Category: War Stories

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The Outer Space Spirit: 1952


By Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer & Wally Wood & various (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 978-0-87816-007-5 (HB) 978-0-87816-012-9 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Lost Classic …10/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

In keeping with the dolorous nature of this time of year I’m concentrating on a few missed opportunities so here’s a graphic novel that was let slip by and rests in some nebulous limbo waiting for someone like me to say: why don’t we reprint this?

It is pretty much accepted today that Will Eisner was one of those pivotal creators who shaped America’s comic book industry, with most of his graphic works more or less permanently in print – as they should be. However, although the story can be found as part of the also ultra-rare Spirit Archive volume 24, this classy monochrome volume from much-missed independent publisher Kitchen Sink in 1983, released in both hardback and softcover, is by far a better reading experience.

Sometimes the Medium is the Message, especially when the artefact is a substantially solid tome delivering magical artwork in crisp, breathtaking black & white which details – not only in the reprinted strips but also sketches, incidental artwork and author’s breakdown layouts – the last and most striking saga of one of the world’s greatest fantasy characters. From 1936 to 1938, Eisner worked as a jobbing cartoonist in the comics production firm known as the Eisner-Eiger Shop, creating strips for both domestic US and foreign markets. Under pen-name Willis B. Rensie, he created and drew opening instalments for a huge variety of characters ranging from funny animal to historical sagas, Westerns, Detectives, aviation action thrillers… and superheroes… lots of superheroes…

In 1940, Everett “Busy” Arnold, head honcho of the superbly impressive Quality Comics outfit, invited Eisner to take on a new challenge. The Register-Tribune newspaper syndicate wanted a 16-page weekly comic book insert to be given away with the Sunday editions. Eisner jumped at the opportunity, creating three strips which would initially be handled by him before two of them were handed off to his talented assistants. Bob Powell inherited Mr. Mystic and distaff detective Lady Luck fell into the capable hands of Nick Cardy (then still Nicholas Viscardi) and later, the inimitable Klaus Nordling.

Eisner kept the lead feature for his own playground and over the next 12 years The Spirit became the most impressive, innovative, imitated and talked-about strip in the business. However, by 1952 he had more or less abandoned it for more challenging and decidely more profitable commercial, instructional and educational strips, working extensively for the US military in manuals and magazines like P*S, The Preventative Maintenance Monthly, and generally leaving comics books behind. Gathered here are last newspaper sections (July 27th through October 5th 1952), plus scripts for what would have been the final three sections of The Outer Space Spirit.

For that final year or so, the bulk of Spirit tales were produced by other hands with assistant Jules Feiffer handling the majority of scripts and diverse artists producing the art. Feiffer preferred to map out his episodes in rough pencil with word balloons and captions fully scripted: once approved by Eisner, the roughs would then be interpreted by an assigned artist for the individual episodes. The long-term plan was not to cancel The Spirit but redefine it for a new decade and expand the Eisner studio/company beyond and around it – but that’s not quite how it played out.

As seen in the scholarly introduction by Cat Yronwoode and Eisner’s own director’s commentary ‘Reminiscence’, the plans to reposition The Spirit were not welcomed by the client papers buying the strip; the creators handling the feature had different creative goals and drives and Eisner himself couldn’t quite let go of his precious baby. Even though society and comic books were wildly in love with the bold new genre of space opera/science fiction and Eisner had previously dabbled with the form in a few previous tales, a large number of Spirit clients and readers did not want any “flying saucer spacey stuff” in their Sunday funnies. Moreover, the brilliantly sardonic, existentialist and sensitively satirical Feiffer was approaching the stories in a bleak, nigh-nihilistic manner, emphasising existentialist isolation, human frailty and the passing of an era, rather than rugged he-men with hot babes in bikinis and fishbowl helmets…

After a succession of fill-in draughtsmen, Wally Wood was selected as artist: a stunningly gifted imagineer reaching unparalleled heights with his work for EC and other comic book Sci Fi publishers. Wood actually began his professional career on The Spirit in the 1940s (as a letterer) and was fantastically keen on the new project, but merciless deadlines and his overwhelming desire to surmount his own high standards soon had the saga experiencing deadline problems on top of everything else.

After text features, the first episode ‘Outer Space’ begins, preceded – as are most of strips here – by Feiffer’s meticulous and detailed script layouts. First appearing on Sunday, July 27th 1952, we see Denny Colt, The Spirit, managing a crew of convict volunteers on an American rocketship to the moon, at the insistent request of eminent space scientist Professor Hartley Skol. However, this was a new hero for an uncertain age. The tough, fun-loving, crime-fighting daredevil had become a cautious, introspective leader, feeling fully the weight of his mission and the burden of unwelcome responsibilities.

‘Mission: the Moon’ (August 3rd 1952), follows Colt, Skol and the pardoned felons onto the satellite’s barren surface and recounts the Spirit’s first victory as he heads off potential mutiny with reason, not force, before ‘A DP on the Moon’ reveals how closely Eisner still monitored the series. DP’s were “Displaced Persons” a common term in the post-war world, and when the explorers find a diary in the lunar dust, it reveals how the world’s greatest dictator and his inner circle fled to the moon to escape Allied justice. Unfortunately, they could not outrun their own paranoia and madness…

In the original script and finished art the diarist is Adolf Hitler, but the grim fate that befell his fellow Nazis was altered at the very last moment by Eisner, who felt the plot was already old hat. Swift retouching transformed Der Fuehrer into fictitious Latin American dictator Francisco Rivera and the revised version ran on August 10th 1952. It still reads pretty well, but if you look carefully, those uniforms in the background flashbacks are hauntingly familiar.

With ‘Heat on the Moon’ the deadline crunch hit, and 1½ pages of spectacular Lunar exploration by Wood abruptly segues to a “meanwhile back on Earth” scene from Eisner, featuring Chief Dolan, daughter Ellen and a criminal with a vested interest in assuring that at least one of the moon volunteers isn’t pardoned. Following their first fatality, the mission goes swiftly awry and ‘Rescue’ (the instalments now cut to only 4 pages in an attempt to fight the deadline doom) sees another body-blow to the expedition. Defeated and demoralised, Spirit decided to return the survivors to Earth…

‘The Last Man on the Moon’ depicts the launch from the moon as, on Earth, another gangster attempts to scotch the return trip. Clearly cursed, the mission suffers one more disaster as a convict sneaks away before take-off, becoming, with the September 7th episode ‘The Man in the Moon’. On September 14th the inevitable occurred and the feature was forced to run a modified reprint (‘The Amulet of Osiris’ from the late 1940s) before Wood resurfaced to illustrate the philosophically barbed ‘Return from the Moon’ on September 21st. Here Denny Colt and the remaining lunar-nauts debate the nature of reality, as Eisner steps in with the help of Al Wenzel to produce ‘The Return’, a hasty wrap-up that still found room for a close encounter with a flying saucer.

A scheduling blip saw an alternate version of the return a week later (sadly not included here) and final episode ‘Denny Colt, UFO Investigator’ ran on October 5th 1952: an inconclusive new beginning illustrated by Klaus Nordling. The strip died with that episode as Eisner, increasingly occupied with military work, and bleeding client-papers, terminated the feature.

But that isn’t quite the end: this book also includes – in various forms – what would have been the next three chapters, discovered in Eisner’s extensive file vault in the early 1980s. First is a fully lettered Feiffer layout, followed by a sequence of lettered pages prior to the art being drawn and the first (and only) typed script from assigned new creator Nordling.

Tense, suspenseful, dark and fearsomely compelling, these are the stories that signified the Spirit demise for nearly two decades, but today they stand as a mini-masterpiece of comics storytelling that was, quite simply, too far advanced for its audience. For we survivors of Cold War, Space Race and Budget-cut scientific exploration, they are a chilling and intensely prophetic examination of human nature in a Brave New World rendered with all the skill and frantic passion of some of comics’ greatest talents.

What wonders could have followed if the readers had come along with them? I don’t know, but at least we still have these tales – as soon as someone reprints them again…
© 1983 Kitchen Sink Press. © Art and stories 1983 Will Eisner. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Firsts: The 1960s


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Larry Lieber, Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, Arnold Drake, Steve Parkhouse, Don Heck, Bill Everett, Dick Ayers, Gene Colan, John Buscema, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5864-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Marvel’s Most Magical… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

For most fans, the Marvel Age of Comics began with Fantastic Four #1 at the tail end of 1961, but the company itself cites Marvel Comics #1 from 1939, when the outfit was called Timely, as the big natal event. That means this year is their 85th anniversary. So with the year rapidly closing it’s time to celebrate some big-ticket compilations.

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

As stated, the company-that-became-Marvel was still going – albeit in dire straits – when Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and a select few others started their comics revolution, and these tales offer unmatched insights into how that all happened by re-presenting official first appearances. Opening in January 1960 with a selection of 16 genre covers ranging from Battle #70 to Love Romances #87 to Patsy Walker #89, the first inklings of what’s to come are seen in Rawhide Kid #17, by Lee, Kirby and inker Dick Ayers.

The Kid was one of Atlas’ older icons, having starred in his own title since 1955. A stock buckskin-clad sagebrush centurion, he was one of the first casualties when Atlas’ distribution crisis forced the company to cut back to 16 titles in the autumn of 1957. However, with westerns huge on TV and youthful rebellion a hot topic in 1960, Lee & Kirby conceived a brand-new six-gun stalwart – a teenager in fact – and launched him in the summer of the year, tidily retaining the numbering of his cancelled predecessor. It’s important to remember that these yarns aren’t trying to be gritty or authentic: they’re accessing a vast miasmic morass of wholesome, homogenised Hollywood mythmaking that generations of consumers preferred to learning the grim everyday toil, travail and terror of the real Old West, so sit back, reset your moral compass to “fair enough” and revel in simplistic Black Hats versus White Hats, with all the dynamic bombast and bravura Kirby & inker Dick Ayers could muster…

It all begins with adopted teen Johnny Bart teaching all and sundry in a cow-town named Rawhide to ‘Beware! The Rawhide Kid’ after his retired Texas Ranger Uncle Ben is gunned down by fame-hungry cheat Hawk Brown. After very publicly exercising his right to vengeance, the naive kid flees Rawhide before he can explain, resigned to living as an outlaw forevermore…

His reputation is further enhanced when he routs a masked gang robbing the ‘Stagecoach to Shotgun Gap!’ after which Don Heck delivers one of his sleekly authentic western tales when a veteran gunslinger devises a way to end his own fearsome career ‘With Gun in Hand!’ The issue closes with by Lee, Kirby & Ayers revealing how another tragic misunderstanding confirms Johnny Bart’s destiny ‘When the Rawhide Kid Turned… Outlaw!’

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

Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961) introduces a brave new world in eponymous landmark ‘The Fantastic Four’ as maverick scientist Reed Richards summons fiancée Sue Storm, their pilot pal Ben Grimm and Sue’s kid brother Johnny before heading off on their first mission. In a flashback we discover that they are driven survivors of a private space-shot that went horribly wrong when Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding. On crashing back to Earth, they found they’d all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks.

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

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

The Incredible Hulk smashed right into his own bi-monthly comic and, after some classic romps by Young Marvel’s finest creators, crashed right out again. After 6 issues, the series was cancelled and Lee retrenched, making the Gruff Green Giant a perennial guest-star in other titles until such time as they could restart the drama in their new “Split-Book” format in Tales to Astonish where Ant/Giant-Man was rapidly proving to be a character who had outlived his time. Cover-dated May 1962, that first issue observes puny atomic boffin Bruce Banner, sequestered on a secret military base in the American desert and perpetually bullied by bombastic commander General “Thunderbolt” Ross as the clock counts down to the world’s first Gamma Bomb test. Besotted by Ross’s daughter Betty, Banner endures the General’s constant jibes as the timer ticks on and tension increases. At the final moment Banner sees a teenager lollygagging at Ground Zero and frantically rushes to the site to drag the boy away. Unknown to everyone, the assistant he’s entrusted to delay the countdown has an agenda of his own…

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

Somehow surviving the blast, Banner and the boy are secured by soldiers, but that evening as the sun sets the scientist undergoes a monstrous transformation. He grows larger; his skin turns a stony grey. In 6 simple pages that’s how it all starts, and no matter what any number of TV or movie reworkings or comicbook retcons and psycho-babble re-evaluations would have you believe that’s still the best and most primal take on the origin. A good man, an unobtainable girl, a foolish kid, an unknown enemy and the horrible power of destructive science unchecked. Written by Lee, drawn by Kirby with inking by Paul Reinman, ‘The Coming of the Hulk’ barrels along as the man-monster and Jones are then kidnapped by Banner’s Soviet counterpart the Gargoyle for a rousing round of espionage and Commie-busting…

Crafting extremely well-received monster and mystery tales for and with Stan Lee, Ditko had been rewarded with his own title. Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy featured a subtler brand of yarn than Rampaging Aliens and Furry Underpants Monsters and their ilk which, though individually entertaining, had been slowly losing traction in the world of comics ever since National/DC had successfully reintroduced costumed heroes. Lee & Kirby had responded with Fantastic Four and the ahead-of-his-time Incredible Hulk, but there was no indication of the renaissance to come when the cover of officially just-cancelled Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) highlighted a brand new and rather eerie adventure character.

