It Came!


By Dan Boultwood, Esq. (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-005-4

Once upon a time “retro” only meant rockets, with all those thrilling chilling connotations of clunky spaceships, cardboard robots and men in Baco-foil suits shambling about and terrifying avid children who had stayed up late to watch B-movie sci-fi yarns on black-&-white TV sets.

Jeepers, I miss those days, and so, apparently, does multi-talented, forward-thinking nostalgeologist Dan Boultwood.

In 2013, his 4-issue miniseries offered a tantalising tribute to the fantastic fantasy movies which fuelled the imaginations of British Baby-Boomers: simultaneously recapturing the wide-eyed wonder of the period whilst adding layers of archly post-modern humour to the mix…

This stirring monochrome graphic-novelisation of a faux-classic effort from the rightly almost-forgotten Pinetree Studios outfit now allows modern film fans to experience (or revisit) the quirky delights which wowed their grandparents – and all from the comfort of their own homes – or even whilst out riding in a open-topped omnibus…

Packed to bursting with and supplemented by oodles of outrageous, hilarious, mood-setting ads for everything from Smoke & Choke’um Cigarettes to Johnny Foreigner Engine Oil, the story is a loving but irreverent paean of praise not only to those inspirational filmic marvels but also to the small repertory of actors and producers who made the late 1950s and early 1960s such a cornucopia of movie madness.

Like all such matinee marvels, the main feature here is preceded by a short trailer (for The Lost Valley of the Lost) which serves to introduce our cast, specifically He-Man Lead Dick Claymore as the sexist, pipe-chewing, tweed draped boffin Dr. Boy Brett and strident starlet Fanny Flaunders as his long-suffering, infinitely patient, glamorous-whilst-screaming assistant/secretary Doris Night.

The vintage supporting cast includes Bertrum Cumberbund, Spencer Lacey and Joan Fetlock, stalwart Pinetree thespians all…

It’s 1958 and in a beautiful bit of rural, ill-educated England a colossal robot rampages…

Two days later Dr. Brett from SpaceUniversity is treating working class ingénue Doris to a ride in his Morris Minor. He decides they should stop for a Ploughman’s Lunch in a strangely quiet and quaint village, blithely unaware that the reason it’s so still is because the aforementioned alien automaton has depopulated the shire…

Its subsequent surprise attempt to trap the tourists founders only when it stumbles into a cloying web of obfuscating, celebratory bunting…

After their spectacular close call the harried humans reach the next village over, but despite the boffin’s Old Boy Network connections, it’s the Devil’s own job to get the Ministry to mobilise the Military.

Nevertheless, Boy persists and soon a squad of veterans arrive to take control of the situation (a superb pastiche of the venerable icons of the “Carry-On” film franchise), only to vanish as the rapacious robot strikes again…

Undaunted, Boy drags Doris into more trouble and soon they find themselves aboard a vast Flying Saucer, uncovering the nature of the invaders’ appalling assault. The creepy, apparently unstoppable horrors are imprisoning salt-of-the-earth British citizens and somehow extracting their Stiff Upper Lips…

Following a necessary Intermission for the purchase and consumption of gin and fags, the cartoon/celluloid calamity continues as our hero – and the girl – escape and head for London to warn the authorities, but not before accidentally dropping a handy but unlucky army division on exercises right in the UFO’s marauding sights.

Dr. Brett arrives barely ahead of the indestructible, unbeatable Saucer and, as the World’s Smoggiest Capital burns and founders, he is compelled to stop running and turn his mighty, college-honed intellect to the task of destroying the threat to civilisation…

This collection is also augmented by the original full-colour covers, hysterical background “information pages” on and intimate photos of stars Claymore and Flaunders, blueprints and design sketches for the alien Grurk and Flying Saucer, a selection from the infamous It Came! Cigarette Cards and colour posters for other Pinetree Studio releases such as ‘My Reptilian Bride!’, ‘Rocket Into Space!’, ‘The Lost Valley of the Lost’ and ‘Myopic Moon Men from the Moon’…

More revelations are forthcoming in the ‘Metropolitan Police Incident Report on Mr. Claymore’s “eccentric” Drinking Habits’, and Director Boultwood’s photo-feature exposing his Special Effects magic in animating the Saucer for celluloid.

It Came! is a brilliant and sublime masterpiece of loving parody, perfectly executed and astoundingly effective. It is also the funniest – both visually and verbally – book I’ve read in years, blending slapstick with satire, outrageous ideas with infamous characterisations, and spit-taking puns, single entendres and innuendoes that would do Sid James, Charles Hawtrey or Kenneth Williams proud.

Miss it at your peril, Chaps (and Ladies too…).
It Came! ™ and © 2014 Dan Boultwood.

It Came! is published on March 11th.

Chronos Commandos: Dawn Patrol


By Stuart Jennett (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-006-1

In a marketplace stuffed to bursting point with books and stories that are only parts of a greater whole, it’s a merciful delight to see that some publishers and creators are still sticking to the perfect basics and delivering complete, enthralling and fundamentally cool packages for kids of all ages (at least if you’re a bit liberal/traditional in your views of parenting and accept the intrinsically bloodthirsty nature of children)…

If you’re British a reader of a certain vintage – and more or less male – you never really grew out of the fundamental and sheerly gratuitous entertainment of seeing soldiers, explosions, chases, big guns and dinosaurs, and this spectacularly backwards-looking romp from Stuart Jennett (Warheads, 2000AD) punches all those buttons in a riotous time-travel war story which originally appeared in 2013 as a 5-issue miniseries.

The idea of honking big lizards against honking big guns is venerable, unceasingly cool and simply too good a concept to resist. I believe it all kicked off with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World and was refined by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Caprona stories (known alternatively as the Caspak Trilogy or “the Land That Time Forgot”, although many of his other novel sequences contained saurian co-stars) providing everything imaginative boys could wish for: giant lizards, humongous insects, fantastic adventures, hot cave girls and two-fisted heroes with lots of guns…

The most successful comics instance of this must surely be Robert Kanigher’s The War that Time Forgot (which debuted in Star Spangled War Stories #90, April-May 1960). The stories of US troops fighting Germans, Japanese and hungry monsters ran until #137 (May 1968) skipping only three issues: #91, 93 and #126 – the last of which starred the United States Marine Corps simian Sergeant Gorilla…

Whereas this fine new iteration, given a quirkily British spin, boasts no busty babes in either torn but oddly obfuscating scraps of lab coat or fetching muskrat-pelt bikinis (though maybe there’s room in the sequel), it does contain fast-paced, gory antediluvian slaughter and a twisty-turny, time-bending plot to heighten the gruelling, gripping duel between the world’s first full time chronal combatants…

Following Jennett’s Introduction the non-stop action begins deep in dinosaur times and climes as a veteran US Army Sergeant leads his squad in another raid to stop Nazi time-troopers from mucking up history in the Fuhrer’s favour.

Temporal travel is still a new arena for combat and nobody really knows the rules, but the Professor back in 1944 is pretty adamant that visitors to the past should harm or kill as little as possible.

Of course that’s easy for him to say from his nice safe lab…

Time-Landings are haphazard at best and the G.I.s have to cut through miles of swamp to reach their current objective, so before too long only Grease and the Sarge are left to sneak up on the Nazi Time-Bell, doing God knows what to win the war for Uncle Adolf…

In charge is old enemy Kapitan Dieter Richter, Germany’s top Chrono-Kriegsmann, and the wily fox again manages to escape even though the Sarge succeeds in blowing up his base…

Exhausted and wounded, the Sarge treks back alone and triggers his Chronosphere’s return, only to emerge into another blazing firefight. Nazi agents have successfully infiltrated the Allied time lab of Project: Watchmaker and stolen the Professor’s Chronos Core – the invention which powers the trips and enables US time-teams to return home…

A traitor has jumped back to the Cretaceous, intent on handing the core over to a Kraut team and giving them an unbeatable edge in time tech, leaving the Americans with only 30-minutes Relative to prevent the end of Allied Chronal Operations forever.

