Category: Spy Stories

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Captain America Sam Wilson volume 1: Not My Captain America


By Nick Spencer, Daniel Acuña, Paul Renaud, Joe Bennett, Mike Choi, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Belardino Brabo & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9640-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

Created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby in an era of national turmoil and frantic patriotic fervour, Captain America was a dynamic, emphatically visible response to the horrors of Nazism and the threat of Liberty’s loss. Consequently, the concept quickly lost focus and popularity once hostilities ceased. The Sentinel of Freedom and Champion of Democracy faded away during post-war reconstruction, only to briefly reappear after the Korean War: a harder, darker Cold Warrior hunting monsters, subversives and “Reds” who lurked under every American bed.

He abruptly vanished once more, until the burgeoning Marvel Age resurrected him just in time to experience the Land of the Free’s most turbulent, culturally divisive era. He became a mainstay of the Marvel Revolution in the Swinging Sixties, but lost his way after that, except for a politically-fuelled, radically liberal charged period under scripter Steve Englehart.

Despite everything, Captain America evolved into a powerful symbol for generations of readers and his career can’t help but reflect that of the nation he stands for…

Devised in the fall of 1940 and on newsstands by December 20th, Captain America Comics #1 was cover-dated March 1941, and an instant monster, blockbuster smash-hit. The Sentinel of Liberty had boldly and bombastically launched in his own monthly title with none of the publisher’s customary caution, and instantly became the absolute and undisputed star of Timely’s top-selling “Big Three” (with The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner.)

He was, however, one of the first to fall from popularity as the Golden Age ended.

During that initial run, his exploits were tinged – or maybe “tainted” – by the sheer exuberant venom of appalling racial stereotyping and fervent jingoism at a time when America was involved in the greatest war in world history. Nevertheless, the first 10 issues of Captain America Comics remain amongst are the most exceptional comics in history…

You know the origin story like your own. Simon & Kirby revealed how scrawny, enfeebled patriot and genuinely Good Man Steven Rogers – after being continually rejected by the US Army – is recruited by the Secret Service. Desperate to stop Nazi expansion and Home Front mischief, the passionate kid joined a clandestine experimental effort to create physically perfect super-soldiers.

I have no idea if the irony of American Übermenschen occurred to the two Jewish kids creating that mythology, but here we are…

When a Nazi infiltrated the project and murdered the pioneering scientist behind it, Rogers was left as the only successful result and became America’s not-so-secret weapon. When he was lost, others took up the role and have periodically done so ever since. I might be wrong, but as I recall every substitute and replacement was white and male…

Over decades the story unfolded, constantly massaged and refined, yet essentially remaining intact. In 2002 – and in the wake of numerous real-world scandals like the revelations of the “Tuskegee Experiment” (AKA Tuskegee Syphilis Study 1932-1972) – Robert Morales & Kyle Baker took a trenchantly cynical second look at the legend through the lens of the treatment of and white attitudes towards black American citizens…

The result was Truth: Red, White & Black (link please): a hard-hitting view of the other side of a Marvel foundational myth that forever changed continuity: one using tragedy and injustice to add more – and more challenging – role models/heroes of colour to the pantheon.

As Marvel expanded and reached market dominance in the 1960s, its publications ceaselessly whittled away at the unacknowledged colour bar in comics. At this time, many companies (choked to bursting point with seditious Liberals and even some actual Intelligentsia!) were making tentative efforts to address what were national and socio-political iniquities.

However, issues of race and ethnicity took a long time to filter through to still-impressionable young minds avidly absorbing knowledge and formative attitudes via four-colour pages that couldn’t even approximate the skin tones of African-Americans or Asians…

As in television, breakthroughs were small, incremental and too often reduced to a cold-war of daring “firsts”. Excluding a few characters (like Matt Baker’s Voodah) in jungle-themed comic books of the 1940s-1950, Marvel clearly led the field with their black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos team – the historically impossible Gabe Jones who debuted in #1, May 1963. So unlikely was Gabe that he was automatically and so helpfully re-coloured “Caucasian” at the printers, who clearly didn’t realise his ethnicity but knew he couldn’t be anything but white.

