Science Fiction – Page 100

May 3, 2013May 2, 2013

Jeremy Brood part 1: Relativity & Fantagor Presents Brood

By Richard Corben & Jan Strnad with additional designs by Stan Dresser (Fantagor Press/Longhorn Book Distribution)
ASIN: B0006F7UMUÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â ISBN: 978-0-96238-410-3

Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest proponents and pioneers of graphic narrative: a legendary animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist who surfed the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in pictorial storytelling with his own unmistakable style and vision. Renowned for his mastery of airbrush and anatomical stylisation – producing works of captivatingly excessive overwhelming eroticism – and infamous for delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales, Corben’s epic storytelling, violent, cathartically graphic and often blackly hilarious triumphs through the 1970s and 1980s were instrumental in making comics a mainstream medium and art form for mature readers.

Always garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe, he was regularly collected in luxurious albums even as he fell out of favour – and print – in his own country. Although most acclaimed for interpretations of classic horror literature, he is equally adept at capturing the alarming nuances of technological terror and cynical political intrigue in shocking science fiction tales such as the truncated epic spotlighted here.

In 1982 he began, with long-time collaborator Jan Strnad, a proposed series of European style square-bound albums starring a troubled star traveller, but it sadly fell victim to an economic downturn before it could find its feet. This taste of a tantalisingly uncompleted greater epic began in Jeremy Brood: Relativity and was brought to an abrupt finish in the magazine Fantagor Presents Brood (Fantagor #5, 1983). The tale has since been collected in a book in 1989 and subsequently re-released in 1998.

The original chronicle begins with a fascinating glimpse at the artist’s working process in his picture-packed ‘Illustrators Notes’ before the full Technicolor experience opens with spare-faring civil servant Brood and his horny but frustrated co-pilot Charlene receiving a sub-space transmission from Earth.

An agent on the planet Eden has sent a distress call and they are to divert there at top speed. Their civilisation is at a cultural crossroads and needs nudging in the right direction – or so planetary sociologist Bernard Finchley claims.

However due to the relativistic nature of near-light speeds, the message is three years old by the time it reaches them and their short trip to Eden will take two centuries in local timeâ€¦

When they at last arrive, the promised paradise world is a hot, dry desert but, following protocol and armed with the latest tapes of the language, Brood dons a disguise and makes his way to the nearest city, leaving Char and the ship as back-up in case of trouble.

It finds him anyway and the Earthman is attacked by barbaric grotesques and has to get physical with the brutesâ€¦

In the intervening years Eden has fallen into religious fanaticism, and as Brood enters the devastated city he is found by an aged cleric who draws him towards a vast gathering. The worshippers are about to sacrifice another nubile virgin maid to Holobar – an increasingly rare occurrence as most girls wisely â€œdisqualifyâ€ themselves at their very first opportunity – in the hope that the prophesied saviour will appear to deliver them from their oppressive all-conquering deity. As Jeremy watches in secure anonymous horror, his ancient guide Narrl hurls him into the middle of the ceremony and urges him to deflower the alien maiden or be torn apart by the mobâ€¦

Repressed WASP Brood used to have trouble getting sufficiently amorous even with his black girlfriend in the privacy of their spaceship – and she was actually the same species – so this horrific situation almost ends in disaster until the old wise man smashes the stone mask on a huge idol above the altar. Underneath, the monolith has Brood’s faceâ€¦

Shocked, panicked and realising he’s been set up by a man dead for centuries, Brood at last accomplishes what he was dispatched for, encouraged in equal measure by the willing female under him and the screaming fanatics surrounding him.

Meanwhile miles distant, desert brigands mount a lethal assault on the grounded starshipâ€¦

Safe for the present, Brood and his new bride Brynne are filled in by the devious alien Priest – who is also Narrl’s brother. The old connivers are the great grandsons of Finchley and a native girl, and their family has been working to build a counter-religion and messiah-cult based on Brood’s eventual arrival in the expectation that his Earth technology will allow them to overthrow the oppressive, draconian fundamentalist followers of Holobar â€¦

Jeremy can’t think about his proposed role as rabble-rousing rebel: he’s lost radio contact with Char, and is forced to trek back to the ship. En route, however, Narrl tries to kill Brood, revealing himself to be a traitor seeking to destroy the saviour and crush the people’s hope of redemption forever. Eradiating his betrayer Brood pushes on, only to discover he is now the only Earthling on Edenâ€¦

Fantagor Presents Brood came out a year later: a special edition of Corben’s own occasional and self-published art magazine which ran a conclusion of sorts in full colour, supplemented by a black and white reprint and a new unconnected monochrome fantasy tale.

(In case you’re wondering the reprint was Razar the Unhero’ written in 1970 by Herb Arnold as â€œStarr Armitageâ€: a dark and sexily violent spoof with a deprecating edge, deliciously lampooning the Sword and Sorcery epics dominating paperback bookshelves of the day. The new tale was ‘Ogre II’, a tragic comic monster love story sequel to a yarn that ran in Warren Publishing’s 1984 #4.)

Jeremy Brood however starred in the rocket-paced all-action shocker ‘The Big Shriek!’ which picked up moments after Relativity endedâ€¦

As Jeremy buries what remains of Charlene, hordes of airborne dragon-riding Holobar zealots pass over his head heading towards the city and the (presumably) impregnated Edenite Madonna, determined to end the heretical resistance foreverâ€¦

Soon the city is under shattering bombardment and all looks black until the infuriated Brood storms in, crashing his barely airworthy ship into the central square and briefly driving back in the attackers.

Retreating to the temple, Brood and Brynne prepare for their inevitable end, but the cunning far-seeing and ruthless Bernard Finchley and his devoted disciple Priest had arranged a last-ditch contingency plan, with no thought at the horrific cost their centuries-separated dupe Jeremy would be forced to payâ€¦

Moody and trenchant, laced with sparkling irreverence and cynicism, this parable could and should have found time to fully flower but the times and trends were against it. However Corben and Strnad’s sublime acumen in depicting humanity’s primal drives and inescapable failings has never been better exemplified, and at least the 80 or so pages that were complete are still available in one single edition should you care to check out yet one more book no comics or fantasy fan should be without.
Â© 1982, 1983, 1989 Richard Corben and Jan Strnad. All rights reserved.

April 16, 2013April 19, 2013

Essential Thor volume 5

By Gerry Conway, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Don Perlin, Vince Colletta, Jim Mooney & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5093-0

Whilst the ever-expanding Marvel Universe had grown ever-more interconnected as it matured, with characters literally tripping over each other in New York City, the Asgardian heritage of Thor and the soaring imagination of Jack Kirby had most often drawn the Thunder God away from mortal realms into stunning, unique landscapes and scenarios.

By the time of this fifth Essential monochrome compendium, an unthinkable Changing of the Guard had seen the King of Comics jump ship from the House of (His) Ideas to arch-rival DC where he crafted the unfinished Magnum Opus of the Fourth World series as well as a number of other game-changing concepts.

The Thunder God suffered a sharp, sudden loss of imaginative impetus, however, which left the series floundering, despite the best efforts of (arguably) the company’s greatest remaining illustrators, Neal Adams and John Buscema. More than any other Marvel feature, The Mighty Thor was the strip where Kirby’s creative brilliance had always found its greatest release in cosmic wandering and questing exploration of an infinite and dangerous universe.

His dreaming, extrapolating and honing of a dazzling new kind of storytelling and graphic symbology, wedded to soul-searching, mind-boggling concepts of Man’s place in the universe – and all within the limited confines of a 20-page action adventure – was an impossible act to follow.

Although his successors mimicked the trappings of that incredible conceptual juggling act, the heart, soul and soaring, unfettered wonder just were not there any longer – nor would they be until 1983 when Walt Simonson assumed creative control with #337 (see Mighty Thor: the Ballad of Beta Ray Bill).

By the time these monthly episodes (from issues #196-220, February 1972 to February 1974) saw print, the Thunder God and his Asgardian companions were slowly devolving into a muddled, self-doubting band of fantasy spacemen roving the outer limits of the Marvel Universe under the earnest but uninspired governance of young science fiction novelist Gerry Conway and a dedicated, talented but still somehow inappropriate string of artists.

The previous volume had seen Asgard again imperilled by mystic monstrosity Mangog with Thor and friends dispatched on another extended odyssey to the ends of the Universe in search of succour and water from The Twilight Well. In his righteous rage Odin had previously banished God of Evil Loki to a fantastic world, momentarily forgetting that once there the Prince of Evil could awaken the most vicious, unbeatable monster in the universeâ€¦

Now the Thunderer, with Warriors Three Fandral the Dashing, Voluminous Volstagg and Hogun the Grim, found himself lost ‘Within the Realm of Kartag!’ (illustrated by John Buscema & Vince Colletta): facing slug-men and bewitching temptress Satrina even as the All-Father and the hosts of the Shining City struggled to hold Mangog at bay. Meanwhile on the planet Blackworld Lady Sif and her muscular shield-maiden Hildegarde were undertaking another Odinian quest and found themselves caught up in a time-bending nightmareâ€¦

Thor #197 saw the heroes overcome all odds to find ‘The Well at the Edge of the World!’ meeting the conniving, all-powerful Norns and recruiting the colossal Kartag for their desperate return to shattered Asgard.

