World Classics – Page 13

June 29, 2019June 28, 2019

Asterix Omnibus Volume 8 Asterix and the Great Crossing; Obelix and Co.; Asterix in Belgium

By Goscinny & Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Orion Children’s Books)
ISBN: 978-1-44400-837-1 (HB) 978-1-44400-838-8 (TPB)

One of the most popular comics features on Earth, the collected chronicles of Asterix the Gaul have been translated into more than 100 languages since his debut in 1959, with a dozen animated and live-action movies, TV series, assorted games, toys, merchandise and even a theme park outside Paris (Parc AstÃ©rix, unsurprisinglyâ€¦); all stemming from his gloriously absurd exploits.

More than 325 million copies of unforgettable Asterix books have sold worldwide (not counting the five non-canonical tomes most fans also own), making his joint originators France’s best-selling international authors. There is even the tantalising yet frightening promise of a new – 38^th – volume sometime this year by follow-up creative team Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conradâ€¦

The diminutive, doughty, potion-powered paragon of Gallic Pride was created by two of the industry’s greatest masters, RenÃ© Goscinny & Albert Uderzo, as a weekly strip in Pilote, swiftly becoming a national success and symbol. Although their inspirational collaborations ended in 1977 with the death of the prolific scripter, the creative wonderment continued until 2010 from Uderzo and assistants – albeit at a slightly reduced rate.

After nearly 15 years as a comic strip subsequently collected into compilations, in 1974 the 21^st tale (Asterix and Caesar’s Gift) was the first to be published as a complete original album before being serialised. Thereafter each new release was a long anticipated, eagerly awaited treat for the strip’s countless aficionadosâ€¦

The comics magic operates on multiple levels: ostensibly, younger readers revel in the action-packed, lavishly illustrated comedic romps where sneaky, bullying baddies get their just deserts, whilst we more worldly readers enthuse over the dry, pun-filled, sly satire, especially as enhanced for English speakers by the brilliantly light touch of translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge, who played no small part in making the indomitable Gaul and his gallant companions so palatable to the Anglo-Saxon world. (pour moi, though, a perfectly produced physically poetic â€œPaf!â€ to the phizzog is as welcome and wondrous as any painfully potent procession of puns or sardonic satirical sideswipesâ€¦)

More than half of the canon occurs on Uderzo’s beloved Brittany coast, where, circa 50 B.C., a small village of cantankerous, proudly defiant warriors and their families resisted every effort of the Roman Empire to complete the conquest of Gaul. The land had been divided by the conquerors into the provinces of Celtica, Aquitania and Amorica, but the very tip of the last-cited just refused to be pacifiedâ€¦

The remaining epics take place in various legendary locales throughout the Ancient World, as the Garrulous Gallic Gentlemen visited all the fantastic lands and corners of civilisations of the eraâ€¦

When the heroes were playing at home, the Romans, unable to defeat the last bastion of Gallic insouciance, futilely resorted to a policy of absolute containment. Thus, the little seaside hamlet was permanently hemmed in by the heavily fortified garrisons of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium.

The Gauls don’t care: daily defying the world’s greatest military machine simply by going about their everyday affairs, protected by the magic potion of resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits of the diminutive dynamo and his simplistic, supercharged best friendâ€¦

Firmly established as a global brand and premium French export by the mid-1960s, Asterix the Gaul continued to grow in quality as Goscinny & Uderzo toiled ever onward, crafting further fabulous sagas; building a stunning legacy of graphic excellence and storytelling gold. Moreover, following the civil unrest and nigh-revolution in French society following the Paris riots of 1968, the tales took on an increasingly acerbic tang of trenchant satire and pithy socio-political commentaryâ€¦

La Grande TraversÃ©e was the 22^nd saga and second original book release in France, premiering in 1975, with a British hardcover edition – Asterix and the Great Crossing – launching here the following year.

It begins with another typical village kerfuffle as to the true and relative vintage of Unhygienix the fishmonger’s wares before descending into the standard-issue, boisterous, all-comers-welcome brawl.

However, the situation is rather more serious this time as Druid Getafix needs really fresh fish for the magic potion that keeps them all free of Romeâ€¦

A merchant but not a fisherman, Unhygienix refuses to catch his own stock so Asterix and Obelix eventually volunteer to take to sea in old Geriatrix’s dilapidated skiff to replenish the wizard’s stores, even though a big storm is brewing. Sadly, our heroes aren’t fishermen either, and after losing the nets the neophyte seamen are blown far from homeâ€¦

Lost at sea and starving, they encounter their old pals the Pirates, but Obelix eats all their provisions in one go and soon the mismatched mariners – and faithful mutt Dogmatix – are in even direr straits as another storm blows them ever further westward.

Just as death seems inevitable, the Gauls wash up on an island of the Empire they have never seen before. In this strange outpost the Romans have red skins, paint their faces and wear feathers in their hair. Most terrifyingly, there are no wild boar to eat, only big ugly birds that go â€œgobble, gobbleâ€â€¦

After the usual two-fisted diplomacy with the â€œIberians, or perhaps Thracians?â€, Asterix and Obelix settle down comfortably enough, but the situation changes when the chief decides the big paleface is going to marry his daughter. Desperately, the Gauls steal a canoe one night and strike out across the Big Water towards home but only get as far as a little islet where they’re picked up by Viking explorers Herendethelessen, SteptÃ¸Ã¥nssen, NÃ¸gÃ¸Ã¸dreÃ¥ssen, HÃ¥rÃ¥ldwilssen and their valiant Great Dane HuntingseÃ¥ssen, who are all jointly looking for unmapped continentsâ€¦

Convinced their odd discoveries are natives of this strange New World, the Danes try to entice the oddly eager indigenes to come home with them as proof of Herendethelessen’s incredible discovery. Braving icy Atlantic seas, the dragon ship is soon back in cold, mist-enshrouded Scandinavia where gruff, dismissive Chief Ã˜diuscomparissen is suitably amazed and astoundedâ€¦

However, when Gaulish slave Catastrofix reveals they are from his European homeland, tempers get a bit heated and another big fight breaks out…

Taking advantage of the commotion, Asterix, Obelix and Catastrofix – an actual fisherman by trade – steal a boat and head at last for home, picking up some piscine presents for Getafix en routeâ€¦

This is a wittily arch but delightfully straightforward yarn, big on action and thrills, packed with knowing in-jokes and sly references to other French Western strips such as Lucky Luke and Ompa-pa (Oumpah-pah in French) as well as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and ultimately formed the basis of the animated feature film Asterix Conquers America.

Strong, stinging satire was the foundation of the next saga. ObÃ©lix et Compagnie debuted in 1976 with English-language hardcover Obelix and Co. launching in 1978: once again dealing with frustration-wracked Julius Caesar’s attempting to end the aggravating resistance of the indomitable Gauls.

To that effect the most powerful man in the world dispatches a bold, brash go-getter from the Latin School of Economics to destroy their unity forever. Financial whiz-kid Preposterus has a plan that simply can’t fail and will incidentally pay huge dividends to the Empire.

Meanwhile, the replacing of the Totorum Garrison with fresh troops has allowed the Gauls to give Obelix a truly inspired birthday gift. After beating up the entire contingent on his own and without having to share the soldiers, the delighted big man goes back to carving and delivering Menhirs before meeting a strange young Roman.

Preposterus – a cruelly effective caricature of France’s then Prime Minister Jacques Chirac – intends to destroy the villagers by making them as greedy, lazy and corrupt as any Roman Patrician, all through the introduction of Capitalism and Market Forcesâ€¦

To that end he pretends to be a Menhir buyer, willing to pay any amount for the giant stone obelisks (which have no appreciable use or worth and were normally swapped for small treats or favours), telling the big gullible oaf that money makes men important and powerful.

Without really understanding, easygoing Obelix begins accepting ever-larger sums for each standing stone, forcing himself to work harder and never stop. He doesn’t know what to do with the money but is caught up in an ever-hastening spiral of production.

Too busy to have fun hunting wild boars or play with Dogmatix, he begins hiring his equally gullible friends and neighbours: first to hunt for him and later to help sculpt Menhirs. All does is work and spend his growing mountain of cash on increasingly daft fancy clothes as he drives himself to miserable exhaustion.

Before long most of the village is caught in the escalating economic bubble, all except wily Asterix, who attempts to bring his old pal to his senses by suggesting to his friends that they set up as rival Menhir manufacturers. The little man is inadvertently helped in this by the status-obsessed village wives who push their men to become as â€œsuccessful and influentialâ€ as the fat oafâ€¦

In Totorum, the megaliths are beginning to pile up as Preposterus proceeds to exhaust all Rome’s funds purchasing Menhirs. Centurion Ignoramus is ecstatic that the plan to destroy the Gauls through cutthroat competition is working, but wants the growing mountain of shaped stones out of his camp, so Preposterous has them shipped back to Rome and starts selling them to rich trendies as indispensable fashion accessories.

The whiz-kid has nearly emptied Caesar’s coffers but his swish and intensive advertising campaign looks sets to recoup the losses with a folk-art sales boomâ€¦ until sleazy Italian entrepreneur Meretricius starts selling cut-rate Rome-manufactured Menhirs and the Boom leads to a ruthless price war and inevitable Bust which almost topples the Empireâ€¦

Meanwhile, success has not made Obelix happy and he’s thinking of quitting, just as the desperate Preposterous returns and inconsiderately, immediately stops buying Menhirs. Of course, being simple peasants the Gauls don’t understand supply and demand or the finer principles of a free market: they’re just really annoyed and frustrated.

Luckily there’s lots of Romans around to help deal with their pent-up tensionsâ€¦

Soon the air is cleared and the villagers have returned to their old-fashioned ways so Asterix and Getafix can laugh at news of a financial crisis wracking Romeâ€¦

This hilarious and telling parody and unashamed anti-Capitalist tract shows Goscinny & Uderzo at their absolute, satirical best, riffing on modern ideologies and dogmas whilst spoofing and lampooning the habits and tactics of greedy bosses and intransigent workers alike. Many politicians and economists have cited this tale – which is as always, stuffed with cameos and in-joke guest shots. I’m reliably informed that the beautiful page 36, which featured Preposterus explaining his ad campaign, was also the 1000^th page of Asterix since his debut in 1959.

