Category: World Classics

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Conan the Barbarian Epic Collection volume 1: The Coming of Conan (1970-1972)


By Roy Thomas & Barry Windsor-Smith with John Jakes, Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, Sal Buscema, Frank Giacoia, Tom Palmer, Tom Sutton, “Diverse Hands”, Marie Severin, John Romita Sr. & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2555-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because We Believe in Blockbusters… 9/10

During the 1970’s the US comic book industry opened up after more than 15 years of cautiously calcified publishing practises that had come about as a reaction to censorious oversight of its self- inflicted Comics Code Authority. This body was created to keep the publishers’ product wholesome after the industry suffered their very own McCarthy-style Witch-hunt during the 1950s.

One of the first genres revisited was Horror/Mystery comics and from that sprang pulp masterpiece Conan the Cimmerian, via a tale in anthology Chamber of Darkness #4, whose hero bore no little thematic resemblance to the Barbarian. It was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry (Windsor-) Smith, a recent Marvel find, and one who was gradually breaking out of the company’s all-encompassing Jack Kirby house-style.

Despite some early teething problems – including being cancelled and reinstated in the same month – the comic book adventures of Robert E. Howard’s brawny warrior became as big a success as the revived prose paperbacks which had heralded a world flowering in tales of fantasy and the supernatural.

After decades away, the brawny brute recently eventually to the aegis of Marvel. Designated “the Original Marvel Years” (due to the character’s sojourn with other publishers/intellectual properties rights holders), this bombastic tome of groundbreaking action fantasy yarns re-presents the contents of Conan the Barbarian #1-13 plus that trailblazing short story, cumulatively spanning cover-dates April 1970 to January 1972. Digitally remastered and available as a trade paperback or eBook, these are the absorbing arcane adventures that sparked a revolution in comics and a franchising empire in my youth, and are certainly good enough to do so again. They are also astonishingly readable…

The drama begins most fittingly after a glimpse at a classic map of ‘The Hyborean Age of Conan’ plus an accompanying quote I’m sure every devoted acolyte already knows by heart, after which that precursor romp sets the scene.

Set in modern America, ‘The Sword and the Sorcerers!’ primes the pump with the tale of a successful writer who foolishly decides to kill off his most beloved character Starr the Slayer: a barbarian so beloved that he has taken on a life of his own and is determined to do whatever is necessary to keep it…

After that we are catapulted back in time approximately 12,000 years into a forgotten age of terrors and wonders as scripter Thomas broadly follows Howard’s life path for young Conan of Cimmeria, beginning with the still teenaged warrior’s meeting with a clairvoyant wizard who predicts a regal destiny in ‘The Coming of Conan’ (inked by Dan Adkins), through brief but brutal enslavement in ‘The Lair of the Beastmen’ (Sal Buscema finishes), before experiencing a minor Ragnarok and witnessing ‘The Twilight of the Grim Grey God!’

An aura of lyrical cynicism grows to balance the wealth of mystical menaces and brooding horror as the wanderer becomes a professional thief and judge of human foibles in ‘The Tower of the Elephant’. Conan’s softer side is revealed in CtB #5 after meeting bewitching ‘Zukala’s Daughter’ (Frank Giacoia inks) and liberating a wizard-plagued town. Buscema returned for ‘Devil Wings over Shadizar’, wherein the warrior lad tackles a welter of antediluvian terrors, with both Adkins & Sal B applying their pens and brushes to expose ‘The Lurker Within’ – based on Howard’s magnificent chiller The God in the Bowl – after which tomb raider Conan crushes zombies and dinosaurs in ‘The Keepers of the Crypt’ (inked by Toms Palmer & Sutton)…

Thomas’s avowed plan was to closely follow Conan’s established literary career from all-but-boyhood to his eventual crowning as King of Aquilonia, adding to and adapting Howard’s prose works and that of his posthumous collaborators on the way. This agenda led to some of the best, freshest comics of the decade. The results of (not-yet-Windsor-) Smith’s search for his own graphic style led to unanimous acclaim and many awards for the creative duo.

By issue #9 the character had taken the comics world by storm and any threat of cancelation was long gone. ‘The Garden of Fear’ – adapted by Thomas & Smith, with inks by Sal B from Howard’s short story – features a spectacular battle with a primordial survivor in a lost valley before the wanderer returns to big city life, and learns too late to ‘Beware the Wrath of Anu!’

This god-slaying bout is mere prelude to another classic Howard adaptation, ‘Rogues in the House’: an early masterpiece of action and intrigue benefitting from a temporary doubling in page count.

‘Dweller in the Dark’ is an all-original yarn of monsters and maidens, notable because artist Smith inked his own pencils, and indications of his detailed fine-line illustrative style can be seen for the first time. An added bonus in that issue was a short back-up yarn by Thomas & Gil Kane with “Diverse Hands” called in to ink ‘The Blood of the Dragon!’: telling of a very different Hyborian hero getting what he deserves…

Fantasy author John Jakes plotted the final tale in this initial outing as ‘Web of the Spider-God’ offers a sardonic drama of the desert with the surly Cimmerian battling thirst, tyranny. pompous priests and a big, big bug in a riotous romp finished off by Thomas, Smith & Buscema.

Adding value to the treasury is a vast bonus section which includes pencilled cover art (used and unused); Thomas’ original script breakdowns as annotated by the artist; extracts from Marvelmania (the company’s first in-house fanzine); unused illustrations, house ads and Marvel bulletin items; cover roughs, concepts and finished art by Marie Severin & Gil Kane; Jakes’ plot synopsis and many pages of original art from the tales collected herein.

Also on show are cover galleries of the Marvel Books reprint paperback line and the Conan Classic comics series – all by Windsor-Smith – plus even before-&-after alterations demanded by the Comics Code Authority on the still contentious and controversial title.

These re-mastered epics are a superb way to enjoy some of US comics’ most influential and enjoyable blockbuster moments. They should have a place carved out on your bookshelf.
© 2020 Conan Properties International, LLC (“CPI”).

Herrrr–ge’s Ad–Ventures of Tinnnn–Tinn! (well, some of them) were largely drawn by Bob deMoor, who was born today in 1925, as was the wonderful Michael Zulli in 1952. Have you read The Puma Blues: The Complete Collection in One Volume?

In 1982 today, mangaka Katsuhiro Otomo saw the first episode of his astounding Akira epic published.

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck volume 5: “Christmas on Bear Mountain” by Carl Barks


By Carl Barks (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-697-3 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The Utter Acme of All-Ages Entertainment… 10/10

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901, growing up in the rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in US history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks worked as an animator at Disney’s studio before quitting in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books. With cartoon studio partner Jack Hannah (another occasional strip illustrator) Barks adapted a Bob Karp script for an animated cartoon short into the comic book Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. It was published as Dell Four Color Comics Series II #9 in October of that year and – although not his first published comics work – it was the story that shaped the rest of his career.

From then until his official retirement in the mid-1960s, Barks worked in self-imposed seclusion, writing and drawing and devising a vast array of adventure comedies, gags, yarns and covers that gelled into a Duck Universe of memorable and highly bankable characters. These included Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Magica De Spell (1961) and the nefarious Beagle Boys (1951) to supplement Disney’s stable of cartoon actors. His greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad giga-gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the World’s wealthiest winged septuagenarian and the harassed, hard-pressed star of this show.

Whilst producing all that landmark material Barks was just a working guy, generating cover art, illustrating other people’s scripts when asked and contributing stories to the burgeoning canon of Duck Lore. After Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material – and a selection of other Disney strips – in the 1980s, he discovered the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed…

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

Throughout his working life Barks was blissfully unaware that his work – uncredited by official policy as was all Disney’s cartoon and comic book output – had been singled out by a rabid and discerning public as being by “the Good Duck Artist”. When his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, a belated celebrity began.

In 2013 Fantagraphics Books began collecting Barks’ Duck stuff in wonderful, carefully curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes (and digital editions) that finally did justice to the quiet creator. These will eventually comprise a Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The physical copies are sturdy and luxurious albums – 193 x 261mm – that would grace and enhance any bookshelf, with volume 5 – Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: “Christmas on Bear Mountain” (for reasons irrelevant here) acting as debut release, and re-presenting works from 1947 – albeit not in strictly chronological release order.

It begins eponymously with the landmark introduction of Bark’s most enduring creation. Scrooge McDuck premiered in seasonal full-length Donald Duck yarn ‘Christmas on Bear Mountain’ (as seen in Four Color #178 December 1947): a disposable comedy foil to move along a simple tale of Seasonal woe and joy. Here a miserly relative seethes in opulent isolation, hating everybody and opting to share the gloom by tormenting his nephews Donald, Huey, Louie & Dewey by gifting them his mountain cabin for the Holidays.

