Category: World Classics

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The Definitive Charley’s War volume 1: Boy Soldier


By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun & various (Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-619-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

On July 27th 1914, Austrian foreign Minister Berchtold had Emperor Franz Joseph sign a Declaration of War in hopes of stealing a march on the empire’s political opponents of the Triple Entente and ensure any peace proposals would be pointless. The Great War officially began the following day…

When Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun began their tale of an impressionable lad who joins up just in time to fight in the disastrous Somme campaign, I suspect they had, as usual, the best of authorial intentions but no real idea that this time they were creating comics history. The landmark feature was originally published in British war anthology Battle (AKA Battle Picture Weekly, Battle Action, etc.). A surprise hit, the serial proper launched in #200, running from January 1979 until October of 1986.

It recounted, usually in heartrending and harrowing detail and with astounding passion for a Boys’ Periodical, the life of an East-End kid who lies about his age to enlist with the British Army reinforcements setting out to fight the Hun in 1916.

The stunning strip contingent contained within this edition – 86 weekly episodes in all – span January 6th 1979 through 25th October 1980, forming one of the most powerful and influential characterisations of the oh-so-ironic “war to end all wars” ever depicted. Lovingly researched, lavishly limned and staggeringly authentic, the saga touches upon many diverse aspects of the conflict – even the effects on the Home Front – all delivered with a devastating, sardonically understated dry sense of horror and injustice, albeit frequently leavened with gallows humour as trenchant as that legendarily “enjoyed” by the poor trench-bound “Tommies” of the time.

This magnificent (mostly) monochrome mega-compilation opens with a 4-page instalment (for much of the middle run the series came in 3-page episodes) ‘Charley’s War – the Story of a Soldier in World War One’, following 16-year-old London Bus Company worker Charley Bourne as he eagerly enlists and so-quickly graduates to unending, enduring horrors of muddy, blood-soaked battlefields, beginning with The Somme.

Military life was notoriously 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 put young Charley in the Westshire Regiment and show a rapidly changing casualty-shaped cast being constantly whittled away by various modes of combat attrition.

The weekly hellscapes show lesser-known, far-from-glorious aspects of the conflict readers in the 1970s & 1980s had never seen in any other war comic. Each strip was cunningly punctuated and elucidated by the telling narrative device of the simple lad’s letters to his family in “Blighty” whilst also cleverly utilising reproductions of cartoons and postcards from the period.

With Boer War veteran Ole Bill Tozer as his mentor, Charley narrowly survives shelling, mudslides, digging details, gas attacks, the trench cat, snipers, callous stupidity of his own commanding officers – although there are examples of good officers too – and the far-too-frequent insane absurdity of a modern soldier’s life. Slowly but irrevocably the callow, naïve boy becomes a solid, dependable warrior – albeit one with a nose for trouble and a near-divine gift for lucky escapes.

When Tozer leads a party across No-Man’s Land to capture prisoners for interrogation, new pal Ginger sustains a frankly hilarious wound in his nether regions. As a result, however, and despite the sortie establishing the inadvisability of an attack, Allied generals continue their plans for a “Big Push”. Thus, Charlie is confronted with an agonising moral dilemma when he catches a comrade trying to wound himself and get sent home before the balloon goes up. This time, grim fate intervenes before the boy soldier can make his terrible choice…

The unit’s troubles increase exponentially when arrogant, ruthless aristocrat Lieutenant Snell arrives; constantly undermining if not actively sabotaging every effort by sympathetic Lieutenant Thomas to make the riffraff cannon fodder’s lives tolerable. The self-serving toff officer takes an extremely personal dislike to Charley after the lad drops in trench mud a huge picnic hamper belonging to the rich twat…

On July 1st 1916 The Battle of the Somme begins. Like so many other unfortunates, Charley and his comrades are ordered “over the top”: expected to walk steadily into mortars and machine gun fire of entrenched German positions. Thomas, unable to stand the stupidity, cracks and commands them to charge at a run. It saves his squad but lands his men in a fully-manned German dug-out…

After ferocious fighting the lads gain a brief respite, but retreating Huns have left insidious booby-traps to entice and destroy them. Many beloved characters die before Charley, Ginger and poor shell-shocked Lonely are finally captured by “the Boche”.

As they await their fate, the traumatised veteran of 1914 reveals to Ginger and Charley the horrific events of the previous Christmas and why he so wants to die. Moreover, the sole cause of that appalling atrocity is the same Snell now commanding their own unit…

Through Charley’s signature dumb luck they escape, only to blunder into a gas attack and British Cavalry. The mounted men gallop off to meet stiff German resistance (resulting in some of the most baroque and disturbing scenes ever depicted in kids’ comics) whilst Bourne and the lads are miraculously reunited with their lost comrades. The combat carnage has not ceased, however. Awaiting orders to attack, Lt. Thomas and his embattled men are suddenly subjected to a terrific barrage. With horror the officer realises they are being shelled by their own big guns and dispatches a runner to Snell who has a functioning line to Allied HQ.

The role of messenger was the most dangerous in the army but, with no means of communication except written orders and requests, failure to get through was never acceptable. By the time Charley volunteers a dozen men have failed. With British shells still butchering British troops, Bourne resolves to test his luck as the “Thirteenth Runner”…

As previously stated, Charley’s War closely follows the war’s key events, using them as a road map or skeleton to hang specific incidents upon. This was not the strip’s sole innovation. Mills’ detailed research concentrated more on characters than fighting – although there was still plenty of heartrending action – and declared to the readership (which at time of original publication were categorically assumed to be boys between ages 9-13) that “our side” could be as monstrous as the “bad guys”.

Mills also fully exercised his own political/creative agendas in 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 and detailed ‘Strip Commentary’ concluding this edition)…

With the Thirteenth Runner storyline, likable everyman Charley Bourne slowly began his descent from fresh-faced innocent to weary, battle-scarred veteran as the war reached beyond cataclysmic opening moves of the Somme Campaign into the conflict’s most bloody events. Frantically making his way to the rear positions, Charley successfully passes twelve fallen runners but only encounters more officer arrogance and Professional Soldier stupidity before the battle ends. Snell refuses to even read the message until he has finished his tea…

Helpless before aristocratic indifference, Charley angrily returns to the Front. Finding everyone apparently dead, he snaps. Reduced to a killing rage he is only dragged back to normal when Ginger, Smith Seventy and the Sarge emerge from a shattered support trench.

The lad’s joy is short-lived. Thomas is arrested for showing cowardice in the face of the enemy, and with him gone Snell commands the unit of despised disposable commoners…

Removed to the Rear to have their wounds treated, Charley and his chums meet Weeper Watkins. The former ventriloquist cries permanently. His eyes are ruined by exposure to poison gas but he is still considered fit for duty. All too soon they fall foul of sadistic military policeman Sergeant Bacon who has earned his nickname as “the Beast” over and again…

With a chance to blow off steam – like a hilarious volunteer Concert Party show – Charley and Weeper are soon in the Beast’s bad books. However, his first attempt to beat and break Bourne goes badly awry when a couple of rowdy Australian soldiers join the fray and utterly humiliate the rogue Red Cap.

Bullies are notoriously patient, however, and Bacon’s turn comes at last when Lt. Thomas is found guilty. Charley and Weeper refuse to be part of the firing squad which executes him and are punished by military tribunal, leaving them at the Beast’s non-existent mercy. Enduring savage battlefield punishments including a uniquely cruel form of crucifixion, their suffering only ends when the base is strafed by German aircraft. With sentence served and Bacon gone, Charley is soon back in the trenches, just in time for the introduction of Tank Warfare to change the world forever. A fascinating aspect of the battle is highlighted here as the strip concentrates heavily upon German reaction to the innovation. The Central Powers considered the tank an atrocity weapon in just the same way modern soldiers do chemical and biological ones.

In the build-up to the Big Push, Charley is singled out by a new replacement. Unctuous Oliver Crawleigh is a cowardly spiv and petty criminal, but he’s also married to Charley’s sister Dolly. The chancer ignobly attaches himself to the young veteran like a leech, offering to pay Charley to either protect him or wound him some minor way which will get “Oiley” safely back to Britain…

The next day the British Empire’s new landships make their terrifying debut with army infantry in close support. The effect on the Germans is astounding. In a ferociously gripping extended sequence, Mills & Colquhoun take readers inside the hellish iron leviathans as outraged Huns devote their manic utmost efforts into eradicating the titanic tin terrors. The carnage is unspeakable but soon Charley, Oiley and Smith Seventy are inside one of the lumbering behemoths, reluctantly replacing the dead crew of clearly deranged tank man Wild Eyes. The modern-day Captain Ahab drags them along for the ride, seeking a madman’s redemption for the loss of his pals, the slaughter of a town and destruction of a church…

In the quiet of the weary aftermath, Oiley deliberately puts his foot under a tank to “get a Blighty” (a wound sufficiently serous to be sent home) and attempts to bribe Charley into silence. The disgusted, exhausted teenager responds in typically cathartic manner. During this lull in the fighting, events on the German side see despised commoner and Eastern Front veteran Colonel Zeiss spurn his aristocratic Junker colleagues’ outdated notions, devising a new kind of Total Warfare to punish the British for their use of mechanised murder machines…

Charley, meanwhile, is wounded and his comrades celebrate the fact that he will soon be home safely. Naturally, things are never that simple and the callous indifference of the British army’s medical contingent – especially notorious “Doctor No” who never lets a man escape his duty – means any soldier still able to pull a trigger is sent back into battle.

