World Classics – Page 25

April 2, 2015April 1, 2015

Hurricane Isle: The Best of Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs

By Roy Crane, edited by Rick Norwood (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-809-0

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

It’s virtually impossible for us to today to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. â€œThe Funniesâ€ were the most common recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality.

From the very start humour was paramount; hence the terms â€œFunniesâ€ and â€œComicsâ€, and from these gag and stunt beginnings – a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and vaudeville shows – came a thoroughly entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Washington Tubbs II was a comedic gag-a-day strip not much different from family favourite Harold Teen (by Crane’s friend and contemporary Carl Ed). Tubbs was a diminutive, ambitious and bumbling young store clerk when the feature debuted on April 21^st 1924, but after only three months Crane re-evaluated his little enterprise and made a few changes which would reshape the entire art form.

Having Wash run away to the circus (Crane did much the same in the name of research) the artist gradually moved the strip into mock-heroics, then through a period of gently boisterous action romps to become a full-blown, light-hearted, rip-roaring adventure series. It was the first of its kind and dictated the form for decades thereafter. Crane then sealed its immortality with the introduction of prototype he-man and ancestral moody swashbuckler Captain Easy in the landmark episode for 6^th May, 1929.

As the tales gradually became more exotic and thrill-packed, the globe-trotting little dynamo clearly needed a sidekick and sounding board. After a few bright and breezy types were tried and discarded, Crane decided on one who could believably handle the combat side of things, and thus in the middle of a European war, in the fairytale kingdom of Kandelabra, Tubbs liberated a mysterious fellow American from a cell and history was made.

Before long the mismatched pair were inseparable; tried-and-true travelling companions hunting treasure, fighting thugs and rescuing a bevy of startlingly comely damsels in distressâ€¦

The bluff, two-fisted, completely capable and utterly dependable, down-on-his-luck â€œSouthern Gentlemanâ€ was something not seen before in comics: a taciturn, raw, square-jawed hunk played completely straight rather than the previously popular buffoon or music hall foil seen in such classic serials as Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond.

Moreover Crane’s seductively simple blend of cartoon exuberance and design was a far more accessible and powerful medium for action story-telling than the somewhat static illustrative style favoured by artists like Hal Foster: just beginning to make waves on the new Tarzan Sunday page at this time.

Tubbs and Easy were as exotic and thrilling as the Ape Man but rattled along like the tempestuous Popeye, full of vim, vigour and vinegar, as attested to by a close look at the early work of the would-be cartoonists who followed the strip with avid intensity.

Floyd Gottfredson, Milton Caniff, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and especially young Joe Shuster were eager fans taking notes and following suitâ€¦

After a couple of abortive attempts starring his little hero, Crane eventually bowed to the inevitable and created a full colour Sunday page dedicated solely to his increasingly popular hero-for-hire. Captain Easy debuted on 30^th July 1933, in wild and woolly escapades set before his fateful meeting with Tubbs.

Both together and separately, reprinted exploits of these troubleshooters became staples of the earliest comic books (specifically The Funnies from October 1936 and The Comics, March 1937 onwards).

With an entire page and vibrant colours to play with, Crane’s imagination ran wild and his fabulous visual concoctions achieved a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The effect of the pages can be seen in so many strips since, especially the works of such near-contemporaries as HergÃ© and giants in waiting like Charles Schulz. They have all been collected in the four-volume Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips.

Those pages were a clearly as much of a joy to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA Syndicate’s abruptly and arbitrarily demanding that all its strips be henceforward produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate them being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated. Crane just walked away, concentrating on the daily feature. In 1943 he quit NEA to create the wartime aviator strip Buz Sawyer, and Turner became the able custodian of the heroes’ fate.

Wash Tubbs ran until January 10^th 1988.

Before all that however Wash was the affable and undisputed star of a never-ending parade of riotous daily black and white escapades and this superb hardback opens with two of them: part of a cherry-picked compilation of ten of the very best adventures of the bombastic buddies. Hopefully if this book is a hit it will lead to another complete reprinting such as the 18-volume series covering the entirety of the Wash Tubbs run – 1934-1943 and published by NBM from 1987-1992â€¦

Before the non-stop nonsense begins author and pre-eminent comic strip historian Ron Goulart details all you need to know about the tales in ‘A History of Lickety Whop’ and editor Rick Norwood provides further background information in his copiously illustrated Introduction’ after which we’re all plunged into astounding adventure on ‘Hurricane Isle’ (which originally ran daily from February 23^rd to June 6^th 1928)â€¦

At this time Wash and fellow inveterate fortune-hunter Gozy Gallup are gloating over securing an ancient map which once belonged to the dread pirate Edward Teach AKA Blackbeard!

As they research the infamous buccaneer and scrabble to find a ship to take them to their destination, they are unaware that aggrieved enemy Brick Bane – the Bandit King of Mexico – is hard on their trail and hungry for revenge. Stalking them as they journey from New Orleans to the Caribbean, he takes a nasty sea captain into his confidence and arranges for the sinister salt to hire out his ship to the treasure seekers. The skipper is unsavoury brute Bull Dawson: destined to become Tubbs’ – and later Easy’s – greatest and most implacable foeâ€¦

After travelling to the island with them Dawson, having already removed Bane, springs his trap and turns Wash and Gozy into enslaved labourers, digging with the crew to find the fabled horde. The lads soon rebel and escape into the jungle to search on their own, and also abortively attempt to steal Dawson’s ship.

The wily brute is always too much for them however and even after the boys finally locate the loot, the malicious mariner reappears to take it from them. The sadistic swine is preparing to maroon them when Bane shows up with a ship full of his Mexican bandits and a shooting war breaks outâ€¦

With bullets flying and bodies dropping, Wash and Gozy convince affable deckhand Samson to switch sides and the trio take off for civilisation with the treasure in the holdâ€¦

Money comes and goes pretty freely for these guys but by the time ‘Arabia’ (July 30^th – December 12^th 1928) begins they are still pretty flush and so opt for a luxurious Mediterranean cruise. Unfortunately Wash’s propensity for clumsy gaffes raises the ire of a very nasty sheik named Abdul Hoozit Hudson Bey and the affronted potentate swears vengeance when the ship docks in Tunis.

As if icing fate’s cake, when wandering through the bazaar Wash is glamoured by a pair of gorgeous eyes and inadvertently seals his doom by attempting to rescue a girl from a seraglio: Jada is not only a distressed damsel but Bey’s favourite wifeâ€¦

Heeding the French authorities’ advice to leave town quickly, the lads take off on a camel caravan into the Sahara but have no idea they are heading into cunning Bey’s trapâ€¦

The fact that Jada is the favourite of the incensed chieftain saves them temporarily, but when the sheik finally finds a way to surreptitiously assassinate them, she and her devoted slave Bola dash into the deep desert to save them, and the quartet strike out for safety and freedom together.

That trek dumps them in the clutches of Bey’s great rival Abdullah Bumfellah and leads to a tribal shooting war. Happily Bola has been busy and found a Foreign Legion patrol to save the day.

And that’s when Jada drops her bombshell. She is actually a princess from a European principality, sold to Bey by her father’s Grand Vizier so that he could steal the throne. Now that she’s free again she must return to liberate her poor people. Despite having to get back to America, Wash won’t shut up about wishing he’d gone with herâ€¦

He soon gets the chance as ‘Kandelabra’ (April 11^th – July 6^th 1929) became the most significant sequence in the strip’s history; introducing Captain Easy in a riotous, rousing Ruritanian epic which we join after Wash reunites with Jada in the postage stamp kingdom she had been so cruelly abducted from.

Our little go-getter soon infiltrates the government and rises to the rank of admiral of the landlocked land but overplays his hand and is framed for stealing the army’s payroll. Delivered to a secret dungeon he (partially) escapes and finds a gruff fellow American who refuses to share his name but insists on being called â€œEasyâ€â€¦

Busting out his new pal, soon Wash and the stranger are caught in a bloody revolution when the aggrieved army mutinies. Before long the Vizier’s cronies are ousted, the vile villain accidentally orchestrates his own demise and the regally restored Jada declares the birth of the continent’s newest democracyâ€¦

In ‘Desert Island’ (February 6^th – June 7^th 1930) Bull Dawson returns to steal Tubbs’ entire fortune, flying off across America in a bid to escape with his ill-gotten gains. The robbery becomes a nationwide sensation and we join the action as Wash and Easy frantically pursue the fugitive. Tracking him to San Francisco they continue the chase when the malign mariner takes off in a schooner with our heroes as stowaways and, before long, prisonersâ€¦

The sadistic Bull lose faces after being thrashed in a no-holds barred fight with Easy which was merely subterfuge to allow the southern soldier of fortune to pick Dawson’s pocket and recover Wash’s easily portable $200,000 in cash. As the battered thug recuperates the ship is hit by a monster typhoon which apparently leaves our heroes the only survivors aboard the shattered shards of the schooner.

The wreck fetches up on a desolate Pacific atoll where the boys soon fall into the routine of latter-day Robinson Crusoes. The isolated idyll becomes complicated when they find the place is already home to a young woman who was the only survivor of an attack by roving headhunters from Borneo.

Mary Milton is brave, competent and beautiful and before long the lonely pals are fierce rivals for her affectionsâ€¦

The situation grows dangerously intense and only stabilises when the savages return, forcing the warring suitors to stand together or fall separatelyâ€¦

When the brutal battle ends the westerners are in possession of a sturdy war canoe and decide to risk their lives on an epic ocean odyssey to the nearest outpost of civilisation. It is only after the voyagers are far out to sea that Wash agonisingly recalls that he left his stash of dollars behindâ€¦

The next adventure (running from June 9^th – October 1930) immediately follows on as the weary travellers reach French Indo-China and, thanks to a friendly soldier, escape far inland via a mighty river. After days of travel they reach the previously hidden kingdom of Cucumbria and quickly fall foul of the toad-worshipping emperor Igbay Umbay who takes one look at Mary and decides he must have herâ€¦

Being a coward who stole the throne from his brother, the grand poobah hasn’t the nerve to simply take her and orchestrates a succession of scurvy schemes to get rid of Wash and Easy but the boys are too smart and bold to fall for them. Infuriatingly rising in power and status, aided by young prince Hilo Casino – freshly returned from college in America – the Americans finally seem be out of the Umbay’s hair after they agree to lead his armies against the supernatural rebel leader known as ‘The Phantom King’â€¦

Despite deep misgivings â€œGeneralâ€ Easy and his aide Washington Tubbs set out on a campaign that will ravage the hidden kingdom, unseat an emperor, cost thousands of lives and lose them the girl they both loveâ€¦

A year later ‘Down on the Bayou’ (March 12^th – July 25^th 1931) found the world-weary wanderers nearing home again only to be arrested as they approach New Orleans in a stolen plane. They were fleeing a clever frame-up in infamous Costa Grande, but without proof could only evade their US Navy captors and flee into the swampy vastness of the Mississippi Deltaâ€¦

Lost for days and starving, they are picked up by vivacious gangster’s moll Jean who recruits them into a gang of smugglers and rum-runners who inhabit a huge plantation somewhere between Pelican Island and Barataria dedicated to various criminal enterprises. Tubbs and Easy are soon comfortably settled in amidst the rogues and outcasts but everything changes when Jean’s brother returns from a smuggling trip. His name is Bull Dawsonâ€¦

The pirate is prevented from killing our heroes by Jean and the huge Cajun in charge of the outlaw outpost, but Dawson takes it badly and with his gang of deadly bodyguards decides to take over the whole enterprise.

A couple of murders later Bull is big boss but also oddly friendly to his most despised enemies. Maybe it’s a ploy to put them off guard, but perhaps it has more to do with the gang of Chicago mobsters who have come down to put an end to the bootlegging mavericks cutting into their profitsâ€¦

The troubles and bloodshed escalate exponentially and Jean drops her final bombshell: she’s a federal agent working with the Coast Guard to smash the budding criminal empireâ€¦

Once the dust settles she has one final surprise in store. In all the years of their friendship Wash could never get his taciturn pal to talk of his past or even reveal his real name. Now the government girl gives Mr. William Lee a message which sends him rushing across country to an old plantation home. Here the astounded Wash hears all about his pal’s shocking life, sordid scandals and abandoned wife â€¦and then he learns the truthâ€¦

Soon the impediments and lies which blighted Easy’s life are all removed and the wanderer settles in to a well-deserved retirement with the girl he always loved but could never have. Tubbs moves on, quickly reuniting with old chum Gozy Gallupâ€¦

A few weeks later the ever-restless Wash is riding a tramp steamer headed for Europe, intent on paying Jada a visit in Kandelabra but, falling foul of rustic transportation systems, ends up in the similar but so different Principality of Sneeziaâ€¦

Apart from pretty girls, the tiny kingdom has only one point of interest: the world’s dinkiest railway service. Run by aged expatriate American Calliope Simpson ‘The Transalpina Express’ (August 13^th – November 21^st 1931) links Sneezia to sister kingdom Belchia and is the most unique and beloved (by its intoxicated customers at least) service in the world.

Wash is especially keen to learn the business since being the engineer has made octogenarian Cal the most irresistible man in two countries, fighting off adorable young women with a stickâ€¦

The lad’s greatest dream comes true when Simpson finally elopes with one of his adoring devotees and Washington Tubbs become sole operator of the Express, but his joy at all the feminine attention soon sours when Belchia and Sneezia go to war and both sides want to use his train to move men and material into combat. Of course the dilemma can only end in disaster and before long our boy is running for his life againâ€¦

There’s a big jump to the next yarn which finds Wash and Easy reunited and stowing away on the wrong-est ship imaginable. Quickly caught, they are quite understandably assumed to be part of the contingent of prisoners bound for the final destination – ‘Devil’s Island’ (June 9^th – August 30^th 1932)â€¦

No sooner are they mixed in with the hopeless prison population than the planning of their inevitable escape begins, but success only leads to greater peril as they and their criminal confederates take ship with a greedy captain subject to murderous bouts of paranoia and madnessâ€¦

‘Whales’ (April 24^th – August 30^th 1933) is probably the most shocking – to modern sensibilities – of the perennial wanderers’ exploits as Wash and Easy are drugged in a Dutch cafe and dumped aboard one of the last sailing ships to work the whaling trade.