On Blackworld Sif and Hildegarde encountered monsters and men making uncontrollable evolutionary leaps towards an unguessable future, but found an unlikely ally and guide in aged sailor Silas Grant.

The male heroes returned to find Asgard in flaming ruins and the cataclysmic confrontation with the Mangog nearing an apocalyptic end, whilst on Blackworld Sif, Hildegarde and Silas met alien Rigellian Colonizer Tana Nile and the horrendous creature behind the evolutionary jumps. Simultaneously the battle in Asgard reached a horrific climax when Mangog was at last defeated ‘â€¦And Odin Dies!’

Issue #199 saw the ravaged home of the gods adrift in a dimensional void, allowing Thor – clutching to a desperate last hope – to cocoon his deceased father in a timeless forcefield, preventing Dark Goddess Hela from claiming his soul. However she wasn’t the only deity hungry for the All Father’s spirit and ‘If This Be Death…!’ revealed Grecian netherlord Pluto invading the broken realm to take Odin into his own dire domain.

â€¦And, on Blackworld, Tana Nile hinted at the origin of the monstrous Ego-Prime and how it can force such terrifying uncontrollable time-warpsâ€¦

Back in free-floating Asgard, things went from bad to worse as brave Balder‘s beloved Karnilla deserted him just as invincible Pluto defeated Hela and aimed a killing blow at Thorâ€¦

The denouement was aggravatingly delayed as anniversary issue #200 hit the pause button to flashback to an earlier age. ‘Beware! If This Beâ€¦ Ragnarok!’ was crafted by Stan Lee, John Buscema & John Verpoorten and spectacularly depicted the fall of the gods through the mystic visions of Volla the Prophetess, with only a bridging Prologue and Epilogue by Conway & Buscema revealing the Norns saving Thor’s life just in time for the concluding battle against Pluto in #201 (with Jim Mooney providing lush finished art over Buscema’s layouts).

When Hela relinquished her claim to the father of the gods and Odin enjoyed a miraculous ‘Resurrection!’, on Earth absentee Asgardians Heimdall and Kamorr began seeking out mortals for a another Odinian master-plan even before the battle with Pluto was fully concluded. As they scoured Midgard, on Blackworld Ego-Prime advanced the civilisation into atomic Armageddon and Sif barely transported her companions to Earth in time to escape the thermonuclear conflagration.

Luckily Thor, Balder, and the Warriors Three were in New York City to meet the refugees, since the deadly, now self-evolving, Ego-Prime had followed themâ€¦

Thor #202 boasted ‘â€¦And None Dare Stand ‘Gainst Ego-Prime!’ (Buscema & Colletta) although Silas, Tana Nile and the assembled Asgardians tried their best as the now-sentient shard of Ego, the Living Planet rampaged across the city making monsters and shattering entire streets, whilst Odin calmly observed the carnage and destruction and Heimdall and Kamorr gathered their human targets for the concluding ‘They Walk Like Gods!’, wherein all Odin’s machinations were finally revealed as Ego-Prime inadvertently created a new race of 20^th century deities. Sadly the All-Father’s long and single-minded scheme appalled his son and weary, war-torn subjects, whose understandable rebukes led to them all being ‘Exiled on Earth!’ in #204 (Buscema & Mooney) and soon targeted by terrifying satanic tempter Mephistoâ€¦

Soon only the Thunderer was left to oppose the devil invading his private hell and liberating hundreds of demon-possessed humans from ‘A World Gone Mad!’ (Colletta inks), after which the Earth-bound godling clashed brutally but inconclusively with the uncharacteristically amok Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man just as Thor’s greatest enemy resurfaced in #206’s ‘Rebirth!’

Tracking the escaped Creel to Rutland, Vermont during their annual Halloween festival, Thor, Sif and Hildegarde clashed with the malevolent Loki and his all-powerful ‘Firesword!’ in an action-heavy duel elevated by a plethora of comic creator cameos with the divine Marie Severin adding her caricaturing brilliance to Buscema & Colletta’s workmanlike illustration. Another extended sub-ploy opened here as Sif vanished, spirited away by the love-lorn Karnilla to the ends of the universeâ€¦

Sci fi themes took the lead again in Thor #208 as ‘The Fourth-Dimensional Man!’ manifested, stealing the Thunderer’s ambient Asgardian energies to save his own world from disaster. Sadly they were insufficient and the malevolent Mercurio needed to tap his source directly resulting in battle without mercy as Thor’s noble spirit gradually gave way to the despair of exile and constant lossâ€¦

Incessantly searching for Sif, Thor stopped in London (not one any Briton would ever recognise though) in #209 long enough to accidentally awaken a sleeping alien dormant since the building of Stonehenge. The resultant clash between Thunder God and â€œDemon Druidâ€ devastated much of England in ‘Warriors in the Night!’ before being ambushed in Red China by Mao’s soldiers in #210 ‘The Hammer and the Hellfire!‘ (Buscema, Don Perlin & Colletta). They were merely the action appetiser, however, since ultimate Troll Ulik had decided to conquer both his own people and Earth and moved pre-emptively to remove his greatest foe from the equationâ€¦

With New York invaded by Troll warriors, #211 revealed ‘The End of the Battle!’ (Buscema, Perlin & Colletta) as the fighting mad Asgardians routed the underworld insurgents just as an insane Balder returned to warn that Asgard had been conquered. With the Realm Eternal emptied of gods and occupied by sleazy lizard-men, Thor and his companions were soon hot on the trail of their missing race. Guided by saurian rogue Sssthgar and his serpentine horde, they undertook a ‘Journey to the Golden Star!’ in #212 and discovered their liege and kin meek chattels on a slaver’s auction blockâ€¦

Scripted by Len Wein over Conway’s plot, ‘The Demon Brigade!’ saw Thor betrayed by the Lizard Lord and embroiled in a war between slaver races before discovering Sssthgar’s secret and freeing his father. He also obtained a lead to the whereabouts of Sif and Karnilla, consequently plunging his small dedicated party of heroes recklessly ‘Into the Dark Nebula!’ (by Conway, Sal Buscema & Mooney) to rescue the missing maidens from the asteroid miners who had purchased them.

They found their quarry besieged by the 4D Man and his army, who were intent on acquiring a malign, sentient source of infinite power, but events took an uncanny turn when ‘The God in the Jewel’ (John Buscema & Mooney) absorbed the women into its crystalline mass and took off, intent on dominating all life in the universeâ€¦

Forced to become allies of convenience, the Asgardians and Mercurio strove together ‘Where Chaos Rules!’ to free the women and stop the rapacious gem-god, but even after eventual victory found them tenuous comrades, Thor’s trials were not done.

Returning in triumph to a mysteriously rebuilt Asgard in #217, the wanderers found ‘All Swords Against Them!’ (Sal Buscema inking brother John), as impossible doppelgangers of Odin, Thor and the rest greeted them with murderous hostility. Whilst the Thunder God furiously battled to unravel this latest mystery, in another sector of the universe the all-conquering Colonizers of Rigel were put to flight and abandoned their worlds to an all-consuming force of sheer destructionâ€¦

Thor #218 proved there was no rest for the weary as the victorious Asgardians again took ship for deep space to prevent the Rigellians’ doom from reaching Earth. ‘Where Pass the Black Stars There Also Passesâ€¦ Death!’ (J. Buscema & Mooney) found the hard-travelling heroes discovering a nomadic race of colossal, decadent star-farers who fuelled their unending flight by recycling thriving civilisations into food and power.

In distant Asgard, Hildegarde’s young sister Krista was slowly falling under the sway of sinister seductive evil even as her hereditary protectors were a cosmos away, infiltrating one of the Black Stars’ cosmic scoops and encountering a race of mechanical slaves in

#219’s ‘A Galaxy Consumed!’ (inked by Mike Esposito) before this volume’s story-portion ends with #220, wherein the slaves and their charismatic messiah Avalon are at last freed and untold galaxies subsequently saved from callous consumption in ‘Behold! The Land of Doom!’

This collection also includes fact-filled Marvel Universe Handbook pages on Pluto, Tana Nile, and Mercurio, the 4-D Man.

The Kirby Thor will always be a high-point in graphic fantasy, all the more impressive for the sheer imagination and timeless readability of the tales. With his departure the series foundered for the longest time before finding a new identity, but his successors did their honest best to follow in his Brobdingnagian footsteps.

The tales gathered here may lack the sheer punch and verve of The King but fans of cosmic Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy will find this tome still stuffed with intrigue and action, magnificently rendered by artists who, whilst not possessing Kirby’s vaulting visionary passion, were every inch his equal in craft and dedication, making this a definite mustÂ for all fans of the character and the genre.

April 12, 2013April 11, 2013

The Umbrella Academy volume 2: Dallas

By Gerard Way & Gabriel BÃ¡ (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-345-8

Superheroes have been around long enough now that they’ve been able to evolve into different sub-sets: straight Save-the-World continuity types as championed by DC and Marvel, obsessively â€œrealâ€ or realist iterations such as Marvelman, Crossfire or Kick-Ass, comedic spins like Justice League International or She-Hulk and some rare ducks that straddle a few barstools in between.

Addressing the same Edgy, Catastrophic Absurdism as Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, the archly anti-didactic antics of The Umbrella Academy offered readers a subtly subversive take on the idiom which impressed the heck out of everybody and lured many disillusioned fans back to the pitifully tired and over-used genre when first releasedâ€¦

This second collected volume gathers the frenzied fantastical follow-up 6-issue miniseries as well as an offering a chance to see the 8-page online yarn from MySpace Dark Horse Presents #12.