Bourne returns just in time to meet the first wave of Zeiss’ merciless “Judgement Troops”, who storm British lines, slaughtering everyone – including German soldiers who get in the way – in a savage, no-holds-barred assault. The “Blitzkrieg tactics” overwhelm everything in their path. Charley and his mates reel from fresh horrors: battlefield executions, flamethrowers, experimental forms of poison gas, strafing by steel javelins and brutal, uncompromising hand-to-hand combat in their own overrun trenches before the bloody battle peters out indecisively…

Zeiss is subsequently cashiered by his own appalled superiors, but knows that one day his concepts of Blitzkrieg and Total War will become the norm…

Exhausted, battle-weary Charley is again injured, losing his identification in the process and returned eventually to England as a shell-shocked amnesiac. His mother undergoes slow torture as she receives telegrams declaring her son, missing, dead, found wounded and lost again…

Mills & Colquhoun now begin a masterful sequence that broke all the rules of war comic fiction; switching emphasis to the Home Front where Charley’s family mourn his apparent death, and work in the war industries. It’s at this time that German Zeppelin raids on British cities begin. Mills’ acerbic social criticism makes powerful use of history as our recovering boy soldier experiences the trials of submarine warfare, when the troop ship carrying him and Bill Tozer back to Blighty is torpedoed…

When their perilous North Sea odyssey at last brings Charley back to Silvertown in London’s West Ham, it is in the wake of a catastrophic disaster in which 50 tons of TNT detonate at a munitions factory, killing more than 70 workers and injuring a further 400. No longer comfortable around civilians and with no stomach for jingoistic nonsense of stay-at-homes or covert criminal endeavours of boastful “war-hero” (and secret looter) Oiley, Charley hangs out in pubs with the Sarge and reconnects with old soak/Crimean War survivor Blind Bob…

London is under constant threat, not just from greedy munitions magnates who care more for profit than safety of their workers or even victory for their homeland, but also increasingly common aerial bombing raids which provoke mindless panic and destruction at the very heart of the British Empire.

Focus here divides as Charley’s days are contrasted with the zealous mission of devoted family man Kapitan Heinrich von Bergmann who leads his Zeppelin squadron in a carefully calculated night sortie against the hated English. When Blind Bill is evicted from his rooms, Charley invites him to stay with the Bournes and the beggar’s incredible hearing (coupled with the area’s quaint air-raid listening devices) provides enough warning to seal Bergmann’s doom, but not before the airman has rained tons of explosive death on the capital…

During the bombing, Charley discovers his mum is still toiling in the local munitions works. The exploitative owner has decided not to sound his air raid evacuation alarm as he has profits and contracts to consider. Charley is not happy and dashes to get her out…

This stunning collection ends with a sharp jab at dubious practices of British recruitment officers (who got bonuses for every volunteer they signed up) as Charley stops his extremely little brother Wilf from making the same mistake he did, and teaches the unscrupulous recruiter a much-deserved lesson…

To Be Continued…

Charley’s War is a highpoint in the narrative examination of the Great War through any artistic medium and exists as 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 its mass-market, popular culture roots to become a landmark of fictive brilliance. We can only thank our lucky stars that no Hollywood hack has made it a blockbuster which would inescapably undercut the tangibility of the “heroes” whilst debasing the message. There is nothing quite like it and you are diminished by not reading it.

Included in this volume are a full cover gallery and restored colour sections (reproduced in monochrome for earlier collections but vibrantly hued here to vivid effect) and writer Mills’ wonderfully informative chapter notes and commentary on the episodes. Not just a great war comic, Charley’s War is a highpoint in narrative examination of the Great War through any artistic medium. I won’t belabour plot, script or even the riveting authentic artistic depictions. I won’t praise the wonderful quality. I simply state if you read this you will get it, and if you don’t, you won’t.

Let’s all make ensure that it’s NOT all over by Christmas!
© 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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Sidney Smith’s The Gumps


By Sidney Smith, edited and compiled by Herb Galewitz (Charles Scribner’s Sons)
ISBN: 978-0-68413-997-5 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

There are so many milestones of the art of comics that new or casual readers can’t enjoy these days. The literary pioneer celebrated in this book is probably the most important of all 20th century US cartoonists, but other than this rare-as-hen’s-teeth tome and a single Library of American Comics Essentials collection (The Saga of Mary Gold) there’s precious little to be seen of his greatest invention – in English at least. Chances are you’ve never heard of him, but Robert Sidney Smith (February 13th 1877 – October 20th 1935) is arguably the most influential creator in the history of popular entertainment. A pretty big claim, I admit, but true nonetheless.

Smith was a pioneer of narrative continuity and the most successful early cartoonist to move the medium on from situational, gag-a-day variations on a character (a style dominant again today) to build with his avid audience an ongoing relationship based on character development and story progress. The Gumps grew from a notion expressed by influential comic strip Svengali Joseph Medill Patterson – Editor and Publisher of the Chicago Tribune – who shaped the development of such iconic institutions as Little Orphan Annie, Gasoline Alley, Dick Tracy, Terry and the Pirates and so many more. He handed his idea to Smith to make magic with…

The ongoing saga of a middle class American family began in 1917 and ran for 42 years, inviting readers to share the largely comedic tribulations of chinless wonder Andy Gump, his formidable wife Minerva, son Chester, cat Hope, dog Buck and fearsome Tilda, the family’s aging cook, housemaid, gadfly and critic

Andy was a regular guy: a blowhard with lots of schemes to make his fortune, Min was shrewish and nagging, the boys were troublesome and Tilda was a nosy tartar and the already infinite plot well of their domestic set-up sporadically drifted into thrilling adventure and flights of fancy whenever eccentric, two-fisted globetrotting millionaire Uncle Bim paid a visit…

It sounds hackneyed now, but that’s because The Gumps literally wrote the book on what daily story narratives should be: a lot of laughs, plenty of vicarious judgement, an occasional tragedy, oodles of long-drawn out tension and archetypal characters every reader recognised if not actually identified with…

Having enticed and beguiled a nation, The Gumps was one of the earliest strips to make the jump to celluloid. More than four dozen Universal Pictures 2-reel comedies were released between 1923 and 1928 starring Joe Murphy as the gormless patriarch. These followed 50 or more animated cartoons first seen between in 1920 and 1921, produced and directed by Wallace A. Carlson with scripts credited to Smith.

The Gumps was an early sensation of radio (1931-1937), paving the way for all later family soap operas which mimicked its irresistible format. Most importantly, as the strip progressed, its rocketing popularity became a key driver in the rise of comics syndication. Eventually Sidney Smith’s baby was seen across America and the world and he became one of the most highly-paid artists in the history of the medium. His salary was enormous and kept rising, as the grateful Patterson constantly rewarded him with some new extravagance to show his gratitude. The legend goes that racing-mad speed-freak Smith was driving his latest luxury Rolls Royce when he died in a smash-up in 1935…

After his shocking death, Patterson parachuted in sports cartoonist Gus Edson: a creditable replacement but ultimately unable to recapture the indefinable pizzazz of the originator. Whether it was something unique to Smith or simply that times and tastes were changing will never be known. Readership declined steadily but it took decades before the feature finally folded on October 17th 1959, by which time less than 20 papers carried it.

There will probably never be a comprehensive or complete Gumps archival collection. The spiky but compelling art is still manically wonderful and most of the gags remain well-conceived and effective, but the real problem is the pacing and verbosity of the text in the panels. Smith was writing and drawing a whole new way to tell stories and had to be sure the majority of his audience were with him. For most modern readers – blessed with a 100+ years of progress – much of the material might seem interminably slow. Not so back then: many of Smith’s boldest innovations caused uproar and shock on a periodic basis…

This sterling and scholarly monochrome landscape tome from 1974 still pops up now and again, offering the best of all possible worlds; extracting salient snippets, events and extracts from key storylines whilst providing fascinating commentary and context where necessary.

On Thursday February 8th 1917 Sidney Smith’s funny animal strip Old Doc Yak ended with the sagacious ruminant moving out of their house and wondering who the next tenants might be. The following Monday – February 12th – the doors opened on the Gump clan. The magic started strong and just kept on going…

Packed with photos and plenty of astonishing facts, Herb Galewitz’s ‘Introduction’ offers the run-down on the strip and its creator whilst also providing a glimpse at the star in the making through ‘Sidney Smith’s Sports Cartoons’. Also revealed are ‘The Last Old Doc Yak’ strip and a handy pictorial introduction to the incoming cast before ‘The Early Years: 1917-20’ sees the stories begin to unfold…

Scenes of wedded bliss and domestic contention abound as Andy & Min contend with household chores, wayward furnaces, gardening, child-rearing and each other. As ticked off as they ever got, the happy marrieds seldom let adversarial moments linger or fester…

‘Andy On Vacation – 1922’ shows our hero’s take on bucolic pastimes like fishing, hiking and cooking after he and Min take separate holidays. Andy finds himself at a lakeside cabin with the least welcoming couple in history. Mr. Gump doesn’t mind: it takes all sorts and he’s willing to be accommodating…

The satire cup overflows when the pontificating prawn then enters politics. ‘Andy Runs for Congress – 1922’ proffers plenty of scope for character assassination, skulduggery and corrupt shenanigans before all the votes are finally cast and counted…

The Gumps truly hit its peak after moving wholeheartedly into melodrama, as with ‘The Vindication of Tom Carr – 1929’, wherein romantic regular Mary Gold’s one true love was wrongfully convicted of robbery. Smith sagely portrayed the trial through daily bulletins which built tension and sympathy in equal amounts. When the travesty of justice saw the real culprit rapaciously move in on Mary, the aroused assembled readership was aghast and astoundingly vocal in their protests…

They went absolutely crazy when the vile predator’s machinations led shockingly to ‘The Death of Mary Gold – 1929’. The story even moved from the comics section to Front Page as readers registered their disapproval. Circulation of papers carrying The Gumps skyrocketed…

Uncle Bim was an exotic semi-regular whose appearances always caused sparks. His lonely years of prospecting and wealth-gathering looked likely to end when he met Millie De Stross but her social-climbing mother had other ideas. These brought her to near-ruin after the gullible old lady encountered unscrupulous embezzler/conman Townsend Zander who masqueraded as royalty in ‘The Count Bessford Affair – 1933’…

With Mama firmly in the crook’s pocket, the scoundrel demanded marriage to Millie as part of his pay-off. When that went wrong he resorted to kidnap and blackmail. Audiences were breathless and terrified. Their favourite funny page feature had a track record of letting good guys suffer and killing off heroines…

When ‘The Disappearance of Uncle Bim – 1933’ was finally resolved, the distraught millionaire rushed his intended to the altar, but Zander had one last card to play, resulting in ‘A Foiled Wedding! – 1934’…

The villain’s outrageous claim to have already wed Millie led to courtroom drama and ‘A Legal Hassle! – 1934’, allowing reprehensible, haughty Mama De Stross to sue Bim for his fortune, so Andy took the beleaguered suitor to his old holiday haunt for ‘An Interlude at Shady Rest – 1934’…

