Category: World Classics

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Hellboy Omnibus volume 1


By Mike Mignola, with John Byrne, Mark Chiarello, Matt Hollingsworth, James Sinclair, Dave Stewart, Pat Brosseau & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-666-5 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-50670-687-0

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Seasonal Standard for Shock Addicts… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

After the establishment of the US comic book direct market system, there came a huge wave of independent publishers. As with all booms, a lot of them went bust. Some few however were more than flash-in-the-pans, growing into major players of a new world order. Arguably, the most successful was Dark Horse Comics who fully embraced the concept of creator ownership (amongst other radical ideas). This concept – and their professional outlook and attitude – drew many big name creators to the new company and in 1994 Frank Miller & John Byrne formally instituted sub-imprint Legend for major creators wanting to produce their own way and at their own pace.

Over the next four years the brand counted Mike Mignola, Art Adams, Mike Allred, Paul Chadwick, Dave Gibbons and Geof Darrow amongst its ranks; generating a wealth of superbly entertaining and groundbreaking series and concepts. Unquestionably, most impressive, popular (and long-lived) was Mignola’s supernatural thriller Hellboy. The monstrous monster-hunter debuted in event program San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2 (August 1993) before formally launching in 4-issue miniseries Seed of Destruction (where Byrne scripted over Mignola’s plot and art). Colourist Mark Chiarello added loads of mood with his understated hues.

That story and the string of sequels that followed were re-presented in the first of four trade paperback offerings (also available as a complete boxed set). This particular tome offers Mignola’s earliest longform triumphs starring the Scourge of Sheol – The Wolves of Saint August; The Chained Coffin; Wake the Devil and Almost Colossus. The omnibi were latterly accompanied by a companion series featuring all the short stories.

The incredible story begins with a review of secret files. On December 23rd 1944 American Patriotic Superhero The Torch of Liberty and a squad of US Rangers interrupt a satanic ritual predicted by Allied parapsychologist Professors Trevor Bruttenholm and Malcolm Frost. They were working in conjunction with influential medium Lady Cynthia Eden-Jones. All waited at a ruined church in East Bromwich, England when a demon baby with a huge stone right hand eventually appeared in a fireball. The startled soldiers took the infernal yet seemingly innocent waif into custody. Far, far further north, off the Scottish Coast on Tarmagant Island, a cabal of Nazi Sorcerers roundly berated ancient wizard Grigori Rasputin whose Project Ragna Rok ritual seems to have failed. The Russian is unfazed. Events are unfolding as he wishes…

Five decades later, the baby has grown into a mighty warrior engaging in a never-ending secret war: the world’s most successful paranormal investigator. Bruttenholm has spent the years lovingly raising the weird foundling whilst forming an organisation to destroy unnatural threats and supernatural monsters: The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. “Hellboy” is now its lead agent. Today, the recently-returned, painfully aged professor summons his surrogate son and warns of impending peril wrapped in obscured reminiscences of his own last mission. The Cavendish Expedition uncovered an ancient temple submerged in arctic ice, but what occurred next has been somehow excised from Bruttenholm’s memory. Before he can say more, the mentor is killed by a rampaging plague of frogs, and enraged Hellboy is battling for his life against a demonic giant amphibian…

Following fact-files about Project Ragna Rok and ‘An African Myth about a Frog’, Chapter Two opens at eerie Cavendish Hall, set on a foetid lake in America’s Heartland. Matriarch Emma Cavendish welcomes Hellboy and fellow BPRD investigators Elizabeth Sherman and Dr. Abraham Sapien, but is not particularly forthcoming about her family’s obsession. Nine generations of Cavendish have sought – and sponsored the search for – the Temple at the Top of the World. Three of her own sons were lost on the latest foray, from which only Bruttenholm returned, but her story of how founding patriarch Elihu Cavendish’s obsession infects every male heir for hundreds of years imparts no fresh insights. She also says she knows nothing about frogs, but she’s lying and the agents know it…

As they retire for the night, Hellboy’s companions prepare for battle. Psychic firestarter Liz is taken unawares when the frogs attack and our Dauntless Demon fares little better against another titanic toad-monster. Of Abe there is no sign: the BPRD’s own amphibian has taken to the dank waters of the lake in search of long-buried answers…

And then a bald Russian guy claiming to know the truth of Hellboy’s origins appears and monstrous tentacles drag the hero through the floor…

Chapter Three views a vast hidden cellar where Rasputin explains he is the agent for undying and infinite antediluvian evil: seven-sided serpent Ogdru-Jahad who sleeps and waits to be reawakened. Hellboy was originally summoned from the pit to be the control interface between the Great Beast and the wizard whilst he oversaw the fall of mankind, but when the BPRD agent refuses his destiny – in his obtuse, obnoxious manner – Rasputin goes crazy…

Overwhelmed by the Russian’s frog foot soldiers, Hellboy is forced to listen to the story of Rasputin’s alliance with Himmler and Hitler, and how they sponsored a mystic Nazi think-tank to conquer Earth. Of how the mage manipulated the fanatics, found the Temple at the Top of the World and communed with The Serpent, and of how that last Cavendish Expedition awoke him. Of how he used them to trace the crucial tool he had summoned from Hell half a century ago… And then the raving Russian reveals how his infernal sponsor Sadu-Hem – The Serpent’s intermediary – has grown strong on human victims but will become unstoppable after feasting on Liz’s pyrokinetic internal forces…

With all hell literally breaking loose, the final chapter sees Rasputin exultantly calling upon each of the seven aspects as Hellboy attempts a desperate, doomed diversion and the long-missing Abe Sapien finally makes his move, aided by a hidden faction Rasputin had not anticipated…

The breathtaking conclusion sees supernal forces spectacularly laid to rest, but the defeat of Sadu-Hem and his Russian doll only opens the door for other arcane adversaries to emerge…

Bombastic, moody, laconically paced, suspenseful and explosively action-packed, Seed of Destruction manages the masterful magic trick of introducing a whole new world and making it seem like we’ve always lived there.

‘The Wolves of Saint August’ was originally serialised in Dark Horse Presents #88-91 during 1994, before being reworked a year later for a Hellboy one-shot of the same name. Mignola handles art and script, with James Sinclair on colours and Pat Brosseau making it all legible and intelligible.