Frantically, Sarge assembles a 4-man team from the lab’s surviving soldiery to give chase and recover the device, utterly unaware that he has left the Prof unprotected with another insidious Nazi infiltrator…

The grizzled Non-Com would be no happier knowing that he’s bringing one back to the age of reptiles with him too…

What follows is a desperate and ghastly race against time with hungry saurians, deadly giant bugs and murderous bushwhacking Nazis all adding to the body count, whilst in the Age of Man lethal paradoxes multiply and the fragile stability of all time and space begin to fracture…

Riotous and spectacular, explosively gung-ho but still smart enough to pile on the temporal pressures and leavened with sly, knowing black humour, Dawn Patrol offers a bullet-ridden rollercoaster of blockbuster thrills no big kid could possibly resist.

Also included here is a large section of added features from the ‘Chronos Commandos Supplemental Briefing Pack’ which includes such text background as ‘Official Papers Transferring Sgt. XXXX to Project: Watchmaker…’, ‘Black Star Initiative Operational Parameters’, ‘Chronos Commandos Search and Destroy Mission Briefing’, ‘Dr. Herla’s Autopsy Report: including Discussion of His Various Fatal Mutations, and Informed Speculation on the Perils of Time Travel’ and ‘Know Your Enemy Dinosaur Comparison Charts’.

Also included are the tragic fragments of a lost hero’s life in ‘Peabody’s ‘Letters from Home’ and his ‘Vintage Crash Jordan Serial Poster’ as well as Blueprints for both the Allied and Nazi Time Pods, original comics ‘Series Covers’ and extensive excerpts from ‘The Chronos Commandos Sketchbook’.

Chronos Commandos™ and © 2014 Stuart Jennett. All rights reserved.

 

Chronos Commandos: Dawn Patrol is published on March 11th. For details of how to meet the author and get a copy signed, check out our Noticeboard section.

Zero Hour and Other Stories


Illustrated by Jack Kamen, written by Al Feldstein, Bill Gaines, Ray Bradbury & Jack Oleck (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-704-8

From 1950-1954 EC was the most innovative and influential comicbook publisher in America, dominating the genres of crime, horror, adventure, war and science fiction. They even originated an entirely new beast – the satirical comicbook – with Mad.

After a shaky start and following the death of his father (who actually created comicbooks in 1933), new Editor/publisher William Gaines and his trusty master-of-all-comics trades Al Feldstein turned a slavishly derivative minor venture into a pioneering, groundbreaking enterprise which completely altered the perception of the industry and art form.

They began co-plotting the bulk of EC’s output together, intent on creating a “New Trend” of stories aimed at older, more discerning readers (rather than the mythical 8-year-olds comics ostensibly targeted) and shifted the emphasis of the ailing company towards dark, funny, socially aware broadly adult fare.

Their publishing strategy also included hiring some the most gifted writers and artists in the field. One of the earliest and certainly most undervalued at the time was Jack Kamen…

This lavish monochrome hardcover volume, another instant classic in Fantagraphics’ EC Library, gathers a scintillating selection of Kamen’s quirkily low-key science fiction tales which always favoured character over spectacle or gimmicks and human frailty and foibles: the kind of offbeat yarns which predominated in such cleverly thought out TV shows as Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, which followed in EC’s wake…

This almanac of The Unknown is, as always, stuffed with supplementary features beginning with ‘Graceful, Glamorous, and Easy on the Eye’: an informative, picture-packed history and critical appreciation by lecturer Bill Mason, after which the succession of scary, funny Tomorrow Stories opens with ‘Only Human!’

Kamen actually began working for EC before their New Trend days, brought in by old friend Al Feldstein (who scripted most of the stories here after barnstorming plot-sessions with affirmed SF fan and closet scientist Gaines) and this yarn from Weird Science #11, January/February 1952, perfectly shows the artist’s facility for capturing feminine allure (which served him well in his earlier romance comics days).

The tale is smart too as a group of readers is hired to educate the first ever electronic brain, but are unable to keep their feelings from contaminating the project…

‘Shrinking from Abuse!’ (Weird Fantasy #11, also January/February 1952) is more recognisably EC “just desserts” fare, as an abusive chemist’s size-changing solution leads to his beleaguered wife getting the final word in, whilst ‘The Last Man!’ from W S #12 (March/April 1952) plays morality games after a male survivor of atomic Armageddon finally locates a new Eve and finds she is the only woman he can’t possibly repopulate the world with…

Weird Fantasy #12, (March/April 1) revealed ‘A Lesson in Anatomy’ as a little lad’s ghoulish curiosity inadvertently ended an alien infiltration attempt, after which ‘Saving for the Future’ (Weird Science #13, May/June) offered a stunning lesson in Compound Interest when a poor couple opened a bank account and went into induced hibernation for 500 years, whilst ‘The Trip!’ (W F#13, May/June) looked at a different aspect of the topic as a philandering scientist attempted to use quick freeze tech to run off with his pretty assistant, but forgot something really important…

‘Close Call!’ (W F #14, July/August) took a rather cruel look at a female scientist who wished that her male colleagues would stop hitting on her and wasn’t too happy at the hand fate then dealt her, before Weird Science #15 (September/October 1952) took a knowing glimpse at everyman’s dream when a nerd accidentally acquired the time-lost means to make perfect, willing women – and still got everything wrong due to ‘Miscalculation!’…

Feldstein worked on every genre in EC’s stable, but the short, ironic, iconic science thrillers he produced during that paranoid period of Commies and H-Bombs, Flying Saucer Scares and Red Menaces, irrevocably transformed the genre from cowboys in tinfoil suits and Ray-gun adventure into a medium where shock and doom lurked everywhere.

His cynically trenchant outlook and darkly comedic satirical stories made the cosmos a truly dangerous, unforgiving place and kept it such – until the Comics Code Authority and television pacified and diminished the Wild Black Yonder for all future generations. He did however maintain a strong working relationship with Space-babes and ethereally beautiful E.T.s – and nobody drew them better than Kamen…

 ‘He Who Waits!’(Weird Fantasy #15, September/October 1952) revealed one of their best collaborations as an old botanist discovered a luscious, seductive maiden only eight inches tall, living in one of his plants. The bittersweet tale showed that love could overcome any obstacle…

Greed is another unfailing plot driver in EC stories and in ‘Given the Heir!’ (W S #16, November/December) a poor new husband recruits his own descendent in a crazy plan to change the past and inherit millions. Unfortunately he didn’t pay as much attention to family history as he should have…

‘What He Saw!’ in W F #16, (November/December) is an unrelenting tale of induced madness inflicted upon a lost space explorer whilst 1953 began in fine style with another science lesson as ‘Off Day!’ (Weird Science #17, January/February) outrageously depicted the potential results of the law of averages taking a day off before ‘The Parallel!’ (W S #18, March/April 1953) explored the concept of alternate earths as a smart but poor genius attempted to improve his life by murdering his other selves…

Weird Fantasy #18 (March/April) featured the eponymous ‘Zero Hour’ – adapted from a Ray Bradbury short story – and dealt with the subtlest of Martian invasions as imaginary friends used human children to pave their way, after which the Gaines/Feldstein brain trust described the grim fate of a chancer who used intercepted future gadgetry to turn his automobile into a getaway vehicle nobody could catch… or find… in ‘Hot-Rod!’ (Weird Fantasy #19, May/June 1953).

