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Ant-Man/Giant-Man Epic Collection volume 1 1962-1964: The Man in the Ant-Hill


Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Ernie Hart, Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, Sol Brodsky, Steve Ditko, Paul Reinman, Chic Stone, & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9850-5 (TPB/Digital edition) 

Dates and debuts are big deals to comics fans, and this year is a major one for Marvel Anniversaries, if not always first appearances. Here’s a classic case-in-point… 

If you’re of a particularly picky nature – and what true fan isn’t? – you could consider The Astonishing Ant-Man to be the second superhero of the Marvel Age. He first popped up in Tales to Astonish #27 (cover-dated January 1962 but on sale from the end of September 1961), in one of the splendidly addictive men-vs-monsters anthology titles that dominated in those heady days of Science Fiction Double-Feature B-Movies. 

This eclectic episodic, entomologically edifying and endearing compendium gathers pertinent portions of Tales to Astonish #27 and a majority of the succeeding series (which ran from #35-69: September 1962 to July 1965). Sadly the little dramas herein terminate with #59 (September 1964). 

These itty-bitty sagas reveal scintillating solo outings of a brilliant but troubled scientist who became an unlikely, uncomfortable and ultimately mentally unstable champion, and begin with what was just supposed to be another throwaway filler thriller… 

A cover-featured 7-page short introduced Dr Henry Pym, a maverick scientist who discovers a shrinking potion and became ‘The Man in the Anthill!’, discovering peril, wonder and even a kind of companionship amongst the lowliest creatures on Earth and under it… 

Plotted by Stan Lee, scripted by his brother Larry Lieber and stunningly illustrated by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers, the engaging piece of fluff owed more than a little to classic B-movie The Incredible Shrinking Man… 

Obviously, Pym struck a chord with someone since, as the DC Comics-inspired superhero boom flourished, he was rapidly retooled as a full-fledged costumed do-gooder, debuting again mid-year (#35, cover-date September 1962) in ‘The Return of the Ant-Man’ by Lee, Lieber, Kirby & Ayers. The plot concerned a raid by Soviet agents (this was during the height of Marvel’s ‘Commie-Buster’ period when every other villain was a Red somebody or other and rampaging socialism was a cultural bête noir) with Pym imprisoned in his own lab. 

Forced to return to the abandoned shrinking gases and cybernetic devices he’d built to communicate with ants, Dr. Pym soundly trounced the spies and resolved to use his gifts for the good of Mankind. 

The same creative team produced the next four adventures, starting with ‘The Challenge of Comrade X!’ (TTA #36) as an infallible Soviet superspy was dispatched to destroy the Tiny Terror, after which Ant-Man was temporarily ‘Trapped by the Protector!’ – a cunning jewel-thief and extortionist who ultimately proved no match for the little wonder. 

‘Betrayed by the Ants!’ featured the debut of intellectual archfoe Egghead: a maverick and mercenary research scientist who attempted to usurp the hero’s control of insects whilst ‘The Vengeance of the Scarlet Beetle!’ saw a return to scary monster stories as a radioactively mutated, super-smart bug sought to eradicate humanity, with only Pym able to stop him… 

Sol Brodsky replaced Ayers as inker on ‘The Day that Ant-Man Failed!’ (TTA #40), with a deadly Hijacker robbing trucks and pushing the inventor to new heights of ingenuity, after which Kirby too moved on: his lavishly experimental perspectival flamboyance replaced by the comforting realism and enticing human scale of Don Heck who limned a classy alien invasion yarn in ‘Prisoner of the Slave World!’ before depicting a mesmerising menace who could control people with ‘The Voice of Doom’ (TTA #42). 

The following issue H. E. Huntley (AKA veteran writer/artist Ernie Hart) replaced Lieber as scripter with ‘Versus the Mad Master of Time’: a run-of-the-mill mad – or rather disgruntled and misguided – scientist yarn. The next issue (#44) saw Kirby return to pencil a significant change to the series…. 

‘The Creature from Kosmos’ (inked by Heck) introduced The Wasp – Pym’s bon vivant crime-fighting partner Janet Van Dyne – in a double-length tale featuring a murderous alien marauder who killed her father. There was even a fresh secret origin for Ant-Man: a rare and uncharacteristic display of depth revealing Pym was a widower. When his Hungarian wife Maria was murdered by Communist agents, it irrevocably changed a young scientist from a sedentary scholar into a driven man of action…. 

Ant-Man used his discoveries to endow Janet with the power to shrink and fly and she became his crime-fighting partner. Together they overcome ‘The Terrible Traps of Egghead’ (Lee, Huntley & Heck) before travelling to Greece to thwart another alien invasion ‘When Cyclops Walks the Earth!’ 

Back in the USA, the Diminutive Duo battle mystic trumpeter Trago in ‘Music to Scream By’ and defeat an avaricious weapons designer who builds himself a unique warsuit to become super-thief ‘The Porcupine!’: all serving as placeholders before the next big change came with Tales to Astonish #49’s ‘The Birth of Giant-Man!’. 

Lee scripted and Kirby pencilled how Pym learned to enlarge as well as reduce his size, just in time to tackle trans-dimensional kidnapper The Eraser. In the next issue Steve Ditko inked The King in ‘The Human Top’: first chapter of a continued tale which showed our hero struggling to adapt to his new strength and abilities. 

Concluding episode ‘Showdown with the Human Top!’ was inked by Ayers who would draw the bulk of the succeeding stories until the series’ demise. Also with this issue (TTA #51) back-up feature The Wonderful Wasp Tells a Tale began; blending sci-fi vignettes narrated by the heroine, fact-features and solo adventures. The first is space thriller ‘Somewhere Waits a Wobbow!’ by Lee, Lieber & George Roussos in Marvel mode as “George Bell”. 

The super-hero adventures settled into a predictable pattern from then on: individually effective enough but uninspired when read in quick succession. First up is a straight super-villain clash as ‘The Black Knight Strikes!’ (Lee & Ayers: TTA #52), supplemented by Wasp’s homily ‘Not What They Seem!’. Issue #53 led with another spectacular battle-bout ‘Trapped by the Porcupine!’ and finished with Wasp yarn ‘When Wakes the Colossus!’ (Lee, Lieber & Heck) before #54 found Heck briefly reinstated to illustrate the Crusading Couple’s catastrophic trip to South of the Border Santo Rico but finding ‘No Place to Hide!’ The taut tale of being trapped and powerless in a banana republic run by brutal commie agent El Toro was neatly counterbalanced by Wasp’s sci fi saga ‘Conquest!’ (Lee, Lieber & Brodsky). 

An implacable former foe defeated himself in ‘On the Trail of the Human Top!’ when the psychotic killer stole Giant-Man’s size changing pills in #55, following which Lee, Lieber & Bell produced Wasp’s tale of ‘The Gypsy’s Secret!’ 

A criminal stage conjuror was far more trouble than you’d suspect in ‘The Coming of The Magician!’: even successfully abducting the Wasp before his defeat, which she celebrated by regaling readers with tall tale ‘Beware the Bog Beast!’ (Lee, Lieber & Paul Reinman) after which #57 featured a major guest-star as the size-changing sweethearts set out ‘On the Trail of the Amazing Spider-Man!’ courtesy of Lee, Ayers & Reinman, with Egghead waiting in the wings and pulling strings, before the Wasp actually enjoyed a complete solo adventure with ‘A Voice in the Dark!’ by Lee, Lieber & Chic Stone. 