Asterix travel epics are always packed with captivating historical titbits, soupcons of healthy cynicism, singularly surreal situations and amazingly addictive but generally consequence-free action, always illustrated in a magically enticing manner. Such was certainly the case with AstÃ©rix chez les Belges, the 24^th adventure and Goscinny’s last. The indefatigable writer passed away in 1977 halfway through the book’s completion. You can even commemorate the tragic event as just as Uderzo did, by drawing sullen, stormy skies for the rest of the tale he was completing: marking the moment, and incorporating one last wry shared dig at Belgian weatherâ€¦

The story is a grand old romp of friendly rivalries – released in Britain in 1980 as Asterix in Belgium – and begins when a relief troop takes over the garrison of Laudanum. These soldiers are delighted to be in Amorica, because it means they are no longer fighting the Belgians. Those barbarians are even worse than the indomitable villagers in Amorica. Caesar himself has called them â€œthe bravest of all the Gaulish Peoplesâ€â€¦

Perplexed by the laid-back attitude of the new occupiers, who consider their new posting a â€œrest cureâ€, Asterix and Obelix question one of the replacement Romans. They report his unbelievable news to Vitalstatistix, who is beside himself with indignation. Most of the others don’t really care, but when the furious Chief storms off for the border to see for himself, the old pals follow to keep him out of troubleâ€¦

Soon they have crossed the border and encounter the fabled warriors, led by their chiefs Beefix and Brawnix. They are indeed mighty fighters but awfully arrogant too, and soon Vitalstatistix has become so incensed with their boasting that he proposes a competition to see who can bash the most Romans and prove just who are the Bravest Gauls.

Obelix doesn’t mind: the Belgians are just like him. The only thing they like more than hitting Romans is eating and they seem to do the latter all day longâ€¦

Before long, however, there are no more Roman forts in the vicinity and the matter of honour is still unsettled. What they need is an unbiased umpire to judge who is the greatest and – fortuitously – Julius Caesar, moved to action by the terrible news from Belgium and rumours that the Amoricans (three of them at least) are also rising in revolt, has rushed to the frontier with the massed armies of the Empireâ€¦

Against such a force the squabbling cousins can only unite to force Caesar to admit who’s bestâ€¦

Stuffed with sly pokes and good-natured joshing over cherished perceived national characteristics and celebrating the spectacular illustrative ability of Uderzo, this raucous, bombastic, bellicose delight delivers splendid hi-jinks and fast-paced action, and is perhaps the most jolly and accessible of these magical all-ages entertainments: a fitting tribute to the mastery of Goscinny and Uderzo.
Â© 1975-1979 Goscinny/Uderzo. Revised English translation Â© 2005 Hachette. All rights reserved.

June 16, 2019June 15, 2019

Krazy & Ignatz 1943-1944: â€œHe Nods in Quiescent Siestaâ€

By George Herriman, edited by Bill Blackbeard (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-932-6 (TPB)

In a field positively brimming with magnificent and eternally evergreen achievements, Krazy Kat is – for most cartoon cognoscenti – the pinnacle of pictorial narrative innovation: a singular and hugely influential body of work which shaped the early days of the comics industry and elevated itself to the level of a treasure of world literature.

Krazy & Ignatz, as it is dubbed in these gloriously addictive archival Fantagraphics tomes, is a creation which must always be appreciated on its own terms. Over the decades the strip developed a unique language – simultaneously visual and verbal – whilst delineating the immeasurable variety of human experience, foibles and peccadilloes with unfaltering warmth and understandingâ€¦ and without ever offending anybody. Baffled millions, perhaps, but offendedâ€¦ no.

It certainly went over the heads and around the hearts of far more than a few, but Krazy Kat was never a strip for dull, slow or unimaginative people: those who simply won’t or can’t appreciate the complex, multi-layered verbal and cartoon whimsy, absurdist philosophy or seamless blending of sardonic slapstick with arcane joshing. It is still the closest thing to pure poesy narrative art has ever produced.

George Joseph Herriman (August 22, 1880-April 25, 1944) was already a successful cartoonist and journalist in 1913 when a cat and mouse who’d been noodling about at the edges of his domestic comedy strip The Dingbat Family/The Family Upstairs graduated to their own feature. Mildly intoxicating and gently scene-stealing, Krazy Kat subsequently debuted in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal on Oct 28th 1913 and – by sheer dint of the overbearing publishing magnate’s enrapt adoration and direct influence and interference – gradually and inexorably spread throughout his vast stable of papers.

Although Hearst and a host of the period’s artistic and literary intelligentsia (such as Frank Capra, e.e. Cummings, Willem de Kooning, H.L. Mencken and more) adored the strip, many local and regional editors did not; taking every potentially career-ending opportunity to drop it from those circulation-crucial comics sections designed to entice joe public and the general populace.

Eventually the feature found its true home and sanctuary in the Arts and Drama section of Hearst’s papers. Protected there by the publisher’s unshakable patronage and enhanced with the cachet of enticing colour, Kat & Ko. flourished unhampered by editorial interference or fleeting fashion, running generally unmolested until Herriman’s death on April 25th 1944.

This final collection covers the final days of the feature as Herriman succumbed slowly and painfully to cirrhosis caused by Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Eschewing the standard policy of finding a substitute to carry on the strip, Hearst decreed that Krazy Kat would die with its creator and sole ambassador.

It was no real sacrifice to profit, but the culmination to years of grand tribute to unique mastery. The strip had declined in syndication for years. By the 1930s it was featured in only 35 papers, but despite that the publisher – acting more as renaissance-era artistic patron than hard-bitten businessman – refused Herriman’s every earnest request that his salary be reduced to fit his dwindling circulation. In 1935 Hearst responded to the requests by promoting the feature to the full-page, full-colour glory it enjoyed until the end.

The epic’s basic premise is simple: Krazy is an effeminate, dreamy, sensitive and romantic feline, hopelessly in love with Ignatz Mouse; a venal everyman, rude, crude, brutal, mendacious and thoroughly scurrilous.

Ignatz is a truly, proudly unreconstructed male and early forerunner of the men’s rights movement: drinking, stealing, fighting, conniving, constantly neglecting his wife and innumerable children and always responding to Krazy’s genteel advances by clobbering the Kat with a well-aimed brick. These he obtains singly or in bulk from noted local brick-maker Kolin Kelly. The smitten kitten apparently always misidentifies these gritty gifts as tokens of equally recondite affection showered upon him in the manner of Cupid’s fabled arrowsâ€¦

By the time of these tales it’s not even a response, except perhaps a conditioned one: the mouse still spends most of his time, energy and ingenuity in launching missiles at the mild moggy’s bonce. He can’t help himself, and Krazy’s day is bleak and unfulfilled if the hoped-for assault doesn’t happen. However, in these concluding episodes even that fiery warped passion has somewhat cooled: often attempted in perfunctory manner and frequently resulting in failure: just like any loving couple in their twilight years togetherâ€¦

The final critical element completing an anthropomorphic eternal triangle is lawman Offissa Bull Pupp: utterly besotted with Krazy, professionally aware of the Mouse’s true nature, yet hamstrung by his own amorous timidity and sense of honour from permanently removing his devilish rival for the foolish feline’s affections. Krazy is, of course, blithely oblivious to the perennially â€œFriend-Zonedâ€ Pupp’s dolorous dilemmaâ€¦

Secondarily populating an ever-mutable stage are a big supporting cast of inspired bit players such as terrifying deliverer of unplanned babies Joe Stork; unsavoury huckster Don Kiyoti, hobo Bum Bill Bee, portal-packing Door Mouse, self-aggrandizing Walter Cephus Austridge, inscrutable, barely intelligible Chinese mallard Mock Duck, dozy Joe Turtil and snoopy sagacious fowl Mrs. Kwakk Wakk, plus a host of other audacious animal crackers all equally capable of stealing the limelight and even supporting their own features.

The exotic, quixotic episodes occur in and around the Painted Desert environs of Coconino (patterned on the artist’s vacation retreat in Coconino County, Arizona) where surreal playfulness and the fluid ambiguity of the flora and landscape are perhaps the most important member of the cast.

The strips themselves are a masterful mÃ©lange of unique experimental art, cunningly designed, wildly expressionistic and strongly referencing Navajo art forms whilst graphically utilising sheer unbridled imagination and delightfully evocative lettering and language. This last is particularly effective in these later tales: alliterative, phonetically, onomatopoeically joyous with a compelling musical force and delicious whimsy (â€œgoldin moom bimsâ€ or â€œthere is a heppy lend, furfur awayâ€¦â€).

Yet for all our high-fallutin’ intellectualism, these comic adventures are poetic, satirical, timely, timeless, bittersweet, self-referential, fourth-wall bending, eerily idiosyncratic, outrageously hilarious escapades encompassing every aspect of humour from painfully punning shaggy dog stories to riotous, violent slapstick. Kids of any age will delight in them as much as any pompous old git like me and youâ€¦

There’s been a wealth of Krazy Kat collections since the late 1970s when the strip was first rediscovered by a better-educated, open-minded and far more accepting generation. This bittersweet final chapter covers all the strips from 1943 to the middle of 1944 in a comfortably hefty (231 x 305 mm) softcover edition – and is also available as a suitably serene digital edition.

With far fewer strips to catalogue, this edition is bulked up with a veritable treasure trove of unique artefacts: plenty of candid photos, personal correspondence, vast stores of original strip art and many astounding examples of Herriman’s personalised gifts and commissions (gorgeous hand-coloured artworks featuring the cast and settings), as well as a section on the rare merchandising tie-ins and unofficial bootleg items.

Tribute, commentary and analysis is provided by Bill Blackbeard’s final Introduction ‘The Tragedy of a Man with an Absent Mind’ and Jeet Heer and Michael Tisserand’s heavily-illustrated essay ‘Herriman’s Last Days (or, All Kats are Gray in the Dark)’ offering superb analysis of the unique talent celebrated herein. This inevitably leads to those superb cartoons, resuming with January 3rd 1943 and a tumultuous exchanging of gifts between cast regularsâ€¦

Due to the author’s declining health and perhaps the several personal tragedies that afflicted him in later life, the story atmosphere is mostly ruminatory and philosophical. It is also tinged with topical anxieties as World War II touches even the distant hills and mesas of Coconino. The trials of torrid triangular romance still play out as painfully and hilariously ever, but are balanced by more considered gags. Oblique references to the real world abound: a tortoise named Tank shambles about, Krazy is castigated for growing pretty flowers in the Victory Garden, and Ignatz is perforce compelled to handle bricks on a rationed, time-shared basisâ€¦

The usual parade of hucksters and conmen still abound, but pell-mell action, devious schemes and frantic chase gradually give way to comfortable chats and the occasional debate before inevitably concluding at the jail houseâ€¦

Ignatz endures regular incarcerations and numerous forms of exile and social confinement, but with Krazy aiding and abetting, these sanctions seldom result in a reduction of cerebral contusions, whereas the plague of travelling conjurors, unemployed magicians and shady clairvoyants still make life hard for the hard-pressed constabulary and the gullible fools they target. Perhaps because of Herriman’s own vintage, many regular characters share a greater appreciation of infirmity and loss of drive, often reflected in the reduction of Krazy to a bit player in many strips.

Pupp suffers with his age, repeatedly trying labour-saving new policing appliances such as electrically booby-trapped or glue-drenched bricks and termites trained to chew on fired clay, and as a steady stream of displaced royals from conquered lands set up in the desert paradise and the phenomenon of zoot-suiters manifests, the forces of law and order seem harder-pressed every day.

