Category: Science Fiction

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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 Astrovik – Major 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.

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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.

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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.

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Impossible Tales: The Steve Ditko Archives volume 4


By Steve Ditko & various, edited by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-640-9

Perfect Christmas Present Alert! – For every discerning comics fan and suspense lover… 10/10

Once upon a time the short complete tale was the sole staple of the comicbook profession, where the plan was to deliver as much variety as possible to the reader. Sadly that particular discipline is all but lost to us today…

Steve Ditko is one of our industry’s greatest talents and probably America’s least lauded. His fervent desire to just get on with his job and to tell stories the best way he can, whilst the noblest of aspirations, will always be a minor consideration or even stumbling block for the commercial interests which for so long controlled all comics production and still exert an overwhelming influence upon the mainstream bulk of Funnybook output.

Before his time at Marvel, young Steve Ditko perfected his craft creating short stories for a variety of companies and it’s an undeniable joy to be able to look at this work from a such an innocent time when he was just breaking into the industry: tirelessly honing his craft with genre tales for whichever publisher would have him, utterly free from the interference of intrusive editors.

This fourth fantastic full-colour deluxe hardback reprints another heaping helping of his ever more impressive works: all published between July 1957 to March 1959 and all courtesy of the surprisingly liberal (at least in its trust of its employees’ creative instincts) sweat-shop publisher Charlton Comics. Some of the issues here were actually put together under the St. John imprint, but when that company abruptly folded much of its already prepared in-house material – even entire issues – were then purchased and published by clearing-house specialist Charlton with almost no editorial changes.

And whilst we’re being technically accurate it’s also important to note that the eventual publication dates of the stories in this collection don’t have a lot to do with when Ditko crafted these mini-masterpieces: Charlton paid so little the cheap, anthologically astute outfit had no problem in buying material it could leave on a shelf for months – if not years – until the right moment arrived to print…

All the tales and covers reproduced here were created after implementation of the draconian, self-inflicted Comics Code Authority rules (which sanitised the industry following Senate Hearings and a public witch-hunt) and all are wonderfully baroque and bizarre fantasy, suspense or science fiction yarns and helpfully annotated with a purchase number to indicate approximately when they were actually drawn.

Sadly there’s no indication of how many (if any) were actually written by Ditko, but as at the time the astoundingly prolific Joe Gill was churning out hundreds of stories every year for Charlton, he is always everyone’s first guess when trying to attribute script credit…

Following an historically informative Introduction and passionate advocacy by Blake Bell, the evocative tales of mystery and imagination commence with ‘The Menace of the Maple Leaves’, an eerie haunted woods fable from Strange Suspense Stories #33 (August 1957), closely followed a dark and sinister con-game which goes impossibly awry after a wealthy roué consults a supposed mystic to regain his youth and vitality and is treated in ‘The Forbidden Room’ (Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #4 July 1957)…

From November 1957, Do You Believe in Nightmares? #1 offers a bounty of Ditko delights, beginning with the stunning St. John cover heralding a prophetic ‘Nightmare’, the strange secret of a prognosticating ‘Somnambulist’ and the justice which befell a seasoned criminal in ‘The Strange Silence’: all proving how wry fate intervenes in the lives of mortals. ‘You Can Make Me Fly’ then goes a tad off-topic with a tale of brothers divided by morality and intellect and the issue ends with a dinosaur-packed romp courtesy of ‘The Man Who Crashed into Another Era’…

Next up is a tale from one of Charlton’s earliest star characters. Apparently the title came from a radio show which Charlton licensed, and the lead/host/narrator certainly acted more as voyeur than active participant, speaking “to camera” and asking readers for opinion and judgement as he shared a selection of funny, sad, scary and wondrous human interest yarns all tinged with a hint of the weird and supernatural.

When rendered by Ditko, whose storytelling mastery, page design and full, lavish brushwork were just beginning to come into its mature full range, the Tales of the Mysterious Traveler were esoteric and utterly mesmerising…

From issue #6 (December 1957) ‘Little Girl Lost’ chills spines and tugs heartstrings with the story of a doll that loved its human companion, followed by a paranoid chase from Strange Suspense Stories #35 (December 1957) as ‘There it is Again’ sees a scientist dogged by his most dangerous invention…

Unusual Tales #10 (January 1958) provides a spooky cover before disclosing the awesome secret of ‘The Repair Man from Nowhere’ and, following the wickedly effective Cold War science fiction parable ‘Panic!’ from Strange Suspense Stories #35, resumes with ‘A Strange Kiss’ that draws a mining engineer into a far better world…

Out of This World #6 (November 1957) provides access to ‘The Secret Room’ which forever changed the lives of an aging, destitute couple. Then the cover and original artwork for Out of This World #12 (March 1959) lead to a tale in which a ruthless anthropologist is brought low by ‘A Living Doll’ he’d taken from a native village…

Returning to Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #6 results in three more captivating yarns. ‘When Old Doc Died’ is perhaps the best in this book, displaying wry humour in the history of a country sawbones who was only content when helping others, whilst ‘The Old Fool’ everybody mocked proved to be his village’s greatest friend, and ‘Mister Evriman’ explored the metaphysics of mass TV viewing in a thoroughly chilling manner…

The dangers of science without scruples informed the salutary saga of a new invention in ‘The Edge of Fear’ (Unusual Tales #10, January 1958), after which the cover of This Magazine is Haunted #14 (December 1957) ushers us into cases recounted by the ghoulish Dr. Haunt; specifically a scary precursor to cloning in ‘The Second Self’ and a diagnosis of isolation and mutation which afflicted ‘The Green Man’…

The cover and original art for the giant-sized Out of This World #7 (February 1958) precedes ‘The Most Terrible Fate’ befalling a victim of atomic warfare whilst ‘Cure-All’ detailed a struggle between a country doctor and a sinister machine which healed any ailment.

We return to This Magazine is Haunted #14 wherein Dr. Haunt relates a ghastly monster’s progress ‘From Out of the Depths’ before ‘The Man Who Disappeared’ tells his uncanny story to disbelieving Federal agents, whilst Out of This World #7 provides an ethereal ringside seat from which to view a time traveller’s ‘Journey to Paradise’.

From Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #7 (March 1958), ‘And the Fear Grew’ relates how an Australian rancher fell foul of an insidiously malign but cute-looking critter, after which ‘The Heel and the Healer’ reveals how a snake-oil peddler found a genuine magic cure-all, whilst ‘Never Again’ (Unusual Tales #10 again) took an eons-long look at mankind’s atomic follies and ‘Through the Walls’ (Out of This World #7) saw a decent man framed and imprisoned, only to be saved by the power of astral projection…

Out of This World #12 (March 1959) then declared ‘The World Awaits’ when a scientist uncovered an age-old secret regarding ant mutation and eugenics, Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #7 (February 1958) exposed ‘The Angry Things’ which haunted a suspiciously inexpensive Italian villa, and the gripping cover to Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #10 (November 1958) segues into the unsuspected sacrifice of a jazz virtuoso who saved the world in ‘Little Boy Blue’…

A tragic orphan found new parents after ‘The Vision Came’ (Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #8, July 1958) and Dr. Haunt proves television to be a cause of great terror in ‘Impossible, But…’ from This Magazine is Haunted volume 2, #16 (May 1958) – an issue which also disclosed the world-changing fate of a soviet scientist who became ‘The Man from Time’…

Another selfless inventor chose to be a ‘Failure’ rather than doom humanity to eternal servitude in a stunning yarn from Strange Suspense Stories #36 (March 1958), whilst the luckiest man alive at last experienced the downside of being ‘Not Normal’ (Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #7) before Unusual Tales #11 – from March 1958 – revealed the secret of Presidential statesmanship to a young politician in ‘Charmed, I’m Sure’, and exposed a magical secret race through an author’s vacation ‘Deep in the Mountains’…

This mesmerising collection then concludes with the suitably bizarre tale of Egyptian lucky charm ‘The Dancing Cat’ (from Strange Suspense Stories #37, July 1958) to ensure the spooky afterglow remains long after the final page and leave you hungry for more mystic merriment and arcane enjoyment…

This sturdily capacious volume has episodes that terrify, amaze, amuse and enthral: utter delights of fantasy fiction with lean, stripped down plots and simple dialogue that let the art set the tone, push the emotions and tell the tale, from times when a story could end sadly as well as happily and only wonderment was on the agenda, hidden or otherwise.