Elderly and nostalgic Captain Folly has been convinced by psychotic First Mate Mr. Slugg to compete one last time against the new-fangled factory whaling fleets, unknowingly crewing his creaking old ship with shanghaied strangersâ€¦

The grim minutiae of the ghastly profession is scrupulously detailed as our heroes seek some means of escape but with Slugg becoming increasingly unbalanced and eventually murdering Folly, bloody mutiny soon leads to the ship foundering and both factions – or at least the survivors of each – being marooned on the arctic Alaskan ice, where naturally our heroes find the only pretty girl in a thousand square milesâ€¦

This fabulous treasury of thrills concludes with one last battle against Bull Dawson after the incorrigible monster links up with gorgeous grifter Peggy Lake, who fleeces gullible Wash of his savings and disappears into the endless green wilderness of the swamps of ‘Okefenokee’ (June 13^th – July 24^th 1935).

The crime leads to a massive police manhunt through the mire before the boys personally track down the villains and deliver one more sound thrashing to the malodorous malcontent and his pretty patsyâ€¦

Rounding off this superb collection is a thorough ‘Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs Episode Guide’ by Rick Norwood as well as a glorious graphic Mexican travelogue feature by Crane in ‘An Afterword in Pictures’ as well as the informative biography section ‘About the Authors’.

If I’ve given the impression that this has all been grim and gritty turmoil and drama thus far, please forgive me: Crane was a superbly irrepressible gag-man and his boisterous, enchanting serials abound with breezy, light-hearted banter, hilarious situations and outright farce – a sure-fire formula modern cinema directors plunder to this day.

Easy was the Indiana Jones, Flynn (The Librarian) Carsen and Jack (Romancing the Stone) Cotton of his day – and, clearly blazing a trail for all of them – whilst Wash was akin to Danny Kaye or our own Norman Wisdom: brave, big-hearted, well-meaning, clay-footed, irrepressible and utterly indomitable everymen… just like all of us.

This superb monochrome landscape hardback (274 x 33 x 224 mm) is a wonderful means of discovering or rediscovering Crane’s rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventure trailblazer.

This is comics storytelling of the very highest quality: unforgettable, spectacular and utterly irresistible. These tales rank alongside her best of HergÃ©, Tezuka and Kirby and led irrefutably to the creations of all of them. Now that you have the chance to experience the strips that inspired the giants of our art form, how can you possibly resist?
Hurricane Isle: The Best of Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs Â© 2015 Fantagraphics Books. All Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy Strips Â© 2015 United Features Syndicate, Inc. All other material Â© the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

March 31, 2015March 30, 2015

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 9: 1953-1954

By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-735-2

The stellar Sunday page Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur debuted on February 13^th 1937, a luscious, luminous full-colour weekly window into a miraculous too-perfect past of adventure and romance, even topping creator Hal Foster’s previous endeavour, the astoundingly impossibly popular comics masterpiece Tarzan of the Apes.

The saga of noble knights played against a glamorised, dramatised Dark Ages historical backdrop as it followed the life of a refugee boy driven from his ancestral homeland in Scandinavian Thule who grew up to roam the world and attain a paramount position amongst the heroes of fabled Camelot.

Auteur Foster wove his epic tale over decades, following the progress of a near-feral wild boy who grew into a paragon of chivalric virtue: knight, warrior, saviour, vengeance-taker and eventually family patriarch in a constant deluge of wild – and joyously witty – wonderment.

The restless hero visited many far-flung lands, siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes and utterly enchanting generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

There have been films, an animated series and all manner of toys, games, books and collections based on Prince Valiant – one of the few adventure strips to have run continuously from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (more than 4000 episodes and counting) – and even here at the end times of newspaper narrative cartoons as an art form, it continues to astound in more than 300 American papers. It has even cut its way onto the internet with an online edition.

Foster crafted the feature alone until 1971 when illustrator John Cullen Murphy (Big Ben Bolt) succeeded him as illustrator. Foster continued as writer and designer until 1980, after which he retired and Cullen Murphy’s daughter Mairead took over colouring and lettering whilst her brother John assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired, since when the strip has soldiered on under the auspices of many extremely talented artists such as Gary Gianni, Scott Roberts and latterly Thomas Yeates with Mark Schultz (Xenozoic) superbly scripting. That scribe also provides this volume’s Introduction ‘More Than Pretty Pictures: Storytelling Beyond Genre, Gender, and Medium’ wherein Foster’s extraordinary facility with expressions and pioneering creation of strong and capable female characters is celebrated, analysed and explained by focusing on the artist’s astoundingly able wife and lifemate Helen.

This enormously entertaining and luxurious oversized (362 x 264mm) full-colour hardback reprints the pages from January 4^th 1953 to 26^th December 1954 (pages #830-933, if you’re counting) but before we proceedâ€¦

What Has Gone Before: Having negotiated a truce between Val’s Scandinavian nation Thule and the kingdom of Orkney, the restless Prince undertook his most momentous task yet. Bringing back missionaries from Rome at his father King Aguar‘s request, the rowdy knight of Camelot began overseeing the nation’s slow conversion from Paganism and Druid worship to Christianity.

The job was not without risk with the missionaries and their regal escort (who was still far from a believer in the One God himself) encountering stiff resistance and worse from the Thor-loving populace – and especially their profiteering priestsâ€¦

The saga resumes with Val and companions Helgi and Torr presiding over a tenuous truce between new and old faiths which is soon threatened after the Prince exposes the seeming â€œmiraclesâ€ of the Thor priests for what they truly are. In retaliation the new Christian chapel is burned down, but the missionaries’ stoic acceptance and calm rebuilding impresses the masses far more than all the druids’ tricks and bombastâ€¦

Assuming their job completed Valiant and his men depart only to be caught in a terrible forest fire which only two surviveâ€¦

Struggling home to his family, saddened Val monopolises all his wife’s attention and jealous first born son Arn acts up by leaving home to have adventures of his own. The little lad takes with him a hound of dubious pedigree and ancestry – dubbed Sir Gawain – and has a grand old time. Before true peril can threaten however the wanderers encounter an old friend of Valiant’s: another Round Table knight who is less than pleased to learn that he shares his noble name with a mangy, flea-bitten muttâ€¦

A pleasant time of gentle recuperation amongst friends is capped by another birth as Aleta’s Amerindian maid Tillicum produces a first son for her Viking husband Boltar but marred by separation as Valiant’s wife is called back to her own kingdom in the Misty Isles to quell a rebellion. He is unable to join her when Gawain’s mission is revealed: the Danes and Saxons have invaded Britain in a vast army with unbeatable new battle tactics and now lay siege to Camelot itselfâ€¦

Assured by Aleta that she can handle her crisis, Valiant and Gawain take ship and soon rejoin Arthur at Tintagel. The troubled monarch has learned that five kings of Cornwall are planning to ally with the invader Horsa and hopes the devious mind of the Prince of Thule can again trump overwhelming odds with keen wits and courageâ€¦

The campaign begins as Val impersonates a troubadour and sows treachery and dissent amongst the new allies. Soon one Celtic king is dead and the remaining quartet are frantically realigning with Arthur. With the defenders now united against the Saxons the long campaign to repulse them begins and once more the Prince’s unique and imaginative grasp of unconventional warfare is the defenders’ greatest assetâ€¦

With the tide turning, Val is surprised to be ordered away from battle to undertake another impossible task. Throughout Arthur’s reign the realm had periodically suffered raids from Ireland. Now they are a distraction England cannot afford and Valiant is despatched to the Emerald Isle to secure peace.

He has no idea how to accomplish the task but dutifully sails off, and gets into a fight as soon as he touches ground again. Happily his brawl with local chieftain Brian O’Curry impresses everyone so much that the boisterous hulking brute proclaims him a friend for life.

Soon they are travelling to capital outpost Cashel to meet current and pro tem overlord Rory McColm, but the journey is delayed as Brian’s clan encounters and has a quick war with a rival tribe. As Val learns from keenly observing holy man and Christian missionary Patrick, there’s nothing the Irish love more than fightingâ€¦

That also proves true when the visitor is finally granted an audience with the cruelly arrogant McColm, who spurns Britain’s entreaties and insults the infamously hot-headed Prince of Thule. Before long diplomacy is abandoned and a furious duel ensues. After Val ends all hopes of Rory’s retaining his crown – by defeating and mildly maiming him – the visitor becomes a harried fugitive running for his lifeâ€¦

With Brian and Patrick’s assistance Valiant escapes Ireland and heads for home where he meets Merlin who has an important prognostication for Arthur. Unfortunately before he can completely reveal it the aged mage is whisked away by enchanting temptress Nimue, leaving Valiant with nothing but frustrating fragments of a vital warningâ€¦

Rejoining the king as he struggles against the entrenched Saxons in Kent, Valiant finally deciphers the truncated message and goes about orchestrating the invaders’ ultimate defeat. The crucial first step is to allow himself to be captured and tortured by Horsa’s forcesâ€¦

The scheme works perfectly and as deep snows give way to spring the crushed and starving enemy are driven from Britain’s shores, allowing the wily tactician time to wonder how his wife fares in sunnier climes. He is eager to join her but sworn companion Gawain has fallen in love with the wrong maiden – again – and by the time the affair ends all he has to show for it is a new, exceedingly homely, inept yet oddly effective servant dubbed Pierreâ€¦

When Aleta arrived in the Misty Isles with her three children she found her sister and regent Helene increasingly under the sway of her husband Dionseus. The cagy thug had visions of turning the prosperous and peaceful trading nation into a piratical kingdom raiding and conquering the region. To achieve his aims he had slowly infiltrated the government, padding it with his cronies.

He has no idea of Aleta’s incomparable political acumen and astute manoeuvrings and, after failing to poison her and her heirs, somehow finds himself and all his mercenaries banished without a drop of blood being shedâ€¦

Humiliated and infuriated, Dionseus retrenches and begins planning his murderous return at the head of an invasion fleet, just as Valiant and Gawain finally arrive in the Misty Isles. Aleta, delighted to see them, has matters well in hand and prefers that they hang back and let her handle matters her way.

The Queen is grateful however for information provided by Pierre who, after a night of low carousing with servants in town, uncovers a plot by a coterie of nobles who plan to betray her for advancement in Dionseus’ men-only regimeâ€¦

Eventually, outthought and overmatched in every way, the usurper is utterly defeated and bored Valiant grows even more restless as Aleta sets to reforming her kingdom so that such a coup can never threaten again.

After tedium leads to a ferocious domestic spat the Prince and Gawain resolve to get out of everyone’s hair and go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Of course, no sooner have they arrived in the Holy City than they find themselves in hot water after seeing the plight of a Christian knight.

Thanks to another drunken debauch by Pierre the sly truth is soon revealed. Sir Basil has been held in an impenetrable but easily observed dungeon for a decade: an unwilling Judas Goat used by Sheik Ben El Rasch to trap European knights who would attempt to rescue their fellow and fall captive to a master of the art of ransoming.

The soon to depart occupying garrison of Roman soldiers are too busy preparing for their withdrawal to bother themselves with strictly local affairs so the Sheik has grown rich trading on the good intentions of noble Christian pilgrims and warriors, but now, forewarned, Valiant and Gawain are resolved to teach him a lesson he will never forgetâ€¦

Sadly they succeed all too well and taking El Rasch hostage leads to them being approached by his deadliest enemies who wish to buy him! Baulking at such barbarism but stalling until they have freed Sir Basil, the Round Table heroes thus incur the wrath of Syrian tribesmen too, but undaunted determine to finish their pilgrimage.

The decade-delayed Basil is eager to join them, but on every step of the quest they are pursued by two furious rival desert factions as keen to kill them as each otherâ€¦

Although implacable and numerous, the burnoosed hunters have never encountered fighters as cunning, imaginative and skilled as Valiant and his companions. Despite their best efforts – and even the seductive eyes of El Rasch’s daughter – the questors complete their journey and safely head back to the Misty Islesâ€¦

During their absence little Arn has grown old enough to notice girls and he does not like them. He and noble playmate Paul make an exception for kitchen-gamin Diane however, since she can sneak them out of the palace, teach them to fish and outfight them both.

When she subsequently saves their lives, Aleta neatly sidesteps all manner of court scandal and disapprobation by declaring her to be for a full year, a royal companion and a boyâ€¦

Everything seems spoiled though after the pilgrims return and the lad Diane develops a crush on Gawain. The legendary lover is deeply mortified by the sprite’s attention, but when a palace lothario attempts to get rid of Valiant and pursue the queen, Gawain steps in to defend her honour and is grateful for bold Diane’s help in avoiding a treacherous trapâ€¦

Soon however dull peace breaks out once more and before Val and his brother knight can ruin it again Aleta decrees it’s time for the royal family to head North once againâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Closing this astonishing epic of daring-dare-deviltry, Brian M. Kane scrutinises in searing detail the history of film and TV iterations in ‘Prince Valiant and the Sacking of Hollywood: The 60^th Anniversary of Hal Foster’s Creation on the Silver Screen’, featuring the apparently accursed 1954 movie and Foster’s subsequent starring role on This Is Your Life as well as the 1997 international film remake and animated series The Legend of Prince Valiant

Rendered in a simply stunning panorama of glowing visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a non-stop rollercoaster of boisterous action, exotic adventure and grand romance; blending human-scaled fantasy with dry wit and broad humour, soap opera melodrama with shatteringly dark violence.