These were not only signs of the increasing interconnectivity Lee was developing but also indicated the strip was losing impetus. In a market rapidly drowning in superheroes, Giant Man was not selling as well as he used to or should… 

Captain America cameo-ed in #58’s epic Africa-based battle with a giant alien in ‘The Coming of Colossus!’, supplemented by Wasp’s lone hand played against an old foe in ‘The Magician and the Maiden!’ 

The last tale in this collection and beginning of the end for Giant-Man came in Tales to Astonish #59 and ‘Enter: the Hulk!’ with the Avengers inadvertently prompting the Master of Many Sizes to hunt down the Green Goliath. Although Human Top orchestrated a blockbusting battle, Lee was the real mastermind since, with the next issue, The Hulk would co-star in his own series and on the covers whilst Giant-Man’s adventures shrank back to a dozen or so pages. Ten issues later Hank and Jan would retire, making way for amphibian antihero Namor, the Sub-Mariner… 

(Gi)-Ant-Man and the Wasp did not die, but instead joined a vast cast of characters Marvel kept in relatively constant play through team books, via guest shots and in occasional re-launches and mini-series. 

Despite variable quality and treatment, the eclectic, eccentric and always fun exploits of Marvel’s premier “odd couple” remain an intriguing and engaging reminder that the House of Ideas didn’t always get it right, but generally gave their all to entertaining their fans. 

Marvel Comics initially built its fervent fan base through strong and contemporarily relevant stories and striking art, but most importantly by creating a shared continuity that closely followed the characters through not just their own titles but also through the many guest appearances in other comics. Such an interweaving meant that even today completists and fans seek out extraneous stories to get a fuller picture of their favourite’s adventures. 

In such an environment, series like these Epic Collections are an economical and valuable commodity approaching the status of a public service for collectors.  

By turns superb, stupid, exciting and appalling, this Epic encounter epitomises the best and worst of Early Marvel (with the delightful far outweighing the duff). It certainly won’t appeal to everybody, but if you’re a Fights ‘n’ Tights fan with a forgiving nature or a movie-goer looking for extra input, the good stuff here will charm, amaze and enthral you whilst the rest could just be considered as a garish garnish providing added flavour…
© 1962, 1963, 1964, 2015 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. 

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Savant


 

By Jim Alexander, Will Pickering, Fin Cramb & Jim Campbell (Planet Jimbot)
ISBN: 978-1-9164535-6-2 (TPB)  

As well as periodical comic books, anthologies and prose novels, independent publisher Planet Jimbot (primarily Jim Alexander & Jim Campbell, and a seemingly bottomless well of fresh and aspiring talent) also produce proper graphic novels …damned good ones.  

After a quiet period for us all, and brief dalliance with Dark Horse Comics, the lads make their return to independent ways with this slim, full-colour done-in-one interplanetary extravaganza.   

Writer Jim Alexander’s pictorial back-catalogue includes Star Trek the Manga, X-Men (Ororo: Before the Storm), Calhab Justice among many strips for 2000AD; kids licensed properties like Ben 10 and Generator Rex and a broad variety of comics and strips for The Dandy, DC, DC Thomson, Marvel, Dark Horse Comics, Metal Hurlant Chronicles, and loads of other places. He also co-rules – with Jim Campbell – his own publishing empire. Planet Jimbot offers genre releases like Wolf Country; The Ripper Legacy; App-1; The Samurai; App-1; Gabriel and more Alexander has also written potent prose novels like GoodCopBadCop and The Light… 

Here, in conjunction with illustrator Will Pickering (Wolf Country; Burke & Hare), colourist Fin Cramb (White Ash; JM Barrie’s Peter Pan) and letterer Campbell (Firefly; 2000 AD) he debuts cosmic wanderer Lode, who originally hails from fabled memory planet Savant. 

Grieving her lost father, Lode wanders the lesser universe far from elysian Savant, irresistibly drawn to points of crisis, bloodshed and chaos. On Hubris, she finds plenty after being pressganged into using her unique ability to carry other people’s memories in a doomed attempt to interpret the rationale of a crazed demagogue. 

The force of recollection drives this entire saga of good against evil and life over death. The self-exiled preserver of others’ pasts is drawn into a military mission after a supernal force of destruction possesses charismatic leader Trigo. Now as civilisation descends into brutal barbarity, the facsimile mind battles her own drawing Lode and a crack team of paramilitary Civil Servants towards the secret source driving citizens to madness and riot: a civil war between the weary sane and hyper-energised deranged… 

Closing in on the cause of all woes, Lode has no conception of how much her own life and destiny will be changed by the final confrontation… 

Smart, sharp and compelling, this is a keenly insightful exploration of inner universes and outer realities that will delight any fan of thoughtful action and well-reasoned drama and will especially resonate with fans of more conceptually-driven screen dreams like FarScape, Altered Carbon or The Expanse.
Story © 2022 Jim Alexander (story) & Will Pickering & Fin Cramb (art). 

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Jonah Hex volume 3: Origins


By Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Jordi Bernet, and others (DC Comics) 

ISBN: 978-1-84576-629-0 (TPB/Digital edition) 

The Western is an odd genre that can be sub-divided into two discrete halves: the sparkly, shiny version that dominated kids’ books, comics and television for decades, exemplified by Zane Grey stories and heroes like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Then there’s the other half… 

That kind of cowboy – grimy, gritty, excessively dark and nihilistic –was done best for decades by Europeans in such strips as Jean-Michel Charlier’s Lieutenant Blueberry or Bonelli & Galleppini’s Tex Willer and made their way into US culture through the films of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone.  

Jonah Hex is very best of this latter sort. 

DC opened a stable of clean-cut gun-slingers as the super-hero genre imploded in 1949, with dashing and highly readable luminaries like Johnny Thunder, Nighthawk, The Trigger Twins, Matt Savage and dozens of others in a marketplace that seemed limitless in its voracious hunger for chaps in chaps.  

However, all things end and by the early sixties the sagebrush brigade had dwindled to a few venerable properties. A flurry of superheroes hogged the newsstands during the Silver Age from 1956, but as the 1960s closed, they were waning again and thematic changes in the cinematic Cowboy filtered through to a comics industry suffering its second super-hero retreat in twenty years.  

All-Star Western #1 was released with an August/September 1970 cover date, filled with Pow-Wow Smith reprints, and became an all-new anthology with its second issue. It featured numerous creative all-stars, including Robert Kanigher, Neal Adams, Gray Morrow, Al Williamson, Gil Kane, Angelo Torres, & Dick Giordano, working on Outlaw!, Billy the Kid and cult sleeper-hit El Diablo: combining shoot-em-up shenanigans with supernatural chills, in deference to the real hit genre-type that saved comics in those dark days – horror stories. 