These stories display the sharp wit and contained comedic energy which made so many Spider-Man/J. Jonah Jameson confrontations an unforgettable treat a decade later, and this is another cracking collection not only superb in its own right but as a telling examination into the genius of one of the art-form’s greatest stylists.

This is a book serious comics fans would happily kill or die or be lost in time for…
This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books. Introduction © 2013 Blake Bell. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents Rip Hunter… Time Master


By Jack Miller, Bill Ely, Ruben Moreira, Mike Sekowsky & Joe Giella, Joe Kubert, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, Nick Cardy, Alex Toth, various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3521-5

The concept of curious chrononauts is as old as the science fiction genre itself, and every aspect of literature has displayed fascination with leaving the Now for the Then and Thence. As the 1950s closed and the superhero genre slowly re-established itself in comicbooks, National/DC – who had for half a decade been a prime purveyor of bold, he-man fantasy action – successfully scored one last plainclothes hit with the infinite potential of temporal exploration.

With costumed cavorters reappearing everywhere the company combined time-travel vistas with their tried-and-true Adventuresome Quartet format (most effectively utilised for Jack Kirby’s groundbreaking Challengers of the Unknown) and, on a creative high and riding a building wave, introduced a dauntless team of comfortingly ordinary folks as Rip Hunter… Time Master debuted in Showcase #20, cover-dated May/June 1959.

Studious yet manly inventor Hunter had just finished building flying globes which could crack the time barrier and, like any sensible man, wanted his best friend Jeff Smith and girlfriend Bonnie Baxter to share in his fun-filled jaunts. Bonnie’s little brother Corky also came along for most rides…

Series creator Jack Miller was a serious history buff who filled the stories with the very latest in historical facts and theories, but that never got in the way of strong, rousing storytelling from the outset, and the series’ one potential flaw – the lack of a consistent art-team – became a huge bonus in the early days as a procession of top-flight illustrators took turns rendering the strangest and most evocative moments in comics history… to date…

It all began with ‘Prisoners of 100 Million BC’ (Miller & Ruben Moreira): a novel-length introductory exploit which saw the daredevil physicist, engineer Jeff, adoring Bonnie and little Corky travel back to the Mesozoic era, utterly unaware that they were carrying two criminal stowaways.

Once there the thugs hi-jacked the Time Sphere and held it hostage until the explorers helped them stock up with rare and precious minerals. Reduced to the status of mere castaways, Rip and Co. became ‘The Modern-Day Cavemen’ until an erupting volcano caused ‘The Great Beast Stampede’ enabling the time travellers to finally turn the tables on their abductors…

Miller was always careful to use the best research available but never afraid to blend historical fact with bold fantasy for Hunter’s escapades, and the epic follow-up ‘The Secret of the Lost Continent’ (Showcase #21, July/August, 1959 and illustrated by Mike Sekowsky & Joe Giella) saw the Time Masters jump progressively further back in time in search of fabled Atlantis.

A dramatic meeting with Alexander the Great in 331BC led the temporal voyagers on a trail of clues back centuries to ‘The Forbidden Island’ of Aeaea in 700BC to uncover the truth about legendary witch Circe before finally reaching 14,000BC and ‘The Doomed Continent’. Only on arrival did they see that the legendary pinnacle of early human achievement was actually a colony of stranded extraterrestrial refugees…

Rip Hunter appeared twice more in Showcase before winning his own comic, and those succeeding months would see the Silver Age of superheroes kick into frantic High Gear with classic launches coming thick and fast.

Even so, the Time Masters continued slowly building their own faithful audience, happy to explore the traditionally fantastic. Nearly a year later after the initial run they returned in Showcase #25 (March/April 1960 and spectacularly illustrated by Joe Kubert) as ‘Captives of the Medieval Sorcerer’ after Rip’s old college professor requested passage for a scholarly colleague to the kingdom of Ritannia a thousand years past.

Unfortunately the studious Dr. Senn was a charlatan in search of mystic power and his machinations almost led the time team to doom in ‘The Valley of the Monsters’ before Rip discovered the hoax and ended ‘The Sorcerer’s Siege’…

Kubert stuck around to reveal ‘The Aliens from 2000B.C.’ (Showcase #26, May/June 1960) as Rip and the gang travelled to ancient Egypt to verify recently unearthed pottery shards only to clash with extraterrestrial criminals planning on playing gods with the natives. After a daring ‘Escape from the Doomed Village’ the lads linked up with space cops to crush the baddies and their incredible pet monsters in time to win ‘The War of the Gods’…

Ironically, time moved rather slowly for new titles in those days and Rip Hunter… Time Master finally launched another year later sporting a March/April 1961 cover-date. With Ross Andru & Mike Esposito in the drawing seats Miller hit the ground running and ‘The Thousand-year-Old Curse’ captivatingly traced an ancestral doom afflicting the Craig family which brought Rip firstly to New England in pioneer times before further backtracking to Switzerland in 1360A.D. to uncover ‘The Secret of the Volcano Creature’. One final jaunt to feudal Europe revealed the truth after a climactic clash with ‘The Wizard of the 10th Century’…

Two months later #2 began with a sightseeing trip to Greece spoiled when a giant monster escaped from a hidden cave. Ever-curious, Rip followed the evidence and took the team back to meet ‘The Alien Beasts of 500B.C.’ becoming embroiled in an undocumented civil war.

Deposed dictator Demades had gained control of cosmic animals originally captured by stranded alien Big-Game hunter Nytok and intended using them to reassert his rule over Greece until the Time Masters intervened and caused ‘The Battle of the Alien Beasts’. That debacle almost led to ‘Rip Hunter’s Last Stand’ but of course the ingenious future-man had a trick or two up his sleeve…

In #3 an old coin with Corky’s face on it took the chrononauts to Scandinavia in 800A.D. and right into a royal power struggle for ‘The Throne of Doom’. As Corky was a perfect doppelganger for incumbent young King Rollo, all manner of deadly confusions occurred, especially once the boy was targeted by wicked usurper ‘Svend – ‘The Duke with Creature Powers’. Luckily modern know-how exposed the truth about the beasts under the villain’s control before ‘The Battle of the Warriors’ eventually saw Right and Justice restored…

Nick Cardy took over the art duties with #4 as a time-lost avian Vornian arrived in the modern world and the Timesters offered to return him to his home amongst ‘The Bird-Men of 2000B.C.’ Of course the adventurers became involved in a war between legendary King Hammurabi and Vornian rebels where ‘The Ancient Air Raid’ of the insurgents inevitably led to a clash with ‘The Avenging God of Gilgamesh’… or did it?

In #5 ‘The Secret of the Saxon Traitor’ saw the team trying to rewrite established history and clear the name of a long-reviled traitor, but the books never mentioned invading spacemen or ‘The Creatures of Doom Valley’ and the spectacular finale of ‘The Ancients vs. The Aliens’ proved that sometimes history gets it right all along…

The sensational Alex Toth then came aboard for two issues beginning with ‘The Secret of the Ancient Seer’ in #5, as a convocation of contemporary scientists asked Rip to investigate an 8th century Baghdad prophet who predicted Columbus’ discovery of America and, more worryingly, imminent doom from a fireball that would strike Earth in one week’s time. On arriving in Asia, the team discovered the prophecy actually originated in ‘The Doomed City’ of Herculaneum just before the eruption of Vesuvius…

With no solution in the past Rip returned to the present and devised his own astounding solution to ‘The Menace of the Meteorite’…

This astonishing yarn was followed in RHTM #7 by ‘The Lost Wanderers in Time’, as the futurist foursome embarked on a desperate chase through unrecorded history in search of a cure for a disease devastating South American Indians: a spasmodic voyage which eventually took them back a million years to clash with ‘The Last Dinosaur’ before a remedy for ‘The Green Death’ was found in the least likely place…

With #8 veteran illustrator Bill Ely came aboard as regular artist, limning almost every story until the series ended. His first venture was ‘The Thieves Who Stole a Genie’, which found the explorers following gangsters who had stolen their spare Time Sphere to secure Aladdin‘s magic lamp. The trail led to 14th century Baghdad where ‘The Battle of the Genies’ was only interrupted by an invasion. Of course canny Rip had the perfect answer for ‘The Attack of the Ommayads’…

When an archaeologist dug up a rocket-ship he asked the team to travel back and track down ‘The Alien King of 1,000 B.C.’: a breathtaking romp which subsequently found Corky and Rip almost expiring after ‘The Adventure on Planet Zark’, whilst Bonnie and Jeff remained Earthbound and down until a ‘One-Man Alien Army’ saved them and the ancient world from conquest and death.