The wonderment came and went in 11 captivating pages: ‘Spider-Man!’ telling the parable of Peter Parker, a smart but alienated kid bitten by a radioactive spider on a high school science trip. Discovering he has developed arachnid abilities – which he augments with his own natural engineering genius – Parker does what any lonely, geeky nerd would do when given such a gift… he tries to cash in for girls, fame and money. Creating a costume to hide his identity in case he makes a fool of himself, he becomes a minor celebrity – and a vain, self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief flees past, he doesn’t lift a finger to stop him, only to find when he returns home that his Uncle Ben has been murdered.

Crazy for vengeance, Parker stalks the assailant who made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known, to find that it is the felon he couldn’t be bothered with. Since his irresponsibility led to the death of the man who raised him, the boy swears to always use his powers to help others…

It wasn’t a new story, but the setting was one familiar to every kid reading it and the artwork was downright spooky. This wasn’t the gleaming high-tech world of moon-rockets, giant aliens and flying cars – this stuff could happen to anybody…

The tragic last-ditch tale struck a chord with the reading public and by Christmas a new comic book superstar was ready to launch in his own title, with Ditko eager to show what he could do with his first returning character since the demise of Charlton action hero Captain Atom…

The Mighty Thor was the comic series in which Jack Kirby’s restless fascination with all things Cosmic was honed and refined through his dazzling graphics and captivating concepts. The King’s examination of space-age mythology began in modest fantasy title Journey into Mystery where – in the summer of 1962 – a tried-and-true comicbook concept (feeble mortal transformed into god-like hero) was revived by fledgling Marvel to add a Superman analogue to their growing roster of costumed adventurers. JiM #83 (August 1962) saw a bold costumed warrior jostling aside the regular fare of monsters, robots and sinister scientists in a brash, vivid explosion of verve and vigour.

The initial exploit follows crippled American physician Donald Blake who takes a vacation in Norway only to encounter the vanguard of an alien invasion. Fleeing, he is trapped in a cave where he finds an old, gnarled walking stick. When in his frustration he smashes the stick into a huge boulder obstructing his escape, his puny frame is transformed into the Norse God of Thunder Mighty Thor! Plotted by Lee, scripted by Lieber and illustrated by Kirby & inker Joe Sinnott (at this juncture a full illustrator, Sinnott would become Kirby’s primary inker for most of his Marvel career), ‘The Stone Men of Saturn’ is pure dawn Marvel: bombastic, fast-paced, gloriously illogical and captivatingly action-packed. The hugely under-appreciated Art Simek was the letterer and logo designer. It was clear that they were making it up as they went along – not in itself a bad thing – and all that infectious enthusiasm shows…

Amazing Fantasy #15 came out the same month as Journey into Mystery #83 and a month later Tales to Astonish #35 – first to feature Henry Pym’s Astonishing Ant-Man costumed capers – appeared. Here you’ll find the cover to TtA #35 to mark that occasion. Hot on the heels of the runaway success of Fantastic Four, Stan & Jack spun the most colourful and youngest member of the team into his own series, hoping to recapture the glory of the 1940s when the original Human Torch was one of the company’s “Big Three” superstars. Within a year, the magic-&-monsters anthology title Strange Tales became home to the hot-headed hero: in #101, Johnny Storm started his ancillary solo career in eponymous exploit ‘The Human Torch’.

Scripted by Lieber (over a plot by brother Stan) and sublimely illustrated by Kirby & Ayers, the plucky lad investigates sabotage at a new seaside amusement park and promptly discovers Commie-conniving thanks to Red spy the Destroyer. Kirby would pencil the first few yarns before moving on, after which Ayers assumed control for most of its run, although The King generated some of the best covers of his Marvel career throughout the Torch’s tenure.

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

Despite the runway success of its new superheroes, Marvel was still offering a range of genres such as westerns. August 1962 saw the retooling of another Atlas property as Two-Gun Kid #60 (cover-dated November) introduced Eastern lawyer Matt Hawk who moved to barbarous and unruly Tombstone, Texas in ‘The Beginning of the Two-Gun Kid’ (Lee, Kirby & Ayers). After merciless and relentless bullying, the tenderfoot is mentored by aged gunslinger Ben Dancer and transforms into a powerful, ultrafast deadly accurate shootist. When Ben is driven out of town by a pack of thugs working for land baron Clem Carter, Hawk adopts a masked identity to see justice done. Don Heck limned stand-alone tale ‘The Outcast’, revealing the naked ambition of a Navajo warrior before Hawk returns to complete his origin story in ‘I Hate the Two-Gun Kid!’ as romantic interest Nancy Carter falls foul of a scheme by her stepbrother to defraud her and frame the new hero in town…

More striking covers – Modelling with Millie #21 and Amazing Spider-Man #1 – precede the debut of the next Marvel milestone in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963 and on the newsstands for Christmas 1962). Created in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and at a time when “Red-baiting” and “Commie-bashing” were national obsessions in the U.S., the emergence of a brilliant new Thomas Edison employing Yankee ingenuity and invention to safeguard the World was an inevitable proposition. Combining the cherished belief that (US) technology could solve every problem with universal imagery of noble knights battling evil and the proposition became certainty. Of course, kids thought it great fun and very, very cool.

Scripted by Lieber (over Lee’s plot) and illustrated by criminally unappreciated Don Heck, ‘Iron Man is Born’ see electronics wizard Tony Stark field testing his latest invention in Viet Nam when he is wounded by a landmine. Captured by Viet Cong commander Wong-Chu, he is given a grim ultimatum. Create weapons for the Reds and a doctor will remove from his chest the shrapnel that will kill him within seven days. If not…

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

Next was a new genre title, once again given a fresh treatment by Lee, Kirby & Ayers. Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos (May 1963) was an improbable, over-the-top WWII combat comic series similar in tone to later ensemble action movies such as The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch and The Dirty Dozen. The surly squad of sorry reprobates were the first of three teams concocted by men-on-fire Kirby & Lee to secure fledgling Marvel’s growing position as the publisher to watch. Sgt. Fury started out as a pure Kirby creation. As with all his various war comics, The King made everything look harsh and real and appalling: the people and places are all grimy and tired, battered yet indomitable.

The artist had served in some of the worst battles of the war and never forgot the horrific and heroic things he saw – and more graphically expressed in his efforts during the 1950s genre boom at a number of different companies. However, even at kid-friendly, Comics Code-sanitised Marvel, those experiences perpetually leaked through onto his powerfully gripping pages. The saga began with blistering premier ‘Sgt. Fury, and his Howling Commandoes’ (that’s how they spelled it in the storrie-title – altho knot ennyware else): a rip-snorting yarn bursting with full-page panels interrupted by ‘Meet the Howling Commandos’ – a double-page spread spotlighting the seven members of First Attack Squad; Able Company. This comprised Fury himself, former circus strongman/Corporal “Dum-Dum” Dugan and privates Robert “Rebel” Ralston (a Kentucky jockey), college student Jonathan “Junior” Juniper, jazz trumpeter Gabriel Jones, mechanic Izzy Cohen and movie heartthrob Dino Manelli.

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

A low-key introduction served for the next debut as something different debuted at the back of Strange Tales #110. When the budding House of Ideas introduced a warrior wizard to their burgeoning pantheon in the summer of 1963 it was a bold and curious move. Bizarre adventures and menacing monsters were still incredibly popular but mention of magic or the supernatural – especially vampires, werewolves and their eldritch ilk – were all severely proscribed by a censorship panel which dictated almost all aspects of story content.

At this time – almost a decade after an anti-comics public campaign led to Senate hearings – all comics were ferociously monitored and adjudicated by the draconian Comics Code Authority. Even though some of the small company’s strongest sellers were still mystery mags, their underlying themes and premises were almost universally mad science and alien wonders, not necromantic or thaumaturgic horrors. That might explain Lee’s unobtrusive introduction of Steve Ditko’s mystic defender: an exotic, twilit troubleshooter inhabiting the shadowy outer fringes of rational, civilised society in one of those aforementioned monster titles.

Tales of Suspense #41 (May 1963) had seen newcomer Iron Man battle deranged technological wizard Doctor Strange, and with the name legally in copyrightable print, preparations began for a truly different kind of ongoing hero. The company had recently published a quasi-mystic precursor in balding, trench-coated Doctor Droom (later renamed Dr. Druid) and when Stephen Strange scored big, the prototype would be subsequently retro-written into Marvel continuity as an alternative candidate and precursor for the ultimate role of Sorcerer Supreme. Thus, without any preamble, our first meeting with the man of mystery comes courtesy of a quiet little chiller which has never been surpassed for sheer mood and imagination. Lee & Ditko’s ‘Doctor Strange Master of Black Magic!’ in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963) saw a terrified man troubled by his dreams approach an exceptional consultant in his search of a cure. That perfect 5-page fright-fest introduces whole new realms and features deceit, desperation, double-dealing and the introduction of both a mysterious and aged oriental mentor and devilish dream demon Nightmare in an unforgettable yarn that might well be Ditko’s finest moment…

After a period of meteoric expansion, by mid-1963 the ever-expanding Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that cemented the legitimacy of American comics’ Silver Age – the concept of putting a bunch of all-star eggs in one basket which had made the Justice League of America such a winner and inspired the moribund Atlas outfit to try superheroes again. Nearly 18 months after Fantastic Four #1, the fledgling House of Ideas had a viable stable of leading men (if only sidekick women) so Lee & Kirby assembled a handful of them and moulded them into a force for justice and soaring sales…

Seldom has it ever been done with such style and sheer exuberance. Cover dated September 1963, The Avengers #1 kicks off with ‘The Coming of the Avengers’: one of the cannier origin tales in comics. Instead of starting at a zero point and acting as if the reader knew nothing, Stan & Jack (plus inker Dick Ayers) assumed readers had at least passing familiarity with Marvel’s other titles and wasted very little time or energy on introductions.

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

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

Scripted by Lee, ‘X-Men’ opens with the boisterous students welcoming new classmate Jean Grey (promptly dubbed Marvel Girl): a young woman possessing the ability to move objects with her mind. Whilst Xavier is explaining the team goals and mission in life, actual Evil Mutant Magneto is single-handedly taking over American missile-base Cape Citadel. A seemingly unbeatable threat, the master of magnetism is nonetheless valiantly driven off by the young heroes on their first outing in under 15 minutes…

It doesn’t sound like much, but the gritty, dynamic power of Kirby’s art, solidly inked by veteran Paul Reinman, imparted a raw aggressive energy to the tale which carried the bi-monthly book irresistibly forward.

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

As the evolved Atlas Comics grew in popularity, it gradually supplanted its broad variety of genre titles with more and more superheroes. The recovering powerhouse was still hampered by a crippling distribution deal that limited the company to 16 titles per month (which would restrict their output until 1968), so each new untried book would have to fill the revenue-generating slot (however small) of an existing title. Moreover, as costumed characters were selling, each new similarly-themed title would limit the breadth of the monster, western, war, humour or girls’ comics that had been the outfit’s recent bread and butter. It was putting a lot of eggs in one basket, and superheroes had failed twice before for Marvel.

So, Daredevil, the Man Without Fear (April 1964) might have seemed a risky venture. Yes, the artist was one of the industry’s most talented veterans, but not to the young kids who were the audience. Crucially, he wasn’t Kirby or Ditko. ‘The Origin of Daredevil’ recounts how young Matthew Murdock grew up in the slums, raised by his father Battling Jack Murdock, a second-rate prize-fighter. Determined that the boy will be something, the father extracts a solemn promise from his son that he will never fight. Mocked by other kids who sarcastically dub him “Daredevil”, Matt abides by his vow, but secretly trains his body to physical perfection.

