Category: Science Fiction

Posted on

Showman Killer volume 1: Heartless Hero


By Alejandro Jodorowsky & Nicolas Fructus (Titan Comics)
ISBN 978-1-78276-139-6

Born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929, Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, world traveller, philosopher, spiritual guru and comics writer.

The amazing modern polymath is most widely known for such films as Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Sante Sangre, The Rainbow Thief, The Dance of Reality and others, and a vast and influential comics output, including Anibal 5 (created whilst living in Mexico), Le Lama blanc, Aliot, The Meta-Barons, Borgia, Madwoman of the Sacred Heart and so many more, created with some of South America and Europe’s greatest artists.

His decade-long collaboration with Moebius on the Tarot-inspired adventure The Incal (1981-1989) completely redefined and reinvented what comics could aspire to and achieve.

Most widely regarded for his violently surreal avant-garde films, loaded with highly-charged, inspired imagery – blending mysticism and what he terms “religious provocation” – and his spiritually-informed fantasy and science fiction comics tales, Jodorowsky is also fascinated by humanity’s inner realms and has devised his own doctrine of therapeutic healing: Psychomagic, Psychogenealogy and Initiatic massage.

He still remains fully engaged and active in all these creative areas to this day.

He has never stopped creating and most of his lifelong themes and obsessions are seamlessly wedded together in this first volume of a visceral and challenging new sci fi slaughter series which first surfaced in France in 2010 as Showman Killer: Un héros sans coeur.

This slim but sublime translated hardback tome sparkles with the macabre painted mastery of illustrator/animator Nicolas Fructus (Thorinth, Kadath, Arthur and the Minimoys) and opens with a ‘Prologue’ wherein creepy mercenary technologist Doctor Courcolain and his truly disturbing assistant Paleo-Dog Orlanda visit the prison planet Halkatrass in search of fresh sperm samples…

They don’t come fresher than Joe the Gut-Eater‘s; his vital juices callously and corruptly obtained whilst he’s being actively tortured to death. Before long the mad scientist is back in his secret asteroid lab, inseminating long-missing celebrity Lady Anonima. The regal brood surrogate has been in a vegetative state for months and isn’t even aware that the next nine will be her last…

Doctor Courcolain has had enough of serving the puissant, parsimonious Omnimonarch. The prospective and self-made “parent” has a grand scheme to create the universe’s greatest ultra-mercenary and thereafter squeeze vast sums out of the bloodthirsty tyrant when his relentless, totally emotionless killer “son” carries off the lion’s share of regal commissions…

Reared in robotic isolation, the baby is subject to psycho-surgery and biological cyber-augmentation as Courcolain carefully nurtures his perfect killer and, when it comes of age, despatches him to learn/steal all the secrets of the Aldeberan ninja Akka-Kun, a first mission which leaves his sinister scion with the power to shapeshift…

Dubbing his flamboyant creation Showman Killer, the vile physician debuts his creature at the Omnimonarch’s grand gladiatorial games on Planet Gold, where the greatest warriors in the universe convene to fight and die for the sovereign’s pleasure.

The mystery newcomer makes an unimaginable splash and after winning a vast reward for Courcolain affords his creator one last surprise. The so-brilliant doctor has not fully considered what might happen in the mind of perfect assassin reared without hope or affection and programmed to think all life worthless and money the most important thing in creation…

When the dust and bloody mist settles the mature and independent Showman Killer than places himself at the Omnimonarch’s service…

The story proper begins years later as the paragon of murderers awakes from another horrible dream. The royal assassin has grown bored – even of the vast wealth his gifts have earned him – and when an urgent call comes to save the Omnimonarch’s newborn heir and wife from marauding Nihilos he diligently sets off, but cockily allows himself to be distracted by a higher bid from the King of Ornisaurios.

Judging he can save the bird-lizards from invasion and still tackle the Nihilos in time, Showman Killer indulges himself in a welter of gory slaughter, blithely unaware that he has made a grave miscalculation…

At the Noumara Palace Hospital on Planet Arcane the ravaging perpetrators have been exposed as the spearhead of a well-organised insurrection rather than a ragtag band of raiding primitives.

A traitor high within the court has made a ruthless power-play, but the valiant sacrifice of the queen has foiled his Plan A. Now, with the heir missing Showman Killer at last arrives, and experiences the full grief and fury of the Omnimonarch with calm detachment. Despite his failure the assassin is still necessary to the ruler whose soul screams out for vengeance.

The hidden plotter is also content: the real threat to his usurpation is the heir and now the most infallible hunter in the universe will find the child for him…

After a long quest and an ocean of spilled blood, the gulled seeker locates the missing baby and the strange woman who safeguards him. He has seen her many times – in his dreams – and when she leaves the baby in his care and vanishes, the Killer sets out for home with the strangest sensations disturbing his placid attitude. Could it be emotion or perhaps some unguessed connection to the royal infant…?

To Be Continued…

Stark, baroque and chillingly brutal, this is beguiling mystery and rousing space opera at their most uncompromising: blending the familiar locales and trappings of galactic empires with the dark, foredoomed mood and mystique of classical samurai dramas and classic Film Noir.

A visual feast for all lovers of fantastic fiction and ferocious yet tragic antiheroes…
Showman Killer volumes 1, 2, 3, Jodorowsky-Fructus © Éditions Delacourt 2010-2012 Showman Killer volume 1 is available in selected shops now and available to pre-order for a December 29th 2015 internet release.

Posted on

Yoko Tsuno volume 10: Message for Eternity


By Roger Leloup translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-251-5

The uncannily edgy yet excessively accessible European exploits of Japanese scientific adventurer Yoko Tsuno began first began gracing the pages of Spirou in September 1970 and are still going strong.

The explosive, eye-popping, expansively globe-girdling multi-award winning series was the brainchild of Roger Leloup, another hugely talented Belgian who worked as a studio assistant to Herge’s on The Adventures of Tintin before striking out on his own.

Compellingly told, superbly imaginative but always solidly grounded in hyper-realistic settings sporting utterly authentic and unshakably believable technology, these illustrated epics were at the vanguard of a wave of strips featuring competent, clever and brave female protagonists which revolutionised Continental comics from the last third of the 20th century onwards and are as potently empowering now as they ever were.

The initial Spirou stories ‘Hold-up en hi-fi’, ‘La belle et la bête’ and ‘Cap 351’ were short introductory vignettes before the superbly capable Miss Tsuno and her always awestruck and overwhelmed male comrades Pol and Vic truly hit their stride with premier extended saga Le trio de l’étrange which began serialisation with the May 13th 1971 issue.

That epic of extraterrestrial intrigue was the first of 27 European albums to date, and the on show here was first serialised in Spirou #1882-1905 (9th May-17 October 17th 1974) and released the following year as Message pour l’éternité. A skilfully suspenseful mystery thriller, it was chronologically the fifth album and reaches us as Cinebook’s tenth translated chronicle.

It all begins as ever-restless Yoko perfects her skills in a new hobby. Gliding high above Brittany she fortuitously sets down in a field near a vast telecommunications complex. Offered a tour of the space-probing facility she learns from one of the scientists of a fantastic “ghost message” recently picked up by satellites: a Morse code signal from a British plane lost in 1933. Moreover the signal is still being regularly broadcast…

When Yoko tries to arrange to have her glider picked up and sort out her own departure, a mysterious Englishman offers her a lift in his private helicopter. He has an ulterior motive: an employee of the company which insured the lost flight he is looking for someone with certain precise qualifications to trace the downed flight and recover a fortune in jewels from it. Her fee will be £20,000…

It transpires that his firm has known where the plane went down for some time, but geographical and logistic difficulties have prevented them from undertaking a recovery mission until now. Moreover, although they have now started the process, the petite engineer is physically superior to the candidates the company are currently working with…

Cautiously accepting the commission, Yoko starts planning but even before Pol and Vic can join her the following day, strange accidents and incidents begin to imperil her life…

The boys are understandably reluctant but that attitude turns to sheer frustration and terror after someone tries to shoot down Yoko as she practises in her glider. This only makes her more determined to complete the job at all costs.

Two weeks later the trio are heading to the daunting Swiss fortress the company uses as a base when another spectacular murder attempt almost ends their lives, but Yoko is undaunted. Not so Vic and Pol, especially after hearing that two of her fellow trainees have recently died in similar “accidents” in the mountains…

Carrying on regardless, she is introduced to the fantastic glider-&-launch system which will take her to the previously unattainable crash site and begins perfecting her landing technique in a fantastic training simulator.

Eventually more details are provided and the real story unfolds. The Handley-Page transport they are seeking was conveying diplomatic mail from Karachi to London in November 1933, but vanished in a storm over Afghanistan. Decades later a satellite somehow picked up a broken radio message stating it had landed… somewhere…

The businessman the trio call “Milord” identifies himself as Major Dundee – a spymaster from Britain’s Ministry of Defence – and explains how a shady American former U2 pilot approached the British government, claiming to have spotted the downed ship during a clandestine over-flight of Soviet territories.