In issue #10 ‘The Execution of Rip Hunter’ began after a research trip to the 3rd century A.D. led to Bonnie’s abduction. Whilst Roman soldiers tackled the boys, a hypnotic spell transformed her into ‘Bonnie – Queen of Palmyra’ and controller of an impossibly powerful beast her abductors needed to fend off Roman invasion in ‘All Hail the Conquering Creature’…

A classic science fiction gem surfaced in #11 where ‘The Secret of Mount Olympus’ was exposed after the team visited 2nd century B.C. Greece. After meeting a witch Jeff was changed into a griffin and supreme god Zeus demanded Rip perform a small task to save him, resulting in a ‘Dead End on Calypso Island’ before the true nature of the pantheon was revealed and ‘The Invasion of Mount Olympus’ resulted in the team’s escape and the gods’ departure.

Long-time Legion of Super-Heroes fans might recognise this tale as the basis for a major plot stream concerning the Durlan member Chameleon Boy…

For #12 a threat to modern Earth was revealed after a burning meteor erupted from beneath Stonehenge. ‘The 2,200-Year-Old Doom’ first led the heroes back to the building of the monument before at long last travelling into their own future to learn how the fallen star would destroy mankind.

Then, after popping back to when the meteor first hit and seeing the destruction of ‘The Impossible Beasts of One Million B.C.’ Rip finally devised ‘Earth’s Last Chance’ to save Today and all our Tomorrows…

In #13 ‘The Menace of the Mongol Magician’ found Rip working with a renowned scientist on a magic Chinese tapestry, but their trip to the time of Kublai Khan was only a devious scam to warp history. Once there the villainous “Professor” planned to supply the Khan’s enemies with modern weapons in return for magical secrets. However, after making off with ‘The Hijacked Time Sphere’ he was promptly betrayed by his ally. Luckily, Rip and Jeff had their own answer to ‘The Mongol Ambush’ and everything turned out as it should…

‘The Captive Time-Travellers’ in #14 resulted from Rip and a group of scientists examining an invulnerable artefact purported to have been devised by Leonardo Da Vinci. A subsequent conversation with the great man himself revealed that the container held the world’s most destructive explosive…

When one of the 20th century technicians stole the bomb and a Time Sphere ‘The Future Fugitive’ headed for 2550A.D. to sell the weapon to a dictator, so Rip and Co. followed only to become ‘The Prisoners of Time’. And that’s when the bomb’s actual builders turned up…

The cleverly captivating fantasy frolics conclude for now with issue #15 and ‘The Earthlings of 5,000,000 B.C.’ wherein a rampaging alien monster in modern-day America proved to be an Earthling of astonishingly ancient vintage.

When Rip and the gang travelled back to search out the answer to the mystery they found an entire unsuspected civilisation and became ‘The Experimental Creatures’ of that society’s scientists. They only barely escaped the cosmic calamity of ‘The Day the Earth Died’ but returned safely with the knowledge of what happened to the last tragic survivor’s species…

These stories from a uniquely variegated moment in funnybook history were the last vestiges of a different kind of comic tale and never really affected the greater push towards a cohesive, integrated DC Universe. They are, though, splendidly accessible and thoroughly enjoyable adventure tales which should be cherished by every frenzied fan and casual reader.
© 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Steed and Mrs. Peel volume 1: A Very Civil Armageddon


By Mark Waid, Caleb Monroe, Steve Bryant, Will Sliney, Yasmin Liang & Chris Rosa (Boom! Studios/Titan Books)
ISBN: 987-1-60886-306-8

Generally when I write about the Avengers here we’re thinking about an assembled multitude of Marvel superheroes, but – until the recent movie blockbuster stormed the world – for most non-comics civilians that name usually conjured up images of dashing heroics, old world charm, incredible adventure and bizarrely British festishistic attire.

It’s easy to see how that might lead to some consumer confusion…

The (other) Avengers was/were an incredibly stylish and globally popular crime/spy TV show made in Britain which glamorously blended espionage with arch, seductively knowing comedy and deadly danger with elements of technological fantasy from the 1960s through to the beginning of the 1980s. A phenomenal cult hit, the show and its sequel The New Avengers is best remembered now for Cool Britannia style action, kinky quirkiness, mad gadgetry, surreal suspense and the wholly appropriate descriptive phrase “Spy Fi”.

The legacy of the series is still apparent in many later hit shows as The Invisible Man (both TV spy iterations), Chuck, the new Mission: Impossible movies and even Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Enormously popular all over the globe – even Warsaw Pact Poland was crazy for Rewolwer i melonik (or A Revolver and a Bowler Hat) – the show gradually evolved from a gritty crime/vengeance thriller entitled Police Surgeon in 1961 into a paragon of witty, thrilling and sophisticated adventure lampoonery with suave, urbane British Agent John Steed and dazzlingly talented amateur sleuth Mrs. Emma Peel battling spies, robots, criminals, secret societies, monsters and even “aliens” with tongues very much in cheeks and always under the strictest determination to remain cool, dashingly composed and exceedingly eccentric…

The format was a winner. Peel, as played by (Dame) Diana Rigg, had been a replacement for landmark character Cathy Gale – the first hands-on fighting female in British television history – who left the show in 1964 to become Bond Girl Pussy Galore in the movie Goldfinger. However Rigg’s introduction took the show to even greater heights of success and recently bereaved actress Emma Peel’s huge popularity with viewers cemented the archetype of a powerful, clever, competent woman into the nation’s psyche and forever banished the screaming, eye-candy girly-victim to the dustbin of popular fiction.

Rigg left in 1967 (she married James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and another feisty female was found in the person of Tara King (Linda Thorson) to carry the series to its demise in 1969. Its continued popularity in more than 90 countries eventually resulted in a revival during the late 1970s. The New Avengers saw glamorous Purdey (Joanna Lumley) and brutishly manly Gambit (Gareth Hunt) acting as partners and foils to the agelessly debonair and deadly Steed…

The show has remained a hugely enticing cult icon. There was a rather ill-conceived major motion picture in 1998, and in 2007 America’s TV Guide ranked the TV iteration the 20th Top Cult TV Show Ever. During its run and beyond, the internationally adored series spawned toys, games, collector models, a pop single and stage show, radio series, posters and books and all the myriad merchandising strands that inevitably accompany a media sensation.

Naturally, as a popular British Television program these Avengers were no stranger to our comics pages either.

Following an introductory strip starring Steed & Gale in listings magazines Look Westward and The Viewer plus the Manchester Evening News (September 1963 to the end of 1964), legendary children’s staple TV Comic launched its own Avengers strip in #720 (October 2nd 1965) with Emma Peel firmly ensconced. This serial ran until #771 (September 24th 1966) and the dashing duo also starred in the TV Comic Holiday Special, whilst a series of young Emma Peel adventures featured in June & Schoolfriend.

The feature then transferred to DC Thomson’s Diana until 1968 whereupon it returned to TV Comic with #877, depicting Steed and Tara King until 1972 and #1077.

In 1966 there was a one-off, large-sized UK comicbook from Mick Anglo Studios whilst in America, Gold Key’s Four-Color series published a try-out book in 1968 using recycled UK material under the rather obvious title John Steed/Emma Peel – since Marvel had already secured an American trademark for comics with the name “Avengers”…

There were also a number of wonderful, sturdily steadfast hardback annuals for the British Festive Season trade, beginning with 1962’s TV Crimebusters Annual and thereafter pertinent TV Comic Annuals before a run of solo editions graced Christmas stockings from 1967-1969 plus a brace of New Avengers volumes for 1977 and 1978.

Most importantly, Eclipse/ACME Press produced a trans-Atlantic prestige miniseries between 1990 and 1992. Steed & Mrs. Peel was crafted by Grant Morrison & Ian Gibson with supplementary scripting from Anne Caulfield.

That tale was reprinted in 2012 by media-savvy publishers Boom! Studios and acted as a kind of pilot for the current iteration under review here. The adventures of Steed and Mrs. Peel Ongoing began soon after and this initial compilation – collecting issues #0-3 from August to December 2012 – form a worthy reintroduction for the faithful and happily accessible introduction for notional newcomers as the dedicated followers of felons return for another clash with memorable TV antagonists The Hellfire Club.