Set contemporarily, the moody piece sees the red redeemer working with BPRD colleague Kate Corrigan, investigating the death of Hellboy’s old pal Father Kelly in the Balkan village of Griart. It’s not long before they realise the sleepy hamlet is actually a covert den of great antiquity, where a pack of mankind’s most infamous and iniquitous predators still thrive…

Mignola has a sublime gift for setting tone and building tension with great economy. It always means that the inevitable confrontation between Good and Evil has plenty of room to unfold with capacious visceral intensity. This clash between unfrocked demon and alpha lycanthrope is one of the most unforgettable battle blockbusters ever seen…

In 1995 Dark Horse Presents 100 #2 debuted ‘The Chained Coffin’. Here Hellboy returns to the English church where he first arrived on Earth in 1943. Five decades of mystery and adventure have passed, but as the demon-hunter observes ghostly events replay before his eyes, he learns the truth of his origins. All too soon, Hellboy devoutly wishes he had never come back…

Wake the Devil delivered a decidedly different take on the undying attraction of vampires when a past case becomes active again. Hellboy and fellow outré BPRD agents Sherman & Sapien are still reeling from losing their aged mentor and uncovering Rasputin’s hellish scheme to rouse sleeping Elder Gods he served. Moreover, the apparently undying wizard – agent for antediluvian infinitely evil seven-sided serpent Ogdru-Jahad who-sleeps-and-waits-to-be-reawakened – is responsible for initially summoning Hellboy to Earth as part of the Nazi’s Ragna Rok Project. Now the Russian’s clandestine alliance with Himmler, Hitler and their mystic Nazi think-tank is further explored as, deep inside Norway’s Arctic Circle region, a driven millionaire visits a hidden castle. He is seeking the arcane Aryans long-closeted within, eager to deliver a message from “The Master”. In return, the oligarch wants sanctuary from the imminent end of civilisation…

In New York City, a bloody robbery occurs in a tawdry mystic museum and the BPRD are briefed on legendary Napoleonic soldier Vladimir Giurescu. It now appears that enigmatic warrior wasn’t particularly wedded to any side in that conflict… and was probably much older than reports indicated. More important is re-examined folklore suggesting Giurescu was mortally wounded many times but, after retreating to a certain castle in his homeland, would always reappear: renewed, refreshed and deadlier than ever. In 1882 he was in England and clashed with Queen Victoria’s personal ghost-breaker Sir Edward Grey, who was the first to officially identify him as a “Vampire”.  In 1944, Hitler met with Vladimir to convince the creature to join him, but something went wrong and Himmler’s envoy Ilsa Haupstein was ordered to arrest Giurescu and his “family”. The creatures were despatched in the traditional manner and sealed in boxes… one of which has now been stolen from an NYC museum. Intriguingly, the murdered owner was once part of the Nazi group responsible for Ragna Rok. The BPRD always consider worst-case scenarios, and if that box actually contained vampire remains…

The location of the bloodsucker’s fabled castle is unknown, but with three prospects in Romania and only six agents available, a trio of compact strike-teams is deployed with Hellboy in solo mode headed for the most likely location. Although not an active agent, Dr. Kate Corrigan wants Hellboy to take especial care. All indications are that this vampire might be the Big One, even though nobody wants to use the “D” word…

In Romania, still youthful Ilsa Haupstein talks to a wooden box, whilst in Norway her slyly observing colleagues Kurtz and Kroenen express concern. Once the most ardent of believers, Ilsa may have been turned from the path of Nazi resurgence and bloody vengeance. Her former companions are no longer so enamoured of the Fuehrer’s old dream of a vampire army either. Leopold especially places more faith in the creatures he has been building and growing…

Over Romania, Hellboy leaps out of a plane and engages his experimental jet-pack, wishing he was going with one of the other team… and even more so after it flames out. At least he has the limited satisfaction of crashing into the very fortress Ilsa is occupying…

The battle with the witch-woman’s grotesque servants is short and savage and as the ancient edifice crumbles, Chapter Two reveals how on the night Hellboy was born, Rasputin suborned Ilsa and her comrades. Making them devout disciples awaiting Ogdru-Jahad’s awakening, he saves them from Germany’s ignominious collapse. Now the Russian ghost appears offering her another prophecy and a great transformation…

Deep in the vaults, Hellboy comes to and meets a most garrulous dead man, unaware that in the village below the Keep, the natives are recognising old signs and making the traditional preparations again…

Hellboy’s conversation provides much useful background information but lulls him into a false sense of security, allowing the revenant to savagely attack and set up a confrontation with the ferocious forces actually responsible for the vampire’s power. Battling for his life, Hellboy is a stunned witness to Giurescu’s resurrection and ultimate cause of his latest demise, whilst far above, Rasputin shares his own origins with acolyte Ilsa, revealing the night he met the infamous witch Baba Yaga…

Nearly 300 miles away, Liz and her team scour ruined Castle Czege. There’s no sign of vampires but they do uncover a hidden alchemy lab with an incredible artefact in it: a stony homunculus. Idly touching the artificial man, Liz is horrified when her pyrokinetic energies surge uncontrollably into the artefact and he goes on a destructive rampage…

With the situation escalating at Castle Giurescu, Hellboy ignites a vast cache of explosives with the faint hope that he will be airlifted out before they go off, but is distracted by a most fetching monster who calls him by a name he doesn’t recognise before trying to kill him.

If she doesn’t, the catastrophic detonation might…

As the dust settles and civil war breaks out amongst the Norway Nazis, in Romania Ilsa makes a horrific transition and Hellboy awakes to face Rasputin, even as the BPRD rush to the rescue. Tragically Abe Sapien and his squad won’t make it before the revived and resplendent Giurescu takes his shot, whilst the world’s most successful paranormal investigator confronts and is seduced by uncanny aspects of his long-hidden infernal ancestry. With all hell breaking loose, the displaced devil makes a decision which will not only affect his life but dictate the course of humanity’s existence…

The breathtakingly explosive ending also resets the game for Rasputin’s next scheme, but the weird wonderment rolls on in a potent epilogue, wherein the mad monk visits macabre patron Baba Yaga for advice…

The story-portion of this magnificent terror-tome terminates with 1997’s 2-part miniseries ‘Almost Colossus’ wherein traumatised pyrokinetic Liz awaits test results. During the Castle Czege mission, an artificial man she discovered inadvertently drained Liz’s infernal energies, bringing it to life and causing hers to gradually slip away. Now, Hellboy and Corrigan are back in the legend-drenched region, watching a graveyard from which 68 bodies have been stolen. Elsewhere, the fiery homunculus is undergoing a strange experience: he has been abducted by his older “brother” who seeks, through purloined flesh, blackest magic and forbidden crafts to perfect their centuries-dead creator’s animation techniques.

Before the curtain falls, Hellboy – aided by the ghosts of repentant monks and the younger homunculus – battles a metal giant determined to crown itself God of Science, saving the world if he can and Liz because he must…

Wrapping up the show is a wealth of arty extras, beginning with the 1991 convention illustration Mignola created because he just wanted to draw a monster. From tiny acorns…

Following on – with author’s commentary – is a horror hero group shot that is Hellboy’s second ever appearance and a brace of early promo posters, and the full colour Convention book premiere appearance as ‘Hellboy – World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator’ battles a giant demon dog, courtesy of Mignola & Byrne. Hellboy Sketchbook then shares a treasure trove of drawings, designs and roughs from the early stories again, fully annotated to round out the eerie celebratory experience.

Available in paperback and digital formats, this bombastic, moodily suspenseful, explosively action-packed tome is a superb scary romp to delight one and all, celebrating the verve, imagination and longevity of the greatest Outsider Hero of All: a supernatural thriller no comics fan should be without.
Hellboy™ & © Seed of Destruction © 1993, 2018 Mike Mignola. Hellboy, Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman and all other prominently featured characters are trademarks of Mike Mignola. All rights reserved.