Jones was followed by an actual African superhero when Fantastic Four #52 (cover-dated July 1966) introduced The Black Panther. Throughout that intervening period, strong, competent and consistent black characters – like The Daily Bugle’s city editor Robbie Robertson (Amazing Spider-Man #51, August 1967) and detective Willie Lincoln (Daredevil #47, December 1968) – had been gradually and permanently added to the regular cast of many series. They were erudite, dignified, brave, proudly ordinary mortals distinguished by sterling character, not costume or skin tone: proving that the world wouldn’t end if black folk and white folk occupied the same spaces…

The first “negro” hero to helm his own title had already come (and gone largely unnoticed) in a little-regarded title from Dell Comics. Debuting in December 1965 and created by artist Tony Tallarico & scripter D.J. Arneson, Lobo was a black gunslinger in the old west, battling injustice just like any “white hat” cowboy would.

For Marvel, the big moment came in Captain America #117 (September 1969) as, during an extended battle against the Red Skull and his sinister Exiles, artist Gene Colan got his wish to create the industry’s first official African American superhero: Sam Wilson, The Falcon…

After a few cautious months, he returned, became Captain America’s friend, student, partner and – after decades – ultimately his replacement…

Finally, change was acceptable. As the 1960s ended, more positive and inclusive incidences of ethnic characters appeared, with DC finally launching a black hero in John Stewart (Green Lantern #87, December 1971/January 1972) – although his designation as a replacement GL could be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary.

DC’s first solo star in his own title was Black Lightning, but he didn’t debut until April 1977, although Jack Kirby had introduced Vykin in Forever People #1, the Black Racer in New Gods #3 (March and July 1971) and Shilo Norman as Scott Free’s apprentice/successor in Mister Miracle #15 (August 1973), whilst Archie Goodwin engineered Marvel’s biggest triumph with the launch of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire in the summer of 1972. A year later, Black Panther won his own series in Jungle Action #5 and Blade: Vampire Hunter debuted in Tomb of Dracula #10. At last, black people were part and parcel of a greater continuity society, not separate and isolated chimera on the fringes…

This big change came from incremental advances slowly achieved against the backdrop of a huge societal shift triggered by the Civil Rights movement, but even though it all grew out of raised social awareness during a terrible time in American history (yes, even worse than today’s festering social wars), kids and other readers knew something special was happening and they must participate…

Nearly half a century later, following a convoluted but generally steady and steadfast career, multi-talented flying superhero Sam Wilson was a tried and true star: holding a succession of civilian jobs – from social worker to architect to politician – whilst his true vocation was being a superhero, singly, in partnerships in the Avengers and as part of S.H.I.EL.D.

Recently: After spending 12 relative years in hellish time-bent Dimension Z raising a child and saving its indigenous people from sadistic Hitlerian uber-geneticist Arnim Zola, Steve Rogers finally returned to Earth to discover mere hours had passed in the “real” world.

Barely pausing, he went straight back to work, stopping deranged, drug-dependent US supersoldier Frank Simpson (AKA Nuke: a covert Captain America from the Vietnam era) slaughtering men, women and children in the nation’s name. Rogers was then sucked back into spy games: confronting former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent/messianic socialist Ran Shen, who aroused a sleeping dragon for its power to reshape the world to his liking. As the Iron Nail, he tried to destroy greedy, exploitative, destructive capitalism using tools and techniques taught him by Nick Fury (Senior) and Chinese iconoclast Mao Zedong…

Rogers won that war of ideological wonder warriors at the cost of his faith and lifelong purpose of his existence, but fell victim to Dr. Mindbubble: ready, able and extremely willing to share his terrifying expanded sensibilities with the corrupt Establishment world…

Already disgusted by the procession of appalling creations his country has devised in the name of security, Cap’s peace of mind took another big hit when S.H.I.E.L.D. admitted Mindbubble was theirs: a countermeasure to possible rogue super soldiers, but one mothballed when the cure proved worse than the anticipated affliction…

When the so-very-mad Doctor triggered S.H.I.E.L.D.’s ultimate doomsday weapon, Captain America and The Falcon did what they always did to save the world. Ultimately though, it was Rogers, resolute and alone, who fought his greatest battle to save innocents and a nation he embodied but no longer trusted…

What the Falcon rescued from the rubble, Rogers was no longer Captain America at all…