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring, the strip is a true landmark of comics fiction and something no fan should miss.
Â© 2014 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties Â© 2014 their respective creators or holders. This edition Â© 2014 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

March 29, 2015March 28, 2015

The Moomins and the Great Flood

By Tove Jansson, translated by David McDuff (Sort Of Books)
ISBN: 978-1-90874-513-2

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

Tove Marika Jansson was born into an artistic, intellectual and practically bohemian Swedish family in Helsinki, Finland on August 9^th 1914.

Her father Viktor was a sculptor, her mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson a successful illustrator, graphic designer and commercial artist. Tove’s brothers Lars and Per Olov became a cartoonist/writer and photographer respectively. 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 – or immortal kids’ fantasy – as the piece they were all destined to act in.

As she recounts in her Preface to the 1991 Scandinavian edition, all too soon it became too much and she laid it aside. Only once the war was over did she acquiesce to the urgings of friends to complete it.

In 1945 the first fantastic Moomins adventure was published: SmÃ¥trollen och den stora Ã¶versvÃ¤mningen (The Little Trolls and the Great Flood or latterly and more euphoniously The Moomins and the Great Flood), a whimsical epic of gentle, inclusive, accepting, understanding, bohemian, misfit trolls and their strange friends, all searching for something precious that was lost in the aftermath of a terrible calamityâ€¦

A youthful over-achiever, from 1930-1953 Tove worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for Swedish satirical magazine Garm, and achieved some measure of notoriety with an infamous political sketch of Hitler in nappies that lampooned the Appeasement policies of Chamberlain and other European leaders in the build-up to World War II. She was also an in-demand illustrator for many magazines and children’s books, and had started selling comic strips as early as 1929.

Moomintroll was her signature character. Literally.

The lumpy, lanky, gently adventurous big-eyed romantic goof began life as a spindly sigil next to her name in her political works. She called him â€œSnorkâ€ and claimed she had designed him in a fit of pique as a child – the ugliest thing a precocious little girl could imagine – as a response to losing an argument about Immanuel Kant with her brother.

The term â€œMoominâ€ came from her maternal uncle Einar Hammarsten who attempted to stop her pilfering food when she visited by warning her that a Moomintroll guarded the kitchen, creeping up on trespassers and breathing cold air down their necks. Eventually Snork/Moomin filled out, became timidly nicer – if a little clingy and insecure – acting as a placid therapy-tool to counteract the grimness of the post-war world.

The Moomins and the Great Flood didn’t make much of an initial impact but Jansson persisted, probably as much for her own edification as any other reason, and in 1946 her second book Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland) was published. Many critics and commentators have reckoned the terrifying tale a skilfully compelling allegory of Nuclear Armageddon.

When it and her third illustrated novel Trollkarlens hatt (Finn Family Moomintroll or occasionally The Happy Moomins from 1948) were translated into English in 1952 to great acclaim, it prompted British publishing giant Associated Press to commission a newspaper strip about her seductively sweet and sensibly surreal creations.

Jansson had no misgivings or prejudices about strip cartoons and had already adapted Comet in Moominland for Swedish/Finnish paper Ny Tid. Mumintrollet och jordens undergÃ¤ng – Moomintrolls and the End of the World – was a popular feature so Jansson readily accepted the chance to extend her eclectic family across the world.

In 1953 The London Evening News began the first of 21 Moomin strip sagas which promptly captivated readers of all ages. Tove’s involvement in the cartoon feature ended in 1959, a casualty of its own success and a punishing publication schedule. So great was the strain that towards the end she had recruited her brother Lars to help. He took over, continuing the feature until its end in 1975, captivating generations of children and adults alike and pushing Jansson’s gentle gang to the forefront of literary universesâ€¦

Eventually after a succession of nine novels, five picture books and that sublime strip, Tove returned to painting, writing and her other creative pursuits, generating plays, murals, public art, stage designs, costumes for dramas and ballets, a Moomin opera as well as thirteen books and short-story collections strictly for grown-ups.

Tove Jansson died on June 27^th 2001 and her awards are too numerous to mention, but consider this: how many modern artists – let alone comics creators – get their faces on the national currency?

Her Moomin comic strips have long been available in Scandinavian volumes and the discerning folk at Drawn & Quarterly have translated these into English for your – and especially my – sheer delight and delectation.

The Moomins and the Great Flood – being slightly more sombre than the later tales – was out of print for years in Europe (until the aforementioned 1991 edition) and never translated into English at all until 2005 – published by Schildts of Finland for the 60^th anniversary of the series.

This resplendent hardback edition hails from 2012, published in Britain by Sort Of Books and a charmingly moving little thing it is. Not strictly a comic strip or a graphic novel, but rather a beautifully illustrated picture book, unafraid to be allegorical or scary or sad yet closing with a message of joy and hope and reconciliationâ€¦

It begins as capable Moominmamma and her nervous little son enter the deepest part of the great Forest one day at the end of August. They are tired and hungry and have been searching for the longest time for Moominpappa. The big gallant fool went off adventuring with the crazy wandering Hattifatteners and they haven’t seen him for yearsâ€¦

Soon they are joined by a nervous Little Creature and after escaping a Great Serpent meet a blue haired girl named Tulippa who used to live in a flowerâ€¦

Travelling together they meet an old gentleman who lives in a tree which contains a huge park full of sweets and treats, traverse a terrific abyss in a railway cart and narrowly escape an ant-lion.

Persevering the hopeful party continue their wandering search until they meet a band of Hattifatteners and join them on their boat just as the skies begin to darken and a vast deluge beginsâ€¦

The tumultuous voyage search takes them through a world turned upside down by calamity but eventually leads to a joyous reunion after all the assorted and individualistic creatures affected by disaster pull together to survive the inundation and its effectsâ€¦

Augmented with 14 stunning sepia-wash illustrations and 34 spot-illos in various styles of pen and ink scattered like cartoon confetti throughout the confection, this is a magical lost masterpiece for the young, laced with the unfettered imagination, keen observation and mature reflection which enhances and elevates only the greatest kid’s stories into classics of literature. Charming, genteel, amazingly imaginative and emotionally intense, this is a masterpiece of fantasy no one could possibly resistâ€¦
Text and illustrations Â© Tove Jansson 1945, 1991. English translation Â© David McDuff 2012.

March 24, 2015March 23, 2015

Spawn of Mars and Other Stories Illustrated by Wallace Wood

By Al Feldstein, Harry Harrison & Wallace Wood (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-805-2

EC began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines sold the successful superhero properties of his All-American Comics company – including Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman – to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Picture Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market. He then augmented his core title with three more in similar vein: Picture Stories from American History, Science and World History. The worthwhile but unsustainable project was already struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947.

His son William was eventually convinced to assume control of the family business and, with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen and multi-talented associate Al Feldstein, transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comics, consequently triggering the greatest qualitative leap forward in comicbook historyâ€¦

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines settled into a bold and impressive publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a â€œNew Trendâ€ of stories aimed at an older, more discriminating audience.

From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of science fiction, war, horror and crime. The company even added a new type of title and another genre with the creation of parody magazine Mad â€¦

This 12^th volume of the Fantagraphics EC Library compiles a mind-blowing catalogue of cosmic wonders courtesy of Wallace Allan Wood: one of the greatest draughtsmen and graphic imagineers our art form has ever produced.

Woody was a master of every aspect of the business. He began his career lettering Will Eisner’s Spirit strip, readily moving into pencilling and inking as the 1940s ended and, latterly, publishing. After years working all over the comicbook and syndicated strip industries, as well as in legitimate illustration, package-design and other areas of commercial art, he devised the legendary T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents franchise and even created one of the first adult independent comics with Witzend in the late 1960s.

The troubled genius carried the seeds of his own destruction, however. Woody’s life was one of addiction (booze and cigarettes), traumatic relationships, tantalisingly close but always frustrated financial security, illness and eventually suicide. It was as if all the joy and beauty in his existence stayed on the pages and there was none left for real life.

Although during his time with EC Wood became the acknowledged, undisputed Master of Science Fiction art in America, he was equally adept, driven and accomplished in the production of all genres.

This enticingly evocative collection reprints some of his best early science fiction and fantasy masterpieces, re-presented as always, in a lavish monochrome hardcover edition, with supplementary interviews, features and dissertations, beginning with ‘Spawn of Wood’ by Bill Mason, which dissects and appraises the yarns included with forensic discipline and unflinching insight.

Although the usual process at this time was for Gaines and Al Feldstein to plot stories before Feldstein meticulously scripted and laid out each tale for the artists, the worlds of wonder here begin their revelatory orbits with a chilling piece written and illustrated by Wood as ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ (from Weird Fantasy #15 September/October 1950) discloses how the fist lunar landing exposes an alien city of conquerors poised to attackâ€¦

Gaines & Al Feldstein were back in charge for ‘A Trip to a Star!’ (Weird Fantasy #16 November/December 1950) as an exploratory excursion far beyond the solar system leads to an astonishing mystery whilst ‘Return’ (Weird Science #15 January/February 1951) sees survivors of an antediluvian and previously unknown race show up on the brink of humanity’s atomic Armageddon to reveal what caused them to flee the planet in ages pastâ€¦

‘Deadlock!’ was another all-Wood extravaganza (Weird Fantasy #17 January/February 1951), describing a gripping stalemate in space as mankind responded to its First Contact with another star-faring species with typical suspicion. Sadly, the strangers were more like us than differentâ€¦

A traumatised survivor of the ‘Sinking of the Titanic!’ (Gaines, Feldstein & Wood from Weird Science #6 March/April 1951) built a time-machine to avert the tragedy and became a helpless pawn of destiny, whilst that same month in Weird Fantasy #6 ‘Rescued!’ saw a second ship of Earthly Argonauts fall foul of the cosmic irony which devastated their bold predecessors and ‘The Aliens!’ (Weird Science #7 May/June 1951) detailed another sidereal misapprehension when two belligerent alien species confronted each other and vowed eradication of their newfound foe and its homeworld. Sadly both were on a desolate part of Earth at the timeâ€¦

â€œRed Scareâ€ paranoia informed many tales from this time and ‘Breakdown!’ (Weird Fantasy #7, May/June 1951) is one of the best as a distraught wife tries to inform the authorities of imminent invasion only to walk straight into the mind-shatteringly hideous clutches of the infiltrators.

‘The Probers’ (Weird Science #8 July/August 1951) turns the tables on callous human scientists who jump to the wrong conclusions regarding the latest batch of alien guinea pigs whilst that same month in Weird Fantasy #8, all-Wood, ecologically astute saga ‘The Enemies of the Colony’ saw human pioneers on the Galactic Colonization Authority‘s new territory-world drive the wrong predator to extinction – and not live to regret itâ€¦

Extraterrestrial biological horror informed ‘The Gray Cloud of Death!’ (Gaines, Feldstein & Wood from Weird Science #9 September/October 1951) as an inimical and voracious thing invades the second ship to voyage to Venus, whilst that month in Weird Science #9 a tragic misunderstanding and itchy trigger-fingers signalled the end of refugees considered ‘The Invaders’ of our world in anther stark parable from Gaines, Feldstein & Woodâ€¦

The titular ‘Spawn of Mars’ (Gaines, Feldstein & Wood and also featured in WF #9) detailed the experiences of the first woman explorer on Mars as well as the thing that came back masquerading as her husbandâ€¦

A brace of yarns from Weird Science #10 November/December 1951 begins with ‘The Maidens Cried’ as spacemen from Earth find themselves beguiled into the bizarre mating processes of beautiful butterfly women whilst ‘Transformation Completed’ offers a stunning moral fable wherein a possessive father uses his new discovery to get rid of his daughter’s â€œunworthyâ€ suitor by converting him into a woman.

The paranoid Prof comes a cropper because he utterly underestimates his child’s capacity for love and sacrificeâ€¦

‘The Secret of Saturn’s Ring!’ was the first of a Gaines, Feldstein & Wood double-bill from Weird Fantasy #10 (November/December 1951), revealing what lurked within that celebrated debris field and how it portended horrific consequences for mankind, whilst ‘The Mutants!’ depicts our selfish bigotry in all its cruelty as the aberrations born in the atomic age are hounded off Earthâ€¦

‘The Conquerors of the Moon!’ Weird Science #11 January/February 1952 is a quintessential classic of the form as greedy industrialists steal a portion of Earth’s atmosphere to make the Moon cost-effectively habitable, destroying the birthplace of humanity and consequently laying the seeds of their own destruction, after which Weird Fantasy #11 from the same month offers both the irony-drenched tale of generational colonists undertaking ‘The Two-Century Journey!’ and a time-bending prophecy of inescapable atomic incineration in ‘The 10^th at Noon’â€¦

Wry and trenchant black humour resurfaced in ‘A Gobl is a Knoog’s Best Friend’ (Weird Science #12 March/April 1952) as the relationship between Earth spacers and the ship’s dog is misunderstood by aliens before – from the same issue – ‘The Android!’ showed that desire, deception and murder weren’t just facets of mere biology. That month in Weird Fantasy #12 ‘Projectâ€¦ Survival!’ played word games with mythology as mankind sought to survive Armageddon by selecting fragments of Earth to survive aboard rocketship A.R.C.-1 and ‘The Die is Cast!’ gets crushingly literal as explorers find doom and destruction on a desolate flatland plagued by moving mountainsâ€¦

Shock SuspenStories launched in 1952 and was an anthological anthology – by which I mean that Gaines and Feldstein used it to highlight their other short-story titles by having horror, crime and sci fi yarns in each issue. From #2 (April/May) comes grisly parable ‘Gee Dadâ€¦ It’s a Daisy!’ which saw explorers find a planet where the inhabitants are as capricious and inadvertently cruel as any earthling 10-year oldâ€¦

When Wood first began working he formed a studio with a college buddy who would eventually go on to become one of America’s most popular science fiction authors. Working together as writers, pencillers, inkers and letterers it was often impossible to tell who did what.

