Category: Science Fiction

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House of Dolmann


By Tom Tully & Eric Bradbury, with Carlos Cruz & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78618-491-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Weird, Wonderful, So Why Not?… 9/10

Wrapping up a week of Unamerican Superheroes is a classic British confection which might well be the closest we ever got to a Silver Age super-team – even if the members are technically all the same bloke…

Valiant debuted as a “Boys’ Paper” in 1962, as our indigenous periodicals industry struggled to cope with spiralling costs and a sudden mass importation of brash, flashy, full-colour comics from America. A weekly anthology dedicated to adventure features and providing a constantly-changing arena of action, the comic became the company’s most successful title for over a decade: absorbing many less successful titles whilst preserving their top features between its launch on October 6th and eventual amalgamation into new-styled, immensely popular Battle Picture Weekly in 1976. It also generated dozens of extra-sized Summer Specials and 21 Annuals between 1964 and 1985: combining original strips with prose stories; sports, science and general interest features, short humour strips and – increasingly from the 1970s onwards – reformatted reprints from IPC/Fleetway’s copious back catalogue.

In February of 1963 it merged with the company’s previous star vehicle Knockout and, mere months later, became the brand title for a series of fortnightly – later monthly – digest-sized comics volumes. The Valiant Picture Library offered longer stories at the cost of 1 shilling. It ran to 144 issues ending in 1969…

In May 1965, the weekly Valiant increased its price from sixpence to 7d (that was in old money, of course) but also increased the page count from 28 to 40 action and fun-packed pages, and ramped up the innovative anthological entertainment…

British weekly comics in the 1960s and early 1970s were a phantasmagorical playground of bizarre wonders. Truly recognisable heroes appeared in war, western and its gradually declining straight crime serials, whilst the most memorable momentum devolved to a hybrid, bastardized mixture of fantasy, horror and science fiction themes to spawn an evil-crushing pantheon unlike any other…

The Spider, Steel Claw, Thunderbolt, Phantom Viking, Captain Hurricane, Robot Archie, Kelly’s Eye, Cursitor Doom and others utterly tainted the gleaming pristine gene pool of noble superheroism with its bleak and often manic sensibilities. You can thank this stuff for the 1980s “British Invasion” of American comic books and the dystopian weltschmerz that dominated the industry for a decade thereafter, peppering the genre with our sort of misfit, maverick and malcontent misanthrope…

Even early on when we briefly adopted full-blown US style superheroes like Marvelman, Captain Universe, Danger Man and Thunderbolt Jaxon, or late entries Tri-Man, The Leopard from Lime Street, Gadget Man & Gimmick Kid and the wondrous Johnny Future at the height of “Batmania”, Brits could never really take it straight. There was always something daft, anarchic, quirky or just scarily warped in the final result…

Here’s a sublimely perfect example of all that: a seedy solitary inventor with a hidden past who spends his days playing with puppets: an obsessive who can’t help literally putting words into their mouths…

Another stunning salvo of baby boomer nostalgia courtesy of Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics strand, this first collection of The House of Dolmann gathers the early material from Valiant, spanning October 8th 1966 (issue #208) to May 6th 1967, plus a late entry from Valiant Super Special 1980. The strip itself ran until May 1970, and has resurfaced a few times since then, both in reprint form and new tales…

It also offers an incisive Introduction from modern day comics scribe Simon Furman and begins with a handy character guide in ‘Meet Dolmann’s Dolls (part 1)’ providing a pictorial and text run-down of Astro, Elasto, Giggler, Micro, Mole, Raider and Togo: purpose-built robots designed with amazing specialised abilities. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that this was the mid-Sixties, so racial depictions like the half-sized sumo wrestler-bot last cited were perpetrated “in fun”, and not fairness or good taste…

House of Dolmann was a curious, inexplicably compelling blend of super-spy and crime-buster strip scripted by the magnificently prolific Glasgow-born Tom Tully. His astoundingly broad output included classic delights like Roy of the Rovers, Heros the Spartan, Dan Dare, Master of the Marsh, Janus Stark, Mytek the Mighty, The Wild Wonders, Nipper, Adam Eterno, The Mind of Wolfie Smith, Johnny Red, Harlem Heroes, Mean Arena, Inferno, The Robo Machines, Football Family Robinson, Buster’s Ghost as well as many of the strips cited above.

His collaborative co-creator here also worked on many of those sagas. The incredibly gripping moody comic art of Eric Bradbury had begun gracing newsagents shelves in 1949 in Knockout. Frequently working with studio mate Mike Western, Bradbury drew strips like Our Ernie, Blossom, Lucky Logan, Buffalo Bill, No Hiding Place, The Black Crow and Biggles. He was an “in-demand” illustrator who worked into the 1990s on landmark strips like The Avenger, Phantom Force 5, Maxwell Hawke, Death Squad, Doomlord, Darkie’s Mob, Hook Jaw, The Sarge, Invasion, Invasion 1984, Rogue Trooper, Future Shocks, Tharg the Mighty and so much more…

From the start, Tully & Bradbury delivered intense, claustrophobic tension-drenched, action-packed episodic adventures, opening with a spectacular kidnapping at the London Opera House.

When Professor Hanson – head of Britain’s atomic missile program – is abducted by jetpack-wearing masked thugs, the police and security services are stumped and the authorities have no recourse but to call in independent contractors International Security. Enigmatic chief Mr. Marshal and his top aide promptly pop over to the East End and The House of Dolmann: a pokey shop owned by a grimy, creepy puppet seller who apparently makes ends meet as a mannequin repairman who also dabbles in second-hand dolls, puppets, animatronics and shop or museum dummies.

However, in the grotty emporium – looking like a blend of junk shop and the parlour set of Steptoe & Son – a brilliant inventor has been clandestinely building an army of automated assistants – if not actual friends – to do his bidding. The IS operatives are greeted by a 3-foot tall articulated sumo automaton who invites them inside. They are as yet unaware that the voice – and appallingly racist accent – in fact belongs to proprietor Eric Dolmann who uncontrollably puts words in the mouths of all his creations… and perhaps divides a series of multiple personalities amongst them all at the same time. Shabby Dolmann’s life is pure subterfuge. (I digress here, but an awful lot of “our” heroes were tattily unkempt: we had “Grunge” down pat decades before the Americans made a profit out of it!)

The bizarre figure is in fact a troubled engineering genius who designs and constructs an army of specialised robots disguised as puppets to act as his shock-troops in his a dark and crazy war against the forces of evil. They are all directly radio-controlled by the inventor, but seem to act with increasing autonomy as the months go by …

Top of his hit list is subversive organisation D.A.R.T. – the Department for Arson, Revolution and Terror – and he eagerly accepts the job of foiling their plans by single-handedly raiding their London secret HQ with small army of super-bots…

The assault is a complete success but in the resultant rout and rescue, D.A.R.T. boss Rafe Garrott gets away from Dolman and his “children”…

Pattern set, what follows is a potent and spectacular parade of peril-packed romps: complete 4-page thrillers alternating with extended sagas wherein the troubled and frankly disturbing puppeteer and an ever-expanding team tackle high-tech kidnappers, rascally protection racketeers, road haulage hijackers, weapons dealers, bullion bandits, museum marauders, blackmailers and a silver-obsessed madman…

In his unceasing war on wickedness, the daring Dolls hunt and confront modern-day river pirates, escaped killer convicts, train robbers and mail van raiders, fur-thieves, mad scientists Dr. Magno and Doctor Volt, a costumed cat-burglar, super-sophisticated safecrackers, deranged arsonist Firebug, cunning counterfeiters in their tricked-out funfair of doom, a brutal biker gang and – repeatedly – the massed minions of arch super-criminal ‘The Hawk’. The half-pint heroes even infiltrate a prison in search of justice…

As the series progressed, additions were made to the synthetic squad – like tactical calculator Egghead – and supplemental gadgets such as a flying Dolmobile and all-terrain Dol-Bike (with sidecar for the fractious, ever-squabbling toy boys), tacitly acknowledging the tropes and trends gripping the world beyond the comic.

A slow backstory develops, hinting at the inventor’s murky past. Eventually his real name – Jonas Luthor – is revealed after his obscuring clown mask falls off in a tussle with a career criminal. The accident belatedly leads to his squalid shop being threatened by a police raid as diabolical plunderer The Gold Miser drives London into a glistering plutocratic panic and it takes all Dolmann’s ingenuity and dexterity to deflect, divert, disinform and save the day…

Ultimately, wild sci fi spy paraphernalia like levitation ray thieves and the tank-driving Commando Raiders inform and dominate the stories, with D.A.R.T.’s resurrection adding layers of fearsome fantasy frenzy. Crucially, the always-unsettling sight of dolls perpetually arguing amongst themselves grows more frenetic, generating moments of apparently genuine animosity within the automatic adventurers …

The weekly stories were always a mix of action, surreal humour and topical bombast, which close here with a rowdy, rousing romp involving saving the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels from fake guards tunnelling under the walls…

One final treat opens the ‘Extras’ section, with the 1980 Valiant Summer Special providing an extended maritime exploit from Tully and Spanish artist Carlos Cruz (AKA Carlos Cruz González, who limned many UK yarns including Sergeant Kirk, The Shrinker’s Revenge, Mighty McGinty, Sergeant Rock – Paratrooper, Dr. Mesmer’s Revenge, Bloodfang, Union Jack Jackson, M.A.S.K., Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future, The Phantom and so forth) detailing how a jaunt to Cornwall leads to the plastic pack scuppering a gang of transatlantic pirates raiding shipping in a submarine…

That’s supplemented by prose thriller ‘Slaves of the Spider’: a tantalising promo and extract by Barrington J. Bayley & Bradbury taken from the forthcoming Mind of Jason Hyde collection and a batch of Creator Biographies…

Brilliantly bizarre, creepily compelling and stuffed to overflowing with zany thrills and chills, The House of Dolmann is inconceivably engrossing and incontrovertibly British to the core: fast-paced, freakily funny and once seen, never forgotten. Buy it for the kids and read it too; this is a glorious book, and you should brace yourself for better yet to come…
© 1966, 1967 & 2022 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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The Leopard from Lime St. Book Two: the Beast of Selbridge Returns!


By Tom Tully, Mike Western, Eric Bradbury & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 9-781-78108-678-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Other than lawyers, most people claim imitation as the sincerest form of flattery. You can make your own mind up on that score when seeking out these quirky and remarkable vintage treats offering a wonderfully downbeat, quintessentially British spin on a very familiar story…

British comics have always enjoyed a strange, extended love affair with what can only be described as “unconventional” (for which feel free to substitute “weird” or “creepy”) heroes. So many stars and putative role models of our serials and strips have been outrageous or just plain “off”: self-righteous voyeurs-vigilantes like Jason Hyde, sinister masterminds in the manner of The Dwarf, self-absorbed outsiders like Robot Archie, arrogant former criminals like The Spider or outright racist supermen such as Captain Hurricane…

Joking aside, British comics were unlike any other kind: having to be seen to be believed and enjoyed – especially if “homaging” such uniquely American fare as costumed crimefighters…

Until the 1980s, UK periodicals employed an anthological model, offering variety of genre, theme and character on a weekly – sometimes fortnightly – basis. Humorous comics like The Beano were leavened by action-heroes like The Q-Bikes or General Jumbo whilst adventure papers like Smash, Lion or Valiant always carried palate-cleansing gagsters like The Cloak, Grimly Feendish, Mowser and other laugh treats.

