Category: Science Fiction

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Spider-Man Newspaper Strips volume 1: January 3rd 1977 – January 28th 1979

4 images (2 covers + 1 illo and a spare combined covers if the preferred don’t match up)


By Stan Lee & John Romita, with Frank Giacoia & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-8561-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s been a year since we lost genial giant John Romita. His work and life were inextricably woven into the Marvel canon: permeating and supporting the entire company’s output from top to tail, from before the House of Ideas even existed to the stellar Sixties to right now…

By 1977 Stan Lee had all but surrendered his role as editor and guiding light of Marvel Comics for that of a roving PR machine to hype-up the company he had turned into a powerhouse. In that year two events occurred that catapulted Marvel’s standout, signature character into the popular culture mainstream. One was the long-anticipated debut of The Amazing Spider-Man live action TV show (a mixed blessing and pyrrhic victory at best) whilst the other, and one much more in keeping with his humble origins, was the launch of a syndicated newspaper strip with the same hallowed title.

Both mass-audience outreach projects brought the character to a wider audience, but the latter offered at least a promise of editorial control – a crucial factor in keeping the wondrous wallcrawler’s identity and integrity intact. But even this closely-aligned creative medium dictated some tailoring of the Merry Marvel Madness before the hero was a suitable fit with the grown-up world of the “Funny Pages”.

Which is just my longwinded way of saying that completists, long-time fans and lovers of great artwork will absolutely enjoy this collection of periodical strips, as will any admirer of the stunning talents of the senior John Romita (latterly inked by the great Frank Giacoia) even though the stories are tame, bowdlerised and rather mediocre. Deprived of the support network of an overlapping Marvel Universe, they often struggled to find their wallcrawling feet and might feel a tad toned down and simplistic for readers familiar with the wider cast or long history. Those completists, however, might be keen on catching lost adventures featuring Wolverine, Doctor Strange and Daredevil, and it was always easier to import supervillains like Mysterio, The Kingpin and Doctor Doom into the alternate adventures of this Amazing Spider-Man.

Marvel Multiversal Continuity eventually caught up with the feature and it’s now designated Earth-77013 and a regular component of the “Spider-Verse” strand…

The strip was first posited and peddled around the papers in 1970 (Lee & Romita’s initial proposal and two weeks of trial continuities are included at the back of this book) but The Amazing Spider-Man only began on January 3rd 1977. It ran as a property of the Register and Tribune Syndicate until 1985, briefly switching to Cowles Media Company before becoming part of the King Features Syndicate in 1986. The strip went on hiatus following Lee’s death with the final new strip appearing on March 23rd 2019. Lee was still credited as writer even though Roy Thomas had been its ghost writer since 2000. It soon reappeared as reruns – until October 21st 2023 – before being replaced in syndicate packages by Flash Gordon.

One of the industry’s most polished stylists and a true cornerstone of the Marvel Comics phenomenon, the elder John Romita began his comics career in the late 1940s (ghosting for other artists) before striking out under his own colours, eventually illustrating horror and other anthology tales for Stan Lee at Timely/Atlas.

John Victor Romita was Brooklyn born and bred, entering the world on January 24th 1930. From Brooklyn Junior High School he moved to the famed if not legendary Manhattan School of Industrial Art, and graduated in 1947. After spending six months creating a medical exhibit for Manhattan General Hospital he moved into comics in 1949, working for Famous Funnies. A “day job” toiling at Forbes Lithograph was abandoned when a friend found him various inking and ghosting assignments, until he was drafted in 1951. Showing his portfolio to a US army art director, after boot camp at Fort Dix New Jersey, Romita was promoted to corporal, and stationed on Governors Island in New York Bay doing recruitment posters. He was allowed to live off-base in Brooklyn. During this period he started doing the rounds and struck up a freelancing acquaintance with Stan Lee at rapidly expanding genre factory Atlas Comics…

Romita illustrated horror, science fiction, war stories, westerns, Waku, Prince of the Bantu in Jungle Tales, a superb run of inviting cowboy adventures starring The Western Kid and was handed 1954’s abortive revival of Captain America and more, before an industry implosion derailed his – and many other – blossoming careers. He eventually found himself trapped in DC’s romance comics division – a job he hated – before – in 1965 – making a reluctant jump back to the resurgent House of Ideas. As well as steering the career of the wallcrawler and so many other Marvel stars, his greatest influence was felt when he became Art Director in July 1973 – a job he had been doing unofficially since 1968. He had a definitive hand in creating or shaping many key characters, such as Mary Jane Watson, Peggy Carter, The Kingpin, The Punisher, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Satana, ad infinitum. One story goes that it was Romita who suggested Gwen Stacy’s murder to Spidey scripter Gerry Conway…

Working from full scripts (not the acclaimed “Marvel Method”), Romita illustrated The Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip for its first four years, after which Stan’s brother Larry Lieber (Rawhide Kid, Ant-Man, Iron Man, Thor) took on the pencilling. Unhappy with the deadline pressures, he soon left, and was replaced by Fred (Airboy, Captain Britain) Kida who soldiered on from August 1981 to July 1986. A brief interim with Dan (Flash Gordon, Airboy, Tarzan) Barry led to Leiber’s return, and he drew the feature for the next 32 years with a variety of inkers and ghosts such as Alex Saviuk.

Since 2015 the stories have also been collected in IDW’s The Library of American Comics as The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Newspaper Comics Collection with five lavish hardback volumes released to date. This collection – available in landscape paperback and digital formats – is a modified rerelease of a hardback tome from 2008, offering extra editorial and commentary as it re-presents the first two years of the strip, with traditional single tier monochrome dailies accompanied by full-colour, full page Sunday strips. If the reader is steeped in the established folklore of the comic book Spider-Man, the serials here – solidly emphasising Peter Parker‘s personal relationships in the grand manner of strip soap opera drama – begin by introducing Dr. Doom and Dr. Octopus in heavy-handed potboilers light on action but intrinsically riffing on what has gone before in comic books.

However, for the presumed millions of neophyte readers the yarns must have been a tad confusing: presented as if all participants are already fully-established, with no development or real explanation of backstory. After the full-on Marvel villains are successively trounced, serpentine new baddie The Rattler stalks the city in search of increased powers, followed in turn by the more appropriate and understandable (for strips at least) gangster The Kingpin, who combines seditious politics with gun-toting thuggery.

Only then do the creators finally get around to a retelling of the origin, albeit one now based on that aforementioned TV show rather than the classic Lee/Ditko masterpiece. It’s safe to say that in those early years television informed the strip much (too much) more than monthly comic books.

A suitably revised Kraven the Hunter debuts next, presenting an opportunity to remove glamourous but shallow good-time girl Mary Jane Watson from the strip in favour of a string of temporary girl-friends, more in line with the TV iteration. This also signalled a reining-in of super-menaces in favour of less-fantastic or far-fetched opponents such as a middle-Eastern terrorist.

The launch of a Spider-Man movie (surely the most improbable of events!) then takes photojournalist Peter Parker to Hollywood and into a clash with a new version of deranged special-effects genius Mysterio, before Dr. Doom returns, attempting to derange our hero with robot pigeons and duplicates of Parker’s associates..

This is followed by an exceptional, emotionally-stirring run of episodes as three street thugs terrorise senior citizen Aunt May for her social security money, after which Spider-Man must foil a crazed fashion-model who has discovered his identity and blackmails him…

These drama-framed and human-scaled threats are a far more fitting use of the hero in this ostensibly more grown-up milieu – which pauses here with a protection racket romp set in the (feel free to shudder) discotheque owned by young entrepreneurs Flash Thompson and Harry Osborn, courtesy of newly-returned corpulent crimelord Kingpin…

To Be Continued…

Adding to the time capsule of arachnid entertainment is that aforementioned proposal by Lee & Romita, archival interviews with both creators conducted by John Rhett Thomas and Alex Lear plus a gallery of six Sunday title panels (used to summarise events and set the tone for readers who only read the sabbath colour strips), as well as a classic Romita pin-up page starring the artist and his greatest co-creations…

Happily, although goofy stories predominate in this oddball collection, and time has not been gentle with much of the dialogue, the stunning artwork of John Romita in his prime helps to counteract the worst of the cultural excesses. Moreover, there remains a certain guilty pleasure to be derived from these tales if you don’t take your comics too seriously and are open to alternative existences…
© 1977, 1978, 2019 Marvel. All rights reserved.

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Jack Kirby’s Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth volume 2


By Jack Kirby, D. Bruce Berry & Mike Royer with Gerry Conway, Steve Sherman, Paul Levitz & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-2171 (TPB/Digital edition)

With elections looming, it’s hard not to worry about the world that’s coming, and as usual I’m retreating into comics for emotional sustenance. Sadly the prevailing attitude is one of doom and gloom whoever wins, so – in anticipation of calamity unbounded – here’s a comforting look at another always-rewarding end of world scenario…

Other than Gotham City, Jack Kirby’s Earth AD (After Disaster) is DC’s most successful and inspirational Dystopia. It has migrated to television via numerous animated features and informs many aspects of the greater shared continuity. In so many ways it’s a far more enticing world than the one we currently inhabit… albeit not for much longer…

Jack Kirby (28th August 1917 – 6th February 1994) was – and nearly 30 years after his death, remains – the most important single influence in the history of American comics. There are innumerable accounts of and testaments to what the man has done and meant, and you should read those if you are at all interested in our medium. Kirby was a man of vast imagination who translated big concepts into astoundingly potent and accessible symbols for generations of fantasy fans. If you were exposed to Kirby as an impressionable child you were his for life. To be honest, that probably applies whatever age you jump aboard the “Kirby Express”…

Synonymous with larger than life characters and vast cosmic imaginings, “ The King” was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, prejudice, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He experienced Pre-War privation, Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures, but always looked to the future while understanding human nature intimately. Beginning in the late 1930s, it took a remarkably short time for Kirby and his creative collaborator Joe Simon to become the wonder-kid dream-team of the new-born comic book industry. Together they produced a year’s worth of influential monthly mag Blue Bolt, dashed off Captain Marvel Adventures (#1) for overstretched Fawcett, and – after Martin Goodman appointed Simon editor at Timely Comics – launched a host of iconic characters including Red Raven, Marvel Boy, Mercury/Hurricane, The Vision, Young Allies and million-selling mega-hit Captain America. When Goodman failed to make good on his financial obligations, Simon & Kirby were snapped up by National/DC, who welcomed them with open arms and a fat chequebook.

Bursting with ideas the staid industry leaders were never really comfortable with, the pair were initially an uneasy fit, and awarded two moribund strips to play with until they found their creative feet: Sandman and Manhunter. They turned both around virtually overnight and, once safely established and left to their own devices, switched to the “Kid Gang” genre they had pioneered at Timely. Joe & Jack created wartime sales sensation Boy Commandos and Homefront iteration The Newsboy Legion before being called up to serve in the war they had been fighting on comic pages since 1940.

Once demobbed, they returned to a very different funnybook business, and soon after left National to create their own little empire…

Simon & Kirby ushered in the first American age of mature comics – not just by inventing the Romance genre, but with all manner of challenging modern material about real people in extraordinary situations before seeing it all disappear again in less than eight years.

After years of working for others, Simon & Kirby established their own publishing house: making comics for a far more sophisticated audience, only to find themselves in a sales downturn and awash in public hysteria generated by an anti-comicbook pogrom. Their small stable of magazines – generated for an association of companies known as Prize, Crestwood, Pines, Essenkay and Mainline Comics – blossomed and as quickly wilted when the industry contracted throughout the 1950s, but had left future generations fascinating ventures such as Boys’ Ranch, Bullseye, Crime Does Not Pay, Black Magic, Boy Explorers, Fighting American and the entire genre of Romance Comics…

Hysterical censorship-fever spearheaded by US Senator Estes Kefauver and opportunistic pop psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham led to witch-hunting Senate hearings. Caving in, most publishers adopted a castrating straitjacket of draconian self-regulatory rules. Crime and Horror titles produced under the aegis and emblem of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised and anodyne affairs in terms of mature themes, political commentary, shock and gore even though the market’s appetite for suspense and the uncanny was still high. Crime comics vanished as adult sensibilities challenging an increasingly stratified and oppressive society were suppressed. Suspense and horror were dialled back to the level of technological fairy tales and whimsical parables…

Simon left the business for advertising, but Jack soldiered on, taking his skills and ideas to safer, more conventional, less experimental companies. As the panic abated, Kirby returned briefly to DC Comics, working on bread-&-butter anthological mystery tales and revamping Green Arrow (at that time a back-up feature in Adventure Comics and World’s Finest Comics) whilst concentrating on his passion project: newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force. During that period Kirby also re-packaged a super-team concept that had been kicking around in his head since he and Joe had closed their innovative, ill-timed ventures. At the end of 1956, Showcase #6 premiered the Challengers of the Unknown. Following three further test issues they won their own title with Kirby in command for the first eight. Then a legal dispute with Editor Jack Schiff exploded and the King was gone…

He found fresh fields and an equally hungry new partner in Stan Lee at the ailing Atlas Comics outfit (which had once been mighty Timely) and launched a revolution in comics storytelling…

After more than a decade of a continual innovation and crowd-pleasing wonderment, Kirby felt increasingly stifled. His efforts had transformed the dying publisher into industry-pioneer Marvel, but that success had left him feeling trapped in a rut. Thus, he moved back to DC and generated another tidal wave of sheer imagination and pure invention. The result was experimental adult magazines Spirit World and In the Days of the Mob and a stunning reworking of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen – and by extension, all DC continuity. The latter was a prelude to his landmark Fourth World Saga (Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle): the very definition of something game-changing and far too far ahead of its time…

Kirby instinctively grasped the fundamentals of pleasing his audience and always strived diligently to combat the appalling prejudice regarding the comics medium – especially from industry insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies world” they felt trapped in. After his grandiose, controversial Fourth World titles were cancelled, Kirby explored other projects that would stimulate his own vast creativity yet still appeal to a market growing ever more fickle. These included supernatural stalwart The Demon, traditional war stories starring established DC team The Losers, OMAC: One Man Army Corps and even a new metaphysically mighty Sandman – co-created with old pal Joe Simon and his biggest hit science fictional survival saga Kamandi.