Cold, emotionless invaders infiltrated human society only to be doomed by seductive feelings in ‘…Conquers All!’ (W F #20, July/August) after which the Bradbury prose piece “Changeling” became ‘Surprise Package’ in Weird Science #20 (also July/August 1953) detailing the complex web of savage emotions engendered when Love Mannequins become commonplace…

Bradbury’s sequel ‘Punishment Without Crime’ (W S #21, September/October) took the theme further by considering if killing such automata might be murder, before ‘Planely Possible’ (W F #21, September/October) returns to the concept of parallel Earths for a car crash survivor who would do anything to be reunited with his dead wife – or nearest approximation – after which cruel and unscrupulous carnival owners learn what its like to be ‘The Freaks’ (Weird Fantasy #22, November/December 1953)…

Cold war paranoia and repression inform the 1984-like world of ‘4th Degree’ (Weird Science-Fantasy #27, January/February 1955) as a closet rebel attempts to unmake his totalitarian world through time travel, and this glossy, dark trip through vintage tomorrows ends with ‘Round Trip’ from Weird Science-Fantasy #27 (March/April 1955) with a touching and contemplative reverie of a life lived long if not well…

Regarded as one of the company’s fastest artists (only the phenomenal Jack Davis turned in his pages at a greater rate) Kamen always produced illustrative narrative which jangled nerves and twanged heartstrings: his lush forms and lavish inks instantly engaging and always concealing brilliant touches of sly, knowing humour. He was often overshadowed by EC’s other stalwarts but he was every bit their equal.

The timeless comics tales are followed by more background revelations in S.C. Ringgenberg’s ‘Jack Kamen’ and a special essay on the artist’s later life in ‘From Science Fiction to Science Fortune’ drawing intriguing parallels between his EC cartoons and the design assistance he later contributed to his inventor son Dean’s landmark creations – the portable Drug Infusion pump, portable Kidney Dialysis machine and Segway PT (yeah, that Dean Kamen) – before ending on another comprehensively illuminating ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ from Tom Spurgeon, Janice Lee and Arthur Lortie.

The short, sweet but severely limited output of EC has been reprinted ad infinitum in the decades since the company died. These astounding, ahead-of-their-time-comics tales did not just revolutionise our industry but also impacted the whole world through film and television and via the millions of dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.

Zero Hour is the 8th Fantagraphics compendium highlighting the contributions of individual creators, adding a new dimension to aficionados’ enjoyment whilst providing a sound introduction for those lucky souls encountering the material for the very first time.

Whether an aged EC Fan-Addict or the merest neophyte convert, this is a book no comics lover or crime-caper victim should miss…
Zero Hour and Other Stories © 2014 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All comics stories © 2014 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., reprinted with permission. All other material © 2014 the respective creators and owners.

Snowpiercer volume 2: The Explorers


By Benjamin Legrand & Jean-Marc Rochette, translated by Virginie Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978 -1-78276-136-5

Like the times that produced it, the Franco-Belgian comics classic Le Transperceneige was a troubled and ill-starred beast. The tale was originally conceived by prolific veteran scripter and occasional cartoonist Jacques Lob to be illustrated by his Superdupont collaborator Alexis (Dominique Vallet) but the artist’s untimely death on 7th September 1977 stalled the project until 1982 when painter, comics artist and book illustrator Jean-Marc Rochette (Pinocchio, Le petit poucet, Le chat botté, Candide, Le Dépoteur de Chrysanthèmes, Edmond le Cochon, Requiem Blanc) came aboard.

The delayed apocalyptic epic then ran in À Suivre in 1982 and 1983, with a collected edition published in 1984.

Although popular the sequel was not forthcoming until long after Lob died in 1990, whereafter Benjamin Legrand took up the concept with Rochette, producing two more epic tales of the Last Train to Nowhere…

No stranger to comics, Legrand (Lone Sloane, White Requiem, Gold & Spirit) is also a major mainstream prose author and French-language translator of such luminaries as Milton Caniff, R. Crumb, Robert Ludlum, Tom Wolfe, John Grisham and Nelson DeMille amongst many others. This varied background brought an edgy thriller-writing sensibility to the austere high concept of the original dystopian tomorrow mix…

With the imminent UK release of the movie Snowpiercer, Titan Comics (whose other translated offerings include The Hunting Party, Blueberry and other assorted classics by Enki Bilal, Moebius and others) have brought the entire three album masterpiece to our parochial Anglo-centric attention in two lavishly luxurious monochrome hardbacks. Both of Legrand & Rochette’s cool collaborations are here combined into a stunning collection of bleak and chilling End of the World turmoil: in one stunning, sturdy volume, as a companion to Snowpiercer book 1: The Escape.

In that original tale a new Ice Age had instantaneously descended over Earth and a microcosm of humanity rushed onto a vast vacation super-train repurposed as an ever-running ark of survival. As that monolithic futuristic engine began a never-ending circumambulation on tracks originally designed to offer the idle rich the ultimate pleasure cruise, the people rich, lucky or ruthless enough to secure a place quickly settled into their old pre-disaster niches and original divisive social stratifications.

Life continued for decades in this manner until a bold outcast named Proloff escaped from the sealed nether-end carriages, travelling the length of the 1001 cars pulled by the mysterious miracle of modern engineering. He acquired a romantic companion, clashed with the Military and Elite’s hierarchies, inadvertently sowing deadly discord until he reached the Engine herself and discovered the uncanny secret of the machine called “Olga”…

The drama now resumes in Snowpiercer book 2: The Explorers (originally serialised as Le Transperceneige: L’arpenteur in 1999) with a stunning revelation.

Soon after that train first sealed itself from the world and departed, a second, better equipped life-preserving cortège took off after it. Perpetually trailing the original, the denizens of the second Snowpiercer have also devolved into a far-from-homogeneous society: one also crippled by the overwhelming fear that they will inevitably smash into their forerunner one day…

Snowpiercer 2 has many modifications missing from the original. Designed as an icebreaker, the train also boasts radar detection systems, one-man short-hop flying modules and is able to brake and stop, allowing the hardiest individuals to debark and briefly scavenge amongst the frozen ruins of the world that’s gone…

There’s also a far more savvy autocracy in charge; scrupulously managing the disparate elements of the rolling society. Carefully constructed hologram adventures and TV shows placate passengers of all classes, an oligarchic Council manages every aspect of existence, a religion has been created to dole out hope, passive acceptance and guilt as required and the rulers run a gambling racket which provides a safe outlet for the lowest of the low…

Explorers have a short life expectancy and are highly expendable, but generally bring back far more flashy trinkets for the wealthy than salvaged food, drugs or technology for the masses.

The constant fear of collision has produced malcontents, cynics, terrorists, a huge need for anti-depressants and increasing incidents of a deranged group psychosis in many carriage dwellers. “Cosmosians” are gripped by a sure and certain belief that the entire vehicle is actually a spaceship hurtling through hard vacuum, rather than a wheeled entourage braving mere minus-130 degree wind and snow.

The terrifying panic which resulted from the first test-braking 15 years previously still scars most psyches but life on the rails is generally improving. Council head Kennel is delighted to learn that surface temperatures outside are slowly rising again (-121 in some places!), the birth rate is still successfully and voluntarily restricted whilst recycling, meat and agriculture output are at record levels.

Moreover his own daughter Val is constantly coming up with new and exciting Virtual Environment programs for the winners of the ubiquitous gambling contests to enjoy: histories, fantasies and adventures all enthral the Proles and keep them slavishly betting in hope of winning new and stimulating diversions…

Her latest idea is a bit of a shocker though: she wants to reproduce what the Explorers experience when they leave the train…

Despite her father refusing the request Val decides to go ahead anyway and sneaks back to the carriages where Reverend Dicksen is administering the blessing of Saint Loco upon the suicidal scavengers in preparation for their next foray.

As she spies on them she is accosted by the increasingly unstable Metronome – spiritual leader of the breakaway Cosmosian sect – but ignores his warnings, set on learning more about the anonymous stalwarts who risk their lives for medicines for the masses.

Explorer Puig Vallès is not an idealist. As the third-class grunt fatalistically trudges back from a deep-frozen museum, he is one of only four survivors of yet another art raid, stealing useless treasures for the coffers of the elite “Fronters”. His surly rebelliousness and smart mouth soon get him into hot water and he is arrested…

Uncaring of the trouble he’s in or the cheap price of lower class life, Puig is intercepted by Val, whose status and family connections allow her to do almost anything she desires – even interviewing a disgraced Explorer.

