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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto


By Carl Barks (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-779-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

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

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901. He grew up in rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in American history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks worked as an animator at Disney’s studio before quitting in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books.

With cartoon studio partner Jack Hannah (another occasional strip illustrator) Barks adapted a Bob Karp script for an animated short into the comic book Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. Published as Dell Four Color Comics Series II #9 in October of that year – and although not his first published comics work – it was the story that shaped the rest of Barks’ career.

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

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

So potent were his creations that they inevitably fed back into Disney’s animation output itself, even though his brilliant comic work was done for licensing company Dell/Gold Key, and not directly for the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly the animated series Duck Tales: heavily based on his works.

Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries, rationality-based fantasy and epics of exploration. This led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster quest tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps to utterly captivate readers of every type and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions, there would never have been Indiana Jones…

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

In 2013 Fantagraphics Books began collecting Barks’ Duck Stuff in wonderful, carefully curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes and digital editions that finally do justice to the quiet creator. These will eventually comprise the Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The publisher also placed some of the most engaging (How to choose? How to choose?) in three accessible landscape paperback collections. At 185 by 140 mm, they are the perfect size to introduce kids to the master’s masterpieces. They’re all available in digital formats, and this particular tome has a spooky Halloween vibe to further entice you…

The majority of inclusions here come from 1947, so please be aware that – despite Bark’s diligent research and careful, sensitive storytelling – modern readers might be upset by some depictions crafted over seven decades ago…

It begins eponymously on a nautical note: ‘Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto’ is an early masterpiece originating in Four Color #159 (August 1947), with Donald and the rowdy, know-it-all nephews who live with him currently residing in the West Indies, running a kelp boat and harvesting seaweed from the abundant oceans. Here, Huey, Dewey and Louie are the sensible ones in a risky, get-rich-quick venture. Although prime catalysts of comedic chaos in other situations when the mallard miser was around, in Barks’ comics the devilishly downy ducklings’ usual assigned roles were as smartly sensible, precocious and a just a bit snotty kid-counterfoils to their “unca”, whose inescapably irascible nature caused him to act like an overgrown brat most of the time. Nevertheless, all too often the kids fell into temptation, reverted to type and fell prey to a perpetual temptation to raise a ruckus…

When a freak accident temporarily strands them on an isolated reef, Donald and the lads discover a long-lost, shipwrecked galleon, encounter an ongoing abduction mystery dating back centuries, battle genuine monsters, confound a particularly persistent phantom and win and lose again a fabulous treasure in a  thrilling romp and supremely beguiling mystery that has never dated…

Originally from Four Color #147 (May), ‘If the Hat Fits’ is an 7-panel gag split over two of these landscape pages, detailing chapeau japery, and precedes ‘Fashion in Flight’ (FC#178, December), exposing hot-headed Donald’s views on car culture.

Thanks to the nephews and some imprudent bee-keeping, a potty scheme to make more cash becomes another painful and humiliating experience as the bellicose bird tries growing blooms commercially in his garden in ‘Donald’s Posy Patch’ (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #80, May 1947), after which ‘Turn for the Worse’ (Four Color #178 again) reveals just how annoying – and violent – people looking for directions can become…

From the same issue, ‘Machine Mixup’ sees kitchen confusion for Donald as he experiences the downside of modern white goods, before ‘Donald Mines his Own Business’ (WDC&S #81 June) finds the loco parent-ish duck and his boys prospecting in New Mexico. It’s barely moments before they all fall foul of America’s post-war arms rush and missile-race, with devastating and spectacular consequences…

From FC #189 (June 1948) ‘Bird Watching’ exposes the hidden perils of the gentle hobby before  superstition is painfully debunked in ‘Horseshoe Luck’. The fluffy fun finally finishes with an epic farrago – first seen in WDC&S #86 (January 1947) – as telling tale exposes the rise and fall of ‘Fireman Donald’ whose smug hubris ultimately deprives him of a job he’s actually good at!

Carl Barks’ efforts are readily accessible through a number of publications and outlets and every one of his stories is a treasure beyond price. If you’re new to his work and have never experienced his captivating magic, Walt Disney’s Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto is a perfect introduction. No matter what your age or temperament, you can discover “the Hans Christian Andersen of Comics” simply by applying yourself and your credit cards to any search engine.

Always remember, a fan’s got to do what a fan’s got to do and treasure is out there just waiting to be unearthed…
© 2014 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

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El Mestizo


By Alan Hebden & Carlos Ezquerra (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-657-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Carlos Sanchez Ezquerra was born in Aragon on November 12th 1947. Growing up in Ibdes, in the Province of Zaragoza, he began his career illustrating war stories and westerns for Spain’s large but poorly-paying indigenous comics industry. In 1973 he got a British agent (Barry Coker: a former sub-editor on Super Detective Library who formed Bardon Press Features with Spanish artist Jorge Macabich): joining a growing army of European and South American illustrators providing content for British weeklies, Specials and Annuals.

Like so many superbly talented newcomers, Ezquerra initially worked on Girls’ Periodicals  – like Valentine and Mirabelle – and more cowboys for Pocket Western Library as well as assorted adventure strips for DC Thomson’s The Wizard. The work proved so regular that the Ezquerras upped sticks and migrated to Croydon…

In 1974, Pat Mills & John Wagner tapped him to work on IPCs new Battle Picture Weekly, where he drew (Gerry Finley-Day’s) Rat Pack, and later, Major Eazy scripted by Alan Hebden. Three years later he was asked to design a new character called Judge Dredd for a proposed science fiction anthology. Due to creative disputes, Carlos left the project and went back to Battle to draw instead a gritty western entitled El Mestizo…

As we all know, Carlos did return to 2000AD, illustrating Dredd, dozens of spin-offs such as Al’s Baby, Strontium Dog (1978), Fiends of the Eastern Front (1980), adaptations of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat and key Dredd storylines such as the epic Apocalypse War and Necropolis.

Soon after, Ezquerra was “discovered” by America…

El Mestizo debuted amidst a plethora of British-based war features and didn’t last long – June 4th to September 17th 1977 – with author Alan Hebden giving you his take on why in a concise Introduction before the action begins.

Born in Bristol in 1950, Hebden is a second generation comics scripter, having followed his dad into the profession. The lad began his career writing Commando Picture Library stories for DC Thomson – and he still does – and also contributed to the company’s adventure titles Hornet and Victor.

For Fleetway he co-created Major Eazy, and scripted Rat Pack for Battle; The Angry Planet for Tornado; Comrade Bronski, The Fifth Horseman and The Tower King for Eagle; Holocaust and Mind Wars for Starlord and – for 2000 AD – M.A.C.H. One, Mean Team, Death Planet, Meltdown Man, Future Shocks, amongst many others.

Heavily leaning on Sergio Leone “spaghetti westerns”, the first starkly monochrome Mestizo episode – of 16 – introduces a half-black, half-Mexican bounty-hunting gunfighter who offers his formidable services to both the Union and Confederate sides in the early days of the War between the States.

Proficient with blades, pistols, long guns and a deadly bola, El Mestizo plays both sides while hunting truly evil men, whether they be Southern raiders, rogue Northern marauders, treacherous Indian scouts, army deserters from both sides organised by a crazy, vengeful femme fatale, or even a demented physician seeking to end the war by releasing plague in Washington DC.

Along the way, the mercenary even finds time to pay off a few old scores from his days as a starved and beaten plantation slave…

Sadly, the feature was always a fish out of water and was killed off before it could truly develop, but the artwork is staggeringly powerful and the stories deliver the kind of cathartic punch that never gets old.

This stunning package is another nostalgia-triumph from Battle, collecting a truly seminal experience, and hopefully forging a new, untrodden path for fans of grittily compelling fare and sampling a typically quirky British comics experience.

This gem is one of the most memorable and enjoyable exploits in British comics: acerbic, action-packed and potently rendered: another superb example of what British and European sensibilities do best. Try it and see…
© 1977 & 2018 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Ultimate Comics Avengers: Blade versus The Avengers


By Mark Millar, Steve Dillon, Andy Lanning, Scott Hanna & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4009-2 (TPB/Digital)

Marvel’s Ultimates sub-imprint began in 2000 with key characters and concepts retooled to bring them into line with the tastes and sensibilities of modern readers – a potentially discrete market from the baby-boomers and their descendants. The line proliferated and prospered, but eventually this darkly nihilistic new universe became as continuity-constricted as its predecessor.