Issue #10 introduced a disfigured, irascible, shockingly lethal bounty hunter created by writer John Albano & Tony DeZuñiga and DC finally found its greatest and most enduring Western Warrior…  

Hex is the very model of a modern anti-hero. Coarse, callous, proudly uneducated, the relentless manhunter is clad in battered Confederate Grey, half his face lost to a hideous past injury. He offers the aspect of a brutal thug little better than the scum he hunts  and is a man to avoid – or so you’d think on first appearances…  

Hex is arguably the most memorable western comic character ever created. He’s certainly the darkest and most grippingly realised, as is the brutal and uncompromising world he inhabits. His 21st century revival portrayed him as a ruthless demon with gun or knife, hunting men for the price on their heads in the years following the American civil war.  

This collection (reprinting issues #13-18 of the 2006 monthly series) revisits his origin and offers fascinating insights not only in gripping lead tale ‘Retribution’ – illustrated by the utterly superb Jordi Bernet – but also in haunting, nihilistically evocative cautionary tale ‘The Ballad of Tallulah Black’ (beguiling painted by Phil Noto), and blackly comedic ‘I Walk Alone’, drawn with unsuspected subtlety by Val Semeiks. 

Jonah Hex was always the “Western for people who didn’t like Westerns” and cliché aside, it’s still true. This is a perfect book for any adult beginning or returning to comics. 
© 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. 

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Lone Wolf & Cub volume 4: The Bell Warden


By Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima, translated by Dana Lewis (Dark Horse Manga) 

ISBN: 978-1-56971-505-5 (TPB/digital edition) 

Best known in the West as Lone Wolf and Cub, the epic Samurai saga created by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima is without doubt a global classic of comics literature. An example of the popular “Chanbara” or “sword-fighting” genre of print and screen, Kozure Okami was serialised in Weekly Manga Action from September 1970 until April 1976. It was an immense and overwhelming “Seinen” (“Men’s manga”) hit… 

The tales prompted thematic companion series Kubikiri Asa (Samurai Executioner) which ran from 1972-1976, but the major draw – at home and, increasingly, abroad – was always the nomadic wanderings of doomed noble ÅŒgami Ittō and his solemn, silent child. 

Revered and influential, Kozure Okami was followed after years of supplication by fans and editors by sequel Shin Lone Wolf & Cub (illustrated by Hideki Mori) and even spawned – through Koike’s indirect participation – science fiction homage Lone Wolf 2100 by Mike Kennedy & Francisco Ruiz Velasco. 

The original saga has been successfully adapted to most other media, spawning movies, plays, TV series (plural), games and merchandise. The property is infamously still in Hollywood pre-production. 

The several thousand pages of enthralling, exotic, intoxicating narrative art produced by these legendary creators eventually filled 28 collected volumes, beguiling generations of readers in Japan and, inevitably, the world. More importantly, their philosophically nihilistic odyssey – with its timeless themes and iconic visuals – has influenced hordes of other creators. The many manga, comics and movies these stories have inspired around the globe are impossible to count. Frank Miller, who illustrated the cover of this edition, referenced the series in Daredevil, his dystopian opus Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City. Max Allan Collin’s Road to Perdition is a proudly unashamed tribute to the masterpiece of vengeance-fiction. Stan Sakai has superbly spoofed, pastiched and celebrated the wanderer’s path in his own epic Usagi Yojimbo, and even children’s cartoon shows such as Samurai Jack are direct descendants of this astounding achievement of graphic narrative. The material has become part of a shared world culture. 

In the West, we first saw the translated tales in 1987, as 45 Prestige Format editions from First Comics. That innovative trailblazer foundered before getting even a third of the way through the vast canon, after which Dark Horse Comics assumed the rights, systematically reprinting and translating the entire epic into 28 tankōbon-style editions of about 300 pages each, between September 2000-December 2002. Once the entire epic was translated, it was all placed online through the Dark Horse Digital project. 

Following a cautionary ‘Note to Readers’ – on stylistic interpretation – this moodily morbid monochrome collection truly gets underway, keeping many terms and concepts western readers may find unfamiliar. Therefore this edition offers at the close a Glossary providing detailed context on the term used in the stories, plus profiles of author Koike Kazuo & illustrator Kojima Goseki and another instalment of ‘The Ronin Report’ by Tim Ervin-Gore. The occasional series of articles here offers a rundown on exotic weaponry of the era in Weapons Glossary: Part one…  

Set in the era of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the saga concerns a foredoomed wandering killer who was once the Shogun’s official executioner: capable of cleaving a man in half with one stroke. An eminent individual of esteemed imperial standing, elevated social position and impeccable honour, ÅŒgami Ittō lost it all and now roams feudal Japan as a doomed soul hellbent for the dire, demon-haunted underworld of Meifumado. 

When the noble’s wife was murdered and his clan dishonoured due to the machinations of the treacherous, politically ambitious Yagyu Clan, the Emperor ordered ÅŒgami to commit suicide. Instead, he rebelled, choosing to be a despised Ronin (masterless samurai) assassin, pledged to revenge himself until all his betrayers were dead …or Hell claimed him. His son, toddler Daigoro, also chose the path of destruction and together they roam grimly evocative landscapes of feudal Japan, one step ahead of doom, with death behind and before them. 

Unflinching formula informs early episodes: the acceptance of a commission to kill an impossible target necessitates forging a cunning plan where relentless determination leads to inevitable success. Throughout each episode plot is underscored with bleak philosophical musings alternately informed by Buddhist teachings in conjunction with or in opposition to the unflinching personal honour code of Bushido… 

That tactic is eschewed for a simple commission in opening tale ‘Tsuji Genshichi the Bell Warden’ with the assassin hired by a prestigious and honourable official. Greater Edo runs to the timetable of nine great bells, dictating the flow of civilised time and acting as emergency alarm system in times of crisis. All that power and responsibility is controlled by one man: The Bell Warden. 

As with most hereditary official posts, great glory and vast wealth inevitably accrues to the position, but now the aging incumbent is preparing his successor. He has three candidates and grave misgivings about the worth and dedication of each. His solution: hire the most infamous outlaw in Japan to chop off the right (bell-ringing) arm. If they can’t survive and overcome they are none of them the man for the job… 

Drowning in his own ocean of duty, ÅŒgami accepts the commission and isn’t surprised to discover there is a hidden agenda in play… 

As the nation modernised – or lost its ethical core – noble samurai economised by firing their retainers and hiring domestic mercenaries. As this new class – “Chugen-Gashira” – grew in power, they feathered their own nests; increasingly turning to villainy and chicanery, further debasing Japan’s moral core. They were shielded by their own base-born origins, since upholders of the old ways could not “punch down” to retaliate.  