Fate seems to be against her, though, as Puig is promptly announced as a winner in the Lucky Lady lottery. His prize is not a virtual vacation, but the “honour” of piloting one of the deteriorating fliers on an exploratory (AKA suicide) mission to see if Snowpiercer 1 is stalled on the tracks up ahead…

And in a dark and gloomy carriage, Metronome and his acolytes finish a bomb that will divert the hurtling spacecraft from its present course and towards the “promised planet”…

Puig knows he’s been set up to die and breaks free, stealing a gun and running for he knows not where, but is captured after a ferocious fire-fight. Val, meanwhile, has discovered that the train’s archives and historical records have been doctored: there’s evidence of anti-fertility drugs being added to the water, and that momentous day 15 years ago when she personally witnessed the death of Puig’s parents has been somehow deleted…

Near the front, the eternally vigilant “Radarists” have spotted a crisis which needs confirmation. A vast bridge pings back as damaged, but on-site inspection is vital to avoid disaster. Val clandestinely confers with Puig, just before the disgraced Explorer is subjected to a kangaroo court and charged with causing the deaths of the other Explorers in his team.

His guilt a foregone conclusion, he is sentenced to Community Service and ordered to fly a flimsy, malfunctioning scout plane to inspect the failing span ahead of the train.

His terrifying sortie confirms the radar data, and the train frantically brakes to avoid disaster. However, by the time Puig turns the plane back, the Icebreaker has switched to full reverse and is speeding away. Determined not to die, he gives chase in the dying flier, and miraculously travels through a brief burst of sunlight.

Shocked and galvanised he nurses the plane onward, even avoiding anti-aircraft fire from the train and discovers that his rolling home has a super engine at each end…

He threatens to crash the plane into the retreating cars and, as the Council deliberate the potential harm he might cause, Val – listening in on tapped lines – broadcasts the conversation to the entire populace.

Consummate politician Councillor Kennel does the only thing possible: regaining public support by proclaiming Puig a hero and taking him fully into the elite’s confidence by sharing all the Train Elite’s secrets with him.

As a Councillor, the rebel anarchist has no choice but to become a co-conspirator and in a horrifying moment of revelation meets an elderly Explorer who describes how the first “braking” was actually the collision everyone has dreaded for years. The original Snowpiercer is now the rear end of their own vastly snaking train. Every moment of fear and anticipation since than has been manufactured to control the people…

The chilling triptych concludes in the immediately-following Snowpiercer Book 3: The Crossing (serialised in 2000 as Le Transperceneige: La traversée) as Puig chafes under a burden of secrets and his new role as Councillor, but one with far less power than the established members.

At least he no longer fears a collision that can never happen, but his sense of threat has not diminished, but rather widened…

When Metronome’s fanatics finally detonate their bomb at the North End of Upper Second-Class, the explosion wrecks the train braking system. Naturally Puig leads a reconnaissance expedition, allowing adversarial Councillors Reverend Dicksen and fellow hardliner The General opportunity to assassinate the Explorer upstart whilst he is occupied cutting free the destroyed cars, effectively chopping the train – and humanity – in half.

As frantic evacuation procedures take effect, the Reverend dispatches fanatical cold-resistant children he’s been training to dispatch the despised enemy, but even clinging to roof of a rocketing carriage in lethal freezing winds Puig is far harder to kill than anybody realised…

With an Engine at either end, the two halves of the train are quickly separated by frozen miles whilst Puig covertly rejoins wife Val and leads a coup. With Dicksen and the General incarcerated and resources impossibly scant for the people crammed into their half of the train, Kennel then reveals one last piece of potentially life-changing news.

The Radarists have for some time been receiving radio transmissions from across the frozen sea. Perhaps somewhere other pockets of human civilisation exist…

Even if the rails hold firm and bridges are still passable, eventually the truncated train will collide head on with its severed other half if the passengers don’t starve, freeze or kill each other first.

With Councillor Kennel on-side and determined to preserve some vestige of the human race, the Explorer, tantalised by an impossible hope, decides to employ the train’s never-tested Snow Chain technology to leave the tracks completely and take everybody out across the ice-locked, frozen ocean in search of the originators of that beguiling transmission…

Unfortunately the bold strike into the unknown is far less dangerous than the fanatics still riding within, and even the despondent, electronic phantom of Proloff, psychically bonded to the original Snowpiercer engine as a cerebral ghost within the machine, can’t help against the bloody religious uprising fomented by Dicksen, Metronome and the General…

And there are even more deadly revelations and surprises awaiting them in the cold, dark unknown across the sea…

This harsh exploration of society in crisis is a gripping tale depicting different kinds of survival values no reader of fantasy fiction could possibly resist, and one long overdue for major public recognition.

And by reading this volume, you’ll see far more than the movie adaptation could possibly cover…
Transperceneige/Snowpiercer and all contents are ™ and © 2013 Casterman.
Snowpiercer volume 2: The Explorers is scheduled for release on February 25th 2014

Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2: Angela


By Brian Michael Bendis with Neil Gaiman, Sara Pichelli, Olivier Coipel, Valerio Schiti, Francesco Francavilla, Kevin Maguire & Mark Morales (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-570-3

Since its momentous rebirth in the early 1960s Marvel Comics was synonymous with making superheroes more realistic. However the little publisher always maintained a close connection with the fantastic space-opera and outrageous cosmic calamity that typified its pre-renaissance – as cherished by oldsters like me who grew up reading their “Hairy-underpants Monsters from Beyond” stuff.

With Space bigger than ever (a little cosmology humour there), one of the resurgent company’s earliest concepts has had a major revamp and now ranks as one of the most entertaining titles to come out of 2012’s MarvelNow! group-wide reboot.

There’s even a major blockbuster movie scheduled for release this August…

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

A rare “miss” for the creatively on-fire publisher, they then vanished into limbo until 1974, when Steve Gerber incorporated them into Marvel Two-In-One, Giant Size Defenders and The Defenders, wherein assorted 20th century champions travelled a millennium into the future to ensure humanity’s liberation and survival.

This led to the Guardians’ own short-lived series in Marvel Presents (February 1976-August 1977) before premature cancellation again left them floating around the Marvel Universe as perennial guest-stars for such cosmically-tinged titles as Thor, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One and The Avengers.

In 1990 they secured a relatively successful second series (#62 issues, annuals and spin-off miniseries) before cancellation struck again in July 1995.

This isn’t them; that Future was a Prelude…

In 2006 a monumental crossover epic involved most of Marvel’s 21st century space stars in an “Annihilation” Event, and led writing team Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning to reconfigure the Guardians concept for contemporary times and tastes.

Amongst the stalwarts initially in play were Silver Surfer, Galactus, Firelord, Quasar, Nova, Thanos, Star-Lord, Moondragon, Super-Skrull, Gamora, Ronan the Accuser, Drax the Destroyer and a host of previously established alien civilisations such as the Kree, Skrulls, Watchers, Xandarians, Shi’ar et al., all falling before a invasion of rapacious Negative Zone beasties unleashed by undying horror Annihilus.

The saga spawned specials, miniseries and new titles (subsequently collected in many volumes) and inevitably led to a follow-up event…

In Annihilation: Conquest, the cast expanded to tackle new threat, adding – and sometimes subtracting – such interstellar luminaries as Adam Warlock, the Inhumans, Kang the Conqueror, Blastaar, the Magus, Captain Universe, fallen Celestial Madonna Mantis, anamorphic adventurer Rocket Raccoon and gloriously whacky “Kirby Kritter” Groot, a walking killer tree and one-time “Monarch of Planet X”, amongst others…

I’ve covered part of that cataclysmic clash elsewhere and will get to the rest one day: suffice to say that by the end of the successive Annihilations and subsequent intergalactic War of Kings, a new, pan-species Guardian group had appointed itself to defend the recovering civilisations and prevent such calamities from ever happening again.

This isn’t them either… not so much…

A few years later and many more cosmic crises, the remnants of those many Sentinels of the Spaceways got the band back together, still determined to make the universe a safe place (for specifics you should consult Guardians of the Galaxy volume 1: Cosmic Avengers).