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Superman: The Dailies volume II: 1940-1941


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

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

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Continued…

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

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

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Evaristo: Deep City


By F. Solano Lopez & Carlos Sampayo (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0874160345 (Album TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

For British and Commonwealth comics readers of a certain age, the unmistakable artistic style of Francisco Solano Lopez always conjures up dark moods and atmospheric tension because he drew such ubiquitous boyhood classics as Janus Stark, Kelly’s Eye, Adam Eterno, Tri-Man, Galaxus: The Thing from Outer Space, Pete’s Pocket Army, Nipper, The Drowned World, Raven on the Wing, Master of the Marsh and a host of other stunning tales of mystery, imagination and adventure in the years he worked for British publishers.

However, the master of blackest brushwork was not merely a creator of children’s fiction. In his home country of Argentina he was considered a radical political cartoonist whose work eventually forced him to flee to more hospitable climes.

On October 26th 1928 Francisco Solano López was born in Buenos Aires. He began illustrating comics in 1953 with Perico y Guillerma for publisher Columba. With journalist Héctor Germán Oesterheld (a prolific comics scripter “disappeared” by the Junta in 1976 and presumed killed the following year) Solano López produced Bull Rocket for Editorial Abril’s magazine Misterix. After working on such landmark series as Pablo Maran, Uma-Uma, Rolo el marciano adoptive and El Héroe, López joined Oesterheld’s publishing house Editorial Frontera to become a member of the influential Venice Group which included Mario Faustinelli, Hugo Pratt, Ivo Pavone and Dino Battaglia.

López alternated with Pratt, Jorge Moliterni and José Muñoz on Oesterheld’s legendary Ernie Pike serial but their most significant collaboration was the explosively political and hugely popular allegorical science fiction thriller El Eternauta, which began in 1957. By 1959 the series had come to the unwelcome attention of the Argentinian and Chilean authorities, forcing López to flee to Spain. Whilst an exile there, he began working for UK publishing giant Fleetway from Madrid and London. In 1968 he returned to Argentina and with Oesterheld started El Eternauta II for Editorial Records, producing sci-fi series Slot-Barr (written by Ricardo Barreiro) and period cop drama Evaristo with kindred spirit Carlos Sampayo.

In the mid-1970s López was e again compelled to flee his homeland, returning to Madrid where he organised publication of El Eternauta and Slot-Barr in Italian magazines LancioStory & Skorpio. He never stopped working: producing a stunning variety of assorted genre tales and mature-reader material and erotica such as El Instituto (reprinted by Eros as Young Witches), El Prostibulo del Terror (story by Barreiro) and Sexy Symphonies: bleak thrillers Ana and Historias Tristes with his son Gabriel. He illustrated Jim Woodring’s adaptation of the cult movie Freaks and once safely home in Argentina, continued El Eternauta with new writer Pablo “Pol” Maiztegui. He even found time for more British comics with strips such as ‘Jimmy’, ‘The Louts of Liberty Hall’, ‘Ozzie the Loan Arranger’ and ‘Dark Angels’ in Roy of the Rovers, Hot-Shot and Eagle.

Francisco Solano López passed away in Buenos Aires on August 12th 2011.

Poet, critic and author Carlos Sampayo is most well-known for his grimly powerful comics collaborations with Muñoz on Joe’s Bar and Alack Sinner (both also long overdue for comprehensive re-release) as well as other contemporary classics like Jeu de Lumières, Sophie, Billie Holiday and ‘Sudor Sudaca’.

Born in 1943, Sampayo was another outspoken creative Argentinean forced to flee the Junta in the early 1970s. Travelling to Europe he found a home for his desolate, gritty, passionately evocative stories in France and Italy, working with Julio Schiaffino, Jorge Zentner and Oscar Zarate before settling in Spain. Here in 1985, he and fellow expat Solano López produced compelling anti-hero Evaristo.

The long-running serial featured a seemingly brutish ex-boxer who had risen to the rank of Police Commissioner in late 1950s Buenos Aires: a debased and corrupt city of wealth and prestige, cheek-by-jowl with appalling poverty and desperate degradation.

After a compelling introduction by Xavier Coma, the graphic odyssey begins with ‘Breaking the Ties’ as a bank hostage crisis devolves into a long-postponed grudge match when Commissioner Evaristo is confronted by old ring-rival Fournier, who has returned to finally settle an old score. As is so often the case in such long-lived hatreds, there’s a woman at the heart of it…

‘The Famous Lubitsch Case’ sees the grizzled morally ambivalent prize-fight veteran pushed by his bosses to locate a missing heiress who has either been abducted or eloped with a notorious gangster and womaniser. Unfortunately, for reasons even he can’t fathom, Evaristo seems determined to discover the truth, rather than follow the “clues” his bosses have directed him to find…

In ‘The Herman Operation’, secretive guys with German accents and connections to the Argentinean military keep disappearing and the Commissioner is no use at all. It’s like he isn’t even trying…

The hunt for a cop-killing bandit takes a long hard look at the Commissioner’s sordid past – and some dubious child-care practises by the local clergy – in ‘The Crazy Grandson’, whilst ‘Shanty Town’ catches the cops looking for a serial killer whilst a corrupt minister causes a devastating water-shortage – and riots – in the slums. As usual, Evaristo ignores his bosses and keeps looking for the “wrong” people…

As a hit-squad tasked with assassinating the troublesome cop uses what seems to be perfect leverage by kidnapping a kid claiming to be his son, Evaristo appears more concerned with an escaped lion causing ‘Terror in the Streets’ before this superb noir mini-masterpiece concludes with ‘Legend of a Wounded Gunman’ as a case from the Commissioner’s early days eerily replays itself. This this time the ending will be different…

Released in America as Deep City this oversized (277 x 206mm), 112 page monochrome collection depicts the compelling solutions found by a cop who bends all the rules just to win a modicum of justice in an utterly corrupt society: a powerfully cynical, shockingly effective series of vignettes examining freedom and equality in a totally repressive time and place devoid of hope. However at no time does the ideology overwhelm the artistry of the narrative or distract from the sheer power of the art.

This magnificent book and all the other Evaristo tales are long overdue for revival, and this series has never been more relevant. Surely some savvy publisher must take another shot at the big time for this big tale?…
© 1986 F. Solano López, Carlos Sampayo & Xavier Coma. English language edition © 1986 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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


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

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

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Phantom – the complete newspaper dailies: volume Three 1939-1940


By Lee Falk, Ray Moore & Wilson McCoy: introduction by Mike Bullock (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 1-932563-61-X (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Born Leon Harrison Gross, Lee Falk created the Ghost Who Walks at the request of his King Features Syndicate employers who were already making history, public headway and loads of money with his first strip sensation Mandrake the Magician. Although technically not the first ever costumed champion in comics, The Phantom became the prototype paladin to wear a skin-tight body-stocking and the first to have a mask with opaque eye-slits…

The generational champion debuted on February 17th 1936, in an extended sequence pitting him against an ancient global confederation of pirates. Falk wrote and drew the daily strip for the first two weeks before handing over illustration to artist Ray Moore. The spectacular and hugely influential Sunday feature began in May 1939.