He provided purloined photos showing the plane in the centre of a vast circular crater on the Russo-Chinese border, but subsequent reconnaissance flights revealed nothing in the hole and the decision was taken to make a physical assessment, even though the already inaccessible site was deep in hostile enemy territory…

Since then it has become clear that some unidentified agent or group is acting against the recovery project, probably intent on retrieving the ship’s mysterious but valuable cargo for a foreign power.

Events spiral out of control when a traitor in the training team attempts to kill Yoko and “Operation Albatross” is rushed to commencement before the unknown enemy can try again…

Within a day she is transported in a most fantastic and speedy manner around the world before her space-age glider prototype is secretly deployed over the enigmatic crater…

Narrowly avoiding patrolling Soviet jets, Yoko deftly manoeuvres into the mist-covered chasm and plunges into one of the most uncanny experiences of her life.

The old plane is certainly gone. The floor of the crater is strangely cracked and at the centre stands a strangely burned and blackened monolith, there are uncharacteristic animal bones everywhere and at one end of the vast cavity there is a primitive but large graveyard…

Whilst the astounded girl is exploring she is ambushed by her treacherous fellow trainee who has raced after her by conventional means and parachuted into the bizarre basin. However, his original plans have changed drastically since arrival and despite the machine gun he wields he needs Yoko’s help.

He’s already located the Handley-Page – somehow manually dragged under an unsuspected overhang in the crater – but is mortally afraid of what he describes as the “tiny people” infesting the terrifying impact bowl…

As the unlikely allies head towards the perfectly preserved plane, the truth about the terrifying homunculi is shockingly revealed and they encounter the last human survivor of downed Diplomatic Flight, discover to their supreme cost the uncanny and ultimately deadly atmospheric anomaly which has kept the plane a secret for decades and turned the crater into a vast geological radio set…

When the dust settles Yoko realises she is trapped in the subterranean anomaly. With all her escape plans rendered useless she must align herself with the bizarre sole survivor and his bestial, rebellious servants, but she also refuses to give up on the recovery mission.

Of course that doesn’t mean that she has to trust anything the old relic in the hole or Major Dundee has said. With that in mind she lays her own plans to settle matters…

As always the most potent asset of these breathtaking dramas is the astonishingly authentic and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship and storytelling, which superbly benefits from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail, honed through years of working on Tintin.

With this sleekly beguiling tale Yoko proved that she was a truly multi-faceted adventurer, equally at home in all manner of dramatic milieus and able to hold her own against the likes of James Bond, Modesty Blaise, Tintin or any other genre-busting super-star: as triumphantly capable pitted against spies and crooks as alien invaders, weird science or unchecked force of nature…

This is a splendidly frenetic, tense thriller which will appeal to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy or devious espionage exploit.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1973, 1979 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2015 © Cinebook Ltd.

Posted on

Night and the Enemy


By Harlan Ellison & Ken Steacy (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-79961-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Stunning Sci Fi Blockbuster Brilliance… 9/10

Harlan Ellison’s dark and chilling space war tales are always eminently readable.

This gloriously impressive re-issued volume gathers five of the best and most celebrated – all taken from the long-running but intermittent sequence of novellas and short-stories detailing Mankind’s extended intergalactic struggle against a race of star-spanning rivals – adapted in a variety of visual formats by air-brush wizard and aviation-addict Ken Steacy, together with a new prose framing-sequence from the author.

Humanity’s literary battle against the Kyben spanned ten generations and involved all manner of technologies up to and including time-travel. Probably the most famous of them is the award-winning Demon with a Glass Hand, adapted as both an episode of The Outer Limits TV show in 1964 and as one of the very best of the long-gone and much-lamented DC Graphic Novel series, but that’s a graphic extravaganza we’ve already covered elsewhere…

Right here, right now, this classy full-colour album-sized paperback resurrects a glorious artefact first released by Comico and Graphitti Designs in 1987, just as the market for English-language graphic novels was taking off, and piles on the goodies by adding a brace of fabulously informative and keenly reminiscent Introductions: ‘In these Pages, the War Still Wages’ from author Ellison and ‘…As We Go Forward, Into the Past!’ by astoundingly multi-talented adaptor Ken Steacy.

Closing down the show there’s more goodies: an eye-popping glimpse at Steacy’s visual virtuosity in the feature ‘Afterwords & Pictures’ revealing unpublished art, roughs, layouts and finished covers as well as working models and more, plus the original Afterwords ‘War Artist’ and ‘Whispers from the Telling Box’ by Steacy and Ellison respectively from the 1987 edition.

Following a specially created ‘Prologue’ by E & S, the pictorial panoply shifts seamlessly into the earliest tales in the epic conflict, beginning with the apocalyptic ‘Run for the Stars’, a traditional panels and balloons strip describing life and its imminent end on Deald’s World after the hordes of Kyba drop in, followed by ‘Life Hutch’, a grim survival tale combining blocks of text with large images in both lavish colour and stark monochrome highlighting a soldier-survivor’s battle against a malfunctioning robot…

‘The Untouchable Adolescents’ is a bright and breezy art job disguising a tragic and powerful parable of good intentions gone awry, whilst sardonic two-pager ‘Trojan Hearse’ rates just one powerful, lonely illustration for its cunning tale of invasion. ‘Sleeping Dogs’ is a moody epic which fittingly concludes the adaptations with the story of a force of liberating Earth men who trample all over a few aliens in their rush to defeat the Kyben and realise too late they’ve poked the wrong bear…

However fans will be delighted to find this volume also carries an original entry in the annals of the Earth-Kyba conflict with the prose and picture ‘The Few… The Proud’: at the time of this collection’s original release, Ellison’s first new story for the series in fifteen years…

This epic tome was a groundbreaking landmark and the time of its original release and remains an innovative and compelling treat for both old and new fans of the writer, lovers of seductively unconventional graphic narrative and of course comic readers in general.
Written by Harlan Ellison®. © 1987, 2015 The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All Rights Reserved. New material by Harlan Ellison®. © 2015 The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Cover and illustrations © 1987, 2015 Ken Steacy. All Rights Reserved.

Night and the Enemy is available in comic shops and online around the world right now and can be pre-ordered online for a December 25th release in the UK.

Posted on

The Puma Blues: The Complete Saga in One Volume


By Stephen Murphy & Michael Zulli with Alan Moore and an Introduction by Dave Sim and Afterword by Stephen R. Bissette (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-846-79813-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Epic, Enthralling, Exciting… 10/10

During the 1980s the American comics scene experienced an astounding proliferation of new titles and companies following the birth of the Direct Sales Market. With publishers now able to firm-sale straight to specialised, dedicated-retail outlets rather than overprint and accept returned copies from general magazine vendors, the industry was able to risk and support less generic titles whilst authors, artists and publishers could experiment without losing their shirts.

The huge outpouring of fresh material deriving from the Direct Sales revolution resulted in a plethora of innovative titles and creators – and let’s be honest – a host of appalling, derivative, knocked-off, banged-out trash too. Happily I’m the boss of me and I choose to focus on the great stuff…

The period was an immensely fertile time for English-language comics-creators. Comics shops – run by people in touch with their customers and who actually read and loved at least some of what they sold – sprang up everywhere and host of new publishers began to experiment with format, genre and content, whilst eager readers celebrated the happy coincidence that everybody seemed to have a bit of extra money to play with.

Consequently the new kids were soon aggressively competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown resigned to getting their sequential art jollies from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European, Japanese and even Canadian material began creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse, First, Renegade and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

Most importantly, by avoiding traditional family-focussed sales points like newsstands, more mature material could be produced: not just increasingly violent or sexually explicit but also far more political and intellectually challenging too.

Subsequently, the “kid’s stuff” stigma afflicting comics largely dissipated and America began catching up to the rest of the world, at least partially acknowledging that comics might be a for-real art-form.

New talent, established stars and different takes on old forms all found a thriving forum and marketplace desperate for something a little different. Even tiny companies and foreign outfits had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great material came – and, almost universally, as quickly went – without getting the attention or success they warranted.

One of the most critically acclaimed and enthralling features was published by the Moses of Independent creators, Dave Sim.

Sim had begun self-publishing Cerebus the Aardvark in 1977 and pretty much trail-blazed the entire phenomenon for the rest of us. Passionately, stridently non-“mainstream”, he soldiered on in complete control of every aspect of his creation and periodically began publishing other titles by creators who impressed him or he simply liked. Eventually, however, Sim ditched a coterie of fine and uniquely different books that were nurtured by his Aardvark-Vanaheim outfit, leaving them with his ex-wife’s new company Renegade and re-concentrated all his efforts on Cerebus once more.