Once upon a time a strange event occurred. All across Earth, 43 babies were unexpectedly born as the result of apparent immaculate conceptions â€“ or perhaps some kind of inexplicable parthenogenesis.

The births even surprised the mothers, most of whom discarded, abandoned, sold or had adopted their unexpected, terrifying newborns.

Notorious scientist entrepreneur and closet extraterrestrial Sir Reginald Hargreeves, inventor of the Levitator, mobile umbrella communicator, Clever Crisp cereal, Televator and a process which enabled chimps to speak had a secret plan, and he knew the kids would all be special. He thus acquired seven of these miracle babies for an undisclosed purpose, subsequently rearing and training the children to become his private superhero team to enact it.

He was in no way a â€œgoodâ€ parentâ€¦

The callously experimental family, after a spectacular early career eventually proved to be unmanageable and the Umbrella Academy – created and trained â€œto save the Worldâ€ â€“ sundered in grief and acrimony, but not before poor Ben, Number 6 AKA â€œThe Horrorâ€, pointlessly lost his brave young life and Number 5 â€œThe Boyâ€ took a short trip into the future and never came backâ€¦

The surviving members of the utterly dysfunctional superhero team parted but were reunited twenty years later when the news broke that Hargreeves – whose nom de guerre was The Monocle – had diedâ€¦

In the interim, Number 1 son Luther became an off-earth defender and pioneer, so hideously damaged by a doomed journey to Mars that to save him, Hargeeves had grafted The Spaceboy‘s head onto the body of a colossal Martian Gorilla.

Poor, neglected Vanya, whose musical gifts Hargreeves deemed utterly useless, became a drop-out and wrote a scandalous tell-all book before becoming a voluntary exile amidst Earth’s lowest dregs. When Number 7 returned she was again rejected by her â€œfamilyâ€ and summarily seduced by a manic musician who unleashed her true potential and almost destroyed the world with her untapped powerâ€¦

The Boy returned after sixty years of ranging through the time-stream and materialised in the body of the ten-year old he had been, However, his physical form was frozen and he stopped aging at that momentâ€¦

Favourite friend, technologist, housekeeper, actual lifelong care-giver and talking chimp Dr. Pogo had died in Vanya’s – or rather The White Violin‘s – apocalyptic attack which had left Allison (Number 3, The Rumor) with her throat severed, apparently forever deprived of her talent for warping reality with a wordâ€¦

Diego (Number 2, The Kraken) remained the obsessive scary vigilante psychopath he’d always been but Klaus (Number 4, The SÃ©ance) was even weirder than before: a floating, shoeless space-case who talked to the dead and pulled the wings off the laws of physicsâ€¦

Once upon a time, long ago and whilst still children, the UmbrellaAcademy saved WashingtonDC from an animated and extremely angry Lincoln Memorial. They’ve had an odd relationship with American Presidents ever sinceâ€¦

Now having saved the entire world from prophesied destruction, the dysfunctional quintet are at a loss and killing time in the rubble of their old home: Luther zones out watching TV, Klaus pampers himself, Diego keeps busy assaulting various underworld ne’er-do-wells, and maimed Allison offers rather radical treatment to amnesiac Vanya.

Only The Boy is really busy as he deals mercilessly with yet another attempt by chronal cops of the Temps Aeternalis to make him fulfil the mission they recruited and rebuilt him for.

In ‘The Jungle’ of the modern world nobody is a more apex predator than the time-locked tyke, but his former masters are adamant he should fulfil his purpose and send in their most dreaded expediters Hazel and Cha-Chaâ€¦

‘Boy Scouts’ sees The Kraken and Police Inspector Lupo closing in on the mystery assailant leaving dismembered bodies all over the city – and slowly becoming aware how little they really know about the fortuitously returned Number 5 – whilst billionaire John Perseus arrives back in town with a most mysterious crate which definitely bodes badly for all humanityâ€¦.

It’s The Rumour who actually tracks down The Boy and gets to the truth even as the unstoppable Hazel and Cha-Cha make their first gory moveâ€¦

‘Television or Are You There, God? It’s Me, Klaus’ sees The SÃ©ance desperately seeking assistance before succumbing to the time-tossed, sugar-crazed killer couple as the horrific story of The Boy comes out.

Temps Aeternalis spent a lot of time and effort upgrading the kid into the perfect assassin for difficult, history-altering missions and even after a relative eternity of brutal successes they still need him for the Big One.

Dallas 1963â€¦

Klaus, meanwhile, has moved on and is chatting with the Big Guy in Heaven when Luther becomes Hazel and Cha-Cha’s next target in the campaign to get the rebellious Number 5 to do what he was re-made for. If the world is to survive Kennedy must die â€“ but Number 5 just won’t play ball and reality is beginning to sufferâ€¦

A countdown to nuclear Armageddon starts ticking as ‘A Perfect Life’ finds the separated Hargreeves clan all zeroing in on yet another end of the world and taking extraordinary steps to stop it.

Rumour and the Boy for example, ally themselves with the Temps Aeternalis and agree to personally stop The Boy (the other one but it’s really him too, see) whereas Luther, Diego and the freshly resurrected Klaus opt for a straight time-jaunt to the kill-zone to lay in ambush.

Sadly they miss by years and have to wait a bit for their plan to come to fruition in ‘All the Animals in the Zoo’ before all the alternate Earth craziness is superbly made sensible and satisfactorily wrapped up in the deviously bravura climax of ‘The World is Big Enough Without You’â€¦

Also included are an Introduction from Neil Gaiman, a brace of Afterwords by Way and BÃ¡ (‘Texas is the Reason’ and ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ respectively) and a short revelatory glimpse at the rebellious teen years of Vanya and Diego and their punk band The Prime 8s in the deeply moving ‘Anywhere but Here’ from MySpace Dark Horse Presents #12 (July 2007).

This volume concludes with more fascinating behind-the-scenes secrets of ‘Designing the Umbrella Academy’.

Whilst happily swiping, homaging, sampling and remixing the coolest elements from many and varied comics sources, The Umbrella Academy created a unique synthesis and achieved its own distinctive originality within the tired confines of the superhero genre. It’s a reading experience no jaded comics fan should miss.
Text and illustrations of the Umbrella Academy â„¢ Â© 2008, 2009 Gerard Way. All rights reserved.

April 9, 2013April 19, 2013

Doctor Who Graphic Novels volume 15: Nemesis of the Daleks

By Richard Starkings, John Tomlinson, John Freeman, Paul Cornell, Dan Abnett, Steve Moore, Lee Sullivan, John Ridgway, Steve Dillon, David Lloyd & many and various (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-531-4

The British love comic strips and they love celebrity and they love â€œOdd Characters.â€

The history of our graphic narrative has a peculiarly disproportionate amount of radio comedians, stars of theatre, film and TV such as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Winifred Atwell, Max Bygraves, Charlie Drake and their ilk, as well as actual shows and properties such as Whacko!, ITMA, Our Gang, (there was a British version of the Hal Roach film sensation by Dudley Watkins in Dandy as well as the American comicbook series by Walt Kelly), Old Mother Riley, Supercar, Pinky & Perky and literally hundreds more.

Anthology comics such as Radio Fun, Film Fun, TV Fun, Look-In, TV Tornado, TV Comic and Countdown amongst others translated our viewing and listening favourites into pictorial escapism every week, and it was a pretty poor lead or show which couldn’t parley the day job into a licensed comic property.

Television’s Doctor Who premiered with part one of ‘An Unearthly Child’ on November 23^rd 1963, and the following year his (their?) decades-long association with TV Comic began in issue #674 and the first instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’ – so this year marks the 50^th or Golden Anniversary of the evergreen show and the 49^th (Apoplexium, I believe) of the strip iteration.

On 11^th October 1979 (although, adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system, it says 17^th) Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly, which became a monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) and has been with us through various title-changes ever since. All of which only goes to prove that the Time Lord is a comic hero with an impressive pedigree and big shoes to fill.

Marvel/Panini is in the ongoing process of collecting every strip from the prodigious annals and archives in a uniform series of over-sized graphic albums, each concentrating on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer. This particular one gathers stories from a range of sources (specifically Doctor Who Magazine #152-156, 159-162, The Incredible Hulk Presents #1-12, Doctor Who Weekly #17-20, #27-30 and Doctor Who Monthly #44-46; spanning 1980-1990) and nominally stars the Seventh Doctor -Sylvester McCoy.

Also on show are some awesome ancillary stars from the monolithic Time Lord Universe (Whoniverse?) including the eponymous trundling terrors of the title, legendary cosmic crusaders the Star Tigers and the long-revered tragic, demented antihero Abslom Daak, Dalek-Killer.