However, although ideas kept coming (Atlas, Kobra, a new Manhunter and Dingbats of Danger Street), once again editorial disputes took up too much of his time. Reluctantly, he left again, choosing to believe in promises of more creative freedom elsewhere…

As early as 1974, worn down by a lack of editorial support and with his newest creations inexplicably tanking, Kirby considered returning to Marvel, but – ever the consummate professional – scrupulously carried out every detail of an increasingly onerous, emotionally unrewarding DC contract. The Demon was cancelled after 16 issues and he needed another title to maintain his Herculean commitments (legally obliged to deliver 15 completed pages of art and story per week!); Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth had found a solid and faithful audience. It also provided further scope to explore big concepts as seen in thematic companion OMAC: One Man Army Corps. Both series gave Kirby’s darkest assumptions and prognostications free rein, and his “World That’s Coming” has proved far too close to the World we’re frantically trying to fix or escape from today…

Here, as DC’s fanatically interconnected universe takes a distant back seat to amazement, adventure and satirical commentary for most of Kirby’s tenure, this frankly monstrous tome gathers the second half of arguably his boldest, most bombastic and certainly most successful 1970s DC creation. Re-presenting cover-dates October/November 1972 – April 1976, Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth #21-40 explores a shattered world that has grown from the rubble of Mankind’s achievements and mistakes, featuring every issue Kirby was involved with, although not the 19 issues that staggered on after under lesser creative lights once he had headed back to the House of Ideas…

A potent signature of the series was large panels, double-page tableaux and vast vistas, particularly spectacular and breathtaking double-page spreads (generally on the second & third pages  of almost every episode) adding an aspect of wide-screen cinematic bravura. It was especially effective in the first issue when a capable, well-armed teenager paddled through the sunken ruins of New York City. The explorer had just emerged from total isolation in a hermetically sealed bunker designated “Command D”, There he had been schooled by his grandfather, constantly accessing a vast library of microfilm and news recordings. The boy called himself “Kamandi”…

Having obliviously sat out a seemingly overnight decline and fall of humanity – in which atomic armageddon clearly played a major if not exclusive role – the boy constantly met incomprehensible change on every level resulting from a mysterious catastrophe called “The Great Disaster” by the recovering survivors. They were not what the lad had been expecting…

This new world was nothing like his education had promised. Wreckage and mutant monsters abound, the very geography has altered and humans had somehow devolved into savage, non-verbal brutes and beasts, hunted and exploited by many animal species who have gained intellect comparable to his own and the power of speech. Now jockeying for pole position in Humanity’s vacated niche in the world, most of them were engaged in wars for dominance, fuelled by territorial aggression and fuelled by the scavenged remnants of Man’s discarded technologies…

When the boy returned to the bunker, it had finally been breached and his grandfather was dead at the hands of opportunistic biped wolves far too much like men. Shocked, furious and utterly alone, Kamandi fought his way out of his former home and set off to find what else was out there in this scary new world…

As he roamed Earth AD seeking more of his own kind he found monstrous mutants and intelligent animals – such as tigers Grear Caesar, his heir Prince Tuftan, and their brilliant scientist/historian/advisor Dr. Canus who were locked into a struggle for dominance against talking gorillas and other hyper-evolved beasts. Ferocious rival civilisations were built on the salvaged discoveries of the mysterious vanished ancients who ruled before the Great Disaster, but he did eventually find rational men like those of his studies. However, Ben Boxer, Steve and Renzi turned out to be far, far from what was traditionally considered human…

The saga resumes as Kamandi flees the biggest disappointment of his young life. He believed he had found humans like himself in Chicago but the truth left him more lonely and broken than ever…

Exploring a rocky shore, Kamandi meets a new ally in ‘The Fish!’, as a dolphin and his support/assistance human enlist the boy’s aid in a vital mission. The charming cetacean’s subsurface civilisation is at war with ancestral enemy Killer Whales, and the wily foe has now perfected and unleashed an ultimate warrior: one who relentlessly patrols the seas and slays at will. When not fighting off marauding sea monsters, the dolphins are steadily failing to stop ‘The Red Baron’, even with the aid of Ben Boxer and his atomic brothers.

The nuclear mutants can transition from flesh & blood to organic steel by internal fission, and know many secrets of the new world, and have been recruited after crashing into the sea: aiding in exploring those vast territories behind a radiation barrier isolating what used to be Canada. Now, as Kamandi rapidly befriends and loses dolphin pals to the Orca’s trained human predator, the steely trio enact a dangerous plan. It works and ends the hunter, but in the aftermath ‘Kamandi and Goliath!’ finds both sides in the eternal sea war forced to face its savage costs and shattering emotional toll…

Adrift and possibly the sole survivor, in issue #24 battered, shellshocked Kamandi at last washes ashore, meeting a ragged troupe of travelling performers sheltering in a ramshackle old mansion. Schooled in human history during his early years in bunker Command D, he recognises it as a classical movie haunted house, especially once eerie lights and cruel poltergeist phenomena target elderly monkey ringmaster Flim-Flam and his three trained humans…

Terrified but always rational, Kamandi deduces who and what is really going on during ‘The Exorcism!’ before joining Flim-Flam’s ‘Freak Show!’ The ensemble is soon further enriched by Ben, Steve & Renzi, before an invasion of monsters forces a rapid evacuation of their shoreside sanctuary: a retreat taking them to ‘The Heights of Abraham!’ and the mystery land where Kamandi’s loyal bug steed/companion Kliklak had originally come from…

The region has been utterly transformed by the Great Disaster, and is a paradise of nature run riot. Sadly, this ‘Dominion of the Devils’ is under assault by the commercially voracious Sacker’s Company, harvesting its fauna and destroying its flora in a rabid quest for profit…

In the previous volume Kamandi had met the sister of his dead first love Flower and discovered a ruthless capitalist, plutocratic sentient snake had been training humans to talk as staff and livestock whilst he ruthlessly plundered Earth for the technological leavings of the ancients. The wanderers’ disgusted first response to stop the atrocity is only halted by the arrival of a ‘Mad Marine!’ in #27: a “Brittanek” bulldog who is advance guard to an armed force from what was once Europe. These cavalry-styled guardians (horses appear to be one species that never made the evolutionary leap to intellectual comprehension and personal autonomy) are sworn to ‘Enforce the Atlantic Testament!’, and marshal their animal armies to rout Sacker and restore this new world’s order.

Of course, that means immense bloodshed, valiant sacrifice and gallant stupidity on the part of the professional soldier, but Ben and Kamandi have no scruples in stopping Sacker’s forces by any means necessary…

Cover-dated May 1975, Kamandi #29 rapidly achieved cult status by apparently confirming the strip’s status as part of a greater DC Universe. This faith-fuelled fable sees Ben and Kamandi stumble upon a fanatical cult of gorillas awaiting the return of a mighty warrior who could leap over tall buildings, bend metal in his hands and was faster than a speeding bullet. The high priest holds in trust the fabled champion’s suit of blue and red cape, awaiting the day when a being would emulate his deeds and claim his birthright.

Outraged at gorillas appropriating humanity’s greatest cultural myth, Kamandi convinces Ben to become a Man of Steel and reclaim the garments of the ‘Mighty One!’

Canny cultural catastrophe is expanded via cosmic intrigue in #30 as the pair are suddenly scooped up by an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth for undetermined ages. ‘U.F.O. The Wildest Trip Ever!’ offers more clues as to how Man fell as the pair are dumped on a beach overflowing with human artefacts retrieved from across the globe. However, as ‘The Door!’ to another world opens and the artefacts start to vanish, Ben and Kamandi discover a suitcase atom bomb that has been primed to detonate since the night of the Great Disaster.

They barely get clear in time before the bomb shatters the portal, trapping an extremely angry alien far from home, but Boxer overdoses on the  radiation and is warped by ‘The Gulliver Effect!’ Reduced to a mindless metal colossus, he is made a monster just as Tuftan and Dr. Canus appear, exploiting a savage sea battle with the gorillas to look for their lost friends…

As that war bloodily expands, the dog boffin establishes contact with energy force ‘Me!’ whilst Kamandi manipulates his giant pal into driving off the gorilla flotilla. When the ape navy resumes its assault, going after the mixed bag of tigers, dogs, humans and unknowns on the beach, the energy alien saves the day by driving off the simians.

Kamandi #32 was a giant-sized special that also reprinted the first issue beside other extras, which here manifests as photo-feature/interview ‘Jack Kirby – A Man With a Pencil’ by Steve Sherman and a new, extended double-page map of ‘Earth A.D.’, before resuming abnormal service in #33. In the enforced calm, Canus helps the alien stranger build a physical body in ‘Blood and Fire!’: conditions in great abundance offshore as Tuftan’s tigers and the gorillas mercilessly restart hostilities…

By this time Kirby was evidently riding out his contract and #34 (October 1975) saw him relinquish cover duties and the editor’s blue pencil. From this issue on Joe Kubert drew those front images and Gerry Conway edited whilst the King concentrated on interiors, introducing flamboyant, inquisitive and emotionally volatile ‘Pretty Pyra!’ – who promptly soared off to investigate the sea battle. Whilst “she” is distracted, Kamandi and Canus unwisely try to pilot her ship and stop the fight, but instead end up in space, encountering a Cold War holdover who had become a living horror. ‘The Soyuz Survivor!’ is determined to carry out his doomsday scenario instructions, so it’s a good thing Pyra comes looking for them…

Returning to Earth, the voyagers land in ex-Mexico, finding respite of sorts in ‘The Hotel!’ The resort is still a valued destination but now runs on purely Darwinian principles as administered by intelligent – but really mean – jaguars. Visitors can stay where they want and do what they wish, until some other person or group takes the rooms from them. When Kamandi witnesses a tribe of humans driven off, he uses crafty, cruel cunning to set crocodiles and wolves at each other’s throats…

Cover-dated January 1976, ‘The Crater People’ was Kirby’s final script, disclosing how the Last Boy stays to shepherd the hotel humans when Canus and Pyra go off exploring. The boy is soon captured again, this time by what appear to be normal, technologically astute humans. They are anything but…

Initially beguiled into joining them, Kamandi soon learns they too are mutants: living at a hyper-rapid pace and dying of old age in five years. They are harvesting wild human DNA in search of the secret of extended longevity and regard this intelligent, slow-aging homo sapiens from the old world as a genetic goldmine. If only they’d been completely honest with him, instead of trying to exploit the boy via honeytrap Arna…

Kamandi #38 February 1976) was scripted by Conway and Mike Royer returned as inker with the story splitting focus between the plight of the crater people who overstepped their bounds and drove the appalled last boy away whilst in space, ‘Pyra Revealed’ details the truth about her world and mission…

Frantic fugitives, Kamandi and Arna are captured by intelligent lobsters and imprisoned in ‘The Airquarium’ run by a coalition of crustaceans, molluscs and sea snails, just as Canus and Pyra return to terra firma and encounter a nation of saurians. All this time, the tigers and gorillas have been engaging at sea and obliviously continue doing so, even as Kamandi engineers a mass breakout to liberate all the lobster league’s undersea playthings…

Issue #40 ended Kirby’s involvement entirely with the pencils for ‘The Lizard Lords of Los Lorraine!’ scripted by Conway and Paul Levitz. Kamandi & Arna and Canus & Pyra are gulled into stealing a heat-generating ‘Sun Machine’ for rival factions (lizards vs donkeys!) seeking absolute control of the rain forest region. Fast-paced but innocuous, it closed with the unlikely rivals reunited again and ready for fresh, non-Kirby adventures…

Rounding out this paper monolith are pertinent pages from Who’s Who in the DC Universe (Kamandi and Ben Boxer, illustrated by Kirby & Greg Theakston), before a selection of un-inked story pages reveal why ‘The Art of Jack Kirby’ is just so darn great.

For sheer fun and thrills, nothing in comics can match the inspirational joys of prime Jack Kirby. This is what words and pictures were meant for and if you love them you must read this.
© 1974, 1975, 1976, 2023 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Should you opt for complete full-on inundation in the world of Kamandi, all 40 tales in these two paperback tomes are available as the Kamandi by Jack Kirby Omnibus edition, but as there’s no digital iteration, you’ll need mutant muscles of steel to derive the best results…

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The Flood That Did Come


By Patrick Wray (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-53-0 (PB)

We have a proud and hard-won and passionately defended tradition in this country of using fiction and fantasy – especially those presented in the form of kids’ books – to hold up a light to cultural iniquities, political malfeasance and social dystopias. It works for Gulliver’s Travels and Animal Farm and dozens more plus a wealth of comics and graphic novels from Judge Dredd to Flook. This is one more and it’s supremely, chillingly good at what it does.

Artist, writer and musician Patrick Wray studied at the Dartington College of Art and took a long time living before crafting this telling and subtle exploration of property laws and the role of the people in how they’re governed…

Mimicking the look and narrative tone of children’s reading primers (and kids’ comics) The Flood That Did Come is set in the hilltop village of Pennyworth in the year 2036. It’s all the home little Jenny and her brother Tom know, but their happy, innocent days end when it starts to rain heavily… and never stops.

