Category: Science Fiction

Posted on

Judge Anderson PSI Files volume 01


By Alan Grant, John Wagner, Brett Ewins, Cliff Robinson, Robin Smith, Barry Kitson, Jeff Anderson, Will Simpson, Mark Farmer, Mick Austin, David A. Roach, Arthur Ranson, Carlos Ezquerra, Kim Raymond & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-90673-522-7 (TPB/Digital Edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

A wellspring of spin-off creativity, Britain’s last great comic icon can be described as a combination of the other two, combining the futuristic milieu and thrills of Dan Dare with the terrifying anarchy and irreverent absurdity of Dennis the Menace. He’s also well on the way to becoming the longest-lasting adventure character in our admittedly meagre comics stable, having been continually published every week since February 1977 when he first appeared in the second issue of science-fiction anthology 2000AD. As such he’s also spawned a rich world where other stars have been born and thrived…

Judge Dredd and the ultra-dystopian environs of Mega-City One were created by a creative committee including Pat Mills, Kelvin Gosnell, Carlos Ezquerra, Mike McMahon and others, with the majority contribution coming from legendary writer John Wagner, who has written the largest portion of the canon under his own and several pseudonymous names.

Joe Dredd is a fanatically dedicated Judge in the super-city, where hundreds of millions of citizens idle away their days in a world where robots are cheaper and usually more efficient than humans. Jobs are both beloved pastime and treasured commodity and boredom has reached epidemic proportions. Almost everybody is just one askance glance away from mental meltdown. Judges are pot-watching peacekeepers who maintain order at all costs in a vast bubbling cauldron: investigating, taking action and trying all crimes and disturbances to the hard-won equilibrium of the constantly boiling melting pot. Justice is always immediate…

They are necessary fascists in a world permanently on the edge of catastrophe, and sadly, what far too many readers never realised is that the entire milieu is a gigantic satirical black comedy with oodles of outrageous, vicarious cathartic action. Just keep telling yourself, some situations demand drastic solutions…

In 1980 and Progs (that’s tomorrow-talk for issue number) #149-151 – January 26th-February 9th – with continuity and scenario firmly established, Wagner, writing as John Howard, introduced Judge Death: an undead lawman from an alternate Earth, whose Judges, faced with the same interminable problems as our world, took their creed to its only logical conclusion. If all crime is perpetrated by the living, then to eradicate crime…

After ending all life in his own dimension, the ghostly ghoul extended his mission to ours, wiping out criminals and law-abiding citizens alike, with the Judges – even Dredd – unable to stop him… until the flamboyant and unconventional psychic recruit Judge Cassandra Anderson of PSI Division sacrificed herself to trap the evil spirit forever…

With Wagner clearly on a creative roll, the fans spoke long and loud. Both the Zombie Peacemaker and Anderson returned within a year. Credited to T.B. Grover (still Wagner in Progs #224-228/August 8th to September 5th 1981), ‘Judge Death Lives’ saw a desperate citizen releasing the horror from his eternal tomb at the behest of three more expired Judges: Mortis, Fire and Fear.

Reunited with their leader the Dark Judges went about their lawful occasions, executing vast numbers of Mega-City citizens. It took a trans-dimensional trip to their origin realm – “Deadworld” – before Dredd & Anderson could stop the slayers; and even then, only temporarily. Those magnificent yarns appear often in other collections, and I’ll surely revisit them again soon, but the most important aspect of all that is how both Anderson and Death went on to their own series… which brings us to here, because this book is not about Joe Dredd but rather what can bloom in his honking, big-booted shadow…

Cassandra Anderson, as part of the Judges’ psychic/weird phenomena division is given far more leeway than her straitlaced, buttoned-down street cops colleagues. That made her own exploits far quirkier, outrageous and experimental, thereby guaranteeing her a solo series…

Spanning 1983-1990 and collecting early cases as originally seen in anthological weekly 2000AD #416-427, 468-478, 520-531, 607-609, 612-613, 614-612, 635-644, 645-647, 657-659, 669-670, 712-717 and 758-763, plus self-contained episodes from 2000AD Annual 1984 and 2000AD Sci-Fi Special 1988, the eerie off-kilter terrors begin with another outing for the ‘Four Dark Judges’ as detailed by new lead scripter Alan Grant and Wagner in Progs #416-427, with illustrators Brett Ewins, Cliff Robinson and Robin Smith tag-teaming the art. As with the majority of these yarns, veteran letterer Tom Frame made sense of it all…

The opening tale details how the essences of Death and his subordinate Judges Fear, Fire and Mortis mentally bombard the psychic peacekeeper until she breaks regs and dimension hops to their deceased dimension – “Deadworld” – to sort them out once and for all. However, they quickly overpower her consciousness and use her to unleash themselves on the puling masses of Mega-City One. With another kill-spree in full flow, suspended Anderson breaks a few more rules and finds a way to despatch one Dark Judge and force the remaining trio to retreat. She’s ready for them when they strike again and end up banished to Limbo thanks to fortitude, determination and new Judge tech. It’s the only thing that saves her from her own commanding officers…

Grant, Wagner, Ewins & Frame catered Anderson’s second solo-starring soirée (#468-478) as ‘The Possessed’ sees Anderson investigating a poltergeist at Ed Poe “hab-block” (big, Big apartment buildings) and inexorably drawn into a war with demons led by child-possessor Gargarax. Even PSI-Division’s exorcists are outgunned when Cassandra’s gifts lead her to block satanists secretly summoning the arcane entities by sacrificing relatively innocent waif Hammy Blish, and the conflict and carnage soon spread far, wide and even deep under the mass-metropolis into its appalling Undercity…

Anderson’s hunt for Gargarax ultimately leads her to its private hell and war against a host of devils, but her escape and the ensured safety of Mega-City One come at a grave cost…

The rich history of the City and Anderson’s precognitive visions fuel the next epic yarn as illustrators Barry Kitson, Jeff Anderson, Will Simpson, John Aldrich, and letterers Frame & Steve Potter join Grant & Wagner for ‘Hour of the Wolf’ (#520-531). As vague, surreal dream portents plague the rule-breaking Judge, seeking to warn her of a deadly plot, Sov-City psychic sleeper agents attempt to wreck her city, kill her and liberate the Judges’ greatest opponent – arch terrorist Orlok the Assassin of East-Meg One…

The campaign almost succeeds and costs many more lives before the mass murderer is (barely) thwarted…

Grant, Mark Farmer & Frame deliver a shorter pace-changing romp in Progs #607-609 as ‘Contact’ sees Anderson sent to the far end of the solar system to scope out a strange alien ship that has ignored all other forms of communication or investigative scanning. Good call too, as what she finds are liars and deeply predatory…

Mick Austin joins Grant & Frame across #612-613 as ‘Beyond the Void’ sees Anderson despatched to handle a transcendental incident at the Mahatma Cote monastery. There she finds a Lama’s spiritual journey has taken him to the gateway of Judge Death’s cosmic cell, and must act accordingly. David A. Roach then assumes control of the vision-making for Grant as ‘Helios’ (#614-622) sees her and occasional partner Judge Corey on the trail of a long-dead, vengeance-crazed killer using mind-control and surgical alteration to carry out his schedule of slaughter.  Grant, Austin & Gordon Robson then sort out a solo saga in 2000AD Sci-Fi Special 1988. ‘Judge Corey: Leviathan’s Farewell’ finds the empath chasing ruthless sugar smugglers to the toxin-blighted coastal shores, only to have a deep encounter with something old, uncanny and irresistibly tragic…

Arthur Ranson illustrates Grant’s next extended storyline as ‘Triad’ (#635-644) reveals the true nature of an ethereal serial killer with a penchant for baroque monsters and Fortean events hunting in Mega-City One. The connection to an abused boy is not clear at first but as more bodies spectacularly drop, Anderson’s visions become clearer and much more insistent and soon the hand of an old enemy can be seen.

An unhealthy obsession with robots grips a unique spree killer in ‘The Prophet’ (#645-647 by Grant, Roach & Potter) whilst #657-659’s ‘The Random Man’ – illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra – sees Anderson in pursuit of a sex-&-gambling-obsessed perp in the throes of transition, before Roach returns to limn #669-670’s ‘The Screaming Skull’: a deviously twisted macabre mystery of ghosts, assassins and the world’s oldest motive for murder…

One last extended epic brings the psionic shenanigans to a close as Grant, Roach and Potter take two bites of the cherry (Progs #712-717 and 758-763) to explore the meaning of ‘Engram’ in a Shakespearean saga of Cursed Earth witches, a child of destiny and Anderson in hot pursuit of pyrokinetic mass murderer Verona Rom. One threat ended, a bigger one emerges and the Judge-out-of-water must contend with a ghostly stalker only she can see, not-so-slowly driving her insane. After mounting bouts of madness Anderson is sectioned to an Iso-Cube, whilst her colleagues and superiors dig deep to find what really happened in the Cursed Earth, leading to staggering revelations of her own childhood, a game changing reunion with the witches in the scarred wastelands and rebirth of intent in Mega-City One…

To Be Continued…

Rounding out this initial monochrome compendium is ‘Bonus Strip: The Haunting’ by Grant, Kim Raymond & Tony Jacob from 2000AD Annual 1984 with the Judge battling demonic usurper Dahak for the mind and soul of impulsive scholar Dr Levin who should have kept his hands off the treasures of the Mega-City One Museum of Antiquities…

Supplemented by Ewins’ cover for 2000 AD Prog #468, and biographies of the ‘Writers’ and ‘Artists’ involved, these groundbreaking tales are amongst the very best action adventures Apocalypse-obsessed, dystopia driven Britain has ever produced, neatly balancing paranoia with gallows humour and innate anarchic disrespect for authority (any authority) with pulse-pounding thrills, spills and chills.

This is sheer addictive nostalgia for my generation, but the stories hold up against anything made for today’s marketplace. Buy it for the kids or keep it for yourself; this cheap-&cheerful tome is glorious, funny challenging and beautifully realised… and steel yourself for even better yet to come…
© 1983, 1985,1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990 & 2012 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Popeye: The E.C. Segar Popeye Sundays volume 4: Swea’Pea and Eugene the Jeep (February 1936 – October 1938)


By Elzie Crisler Segar, with Charles H. “Doc” Winner, Tom, Sims Kayla E. & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 979-8-8750-0001-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There is more than one Popeye. If your first thought when you hear the name is the cheerful, indomitable swabby in full Naval whites always biffing a hulking great beardy-bloke and mainlining tinned spinach, that’s okay. The Fleischer Studios and Famous Films animated features have a vivid brilliance and spontaneous energy of their own (even later, watered-down anodyne TV versions have some merit) and they are indeed all based on the grizzled, crusty, foul-mouthed, bulletproof, golden-hearted old swab who shambled his way into a fully cast and firmly established newspaper strip and would not leave. But they are really only the tip of an incredible iceberg of satire, slapstick, virtue, vice and mind-boggling adventure.

Popeye first washed ashore on January 17th 1929: a casual extra in the Thimble Theatre comic feature. That unassuming newspaper strip had launched on 19th December 1919: one of many funnies parodying and burlesquing the era’s silent movie serials. Its more successful forebears included C.W. Kahles’ Hairbreadth Harry and Ed Wheelan’s Midget Movies/ Minute Movies… which Thimble Theatre replaced in William Randolph Hearst’s papers.

All these strips employed a repertory company of characters playing out generic adventures based on those expressive cinema antics. Thimble Theatre’s cast included Nana & Cole Oyl; their gawky, excessively excitable daughter Olive; diminutive-but-pushy son Castor and Olive’s sappy, would-be beau Horace Hamgravy. The feature ticked along nicely for a decade, competent, unassuming and always entertaining, with Castor and Ham Gravy (as he became) stumbling and tumbling through get-rich-quick schemes, frenzied, fear-free adventures and gag situations until September 10th 1928, when explorer uncle Lubry Kent Oyl gave Castor a spoil from his latest exploration of Africa.

It was the most fabulous of all birds – a hand-reared Whiffle Hen – and was the start of something truly groundbreaking…

Whiffle Hens are troublesome, incredibly rare and possessed of fantastic powers, but after months of inspired hokum and slapstick shenanigans, Castor was inclined to keep Bernice – for that was the hen’s name – as a series of increasingly peculiar circumstances brought him into contention with ruthless Mr. Fadewell, world’s greatest gambler and king of gaming resort ‘Dice Island’. Bernice clearly affected and inspired writer/artist E.C. Segar, because his strip increasingly became a playground of frantic, compelling action and comedy during this period. When Castor and Ham discovered everybody wanted the Whiffle Hen because she could bestow infallible good luck, they sailed for Dice Island to win every penny from its lavish casinos. Big sister Olive wanted to come along, but the boys planned to leave her behind once their vessel was ready to sail. It was 16th January 1929…

The next day, in the 108th episode of that extended saga, a bluff, brusquely irascible, ignorant, itinerant and exceeding ugly one-eyed old sailor was hired by the pathetic pair to man the boat they had rented, and the world met one of the most iconic and memorable characters ever conceived. By sheer surly willpower, Popeye won readers’ hearts and minds, his no-nonsense, rough grumbling simplicity and dubious appeal enchanting the public until, by tale’s end, the walk-on had taken up residency. He would quickly make Thimble Theatre his own. The Sailor Man affably steamed onto the full-colour Sunday pages forming the meat of this curated collection.

This paperback prize is the closing quartile of four books designed for swanky slipcases, comprehensively re-presenting Segar’s entire Sunday canon. Spiffy as that sounds, the wondrous stories are also available in digital editions if you want to think of ecology or mitigate the age and frailty of your spinach-deprived “muskles”…

Son of a handyman, Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8th December 1894. His early life was filled with solid, earnest blue-collar jobs that typified his generation of cartoonists. Young Segar worked as a decorator/house-painter, played drums to accompany vaudeville acts at the local theatre and when the town got a movie house played for the silent films. This allowed him to absorb staging, timing and narrative tricks from close observation of the screen, and these became his greatest assets as a cartoonist. Whilst working as a film projectionist, he decided to draw for his living, and tell his own stories. He was 18 years old.