In 2008, cleansing event Ultimatum culminated in a reign of terror that killed dozens of superhumans and millions of lesser mortals. Although a strong seller, the saga was largely trashed by the fans who bought it, and the ongoing new Ultimatum Comics line quietly back-pedalled on its declared intentions…

The key and era-ending event was a colossal tsunami that drowned the superhero-heavy island of Manhattan. This post-tsunami collection (re-presenting Ultimate Comics Avengers 3 #1-6) focuses on a more or less dried out world with diminished global populations adapted to the new status quo.

Before the Deluge, Nick Fury (a black iteration so popular that he not only became the film version, but was also retrofitted into the mainstream MCU and replaced the white guy from WWII) ran a super-secret Black Ops team of superhumans designated the Avengers. He was eventually ousted from his position for sundry rule-bending antics – and being caught doing them. Now, as the world dries, he’s firmly re-established, running another black ops team, doing stuff his publicity-courting, officially sanctioned Ultimates team wouldn’t dream of…

Fury’s secret army consists of Hawkeye – the man who never misses; James Rhodes: a fanatical soldier wearing devastating War Machine armour; Gregory Stark, Iron Man’s smarter, utterly amoral older brother; Nerd Hulk – a cloned gamma-monster with all the original’s power but implanted/programmed with Banner’s brain and milksop character; size-shifting insect queen Red Wasp and ruthless super-spy Black Widow.

Also popping in when no one’s looking is resurrected WWII super soldier Captain America – part of the bright and shiny squad, but always happy to slum it when necessary…

Here the dark-side heroes stumble into an ancient and clandestine war that has continued uninterrupted by the end of the world, which sees half-human vampire-hunter Blade on the unaccustomed defensive. The undead bloodsuckers he has historically picked off with ease are now far better organised, more effective and more dangerous. As the story unfolds, it transpires they have found a new king with a grand plan…

This mysterious mastermind is wearing Iron Man’s old armour and now ignores ordinary mortals, preferring to turn super-heroes into a vampiric army. The situation starts bad and gets exponentially worse with metahuman heroes and guest-stars – like Kid Daredevil, Slavic thunder god Perun, numerous Giant-Men, and zen hero-trainer Stick – dropping like flies. With all possible saviours succumbing to the unstoppable plague, it looks hopeless when only Fury, Black Widow and Hawkeye are left untainted, and only the greatest miracle or boldest masterstroke can save humanity. After Cap also succumbs to the curse of the undead, the team’s unwelcome sometime-ally Blade makes a bold but surely suicidal move…

With covers and variants by Leinil Francis Yu, Marte Gracia, Ed McGuinness, Morry Hollowell, Olivier Coipel, Laura Martin, Greg Land, Frank D’Armata, this dark, moody and fast-paced thriller comes from Mark Millar (Judge Dredd, Civil War, Superman, Kick-Ass, The Kingsman, American Jesus, Jupiter’s Legacy) and Steve Dillon (Laser Eraser & Pressbutton, Abslom Daak, Judge Dredd, Animal Man, Preacher, Hellblazer, The Punisher): a wry, violent and powerfully scary romp that is engrossing and eminently readable.

This spooky, cynical, sinister shocker is another breathtakingly effective yarn that could only be told outside the Marvel Universe proper, but one that will resonate with older fans who love the darkest side of superheroes (and remember fondly the days when heroes could be horrors) as well as casual readers who know the company’s movies better than the comics.
© 2020 MARVEL. A British edition published by Panini is also available.

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Semiautomagic volume 1


By Alex De Campi & Jerry Ordway, coloured by Marissa Louise (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-001-4 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-63008-668-8

In an industry/art form that has become over-reliant on vast interlocking storylines, requiring an encyclopaedic knowledge of a million other yarns and the tacit consent to sign up for another million episodes before reaching any kind of narrative payoff, the occasional short, sharp, intensely stand-alone tale is as welcome and vital as a reliable torch in a haunted house.

Just such a salutary singleton (thus far: there’s plenty of scope for more adventures!) was this solid action-horror outing that first appeared in 2014 in Dark Horse Presents volume 3 #4-9 and #13-17.

A no-nonsense, straightforward battle of earthly mage against ancient uncanny abomination, the series was devised (and lettered) by novelist, film director, columnist and comics creator Alex De Campi (Smoke, Kat & Mouse, Agent Boo, Archie vs Predator, Bad Girls, No Mercy, MADI, Bad Karma) and illustrated by certified comics giant Jerry Ordway (All-Star Squadron, Fantastic Four, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Adventures of Superman, The Power of Shazam!, WildStar, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, The Avengers) and introduces enigmatic-woman-with-a-past Alice Creed.

An untenured professor at New Haven, her classes attract all the cool kids, but she has a bad reputation and appalling attendance record. Her students never know when she will turn up to teach, because she consults on police cases. Not ordinary ones, though: Professor Creed gets a call whenever science and reason go out the window…

Her best friend is teaching assistant Archie Rollins: a constant helpmeet and dutiful substitute for her classes. He’s also her housekeeper and is not local – by at least a dozen dimensions…

This morning, as Archie pacifies another disappointed bunch of teens who wanted to experience the mystic “rock star” sharing the unseen secrets of existence, Creed is far away in Bridgeport, attending another uncategorizable case stumping the cops…

Having established that magic always comes at a cruelly high cost, ‘Semiautomagic: The Bomb That Will Bring Us Together’ follows her as the Prof uncovers a case of possession resembling an old case. This time, a kid’s soul has been sucked into the void, via his computer, and a little blood magic determines he’s only one of thousands to have fallen victim to a demonic computer game…

After a ghostly visitation and a touch of divination, Alice heads for Las Cruces, New Mexico tooled up and wearing her other hat: that of merciless monster killer…

Her flight is far from peaceful or uneventful, but overcoming all eldritch resistance, she’s soon bargaining with the local supernal forces for permission to work in their territory, discovering her current quarry has been poaching on their turf with no care regarding the rules and laws governing the magical world.

Creed is cautious and polite, but determined. She knows her place and mission in the ancient hierarchy and considers the huge number of people she couldn’t save as her greatest burden. Here, that attitude leads her an abandoned atomic test town and army of reanimated plastic dummies where she discovers all the magically-abducted games-playing kids just as the vile entity seeking access to Earth orchestrates one last nuclear detonation…

Surviving thermonuclear destruction thanks to her arcane gifts, Creed is then betrayed by one she trusted and forced to confront the extra-dimensional Traveller manipulating the awful events. The invader is exultantly triumphant… until Creed forcefully and fatally reminds it of the Hierarchy already established on this world and the next…

Her mass exorcism also sends most of the abducted souls back to their bodies at a terrible cost, but in the excitement and stress of the ritual, Alice misses something…

A year later – or ten days in-continuity – ‘Semiautomagic: Throne of Blood’ takes up the tale as the drained monster hunter returns to academia, blithely unaware that her oversight has come looking for her and is now attending her classes…

By the time she notices, the sweet and sexy “transfer student” Mark Van Scuyer has charmed his way into the lives of Creed’s class, but her own rules and spectral “Board of Advisors” won’t let her kill him. She has to writhe and burn in frustration until he does something to contravene the laws. She doesn’t have long to wait…

When the beast begins his predations by arcanely assaulting favourite student Chloe and feeding on her pain, the act unleashes a wave of staggering horror and rapacious evil as Mark gathers strength from attacks on the populace. When he targets the misery of the local hospital, Creed knows what she must do and will not be stopped…

Old-fashioned duels between Good and Evil featuring a kick-ass protagonist with almost as much emotional baggage as arcane weaponry, this is a superb done-in-one magical monstery tour to delight old time horror buffs seeking something a little bit new in the grand old manner. The saga is supplemented by ‘Semiautomagic: Behind the Scenes’ sharing Ordway’s roughs, pencil art, cover sketches and more, before tantalising glimpses of De Campi’s Grindhouse comics close the curtain on this fear fest.