In ‘Unfaithful Retainers’, when two noble children seek redress for their father’s assault, the Lone Wolf also falls foul of his own entrenched self-image, and must concoct a byzantine scheme to reach the guilty party and deliver honourable justice…  

Daigoro takes centre stage in ‘Parting Frost’ as his father goes missing during a mission. As his supplies run out and winter snows start to melt , the boy is compelled to strike out in search of his father, only to encounter a Samurai who discerns exactly who and what he is. Testing the child to destruction with fire and steel, obsessive Iki Jizamon is only foiled by the abrupt return of the cub’s far from happy sire… 

Set in a brutal uncompromising world of privilege and misogyny, these episodes are unflinching and explicit in their treatment of violence – especially sexual violence. In detailing another historical aspect of the culture, ‘Performer’ focusses on a particular underclass: Gōmune. The term grouped together all street folk who busked for money: female minstrels, dancers, sleight-of-hand conjurers, weapons-demonstrators, kabuki actors, drummers, travelling players puppeteers, preachers, contortionists, storytellers acrobat and countless others all entertaining for coins. Naturally, they had no protection under law and when a swordswoman martial artist was brutalised by woman-hating warrior using treachery and hypnotism, she was unavenged… 

In her shame and fury, O-Yuki had her body further desecrated by horrific, attention-diverting tattoos, giving her a momentary advantage as she butchered a succession of Samurai on her way to finding one in particular… 

Accepting a commission from a lord rapidly being depleted of soldier-servants, Ōgami plays detective but finds himself deeply conflicted when he finally corners his prey. However, his given word is inviolate, his philosophy is unflinching and a job must be done… 

These stories are deeply metaphorical and work on many levels most of us westerners just won’t grasp on first reading – even with contextual aid provided by the bonus features. That only makes them more exotic and fascinating. Also a little unsettling is the even-handed treatment of women in the tales. Within the confines of the notoriously stratified culture being depicted, females – from servants to courtesans, prostitutes to highborn ladies – are all fully rounded characters, with their own motivations and drives. The wolf’s female allies are valiant and dependable, and his foes, whether targets or mere enemy combatants in his path, are treated with professional respect. He kills them just as if they were men… 

Whichever English transliteration you prefer – Wolf and Baby Carriage is what I was first introduced to – Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima’s grandiose, thought-provoking, hell-bent Samurai tragedy is one of those too-rare breakthrough classics of global comics literature. A breathtaking tour de force, these are comics you must not miss. 

© 1995, 2000 Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima. All other material © 2000 Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Cover art © 2000 Frank Miller. All rights reserved. 

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Cedric volume 7: Isn’t It Past Your Bedtime?


By Laudec & Cauvin; colours by Leonardo, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-025-8 (PB Album/Digital edition)

Raoul Cauvin is one of Europe’s most successful comics scripters. Born in Antoing, Belgium in 1938, by 1960 he was working in the animation department of publishing giant Dupuis after studying Lithography. Happily, he quickly discovered his true calling was writing funny stories and began a glittering, prolific career at Le Journal de Spirou.

With Salverius, he conceived the astounding successful Bluecoats, and dozens more award-winning series like Sammy, Cupidon, Les Femmes en Blanc, Pauvre, Lampil Boulouloum et Guiliguili, and Agent 212: cumulatively comprising well over 240 separate albums.

His collaborator on superbly witty kid-friendly family strip Cédric is Italian born, Belgium-raised Tony de Luca, who studied electro-mechanics and toiled as an industrial draughtsman before making his own break into bandes dessinée. Following some fanzine efforts in the late 1970s as “Laudec”, he landed soap-style strip Les Contes de Cure-la-Flute at Le Journal de Spirou in 1979. He traded that for a brace of war-time serials (L’an 40 in 1983 and March Noir et Bottes à Clous in 1985) whilst working his way around the comic’s other strips. In 1987, he joined Cauvin on the first Cédric shorts. From then on all was child’s play…

We have Dennis the Menace (the Americans have their own too, but he’s not the same) whilst the French-speaking world has Cédric: an adorable, lovesick rapscallion with a heart of gold and an irresistible penchant for mischief. He’s also afflicted with raging amour…

Collected albums – 34 so far – of variable-length strips ranging from a ½ page to half a dozen began appearing in 1989, and remain amongst the most popular and best-selling in Europe, as is the animated TV show spun off from the strip.

…A little Word to the Wise: this is not a strip afraid to suspend silly yoks in deference to a little suspense or even near-heartbreak. The bonny boy is crushingly smitten with Chen: a Chinese girl newly arrived in class and so very far out of his league, leading to frequent and painful confrontations and miscommunications. That gradually starts changing here…

Whilst the advice given by his lonely, widowed grandpa is seldom of any practical use, it often picks open scabs from the elder’s long, happy but now concluded marriage. These moments can reduce normal humans to tears…

This seventh Cinebook translation debuted in Europe in 1995 as Cédric – Parasite sur canapé and opens with a typically chaotic school event as ‘Look at the Birdie’ details why photographers hate kids and school photo day, after which Grandpa is shamed into a new coat by a brief park encounter in ‘Worn Out’…

When the old duffer comes down with a virus the well-meaning kid borrows a neighbour’s baby thermometer and makes the mistake of telling his ailing ancestor how it was most recently used in ‘Sick from Top to Bottom’, after which Cédric confronts the true emotional cost of donating old toys to charity in ‘The Christmas Present’.

‘Shocking’ takes a dive into drama as Cédric witnesses a car accident up close, but his parents can’t conceive of why the school psychologist can’t see him…

Body issues surprisingly arise when the kid the accidentally glimpses Grandpa in the bath and inadvertently shakes the elder’s formerly robust self-image in ‘A Critical Eye’ and ‘Blurp!’ reveals a close – and illicit – encounter with Asian cuisine resulting in an unforeseen gastric event before a romantic turning point arrives when Cédric and Chen eavesdrop on the adults recapturing their own youthful days in ‘Shall We Dance?’

Following a classmate’s funeral, the boy’s ‘Low Spirits…’ prompt an uplifting pep talk from dad that has the reverse effect upon the old guy (theoretically) nearest the grave, and a common nightmare comes true, sparking a near riot at school when Cédric becomes ‘Prisoner of the Toilet’…

A bone of domestic contention devolves into four-way chaos over what to watch on TV, with Grandpa eventually triumphing through guile and long-experience in ‘Whatever it Takes…’ after which birthday girl Chen proves a little less than perfect when her ‘Pastry Failure…’ incapacitates her devout admirer…

‘Grandpa Gets Some Air’, in which the old fossil responds to the gift of a free flight in a two-man plane with his typical cunning, and cowardice is followed by ‘Payment in Kind’ wherein the hapless lad dutifully tries fundraising by selling school raffle tickets but is instead introduced the concept of “barter”…

Cédric’s mediocre sporting achievements are again exposed in cross-country lark ‘Where Are the Others?’ and ‘Reluctant Volunteer’ shows why so many kids hate clowns – as well as a uniquely Cédric response to circus acts – before this show closes with the last bow of a veteran cast member. ‘Recline? Decline!’ sees Grandpa finally part with his beloved Him-shaped armchair. Typically, the high design replacement is not what anybody wants or is comfortable with…

Sharp, rapid-paced, warmly witty yet unafraid to explore life’s harshest moments, the exploits of this painfully keen, beguilingly besotted rapscallion are a charming example of how all little boys are just the same and infinitely unique. Cédric is a picture-perfect family portrait ideal for youngsters of every vintage…
© Dupuis 1995 by Cauvin & Laudec. All rights reserved. English translation © 2021 Cinebook Ltd.

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The Set-Up


By Joseph Moncure March illustrated by Erik Kriek (Korero Press)
ISBN: 978-1-91274-008-6 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-91274-012-3 

I’ve never understood boxing as a sport. Where I come from, you don’t hit people for money or fame but because you don’t like them, have a grievance with them or because they’re a member of the Tory Cabinet. I suppose that’ s pretty much the same thing these days. 