Batteries fully recharged, the irrepressible Gumps returned to the fray to finally outwit Mrs. De Stross and defeat Zander, resulting in a long-delayed happy ending (of sorts) with ‘Bim and Millie, United at Last – 1934’. Of course that meant the newlyweds had to cope with ‘Mama De Stross, Mother In Law – 1934’…

These too-brief tastes of Smith’s amazing graphic narrative achievements are supplemented by a selection of shorter vignettes such as a glimpse at the unique service of housemaid ‘Tilda’ and the wiles of child prodigy ‘Chester Gump’ as well as a peek at the efforts of his successor in ‘Gus Edson’s The Gumps’. Also included is an appreciation of Smith’s gag-panel, uncomfortably displaying the “oriental wisdom” of ‘Ching Chow’. Although disquieting to modern eyes, this philosophy-spouting comedy “Chinaman” first appeared on January 27th 1927 and also carried on after Smith’s death, initially rendered by Stanley Link. Regarded as an irreplaceable cartoon “fortune cookie” by countless editors, the panel was crafted by a succession of creators and ran until June 4th 1990 (!!), outliving The Gumps by almost 40 years…

The examples seen here are counterbalanced by a ‘Comparison of Chester Gump and Stanley Link’s Tiny Tim’ and followed by a photo-feature ‘Miscellany’ displaying a wide range of Gumps books and merchandise to end this cartoon celebration…

Studious and genuinely enticing for students of comics and anybody interested in the evolution of soap operas and sitcoms, this book provides insight and a fascinating visual tour of a phenomenon and world we’ve mostly outgrown, but one still worth celebrating and commemorating.
© 1974 The Chicago Tribune/N.Y. News Syndicate Inc. All rights reserved.

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TinTin’s Moon Adventure/Tintin on the Moon/Adventures of Tintin: Destination Moon & Explorers on the Moon



By Hergé, Bob De Moors and others, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner (Egmont UK/Farshore)
ISBN: 978-1-40520-815-4 (HB Destination) 978-1-40520-627-3 (TPB Destination)
ISBN: 978-1-40520-816-1 (HB Explorers) 978-1-40520-628-0 (TPB Explorers) Tintin’s Moon Adventure (Magnet/Methuen) ISBN: 978-0-41696-710-4 (TPB)
Tintin on the Moon (Egmont) ISBN: 978-1405295901 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Georges Prosper Remi, known all over the world as Hergé, created a true masterpiece of graphic literature with his tales of a plucky boy reporter and entourage of iconic associates. Initially singly and later with stellar assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and the Hergé Studio, Remi completed 23 splendid volumes (originally produced as episodic instalments for numerous periodicals) which have grown beyond their popular culture roots and attained the status of High Art.

Like Dickens with The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Hergé died working, so final outing Tintin and Alph-Art remains a tale without an official conclusion, but is still a fascinating examination and a pictorial memorial of how the artist worked. It’s only fair though, to ascribe a substantial proportion of credit to the many translators whose diligent contributions have enabled the series to be understood and beloved in more than 70 languages. The subtle, canny, witty and slyly funny English versions are the work of Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner.

On leaving school in 1925, Remi worked for Catholic newspaper Le XXe Siècle where he apparently fell under the influence of its Svengali-like editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. The following year, the young artist (himself a dedicated boy scout) produced his first strip series – The Adventures of Totor – for monthly Boy Scouts of Belgium magazine. By 1928, he was in charge of producing the contents of Le XXe Siècle’s children’s weekly supplement Le Petit Vingtiéme. Remi was unhappily illustrating The Adventures of Flup, Nènesse and Poussette and Cochonette (written by a staff sports reporter) when Wallez urged the auteur to create an entirely new adventure series. Perhaps a young reporter who would travel the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues? Perhaps he might also highlight and expose some of the Faith’s greatest enemies and threats?

Having recently discovered word balloons in imported newspaper strips, Remi opted to incorporate this simple yet effective innovation into his own work, and produced a strip that was both modern and action-packed. Beginning on January 10th 1929, Tintin au pays des Soviets AKA Tintin in the Land of the Soviets changed the comics world. Happy 95th Anniversary, Young Man!

The strip appeared in weekly instalments in Le Petit Vingtiéme, running until May 8th 1930: meaning Tintin remains one of the very first globally successful strip characters, barely preceded by Tarzan and Buck Rogers (both January 7th 1929) and pipping Popeye who only shambled into view on January 17th of that year…

The boy-hero – a combination of Ideal Good Scout and Remi’s own brother Paul (a soldier in the Belgian Army) – would be accompanied by his dog Milou (Snowy to us English speakers) and report back all the inequities from the “Godless Russias”. The strip’s prime conceit was that Tintin was an actual foreign correspondent for Le Petit Vingtiéme and opens with the pair arriving in Russia. The dog and his boy were constantly subject to attacks and tricks by “the Soviets” to prevent the truth of their failed economic progress, specious popular support and wicked global aspirations being revealed to the Free World.

Some of the history beyond that first epic trek is quite dark: During the Nazi Occupation of Belgium, Le Vingtiéme Siècle was closed down and Hergé was compelled to transfer the strip to daily newspaper Le Soir (Brussels’ most prominent French-language periodical, and thus appropriated and controlled by the Nazis). Remi diligently toiled on for the duration, but following Belgium’s liberation was accused of collaboration and being a Nazi sympathiser.

It took the intervention of Belgian Resistance war-hero Raymond Leblanc to dispel the cloud over Hergé, which he did by resolutely vouching for the cartoonist and providing cash to create a new magazine – Le Journal de Tintin – which Leblanc published and managed.

The anthology swiftly achieved a weekly circulation in the hundreds of thousands and enabled the artist and his team to remaster past tales: excising material dictated by and added to ideologically shade war time adventures, as well as generally improving and updating great tales that were about to become a global phenomenon. With WWII over and his reputation restored, Hergé entered the most successful period of his career. He had mastered his storytelling craft, commanded a dedicated audience eager for his every effort and was finally able to say exactly what he wanted in his work, free from fear or censure.

In 1949 he returned to unfinished yarn Tintin au pays de l’or noir – abandoned when the Nazis invaded Belgium. The story had been commissioned by Le Vingtiéme Siècle, running from 28th September 1939 until 8th May 1940 when the paper was shut down. Set on the eve of a European war, the plot revolved around Tintin hunting seditionists and saboteurs tampering with Middle East oil supplies. Before being convinced to update and complete the tale as Land of Black Gold, Hergé briefly toyed with taking his cast into space…

Collected albums Objectif Lune and On a marché sur la Lune were colossal hits after initial serialisation in LJdT  from 30th March 1950 – 7th September 1950  and – after what must have been an intolerable wait for readers – from 29th October 1952 – 29th December 1953.

The tale was produced after discussions between Hergé and his friends Bernard Heuvelmans (scientist, author and father of pseudo-science Cryptozoology) and Jacques Van Melkebeke (AKA George Jacquet: strip scripter, painter, journalist and frequent if unacknowledged contributor to Tintin’s canon). The sci fi epic which became a 2-volume masterpiece first made the leap to English in 1959.

On a personal note: I first read Destination Moon in 1964, in a huge hardcover album edition (as they all were in the 1960s) and was blown completely away. I’m happy to say that except for the smaller pages – and there’s never a substitute for “pictorial Big-ness” – this taut thriller and its magnificent, mind-boggling sequel are still in a class of their own in the annals of science fiction comic strips. During the 1980s the entire tale was (repeatedly) released in a combined tome as Tintin’s Moon Adventure: an utterly inescapable piece of publishing common sense. It’s just a shame that it – and all the other the Tintin books – are still not available in digital editions…

Our tale opens with the indomitable boy reporter and Captain Haddock returning to ancestral pile Marlinspike Hall only to discover brilliant but “difficult” savant Professor Cuthbert Calculus has disappeared. When an enigmatic telegram arrives, the puzzled pair are off once again to Syldavia (as seen in King Ottokar’s Sceptre) and a rendezvous with the missing boffin…

Although suspicious, Tintin soon finds the secrecy is for sound reasons. In Syldavia, Calculus and an international team of researchers, engineers and technologists are completing a grand project to put a man on the Moon! In a turbulent race against time and amidst a huge and all-encompassing security clampdown, the scheme nears completion, but Tintin and Haddock’s arrival coincides with a worrying increase in espionage activity.

Some enemy nation or agency is determined to steal the secrets of Calculus’s groundbreaking atomic motor at any cost, and it takes all Tintin’s ingenuity to keep ahead of the villains. The arrival of detectives Thompson and Thomson adds nothing to the aura of anxiety but their bumbling investigations and Calculus’ brief bout of concussion-induced amnesia provide some of the funniest moments in comics history…

As devious incidents and occurrences of sabotage increase in intensity and frequency it becomes clear that there is a traitor inside the project, but at last the moment arrives and Tintin, Haddock, Calculus, technologist Dr. Frank Wolff (and Snowy) blast off for space!

Cold, clinical and superbly underplayed, Destination Moon is completely unlike the flash-and-dazzle razzamatazz of British or American tales from that period – or since. It is as if the burgeoning Cold War mentality of the era infected even Tintin’s bright clean world. Moreover, as before, pressure of work and Hergé’s troubled private life resulted in a breakdown and forced hiatus in the serial, but this time some of that darkness transferred to the material – although it only seems to have added to the overall effect of claustrophobia and paranoia. Even comedy set-pieces are more manic and explosive: despite its fantastic premise, in many ways this is the most mature of all Tintin’s exploits…

Presumably to offset the pressures, the master founded Studio Hergé, beginning on 6th April 1950: a public company to produce The Adventures of Tintin as well other features, with Bob De Moor enthroned as chief apprentice. He became a vital component of Tintin’s gradual domination of the book market: frequently despatched on visual fact-finding missions. De Moor revised the backgrounds of The Black Island for a British edition, repeating the task for a definitive 1971 release of Land of Black Gold. An invaluable and permanent addition to the production team, De Moor supervised and administrated while filling in backgrounds and, most notably, rendering those unforgettably eerie, magnificent Lunar landscapes of the sequel volume.