For such a long-lived, influential series, in terms of compendia or graphic collections, “the Ghost Who Walks” was quite poorly served in the English language market (except in the Antipodes, where he has always been accorded the status of a pop culture god). Many companies have sought to collect strips from one of the longest continually running adventure serials in publishing history, but in no systematic or chronological order and never with any sustained success. That has been rectified recently by archival specialists Hermes Press who launched curated collections in 2010 which have made almost all the various canonical iterations accessible to the devoted.

This third landscape Dailies edition is currently only available digitally. Released in 2011, its pages are stuffed with sumptuous visual goodies like panel and logo close-ups, covers and lots of original art and opens with ‘Introduction: The Phantom and I’: a memories-rich text feature stuffed with sumptuous visual goodies from author/musician and uber-fan Mike Bullock before the vintage blood-&-thunder fun begins with exotic thriller ‘The Mysterious Girl’ (originally running Mondays to Saturdays, May 8th to September 2nd 1939).

Roaming Alexandria in plainclothes, the Ghost Who Walks interrupts a brutal abduction, but the jewel-bedecked victim doesn’t want his help or even to talk about it. Persistent and curious, The Phantom investigates further and learns she is currently amnesiac; terrified and being stalked by sleezy Count Pharos, who claims to be her guardian. When the rogue convinces “Miss Banks” to take a sea voyage with him, the Phantom and his faithful wolf Devil join the jaunt. Before long the heroes are apparently lost at sea, before the memory-afflicted maiden is also disappeared. Hard to kill, The Phantom trails the Count and finds a second abducted prisoner. Young Baron Marshall Dufresne is Pharos’ real ward and his imprisonment and wealth are what really concern the villain, particularly as the lad loves a girl named Merle and is prepared to sign a suicide note leaving everything to Pharos in return for her safety.

Of course, all those sneaky plans come unstuck once the Phantom decides to step in and stop the plot, but not before almost dying in many shocking ways as Pharos and his hulking henchman Red flee with the Phantom in spectacular hot pursuit, The chase ends in justice and Merle’s memories – and reputation – restored. Fast-paced, packed with peril and introducing a truly unique character in the bulky shape of Hannah – a fight-loving domestic servant who is The Phantom’s physical equal in fisticuffs – this epic exploit is sublimely frenetic fun, and segues seamlessly into ‘The Golden Circle’ (September 4th 1939 to January 20th 1940) as the hero’s true love resurfaces. Wealthy American adventurer Diane Palmer was made a nervous wreck by her time with The Phantom and has, for many months, believed him dead. Her doctors advised the masked man to go along with the sham for her sake…

The recuperating heiress has been unsuccessfully wooed by airman Lieutenant Byron, but when the Phantom checks in and finds her still pining for him, checks out again. The example inspires the pilot, who cables the hero to tell him Diana has agreed to become Mrs. Byron…

Enraged and jealous the hero returns to the hospital but finds her already gone. After dealing with Byron, The Phantom chases, catches and re-bonds with Diana. Sadly, that only generates a truly insurmountable problem as Diana’s snooty mother declares the masked peasant unworthy of her daughter. They can only wed if he gets a real job…

Chained to generations of duty and by his vow to oppose evil, the lovers are seemingly parted forever, and soon after in France the heartbroken hero is targeted by a mother/daughter con team and framed for murder. His frantic escape exposes another all-woman criminal gang plundering the world and The Phantom barely escapes the many traps and tribulations of the insidious organization The Golden Circle…

With war in Europe and the epic battle against the Circle ended, the subplot of Diana returns as Mama Palmer finally admits that all the men she’s pushed at her distraught daughter have not passed muster. Running from January 22nd to July 27th) ‘The Seahorse’ sees the dowager advertise for a suitable son-in-law with the result that Diana is feted, charmed, courted and ultimately kidnapped by scurrilous Count Danton. Naturally, The Phantom is not far away, but is he solely motivated by jealousy or does the fact that Danton is the foremost and deadliest enemy agent in the western hemisphere impact the hero’s incredible actions in winning her back?

Crucially, will clearing Diana of espionage charges and accusations of treason make The Phantom a more eligible suitor in Mama’s eyes?

This volume concludes with ‘The Game of Alvar’ (July 27th–
to December 14th 1940) as the reunited lovers enjoy a little downtime together… but only until they stumble onto a canny smuggling operation and Dian is targeted by a deadly assassin running a private murder-island. Naturally the Ghost Who Walks rushes to her aid, but the sinister Mr. Alvar has the entire police force and civil authorities on his payroll. Ultimately, this time it’s Diana who takes up arms, saves the day and restores honourable government to the oppressed, even if The Phantom does latterly land a blow or two…

The saga pauses for now with a few more images taken from The Phantom Big Little Books – another treat long overdue for resurrection.

Stuffed with chases, cruises, air and submarine clashes, assorted fights, torture, action antics, daredevil stunts and many a misapprehension – police and government authorities clearly having a hard time believing a pistol-packing masked man with a pet wolf might not be a bad egg – this is sheer gripping pulp-era excitement that still packs a punch and many sly laughs.
© 2011 King Features Syndicate, Inc.: ® Hearst Holdings, Inc.; reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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Mandrake the Magician: Fred Fredericks Sundays volume 1 – The Meeting of Mandrake and Lothar


By Lee Falk & Fred Fredericks (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-692-6 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Time for another Birthday briefing as we exploit the month of mystery and imagination to celebrate 90 glorious years for another Golden Age stalwart…

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

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

Characters like Mr. Mystic, Ibis the Invincible, Sargon the Sorcerer, and an assortment of  “…the Magician”’s like Zatara, Zanzibar, Kardak proliferated ad infinitum: all borrowing heavily and shamelessly from the uncanny exploits of the elegant, enigmatic man of mystery gracing the world’s newspapers and magazines. In the Antipodes, Mandrake was a suave and stalwart regular of Australian Women’s Weekly and became a cherished icon of adventure in the UK, Australia, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Spain, France, Turkey and across Scandinavia: a major star of page and screen, pervading every aspect of global consciousness.

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

Falk worked on Mandrake and “The Ghost who Walks” until his death in 1999 (even on his deathbed, he was laying out one last story), but also found a few quiet moments to become a renowned playwright, theatre producer and impresario, as well as an inveterate world-traveller. After drawing those first few strips Falk united with sublimely polished cartoonist Phil Davis, whose sleekly understated renditions took the daily strip, and especially the expansive full-page Sunday pages (collected in companion volume The Hidden Kingdom of Murderers), to unparalleled heights of sophistication. Davis’ steadfast, assured realism was the perfect tool to render the Magician’s mounting catalogue of spectacular miracles. Soon the Magician was a major star of page & screen, pervading all aspects of global consciousness as hinted at in a furore of fact features and massed memorabilia treats, beginning with introductory essay ‘The Real Mandrake the Magician’. This discusses real-life stage magician Leon Mandrake – who shared the evocative sobriquet in the mid-20th century – as revealed courtesy of his son Lon. Next on the bill is an appreciation of Davis’ inspired replacement as illustrator, in ‘Fred Fredericks – My Mandrake Artist’ by Andreas Erikson, with incisive exploration of Harold “Fred” Fredericks, who took over art production when Davis died and who ultimately assumed full creative duties when Falk himself passed on in 1999. This briefing covers that his tenure and includes his prodigious pre- and post-Mandrake comics work.