Aged busybody Mrs Kwakk Wakk further expands her role of wise old crone and sarcastic Greek Chorus; confirming her status as a leading player. She has a mean and spiteful beak on her too, and whilst laconic vagabonds such as Bum Bill Bee continue their scams and schemes, the primary cast-members seem inclined to sit back and let them all get on with itâ€¦â€¦

Welcomingly as ever, there is still a solid dependence on the strange landscapes and eccentric flora for humorous or inspiration or simple aesthetic gratification, while all manner of weather and terrain play a large part in inducing anxiety, bewilderment and hilarity. As arthritis, increasing migraines and age took some of the artist’s physical dexterity, it seemed to liberate his eyes and compositional sensibilities. The later strips are astounding sleek graphic exemplars of cunning design and hue on which the regulars play out their final linesâ€¦

The wonderment concludes with ore unearthed artistic treasures and one last instructional ‘Ignatz Mouse Debaffler Page’, providing pertinent facts, snippets of contextual history and necessary notes for the young and potentially perplexed.

Herriman’s epochal classic is a stupendous and joyous monument to gleeful whimsy: in all the arenas of Art and Literature there has never been anything like these strips which have inspired comics creators and auteurs in fields as disparate as prose fiction, film, dance, animation and music, whilst fulfilling its basic function: engendering delight and delectation in generations of wonder-starved fans.

If, however, you are one of Them and not Us, or if you actually haven’t experienced the gleeful graphic assault on the sensorium, mental equilibrium and emotional lexicon carefully thrown together by George Herriman from the dawn of the 20th century until the dog days of World War II, this astounding compendium is a most accessible way to do so.

June 13, 2019June 12, 2019

Adventures of Tintin: The Calculus Affair

By HergÃ©, Bob De Moors and others, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner (Egmont UK)
ISBN: 978-1-40520-817-8 (HB) 978-1-40520-629-7 (TPB)

Georges Prosper Remi, known all over the world as HergÃ©, created an incontrovertible masterpiece of graphic literature with his tales of a plucky boy reporter and his entourage of iconic associates.

Singly, and later with assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and other supreme stylists of the select HergÃ© Studio, he created 23 splendid volumes (originally produced in brief instalments for a variety of periodicals) that have grown beyond their popular culture roots and attained the status of High Art.

On leaving school in 1925, he worked for the conservative Catholic newspaper Le VingtiÃ©me SiÃ©cle where he fell under the influence of its Svengali-esque editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. A devoted boy scout, a year later Remi produced his first strip series The Adventures of Totor for monthly Boy Scouts of Belgium magazine, and by 1928 was producing the contents of the newspaper’s weekly children’s supplement Le Petit VingtiÃ©me.

He was illustrating The Adventures of Flup, NÃ©nesse, Poussette and Cochonette, written by the staff sports reporter when Wallez asked Remi to create a new adventure series. Perhaps a young reporter who roamed the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues?

The rest is historyâ€¦

After a troubled period during the war years, the Boy Reporter and his companions became a staple of the European childhood experience through weekly trans-national magazine Le Journal de Tintin and regular album collections. The anthology comic regularly achieved a circulation in the hundreds of thousands, allowing the artist and his team to remaster past tales and create bold new romps reflecting the tone of the times.

Although HergÃ©’s later life was troubled by personal problems and health issues, this only seemed to enhance his storytelling abilities. The later adventures are all sleek, polished thrillers, rife with intrigue and camaraderie; perfectly garnished with comedy set-pieces of timeless brilliance. Even after decades of working, the artist/auteur continued fresh and challenging, always seeking new arenas of drama to explore.
HergÃ© entered the most successful period of his artistic career. He had mastered his storytelling craft, possessed 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. That meant a return to observations of contemporary themes and situations, as in this effective treatise on the burgeoning Cold Warâ€¦

L’Affaire Tournesol began in the Christmas issue of the Belgian edition of Le Journal de Tintin (dated December 22nd 1954) and ran uninterrupted until February 22nd 1956. The French editions ran it from February 1955, and the completed saga was collected as an album in 1956 and is notable for the introduction of three characters who would become semi-regular cast members: Jolyon Wagg, Cutts the Butcher, and recurring villain Colonel Spoons.

The Calculus Affair once again sees the zany Professor abducted from the palatial home of Captain Haddock, resulting in a dire and desperate chase through espionage-infested Europe. Our heroes are hampered in their efforts to save their friend by the introduction of the infinitely annoying and crushingly dull insurance salesman Jolyon Wagg and, more ominously, rival bands of relentless, ruthless spies.

As they doggedly pursue Calculus to Geneva, Tintin and Haddock encounter not only the insidious agents of Borduria but find that their erstwhile allies of Syldavia are also trying to make the Professor â€œdisappearâ€. After frantic chases, pitched battles and assassination attempts, diplomatic duplicity defeats them, and Calculus becomes an unwilling guest of the totalitarian Bordurians, who are pleased to accept as a â€œgiftâ€ his new invention, which they intend to use as a weapon of mass destruction.

Temporarily stymied, Tintin and Haddock finagle their way into the country, and with the aid of Opera Diva and human tornado Bianca Castafiore, bamboozle the secret police to rescue the Professor and save the day.

Although all the elements in play are tried and trusted ingredients of the Tintin formula, the level of artistic achievement here is superb and the interplay of tense drama, slapstick comedy and breakneck action make this brooding thriller the most accomplished of HergÃ©’s tales. The simple fact that the contemporary Cold War fever is absent for modern readers makes no difference at all to the enjoyment of this magnificent graphic masterpiece.

June 2, 2019May 29, 2019

E.C. Segar’s Popeye volume 5: Wha’s a Jeep?

By Elzie Crisler Segar (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-404-7 (HB)

Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8^th December 1894. His father was a handyman and Elzie’s early life was filled with the types of solid, earnest blue-collar jobs that typified his generation of cartoonists. The younger Segar worked as a decorator and house-painter and played drums, accompanying vaudeville acts at the local theatre. When the town got a movie house, he played for the silent films, absorbing the staging, timing and narrative tricks from the close observation of the screen that would become his greatest assets as a cartoonist. It was while working as the film projectionist, aged 18, he decided to become a cartoonist and tell his own stories.

Like so many others of that â€œcan-doâ€ era, Segar studied art via mail, in this case W.L. Evans’ cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio (from where Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster would launch Superman upon the world), before gravitating to Chicago where he was â€œdiscoveredâ€ by Richard F. Outcault – arguably the inventor of newspaper comic strips with The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown.

The senior artist introduced him around at the prestigious Chicago Herald. Still wet behind the ears, Segar’s first strip, Charley Chaplin’s Comedy Capers, debuted on 12^th March 1916. In 1918 he married Myrtle Johnson and moved to William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago Evening American to create Looping the Loop. Managing Editor William Curley saw a big future for Segar and promptly packed the newlyweds off to the Manhattan headquarters of the mighty King Features Syndicate.

Within a year Segar was producing Thimble Theatre, which launched December 19^th 1919 in the New York Journal. In its earliest incarnation the strip was a pastiche/knock off of Movie features like Hairbreadth Harry and Midget Movies, with a repertory cast to act out comedies, melodramas, comedies, crime-stories, chases and especially comedies for huge daily audiences. The core cast included parental pillars Nana and Cole Oyl, lanky daughter Olive, diminutive-but-pushy son Castor and Olive’s plain and simple occasional boyfriend Horace Hamgravy (later just Ham Gravy).

In 1924, Segar created a second daily strip. The 5:15 was a surreal domestic comedy featuring weedy commuter and would-be inventor John Sappo and his formidable wife Myrtle (surely, no relation?).

A born storyteller, Segar had from the start an advantage even his beloved cinema couldn’t match. His brilliant ear for dialogue and accent shone out from his admittedly average melodrama adventure plots, adding lustre to stories and gags he always felt he hadn’t drawn well enough. After a decade or so – and just as cinema caught up with the introduction of â€œtalkiesâ€ – he finally discovered a character whose unique sound and individual vocalisations blended with a fantastic, enthralling nature to create a literal superstar.

Popeye the sailor, brusque, incoherent, plug-ugly and stingingly sarcastic, shambled on stage midway through nautical adventure ‘Dice Island’, (on January 17^th 1929: see E.C. Segar’s Popeye volume 1: â€œI Yam What I Yam!â€) and once his very minor part was played out, simply refused to leave. Within a year he was a regular and as the strip’s circulation skyrocketed, he became the star. Eventually, the strip title was changed to Popeye and all of the old gang except Olive were consigned to near-oblivionâ€¦

Popeye inspired Segar. The near decade of thrilling mystery-comedies which followed revolutionised the industry, laid the groundwork for the entire superhero genre (sadly, usually without the leavening underpinnings of his self-aware humour) and utterly captivated the whole wide world.

These superb oversized (almost 260 mm by 372mm) hardback collections are the ideal way of discovering or rediscovering Segar’s magical tales. Over and above the increasingly incredible tales from the daily and Sunday strips, this vibrantly enticing fifth volume also contains an insightful introductory essay from Richard Marschall – ‘Character and Personality in Thimble Theatre’ – a captivating article of the period (‘Segar’s Hobbies Put Punch in Popeye Comics’) reprinted from Modern Mechanix and Inventions, plus a fascinating end-piece covering assorted original art teasers editors used to promote upcoming tales in the magical days before television or viral ad campaigns.

The monochrome Monday to Saturday section opens this volume, (covering July 25^th 1935-December 12^th 1936), encompassing one-and-a-half major storylines, and begins with the eagerly-anticipated conclusion of ‘Popeye’s Ark’, wherein our bold sailor-man carries out an ambitious plan to set up his own country of Spinichovia. The incredible scheme is funded by misogynist millionaire Mr. Sphink who insists that the new country be absolutely without women, and Popeye goes along with it, recruiting a host of disaffected guys looking for a fresh startâ€¦

Soon however, the thousands of able-bodied men populating the country are starving for any kind of female companionship: – even Olive Oyl, currently exiled on an island of her own. Things get very strange when the lonely Spinichovians discover a tribe of mermaids frolicking off the coast, but romance is soon forgotten when Brutian despot King Zlobbo decides the new nation must be his in ‘War Clouds’.

To scout out potential opposition, Zlobbo dispatches enticing spy Miss Zexa Peal, but as the most beautiful woman in the country – and comprising 50% of Spinichova’s female population – she isn’t exactly inconspicuousâ€¦

When war breaks out, it results in Popeye’s greatest victory – with just a little excessively violent help from feisty â€œinfinkâ€ baby Swee’ Peaâ€¦

By the conclusion of that epic tale all the players have returned to America, just in time for the introduction of the star of this tome.

‘Eugene the Jeep’ debuted on March 20^th 1936: a fantastic 4^th dimensional beast with incredible powers that Olive and Wimpy use to get very rich, very quickly, only to lose it all betting on the wrong guy in another of Segar’s classic and hilarious set-piece boxing matches between Popeye and yet another barely-human pugilistâ€¦

These tales come from an astonishingly fertile period for the strip’s long history. On August 4^th, Eugene was instrumental in kicking off another groundbreaking and memorable sequence as the entire ensemble cast took off on as haunted ship to undertake ‘The Search for Popeye’s Papa’.

