Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set Up


By Peter O’Donnell and Jim Holdaway (Titan Books)
ISBN: 987-1-84023-658-2 (2007) 978-0-90761-037-3 (1985)

The year 1963 was a big one for the world of entertainment. Go look it up.

Comics and strips particularly enjoyed an explosive renaissance and here we’re saying “well done!” to one of the most astounding characters in fiction: one long overdue for another moment to shine. Happy anniversary Modesty (and Willie)!

Infallible super-criminals Modesty Blaise and her lethally charming, compulsively platonic, equally adept partner Willie Garvin gained fearsome reputations whilst heading underworld gang The Network. Then, at the height of their power, they retired young, rich and still healthy. With honour intact and their hands relatively clean, they cut themselves off completely from careers where they made all the money they would ever need and far too many enemies: a situation exacerbated by their heartfelt and – for their professions – controversial conviction that killing was only ever to be used as a last resort.

When devious British Spymaster Sir Gerald Tarrant sought them out, they were slowly dying of boredom in England. That wily old bird offered them a chance to have fun, get back into harness and do a bit of good in the world. They jumped at his offer and began cleaning up the dregs of society in their own unique manner. The self-appointed crusade took decades…

From that tenuous beginning in ‘La Machine (the first tale in this collected volume) the dynamic duo went on to crush the world’s vilest villains and most macabre monsters in a perpetual succession of tense suspense and inspirational action that lasted for more than half a century.

The inseparable associates debuted in The Evening Standard on 13th May 1963 and, over the passing decades, went on to star in some of the world’s most memorable crime fiction, all in approximately three panels a day.

Creators Peter O’Donnell & Jim Holdaway (who had previously collaborated on Romeo Brown – another lost strip classic equally as deserving of its own archive albums) crafted a timeless treasure trove of brilliant pictorial escapades until the illustrator’s tragic early death in 1970, whereupon Spanish artist Enric Badia Romero (and occasionally John Burns, Neville Colvin & Pat Wright) assumed the art reins, taking the partners-in-peril to even greater heights.

Holdaway’s version has been cited as a key artistic influence by many comic artists.

The series was syndicated world-wide and Modesty starred in numerous prose novels; short-story collections; several films; a TV series pilot; a radio play; an original American graphic novel from DC; an audio serial on BBC Radio 4 as well as nearly 100 comic adventures.

The strip’s conclusion came in 11th April 2001 edition of The Evening Standard. Many papers around the world immediately began running reprints and further new capers were conceived, but British newspaper readers never saw them. We’re still waiting…

The pair’s astounding exploits comprise a broad blend of hip adventuring, glamorous lifestyle and cool capers: a melange of international espionage, crime, intrigue and even – now and again – plausibly intriguing sci fi or supernaturally-tinged horror genre fare, with ever-unflappable Modesty and Willie the canny, deadly, yet all-too-fallibly human defenders of the helpless and avengers of the wronged…

We have UK publisher Titan Books to thank for collecting the saga of Britain’s Greatest Action Hero (Women’s Division), although they haven’t done so for a while now…

Fist seen in 1985, this initial volume introduced Modesty and her right-hand man, retired super-criminals now bored out of their brains. Enter stiff, by the book spook Sir Gerald Tarrant, head of a nebulous British spy organization who recruits her by offering her excitement and a chance to get some real evil sods. From that tenuous beginning in ‘La Machine– where the reinvigorated duo dismantle a global assassination enterprise, the focus moves on to ‘The Long Leveras our stars seek to save a Hungarian defector who has been inexplicably abducted by his former bosses.

The drama concludes with the ‘Gabriel Set-up as the purely platonic power couple scotch a sinister scheme by a criminal mesmerist…

Also included in this monochrome masterwork are ‘In the Beginning – a strip produced in 1966 as an origin and introduction to bring newly subscribing newspapers up to speed on the characters – plus text features ‘Blaise of Glory (part 1)’ by Mike Patterson and ‘Girl Walking’ by O’Donnell himself.

The tales are stylish and engaging spy/crime/thriller fare in the vein of Ian Fleming’s Bond stories (the comic version of which Titan also reprinted) and art fans especially should absorb Holdaway’s beautiful crisp line work, with each panel being something of a masterclass in pacing, composition and plain good, old-fashioned drawing.

The beauty of Modesty Blaise is not simply the timeless excellence of the stories and the captivating wonder of the illustration, but that material such as this can’t fail to attract a broader readership to the medium. Its content could hold its own against the best offerings of television and film. All we have to do is keep the stuff in print…
© 2004-2017 Associated Newspapers/Solo Syndication.

The Steel Claw: The Cold Trail (Super Picture Library)


By Tom Tully & Jesús Blasco & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78618-659-1 (HB/Digital edition)

Another stunning salvo of graphic wonderment from Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics strand, The Steel Claw: The Cold Trail is a sublimely engaging yarn celebrating an all-but-forgotten sub-strand of the 1960s comics experience.

Until the 1980s, comics in the UK were based on an anthological model, offering variety of genre, theme and character on a weekly – or sometimes fortnightly – basis. Humorous periodicals like DC Thomson’s The Beano were leavened by thrillers like the Q-Bikes, Billy the Cat or General Jumbo whilst rival publisher Amalgamated Press/Fleetway/IPCs comedy comics such as Whizzer and Chips always offered a thriller or two like Wonder Car or Pursuit of the Puzzler.

Similarly, adventure papers like Lion or Valiant always included gag strips such as The Nutts, Grimly Feendish, Mowser and a wealth of similar quick laugh treats. And yes, DCT installed equivalents in The Wizard, Victor, Hotspur and the rest…

Both companies also produced Seasonal Specials, hardcover Annuals and digest-sized anthology publications. DCT still publishes Commando Picture Library and used to sell romance, school dramas and a modern science fiction title (Starblazer) to match their London competitors’ successful paperback book titles.

Those ubiquitous delights included Super Picture Library, War Picture Library, Air Ace Picture Library and Action Picture Library.

These were half-sized, 64-page monochrome booklets with glossy soft-paper covers, but between 1967 and 1968 – at the height of the sixties Spy and Superhero booms – were supplemented by a deluxe, card-cover, 132-page version: The Fleetway Super Library.

As well as the always-popular war option of “Front Line” (starring by turn Maddock’s Marauders or Top-Sergeant Ironside), this line offered a “Secret Agent Series” – alternating cool espionage operatives Johnny Nero and Barracuda – and the “Stupendous” (formerly and briefly “Fantastic”) series which delivered lengthy complete sagas starring either The Spider or The Steel Claw.

These extra exploits came twice a month and ran 13 tales for each, with this spiffy hardback tome replaying the fifth release as crafted by the regular strip creative team of Tom Tully & Jesús Blasco …

British comics had a strange and extended love affair with what can only be described as “unconventional” (for which feel free to substitute “creepy”) heroes. So many of the stars and potential role models of our serials and strips were just plain “off”: self-righteous, moody voyeurs-turned vigilantes like Jason Hyde, sinister masterminds like The Dwarf, deranged geniuses like Eric Dolmann, jingoistic, racist supermen like Captain Hurricane and more often than not (barely) reformed criminals or menaces like Charlie Peace, the morally ambivalent Spider or The Steel Claw

One of the most fondly-remembered British strips of all time is the eerily beautiful Steel Claw: created by Ken Bulmer & Blasco for the debut issue of weekly anthology Valiant. From 1962 to 1973, the stunningly gifted Blasco and his small studio of family members (plus occasional fill-in guest illustrators) thrilled the nation’s children, illustrating the angst-filled adventures of scientist, adventurer, secret agent and even costumed superhero Louis Crandell.

The majority of the character’s caseload was actually scripted by prolific and versatile comics writer Tom Tully (Roy of the Rovers, Heros the Spartan, Dan Dare, House of Dolmann, Janus Stark, Mytek the Mighty, The Wild Wonders, Nipper, Adam Eterno, Johnny Red, Harlem Heroes, Mean Arena, Football Family Robinson and many more).

He followed the precepts of H.G. Wells’ original unseen adversary which had been laid out by science fiction novelist Bulmer, presenting some modern spin on Victorian classic The Invisible Man.

In the 1960s, however, our protagonist acted with evil intent as soon as he fell out of sight of his fellow humans, but not through innate poor character, but because of wild technology accidentally unleashed…

The thrills of the writing are engrossing enough, but the real star of this feature is the artwork: captivating classicist drawing, moody staging and the sheer pristine beauty of all participants making this an absolute pleasure to look at.

Born in Barcelona in 1919, Jesús Monterde Blasco began his phenomenal career in 1935, drawing for Mickey magazine. Barely known now in the English-speaking world, his vastly varied output included Cuto, Anita Diminuta, Los Tres Inseperables, Los Guerilleros, Paul Foran, Tom Berry, Tex Willer, Tallafero, Capitán Trueno and Une Bible en Bande Dessinée for continental and South American audiences. His many UK strips include the lush and lavish Buffalo Bill, sci-fi chiller The Indestructible Man, Billy the Kid and the first Invasion! serial (2000 AD from #1, 1977). He died in October 1995.

What has gone before: Louis Crandell was an embittered man, presumably due to having lost his right hand in a lab accident. After his recovery and its replacement with an articulated steel prosthetic, he returned to work as assistant to venerable boffin Professor Barringer, who was attempting to create a germ-destroying ray.

When that device exploded, Crandell received a monumental electric shock and was bathed in radiation. Rather than killing him, the incident rendered him totally transparent whilst changing his body chemistry. Although he couldn’t stay unseen forever, the bodily mutation permanently affected him, and subsequent electric shocks caused all but his metal hand to disappear.

These were simpler times and there was far less SCIENCE around so please – Kids Of All Ages – do not try this at home!

Whether venal at heart or temporarily deranged, Crandell went on a rampage of terror, even attempting to blow up New York City before finally coming to his senses. Throughout Crandell’s outrages, guilt-fuelled Barringer was in pursuit, resolved to save or stop his former friend…

After he was caught and cured, the invisible man was so globally well known that he was framed by his own therapist. Whilst treating Crandell, Dr. Deutz was also traumatically exposed to Barringer’s ray but instead of invisibility, he gained the power to transform into a bestial ape-man and turned to crime for thrills. He malevolently placed the blame for his own spectacular robberies and assaults on his notorious patient…

On the run but innocent this time, Crandell was saved by the intervention of Barringer’s niece Terry Gray. After weeks of beast-triggered catastrophe and panic in the streets, the Steel Claw was vindicated and proved himself a hero. Despite that, a quiet life was clearly beyond the unseen celebrity, and while seeking anonymity in the Bahamas, he was embroiled in a modern-day pirate’s attempt to hijack an undersea super-weapon and plunder cruise ships…

A wilful recluse, Crandell underwent a gradual shift from victim to reluctant hero: accepting his powers and an elite if danger-ridden role at the fringe of society after he was recruited by a wing of British Intelligence dubbed “Shadow Squad”. The first thing the spooks did was to fake his death and publicly proclaim the Steel Claw was gone forever…

With them, Crandell foiled a deranged super-genius intent on eradicating human life and fought off an alien invasion for which see The Steel Claw: Reign of the Brain).

Crafted at the height of superspy media frenzy ‘The Steel Claw and the Cold Trail’ opens with a bored and idle Crandell taking stock of an improved metal hand and new abilities in first chapter ‘Hot Property’: fine tuning the new prosthesis before he’s given a crucial new mission.

For obvious operational reasons, Britain’s top four atomic scientists have never been allowed to occupy the same space at the same time. Now, however, they must convene in person for a crucial conference, and Shadow One wants Crandell to handle security, over the gents’ protests that he’s not qualified for this sort of mission…

His misgivings prove fatally correct when despite all precautions, the quartet are attacked and killed: frozen into blocks of ice by an assailant and method unknown to science. Thanks to his new ability to generate electrical shocks and magnetic waves, Crandell spectacularly chases and corners the assassin, but both the killer and his bizarre ray-gun are destroyed in the process…

Furious, frustrated and embittered, Crandell is placed on administrative leave and left to stew but he’s soon recalled in chapter 2 as ‘Deep Freeze’ reveals that three of the frozen corpses have been stolen. With the fourth about to be buried imminently, the super-agent heads for the funeral and arrives just in time to interrupt more distinctively-garbed assassins attacking the cortege and swiping the remains.

