Posts

Posted on

DC Finest Green Lantern (volume 3) – Hard-Travelling Heroes


By Denny O’Neil, Gardner F. Fox, John Broome, Mike Friedrich, Bob Haney, Gil Kane, Jack Sparling, Mike Sekowsky, Sid Greene, Dick Dillin, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, Neal Adams, Frank Giacoia, Dick Giordano, Joe Giella, Murphy Anderson, Wallace Wood, Vince Colletta, Bernie Wrightson, John Costanza, Joe Letterese, Ben Oda & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-79951-027-7 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Pure Superhero Sensationalism… 10/10

After a hugely successful revival and reworking of Golden Age all-star The Flash, DC (National Periodical Publications as they were then) built on a resurgent superhero trend. Cover-dated October 1959 and on sale from July 28th, Showcase #22 hit newsstands at the same time as the fourth issue of the new Flash comic book (#108) and once again the guiding lights were editor Julie Schwartz and writer John Broome. Assigned as illustrator was genre-versatile action ace Gil Kane.

Brash, cocky test pilot Hal Jordan was in California when an alien cop crashed on Earth. Mortally wounded, Abin Sur commanded his ring – a device which could materialise thoughts – to find a replacement officer: one both honest and without fear. Scanning the planet, the wonder weapon selected Jordan, whisking him to the crash-site. The dying alien bequeathed his ring, lantern-shaped Battery of Power and his profession (patrolman of Sector 2814) to the astonished Earthman.

In 6 pages the story established characters, scenario and narrative thrust of a series that would become the spine of all DC continuity. With the concept of the superhero being re-established among the buying public, there was no shortage of gaudily clad competition. Better books thrived by having something a little “extra”. With Green Lantern, that was primarily the superb scripts of John Broome & Gardner Fox and astounding, ever-evolving drawing of Gil Kane (ably abetted by a string of top inkers) whose dynamic anatomy and dramatic action scenes were maturing with every page he drew. Happily, the concept itself was also a provider of boundless opportunity. Other heroes had extraterrestrial, other-dimensional and even trans-temporal adventures, but the valiant champion of this series was also a cop: a lawman working for the biggest police force in the entire universe.

This fabulous but strictly non-digital assemblage gathers Green Lantern #62-82 (July 1968-March 1971) including contemporaneous guest appearances in The Flash #191 and World’s Finest Comics #201. These all follow neatly on from GL’s previous DC Finest compilation, so you should get that too. It has no bearing on your understanding, as these are deftly designed to be read fresh at any stage of your fandom-hood, but they are really good too and I wouldn’t want you to miss out…

At the time this selection of stories began, DC was a company in transition – as indeed was America itself – with new ideas (which in comic book terms meant younger writers) being given greater headway than ever before, an influx of new kids unseen since the very start of the industry, when excitable young artists and writers ran wild with imagination.

However Green Lantern #62 had veteran scribe Gardner Fox providing clever scientific mystery/crime caper ‘Steal Small… Rob Big!’ for Jack Sparling & Sid Greene to limn before Denny O’Neil’s metaphysical, history-warping thriller ‘This is the Way… the World… Ends!’ in #63 sees Hal apparently hallucinating as the Guardians of the Universe seek to support his battle against time-warping despot Gracchus by acting though his so-human subconscious…

Mike Sekowsky & Joe Giella illustrated O’Neil’s ‘Death to Green Lantern’ wherein a long-forgotten minor foe almost destroys the Green Guardian’s reputation before ending his life… Social historians might want to note the early inclusion of benevolent and necessary (as well as favourably depicted and written) hippie flower children acting as more than mere comedic asides: Those times they really were a-changin’…

A return to straight superhero drama comes as Fox, Sekowsky & Giella’s deliver doomsday eco-thriller ‘Dry Up… and Die!’ which apparently ends the criminal career of Doctor Polaris before Broome takes GL back to the future for another planet-saving sci-fi romp in #66’s ‘5708 AD… A Nice Year to Visit – But I Wouldn’t Want to Live Then!’

GL #67 offered two shorter tales, the first of which – ‘Green Lantern Does his Ring Thing!’ by Fox, Dick Dillin & Giella – is a delightful old-school conundrum as old foe Bill Baggett again wrests mental control of the ring away from the Emerald Gladiator whilst ‘The First Green Lantern!’ (Fox & Greene) reveals how the Corps began in the first (and only, I think) of a projected series: Tales of the Power Ring.

Contemporary space opera was the order of the day in intriguing action thriller ‘I Wonder Where the Yellow Went!’ by O’Neil and featuring the wonderfully welcome return of a rejuvenated Gil Kane, aided and abetted by Giella. Kane’s last efforts of the decade on the hero he visually created was to be an eye-popping run of beautiful, dynamic classics, and none more so than the youth-rebellion parable ‘If Earth Fails the Test… it Means War!’, cleverly scripted by Broome and inked by the incomparable Wally Wood.

Vince Colletta inked the less impressive Broome & Kane space spoof ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Earth’, but honour and quality are restored with Broome, Kane & Giella’s tense countdown-to-disaster conundrum ‘The City that Died!’: one of two tales in #71, and one that reintroduced Olivia Reynolds: a potential love interest for Hal whose subconscious mind is a planet-shattering energy source. The second story was another jolly Jordan Brothers yarn by Broome, Dillin & Murphy Anderson, but ‘Hip Jordan Makes the Scene!’ is a regrettably old-fashioned tale of a grifting hippie way out of tune with readers’ sensibilities… and that’s a shame because it is quite funny.

The annual traditional of an Emerald Gladiator/Scarlet Speedster team-up appears next as The Flash #191 hosts the heroes’ perplexing quest to unite and stop another alien catastrophe involving Olivia Reynolds and many marauding robots in Broome, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito’s ‘How to Invade Earth – Without Really Trying!’