Delivered beauty-contest style in reverse order, the magnificent magic opens with the cataclysmic ‘Nemesis of the Daleks’ (from DWM #152-155) as Richard and Steve Alan – AKA Richard Starkings & John Tomlinson – deliver a definitive and classic clash between the nomadic Time Lord and the ultimate foes of life wherein the deadly Daleks enslave a primitive civilisation and drive the pitiful native Helkans to the brink of extinction by forcing them to construct a Dalek Death Wheel armed with the universe’s most potent and toxic Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Grittily illustrated by Lee Sullivan, the blockbuster saga opens with the valiant last stand of incongruous chmpions the Star Tigers before the peripatetic Doctor accidentally arrives in the right place at the wrong time – no surprise there then – and joins death-obsessed Abslom Daak in a hopeless attempt to stop the Emperor of the Daleks from achieving supreme powerâ€¦

Filled with evocative do-or-die heroics this is a battle only one being can surviveâ€¦

As a complete change-of-pace, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ (#156 from January 1990 and by John Freeman, Paul Cornell & Gerry Dolan) offers a wry and merrily murderous poke at modern art and the slavish gullibility of its patrons that still holds true today – and probably always willâ€¦

The Incredible Hulk Presents was a short-lived reprint weekly from Marvel UK which launched on September 30^th 1989, targeting younger readers and featuring four media-fed features.

As well as the Big Green TV sensation it also reprinted American-produced stories of Indiana Jones and GI Joe/Action Force, but the mix was augmented by all-new adventures of the Gallant Gallifreyan by a rapidly rotating roster of British creators.

The plan was to eventually reprint the Who stories in DWM â€“ thus maximising the costly outlay of new material at a time in British comics publishing where every penny counted. It didn’t quite go to plan and the comic folded after 12 issues, with only a couple of the far simpler – though no less enjoyable offerings – ever making it into the more mature magazine publication.

It all began with ‘Once in a Lifetime’ by Freeman & Geoff Senior wherein an obnoxious alien reporter learned to his dismay that some stories are too big even for the gutter press, after which issues #2-3 featured creators Dan Abnett & John Ridgway whose ‘Hunger From the Ends of Time!’ saw the Doctor and Foreign Hazard Duty – the future iteration of UNIT – save the Universal Library from creatures who literally consumed knowledge.

‘War World!’ by Freeman, Art Wetherell & Dave Harwood found the irascible time-traveller uncharacteristically fooled by an (un)common foot soldier, whilst in ‘Technical Hitch’ by Abnett & Wetherell, the Doctor saved a lonely spacer from unhappy dreams of paradiseâ€¦

Freeman & Senior concocted a riotous, monster-mash for ‘A Switch in Time!’ whilst ‘The Sentinel!’ by Tomlinson & Andy Wildman found the Time Lord helpless before a being beyond the limits of temporal physics who claimed to have created all life in the universe but still needed a little something from Gallifrey to finish his latest projectâ€¦

Another 2-parter in #8-9 declared ‘Who’s That Girl!’ as the Doctor’s latest regeneration apparently resulted in a female form just as the Time Lord was required toÂ stop an inter-dimensional war between malicious macho martial empires. Of course there was more than met the eye going in this silly but engaging thriller by Simon Furman, John Marshall & Stephen Baskerville.

Simon Jowett & Wildman produced a light-hearted salutary fable as ‘The Enlightenment of Ly-Chee the Wise’ proved that some travellers are too much for even the most mellow of meditators to handle, after which Mike Collins, Tim Robins & Senior proved just how dangerous fat-farms could be in ‘Slimmer!’ before The Incredible Hulk Presents ended its foray into time-warping with the portentous ‘Nineveh!’ by Tomlinson & Cam Smith, wherein the Tardis was ensnared in the deadly clutches of the Watcher at the End of Time – an impossible mythical being who harvested Time Lords after their final regenerationâ€¦

For most of its run and in all its guises the Doctor Who title suffered from criminally low budgets and restricted access to concepts, images and character-likenesses from the show (many actors, quite rightfully owning their faces, wanted to be paid if they appeared in printâ€¦) but diligent work by successive editors gradually bore fruit and every so often fans got a real treatâ€¦

‘Train-Flight’ by Andrew Donkin, Graham S. Brand & John Ridgway ran in DWM #159-161 from April to June 1990 and benefited from some slick editorial wheeler-dealing and the generosity of actress Elizabeth Sladen (who allowed her Sarah Jane Smith character to be used for a pittance) in a chilling tale of alien abductions.

A long overdue reunion between the Time Lord and his old Companion was swiftly derailed when their commuter train was hijacked by marauding carnivorous insectsâ€¦

‘Doctor Conkerer!’ (#162 by Ian Rimmer & Mike Collins) then terminates the Time Lord’s travails in this tome with a humorous tale describing the unsuspected origins of that noble game played with horse chestnuts beloved by British schoolboys, assorted aliens and, of course, Vikings of every stripeâ€¦

There’s still plenty of high quality action and adventure to enjoy here, however, as the complete saga of ‘Abslom Daak, Dalek-Killer’ by Steve Moore and artists Steve Dillon& David Lloyd (from Doctor Who Weekly #17-20, February-March 1980, Doctor Who Weekly #27-30, April 1980 and Doctor Who Monthly #44-46, December 1980-February 1981) fills in the blanks on the doomed defenders of organic life everywhereâ€¦

In the 26^th century the Earth Empire is in a death struggle with voracious Dalek forces yet still riven with home-grown threats.

One such is inveterate, antisocial killer Abslom Daak, who, on sentencing for his many crimes, chooses â€œExile D-Kâ€ – being beamed into enemy territory to die as a â€œDalek Killerâ€. His life expectancy as such is less than three hoursâ€¦ and that suits him just fine.

Materialising on an alien world the madman eagerly expects to die but finds an unexpected reason to live until she too is taken from him, leaving only an unquenchable thirst for Dalek destructionâ€¦

The initial ferociously action-packed back-up series led to a sequel and ‘Star Tigers’ found the manic marauder winning such improbable allies as a rebel Draconian Prince, a devilish Ice Warrior and the smartest sociopath in Human space, all willing to trade their pointless lives to kill Daleksâ€¦

As always the book is supplemented with lots of text features, and truly avid fans can also enjoy a treasure-trove of background information in the 17-page text Commentary section at the back, comprising story-by-story background, history and insights from the authors and illustrators, supplemented by scads of sketches, script pages, roughs, designs, production art covers and photos.

This includes full background from former DWM editor/scripter John Freeman on the stories, plus background on the guest stars in ‘Tales from the Daak Side’ by John Tomlinson.

More details and creator-biographies accompany the commentaries on The Incredible Hulk Presents tales and there’s a feature on ‘Hulk meets Who’ explaining that odd publishing alliance, as well as reminisces from editor Andy Seddon and even more info on the legendary Dalek killer and his Star Tiger allies to pore and exult over.

None of which is relevant if all you want is a darn good read. However all the creators involved have managed the ultimate task of any artisan – to produce engaging, thrilling, fun work which can be equally enjoyed by the merest beginner and the most slavishly dedicated and opinionated fans imaginable.

This is another marvellous book for casual readers, a fine shelf-addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form to anyone minded to give comics one more goâ€¦

All Doctor Who material Â© BBCtv. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. Licenced by BBC Worldwide. Tardis image Â© BBC 1963. Daleks Â© Terry Nation. All commentaries Â© 2013 their respective authors. Published 2013 by Panini Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.

April 1, 2013March 28, 2013

Star Trek: the Further Adventures of the Starship Enterprise – Marvel Illustrated Books

By Alan Brennert, Martin Pasko, Tom DeFalco, Luke McDonnell, Joe Brozowski, Mike Nasser, Tom Palmer & Klaus Janson (Marvel/)
ISBN: 0-939766-00-0

The stellar Star Trek brand and franchise might not have actually reached any new worlds, yet it certainly has permeated every civilisation here on Earth, with daily live-action and animated screen appearances appearing somewhere on the planet and comics iterations generated in a host of countries long lying fallow and unseen.

If only somebody could sort out the legal and logistical hassles so we could see again those stunning UK strips which appeared in Joe 90, TV21, TV Comic and Valiant from such fabulous creators as Angus Allan, Harry Lindfield, Mike Noble, Alan Willow, Ron Turner, Jim Baikie, Harold Johns, Carlos Pino, Vicente AlcÃ¡zar, John Stokes and others, I might die a happy, nostalgia-drowned boyâ€¦

In the meantime however, here’s a little-seen lost artefact and another early glimpse at how our industry gradually became mainstream literature or â€œgraphic novelsâ€: a pulse-pounding paperback package for action fans, fantasy freaks and movie-lovers alike.

After a few abortive attempts in the 1960s to storm the shelves of bookstores and libraries, Marvel made a concerted and comprehensive effort to get their wares into more socially acceptable formats and, as the 1970s closed, purpose-built paperback collections and a string of new prose tales tailored to feed into their burgeoning brand began to emerge as the company continued its crusade to break into regular, real-world bookshops.

The company’s careful reformatting of their own classic comics adventures were generally excellent; a superb series of primers and a perfect new venue to introduce fresh readers to their unique worlds. In addition, by judicious partnerships with major film and TV properties, they expanded the market share for their little books in real shops and stores.

In this particular case the fact that the mighty Star Trek franchise’s comicbook requirements were being serviced by a stridently ascendant Marvel (after years with the commercial diffident Western/Gold Key Comics) made for an ideal repackaging opportunityâ€¦

The Further Adventures were all set in the days after Star Trek: the Motion Picture (which rebooted the long-dormant phenomenon and allowed Marvel to produce a vastly underrated 18-issue series) and recounted new exploits of the starship Enterprise and older, wiser, re-united Federation voyagers James T. Kirk, Spock, Dr. Leonard McCoy, Hikaru Sulu, Montgomery Scott, Nyota Uhura and Pavel Chekov.