One day he saves a blind man from being hit by a speeding truck, only to be struck in the face by its radioactive cargo. His sight is burned away forever but his other senses are super-humanly enhanced and he gains a sixth: “radar-sense”. He tells no-one, not even his dad. The senior Murdock is in dire straits. As his career declined, he signed with The Fixer, knowing full well what the corrupt promoter expected from his fighters. Yet Jack’s star started to shine again and his downward spiral reversed itself. Unaware he was being set up, Murdock got a shot at the Big Time, but when ordered to take a dive, refused. Winning was the proudest moment of his life. When his bullet-riddled corpse was found, the cops had suspicions but no proof. Heartbroken Matt graduated college with a law degree and set up in business with his room-mate Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. They hired a lovely young secretary named Karen Page and, with his life on track, young Matt now had time to solve his father’s murder…

His promise stopped him from fighting; but what if he became somebody else?

Scripted by Lee and moodily illustrated by the legendary Bill Everett (with assistance from Ditko) this is a rather nonsensical yet visually compelling yarn that just goes through the motions, barely hinting at the magic yet to come.

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

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

Kirby’s genius for graphic wizardry and gift for dramatic staging mixed with Stan Lee’s manic melodrama to create a tough and tense series which the writers and artists who followed turned into a non-stop riot of action and suspense. The main event starts with ST #135 as the Human Torch lead feature is summarily replaced by ‘Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ – which back then stood for Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division…

In the rocket-paced first episode, Fury is asked to volunteer for the most dangerous job in the world: leading a new counter-intelligence agency dedicated to stopping secretive subversive super-science organisation Hydra. With assassins dogging his every move, the Take-Charge Guy with the Can-Do Attitude quickly proves he is ‘The Man for the Job!’ in a potent 12-page thriller by Lee, Kirby & Ayers.

Originally devised by Bill Everett in 1939, Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner is the offspring of a water-breathing Atlantean princess and an American polar explorer: a hybrid being of immense strength, highly resistant to physical harm, able to fly and exist above and below the waves. Namor technically predates Marvel/Atlas/Timely Comics. He first caught the public’s attention as part of the fire vs. water headlining team in Marvel Comics #1 (October 1939 and Marvel Mystery Comics from the second issue onward), sharing honours and top billing with the original Human Torch, but he had originally been seen (albeit in a truncated black and white version) in Motion Picture Funnies: a weekly promotional giveaway handed out to moviegoers earlier in the year. Rapidly emerging as one of the company’s biggest draws, Namor gained his own title at the end of 1940 (cover-dated Spring 1941) and was one of the last super-characters to go at the end of the first heroic age. In 1954, when Atlas briefly revived its “Big Three” (the Torch and Captain America being the other two) costumed characters, Everett returned for an extended run of superb fantasy tales, but even so the time wasn’t right and the title sunk again.

When Lee & Kirby started reinventing comic books in 1961 they revived the all-but-forgotten awesome amphibian as a troubled, semi-amnesiac, and decidedly more regal, grandiose anti-hero in Fantastic Four #4. The returnee despised humanity; embittered at the loss of his sub-sea kingdom (seemingly destroyed by American atomic testing) whilst simultaneously besotted with Sue Storm. Namor knocked around the budding Marvel universe for a few years, squabbling with other assorted heroes such as the Hulk, Avengers and X-Men, before securing his own series as one half of Tales to Astonish. In 1968 the company ended its restrictive publishing commitments and expanded exponentially.

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

More covers follow – Monsters Unlimited #1, Patsy Walker’s Fashion Parade #1, reprint anthologies Marvel Collectors’ Items Classics #1, Fantasy Masterpieces #1, Marvel Tales #3, King Size Special Marvel Super-Heroes #1 and Thor #126 (a first issue as Journey into Mystery was sensibly retitled) before a new masked-&-costumed western hero debuted in Ghost Rider #1 (December 1966). ‘The Origin of the Ghost Rider’ by Gary Friedrich, Roy Thomas, Ayers & Colletta revealed how Eastern teacher Carter Slade is shot by fake Indians and brought back from the brink of death by real ones. Saved by recently-orphaned Jamie Jacobs, Slade is healed by shaman Flaming Star who trains him in combat and gives him gifts which enable him to perform tricks of stage magic (such as night-time invisibility, image projection and bodily discorporation). Creating a glowing costume, Slade goes after the plundering white men impersonating native tribes – and who killed Jamie’s parents – as a spectral avenging spirit: “He who rides the Night Wind”…

Older fans – or their parents – might possibly recognise this hero as the western legend created by Ray Krank & Dick Ayers for Tim Holt #11 (Magazine Enterprises, 1949), later immortalised by Frank Frazetta. They are stunningly, litigiously similar and Marvel made good use of the original’s reputation and recently voided copyright ownership…

The same holds true for their next superhero addition, who crops up following another cover gallery featuring Not Brand Echh #1 and animated cartoon tie-in one-shot America’s Best (TV) Comics #1. After years as an also-ran/up-and-comer, by 1968 Marvel Comics was in the ascendant. Their sales were catching up with industry leaders National/DC Comics and Gold Key, and they finally secured a new distribution deal that would allow them to expand their list of titles exponentially. Once the stars of Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish and Strange Tales all got their own titles, the House of Ideas just kept on going.

One dead-cert idea was a hero named after the company – and one with a huge amount of popular cachet and nostalgic pedigree as well. After the DC/Fawcett court case of the 1940s-1950s, the name Captain Marvel disappeared from the newsstands, but in In 1967 – during the superhero boom and camp craze generated by the Batman TV show, publisher MLF secured rights to the name and produced a number of giant-sized comics featuring an intelligent robot who could divide his body into segments and shoot lasers from his eyes.

Quirky, charming and devised by the legendary Carl (Human Torch) Burgos who had recently worked for Marvel, the feature nevertheless could not attract a large following. Upon its demise, the name was quickly snapped up by the resurgent Marvel Comics Group.

Marvel Super-Heroes was a brand-new title: it had been giant-sized reprint comic book Fantasy Masterpieces, combining monster and mystery tales with Golden Age Timely classics. With #12, it added an all-new lead experimental section for characters without homes such as Medusa and Black Knight when not debuting new concepts like Guardians of the Galaxy, Phantom Eagle (for some reason not included here) – and, to start the ball rolling, a troubled alien spy sent to Earth from the Kree Galaxy. He held a Captain’s rank and his name was Mar-Vell.

Courtesy of Lee, Colan & Giacoia, the initial MS-H 15 page-instalment ‘The Coming of Captain Marvel!: Phase One!!’ devolved directly from Fantastic Four #64-65 wherein the quartet defeated a super-advanced robotic Sentry from a mythical alien race, only to be attacked by a high official of those long-lost extraterrestrials in their very next issue!

After defeating Ronan the Accuser, the FF heard no more from the far-from-extinct Kree, but the millennia-old empire was once again interested in Earth. Dispatching a surveillance mission, the Kree wanted to know everything about us. Unfortunately, the agent they chose was a man of conscience; whilst his commanding officer Colonel Yon-Rogg was a ruthless rival for the love of the ship’s medical officer Una. No sooner has the good captain made a tentative planet-fall and clashed with the US military from the local missile base than the first instalment ends…

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

The aforementioned expansion is celebrated in the covers for Groovy #1, Captain America #100, Incredible Hulk #102, Iron Man and The Sub-Mariner #1, Iron Man #1, Sub-Mariner #1, Captain Marvel #1, Doctor Strange #169, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 and Spectacular Spider-Man #1 and cemented by the first full solo tale of one the company’s breakthrough stars. Although pretty much a last-minute addition to Fantastic Four #48-50’s ‘Galactus Trilogy’, Jack Kirby’s scintillating creation the Silver Surfer quickly became a watchword for depth and subtext in the Marvel Universe and one Stan Lee kept as his own personal toy for many years.

Tasked with finding planets for space god Galactus to consume and, despite the best efforts of intergalactic voyeur Uatu the Watcher, one day the Surfer discovers Earth, where the latent nobility of humanity reawakens his own suppressed morality; causing the shining scout to rebel against his master and help the FF save the world. In retaliation, Galactus imprisons his one-time herald on Earth, making him the ultimate outsider on a planet remarkably ungrateful for his sacrifice. The Galactus Saga was a creative highlight from a period when the Lee/Kirby partnership was utterly on fire. The tale has all the power and grandeur of a true epic and has never been surpassed for drama, thrills and sheer entertainment. It’s not included here: for that treat you’ll need to see a Fantastic Four Epic Collection or many other Marvel collections…

In May 1968, after frequent guest-shots and even a solo adventure in the back of Fantastic Four Annual #5, the Surfer finally got his own (initially double-length) title at long last.

‘The Origin of the Silver Surfer!’ is illustrated by John Buscema & Joe Sinnott, with the drama opening on a prolonged flashback sequence of the outcast’s forays on Earth and repeated examples of crass humanity’s brutal callousness and unthinking hostility, detailing how Norrin Radd, discontented soul from an alien paradise Zenn-La, became the gleaming herald of a planetary scourge. Radd had constantly chafed against a culture in comfortable, sybaritic stagnation, but when Galactus shattered their vaunted million years of progress in a fleeting moment, the dissident without hesitation offered himself as a sacrifice to save the world from the Devourer’s hunger.

Converted into an indestructible, gleaming human meteor, Radd agreed to scour the galaxies looking for uninhabited worlds rich in the energies Galactus needs to survive, thus saving planets with life on them from destruction. He didn’t always find them in time…

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

The company had early learned the value of reprinting their past glories; both to update new readers and to cheaply monopolise sales points and here a gallery blends ongoing titles such as newly retitled Captain Savage and his Battlefield Raiders #5 and adult-oriented Pussycat #1 with double-sized classics compilations Tales of Asgard #1 and The Mighty Marvel Western #1 before Marvel Super-Heroes #19 (March 1969 and on the stands in December 1968) saw Tarzan analogue Ka-Zar in his first solo story ‘My Father, My Enemy!’ courtesy of Arnold Drake, Steve Parkhouse, George Tuska & Sid Greene,

Beginning as a barbarian wild man in a lost sub-polar realm of swamp-men and dinosaurs, Ka-Zar eventually evolved into one of Marvel’s more complex – and exceedingly mutable – characters. Wealthy heir to one of Britain’s oldest noble families, his best friend is a sabre-tooth tiger, his wife is feisty jungle warrior/zoologist Shanna the She-Devil and his brother is a homicidal super-scientific bandit. He is one of Marvel/Timely’s oldest heroes. Prose pulp hero Kazar predates Martin Goodman’s first foray into comics and strip incarnation Kazar the Great was in Marvel Comics #1, right beside The Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and The Angel…

Lord Kevin Plunder was perpetually torn between the clean life-or-death simplicity of the jungle and the bewildering constant compromises of modern civilisation as he guest-starred in titles as varied as X-Men, Daredevil and Amazing Spider-Man.

As this enjoyable, under-appreciated tale unfolds, many of the hero’s inconsistencies and conflicts are squared as the aristocratic outsider leaves his British castle for the Antediluvian Savage Land to investigate claims that his dead father was a scientific devil intent on using his discovery of anti-metal for evil. Tragically, his warped brother Parnival is ruthlessly determined to hide the truth for his own vile ends. A wild excursion to Antarctica follows, featuring the discovery of a lost land, dinosaurs, lost cities, spectacular locations, mystery and all-out action: it doesn’t get better than this…

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

Marvel continued expanding for the remainder of the decade, but not with superheroes, as a final clutch of covers – Mad About Millie #1, Chili #1, My Love #1, Tower of Shadows #1, Chamber of Darkness #1, Our Love Story #1, Marvel’s Greatest Comics #22, Homer, the Happy Ghost #1, Peter the Little Pest #1, a revived Kid Colt Outlaw (#140), Ringo Kid #1 and Where Monsters Dwell #1 – comes full circle and highlights the publisher’s return to genre themes, after which a brief bonus section reveals Stan Lee’s original synopsis for Fantastic Four #1 and house ads from the early moments of the decade…

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

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Superman: The Dailies volume II: 1940-1941


By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster & the Superman Studio (Kitchen Sink Press/DC)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-461-0 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Up, Up And Forever Away …10/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The American comic book industry – if it existed at all – would be utterly unrecognisable without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s unprecedented invention was fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation and quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. Spawning an army of imitators and variations within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and wish-fulfilment which epitomised the early Man of Steel grew to encompass cops-&-robbers crimebusting, socially reforming dramas, sci fi fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East sucked in America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

From the outset, in comic book terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming the shape of the fledgling funnybook biz, the Man of Tomorrow irresistibly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media. Although we all think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as epitome and acme of comics creation, the truth is that very soon after his springtime debut in Action Comics #1 the Man of Steel was a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse.