Short text feature ‘The Enigma of Harrison the Artist’ by Bill Mason covers that uniquely fertile collaboration and includes a glorious Harry Harrison cartoon of his new colleagues in the pulp sci fi watering hole â€œthe Hydra Clubâ€ before this volume concludes with a selection of Wood/Harrison EC collaborations beginning with ‘Dream of Doom’ (Harrison script & pencils, Wood inks from Weird Science #12 March/April 1950).

Here a pair of comic creators fall out over creator credit and persistent nightmares after which ‘Only Time Will Tell’ (possibly Gaines, Feldstein with Harrison & Wood from Weird Fantasy #13 May/June 1950) finds a scientist caught in an inescapable time-loop after popping back in time to help himself invent time travelâ€¦

Weird Science #13 July/August 1950 unleashed ‘The Meteor Monster’ (Harrison & Wood) which saw a small town slowly succumb to the mental domination of a thing from another world whilst ‘The Black Arts’ (with Harrison inking Wood from Weird Fantasy #14 July/August 1950) offered a rare supernatural horror outing wherein a mousy man tried to used sorcery to get a girlfriendâ€¦ with disastrous results.

The comicstrip chronicles conclude with an all-Harrison affair as the ‘Machine From Nowhere’ (Weird Science #15 September/October 1950) offers an extremely rare upbeat ending as two scientists stifle their perfectly natural suspicions to help a little flying robot steal uranium for purposes unknownâ€¦

Following a delightful ‘Wallace Wood’ caricature by EC colourist and â€œoffice girlâ€ Marie Severin, historian S.C. Ringgenberg provides a detailed history of the flawed genius in ‘Wallace Wood’ and this truly captivating compilation closes on another set of ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ by Janice Lee and Bill Mason and Ted White’s ‘Crime, Horror, Terror, Gore, Depravity, Disrespect for Established Authority – and Science Fiction Too!: ‘The Ups and Downs of EC Comics: A Short History’ – a comprehensive run-down of the entire EC phenomenon.

The short, sweet, cruelly curtailed EC back-catalogue has been revisited ad infinitum in the decades since its demise. Those amazing yarns changed not just comics but also infected the larger world through film and television to convert millions into dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.

Whether you are an aged EC Fan-Addict, just a nervous newbie, or simply a mere fan of brilliant stories and sublime art, Spawn of Mars is a book no sane and sensible reader can afford to be without.
Spawn of Mars and Other Stories Â© 2015 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All contents Â© 2015 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All comics stories and illustrations Â© 2015 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All other material Â© 2015 the respective creators. All rights reserved.

February 18, 2015February 17, 2015

Zorro – the Complete Classic Adventures volumes One & Two

By Alex Toth & anonymous (Eclipse Books)
ISBNs: 0-913035-41-6 and 0-913035-51-3

Alex Toth was a master of graphic communication who shaped two different art-forms and is largely unknown in both of them.

Born in New York in 1928, the son of Hungarian immigrants with a dynamic interest in the arts, Toth was something of a prodigy and after enrolling in the High School of Industrial Arts doggedly went about improving his skills as a cartoonist. His earliest dreams were of a quality newspaper strip like Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, but his uncompromising devotion to the highest standards soon soured him on newspaper strip work when he discovered how hidebound and innovation-resistant the family values-based industry had become whilst he was growing up.

Aged 15, he sold his first comicbook works to Heroic Comics and after graduating in 1947 worked for All American/National Periodical Publications (who would amalgamate and evolve into DC Comics) on Dr. Mid-Nite, All Star Comics, the Atom, Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder, Sierra Smith, Johnny Peril, Danger Trail and a host of other features. On the way he dabbled with newspaper strips (see Casey Ruggles: the Hard Times of Pancho and Pecos) but was disappointed o find nothing had changedâ€¦

Continually striving to improve his own work he never had time for fools or formula-hungry editors who wouldn’t take artistic risks. In 1952 Toth quit DC to work for â€œThrillingâ€ Pulps publisher Ned Pines who was retooling his prolific Better/Nedor/Pines comics companies (Thrilling Comics, Fighting Yank, Doc Strange, Black Terror and many more) into Standard Comics: a publishing house targeting older readers with sophisticated, genre-based titles.

Beside fellow graphic masters Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, Art Saaf, John Celardo, George Tuska, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito and particularly favourite inker Mike Peppe, Toth set the bar high for a new kind of story-telling: wry, restrained and thoroughly mature; in short-lived titles dedicated to War, Crime, Horror, Science Fiction and especially Romance.

After Simon and Kirby invented love comics, Standard, through artists like Cardy and Toth and writers like the amazing and unsung Kim Aamodt, polished and honed the genre, turning out clever, witty, evocative and yet tasteful melodramas and heart-tuggers both men and women could enjoy.

Before going into the military, where he still found time to create a strip (Jon Fury for the US army’s Tokyo Quartermaster newspaper The Depot’s Diary) he illustrated 60 glorious tales for Standard; as well as a few pieces for EC and others.

On his return to a different industry – and one he didn’t much like – Toth resettled in California, splitting his time between Western/Dell/Gold Key, such as these Zorro tales and many other movie/TV adaptations, and National (assorted short pieces such as Hot Wheels and Eclipso): doing work he increasingly found uninspired, moribund and creatively cowardly. Eventually he moved primarily into TV animation, designing for shows such as Space Ghost, Herculoids, Birdman, Shazzan!, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and Super Friends among many others.

He returned sporadically to comics, setting the style and tone for DC’s late 1960’s horror line in House of Mystery, House of Secrets and especially The Witching Hour, and illustrating more adult fare for Warren’s Creepy, Eerie and The Rook. He redesigned The Fox for Red Circle/Archie, produced stunning one-offs for Archie Goodwin’s Batman or war comics (whenever they offered him a â€œgood scriptâ€) and contributed to landmark or anniversary projects such as Batman: Black and White.

His later, personal works included Torpedo for the European market and the magnificently audacious swashbuckler Bravo for Adventure!

Alex Toth died of a heart attack at his drawing board on May 27^th 2006 but before that the kids he’d inspired (mostly comics professionals themselves) sought to redress his shameful anonymity with a number of retrospectives and comics compilations. One of the first and best was this Eclipse Books twin set, gathering his many tales for Dell featuring Disney’s TV iteration of the prototypical masked avenger.

In 2013, Hermes Press released a lavish complete volume in full colour but, to my mind, these black and white books (grey-toned, stripped down and redrawn by the master himself) are the definitive vision and the closest to what Toth originally intended, stripped of all the obfuscating quibbles and unnecessary pictorial fripperies imposed upon his dynamic vision by legions of writing committees, timid editors and Disney franchising flacks.

One the earliest masked heroes and still phenomenally popular throughout the world, â€œEl Zorro, The Foxâ€ was originally devised by jobbing writer Johnston McCulley in 1919 in a five part serial entitled ‘The Curse of Capistrano’. He debuted in the All-Story Weekly for August 6^th and ran until 6^th September. The part-work was subsequently published by Grossett & Dunlap in 1924 as The Mark of Zorro and further reissued in 1959 and 1998 by MacDonald & Co. and Tor respectively.

Famously, Hollywood royalty Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford read the ‘The Curse of Capistrano’ in All-Story Weekly on their honeymoon and immediately optioned the adventure to be the first film release from their new production company/studio United Artists.

The Mark of Zorro was a global movie sensation in 1920 and for years after, and New York-based McCulley subsequently re-tailored his creation to match the so-different filmic incarnation. This Caped Crusader aptly fitted the burgeoning genre that would soon be peopled by the likes of The Shadow, Doc Savage and the Spider.

Rouben Mamoulian‘s 1940 filmic remake of The Mark of Zorro further ingrained the Fox into the world’s psyche and, as the prose exploits continued in a variety of publications, Dell began a comicbook version in 1949.

When Walt Disney Studios began a hugely popular Zorro TV show in 1957 (resulting in 78 half-hour episodes and four 60 minute specials before cancellation in 1961) the ongoing comics series was swiftly redesigned to capitalise on it and the entertainment corporation began a decades-long strip incarnation of â€œtheirâ€ version of the character in various quarters of the world.

This superb set reproduces the tales produced by Toth for Dell Comics; firstly as part of the monumental try-out series Four-Color (issues #882, 920, 933, 960, 976 & 1003), and thereafter as a proven commodity with his own title – of which the restless Toth only drew #12. Other artists on the series included Warren Tufts, Mel Keefer and John Ushler and the Dell series was subsequently relaunched in January 1966 under the Gold Key imprint, reprinting (primarily) the Toth drawn material in a 9-issue run than lasted until March 1968.

Zorro – the Complete Classic Adventures Volume One opens with an effusive and extremely moving ‘Introduction by Howard Chaykin’ before steaming straight into the timeless wonder, but I thought that perhaps a brief note on the scripts might be sensible here.

As part of Disney’s license the company compelled Dell to concentrate on adapting already-aired TV episodes complete with florid, overblown dialogue and stagy, talking head shots which Toth struggled mightily – and against increasingly heated resistance from writers and editors – to pare down and liven up. Under such circumstances it’s a miracle that the strips are even palatable, but they are in fact some of the best adventure comics of the practically superhero-free 1950s.

Sadly, all the covers were photo-shots of actor Guy Williams in character so even that graphic outlet was denied Toth – and usâ€¦

One bonus however is that the short, filler stories used to supplement the screen adaptations were clearly generated in-house with fewer restrictions, so here Toth’s brilliance shines throughâ€¦

The origin and set-up for the series came with Four-Color #882 (February 1958) in ‘Presenting SeÃ±or Zorro’. Retelling the first episode of the TV show, it introduces dashing swordsman Don Diego De La Vega, returning from Spain in 1820 to his home in Pueblo De Los Angeles in answer to a letter telling of injustice, corruption and tyrannyâ€¦

With mute servant Bernardo – who pretends to be also deaf and acts as his perfect spy amongst the oppressors – Diego determines to assume the role of a spoiled and cowardly fop whilst creating the masked identity of El Zorro â€œthe Foxâ€ to overthrow wicked military commander and de facto dictator Capitan Monastario.

Shrugging off the clear disappointment of his father Don Alejandro, Diego does nothing when their neighbour Ignacio â€œNachoâ€ Torres is arrested on charges of treason but that night a masked figure in black spectacularly liberates the political prisoner and conveys him to relative safety and legal sanctuary at the Mission of San Gabrielâ€¦

The second TV instalment became the closing chapter of that first comicbook as ‘Zorro’s Secret Passage’ finds Monastario suspicious that Zorro is a member of the De La Vega household and stakes the place out. When the Commandante then accuses another man of being the Fox, Diego uses the underground passages beneath his home to save the innocent victim and confound the dictatorâ€¦

Four-Color #920 (June 1958) adapted the third and fourth TV episodes, beginning with â€œZorro Rides to the Missionâ€ which became ‘The Ghost of the Mission Part One’ as Monastario discovers where Nacho Torres is hiding and surrounds the Mission. Unable to convince his lancers to break the sacred bounds of Sanctuary, the tyrant settles in for a siege and ‘The Ghost of the Mission Part Two’ sees him fabricate an Indian uprising to force his way in. Sadly for the military martinet Diego has convinced his bumbling deputy Sergeant Demetrio Garcia that the Mission is haunted by a mad monkâ€¦

Despite appearing only quarterly, Zorro stories maintained the strict continuity dictated by the weekly TV show. â€œGarcia’s Secret Missionâ€ became ‘Garcia’s Secret’ in Four-Color #933 (September 1958) and saw Monastario apparently throw his flunky out of the army in a cunning plot to capture the Fox. Once again the ruse was turned against the connivers and El Capitan was again humiliated.

The last half of the issue saw a major plot development, however, as TV instalment â€œThe Fall of Monastarioâ€ became ‘The King’s Emissary’ wherein the Commandante tries to palm off ineffectual Diego as Zorro to impress the Viceroy of California only to find himself inexplicably exposed, deposed and arrestedâ€¦

The rest of this initial outing comprises a quartet of short vignettes commencing with ‘A Bad Day for Bernardo’ (Four-Color #920) wherein the unlucky factotum endures a succession of mishaps as he and Zorro search for a missing seÃ±orita and almost scotch her plans to elope, whilst Four-Color #933 provided the tale of youngster Manuelo, who ran away to become ‘The Little Zorro’. Happily Diego is able to convince the lad that school trumps heroismâ€¦ in this caseâ€¦

In ‘The Visitor’ (Four-Color #960, December 1958) Diego and Bernardo find a baby on their doorstep and help the mother to free her husband from jail before the volume concludes with ‘A Double for Diego’ (Four-Color #976, March 1959) wherein Sgt. Garcia – now in temporary charge of Los Angeles – seeks Diego’s help to capture Zorro, necessitating the wily hero trying to be in two places at onceâ€¦

Zorro Volume Two leads off with ‘A Foreword’s Look Back and Askance’ by Alex Toth, who self-deprecatingly recaps his life and explains his artistic philosophy, struggles with Dell’s editors and constant battle to turn the anodyne goggle-box crusader back into the dark and flamboyant swashbuckler of the Mamoulian movieâ€¦

Four-Color #960 (December 1958) has TV tales â€œThe Eagle’s Broodâ€ and â€œZorro by Proxyâ€ transformed into visual poetry when a would-be conqueror targets Los Angeles as part of a greater scheme to seize control of California. With new Capitan Toledano despatched to seek out a vast amount of stolen gunpowder, ‘The Eagle’s Brood’ infiltrate the town, sheltered by a traitor at the very heart of the town’s ruling eliteâ€¦

Made aware of the seditious plot, Zorro moves carefully against the villains, foiling their first attempt to take over and learning the identity of an untouchable traitorâ€¦

The saga resumed and concluded in ‘Gypsy Warning’ (Four-Color #976, adapting â€œQuintana Makes a Choiceâ€ and â€œZorro Lights a Fuseâ€) as Zorro foils a plot to murder pro tem leader Garcia and stumbles into the final stages of the invasion of Santa Barbara, San Diego, Capistrano and Los Angelesâ€¦

With The Eagle temporarily defeated, short back-up ‘The Enchanted Bell’ (Four-Color #1003, June 1959) sees Zorro prevent the local tax collector confiscating a prized bell beloved by the region’s Indians to prevent a possible uprising, after which the lead story from the same issue details how ‘The Marauders of Monterey’ (adapting â€œWelcome to Montereyâ€ and â€œZorro Rides Aloneâ€) lure officials from many settlements with the promise of vitally needed supplies and commodities before robbing them.