However, it’s an indisputable fact that for billons of humans over thousands of years, pugilism in its various forms has captivated, enthralled and on rare occasion, enhanced the lives of those both participating and spectating.  

Entire sub-cultures have embraced the Fight Game and it has in return elevated a few (some actual combatants, but a far greater number of managers, promoters and – disturbingly – “owners” of society’s officially sanctioned domestic gladiators) to positions of wealth and power. Many love to watch and many more are irresistibly drawn to compete…  

Despite – or more likely because of – modern rules and legal oversight the industry is apparently not as flagrantly in the pockets of crime bosses as in its early golden years, but once upon a time in the mid-20th century Boxing matches were the great leveller: drawing hoods and heroes, media stars and mobster scum, intellectuals and imbeciles… 

In 1928, white Jazz Age poet and essayist Joseph Moncure March wrote a highly successful and influential long-form poem about boxing that stripped away much of the glamour by focussing on the criminality and poverty-driven desperation that underpinned it.  

March was a war veteran, a college protégé of Robert Frost and first managing editor of The New Yorker, and infamous for his other poem. Bawdy, antisocial, deliberatively provocative and shocking, The Wild Party took three years to find a publisher. The Set-Up was similarly divisive and influential. You can find all you need to know about the odes and their author in Masha Thorpe’s brilliantly informative and erudite Introduction which combines appraisal and appreciation with history lesson in a critical biography of the pioneering poet. It also candidly discusses the major bone of contention this uncompromising revival will  stir up: Race.   

Protagonist Pansy Jones is an ex-con, over the hill fighter: an old Negro grateful for one final chance at a payoff against a younger, fitter, tougher opponent. It’s his last bout and he wants to go out with pride and dignity. Sadly, the match is fixed, but his crooked promoters have opted not to tell him and kept his portion of the pay-off for themselves… 

It sounds cliched now, but that’s because the printed poem was a monster hit during the Depression Era, spawning countless swipes and a popular but utterly bowdlerised 1947 noir film adaptation which omitted the uncompromising elements of commonplace bigotry the saga wallows in.  

Although in 1947 the author strenuously protested the replacement of Pansy with a white fighter, when The Set-Up was rereleased in 1968, March himself “de-nationalized” the tale, removing the brooding racial tensions and character that carried the original. 

What we have here now is the restored original text which wallows in grime, crime and poverty with fully-realized, universally grotesque, sordid and unsavoury characters all taking their piece of the action from desperate men pummelling each other for other people’s callous gratification… 
The tale is told in relentless rhyme and pitiless beats presaging modern Hip Hop culture: brutal, bleak, repetitive; glorifying another kind of gang culture and clinging to the notion of a last chance to win if you are man enough. This is dawn-era storytelling with classical themes delivered as primordial Rap in its purest, most primal form: drenched with aggression, hostility, nihilism, misogyny, explicit but accepted racism and, always, frustrated hope. 

March eschews conventional stanzas for explosive couplets, displaying verbal virtuosity and building scene-setting mood through a driving beat and mesmerising rhythm. Visually they are delivered in this edition like blows, laid in typographic blasts in clinches with starkly effective illustration cunningly informed by the works of graphic genius Will Eisner. 

The art is astounding, crafted by a modern master with his head firmly set towards past times. 

Amsterdam-born Erik Kriek (In the Pines – 5 Murder Ballads; silent superhero spoof Gutsman; Little Andy Roid; Welcome to Creek Country; Mika, the Little Bear That Didn’t Want to Go To Sleep) is a graduate of the Rietveld Academy for Art and Design and an in-demand illustrator of books – such as Holland’s Tolkien and Harry Potter editions – magazines, apparel, skateboards, ad infinitum.  

As well as being a musical historian and afficionado, he can turn his hand to many visual styles and graphic disciplines. Gutsman was reconceived as a soundless mime ballet in 2006 and his collection of Lovecraft adaptations Het onzienbare, en andere verhalen H. P. Lovecraft has been republished in many languages… 

Here he again extends his artistic range and demonstrates chiaroscuric virtuosity and versatility in the resurrection of a landmark of American poetry and precursor of noir sensibilities that has, in its own way, also reshaped the landscape of modern popular culture. You already know the story from a hundred other sources, so I’m not saying more, but I will share a few interior pages… 

Restored and beautifully augmented by stunning potent imagery, The Set-Up is a found classic addressing issues we still all struggle with and is a contest you must see.
© 2022 Korero Press Ltd. All rights reserved. 

The Set -Up will be published on April 21st 2022 and is available for pre-order now. 

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Green Eggs and Maakies


By Tony Millionaire (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-618-8 (HB/Digital edition)

As a career and lifestyle, cartooning has far more than its share of individuals with a unique perspective on life. Ronald Searle, Charles Addams, George Herriman, Gerald Scarfe, Rick Geary, Steve Bell, Berke Breathed, Ralph Steadman, Bill Watterson, Matt Groening, Gary Larson – the list is potentially endless.

Perhaps it’s the power to create entire carefully curated and scrupulously sculptured worlds coupled with the constant catharsis of vented spleen that so colours their work – whether they paint or draw – or maybe it’s simply the crucible of constant deadlines that makes their efforts so addictive and effective.

Tony Millionaire loves to draw and does it very, very well: referencing classical art, vintage children’s book illustration and an eclectic mix of pioneering comic strip draughtsmen like George McManus, Rudolph Dirks, Cliff Sterrett, Frank Willard, Harold Gray, Elzie Segar and that George Herriman guy. These influences, styles and sensibilities he seamlessly blends with the vision of European engravings masters from the “legitimate” side of the pictorial storytelling racket. The result is eye-popping…

Born Scott Richardson, he especially cites Johnny (Raggedy Ann and Andy) Gruelle and English illustrator Ernest H. Shepard (The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh) as formative influences.

He has a variety of graphical strings to his bow – such as his own coterie of books for children like the superbly stirring Billy Hazelnuts and Sock Monkey series; animation triumphs and the brilliant if disturbing weekly strip Maakies – which recounts the riotously vulgar and absurdly surreal adventures of Irish monkey Uncle Gabby and fellow dissolute über-alcoholic/nautical adventurer Drinky Crow.

They are abetted but never aided by a peculiarly twisted, off-kilter cast of reprobates, antagonists and confrontational well-wishers such as Drunken Cop, old Wachtel, The Captain’s Daughter and avian Aunt Phoebe whilst constantly opposed by nefarious Gallic crocodile The Frenchman. Or not. Sometimes. It depends…

Launching in February 1994 in The New York Press, the strip is now widely syndicated in US alternative newspapers such as LA Weekly and The Stranger and globally in comics magazines like Linus and Rocky. There was even an animated series on Adult Swim.