Like so many of that “can-do” era, Segar studied art via mail order: in this case W.L. Evans’ cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio – from where Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster would launch Superman upon the world. Segar gravitated to Chicago and was “discovered” by Richard F. Outcault (The Yellow Kid, Buster Brown), arguably the inventor of newspaper comics. Outcault introduced Segar around at the prestigious Chicago Herald and soon – although still wet behind the ears – Segar’s first strip – Charley Chaplin’s Comedy Capers – debuted on March 12th 1916. Two years later, Elzie married Myrtle Johnson and moved to Hearst’s Chicago Evening American to create Looping the Loop. Managing Editor William Curley saw a big future for Segar and promptly packed the newlyweds off to the Manhattan headquarters of the mighty King Features Syndicate. Within a year Elzie was turning Thimble Theatre for The New York Journal. In 1924, Segar created a second daily strip. The 5:15 was a surreal domestic comedy featuring weedy commuter/would-be inventor John Sappo and his formidable, indomitable wife Myrtle…

A born storyteller, Segar had from the start an advantage even his beloved cinema couldn’t match. His brilliant ear for dialogue and accent shone out from admittedly rather average melodrama adventure plots, adding lustre to stories and gags he always felt he hadn’t drawn well enough. After a decade or so – and just as cinema caught up with the introduction of “talkies” – he finally discovered a character whose unique sound and individual vocalisations blended with a fantastic, enthralling nature to create a literal superstar…

Incoherent, ignorant, plug-ugly and stingingly sarcastic, Popeye shambled on stage midway through ‘Dice Island’ and once his very minor bit part played out, simply refused to leave. Within a year he was a regular. As circulation skyrocketed, he became the star. In the less than 10 years Segar worked with his iconic matelot (from January 1929 until the artist’s untimely death on 13th October 1938), the auteur built an incredible metaworld of fabulous lands and lost locales, where unique characters undertook fantastic voyages, spawned or overcame astounding scenarios and experienced big, unforgettable thrills as well as the small human dramas we’re all subject to. They also threw punches at the drop of a hat…

This was a serial saga simultaneously extraordinary and mundane, which could be hilarious or terrifying at the same time. For every trip to the rip-roaring Wild West, idyllic atoll or fabulous lost kingdom, there was a sordid brawl between squabbling neighbours, spats between friends or disagreements between sweethearts – any and all usually settled with mightily-swung fists and a sarcastic aside.

Popeye was the first Superman of comics and its ultimate working-class hero, but he was not a comfortable one to idolise. A brutish lout who thought with his fists, lacking respect for authority, he was uneducated, short-tempered and – whenever “hot termaters” batted their eyelashes (or thereabouts) at him – painfully fickle. He was also a worrisome gambling troublemaker who wasn’t welcome in polite society… and wouldn’t want to be. However, the mighty marine marvel might be raw and rough-hewn, but he was always fair and practical, with an innate, unshakable sense of what’s right and what’s not: a joker who wants kids to be themselves – but not necessarily “good” – and a guy who took no guff from anybody. Of course, as his popularity grew, he somewhat mellowed. Always ready to defend the weak and with absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows, he was and will always be “the best of us”… but the shocking sense of unpredictability, danger and anarchy he initially provided was sorely missed by 1936 – so Segar brought it back again…

This concluding compilation of Segar’s Sunday comics masterpiece spans February 23rd 1936 to October 2nd 1938, with the classic pages and vintage views preceded by another sublimely whimsical cartoon deconstruction, demystification and appreciation. ‘“Gift from Uncle Ben” – An Introduction by Kayla E’ finds creative director/designer/artist Kayla E. (Precious Rubbish, Now: The New Comics Anthology) anticipating and celebrating the legacy of the strip in a captivating “silent” cartoon yarn starring the cast and highlighting the incredible Jeep…

Throughout, the weekend wonderment accentuates arcane antics of the star attraction, but increasingly the support cast provide comedy gold via potential straight man Popeye’s interactions with Wimpy, Olive Oyl, our eponymous co-stars and all the rest of Segar’s cast of thousands (of idiots). The humorous antics – in sequences of one-off gags alternating with occasional extended sagas – see the Sailor Man fighting for every iota of attention whilst mournful mooching co-star Wimpy becomes increasingly more ingenious – not to say surreal – in his quest for free meals.

An engaging Micawber-like coward, cad and conman, the insatiable J. Wellington Wimpy debuted on May 3rd 1931 as an unnamed and decidedly partisan referee in one of Popeye’s frequent boxing matches. The scurrilous but polite oaf obviously struck a chord and Segar gradually made him a fixture. Always hungry, keen to take bribes and a cunning coiner of immortal catchphrases like “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” and “Let’s you and him fight” – he was the perfect foil for a simple action hero and increasingly stole the entire show; just like anything else unless it was firmly nailed down…

When not beating the stuffing out of his opponents or kissing pretty girls, Popeye pursued his flighty, vacillating and irresolute Olive with exceptional verve, if little success, but his life was always made more complicated whenever the unflappable, so-corruptible and adorably contemptible Wimpy made an appearance. He was even an occasional rival suitor, joining returning foils such as long-suffering local charmer Curly as convenient competitors for Olive’s dubious and flighty affections…

Infinitely varying riffs on Olive’s peculiar romantic notions or Wimpy’s attempts to cadge food or money for food were irresistible to the adoring readership, but Segar wisely peppered the Sundays with longer episodic tales, and the weirdest cast in comics then or since. Foils like diner owner Rough House, Alice the Goon and ever-irascible Mr. George W. Geezil perpetually vied for attention with baroque figures like subhuman pal Toar, King Blozo of Spinachovia and the vile Sea Hag, but so many semi-regulars simply defy description.

Eugene the Jeep debuted on March 20th 1936 in the daily strip: a fantastic 4th dimensional beast with incredible powers used by Olive and Wimpy to get very rich, very quickly. They soon lost it all betting on the wrong guy in another of Segar’s classic and hilarious set-piece boxing matches between Popeye and yet another barely-human pugilist. The tales come from an astonishingly fertile period for the strip’s long history. On August 4th, Eugene was instrumental in kicking off another groundbreaking and memorable sequence as the entire ensemble cast took off on a haunted ship to find Popeye’s absentee dad. That memorably riotous tale introduced ancient, antisocial reprobate Poopdeck Pappy and his diminutive hairy sidekick Pooky Jones. The elder mariner was a rough, hard-bitten, grumpy brute quite prepared and even happy to cheat, steal or smack a woman around if she stepped out of line and a visual warning of what might be Popeye’s eventual fate. Once the old goat was firmly established, Segar set Popeye & Olive the Herculean task of civilizing him; a task ongoing to this day…

The full-colour Sunday pages in this volume span February 23rd 1936 to October 13th 1938, opening with uniquely sentimental monster Alice the Goon resurfacing, permanently switching allegiance and becoming nanny to rambunctious tyke Swee’Pea after saving the “infink” from abduction by the sinister oceanic witch. Alice was a regular by the end of April. Her assimilation was part of a series of stand-alone gags revealing Popeye’s violent courtship of Olive and tactics for deterring rivals, counterpointing a stream of pugilistic bouts and reinforcing the gastronomic war of wills between Wimpy and Rough House, with Geezil’s hatred of the moocher also strongly represented week by week.

August 9th saw the Jeep make his spectacular Sunday debut, with a few demonstrations of the fanciful beast’s incredible powers to make money and cause chaos leading to infinitely varying riffs on Olive’s peculiar romantic notions or Wimpy’s attempts to cadge food or money (for food). These incidents were irresistible to the adoring readership, but Segar wisely peppered the Sundays with longer episodic tales, such as the saga of ‘The Terrible Kid Mustard’ (December 27th 1936 – February 28th 1937) and pitting the “sprize-fighting” Sea Salt against another boxer who was as ferociously fuelled by the incredible nourishing power of Spinach… an epic war of nerves that culminated in a ring bout adjudicated by Wimpy and remembered forever…

Another extended endeavour starred the smallest addition to the cast and co-star of this volume. Rambunctious tyke Swee’Pea was never an angel, and when he began stealing jam and framing Eugene (March 7th through 28th) the search for a culprit proved he was also precociously smart too. The impossible task of civilising Poopdeck Pappy also covered many months – with no appreciable or lasting effect – incorporating an outrageous sequence wherein the dastardly dotard becomes scandalously, catastrophically entangled in Popeye’s mechanical automatic diaper-changing machine…

On June 27th Wimpy found the closest thing to true love after meeting Olive’s friend Waneeta: a meek, retiring soul whose father owned 50,000 cows. His ardent pursuit filled many pages over following months, as did the latest scheme of his arch-nemesis Geezil, who bought a cafe/diner with the sole intention of poisoning the constantly cadging conman. Although starring the same characters, Sunday and Daily strips ran separate storylines, offering Segar opportunities to utilise the same good idea in different ways. On September 19th 1937 he began a sequence wherein Swee’Pea’s mother comes back, seeking custody of the boy she had given away. The resultant tug-of-love tale ran to December 5th, displaying genuine warmth and angst amidst the wealth of hilarious stunts by both parties to convince the feisty nipper to pick his preferred parent…

On January 16th 1938, Popeye was approached by scientists who had stumbled upon an incipient Martian invasion. The evil extraterrestrials planned to pit their pet monster against a typical Earthman before committing to the assault, so the wily boffins believed grizzly old pug Popeye was our world’s best bet…

Readers had no idea that the feature’s glory days were ending. Segar’s advancing illness was affecting his output and between December 1937 and August 1938 many pages ran unsigned and were ghosted by Charles H. “Doc” Winner and Tom Sims. When Segar resumed drawing, the gags were funnier than ever (especially a short sequence where Pappy shaves his beard and dyes his hair to impersonate Popeye and woo Olive!), but tragically the long lead-in time necessary to create Sundays only left him time to finish 15 more pages.

The last signed Segar strip was published on October 2nd 1938. He died eleven days later from leukaemia and liver disease.

Popeye and the bizarre, surreally quotidian cast that welcomed and grew up around him are timeless icons of global culture who have grown far beyond their newspaper strip origins. Nevertheless, in one very true sense, with this marvellous yet painfully tragic final volume, the most creative period in the saga of the one true and only Sailor Man closes. His last strips were often augmented or even fully ghosted, but the intent is generally untrammelled, leaving an unparalleled testament to Segar’s incontestable timeless, manic brilliance for us all to enjoy over and over again.

Popeye is four years shy of his centenary and deserves that status as global icon. How many comics characters are still enjoying new adventures 96 years after their first? These volumes are a perfect way to celebrate the genius and mastery of E.C. Segar and his brilliantly flawed superman. These are tales you’ll treasure all of your life and superb books you must not miss. There is more than one Popeye. Most of them are pretty good and some are truly excellent. Don’t you think it’s about time you sampled the original and very best?
Popeye volume 4: Swea’Pea and Eugene the Jeep is copyright © 2024 King Features Syndicate, Inc./™Hearst Holdings, Inc. This edition © 2024 Fantagraphics Books Inc. Segar comic strips provided by Bill Blackbeard and his San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. “Gift from Uncle Ben” © 2024 Kayla E. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Planet of the Apes Adventures – The Original Marvel Years


By Doug Moench, George Tuska, Alfredo Alcala, Mike Esposito, Tony Mortellaro, Dave Hunt, George Roussos & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5073-6 (HB/Digital edition) 978-1-3029-5999-9 (TPB/Epic Collection)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

One of the most effective and long-lasting explorations of failed human ambition and resultant dystopia is not the last 50 years of global government, but rather a film franchise built on a seminal French science fiction novel.

Peirre’s Boulle’s satirical La Planète des singes (1963) was just another tale from a former secret agent/engineer who earned major accolades and rewards as an author. Your entire family has probably seen his other Oscar-winning blockbuster – David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai – never realising it is an autobiographical saga originally called La Pont de la rivière Kwai.

Translated into English 1964, his other epic became Monkey Planet, and – after numerous major rewrites by screenwriters Rod Serling & Michael Wilson – was 1968’s movie sensation Planet of the Apes. The US production inspired four sequels and a TV series which lived on in reruns and reedited TV movies for decades after, plus an animated series, books, toys, games, a home projector pack, records and comics and other merchandise. In 2001 it was added to the US National Film Registry as the Library of Congress deemed it as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”… and that’s all before Tim Burton’s 2001 remake, the 2011 reboot and an ongoing, evolving franchise still growing to this day…

There have been numerous comics iterations and adaptations, beginning with two manga interpretations (1968 & 1971) intersecting a 1970 Gold Key movie adaptation and assorted later international versions. In 1974 – no doubt thanks to the impending TV show – a Marvel Magazine continuation combining serialised comics continuations, expanded comics adaptations of the five original films, features and articles began. Sporting an August 1974 cover-date and on sale from June 25th of that year, Planet of the Apes #1 blended photos and articles with Part 1 (of 6) of an adaptation of the 1968 blockbuster movie, plus all-new ape-ventures set in a time period when humans were still sapient talkers living in notional harmony with equally erudite orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas. For more on that you could consult our review Planet of the Apes Archive volume 1: Terror on the Planet of The Apes or simply go buy that book too. It’s quite good…

Although the US magazine was resolutely aimed at a readership beyond a standard newsstand kids range, in Britain that material was solidly aimed at 10-13-year-olds. When Marvel US abruptly cancelled PotA in December 1976, the franchise lay fallow until Malibu Comics picked it up in 1990 (reprints, new stories and franchise mash-up Ape Nation). Other companies added new material over the years. However, at the height of the fuzzy fun and furore, Marvel reprinted in colour deftly re-edited and toned-down film adaptations from the magazine. The general release incarnation was a simpler affair, and somewhat sporadic in distribution.

Now that Marvel is again helming the simian franchise these tales are again offered to fans: available in hardback and trade paperback Epic Collection each with its digital versions, backstopping new stories in the niche universe. Scripted by Doug Moench (Batman, Moon Knight, Master of Kung Fu), and with comics veteran George Roussos “colorizing” the monochrome art of George Tuska, Mike Esposito, Tony Mortellaro & Dave Hunt, the first film filled #1-6 (October 1975-June 1976) of Adventures on the Planet of the Apes.