Sadly for them, Los Angeles sent the astute but effete Don Diego to bid for the goods and he had his own solutions for fraud and banditryâ€¦

After more than a year away Toth returned for one last hurrah as ‘The Runaway Witness’ (Zorro #12, December 1960/February 1961) found the Fox chasing a frightened flower-girl all over the countryside. Justice rather than romance was on his mind as he sought to convince her to testify against a powerful man who had murdered his business partnerâ€¦ This stunning masterclass in comics excellence concludes with ‘Friend Indeed’ from the same issue wherein Zorro plays one of his most imaginative tricks on Garcia, allowing the hero to free a jail full of political prisonersâ€¦

Full-bodied, captivating and beautifully realised, these immortal adventures of a global icon are something no fan of adventure comics and thrilling stories should be without.
Zorro Â® and Â© Zorro Productions. Stories and artwork Â© 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961Walt Disney Productions This edition Â© 1986 Zorro Productions, Inc.

January 11, 2015January 10, 2015

Asterix and the Falling Sky

By Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Orion Books)
ISBN: 978-0-7528-7548-4

Asterix began life in the last year of the 1950s and is part of the fabric of French life. His adventures have touched billions of people all around the world over the decades. However when this particular tale was released it was like nothing anybody had ever seen before. It fact it is considered to be the most controversial and least well-regarded by purists. Some even hate itâ€¦

They are all welcome to their opinions. I must admit that I too found it a little unsettling when I first read it. So I read it some more and saw the elements that I’d initially had trouble with weren’t lax or lazy or bad but just not what I was expecting. Soon it became one of my favourites just because it was so different.

Uderzo was and is a comics creator par excellence. With Rene Goscinny he created, owned and controlled his intellectual property Asterix and used it to tell the tales he wanted to tell.

It was his right to say and draw whatever he wanted to through his creation and nobody has the right to dictate what he could or could not do with it as long as no laws were broken.

It’s a lesson the whole world needs to learn, now more than everâ€¦

A son of Italian immigrants, Alberto Aleandro Uderzo was born on April 25^th 1927 in Fismes on the Marne. He dreamed of becoming an aircraft mechanic but even as a young child watching Walt Disney cartons and reading Mickey Mouse in Le PÃ©tit Parisien he showed artistic flair.

Albert became a French citizen when he was seven and found employment at thirteen, apprenticed to the Paris Publishing Society, where he learned design, typography, calligraphy and photo retouching. He was brought to that pivotal point by his older brother Bruno (to whom this volume is gratefully and lovingly dedicated for starting the ball rolling) but when World War II reached France he moved to Brittany, spending time with farming relatives and joining his father’s furniture-making business.

The region beguiled and fascinated Uderzo and when a location for Asterix‘s idyllic village was being mooted, that beautiful countryside was the only possible choiceâ€¦

In the post-war rebuilding of France, Uderzo returned to Paris and became a successful artist in the recovering nation’s burgeoning comics industry. His first published work, a pastiche of Aesop’s Fables, appeared in Junior and in 1945 he was introduced to industry giant Edmond-FranÃ§ois Calvo (whose own comic masterpiece The Beast is Dead is far too long overdue for a commemorative reissueâ€¦).

Tireless Uderzo’s subsequent creations included the indomitable eccentric Clopinard, Belloy, l’InvulnÃ©rable, Prince Rollin and Arys Buck. He illustrated Em-RÃ©-Vil’s novel Flamberge, dabbled in animation, worked as a journalist and illustrator for France Dimanche and created the vertical comicstrip ‘Le Crime ne Paie pas’ for France-Soir.

In 1950 he illustrated a few episodes of the franchised European version of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Jr. for Bravo!

An inveterate traveller, the artistic prodigy first met Goscinny in 1951. Soon bosom buddies, they resolved to work together at the new Paris office of Belgian Publishing giant World Press. Their first collaboration was published in November of that year; a feature piece on savoir vivre (gracious living) for women’s weekly Bonnes SoirÃ©e, following which an avalanche of splendid strips and serials poured forth.

Jehan Pistolet and Luc Junior were created for La Libre Junior and they resulted in a western starring a â€œRed Indianâ€ who eventually evolved into the delightfully infamous Oumpah-Pah. In 1955, with the formation of Ã‰difrance/Ã‰dipresse, Uderzo drew Bill Blanchart (also for La Libre Junior), replaced Christian Godard on Benjamin et Benjamine and in 1957 added Charlier’s Clairette to his portfolio.

The following year, he made his debut in Tintin, as Oumpah-Pah finally found a home and a rapturous audience. Uderzo also drew Poussin et Poussif, La Famille Moutonet and La Famille Cokalane.

When Pilote launched in 1959 Uderzo was a major creative force for the new enterprise, collaborating with Charlier on Tanguy et Laverdure and devising – with Goscinny – a little something called Asterixâ€¦

Although the gallant Gaul was a monumental hit from the start, Uderzo continued on Les Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure, but once the first hilarious historical romp was collected in an album as AstÃ©rix le gaulois in 1961 it became clear that the series would demand most of his time – especially since the incredible Goscinny never seemed to require rest or run out of ideas.

By 1967 Asterix occupied all Uderzo’s time and attention, and in 1974 the partners formed IdÃ©fix Studios to fully exploit their inimitable creation. When Goscinny passed away three years later, Uderzo had to be convinced to continue the adventures as both writer and artist, producing a further ten volumes until 2010 when he gracefully retired.

After nearly 15 years as a weekly comic serial subsequently collected into book-length compilations, in 1974 the 21st (Asterix and Caesar’s Gift) was the first published as a complete original album prior to serialisation. Thereafter each new release was an eagerly anticipated, impatiently awaited treat for the strip’s millions of fansâ€¦

More than 325 million copies of 35 Asterix books have sold worldwide, making his joint creators France’s best-selling international authors, and now that torch has been passed and new sagas of the incomparable icon and his bellicose brethren are being created by Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conradâ€¦

One of the most popular comics on Earth, the collected chronicles of Asterix the Gaul have been translated into more than 100 languages since his debut, with numerous animated and live-action movies, TV series, games, toys, merchandise and even a theme park outside Paris (Parc AstÃ©rix, naturellement)â€¦

Like all the best stories the narrative premise works on more than one level: read it as an action-packed comedic romp of sneaky and bullying baddies coming a-cropper if you want, or as a punfully sly and witty satire for older, wiser heads. English-speakers are further blessed by the brilliantly light touch of master translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge who played no small part in making the indomitable little Gaul so very palatable to English tongues.

Many of the intoxicating epics are set in various exotic locales throughout the Ancient World, with the Garrulous Gallic Gentlemen reduced to quizzical tourists and bemused commentators in every fantastic land and corner of the civilisations that proliferated in that fabled era. The rest – more than half of the canon – take place in and around Uderzo’s adored Brittany, where, circa 50 B.C., a little hamlet of cantankerous, proudly defiant warriors and their families resisted every effort of the mighty Roman Empire to complete the conquest of Gaul.

The land is divided by the notional conquerors into provinces of Celtica, Aquitania and Amorica, but the very tip of the last named just refuses to be pacifiedâ€¦

Whenever 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 couldn’t care less, daily defying and frustrating the world’s greatest military machine simply by going about their everyday affairs, protected by the miraculous magic potion of resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits of the diminutive dynamo and his simplistic, supercharged best friend Obelixâ€¦

This particular iconoclasm, Uderzo’s eighth solo outing (and originally entitled Le Ciel lui tombe sur la tÃªte) was released in 2005 as the 31^st volume of an ever-unfolding saga. The English language version was released that same year as Asterix and the Falling Sky. Apart from the unlikely thematic content and quicker pacing, the critics’ main problem seemed to stem from a sleeker, slicker, less busy style of illustration – almost a classical animation look – but that’s actually the point of the tale.

The entire book is a self-admitted tribute to the Walt Disney cartoons of the artist’s formative years, as well as a sneakily good-natured critique of modern comics as then currently typified by American superheroes and Japanese mangaâ€¦

The contentious tale opens with the doughty little Gaul and his affable pal Obelix in the midst of a relaxing boar hunt when they notice that their quarry has frozen into petrified solidity.

Perplexed, they head back through the eerily silent forest to the village, only to discover that all their friends have been similarly stupefied and rendered rigidly inertâ€¦

Only faithful canine companion Dogmatix and the old Druid Getafix have any life in them, but only when Obelix admits to giving the pooch the occasional tipple of Magic Potion does Asterix deduce that it’s because they all have the potent brew currently flowing though their systemsâ€¦

With one mystery solved they debate how to cure everybody else – as well as all the woodland creatures and especially the wild boars – but are soon distracted by the arrival of an immense golden sphere floating above and eclipsing the villageâ€¦

Out of if floats a strange but friendly creature who introduces himself as â€œToonâ€ from the distant star Tadsilweny (it’s an anagram, but don’t expect any help from me). He is accompanied by a mightily powered being in a tight-fitting blue-and-red costume with a cape. Toon calls him Supercloneâ€¦

The mighty minion casually insults Obelix and learns that he’s not completely invulnerable, but otherwise the visitors are generally benevolent. The paralysis plague is an accidental effect of Toon’s vessel, but a quick adjustment by the strange visitor soon brings the surroundings back to frenetic life.

That’s when the trouble really starts as the villagers – and especially Chief Vitalstatistix – see the giant globe floating overhead as a portent that at long last the sky is fallingâ€¦

After another good-spirited, strenuously physical debate, things calm down and Toon explains he’s come from the Galactic Council to confiscate an earthly super-weapon and prevent it falling into the hands of belligerent alien conquerors the Nagmas (that’s another anagram) and there’s nothing the baffled Earthlings can do about itâ€¦

At the Roman camp of Compendium Centurion Polyanthus is especially baffled and quite angry. His men have already had a painful encounter with the Superclone but the commander refuses to believe their wild stories about floating balls and strangers even weirder than the Gauls, but he’s soon forced to change his mind when a gigantic metal totem pole lands in blaze of flame right in his courtyard.

Out of it flies an incredible, bizarre, insectoid, oriental-seeming warrior demanding the whereabouts of a powerful wonder-weapon. Extremely cowed and slightly charred, Polyanthus tells him about the Magic Potion the Gauls always use to make his life miserableâ€¦

The Nagma immediately hurries off and encounters Obelix, but the rotund terrestrial is immune to all the invader’s armaments and martial arts attacks and responds by demonstrating with devastating efficacy how Gauls fightâ€¦

After zapping Dogmatix the Nagma retreats and when Obelix dashes back to the village follows him. No sooner has Toon cured the wonder mutt than the colossal Nagma robot-ship arrives, forcing the friendly alien to fly off and intercept it in his golden globeâ€¦

The Nagma tries to trade high-tech ordnance for the Gauls’ â€œsecret weaponâ€ but Asterix is having none of it, instead treating the invader to a dose of potion-infused punishment.

Stalemated the Nagma then unleashes an army of automatons dubbed Cyberats and Toon responds by deploying a legion of Superclones. The battle is short and pointless and a truce finds both visitors deciding to share the weaponâ€¦

Vitalstatistix is outraged but Getafix is surprisingly sanguine, opting to let both Toon and Nagma sample the heady brew for themselves. The effects are not what the visitors could have hoped for and the enraged alien oriental unleashes more Cyberats in a sneak attack.

Responding quickly, Asterix and Obelix employ two Superclones to fly them up to the marauding robots, dealing with them in time-honoured Gaulish fashion.

The distraction has unfortunately allowed the Nagma to kidnap Getafix and Toon returns to his globe-ship to engage his robotic foe in a deadly game of brinksmanship whilst a Superclone liberates the incensed Druid. None too soon the furious, frustrated Nagma decides enough is enough and blasts off, determined never to come back to this crazy planetâ€¦

Down below Polyanthus has meanwhile taken advantage of the chaos and confusion to rally his legions for a surprise attack, arriving just as the Gauls are enjoying a victory feast with their new alien ally. The assault goes extremely badly for the Romans, particularly after a delayed effect of the potion transforms affable Toon into something monstrous and uncannyâ€¦

Eventually all ends well and, thanks to technological wizardry, all the earthly participants are returned to their safely uncomplicated lives, once again oblivious to the dangers and wonders of a greater universeâ€¦

Fast, funny, stuffed with action and hilarious, tongue-in-cheek hi-jinks, this is a joyous rocket-paced rollercoaster for lovers of laughs and all open-minded devotees of comics. This still-controversial award-winning(Eagle 2006 winner for Best European Comic) yarn only confirmed Uderzo’s reputation as a storyteller willing to take risks and change things up, whilst his stunning ability to pace a tale was never better demonstrated. Asterix and the Falling Sky proves that the potion-powered paragons of Gallic Pride will never lose their potent punch.
Â© 2005 Les Ã‰ditions Albert RenÃ©, Goscinny-Uderzo. English translation: Â© 2005 Les Ã‰ditions Albert RenÃ©, Goscinny/Uderzo. All rights reserved.