Since continuity usually plays second fiddle to the avalanche of inventive ideas and outré action the strips can be read in almost any order, and the debauched drunkenness, manic ultra-violence in the manner of the best Tom & Jerry or Itchy & Scratchy cartoons, acerbic view of sexuality and deep core of existentialist angst still finds a welcome with Slackers, Laggards, the un-Christian and all those scurrilous lost Generations since X… and everyone addicted to bad taste tomfoolery. This lovely lush landscape collection from 2013 compiles two years of impossibly wonderful weirdness and plumbs new depths of daft depravity proving clearly time cannot wither his infinitely grotesque variety one little bit…

In the grand tradition of the earliest US newspaper cartoon features, each episode comes with a linked mini-strip running across the foot of the strip – although often that link is quite hard to ascertain. Nominally and notionally based in a naval setting of rousing rip-roaring 19th century sea-faring situations, replete with maritime monsters and stunning vistas, the dark-and-bitter comical instalments vary from staggeringly rude and crude through absolutely hysterical to conceptually impenetrable.

Be warned: Millionaire’s gags are utterly unfettered by bounds of taste or simplistic acquiescence to wholesome fun-squelching decency.

He often promotes his other creative endeavours on Maakies pages and digresses into autobiography and personal rants, brings in guest creators to mess with his toys and even invites the readership to contribute: ideas, pictures, objects of communal interest – especially any tattoos his dedicated readership can be enticed/bothered to submit. This penetratingly incisive, witty and often poignant cartoon arena is his playground and if you don’t like it, leave… but quietly please, ’cause there’s a hangover going on here most days…

Green Eggs and Maakies offers, in starkly indisputable monochrome, more of the wonderful same with such spit-take, eye-watering, drinks-coming-out-of-your-nose moments as how mermaids and ugly fish are created, fun with snakes, the thoughts of ‘Real Ladies of the Dog Park’; arguably the best Superman fart joke ever, and so much more, scraped like barnacles from the edges of all time and space and history.

Moreover, in a positive frenzy of public-spirited beneficence, this book features ‘Maakies Womb Portraits’; returning visits of ‘Dr. Dubel, Helicopter Faith Healer’; easily absorbed lessons on ‘How to Drink’; scatological marriage proposals, a running commentary on ‘Married Days’ and general sex advice; revelations of ‘The Accidental Sobrietist’; secrets of such self-surgical procedures as removing impacted belly hair or how to conduct an auto-splenectomy; an ode to ‘The Robust Human Liver’ and more bright ideas from ‘The Universal Moon Genius’.

All the timeless favourite themes Millionaire specialises in are on show, and the usual variations of sordid sexual encounters, ghastly interspecies progeny, assorted single entendres, bodily function faux pas and gory death-scenes share space with some of literature’s greatest poets and sots – who never knew what hit them…

There are even a few continued tales starring ‘Noah’s Ark’, barbarian dwarf ‘Klaus Santa, son of Kleas, son of Wachtel’ and two sets of cut-out, colour-and-keep Christmas tree ornaments to make any seasonal pine a domestic no-go zone…

If you’re not easily upset this is a spectacularly funny and rewarding strip, one of the most constantly creative and entertaining in existence today, and if you can thrive on gorge-rousing gags and mind-bending rumination this is an experience you simply cannot deny yourself.

If you’re still not a fan, Green Eggs and Maakies is the perfect opportunity to become one, and if you’re already converted it’s an ideal gift for them that isn’t…
© 2013 Tony Millionaire. All rights reserved.

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Yakari and Nanabozho


By Derib & Job, coloured by Dominque and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1849181778 (Album PB/Digital edition)

Children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded in 1964 by Swiss journalist André Jobin who began writing stories for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later he hired fellow French-Swiss artist Claude de Ribaupierre who had begun his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs), working on Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Spirou. Together they created the well-received Adventures of the Owl Pythagore and two years later struck pure gold with their next collaboration.

Debuting in 1969, Yakari delightfully detailed the life of a young Sioux boy on the Great Plains; sometime after the introduction of horses by the Conquistadores and before the coming of the modern White Man.

Overflowing with gentle whimsy, the beguiling saga celebrates a bucolic existence in tune with nature and free from strife, punctuated with the odd crisis generally resolved without fame or fanfare by a little lad who is smart, compassionate, brave… and can converse with all animals…

As “Derib”, de Ribaupierre – equally excellent in both enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style and a devastatingly compelling realistic action illustration form – became one of the Continent’s most prolific, celebrated and beloved creators through such groundbreaking strips as Celui-qui-est-né-deux-fois, Jo (the first comic on AIDS ever published), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne).

Over decades, many of his masterworks feature beloved Western themes, magnificent geographical backdrops and epic landscapes, with Yakari regarded by most fans and critics to be the feature which catapulted him to deserved mega-stardom.

First serialised in 1978, Yakari et Nanabozho was the fourth European album – released just as the strip transferred to prestigious Le Journal de Tintin – but was only translated by Cinebook in 2013, making it officially the 11th English-language album. That’s not going to be a problem for chronology or continuity addicts, since – as ever – the tale is both stunningly simple and effectively timeless…

It all begins one bright sunny day as the little wonder wanders out to the Rock of the Bear to meet his friend Rainbow. On arrival there’s no sign of her but he does meet a gigantic and extremely voluble desert hare claiming to be Trickster Spirit Nanabozho – a statement proven by making some astounding adjustments to the dubious little lad’s height.

The Great Rabbit claims to be Rainbow’s totem animal, much like Great Eagle watches over and protects Yakari, and the loopy lepine wants the boy to accompany him on a quest. Ever since a travelling tale-teller arrived in camp, sharing shocking stories of the far north, where it’s so cold the bears are snowy white, headstrong Rainbow has wanted to see the amazing creatures for herself. Eager to please his protégé, the Brobdingnagian bunny agrees to help her, even supplying magic walking moccasins to reduce the hardships of the journey. Unfortunately the impatient, excited child wouldn’t wait for the Trickster and Yakari to join her and has put them on unsupervised. Unable to resist the enchanted slippers, Rainbow has started her trek, not knowing where she’s going or how to stop…

Now with boy and bunny transforming into giants and tiny mites as circumstances demand, they hare off after their impetuous friend, following the path of a magic talisman dubbed ‘the Straight Arrow’ and assisted by such beneficial creatures as a night moose.

…And when they at last find Rainbow, the travellers decide that as they’ve come so far, they might as well complete the journey to the Land of the White Bears, aided by a fabulous flying canoe…

Always visually spectacular, seductively smart and happily heart-warming, Job’s sparse plot here affords Derib unmissable opportunities to go wild with the illustrations; creating a lush, lavish and eye-popping fantasy wonderland breathtaking to behold.

This is Really Big Sky storytelling with a delicious twist in its colossal fluffy tail…

The exploits of the valiant little voyager who speaks to animals and enjoys a unique place in an exotic world is a decades-long celebration of joyously gentle, marvellously moving and enticingly entertaining adventure, honouring and eulogising an iconic culture with grace, wit, wonder and especially humour. These gentle sagas are true landmarks of comics literature and Yakari is a strip no fan of graphic entertainment should ignore.
Original edition © 1978 Le Lombard/Dargaud by Derib & Job. English translation 2013 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Moon Knight


By Gregg Hurwitz & Jerome Opeña & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4106-8 (TPB/Digital editions)

Moon Knight is probably one of the most complex and convoluted heroes in comics. There’s also a lot of evidence to support the in-world contention that he’s a certifiable loon…

He first appeared during the 1970s horror boom: a mercenary Batman knockoff hired by corporate villains to capture lycanthropic Jack Russell (AKA Werewolf by Night). Catching the readers’ attention, he then spun off into two trial issues of Marvel Spotlight and an exceedingly mature (for the times) back-up slot in TV-inspired Hulk Magazine before graduating to a number of solo series.