These baroque bounders appeared in the TV episode ‘A Touch of Brimstone’ and so warped the maturing personalities of young Chris Claremont and John Byrne that they later created their own version for a comicbook they were working on – the Uncanny X-Men…

The drama here opens in ‘A Very Civil Armageddon: Prologue’ (written by Boom! chief creative guru Mark Waid and illustrated by Steve Bryant) as, back in the style-soaked Swinging Sixties, our heroes are called upon to investigate ‘The Dead Future’ and how an active – albeit murdered – agent can seemingly age decades overnight.

The situation reminds Mrs. Peel of the mind-bending, lethally effective fun-and-games perpetrated by the insidious Hellfire Club and its now-defunct leader the Honourable John Clever Cartney…

Further inquiries take them to the latest incarnation of the ancient Gentleman’s Club where the futurist Ian Lansdowne Dunderdale Cartney disavows any knowledge of the matter or his dad’s old antisocial habits. In fact the current scion is far more absorbed with the World of Tomorrow than the embarrassing peccadilloes of the past. However it’s all a trap and whilst Emma is attacked by a killer robot maid Steed is ambushed – only to awaken as an old man 35 years later in the year 2000AD!

Forever undaunted, the temporarily separated Derring-Duo refuse to believe the improbable and impeccably strike back individually to uncover the incredible answer to an impossible situation…

The main feature, by Waid and Caleb Monroe with art from Will Sliney, then sees ‘London Falling’ as the long-dreaded nuclear Armageddon finally happens, leaving Steed, Peel and a swarm of politicians, Lords and civil servants as the only survivors in a battered atomic bunker beneath a utterly devastated Houses of Parliament.

The shattered, shaken remnants of Empire and Civilisation are astounded to discover that the only other survivors are ghastly atomic mutants and a coterie of exceptionally well-stocked and fully prepared members of the Hellfire Club…

‘Life in Hell’ finds the former foes joining forces and combining resources, but Steed and Peel are convinced that something is “not kosher”. For one thing former members of once-important political committees and knowledgeable generals keep disappearing, but most importantly Ian Cartney and his deplorable sister Dirigent are now known to be masters of their father’s dark arts of illusion, trickery and brainwashing…

Steed rumbles to the nature of an audaciously cunning Psy-Ops espionage scheme almost too late as Emma is once again transformed into a ferocious, whip-wielding bondage nightmare in the concluding instalment ‘Long Live the Queen’. Of course, a good spy, like a boy scout, is always prepared and the dapper detective cleverly turns the tables on his foes just in time for a rollicking, explosively old-fashioned comeuppance…

Wry, arch and wickedly satisfying, this opening salvo in the reborn franchise is a delight for staunch fans and curious newcomers alike and this volume also includes a vast (28) covers and variants gallery by Joseph Michael Linsner, Phil Noto, Joshua Covey & Blond, Mike Perkins & Vladimir Popov and Drew Johnson to astound the eyes as much as the story assaults the senses…

© 2013 StudioCanal S.A. All rights reserved.

OK. All clued in?

Would you like to own this book without paying? If so then this is your chance.

All you have to do is enter this piffling little contest and trust to luck…

It’s free and absolutely anybody can join in. You can enter as many times as you want but there’s only one prize and my word is final in every instance.

Below are three multiple choice questions. Simply send your best guesses using Leave a Reply and we’ll pull a correct entry out of our digital bowler hat on December 1st.

Do Not Text, Tweet, Telephone or Telepath us. Just append the name of the lucky person you want to receive the prize with the three letters of your divination in the review’s comment section and we’ll take it from there.

Please do not send us your address. If you win we’ll contact you and ask for where you want the book sent.

Unless you’re residing at the ends of the Earth (in which case the parcel may take a little longer to arrive) the winner should have this treasured possession in time for Christmas, even with British post-privatised post practises…

Ready… Set… Go!

  1. The Avengers were known by what title in Poland?
    1. A Revolver and a Bowler Hat.
    2. Hard Hat and Leather Boots.
    3. Umbrellas and Kicks.
  2. Mrs Peel was Steed’s second karate-kicking female fighting partner. Who preceded her?
    1. Sue Storm.
    2. Tara Tempest.
    3. Cathy Gale.
  3. Patrick MacNee & Honor Blackman produced an infamous Avengers spin-off novelty pop single in 1964. What was it called?
    1. These Boots Are Made for Kicking.
    2. Have some Madeira, M’Dear.
    3. Kinky Boots.

Good luck one and all…

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Showcase Presents Tales of The Unexpected volume 1


By Jack Miller, Bernard Baily, Bill Ely, Jack Kirby, Mort Meskin, Sheldon Moldoff, Ruben Moriera, George Papp, John Prentice, Leonard Starr & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3520-8

American comicbooks started rather slowly until the invention of superheroes unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and established a new entertainment genre. Implacably vested in World War Two, the Overman swept all before him (occasional her or it) until the troops came home and the more traditional themes and heroes resurfaced and eventually supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Whilst a new generation of kids began buying and collecting, many of the first fans also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought older themes in the reading matter. The war years 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 and prose as well as comics) increasingly reflected this.

As well as Western, War and Crime comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, but gradually another of those 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 mystery-man garb and trappings (the Spectre, Mr. Justice, Sgt. Spook, Frankenstein, The Heap, Sargon the Sorcerer, Zatara, Zambini the Miracle Man, Kardak the Mystic, Dr. Fate and dozens of others), but these had been victims of circumstance: the Unknown as a power source for super-heroics. Now the 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 the 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.

Technically speaking, Adventures Into the Unknown was pipped at the post by Avon who had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 before reviving the title by launching a regular series in 1951. All the meanwhile, however, parents’ favourite Classics Illustrated had long been milking the literary end of the genre with adaptations of the Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

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

The company that 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. Its success led to a raft of such creature-filled fantasy compendiums in the years that followed such as Sensation Mystery, My Greatest Adventure, House of Secrets and, in 1956, Tales of the Unexpected…

A hysterical censorship scandal which led to witch-hunting hearings (check out Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April- June 1954 on your search engine of choice) was derailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of draconian self-regulatory rules. Horror titles produced under the aegis and emblem of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised and anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, even though the market’s appetite for suspense and the uncanny was still high…

Stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, rationalistic, fantasy-adventure vehicles which dominated until the 1960s when super-heroes (which had begun to creep back after Julius Schwartz reintroduced the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956) finally overtook them.

This mammoth monochrome compilation offers a stunning voyage to the fantastic outer limits of 1950s imagination, collecting the first 20 issues of the charmingly enthralling anthology – produced under the watchful eyes of the Comics Code Authority – cover dates February/March 1956 to December 1957 and starts with a quartet of intriguing, beautifully rendered pocket thrillers.

Sadly for me and you records are spotty and many of the authors remain unsung (although possible candidates include Dave Wood, Bill Finger, Ed Herron, Joe Samachson, George Kashdan, Jack Miller and Otto Binder and I’ll just guess whenever I’m more than half-certain) but the pictorial pioneers at least can be deservedly celebrated…

Behind a captivating cover by Bill Ely, Tales of the Unexpected #1 begins the uncanny excursions with ‘The Out-of-The-World Club’, drawn by the astoundingly precise John Prentice, which detailed the unearthly secret of a night-spot offering truly original groovy sounds, whilst ‘The Dream Lamp’, limned by Leonard Starr, took a bucolic glance at a device which seemed able to perform impossible feats.

Jack Miller, Howard Purcell & Charles Paris then ironically revealed ‘The Secret of Cell Sixteen’ which fooled yet one more prisoner in the Bastille, after which the debut issue ended with a bleak alien invasion fable in ‘The Cartoon that Came to Life’ by Otto Binder & Bill Ely.

Issue #2 offered the uncredited conundrum of ‘The Magic Hats of M’sieu La Farge’ (art by Ruben Moreira) which saw ordinary folk impelled to perform extraordinary feats when wearing the titfers of famous dead folk, whilst ‘The Fastest Man Alive’ (drawn by Bill Draut & Mort Meskin) disclosed how an obsessive rivalry brought destruction upon a man forever relegated to second best behind his exceptional best friend…

‘The Record of Doom’ (Ely art) apparently drove listeners to suicide until a canny cop uncovered the truth, but ‘The Gorilla who Saved the World’ (Starr) was as incredible and alien as you’d expect in a tale of sharp sci-fi suspense…

Issue #3 opened with Purcell’s ‘The Highway to Tomorrow’ wherein a motorway through Native American sacred lands almost resulted in a new uprising, after which Meskin’s ‘The Man Nobody Could See’ revisited the old plot of an invisible criminal. ‘I Lost My Past’ (illustrated by Mort Drucker) recounted an implausibly complex scheme to cure an amnesiac before ‘The Man with 100 Wigs’, by Miller & Prentice, featured a genuinely compelling mystery about a petty thief who stole a sorcerer’s chest filled with hairpieces imparting uncanny power to the wearer…

The mix of cop stories, aliens and the arcane acts clearly struck a chord as, with Tales of the Unexpected #4, the comic was promoted to monthly.