In the aftermath, and as part of publishing relaunch “All-New, All-Different”, weary, worn-out enfeebled Rogers got a desk job as security supremo whilst Wilson was promoted to Captain America. Sam picked up the shield, rebuilt his wings and promptly proved himself by stopping a plot to destroy humanity perpetrated by Helmut Zemo, Baron Blood and Hydra: executed by Sin, Batroc, Taskmaster, Armadillo, Crossbones and a host of other old foes…

Here, though, we’re concentrating on a true fresh start as our so-patient hero officially launches his new role. Gathering Captain America: Sam Wilson #1-6 (cover-dated December 2015 – April 2016), it’s scripted by Nick Spencer (Spider-Man, Astonishing Ant-Man) and initially illustrated by Daniel Acuña (Eternals, Wolverine, Black Widow) & Mike Choi.

During his last exploit the “black Cap” had lost sidekick Nomad, formed a potent alliance with wonder warrior/deadly detective Misty Knight, and became a very public figure in all his identities. Now, as he flies coach from Phoenix to New York that celebrity comes back to bite him…

As a public hero, Wilson wanted to try new things and employed Knight, former ally Dennis Dunphy (Demolition Man) and digital whistleblowing vigilante The Whisperer to run a full-time support team. After again beating Crossbones, Wilson repurposed his role as national symbol and defender by taking a public stand on numerous social and political issues. Generating a storm of right-wing dissent and anti-minority hate-speech, he then doubled down by creating a hotline where literally anybody could ask for Captain America’s help…

Pilloried in the media, he soldiered on, despite being inundated by nutjob notices from across the nation. His idea paid off when someone who really needed help made contact…

In Arizona, immigration was always a hot topic, but when Wilson learned young Joaquín Torres had been abducted by ultra-racists The Sons of the Serpent for helping the Mexican community, Captain America got involved…

The kid was one of many minority ethnic Americans helping immigrants, so the Sons had given him to evil genius Karl Malus to use in his experiments. Although the desert end of the human pipeline was quickly crushed, it took some time for Cap to track the kid down. By the time he and Knight had crushed a legion of villains and worked their way up an abhorrent chain, Torres had been cruelly and continually mutated, merged with Wilson’s animal ally Redwing and infected with vampirism, and was well on his way to becoming something unhuman…

Slow, patient work revealed connections to corporate America and just more “business opportunities” for unchecked Capitalism, and led to utter catastrophe after Malus turned Wilson into a science-derived werewolf and himself into a shapeshifting horror in the manner of Venom and Carnage.

Inevitably – and with Joaquín’s help – Knight, D-Man, Whisperer and “Cap-Wolf” stop Malus, only to find the war against the weakest was orchestrated by reptile-themed old foes working with big business. Rebranded “Serpent Solutions”, the former Serpent Society of supervillains sought to control Wall Street and the world, using tactics perfected by Hydra and AIM.

Their campaign kicks off in a tense tale limned by Paul Renaud & colourist Romulo Fajardo Jr., as supposedly reformed “bad-girl” Diamondback plays both sides when the embattled heroes act to expose the snakes’ scheme…

With double-dealing double crosses, unchallenged racial hatred and unchecked greed unleashed, the good guys are completely overwhelmed until the Serpents’ latest victim takes charge of his destiny and the newest incarnation of the Falcon flies to the rescue: claiming his own share of justice and retribution in a spectacular all action finale illustrated by Joe Bennett, Belardino Brabo & Fajardo Jr.

With covers and variants by Acuña, Renaud, Óscar Jiménez Steve Epting, John Cassady & Laura Martin, Mahmud Asrar and Evan “Doc” Shaner, this epic reworking of an American Tale is wry, witty, controversially outspoken (for a mainstream comic, at least) and superbly rewarding: a saga of the Black Cap which laid much of the groundwork for today’s screen informed Sentinel of Liberty. It might be Not My Captain America, but it’s definitely one all fans should see.
© 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Invincible Iron Man Epic Collection volume 10: The Enemy Within 1982-1983


By Denny O’Neil, Roger McKenzie, Peter B. Gillis, Ralph Macchio, Carmine Infantino, Steve Ditko, Paul Smith, Luke McDonnell, Jerry Bingham, Mike Vosburg, Marie Severin & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-8787-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Tony Stark is a super-rich supergenius inventor who moonlights as a superhero: wearing a formidable, ever-evolving suit of armour stuffed with his own ingenious creations. The supreme technologist hates to lose and constantly upgrades his gear, making Iron Man one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe.