His byzantine origin eventually revealed how multiple-personality afflicted CIA spook-turned-mercenary Marc Spector was murdered by his best-pal and comrade Raoul Bushman, and apparently restored to life by Egyptian deity Khonshu: god of the Moon and Justice, or perhaps simply Vengeance…

Over many years the solitary avenger and a select band of hand-picked helpers battled darker threats more flamboyant superheroes neglected or avoided, ever-vacillating between pristine white knight and bloodthirsty killer-with-a-good-excuse…

At the time of this rocket-paced riot of action and suspense, resurgent villain and American Security Czar Norman Osborn was de facto ruler of America, using Federal clout to wage war on heroes who refused to sign The Superhuman Registration Act. Those he couldn’t coerce or crush, he smeared…

As Moon Knight became more obviously frenzied and manic, Osborn framed the outlaw hero for murder and numerous ferocious atrocities and – in response to seemingly overwhelming opposition – the “out-of-control” hero faked his own death, moved to Mexico and went about cleansing his ravaged mind and troubled soul.

The first and hardest part of the remedy was eradicating every vestige of Marc Spector from his wardrobe of personalities…

Re-presenting Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1-6 (November 2009-May 2010), this spectacular breakneck thriller opens with the return of ‘The White Knight’ to New York City; (mostly) clear-headed and determined to reclaim his name and sullied reputation. That begins with an extremely public foiling of a brutally violent bank robbery, where, despite utmost provocation and the watching citizenry’s fervent expectations, the silent Avenger kills absolutely no one…

Astonished observers – including the hero’s former lover and confidante Marlene Alraune – would have been even more astonished to learn that throughout the shocking struggle, a little godling had been whispering in Moon Knight’s ear…
Khonshu is displeased. He wants his chosen agent exacting full and final vengeance and grows increasingly impatient over this sacrilegious “no killing” peccadillo…

Nights pass and Moon Knight, hunted by cops and Osborn’s agents alike, prowls the streets, quietly thinning out predators feeding on society’s weakest members. His diligent pruning is interrupted when the most powerful of Osborn’s super-operatives appears…

‘The Sentry’s Curse’ is that he is nigh-omnipotent, truly crazy and utterly unpredictable. As an old comrade, the golden giant grants Moon Knight a measure of leeway and one last chance, but Osborn is less sanguine about being defied: ordering mystic minion The Hood and telepathic snoop Profile to find and decisively deal with the returned rebel.

Now favouring his Jake Lockley and Steven Grant personas, the repentant paladin is visiting old associates and comrades whilst using vast financial resources to upgrade Moon Knight’s armoury. Moreover, as an outlaw, he has no problem employing the best criminal scientists money can buy…

The first felonious monster to fall to his renewed crusade is grotesque sin-peddler The Slug, and once again the cataclysmic clash is punctuated by his divine passenger screaming in his ear for blood. That distraction might be why the hero doesn’t notice Profile taking a reading and extracting the one secret that could end his ceaseless war on crime…

After tolerating years of appalling atrocities, Moon Knight eventually killed his greatest enemy and, in a fit of madness, cut off his fright-mask of a face. Now, thanks to the psychic’s reading and The Hood’s dark magic, the one foe Spector could never handle is dragged howling from his grave to pick up where he left off in ‘The Bushman Cometh’…

The resurrected psychotic hits the ground scheming and whilst Moon Knight wastes time trying to convince Spider-Man that’s he’s back – but is also better – Raoul orchestrates a bloody raid on horrific psychiatric sin-bin Ravencroft Asylum.

With fellow maniac Scarecrow, Bushman turns an institution full of criminal madmen into murderous slaves: even augmenting his army of the living damned with autonomous, atrocious menaces such as Herman the German and The Great Wall…

Never reticent, Bushman then unleashes his foul forces on sleeping Manhattan in the sure and certain knowledge that unremitting carnage and slaughter is bound to bring Moon Knight running…

With the city under siege even Spector’s oldest – and most betrayed – friend sees the need for action, and with “Frenchie” Du Champ once again piloting the awe-inspiring Moon Copter, the resurgent Knight takes on the entire legion of loons with devastating if non-lethal force under an unforgiving ‘Full Moon’…

The battle enters overwhelming overdrive in ‘Past is Prologue’ as Bushman at last confronts his ultimate antithesis. Chaos escalates and the screaming of Khonshu for his chosen one to cross back over the line and fulfil his blood-letting destiny is almost too much for any mortal to resist.

…And even after resoundingly defeating his physical foes and restoring some semblance of sense to the city the gory god still calls and, at last, ‘Knight Falls’…

With covers by Leinil Francis Yu and 8 stunning variants by Alex Ross, David Finch, Yu and Francesco Mattina, this explosive all-out psycho-thriller is compellingly scripted by Gregg Hurwitz and captivatingly illustrated by Jerome Opeña, Jay Leisten & Paul Mounts who collaboratively create one of the most memorable and enjoyable reboots ever.

Fast, dark and savagely entertaining, Shock and Awe is pure electric entertainment for testosterone junkies and Fights ‘n’ Tights fanatics – and a relatively uncomplicated introduction to the character currently bewildering TV streaming service viewers…
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom Dark Horse Archives volume Three


By Paul S. Newman, Dave Wood, Frank Bolle, Al McWilliams, George Wilson & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-374-9 (HB) 978-1-61655-354-8 (TPB)

The comics colossus known as Dell/Gold Key/Whitman had one of the most complicated publishing set-ups in history, but that didn’t matter one iota to the kids of all ages who consumed their vastly varied product. Based in Racine, Wisconsin, Whitman had been a crucial part of the monolithic Western Publishing and Lithography Company since 1915, drawing upon commercial resources and industry connections that came with editorial offices on both coasts (and even a subsidiary printing plant in Poughkeepsie, New York).

Another connection was with fellow Western subsidiary K.K. Publications (named for licensing legend Kay Kamen who facilitated extremely lucrative “license to print money” merchandising deals for Walt Disney Studios between 1933 and 1949).

From 1938, Western’s comicbook output was released under a partnership deal with a “pulps” periodical publisher under the umbrella imprint Dell Comics – and again those creative staff and commercial contacts fed into the line-up of the Big Little, Little Golden and Golden Press books for children. This partnership ended in 1962 and Western had to swiftly reinvent its comics division as Gold Key.

As previously stated, Western Publishing had been a major player since comics’ earliest days, blending a huge tranche of licensed titles such as newspaper strip, TV and Disney titles (like Nancy and Sluggo, Tarzan, or The Lone Ranger) with home-grown hits like Turok, Son of Stone and Space Family Robinson.