‘Seven Steps to the Unknown’ (Ely) continued the eclectic winning formula through a perilous puzzle regarding a group of complete strangers inexplicably linked and targeted for murder, whilst ‘The Day I Broke All Records’, illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff, followed a top athlete who gained something “extra” after finding an elixir once favoured by unbeatable Roman gladiator Apulius…

Then a murderer was brought to justice after becoming obsessed with ‘The Flowers of Sorcery’ (Starr) whilst ‘The House Where Dreams Come True’ (Prentice) offered a far kinder tale of human generosity that will melt the heart of the most jaded reader.

In #5 ‘The Man Who Laughed at Locks’ (Moreira) disclosed the inevitable fate of a cheat when rival inventors clashed, ‘I Was Bewitched for a Day’ (Ely) revealed how easily domestic reality can be overturned and Moldoff portrayed the bewilderment of an Art Investigator faced with ‘The Living Paintings’ before Miller & Prentice again triumphed with the tale of an actor literally possessed by his role in ‘The Second Life of Geoffrey Hawkes’…

TotU #6 opened with ‘The Telecast from the Future’ (drawn by George Papp) as a technician foolishly convinced himself that his gear hadn’t really opened a peephole into tomorrow, whilst Ely’s ‘Dial M for Magic’ focussed on a prestidigitator’s club that auditioned an amazing applicant who didn’t just do “tricks”…

‘The Forbidden Flowers’ (Moldoff) then exposed a killer who thought himself safe, after which Moreira’s ‘The Girl in the Bottle’ led an unsuspecting oceanographer into fantastic peril and another incredible criminal scam.

Golden Age great Bernard Baily joined the rotating art crew with #7 as ‘The Pen that Never Lied’ visited a number of people, dispensing justice through unvarnished truth, after which ‘Beware, I Can Read your Mind!’ (Moldoff) saw a truth telepath discover the overwhelming cost of his gift.

When a miner found a talking talisman, it promised anything except ‘The Forbidden Wish’ (George Roussos). Tragically it was the only thing the weak-minded man wanted…

This issue ended with the art debut of the astounding Nick Cardy who lovingly detailed the fate of a murderous thug who refused to listen to the sage advice of ‘The Face in the Clock!’

Tales of the Unexpected #8 opened with fantastic fantasy as ‘The Man Who Stole a Genie’ (Meskin) slowly succumbed to greed and mania, whilst ‘The Secret of the Elephant’s Tusk’ (Ely art) followed the trail of death that resulted after a poacher killed a sacred pachyderm. Roussos’ ‘The Four Seeds of Destiny’ chillingly revealed the doom that came to a TV reporter who stole relics from a Pharaoh’s tomb before ‘The Camera that Could Rob’ (Starr) proved that, even for a thief with an unbeatable gimmick, mistreating a cat never ends well…

In issue #9 ‘The Amazing Cube’ (possibly scripted by George Kashdan and definitely limned by Baily) saw an unscrupulous gambler fall foul of his own handmade dice, whilst a killer conman got his comeuppance courtesy of ‘The Carbon Copy Man’ (Papp). ‘The Day Nobody Died’ by Roussos is a classic of moody mystery wherein a doctor pursues a dark stranger and regrets catching him, after which a little lad saves the world from alien invasion and know-it-all adults in ‘The Man Who Ate Fire’ (illustrated by Starr).

The tone of the time was gradually turning and sorcerous supernature was slowly succumbing to the Space Age lure of weird science as TotU #10 proved with ‘The Strangest Show on Earth’ (art by Jim Mooney) wherein a bankrupt showman stumbled over a Martian circus. Sadly the bizarre performers had their own agenda to adhere to…

‘The Phantom Mariner’ (Moldoff) followed an obsessed sea captain to his inescapable fate, after which a scientist faced a deadly dilemma after creating ‘The Duplicate Man’ (Ely) and Meskin revealed how an antique collector’s compulsion endangered his life in ‘I Was Slave to the Wizard’s Lamp’…

A criminal inventor paid the ultimate price for his venality in ‘Who Am I?’ by Baily which opened Tales of the Unexpected #11, whilst ‘I Was a Man from the Future’ (Cardy) saw an American mountaineer stumble through a time-warp into adventure and romance in15th century France and ‘The Ghost of Hollywood’ (Ely) confounded the special effects designer determined to debunk it.

Starr then closed out the issue with ‘The Man Who Hated Green’, as an artist embarked on an extraordinary campaign of terror…

Issue #12 began with Cardy’s tale of a quartet of escaped convicts who terrorised three little old ladies and were cursed by ‘The Four Threads of Doom’, after which ‘The Witch’s Statues’ (Meskin) proved to be more scurrilous scam than sinister sorcery.

Following a downturn in the industry, Jack Kirby briefly returned to National/DC at this time: producing mystery tales and drawing Green Arrow all whilst preparing his newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force.

He also re-packaged for Showcase an original team concept kicking around in his head since he and Joe Simon had closed the innovative but unfortunate Mainline Comics. Blending explosive adventure with the precepts of mystery comics, Challengers of the Unknown became the pattern for the entire Silver Age superhero resurgence…

After years of working for others, Simon & Kirby had established their own publishing company, producing comics for a more sophisticated audience, only to find themselves in a sales downturn and awash in public hysteria generated by the aforementioned anti-comic pogrom of US Senator Estes Kefauver and psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham.

Simon quit the business for advertising, but Kirby soldiered on, taking his skills and ideas to a number of safer, if less experimental, companies.

Here his run of short fantastic suspense tales commences with ‘The All-Seeing Eye’ wherein a journalist responsible for many impossible scoops realises that the ancient artefact he employs is more dangerous than beneficial…

The issue ends with Ely’s rousing thriller ‘The Indestructible Man’ wherein a stuntman with innate invulnerability decided to get rich quick no matter who gets hurt…

In #13 an amnesiac traced his lost past by seeking out ‘Weapons of Destiny’ (perhaps Binder with Ely art), whilst ‘The Thing from the Skies’ (Meskin) initially proved a boon but ultimately the downfall for a murdering conman. A ghostly ‘Second Warning’ (Papp) saved a tourist when he visited the battlefields of WWII, after which ‘I Was a Prisoner of the Supernatural’ (France E. Herron & Cardy) revealed how an actor escaped a deal with the devil before Herron & Kirby stole the show with a gripping crime-caper in ‘The Face Behind the Mask’…

Tales of the Unexpected #14 started with Meskin’s ‘The Forbidden Game’ as an embezzler played fast and loose with a wagering wizard, followed by ‘Cry, Clown, Cry’ (Baily) which saw a baffled son ignore his father’s injunction not to follow the family tradition to be a gag-man.

Papp pictured the fate of a swindler who wanted folk to believe he was ‘The Man Who Owned King Arthur’s Sword’ and Moldoff finished up proceedings as a crook was haunted by ‘The Green Gorilla’ created by his misdeeds.

Kirby led off in #15, his ‘Three Wishes to Doom’ proving that even with a genie’s lamp crime does not pay, after which ‘The Sinister Cannon’ (Baily) employed by an insidious alien infiltrator proved far more than it appeared. ‘The Rainbow Man’ (Roussos) was a scientific bandit who overestimated the efficacy of his camouflage discovery and ‘The City of Three Dooms’ by Meskin wrapped up things with a mesmerising time-travel romp starring Nazi submariners on a voyage to infinity…

There’s an inexplicable frisson in ‘The Magic Hammer’ by Kirby which opens #16 as the King of Comics relates how a prospector finds a mallet capable of creating storms and goes into the rainmaking business… until the original owner turns up…

That superb vignette is augmented by ‘I Was a Spy for Them’ (Meskin) as a canny physicist turned the tables on the star men who captured him, a crooked archaeologist gained unbeatable power from an ancient ring and became ‘The Exile from Earth’ (Dave Wood & Moldoff), and Moreira illustrated ‘The Interplanetary Line-Up’, wherein an actual Man from Mars gatecrashed a science fiction writer’s fancy dress party…

In #17 ‘Who is Mr. Ashtar?’ (Kirby) chillingly followed a hotel detective who knew there was something off about the new guest in Room 605, whilst ‘Beware the Thinking Cap’ (Ely) described the rise and fall of a crook who found the device which inspired all the geniuses of history. Baily illustrates how a lifer in jail used a unique method of escape in ‘The Bullet Man’, and the issue ends on ‘The Impossible Voyage’ (Mooney) as a couple of alien pranksters took earth suckers for a ride on what only looked like a fairground attraction…

Mooney takes the lead spot in #18 as ‘The Man Without a World’ rejected Earth only to learn that a life in space is no life at all, whilst ‘The Riddle of the Glass Bubble’ (Meskin) threatened to end all life until a little kid offered an unlikely solution. Cardy opened ‘The Amazing Swap Shop’, where humans could trade “junk” for impossibly useful gadgets before Kirby showed how a clever human saved us all by outwitting ‘The Man Who Collected Planets’.