Wilson & Serling’s excoriatingly satirical screenplay was faithfully serialised as ‘Planet of the Apes’, ‘World of Captive Humans’, ‘Manhunt!’, ‘Trial’ and ‘Into the Forbidden Zone’ before at last revealing ‘The Secret’ of the anthropoid world to time-lost astronaut George Taylor. Due to calamity and enemy action Taylor is soon the sole survivor of an Earth space flight that lands him on a primitive devastated world. Here talking orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas live in tense collaboration and humans are barely-sensate beasts of burden or preferred targets of bloodsports. The civilisation is superstitious, uncompromisingly theocratic but, as Taylor quickly deduces, clearly suppressing some awful secret about the human herds they hunt and enslave…

The rebellious talking human is somehow a clear threat to the power and dogma of the ruling simians, but thanks to the aid of well-meaning chimps scientists Zira, Lucius and Cornelius, Taylor and indigenous human companion Nova are able to escape the schemes of chief scientist Zaius who knows the awful truth Taylor and his allies are stumbling towards…

Although film fans waited two years for what happened next, the comics story seamlessly continues as Moench & Roussos join illustrator Alfredo Alcala (Swamp Thing, Batman, Man-Thing) for Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Paul Dehn & Mort Abrams’ bleak, chilling screenplay sequel becomes a dark, brooding and ultimately apocalyptic quest for answers when Taylor is captured by mutated humans who worship nuclear weapons even as Earth’s follow-up expedition smashes to destruction just like the first…

Eponymous opening ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes’ sees sole survivor Brent similarly stranded in 3955 AD and equally unaware that his ship has brought him back to a much-altered birthworld. He soon meets Nova, who was ignored by whatever rules the “Forbidden Zone”. The fact that she’s wearing Taylor’s dog tags convinces Brent to accompany the mute, but he thinks twice when Nova leads him to Cornelius and Zira in Ape City. The metropolis is in turmoil with gorilla General Ursus increasingly usurping Dr. Zaius and demanding eradication of humans and conquest of the heretically sorcerous Forbidden Zone…

In this febrile atmosphere, Nova brings Brent to Taylor’s chimpanzee benefactors, before they are captured and ‘Enslaved!’ by gorillas preparing to invade the land of terror. On escaping, and barely ahead of an ape army, Brent and Nova return to the lost land where the shocked explorer delves deep into subterranean ruins and discovers the secret after recognising a place where he used to live so very long ago. Now it’s a tomb of terror and temple to ‘The Warhead Messiah’, ruled by cruel telepaths who are all that remain of sapient humanity. As ape forces advance, these ‘Children of the Bomb’ introduce Brent to their other captive, forcing the ancient astronauts to battle. As Ursus’ killers invade the nuclear cultists anticipate detonating the bomb to end all bombs and as violence and brutality explode everywhere, any chance to stop ‘The Hell of Holocaust’ dwindles and dies…

With the collection cover art by E.M. Gist and individual series covers by John Buscema, Joe Sinnott, Rich Buckler, Dan Adkins, Ron Wilson, Vince Colletta, Gil Kane, Frank Giacoia, Klaus Janson, Jim Starlin, Mike Nasser/Netzer, Esposito, Alcala, Paty Anderson, & Earl Norem, this is a straightforward slice of allegorical action hokum that reads remarkably well even after all these years. Moreover, as Marvel recently regained the franchise rights, this iteration neatly inspired its own sequel of sorts – for which see a forthcoming review….

In equal parts vivid nostalgia and crucial component of current comics expansion, this compelling treat is pure whacky fun no film fan or comics devotee should miss… and there’s more to come…
© 2023 20th Century Studios.

Posted on

Osama Tezuka’s Original Astro Boy volume 9


By Osamu Tezuka, translated by Frederik L. Schodt (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-792-9 (tank?bon PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

From beginning his professional career in the late 1940s until his death in 1989, Osamu Tezuka generated an incomprehensible volume of quality work which transformed the world of manga and how it was perceived in his own country and, ultimately, across the globe. Devoted to Walt Disney’s creations, he performed similar sterling service with Japan’s fledgling animation industry. The earliest stories were intended for children but right from the start Tezuka’s expansive fairy tale stylisations harboured more mature themes and held hidden pleasures for older readers and the legion of fans growing up with his masterworks…

The “God of Comics” was born in Osaka Prefecture on November 3rd 1928, and suffered from a severe illness as a child. The doctor who cured him inspired the lad to study medicine, and although Osamu began drawing professionally whilst at university in 1946, he persevered with college and qualified as a medical practitioner too. Then, as he faced a career crossroads, his mother advised him to do the thing which made him happiest. He never practiced as a healer but the world was gifted with such masterpieces as Kimba the White Lion, Buddha, Black Jack and so many other graphic narratives. Working ceaselessly over decades, Tezuka and his creations inevitably matured, but he was always able to speak to the hearts and minds of young and old equally. His creations ranged from the childishly charming to the distinctly disturbing such as The Book of Human Insects.

Tezuka died on February 9th 1989, having produced more than 150,000 pages of timeless comics; created the Japanese anime industry and popularised a uniquely Japanese graphic narrative style which became a fixture of global culture.

These monochrome digest volumes (173 x 113 mm in the physical world and any size you like if you read them digitally) present – in non-linear order – revised exploits of his signature character, with the emphasis firmly on fantastic fun and family entertainment…

Tetsuwan Atomu (literally “Mighty Atom” but known universally as Astro Boy due to its dissemination around the world as an animated TV cartoon and one of post-war Japan’s better exports) offers spectacular, riotous, rollicking sci fi action-adventure starring a young boy who also happens to be one of the mightiest robots on Earth.

The series began in 1952 in Shōnen Kobunsha and ran until March 12th 1968 – although in later years Tezuka returned to add to the canon often, both in comics but in also in other media such as the newspaper strips. Over that period, Astro Boy spawned the aforementioned global TV cartoon boom, starred in comic book specials and featured in games, toys, movies, collectibles and the undying devotion of generations of ardent fans.

Tezuka frequently drew himself into his tales as chorus and commentator, and in later revisions and introductions often cited how stifling he found the restrictions of Shōnen comics; specifically, having to periodically pause a plot to placate the demands of his audience by providing a blockbusting fight every episode. That’s his prerogative: most of us avid aficionados have no complaints…

Tezuka and his production team were never as wedded to close continuity as any fan. They constantly modified stories and artwork in later collections, so if you’re a purist you are just plain out of luck. Such tweaking is the reason this series of collections seem to skip up and down the publishing chronology. The intent is to entertain at all times so stories aren’t treated as gospel and order is not immutable or inviolate.

It’s just comics, guys, and in case you came in late, here’s a little background to set you up.

In a world where robots are ubiquitous and have won (limited) human rights, brilliant Dr. Tenma lost his son Tobio in a traffic accident. Grief-stricken, the tormented genius used his position as head of Japan’s Ministry of Science to build a replacement. The android his team created was one of the most groundbreaking constructs in history, and for a while Tenma was content. However, as his mind re-stabilised, Tenma realised the unchanging humanoid was not Tobio and, with cruel clarity, summarily rejected the replacement. Ultimately, the savant removed the insult to his real boy by selling the robot to a shady dealer…

One day, independent researcher Professor Ochanomizu was in the audience at a robot circus and realised diminutive performer “Astro” was unlike the other acts – or indeed, any artificial being he had ever encountered. Convincing the circus owners to part with the little robot, the Prof closely studied the unique creation and realised just what a miracle had come into his hands…

Part of Ochanomizu’s socialization process for Astro included placing him in a family environment and having him attend school just like a real boy. As well as providing friends and admirers the familiar environment turned up another foil and occasional assistant in the bellicose and highly skilled form of Elementary School teacher Higeoyaji (AKA Mr. Mustachio)…

The wiry wonder’s astonishing exploits resume after the now traditional ‘A Note to Readers’ – explaining in prose why one thing that hasn’t been altered is the depictions of various racial types in the stories. The author was also keen on combining all aspects of his creation into one overarching continuity delivered as a cartoon prelude, so these ruminations promptly give way to an epic action adventure doused with humour and social satire as our plucky android Pinocchio stumbles into a vast global conspiracy and becomes an unwitting pawn and courier of a robot doomsday device in ‘The Secret of the Egyptian Conspirators’ (originally seen between April and August 1969 in Shōnen Magazine). With an abundance of contemporary spy fiction tropes and themes in play Astro is trapped in a deadly war when the nation of Egypt falls under the spell of a robotic Cleopatra and her creator and sets about restoring their ancient empire. Bizarrely, behind the scheme is fiendish inventor Baribari – an old acquaintance and enemy of someone extremely close to Astro Boy, but that unknown connection does not impede the cosmic kid’s attempts to redeem Cleopatra whilst battling a battalion of giant robot beast and monuments, as well as the rival’s vile opportunistic human forces, leading to more tragedy and loss for the lonely manmade boy…

Follow-up fable ‘The Invisible Giant’  ran in Shōnen Magazine from May to July 1961, and by Tezuka’s own admission was heavily inspired by George Langelaan’s short story The Fly as first published in Playboy (June 1957) before becoming a sci fi classic and motion picture franchise from 1958 onwards. Here however the teleportation device maguffin results from an intense rivalry between scientists: venerable, irascible Dr. Woods and glory-seeking upstart B.S. Hanabusa. When the latter’s creation malfunctions, failing to rematerialize assorted animals and manifesting a ghastly ethereal poltergeist, Astro and his human pal Shibukagi are caught up in the duel of wills, embroiled with hitman Killer 0000 and targeted by corrupt 3D TV exec Nada and his murderous thugs.

However, when Astro uncovers the true story of the amalgamated horror stalking the city and what Woods and Nada are planning, he finds the path to justice a lot clearer than anticipated… especially with Mr. Mustachio lending his martial art muscle to the gang war erupting in the streets. Even when Nada kidnaps Ochanomizu, the robot boy and his eerie ally have a plan to save the day and produce a notional win for the good guys…

After that frenetic globe girdling and otherworldly outing, moodier adventure ‘Cobalt’ (Shōnen Magazine, June-September 1954) reintroduces a duplicate Astro Boy, built in the midst of an atomic crisis after the original robot hero of Japan goes missing on a mission. Forced to speed up his creation of Astro Boy’s successor, Professor Ochanomizu cuts some corners, but with a nuclear deadline fast approaching, realises that all Cobalt needs to do is find Astro and let the real hero save everyone…

With incredible and deadly locales, fantastic beasts and an unsuspected villain behind the crisis, that proves to be easier said than done, but in the bitter end the substitute proves he’s more than the sum of his parts…

To Be Continued…

Breathtaking pace, outrageous invention, slapstick comedy, heart-wrenching sentiment and frenetic action are hallmarks of these captivating comics constructions: perfect examples of Tezuka’s uncanny storytelling gifts, which still deliver a potent punch and instil wide-eyed wonder on a variety of intellectual levels. The melange of marvels is further enhanced here by an older, more sophisticated tone and the introduction of political and social commentary, proving Astro Boy to be a genuine delight for all ages.
Tetsuwan Atom by Osama Tezuka © 2002 by Tezuka Productions. All rights reserved. Astro Boy is a registered trademark of Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd., Tokyo Japan. Unedited translation © 2002 Frederik L. Schodt.
This book is printed in the traditional western ‘read-from-front-to-back’ format.

Posted on

The Defenders Epic Collection volume 1: The Day of the Defenders (1969-1973)


By Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Len Wein, Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe, Ross Andru, Sal Buscema, Bob Brown, Don Heck, Tom Palmer, Johnny Craig, Bill Everett, Frank McLaughlin, Jim Mooney, Frank Bolle, Frank Giacoia, John Verpoorten, Mike Esposito & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3356-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

For kids – of any and all ages – there is a simple response to and primal fascination with brute strength and feeling dangerous, which surely goes some way towards explaining the perennial interest in angry tough guys who break stuff… as best exemplified by Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner and the Incredible Hulk. When you add the mystery and magic of Doctor Strange, the recipe for thrills, spills and chills becomes simply irresistible…

Last of the big star conglomerate super-groups, The Defenders would eventually number amongst its membership almost every hero – and a few villains – in the Marvel Universe. No real surprise there then, as initially they were composed of the company’s bad-boy antiheroes: misunderstood, outcast and often actually dangerous to know.

For Marvel, the outsider super-group must have seemed a conceptual inevitability – once they’d finally published it. Back then, apart from Spider-Man and Daredevil, all their superstars regularly teamed up in various mob-handed assemblages and, in the wake of the Defenders’ success, even more super-teams comprising pre-existing characters were rapidly mustered. These included the Champions, Invaders, New Warriors  and so forth – but none of them had any Truly Very Big Guns…

They never won the fame or acceptance of other teams, but that simply seemed to leave creators open to taking more chances and playing the occasional narrative wild card. The genesis of the team derived from their status as publicly distrusted villains, threats or menaces, but before all that later inventive approbation. The scintillating collection compiles early days as first seen in whole or in part in Dr. Strange #183, Sub-Mariner #22, 33 & 35, Incredible Hulk #126, Marvel Feature #1-3, Defenders #1-11, and Avengers #115-118 covering November 1969 to December 1973, re-presenting a wealth of extended and linked sagas that would reshape comics.

The first tale in this volume comes from Dr. Strange #183 in ‘They Walk by Night!’ where Roy Thomas, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer introduced a deadly threat to humanity. Elder demon race The Undying Ones were returning, hungry to reconquer the Earth they once ruled, but as the sorcerer’s series unexpectedly ended with that issue, the story went nowhere until the Sub-Mariner #22 (February 1970) and ‘The Monarch and the Mystic!’ brought the Prince of Atlantis into the mix. Here Thomas, Marie Severin & Johnny Craig told a sterling tale of sacrifice in which the Master of the Mystic Arts seemingly dies holding the gates of Hell shut with the Undying Ones sealed behind them.