Thus this second compelling chronicle (collecting Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2 #4-10 from July 2013-January 2014) resumes the immensely absorbing interstellar interactions of a bunch of alien freaks and the human heroes who fight beside – when not actually with – them. Moreover, this time it all ties neatly into the overarching mainstream Marvel continuity…

Brian Michael Bendis continues the tale of Peter Jason Quill – half-breed Terran son of J’Son of Spartax: undisputed ruler of an interstellar empire but no friend of Earth – and his allies in pacifying an unruly and unforgiving universe as Drax, Rocket Racoon, Groot and Gamora (“Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy”) spend some downtime in a bar with their newest recruit, Tony Stark…

Iron Man had been spending time exploring the universe and become embroiled in the self-appointed Guardians’ ongoing trouble with a compact of major cosmic powers and principalities. A coterie of these had formed a Council of Galactic Empires and unilaterally declared Earth “off limits”: quarantined from all extraterrestrial contact.

That high-minded declaration hadn’t stopped one of the Signatories – the scurrilous reptilian Brotherhood of Badoon – from launching a sneak attack on London and being soundly thrashed by Quill, Stark and Co…

After open-minded “Ladies Man” Stark scores an amatory epic fail with Gamora (a wry episode which delivers plenty of laughs for his new comrades who can’t let it lie for the rest of the book), the viridian virago storms out to cool off and is ambushed by an alien bounty hunter.

Despite her formidable prowess she is only saved by the arrival of the Guardians who have just finished trashing a bar and the squad of Spartax soldiers who walked in on their drunken carousing…

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

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

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

Meanwhile, Stark and the remaining Guardians have spotted an unidentifiable lifeform approaching Earth and rush to incept her before she can do any damage…

They reason they can’t identify her is because she’s from another universe and time. Angela (created by Neil Gaiman for Spawn #9 in 1993 and, after much legal foofawraw, brought under Marvel’s auspices in Age of Ultron) is lost and baffled, approaching a world her people have always considered a fairytale or religious myth when the still disgruntled Gamora smashes her into the moon, grateful for an excuse to work off her pent-up hostilities…

The satellite’s oldest inhabitant – Uatu the Watcher – is reeling from the conflict. Not because of its savage intensity but because he knows what Angela is and how she simply cannot be present in this Reality…

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

Rushing back to his birthworld, Star-Lord finds his team faring very badly against the mysterious Angela and pitches in. When she is finally, spectacularly subdued, Uatu appears and proffers dire warnings for all Reality…

With uncharacteristic diplomacy Quill then coaxes the enigmatic intruder into relating her story. Apparently she’s a Hunting Angel from a place called Heven, fallen through a gaping crack in Everything That Is…

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

At this time almost all of Marvel’s titles had been building to a big Avengers-centric crossover event dubbed Infinity, and the next two issues (#8-9, stunningly illustrated by Francesco Francavilla) form the Guardians’ contribution to the epic, in which a double crisis afflicts our particular portion of space.

As Thanos invades Earth for his own dark personal motives, an ancient spread of races from far beyond attack those stellar empires still recovering from the Annihilation outrages and the War of Kings. It’s nothing personal: this invading alien Armada is tasked with eradicating every Earth in every dimension and the Kree, Skrulls, Badoon, Galadorians, Spartax, Shi’ar and all the rest are simply guilty of associating with humans…

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

His affirmative answer enrages Gamora, already bristling from the knowledge Quill has been fraternising with the despised Thanos and she quits…

With Iron Man also gone, Star-Lord, Groot and the Raccoon sneakily infiltrate the station (Drax doesn’t do unobtrusive) but quickly fall foul of the superior forces and only the sudden return of Angela saves the day. When Gamora and Drax then join the fray the Guardians are magnificently triumphant… but at a terrible cost…

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

Bright, breezy, bombastic and immensely enjoyable, the Guardians of the Galaxy offer fast and furious adventure and captivating thrills, spills and chills, and this volume also includes a beautiful gallery of two dozen covers-&-variants by Pichelli & Justin Ponsor, Adi Granov, J. Scott Campbell, Julian Totino Tedesco, Brandon Peterson, Francavilla, John Tyler Christopher, Maguire, Paul Renaud, Skottie Young, Mike Deodato Jr., Terry Dodson, Milo Manara, Paolo Manuel Rivera, Mark Brooks, Leonel Castellani and Adam Kubert plus a wealth of as-standard added extras provided by a multitude of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) offering story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

™ & © 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

Snowpiercer volume 1: The Escape


By Jacques Lob & Jean-Marc Rochette translated by Virginie Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978- 1-78276-133-4

All science fiction is social commentary and, no matter when, where or how set, holds up a mirror to the concerns of the time of its creation. Many stories – in whatever medium – can go on to reshape the culture that spawned them.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, War of the Worlds, Metropolis, Brave New World, 1984, Dan Dare, Day of the Triffids, Star Trek, Thunderbirds, Dune, Star Wars, Stranger in a Strange Land, Solaris, Alien, Neuromancer and so many others escaped the ghetto of their genre to change the cognitive landscape of the world, and hundreds more such groundbreaking and worthy efforts would do the same if we could get enough people to read or see them.

There’s a reason why the Soviets proscribed many types of popular writing but actively encouraged (certain flavours of) Science Fiction…

And most importantly, when done well and with honesty, all such stories are also incredibly entertaining.

All over the world comics have always looked to the stars and voyaged to the future. Europe especially has long been producing spectacularly gripping and enthralling “Worlds of If…” and Franco-Belgian graphic storytelling in particular abounds with undiscovered treasures.

For every Blake & Mortimer, (Tintin’s) Destination Moon or Barbarella, Valérian & Laureline, The Airtight Garage, Jeremiah, Lone Sloane or Gods in Chaos there is an impossible hidden wealth of others, all perched tantalisingly out of reach for everybody unable or unwilling to read nothing but English.

Now however, with the imminent UK release of the movie Snowpiercer, Titan Comics (whose previous translated offerings include Storm, Towers of Bois-Maury, The Magician’s Wife and assorted classics by Enki Bilal and Moebius amongst others) have brought another long-overlooked masterpiece to our parochial Anglo-centric attention.

The original comics series – a stunning example of bleak Cold War paranoid fantasy – is released in a superb two-volume monochrome hardback set, the first of which is available now.

The original tale was serialised in 1982 in À Suivre and collected two years later as Le Transperceneige, written by Jacques Lob (Ténébrax, Submerman, Superdupont, Blanche Épiphanie, Roger Fringan and more) and rendered by painter/illustrator Jean-Marc Rochette (Le Dépoteur de Chrysanthèmes, Edmond le Cochon, Requiem Blanc, Carla, Les Aventures Psychotiques de Napoléon et Bonaparte, etc.) and the driving central conceit is brilliant and awesome.

In the near future life is harsh, oppressive and ferociously claustrophobic. As eternal winter almost instantaneously descended upon the Earth, fugitive remnants of humanity boarded a vast vacation super-train and began an eternal circumambulation of the iceball planet on railway tracks originally designed to offer the idle rich the ultimate pleasure cruise.

Due to lax security as the locomotive started its unceasing circuit of the globe, rogue elements of the poor managed to board the vehicle, but were forced by the military contingent aboard to inhabit the last of 1001 cars pulled by the miracle of engineering.

Now decades later the self-contained and self-sustaining Engine hurtles through unending polar gloom in a perpetual loop, carrying within a raw, fragmented and declining microcosm of the society that was lost to the new ice age…

All contact with the Tail-enders of the “Third Class” has been suspended ever since they tried to break through to better conditions of the middle and front carriages. Their frantic “Wild Rush” was repelled by armed guards and the survivors – who know that event as “the Massacre” – were kicked back to their rolling slums and sealed in to die…

The story proper begins as Lieutenant Zayim is called to an incident in a toilet. Somehow an individual has survived the minus 30 degree chill, climbed along the outside of the train and broken in to the centre carriages. The desperate refugee should be killed and ejected but the stunned officer receives instruction from his Colonel that the indigent – named Proloff – is to be interviewed by the leaders up in First Class.