Employing his invisibility, Crandell tracks the villains to a cargo ship and sneaks aboard, but is eventually captured. To his amazement he learns that the scientists are still alive and that a cunning and cruel turncoat plans to defrost and sell them to a hostile power…

Left to die in the ship’s freezer, The Steel Claw soon ingeniously escapes and – anticipating by decades the movie Die Hard – methodically picks off the mercenary contingent. When the ship returns to dock, only the top traitor escapes…

The plot explodes into all-out action in ‘Slow Thaw’ as, rather than fleeing or hiding, the villain attempts one last bold assault to recapture his valuable cold cargo, resulting in a death duel with his invisible nemesis…

More than any other comics character, the Steel Claw was a barometer for reading fashions. Starting out as a Quatermass-style science fiction cautionary tale, the strip mimicked the trends of the greater world, evolving into a James Bond-style strip with Crandell eventually augmented by outrageous gadgets – and latterly, a masked and costumed super-doer after TV-triggered “Batmania” gripped the nation and the world. When that bubble burst, he resorted to becoming a freelance adventurer, combating eerie menaces and vicious criminals.

This is sheer addictive nostalgia for my generation, but the stories also hold up against anything made for today’s marketplace. Buy it for the kids and read it too; this is a glorious book, and steel yourself for even better yet to come…
© 1967, 2023 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Steel Claw: Reign of the Brain!


By Tom Tully, Jesús Blasco & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-681-2 (TPB/Digital Edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Vivid Visions of Wonderful Weirdness… 9/10

One of the most fondly-remembered British strips of all time is the startlingly beautiful Steel Claw. From 1962 to 1973, the stunningly gifted Jesús Blasco and his small studio of family members thrilled the nation’s children, illustrating the angst-filled adventures of scientist, adventurer, secret agent and even costumed superhero Louis Crandell.

The majority of the character’s career was scripted by prolific and versatile comics veteran Tom Tully (Roy of the Rovers, Heros the Spartan, Dan Dare, House of Dolmann, Master of the Marsh, Janus Stark, Mytek the Mighty, The Wild Wonders, Nipper, Adam Eterno, The Mind of Wolfie Smith, Johnny Red, Harlem Heroes, Mean Arena, Inferno, The Robo Machines, Football Family Robinson, Buster’s Ghost and many more).

He followed the precepts of H.G. Wells’ original unseen adversary which had been laid out by science fiction novelist Ken Bulmer who had devised the strip, presenting some modern spin on Victorian classic The Invisible Man.

In the 1960s, however, our protagonist acted with evil intent as soon as he fell out of sight of his fellow humans, not through innate poor character but because of wild technology accidentally unleashed …

Another stunning salvo of graphic wonderment from Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics strand, this second collection is available in paperback and digital editions. The Steel Claw: The Reign of the Brain gathers material from timeless weekly anthology Valiant, spanning 28th September 1963 to 19th September 1964 and is accompanied by an Introduction from writer and editor John Freeman (treat yourself to his downthetubes.net site for all your nostalgia and comics needs!)

What has gone before: Louis Crandell was an embittered man, probably due to having lost his right hand in a lab accident. After his recovery and its replacement with a steel prosthetic, he returned to work as (a rather surly) assistant to venerable boffin Professor Barringer, who was attempting to create a germ-destroying ray.

When that device exploded, Crandell received a monumental electric shock and was bathed in radiation from the ray-device. Rather than killing him, the incident rendered him totally transparent and changed his body chemistry. Although he couldn’t stay unseen forever, the bodily mutation permanently affected him, and subsequent electric shocks caused all but his metal hand to disappear.

These were simpler times and there was far less SCIENCE around so please – Kids Of All Ages – do not try this at home!

Whether venal at heart or temporarily deranged, Crandell went on a rampage of terror, even attempting to blow up New York City before finally coming to his senses. Throughout Crandell’s outrages, guilt-fuelled Barringer was in pursuit, resolved to save or stop his former friend…

After his cure, the invisible man was so globally notorious and well known that he was framed by his own therapist. Whilst treating Crandell Dr. Deutz was also traumatically exposed to Barringer’s ray but instead of invisibility, he gained the power to transform into a bestial ape-man and turned to crime for fun. He malevolently placed the blame for his own spectacular robberies and assaults on his infamous patient…

On the run but innocent this time, Crandell was saved by the intervention of Barringer’s niece Terry Gray. After weeks of beast-triggered catastrophe and panic in the streets, the Steel Claw was vindicated and proved himself a hero. Despite that, a quiet life was clearly beyond the unseen celebrity, and while seeking anonymity in the Bahamas, he was embroiled in a modern-day pirate’s attempt to hijack an undersea super-weapon and plunder cruise ships…

With this volume, Crandell continues his gradually shift from victim to reluctant hero: accepting his powers and an elite if danger-ridden role at the fringe of society. During the first saga reprinted here, he made a decision that would affect the rest of his life.

Taking stock at a time when super-spies and science fiction were globally ascendent, Tully began with Crandell still courting obscurity. Building a life in San Lemo, capital of South American republic Curacos, Crandell is again recognised and chased by sensation-hungry mobs. The frantic pursuit drives him to a power station where someone takes a shot at him, and he is given a message by a dying man. The victim warns of the end of the world and gives Crandell a phone number, but the real convincer that it’s all deadly serious is the assassin with an electric raygun who starts shooting at him…

Caught up in a sea of lethal intrigue, the Steel Claw falls into an ongoing operation by British Intelligence group “Shadow Squad” and becomes point man in their investigation of a deranged super-genius dubbed ‘The Brain’ (running from 28th September 1963 – 4th April 11th 1964).

Amidst an increasing tide of man-made disasters and thanks to his uncanny gifts, angry determination and sheer dumb luck, Crandell infiltrates the Brain’s cult, invading his booby-trapped tropical island and exposing a scheme to destroy all life on Earth.

Anticipating our modern era’s huge surplus of spoiled, homely, insecure, self-confessed billionaire man-children petulantly making trouble, this duel of wills leads to global unrest and devastation, culminating in a spectacular war of Inventions against Invisibility & Ingenuity. In the end the Claw ultimately emerges – far from unscathed but at least alive – ready for more adventure…

The mission had already paid off big for Crandell: the first thing Shadow Squad did was to fake his death and proclaim that the Steel Claw was gone forever…

As ever, the series is made unmissable by the astounding art of Blasco – although the master is supplanted for a few episodes in the first story by fill-in artists who might or might not be Eric Bradbury & Mike Western…

The Claw’s clash of powers against the Brain is protracted, suspenseful, action-packed and in the end a close-run thing, but inevitably results in victory for the reluctant good guy who becomes a very special agent of the Shadow Squad and an operative of British Intelligence. Those connections next lead him into a secret war on home soil, as he faces the uncanny, barely-perceived threat of ‘The Lactians’ (11th April – 19th September 1964)…

The tense drama opens with our eventual hero back in London. Britain is reeling under twin crises: a plague of fireballs in the night sky over Cornwall and a rising toll of missing persons, and as Crandell rendezvous with his handler, they are ambushed by what appear to be ordinary citizens with bizarre intentions…

When “Shadow Five” dies, Crandell’s frantic fightback exposes the attackers as not of this world: sparking a one-man war against an alien race able to possess bodies and attempting to infiltrate and subjugate mankind via its isolated rural communities – a classic theme of cold war science fiction of the era.

Even with other artists again stepping in to counter the problems of weekly deadlines and international postal deliveries in a pre-digital age, the tenson and terror never relent as the Invisible Man slowly works his way through an all-but indetectable army of enemies to the thing at the top: risking everything on one final desperate counterstrike…

This potent thriller tome also comes with a teaser excerpt from the forthcoming Steel Claw Super Picture Library collection, again highlighting the work of Tully & Blasco…

More than any other comics character, the Steel Claw was a barometer for reading fashions. Starting out as a Quatermass-style science fiction cautionary tale, the strip mimicked the trends of the greater world, evolving into a James Bond-style super-spy strip – with Crandell eventually tricked out with outrageous gadgets – and latterly, even a masked and costumed super-doer after TV-triggered “Batmania” gripped the nation and the world.

When that bubble burst, he resorted to becoming a freelance adventurer, combating eerie menaces and vicious criminals.

The thrills of the writing are engrossing enough, but the real star of this feature is the artwork: captivating classicist drawing, moody staging and the sheer pristine beauty of all participants making this an absolute pleasure to look at.

Jesús Monterde Blasco was born in Barcelona in 1919 and began his phenomenal career in 1935, drawing for Mickey magazine. Barely known now in the English-speaking world, his vastly varied output included Cuto, Anita Diminuta, Los Tres Inseperables, Los Guerilleros, Paul Foran, Tom Berry, Tex Willer, Tallafero, Capitán Trueno and Une Bible en Bande Dessinée for continental and South American audiences. His many UK strips include the lush and lavish Buffalo Bill, sci-fi chiller The Indestructible Man, Billy the Kid and the first Invasion! serial (2000 AD from #1, 1977). He died in October 1995.

This is sheer addictive nostalgia for my generation, but the stories also hold up against anything made for today’s marketplace. Buy it for the kids and read it too; this is a glorious book, and steel yourself for even better yet to come…
© 1963, 1964 & 2022 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Showcase Presents Men of War


By David Michelinie, Robert Kanigher, Roger McKenzie, Jack C. Harris, Cary Burkett, Paul Kupperberg, Ed Davis, Dick Ayers, Jerry Grandenetti, Howard Chaykin, Arvell Jones, Larry Hama, & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4388-3 (TPB)

In America after the demise of EC Comics in the mid-1950’s and prior to the game-changing Blazing Combat, the only certain place to find controversial, challenging and entertaining American war comics was at DC.

In fact, even whilst Archie Goodwin’s stunning yet tragically mis-marketed quartet of classics were waking up a generation, the home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman was a veritable cornucopia of gritty, intriguing, beautifully illustrated battle tales presenting combat on a variety of fronts and from many differing points of view.

As the Vietnam War escalated, 1960s America increasingly endured a Home Front death-struggle pitting deeply-ingrained Establishment social attitudes against a youthful freedom-from-old-values-oriented generation with a radical new sensibility. In response, the military-themed comic books of DC (or rather National Periodical Publishing, as it then was) became ever bolder and innovative…

That stellar and challenging creative period came to an end as all strip trends do, but some of the more impressive and popular features (Sgt. Rock, Haunted Tank, The Losers) survived well into the second – post horror-boom – superhero revival. One of the most engaging of wartime wonders was a combat espionage thriller starring a faceless, nameless hero perpetually in the right place at the right time, ready, willing and so very able to turn the tide one battle at a time.

Currently English-language fans of war stories are grievously underserved in both print and digital formats, but this magnificent monochrome reprint compendium is still readily available online. It collects the entire contents of Men of War: an all-new new anthology title which debuted in August 1977 and ran 26 issues until March 1980.

Although offering a variety of alternating back-up strips, Men of War controversially starred and cover-featured Gravedigger: an African American GI in WWII fighting prejudice, segregationist policies and blinkered authority as much as foreigners’ Fascist aggression.

The series was originated by scripter David Michelinie with art on the first episode by Ed Davis & Romeo Tanghal. MoW #1 introduced ‘Codename: Gravedigger’ as deeply discontented, ever-grumbling US soldier Sergeant Ulysses Hazard toiled in occupied France under fire in the Summer of 1942.