The extended saga concluded on an upbeat note in The Incredible Hulk #126 (April 1970) as Thomas & Herb Trimpe revealed in ‘…Where Stalks the Night-Crawler!’ how a New England cult dispatches helpless Bruce Banner to the nether realms in an attempt to undo Strange’s sacrifice. Luckily, cultist Barbara Norris has last-minute second thoughts and her own dire sacrifice frees the mystic, and seemingly ends the threat of the Undying Ones forever. At the end of the issue Strange retired. Although forsaking magic, he was soon back as the fates and changing reading tastes called him to duty as magic and the supernatural themes rose in popularity. As Namor became an early advocate of the ecology movement, in issues #34-35 of his own title (February & March 1971) the next step in the antihero  revolution came when he recruited Hulk and Silver Surfer for  a critical cause.

Antihero super-nonteam The Defenders officially begins with Sub-Mariner #34-35 (cover-dated February & March 1971). As previously cited, the Prince of Atlantis was an ardent activist and advocate of the ecology movement, and here takes radical steps to save Earth in ‘Titans Three!’ by fractiously recruiting other outcasts to help him destroy a US Nuclear Weather-Control station. In concluding chapter ‘Confrontation!’ (Thomas, Sal Buscema & Jim Mooney) the always-misunderstood outcasts unite to battle a despotic dictator’s legions, the US Army, UN defence forces and Avengers to prevent the malfunctioning station vaporising half the planet…

With that debacle smoothed over life resumed its usual frenetic pace for the Hulk and Namor until giant sized try-out comic Marvel Feature #1. Cover-dated December 1971, it presented ‘The Day of the Defenders!’ as a mysteriously re-empowered Stephen Strange summons the Avenging Son and the Jade Juggernaut to help him stop the deathbed doom of crazed super-mind Yandroth. Determined to not go gently into the dark, the Scientist Supreme had built an “Omegatron” programmed to obliterate the Earth as soon as Yandroth’s heart stopped beating. With magic ineffective, only the brute strength of the misunderstood misanthropes could possibly stop it…

Naturally the fiend hadn’t told the whole truth, but the day was saved – actually only postponed – in a canny classic from Thomas, Ross Andru & Bill Everett. The issue also shares how Strange regained his mojo in ‘The Return’ by Thomas, Don Heck & Frank Giacoia: a heady 10-page thriller proving that not all good things come in large packages.

Clearly destined for great things, the astounding antiheroes reassembled in Marvel Feature #2 (March 1972) with Sal Buscema replacing Everett as inker for late Halloween treat ‘Nightmare on Bald Mountain!’ By capturing archfoe Dr. Strange, extradimensional dark lord Dormammu sought to invade Earth’s realm through a portal in Vermont, only to be savagely beaten back by the mage’s surly sometime comrades, before reuniting in #3 (June 1972, by Thomas, Andru & Everett ) to face a revive old Lee/Kirby “furry underpants” monster in ‘A Titan Walks Among Us!’

Until thrashed by the Defenders, Xemnu the Titan was an alien super-telepath seeking to repopulate his desolate homeworld by stealing America’s children. Of course, older fans recognised him as the cover-hogging star of Journey into Mystery #62 (November 1960) where he acted as a road-test for a later Marvel star in a short tale entitled ‘I Was a Slave of the Living Hulk!’…

An undoubted hit, The Defenders exploded swiftly into their own title (cover-dated August 1972), to begin a bold, offbeat run of reluctant adventures scripted by superteam wunderkind Steve Englehart. As a group of eclectic associates occasionally called together to save the world (albeit on a miraculously monotonous monthly basis) they were billed as a “non-team” – whatever that is – but it didn’t affect the quality of their super-heroic shenanigans. With Sal B as regular penciller, an epic adventure ensued with ‘I Slay by the Stars!’ (Giacoia inks) as sorcerer Necrodamus seeks to sacrifice Namor and free those pesky Undying Ones: a mission that promptly leads to conflict with an old ally in ‘The Secret of the Silver Surfer!’ (inked by John Verpoorten) before concluding in the Mooney-inked ‘Four Against the Gods!’ Here the Defenders take their war to the dimensional dungeon of the Undying Ones and rescued the long-imprisoned and now utterly insane Barbara Norris.

Clearly a fan of large casts and extended epics, Englehart added a fighting femme fatale to the mix with ‘The New Defender!’ (inked by new regular Frank McLaughlin) as Asgardian exiles Enchantress and Executioner embroil the antiheroes in their long-running and lethal love-spat. The fallout includes bringing The Black Knight briefly into the group and turning Barbara into the latest incarnation of Feminist Fury (these were far less enlightened days) The Valkyrie.

Defenders #5 began a long-running plot thread with major repercussions for the Marvel Universe. The denouement left Black Knight an ensorcelled, immobile stone statue, and, as Strange and Co. searched for a cure, the long defused Omegatron suddenly resumed its countdown to global annihilation in ‘World Without End?’, after which the increasingly isolationist Silver Surfer momentarily “joins” in #6 to share ‘The Dreams of Death!’ as lightweight magic menace Cyrus Black attacks, and is rapidly repulsed.

After a spiffy team pin-up by Sal Buscema, Defenders #7 jumps right in as Len Wein co-scripts with Englehart and Frank Bolle inks Sal Buscema in ‘War Below the Waves!’ Here tempestuous ex-Avenger Hawkeye briefly climbs aboard the non-team bandwagon to help defeat undersea tyrant Attuma and soviet renegade The Red Ghost: a bombastic battle to usurp Sub-Mariner of his titles and kingdom concluding a month later in ‘…If Atlantis Should Fall!’, with Englehart providing all the words and McLaughlin inking. Since Defenders #4 the forward-thinking scripter had been putting players in place for a hugely ambitious crossover experiment: one that turned the industry on its head. Next here comes a prologue taken from the end of Avengers #115 which finally set the ball rolling.

Drawn by Bob Brown & Mike Esposito, ‘Alliance Most Foul!’ sees interdimensional despot the Dread Dormammu and Asgardian god of Evil Loki unite in search of an ultimate weapon to give them final victory against their foes. They resolve to trick the Defenders into securing its six component parts by “revealing” that the reconstructed Evil Eye can restore the petrified Black Knight. That plan is initiated at the end of Defenders #8: a brief opening chapter in ‘The Avengers/Defenders Clash’ entitled ‘Deception!’ wherein a message from the Black Knight’s spirit is intercepted by the twin entities of evil, leading directly to ‘Betrayal!’ in Avengers #116 (Englehart, Brown & Esposito) with the World’s Mightiest Heroes hunting for their missing comrade and “discovering” old enemies Hulk and Sub-Mariner may have turned him to stone.

This and third chapter ‘Silver Surfer Vs. the Vision and the Scarlet Witch’ see the rival teams split up: one to gather the scattered sections of the Eye and the other to stop them at all costs. Defenders #9 (Sal B & McLaughlin art) begins with tense recap ‘Divide …and Conquer’ before ‘The Invincible Iron Man Vs. Hawkeye the Archer’ and ‘Dr. Strange Vs. the Black Panther and Mantis’ sheds more suspicion and doubt on the vile villains’ subtle master-plan. Avengers #117 ‘Holocaust’, ‘Swordsman Vs. the Valkyrie’ and crucial turning point ‘Captain America Vs. Sub-Mariner’ (Brown & Esposito) lead to the penultimate clash in Defenders #10 (Sal B & Bolle) in ‘Breakthrough! The Incredible Hulk Vs. Thor’ before an inevitable joining together of the warring camps in ‘United We Stand!’ Tragically it is too late as Dormammu seizes the reconstructed Evil Eye and uses its power to merge his monstrous realm with Earth.

Avengers #118 delivers the cathartic climactic conclusion in ‘To the Death’ (Brown, Esposito & Giacoia) wherein all the Marvel Universe’s heroes resist the demonic invasion as Avengers and Defenders plunge deep into the Dark Dimension itself to end forever the threat of the evil gods…

With the overwhelming cosmic crisis concluded, the victorious Defenders attempt to use the Eye to cure their calcified comrade, only to discover his spirit has found a new home in the 12th century. In #11’s Bolle inked ‘A Dark and Stormy Knight’ the band battle black magic during the Crusades, fail to retrieve the Knight and acrimoniously go their separate ways – as did overworked departing scripter Englehart…

With issue #12 Len Wein would assume the writer’s role, starting a run of slightly more traditional costumed capers…

With covers by Colan, Everett, Severin, Frank Giacoia, John Buscema, John Romita, Sal Buscema, Gil Kane, Ralph Reese, Jim Starlin, Verpoorten, Esposito, Bolle & Ron Wilson this titanic tome also offers contemporary house ads, a revelatory Afterword by Steve Englehart segues into a brief bonus feature including unpublished cover art, the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page announcing the launch of The Defenders, original art pages, and previous collection covers by Carlos Pacheco, John Romita and Richard Isanove.

For the longest time, The Defenders was the best and weirdest superhero comic book in the business, and if you love Fights ‘n’ Tights frolics but crave something just a little different, these yarns are for you… and the best is still to come.
© 2022 MARVEL.

Posted on

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Classics volume 5


By Wally Wood, Steve Skeates, Jerry Siegel, Ralph Reese, Dan Adkins, Mike Sekowsky, George Tuska, Frank Giacoia, John Giunta, Ogden Whitney, Chic Stone & various (IDW)
ISBN: ?978-1-63140-182-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-62302-754-4

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The meteoric lifespan and output of Tower Comics is one of the key creative moments in American comic book history. The brief, bombastic saga of The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves was a benchmark of quality and sheer fun for fans of both the then-still-reawakening superhero genre and that era’s spy-chic obsession. In the early 1960s, the Bond movie franchise was going from strength to strength, with blazing action and heady glamour totally transforming the formerly low-key and seedy espionage genre. The buzz was infectious: soon a Man like Flint and Matt Helm were carving out their own piece of the action as television shanghaied the entire bandwagon with the irresistible Man from U.N.C.L.E. (premiering in September 1964), bringing the whole shtick into living rooms across the planet.

Veteran Archie Comics editor Harry Shorten was commissioned to create a line of characters for a new distribution-chain funded publishing outfit – Tower Comics. He brought in creative maverick Wally Wood, who called on some of the biggest names in the industry to produce material in the broad range of genres the company demanded; as well as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and its spin-offs Undersea Agent, Dynamo and NoMan, there was a magnificent anthology war-comic Fight the Enemy and wholesome youth-comedy Tippy Teen.

Samm Schwartz & Dan DeCarlo handled the funny stuff – which outlasted everything else – whilst Wood, Larry Ivie, Len Brown, Bill Pearson, Steve Skeates, Dan Adkins, Russ Jones, Gil Kane, Ditko and Ralph Reese contributed scripts for themselves and the industry’s other top talents to illustrate on the adventure series. With a ravenous appetite for super-spies and costumed heroes growing in comic-book popularity and amongst the general public, the idea of blending the two concepts seemed inescapable…

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 appeared with no fanfare or pre-publicity on newsstands in August 1965 (with a cover off-sale date of November, so many, many, many happy returns team!). Better yet, all Tower titles were in the beloved-but-rarely-seen 80-page Giant format, offering a huge amount of material in every issue. All that being said these tales would not be so revered if they hadn’t been so superbly crafted. As well as Wood, the art accompanying the compelling, subtly more mature stories was by some of the greatest talents in comics: Reed Crandall, Gil Kane, George Tuska, Mike Sekowsky, Dick Ayers, Joe Orlando, Frank Giacoia, John Giunta, Ogden Whitney, Steve Ditko and more, as well as budding stars like Ralph Reese, Steve Skeates and Dan Adkins…

For those who came in late: When philanthropic benevolent supergenius Professor Emil Jennings perished in an assault by forces of the mysterious Warlord, late-arriving UN troops salvaged some of his greatest inventions. These included a belt that increased the density of the wearer’s body until it became as hard as steel; a cloak of invisibility and a brain-amplifier helmet. These uncopiable prototypes were divided between several agents: the basis of a unit of super-operatives to counter the increasingly bold attacks of multiple global terror threats such as the aforementioned Warlord. First chosen was affable, honest, but far from brilliant file clerk Len Brown. To the astonishment of everyone who knew him, he was assigned the belt and codename Dynamo.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent NoMan was previously decrepit Dr. Anthony Dunn who chose to have his mind transferred into an android body and then gifted with the invisibility cape. If his artificial body was destroyed, Dunn’s consciousness could transfer to another android body. As long as he had a spare ready, he could never die. The helmet went to John Janus: a seemingly perfect UN employee and mental and physical marvel. He easily passed all the tests necessary to wear the Jennings helmet. Sadly, he was also a double agent: the Warlord’s mole poised to betray T.H.U.N.D.E.R. at the earliest opportunity. All plans went awry once he donned the helmet and became Menthor as the device awakened his mind’s full potential, granting him telepathy, telekinesis and mind-reading powers, but also drove all evil from his mind. Such was the redemptive effect that Janus actually gave his life to save his comrades: an event which astounded readers at the time…

Guy Gilbert was leader of crack Mission: Impossible style T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad and asked to beta-test an experimental super-speed suit. As Gung-ho Lightning he proudly did so, even if every use of the hyper-acceleration gimmick shortened his life-span. As the concept grew and the niche universe expanded other augmented agent appeared – such as human fighter jet Raven and subsea spin-off U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent (AKA Davy Jones of the United Nations Department of Experiment and Research Systems Established at Atlantis…

This penultimate collection re-presents the compelling contents of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents#12-14 and Dynamo #4 (cover dated April to June 1967) – with the incomparably cool concept and characters going from strength to strength as a spirit of eccentric experimentation and raucous low comedy increasingly manifested in the wake of the defeat of the Warlord (part of a subterranean race intent on world conquest) and rise of independent supervillains, sinister crime cabals S.P.I.D.E.R. and O.G.R.E. or political foes like China’s Red Star…