Buster offered the best of all worlds. Running 1902 issues from May 28th 1960 to 4th January 2000, it delicately balanced drama, mystery, action and comedy, with its earliest days – thanks to absorbing Radio Fun and Film Fun – heavily dosed with celebrity-licensed material starring media mavens like Charlie Drake, Bruce Forsyth and Benny Hill backing up the eponymous cover star billed as “the son of (newspaper strip star) Andy Capp”. The comic became the final resting place of many, many companion papers in its lifetime, including The Big One, Giggle, Jet, Cor!, Monster Fun, Jackpot, School Fun, Nipper, Oink! and Whizzer & Chips, so its cumulative strip content is wide, wild and usually pretty wacky…

At first glance, British comics prior to the advent of 2000AD – and Happy 45th Anniversary to you all, Mighty Tharg! – seem to fall into fairly ironclad categories. Back then, you had genial and/or fantastic preschool fantasy; a large selection of licensed entertainment properties; action; adventure; war; school dramas, sports and straight comedy strands. Closer looks would confirm that there was always a subversive merging, mixing undertone, especially in such antihero series as Dennis the Menace or our rather strained interpretation of superheroes. Just check out The Phantom Viking, Kelly’s Eye or early Steel Claw…

We had dabbled with the classic form in the early Marvel and Batman-influenced 1960s (and slightly before and beyond), but Tri-Man, The Black Sapper, Gadgetman & Gimmick Kid, Johnny Future, Red Star Robinson and Thunderbolt Jaxon remained off-kilter oddities. In the March 27th 1976 edition of Buster everything changed…

Now part of Rebellion Publishing’s line of British Comics Classics, The Leopard from Lime Street originally ran 470 episodes (comprising 50 adventures until May 18th 1985 – and even later as colorized reprints and a wealth of foreign-language and overseas editions). For most of that time it was a barely-legal knock-off of Marvel’s Spider-Man – with hints of DC Thomson’s Billy the Cat – as viewed through a superbly time-stamped English lens of life in a Northern Town. It was also, however, utterly unmissable reading…

This second collected volume – available as an oversized (213 x 276 mm) paperback and digital edition – was released in 2019, gathering Buster and Buster & Monster Fun strips spanning 18th June 1977 to 15th July1978.

What you need to know: in the middle (or maybe north-ish) of England lies Selbridge, where scrawny 13-year-old Billy Farmer was constantly bullied, by kids at school and especially his Uncle Charlie. Billy’s abiding interests were journalism and photography. He started a school newspaper (Farmer’s World) all by himself, probably to compensate for his home life. He lived with loving but frail Aunt Joan and her vicious, indolent, physically abusive partner Charlie Farmer who avoided honest work like the plague but was always ready to deliver a memorable life-lesson with fist, boot or belt…

Billy’s life forever changed when he visited the Jarman Zoological Institute and was accidentally scratched by Sheba, an escaped leopard being treated for an unspecified disease with radioactive chemicals.

In the days before Health and Safety regulations or a culture of litigation, Billy was given a rapid once-over by the boffins in charge and declared fine before being sent home. When Uncle Charlie tried to hit him. the brute was casually chucked into the dustbins and the lad realised he had developed  the strength, speed, stamina and agility of a jungle cat as well as enhanced senses, empathic feelings, a paralysing roar and a predator’s “danger-sense”…

Soon, clad in a modified pantomime costume, Billy prowled Selbridge’s dark streets and low rooftops, incurring the curiosity and animosity of Thaddeus Clegg: editor of local paper The Selbridge Sun whilst ever-more confidant Billy sold exclusive news photos of burglars, crooks and kidnappers the vigilante “leopard man” preyed upon at night. Somehow, the raw kid could also get candid shots of many secluded celebrities no adult journo could get near…

Moreover, the boy’s earnings – grudgingly paid by Clegg – started making life easier for Aunt Joan, whilst the Beast’s constant proximity to Lime Street ensured Charlie kept his outbursts verbal and his drunken fists unclenched…

School remained a nightmare of bullies and almost-exposure of Billy’s secret, but home life improved further once the police identified Billy as an official confidante of the vigilante. They even noted how Charlie was regularly brutalised by the feral fury in defence of his “friend”…

Over months the leopard man caught many criminals, was implicated – and cleared – of arson and theft, was abducted by a crooked circus owner, caught  child abductors, battled a fame-obsessed masked wrestler and thwarted a circus acrobat mimicking the cat’s abilities to frame the Leopard for crimes.

On a school trip to a Safari Park, Billy was reunited with his accidental creator Sheba and his powers seemed to exponentially increase beyond his ability to control them…

The costumed melodramas resume now as hero-struck kids start imitating “Leopardman”, and the Selbridge Sun puts a cash bounty on his head, precipitating a string of minor annoyances. The real crisis comes when Farmer gets home and learns Aunty Joan is seriously ill and needs cash urgently to help pay for an operation. The only solution is for Billy to surrender his alter ego to Clegg…

Uncle Charlie also wants the cash and starts tracking the sneaky kid, hoping Billy will lead him to the cat beast. As the town erupts with opportunistic hopefuls and the cops close in, Billy prepares to end his double life, before Charlie’s interference provides a last-minute chance of escape and a solution to Joan’s dilemma…

The debacle makes an accidental and unwilling media star of Charlie, but Billy finds a way to safely sabotage the abuser’s 15 minutes of fame, leading to being singled out by more shady fairground showmen who initially seek to co-opt the boy. When rebuffed, they attempt to foist an imitation catman on the gullible public…

After the charlatans schedule a battle between leopard man and actual leopards, Billy is forced to intervene, finding himself in action against a huge, deranged, fame-hungry maniac with steel claws. Suffering a rare defeat, he awakes a captive of vile showman Flanagan who now has the scary beast he’s always hungered to exploit in his underground cages…

A glimpse for freedom comes after the fairground staff move their prize, displaying him at the distant Alf Campbell’s Circus. A moment’s distraction leads to Billy’s escape, liberating all the other big cats and briefly turning the tables on the human beasts before leaving them in the hands of a baffled constabulary and turning tail back to Selbridge…

In school, scrawny Billy is still the butt of bigger kids “jokes”, but finds a new if unwelcome ally in classmate Debra Stevens who secretly looks out for him and discovers that he’s not at all who he pretends to be…

When the cat crusader foils a wages van raid, she confronts the masked mystery, prompting a sustained and spectacular campaign of disinformation as Billy seeks to change her mind and stifle her suspicions. The task is made more difficult when reclusive millionaire (remember them?) Henry Hammond also targets the boy. His motives are far less benevolent but after cornering his prey (and Debra) everything spirals out of control when a criminal gang tries to abduct everybody…

As Christmas rolls around and Joan’s operation fund grows, Selbridge is blanketed in snow (remember that?). As Billy romps alone in the winter wonderland he is joined by Sheba who has once again escaped from Windburn Safari Park, but his joy is tempered with terror as he meets her far less friendly fellow fugitive… angry, unreasonable male leopard Raja…

Barely escaping, the boy hero is appalled to find that in intervening hours hordes of gun-toting hunters have converged on the town, eager for a spot of hometown big game fun. Suiting up, Billy is desperate to stop them – especially gun-nut Buck Redford – killing either Raja or beloved pal Sheba…

Their battle of wits and skills takes hunters, hunted and human cat all over the rugged icy landscape with numerous tragic close calls. The increasingly incensed gunman slowly loses all sense and starts menacing people as well as apex predators until a frenzied assault on Windburn finally sees Billy end the bonkers bwana’s campaign of terror…

Despite being shot, Billy’s greatest casualty is his repurposed costume and the New Year sees him searching out a replacement – or at least spare parts for a patch job. Opportunity knocks in the form of a genuine leopard skin in a junk shop, but even after arduous toil to earn the revolting antique remnant his troubles magnify not diminish when Charlie tries to steal the hard-won prize.

Things get completely out of hand and young Farmer physically rebuffs his guardian before secretly donning the modified suit. Suddenly, somehow, his human personality is utterly overwhelmed by savage, primal killer-cat instincts…

On the prowl and seeking brutal release, Billy comes to his senses just as Charlie is mugged. The town is currently swamped with ruthless violent street thieves and the leopard man instantly, instinctively intervenes: almost losing all semblance of humanity before ultimately regaining control and suppressing his newly awakened wild side after giving the muggers – and Charlie – the fright of their lives…

Ever ready to exploit a situation for profit, the vindictive uncle calls the police, blaming the cat vigilante for the rash of thefts. His lies spark a popular explosion of fear as embattled residents of Selbridge organise a protest which quickly degenerates into a riot and rabid mob on a leopard hunt…

Chased across rooftops, masked Billy tracks down the real muggers and falls into a trap laid by criminal mastermind Nipper Nemo. The elderly bandit is not as smart as he thinks, though, and before long the boy has made him and mugger army his latest chew toys…

Trouble of a different nature materialises at school when well-intentioned teacher Mr. Gleeson encourages the budding journalist and makes Farmer the preferred target of psychotic bully Barry Towler. Fighting back, Billy momentarily loses control before calming down, but the real damage is to his printing gear. With his pride and joy seemingly finished, the desperate boy approaches his employer Clegg, who cruelly offers to print the magazine for him if Billy can get a photo of the legendary ghost haunting the derelict Regal Cinema.

The editor thinks it a tremendous joke, but he’s underestimated the mettle of his victim…

Diligently researching, Billy learns the spook is reputedly old projectionist Lurcher Creel, who perished on the night before the fleapit closed for good. Strange visions have been seen ever since, but oddly, new owner Mr. Miller is violently opposed to letting the kid take a peek inside, for reasons which become blindingly obvious and increasingly deadly when the enigmatic leopard man starts sniffing round…

Enthrallingly scripted by British comics superstar Tom Tully (Roy of the Rovers; Heros the Spartan; Janus Stark; Mytek the Mighty; Adam Eterno; Johnny Red; Harlem Heroes and many of the strips cited above) these tales are magnificently illustrated.

Working collaboratively British comics royalty Mike Western (Lucky Logan; No Hiding Place; The Avenger; Biggles; The Wild Wonders; Darkie’s Mob; The Sarge; HMS Nightshade; Jack O’Justice; Billy’s Boots; Roy of the Rovers) shared pencilling and inking with mood master Eric Bradbury (Mytek the Mighty; Maxwell Hawke; Cursitor Doom; Von Hoffman’s Invasion; House of Dolmann; Death Squad; Hook Jaw; Doomlord; Rogue Trooper; Invasion; Mean Arena; Tharg the Mighty and more) to craft a pre-modern masterwork affording a fascinating insight into the slant a different culture can bring to as genre.

The concept of a “real-life” superhero has never been more clearly and cleverly explored than in these low-key tales of the cat kid who survives not supervillains but a hard-knock life…
The Leopard from Lime Street ™ & © 1977, 1978, 2019, Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Suicide Squad: The Silver Age


By Robert Kanigher, Howard Liss, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, Gene Colan, Joe Kubert & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-6343-0 (HB) 978-1 4012 7516 7 (TPB)

The War that Time Forgot was a strange series which saw paratroopers and tanks of the “Question Mark Patrol” dropped on Mystery Island from whence no American soldiers ever returned. Assorted crack GIs discovered why when the operation was suddenly overrun by pterosaurs, tyrannosaurs and worse…

However, the combat-&-carnosaur creation was actually a spin-off of an earlier concept which hadn’t quite caught on with the comics-buying public. That wasn’t a problem for Writer/Editor Kanigher: a man well-versed in judicious recycling and reinvention…

Back in 1955 he had devised and written anthology adventure comic The Brave and the Bold which featured short complete tales starring a variety of period heroes: a format mirroring that era’s filmic fascination with historical dramas.