We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Avengers and their hyperkinetic kind long ago outgrew four-colour origins to become fully mythologized modern media creatures familiar in mass markets, across all platforms and age ranges…

Far more people have seen and heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comic books. His globally syndicated newspaper strips alone were enjoyed by countless millions, and by the time his 20th anniversary rolled around, at the very start of what we call the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial star, headlined a series of astounding animated cartoons, become a novel attraction (written by George Lowther) and helmed two films and his first smash, 8-season live-action television show. Superman was a perennial sure-fire success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers all over the planet.

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the previous century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail that all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and often the planet – it was seen by millions, if not billions, of readers and generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books. It also paid better, and rightly so. Some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture. Mutt and Jeff, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped their humble tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar. Most still do…

The daily Superman newspaper comic strip launched on 16th January 1939, augmented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th of that year. Originally crafted by luminaries like Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring), the mammoth task required additional talents like strip veteran Jack Burnley and writers including Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz. The McClure Syndicate feature ran continuously until May 1966, appearing, at its peak, in over 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers; a combined readership of more than 20 million. Eventually, Win Mortimer and Curt Swan joined the unflagging Boring & Stan Kaye whilst Bill Finger and Siegel provided stories, telling serial tales largely divorced from comic book continuity throughout years when superheroes were scarcely seen.

This superb, long overdue for re-release collection comes from 1999, re-presents strips #307-672 (episodes 11-19) and is preceded by Steve Vance’s informative, picture/photo-packed introduction ‘The Superman Bandwagon’, focussing on the hero’s spectacular early merchandising successes prior to the never-ending battle resumes with story-sequence #11 comprising daily episodes strips #307-334, spanning January 8th to February 8th 1940. The tale is in fact a continuance of sabotage saga ‘Unnatural Disasters’ (18th December 1939 – January 6th 1940 as seen in the previous volume) wherein a gang blew up a dam and poisoned a reservoir. Too late to stop them, Superman saved what lives he could and vowed to avenge the dead…

Now, as ‘Clark Kent – Spy’, that promise is kept as the reporter infiltrates the Ajax News Agency to find out more, and allows himself to be blackmailed by subversive spies Nikol and Ratoff. Systematically foiling all their murderous schemes, Superman ultimately delivers harsh justice before going after belligerent aggressor nations Blitzen and Rutland in ‘Superman Goes to War’ (335-354 from February 9th to March 2nd), showing his power to a still-isolationist America all over war-torn Europe, by trashing modern military might and armaments before making the bellicose, greedy rulers personally settle their grievances in a fist fight…

Having imposed peace in Europe, Superman heads home to tackle ‘Trouble in the Tenements’, (355-396; March 4th – April 20th) by helping cruelly exploited tenants against hired thugs and teaching law-exploiting slumlord Mr Lewis that he cannot treat human beings like his neglected properties, whilst instalments 396-414 (April 22nd – May 11th) depict the return of Pinelli – ‘The Big Boss’ of Prohibition racketeering who thinks he can return to his old heights of depravity until Superman/Clark and Lois Lane show him otherwise…

As the rest of the world reeled under an almost all-encompassing war, still-neutral America concentrated on domestic issues like crime. Superman thus clashed with another bank robbing gangster as ‘“The Unknown” Strikes’ (415-462 May 13th – July 6th) with Siegel & Shuster continuing their social reforming crusade via a villain who was a respectable capitalist simply making his own rules… and ruthlessly exploiting them at the public’s expense until the Man of Tomorrow stepped in. Actual news headlines provided the next plot – a gripping comedy of errors – as Lois and Clark hunt the ‘King of the Kidnapping Ring’ (463-510; July 8th – August 31st). When the mild-mannered reporter again goes undercover to prove untouchable crime boss Big Bill Bowers is the man behind Metropolis’ current woes, Clark proves surprisingly good at being a bad guy, but ultimately needs his bulletproof alter ego to save the day, after which world events again come to the fore as the city is plagued with infrastructure catastrophes caused by ‘The Hooded Saboteur’ (511-540, September 2nd – October 5th). Big on spectacle, having a truly disturbing death toll by modern strip standards, and displaying Superman’s awesome powers, the case saw “agents of a foreign power” creating chaos and served to prepare the public for a war almost everyone felt was inevitable now…

A welcome whiff of humorous whimsy, ‘Pawns of the Master’ (541-588; October 7th – November 30th) sees Lois’ sharp tongue and unrestrained opinions get her fired. A magnet for trouble, her visit to an employment agency drops her right into a criminal conspiracy run by a devious hidden mastermind who is also the Man of Steel’s greatest archfoe. Thankfully, a concerned, not-at-all parochially patronising Superman has been keeping a telescopic X-ray eye on her…

This rip-roaring review of early glories ends with strip sequence 19 and episodes 598-672 (December 2nd 1940 to March 8th 1941) as Superman offers some life advice to Eustace Watson, a downtrodden lovelorn sap crushed by existence and considered ‘The Meekest Man in the World’. When even Superman cannot shift the weight of mediocrity from the poor fool’s shoulders he is forced to resort to plan B. Isn’t it a happy coincidence that Eustace and Clark Kent could pass for identical twins…

To Be Continued…

Offering timeless wonders and mesmerising excitement for lovers of action and fantasy, the early Superman is beyond compare. If you love the era or just crave simpler stories from less angst-wracked times, these yarns are perfect comics reading, and this a book you must see.

Superman: The Dailie volumes II co-published by DC Comics and Kitchen Sink Press. Covers, introduction and all related names, characters and elements are ™ & © DC Comics 1998, 1999. All Rights Reserved.

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Charley’s War – The Definitive Collection volume 3: Remembrance


By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-621-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Uncompromising and Unmissable… 10/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

The Great War officially ended today in 1918. I can’t tell you how glad I am that we got all that jingoism, racism, seductive superiority, addictive violence and nationalistic avarice out of our collective systems back then. It’s a much calmer, nicer world now, right?

Meanwhile, here’s more of the best story – bar none, in any medium – to translate those appalling, internationally insane, diplomatically deranged and pointlessly self-destructive days into scenarios we can accept and process, if not understand today. Charley’s War evocatively and emotionally depicts not only the mud and mire, military madness and mass mortality of that conflict, but also shared with the young and impressionable the social impact on the poor and the mighty who survived into the totally different world that followed. You must read it and the other two collected volumes. Message ends.

When Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun began their tale of a patriotic working-class kid who broke the rules to proudly fight for his country just in time for the disastrous Somme campaign, I suspect they had, as always, the best of authorial intentions but no real idea that this time they were making comics history. The epochal feature was originally published in UK anthology Battle (AKA Battle Picture Weekly, Battle Action, etc.). A surprise hit, the serial proper launched in #200, eventually running from January 1979 to October 1986. It recounted, in heartrending, harrowing and often utterly surreal detail – and with amazing maturity and passion for a Boys’ Periodical – the life of an East End teen who grew up in the British Army reinforcements setting out to fight the Hun in 1916.

The strip contingent in this third stunning collection covers episodes #177-293 spanning October 2nd 1982-January 26th 1985, and closes the book on our lad’s wartime life, although the series did go on, as Charley went back to war when the Germans did in 1939…

One of the most powerful and influential characterisations of the oh-so-ironic “war to end all wars”, the comic feature was lovingly researched, lavishly limned and staggeringly authentic. Stories touched upon many diverse aspects of the conflict and even reveal the effects on the Home Front, all delivered with a devastatingly understated dry sense of horror and cruel injustice, albeit constantly leavened with gallows humour as trenchant as that legendarily “enjoyed” by the poor trench-bound “Tommies” of the time.

It all began  with “the Story of a Soldier in World War One” which saw 16-year-old London Bus Company worker Charley Bourne lie about his age to illegally go “over there”. Once he got there, Bourne endured unending, horror on the muddy, blood-soaked battlefield of The Somme. He also experienced the callous ineptitude and toxic entitlement of the upper class idiots running the war, most of whom believed their own men were utterly expendable. Military life was alternately hard and unremittingly dull – except for brief bursts of manic aggression and strategic stupidity which ended so many lives. Closely following the recorded course of the war, Mills & Colquhoun placed young Charley in the Westshire Regiment and added a rapidly changing cast constantly whittled away by various modes of combat attrition.

The weekly hellscapes showed lesser known, far from glorious sides of the conflict readers in the 1980s had never seen in any other war comic. Each episode was punctuated by a narrative device of the simple lad’s letters to his family in “Blighty” whilst also cleverly utilising reproductions of cartoons and postcards of the period. For this closing edition most of those conceits were absent, leaving room for astounding action, increasingly surreal true incidents folded into Charley’s story and mounding indignation in every script Mills submitted…

With Boer War veteran Ole Bill Tozer as his mentor, Charley narrowly survived shelling, mudslides, digging details, gas attacks, the Trench Cat, rats, snipers, smug stupidity of commanding officers – although there are examples of good “brasshats” too – and the far too often insane absurdity of a modern soldier’s life.

On July 1st 1916 The Battle of the Somme began and Charley and his comrades were ordered “over the top”: expected to walk steadily into mortars and machine gun fire of entrenched German defenders. When his commanding officer was unable to stand the stupidity and ordered them to charge at a run, it saved the squad but ultimately led to Lt. Thomas being executed by firing squad. Charley and former musical hall ventriloquist Weeper Watkins refused to shoot him and were extensively punished by sadistic military policemen.

When Charley and his crooked brother-in-law Oliver Crawleigh were caught in the first tank battle in history and the dreadful German response, “Oiley” offered to pay Charley to either protect him or wound him in some minor way that would get safely back to Britain. When Charley refused, Oiley misused a tank to earn his “Blighty” passage home…

As previously stated, Charley’s War closely followed key historic events, using them as a skeleton to hang specific incidents upon, but this was not the strip’s only innovation. Highly detailed research concentrated more on character development than fighting – although there is so much shocking action – and declared to the readership (which at time of publication was categorically believed to be boys aged 9-13) that “our side” was as monstrous and stupid as “the Boche.” Mills also fully exercised his own political and creative agendas on the series and was constantly amazed at what he got away with and what seeming trivialities his editors pulled him up on (more fully expanded upon in the author’s informative ‘Strip Commentary’ which concludes this edition)…

No longer a fresh-faced innocent but a weary, battle-scarred veteran, Charley and the strip marched beyond the cataclysmic Somme Campaign into the conflict’s most bloody events. He was wounded again and sent home, albeit via torturous routes involving amnesia and U-Boat warfare. Mills & Colquhoun delivered acerbic social criticism as the recuperating lad experienced fresh horrors when the troop ship carrying him and Bill Tozer was torpedoed…

When the perilous North Sea odyssey at last brought Charley back to Silvertown in London’s West Ham, it was in the wake of a real-world catastrophic disaster wherein 50 tons of TNT detonated at a munitions factory, killing 70 workers and injuring a further 400.

No longer comfortable around civilians and with no stomach for the jingoistic nonsense of the stay-at-homes or the lies of boastful “war-hero” Oiley, Charley hung out in pubs with the Sarge, but was caught up in enemy air raids (giving the creators room to explore the enemy side via the zealous actions of devoted family man Kapitan Heinrich von Bergmann who led Zeppelins in night sorties against the hated English)…

London was under constant threat, not just from increasingly common aerial bombing raids which provoked mindless panic and destruction at the very heart of the British Empire, but also profiteering British industrialists and greedy munitions magnates who cared more for profit than the safety of their workers or even the victory of their homeland. During one raid Charley realised his mum was still in the local works as her boss refused to sound air raid evacuation alarms because he had profits and contracts to consider. His view of the land he was fighting for barely survived his valiant efforts to save her and took an even bigger hit when an unscrupulous army recruiter (earning bonuses for every volunteer signed up) attempted to entrap his underaged but battle-obsessed little brother Wilf…

The second volume opened with a bold experimental diversion as, in March 1917 readers experienced the testimony of a charismatic deserter. ‘Blue’s War’ was a story within a story with the strip’s titular character reduced to an avid and appalled listener…

Set in bombed-out London Streets where Red Caps hunted deserters, Charley learns even more horrific truths about “his side”. The military police are led by a pitiless, fanatical dying-of-wounds officer The Drag Man obsessively hounding a desperate character called Blue – based on real-world “Monocled Mutineer” Percy Toplis. The knife-wielding fugitive met Charley while looking for Oiley who has graduated from thievery and looting to selling fake papers and passage abroad to military absconders …

Disgusted, but unwilling to force anyone back into the war, Charley says nothing, and hears the hows & whys of Blue’s situation – a staggering tale of combat, cruelty, bravery and more army ineptitude. Blue is an Englishman who joined the French Foreign Legion. He served with the French Army and survived the hell of Verdun (longest battle of the WWI, lasting from February 21st to December 18th 1916), commandeering the strip for months to come.