December 23, 2014December 22, 2014

Moomin: the Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip volume 5

By Tove and Lars Jansson (Drawn & Quarterly)
ISBN: 978-1-89729-994-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Moomins Aren’t Just For Christmas, But For Lifeâ€¦ 10/10

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

Tove Marika Jansson was born into an artistic, intellectual and practically bohemian Swedish family in Helsinki, Finland on August 9th 1914. Her father Viktor was a sculptor, her mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson a successful illustrator, graphic designer and commercial artist. Tove’s brothers Lars and Per Olov became a cartoonist/writer and photographer respectively. 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 act in.

After intensive study from 1930-1938 (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, the 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 period of the Second World War. Intensely creative in many fields, she published the first fantastic Moomins adventure in 1945: SmÃ¥trollen och den stora Ã¶versvÃ¤mningen (The Little Trolls and the Great Flood or latterly and more euphoniously The Moomins and the Great Flood), a whimsical epic of gentle, inclusive, accepting, understanding, bohemian, misfit trolls and their strange friendsâ€¦

A youthful over-achiever, from 1930-1953 Tove worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the Swedish satirical magazine Garm, and achieved some measure of notoriety with an infamous political sketch of Hitler in nappies that lampooned the Appeasement policies of Chamberlain and other European leaders in the build-up to World War II. She was also an in-demand illustrator for many magazines and children’s books, and had started selling comic strips as early as 1929.

Moomintroll was her signature character. Literally.

The lumpy, gently adventurous big-eyed romantic goof began life as a spindly sigil next to her name in her political works. She called him â€œSnorkâ€ and claimed she had designed him in a fit of pique as a child – the ugliest thing a precocious little girl could imagine – as a response to losing an argument about Immanuel Kant with her brother.

The term â€œMoominâ€ came from her maternal uncle Einar Hammarsten who attempted to stop her pilfering food when she visited by warning her that a Moomintroll guarded the kitchen, creeping up on trespassers and breathing cold air down their necks. Snork/Moomin filled out, became timidly nicer – if a little clingy and insecure – acting as a placid therapy-tool to counteract the grimness of the post-war world.

The Moomins and the Great Flood didn’t make much of an initial impact but Jansson persisted, probably as much for her own edification as any other reason, and in 1946 the second book Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland) was published. Many commentators have reckoned the terrifying tale a skilfully compelling allegory of Nuclear Armageddon.

When it and her third illustrated novel Trollkarlens hatt (1948, Finn Family Moomintroll or occasionally The Happy Moomins) were translated into English in 1952 to great acclaim, it prompted British publishing giant Associated Press to commission a newspaper strip about her seductively sweet and sensibly surreal creations.

Jansson had no misgivings or prejudices about strip cartoons and had already adapted Comet in Moominland for Swedish/Finnish paper Ny Tid.

Mumintrollet och jordens undergÃ¤ng – Moomintrolls and the End of the World – was a popular feature so Jansson readily accepted the chance to extend her eclectic family across the world.

In 1953 The London Evening News began the first of 21 Moomin strip sagas which promptly captivated readers of all ages. Tove’s involvement in the cartoon feature ended in 1959, a casualty of its own success and a punishing publication schedule. So great was the strain that towards the end she had recruited her brother Lars to help. He took over, continuing the feature until its end in 1975. The three strips in this volume were all scripted by Lars and illustrated by his sister.

Free of the strip, Tove returned to painting, writing and her other creative pursuits, generating plays, murals, public art, stage designs, costumes for dramas and ballets, a Moomin opera and another nine Moomin-related picture-books and novels, as well as thirteen books and short-story collections strictly for grown-ups.

Tove Jansson died on June 27^th 2001 and her awards are too numerous to mention, but consider this: how many modern artists – let alone comics creators – get their faces on the national currency?

Her Moomin comic strips have long been available in Scandinavian volumes and the discerning folk at Drawn & Quarterly have translated these into English for your – and especially my – sheer delight and delectation.

Moomintrolls are easygoing free spirits, bohemians untroubled by hidebound domestic mores and societal pressures. Moominmama is warm and capable but overly concerned with propriety and appearances whilst Moominpappa spends most of his time trying to rekindle his adventurous youth or dreaming of fantastic journeys. Their son Moomin is a meek and dreamy boy who adores their permanent guest Snorkmaiden – although that impressionable gamin prefers to play things slowly whilst waiting for somebody potentially betterâ€¦

This fifth oversized (312 x 222mm) monochrome hardback compilation gathers the 19^th, 20^th and 21^st strip sagas and is a particular favourite, comprising a trio of epic length sequences commencing with ‘Moomin Winter’ as the worst snow season in living memory begins and the nonconformist family decide that this year they will return to traditional ways and hibernate as proper Moomintrolls shouldâ€¦

However happenstance and their own magnanimous natures work against them as other locals – less prepared for the winter’s icy blasts – keep turning up seeking succour, solace and shelter. Naturally no decent creature could turn away neighbours – or even complete strangers – in needâ€¦

First it’s timid Miss Fluffins nervously tapping on the door then a little later the quirkily obnoxious Gromf imposing himself upon them, but the truly disruptive influence only arrives after a most odd Christmas when the snow lies metres deep around the house. Delivered through an upstairs window by the indefatigable parcel post is a box containing a baby Niblingâ€¦

Abandoning all hope of a successful hibernation, the Moomins become unwilling but polite hosts to them all although, as Niblings are such legendary troublemakers, it’s understandable that Moominmama first goes on a heroic expedition to all the neighbours, striving to find a suitable home (i.e. somebody else’s) for the little miteâ€¦

She even briefly considers the draconian local orphanage before relenting and returning home with the nosy, chaos-causing little critterâ€¦

As well as having voracious eating habits, the Nibling is less than welcome for its incessant curiosity and stunningly forthright rudeness. As the snowbound days pass the inquisitive meddler sniffs out every shameful secret of the household from Fluffins’ strangely masculine habits to Snorkmaiden’s binge eating, young Moomintroll’s aspirations to thespianism or the fearsome Gromf’s addiction to knitting doiliesâ€¦

These secrets and others it uses to virtually run the house. Moominpapa retires to his study to reminisce and read the papers whilst his long-suffering wife resorts to the thankless tasks of housework to keep busy. Eventually however, as the months go by the Moomins decide it’s time for drastic action and try to starve all their increasingly unwelcome guests outâ€¦

Sadly, as ever, the hosts are too gracious and well-mannered to persist for long and soon the boy troll and incessant Nibling are skiing through the winter wilderness hunting grizzly and moose for the larder. A little later, things come to a comical head when the assemblage decides to share all their secret peccadilloes thus depriving the mischievous Nibling of its powerâ€¦

This comedy of manners is followed by a boisterously sedate and surreal adventure as ‘Moomin Under Sail’ finds Moominpapa and family joining neighbour Too-Tikki (the eminently practical and capable lady was based on Jansson’s life partner, graphic artist Tuulikki PietilÃ¤, and first appeared in the novel Moominland Midwinter) in building a wooden sailing ship and going voyagingâ€¦

The construction is well underway, with everyone contributing in their own unique way, when a wandering poet appears and names the vessel â€œMermaidâ€ – which rash Moomin misspells as â€œMurmadeâ€ when painting the hull – before moving on, and all too soon the travellers are underwayâ€¦

At least they would be if they hadn’t built their boat on a hill and now can’t shift it. Fortunately Too-Tikki knows a rather irascible but polite giant Booble named Mr. Edward who she can convince to move the river for themâ€¦

And in a roar of waters they are off, hurtling out to sea in search of wonder, mystery and romance. It comes all too soon as food and whisky starts to vanish and â€“ at least for the ever-imaginative Snorkmaiden â€“ passion is found when the terrified shipmates discover that the beguiling, advantage-taking poet has stowed awayâ€¦

Young Moomin is less than sanguine that his one and only has become besotted with the unscrupulous scribbler and is secretly delighted when a school of seagoing wild Niblings board the vessel and eat all his odesâ€¦

None too soon they depart, taking the poet with them whilst leaving one of their cubs behind. The rapacious tyke is rather sweet but has a disturbing taste for paper and leather goodsâ€¦

Things begin to go further awry as the babe eats all the charts so Too-Tikki captures some clouds for the child to chew, accidentally precipitating a colossal hurricane which rips their sails away. Happily the clouds make a suitable substitute. There’s even some left to give to Mr. Edward when the aggrieved Booble suddenly shows upâ€¦

Sighting land the Moomins and Co go ashore to re-supply and hear worrying stories of a pirate marauder dubbed the â€œBloody Maryâ€ before heading back out to sea and encountering a Marie Celeste-like conundrum and inevitable encountering the dread privateers.

Imagine the surprise of the Murmade mariners when they discover the wild freebooters are in fact old acquaintancesâ€¦

This amazing, enchanting collection concludes with a salutary tale of unrequited love as Moomin makes a new friend and becomes involved with ‘Fuddler’s Courtship’. The meek and rather scruffy young man is a collector of many things – but most especially buttons – and reveals to his new chum that he is hopelessly in love with quirky, overly romantic and lonely Mymbleâ€¦

Despite their misgivings over the clear mismatch, Moomin and Snorkmaiden attempt to facilitate affairs but the target of the Fuddler’s affections is currently enamoured of a dynamic strongman. Although she’s prepared to give any new suitor a chance, his clumsiness, diffidence, messiness and collecting habits soon drive Mymble back to her photos of the oblivious Sebastianâ€¦

With his confidence crushed Fuddler retreats to his coffee-can home to be depressed, provoking Moomin and Snorkmaiden to call in newspaper psychiatrist Dr. Hatter. It is a terrible mistakeâ€¦

The Shrink is a mass of complexes and neuroses and soon he has infected almost everybody with one of his problems. Moreover Mymble finds the tortured â€œgeniusâ€ utterly fascinating.

Moomin then tries everything – even a helpful ghost – to drive Hatter away, but only succeeds in having his entire family locked up. Happily the Fuddler has a collection of keys and other cage-opening gimmicks amongst his copious possessionsâ€¦

The course of true love continues to run anything but smoothly for all concerned until one night the Fuddler meets a sweet, confused and messily charming collector of shells and stones. Her name is The Jumbleâ€¦

Wrapping up the Wild Things wonderment is the short essay ‘Tove Jansson: To Live in Peace, Plant Potatoes, and Dream’: a comprehensive biography and commentary by Alisia Grace Chase (PhD) which celebrates the incredible achievements of this genteel giant of literature.

These are truly magical tales for the young laced with the devastating observation and razor sharp mature wit which enhances and elevates only the greatest kid’s stories into classics of literature. These volumes are an international treasure and no fan of the medium – or carbon-based lifeform with even a hint of heart and soul – can afford to be without them.
Â© 2010, 2014 Solo/Bulls. All other material Â© its creators. All rights reserved.

December 22, 2014December 21, 2014

Asterix and the Actress

By Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Orion Books)
ISBN: 978-0-75284-658-8

A son of Italian immigrants, Alberto Aleandro Uderzo was born on April 25th 1927 in Fismes on the Marne. He dreamed of becoming an aircraft mechanic but even as a young child reading Mickey Mouse in Le PÃ©tit Parisien he showed artistic flair. Albert became a French citizen when he was seven and found employment at thirteen, apprenticed to the Paris Publishing Society, where he learned design, typography, calligraphy and photo retouching.

When World War II came he spent time with farming relatives in Brittany and joined his father’s furniture-making business. Brittany beguiled and fascinated Uderzo and when a location for Asterix‘s idyllic village was being mooted, that beautiful countryside was the only choice…

Tireless Uderzo’s subsequent creations included the indomitable eccentric Clopinard, Belloy, l’InvulnÃ©rable, Prince Rollin and Arys Buck. He illustrated Em-RÃ©-Vil’s novel Flamberge, dabbled in animation, worked as a journalist and illustrator for France Dimanche and created the vertical comicstrip ‘Le Crime ne Paie pas’ for France-Soir.

In 1950 he illustrated a few episodes of the franchised European version of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Jr. for Bravo!

An inveterate traveller, the artistic prodigy met Rene Goscinny in 1951. Soon bosom buddies, they resolved to work together at the new Paris office of Belgian Publishing giant World Press. Their first published collaboration was in November of that year; a feature piece on savoir vivre (gracious living) for women’s weekly Bonnes SoirÃ©e, following which an avalanche of splendid strips and serials poured forth.

Jehan Pistolet and Luc Junior were created for La Libre Junior and they resulted in a western starring a â€œRed Indianâ€ who eventually evolved into the delightfully infamous Oumpah-Pah. In 1955, with the formation of Ã‰difrance/Ã‰dipresse, Uderzo drew Bill Blanchart for La Libre Junior, replaced Christian Godard on Benjamin et Benjamine and in 1957 added Charlier’s Clairette to his portfolio.

Although the gallant Gaul was a massive hit from the start, Uderzo continued illustrating Les Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure, but once the first hilarious historical romp was collected in an album as AstÃ©rix le gaulois in 1961 it became clear that the hit series would demand most of his time – especially since the incredible Goscinny never seemed to require rest or run out of ideas.