Scrooge schemed, intent on terrorising them in a bear costume, but fate had other ideas…

The old coot was crusty, energetic, menacing, money-mad and yet oddly lovable – and thus far too potentially valuable to be misspent or thrown away. Undoubtedly, the greatest cartoon creation of legendary and magnificent story showman Barks, the Downy Dodecadillionaire returned often and eventually expanded to fill all available space in the tales from the scenic metropolis of Duckburg.

From the same issue a brace of one-page gags expose Donald’s views on car culture in ‘Fashion in Flight’ and annoying people looking for directions in ‘Turn for the Worse’ before ‘Donald’s Posy Patch’ (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #80, May) turns into another painfully humiliating experience as the bellicose bird tries getting rich by growing blooms…

June’s WDC&S #81 finds him and the boys prospecting and running afoul of the post-war arms and rocket-race in ‘Donald Mines his Own Business’ before Four Color #147 (May) takes them on an epic voyage of fantastic discovery to ‘Volcano Valley’ after accidentally buying an army surplus bomber.

Always looking for a quick buck, Donald and the kids turn to commercial charters: flying innocuous-seeming Major Pablo Mañana back to Central American beauty-spot Volcanovia, but they all have a devilishly difficult time getting out again. This yarn sets a solid pattern for Bark’s adventure/travelogue yarns in years to come, blending comedy, thrills, whimsy and social commentary into an irresistible treat…

July’s WDC&S #82 finds adult and juvenile ducks enjoying an ever-escalating war over who’s the best conjuror in ‘Magical Misery’ and by the time Daisy Duck deals with them, Donald is ready for a day of peace and quiet. Sadly, ‘Ring Wrongs’ (AKA ‘Vacation Time’ from August’s WDC&S #83) reveals that thanks to Huey, Louie & Dewey, he’s the target of a relentless wave of door-to-door salesmen and sees him react with typical zest and vigour…

An inappropriate experiment in hypnosis transforms Donald (mentally) into a kangaroo and prompts an ‘Adventure Down Under’ (FC #159, August) with the eventually restored Drake and his nephews compelled to become ‘roo hunters to fund return passage to Duckburg. They are mightily outmatched by Mournful Mary – Queen of the Kangaroos – until they meet some local aborigines and experience a change of heart.

Please be aware that – despite Bark’s careful research and diligent, sensitive storytelling – some modern readers could be upset by his depictions from over seven decades ago…

‘If the Hat Fits’ is a gag-page of chapeau chuckles from FC #147 (May) preceding a mid-length tale describing Donald’s efforts to master dancing in ‘The Waltz Kings’ (WDC&S #84, September) counterbalanced a month later by #85’s ‘The Masters of Melody’, wherein the boys struggle to learn playing musical instruments…

‘Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto’ is an early masterpiece originating in Four Color #159 (August 1947), with Donald and the lads in the West Indies, running a kelp boat and harvesting seaweed from the abundant oceans. After being temporarily stranded on an isolated reef, they discover monsters, a shipwrecked galleon, an ongoing abduction mystery dating back centuries and a particularly persistent phantom, all blending into a supremely thrilling and beguiling mystery that has never dated…

WDC&S #86 exposes the rise and fall of ‘Fireman Donald’, whose smug hubris deprives him of a job he’s actually good at, after which ‘The Terrible Turkey’ from #87 details the Duck’s frankly appalling efforts to secure a big bird for the Thanksgiving feast despite skyrocketing poultry prices…

Donald and Mickey Merry Christmas 1947 (cover-dated January 1948) sees the boys strive a little too late and much too hard to be ‘Three Good Little Ducks’ and ensure a wealth of swag on Christmas morning, before one final single-pager sees kitchen confusion for Donald in ‘Machine Mix-up’ (FC #178, December)…

With the visual verve done we move on to validation as ‘Story Notes’ offers erudite commentary for each Duck tale. Donald Ault relates ‘Carl Barks: Life Among the Ducks’ before ‘Biographies’ reveals why he and commentators Alberto Beccatini, Joseph Robert Cowles, Craig Fischer, Jared Gardner, Rich Kreiner, Ken Parille, Stefano Priarone, R. Fiore, and Mattias Wivel are saying all those nice and informative things. We close with provenance as ‘Where Did These Duck Stories First Appear?’ explains the somewhat byzantine publishing schedules of Dell Comics.

Carl Barks was one of the greatest exponents of comic art the world has ever seen, and almost all his work featured Disney’s characters: reaching and affecting untold millions of readers across the world and he all too belatedly won far-reaching recognition. You might be late to the party but it’s never too soon to climb aboard the Barks Express.
Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “Christmas on Bear Mountain” © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All contents © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Today in 1913 master story-man screenwriter and occasional comics author Alfred Bester was born. His visual feasts included lots of DC comics such as Green Lantern, and newspaper strips The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. You are incomplete if you haven’t read The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger, Tiger) and Who He?

In 1919 British cartoon genius Ken Reid was born so look him up here too if you need a quick giggle. 30 years later modern comics maestro everyman Paul Neary joined the party. You know him as an inker, but he was a writer, illustrator and editor without equal so google that name too when you have a moment…

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Not Quite Last-Minute Presents: Goodnight Opus, The Last Basselope & Red Ranger Came Calling

By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co.)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: To Be Read Every Christmas Until the Stars Grow Cold… 10/10 Each!

If – like me – you’re actually too busy to enjoy the season, or maybe poor, scared, fed up or otherwise disengaged, here’s a way to get it done and still derive some joy – absolutely astounding comics and cartoon wonder – all in one bunch!

 

Goodnight Opus

ISBN: 978-0-316-10853-9 (HB) 978-0-316-10599-6 (PB)

After a desperately brief and glittering career as a syndicated strip cartoonist and socio-political commentator (so often the very same function) Berkeley Breathed retired his award-winning Bloom County and Outland vehicles and became a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He lost none of his perception, wit or imagination, and actually got better as a narrative artist. He didn’t completely abandon his entrancing cast of characters and – as a happy ever after postscript – eventually revived them all for another go-round of satire and social advocacy. Yay!

This one is a story about the magic of storytelling and features universal innocent Opus the Penguin. One night, as she has done two hundred and nine times before, Granny starts to read the svelte yet uncool waterfowl his favourite bedtime book. But this night is different. Tonight, Opus’ mind wanders and he “departs the text”…

And so begins a riotous flight of Technicolor fantasy as sedate monochromatic images give way to a powerful, vibrant and surreal romp extending to the Milky Way and back, by way of animated monuments, the burned out Fairy of Sleep, and stopovers at some of the most exotic corners of the planet.

Less a story than an exuberant travelogue of Imagination, delivered in sharply lyrical rhyme, this is a book to trigger dreams and promote creativity. A perfect primer to explain how to wonder and wander…

Every kid, at any age, should have this.
© 1994 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

 

The Last Basselope – One Ferocious Story

ISBN: 978-0-316-10761-7 (HB) 978-0-590-47542-6 (PB)

Berke Breathed is no one-trick-pony and has never been limited to one specific season or holiday. He can do fun and wonder all year round. Although not a proper Christmas story, this charming, tearfully funny tale is another joyous celebration of childhood realms and regions and how little adventures can become great big ones.

It stars his best-loved characters from Bloom County and Outland: jolly, unfulfilled Opus, Bill the Cat, Milquetoast the Housebug, Ronald-Anne (her mother named her for President Reagan – because he had done so much to advance the cause of Poor Black Women) and Rosebud, the eponymous, enigmatic Basselope of the title.

Opus is a dreamer of great dreams and frustrated explorer. In his unassuming, shy way he lusts for glory and the heady wine of immortality. As everybody knows, that can only be found by Discovering Something.

Anything will do. And in the pages of the latest National Geographic Enquirer he finds his dream waiting…

Organising a safari, our fish-fuelled fool heads for the woods in back of the house in search of the most elusive beast in history; every crypto-zoologist’s Holy Grail.

How he finds The Last Basselope and what he actually learns comprises a magical journey of intense discovery into the uncharted wilds of childhood’s imagination which reveals the strength, power and character of true friendship.

This beautifully illustrated, captivating and multi-layered fable is ideal for the eternally young at heart and all those still looking for a path back to their own wonder years.
© 1994 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

 

Red Ranger Came Calling – A Guaranteed True Christmas Story

ISBN: 978-0-61371-758-8 (HB) 978-0-31610-249-0 (PB)

We sneer at sentimentality these days but in the hands of a master storyteller it can be a weapon of crippling power. This glorious fable is purportedly one told every Christmas Eve to the author by his own father before being generously shared with us in mesmerising prose and captivating illustrations.

In 1939 young Red Breathed was well on the way to becoming a snotty, cynical wiseacre. Sent to spend the Holidays with his Aunt Vy, he mooches about all day with her old dog Amelia, while lusting as only a child can after an Official Buck Tweed Two-Speed Crime-Stopper Star Hopper bicycle.