Before that, however, the invader must be quarantined as the carriage doctor has no idea what contagions must proliferate in the squalor of the rear. But whilst Proloff is isolated, young idealistic activist Adeline Belleau forces her way into the car.

She is with a humanitarian Aid Group agitating to integrate the abandoned Tail-enders with the rest of the train, but is unceremoniously confined with the Tail-Rat and suffers the same appalling indignities as her unfortunate client…

After a “night” in custody Proloff and Adeline are cautiously escorted by Sergeant Briscard and his men through the strange and terrifying semi-autonomous carriages: each a disparate region of the ever-rolling city, contributing something to the survival of all. Travelling through each car during their slow walk, Proloff sees how humanity has uniquely adapted to the journey to nowhere, but that each little kingdom is filled with people scared, damaged and increasingly dangerous.

In one car they are even attacked by bandits…

He also begins to pick up things: a religion that worships the unlimited life-bestowing power of Saint Loco, rumours that the train is slowing down, reports that a plague has begun in the carriage he broke into. Even Adeline has picked up a cold from somewhere…

As they slowly approach the front, Proloff and Adeline grow closer, uniting against the antipathy of the incrementally better off passengers who all want the Powers-That-Be to jettison the dragging carriages packed with filthy Tail-enders…

When they at last reach the luxurious “Golden Cars” the outcasts are interviewed by military Top Brass and the President himself.

He confirms that the train is indeed slowing down and that the furthest carriages will be ditched, but wants Proloff to act as an emissary, facilitating the dispersal of the human dregs throughout the rest of the train.

Billeted with Al, the timidly innocuous Train Archivist, Historian and Librarian, Proloff quickly confirms his suspicion that he is being played. Whilst deftly avoiding the grilling regarding conditions at the train’s tail, he swaps some theories about how the ice age really began and just how coincidentally lucky it was that this prototype vacation super-train was set up, ready and waiting to save the rich and powerful… and only accidental selections of the rest of humanity…

Stoically taking in the decadent debauchery of the First Class cars, Proloff is ready to die before going back, and when word of plague and revolution provokes an attack by the paranoid autocrats, he and Adeline decide to go even further forward, to see the mighty Engine before they die.

What they find there changes everything for everyone, forever…

This incisive exploration of a delicately balanced ostensibly stable society in crisis is a sparkling allegory and punishing metaphor, playing Hell and poverty at the bottom against wealth in Heaven at the top, all seen through the eyes of a rebel who rejects both options in favour of a personal destiny and is long overdue for the kind of recognition bestowed on that hallowed list of SF greats cited above.

At least with this volume, even if the movie adaptation doesn’t do it, you’ll still have the comics source material to marvel at and adore…
Transperceneige/Snowpiercer and all contents are ™ and © 2013 Casterman.

Ark


By Peter Dabbene & Ryan Bayliss (Arcana Studio)
ISBN: 978-1-77135-122-5

It’s not that often that I can allow myself to be relatively succinct, but every now and then a tome turns up which is pretty much comic book perfect and I’m left with very little to say except read this by any means necessary…

The first one I’ve seen this year is a gloriously understated science fiction thriller suitable for older teens that got far too little attention (mine included) when it came out, and which is definitely worth the time for any fan of science fiction or offbeat detective stories…

This transatlantic collaboration is written by New Jersey Boy Peter Dabbene and illustrated by British artist Ryan Bayliss, who combine to tell an all too human tale which holds your interest in both the characters and concept long after the final page turns…

It begins far beyond the orbit of Pluto where Explorer, Earth’s first extra-solar colonisation ship, silently drives ever deeper through interstellar space.

The crew, whose families are also aboard, are all fatalistically dedicated to their mission – to find and settle a new world – although some still harbour suspicions and distrust of the unique passengers… even after thirteen years of watching them grow from little children into young adults.

That small select group are all civilians and all Meta-Humans: genetically engineered hybrids combining human and animal DNA, with incredible abilities still barely revealed or explored.

But now a crisis has arisen and Captain Smith is at odds with his Second-in-Command Victor Diaz about how to proceed…

As the entire ship’s company discovers next morning, all contact with Earth has stopped and the Captain wants to ask the Hybrids to join the crew in running the vessel as it continues the mission. Commander Diaz however does not like the freaks and believes it dangerous to allow them full and unfettered access to the ship.

Even the teenagers in question are undecided on the matter. Some, like chimp-form Gerry, are keen and eager to do their bit, but a small rebellious faction feels they are being drafted and exploited.

Debate rages throughout Explorer: many humans have grown close to their cargo over the years and, now the Hybrids have matured, fraternisation – if not love – has become an issue. The die-hard crewmembers draw much comfort from the fact that the freaks age faster than humans and were all designed to be sterile mules…

Most importantly, many of the crew have begun to question the very nature of the mission itself; constantly finding glaring illogicalities in the whole undertaking… Thoughts turn to the possibility that some disaster has befallen the mother planet…

Smith is more worried about the loss of signal than he lets on, however, and tasks Gerry – who is a very literal-minded mega-genius – to help communications officer Winfield  look into why Earth has gone silent.

Ever eager to please, the simian sets to, uncovering a coded message where no normal person would expect to find it and rushes to share it with Captain Smith. The next morning Gerry is gone: apparently lost in space…

Lizard-girl Darien was a silent observer of what truly happened, and although she refuses to share what she saw, mistrust and paranoia run rampant throughout the enclosed community. Nobody believes Gerry died accidentally, but was it suicide or murder?

As suspicions mount and tensions rise, a microcosmic species war erupts which only a concerted coalition of humans and Metas can quash. Throughout the crisis, however, a greater mystery and threat remains: what was in that final message from Earth and does it reveal the real true purpose of the Ark in space?

Clever, beguiling and splendidly aware that with murder what’s paramount is who dies rather than how many, Ark offers a singularly sophisticated tale of unalterable human passion that will delight readers jaded by cosmic megadeaths and overblown angsty overkill.

Perhaps a little hard to find now as a physical book, Ark is available digitally at http://www.comixology.com/ARK/comics-series/10257 but if, like me, you’re a sucker for paper and the scent of ink and glue, you can get a proper book edition from the U.S. Amazon website (http://www.amazon.com/Ark-Peter-Dabbene/dp/1771351225/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391613791&sr=8-1&keywords=ark+dabbene) Or from the publisher Arcana at http://www.arcana.com/store.php?item=633
© 2012 Arcana Studio, Inc. All rights reserved.

Guardians of the Galaxy – Legacy


By Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Paul Pelletier, Rick Magyar & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3338-4

Following twin cosmic catastrophes (the invasion of our cosmos by the Negative Zone legions of Annihilus and consequent incursion of the shattered survivors of parasitical Phalanx) Marvel breathed new life in many of its moribund cosmic comics characters, and none more so than the rough agglomeration of rootin’, tootin’, blaster-shootin’ outer space reprobates that formed a new 21st century iteration of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Although heralded since its launch in the early 1960s with making superheroes more realistic, Marvel Comics also maintained its intimate affiliation with outlandish and outrageous cosmic calamity (as wonderfully embodied in their pre-superhero “monster-mag” days), and with an upcoming big-budget movie due soon this is a property the company needs to keep in the public eye…

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

Initially unsuccessful, the far-future space squad floated in limbo until 1974 when Steve Gerber incorporated them into Marvel Two-In-One #4 and 5 and Giant Size Defenders #5 as well as the monthly Defenders (#26-29, July – November 1975), wherein assorted 20th century champions travelled a millennium into Tomorrow to ensure mankind’s very survival.

This in turn led to the Guardians’ own short-lived series (in Marvel Presents #3-12, February 1976 – August 1977) before abrupt cancellation left them roaming the Marvel Universe as perennial guest-stars in such cosmically-tinged titles as Thor, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One and The Avengers.

In June 1990 they were back, securing a relatively successful series (#62 issues, plus annuals and a spin-off miniseries) until the axe fell again in July 1995.