Soon, all of Kingsby County and the entire country are under water, with only a few high-lying hamlets remaining above water. The kids and their friends make the best of the new normal and enjoy the changes to the wildlife around them, leaving the adults to worry about the details such as being resupplied by airdrops…

One day, however, the holiday ends when a sailing boat arrives from nearby industrialised town Brooks Falls. The youngsters aboard have come to warn Pennyworth residents that the adults of their drowned conurbation are coming, armed with the latest technologies and The Law. It transpires that long ago – back in 1851 – Pennyworth was merely an outlying district of the sprawling metropolis and still remains part of the greater whole. Now that it’s the only part above water, the Mayor and council of Brook Falls intend to move their entire operation here and carry on their business as usual…

Sadly, as always when politicians and big business want something, the rights and feelings of ordinary people don’t count for much…

Simple, breezy and chilling to the core, this tale of resistance and capitulation is made all the more effective by Wray’s cunning choice of art style and faux children’s story feel. The result is reminiscent of school workshops and protest marches supplied with stencil screens, or of street-rebel print slogans and tagging-inspired found imagery and marches of solidarity and protest.

The industrial-flavoured visuals magnificently disguise the potency of the political allegory making this a tale no tuned-in, socially aware grown up looking to make changes can afford to miss.
© 2020 Patrick Wray. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents World’s Finest volume 4


By Cary Bates, Bob Haney, Robert Kanigher, Denny O’Neil, Mike Friedrich, Curt Swan, Ross Andru, Dick Dillin, Mike Esposito & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3736-3 (TPB)

For decades Superman and Batman were quintessential superhero partners: the “World’s Finest team”. The affable champions were best buddies as well as mutually respectful colleagues, and their pairing made sound financial sense since DC’s top heroes could happily cross-pollinate and cross-sell their combined readerships.

This fourth monochrome compendium re-presents cataclysmic collaborations from the dog days of the 1960’s into the turbulent decade beyond (World’s Finest Comics #174-202, spanning March 1968 to May 1971), as shifts in America’s tastes and cultural landscape created such a hunger for more mature and socially relevant stories that even the Cape & Cowl Crusaders were affected – so much so in fact, that the partnership was temporarily suspended: sidelined so that Superman could guest-star with other icons of the DC universe.

However, after a couple of years, the relationship was revitalised and renewed with the “World’s Finest Heroes” fully restored to their bizarrely apt pre-eminence for another lengthy run until the title was cancelled in the build-up to Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986.

The increasingly grim escapades begin with ‘Secret of the Double Death-Wish!’ by Cary Bates, Pete Costanza & Jack Abel from #174 (cover-dated March 1968, so actually the last issue of 1967) wherein mysterious voyeurs seemingly kidnap the indomitable heroes and psychologically crush their spirits such that they beg for death.

Smart and devious, this conundrum was definitely old-school, but a New Year saw subtle changes as, post-Batman TV show, the industry experienced superheroes waning in favour of war, western and especially supernatural themes and genres. Thus 1968 saw radical editorial makeovers at National/DC. Edgier stories of the costumed Boy Scouts began as iconoclastic penciller Neal Adams started turning heads and making waves with his stunning covers and two spectacularly gripping Cape & Cowl capers. It began in WFC #175 with ‘The Superman-Batman Revenge Squads!’, scripted by Leo Dorfman and inked by Dick Giordano. The story details how an annual contest of wits between the crimebusting pals is infiltrated by alien and Terran criminal alliances intent on killing their foes whilst they are off guard.

Issue #176 featured beguiling thriller ‘The Superman-Batman Split!’ (Bates, Adams & Giordano). Ostensibly just another alien mystery, this twisty little gem has a surprise ending for all and guest stars Robin, Jimmy Olsen, Supergirl and Batgirl, with the artist’s hyper-dynamic realism lending an aura of credibility to the most fanciful situations, and ushering in an era of gritty veracity to replace the anodyne and frequently frivolous Costumed Dramas.

Jim Shooter, Curt Swan & Mike Esposito also edged closer towards constructive realism with #177’s ‘Duel of the Crime Kings!’ as Lex Luthor again joins forces with The Joker. This go-round the dastardly duo used time-busting technology to recruit Benedict Arnold, Baron Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Munchausen and Leonardo Da Vinci to plan crimes for them, only to then fall foul of the temporally displaced persons’ own unique agendas…

WFC #178 began a 2-part Imaginary Tale with ‘The Has-Been Superman!’ (Bates, Swan & Abel) which has the Action Ace lose his Kryptonian powers and subsequently struggle to continue his career as Batman-style masked crimebuster Nova. More determined than competent, he soon falls under the influence of criminal mastermind Mr. Socrates – a brainwashed stooge programmed to assassinate Batman…

The moody suspense saga was interrupted by #179 – a regularly scheduled, all-reprint 80-Page Giant featuring bright-&-shiny early tales from the team’s formative years – represented in this collection by its striking Adams cover – before the alternate Earth epic concludes in #180 with ‘Superman’s Perfect Crime!’ courtesy of Bates and new regular art team Ross Andru & Mike Esposito.

During the late 1950s when the company’s editors cautiously expanded the characters’ continuities, they learned that each new tale was an event which added to a nigh-sacred canon, and that what was printed was deeply important to the readers – but no “ideas man” would let all that aggregated “history” stifle a good plot situation or sales generating cover.

Thus “Imaginary Stories” were conceived as a way of exploring non-continuity plots and scenarios, devised at a time when editors knew that entertainment trumped consistency and fervently believed that every comic read was somebody’s first and – unless they were very careful – potentially their last…

Bates, also scripted #181’s ‘The Hunter and the Hunted’ wherein an impossibly powerful being from far away in space and time relentlessly pursues and then whisks away the heroes to a world where they were revered as the fathers of the race, whilst in the next issue ‘The Mad Manhunter!’ depicted a suspenseful shocker which found Batman routinely rampaging like a madman due to a curse. Naturally, what seemed was far from what actually was…

Another massive con-trick underscored #183’s Dorfman-scripted drama as apes from the future accused the Man of Steel of committing ‘Superman’s Crime of the Ages!’ and Batman and Robin had to arrest their greatest ally. In WFC #184 Bates, Swan & Abel concocted another bombastic Imaginary Tale which revealed ‘Robin’s Revenge!’, tracing the troubled teen sidekick’s progress after Batman is murdered, with Superman powerless to assuage the Boy Wonder’s growing hunger for revenge…

Robert Kanigher joined old collaborators Andru & Esposito from #185 onwards, detailing the bizarre story of the ‘The Galactic Gamblers!’ who press-ganged Superman, Batman, Robin and Jimmy to their distant world to act as living stakes and game-pieces in their gladiatorial games of chance, before taking the heroes on a time-tossed 2-part supernatural thriller.

In #186, anecdotal stories of Batman’s Colonial ancestor “Mad Anthony Wayne” prompt the heroes to travel back to the War of Independence where the Dark Knight is accused of infernal deviltry as ‘The Bat Witch!’ and sentenced to death. Of course, it’s actually the Action Ace who is possessed to become ‘The Demon Superman!’ in the follow-up before all logic and sanity are restored by exorcism and judicious force of arms…

After the cover to World’s Finest #188 – another reprint Giant – Bates returns in #189 with a (still) shocking 2-parter opening in ‘The Man with Superman’s Heart!’ wherein the Caped Kryptonian crashes from space to Earth and is pronounced Dead On Arrival. As per his wishes, many of his organs are harvested (this was 1969 and still purely speculative fiction at that time) and bequeathed to worthy recipients. When Batman refuses to accept any organic bequests, Superman’s eyes, ears, lungs, heart and hands (yes, I know… just go with it) are simply stored …until Luthor steals them to auction off to gangland’s highest bidders…

Concluding episode ‘The Final Revenge of Luthor!’ sees a quartet of crooks running wild as the transplants bestow mighty powers Batman and Robin cannot combat, but the tragedy has a logical – if rather callous – explanation as the real Man of Steel appears to save the day…

Bates, Andru & Esposito then explore ‘Execution on Krypton!’ in WFC #191, as incredible events on Earth lead Superman and Batman back to Krypton before Kal-El was born. Here he learns how his revered parents Jor-El and Lara became radicalised college lecturers, and why they were teaching their students all the subversive tricks revolutionaries needed to know…

Bob Haney joined Andru & Esposito from #192 for a dark, Cold War suspense thriller as Superman is captured by the Communist rulers of Lubania and held in ‘The Prison of No Escape!’ When Batman tries to bust him out, he too is arrested and charged with spying by sadistic Colonel Koslov, utilising brainwashing techniques to achieve ‘The Breaking of Superman and Batman!’ in the next issue. However, the vile totalitarian’s torturous treatment disguises an insidious master-plan which the World’s Finest almost fail to foil…

Popular public response to Mario Puzo’s phenomenal novel The Godfather most likely influenced Haney, Andru & Esposito’s next convoluted 2-parter. WFC #194 sees Superman and Batman undercover ‘Inside the Mafia Gang!’ and hoping to dismantle the organisation of “Big Uncle” Alonzo Scarns from within. Sadly, a head wound muddles the Gotham Gangbuster’s memory and Batman begins to believe he is actually the “Capo di Capo Tutti”, condemning Robin and Jimmy to ‘Dig Now, Die Later!’ Helplessly watching, Superman is almost relieved when the real Scarns shows up…

An era ended with #196 as ‘The Kryptonite Express!’ (Haney, Swan & George Roussos) details how a massive meteor shower bombards the US with tons of the deadly green mineral. After countless decent citizens gather up the Green K, a special train is laid on to collect it all and ship it to somewhere it can be safely disposed of. Superman is ordered to stay well away whilst Batman takes charge of the FBI operation, but they have no idea master racketeer and railway fanatic K.C. Jones has plans for the shipment and a guy on the inside…

After #197 – another all-reprint Superman/Batman Giant – a new era launches (for the entire experiment you should see World’s Finest: Guardians of Earth please link to 2021, June 3rd) as the Fastest Man Alive teams with the Man of Tomorrow. DC Editors of the 1960s generally avoided questions like who’s best/strongest/fastest for fear of upsetting a portion of their tenuous and assuredly temporary fanbase, but as the tide turned against superheroes in general and upstart Marvel began making serious inroads into their market, the notion of a definitive race between the almighty Man of Steel and Scarlet Speedster became increasingly enticing and sales-worthy.

They had raced twice before (Superman #199 and Flash #175 – August & December 1967) with the result deliberately fudged each time, but when they met for a third round a definitive conclusion was promised – but please remember it’s not about the winning, but only the taking part. As World’s Finest became a team-up vehicle for Superman, Flash again found himself in contrived competition. ‘Race to Save the Universe!’ and conclusion ‘Race to Save Time!’ (#198-199, November and December 1970, by Denny O’Neil, Dick Dillin & Joe Giella) up the stakes as the high-speed heroes are conscripted by the Guardians of the Universe to circumnavigate the cosmos at their greatest velocities thereby undoing the rampage of mysterious Anachronids: faster-than-light creatures whose pell-mell course throughout creation is unwinding time itself. Little does anybody suspect Superman’s oldest enemies are behind the entire appalling scheme…

In anniversary issue #200, Mike Friedrich, Dillin & Giella focus on brawling brothers on opposite sides of the teen college scene, abducted with unruly youth icon Robin and “Mr. Establishment” Superman to a distant planet. Here undying vampiric aliens wage eternal war on each other in ‘Prisoners of the Immortal World!’ Green Lantern then pops in for #201, contesting ‘A Prize of Peril!’ (O’Neil, Dillin & Giella) which will give either Emerald Gladiator or Man of Steel sole jurisdiction of Earth’s skies.

Batman returns for a limited engagement in #202. The final tale in this compilation, O’Neil, Dillin & Giella’s ‘Vengeance of the Tomb-Thing!’ sees archaeologists unearth something horrific in Egypt as Superman seemingly goes mad: attacking his greatest friends and allies. A superb ecological scare-story, this tale changed the Man of Tomorrow’s life forever…

These are gloriously smart, increasingly mature comic book yarns whose dazzling, timeless style informed the evolution of two media megastars, which still have the power and punch to enthral even today’s jaded seen it-all audiences. The contents of this titanic team-up tome are a veritable feast of witty, gritty, pretty thrillers packing as much punch and wonder now as they always have. Utterly entrancing adventure for fans of all ages!
© 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Guardians of the Galaxy by Brian Michael Bendis volume 1


By Brian Michael Bendis, with Neil Gaiman, Steve McNiven, Sara Pichelli, Michael Avon Oeming, Olivier Coipel, Valerio Schiti, Francesco Francavilla, Kevin Maguire & Mark Morales Ming Doyle, Michael Del Mundo, John Dell & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9400-2 (HB/Digital edition)

With the final GoTG Marvel Cinematic interpretation long done and dusted, there’s little to look forward too other than the past, but at least in this anniversary year – 55 and counting! – there are still timely collection ideal for boning up on some of those blasts from futures past…

Although heralded since its launch in the early 1960s with making superheroes more realistic, Marvel Comics never forsook its close connection with outlandish and outrageous cosmic calamity (as embodied in their pre-superhero “monster-mag” days. This iteration of space crusaders maintains that delightful “Anything Goes” attitude by revisiting an impressive relaunch – then part of the MarvelNow! group reboot – that built on the movie franchise.

The Guardians of the Galaxy were created by Arnold Drake in 1968 for try-out title Marvel Super-Heroes (#18, January 1969): a group of futuristic freedom fighters dedicated to liberating star-scattered Mankind from domination by the sinister, reptilian Brotherhood of Badoon.