And then in 1985 a couple of casual acquaintances showed Sim the opening instalment of something called The Puma Blues…

The full story – including how that strangely compelling, so-slowly and dreamily unfolding eco-fable became a helpless hostage and collateral casualty in the one-man publishing house’s lengthy battle with an international distributor determined to dictate how creators did business – is related in painful, sordid detail in Sim’s Introduction for this stunningly impressive archival edition – complete with his equally stunning pin-up of the series’ iconic signature invention…

This monolithic monochrome tome gathers and reprints every published issue of The Puma Blues comic (except the non-canonical Benefit Issue #21 which was rushed out in solidarity by incensed fellow creators to generate publicity, support and funds) before finally, after almost 25 years, reuniting writer Stephen Murphy and Michael Zulli to complete their story…

The aforementioned hostage was an eerily beautiful disturbingly pensive oddment which debuted as a black-&white title in June 1986; marrying then-escalating ecological concerns and tropes of science fictive paranoia with scrupulous soul-searching and the eternal quest for place in both family and the world…

The Puma Blues is a tale more about the Why and How of things rather than the usual What of plot and character, so this overview will be brief and short on detail: trust me, you’ll be grateful for my forbearance when you start reading the magnum opus yourself…

Accepting the premise that all Science Fiction – whenever it’s created – is always about Right Here, Right Now, the abiding undercurrent of The Puma Blues is an inexorable slide to tragic, unfixable, unwanted change.

Since the 1970s and proceeding ever more unchecked into the 21st century, nations and human society have been plagued with horrors and disasters exacerbated – if not actually caused – by a world-wide proliferation of lying, greedy, venal, demented and just plain stupid bosses and governments. You could call it retro-futurism now, but tomorrow – as seen from 1986 – at least in terms of society was for many a foredoomed and hopeless place.

Looking at my TV screen or out of a window, I’m not sure that Murphy & Zulli weren’t fundamentally right and doubling as prophets when they set their gentle epic fourteen years into the future…

2000 AD and government agent Gavia Immer (look it up, they’re being very clever) is monitoring changes to flora and fauna in the wilderness Reserve around Quabbin Reservoir, Massachusetts on behalf of the US military.

Still a beautiful, idyllic landscape dominated by ancient apex predators such as mountain lions, despite the perpetual acid rains, ozone layer breaches and the radioactive toxins left after White Supremacists nuked the Bronx, the harsh area monitored by the solitary researcher is the site of some radical changes…

Gavia’s job is not just clerical. His mission is to periodically test the fluctuating PH levels of the lake in between the state’s continual chemical readjustments of the body of water and, whenever he discovers a mutant species – whether “animute” or “biomute” – he has to utilise state-of-the-art technology to instantaneously ship the specimens to a US-Sino laboratory/Reserve somewhere in China.

That hasn’t prevented the hauntingly lovely flying mantas from proliferating and dominating the skies above his head, however…

Gavia’s only contact with the rest of humanity is his TV screen. It delivers reports, interviews and pep talks from his superiors and allows him to talk to his mother. That gives the solitary agent plenty of time to brood about his father’s death and their unresolved issues.

The fanatical film-maker has been gone four years now but Gavia is still drowning in unresolved conflicts, which is probably what prompts his mum to forward tapes of all the strange documentaries he neglected his wife and son to make…

Is Gavia imagining it or is he actually gradually divining some inner cosmic revelation from his dad’s tapes and theories? Their examination of recent historical events draw solid links between the declining state of the world and a (frankly baffling and seemingly implausible) connection to patterns of UFO sightings.

Surely though, his father’s clearly growing obsession with the strange “alien” creatures popularly known as “Greys” must only have his metaphorical way of searching for incontestable Truth?

Nonetheless they slowly begin to have a similar effect on the thinking of the equally soul-searching son…

There’s certainly plenty of room for new answers: the growing dominance of the flying mantas is clearly no longer a secret – as Gavia learns to his regret – after an old soldier and radical “neo-Audubon” named Jack invades the Preserve looking for proof of the flying former fish. Despite himself Gavia lets the affable old coot stay; a decision he soon has cause to regret…

And as animals old and new jostle and tussle to find their niche in the new world order, Gavia sinks further into his father’s videotaped philosophies until he has his revelation and takes off into the heart of America to find out how and why things are falling apart…

Proffering an increasingly strong but never strident message of environmental duty and responsibility, The Puma Blues outlined its arguments and questions as a staggeringly beautiful and compelling mystery play which ran for 23 formal issues, a Benefit special designated “Eat or Be Eaten” and a tantalisingly half-sized #24 before the exigencies of publishing made it extinct.

Before it was squeezed out of existence the saga was collected as two trade paperbacks – Watch That Man and Sense of Doubt – but this monumental tome finally completes the story and then offers a passionate defence and valiant elegiac testimony in ‘Acts of Faith: a Coda’ by devoted follower and occasional contributor Stephen R. Bissette and even finds room to reprint two items from the aforementioned Benefit Issue: a page from ‘Pause’ by Murphy, Zulli & Bissette plus the eerily erotic ‘Acts of Faith’ by Alan Moore, Bissette & Zulli exploring the mating habits of those sky-borne Birostris (look that up too, now I’m being clever…)

The long-delayed walk on the wild side finally concludes with the quasi-theosophical ‘Mobile’: the full contents of Puma Blues #24½ mini-comic by Murphy & Zulli.

Haunting, chilling, beguiling and intensely imposing, this is a massive accomplishment and enduring triumph in comics narrative.
© 2015 Stephen Murphy & Michael Zulli. Introduction by Dave Sim © 2015 to be reciprocally owned by both Stephen Murphy & Michael Zulli. Afterword © 2015 by Stephen R. Bissette. All rights reserve.

The Puma Blues is available in comic shops and online around the world now. It can be pre-ordered online for a December 25th release in the UK.

Posted on

The Complete Adventures of Cholly & Flytrap


By Arthur Suydam with John Workman, Chris Eliopoulos & Annie Parkhouse (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-767-1

Win’s Christmas Recommendation: Merry, Manic Mayhem… 8/10

Arthur Suydam comes from an impressive American dynasty of acclaimed artists harking back to the birth of the nation, but whereas they excelled in gallery painting and architecture, their polymath descendant has divided his time, talents and energies between sequential art and music.

Probably best known (unless you’ve seen him playing with Bruce Springsteen) today as a creator of stunning Zombie art, Suydam’s other signature graphic enterprise has been the perilously peripatetic and gorily satirical burlesques of an inseparable duo of legendarily post-apocalyptic weirdoes dubbed Cholly & Flytrap.

As noted in this lavish hardcover complete collection, the illustrator, author, designer, screenwriter and composer/musician has, since the 1960s, peddled his anarchically humorous, offbeat confections in such disparate venues as Heavy Metal, National Lampoon, Penthouse Comix and Epic Illustrated (where many of these brutally madcap little graphic novellas first appeared – specifically issues #8, 10, 13, 14 and 34); comicbooks like Tarzan, Conan, Batman, House of Mystery, Walking Dead and Marvel Zombies plus movie spin-offs Aliens and Predator.

He has also produced covers for novels including Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane’s collaborative Dead Street and Game-box art for Touch the Dead. Periodically the always-busy Suydam returns to his own uniquely skewed creative projects such as Mudwogs and the mirthfully militaristic muck-ups of his bombastically bloody buddies, teasingly releasing another snippet every so often…

Lavishly grotesque, wickedly wry and surreptitiously subversive, Cholly & Flytrap is a bold blend of dryly witty pastiches combining elements of Moebius’ Arzach, the sci-fi tinged cultural iconoclasm of Vaughn Bode and a surreal anti-war temperament as pioneered by EC Comics which imbues the constant and blackly comic ultra-violence with a hauntingly tragic and educative undertone.

Long ago the space-barge Exodus II crashed on an uncharted world. After untold ages the survivors have bred but never prospered, locked as they are in the constant struggle for survival. It’s not that the planet is particularly inhospitable… it’s just that the denizens – indigenous and not – adore war-making and love killing. Gosh, it’s so very much like Earth…

In the early 1970s Cholly began life as a bat-riding warrior: an inspiration (and eventually poster advert) for the animated Heavy Metal movie, but it was mysteriously transformed into a hot chick on a pterodactyl after acceptance (this sort of inexplicable conceptual metamorphosis happens a lot in film-land), leaving Suydam with the rights to a cool-looking visual and a lot of ideas…

Time passed, Marvel started a creator-owned, rights-friendly fantasy periodical in response to the success of Heavy Metal and that reinvented bat-riding, goggles-wearing avatar of conflict started popping up. Of course, he had evolved slightly whilst the chiropteran had become a colossal, dauntingly naked, bald fat Chinese man. Cholly still rode him like a seasoned Ace, though…

Augmented by a wealth of original art studies, sketches and finished paintings, the ‘Introduction by Max Weinstein’ offers contemporary background, history and critical expression before the exigent exploits (gathered in the order of the 2004-5 repackaged reprints from Image Comics) begin with ‘Chapter 0’ (plotted by Peter Koch) as the restless wanderers haul up at their favourite restaurant for a feed. Impatience, hunger, foreign food cooked by scurrilous talking bugs and honking big guns never make for a sedate evening…

This yarn is neatly stitched together with a later tale (originally entitled ‘A Little Love, a Little Hate!’ from 1981); a frenetic chase/duel between a foul-mouthed, flying-jacketed war-hawk and his slug-like arch-enemy, which showed Cholly’s streetwise cunning in spectacular, over-the-top, take-no-prisoners fashion.