If the first book is an exercise in tension and suspense, Explorers on the Moon is sheer bravura spectacle. En route to Luna the explorers discover the idiot detectives have stowed away by accident. In conjunction with Captain Haddock’s illicit whisky imbibing and the effects of freefall, Thompson & Thomson provide brilliant comedy routines to balance the pervasive isolation and dramatic dangers of the journey.

Against all odds the lunanauts land safely and make astounding scientific discoveries. We Boomers knew decades ago that there was water on the moon because Tintin and Snowy went skating there! However, the explorations are cut short due to the imminent threat of suffocation after the discovery of another extra passengers on the rocket. Moreover, lurking in the shadows is the very real threat of a murderous traitor to be dealt with…

This so-modern yarn is a high point in the entire Tintin canon, blending heroism and drama with genuine moments of irresistible emotion… and side-splitting comedy. The absolute best of the bunch in my humble opinion, and still one of the most realistic and accurately depicted space comics ever produced. If you only ever read one Hergé saga it simply must be the translunar Adventure of Tintin.
Destination Moon: artwork © 1953, 1959, 1981 Editions Casterman, Paris & Tournai. Text © 1959 Egmont UK Limited. All Rights Reserved. Explorers on the Moon: artwork © 1954, 1959, 1982 Editions Casterman, Paris & Tournai. Text © 1959 Egmont UK Limited. All Rights Reserved.

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Tarzan and the Adventurers (Complete Burne Hogarth Comic Strip Library volume 5)


By Burne Hogarth & Rob Thompson with James Freeman, Dan Barry, Nick Cardy, Bob Lubbers & various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78565-380-3 (landscape album HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

The 1930 and 1940s were decades of astounding pictorial periodical adventure. In the age before mass television, newspaper strips (and their bastard spawn comic books) were the only form of visually-based home entertainment for millions of citizens young and old, consequently shaping the culture of many nations. Relatively few strips attained nigh-universal approval and acclaim. The Gumps, Little Orphan Annie, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, Terry and the Pirates and Prince Valiant were in that rarefied pantheon but arguably the most famous was Tarzan.

Evolving from mock melodrama comedic features like Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs or Carl Ed’s Harold Teen, the full-blown dramatic adventure serial truly started on January 7th 1929 with Buck Rogers and Tarzan debuting that day. Both were skilful adaptations of pre-existing prose properties and their influence changed the shape of the medium forever. The following years saw an explosion of similar fare, launched with astounding rapidity to huge success. Not only strips, but also actual fictive genres were born in that decade, still impacting today’s comic books and all our popular entertainment forms.

In terms of art quality, adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ immensely successful novels starring jungle-bred John Clayton, Lord Greystoke by Canadian commercial artist Harold “Hal” Foster were unsurpassed. The strip soon became beloved by the masses, supplementing and nurtured by the movies, books, radio show and ubiquitous advertising appearances.

As detailed in previous volumes of this sublime oversized (330 x 254 mm), monochrome/full -colour hardback series, Foster initially quit at the end of a 10-week adaptation of first novel Tarzan of the Apes. He was replaced by Rex Maxon, but at the insistent urging of author Burroughs, returned when the black-&-white daily expanded to include a lush, full colour Sunday page offering original adventures. Maxon was left to capably handle the weekday book adaptations, as Foster crafted the epic and lavish Sunday page until 1936: 233 consecutive weeks. He then left again for good: moving to King Features Syndicate and his own landmark weekend masterpiece Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur which debuted in February 1937. Once the 4-month backlog of material he had built up was gone, Foster was succeeded by a precociously brilliant 25-year old neophyte.

Burne Hogarth was a passionate graphic visionary whose superb anatomical skill, cinematic design flair and compelling page composition revolutionised action/adventure narrative illustration. His galvanic dynamism of idealised human figures and animals can still be seen in today’s comic books: all that impossibly body-positive perfection in motion can be directly attributed to Hogarth’s pioneering drawing and, in later years, educational efforts. Burroughs was a big fan and cannily used the increasingly popular comic strip to cross-market his own prose efforts with great effect.

This fabulous fifth & final tome encompasses Sunday pages from October 1949 to September 1950 and the equivalent Daily strips (September 1947 through September 1950), with Hogarth gradually easing out of the now-onerous job and employing a legion of gifted ghosts to fulfil his obligations. During this period, commercially-led format changes reduced the size and changed the shape of the Sunday strip from tabloid to landscape framing, but the contents suffered no loss of wonder, action or drama. The transition and repercussions are discussed with some academic frontloading and fitting further explanation in the form of extended essay ‘Transforming Tarzan’s Jungle’ by Henry G. Franke III. Fully briefed for our trek, we resume the fun with ‘Tarzan and the Adventurers’: Sunday pages #973 – 1010 as seen spanning October 30th 1949 to July 16th 1950. The saga was crafted by Hogarth, writer Rob Thompson and latterly James Freeman – who was forced upon Hogarth after the syndicate fired his preferred collaborator. It sees the Ape-Man visiting old ally Masai chief N’Kola just as white explorers Baker and Cleveland arrive, seeking the tribes’ help in locating a medicinal herb which might be a malaria cure.

In truth, the scurrilous duo are hunting lost treasure sunk in kingdom-demarcating Lake Dagomba, and need help in convincing Dagomba headman Mabuli to allow them access. This chief hates Tarzan but the impasse is ended when wicked witch doctor Chaka strikes a sinister side deal that triggers valiant efforts and vile betrayal, double cross, murder and bloody civil warfare incorporating spectacular chases, fantastic duels with beasts, mortals and the very landscape, captivating readers for months until the saga ended with explosive irony and tons of TNT…

The end was near for Hogarth and the Jungle Lord, and the Sunday association closed in a short serial finished by a comic book artist slowly making strips his career. Born in 1922, Robert Bartow “Bob” Lubbers drew a host of features before WWII, but other than The Vigilante and The Human Fly after hostilities ceased, mostly settled on newspaper stars like The Saint, Big Ben Bolt, Li’l Abner, Secret Agent X-9 and his own creations Long Sam and Robin Malone. That all occurred after a stellar run assisting/replacing Hogarth.

Ostensibly crafted by – and still signed “Hogarth”, ‘Tarzan and the Wild Game Hunters’ (#1011-1019: July 23rd to September 17th 1950) saw the vine-voyaging valiant aid cowboy-turned safari man Russ Rawson in capturing a rhino and gorilla for Winchester Zoo… but only after determining that Africa would be a far better place without these pair of particularly perilous rogue beasts…

Before switching to moody monochrome and standard single tier-per-diem layouts for the dailies section, Franke III explores ‘The Daily Grind’ in another erudite prose prologue preceding the accumulated serial sequences: providing context and background on writer Thompson and artistic aids/replacements Dan Barry, Nick Cardy & Lubbers, with John Lehti and Paul Reinman also getting a worthy mention.

Monday to Saturday storylines were relentless and tough to get right. No matter how good you are, there’s only so much progress to be made in 3-4 panels at a time, and savvy creators usually combined classic themes with familiar material whenever they could. Here that notion resulted in a (very) broad adaptation/reinterpretation of ERB’s prose pulp serial Tarzan at the Earth’s Core, which had been first serialised between September 1929 and March 1930 ,before becoming the 13th canonical novel in 1932. The strips comprising ‘Tarzan at the Earth’s Core’ (#2509 to 2616, September 1st 1947 through January 3rd 1948) were supervised by Hogarth & Thompson but limned primarily by Dan Barry (1911-1997).

He also began as a jobbing comic book guy. Like his own brother Seymour “Sy” Barry – who produced The Phantom newspaper strip for three decades – Dan worked in a finely-detailed, broadly realistic style, blending aesthetic sensibility with straightforward visual clarity and firm, almost burly virile toughness: a gritty “He-man” attitude for a new era, contemporarily christened “New York Slick”.

He drew masked hero fare like Airboy, Skywolf, Boy King, Black Owl, Spy Smasher, Doc Savage and more before joining the US Air Force and, on returning after the hostilities, drew monster hero The Heap and sundry genre shorts for titles like Crimebusters whilst running his own outfit producing educational/informational comics. Dan began his  gradual withdrawal from funnybooks as early as 1947, joining Hogarth’s studio and assuming art chores on the Tarzan daily for a year, whilst still gracing DC’s crime, mystery and science fiction anthologies until as late as 1954. He was offered Flash Gordon and quickly accepted, but that’s the stuff of another review…

In deepest, darkest Africa, the Jungle Lord is tracked down by explorer Jason Gridley who has been in contact with a man named David Innes, and resolved to save that lost soul. Innes is an adventurer who joined Professor Abner Perry in a giant drilling vehicle that took them deep inside the Earth. They are now trapped in an incredible antediluvian realm more than 500 miles below the world’s crust: a land of beast men, lost empires, dinosaurs and even more incredible things…

Tarzan is largely a spectator for this sequence as ERB’s prose adventures in Pellucidar are updated and recounted for readers before Lord Greystoke joins the rescue party using another mole machine – built by boffin Dr. Dana Franklin – to reach the exotic underworld. Adding romantic interest is Franklin’s glamourous daughter/assistant Doris as they voyage deep into a myriad of incredible adventures.