Semiautomagic is a perfect B-Movie horror comic: stark, inventive, rollercoaster-paced and rendered with exhilarating bravura. This thundering, down-and-dirty fable grips like a vice and hits like a hammer, and in Professor Alice Creed comics have another weird warrior to join the ranks of Doctors Fate, Strange, Voodoo, Doom, Drew, Mirage and all the rest.
© 2014, 2015, 2016 Alex de Campi and Jerry Ordway. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents The Witching Hour


By Alex Toth, Bob Haney, George Kashdan, Ed Herron, Jack Miller, Carl Wessler, Dennis O’Neil, Steve Skeates, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway, Jack Oleck, Mike Friedrich, Alan Riefe, Dave Kaler, Phil Seuling, Jack Phillips, Murray Boltinoff, Sergio Aragonés, Nick Cardy, Carmine Infantino, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Neal Adams, Mike Sekowsky, George Tuska, Wally Wood, Dick Giordano, Joe Orlando, Bob Brown, Gray Morrow, Murphy Anderson, Pat Boyette, Bill Draut, Howard Sherman, Howard Post, Jerry Grandenetti, John Celardo, Art Saaf, Jack Sparling, Michael Wm. Kaluta, José Delbo, Lee Elias, Sid Greene, Jeff Jones, Tony DeZuñiga, Bernie Wrightson, Jim Aparo, John Calnan & many & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3022-7 (TPB)

American comic books struggled until the creation of superheroes unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and invented a new genre. Implacably vested in World War II, the Overman swept all before him (and the far too occasional her) until the troops came home and more traditional genres supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Although kids (of all ages) kept buying, much of the previous generation also retained a four-colour habit, but increasingly sought more mature themes in the reading matter. The war years altered the psychology of the world, and as a more world-weary, cynical public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything, their chosen forms of entertainment (film and prose as well as comics) reflected this.

As well as Western, War and Crime comics, escapist comedy and anthropomorphic animal features were immediately resurgent, but gradually another periodic revival of spiritualism and interest in the supernatural led to a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and even shocking horror comics.

There had been a sector of supernatural stars before; even a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in mystery-man garb and trappings: The Spectre, Dr. Fate, The Heap, The Heap, Mr. Justice, Sgt. Spook, Frankenstein and dozens of others). However, these had been individualistic victims of circumstance, with the vague force of “The Unknown” acting as a power source for super-heroics. Now the focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond human ken or control with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on an increasingly popular bandwagon, with B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launching the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948 – although Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon, who had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 before launching a regular series in 1951.

By this time Classics Illustrated had already long-milked the literary end of the medium with adaptations of The Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

If we’re keeping score this was also the period in which Joe Simon & Jack Kirby identified another “mature market” gap and invented the Romance comic (via Young Romance #1, cover-dated September 1947). They too saw the sales potential of spooky stories, resulting in the seminal Black Magic (1950) and boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams (1952).

National Periodicals/DC Comics also bowed to the inevitable, and in 1951 launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles – The House of Mystery. When the hysterical censorship scandal which led to witch-hunting hearings was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulatory rules, HoM and sister title House of Secrets were dialled back into rationalistic, fantasy adventure vehicles, which nevertheless dominated the market. This was the status quo until the 1960s when superheroes (which had started to creep back after Julius Schwartz began the Silver Age of comics by reintroducing The Flash in Showcase #4, 1956) finally overtook them.

Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom and an avalanche of other costumed characters became a gaudy global bubble of masked madness which forced even dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books.

However, nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and Silver Age superhero boom stalled and crashed as the 1960s ended, leading to surviving comics publishers agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at that time, but since the liberalisation coincided with another bump in global interest in the supernatural, a resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion…

Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Thrillers…

With Tales of the Unexpected #105 and House of Mystery #174, National/DC switched back to anthology horror material, before creating an all-new title to further exploit our morbid fascination with all thingies fearsome and spooky (even resurrecting the cancelled House of Secrets in late 1969) for those heady days when it was okay – and profitable – to scare the heck out of little kids by making them laugh.

Edited until #14 by Dick Giordano, The Witching Hour first struck with a February/March 1969 cover-date (actually on-sale from December 19th 1968) and from the outset was an extremely experimental and intriguing beast. This amazingly economical Showcase Presents collection reprints the first 19 issues, covering the first three years as a fear fad grew to become the backbone of DC’s sales. It is perhaps the most talent-stuffed title of that entire period…

In this graphic grimoire, the cool and creepy horror-hosts who traditionally introduce the entertainment are three witches. Based as much on Macbeth as the ancient concept of Maiden, Mother & Crone, this torrid trio constantly strove to outdo and out-gross each other in the telling of terror tales. Moreover, Cynthia, Mildred and Mordred – as well as shy monster man-servant Egor – were designed by and initially delineated by master illustrator Alex Toth, making framing sequences between yarns as good as and sometimes better than the stories they brazenly bracketed.

One minor quibble: records from the period are not complete and occasionally a creator is unknown, but this volume also sadly misattributes the artist too. I’ve attempted to correct the mistakes when I’m certain, but please be warned and beware – I’m not always right either…

Following a stunning Nick Cardy cover, Toth started the ball rolling by introducing the sinister sisters and their ongoing contest before Dennis O’Neil & Pat Boyette relate the story of a time-travelling tap-dancer in ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’.

Toth wrote and limned a compelling period piece of peril in ‘Eternal Hour!’ and Jack Sparling related the eerie fate of wave-obsessed Stanley’s search for ‘The Perfect Surf’.

Toth’s scary sisters closed out the premier issue (with, I suspect, additional inks from Neal Adams), but still found room for ‘Silk Gauze’, an informational page by persons unknown which first appeared in Tales of the Unexpected.

Although attributed to Toth, #2’s introductory episode is by his old Standard Comics stable-mate Mike Sekowsky (inked by Giordano), leading into Sparling/s dream-chiller ‘Scream!’, after which José Delbo delineates a shocking period tale of slavery and vengeance ‘The Trip of Fools!’ before Sid Greene’s ghost story ‘The Beat Goes On!’ and Sparling’s ‘Once Upon a Surprise Ending!’ end an issue regrettably short on writer credits.

Following another Sekowsky/Giordano intro, Toth & Vince Colletta illustrate Don Arneson’s medieval mood masterpiece ‘The Turn of the Wheel!’ whilst Alan Riefe & Sparling tell a decidedly different ghost-story in ‘The Death Watch’, after which Steve Skeates & Bernie Wrightson debut a decidedly alterative fantasy hero in ‘…And in a Far-Off Land!’, followed by the first of a series of short prose vignettes: anonymous fright-comedy ‘Potion of Love’.

Toth illustrates the sisters’ ‘Witching Hour Welcome Wagon’ (a useful identifying rule of thumb for the uninitiated is that the master usually signed his work – and was allowed to…) after which new kid Gerard Conway scripted spectral saga ‘A Matter of Conscience’ for art veterans Sparling & George Roussos. Anonymous prose piece ‘If You Have Ghosts’ precedes smashing yarn entitled ‘Disaster in a Jar’ (Riefe & Boyette) before Conway scripts period witchfinder thriller ‘A Fistful of Fire’ for Delbo – a vastly underrated artist who was on the best form of his career at this time.

Toth’s Weird Sisters close out that issue and eerily, hilariously open #5 before Wrightson lavishly embellishes a nifty but uncredited (as is every script in this one) nautical nightmare ‘The Sole Survivor!’, followed by text-teaser ‘The Non-Believer! and Boyette’s stunning, clownish creep-feature ‘A Guy Can Die Laughing!’

Stanley Pitt & Giordano’s dating dilemma ‘The Computer Game’ was one of the first to explore that now-hoary plot and, after Toth signs off the witches, there’s an added single-page black-comedy bonus from Sid Greene in ‘My! How You’ve Grown!’

Sekowsky & Giordano limned Dave Kaler’s take on the sisters’ intro for The Witching Hour #6, after which a far darker horror debuts as ‘A Face in the Crowd!’ (Conway, Mike Roy & Mike Peppe), wherein Nazi war-criminal and concentration camp survivor meet in an American street; Marv Wolfman & Delbo described a tale of neighbourly intolerance in ‘The Doll Man!’ and ‘Treasure Hunt’ by Skeates, John Celardo & Giordano show why greed isn’t always good. Also included were Conway’s prose tale ‘Train to Doom’, ‘Mad Menace’ – a half-page gag strip by John Costanza, and ‘Distortion!’; another Greene-limned one-pager.

Toth & Mike Friedrich were on spectacular form for #7’s intro and bridging sequences, whilst Bill Draut was compulsively effective in prison manhunt saga ‘The Big Break!’, with scripter Skeates also writing modern-art murder-mystery ‘The Captive!’ for Roussos. Friedrich & Jack Abel then advise a most individual baby to ‘Look Homeward, Angelo!’, Whilst text piece ‘Who Believes Ouija?’ and Jack Miller & Michael Wm. Kaluta’s Gothically delicious ‘Trick or Treat’ round out the sinister sights in this issue.