Issue #1 led with Roman swords-&-sandals epic Golden Gladiator, medieval mystery-man The Silent Knight and Joe Kubert’ Viking Prince. Soon the Gladiator was side-lined by the company’s iteration of Robin Hood, but the high adventure theme carried the title until the end of the decade when the burgeoning superhero revival saw B&B transform into a try-out vehicle in the manner of the astounding successful Showcase. Used to launch enterprising concepts and characters such as Cave Carson, Strange Sports Stories, Hawkman and the epochal Justice League of America, the title began test runs s with #25 (August/September 1959) with the fate-tempting Suicide Squad – code-named Task Force X by the US government to investigate uncanny mysteries and tackle unnatural threats.

The scary tales were all illustrated by Kanigher’s go-to team for fantastic fantasy (Ross Andru & Mike Esposito) and they clearly revelled at the chance to cut loose and show what they could do outside the staid whimsy of Wonder Woman or gritty realism of the war titles they usually handled…

The Brave and the Bold #25 introduced a quartet of merely human specialists – air ace war hero Colonel Rick Flag, combat medic Karin Grace and big-brained boffins Hugh Evans and Jess Price – all officially convened into a unit whose purpose was to tackle threats beyond conventional comprehension such as the interstellar phenomenon dubbed ‘The Three Waves of Doom!’

The quartet were built on a very shaky premise. All three men loved Karin. She only loved Rick (who wouldn’t?), but agreed to conceal her inclinations and sublimate her passions so Hugh and Jess would stay on the team of scientific death-cheaters…

In their first published exploit, a cloud from outer space impacted Earth and created a super-heated tsunami which threated to broil America. With dashing derring-do, the troubleshooters quenched the ambulatory heat wave only to have it spawn a colossal alien dragon emanating super-cold rays that might trigger a new ice age…

The only solution was to banish the beast back into space on a handy rocket headed for the sun, but tragically, the ship had to be piloted…

Having heroically ended the invader, the team were back two months later as B&B #26 opened with an immediate continuation. ‘The Sun Curse’ saw our stranded astronauts struggling – in scenes eerily prescient and reminiscent of the Apollo 13 crisis a decade later – to return their ship to Earth. Uncannily, the trip bathes them in radiation which causes them to shrink to insect size…

Back on terra firma but now imperilled by everything around them, the team nonetheless manages to scuttle a proposed attack by a hostile totalitarian nation before regaining their regular stature…

A second, shorter tale finds the quartet enjoying some downtime in Paris before the Metro is wrecked by an awakened dinosaur. Of course, our tough tourists are ready and able to stop the ‘Serpent in the Subway!’

In an entertainment era dominated by monsters and aliens, with superheroes still only tentatively resurfacing, Task Force X were at the forefront of beastie-battles. Their third and final try-out issue found them facing evolutionary nightmare as a scientist vanished and the region around his lab was suddenly besieged by gigantic insects and a colossal reptilian humanoid the team dubbed ‘The Creature of Ghost Lake!’ (December 1959/January 1960). They readily destroyed the monster but never found the professor…

A rare failure for those excitingly experimental days, the Suicide Squad vanished after that triple try-out run, only to resurface months later for a second bite of the cherry. The Brave and the Bold #37 (August/September 1961) opened with Karin displaying heretofore unsuspected psychic gifts and predicting an alien ‘Raid of the Dinosaurs!’ which pitted the group against hyper-intelligent saurians whilst ‘Threat of the Giant Eye!’ focussed on the retrieval of a downed military plane and lost super-weapon. That mission brought the Squad to an island of mythological mien where a living monocular monolith hunted people…

In #38 (October/November 1961) the team tackled the ‘Master of the Dinosaurs’ – an alien using Pteranodons to hunt like an Earthling employs falcons – after which the fabulous four fell afoul of extra-dimensional would-be conquerors but still had enough presence of mind and determination to defeat the ‘Menace of the Mirage People!’

B&B #39 (December 1961/January 1962) called “time!” on Task Force X after ‘Prisoners of the Dinosaur Zoo!’ saw the team uncover an ancient extraterrestrial ark caching antediluvian flora and fauna, and a ‘Rain of Fire!’ found them crushing a macabre criminal entombing crime-busters in liquid metal. That was it for the Squad until 1986 when a new iteration of the concept was launched in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Or was it? Superhero fans are notoriously clannish and insular so they might not have noticed how one creative powerhouse refused to take “no thanks” for an answer…

Robert Kanigher (1915-2002) was one of the most distinctive authorial voices in American comics, blending rugged realism with fantastic fantasy in his signature war comics, westerns, horror stories, superhero titles such as Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Teen Titans, Hawkman, Metal Men, Batman and other genres too numerous to cover here. He also scripted ‘Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt’ – the very first story of the Silver Age. This introduced Barry Allen AKA the Flash to hero-hungry kids in 1956.

Kanigher sold his first stories and poetry in 1932 and wrote for the theatre, film and radio before joining the Fox Features shop where he created The Bouncer, Steel Sterling and The Web whilst also providing scripts for Blue Beetle and the original Captain Marvel.

In 1945, he settled at All-American Comics as both writer and editor, staying on when the company amalgamated with National Comics to become the forerunner of today’s DC. He wrote the original Flash and Hawkman, created Black Canary and Lady Cop, plus many memorable villainous femme fatales like Harlequin and Rose and Thorn. This last he reconstructed during the relevancy era of the early 1970s into a schizophrenic crime-busting female superhero.

When mystery-men faded out at the end of the 1940s, Kanigher easily switched to espionage, adventure, westerns and war stories, becoming in 1952 writer/editor of the company’s combat titles: All-American War Stories, Star Spangled War Stories and Our Amy at War.

He created Our Fighting Forces in 1954 and added G.I. Combat to his burgeoning portfolio when Quality Comics sold their line of titles to DC in 1956, all the while helming Wonder Woman, Johnny Thunder, Rex the Wonder Dog, Silent Knight, Sea Devils, The Viking Prince and a host of others.

Among his numerous game-changing war series were Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace, the Haunted Tank and The Losers as well as the visually addictive, irresistibly astonishing “Dogfaces and Dinosaurs” dramas sampled and filling out the back of this stunning collection…

Kanigher was a restlessly creative writer and even used the uncanny but formulaic adventure arena of The War that Time Forgot as a personal laboratory for his series concepts. The Flying Boots, G.I. Robot and many other teams and characters first appeared in the manic Pacific hellhole with wall-to-wall danger. Indisputably the big beasts were the stars, but occasionally (extra)ordinary G.I .Joes made enough of an impression to secure return engagements, too…

The War that Time Forgot debuted in Star Spangled War Stories #90 (April-May 1960), running until #137 (May 1968). It skipped only three issues: #91, 93 and #126 (the last of which starred the United States Marine Corps simian Sergeant Gorilla – look it up: I’m neither kidding nor being metaphorical…).

Simply too good a concept to ignore, this seamless, shameless blend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Caprona stories – known alternatively as the Caspak Trilogy or The Land That Time Forgot – provided everything baby-boomer boys could dream of: giant lizards, humongous insects, fantastic adventures and two-fisted heroes with lots of guns. The only thing mostly missing was cave-girls in fur bikinis…

In the summer of 1963, a fresh Suicide Squad debuted in Star Spangled War Stories #110 to investigate a ‘Tunnel of Terror’ into the lost land of giant monsters: this time though, a giant albino gorilla decided that us mammals should stick together…

The huge hairy beast was also the star of ‘Return of the Dinosaur Killer!’ in #111 as the unnamed Squad leader and a wily boffin (visually based on Kanigher’s office associate Julie Schwartz) struggled to survive on a reptile-ridden tropical atoll…

SSWS #116 (August/September 1964) depicted a duo of dedicated soldiers facing ice-bound beasts in ‘The Suicide Squad!’ – the big difference being that Morgan and Mace were more determined to kill each other than accomplish their mission…

‘Medal for a Dinosaur!’ in #117 bowed to the inevitable: introducing a (relatively) friendly and extremely cute baby pterodactyl to balance out Mace & Morgan’s barely suppressed animosity, after which ‘The Plane-Eater!’ in #118 saw the army odd couple adrift in the Pacific and in deep danger until the leather-winged little guy turned up once more…

The Suicide Squad were getting equal billing by the time of #119’s ‘Gun Duel on Dinosaur Hill!’ (February/March 1965), as yet another band of men-without-hope battled saurian horrors – and each other – to the death, after which seemingly unkillable Morgan & Mace returned with Dino, the flying ptero-tot, who found a new companion in handy hominid Caveboy before the whole unlikely ensemble struggled to survive against increasingly outlandish creatures in ‘The Tank Eater!’…

Issue #121 presented a diving drama when a UDT (Underwater Demolitions Team) frogman won his Suicide Squad rep as a formidable fighter and ‘The Killer of Dinosaur Alley!’ Increasingly now, G.I. hardware and ordnance trumped bulk, fang and claw…

Undisputed master of gritty fantasy art Joe Kubert added his pencil-and-brush magic to a tense, manic thriller featuring the return of the G.I. Robot in stunning battle bonanza ‘Titbit for a Tyrannosaurus!’ in #125 (February/March 1965), after which Andru & Esposito covered another Suicide Squad sea-saga in #127: ‘The Monster Who Sank a Navy!’

This eclectic collection tumultuously terminates in scripter Howard Liss and visual veteran Gene Colan’s masterfully crafted, moving human drama from #128 which was astoundingly improved by the inclusion of ravening reptiles in ‘The Million Dollar Medal!’

Throughout this calamitous compilation of dark dilemmas, light-hearted romps and battle blockbusters, the emphasis is always on foibles and fallibility; with human heroes unable to put aside grudges, swallow pride or forgive trespasses even amidst the strangest and most terrifying moments of their lives. This edgy humanity informs and elevates even the daftest of these wonderfully imaginative adventure yarns.

Classy, intense, insanely addictive and Just Plain Fun, the original Suicide Squad offers a kind of easy, no-commitment entertainment seldom seen these days and is a deliciously guilty pleasure for one and all. Surely, this is a movie we would all watch…
© 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 2016 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Cyclops volume 2: A Pirate’s Life for Me


By John Layman, Javier Garrón, Chris Sotomayor, & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9076-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

When mutant genius Henry McCoy learned he was dying, he used time-travel tech in a last-ditch attempt to give his life meaning. Seeking to prevent an inter-species war, he brought the young, naïve X-Men of his own youth into the future to reason with his radicalised former comrade Scott Summers, praying the still idealistic and hopeful teens could divert Mutant Enemy Terrorist No. 1 from his path of doctrinaire madness…

The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than shocking modern day Cyclops back to his senses, the confrontation hardened the renegade’s heart and strengthened his resolve. Moreover, after McCoy the younger somehow cured his older self, he and the rest of the X-Kids were trapped in their own future and began gradually defecting to the fundamentalist team…

Eventually, the temporally-misplaced First Class ended up living with the elder Cyclops’ crew, but everything changed after Gladiator of the Shi’ar realised Jean Grey AKA Marvel Girl – and future host of the cosmic force known as the Phoenix – was back. The alien emperor rashly attempted to abduct and execute her for the crimes of her older self, but his insane pre-emptive punishment plan was foiled by an assembly of X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy and intergalactic buccaneers Hepzibah, Ch’od, Raza Longknife, Korvus and insectoid medical wizard Sikorsky – collectively known as The Starjammers.

During the sideral shenanigans, 16-year-old Scott met his long-believed-dead dad. Now going by Corsair and undisputed leader of the cosmic privateers, Christopher Summers invited his boy to stay behind when the mutant heroes returned to Earth…

Enduring and barely surviving a steep learning curve to become a full-blooded galactic buccaneer whilst forging bonds of comradeship with the exotic crew, Scott eventually takes off with his dad for some true father-son time only to discover Corsair’s darkest secret whilst being marooned on a desolate planetoid.

