Category: Spy Stories

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The Adventures of Blake and Mortimer: The Complete Collection volume 1


By Edgar P. Jacobs, coloured by Philippe Biermé & Luce Daniels, with material by Brieg F. Haslé & Nicolas Thibaudin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-147-7 (Album HB), 978-1-80044-776-9 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Today in 1946, the European post war comics revolution began with the release of multi-national anthology periodical Le Journal de Tintin. This strip was the Other big draw of those early years and remains one of my all-time favourites…

Le Journal de Tintin launched on 26th September 1946, and evolved through the post-war Years to become a benchmark of quality comics storytelling. Initially “the magazine for the Youth from 7 to 77” was intended to create longform stories for later book publication by serialising stories in increments – a method still used to this day. It sold in a number of countries and regions in their own languages, initially combining new material with recycled and modified episodes of previous Tintin tales, before moving to all new material. Publication ceased in 1993, with the 29th June edition.

For the first three years LJdT was home to an astounding unfolding epic that enthralled the readership. The first of so many, The Adventures of Blake and Mortimer were converted into books which been tweaked over decades and are presented complete in this single volume, which gathers The Secret of the Swordfish part 1 The incredible Chase; Part 2 Mortimer’s Escape; and Part 3 SX1 Strikes Back, and includes fascinating background features by Brieg F Haslé and Nicholas Thibaudin…

Belgian Edgard Félix Pierre Jacobs (1904-1987) is rightly regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Continental comics industry. Although his output was relatively scant compared to some of his contemporaries, the iconic series he created formed the basis and foundation of the art form in Europe, and his splendidly adroit, roguish yet impeccably British adventurers Blake and Mortimer – from the premiere issue of Le Journal de Tintin onwards – became a staple of post-war European kids’ life, the way Dan Dare would in Britain across the 1950s.

E.P. Jacobs was born in Brussels, a precocious child who began feverishly drawing from an early age but was even more obsessed with music and the performing arts – especially opera. He attended a commercial school but, determined never to work in an office, pursued art and drama following his graduation in 1919. A succession of odd jobs at opera-houses; scene-painting, set decoration, acting and singing as an Extra supplemented his private performance studies, and in 1929 Jacobs won a Government award for classical singing. Sadly, his proposed career as an opera baritone was ended by the Great Depression, as the Arts sector took a nosedive following the stock market crash.

Picking up whatever stage work was going (including singing and performing) Jacobs segued into commercial illustration in 1940 and regular employment came from the magazine Bravo. While illustrating short stories and novels, Jacobs famously took over the syndicated Flash Gordon strip after occupying German authorities banned Alex Raymond’s quintessentially All-American Hero. This left the publishers desperately seeking someone to satisfactorily complete the saga., but Jacobs’ Stormer Gordon lasted less than a month before being similarly sanctioned by the Nazis. Thus Jacobs created his own epic science-fantasy feature in the legendary Le Rayon U: a milestone in both Belgian comics and science fiction adventure. The U Ray was a huge hit in 1943 and scored big all over again a generation later when Jacobs reformatted the original “text-block & picture” material to incorporate speech balloons before re-running the serial in Le Journal de Tintin, with subsequent releases forming a trio of graphic albums in 1974.

There are conflicting accounts of how Jacobs and Tintin creator Hergé got together and why they parted ways professionally, if not socially, but as to the whys and wherefores of the split, I frankly don’t care. What is known is this: whilst crafting the weekly U Ray, one of Jacob’s other jobs was scene-painting, and during the staging of a theatrical version of Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh, Hergé and Jacobs met and became friends. If the comics maestro was unaware of Jacob’s comics output before then, he was certainly made aware of it soon after. Jacobs began working on Tintin, colouring the original monochrome strips of The Shooting Star from newspaper Le Soir for a forthcoming album collection. By 1944, Jacobs was performing similar service for Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, King Ottokar’s Sceptre and The Blue Lotus. By now, he was also contributing to the illustration as well, on extended epic The Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun.

Jacob’s love of opera made it into the feature as Hergé (who loathed the stuff) teasingly created bombastic Bianca Castafiore as a comedy foil and based numerous bit players (like Jacobini in The Calculus Affair) on his long-suffering assistant. After the war and liberation, publisher Raymond Leblanc convinced Hergé, Jacobs and other creatives to work for his new venture. Launching publishing house Le Lombard, he also started Le Journal de Tintin, an anthology comic. Edited by Hergé, with various language editions in Belgium, France and Holland starring the intrepid boy reporter plus a host of newer heroes.

Beside Hergé, Jacobs and writer Jacques van Melkebeke, the comic also featured Paul Cuvelier’s Corentin and Jacques Laudy’s ‘The Legend of the Four Aymon Brothers’. Laudy had been a friend of Jacobs’ since they worked together on Bravo, and the first instalment of foreboding epic thriller serial Le secret de l’Espadon starred a bluff, gruff British scientist Professor Philip Mortimer as well as an English Military Intelligence officer who was closely modelled on Laudy: Captain Francis Blake.

The complete serialised saga ran from issue #1 (26th September 1946 to September 8th 1949): and confirmed Jacobs’ status as a star in his own right. In 1950, with the first 18 pages slightly redrawn, Le secret de l’espladon V1 (The Secret of the Swordfish – The Incredible Chase) became Le Lombard’s first album release; with the concluding part published 3 years later. Those volumes were reprinted nine more times between 1955 – 1982, with an additional single complete deluxe edition released in 1964. In 1984 the story was reformatted and repackaged in English translation as 3 volumes with additional material (mostly covers from the weekly Tintin added to the story as splash pages). It was part of a European push to win some of Britain’s lucrative love of Tintin & Asterix, but ended after seven volumes, having failed to find an audience. Happily, Cinebook successfully reintroduced us to the dashing duo – albeit after publishing later adventures first – and you can revel in their wonderment in either paperback album or eBook formats. Or in this Complete edition…

Hergé & Jacobs purportedly suffered a split in 1947 when the former refused to grant the latter a by-line on new Tintin material, but since they remained friends for life and Jacob’s continued to produce Blake and Mortimer for the Belgian weekly, I think it’s fair to say that if such was the case it was a pretty minor spat. I suspect The Secret of the Swordfish was simply taking up more and more of the brilliant, diligent artist’s time and attention…

The U Ray also provided early visual inspiration for Blake, Mortimer and implacable nemesis Colonel Olrik, who bear more than passing resemblances to heroic Lord Calder, Norlandian boffin Marduk and viperous villain Dagon.

One minor word of warning: by having the overarching enemies of mankind be a secret Asiatic “Yellow Peril” empire of evil, there’s potential for offence – unless one actually reads the text and finds that the presumed implicit racism is countered throughout by plenty of “good” ethnic characters and “evil” white folk. And remember the ultimate enemy Olrik could pass for a British stockbroker or political party candidate any day of the week…

This complete edition offers the entire epic in one almighty go and is sublimely supplemented by factual and contextual gold, mined by Brieg F. Haslé and Nicolas Thibaudin.

Delivered as The Secret Notebooks of Blake, Jacobs, and Mortimer, fun facts are broken down into engaging preparatory dossiers, divided by year and packed with candid preparatory material, designs and sketches. For 1946 we see a Synopsis of the first book; meet Jacobs ‘In his own words’; share ‘Mortimer’s Confidences’ and go ‘Behind the Scenes’ to examine extraordinary ‘Jacobsian Machines’ with ‘The Golden Rocket’. Then ‘Emblematic Characters’ reviews Olrik and we see ‘What Lies Behind a page’ with narrative techniques deconstructed in ‘The Third Word War Live… on Radio!’ before the initial episode begins…

The Secret of the Swordfish Part 1 – The Incredible Chase

Humanity’s next world war begins with ‘The Incredible Chase’ as a unknown army hidden in the Himalayas prepares to launch a global Blitzkrieg on a world slowly recovering from its second planetary conflagration. Wicked Basam Damdu, Emperor of Tibet, has assembled an arsenal of technological super-weapons and the world’s worst rogues such as insidious Colonel Olrik in a bid to seize control of Earth. However, a bold British-Asian spy has infiltrated the hidden fortress and surrenders his life to get off a warning message.

In England, physicist and engineer Philip Mortimer and MI5 Captain Francis Blake discuss the worsening situation at an industrial installation where the boffin’s radical new aircraft engine is being completed. When warning comes that the war begins that night, the old friends swing into immediate action. As super-bombers rain destruction down on all the world’s cities, Mortimer’s dedicated team prepares his own prototype, the Golden Rocket, for immediate launch, lifting off just as Olrik’s bombers appear over the desolate compound. Despite heavy fire, the Rocket easily outdistances rapacious Imperial forces, leaving ruined homes in its wake and the fleeing Britons flying into a hostile world now controlled by brutal maniac Basam…

Whilst attempting to join British Middle East resistance forces who possess another prototype super-plane, teething troubles and combat damage create tense moments in the fugitives’ flight. When the Rocket encounters a flight of jets, the test ship’s superior firepower enables it to fight free, but only at the cost of more structural deterioration. Fully failing now, the Rocket goes down in the rocky wilds between Iran and Afghanistan. Parachuting free of the doomed ship, Blake, Mortimer and the crew are machine-gunned by pursuing Empire jets…

Only three men make it to the ground safely and after days of struggle Blake, Mortimer and the indomitable Jim are cornered by Iranian troops who have joined Olrik’s forces. Sensing disaster, the Britons hide the plans to Mortimer’s super-plane, but one of the Iranians sees the furtive act. When no one is looking – especially his superiors – Lieutenant Ismail hurriedly scoops up the documents. Somehow, he misses one…

Under lock & key and awaiting Olrik’s arrival, the prisoners are accosted by Ismail, who sees opportunity for personal advancement which the Englishmen turn to their own advantage. Denouncing him, Blake instigates a savage fight between Ismail and his captain. During the brief struggle Jim sacrifices himself, allowing Blake & Mortimer’s escape with the recovered plans. Stealing a lorry, the desperate duo drive out into the dark desert night.

Followed by tanks into mountain passes, the wily pair trap their pursuers in a ravine just as hill partisans attack. The Imperial collaborators are wiped out and – upon trading information with the freedom fighters – the Englishmen take a captured vehicles to a distant rendezvous with the second Golden Rocket. Lack of fuel forces them to stop at a supply dump where they are quickly discovered, but by setting the dump ablaze, the heroes escape again. In the desert Olrik has arrived and found a sheet of notes left behind by Ismail. The cunning villain is instantly aware of what it means…

Fighting off aerial assaults from Empire jets and streaking for the mountains, Blake & Mortimer abandon their tank. Forced to travel on foot, they at last reach the meeting point where British-trained Sergeant Ahmed Nasir awaits them. The Indian served with Blake during the last war and is delighted to see him again, but as the trio make their way to the target site, they become aware that Olrik has already captured their last hope…

Only temporarily disheartened, the trio use commando tactics to infiltrate Olrik’s camp, stealing not the heavily-guarded prototype but the villainous Colonel’s own Red-Wing super-jet. Back on course to the British resistance forces, the seemingly-cursed fugitives are shot down by friendly fire: rebels perceiving the stolen plane as another enemy target.

Surviving this crash too, they are ferried in relative safety by apologetic tribesmen to enemy-occupied town Turbat. Whilst hiding, a spy of the Empire’s newly-appointed Wazir recognises the Englishmen. When Nasir realises they are in trouble, he dashes to the rescue but is too late to prevent Mortimer from being drugged. Sending the loyal Sergeant on ahead, Blake fights frantically to revive his comrade, even as Imperial troopers rapidly mount the stairs to their exposed upper room…

To Be Continued…

But only after Section 1947 offers more bonus material infilling the making of the tale. Here The Secret Notebooks… contribute another volume Synopsis while ‘In his own words’ concentrates on successor scripter Jean Van Hamme before Mortimer’s confidences reviews pertinent covers. ‘Behind the scenes’ focuses on the wide-ranging locations of the tale; Jacobsian Machines highlights ‘The Red Wing’ and Emblematic Characters explores the antecedents of arch villain Basam Damdu, whilst What Lies Behind a page and Setting The Mood delve into how Mortimer’s imprisonment is expressed, prior to the saga resuming…

 

The Secret of the Swordfish Part 2 – Mortimer’s Escape

This second instalment escalates the tale to another epic level, as the frantic action resumes with soldiers bursting into an empty chamber before being themselves attacked by the Khan. After a bloody firefight our heroes emerge from their cunning hiding place and flee Turbat, which has been seized by a furious spur-of-the-moment rebellion. Unknown to the fugitives, devious spy Bezendjas is hard on their heels and soon finds an opportunity to inform Olrik.

With the city in flames and fighting in every street, the callous colonel abandons his own troops to pursue Nasir, Blake & Mortimer into the wastes beyond the walls. On stolen horses the heroes endure all the ferocious hardships of the desert, but cannot outdistance Olrik’s staff-car. After days of relentless pursuit, they reach the rocky coastline and almost stumble into another Empire patrol. Whilst ducking them, Blake nearly falls to his doom…

Narrowly escaping death, the trio continue to climb steep escarpments and it is dusk before the Intelligence Officer realises that he has lost the precious plans and documents they have been carrying since fleeing England. Realising that someone must reach British resistance forces at their hidden Eastern base, the valiant comrades split up. Blake and Nasir continue onwards whilst Mortimer returns to the accident site. Finding the plans is a stroke of sheer good fortune, immediately countered by an ambush from Olrik’s troops. Despite a Herculean last stand, the scientist is taken prisoner, but only after successfully hiding the lost plans…

Three months later, Olrik is called to account in the exotic city-fortress of Lhasa. Basam-Damdu’s ruling council are unhappy with the Colonel’s lack of progress in breaking the captive British scientist, and even more infuriated by a tidal-wave of sabotage and armed rebellion throughout their newly-conquered territories. Even Olrik’s own spies are warning that his days as an agent of the Yellow Empire are numbered…

Given two days to make Mortimer talk, the Colonel returns to his base in Karachi just as another rebel raid allows Nasir to infiltrate the Empire’s HQ. Blake is also abroad in the city, having joined British forces in the area…

With less than a day to act, the MI5 officer rendezvous with a British submarine and travels to a vast atomic-powered secret installation under the Straits of Hormuz. Here, the Royal Navy are stoically preparing for a massive counter-attack on the Empire. With raids liberating interned soldiers all the time, ranks of scientists, technicians and soldiers are swelling daily.

Meanwhile, Nasir has his own desperate plan to free Mortimer, still adamantly refusing to talk of the mysterious “Swordfish” Olrik’s agents continually hear of…

Aware of his danger and the Sergeant’s efforts, Mortimer instead cunningly informs Nasir of the lost plans’ location, even as the impatient Emperor’s personal torturer arrives from Lhasa.

Always concerned with the greater good, Blake and a commando team secure the concealed plans and are met by Nasir who has been forced from Karachi after realising Bezendjas has recognised him. It appears that time has run out for their scholarly comrade…

Mortimer, however, has taken fate into his own hands. When the devious doctor Sun Fo begins his interrogation, the Professor breaks free and escapes into the fortress grounds during an earth-shattering storm. Trapped in a tower with only a handgun, he is determined to sell his life dearly, but is rescued by Blake and Nasir in a Navy Helicopter. Using the storm for cover, the heroes evade jet pursuit and an enemy naval sweep to link up with a British sub and escape into the night…

To Be Concluded…


Haslé & Thibaudin conclude The Secret Notebooks of Blake, Jacobs, and Mortimer with 1949 providing more bonus material reconstructing the embattled world. A Synopsis and overview includes In his own words spotlighting Philippe Biermé (President of the Edgar P. Jacobs Foundation) and successor artist Ted Benoit before Mortimer’s confidences considers more historical inspirations for story characters, Behind the scenes reviews more iconic covers and reformatting the serial for book publication; Jacobsian Machines shares design secrets of The Swordfish and Emblematic Characters denounces Razul the Bezendjas. What Lies Behind a page and Setting The Mood concludes the briefing with a closer look at key scene The Spider Crab Pit before the saga concludes with The Secret of the Swordfish Part 3 – SX1 Strikes Back!

After three years of stunning intrigue, mystery and action, E.P. Jacobs’ groundbreaking saga of a battle for global peace and universal liberty concluded in a spectacular duel beneath the Earth and all-out war in the skies of the embattled world. SX1 Strikes Back sees a tension-drenched race against time as Blake, Mortimer and the shattered dregs of Britain’s military forces prepare for a last-ditch strike using the Professor’s greatest inventions to win freedom for the oppressed peoples of Earth…

It opens with a stunning reprise of past events – cunningly compiled from six full-page illustrations (original covers from weekly Le Journal de Tintin), before a bold commando raid liberates a trainload of British prisoners. Brought to a fabulous subterranean fortress, the assorted scientists and engineers discover an underground railway, factory, armaments-facilities and even an atomic pile, all furiously toiling to complete the mysterious super-weapon dubbed “Swordfish”. The P.O.W.s readily join the volunteers, blithely unaware that supremely capable scoundrel Olrik is amongst them in devilish disguise…

Days pass and as preparations for the Big Push produce satisfactory results, a slew of disastrous accidents lead to one inescapable conclusion: there is a saboteur in the citadel…

Eventually Olrik grows overconfident and Mortimer exposes the infiltrator in a crafty trap. However, in a fraught confrontation the Colonel escapes after almost causing a nuclear catastrophe. Fleeing across the seabed, the harried spy narrowly avoids capture by diver teams and a hungry giant octopus! The flight takes its toll upon Olrik and he barely reaches land alive. Luckily for him, Bezendjas has been checking out that region of coastline and finds the exhausted scoundrel trapped in his stolen deep-sea suit. After a lengthy period, the dazed desperado recovers and delivers his hard-won information. All too soon, Imperial forces are converging on the British bastion.

As air and sea forces bombard the rocky island and sea-floor citadel, Olrik dispatches crack troops to break in via a concealed land entrance, resulting in a staggering clash in the depths of the Earth.

They were almost in time…

After months of desperate struggle, Mortimer and his colleagues have rushed to complete the incredible Swordfish: a hypersonic attack jet with uncanny manoeuvrability and appallingly destructive armament. Astoundingly launched from beneath the sea, a sleekly sinister plane single-handedly shoots the Empire jets out of the skies before sinking dozens of attacking ships. Ruthlessly piloting SX1 is Francis Blake; and even as he wreaks havoc upon the invading force, he is joined by SX2: a second, equally unstoppable super-jet…

Before long the Yellow Empire is in full retreat. A squadron of Swordfish is completed and with the once-occupied planet in full revolt, Lhasa soon tastes the flaming death it callously inflicted upon a peaceful, unsuspecting and now extremely vengeful world. They are only just in time: the insane and malignant Emperor is mere moments away from launching a doomsday flight of atomic missiles to every corner of the planet he so briefly owned…

This Cinebook Complete edition also includes fascinating illustrated essay ‘Jacobs: 1946, The Swordfish, starting point of a masterful work’, first seen in The World of Edgar P. Jacobs, plus a biographical feature and chronological publication chart of Jacobs’ and his successors’ efforts.

Gripping and fantastic in the truest tradition of pulp sci-fi and Boy’s Own Adventures, Blake and Mortimer are the very epitome of dogged determination; always delivering grand, old-fashioned heroic Blood-&-Thunder thrills & spills in timeless fashion and with astonishing visual punch. Despite an epic body count and dated milieu, any kid able to suspend modern mores and cultural disbelief (call it alternate Earth history or Bakelite-Punk if you want) will experience the adventure of their lives – and so will their children.