Sergio Aragonés & Neal Adams provide the witch-bits for #8, bracketing their satanically sardonic ‘Above and Beyond the Call of Duty!’, as well as ‘Three Day Free Home Trial!’ (Aragonés & Cardy) and staggeringly inventive ‘ComputERR’ by that man again and Toth.

‘The Career Man’ is a witty but anonymous prose piece and the issue closes with a Twice Told Tale by Ron Whyte & Sparling, as an urban myth is exposed at ‘The Sign of the Hook!’

Toth & Draut began #9, after which Bob Brown & Murphy Anderson illustrate ghostly tale ‘The Long Road Home!’ and, after text story ‘The Dark Well’ peripatetic, post-apocalyptic, ironic occasional series ‘The Day after Doomsday’ (Len Wein & Sparling) makes a welcome appearance.

Delbo delightfully delineated a terrifying tale of Old China in ‘The Last Straw’ and, after George Tuska takes over the Weird Sisters link-segments, a doomsday debacle closes the dramas with a ‘Trumpet Perilous!’ as drawn by Sparling & Abel.

The witches opening issue #10 are once more by Toth & Draut, promptly followed by a magnificent illustration job by Gray Morrow on regrettably uncredited ‘A Warp in Time …Loses Everything!’ after which the all-word ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’ precedes Conway & Toth’s superb forbidden romance ‘Hold Softly, Hand of Death!’. Tuska handles the Sisters before Sparling’s faux-fact page ‘Realm of the Mystics’ ends this excursion into outer darkness.

Toth drew the intro and Jack Oleck’s The Mark of the Witch’ (inked by Draut) in #11, whilst – following text-tale ‘Retired Undefeated!’ – Tuska inspirationally illustrates creepy chronal conundrum ‘The Sands of Time, the Snows of Death!’

TWH #12 was similarly blessed as, after a sinisterly sexy Skeates/Toth intro, the devilish duo then describe an horrific ‘Double Edge’ battle between witch-queens and valiant mortals, followed by a Machiavellian actor’s ‘Double Take’ (Skeates & Tuska) and a demonic duel and ‘Double Cross!’ by Skeates & Gil Kane. The ever-anonymous prose piece is mordantly merry ‘The Dead Can’t Talk But…’

Giordano’s last issue as editor was #13, opening in grand style as fellow comic book hosts Cain, Abel and the Mad Mod Witch (from Houses of Mystery and Secrets and The Unexpected, dis-respectively) attend ‘New Year’s Eve at the Witching Hour’ (illustrated by Adams), followed by a marvellously experimental psycho-thriller by Alan Gold & Gray Morrow entitled ‘The Maze’; a far more traditional but no less scary story ‘The Accursed Clay!’ (Miller, Sparling & Frank Giacoia) and just plain strange tale of ‘The Rush-Hour Ride of Abner Pringle!’ by Wein & Delbo.

As an added treat the text token is ‘The Witching Hour Mistree’ by that shy but not retiring rogue Egor and what looks like Sal Amendola…

When veteran editor Murray Boltinoff assumed the reins with #14 (April-May 1971), an element of experimentalism was surrendered but more conventional material was no less welcomed by the horror-hungry readership: more proof, if any were needed, that artistic endeavour and envelope-pushing aren’t to everybody’s taste. Tuska replaced Toth as regular illustrator of introductory and bridging sections, but otherwise most fright-seeking kids could hardly tell the difference.

The all-science fiction issue opens with a beautiful yet oddly-stilted yarn from Conway & Jeff/Catherine Jones exploring the solitary burdens of ‘Fourteen Months’ in deep space, and ‘Which Witch is Which?’ (Kaler and Stanley & Reg Pitt) depicts the comeuppance of an intergalactic Lothario.

As “Al Case”, editor Boltinoff provides text feature ‘Dead Letter Office’ before the issue ends on a classic visual high with ‘The Haunted House in Space!’ illustrated by dream team Al Williamson & Carlos Garzon.

After the usual grisly graphic girl-talk, #15 starts with a murder masterpiece from George Kashdan & Wally Wood, revealing ‘Freddy is Another Name For Fear!’, after which Al Case scripts ‘End of a World’ before Phil Seuling & Gray Morrow steal the show with fearsome fable ‘Bayou Witch’ and Case & Art Saaf ring down the curtain with ‘I Married a Witch!’

Issue #16 saw TWH expand from 32 to 52 pages – as did all DC titles for the next few years – opening doors to a superb period of new material and the best of DCs prodigious archives to an appreciative, impressionable audience. The magic began after Tuska’s punchy prelude with cautionary ‘Never Kill a Witch!’ by Carl Wessler, John Calnan & Bernie Case, after which Boltinoff (as Bill Dennehy) provides a slick, edgy reinterpretation of a classic fairy tale for Morrow to lavishly limn in ‘The Spell of Sinner Ella!’, before switching back to his Case persona for the Tony DeZuñiga illustrated duelling drama ‘You Can’t Hide From Death’.

Classic reprints began with ‘The Wondrous Witch’s Cauldron’ (drawn by Lee Elias from House of Secrets #58), followed by Joe Orlando illustrated, Charles King scripted text piece ‘Last Meal’ and Howie Post & Draut’s ghoulish period parable ‘The Curse of the Cat’: both originally seen in House of Mystery #177.

Kashdan & Heck opened #17 with a modern magic myth ‘This Little Witch Went to College’, after which a classic 1950’s fear-feature from Sensation Mystery Comics #109 saw Carmine Infantino & Joe Giella devastatingly depict the ‘Fingers of Fear!’ whilst – from House of Secrets #46 – Howard Sherman delineated ‘The Second Life of Simon Steele’. Dennehy, Calnan & Colletta provided new yarn with an old moral ‘The Corpse Who Carried Cash!’ before Wessler & mood-master Jerry Grandenetti fantastically finished the fear-fest with ‘The Man in the Cellar’.

The same team opened #18 with ‘The Worm that Turned to Terror’, a schizophrenic slice of domestic hell followed by ‘The Diggers!’: a nasty, vengeful yarn from Bobs Haney & Brown with Giacoia inks, encompassing half a century of French war and regret.

Tales of the Unexpected #13 was the original source of both the Ed Herron/Jack Kirby conundrum ‘The Face Behind the Mask’ and the Herron/Cardy creepy-crime caper ‘I Was a Prisoner of the Supernatural’, after which modernity resumes with Jim Aparo’s ‘Hypnotic Eye’ and Kashdan, Calnan & Colletta’s cautionary tale ‘When Satan Comes Calling!’

The final issue in this superbly spooky compendium is The Witching Hour #19 which – after the customary Tuska drawn kaffeeklatsch with Mordred, Mildred and Cynthia – commences in a stylish, sparkling Jack Phillips & Grandenetti chiller ‘Tomb for the Winning!’, followed by ‘The Four Threads of Doom’ (by anonymous & Cardy, from Tales of the Unexpected #12) after which another anonymous & Tuska provide fresh new thriller ‘Stop Beating, Heart! You’re Killing Me!’.

One final Cardy reprint – ‘The Lamp That Changed People!’ (House of Mystery #20) – follows before this glorious volume of witchy wonderment concludes with Kashdan/Elias shocker ‘What Evil Haunts This House?’

These terror-tales captivated reading public and critics alike when they first appeared, and it’s indisputable that the supernatural sector saved DC during one of the toughest downturns in comics publishing history. Now their blend of garish mordant mirth, classic horror scenarios and suspense set-pieces are most familiarly seen in shows like Goosebumps, Stranger Things and many, many others.

This volume – like so many others – is unavailable digitally, and hard to find in print, but with a growing taste for horror stories manifesting in comics again, perhaps it won’t be long before we can shiver and giggle to classic chillers once more. If you crave beautifully realised, tastefully gore-free sagas of tension and imagination, not to mention a huge supply of bad-taste, kid-friendly cartoon comedy chaos, stay up past The Witching Hour as long and as often as you possibly can…
© 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Shadowman – by Garth Ennis & Ashley Wood


By Garth Ennis, Paul Jenkins & Ashley Wood (Acclaim Comics/Valiant)
ISBN: 978-1-68406-912-5 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-68215-135-8

In the mid-1990s, comics publishing was risky business. In those fickle, febrile times, hits came hard and fast and from utterly unexpected directions, but yesterday’s mega-triumph so often became tomorrow’s unwanted, unsellable surplus in a matter of moments.