As well as saving Innes and Perry and reuniting the former with his own true love Dian the Beautiful, the newcomers face sentient pterodactyl tyrants (Thipdars if you’re au fait with the books), clash with cavemen and ape beasts (Sagoths), fight a macabre menagerie of long-extinct monsters, war with lizard warriors (Horibs) and get utterly lost and reunited in a land where time does not pass and night never comes…

The series is a paean to primitivism and is a boost to all those besotted with wild kingdoms. There are even pulchritudinous primeval pairings… Gridley to cavegirl princess Jana and Doris with Clovian cave chief Ulan…

The drama is divided into individual overlapping adventures until all the players eventually reunite for a big, big finale. With the aforementioned ghost artists deployed to augment Barry & Thompson, the saga concludes with episodes #2617-2640 of ‘Tarzan at the Earth’s Core’ (January 5th – 31st January 1948) as all the plot threads cleave together and those who want to return to the surface do so…

Although he was still involved in a mostly administrative capacity, Hogarth’s signature had been missing for some time when ‘Tarzan and Hard-Luck Harrigan’ #3361-3414: 22nd May – 22nd July 1950) began. The strip sported the name of new illustrator Nick Cardy; AKA strip veteran Nicolas Viscardi, who had drawn Lady Luck and other features for Will Eisner, and post-war became a DC mainstay on Gang Busters, Congo Bill, Aquaman, Teen Titans, Bat Lash, Batman/The Brave and the Bold and so much more. The tale itself was lighter fare with humorous overtones as Greystoke encountered a decrepit and devious old western prospector/snake oil peddler who had foolishly hitched his wagon to an African adventure… The affable scoundrel initially tried to capture Tarzan’s monkey pals before attempting to catch and sell the Ape-man himself before learning the error of his ways…

Sadly, old habits died hard. When the odd companions encountered desert raider El Mahmud dying of wounds, they were forced by the bandit’s devoted lieutenant Rambul to “cure” him with Harrigan’s bottled nostrum. That’s when the literal gold-digger spots the treasure the raiders possess and reverts to type, determined to enjoy one last lucky strike, no matter who he must betray…

Again demarcated by an artist change, ‘Tarzan and Hard-Luck Harrigan’ concluded with episodes #3415-3420 (24th – 29th July 1950) signifying the beginning of Lubbers 3½ year tenure, with a rowdily raucous big battle and the old coot’s redemption before moving briefly on to final inclusion ‘Attack of the Apes’ (#3421-3462: 31st July – 16th September 1950) with Lubbers benefitting from Hogarth’s last moments of oversight in a spooky yarn where a renegade troop of Great Apes (the fictious subspecies that reared Tarzan) begin attacking native villages…

After investigating in the primal manner of the lord of the forests, Tarzan gains a new anthropoid assistant in brutal Bay-At, learns who, why and what the true culprits are and renders his own judgement…

And that was that for Hogarth’s Tarzan until a flurry of new material appeared as graphic novel prototypes in the 1970s, which helped usher in a more mature view of the comics medium itself.

Tarzan is a fictive figure who has attained immortal reality in a number of different creative arenas, but none offer the breathtaking visceral immediacy of Burne Hogarth’s comic strips. These vivid visual masterworks are all coiled-spring tension or vital, violent explosive motion: stretching, running, fighting, surging rushes of power and glory where even backgrounds and landscapes achieve a degree of dramatic interactive expressionism. It’s a dream come true that these majestic exploits are available in full for ours and future generations of dedicated fantasists to enjoy.
Trademarks Tarzan® and Edgar Rice Burroughs® owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and Used by Permission. Copyright © 2018 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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V for Vendetta/V for Vendetta 30th Anniversary Edition


By Alan Moore & David Lloyd, with Tony Weare, Steve Whitaker, Siobhan Dodds & various (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-8500-5 (30th Deluxe HB) 978-1-4012-0841-7 (TPB)

Very few pieces of literature enter public consciousness and fewer still from the relatively young land of graphic narratives. Here’s one of the best that – as my dwindling days go by – looks and feels more and more like poetic prophecy than fantasy fiction…

The serial V for Vendetta began in 1982 in legendary British comics magazine Warrior: back when Britain had a covertly totalitarian, graspingly greedy government that looked like a Peppa Pig birthday party, but were at least marginally efficient and made some trains run on time and in affordable price bands…

The deviously convoluted mystery play describes a highly individualistic resistance campaign conducted by an enigmatic flamboyant and ruthless “anarchist” against a fascistic British government which had stumbled into power after a disaster (a nuclear exchange in this case) destroyed all the bigger countries.

Or does it?

This is just as much a tale of intellectual and political awakening and choosing to take action. Most events are seen (as the escalating situation unravels) through the eyes and experiences of Evey Hammond, a pathetic little nobody rescued from secret policemen – almost as an afterthought – by enigmatic rebel activist “V” during his first highly public exploit.

The sinisterly suspenseful series was originally presented Visually in starkly stunning black & white, every chapter title beginning with a “v” word. Fans of classic British strip art revelled in occasional contributions from the wonderfully gifted Tony Weare (Matt Marriot, Pride of the Circus, Savage Splendour, The Colditz Story and much, much more) who fully illustrated the chapter designated ‘Vincent’ and also assisted master stylist David Lloyd (Sláine: Cauldron of Blood, Night Raven: House of Cards, Aliens: Glass Corridor, Weird War Tales, Gangland, The Horrorist, Marlowe: The Graphic Novel, Hellblazer: Rare Cuts, War Story: J For Jenny, War Story: Nightingale, Kickback and more) in creating a masterpiece of daunting visual atmosphere throughout.

This was no mean feat as V – whilst dismantling with lethal efficiency the machineries of a totalitarian and ever vigilant State that constantly voiced its views that everything was better in the Good Old Days – declared himself the true guardian of lost and/or forgotten National Culture. This demanded a phenomenal amount of research and vital trust that the readership would pick up on some pretty obscure references, both Verbal and Visual…

The then-controversial jump to colour (I, for one, would kill for a fully monochrome director’s cut edition of this saga) following DC’s appropriation of the saga was deftly handled by Lloyd himself, with the hued back-up of much-missed Steve Whitaker and Siobhan Dodds, whilst the relentless and captivating Verbiage of Alan (Providence, Jerusalem, Lost Girls, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Illuminations, Voice of the Fire, A Small Killing, Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, Swamp Thing, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Watchmen, D.R. & Quinch ad infinitum…) Moore’s astounding scripts came courtesy of letterers Jenny O’Connor, Steve Craddock & Elitta Fell.

… And yes, pitiless the enigmatic protagonist known only as V generally adopts the seeming of ultimate anti-authoritarian rebel Guido “Guy” Fawkes. His once-common masked vulpine visage was rescued from vintage obscurity for this tale and has subsequently become a global symbol and tool of anonymity for new generations of rebels, resisters, protestors and occupiers…

The subtle shadings of the large cast and the device of telling the tale from the point of view of its villains as much as the protagonists adds vast shades of meaning to this exploration of free will and oppression, and it’s still shocking to realise that the “hero” actions are all too often indistinguishable from those of his opponents: philosophically, morally and especially physically…

The collected book was first released in the early 1990s, re-released to coincide with a (rather disappointing) movie adaptation but remains available in hardback Deluxe, Trade paperback and future-proof digital editions.

Despite temporarily reclaiming the image of good old Guy Fawkes night, this review is actually a paean of praise for our art form’s ultimate resistance tract and I strongly suggest that if you are still uninformed and unentertained, you should experience V for Vendetta as soon as Viable. Messers Moore & Lloyd made a magnificent and mighty beast which should be Viewed in all its glory, before Vile Vehement politics ends us all, and absolutely prior to any forthcoming Plebiscite, Election or Popular Vote.
© 1988, 1989, 1990, 2009, 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mandrake the Magician: Dailies volume 1 – The Cobra


By Lee Falk & Phil Davis (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1178276-690-2 (HB)

Time for another – belated – Birthday briefing as we celebrate 90 glorious years for another golden Age stalwart…

Regarded by many as comics’ first superhero, Mandrake the Magician debuted as a daily newspaper strip on 11th June 1934 – although creator Lee Falk had sold the strip almost a decade previously. Initially drawing it too, Falk replaced himself as soon as feasible, allowing the early wonderment to materialise through the effective understatement of sublime draughtsman Phil Davis. An instant hit, Mandrake was soon supplemented by a full-colour Sunday companion page from February 3rd 1935.

Falk – as a 19-year old college student – had sold the strip to King Features Syndicate years earlier, but asked the monolithic company to let him finish his studies before dedicating himself to it full time. Schooling done, the 23-year-old born raconteur settled into his life’s work: entertaining millions with astounding tales. Falk also created the first costumed superhero in moodily magnificent generational manhunter The Phantom, whilst spawning an entire comic book subgenre with his first creation. Most Golden Age publishers boasted at least one (but usually many) nattily attired wizards in their gaudily-garbed pantheons: all roaming the world(s) making miracles and crushing injustice with varying degrees of stage legerdemain or actual sorcery.

Characters such as Mr. Mystic, Ibis the Invincible, Sargon the Sorcerer, and an assortment of  “…the Magician” ’s like Zatara, Zanzibar, Kardak proliferated ad infinitum: all borrowing heavily and shamelessly from the uncanny exploits of the elegant, enigmatic man of mystery gracing the world’s newspapers and magazines.

In the Antipodes, Mandrake was a suave stalwart regular of Australian Women’s Weekly and became a cherished icon of adventure in the UK, Australia, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Spain, France, Turkey and across Scandinavia: a major star of page and screen, pervading every aspect of global consciousness.

Over the years he has been a star of radio, movie chapter-serials, a theatrical play, television and animation (as part of the cartoon series Defenders of the Earth). With that has come the usual merchandising bonanza of games, toys (including magic trick kits), books, comics and more…

Falk worked on Mandrake and “The Ghost who Walks” until his death in 1999 (even on his deathbed, he was laying out one last story), but also found a few quiet moments to become a renowned playwright, theatre producer and impresario, as well as an inveterate world-traveller.

After drawing those the first few strips Falk united with sublimely polished cartoonist Phil Davis. His sleekly understated renditions took the daily strip, especially that expansive full-page Sunday page (collected in a sister volume), to unparalleled heights of sophistication. Davis’ steadfast, assured realism was the perfect tool to render the Magician’s mounting catalogue of spectacular miracles.

Those in the know are well aware that Mandrake was educated at the fabled College of Magic in Tibet, thereafter becoming a suave globe-trotting troubleshooter, always accompanied by his faithful African friend Lothar and beautiful companion (eventually, in 1997, bride) Princess Narda of Cockaigne, co-operatively solving crimes and fighting evil.

Those days, however, are still to come as a wealth of fact-filled features begins here with college Classics Professor Bob Griffin vividly recalling ‘From Fan to Friend: My Memories of Lee Falk’. Mathematics lecturer and comics historian Rick Norwood traces comic book sorcerers and sources in ‘Mandrake Gestures Hypnotically’ before the strips section of this luxury monochrome landscape hardback opens on the hero’s first case.

A classy twist on contemporary crime dramas and pulp fiction, ‘The Cobra’ (June 11th – November 24th 1934) exhibits the eponymous criminal mastermind menacing the family of US ambassador Vandergriff… until a dapper, haunting figure and his colossal African companion insert themselves into the affair. Initially mistrusted, Mandrake & Lothar guide the embattled diplomat through a globe-girdling vendetta against a human fiend with mystic powers and a loyal terrorist cult. Employing their own miracles, wonders and common sense, the heroes defeat every scheme leading to a ferocious final clash in the orient and the seeming destruction of the wicked evil wizard.