Facing slow death, Cyclops devises a way off but it’s possibly worse than being eaten by the mudball world’s predatory lifeforms…

Scripted by John Layman, illustrated by Javier Garrón and coloured by Chris Sotomayor, this compendium collects issues #6-12 of Cyclops: (December 2014-June 2015), following the chronal castaway into emotional typhoons and universe-shredding crises before making safe harbour back on Earth…

It begins with the Summers family back aboard the Starjammer with the kid geekily seeking to impress his crewmates. His eagerness leads to disaster and the ship’s ambush by master star pirate Captain Malafect of the mighty vessel Desolation. Outgunned, outnumbered and seemingly helpless, Corsair savagely turns on his son, beating and denouncing him…

When the triumphant villain maroons the Starjammers to die a slow death in a lifepod, he keeps Scott as his newest recruit and Corsair just so’s he can torment and torture his old shipmate…

Soon the kid is learning the darkest sides of space pillaging, and it’s all he can do to keep the bodycount low. His squeamishness and eagerness to please doesn’t initially endear him to his new shipmates either, but he gradually befriends some of them. Pretending to torture Corsair helps his standing but the real turnabout comes after Captain’s daughter Vileena decides she really likes the “Pirate Boy”…

The X-Man Cyclops was regarded as one of the most brilliant tacticians ever born and now his timeslipped junior self proves that gift came early as the complex long game he initiated when the Starjammer was first taken begins to pay off.

As his marooned former shipmates are picked up by slavers, he leads a (relatively bloodless) raid and acquires a Shi’ar super-weapon dubbed a “starcracker”, endearing him further to Malefect and Vileena whilst losing forever the leader of the crew faction intent on killing him…

Riding high in the buccaneer’s regard, Scott leads an away mission whilst the Captain seeks to sell the ultimate weapon leading to the liberation of his father and an all-out war that pits his new friends against his old crew. In the end, it can only end in disaster and tragedy…

Rightly, the tale should end here, but also included is the final issue which was the tenth instalment of publishing event Black Vortex (Cyclops #12; June 2015). The story detailed how many of Marvel’s space-based heroes and villains became embroiled in the quest to possess a cosmic mirror that bestowed infinite power on any who used it.  Prior to this chapter, Scott reunited with his X-Men as a mystery opponent named Mr. Knife out-manoeuvred the Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, Captain Marvel and many more…

Now reunited with his school chums and on the run again Scott sacrifices himself – as do Iceman and Groot – to the Black Vortex, hoping the resultant power-hike will help their friends before ultimately corrupting them…

Unfortunately, readers won’t learn the answer here, as we conclude with a feature on Garrón & Sotomayor’s process for turning drawings into full colour art , leaving us to the seas of fate and another collection for answers and culmination…

With covers & variants gallery by Alexander Lozano and Andrea Sorrentino, this is – despite my cavils and quibbles – a thrilling, heart-warming, funny and astoundingly action-packed romp. Cyclops: A Pirate’s Life For Me combines cosmic intrigue and dashing derring-do with solid characterisation and wild blue yonder wonderment, and will delight any fan of cosmically light-hearted Marvel Movies like Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor: Love and Thunder. What more could any wide-eyed, entertainment-starved child of the wondering stars want?
© 2014 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. 2021 MARVEL

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Mighty Samson Archives volume one


By Otto Binder & Frank Thorne & various (Dark Horse Comics) 
ISBN: 978-1-59582-579-7 (HB) 

These days all the attention in comics circles goes to big-hitters and headline-grabbing ground-breakers, but once upon a time, when funnybooks were cheap as well as plentiful, a kid (whatever their age) could afford to follow the pack and still find time and room to enjoy quirky outliers: B through Z listers, oddly off-kilter concepts and champions far falling outside the accepted parameters of standard super-types… 

A classic example of that exuberant freedom of expression was the relatively angst-free dystopian tomorrow of Mighty Samson, who had a sporadic yet extended comics career of 32 issues spanning 1964 to 1982. 

Although set in the aftermath of an atomic Armageddon, the story of the survivors was a blend of updated myth, pioneer adventure and superhero shtick, liberally leavened with variations of the incredible creatures and sci fi monsters the industry thrived on back then. 

Comics colossus Dell/Gold Key/Whitman had one of the most complicated publishing set-ups in history, but that didn’t matter one iota to kids of all ages who consumed their vastly varied product. Based in Racine, Wisconsin, Whitman had been a crucial component of monolithic Western Publishing and Lithography Company since 1915: drawing upon huge commercial resources and industry connections that came with editorial offices on both coasts. They even boasted a subsidiary printing plant in Poughkeepsie, New York. 

Another connection was with fellow Western subsidiary K.K. Publications (named for licensing legend Kay Kamen who facilitated extremely lucrative “license to print money” merchandising deals for Walt Disney Studios between 1933 and 1949). From 1938, the affiliated companies’ comic book output was released under a partnership deal with a “pulps” periodical publisher under the umbrella imprint Dell Comics – and again those creative staff and commercial contacts fed into the line-up of the Big Little, Little Golden and Golden Press books for younger children. This partnership ended in 1962 and Western had to swiftly reinvent its comics division as Gold Key. 

Western Publishing had been a major player since comics’ earliest days, blending a huge tranche of licensed titles including newspaper strips, TV tie-in and Disney titles (like Nancy and Sluggo, Tarzan and The Lone Ranger) with in-house originations such as Turok, Son of Stone, Brain Boy and Kona: Monarch of Monster Isle. 

Dell and Western split just as a comic book resurgence triggered a host of new titles and companies, and a superhero boom. Independent of Dell, new outfit Gold Key launched original adventure titles including Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom; Magnus – Robot Fighter; M.A.R.S. Patrol – Total War; Space Family Robinson and many more. 

As a publisher, Gold Key never really “got” the melodramatic, frequently mock-heroic Sturm und Drang of the 1960s superhero boom – although for many of us, the understated functionality of classics like Magnus and Doctor Solar or the crime-fighting iterations of classic movie monsters Dracula, Frankenstein and Werewolf were utterly irresistible. The sheer off-the-wall lunacy of features like Neutro or Dr. Spektor I will reserve for a future occasion… 

This superb first full-colour hardback compilation – printed on a reassuringly sturdy and comforting grainy old-school pulp stock rather than glossy paper – gathers the first half dozen issues of Mighty Samson, as anonymously created by industry giants Otto Binder & Frank Thorne. It even includes some monochrome single-page fact-features and the mesmerising painted covers by unsung master illustrators Morris Gollub and George Wilson. 

These covers were reproduced text-free on the back of each issue and probably graced many a kid’s bedroom wall way back when. You get those too, but I’d suggest scanners rather than scissors this time around… 

Otto Binder was a quintessential jobbing writer. He and his brother Earl were early fans of science fiction, making their first professional sale to Amazing Stories in 1930. As “Eando Binder” their pulp-fiction and novels output continued well into the 1970s, with Otto rightly famed for his creation of primal robotic hero Adam Link. 

From 1939 onwards, Otto was also a prolific comic book scripter, most beloved and revered for the invention and perfection of a humorous blend of spectacular action, self-deprecating humour and gentle whimsy as characterised by the Fawcett Captain Marvel line of titles (and later in DC’s Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen). Binder was also constantly employed by many other publishers and amongst his most memorable inventions and innovations are Timely’s Young Allies, Mr. Mind, Brainiac, Krypto the Super Dog and the Legion of Super-Heroes.  

In his later life, he moved into editing, producing factual science books and writing for NASA. 

Frank Thorne was one of the most individualistic talents in American comics. Born in 1930, he began his comics career drawing romance stories for Standard Comics beside the legendary Alex Toth before graduating to better-paid newspaper strips, such as Perry Mason for King Features Syndicate. For Dell/Gold Key he drew comic book classics Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim and The Green Hornet, as well as the first few years of this seminal sci-fi classic. 

For DC he did compelling work on Tomahawk and Son of Tomahawk before being hired by Roy Thomas at Marvel to illustrate his belated breakthrough strip Red Sonja. Forever-after connected with feisty, earthy, highly sexualised women, in 1978 Thorne created outrageously bawdy (some say vulgar) swordswoman Ghita of Alizarr for Warren’s adult science fantasy anthology 1984/1994 as well as such adult satirical strips as Moonshine McJugs for Playboy and Danger Rangerette for National Lampoon.  

Thorne eventually won the National Cartoonists Award for comic books, an Inkpot Award and a Playboy Editorial Award, but was still a fairly by-the-book illustrator at the time of this collection’s content. In fact, it was on Mighty Samson that he opened up and found his own unique artistic vision: one which would carry him to the forefront of stylists with the satirical and erotic works of his later years. 

That’s meat for other reviews, but here the creators combine to craft a beguiling otherworld of action, adventure and drama suitable for most kids of all ages and a milieu which would be perfectly at home today on any Kids channel… 

The strip, its merits and the incredible careers of its originators are fully and lovingly discussed by Dylan Williams in his Foreword ‘The Mighty Samson Comics of Frank Thorne and Otto Binder’, and there are full ‘Creator Biographies’ at the end of the book, but what really matters is the sublime yarns reprinted between those points: no-nonsense, high-fantasy yarns at once self-contained, episodic, exciting, enticing and deceptively witty. 

Following the first magnetic painted cover from Gollub, the eponymous ‘Mighty Samson’ (#1, July 1964) introduces the bombed out former metropolis of N’Yark: a dismal dangerous region where human primitives cling to the ruins, striving daily against mutated plants and monsters and less easily identified blends somewhere in between… 

A remarkable occurrence begins one day when a toddler is grabbed by a predatory plant and casually tears the terror apart with his podgy little hands. Years pass and the child grows tall and clean-limbed, and it’s clear that he too is a mutant: immensely strong, fast and durable… 

Impassioned by his mother’s dying words – “protect the weak from the powerful, the good from the evil” – Samson becomes the champion of his people, battling the beasts and monsters imperilling the city. Sadly, these struggles are not without cost, such as when he kills the immense Liobear, but loses his right eye in the struggle… 

The clash proves a turning point in his life as his terrible wounds are dressed by a stranger named Sharmaine. She and her father Mindor are voluntary outcasts in the city: shunning contact with superstitious tribes whilst gathering lost secrets of science.  

They are striving to bring humanity out of its second stone age and, fired with inspiration, Samson agrees to join in their self-appointed mission: defending them from all threats as they carry out their work. 

There were generally two complete adventures per issue, and the quest continues in ‘Ancient Weapon’ as the trio’s scavenging leads them through a gauntlet of horrendous mutant monsters to an ancient armoury where sagacious Mindor deciphers the secrets of sticks which kill from a distance. Unfortunately, the discovery is observed by brutal warlord Kull the Killer who takes Sharmaine hostage to seize control of the rediscovered death-technology. Thankfully, the tyrant and his warriors never suspect Samson is as clever as he is strong… 

It was nearly a year until a second issue was released (#2, June 1965), but when it finally arrived it was at full throttle. ‘The Riddle of the Raids’ sees the wandering science nomads buzzed by a flying saucer which proves to be the vehicle of choice of a new arch foe. Terra is an exotic mystery woman possessing many lost technological secrets who has emerged after years underground in a bunker from the old world. Her store of atomic batteries finally exhausted, she begins raiding across the toxic, monster-infested Huzon River from the wastelands of Jerz, and quickly recruits Kull to her cause. However, even working in unison they are no match for Mighty Samson and once he drives them off, aged Mindor is able to add greatly to mankind’s store of recovered knowledge… 

Intent on uncovering the truth about ‘The Maid of Mystery’, Samson makes the perilous excursion across the devastated George Washington Bridge to invade Terra’s subterranean fortress in Jerz. Although faced with Kull’s monstrous minions and captured, the one-eyed hero soon escapes, but not before making a lasting impression on the evil empress of forgotten lore… 

More lost secrets emerge in #3 (September 1965) after the atomic archaeologists unearth ‘Peril from the Past’. Dr. John Pitt was working in an atomic bunker when the civilisation ended, somehow falling into suspended animation before being revived by jubilant Mindor. 