During that market-led, gimmick-crazed frenzy, amongst the interminable spin-offs, fads and shiny multiple-cover events a new comics company revived some old characters, invented a few more to supplement their new universe and proved once more that good story-telling never goes out of fashion. As Editor-in-Chief, Jim Shooter had made Marvel the most profitable and high-profile they had ever been and, after his departure, he used that writing skill and business acumen to transform some almost-forgotten Silver-Age characters into contemporary gold.

Under various guises and imprints, Western Publishing had been a major player since the industry’s earliest days: blending TV, Movie, animated cartoon and Disney properties with homegrown hits like Turok, Son of Stone and Space Family Robinson. In the 1960s, the superhero boom brought forth Brain Boy, M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War, Magnus, Robot Fighter, Nukla, Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom and others. Despite their titles’ quality and a passionate fan-base, they never captured the media spotlight of DC or Marvel’s costumed cut-ups. Western closed their comics division in 1984.

With an agreement to revive some, any or all of these four-colour veterans, Shooter and co-conspirator Bob Layton made those earlier adventures part-and-parcel of their refit: acutely aware older fans don’t like having their childhood favourites bastardized. To compelling reinterpretations of Magnus, Turok and Solar, Man of the Atom they added latter day hits like Archer & Armstrong, Eternal Warrior, XO-Manowar, Ninjak, Bloodshot, and their own quirky supernatural avenger, who debuted in May 1992…

Hit after hit followed and the pantheon of heroes expanded until troubled market conditions and corporate chicanery ended the company’s stellar expansion. It was taken over and, soon after, disappeared…

Under new ownership (games company Acclaim Entertainment) many characters – radically revised – reappeared in a bold relaunch: just as enjoyable and innovative but still hostages to fortune and turbulent times and tastes. Part of that renaissance was a bleak and extremely adult new iteration of the aforementioned magical warrior: a bold new take resulting from an industry-wide resurgence in terror tales triggered by DC’s Vertigo imprint with its adult-rated material…

In the first instance, struggling session saxophonist Jack Boniface was seduced by a woman he’d picked up in a New Orleans club. Her actions left him unconscious, amnesiac and forever altered by a bite to his neck. She was a Spider Alien: agent of a race preying on humanity for uncounted centuries and responsible for creating many of the paranormal humans who secretly inhabit the world.

Her bite forever changed Jack and when darkness fell he was compelled to roam the Voodoo-haunted streets of the Big Easy as an impulsive daredevil dubbed Shadowman: a violent maniac, hungry for conflict whenever the sun went down. Over years – and 43 issues and specials – the mystical nature and historical role of a succession of Shadowmen was explored and an uncanny, arcane universe was constructed before entering oblivion…

Cover-dated March 1997, a revived, revised version debuted, courtesy of seasoned scripter Garth Ennis and experimental illustrator Ashley Wood. Proudly Irish, Ennis had won a well-deserved reputation for shocking, moving, irreverent and wickedly funny storytelling, and was accomplished in blending genres for maximum effect, as his successes with Preacher, Hellblazer, The Demon, True Faith and dozens of other tales could attest.

Wood is Australian, and combines mixed media painting with digital and multimedia techniques to create unforgettable images on Judge Dredd, Spawn, Zombies vs. Robots, Sam and Twitch, Grendel, Star Wars Tales, Automatic Kafka and for games like Metal Gear Solid.

Here his surreal, moodily amorphous rendering adorns a violent, mordantly wry script as passionate movie buff Ennis strips out all but the barest of plot bones to expose a spartan quest for haunted vengeance, truth and understanding worthy of Sam Peckinpah. Boniface works with voodoo witch Nettie to keep the living world free of undead predators…

Sadly, Nettie’s Shadowman is killed by Tommy-Lee Bones and three other merciless fugitives from the torment that awaits all beings once they die. Their plan seems vague and pointless, but it cannot fail as they’ve already removed their main opposition before tending to the Shadowman…

The “Deadside” they’ve escaped from is an infinite region of pure misery: a purgatorial holding cell containing all who have ever lived, and an obscenely cruel penitentiary the Shadowmen were designed to hold forever shut tight.

Now that they’re out again, Tommy and the lads have no intention of ever going back, but are fine with feeding it every living sod they can get their bloodstained hands on…

With the monsters on a macabre murder spree, things look bleak, but the voodoo queen has been doing this for a long time and has stacked the odds with little thought for who gets hurt. Boniface may be on a slab, but Zero – New Orleans’ most enigmatic, infallible, amnesiac and brain damaged hitman – is already primed to take his place…

Assigning Irish spirit and “walker-between-the-worlds” Jaunty as her prospect’s guide and liaison, Nettie is fine with Zero learning on the job, but has not anticipated how the task might affect Zero’s lost memories. It’s a mistake she’s going to regret…

One area that hasn’t been compromised is his gift for combat risk assessment. As Tommy’s Boys ravage the populace, Jaunty gives Zero a briefing on the real afterlife, but the shadow warrior has no real inkling until Tommy kills him too. Now the Shadowman gets a real tour of Deadside, where – happily, for Zero – death doesn’t take…

When he unexpected returns to the world, Zero discovers his new boss has not been honest with him…

Now, with Bones increasingly in charge and out of control, Zero learns to use his abilities in a way Boniface never could and – reeling with newfound independence – starts doing the job his way: extracting the whole sordid truth of his life and death before dealing with Tommy and his pals…

As well as gathering the 4-issue arc ‘Deadside’ from Shadowman volume 2 #1-4 – which was coloured by Atomic Paintbrush and lettered by Dave Lanphear – this compendium also re-presents another notionally 4-issue treat. Miniseries Deadside was written by Paul Jenkins (Hellblazer, Spectacular Spider-Man, The Inhumans, Sentry) with Wood, Dennis Calero & letterer Chris Eliopoulos handling the bits you saw. In actuality, it should read #1-3, as the series was cancelled before the final issue, but this book at last shows what we all missed…

Here, grisly guide Jaunty tips us off to the horrifically miserable afterlife, in salutary snatches detailing the actions of a mad doctor’s awful science experiment, a dead mother searching in vain for Heaven or Hell, and a sinner who thought he’d deservedly located the latter…

Thanks to the publishing crisis beleaguering the industry back then ‘The Fearsome Finale’ was never completed, but what remains – script pages, finished art and working roughs and sketches – affords the only closure we’re likely to see at this juncture. This book also offers a Gallery of art, character design sketches and variant covers by Charlie Adlard, Vince Evans and Woods.

Although a fresh creative team would cover the further adventures of Shadowman Zero, this eclectic, eccentric episode offers a rowdy, raucous and deliriously demented thrill-ride no fright fan should miss.
© 1997, 1999, 2016 Valiant Entertainment LLC. All rights reserved.

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Frostbite


By Joshua Williamson, Jason Shawn Alexander, Luis NCT, Steve Wands & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7134-3 (HB/Digital edition)

As you have probably noticed, Earth as we know it is doomed. It’s a tragedy of staggering proportions and a telling indictment of the suicidal greed and indifference afflicting so many humans. Ironically this fact does fuel an immense and growing genre of armageddon fiction…

Here’s a – brace yourselves! – truly chilling, utterly gripping yarn from writer Joshua Williamson (The Flash, Infinite Frontier, Justice League vs Suicide Squad, Birthright. Deathbed), illustrator Jason Shawn Alexander (Killadephia, Marvel Zombies, Empty Zone, Batman), colour-artist Luis NCT and letterer Steve Wands that superbly captures all the grim foreboding of the Last Days whilst still dangling cruel hopes of possible survival.

If you’re one of that strange breed of modern knight errant who just can’t stomach a woman – and a black one, too! – in the role as Last Action Hero, you won’t like this superb science-gone-bad, doom-watched dystopian drama, so you’ll want to go play somewhere else for validation…

Once upon a time, six scientists sought to save the world from destruction and humanity from itself. As inexorable climate change turned Earth into an uninhabitable tinderbox, they did something wondrous with cold fusion and eradicated the searing heat build-up.

However, as we all know, no good deed ever goes unpunished and their miraculous solution unleashed a new ice age that brought civilisation to its knees and human beings to the edge of extinction.