Initially unsuccessful, they floated in limbo until 1974 when Steve Gerber incorporated them into Marvel Two-In-One #4-5 and Giant Size Defenders #5 following up in the monthly Defenders title (#26-29, July through November 1975), wherein assorted 20th century champions travelled a millennium into the future to ensure humanity’s liberation and survival. This in turn led to the Guardians’ own short-lived series in Marvel Presents #3-12 (February 1976 – August 1977) before cancellation left them roaming the Marvel Universe as perennial guest-stars in such cosmically-tinged titles as Thor, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One and The Avengers. Eventually – in June 1990 – they secured a relatively successful series (#62 issues, annuals and spin-off miniseries until July 1995) before cancellation again claimed them.

This isn’t them; this is another bunch…

In 2006 a massive crossover involved most of Marvel’s 21st century space specialists in a spectacular “Annihilation” Event, leading writing team Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning to reconfigure the Guardians concept for modern times and tastes. Among the stalwarts in play were Silver Surfer, Galactus, Firelord (and other previous heralds of the world-eater), Moondragon, Quasar, Star-Lord, Thanos, Super-Skrull, Tana Nile, Gamora, Ronan the Accuser, Nova, Drax the Destroyer, a Watcher and host of alien civilisations such as the Kree, Skrulls, Xandarians, Shi’ar et al.: all falling before a invasion of rapacious negative zone bugs and beasties unleashed by insectoid horror Annihilus. The event spawned a number of specials, miniseries and new titles (subsequently collected in three volumes plus a Classics compilation that reprinted key appearances of a number of the saga’s major players), and inevitably led to a follow-up event…

Sequel Annihilation: Conquest expanded the cast, adding Adam Warlock, The Inhumans, talking dog Cosmo, Kang the Conqueror, Vance Astro/Major Victory, Maelstrom, Jack Flag, Blastaar, The Magus, Galactic Warrior Bug (from 1970’s sensation Micronauts), the current Captain Universe (ditto), Shi’ar berserker Deathcry, Celestial Madonna Mantis, anamorphic adventurer Rocket Raccoon and gloriously whacky “Kirby Kritter” Groot, a walking killer tree and one-time “Monarch of Planet X”, amongst others…

I’ve covered part of that cataclysmic clash and will get to the rest one day: suffice to say that by the conclusion of the assorted Annihilations a new pan-species Guardian group had appointed itself to defend civilisations and prevent any such wars from ever happening again.

This isn’t them either… not exactly…

A few years later and with many more cosmic crises – such as a devastating War of Kings – averted, the remnants of those many Sentinels of the Stars are here getting the band back together, still determined to make the universe a safe place.

Thus this impressive and readily accessible volume (collecting Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers #1 Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1 & volume 2, #1-10 from February 2013 – January 2014#1-10) provides a handy jumping-on point, recapitulating the bare essentials before launching into an immensely absorbing interstellar romp tied inextricably into mainstream Marvel continuity.

Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven, John Dell & Justin Ponsor set the ball rolling with the secret origin of Star-Lord, revealing how 30 years ago warrior Prince J’Son of the interstellar empire of Spartax was shot down over Colorado and had a brief fling with solitary Earther Meredith Quill. Despite his desire to remain in idyllic isolation, duty called J’Son back to battle and he left, leaving behind an unsuspected son and a unique weapon…

A decade later, the troubled boy saw his mother assassinated by alien lizard men determined on eradicating the legacy of Spartax. Peter vengefully slaughtered the Badoon with Meredith’s shotgun, before his home was explosively destroyed by a flying saucer. The orphan awoke in hospital, his only possession a “toy” ray-gun his mother had hidden from him his entire life…

Years later his destiny found him, and the half-breed scion of Spartax became Star-Lord. Rejecting both Earth and his father – now king of his distant corner of creation – Quill chose freedom, the pursuit of justice and the comradeship of disreputable aliens. The origin story concludes with Peter welcoming avid listener and neophyte spacer Tony Stark into his loose-knit fellowship of Guardians…

The series proper – by Bendis, Steve McNiven, John Dell & Justin Ponsor – opens with Peter Quill diplomatically ambushed in a seedy dive by his long-lost dad. J’Son rules Spartax but the rift between him and the Star-Lord is wide and deep and impassable. Dear old dad also has a message: he has entered into a compact with the other major powers and principalities of the universe and declared Earth off limits and quarantined from all extraterrestrial contact. He/they will act immediately to stop any alien individual or species from contaminating it.

That especially means his own wayward son…

A little later, Iron Man is playing with and in his new space armour when a Badoon starship attacks Earth. Overmatched, Stark is unexpectedly reinforced by Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket Raccoon and Groot who devastate the monolithic vessel – but not before fighter ships break atmosphere and bombard London.

With the Home Counties under attack despite The Council of Galactic Empires’ edicts – and apparently by one of the signatory civilisations – the Guardians go to work ending the Badoon, with Peter distracted in trying to divine his duplicitous father’s actual intent.

Meanwhile, in the Negative Zone J’Son is conferring virtually with his opposite numbers from the Kree, Shi’ar, Brood, Badoon and Asgard, with a new Annihilus presiding over the fractious meeting, and indeed dirty work and dirty tricks are afoot…

In blistering battles the Badoon are beaten, but no sooner do the Guardians pause for breath than a star fleet supposedly blockading Earth arrests them for breaking the embargo. Imprisoned on Spartax, Quill and Co eventually bust out and publicly declare war on J’Son, sowing seeds of a future rebellion – but even they are unaware that the devious and double-dealing king is also being played for a sucker…

After Stark scores an amatory epic fail with Gamora (a wry episode which delivers plenty of laughs for his new comrades, who can’t let it lie for the rest of the book), she storms out to cool off and is ambushed by an alien bounty hunter. Despite her formidable prowess Gamora is only saved by the arrival of the Guardians – who have just finished trashing a bar and the squad of Spartax soldiers who walked in on their drunken carousing…

With no information on who else now wants them dead, the disparate legion of the lost head back into space and a fateful dalliance with destiny…

Still being crushingly snubbed by Gamora, Stark occupies himself learning new ways to repair his comparatively primitive armour under the guidance of an aggravatingly disparaging racoon whilst Quill takes a secret meeting in one of the universe’s many unsavoury and unwelcoming armpits.

Star-Lord’s consultation with former ally Mantis about a bizarre episode (wherein he seemed to experience an inexplicable and debilitating chronal mind quake) provides no answers and he is forced to go ask the last person in creation he ever wanted to see again…

Meanwhile, Stark and the remaining Guardians spot an unidentifiable lifeform approaching Earth and rush to incept her before she can do any damage. They reason they can’t identify her is because she’s from another universe and time. Angela (created by Neil Gaiman for Spawn #9 in 1993 and, after much legal foofaraw, brought under Marvel’s auspices in Age of Ultron) is lost and baffled: approaching a world her people have always considered a fairy tale or religious myth when still-disgruntled Gamora smashes her into the moon, grateful for an excuse to work off her pent-up hostilities. The satellite’s oldest inhabitant – Uatu the Watcher – reels from the conflict. Not because of its savage intensity but because he knows what Angela is and how she simply cannot be present in this Reality…

Quill however is pumping mad Titan Thanos for information on his own time troubles and suddenly realises he has just poked the biggest bear in existence. The Death-Lover declares humanity’s perpetual tampering with the time-stream has broken the universe and brought our pathetic mud-ball to the attention of races and powers that won’t let Mankind muck up Reality any longer…

Rushing back to his birthworld, Star-Lord finds his team faring very badly against mystery menace Angela and pitches in. When she is finally, spectacularly subdued, Uatu appears and proffers dire warnings for all Reality as – with uncharacteristic diplomacy – Quill coaxes the enigmatic intruder into relating her story. Apparently she’s a “Hunting Angel” from somewhere called Heven, fallen through a gaping crack in Everything That Is.

Drawn to Earth – a place her race reveres but considers a beautiful fiction – she was ambushed by Gamora, who cannot believe Star-Lord’s next move: freeing Angela and, after personally conducting her on a tour of the world, letting her go free…

At this time almost all of Marvel’s titles were building to a big Avengers-centric crossover event Infinity, and the next two issues (#8-9, stunningly illustrated by Francesco Francavilla) form the Guardians’ contribution to the epic, in which a double crisis afflicts our particular portion of space. As Thanos invades Earth, an ancient array of races from far beyond attack those stellar empires still recovering from the Annihilation outrages and War of Kings. It’s nothing personal: this invading alien Armada is tasked with eradicating every Earth in every dimension and the Kree, Skrulls, Badoon, Galadorians, Spartax, Shi’ar and all the rest are simply guilty of associating with humans…

With all the Avengers called into space to fight beside their former enemies, Earth is helpless when enemy E.T.’s overwhelm The Peak (the planet’s orbital defence citadel) and Abigail Brand – Director of the Sentient World Observation & Response Department – sends a desperate distress call to Star-Lord.

His affirmative answer enrages Gamora, already bristling from the knowledge that Quill has been fraternising with despised Thanos. She quits – and with Iron Man also gone, Star-Lord, Groot and Rocket sneakily infiltrate the station (Drax doesn’t do unobtrusive) but quickly fall foul of the superior forces. Only the sudden return of Angela saves the day and when Gamora and Drax join the fray the Guardians are magnificently triumphant… but at a terrible cost…

Regular programming ends with a far lighter ‘Girls Night Out-rageous’ (#10, illustrated by Kevin Maguire) as Gamora and Angela enjoy a blistering bonding session and action-comedy moment whilst visiting Badoon homeworld Moord, freeing the reptilians’ vast contingent of enslaved races and accidentally uncovering an impossible connection between the scurvy raider race and Angela’s dimensionally displaced people…

This initial volume closes with more delving into formative events as seen in anthological Tomorrow’s Avengers #1 (Bendis, individually illustrated by Michael Avon Oeming, Ming Doyle & Michael Del Mundo), revealing how Quill tracked down old friends and prospective members for his new team, detailing recent exploits of at-large and unfocused stalwarts Drax, decidedly odd couple Rocket & Groot and, of course, the Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy…

The former bane of Thanos, Drax is idling away the days in pointless fighting when Star-Lord comes calling, whilst Groot at least is still defending the weak from the wicked in a classy farmers-vs.-bandits fable.

The unique, blaster-toting peril-loving Procyonidae (look it up) was mouthing off in a bar, drinking and fighting as usual when he found tantalising evidence that there was at least one other Rocket Raccoon at large in the universe, whilst gorgeous Gamora just never stopped. She was still slaughtering her adopted dad’s minions when Star-Lord made his offer…

Bright, breezy, bombastic and immensely enjoyable, these action-packed fun and frolic fables also include a beautiful and massive gallery of covers and variants – including a lovely movie-art landscape/wraparound by Charlie Wen, and a Lego variant by Leonel Castellani. Contributors comprise McNiven, Dell & Ponsor, Doyle, Ed McGuiness, Joe Quesada, Adi Granov, Mark Brooks, Milo Manara, Terry Dodson, Mike Deodato Jr., Phil Jimenez, Mike Perkins, Joe Madureira, Skottie Young, Pichelli & Ponsor, J. Scott Campbell, Julian Totino Tedesco, Brandon Peterson, Francavilla, John Tyler Christopher, Maguire, Paul Renaud, Paolo Manuel Rivera, Adam Kubert and more.
© 2020 MARVEL.

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Beyond Mars – The Complete Series 1952-1955


By Jack Williamson & Lee Elias (IDW Publishing)
ISBNs: 978-1-631404-35-1 (HB/Digital edition)

The 1950s saw the last great flourish of the American newspaper strip. Invented and always used as a way to boost circulation and encourage consumer loyalty, the inexorable rise of television and spiralling costs of publishing gradually ate away at all but the most popular features as the decade ended. However, the post-war years saw a final, valiant, burst of creativity and variety as syndicates looked for ways to recapture popular attention and editors sought ways to maximise every fraction of a page-inch for paying ads, rather than fritter away column inches on expensive cost-centres. No matter how well produced, imaginative or entertaining, if strips couldn’t increase sales, they weren’t welcome…

The decade also saw fantastic social change as commercial boomtimes and technological progress created a new type of visionary consumer – one fired up by the realization that America was Top Dog in the world.

The optimistic escapism offered by the stars above led to a reawakening in the science fiction genre, with a basic introduction for the hoi-polloi offered by the television industry through such pioneering (if clunky) programmes as Tom Corbett, Space Cadet or Captain Video, cinema serials like King of the Rocket Men and major movies from visionaries like Robert Wise (Day the Earth Stood Still) and George Pal (Destination Moon, When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds and others).

Most importantly, for kids of all ages, conceptual fancies were being tickled by a host of fantastic comic books ranging from the blackly satirical Weird Science Fantasy to affably welcoming, openly enthusiastic and optimistic Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space. In the gradually expiring pulp magazines, master imagineers like Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, Sturgeon, Dick, Bester and Farmer were transforming the genre from youthful melodrama into a highly philosophical art form…

With Flying Saucers in the skies and headlines, Reds under every Bed and refreshing adventure in mind, the multifarious Worlds of Tomorrow were common currency and newspapers wanted in on the phenomenon. Established strip features such as Buck Rogers, Brick Bradford and Flash Gordon were no longer enough and editors demanded bold new visions to draw in a wider public, not just those steady fans who already bought papers for their favourite futurians.

John Stewart “Jack” Williamson was one of the first superstars of American science fiction writing, a rurally raised, self-taught author with more than 18 short story collections, 50 books, and even volumes of criticism and non-fiction to his much-lauded name. Arizona-born in 1908, he was reared in Texas and sold his first story to Amazing Stories in 1928. He created a number of legendary serials such as the Legion of Space, The Humanoids and Legion of Time. Williamson is credited by the OED with inventing the terms and concepts of “terraforming” and “genetic engineering” and was one of the first literary investigators of anti-matter with his Seetee novels.