Tweed, of course, is the famous movie serial star “Red Ranger of Mars” and the only thing capable of brightening the benighted life of the woeful, unfairly exiled child. Times are tough though, and Red knows his chances of getting that bike are nonexistent, but he just can’t stop himself hoping…

On his way home one day he sees an odd, pointy-eared little man heading for the ramshackle house of that reclusive old man Saunders. Since he’s a big kid now, Red knows there’s no Father Christmas and none of that hokey magic stuff is true, but even so finds himself sneaking up to the old house that Christmas Eve night…

This is a gloriously powerful tale fully capturing and emphasising the magic of belief and tragedy of realisation, and yet still ends with a Christmas miracle and a stunning surprise ending. Get this book for the kids, get this book for yourself, but get this book – and on pain of emotional death, don’t peek at the last page until the time is right!
© 1994 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1892 artist Alfred Bestall was born. Anything else needful to know can be gleaned by visiting Rupert: A Celebration of Favourite Stories – 100 Years of Rupert Bear 1920-2020. In 1914 the day welcomed troubled genius Jack Cole who was responsible for manic innovation as packed into DC Finest: Plastic Man – The Origin of Plastic Man. It’s also – in 2011- the day we lost comic legend Joe Simon, co-creator of Captain America, Boy Commandos, Newsboy Legion and The Fly as well as inventor of Brother Power The Geek and other wild notions.

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The Complete Peanuts volume 10: 1969-1970


By Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Books/Canongate Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-126-0 (US TPB) 978-0857862143 (Cannongate HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Towering Monumental Tradition Writ (and Drew) Large… 10/10

Peanuts is unequivocally the most important comic strip in the history of graphic narrative. It is also the most deeply personal. Cartoonist Charles M Schulz crafted his moodily hilarious, hysterically introspective, shockingly surreal philosophical epic for half a century: 17,897 strips spanning October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000. He died – from complications of cancer – the day before his last strip was printed.

At its height, Peanuts ran in 2,600 newspapers, in 21 languages and75 countries. Many of those venues still run it as perpetual reprints, and have done ever since “Sparky” passed. During his lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy doodler an actual billionaire at a time when that really meant something…

None of that matters. Peanuts – a title Schulz loathed, but one the syndicate forced upon him – changed the way comics strips were received and perceived: proving cartoon comedy could have edges and nuance and meaning as well as too-soon-forgotten pratfalls and punchlines.

We begin with an effusive and enthusiastic foreword from author/animator/illustrator Mo Willems (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, Knuffle Bunny, Sheep in the Big City) expressing his debt to the strip.

On the pages, this period heralds a true renaissance probably triggered by headlines in an era of swiftly shifting changes in social attitudes and rampant cultural exploration. Notionally, our focus and point of contact remains quintessentially inspirational loser Charlie Brown who, despite slowly taking a few steps behind fanciful, high-maintenance mutt Snoopy, remains squarely at odds with the mercurial supporting cast. They are still hanging out doing what at first sight seems to be Kids Stuff in an increasingly hostile and intrusive universe of perverse happenstance. Except perhaps that Lucy Van Pelt kid. She’s not like the others…

Neatly interspersed with daily doses of gloom, the Peanuts Sunday page first debuted on January 6th 1952: a standard half-page slot offering more measured fare than 4-panel dailies. Thwarted ambition, sporting failures, crushing frustration abound, alternating with Snoopy’s inner life of aviation and war stories, star gazing, shooting the breeze with bird buddies, weather woes and food fiascos. These and other signature sorties across the sabbath indulgences afforded Schulz room to be his most imaginative, whimsical and provocative…

Regular tentpole moments to relish include more Snoopy v Lucy deathmatches/ambush snogs/dance offs; Charlie Brown’s food feud with the beagle, an assortment of night terrors; Lucy’s emphatically simple solutions to complex questions; doggy dreams; the power of television; sporting endeavours and the sharply-cornered romantic triangle involving Lucy, Schroeder & Beethoven – albeit wedded to “sophisticated” fallout when pushy Frieda decides she also wants to play…

Always, gags centre on play, varying degrees of musicality, pranks, interpersonal alignments, the mounting pressures of ever-harder education, mass media lensed through young eyes and a selection of sports in their season. All are leavened by agonising teasing, naked contempt, kindled and crushed hopes, the making of baffled observations and occasionally acting a bit too much like grown-ups. However, in this tome, themes and tropes that define the entire series (especially in the wake of many animated TV specials) become mantra-like yet endlessly variable, but focus less on Charlie and more on those around him. Also, the outside grown-up world considerably encroaches, as when Lucy declares herself a “ New Feminist” although no one looking can see any difference to any presumably previously un-enlightened Miss van Pelt…

Human interactions still find the boy a pitiable outlier. Mean girl Violet, musical prodigy Schroeder, self-taught psychoanalyst/dictator-in-waiting Lucy, her brilliantly off-kilter little brother Linus and dirt-magnet “Pig-Pen” are fixtures honed and primed to generate joke-routines and gag-sequences around their signature foibles, but some early characters have faded away in favour of fresh attention-attracting players. Newcomers sidle in and shuffle off without much flurry or fanfare but in our real world the use of “Minority” characters José Peron of New Mexico and African American Franklin drew much attention and controversy – because, I guess, there will always be gits and arseholes – especially if the oblivious readers elected them…

The most significant expansion is that weird upside bird bugging the beagle gets a name – Woodstock (as revealed on June 22, 1970) – and a job as his dogsbody – secretary, actually – whilst shock near-cripples the round-headed kid when he discovers that the “little red-haired girl” he almost plucked up the nerve to talk to moves to a new city. It’s a blow he’s still reeling from when this book ends two years later, and one only Linus really understands. After all, his teacher Miss Othmar is gone after the teacher’s strike…

There is much more madcap politically-tinged material, including repeated riffs on a recently inaugurated new real-world president (Richard Milhous Nixon on January 20, 1969) as seen when Snoopy briefly becomes the most powerful mutt in the Free world after being chosen as the new Grand Beagle…

At least the Brown boy’s existential crisis/responsibility vector/little sister Sally has grown enough to become just another trigger for relentless self-excoriation. As she grows, pesters librarians, forms opinions and propounds steadfastly authoritarian views, Charlie is relegated to being her dumber, but eternally protective, big brother especially as her biggest bugbear is starting school and Charlie is such an expert on all things scholastic…

Resigned to – but far from uncomplaining about – life as a loser in the gunsight of cruel and capricious fate, the boy Brown is helpless meat in the clutches of openly sadistic Lucy. When not sabotaging his efforts to kick a football, she monetises her spiteful verve via a 5¢ walk-in psychoanalysis booth (although supply and demand economics also affects this unshakeable standard), ensuring that whether at play, in sports, kite-flying or just brooding, the round-headed kid truly endures the character-building trials of the damned.

One deliciously powerful constant that grows more abundant is the boy’s utter inability to fly that kite. Here war with wind, gravity and landscape reaches absurdist proportions, as the tree haunts Charlie Brown’s adored pastime with vicious, violent and malign venom. Moreover, other kids are aware of its growing power. After one terse musical interlude with Schroeder, Lucy lobs our reluctant lover-boy’s beloved piano into the voracious carnivorous conifer…

By now, the beagle is the true star of the show, with his primary quest for more and better playing out against an increasingly baroque inner life, wild encounters with birds, sports, dance marathons and skating trysts (especially the close-order combat called ice hockey!), philosophical ruminations, and ever-more-popular catchphrases. Here, burgeoning whimsy leads to more glimpses of the interior world: his WWI other life, peppered with dogfights against the accursed Red Baron, but also careers as an astronaut, a sports coach, a prairie dog and a detective seeking his lost mother. That tragic obscured past as an alumni of the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm leads to constant introspection… and dancing… lots and lots of dancing…

Naturally, Snoopy soon subverts all that misery and curiosity to fuel his creative side and begins the Great American Novel that will change literature forever… but that’s before the Browns go on vacation and leave the dog with the Van Pelts. Naturally, Lucy has an idea about finally fixing the pooch. It doesn’t end well…

As always, timeless episodes of play, peril, peewee psychoanalysis and personal excoriation are beards for some heavy topics. Rendered in marvellous monochrome, there are crucial character introductions, plot developments and creation of more traditions we all revere to this day. Of particular note is the growing role of Patricia Reichardt – AKA tomboy Peppermint Patty – who heartbreakingly deals with the so-early discovery that she will never be pretty or beautiful. Even Snoopy’s most concerted efforts can’t quite salve that sting…

Another trenchant continued gag-series resumes Lucy obsessive attempts to “cure” Linus of his blanket dependency by again playing him off against Grandma who will give donations to charities if the boy grows up…