Then in Green Lantern #72 O’Neil, Kane & Giella manifest and materialise ‘Phantom of the Space Opera!’ in a visually magical but rather heavy-handed co-opting of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs (a favourite work of music-loving Kane) transposed to deep space. However, this was more than compensated for by the brilliant two-parter that followed. ‘From Space Ye Came…’ in Green Lantern #73, and climactic conclusion ‘Lost in Space!’ by Mike Friedrich, Kane & Anderson sees an unforgettable clash of ultimate enemies as renegade Green Lantern Sinestro makes a brutal attempt on Jordan’s life using his foe’s unrequited love for Carol Ferris as a psychological wedge. However, the alien mastermind was unaware of just how unstable Ferris was in her dual identity of gem-possessed space amazon Star Sapphire…

With #76 Denny O’Neil would become sole scripter and in collaboration with comics genius Neal Adams completely redefine contemporary superhero strips with relevancy-driven stories. First, though, the opening chapter of Hal Jordan/Green Lantern’s chequered career comes to its glorious swan-song with #75 and ‘The Golden Obelisk of Qward!’ Here the Emerald Crusader and a desperate doctor invaded the antimatter universe to save Olivia Reynolds and destroy a weapon capable of demolishing our galaxy. Broome, Kane & Giella went out on a high note, blending modern sensibilities with the plot-driven sense of wonder and high-octane action which made Green Lantern such an astounding hit and the very foundation stone of DC mythology.

In 1969, after nearly a decade of earthly crimebusting, interstellar intrigue and spectacular science fiction shenanigans, the Silver Age Green Lantern was swiftly becoming one of the earliest big-name casualties of the downturn in superhero sales. Editor Schwartz knew something extraordinary was needed to save the series and the result was a bold experiment that created a fad for socially relevant, ecologically aware, more mature stories which spread throughout costumed hero comics and utterly revolutionised the industry and nigh-radicalised the readers.

Tapping relatively youthful superstar-in-waiting O’Neil and with hyper-realistic artist Neal Adams to produce the revolutionary fare, Schwartz watched in fascinated disbelief as 13 groundbreaking issues captured and encapsulated the tone of the times. These garnered critical praise and awards within the industry and crucially valuable publicity from the real world outside. Sadly, the stories simultaneously registered such poor sales that the series was cancelled anyway, with the heroes unceremoniously packed off to the back of marginally less endangered title The Flash. O’ Neil, in tight collaboration with Adams, assaulted all the traditional monoliths of contemporary costumed dramas with tightly targeted, protest-driven stories. The comic book was re-titled Green Lantern/Green Arrow with the Emerald Archer constantly mouthing off as a hot-headed, liberal sounding-board and platform for a generation-in-crisis, as staid, conservative, quasi-reactionary Hal Jordan played the part of the oblivious but well-meaning old guard.

America was a bubbling cauldron of social turmoil and experimentation. In comic book terms, everything was challenged and ended with GL/GA #76. Cover-dated April 1970, on sale from February 19th, it was the first issue of the new decade and from the start O’Neil & Adams redefined superheroes; transforming complacent establishment masked boy scouts into uncertain, questioning champions and strident explorers of the revolution and enigmatic, apparently self-consuming America.

Inked by Frank Giacoia, ‘No Evil Shall Escape My Sight!’ broke the mould of the medium, re-positioning the very concept of the costumed crusader as newly-impoverished ex-millionaire turned social rebel Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen challenges GL’s cosy worldview. The specific villain du jour is a wealthy landlord whose treatment of his poverty-stricken tenants isn’t actually illegal but certainly is wickedly immoral. Soon the lofty space-cop painfully discovers real villains wear business suits, operate expense accounts, hurt people just because of skin colour and can happily poison their own nests for short-term gain.

Of course, that the story is a magnificently illustrated brilliant crime thriller with science-fiction overtones doesn’t hurt either…

O’ Neil became sole scripter with this story and, in close collaboration with socially “involved” ultra-realistic art-genius Adams, instantly overturned contemporary costumed dramas with their societally-targeted protest-stories. At least the “Ring-slinger” was able to perceive his faults, and was more or less willing to listen to new ideas…

Follow-up ‘Journey to Desolation’ in #77 was every bit as groundbreaking.

At the conclusion of #76 an immortal Guardian of the Universe – affectionately known as “the Old Timer” – is assigned to accompany the Emerald Duo on a voyage to “discover America”: a soul-searching exploration into the dichotomies which divided the nation, and a tremendously popular pastime for the nation’s disaffected citizens back then.

The first stop brought the trio to a poverty-stricken mining town run as a private kingdom by a ruthless entrepreneur happy to use agent-provocateurs and Nazi war criminals to keep his wage slaves in line. When a young protest singer looks likely to become the next Bob Dylan and draw unwelcome publicity, he has to be eliminated… as do the three nosy strangers who drive into town at just the wrong moment…

Although the heroes provide temporary solutions and put away viciously human criminals, these tales were always carefully heavy handed in exposing bigger ills and those issues which couldn’t be fixed with a wave of a Green Ring; invoking an aura of helplessness that was metaphorically emphasised during this story when Hal is summarily stripped of much of his power for no longer being the willing, unquestioning stooge of his officious, high-and-mighty alien masters. Even with Jordan off active duty (but still on-call!), his power levels and actions were still arbitrarily controlled by his little blue bosses…

The confused, now merely-mortal Lantern discovers another unpalatable aspect of human nature in ‘A Kind of Loving, a Way of Death!’ after newly-widowed Black Canary joins the peripatetic cast. Seeking to renew her stalled relationship with Green Arrow, she is waylaid by bikers, grievously injured and taken in by a charismatic hippy guru. Sadly, drop-out Joshua is more Manson than Messiah and his brand of Peace & Love only extends to white people. Everybody else is simply target practise…

The plight of Native Americans was stunningly highlighted in ‘Ulysses Star is Still Alive!’, as corporate logging interests attempt to deprive a mountain tribe of their very last scraps of heritage, again provoking the Green Knights to pick a side and take extraordinarily differing courses of action to help. GL/GA #80 then returns some science fictional gloss in a tale of judicial malfeasance. In ‘Even an Immortal Can Die!’ (inked by Dick Giordano), after the Old Timer uses his powers to save Green Lantern rather than prevent a pollution catastrophe in the Pacific Northwest, he is immediately sanctioned. For his selfish deed he is chastised by his fellow Guardians and dispatched to the planet Gallo for judgement by the supreme arbiters of Law in the universe.