Determined to glean everything possible from the shaken survivor, his hopes are continually dashed as a geological accident in an old chemical factory threatens N’Yark with toxic clouds of radioactive poison. However, as the reawakened chemist works with his rescuers to end the threat, Sharmaine suspects the old-worlder is hiding something… 

The tragic truth about Pitt comes out as he and Samson begin ‘The Desperate Mission’ to snuff out the source of the death cloud, but it is only a prelude to a greater, final loss… 

With Mighty Samson #4 (December 1965), the turbulent world of tomorrow expanded exponentially as N’Yark endured raids by post-apocalyptic Vikings from pastoral paradise Greelynd. Barbaric despot Thorr leads ‘The Metal Stealers’ in stripping the ruins of all its scrap alloys; sailing them to a distant Nordic castle where he has rediscovered the processes of smelting and forging. 

Samson doggedly tracks him across unknown oceans, not just because he has stolen the city’s heritage and vital resources, but also because the reaver kidnapped Sharmaine and seemingly turned Mindor’s head with promises of technological resources and total freedom to experiment… 

Of course, all is not as it seems and when Samson invades Thorr’s ‘Sinister Stronghold’ to battle the tyrant’s legion of monsters, idealistic Mindor’s seeming compliance is revealed as a clever scheme to defeat the resource raider… 

Returned to their shattered home, the allies are helpless against the mounting radioactive peril of ‘The Death Geysers’ (#5, March 1966) erupting from beneath the city. With large portions of N’Yark now no-go areas, hope apparently materialises in the form of Vaxar: a newcomer versed in science, whom Samson rescues from a voracious “Gulping Blob”. The stranger eagerly joins their efforts to neutralise the geyser menace, but the researcher’s every invention is countered by monstrous, bestial mutant Oggar who is every inch Samson’s physical equal… 

Once again, clear-headed Sharmaine is the one who deduces the truth about ‘The Double Enemy’ in their midst and, as Vaxar’s terrible secret is exposed, awesome natural forces combine with a most terrifying artefact of recovered weaponry to end the threat of both Oggar and the geysers… 

These utterly accessible, exultant and exuberant romps conclude in this volume with a sop to the then-escalating “space race” between Russia and the USA. Issue #6 (June 1966) opens with N’Yark bombarded by ‘The Sinister Satellites’ of a forgotten era, haphazardly crashing to earth around the city. Consulting his preciously-hoarded records, Mindor ascertains they are lost technology he simply must possess, but finds himself in deadly contention with Terra of Jerz for the fallen stars. 

None too soon, suspicious Samson and Sharmaine discover the evil queen of science is actually pulling the satellites out of the skies with a magnetic cannon, but as they move to stop her, an unintended consequence of her meddling unleashes ‘The Monster from Space’ growing uncontrollably and soon set to devour the entire continent should Mighty Samson not find some way to kill it… 

This excellent tome has one last treat in store, as a brace of monochrome pictorial fact features – also illustrated by Thorne – reveal a few salient facts about the iconic Empire State Building in ‘The Mighty Tower’ and ‘The World’s Tallest’, both originally produced as frontispieces for the advert-free original comic books. 

Bizarre, action-packed and fabulously bombastic, Binder’s modern myth of a rationalist Hercules battling atom-spawned Titans and devils is a stunning spectacle of thrill-a-minute wonderment from start to finish, with artist Thorne visibly shaking off his artistic chains on every succeeding page. These tales are lost gems from an era when fun was paramount and entertainment a mandatory requirement. This is comics the way they were and really should be again… 
Mighty Samson ® Volume One ™ & © 2010 Random House, Inc. Under license to Classic Media LCC. All rights reserved. All other material, unless otherwise specified, © 2010 Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved

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Doctor Who Graphic Novel volume 3: The Tides of Time


By Steve Parkhouse, Dave Gibbons, Dez Skinn, Paul Neary, Mick Austin, Steve Dillon & various (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-904159-92-6 (Album TPB)

The British love comic strips and they love celebrity and they love “Characters.” The history of our homegrown graphic narrative has a peculiarly disproportionate number of comedians (stage, screen and radio), Variety stars, general celluloid icons and all manner of television actors both in and out of character. This includes such disparate legends as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Flanagan & Allen, Shirley Eaton (“The Modern Miss”), Max Bygraves, Jimmy Edwards, Charlie Drake, and so many more; all dead and mostly forgotten.

As much adored and adapted were actual shows and properties like Whacko!, ITMA, Our Gang (a British version of Hal Roach’s film sensation by Dudley Watkins ran in The Dandy as well as the American comicbook series by Walt Kelly), Old Mother Riley, Andy Pandy Muffin the Mule, Supercar, Thunderbirds, Pinky and Perky, The Clangers and more.

Hugely popular anthology comics like Radio Fun, Film Fun, TV Fun, TV Tornado, Look-In, TV Comic and Countdown translated our viewing and listening favourites into pictorial joy every week, and it was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley the day job into a licensed comic property…

Doctor Who premiered on black-&-white televisions across Britain on November 23rd 1963 with the first episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’ and in 1964 a decades-long association with TV Comic began: issue #674 offered the premier instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’…

On 11th October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says 17th), Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. It regenerated into a monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) and has been with us – under various names and guises – ever since. proving that the Time Lord is a comic hero with an impressive pedigree.

Panini’s UK division (formerly Marvel UK until 1995) endeavoured to collect every strip from its tenure as publisher into a compete archive in a uniform series of oversized graphic albums, each concentrating on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer. This particular tome was first released in 2005, collecting strips from Doctor Who Monthly #61-83 and #86-87 plus a bonus story from Doctor Who Weekly #17-18 spanning February 1982 to April 1984 and featuring the complete comics oeuvre of the “Fifth Doctor” as played by Peter Davidson.

With Steve Parkhouse scripting and increasingly in-demand Dave Gibbons still illustrating – albeit not for much longer as America called and global stardom beckoned – ‘The Tides of Time’ opens proceedings with a spectacular epic pulling together threads from previous strip exploits, as multiversal control mechanism The Event Synthesizer is compromised and its attendant guardian The Prime Mover assaulted and ousted by demonic intruder Melanicus.

Built to harmonise the flow of time into a single logical sequence, under the demon’s control the device begins randomising time and wrecking reality…

Meanwhile on Earth in the putative Now, a certain wandering Gallifreyan steps out to bat on a warm afternoon in a village cricket match.

Play suddenly stops when the ball turns into a live grenade halfway to the wicket! Total chaos ensues and the Doctor investigates, incidentally befriending and dragging along displaced medieval knight Sir Justin when irresistibly summoned to a conclave of “higher evolutionaries”: advanced beings such as Gallifrey’s original Master of Time Rassilon, and other sublime and elevated members of the Celestial Intervention Agency who despatch him to deal with the salvo of time-warps Melanicus has unleashed to unmake existence.

Aided – at first unknowingly – by Rassilon’s secondary agent Shayde (a complex program given form to match his function), The Doctor and Justin travel beyond time and reality to encounter bizarre and fantastic things before finally ending the demon’s reign of chaos…

In the aftermath as existence resets itself The Doctor returns to his cricket match and a waiting game…

Doctor Who Monthly #68-69 featured Gibbons’ final work on the feature as seeming standalone tale ‘Stars Fell on Stockbridge’ laid the groundwork for the rest of this Gallifreyan incarnation’s tenure whilst introducing local UFO nut and fantasist skywatcher Maxwell Edison who stumbles across a true alien and shares his TARDIS on the voyage of a lifetime.

Sadly, it intersects with an incredible ancient starship and awakens something incomprehensible before breaking up and raining down as fireworks over the sleepy British town…

Parkhouse pencilled the opening episodes of ‘The Stockbridge Horror’ in #70-75 before his inker Paul Neary was joined by Mick Austin for a dazzling mystery that opened when the local quarry blasted open a sheet of rock five hundred million years old to find a perfect fossilised impression of an old police box…

News of it ruined The Doctor’s breakfast in Stockbridge and precipitated a chase across creation: uncovering the horrifying fact that his TARDIS was increasingly rebellious and dysfunctional due to having been possessed and parasitized. It took a voyage across, between and beyond universes and a total rebuild to fix the problem and demanded a supreme sacrifice from Shayde…

It also brought the wanderer to the attention of Gallifrey’s shamefully opportunistic Military and caused another show trial of the Time Lord before honour could be restored and the parasite – which had gone on to shape all human history – was dealt suitably with. All that was left was to institute a cover-up on Earth, but the Time Lords were to slow and not thorough enough and some details remained in the hands of the UK’s S.A.G.3 unit: a covert squad of super-powered intelligence operatives…

In dire need of a vacation, the Doctor goes fishing in the tropics, but his downtime at the ‘Lunar Lagoon’ in #76-77 (all art by Austin) is marred when he’s captured by a Japanese soldier who doesn’t realise the war has ended. As he gradually befriends confused hold-out Fuji, his gentle therapy is short-circuited by an America warplane strafing the TARDIS before being shot down by Japanese planes!

Due to the Gallifreyan’s misguided interference, confusion follows tragedy as the American flier kills Fuji leading into epic follow-up serial ‘4-Dimensional Vistas’ (DWM #78-83) as the pilot reveals that the date is 1963 and the war never ended. In shock, The Doctor realises he has been on an alternate Earth since the Time Lords released him and offers Angus “Gus” Goodman a chance to escape the conflict forever…

After travelling back to a point when the world was still roiling stardust, the Doctor finally finds “his” Earth, in time to finish the secret mission that first found him playing a waiting game in Stockbridge. In the Arctic, another airliner is brought down and its remnants added to a long-running secret project instigated by Martian Ice Warriors and a hidden ally. Using stolen Gallifreyan technology a traitor Time Lord has been creating an ultimate weapon for the military maniacs, but had not reckoned on a last-ditch assault by the super-agents of S.A.G.3, and more interference from old enemy The Doctor. Although ultimately successful, the brutal battle at the top of the world is only won at great cost…

An era ended and the tone lightened with ‘The Moderator’ in #86-87. Steve Dillon deftly added gritty action and sardonic mirth to the tale of an infallible hired killer commissioned to destroy The Doctor and secure his time vehicle for a new recurring villain…

Ultimate disaster capitalist Josiah W. Dogbolter was the richest man (humanoid frog actually) in creation and believed that Time was Money, further positing that if he had a machine to control time all the money would naturally follow. He was not happy when The Doctor couldn’t be bought…

This stunning, sterling trade paperback concludes with a short story by veteran British comics stalwart Paul Neary (from a plot by Dez Skinn) as an extragalactic chronovore invades the TARDIS, causing continuity to reverse itself and requiring the attention of all four Doctors (and K-9!) to counter the threat of ‘Timeslip’ (DWW #17-18: February 6th – 13th 1980).

Sheer effusive delight from start to finish, this is a splendid confection for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form to anyone minded to give comics another shot. The only thing that could improve it would be a digital edition…

All Doctor Who material © BBCtv. Doctor Who, the Tardis, Dalek word and device mark and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. Dalek device mark © BBC/Terry Nation 1963. All other material © its individual creators and owners. Published 2005 and 2014 by Panini. All rights reserved.

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Yoko Tsuno volume 2: The Time Spiral


By Roger Leloup translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-43-4 (Album PB)

In 1970, indomitable intellectual adventurer and “electronics engineer” Yoko Tsuno began her career in Le Journal de Spirou. She is still delighting readers and making new fans to this day in astounding, all-action, excessively accessible adventures which are amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created.

The globe-girdling, space-&-time-spanning episodic epics starring the Japanese investigator were devised by monumentally multi-talented Belgian maestro Roger Leloup, who began his own solo career after working as a studio assistant and technical artist on Hergé’s timeless Adventures of Tintin.