By now thoroughly gripped in UFO fever, Tales of the Unexpected #19 began with ‘The Man from Two Worlds’ (Cardy) wherein evil Neptunians attempted to abduct an Earth scientist by guile, whereas ‘D-Day on Planet Vulcan’ (Mooney) saw embattled ETs beg our help to end a world-crushing crisis, after which a meteor turned a hapless technician into ‘The Human Lie Detector’ (Ely) and a dotty old eccentric surprised everybody by ending ‘The Menace of the Fireball’ (with art by Bob Brown).

This first terrific tome concludes with issue #20 where ‘The Earth Gladiator’ (Cardy) struggled to save his life and prove Earth worthy of continued existence, an engineer scuppered ‘The Remarkable Mr. Multiplier’ (Ely) before his invention wrecked civilisation and ‘I Was Marooned on Planet Earth’, by Baily, illustrated that every alien incursion was malign or dangerous.

Moreira then brings the cosmic catalogue to a close with ‘You Stole Our Planet’ wherein gigantic space creatures arrived with a strong claim of prior ownership…

Although certainly dated and definitely formulaic, these complex yet uncomplicated suspenseful adventures are drenched in charm, gilded in ingenuity and still sparkle with innocent wit and wonder. Perhaps not to everyone’s taste nowadays, these fantastic exploits are nevertheless an all-ages buffet of fun, thrills and action no fan should miss.

© 1956, 1957, 1958, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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A1: The World’s Greatest Comics


By various (Atomeka/Titan Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-78276-016-0

A1 began in 1988 as an anthology showcase for comics creativity, free from the usual strictures of mainstream publishers, consequently attracting many of the world’s top writers and artists to produce work at once personal and experimental, comfortingly familiar and, on occasion, deucedly odd.

Editors Garry Leach and Dave Elliott have periodically returned to their baby and this year the title was resurrected under the aegis of Titan Comics to provide more of the same.

Always as much committed to past excellence as future glories (you should see the two page dedication list here) and following the grandest tradition of British comics, the new title already has a great big hardback annual and it offers the same eclectic mix of material old and new…

After that aforementioned thank you to everyone from Frank Bellamy to Faceache in ‘The Dream Day’s are Back: The One’s Especially For You…’ the cartoon carnival commences with a truly “Golden Oldie” as Joe Simon & Jack Kirby (inked by Al Williamson) provide the science fiction classic ‘Island in the Sky’ – which first surfaced in Harvey Comic’s Race for the Moon #2 September, 1958 – wherein an expired astronaut returns from death thanks to something he picked up on Jupiter…

Each tale here is accompanied by fulsome creator biographies and linked by factual snippets about most artists’ drug of choice.

These photographic examples of coffee barista self-expression (with all ‘Latte Art’ throughout courtesy of Coffee Labs Roasters) are followed by illustrator Alex Sheikman & scripter Norman Felchle’s invitation to the baroque, terpsichorean delights of the ‘Odd Ball’.

The fantastic gothic revisionism resumes after another coffee-break as the sublime Sandy Plunkett details in captivating monochrome the picaresque perils of life in a sprawling urban underworld with his ‘Tales of Old Fennario’

‘Odyssey: A Question of Priorities’ by Elliot, Toby Cypress & Sakti Yuwono is a thoroughly up-to-date interpretation of pastiche patriotic avenger Old Glory, who now prowls modern values-challenged America, regretting the choices he’s made and the timbre of his current superhero comrades…

‘Image Duplicator’ by Rian Hughes & Dave Gibbons is, for me, the most fascinating feature included here, detailing and displaying comics creator’s admirable responses to the appropriation and rapine of comic book images by “Pop” artist Roy Lichtenstein.

In a move to belatedly honour the honest jobbing creators simultaneously ripped off and denigrated by the “recontextualisation” and transformation to High Art, Hughes and Gibbons approached a number of professionals from all sectors of the commercial arts and asked them to re-appropriate Lichtenstein’s efforts.

The results were displayed in the exhibition Image Duplicator and all subsequent proceeds donated to the charity Hero Initiative which benefits comic creators who have fallen on hard times.

In this feature you can see some of the results of the comicbook fightback with contributions from Hughes, Gibbons, FuFu Frauenwahl, Carl Flint, Howard Chaykin, Salgood Sam, Mark Blamire, Steve Cook, Garry Leach, Dean Motter, Jason Atomic, David Leach, Shaky Kane, Mark Stafford, Graeme Ross, Kate Willaert & Mitch O’Connell.

Master of all funnybook trades Bambos Georgiou then offers his 2011 tribute to DC’s splendidly silly Silver Age in the Curt Swan inspired ‘Weird’s Finest – Zuberman & Batguy in One Adventure Together!’ and Dominic Regan crafts a stunning Technicolor tornado of intriguing illumination as Doctor Arachnid has to deal with cyber Psychedelia and a divinely outraged ‘Little Star’…

‘Emily Almost’ by Bill Sienkiewicz first appeared in the original A1 #4, a bleak paean to rejection seen here in muted moody colour, after which Scott Hampton revisits the biblical tale of ‘Daniel’ and Jim Steranko re-presents his groundbreaking, experimental multi-approach silent story ‘Frogs!’ and follows up with ‘Steranko: Frogs!’  – his own treatise on the history and intent behind creating the piece thirty years ago…

‘Boston Metaphysical Society’ is a prose vignette of mystic Steampunk Victoriana written by Madeleine Holly-Rosing from her ongoing webcomic, ably illustrated by Emily Hu, whilst ‘Mr. Monster’ by Alan Moore & Michael T. Gilbert (with inks from Bill Messner-Loebs) is a reprint of ‘The Riddle of the Recalcitrant Refuse!’

First found in #3 (1985) of the horror hunter’s own series, it recounts how a dead bag-lady turns the city upside out when her mania for sorting junk transcends both death and the hero’s best efforts…

‘The Weirding Willows: Origins of Evil’ by Elliot, Barnaby Bagenda & Jessica Kholinne is one of the fantasy features from the new A1 – a dark reinterpretation of beloved childhood characters such as Alice, Ratty, Toad and Mole, which fans of Bill Willingham’s Fables should certainly take notice of…

‘Devil’s Whisper’ by James Robinson & D’Israeli also comes from A1 #4, and features Matt Wagner’s signature creation Grendel – or does it?

Stechgnotic then waxes lyrical about Barista art in ‘The Artful Latte’ after which ‘Melting Pot – In the Beginning’ by Kevin Eastman, Eric Talbot & Simon Bisley ends the affair by revisiting the ghastly hellworld where the gods spawned an ultimate survivor through the judicious and repeated application of outrageous bloody violence.

Of course it’s a trifle arrogant and rather daft to claim any collection as “The World’s Greatest Comics” and – to be honest – these aren’t. There’s no such thing and never can be…

However this absorbing, inspiring oversized collection does contain a lot of extremely good and wonderfully entertaining material by some of the best and most individualistic creators to have graced our art form.

What more can you possibly need?

A1 Annual © 2013 Atomeka Press, all contents copyright their respective creators. ATOMEKA © 2013 Dave Elliott & Garry Leach.

Anyone wishing to learn more or donate to Hero Initiative can find them at www.heroinitiative.org

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Thunderbirds – the Comic Collection


By Alan Fennell, Scott Goodall, Frank Bellamy, John Cooper, Eric Eden, Graham Bleathman & various (Egmont)
ISBN: 978-1-4052-6836-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: 10/10 because it just is.