His earth friends accompany him there and find a disturbing new administration with a decidedly off-kilter view of justice in a barbed and telling attack on the then-seen-to-be biased if not corrupt US Supreme Court… same as it ever was…

Adams’ staggering facility for capturing likenesses added extra-piquancy to this yarn that we’re just not equipped to grasp all these decades later, with the usurping, overbearing villain derived from the Judge of the infamous trial of anti-war protesters “The Chicago Eight”

Insight into the Guardians’ history underpins ‘Death Be My Destiny!’ when Lantern, Arrow & Canary travel with the now-sentenced and condemned Old Timer to the ancient planet Maltus (that’s a pun, son: just type Thomas Robert Malthus into your search engine of choice or even look in a book). They arrive on a world literally choking on its own out-of-control population. The uncanny cause of the catastrophe casts an unlovely light on the perceived role and worth of women in modern society…

Penultimately closing on a more traditional note, GL/GA #82 enquired ‘How Do You Fight a Nightmare?’ (with additional inks from Bernie Wrightson) as Lantern Jordan’s greatest foe unleashes Harpies, Alien Amazons and all manner of female furies on the hapless hero before Black Canary & Green Arrow can turn the tide, all whilst asking a few extremely pertinent and extremely pointed questions about women’s rights…

We properly close here with a nifty sidestep into the more cosmic heydays of the hero as World’s Finest Comics #201 (recently converted into a team-up vehicle for Superman), finds Jordan back at full strength and gulled into contesting ‘A Prize of Peril!’ (O’Neil, Dillin & Giella) after clashing with Superman. A close miss in near space prompts a competition to decide whether either Emerald Gladiator or Man of Steel has sole jurisdiction of Earth’s skies; at least that is the ostensible goal, but those adjudicating are not at all what they seem…

Augmented with covers by Kane, Sparling, Adams, Sekowsky, Anderdon, Jack Adler, Jo Kubert, Greene & Joe Giella, these costumed drama romps are in themselves a great read for most ages, but when also considered as the building blocks of all DC continuity they become vital fare for any fan keen to make sense of the modern superhero experience. This blockbusting book showcases the imaginative and creative peak of Broome, Fox & Kane as well as the start of the new world in comics, as a plot-driven plethora of action sagas and masterful thrillers give way to emotive, evocative dramas that literally reshaped the DC Universe. These tales of wit and courage, illustrated with astounding dynamism defined – and marked the end of – the Silver Age of comics and they are still as captivating and engrossing now as they ever were; perhaps even more so. If you love the gloss, scope and glamour of superhero fiction, you will never read better.
© 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 2026 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Lucky Luke volume 54: Rodeo and volume 55: Arizona


By Morris, with Louis De Bevere translated by Jerome Saincantin  (Cinebook)
ISBN Rodeo: 978-1-84918-259-1 (Album PB), 978-1-84918-833-3 (Digital edition)
ISBN Arizona: 978-1-84918-268-3 (Album PB), 978-1-84918-739-8 (Digital edition)

These book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Our Continental cousins have a mature relationship with comics, universally according them academic and scholarly standing as well as nostalgic value and the validation of acceptance as an art form. These particular tomes collect one long lived western hero’s earliest material: stories that shaped that accepting, and formative yarns of a fictional wonder who is certainly a national treasure in Belgium and France if not America…

Fair warning, there are images (very few but nonetheless…) here that utilise the ubiquitous, unreconstructed and casually racist narrative shorthand seen in so many areas of popular media – and actual history books – of this post-war era. Thus, here is where informed consent and parental responsibility are required. This does not mean knee-jerk overreactions. This is history. It can’t and must not be painted over and if such matters are important to you, please look at the material here and make a reasoned judgement (in this instance and in all others) before someone perilously impressionable does.

As we know him now, Lucky Luke is a rangy, good-natured, lightning-fast cowboy roaming the mythic Old West, enjoying light-hearted adventures with and astride his super-smart, hyper-sarcastic steed Jolly Jumper whilst interacting with a host of historical and legendary figures of the genre.

His unceasing exploits over 80 years (Happy Birthday Lucky and Jolly Jumper!) have made him one of the best-selling comic characters in Europe (83 albums, at least 13 spin-off books and more than 300 million albums in at least 31 languages thus far), with a mega-mesa of merchandise: posters, toys, computer games, apparel, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies.

He was created in 1946 by Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (“Morris”). For years we all believed it was for Le Journal de Spirou Christmas Annual (L’Almanach Spirou 1947), before being launched into his first weekly adventure ‘Arizona 1880’ on December 7th 1946. However, scholarly research and rereading old comics with a calendar at hand have revealed that I’ve been inadvertently lying to you all these years…

In fact, the strip debuted in the multinational weekly comic, but without a title banner or logo and only in the edition released in France…

Morris was a precocious, westerns-&-art-mad kid unhappily educated by Jesuits, but who escaped via pranks at school and who sought out “useless” work after leaving. His pre-comics cartooning led into film animation before he settled into his true vocation. Working at the CBA cartoon studio, Morris met future comics superstars Franquin & Peyo, and toiled for weekly magazine Le Moustique as a caricaturist. Morris became one of la Bande des quatre – The Gang of Four – comprising Jijé, Will and old comrade Franquin – all leading proponents of the loose-limbed, free-wheeling art style dubbed the “Marcinelle School” which soon dominated Le Journal de Spirou. This was in aesthetic contention with the “Ligne Claire” style utilised by Hergé, EP Jacobs and other artists in Le Journal de Tintin.

In 1948 said Gang (all but Will) visited America, meeting US creators and sightseeing. Morris stayed for six years, meeting fellow traveller René Goscinny, scoring commissions from newly-formed EC sensation Mad and making copious notes and sketches of the swiftly vanishing Old West. That research would resonate on every page of his life’s work.

Working solo (with script assistance from his brother Louis De Bevere) until 1955, Morris produced ten albums worth of affectionate sagebrush parody before reuniting with Goscinny, who became regular wordsmith as Luke attained the dizzying heights of superstardom, commencing with Des rails sur la Prairie (Rails on the Prairie), which began serialisation in LJdS on August 25th 1955. In 1967 the 6-gun straight-shooter switched teams, transferring to Goscinny’s own magazine Pilote with La Diligence (The Stagecoach).

Goscinny produced 45 albums with Morris before his death, from whence Morris continued both singly and with fresh collaborators. Morris died in 2001, having drawn 70 books worth of adventures, plus spin-off sagebrush sagas of Rantanplan (“dumbest dog in the West”) whilst Achdé, Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac took on the franchise, producing another five tales to date.

Lucky Luke first appeared in Britain in the fifties, syndicated to weekly anthology comic Film Fun and again in 1967 in Giggle where he was renamed Buck Bingo. In all these venues – as well as the numerous attempts to follow the English-language successes of Tintin and Asterix albums from Brockhampton and Knight Books – Luke had a trademark cigarette hanging insouciantly from his lip. In 1983 Morris, amidst both pained howls and muted mutterings of “political correctness gone mad”, substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, which garnered him an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organization. The most recent and successful attempt to bring Lucky Luke to our shores and shelves comes from Cinebook who have rightly restored the foul weed to his lips on the interior pages if not the covers and also recently translated every last official album into our mother tongue…

Lucky Luke volume 54: Rodeo

Originally seen in Europe in 1951 as second collected hardback album Rodéo, the material contained within were extended simplistic romps and western movie riffs from the cowboy’s youngest, brashest moments.