“See Tee” or “Contra Terrene Matter” is also at the heart of the strip under discussion here, completely collected in a magnificent full colour volume available in positive matter Hardback and the ethereal pulses technique we dub digital publication.

Following a damning newspaper review of Seetee Ship – which claimed the book was only marginally better than a comic strip – Williamson’s second novel in that sequence moved the editor of a rival paper to engage Williamson and artist Lee Elias to produce a Sunday page based in the same universe as the books.

Leopold Elias was born in England in 1920, but grew up in the USA after the family emigrated in 1926. He studied at the Cooper Union and Art Students League of New York before beginning his professional comics illustration career at Fiction House in 1943. He worked on Captain Wings and latterly western classic Firehair. His sleek, Milt Caniff-inspired art was highly prized by numerous publishers, and Elias contributed to the lustre of The Flash, Green Lantern, Sub-Mariner, Terry and the Pirates and, most notably, the glamourous Black Cat series at Harvey Comics.

Elias briefly left the funnybook arena in the early 1950s after his art was singled out by anti-comic book zealot Dr. Fredric Wertham. He traded up to the more prestigious newspaper strips, ghosting Al Capp’s Li’l Abner before landing the job of bringing Beyond Mars to life. He returned to comic books after the strip’s demise, becoming a DC mainstay in the 1960s, Marvel in the 1970s and Warren in the 1980s. He died in 1998, having spent his final years teaching at the School of Visual Arts and the Kubert School.

The glorious meeting of minds is preceded here by an effusive and informative Introduction from Bruce Canwell –‘When “Retro” Was Followed by “Rocket” – packed with cover art, original pages and illustrations setting the scene and sharing lost secrets of the strips genesis and Armageddon.

With Dick Tracy strip maestro Chester Gould as adviser at the start, Beyond Mars ran exclusively and in full colour in the New York Daily News every Sunday from February 17th 1952 to May 13th 1955: a glorious high-tech, high-adventure romp based on and around Brooklyn Rock in 2191 AD. This bastion was a commercial space station bored into one of the rocky chunks drifting in the asteroid belt “Beyond Mars” – an ideal rough-&-tumble story venue on the ultimate frontier of human experience.

Although as the series progressed, a progression of inspired extraterrestrial sidekicks and svelte, sultry, sexy women beloved of the era’s movies increasingly stole the show, but the notional star is Spatial Engineer Mike Flint, an independent charter-pilot based on the rock. The first tale begins with Flint selling his services to plucky Becky Starke who has come to the furthest edge of civilisation in search of her missing father. A student of human nature, she cloaks that motivation as a quest for a city-sized, solid diamond asteroid floating in the deadly “Meteor Drift”…

Soon Mike and his lisping ophidian Venusian partner Tham Thmith are contending with Brooklyn Rock’s crime boss Frosty Karth: a fantastic raider dubbed The Black Martian, a super-criminal named Cobra and even more unearthly menaces in a stirring tale of interplanetary drug dealers, lost cities and dead civilisations. There’s even a fantastic mutation in the resilient form of a semi-feral Terran boy who can breathe vacuum and rides deep space on a meteor!

With that tale barely concluded the crew, including that rambunctious space boy Jimikin, plunge deep into another mystery: Brooklyn Rock has gone missing!

Tough guy Flint has no time to grieve for the family and friends left behind as he intercepts an inbound star-liner and discovers both an old flame and a smooth-talking thug bound for the now-missing space station. One of them knows where it went…

Unknown to even this mastermind, the Rock – stolen by pirates – is out of control and drifting to ultimate destruction in a debris field, but no sooner is that crisis averted than the heroes are entangled in a “First Contact” situation with an ancient alien from beyond Known Space. Perhaps it might actually be more correctly deemed becoming snared by the devilish devices he/she/it left running? Ultimately, Mike, Tham, Jimikin and curvaceous Xeno-archaeologist Victoria Snow narrowly escape alien vivisection from robotic relics before the tragic, inevitable conclusion…

Snow’s brother Blackie is a fast-talking ne’er-do-well, and when he shows up, Karth takes the opportunity to settle some old scores, leading Flint into a deadly trap on Ceres in a slick saga of genetic manipulation, eugenic supermen and mega-wealth. Meanwhile on an interplanetary liner, a new cast member “resurfaces” in the shape of crusty coot/Mercurian ore prospector Fireproof Jones, just in time to help Flint and Sam mine their newfound riches.

As ever, Karth is looking to make trouble for the lads but he wins some for himself when his young daughter suddenly turns up on the Rock, accompanied by gold-digging Pamela Prim. Suddenly, murderous raider Black Martian returns to plague the honest pioneers of the Brooklyn frontier…

Glamour model Trish O’Keefe causes a completely different kind of trouble when she lands, looking for her fiancé. Naturally, Tack McTeak isn’t the humble space-doctor he claims to be but a cerebrally augmented criminal mastermind, with plans to snatch the biggest prize in space inevitably leading to a sequence of stunning thrills and astonishing action.

Focus switches to Earth as the cast visit “civilisation” and find it far from hospitable, with the chance to battle manufactured monsters and mysterious Dr. Moray on his private tropical island something of a welcome – if mixed – blessing…

By this time, the writing must have been on the wall, as the strip had been reduced to a half page per week. Even so, the creators clearly decided to go out in style. Sheer bravura spectacle was magnificently ramped up and all the tools of the sci fi world were utilized to ensure the strip ended with a bang. Moray’s plans are catastrophically realised when the villain employs an anti-gravity bomb to steal Manhattan; turning it into a deadly Sword of Damocles in the sky…

The series abruptly ended when the New York Daily News changed its editorial policy: dropping all comics from its pages. The decision was clearly unexpected, as the saga finished satisfactorily if quite abruptly on Sunday 13th March 1955.

Beyond Mars is a breathtaking lost gem from two master craftsmen successfully blending the wonders of science and the rollicking thrills of Westerns with broad, light-hearted humour to produce a mind-boggling, eye-popping, exuberantly wholesome family space-opera the likes of which wouldn’t be seen again until Star Wars put fun back into futuristic fiction.

Thankfully, after years of frustrated agitation by fans, the entire saga is available in this fabulous oversized (244 x 307 mm) edition no lover of stars & strife can afford to be without.
© 2015 Tribune Content Agency LLC. All rights reserved. Introduction © 2015 Bruce Canwell.

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Wonder Woman: A Celebration of 75 Years


By William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter, Robert Kanigher, Dennis O’Neil, Roy Thomas, Greg Potter, George Pérez, William Messner-Loebs, Eric Luke, Phil Jimenez, Greg Rucka, Darwyn Cooke, Brian Azzarello, Gail Simone, Amy Chu, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, Mike Sekowsky, Don Heck, Gene Colan, Jill Thompson, Mike Deodato Jr., Yanick Paquette, Matt Clark, Drew Johnson, J. Bone, Cliff Chiang, Ethan Van Sciver, Bernard Chang & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-6512-0 (HB/Digital edition)

Wonder Woman is the very acme of female icons. Since her debut in 1941 she has grown to permeate every aspect of global consciousness and become not only a paradigm of comics’ very fabric but also a symbol to women everywhere. Whatever era you choose, the Amazing Amazon epitomises the eternal balance between Brains & Brawn and, over those decades, has become one of that rarefied pantheon of literary creations to achieve meta-reality.

The Princess of Paradise Island originally debuted as a special feature in All Star Comics #8, conceived by psychologist and polygraph pioneer William Moulton Marston and illustrated by Harry G. Peter, in a calculated attempt to offer girls a positive and forceful role model and, on forward-thinking Editor M.C. Gaines’ part, to sell more funnybooks to girls. Immediately catapulted into her own series and cover-spot of new anthology Sensation Comics one month later, she was an instant hit. Wonder Woman won an eponymous supplemental title a few months later, cover-dated summer 1942, enabling the Star-Spangled Siren to weather the vicissitudes of the notoriously transient comic book marketplace and survive the end of the Golden Age of costumed heroes beside Superman, Superboy, Batman and a few lucky hangers-on who inhabited the backs of their titles.

This stunning compilation – part of a dedicated series introducing and exploiting the historical and cultural pedigree of venerable DC icons – offers a sequence of sublime snapshots detailing how Diana of the Amazons evolved and thrived in worlds and times where women were generally regarded as second class, second rate, painfully functional and strictly ornamental, collects material from All-Star Comics #8, Sensation Comics #1, Wonder Woman (volume 1) #7, 28, 99, 107, 179, 204, 288, Wonder Woman (vol. 2) #1, 64, 93, 142, 177, 195, 600, Wonder Woman (vol. 3) #0, Justice League: New Frontier Special #1, Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #1 & 7 – cumulatively covering July 1940 to November 2012.

The groundbreaking appearances are preceded by a brief critical analysis of significant stages in her development, beginning with Part I: The Amazon 1941-1957 which details the events and thinking which led to her creation and early blockbusting dominance of Man’s Boy’s World…

‘Introducing Wonder Woman/(Wonder Woman Comes to America)’ originated in All-Star Comics #8, (December 1941) and Sensation Comics #1 (January 1942) respectively, revealing how, once upon a time on a hidden island of immortal super-women, US Army Intelligence aviator Steve Trevor crashes to Earth. Near death, he is nursed back to health by young, impressionable Princess Diana. Fearful of her besotted child’s growing obsession with the creature from a long-forgotten and madly violent world, Diana’s mother Queen Hippolyte reveals the hidden history of the Amazons: how they were seduced and betrayed by men but rescued by the goddess Aphrodite on condition that they forever isolate themselves from the mortal world and devote their eternal lives to becoming ideal, perfect creatures.

However, when Trevor explains the perfidious spy plot which accidentally brought him to the Island enclave and with the planet in crisis, goddesses Athena and Aphrodite order Hippolyte to send an Amazon back with the American to fight for global freedom and liberty. The Queen declares an open contest to find the best candidate and, although forbidden to compete, young closeted, cosseted Diana clandestinely overcomes all other candidates to become their emissary.

Accepting the will of the gods, the worried mother outfits Diana in the guise of Wonder Woman and sends her out to Man’s World armed with an arsenal of super-scientific and magical weapons…

The Perfect Princess gained her own series and cover-spot in new anthology title Sensation Comics a month later, with the story continuing where the introduction had left off. ‘Wonder Woman Comes to America’ sees the eager immigrant returning the recuperating Trevor to the modern World before trouncing a gang of bank robbers and briefly falling in with a show business swindler. The major innovation was her buying the identity of lovelorn Army nurse Diana Prince, elegantly allowing the Amazon to be close to Steve whilst enabling the heartsick medic to join her fiancé in South America. Even with all that going on, there was still room for Wonder Woman and Captain Trevor to bust up a spy ring attempting to use poison gas on a Draft induction centre. Typically, Steve breaks his leg and ends up in hospital again, where “Nurse Prince” can look after him…

The new Diana soon gained a position with Army Intelligence as secretary to General Darnell, further ensuring she would always be able to watch over her beloved. She little suspected that, although shallow Steve only had eyes for the dazzling Amazon superwoman, the General had fallen for the mousy but supremely competent Lieutenant Prince…

As previously mentioned, the Amazing Amazon was a huge and ever-growing hit, quickly gaining her own title in late Spring (cover-dated Summer 1942). The comic frequently innovated with full-length stories, and here ‘America’s Wonder Women of Tomorrow’ (Wonder Woman volume 1 #7, Winter 1943) offers an optimistic view of the future in an extract of a fantastic fantasy tale wherein America in 3000 AD is revealed as a true paradise.

Ruled by a very familiar Lady President, the nation enjoys a miracle supplement which has extended longevity to such an extent that Steve, Etta Candy and all Diana’s friends are still thriving. Sadly, some old male throwbacks still pine for the days when women were subservient, meaning there’s still much work for the Amazing Amazon to do. With a wry but wholesome sex war brewing (and no bears available), faithful Steve goes undercover with the rebel forces and uncovers a further startling threat…

As the Golden Age drew to a close and superheroes began to wane, Wonder Woman #28 (April 1948) debuted ‘Villainy Incorporated!’ in an epic-length tale of revenge wherein eight of her greatest enemies – Queen Clea, Hypnota, Byrna Brilyant, the Blue Snowman, Giganta, Doctor Poison, Eviless, Zara, Priestess of the Crimson Flame and The Cheetah – unite to ensure her destruction and escape from Amazonian mind-bending gulag Transformation Island, where they were being rehabilitated…

Whilst costumed colleagues foundered, Wonder Woman soldiered on well into the Silver Age, benefitting from constant revisionism under the auspices of Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, who re-energised her for the Silver Age renaissance and beyond: a troubled period encapsulated in the briefing notes for Part II: The Princess 1958-1986…

Using the pen-name Charles Moulton, Marston had scripted all Diana’s adventures until his death in 1947, whereupon after a period when his assistant Joye Hummel wrote the stories, Kanigher took over the writer’s role. H. G. Peter soldiered on with his unique artistic contribution until he passed away in 1958. In April of that year Wonder Woman #97 was his last hurrah and truly the end of an era.