At their ease in Alexandria, Mandrake & Lothar are targeted by criminal mastermind ‘The Hawk’ (November 26th 1934 – February 23rd 1935) and meet distrait socialite Narda of Cockaigne, who employs her every wile to seduce and destroy them. Thwarting each plot, Mandrake learns her actions are dictated by a monstrous stalker blackmailing Narda’s brother Prince Sigrid. With his true enemy revealed, the Mage sets implacably to work to settle the villain’s affairs for good…

With an impending sense of further entanglements to come, the wanderers leave Narda, eventually fetching up in the Carpathians and encountering a lonely, embattled woman tormented by crazed Professor Sorcin and ‘The Monster of Tanov Pass’ (February 25th – June 15th 1935). This time, there’s a fearsomely robust and rational explanation for all the terror and tribulations…

Mandrake & Lothar meet weary policeman Inspector Duffy and clash with a brilliant mimic and master thief in Arabia. ‘Saki, the Clay Camel’ (June 17th – November 2nd 1935) is driving the occupying British authorities to distraction but an offer of mystic assistance brings danger, excitement and a surprise reunion with Narda before the faceless fiend and his army of desperate criminals are defeated…

Heading into the frozen north, magician and strongman encounter persecuted Lora, saving her from her own unscrupulous and cash-crazed family and ‘The Werewolf’ (November 4th 1935 – February 29th 1936) before this first volume concludes with ‘The Return of the Clay Camel’ (March 2nd – July 18th 1936): a rip-roaring romp showing off Falk’s deft gift for comedy…

It begins with our heroes curing a raging, obsessive sportsman of the urge to hunt, before expanding into a baffling mystery as the long vacationing Sir Oswald returns home to England only to discover someone has been perfectly impersonating him for months…

Devolving into a cunning robbery and comedy of mistaken identity, Mandrake and the false faced Saki test wits and determination, but even with the distraction of an impending marriage being hijacked too, its certain that the canny conjuror is going to come out on top…

Closing with ‘The Phil Davis Mandrake the Magician Complete Daily Checklist 1934-1965’ this thrilling tome offers exotic locales, thrilling action, bold belly laughs, spooky chills and sheer elegance in equal measure. Paramount taleteller Falk instinctively knew from the start that the secret of success was strong and – crucially – recurring villains to test and challenge his heroes, and make Mandrake an unmissable treat for every daily strip addict. These stories have lost none of their impact and only need you reading them to concoct a perfect cure for the 21st century blues.
Mandrake the Magician © 2016 King Features Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. All other material © 2016 the respective authors or owners.

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The Brittle Mastery of Donald Duck


By Carl Barks (Gladstone Comic Album #7)
ISBN: 978-0-94459-906-8 (Album PB)

Although experts quibble over the details of Donald Duck’s debut (I cleave to the notion we should use the premier of The Wise Little Hen on 3rd May rather than the June 9th US general release date), everybody agrees 1934 was the year and that the magnificent mallard is 90 this year. In honour of that achievement, here’s a lovely old book starring Disney’s top cartoon star that you might be lucky enough to find. Even if you can’t, the stories are scattered throughout Fantagraphics’ magnificent Carl Barks library editions which we will continue sporadically reviewing and which you really should already own…

Donald Duck ranks among a small group of fictional characters to have transcended the bounds of reality and become – like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Popeye and James Bond -meta-real. As such, his origins are complex and convoluted. His official birthday is June 9th 1934: a dancing, nautically-themed bit-player in the Silly Symphony cartoon short The Wise Little Hen.

The animated cartoon was adapted by Ted Osborne & Al Taliaferro for the Silly Symphonies Sunday newspaper strip and thus classified by historians as Donald’s official debut in Disney comics. Controversially, he was also reported to have pre-originated in The Adventures of Mickey Mouse strip which began 1931. Thus the Duck has more “birthdays” than he knows what to do with, which presumably explains why he’s such a bad-tempered cuss.

Visually, Donald Fauntleroy Duck was largely the result of animator Dick Lundy’s efforts, and, with partner-in-fun Mickey Mouse, is one of TV Guide’s 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time. The Duck has his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame and has appeared in more films than any other Disney player. Throughout the 1930s, his screen career grew from background and supporting roles via a team act with Mickey and Goofy to a series of solo cartoons beginning with 1937’s Don Donald. That one also introduced love interest Daisy Duck and the irrepressible nephews Huey, Louie and Dewey…

By 1938 The Duck was officially more popular than corporate icon Mickey Mouse, and even more so after his national service as a propaganda warrior in a series of animated morale boosters and information features during WWII. The merely magnificent Der Fuehrer’s Face garnered the 1942 Academy Award for Animated Short Film…

Crucially for our purposes, Donald is also planet Earth’s most-published non-superhero comics character, and blessed with some of the greatest writers and illustrators ever to punch a keyboard or pick up a pen or brush. A publishing phenomenon and megastar across Europe – particularly Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland – Donald (& Co) have spawned countless original stories and many immortal characters. Sales are stratospheric across all age groups there and in upwards of 45 other countries they export to. Japan’s manga publishers have their own iteration too…

The aforementioned Silly Symphonies adaptation and Mickey strip guest shots were trumped in 1937 when Italian publisher Mondadori launched an 18-page comic book story crafted by Federico Pedrocchi. It was quickly followed by a regular serial in Britain’s Mickey Mouse Weekly (a comic produced under license by Willbank Publications/Odhams Press that ran from 8th February 1936 to 28th December 1957). Issue #67 (May 15th 1937) premiered Donald and Donna – a prototype Daisy Duck girlfriend – drawn by William A. Ward. Running for 15 weeks, it was followed by Donald and Mac before ultimately settling as Donald Duck – a fixture until the magazine folded. The feature inspired similar Disney-themed publications across Europe, with Donald regularly appearing beside company mascot Mickey…

In the USA, a daily Donald Duck newspaper strip launched on February 2nd 1938, with a colour Sunday strip added in 1939. Writer Ted Karp joined Taliaferro in expanding the duck cast and history: adding a signature automobile, pet dog Bolivar, goofy cousin Gus Goose, and grandmother Elvira Coot whilst expanding the roles of both Donna and Daisy. In 1942, his comic book life began with October cover-dated Dell Four Color Comics Series II #9: AKA Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. It was conceived by Homer Brightman & Harry Reeves, scripted by Karp and illustrated by Disney Studios employees Carl Barks & Jack Hannah. That was the moment everything changed…

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901, and raised in rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in American history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks was a cartoonist, then an animator before quitting the Studio in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books. From then until his retirement in the mid-1960s (he officially downed tools in 1966 but was cajoled into scripting stories well into 1968), Barks worked in self-imposed seclusion: writing, drawing and devising a vast array of adventure comedies, gags, yarns and covers that gelled into a Duck Universe of memorable and highly bankable characters like Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Magica De Spell (1961) and the nefarious Beagle Boys (1951) to supplement the Studio’s stable of cartoon actors.

His greatest creation was crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad giga-gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the World’s wealthiest winged nonagenarian and frequent spur/gadfly and reluctant sugar daddy to the adventuresome youngsters…

Whilst producing all that landmark material Barks was also just a working guy, generating cover art, drawing other people’s scripts as asked, and always adding stories to a burgeoning international canon of Duck Lore. Only after Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material in books like this during the 1980s, did he discover the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed. Media Historian Leonard Maltin called Barks “the most popular and widely read artist/writer in the world”…

So potent were Barks’ creations that they fed back into Disney’s overarching animation output, despite all his brilliant comic work being for Dell/Gold Key and not the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly animated series Duck Tales, based on his classic Uncle Scrooge adventures. Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries and epics of exploration, and this led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and sheer wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps that utterly captivated readers of every age and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions there would never have been an Indiana Jones…

During his working life Barks was utterly unaware that his work – uncredited due to company policy, as was all Disney’s comics output – had been recognised by a rabid and discerning public as “the Good Duck Artist”. When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, belated celebrity began.

In 2013, Fantagraphics Books began chronologically collecting Barks’ Duck stuff in curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes and digital editions that finally did justice to the quiet creator. These will eventually comprise the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. Physical copies are sturdy and luxurious albums – 193 x 260mm – to grace any bookshelf.

Gladstone Publishing began re-releasing Barks material and sundry other Disney strips in the late-1980s and this album is one of their best. Printed in the European oversized format (278mm x 223mm) this joyous compendium collects an occasional series of similarly-themed yarns: some of the best and funniest Duck tales ever crafted.

The “Brittle Master” series is the name given by devotees to a group of stories wherein the perennial failing, fiery-tempered and eternally put-upon everyman Donald displays an excellence in some unique skill or service, winning the approval and veneration of all and sundry – only to have his own smug hubris bring about his ultimate humiliation and downfall.

The first untitled tale, from Walt Disney Comics and Stories #156 (1953) sees Donald as an airplane-piloting, cloud-sculpting Master Rainmaker catering to increasingly outrageous requests from his adoring public. This leads him inevitably to disaster – in this case the creation of a full-blown, devastating Ice-storm…

Next, from WDC&S #222 (1959) comes the tale of the Master Mover, as Donald displays an uncanny ability to transport anything anywhere, only to come a crushing cropper when he guarantees to shift an entire zoo to a mountaintop in one afternoon!

From Donald Duck #68 (also from 1959) ‘The Master Glasser’ (we’d call him a glazier) is a wickedly satirical glimpse at small-town America as the arrogant artificer at the height of his fame attempts to repair the aged fascia of Duckburg’s giant clock. Perhaps he shouldn’t have tried to do it live on TV?

