their own carefully-tailored iterations too…

The aforementioned Silly Symphonies adaptation and Mickey Mouse newspaper strip guest shots were trumped in 1937 when Italian publisher Mondadori launched an 18-page story by Federico Pedrocchi in comic book format. It was quickly followed by a regular serial in Britain’s Mickey Mouse Weekly. The comic was produced under license by Willbank Publications/Odhams Press and ran from 8th February 1936 to 28th December 1957.

In #67 (May 15th 1937) it launched Donald and Donna (a prototype Daisy Duck girlfriend), drawn by William A. Ward. Running for 15 weeks it was followed by Donald and Mac before ultimately settling on Donald Duck, and became a solid fixture until the magazine folded. That comic inspired similar Disney-themed publication across Europe, with Donald regularly appearing beside company mascot Mickey.

In the USA, a daily Donald Duck newspaper strip launched on February 2nd 1938, with a colour Sunday strip added in 1939. Writer Ted Karp joined Taliaferro in expanding the duck cast, adding a signature automobile, dog Bolivar, cousin Gus Goose, grandmother Elvira Coot and even expanded the roles of both distaff ducks Donna and Daisy…

In 1942, Donald’s licensed comic books canon began with October cover-dated Dell Four Color Comics, Series II #9. As Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold it was conceived by Homer Brightman & Harry Reeves, scripted by Karp and illustrated by Disney Studios employees Carl Barks & Jack Hannah. That was the moment everything changed…

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901, and raised in rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in American history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks was an animator before quitting in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books. With studio partner Jack Hannah (another future strip illustrator) Barks adapted Karp’s rejected script for an animated cartoon short into Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold, and although not his first published comics work, it was the story that shaped the rest of Carl’s career.

From then until his official retirement in the mid-1960s, Barks operated in self-imposed seclusion: writing, drawing and devising a vast array of adventure comedies, gags, yarns and covers that gelled into a coherent Duck Universe of memorable – and highly bankable – characters. These included Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Magica De Spell (1961) and the nefarious Beagle Boys (1951) to supplement Disney’s stable of cartoon actors. The greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad giga-gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the World’s wealthiest winged nonagenarian.

Whilst producing all that landmark material Barks was also just a working guy, generating cover art, illustrating other people’s scripts when asked, and contributing stories to a burgeoning canon of Duck Lore. After Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material amongst other Disney strips in the 1980s, he discovered the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed. So potent were his creations that they inevitably fed back into Disney’s animation output, even though his brilliant comic work was done for Dell/Gold Key and not directly for the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly animated TV series Duck Tales: heavily based on his classic Uncle Scrooge tales.

Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries and epics of exploration, and this led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and sheer wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps that utterly captivated readers of every age and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions there would never have been an Indiana Jones…

During his working life Barks was blissfully unaware that his efforts (uncredited by official policy, as was all Disney’s comics output) had been recognised by a rabid and discerning public as “the Good Duck Artist”. When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, a belated celebrity began.

In 2013, Fantagraphics Books began chronologically collecting Barks’ Duck stuff in wonderful, carefully curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes and digital editions that finally do justice to the self-closeted creator. These will comprise the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The physical copies are sturdy and luxurious albums – 193 x 261mm – that would grace any bookshelf, with volume 6 re-presenting works from 1948 – albeit not in strict release order. I should also note that all Four Color issues come from Series II of that mighty anthological vehicle and all covers are by Barks.

It begins eponymously with ‘The Old Castle’s Secret’ (FC #189, June 1948) as a financial crisis in McDuck’s empire triggers a mission for Donald and the nephews: accompanying Scrooge to the ancestral pile in Scotland to search for millions in hidden treasure. Apparently the craggy citadel is haunted, but what they actually encounter is both more rationalistically dangerous and fantastically unbelievable…

Two single-page gags from the same issue follow, with ‘Bird Watching’ exposing the hidden perils of the hobby before superstition is painfully debunked in ‘Horseshoe Luck’ after which ‘Wintertime Wager’ (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #88, January) introduces annoying cousin Gladstone Gander. Amidst chilling winter snows, the miraculously lucky, smugly irksome oik invites himself over for Christmas and soon he and Donald are involved in an escalating set of ordeals that might cost the Duck his house. Thankfully, Daisy and the boys are there to solve the problem…