With the exception of DC’s Trinity (plus a few then-innocuous back-up features like Green Arrow and Aquaman), superheroes all but vanished by the early 1950s, replaced by mostly mortal champions in a deluge of anthologised genre titles. Everything changed again after Showcase #4 rekindled public interest in costumed crimebusters with a new iteration of The Flash in 1956. From that moment fanciful floodgates opened wide once more, and whilst reinventing Golden Age Greats such as Green Lantern, The Atom and Hawkman, National /DC methodically updated those venerable veteran survivors who had weathered the backlash. None more so than the ever-resilient Wonder Woman…

As writer/editor Kanigher tweaked or reinvented much of the original mythos, tinkering with her origins and unleashing Diana on an unsuspecting world in a fanciful blend of girlish whimsy, rampant sexism, strange romance, alien invasion, monster-mashing and utterly surreal (some say-stream-of-consciousness) storytelling. This was at a time when all DC’s newly revived, revised or reinvented costumed champions were getting together and teaming up at the drop of a hat – as indeed was the Princess of Power in Justice League of America. However, on the pages of her own title a timeless, isolated fantasy universe was carrying on much as it always had.

Wonder Woman #99 (volume 1, July 1958) heralded a new start and introduction of the Hellenic Heroine’s newly revitalised covert cover: Air Force Intelligence Lieutenant Diana Prince, launching a decade of tales with Steve perpetually attempting to uncover her identity and make the most powerful woman alive his blushing bride, whilst the flashily bespectacled glorified secretary stood exasperated and ignored beside him. ‘Top Secret’ sees Steve trying to trick Diana into marriage – something the creep tried a lot back then – by rigging a bet with her. Of course, the infinitely patient Princess outsmarts him yet again…

Although not included here, WW #105 had introduced Wonder Girl: revealing how centuries ago the gods and goddesses of Olympus bestowed unique powers on Hippolyta’s daughter and how even as a mere teenager indomitable Diana had brought the Amazons to Paradise Island. Continuity, let alone consistency or rationality, were never as important to Kanigher as a strong story or breathtaking visuals and that eclectic odyssey – although a great yarn – simply annoyed the heck out of many fans; but not as much as the junior Amazon would in years to come…

The teen queen kept popping up and here ‘Wonder Woman – Amazon Teen-Ager!’ (#107, July 1959) sees the youngster wallowing in a new, largely unwanted romantic interest as mer-boy Ronno perpetually gets in the way of her quest to win herself a superhero costume…

As the 1960s progressed, Wonder Woman looked tired and increasingly out of step with the rest of the company’s gradually gelling – ultimately cohesively shared – continuity but, by the decade’s close, a radical overhaul of Diana Prince was on the cards.

In 1968 superhero comics were once again in decline and publishers were looking for ways to stay profitable – or even just in business – as audience tastes and American society evolved. Back then, with the entire industry dependent on newsstand sales, if you weren’t popular, you died. Handing over the hoary, venerable and increasingly moribund title to Editor Jack Miller and Mike Sekowsky, the bosses sat back and waited for their eventual failure, and prepared to cancel the only female superhero in the marketplace…

Sekowsky’s unique visualisation of the Justice League of America had greatly contributed to the title’s overwhelming success, and at this time he was stretching himself with a number of experimental projects, focussed on the teen and youth-markets. Tapping into the teen zeitgeist with the Easy Rider styled drama Jason’s Quest proved ultimately unsuccessful, but with Metal Men and hopelessly hidebound Wonder Woman, he had much greater impact. Sekowsky ultimately worked the same magic with far greater success for Supergirl in Adventure Comics (another epic and intriguing run of tales long overdue a curated compilation).

With relatively untried scripter Denny O’Neil on board for the first four tales, #179 heralded huge changes as ‘Wonder Woman’s Last Battle’ (December 1968, with Dick Giordano inking) saw the immortal Amazons of Paradise Island forced to abandon our dimensional plane. They took with them all their magic – including all Diana’s astounding gadgets and weapons like the Invisible Plane and Golden Lasso – and ultimately even her mighty powers. Despite all that, her love for Steve compelled her to remain on Earth. Effectively becoming her own secret identity of Diana Prince, the now-mortal champion resolved to fight injustice as a human would…

Sekowsky’s root & branch overhaul offered a new kind of Wonder Woman (and can be seen in a magical quartet of collections entitled Diana Prince: Wonder Woman) but, as always, fashion and reader response ruled and in a few years, with no fanfare or warning, everything that had happened since Wonder Woman lost her powers was unwritten.

Her mythical origins were revised and re-established as she abruptly returned to a world of immortals, gods, mythical monster and supervillains. There was even a new nemesis: an African/Greek/American half-sister named Nubia who debuted in ‘The Second Life of the Original Wonder Woman’ (Wonder Woman #204, February 1973, by Kanigher, Don Heck & Vince Colletta) which delivers the murder of Diana’s martial arts mentor I Ching as prelude to Diana being restored to her former glory by the returned and restored Amazons on Paradise Island…

Such an abrupt reversal had tongues wagging and heads spinning in fan circles. Had the series offended some shady “higher-ups” who didn’t want controversy or a shake-up of the status quo?

Probably not.

Sales were never great even on the Sekowsky run and despite strident public protests about depowering a strong woman from feminists like Gloria Steinem, the most rational and realistic reason is probably Television money. The Amazon had been optioned as a series since the days of the Batman TV show in 1967, and by this time (1973) production work had begun on the 1974 pilot featuring Cathy Lee Crosby. An abrupt return to the character most viewers would be familiar with from their own childhoods seems perfectly logical to me…

By the time Lynda Carter made the concept work in 1975 by going back to ancient basics, Wonder Woman was once again “Stronger than Hercules, Swifter than Mercury and More Beautiful than Aphrodite”…

Eventually however – after the TV-inspired sales boost ended with the show’s cancellation – the comic slumped into another decline, leading to another revamp.

Notionally celebrating the beginning of her fifth decade of continuous publication, Wonder Woman #288, (February 1982) saw Roy Thomas. Gene Colan & Romeo Tanghal take over, rededicating the Amazon to fighting for Love, Peace, Justice and Liberty in ‘Swan Song!’

The story features the creation by war god Mars of new villain Silver Swan – transformed from an ugly, spiteful ballerina into a radiant, spiteful flying harridan – whilst the biggest visible change was replacing the stylised eagle on Diana’s bustier with a double “W”, signifying her allegiance to women’s action group The Wonder Woman Foundation.

The Silver Age had utterly revolutionised a flagging medium, bringing a modicum of sophistication to a returning and evolving sub-genre of masked mystery men. However, after decades of cosy wonderment, Crisis on Infinite Earths transformed all of DC’s interconnected Universe, leading to a truly reimagined Wonder Woman with a different history and character as discussed and then displayed in Part III: The Ambassador 1986-2010…

Wonder Woman volume 2 #1 debuted with a February 1987 cover-date. Crafted by Greg Potter, George Pérez & Bruce Patterson, ‘The Princess and the Power’ reveals how Amazons are actually reincarnated souls of women murdered by men throughout primordial times. Given potent new form by female Hellenic gods, they thrived in a segregated city of aloof, indomitable women until war god Ares orchestrated their downfall via his demigod dupe Herakles.

Abused, subjugated and despondent, the Amazons were rescued by their guardian goddesses in return for eternal penance in isolation on hidden island Themyscira. Into that paradise Diana is born: another murdered soul, imbued with life in an infant body made from clay. She will excel in every endeavour and become the Wonder Woman…

On relocating to the outer world, Diana becomes an inspirational figure and global hero constantly trying to integrate and understand the madness of “Patriarch’s World”…

In ‘The Heart of the City’ (Wonder Woman vol. 2 #64, July 1992) Bill Messner-Loebs, Jill Thompson & Denis Rodier focus on that dilemma as Diana attempts to recover a kidnapped child used as leverage by gangsters while saving a weary, outraged but righteous cop from confusing vengeance with justice…

That struggle for understanding – and sales – led to the Princess surrendering her right to the role of Wonder Woman after losing a duel with fellow Amazon Artemis. The aftermath seen in ‘Violent Beginnings’ (Wonder Woman #93, January 1995 by Messner-Loebs & Mike Deodato Jr.) reveals how her brutal, hard-line replacement takes over her ambassadorial role in Patriarch’s World with the defeated but undaunted predecessor keeping watchful eyes on the brutal warrior in her clothes…

These years are categorised by a constant search for relevance and new direction, and in ‘The Bearing of the Soul’ (WW #142 March 1999 by Eric Luke, Yanick Paquette, Matt Clark, Bob McCloud & Doug Hazlewood) the Amazon, supplemented with incredible alien technology, declares herself a global peacekeeper, dashing to flashpoints and conflict zones to end wars and save lives, irrespective of others’ political or moral objections…

From three years later, ‘Paradise Found’ (#177, 2002, by Phil Jimenez & Andy Lanning) sees another course change as Themyscira is rebuilt following war between gods and offered to the outer world as an exemplar of Paradise on Earth and the oldest and youngest of its sometimes-united nations…

The often-hilarious downsides of ‘The Mission’ (WW #195, 2003) are explored by Greg Rucka, Drew Johnson & Ray Snyder and reiterated in a wry out-of-world vignette by Darwyn Cooke & J. Bone, teaming the Diana of 1962 with equally-pioneering female crimefighter Black Canary. ‘The Mother of the Movement’ (Justice League: New Frontier Special #1, 2008) sees the occasional sister-act confront a magazine owner and aspiring nightclub impresario over the way he makes his staff dress up like rabbits. Moreover, history fans, one of those indentured luscious lepines is an undercover reporter…

Many such minor tweaks in her continuity and adjustments to the continuity accommodated different creators’ tenures until 2011, when DC rebooted their entire comics line again and Wonder Woman once more underwent a drastic, fan-infuriating root-&-branch refit as represented here in Part IV: The Warrior 2012-2014. Possibly to mitigate the fallout, DC okayed a number of fall-back options such as the beguiling collected package under review today…

After a full year of myth-busting stories, ‘Lair of the Minotaur’ was the subject of Wonder Woman vol. 4 #0, (November 2012) wherein Brian Azzarello & Cliff Chiang puckishly explored a different history as a teenaged Princess Diana underwent trials and training and fell under the sway of a sinister god…

As an iconic figure – and to address the big changes cited above – a number of guest creators were invited to celebrate their take on the Amazon in an out-of-continuity series, and from Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #1, (2014) Gail Simone & Ethan Van Scriver’s ‘Gothamazon’ deliciously details how a mythologically militaristic Wonder Woman uncompromisingly and permanently cleans up Batman’s benighted home when the Gotham Guardians are taken out of play, whilst in Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #7, Amy Chu & Bernard Chang go out-of-world (and into ours?) to celebrate the inspirational nature of the concept of Wonder Woman.

‘Rescue Angel’ sees soldiers pinned down in Afghanistan saved by Lt. Angel Santiago. The wounded woman warrior claims her outstanding actions under fire are the result of a vision from her favourite and most-beloved comic book character…

This magical and magnificent commemoration is packed with eye-catching covers from the stories but also from unfeatured tales, by the likes of H.G. Peter, Irwin Hasen & Bernard Sachs, Sekowsky, Dick Giordano, Heck, Gene Colan, Pérez, Brian Bolland, Deodato Jr., Adam Hughes, Chiang, Van Sciver, Shane Davis & Michelle Delecki, Ivan Reis & Oclair Albert, Nicola Scott & Francis Manapul.

Wonder Woman is a primal figure of fiction and global symbol, and set to remain one. This compilation might not be all of her best material – or even up to date – but it is a solid representation of what gave her such fame and would grace any fan’s collection.
© 1941, 1942, 1943, 1948, 1958, 1959, 1968, 1973, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection volume 1


By Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird, Steve Lavigne & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-007-8 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-62302-298-3

FORTY(!!!) years ago this month an indie comic by a pair of cannily adroit wannabe creators began making waves and soon sparked a revolution. The guys were Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird and their work did remarkably well, interesting companies outside our traditionally cautious insular industry and garnering a few merchandising deals. Thanks to TTE (the Telescoping Time Effect that renders the passage of many years between adulthood and the grave to the blink of an eye), my comics generation still regard these upstart critters as parvenu newcomers.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first appeared in May 1984, bombastically occupying an oversized, self-published black-&-white parody mag. Eastman & Laird were huge fans of Ditko and Kirby, and so set up Mirage Studios so they could control their efforts, having great fun telling pastiche adventures notionally derived and inspired by contemporary superhero fare.

They especially honed in on the US marketplace’s obsession with Frank Miller’s reinterpretations of manga stars Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima: particularly Lone Wolf & Cub. There were also smart pokes at and conceptual themes poached from other top trends as inspired by The X-Men, New Teen Titans and outsider icon Howard the Duck. This was at a time when the US industry was experiencing an explosive boom in do-it-yourself comics: one that changed forever the very nature of the industry and destroyed the virtual monopoly od DC and Marvel.

Eastman & Laird’s quirky concept became the paradigm of Getting Rich Quick: a template for many others and – in their case at least – an ideal example of beneficial exploitation. Their creation expanded to encompass toys, movies, games, food, apparel, general merchandising and especially television cartoons. In 1987 it became – and remains – a globally potent franchise. There’s probably another movie on the go even as I type this…

None of that matters here as I want to look at the actual comics that started everything and there’s no better way than with this carefully curated edition chronologically covering the primal tales and offering commentaries and reminiscences from the guys who were there…

Just as Los Bros Hernadez had done with Love and Rockets in 1981, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles debuted as a self-published (print run of 3000 copies), self-financed one-shot that was swiftly picked up by a legion of independent comics shops run by fans for fans. Word of mouth and frantic demand generated a wave of reprintings and much speculative imitation. The rest is history…

This book – re-presenting issues #1-7 and one-shot Raphael Micro-Series – was the first of a sequence of collections published a dozen years ago by licensing specialists IDW. By that time the original creators had long sold the rights and moved well on, to the extent of even occasionally revisiting their baby through nostalgia, but here their fevered passion in their creation and the sheer joy of having fun by learning was at its intoxicating height.