Of course, he had plenty to complain about. Being a “negro”, Hazard was not permitted to fight beside white enlisted men and could only be assigned to catering services or the Graves Registration team that marked and recovered the fallen. It was a hard pill to swallow for a tough-minded ghetto kid who overcame polio, privation, bigots and bullies, and – through sheer determination – turned himself into a physically perfect human weapon.

When he single-handedly saves a French family from a pack of brutal Germans, white soldiers led by Lieutenant Gage claim the credit. The next day, Hazard again displays his military superiority by saving the entire unit from a strafing attack, only to be told once more black men can’t fight. When he subsequently learns he was saving racists whilst his best pal Andy died in the raid, Hazard fixes upon a desperate plan…

Arvell Jones & Tanghal illustrate the next chapter in #2 as Hazard goes AWOL: sneaking back into America to fight ‘The Five-Walled War!’. Breaking into the newly-constructed Pentagon, the outraged warrior battles his way past an army of troops to confront the astounded Undersecretary of War.

A shrewd and ruthless opportunist, the politico sees a chance to create a different kind of soldier and maybe even buy black votes in the next election cycle. Decreeing Hazard a top secret, one-man strike-force (and personal suicide squad), with typical unforced irony the demagogue designates his new, extremely expendable toy ‘Codename: Gravedigger’

Issue #3 finds newly-promoted Captain Hazard back in France within days; rescuing Gage and the soldiers who took credit for his actions. Even after they try to arrest him for desertion, Hazard pushes on with his first mission: ‘The Suicide Stratagem’ demanding he invade a mountaintop fortress to clear out a nest of Nazis holding up the entire war effort. No sooner has he done so than Gage and crew burst in to wipe out the survivors – and especially any black soldiers who might get in their way…

Evergreen WWI anti-war feature Enemy Ace copped the first tranche of back-up slots for issues #1-3. Executed by Robert Kanigher, Ed Davis & Juan Ortiz, opening chapter ‘Death is a Wild Beast!’ has conflicted, honourable fighter pilot Hans Von Hammer downing a devil-themed British pilot who accomplishes a miraculous ‘Return from Hell!’ in the second instalment before experiencing ‘The Three Faces of Death’ in the final chapter. As ever, the real meat of the macabre missions is the toll on the minds and bodies of the merely mortal fliers who die while Von Hammer lives on in guilty anguish…

The next back-up triptych (in #4-6) introduced New York Courier reporter Wayne Clifford, arriving in London in June 1940 to cover the “European War” for the still-neutral folks back home. Crafted by Cary Burkett & Jerry Grandenetti ‘Dateline: Frontline’ focuses on stories behind the war, as neophyte Clifford is taken under the wing of veteran wordsmith Ed Barnes learning some hard truths about propaganda, integrity and necessity, after he tries to send back his account of a friendly-fire incident…

More gritty revelations add to the innocent’s education during an air raid spent with hard-pressed Londoners in a tube station in ‘Dateline: Frontline: Human Interest Story’ whilst #7 saw the plucky news-hawk at ground zero on top of an unexploded bomb in ‘Dateline: Frontline Countdown!’

Combat veteran Dick Ayers took over as penciler in Men of War #4 as Gravedigger’s ‘Trial by Fire’ explosively ends with the pariah destroying the mountaintop Nazi base and saving Gage’s unit, only to be reviled and attacked by the man he humiliatingly saved, after which #5 welcomed Roger McKenzie as new writer.

Here Gravedigger enters the ‘Valley of the Shadow’ in an Alpine village turned impregnable German stronghold. His mission is to trigger an avalanche and eradicate the Nazi artillery nest, but no one warned him of the captive populace held in the church…

MoW #6 offers ‘A Choice of Deaths’ (McKenzie, Ayers & Tanghal) as the loner’s daring raid on a prison to liberate hostages is almost thwarted by the internees’ reluctance to leave behind certain works of art…

Men of War #7 featured Gravedigger’s first full-length exploit. ‘Milkrun’ sees the one-man army ordered to England for further intensive training at the hands of British expert Major Birch, but the journey back with mild-mannered clerk-turned-jeep driver Boston proves to be one of the most eventful rides Hazard has ever taken…

‘Death-Stroke’ leads in #8, as the American’s intensive training includes a potent degree of brainwashing. Unknow to anybody, Birch has been replaced by a Nazi agent who primes Ulysses to murder Winston Churchill

Another Enemy Ace triptych began in the back of #8 and ‘Silent Sky… Screaming Death!!’ (illustrated by Larry Hama & Bob Smith) details a trenchant tale of a family at war. Howard Chaykin took over illustration as a regulation clash in the sky resulted in attack by vengeful siblings and the return of Von Hammer’s father in ‘Brother Killers!’ (#9): revealing aspects of the German Ace’s own childhood and culminating in a fateful and final ‘Duel at Dawn!’ in #10.

MoW #9’s ‘Gravedigger – R.I.P.’ exposed layer upon layer of deceit and deception. Thanks to a tip-off by investigative reporter Wayne Clifford, Hazard’s assassination attempt is foiled by the Allies’ own master-of-disguise super-agent (no prizes for guessing it’s the Unknown Soldier) before the brainwashed would-be assassin is captured and de-programmed. His death then cleverly faked, Hazard clandestinely heads to Berlin to rescue the real Birch…

This issue included extra feature ‘Dateline: Frontline: Bathtub Blues’ by Burkett & Grandenetti. Now stationed in North Africa, Clifford is attached to the British Army and sees for himself the nauseating difference between a braggart and a hero…

The next issue opened with a ‘Crossroads’ reached by Codename: Gravedigger after he is shot down miles short of his Berlin destination and meets a fugitive Jewish family torn apart less by the war than the hatred and horrors that sparked it…

Supplementing the Enemy Ace back-up cited above is another stark and bleakly moving Wayne Clifford yarn from Burkett & Grandenetti. ‘Dateline: Frontline: Glory Soldier’ sees the writer caught in the bloody orbit of a gung-ho suicidal British corporal…

In #11 Hazard and his new Jewish comrades invade top secret death camp ‘Berkstaten’ and discover to his shock and relief that not all Germans are monsters, whilst ‘Dateline: Frontline: Funeral Pyre’ finds Wayne losing his journalistic distance and impartiality after rescuing a baby and being captured by Arab raiders who consider both Germans and British ruthless invaders

Jack C. Harris took over writing the lead feature in MoW #12 as ‘Where is Gravedigger?’ sees the black soldier and youthful Jewish allies finally enter Germany’s capital, with the entire German army hunting for them. Unfortunately for the pursuers, the one place they neglect to check is the torture chamber holding Major Birch…

Kanigher & Chaykin began another doleful, doom-laden Enemy Ace drama in that issue. ‘Banner of Blood!’ sees the troubled Rittmeister striving to retrieve the Von Hammer family standard from a cunning French air ace who is the latest scion of an ancestral foe.

The tale continued in #13 as Von Hammer’s face-to-face confrontation with ‘The Last Baron!’ leads to the final clash in a centuries-long vendetta with the Comtes de Burgundy, ending forever in one last honourable ‘Duel!’

‘Project Gravedigger… Plus One’ was the blockbusting main attraction in #13 as Hazard and Birch blaze and blast their way out of Berlin and back to Britain, where a confrontation with original sponsor the US Undersecretary of War leads to the black warrior regaining some autonomy and taking on a new and freer role in his own affairs. Back in Germany, however, outraged bigot and madman Joseph Goebbels takes personal charge of punishing the “subhuman inferior” who has shamed the entire Reich…

Despatched to Egypt in MoW #14, Hazard faces ‘The Swirling Sounds of Death’ with the interception of a crucial Nazi courier briefly derailed after Gravedigger is captured by Arab bandits. By the time he resumes stalking his target, Ulysses rules the Tuaregs but leads them into disastrous battle with British tanks before being himself taken by his elusive enemy Eric Von King‘The Man with the Opened Eye’

Rounding out the issue are two short combat yarns: underwater demolitions thriller ‘Wolf Pack’ by Bill Kelley, Hama & Jack Abel followed by American Civil War vignette ‘The Sentry’ by artist Bill Payne and an uncredited writer.

A minor visual overhaul for the battle star comes with #16’s book-length thriller ‘Hide and Seek the Spy’ as Von King uses Hazard as a human shield during a Panzer assault on British lines. Although the hero escapes, he will forever bear the scars of his close shave. Worst of all, the slippery courier again eludes him with the critical plans known as Defense Packet 6

Never quitting, Hazard and an elite commando team continue pursuit in MoW #17, reaching the Nile where a German mini U-boat turns the majestic waterway into ‘The River of Death’. In Germany, Goebbels’ top scientists edge closer to completing the perfect antidote to the Gravedigger’s perpetual interference…

In the back of the issue Paul Kupperberg & Grandenetti introduced a new historical hero as ‘Rosa: The Castle Rhinehart Affair Part One’ sees a century secret agent/international man of mystery tasked in 1870 with ending the Franco-Prussian War by assassinating Bismarck’s top advisor…

The fraught and frantic mission in a strategically vital Schloss concludes in ‘Rosa: The Castle Rhinehart Affair Part Two’ with the master spy completing his task and consequently uncovering top-level double-dealing amongst his own superiors. A creature of implacable moral fortitude, Rosa has his own cure for treachery…

Gravedigger’s apparent failure is rewarded with another suicidal solo mission in MoW #18 as ‘The Amiens Assault’ covertly returns him to France to extract atomic scientist Monsieur Noir: another doomed mission afforded a miraculous helping hand from French Resistance fighters and ‘An Angel Named Marie’ in #19.

Issues #19-20 (August & September 1979) also featured another Kanigher/Chaykin Enemy Ace tale of nobly idiotic honour and wasted young lives with Von Hammer making ‘A Promise to the Dying’ and seeks to restore a contentious souvenir to its rightful owner in ‘Death Must Wait!’

For Ulysses Hazard #20 meant a short trip to Sicily to locate and destroy a munitions dump reinforcing German forces battling General Patton’s advance in ‘Cry: Jericho’

Men of War #21 provided a novel change of pace and locale as ‘Home – Is Where the Hell Is’ takes Hazard back to America after his mother falls ill. Even a one-man army despised and reviled by his superiors is eligible for compassionate leave, but nobody realises the entire scheme has been concocted by Goebbels using surgically created doppelgangers to eliminate the despised super soldier…

Taking up the rear, the most harrowing phase of Wayne Clifford’s career begins as Burkett & Grandenetti point his nose for news to the Eastern Front in ‘Dateline: Frontline: Mother Russia’. Barely surviving passage on a convoy ship and limping into a battered port, the journalist realises the true import of his next story only after meeting starving Russian children…

Ambushed in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Gravedigger opens issue #22 by killing his assailants, sinking a Nazi U-boat and causing a ‘Blackout on the Boardwalk’, after which ‘Dateline: Frontline: Scorched Earth, Crimson Snow’ further explores the Eastern hellscape as Clifford experiences first hand and up close the siege of Moscow…

Gravedigger’s ‘Mission: Six Feet Under!’ sees him plying his old trade with the Graves Registration unit during a highly suspicious trade of bodies with the Germans. It doesn’t take him long to determine that the American cadavers he’s retrieving have been gimmicked with the vilest form of biological weapon before responding accordingly…

Burkett & Grandenetti then record that ‘Dateline: Frontline: A Quiet Day in Leningrad’ is anything but, whilst Hazard is detailed to safeguard Franklin Delano Roosevelt on a trip to England that has all manner of Nazi spy and maniac crawling out of the woodwork…

‘Rosa: The Ambassador’s Son Affair Part One’ – Kupperberg & Grandenetti and concluding in the next issue – finds the master of intrigue sharing his (possible) origins with an imperilled junior dignitary in Mexico circa 1867 before #25 sees Gravedigger ‘Save the President’ through a phenomenal display of ingenuity and martial prowess only to be rewarded with an even more impossible mission…

Men of War was cancelled with #26, but went out in a blaze of glory as ‘Night on Nickname Hill’ (Harris, Ayers & Tanghal) has Hazard despatched to Tunis in March 1943, linking up with Sgt. Rock and even leading Easy Company against a fortified artillery position: a critical battle to determine the outcome of the Allies’ campaign in Africa…

With stunning covers by Joe Kubert, Ed Davis & George Evans, this mighty black-&-white treasure trove of combat classics is a type and style of storytelling we’re all the poorer without. Hopefully the publishers will wise up soon and begin restoring their like to the wide variety of genre sagas currently available in graphic collections…
© 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 2014 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

House of Dolmann


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clifton volume 8: Sir Jason


By De Groot & Turk, translated by Mark Bence (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-407-6 (Album PB/digital edition)

For some inexplicable reason and despite our recent obnoxiously ungrateful behaviour, most of Europe’s comics cognoscenti – most especially French and Belgians – seem fascinated with us Brits. Maybe it’s our shared heritage of Empires lost and cultures in transition? An earlier age might well have claimed it’s simply a case of “Know your Enemy”…

Whether we look at urban guttersnipes Basil and Victoria, indomitable adventurers Blake and Mortimer, the Machiavellian machinations of Green Manor or even the further travails of Long John Silver, so many serried stalwarts of our Scepter’d Isles cut a dashing swathe through the pages of the Continent’s assorted magazines and albums, it’s like Europe is our second home.