As always the action opens with a Dynamo solo tale as ‘Strength is Not Enough’ by an unknown scripter, Steve Ditko, Dan Adkins & Wally Wood sees S.P.I.D.E.R. unleash a petty thug transformed into human weapon able to outpower the hero. Sadly, Rocky Stone loved to fight but had a conscience, and when he learned from Dynmao that his rebuild left him with only days to live he sought to make amends on his own terms. Fighting fire with fire was a persistent theme then, as Lightning battled a super-fast ‘Speed Demon’ unleashed by S.P.I.D.E.R.’s Nazi-trained mad scientist Herr Doktor in a rapidly unfolding romp by Steve Skeates, Mike Sekowsky & Frank Giacoia while android avenger NoMan faces ‘The Rock’ (John Giunta & Giacoia): a seemingly unkillable madman with the ability to vitrify his victims and petrify buildings…

Lightning quits using the speed augmenter and returns to the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent squad in a tense thriller by Skeates, Mike Sekowsky & Giacoia, but the act is merely a ploy to locate ‘The Road to Spider HQ’ after which flying agent in Craig Lawson suits up in his heavily armed augmented flight-costume to crush another neo-Nazi revival in Manny Stallman’s politically-charged battle bonanza ‘The Raven Battles the Storm Troopers of Xochimilco’ …

Behind a Wally Wood cover for Dynamo #4, ‘The Maze’ (Wood & Dan Adkins) sees the strongman undergo terrifying psychologically reinforcement prior to being beamed to another world to face aliens that have previously probed Earth after which Ralph Reese, Joe Orlando, Adkins & Wood reveal the teething of a voice-controlled Thunderbelt in ‘The Secret Word is…’, before Reese & Chic Stone depict the awful monkeyshines of ‘Dynamo’s Day Off’ and the seductive power of returned foe The Iron Maiden who uses her wiles and stuff to turn the super-agent into ‘The Weakest Man in the World’…

The fun expands and concludes with a tale of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent Weed (a character Wally Wood regarded as his “spirit animal”) as ‘Once Upon a Time’ (Wood & Ditko) sees the seedy spook reinterpret state secrets and the final battle with the Iron Maiden as an expurgated fairy tale for the kids he’s babysitting…

The big spy bubble was bursting by this point and the spin-off titles had all folded by the time T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #13 was released. The anthological line up continued as always however, and opens here with Adkins & Wood’s ‘ “A” Bullet for Dynamo’ as a handheld atom bomb launcher is stolen by a S.P.I.D.E.R. infiltrator and only Len Brown has any chance of averting ultimate armageddon…

Jerry Siegel & Ogden Whitney then had NoMan seemingly ‘Escape From Destiny’ when a bizarre accident implants his consciousness in a human body. Sadly, conscience and sense of duty ruin his dreams of real life before Steve Skeates and Stone unite to pit Lightning against evil duplicates in ‘The Quick and the Changing’ and the entire T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents cadre unites against a villain using ‘The Black Helmet’ once used by Menthor in a titanic tussle by Reese, Wood & George Tuska. The issue ends with an unused U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. Agent short by Skeates & Paul Reinman. Evil android duplicates also infest this fishy tale as Davy Jones and assistant Skooby inadvertently invade ‘The Second Atlantis’ and foils a dastardly plot to replace all their friends and allies…

Sporting a Gil Kane Raven cover, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #14 opens with Ditko & Wood & Adkin’s ‘Dynamo vs Andor! Return Engagement’: another spectacular bravura battle between the agent and a misunderstood modern Prometheus.

Long ago the Warlords stole a human baby and spent decades turning the waif into a biological superman devoid of sentiment or compassion. Sadly, they lost all control of the living weapon once he met fellow mortals. Since their defeat, the pitiful misfit’s attempts to rejoin mankind are constantly thwarted and derailed. Here, his latest sanctuary – a hippy commune – is taken over by S.P.I.D.E.R. until he single-handedly repels them and in retaliation they orchestrate a clash with their other nemesis Len Brown…

Lightning’s campaign against disguise master Mock-Man intensifies in return match ‘To Fight is to Die’ by Skeates & Stone and ends with the hero the loser, after which S.P.I.D.E.R. also score a win by reprogramming NoMan and making him an operative ‘On the Other Side’ (Skeates & Giunta) before Kane writes and illustrates ‘Darkly Sees the Prophet’ wherein Raven confronts a rabble rousing, clairvoyant demagogue who is far more than he seems before the entire gang reassembles to save New York and the UN building from terrifying weapons platform ‘The Fist of Zeus’ (anonymous & George Tuska).

With stories all shaded in favour of fast pace, knowing wit, sparse dialogue, explosive action and breathtaking visuals, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was decades ahead of its time and informed everything in Fights ‘n’ Tights comics that came after it. These are truly timeless comic classics which improve with every reading, so do yourself a favour and add these landmark super-sagas to your collection.
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Classics volume 5 © 2015 Radiant Assets, LLC. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Robin Archive Edition volume 1 & 2



By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Win Mortimer, Jim Mooney, Curt Swan, Jack Burnley, Sheldon Moldoff, Charles Paris, John Fischetti, John Giunta, Fred Ray, Don Cameron, David Vern Reed, Jack Schiff & various (DC Comics)

ISBN: 978-1-4012-0415-0 (HB/vol 1) 978-1-4012-2625-1 (HB/vol 2)

These books include Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Robin the Boy Wonder debuted in Detective Comics #38, cover-dated April 1940 and on sale from March 6th of that momentous year. He was created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger & Jerry Robinson, introducing a juvenile circus acrobat whose parents were murdered by a mob boss. The story of how Batman took the orphaned Dick Grayson under his scalloped wing and trained him to fight crime has been told, retold and revised many times over the decades (some of which we’ll revisit over the next 12 months) and still regularly undergoes tweaking to this day.

In chronological DC comics continuity Grayson fought beside Batman until 1970 when, as an indicator of those turbulent times, he flew the nest, becoming a Teen Wonder college student and ultimately leader of a team of fellow sidekicks and young justice seekers: the Teen Titans. He graduated to his own featured solo spot in the back of Detective Comics from the end of the 1960s, where he alternated and shared space with Batgirl, holding a similar spot throughout the 1970s in Batman, before winning a starring feature in the anthological Batman Family and Giant Detective Comics Dollar Comics. During the 1980s he led a New Teen Titans team, initially in his original costumed identity, but eventually reinvented himself as Nightwing, whilst (re)establishing a turbulent working relationship with his mentor Batman.

Robin’s groundbreaking creation as a junior hero for young readers to identify with inspired an incomprehensible number of costumed kid crusaders, and Grayson continues in similar innovative vein for the older, more worldly-wise readership of America’s increasingly rebellious contemporary youth cultures. However, his star potential was first realised much earlier in his halcyon career…

From 1947 to 1952 (and issues #65-130), Robin the Boy Wonder carried his own solo series – and regular cover spot – in Star Spangled Comics at a moment when the first superhero boom was fading and being replaced by traditional genres like crime, westerns, war and boys’ adventure stories. His exploits blended in-continuity action capers with more general youth-oriented fare, reducing adults Batman, Alfred and Commissioner Gordon to minor roles or indeed rendering them entirely absent, allowing the kid crusader to display not just his physical skills but also his brains, ingenuity and guts.

Long out of print and crying out for modern reissue in some form as well as completion of the full run, these stellar Archive compilations re-present the first 21 tales from Star Spangled #65-85 (covering February 1947 to October 1948) in volume 1 before adding the exploits from ASC #86-105 (November 1948-June 1950) as a second tome.

Compelling but uncomplicated, these yarns recapture the bold, verve and universal appeal of one of fantasy literature’s greatest youth icons, opening with volume 1’s fascinating Roy Thomas penned Foreword, discussing the origins and merits of boy heroes and history of the venerable anthology title before offering some insightful guesses as to the identity of the generally un-named writers of the Robin strip. Although almost universally unrecorded, most historians consider Batman co-creator Bill Finger to be author of most if not all of the stories and I’m going to happily concur here with that assessment until informed otherwise…

Star Spangled Comics #65 starts the ball rolling with ‘The Teen-Age Terrors’ illustrated by Win Mortimer (with the inking here misattributed to Charles Paris) in which the Caped Crusaders’ faithful butler happens across an unknown trophy and is regaled with Dick’s tale of that time when he infiltrated a Reform School to discover who inside was releasing the incarcerated kids to commit crimes on the outside…

That tale segues seamlessly into ‘The No-Face Crimes’ wherein the Boy Wonder acts as stand-in to a timid young movie star targeted by a ruthless killer, and #67 reveals ‘The Case of the Boy Wonders’ as our hero becomes part of a trio of boy geniuses kidnapped for the craziest of reasons. In #68 an outrageously flamboyant killing results in the pre-teen titan shipping out on a schooner as a cabin boy, spending ‘Four Days Before the Mast’ to catch a murderer, after which modern terror takes hold when Robin is the only one capable of tracking down ‘The Stolen Atom Bomb’ in a bombastically explosive contemporary spy thriller. Star Spangled Comics #70 then introduced an archvillain all his own for the junior crime crusher, as ‘Clocks of Doom’ premiered an anonymous criminal time-&-motion expert forced into the limelight once his face was caught on film. The Clock’s desperate attempts to sabotage the movie Robin is consulting on inevitably leads to hard time in this delightful romp (this one might possibly scripted by Don Cameron)…

Chronal explorer Professor Carter Nichols succumbs to persistent pressure and sends Dick Grayson back to the dawn of history in #71’s ‘Perils of the Stone Age’ – a deliciously anachronistic cavemen & dinosaurs epic with Robin kickstarting freedom and democracy, after which the Boy Wonder crashes the Batplane on a desert island, encountering a boatload of escaped Nazi submariners in ‘Robin Crusoe’ – a full-on thriller illustrated by Curt Swan & John Fischetti. In SSC #73 the so-very-tractable Professor Nichols dispatches Dick to revolutionary France where Robin battled Count Cagliostro, ‘The Black Magician’ in a stirring saga drawn by Jack Burnley & Jim Mooney, after which the Timepiece Terror busts out of jail set on revenge in ‘The Clock Strikes’ as illustrated in full by Mooney – who would soon become the series’ sole artist. Before that Bob Kane & Charles Paris step in to deliver a tense courtroom drama in #75 as ‘Dick Grayson for the Defense’ finds the millionaire’s ward fighting for the rights of a schoolboy unjustly accused of theft. Then cunning career criminal The Fence comes a cropper when trying to steal 25 free bikes given as prizes to Gotham’s city’s best students in ‘A Bicycle Built for Loot’ (Finger & Mooney).

Prodigy and richest kid on Earth, Bert Beem is sheer hell to buy gifts for, but since the lad dreams of being a detective, the offer of a large charitable donation secures the Boy Wonder’s cooperation in a little harmless role play. Sadly, when real bandits replace actors and Santa, ‘The Boy Who Wanted Robin for Christmas’ enjoys the impromptu adventure of a lifetime…

Another rich kid is equally inspired in #78, becoming the Boy Wonder of India, but soon needs the original’s aid when a Thuggee murder-cult decides to destroy ‘Rajah Robin’, after which ‘Zero Hour’ (illustrated by Mooney & John Giunta) sees The Clock strike again with a spate of regularly-scheduled time crimes before Star Spangled #80 reveals Dick Grayson as ‘The Boy Disc Jockey’, only to discover the station is broadcasting coded instructions to commit robberies in its cryptically cunning commercials. Robin is temporarily blinded in #81 whilst investigating the bizarre theft of guide dogs, but quickly adapts to his own canine companion and solves the mystery of ‘The Seeing-Eye Dog Crimes’, but has a far tougher time as a camp counsellor for ghetto kids after meeting ‘The Boy Who Hated Robin’. It takes grit, determination and a couple of escaped convicts before the kids learn to adapt and accept…

A radio contest leads to danger and death before one smart lad earns the prize for discovering who ‘Who is Mr. Mystery?’ (#83), after which Robin investigates the causes of juvenile delinquency by going undercover as new recruit to ‘The Third Street Gang’, before the outing ends on a spectacular high as the Boy Wonder sacrifices himself to save Batman and ends up marooned in the Arctic. Even whilst the distraught Caped Crusader is searching for his partner’s body, Robin must respond to the Call of the Wild, joining Innuits and capturing a fugitive from American justice in #85’s ‘Peril at the Pole’…

The second hardback Archive Edition re-presents more tales from Star Spangled recapturing the dash, verve and universal appeal of one of fantasy literature’s greatest youth icons – albeit with a greater role for Batman – and opens with a Foreword by Bill Schelly adding layers of historical perspective and canny insight to the capers to come.

Every beautiful cover is included – although most of the later ones feature colonial-era frontier sensation Tomahawk – lovingly rendered by Mooney, Mortimer, Paris, Bob Kane and Fred Ray. Although unverified, writers Bill Finger, Don Cameron, David Vern Reed and Jack Schiff are considered by most comics historians to be the authors of these stories. Easier to ascertain is Mooney as penciller of almost all and inker of the majority, with other pencil and penmen credited as relevant.

Action-packed, relatively carefree high jinks recommence with Star Spangled Comics #86 and ‘The Barton Brothers!’ (inked by Mortimer, who remained until #90) as the Boy Wonder seeks lone vengeance, hunting a trio of killers whose crime spree includes gunning down Batman, after which racketeer Benny Broot discovers he’s related to aristocracy and patterns all his subsequent vicious predations on medieval themes as ‘The Sinister Baron!’…

In defiance of his mentor Robin goes AWOL to exonerate the father of a schoolmate in ‘The Man Batman Refused to Help!’, although his good intentions clearing an obviously framed felon almost upset a cunning plan to catch the real culprit, after which SSC #89 has ingenious hoods get hold of ‘The Batman’s Utility Belt!’ and sell customised knock-offs until the Dynamic Duo crush their racket. Then the murder of a geologist sends the partners in peril out west in #90 to solve ‘The Mystery of Rancho Fear!’, acting undercover as itinerant cowboys to deal with a gang of extremely contemporary claim-jumpers.