Bourne’s grudging return to the Western Front in April 1917 sees him a seasoned veteran posted to the Salient before the Third Battle of Ypres and caught up in daily skirmishes, sudden deaths, simmering feuds among his comrades and even more arrant stupidity from the Brass. His job become more difficult when arrogant old enemy and ruthless aristocrat Captain Snell – who thinks the war a terrific lark – returns as commanding officer and appoints Charley his manservant/dogsbody…

Snell constantly undermines and crushes the spirit of the riffraff cannon fodder under his command and loves making their lives intolerable. By May the infantry have survived heat, the Third Battle of Ypres and – by August – Passchendaele. Snell’s unit is posted to an engineering detail where Bourne and co. endure backbreaking toil as “clay-kickers”, risking cave-ins, flood, gas, explosions and Germans above them digging into their tunnels: a year-long project undermining a vast ridge of solid rock that is the enemy artillery emplacement on the Messine Ridge. The goal was the biggest manmade explosion in history… thus far. In the build-up everyone dies, but at least Snell also goes to his infernal reward, with the pitiful survivors despatched to a brutal retraining centre, bringing Charley into contact with organised deserters and reuniting him with many lost comrades. In England Oiley facilitates war-mad Wilf Bourne’s enlistment years before he is legally eligible, and Charley spends agonised months trying to find out what happened to Wilf…

The mounting tensions, barbarous treatment and institutionalised class injustice at Etaples leads to a British army mutiny in September, triggering the most shameful moments of Charley’s life when he is forced to join another firing squad. The mutiny goes on for days, emptying stockades and allowing the settling of many old scores, but Charley’s war is even more complicated after encountering Blue again. Bourne is even more astonished by the Army’s capitulation to the mutineers’ terms, and totally unprepared for inevitable retaliations. In response he transfers to the most dangerous job in the army to expiate his guilt…

This final mostly monochrome collection commences with Charley’s utterly astounding experiences as a stretcher bearer, enduring insane rules of conduct and increased enemy action whilst ferrying wounded and the dead from the battlefields. In another experimental sortie the story even switches to “the future” to follow one of the Tommies Charley saves.

The creators wallow in bizarre historical accuracy and intriguing gallows humour but such heartfelt sentimental moments are truly breathtaking. Just keep telling yourself it’s a kids’ comics and see if you believe it…

Due to shocking injustices and standard army prejudices, Charley is soon a shooting soldier again, just in time for some of the most horrific tank and cavalry battles in history. He then becomes a sniper at the same time as a fanatical corporal named Adolf Hitler starts haunting the trenches in his sights, before the scene again shifts. Interlaced with Charley’s exploits, focus shifts week-by-week to encompass the air war as seen via the illicit adventures of under-age Wilf Bourne. An extended, crushing sequence follows as the dead end kid gives everything he has to achieve his dreams of being a fighter pilot…

It’s January 1918, and Charley is accused of shooting himself in a ploy to dodge combat. The storyline involves his surviving a court martial and meeting a nurse who will – after much misunderstanding – become his “missus”. As ever Mills seeks to demonstrate how this war and this strip affected the non-combatants involved. The sequence also sees the return of arch-nemesis Snell: released from an English mental asylum to lead his old regiment, because he’s apparently the “still-useful” side of “mad as a hatter”…

Another military sidestep brings Charley’s cousin Jack into the picture, allowing a powerful and memorable exploration of the sea war, particularly the disaster of Gallipoli and sinking of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Nürnberg at the first Battle of the Falkland Islands. Somehow, this overt political act of comics subversion and antiwar protest completely escaped editors in the months after the country experienced the second one…

At last surrendering to the forces of narrative, as the war staggered to a close, Charley was back at the front facing a desperate defeated enemy now fighting for their families’ lives. Gradually re-meeting and saying farewell to almost everyone he had met along the way Charley soldiered on to the end. The vicious fighting was aided by American troops. Some were brave, valiant and good comrades-in-oppression. Others were white…

In the end, the entire war comes down to a brutal personal grudge match with Snell, who was determined to kill the peasant who had ruined his life. It happened on November 11th 1918, but even though Bourne was triumphant, Snell had the posthumous last world. It also allowed the creators to extend the strip and shine a light on another shameful episode. Although most soldiers downed arms in November 1918, in Russia the conflict continued as Tsarist White Russians battled the growing Soviet power of Red Russians. Two dozen countries – England included – sent men and resources to fight communism at a distance. And thanks to Snell, poor Charley was one of them…

What he saw and did there would shape the rest of his life…

These compilations of Mills & Colquhoun’s comic strip condemnation of the Great War (and war-mongering and profiteering in general) reaffirm how then and now the feature was one of the most sophisticated and adult dramas ever seen in fiction, let alone the pages of a kids’ war comic. Lifted to dizzying heights of excellence by the phenomenal artwork of Joe Colquhoun – much of it in colour as the strip alternated between the prized cover spot and almost as prestigious centre-spread slot – these are masterpieces of subversive outrage. Included in this volume are restored colour sections (reproduced in monochrome for earlier collections but vibrantly hued here to vivid effect) plus Mills’ amazingly informative chapter notes and commentary on episodes 177-293. These were not the last strips to feature Charley Bourne or indeed Joe Colquhoun’s incredible art, but in Mills’ view were the true end of the dramatic arc as the soldier boy came home to his wife, and decades of poverty and unemployment… until WWII saw him return to fighting for a country that really didn’t care about its people, only prestige, status and entrenched power. The book concludes with the author’s incisive essay and pleas for more comics featuring ‘A Working Class Hero’…

Charley’s War is a highpoint and benchmark in the narrative examination of the Great War in any artistic medium and exists as a shining example of how good “Children’s Comics” can be. It is also one of the most powerful pieces of fiction ever produced for readers of any age. I know of no anti-war story that is as gripping, as engaging and as engrossing, no strip that so successfully transcends mass-market origins and popular culture roots to become a landmark of fictive brilliance. I’d bribe Ministers to get these wonderful books onto the National Curriculum. We can only thank our lucky stars no Hollywood hack has made it a “blockbuster” inescapably undercutting the tangibility of the “heroes” whilst debasing the message. There is nothing quite like it and you are diminished by not reading it.
© 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 & 2018 Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Charley’s War is ™ & © Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash


By Dave McKean & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-108-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Magnificent and thought-provoking… 9/10

After so many years of being sidelined and despised, sequential narrative has finally been acknowledged as one of humanity’s immortal and intrinsic art forms. That’s never been more apparent than in this astounding biographical examination of celebrated surrealist, landscape painter and war artist Paul Nash, as conceived, designed and created here by modern master of many disciplines Dave McKean.

Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash was commissioned to supplement a retrospective exhibition of Nash’s work, running at London’s Tate Gallery from October 26th 2016 to March 5th 2017. Thia was done as part of 14-18 Now: the Arts plank of Britain’s national centenary commemoration of the Great War. The project was set in motion as a result of the always wonderful Lakes International Comic Art Festival (so you should also look them up, send an effusive thank you and book early for next year’s shindig). At the time the book also came in a limited edition run of 400 signed hardbacks…

This huge (280 x 219 mm) comics chronicle is rendered in a stunning melange of styles alternatively racing and meandering in evocatively sequential manner through Nash’s nightmares and memories. Distilled from his art works, correspondence and writings, it examines the artist’s thoughts and reactions in dreamlike snippets as he comes to terms with a troubled family life, the staggering shocks of war and his lifelong striving for a clear artistic vision. These visions are filtered through a lens of mud, blood and unremitting horror which didn’t diminish after surviving life in the trenches.

Potent and evocative, this is a compelling visual poem not meant as a primer, biographical introduction or hagiography. It’s a celebration of Nash’s art and ethos, and a reminder of the pointless futility of throwing away people’s lives, delivered in styles and imagery deftly chosen for emotional impact. As such it might require you to consult a favourite search engine to grasp the subtler nuances, but any fool can see that a century on from the close of the War to end all Wars, we’ve all individually or collectively made precious little progress or changed in any significant way…

At least we can all still appreciate and be moved by beauty and horror, or art and suffering, and here, it’s definitely worth the effort.
Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash ™ & © Dave McKean. All rights reserved.

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Enemy Ace: War Idyll


By George Pratt (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-93028-965-2 (HB) 978-0-93028-978-2 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Visions of Hell to Witness Ever After… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

During the 1960s Marvel gave industry leader National (now DC) Comics an artistic and sales drubbing, overhauling their 20-year position as industry leader – but only in the resurgent genre of super-heroes. In such areas as young kids’ comics, teen-comedies and romance, the House of Ideas still lagged way behind, and in the venerable and gritty war-comics market they rated lower even than Charlton.

Admittedly, they weren’t really trying, with only the highly inconsistent Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and latterly Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders as publications of any longevity, but that didn’t stop National’s editors and creators from forging ahead: creating a phenomenal number of memorable series and characters to thrill and inform a generation very much concerned with all aspects of military life.

Enemy Ace first appeared as a back-up in issue #151 of flagship war comic Our Army at War (cover-dated February 1965): home of the already legendary Sergeant Rock. Crafted by combat comics dream-team Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert, the series told bitter tales of valour and honour from the point of view of German WWI fighter pilot Hans Von Hammer: a pure and noble old-world warrior fighting for his country in a conflict that was swiftly excising all trace of such outmoded concepts from the extremely profitable business of industrialised mass-killing.

The tales – loosely based on “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen – were a magnificent tribute to the discipline of soldiering whilst wholeheartedly condemning the utter madness of war, produced during the turbulent days of Vietnam: first conflict to be televised and contemporaneously news-packed.

They are still moving and powerful beyond belief.

As is this seminal sequel Enemy Ace: War Idyll. Delineated in moody, misty, strikingly sombre images by painter George Pratt, the story follows the quest of troubled veteran Edward Mannock, a recently returned Vietnam grunt turned photo-journalist. This is a man desperately seeking answers to imponderable questions, and great truths to cure the damage his own combat experiences have caused.

It’s 1969, and Mannock’s search takes a pivotal turn when, on a routine assignment, he discovers elderly, infirm Von Hammer. The mythic “Hammer of Hell” is dying in a German nursing home, but instantly sees that he and the distraught young man share a deep kinship, common bond and the same nightmares…

Inexplicably allowed to drop out of print in both hardback and softcover editions and still criminally unavailable in digital formats, this is an astounding, excoriatingly incisive exploration of war and its extended repercussions good and bad, and the effect that combat has on singular men. War Idyll is visceral, poetic, emotive, evocative and terrifyingly instructive: with as much impact as All Quiet on the Western Front, Goddam This War! or Charley’s War. Every child who wants to be a soldier should be made to read this book.

You don’t want me to talk about it, but you do need to experience it, and once you have you’ll want to share that experience with others, This is one of those items worth every iota of effort required to find it…
© 1990, 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Ginette Kolinka Adieu Birkenau


By Ginette Kolinka, JDMorvan & Victor Matet, Cesc & Efa, Roger, Tal Bruttmann & various; translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-423-2 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Awful Truth That Must Be Told… 8/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

With its world-shaking reordering of society and all the consequent, still-felt repercussions of the rise of fascism and (hopefully) temporary triumph of totalitarianism, World War II – and the apparently ongoing/slowly gaining momentum third one – remain very much in people’s minds. I fear current events may well be inviting the world to revisit and reemphasise those hard learned lessons in the months and years to come…

The role of history in avoiding repeating past mistakes has never been more crucial and -thanks to brave and talented individuals and a trend for biographical and autobiographical sequential narratives – better armed than now. One chilling yet charming case in point is this testament, detailing the life and work of a Frenchwoman who survived Nazi concentration camps and enjoyed a “normal” life before latterly dedicating her last years to educating the world and preventing the reoccurrence we’re all anticipating today…

Born in February 1925, Parisian Ginette Kolinka (nee Cherkasky) enjoyed an unexceptional early life within a large, loving, non-religious Jewish family. That changed in 1940 when the Nazis took over. Fleeing across the divided nation (half under direct German administration and half under the puppet “Vichy” regime), Ginette and her kin were inevitably captured, processed through a methodically inhuman system and sent to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Birkenau. Ginette somehow survived as so very many did not and was liberated in May 1945.