Gainful employment was a regular dilemma for Donald, so February’s ‘Watching the Watchman’ (WDC&S #89) finds him taking a midnight-to-daybreak job at the docks, despite being pitifully unable to alter his sleep patterns. Once again, Huey, Louie & Dewey offer outrageous assistance but this time it’s the Duck’s failure to stay awake that foils a million dollar heist. The kids are actually Donald’s rivals in ‘Wired’ (WDC&S #90, March) when all seek big bucks as telegram messengers. Sadly, millionaires are not generally friendly, welcoming or prone to giving giant gratuities…

A dedicated social climber, Donald plans a garden party in WDC&S #91 (April), but his notion of fancy dress and family solidarity utterly enrage the boys, who retaliate with manic mesmerism in ‘Going Ape’, after which March of Comics #20 finds butterfly-hunter Donald at war with avaricious lepidopterist Professor Argus McFiendy across two continents. Donald’s sharp and ruthless tactics inspire onlooker Sir Gnatbugg-Mothley to fund a safari to ‘Darkest Africa’ in search of the rarest butterfly on Earth. The daunting quest for Almostus Extinctus is frenetically fraught, astoundingly action-packed and fabulously fun-filled but please be aware that despite Barks’ careful research and diligent, sensitive storytelling some modern folk could be upset by his depictions of indigenous peoples in terms of the accepted style of those decades-distant times…

Nevertheless, the bombastic war ends with a delicious sting in the tail.

In case you were wondering: March of Comics releases were prestigious promotional giveaways tied to retail products and commercial clients like Sears, combining licensed characters from across Whitman/KK/Dell’s joint catalogue. The often enjoyed print runs topping 5 million copies per issue. Being a headliner for them was a low key editorial acknowledgement of a creator’s capabilities and a franchise’s pulling power…

In the regular comics world, Donald’s eternal war of nerves with the kids boiled over in FC #189 (June) as ‘Bean Taken’ saw his obsessive side dominant in a guessing game, a single-pager preceding another exploring the downside of sandlot baseball in ‘Sorry to Be Safe’ (FC #199, October) and standard 10-page romp ‘Spoil the Rod’ (WDC&S #92, May). Here passing do-gooder Professor Pulpheart Clabberhead seeks to stop Donald’s apparent abuse of Huey, Louie and Dewey – but only until he gets to know them…

Although the science fiction boom and flying saucer mania was barely beginning in 1948, Barks was an early advocate and ‘Rocket Race to the Moon’ (WDC&S #93, June) sees newspaper-seller Donald suckered into piloting an experimental lunar exploration ship. Sadly, Professors Cosmic and Gamma seem more concerned with a large cash-prize contest than advancing knowledge, and rival rocketman Baron De Sleezy is a ruthless schemer, but no one – not even the stowaway nephews – was prepared for what lived on the moon…

Patriotism inspires our bellicose birdbrain to enlist as ‘Donald of the Coast Patrol’ (WDC&S #94, July) but it’s his gullibility and bad temper that helps him bag a bunch of spies before true wickedness rears its downy head as ‘Gladstone Returns’ (WDC&S #95, August). The ghastly Gander was designed as a foil for Donald, intended to be even more obnoxious than the irascible, excitable film fowl and this originally untitled tale reintroduces him as a big super-lucky noxious noise every inch as blustery a blowhard as Donald. Here, both furiously boast and feud, trying to one-up each other in a series of scams that does neither any good – especially once the nephews and Daisy join the battle…

Arguably Barks’ first masterpiece, ‘Sheriff of Bullet Valley’ was the lead tale from Dell Four Color Comics #199, drawing much of its unflagging energy and trenchant whimsy from Barks’ own love of cowboy fiction, albeit seductively tempered with his self-deprecatory sense of absurdist humour. For example, a wanted poster on the jailhouse wall portrays the artist himself, offering the princely sum of $1000 and 50¢ for his inevitable capture.