This isn’t them; this is another bunch…

By 2006 reading tastes had once turned to watching the skies and a massive crossover event involving most of Marvel’s 21st century space specialists erupted throughout the Marvel Universe.

Annihilation, brainchild of writing team Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, resulted in a vast reconfiguration (pre- configuration), creating a set of galactic Guardians for modern times and tastes.

Among the stalwarts in play were Silver Surfer, Galactus, Firelord (and other heralds of the world-eater), Moondragon, Quasar, Star-Lord, Thanos, Super-Skrull, Tana Nile, Gamora, Ronan the Accuser, Nova, Drax the Destroyer, a Watcher as well as a host of alien civilisations such as the Kree, Skrulls, Xandarians, Shi’ar et al and more, all relentlessly falling before a invasion of rapacious Negative Zone bugs and beasties unleashed by undying insectoid horror Annihilus.

That conflagration spawned its own wave of specials, miniseries and new titles (subsequently collected in three volumes plus a Classics compilation which reprinted key appearances of most of the saga’s star players). It inevitably led to a follow-up event …

In Annihilation: Conquest, with Kree and Skrull empires splintered, the Nova Corps of Xandar reduced to one single operative, and wild ancient gods returned, a sizable proportion of the Negative Zone invaders had tenuously established themselves in territories once home to untold billions.

The Supreme Intelligence was gone and arch-traitor Ronan had become a surprisingly effective ruler of the few remaining Kree. Cosmic Protector Quasar had died, and Phyla-Vel, (daughter of the first Captain Marvel) has inherited both his powers and name…

Whilst she and psychic demi-goddess Moondragon worked with the pacifist Priests of Pama to relieve the suffering of starving survivors, Star-Lord Peter Quill toiled with Ronan to shore up the battered interstellar defences of the myriad races in the decimated space-sector.

Quill then brokered an alliance with the Spaceknights of Galador (an old noble cyborg species most famously represented by 1980s hero Rom) to enhance the all-pervasive etheric war-net, but the system had been treacherously compromised, and when activated instantaneously overwritten ruled by a murderous, electronic sentient parasitic species known as the Phalanx, whose cybernetic credo was “peace and order through assimilation”…

Once again a rag-tag rabble united to repel a cosmic invasion, with Quill commanding a Kree resistance division/Penal Strike Force. The highly engaging intergalactic Dirty Half-Dozen comprised Galactic Warrior Bug (originally from the 1970’s phenomenon Micronauts), the current Captain Universe (ditto), Shi’ar berserker Deathcry, failed Celestial Madonna Mantis, anamorphic adventurer Rocket Raccoon and the magnificently whacky “Kirby Kritter” Groot, a Walking Tree and one-time “Monarch of Planet X.”

In combination with stellar stalwarts Drax, Gamora – “Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy” – and Adam Warlock, the organic underdogs and other special all-stars turned back the techno-parasites and were left to set the saved if battered universe back on an even (ish) keel.

The success of all that intergalactic derring-do led in turn to a new series and this initial tome (collecting Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2 #1-6 from July-December 2008) finds some of the recently acquainted adventurers in the midst of saving the universe some more…

‘Somebody’s Got To Do It’ (by writers Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, illustrated by Paul Pelletier & Rick Magyar) reveals how – thanks to fellow Earthling Nova’s prompting – Star-Lord determined to create a pro-active defence force to handle the next inevitable cosmic crisis as soon as it started.

To that end he convinced Drax, Gamora, Groot, Phyla-Vel, Warlock and the raccoon to relocate with him to the pan-species science-station Knowhere (situated in the hollowed out skull of a dead Celestial Space God) and start putting out the never-ending progression of interstellar brush-fires before they become really serious…

The station is guarded and run by Cosmo – a Russian dog with astounding telepathic abilities – and is where old comrade Mantis works as chief medic. It also offers unlimited teleportational transport which the team soon needs as it tries to prevent an out-of-control Universal Church of Truth Templeship crashing into a time/space distortion and shredding the fabric of reality…

Soon the surly scratch squad are battling savage, crazed missionary-zealots – powered by the worship of enslaved adherents channelled through the Templeship’s colossal Faith Generators – whilst desperately attempting to divert the vessel before it impacts the fissure in space. Such a collision would cause catastrophic destruction to the galaxy but the UCT crusaders only see heretics trying to interfere with their mission to convert unbelievers…

The crisis is exacerbated by another small problem: there are very nasty things on the other side of the fissure that really want to come and play in our universe, and when one of them breaks through the only thing to do is destroy the entire ship…

In the aftermath, Warlock reveals that the string of cosmic Armageddons has fundamentally damaged the nature of space, and more fissures will appear. He wants to repurpose the team to find and close them all before anything else escapes.

And on Sacrosanct, homeworld of the Universal Church of Truth, the Matriarch issues a decree for her Cardinals to deal with the interfering unbelievers…

‘Legacy’ sees the team dash to another Reality rupture which has recently spewed out a huge chunk of limbo-ice, only to find the temporal effluvia is encasing a chunk of Avengers Mansion and another appalling atrocity hungry for slaughter. As it attacks them they are saved by a recently-thawed costumed hero throwing a circular shield with concentric circles and a single star…

The confused hero says he is Vance AstrovikMajor Victory of the Guardians of the Galaxy and he has travelled back from the 30th century. The problem is that he can’t remember why or if he’s arrived in the right universe…

As the mystery man is probed by telepathic, precognitive Mantis, Quill and Warlock drag the team off to seal another Fissure, only to be ambushed by a unit of Cardinals as they enter a vast Dyson Sphere where something horrific is hunting…

As pitched, merciless battle breaks out on the Sphere in ‘Beyond Belief’, Mantis and Major Victory are attacked in Knowhere’s sickbay by a being of incredible power. Astrovik calls the assailant Starhawk but Mantis is unable to glean any information about him from any future she can see…

Within the Sphere, the war between Guardians and Cardinals is abruptly terminated as the bio-horror that haunts the solar system-sized construct attacks. Trapped and desperate Gamora is severely damaged when she uses the artefact’s captive sun to destroy it…

Back home at Knowhere to recuperate in ‘Damages’, the squad is caught in the latest of a series of escalating acts of sabotage. However the real shock comes as amongst the 38 dead are three Skrulls. The rapacious shape-shifting conquerors have clearly infiltrated the many races using the science station…

Apparently able to defeat all the base’s detectors and confound the many telepaths in situ, the reviled creatures prove a wave of panic and Cosmo is soon being challenged by Gorani and Cynosure of the Administrative Council, both demanding swift, strong action…

The news also incites a wave of paranoia and panic amongst the inhabitants and mystery man Astrovik is targeted by a mob, leading to Quill’s team being confined to quarters, where Drax overhears a shocking exchange between Star-Lord and Mantis…

The final two issues here form part of a major company-wide crossover but thankfully can stand alone from that event. It all begins with ‘Deception – a Secret Invasion Story’ wherein Drax goes rogue, hunted throughout the station by super-powered cops as the rest of his team undergo a trial. Of course, with a suffix like “the Destroyer” there’s little reason to trust the big green galoot, and no chance to stop him as he trashes Cynosure’s superteam The Luminals, and soon his former comrades join the search too.

Things take a darker turn as Starhawk reappears – this time as a woman – determined to stop the wrong future from happening, whilst elsewhere one of team is revealed to be concealing and protecting the dreaded Skrulls…

And in the bowels of the station Drax works on his plan to flush out the shape-shifters: after all, everybody knows that they revert to their own forms on death so all he has to do is kill everyone in Knowhere to find them…

The frankly brilliant conclusion occurs in ‘Death – a Secret Invasion Story’ which cleverly and spectacularly wraps up the crossover whilst positioning the assorted heroes for the next major story arc by splitting them up: a fairly natural reaction once the Guardians learned that Quill had had Mantis mind-control each one to get them to join his proposed pro-active strike-force in the days following the defeat of the Phalanx…

This stunning stellar treasure-chest also includes a covers-&-variants gallery by Clint Langley and Nic Klein, with a dozen of Langley’s unused Cover Options, a magnificent double-page pencil-art spread by Pelletier plus a Concept Artwork section on the new improved and savagely sinister Starhawk to astound and amaze all lovers of astral action and gritty, funny fantastic fantasy.