Snoopy is the only force capable of challenging if not actually countering Lucy. Over these two years, her campaign to curb that weird beagle, cure her brother of blanket addiction and generally reorder reality to her preferences reaches astounding heights and appalling depths, but the dog keeps trying and scores many minor victories. As always the book opens and closes with many strips riffing on snow, food, movie-going and television – or the gang’s responses to it – becoming ever more pervasive. And as always, Lucy constantly, consistently sucks all the joy out of the white wonder stuff and the astounding variety offered by the goggle-box. Perpetually sabotaged, and facing abuse from every female in their life, Brown and Snoopy endure more casual grief from smug, attention-seeking Frieda, who champions shallow good looks over substance. At least Linus is growing: hardened inside by what happened to teacher Miss Othmar, but Lucy’s amatory ambitions for Schroeder grow ever more chilling and substantive. She will never move on…

Schulz established way points in his year: formally celebrating certain calendar occasions – real or invented – as perennial shared events: Mothers and Fathers’ Days, Fourth of July, National Dog Week strips accompanied in their turn yearly milestones like Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween/Great Pumpkin Day and Beethoven’s Birthday were joined this year by a return to another American ritual as many of the cast return to summer camp. At least there is unbridled joy when Brown’s baseball team hits a winning streak and Charlie meets his all-time sporting idol – except of course they’re not quite the boons they first appear…

Sports loom large and terrifying as ever, but star athlete Snoopy is more interested in new passions than boring old baseball or hockey. Even Lucy finds far more absorbing pastimes but still enjoys crushing the spirits of her teammates in whatever endeavour they are failing at. Anxiety-wracked Brown even steps down from the baseball team to ease his life, but that only intensifies his woes, and does nothing to help his kite wielding or football kicking…

Linus endures more disappointment in two Great Pumpkin seasons and before you know it, there’s the traditional countdown to Christmas and another year filled with weird, wild and wonderful moments…

Wrapping it all up, Gary Groth celebrates and deconstructs the man and his work in ‘Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000’, preceded by a copious ‘Index’ offering instant access to favourite scenes you’d like to see again…

Available in multiple formats, this volume guarantees total enjoyment: comedy gold and social glue metamorphosing into an epic of spellbinding graphic mastery that still adds joy to billions of lives, and continues to make new fans and devotees long after its maker’s passing.
The Complete Peanuts: 1969-1970 (Volume Ten) © 2008 Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. The Foreword is © 2008, John Waters. “Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000” © 2008 Gary Groth. All rights reserved.

Today in 1946 Lucky Luke “debuted” in the Spirou Alamanch Annual – except if you read Lucky Luke: The Complete Collection Volume One you’ll know that ain’t necessarily so…

And in 1970 the incredible Rube Goldberg shuffled off this mortal coil. It was probably one he had designed in his masterful cartoons. Go google Rueben Awards…

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years Volume Nine


By Gaylord DuBois & Jesse Marsh (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-649-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Primal fantasy Adventure… 8/10

I don’t know an awful lot about Jesse Marsh, other than that he was born on 27th July 1907 and died far too young: on April 28th 1966 from diabetic complications at the height of a TV Tarzan revival he was in large part responsible for. What I do know, however, is that to my unformed, pre-fanboy, kid’s mentality, his drawings were somehow better than most of the other artists and that every other kid who read comics in my school disagreed with me.

There’s a phrase we used at 2000 AD that summed it up: “Artist’s artist”, which usually meant someone whose fan-mail divided equally into fanatical raves and bile-filled hate-mail. It seems there are some makers of comic strips that many readers simply don’t get.

It isn’t about the basic principles or artistic quality or even anything tangible – although you’ll hear some cracking justifications: “I don’t like his feet” (presumably the way he draws them) and “it just creeps me out” being my two favourites. Never forget in the 1980s DC were told by the Comics Code Authority that Kevin O’Neill’s entire style and manner of Drawing was unacceptable to American readers!

I got Jesse Marsh. He was another Disney animator (beginning in 1939) who moved sideways – in 1945 – to become a full-time narrative illustrator for the studio’s comic book licensee Whitman Publishing. Marsh never looked back and became the go-to guy for other ERB adaptations such as John Carter of Mars.

Situated on the West Coast, Western’s Dell/Gold Key imprints rivalled DC and Marvel at the height of their powers, and the licensee famously never capitulated to the wave of anti-comics hysteria that resulted in the crippling self-censorship of the 1950s. No Dell Comics ever displayed a Comics Code Authority symbol on the cover – they never needed to…

Marsh jobbed around adapted movie properties – mostly westerns like Gene Autry – until 1948 when Dell introduced the first all-new Tarzan comic book. The newspaper strip had run since 1929 and all previous funnybook releases had featured expurgated and modified reprints of those adventures. That all changed with Dell Four Color Comic #134 (February 1947) which featured a lengthy, captivating tale of the Ape-Man scripted by Robert P. Thompson, who also wrote both the Tarzan radio show and the aforementioned syndicated strip (as you can see in Tarzan and the Adventurers).

The comic was very much in the Burroughs tradition: John Clayton, Lord Greystoke and his friend Paul D’Arnot aid a young woman in rescuing her lost father from a hidden tribe ruled over by a monster. The engrossing yarn was made magical by the simple, underplayed magic of a heavy brush line and absolutely unmatched design sense. Marsh was unique in the way he positioned characters in space, using primitivist forms and hidden shapes to augment his backgrounds, and as the man was a fanatical researcher, his trees, rocks, and constructions were 100% accurate. His animals and natives, especially children and women, were all distinct and recognisable; not the blacked-up stock figures in grass skirts even the greatest artists so often resorted to.

He also knew when to draw big and draw small: the internal dynamism of his work is spellbinding. His Africa became mine, and of course the try-out comic book was an instant hit. Marsh and Thompson’s Tarzan returned with two tales in Dell Four Color Comic #161, cover-dated August 1947. This was a remarkable feat: Four Colour was a catch-all title showcasing in rotation literally hundreds of different licensed properties, often as many as ten separate issues per month. So rapid a return engagement meant pretty solid sales figures…

Bolstered by a healthy and extremely popular film franchise and those comics strips, within six months, bimonthly Tarzan #1 was released (January/February 1948). It was a swansong for Thompson, but another unforgettable classic for Marsh – and the first of an unbroken run that would last until 1965: over 150 consecutive issues. Moreover there were also spin-offs featuring other ERB character adaptations and gigantic specials like the Annual that opens this collected volume.

Prior to that, the collection – reprinting material from 1953 from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan #44-46 and monumental bonus book Tarzan’s Jungle Annual #2 – opens with Foreword ‘Looking for Jesse Marsh’: a heartfelt appreciation and appraisal of the secretive genius by publisher Dan Nadel, packed with information about the enigmatic master. Then, cover-dated August 1953 and on sale from 16th July, that colossal bonus book delivers a painted cover by Morris Gollub (not featuring then current big screen Tarzan Lex Barker) in advance of a beguiling trip to an Africa that never was…

A monochrome Jungle World frontispiece revels in an idyllic quiet moment for the Ape-Man and faithful pachyderm pal Tantor, before main event ‘Tarzan in the Valley of Towers’ transports the Jungle Lord and pilot/scientist Professor Alexander MacWhirtle to a distant unexplored region in aid of a girl who sent a plea for help in a tiny parachute woven from spider-webs…

As always this yarn (and everything else including puzzles) was written by Gaylord DuBois. Editor and prolific scripter (Lone Ranger, Lost in Space, Turok, Son of Stone, Brothers of the Spear and many more) he was Marsh’s creative collaborator for nearly 20 years.

Flying into the great desert, Tarzan and “Professor Mac” soon find Heather Day laid out as a sacrifice on a towering limestone altar, left for giant carnivorous bats by debased humans who have turned themselves into flying/gliding predators in their image. The battle to overthrow the petty tyrants of the sky takes them from the highest peaks to deepest subterranean depths, but inevitably Tarzan triumphs and returns Hearther to the outer world.

Back then, entertainment was full on and informative, so this Annual was packed with fact and activity features. First up, and still all Marsh in vision, is potted travelogue ‘Jungle Trails’ augmented by a simple method for ‘Making Maps’ and a clever rebus message from Tarzan to his ‘Jungle Village’. Then it’s back to action as ‘Tarzan and the Cannibals of Kando-Mor’ finds the Ape-Man and his Waziri friend Chief Muviro traversing the fearsome Great Swamp when the party is captured by man-eating men. Their escape brings the wanders fully into Burroughs’ rich fantasy-scape as they discover another isolated and embattled outpost of lost land Pal-Ul-Don (introduced in 8th novel Tarzan the Terrible) and befriend the buffalo-worshipping Gallugos. The event is quite timely as the ever-encroaching cannibals have almost completed their extended scheme to eliminate the cow-lovers…

Almost…

Illustrated sheet music provides long-distance lessons for ‘Dancing Feet’ to cavort at a ‘Moonlight Marriage’ ceremony, whilst ‘Happy Warrior’ shares the secrets of kite-making before ‘Boy Stands by a Friend’ offers another intimate peek at the formative years of Greystoke’s African family when Boy – later called Korak – and ape pal Zorok stow away on a riverboat and nearly end up as zoo exhibits. ‘Letters from Boy’ to the readers feature next, as ‘Jungle Hunt’ details how to make an inner tube popgun and water canteens, prior to an adventure with elephants as ‘The Troubles of Tantor’ seen the herd patriarch go to extraordinary lengths to rescue wayward calves captured by angry farmers.