…And then there’s Clifton

As originally devised for iconic comic Le Journal de Tintin by strip genius Raymond Macherot (Chaminou, Les croquillards, Chlorophylle, Sibylline), this doughty True Brit troubleshooter first appeared in December 1959. After three albums worth of material – compiled and released in 1959 and 1960 – Macherot quit Tintin for arch-rival Le Journal de Spirou, leaving the eccentric crime-fighter to flounder until LJdT revived him at the height of the Swinging London scene. This was courtesy of Jo-El Azaza & Greg (Michel Régnier), and those strips were subsequently collected as Les lutins diaboliques in French and De duivelse dwergen for Dutch-speakers in 1969.

It was back to retirement for a few years until the early 1970s saw writer Bob De Groot & artist Philippe “Turk” Liégeois revive Clifton for the long haul: producing 10 tales of which this – Sir Jason (from 1976) – was their seventh collaboration.

Son of a cabinet maker, Turk was born in Durbuy, Belgium on July 8th 1947. His wonderful mother ran a boarding house and didn’t seem to mind that her dreamy, lazy lad spent his days taking things apart or redrawing (“improving”) his favourite comics – usually ones by Peyo and Franquin.

In fact, in 1963, when Phillipe was just 16, she sent a bunch of those upgrades to Le Journal de Spirou where editor Yvan Delporte promptly arranged for the kid to become an office apprentice, learning the profession under celebrated cartoonist Maurice Rosy (Jerry Spring; Spirou et Fantasio; Tif et Tondu; Max the Explorer; Boule et Bill/Billy & Buddy).

Young Liégeois worked for two years at Dupuis’ Brussels studio, and his first professional sale – to LJdS – came in 1967. It was the year he first met Bob De Groot as they collaborated as artists on a strip scripted by “Fred” (AKA Frédéric Othon Théodore Aristidès) to appear in Pilote. The casual alliance became a life-long association in such series as Archimède; Robin Dubois; Léonard and more. The price of success is increased workload and they were convinced to add Macherot’s moribund spy saga to their schedules…

Those comic escapades all ran in parallel with Turk’s other projects such as Les Club des “Peur-de-rien”; La Plus Grande Image du Monde; Docteur Bonheur and more.

Bob de Groot was born in Brussels in 1941, to French and Dutch parents. He was art assistant to Maurice Tillieux on Félix before creating his own short works for Pilote. A rising star in the 1960s, he was drawing 4 × 8 = 32 L’Agent Caméléon when he met Philippe Liégeois. They hit it off and as established a team with De Groot beginning a slow transition from artist to writer on Clifton and 1989’s Digitaline – devised with Jacques Landrain and a strong contender for the first comic created entirely on a computer. He kept busy, working with legendary creator Morris on both Lucky Luke and its canine comedy spin-off Rantanplan whilst co-creating Des villes et des femmes with Philippe Francq; Doggyguard with Michel Rodrigue, Pére Noël & Fils (Bercovici art) and Le Bar des acariens (with Godi) and so much more.

The association with Clifton is perennial however and even after their first tour of duty ended they stayed in touch. From 1984 on, artist Bernard Dumont – AKA Bédu – limned De Groot’s scripts: eventually assuming the writing role as well, persevering until the series ended in 1995. In keeping with its rather haphazard nature and typically undying nature, the Clifton experience resumed once again in 2003, crafted by De Groot & Rodrigue for four further adventures: a grand total of twenty album length tales and as many shorter exploits.

In 2016 the old comrades even co-operated on more Clifton cases with Zidrou scripting…. and one day we’ll see English editions of Clifton et les gauchers contraries (Clifton and the Upset Left-Handers???) and 2017’s Just Married

So what’s the Sit Rep?

The scenario is deliciously simple: pompous and irascible Colonel Sir Harold Wilberforce Clifton, ex-RAF, former Metropolitan Police Constabulary and recently retired from MI5, has a great deal of difficulty dealing with being put out to pasture in rurally bucolic Puddington. He thus takes every opportunity to get back in the saddle, occasionally assisting the Government or needy individuals as an amateur sleuth.

Sadly for Clifton – as with that other underappreciated national treasure Captain George Mainwaring in TV landmark Dad’s Army – he is convinced that he is the only truly competent man in a world full of blithering idiots. Of course, he’s generally proved correct in that assumption…

In this translated album from 2018, the Gentleman Detective is again enduring the mixed blessing of a holiday in England when he is outrageously dragged out of his permanent dudgeon and unwanted retirement by his old spymaster handlers who need him to attend to a tricky problem only someone of his vast experience and discretion could handle…

It begins in the sleepy hamlet of Dormhouse, where the vacationing surly sod livens up his day by furiously debating the correct surface temperature of toast, annoying village “bobby” Constable Walrus and failing to fish in idyllic streams. That changes in an absurdly fraught instant when old associate Captain Twincam ambushes him…

The government operative is in a bit of a pickle and needs the old Clifton finesse…

Twincam’s partner is Sir Jason: a strapping Adonis of a young man with generations of pedigree and privilege behind him. His family – the highly-entitled clan Macassock -have always produced sons who became spies or clergymen, and despite this lad’s heartfelt desire to be a jazz musician, he will do his duty and follow family tradition…

The minor noble has finished training and is – on paper at least – a superbly-schooled, hyper-fit, lethally capable super-agent in waiting. There’s only one small snag: this aristocratic boy wonder freezes at the merest hint of actual action…

With the future of the whole hidebound spycraft system under threat, the Secret Service need someone to teach the lad how to use what he knows for the good of the nation. No expense spared, carte blanche in methods used and the promise of some much-missed excitement finally induce old warhorse Clifton to agree, and no sooner does he accept the mission than fate smiles on them as mentor and apprentice stumble into an armed robbery and indulge in a spectacular high speed chase through the verdant countryside…

It’s an utter disaster and the Colonel realises he has his work cut out for him if he’s to unleash the tiger buried deep, deep, deep inside the spy scion…

After a short stopover in his own house in bucolic Puddington  and a fractious reunion with Housekeeper Miss Partridge, it’s off to London for Clifton and his protégé. Unbeknownst to Sir Jason (as most things seem to be), the wily old spy has hired some of his seedier acquaintances to jump the lad as a kind of live fire test. Confidant that in the crunch, superb training, heroic heritage and elevated lineage will kick in, the old soldier lets himself get beaten up and witnesses some truly shameful acts of cowardice before giving up…

They are down by the Embankment cleaning up when Clifton sees two frogmen riding a minisub emerge from the waters. He knows true evil in play when he sees it but is barely able to stop these really capable villains killing them both to keep whatever they’re up to secret…

Now mentor and terrified apprentice are on the run with relentless, ruthless hunters chasing them all over the landscape. Jason gains plenty of on-the-job experience but no appreciable increase in confidence, gumption or backbone. Cut off from all possible assistance, the veteran warrior has no choice but to go after the killers’ boss himself, using his partner’s failings to his advantage and hoping they all make it out alive and relatively unscathed…

Visually spoofing 1970’s London and eternally staid and stuffy English Manners with wicked effect, these comfy thrillers are big on laughs but also pack loads of consequence-free action into their eclectic mix. Delightfully surreal, instantly accessible and doused with daft slapstick in the manner of Jacques Tati and humoresque intrigue like Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, this wild ride rattles along in the grand comedic manner of Will Hay, Terry-Thomas and Alistair Sim (maybe Wallace and Gromit or Johnny English if you’re of a later generation) by channelling classic crime series like The Sweeney or The Professionals – offering splendid fun and timeless laughs for all.
Original edition © Les Editions du Lombard (Dargaud-Lombard S. A.) 2001 by Turk & De Groot. English translation © 2018 Cinebook Ltd.

Buz Sawyer volume 4: Zazarof’s Revenge


By Roy Crane, with Henry G. “Hank” Schlensker & Edwin Granberry (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-975-2 (HB)

Modern comics evolved from newspaper strips: pictorial features that were, until relatively recently, utterly ubiquitous. Hugely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as a weapon to secure sales and increase circulation, strips seemed to find their only opposition in blinkered local editors who often resented the low brow art form, which cut into potential ad space and regularly drew complaint letters from cranks…

It’s virtually impossible for us today to understand the overwhelming allure and power of the comic strip – especially from the Great Depression to the end of the 1950s. With limited television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comics sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. “The Funnies” were universally enjoyed recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality of graphic sagas and humorous episodes.

From the start comedy was king; hence our terms “Funnies” and “Comics”. From these jest and stunt beginnings – blending silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and vaudeville antics – came an entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting in April 1924, Washington Tubbs II was a comedic, gag-a-day strip which evolved into a globe-girdling adventure serial. For years, Crane spun addictive high-quality pictorial yarns – until his introduction of moody swashbuckler Captain Easy ushered in the age of adventure strips with the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929.

This led to a Sunday colour page which was possibly the most compelling and visually imaginative of the entire Golden Age of Newspaper strips (see Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volumes 1-4). Improving almost minute by minute, it benefited from Crane’s relentless quest for perfection. His fabulously imaginative compositional masterpieces attained a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The influence of his pages can be seen in the works of near-contemporaries like Hergé, giants-in-waiting such as Charles Schulz or comic book masters Alex Toth, John Severin and many more.

The material was obviously as much fun to make as to read. In fact, Crane’s cited reason for surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA/United Features Syndicate’s abrupt and arbitrary diktat that all strips would henceforward be produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate their being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated.

They just didn’t lift the artist any more so he stopped making them. At the height of his powers, Crane walked away from the astounding Captain Easy Sunday page; concentrating on the daily feature until his contract expired in 1943 whereupon he left United Features: lured away by that grandee of strip poachers William Randolph Hearst.

The result was an aviator strip set in then-ongoing World War II: Buz Sawyer.

Where Wash Tubbs was a brave but largely comedic Lothario and his pal Easy a surly, tight-lipped he-man, John Singer “Buz” Sawyer was a joyous amalgam of both: a handsome, big-hearted, affable country-boy who went to war because his country needed him…

Buz was a fun-loving, skirt-chasing, musically-inclined pilot daily risking his life with his devoted gunner Rosco Sweeney: a bluff, brave ordinary Joe – and one of the most effective comedy foils ever created.