By 1967 Asterix occupied all Uderzo’s time and attention, and in 1974 the partners formed IdÃ©fix Studios to fully exploit their inimitable creation. When Goscinny passed away three years later, Uderzo had to be convinced to continue the adventures as writer and artist, producing a further ten volumes until 2010 when he retired.

After nearly 15 years as a weekly comic serial subsequently collected into book-length compilations, in 1974 the 21st (Asterix and Caesar’s Gift) was the first published as a complete original album before serialisation. Thereafter each new release was an eagerly anticipated, impatiently awaited treat for the strip’s millions of fansâ€¦

One of the most popular comics on Earth, the collected chronicles of Asterix the Gaul have been translated into more than 100 languages since his debut, with twelve animated and live-action movies, TV series, assorted games, toys, merchandise and even a theme park outside Paris (Parc AstÃ©rix, naturellement)â€¦

The land is divided by the notional conquerors into provinces of Celtica, Aquitania and Amorica, but the very tip of the last named just refuses to be pacifiedâ€¦

Firmly established as a global brand and premium French export from the mid-1960s onwards, Asterix the Gaul continues to grow in quality as new creators toil ever onward, crafting further fabulous sagas and building a stunning legacy of graphic excellence and storytelling goldâ€¦

Uderzo’s seventh session as sole auteur was AstÃ¨rix et Latraviata released in 2001 as the 30^th volume of the ever-unfolding saga. The English language version was released that same year as Asterix and the Actress.

The revelatory epic opens with romance in the air as Obelix and his lifelong pal return to the village laden down with boars and more battered keepsakes of the ongoing battle with the woefully outmatched Romans.

They amiably amble into a huge surprise party. The heroes share the same birthday and their friends have arranged the event to commemorate the occasion. Even their mothers have come down for a visit from fashionable regional capital Condatumâ€¦

Soon a feast is in full swing but after handing over their spectacular gifts – a fabulous jewelled sword for Asterix and an equally splendid Roman helmet for Obelix to add to his huge collection – culled from the parents’ fashionable souvenir shop, the mothers begin a battle of their own with their sons.

Fed up with waiting for their hardworking husbands to arrive from the Big City, the impatient matrons start in on the birthday boys with lectures about settling down and providing some grandchildrenâ€¦

Overruling Asterix and Obelix’s complaints, the insistent Sarsaparilla and Vanilla conduct acutely embarrassing interviews with the village’s contingent of eligible females – and their potential mothers-in-law – and even organise a formal dance to show off their sons’ matrimonial potential, but the matchmaking is a succession of fiascos since the oafish louts just don’t want to play ballâ€¦

Fathers Astronomix and Obeliscoidix are now long overdue. Unknown to all they have been arrested by Prefect Bogus Genius. The wily official has a problem which needs some clever and extremely delicate handling…

Already in custody is dipsomaniac former legionary Tremensdelirious (see Asterix and Caesar’s Gift), who sold the aforementioned sword and helmet to the Gaulish souvenir traders. Sadly the items’ true owner is Caesar’s greatest enemy Pompey and thus proof positive that the usurping former tribune is back in Europe. The items must be quietly recovered before Rome realisesâ€¦

Well aware of the ferocious reputation of the sons of his Gaulish captives, the Prefect enacts a devious scheme suggested by his spies. Mighty Obelix turns to jelly whenever he sees the beautiful Panacea (another village Ã©migrÃ© now living in Condatum with her husband Tragicomix – as first seen in Asterix the Legionary) so the devilish conspirator has hired the Empire’s greatest actress Latraviata to impersonate her and steal back the incriminating evidenceâ€¦

As the despondent dads tire of waiting for rescue by their doughty boys and strike a deal with their cellmate Tremensdelirious, Decurion Fastandfurius is pretending to be a merchant escorting â€œPanaceaâ€ back to her home village. The poor thing has a very selective case of amnesiaâ€¦

In that certain Gaulish village on the coast of Armorica the actress is readily accepted with only Druid Getafix in the least suspicious. Soon her fawning attention to besotted Obelix wins her the helmet but Asterix is not so easily wooed. That changes when a spat with his now-jealous bosom buddy results in a mighty blow to the head which deprives him of his usually superior witsâ€¦

If not for overprotective mother Vanilla the plot would have succeeded then and there, but she stops the ingÃ©nue making off with the sword and calls in Getafix to cure her addled son. Unfortunately the magic potion has a bizarre effect on the little zombie and Asterix goes wild, acting like an animal and scrapping with Obelix before hurtling out to sea like a torpedoâ€¦

He regains his senses on a rock in the middle of nowhere just as a massive storm erupts about him and only survives due to the intervention of old frenemies The Pirates and a particularly accommodating dolphinâ€¦

In the meantime Latraviata and Fastandfurius have secretly secured the sword and started back for Condatum. Still unaware of their true nature, the freshly reconciled Asterix and Obelix – who are heading in the same direction to find out what has delayed their dads – cadge a lift on the infiltrators’ cart.

Elsewhere, other agents are coming into play. A certain spy has already informed Caesar of trouble brewing and the real Panacea, having seen Astronomix and Obeliscoidix’s wrecked shop, has rushed off with Tragicomix to warn the villageâ€¦

As the heroes head for the city, they are baffled to see Romans so busy fighting each other that they don’t even notice their Gaulish nemeses, and everything comes to a startling head when Panacea apparently meets herself on the roadâ€¦

After explanations, apologies and a surprising change of heart on behalf of one of the conspirators, Asterix and Obelix dash on to Condatum to rescue their fathers, only to stride straight into a major melee as Caesar and Pompey’s forces furiously clashâ€¦

Of course it all works out in the end and cartoon dog-lovers everywhere will rejoice in the last moment arrival of the missing wonder mutt Dogmatixâ€¦and the introduction of his new â€œwifeâ€ and family. Apparently some heroes can successfully combine romance and dutyâ€¦

Packed with outrageous action, good-natured joshing, clever targeted raucous family humour, bombastic spectacle and a torrent of punishing puns to astound and bemuse youngsters of all ages, this rollicking affirmation of life’s eternal verities further confirmed Uderzo’s reputation as a storyteller whilst his stunning illustrative ability affords glimpses of sheer magic to lovers of cartoon art. Asterix and the Actress proves that the potion-powered paragons of Gallic Pride will never lose their potent punch.
Â© 2001 Les Ã‰ditions Albert RenÃ©, Goscinny-Uderzo. English translation: Â© 2001 Les Ã‰ditions Albert RenÃ©, Goscinny/Uderzo. All rights reserved.

December 18, 2014December 17, 2014

Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book: Essential Kurtzman volume One

By Harvey Kurtzman (Kitchen Sink Books/Dark Horse Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-61655-563-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Buy It Now, Love It Foreverâ€¦ 10/10

Well this is embarrassingâ€¦

About a month ago, after literally years of waiting impatiently, I finally reviewed one of the earliest classics of our art form, impetuously deciding that at least some of you might find and delight in Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book through second-hand and pre-owned suppliers.

Apparently, even as I was whining about the thing not being in print, superbly crafted copies of a wonderful new deluxe hardcover edition were winging their way around the planet thanks to the perspicacity of those fine people at Dark Horse and Kitchen Sink.

That will teach me to actually read some of the online reports and press releases we’re bombarded with here at Grumpy Old Luddite Centralâ€¦

Still my humiliation is your good fortune as this magnificently oversized (297x184mm) masterpiece is ready to buy and just in time to make this Holiday Season a time of wickedly barbed merrimentâ€¦

Here in Britain we think we invented modern satire, and quite frankly it’s a pretty understandable notion, with â€œThe Great 1960s Satire Boomâ€ producing the likes of Peter Cook, John Bird, John Fortune, Bernard Levin, Richard Ingrams, Alan Bennett, Paul Foot, Ned Sherrin, Jonathan Miller, David Frost and institutions such as The Establishment club, That Was the Week that Was and the utterly wonderful Private Eye (long may She reign, offend, fly at Gads and survive repeated libel and defamation writs – there’s a Christmas Annual out even as we speakâ€¦).

Sadly our American cousins were not so magnanimously blessed. Their share of genuine world-changing, liberal-lefty rib-tickling intellectual troublemakers only really comprised Tom Lehrer and Harvey Kurtzman. Of course it is a very large country of excitable citizens, with an unbelievable number of guns equally distributed amongst smart folks, idiots and outright lunaticsâ€¦

Creative genius Harvey Kurtzman is probably the most important cartoonist of the last half of the last century – even more so than Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert or Will Eisner.

His early triumphs in the fledgling field of comicbooks (Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales and especially the groundbreaking, game-changing Mad) would be enough for most creators to lean back on but Kurtzman was also a force in newspaper strips (Flash Gordon Complete Daily Strips 1951-1953) and a restless innovator, commentator and social critic who kept on looking at folk and their doings and just couldn’t stop making art or sharing his conclusionsâ€¦

He invented a whole new format when he converted the highly successful colour comicbook Mad into a black-&-white magazine, safely distancing the brilliant satirical publication from the fall-out caused by the 1950s comics witch-hunt which eventually killed all EC’s other titles.

He pursued comedy and social satire further with the magazines Trump, Humbug and Help!, all the while creating challenging and powerfully effective humour strips such as Little Annie Fanny (for Playboy), Nutz, Goodman Beaver, Betsy and her Buddies and many more. He died far too soon, far too young in 1993.

In 1959, having left Mad over issues of financial control and with both follow-up independent ventures Trump andÂ Humbug cruelly defunct, the irrepressible Kurtzman convinced Ballantine Books to publish a mass-market paperback of all-new satirical material. That company had just lost the rights to publish Mad‘s phenomenally best-selling paperback reprint line and were cautiously amenable to a gambleâ€¦

The intriguing oddment saw the Great Observer in top form, returning to his comic roots by spoofing and lambasting strip characters, classic cinema, contemporary television and apparently unchanging social sentiments in a quartet of hyper-charged tales. Unfortunately the project was the first of its kind in America and met with far less than stellar success. No one had ever published 140 pages of new comics in one savage bite before, and even the plenitude of strip reprint books packing bookshop shelves and newsstand spinners were always designed with one eye on the kids’ market.

This new stuff was strictly for adults who would happily follow newspaper or magazine strips but didn’t want to be seen carrying a whole book of them. Duly enlightened, Kurtzman instead returned to safer ground and launched Help! just in time for the aforementioned Swinging Sixties’ satire boomâ€¦

The slim monochrome package might not have changed the nation but it certainly warped and affected a generation of budding cartoonists and writers. Quickly becoming a legend – and nearly a myth in many fan circles – Jungle Book was rescued from limbo in 1986 when cartoonist, publisher and comics advocate Denis Kitchen released the entire lost volume as a deluxe oversized collectors hardback edition through his Kitchen Sink Press.

Adjudged by The Comics Journal as #26 in the â€œTop 100 Comics of the 20^th Centuryâ€, the racy, revelatory controversial – and in 1959 completely ignored – tome’s full title is Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book: Or, Up from the Apes! (and Right Back Down) – In Which Are Described in Words and Pictures Businessmen, Private Eyes, Cowboys, and Other Heroes All Exhibiting the Progress of Man from the Darkness of the Cave into the Light of Civilization by Means of Television, Wide Screen Movies, the Stone Axe, and Other Useful Arts and this latest edition brilliantly gilds the graphic lily with a host of extra features and treats.

Augmented by a wealth of candid photos, covers and sketches from other works, this new chronicle of craziness offers an effusive Introduction by Gilbert Shelton and a fascinating and informative essay by Kitchen entitled ‘It’s a Jungle Out There!’ which reveals the tone of the times and discloses the background behind the novel novel’s creation.

Also included is the 1986 Kitchen Sink edition’s ‘Intro’ by rabidly devoted fan Art Spiegelman and, after the words and picture-fest concludes, a captivating ‘Epilogue’ ensues in the form of a scholarly ‘Conversation between Peter Poplaski and R. Crumb’â€¦

The material itself is gloriously timeless and revelatory. In 1959 it gave the author an opportunity to experiment with layout, page design, narrative rhythms and especially the graphic potential of lettering, all whilst asking pertinent, probing questions about the world rapidly changing all around him.

Each tale in the quartet is prefaced by Kurtzman’s own commentary as shared with comics historian Dave Schriener for the 1986 Editionâ€¦

‘Thelonius Violence, Like Private Eye’ is ostensibly a parody of groundbreaking TV show Peter Gunn, with the jazz-loving, hipster â€œWhite Knight for Hireâ€ scoring chicks and getting hit an awful lot as he infallibly and oh-so-coolly tracks a killer whilst protecting blackmail victim Lolita Nabokovâ€¦

The tale is slick and witty and sublimely smart, whereas the next piece (barely) contains a lot of pent-up frustration for past sins and misdemeanours.

In creating ‘Organization Man in the Grey Flannel Executive Suite’ Kurtzman accessed his experiences working for low-rent publishers and bosses (such as Marvel’s Martin Goodman) to create the salutary tale of a decent young man’s progress up the corporate ladder at Shlock Publications Inc.

The quasi-autobiographical, impressionable and ambitious naÃ¯f in question is Goodman Beaver (who would be resurrected for Help! and eventually, improbably evolve into Little Annie Fanny) and his transformation from sweet kid to cruel, corrupt, exploitative average business jerk makes for truly outrageous reading.

The title comes from a trio of contemporary bestsellers on the subject of men in business: Executive Suite by Cameron Hawley (1952), The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson in 1955 and William H. Whyte’s 1956 drama The Organization Man.