Picture essays detail the secrets of MacWhirtle’s plane and the domain of dinosaurs in ‘Boys Air Adventure to the Valley of Monsters’ after which a touch of old-fashioned racial profiling describes native characteristics in ‘Jungle Tribes’ and ‘Jungle Woman’ before embracing romance as final story ‘Tarzan Trails the Brothers of the Barracuda’ sees the Ape-Man reunite shipwrecked and separated young lovers by hunting down the slave traders who have seized and sought to sell her…

Wrapping up with a load of lexicons, ‘Jungle Language: Swahili-English’ and ‘Jungle Language: Ape-English’ provides illustrated dictionaries that come in handy for the puzzle pages and crossword, before monochrome endpiece ‘Jungle World’ explores the violent existence of bugs and minibeasts.

Cover-dated May 1953, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan #44 sees the Jungle Lord enjoying a quiet ride over vast hidden Pal-Ul-Don on his giant eagle Argus when he saves a tiny shepherd from a vulture as big as the mighty raptor Tarzan rides. In ‘Tarzan and the Little Spearmen’ this good deed soon sours. Coro of Saparta is grateful and desperate and happy in turn as the benevolent giant and his equally immense pal Muviro hunt down the ferocious carrion feeders who find living little people more tasty than corpses. Sadly, the interaction sparks civil war between the farming fraternity and now-unemployed spearman clan who used to defend them, especially after Tarzan teaches them the high-tech marvel of archery…

Pathos and nostalgia hit hard in second saga ‘Tarzan and the Strange Balu’ as a she-ape finds a human baby and replaces her own dead newborn with him. Poor, grieving Kalahari will not surrender the infant, leaving the Ape-Man in a double bind: finding the child’s real family and saving the mother surrogate from heartbreak…

The task is made even harder but more gratifying when Tarzan discovers vile slavers have been transporting a white woman to market…

The issue ends with a stunning pinup of Argus and a GIANT-giant vulture and contemporary house ad before ERBT #45 (June 1953) opens with ‘Tarzan and the Haunted Plantations’ wherein the Ape-Man visits old friend Chief Buto and learns his warrior comrade is plagued by devils and ghosts. A little careful investigation then reveals the fields where his people hire out as croppers are coveted by a bandit with knowledge of unexploited resources beneath that fruitful dirt, and Razan devises a sneaky scheme…

‘Boy and the Shamba Raider’ again focuses on the exploits of Korak-to-come as the kid and his pal Dombie take executive action to trap rogue water buffalo raiding crops and attacking workers. They wouldn’t have had to if the adult warriors had listened to them in the first place…

Epic fantasy follows in ‘Tarzan Returns to Cathne’ when the Jungle Man and Waziri’s Pal-Ul-Don explorations bring them into conflict with sabretooth tigers attacking the war-lions of Queen Elaine of Cathne. The staunch friend and ally is a fugitive now as her husband King Jathon is gone and usurper Timon rules. The madman is unstoppable and seeks to conquer sister city Athne, but Tarzan has other ideas and the wits to implement them…

The issues closes with another house ad and ‘Tarzan’s World’ pinup of the Dangina (Cape Hunting Dog) before we segue into final entry Tarzan #46 .

Dated July 1953 it begins with ‘Tarzan Defends a City’ as the Ape-Man and not-dead Jathon (surprise!) trek back to Cathne with super-colossal war lion Goliath, only to find the citadel under siege by crocodile-riding Terribs from the Great Swamp. Things look bleak until the Gallugos – freshly fled from the cannibal Kando-Mors – arrive and turn the muddy tide. All they want in return is land to build their new city…

Back in regular Africa, ‘Boy Faces the Fangs of the Mamba’ after Matusi witchdoctor Ungali – having failed to kill Tarzan – frames his annoying spawn Boy for theft and orchestrates a lethal trial by snake. Sadly for the villain, Ape-Man arrives just in time…

This titanic tome terminates with whimsical mystery ‘Tarzan and the Treasure of the Apes’ as brutal unscrupulous white hunters discover the great apes dubbed “mangani” are all bedecked in priceless jewels. Ruthlessly stalking the vain bedazzled beasts the safari killers even manage to wound Tarzan, before he convinces the apes to surrender their “pretty stones” in favour of something better: something edible.

The Jungle King then delivers a unique judgement that might not look like justice but truly is nothing but…

Although these are tales from a far-off, simpler time they have lost none of their passion, inclusivity and charm, whilst the artistic virtuosity of Jesse Marsh looks better than ever. Perhaps this time a few more people will “get” him…
Edgar Rice Burroughs® Tarzan®: The Jesse Marsh Years volume 9 © 1953, 2011, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. Tarzan ® Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. All rights reserved.

In 1952 Jack of all comics trades Keith Giffen was born. We haven’t reviewed Ambush Bug, Legion of Super-Heroes or his Doom Patrol yet, so why not recall gleeful glory days with Justice League International volume 1?

In 1978 screen writer and comics luminary Robert Kirkman was born. You probably know him best for Walking Dead volume 1: Days Gone Bye.

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Moomin volume Ten – The Complete Lars Jansson Comic Strip


By Lasse Lars Jansson (Drawn & Quarterly)
ISBN: 978-1-77046-202-1 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-77046-557-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: the Personification of Good Will at Every Season… 9/10

Tove Jansson was one of the greatest literary innovators and narrative pioneers of the 20th century: equally adept at shaping words and images to create worlds of wonder. She was especially expressive with basic components like pen & ink, manipulating economical lines and patterns into sublime realms of fascination, whilst her dexterity made simple forms into incredibly expressive and potent symbols. So was her brother…

Tove Marika Jansson was born into an artistic, intellectual and rather bohemian Swedish family in Helsinki, Finland on August 9th 1914. Patriarch Viktor was a sculptor and mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson a successful illustrator, graphic designer and commercial artist. Tove’s brothers Lars AKA “Lasse” and Per Olov became – respectively – an author and cartoonist, and an art photographer. The family and its close intellectual, eccentric circle of friends seems to have been cast rather than born, with a witty play or challenging sitcom as the piece they were all destined to inhabit. After extensive and intensive study (from 1930-1938 at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Graphic School of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and L’Ecole d’Adrien Holy and L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris), she became a successful exhibiting artist through the troubled years of WWII.

Brilliantly creative across many fields, she published her first Moomins fable in 1945. Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (The Little Trolls and the Great Flood – latterly and more euphoniously The Moomins and the Great Flood) was a whimsical epic of gentle, inclusive, accepting, understanding, bohemian misfit trolls and their strange friends…

The term “Moomin” came from maternal uncle Einar Hammarsten who tried to stop Tove pilfering food when she visited by warning that a Moomintroll guarded the kitchen, creeping up on trespassers and breathing cold air down their necks… you can check out our other reviews such as Christmas Comes to Moominvalley for how the critter made a mega franchise and proto-mythology. Here and now, let’s discuss how Lars got involved…

Exponentially more popular with each successive book, global fame loomed. In 1952 Finn Family Moomintroll/The Happy Moomins was translated into English to great acclaim, prompting British publishing giant Associated Press to commission a daily newspaper strip starring the seductively sweet & sensibly surreal creations. Jansson had no misgivings or prejudices about strip cartoons as she had already adapted Comet in Moominland for Swedish/Finnish paper Ny Tid.

Mumintrollet och jordens undergäng/Moomintrolls and the End of the World was hugely popular and she welcomed the chance to extend her eclectic family’s range. In 1953, The London Evening News began the first of 21 Moomin strip sagas which captivated readers of all ages. Tove Jansson’s involvement in the cartoon ended in 1959, a casualty of its own success and the punishing publication schedule. So great was the strain that she had already recruited brother Lars to help. He quietly took over, continuing the feature until its close in 1975. His tenure as sole creator officially began with the sixth collection in this series and reaches its penultimate volume here…

Liberated from cartooning pressures, Tove returned to painting, writing and other pursuits: generating plays, murals, public art, stage designs, costumes for dramas and ballets, a Moomin opera and 9 more Moomin-related picture-books and novels, as well as 13 books and short-story collections strictly for grown-ups. She died on June 27th 2001, with awards too numerous to mention, and her face on the national currency…

Lars Fredrik Jansson (October 8th 1926 – July 31st 2000) was almost as amazing as his sister. Born into that astounding overachieving clan 12 years after Tove, at 16 he started writing – and selling – his own novels (nine in all). He also taught himself English as there weren’t enough Swedish-language translations of books available for his voracious reading appetite. In 1956 at his sister’s request he began co-scripting the Moomin strip: injecting his own witty whimsicality to ‘Moomin Goes Wild West’. He had been Tove’s English language translator and sense-reader from the start, seamlessly converting her Swedish into text and balloons even the British could grasp. In 1959, when her contract with The London Evening News expired, Lars officially took over, having spent the interim period learning to draw and perfectly mimic his sister’s art style. He had done so in secret, assisted and tutored by their mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson. From 1961 to strip’s end in 1974, Lars was sole steersman of trollish tabloid tails (I fear that could be much misconstrued these days…).