Donald is, of course, a self-declared expert on the Wild West (he’s seen all the movies) so when he and the boys drive through scenic Bullet Valley, a wanted poster catches his eye and his imagination. Soon he’s signed up and sworn in as a doughty deputy, determined to catch rustlers plaguing the locals. Unfortunately for him, the good old days never really existed and today’s bandits use radios, trucks, tommy guns and ray machines to achieve their nefarious ends. Can Donald’s impetuous boldness and the nephews’ collective brains and ingenuity defeat the ruthless high-tech raiders? Of course they can…

That same issue provided a brace of short gags, beginning with ‘Best Laid Plans’ as Donald’s feigned illness earns him extra hard labour rather than a malingering day in bed, and closing with ‘The Genuine Article’, wherein suspicions of an antique’s provenance leads to disaster…

The lads’ plans to go fishing are scuppered – but not for too long – when Donald demands their caddying services in ‘Links Hijinks’ (WDC&S #96, September), but it all really goes south once Gladstone horns in and Donald’s competitive spirit overwhelms everybody…

That tendency to overreact informs ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ (WDC&S #97, October) when the nephews find a small pearl in a locally-sourced oyster and big-dreaming Donald goes overboard in exploiting the “hidden millions” presumably peppering the ocean floor, before we close with another mission for Uncle Scrooge.

To close a deal with British toff Lord Tweeksdale, McDuck must prove his family pedigree by excelling in the most “asinine, stupid, crazy, useless sport in the world”: fox hunting. Designating Donald his champion, the Downy Dodecadillionaire of Duckburg is thankfully unaware Huey, Louie & Dewey also consider themselves ‘Foxy Relations’ (WDC&S #98, November), injecting themselves covertly into proceedings with catastrophic repercussions…

The visual verve over, we move on to validation as ‘Story Notes’ offers commentary for each Duck tale and Donald Ault relates ‘Carl Barks: Life Among the Ducks’, before ‘Biographies’ explain why he and commentators Alberto Beccatini, R, Fiore, Craig Fischer, Jared Gardner, Leonardo Gori, Rich Kreiner, Ken Parille, Stefano Priarone, Francesco (“Frank”) Stajano and Mattias Wivel are saying all those nice and informative things. We close with examination of provenance as ‘Where Did These Duck Stories First Appear?’ explains the somewhat byzantine publishing schedules of Dell Comics.

Carl Barks was one of the greatest exponents of comic art the world has ever seen, and almost all his work featured Disney’s Duck characters: reaching and affecting untold millions of readers across the world and he all too belatedly won far-reaching recognition. You might be late to the party but it’s never too soon to climb aboard the Barks Express.

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “The Old Castle’s Secret” © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All contents © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
Today in 1937 Donald Duck began his solo comics career.

In 1897 journalist turned strip writer Glenn Chaffin (Tailspin Tommy) was born, as was legendary fan artist John G. Fantucchio (Rocket’s Blast Comicollector (RBCC), The Collector, The Buyer’s Guide for Comic’s Fandom, Fantastic Fanzine, Comic Crusader) in 1938, and inker, illustrator and production god John Verpoorten in 1940. A year later along came Underground Commix and Graphic Novel pioneer Jaxon AKA Jack Jackson (God Nose, Comanche Moon, The Secret of San Saba)…

The date saw the deaths of both Golden Age star/political cartoonist Gill Fox (Torchy, Plastic Man, The Spirit daily) and Disney animator and story-maker Jack Bradbury in 2004, and legendary humour artist Will Elder (Mad, Little Annie Fanny) in 2008.

In 2006, Mark Tatulli’s silent strip Li? launched today.

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Superman: The Man of Steel volume 3


By John Byrne, Jerry Ordway, Ron Frenz, Dan Jurgens, Jim Starlin, Arthur Adams, , Curt Swan, Karl Kesel, John Beatty, Brett Breeding, Dick Giordano, Steve Montano, Roy Richardson, Leonard Starr, Keith Williams & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0966-6 (HB), 978-1-7795-1378-6 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

In 1985 when DC Comics rationalised, reconstructed and reinvigorated their continuity with Crisis on Infinite Earths they used the event to simultaneously regenerate key properties. The biggest gun they had was Superman and it’s hard to argue that change was not before time. The big guy was in a bit of a slump, but he’d weathered those before. So how could a root & branch retooling be anything but a pathetic marketing ploy that would alienate “real” fans for a few fly-by-night Johnny-come-latelies who would jump ship as soon as the next fad surfaced? The new Superman was going to suck…