She returned to France, married and remained silent about what she endured for fifty years, but was convinced by other Shoah survivors to share her experiences – particularly with school children. Kolinka became a tireless and passionate “ambassador for the memory” of those dark days and actions. Her efforts have been acknowledged with fame and numerous accolades, including a knighthood from (and eventual officer status in) the Legion of Honour, and appointment as commander of the Ordre des Palmes académiques for services to education.

Kolinka is a major force in spreading awareness of atrocity and in 2022 her life and achievements became this engaging and compelling graphic tome thanks to writers JDMorvan & Victor Matet, illustrators Cesc & Efa and colourist Roger. Rather than further précising Kolinka’s amazing story, I’ll just say that the tone seamlessly switches from sweetly engaging to appallingly chilling (and back again) with deft ease and the narrative conceit of contrasting flashbacks of Ginette’s historical recollections with a present day trip back to camp with a group of modern-day schoolchildren is shockingly effective and powerfully evocative.

Adding academic vigour and heartbreaking veracity, the tale is appended by Tal Bruttmann’s pictorial essay ‘Ginette Kolinka: A Survivor’s Story’, detailing everything from Paris under Nazi occupation to life in the camps, supplemented by photos, sketches, recovered artefacts and family memorabilia.

This tale is a potent counterpoint to the usual shock-&-bombast approach, devoting as much time to showing how far we’ve come and what we all stand to lose if those days and attitudes are allowed to resurface. Adieu Birkenau reveals how inhumanity, stupidity and simple evil can only be defeated by endurance and will. Here, we see acknowledgment of the nigh-universally disregarded contributions of women caught up in the conflict, and how the way to win against monsters is to not to be like them and never let them win.
© Éditions Albin Michel Départment bande dessinée, 2023. All rights reserved.

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Buz Sawyer volume 1: The War in the Pacific


By Roy Crane (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-362-0 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect Comics with Timeless Punch… 10/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips. Until relatively recently these pictorial features were utterly ubiquitous, hugely popular with the public and valued by publishers who used them as a sales weapon to guarantee and increase circulation and profits.

It’s virtually impossible for us to today to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. The Funnies were the most common recreation for millions: well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality. From the very start humour was paramount; hence the actual terms “Funnies” and “Comics”, and from these gag and stunt beginnings – a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and the vaudeville shows – came a thoroughly entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting on April 21st 1924,Washington Tubbs II was a breezily comedic gag-a-day strip that evolved into a globe-girdling adventure serial. Crane crafted pages of stunning, addictive quality yarn-spinning whilst his introduction of moody swashbuckler Captain Easy in the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929 led to a Sunday colour page that was arguably the most compelling and visually impressive of the entire Golden Age of Newspaper strips (as seen in Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volumes 1-4).

Improving almost minute by minute, Crane’s imagination and his fabulous visual set pieces achieved a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The influence of those pages can be seen ever since in the works of near-contemporaries such as Hergé, giants-in-waiting like Charles Schulz and comics creators including Alex Toth and John Severin.

The work was obviously as much fun to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA/United Features Syndicate’s abrupt and arbitrary demand that all its strips must be henceforward produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate their being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated – although the compelling text features in this book dedicated to his second masterpiece reveal a few more commercial and professional reasons for the jump from the small and provincial syndicate to the monolithic King Features outfit. At the height of his powers Crane just walked away from the astounding Captain Easy page, concentrating on the daily feature, and when his contract expired in 1943 he left United Features to create the World War II aviation strip Buz Sawyer; lured away by the grandee of strip poachers William Randolph Hearst.

The result is still one of the freshest and most engaging comics strips of all time…

Where Wash Tubbs was a brave but comedic Lothario and Easy a surly, tight-lipped he-man, John Singer “Buz” Sawyer was a happy amalgam of the two: a plain & simple, good-looking popular country-boy who went to war because his country needed him.

After the gripping and informative text feature ‘Crane’s Great Gamble’ by Jeet Heer, the strip explodes into action on Christmas Eve 1942, as new Essex Class Aircraft Carrier USS Tippecanoe steams for the Pacific Theatre of Operation carrying 100 fighter-bombers and an extremely keen pair of cartoon paladins.

Buz Sawyer is a fun-loving, skirt-chasing, musically-inclined pilot and his devoted gunner Rosco Sweeney, a bluff, simple ordinary guy – as well as one of the best comedy foils ever created.

The strip is a marvel of authenticity: picturing not just the action and drama of the locale and situation, but more importantly capturing the quiet, dull hours of training, routine and desperate larks between the serious business of killing whilst staying alive. Like contemporaries Bill Mauldin and Milton Caniff, Crane was acutely aware that all his readers had someone involved in the action and therefore felt a duty to inform and enlighten as well as entertain. Spectacular as the adventure was, the truly magical moments focus on the off-duty camaraderie and candid personal interactions that pepper the daily drama.

This beautiful archival hardback covers the entire war years of the strip from November 1st 1943 to October 5th 1945, wherein the inspired artist perfected his masterly skill with Craftint (a mechanical monochrome patterning effect used to add greys and halftones which Crane employed to add miraculous depths and moods to his superb drawing) and opens with the lovable lads shot down whilst tackling a Japanese carrier.

Marooned, their life raft washes up on a desolate desert island where they’re hunted by enemy troops and discover a marooned German farmer and his beautiful daughter. At first hostile, lovely fräulein April soon succumbs to Buz’s boyish charm. Helping Buz and Roscoe escape, the trio only make it as far as the next islet, where fellow pilot and friendly rival Chili Harrison has also been stranded since his plane went down.

Eventually rescued, the Navy fliers return to “the Tip” for training on new planes (sublimely detailed and delineated Curtiss SB2C Helldivers; in case you were wondering) in preparation for the push to Japan. Amidst spectacular action sequences, shipboard life goes on, but during a raid on an occupied island Buz and Sweeney are once more shot down. In the middle of a fire-fight they effect repairs and head back to the Tippecanoe, but not without cost. Rosco has been hit…

Sawyer’s exemplary exploits haven’t gone unnoticed and, whilst Sweeney is recovering from wounds, the titular hero is selected for a secret mission deep into enemy territory; ferrying an intelligence agent to a meeting with enigmatic underground leader the Cobra. It all goes tragically wrong and the US agent is captured. With the enemy hunting high and low for the pilot, Buz then falls back on his most infuriating ability: dropping into the willing laps of beautiful women…

‘Sultry’ is a gorgeous collaborator high in the favour of the occupying Japanese, but she too finds the corn-fed aviator irresistible. Of course, it might simply be that she’s also Cobra…

This extended epic is a brilliant, breathtaking romp blending action, suspense, romance and tragedy into a compelling thriller that carries Buz all the way to December 1944. As a result of his trials, the hero is sent back to America on a 30-day leave – enabling Crane to reveal some enticing background and invoke all the passions, joys and heartbreaks of the Home Front.

Buz doesn’t want to go, but orders are orders, so to make things a little more bearable he takes still-recuperating Sweeney with him. It isn’t that the young flier despises his origins – indeed, his civilian life is a purely idyllic American Dream – it’s simply that he wants to get the job done against the enemy. Nevertheless, with a warrior’s grace under pressure, he resigns himself to peace and enjoyment whilst his comrades soldier on. If he knew the foe he would face in his little hometown, Buz would probably have gone AWOL…

Crane’s inspirational use of the War at Home was a masterstroke: it’s not a world of spies and insidious Bundists, but just an appetising little burg filled with home comforts and proud people: the kind of place soldiers were fighting to preserve and a powerful tool in the morale-builder’s arsenal. It’s also a place of completely different dangers…

Buz is the son of the town’s doctor; plain, simple and good-hearted. In that egalitarian environment, the kid was sweetheart to the richest girl in town, and when Tot Winter‘s upstart, nouveau riche parents hear of the decorated hero’s return they hijack the homecoming and turn it into a self-serving publicity carnival.

Moreover, ghastly, snobbish Mrs. Winter conspires with her daughter to trap the lad into a quick and newsworthy marriage. Class, prejudice, financial greed and social climbing are enemies Buz and Sweeney are ill-equipped to fight, but luckily that annoying tomboy-brat Christy Jameson has blossomed into a sensible, down-to-earth, practical and clever young woman. She’s scrubs up real pretty too…

After a staggeringly smart and compelling soap opera sequence that would do Eastenders or Coronation Street proud, Buz ends up (accidentally) engaged to Tot after all. Mercifully, his leave ends and he and Sweeney must return to the war – but even then, they are disappointed to discover that they won’t immediately be fighting again.

Posted to Monterey, California, they are to be retrained for new planes and a new squadron, reuniting with rowdy rival Chili Harrison. Even so, Mrs Winter is determined to have a war hero in the clan and pursues them with Tot in tow, determined to get Buz married before he returns to the Pacific. Insights into another aspect of the military experience (Crane had almost unfettered access, consultation privileges and the grateful willing cooperation of the US Navy) are revealed to readers as the whiz-kid is suddenly back in school again; and usually in the dog-house because of his hot-dogging.

Dramatic tension divides evenly between Buz’s apparent inability to be a team-player and the increasingly insistent and insidious ploys of Mrs. Winter. Moreover, the squadron’s training commander has an uncanny ability to predict which pilots will die in training or combat and Buz’s name is high on that list…

At last the training concludes and – miraculously alive and unmarried – Buz & Sweeney ship out to the Pacific and the relatively easy task of ending the war. Part of a vast fleet mopping up island fortresses en route to Tokyo, they are soon flying combat missions, and before long, shot down once more. This time they are taken prisoner aboard an enemy submarine…

After more incredible escapes and rousing triumph, the war finishes, but Crane actually ratcheted up the tension by covering the period of American consolidation and occupation as Buz & Sweeney await demobilisation. Whilst posted to a medical facility in Melatonga, the lads and Chili meet a woman from Buz’s chequered past they had all believed long dead…

When discharge papers finally arrive (in the episode for September 9th 1945) an era of desperate struggle closes. However, with such a popular and pivotal strip as Buz Sawyer, that only means that the era of globe-girdling adventure is about to begin…

This superb monochrome hardback also offers a selection of Sunday strips in full colour. The eternal dichotomy and difficulty of producing Sunday Pages (many client papers would only buy either dailies or Sunday strips, not both) meant that some strip creators produced different story-lines for each feature – Milt Caniff’s Steve Canyon being one of the few notable exceptions. Crane handled the problem with typical aplomb: using the Sundays to tell completely unrelated stories. For Wash Tubbs he created a prequel series starring Captain Easy in exploits set before the mismatched pair had met; with Buz Sawyer he turned over the Sabbath slot to Rosco Sweeney for lavish gag-a-day romps, big on laughs and situation comedy.

Set among the common “swabbies” aboard ship, it was a lighter family-oriented feature and probably far more welcome among the weekend crowd of parents and children than the often chilling or disturbing realistically and sophisticated saga that unfolded Mondays to Saturdays.

Also included here – and spanning November 28th 1943 to 25th February 1945 in delicious full-page fold outs – are 15 of the best (many with appearances by Buz): a cheerily tantalising bonus which will hopefully one day materialise as an archival collection of their own. Whilst not as innovative or groundbreaking as Captain Easy, they’re still superb works by one of the grand masters of our art-form.