It opens with ‘Grand Rodeo’ which first ran in Le Journal de Spirou #528-545, ending in September 1948. The art took a major upturn towards what we are familiar with today as Lucky arrives in Navajo City to compete in a legendary competition and uncovers both skulduggery and poor sportsmanship. Most of that comes from cheating  scoundrel and poor loser turned prize-money bandit Cactus Kid, but Lucky – and his steed – soon teach him the meaning of sportsmanship…

Without a pause, fresh escapade ‘Lucky Luke in Desperado City’ followed on (LJdS #546-566, ending 17th February 1949), as Lucky becomes sheriff of an embattled frontier town to defeat tyrannical owlhoots The Pistol Brothers. They prove to be far tougher to stop than expected, implicating the lone rider in stage coach robberies and even nearly having him lynched. Eventually, however, they are caught and exposed as the stooges of a hidden criminal mastermind posing as decent, law-abiding citizen.

When the dust settles and smoke clears, our hero rides off into the sunset bidding farewell to newly tamed town Justice City…

‘The Buffalo Creek Goldrush’ (serialised in LJdS #567-584 as La ruée vers l’or de Buffalo Creek, and ending 23rd June 1949), filled out the tome with a delicious satire on greed as a supposedly harmless prank on Lucky’s part goes horribly wrong. Surreptitiously dropping a gold nugget into the pan of a down-on-his luck prospector proves to be huge mistake as greed and wild rumours grip the entire region, turning a barren wasteland into an ephemeral metropolis of miners – until the penny finally drops and reality is painfully restored…

Lucky Luke volume 55: Arizona (& Lucky Luke Versus Cigarette Cesar)

Although the third album (published in November 1951), Arizona re-presents the very first exploit from 1946 and another primal perambulation across the mythic wild west.

Still very much delivered in all action mode as most similarly seen in Fleischer Popeye, Warner Brothers and MGM cartoons of the era, the original untitled debut tale was re-designated Arizona 1880 (LJdS #443-462) and details an archetypical wandering cowboy tenaciously tracking down stagecoach bandits Big Belly and Cheat.

Le Journal de Spirou #585- 601 revisited the fourth saga, by which time the Lonesome Cowboy was clearly here to stay. It was back to outright villains for ‘Lucky Luke versus Cigarette Cesar’ (ending October 20th 1949), as Lucky trails a deadly and devious escaped convict south of the border and indulges in the kind of animal cruelty gags we just don’t tolerate these days where and when bullfighting is largely discredited (please consider that a gentle warning…)

This book restores many serial pages that were edited out of the first albums for brevity and comes with extras including a Lucky pin-up, recurring cast crowd shot and a colourised contemporary woodcut print of a stage coach robbery.

Packed with contemporaneous extras, commentary, creator biographies and more, these will delight older kids with a bit of perspective and historical understanding, although the action and comedy set pieces are no more contentious than any Laurel and Hardy film (perfectly understandable as Morris was a devout fan of the bumbling duo).

The first forays of an indomitable hero, these grand old hoots stand in the tradition of Destry Rides Again and Support Your Local Sheriff, superbly executed by a master storyteller finding his feet, and are splendid introductions to a unique genre for modern kids who might well have missed the romantic allure of the Wild West that never was…
Rodeo © Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Morris. © Lucky Comics. English Translation ©  Cinebook Ltd.
Arizona © Dargaud Editeur Paris 1971 by Morris. © Lucky Comics. English Translation ©  Cinebook Ltd.

Posted on

Star Trek Archives volume 5: Best of Captain Kirk


By Peter David, James Fry, Gordon Purcell, Arne Starr & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-60010-571-5 (TPB) 978-1-62302-507-6 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The stellar Star Trek brand and franchise probably hasn’t reached any new worlds (strange or otherwise) just yet, but it certainly has permeated every aspect of civilisation here on Earth. Even though Canadians saw it first on Sept 6th 1966,“The Man Trap” went out on September 8th in the USA, which is why today is STAR TREK DAY.

The brand is arguably the biggest franchise engine on Earth, permeating every merchandisable sector imaginable. You can find daily live-action and animated screen appearances constantly screening somewhere on the planet, toys, games, conventions, merchandise, various comics iterations generated in a host of nations and languages and a reboot of the assorted movie divisions proceeding apace even as I type this. There’s a wealth of new series – live action and animated, all-ages and strictly adult and even as I just hinted, competing blockbuster film franchises. Like the most hallowed of fiction (Dracula, Tarzan, Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes) the show and its spinoffs have become part of shared human cultural heritage and like Shakespeare & Dickens (and The Simpsons!) the show has added concepts to and enlarged the vocabulary of the language. Happy 60th Birthday Star Trek. Live long and keep on prospering…

Many companies have published comic book adventures based on the exploits of Gene Roddenberry’s immortal brainchild. Currently, IDW have that treasured funnybook license and have combined splendid new tales with a choice selection of older examples from other publishers. A particularly fine extended exploit fills this epic sequence taken from the wonderful run of missions produced under the DC badge during the 1980s and early 1990s. Never flashy or sensational, those tales assiduously and scrupulously referenced the TV and movie canon whilst embracing the same storytelling values, by concentrating on stories simultaneously character-led and plot-driven – and never taking themselves too seriously.

Here Federation history blends seamlessly with suspenseful drama and spectacular action, subtle character interplay, boisterous humour and good old fashioned thrills as much-missed scripter Peter David and his artistic allies concocted a tense, politically-tinged saga first seen; between cover-dates April – September 1990, in issues #7-12 of DC’s monthly Star Trek comic book.

Peter Allen David (23rd September 1956-24th May 2025) wrote thousands of stories: continuity-changing runs on Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk (which he helmed for 12 years), Aquaman,  Supergirl, Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, Scarlet Spider, The Phantom, Young Justice, Dreadstar, X-Factor and Wolverine, as well as notable runs on countless more. In an industry heavily reliant on adapting media properties, he was the go-to guy for dozens of tie-in titles including all Star Trek books at various companies; Babylon 5; manga import Negima; Halo: Helljumper; Tron and younger reader titles like Powerpuff Girls and The Little Mermaid. His screen credits include Babylon 5 and animated series including Ben 10, Young Justice and Space Cases which he co-created with Bill Mumy. In comics he created or co-created Spiderman 2099, Fallen Angel, Sachs and Violens, Soulsearchers and Co., SpyBoy, The Atlantis Chronicles and so much more.