Original editions © Éditions BLAKE & MORTIMER/Studio Jacobs (Dargaud – Lombard S.A.) 1984, 1985, 1986 by E.P. Jacobs. Cahier Hachette© Éditions BLAKE & MORTIMER/Studio Jacobs (Dargaud – Lombard S.A.) 2012, Brieg F. Haslé et Nicolas Thibaudin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2024 Cinebook Ltd.
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Spot On Epic Retro-Wonderment… 10/10

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Marvel Firsts: The 1960s


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Larry Lieber, Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, Arnold Drake, Steve Parkhouse, Don Heck, Bill Everett, Dick Ayers, Gene Colan, John Buscema, George Tuska, Christpher Rule, George Klein, Paul Reinman, Joe Sinnott, George Roussos, Sol Brodsky, Vince Colletta, Chic Stone, John Verpoorten, Syd Shores, Frank Giacoia, Sid Greene, Stan Goldberg, Sam Rosen, Art Simek, Terry Szanics, John Duffy & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5864-6 (TPB), 978-1-3025-0063-4 (Digital edition)

This book includes some Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless Fantasy Masterpiece for All Old Alike… 9/10

For most fans, the Marvel Age of Comics began with Fantastic Four #1 at the tail end of 1961, but the company itself cites Marvel Comics #1 from 1939, when the outfit was called Timely, as the big natal event. That means this year is their 87th anniversary. The first modern (for which read Post-War) comic books badged with a Marvel Comics brand were mystery anthology Journey into Mystery #69 and teen-humour hit Patsy Walker #95 (both cover-dated June 1961), each displaying an “MC” box on the cover. These soon proliferated until iconic storyteller Steve Ditko redesigned the masthead corner box for Amazing Spider-Man #2 (cover dated May 1963 and on sale from February 12th). By the July releases the name was on all issues and Marvel was forever linked to a comics revolution…

Whenever the event was, has been celebrated in a number of big-ticket compilations. This hefty carefully curated edition from 2011 wasn’t one of them, but is a superb overview of the decade of innovation that made the House of Ideas a global force and household name. It collects the first story of each character’s own series (not necessarily the same as a debut appearance), highlighting key moments through material taken from Rawhide Kid #17, Amazing Adventures #1, Fantastic Four #1, Tales to Astonish #27, 51 & 70, Incredible Hulk #1, Amazing Fantasy #15, Journey into Mystery #83, Strange Tales #101, 110 & 135, Two-Gun Kid #60, Tales of Suspense #39, 49 & 59, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandoes #1, The Avengers #1, X-Men #1, Daredevil #1, Ghost Rider #1, Marvel Super-Heroes #12, 19-20, Captain Savage #1 & Silver Surfer #1. These collectively cover August 1960 to May 1969 and also incorporate a vast gallery of covers from the other titles that came and went with such breathtaking rapidity in those days.

As stated, the company that would be Marvel was still going (albeit in dire straits) when Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Ditko and a select band of other multi-genre creators started that revolution, and these tales offer unmatched insights into how it all happened by re-presenting official first appearances…

Opening in January 1960 with 16 genre covers ranging from Battle #70 to Love Romances #87 to Patsy Walker #89, the first inklings of what’s to come are seen in narrative components taken from Rawhide Kid #17, by Lee, Kirby and inker Dick Ayers.

The Kid was one of Atlas’ older icons, having starred in his own title since 1955. A stock sagebrush centurion clad in buckskins, he was an early casualty when Atlas’ distribution crisis forced the company to cut back to 16 titles in the autumn of 1957. With westerns huge on TV and youthful rebellion a hot topic in 1960, Lee & Kirby conceived a brand-new sixgun stalwart – and a teenager to boot! – and launched him in the summer of the year, economically continuing the numbering of his cancelled predecessor.

It’s important to remember that these yarns aren’t trying to be gritty or authentic: they’re accessing the vast miasmic morass of wholesome, homogenised Hollywood mythmaking that generations of consumer preferred to learning the grim everyday toil, travail and terror of the real Old West, so sit back, reset your moral compass to “fair enough” and revel in simplistic Black Hats vs White Hats with all the dynamic bombast and bravura Kirby & Ayers could muster.

It all begins with adopted teen Johnny Bart teaching all and sundry in a cow-town named Rawhide to ‘Beware! The Rawhide Kid’ after his retired Texas Ranger Uncle Ben (!) is gunned down by fame-hungry cheat Hawk Brown. After very publicly exercising his right to vengeance, the naive kid flees Rawhide before offering justifications or explanation, resigned to living as an outlaw forevermore. His reputation is further enhanced when he routs a masked gang robbing the ‘Stagecoach to Shotgun Gap!’, after which Don Heck delivers one of his slickly authentic western yarns as a veteran gunslinger devises a way to end his own fearsome career ‘With Gun in Hand!’ The issue closed with by Lee, Kirby & Ayers revealing how another tragic misunderstanding confirms Johnny Bart’s destiny ‘When the Rawhide Kid Turned… Outlaw!’

Following a trio of romantic comedy covers (My Girl Pearl #7; Teen-Age Romance #77 & Life with Millie #8) we turn to the splendidly addictive men-vs-monsters anthology titles wherein Amazing Adventures #1 (cover-dated June 1961) begins a cautious experiment by launching a low-key – un-costumed even – paranormal mystically empowered investigator for a short run of pre-superhero escapades. ‘I Am the Fantastic Dr. Droom!’ (Lee & Kirby with Ditko inking) sees a seemingly sedate American drawn to Tibet to be trained in ancient mysteries before returning home as an occult consultant. The cover for Linda Carter, Student Nurse #1 then takes us to the big moment when everything changed…

Cover-dated November 1961 and on sale from August 8th, Fantastic Four #1 introduced a brave new world in eponymous epic ‘The Fantastic Four’ as maverick genius Reed Richards summons his fiancée Sue Storm, their pilot pal Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother Johnny before heading off on their first mission. Via flashback we learn they are driven survivors of a private spaceshot that went horribly wrong after Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding. On crashing back to Earth, they found they’d all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks.

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue could become invisible, Johnny Storm could turn into living flame and tragic Ben was reduced to a shambling, rocky living horror. Shaken but unbowed, they vowed to dedicate their new abilities to benefiting mankind. Crafted by Lee & Kirby. inked by George Klein & Christopher Rule, the drama intensified with ‘The Fantastic Four meet the Mole Man’ as they foil another outcast who tyrannically controls monsters and slave humanoids from far beneath the Earth. This summation of the admittedly mediocre plot cannot do justice to the engrossing wonder of that breakthrough issue… we really have no grasp today of just how different in tone, and how shocking it all was.

Next comes Ditko’s cover to Amazing Adult Fantasy #7, preceding a throwaway vignette from another of the company’s anthological monster mags. Taken from Tales to Astonish #27 (January 1962) a 7-page short introduces Dr Henry Pym, the maverick scientist who discovered a shrinking potion and invoked peril, wonder and a kind of companionship amongst the lowliest creatures on Earth and under it. This engaging piece of fluff – which owed more than a little to movie The Incredible Shrinking Man – was plotted by Lee, scripted by his brother Larry Lieber and stunningly illustrated by Kirby & Ayers.

The Incredible Hulk smashed right into his own bi-monthly comic and, after some classic romps by Young Marvel’s finest creators, crashed right out again. After 6 issues the series was cancelled and Lee retrenched, making the Gruff Green Giant a perennial guest-star in other Marvel titles until such time as they could restart the drama in their new Split-Book format in Tales to Astonish where Ant/Giant-Man was rapidly proving to be a character who had outlived his time.

Cover-dated May 1962, that first issue observes puny atomic scientist Bruce Banner, sequestered on a secret military base in the Midwest desert, perpetually bullied by bombastic commander General “Thunderbolt” Ross as a clock counts down to the world’s first Gamma Bomb detonation. Besotted by the General’s daughter Betty, Banner endures the General’s constant jibes as the timer ticks on and tension increases. At the final moment Banner sees a teenager lollygagging at Ground Zero and frantically rushes to the site to drag the boy away. Unknown to everyone, the assistant he’s entrusted to delay the countdown has an agenda of his own…

Rick Jones is a wayward but good-hearted kid. After initial resistance he lets himself be pushed into a safety trench, but just as Banner prepares to join him The Bomb explodes…

Somehow surviving the blast, Banner and the boy are secured by soldiers, but that evening as the sun sets the scientist undergoes a monstrous transformation. He grows larger and his skin turns stony grey…

In 6 simple pages that’s how it all starts, and no matter what any number of TV or movie reworkings or comicbook retcons and psycho-babble re-evaluations would have you believe that’s still the best and most primal take on the origin. A good man, an unobtainable girl, a foolish kid, an unknown enemy and the horrible power of destructive science unchecked…

Written by Lee, drawn by Kirby & inked by Paul Reinman, ‘The Coming of the Hulk’ barrels along as the man-monster & Jones are kidnapped by Banner’s Soviet counterpart The Gargoyle for a rousing round of espionage and Commie-bashing…

Crafting extremely well-received monster and mystery tales for and with Stan Lee, Ditko had been rewarded with his own title. Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy featured a subtler alternative kind of yarns other than Rampaging Aliens or Furry Underpants Monsters, which – though individually entertaining – had been slowly losing traction in the world of comics ever since National/DC had successfully reintroduced costumed heroes.

Lee & Kirby had responded with Fantastic Four and the ahead-of-his-time Hulk, but there was no indication of the renaissance to come when the cover of officially just-cancelled Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) highlighted a brand new and rather eerie adventure character. The wonderment came and went in 11 captivating pages as ‘Spider-Man!’ told the parable of Peter Parker, a smart yet alienated kid bitten by a radioactive spider on a high school science trip. Discovering he has developed arachnid abilities (which he augments with his own natural engineering genius) Parker does what any lonely, geeky nerd would do when given such a gift… he tries to cash in for girls, fame and money.

Creating a costume to hide his identity in case he makes a fool of himself, Parker becomes a minor celebrity and a vain, self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief flees past, he doesn’t lift a finger to stop him, only to find when he returns home that his Uncle Ben has been murdered. Crazy for vengeance, Parker stalks the assailant who made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known, to find that it is the felon he couldn’t be bothered with. Since his irresponsibility led to the death of the man who raised him, the boy swears to always use his powers to help others…

It wasn’t a new story, but the setting was familiar to every kid reading it and the artwork was downright spooky. This wasn’t the gleaming high-tech world of moon-rockets, giant aliens and flying cars, this stuff could happen to anybody. The tragic last ditch tale struck a chord with the readers and by Christmas a new comic book superstar was ready to launch in his own title, with Ditko eager to show what he could do with his first returning character since the demise of Charlton action hero Captain Atom.

The Mighty Thor was the comic series in which Kirby’s restless fascination with all things Cosmic was honed and refined through his dazzling graphics and captivating concepts. The King’s examination of space-age mythology began in modest fantasy title Journey into Mystery where, in the summer of 1962, a tried-&-true comic book concept (feeble mortal transformed into god-like hero) was revived by the fledgling outfit to add a Superman analogue to their growing roster of costumed adventurers. Journey into Mystery #83 (August 1962) saw a bold costumed warrior jostle aside the regular fare of monsters, robots and sinister scientists in a brash, vivid explosion of verve and vigour. The initial exploit follows crippled US doctor Donald Blake vacationing in Norway and encountering the vanguard of an alien invasion. Fleeing, he is trapped in a cave and finds an old, gnarled walking stick. In his frustration, he smashes the stick into a huge boulder obstructing his escape and his spindly frame transforms into Norse God of Thunder Mighty Thor!

Plotted by Lee, scripted by Lieber and illustrated by Kirby & inker Joe Sinnott (at this juncture a full illustrator, Sinnott would become Kirby’s primary inker for most of his Marvel career), ‘The Stone Men of Saturn’ is pure early Marvel: bombastic, fast-paced, gloriously illogical and captivatingly action-packed. The hugely under-appreciated Art Simek was the letterer and logo designer.

It was clear that they were making it up as they went along (not in itself a bad thing) and all that infectious enthusiasm showed. Amazing Fantasy #15 came out the same month as JiM #83 and a month later Tales to Astonish #35 – the first featuring Henry Pym as Astonishing Ant-Man in costumed capers appeared. In this volume you’ll find the cover to TtA #35 to mark that occasion…

Hot on the heels of the runaway success of the FF, Stan & Jack spun the most colourful – and youngest – member of the team into a solo series, seeking to recapture the glory of the 1940s when the original Human Torch was one of the company’s “Big Three” superstars. Within a year, magic-&-monsters anthology Strange Tales became home for the hot-headed hero. ST #101 saw Johnny Storm start his off-duty career with eponymous exploit ‘The Human Torch’. Scripted by Lieber (over a plot by brother Stan) and sublimely illustrated by Kirby & Ayers, the plucky lad investigates sabotage at a seaside amusement park and uncovers Commie-conniving by Red spy The Destroyer. Kirby pencilled the first few adventures before moving on, with Ayers assuming artistic control for most of its run, although The King generated some of the best covers of his Marvel career throughout the Torch’s Strange Tales tenure.

An odd inconsistency – or, more likely, tension- and drama-inducing gimmick – did crop up here. Although public figures in the FF, Johnny and sister Sue lived part-time in Long Island hamlet Glenville, where, despite the townsfolk being fully aware of her as the glamorous and heroic Invisible Girl, they seemed oblivious to the fact that her brother is the equally famous Torch. Many daft-but-ingenious pages of Johnny protecting his “secret identity” ensued before the situation was brilliantly resolved…

Despite the runway success of its new-fangled superheroes, Marvel still offered a range of genres like westerns. August 1962 saw the retooling of another retired Atlas property when Two-Gun Kid #60 (cover-dated November) introduced Eastern lawyer Matt Hawk. He moved to barbarous, unruly Tombstone, Texas in ‘The Beginning of the Two-Gun Kid’ (Lee, Kirby & Ayers). After merciless and relentless bullying, the tenderfoot is mentored by aged gunslinger Ben Dancer and becomes a powerful, ultrafast deadly accurate shootist.

When Ben is driven out of town by thugs working for land baron Clem Carter, Hawk adopts a masked identity to see that justice is done. Heck then limns stand-alone tale ‘The Outcast’, exposing the naked ambition of a Navajo warrior, before Hawk returns to complete his origin story in ‘I Hate the Two-Gun Kid!’ as romantic interest Nancy Carter succumbs to a scheme by her stepbrother to defraud her and frame the new hero in town…

More striking covers – Modelling with Millie #21 & Amazing Spider-Man #1 – precede the debut of Marvel’s next milestone in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963 and on sale for Christmas 1962). Created in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis at a time when “Red-baiting” & “Commie-bashing” were national obsessions in the U.S. the emergence of a brilliant new Thomas Edison employing Yankee ingenuity and invention to safeguard the World was an inevitable proposition.

Combining the cherished belief that (US) technology could solve every problem with universal imagery of noble knights battling evil, the proposition became certainty. Of course, kids thought it great fun and very, very cool. Scripted by Lieber (over Lee’s plot) and illustrated by the criminally unappreciated Don Heck, ‘Iron Man is Born’ saw electronics wizard turned arms maker Tony Stark field testing inventions in Vietnam when he is wounded by a landmine. Captured by Viet Cong leader Wong-Chu, Stark is given a grim ultimatum. Create weapons for the Reds and a doctor will remove from his chest the shrapnel that will kill him within seven days. If not…

Knowing Commies can’t be trusted, Stark and aged Professor Yinsen – another captive scientist – build a mobile iron lung (remember this is years before transplants or pacemakers) to keep his heart beating, equipping it with all the weapons their ingenuity and resources can secretly build. Naturally they succeed, defeating Wong-Chu, but not without tragic sacrifice.

Next was a new genre title, again given a fresh treatment by Lee, Kirby & Ayers. Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos (May 1963) was an improbable, over-the-top WWII combat comics series similar in tone to later ensemble action movies like The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch or The Dirty Dozen. The surly squad of sorry reprobates were the first of three teams concocted by men-on-fire Kirby & Lee to secure Marvel’s growing position as the publisher to watch. Sgt. Fury started out as a pure Kirby creation. As with his various war comics, The King made everything look harsh and real and appalling: the people and places are all grimy and tired, battered yet indomitable. Jack had served in some of the worst battles of the war and never forgot horrific and heroic things he saw. These he more graphically expressed in his efforts during the 1950s genre boom at many different companies. However, even at kid-friendly, Comics Code-sanitised Marvel, those experiences perpetually leaked through onto his powerfully gripping pages.

The saga began with blistering premier ‘Sgt. Fury, and his Howling Commandoes’ (that’s how they spellleded it in the storrie-title – altho knot enneewaire else): a rip-snorting yarn bursting with full-page panels interspersed with ‘Meet the Howling Commandos’ – a double-page spread spotlighting the 7-member First Attack Squad; Able Company, comprising Fury himself; former circus strongman/Corporal “Dum-Dum” Dugan and privates Robert “Rebel” Ralston (a Kentucky jockey); college student Jonathan “Junior” Juniper; jazz trumpeter Gabe Jones; Brooklyn mechanic Izzy Cohen and glamorous movie heartthrob Dino Manelli.

Controversially even for the 1960s, this battle Rat Pack was an integrated unit with Jewish and black members as well as Catholics, Southern Baptists and New York white guys all merrily serving together. The Howling Commandos pushed envelopes and busted taboos from the very start and the first mission was a non-stop riot pitting ‘Seven Against the Nazis!’ whilst putting the squad through their unique paces. The ragged band of indomitable warriors took on hordes of square-necked Nazis to save D-Day and rescue a French resistance fighter carrying vital plans of the invasion and is counterpointed by a far more low-key introduction for the next debut.

Something definitely different debuted at the back of Strange Tales #110.

When the budding House of Ideas introduced a warrior wizard to their proliferating pantheon in the summer of 1963 it was a bold but curious move. Bizarre adventures with menacing monsters were still incredibly popular both in and outside comics but mention of magic or the supernatural – especially vampires, werewolves and their eldritch ilk – were savagely proscribed by the censorship panel which dictated almost all aspects of story content. At this time (nearly a decade after an anti-comics public campaign led to Senate hearings) all comics were ferociously monitored and adjudicated by a draconian Comics Code Authority. Even though some of smaller company’s strongest sellers were mystery mags, their underlying themes and premises were almost universally mad science & alien wonders, not necromantic or thaumaturgic horrors. That might explain Lee’s unobtrusive introduction of Ditko’s mystic defender: an exotic, twilit troubleshooter inhabiting the shadowy outer fringes of rational, civilised society in one of those aforementioned monster titles.

Tales of Suspense #41 (May 1963) saw neophyte Iron Man battle crazed tech-wizard Doctor Strange, and with the codename successfully and legally in copyrightable print, preparations began for a truly different kind of ongoing hero. Marvel had recently published a quasi-mystic champion in balding, trench-coated Doctor Droom (later rechristened – or is that re-paganed? – Dr. Druid) and when Stephen Strange scored big, the prototype was retro-written into Marvel continuity as an alternative candidate and precursor for the ultimate role of Sorcerer Supreme.

Thus, without any preamble, our first meeting with the man of mystery comes courtesy of a quiet little chiller which has never been surpassed for sheer mood and imagination. Lee & Ditko’s ‘Doctor Strange Master of Black Magic!’ (Strange Tales #110, July 1963) saw a terrified man troubled by dreams approach an exceptional consultant in his search of a cure. That perfect 5-page fright-fest introduced entire fresh realms and featured deceit, desperation, double-dealing and the introduction of both a mysterious, aged oriental mentor and devilish dream demon Nightmare in an unforgettable yarn that might well be Ditko’s finest moment.