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

It began with all Superman titles being “cancelled” (actually suspended) for three months, and yes, for the first time in decades, that did make real-world media sit-up and take notice of the character everybody thought they knew. However, there was method in this seeming corporate madness. The missing mainstays were replaced by a 6-part miniseries running from October to December 1986. Entitled Man of Steel, it was written and drawn by Marvel’s mainstream superstar John Byrne; fresh off a spectacular, groundbreaking run on Fantastic Four and inked by venerated veteran Dick Giordano. The bold manoeuvre was a huge and instant success. So much so that when first collected-as-a-stand-alone compilation album in 1991, it became one of comics’ premiere “break-out” hits in the new format that would eventually become the industry standard for reaching mass readerships. Nowadays few people buy the periodical pamphlets but almost everybody has read a Graphic Novel…

From that overwhelming relaunch the Action Ace seamlessly returned to his suspended comic book homes, enjoying the addition of a third monthly title that premiered that same month. Superman, Adventures of Superman, and Action Comics (which became a fan-pleasing team-up title guest-starring other favourites of the DC Universe, in the manner of the cancelled DC Comics Presents) were instant best-sellers. The back-to-basics approach lured many readers to – and, crucially back to – the Superman franchise, and the sheer quality of the stories and art convinced them to stay. Such cracking, clear-cut superhero exploits are a high point in the Man of Tomorrow’s near- nine decade career, and these collections are certainly the easiest way to enjoy one of the most impressive reinventions of a comic book icon.

So successful was the new look that by the early 1990’s Superman was carrying four monthly titles as well as numerous Specials, Annuals, guest shots and regular appearances in titles like Justice League – quite a turnaround from the earlier heydays of the Man of Steel when editors were frantic about never overexposing their meal-ticket. In Superman’s 85th year of more-or-less consecutive and continuous publication, a new sequence of collections brought Byrne & Co.’s tales to a new generation of fans, and at long last we’re getting around to plugging the third one…

This monumental compilation traces the Never-Ending Battle in unfolding, overlapping story order, not chronological release dates, spanning cover-dates October 1987 to May 1988, re-presenting Superman #12-15; Action #594-597; Adventures of Superman #436-438 and each title’s first Annual. Also included are crossover issue Booster Gold #23 and one-shot Superman: The Earth Stealers with relevant informative bio-pages from Who’s Who Update ‘87 #5 and Who’s Who Update ‘88 #2. Covers throughout are by Arthur Adams, Giordano, Ron Frenz, Brett Breeding, Dan Jurgens, Jim Starlin, Byrne and Jerry Ordway.

The magic kicks off with ‘Skeeter’, originally published in Action Comics Annual #1. A vampire shocker written by Byrne and illustrated by Art Adams & Dick Giordano, it plays out in the swamplands of Fayerville, South Carolina, with guest star Batman hunting a deceptively deadly bloodsucker before being forced to call in the biggest Big Gun he knows.

The brutal ending serves to underscore the big differences between the Post-Crisis Dark Knight and Man of Steel…

Next is a poignant updating of a Silver Age classic. ‘Tears for Titano’ (Byrne, Frenz & Breeding) first saw print in Superman Annual #1 cover-dated August 1987 and puts a modern spin on the sorry saga of a giant ape that menaced Metropolis. It all starts when Lois Lane objects to the treatment of a lab chimp by her old nemesis Dr. Thomas Moyers. The heartless, ambitious energy research scientist’s callous disregard for procedure, or even simple humanity, results in the anthropoid mutating into a colossal out-of-control rampaging menace only Superman can stop… even if he doesn’t want to…

The Adventures of Superman Annual #1 spawned ‘The Union’ by Jim Starlin, Jurgens & Steve Montano, wherein Superman is asked by President Ronald Reagan and über-Fed Sarge Steel to ferret out what happened to the people formerly living in the instant ghost-town of Trudeau, South Dakota. This edgy, chilling by-the-numbers sci-fi shocker showed audiences that the new Man of Steel wasn’t the guaranteed winner he used to be, and set the scene for a momentous future confrontation with the monstrous alien life-consumer Hfuhruhurr the Word-bringer., as well as showing the limits of a pledge to never take life…