Those in the know are well aware that Mandrake was educated at the fabled College of Magic in Tibet, thereafter becoming a suave globe-trotting troubleshooter. Always and everywhere he was accompanied by African partner-in-crimefighting Lothar and, from early on, capable companion (eventually, in 1997, bride) Princess Narda of Cockaigne. Together they solved mysteries and fought evil. Those exploits took the close-knit team literally everywhere, and the strips section of this luxury monochrome landscape hardback opens on ‘Traveler’s Tale’ which ran from March 21st to August 22nd 1965 and saw the last episodes illustrated by Davis, before his death in 1964 from a heart attack.

The saga sees Mandrake in the arctic, where iceberg-watching leads to the recovery of an apparent alien in a survival capsule. A physical and mental marvel, while slowly awakening Opolo deduces not just the English language but also that he’s been in hibernation for 60,000 years. He goes on to reveal that he’s actually from Earth, albeit part of a space-faring race that preceded Homo Sapiens. He’s also pining for his estranged true love Adrana, and Mandrake is happy to help him find her and the long buried civilisation they both came from and are the last survivors of…

Incredibly, along the way, the magician also solves an ancient murder mystery and plays cupid to the reunited survivors, before seeing them abandon their birthworld for the stars…

Always well in tune with contemporary zeitgeists – like sci fi and spy fi – Falk dipped into the growing well of supervillains monopolizing book shelves and airwaves by next reviving Mandrake’s personal arch-nemesis as ‘The Cobra Returns’ (August 29th 1965 – April 3rd 1966). The sinister savant was once Mandrake’s tutor at The College of Magic and here begins a globally destabilising assassination spree, provoking crime busting agency Inter-Intel to call in the Magician and his crew to consult. Sadly, the ploy only makes the perfidious plotter turn his full murderous attentions on our heroes, in an escalating series of attacks that ultimately end in a spectacular showdown and apparent end of the evil one…

With global stability secured, organised crime goes wild, and the miracle trio are kept busy helping the good guys crack down on mobsters in ‘The Underworld vs. Inter-Intel’ (April 10th – August 7th 1966), after which ‘The Astro Pirates’ (August 14th – December 25th 1966) highlights a modern spin on an old racket…

When bold bandits begin holding up airliners in the stratosphere they foolishly pick a jet carrying Narda, and a fully-engaged Mandrake and Lothar spare no effort to end the sinister sky-jinks, after which – inspired by the “Great Northeast Blackout” of November 5th 1965 – Falk & Fredericks fill us in on ‘The Blackout Caper’ (January 1st – April 23rd 1967), as a mad scientist teams up with mobsters to use darkness and chaos to get rich quick and fulfil even nastier nuclear ambitions but underestimate the power of the mighty magician…

Fredericks was a liberal and civil rights proponent, and had for months been subtly changing the “happy, loyal native” appearance of the African globetrotter to match the acts and character Falk had been crafting for years. The process was completed with a reboot of their first adventure together spanning April 30th – September 24th. ‘The Meeting of Mandrake and Lothar’ relates how the practically superhuman prince of reclusive kingdom “the 12 Nations” joins Mandrake in stopping crazed fugitive Mad Dog Dill, before abdicating all monarchical responsibilities to fight evil everywhere. However, returning to the present, shocks abound as Lothar agrees to helm his people’s transition to democracy by becoming their president, just as Mandrake and Narda are targeted by a manic gambler turned master-villain.

‘The Game of Chance’ (October 1st 1967 – February 11th 1968) soon sees Lothar return to aid in the comeuppance of devious blackmailer, kidnapper and influence-peddler Baron Chance and, prior to a resurgence of full-on fantasy, returns in ‘Invasion of the Babu’ (February 18th – July 21st 1968). No stranger to space adventure, Mandrake and Co are best friends with Magnon and Carola, Emperor and Empress of the Central Galaxy and benign rulers of one million worlds. The humans were there when the potentates had their baby Nardraka, and, as dutiful “godparents”, pull out all the stops when the toddler princess is abducted by barbaric invaders the Baboos.

Sadly for them, the apelike alien aggressors make a string of mistakes, beginning with hiding the hostage on even more barbaric Earth, continuing with trying to outsmart Mandrake and closing with believing Nardraka is “just” a stupid little female…

With one crisis resolved, Mandrake barely survives the renewed attentions of the Baron as ‘Second Chance’ (July 28th – November 3rd 1968) sees the magician and Inter-Intel hunt the murderous malefactor to his hidden island fortress and strike a major blow against organised crime, after which ‘The All or Nothing Hunt’ (November 10th 1968 – March 30th 1969), heralds the arrival of alien gamblers Alpha and Beta, who have made the mage their next obsession. Hiding a planet-eradicating bomb on Earth, the wagerers expect the wonder wizard to traverse the globe, deciphering clues to deactivate it. Of course, the extraterrestrials don’t play fair, but Mandrake isn’t playing at all…

No good deed goes unpunished, however, and ‘The Galactic Rumble’ (April 6th – September 7th 1969) reveals that Alpha and Beta are intergalactic crime lords with millions of thugs now indulging in an intergalactic gang war Magnon’s military and peacekeepers are helpless to stop. Isn’t it time to call in some consultants with the know-how to fight them on their own terms?

Yes it is, and not even exploding stars and marauding star dragons can long slow them down…

Ending the show are ‘The Fred Fredericks Mandrake the Magician Complete Sunday Checklist (1965-2002)’, plus full biographies of Fred Fredericks and Lee Falk. This thrilling tome offers exotic locales, thrilling action, bold belly laughs, cunning crime action and sheer wonder in equal measure. Paramount taleteller Falk instinctively knew from the start that the secret of success was strong and, crucially, recurring villains to test and challenge his heroes, and make Mandrake an unmissable treat for every strip addict. These stories have lost none of their impact and only need you reading them to concoct a perfect cure for the 21st century glums.
Mandrake the Magician © 2018 King Features Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. All other material © 2018 the respective authors or owners.

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Kingdom Come – New Edition



By Mark Waid & Alex Ross, with Todd Klein & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-9096-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

With documentary The Legend of Kingdom Come out and another commemorative edition scheduled for early next year, it’s time to revisit this modern classic once more and prep for all the furore to come. It’s also a damn fine read to amble into the festive season with…

In the mid-1960s a teenaged Jim Shooter wrote a couple of stories about the Legion of Super-Heroes set some years into the team’s own future. Those stories of adult Legionnaires revealed hints of things to come that shackled the series’ plotting and continuity for decades as eager, obsessed fans (by which I mean all of us) waited for the predicted characters to be introduced, presaged relationships to be consummated and heroes to die. By being so utterly impressive and similarly affecting, Kingdom Come accidentally repeated the trick decades later, subsequently painting the entire post Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe into the same creative corner until one of the company’s periodic continuity reboots unleashed possibility and uncertainty again…

Envisaged and designed by artist Alex Ross as DC’s answer to groundbreaking epic Marvels, Kingdom Come was originally released as a 4-issue Prestige Format miniseries in 1996 to rapturous acclaim and numerous awards and accolades. Although set in the future and an “imaginary story” released under DC’s Elseworlds imprint, it almost immediately began to affect the company’s mainstream continuity.