“Lasse” was a man of many parts. Other careers included aerial photographer, professional gold miner, writer and translator. He was basis and model for ultimate cool kid Snufkin and his Moomins exploits were subtly sharper than his sister’s version: far more closely in tune with the quirky British sense of humour. Nevertheless, his whimsically wry sense of wonder was every bit as compelling. In 1990, long after the original series, Lasse began a new career, working with Dennis Livson (designer of Finland’s acclaimed Moomin World theme park) as producers of anime series The Moomins and, with daughter Sophia Jansson in 1993, on new Moomin strips…

Moomintrolls are easy-going free spirits: polite modern bohemians untroubled by hidebound domestic mores but under Lars, increasingly diverted and distracted by societal pressures. Moominmama is warm, kindly tolerant and capable, if perhaps overly concerned with propriety and appearances, whilst her devoted spouse Moominpappa spends most of his time trying to rekindle his adventurous youth or dreaming of fantastic journeys. Doting, darling son Moomintroll is a meek, dreamy boy with a big imagination and confusing ambitions who adores – and so moons over – permanent houseguest the Snorkmaiden. That impressionable, flighty gamin prefers to play things slowly whilst awaiting somebody potentially better…

A wonderfully whimsy driven affair, this 10th and final monochrome moon melange delivers serial strip sagas #38 to 41, and commences with Lars still totally in charge as panic grips the sheltered valley-dwelling community. This is thanks to something supernally sinister and quite unknown pops by for the mass mess deemed ‘Moomin and the Vampire’…

The parable on uncontrolled hysteria sees the dozy denizens driven mad by an assumed monster in their midst and begins following a normal day of big game hunting in the small Scandinavian valley. When rumour of an undead horror haunting the fir forests and charming cottages, the usual miscommunications and madnesses leave everyone in a tizzy, tracking or hiding from the unseen doom. All poor placid Moominmama sees is a tiny fuzzy flying creature in need of a feed and a place to rest, but it probably best not to share the secret of her new guest with all her excitable neighbours…

Up next and a swingeing assault on popular cultures comes ‘Moomin and the TV’, as the reclusive Moomins go shopping for anew sideboard and are pressured into purchasing a top of the line television set…

Despite initial resistance and treating the box as a giant wooded chest, eventually the family succumb to the shows and ads perpetually erupting from it, but that’s as nothing to the chaos caused as the friendly visits from everyone else in Moominvalley – even passing strangers! -threaten to overwhelm even Moominpapa’s legendary hospitality and deplete the mythic capacity of ‘Mama’s larder and pantry…

And my gosh, the rubbish they all watch!

A delicious poke at town planning, social crusaders, local politics and property developers follows as ‘The Underdeveloped Moomins’ finds the big white darlings helping a dedicated but unemployed and under-appreciated Assessor of Under-Developed Areas feel fulfilled. She knows her gifts, specialisms and training can readily bring these primitive, happy valley-folk into the top echelon of progressive go-getting modern citizens, and the Moomins are happy to help, no matter how miserable all these new-fangled ideas, gadgets and schemes make everyone…

The wonderment comes to a close with a whiff of prognostication and prophecy as winter draws on in ‘Moomin and Aunt Jane’. When glamourous but generally useless Romantic poet Wispy moves in next door, he accidentally and then intentionally beguiles flirtatious dreamer Snorkmaiden, just as a little old lady haunts the chilly community. Perpetually predicting frozen doom and deadly privation, she starts to snaffle any potentially useful kit – other people’s blankets, firewood, food, skis, stores. As young Moomin and the maiden again perform their standard jealousy dance, ‘Pappa finally listens to the busy biddy and is convinced the extremely cold end of days is coming. As he begins his own excessive doomsday-prepper precautions, Wispy and Snorkmaiden elope with Moomin in cold pursuit, and the crisis goes into overdrive as prim, officious Moomin Aunt Jane invites herself to stay. Not even faking deadly illness can deter this dowager do-gooding know-it-all and she has no time for silly biddies, puling poets, vacuous romance or any sort of nonsense..

Finishing the fabulous Finnish saga in a cloud of confusion with a domestic dramedy in the best Ealing Comedy traditions of anything with Dame Magaret Rutheford in it, this is the ideal end to a cartoon era…

This compilation again closes with a closer look at the creator in ‘Lars Jansson: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get to Work’ courtesy of family biographer Juhani Tolvanen, extolling his many worthy attributes…

These are utterly, adorably barbed tales for the young, laced with that devastating observation and razor-sharp wit which enhances and elevates only the greatest kids’ stories into classics of literature. These tomes – both Tove & Lars’ – are an international treasure trove no fan of the medium – or carbon-based lifeform with even a hint of heart and soul – can afford to be without.
© 2015 Solo/Bulls, except “Lars Jansson: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get to Work” © 2011/2015 Juhani Tolvanen. All rights reserved.

Today in 1921, Heart of Juliet Jones & Blondie artist Stan Drake was born. Why not treat yourself to a rarer delight such as Kelly Green volume 1: The Go-Between? In 1951, Bill Mantlo was born, and in 1964, Brant Parker & Johnny Hart’s Wizard of Id strip debuted. Three years later in France, Jean-Claude Mézières & Pierre Christin’s Valérian and Laureline began utterly revolutionising sci fi. In 1993 star penciller/ editor Ross Andru died. All of the above make multiple appears in Now Read This! so just go wild in that search box…

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Osama Tezuka’s Astro Boy volume 10


By Osamu Tezuka, translated by Frederik L. Schodt (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-793-1 (tank?bon PB/Digital edition)

This book contains Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

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 also performed similar sterling service with Japan’s fledgling animation industry. Look what that led to…

The earliest stories were intended for children but right from the start Tezuka’s expansive fairy tale stylisations harboured more mature themes, holding hidden pleasures for older readers and the legion of fans growing up with the Mankaga’s manga masterworks…

The “God of Comics” was born in Osaka Prefecture on November 3rd 1928, and as a child suffered from 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 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 or Tomorrow the Birds.

Tezuka died on February 9th 1989, having produced more than 150,000 pages of timeless comics; reinvented the Japanese anime industry and popularised a uniquely Japanese graphic narrative style which has become a fixture of global culture.

These monochrome digest volumes (173 x 113 mm in the physical world and any size you like if you read them digitally) present – in non-linear order – early exploits of his signature character, with the emphasis firmly on fantastic fun and family entertainment…

Tetsuwan Atomu (literally “Mighty Atom” 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 Sh?nen Kobunsha and ran until March 12th 1968 – although Tezuka often added to the canon in later years, both in comics but in also in other media such as newspaper strips and in magazines. Throughout that period, the plucky robot lad spawned the aforementioned global TV cartoon boom, starred in comic book 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 Sh?nen 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 complaints and one upheld in abundance in the early tales included here…

Tezuka and his production team were never as wedded to close continuity as fans are. They constantly revised stories and artwork for later collections, so if you’re a purist you are just plain out of luck. Such tweaking and modifying is the reason these editions seemingly skip up and down 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, guys, and in case you came in late, here’s a little background to set you up.

In a forthcoming 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 have his team build a replacement. The android created was one of the most groundbreaking constructs in history, and for a while Tenma was content. However, as his mind re-stabilised, Tenma realised this unchanging humanoid was not Tobio and, with cruel clarity, no longer accepted a substitute. Ultimately, the savant removed the insult to his real boy by selling the robot to a shady dealer…

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

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 other foils and occasional assistants such as the bellicose Elementary School teacher Higeoyaji (AKA Mr. Mustachio) and a robot little sister dubbed Uran…

The wiry, widgety wonder’s astonishing exploits resume here 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. Since the author was keen to combine all aspects of his creation into one overarching continuity, this volume (at last) incorporates classic 1950s material as well as the masterful Sixties sagas and following an intimate chat with the cartoonist opens with masterful monster mash -up ‘Astro vs Garon’ which was originally serialised in Sh?nen Magazine from October 1962 to February 1963. Here a sequence of wild weather events precedes the arrival of a bizarre object from space. As scientists gather, prod and poke about, they determine the package is some sort of cosmic flat-pack parcel. Sadly, once they put all the pieces together, what they have is a planet-restructuring autonomous entity…

Thanks to Ochanomizu and his little robot companion, a packing note is translated, revealing the power and purpose of the construct, and – crucially – that it has arrived on the WRONG PLANET!