After a period of meteoric expansion, by mid-1963 the ever-expanding Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that cemented the legitimacy of the Silver Age of American comics. The notion of putting a bunch of all-star eggs in one basket had made Justice League of America such a winner it inspired fading Atlas to try superheroes again. Nearly 18 months after FF #1, Marvel had a viable stable of leading men (but only sidekick women) so Lee & Kirby assembled a handful of them and moulded them into a force for justice and soaring sales. Seldom has it ever been done with such style and sheer exuberance. Cover dated September 1963, The Avengers #1 kicks off with ‘The Coming of the Avengers’: one of the industry’s cannier origin tales. Instead of starting at a zero point and acting as if the reader knew nothing, Stan & Jack (plus inker Ayers) assumed consumers had at least a passing familiarity with their other titles and wasted very little time or energy on introductions.

In Asgard, God of Mischief Loki is imprisoned on a dank isle, hungry for vengeance on his half-brother Thor. Observing Earth, the wicked godling espies monstrous, misunderstood Hulk and engineers a situation wherein the man-brute seemingly goes on a rampage, simply to trick the Thunder God into battling the brute. When the Hulk’s sidekick Rick Jones radios the FF for assistance, devious Loki diverts the transmission and smugly awaits the outcome of his trickery Sadly, Iron Man, Ant-Man & The Wasp also pick up the redirected SOS and respond. As heroes converge in the US Southwest to search for the Jade Giant, they realize that something is oddly amiss…

This terse, epic, compelling and wide-ranging yarn (New York, New Mexico, Detroit and Asgard in 22 pages) is Lee & Kirby at their bombastic best, but that same month they also premiered another super squad that was the hero team’s polar opposite. X-Men #1 introduced gloomy, serious Scott Summers (Cyclops), ebullient Bobby Drake/Iceman, wealthy golden boy Warren Worthington III codenamed Angel, and erudite, brutish genius Henry McCoy as The Beast. The teens were students of wheelchair-bound telepath Professor Charles Xavier, dedicated to broker peace and achieve integration between sprawling masses of humanity and Homo Superior: an emergent off-shoot species of mutants with incredible extra abilities.

Scripted by Lee ‘X-Men’ opens with the boisterous boy students welcoming newest classmate Jean Grey (promptly dubbed Marvel Girl): a young woman possessing the ability to move objects with her mind. Whilst Xavier is explaining the team goals and mission in life, actual Evil Mutant Magneto is single-handedly taking over US missile-base Cape Citadel. A seemingly unbeatable threat, the master of magnetism is nonetheless valiantly driven off by the young heroes on their first outing in under 15 minutes. It doesn’t sound like much, but the gritty, dynamic power of Kirby’s art, solidly inked by veteran Paul Reinman, imparted raw aggressive energy to the tale which carried the bi-monthly book irresistibly forward.

As Henry Pym matured from Ant-Man to Giant-Man, he took on a crimefighting partner in Janet Van Dyne: The Wasp. Although she almost never got a chance to solo star, with Tales to Astonish #52 (January 1964) Jan was granted a back-up series where she narrated horror stories like the one included here. Crafted by Lee, Lieber & George Roussos, ‘Somewhere Waits a Wobbow!’is a standard cautionary tale of fate and justice catching up to a crooked ne’er-do-well, and is followed here by a similar new position for an alien first introduced in Fantastic Four #13. From the same team and the same month, Tales of the Watcher began in Tales of Suspense #49 with the omnipotent intergalactic voyeur sharing ‘The Saga of the Sneepers!’ with predatory extraterrestrials observing Earth and making plans of conquest…

As the evolved Atlas Comics grew in popularity, it gradually supplanted its broad variety of genre titles with more and more superheroes. The recovering powerhouse was still hampered by a crippling distribution deal that limited the company to 16 titles per month (which would restrict their output until 1968), so each new untried book would have to fill the revenue-generating slot (however small) of an existing title.

Moreover, as costumed characters were selling, each new similarly-themed title would limit the monster, western, war, humour or girls’ comics that had been the outfit’s recent bread and butter. It was putting a lot of those eggs in one basket, and superheroes had failed twice before for Marvel. So Daredevil, the Man Without Fear (April 1964) might have seemed a risky venture. Yes, the artist was one of the industry’s most talented veterans, but not to the young kids who were its audience. Most importantly, he wasn’t Kirby or Ditko…

‘The Origin of Daredevil’ sees how young Matthew Murdock grew up in the slums, raised by his dad Battling Jack Murdock, a second-rate prize-fighter. Determined that his boy will be someone, Jack extracts a solemn promise from his son that he will never fight. Mocked by other kids who sarcastically dub him “Daredevil”, Matt abides by his vow, but secretly trains his body to physical perfection. One day he saves a blind man from being hit by a speeding truck, only to be struck in the face by its radioactive cargo. His sight is burned away forever but his other senses are super-humanly enhanced and he gains a sixth: “radar-sense”. He tells no-one, not even his dad.

Jack is in dire straits. As his career declined, he signed with The Fixer, knowing full well what the corrupt promoter expected from his fighters. Yet Jack’s star started to shine again and his downward spiral reversed itself. Unaware that he was being set up, Murdock got a shot at the Big Time, but when ordered to take a dive, refused. Winning was the proudest moment of his life. When his bullet-riddled corpse was found, the cops had suspicions but no proof…

Heartbroken Matt graduates college with a law degree and sets up in business with old room-mate Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. They hire young secretary Karen Page and, with his life on track, Matt now has time to solve his father’s murder. His promise had stopped him from fighting but what if he became somebody else? Scripted by Lee and moodily illustrated by Bill Everett (with assistance from Ditko) this is a rather nonsensical yet visually compelling yarn that just goes through the motions, barely hinting at the magic yet to come.

A cover gallery highlighting Marvel Tales Annual #1, Tales to Astonish #60 and photo-satire mag Monsters to Laugh With #1 then leads to the return of Captain America in his own series. After his resurrection in Avengers #4, the golden Age Cap exponentially grew in popularity and was quickly awarded his own solo feature, sharing Tales of Suspense with Iron Man. Sparsely scripted by Lee with the staggeringly perfect team of Kirby & Chic Stone illustrating, ‘Captain America’ is one phenomenal extended fight as an army of thugs invade Avengers Mansion because “only the one without superpowers” is at home. They soon learn the folly of that misapprehension…

Veteran war-hero Nick Fury was reimagined in Fantastic Four #21 (December 1963) as a grizzled, world-weary CIA Colonel at the periphery of really big events in a fast-changing world. Fury’s latter-day self then emerged as a big-name star once espionage yarns went global in the wake of popular TV sensations like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The elder iteration was given a second series in Strange Tales #135 (August 1965). Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (which back then stood for Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division) combined Cold War tensions with sinister schemes of World Conquest by a subversive, all-encompassing, hidden enemy organisation. The unfolding saga came with captivating Kirby-designed super-science gadgetry…

Kirby’s genius for graphic wizardry and gift for dramatic staging mixed with Lee’s manic melodrama to create a tough, tense series which the writers & artists who followed turned into a non-stop riot of action and suspense. The main event opens in ST #135 as the Human Torch lead feature was summarily replaced. In the rocket-paced first episode, Fury is asked to volunteer for the most dangerous job in the world: leading a new counter-intelligence agency sworn to stop secret subversive super-science organisation Hydra. With assassins dogging his every move, the Take-Charge Guy with the Can-Do Attitude proves he is ‘The Man for the Job!’ in a potent 12-page thriller by Lee, Kirby & Ayers.

Originally devised by Bill Everett in 1939, Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner is the offspring of a water-breathing Atlantean princess and a US polar explorer: a hybrid being of immense strength, highly resistant to physical harm, able to fly and exist above and below the waves. Namor technically predates Marvel/Atlas/Timely Comics. He first caught public attention as part of the fire vs. water headlining team in Marvel Comics #1 (October 1939 and Marvel Mystery Comics from the second issue onward), sharing honours and top billing with the original Human Torch, but he had originally been seen (albeit in a truncated monochrome version) in Motion Picture Funnies: a weekly promotional giveaway handed out to moviegoers earlier in the year.

Rapidly emerging as one of the company’s biggest draws, Namor gained his own title at the end of 1940 (cover-dated Spring 1941) and was one of the last super-characters to go at the end of the first heroic age. In 1954, when Atlas briefly revived its Big Three super characters, Everett returned for an extended run of superb fantasy tales, but even so the time wasn’t right and the title sunk again. When Lee & Kirby began reinventing comic books in 1961 they retooled the forgotten awesome amphibian as a troubled, semi-amnesiac, decidedly regal and grandiose antihero in FF #4. Namor despised humanity; embittered at the loss of his sub-sea kingdom (which was seemingly destroyed by atomic testing) whilst being simultaneously besotted with Sue Storm.

Namor knocked around the budding continuity, squabbling with assorted heroes like Hulk, Avengers & X-Men, before winning his own series as half of Tales to Astonish. Marvel’s split-books had been devised as a way to promote their growing stable of stars whilst toiling under a highly restrictive distribution deal limiting the number of titles they could release each month. In 1968 the company ended this commitment and expanded exponentially.

After spectacularly battling Daredevil in the Scarlet Swashbuckler’s 7th issue, TtA #70 heralded ‘The Start of the Quest!’ as Lee, Gene Colan (in pseudonymous disguise as Adam Austin) & Vince Colletta set Sub-Mariner to storming an Atlantis under martial law ordered by his usurping Warlord Krang. The effort is for naught and our returning hero is rejected by his own people. Callously imprisoned, the troubled Prince is freed by his oft-neglected and ignored paramour Lady Dorma, charging him to undertake a mystical quest to find the lost Trident of King Neptune… which only the rightful ruler of Atlantis can hold.

More covers follow: Monsters Unlimited #1, Patsy Walker’s Fashion Parade #1, reprint anthologies Marvel Collectors’ Items Classics #1, Fantasy Masterpieces #1, Marvel Tales #3, King Size Special Marvel Super-Heroes #1 & Thor #126 (a first issue as Journey into Mystery was sensibly retitled here) before a new masked-&-costumed western hero debuted in Ghost Rider #1 (December 1966).

‘The Origin of the Ghost Rider’ by Gary Friedrich, Roy Thomas, Ayers & Colletta revealed how Eastern teacher Carter Slade is shot by fake Indians and brought back from the brink of death by real ones. Saved by recently-orphaned Jamie Jacobs, Slade is healed by shaman Flaming Star who trains Slade in combat and grants him gifts enabling him to perform tricks of stage magic (such as night time invisibility, image projection and bodily discorporation). Creating a glowing costume, Slade goes after plundering white men impersonating native tribes – and who killed Jamie’s parents – as a spectral avenging spirit “He who rides the Night Winds”…

Older fans – or their grandparents – might possibly recognise this hero as a western legend created by Ray Krank & Dick Ayers for Tim Holt #11 (Magazine Enterprises, 1949) and later immortalised by Frank Frazetta. They are stunningly, litigiously similar and Marvel made good use of the original’s reputation and recently voided copyright ownership. The same holds true for their next superhero addition, who crops up following another cover gallery featuring Not Brand Echh #1 and animated cartoon tie-in one-shot America’s Best (TV) Comics #1.

After years as an also-ran/up-and-comer, by 1968 Marvel Comics was in the ascendant. Their sales were catching up with industry leaders National/DC Comics and Gold Key, and they at last secured a new distribution deal that allowed them to expand their titles exponentially. Once the doubled-up stars of split-books Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish & Strange Tales all got their own titles, the House of Ideas just kept on going. One dead-cert idea was a star named after the company… one with a vast amount of name-recognition and nostalgic pedigree as well.

After the DC/Fawcett court case of the 1940s-1950s, the name Captain Marvel disappeared from newsstands, but in 1967, during the superhero boom and camp craze generated by the Batman TV show, publisher MLF secured rights to the name and produced giant-sized comics featuring an intelligent robot who could divide his body into segments and shoot lasers from his eyes. Quirky, charming and devised by the legendary Carl (Human Torch) Burgos who had recently worked for Marvel, the comic nevertheless did not attract a large following. Upon its demise, the name was quickly snapped up by the resurgent Marvel Comics Group. Marvel Super-Heroes was a brand-new title. It had been giant-sized reprint title Fantasy Masterpieces, combining monster & mystery tales with Golden Age Timely classics. With #12, it added an all-new experimental lead section for characters without homes. These would include Inhuman Queen Medusa and a new Black Knight when not debuting new concepts like Guardians of the Galaxy, Phantom Eagle (oddly omitted from this volume) and, to start the ball rolling, an troubled alien spy sent to Earth from the Kree Galaxy. He held a Captain’s rank and his name was Mar-Vell.

Crafted by Lee, Colan & Giacoia, initial 15-page MS-H instalment ‘The Coming of Captain Marvel!: Phase One!!’ devolved directly from FF #64-65 wherein the quartet defeated a super-advanced Sentry robot from a mythical space empire, only to be attacked by a high official of those long-lost extraterrestrials in their very next issue! After defeating Ronan the Accuser, the FF heard no more from the far-from-extinct Kree, but the millennia-old civilisation was once again interested in Earth. Dispatching a surveillance mission, the Kree wanted to know everything about us. Unfortunately, the agent they chose was a troubled man of conscience; whilst commanding officer Colonel Yon-Rogg was a ruthless rival for the love of the ship’s medical officer Una. No sooner has the good captain made tentative planetfall and clashed with the US military from the local missile base than this first instalment ends…

Although cover-dated January 1968, Capt. Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders #1 was released in November of the previous year, literally promoting a long-running supporting character from Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos to lead status and the Pacific Theatre of War in WWII. Crafted by Friedrich, Ayers & Syd Shores ‘The Last Banzai!’ sees US submarine commander Simon Savage reluctantly appointed the head of a squad of elite (multicultural/multi-ethnic) marines to clear the way for imminent Allied landings on the fortified atoll of Tarawa. It’s a dirty job but…

The aforementioned expansion is celebrated by a gallery of debuting series covers for Groovy #1, Captain America #100, Incredible Hulk #102, Iron Man and The Sub-Mariner #1, Iron Man #1, Sub-Mariner #1, Captain Marvel #1, Doctor Strange #169, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 and Spectacular Spider-Man #1 and cemented by the first full solo tale of one the company’s breakthrough stars.

Although pretty much a last-minute addition to Fantastic Four #48-50’s ‘Galactus Trilogy’, Jack Kirby’s scintillating creation the Silver Surfer swiftly became a watchword for depth and subtext in the Marvel Universe and one Lee kept as his own personal toy for many years. Tasked with finding planets for space god Galactus to consume and, despite the best efforts of intergalactic voyeur Uatu the Watcher, one day the Surfer discovers Earth, where the latent nobility of humanity reawakens his own suppressed morality; causing the shining scout to rebel against his master and help the FF save the world. In retaliation, Galactus imprisons his one-time herald on Earth, making him the ultimate outsider on a planet remarkably ungrateful for his sacrifice. The Galactus Saga was a creative high from a period when the Lee/Kirby partnership was absolutely on fire. The tale has all the power and grandeur of a true epic and has never been surpassed for drama, thrills and sheer entertainment. It’s not included here: for that treat you’ll need to see a Fantastic Four Epic Collection or many another Marvel collection…

In May 1968, after frequent guest-shots and even a solo adventure in the back of Fantastic Four Annual #5, the Surfer finally got his own (initially double-length) title at long last. Illustrated by John Buscema & Joe Sinnott, ‘The Origin of the Silver Surfer!’ finds the drama opening on a prolonged flashback sequence of the outcast’s forays on Earth and repeated examples of crass humanity’s brutal callousness and unthinking hostility. Then we see how Norrin Radd, discontented soul from an alien paradise Zenn-La, became the gleaming herald of a planetary scourge. Radd had constantly chafed against a civilisation in comfortable, sybaritic stagnation, but when Galactus shattered their cosy million years of progress in a fleeting moment, without hesitation the discontented dissident offered himself as a sacrifice to save the world from the Devourer’s hunger. Converted into an indestructible, gleaming human meteor, Radd agreed to scour the galaxies looking for uninhabited worlds rich in the energies Galactus needs to survive, thus saving planets with life on them from destruction. He didn’t always find them in time…

The stories in this series were highly acclaimed – if not commercially successful – both for Buscema’s agonised, emphatic and lush artwork as well as Lee’s deeply spiritual and cod-philosophical scripts. The tone was accusatory; with the isolated alien’s travails and social observations creating a metaphoric status akin to a Christ-figure for an audience that was maturing and rebelling against America’s creaking and unsavoury status quo.

Marvel the business had early learned the value of reprinting past glories; both to update new readers and to cheaply monopolise sales points. Here a gallery blends ongoing titles like newly retitled Captain Savage and his Battlefield Raiders #5 and adult-oriented comics magazine Pussycat #1 with double-sized classics reprint compilations Tales of Asgard #1 and The Mighty Marvel Western #1 before Marvel Super-Heroes #19 (March 1969 and on the stands in December 1968) sees Tarzan analogue Ka-Zar in his first solo story ‘My Father, My Enemy!’ courtesy of Arnold Drake, Steve Parkhouse, George Tuska & Sid Greene. Beginning as a barbarian wild man in a lost sub-polar realm of swamp-men and dinosaurs, Ka-Zar eventually evolved into one of Marvel’s more complex – and exceedingly mutable – characters. Wealthy heir to one of Britain’s oldest noble families, his best friend is a sabre-tooth tiger, his wife is feisty jungle warrior/zoologist Shanna the She-Devil and his brother is a homicidal super-scientific bandit. He is one of Marvel/Timely’s oldest heroes; pulp hero predated Martin Goodman’s first foray into comics and strip incarnation Kazar the Great was in Marvel Comics #1, right beside Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and The Angel…

Lord Kevin Plunder was perpetually torn between the clean life-or-death simplicity of the jungle and the bewildering constant compromises of modern civilisation as he guest-starred in titles as varied as X-Men, Daredevil & Amazing Spider-Man. As this enjoyable, under-appreciated tale unfolds many of the modern hero’s inconsistencies and conflicts are squared as the aristocratic outsider quits his English castle for the Antediluvian Savage Land to investigate claims that his dead father was a scientific devil intent on using his discovery of anti-metal for evil. Tragically, his warped brother Parnival is ruthless and determined to hide the truth for his own vile ends. A consequent wild excursion to Antarctica sees the discovery and obfuscation of the truth, strange aliens, dinosaurs, lost cities, spectacular locations, pervasive mystery and all-out action. Comics don’t get better than this…

Ending these astounding formative adventures is a tale from February 1969, just as comics began experiencing another downturn in superhero sales and the resurrection of other, more traditional genres with fresh modern tones. Co-written and pencilled by Lieber with Thomas, Giacoia & Vince Colletta, ‘This Man… This Demon!’ was the final solo try-out in Marvel Super-Heroes (#20, cover-dated May) before it became an all-reprint vehicle. It restated Dr. Victor von Doom’s origins and revealed his tragic, doomed relationship with “insignificant” Roma girl Valeria. That relationship is then exploited by demon alchemist Diablo who claims to need an ally but actually wants a new slave. The terrifying monarch of Latveria deals with the charlatan in typically effective style…

Marvel continued expanding for the remainder of the decade, but not with superheroes, as a final clutch of covers – Mad About Millie #1, Chili #1, My Love #1, Tower of Shadows #1, Chamber of Darkness #1, Our Love Story #1, Marvel’s Greatest Comics #22, Homer, the Happy Ghost #1, Peter the Little Pest #1, the revived Kid Colt Outlaw(#140), Ringo Kid #1 and Where Monsters Dwell #1 – highlights the publisher’s return to broader choices and themes, following as always the trends of TV and movies. Also included is a brief bonus section sharing Stan Lee’s original synopsis for FF #1 and iconic contemporary house ads.