‘Compulsion on the Range’ simultaneously spoofs top-rated western Gunsmoke and the era’s growing fascination with cod psychology and angst-ridden heroes as Marshal Matt Dolin‘s far-reaching obsession with out-shooting infallible outlaw Johnny Ringding which takes him to the ends of the Earthâ€¦

The cartooning wraps up with an edgily barbed tribute to Great Southern novels like Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre or assorted works of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, filtered through a glorious froth of absurd melodrama, frustrated passions and steamy sex (by all accounts the Very Best Kind), all outrageously delivered via astoundingly rendered caricatures and inspired dialect and accent gags.

The tale was inspired by the time Kurtzman spent in Paris, Texas during his wartime serviceâ€¦

In ‘Decadence Degenerated’ us’n sees thet nothin’ evah changes in sleepy ole Rottenville. Then wun naht, when the boys is jus’ a-oglin’ purty Honey-Lou as ushul, sommin’ goes awry an’ it all leads to murdah an’ lynchin’ befoah some snoopy repohtah who claims he frum up Noath turns up thinkin’ he can fin’ the truthâ€¦

Soon vi’lint passions is furtha aroused and nuthin’ kin evah be the same aginâ€¦

Funny, evocative and still unparalleled in its depth, ambition and visual potency, Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book inspired and influenced creators and storytellers as disparate as Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton and Terry Gilliam. This is a masterpiece of our art form which no true devotee can afford to be without.
Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book (Essential Kurtzman Volume One) Â© 2014 Kitchen, Lind & Associates, LLC. All contents Â© and/or â„¢ their respective creators or rights holders. All artwork and stories Â© the estate of Harvey Kurtzman unless noted. Â All rights reserved.

November 13, 2014

Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips volume 3: Evidence to the Contrary

By Walt Kelly, edited by Carolyn Kelly & Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-694-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Possibly the Best Comic Strip Collection in the Worldâ€¦ 10/10

Books of this stature and calibre are worth buying and reading at every moment of every day, and rather than waste your valuable time with my purely extraneous blather, you should just hit the shops or online emporia and grab this terrific tome right now.

If you still need more though, and aren’t put off by me yet, I’m honoured to elucidate at some lengthâ€¦

Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. was born in 1913 and began his cartooning career whilst still in High School as artist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. In 1935 he moved to California and joined the Disney Studio, working on animated short films and such features as Dumbo, Fantasia and Pinocchio.

His steady ascent was curtailed by the infamous animator’s strike in 1941. Refusing to take sides, Kelly quit, moving back East and into comicbooks – primarily for Dell who held the Disney funnybook license amongst others at that time.

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

For the December 1942-released Animal Comics #1 he created Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum, wisely retaining the copyrights to the ongoing saga of two affable Bayou critters and their young African-American pal Bumbazine. Although the black kid soon disappeared, the animal actors stayed on as stars until 1948 when Kelly moved into journalism, becoming art editor and cartoonist for hard hitting, left-leaning liberal newspaper The New York Star.

On October 4^th 1948, Pogo, Albert and an ever-expanding cast of gloriously addictive, ridiculously exuberant characters began their strip careers, appearing in the paper six days a week until the periodical folded in January 1949.

Although ostensibly a gently humorous kids feature, by the end of its New York Star run (reprinted in Pogo: the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips volume 1) the first glimmerings of an astoundingly barbed, boldly satirical masterpiece of velvet-pawed social commentary had begun to emergeâ€¦

When the paper folded Pogo was picked up for mass distribution by the Post-Hall Syndicate, debuting on May 16^th 1949 in selected outlets across the nation. A colour Sunday page launched January 29^th 1950 and both were produced simultaneously by Kelly until his death in 1973 and thereafter by his talented wife and family until the feature was at last laid to rest on July 20^th 1975.

At its height the strip appeared in 500 papers in 14 countries and the book collections – which began in 1951 – eventually numbered nearly 50, collectively selling over 30 million copiesâ€¦ and all that before this Fantagraphics series even beganâ€¦

In this third and much delayed (due to the sudden death of much missed editor and publisher Kim Thompson) volume of a proposed full dozen reprinting the entire Kelly canon of the Okefenokee Swamp critter citizenry, undoubtedly the main aspect of interest is the full-on comedic assault against possibly the greatest danger and vilest political demagogue America ever endured, but the counterattack against witch-hunter Senator Joe McCarthy is merely one of the many delights in this stunning mix of free expression and wild and woolly whimsyâ€¦

This colossal and comfortingly sturdy landscape compilation hardback (boasting three-hundred-and-fifty-six 184 x 267mm pages) includes the monochrome ‘Daily Strips’ from January 1^st 1953 to December 31^st 1954, and the Sundays – in their own full-colour section – from January 4^th to December 26^th of the same years.

Supplemental features this time comprise a Foreword from ward winning cartoonist Mike Peters (Mother Goose & Grimm), a wealth of deliriously winning unpublished illustrations and working drawings by Kelly and utterly invaluable context and historical notes in R.C. Harvey’s ‘Swamp Talk’ which also compellingly, almost forensically, details the rise and fall of rabblerousing â€œred-baiterâ€ Joe McCarthy and how Kelly courageously opened America’s fight back against the unscrupulous, bullying chancer (and the movement for which he was merely a publicity-hungry figurehead) with an unbeatable combination broadside of ridicule and cool disdainâ€¦

The closing regular biographical feature ‘About Walt Kelly’ by Mark Evanier is supplemented by a comprehensive ‘Index of the Strips’ and a gloriously inspired selection of ‘Noteworthy Quotes’ to fill out the academic needs of the readers, but of course the greatest boon here is the strips and characters themselves.

Kelly was a masterful inventor of engaging and endearing personalities, all of whom carried as many flaws as virtues. The regular roll call (which some commentators reckon to be as many as 1000) included gentle, perpetually put-upon and bemused possum Pogo, boisterous, happily ignorant alligator Albert, dolorous, sensitive Porkypine, obnoxious turtle Churchy La Femme, lugubrious hound Beauregard Bugleboy, carpet-bagging Seminole Sam Fox, pompously ignorant know-it-all Howland Owl, sveltely seductive skunk Miz Mam’selle Hepzibah, long suffering matron Miz Beaver, maternal Miz Groun’chuck and her incomprehensible, bitey baby Grundoon plus all the other bugs, beasts and young’uns of the swamp, but the author’s greatest strength lay in his uniquely Vaudevillian rogues, scoundrels and outright villains.

The likes of Tammanany Tiger, officious Deacon Mushrat, sinister, sycophantic beatnik communist Catbirds Compeer and Confrere, sepulchral Sarcophagus MacAbre, sloganeering P.T. Bridgeport and a trio of brilliantly scene-stealing bats named Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred were perfect confections to illustrate all manner of pestilential pettifogging, mean manners and venal self-serving atrocities as they intermingled and interfered with the decent folk volubly enduring the vicissitudes of such day to day travails as love, marriage, comicbooks, weather, rival strips, fishing, the problem with kids, the innocent joys of sport, cadging food, making a living and why neighbours shouldn’t eat each otherâ€¦

In this volume the topics of exotically extravagant conversation include the longevity and worth of New Year’s Resolutions, the scandalous behaviour of Porkeypine’s kissing-thief Uncle Baldwin, a get-rich scheme involving dirt and opening shots at the burgeoning phenomenon of commercial television. However the gradual conversion of the Deacon’s Boy Bird Watchers society into a self-policing vigilante committee looking out for strangers and making sure all the citizens are right thinking and true looking would quickly insinuate itself into every corner of the featureâ€¦

The anti-foreigner sentiment peaks following the arrival of Deacon Mushrat’s old pal The Hon. Mole MacCarony; a blind, self-aggrandizing politico determined to root out all (undisclosed) threats, enforce conformity and stamp out the diseases obviously carried by strangers.

The xenophobic dirt-digger was based on Nevada Senator Patrick McCarran who briefly shaped paranoid public opinion on a platform of severely restricting immigration and implementing the speedy deportation of all communists and non-Americans.

Things got much darker – and therefore more effectively ludicrous – with the arrival of Mole’s malicious and ambitious associate Simple J. Malarkey whose bullying tactics soon began to terrify his fellow bigots as much as the increasingly outraged, off-balance citizensâ€¦

Eventually the villains fell out and triggered their own downfall with the mortified Deacon sheepishly denying his part in the fiasco. Peace and (in)sanity returned and with sunny days ahead weather-prognosticating frog Picayune debuted, but suffered a great loss when Albert accidentally ingested the amphibian’s pal Halpha – an amoeba who actually did all the meteorological messing aboutâ€¦

Voracious Albert generally swallowed a lot of things, but his biggest gaffe probably occurred after meeting Roogey Batoon, a pelican impresario who – briefly – managed Flim, Flam and Flo: a singing fish acted billed as the Lou’siana Perchesâ€¦

Many intriguing individuals shambled into view at this time: Ol’ Mouse and his tutorial pal Snavely (who taught worms how to be cobras and rattlers), cricket-crazed British bugs Reggie and Alf and family icons Bug Daddy and Chile, but the biggest mover and shaker to be introduced was undoubtedly a sporty Rhode Island Red chicken named Miss Sis Boombah.

The formidable biddy was a physically imposing and prodigiously capable sports enthusiast (and Albert’s old football coach), who wandered in as survey taker for â€œDr. Whimsy‘s report on the Sectional Habits of U.S. Mail Menâ€ (a brilliant spoof of the societally sensational Kinsey Report on sexual behaviour in America) but her arrival also generated a succession of romantic interludes and debacles which eventually led to a bewildered Mushrat proposing marriage before leaving her in the lurch and disappearing into the deepest parts of the swampâ€¦

Mole had already reared his unseeing head again, causing only minor mischief, but when the marriage-averse Deacon encountered the terrifying Malarkey lurking in hiding with sinister acolyte Indian Charlie (who bears a remarkable resemblance to then current US Vice-President Richard Nixon) the scene was set for another savage and often genuinely scary confrontationâ€¦

That’s also exactly what Miss Boombah had in mind as she set out with Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred to hunt down the scoundrel who had left her in the lurch at the churchâ€¦

Other story strands and insane interludes include such epic mini sagas as the hunt for an abducted puppy – lampooning TV cop series Dragnet – and a long session on the keeping and proper sharing of secrets, much ado about gossip and the art of being a busybody.

Most memorable of all though are Churchy’s sudden predilection for dressing up as pretty little blonde girl, perpetually visiting Martians and poor Pogo’s oddly domestic recipe for A Bombsâ€¦

In his time satirical supremo Kelly unleashed his bestial spokes-cast upon many other innocent, innocuous sweethearts such as J.Edgar Hoover, the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Clan, as well as lesser lights likes Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson and – with eerie perspicacity – George W. Romney (U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Governor of Michigan and father of some guy named Mitt), but nothing ever compared his delicious and devilish deconstruction of â€œTailgunner Joeâ€ in the two extended sequences reprinted hereâ€¦

Kelly’s unmatched genius lay in his seemingly effortless ability to lyrically, if not vivaciously, portray through anthropomorphic affectation and apparently frivolous nonsense language comedic, tragic, pompous, infinitely sympathetic characters of any shape or breed, all whilst making them undeniably human.

He used that gift to readily blend hard-hitting observation of our crimes, foibles and peccadilloes with rampaging whimsy, poesy and sheer exuberant joie de vivre. Generally though he usually toned down the satirical scalpels for the magnificently imaginative ‘Sunday Funnies’: concentrating instead on fantastic and unfailingly hilarious serial fables and comedy romps.

Some of the best he ever conceived conclude this volume, beginning with the epic saga of little faun Melonbone whose search for the Fountain of Youth inadvertently caused Sam Duck to revert to an egg. The distraught drake’s wife was not best pleased at having to hatch her own husband out at her age (she was no spring chicken)â€¦

Churchy and Albert then fell afoul of sharp toothed tot Grundoon as the kid’s inability to converse led the alligator to accidentally swallow his turtle pal, after which the animal crackpots all got very lost for a long time in their own swampy backyardâ€¦

Howlan Owl’s latest get-rich-quick scheme – digging to China – resulted in his and Albert’s reluctant consultation of an Atlas and the shocking conclusion that the Russians had taken over Georgia.

The panicked reaction of the chumps then led to their accidentally awakening an oversleeping bear who decided to start celebrating Christmas in the middle of August. Eventually everybody caught up to him just in time for the true Yule eventâ€¦

After the usual New Year’s shenanigans, 1954 really took hold as everyone’s favourite alligator tried to recount the amazing exploit of ‘King Albert and the 1001 Arabian Knights of the Round Table’ – despite each listener’s evident and express disinterest – before Howlan and Churchy became compulsively embroiled in a furious feud over pugilism.

Soon thereafter Albert was mistaken for a monster after getting his head stuck in a cauldron. Sadly, once the alligator was finally extricated from the calamitous cookpot, other unhappy folk become the infernal alembic’s’s unwilling method of locomotionâ€¦

No sooner did that catastrophe conclude than the whole sorry fiasco promptly kicked off again with a lovesick octopus now playing transient chapeau to a succession of unfortunate and duly startled swamp critters â€¦

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

This stuff will certainly make you laugh; it will probably provoke a sentimental tear or ten and will certainly satisfy your every entertainment requirement. Timeless and ineffably magical, Pogo is a giant not simply of comics, but of world literature and this magnificent third tome should be the pride of every home’s bookshelf, right beside the other two.

â€¦Or, in the popular campaign parlance of the all politically astute critters – â€œI Go Pogo!â€ and so should you.

Pogo Vol. 3: Evidence to the Contrary and all POGO images, including Walt Kelly’s signature Â© 2014 Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc. All other material Â© 2014 the respective creator and owner. All rights reserved.

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