In the monthly periodicals ‘All that Glisters’ (Byrne & Keith Williams) comes from November 1987’s Action Comics #594: a big battle team-up with fugitive from the future Booster Gold sneakily and accidentally orchestrated by Lex Luthor employing his robot duplicates. The acrimonious clash carried over and concluded in Booster Gold #23, with ‘Blind Obsession’ (art/story by Jurgens, inked by Roy Richardson) seeing the bad guy billionaire (is there any other kind?) thwarted and frustrated again…

Next up is the magical retelling of another classic Wayne Boring Superman tale. ‘Lost Love’ (Superman #12, by Byrne & Karl Kesel) recounts the tragic tale of college boy Clark Kent’s brief affair with mysterious Lori Lemaris, a unique girl he twice loved and lost. Then, Action Comics #595 brings us back to the present with a bump in the night. Courtesy of Byrne & Williams ‘The Ghost of Superman’ introduces eerie, life-stealing Silver Banshee in a mystery team-up with a sneaky superstar who saves Metropolis from terror and dread and whose Big Identity Reveal I’m not going to spoil for you…

Next come the Kryptonian corners of DC’s third inter-company mega-crossover event. After Crisis on Infinite Earths and Legends there was Millennium, which saw writer Steve Englehart expand on an iconic tale from his Justice League of America run (#140-141) as well as his tenure on the Green Lantern Corps title. But first, a little background…

Billions of years ago robotic peacekeepers known as Manhunters rebelled against their creators. The Guardians of the Universe were immortal and desired a rational, orderly, emotionless cosmos – a view not shared by their own women. The Zamarons abandoned the Guardians on planet Oa at the inception of their grand scheme but, after billions of years, the two factions had reconciled and left our Reality together. Now they had returned with a plan to midwife a new race of immortals on Earth, but the Manhunters – who had since infiltrated all aspects of every society throughout the universe – were determined to thwart the plan, whether by seduction, connivance or just plain brute force. Earth’s heroes were summoned by the reunited immortals and subsequently gathered to see the project to completion but were continually confronted by Manhunters in their own private lives… and their own comics.

DC Comics third braided mega-series was a bold effort intended to touch all corners of their universe, introduce new characters, tie-in titles and do so on a weekly, not monthly, schedule. In addition to the 8 weekly issues of the miniseries itself, Millennium spread across 21 titles for two months – another 37 issues – for a grand total of 44 comic books, with the Superman-related crossover craziness opening here with ‘Toys in the Attic!’ (Superman #13, by Byrne & Kesel) .

In Metropolis, elderly British craftsman Winslow Percival Schott opens a campaign of murder and wanton destruction targeting Lex Luthor, the ruddy Yank who ruined his little company and forced him to become the murderous Toyman. No sooner has the Man of Tomorrow intervened in that fracas than he’s drawn back to sleepy hometown Smallville in ‘Junk’ (Adventures of Superman #436, script by Byrne, art by Ordway & John Beatty) to discover trusted confidant Lana Lang has for years been an agent of the Manhunters.

In truth the insidious mechanoids have been watching the Last Son of Krypton since before that world died, but had botched capturing the space infant when he first arrived on Earth. As a back-up plan, Manhunters replaced local medical practitioner Doc Whitney and he subsequently turned every child born since into a mind-controlled sleeper agent. With Clark a key factor in the Millennium, Whitney rallies his forces to capture Superman, but utterly underestimates the power and resourcefulness of the Man of Steel. Although victorious, Superman’s triumph is tainted by tragedy. In defeat, all Whitney’s unwitting agents – two generations of Smallville’s young folk – keel over dead…

Then, in Action Comics #596, ‘Hell is Where the Heart Is…’ (Byrne & Williams) as Ghostly Guardian The Spectre is drawn to the catastrophe and facilitates Superman’s odyssey to the Spiritual Realms to rescue all the recently and unjustly departed deceased…

Byrne & Kesel’s Superman #14 offered a bombastic team-up with Green Lantern Hal Jordan wherein Emerald Gladiator and Action Ace chase colossal super-Manhunter Highmaster through uncanny dimensions as that mechanical maniac seeks to attack the sequestered, enervated Guardians and Zamarons in ‘Last Stand!’, after which events take a far more moody turn in Adventures of Superman #437. A twinned tale by Byrne, Ordway & Beatty, ‘Point of View’ simultaneously reveals how Luthor attempts to seduce one of the Millennium candidates to his evil side even as Lois Lane helplessly watches the brutally crippling struggle of merely mortal vigilante Jose “Gangbuster” Delgado against Lex’s hyper-augmented cyborg warrior Combattor…