The 1960s was the turning point in the history of US comic books: the moment a populist industry became an art form. These tales helped sparked that renaissance and remain some of the best stories and art you will ever experience. Nuff Said?
© 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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I… Vampire!


By J.M. DeMatteis, Bruce Jones, Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, Mike W. Barr, Tom Sutton, Ernie Colon, Adrian Gonzales, Paris Cullins, Dan Day, Jim Aparo, Joe Kubert, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Tatjana Wood, Adrienne Roy & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3371-6 (TPB), 978-1-4012-5507-7 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Scary times ahead so let’s ease in to the season of mists mellow fruitfulness and spine sucking terror! with a guaranteed classic grimoire of reasonably family oriented ghoulish gore and wonder…

When superheroes entered their second decline at the end of the 1960s, four of the six surviving newsstand comic book companies (Archie, Charlton, DC, Gold Key, Harvey & Marvel) increasingly turned to horror and suspense anthologies to bolster their flagging sales. Even wholesome Archie briefly produced Red Circle Sorcery/Chillers comics, diverting a portion of their teen-comedy core gently into superb tales of witchcraft, mystery and imagination.

DC’s first generation of mystery titles blossomed at the end of the Golden Heroic Age when most comic book publishers of the era started switching to Crime, Romance, Western, Sci Fi and Horror genre anthologies to recapture an aging readership which was drifting away to other mass-market entertainments like TV and movies. Intriguingly, 1950’s TV also adopted en masse the anthological mystery tale model as seen in a wealth of repertory company anthology shows like The Veil, One Step Beyond, Tales of Tomorrow, and later, better remembered classics like The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone.

After a few tenuous attempts with supernatural-themed heroic leads in established titles (Johnny Peril in Comic Cavalcade, All-Star Comics and Sensation Comics; Dr. Terry Thirteen, The Ghostbreaker in Star-Spangled Comics) by 1951 National Comics had bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology sans recurring lead stars… which nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles. It all began on October 3rd with the launch of The House of Mystery (cautiously cover-dated December 1951/January 1952).

When a hysterical censorship muck rake led to witch-hunting hearings attacking comic books and newspaper strips (just type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time), the industry panicked and hurriedly adopted a castrating straitjacket of stringent self-regulatory rules and admonitions. Despite mystery/suspense titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority being sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock & Gore, the readership’s appetite for mystery and suspense stayed high, and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected & House of Secrets.

Supernatural thrills and spooky monsters were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, genteel, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles which nonetheless dominated the market until the end of the 1950s when the super-hero returned in force – having begun a renaissance in 1956 after Julius Schwartz reintroduced The Flash in Showcase #4. Revivals of Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom and new costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked myrmidons which even forced these dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with J’onn J’onzz, Manhunter from Mars and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and paranormal investigator Mark Merlin (latterly Prince Ra-Man) sharing space with anti-hero Eclipso in HoS. When caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties, folding with the September/October 1966 issue. House of Mystery carried on with its eccentric costumed cohort until #173, and Tales of the Unexpected endured until #104.

However, nothing combats censorship better than plunging profits, and as the Sixties ended the superhero boom busted again. With once-popular titles promptly perishing and many of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain, this real-world Crisis led to surviving publishers agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against horror (and crime) comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at the time, but as this liberalisation coincided with another bump in global public interest in all aspects of the Great Unknown, the resurrection of spooky story comics was a foregone conclusion and obvious no-brainer…

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all, House of Mystery and Unexpected switched back to tales of magic, mystery and imagination whilst already cancelled House of Secrets rose again with #81, (cover-dated August/September 1969), retooled to feed a seemingly insatiable appetite for terror and suspense…

Before long, an expansive battalion of supernatural thriller titles dominated DC’s – and competitors’ – publishing schedules again. This time, however, although the initial impetus died out by 1978, horror comics had secured a dedicated audience, soldiering on despite declines in sales into the turbulent 1980s. During that period, the venerable periodical experimented with varying formats and became a springboard for many creative careers, but never returned to established, recurring characters until the reign of publishing whiz kid Karen Berger who officially assumed control with HoM #292. Some issues earlier, a new longform miniseries (we used to call them “serials”) had debuted, detailing the exploits of a reluctant monster seeking to atone for past sins…

The full groundbreaking, tragic, idiosyncratic saga was gathered into a chilling chronicle recounting the afterlives of the bloodsucker and his human allies and re-presents here pertinent material from House of Mystery #290-291, 293, 295, 297, 299, 302, 304-319, plus a guest-shot in The Brave and the Bold #195, cumulatively spanning cover-dates March 1980 to August 1983. It opens without fanfare or preamble in ‘I… Vampire’ by co-creators J.M. DeMatteis & Tom Sutton.

In 10 tightly-packed yet smoothly inviting pages we meet English noble Sir Andrew Bennett, who died at the hands of a nosferatu during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Beloved by his fiancée Mary Seward, Bennett succumbed to her desperate pleas to be similarly infected, so that their love might last forever. Only afterwards did he realise that the transformation generally creates soulless monsters, even though, somehow, he has retained his conscience and personality…

Over four centuries, “Bloody Mary” becomes a prestigious leader of massed vampires in an insidious, influential covert global cult dubbed the Blood Red Moon. They sow chaos and destruction whilst working towards the ultimate goal of vampires ruling a world of human cattle. Heartbroken and guilt ridden, Bennett has opposed her schemes for all that time, aided by human allies such as his most recent “daywalkers”: aged Russian warrior Dimitri Mishkin and go-getting “Eighties Woman” Deborah Dancer…

Blessed with all the traditional gifts of the undead (shapeshifting, supernatural vigour, hypnosis, etc) and similarly afflicted by their weaknesses (sunlight, crucifixes, Holy Water, stakes, et al) Bennett staves off his insatiable hunger for blood by sheer willpower and the determination that he will not die until he has ended Mary’s depredations…

The introductory episode covers all that even as Mary’s minions lose another running battle with Bennett’s team but escape to instigate their latest plan…

The adventure concludes in ‘Night of the Living Undead’ as team Bennett expose and end a proposed alliance between the cult and New York’s biggest drug dealer, after which ‘The Burning’ sees the hunters scotch a scheme to infiltrate the White House once Mary affiliates with a race-hate spouting demagogue whose influential links include the KKK and US President. The closure of that case tears open old wounds, as Mishkin subsequently clashes with one of Mary’s lieutenants, only to discover a dreaded family connection in ‘Mother Love/Mother Hate’, leading to a look into how Bennett recruited him as a boy just as the 19th century became the 20th…

DeMatteis moved on after the dark heroes foil Mary’s attempt to destroy an ashram and its spiritual guru in ‘Zen Flesh! Zen Bones!’ after which Bruce Jones moves in, offering a more fanciful approach in ‘The Sun Also Burns’. Here Bennett and his human friends are ambushed and left to die in a mine. As time passes, the valiant vampire – deprived of bottled blood – must battle his irresistible thirst before abandoning them. Resolved never to endanger them again, he sets out on a solo quest for vengeance…

In HoM #302 ‘Blood Ties’ sees that lonely walkabout take him to Eudora, Kansas where odd events culminate in Bennett accidentally causing the deaths of an entire family of innocents before stumbling across a predatory circus abducting innocents for profit, and sponsored by Mary. His war against the ‘Carnival of Souls’ lasts until #304 where – with Ernie Colon substituting for Sutton – Bennett learns ‘The Night Has Eyes’ and proves that he has no pity for child stealers…

Jones then offers a lengthy saga in ‘Blood and Sand’ as the still-solo Bennett tracks Mary’s agents to Egypt in the wake of a global anti-cancer vaccine rollout that has the unexpected side-effect of making human blood toxic to the undead. Meanwhile, and for all this time, Mishkin & Dancer have been hunting for their leader, and are finally closing in…

Made unwilling allies by fate, Andrew and Mary invade a lost tomb, where the cult queen steals the time-travelling Rings of Anubis from a mystic mummy before setting off into the past to undo the creation of the vaccine. In hot pursuit, thanks to a second ring, Bennett arrives in Whitechapel, London at the height of history’s most infamous serial killer spree.

Crafted by Jones and the returned Sutton, ‘A Rip in Time’ sees all Mary’s efforts thwarted, and the ancestor of mysterious vaccine creator Dr. Barr escape unharmed, even as the vampires are hurled back into the time stream. Bennett washes ashore in Maine in November 1964, just in time to save a little girl from drowning. ‘Lovers Living, Lovers Dead’ reveals that in the present Deborah Dancer has developed a psychic link and can “see” vampires’ past actions as they happen. She is suitably horrified to observe Mary attack the child and aghast to realise that the child is herself…

After heroic intervention from Bennett saves the child, the time chase pauses as the undead knight battles a crew of revenant Nazi submariners in ‘Mirrors That Look Back’ before his pursuit resumes, depositing him and his quarry in Elizabethan England mere days before their first deaths. A bewildering succession of time-tossed doubles and mistaken identity switches culminates in a deadly ‘Witch Hunt’ with religiously enflamed peasants running riot before the chronal paradoxes dump them both back in the 20th century where new writers Dan Mishkin (no relation) & Gary Cohn concoct a ‘Manhattan Interlude’ (#310, November 1982) foe penciller Adrian Gonzales and ever-faithful Tom Sutton to render. Here Bennett encounters another vampire who has retained both soul and innocence and regretfully helps her meet her final end on her own terms…

Paris Cullins joins Mishkin & Cohn, Gonzales & Sutton for a dark peek at Deborah Dancer’s teen years in ‘By the Time We Got to Woodstock…’, revealing how she “first” stumbled into the Blood Red Moon’s schemes of conquest after losing all her friends to hippy bloodsuckers at the legendary festival, only surviving thanks to an old Russian and an eerie, red-eyed Englishman…

HoM #312 reunites the trio in time to tackle ‘The Thing in the Tunnel’ (Mishkin, Cohn, Gonzales & Sutton), a predatory beast escaped from the familiar-sounding Barr Research Laboratories and leading to a deadly clash with an enigmatic, extraordinarily long-lived (hint, hint) biologist in ‘Side Effects’, before ‘I.. Edward Trane, I… Vampire’ in #314 (illustrated solely by Sutton) sees a tragic reunion for Bennett with one of his own Victorian acolytes who fell in battle, but never fully died…

Mishkin, Cohn, Cullins & Sutton then detail an untitled exploit wherein the vampire hunters are targeted by sanctimonious religious zealots hunting the unholy. Sadly, their leader’s top aide is not only undead herself, but also Dimitri’s mother, and the Presidency is once more the glittering prize being sought…

Although the plot is foiled, the cost is high, compelling Bennett to turn eastwards, and ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’ he uncovers a KGB program to weaponize vampirism and extend the joys of eternity to the aging Politburo. The result is open warfare between Mary’s cult and a Soviet secret army, ultimately proving in ‘Blood is Thicker…’ that not all military spending is pointless, and not every hero gets to ride off into the sunset…

Despite a long run, changing times and tastes were indicating that the title and, indeed, entire genre were not a viable contemporary comics option. With the series building to climax, #318 offered another untitled yarn (with Dan Day pencilling) wherein a freshly bereaved Andrew Bennett employs stolen Soviet technology to force a final confrontation with Mary and the Blood Red Moon, resulting in his final demise and birth of a new kind of hero in climactic last episode ‘Dreams of Death’ by Mishkin, Cohn & Sutton in House of Mystery #319 (August 1983).

Aggravatingly, that big finish isn’t the end here, as there follows a solid but painfully out-of-continuity tale taken from The Brave and the Bold #195 (February 1983). For ‘Night of Blood’ (Mike W. Barr & Jim Aparo) Bennett’s perpetual hunt for Mary brings him to Gotham City after a gangster’s daughter becomes the latest victim of a vampire. Batman is firmly convinced the attacks are fake – and he’s right – until an actual magic-accursed blood drinker shows up. At least this time the standard misunderstanding doesn’t result in pointless battle before reason prevails and the mismatched heroes unite to catch the real culprits…

Graced with staggeringly compelling covers by Joe Kubert, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Aparo, Tatjana Wood & Adrienne Roy, this is a genuine slice of engaging, unorthodox and vastly entertaining horror action that predates – and probably influenced – later hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel. A hugely enjoyable edgy romp, well-scripted, imaginative and gorgeously illustrated I… Vampire is a timeless tome for all lovers of dark delight and one no arcane aficionada can afford to be without.
© 1981, 1982, 1983, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Shadow volume 1: The Fire of Creation


By Garth Ennis, Aaron Campbell, Carlos Lopez & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-361-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content used for dramatic effect.

Throughout the 1930s, The Shadow granted thrill-starved readers measured doses of extraordinary excitement via cheaply produced periodical novels dubbed “pulps” (because of the low-grade paper they were printed on), as well as over the mood-drenched airwaves, via his own radio show. Pulp titles were published in their hundreds every month, ranging from the truly excellent to the pitifully dire, in every style and genre, but for exotic adventure lovers there were two star characters who outshone all others. The Superman of his day was Doc Savage, Man of Bronze, whilst the foremost dark, relentless creature of the night dispensing terrifying grim justice was a mysterious slouch-hatted hero under discussion here. Originally, radio series Detective Story Hour – based on stand-alone yarns from Street & Smith publication Detective Story Magazine – used a spooky voiced narrator (variously Orson Welles, James LaCurto and Frank Readick Jr.) to introduce each tale. He was generically dubbed “the Shadow” and from the very start on July 31st1930, he was far more popular than the stories he introduced.

The Shadow swiftly evolved into a proactive force, solving instead of narrating mysteries and, from April 1st 1931 (Happy 95th anniversary, mystery-man!), starred in his own printed pulp series, written by astoundingly prolific Walter Gibson under house pseudonym Maxwell Grant. On September 26th 1937 the radio show officially became The Shadow, with the eerie slogan/mantra “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Men? The Shadow knows!” ringing out unforgettably over the nation’s airwaves.

Over the next eighteen years 325 novels were published, usually at the rate of two a month. The uncanny crusader spawned comic books, seven movies, a newspaper strip and all the merchandising paraphernalia you’d expect of a superstar brand. The pulp series officially ended in 1949, although Gibson and others added to the canon during the phantasmagorical 1960s as a pulp-fantasy revival gripped America, generating reprinted classic tales and a run of new adventures marketed as paperback novels.

As hinted above, in graphic terms The Shadow was a major player. His national newspaper strip (by Vernon Greene) launched on June 17th 1940 and when comic books took off, the Man of Mystery had his own four-colour title; running from March 1940 to September 1949. Archie Comics published a controversial contemporary comic book (1964-1965, by Robert Bernstein, Jerry Siegel, John Rosenberger & Paul Reinman) under their Radio/Mighty Comics imprint and in 1973, DC acquired the rights to produce a captivating, brief and totally definitive series of classical adventures unlike any other superhero title then on the stands.

DC periodically revived the venerable and vicious vigilante. After the runaway success of Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman, Howard Chaykin was engaged to utterly overhaul the vintage feature. This led to further, adult-oriented iterations (and even one cracking outing from Marvel) before Dark Horse assumed the license of the quintessential grim avenger for the latter half of the 1990s and beyond. Dynamite Entertainment picked up the option in 2011 and, as well as re-releasing many of those other publishers’ earlier efforts, began a series of new monthly Shadow comics.

Set in the turbulent 1930s & 1940s these were designed as self-contained story arcs, crafted by some of the top writers in the industry, each taking their shot at the immortal legend, and all winningly depicted by a succession of extremely gifted illustrators. First to fire was the incomparable Garth Ennis who muted his signature black humour for a tale screaming of unrequited injustice over six stunningly compelling episodes…

It begins with a précis of Japan’s official invasion of China in 1937 and appalling atrocities inflicted by their forces as they began building their “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere”, jumping a few years and to the docks of New York City, where a dark angel dispenses bloody judgement to a murderous band of crooked dockworkers. A little later abrasive, indolent playboy Lamont Cranston joins Washington insider Mr. Landers and his gung-ho young protégé Pat Finnegan at the Algonquin Hotel. They are meeting to discuss an imminent crisis amidst the ever-worsening situation in the East, and how the massacre at the pier was connected to it. Specifically, two of the bodies dropped at the scene were high-ranking Japanese agents…

Despite Finnegan’s outspoken distaste at involving a civilian dilettante, a tale is shared of a rare mineral that both America and Japan will do anything to obtain. Cranston agrees to lead a small party into China to secure the samples (originally dug up by prospecting American geologists before they vanished) for the Land of the Free. Of great concern is the unspecified part played by Taro Kondo: a formidable and ruthless Major in the Japanese intelligence service with whom Cranston had unsavoury dealings during his younger, less salubrious years in the East…

Cranston prepares his paramour and assistant Margo Lane for the rigours that lie ahead, but she has no conception of how much true horror and mass slaughter The Shadow has foreseen in the years to come. Whilst Finnegan travels by spartan military plane transport, Cranston & Margo escape his juvenile jingoistic fervour by taking a Pacific Clipper. However, their luxurious voyage is abruptly ended when they are attacked by Nazi agents masquerading as rich, indolent vacationers. The resulting bloodbath brings down the plane and our heroes barely survive. They also have far greater problems to worry about…

Ahead of them Kondo leads ambitious Emperor-lover and sexual deviant General Akamatsu on a tawdry trek to meet Chinese bandit Lord Wong Pang-Yan, descriptively and accurately known to all as the Buffalo. The grotesque, greedy barbarian is their only means of acquiring a rare mineral they crave, and Kondo is eager to placate his haughty, nauseated superior. After all, they know The Shadow is coming and have other plans in place to deal with him. To soothe the General’s nerves, Kondo promises he can behead the double-dealing Buffalo, just as soon as they have the enigmatic matter poetically described as the Spirit-Weapon and Fire of Creation…

Since Buffalo Wong originally offered his treasure to many nations, there are a numerous expeditions converging on the region, and when a Japanese fighter plane removes a rival Soviet military force from the game, Kondo gloats at another problem solved before returning to placate his aggravating, arrogant “superior”. It’s only a minor inconvenience to him that Cranston has survived his German allies’ attack and linked up with US agent Finnegan in Shanghai…

As the Yankees’ arrangements to use a British Navy vessel to reach Wong’s stronghold are finalised, Kondo’s assassins strike, but once again are no match for The Shadow’s mesmerism and blistering gunplay. To make a point, the Dark Avenger not only eliminates his attackers but weeds out and ends every Japanese and German agent in the city…

The delay gives Kondo’s party a healthy head start. As their sailing boat (an unpowered Junk) navigates the great river, the former smuggler/crimelord passes the time by sharing all he knows of human monster Kent Allard who was his criminal rival 15 years ago. What he doesn’t know is that the despicable rogue became the man called Cranston, but is certain that he is still the most implacable and remorseless killer on Earth…

Behind them, Finnegan, determined to prove his manhood and authority, pushes the British Commander and crew. Resolved to catch Kondo’s military detachment before they reach their ultimate destination, he sees firsthand atrocities Japanese soldiers casually inflict on “lesser” races, and in his disgust and inexperience leads the gunboat into a lethal trap only he, Margo and the insufferable Cranston survive…

Far ahead of them, Kondo and Akamatsu make their final trade with Wong – miracle mineral for gold – and the inevitable double-crossing and bloodletting begins. What none of the treacherous villains realize is that the angry, vengeful Shadow is already amongst them, cutting down soldiers and bandits like chaff as he methodically, determinedly makes his way to the true cause of all the terror. At last Kondo realises he has only one card left to play, but the monstrous future has already begun and will inevitable end in fire…

Dynamite publish periodicals with a vast array of cover variants and here a copious collected gallery highlights dozens of iconic visions from Alex Ross, Chaykin, John Cassaday, Stephen Segovia, Ryan Sook, Sean Chen, Francesco Francavilla & Jae Lee. Adding to the Bonus Material is Ennis’s script for the first issue, and gloriously gilding the lily is a mountain of powerful pencil studies by Ross and Lee.