Sent to the Superintendent of Megalopa by the King of Planet Yura, the package has been despatched to “kill Plasta” and “modify” planets, so the sagacious observers are perfectly happy to leave it alone from now on if they can’t find a way to destroy it. Sadly, they aren’t quick enough and lightning awakens “the Garon”, which goes on a catastrophic rampage that all Earth’s military might and valiant Astro Boy can barely handle.

Thinking the crisis over, the handmade hero is called back into action when inert Garon is stolen by sleazy Professor Amagawa and a conglomerate of greedy capitalists and gangsters, Transported to the South Pacific the monster is then deliberately unleashed and all hell inevitably breaks loose. Able to convert the atmosphere and alter gravity, Garon goes wild and the astonishingly outpowered robot kid seems unable to pull off a second miracle.

Thankful for an old fable he once heard, Astro Boy devises a way to outsmart and banish the beast he cannot kill…

Japanese kids were editorially and parentally sheltered in different ways to us in the West, and second saga ‘Yellow Horse’ (Sh?nen, October 1955 – February 1956) might be a little shocking to some. It deals with diabolical drug dealers and sees Astro seconded by Police Inspector Nakamura to crack a ruthless smuggling gang with a hideout that is literally out of this world. To defeat them, the boy ‘bot goes undercover posing as a young user and eventually junkie/recruit, having to allow his hero Mr. Mustachio to be attacked and nearly killed and Professor Ochanomizu to be tortured and turned into an addict…

Eventually however, the plan gels and a calamitous battle reveals another shocking secret before the case can be closed…

Next, from Sh?nen magazine March to April 1967, ‘The 100 Million Year Old Crime’ sees a gang of French mutant juvenile delinquents run amok, endangering all of society with their unchecked mental powers. Called in to help, Professor O and Astro are crushed and defeated by the teens after they steal unstoppable robot superweapon Karabusu…

As the professor is cruelly enslaved by the mutant kids, the wrecked scraps of Astro are found by ancient aliens. These “water ghosts” have been on/in Earth for 100,000,000 years and the father one is mired in guilt for committing an utterly unpardonable act. His daughter Parma is, however, enchanted by the robot remains and rebuilds him, triggering a cycle of redemption. Repaired and curious, Astro learns that heinous antediluvian crime was meddling with earth creatures’ genetic and creating humanity. All their historical atrocities and planetary harms are the alien’s fault and now he will wipe out his mistake. Desperate, Astro debates with the despondent progenitor and a deadly deal is struck, one involving reforming those mutant kids who seem to be the very worst the species can offer…

Sadly, the morbid maker has no intention of honouring it and Astro has to resort to the kind of tactics he despises for the good of all…

This outing to the orient of cartoon yore ends with a cunning crime caper and contemporary spoof saga as ‘Astro’s Been Stolen!’ (June to September in Tetsuwan Atom Kurabu AKA Mighty Atom Club) sees the mecha mite and his loving (equally mechanical) family distraught following a message from Professor O. This explains that the boy, his sister and they all need to grow for their mental health. That means transferring their processors and personalities into new, appropriately aged bodies every ten years…

Tragically, Ochanomizu has been targeted by diabolical twinned Doctors Rukarike. He’s actually a singular supervillain called Gettrich who cons the well-meaning savant into switching Astro Boy’s electro-brain into an adult replacement frame just so he can steal the junior version and place a hench-minion’s mind in it. The purpose is to gain admittance to the top-secret base containing super artefact the Neo-pyramid, but the fiend has not reckoned with Astro’s resilience and determination, nor the timely interference of British agent James Itch Dnob…

Breathtaking pace, outrageous invention, slapstick comedy, heart-wrenching sentiment and frenetic action are hallmarks of these captivating comics constructions: all ideal examples of Tezuka’s uncanny storytelling gifts. These still deliver a potent punch and instil wide-eyed wonder on a variety of intellectual levels and our melange of mecha-marvels is further enhanced an older, more sophisticated tone via the material’s constant revision, confirming Astro Boy as a genuine delight for all ages.
Tetsuwan Atom by Osama Tezuka © 2002 by Tezuka Productions. All rights reserved. Astro Boy is a registered trademark of Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd., Tokyo Japan. Unedited translation © 2002 Frederik L. Schodt.

Today in 1998 Batman co-creator Bob Kane died. Coincidentally, way back in 1927 letterer Milt Snappin was born on this same date. Milt put the words in Batman & Robin’s bubbles – as well as Superman, Superboy and other DC World’s Finest stars throughout the post Golden and Silver Age period.

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Chas Addams™ Half-Baked Cookbook: Culinary Cartoons for the Humorously Famished


By Charles Addams (Simon & Schuster)
ISBN: ?978-0-7432-6775-5 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-439-10386-9

This boos includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. It also uses Discriminatory Content included for comedic and satirical effect.

Cartoonist Charles Samuel Addams (1912-1988) was a distant descendant of two American Presidents (John Adams & John Quincy Adams). He compounded that hereditary infamy by perpetually making his real life as extraordinary as his dark, mordantly funny drawings.

Born into a successful family in Westfield, New Jersey, the precocious, prankish, constantly drawing child was educated at the town High School, Colgate University, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York City’s Grand Central School of Art, and apparently spent the entire time producing cartoons and illustrations for a raft of institutional publications.

In 1932 he became a designer for True Detective magazine – “retouching photos of corpses” – and soon after started selling drawings to The New Yorker. In 1937, at the peak of popular fascination in cinematic and literary horror stories, he began a ghoulish if not outright macabre sequence of family portraits that ultimately became his signature creation. However, during WWII, he toned down the terror and served with the US Signal Corps Photographic Center, devising animated training films for the military.

Whether Addams artfully manufactured his biography to enhance his value to feature writers or was genuinely a warped and wickedly wacky individual is irrelevant, although it makes for great reading – especially the stuff about his wives – and, as always, the internet is eager to be your informative friend…

What is important is that in all the years he drew and painted those creepily sardonic, gruesome gags and illustrations for The New Yorker, Colliers, TV Guide and so many others, he managed to beguile and enthral his audience with a devilish mind and a soft, gentle approach that made him a household name long before television turned his characters into a hit and generated a juvenile craze for monsters and grotesques that lasts to this day. That eminence was only magnified once the big screen iterations debuted. And now we have streaming fun too. He would have loved the sheer terrifying inescapability of it all…

As he worked on unto death, Addams got even wackier: marrying his third wife in a pet cemetery, spending a fortune collecting weapons and torture devices – “for reference” – and inventing… recipes…

In a legendary career dedicated to being odd, the sudden swerve into crafting and compiling an actual cookbook garnished with macabre cartoon japery is a fabulous affirmation of all the unharnessed unpredictability man stood for, and one which constantly delivers treat after tasty treat…

The compendium commences with introduction ‘Café Styx’ from culinary author Allen S. Weiss, after which a bundle of gags – many starring Addams Family stalwarts – brings us to the secrets of making mouthwatering ‘Mushrooms Fester’. Always be sure when cooking this where you sourced your fungi from – and what you need them to do…

The pattern repeats throughout in chapters divided into ‘Platters’: soundly sinister laughs and gruesomely gustatory giggles peppered with rather tasty recipes. You can see for yourself the quality of the cartooning here so I’ll be brief for a change and simply menu the other olfactory and tongue-tangling taste-bombs included.

The next is utterly self-explanatory ‘Macaroni and Oysters’, ending the first course prior to commencing the ‘Second Platter’ – specifically ‘Black Puddings’ (Yanks call them “blood puddings” and they’re not wrong) and ‘Transparent Pie’ with ‘Boiled Salad of Fiddleheads’ (that’s newly sprouted ferns)…

Pausing for a delicious ‘Intermezzo’ of home-made (for who could sell them?) ‘Dandelion Beer’ and ‘Influenza Punch’ accompanied by ‘Stewed Pigeons’, ‘Potted Woodland Squirrel’ & ‘Fried Locusts’ sagaciously catered to with helpful ‘Hints for the Ill’, we eventually come to what all gastrophiles, gastronomes (and gastrophobes!) have been waiting for: the triumphant ‘Third Platter’ and subsequent ‘Digestifs’…

Here the drawings are in their prime and perfectly piquant whilst consumers are advised on how to tackle ‘Hearts Stuffed for Valentine’s Day’ (with a most special Stuffing mix); ‘Ostrich Eggs’ and ‘Reindeer Rice Curry’. Of course, as with all comedy, acquiescence and acceptance in adversity might mean modern kitchen scullions might need to replace the odd ingredient for all these GENUINE early American recipes collected by Chas and Tee Addams over decades, but what really matters is that gradually older collections of the Addams oeuvre are being unearthed and this one’s truly scrumptious; or perhaps just an acquired taste…

For clarity and pure knowledge this volume closes with a full biography of the auteur and full list of ‘Credits’ for the recipes included.