That neatly segues into extended saga ‘The Rites of Spring‘ where Suydam expanded his cast and extemporized on the concept of mortals as organic war machines in a Horatian paean of Thermopylan courage on a world where combat is the natural order.

With Cholly and faithful, mute Flytrap stubbornly holding back a veritable horde of slug-troopers and colossal war-wagons, this is a smart and lusciously graphic feast of visual violence and sassy back-chat…

‘Flightus Interuptus’ follows; an airborne tussle (possibly started before the previous tale?) wherein the high-flying Cholly, sans his humanoid steed, harasses a massive mammary zeppelin-bomber in nothing more than a primitive tri-plane pulled and supported by a brace of the planet’s autonomous, levitating anti-gravity breasts – and no, that’s not a misprint…

Shot down in the throes of victory, the adaptable aviator finds a giant bat to ride (remember kids, recycling even of ideas and art is good for any planet). Sadly the noble beast doesn’t last long before ‘The End’ sees the unseated aviator tooling around the sky with a pair of those flying hooters strapped to his appreciative feet until he encounters a monolithic monster having a furious argument with his own outrageously outspoken boy-bits. Passions aroused and tempers flaring, Cholly is witness to a conflict resolution you simply don’t see every day…

Soldier and human(ish) steed are reunited for ‘Chapter 6’ (with additional text by Bob Burden) as Cholly and a couple of fellow warriors battle slug-troopers to secure a downed freighter’s supplies and end up falling into the oddest sort of hell…

‘The Adventures of Cholly and Flytrap Part II’ commence with their explorations of the scarily Eden-like valley and its buxom, welcoming inhabitants. It’s almost a relief when the Devil pops up to deal with them, but happily Flytrap has a counter to his Final Solution…

The remainder of the comics extravaganza is dedicated to a vast and sprawling pseudo-noir pastiche entitled ‘Center City’, set in a brooding metropolis indistinguishable from 1930 New York or Chicago… except for the aliens, robots, mutants and monsters…

Vile, crippled gang-boss Emiel Luvitz runs the rackets and makes most of his money from the citizens’ gambling on his prize-fighting operation. It helps that he also owns the undisputed “Champ” – slow-witted, gigantic, super-strong Stanley Yablowski – who has never lost a bout or let an opponent live…

Cholly & Flytrap don’t care, they’re only in town long enough to scrape up some ammunition and get drunk, but when The Champ and his minders invade the dive they are patronising, things go south pretty quick.

The hulking bully wants some fun but when he forces the silent Chinaman into an arm-wrestling contest – and loses – all hell breaks loose…

Watching the brief but ferocious struggle is rival mobster and fight-promoter One-Lunger who instantly sees a way to topple Big Wheel Luvitz. Killing Cholly and shanghaiing Flytrap, the callous thug drags the protesting mute all over the world, training and building up the heartbroken yet still-resisting, silent giant into a successful, popular mystery contender who can possibly beat the Champ…

Center City soon becomes a Shakespearian nightmare as Luvitz, seeing foes all around him, begins a paranoia-fuelled campaign of terror, killing or alienating everyone around him even as One-Lunger and his over-the-hill robotic trainer Pop prepare their captive combatant for the grudge match that will settle the fate of the maddened municipality.

What nobody realises yet is that Cholly isn’t actually dead. Slowly stalking the unwary mobsters, he’s anticipating some extreme violence to get his beloved bosom buddy back…

Smart, devious and utterly compelling, this is a splendidly hilarious, wickedly gratuitous OTT tale to make Wagner or Brecht sit up and take notes…

Supplementing the graphic wonderment is a ‘Cover Gallery’, a vast portfolio of monochrome sketches, working drawings and finished paintings, a studious and multi-generational essay on ‘The Suydam Legacy in New York’ plus a photo-packed, celebrity stuffed ‘Biography’ of the dauntingly gifted Arthur…

This is a sumptuous, exuberant and entrancingly daft slab of eye-candy that will astound and delight all canny fantasists.
Cholly and Flytrap ™ & © Arthur Suydam 2015. All Rights Reserved. All other art and trademarks are the property of their individual rights holders.

Posted on

The Dan Dare Dossier


By Norman Wright, Mike Higgs & various (Hawk Books)
ISBN: 978-0-94824-812-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: For everybody with Stars in their Eyes… 8/10

Launching on April 14th 1950 and running until 26th April 1969, Eagle was the most influential comic of post-war Britain, and possibly in our nation’s history.

It was the brainchild of a Southport vicar, the Reverend Marcus Morris, who was increasingly concerned about the detrimental effects of American comic-books on British children and wanted a good, solid, middle-class Christian antidote.

Seeking out like-minded creators he hoiked a dummy edition around British publishers for over a year with little success until he found an unlikely home at Hulton Press, a company that produced general interest magazines such as Lilliput and Picture Post.

The result was a huge hit which soon spawned age and gender-specific clones Swift, Robin and Girl which targeted the other key demographic sectors of the children’s market.

A huge number of soon-to-be prominent creative figures worked on the weekly, and although Dan Dare is deservedly revered as the star, many other strips were as popular at the time, and many even rivalled the lead in quality and entertainment value. Eagle‘s sensational pantheon – which included PC 49, Captain Pugwash, Jeff Arnold/Riders of the Range and the inimitable Harris Tweed – quickly became stars as well of radio series, books, toys, games and all other sorts of ancillary merchandising.

At its peak Eagle sold close to a million copies a week, but inevitably changing tastes and a game of “musical owners” killed the title. In 1960 Hulton sold out to Odhams, who became Longacre Press. A year later they were bought by The Daily Mirror Group who evolved into IPC. In cost-cutting exercises many later issues carried cheap Marvel Comics reprints rather than British originated material. It took time but those Yankee cultural Invaders won out in the end. With the April 26th 1969 issue Eagle was subsumed into Lion, eventually disappearing altogether. Successive generations have revived the title, but never the success.

There is precious little that I can say about Dan Dare that hasn’t been said before and better. What I will say is that everything you’ve heard is true. The vintage Dan Dare strips by Frank Hampson and his hand-picked team of dedicated artists are a high point in world, let alone British comics, ranking beside Tintin, Asterix, Tetsuwan Atomu, Lone Wolf & Cub and the best of Kirby, Adams, Toth, Noel Sickles, Milt Caniff, Elzie Segar and Carl Barks.

If you don’t like this stuff, there’s probably nothing any of us can do to change your mind, and all we can do is hope you never breed.

Accepting that there is a part of national culture which is Forever Dare, here’s a long overdue peek at an item which will delight all boys of a certain age which – despite its own vintage – is happily still readily available through internet vendors…

The colourful, magnificently oversized (333 x 242 mm), resolutely hard-backed Dan Dare Dossier was published in 1990 and offers everything any devotee could wish to know and see. It is absolutely packed with mouth-watering artwork and photos, tantalising examples of memorabilia, classic strips and even unseen/new material by a phalanx of the original creators.

Heavily illustrated throughout, it all begins with ‘The Rise of Dan Dare’, detailing the history of science fiction, development of comics – and especially Eagle – and offering a potted biography of Hampson, his team and Dan’s serried exploits.

Simultaneously those great big pages present unseen monochrome strip adventure ‘Dan & Donanza’ by the master himself, wherein our doughty heroes go haring across the solar system in pursuit of a fallen dictator who has turned the moon into a giant bomb…

Following that is an expansive itinerary of the major characters involved over the years in ‘Actors against a Solar Backdrop’ before ‘The Hardware File’ offers an eye-popping selection of plans, designs and extracted strip illustrations displaying the vast wealth of ships, kit and tech invented by the assembled strip-creators over the decades and paying especial attention to Space Transports and Dan and Digby’s venerable runabout Anastasia.

More bravura virtuosity is celebrated in ‘Aliens & Their Worlds’ as pertinent and beautiful clips and snippets highlight the amazing variety of extraterrestrial races and species.