Sardonic, brutal and deviously convoluted, The Fire of Creation is a splendid addition to the annals of the ultimate and original Dark Knight, and one no lover of action and mystery can afford to miss.
The Shadow® & © 2012 Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. ™ & © Conde Nast. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1817 trailblazing British cartoonist John Leech (Punch) was born, sharing the day with veteran Disney all-star Al Taliaferro (Donald Duck, Silly Symphonies) in 1905; illustrator Patrick Zircher (Green Hornet, Iron Man, Nightwing) in 1963; Norwegian creator Karine Haaland (Våre venner menneskene, Piray) in 1966 and US all-rounder Jason Pearson (Body Bags, Legion of Super-Heroes) in 1970.

On this day in 1983, Underground commix frontrunner Rory Hayes (Bijou Funnies, Arcade) died.

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Jack Kirby’s Silver Star


By Jack Kirby, with Mike Royer, D. Bruce Berry, Janice Cohen, Erik Larsen & Eric Stephenson, Jim Lee, Joe Sinnott & various (Image)
ISBN: 978-1-58240-764-7 (HB/Digital edition)

Jack Kirby was – and remains – the most important single influence in the history of US comics. There are millions of words about what the man has done and meant, and you should read those if you are at all interested in our medium. Kirby was a man of vast imagination who translated big concepts into astoundingly potent and accessible symbols for generations of fantasy fans. If you were exposed to Kirby as an impressionable kid you were his for life. To be honest, the same probably applies whatever age you jump aboard the “Kirby Express”…

For those of us who grew up with Jack, his are the designs and images furnishing our interior mindsets. Close your eyes and think “robot” and the first thing that pops up is a Kirby creation. Every fantastic, futuristic city in our heads is crammed with his chunky, towering spires. Because of Jack, we all know what the bodies beneath those stony-head statues on Easter Island look like, we are all viscerally aware that you can never trust great big aliens parading around in their underpants and, most importantly, we know how cavemen dressed and carnosaurs clashed. His creations are magical; they inspire successive generations of creators to pick up the ball and keep running with it…

In the late 1930s, it took a remarkably short time for Kirby and creative partner Joe Simon to become the wonderkid dream team of the newborn comic book industry. Together they produced a year’s worth of pioneering influential monthly Blue Bolt; dashed off Captain Marvel Adventures (#1) for overstretched Fawcett and, after Martin Goodman appointed Simon editor at Timely Comics, co-created a host of iconic characters like Red Raven, the original Marvel Boy, Mercury, Hurricane, The Vision, Young Allies and million-selling mega-hit Captain America.

When Goodman failed to make good on his financial obligations, Simon & Kirby were snapped up by National/DC, who welcomed them with open arms and a fat chequebook. Bursting with ideas that cautious company were never really comfortable with, the Dynamism Duo were initially an uneasy fit, and were given two moribund strips to play with until they found their creative feet. They turned both Sandman and Manhunter around virtually overnight and, once established and left to their own devices, switched to the “Kid Gang” genre they had pioneered at Timely. Joe & Jack created wartime sales sensation Boy Commandos and Homefront iteration The Newsboy Legion before being called up to serve in the war they had been fighting on comic book pages since 1940. Once safely back and demobbed, they returned to a very different funnybook business and soon left National to create their own little empire.

Simon & Kirby heralded and ushered in the first American age of mature comics – not just by inventing the Romance comics genre, but with all manner of challenging modern material about real people in extraordinary situations – before seeing it all disappear again in less than eight years. Their small stable of magazines – generated for the association of companies known as Prize, Crestwood, Pines, Essenkay and/or Mainline Comics – blossomed and as quickly wilted when the industry abruptly contracted throughout the 1950s. After years of working for others, Simon & Kirby established their own publishing house, producing comics for a far more sophisticated audience, only to find themselves in a sales downturn and awash in public hysteria generated by an anti-comic book pogrom.

Hysterical censorship-fever spearheaded by US Senator Estes Kefauver and opportunistic pop psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham led to witch-hunting Senate hearings. Caving in, publishers adopted 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. Crime comics vanished and mature themes challenging an increasingly stratified and oppressive society were suppressed…

Simon quit comics for advertising, but Jack soldiered on, taking his skills and ideas to a many safer, if less experimental, companies. As the panic abated, Kirby returned briefly to DC where he worked on mystery tales and Green Arrow (at that time a back-up page-filler in Adventure Comics and World’s Finest Comics) whilst concentrating on his long-dreamed-of newspaper strip please link to Sky Masters of the Space Force: The Complete Dailies August 6th 2023. During that period Kirby also re-packaged an original superteam concept that had been kicking around in his head since he and Simon had closed their innovative, ill-timed ventures. At the end of 1956 Showcase #6 premiered the groundbreaking Challengers of the Unknown. After three further test issues the “Challs” won their own title with Kirby in command for the first eight issues. Then a legal dispute with Editor Jack Schiff exploded and the King was gone…

He found fresh fields and an equally hungry-for-change new partner in Stan Lee at ailing Atlas Comics (which had once been mighty Timely). There they created a revolution in superhero comics storytelling…

After just over a decade of never-ending innovation and wonderment, Kirby felt increasingly stifled. His efforts had transformed the dying publisher into industry-pioneer Marvel but now he felt trapped in a rut. Thus, he gambled on a move back to DC for another burst of sheer imagination and pure invention. Jack always understood the fundamentals of pleasing his audience and strived diligently to combat the appalling prejudice against the comics medium – especially from industry insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies’ world” they were timidly trapped in. After his controversial, grandiose Fourth World titles were cancelled, Kirby looked for other concepts which would stimulate his own vast creativity and still appeal to a market growing evermore fickle. Follow-ups included science fiction themed heroes Kamandi and OMAC, supernatural star The Demon, war stories starring The Losers, and even a new Sandman co-created with Joe Simon. However, although ideas kept coming (Atlas, Kobra, Dingbats of Danger Street, and proposed adult titles In the Days of The Mob, Spirit World and True-Life Divorce) yet again editorial disputes ended up with him leaving for promises of more creative freedom elsewhere…

Kirby’s return to Marvel in 1976 was much hyped at the time but again turned out to be controversial. His new creations (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Eternals, Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man) found friends rapidly, but his return to earlier creations Captain America and Black Panther divided an increasingly voluble and transient fanbase. Jack was never slavishly wedded to tight continuity, and preferred to treat his stints on titles as another “Day One”: a policy increasingly at odds with close-continuity demanded by a strident faction of the readership…

They were apparently blind to the unfettered, joyous freedom of imagination run wild, the majesty of pulse-pounding thrills and galvanising BIG ART channelling BIG IDEAS! The end of the 1970s saw Kirby move back into animation: designing characters and scenarios for shows like Turbo-Teen, Thundarr the Barbarian and even The New Fantastic Four. His comics efforts included Original Graphic Novel The Hunger Dogs and miniseries Super Powers for DC, and an adaptation of movie The Black Hole for syndicated strip Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales.

However, his most memorable move was to validate the newly-minted Independent Comics and Direct Sale Market sectors where he launched bombastic sci fi shocker Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers for distributor-turned-publisher Pacific Comics. For Eclipse, he co-created with Steve Gerber industry-excoriating symbol of creative rebellion Destroyer Duck (part of a grass-roots campaign that ultimately vanquished an iniquitous work-for-hire business model that had made creators little more than indentured servants since the business began). Also for Pacific at that time, Kirby crafted a 6-issue miniseries revisiting his cherished themes of human advancement and perfection. The lure of these projects was that after decades of toil and unleashed genius, now he owned his stuff, with complete editorial control.

That’s paid off in this dynamic yarn celebrating the sheer power and exuberance of The King’s gifts. Kirby never threw away a notion or design, and from his copious “Maybe Later/Maybe One Day” file in 1983, he crafted this frenzied, frenetic superhero-espionage doomsday thriller based on an unsuccessful screenplay he and then-assistant Steve Sherman had put together in the 1970s. Accompanied by an early concept drawing, the origins and impact of the original Silver Star miniseries – which ran from February 1983 to January 1984 – are discussed by Pacific’s editorial director Dave Scroggy in his Introduction before we meet Morgan Miller: Homo Geneticus! in premiere outing ‘Silver Star is here!!’

Via a communal psychic network, the next stage in human evolution reveals his secrets, disclosing that Morgan’s incredible powers come from prenatal genetic tampering by his father Dr. Bradford Miller. He was seeking to offset repercussions of prospective atomic war, and the son is apparently not the only one of this “Next Breed”.

He soon might be though, since earlier prototype Darius Drumm is methodically and ruthlessly exterminating them whenever he tracks them down…

Morgan’s powers manifest when he comes under heavy fire as a good soldier fighting in another US overseas war. After an extremely public debut, he’s quickly co-opted by Secret Service agent Floyd Custer to protect The Land of the Free, even though Drumm’s campaign of terror against ‘The Others’ continues, not just with uncanny powers in the all-too-frail physical world, but also in torment-fuelled sorties into a communal astral plane where Morgan seeks to preserve the life and sanity of mysterious gamin Tracy Coleman…

Sadly, the hero’s success rate is pretty abysmal, and Drumm’s twisted religious mania gives him an advantage in the war, as seen in ‘The Super-Normals: Are they God’s or Satan’s Children?’ It seems the tireless demagogue is also charismatic leader of a vast, anti-happiness and wellbeing cult…

The first four issues were inked & lettered by Mike Royer with colours from Janice Cohen, but the remaining two chapters – which coincided in the 1980s with Pacific moving to more experimental print processes and paper stock (with a noticeable loss of reproduction quality) – are graced by the pens & brushes of D. Bruce Berry. They’re re-coloured for this edition by Erik Larsen & Eric Stephenson, who usher in a climactic showdown and moment of global revelation as ‘The World According to Drumm!’ sees hard-pressed hero Silver Star and his surviving species-mates zeroing in on the killer. Their foe, however, has expanded his remit to encompass all of Earth, forcing the hero to battle a science-spawned ‘Angel of Death!’…

Peppered throughout with concept and developmental sketches, unused artwork, covers, pinups and designs inked by the likes of Jim Lee & Joe Sinnott, Kirby’s self-described and long-awaited Visual Novel also offers a lavishly illustrated look at his & Steve Sherman’s Silver Star Original Screenplay.

Kirby’s commitment to wholesome adventure, breakneck action and breathless wonderment combined with an absolute mastery of the comic page and unceasing quest for the Next Big Thrill always made for a captivating read. His comics should be compulsory for all and found in every home…
© 2007 the Jack Kirby Estate. All rights reserved.

Born today in 1929 was real life Wonder Woman Marie Severin (EC comics, Hulk, Doctor Strange, Sub-Mariner, Kull the Conqueror, Not Brand Echh, Superman Adventures); sharing festivities with Gary Friedrich (Monster of Frankenstein, Captain Atom, Hulk, Captain Britain, Captain America, Ghost Rider, Sgt. Fury, Capt. Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders, Hell-Rider) in 1943 and Spanish artist Juan José Ryp (Wolverine, Frank Miller’s Robocop, Clone) in 1971.

In 1984 we lost distributor and founder of comic conventions Phil Seuling, and on this day in 1993 British tabloid weekly The Topper closed its oversized doors for good after a sterling and mostly manic run that began on January 21st 1956.

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Corto Maltese: Under the Sign of Capricorn (A Corto Maltese USA Graphic Novel)


By Hugo Pratt, translated by Dean Mullaney & Simone Castaldi (CONG SA)
ISBN: 978-2-940552-42-9 (Digital edition), ASIN: B0BZ4YY5BK

This book include Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

Born in Rimini on June 15th 1927, Ugo Eugenio Prat, AKA Hugo Pratt, wandered the world in his early life, and became one of its paramount comics creators. His enthralling pictorial inventions since Ace of Spades (whilst still a student at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts in 1945) were many and varied. His signature character – based in large part on his own exotic formative years – is mercurial soldier (perhaps sailor is more accurate) of fortune Corto Maltese who will be celebrating 60 inglorious years of disservice in July 2027.

Pratt was a consummate storyteller with a unique voice and starkly refined graphic style that should not work, but so wonderfully does. Usually and preferably viewed in stark monochrome, his tales blended pared-down, relentlessly modernistic narrative stylism with complex and memorable characters, often bordering on pure archetypes.

By placing a modern, morally ambivalent antihero in an era where his actions and responses to old-world duties and attitudes should make him a scoundrel and villain, yet keeping him true to an utterly personal, ironclad yet chimerical ethical integrity that went beyond considerations of race, class or gender, Pratt created an adventurer yardstick against which we cannot help but measure all other heroes. There and then, as empires faded and colonies fell, itinerant Corto Maltese dealt with and was moved by people, not money, national concepts and institutions or traditions. He was ever a whimsical man of action and a faithful humanist with a gift for being in the wrong place at the right time. We’ll return to him momentarily…

After working in both Argentinean and, from 1959, on English comics and true blue characters like Battler Briton, Hugo Pratt made a name for himself. In the UK he produced weekly serial fare and especially complete stories for our (extremely popular) digest graphic novel lines including Super Picture Library, Air Ace Picture Library, Action Picture Library and Thriller Picture Library. These were half-sized, 64-page monochrome booklets with glossy soft-paper painted covers presenting complete stories in 1-4 panels per page. This was a luxury of layout and page design he would return to in his later years. Particularly suited to combat titles, Pratt worked on exotic jungle yarns for War Picture Library, Battle Picture Library, War at Sea Picture Library and more. In the mid-1960s Pratt resettled in Italy and (in 1967) produced with Florenzo Ivaldi a number of features for monthly comic anthology Sgt. Kirk. In addition to the titular Western star, Pratt created pirate strip Capitan Cormorand; detective Lucky Star O’Hara, and a moody South Seas saga called Una Ballata del Mare Salato (A Ballad of the Salty Sea) and now regarded as the first official adventure of the insalubrious mariner. When the anthology folded in 1970, Pratt moved to France and took Una Ballata’s breakout character to French weekly Pif Gadget before eventually settling in at legendary Belgian periodical Le Journal de Tintin. Corto Maltese proved as much a Wild Rover in reality as in his historic and eventful career…

The sailor was soon seen all over Europe, filling a dozen multi-translated albums. His peripatetic exploits (both short-form tales and extended sagas in black-&-white yarns) were shared in no particular order and spanned 1967 to 1989, covering the old rogue’s wanderings between the turn of the 20th century and the 1930s. Corto won international awards and his own eponymous title, running between October 1983 and July 1993. Hugo Pratt died on August 20th 1995.

In 2014, current rights owner CONG SA regenerated the dormant property with new Corto albums created by writer Juan Díaz Canales (Blacksad) & illustrator Rubén Pellejero (El silencio de Malka) generating 5 new albums thus far. A year later, US publisher IDW began releasing English language translations (repaginated & “colorized”) of prime Pratt to mixed reviews, and in 2022 Spanish parent company CONG: Hugo Pratt Art Properties started a line of curated collections as eBooks, of which Under the Sign of Capricorn is the first. It’s still in color – but sensitively done – so if you’re a graphic purist who can’t abide the hues, you might prefer to track down the mid-1980s Corto Maltese volumes from NBM that we covered way back in 2007…

Chronologically, Under the Sign of Capricorn was the third captain’s log of salty seadog sagas. It’s 1916 – one year after the events of Ballad of the Salty Sea – as we open with ‘The Secret of Tristram Bantam’ wherein Corto broods, smokes, drinks and ponders at the Java Inn, Paramaribo, in the debilitating heat of Dutch Guyana. A magnet for trouble and sucker for sob stories, despite his hostess’s warnings he adopts drunken wretch and target of bullies Professor Jeremiah Steiner and is simultaneously sought out by a runaway English schoolboy beset with dreams and premonitions…

Current possessor of certain valuable papers indicating the location of the fabled lost kingdom of Mû, young Tristram’s father was an “associate” of worldly knife-throwing Madame Java and has sought her out as a possible means of meeting his disreputable half-sister Miss Morganna Dias do Santos Bantam of San Salvador de Bahia. All this has made Tristan the unwitting subject of nefarious scrutiny from his own lawyer Milner in London, the firm’s Javanese representative Kerster, locals like voodoo queen Ogun Ferraille and assorted murderous thugs. This results in a succession of murder attempts and the sinking of Maltese’s beloved boat…

Captain Maltese has heard many ridiculous and unprofitable fables in his time but is compelled in this instance by just how many rogues and killers are trying to take the papers from his new pint-sized admirer, and with Steiner and the kid in tow sets off to solve the mystery and find Mu…

The mystery deepens in ‘Rendez-Vous in Bahia’ as Bantam’s yawl The Dreaming Boy sails for Bahia to find Morgana. She has their father’s notes about the lost continent, documents Tristan has only tantalisingly glimpsed in dreams, These are getting more compelling and engrossing as the voyagers arrive meet a native shaman and accidentally expose a convict trafficking scheme. Recently arrived big boss Milner tries to save himself by killing Tristan but instead loses his own life thanks to Corto’s skill with cards and weapons, leaving the trail apparently clear sailing from now on…

‘Chapter Three: Sureshot Samba’ sees the seekers reach Itapoa, where Corto, Tristan and Steiner meet Bocca Dorata AKA Gold Mouth: a great sorceress who raised Morgana and taught her black and white magic. The enigmatic sage somehow knows far too much about Corto’s past and origins for comfort, but nevertheless he accepts her proposal to ferry weapons and cash to Cangaceiros. There, rebel natives led by local legend Sureshot fight in the Brazilian Sertão against landholding European tycoons, murderous mercenaries, corrupted Federal Colonel Gonçalves and his requisitioned river gunboat. After all, £1000 is not to sneezed at…

Corto deals with his opponents and competes his mission with startling violences and efficiency and assures a swift brutal change in political fortunes…

Still houseguests of Gold Mouth, in ‘The Basilian Eagle’ reluctant slave liberators/freedom fighters Corto, Tristan & Steiner are caught in the backwash of the Great War. As they sail the coast seeking a wrecked Spanish galleon loaded with gold – it supposedly foundered near Marajò Island, at the mouth of the Amazon – they are trapped by global politics and international intrigue as colonial powers Great Britain and Germany square off in Brazil. Wallowing in innocent avarice, our derelict adventurers become unwitting competitors with a German Baron and apparent naval “deserters”. Enfolded in the byzantine scheme hatched by Bocca Dorata, Corto’s fate comes down to actions of rogue operatives, a double/triple agent dubbed “Jawbreaker”, overwhelming greed and gunboat diplomacy…

In earlier-set tales, Corto Maltese visited Russia and made an enemy for life of wild rogue/ spiritual anthesis Rasputin (no relation). Now that ferocious frenemy shows up in ‘So Much for Gentlemen of Fortune’ in an adventure centred on the search for fabulous pirate treasure, set in Saint Kitts in the Antilles. Still reading and rereading those papers brought by Tristam, Corto & Steiner happen upon a singular grave and a clue leading to confrontations and untenable alliances with contemporary freebooters Rasputin and Ambiguity di Poincy, all similarly in search of the amalgamated hoard of creole corsair Prying Barracuda, Calico Rackman, Agonia La Bella of Rochelle and Blackbeard Teach…

The game of double dealing leads to vast wealth and huge surprises, but in the end such friendships are doomed and savage bloodletting leaves everyone dead broke or both and Corto counting the cost of what and who he’s lost…

Concluding episode ‘The Seagull’s Fault’ lays the groundwork for more tales in a bizarre murder-mystery set on an island near British Honduras. Wounded and amnesiac, our Not-a-Hero reels on a bloody beach as his life ebbs away. As he blankly watches his totem animal fly, peck and probe, “John Smith’s” memories lie just beyond reach. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the stranger he can’t see would stop shooting at him…

It gets no clearer when lovely angel Soledad and her brutish Caribi minder arrive, as their tender ministrations in the gothic pile they call home soon prove to be barbed and double edged. If only he could remember what all this has to do with legendary pirate and merciless “Evangelist” Judas Lokäarth. Surely, though, that long-missing maniac is dead and gone?