However, in Iron Man #120-128 (March to November 1979), the unrelenting pressure of running a multinational corporation and saving the world on a daily basis resulted in the weary warrior succumbing to the constant temptations of his (originally sham) sybaritic lifestyle. Thus, he helplessly slipped into a glittering world drenched with excessive partying and drinking.

That dereliction was compounded by his armour being usurped by rival Justin Hammer: used to murder an innocent. The ensuing psychological crisis forced Stark to confront the hard fact that he was an alcoholic …and probably an adrenaline junkie too.

That crux landmark story ‘Demon in a Bottle’ saw the traumatised hero plumb the depths of grief and guilt, bury himself in pity, and alienate all his friends and allies before an unlikely intervention forced him to take a long, hard look at his life and actions…

A more cautious, level-headed and wiser man, Stark resumed his high-pressure lives, but he could not let up and the craving never went away. Then in 1982 author/editor Denny O’Neil made him do it again, with the result that Marvel gained another black superhero at long last…

It was the start of a period of legacy heroes inheriting the mantles, established roles and combat identities from white and mostly male champions, and was certainly a move in the right direction…

This grand and gleaming chronological compendium navigates that transitional period, re-presenting Iron Man #158-177 and Iron Man Annual #5: episodically spanning cover-dates May 1982 through December 1983, as the title experienced an uncomfortable number of creative personnel shuffles before settling on a steady team to tackle the biggest of changes…

It starts with Iron Man #158 as O’Neil, Carmine Infantino, Dan Green & Al Milgrom breeze through the motions as a deranged junior genius attacks modern technology from his literal man-cave by tapping the latent psychic power of his ‘Moms’…

Roger McKenzie, rising art star Paul Smith & inking collective “Diverse Hands” stepped in to relate what occurs ‘When Strikes Diablo’, as the Fantastic Four’s alchemical nemesis infiltrates Stark International to steal the techno-wizard’s resources and obsolete suits, only to unleash a mystic menace beyond all control…

With pressure mounting and threats everywhere, the craving for booze painfully manifests in ‘A Cry of Beasts’ – by O’Neil, Steve Ditko, Marie Severin & Green – as Stark’s party-persona collides with hot, willing babes …until an attack on his factory by the sinister Serpent Squad reminds him of his priorities.

Preceding Iron Man Annual #5, and by O’Neil, Luke McDonnell, Mike Esposito & Steve Mitchell, a brief encounter with newcomer hero Moon Knight sees Stark at odds with rival rich man Steven Grant (one of four people comprising the edgy new crusader) in ‘If the Moonman Should Fail!’

Frenemies at first sight, the Golden Avenger and Fist of Khonshu swallow their differences to save mutual friends held hostage by Advanced Idea Mechanics, after which the extra-length Annual extravaganza sees Iron Man in Wakanda where The Black Panther must defeat mysteriously resurrected nemesis and determined usurper Eric Killmonger…

Crafted by Peter B. Gillis, Ralph Macchio, Jerry & Bingham & Green, the action-packed ‘War and Remembrance!’ reveals an old foe methodically manoeuvring Stark and Iron Man into an inescapable trap, which closes tighter in Iron Man #162 as O’Neil, Mike Vosburg & Mitchell expose ‘The Menace Within!’ as a trusted employee sabotages S.I.…

There seems to be more than one campaign to crush Stark, and – as O’Neil, McDonnell & Mitchell become the regular creative team – ‘Knight’s Errand!’ opens an extended gambit with another hidden plotter turning ruthless capitalism, corporate raiding, advanced weaponry and an obsession with chess into a war for control of the company.