This full-colour delight reformatted three of very best comicbook episodes and begins with ‘Eclipse of Reason’ by Alan Brennert, Martin Pasko, Luke McDonnell & Tom Palmer (originally seen in issue #12, March 1981) wherein the comrades are reunited with former Yeoman Janice Rand.

She has since married Kadan of Phaeton, an alien being composed of pure thought and volunteered for a one-way trip with him and an equally disembodied crew beyond the energy barrier that seals off our galaxy from the rest of the universe. However as in the TV episode â€œWhere No Man has Gone Beforeâ€, collision with the barrier produces terrifying psionic anomalies and the exploratory starship U.S.S. Icarus turns back, its conceptual crew driven mad and determined to return home at all costs.

With the anti-matter powered ship on a collision course with the densely populated planet, Kirk, Spock and Rand must overcome extraordinary perils to save an entire world and a unique, extraordinary loveâ€¦

Pasko, Joe Brozowski & Palmer collaborated on ‘Like a Woman Scorned’ (from previous issue #11, February 1981) wherein the Enterprise was despatched to evacuate a cult leader from a radiation-drenched colony world and Scotty was unhappily reunited with bitter old flame Andrea Manning – and her charismatic guru Carl Wentworth.

Even as the reluctant evacuee began exerting an uncanny persuasion and fomenting actual rebellion aboard ship, the downhearted engineer and his beloved ship began to suffer impossible attacks from creatures out of dark fairytales, leaving Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy to divine the incredible secret to the inimical invasionâ€¦

Last included is the marvellously twisted ‘Tomorrow or Yesterday’ (Tom DeFalco, Mike Nasser & Klaus Janson from #7 October 1980) wherein a landing crew beams down to doomed world Andrea IV to rescue the indigenous primitives from a devastating radiation cloud only to find the natives welcoming, aware of the danger but strangely unworried.

To make matters worse the encroaching Rad-storm has made return to the enterprise all but impossible.

In the great square the mystery deepens as destruction looms, when Kirk, Spock and McCoy observe the natives praying to statues of the Saviours destined to save them all: perfect likeness of the Federation Officers sculpted 24,000 years previouslyâ€¦

With time running out, the desperate heroes find themselves trapped amongst blithely unworried masses, all patiently waiting for the prophesied messiahs to save them – just as they have already doneâ€¦

Smart, effective and lovingly executed, these classic yarns are long overdue for a compilation re-release (as far as I’m aware the stories from this comics series were only ever available in this paperback and as part of a CD-Rom package), and Trekkies, Trekkers and comics aficionados alike should rowdily unite to agitate until some publisher gets the messageâ€¦
Â© 1980, 1981 Paramount Picture Corporation. All rights reserved. At that time Star Trek was â„¢ Paramount Picture Corporation.

March 30, 2013March 28, 2013

The UmbrellaAcademy volume 1: Apocalypse Suite

By Gerard Way & Gabriel BÃ¡ (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-978-9

Superheroes have been around long enough now that they’ve been able to evolve into different sub-sets: straight Save-the-World continuity types as championed by DC and Marvel, obsessively â€œrealâ€ or realist iterations such as Marvelman, Masked Man, Crossfire or Kick-Ass, comedy versions like Justice League International, Ambush Bug, Deadpool or She-Hulk and some rare ducks that straddle a few barstools in between.

Cut from the same cloth of Edgy, Catastrophic Absurdism as Scott McCloud’s Zot!, Brendan McCarthy’s Paradax or Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol and Flex Mentallo, the archly anti-didactic antics of The Umbrella Academy offered readers a subtly subversive take on the idiom which impressed the heck out of everybody and lured many disillusioned fans back to the pitifully tired and over-used genre when first releasedâ€¦

This debut collected volume gathers the initial 6-issue miniseries as well as a 2-page online tease from MySpace Dark Horse Presents and an introductory short story from the company’s Free Comic Book Day issue in 2007.

Once upon a time a strange event occurred. All across Earth 43 babies were unexpectedly born as the result of apparent immaculate conceptions – or perhaps some kind of inexplicable parthenogenesis. The births even surprised the mothers, most of whom abandoned or put up for immediate adoption their terrifying newborns.

Seven of these miracle babies were acquired by esteemed inventor and entrepreneur Sir Reginald Hargreeves. The inventor of the Levitator, mobile umbrella communicator, Clever Crisp cereal, Televator and a process which enabled chimps to speak was in actuality an over-achieving alien with a secret plan, and he raised the children to become superheroes to enact it.

He was not a good or caring parentâ€¦

The callously experimental family, after a number of early spectacular successes such as ‘The Day the Eiffel Tower Went Berserk’, soon proved to be unmanageable and the Umbrella Academy – created and trained â€œto save the Worldâ€ – sundered in grief and acrimony, but not before poor Ben, Number 6 or â€œThe Horrorâ€, pointlessly lost his brave young life and Number 5 â€œThe Boyâ€ took a short trip into the future and never came back…

An utterly dysfunctional superhero team, the children parted, but now, twenty years later, the surviving members of the squad gather again at the news that Hargreeves – whose nom de crime was The Monocle – has diedâ€¦

In the interim, Number 1 son Luther became an off-earth defender and pioneer, but was hideously damaged on a doomed journey to Mars. To save him, The Monocle grafted his head onto the body of a colossal Martian Gorilla but the â€œSpaceboyâ€ found it far easier to live alone on the Moon than stay with his saviour.

Poor, neglected Vanya however, whose musical gifts Hargreeves deemed utterly useless, became a drop-out and wrote a scandalous tell-all book before becoming a voluntary exile amidst Earth’s lowest dregsâ€¦

In ‘We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals’ the disparate clan gathers and Luther discovers The Boy has returned, looking not a day different. He isn’t â€“ but his mind is sixty years old and has experienced horrors beyond all imaginingâ€¦

Made welcome by technologist, housekeeper and talking chimp Dr. Pogo, Luther is startled by the return of Allison (Number 3, The Rumor). She’s changed a lot since her marriage – although she’s now single again – but Diego (Number 2, The Kraken) and Klaus (Number 4, The SÃ©ance) are just the same: physically mature but still completely, scarily dementedâ€¦

The interment ceremony is a complete fiasco and descends into a brawl, but the savage bitterness the family exhibits towards each other is as nothing compared to the carnage caused by the arrival of merciless robotic Terminauts tasked with stopping the Umbrella Academy reforming at any costâ€¦

Across town, poor forgotten Vanya has an audition with some very special musicians. The Orchestra Verdammten need only the best if their unconventional maestro, The Conductor is to perfectly premiere his latest opus – The Apocalypse Suiteâ€¦

As the reluctantly reunited Academy fall into old habits and dash off to save innocents from slaughter, The Boy drops his last bombshell: in the future he’s returned from, Earth was destroyed three days after the Monocle diedâ€¦

Built by a long-vanquished foe, the killer mechanoids are ‘Dr. Terminal’s Answer’ to the pesky kids who ruined his plans, although they don’t fare well against Spaceboy, Rumor SÃ©ance and The Kraken.

Dr. Pogo has stayed to examine The Boy and finds him exceedingly strange: a 60-year old mind wearing a 10-year old body that hasn’t aged a single second since it reappeared. There’s even stranger stuff going on which the monkey medic can’t detect, thoughâ€¦

Diego never stopped fighting monsters and has become a darkly driven vigilante, who even now has ignored the flamboyant threat of the robots to save imperilled kids. However when Vanya – fresh from fleeing the deranged Conductor – stumbles into the conflagration he disparages her; calling her useless, just like Hargreeves used to.

As her strange siblings wrap things up and return to the puzzle of exactly how the Earth will end in a matter of days, the dejected, rejected Number 7 returns to The Orchestra Verdammtenâ€¦

Subjected to outrageous experiments in ‘Baby, I’ll be Your Frankenstein’, Vanya is quickly transformed into a finely-tuned instrument to shatter reality, even as Pogo and The Boy stop for coffee and meet time-travelling trouble.

â€¦And at the Icarus Theatre, the once disregarded and discarded White Violin makes her deadly, devastating debutâ€¦

At a certain Diner, distressed waitress Agnes tells Police Inspector Lupo how a veritable army of futuristic thugs were reduced in seconds to scarlet shreds and tatters by a little boy who politely said ‘Thank You for the Coffee’ before leaving with his chimpanzee friend. Lupo has endured a long and difficult unofficial association with ruthless avenger Kraken which has kept the city’s worst criminals from running riot, but when the old cop casually remarks that a lot of violinists have suddenly vanished even he is quite unprepared for the vigilante’s reactionâ€¦

The family gathers at the Academy: Luther and The Rumor slowly rekindling a long suppressed relationship even as The Boy makes the huge mistake of looking through Hargreeves’ trademark Monocle just as prodigal sister Vanya knocks on the door â€“ with shattering, killing forceâ€¦

The shocked stunned survivors quickly marshal their forces for ‘Finale or, Brothers and Sisters, I Am an Atomic Bomb’, but even though they achieve some sort of victory and save reality, it’s at a terrible, World-shattering costâ€¦

Following Editor Scott Allie’s Afterword on the trials, tribulations and triumph of working with a big-name rock-star (yes, that Gerard Way: the multi-talented musician/writer/artist/designer who fronts the band My Chemical Romanceâ€¦) whilst trying to maintain a comicbook schedule, illustrator Gabriel BÃ¡ and the author then reveal a host of production secrets in ‘Designing the Umbrella Academy’.