Compelling, enticing and invitingly addictive, these bleak but witty, darkly romantic, captivatingly cosmopolitan stories will grip you and never let go. These are treasures you must unearth and cherish forever.
© 1971 Cong S.A., Switzerland. Corto Maltese® and Hugo Pratt™ © Cong S.A. Translation © 2019 Dean Mullaney and Simone Castaldi, All rights reserved.

Today in 1915 artist, inker, letterer & colourist George Roussos (Batman, Johnny Quick, Airwave, Vigilante, Superman, Starman, CrimeSuspensStories, Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Sgt Fury, Fantastic Four, Avengers et al) was born, followed in 1930 by cartoonist Bill Rechin (Out of Bounds, Crock), and in 1968 artist Jeff Johnson (Wonder Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Way of the Rat, Weapon X, Greem Lantern) and writer/filmmaker Greg Pak (City Boy, John Wick, Eternal Warrior, World War Hulk, Incredible Hercules, Firefly, Agents of Atlas).

This day marks the passing of three giants: inventor of comic books Max Gaines in 1947; British legend Dudley. D. Watkins in 1969 and Hugo Pratt in 1995.

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Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos Epic Collection: Volume 1 (1963-1965): The Howling Commandos


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers, with George Roussos, Steve Ditko, Frank Giacoia, Vince Colletta, Chic Stone & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1657-2 (TPB)  978-1-3025-1036-7 (Digital edition

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

On August 28th 1917 in New York’s Lower East Side, Jacob Kurtzberg was born to Jewish-Austrian parents. He grew up to be one of the most influential and recognisable artists in world history. We’ll be celebrating his legacy of 99 years and counting over the next few weeks and rest of the year, but let’s start with the title all budding Marvelites rated least when he and Stan Lee first began changing comics together…

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos began as an improbable, raucously over-the-top WWII combat comics series similar in tone to ensemble action movies like The Magnificent Seven, and such later offerings as The Wild Bunch and The Dirty Dozen. Our surly squad of sorry reprobates premiered in May 1963; one of three teams specifically concocted by men-on-fire Jack Kirby & Stan Lee to cover their genre bases whilst securing fledgling Marvel’s growing position as the publisher to watch.

Two years on, Fury’s post-war self was retooled as the big-name star of a second series (beginning with Strange Tales #135, August 1965) when espionage shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and 007 film franchise were becoming international sensations. Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. combined Cold War tensions with sinister schemes of global domination by subversive, all-encompassing hidden enemy organisations with captivating super-science gadgetry and iconic imagineering from Jack Kirby and latterly Jim Steranko.

For all that time however, the original wartime version soldiered on (puns are my cool gadget of choice), blending a uniquely flamboyant house-bravado style, often ludicrous, implausible, historically inaccurate, all-action bombast with moments of genuine heartbreak, unbridled passion and seething emotion. Sgt. Fury started out as a pure Kirby creation. As with all his various war comics, The King (a seasoned WWII veteran who had served under Patton) made everything look harsh and real and appalling: the people and places are all grimy and tired, battered yet indomitable. Jack had survived some of the worst battles of the conflict and never forgot the horrific and heroic things he saw – as more graphically expressed in his comics (such as Foxhole) at different companies during the 1950s genre boom. However, even at kid-friendly, Comics Code-sanitised Marvel, those experiences perpetually leaked through onto his powerfully gripping pages.

Kirby was, sadly, far too valuable a resource to squander on a simple war comic (or indeed the X-Men or Avengers, the other series launched in that tripartite blitz on kids’ spending money) and was quickly reassigned, leaving redoubtable fellow veteran Dick Ayers to illuminate later stories, which he did for almost its entire run (95 issues plus Annuals) until transition to a reprint title with #121 (July 1974). The title then carried on until its ultimate demise in December 1981 with #167.

This initial compendium collects the contents of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1-19 (spanning May 1963 – June 1965) and opens just as you’d expect with blistering premier ‘Sgt. Fury, and his Howling Commandoes’ (that’s how they spelleleled it in the storree-title – altho knot ennyware else).

Crafted by Lee, Kirby and inker Dick Ayers, the rip-snorting yarn is bursting with full page panels interrupted by ‘Meet the Howling Commandos’ – a double-page spread starring the seven members of First Attack Squad; Able Company. This comprised Fury himself, former circus strongman/Corporal “Dum-Dum” Dugan and Privates Robert “Rebel” Ralston (a Kentucky jockey), college student Jonathan “Junior” Juniper, jazz trumpeter Gabriel Jones, mechanic Izzy Cohen and glamorous movie heartthrob Dino Manelli. Controversially – even in the 1960s – this combat Rat Pack was an integrated unit with Jewish and black members as well as Catholics, Southern Baptists and New York Irish white guys all merrily serving together. The Howling Commandos pushed envelopes and busted taboos from the very start.

The first mission was a nonstop action romp pitting ‘Seven Against the Nazis!’ putting the squad through their unique paces as a ragged band of indomitable warriors took on hordes of square-necked Nazis to save D-Day and rescue a French resistance fighter with vital plans of the invasion. They even bring back a high-ranking “kraut” prisoner and leave room for a Kirby fact-page comparing and contrasting six different side-arms of the period in ancillary feature ‘Weapons of War’…

SF&HC #2 found ‘7 Doomed Men!’ up to their torn shirts in Germans as they first infiltrate a French coastal town to blow up a U-Boat base and get back to England just in time to be sent on another suicide mission. This time it’s to destroy a secret facility at Heinemund in the heart of the Fatherland, where Nazi scientists are doing something sinister and nefarious with “hard water”. These overblown fustian thrillers always played fast and loose with history and logic, so if you crave veracity above all, I’d steer clear, but if you can swallow a heaping helping of creative anachronism there’s always great fun to be had here – especially since nobody drew atomic explosions like Kirby. This drama is capped with fact pages as ‘The Enemy That Was!’ explores the capabilities of ‘The German Infantryman’ whilst ‘Weapons of War: “Chatter Guns” of World War II’ details all you need to know about submachine guns.

Rough-&-ready gallows humour and broad comedy became increasingly important to the series from SF&HC #3 onwards, with home base rivalries and comradely sparring leavening the outrageous nonstop carnage of the missions. ‘Midnight on Massacre Mountain!’ sees the septet explosively invading Italy to rescue a US army division caught in a Nazi trap. Along the way they meet a brilliant OSS officer training partisan troops, and Fury especially believes that young Reed Richards will go far…

Supplementing this exploit is a fascinating feature revealing what ordnance and hardware cost in ‘America’s World War II Shopping List!’ before, in #4, ‘Lord Ha-Ha’s Last Laugh!’ began an inking tour of duty for “George Bell” (Kirby’s 1950s studio-mate George “Inky” Roussos) and introduced a love interest for the Sarge, after he meets aristocratic Red Cross volunteer Lady Pamela Hawley during a London air raid. How cruel and tragic was fate then, that the Howlers’ very next mission takes them to Berlin to kidnap a young British nobleman with the same name, now acting as a crucial propaganda mouthpiece for the Wehrmacht…

The mission is a double disaster. Not only does Pamela’s ignoble brother perish, but the debacle also costs the life of a Howler. Bonus feature ‘Weapons of War: Combat Rifles of World War II’ follows this shocking, surprisingly grim and low-key melodrama…

Fury’s key appearance as a CIA agent in FF #21 (not included here) was released between that issue and #5, but no mention is made of it as the dark and cunning yarn introduces one of Marvel’s vilest, greatest villains. ‘At the Mercy of Baron Strucker’ sees Fury humiliated and defeated in personal combat against an Aryan nobleman who uses candid filmed footage as a propaganda tool of the Nazis. Only too late does dashing Dino point out how the nonplussed noncom has fallen for the oldest trick in Hollywood’s archvillain playbook…

A riotous rematch goes rather better after which ‘Weapons of War: Light Machine Guns of World War II’ ends matters in a graphically educational manner, before ‘The Fangs of the Desert Fox!’ in #6 dumps the Squad in the desert to confront the massed forces of General Erwin Rommel in a mission foredoomed to fail. ‘The Court-Martial of Sergeant Fury’ provides a glimpse into the hard-bitten hero’s past and offers insights into his tempestuous relationship with immediate superior Captain Samuel “Happy Sam” Sawyer. Of course, to get that information we must watch Fury endure a dramatic trial after seemingly sabotaging a mission and striking a commanding officer…

Although continuing to draw the magnificent, eye-catching covers, Kirby left the title with this issue. His astounding abilities were more profitably employed in superhero titles, even as Lee began consolidating the ever-expanding Marvel Universe by utilising more WWII iterations of contemporary characters. In #8 ‘The Death Ray of Baron Zemo!’ pits Howlers against a Captain America villain recently debuted in The Avengers. Ayers & Roussos capably depict the squad’s attempts to capture a Nazi super-scientist and a weapon which could shape the outcome of the entire war. The tale introduced Junior Juniper’s replacement: a rather fruity caricature of a British soldier named Percival Pinkerton, resplendent in horn-rimmed specs, pencil moustache, fuchsia beret and impossibly utilitarian umbrella…

In #9 implausibly audacious ‘Mission: Capture Adolf Hitler!’ goes awry after the Howlers’ latest incursion into Berlin brings Fury face-to-face with Wolfgang von Strucker; leading to his temporary capture and an astounding escape, after which ‘On to Okinawa!’ in #10 sees the squad achieve far greater success when despatched to the Pacific to rescue a captured US colonel from the Japanese. This exploit also saw the debut of a bearded bombastic submarine commander who would become a series regular before eventually winning his own title (Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders) in 1967.

Post-Kirby, the pace visibly slowed and melodramatic subplots increased. In #11, ‘The Crackdown of Capt. Flint!’ depicted Happy Sam briefly replaced by a spit-&-polish officer who soon learns the limitations of his ways, after which in #12, a raid on a V1 factory in the heart of Europe seemingly prompts Dino to join the Nazis ‘When a Howler Turns Traitor!’ It was just a pre-arranged ploy of course, but sadly nobody told the US commander, who latterly stuck the star in front of a firing squad…

This issue also included a Marvel Masterwork Pin-up of Fury by Ayers, before Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #13 offered arguably the best issue of the entire 167 issue run. The title said it all: ‘Fighting Side-by-Side with… Captain America and Bucky!’ reunited Lee, Kirby & Ayers in a blistering battle yarn wherein the Howlers cross paths with the masked Sentinels of Liberty after both teams stumble across a top-secret Nazi operation to build an invasion tunnel under the channel to England. To resort to the vernaculars of those times: “Wah-Hoo!”…

Ayers was back pencilling in #14, with Lee scripting and Roussos inking a minor milestone as harassed Adolf Hitler decrees the creation of a Nazi answer to Fury’s elite attack force. All ‘The Blitzkrieg Squad of Baron Strucker!’ had to do was lure the Howlers to a V2 rocket base and spring their trap…Yeah, that’s all…

Irregular supplemental feature Weapons of War provides the gen on the ‘B-26 Martin Marauder’ to inform and entertain in equal amounts before Steve Ditko stepped in to ink Ayers in issue #15 as ‘Too Small to Fight, Too Young to Die’ relates an ill-fated mission in Holland to destroy the dykes and flood the occupation forces. It all goes drastically awry and the Howlers “flee” back to Blighty with nothing but broken-hearted boy Hans Rooten… who has no idea that his despised quisling father is in fact now the Allies’ top spy in the region…

Hans is adopted as the Howlers’ plucky mascot but can’t accompany them when the squad is despatched to Africa in #16 to eradicate yet more Nazi super-weapons in ‘A Fortress in the Desert Stands!’ (pseudonymously inked by Frank Giacoia as Frankie Ray). From there it’s only a short camel-ride south until the ragtag rovers encounter spear-wielding natives and nasty Nazis engaged in a battle of Hearts & Minds ‘While the Jungle Sleeps!’ with Lee & Ayers supported by inker Vince Colletta.

All this time the chalk-&-cheese romantic relationship between Nick and Lady Pamela Hawley had been slowly developing to the point where the Yankee lout was ready to propose. That all ended in Chic Stone inked #18 when, as the unit is busy sinking a German battleship in a Norwegian port, Hawley is ‘Killed in Action!’ Crushed and crazy, Fury goes AWOL in the final tale of this collection, remorselessly hunting down the leader of the bomber flight which had targeted the hospital where she worked and extracting ‘An Eye for an Eye!’ in a satisfyingly shocking Lee story sensitively rendered by Ayers & Giacoia. The Howlers go along for the ride, but whether to help their leader or hold him back is unclear…

Gilding this bellicose lily, the book signs off with a wealth of stunning original art pages from Kirby, Ayers, Ditko, Giacoia, Stone & Roussos; contemporary house ads, and previous collection covers. Whereas close rival DC increasingly abandoned the Death or Glory bombast at this time in favour of humanistic, anti-war explorations of war and soldiering, Marvel’s take always favoured action-entertainment and fantasy over soul-searching for ultimate truths. On that level at least, once Kirby had moved on, these early epics are stunningly effective and galvanically powerful exhibitions of the comics combat genre.

Just don’t use them for history homework.
© 1963, 1964, 1965, 2019 Marvel All rights reserved.

Born yesterday in 1908, Argentinian cartoonist turned Golden Age comics artist Louis Cazaneuve (Quique, el Niño Pirata , Blue Beetle, Red Raven, Captain Savage, Sea Rover, Aquaman) shares the day with Filipino cartoonist Lauro “Larry” Zarate Alcala (Siopawman, Slice of Life, Mang Ambo, Kalabog en Bosyo) in 1926; Italian shock artist Stefano Tamburini (RanXerox, Fuzzy Rat, Snake Agent) in 1955; US comic book star Ron Garney (Captain America, Hulk, JLA, Daredevil, Silver Surfer, BRZRKR) in 1962, and in 1967 writers Brian Michael Bendis (Jinx, Torso, Secret Invasion, Ultimate Spider-Man, Alias) & Pete Tomasi (Batman and Robin, Brightest Day, Green Lantern Corps) and artist Eddy Barrows (52, Birds of Prey, Teen Titans, Superman), with latecomer Nathan Fairbairn (Lake of Fire, Scott Pilgrim, Wonder Woman, Batman Incorporated) arriving in 1976.

Today also saw the passing of Portuguese satirist and political cartoonist Carlos Botelho in 1982; Underground cartoonist Rick Griffin (Zap Comix) in 1991 and Spanish legend Afonso Azpiri Mejía (Black Hawk, Reflections, Mot, Chang, Lorna, Bethlehem Steele) and Italian Diabolik and Tex Willer contributor Sergio Zaniboni in 2017.

Today in 1903, radio writer and comics strip scripter Fran Striker was born, creator of an undying dynasty of pulp heroes that included The Lone Ranger, Green Hornet & Sgt. Preston of the Yukon. In 1932 French auteur Jacques Lob (Superdupont, Ténébrax, Blanche Épiphanie) arrived, sharing the natal day with Underground Commix pioneer Skip Williamson (Snappy Sammy Smoot, Bijou Funnies, Steal This Book) in 1944; Herb and Jamaal creator Stephen R. Bentley a decade later and comics artist/animator Chuck Patton (Justice League of America, The Creeper, Green Lantern) in 1956. Later comics related natal events include Jim Calafiore (Exiles, Aquaman, Secret Six, Deadpool) and all-rounder Brian Haberlin (Witchblade, Spawn) in 1963; Italian artist Stefano Gaudiano (Kafka, Batman, Catwoman, Walking Dead) in 1966; Gene Ha (The Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix, Top Ten, Wonder Woman: Historia, Mae) in 1969 and Chynna Clugston (Blue Monday, Hopeless Savages, Queen Bee, Legion of Super Heroes in the 31st Century, Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy) in 1975.

This day in 1984 artist Don Newton (The Phantom, Aquaman, The Avengers, New Gods, Batman, Captain Marvel/Shazam!) died. On this date in 2006 The Beano began running Hunt Emerson’s anarchic strip Ratz.

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Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 15: 1965-1966


By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-025-6 (HB)

These books include Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect

Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur premiered on Sunday February 13th 1937: a fabulous rainbow-hued weekly peek into a world where history met myth to produce something greater than both. Canadian illustrator-turned pioneering comics creator Harold “Hal” Foster developed the feature after a groundbreaking and astoundingly popular run on the Tarzan of the Apes comic strip, seeking something that could be his personal domain.

Prince Valiant offered action, adventure, exoticism, romance and a surprisingly high quota of laughs in its engrossing depiction of noble knights, scheming kings and wicked barbarians played out against a glamorised, dramatized Dark Ages backdrop. The never-ending story traces the eventful life a refugee lad of royal blood, driven from an ancestral Scandinavian homeland – Thule – and who grows up to roam the world, attaining a paramount position amongst the fabled heroes of Camelot.

Foster wove his generational epic romance over decades, tracing the progress of a feral wild boy who became a paragon of chivalric virtue: knight, warrior, saviour, secret agent, avenger and ultimately family patriarch through a constant storm of wild, robust and joyously witty wonderment. The restless champion visited many far-flung lands, siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes whilst enchanting generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

The glorious strip saga spawned films, animated series, comic books and all manner of toys, games, books and collections. Prince Valiant was – and remains – one of the few adventure strips to have run continuously from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (well north of 4000 episodes and still going strong) – and, even here at the end-times of newspaper strips as an art form, it continues in hundreds of papers and via the internet.

Foster soloed on the feature until 1971 when John Cullen Murphy (Big Ben Bolt) succeeded him as illustrator and the originator continued as writer and designer. That ended in 1980, when Foster fully and finally retired. Cullen Murphy’s daughter Mairead took over colouring and lettering whilst her brother John assumed the writer’s role, and in 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired, since when the strip has soldiered on under the aegis of other extremely talented artists such as Gary Gianni, Scott Roberts and latterly Thomas Yeates & Mark Schultz.

This luxuriously oversized (362 x 264 mm) full-colour hardback (tragically, the series is still unavailable digitally) re-presents pages spanning January 3rd 1965 to December 25th 1966, (individual Strips #1456 to 1559) and comes with all the regular bonus trimmings. Preceding two years’ worth of graphic narrative wonderment, historian/editor Brian M. Kane conducts an interview with a veteran comic book artist/comics strips illustrator. Heavily illustrated, the Foreword ‘Sir Robert of Dell: the Prince Valiant Art of Bob (Rip Kirby; Flash Gordon; Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom; Turok, Son of Stone; Lassie) Fujitani’ shares many secrets at the front, and the titanic tome ends with a flurry of illustrated essays and the rear.

These include fabulous King Features promotional material and inducements to newspapers plus Kane’s critical appraisal and discussion of the strip in other media. ‘Not Just For Sundays: Prince Valiant’s Adventures Beyond the Fourth Estate’ details collected editions from around the world; spin-offs and edited collections for the children’s book trade; novelisations (mainly by Max Trell); Hal Foster’s other books and curated compendia that fuelled the global demand for the apparently inexorable knight extant. Heavily illustrated with a wealth of book and comics covers (by Foster, John Cullen Murphy or Mike Grell) and candid photos, the reprint round-up also includes a gallery of covers by Michael Wm. Kaluta that graced the all-new sagas published by Marvel in 1994 (as written by Charles Vess & Elaine Lee and illustrated by the deeply underrated John Ridgway).