Sharing a few pages with new black-&-white comedic strip ‘Digby – the Guinea Pig’ is a rundown of some of ‘The Artists’ who toiled collaboratively to produce the stunningly painted two pages per week (Hampson, Harold Johns, Eric Eden, Don Harley, Bruce Cornwell, Desmond Walduck, Frank Bellamy and Keith Watson); followed in turn by a fascinating trivia and memorabilia stuffed appreciation of the dauntless chaps’ five years on radio in ‘Dan Dare, Pilot of the Airwaves’…

Wisely taking a break from all that factual stuff, ‘Full Colour Adventure: Dan Dare in The Planulid’ reprints a rousing tale of a monstrous invasion of Earth (first seen in The Dan Dare Space Annual 1963) before the rousing envy-fest resumes with a grand examination of the breathtaking wealth of ‘Merchandise & Ephemera’ the strip generated.

On view is a procession of numerous ray guns and rocket pistols, games, puzzles, buttons, badges, stencil-kits, apparel, models, action-figures, home picture-film strips and projectors, walkie-talkies, all manner of books and print novelties and so much more…

Adjacent and in parallel with a full ‘Dan Dare Chronology’ is the immensely rare and sadly unappreciated Newspaper Strip ‘Mission to the Stars’ by William Patterson & Don Harley, which ran every Sunday in The People from April to October 1964, all capped off by the demise of the dream thanks to changing tastes and commercial mismanagement as detailed in ‘Changes – the Long Decline’…

Downhearted spirits are properly revived by another ‘Full Colour Adventure’ from The Dan Dare Space Annual 1963, specifically ‘The Planet of Shadows’ wherein our gallant lads uncover a lost civilisation on a new world after which ‘Dan Dare – to Date’ describes our hero’s 1977 resurrection in the pages of apocalyptic, dystopian 2000 AD. Reimagined as a bombastic rebel, the article tracks his slow rehabilitation and transition to the newly revived 1982 Eagle, before neatly segueing into a delightful reprint of one of those 80’s retro-exploits as ‘Dan Dare by Keith Watson’ depicts a hazardous mission by the Space Fleet stars to transport Earth’s radioactive waste stockpiles to the depths of space. It’s hard enough as is but things get particularly dicey when arch-nemesis The Mekon raises his giant green head…

Big, bold, beautiful and ruthlessly nostalgia-driven, this epic tome will utterly enchant veterans of the Baby-boomer years and sci fi fanatics in general, but it’s also packed with enough top flight comics material to beguile any kid or newcomer to our medium in search of a little simple, awestruck wonder…
This edition © 1990 Hawk Books Ltd. Dan Dare © 1990 Fleetway Publications.

Posted on

An Android Awakes


By Mike French & Karl Brown (Elsewhen Press)
ISBN: 978-1-908168-63-4

It’s been a while since we looked at anything experimental so here’s an intriguing blend of illustrated book and graphic narrative which has a lot to recommend it.

In the world that’s coming, human beings are in decline and androids on the ascendant. Sadly our synthetic successors are prey to all the emotional foibles and insecurities we were. They’re very much like us except they can eat rivets and get really hammered on oil…

They especially have an overwhelming desire to experience fiction, even if the powers-that-be are as sleazy, quixotic, unpredictable, small-minded, corporate and blinkered as any meat-and-bone based publisher ever was…

Android Writer PD121928 is part of the Android Publishing Program. The state provides for his needs (drugs, whores, deep-frozen pets and the removal of his wife so that he can achieve the proper frame of artistic angst and squalor) and in return he conceives increasingly outré and wild adventure tales. It’s the same deal for every creative automaton in the system: Filmmakers, photographers, artists, whatever…

He hasn’t sold one yet which is becoming a bit of a problem since Android Writers are only allowed 42 submissions. If they can’t land a publishing contract before getting 42 rejection slips, they’re scrapped and another musing mechanoid gets his shot in the Program…

With the ignominious return of The Eating of Citizen Kane, PD121928 is down to his last 14 lives (a situation not unlike that of the succession of cats periodically thawed out to keep him company. It’s a shame they keep dying or going missing…) and the tension sends him into a paroxysm of creativity with us carried along on the surprisingly brief and exotic adventures of the pantheon of character-creations that have become so very real to the stressed creator…

Through the carefully crafted and impossibly interconnected stories of Finn, The Locust Wife, Abel Ford, Angel UK, Cai Lun, Richard Steinberger, The Great Explorer Umberto Amunsden, Commander Oleg, Aedus Cricklewood, JiéyÇ” The Detective and Mark, via recurrent motifs of mockingbirds and angel fish, the Android Writer pours out and repeatedly risks his life – even entering into unwise liaisons with a human prostitute on the Endangered List – as he struggles to survive and simultaneously wonders why he bothers…

Mike French’s beguiling, fantasy-vignette studded account of a creator-in-crisis is augmented by and combined with a wealth of raw and jarring monochrome illustrations from Karl Brown, but unlike most illustrated tomes these pictures are fully integrated into the text and often supplant the narrative entirely, detailing key moments of specific submissions such as ‘The Amazing Arctic Sinking Man‘, ‘OAP Extraction’, ‘The Antiquity of Zero’, ‘The Great Sea in the Sky’, or ‘The Sacrament of Abel Ford’ with extended sections of mute sequential art just like the heydays of European sci fi comics or classic 2000AD.

And then it’s time for Submission 42 and the desperately spiralling writer has a really different idea…

Overtones of Barrington J. Bayley, Christopher Priest and especially Michael Moorcock (when he was writing Breakfast in the Ruins) give this portmanteau of tales within tales a splendidly refined and timeless feel as a litany of cool ideas and stand-out characters weep out in the truncated (1000 words per…) yet expansively polished format of tomorrow’s word-counted entertainments…

Smart, challenging and well worth any jaded fantasist’s rapt attention.
Text © Mike French 2015. Artwork © Karl Brown 2015. All rights reserved.
An Android Awakes is also available as an eBook (ISBN: 978-1-908168-73-3)

Posted on

Showcase Presents Weird War Tales volume 1


By Robert Kanigher, Bob Haney, Bill Finger, Sheldon Mayer, Jack Oleck, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, Dennis O’Neil, Russ Heath, Mort Drucker, Frank Thorne, Alex Toth, Reed Crandall, Sam Glanzman, John Severin, Howard Chaykin, Ed Davis, Frank Robbins, Nestor Redondo, George Evans, Alex Niño, Russ Heath, Neal Adams & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3694-6

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Inventive, Intense and Intoxicating… 9/10

American comicbooks just idled along rather slowly until the invention of Superman provided a flamboyant new genre of heroes and subsequently unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and imaginative generation for a suddenly thriving and voracious new entertainment model.

Implacably vested in World War II, these gaudily-attired mystery men swept all before them until the troops came home, but as the decade closed more traditional themes and heroes began to resurface and eventually supplant the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Even as a new generation of kids began buying and collecting, many of the first fans who had retained their four-colour habit increasingly sought more mature themes in their pictorial reading matter. The war years and post-war paranoia had irrevocably altered the psychological landscape of the readership and as a more world-weary, cynical young public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything, their chosen forms of entertainment (film, theatre and prose as well as comics) increasingly reflected this.

To balance the return of Western, War and Crime and imminent Atomic Armageddon-fuelled Science Fiction comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist or teen-oriented comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features sprang up, but gradually another of the cyclical revivals of spiritualism and a public fascination with the arcane led to a wave of impressive, evocative and shockingly addictive horror comics.

There had been grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in superhero trappings but these had been victims of circumstance: The Unknown as a power source for super-heroics. Now focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on an increasingly popular bandwagon, with B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launching the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948, although their Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon. The book and comics publisher had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 but didn’t follow-up with a regular series until 1951.

Classics Illustrated had already secured the literary end of the medium with child-friendly comics adaptations of The Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

If we’re keeping score this was also the period in which Joe Simon & Jack Kirby identified another “mature market” gap and invented Romance comics (Young Romance #1, September 1947) but they too saw the sales potential for spooky material, resulting in the seminal Black Magic (launched in 1950) and boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams (1952).

The company which would become DC Comics bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

After the hysterical censorship debate which led to witch-hunting Senate hearings in the early 1950s was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulation, titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, but the audience’s appetite for suspense was still high and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected and House of Secrets.

Stories were dialled back from uncanny spooky yarns to always marvellously illustrated, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles and, eventually, straight monster-busting Sci Fi tales which dominated the market into the 1960s. That’s when super-heroes – which had gradually enjoyed their own visionary revival after Julius Schwartz reintroduced the Flash in Showcase #4 – finally overtook them.

Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a growing coterie of costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked mavens which forced previously staunchly uncompromising anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character books. Even ACG slipped tights and masks onto its spooky stars.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, superheroes began dropping like Kryptonite-gassed flies. However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and, at the end of the 1960s with the cape-and-cowl boom over and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain, the surviving publishers of the field agreed to revise the Comics Code, loosening their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics.

Nobody much cared about gangster titles but, as the liberalisation coincided with yet another bump in public interest concerning supernatural themes, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious “no-brainer.”

Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillers…

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all horror comics came back and quickly dominated the American funnybook market for more the next half decade. DC led the pack: converting House of Mystery and Tales of the Unexpected into supernatural suspense anthologies in 1968 and resurrecting House of Secrets a year later.

Such was not the case with war comics. Tales of ordinary guys in combat began with the industry itself and although mostly sidelined during the capes-&-cowls war years, quickly began to assert themselves again once the actual fighting stopped.

National/DC were one of the last publishers to get in on the combat act, converting superhero/fantasy adventure anthology Star Spangled Comics into Star Spangled War Stories the same month it launched and Our Army at War (both cover-dated August 1952) and promptly repurposing All-American Comics into All-American Men of War a month later as the “police action” in Korea escalated.

They grew the division slowly but steadily, adding Our Fighting Forces #1 (November 1954) – just as EC’s groundbreaking combat comics were vanishing – and in 1957 added GI Combat to their portfolio when Quality Comics got out of the funnybook business.

As the 1950s closed however the two-fisted anthologies all began to incorporate recurring characters such as Gunner and Sarge – and latterly Pooch – from Our Fighting Forces #45 on, (May 1959), Sgt Rock (Our Army at War #83 (June 1959) and The Haunted Tank (G.I. Combat #87, April/May 1961) and soon all DC war titles had a lead star or feature to hold the fickle readers’ attention. The drive to produce superior material never wavered however, hugely aided by the diligent and meticulous ministrations of writer/editor Robert Kanigher.

In America after the demise of EC Comics in the mid-1950’s and prior to the game-changing Blazing Combat, the only certain place to find controversial, challenging and entertaining American war comics was DC. In fact, even whilst Archie Goodwin’s stunning but tragically mis-marketed quartet of classics were waking up a new generation of readers in the 1960s, the home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman was a veritable cornucopia of gritty, intriguing and beautifully illustrated battle tales presenting warfare on a variety of fronts and from many differing points of view.

Whilst the Vietnam War escalated, 1960s America increasingly endured a Homefront death-struggle pitting deeply-ingrained Establishment social attitudes against a youth-oriented generation with a radical new sensibility. In response the military-themed comicbooks from National Periodical Publishing, as it then was, became even more bold and innovative…

However the sudden downturn in superheroes at the end of the 1960s led to some serious rethinking here and although the war titles maintained and even built sales they beefed up the anthological elements.

Thus in 1971 a title combining supernatural horror stories with bombastic battle yarns in an anthological setting seemed a forgone conclusion and sure thing to both publishers and readers alike and this economically epic monochrome tome collects the contents of Weird War Stories #1-21 (cover-dated September/October 1971 to January 1974), offering a broad blend of genre mash-ups for readers with a taste for the dark and uncanny to relish.

The series launched in a 52-page format combining new material with adapted reprints featuring a veritable Who’s Who of top flight creative talent – both seasoned veterans and stars in waiting – and #1 saw Editor Joe Kubert writing and illustrating an eerie linking story entitled ‘Let Me Tell You of the Things I’ve Seen’ as a lost GI stumbles into the personification of Death (the title’s long-term narrator in various blood-stained uniforms) who tells him a few stories…

The reaper began with ‘Fort Which Did Not Return!’ by Robert Kanigher & Russ Heath as originally seen in GI Combat #86, detailing how a bomber continued its mission even after the crew bailed out and followed up with all-new ‘The Story behind the Cover’ wherein Kubert revealed how a shunned German soldier carried on his duties after death…

From Star Spangled War Stories #71 (July 1958) Bob Haney & Kubert revealed ‘The End of the Sea Wolf!’ as a sadistic U-Boat captain was sunk by one of his own earlier victims whilst SSWS #116 (August/September 1964) originally saw France Herron & Irv Novick’s ‘Baker’s Dozen’ with a fresh-faced replacement to a super-superstitious platoon battling to prove he’s not their unlucky thirteenth man…

The issue ends with that lost GI realising just who has been telling tales in Kubert’s ‘You Must Go!’…

The reprints included in these early issues were all taken from a time when supernatural themes were proscribed by the Comics Code Authority, but even so they all held fast to eerie aura of sinister uncertainty – the merest hint of the strange and uncanny to leaven the usual blood and thunder of battle books…

In Weird War Tales #2 Kubert reprised his bridging vehicle as ‘Look… and Listen…’ saw a crashed Stuka pilot meeting a ghastly stranger at a battle-torn desert oasis before ‘Reef of No Return’ (by Haney & Mort Drucker from Our Fighting Forces #43, March 1959) detailed a determined frogman’s most dangerous mission and Kanigher & Frank Thorne’s new WWI silent saga ‘The Moon is the Murderer’ proved that overwhelming firepower isn’t everything…

Kubert’s ‘Behind the Cover’ featured a prophetic dream and terrifying telegram after which ‘A Promise to Joe!’ (Kanigher & Novick, G.I. Combat #97 (December 1962-January 1963) sees a dead gunner seemingly save his friend from beyond the grave and the superb ‘Monsieur Gravedigger’ – by Jerry DeFuccio & the legendary Reed Crandall – follows the follies of a sadistic Foreign Legionnaire who pushed his comrades too far…

Cartoonist John Costanza delivers some gag-filled ‘Military Madness’ and Kubert & Sam Glanzman offer a fact-packed ‘Sgt. Rock’s Battle Stations’ about ‘The Grenadier’ before Bill Finger, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito examine a young recruit’s rite of passage and development of ‘The Face of a Fighter’ (Our Fighting Forces #25, September 1957) after which ‘Oasis’ concludes the sorry saga of that downed Aryan airman…

American Naval Aviators ditching at sea were the unwilling audience for Death’s stories as WWT #3 opens with Kubert’s ‘Listen…’

The itinerary starts with ‘Been Here Before!’ (Finger, Andru & Esposito, G.I. Combat #44 January 1957) as a soldier under fire turns his mind back to boyhood games to save the day after which we see an aerial battle and parachute drop from the perspective of ‘The Cloud That Went to War!’ (Our Fighting Forces #17, January 1957 by Dave Wood, Andru & Esposito).

More Costanza comedy from ‘The Kreepy Korps!’ precedes an early tale by relative newcomers Len Wein & Marv Wolfman, ably illustrated by Russ Heath as both cave tribes and modern soldiers battle to possess ‘The Pool’, before the artists earlier collaboration with Bob Haney reveals how ‘Combat Size!’ is all a matter of mental attitude in a tale first seen in Our Army at War #66 (January 1958).

Glanzman’s ‘Battle Album’ explains ‘Flying Guns’ after which a finny friend helps a US submarine sink an aircraft carrier in Finger & Drucker’s ‘Pilot for a Sub!’ (Our Army at War #68, March 1958) before the issue ends as Kubert sends a ‘Lifeboat’ for those tragic aviators…

The fourth issue opens with Kubert’s final linking tale as a ‘Gypsy Girl’ and her family find wounded soldier Tony after his buddy runs off to get a medic. They kindly offer to pass time with him sharing stories such as ‘Ghost Ship of Two Wars’ (Kanigher & Novick from All-American Men of War #81, September 1960) wherein an obsessed WWI pilot seemingly slips into 1944 while pursuing of his unbeatable arch-enemy the Black Ace.

‘Time Warp’ by Kanigher and Gene Colan originally appeared as ‘The Dinosaur who Ate Torpedoes!’‘ in Star Spangled War Stories #123 (October/November 1965 and part of the uniquely bizarre War That Time Forgot series), pitting US frogmen against colossal sea-going saurians, after which ‘The Unknown Sentinel’ (by author unknown & Mort Meskin from House of Mystery #55, October 1956) saves the lives of two soldiers lost on manoeuvres on America’s most famous battlefield.

Glanzman then offers one of his magnificently engaging autobiographical USS Stevens vignettes with the all-new elegiac ‘Prelude’ before Kubert wraps up his chilling drama as ‘I Know Them to be True’ sees medics arriving to find Tony a much changed man, leaving Costanza to close things down with a laugh and some ‘Military Madness’…

Weird War Tales #5 opens with Haney & Alex Toth providing the book-end tale of ‘The Prisoner’ held by Nazis in Italy. Seeking a way out he recalls tales of escape such as ‘The Toy Jet!’ (Haney & Heath from All-American Men of War #78, March/April 1960), a chilling psychological thriller about an interned pilot in North Korea, and ‘Human Trigger’ (Herron, Andru & Esposito, Star Spangled War Stories #18, February 1954) which shows how a soldier lying on a mine deftly saves his own life…

Herron & Carmine Infantino then reveal how an American spy is forced to ‘Face a Firing Squad!’ (SSWS #14, November 1953) and Norman Maurer instructs with the history of ‘Medal of Honour: Corporal Gerry Kisters’ and Willi Franz & Heath detail the victory of a ‘Slave’ in Roman times before Haney & Toth offer a final release in ‘This Is It!’