The fourth tale is one where I suspect Donald actually found his true calling. The ‘Master Wrecker’ (WDC&S #26, 1962) is the go-to-duck if you need something demolished with no muss or fuss, and even in this hilarious yarn Donald doesn’t actually fail. The target is utterly razed: it’s just not the one he was supposed to demolish…

This delightful collection ends with the satisfyingly sharp ‘Spare That Hair’ (WDC&S #272, 1963) as Donald the Master Barber finally wins one for a change, even though he mistakenly shaves a gorilla and inspires the ire of a rowdy circus ringmaster…

Barks was as adept with quick-fire gag stories as epic adventures; blending humour with drama and charm with action, and even if you can’t find this particular volume, most of his unforgettable work is readily accessible through a number of publications and outlets and in many languages. So if you seek to become a Master Reader, you know what you need to do…
© 1988, 1963, 1962, 1959, 1953 The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Lone Wolf and Cub volume 6: Lanterns for the Dead


By Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima, translated by Dana Lewis (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-507-9 (TPB/digital edition)

Best known in the West as Lone Wolf and Cub, the vast Samurai saga created by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima is without doubt a global classic of comics literature. An example of the popular Chanbara or “sword-fighting” genre of print and screen, Kozure Okami was first serialised in Weekly Manga Action from September 1970 until April 1976. It was an immense and overwhelming Seinen (“Men’s manga”) hit. The tales prompted thematic companion series Kubikiri Asa (Samurai Executioner – which ran from 1972-1976) but the major draw – at home and, increasingly, abroad – was always the nomadic wanderings of doomed feudal noble Ogami Ittō and his solemn, silent child Daigoro as they were framed by family rivals, dishonoured by the Shōgun and condemned to death by his peers. Breaching all etiquette the court executioner refused to suicide quietly and instead opted to vengefully walk the bloody road to Meifumadō: the hell of Buddhist legend…

Revered and influential, Kozure Okami was – after years of supplication by fans and editors – followed by sequel Shin Lone Wolf & Cub (illustrated by Hideki Mori) and even spawned – through Koike’s indirect participation – science fiction homage Lone Wolf 2100 (by Mike Kennedy & Francisco Ruiz Velasco) The original saga has been successfully adapted to most other media, spawning movies, plays, TV series (plural), games and merchandise. The property is infamously still in Hollywood pre-production…

The several thousand pages of enthralling, exotic, intoxicating narrative art produced by these legendary creators eventually filled 28 collected volumes, beguiling generations of readers in Japan and, inevitably, the world. More importantly, their philosophically nihilistic odyssey – with its timeless themes and iconic visuals – has influenced hordes of other creators. The many manga, comics and movies, TV and animated versions these stories have inspired around the globe are utterly impossible to count. Frank Miller, who illustrated the cover of this edition, referenced the series in Daredevil, his dystopian opus Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City. Max Allan Collins’ Road to Perdition is a proudly unashamed tribute to the masterpiece of vengeance-fiction. Stan Sakai has superbly spoofed, pastiched and celebrated the wanderer’s path in his own epic Usagi Yojimbo, and even children’s cartoon shows such as Samurai Jack are direct descendants of this astounding achievement of graphic narrative. The material has become part of a shared global culture.

In the West, we first saw the translated tales in 1987, as 45 Prestige Format editions from First Comics. That innovative trailblazer foundered before getting even a third of the way through the vast canon, after which Dark Horse Comics acquired the rights, systematically reprinting and translating the entire epic into 28 tankōbon-style editions of around 300 pages each. Once the entire epic was translated – between September 2000 and December 2002 – it was all placed online through the Dark Horse Digital project.

Following cautionary warning on stylistic interpretation ‘A Note to Readers’, this moodily morbid monochrome collection truly gets underway, keeping in text many terms and concepts western readers may find unfamiliar. Thankfully on offer at the close is a Glossary providing detailed context on the term used in the stories. The endless journey resumes in Lanterns for the Dead with 29th exploit ‘Floating Spirits’ as the wanderer buys two bamboo boats as a votive offering, even as elsewhere extremely low-placed yakuza foot-soldiers Kinpachi and Kotomi make a life-changing mistake that costs both their dignity and one his life.

As the heartsick survivor seeks redress of deadly killer Kyōjō Isogitabi and vengeance upon his gang of brutal killers, the petty thug is inexorably drawn into the orbit of the Lone Wolf. The hell-bound wanderer is undertaking his latest commission and already pursues Kyōjō, with that inevitable clash granting Kinpachi and Kotomi deferred but suitably bloody vengeance of a kind…

When a gang of criminal fraudsters attempt their riskiest con after intercepting a client of the Lone Wolf and impersonating Ogami Ittō, the cost to the scurrilous ‘Deer Chaser’ gang is full and fatal. However, the delivery of their fate does not come from the mimicked hitman but from a trusted source turned traitor…

A rather shocking (Absolutely not for the squeamish!) tale – to western sensibilities at least – follows as famine blights the region. The lord of Kigaru Castle’s favourite sport is hunting and torturing dogs and when he does so at ultimate cost to his serfs in ‘Hunger Town’, Wolf and Cub exploit his obsession at great personal cost (especially little Daigoro, who has never had a pet before). With both assassin and deranged noble oblivious to a rural revolt, it all plays out exactly as Ogami expects…

Steeped in Buddhist lore and mythology, ‘The Soldier is the Castle’ sees the grim nomad tested by desperate men before agreeing to become an unlikely saviour. Uncovering a plot to destroy their homeland of Iwakidaira Han by subterfuge, they ask the Wolf to foil a sham gold robbery intended to disgrace and dismantle a region long-coveted by the Shōgun. The impossible task is not just to stop the robbery ever happening but also destroy with notice an army of warriors and the Court’s relentless Kurokuwa Ninjas. Proud to die for the treasured outmoded principle of “Kanjō” (literally The Soldier is the Castle), Ogami Ittō manufactures a miracle, but again only at terrible personal cost…

A potent change of pace concludes the adventure here at ‘One Stone Bridge’ as little Daigoro seeks to care for his grievously wounded father despite the predations of a gang of bullying older kids. His efforts charm and latterly astound a wealthy childless couple who consider adopting the waif.

When they find the child is caring for an adult they seek to help – but only until the assassin drags himself from what should be his deathbed to face Kurokuwa Ninjas who have – due to his actions against the Shōgun rescinded their previous neutrality and declared war on the killer bound for Hell. When Ogami again overcomes all, the couple are still keen to help, if only to get father and child away from them as soon as possible…

Closing with ‘Creator Profiles’ of author Koike Kazuo & illustrator Kojima Goseki plus a tonal ‘Art Gallery’ of powerfully moving images by the latter, this is another classic volume in a series of Japanese imports which utterly changed the nature of American comics and a saga no lover of historical fiction should be without.
Art and story © 1995, 2001 Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima. All other material © 2000 Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Cover art © 2001 Frank Miller. All rights reserved.

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Pogo – Bona Fide Balderdash: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips volume 2


By Walt Kelly, edited by Carolyn Kelly (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-584-6 (HB/Digital edition)

By golly, we finally got us an election, and in these moments of elation and trepidatious uncertainty, it’s only natural to turn to the steadfast things in our lives such as the total conviction that this guy knew all about liars, chancers, opportunists and self-serving, utterly unqualified dissimulators suddenly paying really close attention to what the public has been telling them for years…

It doesn’t hurt that his creator was one of the greatest cartoonists and humourists of all time and that his comics are timelessly wonderful. Read this book and all the others – it may well be your last chance to do so…

Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. was born in 1913 and started his cartooning career whilst still in High School, as artist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. In 1935, after relocating to California he joined the Disney Studio, working on short cartoon films and such major features as Dumbo, Fantasia and Pinocchio. When the infamous animator’s strike began in 1941 Kelly refused to take sides, and moved back East and into comic books – primarily for Dell Comics who at that time held the Disney funnybook license, amongst so many others.

Despite glorious work on such popular people-based classics as the Our Gang movie spin-off, he preferred and particularly excelled with anthropomorphic animal and children’s fantasy material.

For the December 1942-released Animal Comics #1 this other Walt created Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum: sensibly retaining copyrights in the ongoing saga of two affable Bayou critters and their young African-American pal Bumbazine. Although the black kid soon disappeared, the animal actors stayed as stars until 1948 when Kelly moved into journalism, becoming art editor and cartoonist for hard hitting, left-leaning liberal newspaper The New York Star. On October 4th 1948, Pogo, Albert and an ever-expanding cast of gloriously addictive characters began their second careers, on the far more legitimate funny pages, appearing in the paper six days a week until it folded in January 1949.

Although ostensibly a gently humorous kids feature, by the end of its run (reprinted in full at the back of Pogo: the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips volume 1 link please) the first glimmers of an increasingly barbed, boldly satirical masterpiece of velvet-pawed social commentary began to emerge. When The Star closed, Pogo was picked up for mass distribution by the Post-Hall Syndicate, and launched in selected outlets on May 16th 1949. A colour Sunday page debuted January 29th 1950: both produced simultaneously by Kelly until his death in 1973 (and even beyond, courtesy of his talented wife and family). At its height the strip appeared in 500 papers in 14 countries with book collections – which began in 1951 – eventually numbering nearly 50 and collectively selling over 30 million copies – and all that before this Fantagraphics series began…

In this second volume the main aspect of interest is the personable Possum’s first innocently adorable attempts to run for Public Office. This became a ritual inevitably and coincidentally reoccurring every four years, whenever America’s merely human inhabitants got together for raucous caucuses and exuberant electioneering. It’s remarkable – but not coincidental – to note that by the close of the 2-year period contained herein, Kelly had increased his count of uniquely Vaudevillian returning characters to over one hundred. The sordid likes of Solid MacHogany, sloganeering P.T. Bridgeport, Tamananny Tiger, Willow McWisper, Goldie Lox, Sarcophagus MacAbre, bull moose Uncle Antler and three brilliantly scene-stealing bats named Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred, amongst so many others, would pop up with varying frequency and growing impact over following decades

This colossal and comfortingly sturdy landscape compilation (356 pages) offers monochrome Dailies from January 1st 1951 to December 31st 1952, plus the Sundays – in their own full-colour section – from January 7th 1951 to December 28th 1952: each faithfully annotated and listed in a copious, expansive and informative Table of Contents. Supplemental features include a Foreword from pioneering comedy legend Stan Freberg, delightful unpublished illustrations and working/developmental drawings by Kelly, extra invaluable context and historical notes in the amazing R.C. Harvey’s ‘Swamp Talk’ and a biographical feature ‘About Walt Kelly’ from Mark Evanier.