What Has Gone Before: valued vassal and infallible secret asset of King Arthur of Britain, Prince Valiant has travelled the world carrying out missions for his liege lord, embattled Christendom, honour and decency. His greatest comrades are stalwart Knights like Sir Gawain, Sir Kay and Sir Launcelot and barbarous Viking pirate Baltar. Val’s life of duty and action won him a glorious, implacable and equally incomparable wife in Mediterranean monarch Queen Aleta of the Misty Isles. Their first son Arn was born on an unknown continent and since has thrived on a life of constant peril. He stands on the brink of manhood and his own path of Royal service.

Val’s offspring currently number four: Arn, precocious twin girls Karen & Valeta and recent addition Galan, arriving during Aleta’s last peril-packed stay in her Misty Isles homeland. Arn rapidly advanced from Court Page to Novice and began official combat training. He swiftly became a Batchelor-at-Arms and constantly excels. Some battles are purely personal as when vindictive Mordred attempted to traduce Aleta’s honour by orchestrating a vicious scandal involving her and Lancelot, but the plot was foiled by clear thinking and valiant action…

In combination with his father, Arn’s gifts proved invaluable in repelling invasion by Saxon hordes and foiling rebellions in Scotland, Cornwall and Wales, as well as an international insurrection when savage Skogul Oderson united disparate Nordic tribes into a united force to ravage his grandfather’s kingdom of Thule. In the aftermath of that triumph, Valiant’s large family wintered in those chilly climes. While taking their ease, Arn and Boltar’s son Hatha talked much of the lost lands of Arn’s birth, recalling the prophecy that Valiant’s heir (deemed “son of the Sun Woman and the Bringer of Harvests”) would one day return to Vinland (the Americas) and his Niagara birthplace to do great deeds…

It should be noted that Hatha’s mother Tillicum is a princess of the Algonquin folk the Vikings befriended 15 years previously. She accompanied the Sun Woman on her return north and east, becoming Aleta’s bondswoman, royal nursemaid and confidante…

Now, as the year reaches mid-point Arn yearns to fulfil his mother’s promise of his return, not only to prove his manhood, but also to make good his family honour, forge trade alliances, and do mighty deeds. The most import of these goals is the first… receiving his father’s approval and mother’s grudging acquiescence. As winter approaches, Arn and Hatha must ready a ship – the province of Valiant’s old friend and ingenious shipwright Gundar Harl – and recruit a competent crew who can survive the perilous voyage and handle anything they might meet on the other side…

Arn further prepares by learning the Algonquin language from Tillicum and discovers her gift for strategic planning. He is delighted when she invites herself along for the trip – a gesture that convinces many holdouts that mayhap the callow youth might make them all rich after all…

Preparations are geared to a spring embarkation and Arn spends every moment seeking to anticipate problems and solve them. Disbelief and dwindling confidence in his proposed crew is offset by Arn undertaking a perilous midwinter sortie to the chilly home of his grandfather Aguar and convincing the hard-headed businessman to back the venture. That gained, Arn almost dies on the return trip, but survives to recruit even more men from local lads who would rather fight than farm…

Arn’s relentless proselytising (he even recruits a skald to visit outlying homesteads singing of the glorious exploit to come in hopes of boosting support and manpower) pays dividends and the voyage begins with the Prince, Hatha, Tillicum and Gundar leading an untried crew across largely unknown waters. Early upsets are all deftly dealt with by Arn and his nursemaid: pirates, rebellious crewmen, deadly winds, dire doldrums, pack ice and resource shortages, before they make landfall in the chilly climes of Vinland…

Here the real adventure begins as the explorers make their way down from the far north to the more hospitable shores of what will be New England a thousand years hence. Arn manipulates the understandably anxious tribes and stage-manages a charm offensive that sees him accepted as the supernatural “Bringer of Harvests” promised by the Sun Woman, as he introduces new weapons and tactics, farming implements, fresh food production methods, new ways to fight and fish, permanent sustainable dwellings and a staggering haul of trade goods. In the course of an epic exploration of the region via the St Lawrence river and overland, Arn learns the art of ruling and that physical wealth means nothing. Hatha narrowly escapes marriage, Tillicum reunites with her long-abandoned father and Viking knowhow saves the Algonquin from eradication by tribal nemeses the Iroquois, and apparently unkillable (chainmail-clad) Arn raises their status with the so-far neutral Ottowa and Huron. In the aftermath of a colossal tribal war, preparations begin for the return to Thule with their trade items (amber, seeds, furs, pemmican and precious minerals) being constantly computed and weighed against sufficient provisions to sustain them for the entire trip home. However, even readying themselves to leave generates tension and clashes with Mohawk and Mohegan enclaves before Gundar declares his modified dragonship refitted and ready to go…

During this rite of passage and voyage of bloody discovery life continued to present challenges in civilised Thule. As their children endured the return trip, both Valiant and Boltar were at the end of their patience and the Prince unwisely organised a tournament to amuse the warriors and himself. Sadly, unlike Arthur’s knights rowdy reivers have no understanding of ritual combat and the event was called off; barely before the competitors killed each other…

Soon after the debacle their boys triumphantly return, but their exploits and triumphs are not celebrated for long, as a ship from Camelot follows, bidding Valiant back into service. Beyond Hadrian’s Wall, life-long foes the Picts and Caledonians have somehow buried past grievances and are massing to attack England together. Arthur needs his greatest operative to find out how the miracle occurred and how best to counter it. Disguised as a vagabond sell-sword Val infiltrates the alliance and discovers Mordred is the unifying force, and embarks on a rapid but brutal solution. There is no love lost between the factions and less trust even now, so it only takes a few covert – and rather macabre – dirty tricks to set clan against clan. Sadly, Mordred sees his old enemy’s hand in the affair and determines to be revenged…

Arn would have joined the undercover mission, but as the latest Man of the House his job was to escort Aleta and the family back to Arthur’s court. By the time they arrive, Mordred and his half-brothers Agravaine and Gaheris have enacted a scheme to targeting Valiant’s loved one, but which is humiliating foiled by playful romance-obsessed Karen & Valeta and their burly handmaiden Katwin. Upon his return to Court, Valiant seeks out Mordred and lays down the law…

The year and the book close on lighter notes as skinny-dipping Aleta accidentally starts a mermaid panic after taking up bathing in Britain’s chilly seas, before her husband is called upon to apply his diplomatic skills to end a succession crisis. A staunch supporter of Arthur, King Bedwin of Dimore had trained his son Prince Harwick to carry on his wise reign and peaceful policies. Now though, as death approaches the aged monarch, Harwick has vanished and Bedwin’s brothers make ready for civil war should the son not be available to take over. When Val traces the absent heir apparent, he finds an obnoxious layabout dedicated only to fishing and carousing, but still smart enough to trick an oath of non-interference out of Arthur’s agent…

As war clouds gather, Valiant seems utterly stifled by his own honour and beliefs..

To Be Continued…

A mesmerising non-stop panorama of visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a tremendous procession of boisterous action, exotic adventure and grand romance; blending epic fantasy with dry wit and broad humour, and soap opera melodrama with dark vividly authentic violence. Lush, lavish and captivatingly lovely, it is an indisputable landmark of comics fiction and something no true fan should miss.
All comics © 2017 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties © 2016 their respective creators or holders. This edition © 2015 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

Today in 1892 cartoonist and animator Otto Messmer (Fun, Feline Follies, Felix the Cat) was born, sharing the natal celebrations with fellow cartoon gamechanger Hal Foster (Tarzan, Prince Valiant). In 1916 Golden Age art star Paul Gustavson (The Angel, The Human Bomb, A-Man, Alias the Spider, Quicksilver) was born; as was British writer Dick Foreman (Black Orchid, Hellblazer) in 1952; illustrator Brian Stelfreeze (Black Panther, CyCops, Shadow of the Bat, Gun Candy) in 1962 and Italian artist Enrico Marini (Batman: Dark Prince Charming, Gipsy, The Scorpion) in 1969.

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Master of Kung Fu Epic Collection volume 2: Fight Without Pity


By Doug Moench, Paul Gulacy, Sal Buscema, Keith Pollard, Jim Craig, Dan Adkins, Jack Abel, Pablo Marcos, Mike Esposito, Sal Trapani, John Tartaglione, Duffy Vohland, Tom Sutton & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0135-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times Comic books have always operated within outworld popular trends and fashions – just look at what got published whenever westerns or science fiction dominated on TV – so when the ancient philosophy and discipline of Kung Fu made its mark on western entertainment, it wasn’t long before all those kicks and punches found their way onto four-colour pages of America’s periodicals. Early starter Charlton Comics added Yang and House of Yang to their pioneering Judo Joe title and Frank McLaughlin’s Judomaster; DC debuted Richard Dragon and rebooted Karate Kid; Atlas/Seaboard opened (and as quickly closed again) The Hands of the Dragon and Marvel converted an already in-development proposed literary adaptation into an ongoing saga about a villain’s son…

A month after it launched, a second orient-inspired hero debuted with Iron Fist: combining combat philosophy, high fantasy and magical forces with a proper superhero mask and costume…

Although largely retrofitted for modern times, inspirational Master of Kung Fu star Shang-Chi originated with lots of tricky baggage. He kicked off in the autumn of 1973, cashing in on the contemporary West’s craze for Eastern philosophy and martial arts action that had already generated an avalanche of “Chop Sockey” movies and a controversial TV sensation entitled Kung Fu. You may recall that the lead in that cowboy-set saga was a half-Chinese Shaolin monk, played – after much publicised legal and industry agitation – by a white actor…

At Marvel, no one at that time particularly griped about the fact that Shang-Chi was designed by editor Roy Thomas and artisans Steve Englehart, Jim Starlin & Al Milgrom as a naive innocent (also half Chinese, with an American mother) thrown into tumultuous modern society as a rebellious yet involved counterpoint to his father: an insidious scheming fiend intent on global domination. Back then, securing rights to a major literary property and wrapping new comics in it was an established practise. It had worked spectacularly with Conan the Barbarian and horror stars Dracula and The Monster of Frankenstein. The same process also brilliantly informed seminal science fiction icon Killraven in War of the Worlds and plenty more…

These days we comics apologists keep saying “it was a different era”, but I genuinely don’t think anyone in the editorial office paused for a moment of second thoughts when their new Kung Fu book secured the use of one of literature’s greatest villains as a major player. Special Marvel Edition #15 (cover-dated December 1973) launched to great success, with Fu Manchu an overarching villain already a global personification of infamy.

Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward AKA Sax Rohmer’s ultimate embodiment of patronising mistrust and racist suspicion had been hugely popular since 1913’s The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu. The prime archetype for mad scientists and remorseless “Yellow Peril” threatening civilization, the character spread to stage, screen, airwaves and comics (even appropriating the cover of Detective Comics #1, heralding an interior series that ran until #28), but most importantly, became the visual affirmation and conceptual basis for countless evil “Asiatics”, “Orientals” and “Celestials” dominating popular fiction ever since. In recent years we’ve all (well, mostly all) acknowledged past iniquities and Shang-Chi has been fully reimagined, with that paternal link downplayed and ultimately abandoned – as much for licensing laws as social justice. And cultural respect, naturally…

Like most comics companies, Marvel employed plenty of “Yellow Peril” knock-offs and personifications – including Wong Chu; Plan Tzu (AKA the Yellow and latterly Golden, Claw); Huang Zhu; Silver Samurai; Doctor Sun, ad infinitum: all birds of another colour that are still nastily pejorative shades of saffron. Perhaps this is just my white guilt and fanboy shame talking. These stories, crafted by Marvel’s employees were – and remain – some of the best action comics you’ll ever encounter, but never forget what they’re actually about -distrust of the “other”. Without making excuses, I should also state that despite the casual racism suggested by legions of outrageously exotic, inscrutable lemon-hued bad guys haunting this series at every level, Master of Kung Fu did sensitively address issues of race and honestly attempt to share non-Christian philosophies and thought whilst – most importantly – offering potently powerful role models to kids of Asian origins. So at least there’s that…

Packed with stunning exotic adventure and compellingly convincing drama, this collection gathers Master of Kung Fu #29-53 and Master of Kung Fu Annual #1 (spanning June 1975 to August 1977). Written entirely by Doug Moench and primarily showcasing the developing graphic realism of Paul Gulacy, surrendering to his love of spy fiction it opens without a preamble in the middle of a mighty struggle…

Previously: the series inauspiciously launched in bimonthly reprint title Special Marvel Edition as The Hands of Shang Chi: Master of Kung Fu, but by the third issue (April 1974) became exclusively his. The origin episode introduced a vibrant, brilliant young man raised in utter isolation in the style and manner of imperial China. Reared by monks and savants, the boy was the result of a match between a physically perfect American woman and “misunderstood patriot” Fu Manchu. The boy was raised to accept that his sire was a noble hero unfairly hunted and slandered by corrupt western governments and the communist usurpers now blasphemously controlling the world’s greatest empire.

Fu’s son was schooled to respect and obey his father, trained to perfection in martial arts and designed as the ultimate warrior servant: the doctor’s devoted personal weapon against lifelong enemies Sir Dennis Nayland Smith and Doctor Petrie.

On reaching maturity, Shang – whose name means “the rising and advancing of a spirit” – was despatched to execute Petrie. However, after the obedient weapon completed his mission, he subsequently questions his entire life and the worldly benefit of killing an elderly, frail, already dying man. An emotional confrontation with Nayland Smith (who endured daily agonies from being maimed at the Devil Doctor’s command) further rattled the boy’s resolve and eventually Shang’s sublime education demanded he reassess everything his father had taught him…

After invading the villain’s New York citadel and crushing an army of freaks and monsters, Shang Chi faced his father and rejected all he stood for. The battle lines of an epic family struggle had been drawn. Banished from his cloistered childhood home and environs, the philosophically minded innocent adapted rapidly to the constant violence of the modern world. eventually accepting shelter with Nayland Smith in return for (espionage) services rendered…

Now, a turning point in his rising and advancement comes in MOKF #29 as Shang finds reason to abandon his pacifistic aspirations and get involved in western affairs after seeing firsthand the harm drugs cause, joining Nayland Smith’s team to cripple the drug trade. The unwelcome allies include veteran heavy Blackjack Tarr, and Petrie – not dead at Shang’s hand after all and subsequently rescued from his father’s clutches – working with British agent Clive Reston. He is, by his own account, a descendent of a famed “Consulting Detective” and a Double-0 operative “on Her Majesty’s Secret Service”)

The entire series was slowly morphing into a James Bond pastiche and with this mission to end effetely urbane drug dealer turned nuclear terrorist Carlton Velcro, illustrator Gulacy began a ballistic visual progression that would make him one of most watched and admired artists of the era as he referenced movie star and set pieces throughout the saga.

‘The Crystal Connection’ begins with Reston undercover at Velcro’s French coast fortress, playing heroin buyer Mr Blue until Shang & Tarr can infiltrate and secure the dope stocks. No one expected such massive defences; an army of killers led by deadly assassin Razor-Fist and a nuclear arsenal hidden below ‘A Gulf of Lions’ (#30, inked by Dan Adkins), with the pitched battle ranging far and wide as Razor Fist’s defeat leads to Shang clashing with whip-wielding panther woman Pavane before a truly explosive conclusion in ‘Snowbuster’…

‘Assault on an Angry Sea!’ was a hasty fill-in illustrated by Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito as Shang returns to London by ship and is drawn into the hunt for an undercover courier who is unaware that counteragents intend to intercept and end them. In this traditional mystery yarn, Chi finds too many suspects and can’t tell friend from foe from target, but triumphs nonetheless, before MOKF #33 resumes the Moench/Gulacy filmic fun-fest with ‘Wicked Messenger of Madness!’ This introduces seductive, conflicted agent Leiko Wu as both romantic interest and wedge between Shang Chi and his colleagues, and sees a robotic mannequin fail to assassinate Nayland Smith thanks to martial arts mastery but opens the door to a complex web of lies, double-dealing, insane artificial intelligences and a doomsday weapon.

The robot was a literal tool of missing agent Simon Bretnor, revealed far too late as narcissistic hired killer and would-be world conqueror Mordillo, who wants a space weapon using the ozone layer and sunlight to ravage sites on Earth. The plans for it are encoded in Wu’s brain, but by the time she realises her current boyfriend Bretnor is the bad guy, Leiko’s his prisoner on a manically murderous version of Fantasy Island…

As Shang & Reston race to the madly modified atoll-turned-playground-of-peril, Wu attempts to reason with the crazed Mordillo, but gets more sense from his Pinocchio-like AI robot sidekick Brynocki, who is trying to mediate a ‘Cyclone at the Center of a Madman’s Crown!’ She does, however, learn that her captor had a connection to Pavane and Velcro and now holds Chi responsible for a huge loss of face and fortune. Another spectacular conclusion comes when maniac and martial artist clash in the skies above the island as the villain briefly unleashes his stolen Solar Chute to rain destruction down on the island in ‘Death-Hand and the Sun of Mordillo’…

What feels like a reformatted leftover from the Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu era follows in #36 & 37 (January & February 1976, by Moench, Keith Pollard & Sal Trapani) with Shang entering a magical maze of mystery. He seeks to defend from ninjas and their leader Darkstrider a carnival of hapless freaks voluntarily living in ‘Cages of Myth, Menagerie of Mirrors!’ but is initially hard-pressed saving anyone from the villain who subtly weaves a ‘Web of Dark Death!’ Moench, Pollard, John Tartaglione & Duffy Vohland continue fantasy themes in Master of Kung Fu Annual #1 during a team-up with fellow transplanted warrior Iron Fist. Here Danny Rand and Shang are tricked into entering another dimension to invade ‘The Fortress of S’ahra Sharn!’ The culprit is trickster wizard Quan-St’ar, whose true goal is the destruction of immortal city K’un-Lun, but he makes one huge mistake…

At their creative peak Moench & Gulacy started an epic, ambitious, truly sophisticated and industry-changing run in MOKF #38 (March 1976). Here Shang Chi reluctantly accepts a rescue mission to extract an agent from Hong Kong, meeting lies, passion, disinformation and deadly love in ‘Cat’. Nayland Smith has again orchestrated events to satisfy his own agenda and saving Julia leads Chi into a ‘Fight Without Pity’ against an opponent who might well be his superior in combat ability… and also holds the moral high ground.

The landmark clash is simply prologue to an extended, character driven serial that opens at ‘The Murder Agency’ (#40 with Gulacy inking himself) as on-fire creators pioneer storytelling techniques later seen in Christopher Nolan’s Memento. A traitor in British Intelligence is murdering agents and the information Nayland Smith wanted from Julia should have given them vital advantage. However, as Shang again quits all “games of death and deceit” he, Tarr & Leiko Wu are attacked by (apparent) Chinese agents masquerading as “Oriental Expediters”.