Issue #6 saw Weird War drop to a standard 36 page package and take a step into tomorrow with Haney & Toth’s battlefield test of ‘Robots’. Wolfman & Thorne expanded the theme in ‘Pawns’ as humans and mechanoids finally decided who worked for whom whilst ‘Goliath of the Western Front!’ (Herron, Andru & Esposito from SSWS #93 (October/November 1960) featured a giant mechanical Nazi and an American David who finally did for him, before Haney & Toth settled all debate with the conclusive ‘Robot Fightin’ Men’…

Wolfman & Kubert combined to provide thematic bookends for issue #7, beginning with ‘Out of Action’ with wounded GIs awaiting the worst and trading tales like William Woolfolk, Jerry Grandenetti & Joe Giella’s ‘Flying Blind’ (Our Army at War #12 July 1953) as a wounded pilot was forced to trust someone else for the first time in his life if he wanted to land his burning jet, whilst Kanigher & Kubert’s ‘The 50-50 War!’ (All-American Men of War #41, January 1957) finds sporting rivals forced to help each other after both suffer injuries on an alpine mission, with Costanza adding more much-needed levity through his ‘Military Hall of Fame’…

‘The Three GIs’ (Finger & Heath, SSWS #62, October 1957) riffs smartly on those monkeys who respectively can’t see, hear and speak and the Purple Heart yarns end with Wolfman & Kubert’s chilling ‘I Can’t See’…

From #8 editorial control switched to the mystery division under the control of Joe Orlando and with it the reprints were shelved in favour of all-original material as publication frequency graduated from six times a year to monthly.

This all German-focused issue begins with a gruesome ‘Guide to No-Man’s Land’ (probably written by assistant editor E. Nelson Bridwell and illustrated by Tony DeZuniga) before moving on to ‘The Avenging Grave’ by Kanigher & DeZuniga with SS officers learning too late the folly of desecrating the dead of WWI, whilst anonymously scripted ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill!’ – with art by Steve Harper & Neal Adams – sees more gloating Nazis facing a vengeful golem…

Kanigher & DeZuniga then return to reveal the fate of an arrogant 1916 air ace in the skies over No-Man’s Land in ‘Duel of the Dead’ before the artist’s ‘Epilogue’ wraps things up…

Weird War Tales #9 invites us to ‘Enter the Portals of War’ in an introduction drawn by Howard Chaykin, swiftly followed by a trio of Kanigher yarns illustrated by the cream of DC’s Filipino artists.

‘The Promise’ was limned by Alfredo P. Alcala, telling a tale in two eras as both Teutonic knights in 1242 and German tankers seven centuries later fail to cross frozen Lake Chud, whilst Gerry Talaoc renders the disastrous end of deathly, determined ‘Blood Brothers!’ during the American Civil War and the incomparable Alex Niño details ‘The Last Battle’ between East and West before Chaykin pops back to declare ‘Death, the Ultimate Winner’.

Sheldon Mayer & Toth open WWT #10 with a deliciously whimsical ghostly love story in ‘Who is Haunting the Haunted Chateau?’ before Raymond Marais & Quico Redondo change the tone as a Death-Camp commandant returns after the war to salvage his ill-gotten gains from ‘The Room that Remembered’ whilst Wein & Walter Simonson – on the artist’s pro comics debut – reveal how invading Nazis shouldn’t have abused the town idiot and incurred the wrath of ‘Cyrano’s Army’…

Always experimental, the creative team of Mayer, DeZuniga, Alcala, Talaoc & Niño tried their hand at a time-twisting complete adventure for issue #11. Occurring on ‘October 30′ over 99 years beginning in 1918, the tale compares the progress of an ambitious German General granted a wish for glory by a treacherous spirit of war with three ghostly Americans determined to fix a long-standing mistake whatever the cost…

DeZuniga draws the introduction to #12, featuring tales of ‘Egypt’ starting with Kanigher & Talaoc’s tale of an ancient warlord who learned to regret spitting on the ‘God of Vengeance’, whilst ‘Hand of Hell’ (Kanigher & DeZuniga) saw Anubis similarly deal with one of Rommel’s least reputable and most sadistic deputies, after which Arnold Drake & Don Perlin switch locales to Roman Britain where a centurion takes an accidental time-trip and ultimately overthrows the Druids in ‘The Warrior and the Witch-Doctors!’…

Weird War Tales #13 opens with ‘The Die-Hards’ by Jack Oleck & Nestor Redondo, with Nazis realising there are even worse killers than they haunting their latest conquered village before Drake & Niño determine that ‘Old Samurai Never Die’ when a would-be shogun offends the patron spirit of Bushido and ‘Loser’s Luck’ by Michael J. Pellowski, George Kashdan & DeZuniga details the harsh choices facing the unfortunate winners of the next, last war…

Mayer, DeZuniga & Alcala unite in #14 to tell an eerie tale of doomed love and military injustice from the days before Pearl Harbor which begins with a ‘Dream of Disaster’, incorporates a deadly flight with a ‘Phantom for a Co-Pilot’ and marines who arrive ‘Too Late for the Death March!’ before finally meeting ‘The Ghost of McBride’s Woman’ and vindicating an unsung hero…

A little boy enamoured of war’s glory learns a lesson in WWT # 15 when his dead grandfather takes him back to WWI to see how ‘“Ace” King Just Flew in from Hell’ (Drake & Perlin) after which Oleck & Talaoc reveal the doom of ‘The Survivor’ of a Viking raid which offends a sorceress, and Oleck & Alcala detail the shocking fate of a fanatical crusader who succumbs to ‘The Ultimate Weapon’ of a Saracen wise man…

Drake & Alcala describe transplant science gone mad in #16’s ‘More Dead than Alive!’, whilst the first of a Niño double bill sees him delineate ‘The Conquerors’ (scripted by Oleck) who eradicate humanity – but not the things that predate on them – before Drake’s ‘Evil Eye’ sees a little boy inflict hell’s wrath on both Allies and Axis alike.

In #17 Kanigher & George Evans disclose how a dishonourable French Air Ace is punished by ‘Dead Man’s Hands’ before Pellowski, E. Nelson Bridwell & Ernie Chan show how a murdered soldier is avenged by ‘A Gun Named Marie!‘

WWT #18 has Drake & DeZuniga sketch the brief career of ‘Captain Dracula!‘ as he marauds through (mostly) German forces in Sicily before Mayer & Talaoc reunite for the cautionary tale of a greedy German sergeant in France whose greed makes him easy prey for the ‘Whim of a Phantom!’

Drake & Talaoc started #19 with the full-length story of the agent who infiltrated the Nazi terror weapon known as ‘The Platoon That Wouldn’t Die!’ whilst #20 reverted to short stories with Oleck & Perlin’s ‘Death Watch’ of a doomed coward who should have waited one more day before deserting, Drake & Alcala’s period saga of a witchcraft vendetta in ‘Operation: Voodoo!’ followed by their Battle of Britain chiller wherein a burned out fighter pilot learns ‘Death is a Green Man’…

This blockbusting blend of military mayhem, magical melee and martial madness concludes with Weird War Tales #21 and ‘One Hour to Kill!’ by Drake & Frank Robbins wherein an American soldier is ordered to go back in time to assassinate Leonardo Da Vinci and prevent the invention of automatic weapons before Mayer & Bernard Baily show just how a foul-up GI became an unstoppable hero ‘When Death Took a Hand’…

Classily chilling, emotionally intense, superbly illustrated, insanely addictive and Just Plain Fun, this is a deliciously guilty pleasure that will astound and delight any lover of fantasy fiction and comics that work on plot invention rather than character compulsion.
© 1971, 1972, 1973, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Blake and Mortimer: The Time Trap


By Edgar P. Jacobs, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-214-0

Pre-eminent fantasy raconteur Edgar P. Jacobs devised one of the greatest heroic double acts in fiction: pitting his distinguished Scientific Adventurers Professor Philip Mortimer and Captain Francis Blake against a wide variety of perils and menaces in a stellar sequence of stunning action thrillers which merged science fiction scope, detective mystery suspense and supernatural thrills. The magic was made perfect through his stunning illustrations rendered in the timeless Ligne claire style which had made intrepid boy-reporter Tintin a global sensation.