Compellingly told, superbly imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of any individual yarn may appear – always firmly grounded in hyper-realistic settings underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles, Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of a wave of strips revolutionising European comics.

That long-overdue sea-change heralded the rise of competent, clever, brave and formidably capable female protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals; elevating Continental comics in the process. These endeavours are as engaging and empowering now as they ever were, and none more so than the trials and tribulations of Miss Tsuno.

Her very first outings (the still unavailable Hold-up en hi-fi, La belle et la bête and Cap 351) were mere introductory vignettes before the superbly capable troubleshooter and her valiant if less able male comrades Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen properly hit their stride with premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange in 1971 (Le Journal de Spirou’s May 13th edition)…

Yoko’s journeys include explosive exploits in exotic corners of our world, sinister deep-space sagas and even time-travelling jaunts like this one. There are 30 European albums to date but only 16 translated into English thus far. This one was first serialised in 1980 (Spirou #2189-2210 before being released the following year as compellingly gripping thriller album La Spirale du temps. Chronologically the 11th album, due to the quirks of publishing it reached us Brits as her second English-language Cinebook outing, offering enigma and mystery and three shots of global Armageddon…

Miss Tsuno is visiting a cousin and enjoying old childhood haunts in Borneo, with Vic and Pol along for the ride: as ever scouting film footage for another of their documentary projects. As the boys take to the skies in a helicopter, their companion is befriending elephants and exploring an ancient, ramshackle and beloved temple. She is particularly taken with the bas-relief of a beautiful dancer on the wall of the crumbling edifice which has fascinated her since her earliest years…

This night, however, her bucolic routine is shattered by bizarre events. Staying out later than usual, Yoko observes a weird machine appear out of thin air near the temple. When a young girl steps out of the contraption, she is barracked by two men, one of whom then shoots her.

Instantly Yoko intervenes, but when she decks the shooter he vanishes in an explosive swirl of light. Incredible explanations follow as “Monya” introduces herself as a time traveller from the 39th century. It’s hard to believe, but she does have a gadget which closes and repairs her wound in seconds…

Monya has voyaged back in time to prevent a contemporary scientific experiment running in the area causing Earth’s destruction in her era. In fact, the visitor from 3872 saw her own father die and the planet turn to a cinder relative moments before arriving. Now she is intent on finding scientist Stephen Webbs and stopping his imminent test of an antimatter bomb…

At her cousin Izumi’s home, Yoko confers with Vic and Pol, who hear with astonishment a tale of future war, a devastated ecology planetary destruction and how the 14-year old has been tasked with ensuring that her reality never comes to pass.

Monya’s attacker had been a man named Stamford: a fellow time-traveller who had gone off-mission and died because of it. Chrononauts cannot exist outside their own time without biological regulators to attune them to foreign times, and he must have damaged his when he tried to kill her…

A lucky chance then points them to a remote area where an Australian named Webbs has set up a site for an international telecoms company. The next morning our heroes are heading for the Dragon Mountain in two helicopters, although they are not sure what they will do when they get there. It certainly won’t be to kill Webbs like Stamford wanted…

Bluffing their way in, Yoko and Monya leave the boys in the air as back-up and quickly discover the site has precious little to do with radio communications. It’s an old Japanese fortress from WWII, reconditioned to be utterly impregnable and manned by a private army. They even have a particle accelerator!

Whatever the researchers are up to, they don’t discount Monya’s story. Too many strange things have occurred lately. Webbs was acquainted with Stamford; another colleague – Leyton – has gone missing and a rash of strange events still plagues the project. Before suspicious Webbs can explain further, and as if to underscore the point, a massive piece of machinery flies across the room and almost kills the nosy girls…

Webbs is at his wits end, but Monya’s futuristic tech detects a strange energy field and leads Yoko to another fantastic discovery. On a tunnel wall sealed for decades she reads a military warning inscription. It is signed by her uncle, Toshio Ishida. An engineer and part of the occupation forces, he stayed and married a local after the war. Yoko is staying in his home with the colonel’s son Izumi…

Webbs is desperate to talk. Taking the girls aside he reveals what Monya already knows: he has isolated antimatter. What she didn’t know, however, is that this revelation was given to him by some unknown manipulator and only he can handle the material. Everybody else is held back by the kind of force causing objects to fly about and explode. Most terrifying of all, Webbs has uncovered evidence that the Japanese also had antimatter. But if so, why didn’t they win the war with it?

With no other option available, Yoko decides she and Monya must travel back to 1943 to solve the mystery…

What they discover is a viper’s nest of criminality and intrigue, a scheme to unleash hell on Japan’s democratic enemies and an arcane horror which tests Yoko’s guts and ingenuity to the limit. Moreover, even after spectacularly defeating the threat in 1943, the alien menace remembers its enemies once they return to the present…

Complex, devious and superbly fast-paced, this mesmerising thriller is an onion-skinned marvel of ingenious plotting: a fabulous monster-hunting yarn which reveals more of Yoko’s past as she tackles a threat to today and saves a distant tomorrow.

Building to a thundering climax and uplifting conclusion, it again confirms Yoko Tsuno as an ultimate hero, at home in every kind of scenario and easily able to hold her own against the likes of James Bond, Modesty Blaise, Tintin or other genre-busting super-stars: as coolly capable facing spies and madmen as alien invaders, weird science or unchecked forces of nature…

As always the most effective asset in these breathtaking tales is the astonishingly authentic and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship and storytelling, which superbly benefits from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail. The Time Spiral is a magnificently wide-screen thriller, tense and satisfying, and will appeal to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy or devious derring-do.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1981 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2007 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Adam Eterno – A Hero for All Time


By Tom Tully, Tom Kerr, Colin Page, Francisco Solano López, Eric Bradbury Ted Kearon, Rex Archer & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-869-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

British comics had a strange and extended love affair with what can only be described as “unconventional” (for which feel free to substitute “creepy”) heroes. So many of the stars and potential role models of our serials and strips were just plain “off”: self-righteous, moody voyeurs-turned vigilantes like Jason Hyde, sinister masterminds like The Dwarf, deranged geniuses like Eric Dolmann, so many reformed criminals like The Spider or just outright racist supermen like Captain Hurricane…

…And don’t get me started on our legion of lethally anarchic comedy icons or that our most successful symbol of justice is the Eagle-bedecked jack-booted poster boy for a fascist state. Perhaps that explains why these days we can’t even imagine or envision what a proper leader looks like and keep on electing clowns, crooks and oblivious privileged simpletons…

All joking aside, British comics are unlike any other kind and simply have to be seen to be believed and enjoyed. One of the most revered stars of the medium has finally begun to be collected in archival editions, and perfectly encapsulates our odd relationship with heroism,  villainy and particularly the murky grey area bridging them…

Until the 1980s, comics in the UK were based on an anthological model, offering variety of genre, theme and character on a weekly – or sometimes fortnightly – basis. Humorous periodicals like The Beano were leavened by thrillers like Billy the Cat or General Jumbo and adventure papers like Lion or Valiant always included gag strips such as The Nutts, Grimly Feendish, Mowser and a wealth of similar quick laugh treats.

Thunder and Jet were amongst the last of this fading model. Fleetway particularly was shifting to themed anthologies like Shoot, Action and Battle, whilst venerable veterans like Lion, Valiant and Buster hung on and stayed fresh by absorbing failing titles. Thunder ran for 22 weeks before merging into Lion & Thunder, bringing with it Black Max, The Steel Commando, The Spooks of Saint Luke’s and Adam Eterno. With Steel Commando, Adam would survive and thrive, as the comic later merged into Valiant & Lion (June 1974) until 1976. He also appeared in numerous Annuals and Specials thereafter.

Eterno was initially devised by Thunder assistant editor Chris Lowder and editor Jack Legrand, with top flight artist Tom Kerr (Monty Carstairs, Rip Kerrigan, Kelly’s Eye, Charlie Peace, Captain Hurricane, Steel Claw, Kraken, Mary-Jo, Tara King/The Avengers, Billy’s Boots) initially designing and visualising the frankly spooky antihero and drawing the first episode.

The feature was scripted by equally adept and astoundingly prolific old hand Tom Tully (Roy of the Rovers, Heros the Spartan, Janus Stark, Dan Dare, The Wild Wonders, Johnny Red, The Leopard from Lime Street) but after he left in 1976 Kerr, Donne Avenell, Scott Goddall and Ted Cowan would write Adam’s later adventures for star turns like Joe Colquhoun, John Catchpole, Eric Bradbury, Page, Carlos Cruz and others to illustrate.

Gathering the debut and all episodes from Thunder (October 17th 1970 – 13th March 1971 plus material from Thunder Annual 1972, 1973 & 1974, the chronal calamities and dark doings are preceded by ‘A Hero in Time’: an editorial reminiscence by artist Colin Page.

Delivered in stark, moody monochome, and further illustrated by Page, Francisco Solano López (and his family studio), Bradbury, Ted Kearon and Rex Archer, these tales are the earliest exploits of the tragic immortal chronal-castaway Adam Eterno who began life as a 16th century apprentice to alchemist Erasmus Hemlock…

When his master perfects an immortality serum, headstrong impatient Adam samples the potion against the sage’s command, precipitating the ancient’s death and a fiery conflagration that destroys the house. The alchemist last act is to curse his disobedient student to live forever and “wander the world through the labyrinths of time”. His only surcease would come from a mortal blow struck by a weapon of solid gold…

The curse is truly effective and as centuries pass, Adam becomes a recluse: his unchanging nature driving him away from superstitious mortals and denying him over and over again simple contact with humanity. He fought in all of Britain’s wars, but combat comradeship always ended when a seemingly fatal blow of wound left him unharmed…

Everything changed and the second part of the alchemist’s curse came true in 1970 when the traumatised, barely sane 421-year-old tramp staggered into a bullion robbery and was shot by the thieves. Realising their victim is invulnerable, the bandits attempt to use him in a raid on the Bank of England, but when that fails, Adam slowly starts to regain his wits – just in time to be struck by the fully-gold-plated limousine of a speeding millionaire…

The impact would be fatal for any other being, but for Adam Eterno it is the beginning of redemption as the shock hurls him into the time stream to land over and again in different eras…

With Page (D-Day Dawson, Paddy Payne) at the helm, his first jaunt lands Adam on a sailing ship in 1770, inadvertently saving seagoers from murderous pirate Barnaby Shark, before joining the buccaneer to steal his solid gold dagger to end his twice-lived life…

When that ploy fails, Adam is whisked away to rematerialize in Texas. The year is 1872 and the gold rush has ended a decade since, but evil still abounds as local cattle baron Bret Logan seeks to drive settlers away. When Adam sides with them, the rancher hires deadly gunslinger The Yellowstone Kid, a killer with guns of gold. It seems like Adam would finally get his wish, but sadly the bullets are simply lead.

And so it goes: Adam comes tantalisingly close on every arrival, seemingly drawn to terror and injustice with each event linked to some sort of potential auric armageddon. In Victorian London he battles masked madman the Flying Footpad as the villains seeks to steal a golden turban; foils contemporary South American dictator and war criminal General Carlos Cabeza despite the threat of another golden dagger and returns to World War I’s Western Front and confronts seemingly indestructible German General Von Gruber and his golden sabre in extended multi-chapter exploits.