When Popeye first appeared, he was a shocking anti-hero. The first Superman of comics was not a comfortable icon to idolise. A brute who thinks with his fists and doesn’t respect authority; uneducated, short-tempered, fickle (when hot tomatoes batted their eyelashes – or thereabouts – at him), a gambler and troublemaker, he wasn’t welcome in polite societyâ€¦ and he wouldn’t want to be.

Popeye was the ultimate working-class hero: raw and rough-hewn, practical, but with an innate and unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not. He was a joker who wants kids to be themselves, but not necessarily â€œgoodâ€, and a man who takes no guff from anyone.

Of course, as his popularity grew, he somewhat mellowed. He was always ready to defend the weak and had absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows. He was and will always be â€œthe best of usâ€â€¦ but the shocking sense of unpredictability, danger and anarchy he initially provided was sorely missed by 1936 – so Segar brought it back againâ€¦

This memorably riotous tale introduced ancient, antisocial crusty reprobate Poopdeck Pappy and his diminutive hairy sidekick Pooky Jones during another fabulous voyage of discovery. The elder mariner was a rough, hard-bitten, grumpy brute quite prepared and even happy to cheat, steal or smack a woman around if she stepped out of lineâ€¦

Once that old goat was firmly established, Segar set Popeye and Olive the Herculean task of ‘Civilizing Poppa’ which is where the monochrome adventures here concludeâ€¦

The full-colour Sunday pages in this volume span April 4^th 1935 to September 13^th 1936, and see the bizarrely entertaining Sappo (and mad scientist lodger Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle) supplemental strip gradually diminish to allow the Popeye feature even more room to excel and amaze.

Eventually Sappo became a cartooning tricks section allowing Segar to play graphic games with his readership. Popeye’s Cartoon Club also disappeared, as the focus inexorably shifted to Popeye and Co. in alternating one-off gag strips and extended sagas. However, the Sailor-Man had to fight for space with his mooching co-star J. Wellington Wimpyâ€¦

When not beating the stuffing out of his opponents or kissing pretty girls, Popeye pursued his flighty, vacillating and irresolute Olive Oyl with exceptional verve, if little success, but his life was always made more complicated whenever the unflappable, so-corruptible and adorably contemptible Wimpy made an appearance.

The engaging Micawber-like coward, moocher and conman was first seen on 3^rd May 1931 as an unnamed and decidedly partisan referee in one of Popeye’s regular boxing matches. The scurrilous but ever-so-polite oaf obviously struck a chord and Segar gradually made him a fixture. Eternally hungry, always eager to take a bribe and a cunning coiner of many immortal catchphrases such as â€œI would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger todayâ€ and â€œlet’s you and him fightâ€, Wimpy was the perfect foil for a simple action hero and often stole the entire show.

Infinitely varying riffs on Olive’s peculiar romantic notions or Wimpy’s attempts to cadge food or money for food were irresistible to the adoring readership, but Segar wisely peppered the Sundays with longer episodic tales, such as the cast’s gold-prospecting venture to the inhospitable western desert of ‘Slither Creek’ (April 14^th – August 25^th 1935) and a sequel sequence wherein the temporarily wealthy but eternally starving Wimpy buys his own diner – the ultimate expression of blind optimism and sheer follyâ€¦

The uniquely sentimental monster Alice the Goon returned to the strip on February 23^rd 1936, permanently switching allegiance and becoming nanny to rambunctious tyke Swee’ Pea. She was a cast regular by the end of April.

August 9^th saw Eugene the Jeep make his Sunday debut, and a few demonstrations of the fanciful beast’s incredible powers to make money and cause chaos fill out this fifth fantastic tomeâ€¦

There is more than one Popeye. If your first thought on hearing the name is an unintelligible, indomitable white-clad sailor always fighting a great big beardy-bloke and mainlining tinned spinach, that’s okay: the animated features have a brilliance and energy of their own (even the later, watered-down anodyne TV versions have some merit) and they are indeed based on the grizzled, crusty, foul-mouthed, bulletproof, golden-hearted old swab who shambled his way into Thimble Theatre and wouldn’t leave. But they are really only the tip of an incredible iceberg of satire, slapstick, virtue, vice and mind-boggling adventureâ€¦

There is more than one Popeye. Most of them are pretty good and some are truly excellent. Don’t you think it’s about time you sampled the original and very best?
Â© 2011 Fantagraphics Books Inc. All comics and drawings Â© 2011 King Features Inc. All rights reserved.

May 23, 2019May 17, 2019

Asterix Omnibus volume 7: Asterix and the Soothsayer; Asterix in Corsica; Asterix and Caesar’s Gift

By Goscinny & Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Orion Books)
ISBN: 978-1-44400-835-7 (HB), 978-1-44400-836-4 (PB)

One of the most-read comics strips in the world, the collected chronicles of Asterix the Gaul have been translated into more than 100 languages since his debut in 1959, with animated and live-action movies, TV series, assorted games, toys and even a theme park outside Paris (Parc AstÃ©rix, unsurprisinglyâ€¦) all stemming from his glorious exploits.

More than 325 million copies of Asterix’s many albums have sold worldwide, making his joint creators France’s bestselling international authors.

The doughty, potion-powered paragon of Gallic Insouciance was created by two grandmasters of comics: RenÃ© Goscinny & Albert Uderzo. Although their inspirational collaborations ended with the death of the prolific scripter in 1977, the creative wonderment continued until relatively recently from Uderzo, assistants and ultimately his successors – albeit at a slightly reduced rate.

The wonderment works on multiple levels: ostensibly, younger readers revel in action-packed, lavishly illustrated comedic romps wherein sneaky, bullying baddies get their just deserts, whilst we more worldly readers enthuse over the dry, pun-filled, sly satire, especially as enhanced for English speakers by the brilliantly light touch of translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge, who played no small part in making the indomitable Gaul and his gallant companions so palatable to the Anglo-Saxon world.

(Moi, I still rejoice in a perfectly produced â€œPaf!â€ to the phizzog as much as any painfully potent procession of puns or sardonic satirical sideswipeâ€¦)

The stories were set on Uderzo’s beloved Brittany coast, where a small village of warriors and their families resisted every effort of the Roman Empire to complete the conquest of Gaul, or alternately, anywhere in the Ancient World, circa 50 BCE, as the Gallic Gentlemen wandered the multifarious provinces of the Empire and even beyond its generally-secure bordersâ€¦

When the heroes were playing at home, the Romans, unable to defeat this last bastion of Gallic insouciance, resorted to a policy of containment. Thus, the little seaside hamlet is permanently hemmed in by the heavily fortified garrisons of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium.

The truculent Gauls don’t care: they daily defy the world’s greatest military machine simply by going about their everyday affairs, protected by the magic potion of resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits of the diminutive dynamo and his simplistic, supercharged best friendâ€¦

Le Devin was the 19^th serialised epic, originally running in Pilote #652-673 throughout 1972, first translated into English album Asterix and the Soothsayer in 1975, and begins ominously whilst the village’s venerable mystic protector Getafix is away at his annual Druiding conference.

During a torrential storm, a nefarious soothsayer named Prolix turns up seeking shelter. His dark predictions instantly spread disharmony amongst the hospitable, hot-headed, painfully superstitious and credulous Gaulish stalwartsâ€¦ except for level-headed, canny little Asterix.

As Prolix leaves, Chief’s wife Impedimenta sneaks after him, keen on a personal prediction, and the crafty charlatan soon discovers he’s on to a good thing and profitably cushy numberâ€¦

Before long the entire village is under the soothsayer’s grimy thumb, but when he vanishes the ladies of the village accuse Asterix of driving him away.

In actuality, the unsavoury sage has been arrested by the Romans who have standing orders to deal harshly with all non-Roman prognosticators and troublemakers. Wily Prolix barters for his life with Centurion Arteriosclerosus, who sees a way to end his Indomitable Gaul problem by using the obviously fraudulent fortune-teller as a wedge to drive out the obstreperous resistors. Prolix returns to the village uttering a doom-laden pronouncement: the place has been cursed by the Gods and a pestilential stench will precede plague. Inevitable death will be their fate if they remainâ€¦

Panicked, the gullible Gauls head for the beach and take refuge on an off-shore island – all that is, except for Asterix, Obelix and chivalrous canine companion Dogmatixâ€¦

With the Romans at last in possession of the village – and all Gaul finally conquered – the bold last rebels make their plans until Getafix returns. On his arrival the three men and a dog embark on an elaborate scheme to take back their home and teach their foolish fellows a much-needed lesson.

Concocting a stunningly malodorous vapour which drives the occupiers from the village, the druid convinces the Romans that Prolix is a real soothsayer and ambitious Arteriosclerosus sees a chance to become the next Caesar. Increasingly baffled, conman Prolix begins to believe his predictions are realâ€¦

After dressing down the refugee Gauls, Getafix leads them back to their beloved homes where the incensed and wiser villagers top up on magic potion before rushing off to teach the invaders – and Prolix – a much needed lesson. On this occasion, Impedimenta and the village women accompany their men, determined to expiate their embarrassing gullibility with a little cathartic violence of their ownâ€¦

This delightfully arch and acerbic attack on gullibility and superstition is a splendid and long-overdue chance to see the minor characters play to their strengths and weaknesses, with Asterix and Obelix almost relegated to walk-on partsâ€¦

First translated two years earlier in England but chronologically following on from The Soothsayer in the original French serialisations, AstÃ©rix en Corse (Pilote #687-708, in 1973) was the 20^th adventure and the best-selling French-language album of the series.

Another globe-trotting yarn, it begins with the Romans of the four occupying garrisons â€œdeploying for manoeuvresâ€ to avoid having to deal with Gauls’ painfully exuberant celebration of the anniversary of the Battle of Gergovia. Unfortunately for Centurion Hippotamus and his men, they are delayed by the arrival of a party from Praetor Perfidius, Governor of Corsica, escorting a dangerous prisoner into exile. They are all still in Totorum when the high-spirited villagers (and many guest-star friends from previous tales) arrive, keen for a punch-up and a little annoyed that all the other Roman camps are desertedâ€¦

When the dust settles and the groans of pain subside, Asterix discovers and liberates the prisoner Boneywasawarriorwayayix and invites him back to the village for a slap-up feed. Over boar and beer, the Gauls hear how Perfidius had the popular Corsican leader exiled to prevent him revealing how the Praetor has been over-taxing the people and embezzling the gold for himself instead of sending it to Caesar in Rome.