With Mooney now handling all art chores, #91 sees the Boy Wonder instigating a perplexing puzzle to stump his senior partner in ‘A Birthday for Batman!’ It would have been a perfect gift if not for genuine gangsters who stumble upon the anniversary antics. The crimebusting kid played only a minor role in #92’s ‘Movie Hero No. 1’ wherein Batman surreptitiously replaces and redeems an action film actor who is a secret coward, but resumes star status for ‘The Riddle of the Sphinx!’ when a mute, masked mastermind seemingly murders the Dark Knight and supplants Gotham’s criminal top dog Red Mask.

Entertainment motifs abounded in those days and Star Spangled Comics #94 heralds ‘The End of Batman’ as the Dynamic Duo stumble on a film company crafting movie masterpieces tailored to the unique tastes and needs of America’s underworld, after which greed and terror grip Gotham’s streets when a crook employs an ancient artefact to apparently transform objects – and even the Boy Wonder – to coldly glittering gold in #95’s ‘The Man with the Midas Touch!’

Indication of changing times and tastes came with September 1949 Star Spangled Comics as Fred Ray’s Tomahawk took over the cover-spot with #96. Inside, Robin’s solo saga ‘The Boy Who Could Invent Miracles!’ – pencilled by Sheldon Moldoff with Mooney inks – saw the kid crusader working alone whilst Batman recovers from gunshot wounds, encountering a well-meaning bright spark whose brilliantly conceived conceptions revolutionise the world… prior to almost exposing the masked avenger’s secret identity. With Mooney back on full art, The Clock returns yet again in #97 in ‘The Man Who Stole Time!’: determined to publicly humiliate and crush his juvenile nemesis through a series of suitably-themed crimes

… but with the same degree of success as always. Next, Dick Grayson’s classmate briefly becomes ‘Robin’s Rival!’ after devising a method of travelling on phone lines as Wireboy.

Sadly, his ingenuity is far in excess of his fighting ability or common sense and he’s wisely convinced to retire, after which gambling gangster Sam Ferris breaks jail, turning his obsession with turning circles into a campaign of ‘Crime on Wheels!’ until Robin sets him straight again in advance of SSC #100’s powerfully moving tale of the Boy Wonder giving shelter to ‘The Killer-Dog of Gotham City!’ and proving valiant Duke can shake off his criminal master’s training to become a boon to society. In #101, High School elections are being elaborately suborned by ‘The Campaign Crooks!’ employing a bizarre scheme to make an illicit buck from students, whilst ‘The Boy with Criminal Ears!’ develops super-hearing: making his life hell and ultimately bringing him to the attention of sadistic thugs with an eye to the main chance…

Star Spangled Comics #103 introduces ‘Roberta the Girl Wonder!’ as class polymath Mary Wills follows her heart and tries to catch the ideal boyfriend by becoming Robin’s crimefighting rival, before #104’s ‘Born to Skate’ shows classmate Tommy Wells’ freewheeling passion leading Robin to a gang using a roller-skate factory to mask crimes as varied as smuggling, kidnapping and murder. Then the wholesome adventures end with a rewarding tale blending modelmaking and malfeasance, as guilt-wracked Robin comes to the aid of a police pilot who has been crippled  and worse whilst assisting on a case. As part of his rehabilitation, the Junior Manhunter devises high-tech models for Bill Cooper’s aviation club, but when ‘The Disappearing Batplanes!’ are purloined by cunning air pirates, the scene is set for a terrifying aerial showdown…

Beautifully illustrated, wittily scripted and captivatingly addictive, these rousingly traditional superhero escapades are a perfect antidote to teen angst and the strident, overblown, self-absorbed whining of so many contemporary comic book kids. Fast, furious and ferociously fun, these superb Fights ‘n’ Tights classics are something no Bat-fan, Robin-rooter or fun-fan will want to miss.
© 1947, 1948, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. © 1948, 1949, 1950, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Spirou & Fantasio volumes 14 & 16 – The Comet and the Clockmaker and The Z Rises Again


By Tome & Janry with Carlos Rocque and Stuf, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-404-5 (Album PB/Digital edition Clockmaker)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-441-0 (Album PB/Digital edition Z Rises Again)

These books include Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Apparently, there’s no time like the present!

Spirou (whose name translates as “squirrel”, “mischievous” and “lively kid” in the language of the Flemish Walloons) was created by French cartoonist François Robert Velter – AKA “Rob-Vel” – for Belgian publisher Éditions Dupuis. The evergreen youngster in red was a response to the success of Hergé’s Tintin at rival outfit Casterman. In the beginning, the character Spirou was a plucky bellboy/lift operator employed by the Moustique Hotel (an in-joke reference to Dupuis’ premier periodical Le Moustique) whose improbable adventures with pet squirrel Spip evolved into astounding and often surreal comedy dramas.

The other red-headed boy adventurer premiered on April 21st 1938 in an 8-page tabloid (in (French and/or Dutch) magazine bearing his name to this day. Fronting a roster of new and licensed foreign strips – Fernand Dineur’s Les Aventures de Tif (latterly Tif et Tondu) and US newspaper imports Red Ryder, Brick Bradford and Superman – Le Journal de Spirou expanded exponentially, adding Flemish-edition Robbedoes on October 27th 1938, boosting page counts and adding action, fantasy and comedy features until it was an unassailable, unmissable necessity for continental kids. His likeness and exploits fuelled mountains of merch, public acclaim, statues and civic art and in 2018 he got his own theme park.

Spirou and chums helmed the magazine for most of its life, with many notable creators building on Velter’s work, beginning with his wife Blanche “Davine” Dumoulin, who took over the strip when her husband enlisted in 1939. She was aided by Belgian artist Luc Lafnet until 1943, when Dupuis purchased all rights to the feature. Thereafter comic strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (“Jijé”) carried it until 1946 when his assistant André Franquin inherited the entire affair. Gradually, the new auteur retired traditional short gag vignettes in favour of longer adventure serials, introducing a wide returning cast. Ultimately, Franquin created his own milestone character. Phenomenally popular animal Marsupilami debuted in 1952’s landmark yarn Spirou et les héritiers, swiftly evolving into a scene-stealing regular and eventually one of the most significant stars of European comics.

Jean-Claude Fournier succeeded Franquin: overhauling the feature over nine stirring serial adventures between 1969-1979 by tapping into a rebellious, relevant zeitgeist in tales of drug cartels, environmental concerns, nuclear energy and repressive regimes. By the 1980s, the series seemed stalled; three different creative teams alternated on the serial: Yves Chaland, Raoul Cauvin & Nic Broca, and Philippe Vandevelde writing as “Tome” & illustrator Jean-Richard Geurts – AKA Janry. These last reverently referenced the revered and adored Franquin era: reviving the feature’s fortunes over 14 wonderful albums between 1984-1998. On their departure the strip diversified into parallel strands: Spirou’s Childhood/Little Spirou and guest-creator specials A Spirou Story By…

Later teams and guests to tackle the wonder boys include Lewis Trondheim, Jean-Davide Morvan & Jose-Luis Munuera, Fabien Vehlmann & Yoann, Benoît Feroumont, Emile Bravo, Jul & Libon, Makyo, Toldac & Tehem, Guerrive, Abitan & Schwartz, Frank le Gall, Flix and many more. By my count that brings the album count to approximately 92 if you include specials, spin-offs series and one-shots, official and otherwise. Happily, in recent years, even some of the older vintages have been reprinted in French, but there are still dozens that have not made it into English yet. Quelle sodding horreur!

Cinebook have been publishing Spirou & Fantasio’s exploits since October 2009, initially concentrating on bringing Tome & Janry’s superb pastiche/homages of Franquin before dipping into the original Franquin oeuvre and latterly adding tales by some of the bunch listed above.

On January 3rd 1924, (belated bon anniversaire!) Belgian superstar André Franquin was born in Etterbeek. Drawing from an early age, he began formal art training at École Saint-Luc in 1943. When the war forced the school’s closure a year later, he found work as an animator at Compagnie Belge d’Animation in Brussels. There he met future bande dessinée superstars Maurice de Bevere (Lucky Luke-creator “Morris”), Pierre Culliford/Peyo (creator of The Smurfs) and Eddy Paape (Valhardi, Luc Orient). In 1945 everyone but Culliford signed on with Dupuis, and Franquin began his career as a jobbing cartoonist/illustrator. He produced covers for Le Moustique and scouting magazine Plein Jeu and, throughout those early days, was (with Morris) trained and mentored by Jijé. At that time main illustrator at Le Journal de Spirou, Jijé turned the youngsters and fellow neophyte Willy Maltaite – AKA Will (Tif et Tondu, Isabelle, Le jardin des désirs) – into a creative bullpen known as the La bande des quatre. This “Gang of Four” promptly revolutionised Belgian comics with their engaging “Marcinelle school” style of graphic storytelling.

Jijé handed Franquin all responsibilities for the flagship strip part-way through Spirou et la maison préfabriquée, (LJdS #427, June 20th 1946) and the eager beaver ran with it for two decades, enlarging the scope and horizons until it became purely his own. Almost every episode, fans would meet startling new characters like comrade/rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor The Count of Champignac. Spirou & Fantasio were globe-trotting troubleshooting journalists, endlessly expanding their exploits in unbroken four-colour glory. They travelled to exotic places, uncovering crimes, capturing the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of extraordinary arch-enemies such as Zorglub and Zantafio. Along the way Franquin premiered one of the first strong female characters in European comics – competitor journalist Seccotine (Cellophine in current English translations).

In an admirable example of good practise, Franquin mentored his own apprentice cartoonists during the 1950s. These included Jean Roba (La Ribambelle, Boule et Bill), Jidéhem (Sophie, Starter, Gaston Lagaffe) and Greg (Bruno Brazil, Bernard Prince, Zig et Puce, Achille Talon), who all worked with him on Spirou et Fantasio. In 1955, a contractual spat with Dupuis led to Franquin signing up with rivals Casterman on Le Journal de Tintin, where he collaborated with René Goscinny and old pal Peyo whilst also creating raucous gag strip Modeste et Pompon. Franquin quickly patched things up with Dupuis and returned to LJdS, subsequently co-creating Gaston Lagaffe (AKA Gomer Goof) in 1957, but was still obliged to carry on those Casterman commitments too…

From 1959, writer Greg and background artist Jidéhem began regularly assisting Franquin, but by 1969 the master storyteller had reached his Spirou limit. He quit, taking his mystic yellow monkey with him. Later creations include fantasy series Isabelle, illustration sequence Monsters and bleak adult conceptual series Idées Noires, but his greatest creation – and one he retained all rights to on his departure – was Marsupilami, which – in addition to comics – has become a megastar of screen, plush toy store, console and albums.

Plagued in later life by bouts of depression and cardiac problems, Franquin passed away on January 5th 1997, but his legacy remains: a vast body of work that reshaped the landscape of European comics. The payout for all that good practise can be enjoyed here as we review hopefully happier if undoubtedly weirder days as,via the vagaries of publishing (almost as byzantine as time travel in its own way) we encounter a continued story annoyingly broken up for English readers due to an adventure published out of sequence…

Spirou & Fantasio volume 14 – The Comet and the Clockmaker

Serialised in 1984, Tome & Janry’s L’Horloger de la comète was their 4th tale together, running in Le Journal de Spirou  #2427-2448 before becoming the 36th S&F album in February 1986). In it, the valiant lad and his inseparable pal are foolishly left housesitting the wonder-packed chateau of their inspirational boffin buddy: mushroom-mutating magician Pacôme Hégésippe Adélard Ladislas, comte de Champignac AKA Count Champignac… and someone else who turns 75 this year…

In the course of the evening, the lads use the installed telescope to track a comet across the sky but are distracted by a ship crashing into the lawn. Inside it is a time traveller who is also the Count’s descendant Aurélian de Champignac. Accompanied by his faithful pet Snuffeller Timothy, Aurélian has come on a mission of extreme importance, one crucially linked throughout history by the comet’s regularly returning appearances. Sadly, his task – to gather plants and reseed the barren world of tomorrow – is made more dangerous by unsuspected and extremely sinister seeming pursuers from beyond his own lifeless era, intent on keeping the future’s status quo intact…

And then the new allies are off, triggering alarms and military responses all over the world as they head for deepest, greenest Palombia, land of lunacy and the Marsupilami. Of course, everything goes wrong and before long our dauntless saviours are not only lost in the green hell but also in time. Fetching up in Portuguese-colonised climes circa 1531 anno Domini, the regreening of Earth seems destined to fail when they crash smack in the middle of a native resistance to European expansion and an internal power-grabbing insurrection amongst the invaders. But then…

If you’re fussy, the Zordolt story which breaks up the narrative flow (volume 15: Shadow of the Z) was reviewed here, so if it makes you more comfortable stop now, go read that and return here once that affirms your particular or preferred take on reality.

Spirou & Fantasio volume 16 – The Z Rises Again

In Europe, L’Horloger de la comète was promptly followed in Le Journal de Spirou #2487-2508 by Le réveil du Z which in September 1986 became the 37th collection. A wry, satirically-charged notional sequel to Franquin’s 1960 yarn Z is For Zorglub, it sees a kind of return for the pompous, conflicted Bond-style supervillain…

Back in their present, Spirou & Fantasio strive to return to their regular lives only to discover that although they have had enough of time travel, it has not had enough of them. Scorned, derided and disbelieved at home and the editorial office, our unruly investigators are suddenly kidnapped to 2062 by Aurélian de Champignac’s assistant So-Yah, where Zorglub Junior is using his ancestor’s mind-bending technologies and mastery of Champignac’s time travel techniques to become ruler of the world…

Happily, the Count has a plan to foil the ascendant tyrant, so all Spirou & Fantasio – with Timothy the Snuffeller – have to do is liberate Aurélian from the forbidding timeless citadel where the villain’s army of ruthless Zorglmen are holding him captive until their war of chronal conquest is won…

… Oh and probably destroying the giant Zorglock device enslaving every mind and directing every life on Earth might be beneficial too…

Fast-paced, wry, edgily-barbed, compellingly convoluted and perfectly blending helter-skelter excitement with keen suspense and outrageous slapstick humour, The Z Rises Again is a terrific romp to delight devotees of easy-going adventure and a perfect counter to the riotous eco-adventure that precedes it. Read together, they comprise a superbly wild sci-fi ride any fan of the genre or just good storytelling will adore. Easily accessible to readers of all ages and drawn with the beguiling style and seductively wholesome élan that make Asterix, Lucky Luke and Tintin so compelling, these are enduring tales from a long line of superb exploits, as deserving to be a household name as much as those series.
Original editions © Dupuis, 1986 by Tome & Janry. All rights reserved. English translations 2018, 2019 © Cinebook Ltd.