Up first is fast-flying tech terror The Knight who makes short work of Tony’s bodyguard, pilot, friend and confidante James Rhodey, but the real threat comes from a new acquaintance and future companion, covertly hollowing out Stark at close hand. Rising in the rankings after defeating the hovering horseman, Iron Man barely survives the ‘Deadly Blessing’ of The Bishop after his security team digs up leads to the plot in Scotland…

In IM #165, the trail leads to Jamie, Laird of Glen Travail and another deadly duel of devices, but the true purpose is to destabilise Stark by abducting Rhodey in an effort to coerce his capitulation. The resultant ‘Endgame’ seemingly goes Stark’s way, but the battle is fought on many levels by a distanced player secretly commanding the Laird: one with a cruel emotional counterpunch long-prepared to destroy the hero from within…

After a brief interlude offering original art pages from issues #161, 163 & 165, the stories resume and tensions mount on ‘One of Those Days…’ as old foe The Melter attacks Stark’s New York facility. Rhodey is recuperating in Scotland and Stark yet again faces enforced inactivity in the land of sublime alcoholic beverages, so he abruptly abandons his friend and jets home to stop the supervillain. He also learns his brilliant head of security Vic Martinelli has uncovered the identity of one of the hidden players attacking the company: chess grandmaster turned armaments entrepreneur Obadiah Stane…

With Rhodey missing again in Scotland, the newcomer wants all Stark’s creations and in the most hostile of takeovers, has used every trick in the book – from honey traps to guided missiles and abduction to intoxication – to seize the advantage…

‘The Empty Shell’ sees that nefarious planning bear evil fruit as Stark finally cracks under interminable pressure and one last betrayal, leading to a crushing fall “off the wagon” and into the gutter in ‘The Iron Scream’.

Permanently drunk and deprived of all judgement, Stark dons his armour to clash with Machine Man, even as far away, Rhodey makes his own life-threatening break for freedom and home…

As chaos ensues at the Stark plant, a major player debuts in the form of junior employee and minor boffin Morley Erwin, who’s on hand for Stark’s reunion with Rhodey and an aghast witness to one of the smartest men alive willingly crawling into a bottle and trying to drown away his pain…

That process begins in #169 as ‘Blackout!’ sees Stark simply give up when confronted by volcanic B-list villain Magma, and sleep through the moment Jim Rhodes steps up – and into – the role and armour of Iron Man…

The new era properly begins in #170’s ‘And Who Shall Clothe Himself in Iron?’ (cover-dated May 1983) as the former military airman promotes Erwin to the role of tech support adviser to help him pilot the most complex weapon he’s ever used to defeat Magma and save a far from grateful Tony Stark…

In the aftermath, the inventor just walks away: letting a new hero flounder even as, in the shadows, Stane gradually completes his takeover. Alone, isolated and under resourced, Rhodey and Erwin stumble into a heist in ‘Ball and Chain’, after seeking to arbitrate a domestic hostage situation triggered by Asgardian-powered supervillain Thunderball not knowing when no means no…

They are then duty-bound to intervene when Stark – completely off the rails – is arrested. However, his drunken debacle is only the start of their woes, as one the souse’s most murderous enemies tries to exact ‘Firebrand’s Revenge!’ and an entire hotel goes up in flames.

Thankfully Captain America is on hand to give the new guy in the suit a helping hand, but the distraction is just what Stane needs to seal his deal…

Homeless, broke and close to death on the streets, Stark is then accidentally saved by his conqueror, who lays the seeds of his own eventual downfall by dragging the lush to a grand takeover ceremony. Also attending is the new Iron Man who gets a lead to the woman who tempted and crushed Stark: an operative of freelance espionage ring The Sisters of Ishtar. This time both Stane and Rhodey learn that ‘Judas is a Woman’…

During this period every effort to turn Stark around fails: shot down by his self-sabotage. Now however, his friends must pause their personal interventions as the national and international repercussions of Stane’s triumph grows. Refusing to let a ruthless war profiteer benefit from Iron Man tech, Rhodey and Morley take drastic steps: stealing all the old kit and prototypes from Stane International. They are blithely unaware Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. share those opinions and are making their own clandestine arrangements in ‘Armor Chase’ (inked by Sam de LaRosa)…

A three-way clash escalates in O’Neil, McDonnell, & Mitchell’s Iron Man #175 as all ‘This Treasure of Red and Gold…’ ends up dumped deep in the ocean: purportedly beyond human reach. Nobody seemed to think that maybe water breathers like bellicose Atlantean renegade Warlord Krang might be in the market for a weapons upgrade dropped right in his lap…