But that’s not all: the introductory ‘Short Stories’ – with notes and commentary from BÃ¡ – follow, revealing a lighter side to the team in ‘â€œMon Dieu!â€’ and a surprisingly deft surreal murder mystery in‘â€¦But the Past Ain’t Through with You’ (first seen in MySpace Dark Horse Presents and Dark Horse Free Comic Book Day 2007 respectively).

Whilst happily swiping, homaging, sampling and remixing the coolest elements from many and varied comics sources, The Umbrella Academy created a unique synthesis and achieved its own distinctive originality within the tired confines of the superhero genre. Maybe because it stylishly combines the tragic baroque tone of a La Belle Ã‰poque scenario with an ironic dystopian fin de siÃ¨cle sensibility and re-presents it all as a witty post-modern heroic fable, or perhaps more likely simply because it’s all just really damned good, darkly sardonic fun, conceived with love and enthusiasm and crafted with supreme skill and bravura by extremely talented people who love what they doâ€¦?

Read The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite if you’re smart, read it if you’re bored, read it because I said so, but if you too love the medium and the genre, read it, read it, read it.
â„¢ Â© 2008 Gerard Way. All rights reserved.

March 21, 2013March 15, 2013

Fear Agent: Re-Ignition

By Rick Remender & Tony Moore (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 987-1-59307-764-8

Once upon a time science fiction was hard, fast all-action wrapped in impossible ideas, but over the years films like Star Wars and TV shows like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica slowly ameliorated, crossbred and bastardised the form until it became simple window-dressing for cop stories and westerns and war yarnsâ€¦

Rick Remender clearly loves the old-fashioned, wide-eyed wonder stuff too, and in 2005 brought back strictly impossible, mind-bending action-packed Amazing Stories to remind us all of what we’d been missing.

Fear Agent debuted from Image Comics and ran for eleven issues before folding and being subsequently picked up by Dark Horse in 2007. This slim, scintillating tome collects the introductory 4-issue story-arc which introduced dissolute, Mark Twain-spouting, alcoholic Texan freelance pest-control operative Heath Huston: the original Man With A Past But No Futureâ€¦

It opens as a weary, hungry space-trucker pulls into Glentbin deep-space service station and discovers to his horror that the place is overrun with an entirely unacceptable kind of vermin, before the scene shifts to planet Frazterga where independent contractor Huston is on a bug-hunt with his mouth dry, his head screaming and his bank-account empty.

He’s climbing a really big mountain with a massive hangover and it’s real hard to make a living when the pencil-pushers of the Quintala Convention daily redefine the parameters of the Killable Alien Rating, but here in this last-ditch, last-chance filthy backwater Huston is going to make some money if it kills him.

Heath’s been hired to retrieve terraforming technology filched from colonists by the stupid, stupid ape-creatures living in the hills, but after a decidedly well-planned resistance from the hairy beasts he soon realises he’s been shafted yet again. The big dumb monkeys are using the stolen parts to build a spaceshipâ€¦

After another blockbusting battle Huston discovers the burly pro-simians have been psionically enslaved by a marooned Class A entity. Officially, he should back off and leave it be, but he’s ticked, determined to get paid and has never liked aliens anywayâ€¦

The catastrophic explosion and riotous aftermath don’t go down too well with his clients either, and when he returns to his sentient spaceship Annie it’s empty-handed and with the Mayor’s blood on his gauntlets.

Down to their last wisps of fuel, the exterminator and his rather stroppy ship head for nearby Glentbin Station and the dubious hope that they can hock or trade something for fuel and foodâ€¦

As they coast on fumes towards the service facility a call comes in from Thomas Yorke of the United Systems government. He wants to hire the reprobate â€“ maybe that should be â€œneeds to hireâ€â€¦

They are old not-friends but Glentbin has gone offline and the authorities suspect some kind of infestation. If there is and Huston cleans it up there’s a 10,000 Uni-cred fee in itâ€¦

The satellite mall is empty and the legendary â€œtoo quietâ€, but the smell more than makes up for it. Fearing the worst, Huston starts helping himself to supplies when he finds the ghastly remains of a patron and realises the entire place has been taken over by Feedersâ€¦

Fighting a wave of tentacles coming from everywhere, the terrified spacer blasts his way into a water pipe and is flushed into the station’s main cistern. Floating there is the only survivor of the infestation â€“ a feisty, surly warp scientist named Maraâ€¦

She’s never seen the beasts before but Heath has. Feeders are a flesh-eating horror that were only stopped by blowing up any planet they landed on and, when his sodden new friend says they were sent to Glentbin by the Dressite Empire, Huston realises that Earth’s greatest enemy are planning on finishing the job they started decades ago: the last time they tried to wipe out mankind and legendary Fear Agents only just stopped themâ€¦

Blasting through the hull of the station, the grizzled veteran admits to being the only survivor of that august cadre of warriors, even as he and Mara spy on the station from the relative security of hard vacuum.

And that’s when he learns the Dressites have used the station to dispatch the unstoppable Feeder larvae to Earth in a convoy of deadly Trojan Horse shipsâ€¦

Frantic, frustrated and unable to broadcast a warning, the Terrans bleed off cached fuel supplies into Annie – who hates Mara on sight – and try to reach Earth first. This is exactly what the Dressites want: they’ve supercharged the warp fuel and expect their old enemy to go up in a blaze of burning hellâ€¦

They have however not reckoned on the astounding intellect of the AI, who contrives to ride the explosive warp-wave and dumps the fugitives alive but lost on a strange alien world where they’re soon embroiled in an apocalyptic civil and religious war between creatures of flesh and monsters of metal. Moreover, as the campaign proceeds and Huston frets that the Feeders are inexorably closing on planet Earth, he realises that they are lost not just in space but also timeâ€¦

Given a chance to save his homeworld years before any greedy marauding ETs ever attacked it, Huston embarks on a crazy raid with his fleshy allies that goes horribly, irretrievably wrong.

And then he’s killed.

To Be Continued (yes, really)â€¦

With a copious sketchbook section from artist Tony Moore, this powerfully character-driven, fast, furious, frantic, thrilling, manic and exceedingly clever balls-to-the-wall science fiction is in the best tradition of 2000AD, and has all the adrenalin-fuelled fun any fantasy aficionado could want.

Fear Agent was a breath of fresh air when it came out and remains one of very best cosmic comics experiences around. If you’re old enough, Sentient enough and Earthling enough, this is a series you must see before you die, have your brain-engrams recorded and are cloned into a new form unable to enjoy terrific fiction feasts.
Â© 2006, 2007 Rick Remender & Tony Moore. All rights reserved. All characters and distinctive likenesses are â„¢ Rick Remender & Tony Moore.

February 16, 2013February 14, 2013

The Silver-Metal Lover

By Tanith Lee, adapted by Trina Robbins (Harmony/Crown Books)
ISBN: 0-517-55853-X

During the 1980s, comics finally began to filter through to the mainstream of American popular culture, helped in no small part by a few impressive adaptations of works of literary fantasy such as Michael Moorcock’s Elric or DC’s Science Fiction Graphic Novel line.

Cartoonist, author and comics historian Trina Robbins joined the throng with this deceptively powerful and effectively bittersweet romance adapted from Tanith Lee’s short tale about an earnest young girl in a spoiled, indolent world who discovered abiding love in the most unexpected of places.

In the far-flung, ferociously formal and civilised future everything is perfect – if you can afford it – but human nature has not evolved to match Mankind’s technological and sociological advancements.

Jane has everything a 16-year old could want but is still unhappy. Her mother Demeta provides all she needs – except human warmth – whilst her six registered friends do their best to provide for her growing associative and societal needs. Of her carefully selected peer circle, Jane only actually likes flighty, melodramatic needily narcissistic Egyptia – whom Jane’s mother approves of but considers certifiably insane.

In this world people can live in the clouds if they want, and robots perform most manual toil and tedious services, but it’s far from paradise. Humans still get suspicious and bored with their chatty labour-saving devices and the monumental Electronic Metals, Ltd strive constantly to improve their ubiquitous inventionsâ€¦

One day Jane agrees to accompany Egyptia to an audition and the fully made-up thespian is accosted by a rude man who mistakes her for a new android. He wants to buy her.

Ruffled by the rude man’s manner, Jane’s attention is then distracted by a beautiful metal minstrel busking in the plaza. The robot’s performance and his lovely song move and frighten Jane in way she cannot understand, and when S.I.L.V.E.R. (Silver Ionized Locomotive Verisimulated Electronic Robot) affably introduces himself the flustered girl bolts, running for the relative security of the nearby home of sardonic friend Clovis, where the beautiful tart is in the process of dumping another lover. He proves unsurprisingly unsympathetic to Jane’s confusion and distress, telling her to go home where, still inexplicably upset, she tries to talk the experience out with her mother. Impatient as always, the matron simply enquires if Jane is masturbating enough before telling her to record whatever’s bothering her for mummy to deal with laterâ€¦

Sulking in a bath Jane is awoken from a sleep by the ecstatic Egyptia who has passed her audition. Bubbling with glee the neophyte actress demands Jane join her at a big party. Avoiding a persistent old letch who is creepily fixated on the fresh young thing, Jane stumbles again upon S.I.L.V.E.R. and once more reacts histrionically to his singing.