Posted on

Captain America Epic Collection volume 6: The Man Who Sold the United States (1974-1976)


By Steve Englehart, Jack Kirby, John Warner, Tony Isabella, Bill Mantlo, Marv Wolfman, Frank Robbins, Sal Buscema, Herb Trimpe, Vince Colletta, Frank Giacoia, D. Bruce Berry, Joe Giella, Mike Esposito, Frank Chiaramonte Barry Windsor-Smith John Romita, John Verpoorten, Dan Adkins, John Byrne, Joe Sinnott, Marie Severin, Charley Parker, Bob Budiansky, Paty Cockrum, & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4873-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

It’s customary – right here at least – to end our year with bit of timey-wimey extrapolation and conjecture, or celebrate an anniversary. However, due to the parlous state of global existence, I’ve instead opted for political pontificating. I decided that with the horror of the next four years barely begun, it’s time to stand tallish and make a sly whiny statement and see who even notices…

Created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby in an era of ferocious patriotic fervour and carefully-manipulated idealism, Captain America was a dynamic and exceedingly bombastic response to the horrors of Nazism and the threat of Liberty’s loss.

He quickly lost focus and popularity once hostilities ceased: fading away as post-war reconstruction began. He briefly reappeared after the Korean War: a harder, darker sentinel ferreting out monsters, subversives and the “commies” who lurked under every American bed. Then he vanished once more until the burgeoning Marvel Age resurrected him just in time to experience the Land of the Free’s most turbulent and culturally divisive era. Here the Star-Spangled Avenger was in danger of becoming an uncomfortable symbol of a troubled, divided society, split along age lines and with many of the hero’s fans apparently rooting for the wrong side. Now into that turbulent mix crept issues of racial and gender inequality…

Cap had quickly evolved into a mainstay of the Marvel Revolution during the Swinging Sixties but lost his way somewhat after that, except for a glittering period under writer Steve Englehart. Eventually however, in the middle of the decades, that enlightened voice-of-a-generation scribe also moved on and out. Meanwhile, after nearly ten years drafting almost all of Marvel’s successes, Jack Kirby had jumped ship to arch-rival DC in 1971, creating a whole new mythology, dynamically inspiring pantheon and new way to tell comics stories. Short term though, cowardly editorial practices and lack of support had convinced him that DC was no better than Marvel for men of vision. Eventually, he accepted that even he could never win against any publishing company’s excessive pressure to produce whilst enduring micro-managing editorial interference.

Seeing which way the winds were blowing, Kirby exploded back into the Marvel Universe in 1976 with a signed promise of free rein to concoct another stunning wave of iconic creations – licensed movie sensations such as 2001: a Space Odyssey (and – so very nearly – seminal TV paranoia-fest The Prisoner); Machine Man; Devil Dinosaur and The Eternals. He was also granted control of two of his previous co-creations – firmly established characters Black Panther and Captain America to do with as he wished…

His return was much hyped at the time but swiftly became controversial since his intensely personal visions paid little lip service to company continuity: Jack always went his own bombastic way. Whilst those new works quickly found many friends, his tenure on those earlier inventions drastically divided the fan base. Kirby was never slavishly wedded to tight continuity and preferred, in many ways, to treat his stints on Cap and the Panther as creative “Day Ones”. That was never more apparent than for the Star-Spangled Sentinel of Liberty…

This resoundingly resolute rabble rousingly rambunctious sixth full-colour Epic Collection re-presents Captain America and the Falcon #180-200 and 1976’s colossal Marvel Treasury Special: Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles, cover-dated December 1974 to August 1976: spanning and neatly wrapping up the post-Englehart period and revealing how, when Kirby came aboard as writer, artist and editor, he had big plans for the nation’s premiere comicbook patriotic symbol in the year of its 200th anniversary…

At this time the US was a nation reeling from loss of idealism caused by Vietnam, Watergate and the (then partial) exposure of President Richard Nixon’s crimes. The general loss of idealism and painful public revelation that politicians are generally unpleasant – and even potentially ruthless, wicked exploiters – kicked the props out of most Americans who had an incomprehensibly rosy view of their leaders. Thus, Cap’s exposing a conspiracy reaching into the halls and backrooms of government to undemocratically seize control of the country by deceit and criminal conspiracy (sounds like sheer fantasy these days, doesn’t it?) was extremely controversial but compellingly attractive in those distant, simpler days. Now after doing what was necessary, the idealistic hero could no longer be associated with a tarnished ideal…

Previously: the Sentinel of Liberty had become a lost symbol in and of a divided nation. Uncomfortable in his red, white and blue skin but looking to carve himself a new place in the Land of the Free he is also unable to  abandon the role of do-gooder. When Steve Rogers is convinced by Avenging comrade Hawkeye that he could still serve his country and people even if he can’t be a star-spangled representative of America, it sparks a life-changing decision in opening tale ‘The Coming of the Nomad!’ Sadly, survivors of the sinister Serpent Squad (Cobra and The Eel) return with psychotic Princess Python in tow and maniac nihilist Madame Hydra murderously assuming the suddenly vacant leader’s role as a new Viper. When Rogers – as Nomad, “the Man Without a Country” – tackles the ophidian villains, he battles ineptly and fares badly but still stumbles across a sinister scheme by the Squad and Sub-Mariner’s arch-nemesis Warlord Krang. That subsea tyrant – in the thrall of ancient evil force the Helmet of Set – seeks to raise a sunken continent and restore an ancient civilisation in ‘The Mark of Madness!’ Elsewhere at the same time, former partner Sam Wilson/The Falcon is ignoring his better judgement and training determined young Roscoe Simons to become the next Captain America…

A glittering era ended with #182 as artist Sal Buscema moved on and newspaper-strip star Frank Robbins came aboard for a controversial run, beginning with ‘Inferno!’ (inked by Joe Giella). Whilst Nomad successfully mops up the Serpent Squad – despite well-meaning police interference – Sam and Cap’s substitute Roscoe encounter the Sentinel of Liberty’s greatest enemy with fatal consequences. The saga shifts into top gear as ‘Nomad: No More!’ (Frank Giacoia inks) sees shamed, grief-stricken Rogers once more take up his star-spangled burden after the murderous Red Skull simultaneously attacks the hero’s loved ones and dismantles America’s economy by defiling the banks and slaughtering the financial wizards who run them.

Beginning in the chillingly evocative ‘Cap’s Back!’ (art by Herb Trimpe, Giacoia & Mike Esposito), rampaging through the utterly shocking ‘Scream of the Scarlet Skull!’ (Sal Buscema, Robbins & Giacoia), it all climaxes in ‘Mindcage!’ (with additional scripting by John Warner and art by Robbins & Esposito) wherein our titular hero’s greatest ally is apparently revealed as his enemy’s stooge and slave. As the Red Skull, in all his gory glory, gloatingly reveals that his staggeringly effective campaign of terror was as nothing to his ultimate triumph, we learn that the high-flying Falcon has been his unwitting secret weapon for years. The staunch ally was originally cheap gangster “Snap” Wilson, radically recreated and reprogrammed by the Cosmic Cube to be Captain America’s perfect partner; and a tantalising, ticking time bomb waiting to explode…

Captain America and the Falcon #187 opens on ‘The Madness Maze!’ (Warner, Robbins & Frank Chiaramonte) with the Skull recently-fled and a now-comatose Falcon in custody of superspy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. Abruptly, the Star-Spangled Avenger is abducted, snatched by by a mysterious flying saucer and latterly attacked by alchemical androids employed by a rival espionage outfit, culminating in a ‘Druid-War’ (Warner, Sal B & Colletta), before Tony Isabella, Robbins & Chiaramonte put Cap into an ‘Arena For a Fallen Hero!’ where deception, psychological warfare and unarmed combat combine into a risky shock therapy to kill or cure the mind-locked Sam Wilson. However, just as the radical cure kicks in, an old foe takes over S.H.I.E.L.D.’s flying HQ in ‘Nightshade is Deadlier the Second Time Around!’ (Isabella, Robbins & Colletta). Once she’s defeated, the past crimes of forcibly-reformed Snap Wilson are reviewed and judged in an LA courtroom in climactic wrap-up ‘The Trial of the Falcon!’ (Isabella, Bill Mantlo, Robbins & D. Bruce Berry): proffering a predictable court ruling, a clutch of heroic cameos and a bombastic battle against the sinister Stilt-Man – hired by mob bosses to ensure Snap’s silence on his gangland activities…

Narrative decks cleared, CAatF #192 delivered an ingenious, entertaining filler written by outgoing editor Marv Wolfman, illustrated by Robbins & Berry, wherein Cap hops on a commercial flight back to the East Coast and finds himself battling deranged psychiatrist Dr. Faustus and a contingent of mobsters on a ‘Mad-Flight!’ thousands of feet above New York. With all plots safely settled, the stage was set for the return of Cap’s co-creator: returning with a bombastic fresh take that would take the Sentinel of Liberty into regions never before explored…

It begins with Captain America and the Falcon #193, offering the opening salvo in an epic storyline leading up the immortal super-soldier’s own Bicentennial issue (sort of). Gone now was all the soul-searching and breast-beating about what the country was or symbolised: The USA is in peril and its sentinel was ready to roar into action…

Inked by fellow veteran Frank Giacoia ‘The Madbomb’ exposes a ‘Screamer in the Brain!’ as a miniscule new weapon is triggered by unknown terrorists, reducing an entire city block to rubble by driving the populace into a mass psychotic frenzy. Experiencing the madness at close hand, Cap and the Falcon are swiftly seconded by the US government to ferret out the culprits and find a full-scale device hidden somewhere in the vast melting pot of America…

‘The Trojan Horde’ introduces plutocratic mastermind William Taurey who intends to correct history, unmaking the American Revolution and restoring a privilege-ridden aristocracy upon the massed millions of free citizens. Using inestimable wealth, a cabal of similarly disgruntled billionaire elitists (what a ree-dicalus ideah!), an army of mercenaries, slaves cruelly transformed into genetic freaks and other cutting-edge super-science atrocities, the maniac intends to forever eradicate the Republic and plunder the resources of the planet. Thank every god you know that it couldn’t happen today…

Moreover, when he is finally elevated to what he considers his rightful place, the first thing Taurey intends to do is hunt down the last descendent of Colonial-era hero Steven Rogers: a rebel who had killed Taurey’s Monarchist ancestor and allowed Washington to win the War of Independence. Little does he suspect the subject of his wrath has already infiltrated his secret army…

Inked by D. Bruce Berry, in ‘It’s 1984!’ Cap & Falcon get a firsthand look at the kind of fascistic world Taurey advocates, battling their way through monsters, mercenaries and a mob fuelled by modern mind-control and pacified by Bread & Circuses, before ultra-spoiled elitist Cheer Chadwick takes the undercover heroes under her bored, effete and patronising wing. Sadly, even she can’t keep her new pets from being sucked into the bloody, brutal Circus section of the New Society, where American loyalists are forced to fight for their lives in ultra-modern gladiatorial mode in the ‘Kill-Derby’, even as the US army raids the secret base in Giacoia inked ‘The Rocks are Burning!’ Soon, the Patriotic Pair realise it has all been for nought since the colossal full-sized Madbomb is still active: carefully hidden somewhere else in their vast Home of the Brave…

The offbeat ‘Captain America’s Love Story’ then takes a decidedly different and desperate track as the Bastion of Freedom must romance a sick woman to get to her father – the inventor of the deadly mind-shattering device – after which ‘The Man Who Sold the United States’ accelerates to top speed for all-out action as the hard-pressed heroes race a countdown to disaster with the Madbomb finally triggering by ‘Dawn’s Early Light!’ for a spectacular showdown climax that truly  surpasses all expectation.

This compilation compellingly concludes with a once in a lifetime special event. Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles was originally released (on June 15th 1976) as part of the nationwide celebration of the USA’s two hundredth year. One of Marvel’s tabloid-sized “Treasury Format” (80+ pages of 338 x 258mm dimensions) titles, it took the Star-Spangled Avenger on an incredible excursion through key eras and areas of American history. An expansive, panoramic and wildly iconic celebration of the memory and myth of the nation, this almost abstracted, deeply symbolic 84-page extravaganza perfectly survives reduction to standard comic dimensions, following Captain America as cosmic savant – and retrofitted Elder of the Universe The Contemplator – Mister Buda propels the querulous hero into successively significant slices of history. Enduring a blistering pace of constant change, Cap encounters lost partner Bucky during WWII, meets Benjamin Franklin in Revolutionary Philadelphia and revisits the mobster-ridden depression era of Steve Roger’s own childhood as ‘The Lost Super-Hero!’.

In ‘My Fellow Americans’, Cap confronts Geronimo during the Indian Wars and suffers the horrors of a mine cave-in, before ‘Stop Here for Glory!’ finds him surviving a dogfight with a German WWI fighter ace, battling bare-knuckle boxer John L. Sullivan, resisting slavers with abolitionist John Brown, and observing both the detonation of the first Atom Bomb and the Great Chicago Fire. ‘The Face of the Future!’ even sees him slipping into the space colonies of America’s inevitable tomorrows, and segueing into pure emotional fantasy by experiencing the glory days of Hollywood, the simple joys of rural homesteading and the harshest modern ghetto, before drawing strength from the nation’s hopeful children…

Inked by such luminaries as Barry Windsor-Smith, John Romita Sr., Herb Trimpe and Dan Adkins, the book length bonanza comes peppered with a glorious selection of pulsating pin-ups.