Stand By For Frothing!
Growing up in 1960’s England was the best of all possible worlds for a comic lover. As well as US imports you were treated to some frankly incredible weekly publications, and market bookstalls sold second-hand comics for at least a third of their cover price. We also had some of the greatest artists in the world working on some of the best licensed properties around. A perfect example is the TV – primarily Gerry Anderson – anthology comic TV Century 21.

For British kids of a certain vintage – it varies from eighty to four and three quarters – the Anderson experience is a large and critical component of the DNA of childhood. The TV episodes, toys, bubblegum cards, movies and especially the comic strips all irresistibly evoke and re-manifest the thrill and fevered anticipation of juvenile ecstasy in the millions of kids who enjoyed the weekly rush of mind-boggling, mouth-watering adventure – even decades after the initial hit.

Thus this latest glossy compilation, collecting some of the greatest strips in comics history is probably going to leave a lot of people gurgling in delight as they revisit or – if they’re incredibly lucky – see for the first time a spectacular panorama of futuristic fantasy thrills, spills and chills.

TV Century 21 (the unwieldy “Century” was eventually dropped) was patterned after a newspaper – albeit from 100 years into the future – and this shared conceit carried avid readers into a multimedia wonderland as television and comics fed off each other.

The incredible illustrated adventures were often supplemented with colour stills taken from the shows and photos also graced all text features and fillers which added to the unity of one of the industry’s first “Shared Universe” products. Even the BBC’s TV “tomorrows” were represented in a full-colour strip starring The Daleks.

The first issue launched on January 23rd 1965, instantly capturing the hearts and minds of millions of children and further proving to British comics editors the unfailingly profitable relationship between TV shows and healthy sales.

Filled with high quality art and features, printed in gleaming photogravure, TV21 featured such strips as Fireball XL5, Supercar and Stingray as well as a strange series about a posh future lady spy and her burglar chauffeur.

In an attempt to be topical, the allegorically Soviet and terribly totalitarian state of Bereznik was used in many strips, acting as an overarching, continuity-providing bad guy. Behind numerous plots and outrages, the TomorrowTerrorState constantly schemed against the World Government (for which read “The West”) in an eerily advanced Cold War espionage scenario which augmented the aliens, aquatic civilizations, common crooks and cataclysmic disasters that threatened the general well-being of the populace.

Although Thunderbirds did not premiere on TV until September of that year (with Frank Bellamy’s incredible strip joining the comic’s line-up in January 1966 with #52) Lady Penelope and Parker (subtitled as and promising “Elegance, Charm and Deadly Danger”) had been running since issue #1.

The aristocratic super-spy was promoted to her own spin-off, top-class photogravure publication in January 1966 – just as Anderson’s newest creations launched into super-marionated life: their comics exploits becoming the big draw in the already unmissable TV21.

All that is further explained in an expansive ‘Introduction’ before the procession of weekly wonderment – two staggeringly intoxicating pages every seven days! – begins in this massive (290 pages, 297x222mm) full-colour luxury hardback.

It all begins with the thirteenth adventure, which ran from #141-146 (30th September to November 4th 1967, scripted by Scott Goodall and illustrated by Frank Bellamy) and details how an avaricious madman intends splitting Persia in two with ‘The Earthquake Maker’.

The unforgettable alien invader story ‘Visitor from Space’ (#147-154) follows, with one of the most memorable monsters in comics history stealing the show on every page, after which ‘The Antarctic Menace’ (6th January-17th February 1968, #155 to 161) begins a brand new year with the same tried and true thrills as the Tracy boys are called in to save the day after the Australia-Antarctica highway is sabotaged!

‘Brains is Dead’ (#162-169, running until 13th April) features the skulduggery of the sinister Hood in a deadly game of industrial espionage, after which artist Graham Bleathman provides a captivating glimpse at those longed-for technical details with double-page cutaway spreads and single page strip sequences ‘Thunderbird 1 Technical Data’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 1’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 2’ and ‘Thunderbird 2 Technical Data’.

The suspenseful strip stories resume with ‘The Space Cannon’ (Goodall & Bellamy, from TV21 #170-172 April 20th to May 4th 1968) as the team have to stop a continually firing neutron cannon that’s crashed into the Thames, whilst follow-up yarn ‘The Olympic Plot’ by Howard Elson & Bellamy (#173-178) finds the great games – held in the crater of Vesuvius – disrupted not only by a lake of fire but also a madman digging up a pirate treasure hidden since the 17th century…

TV21 #184-187 (27th July-17th August 1968) offered ‘Devil’s Crag’ (Goodall & Bellamy) and saw International Rescue save a lost schoolboy; a spectacular visual extravaganza that belies its deceptively simple plot, after which ‘The Eiffel Tower Demolition’ (#188-191) goes dreadfully wrong and Scott and Virgil find themselves endangered by thieves and saboteurs…

Bleathman returns with more pictorial top secrets in ‘Specifications of Thunderbird 3’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 3’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 4’ and ‘Specifications of Thunderbird 4’ after which Goodall & Bellamy expose ‘The Nuclear Threat’ (TV21 #192-196, 21st September-19th October 1968) of an out-of-control drone ferrying atomic weapons to their intended deep sea dumping ground, whilst the ‘Hawaiian Lobster Menace’ (#197-202) outrageously reveals a plot to turn tasty crustacean treats into explosive anti-personnel weapons…

‘The Time Machine’ (December 7th 1968 to January 11th 1969) used by Jeff and Scott Tracy malfunctioned in a most unfortunate manner, whilst from #209-217 a more domestic disaster saw ‘The Zoo Ship’ which foundered off Tracy Island lead to crewmen trapped aboard ship and savage beasts loose on shore with our harried heroes trying to save lives whilst keeping their secrets safe from the ever insidious Hood…

Bleathman has more artistic innovations to display in ‘Specifications of Thunderbird 5’, ‘The Construction of Thunderbird 5′, ‘This is Tracy Island’ and ‘Tracy Island’ giving us all the detail and data we desire before ‘City of Doom’ (Goodall as “Spencer Howard” & Bellamy from #218-226, 22nd March to May 17th) finds a top secret, ultra-futuristic Andean science metropolis endangered by a wild nuclear reaction…

Scripted by Goodall or (perhaps John W. Jennison?), ‘Chain Reaction’ ran in TV21 and TV Tornado #227-234, May 24th-12th July 2069) wherein the Tracy team had to stop an out of control 50,000-ton space freighter from impacting in the middle of San Francisco – and that’s just the start of an epic calamity which threatened to destroy the entire Pacific Rim…

There’s a big jump here to October 1968 for ‘The Big Bang’ by Geoff Cowan & John Cooper, possibly explained by the fact that once Bellamy left the strip, his cruelly underrated replacement rendered the strip in black and white. When Fleetway revived the Anderson franchise in the early 1990s the comics featured artwork from TV21 supplemented with new original material from another generation of fans and creators, but as Thunderbirds was far and away the biggest hit, some of Cooper’s strips were reprinted with the artist at last getting the chance to colour his efforts.

Thus this, his second original yarn from TV21 & Joe 90 #5-8 (25th October-15th November 1969), involving smuggled diamonds and a boy trapped on a building both sinking and about to explode…

The endeavours of the Tracy clan then conclude with ‘The Mini Moon’ (Richard O’Neill & Cooper (TV21 & Joe 90 #22-28, 21st February to April 4th 1970) as a roving planetoid menaces Earth and Brains, Alan and Gordon have to blow it up while it’s still far enough away to pose no extinction-level threat…

Happily there’s still plenty for fans to enjoy as, after Bleathman’s revelatory ‘The Secrets of FAB 1’ and Creighton-Ward Stately Home’, the adventures of Lady Penelope and her invaluable manservant Parker begin with ‘Mr. Steelman’ by Alan Fennell & Eric Eden. Originally seen in TV Century 21 #1-11, January 23rd to April 3rd 1965, this is a complex thriller involving espionage and a deadly robot, after which Bellamy handles ‘The Isle of Arran Riddle’ (#35-43, September 18th to November 13th 1965) wherein the Honourable Lady Creighton-Ward attempts to solve an ancient puzzle and inherit a fabulous ruby.

Eden returned for ‘The Vanishing Ray’ (#44-51) as the stately spy was mysteriously sent a torch that turned objects transparent, unaware that the wicked Hood was hot on its trail.