As he profusely apologizes for the inexplicable distress he’s somehow caused her, Jane realizes the disturbing mechanical minstrel has been rented by Egyptia for quite another kind of performance laterâ€¦ a private oneâ€¦

With a gasp of surprise Jane at last understands what she’s feeling and kisses the alluring automaton before fleeing.

Her mother is as useless as ever. Whilst futilely attempting to explain her problem but failing even to catch Demeta’s full attention, Jane gives up and claims she’s in love with Clovis just to cause a shockâ€¦

The next day the heartsick waif visits the offices of Electronic Metals, Ltd ostensibly to rent the droid of her dreams – as a minor she has to lie about her age – but is sickened when she finds him partially dissembled whilst the techs try to track down an anomalous response in his systemsâ€¦

Despondent, she is astonished when Machiavellian Clovis intervenes, renting S.I.L.V.E.R. for Egyptia and convincing the too, too-busy starlet to let Jane look after it for herâ€¦

Alone with the object of her affection, insecure Jane’s imagined affair quickly becomes earthily, libidinously real but the honeymoon ends far too soon when Clovis informs her the rental period is over. Crippled by her burning love for the artificial Adonis, Jane begs her mother to buy him for her. When the cold guardian refuses the obsessed child at last rebelsâ€¦

When Demeta disappears on another of her interminable business trips Jane sells her apartment’s contents, moves into the slums and desperately claims her dream lover with the ill-gotten gainsâ€¦

Following a tragically brief transformative period of sheer uncompromised joy with her adored mechanical man, reality suddenly hits the happy couple hard as Demeta tracks Jane down and smugly applies financial pressure to force her wayward child to return. Undaunted, the pair become unlicensed street performers and grow ever closer but even as Jane grows in confidence and ability, becoming fiercely independent, public opinion has turned against the latest generation of far-too human mechanical servants. When Electronic Metals recalls all its now hated products, the improper couple flee the city. However the heartless auditors track them down and reclaim Jane’s Silver Metal Loverâ€¦

Lyrical and poetic, this is a grand old-fashioned tale of doomed love which still has a lot to say about transformation, growing up and walking your own path, with Trina Robbins’ idyllic and idealised cartooning deceptively disguising the heartbreaking savagery and brutal cruelty of the story to superb effect, making the tragedy even more potent.

Regrettably out of print for years, this is a comics experience long overdue for revival – perhaps in conjunction with new interpretations of the author’s later sequels to the saga of love against the oddsâ€¦
Illustrations Â© 1985 Trina Robbins. Text Â© 1985 Tanith Lee. All rights reserved.

February 9, 2013February 9, 2013

Knights of Sidonia volume 1

By Tsutomo Nihei translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-935654-80-3

As I’ve often said, these days nobody does hard comics science fiction like the Japanese – although admittedly our own 2000AD and Warren Ellis’ SF are keeping the flag flying ahead of much of even manga’s greatest masters in their own mostly unacknowledged wayâ€¦

In the tech-obsessed East, the tough, no-nonsense, nuts-and-bolts mystery and refined imagination of star flight have long been blended with more fanciful and romantic futuristic themes to captivate at least four generations since Osamu Tezuka first started the ball rolling in the 1950s, making space commonplace and conceptually comfortable for the Japanese.

We in Western world have been simultaneously enraptured and frantically trying to catch up, ever since some – too few, alas – of these manga tales first began to be translated into English at the end of the 1980s.

One of the most talented and respected proponents of the genre is Tsutomu Nihei whose triumphs have ranged from wholly self-created graphic epics such the stunning cyberpunk thriller Blame!, its prequel NOiSE, and Biomega to impressive stints on major commercial properties such as comics iterations of the video game Halo and the miniseries Wolverine: Snikt! for Marvel.

Born in 1971, the author prefers to let his works speak for him. His latest series Shidonia no Kishi began in 2009, debuting in Kodansha’s Seinen title Bessatsu Shonen Magazine and running to nine volumes so far.

The premise is familiar but evergreen. A thousand years from now Earth is gone. Our solar system was destroyed by unstoppable alien monsters and the survivors of humanity have scattered to the stars in vast self-contained generational vessels as much rock as rocketship. Over a millennium these colonies have hurtled ever outward seeking escape and survival, whilst within them humans have slowly become something differentâ€¦

The eponymous Knights of Sidonia are the young pilots gifted enough to pilot the colossal humanoid fighter vessels that defend and scavenge interstellar resources for the ever-moving colony our story concernsâ€¦

The story begins with ‘Nagate Tanikaze’s Choice’ as an unexpected event occurs. Unknown to all the inhabitants of the hive-like colony ship years ago, an old man took his infant grandson deep into the bowels of the vessel and vanished. Raised in utter isolation with only tapes, a flight simulator/VR trainer and stolen food, the boy grew into a tough, hardy and independent survivor.

When, after three years, Nagate Tanikaze finally accepted that the corpse in the chair was no longer his â€œgrampsâ€, he regretfully headed up in search of food and was soon caught by the incredulous authorities. He is starving and impossibly weak, but adamantly refuses to undergo the commonplace genetic procedure that will enable him to photosynthesise starlight. He might well be the only traditionally human being on Sidoniaâ€¦

His captors-turned-benefactors accept his idiosyncrasies and welcome him into their austere, oddly passionless society, but some people seem to seethe with hostility at Tanikaze’s presence.

He is assigned quarters at a dorm and is welcomed by Ms. Hiyama, a motherly amalgam of human, bear and cyborg. He spends his time acclimatising by aimlessly wandering the vast labyrinthine cocoon which has patterned itself on an idealised 20^th century Japan, but trouble still finds him when he wanders into a female photosynthesis chamber and is beaten up by the outraged girls â€œfeedingâ€ insideâ€¦

In the higher echelons of the ship, passive panic is gripping the ship’s leaders. Long range sensors have spotted a Gauna – one of the Brobdingnagian bio-horrors that invaded and destroyed Earth ten centuries past – and with grim fatality the Garde pilots are mobilised.

Tanikaze has been tested and found to be a superb pilot prospect. As the ship goes on alert his actual training begins, converting his years on the simulator into hands-on experienceâ€¦

‘Nagate Tanikaze’s Maiden Battle’ finds the trainee mecha-rider still experiencing some prejudice but making his first friend in pretty Izana Shinatose, a fellow Garde pilot who adopts the outsider, acting as his guide and social mentor. Izana is warm and welcoming and it’s not too long before Nagate accepts â€œherâ€ (to him) odd situation as a third-gendered, asexual parthenogenetic hermaphrodite. â€œSheâ€ also seems to be mildly telepathicâ€¦

Testing on the latest simulator, the outcast astounds all his classmates by scoring far above the machine’s assessment parameters but the purely physical – and appallingly uncomfortable and embarrassing – aspects of wearing a working spacesuit and dealing with the psychological pressures of working in the limitless void still challenges Tanikaze’s resolve and mental resources.

And even training is deadly work. As two squads of Mecha extract ice from a passing asteroid the simple drill turns into a disaster when a Gauna ambushes the novicesâ€¦

‘Eiko Yamano’s Starry Heavens’ recalls that cadet’s spurning of the students’ superstitious pre-flight ritual before returning to her present as the star-beast consumes her and adds her DNA to its metamorphic mass, simultaneously gravely damaging Tanikaze’s vessel. The telemetry from his ship indicates he’s near deathâ€¦

Aboard Sidonia, their superiors can only write off the kids and begin readying their only effective weapon – a Heavy Mass Cannon that should push the nigh-unkillable free-floating carnivore far out of rangeâ€¦

The Sidonians are astonished when Nagate apparently regains consciousness and valiantly confronts the gigantic horror slowly assuming Yamano’s form. Incomprehensibly driving it back, he is dragged away by his comrades just as the huge projectile from the mass cannon devastatingly hits homeâ€¦

‘Norio Kunato’s Fury’ finds the recovering Nagate plagued by ghastly dreams of Eiko’s death – and particularly her imagined transubstantiation into a Gauna. He should be dead but refuses even to give in to the pace of his own healing and soon drags himself on crutches back to lectures. When Izana sees him leaning on willowy Kunato in moments of dizziness, the outraged asexual storms off in a huffâ€¦

The baffled Tanikaze only gets the chance to make amends at the Gravity Festival – an annual function that allows the barbarian boy opportunity to eat as much actual food as he can hold – but is distracted by the attentions of fellow pilot Hoshijiro Shizuka who had brought his wounded Mecha and battered body back to Sidonia after the Gauna ambush. However when haughty Norio Kunato insults and assaults Izana, Nagate goes crazy and jumps the elitist bigot. Their battle wrecks the fair, and the outcast learns that many of his fellow pilot candidates feel he is unworthy to ride the giant guardian mechaâ€¦

This first monochrome volume concludes with ‘Mochikuni Akai’s Glory’ as the trainees continue their steep and brutal learning curve. The repelled Gauna is gradually, inexorably approaching Sidonia again. Moreover it’s clear that not all the populace despise the new kid. As the first person to fight – let alone survive – a Gauna attack Tanikaze is apparently held in high regard by the older Guardians.