Set approximately 20 years into the future, the grandiose saga details a tragic failure and subsequent loss of Faith for Superman and how his attempt to redeem himself almost leads to an even greater and ultimate apocalypse. The events are seen through the eyes and actions of Dantean witness Norman McCay, an aging cleric co-opted by Divine Agent of Wrath the Spectre after the pastor officiates at the last rites of dying superhero Wesley Dodds. As the Sandman, Dodds was cursed for decades with precognitive dreams which compelled him to act as an agent of justice.

Opening chapter ‘Strange Visitor’ reveals a world where metahumans have proliferated to ubiquitous proportions: a sub-culture of constant, violent clashes between the latest generation of costumed villains and vigilantes, all unheeding and uncaring of the collateral damage they daily inflict on the mere mortals around and in all ways beneath them. The shaken preacher sees a final crisis coming, but feels helpless until the darkly angelic Spectre comes to him. Taken on a bewildering voyage of unfolding events, McCay is to act as the ghost’s human perspective whilst the Spirit of Vengeance prepares to pass final judgement on Humanity.

First stop is the secluded hideaway where farmer Kal-El has hidden himself since the ghastly events which compelled him to retire from the Good Fight and the eyes of the World. The Man of Tomorrow was already feeling like a dinosaur when newer, harsher, morally ambiguous mystery-men began to appear. After the Joker murdered the entire Daily Planet staff and hard-line new hero Magog consequently executed him in the street, the public applauded the deed. Heartbroken and appalled, Superman disappeared for a decade. His legendary colleagues also felt the march of unwelcome progress and similarly faded from sight.

With Earth left to the mercies of dangerously irresponsible new vigilantes, civil unrest escalated. The younger heroes displayed poor judgement and no restraint, with the result that within a decade the entire planet had become a chaotic arena for metahuman duels.

Civilisation was fragmenting. The Flash and Batman retreated to their home cities and made them secure, crime-free solitary fortresses. Green Lantern built an emerald castle in the sky, turning his eyes away from Earth and towards the deep black fastnesses of space. Hawkman retreated to the wilderness, Aquaman to his sub-sea kingdom whilst Wonder Woman retired to her hidden paradise. She did not leave until Armageddon came one step closer…

When Magog and his Justice Battalion battled the Parasite in St. Louis, the result was a nuclear accident which destroyed all of Kansas and much of Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska. Overnight the world faced starvation as America’s breadbasket turned into a toxic wasteland. Now with McCay and the Spectre invisibly observing, Princess Diana convinces the bereft Kal-El to return and save the world on his own terms…

In ‘Truth and Justice’ a resurgent Justice League led by Superman begins a campaign of unilateral action to clean up the mess civilisation has become: renditioning “heroes” and “villains” alike, imprisoning every dangerous element of super-humanity and telling governments how to behave, blithely unaware that they are hastening a global catastrophe of Biblical proportions as the Spectre invisibly gathers the facts for his apocalyptic judgement.

In the ensuing chaos, crippled warrior Bruce Wayne rejects Superman’s paternalistic, doctrinaire crusade and allies himself with mortal humanity’s libertarian elite – Ted (Blue Beetle) Kord, Dinah (Black Canary) Lance and Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen – to resist what can only be considered a grab for world domination by its metahuman minority. As helpless McCay watches in horror, Wayne’s group makes its own plans; one more dangerous thread in a tapestry of calamity…

At first Superman’s plans seem blessed to succeed, with many erstwhile threats flocking to his banner and his doctrinaire rules of discipline, but as ever there are self-serving villains with their own agendas. Lex Luthor organises a cabal of like-minded compatriots – Vandal Savage, Catwoman, Riddler, Kobra and Ibn Al Xu’ffasch (“Son of the Demon” Ra’s Al Ghul) – into a “Mankind Liberation Front”. With Shazam-empowered Captain Marvel as their slave, this group are determined the super-freaks shall not win. Their cause is greatly advanced once Wayne’s clique joins them…

‘Up in the Sky’ sees events spiral into catastrophe as McCay, still wracked by his visions of Armageddon, is shown the Gulag where recalcitrant metahumans are dumped. He also witnesses how it will fail, learns from restless spirit Deadman that The Spectre is the literal Angel of Death and watches with growing horror as Luthor’s plan to usurp control from the army of Superman leads to shocking confrontation, betrayal and a deadly countdown to the End of Days…

The deadly drama culminates in a staggering battle of superpowers, last moment salvation and a second chance for humanity in a calamitous world-shaking ‘Never-Ending Battle’…

Thanks to McCay’s simple humanity, the world gets another chance and this edition follows up with epilogue ‘One Year Later’ ending the momentous epic on a note of renewed hope…

This particular edition – released as a 20th Anniversary deluxe hardback, a standard trade paperback and in digital format – came with an introduction by author and former DC scribe Elliot S. Maggin, assorted cover reproductions and art-pieces, an illustrated checklist of the vast cast list plus a plethora of creative notes and sketches in the ‘Apocrypha’ section, and even hints at lost glories in ‘Evolution’: notes, photos and drawings for a restored scene that never made it into the miniseries. We will have to see what Kingdom Come DC Compact Comics Edition additionally offers when it’s released next May…

Epic, engaging and operatically spectacular, Kingdom Come is a milestone of the DC Universe and remains to this day a solid slice of superior superhero entertainment, worthy of your undivided attention.
© 1996, 2006, 2008, 2016, 2019 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because Quality Counts …9/10

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Bloom County: Real, Classy, & Compleat 1980-1989


By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co./IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-976-9 (HB/Digital editions)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in far less enlightened times.

Oh Joy! Oh Joy! More American elections!

This review is a blatant deception. As usual, I’ve cited a specific release you should have – especially if you’re a hedonistic sucker for the comfortingly tactile and simultaneously intoxicating buzz of a sturdy, well-bound block of processed tree, glue, stitches and inks containing wonderful stories and images – and it’s worth every penny. Actually, though, I’m really telling you to take a look at one remarkable creator’s entire output…

For most of the 1980s and half of the 1990s, Berke Breathed dominated the American newspaper comic strip scene with his astoundingly funny, edgy-yet-surreal political fantasy Bloom County (8th December 1980 to August 6th). All his stuff is fully available digitally – so don’t dawdle here with my reviews, just get them now!

At the top of his game and swamped with dazzling awards like Pulitzer prizes, Breathed retired from strip work to concentrate on a series of lavish children’s fantasy picture books – such as Red Ranger Came Calling and Mars Needs Moms! They rank among the best America has ever produced. Get them too.