After helping to defeat the attackers, Wu leaves on a similar extraction mission and suggests that the embattled operatives re-enlist disgraced former agent/current drunken sot James Larner. When they try, he’s got a new pal also boozing himself to death: lovelorn abandoned Clive Reston. That’s when another heavily-armed gang burst in guns blazing, laying down their lives simply to bait a trap the agents can’t afford to avoid…

With the spy saga solidly underway, everything suddenly screeched to a halt as a deadline crunch necessitated another fill-in moment, with Moench, Sal B & Esposito revealing a childhood moment in ‘Slain in Secrecy, and by Illusion!’ Here Shang recalls reluctant clashes with childhood companion M’nai – AKA Si Fan super-assassin Midnight – to prove Fu Manchu’s hallowed home harboured a thief and traitor…

Inked by Tom Sutton, the main event resumes in #42 in a welter of flashbacks, crosscuts and flash forwards as ‘The Clock of Shattered Time’ introduces a mechanically augmented, electrically-enhanced martial arts assassin who almost kills Chi. Shock-Wave has a strong but top-secret connection to Nayland Smith and nearly succeeds in blowing up the spy chief too…

As the MI5 mole and Shock-Wave set more bombs, MOKF #43 sees a changed and vengeful Shang win a rematch with the amplified assassin in ‘A Flash of Purple Sparks’. As Wu escorted her own living package across Europe with the Oriental Expediters chasing them all the way to an MI5 safehouse in Switzerland, Shang was waiting, but his triumph was short-lived as Leiko’s charge revealed who was behind all the deaths – and the Oriental Expediter organisation – and that, in London. another of his allies had fallen…

The drama kicked into overdrive with a long-anticipated event. Cover-dated September 1976, #44 heralded ‘The Return of Fu Manchu, Prelude: “Golden Daggers (A Death Run)”’ with the scattered British agents heading for home under a hail of gunfire and assorted ambushes. Crucially revealed now is how the Devil Doctor’s recalcitrant first-born Fah Lo Suee is at war with their father for control of his empire…

She originally debuted in third novel The Si-Fan Mysteries /The Hand of Fu-Manchu in 1917 (or fourth outing The Daughter of Fu-Manchu in 1931, depending on who you ask) and became a minor character here in Master of Kung Fu #26, but now steps into the full spotlight after Nayland Smith is finally downed… by his most trusted ally! On the back foot and losing, Fah Lo Suee seeks alliances and her brother’s aid in ‘Part One (Shang Chi): “The Death Seed!”’ while Fu Manchu is occupied with resurrecting his founding ancestor to be his new – loyal – son/enforcer.

In London, Larner saves Nayland Smith even as Reston, Shang & Wu reunite and rebuff the “daughter of the Devil”… and that’s when Clive makes a big mistake and is taken by Fah Lo Suee. Inked by Pablo Marcos, ‘Part Two (Clive Reston): “The Spider Spell!”’ splits attention between the British agent’s trial and eventual triumph and Fu resurrecting legendary warlord Shaka Kharn, before ‘Part Three (Leiko Wu): “Phantom Sand”’ details how she & Shang infiltrate a fantastic city at the north pole in advance of what’s left of the team joining them to destroy the citadel. Before that, though, the final clash between father and daughter again confirms the total mastery of the malevolent mandarin…

The true appalling scope of the Devil Doctor’s ambitions are exposed in ‘Part Four (Black Jack Tarr): “City in the Top of the World”’ as the schemer prepares to leave Earth and cull its population by 90%! Meanwhile Shang duels revived revenant Shaka Kharn, and battles his way aboard his sire’s space shuttle even as his companions destroy the base at the cost of another valiant soul in ‘Part Five (Sir Dennis Nayland Smith): “The Affair of the Agent Who Died!”’ The astounding saga – and Gulacy’s interior involvement – ends with #50 as the villain speaks for himself with his plans and perhaps his over-extended life ended for real in ‘Part Six (Fu Manchu): “The Dreamslayer!”’

Master of Kung Fu #51 saw Jim Craig join Moench & Marcos, taking over pencil duties for ‘Epilogue: “Brass and Blackness!” (A Death Move!!)’ infilling details of interments and getting back to Earth where our unhappy reluctant warrior again quits the spy world. The final tale here (#52, May 1977) is one more fill-in as Moench & Pollard reintroduce Groucho Marx knock-off Rufus T. Hackstabber who invites our baffled battler to ‘A Night at the 1001 Nights!’ in search of family (such as reprobate/WC Fields analogue Quigley J. Warmflash); riches and safety from mercenaries led by Si-Fan general Tiger-Claw.

Ernie Chan’s cover to MOKF #53 (which reprinted #20) leads into an bonus section including Gil Kane & Adkins’ covers to Savage Fists of Kung Fu tabloid collector’s edition; house ads: 10 pages of original art plus unused and modified covers. The published ones throughout were crafted by Kane, Adkins, Sal Buscema, Rich Buckler, Dave Cockrum, Marie Severin, Chan, Gulacy, John Romita Jr., Ron Wilson & Jack Abel, Al Milgrom, Esposito, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia and Klaus Janson.

In recent years, Shang Chi’s backstory has been adapted and altered. His dad was understandably reinvented as Zheng Zu, Mr. Han, Chang Hu, Wang Yu-Seng and The Devil Doctor, so, depending on your attitude, you have the ultimate choice and sanction of not buying or reading this material. If you do – with eyes wide open and fully acknowledging that the past is another place that we can and should now consign to history – your comics appreciation faculties will see some amazing stories incredibly well illustrated: ranking amongst the most exciting, visually beguiling and enjoyable in Marvel’s canon.
© 2018 MARVEL.

Today in 1987 the final issue of British toddlers weekly Playhour was published, ending a 1700+ run that had commenced on 16th October 1954, whilst on this day back in 1982 cartoonist and master of minimalism Ernie Bushmiller (Mac the Manager, Fritzi Ritz, Nancy) died.

The day saw the birth of Golden Age Superman artist Ed Dobrotka in 1917; Indian cartoonist Pran Kumar Sharma (Billoo, Chacha Chaudhary) in 1938; realist action artist Paul Gulacy (Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species, Master of Kung Fu, Batman: Prey, Black Widow, Slash Maraud, Six From Sirius, Sci-Spy, James Bond 007) in 1953; writer/Conspiracy historian Lamar Waldron (Lightrunner, M.I.C.R.A.: Mind Controlled Remote Automaton) in 1954; artist Terry Shoemaker (X-Men, Spellbound, Legion of Super-Heroes) in 1960 and “Bad Grrrl” artist Jim Balent (Catwoman, Purgatori, Vampirella, Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose) in 1963. Also blowing out candles today are Iron Man, XO Manowar, Elektra & Wolverine artist Sean Chen and quite rude Norwegian cartoonist Frode Øverli (Pondus, Riskhospitalet, Rutetid, Deep Shit Junkies) – both in 1968, and artists David Nakayama (City of Heroes, Big Hero Six, Proximity) in 1978 and Clay Mann (Magneto: Not a Hero, X-Men: Legacy, XO Manowar, Gambit, Heroes in Crisis) in 1990.

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Star Comics All-Star Collection volume 1


By Lennie Herman, Sid Jacobson, Stan Kay, Bob Bolling, Warren Kremer, Howard Post, Vince Colletta, Jon D’Agostino, Jacqueline Roettcher & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4291-1 (TPB), 978-1-3025-0691-9 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content and especially outdated gender roles produced in less enlightened times.

Once upon a time the US comic book industry aimed at younger readers was utterly dominated by Dell/Gold Key with their TV & Disney licenses, and Harvey Comics who had largely switched from a variety of genres to a wholesome, kid-friendly pantheon by the end of the 1950s. Despite valiant and consistent efforts from DC, Charlton and Marvel to compete, this Big Two owned the pre-school sector until declining morals, television cartoon saturation and rising print costs finally forced them to bow out.

The Wester Publishing companies suffered a slow erosion, gradually losing valuable prime properties like Popeye, Star Trek, assorted Hanna-Barbera and Warner Brothers cartoon stars, plus sundry other treasures until the parent company called it a day in 1984. Harvey had already shut up shop in 1982 when company founder Alfred Harvey retired.

The latter’s vast archived artwork store was sold off and, with properties and rights up for grabs, Marvel Comics (who had already secured those lost Star Trek and Hanna-Barbera titles) was frontrunner for licensing the family firm’s iconic characters. These included Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Sad Sack, Hot Stuff – the Little Devil, Wendy the Good Little Witch and so many others. That bid ultimately foundered, but business savvy Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, recognised a huge gap in the market, and subsequently launched a cloned imprint of the Harvey stable which would also encompass new TV/toy properties like Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies & Fraggle Rock; Alf; Madballs; Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears; Thundercats; Ewoks and every Saturday Morning TV sensation still to come. He resolved to devise and deliver the next generation of worthily wholesome, entry-level comics for entertainment-hungry young minds and their concerned parents…

Marvel’s Star Comics line launched in 1985, edited by ex-Harvey head-honcho Sid Jacobson, with familiar-looking titles sporting an incontestably similar look and feel, which was achieved primarily by hiring former Harvey stalwarts like Jacobson, Lennie Herman, Warren Kremer, Howard Post, Ernie Colon and others.

Millionaire prince and all-around good kid Royal Roy especially invoked the ire of the Harvey heirs who sued for copyright infringement of their astonishingly prolific Richie Rich: a glittering prize who had shone in over 55 separate titles between his debut in 1953 and the bust of 1982. Roy was cancelled after 6 issues – as were many Star series – in a brutal “Survival of the Funnest” policy – and the suit was quietly dropped. None of which affects the fact that those Eighties child stars were, in their own right, superb examples of all-ages fun, excitement and adventure joyously revisited in this collection first released in from 2009: gathering that first wave of titles and latterly expanded on in a coordinated curated kids comics book sequence (remember now: “gotta get ‘em all!”).

Re-presenting Planet Terry #1-2, Top Dog #1-3, Royal Roy #1-2 & Wally the Wizard #1-2 in a veritable nova of bubbly contagious thrills and frolics, the eccentric escapades open with a star who was just a little lost boy in space…

Planet Terry was created by Lennie Herman (who died just before the big Star Comics launch) and the merely magnificent Warren Kremer, whose animation-based art style became the defining look of Harvey Comics during its happy heyday, and starred a young lad searching the universe for the parents he had never known. Introduced in ‘The Search’ (Herman, Kremer & Vince Colletta), little Terry was something of a nuisance, periodically landing on alien worlds, pestering the inhabitants and asking “Has anyone seen my mother and father?”

Found wandering in a life-pod which raised and educated him, the only clues PT had to his past are a name bracelet and an empty picture frame. However, this time when he returns to the obnoxious planet Bznko, Terry accidentally drives off a menace which bores folks to death with bad jokes, so the inhabitants give him a junked lady robot as a reward. This proves to be a blessing in disguise as Robota inadvertently leads the lonely lad to ‘A Clue’ when they later crashland on a mining asteroid and meet aged Enoch Diggs who recognises the lifepod the infant Terry was originally found in…

‘Some Answers’ are forthcoming as the dithery prospector reveals he once worked on Confederation Cosmos Cruiser Space Warp, where the captain’s wife was going to have a baby. Needing a sterile environment for the newborn infant, the crew placed him in the emergency lifeboat, but his jubilant father accidentally triggered it whilst celebrating his son’s birth and the infant was rocketed into deep space. Although they searched everywhere, the heartbroken spacemen never located the pod and assumed baby Terry was lost forever…

Although Enoch can’t remember the names of Terry’s parents, he suggests another old shipmate might, and the re-energised searchers rush to another asteroid to find him. Sadly, they instead encounter ‘The Malt Shop Menace’, before recruiting another voyager when Robota saves a brutish monster…

Omnus gratefully joins their decidedly odd and growing family. Little do they know that a sinister conspiracy is at work to keep the whereabouts and secret of the Space Warp lost forever…

In #2 (by Herman, Kremer & Jon D’Agostino) the quest continues as the outcasts encounter sabotage and opposition before landing their freshly repaired ship on the lost world of the Gorkels where the trio clumsily fulfil an ancient prophecy in ‘The Saga of Princess Ugly’. In return for repairing Terry’s downed vessel, he, Robota and Omnus must rescue an abducted Princess by battling hostile jungles, shapeshifting beasts, killer vines, a whirlpool and a volcano all controlled by archvillain Vermin the Vile in ‘Too Close (enough) for Comfort’ before saving the girl from ‘The Doom of the Domed City’ and uncovering the final resting place of the elusive Space Warp…

Also by Herman, Kremer & D’Agostino, Royal Roy debuted on his birthday in ‘The Mystery of the Missing Crown’, wherein the Prince of wealthy Ruritanian Cashalot discovers that the traditional, venerable Royal Highness Crown has gone missing on the very day of his investiture. Whilst King Regal and Queen Regalia understandably panic, super suave, ultra cool bodyguard Ascot diligently investigates as assorted resplendent relatives dither and interfere, so Roy and his pet crocodile Gummy keep their heads and maintain their poise by ‘Picking up the Scent’. They soon expose a supernatural agency at work after ‘A Midnight Visit’ by ghostly ancestor William the Warhorse…

Topping off that opening issue was a snappy, snazzy short fun yarn starring reptilian Gummy in ‘Crocadog’ prior to #2 hosting ‘The Grand Ball’. Scripted by Stan Kay, it occupied most of Roy’s attention as the underage but still eligible Prince took a fancy to simple commoner Crystal Clear whilst ambitious – and mean – social climber Lorna Loot spent all her time – and considerable cash – unsuccessfully attempting to beguile the boy by turning herself into a contemporary Cinderella in ‘A Strange Stranger’…

‘Maneuvers!’ then sees Roy fulfil his hereditary duties by joining Cashalot’s army on dawn exercises. As ruler-in-waiting of a rich but peaceful nation, the plucky lad isn’t too surprised to find that the entire armed forces consists of one reluctant prince and a keen but aging general…

Top Dog featured a far more modern and mundane situation, depicting the lives of average American boy Joey Jordan and a mutt he brought home one day. Herman, Kremer & Jacqueline Roettcher’s ‘The Dog-Gone Beginning’ revealed how, whilst looking for his lost baseball, the kid had accidentally spotted a dog reading the newspaper and talking to himself. Exposed, the canny canine begged the boy to keep his secret else all the four-footed wonder could expect was a short and painful life being poked, prodded and probed by scientists…

Once the lad swore to keep his secret, Top Dog agreed to come live with Joey in ‘House About a Dog, Mom?’ Whilst the boy tries to teach the pooch to bark – one of the few languages he can’t speak! – Joey’s accommodating family gradually get used to the seemingly normal dog and his boy.

However, when Mervin Megabucks (the richest, meanest kid in town) overhears them playing and chatting, the spoiled brat refuses to believe Joey is a ventriloquist and when the junior Jordan refuses to sell, Mervin steals Top Dog as the perfect addition to his palatial high-tech house. However, even torture won’t make the purloined pooch speak again, and when Joey stages ‘The Big Breakout’, Mervin’s mega-robots prove no match for dogged determination leaving the peewee plutocrat brat baffled, bamboozled and dog-less…

Top Dog #2 exposes ‘Spies!’ after the restless dog of a thousand talents seems to harbour a dark side. Going out on nightly jaunts, the marvellous mutt apparently leads a double life as a security guard at a Defence Plant, triple-crossing everybody by photographing military secrets for a foreign power. It’s actually a diminutive enemy agent in a dog costume but Vladimir’s handlers hadn’t reckoned on a real dog looking (and speaking) just like their hairy infiltrator. Thus they accidentally give the purloined plans to the chatty all-American canine.

After spectacularly trapping the sinister spies without revealing his own astounding intellect, Top Dog is framed in #3 by Joey’s best friend Larry who’s been feeling neglected and rejected since the brilliant bow-wow moved in. With a feral hound dubbed ‘The Mad Biter’ on the prowl and attacking people, it’s simple to send our perspicacious pup to the Pound, where he encounters lots of bad dogs who probably deserve to be ‘Caged’.

Faithful Joey never gives up and after bailing his canine comrade out, they convince the guilt-ridden perjurer to see the light by via an impromptu midnight ‘Ghost Story’. Even with Larry recanting his lies, neighbourhood families don’t trust Top Dog, but that all changes once the maligned mutt tracks down the real Biter and engages him in ‘A Fight to the Finish’…

The final initial entry was written and illustrated by Archie Comics veteran Bob Bolling who concocted a fabulous medieval wonderland for Wally the Wizard to play in. In #1’s ‘A Plague of Locusts’, mystical Merlin’s older, smarter brother Marlin is having trouble with a stubbornly inquisitive apprentice. Wally wants to know everything NOW, has no discipline and is full of foolish ideas and misconceptions. As a serious scientist, Marlin has no time for silly superstitions, so after the lad accidentally releases a time-travelling demon from an age-old prison, the mage refuses to believe him.

Gorg however swears faithfully to repay the favour before disappearing…

Despatched to deliver a potion to King Kodger, Wally also helps a dragon save his hatchling from a deep well, only just reaches the sovereign in time and has a feed on the Royal Barge where he once again fails to impress beauteous Princess Penelope…

Meanwhile in Bloodmire Castle, wicked plotters Vastar the Vile, his sister Sybilious the Bilious and wicked warlock Erasmo conspire to conquer the kingdom by unleashing a huge metal locust to consume all in its path. Noble knights led by invincible Sir Flauntaroy are helpless before the brazen beast and Wally realises only Marlin can save them. Sadly, the boy gets lost on route to fetch him, but happily for everybody, the dragon and demon the rationalist sorcerer refuses to believe in are ready to pay their debts to the apprentice…

Sid Jacobson, Howard Post & D’Agostino handled the second issue wherein Wally enters the annual apprentice’s games, with Marlin now suddenly transformed into a traditional magic-making mage. In fact, Marlin, as a three-time champion of ‘The Magic-a-Thon!’ is secretly regretful that Wally is too inexperienced to compete… a fact his disciple discerns and tries to fix. Desperately cramming for a week and eventually (with the coaching of his proud master) Wally sets off to compete but a lovelorn barbarian accidentally cleaves the kid’s crib notes in twain, leaving him able to create only half-spells and conjure up mere semi-monsters…

Undaunted, Wally continues and perseveres, even after a huge storm deprives him of the demi-directions and his back-up pouch of herbs and potions. He is determined to win using nothing but his wits, guts and unflagging optimism…

This clutch of classic children’s tales also includes the enchanting covers and the original house-ads which introduced the characters to the Kids in America and four decades later is still a fabulous blast of intoxicating wonder and entertainment readers of all ages cannot fail to love. With children’s comics back in force again after too long a fallow period, it’s apt, sensible and fun to acknowledge the timeless classics we used to draw upon and which drew kids in. Historical compilations like this one belong on the shelves of every funnybook-loving parent and even those lonely couples with only a vague twinkle in their eyes…
© 1985 and 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Today in 1928 Lyman Young’s strip epic Tim Tyler’s Luck launched, followed by Al Capp’s Li’l Abner in 1934.

This day in 1919 prolific illustrator and inker Jim Mooney (Tommy Tomorrow, Supergirl, Omega the Unknown, Robin, Batman, Pussycat, Man-Thing, Spider-Man, Thundercats, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) was born, as were artist/inker Gene Day (Star*Reach, Star Wars, Master of Kung Fu) in 1951; all-rounder Donna Barr (Desert Peach, Stinz) in1952; UK artist Rob Davis (Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, Nelson) in 1954; artist Bret Blevins (New Mutants, Sleepwalker, Bozz Chronicles) in 1960; both Billy Tucci (Shi, Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion) and cartoonist Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man, Postage Stamp Funnies) in 1966 and Malaysian artist Billy Tan Mung Khoy AKA Billy Tan (Uncanny X-Men, Green Lantern, Tomb Raider) in 1970.

Passing on this day were Jack Cole (Plastic Man, Betsy and Me) in 1958; British editor creator John Geering (Sparky, The Topper, Cracker, Plug, Nutty, The Beano, The Dandy on Puss ‘n’ Boots, Smudge, Bananaman, DangerMouse, Count Duckula) in 1999 and Tintin colour artist Josette Baujot in 2009.