The wartime strip was – and remains – a marvel of authenticity: portraying not just action and drama of the locale and situation but crucially also capturing the quiet, dull hours of training, routine and desperate larks between the serious business of killing and staying alive. When the war ended the action-loving duo – plus fellow pilot/girl-chasing competitor Chili Harrison – all went looking for work that satisfied their thirst for action and adventure…

Crane had mastered popular entertainment tastes, blending adventure with drama and sophisticated soap opera, all leavened with raucous comedy in a seamless procession of unmissable daily episodes. He and his team of assistants – which over decades comprised co-writers Ed “Doc” Granberry, Clark Haas and Al Wenzel, and artists Hank Schlensker, Joel King, Ralph Lane, Dan Heilman, Hi Mankin & Bill Wright – soldiered on under relentless deadline pressure, producing an authentic and exotic funny romantic thriller rendered in his stark signature style as well as a prerequisite full-colour Sunday page.

This fourth stout and sturdy hardcover edition is a mostly monochrome tome re-presenting more magnificent strip shenanigans starring a dynamic All-American good guy, but now Buz is just another fading war hero: albeit admittedly a globetrotting, troubleshooting one and a newlywed husband to boot.

Having – after much kerfuffle, procrastination, intrigue, bloodshed, sexy skulduggery and delay – finally married extremely understanding childhood sweetheart Christy Jameson, our clean-cut boy-next-door then dragged her into his regularly perilous and frequently lethal working world as prime problem-solver for Frontier Oil: a company with fingers in many international pies and one most modern readers will find hard to consider “the Good Guys”…

These strips – made in collaboration with Granberry & Hank Schlensker – cover the societally turbulent period spanning July 1949 to June 1952, as America leaned hard into its dreams of Exceptionalism and enjoyed domestic boom times while embracing it’s self-appointed role as the World’s Policeman. Crane and his creative laboured long, hard, often acrimonious hours to produce each daily strip; all beguilingly rendered in black-&-white through Crane’s masterly techniques employing line art and craftint (a tricky mechanical monochrome patterning effect which added greys and halftones to produce miraculous depths and moods to the superb base drawing) but the toll was heavy on personnel and feelings.

Before the ten self-contained tales here kick off, heavily-illustrated preliminary prose piece ‘The Three of Us are a Team’ (‘remarks at the New York Banshee Society’ from transcripts donated to Syracuse University) revisits Crane’s acceptance speech on winning the 1961 Silver Lady Award as determined by a collation of contemporary communications executives. Effusive and reminiscent, it sees him give his partners all the credit for the hard work in crafting the feature…

Buz Sawyer began on November 1st 1943 and ran until 1989. Crane officially retired with the April 21st 1977 episode (dying on July 7th) while it continued under Granberry, Schlensker, Haas, Wenzel and John Celardo until cancelation on October 7th 1989.

The story resumes with an example of contemporary trends…

Chimpanzees were becoming a popular story addition for most media as the 1940s ended (just look at movies or comic books) and ‘Monkey Business’ finds our happy couple back in the USA after an African honeymoon (of sorts) which left the them owners of a young chimp named Junior…

Anticipating decades of future sitcoms, the tale details how Junior plays up during a critical dinner party/holiday weekend held by Sawyer’s boss Colonel Harrison but the resulting debacle at a swish soiree on Harrison’s palatial estate fails to impress potential business partner Mr Tidley Bragg. A cheeky excuse for manic screwball comedy and social gaffes, the chaos generates explosive hilarity, humiliation and Buz’s sacking before fate intervenes to show everyone that Junior was a boisterous blessing in disguise…

Swiftly rehired, Buz heads south, encountering ‘Revolution’ (September 19th 1949 – January 18th 1950) in a Central American republic. Frontier Oil was seeking an oil concession, but apparently their agent – Barstain – had played a double game. Before long, Buz is using his war experiences to lead a counter revolution to save democracy…

January 20th- June 17th offers a grimly chilling change of pace as ‘Buz Alone’ sees Christy and her husband on a well-earned vacation at a Florida honeymoon cottage. Tragically, danger is never far from them, and the brief idyll is shattered after a nature-watching boat trip leaves them stranded on a sandbar with no food, water, shelter or prospect of rescue.

A true champion, Buz survives a gruelling swim to the mainland and returns in a seaplane only to find three men on the sandbar and no trace of Christy. When he gets agitated, he’s accused of making it all up and – if she ever existed – doing away with the woman…

Beaten up when he tries to search their boat, Buz is left to pick up the pieces and track down Christy. In his hunger for clues, he is manipulated by a woman seeking a new husband – and someone to remove her current one – before eventually clashing with vengeful old enemy Harry Sparrow. At no time does he ever get near his missing better half…

While he flounders, a comely, capable lady with no memory is picked up on the mainland before losing herself amidst the sleazy local underworld. With the police now assisting, Buz sets out on the fresh trail, aided by trusty pal Sweeney. After more trauma and tribulation, Christy is found, but it’s not the girl Buz married yet – not by a long shot…

A return to lighter intrigue and enterprise comes when spoiled debutante ‘Diana’ (June 19th – November 24th) makes Daddy find her a job. Unluckily for Buz, Remington Chase is a bigwig at Frontier and his bored hellion of a daughter likes the idea of being Sawyer’s secretary – or at least the idea of Sawyer…

Even debonair Chili Harrison can’t sway her aim and when Buz “escapes” into work – despatched to Iron Curtain nation Sovmania just when he and Christy began looking at homes to buy – Miss Chase infuriatingly follows. Negotiating with the Soviets is tricky enough, but when it’s a US corporation demanding the communists hand back wells and refineries they illegally annexed and expropriated, Sawyer knows he can’t win and may end up mysteriously deceased. It’s no surprise to find Diana draws attention and danger like a magnet, but her response when the oppressors decide to arrest them is a life-changing revelation.

Spectacular spy games give way to a lighter interlude when Buz reunites with Christy and they babysit a parrot named ‘William Shakespeare’ (November 24th 1950-January 6th 1951). The beloved baby of a poetry professor, with an astounding talent for repeating what he hears, the bird proves to be even more trouble that their chimp was…

Clearly qualified in policing difficult customers, Buz is then assigned to locate a wandering landowner with 6,000 prime acres to lease. ‘Wish Jones’ (January 8th to April 19th) is old, homely, rich, romantic, suggestible and (suddenly) married to exotic dancer Taffy Fawn. However, he hasn’t signed the contracts Frontier needs, leaving Buz playing catch across all the love nests of the South Pacific. The fixer’s greatest asset is Taffy herself, who never thought wedded bliss and matchless wealth included so much sand, birds or bugs. His biggest problem is that even desert island paradises have crooks, radios and newspapers…

Another episode of animal husbandry catastrophes – this time a dachshund and a voracious baby heron – leads implausibly to a sojourn in ‘Alaska’ (26th April – August 22nd) with Sawyer undercover as John Singer.

While seeking a geologist’s killers, he’s also acting as courier for the Government in a serious and solid spy escapade worthy of Alfred Hitchcock with abductions, misreported deaths, murderous sailors, devious twins, fake relatives and hidden uranium reserves all in play, with Buz’s survival skills pushed to the limit before his mission is accomplished.

In dire need of relaxation, the reunited Mr & Mrs Sawyer trust to fate and pluck a name out of an atlas for a vacation. They land in a lakeside resort boasting peace and quiet but dreary ‘Doldrums’ (August 23rd – September 29th) is soon a pandemonium of envy and excitement as bored couples seek to spice up their passionless lives by emulating the infamous, glamorous newcomers…

Eponymous epic ‘Zazarof’s Revenge’ spans October 1st 1951-January 10th 1952, opening with a global sabotage campaign against Frontier, leading Buz to Switzerland where there’s no doubt of mystery man Igor Zazarof‘s guilt, but apparently no way to find or face him.

Ultimately, persistence and charm break down the villain’s obvious pawn Neri, whilst all attempts to bribe, frame, frighten or kill the American fail, leading to an extended and brutal duel to the death on a mountain peak as the only way to deal with Sawyer…

We conclude for now with home-grown bad men ‘The Hawks Boys’ (January 10th – June 19th) terrorising and sabotaging a Frontier installation in Utah. As assault escalates to murder, Buz discovers why the Hawks’ – already well-paid for the oil rights to their land – are doing everything they can to force the company to pull out. What could be worth more than oil and what won’t they do to keep their secret?

Completing this vivid vintage venture is a wry glimpse of Crane’s early days. With text written by Jeet Heer, ‘A Cartoonist’s Travels’ offers a brief gallery of cartoons about bums, hoboes, tramps and voyagers, with the artist drawing upon his own youthful experiences as an itinerant bindlestiff and drifter…

This a sublime slice of compelling comics wonder is an ideal way to discover or reconnect with Crane’s second magnum opus. Bold, daring, funny and astonishingly enthralling, these episodic exploits influenced generations of modern cartoonists, illustrators, comics creators and storytellers. The series ranks amongst the very greatest strip cartoon features ever created: always delivering comics tale-telling unforgettable, unmissable and utterly irresistible. Try it and see for yourself.
Buz Sawyer: Zazarof’s Revenge © 2016 Fantagraphics Books. All Buz Sawyer strips © 2016 King Features Syndicate, Inc. All other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

Suicide Squad volume 1: Trial by Fire (New Edition)


By John Ostrander, Luke McDonnell, Bob Lewis, Karl Kesel, Dave Hunt & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5831-3 (TPB)

Following the huge success of Crisis on Infinite Earths, fickle fan-interest was concentrated on DC, and many of their major properties – and indeed the entire continuity – were opened up for radical change, innovation and renewal.

So, how best to follow the previous year’s cosmic catastrophe? Why not a much smaller and more personal Great Disaster, spotlighting those strangers in familiar costumes and a bunch of beginnings rather than the deaths and endings of the Crisis?

Thus, Darkseid of Apokolips attacked humanity’s spirit by destroying the very concept of heroism and individuality in Legends and sent hyper-charismatic Glorious Godfrey to America to lead a common man’s crusade against extraordinary heroes, while he initiated individual assaults to demoralize and destroy key champions of Earth.

The rampant civil unrest prompted President Ronald Reagan to outlaw costumed crime-busters and opened the door for a governmental black-bag operation to use super-powered operatives who had no option but to obey the orders of their betters…

That was the beguiling concept behind the creation – or more accurately consolidation and reactivation – of separate but associated concepts dating back to the 1960s and the first revival of superhero comics.

John Ostrander was new to DC; lured with editor Mike Gold from Chicago’s First Comics where their work on Starslayer, Munden’s Bar and especially Grimjack had made the independent minnows some of the most popular series of the decade. Spinning out of Legends, Ostrander hit the ground running with a superb and compelling reinterpretation of the long neglected Suicide Squad: a boldly controversial revaluation of meta-humanity and the hidden role of government in a world far more dangerous than the placid public believed…

Devised by Robert Kanigher, The War that Time Forgot debuted in Star Spangled War Stories #90 (April-May 1960) and ran until #137 (May 1968). The wonderment began as paratroops and tanks of “Question Mark Patrol” were dropped on Mystery Island from whence no American soldiers ever returned. The crack warriors discovered why when the operation was overrun by Pterosaurs, Tyrannosaurs and worse: all superbly rendered by veteran art team Ross Andru & Mike Esposito.

What followed was years of astonishing action as various military disciplines – of assorted nationalities – pitted modern weapons and human guts against the most terrifying monsters ever to stalk the Earth…

The Brave and the Bold #25 (September 1959) was the first issue of the title in its new format as a try-out vehicle testing new characters and concepts before launching them into their own series. Inauspiciously, the premier starred a quartet of human specialists – Colonel Rick Flag, medic Karin Grace and big-brained boffins Hugh Evans and Jess Price – officially convened by the US government into a Suicide Squad codenamed Task Force X to investigate uncanny mysteries and tackle unnatural threats.

The gung-ho gang – another Kanigher, Andru & Esposito invention – appeared in six issues but never really caught the public’s attention – perhaps because they weren’t costumed heroes – and quickly faded from memory.

In April 1967, Our Fighting Forces #106 began running the exploits of homicide detective Ben Hunter who was recruited by the army during WWII to run roughshod over a penal battalion of prisoners who had grievously broken regulations.