Drafted with verve, gusto and no respect for “the rules”, the saga of ‘Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ opens with four outlandish humanoids fighting for their lives in a dingy alley. The enemy are thugs and street scum and – once they’re emphatically taken care of – with victory assured, the bizarre heroes retreat into the sewers…

Here they greet a giant rat dressed as a sensei and discuss their origins and goals. You all already know the tale – or just don’t care – but briefly: the pet rat of martial artist Yoshi absorbed kung fu skills and concepts of honour and duty by observation. He also witnessed romantic rivals become arch foes. The losing suitor’s brother subsequently destroys the lovers (even after they fled to New York) and is now leader of ninja clan The Foot.

The youngster – Oroku Saki but known as The Shredder – pursued his warped obsession in the New World and murdered the lovers, even as nearby a boy saved an old one from being hit by a truck carry toxic material. The kid was blinded when the cannister hit his eyes, but as he was carted off to his own comics destiny, the canister that hit him broke, leaking mutagens into sewers where an uncaring owner had dumped somebaby turtles and where Yoshi’s escaped pet was hiding…

Over years exposure changed them all. The rat called Splinter became a sagacious humanoid rodent who diligently trained four brilliant, rapidly growing reptiles in the skills he had observed with his master. Splinter named them Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael and at last deemed them sufficiently advanced to obtain vengeance for his murdered master.

Called to battle, the villain employs all his minions but nevertheless falls to turtle justice…

Fast-paced and action-packed, the tale delivers a sure no-frills punch and – as revealed in the commentary ‘Annotations’ section that follows – left the creators with a rare dilemma: overnight success, demands for reprints and readers demanding more of the same…

Each issue’s bonus section also provides background, insights and developmental drawings but the meat is contained in the stories as the debutantes quickly gained confidence and ran wild. The second issue introduced insufferable mad scientist Baxter Stockman who unleashes robot rat-hunters (“Mousers”) in a scheme to get rich by cleaning up the sewers. In fact, he is also using them to rob from below and when his assistant April O’Neil finds out he frames and tries to kill her. Thankfully the turtles step in to save her and New York…

The third episode reveals heroism comes at a cost: when they return to their underground lair, the Turtles discover it devastated, with Mouser fragments and rat blood everywhere… but no Master Splinter…

When April offers them shelter, relocation turns into a major headache as the strange, heavily shrouded quartet are mistaken for burglars, triggering a massive police car chase through the streets. The spectacular road riot is appended by an ‘Epilogue’ revealing exactly what happened to Splinter, leading to major plot developments in #4, as mystery company TCRI are revealed as the creators of the mutagen and far more than they seem.

Before that though, the Raphael Micro-Series offers all-action romp ‘Me, Myself and I’ as the moody, anger-management-challenged young warrior loses control whilst sparring and flees the team in shame. Sadly, Raphael seeks to calm down by prowling the streets and encounters well-meaning street vigilante Casey Jones thrashing a gang of molesters. Of course, a violent misunderstanding ensues…

In TMNT #4, the search for Splinter is interrupted by an army of Foot ninjas, but the ambush drops our heroes right into TCRI HQ. With the corporate logo from that fateful cannister blazoned across a skyscraper, priorities shift and the turtles retrench. When they infiltrate the building, the shock of finding Splinter is instantly erased by finding out just what they’re facing, but it is as nothing to the trauma of being teleported to another universe…

The fifth issue came out in November 1985, the first to sport a full colour cover and used to expand a phenomenon into a merchandisable continuity universe by guest-starring another, subsequent Eastman & Laird creation – Fugitoid. The little droid was a (non-Terran) human teleportation scientist whose discoveries made him a target of the local military dictatorships on a world packed with hundreds of different sentient species. When Honeycutt was killed, his mind was trapped in a small mechanoid and his plight intersected that of the shanghaied shellbacks. They join forces to thwart evil tyrant General Blanque and an army of secretly invading “Triceratons”, all whilst Honeycutt finds a way to send them home…

Sadly, that route leads directly to an orbiting Triceraton war base in #6 and magnifies the manic mayhem and martial arts magic as the Turtles battle every creature imaginable and still end up as interstellar gladiators before another transmat glitch sends them, Fugitoid and some Triceratons back to Earth and the heart of TCRI.

Of course, in the interim, the building has been surrounded by America’s military and the robotic-augmented Kraangs who run the place are in full battle mode. Cue much more ray gun shenanigans and sword-filled fists of fury as TMNT #7 offers conflict, contusions, confusions, conclusion, explanations and a long-awaited reunion…

To Be Continued…

Fast, furious, fun-filled and funny, but with all sharp edges prominently featured (so nervous parents might want to pre-assess the material before giving this book to true youngsters) this debut saga of the shell-backed sentinels of the sewers offers a superb slice of excitement and enjoyment that will keep kids and adults alike bouncing off the walls with eager appreciation.
© 2011 Viacom International Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Deadpool Epic Comics volume 1: The Circle Chase 1991-1994


By Rob Liefeld, Fabian Nicieza, Glenn Herdling, Gregory Wright, Tom Brevoort, Mike Kanterovich, Mark Waid, Dan Slott, Pat Olliffe, Mark Pacella, Greg Capullo, Mike Gustovich, Joe Madureira, Isaac Cordova, Jerry DeCaire, Bill Wylie, Ian Churchill, Sandu Florea, Terry Shoemaker, Al Milgrom, Scot Eaton, Ariane Lenshoek, Tony DeZuñiga, Lee Weeks, Don Hudson, Ken Lashley & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-302-3205-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

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

Bloodthirsty killers and stylish mercenaries have long made for popular protagonists and this guy is probably one of the most popular. Deadpool is Wade Wilson: a survivor of sundry experiments that left him a scarred, grotesque bundle of scabs and physical unpleasantries – albeit functionally immortal, invulnerable and capable of regenerating from literally any wound.

Moreover, after his initial outings on the fringes of the X-Universe, his modern incarnation makes him either one of the few beings able to perceive the true nature of reality… or a total gibbering loon.

Chronologically collecting and curating cameos, guest shots and his early outrages from New Mutants #98, X-Force #2, 11 & 15, Deadpool: The Circle Chase #1-4, and Secret Defenders #15-17, as well as pertinent excerpted material from X-Force #4, 5 10, 14, 19-24; X-Force Annual #1, Nomad #4; Avengers #366 & Silver Sable & the Wild Pack #23 & 30, (spanning February 1991 to November 1994), this tome is merely the first in a series cataloguing his ever more outlandish escapades.

After Gail Simone’s joyous Foreword ‘He was always Deadpool’ justifies and confirms his fame, escalating antics and off-kilter appeal, his actual debut in New Mutants #98’s ‘The Beginning of the End, part one’ opens proceedings. The “merc with a mouth” was created as a villain du jour by Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza, as that title wound down in advance of a major reboot/rebrand. He seemed a one-trick throwaway in a convoluted saga of mutant mayhem with little else to recommend it. An employee of enigmatic evildoer Mr. Tolliver, Deadpool was despatched to kill to kill future-warrior Cable and his teen acolytes… but spectacularly failed. The kids were soon after rebranded and relaunched as X-Force though, so he had a few encores and more tries…

With appropriate covers and text to precis events between excerpt moments, we learn Deadpool first popped back in September 1991’s X-Force #2’s ‘The Blood Hunters’ where he clashed with another product of Canada’s clandestine super-agent project (which had turned a mutant spy into feral, adamantium-augmented warrior Wolverine as well as unleashing so many other second-string cyborg super-doers). Gritty do-gooder Garrison Kane was dubbed Weapon X (first of many!) and the tale also included aging spymaster GW Bridge…

Still just a derivative costumed killer for hire popping up in bit part roles, the merc continued pushing Tolliver’s agenda and met Spider-Man until as seen here via snippets from X-Force Annual #1 (1991) before stumbling through Nicieza-scripted crossover Dead Man’s Hand. Illustrated by Pat Olliffe & Mark McKenna, ‘Neon Knights’ (Nomad #4, August 1992) finds Deadpool just one of a bunch of super-killers-for-hire convened by a group of lesser crime bosses seeking to fill a void created by the fall of The Kingpin. His mission is to remove troublemaking fellow hitman Bushwacker, but former super sidekick Jack “Bucky” Monroe has some objections…

Excerpts from X-Force #10 (May 1992) presage #11’s extended fight between Deadpool, the teen team, Cable and mutant luck-shaper Domino in ‘Friendly Reminders’ (Nicieza, Liefeld, Mark Pacella & Dan Panosian) before a clip from X-Force #14 (September 1992 limned by Terry Shoemaker & Al Milgrom) reveals a shocking truth about Domino and Deadpool’s relationship with her, prior to X-Force #15’s ‘To the Pain’ (October 1992 with art by Greg Capullo) wrapping up a long-running war between Cable’s kids, Tolliver and The Externals…

Excerpts from X-Force #19-23 – as first seen in 1993 – find the manic merc hunting Domino and/or Vanessa and sparking a mutant mega clash before Wade Wilson guests in Avengers #366 (September 1993 by Glenn Herdling, Mike Gustovich & Ariane Lenshoek). A tie-in to Deadpool’s first solo miniseries, ‘Swordplay³’ sees the merc and a group of meta-scavengers embroiled in battle with each other and new hero Blood Wraith with The Black Knight helpless to control the chaos…

That first taste of solo stardom came with 4-issue miniseries The Circle Chase: cover-dated August-November 1993 by Nicieza, Joe Madureira & Mark Farmer. A fast-paced but cluttered thriller, it sees Wilson doggedly pursuing an ultimate weapon: one of a large crowd of mutants and variously-enhanced ne’er-do-wells seeking the fabled legacy of arms dealer/fugitive from the future Mr. Tolliver. Among other (un)worthies bound for the boodle in ‘Ducks in a Row’, ‘Rabbit Season, Duck Season’, ‘…And Quacks Like a Duck…’ and ‘Duck Soup’ are mutant misfits Black Tom and The Juggernaut; the then-latest iteration of Weapon X; shape-shifter Copycat and a host of fashionably disposable cyborg loons with quirky media-buzzy names like Commcast and Slayback. If you can swallow any understandable nausea associated with the dreadful trappings of this low point in Marvel’s tempestuous history, there is a sharp and entertaining little thriller underneath…

A follow-up tale in Silver Sable & the Wild Pack #23 (April 1994, Gregory Wright, Isaac Cordova & Hon Hudson) pits Wilson against Daredevil and notional heroes-for-hire Paladin and Silver Sable before uniting to thwart fascist usurpers The Genesis Coalition, prior to a relatively heroic stance in Doctor Strange team-up title Secret Defenders.

Beginning in #15’s ‘Strange Changes Part the First: Strangers and Other Lovers’ (May 1994 by Tom Brevoort, Mike Kanterovich, Jerry Decaire & Tony DeZuñiga) the Sorcerer Supreme sends Doctor Druid, Shadowoman, Luke Cage and Deadpool to stop ancient life-sucking sorceress Malachi – a task fraught with peril that takes #16’s ‘Strange Changes Part the Second: Resurrection Tango’ (pencilled by Bill Wylie and debuting zombie hero Cadaver), and #17’s ‘Strange Changes Part the Third: On Borrowed Time’…

A moment from Silver Sable & the Wild Pack #30 (November 1994, by Wright, Scot Eaton & Jim Amash) depicting Wade’s reaction to his rival’s fall from grace segues into the second 4-part Deadpool miniseries (August – November 1994) which revolves around auld acquaintances Black Tom and Juggernaut. Collaboratively contrived by writer Mark Waid, pencillers Ian Churchill, Lee Weeks and Ken Lashley with inkers Jason Minor, Bob McLeod, Bub LaRosa, Tom Wegryzn, Philip Moy & W.C. Carani, ‘If Looks Could Kill!’, ‘Luck of the Irish’, ‘Deadpool, Sandwich’ and ‘Mano a Mano’ delivers a hyperkinetic race against time heavy on explosive action.

The previous miniseries revealed Irish archvillain Black Tom Cassidy was slowly turning into a tree (as you do). Desperate to save his meat-based life, the bad guy and best bud Cain “The Juggernaut” Marko manipulate Wade Wilson: exploiting the merc’s unconventional relationship with Siryn (a sonic mutant, Tom’s niece and X-Force member). Believing Deadpool’s regenerating factor holds a cure, the villains stir up a bucket-load of carnage at a time when Wade is at his lowest ebb. Packed with mutant guest stars, this is a shallow but immensely readable piece of eye-candy that reset Deadpool’s path and paved the way for a tonal change that would make the Merc with a Mouth a global superstar…

All Epic Collections offer bonus material bonanzas and here that comprises images from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Master Edition, many cover reproductions (Deadpool Classic volume 1 by Liefeld & John Kalisz, Deadpool Classic Companion by Michael Bair & Matt Milla, Deadpool: Sins of the Past and The Circle Chase TPBs by Madureira, Farmer & Harry Canelario), pin-ups by Rob Haynes & John Lowe from X-Force Annual #2 and Annual #3 by Lashley & Matt “Batt” Banning, plus Sam Kieth’s Marvel Year-in-Review ’93 cover. That magazine’s parody ad by Dan Slott, Manny Galen, Scott Koblish & Wright, follows with Joe Quesada, Jimmy Palmiotti & Mark McNabb’s foldout cover to Wizard #22 and Liefeld’s “Marvel ‘92” variant cover for Deadpool #3 (2015).

Featuring a far darker villain evolving into an antihero in a frenetic blend of light-hearted, surreal, full-on fighting frolics these stories only hint at what is to come but remain truly compulsive reading for dyed-in-the-wool superhero fans who might be feeling just a little jaded with four-colour overload…
© 2021 MARVEL.