The repercussions of that clash are examined in ‘Visitor’ (Action Comics #597) wherein Byrne, Leonard Starr & Williams impishly referenced Silver Age catfights between Lois Lane and Lana Lang, whilst the story itself establishes the false premise that Superman was raised as Clark’s adopted brother to throw off Lois’ growing suspicions…

With the Millennium complete, Superman #15 returned to regular wonderment as Superman is asked to find Metropolis Police Captain Maggie Sawyer’s missing daughter Jamie, just as the city is hit with a rash of flying bandit children. ‘Wings’ (Byrne & Kesel) debuts repulsive monster Skyhook: a horrific bat-winged Fagin who beguiles and mutates runaways whilst concealing even greater ghastly secrets…

The Fights ‘n’ Tights fun intensifies with Adventures of Superman #438 (March 1988, by Byrne, Ordway & Beatty) and another modern-day re-imagination of a past icon. ‘…The Amazing Brainiac’ sees a trip to the circus disastrously coincide with drunken mentalist Milton Fine developing uncanny psionic abilities and going wild. Despite his mental assaults being particularly effective against the Man of Steel, Superman eventually overcomes the furiously frantic performer, but is the defeated man simply deranged by his own latent abilities, or are his ravings of being possessed by an alien named Vril Dox of Colu somehow impossibly true?

This collection concludes with one-shot “Prestige Format” special Superman: The Earth Stealers by writer Byrne, inker Ordway and colourist Bill Wray who augment a post-Crisis return to the Action Ace for lifelong Super-Artist Curt Swan. Here the whole world is confiscated by a plundering alien seeking to sell it for scrap and resources, but the fiend and his brutal gladiator/legbreaker Gunge have not reckoned on this latest easy score being home to the last of the fabled and feared Kryptonians…

The bonus bit at the back consists of a ‘Cover gallery’ of previous MoS collections by Ordway, Byrne & Kesel, with excerpts from Who’s Who Update ‘87 #-5 and Who’s Who Update ‘88 #2, featuring illustrated fact-snacks concerning Booster Gold ( by Jurgens & Mike DeCarlo); Titano (Frenz & Byrne); Lori Lemaris (Byrne); Silver Banshee (Mike Mignola & P. Craig Russell) before a big bold pin-up of the Man of Steel finalises the fun for now.

Against all contemporary expectation the refitted Man of Tomorrow was a huge critical and commercial success. As one of the penitent curmudgeons who was proved wrong at the time, I can earnestly urge you not to make the same mistake. These are magically gripping and memorable comic gems to be enjoyed over and over again. So the sooner you get these books the sooner you can start the thrill ride reinvention of the ultimate comic book icon.
© 1987, 1988, 1989, 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1844 Spanish painter/illustrator/cartoonist Josep Lluis Pellicer was born, followed by Disney comics maestro Tony Strobl in 1915, and comics editor, publisher and historian catherine “Cat” yronwoode in 1947. The post-war Fifties greeted cartoonist Tom Armstrong (Marvin) in 1950; artist/publisher Neil D. Vokes (Robotech, Fright Night, Eagle) in 1954 and Elizabeth Smith (Action Comics, Lex Luthor) in 1958.

Deaths this date include legendary British licensed properties artist British artist/illustrator George William Wakefield (Laurel & Hardy, Ben Turpin, Jackie Coogan, George Formby, The Funniosities of Fatty Arbuckle, The Screen Screams of Ford Sterling, Jolly Rover, Freddie Flip and Uncle Bunkle, Abbott & Costello) in 1942; US cartoonist/writer Dick Calkins (Uncle Bob’s Story Book, Buck Rogers, Skyroads) in 1962; children’s book illustrator/cartoonist Syd Hoff (Danny the Dinosaur, I Can Read…, Tuffy, Laugh It Off) in 2004 and legendary Belgian all star Eddy Paape (Valhardi, Buck Danny, Mark Dacier, Luc Orient, Surcouf, Johnny Congo) in 2012.