Returning to modern days, Eterno joins treasure-hunting divers facing an apparent ghost guarding a sunken galleon: battling brutal thug dubbed Hammerhand (because of his gold prosthesis). Courtesy of the magnificent Solano López (Kelly’s Eye, Janus Stark, Master of the Marsh, Raven on the Wing), a voyage to Dark Ages England to stave off a Viking invasion, segues into Saxon times (by Colin Page) in the wake of the Norman conquest and a small war against wicked golden knight Baron de Gride before a turning point and further facts on the enigmatic wanderer arrives when he land in a 20th century reconstruction of the house where he served and was cursed by Erasmus Hemlock…

Limned by Solano-López, the tale discloses how modern crooks seek to use the house to swindle a rich American until “dissuaded” by the original occupant, who then fetches up in Africa during the Boer War, with Page detailing how he saves English troops from brutal Afrikaans tactical mastermind The Butcher. This time, the weapon to watch is a gold-tipped bullwhip…

Solano López returns for a Roman holiday as Adam saves a gladiator from assassination and becomes embroiled in a plot by wicked Odius Limpus to make himself even more wealthy. Such a shame it’s happening in Pompeii’s arena in August, 79 AD…

This spectacular yarn closed Adam Eterno’s run and indeed the comic Thunder, but this collection holds more gleaming extras in the form of a quintet of tales from Thunder Annuals. The first is from the 1972 edition, rendered by British national treasure Eric Bradbury who depicts a snowy drama in a German town circa 1598, where “the Old Man of Vartzberg” is again terrorising the populace with his sudden manifestations. In situ – prior to becoming lost in time – is English Witchfinder Adam Eterno, on a personal crusade to wipe out alchemists and other mystic dabblers. When he roots out the wizard he is damned by a prophecy to beware a golden sword… but the crisis point only happens in 1943 when British commando Eterno leads a team against Nazi-held Vartzberg…

Next comes a brace of tales from 1973, beginning with an adventure illustrated by Rex Archer. Here, after Merlin seals the Goblin Crown of the Dark Gods in his Golden Tower, Adam is plucked from Limbo to battle a dragon and duped by vile Sir Mordrac into fetching the artefact out again. Thankfully, King Arthur’s mage had made contingency plans…

In accompaniment is a prose tale with spot illustrations from Ted Kearon, wherein Adam saves enslaved Saxons from Vikings and is forced to prove his unkillable nature over and over again.

The following year Solano-López opened proceedings as the Man Who Could Not Die arrived in the Americas just in time to aid privateer captain Francis Drake in his legendary raid on Panama, but only after Adam clears out a host of giant mutated monsters created by a crazed Spanish Don-turned-alchemist.

Bradbury then added two-toned images (red & black) to another prose saga as Adam arrived in London fog in 1896: avoiding the police whilst tracking a murderous “Leaping Terror” with a strong resemblance to a giant bat…

Closing with biographies on the many creatures featured herein and dotted with covers and teaser visuals, Adam Eterno – A Hero Out of Time is potently thrilling and rewarding romp to delight readers who like their protagonists dark and conflicted and their history in bite-sized bursts.
© 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, & 2021 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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The Time Tunnel: The Complete Series


By Paul S. Newman & Tom Gill & various (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-932563-33-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

The Time Tunnel debuted in America for the Fall season of 1966: the third family sci fi thriller in producer Irwin Allen’s incredibly successful string of TV fantasy series which also included Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Land of the Giants.

The show generated 30 episodes between September 9th 1966 and April 7th 1967 and became a cult classic via syndication re-runs for decades after. The show spawned a Viewmaster 3D reel, book, numerous games, colouring books and toys, Pinball games, plus a brace of excellent novels by pulp Sci Fi legend Murray Leinster and the comic book series that drew us here today…

The series’ premise is relatively straightforward and set two years in the future: the US government had spent a decade exploring the mechanics of time travel in top secret Project Tic-Toc and now have a prototype device in a vast underground military complex in Arizona. Directors Dr. Douglas Phillips, Dr. Anthony Newman and Lt. General Heywood Kirk, with a number of specialists, are making crucial advances to the operation when US Senator Leroy Clark visits, intent on ending the vast spending he can see no point to.

When he demands an immediate successful time journey and return or complete closure, Newman impetuously projects himself through the infinite tunnel and is lost. Without hesitation, Phillips goes after him, but once they make contact they are constantly and randomly hurled to different points in history and even into the future.

Tic-Toc is quickly repurposed to retrieve them, but other than occasional instants where the technicians can move them up or down the time stream, the project is reduced to helpless observation as Tony and Doug bounce from one momentous moment to another, meeting the likes of Custer, Marie Antoinette, Ulysses, Billy the Kid, Robin Hood and Rudyard Kipling and surviving catastrophes such as the Titanic sinking, the Alamo, Pearl Harbor, the eruption of Krakatoa and even alien attacks and invasions…

Gold Key licensed the property for a short-lived but entertaining run spanning cover-dates February and July 1967, with eye-catching painted covers by George Wilson and interiors attributed to the company’s adaptation warhorses – prolific scripter Paul S. Newman (Turok, Son of Stone, Lone Ranger, 77 Sunset Strip, Buck Rogers) and meticulous illustrator Tom Gill (Flower Potts, Lone Ranger, Land of the Giants).

Collected in this archival edition, the accidental chrononauts’ odyssey is preceded by an effusive photo-and ephemera-filled Introduction: ‘Time Travel in the 1960s’ by Alan J Porter in which he rapidly revisits roughly contemporary shows such as Star Trek, Doctor Who and Time Slip (plus later shows like Sapphire and Steel, Quantum Leap and others) all dabbling in temporal hijinks, and also explores the unlikely sub-genre’s literary antecedents.

Porter goes on to plug the many modern ways to vie the source material and revisit the untapped potential of the series’ perennial attempts at a reboot…

The comics cases open with The Time Tunnel #1 and ‘The Assassins’ as the patriotic lost boys arrive in advance of the murder of President Abraham Lincoln. Those of us now well versed in decades of entertainment dogma regarding time travel know better than to meddle, but in the show and here, attempts to change history were almost mandatory, but at the Ford Theatre on April 14th 1865 our heroes again fail to thwart a national tragedy and barely escape with their own lives as the Tic-Toc techs “switch them out” of that time period…

They materialise in a gladiatorial arena ready to face ‘The Lion or the Volcano’. The date is August 24th in AD 79 and the location is Pompeii…

Although the safeguarding observers again manage to time transfer the embattled duo – but only after a terrific struggle against beasts, panicked Romans, fireballs and poison gases – there is an unconventionally high body count here. That’s because by never signing up to the draconian and bowdlerizing Comics Code Authority, Dell/Gold Key became the company for life and death thrills, especially in traditional adventure stories.

If you were a kid in search of a proper thrilling gore instead of flimsy flesh wounds you went for Tarzan, Zorro, M.A.R.S. Patrol, Tom Corbett and their ilk. That’s not to claim that the West Coast outfit were gory, exploitative sensationalists – far from it – but simply that their writers and editors knew that fiction – especially kids’ fiction – needs a frisson of danger and honest high stakes drama to make it work.

The initial outing concludes with a swift jaunt to the future as ‘Mars Count-down’ sees Tony and Doug alight aboard a 1980 one way test flight to the Red Planet, and forced to jury rig a return trip to earth before Tic-Toc can lock on and dump them back into the roiling time stream…

The premier issue’s back cover was a photo still of the Time Tunnel from the show and segues neatly into another Wilson masterpiece on #2, with ‘The Conquerors’ finding Tony and Doug in a Nazi base in 2068 where an Aryan elite are perfecting their own time machine to change the outcome of the 1944 D-Day landing. Using the new device to follow the time saboteurs, the Americans spoil the scheme and destroy the insane Fuhrer II, only to become chronal castaways again, fetching up in 1876 and – as ‘The Captives’ – failing again to stop arrogant tyrant George Armstrong Custer from being wiped out at the Little Big Horn…

Issue #2’s photo portrait cover leads to more stills and an essay on ‘The Artists of Time Tunnel’ with Daniel Herman outlining the careers of Wilson and Gill before a captivating selection of ‘Artwork, concepts, Photos, and Collectibles’ offers context and behind the scenes snippets taken from a 1967 TV Guide; 20th Century Fox production art; even more stills; episode storyboards and tantalizing glimpses of the aforementioned merchandise – games, bumper stickers, buttons, the Viewmaster kit.

TV themed compendia of screen-to-page magic were an intrinsic part of growing up for generations and still occur every year with only the stars/celebrity/shows changing, not the package. The show itself has joined the vast hinterland of fantasy fan-favourites. immortalised in DVD and streamed all over the world but if you want to see more, this sparkling tome is a treat you won’t want to overlook.
The Time Tunnel® is © 1966, 1967 and 2009 Irwin Allen Properties, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. The Time Tunnel® and its indicia, characters and designs are trademarks of Irwin Allen Properties, LLC; licensed by Synthesis Entertainment.

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Valerian – The Complete Collection volume 5


By J-C Méziéres & P Christin with colours by E. Tranlé: translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-400-7 (Album HB/Digital edition)

Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent first took to the skies and timestream in 1967: gracing the November 9th edition of Pilote (#420) in an introductory serial which ran until February 15th 1968. Although an instant hit, album compilations only began with second tale – The City of Shifting Waters – as the creators considered their first yarn as a work-in-progress, not quite up to their preferred standard.

You can judge for yourself by getting hold of the first hardcover compilation volume in this sequence of compilations Or you can consider yourself suitably forward-looking and acquire an eBook edition…

The groundbreaking fantasy series followed a Franco-Belgian boom in science fiction comics sparked by Jean-Claude Forest’s 1962 creation Barbarella. Other notable hits of that era include Greg & Eddy Paape’s Luc Orient and the cosmic excursions of Philippe Druillet’s Lone Sloane, which all – with Valérian in the vanguard – boosted public reception of the genre. It all led, in 1977, to the creation of dedicated fantasy periodical Métal Hurlant…

Valérian and Laureline (as the series became) was light-hearted and wildly imaginative: a time-travel action-adventure romp drenched in wry, satirical, humanist and political social commentary. The star was – at least initially – an affable, capably unimaginative, by-the-book cop tasked with protecting universal timelines and counteracting paradoxes caused by casual, incautious or criminally-minded chrononauts…

In the course of that debut escapade, Valerian picked up impetuous, sharp-witted peasant lass Laureline, who was born in the 11th century before becoming our star’s assistant and deputy. In gratitude for her truly invaluable assistance, the he-man hero brought her back to Galaxity, the 28th century super-citadel administrative capital where the feisty firebrand took a crash course in spatiotemporal ops before accompanying him on his cases…. luckily for all existence.

The series is not only immensely popular but also astoundingly influential.

This fabulous fifth oversized hardback – also available digitally – re-presents 1988’s On the Frontiers, 1990’s The Living Weapons and 1994’s The Circles of Power, and again offers a treasure trove of text features, beginning with critical appraisals ‘Valerian and Laureline: The Stuff of Heroes’; ‘Valerian, the Accidental Hero’; ‘Laureline, Bewitching and Wise’ and ‘The Heroes’ Metamorphosis’ by Stan Barets. Accompanying them are clip-art photo features ‘The Secret Charms of Laureline’, ‘The Colours of Laureline’ and essay ‘And Meanwhile…’ (detailing the creative duo’s other occupations at the time of creation).

A flurry of photos, sketches, designs and reference material detail the connections between comic album The Circles of Power and movie epic The Fifth Element in ‘A Taxi for Two’, and rounding out the extras is a selection of reportage comics by inveterate traveller Christin, illustrated by Philippe Aylmond, Alain Mounier, Enki Bilal, Méziéres, Olivier Balez and Max Cabanes.