The deadly games end with ‘The Enemy Spy’, illustrated by the legendary Frank Hampson from the July 1965 Lady Penelope Summer Extra, wherein an idle glance at the TV news sets Her Ladyship on the trail of Bereznik’s top assassin…

But of course the real treasure is the phenomenal and unparalleled work of Frank Bellamy, whose fantastic design, drawing and painted colour (which holds up rather well here, despite the limitations of modern print technology to accommodate the subtleties of the photogravure process) steals the show – and usually one’s breath away!

The work of Bellamy and his successors are a cherished highpoint of British comic-making. Crisp, imaginative writing, great characters and some of the very best science-fiction art of all time make this a must-have book for just about anybody with a sense of adventure and love of comics. It doesn’t get better than this.
Thunderbirds ™ and © ITC Entertainment Group Limited 1964, 1999, 2013. Licensed by ITV Ventures Limited. All rights reserved.

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Heroic Tales: The Bill Everett Archives volume 2


By Bill Everett and others, edited and complied by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-600-3

Thanks to modern technology there is a superabundance of collections featuring the works of too-long ignored founding fathers and lost masters of American comic books. A magnificent case in point is this second superb chronicle revisiting the incredible gifts of one of the greatest draughtsmen and yarn-spinners the industry has ever seen.

You could save some time and trouble by simply buying the book now rather than waste your valuable off-hours reading my blather, but since I’m keen to carp on anyway feel free to accompany me as I delineate just why this tome needs to join the books on your “favourites” shelf.

He was a direct descendent and namesake of iconoclastic poet and artist William Blake. His tragic life and awe-inspiring body of work – Bill was possibly the most technically accomplished artist in US comicbook industry – reveals how a man of privilege and astonishing pedigree was wracked by illness, an addictive personality (especially alcoholism) and sheer bad luck, nevertheless shaped an art-form and left twin legacies: an incredible body of superlative stories and art, and, more importantly, saved many broken lives saved by becoming a dedicated mentor for Alcoholics Anonymous in his later years.

William Blake Everett was born in 1917 into a wealthy and prestigious New England family. Bright and precocious, he contracted Tuberculosis when he was twelve and was dispatched to arid Arizona to recuperate.

Thus began a life-long affair with the cowboy lifestyle: a hard-drinking, smoking, tall-tale telling breed locked in a war against self-destruction, described in the fact-filled, picture-packed Introduction by Blake Bell which covers ‘The Early Years of Comics: 1938-1942’, ‘The Birth of Marvel Comics’ and ‘The Comic Book Production System’, before ‘The Heroes’ precedes a full-colour selection of incredible prototypical adventure champions with a brief essay on the set-up of Centaur Comics, Novelty Press, Eastern Color Printing, Hillman and Lev Gleason Publications…

Accompanied by the covers for Amazing Mystery Funnies volume 2 #3, 5 and 6 (March, May & June 1939, Centaur) are three outer space exploits of futuristic trouble shooter Skyrocket Steele, whilst Tibetan-trained superhero Amazing-Man offers a transformative triptych of titanic tales spanning war-torn Europe, augmented by the covers to Amazing-Man Comics #9-11 February-April 1940.

Everett’s deeply held western dreams are covered next with a brace of rootin’ tootin’ yarns starring Bull’s-Eye Bill from Novelty Press’ Target Comics #3-4 (April & May 1940) whilst from #7-9 (August-October 1940), the author smoothly switched to sophisticated suspense with master of disguise The Chameleon crushing contemporary criminals in scintillating escapades from Target Comics’ answer to The Saint, the Falcon and the Lone Wolf.

Thanks to his breakthrough Sub-Mariner sagas Everett was inextricably linked to water-based action, and Eastern Comics hired him to create human waterspout Bob Blake, Hydroman for the bimonthly Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics. Here, spanning issues # 6-9 (May-November 1941, with the covers for #6 and 7), are four spectacular, eerie, offbeat exploits, covering an extended battle against foreign spies and American Fifth Columnists, after which Red Reed in the Americas! (created by Bob Davis & Fitz) offers the first two chapters in a political thriller wherein a college student and his pals head South of the Border to fight Nazi-backed sedition and tyranny in a stunning tour de force first seen in Lev Gleason’s Silver Streak Comics #20 & 21 (April & May 1942).

A section of Miscellaneous and text illustrations follows, blending Western spot drawings with the eye-catching covers from Amazing Mystery Funnies volume 2 #18, Target Comics #5 and 6, Blue Bolt (vol. 1 #11, vol. 2 #1, 2 and 3) and Famous Funnies #85.

The Humorous and More describes Everett’s forays into other markets: niche sectors such as licensed comics, comedy and romance, and even returns to pulp and magazine illustration as he strove to stay one step ahead of a constantly shifting market and his own growing reputation for binges and unreliability.

‘What’s With the Crosbys?’ is a superbly rendered gossip strip from Famous Stars #2 (1950, Ziff-Davis) whilst a stunning monochrome girly-pin-up of ‘Snafu’s Lovely Ladies’ (from Snafu #3 Marvel, March 1956), and the cover of Adventures of the Big Boy #1 (also Marvel, from the same month) lead into the Back Cover of Cracked #6 (December 1958, Major Magazines) and other visual features from the Mad imitator as well as the colour cover to less successful rip-off Zany (#3, from March 1959).

Everett’s staggering ability to draw beautiful women plays well in the complete romance strip ‘Love Knows No Rules’ (Personal Love #24, November 1953 Eastern Color), and this section concludes with a gritty black and white title page piece from combat pulp War Stories #1, courtesy of Marvel’s parent company Magazine Management, September 1952.

The Horror concentrates on the post-superhero passion for scary stories: an arena where Bill Everett absolutely shone like a diamond. For over a decade he brought a sheen of irresistible quality to the generally second-rate chillers Timely/Atlas/Marvel generated in competition with genre front-runners EC Comics. It’s easy to see how they could compete and even outlive their gritty, gore-soaked competitor, with such lush and lurid examples of covers and chillingly beautiful interior pages…

Following a third informative background essay detailing his life until its cruelly early end in 1973, a choice selection of his least known and celebrated efforts opens with tale of terror ‘Hangman’s House’ (Suspense #5, November, 1950): a grim confrontation with Satanic evil, followed by futuristic Cold War shocker ‘I Deal With Murder!’ and a visit to a dark carnival of purely human wickedness in ‘Felix the Great’ (both culled from Suspense #6, January 1951).

Adventures into Weird Worlds #4 (Spring 1952) offered a laconic, sardonic glimpse into ‘The Face of Death’, whilst from the next issue (April 1952) ‘Don’t Bury Me Deep’ tapped untold depths of tension in a moodily mordant exploration of fear and premature burial. Hard on the heels of the cover to Journey Into Unknown Worlds #14 (December 1952) comes one of its interior shockers as ‘The Scarecrow’ helped an aged couple solve their mortgage problems in a most unusual manner.

The Marvel madness then concludes with a cautionary tale of ‘That Crazy Car’ from Journey into Mystery #20, December 1954, concluding a far too brief sojourn amidst arguably Everest’s most accomplished works and most professionally adept period.

This magnificent collection ends with a gallery of pages and one complete tale from the end of his career; selected from an even more uninhibited publisher attempting to cash in on the adult horror market opened by Warren Publishing with Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella.

Skywald was formed by industry veteran Israel Waldman and Everett’s old friend Sol Brodsky, tapping into the burgeoning black and white market with mature-reader and supernatural magazines Hell-Rider, Crime Machine, Nightmare, Psycho and Scream. Offered an “in” Everett produced incredible pin-ups (included here are three from Nightmare (#1, 2 & 4, December 1970-June 1971), ‘A Psycho Scene’ (Psycho #5, November, 1971) a stunning werewolf pin-up from Psycho #6 and one of revived Golden Age monstrosity ‘The Heap’ from Psycho #4.

Most welcome, however, is a magnificent 10-page monochrome masterpiece of gothic mystery ‘The Man Who Stole Eternity’ from Psycho #3, May, 1971.

Although telling, even revelatory and concluding in a happy ending of sorts, what this book really celebrates is not the life but the astounding versatility of Bill Everett. A gifted, driven man, he was a born storyteller with the unparalleled ability to make all his imaginary worlds hyper-real; and for nearly five decades his incredible art and wondrous stories enthralled and enchanted everybody lucky enough to read them.

© 2013 Fantagraphics Books. Text © 2013 Blake Bell. All art © its respective owners and holders. All rights reserved.
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect for art lovers, Marvel Zombies and addicts of pure comics magic… 9/10