This initial collection is the perfect means of discovering or rediscovering Crane’s second magnum opus – spectacular, enthralling, exotically immediate adventures that influenced generations of modern cartoonists, illustrators, comics creators and storytellers. Buz Sawyer: War in the Pacific ranks as one the greatest strip sequences and best war stories ever crafted: thrilling, rousing, funny, moving yarn-spinning that is unforgettable, unmissable and utterly irresistible.
Strips © 2010 King Features Syndicate, Inc. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books, all other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents Ghosts


By Leo Dorfman, Murray Boltinoff, John Broome, Jack Miller, Joe Samachson, George Kashdan, Bob Haney, Richard E. Hughes, Carl Wessler, Tony DeZuñiga, Jim Aparo, Sam Glanzman, Carmine Infantino, Sy Barry, Frank Giacoia, John Calnan, Bob Brown, George Tuska, Wally Wood, Curt Swan, Ruben Moreira, Irwin Hasen, Leonard Starr, Jerry Grandenetti, Nick Cardy, Ramona Fradon, Art Saaf, Michael William Kaluta, Jack Sparling, Win Mortimer, Ernie Chan, Buddy Gernale, Nestor, Quico & Frank Redondo, Alfredo Alcala, Gerry Talaoc, Nestor Malgapo, E.R. Cruz, Rico Rival, Abe Ocampo, Ernesto Patricio & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-836-1 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Perfect Serving of Spectral Wonderment… 8/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Happy Dia de los Muertos! Let’s wind down our own Halloween celebrations and enjoy the more life-affirming Day of the Dead with a fabulously appropriate tome…

DC Comics came relatively late to funnybooks’ phantom-peril party, only bowing to the inevitable hunger for horror and mystery in the early 1950s. Comparatively straight-laced anthology The House of Mystery (cover-dated December 1951/January 1952) started the ball rolling with a gradual pick up that stopped dead after a hysterical censorship scandal and governmental witch-hunt created a spectacular backlash. It resulted in the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulatory rules. Horror titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, even though the appetite for suspense was still high. Nevertheless, in 1956 National/DC added sister title House of Secrets which specialised in taut human-interest tales in a fantasy milieu.

Stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, rationalistic, fantasy-adventure vehicles which dominated the market until the 1960s when super-heroes finally overtook them. When that bout of cape-and-cowl craziness peaked and popped, sales began bottoming out for Costumed Dramas and comics faced another punishing sales downturn.

Nothing combats censorship better than falling profits. As the end of the 1960s saw the superhero boom end with so many titles dead and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain too, the publishers took drastic action. This real-world Crisis led to the surviving players in the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles but as liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Worlds Beyond, a resurrection of spooky comics was a foregone conclusion…

The chilling comeback resumed with The House of Mystery in 1968, and soon supernatural mystery titles dominated the marketplace, DC began a steady stream of launches along narrowly differing thematic lines. There was gothic horror romance title Sinister House of Secret Love, combat iteration Weird War Tales and, from late summer 1970, a bold new book which proudly boasted “True Tales of the Weird and Supernatural!” and challenged readers to read on… if they dared…

Originally released on St Valentine’s Day 2012, this sadly sole and singular monochrome encyclopaedia of the uncanny collects the first 18 issues of Ghosts, covering like a shroud September/October 1970 to September 1973. Lead scripter and supernatural enthusiast Leo Dorfman produced most of the original material for a title he is generally credited with creating. Dorfman was one of the most prolific scripters of the era (also working as David George and Geoff Brown) and a major scripter of horror stories for DC and Gold Key titles.

The thrills and chills begin with a graphic ‘Introduction’ from Tony DeZuñiga – probably scripted by editor Murray Boltinoff – prior to ‘Death’s Bridegroom’ (Dorfman & Jim Aparo) exposing a conniving bluebeard conman who finally picked the wrong girl to bilk and jilt. Sam Glanzman illustrated a fearsome tale of a shipbuilder slain while sabotaging a Nazi U-Boat before returning as a vengeful ‘Ghost in the Iron Coffin’, after which John Broome, Carmine Infantino & Sy Barry’s ‘The Tattooed Terror’ offers a slice of Golden Age anxiety (from Sensation Mystery #112, November 1952) with a career criminal seemingly haunted by his betrayed partner. Broome, Infantino & Frank Giacoia then relived ‘The Last Dream’ (Sensation Comics #107, December 1951-January 1952) as a 400-year old rivalry results in death for a 20th century sceptic, and this initial issue ends with a Western mystery in ‘The Spectral Coachman’ by Dorfman & DeZuñiga.

The second issue opens with a predatory ghost-witch persecuting a Carpathian village in Dorfman, John Calnan & George Tuska’s ‘No Grave can Hold Me’, whilst ‘Mission Supernatural’ (limned by Bob Brown & Wally Wood) reveals a WWII secret perpetually plaguing a modern English airport. A brace of revered reprints begin with light-hearted romp ‘The Sorrow of the Spirits’ from HoM #21 (December 1953, Jack Miller, Curt Swan & Ray Burnley) wherein a plague of famous phantoms attempt to possess their descendants’ bodies and ‘Enter the Ghost’ (Joe Samachson & Ruben Moreira, HoM #29, August 1954) finds an actor endangered by a dead thespian jealous of anyone recreating his greatest role…

With Dorfman still writing the lion’s share of new material, DeZuñiga renders the sorry fate of an unscrupulous diver seduced by discovery of a ‘Galleon of Death’, as Miller & Irwin Hasen’s ‘Lantern in the Rain’ (Sensation Mystery #113, January/February 1953) recounts an eerie railroad episode. Dorfman & Glanzman reunite to tell an original tale of ‘The Ghost Battalions’ who still haunt the world’s battle sites from Gallipoli to Korea.

Dorfman & DeZuñiga visited 17th century Scotland for #3’s opening occult observation, wherein a sea-born princess demands her child back from a wicked Laird in ‘Death is My Mother’, after which ‘The Magician who Haunted Hollywood’ (George Kashdan & Leonard Starr, HoM #10, January 1953) reveals how actor Dick Mayhew may have been aided by a deceased escapologist when playing the starring role in the magician’s biopic…

Drawn by Calnan, ‘The Dark Goddess of Doom’ reveals how a statue of Kali deals with the ruthless collector who stole her, after which anonymously authored ‘Station G.H.O.S.T.’ (limned by Moreira for HoM #17, August 1953) discloses how a man’s scheme to corruptly purchase a house haunted by his ancestor goes weirdly awry, before Tuska draws the saga of a WWII pilot who crashes into a desert nightmare and fatefully meets a ‘Legion of the Dead’. Following a reprinted fact-file on ‘Ghostly Miners’, Jerry Grandenetti depicts how a French landowner who unwisely disturbs a burial ground meets ‘The Screaming Skulls’…

Ghosts #4 starts with a secret history of one of America’s most infamous killers in ‘The Crimson Claw’ (Tuska & cover artist Nick Cardy) before ‘The Ghostly Cities of Gold’ (Grandenetti) reveals some truth about fabled, haunted Cibola as the first reprint reveals ‘The Man Who Killed his Shadow!’ Crafted by Miller, Swan & Burnley for HoM #16 (July 1953) it tells how a murdered photographer reaches from beyond the grave for justice. Thereafter, Ernie Chan limns ‘The Fanged Spectres of Kinshoro’, with a Big Game hunter pitting 20th century rationality against an ancient Ju-Ju threat, whilst the superb team of Bob Haney, Ramona Fradon & Charles Paris shine again with ‘The Legend of the Black Swan’ (HoM #48, March 1956) wherein three sceptical US students in Spain have an eerie encounter with doomed 17th century sailors before concluding on ‘The Threshold of Nightmare House’ with Calnan & Grandenetti illustrating inevitable doom for a woman haunted by her own ghost…

During the invasion of China in 1939, a greedy Japanese warlord meets his fate – and the spirits of the Mongol warriors whose tomb he robbed. Issue #5’s lead tale ‘Death, the Pale Horseman’ (Dorfman & Art Saaf) is followed by ‘The Hands from the Grave’ (Calnan) which somehow saves a young tourist from early death, after which reprint ‘The Telltale Mirror’ (by an unknown author & Grandenetti from HoM #13, April 1953) shows the dread downside of owning a looking glass that reflects the future…

Original yarn ‘Caravan of Doom’ (Jack Sparling) tells of an uncanny African warrior aiding enslaved Tommies in WWI Tanganyika, balanced by uncredited reprint ‘The Phantom of the Fog’ (Moreira art from HoM #123, June 1962), wherein valiant rebels overthrow a petty dictator with the apparent aid of an oceanic apparition, before Grandinetti’s ‘The Hearse Came at Midnight’ ends the issue with spoiled college frat boys learning an horrific lesson about hazing and initiation rites…

With Ghosts #6, page counts dropped from 52 to 32 pages and reprints were curtailed in favour of new material. Proceedings begin with Dorfman & Saaf’s cautionary tale of an avaricious arcane apothecary when ‘A Specter Poured the Potion’, before ‘Ride with the Devil’ (Calnan) tells of a most unexpected lift for an unwary hitchhiker whilst ‘Death Awaits Me’ (Grandenetti) exposes an eerie premonition marking the bizarre death of dancer Isadora Duncan. A rare DC outing for mercurial comics genius Richard E. Hughes illustrated by Sparling closes this slimline edition with ‘Ghost Cargo from the Sky’, exposing the incredible power of wishing to Pacific Islanders in the aftermath of WWII.

Michael William Kaluta stood in for Cardy as cover artist for #7 but Dorfman remained as writer, beginning with ‘Death’s Finger Points’ (Sparling) as a bullying Australian sheep farmer falls foul of aborigines he’d abused, whilst President in waiting Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the latest VIP to learn the cost of ignoring a Fakir’s warning in the Saaf-illustrated ‘Touch not my Tomb’.

Calnan closed things out with ‘The Sweet Smile of Death’ in a doomed romance between a 20th century photographer and a flighty Regency phantom who refused to let this last admirer go. ‘The Cadaver in the Clock’ (art by Buddy Gernale) opened #8, as a succession of heirs learn the downside of an inheritance which perforce included a mummified corpse inside a grand chronometer, but Glanzman’s ‘The Guns of the Dead’ shows a far more beneficial side to spectres as US marines are saved by their unstoppable – deceased – sergeant in 1944. Lovingly limned by the wonderful Nestor Redondo, ‘Hotline to the Supernatural’ recounts cases of supernatural premonition, whilst ‘To Kill a Tyrant’ (Quico Redondo) implausibly links the incredible last hours of Rasputin to the so-necessary death of Stalin decades later…

Ghosts #9 begins with Calnan’s ‘The Curse of the Phantom Prophet’ as an Indian holy man continues his war against the insolent British and rapacious white men long after his death by firing squad. ‘The Last Ride of Rosie the Wrecker’ (gloriously illustrated by Alfredo Alcala) then details the indomitable determination of a crushed US tank that shouldn’t have been able to move at all, and Grandenetti’s ‘The Spectral Shepherd of Dartmoor’ shows how a long-dead repentant convict still aids the weak and imperilled in modern Britain. Events end on an eerie note as vacationers see horrific apparitions but discover ‘The Phantom that Never Was’ has created a real ghost out of a hoax disaster in a genuine chiller drawn by Bob Brown & Frank McLaughlin.

Fact page ‘Experimenters Beyond the Grave’ – from Dorfman & Win Mortimer – details attempts by Harry Houdini, Mackenzie King and Aldous Huxley to send messages from the vale of shades before storytelling resumes in #10 with the Gerry Talaoc/Redondo Studio limned tale of a Vietnamese Harbinger of Doom in ‘A Specter Stalks Saigon’. Increasingly, superb Filipino artists took on art chores for the ubiquitous Dorfman’s scripts, such as ‘The Ghost of Wandsgate Gallows’ by Ernie Chan, detailing the inevitable fate of an English noble who hires and then betrays a contract killer. Although naval savant Sam Glanzman could be the only choice for the US maritime mystery ‘Death Came at Dawn’, Nestor Malgapo artfully handles horrific saga ‘The Hell Beast of Berkeley Square’, which for decades slaughtered guilty and innocents alike in prosperous Mayfair…

Ghosts #11 opened with Eufronio Reyes (E.R.) Cruz’s contemporary thriller wherein Nazi war criminals recovering long-hidden loot finally pay for their foul crimes in ‘The Devil’s Lake’, before Chan sketches a subway journey where the ‘Next Stop is Nowhere’. Graphic master Grandenetti visually captures ‘The Specter Who Stalked Cellblock 13’ (of San Quentin), and Brown returns to illustrate how a church organ killed anyone who played it in ‘The Instrument of Death’ before Sparling charts the sinister coincidences of ‘The Death Circle’ dictating that every US President elected in a year ending in zero dies in office. Of course, not everyone today is happy that the myth has been debunked…

Issue #12 featured ‘The Macabre Mummy of Takhem-Ahtem’ (Calnan): more a traditional monster-mash than purportedly true report, after which Grandinetti’s ‘Chimes for a Corpse’ sees a German watchmaker die for his malicious treatment of an apprentice before the always amazing Glanzman-limned ‘Beyond the Portal of the Unknown’ closed proceedings in magnificent style when French soldiers in 1915 uncover a terrible tomb and unleash a centuries old vendetta of vengeance…

Dorfman & Brown open issue #13 with ‘The Nightmare in the Sandbox’ detailing a war of voodoo practitioners in Haitian garden, whilst Calnan’s ‘Voice of Vengeance’ depicts macabre marionette vengeance on an embezzling official who silences their maker. ‘Have Tomb, Will Travel’ (Talaoc) sees contract killers using a scrapyard to lose their latest corpse discover their brand-new car comes with his unquiet spirit as an angry extra as Nestor Redondo depicts the inexplicable experience of lost GIs spending a night in a castle that isn’t there and learning ‘Hell is One Mile High’…

In #14, an heirloom wedding dress that comes with a curse doesn’t stop Diane Chapman marrying her young man in Gernale’s ‘The Bride Wore a Shroud’, whilst ‘Death Weaves a Web’ (Kashdan & Chan) sees a bullying uncle live to regret destroying his little nephew’s spider collection – but not for long. Talaoc’s ‘Phantom of the Iron Horseman’ finds a young train driver and host of passengers saved from disaster by the spirit of his disgraced grandpa before the issue ends with a catalogue of global portents warning of the appalling 1966 Aberfan tragedy in Cruz’s ‘The Dark Dream of Death’.