Corsica is officially the most troublesome spot in the Empire and the exile is determined to return and expose the hated Governor, so proud, haughty Boneywasawarriorwayayix is delighted when Asterix and Obelix – with faithful canine companion Dogmatix – determine to help him sneak back to his fiercely over-fortified and contained island (most volumes of this album have a map of Corsica instead of the traditional Gaulish village, and the tiny nation contains four towns and forty-six Roman camps)â€¦

Hilariously obtaining passage on the pirate ship of Redbeard, the voyagers soon find themselves on the island – but by no means unnoticedâ€¦

Soon the dissolute and lazy soldiery are hunting the heroes as they make their way inland to the exile’s home village to rally the populace, whilst in the city of Aleria Perfidius reckons the jig is up and prepares to flee with his ill-gotten gainsâ€¦

Attempting to rally the natives, Boneywasawarriorwayayix comes up against the age-old dilemma: most Corsicans are involved in centuries-long vendettas and would much rather fight each other – at least when they’re not taking a siesta – than unite to attack the invaders. However, eventually – and almost too late – a determined band of warriors march on Aleria. Perfidius has been secretly loading his loot onto a ship, but when his soldiers discover the riches, they realise their leader is planning to abandon them to the fiercely furious Corsicans – at least if overtaxed diplomatic Asterix can keep the natives from killing each other firstâ€¦

Stuffed with sly pokes and good-natured trans-national teasing of perceived (and generally treasured) national characteristics; celebrating the terrifying power of Corsican cheeses and liberally served up with raucous hi-jinks and fast-paced action, this is another magical titbit of all-ages entertainment.

In 1974 Le Cadeau de CÃ©sar was the first tale to be published as a complete album prior to being serialised, with British translation Asterix and Caesar’s Gift appearing in 1977. The saga begins in Rome where two 20-year veteran legionaries drunkenly celebrate being honourably discharged. Tremensdelirious and Egganlettus eagerly look forward to being given their service reward: a parcel of land each.

Unfortunately, Tremensdelirious is overheard disparaging Caesar, but the sardonically cruel Emperor does not punish the old soldier or even withhold his pension. In fact, he gives the veteran a lovely portion of the Gaulish coast in Armorica: all he has to do is shift a few recalcitrant Gauls from their village on his new small holdingâ€¦

A drunk but not a fool, the old soldier knows his fate is sealed and soon trades his dispensation to Lutetian inn-keeper Orthopaedix to settle his outstanding and prodigious bar-billâ€¦

The first that the Indomitable Gauls know of this is when Orthopaedix, wife Angina and daughter Influenza roll up in their cart and try to take possession. After some hilarity the villagers go back about their business and the inn-keeper is left to suffer the fury of his wife at the uprooting of the family to a barbaric hovel where nobody acknowledges their claim.

No stranger to such a tongue-lashing, Chief Vitalstatistix takes pity on Orthopaedix, offering to let them stay and open an inn in the hamlet, but the standoffish villagers are angered by Angina’s superior airs and a riot breaks out on opening nightâ€¦

The world-weary publican is ready to quit, but now humiliated Angina is in a status duel with Impedimenta and, determined to stay, forces Orthopaedix to challenge Vitalstatistix for the post of village Chief. As the campaign to win the support of the always-argumentative villagers intensifies, all manner of shoddy tactics, dubious lobbying and outright bribery takes place, with each party frantically trying to curry political favour from the fickle but extremely astute potential voters who know the value of their own supportâ€¦

Meanwhile, simple, gentle, oafish Obelix has fallen under the spell of the lovely Influenza, and she leads him on cruelly to help out her mother’s naked ambition, leading to a clash with his best friend. Only Asterix seems aware that the discord could well be the death of the village and lead to Caesar’s ultimate triumph and before long the waters are further muddied when elderly Lothario Geriatrix declares himself a third party, splitting the potential vote even further.

The political crisis reaches boiling point when Tremensdelirious turns up, demanding his land-grant back: after all it’s illegal to sell them to Gauls, and Orthopaedix has no say in the matterâ€¦

When the ex-legionary turns violent, Asterix steps in to save the day and the old sot is driven off at sword-point. He doesn’t go far – only to the garrison of Laudanum where old comrade Egganlettus has re-enlisted – and together they blackmail Centurion Tonsillitus into attacking the Gauls to uphold Roman law and get back that â€œofficialâ€ pension land which is every soldier’s rightâ€¦

That kind of military intervention usually ends disastrously, but this time the village is hopelessly divided by political intrigue and backstabbing and even Asterix cannot unite them against their real and common foe. It seems that the Gauls must lose everything until Orthopaedix makes a supreme sacrifice to save the dayâ€¦

Brittle, barbed and devilishly sharp, this outrageous political thriller and satire on modern electioneering is as pertinent and punchy as it ever was, proving once again that these Gallic graphic masterpieces are perfect comics which everyone should read over and over again.
Â© 1972-1974 Goscinny/Uderzo. Revised English translation Â© 2004 Hachette. All rights reserved.

May 5, 2019May 4, 2019

Adventures of Tintin: Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon

By HergÃ©, Bob De Moors and others, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner (Egmont UK)
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)
As Tintin’s Moon Adventure (Magnet/Methuen) ISBN: 978-0-41696-710-4 (TPB)
Forthcoming – Tintin on the Moon (Egmont) ISBN: 978-1405295901 (HB)

On leaving school in 1925, he worked for the conservative Catholic newspaper Le VingtiÃ©me SiÃ©cle where he fell under the influence of its Svengali-esque editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. A devoted boy-scout, a year later Remi produced his first strip series The Adventures of Totor for monthly Boy Scouts of Belgium magazine, and by 1928 was in charge of producing the contents of the newspaper’s weekly children’s supplement Le Petit VingtiÃ©me.

The rest is historyâ€¦

Some of that history is quite dark: During the Nazi Occupation of Belgium, Le VingtiÃ©me SiÃ©cle was closed down and HergÃ© was compelled to move his popular strip to daily newspaper Le Soir (Brussels’ most prominent French-language periodical, and thus appropriated and controlled by the Nazis).

He diligently toiled on for the duration, but following Belgium’s liberation was accused of collaboration and even being a Nazi sympathiser. It took the intervention of Belgian Resistance war-hero Raymond Leblanc to dispel the cloud over HergÃ©, which he did by simply vouching for the cartoonist and by providing cash to create a new magazine – Le Journal de Tintin – which Leblanc published and managed. The anthology comic swiftly achieved a weekly circulation in the hundreds of thousands and allowed the artist and his team to remaster past tales: excising material dictated by and unwillingly added to ideologically shade the war time adventures as well as generally improving and updating great tales that were about to become a global phenomenon.

With World War II over and his reputation restored, HergÃ© entered the most successful period of his artistic career. He had mastered his storytelling craft, possessed 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 VingtiÃ©me SiÃ©cle, running from 28^th September 1939 until 8^th May 1940 when the paper was closed down. Set on the eve of a European war, the plot revolved around Tintin hunting seditionists and saboteurs sabotaging oil supplies in the Middle East. Before being convinced to update and complete the tale as Land of Black Gold, HergÃ© briefly toyed with the notion of taking his cast into spaceâ€¦

Collected albums Objectif Lune and On a marchÃ© sur la Lune were huge hits after the initial serialisation in Le Journal de Tintin from 30^th March 1950 to 7^th September 1950 and – after what must have been an intolerable wait for readers – from 29^th October 1952 to 29^th December 1953.

The tale was produced after discussions between HergÃ© 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 a frequent if unacknowledged contributor to the Tintin canon). The sci fi epic that 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 â€œBig-nessâ€ – this taut thriller and its magnificent, mind-boggling sequel are still in a class of their own in the annals of science fiction comic stripsâ€¦

Moreover, 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 that is finally being repeated this summer in a new hardback album from Methuenâ€¦

Our tale begins with our indomitable boy reporter and Captain Haddock returning to ancestral pile Marlinspike Hall only to discover that brilliant but â€œdifficultâ€ 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 that the secrecy is for sound reasons. In Syldavia, Calculus and an international team of researchers 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.

An 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 do provide some of the funniest moments in comics historyâ€¦

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

Cold, clinical and superbly underplayed, Destination Moon is completely unlike the flash-and-dazzle razzamatazz of British and American tales from that period – or since. It is as if the burgeoning Cold War mentality of the era has infected even Tintin’s bright clean world. Once again, the pressure of work and HergÃ©’s troubled private life resulted in a breakdown and a hiatus in the strip – 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 the comedy set-pieces are more manic and explosive: This is possibly the most mature of all Tintin’s exploitsâ€¦

Presumably to offset the pressures of creation to weekly deadlines, the master founded Studio HergÃ© on 6^th 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, and repeated the task for the definitive 1971 release of Land of Black Gold. An invaluable and permanent addition to the production team, De Moor supervised while filling in backgrounds and, most notably, rendering the unforgettable eerie and magnificent Lunar landscapes that feature here.

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 that the idiot detectives have accidentally stowed away, and along with Captain Haddock’s illicit whisky and the effects of freefall, provide brilliant comedy routines to balance the eerie isolation and dramatic dangers of the journey.

Against all odds the lunanauts land and make astounding scientific discoveries, but must cut short their adventures due to the imminent threat of suffocation caused by the introduction of the extra passengers on the fantastic atomic moon rocketâ€¦

Moreover, lurking in the shadows, there is still the very real threat of a murderous traitor to be dealt withâ€¦

This so-modern yarn is a high point in the series, 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 HergÃ© saga it simply must be this translunar Adventure of Tintin.
Destination Moon: artwork Â© 1953, 1959, 1981 Editions Casterman, Paris & Tournai. Text Â© 1959 Egmont UK Limited. All Rights Reserved. Explorers on the Moon: artwork Â© 1954, 1959, 1982 Editions Casterman, Paris & Tournai. Text Â© 1959 Egmont UK Limited. All Rights Reserved.

A new combined compilation – Tintin on the Moon – will be released on June 27^th 2019 and is available for pre-order now

April 28, 2019April 27, 2019

Krazy & Ignatz 1941-1942: â€œA Ragout of Raspberriesâ€

By George Herriman, edited by Bill Blackbeard (Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 978-1-56097-887-9

In a field positively brimming with magnificent and eternally evergreen achievements, the strip Krazy Kat is – for most cartoon cognoscenti – the pinnacle of pictorial narrative innovation; a singular and hugely influential body of work which shaped the early days of the comics industry and elevated itself to the level of a treasure of world literature.

Krazy and Ignatz, as it is dubbed in these gloriously addictive commemorative tomes from Fantagraphics, is a creation which must be appreciated on its own terms. Over the decades the strip developed a unique language – simultaneously visual and verbal – whilst exploring the immeasurable variety of human experience, foibles and peccadilloes with unfaltering warmth and understandingâ€¦ and without ever offending anybody. Baffled millions, perhaps, but offendedâ€¦ no.

It did go over the heads and around the hearts of far more than a few, but Krazy Kat was never a strip for dull, slow or unimaginative people: those who simply won’t or can’t appreciate the complex, multi-layered verbal and cartoon whimsy, absurdist philosophy or seamless blending of sardonic slapstick with arcane joshing. It is still the closest thing to pure poesy that narrative art has ever produced.

Herriman was already a successful cartoonist and journalist in 1913 when a cat and mouse who had been noodling about at the edges of his outrageous domestic comedy strip The Dingbat Family/The Family Upstairs graduated to their own feature. Mildly intoxicating and gently scene-stealing, Krazy Kat subsequently debuted in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal on Oct 28^th 1913 and – largely by dint of the publishing magnate’s enrapt adoration and overpowering direct influence and interference – gradually and inexorably spread throughout his vast stable of papers.