In the 1960s, during the camp/superhero boom the original adventure titles expanded to include Brain Boy, M.A.R.S. Patrol, Total War (created by Wally Wood), Magnus, Robot Fighter (by the incredible Russ Manning) and – in deference to the atomic age of heroes – Nukla and another brilliantly cool and understated thermonuclear white knight…

Despite supremely high quality and passionate fan-bases, Western’s pantheon never really captured the media spotlight of DC or Marvel’s costumed cut-ups, and eventually – in 1984 – the West Coast crew closed their comics division, having lost or ceded their licenses to DC, Marvel and Charlton.

As a publisher, Gold Key never really “got” the melodramatic, breast-beating, often-mock-heroic Sturm und Drang of superheroes – although for a sadly-dwindling number of us, the understated functionality of Silver Age classics like Magnus, Robot Fighter or remarkably radical concepts of atomic crusader Nukla and even the crime-fighting iterations of classic movie monsters Dracula, Frankenstein and Werewolf were utterly irresistible.

The sheer off-the-wall lunacy of features like Neutro or Dr. Spektor I will save for a future occasion…

The company’s most recognisable and significant stab at a superheroes was an understated Atomic era paladin with the rather unwieldy codename of Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom. He debuted in an eponymous title cover-dated October 1962 – Happy Anniversary! – sporting a captivating painted cover by Richard M. Powers which made it feel like a grown up book rather than a simple comic. With #3, George Wilson took over the iconic painted covers: a glorious feature that made the hero unique amongst his costumed contemporaries…

By the time of this third collection – also available in hardback, but tragically not in any digital editions I know of – originator Paul S. Newman (A Date With Judy; The Lone Ranger; Turok, Son of Stone; I Love Lucy and countless more) had all but moved on – despite what the credits here say. The issues included here are Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom #15-22 and span December 1965 to January 1968 and he only wrote one of them.

Golden Age all-star Dick Wood (Sky Masters of the Space Force; Crime Does Not Pay; The Phantom; Mandrake the Magician; Flash Gordon and countless others) was primarily tapping the keys for this period, but Frank Bolle (The Twilight Zone; Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery; Flash Gordon; The Heart of Juliet Jones) was still providing slick understated visuals for one of the most technically innovative and conceptually spectacular series on the stands. That changed with #20, when Alden “Al” McWilliams (Danny Raven/Dateline: Danger; Star Trek, Flash Gordon; Twilight Zone; Buck Rogers; Justice Inc.; Star Wars and so much more) took over, drawing and inking to the end of this volume (and the first tale in the next one).

The Supreme Science Hero was born when a campaign of sabotage at research base Atom Valley culminated in the death of Dr. Bentley and accidental transmutation of his lab partner Doctor Solar into a (no longer quite) human atomic pile with incredible, impossible and apparently unlimited powers and abilities. Of course, his mere presence is lethal to all around him until scientific ingenuity devises – with dutiful confidantes girlfriend Gail Sanders and mentor Dr. Clarkson – a few brilliant work-arounds…

Following a Foreword from Mike Baron detailing those faraway times and concentrating on real world nuclear near-things, the atomic adventuring resumes with the latest ploy by evil mastermind Nuro, who wants the monopoly on atomic science and global decision making.

Written by Wood and limned by Bolle, ‘Doomsday Minus One Minute Parts I & II’ comes from the end of 1965 and finds Atom Valley boffin Dr. Lamson cracked under the Cold War pressure. He devises a doomsday trigger to fire every thermonuclear weapon at once… just to end the appalling anticipation…

After failing at every stage to avert armageddon, Solar secures a unique method of time-travel to save the day and all the rest to come…

Cover-dated June 1966 and on newsstands from March onwards thanks to Gold Key’s byzantine publishing schedules, ‘The War of the Suns Pts I & II’ was #16’s main feature and actually by Newman & Bolle. Here Nuro’s espionage delivers the deadly methodology of building miniature suns, and enables him to unleash hell on Earth from close orbit. The solution? Build another sun and have Solar use it to destroy the hellish invader. What could go wrong?

Wood & Bolle reunited in #17 (September 1966) for some traditional monster marauding as Nuro combines weird science and Alaskan volcanoes to build ‘The Fatal Foe.’ Elemental colossus Primo rampages towards Atom Valley and an eventual but titanic ‘Duel to Disintegration’.

Although a diabolical master of mayhem, Nuro’s continued failures clearly began to grate with his lieutenant Uzbek, who increasingly squabbled and gaslit the mastermind’s faceless android protégé Orun. In #18 (December 1966) with open warfare brewing between flunky and automaton, their fiendish overlord returned to brainwashing, targeting all Atom Valley techs and boffins with mind-control scorpions in ‘The Mind Master Parts I & II’. He sought the secret identity of the Man of the Atom but almost brought about his own destruction, further strengthening Uzbek’s thoughts of rebellion…

Bolle bowed out with #19 (April 1967) as Nuro modified his metal minion to resemble the Atomic Adventurer and attempted to blacken his enemy’s name and reputation in ‘Solar vs Solar’ and its action-packed conclusion ‘Only One Shall Survive’. The tale ended on a cliffhanger with Solar defeated, trapped and wired into the villain’s secret HQ, providing atomic energy to fuel Nuro’s next vile venture…

Cover dated July, #20 saw Al McWilliams join Wood as ‘Atomic Nightmares Parts I & II’ revealed how the hero brilliantly engineers his escape, but only by inadvertently creating a menace as great as Nuro. Almost as portentous is the debut of Gail’s nephew Hamilton Mansfield Lamont: a teen super-genius with as many secrets as ideas…

As he settles in at Atom Valley, #21 (October 1967) aliens considering an invasion of Earth offer a ‘Challenge from Outer Space Parts I & II’ which needs all Solar’s power plus a helping hand from the kid to foil, before the volume closes with an epic clash and monumental upgrade in menace.

Cover-dated January 1968, Wood & McWilliams reveal ‘The Two Lives of Nuro’ as Uzbek sells out, delivering the mastermind’s location to Interpol. With Solar leading the charge in a blazing battle, the villain finally falls. Dell/Gold Key infamously never joined the Comics Code Authority, and consequently their titles always had a perfectly understandable body count in situations where equivalent Marvel or DC characters would generate the odd skinned knee or sprained ankle in already empty and “condemned” buildings…

Here, however, as carnage mounts and justice closes in, Uzbek is brutally killed before the would-be world-conqueror “commits suicide” while transferring his malevolent personality into his robot for ‘The Strange Death of Nuro’. The countless casualties climb even further when Solar brings the body and the android back to Atom Valley and the dormant motionless mandroid revives…

The epics end for now with ‘Biographies’ of Newman, Bolle and cover artist Wilson, as this charismatic collection offers potently underplayed and scientifically astute (as far as the facts of the day were known) adventures blending the best of contemporary film tropes with the still fresh but burgeoning mythology of the Silver Age superhero boom. Enticingly restrained and understated, these Atom Age action comics offered a compelling counterpoint to the hyperbole of DC and Marvel and remain some of the most readable thrillers of the era.

These tales are lost gems from a time when fun was paramount and entertainment a mandatory requirement. This is comics the way they were and really should be again…
DOCTOR SOLAR®, MAN OF THE ATOM ARCHIVES Volume 3 ® and © 2014 Random House, Inc. Under license to Classic Media, LLC. All rights reserved.