His first foray into the field was 1991’s A Wish for Wings That Work: a Christmas parable featuring Breathed’s signature character, and his most charmingly human. Opus is a talking penguin, reasonably well-educated (for America), archaically erudite, genteel, emotionally vulnerable; insecure yet unfalteringly optimistic (think Alan Alda in a tux and fat-suit). His two most fervent dreams are to be reunited with his absent mother one day, and that in the fullness of time he might fly like a “real” bird…

Between 2003 and 2008, Breathed revived Opus as a Sunday strip, but eventually capitulated to a career-long antipathy to manic deadline pressures in newspaper production and the often-insane, convoluted contradictions of editorial censorship. It seemed his ludicrous yet appealing cast of misfits – all deadly exponents of irony, sarcasm and common sense residing in the heartland of American conservatism – were done and gone for good.

Ultimately, however, the internet provided a platform for the opinionated artist to resume his role as a gadfly commentator on his own terms. Since 2015, Bloom County has returned to mock, expose and shame capitalism, celebrities, consumerism, popular culture, politicians, religious leaders and people who act like idiots. He does it at his own pace (only seven strips in 2023!) and became guardian of America’s artistic soul when he began – with permission – to incorporate Bill Watterson’s immaculate clowns Calvin and Hobbes into his outings.

These post-2015 efforts, unconstrained by syndicate pressures to not offend advertisers, are also available in book collections. You’ll want those too, and be delighted to learn all that Bloom County treasure is available in digital formats – fully annotated to compensate for the history gap if you didn’t live through events such as Iran-Gate, Live-Aid, Star Wars (both cinematic and military-industrial complex versions), assorted cults and televangelists experiencing less that divine retribution and the other tea-cup storms that have made us Baby Boomers so rude and defensive…

Once more, I’m recommending an entire canon of work rather than a specific volume, but Bloom County, Outland, Opus and – oh, heaven, unbound! – the triumphant second coming of the Bloom County crew of recent years are absolute classics of comics creation: political, polemical, sardonic, surreal, groundbreaking, witty, acerbic, frequently angry and always, ALWAYS cripplingly funny.

I barely survived those years and can honestly admit it’s probably the best treatise of modern history and social criticism you will ever see.

Set firmly in The Heartland – what we’ve all accepted as Trump’s fact-resistant, rationality-immune base territory – the strip pitilessly lampoons fads, traditions and icons through the lens of youngsters and a menagerie of astute talking animals living in or around the Bloom Boarding House. Also adding to the confusions are bastions and bulwarks of American society: horny ambulance-chasing jock lawyer Steve Dallas, Vietnam survivor Cutter John, liberal feminist school teacher Bobbi Harlow, New Age hippie Quiche Lorraine, corrupt Senator Bedfellow, and many more lampoonable archetypes, like fundamentalist Christians and Donald Trump…

The true stars though are the kids and beasts who perpetually vex, perplex and test them, asking questions and taking radical action to set the old order “all higgledy-piggledy” – such as their creation of a third force in politics: The Meadow Party that has (unsuccessfully, thus far) fought every presidential election since 1980…

Hilarious, biting, wildly imaginative and crafted with a huge amount of sheer emotional guts and empathy, these strips are simply incomparable. If you love laughter, despise chicanery and crave unique characters and great art, this is a universe you simply must inhabit.

… And while you’re at it, get those other books I mentioned. It can’t be Christmas without them. When the family have almost ruined the holiday, of if you find yourself somewhere other than where you’d want or expect to be, this is what you want to restore your spirits. Kids too.
© 2017, 2020 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

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Popeye: The Great Comic Book Tales by Bud Sagendorf


By Bud Sagendorf, edited & designed by Craig Yoe (Yoe Books/IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-60010-747-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68406-381-9

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Forest Cowles Sagendorf (March 22nd 1915 – September 22nd 1994) died 30 years ago today. He was a master of cartoon comedy adventure only known for one stellar character.

There are few comic stars to have entered communal world consciousness, but a grizzled, bluff, uneducated, visually impaired old sailor with a speech impediment is possibly the most well-known of that select bunch. He’s a true global icon but today we’re talking about and celebrating the second genius who crafted his salty exploits…

Elzie Segar had been producing Thimble Theatre since December 19th 1919, but when he introduced a coarse, brusque “sailor man” into the saga of vaudevillian archetypes Ham Gravy and Castor Oyl on January 17th 1929, nobody suspected the giddy heights the scrappy walk-on would reach. Once old swab Popeye appeared, he wouldn’t go and he’s still going strong under the aegis of cartoonist R. K. Milholland (Something Positive, New Gold Dreams, Midnight Macabre, Classically Positive, Super Stupor) who took over from Hy Eisman (Kerry Drake, Little Iodine, Bunny, Little Lulu, The Katzenjammer Kids) in 2022.

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

After Segar’s demise in 1938, Doc Winner, Tom Sims, Ralph Stein and Bela Zambouly all worked on the newspaper strip even as animated short features brought “The Sailor Man” to the entire world via the magic of movies. Sadly, none of the films had the eccentric flair and raw inventiveness which had rocketed Thimble Theatre to the forefront of cartoon entertainment…

Born in 1915, Forrest “Bud” Sagendorf was barely 17 when his sister – who worked in the Santa Monica art store where Segar bought his supplies – introduced the star struck kid to the master who became his teacher and employer as well as a father-figure. In 1958, Sagendorf took over the strip and ALL merchandise design, becoming Popeye’s prime originator…

When he did, his loose, rangy style and breezy scripts brought the strip itself back to the forefront of popularity and made reading it cool and fun all over again. He wrote and drew Popeye in every graphic arena – including the majority of licensed merchandise – for 24 years. When Sagendorf retired in 1986, Underground cartoonist Bobby London took over the sailor-man’s voyages until his death in 1994.

Bud had been Segar’s assistant and apprentice and learned the ropes from a master. When Dell Comics – America’s king of licensed periodicals – asked him to write and illustrate Popeye’s comic book adventures, the title began in 1948 and carried on for three decades.

When Popeye first appeared, he was a rude, crude brawler: a gambling, cheating, uncivilised ne’er-do-well. He was embraced as the ultimate working-class hero: raw and rough-hewn, practical, but with an innate, unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not; a joker who wants kids to be themselves – but not necessarily “good” – and someone taking guff from no one. Naturally, as his popularity grew, Popeye mellowed somewhat. He was still ready to defend the weak and had absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows but the shocking sense of dangerous unpredictability and comedic anarchy he initially provided was sorely missed – but not in Sagendorf’s comicbook yarns…

Collected in this enchanting full-colour edition is an admittedly arbitrary, far from definitive selection of the Young Master’s compelling Dell funnybook canon, spanning February/April 1948 to September 1957. The many other yarns are available in IDW’s Popeye Classics series and if you like this you’ll be wanting those in the fullness of time.

Stunning, seemingly stream-of-consciousness stories are preceded here by an effusively appreciative Introduction by Jerry Beck before ‘Ahoy, Ya Swabs!’ relays official history and private recollections from inspired aficionado and historian/publisher Craig Yoe, augmented by a fabulous collation of candid photos, original comic book art and more. Especial gems are Bud’s 1956 lessons on backgrounds from the Famous Artists Cartoon Course, series of postcards and the Red Cross booklet produced for sailors.