A tireless scribe and popular culture maven, his nigh 100 prose books include original creations, genre and franchise spin-off  novels for all Star Trek sub-franchises, Babylon 5, Alien Nation, Battlestar Galactica, Swamp Thing, Transformers, novelisations and adaptations, movie, biographies commentary and nonfiction. Outspoken, ferociously liberal, minority-advocating and never, never boring, he was a master of spit-take comedy moments and crushing emotional body blows in his work, and we are all poorer for his passing.

Previously on the Final Frontier: a number of hostile alien races – the Klingons just prior to a grand rapprochement with the Federation – and a now-uncomfortably un-PC fundamentalist species called Nasguls (based on then-contemporary bugbear Iran under the Ayatollahs) had recently fallen foul of James T. Kirk’s unconventional problem-solving methods. Having had enough of that human’s impious interference, the sacred Salla of the Nasguls had placed a planet-sized bounty on the Enterprise’s Captain.

Kirk didn’t care: he always has bigger problems, but finally fed up with his interstellar shenanigans and maverick solutions, Starfleet had appointed civilian protocol officer R. J. Blaise to the USS Enterprise to ensure Kirk behaves properly. Somehow this particular beautiful woman is completely immune to our hero’s amatory charms…

The astral action opens on Earth where Starfleet Vice-Admiral Tomlinson and the Federation President are enduring a fractious and tiresome meeting with the Klingon ambassador and the august Salla himself. The tyrannical aliens have temporarily suspended their disdain for each other and are now (relatively) united in pursuing quasi-legal avenues; seeking to have Kirk cashiered from the service, tried in a Federation court and then (naturally) executed.

Events take a most unwelcome turn in ‘Not… Sweeney!’ (by David, James W. Fry & Arne Starr) as news comes that the most dreaded bounty hunter in the universe has decided to collect the price on Kirk’s head. Although caring little for the death-sentence dogging him, the starship captain is utterly incensed when it adversely affects his job. Despatched to Tau Gamma II to rescue a human colony before the geologically unstable planet shakes itself to bits, Kirk is flabbergasted to find the survivors demanding another ship or to be left to the world’s erratic mercies, rather than endure certain doom when Sweeney comes for the Enterprise’s captain…

Their anxiety proves well-founded when, mere hours later, the infallible stalker arrives with a fleet of ships and instantly attacks…

After a tremendous struggle in ‘Going, Going…’, Kirk – with Spock and Blaise as collateral captives – is confined aboard the disturbingly effete bounty hunter’s flagship and made the star of an impromptu auction. Kirk has made many enemies in his career and a ferocious bidding war begins, but Sweeney’s attentions are soon diverted by the captive Vulcan. The scrupulously polite and terrifyingly brilliant manhunter has never met a prisoner like Spock, and his distracting new fascination eventually leads to Sweeney’s first defeat as Kirk and Blaise break out of the Brig just as competing Klingon and Nasgul forces warp in to claim the prize lot in Sweeney’s auction…

Things come to a head when the situation deteriorates into a petulant shooting war in ‘…Gone!’, leaving Kirk to pull off yet another hairsbreadth escape and even save the Tau Gamma II colonists. However, no longer willing to tolerate the political machinations, Kirk forces the issue to a head by surrendering himself to Federation authorities on Earth and demanding his day in court to clear his name once and for all…

Given the chance for a show trial, the Salla and his Klingon antagonists revel in the chance to destroy the greatest hindrance to their plans and ‘The Trial of James T. Kirk’ opens with ‘The First Thing We Do…’

This story-within-a-story is stuffed with hilarious cameos and vignettes from many old TV episodes (but in an easily accessible manner for newcomers unfamiliar with lore) and sees Kirk’s attorneys Samuel T. Cogsley and Areel Shaw (look them up if you need to) deftly manoeuvre to remove most of the charges whilst rolling out a host of fan-favourites from TV episodes to act as “character witnesses”…

Despite making some telling points, an Enterprise crewman turning to the Dark Side and the frank sworn testimony of R. J. Blaise, the case is clearly going against the Klingons and Nasgul. Thus they individually and clandestinely resort to their respective Plan Bs in ‘…Lets Kill All the Lawyers!’ The bellicose warrior race fly in their own Emperor to give personal testimony and demand Kirk’s destruction, whilst the fundamentalist tyrant of the Nasgul opts for a far more hands-on and devastatingly final solution…

Pencilled by Gordon Purcell, the saga explosively concludes in ‘Trial and Error!’ as deft work by Spock and the Bridge Crew uncover a plot to eradicate the courtroom and everyone in it, leading to a cessation of hostilities between Federation and Klingons and Kirk’s full exoneration.

Sadly, those efforts completely fail to expose the treacherous mole high in Star Fleet Command who was crucial to instigating the entire affair…

This tale is pure classic Trek. Fans loved it then and you will now. It’s also a superb example of how to do a licensed property in comic form, and readers and wannabe creators should buy and take note. Balancing action and drama are captivating moments of interpersonal byplay filling out the roles of beloved characters like Uhura & Sulu and – as you’d expect from Peter David – the story is packed with outrageously hilarious quotable moments…

These yarns are magical romps of fun and thrills fully embracing and enhancing canonical Star Trek for the dedicated devotee, offering memorable comic book adventure for followers of our art-form and, most importantly, providing an important bridge between the insular world of fans and the wider mainstream. Stories like these about such famous characters can only bring more people into comics and isn’t that what we all want?
Star Trek ® and © 2009 CBS Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Star Trek and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc.

Posted on

Batman: Terror of the High Skies


By Joe R. Lansdale, Edward Hannigan & Dick Giordano (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN: 978-0-316-17765-8 (TPB)

September 19th is the 12th Annual Batman Day and this year it coincides with the 32nd International Talk Like A Pirate Day. That’s gonna be some strange dinner party conversation, right there, me Hearties! Moreover, World Police expect to deploy specially trained penguins to keep rival marchers Ap-Aarrrrrt!