Although Hearst and a host of the period’s artistic and literary intelligentsia (such as Frank Capra, e.e. Cummings, Willem de Kooning, H.L. Mencken and Jack Kerouac) all adored the strip, many local and regional editors did not; taking every potentially career-ending opportunity to drop it from the populace-beguiling comics section.

Eventually the feature found its true home and sanctuary in the Arts and Drama section of Hearst’s papers. Protected there by the publisher’s doctrinaire patronage and enhanced with the cachet of enticing colour, Kat & Ko. flourished unharmed by editorial interference or fleeting fashion, running generally unmolested until Herriman’s death in April 1944.

The saga’s basic premise is simple: Krazy is an effeminate, dreamy, sensitive and romantic feline, hopelessly in love with Ignatz Mouse; a venal everyman, rude, crude, brutal, mendacious and thoroughly scurrilous.

Moreover, by the time of these tales it’s not even a response, except perhaps a conditioned one: the mouse spends all his time, energy and ingenuity in heaving missiles at the mild moggy’s bonce. He can’t help himself, and Krazy’s day is bleak and unfulfilled if the hoped-for assault doesn’t happen, but at least in this volume, the brick is supplemented by other projectiles for the sake of varietyâ€¦

The smitten kitten always misidentifies (or does he?) these gritty gifts as tokens of equally recondite affection showered upon him in the manner of Cupid’s fabled arrowsâ€¦

The final crucial element completing an anthropomorphic eternal triangle is lawman Offissa Bull Pupp: completely besotted with Krazy, professionally aware of the Mouse’s true nature, yet hamstrung by his own amorous timidity and sense of honour from permanently removing his devilish rival for the foolish feline’s affections. Krazy is, of course, blithely oblivious to the perennially â€œFriend-Zonedâ€ Pupp’s dolorous dilemmaâ€¦

Secondarily populating the ever-mutable stage are a stunning supporting cast of inspired bit players such as terrifying deliverer of unplanned babies Joe Stork; unsavoury huckster Don Kiyoti, hobo Bum Bill Bee, social climbing busybody Pauline Parrot, portal-packing Door Mouse, self-aggrandizing Walter Cephus Austridge, inscrutable, barely intelligible Chinese mallard Mock Duck, dozy Joe Turtil and the increasingly ubiquitous sagacious fowl Mrs. Kwakk Wakk, plus a host of other audacious animal crackers all equally capable of stealing the limelight and even supporting their own features.

The strips themselves are a masterful mÃ©lange of unique experimental art, cunningly designed, wildly expressionistic and strongly referencing Navajo art forms whilst graphically utilising sheer unbridled imagination and delightfully evocative lettering and language. This last is particularly effective in these later tales: alliterative, phonetically and even onomatopoeically joyous with a compelling musical force and delicious whimsy (â€œâ€¦stomms an’ momsooms, gales an’ tie foomsâ€¦â€ or â€œocto pusses an’ pinkwinsâ€).

Yet for all that high-fallutin’ intellectualism, these comic adventures are poetic, satirical, timely, timeless, bittersweet, self-referential, fourth-wall bending, eerily idiosyncratic, astonishingly hilarious escapades encompassing every aspect of humour from painfully punning shaggy dog stories to riotous, violent slapstick. Kids of any age will delight in them as much as any pompous old git like me and youâ€¦

Sometimes Herriman even eschewed his mystical mumblings and arcane argots for the simply sublime grace of a supremely entertaining silent gag in the manner of his beloved Keystone Copsâ€¦

There’s been a wealth of Krazy Kat collections since the late 1970s when the strip was first rediscovered by a better-educated, open-minded and far more accepting generation. This delirious tome covers all the strips from 1937-1938 in a comfortably hefty (231 x 305 mm) softcover edition – and is also available as a madly mystical digital edition.

Preceded by candid photos, original art and examples of some of Herriman’s personalised gifts and commissions (hand-coloured artworks featuring the cast and settings), the splendid pictorial carnival is bolstered by Jeet Heer’s superb analysis of the unique voice of the strip as cited above. This comes in his erudite Introduction ‘Kat Got Your Tongue: Where George Herriman’s Language Came From‘ after which the jocularity resumes with January 15^th 1941 – with the hues provided by professional separators rather than Herriman.

Within this jubilant journal of passions thwarted, the torrid triangular drama plays out as winningly as ever, but with emphasis shifting more to the varied minor cast members. The usual parade of hucksters and conmen return, but the eternally triangular clashes and confusions – although still a constant – are not the satisfying punchlines they used to be, but rather provide a comforting continuity as the world subtly changes and the Second World War begins to slowly shade the strip and affect the charactersâ€¦

As well as his semi-permanent incarcerations, Ignatz endures numerous forms of exile and social confinement, but with Krazy aiding and abetting, these sanctions seldom result in a reduction of cerebral contusions and the plague of travelling conjurors, unemployed magicians and shady clairvoyants still make life hard for the hard-pressed constabulary and the gullible fools they targetâ€¦

As always, the mouse’s continual search for his ammunition of choice leads to many brick-based acquisition and delivery gags but has widened his scope to encompass munition of materials other than clay and shapes more aerodynamic and enticing than bulky rectangles. Perhaps because of Herriman’s own vintage, many characters share a greater appreciation of infirmity and loss of focus, reflected in the reduction of Krazy to a bit player in many of the strips.

Pupp suffers from double vision on occasion and repeatedly tests labour-saving new policing appliances – such as stilts and periscopes – while Colin Kelly moves away from artisanal brick-baking to conveyor-belt mass production. Ignatz tries to bolster his fading energies through unlikely herbal additives – such as spinach – and the entire township (including buildings) suffer protracted bouts of polka-dottedness after the arrival of a dalmatian â€œkoach kanineâ€. Joe Stork starts using robot planes to deliver his dread bundles of natal joy and responsibility, Ignatz’s much abused wife Magnesia starts her long-delayed resistance and emancipation, and everybody in town can’t seem to get enough sleepâ€¦

The ever-changing skies remain a source of wonder and bewilderment with oddly-shaped stellar phenomena abounding, and the Prof from Coconino’s Museum of Palaeontology, Archaeology and Such unearths primeval precursors to our cartoon cast, while modern times are acknowledged through myriad permutations and adaptations to Ignatz’s home-from-home the county jail.

Aged busybody Mrs Kwakk Wakk expands her role of wise old crone and sarcastic Greek Chorus; upping her status from bit-player to full-on supporting cast. She has a mean and spiteful beak on her too, whilst laconic vagabond Bum Bill Bee shares his regal origins (a whole bunch of them, in fact) with the hoi polloi in townâ€¦

The town barber stokes the flames of passion and reshapes the grizzled heads of many ardent swains seeking to curry the favours of vivacious, exotic new schoolteacher Miss Mimi who is, as everybody is painfully aware, Frenchâ€¦

A different form of double vision taxes the Kat’s composure in doses of mirror madness and episodes of powdered katnip overindulgence offer a nosy edge of conspiracy to proceedings, but doesn’t too much curtail Krazy’s efforts in horticulture, nourishing korn and other useful vegetable cropsâ€¦

The tone of the strips subtly changes from October 1941 with the introduction of Pupp’s mechanised Listening Post. Spying was always a major interest for all citizens, as was stargazing and gossip. Now however, with war clouds forming in the real world, an edge of gloomy but absurdist satire could be detected in many strips, such as when Kelly cuts off the mouse’s brick supply due to clay – like paper, rubber and gasoline – being officially afforded new status as a Military Priority Materialâ€¦

There’s a marked increasing in winking around town, although those in the know codify the practice as â€œnictatingâ€ and some citizens – such as the pelicans and Mr. Kenga Roo – are subjected to increased stop-&-search indignities too: what with them being born to conceal bricks and brick-tossersâ€¦

At least, the traditional fishing, water sports, driving and parlous and participatory state of the burgeoning local theatre scene remain hot topics tooâ€¦

And, welcomingly as ever, there is still a solid dependence on the strange landscapes and eccentric flora (including a mass ingress of elephants, snakes and worms) for humorous inspiration, while all manner of weather and terrain play a large part in inducing anxiety, bewilderment and hilarity.

This penultimate collection is again supplied with an erudite and instructional ‘Ignatz Mouse Debaffler Page’, providing pertinent facts, snippets of contextual history and necessary notes for the young and potentially perplexed.

If, however, you are one of Them and not Us, or if you actually haven’t experienced the gleeful graphic assault on the sensorium, mental equilibrium and emotional lexicon carefully thrown together by George Herriman from the dawn of the 20^th century until the dog days of World War II, this astounding compendium is a most accessible way to do so.
Â© 2008, 2015 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

April 25, 2019April 24, 2019

Omnibus 6: Asterix in Switzerland, The Mansions of the Gods, Asterix & the Laurel Wreath

By Goscinny & Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Orion Books)
ISBN: 978-1-44400-489-2 (HB), 978-1-44400-491-5 (PB)

More than 325 million copies of 34 Asterix books have sold worldwide, making his joint creators France’s bestselling international authors.

(Moi, I still rejoice in a perfectly produced â€œPaf!â€ to the phizzog as much as any painfully potent procession of puns or sardonic satirical sideswipeâ€¦)

The Gauls don’t care: they daily defy the world’s greatest military machine simply by going about their everyday affairs, protected by the magic potion of resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits of the diminutive dynamo and his simplistic, supercharged best friendâ€¦

Firmly established as a global brand and premium French export by the mid-1960s, Asterix the Gaul continued to grow in quality as Goscinny & Uderzo toiled ever onward, crafting further fabulous sagas; building a stunning legacy of graphic excellence and storytelling gold. Moreover, following the civil unrest and nigh-revolution in French society following the Paris riots of 1968, the tales began to increasingly show signs of trenchant satire and more directed social commentaryâ€¦

As AstÃ©rix chez les HelvÃ¨tes was the 16^th serialised saga, originally running in Pilote #557-578 throughout 1970 and first translated into English as Asterix in Switzerland in 1973. It opens with the attempted murder of Roman official Quaestor Vexatius Sinusitus; dispatched to Gaul to audit the corrupt, embezzling and utterly decadent Governor Varius Flavus.