Still operating under what can only be described as trial-by-fire period, Rhodey dives right in, triumphs again and even makes a new friend…

Stark’s own deep descent is marginally arrested after befriending an elderly “un-homed” guy on the streets in ‘Turf’, even as far away Iron Man meets the Sisters of Ishtar again and has his first encounter with something not of this Earth…

This tome pauses for now with a transitional tale loaded with portents of bad times to come. After meeting Erwin’s even smarter sister Clytemnestra, Rhodey looks – after a chat with Heroes for Hire Luke Cage & Iron Fist – into forming a rather unique start-up company in ‘Have Armor Will Travel’. The idea only truly gels after he’s hired to bodyguard an officious unflappable official in South America and encounters – and survives – deadly armoured mercenary Flying Tiger. However, in all the furore, our hero barely notices that he’s having headaches almost constantly these days…

To Be Continued…

With covers by Bob Layton, Smith, Jim Starlin, Ed Hannigan & Al Milgrom, Bingham & Brett Breeding, McDonnell, Brent Anderson & Mitchell, the bonus section includes ‘Original art and covers’, the cover for The Many Armors of Iron Man collection by McDonnell, Mitchell, & Frank D’Armata and contemporary House ad from Marvel Age #12.

As comics companies sought to course correct old attitudes and adapt their wares to a far wider and more diverse readership than they had previously acknowledged, some rash rushed decisions were made that did not suit all the fans. Thankfully, that never stopped the editors and publishers from trying and the wonderful results are here and everywhere in comics because of it. Go read and enjoy and see how it all began to change.
© 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Unknown Soldier volume 1: Haunted House


By Joshua Dysart, Alberto Ponticelli & various (DC/Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2311-3 (TPB)

One of the very best concepts ever devised for a war comic, The Unknown Soldier was actually a successful spin-off, having first appeared as a walk-on in a Robert Kanigher/Joe Kubert Sgt. Rock story (Our Army at War #168, cover-dated June 1966). He won his own series in 1970, beginning with Star-Spangled Comics #151, cover-dated July 1970 and an all-Kubert affair.

The timely interventionist was 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. This family’s last son had dedicated himself to ensuring the safety of his nation in the face of outrageous aggression from the Nazis and Japanese, and specifically the death of his own older brother in an enemy sneak attack…

The war strip grew to be one of DC’s most popular and long-lived: Star-Spangled became The Unknown Soldier in 1977 and the comic only folded in 1982 with issue #268, when sales of traditional comic books were in severe decline.

Since then the character has resurfaced numerous times – in superhero guest-shots and as a 12-issue miniseries in 1988-9; a 4-part Vertigo tale in 1997 and this ferocious politically-charged contemporary reboot which surfaced as an ongoing series in 2009. Another iteration was later revived and unsuccessfully updated as part of the 2011 “New 52” project.

With each iteration the hero moved further and further away from the originating concept, but never truly abandoned or escaped it.

As reimagined by Joshua Dysart (Violent Messiahs, Swamp Thing, Hellboy: B.P.R.D., Conan, Harbinger, Bloodshot, Goodbye Paradise) for adult imprint Vertigo Comics, the action shifts to Uganda at the beginning of this century, where almost continual tribal unrest since the fall of Idi Amin had turned the nation into a charnel house.

Especially appalling were the actions of murderous fundamentalist Christian demagogue Joseph Kony: a self-professed prophet whose “Lord’s Resistance Army” kidnapped, pressganged and brainwashed children: making killers of boys and sex slaves of girls – all forcibly indoctrinated into his religion-cloaked armed insurgency. If you’re old enough, you’ll recall a time when his atrocities were never far from our news…

Here, Dysart and illustrator Alberto Ponticelli (Dial H for Hero, Frankenstein, Come un cane, Sam & Twitch, Blade II, Alias, Blatta) co-opt those headlines as basis for a shocking tale of barbarity and duplicity set in 2002 when noted pacifist, physician and award-winning humanitarian Dr. Moses Lwanga returned to the country of his birth after decades away.

A successful refugee from Amin’s lethal reign, he has been raised in America since he was seven. After benefitting from an Ivy League education at Harvard, he intends on doing good for his benighted former countrymen. The move has already paid wonderful dividends as his first explorations won him a wife in the form of equally-accomplished local doctor Sera Christian.