Popeye’s fantastic first issue launched cover-dated February 1948, with no ads and offering duo-coloured (black & red) single page strips on the inside front and back covers. From that premiere a full-coloured crisis comes as ‘Shame on You! or Gentlemen Do Not Fight! or You’re a Ruffian, Sir!’ sees our salty swab earning a lucrative living as an occasional prize-fighter. That all ends when upcoming contender Kid Kabagge and his cunning manager Mr. Tillbox use a barrage of psychological tricks to put Popeye off his game. The key component is electing his sweetie Olive Oyl President of a fictitious Anti-Fisticuff Society to convince her man to stop being such a beastly ruffian and to abandon violence. It works… but only until the fiery frail learns that she has also been gulled…

Next up is the lead tale from #9, (October/November) as ‘Misermites! or I’d Rather Have Termites!’ details how peaceful coastal town Seawet is plagued by an invasion of plundering dwarves. When the pixie-ish petty pilferers vanish back to their island with “orphink kid” Swee’ Pea as part of the spoils, Popeye and Wimpy give chase and end up battling a really, really big secret weapon…

‘Witch Whistle’ comes from Popeye #12 (April/May 1950) and sees the swabbie revisit embattled kingdom Spinachovia where old King Blozo is plagued by a rash of vanishing farmers. The cause is nefarious old nemesis The Sea Witch whose vast army of giant vultures seem unbeatable until Popeye intervenes…

Popeye #21’s (July-September 1952) ‘Interplanetary Battle’ taps into a growing fascination with UFOs as Wimpy innocently seeks to aid his old pal. When no prize fighter on Earth will box with Popeye, the helpful vagabond moocher broadcasts a message to the universe. What answers the call is a bizarre shapeshifting swab with sneaky magic powers…

An engaging Micawber-like coward, cad and conman, incorrigible insatiable J. Wellington Wimpy debuted in the newspaper strip on May 3rd 1931: an unnamed and decidedly partisan referee in one of Popeye’s pugilistic bouts. The scurrilous but so-polite oaf struck a chord and Segar gradually made him a fixture. Always hungry, eagerly soliciting bribes and a cunning coiner of many immortal catchphrases – such as “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” and “Let’s you and him fight” – Wimpy was a perfect foil for the simple action hero and increasingly stole the entire show… and anything else unless it was extremely well nailed down…

From Popeye #25 (July-September 1953), ‘Shrink Weed’ details how some “wild spinach” reduces the old salt and baby Swee’ Pea to the size of insects with outrageous and potentially dire consequences before the entire cast visit ‘The Happy Little Island’ (#27, January-March 1954) and confront subsurface creatures doing their darndest to spoil that jolly atmosphere.

An epic thrill-fest manifests in ‘Alone! or Hey! Where is Everybody? or Peoples is All Gone!’ (#32, April-June 1955) as humans are abducted from all over the coast, leading Popeye into another ferocious battle with evil machines and his most persistent enemy, after which another family sea voyage results in the cast being castaway on an island of irascible invisible folk in ‘Nothing!’ (#34, October-December 1955). The fun concludes in sheer surreal strife as Popeye #41 (July-September 1957) displays capitalism at its finest when Olive gets a new boyfriend: one with a regular job and prospects. Stung to retaliate, Popeye devises ‘Spinach Soap!’ to secure his own fortune, but being an un-ejjikated, rough-&-ready sort, appoints Wimpy as his boss and administrator. Big mistake…

There was only one Segar and only one Sagendorf but there has always been more than one Popeye. Most of them are pretty good, and some are truly excellent. The one in this book is definitely one of the latter and if you love lunacy, laughter and rollicking adventure you must now read this.
Popeye: The Great Comic Book Tales by Bud Sagendorf © 2018 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Popeye © 2018 King Features Syndicate. ™ & © Heart Holdings Inc.

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Lord of the Flies – The Graphic Novel


By William Golding, adapted and illustrated by Aimée de Jongh (Faber & Faber)
ISBN: 978-0-571-37425-0 (HB/Digital edition)

In 1954, after many disappointments, one philosophy teacher, sailor (and Royal Navy D-Day veteran), actor and musician finally sold his first novel. Strangers from Within was a reaction to R. M. Ballantyne’s Christian-centric children’s classic The Coral Island, seen through the lens of a sensitive school teacher who had seen man at his very worst and was recuperating during the earliest era of a growing Cold War.

The book was knocked back many times before one editor at Faber – Charles Monteith (who liked and published Samuel Beckett, John Osborne, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, P. D. James, Philip Larkin and Alan Bennett and so many, many more gifted individuals) – saw something there and decided to have a punt…

As Lord of the Flies, the book hit the shelves and steadily grew to become one of the most revered, beloved and inspirational stories of all time and one that has literally reshaped social thought and opinion. In this 70th anniversary year, the book will be re-issued in an exclusive deluxe hardback edition, but its status as milestone and groundbreaker deserved more. Thus award-winning graphic novelist Aimée de Jongh (The Return of the Honey Buzzard, Days of Sand) was commissioned to create this adaptation and visual synthesis to celebrate the initial publication. The result is truly remarkable…

Golding went on to write more amazing books – such as The Inheritors, The Free Fall, Pincher Martin, The Double Tongue, and Booker Prize winner Rites of Passage, and was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature, and it’s very likely this pictorial treat will garner a few more glittering citations and prizes…

You may not have read it, but sheer cultural osmosis means you already know Lord of the Flies to some degree.

A plane carrying a large group of pre-adolescent British schoolboys crashes into the Pacific Ocean and a number of survivors make the arduous swim to a desolate but lush mountainous island. Shocked, stunned and starving, the ineffectual gaggle initially unite to find food and water and quickly evolve processes and systems to stay alive. A reflection of their schoolboy experiences soon divide the group into leaders and followers, as much by confusion and inertia as ambition or duty. The search for sustenance and means of rescue is constantly marred by a growing unease that their prison harbours monsters…

All too soon oppressive regulation and the nascent rules of conduct and governance – like only speaking at gatherings when holding the “Conch shell” – creates entrenched opposing viewpoints, factionalism and inevitably escalating violence…

Adaptor de Jongh magnificently captures the dichotomy of a paradise that is also hell and the inexorable mounting pressure upon narrative beacons Ralph, Piggy, Simon and Jack Merridew as the drama unfolds…

This superb creation is not a substitute for the three film adaptations, many stage and radio plays or the novel itself: it’s just another sublime opportunity of accessing a milestone tale in an increasingly and regrettable post-literate era where direct visual information has largely augmented if not yet replaced the semantic and semiotic processing of prose. It is, however, just as compelling and evocative as Golding’s world-shaking masterpiece and you really need to read both. I don’t have the conch of speaking anymore, so it’s up to you to choose which you do first…

Lord of the Flies © William Golding 1954. Adaptations and illustrations © Aimée de Jongh 2024. All rights reserved.
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Simply Unmissable …10/10