In the aftermath, as pockets of mankind sought to stay warm and eat on a desolate ice-ball world, it was revealed that the temperature inversion had brought another – even more terrifying – tribulation: a bizarre disease that slowly turned living creatures into ice. Terrified humans began isolating themselves in smaller groups, making pariahs of strangers, abhorring the blue stigma and dreading the inescapable death sentence that was “Frostbite”…

America 57 years after big freeze is an icy wind-wracked wilderness, with meagre population pockets occupying what used to be mega-cities. It’s a world of barter, exploitation and quick violence, with heating devices and drugs as the prime transferable resources. Criminals have scrambled to the top of the heap and dictate the way things are. Everyone is terrified that fraternisation also brings the cold contagion…

In Mexico City, freelance cargo-shippers Keaton and her partner Chuck Barlow accept a commission to transport a father and his daughter to what used to be Alcatraz Island. Both prospective passengers are science doctors and display obvious signs of great wealth, but broke as she is, Keaton can’t shake her suspicions of something bad in play…

Henry Bonham and his brilliant child Victoria clearly have the resources to travel in style and comfort, but instead want the secrecy of a lumbering tractor like Barlow’s pride-&-joy Icebreaker. Keaton would be even more upset if she knew who they were and who was chasing them…

When those pursuers attack, the Bonhams are separated and Keaton, on learning Henry’s secret, kills him herself. Only afterwards does she discover that it wasn’t him the pursuers wanted, but Victoria. The junior scientist has developed a cure for frostbite and is now the most valuable thing on earth…

Furious, guilt-ridden, repentant, hopeful and slowly dying, Keaton resolves to get the daughter to the Alcatraz lab before she expires, no matter who or what stands in their way. As she grows ever closer to her trek buddy, the hardest part is not confessing what she’s done and what’s she’s becoming. Although built on mutual lies, there’s a painfully doomed relationship growing that might be even more important to Keaton than saving the world or her own life…

Their voyage across the frozen south overflows with violent clashes as relentless pursuit constantly results in explosive violence, with Keaton’s prowess and ingenuity significantly reducing the numbers of humans in existence every time they are caught or intercepted.

Soon however, their only foe is Keaton’s secret and when that’s exposed, everything changes forever…

Fast-paced, smart, action-packed and tension-taut, Frostbite is a picture perfect action adventure with a flawed but indomitable hero in the same unstoppable yet fragile mould as Ripley or Sarah Connor.

Graced by a magnificent cover gallery by Alexander & NCT, this is the kind of chill affirmative action we should all enjoy.
© 2016, 2017 Joshua Williamson and Jason Shawn Alexander. All Rights Reserved.

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The Monster of Frankenstein


By Gary Friedrich, Doug Moench, Bill Mantlo, Gerry Conway, Mike Ploog, John Buscema, Bob Brown, Val Mayerik, Don Perlin, Sal Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9906-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

Whereas DC Comics capitalised on the early 1970s global boom in all things supernatural and mystic by creating a plethora of short-story anthologies and the occasional spooky star, Marvel Comics took the trend in another direction and created a small army of horror-heroes to headline their own series.

This particular collection reprints the House of Ideas’ interpretation of the Mary Shelley classic from a time when the censorious Comics Code Authority first loosened some of its strictures banning horror material from the pages of comics. That translates here to 18 issues of the colour comicbook; Giant-Sized Werewolf #2, Marvel Team-Up #36-37 and all the pertinent strips from adult-oriented Marvel magazines Monsters Unleashed #2, 4-7, 9-10 and one-shot Legion of Monsters (spanning January 1973-September 1975), all awaiting your rapt attentions.

Some comic artists work best in black-&-white. Such is certainly the case with Mike Ploog. A young find who had previously worked with Will Eisner, Ploog illustrated Gary Friedrich’s pithy adaptation of the original novel before moving on to groundbreaking new ventures as the strip graduated to in-house originated material. This monumental tome is presented mostly in colour, but if you are of a similar opinion you could try to lay your hands on the 2004 monochrome Essential Monster of Frankenstein edition…

Cover-dated January 1973, ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein!’ introduced Robert Walton IV, great grandson of the sea-captain who had rescued scientist Victor Frankenstein from the polar ice and who was subsequently regaled with the incredible tale of “the Modern Prometheus”.

Now, in 1898 and leading a band of rogues, cutthroats and sullen Inuit, Walton finds the fabled monster interred in a frozen slab and brings it aboard his ice-breaker. He then recounts the story to his fascinated cabin-boy, unaware of the fear and discontent simmering below decks…

A bloody mutiny during a terrible gale opens the second issue as the burning ship founders. Meanwhile the flashbacked saga of tragic Victor reaches the terrible moment when the monster demanded a mate. The guilt-plagued scientist complied only to baulk at the last and destroy his second creation. ‘Bride of the Monster!’ concludes with the creature’s fearsome vengeance on his creator, paralleling the grim fate of the storm-tossed ship…

In The Monster of Frankenstein #3, ‘The Monster’s Revenge!’ has the reawakened creature freed from its ice-block to overhear the continuation of his life-story from Walton’s lips, even as the last survivors struggle to find safety in the Arctic wastes.

Thereafter ‘Death of the Monster!’ – with inker John Verpoorten taking some of the deadline pressure off hard-pressed Ploog – turns the tables as the monster reveals what happened after the polar showdown with his creator, leading to a new beginning as Walton reveals that not all the Frankensteins were eradicated by the Monster’s campaign of vengeance. Their warped blood-line lives on…

A new direction began with issue #5 in ‘The Monster Walks Among Us!’. Making his way south, the tragic creature arrives in a Scandinavian village in time to save a young woman from being burned at the stake on a blazing longboat, only to rediscover that when villagers pick up pitchforks and torches to go a-screamin’ and a-hollerin’ for blood, they generally have a good reason…

With issue #6 the comic book renamed itself The Frankenstein Monster as the undying creature reaches the village of Ingolstadt a century after he first wreaked bloody vengeance on his creator’s loved ones.

‘…In Search of the Last Frankenstein!’ is a mini-classic of vintage horrors scripted as usual by Friedrich but plotted, pencilled & inked by Ploog, who was reaching an early peak in his artistic career. It was also his last issue.

Ploog was followed by John Buscema & Bob Brown before Val Mayerik settled as regular artist whilst Friedrich gave way to Doug Moench, a writer once synonymous with Marvel’s horror line.

Issues #7, 8 and 9 bowed to the inevitable, pitting the Monster against Marvel’s top horror star (albeit 75-ish years prior to his contemporary adventures). Beginning with ‘The Fury of a Fiend!’ continuing in ‘My Name is… Dracula!’ and concluding with ‘The Vampire Killers!’, this is an extremely classy tribute to the old Universal movies and then-current Hammer Films in equal measure, wherein the misunderstood misanthrope battled an undying evil for ungrateful humanity, consequently losing the power of speech; and becoming more monstrous in the process.

Produced by Friedrich, Buscema and Verpoorten, this trilogy lacks the atmosphere of Ploog’s tenure, but the action is very much in the company’s house-style. With #10 (inked by Frank Giacoia and Mike Esposito) the creature finally found ‘The Last Frankenstein!’ …much to his regret.

With number #11’s ‘…And in the End…!?’ – illustrated by Brown & Vince Colletta – and #12’s ‘A Cold and Lasting Tomb’ (Moench, Mayerik and Colletta), the Monster wrapped up his historical adventures by falling into a glacial sea. Frozen once again into another block of ice he was revived, Captain America-style, in modern times: i.e. the swinging 1970s…

The epic account then switches to monochrome as more mature episodes from Monsters Unleashed begin, starting with #2 and ‘Frankenstein 1973’ by Friedrich, Buscema & Syd Shores. Here we see how an obsessive young man finds the Monster preserved as a carnival exhibit, only to see his jealous girlfriend revive it whilst trying to burn down the sideshow. The story continued in #4 as ‘Frankenstein 1973: Chapter Two – The Classic Monster’ (Friedrich, Buscema & Win Mortimer), with a literal mad scientist actually putting his own brain in the monster’s skull. Happily, the unnatural order is restored in ‘Once a Monster…’

Monsters Unleashed #6 introduced new creative team Doug Moench & Val Mayerik who completed the introduction to modern times with a good old-fashioned monster hunt in ‘…Always a Monster!’

This leads directly to #7’s ‘A Tale of Two Monsters!’: a dark, socially relevant tale of the modern underclass and man-made horrors carried over into ‘Frankenstein 1974: Fever in the Freak House’ before concluding in #9’s ‘The Conscience of the Creature’.

The horror boom was fading by this time and Monsters Unleashed #10 was the Monster’s last outing there: a superbly dark and sardonic Christmas offering complete with elves, snow, terrorists and a Presidential assassination attempt.

One final monochrome tale from Moench, Mayerik, Dan Adkins & Pablo Marcos (accompanied by a chilling frontispiece by Marcos) appeared in 1975 one-shot The Legion of Monsters. ‘The Monster and the Masque’ was a bittersweet morality play seeing the creature accidentally accepted at a fancy dress party, which is ruined when a different sort of monster gets carried away…

Switching back to full-colour comics, next up is a rather tame team-up/clash from Giant-Size Werewolf #2 wherein ‘The Frankenstein Monster Meets Werewolf by Night’ (Moench, Don Perlin & Colletta) to collaterally combine and quash a band of run-of-the-mill West Coast Satanists.

Resuming his own series, The Frankenstein Monster #13 displays ‘All Pieces of Fear!’ (Moench, Mayerik & Jack Abel) as, shoe-horned into mid-1970s America, the Monster is drawn into a tale heavy with irony as men act like beasts and an obsessive father ignores his family whilst building his own abominations through the nascent science of cloning.

With a hip young teenager as sidekick/spokesperson, ‘Fury of the Night-Creature’ (Dan Green inks) extends the saga by introducing I.C.O.N. (International Crime Organizations Nexus): yet another secret organisation intent on conquest by merging corporate business practices with traditional gangsterism.

Issue #15’s ‘Tactics of Death’ (Klaus Janson inks) briefly concludes the acronym-agenda as the Monster and companion Ralph mop up the men in suits only to be shanghaied to Switzerland to meet the latest Last-of-the-Frankensteins in ‘Code-name: Berserker!’ (inked by Bob McLeod – who managed to handle the next issue too).

Veronica Frankenstein was still absorbed in the family business, but claimed to be fixing her ancestors’ mistakes when I.C.O.N. creeps showed up, demanding her biological techniques in ‘A Phoenix Beserk!’. Beautifully inked by Mayerik and Adkins, the last colour issue ended on a never-to-be completed cliffhanger (although scripter Bill Mantlo covered elements of the story in Iron Man some years later) as the Monster and his new friend met ‘The Lady of the House’ – the utterly bonkers creature-crafter dubbed Victoria Von Frankenstein…

Perhaps the abrupt cancellation was a mercy-killing after all…

Rounding off the narrative wonderment is a 2-part tale from Gerry Conway, Sal Buscema & Colletta first seen in Marvel Team-Up #36-37 wherein Spider-Man is kidnapped and shipped off to Switzerland by the assuredly insane Baron Ludwig Von Shtupf, who proudly proclaims himself The Monster Maker…

In ‘Once Upon a Time, in a Castle…’ the bonkers biologist wants to pick-&-mix creature traits – having already secured the Frankenstein Monster to practise on… After the webslinger busts them both out, they stumble upon sexy SHIELD Agent Klemmer, but a rapid counterattack goes badly wrong when Von Shtupf unleashes his other captive – the furiously feral Man-Wolf – and only big Frankie can prevent a wave of ‘Snow Death!’

This codex of comic creepiness concludes with a mammoth bonus section offering art lovers and funnybook historians additional treats such as Ploog’s very first design sketch of the monster from 1972, original art, illustrations and (finished but pre-editorial addition) painted covers by Boris Vallejo.

Also on show are assorted frontispieces, pencils, inks and previous collected editions, covers and original art by Tom Sutton, Gray Morrow, Vince Evans, Mayerik, Bernie Wrightson & Arthur Adams, making this compendium a perfect treat for fantasy fans and dedicated horrorists: one that should be a first choice for introducing scare-loving civilians to the world of comics.
© 1973, 1974, 1975, 2015 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Angola Janga: Kingdom of Runaway Slaves


By Marcelo D’Salete, translated by Andrea Rosenberg (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-191-8 (HB/Digital edition)

Art historian Professor Marcelo D’Salete is one of Brazil’s most respected authors and graphic novelists. Born in 1979 and a graduate of Carlos de Campos College and the University of São Paulo, he currently resides in Italy. Despite this, the majority of his comics examines Brazil’s history of slavery and consequent issues affecting the vast Afro-Brazilian underclass resulting from it.

After freelancing as an illustrator, D’Salete’s first graphic novel Noite Luz was released in 2008, followed by Encruzilhada in 2011. He acquired a greater degree of fame after his 2014 book Cumbe was translated into English by Fantagraphics in 2017: subsequently garnering a boatload of prizes as Run For It: Stories of Slaves Who Fought for their Freedom.

Technically, the professor followed that multi award-winning volume with this even more ambitious tome, but Angola Janga actually took eleven years to complete and its initial release that same year was simply a fortunate convergence…

This epic expands the story of that escaped slave culture, detailing how Palmares Quilombos (“war camps of runaway slaves”) were crushed by colonisers. Before the story opens, Introduction ‘Mocambos and Plantations’ explains how 16th century Portuguese occupiers moved from enslaving local peoples to importing millions of Africans. These supplemented a huge indigenous workforce toiling to exploit timber, sugarcane and other natural resources for ruthless masters on increasingly prolific and profitable plantations.

Over centuries – but largely due to Dutch attempts to seize control from the Portuguese between 1630-1654 – generations of black slaves (designated “units”) in the Pernambuco region had escaped into the forests and Serra da Barriga hills: founding an outlaw nation of semiautonomous settlements: “mocambos”.

By the time events open here, Palmares or Angola Janga (“Little Angola” in Bantu language Kimbundu) comprised an estimated 20,000 free-living rebellious “blacks”, “Indios”, “mulattos” and other demeaning and pointless designations of mixed race all considered to be property not humanity…

This astounding dramatised examination is delivered in brief vignettes torturously following the entwined paths of key individuals like black leaders Soares, Ganga Zumbi and Ganga Zamba, numerous religious and civic figures and Domingos Jorge Velho: pitiless commander of “Paulista” mercenaries hired to reimpose order and crush the beacon of hope Angola Janga represented.

Crafted in stark edgy monochrome with dialogue and narration at a bare minimum, it begins with ‘The Way to Angola Janga’. Each chapter is preceded by pertinent excerpts from contemporary accounts by the victorious colonisers and historians.

In 1673, two frantic runaways crash through trees and brush. Soares was promised freedom by dying plantation owner Mistress Catarina, but her son Gonçalo chose not to honour her wishes and brutally punished the mulatto (“mixed race”) for demanding his Letter of Emancipation. Now he and companion Osenga are fleeing, searching for a mocambo to take them in. Soares’ past is complex and complicated, but common gossip amongst the slave catchers preparing to bring him back…

‘Birth’ wings back to 1655 and the controversial origins of the “half-caste”: revealing connections that have church and military authorities clashing and colluding in a conspiracy of silence, whilst revealing the inner workings and defence strategies of mocambos and their leaders before the fate of Angolan enclave ‘Aqualtune’ introduces more charismatic defenders of liberty in episodes set in 1677…

When Palmares warriors attack white plantations, outraged plantation owners declare implacable war, but instead of engendering alliances, tribal and sibling rivalries undermine the rebels’ unity with catastrophic consequences…

Moreover, devious white masters employ cruel tactics to regain their valuable Units and maintain the status quo: combining religious tyranny, disease, relentless police actions and bounty hunting with spurious offers of amnesty, designated black Reservations and valueless treaties. These slowly chip away at the hidden free kingdoms, as seen in ‘Scars’, ‘Cucaú’ and ‘Encounters’, with even free-born and emancipated blacks experiencing a rise in intolerance, prejudice and white exceptionalism.

Resistance was common and reprisals inescapable. Always the mocambos called to those brave enough to stand up and fight back, but increasingly they were fighting their own kind rather than their oppressors… sometimes, even their own families…

The saga explores a subtext of religious and political beliefs in opposition, complementing the physical and geographical struggle. ‘Savages’ reveals the turbulent and traumatic early years of Domingos Jorge Velho and how white leaders suborned and seduced native tribes like the Oruazes into joining their ‘War’ against Palmares…

Beginning in 1691 the savage strands converge, as raids by belligerent mocambo warriors and sorties to recapture lost slaves reach lethal levels. With the entire region in turmoil, and death toll mounting, many scared officials and churchmen petition for blanket emancipation to end the bloodshed. However, a final clash is imminent and – risen to high office amongst the runaways – Soares endures the ‘Sweet Hell’ of vindication or defeat, unaware that the foe has deployed the latest weapons technology to conclusively end the struggle …

The triumphant mopping up operation is covered in ‘The Embrace’ as defeated Soares flees, descending into delusion and worse before gaining the truest freedom of all in one last battle, before the end of the campaign and what came after is explored in terms of spirituality and symbolic prognostication with ‘Footsteps in the Night’…

Augmenting this tragic history is a full Glossary of terms, concepts and characters and their originations, and Author’s Afterword ‘Trails and Dreams’ explores the exponential growth of the Portuguese slave trade. Also on view are a ‘Chronology of the Palmares War 1597-1736’, ‘Summary of the Palmares War’, maps and text pieces on ‘Pernambuco, Palmares, towns, mocambos (seventeenth century)’, ‘Principal quilombo and quilombola regions in Brazilian territory’, ‘The region of Angola – one of the largest sources of Africans sent to Brazil’ and truly disturbing charts and maps disclosing ‘Estimates of embarkation and disembarkation of enslaved Africans between 1501 and 1900’. These shocking visual aids are supported by a copious bibliography of References and biography of the author.

Appalling and beautiful, this is a superb testament to the power of resistance and hope: one that should be compulsory reading in every school and college.
© 2019 Marcelo D’Salete. Glossary © 2019 Marcelo D’Salete, Allan da Rosa & Rogério de Campos. Original edition published by Editora Veneta © 2017. All rights reserved.

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Jack Kirby’s Spirit World


By Jack Kirby with Mark Evanier, Steve Sherman, Sergio Aragonés, Vince Colletta, Mike Royer & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3418-8 (HB)

Jack Kirby was – and remains long after his passing – the master imagineer of American comics. His collected works provide a vast rich trove of astounding narrative delights for any possible occasion. An ideal and seasonably timely tome is this magnificent compendium re-presenting the complete “King’s Canon” of one of his least known, most misunderstood and mishandled DC creations. Regrettably, it’s still not a book you can read digitally, but hope springs eternal…

Famed for larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, Kirby was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, gangsterism, the Depression, World War II and the rise and stall of the Space Age. He’d seen and survived Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures. Above all else, he was open-minded and utterly wedded to the making of comics stories on every imaginable subject.

On returning from valiant service in World War II, Jack – reunited with long-term creative partner Joe Simon – began producing genre material for older audiences and famously invented the genre of Romance comics. Amongst the dynamic duo’s other concoctions for Prize/Crestwood/Essankay Publications was a noir-esque anthology, supernatural-themed and psychologically underscored, reflecting the tone and trends of those rapidly-changing, globally Post-Traumatic times.

Black Magic (and short-lived companion title Strange World of Your Dreams) eschewed traditionally gory, heavy-handed morality plays and simplistic cautionary tales seen in other comics and concentrated on deeper, stranger fare. They were – until EC comics hit their peak – far and away the best horror and mystery titles on the market.

Changing tastes and an anti-crime, anti-horror witch-hunt quashed the comics industry, so under a doctrinaire, self-inflicted conduct code, publishers stopped innovating and moved into more anodyne areas. This established holding pattern persisted until the rebirth of superheroes and triggered the demise of many smaller publishers…

From 1956, at a little outfit using the name “Atlas”, Kirby partnered with Stan Lee and, when superheroes were revived, changed the world with a salvo of new concepts and characters that revitalised if not actually saved the comics business. Kirby always understood the fundamentals of pleasing an audience and toiled diligently to combat the appalling prejudice about the word-&-picture medium – especially from insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies’ world” they felt trapped in.

However, after a decade or so, costumed characters began to wane again as public interest in the supernatural grew. With books, television and movies all exploring The Unknown in gripping and stylish new ways, the Comics Code Authority sought to slacken its censorious choke-hold on horror titles, hoping to save the industry from implosion when the superhero boom busted…

Experiencing increasing editorial stonewalling and creative ennui at Marvel, in 1970 Kirby (after breaking ground with a few horror shorts for the House of Ideas’ new anthology titles) accepted a long-standing offer from arch rival DC Comics…

Promised freedom to innovate, one of the first projects he tackled was a new magazine format carrying material targeting adult readerships. For the full story of how that worked out, you can read Mark Evanier’s acerbic article at the centre of this glorious – but inexplicably still not available in digital editions – oversized (282 x 212 mm) hardback compilation. He was there and knows a lot of the secrets…

Reflecting and rechannelling the mature experimentation of Black Magic in a superb yet poorly received – and largely undistributed – monochrome magazine, Spirit World #1 and only launched in the summer of 1971, but, as happened all too often, editorial cowardice and back-sliding scuppered the project before it could get going. At least when the original 1940s-1950s Black Magic was revived as a DC reprint anthology in 1973, it got a few years to properly test the waters…

Material from a second, never-to-be published, Spirit World issue eventually appeared in various colour comic books, but with most of his ideas misunderstood, ignored or side-lined by the company, Kirby opted to return to more traditional formats.

Never truly defeated, he cannily blended his belief in the marketability of supernature with flamboyant super-heroics to create another unique and lasting mainstay for the DC universe: one that lesser talents later made a pivotal figure of the company’s continuity: Etrigan the Demon. There’s a complete Kirby compendium of the Hellish hero’s deeds out there too if you’re interested, as well as many subsequent reinterpretations by creators infernally inspired by the original…

The eerily eclectic Spirit World collection, however, eschews costume continuity in favour of plot and mood-driven tales, opening with the published premier issue: combining primarily comics tales (because DC wouldn’t spring for colour photography illustrations) with prose and black-&-white “Foto-Features”, all driven by the King’s voracious, questing imagination and unique perspectives…

Printed in spooky blue tones, the arcane explorations unfold with Jack & Vince Colletta’s pictorial investigation of the power of precognition. Preceded by a stunning 3-page Kirby photo-collage, ‘The President Must Die!’ – narrated by erudite host/parapsychologist Dr. E. Leopold Maas – recounts and interprets the chilling dreams of an unnamed woman in the days leading up to the assassination of JFK.

Again sporting a collage intro, ‘House of Horror!’ grippingly relates what happened when Dr. Maas was invited to visit the phantom-plagued Calder House…

‘Children of the Flaming Wheel!’ is a fumetti-work (photographic comic strips that were huge in Europe and an area of storytelling Jack was desperate to develop) depicting the astral journey of a supposed modern cultist, after which tireless Dr. Maas shares his discoveries on the nature of reincarnation by opening ‘The Lorca File!’

As “transcribed” by Kirby’s editorial assistants Steve Sherman & Mark Evanier, ‘The Spirit of Vengeance!’ relates in a terse prose piece Maas’ interaction with a most unquiet and petty revenant before Kirby & Colletta illuminate the astounding accomplishments and warnings of ‘Nostrodamus!’ – including all those predictions still pending confirmation…

The magazine concluded with a page of ‘Weird Humor’ strips by Sergio Aragonés (and possibly Dave Manak) and came with a free wallposter. It’s included here for veracity’s sake and because they’re still pretty damn cool…

Following that tell-all article from Evanier, the majority of the proposed second issue follows in standard monochrome. The strips are taken from their eventual last resting place in DC’s anthologies Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #6 and Weird Mystery Tales #1-3, and still have insets and copy from other hosts such as Destiny (yes!… latterly of the Endless!), but the art, plots and most of the scripting is pure Kirby…

With Mike Royer inking all these later yarns, ‘Horoscope Phenomenon or The Witch Queen of Ancient Sumeria’ opens the fearsome festivities as a bizarre regal apparition visits many modern men and women to change their fates forever, after which the lugubrious Dr. Maas probes a primordial artefact and speculates upon the barbaric life and cataclysmic demise of ‘Toxl, the World Killer’ – a rousing fantasy warrior yarn co-plotted and scripted by Evanier.

Accompanied by photomontage inserts, ‘The Burners’ confounds Maas with a spate of deaths by spontaneous combustion and possible alien incursion – before the mystery-&-imagination moments culminate with uncanny cases of ‘The Psychic Bloodhound’. Co-plotted by Evanier & Sherman, this graphic fictionalisation of a detective with extra-sensory perception is probably based on the exploits of controversial Dutch celebrity sleuth Peter Hurkos…

Jack Kirby remains a unique and uncompromising artistic force of nature: his words and pictures an unparalleled, hearts-&-minds grabbing delight no comics lover could resist. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind.

That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American scene and indeed the entire comics planet – affecting the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour for generations. He’s still winning new fans and apostles, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. Jack’s work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep whilst simultaneously mythic and human.

Wherever your tastes take you, his creations will be there ready and waiting. So, if fear and mystery are your meat, you can wonderfully upset your complacent equilibrium with this classy classic…
© 1971, 1972, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.