Facing imprisonment or execution, the individually lethal military malcontents were given a chance to earn a pardon by undertaking missions deemed too tough or hopeless for proper soldiers. Hunter’s Hellcats – inarguably “inspired” by the movie The Dirty Dozen – ran until OFF #122 (December 1969) on increasingly nasty and occasionally fatal little sorties, before being replaced without fanfare or preamble by The Losers and similarly lost to posterity.

This reissued trade paperback/digital collection (spanning May to December 1987) gathers the in-filling, background-providing revised backstory from Secret Origins #14 and the first 8 issues of the decidedly devious thriller serial set in the darkest corners of the-then DCU. It opens sans fanfare in the Oval Office as strident political insider Amanda Wallerbriefs the President on ‘The Secret Origin of the Suicide Squad’ (by Ostrander, Luke McDonnell & Dave Hunt).

Smartly amalgamating the aforementioned Hellcats and Colonel Flag through early missions against those dinosaurs, Ostrander neatly tied together strands and linked obscure periods of recent events to provide a shocking secret history of America: a time when superheroes were forced into retirement after World War II, with the US military and Task Force X used to unobtrusively take out those monsters, spies, aliens and super-criminals who didn’t conveniently pack up with them…

Waller has a plan: she doesn’t want society to depend on the current crop of capricious super do-gooders and has recruited Flag’s damaged and driven son to run a new penal battalion comprising captured super-villains who will work off the books for the highest echelons of government, using metahuman force for the greater – i.e. political – good…

The true reasons and motivations for her actions are then disclosed in a tragic story of personal loss and criminal atrocity before she is grudgingly given the go-ahead, but told that if the new initiative fails or becomes public knowledge, she alone will bear the blame…

The series proper – by Ostrander and McDonnell – begins with ‘Trial by Blood’ (inked by Karl Kesel) as metahuman terrorist team The Jihad – working out of rogue state Qurac bloodily prepare to bring slaughter to America. Tipped off by an asset inside the killer sect, the US wants to stop the killers before they start. This means sending Waller’s convict team to kill off the Jihad before they even leave their impregnable mountain fortress.

Knowing criminals cannot be trusted, the set-up involves not just bribery – reduced sentence deals, favours and pardons – but also minor coercion. Combat operations are led by traumatised, obsessively patriotic Rick Flag Jr. – assisted by amnesiac martial arts master Bronze Tiger. To keep everybody honest and on-mission, convict-operatives Deadshot, Plastique, Mindboggler, Captain Boomerang and schizophrenic sorceress Enchantress are wired with remote-detonation explosive devices…

Backed by a support team which includes Flag’s ex-girlfriend Karin Grace and Briscoe, an oddball mystery pilot enjoying a rather unusual relationship with his seemingly sentient helicopter gunship, the squad seem ready for anything. However, even before they set off for Qurac, things go badly wrong after Boomerang and Mindboggler clash and the Australian promises bloody vengeance…

Linking up with undercover asset Nightshade, even more misfortune manifests as the teleporting covert op violently complains to Flag about the horrific things she has had to do since infiltrating Jihad. Challenged but committed now, the unwilling agents begin their assignments in assassination but the ‘Trial by Fire’ unravels when one of the Squad switches sides…

Thankfully, the US has another agent in play and undercover, so the damage is limited. Nevertheless, not every American makes it home…

Issue #3 finds defeated and deflated New God Glorious Godfrey incarcerated in Belle Reve: a superhuman detention centre and top secret base of the Suicide Squad, whilst a universe away his master Darkseid despatches Female Furies Lashina, Stompa, Bernadeth and Mad Harriet to fetch him home.

Tensions pop Earth-side when Flag strenuously objects to mind-wiping procedures being used on one of his “recruits”, and Waller takes flak from Nightshade and super-disguise expert Nemesis over her handling of the Qurac mission… even getting grief from mouthy felon Digger Harkness.

The erstwhile Captain Boomerang was promised a measure of leniency and even a place outside the walls if he behaved, and thinks it’s time he got his reward. All arguments end however when the unstoppable Furies bust in to administer Darkseid’s judgement in ‘Jailbreak’…

Despite their best efforts the mere mortals are swept aside and only the renewal of an internecine struggle for command of the Furies prevents greater harm to the criminal crew…

As Bob Smith takes over inking these tense yarns, domestic issues take precedence when a new masked hero begins cleaning up the streets of Central City. Waller is painfully aware that the increasingly popular vigilante is turning minority criminals over to the cops, but letting white perps slide if they promise to join burgeoning political party the Aryan Empire…

With undercover specialists Black Orchid and Nemesis taking the lead and obnoxious racist Harkness acting as thoroughly credible decoy, the team – supplemented by Time Thief Chronos – lay a trap for a white supremacist billionaire to end ‘William Hell’s Overture’…

A disastrous dip into Cold War realpolitik then begins when Waller is ordered to send a team into a Soviet gulag to rescue a dissident novelist in ‘The Flight of the Firebird’.

Tapping criminal strategist The Penguin to plan the complex mission, neither she, her superiors nor indeed anyone seems aware that the Russians actually want to banish gadfly Zoya Trigorin to the West, but she wants to stay a martyr in the Novogorod “psychiatric centre”…

More importantly, the foredoomed scheme depends on Enchantress, who now exhibits all the more bloodthirsty symptoms of being crazier than a bag-full of rabid badgers…

Before they head off, Flag checks in on Harkness (who has earned his own place in New Orleans), blithely unaware that the unrepentant rogue is already planning to supplement his civil service stipend by returning to his old felonious ways…

The mission begins and the Squad slowly infiltrates the frozen town of Gorki and breaks into Novogorod, but when Trigorin refuses to leave they are forced to kidnap her and make a desperate escape across Russia in ‘Hitting the Fan’.

The botched job leads American authorities to disavow all knowledge of their efforts, but the real problem is still the killing cold, vast distance and murderously determined efforts of Soviet super-team The People’s Heroes, who relentlessly hunt the survivors who have been ‘Thrown to the Wolves’ by their own bosses…

This glimpse at the grubby underside of super-heroics concludes with a smart yet incisive perusal of project psychologist Simon La Grieve‘s ‘Personal Files’: offering insights and setting up future subplots for Waller, Flag, Deadshot Floyd Lawton, Boomerang and temporarily curtailed, mystically-bound Enchantress as well as her helpless human host June Moon…

These were and remain a magnificent mission statement for the DC Universe, offering gritty, witty, cohesive and contemporary stories that appealed not just to Fights ‘n’ Tights fanatics but also lovers of espionage and crime capers. This collection is perfect fun-fodder for today’s so-sophisticated, informed and thrill-seeking readers.
© 1987, 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Original compilation © 2011, DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Pow! Annual 1971


By unknown writers & artists and Miguel Quesada Cerdán, Vicente Ibáñez Sanchis, José Ortiz Moya, Matías Alonso, Enric Badia Romero, Eustaquio Segrelles del Pilar, Leopoldo Ortiz & various (Odhams Books)
SBN: 60039607X

This quirky item is one of my fondest childhood memories and quite inspirational in directing my career path, and as well as being still a surprisingly splendid read I can now see it as a bizarre and desperately belated sales experiment…

By the end of the 1960s, DC Thomson had overtaken the monolithic comics publishing giant that had been created by Alfred Harmsworth at the beginning of the twentieth century. The company – variously named Fleetway, Odhams and IPC – had absorbed rivals such as The Eagle‘s Hulton Press, and stayed at the forefront of sales by latching onto every fad they had kept their material contemporary, if not fresh, but the writing was on the wall, but now

the comedy strip was on the rise and action anthologies were finding it hard to keep readers attention.

By 1970 – when this annual was released – the trend generated by the success of the Batman TV show was thoroughly dead, so why release a book of all-new superhero strips in a title very much associated with comedy features and cheap Marvel Comics reprints?

A last ditch attempt to revive the genre? Perhaps a cheap means of using up inventory?

I don’t know and I don’t care. What they produced that year was a wonderful capsule of fanboy delight, stuffed with thrills, colourful characters and a distinctly cool, underplayed stylishness, devoid of the brash histrionics of American comic books.

Conceived by tragically uncredited writers – but purportedly all created by Alan Hebden – this is a visual delight illustrated in alternating full colour (painted) and half-colour (black and magenta) sections by IPC’s European stable of artists: some of the greatest artists of the era, and delivered in a thoroughly different and grittily dark take on extraordinary champions, costumed crimebusters and the uncanny unknown…

The wonderment kicked off with ‘Magno, Man of Magnetism’ drawn by Miguel Quesada Cerdán: a valiant crimecrusher who seemed a cross between Simon Templar and James Bond, who donned his mask and used his superpowers only if things got really rough…

Eerily off-kilter sea scourge ‘Aquavenger’ was an oceanic crimefighter illustrated by The Victor veteran Vicente Ibáñez Sanchis, while ‘Mr. Tomorrow: Criminal of the Future’ – illustrated by jack of all genres Matías (Air Ace, Battle Action, Commando, The Victor, Twinkle) Alonso was an outright rebel from an oppressive state in days to come.

I don’t know who wrote or drew edgy, self-contained thriller ‘The Hunter and the Hunted’, but ‘Electro’ (no relation to the Marvel villain – other than the high-voltage shtick) is gloriously rendered by the legendary José Ortiz Moya (Caroline Baker, Barrister at Law; Smokeman; UFO Agent; The Phantom Viking; Commando Picture Library; BattlePicture Library; Vampirella; The Thirteenth Floor; Rogue Trooper; Tex Willer, Judge Dredd and many more).

In the most  traditional tale of the book, Eddie Edwards defends Surf City, USA as a voltaic vigilante and as part of the hero-heavy Super Security Bureau defeating terrors such as the crystalline marauders on view here…

Limned by future Modesty Blaise and Axa illustrator Enric Badia Romero, the fascinating psionic super-squad ‘Esper Commandos’ infiltrate and eliminate the competition before urban hunter ‘Marksman’ deals with a deadly saboteur and faux vengeful spectre ‘The Phantom’ (again no relation to any US star and illustrated by watercolours specialist Eustaquio Segrelles del Pilar) hands out summary justice decked out in a spooky uniform loaded with cunning gadgets…

We dip into the mind of a monster when aquatic horror ‘Norstad of the Deep’ – illustrated by Leopoldo Ortiz – invades the upper world but revert to heroic adventure for closing yarn ‘Time Rider’. Rendered by Ibáñez, it details how a bored genius millionaire builds a time-travelling robot horse and goes in search of adventure…

These are all great little adventures, satisfactorily self-contained, beautiful and singularly British in tone, even though most of the characters are American – or aliens (and no, that’s not necessarily the same thing). This tome easily withstands a critical rereading today, but the most important thing is the inspiring joy of these one-off wannabes. They certainly prompted me to fill sketchbook after sketchbook and determined that I would neither be a “brain surgeon nor a bloke wot goes down sewers in gumboots”. This great little tome gave me that critical push towards the fame and fortune I now enjoy, and could probably do it again!
© 1970 The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited.

DC Goes to War


By Will Eisner, Bob Powell, Jon L. Blummer, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Robert Kanigher, Ed Herron, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, David Michelinie, Chuck Dixon, Garth Ennis, Chuck Cuidera, John Severin, Joe Kubert, Jerry Grandenetti, Mort Drucker, Russ Heath, Jack Abel, Alex Toth, Gerry Talaoc, Judith Hunt, Sam Glanzman, Eduardo Barreto, Chris Weston, Christian Alamy & various (DC Comics)

ISBN: 978-1-7795-0015-1 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Blockbuster Thrills No Movie Could Match… 9/10

For America, the genre of war comics only really took in 1950, as the Korean War scared the pants off a world still recovering from WWII. Even so, while war was current affairs, publishers didn’t shirk making stories and heroes amidst the bomb blasts and strafing runs…

Many publishers fed the trend, but although a firm fan fave, the sector soon settled into mediocrity. However, after the meteoric rise and sudden demise of EC Comics in the mid-1950’s and prior to the game-changing Blazing Combat, the only sure place to find controversial, challenging, exceptional and entertaining combat comics was DC.