When hot-shot pilot Akai invites Nagate and Izana to a private paradise of artificial seas and beaches, it is to reveal that he and his fellow officers have been tasked with deflecting the beast’s next attack. Although the party is enjoyable and the surroundings stunning, the cadets can’t help but feel they’re intruders at a Last Supperâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Like Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven and other masters of the art form, Tsutomu Nihei frequently works in a notional shared continuity (for instance the monstrous Gauna first appeared in his earlier series Abara), but there’s no sense of having missed anything in this premier instalment of a wonderfully engrossing, gloriously engaging epic of Horatian heroism and Mankind’s Last Stand.

Compelling, subtle, spectacular and even funny, this is a yarn no adventure aficionados or sci-fi fanatics should miss.

This book is printed in the traditional Japanese right to left, back to front format.

February 1, 2013

Twin Spica volume 3

By Kou Yaginuma (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-90-3

The hungry fascination, hopeful imagination and fevered anticipation of space travel which was an integral component of post-World War II society is the driving narrative engine for this inspiring manga epic from Kou Yaginuma, who began capturing questing imaginations with his poignant short story ‘2015 Nen no Uchiage Hanabi’ (‘2015: Fireworks’), published in Gekkan Comics Flapper magazine in June 2000.

The author subsequently expanded and enhanced the subject, themes and characters into an all-consuming narrative epic combining hard science and humanist fiction with lyrical mysticism and traditional tales of school-days and growing up.

Diminutive teenager Asumi Kamogawa has always dreamed of going into space. From her earliest moments the lonely child had gazed with intense longing up at the stars, her only companion and confidante her imaginary friend Mr. Lion.

When Asumi was a year old, the first Japanese space-launch ended in utter catastrophe when rocket-ship ShishigÅ (â€œThe Lionâ€), exploded: crashing back to earth on the city ofYuigahama where the Kamogawas lived. Hundreds were killed and so many more injured, including Asumi’s mother.

Maimed and comatose, the matron took years to die and the long-drawn-out tragedy utterly traumatised the tiny uncomprehending daughter. The shock also crushed her grieving husband who had worked as a designer on the rockets for Japan’s Space Program.

In the wake of the disaster, Tomoro Kamogawa was assigned by the corporation who built the ship to head the reparations committee. Guilt-wracked and personally bereaved, the devastated technologist had to visit and formally apologise to each and every survivor or victim’s grieving family. The experience completely destroyed the man.

He was certainly no fan of the space program, having lost his wife, his beloved engineering career, and his pride to the race for the stars. He has raised his daughter alone by working two and often three menial jobs at a time for over a decade and cannot countenance losing the very last of his loved ones to the cold black heavensâ€¦

In response to the disaster,Japanset up an Astronautics and Space Sciences Academy. After years of passionate struggle and in defiance of her father’s wishes, in 2024 Asumi – an isolated, solitary, serious but determinedly star-bound teenager – was accepted to theTokyoNationalSpaceSchool. She reluctantly left Yuigahama and joined the new class.

Amongst the year’s fresh intake were surly, abrasive Shinnosuke Fuchuya (an elementary school classmate who used to bully her as a child back in Yuigahama), jolly Kei Oumi, chilly Marika Ukita and spooky, ultra-cool style-icon and fashion victim Shu Suzuki who became the shy introvert’s closest acquaintances.

Every day Asumi nudged inexorably towards her goal: the stars. Ever since the crashing rocket had shattered her family, she had drawn comfort from the firmament, with Mr. Lion staring up at the heavens at her wide â€“ especially drawn to the twinkling glow of Virgo and the alluring binary star Spica. And now she was so tantalisingly closeâ€¦

Small, poor, physically weak but resolutely capable, Asumi endures and triumphs over every obstacleâ€¦ and she still talks with Mr. Lion – who might just be the ghost of one of the astronauts who died on the ShishigÅâ€¦

All the students can think of is going to space, but they are constantly reminded of the fact that most of them won’t even finish their schoolingâ€¦

Asumi – barely four feet, eight inches tall – is constantly struggling to meet the arduous physical requirements dictated by the Academy but has more immediate problems. She is only slowly adjusting to life in Tokyo, sleeps in tawdry communal women’s dorm â€œThe Seagullâ€, struggles with many of her classes and subsists on meagre funds, supplemented by part-time jobs.

Moreover she has inexplicably incurred the obsessive hostility of astrophysics lecturer Professor Sano. Unbeknownst to Asumi, Sano has a long-hidden grievance with her father and has thus determined to kick her out of the school at all costsâ€¦

He has already tried to have her removed because her small size dictates that she needs a customised pressure suit – offering Sano an opportunity to force her out by citing budget restrictionsâ€¦

The individual stories are broken up into â€œMissionsâ€ and this particularly moving and moody third volume covers numbers 9-13, plus a revealing sidebar tale and another autobiographical vignette about the author’s own school days.

‘Mission: 09’ begins with Asumi returning to her father’s home, pondering if she should ask Mr. Lion if the disgraced engineer was actually responsible for the rocketship crash all those years ago. Meanwhile inTokyo her classmates are trying to intervene in Sano’s obvious vendetta against their friendâ€¦

Mr. Lion is there too, but has been drawn to the wedding of Asumi’s old teacher Miss Yuko Suzinari. Although she still desperately misses her fiancÃ©, who piloted The Lion and died in the tragic explosion five years previously, she is getting married todayâ€¦ a fact Asumi discovers from an invitation left in an unopened pile of mail she finds in her father’s empty houseâ€¦

Having missed another day of school, Asumi again incurs Sano’s wrath as ‘Mission: 10’ begins, but the astrophysicist and his mysterious superior are in for a rude awakening. Meanwhile the determinedly upbeat Miss Kamogawa is having an oddly unifying effect on her fiercely independent classmates, turning rivals into comrades. All, that is, except the chilly, acerbic, mysteriously aloof Marika Ukitaâ€¦

Undeterred, Asumi probes deeper, and with her phantom mentor’s spiritual advice finally finds a way to crack the ice-queen’s brittle exterior. Valiant, protective Kei Oumi meanwhile openly challenges Sano over his unfair treatment and is soundly reminded by the teacher that the course is a process of elimination. Would she surrender her own chances of success to ensure Asumi remainedâ€¦?

‘Mission: 11’ continues the deliberation of the completion for final places, but Mr. Lion again offers sage and calming words as, in the upper echelons, Sano’s words and actions have drawn unfavourable criticism, leading to some further surprising revelations about Asumi’s dad, hints of a concealed scandal regarding the construction of the doomed ShishigÅ and the disappearance of the conniving astrophysicist from the facultyâ€¦

With Sano abruptly replaced by the far more amenable and encouraging Mr. Shiomi, Asumi and the gang decide to take a short camping vacation to the Cosmic Communications Center atChiba, but not before Asumi has one last moving confrontation with her former nemesisâ€¦

‘Mission: 12’ finds them readying for the trip – all but the stand-offish Ukita who flatly refuses to join them – when an incident in the Multi-Axis Trainer (that’s the cool-looking. spinning ball thingy astronauts sit in) results in the ice-queen collapsing. When she gets out of the infirmary Asumi and Kei follow Ukita home and discover she lives in a palatial mansionâ€¦

When they see her being brutalised and abused by a shouting man – presumably her father – Asumi sees red and attacks. Suzuki and Fuchuya are astounded when without any explanation Ukita gets on the bus to Chiba with them and the smiling girlsâ€¦

At their destination the cash-strapped kids walk until Marika again collapses.

Belligerent Fuchuya picks up the moody girl with the badly bleeding feet and carries her to their destination as ‘Mission: 13’, through dreamy flashbacks and a near-fatal hiking incident, discloses some of the incredible, uncomfortable secrets of Marika Ukita and how her own abiding love affair with the cosmos beganâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Although the ongoing saga pauses here, there’s even more affecting revelations to come in the complete tale ‘Asumi’s Cherry Blossom’ which harks back to her school days in Yuigahama. A weird, distracted child, she is bullied by many classmates and even a few teachers, but is championed by a boy who seems very interested in her. Takashi Shimazu is a talented artist who won’t let Asumi see what he’s constantly drawing, and he’s absent from school quite a lot, but they strike up a friendship anyway. Asumi really likes the boy, but wishes he wouldn’t joke about being able to see Mr. Lionâ€¦

This bittersweet tragedy is followed by a beguiling and introspective ‘Another Spica’ episode in which Yaginuma details his shiftless, ambition-free teens and shared moment of clarity with a girl in his classroomâ€¦

These powerfully unforgettable tales originally appeared in 2001-2002 as Futatsu no Supika and in the Seinen manga magazine Gekkan Comics Flapper, targeted at male readers aged 18-30, but this ongoing, unfolding beguiling saga is perfect for any older kid with stars in their eyesâ€¦

Twin Spica filled sixteen collected volumes from September 2001 to August 2009, tracing the trajectories of Asumi and friends from callow students to competent astronauts and the series has spawned both anime and live action TV series.

This delightful serial has everything: plenty of hard science to back up the informed extrapolation, an engaging cast, mystery and frustrated passion, alienation, angst and true friendships; all welded seamlessly into a joyous coming-of-age drama with supernatural overtones and masses of sheer sentiment.

Rekindling the magical spark of the Wild Black Yonder for a new generation, this is a treat no imagineer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to missâ€¦

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