Gernale opened #15 with ‘The Ghost that Wouldn’t Die’, another case of domestic gold-digging, ectoplasmic doppelgangers and living ghosts, whilst ‘A Phantom in the Alamo’ (Carl Wessler & Glanzman) reveals the ghastly fate of the American who sold out the valiant defenders to the Mexican attackers. Alcala lent his prodigious gifts to the Balkan tale of a corpse collector who abandons morality and to profit from his sacred trust in ‘Who Dares Cheat the Dead?’ and Rico Rival delineates a gripping yarn wherein a corrupt surgeon is haunted by the hit-and-run victim he’d silenced in ‘Hand from the Grave’.

Ghosts #16 has a Spanish “gypsy” cursed to see ‘Death’s Grinning Face’ whenever someone is going to die, in a stirring thriller from Rival, and Glanzman again displays his uncanny knack for capturing shipboard life – and death – when, after 25 years, a deserter finally joins his dead comrades in ‘The Mothball Ghost’. Talaoc then delineates Napoleon Bonaparte’s services to France after the Little Corporal dies to become ‘The Haunted Hero of St. Helena’.

Issue #17 finds a phantom lady saving flood-lost children in Dorfman & Alcala’s moving ‘Death Held the Lantern High’ after which editor Murray Boltinoff & Talaoc reveal ‘The Specters Were the Stars’ as a film company tries to capture the horror of the 1920 Ulster Uprising, whilst Kashdan & Calnan expose the seductive allure and inescapable power of traditional Roma using ‘The Devil’s Ouija’ to combat centuries of prejudice…

This first terrifying tome terminates with Ghosts #18 and Alcala’s account of a hateful Delaware medicine chief still luring white men to his watery ‘Graveyard of Vengeance’, centuries after his death, whilst Abe Ocampo details the unlikely ‘Death of a Ghost’ at the hands of a very smug inventor who has just moved into a haunted mansion. Frank Redondo describes how villagers in old Austria knew young Adolf would come to a bad end because the boy had ‘The Eye of Evil’ and the spookiness at last ceases with Ernesto Patricio & Talaoc’s ‘Death Came Creeping’ as a visiting Egyptian merchant and his unique pet stop a sneak thief’s predations in an age-old manner…

These turbulent terror-tales captivated readers and critics alike when they first appeared and it’s almost certain that they saved DC during one of the toughest downturns in comics publishing history. Their blend of sinister mirth, classic horror scenarios and suspense set-pieces can most familiarly be seen in such children’s series as Goosebumps, Horrible Histories and their many imitators. Everybody loves a good healthy scare – especially today or even on those dark Christmas nights to come – and this beautiful gathering of ethereal escapism (sadly, still only available in monochrome and paperback) is a treat fans of fear and fantastic art should readily take to their cold, dead hearts…
© 1971, 1972, 1973, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Black Max volume 3


By Frank S. Pepper, Ken Mennell, Alfonso Font & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-83786-102-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Astoundingly Eerie Air Ace Action… 8/10

It’s time for another sortie down memory lane for us oldsters and, hopefully a frolic down a new, untrodden path for fans of the fantastic in search of a traditionally quirky British comics experience. This compelling compilation is another stunning nostalgia-punch from Rebellion’s superb, ever-expanding Treasury of British Comics, concluding the exotic, esoteric episodic exploits of seminal shocker Black Max: another darkly sparkling gem from our crown jewels of weird kids’ comics… and yes, there’s a strong argument that the readers were as wild and whacko as the strips we loved…

This sinister selection delivers the last gasps of the unsavoury war criminal of the skies, and includes rare-for-the-era crossover with another strip star. Black Max debuted in the first issue of Thunder and more than ran the distance: surviving cancelation and merger, soaring on into Lion & Thunder which finally gave up the ghost mid-decade. This third volume carries the last wave of those stories, covering 15th January to October 21st 1972 with the aviation excitement augmented by a brace of longer yarns taken from Thunder Annual 1974.

The series was typical of the manner in which weekly comics functioned back then: devised by screenwriter, veteran editor and prolific scripter Ken Mennell (Cursitor Doom, Steel Claw, The Spider and many more), with the first episode limned by the company’s star turn for mood and mystery, Eric Bradbury (Invasion, The Black Crow, Cursitor Doom, House of Dolman, Hookjaw and dozens more). The whole kit and kaboodle was then handed off to another team to sink or swim with, which they did until 1973: a pretty respectable run for any British comic feature…

In many ways, the attrition rate of British strips bore remarkable similarities to WWI casualty figures, but this serial was well-starred. The assigned follow-up writer was Frank S. Pepper. who began his legendary comics career in 1926. By 1970, he had clocked up many major successes including Dan Dare, Rockfist Rogan, Captain Condor, Jet-Ace Logan and Roy of the Rovers to name but a very, very few. Series illustrator Alfonso Font was a 10-year veteran – mostly for overseas publications – when he succeeded Bradbury. Based in Spain, Font had worked not just for Odhams/Fleetway but on strips for US outfits Warren and Skywald and continental classics such as Historias Negras (Dark Stories), Jon Rohner, Carmen Bond, Bri D’Alban, Tex Willer, Dylan Dog, Clark & Kubrick: Spiritualists Inc., Taxi, Héloise de Montfort and more…

Episodic by nature and generally delivered in sharp, spartan 3-page bursts, by the time of these trench warfare and skyborne tales, the premise and key characters were firmly established and Pepper & Font were growing bolder and more experimental…

In 1917, Germany and her allies were slowly losing the Great War. In the Bavarian schloss of Baron Maximilien von Klorr, the grotesque but brilliant scientist/fighter ace devised a horrific way to tip the scales back in favour of his homeland. His extremely ancient family had, for millennia, enjoyed an almost affinity with bats, and the current scion had bred giant predatory versions he controlled by various means – including magic amulets and telepathy. These flew beside him to terrify and slaughter the hated English. Initially, they had been a secret weapon used sparingly, but by this juncture allied soldiers and aviators knew well this other form of death from the skies…

His schemes were imperilled and countered on a weekly basis by young British pilot Tim Wilson. Originally a performer in a peacetime flying circus, the doughty lad was possibly the best acrobatic aviator on the Western Front and his constant clashes with von Klorr and the colossal chiropterans constantly frustrated the manic monster master…

Now, with Wilson’s superiors fully aware of the fearsome bioweapons, and thanks to the peasant’s constant interference, the Baron devotes an astonishing amount of time and effort to killing the English fighter ace… when not butchering Allied fliers and ground troops in vast numbers.

The odds seemed to shift once von Klorr began mass-producing his monsters, but Wilson eventually gained the upper hand: driving “Black Max” out of his castle HQ and into a hidden facility where the vile villain retrenched and made bigger, better terrors…

As lengthy, multi-part serials became the standard, the human fliers’ private duel expanded to include many veteran English Aces, infiltrating traitors into the Royal Flying Corps, brainwashing and torturing prisoners, steering zeppelins on civilian raids, and kidnapping British animal scientist Professor Dutton to improve the strength of his killer beasts…

Always, however, the Baron is foiled by his inability to ignore or avoid Wilson: a mistake that scuttles his grand schemes and costs him dearly…

Down but never out, the Baron returns to successful strategies and familiar killing fields, but suffers another reversal when Wilson discovers his current laboratory base. With only one giant bat left and his resources exhausted, Von Klorr relocates to a deserted aerodrome to consider his options and is shocked to receive a message from his grandfather. The terrifying patriarch of the “bat clan” has knowledge spanning millennia and reveals he has unearthed an ancient potion to recreate the “great Kingbat!”

Thanks to more timely interference from Tim, the killer beast attacks both German and British lines, necessitating an unprecedented alliance of the sworn enemies. Wilson is completely ready for von Klorr to betray him, but is still taken unawares when the moment comes as they kill the rampaging terror…

Here and now, it’s mere weeks after the crisis, and business as usual in the skies over Europe. As brave men shoot at each other, Von Klorr is almost court-martialled by his own leaders, but responds by secretly unleashing his last killer bat in defiance of the generals. It leads to a shocking meeting with another German freak and outcast every bit as nefarious and deranged as the Baron. Doktor Gratz is a towering intellect and supergenius in a warped, stunted body as proved by the mighty mole machine he travels under the earth in and the whirlwind weapon he uses to smash ships from the sky. He hates the British too and knows a fellow fiend when he sees one…

Soon they are attacking the allies and making a real dent, but Herr Doktor is keeping secrets from his partner. Sadly for them, Wilson is dogging their trail and prevents Gratz gaining his true objective, whilst exposing his perfidy to the furious Baron. The upshot is a sundered alliance, but Von Klorr does regain the trust of the generals which he uses – with his grandfather’s aid – to unleash more colossal Kingbats. His scheme is incredible in its audacity: employing the monsters to sink a British naval flotilla, capture an entire experimental battleship and imprison its crew…

Once again, it’s Wilson to the rescue, infiltrating a German internment camp to spring the sailors before leading the cruiser’s recovery in the face of the very worst the Kingbats can do. Von Klorr, meanwhile, has found even more uncanny allies in the form of an ancient race of subterranean bat-men dwelling unsuspected under the French countryside. These he controls with an amulet, but the sentient horrors are more than happy to kill humans…

Nearby, opportunistic Doktor Gratz reemerges and negotiates a truce with the Baron in anticipation of killing more enemy soldiers. Soon the macabre coalition is pushing back the Allied advance and all looks very bleak, but Wilson has a plan…

Defeated again and in retreat, Black Max and Gratz launch a new terror weapon – sinister “ghost planes” – but once more their subtle trickery is exposed, but not before the human devils unleash an assassination plot against French leaders and attack Paris in force with a legion of flying monsters. The build-up of months climaxes with relentless pursuit as the Germans abandon all schemes in a vengeful effort to kill the British flier, but as chaos mounts they reach too far…

In a rare event the series came to a fitting conclusion here and although the Baron was declared dead, Gratz did very well out of these walk-on appearances: he won his own spin-off series once Black Max ended. Uncomfortably entitled Secrets of the Demon Dwarf, it ran in Lion from October 28th 1972 to March 17th 1973 (plus annual and specials) as the mad scientist accidentally stranded himself in the 1970s and sought revenge for losing two World Wars and presumably just the one World Cup. Font did some of most expressive and inventive work on the feature, but I suspect Rebellion won’t be archiving this series any time soon…

As previously stated, this closing collection also includes two complete adventures from Thunder Annual 1974: one in prose and illustrated by an artist unknown and a final furious comics foray. The text tale saw Von Klorr visiting a Serbian castle to bolster failing Austrian forces only to fail due to Tim Wilson, whilst the final flight sees the true Brit following the Baron to Africa in search of ingredients to make a potion that might save his dying Kingbats from a dire disease…

These strip shockers are amongst the most memorable and enjoyable exploits in British comics: smart, scary and beautifully rendered. This a superb example of war horror that deserves to be revived and revered.
© 1972, 1973 & 2024 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. Black Max and all related characters, their distinctive likenesses and related elements are ™ Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved.