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Moon Knight Epic Collection volume 1: Bad Moon Rising (1975-1981)


By Doug Moench, David Anthony Kraft, Bill Mantlo, Steven Grant, Roger Slifer, John Warner, Don Perlin, Bill Sienkiewicz, Keith Giffen, Mike Zeck, Jim Mooney, Jim Craig, Gene Colan, Keith Pollard & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2092-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

Moon Knight is probably the most complex and convoluted hero(es) in comics. There’s also a lot of eminently readable strip evidence to support the contention that he’s a certifiable loon.

The mercurial champion first appeared during the 1970s horror boom: a mercenary Batman knockoff hired by corporate villains to capture a monster. Sparking reader attention, the mercenary spun off into a brace of solo trial issues in Marvel Spotlight and welter of guest shots before securing an exceedingly sophisticated back-up slot in the TV inspired Hulk Magazine before graduating to the first of many solo series.

His convoluted origin eventually revealed how multiple-personality-suffering CIA spook-turned-mercenary Marc Spector was murdered by his boss and apparently resurrected by an Egyptian god…

This first epic compilation re-presents Werewolf by Night #32-33; Marvel Spotlight #28-29; Defenders #47-50, Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #22-23; Marvel Two-In-One #52; material from Hulk Magazine #11-15, 17-18 & 20; Marvel Preview #21 and Moon Knight #1-4, spanning 1975 to 1981.

It all began in Werewolf by Night #32 (August 1975) and another stage in a long-running plot thread. Accursed lycanthrope Jack Russell and his sister Lyssa had been targets of criminal capitalists the Corporation for months. The plutocratic cabal believed that by terrorising the public, they could induce them to spend more…

Here Doug Moench & Don Perlin (with assistance from little Howie Perlin) introduced mercenary Marc Spector: a rough and ready modern warrior hired by plutocratic plunderers and equipped with a silver-armoured costume and weapons to capture Russell or his animal other as ‘…The Stalker Called Moon Knight’.

The bombastic battle and its ferocious sequel ‘Wolf-Beast vs. Moon Knight’ received an unprecedented response and rapidly propelled the lunar avenger to prominence as Marvel’s edgy answer to Batman: especially after the mercurial merc rejected his latest loathsome employers’ entreaties and let the wolf, as well as collateral hostages Lissa and Topaz, run free…

Within a year the spectral sentinel had returned for a two-part solo mission that fleshed out his characters (yes, plural!) and hinted at a hidden history behind the simple mercenary façade. Cover-dated June & August 1976, Marvel Spotlight #28-29 ‘The Crushing Conquer-Lord!’ and concluding chapter ‘The Deadly Gambit of Conquer-Lord!’ reveal the mercenary to be a well-established clandestine crimebuster with vast financial resources, a dedicated team of assistants including pilot “Frenchy” and secretary Marlene as well as wide-ranging network of street informants, a mansion/secret HQ, a ton of cool gadgets and at least four separate identities.

This latter aspect would inform Moon Knight’s entire career as various creators explored where playacting ended and Multiple Personality Disorder – if not outright supernatural possession – began…

Thanks to his brush with the werewolf, the masked vigilante had also gained a partial superpower. As the moon waxed and waned, his physical strength speed, stamina and resilience also doubled and diminished.

Here, billionaire Steven Grant, New York cabbie/information gatherer Jake Lockley, repentant gun-for-hire Marc Spector and the mysterious Moon Knight discovered he had been targeted by ruthless mastermind Mr. Quinn, who sought to eliminate a potential impediment in his plane to become a supervillain and rule Manhattan. The cunning criminal had placed a spy in Steven Grant’s inner circle and subsequent research revealed how Spector – a former CIA unarmed combat and weapons expert – had infiltrated the Corporation, gained powers, created alternate identities and, for unknown reasons, declared war on crime…

Sadly, despite this devious scheme and deploying plenty of his own wonder weapons and henchmen, the Conquer-Lord proves no match for the hidden hero in a gripping thriller by Moench & Perlin.

Following a quartet of previous collection covers by Gil Kane & Tom Smith, Perlin & Matt Milla, Bill Sienkiewicz & John Kalisz, and Sienkiewicz, Klaus Janson & Thomas Mason, the spectral sentinel’s next appearance was as a guest in a long running super-team saga.

Beginning with ‘Night Moves!’ in Defenders #47 (May 1977 and running through #50 and beyond), John Warner, David Anthony Kraft, Roger Slifer, Keith Giffen – in full Kirby mimic mode – with inkers Janson & Mike Royer disclose how putative loner Moon Knight is drawn into a war between a supervillain suffering a despondent mid-life crisis and the heroic “non-team” of Nighthawk, Valkyrie, Hellcat and The Hulk.

It begins in New Jersey, as the late-patrolling vigilante stumbles upon an abduction. When S.H.I.E.L.D. boss Nick Fury “arrests” Valkyrie’s former husband Jack Norriss in a most unorthodox manner, Moon Knight rescues Jack, taking him to Doctor Strange. Before long, MK’s somehow fighting Avenger Wonder Man, and thereafter catapulted into an aging Bad Guy’s existential crisis in #48’s ‘Who Remembers Scorpio? Part 1: Sinister Savior’…

Certainly not Jack, now a captive audience to Fury’s supposedly dead brother, who bemoans his lot in life while waiting for his new Zodiac team to mature and leave the Life Model Decoy machine currently constructing them…

When the Knight finds them, he’s caught in a deadly death trap, as Nighthawk is captured and added to the whining villain’s unwilling audience. Moon Knight’s escape and dash for reinforcements coincides with Hulk’s latest ‘Rampage’ through Manhattan in #49, allowing MK to lead him back to the Zodiac base, with Hellcat and Valkyrie close behind them.

Everyone meets up just as the artificial Zodiac is prematurely born, with double-length Defenders #50 hosting massive, manic free-for-all ‘Who Remembers Scorpio? Part 3: Scorpio Must Die!’

The clash ends in tragedy and Moon Knight’s departure, but not before an extract from #51’s ‘A Round with the Ringer!’ reveals the shocking secret of Fury’s involvement and exactly how the Knight in White escaped that aforementioned death trap…

You’re not really a Marvel Superhero until you meet the wondrous webslinger, and that initial introduction came in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #22-23 (September & October 1978) as Bill Mantlo, Mike Zeck & Bruce D. Patterson detail an underworld plot to destroy the mysterious vigilante ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon Knight!’

When an informant is gunned down warning the Maggia have ferreted out one of his secret identities, Moon Knight learns the lethal legacy of Conquer-Lord’s files have made targets of his other assets, including diner owner Gena and homeless derelict Crawley. Lockley seeks to save them from assassination as Spider-Man is just passing, and the webslinger intervenes to save lives and keep his neighbourhood friendly…

After the traditional misunderstanding Meet-&-Beat-Up, Spidey and Moon Knight unite just in time to battle the Maggia’s top super-enforcer… French speedster Cyclone!

The saga concludes courtesy of artists Jim Mooney & Mike Esposito as the wallcrawler enviously scopes out MK HQ before joining a punitive counterstrike on the crime combine in ‘Guess Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb!’

Cover-dated June 1979, one last guest shot preceded MK’s transition to a solo series. In Marvel Two-In-One #52, Steven Grant – the real one Spector’s alter ego is teasingly based on – and artist Jim Craig & Pablo Marcos had the mysterious Moon Knight ally with The Thing to stop CIA Psy-Ops master Crossfire from brainwashing the city’s superheroes into killing each other…

Superhero credentials suitably established, Moon Knight began carving out his uniquely twisted corner of the Marvel Universe in a psychologically-themed vehicle aimed at an older, more general audience.

Originally released as newsprint monochrome magazine The Rampaging Hulk, the advent of the company’s “Marvelcolor” process and a hugely successful TV show starring the Green Goliath saw the periodical upgraded to slicker paper stock and obliquely continuity-adjacent storylines to address the needs of casual readers/television converts.

Supposedly a more sophisticated product, the book offered a home to Moon Knight, who moved in for a series of dark modern tales also outside standard superhero parameters. Before those begin here, Hulk Magazine #11 (October 1978) provides Bob Larkin’s wraparound painted cover, a house ad from #10 and a text introduction extolling the virtues of artistic debutante Bill Sienkiewicz from #13…

A new era dawned with ‘Graven Image of Death’ (#11, by Moench, Gene Colan & Tony DeZuñiga) as the hooded hunter stumbles into a murderous war between rival antiquities collectors Joel Luxor and Anton Varro: millionaires vying for possession of a statuette of Egyptian god Horus. As bodies stack up, Moon Knight despatches Grant’s assistant/paramour Marlene to question museum curator Fenton Crane and is barely in time to stop her joining the body count in #12’s ‘Embassy of Fear!’ (Moench, Keith Pollard, Frank Giacoia & Esposito).

On learning the entire affair is simply smoke and mirrors for a larger scheme, with the statue simply moneymaking collateral in an international terrorism plot, Moon Knight buys in as shady millionaire Grant to work undercover. He is unaware that another mastermind has obtained Conquer-Lord’s files and it’s all a trap.

Hulk Magazine #13 (February 1979) was Sienkiewicz’s moment. On ‘The Big Blackmail’ his sleek imitation of classic Neal Adams hyperrealism (and Batman swipe files) combined with Steve Oliff’s advanced colour techniques, were breathtaking as enigmatic Machiavelli Lupinar observed the hero’s friends and allies at dangerously close quarters. Orchestrating nuclear armageddon with Moon Knight as his unwitting dupe, legendary operative Marc Spector was his true target…

After wading through layers of murderous multinational intermediaries, Moon Knight finally confronts his bestial hidden enemy in #14’s ‘Countdown to Dark’ (Bob McLeod inks) in a furious fight to the death as a nuclear clock inexorably counts down…

A smart crossover follows after a gallery of Hulk covers – #12-15 by Joe Jusko, Earl Norem, Larkin & Peter Ledger before June 1980’s #15 hosted a single encounter told from two perspectives. Moench, Sienkiewicz & McLeod explored ‘An Eclipse, Waning’ with Grant indulging a neglected passion for astronomy by visiting an old pal in the countryside on the night of a total lunar occultation.

The event brings brutal burglars out of the woodwork and Moon Knight is required to stop them, but, bizarrely, at the height of the eclipse, during the moment of utter darkness, the Lunar Avenger encounters something huge, monstrous and unbeatable, barely escaping with his life.

Answers come in ‘An Eclipse Waxing’ as on that same night , fugitive Bruce Banner meets burglars breaking into an isolated house and helplessly transforms into the Hulk again. Just as total night falls, the monster briefly encounters an unseen foe of far greater capabilities…

Norem, Larkin and Jusko covers for #17, 18 and 20 precede some longed-awaited revelations of the White Knight’s troubled past, emerging when as regular Moon Knight feature resumed in #17. In a chilling, disturbing sequence inked by Klaus Janson, ‘Nights Born Ten Years Gone Part I-III’ finds Manhattan terrorised by a mad axeman stalking nightshift nurses.

Wearing pyjama bottoms and a clown mask, the “Hatchet-Man” has racked up nine kills before Moon Night’s street agents present evidence indicating a close historical connection to Spector. Always cautious, the Man of Many Parts is parsimonious in sharing knowledge and Marlene convinces him that she can safely act as bait…

The ploy goes appallingly wrong and she is severely injured by both the police and the axe-man, leading to the incensed lunar vigilante going wild amidst the ‘Shadows in the Heart of the City’ as the frustrated maniac spirals out of control

However, although the killer is stopped, the guilt-wracked hero tirelessly works a night of minor life-saving exploits and endures anxious terrors before Marlene is safe in ‘A Long Way to Dawn’…

That euphoric fable appeared in Hulk Magazine #20 (April 1980) and was Moon Knight’s swan song there, but he resurfaced in a complex conspiracy mystery in monochrome magazine Marvel Preview (#21, Spring 1980).

Behind the Sienkiewicz, Larkin, Janson & Oliff cover here and preceded by the penciller’s B&W frontispiece ‘The Mind Thieves’ and concluding chapter ‘Vipers’ come from a later colourised reprint, but retain all the sinister paranoic confusion of the Moench, Sienkiewicz, Tom Palmer & Dan Greene original.

When a corpse is delivered to Grant’s mansion, it reactivates Spector’s CIA career and sets Moon Knight on the trail of unfinished business in a “Company” mind control lab supposedly decommissioned years previously…

Following a trail of dead men, dirty secrets, and programable super-killers, MK, Marlene and Frenchy escape barely death in Montreal and Paris while exposing a vicious vengeance plot behind the dirty tricks campaign. It almost costs them everything…

Appended by Ralph Macchio’s editorial ‘Full Phase’, the story closes one chapter in the character’s life and leads into the far mor complex and conflicted career of a man seeking atonement as the November cover-dated premier solo title exposes the secrets of ‘The Macabre Moon Knight!’

Here Moench, Sienkiewicz & Frank Springer reveal how world-weary, burned-out mercenary Spector was working for murderous marauder Raul Bushman but reclaimed his moral compass after his ruthless boss murdered archaeologist Peter Alraune for the contents of a recently excavated Sudanese tomb. The scientist’s daughter Marlene escaped, as did equally disgusted comrade Frenchy, but when Spector attempted to stop Bushman executing witnesses he was beaten and left to die in the desert.

Dying by degrees, Spector crawled for miles and died just as he enters the tomb of Pharoah Seti, where Marlene and her workers were hiding. Dumped at the feet of a statue of Khonshu – god of the Moon and Taker of Vengeance – he inexplicably revived. Clearly deranged, he draped the statue’s white mantle around himself, before going out into the night. By dawn, Bushman’s band are dead and the monster fled…

Skipping forward to now and hinting at a long eventful road to the life of a multi-identity superhero, the origin ends with a fateful showdown with the returned Bushman in his New York lair…

Barely pausing, #2 focuses on pitiful peeping pawn Crawley in a powerful human interest tale. The city reels under the bloody shadow of a butcher hunting bums and indigents. With corpses no one cares about mounting, Moon Knight soon learns ‘The Slasher’ is seeking one specific homeless man, and will not stop until he finds him…

Cover-dated January 1981, #3 sees Sienkiewicz ink himself as ‘Midnight Means Murder’ with the Knight of the Moon facing ruthless thief Anton Mogart/The Midnight Man, before the saga pauses with #4 and the Janson-inked action thriller ‘A Committee of 5’. Here, the Lunar Avenger is hunted by and hunts in return a quintet of specialist assassins. Happily, fortune augments ability and Khonshu’s chosen is more than a match for the killer elite…

Accompanied throughout by covers from Gil Kane, Al Milgrom, Klaus Janson, Perlin, Jack Kirby, Ed Hannigan, Joe Sinnott, Dave Cockrum, Joe Rubinstein, Keith Pollard, George Pérez, Sienkiewicz and others, the extras are supplemented by Sienkiewicz’s wrapround covers from Moon Knight Special Edition #1-3 and the 6-plate character portfolio contained therein, plus Jim Shooter’s introduction.

Also on show are contemporary house ads; printed trivia; previous collection covers; the painted cover to fanzine Amazing Heroes #6 and 11 pages of original art and covers by Milgrom, Cockrum, Rubinstein, Sienkiewicz, McLeod, Springer & Janson.

Moody, dark, thematically off-kilter and savagely entertaining this first volume sees a Batman knock-off evolve into a unique example of the line between hero and villain and sinner and saint all wrapped up in pure electric entertainment for testosterone junkies and
© 2019 MARVEL.

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Dreams in Thin Air


By Michael Magnus Nybrandt & Thomas Engelbrecht Mikkelsen translated by Steffen Rayburn-Maarup (Conundrum Press)
ISBN: 978-1-77262-010-8 (HB)

Fantastic battles against overwhelming odds and magnificent, unlikely victories are the lifeblood of graphic narratives – and most of popular fiction, I suppose – but seeing such triumphs in our own mundane mortal coil is barely credible in the real world.

Happily, miracles do occur, and one such forms the basis of this stunningly engaging chronicle of a good heart and love of sport defeating the political skulduggery of an oppressive but publicity-shy superpower.

Delivered as a sturdy and compelling full-colour landscape format hardback, Dreams in Thin Air details the struggle of a young Danish man whose life was changed by a pre-college visit to Tibet: the things he saw and the people he met…

To make the story even more accessible, the man at the centre of events tells his own story, teaming here with Danish comics superstar and educator Thomas Engelbrecht Mikkelsen (Wizards of Vestmannaeyjar, Einherjar) who adds zest, verve and spectacular imagination to the already heady mix.

Following a Foreword by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, the story opens near the end as impassioned, frustrated Michael Magnus Nybrandt paces outside the Chinese Embassy in Copenhagen. We haven’t seen it yet, but Michael has gambled years of hard work, devious conniving and soul-destroying dedication on a true long shot!

‘Chapter 1: Towards Tibet’ then takes us back to 1997 as Michael and his friend Thomas land at Lhasa Airport and are only saved from disaster by the quick thinking of Tibetan guide Jamphel Yeshi, who rescues the idealistic Scandinavians from a potentially lethal encounter with bribe-seeking Chinese Guards.

As they ride away from the airport, the Europeans observe over and again the brutal results of China’s annexation and systematic eradication of Tibetan culture begun in the aftermath of the 1950 invasion. Of course, the gun-toting occupiers called it an act of “liberation”…

The white boys’ feelings as they contrast the broken relics of a glorious past with urbanised concrete wastelands inflicted by two generations of self-serving Chinese occupiers are obvious and exceedingly painful, and before long they check out of their state-sponsored hotel and go on a trans-Tibetan tandem ride, looking for the real country…

In ‘The Easy Way’, that joyous if exhausting excursion brings them into constant contact with the earthy, gregarious Tibetans and solidifies a feeling in Michael that he must do something to help them. The revelation of exactly what that might be comes after they arrive at a shattered temple and meet Lama Tsarong.

During their stopover, the Europeans encounter young monks in training and discover the Tibetans’ abiding passion for football – the proper “beautiful game” and not the dandified Rugby played by Americans…

Later, Michael endures a bizarre dream in which he is coach of a Tibetan National Team. That’s clearly an impossible notion. Thanks to China’s political clout and annexation policy, there is no such nation as Tibet, only outlaw enclaves of dispossessed Tibetans living as exiles in well-wishing countries such as India and Nepal.

No politically expedient government on Earth recognises the annexed but unforgotten land and it has no official national standing in any arena… even sporting ones…

In August 1997, Nybrandt returns to Denmark and resumes his education in Aarhus. He is part of the landmark radical education initiative dubbed Kaospilot, but despite all his studies cannot shift his focus away from that vivid dream…

At that time, privately-sponsored Kaospilot trained less than 40 students per year in Leadership, Business Design, Process Design and Project Design. The private school’s educational philosophy stresses personal development, values-based entrepreneurship, socially-responsible innovation and – above all else – creativity.

Although Michael strives to adapt to the program, eventually he gives in to his obsession and retools his lessons and educational modules to the ultimate goal of creating a Tibetan National Football team and securing for them international matches…

That’s when his problems really begin, as the full political might of the People’s Republic is brought to bear, not just on him but also on Denmark itself. In ‘Dharamsala’ that subtle, silent opposition becomes far more overt, even as Nybrandt tirelessly works with Tibetan bigwigs – in the conquered mountain country itself and throughout the rest of the world.

Undaunted, he sources players, finds sponsors bold enough to buck the Chinese government; sidestepping petty-minded obfuscations like visa-sabotage and rescinded travel permits and even terrifying physical assaults from thinly-disguised political bully boys in China’s pay…

The tide starts to turn in ‘Dharma Player’ after a meeting with the Dalai Lama and arrangement of an international fixture against Greenland’s national team. With the threat of public legitimisation of a “non-country”, China begins turning the geo-political screws: threatening economic sanctions that might bankrupt Denmark and even more dire unspecified consequences…

On the brink of defeat, Michael thinks furiously and realises that although the prestige of international sport has caused all his problems, it has also provided a once-in-a-lifetime possible solution. All he has to do is confront the Chinese ambassador and not blink first…

The result was a milestone in the modern history of oppressed, subjugated Tibet and resulted in ‘Ninety Minutes of Recognition’ as China was forced to climb down and allow the match to take place…

Being a true story, this gloriously inspirational tale also offers a photo-reportage-packed ‘Epilogue by the Author’; geographical and socio-political synopsis on the country at ‘The Roof of the World’ and a heartfelt ‘Acknowledgments’ section dedicated to the brave souls who made the miracle happen and brought this book into print.

Compelling, hugely entertaining and astoundingly uplifting, Dreams in Thin Air is a moving and wonderful tribute to the power of sport and the resolve of good people. Don’t wait for the inevitable feelgood movie: read this magnificent graphic testament right now and experience the all-too-rare joy of good intentions triumphing over arrogance and overwhelmingly ensconced power…
English Edition © Michael Magnus Nybrandt, Thomas Engelbrecht Mikkelsen and Conundrum Press 2017.

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The Archangels of Vinea: Yoko Tsuno volume 14


By Roger Leloup, coloured by Studio Leonardo, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-438-0 (Album PB)

In 1970, indomitable intellectual adventurer and “electronics engineer” Yoko Tsuno began her career in Le Journal de Spirou. She is still delighting readers and making new fans to this day in astounding, all-action, excessively accessible adventures which are amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created.

The globe-girdling, space-&-time-spanning episodic epics starring the Japanese investigator were devised by monumentally multi-talented Belgian maestro Roger Leloup, who began his own solo career after working as a studio assistant and technical artist on Herge’s timeless Adventures of Tintin.

Compellingly told, superbly imaginative and – no matter how implausible the premise of any individual yarn may appear – always firmly grounded in hyper-realistic settings underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles, Leloup’s illustrated escapades were at the vanguard of a wave of strips revolutionising European comics.

That long-overdue sea-change heralded the rise of competent, clever, brave and formidably capable female protagonists taking their rightful places as heroic ideals; elevating Continental comics in the process. Unsurprisingly, these endeavours are as engaging and empowering now as they ever were, and none more so than the trials and tribulations of Miss Tsuno.

Her very first outings (the still unavailable Hold-up en hi-fi, La belle et la bête and Cap 351) were mere introductory vignettes before the superbly competent wanderer and her valiant but less able male comrades Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen properly hit their stride with premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange in 1971 with Le Journal de Spirou’s May 13th edition…

Yoko’s journeys include explosive exploits in exotic corners of our world, time-travelling jaunts and sinister deep-space sagas – like this one – where our terrestrial trouble-shooters toil beside the disaster-prone alien colonists of planet Vinea. Their chief contact and most trusted ally is Khany: a competent, commanding single mother who combines parenting her toddler Poky with saving worlds, leading her people and averting continual cosmic catastrophe…

There are 29 European albums to date (with #30 due for release in September) but only 16 translated into English thus far. Today’s tale debuted in 1983 as Les archanges de Vinéa, chronologically Tsuno’s thirteenth exploit and sixth co-starring the Vineans: a thrilling tale of discovery and ancient undying tyranny and evil…

In their first outing, Yoko, Vic and frivolous Pol discovered a pocket of long-dormant aliens hibernating for eons in the depths of the Earth. After freeing them from robotic subjugation, the valiant humans occasionally helped the alien refugees (who had fled their own planet two million years previously) rebuild their lost sciences. Ultimately, the humans accompanied the Vineans as they returned to their own star system and presumed-dead homeworld. As the migrants gradually rebuilt their decadent and much-debased former civilisation and culture, the trio became regular guests…

On this excursion, the humans are again exploring another reclaimed region of the recovering planet. In the millions of years the Vineans slept in the depths of Earth, their primary civilisation collapsed, and the planet they have reclaimed is much-changed with isolated pockets of the former changed beyond recognition… and usually lethally hostile to their returned descendents…

We open as Yoko and little Poky accompany Khany to a desolate island and interview a strange old hermit who has been sheltering a child from the past. Khany’s cautious efforts reveal a young boy in a hibernation pod for countless ages, and that the entre rig has been until very recently, underwater…

As they further question the crazed old woman who lives in constant dread of The God’s wrath, an atmospheric disturbance occurs, leading them to a fantastic machine thunderously drawing air down into the depths of the sea. When they fly over to investigate further, Kany is lost…

By the time Yoko and Poky land, primitive raiders have boarded the edifice as it starts to sink. From nowhere, a serene and calmly confidant Vinean Adonis appears, saving Yoko from being blasted by the barbaric raiders. As he and Poky are arrested he joins the group but does not interfere.

The newcomers are equipped with makeshift breathing gear and share it with the captives, dropping into the depths just as the edifice was. The sea-dwellers also use huge turtle-like sea-beasts and her enigmatic saviour – easily keeping pace with the raiders – appears to be equally amphibious…

Unwelcome but unmolested, the stranger keeps pace as the war party passes a shattered sunken city, and encounters fierce marine monsters that have been tamed by electronic devices clamped to their heads. It is a technology clearly far beyond the understanding of Yoko’s captors, and gradually she learns of a bizarre truth: these sea-Vineans are low caste workers in a lost subterranean city of evil that has survived submerged for millennia, ruled by a capricious, cruel immortal Queen. Hegora has the powers of a god and is just as implacable…

However, her diffident saviour and guardian is one of twenty undying supermen: “Archangels” set apart from and uncaring of the plight of ordinary beings. As Yoko soon discovers, her acquaintance has a ruthless, timeless agenda of his own…

Her life constantly imperilled as she seeks hostage Khany, Yoko learns the horrific secret of the subsea City of the Abyss, and why the Archangels have battled Hegora for so long: possession and control of thousands of hibernating children. The endless struggle ends as Yoko tips a delicate balance, uncovering the incredible secrets of the City’s past and before long, a cold war resolves into a battle of wills and vastly opposing moralities. In the end it’s Yoko who triumphs to impose a new regime on the sunken citadel…

Gripping and visually spectacular, The Archangels of Vinea combines hard science with tense drama and a soupcon of social criticism: delivering another terse, action-packed, sci fi thriller, once again magnified into magnificence by the astonishingly compelling and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship and storytelling of Leloup and the indomitable integrity of Yoko Tsuno.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1983 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2019 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 14: 1963-1964


By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-970-7 (HB)

Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur premiered on Sunday February 13th 1937: a fabulous rainbow-colour weekly peek into a world where history met myth to produce something greater than both. Pioneering creator Hal Foster developed the feature after a groundbreaking and astoundingly popular run on the Tarzan of the Apes comic strip.

Prince Valiant offered action, adventure, exoticism, romance and a surprisingly high quota of laughs in its engrossing depiction of noble knights and wicked barbarians played out against a glamorised, dramatized Dark Ages backdrop. The never-ending story follows a refugee lad of royal blood, driven from ancestral Scandinavian homeland Thule who grows up to roam the world, attaining a paramount position amongst the fabled heroes of Camelot.

Foster wove his complex epic romance over decades, tracing the progress of a feral wild boy who became a paragon of chivalric virtue: knight, warrior, saviour, avenger and ultimately family patriarch through a constant storm of wild, robust and joyously witty wonderment. The restless champion visited many far-flung lands, siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes, enchanting generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

The glorious epic spawned films, an animated series and all manner of toys, games, books and collections. Prince Valiant was – and remains – one of the few adventure strips to have run continuously from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (well north of 4000 episodes and still going strong) – and, even here at the end-times of newspaper strips as an art form, it continues in more than 300 American papers and via the internet.

Foster soloed on the feature until 1971 when John Cullen Murphy (Big Ben Bolt) succeeded him as illustrator whilst the originator remained as writer and designer. That ended in 1980, when he finally retired and Cullen Murphy’s daughter Mairead took over colouring and lettering whilst her brother John assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired, since when the strip has soldiered on under the auspices of other extremely talented artists such as Gary Gianni, Scott Roberts and latterly Thomas Yeates & Mark Schultz.

This luxuriously oversized (362 x 264 mm) full-colour hardback (tragically, the series is still unavailable digitally) re-presents pages spanning January 6th 1963 to December 27th 1964, (individual Strips #1352 to 1455) and comes with all the regular bonus trimmings.

Comics scripting A-Lister Roger Stern (Superman; Avengers; Spider-Man; Doctor Strange; Incredible Hulk; Captain America) discusses and critically appraises the influential force of the newspaper strip on comic books in a picture packed Foreword ‘Swiping Mr. Foster: A Legacy in Four Colors’, offering many potent comparisons and shameless swipes, after which Brian M. Kane expands the argument about Valiant’s lasting influence in ‘Might for Right: A Code of Honor for Sentinels of Liberty’.

The erudite scholar returns at this tome’s close: spotlighting the glorious range of the master story teller in closing article ‘Land and Sea: Hal Foster’s Fine Art Paintings’ in a select gallery of land-and-seascapes, nature studies and illustrative tableau. Captivating as they are though, the real wonderment is, as ever, the unfolding epic that precedes them…

What Has Gone Before: following a failed and ruinous quest for the Holy Grail by the Round Table Knights, Valiant has compelled their return to Camelot and courtly duties. In the months that followed he visited the Great Tor at Glastonbury, met St Patrick and assisted a Papal mission from Rome building a cathedral there. Wars erupted and plots were foiled, and an extended familial rift with long-suffering wife Aleta was healed. A visit to Valiant’s homeland of Thule brought more combat and death and personal injury. With son Arn in tow, recuperation was concluded during a visit of the entire clan to Aleta’s ancestral kingdom in the Misty Isles, with Viking reiver Boltar escorting them to counter Mediterranean pirates and brigands…

At their destination, the family defeated a colonising invasion by rival ruler Thrasos during which the queen delivered twin daughters, to make Valiant a proud father of four. His peace was shattered when fleeing prisoners of war abducted Arn and his commoner pals Paul and Diane, forcing Valiant and Viking shipwright Gundar Harl, into frantic pursuit to prevent their being sold as slaves. By the time they caught up, Arn had already dealt with the problem…

Even with the crisis averted peace was impossible to find. When pilgrims bound for the Holy Land were shipwrecked on the Misty Isles, Val felt duty-bound to offer aid, and used his presence as escort to found a trade mission promoting the produce and wares of his island home. He also brought Arn, whose days of childhood indolence gave way to learning his place in the world…

Many rousing exploits marked their trail from Jaffa to the Dead Sea, Damascus to Baghdad before the pilgrimage ends in Aleppo where Boltar waits to ferry father and son back to a recovered and much wealthier Aleta. However, a brief period of glorious relaxation ends when King Arthur summons them to save Gaul from invading Goth hordes. With safe passage across Europe ended, England’s ruler needed his greatest hero carry a message to the Pope…

As Aleta’s forces secured a sea route to Albion, Valiant and Arn’s perilously mission drew much action but ultimately no satisfaction from the embattled Pontiff.  Undaunted, Valiant devised an alternative trade route between the Holy Father and still-imperilled Christian Britain: visiting what become Spain and France, encountering a lost land where monks were guarded by monsters, dodging Goths and ousting a usurper whilst reinstating the true ruler…

By the time the scattered family are reunited in England, the country endures a new kind of assault, as a charismatic priest is manipulated by scurrilous scholar attendants/business managers to foment a religious revolution…

After cleverly ending the near-insurrection, Val rejoined his family at the site of a church under construction near the fens where he grew up. The lure of his sire’s past beguiles Arn, who explored the boggy waterways and was soon hopelessly lost. Over tense weeks, he experienced the same privations his father had, before being rescued.

Carrying huge wealth destined for Arthur’s coffers, the family thankfully took ship for Camelot, unaware that greedy, ambitious eyes were watching…

The illuminating wonders here resume with those eyes fatally blinking. Opportunistic fellow voyager Ethwald abducts Arn by subterfuge and holds him to ransom for the treasure Valiant is safeguarding for the king. Ethwald fears the knight’s prowess but feels assured a father will do nothing to endanger his heir. He grievously underestimates the murderous wiles of enraged mother Aleta…

The majority part of this two-year tome deals with the anticipation and results of a mass invasion by Angles and Saxons, but the slowly-building saga is comprised of many shorter episodes – adventures both tragic and even broadly comedic – in its ever-expanding tapestry.

After returning to Camelot, the family are feted until Valiant is again called to defend the realm. Arn meanwhile steadily advances from Page to Novice and begins official combat training. Soon he is made a Batchelor-at-Arms and, when the vassal king of Wales dies, is drawn into war.

The former Prince Cidwic hungers for fame, glory and riches, and – deploying his Welshmen and a mercenary Pictish and Caledonian warband – besieges Carlisle in an attempt to annexe Scottish territories. The city is defended by a small contingent of cavalry and engineers led by Sir Kay, but as Arthur prepares a rescue fleet to aid them, Valiant forms and leads a unit of swift-riding messengers from the Novices and Batchelors to keep lines of communication open. The youngest recruit is Arn…

When Cidwic regroups and fortifies his position, the boy plays a crucial role in supporting Kay’s forces and the would-be conqueror’s eventual downfall. As diplomacy and reconciliation take over, Arthur rewards the lad with more responsibility: befriending new King Cuddock, Cidwic’s 12-year old son. As they bond and duty grows into true friendship, the king’s uncle Ruddah seeks to frame Arn for murdering the boy king, and learns to his eternal regret that youth does not equate to stupidity…

The plot foiled, Valiant and Arn make their slow way back to Court, partaking of the many local jousts and tourneys that filled the autumn season and served to keep fighting men in peak form. As they compete they encounter a pair of impoverished, less than noble knights whose response to defeat leaves much to be desired and exposes the sordid underbelly of professional jousting…

Upon reaching Camelot, a joyous family reunion almost ends in shame and bloodshed when cunning schemer Modred attempts to traduce Aleta’s honour and reputation by trapping her and Launcelot in a compromising situation. His vile scheme exposed, the villain flees and encounters a Saxon war party infiltrating the region around the Vale of the White Horse. The long dreaded war with the invaders is starting to happen…

War-wise Arthur deems them to be scouting the land and sends his best men to observe them, with Arn and other knights-in-training as messengers. Sadly, Owen is still starry-eyed and vainglorious, and his inexperience leads to Arn’s capture. Thankfully he is sharp-witted and well-disguised: convincing the Saxons he is a son of infamous pirate Boltar, while turning his situation to England’s advantage by learning the plans of the vast invasion force marshalling overseas. Of course his actions suggest to the keenly watching rescue party that the son of valiant has turned traitor before the boy orchestrates his escape and reports back to Arthur…

Although moving to a war footing, life at Court continues largely as before and leads to personal crisis when a grand tournament intended to hone the fighting spirit of the nation’s champions sparks intrigue, and murder…

Visiting his kinsman Launcelot, Count Brecey of Brittany finds Aleta most pleasing and determines to make her his. That she is a queen with four children he can profitably marry off when he marries her is a huge additional benefit. Used to taking whatever he wants, the overprivileged coward operates through his assassin Hugo, but that deadly killer proves no match for Valiant and his mighty warhorse Arvak, and as a web of sinister schemes unravels, Brecey is forced to abduct Aleta and run for the coast. Thanks to the efforts of his victim and her hotly-pursuing spouse and first son, the Count doesn’t get far and – when caught – compounds his villainy with the worst kind of cowardice…

As summer approaches, Arthur’s preparations intensify, and the entire Court awaits news of a vast fleet of Angles, Jutes, Danes and Saxons. Tensions mount as word comes of established colonies previously defeated by and sworn to Arthur, recant their oaths of allegiance and pick up the swords they had abandoned for peace and acceptance. The lure of imminent plunder is everywhere and the King is forced to remind is noble subjects of their promises to supply fighting men when the nation needs them.

Valiant and Gawain are despatched to Cornwall where three local kings are at war with each other and “unable” to honour their word, whilst Arn travels to North Wales where his friend Cuddock is genuinely embattled, plagued by raids of marauding Scotti. He will soon discover, the raiders are sponsored by the Saxon overlord as a distracting diversion…

Whilst one Cornish ruler is steadfast and readily provides promised forces for the army, weak, ambitious and greedy Kings Grundemede and Alrick-the-Fat need a sharp lesson in realpolitik and practical conjuring (learned long ago when young Valiant was attached to the wizard Merlin) before they grudgingly comply…

Their missions successful both the Cornish and Welsh embassages return with their new reinforcements to Camelot to make final preparations for the encroaching Saxon invasion. Thanks to Arn’s prior intelligence warlord’s colonising raiders head for Badon Hill, the perfect site for Arthur’s stout defence…

This astounding clash takes seven weeks to tell, but at the end England is barred to them for generations and the victorious armies return to their own lands. Switching from epic action to wry romantic comedy, Foster then plays with his stars as Aleta and the visiting queen of Alrick-the-Fat indulge in combat matchmaking; each seeking to wed heroic Sir Charles of Cornwall to their respective noblewoman protégés. However, their escalating wiles and schemes make a catastrophic impression on Aleta’s twins Karen and Valeta, who apply what they’ve seen to their own relentless pursuit of boy-king Cuddock, recuperating from nobly-earned wounds and far too naive to endure being the subject of the girls’ first crush…

Employing the clever conceit of lost historical scrolls, the narrative jumps forward some months and resumes with Valiant’s entire family en route to the ancestral kingdom of Thule with bombastic brigand Boltar. The voyage is interrupted by news of marauders assembled by Skogul Oderson, who has united many tribes into a formidable force to ravage Thule.

As the year ends, the far northern chieftain is spectacularly beaten. He never counted on Valiant and wilderness scout Garm organising the scattered selfish homesteaders into a lethally effective guerrilla force who slowly whittle away the raider’s numerical advantage through guile, lethally inventive use of terrain and psychological warfare…

The final instalment here presages even greater adventure as Boltar’s son and Arn discuss a return to the lost continent they had visited: a land latterly dubbed “the New World.”

To Be Continued…

A mind-blowing panorama of visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a tremendous procession of boisterous action, exotic adventure and grand romance; blending epic fantasy with dry wit and broad humour, soap opera melodrama with dark violence. Lush, lavish and captivating lovely, it is an indisputable landmark of comics fiction and something no true fan should miss.
All comics © 2015 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties © 2016 their respective creators or holders. This edition © 2016 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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The Mighty Thor Epic Collection volume 7: Ulik Unchained 1973-1975


By Gerry Conway, Bill Mantlo, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Rich Buckler, Sal Buscema, Arvell Jones & Keith Pollard, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2949-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Disabled doctor Donald Blake took a vacation in Norway only to stumble into an alien invasion. Trapped in a cave, he found an ancient walking stick which, when struck against the ground, turned him into the Norse God of Thunder! Within moments he was defending the weak and smiting the wicked.

Months swiftly passed with the Lord of Storms tackling rapacious extraterrestrials, Commie dictators, costumed crazies and cheap thugs, but these soon gave way to a vast kaleidoscope of fantastic worlds and incredible, mythic menaces, usually tackled with an ever-changing cast of stalwart immortal warriors at his side…

As this bombastic compendium (reprinting Mighty Thor #217-241 and Marvel Premier #26 – spanning November 1973 through November 1975) opens, our cosmic cast returns to long-abandoned Asgard after interstellar escapades and bravely endured exile.

Thor #217 sees the triumphant return of Thor with recently rescued from alien enslavement All-Father Odin. He and his fellow heroes Sif, Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, Hildegarde (plus Rigellian Tana Nile and planetary exile Silas Grant) discover a mysteriously rebuilt Eternal Realm filled with their fellow Asgardians who brandish ‘All Swords Against Them!’

Scripted by Gerry Conway with art by John & Sal Buscema, the saga sees them confronting impossible doppelgangers of Odin, Thor and the rest, all offering murderous hostility…

Whilst the Thunderer furiously struggles to unravel this latest mystery and defeat the invading fakes, in another sector of the universe the all-conquering Colonizers of Rigel are put to flight; abandoning their worlds to an all-consuming force of sheer destruction…

Issue #218 proves there’s no rest for the weary as the again-victorious true Asgardians once more take ship to the stars to prevent the Rigellians’ doom affecting Earth. ‘Where Pass the Black Stars There Also Passes… Death!’ (illustrated by J. Buscema & Jim Mooney) finds the hard-travelling heroes facing a nomadic race of colossal, decadent starfarers who fuel their unending flight by converting thriving civilisations into food and power.

In distant Asgard, war woman Hildegarde’s young sister Krista is slowly falling under the sway of sinister seductive evil, even as her hereditary protectors are a cosmos away, daringly infiltrating one of the Black Stars’ cosmic scoops and encountering a race of mechanical slaves in ‘A Galaxy Consumed!’ (Mike Esposito inks) before they and their charismatic messiah Avalon are at last freed – and untold galaxies subsequently saved – from callous consumption in ‘Behold! The Land of Doom!’

With scripter Conway firmly in the driving seat and legendary illustrator John Buscema (aided by inker Esposito) delivering the art, the mythic mayhem intensifies with ‘Hercules Enraged!’ as Thor savagely attacks Olympus, in search of the Grecian Prince of Power.

After Asgardian maiden’s Krista abduction, the All-Father had a vision of her chained in Hades with the Thunder God’s trusted ally gloating over her beside vile Grecian netherlord Pluto…

By the time lordly Zeus stops the shattering clash that follows, half of the celestial city is in ruins, but in that breathing space he proves Hercules innocent of the atrocious act and the abashed comrades duly turn their attentions to the true culprit…

Inked by Joe Sinnott, Thor #222 finds the earnest comrades in search of Hercules’ insidious impersonator and taking advice from a scary sorceress even as war-god Ares receives an eldritch summons to meet his co-conspirator ‘Before the Gates of Hell!’

Sadly for him, the war god is intercepted by our heroes before he gets there and receives the sound thrashing he deserves prior to the enraged companions storming the netherworld itself. At the moment of their triumph, however, Pluto snatches up his hostage and vanishes. The infernal trail leads straight to Earth where one final confrontation results in ‘Hellfire Across the World!’ (Esposito inks) leaving kidnapped Krista wounded unto death…

After a lengthy hiatus, #224 finds Thor resuming his mortal alter ego as surgeon Don Blake is needed to operate on the dying Asgardian, even as elsewhere in Manhattan, a rash scientist accidentally reactivates Odin’s unstoppable battle construct and discovers ‘No One Can Stop… the Destroyer!’

With Krista saved, Thor joins sorely-pressed Hercules and – although outmatched by the Asgardian killing machine – devises a way to stop its human power source, only to then face ‘The Coming of Firelord!’ (inked by Sinnott). The tempestuous, short-tempered herald of planet-consuming Galactus has been sent to fetch Thor and will brook no refusals…

Issue #226 sees the voracious space god on Earth again, personally beseeching the Thunder God’s aid in ‘The Battle Beyond!’ (Esposito) against living planet Ego, who has seemingly gone mad and now poses a threat to the entire universe…

Deftly channelling Jack Kirby, penciller Rich Buckler (aided by his pals Arvell Jones & Keith Pollard) joined Conway & Sinnott in #227 as the Storm Lord, Hercules and Firelord go ‘In Search of… Ego!’

Penetrating deep within the sentient-but-raving planet and defeating incredible biological horrors acting as planetary antibodies, the trio reach his malfunctioning brain and experience the incredible origin of the “bioverse” in ‘Ego: Beginning and End!’, before contriving an earth-shaking solution to the wild world’s rampages. In a final act of unlikely diplomacy, the Thunderer then finds a replacement herald and secures Firelord’s freedom from Galactus…

Joined by veteran inker Chic Stone, Buckler depicts the godly prince safely back on Earth and facing a new kind of terror in Thor #229 as ‘Where Darkness Dwells, Dwell I!’ finds fellow Avenger Hercules investigating an uncanny string of suicides amongst the mortals of Manhattan. After consulting the Storm Lord and recently returned Sif, the Prince of Power is ambushed by a shadowy figure and himself succumbs to dark despondency…

Plucked from psychological catatonia by Iron Man and recuperating Krista, the severely shaken Hercules recovers enough to lead Thor deep beneath the city where they jointly confront and conquer a horrific lord of fear in #230’s climactic ‘The Sky Above… the Pits Below!’ (inked by Sinnott).

Of greater moment is the revelation in hallowed Asgard that almighty Odin is mysteriously missing again…

John Buscema returned in #231, inked by Dick Giordano to limn ‘A Spectre from the Past!’, wherein Thor learns that former true love Jane Foster is dying: another victim of the recently defeated fear lord. Whilst doting current paramour Sif fruitlessly returns to Asgard seeking a cure, the grieving Thunderer is momentarily distracted when Hercules is attacked by an unbelievably powerful anthropoidal throwback. Disembodied spirit Armak the First Man has somehow possessed the body of an unwary séance attendee and now runs savagely amok in the streets…

Since gaining his liberty, former herald Firelord had been aimlessly travelling the globe. Lured by Asgardian magic he now becomes wicked Loki’s vassal in ‘Lo, the Raging Battle!’…

Heartsick Thor will not leave Jane’s hospital bedside, prompting Sif and Hercules to travel alone to the ends of the universe to retrieve the mystic and fabled Runestaff of Kamo Tharnn. No sooner do they depart than ensorcelled Firelord attacks and whilst incensed, impatient Thor is knocking sense back into him, his evil half-brother leads an Asgardian army in a sneak attack on America…

With ‘Midgard Aflame’ (J. Buscema & Stone) Thor furiously leads the human resistance and learns for the first time that his father is missing. Odin’s faithful vizier reveals the All-Father has deliberately divested himself of his memory and chosen to reside somewhere on Earth as a hapless mortal, the better to learn humility…

With humanity preparing to unleash their atomic arsenal against the occupying Asgardians, the invasion abruptly ends after a savage duel between Thor and Loki in ‘O, Bitter Victory!’ (inked by Sinnott) after which the Thunderer returns to Jane’s side, unaware that he is being stalked by a merciless old enemy. Simultaneously but far, far away Sif and Hercules have clashed with the one ‘Who Lurks Beyond the Labyrinth!’ and secured a remedy for Thor’s mortal beloved…

Thor #236 opens as the Thunder God revels in furious combat with The Absorbing Man. Unknown to the blockbusting battlers, at that very moment Sif is expressing her own love for her wayward prince by using the Runestaff to fix Jane in ‘One Life to Give!’

…And somewhere in California, an imposing old man called Orrin ponders his strangely selective amnesia and wonders how he can possibly possess such incredible strength and vitality…

With combat concluded, Thor hastens back to Jane and finds her completely cured. His joy is short-lived, however, as he realises that Sif is gone, seemingly forever…

Issue #237 finds reunited lovers Don Blake and Jane Foster cautiously getting reacquainted and pondering Sif’s incredible sacrifice when an army of Asgardian Trolls led by ‘Ulik Unchained’ attack New York. Before long, they have made off with Jane under cover of the blockbusting melee that inevitably ensues…

Conway concluded his tenure with Thor #238 as the Thunderer capitulates to his hostage-taking foe and is taken below the worlds of Earth and Asgard on the ‘Night of the Troll!’ Ulik wants to overthrow his king Geirrodur and is confident his hold over his mighty archenemy will accomplish the act for him. He is utterly unprepared for the new martial spirit which now infuses his formerly frail mortal hostage…

…And in California old man Orrin decides to use his power to help the poor, arousing the ire of big business, brutal strike-breakers and the local authorities…

Writer/Editor Roy Thomas and artist Sal Buscema join Sinnott in Thor #239 as the Thunder God brutally ends his association with the trolls even as Orrin’s rabble-rousing civil unrest is cut short when a colossal pyramid containing Egyptian gods erupts from the Californian ground in ‘Time-Quake!’

Thor knows nothing of the latest upheaval. He has returned to Asgard, uncovering a mysterious force draining his people of power and vitality. Warned by duplicitous seer Mimir, the anguished godling rushes back to Earth to clash with puissant Horus ‘When the Gods Make War!’ (Thomas, Bill Mantlo, Sal B & Klaus Janson).

The depleted Egyptian pantheon have desperate need of an All-Father and have conditioned Odin/Orrin to believe that he is their long-lost patron Atum-Re…

Go-getting, proactively take-charge Jane is already waiting in California when Thor arrives and is present when the elder deity devastatingly assaults his astounded son. Happily, her cool head prevails and soon the warring deities are talking. An uneasy alliance forms and the truth comes out. Horus, Isis and Osiris are at war with vile Death God Seth and need the power of a supreme over-god to assure victory for the forces of Life. Sadly, that energy is being siphoned from Asgard…

The cosmic conflict concludes in #241 as ‘The Death-Ship Sails the Stars!’ (Mantlo, John B & Sinnott) with ghastly Seth and his demonic servants ultimately repulsed and Jane again playing a major role: even triumphally shaking Odin out of his compliant, mind-wiped state…

To Be Continued…

Adding lustre next is the cover to all-reprint Giant-Size Thor #1, followed by a compelling contemporaneous solo tale of Hercules (November 1975), taken from Marvel Premiere #26. Used to set up his major role in forthcoming team title The Champions, it was crafted by Mantlo, George Tuska & Vince Colletta. Sporting a new Kirby cover, ‘The Game of Raging Gods’ has the legendary hero relocate to California on the college lecture circuit and targeted by old enemies Typhon the Titan and spurned priestess Cylla the Witch of Delphos…

With covers by John Romita, Buckler, Sinnott, John Buscema, Gil Kane, Esposito, Frank Giacoia, Marie Severin, Tom Palmer, Giordano, Dan Adkins, Klaus Janson and Jack Kirby & Vince Colletta, this collection also includes assorted House ads; covers created by Romita, a John Buscema double page pin-up of the Asgardian cast and a frontispiece by Marie Severin from the Thor-starring reprint edition Marvel Treasury Edition #3.

Thor is one of modern comics’ greatest attractions and a cornerstone of the Marvel Universe. Always a high-point in graphic fantasy, his longevity is all the more impressive for the sheer imagination and timeless readability of the tales crafted by an army of creators. This chronicle is an absolute must for all fans of the medium and far-flung fantasy thrills.
© 2021 MARVEL

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Batman: The Scottish Connection


By Alan Grant & Frank Quitely (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-5638-9372-8 (TPB)

Once again we’ve lost another comics great, another uniquely brilliant and imaginative voice. Alan Grant died yesterday, July 21st 2022.

Born on February 9th 1949, in Bristol, Alan Grant grew up as a true Scot in the heart of Midlothian. He was a bit wayward and anarchic and – after trying regular life a couple of times –  began his comics career in 1967 as an editor for DC Thomson. Soon he was writing scripts – many with life-long collaborator John Wagner – and inventing characters, first for British companies but eventually all over the world.

His triumphs include Tarzan, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Batman, Lobo, L.E.G.I.O.N., Judge Anderson, The Bogie Man, Channel Evil, Kidnapped, The Demon, Anarky, Robo-Hunter, The Loxleys and the War of 1812 and countless more.

Alan contributed to amateur fanzines, constantly encouraging and supporting new talent; adapted classic literature to comics form for major art festivals; worked in animation; organized his own comic conventions in home village of Moniaive; self-published and ran his own publishing house Berserker Comics. He was tirelessly inquisitive, deeply philosophical and instinctively socially philanthropic. In 2020, he led a community outreach project to inform about CoVID-19 via a comic book.

Alan Grant was funny, and friendly and amazing. Here’s one of his best books remembered. A fuller tribute will follow shortly: probably one of his more controversial (for which read scandalous and hilarious) efforts, because that would have pleased him greatly…

Way, way back in 1953, Detective Comics #198 cover featured ‘Lord of Bat-Manor’, written by Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton and drawn by the legendary Dick Sprang. In it, Batman inherited a Scottish Castle and it was later established that Bruce Wayne’s ancestors came from Scotland.

Don’t ask me why that bit of ephemera remains when so very much else has been rewritten over the years but it has, and decades later, canny, proud and professional Scots Alan Grant & Frank Quitely parlayed that trivia titbit into this slim yet gripping Caledonian conundrum.

On a visit to the Auld Country, Bruce Wayne stumbles onto a quasi-Masonic plot to locate the lost treasure of the Knights Templar, but that’s simply the tip of the iceberg in a revenge scheme centuries in the making: one involving beautiful tragic women, deadly plagues, ancient super-weapons, crazed claymore-waving maniacs and good old-fashioned Heid-cases and Barm-pots all a-bother…

Beautifully illustrated, seditiously scripted and brilliantly dancing on the line between classic comedy and chilling thriller, this is pure adventurous escapism from two consummate professionals. Go and get it, bonny lads and lassies and all you others…
© 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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DC’s Greatest Detective Stories Ever Told


By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Gardner F. Fox, Mindy Newell, Mike W. Barr, Denny O’Neil, Andy Helfer, Rusty Wells, Creig Flessell, Carmine Infantino, Alan Davis, Paul Neary, Terry Beatty & Dick Giordano, Al Vey, E.R. Cruz, Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar, Mark Badger, Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0594-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

Fundamental and definitive aspects of “detective stories” have been attributed to the Bible, ancient Greek dramas, One Thousand and One Nights and similarly compelling classical texts from China, India and other places, but the true genre of crime and mystery fiction really began with cheap printing and the rise of mass entertainment culture.

Detective stories are a subgenre wherein an investigation – by amateur or professional (active or retired) – into a legal felony or moral/social injustice. Like exploration/adventuring, fantasy, horror and science fiction, Detective Stories blossomed in white western societies in the mid-19th century: spreading from prose books and magazines to other entertainment media like plays and films, with early stars including C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Maigret, Father Brown, Lord Peter Wimsey, Sexton Blake and Hercule Poirot. Tales aimed at youngsters generated their own sleuthing stars: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and more

As comic strips developed, they also spawned detective champions like Hawkshaw, Dick Tracy, Charlie Chan, Kerry Drake ad infinitum: all contributing to a tidal wave of pulp fiction crimebusters that inspired true literary legends – Philip Marlow, Sam Spade, Simon Templar, Mike Hammer and so on…

Detective Comics #1 had a March 1937 cover-date and was the third and final anthology title devised by luckless pioneer Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. In 1935, the entrepreneur had seen the potential in Max Gaines’ new invention – the comic book – and reacted quickly, conceiving and releasing packages of all-new strips in New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine and its follow-up New Fun/New Adventure (which ultimately became Adventure Comics) under the banner of National Allied Publications.

These publications differed from similar prototype comics magazines which simply reprinted edited collations of established newspaper strips. However, these vanguard titles were as varied and undirected in content as any newspaper funnies page.

Detective Comics was different. Specialising solely in tales of crime and crimebusters, the initial roster included (amongst others) adventurer Speed Saunders, Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise, Gumshoe Gus and two series by a couple of kids from Cleveland named Siegel & Shuster: espionage agent Bart Regan and two-fisted shamus Slam Bradley…

Within two years the commercially unseasoned Wheeler-Nicholson had been forced out by his more adept business partners, and eventually his company grew into monolithic DC (for Detective Comics) Comics. Surviving a myriad of changes and temporary shifts of identity and aims, it’s still with us – albeit primarily as a vehicle for the breakthrough character who debuted in #27 (May 1939)…

Celebrating that quintessential connection and affiliation to the form, this slim tome gathers an unconventional array of sleuths and problem solvers, many not native to the parent title, but all offering a heady taste of what made the title great. Re-presenting material from Adventure Comics #51; Batman #441; Detective Comics #2, 329 & 572; Lois Lane #1-2; Secret Origins #40 and The Question #8 it spans August 1937 to November 1989: an epic package chronologically sampling the company’s connection and debt to the genre that truly started their ball rolling…’’

Sans preamble, we dive straight into action with early star Slam Bradley in his second ever case. ‘Skyscrapers of Death’ originated in the April 1937 cover-dated Detective Comics #2, (by Jerry – back when he still called himself “Jerome” – Siegel & Joe Shuster). It reveals how the abrasive, two-fisted gumshoe is framed for murder by a crooked Union boss. Slam and his assistant Shorty were a big draw in those early days: revelling in all the raw action and spectacle that would fire up his younger cousin Superman. The Bradley strip ran until October 1949, finally closing shop in Detective Comics #152.

Next up is quintessential pulp sleuth The Sandman who premiered in either Adventure Comics #40 July 1939 (two months after Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27) or two weeks earlier than that in New York World’s Fair Comics 1939, depending on which distribution records you choose to believe.

He was created and originally illustrated and scripted by multi-talented all-rounder Bert Christman, with assistance from Gardner F. Fox. Head utterly obscured by a gas-mask and slouch hat; caped, business-suited millionaire adventurer Wesley Dodds is a rugged playboy scientist cut from the radio drama/prose periodical mystery-men mould of The Shadow, Phantom Detective, Green Hornet, Lone Ranger, Spider, Avenger and so many more: all household names of early mass-entertainment.

Wielding a sleeping-gas gun and haunting the night hunting killers, thieves and spies, he was soon joined by plucky paramour Dian Belmont, before gradually losing readers’ interest and slipping from cover-spot to last feature in Adventure, just as the shadowy, morally ambiguous avengers he emulated also slipped from popularity in favour of gaudily clad glory-boys…

Alternately titled ‘The Pawn Broker’ in previous reprints, ‘The Van Leew Emeralds’ comes from Adventure Comics #51 (June 1940 by Fox & Creig Flessel): a fascinating mystery romp for the romantically-inclined crimebusters to solve in fine style and double-quick time…

In 1963 Julius Schwartz took editorial control of Batman and Detective Comics and finally found a home for a character who had been lying mostly fallow ever since his debut as a walk-on in The Flash #112 (April/May 1960). The Elongated Man was Ralph Dibny: a circus-performer who discovered an additive in soft drink Gingold which granted certain people increased muscular flexibility. Intrigued, he refined the chemical until he had a serum bestowing ability to stretch, bend and compress his body to an incredible degree. Then Ralph had to decide how to use his new powers…

Designed as a modern take on Jack Cole’s immensely popular Golden Age star Plastic Man, Dibny became a regular guest star/colleague for the Scarlet Speedster. He married vivacious debutante Sue Dibny and joined Flash’s battles against aliens and supervillains, but when the back-up spot opened in Detective Comics (previously held by Martian Manhunter since 1955 and only vacated because J’onn J’onzz was promoted to lead position in House of Mystery) Schwartz had Dibny slightly reconfigured as a flamboyant, fame-hungry, attention-seeking, brilliantly canny globe-trotting private eye solving mysteries for the sheer fun of it.

Aided by his equally smart but thoroughly grounded wife, the short tales were patterned on classic Thin Man filmic adventures of Nick and Norah Charles: blending clever, apparently impossible crimes and events with slick sleuthing, all garnished with the outré permutations and frantic physical antics first perfected by Cole…

Drenched in fanciful charm and sly dry wit, the complex yet uncomplicated sorties began in Detective #327 (May 1964) running until #371 (cover-dated January 1968). Crafted by Fox & Infantino – who inked himself in early episodes – this third outing has them heading for cowboy country to unravel the ‘Puzzle of the Purple Pony!’ (Detective Comics #329) by inadvertently playing cupid for a young couple hunting a gold mine before capturing a gang of murderous bandits with money and murder in mind.

Next up is a rare, completely serious outing for the oldest female lead in superhero comics. Although her role varied from patsy to comedy stooge, from jester to romantic ideal to eye-candy as the situation warranted, Lois Lane was always an investigative whirlwind.

Here in the dying moments of the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, scripter Mindy Newell & artist Gray Morrow found their 4-issue miniseries scrunched into two double-length issues (August-September 1986,with that notorious “Superman’s Girl Friend…” strap line thankfully dropped) as Lois Lane #1-2, scrupulously, meticulously, obsessively, and ultimately unsuccessfully tried to bring a national crisis in missing children to the public’s attention in ‘When it Rains, God is Crying’.

Devoid of superhero involvement, the regular Superman cast are drawn into a polemical story exposing the extent of child abduction, the repercussions of recovering victims – dead or otherwise – and official responses in ‘Ignorance Was Bliss’, ‘Dark Realities’, ‘Quicksand’ and ‘Bless the Child’ after Lois becomes increasingly driven to solve the mystery of an unidentified child found dead in Metropolis. Refusing to accept the horrific toll of disappearances she uncovers, the traumatised reporter puts her life and career on the line to find answers nobody seems willing to hear…

From painful reality we fold back into fantastic fantasy as anniversary issue Detective Comics #572 (March 1987) unites Batman, second Robin Jason Todd, Elongated Man, Slam Bradley and Sherlock Holmes in a hunt for ‘The Doomsday Book’, courtesy of scripter by Mike W, Barr, Alan Davis & Paul Neary, Terry Beatty & Dick Giordano, Infantino & Al Vey & ER Cruz.

The story begins with the descendent of infamous Professor Moriarty enacting a century old scheme, countered by each hero in a solo turn before all leads connect them to a certain British castle and a manic climactic confrontation…

In the gritty post-Crisis reality, Denny O’Neil, Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar retooled Steve Ditko’s ultimate lone agent of justice into a philosophical force of nature, relentless in his pursuit of answers.

An ordinary man pushed to the edge by his obsessions, Vic Sage used his fists and a mask that makes him look faceless to secure truth and justice whenever normal journalistic methods failed. Here the remorseless Question prowls Hub City hunting the ‘Mikado’ (The Question #8, September 1987): a good man driven by the daily horrors of the city to take action, against villains and hypocrites, making his punishments fit the crime…

In the years when superheroes were in retreat and considered too foolish for readers. DC launched Rex the Wonder Dog, who solved crimes, fought dinosaurs and saved the world. In issue 4 (July/August 1952), a back-up feature launched. Written by John Broome, Bobo was Detective Chimp: a Florida-based stalwart who was assistant and deputy to the local sheriff. He cracked many cases and was extremely popular among certain types of fan. He remains so and in Secret Origins #40 (May 1989) finally enjoyed ‘The Origin of Detective Chimp’ thanks to Mark Badger Andy Helfer & Rusty Wells. Madcap and hilarious, it’s a wild ride but has been superseded in later years by other, more quasi rational tales. Nevertheless, an ape solving crimes is a sure-fire winner as many other hirsute DC gumshoes could attest…

This eclectic selection closes with the middle chapter of a landmark crossover tale. Crafted by Marv Wolfman, Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo, ‘Parallel Line’ comes from Batman #441 (November 1989) the third chapter of the Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying arc introducing third Robin Tim Drake.

After original Robin Dick Grayson’s departure, the Dark Knight worked solo until he caught a streetwise urchin stealing the Batmobile’s tires. This lost boy was Jason Todd, whose short but stellar career as the Boy Wonder was fatally tainted by his impetuosity, tragic links to one of the hero’s most unpredictable foes and shocking death. The trauma of losing his comrade forced Batman to re-examine his own origins and methods, becoming darker still..

After a period of increasingly undisciplined encounters Batman was on the edge of losing not just his focus but also his ethics and life: seemingly suicidal on frequent forays into the night. Interventions from his few friends and associates had proved ineffectual. Something drastic had to happen if the Dark Knight was to be salvaged.

Luckily there was an opening for a sidekick…

The crossover tale originally appeared in Batman #440-442 and New Teen Titans #60-61 (all plotted by Wolfman & George Pérez) and a new character entered the lives of the extended Batman Family; a remarkable child who would reshape the DC Universe.

‘Parallel Lines’ unravels the enigma of Tim Drake, who as a toddler was in the audience the night the Flying Graysons were murdered. Tim was an infant prodigy, and when, some months later he saw new hero Robin perform the same acrobatic stunts as Dick Grayson, he instantly deduced who the Boy Wonder was – and by extrapolation, the identity of Batman.

A passionate fan, Drake followed the Dynamic Duo’s exploits for a decade: noting every case and detail. He knew when Jason became Robin and was moved to act when his death triggered Batman’s increasing instability. Taking it upon himself to fix his broken heroes, Tim tried to convince the “retired” Grayson to became Robin once more – but fate had other plans…

Eccentrically engaging, these tales are the merest hint of the wonders locked in DC’s vaults of fun and wonder. Hopefully, it’s also simply the start of a long and vibrant caseload of recovered mysteries
© 1937, 1940, 1964, 1986, 1987, 1989, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Miss Don’t Touch Me volumes 1 and 2


By Hubert & Kerascoët, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-544-3 (TPB) & 978-1-56163-592-4 (TPB)

Hubert Boulard was a French comics writer and colourist who died suddenly on February 12th 2020. He is criminally unknown in the English-speaking world.

“Hubert” was born on January 21st 1971, and after graduating in 1994 from the École régionale des beaux-arts d’Angers, began his comics career as an artist for seasoned pros such as Éric Ormond, Yoann, Éric Corberyan, Paul Gillon and others. He started writing strips for others in 2002, with Legs de l’alchimiste limned by Herve Tanquerelle, followed up with Yeaux Verts for long-term collaborator Zanzim.

He produced another 14 separate series – many of them internationally award winning like Les Ogres-Dieux and Monsieur désire? – and in 2013 contributed to collective graphic tract Les Gens normaux, paroles lesbiennes gay bi trans: released to coincide with France’s national debate on legalizing same sex marriage.

His final book was with artist Zanzim. Peau d’homme – a comedy exploring gender and sexuality at the height of an era of medieval religious intolerance and social stratification – was posthumously published in June 2020… and is as yet unavailable in English translation.

Debuting in 2006, Miss Pas Touche was Hubert’s third scripting venture and remains arguably his most successful. It was originally released as four volumes in France, which – when translated by NBM – were delivered as two deliciously wicked tomes…

This slim, sleek initial translated tome offers a superb period murder mystery from visual creators probably best known in the English speaking world as contributors to Joann Sfar & Lewis Trondheim’s Dungeon series of interlinked fantasy books.

Here, Paris at the end of the 19th century is plagued by its very own Jack the Ripper – a knife-wielding maniac dubbed “the Butcher of the Dances” because he picks his victims from lower class girls frequenting suburban Tea-dances where the young people gather…

Blanche is a maid in a fine socially prestigious house: pious, repressed and solitary, unlike her sister Agatha – also a maid in the same residence – who is fun-loving and vivacious. They share the attic room at the top of the house where one night, Blanche accidentally sees “the Butcher” at his bloody work through a crack in the wall.

He sees her too, and some nights later she finds Agatha dead, as if by her own hand. Blanche knows what must have really happened…

Anxious to avoid scandal, the mistress of the house dismisses Blanche, who is forced to fend for herself on inhospitable streets. Through a combination of detective enquiry and sheer luck, she finds a lead to the killer and secures a position in The Pompadour, the most exclusive brothel in the city. By catering to a rich and powerful elite, here she will find the Butcher and exact her revenge…

Originally published in France as La Vierge du Bordel and Du Sang sur le Mains, this witty, and hugely engaging crime conundrum cleverly peels back its layered secrets as our star finds a way to turn her steadfast virginal state and overwhelming frustration to her advantage amidst the decadent rich and sexually bored of Paris. Maintaining her virtue against all odds, Blanche discovers the other side to a world she previously despised, while valiantly achieving her goal, even though it threatens to topple two empires!

Feeling very much like a cheeky grown-up version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1905 novel A Little Princess, this saucy confection from writer/colourist Hubert is delightfully realized with great panache by the Kerascoët to the delight of a wide variety of grown-up readers.

 

Miss Don’t Touch Me volume 2

Let’s return to the eclectic world of the French demi-Monde – in the oddly inappropriate guise of formerly naive and still virginal ex-housemaid Blanche, who one night espied a psychopathic murderer at work. Intent on silencing the pesky witness, “the Butcher of the Dances” mistakenly killed Blanche’s sister Agatha in her stead, before the surviving sibling was unceremoniously sacked by her employers to avoid scandal.

Thrown onto the streets of fin de siècle Paris, our pious innocent found refuge and unique employment within the plush corridors of the city’s most exclusive and lavishly opulent bordello. Fiercely hanging on to her virtue against all odds, Blanche became Miss Don’t Touch Me: a spirited – and energetic – proponent of the “English Method” – specifically, an excessively enthusiastic flagellating dominatrix, beating the dickens out of men who delighted in enduring exquisite pain and exorbitant expense. The first volume ended with justice for both Blanche and the Butcher but her adventures were not over…

This delightfully audacious and risqué sequel opens with Blanche – virtue still notoriously and profitably intact – as the Pompadour’s most popular attraction, even though the magnificent edifice is undergoing an expensive and disruptive refit.

However, she is deeply unhappy with her life and tries to flee, buy and even blackmail herself out of her onerous contract. She is soon made brutally aware of how business is really done in the twilight world of the courtesan-for-hire…

Utterly trapped, Blanche loses all hope, even while becoming gradually enamoured of Apollo-like young dandy Antoine: one of the wealthiest men in the country and a man apparently content to simply talk with her. Complications mount when her unscrupulous, conniving mother returns to Paris and begins to avail herself of the surviving daughter’s guilt-fuelled generosity and social contacts…

Blanche’s velvet-gloved imprisonment seems set to end when her bonny bon vivant boy begins to talk of marriage, but just as suddenly, her life at the brothel begins to radically unravel. Obviously the aristocrat’s dowager mother has no stomach for the match, but social humiliation is not the same as the malicious lies, assaults, attacks and even attempted poisoning Blanche experiences.

Moreover, the genteel dominatrix’s mother seems to hold a hidden secret concerning Antoine’s family and, if they are to be wed, why doesn’t the prospective groom want his bride-to-be to give up her day – or more accurately – evening job?

Originally published in France as Le Prince Charmant and Jusqu’à ce que la Mort Nous sépare, this enticing, knowing and hugely enthralling tale trumps the inspired murder-mystery of the introductory volume with a turbulent period melodrama of guerrilla Class Warfare that promises tragic and shocking consequences, especially after Antoine abruptly vanishes and the apparently benevolent brain surgeon Professor Muniz begins his terrifying work…

A compelling saga stuffed with secrets, this engagingly sophisticated confection from writer/colourist Hubert, illustrated with irrepressible panache by Kerascoët (married artistic collaborators Marie Pommepuy & Sébastien Cosset) will further delight the wide variety of grown-up readers who made the first book such a popular and critical success.
© 2007 Dargaud by Kerascoet & Hubert. All Rights Reserved. English Translation © 2007, 2008, 2010 NBM.

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Alice Guy: First Lady of Film


By Catel & Bocquet, translated by Eward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-03-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

I’ve reached a ripe – really, really ripe – old age and only learned one true thing: Men should not be allowed to be in charge of history. We have a very nasty and juvenile tendency to balls it up and – I’m going to say – “forget” stuff that women actually did.

I’m not going to embarrass us all with a list of female accomplishments and discoveries excised from the record, but I might wax quite a bit wroth whilst reviewing this superb graphic biography that joins the movement to redress the wrongs done to an extraordinary talent who shaped the primary entertainment medium of the last century and was then made to be forgotten…

Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché was born on July 1st 1873 and is officially the world’s first female Film Director as well as. by most metrics, the first person to add narrative to the nascent scientific diversion and tent show phenomenon of Cinema. Where once the spectacle of objects moving, ordinary people walking about and trains entering stations was the sum total of creative endeavour, she added storytelling and birthed a whole new world.

However, her legacy was almost erased in the years after she stopped working. At one stage none of her films were officially registered anywhere and to this day no complete archive of her works exists or even a complete record of how many motion-pictures she made…

A well-travelled, well-read daughter of educated parents (her father owned bookshops and a tri-national publishing house in Chile, before war and natural disasters destroyed their fortune), Alice Guy’s connection to photography began in 1894, when she joined a photographic instruments business that would become the mighty Gaumont Cinema empire. She started as a stenographer (possibly the first ever in France), and quickly – pretty much sans any acknowledgement – became company secretary, business manager and – when the explosion of individual technical discoveries converged to make a scientific oddity into an unexpected entertainment phenomenon – the company’s foremost maker of films for public consumption.

Initially indulged and soon eagerly supported and encouraged by (most of) the men in charge Alice Guy wrote the first scripted films, beginning in 1996 with a charming fantasy about where babies come from.

La Fée aux Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages or, in at least two later remakes benefitting from her technological and narrative inventions, The Birth of Children) was huge hit with the public and resulted in her scripting and/or directing hundreds of further films of varying lengths. A passionate pioneer, she blended strong, visually arresting narratives and constant examination of social inequity and inequality with cutting edge and innovative technology, art direction and set making.

At the turn of the century, Guy made many dozens of sound-enhanced films in the now all-but forgotten “Chronophone” system (synchronising phonographic recordings with projected film decades before 1927’s “Talkies” revolution); championed and perfected location shooting; devised new special effects; instituted purpose-built studios and specialised sets and experimented with colour-tinted film.

In 1906, Guy invented historical/biblical epics and chapter serials with La vie du Christ (The Life of Christ): a 25 part extravaganza employing 300 actors and in 1912 – after moving to America to found her own studio Solax – made the first film with an all-black cast.

Minstrel comedy A Fool and his Money would have had only one African American character and loads of white guys in traditional and popular “blackface”, but when her established white American actors refused to work beside even one actual negro – vaudeville comedian James Russell – she let them all go and hired Russell’s fellow performers instead…

In 1913, she directed The Thief: the first script sold by Harvard student William Moulton Marston, eventual polygraph pioneer and creator of Wonder Woman…

Guy also created groundbreaking feminist satires, and used her films to explore women’s rights and champion birth control politics. She made international dance and travelogue films in incredibly successful “one-reelers” dedicated to sharing the wonders of terpsichorean movement across borders, and always looked for the next new thing, but her rising star burned out after moving to America and ending her marriage to a faithless man who speculated away all their money amidst the chaos of changing economic systems, Spanish Flu, and the Great Depression. Sounds like a classic movie plot, right?

Guy directed her last film – Tarnished Reputations – in 1920, and began an inexorable descent into poverty and obscurity, spending her days seeking to find copies of any of the hundreds of features she had created.

Alice Guy died in 1968, just as other, more appreciative truth-seekers who had taken up her later-life struggle to re-establish her  place in history were finally making headway and returning her to the annals of cinema history.

Written after WWII, her autobiography had languished on a publishers desk for decades before finally being posthumously published in 1976. Since then, a veritable Who’s Who of academics, historians and industry greats have toiled to overturn her erasure. Alice is now getting the acclaim and appreciation she earned incognito. As always, it appears to be one more case of Too Little, Too Late…

All that achievement, accomplishment, disillusionment and ultimate abandonment by her own colleagues and the public she invisibly captivated has been given a sublimely moving human face in this chronological, episodic, dramatized narrative from award-winning graphic novelist Catel Muller (Ainsi soit Benoîte Groult, Adieu Kharkov, Lucie s’en soucie, Le Sang des Valentines, Kiki de Montparnasse, Joséphine Baker, Olympe de Gouges) and crime novelist, screenwriter, biographer and comics writer José-Louis Bocquet (Sur la ligne blanche, Mémoires de l’espion, Panzer Panik, Kiki de Montparnasse, Joséphine Baker, Olympe de Gouges, Anton Six). Here, Alice’s life is traced from cradle to grave in black-&-white “shorts”, concentrating on her family life and relationships, with her astounding energy, creativity and catalogue of innovations and successes acting as a mere spine to form an impression of the woman whose guiding motto was always “be natural”.

Entertaining, engaging and subtly informative, the book is supplemented by a vast supporting structure of extras, beginning with a heavily illustrated and highly informative ‘Timeline for Alice Guy’ incorporating pivotal events in the invention of cinema. That’s further augmented by ‘Biographical Notes’: 32 character portraits in prose and sketch form of the historical figures who also feature in this epic saga, as well as a Filmography of the movies researchers have since confirmed and acknowledged, and a Bibliography of films, documentaries and books about her.

If you love film, or comics, justice triumphant or just great stories, you really need to set some records straight and read this book.
© Casterman 2021. All rights reserved.

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Vimanarama


By Grant Morrison & Philip Bond (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0496-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM) starts today, running, as it does every year, from 18th July to 17th August. We’ll be dropping the occasional new and old review that might be of added significance over that period and probably beyond if I can find enough books that qualify through content or creators. Let’s start with a certifiable classic…

Superbly aided and abetted by the brilliant art of Philip Bond, Grant Morrison’s classic modern theological soap opera fantasy Vimanarama is set in and around an “open all hours” corner shop in Bradford.

Here second son Ali is fretting because his arranged bride is due to arrive any moment. His future happiness and life’s success or failure is tied to a girl he has never even met but fears that he is utterly unsuited for and will inevitably disappoint. Therefore, he really hasn’t got time to worry about the massive hole that has opened up under the shop, or brother Omar’s severe injuries from falling down it, or even that the baby has wandered into it and found a lost outpost of Atlantis.

Forced to explore the incredible ancient and remarkably well-preserved under-Earth mega-metropolis, Ali is, however, pretty impressed by the very capable and newly-arrived Sophia. His intended bride has made her own way to the shop, and also sought to find the toddler… She’s beside Ali when the savage techno-demons – who had slumbered there for millennia – awake and escape, intent on undoing creation. She helps him awaken the godly Ultrahadeen. …And she’s beautiful.

The problem is that the leader of these lordly heroes instantly loves Sophia too, which could drastically impinge on the whole saving humanity thing, as well as interfering with Ali’s now eagerly anticipated nuptials. The god-like Ben Rama is really tall, really beautiful, and, let’s not forget, a god.

How the world is saved and Ali gets what he deserves is a gloriously exuberant romp, bright, colourful and very, very funny. I haven’t heard a cool media term to pigeon-hole this sort of cross culture comic with, and I’m not going to use any form of “Bollywood” derivative. You should just read this and make one up yourself. Or, if not that, you should just read this.

This very Vedic epic was originally seen as a 3-issue miniseries in 2005 and first collected as book a year later. The story is also available as half of a graphic double bill with Morrison & Bond’s anarchically surreal social comedy Kill Your Boyfriend. When I review that soon , you can either reread the above review again or just ignore it. As ever in this Cycle of Existence, the choice is yours (although our assorted destinies are already written)…
© 2005 Grant Morrison & Philip Bond. All Rights Reserved.