The poisoning only fails due to the efforts of Getafix, but to keep the Roman alive – and further thwart Flavus – the sage needs a rare flower which only grows in the mountains of neighbouring country Helvetia (and that’s Switzerland, mein kinder). Always keen for a road trip, Asterix and Obelix quickly volunteer to fetch the fabled â€œsilver starâ€ or Edelweiss â€¦

With Sinusitus sheltered in the village of the indomitable Gauls, Flavus’ only hope is to stop the happy voyagers. To that end he sends his most unscrupulous man to warn the equally repugnant and devious Curius Odus, Governor of Helvetia, to stop the Gauls at all costsâ€¦

Asterix and Obelix cannily avoid Roman sabotage plots, beat up many, many thugs and bullies, whilst marvelling at the quirkiness of their newfound Helvetian friends, with their mania for cleanliness, passion for melted cheese, yodelling, tidy, solicitous brand of medical treatments, cultured beverages, cultivated villages, lakes and banks and their fruit-based archery training programs for the youngâ€¦

Although a far darker tale than most previous escapades, all the familiar gentle spoofing of national characteristics, cartoon action and hilarious lampoonery is incorporated into this splendid and beautifully rendered yarn. The search for the silver-star is, of course ultimately successful, despite an entire battalion of troops racing up a mountain after them, with a stunning alpine climax and an exceptionally different kind of endingâ€¦

Translated that same year was Le Domaine des Dieux (from Pilote #591-612, in 1971) wherein Caesar, determined to eradicate the last remnant of Gaulish resistance, tries to win by social planning and cultural imperialism. To that end he plans to cut down the great forest which surrounds the village and build a new town of lavish Roman apartments in the stylish, modern Roman manner: The Mansions of the Godsâ€¦

Whiz kid architect Squaronthehypotenus leads the project, but his immigrant army of slave labourers soon founders when boar-loving Obelix strenuously objects to having his favourite hunting preserve torn down and paved overâ€¦

However, the massed might of Rome is insurmountable, and eventually many mighty oaks are felled. To counter this Getafix simply grows instant new ones whilst Asterix shares his magic potion with the increasingly fed up slavesâ€¦

This stalemate is only overcome when the wily Gauls seemingly surrender and allow the â€œMansions of the Godsâ€ to be built and stocked with middle-class colonists from Rome. After a rapid bump in trade as the villagers become tourist-trappers, the complacent property developers make their greatest mistake and rent an apartment to the Gaul’s uniquely gifted bard Cacofonix, leading to a rapid exodus of tenants and an inevitable and breathtaking final clash with the garrison of Aquarium, who had moved into the luxurious vacant apartmentsâ€¦

Drenched in trenchant observation of and jibes at the industrial relations conflicts, the then runaway speculation in new developments in France and the inexorable growth of â€œplanning blightâ€ (still painfully relevant today anywhere in the industrialised world), this tremendously effective satire is packed with gags and action and displays artist Uderzo’s sublime gift for caricature and parody – especially in the wonderful spoofs of real estate advertising campaignsâ€¦

Also debuting in Pilote, Les Lauriers de CÃ©sar came from issues #621-642, in 1971 and was given the fabulous Bell/Hockridge treatment in 1974 to become Asterix and the Laurel Wreath. It begins in Rome where Asterix and Obelix are arguingâ€¦

During a visit to Chief Vitalstatistix‘s wealthy, snobbish and city-dwelling brother-in-law Homeopathix, the crusty old warrior gets too drunk and boasts that he can get something which all the merchant’s money cannot buy – a stew seasoned with Caesar’s fabled wreath of office.

Sober now and in dire danger of eternal embarrassment as well as the unflinching approbation of his sharp-tongued wife Impedimenta, the Chief has no option but to allow his two best men – the larger of whom had drunkenly egged him on at the family gathering and then volunteered to fetch the leafy headpiece – to travel to the heart of Caesar’s power and attempt the impossibleâ€¦

At least Asterix knows it’s impossible; Obelix is quite happy to storm the Imperial Palace and just grab the wreathâ€¦

Luckily, reason prevails and the wily little warrior determines their only chance is infiltration, to which end Asterix sells them both as slaves. Unfortunately, they are bought by the wrong Roman. Osseus Humerus is an innocuous Patrician with a troublesome family, but as Asterix tries every trick to get their unsuspecting owner to return them to the Slave Auctioneer, he only endears himself even more to his very satisfied customer. So much so in fact, that Humerus entrusts them with a message to be delivered to Caesar himself.

Jealous major-domo Goldendelicius then accuses them of planning assassination and the heroes are locked in the dungeons – leaving them complete access to the entire palaceâ€¦

Before long, the indomitable duo are wreaking havoc in the Imperial Court and playing hob with the usually predictable proceedings in the Arena of the Circus Maximus.

Seemingly untouchable, but no nearer the Laurel Wreath, the despondent Gauls finally seize their chance when they encounter again the recently promoted Goldendelicius. Rewarded by Caesar, the major-domo now holds a position of great responsibility: holder of the triumphal floral arrangement at Caesar’s next public engagementâ€¦

Sharp and deeply intriguing, this comedy of errors is spectacularly illustrated by Uderzo at the very top of his game, whilst Goscinny’s dry, wry script seamlessly rockets from slapstick set-piece to penetrating observational comedy and magnificently engaging adventure, with our unlikely heroes inevitably, happily victorious in every instance. Just as it should beâ€¦

Asterix epics are always packed with captivating historical titbits, soupcons of healthy cynicism, singularly surreal situations and amazingly addictive but generally consequence-free action, illustrated in a magically enticing manner. These are perfect comics that everyone should read over and over again.
Â© 1970, 1972-3 Goscinny/Uderzo. Revised English translation Â© 2004 Hachette. All rights reserved.

April 21, 2019April 20, 2019

Popeye Classics volume 3

By Bud Sagendorf, edited and designed by Craig Yoe (Yoe Books/IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-61377-779-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-62302-492-5

There are a few fictional personages to enter communal world consciousness – and fewer still from comics – but a grizzled, bluff, uneducated, visually impaired old sailor with a speech impediment is possibly the most well-known of that select bunch.

Elzie Segar had been producing Thimble Theatre for a decade (since December 19^th 1919) when he introduced a coarse, brusque â€œsailor manâ€ into the everyday ongoing saga of hapless halfwits Ham Gravy and Castor Oyl on January 29^th 1929. Nobody suspected the giddy heights that stubborn cantankerous walk-on would reachâ€¦

In 1924 Segar created a second daily strip The 5:15: a surreal domestic comedy featuring weedy commuter and would-be inventor John Sappo and his formidable wife Myrtle which endured – in one form or another – as a topper/footer-feature accompanying the main Sunday page throughout the author’s career. The feature even survived his untimely death, eventually becoming the trainee-playground of Popeye’s second great humour stylist: Bud Sagendorf.

After Segar’s far-too-premature death in 1938, Doc Winner, Tom Sims, Ralph Stein and Bela Zambouly all worked on the strip, even as the Fleischer Studios animated features brought Popeye to the entire world, albeit a slightly different vision of the old salt.

Sadly, none of them had the eccentric flair and raw inventiveness that had put Thimble Theatre at the forefront of cartoon entertainmentsâ€¦

Born in 1915, Forrest â€œBudâ€ Sagendorf was barely 17 when his sister – who worked in the Santa Monica art store where Segar bought his drawing supplies – introduced the kid to the master cartoonist who became his teacher and employer as well as a father-figure. In 1958, after years on the periphery Sagendorf, finally took over the strip and all the merchandise design, becoming Popeye’s prime originatorâ€¦

When Sagendorf became the main man, his loose, rangy style and breezy scripts brought the strip itself back to the forefront of popularity and made reading it cool and fun all over again. Bud wrote and drew Popeye in every graphic arena for 24 years and when he died in 1994, he was succeeded by controversial â€œUndergroundâ€ cartoonist Bobby London.

Bud had been Segar’s assistant and apprentice, and – from 1948 onwards – exclusive writer and illustrator of Popeye’s comicbook adventures in a regular monthly title published by America’s king of licensed periodicals, Dell Comics.

When Popeye first appeared, he was a rude, crude brawler: a gambling, cheating, uncivilised ne’er-do-well. He was soon exposed as the ultimate working-class hero: raw and rough-hewn, practical, but with an innate, unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not; a joker who wanted kids to be themselves – but not necessarily â€œgoodâ€ – and someone who took no guff from anyoneâ€¦

Naturally, as his popularity grew, Popeye mellowed somewhat. He was still ready to defend the weak and had absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows but the shocking sense of dangerous unpredictability and comedic anarchy he initially provided was sorely missedâ€¦ but not in Sagendorf’s comicbook yarnsâ€¦

Collected in their entirety in this beguiling full-colour hardback (also available in a digital edition) are issues #10-14 of Popeye‘s comicbook series, produced by the irrepressible Sagendorf and collectively spanning December 1949/January to October/December1950.

The stunning, seemingly stream-of-consciousness stories are preceded by an effusively appreciative Foreword – ‘Society of Sagendorks’ – by inspired aficionado, historian and publisher Craig Yoe, offering a fabulous collation of candid photos and assorted gems of merchandise – such as actual Wimpy burgers, a set of Popeye-themed Old Maid cards, Lunchbox illustrations, an anti-bullying campaign posters and foreign edition covers – in another ‘Bud Sagendorf Scrapbook’.

Popeye‘s fantastic first issue launched in February 1948, and we rejoin the parade of laughs and thrills nearly two year later with #10 and a single-page monochrome duel of wits between Popeye and his â€œinfinkâ€ protÃ©gÃ© Swee’ Pea before the four-colour fun takes off with ‘Rockabye Berries! – A Lethargic Tale of Slumbering Horror amid the Snoozing Sleepers of a Drowsy Island’ as old King Blozo of Spinachovia pleads for aid to overcome a bizarre plague of sleeping sickness. The old salt soon stumbles onto – and deals with – the causeâ€¦ the island’s long-forgotten and rather aggrieved original inhabitantsâ€¦

‘Ouch! or Don’t Hit Himâ€¦ He’s a Human!!’ sees master moocher Wellington J. Wimpy attempt to teach fiery prize-fighter Popeye how to lose a fight after which ‘Pirate! or The Fist mus’ be Mightier ‘an the Sword! or The Seven Seas ain’t Big Enough to hold Both of Us!’ introduces nautical bully Typhoon Thomas who relentlessly pursues the sailor-man to force a duel and prove his own toughness. Big mistakeâ€¦

Short prose stories were a staple of these comics (and a legal necessity to gain favourable postal rates) and here ‘Swee’ Pea and the Wonderful Bait!‘ details a fishing competition between the kid and grizzled â€œgrandparentâ€ Poopdeck Pappy before Wimpy and Swee’ Pea clash wills in a story of the chase entitled ‘Apple Snack!’

The issue ends with a bang in a black & white interior half-page Popeye gag about pesky mosquitoes and issue #11 (February/March 1950) opens with a monochrome single-pager gag as the incredible infink builds a burglar trap and Olive Oyl proves it worksâ€¦

Four-colour fun resumes with ‘Swell Day’, pitting Popeye against bullying adult sadist The Duke, who loves to make kids cry, forcing out hero to adopt infantile camouflage to teach him a lesson. Instantly following is ‘The Guest! or Was This Visit Necessary? or Good-Bye! Good-Bye! or Next Time Call B’fore you come, so I can Leave B’fore you Arrive!!’ as a translunar Moon Goon imposes on Popeye’s hospitality and literally eats him out of house and homeâ€¦

The old salt almost endures his first defeat when playing ‘Golf!’ against Wimpy and Rough-House until he dumps the clubs for a more versatile striking implement, after which prose yarn ‘Swee’ Pea and the Tossing Island!’ spins a bittersweet yarn about a lonely beast on a distant atoll. Wimpy then stars in ‘Easy to Find!’: another duel with the baby sailor before the issue ends on another half-page monochrome Popeye gag.