Prior to the days of all-out Superhero cinema, we parochial comics fans tended to regard and measure our greatest assets in purely graphic narrative terms, but truthfully characters such as Superman, Spider-Man and especially Batman have long-since grown beyond their origins and are now fully modern mythological creatures who inhabit a mass of medias and even age ranges. A precious case in point is this superbly rowdy, rollicking. rousing and rather rare “Boy’s Own adventure” released in November 1992 as part of the perennial and hopefully never-ending drive to get kids reading.

Terror of the High Skies was written by the brilliant and joyously prolific Texan Joe R. Lansdale, whose credits range from novels to screenplays (Bubba Ho-Tep, Hap and Leonard) and cartoons (Superman: The Animated Series, DC Showcase: Jonah Hex) to comic books (Jonah Hex: Two Gun, Molo & Shadows West, Red Range, Pigeons From Hell, The Steam Man, Batman) in genres as broad as horror, comedy, westerns, crime-thrillers, fantasy science fiction and all points in between. He is as adept at challenging adult audiences as he is beguiling – far harder to impress – young readerships… and he knows kung fu too!

The illustrated prose tale begins as young Toby Tyler slowly adjusts to life in Gotham City after growing up in Mud Creek, East Texas. One night, as his parents play host to old friend – and Police Commissioner – Jim Gordon, Toby hears a cat in distress and climbs out of his bedroom window onto the roof of his building. Once there, he finds a flying galleon heaving-to and infamous criminal The Joker capering about all gussied-up in the guise of a movie pirate.

Toby’s a big fan of films and keeps up to date on the news, so when the Mountebank of Mirth makes the kid walk the plank off the roof he overhears some clues that will eventually lead to the Clown Prince’s defeat. It’s also where and when he first meets the daring Dark Knight, as Batman swoops out of the darkness to save him before racing off to confront Joker and his gang of plundering sky-pirates…

Already deeply involved in solving taunting card-clues to the raucous rogue’s future crimes, Batman comes close to ending the case right there, but the wily Harlequin of Hate hastily hightails it to embarks on a campaign of pirate-themed plundering, unaware that plucky Toby has deduced where and when he will strike next.

With the focus very much on the valiant boy – just as young Jim Hawkins is the narrative voice of Robert Louis Stevenson’s genre-founding Treasure Island – readers are treated to a splendid adventure as Toby is allowed to join Batman’s search for the Joker in a fantastic chase encompassing a visit to the Batcave; meeting and rescuing his favourite horror-film actor; stowing away aboard the cloud-soaring marauder; facing a (mechanical) sea monster and eventually foiling a spectacular scheme to unleash a wave of madness on unsuspecting Gotham City.

Boldly boisterous, fast-paced and engaging; delivered very much in the manner of Batman the Animated Series (for which Lansdale also wrote a number of episodes), this delightful text escapade is enhanced by eight breathtaking full-page action-illustrations by Batman veterans Ed Hannigan & Dick Giordano and would make a perfect primer for younger fans to begin their – hopefully – life-long love affair with reading… once some forward-thinking editorial bigwig has it re-released and commissions a new one too…
© 1992 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Published under license from DC Comics.

Posted on

The Death of Groo the Wanderer (Marvel Graphic Novel #32)


By Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai & Tom Luth (Epic/Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-290-3 (1990 Album TPB)

Groo is a living paradox: a brilliant fighting man and unbeatable warrior sell-sword, and also – AT THE SAME TIME – far too stupid to be harmed and the dumbest loose assemblage of organic molecules on the planet. Always hungry, he wanders because most places where he pauses burn down, wash away or crash into rubble soon after he gets there. He loves to fight and the entire world trembles at the mention of his name. They do the same whenever they are downwind of him too…

Produced in unique fashion by Sergio Aragonés, wordsmith Mark Evanier, letterer Stan Sakai (creator of Usagi Yojimbo) and colourist Tom Luth, the idiot’s adventures form one of the longest running humour comic book series in America and there seems to be no chance of stopping the creators as long as we keep buying these incredible, hilarious sagas…

Both in comic narrative and the infinitely more strenuous idea-consuming field of gag-cartooning, Sergio Aragonés Domenech (born today in 1937 so Happy Birthday amigo!) has produced vast volumes of excellent stuff. His darkly skewed sensibilities and deathgrip on the cosmically absurd, wedded to a utterly unique, anarchically meticulous drawing style and frankly terrifying professional discipline, have made his (frequently) silent doodles a vibrant proof of the maxims that laughter is universal and a picture is worth a thousand words.

Also an actor of some merit and repute, the Spanish-born Mexican-American most famously worked for years at Mad Magazine and on DC’s horror anthology titles when he first moved to the USA. Here he mostly delivered pages of gags and occasional full comic scripts and strips. Then in 1981, with comics scripting, screenwriting associate Mark Evanier, Aragonés knocked out a madcap 4-page parody of the entire Sword-&-Sorcery genre as his contribution to the Creators Rights benefit comic book Destroyer Duck being published by Eclipse Comics.

Following a second outing in Mike Grell’s Starslayer (#5), Pacific Comics launched Groo the Wanderer in his own title. After 8 issues (December 1982-April 1984) that beleaguered, troubled company folded but the unsinkable yet unwashed barbarian (that’s a joke I’ll explain later) resurfaced in a Groo Special one-shot from Eclipse (October 1984), before finding a relatively stable home at Epic Comics, Archie Goodwin’s creator-owned corner of the Marvel Universe.

Aragonés had first doodled his witless warrior in the 1970s, but no publisher would take on the property unless he sold all rights – a nigh-universal situation in the industry until the advent of the Direct Sales market transferred power from companies and distributors to creators and consumers. Groo is arguably the most successful creator-owned property of the US comic book market, and this randomly selected volume of so very many pretty much epitomises what the meandering (but never a mendicant!) moron is all about. Since that Epic incarnation (an uproarious 120 issue run plus dozens of graphic novel compilations) the witless wall-eyed wanderer moved on to Image and Dark Horse Comics, but they haven’t completely gone belly-up yet. Moreover, he has teamed up with the best in the biz (like Tarzan and Conan) and continues to escape in new editions whenever you least expect it…

This all original volume from 1987 reintroduces readers to the ugliest, stupidest, stinky-est itinerant mercenary in the world. Luckily he’s also the best swordsman in creation and too thick to be harmed, because when he shuffles his unshod, dirty feet into the domain of King Krag he inadvertently encounters a thoroughly nasty man with a good many reasons to psychotically hate him…

At this time the kingdom is being ravaged by a colossal dragon, but as the only man on the planet crazy enough to fight it has a huge bounty on his head, how stupid would he have to be to come and attempt to kill it? If you’re having difficulty answering that, either you’ve not been paying attention or Groo has found a new apprentice…