In fact, even whilst Archie Goodwin’s stunning but tragically mis-marketed quartet of classics were waking up a generation, the home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (herself a true “war baby”) was a veritable cornucopia of gritty, intriguing and beautifully illustrated battle tales presenting combat on a variety of fronts and from many differing points of view.

As the Vietnam War escalated, 1960s America increasingly endured a Home Front death-struggle pitting deeply-ingrained Establishment social attitudes against a youth-oriented generation with a radical new sensibility. In response, DC/National Periodical Publications’ military-themed comic books became even more bold and innovative…

That stellar creative period came to an end as all strip trends do, but a few of the more impressive and popular features (Sgt. Rock, Haunted Tank, The Losers) survived well into the second superhero revival.

Currently, English-reading fans of the genre are grievously underserved in both print and digital formats, but this magnificent hardback and digital compendium is hopefully the vanguard of a change of fortune…

Re-presenting material from Military Comics #1; All-American Comics #48; Boy Commandos #1; Our Army at War#67, 83, 233, 235; Our Fighting Forces #49, 102; Star Spangled War Stories #87, 183; G.I. Combat #87; Showcase#57; Weird War Stories #3; The Losers Special #1; Sgt. Rock Special #2 and Enemy Ace: War in Heaven #1-2 spanning August 1941, this epic package chronologically samples the company’s wide and deep well of war tales…

Tales of ordinary guys in combat began with the industry itself and although mostly sidelined during the capes-&-cowls war years, they quickly re-asserted themselves again once the actual fighting stopped. Those early days of the industry were awash with both opportunity and talent, and these factors coincided with a vast population hungry for cheap entertainment. Comics had no acknowledged fans or collectors; only a large, transient clientele open to all varied aspects of yarn-spinning and tale-telling – a situation which persisted right up to the end of the 1960s. Thus, the action here starts before it started for America…

Even though loudly isolationist and more than six months away from active inclusion in the Second World War, creators like Will Eisner and publishers like Everett M. (“Busy”) Arnold felt Americans were ready for the themed anthology title Military Comics.

Nobody was ready for Blackhawk.

Military Comics #1 launched on May 30th 1941 (August cover-dated) and included in its line-up Miss America, Jack Cole’s Death Patrol, Fred Guardineer’s Blue Tracer, X of the Underground, The Yankee Eagle, Q-Boat, Shot and Shell, Archie Atkins and Loops and Banks (by “Bud Ernest” – actually aviation-nut and unsung comics genius Bob Powell).

None of the strips – not even Cole’s surreal and suicidal team of hell-bent fliers – had the instant cachet and sheer appeal of Eisner & Powell’s “Foreign Legion of the Air”, led by the charismatic Dark Knight of the airways known only as Blackhawk.

Happy Anniversary “Magnificent Seven”!

Chuck Cuidera, famed for creating Blue Beetle for Fox, drew ‘The Origin of Blackhawk’ wherein a lone pilot fighting the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 is shot down by Nazi Ace Von Tepp, only to rise bloody and unbowed from his plane’s wreckage to form the World’s greatest team of airborne fighting men…

This mysterious paramilitary squadron of unbeatable fliers, dedicated to crushing injustice and smashing the Axis war-machine, battled on all fronts during the war and stayed together to crush Communism, international crime, Communism and every threat to democracy from alien invaders to supernatural monsters – and more Communism – becoming one of the true milestones of the US industry.

There were many melodramatic touches that made the Blackhawks so memorable in the eyes of a wide-eyed populace of thrill-hungry kids. There were the cool, black leather uniforms and peaked caps. The unique, outrageous – but authentic – Grumman F5F-1 Skyrocket planes they flew from their secret island base, and of course, their eerie battle-cry “Hawkaaaaa!”

But perhaps the oddest idiosyncrasy to modern readers was that they had their own song (would you be more comfortable if we started calling it an international anthem?) which Blackhawk, André, Stanislaus, Olaf, Chuck, Hendrickson and Chop-Chop would sing as they plummeted into battle…

This is a good place to remind everyone that historically, war comics have never been a place with comfortable depictions of race, ethnicity or creed. Please treat the material as necessarily historically authentic or simply find other more evolved and comfortable books to read…

Quality Comics adapted well to peacetime demands: Plastic Man and Doll Man lasted far longer than other superhero titles, whilst the rest of the line adapted into tough-guy crime, war, western, horror and racy comedy titles. The Blackhawks soared to even greater heights, starring in their own movie serial in 1952. However, the hostility of the marketplace to mature-targeted titles after the adoption of the self-censorious Comics Code was a clear sign of the times. In 1956 Arnold sold most of his comics properties and titles to DC and set up as a general magazine publisher.

Many of the purchases were a huge boost to National’s portfolio, with titles such as G.I. Combat, Heart Throbs and others running into the 1980s whilst the appeal and potential of characters such as Uncle Sam, assorted Freedom Fighters, Kid Eternity and others keep them coming back to this day…

Next up is Jon L. Blummer’s Hop Harrigan, America’s Ace of the Airways. He debuted in All-American Comics #1 in April 1939 as a dashing aviator: becoming a radio show phenomenon and ultimately a movie serial star. Harrigan was a serving pilot throughout the war and in this tale from All-American Comics #48 March 1943 tests a secret weapon launched from a B-24 bomber to inflict hell on the Japanese.

When Timely Comics failed to make good on financial obligations, Captain America creators Joe Simon & Kirby jumped ship to National/DC, who welcomed them with open arms. After establishing themselves with The Sandman and Manhunter, they returned to the “Kid Gang” genre they had created with The Young Allies and devised a juvenile Foreign Legion entitled The Boy Commandos.

These bellicose brats initially shared – or stole – some of the spotlight from Batman & Robin in flagship title Detective Comics before and whilst their solo title became one of the company’s top three sellers.

Frequently cited as the biggest-selling American comic book in the world at that time, Boy Commandos was such a success that the editors – knowing “The Draft” was lurking – green-lit the completion of a wealth of extra material to lay away for when their star creators were called up. S&K produced so much four-colour magic in a phenomenally short time that Publisher Jack Liebowitz suggested they retool some of it into adventures of a second kid gang… and thus was born Home Front heroes The Newsboy Legion…

We never learn how American Captain Rip Carter got to command a British Commando unit nor why he was allowed to bring a quartet of war-orphans with him on a succession of deadly sorties into “Festung Europa”, North Africa, the Pacific or Indo-Chinese theatres of war. All we had to do was realise that cockney urchin Alfy Twidgett, French lad Pierre –latterly and unobtrusively renamed Andre Chavard – little Dutch boy Jan Haasen and rough, tough little lout Brooklyn were fighting the battles we would, if we only had the chance…

Boy Commandos #1 (Winter 1942-1943) here visits ‘The Town that Couldn’t be Conquered!’ as Rip leads the lads back to Jan’s home village to terrify the rapacious occupiers and start a resistance movement…

National/DC were one of the last publishers to fully embrace the end of decade combat trend, converting superhero/fantasy adventure anthology Star Spangled Comics into Star Spangled War Stories the same month it launched Our Army at War (both cover-dated August 1952). All-American Comics was repurposed as All-American Men of War one month later as the “police action” in Korea escalated.

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

As the 1950s closed however, the two-fisted anthologies all began incorporating recurring characters such as Gunner and Sarge – and latterly Pooch – from Our Fighting Forces #45 on (May 1959) – soon to be followed by Sgt.  Rock and The Haunted Tank. Ultimately, all war titles had a lead star or feature to hold the fickle readers’ attention.

The potency of the anthological model is demonstrated here by ‘Push-Button War!’ by Ed Herron & John Severin from Our Army at War #67, (February 1958) as a bombardier learns how the rest of his flight crew do their deadly jobs after which Our Army at War #83 (June 1959) depicts the birth of a legend…

Crafted by Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert, ‘The Rock and the Wall!’ was actually the fourth appearance of a character undergoing constant revision. G.I. Combat #68 has an anonymous boxer who simply refused to be beaten. When ‘The Rock!’ enlisted in the US Army, that Horatian quality attained mythic proportions as he held back an overwhelming Nazi attack by sheer grit and determination, remaining bloody but unbowed on a field littered with dead and broken men.

Dubbed “Rocky”, the character returned as a sergeant in Our Army at War #81, again facing superior forces as ‘The Rock of Easy Co.!’ in a brief but telling vignette before finally winning a personal and extremely individualistic identity in the next issue. This was ‘Hold Up Easy!’: another harsh and declarative mini-epic from Kanigher which saw hard-luck heroes Easy Company delayed and then saved by callow replacements who eventually came good…

Only now can we see the story reprinted here as the true debut of the immortal everyman hero. Kanigher & Kubert’s ‘The Rock and the Wall!’ features a tough-love, battlefield tutor shepherding his men to competence and survival amidst the constant perils of war. Here the grizzled noncom meets a rival for his men’s admiration in the equally impressive Joe Wall…

Sgt Rock and the “combat-happy Joes” of Easy Company are one of the great and enduring creations of the American comic-book industry. The gritty meta-realism of Robert Kanigher’s ordinary guys in life-or-death situations captured the imaginations of generations of readers, young and old. So pervasive is this icon of comic book combat, that’s it’s hard to grasp that Rock is not an immortal industry prototype like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman – with us since the earliest moments of the industry – but is, in fact, a late addition to and child of the Silver Age of Comics.

For most fans, DC’s war comics are synonymous with two names. Individually and in partnership, Kanigher & Kubert built the combat division.

Robert Kanigher (1915-2002) was one of the most distinctive authorial voices in American comics, blending rugged realism with fantastic fantasy in his signature war comics, as well as horror stories, westerns and superhero titles likeTeen Titans, Hawkman, Metal Men, Batman plus other too numerous to cover here. A restlessly creative writer, he frequently used his uncanny but formulaic adventure arenas as a testing ground for future series concepts. Among the many epochal war features he created were Sgt. Rock, The War that Time Forgot, The Haunted Tank, The Losers and the controversial star of this stupendously compelling war-journal.

He sold his first stories and poetry in 1932, wrote for the theatre, film and radio, joined the Fox Features shop and created The Bouncer, Steel Sterling and The Web, whilst providing scripts for Blue Beetle and the original Shazam!-shouting Captain Marvel.

In 1945, he settled at All-American Comics as both writer and editor, staying on when the company amalgamated with National Comics to become the forerunner of today’s DC. He wrote Flash and Hawkman, created The Black Canaryand many memorable female villains such as Harlequin and Rose and the Thorn. This last turbulent terror he redesigned during the relevancy era of the early 1970s into a schizophrenic crime-busting vigilante who haunted the back of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane – which he also scripted.

When the taste for mystery-men faded at the end of the 1940s, Kanigher moved seamlessly into adventure, westerns and war yarns: becoming in 1952 writer/editor of the company’s combat titles.

As well as scripting for All-American War Stories, Star Spangled War Stories and Our Army at War, he created Our Fighting Forces in 1954 before adding G.I. Combat to his burgeoning portfolio when Quality sold their titles to DC in 1956. This was whilst still working on Wonder Woman, Johnny Thunder, Rex the Wonder Dog, Silent Knight, Viking Prince and so many others.

In 1956 he scripted ‘Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt’ – the first story of the Silver Age which introduced Barry Allen as the new Flash to the hero-hungry kids of the world. Drawn by Carmine Infantino, the risky experiment included multi-talented veteran Joe Kubert as inker for the crucially important debut issue…

Kubert was born in 1926 in rural Southeast Poland (which became Ukraine and might be Outer Russia by the time you read this). At age two, his parents took him to America and he grew up in Brooklyn.