Then, following a retrospective overview of the albums, it’s time to blast-off…

Valerian is arguably the most influential science fiction series ever drawn – and yes, I am including both Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in that undoubtedly contentious statement. Although to a large extent those venerable newspaper strips formed the medium’s foundations, anybody who has seen a Star Wars movie has seen some of Jean-Claude Méziéres & Pierre Christin’s brilliant imaginings which the filmic franchise has shamelessly plundered for decades: everything from the look of the Millennium Falcon to military uniforms to Leia’s Slave Girl outfit…

Simply put, more carbon-based lifeforms have experienced and marvelled at the uniquely innovative, grungy, lived-in tech realism and light-hearted, socially-critical swashbuckling of Méziéres & Christin’s co-creation than any other cartoon spacer ever imagined. Now having scored their own big budget movie, that surely unjust situation is finally addressed and rectified…

Packed with cunningly satirical humanist action, challenging philosophy and astute political commentary, the mind-bending yarns always struck a chord with the public and especially other creators who have been swiping, “homaging” and riffing off the series ever since.

Sur les frontiers (On the Frontiers to English-speakers) was the 13th tale and marked a landmark moment in the series’ evolution.

When first conceived, every adventure started life as a serial in Pilote before being collected in album editions, but with this adventure from 1988, the publishing environment changed. This subtly harder-edged saga debuted as an all-new, complete graphic novel with magazine serialisation relegated to minor and secondary function. The switch in dissemination affected all top characters in French comics and almost spelled the end of periodical publication on the continent…

In the previous storyline the immensity of Galaxity had been erased from reality and our Spatio-Temporal Agents – with a few trusted allies – were stranded in time and stuck on late 20th century Earth…

Here, and now, we open in the depths of space as a fantastic and fabulous luxury liner affords the wealthy of many cultures and civilisations the delights of an interstellar Grand Tour. Paramount amongst guests are two god-like creatures amusing themselves by slumming amongst lower lifeforms whilst performing an ages old, languidly slow-moving mating ritual of their kind…

Sadly, puissant, magnificent Kistna has been utterly deceived by her new intended Jal. He actually has no interest in her or propagating the species: he intends stealing her probability-warping powers…

Jal is a disguised Terran and once he has completed his despicable charade, compels the ship’s captain to leave him on the nearest world: a place its indigenes call Earth…

Stranded on that world since Galaxity vanished, partners-in-peril Valerian and Laureline have been using their training and a few futuristic gadgets they had with them to become freelance secret agents. At this moment they’re in Soviet Russia where Val has just concluded that the recent catastrophic meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor was deliberately sparked by persons unknown…

As officials on site absorb the news, Val is extracted from the radioactive hotspot and ferried by laborious means across the frozen wastes to Finland and a belated reunion with Laureline and Mr. Albert: previously Galaxity’s jolly, infuriatingly unflappable 20th information gatherer/sleeper agent. The topic of discussion is tense and baffling: who could possibly profit from sparking Earth’s political tinderbox into atomic conflagration?

Far away in a plush hotel, a man with extraordinary luck discusses a certain plan with his awed co-conspirators, unaware that in the Tunisian Sahara near the frontier with Libya, three time-travelling troubleshooters are following his operatives…

That trail leads to a nuclear mine counting down to detonation, but happily the agents are well-versed in tackling primitive weaponry and the close call allows Albert to deduce why Libya and an unknown mastermind are working to instigate nuclear conflict in Africa…

After another near-miss on the US-Mexican border, investigators finally get a break, isolating the enigma behind these many almost-Armageddon moments. However, when Laureline approaches the super-gambler financing global nuclear terrorism through his bank-breaking casino sprees, she is astounded to realise the deadly disaster capitalist knows Galaxity tech…

As Valerian hurtles to her rescue, he discovers the enemy is an old comrade. For what possible reason could a fellow Galaxity survivor orchestrate Earth’s destruction? After all, isn’t it the home and foundation of the time-travelling Terran Empire they are all sworn to protect and restore?

This stunning caper was Christin & Méziéres deft re-rationalisation and clarification of their original drowned Earth storyline (as seen in 1968’s The City of Shifting Waters): adjusting it to the contemporary period that they were working in, with the added benefit of sending Valerian and Laureline into uncharted creative waters. Thus the agents’ solution to the problem of their deranged, broken – and god-powered – comrade was both impressively humane and winningly conclusive…

It was followed by 1990’s Les Armes Vivantes, with Valerian and Laureline forced to expend their last assets – a damaged astroship, some leftover alien gadgets and their own training – to eke out a perilous existence as intergalactic trans-temporal mercenaries.

Despite the misbehaviour of fractious inter-dimensional circuits in the much-travelled ship, our celestial voyagers are bound for distant, disreputable planet Blopik where Val has agreed to hand-deliver some livestock-improvement supplies. Moralistic Laureline is deeply suspicious of the way her man is behaving: it’s as if he’s doing something he knows she will disapprove of…

After a pretty hairy landing, she exits the ship to explore the burned-out pest-hole on her own. making the acquaintance of a trio of unique individuals: intergalactic performers stranded in their worst nightmare – a world without theatres and an absentee manager…

Before long they are all travelling together. The showbiz trio – malodorous metamorphic artiste Britibrit from Chab, indestructible rock-eater Doum A’goum and the indescribable Yfysania are seeking a venue to play in and appreciative audience to admire them, whilst taciturn Valerian is simply hunting the proposed purchaser of the wares in his case.

Laureline is, by now, frankly baffled. The centaurs who inhabit Blopik only understand and appreciate one thing – combat – and the planet’s cindered state is due to them setting fire to everything during the annual war between rival tribes. She can’t imagine what such folk would want with “farming gear”. For that matter, she also can’t imagine why Valerian keeps arguing with whatever he has in his travel-case…

Eventually, however, the alien Argonauts reach a grassy plain to be met by a bombastic centaur general. For “met”, read attacked without warning, but the natural abilities of the astounding performers soon gives pause to the hooved hellions and warlord Rompf agrees to parlay. He’s a centaur with a Homeric dream and Shakespearean leanings as well as the proposed purchaser of the bio-weapon in Valerian’s case. That thing has come direct from Katubian arms dealers and Laureline is appalled that Val has sunk so low and been devious enough to keep her out of the loop…

Rompf has declared War on War. He seeks to unify the tribes of Blopik by beating them all into submission and desperately needs the flame-spitting, foul-mouthed Schniafer couriered by the shamefaced former Spatio-Temporal peacekeeper to seal the deal. However, now that he’s seen what the offworld clowns can do, Rompf wants them too…

The various vaudevillians are not averse to the idea, but pride demands they put on a show too! They even have ideas how Laureline can be part of the fun.

…And that gives Valerian a chance to redeem himself too…

This tesseract of timely tales close here for now with The Circles of Power (released continentally in 1994 as Les Cercles du pouvoir). The hard-ridden, worn-out brutally battered astroship has finally given up the ghost after reaching planet Rubanis: an advanced but violently volatile and dangerous world divided into five nested rings of influence and specialism. Leaving the ship for some extremely costly repairs in the anarchic, technological boomtown of the First Circle, the Spatio-Temporal Agents start looking for some way of earning enough cash to pay for it all…

Worryingly, their occasional allies the Shingouz have already found a profitable prospect (and naturally factored in their own cut): sending the humans to meet old acquaintance and current planetary Chief of Police Colonel Tlocq in his palatial, low-orbit, high security citadel. That means taking a flying taxi and learning more than they wanted to as their highly excitable, enthusiastic and informative cabbie briefs them on the planet. He is also a young man with strong beliefs, big ideas and an often expressed violent streak…

Tlocq is a venal, casually violent but extremely efficient being policing a brutal, callous rogue world with permanently conflicting interests. Moreover, he has adopted mistrust, deception and institutional corruption as the most effective methodology to keep everything on an even keel. His policy seems to be “keep your enemies close and your allies and subordinates close enough to stab in the back”…

His chief deputy Krupachov holds the exalted rank of “Informer” and they maintain a constant atmosphere of productive, self-limiting disorder in and between the ringed regions…

However, even Tlocq has realised that something extra nasty is unfolding below him: not just in the always-explosive Heavy Industry First Circle but also in the Second (Business) Circle; the Trade/Entertainments/Arts morass of the Third Circle and even the elitist, crime-free and off-limits Fourth Circle reserved for Religion, Administration, Finance and Aristocracy. This rarefied region generates what passes for Tlocq’s directives, orders and operating rules, but he hasn’t received anything from them for some time now…

In the past he received direction via one of the ubiquitous enigmatic “machines” dotted around the cities, but is utterly opposed to letting the humans poke around inside them. He believes the machines are somehow connected to the sporadically spreading, microcephaly-inducing Scunindar virus cropping up all over Rubanis. In fact, the last time Valerian and Laureline saw him (in The Ghosts of Inverloch), Tlocq was dying from it, but he seems to have fully recovered now…

To ensure they do things his way, Tlocq doubles their fee and, knowing exactly how his world works, also gives an advance: a Grumpy Transmuter from Bluxte, able to spontaneously generate any kind of cash to buy their way out of trouble…

What he wants is not clearcut or straightforward. Although the Colonel still controls the utterly mercenary, self-serving forces under him, he has lost faith in and contact with those above who issue his orders. He wants the outsiders to bypass them and invade the ineffable Fifth Circle and find out who or what truly governs this world…

Valerian and Laureline begin by heading for the Third Circle in the flying cab, but are immediately targeted by a hidden foe. Attacked by a by a mystery woman in a tricked-up luxury vehicle that could only come from the richer echelons, they are forced down, but thanks to the cabbie’s combat skills, bring the war-limousine down with them. Go-getting taxi pilot S’traks also leads them to shelter in a seedy club in the region of entertainment…

The Shingouz are already there, haggling with a seedy mechanic who claims to know a secret way into the Last Circle…

All dickering and bargains are put on hold when their attacker bursts in, leading a squad of Vlago-Vlago mercenaries and wielding a “moroniser” whip that paralyzes, pauses cognition and wipes short-term memory. Helpless and hidden, Val and the cabbie watch merciless crime lord Na-Zultra cart off stupefied Laureline, much to the anger and frustration of her incorrigible, besotted new admirer S’traks…

It’s his idea for the undeclared love rivals to conceal themselves in the crashed limo and wait for vicious virago Na-Zultra to reclaim her highly exclusive property, and it almost works, but when they emerge from the vehicle thy are deep in unknown territory, covertly watching a procession of High Priests, business moguls and assorted aristopatrons attend a secret ceremony. They all have preternaturally shrunken heads…

Regaining consciousness a prisoner, Laureline resists all Na-Zultra’s entireties and threats of torture whilst extracting the schemer’s intentions. She learns that the ambitious criminal was hired by some faction in the Fourth Circle to secure control of Rubanis for them, but now intends to seize power for herself. When Valerian and S’Traks are discovered, Na-Zultra goes after them with the majority of her forces and Laureline makes her move…

After recuing the men and having exposed a web of conspiracies as well as the deliberate pointless of their commission, the heroes split up with Valerian confronting Tlocq about his true intent whilst Laureline seeks out the Shingouz to finally expose the mystery of the Last Circle, with go-getting S’traks using the deteriorating situation and his cabbie connections to mobilise the lower classes in an armed uprising…

Ultimately the shocking truth is exposed, triggering planetary revolution with Tlocq, Na-Zultra and S’Traks leading separate factions. Before the dust at last settles, he is well on his way to controlling Rubanis via a popular revolution across all the Circles…

Smartly subtle, sophisticated, complex and hilarious, the exploits of Valerian and Laureline mix outrageous satire with blistering action, stirring the mix with wryly punishing, allegorically critical social commentary: challenging contemporary cultural trends to forge one of the most thrilling sci fi strips ever seen.

These stories are some of the most influential comics in the world, timeless, dynamic, funny and just too good to be ignored. The time is now and there’s no space large enough to contain the sheer joy of Valerian and Laureline, so go see what all the fuss is about right now…
© Dargaud Paris, 2017 Christin, Méziéres & Tran-L?. All rights reserved. English translation © 2018 Cinebook Ltd.