Should you not be as familiar with his actual cartoons as with the big and small screen legacy Addams unleashed, you really owe it to yourself to see the uncensored brilliance of one of America’s greatest humourists. It’s very appetising and dead funny…

© 2005 by Tee and Charles Addams Foundation. All rights reserved.

Today was a biggie for Comics. In 1764, grand master and originator of mean drawing William Hogarth died. In 1931 Stan’s brother (the one who could write AND Draw) Larry Lieber was born. Among his many unsung triumphs was Rawhide Kid, co creating Iron Man and writing most of the stories in Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor volume 1: The Vengeance of Loki.

In 1941 Belgian Bob De Groot was born. You really should read one of his many light adventure gems such as Clifton volume 5: Jade.

In 1970, two US strips launched today one was Mel Lazarus’ venerable Momma, and the other was by Gary Trudeau. Go see and worship some more with the fabulous Yuge! – 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump.

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Chas Addams Happily Ever After: A Collection of Cartoons to Chill the Heart of You


By Charles Addams (Simon & Schuster)
ISBN: 978-1-43910-356-2 (PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. It also has Discriminatory Content included for comedic and satirical effect.

Cartoonist Charles Samuel Addams (1912-1988) was a distant descendant of two American Presidents (John Adams & John Quincy Adams). He compounded that hereditary infamy by perpetually making his real life as extraordinary as his dark, mordantly funny drawings.

Born into a successful family in Westfield, New Jersey, the precocious, prankish, constantly drawing child was educated at the town High School, Colgate University, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York City’s Grand Central School of Art, and apparently spent the entire time producing cartoons and illustrations for a raft of institutional publications.

In 1932 he became a designer for True Detective magazine – “retouching photos of corpses” – and soon after started selling drawings to The New Yorker. In 1937, at the peak of popular fascination in cinematic and literary horror stories, he began a ghoulish if not outright macabre sequence of family portraits that ultimately became his signature creation. However, during WWII, he toned down the terror and served with the US Signal Corps Photographic Center, devising animated training films for the military.

Whether Addams artfully manufactured his biography to enhance his value to feature writers or was genuinely a warped and wickedly wacky individual is irrelevant, although it makes for great reading – especially the stuff about his wives – and, as always, the internet is eager to be your informative friend…

What is important is that in all the years he drew and painted those creepily sardonic, gruesome gags and illustrations for The New Yorker, Colliers, TV Guide and so many others, he beguiled and enthralled his audience with a devilish mind and a soft, gentle approach that made him a household name long before television turned his characters into a hit. This was a substantial part of what generated the craze for monsters and grotesques that lasts to this day. That eminence was only magnified once the big screen iterations debuted. And now we have streaming fun too. He would have loved the sheer terrifying inescapability of it all…

As he worked on unto death, Addams got even wackier: marrying his third wife in a pet cemetery, spending an absolute fortune collecting weapons and torture devices – “for reference don’cha know” – and inventing… recipes…

There will be more on that last one another time but what really matters is that older collections of his oeuvre are finally being unearthed. This one – compiled from Addams’s personal archive, with many previously unpublished gems, explores the widest gamut of emotion, from ecstatic love to disappointed affection to murderous obsession. It’s a creepy corker demonstrating that love really does hurt…

Chas Addams Happily Ever After: A Collection of Cartoons to Chill the Heart of You opens in full scholar mode with ‘Chas Addams’ a photo-essay appreciation by H. Kevin Miserocchi, backed up by an explanation of the work of the ‘Tee and Charles Addams Foundation’ – remembering of course that the Tee here is his truly kindred spirit third wife Marilyn Matthews Miller-Addams (1926–2002).

Then the cartoon carnival commences with early works as ‘In the Beginning’ sets the cultural scene with crime, terror, murder and the ever-lurking supernatural before the remainder of the perilous pictorium offers insights into what used to be called “the war of the sexes”. This socially sensitive selection judiciously deals even handedly with ‘His Side’ and ‘Her Side’ before going on to test ‘His Resolve’ and ‘Her Resolve’…

The matter is naturally settled in revelatory style with ‘The Final Score’…

For clarity and pure knowledge this hilariously judgemental tome closes with a full list of ‘Dates of First Publication’ and the happy confirmation that a goodly proportion of the gags are new/unpublished until this time.

Should you not be as familiar with his actual cartoons as with the big and small screen legacy Addams unleashed, you really owe it to yourself to see the uncensored brilliance of one of America’s greatest humourists. It’s dead funny…
© 2006 by Tee and Charles Addams Foundation. All rights reserved.

Today in 1897 English writer & cartoonist Charles Henry Ross died. He’s one of the chaps accused of inventing comics with his disreputable rogue Ally Sloper. The closest we’ve got yet to exposing that rapscallion was in Great British Comics.

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The Complete Peanuts volume 1: 1950-1952


By Charles Schulz (Canongate Books/Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-589-2 (Fantagraphics HB) 978-1-60699-763-5 (Fantagraphics TPB) 978-1-84767-031-1 (Canongate)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: All that’s great about cartoon strips… 10/10

Peanuts is unequivocally the most important comics strip in the history of graphic narrative. It is also the most deeply personal. Today in 1950 it all began, and cartoonist Charles M Schulz went on crafting his moodily hilarious, hysterically introspective, shockingly surreal philosophical epic for half a century: 17,897 strips spanning October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000.

He died from complications of cancer the day before his last strip was printed.

At its height, Peanuts ran in 2,600 newspapers, in 21 languages and in 75 countries. Many of those venues still run it as perpetual reprints, and have ever since his death. During Schulz’s lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy doodler an actual billionaire at a time when that really meant something…

None of that matters. Peanuts – a title Schulz loathed, but one the syndicate forced upon him – changed the way comics strips were received and perceived: proving cartoon comedy could have edges and nuance and meaning as well as soon-forgotten pratfalls and punchlines.

Following a typically garrulous, charming and informative Introduction from fellow Minnesotan Garrison Keillor, this mammoth (218 x 33x 172 mm) landscape compendium offers the first two and a bit years. Here a prototypical, rather outgoing and jolly Charlie Brown and high-maintenance mutt Snoopy joined with bombastic Shermy and mercurial Patty in hanging out doing kid things.

These include playing, playing pranks, playing sports such as tennis, golf and baseball, playing musical instruments, teasing each other, making baffled observations and occasionally acting a bit too much like grown-ups. Fans of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes will feel eerie familiarity with much of the hijinks and larks of these episodes.

As new characters Violet, infant prodigy Schroeder, and Lucy and her strange baby brother Linus were added to the mix, the boisterous rush of the series began to imperceptibly settle into a more contemplative pace. Charlie Brown began to adopt and embrace his eternal loser, singled-out-by-fate persona and the sheer diabolical wilfulness of Lucy began to sharpen itself on everyone around her…

The first Sunday page debuted on January 6th 1952; a standard half-page slot offering more measured fare than the daily. Both thwarted ambition and explosive frustration became part of the strip’s signature denouements…

By the end of 1952, all those the rapid-fire gags had evolved from raucous slapstick to surreal, edgy, psychologically barbed introspection, garnished by crushing judgements and deep rumination in a world where kids – and certain animals – were the only actors. The relationships, however, were increasingly deep, complex and absorbing even though “Sparky” Schulz never deviated from his core message: entertain…

David Michaelis then celebrates and deconstructs ‘The Life and Times of Charles M. Schulz’ after which Gary Groth & Rick Marschall conduct ‘An Interview with Charles M. Schulz’, rounding out our glimpse of the dolorous graphic genius with intimate revelations and reminiscences whilst a copious ‘Index’ offers instant access to favourite scenes you’d like to see again.

Readily available in hardcover, paperback and digital editions, this initial volume offers a rare example of a masterpiece in motion: comedy gold and social glue gradually metamorphosing in an epic of spellbinding graphic mastery which became part of the fabric of billions of lives, and which continues to do so long after its maker’s passing.

Happy ever afters, kids.
The Complete Peanuts: 1950-1952 (volume 1) © 2004 Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. Introduction © 2004 Garrison Keillor. “The Life and Times of Charles M. Schulz” © 2000 David Michaelis. “Interview with Charles M. Schulz” © 2004 Gary Groth and Richard Marschall. All other material copyright its respective owners. All rights reserved.

Today in 1909 Alex Raymond was born. You’ll know him best for stuff like Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo volume 1: Sundays 1934-1937 (The Complete Flash Gordon Library. In 1916 Bob Powell, was born. He went on to do things like Bob Powell’s Complete Jet Powers.

Ramona Fradon was born in 1926, and Spirou stalwart Janry arrived in Belgium in 1957, whilst Maltese docu-comics journalist Joe Sacco was born in 1960. You can find dozens of books by the first two just by using a search box here, and I’ve almost summoned enough nerve to review Sacco’s Palestine despite – or because of – these febrile times…