His folks encouraged Joe to draw from an early age and the precocious kid began a glittering career at the start of the Golden Age, before he was even a teenager. Working and learning at the Chesler comics packaging “Shop”, MLJ, Holyoke and assorted other outfits, he began his close association with National/DC in 1943, whilst still dividing his time and energies between Fiction House, Avon, Harvey and All-American Comics, where he particularly distinguished himself on The Flash and Hawkman.

In the early 1950s he and old school chum Norman Maurer were the creative force behind publishers St. Johns: creating evergreen caveman Tor and launching the 3D comics craze with Three Dimension Comics.

Joe never stopped freelancing, appearing in EC’s Two-Fisted Tales, Avon’s Strange Worlds, Lev Gleason Publications & Atlas Comics until 1955 when, with the industry imploding, he took a permanent position at DC, only slightly diluted whilst he illustrated the contentious and controversial newspaper strip Tales of the Green Berets (from 1965 to 1968). An elder statesman of the industry, he was creating new works and passing on knowledge and experience through his world-famous Joe Kubert School until his death in August 2012.

Here ‘Blind Gunner’ from Our Fighting Forces #49, (September 1959 by Kanigher & Jerry Grandenetti) revisits Pacific Theatre warriors Gunner and Sarge as the sharpshooter looses his sight and is paired up with an astounding – and scene-stealing – K-9 star… “Pooch”.

With Mort Drucker, Kanigher then hits a ‘T.N.T. Spotlight!’ (Star Spangled War Stories #87, November 1959) as French Resistance leader Mlle Marie defeats a Nazi manhunt and retains her reputation for ruthless infallibility before we witness the birth of another genuine phenomenon.

In G.I. Combat #87 (April/May 1961), Kanigher & Russ Heath launched one of the strangest and most beloved war series ever conceived. ‘Introducing – the Haunted Tank’ sees boyhood friends Jeb Stuart Smith, Arch Asher, Slim Strykerand Rick Rawlins all assigned to the same M-3 Stuart Light Tank, named for the legendary Confederate Army General who was a genius of cavalry combat. During a patrol they somehow destroy an enemy Panzer even though they were all knocked unconscious…

Narrated by Jeb in the Commander’s spotter-position (head and torso sticking out of the top hatch and completely exposed to enemy fire whilst driver Slim, gunner Rick and loader Arch remain inside), he recounts how a ghostly voice offered advice and prescient, if veiled, warnings, all while enduring the jibes of fellow soldiers who drive bigger, tougher war machines. Eventually the little tank proves its worth and Jeb wonders if he imagined it all due to shock and his injuries, but we know better – as decades of further exploits proved…

The war department was always pushing envelopes and experimenting and the next star is one of the most notorious and remarkable.

Enemy Ace first appeared as a back-up in flagship title Our Army at War in tales loosely based on “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen. The stories were a magnificent, thought-provoking examination of and tribute to the profession of soldiering, whilst simultaneously condemning the madness of war, produced by dream team Kanigher & Kubert during a period when the ongoing Vietnam conflict was beginning to tear American society apart.

An immediate if seminal hit, the series told bitter tales of valour and honour from the point of view of German WWI fighter pilot Hans von Hammer: a hidebound, noble warrior fighting for his country in a conflict that was swiftly excising all trace of such outmoded concepts from the business of government sanctioned mass-killing.

Mere months later, he starred in a brace of full-length thrillers for prestigious try-out vehicle Showcase. Issue #57 (July/August 1965) here declares him ‘Killer of the Skies!’: recapitulating all that had gone before whilst introducing a potential equal in the form of Canadian ace “The Hunter”. A new wrinkle was added to the mix as Von Hammer now perpetually agonised and bemoaned his inability to save the human conveyor belt of naive, foolish replacement pilots to his Jagdstaffel from killing themselves through enthusiasm, bravado and youthful stupidity…

Eventually the real war hit DC’s comic pages as Capt. Hunter began a personal crusade in Vietnam. Green Beret Captain Phil Hunter debuted in Our Fighting Forces #99, drawn to the conflict to find his twin brother Nick: shot down and now M.I.A. ‘Cold Steel for a Hot War!’ comes from Our Fighting Forces #102 (August 1966 by Kanigher & Jack Abel) and sees the obsessed warrior training child soldiers beside enigmatic turncoat femme fatale Kewpie Doll…

Whilst the Vietnam War escalated, 1960s America increasingly endured a Home Front death-struggle pitting deeply-ingrained Establishment social attitudes against a youth-oriented generation with a radical new sensibility. In response DC’s military-themed comics became even more bold and innovative. However, the sudden downturn in superheroes led to some serious rethinking. Although war titles maintained and even built sales, they beefed up the anthological elements and began expressing anti-war sentiments…

Sgt, Rock increasingly became a mouthpiece for such sentiment: experiencing the horror and stupidity of fighting and revealing what lay behind the glory and patriotic fervour. Kanigher & Kubert’s ‘Head-Count!’ (Our Army at War #233, June 1971) detailed a new replacement to Easy Co who used the conflict to feed his own sick appetites, after which Kanigher & Alex Toth reveal how boyhood dreams turn to nightmares in shocking US Civil War vignette ‘The Glory Boys!’ (Our Army at War #235, August 1971)

The theme is revisited in ‘The Pool…’ from Weird War Stories #3 (January/February 1972): an early tale by relative newcomers Len Wein & Marv Wolfman, ably illustrated by Heath which shows how both cavemen tribes and modern soldiers battle eternally to possess the only source of water in a trackless wasteland…

Times and tastes constantly evolved, and simple fighting was no longer satisfactory…

One of the very best concepts ever devised for a war comic, The Unknown Soldier was a spin-off, first appearing as a walk-on in a 1966 Sgt. Rock story (Our Army at War #168, by Kanigher & Kubert). His later series featured a faceless super-spy and master-of-disguise whose forebears had proudly fought and died in every American conflict since the birth of the nation.

The strip became one of DC’s most popular and long-lived: Star Spangled morphed into Unknown Soldier in 1977 with #205: only folding in 1982 (#268) when sales of traditional comic books harshly declined. Since then the character has frequently been rebooted and reinvented: each iteration moving further and further way from the originating concept.

His origin revealed how two inseparable brothers joined up in the days before America was attacked and were posted together to the Philippines just as the Japanese began their seemingly unstoppable Pacific Campaign. Overwhelmed by a tidal wave of enemy soldiers one night the brothers held their jungle posts to the last and when relief came only one had survived, his face a tattered mess of raw flesh and bone…

As US forces retreated from the islands the indomitable survivor was evacuated to a state-side hospital. Refusing medals, honours or retirement, the recuperating warrior dedicated his remaining years to his lost brother Harry and determinedly retrained as a one-man-army intelligence unit. His unsalvageable face swathed in bandages, the nameless fighter learned the arts of make-up, disguise and mimicry, perfected a broad arsenal of fighting skills and offered himself to the State Department as an expendable resource who could go anywhere and do anything.

After a long run by numerous stellar creators, shifting fashions provoked a shift in emphasis. Relative neophytes David Michelinie & Gerry Talaoc came aboard with SSWS #183, resulting in an evocative change of direction with ‘8,000 to One’.

The horror boom peaked in 1974 and new editor Joe Orlando capitalised on that fascination with a few startling changes – the most controversial being to expose the Unknown Soldier’s grotesque, scar-ravaged face – presumably to draw in monster-hungry fear fans…

The story itself goes back to the Immortal G.I.’s earliest days as an American agent as he’s despatched to Denmark to rescue a ship full of Danish Jews destined for Hitler’s death camps. Disguised as SS Captain Max Shreik, the Soldier is forced to make an unconscionable choice to safeguard his mission. The degree and manner of graphic violence was also exponentially increased to accommodate the more mature readership as the Soldier took a very personal revenge…

Another result of changing tastes was teaming older strip stars. The Losers were an elite unit of American soldiers formed by amalgamating three old war series together. Gunner and Sarge – supplemented by Fighting Devil Dog Pooch – were Pacific-based Marines, debuting in All-American Men of War #67 (March1959). They ran for 50 issues in Our Fighting Forces (#45-94, May1959-August 1965), whilst Captain Johnny Cloud – Navajo Ace and native American fighter pilot – shot down his first bogie in All-American Men of War #82. He flew solo until issue #115 (1966), whilst the final component of the Land/Air/Sea team was filled by Captain Storm, a disabled PT Boat commander (he had a wooden leg) who had his own 18 issue title from 1964 to 1967. All three series were created by warlord Kanigher.

They had all pretty much passed their sell-by dates when they teamed-up as guest-stars in a Haunted Tank tale in 1969 (G.I. Combat #138 October), but these “Losers” found a new resonance together in the relevant, disillusioned, cynical Vietnam years, and their rather nihilistic, doom-laden anti-hero adventures took the lead spot in Our Fighting Forces#123 (January/February 1970), written by Kanigher with art from giants like Ken Barr, Russ Heath, Sam Glanzman, John Severin and Joe Kubert.

With the tag-line “even when they win, they lose” they saw action all over the globe, winning critical acclaim and a small, passionate following until #181 (September/October 1978) – when the comic was cancelled – and one last hurrah in 1982’s Unknown Soldier #265.

When DC revised its entire continuity in 1985 for Crisis on Infinite Earths a final tale was devised by Kanigher, Judith Hunt, Sam Glanzman & Mike Esposito in a one-shot. The Losers Special #1 saw the doomed heroes perish saving the war effort by destroying a German missile base. That’s not a spoiler: It’s comics and they haven’t all stayed dead…

Readers’ understanding and appreciation of war stories constantly matured over the decades and by the time of ‘Hammer and Anvil’ (Sgt. Rock Special #2, 1992 by Chuck Dixon & Eduardo Barreto) the tales were practically indistinguishable from film or TV fare. Seldom a matter of good versus evil, here, war itself and weather are the enemy as Easy Company endure the horrors of Bastogne and clash with Nazi infiltrators indistinguishable from G.I.’s at the Battle of the Bulge…

Ending this sortie of superb classics is a brilliant extrapolation by modern day keeper of the war flame Garth Ennis, ably assisted by Christian Alamy, Chris Weston & Russ Heath. Released in 2001 as a 2-issue miniseries, Enemy Ace: War in Heaven takes another look at the flyer on the other side, now transplanted to World War II and a far less defensible position…

Bavaria 1942, and 46 years old Baron Hans von Hammer is visited by an old flying comrade urging him to come out of retirement and serve his country. No lover of Nazism, the old ace has remained isolated until now, but Germany’s attack on Russia has proven a disastrous blunder, and this last plea is a much warning as request.

Neophyte pilots on the Eastern Front need his experience and leadership, whereas Hitler’s goons don’t need much excuse to remove a dissident thorn…

Based loosely on the lives of such German pilots as Adolf Galland, book 1 – rendered by Weston – finds von Hammer as indomitable as ever in the killer skies but unable to stomach the increasing horror and stupidity of the conflict and its instigators. The phrase “My Country, Right or Wrong” leaves an increasingly sour taste in his mouth as the last of his nation’s young men die above Soviet fields…

Book 2 is set in 1945 with Germany on the brink of defeat and von Hammer flying an experimental jet fighter (a Messerschmitt 262, if you’re interested): shooting down not nearly enough Allied bombers to make a difference and still annoying the wrong people at Nazi High Command.

He knows the war is over but his sense of duty and personal honour won’t let him quit. He is resigned to die in the bloody skies that are his second home, but is shot down and parachutes into a concentration camp named Dachau…

With art from comics legend Russ Heath, this stirring tale ends with a triumph of integrity over patriotism: a perfect end to the war record of a true soldier and another compelling, deeply incisive exploration of war, its repercussions, both good and bad, and the effects that combat has on singular men. This should be mandatory reading for every child who wants to be a soldier…

With covers Will Eisner & Gil Fox, Simon & Kirby, Grandenetti, Kubert, Dan Brereton and Alamy, this monument to combat comics is a stunning example of passion in play and a clarion call to publishers to return to their archives and release many more such tomes.
© 1941, 1943, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1965, 1966, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1985, 1994, 2001, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.