The Doughty Duo debuted in the very first issue of Le Journal de Tintin (26th September 1946): an ambitious international anthology comic with editions in Belgium, France and Holland. The magazine was edited by Hergé, with his eponymous star ably supplemented by a host of new heroes and features for the post-war world…

The Time Trap comes from a transitional period when the entire world seemed to be changing. The tale was originally serialised from January 8th 1958 to 22nd April 1959 and subsequently collected in a single album, as B & M’s eighth drama-drenched epic album escapade, six months after the conclusion. However, as befitted the times, this largely solo saga seemed to offer faster, leaner drama and stripped-down action in bigger, less dense panels…

It was only recently translated by Cinebook (2014 as their 19th Blake and Mortimer release), and begins here with the heroes relaxing in Paris when Mortimer gets a rather shocking message. Not long before, the incomparable boffin had been instrumental in foiling the plans of diabolical Professor Milosh Georgevich who used the vast resources of an aggressor nation to weaponise the weather (as seen in SOS Meteors) in advance of an audacious scheme to invade France, and now the villain has seemingly communicated from beyond the grave…

The literally mad scientist was believed to have perished and now word comes that he has bequeathed to Mortimer – the only man he considered an intellectual equal – his estate as well as his last and greatest invention…

With his naturally suspicious comrade called to Germany on another Secret Service errand, the Professor slowly motors alone down to rural La Roche-Guyon and – still looking for traps – cautiously inspects the 10th century house known locally as “The Bove of the Maiden” bequeathed to him by Milosh.

The idyllic setting, complete with haunted, legend-drenched castle, is not one to likely to set off any alarms in his bemused head…

What he finds in the deep cellars beneath his new property defies belief and comprehension. As described in recorded messages Georgevich had solved the mystery of time travel and, since he was dying of radiation poisoning, wanted his incredible device to be used by the only other person who could truly appreciate the scope of his genius…

In a daze the still sceptical Mortimer follows the taped instructions, donning the protective suit provided before activating the vehicle. Only as the “Chronoscaphe” rumbles into action and deposits him a terrifying antediluvian world of colossal plants, rampaging dinosaurs and marauding giant bugs does he realise how he has been tricked…

Against all his expectations the time machine works, landing him in a fantastic lost realm. Sadly the machine’s selector controls have been sabotaged, leaving Mortimer no way to return…

Devilish Milosh however has not counted on his dupe’s steely determination, expansive brilliance and sheer stubbornness, and before long the Professor is hurtling forward 100,000,000 years through eternity, roughly calculating in his shaggy head his original point of origin.

He’s not far off in his sums, relatively. The cellar is indeed the one he first found the Chronoscaphe in, but some time before Georgevich built his lab. Realising he needs to know the exact date before he can fine-tune his calibrations Mortimer works his way through the tunnels towards the surface and promptly finds himself in the midst of a feudal rebellion…

Gui de la Roche is not a benevolent overlord and is currently losing control of his lands to an uprising of his Serfs. The petty tyrant is understandably unhappy and suspicious when a strangely dressed Englishman drops into the middle of the conflict, babbling like a loon. The ill-educated peasants simply think he’s a demon…

Mortimer barely makes it back to the Chronoscaphe and in his haste overshoots his desired destination, encountering a few bizarre temporal manifestations as he plunges far into a dystopian future…

Finding himself embroiled in an all-out war to liberate mankind from an insidious global dictator, the Professor’s insights wedded to the technology of a broken future soon topple the tyrant and he thereafter adapts Tomorrow’s technology to solving his own problems.

With everything he needs to steer true a course home, the wily boffin even has an opportunity to turn the tables on the madman who caused his eccentric odyssey through the corridors of time…

Swift-paced, witty and spectacularly action-packed, this solo outing for Mortimer rockets from staggering sci fi set-piece to set-piece, building to an explosive conclusion with a tantalising final flourish, resulting in a superbly engaging blockbuster to delight every adventure addict.

This Cinebook edition also includes excerpts from two other Blake & Mortimer albums plus a short biographical feature and publication chart of Jacobs’ and his successors’ efforts.
Original edition © Editions Blake & Mortimer/Studio Jacobs (Dargaud-Lombard s. a.) 1962 by E.P. Jacobs. All rights reserved. English translation © 2014 Cinebook Ltd.

Posted on

Yoko Tsuno volume 9: The Forge of Vulcan


By Roger Leloup (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-197-6

The uncannily edgy yet excessively accessible European exploits of Japanese scientific adventurer Yoko Tsuno began first began gracing the pages of Spirou in September 1970 and are still going strong.

The explosive, eye-popping, expansively globe-girdling multi-award winning series was devised by Roger Leloup, another hugely talented Belgian who worked as one of Herge’s assistants on the Adventures of Tintin strip before striking out on his own.

Compellingly told, superbly imaginative but always solidly placed in hyper-realistic settings sporting utterly authentic and unshakably believable technology, these illustrated epics were at the vanguard of a wave of strips starring smart, competent and brave female protagonists which revolutionised Continental comics from the last third of the 20th century onwards and are as potently empowering now as they ever were.

The initial Spirou stories ‘Hold-up en hi-fi’, ‘La belle et la bête’ and ‘Cap 351’ were short introductory vignettes before the formidable Miss Tsuno and her always awestruck and overwhelmed male comrades truly hit their stride with premier extended saga Le trio de l’étrange which began serialisation with the May 13th 1971 issue.

That epic of extraterrestrial intrigue was the first of 26 European albums, and this one was first serialised in 1973 (Spirou #1819-1840) and released the same year as La forge de Vulcain. A spectacular earth-shaking rollercoaster romp, it was chronologically the third album and reaches us as Cinebook’s ninth translated chronicle.

It all begins when Yoko spots a TV report of a disaster on an oil rig near Martinique and realises the drill has impacted and penetrated the same strange material – “vitreous, luminous and ultra-magnetic” – that was a basic building material of the subterranean aliens known as the Vineans…

Those ancient wanderers had been secretly hibernating deep within the earth for hundreds of thousands of years until she and her new comrades (freelance TV producer Vic Van Steen and his frivolous cameraman pal Pol Paris) encountered them and set the lost race on a new path…

Now the Vineans seem to be at the heart of a burgeoning ecological catastrophe of cataclysmic proportions, and none too soon Yoko and the lads are winging their way to the Caribbean. Upon landing they waste no time in bluffing their way into the offices of oil company Forex, aided by a few mementoes of their under-earth adventure.

They are, however, about to be unceremoniously ejected when news comes that the soon-to-explode rig has encountered a new problem: a strange craft, unlike any ever seen, is trapped in the rig’s legs even as inexplicable seismic distortions are propagating, creating an area of meteorological instability.

Yoko desperately tries to convince the manager that she has prior experience in matters like these and is promptly jetting over in a helicopter. Of course, she had to stow away first…

Before long she is valiantly prying a live Vinean and his scout vessel out of a boiling gusher of mud and has discerned the true scale of the threat. The rig’s drill has intercepted a Vinean magma tunnel – used in their construction projects – which has strayed too close to the oil field and triggered a potential geological time-bomb…

Thankfully the crisis has brought forth an unexpected benefit too as old friend and benevolent alien scientist Khany arrives to take charge.

The forthright technologist already has a plan but needs her old surface allies’ assistance to carry it out. Soon Yoko, Pol and Vic are abandoning the incredulous rig engineers and heading back under earth where an unpleasant surprise is awaiting them.

The Vineans had slept in huge, manufactured caverns for almost half a million years, but since recently reviving, internecine strife has entered the lives of the blue-skinned colonist/refugees.

In The Curious Trio, ambitious militaristic throwback Karpan made a play to seize power from the vast electronic complex known as The Centre which regulated the lives of the colonists but he was ultimately frustrated by Khany and her newfound surface pals.

Now though – thanks to humanity’s underground atomic testing – the blustering bully has returned to prominence amongst his terrified people and undertaken a dangerous scheme to destroy Earth’s civilisation and conquer the survivors.

Subverting a plan to divert magma and grow a new continent for the Vineans to occupy, Karpan wants to use the colossal magma-shifting technology to drown the surface world and conquer the survivors…

Khany and her followers were already attempting to scuttle the scheme but now that grim fortune and the humans’ drill has damaged the vast, super-engineered magma-tubes, a drastic solution is necessary to save the planet both species occupy from exploding like a cosmic firecracker…

Naturally Yoko has a plan, but this one depends as much on luck as her scientific ingenuity and martial arts prowess as she tries to mould lava like plasticine and thwart Karpan’s globally suicidal schemes…

As always the most potent asset of these breathtaking dramas is the astonishingly authentic and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship, which benefits from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail, honed through years of working on Tintin.

Possible the most frenetic and visually spectacular of all her adventures, The Forge of Vulcan is a relentless, rocket-paced race to doom or salvation that will appeal to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1973, 1979 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2014 © Cinebook Ltd.