Due to the kind of circumstance-concatenation that only happens in this series, everybody in the land of Groo-haters thinks the oaf is finally dead – even Groo – but with all the folk who have ever suffered at his hands gathered in one place, they all start to realise that a world without Groo just isn’t the same…

Fear not, however. Order, if not sense, is eventually restored… but only after a grand display of confusions, contusions, conflagrations, conflicts, pratfalls, pitfalls, punch-lines and punch-ups. There’s even a little room left over for a soupçon of romance (Mmmm, Soup! Mmmm, leftovers…)

Originally published in the extravagant, luxurious over-sized 285mm x 220mm European album format (other later versions are available!) allowing even more room for the artist’s tireless tornado of visual hits and narrative graffiti, this is a masterpiece of mirth and madness comedy addicts will adore and the great most telling strength of the series is that new readers can start practically anywhere – and still be none the wiser…

Marvellously cynical, wildly witty and stunningly silly, Groo remains the comic of first resort for people who hate comics: titanically tongue-in-cheek, sharply sarcastic and searingly self-deprecating. An irresistible humour tour-de-force astoundingly scribed and illustrated by jesters who don’t know when – or how – to stop.

The unstoppable brain-donor (Groo, not Aragonés) has since rambled on to other ventures but there’s still plenty of material for you to track down…

Oh yeah, that sinking thing: among his other lack of abilities Groo cannot travel by ship. He’s not seasick or anything, it’s just that his physical presence on nautical apparatus of any sort causes it to sink. This book has one of the very best riffs on that running (swimming? sinking?) gag I’ve ever seen… and while we’re sharing secrets, according to our admittedly so-very-wry and untrustworthy narrator/creators, a hallowed, unchanging creative process forms the basis of the prolific partnership.

Groo’s tales are initially plotted and pencilled by Aragonés before being handed off to Evanier (Scooby-Doo, Blackhawk, Crossfire, DNAgents, New Gods, Garfield) to dialogue in those bits least filled with pictorial idiocy and graphic contumely. After all that, Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo, The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper and Hermy, 47 Ronin) letters the pages (in indelible ink!) before Sergio gets them back to embellish and change back to what he wanted in the first place. A colourist (usually Tom Luth) colours it all in for picky customers who want no truck with measly monochrome…

If you must read only one Groo book, any one will do. I like this one and so do all of these dissatisfied customers…

© 1987, 1990, 2026 Sergio Aragonés. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Aragones 3-D


By Sergio Aragones, with 3-D enhancement by Ray Zone (3-D Zone)
ISBN: 978-0-92530-000-3 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Whilst we’re celebrating a truly unique oeuvre, why not try to find this booklet of wordless humour in 3-D. It should include two pairs of 3-D glasses, but you know what resellers and second hand retailers are like…

I’m all about everything to do with comics and so to celebrate our Spanish/Mexican-American cartoonist, occasional actor and birthday boy I’ve dredged up this wonderful piece of eye-candy. It is both a splendid example of the periodic fascination our industry has with the somewhat hit-or-miss print process of Three-Dimensional reproduction, and also a superb short collection of sardonic pictorial lunacy by of one of the modern world’s greatest gag cartoonists. Notably, black-& white’s perfectly all right for gag-cartooning genius Aragonés and he’s not fussed by red & green either…

This little book features more than sixty of his best, many embracing the theme of 3-D itself, but all dipped in the grim wit of the cynical absurdist. Shove on your specs and see the gags just jump out at you.
© 1989 Sergio Aragones. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

The Spectre volume 1: Crimes and Judgements


By John Ostrander & Tom Mandrake with DIGITAL CHAMELEON, Carla Feeny, Todd Klein & various(DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4718-8 (TPB) 978-1-4012-5253-3 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The Spectre is one of the oldest characters in DC’s vast stable, created by Jerry Siegel & Bernard Baily in 1940 for More Fun Comics #52 & 53. However, just like Siegel’s other iconic co-creation, the Ghostly Guardian soon began to suffer from a basic design flaw: he was just too darn powerful. In fact, unlike Superman, he’s already dead, so he can’t really be dramatically imperilled by anything.

Starting out as a virtually omnipotent phantasm and singleminded fighter of evil, the Sinister Spirit ultimately resolved over various returns and refits spanning more than 66 years into a succession of tormented souls bound to the merciless personification of the biblical Wrath of God. That last revelation came about thanks to a piece of inspired rethinking in a revival from the early 1990s. The character had already been rebooted and resurrected many times, but none better than that superbly incisive iteration, wherein scripter John Ostrander shifted the narrative spotlight onto the relative Tabula Rasa that was Jim Corrigan. He was the tough-guy, depression era cop whose brutal murder unleashed The Spectre into the burgeoning world of costumed heroes…

His story was a genuinely gruesome one: on the eve of his wedding police detective Corrigan was captured by the Gat Benson mob, shoved in a barrel of cement and pitched off a pier. Called back to the land of the living, he was commanded by a glowing light and disembodied voice to “confront Evil”…

Over the following decade of his subsequent dark crusade, fighting crime and crushing demonic monsters, the Avenging Astral Angel was indisputably the most formidable hero of the Golden Age. For most of the Spectre’s time on Earth, Corrigan had been its human face: a way for readers to glimpse the softer side of a relentless punisher of misdeeds. Ostrander’s take on the character delved deeper. For nearly five years he and artistic collaborator Tom Mandrake lent a tragic, barbaric humanity to a champion who was simply too big and too strong for periodical comics. With DC currently returning to the back catalogue of the Grim Ghost, let’s revisit that stellar run. Initial offering Crime and Judgements gathers issues #1-12 of The Spectre (volume 3, spanning cover-dates December 1992 to November 1993) in a deliriously dark collation of macabre mood and shocking suspense wherein Corrigan and The Spectre finally learned the truth about their relationship.