Smart, breathtaking adventure with loads of laughs and tremendous imagination, this is superb stuff well worth seeking out and, hopefully, set to be re-issued in the lead up to the forthcoming major movie production…
© 2008 and 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Numbercruncher


By Simon Spurrier & P.J. Holden with Jordie Bellaire (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-004-7

I’ve made a resolution to be more terse and concise in my reviews. Let’s see how long that lasts…

Sometimes a story just cries out to be told – especially if your tastes run to the sentimentally cynical, soppily savage or wide-eyed and jaded. If that’s you, Numbercruncher is just what you need to confirm all your suspicions about life whilst having a really good time.

The tale – by Simon Spurrier (Judge Dredd, X-Men: Legacy, Six-Gun Gorilla and others) & P.J. Holden (that man Dredd again, Rogue Trooper, Battlefields, Terminator/Robocop and more) – began as a creator-owned project in Judge Dredd Megazine before being expanded into a 4-issue miniseries from Titan Comics. Now it’s available as a splendid hardback packed with clever, controversial notions that will delight and astound lovers of metaphysical whimsy, romantic fantasy and unnecessarily extreme violence.

Like The Wizard of Oz and especially A Matter of Life and Death, this story is told on two separate levels of existence and differentiated by full-colour earthly sections and black-&-white views of the Afterlife. Unlike them, it’s a nasty and wittily vicious piece of work; just like handy geezer Bastard Zane, operative #494 employed by The Divine Calculator to enforce the Karmic Accountancy and keep souls circulating through the great cosmic all.

The Universe is just numbers and God is a mean, pedantic bean-counter, only concerned with the smooth running of his Grand Algorithm. Unfortunately, it all starts to fall apart when Zane is tasked by the weaselly Big Boss with stopping an in-love and dying young mathematician from gaming the system.

Genius Richard Thyme, in his final seconds of mortal life, has a Eureka moment and divines the true and exact nature of everything – and how to manipulate it…

Armed with such inspirational knowledge, Thyme’s soul arrives before the Writer in the Grand Ledger and wheedles another spin on the Karmic Wheel – Reincarnation.

Brilliant Richard had been utterly in love with a dippy hippy chick named Jessica Reed, and bargains for another chance at a life with her, and mean, petty-minded Divine Calculator gleefully accepts the proposition.

Thyme will be reborn, with all memories intact, but when this second life ends his soul will be employed by the Karmic Accountancy Agency as a collector just like Zane. The standard term of employment is for eternity – unless he can convince somebody to take his place. The indentured operatives call it “Recirculation”…

There is only one get-out: a “Zero-clause” which means that if Thyme can live a life completely and totally without sin, his contract is null and void. But who could possibly live a mortal life without the slightest transgression…?

Of course, The Accountant doesn’t play fair: stacking the deck so that reborn Richard is unable to even get near his lost love until it’s too late. However when Zane finally shows up in 2035AD, eagerly expecting to close the case-file and retire with Thyme taking his long-suffering place in The Register, the frustrated, cheated genius plays his own trump card.

He’d always expected to be short-changed and made his own Karmic deal. By selling his contract to another Accountancy operative, he had bought another life. And as the psychotically furious Bastard Zane soon sees, Thyme has pulled the trick over and over again. No matter how often Richard dies, he’s already being born again somewhere else…

With the mathematician’s sold-and-resold soul promised to practically every agent in the Afterlife, Zane’s only hope of retirement rests in killing the kid’s each and every reincarnation whilst simultaneously slaughtering all the Karmic operatives who have been suckered into a deal with the lovesick little sod…

And on Earth, despite perpetual setbacks, each brief existence inches Richard slowly closer to Jess. That should make his eventual capture inevitable – but even here the genius has an incredible Plan B in operation which even the Supreme Architect of the Cosmos didn’t see coming… one which could well undo the Algorithm underpinning Everything That Is…

Poignant, funny, outrageously gory, gloriously rude and wickedly clever, this is a ferociously upbeat and hilariously dark black comedy no insufferable incurable romantic could possibly resist.

Moreover, for all us dyed-in-the-wool comics freaks, there’s a host of background features included,

Interspersed between a gallery of covers and variants – plus unused iterations – and loads of original art, roughs and sketches, the ‘Author’s Note’ takes us behind the genesis of the tale, which is further expanded upon in ‘A Comic for Talking to God – an interview with Brian Truitt of USA Today’.

A discussion and explanation of Jordie Bellaire’s colouring process is the focus of ‘Working Flat-Out’ and ‘Birth Placement’ details the procedure for creating a cover, before the usual Creator’s Biographies ends things on a knowledgeable note.

Love, Death, Sex, more Death, Rebirth, lots of Death and Numbers: there’s your Meaning of Life right there…
™ & © 2013 Simon Spurrier & P.J. Holden. All rights reserved.

Numbercruncher is scheduled for release in January 2014.

Vicious


By V.E. Schwab (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78329-021-5

Once upon a time the meat and metier of comicbooks – fantastic beings with incredible abilities – was ghettoised: disregarded by the wider world as nonsense for kids and sad juveniles who’d grown older but not “up”.

How times change. These days those notions of men like gods – or more likely, monsters – are the bread-&-butter of movies and television: the public has accepted the core concepts of superhero sagas in the same way my generation gradually accepted hand-held communicators, teleportation, time-travel and parallel worlds (thank Star Trek for most of that).

Naturally then, with such fantastic concepts now common parlance amongst society’s hoi-polloi, prose fiction was bound to get in on the act (leaving aside the rare dabblings on the fringes of science fiction such as Wild Cards or Soon I Will Be Invincible) as the “new” genre won general acceptance and gained fictive credence. And eventually, something really fresh and new in the nascent medium of Superhero Novels was bound to emerge…

Vicious is a brilliantly plotted revenge drama dressed up in the supernature pyrotechnics of comicbooks, which wisely leaves aside the more flamboyant aspects of the strips to recount a story of wrongs redressed and vengeance hard-won in the classical manner of the Count of Monte Cristo – or more accurately Alfred Bester’s re-invention of it in The Stars my Destination.

Ten years ago two very special young men met in college: unique geniuses who had much in common. They became friends (in the way Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom or Clark Kent and Lex Luthor did) and together researched the urban myth of EOs – ExtraOrdinary individuals.

Barely believing the tabloid joke, they nevertheless soon discovered such people with their impossibly improbable powers could exist – and how to make them…

As the project began to obsess them, rivalry developed. They both underwent their transformative process and a girl they both wanted died.

Lines were drawn: moody pariah Victor Vale went to prison and charismatic Golden Boy Eli Cardale went free, buoyed up by his new, divinely-inspired mission. But now Victor is out and, with his small gang of similarly empowered EOs, hunting Eli.

His prey is the secret weapon of the Merit City Police Department and a key component in a decade-long case. Someone has been tracking EOs; acting as judge, jury and executioner of these ungodly abominations…

And now, Victor will have his vengeance, no matter the cost…

Comicbook veterans should find enough here to draw them in, but will be stunned as the tale steadfastly refuses to follow the accepted memes of “their” genre or utilise the artefacts (masks, costumes, code-names) that used to set it apart. Film and TV fans might note similarities to films like Scanners or Jumper or shows such as Heroes or Alphas, but the fast-paced, brutal and obsessive tale told here is actually most akin to a western: High Noon…

Antecedents aside, Vicious is a supremely clever, cruelly addictive thriller easily cloaked in the trappings of genre fiction whilst telling a stunningly powerful, wonderfully absorbing horror story of timeless archetypical passions whilst exploring the nature of heroism, villainy, friendship and family.

A magnificent treat for all lovers of the dark fantastic…
© 2013, 2014 V.E. Schwab. All rights reserved.