Moved to quarterly release, # Popeye #12 (April-June) opens with a monochrome single-pager and Popeye â€œexplainingâ€ in his unique brisk manner why no one calls him a sissy, after which the magnificent ‘Witch Whistle’ sees the sailor revisit embattled Spinachovia where King Blozo is plagued by a rash of vanishing farmers. The cause is sinister old nemesis the Sea Witch whose army of giant vultures seem unbeatableâ€¦ until Popeye intervenesâ€¦

‘Drip! Drip!’ finds the nautical champion still in Spinachovia as a vile villain tampers with the water supply and the sailor-man is forced to dig deep to achieve his purposeâ€¦

All sailors and kids love the prospect of buried treasure so when Popeye unearths ‘The Map!’ in his own garden he soon sparks a storm of interest and unwelcome attention, before text vignette Swee’ Pea’s Sea Kite!’ reveals a close shave aboard ship and cartoon classic ‘The Double Mooch!’ sees wily Wimpy defeated by the machinations of Poopdeck Pappy and tricked into a day’s hard labourâ€¦

A monochrome gag reveals the limits of Popeye’s courage after his sweetie Olive asks him to critique her new hat, ending the issue and segueing neatly into #13 (June-August) and another with the infernal infink plundering a new fishpond, before the main event unfolds in ‘Shipwreck!’ Here the unusual suspects set off in search of an island of solid gold, unaware that they are also carrying two â€œghostâ€ stowawaysâ€¦

Safely returned to shore, our cast heads west once more in ‘Adrift! or Here’s Dirt in your Face!’ Their desert trek soon uncovers evidence of ancient gopher people: they’re quite mean and rather rudeâ€¦

Swee’ Pea then has fun with pets in prose piece ‘A New Port!’ before Pappy and the ultimate moocher renew their simmering rivalry in ‘Wimpy and the Big Bite!’, after which another monochrome closer details the joys and wonders of random fruit fling tossing (I threw an apple in the airâ€¦ where it landed, I don’t careâ€¦).

Popeye #14 (October-December) celebrates the magic of the Iron Horse with a stunning cover (but aren’t they all?) and a B&W rebus crossword puzzle before ‘Western Railroading!’ finds the sailor-man setting up his own wild west train line. Sadly, with Olive as his sole passenger, business gets pretty tough, pretty quickâ€¦

Staying in cactus country but switching modes of transport, ‘Horse Race!’ sees the crafty cove adapt maritime techniques to cowboy pursuits before the cast are bedazzled and beguiled by the acquisition of a ‘Ghost Mine!’â€¦

Prose tale ‘Pappy Severs a Partnership’ sees the old reprobate rebel against Popeye’s galley fare with heart-rending consequences before cartoon madness resumes with J. Wellington Wimpy lured into excessive effort – and mortal combat with a cow – in a western ‘Gold Rush!’ before this captivating chronicle concludes with one last rebus crossword puzzle.

There is more than one Popeye. Most of them are pretty good, and some are truly excellent. This book is definitely top tier and for those who love lunacy, laughter, frantic fantasy and rollicking adventure. If that’s you, add this terrific treasure trove of wonder to your collection.
Popeye Classics volume 3 Â© 2014 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Popeye Â© 2014 King Features Syndicate. â„¢ Heart Holdings Inc.

April 10, 2019April 8, 2019

Astro Boy volume 5

c
By Osamu Tezuka, translated by Frederik L. Schodt (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-680-9 (TPB)

From beginning his professional career in the late 1940s until his death in 1989, Osamu Tezuka generated an incomprehensible volume of quality work which transformed the world of manga and how it was perceived in his own country and, ultimately, across the globe. Devoted to Walt Disney’s creations, he performed similar sterling service with Japan’s fledgling animation industry.

The earliest stories were intended for children but right from the start Tezuka’s expansive fairy tale stylisations harboured more mature themes and held hidden pleasures for older readers and the legion of fans growing up with his manga masterpiecesâ€¦

â€œThe God of Comicsâ€ was born in Osaka Prefecture on November 3^rd 1928, and as a child suffered from a severe illness. The doctor who cured him inspired the lad to study medicine, and although Osamu began drawing professionally whilst at university in 1946, he persevered with college and qualified as a medical practitioner too. Then, as he faced a career crossroads, his mother advised him to do the thing which made him happiest.

He never practiced as a healer but the world was gifted with such masterpieces as Kimba the White Lion, Buddha, Black Jack and so many other graphic narratives.

Working ceaselessly over decades, Tezuka and his creations inevitably matured, but he was always able to speak to the hearts and minds of young and old equally. His creations ranged from the childishly charming to the distinctly disturbing such as The Book of Human Insects.

Tezuka died on February 9^th 1989, having produced more than 150,000 pages of timeless comics, created the Japanese anime industry and popularised uniquely Japanese graphic narrative which became a fixture of world culture.

This fifth monochrome digest volume (173 x 113 mm in the physical world and any size you like if you get the eBook edition) continues to present – in non-linear order – early exploits of his signature character, with the emphasis firmly on fantastic fun and family entertainmentâ€¦

Tetsuwan Atomu (literally â€œMighty Atomâ€ but known universally as Astro Boy due to its dissemination around the world as an animated TV cartoon and one of post-war Japan’s better exports) is a spectacular, riotous, rollicking sci fi action-adventure starring a young boy who also happens to be one of the mightiest robots on Earth.

The series began in 1952 in ShÅnen Kobunsha and ran until March 12^th 1968 – although Tezuka often returned to add to the canon in later years. Over that period, Astro spawned the aforementioned global TV cartoon boom, starred in comicbook specials and featured in games, toys, collectibles, movies and the undying devotion of generations of ardent fans.

Tezuka frequently drew himself into his tales as a commentator, and in his later revisions and introductions often mentioned how he found the restrictions of ShÅnen comics stifling; specifically, having to periodically pause a plot to placate the demands of his audience by providing a blockbusting fight every episode. That’s his prerogative: most of us avid aficionados have no complaintsâ€¦

Tezuka and his production team were never as wedded to close continuity as fans are. They constantly revised both stories and artwork in later collections, so if you’re a purist you are just plain out of luck. Such tweaking and modifying is the reason this series seems to skip up and down the publishing chronology. The intent is to entertain at all times so stories aren’t treated as gospel and order is not immutable or inviolate.

It’s just comics, guysâ€¦

And in case you came in late, here’s a little background to set you upâ€¦

In a world where robots are ubiquitous and have won (limited) human rights, brilliant Dr. Tenma lost his son Tobio in a traffic accident. Grief-stricken, the tormented genius used his position as head of Japan’s Ministry of Science to build a replacement. The android his team created was one of the most ground-breaking constructs in history, and for a while Tenma was content.

However, as his mind re-stabilised, Tenma realised the unchanging humanoid was not Tobio and, with cruel clarity, summarily rejected the replacement. Ultimately, the savant removed the insult to his real boy by selling the robot to a shady dealerâ€¦

One day, independent researcher Professor Ochanomizu was in the audience at a robot circus and realised diminutive performer â€œAstroâ€ was unlike the other acts – or indeed, any artificial being he had ever encountered. Convincing the circus owners to part with the little robot, the Prof closely studied the unique creation and realised just what a miracle had come into his handsâ€¦

Part of Ochanomizu’s socialization process for Astro included placing him in a family environment and having him attend school just like a real boy. As well as providing friends and admirers the familiar environment turned up another foil and occasional assistant in the bellicose form of Elementary School teacher Higeoyaji (AKA Mr. Mustachio)â€¦

The wiry wonder’s astonishing exploits resume after the now traditional ‘A Note to Readers’ – explaining why one thing that hasn’t been altered is the depictions of various racial types in the stories.

‘Crucifix Island’ originally ran January through April, 1957 in ShÅnen Magazine and begins with an explanation of why most robots are generally humanoid before concentrating on obsessive Doctor Tozawa who channelled his ancient ninja lineage to create an ultimate shape-changing mechanoid. He was interrupted and arrested before he could complete his masterpiece but that was then and this is now where our story properly beginsâ€¦

Following a manic prison break, Tozawa and his new crooked cronies wash up on and take over a desolate island housing one hundred thousand robots operating the deepest and most sophisticated uranium mine on Earth. The merest by-product is a daily fortune in other precious ores and gemsâ€¦

Meanwhile, at the Isle’s Robot School Astro is having problems with another young automaton. Pook is troubled because he’s incomplete: his â€œfatherâ€ was arrested and imprisoned before he could make his boy perfectâ€¦

When Pook and Tozawa are reunited, the mad scientist ambushes Astro, harvesting his body for the parts needed to complete his dream robot. The troubled mechanoid finally gains the power to change shapeâ€¦

Sadly, one thing that never changes is human greed and Tozawa’s fellow fugitives turn on him when he ignores their pleas to plunder the discarded mountain of gems. Inviting their army of criminal comrades to take over the island, they try to kill the now repentant technologist. With his breath fading, the Doctor repairs Astro to tackle the thieves, but nobody anticipated Pook’s reaction to gaining his full powers or how that would affect the multitude of lethal digging robotsâ€¦

After a tremendous battle order is eventually restored but not everybody makes it out aliveâ€¦

Running in ShÅnen Magazine from February to April 1960, ‘Space Snow Leopard’ details how frosty precipitation across Earth steals energy from robots and machines. Seemingly unaffected, Astro is challenged by a space wizard and his six-legged killer feline Lupe, but barely escapes as they continue softening up the planet for an alien takeover.

On the run, Astro consults his school friends hoping organic humanity can prevail against the bizarre duo. Ultimately however it takes humans and robots working together and the invention of a giant amalgamated mecha comprised of many smaller automatons working in unison to save the worldâ€¦

‘The Artificial Sun’ first ran between December 1959 and February 1960 and concludes this compilation in glorious style as a ship at sea reports a deadly floating fireball causing weather disruptions. Fearing the worst, the International Council of Police Organizations consult super-cop Sherlock Holmspun to tackle the crisis. His pride in in a swift breakthrough is soon scotched, however, when the council insist he take along some competent backup/additional firepower in the form of a robot codenamed Mighty Atom â€¦

With the game afoot, the odd couple track down prime suspect Professor Hirata and his deadly monster, but will Holmspun’s prejudice jeopardise the mission… or will his dreadful secret shame leave them all unable to fight off the deadly fireball beast and the real culprit behind it?

Breathtaking pace, outrageous invention, slapstick comedy, heart-wrenching sentiment and frenetic action are the hallmarks of these captivating comics constructions: perfect examples of Tezuka’s uncanny storytelling gifts, which can still deliver a potent punch and instil wide-eyed wonder on a variety of intellectual levels.
Tetsuwan Atom by Osama Tezuka Â© 2002 by Tezuka Productions. All rights reserved. Astro Boy is a registered trademark of Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd., Tokyo Japan. Unedited translation Â© 2002 Frederik L. Schodt.

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