In his time, satirical mastermind Kelly unleashed his bestial spokes-cast on such innocent, innocuous sweethearts as Senator Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, The John Birch Society, Richard Nixon and the Ku Klux Clan, as well as less loathsome louts like of Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and – with eerie perspicacity – George W. Romney (US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development) Governor of Michigan and dad of a guy named Mitt…

This particular monument to madcap mirth and sublime drollery naturally carries the usual cast: gently bemused Pogo, boisterous, happily ignorant alligator Albert, dolorous Porkypine, obnoxious turtle Churchy La Femme, lugubrious hound Beauregard Bugleboy, carpet-bagger Seminole Sam Fox, pompous (doesn’t) know-it-all Howland Owl and all the bestial rest: covering not only day-to-day topics and travails like love, marriage, weather, fishing, the problem with kids, the innocent joys of sports, making a living and why neighbours shouldn’t eat each other, but also includes epic and classic sagas: the stress of Poetry Contests, hunting – from a variety of points of view – Christmas and other Public Holidays, incipient invasion, war and even cross-dressing, to name but a few…

Kelly spent a good deal of 1952 spoofing the electoral race, and this tome offers magical, magnificent treatment of all problems associated with grass (and moss) roots politics, dubious campaign tactics, loony lobbying, fun with photo ops, briefings (for & against), impractical tactical alliances, glad-handing, a proliferation of political promos and ephemera, how to build clockwork voters – and candidates – and of course, life after a failed run for the top job…

As the delicious Miz Ma’m’selle Hepzibah would no doubt say: “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”…

Either I heard it somewhere or I’m just making it up, but I gather certain embattled Prime Ministers and Presidents are using the cartoons as tactical playbooks and there’s a copy in every gift bag handed out at Riyadh and Davos. Gosh, how I hope so…

Kelly’s uncontested genius lay in a seemingly effortless ability to lyrically and vivaciously portray – through anthropomorphic affectation – comedic, tragic, pompous, infinitely sympathetic characters of any shape or breed, all whilst making them undeniably human. He used that blessed gift to blend hard-hitting observation of our crimes, foibles and peccadilloes with rampaging whimsy, poesy and sheer exuberant joie de vivre.

The hairy, scaly, feathered slimy folk of the surreal swamp lands are, of course, inescapably us, elevated by burlesque, slapstick, absurdism and all the glorious joys of wordplay from puns to malapropisms to raucous accent humour into a multi-layered hodgepodge of all-ages delight. Tragically, here at least, we’ve never looked or behaved better…

This stuff will certainly make you laugh; it will probably provoke a sentimental tear or ten and will certainly satisfy your every entertainment requirement. Timeless and magical, Pogo is a weeny colossus not simply of comics, but of world literature and this magnificent collection should be the pride of every home’s bookshelf, right beside the first one. Or, in the popular campaign parlance of the critters involved: “I Go Pogo!” and so should you.
POGO Bona Fide Balderdash and all POGO images, including Walt Kelly’s signature © 2012 Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc. All other material © 2012 the respective creator and owner. All rights reserved.

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Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo volume 1: Sundays 1934-1937 (The Complete Flash Gordon Library


By Alex Raymond & Don Moore, with restorations by Peter Maresca (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-154-6 (HB)

By any metric, Flash Gordon is the most influential comic strip in the world. When the hero debuted on Sunday January 7th 1934 (with the superb but cruelly dated Jungle Jim running as its supplementary “topper” strip) as response to revolutionary, inspirational, but clunky Buck Rogers (by Philip Nolan & Dick Calkins and which had also began on January 7th but in 1929), a new element was added to the realm of fantasy wonderment: Classical Lyricism.

Where Rogers offered traditional adventures laced with blue sky science concepts, its new competitor reinterpreted Fairy Tales, Heroic Epics and Mythology. It did so by spectacularly draping them in trappings of a contemporary future, varying ‘Rays’, ‘Engines’ and ‘Motors’ substituting for trusty swords and lances (although there were also plenty of those) and exotic flying craft and contraptions standing in for Galleons, Chariots and Magic Carpets.

Most important of all, the sheer artistic talent of Raymond, his compositional skills, fine line-work, eye for concise, elegant detail and just plain genius for drawing beautiful people and things, swiftly made this the strip all young artists swiped from. When all-original comic books began some few years later, literally dozens of talented kids used the clean lined Romanticism of Gordon as their model and ticket to future success in the field of adventure strips. Most of the others went with Milton Caniff’s expressionistic masterpiece Terry and the Pirates (which also began in 1934 – and who will get his go another day).

Thankfully in this 90th anniversary year there are still many collections knocking about, and I’m plumping here for 2012’s hardcover archive from British publisher and keeper of traditions Titan Books, who boldly began a Complete Library of the stellar crusader’s exploits that year. We’re still waiting for its conclusion…

Augmenting the epic entertainment is a brace of photo and illustration-packed introductory essays, beginning with uber-artist/fan Alex Ross’ exploration of ‘The Flash Gordon Legacy’ and continuing with ‘Birth of a Legend’ by comics writer and historical publisher Doug Murray, detailing the fantasy milieu into which the dauntless hero was born…

The immortal saga begins with a rogue planet about to smash into Earth. As panic grips the planet, polo player Flash and fellow airline passenger Dale Arden narrowly escape disaster when a meteor fragment downs the plane they’re traveling on. Parachuting out, they land on the estate of tormented genius Dr. Hans Zarkov – who imprisons them on a rocket-ship he has built. His plan? To fly directly at the astral invader and deflect it from Earth by crashing into it!

…And that’s just the first 13-panel episode. ‘On the Planet Mongo’ ran every Sunday until April 15th 1934 when, according to this wonderful full-colour book, second adventure ‘Monsters of Mongo’ (22nd April – 18th November 1934) began, promptly followed by ‘Tournaments of Mongo’ (25th November 1934 to 24th February 1935).

To readers back then, of course, there were no such artificial divisions. There was just one continuous, unmissable Sunday appointment with utter wonderment. The machinations of the impossibly evil but magnetic Ming, emperor of the fantastic wandering planet, Flash’s battles and alliances with myriad exotic races subject to the Emperor’s will and the Earthman’s gradual victory over oppression captivated America and the World in tales that seemed a direct and welcome contrast to an increasingly darker reality in the days before World War II.

In short order the Earthlings become firm friends – and in the case of Flash & Dale, much more – as they encounter, battle and frequently ally with beautiful, cruel Princess Aura, the Red Monkey Men, Lion Men, Shark Men, Dwarf Men, and crucially King Vultan and the winged Hawkmen. The epic rebellion against seemingly unbeatable Ming really started with the awesome ‘Tournaments…’ sequence wherein Raymond seemed to simply explode with confidence. It was here that true magic blossomed, with every episode more spectacular than the last. Without breaking step, Raymond moved on to his next mini-epic, as our hero entered ‘The Caverns of Mongo’ on March 3rd until 14th April 1935.

Veteran editor Don Moore was only 30 when he was convinced to “assist” Raymond with the writing, starting soon after the strip first gained momentum and popularity. Moore remained until 1953, long after Raymond had gone. The artist had joined the Marines in February 1944, with the last page he worked on published on April 30th of that year. On demobilisation, Raymond moved to fresh strip fields with detective strip Rip Kirby. Mercifully, that still leaves a decade’s worth of spectacular, majestic adventure for us to enjoy…

Without pausing for breath, the collaborators introduced a host of new races and places for their perfect hero to win over in the war against Ming’s timeless evil. On increasingly epic Sunday comics pages, Flash and his entourage confronted the ‘Witch Queen of Mongo’ (April 21st – 13th October 1935), found themselves ‘At War with Ming’ (20th October 1935 – April 5th 1936) and discovered ‘The Undersea Kingdom of Mongo’ (12th April – 11th October 1936). The sheer glorious beauty and drama of the globally-syndicated serial captivated readers all over the world, resulting in not only some of the medium’s most glorious comic art, but also novels, 3 movie serials, radio and TV shows, a monochrome daily strip (by Raymond’s former assistant Austin Briggs), comic books, merchandise and so much more.

The Ruritanian flavour of the series was enhanced continuously, as Raymond’s slick, sleek futurism endlessly accessed and refined a picture-perfect Romanticism of idyllic Kingdoms, populated by idealised heroes, stylised villains and women of staggering beauty. In these episodes Azura, Witch Queen of Mongo wages brutal, bloody war against Flash and his friends for control of the underworld, eventually leading to all-out conflict with Ming the Merciless – a sequence of such memorable power that artists and movie-men would be swiping from it for decades to come.

When the war ends our heroes are forced to flee, only to become refugees and captives of the seductive Queen Undina in her undersea Coral City. The never-ending parade of hairsbreadth escapes, fights and/or chases continues as Flash, Dale & Zarkov crash into the huge jungle of Mongo. As this initial tome ends the refugees enter ‘The Forest Kingdom of Mongo’ (October 18th 1936 to January 31st 1937): barely surviving its wild creatures before weathering horrific tunnels of ‘The Tusk-Men of Mongo’ (February 7th to June 5th 1938). Here, struggling through desperate hardship and overcoming both monsters and the esoteric semi-humans they finally reach Arboria, the Tree kingdom of Prince Barin, Ming’s son-in-law. He is not what he seems…

And so the book ends, but not the adventure. Even stripped down to bare plot-facts, the drama is captivating. Once you factor in the by-play, jealousies and intrigues – all rendered with spectacular and lush visualisation by the master of classical realism – you can begin to grasp why this strip captured the world’s imagination and holds it still. To garnish all this enchantment, there’s even ‘The Alex Raymond Flash Gordon Checklist’ and biographies of both creators and this astounding tome’s key contributors

Along with Hal Foster (Prince Valiant) and Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon), Raymond’s work on Flash Gordon is considered pivotal to the development of American – if not world – comic art. These works overwhelmingly influenced everyone who followed until the emergence of manga and the advancement of computer technology. If you’ve only heard how good this strip is, you owe it to yourself to experience the magic up close and personal.

I never fail to be impressed by the quality of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon. Yes, plots are formulaic and some gender and social attitudes need to be embraced on their own historical terms but what commercial narrative medium of any vintage is free of that? What is never dull or repetitive is the sheer artistry and bravura staging of the tales. Every episode is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, but the next episode still tops it. You are a fool to yourself if you don’t try this wonderful strip out.

Flash Gordon © 2012 King Features Syndicate Inc., ™ & © Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.