Now, having endured the painful rigmarole of fundraising and gladhanding even the most well-meaning of interested parties – such as “involved and concerned” humanitarian cause-driven actress Mrs Margaret Wells – Moses is more than ready to head in-country and save actual lives.

It’s a painful, frustrating task as it’s not just modern problems causing bloodshed and carnage. The country suffers from ancient grievances underlying everything else: caused by the colonial British bundling together disparate tribes and adjacent regions into one country. When they left, eternal differences between the southern Ganda/Buganda and northern Acholi Peoples fuelled much of the brutal ambitions of all those monstrous “leaders” seeking to fill the power vacuum…

Into this morass of murder and exploitation the Lwangas plunge, setting up a field hospital in Acholiland and trying their very best. They are keenly observed by many, especially journalist Momolu Sengendo and President Museveni’s highly ineffective Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF), who are providing security for the facility which is deep in the region where Kony’s atrocities are daily occurring…

Apart from Sera, nobody is aware of the horrific, violent nightmares Moses endures nightly, and even she does not know how she figures in them…

Weeks later, the couple are struggling to cope with a continuous stream of mutilation, rape and punishment amputation cases caused by Lord’s Resistance Army units: largely autonomous groups spreading chaos and terror in the name of Jesus and Kony. One morning it all becomes too much. When a dying boy is brought in and reveals the LRA have taken his sister, Moses snaps and heads into the bush, outdistancing his extremely reluctant guards. He is easily captured and forced to watch children brutalise even younger children. Deep inside him, something breaks and a terrifyingly different man emerges: one as skilled in combat and death as Moses Lwanga is in healing…

When the smoke clears and the shooting stops, he’s subject to flashbacks of things that never happened, ongoing hallucinations and a voice in his head giving him orders…

Days later, a kind of rationality returns as he awakens with a ruined infected face swathed in bandages. They’ve been applied by an Australian nun, running a home for orphan girls in the middle of the worst place on Earth they could possibly be…

The famous doctor’s disappearance has caused dangerous waves in the outer world, and the press and the UPDF are frantically beating the bushes, but a much more measured approach is being taken by mysterious overseas interests. They have tasked the local CIA office to sort the problem and the ops on the ground “commission” – extort – veteran agent and drunken renegade Jack Lee Howl to find Moses at all costs…

The subject of all that interest is physically recovering at the convent school, but not so much in his head. That voice is telling him that neither he nor the children are safe and it’s backed up by increasingly agonising flashbacks and ever more daring insurgent forays.

Inevitably, the attack comes and broken child soldiers come looking for war brides, only to meet a force of murderous nature no amount of training could prepare them for…

Nevertheless, the bandaged terror fails and is captured by local LRA commander Lieutenant Lakut. A fanatical, remorseless monster, he recognises another when he sees one, and tries to break and recruit his captive. He would have been far wiser killing him right at the start…

As helpful-seeming old lag Howl probes Sera Lwanga for clues, in the bush Moses – or at least the passenger in his head – escapes and even more kids die as he tries to save the convent school residents, but another partial failure only tips him further way from the good man he wants to be…

By the time Howl finds him, Moses is having hallucinations – or are they recollections? – about another, far older killer with a bandaged face and no morality…

Ultimately, Moses battles his way back to Sera at an Internally Displaced Persons camp, only to lead Lakut to fresh victims. In the course of the massacre that follows, the doctor is lost to the soldier and in the aftermath of driving way the LRA, the bandaged man resolves that the only way to heal this infection is to hunt down and kill Joseph Kony himself…

To be continued…

A powerful and unforgettable tale of inhumanity made ever more shocking by its real world origins, this is a staggeringly potent comics tale long overdue for further attention. This initial tome – still cruelly out of print and unavailable digitally – was coloured by Oscar Celestini and lettered by Clem Robins, and features a variant cover by Rich Corben, augmenting regular covers by Igor Kordey whose image for US #1 won the Glyph Comics Award for Cover of the Year.

Dark, brooding, painfully true, Haunted House is a book worthy of your time and deserving of everyone’s attention.
© 2008, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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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 Lever’ as 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.