With covers throughout by Gil Kane, Kirby, Giacoia, Esposito, Joe Sinnott, Ron Wilson, John Romita (Sr.), Sal Buscema &John Verpoorten, this supremely thrilling collection also has room for a selection of bonus treats beginning with the Kane & Esposito cover for reprint title Giant-size Captain America #1 (1975); relevant Cap & Falcon pages from Mighty Marvel Calendar for 1975 ((July, by John Romita); the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page announcing the King’s return in all October issues, and assorted house ads. Also on view are extracts and articles from company fanzine F.O.O.M. #11, September 1975; an all-Kirby issue declaring – behind a Byrne/Joe Sinnott cover – that “Jack’s back!”. Material includes ‘The King is Here! Long Live the King!’, ‘Kirby Speaks!’, stunning artwork from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alex Boyd’s appreciation ‘The Once and Future King!’, Charley Parker’s ‘The Origin of King Kirby’, ‘Kirby’s Kosmik Konsciousness’ and a caricature from the wonderful Marie Severin.

Also on show are cover roughs and un-inked pencils to delight art fans and aficionados, as well as original page art by Kirby inked by Giacoia & Windsor Smith.

King Kirby’s commitment to wholesome adventure, breakneck action and breathless wonderment, combined with his absolute mastery of the medium and unceasing quest for the Next Big Thrill, always make for a captivating read and this stuff is amongst the most bombastic and captivating material he ever produced. Fast-paced, action-packed, totally engrossing Fights ‘n’ Tights masterpieces no fan should ignore and, above all else, fabulously fun tales of a true American Dream and a perfect counterpoint and exemplar to the moodily insecurity of the Englehart episodes that precede them here. Despite the odd cringeworthy story moment (I specifically omitted the part where Cap battles three chicken-themed villains for example, and still wince at some of the dialogue from this forthright and earnest era of “blaxsploitation” and emergent ethnic awareness), these tales of matchless courage and indomitable heroism are fast-paced, action-packed, totally engrossing fights ‘n’ tights no comics fan should miss, and joking aside, their cultural significance is crucial in informing the political consciences of the youngest members of post-Watergate generation, and so much more so today…
© 2024 MARVEL.

Posted on

Mac Raboy’s Flash Gordon volume 4


By Mac Raboy & Don Moore, Dan Barry & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-156971-979-9 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

By almost every metric, Flash Gordon is the most influential comic strip in the world. When the hero debuted on Sunday January 7th 1934 (Happy Birthday Flash!) with equally superb Jungle Jim running as a supplementary “topper” strip, it was a slick, sophisticated answer to Philip Nolan & Dick Calkins’ revolutionary, ideas-packed, inspirational, but quirkily clunky Buck Rogers (which also launched on January 7th – albeit in 1929) with two fresh elements added to the wonderment: Classical Lyricism and Poetic Dynamism. The newcomer became a weekly invitation to stunningly exotic glamour and astonishing beauty.

Where Buck merged traditional adventure with groundbreaking science concepts, Flash reinterpreted fairy tales, hero epics and mythology, draping them in the spectacular trappings of contemporary futurism, with the varying “rays”, “engines” and “motors” of modern pulp sci fi substituting for trusty swords and lances. There were also plenty of those too – and exotic craft and contraptions stood in for galleons, chariots and magic carpets. Look closely, though, and you’ll see cowboys, gangsters and of course, contemporary flying saucer fetishes adding flourish to the fanciful fables. The narrative trick made the far-fetched satisfactorily familiar – and was continued with contemporary trends and innovations by Austin Briggs and Don Moore before Mac Raboy (with Moore and Robert Rogers) took over the Sunday strips for a groundbreakingly modern yet comfortably familiar tenure lasting from 1948 to 1967.

The sheer artistic talent of Raymond, his compositional skills, fine linework, eye for clean, concise detail and just plain genius for drawing beautiful people and things, swiftly made this the strip that all young artists swiped from literally all over the world. When original material comic books began a few years later, many talented kids used Gordon as their model and ticket to future success in the field of adventure strips. Almost all the others went with Raymond’s stylistic polar opposite: emulating Milton Caniff’s expressionist masterwork Terry and the Pirates (and to see one of his better disciples check out Beyond Mars, limned by the wonderful Lee Elias).

Flash Gordon began on present-day Earth (which was 1934, remember?) with a wandering world about to smash into our planet. As global panic ensued, polo player Flash and fellow passenger Dale Arden narrowly escaped disaster when a meteor fragment downed their airliner. They landed on the estate of tormented genius Dr. Hans Zarkov, who imprisoned them in the rocket-ship he had built. His plan? To fly the ship directly at the astral invader and deflect it from Earth by crashing into it! Thus began a decade of sheer escapist magic in a Ruritanian Neverland: a blend of Camelot, Oz, John Carter of Mars and a hundred other fantasy realms promising paradise yet concealing vipers, ogres and demons, all cloaked in a glimmering sheen of sleek scientific speculation. Worthy adversaries such as utterly evil yet magnetic Ming, emperor of the fantastic wandering planet; myriad exotic races and shattering conflicts offered a fantastic alternative to drab and dangerous reality for millions of avid readers around the world.

With Moore handling the bulk of scripts, Alex Raymond’s ‘On the Planet Mongo’ ran every Sunday until 1944, when the artist joined the Marines. On his return, he forsook wild imaginings for sober reality by introducing gentleman gumshoe Rip Kirby. The public’s unmissable weekly appointment with wonderment perforce continued under the artistic auspices of Austin Briggs – who had drawn the monochrome daily instalments since 1940.

In 1948, eight years after beginning his career drawing for the Harry A. Chesler production “shop”, comic book artist Emmanuel “Mac” Raboy took over illustrating the Sunday page. Moore remained as scripter and began co-writing with the new artist. Raboy’s sleek, fine-line brush style – heavily influenced by his idol Raymond – had made his work on Captain Marvel Jr., Kid Eternity and especially Green Lama a pinnacle of artistic quality in the early days of the proliferating superhero genre. His seemingly inevitable assumption of Flash Gordon’s extraordinary exploits led to a renaissance of the strip and in a rapidly evolving post-war world, it became once more a benchmark of timeless, hyper-realistic quality escapism which only Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant could match.

This fourth and final 276-page paperback volume – printed in stark monochrome, landscape format and still criminally out-of-print/long overdue for a fresh edition – spans December 16th 1962 through December 31st 1967 – by which time successor Dan Barry was already adding his artistic contributions to the final chapter (from December 24th). After one last informative appraisal of Raboy in Bruce Jones’ Introduction ‘Walking with Giants’ it’s time for one last blast-off as the adventure resumes with already-in-progress thriller ‘Sons of Saturn’… Sequence SO91 had begun on October 21st 1962 and cliffhangerly closed the previous volume barely weeks in. It resumes here with the episode for December 16th and carries on until January 20th 1963 revealing how the hitherto unsuspected super-civilisation thriving in the clouds of the Sixth Planet is revealed when an Earth probe provokes its current overlord to determine human nature and resource by sending super-criminal outcast Baldr to plague, punish and test them. That results in the indestructible giant breaking into Flash’s ship and going on a rampage, but ultimately alien force proves no match for human – i.e. Flash Gordon’s – ingenuity and the embattled visitors accidentally initiate a sudden and very permanent regime change…

Running from January 27th to April 14th pure cold war paranoia shapes sequence S092. ‘The Force Dome’ sees well-meaning Professor Howe build a perfectly impenetrable protective energy barrier and convince the authorities to let him run a live test by shielding all of Metropole City. When Howe dies suddenly the experiment goes awry and the generators can’t be switched off. Thankfully, Flash and Zarkov are on site and able to avert the crisis before all the air under the city-sized bubble is used up…

It’s back to the beyond next as (S093: 21/4/63 – 14/7/63) finds our hero further testing the bounds of Earth’s recently-developed Faster-Than-Light technologies, with Flash despatched to a far star system to discover what happened to an off-line ‘Star Beacon’ that has stopped providing subspace navigation data. That all sounds quite technical, but it’s just a plot device to enable Flash & Co to wryly clash with cunning alien primitives after which it’s back to Earth and the Himalayas to rescue explorer Bill Penrose from fabled monsters (S094: 21/7/63-17/11/63). However, as Flash digs deeper, he learns these ‘Yeti’ are actually robots employed by extraterrestrial resource bandits to steal uranium, resulting in an epic battle beneath the Earth, before returning to space and a new station orbiting Jupiter. Set on Earth’s newly-constructed interstellar transit station, sequence S095 (24/11/63 to 15/3/1964) sees Dale and Flash accidentally in loco parentis to Miki – an extremely impulsive ‘Boy From Another World’ …and his disruptively radioactive pet Zhlubb…

The furore builds as the star waifs suddenly go missing just as interplanetary bandit trio the Breen Brothers invade the station whilst Flash is testing Zarkov’s latest super-ship, triggering a monumental and manic battle beyond the stars. When the shooting stops and with Miki restored to his parents, Flash finally boosts off in the new FTL vessel, destined for a colony world that has called for help by sending back all its women and children. In truth, the castaways’ return is a bid by aliens on a dying world who seek to inveigle tribute and rations for their starving civilisation by holding the male human colonists hostage.

Backed up by colonist Kitty Corum and rash, overconfident Star Patrol Special Service recruit Dino, Flash’s test ride becomes a rescue/diplomatic mission to the ‘Dark Sun of Dragor’ (S096: 22/3/ to 7/19/64): a most unconventional confrontation that culminates in the death of a star system, followed by a brief diversion. Spanning 26th July to November 8th, sequence S097 sees a family of giant, shapeshifting aliens crash on Earth and their colossal child faces typical panic and bigotry until Dale steps in to salve tensions and save ‘The Chameleon’, prior to sheer arrogance almost destroying the world’s hopes of halting chaotic storms caused by solar flares and securing reliable ‘Man-Made Weather’ (S098: 15/11/64 – 2/14/February 65). The problem is a clash of wills between abrasive Dr Franz Graf and Zarkov, but eventually the meteorological fireworks spark a world-saving inspiration…

Another mountaintop yarn finds Flash and junior shuttle pilot Wally Green captive of the ‘Lost Tribe of the Andes’ (S099: February 21st to 13th June), facing the bellicose descendants of Spanish conquistadors shielded from progress for hundreds of years and ultimately duelling dastardly power-hungry despot-in-waiting El Mono, before a return to modern civilisation brings the first Moon’s Fair and a transport nightmare when the best pilot in space gets involved in transporting Michelangelo’s David to the exhibition site. It all results in ‘The Greatest Art Theft’ (SI00: June 20th – October 10th) as petty tyrant/organised crime overlord Baron Borgaz purloins the masterpiece for his private orbital fiefdom and is vain enough to allow Flash entrance to search his sinister, thug-&-monster-stuffed citadel…

Next comes a yarn older British fans might recognise as part of the 1967 digest series World Adventure Library: a line that also included Mandrake the Magician, The Phantom, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Batman. Here Flash plays space cop in pursuit of devious disguise artist/thief Merlyn, who swindles his way across the solar system and even escapes Gordon’s justice… but not his fate or just deserts in year spanning comedic change-of-pace ‘Con Man in Space’ (SI01: 17/10/1965 to 30/01/1966). It’s followed by ‘A Visit From Mercury’ (February 6th to June 5th ’66 and another tale reprinted in the UK) as a trip to erupting volcano Vesuvius allows “impervium”-clad Flash, Dale & Zarkov to enter a undiscovered base deep in the magma, where visitors fleeing the first rock from the sun are hiding. Sheltered from geological upheaval and basking in Earth’s warmth, they’re ultimately restored to their point of origin with Earth’s aid, but only after Gordon deals with flaming recidivist usurper Janj…

Old-style mystery and monster hunting shapes survival saga ‘Death World’ (SI03: 12/06 – 23/10/66) as Flash and a Space Agency Survival Corps squad led by Sikh commander Singh are despatched to learn what caused the disappearance of an entire human colony and rise of a swathe of killer beasts. What they discover changes lives and the annals of bio-science, before Flash tangles with another low-orbit lowlife when ‘The Duke of Naples’ (SI04: 30th October 1966 – April 2nd 1967) reinstitutes privateering, slave-taking and gladiatorial combat on his private space station in his passionately plutocratic desire to return humanity to feudalism, after which big science engineering finds Flash and Zarkov mediating war between grudge-bearing Madame Mimi Duclos and martinet Godfrey Ledge as each attempts to seize control and complete construction of ‘The Moon Launcher’ (April 9th to July 16th). The ion launch platform is an obvious and permanent boon to human space expansion, but the project takes on desperate urgency after explorers on Pluto encounter trouble and the acceleration launcher offers the only possibility of getting a rescue ship to them in time.

The bitter war between the project chiefs sparks industrial strife, worker mutiny and even criminal changes against Flash’s new best pal Pancho, but sooner rather than later the job is done and Gordon (plus fugitive stowaway Pancho) are rocketing into infernal darkness and Raboy’s last adventure.  Sequence SI06 spans 23/7/1967 to 7/1/1968 (with Dan Barry taking over on December 24th) as the voyagers find the lost explorers but are ‘Captured on Pluto’ by super-advanced aliens playing mindgames and conjuring fantastic worlds and beings in a cosmic scaled romp deeply redolent of 1964 Star Trek pilot episode The Cage…

To Be Continued… by other hands

Each week as he toiled on the strip, Raboy produced ever-more expansive artwork filled with distressed damsels, deadly monsters, incredible civilisations, increasingly authentic space hardware and locales, and all sorts of outrageous adventure that continued until the illustrator’s untimely death in 1967. Perhaps it was a kindness. He was the last great Golden Age romanticist illustrator and his lushly lavish, freely-flowing adoration of perfected human form was beginning to stale in popular taste. The Daily feature had already switched to the solid, chunky, He-Manly burly realism of Dan Barry and Frank Frazetta, but here at least the last outpost of ethereally beautiful heroism and pretty perils still prevailed: a dream realm you can visit as easily and often as Flash, Dale & Zarkov popped between planets, just by tracking down this book and the one which preceded it…
© 2003 King Features Syndicate Inc. ™ & © Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.