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Planetes Omnibus volume 1


By Makoto Yukimura, adapted by Anna Wenger & Brendan Wright, translated by Yuki Johnson (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-921-2 (Omnibus TPB)

The hard, gritty mystery and imagination of space travel, so much a component of immediate post-WWII industrial society, briefly re-captivated legions of level-headed imagineers at the end of the 20th century when relative newcomer and manga debutante Makoto Yukimura  rekindled interest in near-space exploration in all its harsh and grimy glory with this inspirational “nuts-&-bolts” manga series exploring the probable rather than the possible…

Yukimura (born in Yokohama in 1976, just as the once-ambitious US space program was languishing in cash-strapped doldrums and five long years before the first space shuttle launch) began his professional life as an assistant to veteran Mankaka (“comics creator”) Shin Morimura before launching his independent career with the Planetes. Working exclusively for Kodansha, his award-winning premier Seinen series ran in Weekly Morning magazine (from January 1999 – January 2004) before being collected in four tankōbon editions. The serial easily made the jump to an anime series and the books became a multi-award-winning global sensation. Yukimura – after producing evocative one-shot Sayōnara ga Chikai node (For Our Farewell is Near) for Evening magazine – in 2005 abandoned the future for the past, to concentrate his creative energies on monolithic historical epic Vinland Saga. Serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine and Afternoon, it has thus far filled 27 rousing volumes to date…

The premise of Planetes is diabolically simply and powerfully engaging. Humanity is a questing species but cannot escape its base origins. In 2074, space travel and exploitation is commonplace but as we’ve conquered the void between Earth and the asteroid belt and prepare to explore – and ruinously exploit – the outer planets, the once-pristine void around us has become clotted and clustered with our obsolete tech and all manner of casually discarded rubbish. Even the most minute speck of junk or debris falling through hard vacuum is a high-velocity, potentially deadly missile, so to keep risk to a minimum hardy teams of rugged individualists must literally sweep the heavens free of our discarded crap.

Prelude ‘Phase 1: A Stardust Sky’ begins with the death of a passenger on a commercial low-orbit spaceliner before jumping six years forward and introducing a trio of these celestial dustbin-men scooping up Mankind’s negligent castoffs and unconsidered detritus. Hachirota Hoshino is the newest, youngest member of the team, a kid who craves becoming a real astronaut and famed explorer like his dad. Dreaming of one day owing his own prestige spaceship, excitable “Hachimaki” is soon disenchanted with the dreary, dull and disgusting daily life of drudgery aboard DS-12: a sanitation/cargo ship fondly dubbed “Toybox” but little better than the discards he and his two comrades daily scoop up or destroy…

These days there’s something wrong with the sombre, stoic Russian, Yuri Mihairokov. The big man is increasingly distracted, blanking out, staring vacantly into the Wild Black Yonder as the cleaners orbit Earth at 8 kilometres per second. Events come to head when a shard of micro-debris holes their ramshackle vessel and an old timer reveals the Russian’s tragic secret.

Long ago Yuri and his wife were passengers on that shuttle and when it was holed she died. Heartbroken, her husband – one of the few survivors – returned to space to clear the deadly trash that took his wife. He never forgot her.

Years later, whilst drifting in the void the solitary heartsick astronaut sees a glitter, and her keepsake compass just floats into his hand, brought back to him by the winds of space and cruel fate. Beguiled, he falls into Earth’s gravity well and only Hachimaki’s most frantic efforts save his comrade from fiery death.

Safely back in free orbit, the Russian opens his gauntleted fist. On the compass are scratched his wife’s final thoughts as death took her – “please save Yuri”…

The poignant, bittersweet and deeply spiritual tale properly begins with ‘Phase 2: A Girl From Beyond the Earth’ wherein Hoshino slowly and impatiently recovers from a broken leg in the hospital of the moon colony Archimedes Crater City. These tales are laced with the most up-to-date space science available to author Yukimura, and the recent revelations that extended time spent in low/zero-gravity radically weakens bones and muscles was the lynchpin of this moving brush with another youngster bound irrevocably to the void.

When a doctor suggests returning to full-gravity Earth to recuperate the easy way, Hachi is in two minds and sorely tempted. His commander and fellow debris-destroyer Fee Carmichael and a grizzled 20-year both veteran pour scorn on the quitter’s option. All real astronauts know that once back on the home world few ever come back to space.

The kid is still tempted though… until he strikes up a friendship with a thin, wasted young woman. Nono has been on Luna for 12 years and dreams of blue skies and open seas, even though she will never see them. After aged Mr. Roland chooses to spend the rest of his life among the stars, Hachimaki discovers Nono’s sad, incredible secret and at last abandons all notion of forsaking the stars…

Focus stays on nicotine-fiend Fee Carmichael as she struggles to enjoy a well-deserved vice in ‘Phase 3: A Cigarette Under Starlight’ in Orientale Basin Underground City some months later. With breathing-oxygen at a premium, smokers must juggle their addiction with the dedication to life in space. Poor Fee has been Jonesing for a drag for far too long. Now though, whilst on shore-leave at a station big enough (and sufficiently civilised) to house a designated smoking area, the Toybox’s chief is still unable to indulge her vice…

Ideological terrorist group the Space Defense Fighters want to keep the void pristine and free of Mankind’s polluting influence and have been detonating bombs in outposts all over the moon. Their latest outrage targets the base’s vending machines and smoking rooms, so the authorities have sealed them all in the name of public safety. Driven near to madness, Fee snaps and lights up in public toilets, forgetting fire countermeasures and smoke detection devices are automatic, incredibly sensitive and painfully effective…

Humiliated, sodden but undeterred, she takes off for another city and a solitary snout (for any non-Brits, that’s a particularly demeaning and derogatory term for a smoke) and finds the only guy more in need of a drag than her. Of course, setting bombs is nervous work and a quick ciggy always calms his nerves…

The frustration is too much and Fee returns to her job, but the SDF’s explosive campaign has barely begun. Their next scheme is the creation of a deadly Kessler Syndrome wave (a blast or impact which changes the trajectories of free-floating orbital scrap and debris, creating even more debris/shrapnel and aiming it like a hard rain of lethal micro-missiles)…

With a commandeered satellite directed at a space station, the terrorists intend to detonate their captured vehicle and shred the habitat – which coincidentally carries the last cigarettes in space – shooting it out of the sky to create a lethal chain reaction to make high-orbit space forever unnavigable.

Unsure of her own motives, Fee uses the DS-12 to suicidally shove the stolen projectile away from the station and into Earth’s atmosphere…

Whilst she recuperates in Florida, ‘Phase 4: Scenery for a Rocket’, depicts Hachimaki bringing Yuri to visit the family home in Japan. However, the volatile lad immediately slips back into a violent sibling rivalry with younger brother Kyutaro: a rocketry prodigy even more resolved to conquer space than his surly and increasingly fanatical brother… or their absentee astronaut father Goro. Happily the steadfast Russian’s calming influence begins repairing fences between the warring Hoshino boys, although not before a series of explosive confrontations lead to Yuri finally passing on his beloved wife’s compass…

‘Phase 5: Ignition’ finds Fee, Yuri and Hachimaki reunited just in time for the junior junkman to suffer an (almost) career-ending psychological injury. Although physically uninjured by a rogue solar flare, the lad is completely isolated in the void for so long that he develops post-traumatic “Deep-Space Disorder”. If he can’t shake off the debilitating hallucinatory condition his life in space is over. Nothing experts at the supervising Astronaut Training Center do has any lasting effect, but fortunately Yuri knows just what prodding might awaken the wide-eyed, Wild Black Wonderment in his feisty little comrade…

‘Phase 6: Running Man’ has the Toybox’s weary crew visit Moon Orbital Space Port where the obsessively training Hachimaki is approached by an unctuous business type looking for his infamous dad. Werner Locksmith is head and chief designer of the Earth Development Community-sponsored manned mission to Jupiter and, unknown to the starry-eyed kid, had pegged Hachi’s father as the only man capable of piloting the innovative new vessel on the 5-year mission: one the lad would give anything to be on. Frustratingly, the elder explorer doesn’t want to go and has actually absconded from the Private/Public sector project and is currently a fugitive on the run through the vents and ducts of various moon bases…

The old rogue has had enough of space-faring: a fact he finds impossible to relate to his furious, outraged son when they accidentally meet. The old spacer intends to retire to Earth and make things right with the wife he’s abandoned so many times…

Meanwhile Locksmith has been called away. Something has gone disastrously wrong with the Jupiter ship “Von Braun”…

Above Luna as Hachi argues with his dad, another crisis crescendos as a devastating explosion rips through the station. As everybody evacuates, in the safe chill of the void, Hachi and the crew watch a phenomenal debris field emanate from the moon’s surface. The Von Braun’s experimental engines have failed and an entire lunar base has been evaporated…

Following the tragedy, ruthlessly cool Locksmith unswervingly starts to rebuild and the senior Hoshino breathes a huge sigh of relief. Hachi however is undeterred. He fanatically resumes his physical training, knowing that when the Von Braun is ready to fly, he will be ready to join it…

In ‘Phase 7: Tanabe’ stoic Yuri and harassed commander Fee acknowledge and address their comrade’s impossible dream, inducting a raw recruit to the Toybox crew and task Hachi with training her to be his (eventual) replacement. According to the ambitious spacer, however, mere girl Ai is a hopeless case, fruitlessly wasting valuable time he could be using to train and study for his application to the Jupiter Mission. Suffering mightily from having to babysit the useless girl, he only discovers her suppressed inner fire after a 50-year old space coffin is recovered from the dark expanse and provokes a bitter dispute about love, passion and man’s place in the cold, lonely universe…

Hachi’s dream comes a giant leap closer to reality in ‘Phase 8: A Black Flower Named Sakinohaka (Part 1)’ as he begins his official audition regimen for the Von Braun. He has become an emotional void with nothing but cold ambition driving him. He can’t even process the deadly constant threat posed by increased sabotage activity from the terrorist SDL: more determined than ever to keep space free of Man’s toxic presence.

Despite competing with more than 20,000 applicants, Hoshino is beginning to distinguish himself when a series of bomb blasts rock the project. Narrowly escaping death, Hachi is visited by his old friends who are horrified his obsessive and blasé attitude and apparent disregard for the pain and suffering of his rival candidates caught in the detonations. Is he truly so determined to get on the mission that all he sees are fewer competitors?

Only fellow applicant and new buddy Hakimu seems to understand that any sacrifice and personal misery are worth the prize…

Soon testing reaches its final stages and Locksmith lectures the remaining candidates from the bridge of the almost completed Von Braun. Only a handful of desperate spacers will make this final cut but the big day is again delayed after Hachi confronts the insidious saboteur… and fails to stop him.

The tale resumes six months later, and the last 23 candidates await final call as ‘Phase 9: A Black Flower named Sakinohaka (Part 2)’ sees Hachi’s still-fugitive father targeted by SDL assassins and heading back to the son who disowned him. His arrival coincides with Ai Tanabe’s visit as she delivers Hachi’s belongings from Toybox, and leads to an embarrassing confusion as to her amatory status, but before things can be clarified the terrorists attack again, seeking to kill the “only man who could pilot the Von Braun”…

Fleeing via the lowest levels of Oriental Basin Underground Tunnel City, the spacer trio are more dangerous to each other than their murderous pursuers. After another devastating blast Hachi again confronts the traitor who sabotaged his last attempt to join the Jupiter mission and almost commits an unpardonable act… until gentle Tanabe talks him off the emotionally-charged metaphorical ledge. ‘Phase 10: Lost Souls’ sees Hachi successful in final training for the mission that has become his life when a lunar accident strands him and new comrade Leonov on the unforgiving surface with only hours of oxygen and a 40-kilometre walk to the nearest relief station. It would have been impossible even if the copilot wasn’t wounded with a slowly-leaking suit. By the time rescue arrives Hachi has reached the stage where he fights his saviours, frantic to prove he needs no one’s help to achieve his goals.

‘Phase 11: – what on the page translates as “Spasibo”’ (either “thank you” or “God save you”) sees recuperating Hachi return to the family home in Japan, accompanied by his penitent father, and visited by Leonov’s grateful mother. Although he doesn’t understand a word she says, the old lady still makes far more sense than his constantly warring family and, after another drunken fight with dad, events come to tragic, galvanising crisis which at last crushes the walls enclosing his traumatised head and heart…

This first passionately philosophical, sentimentally suspenseful chronicle concludes here with a moment of eerie portent when ‘Phase 12: ‘A Cat in the Evening’ sees a simulation test with crewmate Sally turn into a creepy moment of premonition after Hachimaki finds himself stalked to the point of distraction by a dead and decaying alley cat that talks philosophy and tries to kill him…

To Be Concluded…

Each chapter opens with a full colour painted section before reverting to comfortingly appropriate monochrome line art, with superb developmental sketches, pin-ups, a selection of 4-panel sidebar humour strips (‘A Four Panel Comic’, ‘Namao-san (Presumably Male)’, ‘Eat? That Thing?’, ‘Drinking Hot Coffee through a Straw’) included throughout as breaks between story phases. Should you be lucky enough, the original turn-of-the-century English-language TokyoPop editions (which have bonus features not included in the omnibus edition) are still obtainable in many comics shops.

Suspenseful, funny, thrilling and utterly absorbing, these tales perfectly capture the allure of the Wild Black Yonder for newer generations, making this authentic, hard-edged, wittily evocative epic a treat no hard-headed dreamer with eyes set firmly above the clouds should miss…
© 2015 Makoto Yukimura. All rights reserved. Publication rights for this edition secured by Kodansha, Ltd, Tokyo.