It begins as Corrigan visits the bedside of dying thug Louis Snipe in ‘Crimes of Violence’. Fifty years previously this gunsel was one of the gang who murdered Corrigan, but before their potentially final exchange can progress they are interrupted by social worker Amy Beitermann, who gets a strange vibe off the ex-policeman…

Moments later she inadvertently witnesses his uncanny secret in action as The Spectre emerges to deliver gory justice to gangbangers perpetrating a drive-by shooting on the steps of the hospital. She keeps the unbelievable details of the resultant bloodbath from Police Inspector Nate Kane. She knows the older man has a crush on her, and isn’t above using his doting interest to ply him with questions about former cop-turned-Private Investigator named Corrigan…

Later, as the Spectre concludes his business with Snipe, somewhere in the city, a blood-spilling serial killer takes his latest victim and Corrigan once more questions the point of his existence. Half a century of punishing the guilty and nothing has changed…

‘Crimes of Passion’ opens with the Ghostly Guardian drawn to a house where a repeating phantom constantly relives her own murder. When she refuses to disclose any details of the crime or perpetrator Spectre reacts with typical furious overkill. Elsewhere, Amy enters the storefront of fortune teller Madame Xanadu. Beitermann’s enquiries have traced Corrigan to an office in that building, but her abrupt meeting with the sultry seer proves more than she can handle, especially after the sorceress summarily demands she find Corrigan for her.

The driven spirit they’re pursuing has been just as inquisitive. Unfortunately his questioning of the unquiet ghost’s husband, lover and sister leads to nothing but death and damnation for all the wrong people…

…And at the docks Nate Kane inspects the site of the latest atrocity attributed to the Reaver but finds himself unexpectedly encumbered with two bodies: one of them encased in cement and in a 50-year-old barrel…

‘Crimes and Punishments’ finds Amy visiting Kane at the Precinct house. Poking around, she is aghast to find a concrete corpse and beyond words when she sees it has Corrigan’s agonised face. Across town, commercial artist Danny Geller is thinking about passion and the kind of woman he likes, but the Spectre is busy, or at least Corrigan is. Having caused the suicide of an innocent, the human half of the Astral Amalgamation is in need of confession and seeks out Amy. He can’t understand why, but Jim is inexplicably drawn to her…

It’s exactly the wrong moment for a street gang to jump them and The Spectre’s revolting response-in-kind utterly disgusts the stunned social worker. When she questions why such violence is necessary, Spectre mystically shows her Corrigan’s savage childhood with an abusive, travelling-preacher father and later how the cop he became met his eventual end.

Although that panorama is too awful to bear, Amy takes some solace in seeing how happy Jim once was with his fiancée Clarice Winston…

The revelatory visions conclude with ‘Crime and Judgment’ as Corrigan re-experiences his meeting with God’s Will in Limbo. Amy intangibly observes his mission laid out again and realises the newly-dead man missed something the first time: the Voice actually saying “Confront Evil. Confront and Comprehend…”

Flashing back in time to the moment The Spectre began, Amy watches as Clarice is killed and how Corrigan dragged her back from Heaven. His beloved lived again… but she shouldn’t have…

Challenging The Spectre only causes him to turn his excoriating gaze upon Amy. He probes and exposes her greatest guilt. Once she was married to an unfaithful man. When she caught her spouse in his lustful betrayals she spitefully reacted just like him and unknowingly passed on the killer contagion he had afflicted her with and consequently to many of her own retaliatory one-night partners. In her own eyes Amy is every inch a killer too…

However, when the aroused, irate Spectre attempts to administer judgement, Corrigan rises to resist his other half and, after a tremendous struggle, a deal is struck…

A new story arc begins with a road accident that leaves a kidnapper dead before the missing child can be found. With no hope remaining, Amy asks Jim for specialised help and the detective follows the abductor’s soul to its reward in The Pit. Ignoring his own justly-suffering father, Corrigan probes deeper into the Abode of the Damned and meets again Shathan the Eternal. Their epic battle triggers ‘A Rage in Hell’ before the Ghostly Guardian gets what he needs and the child is saved…

All the same, The Devil landed a last telling blow, citing the legend of how a demonic Prince of the Damned escaped Hell. This Spirit of Wrath volubly and piously repented and was bound to a human. Together they roam Earth, doing Heaven’s work. Somehow, this story deeply unsettles The Spectre….

With uncomfortable suspicions of infernal taint destabilising his usually implacable composure, the Grim Ghost seeks out Amy. Although her ailment and condition has forced her to avoid intimacy with guys like poor Nate, she feels comfortable in the arms of a dead man, and takes the opportunity to talk Jim into trying to ameliorate his alter ego’s excesses. The inconclusive initial results are seen as Spectre goes on a rampage against a succession of callous casual murderers and greedy gangbangers in ‘The Bleeding Gun’. Greater forces are in play, though. Xanadu, urgently seeking her phantom lodger, unleashes magic forces against uncooperative Amy even as Danny Geller makes another killing. Every day he’s getting closer to the one woman he really wants…

With Jim and Amy trapped in a fantastic realm, ‘Vision and Power’ reveals that when Xanadu was sheltering Corrigan after his latest resurrection, she began tapping tiny slivers of its mystic energies and has become addicted. Taunting her victims by claiming this magic could even cure Amy – something The Spectre would never allow – the seer then steals all that arcane might, but is overwhelmed by the force of the mission underpinning the power…

With Xanadu on a brutally bloody rampage of distorted judgment and punishment, Corrigan (free and free-thinking for the first time in decades) has no choice but to convince her to surrender the infinite force before picking up his burden once again…

The second act of Shathan’s vengeance begins when his diabolical lieutenant Azmodus – carried back to Earth in the wrathful Spectre’s wake – starts possessing mortals and sowing destruction. Nate, meanwhile, discovers all the Reaver’s victims were HIV-positive like Amy, and gets a nasty inkling of what’s really going on when he finally realises the ex-cop she was asking about and the concrete corpse both have the same face as the creepy new guy she’s been seeing.

When he confronts them his ‘Righteous Anger’ leads to a shattering series of further revelations. Kane learns ‘No Good Deed Goes Unpunished’ as news of the HIV angle goes public and he’s made the police’s scapegoat for their failure to catch the Reaver. As the Spectre is dragged from Amy’s side after body-hopping Azmodus begins a campaign of spectacular slaughter, the Astral Avenger is trapped by his own zealousness within the demon whilst it continues its appalling kill-spree. Geller too has been busy, and although his body-count is far less impressive it has a single purpose. All this time he’s been hunting the harlot who infected him with a vile death-sentence. Now he’s found her. The ‘Unforgivable Acts’ by all the players then continue with restored Xanadu pondering Amy’s destiny, well aware that not even The Spectre is mighty enough to foil Fate.

The Supernal Spirit has other ideas, however, following the killer’s latest victim to the Gates of Heaven, resolved to glean the Reaver’s identity. Unfortunately, Archangel Michael won’t permit that and The Spectre finally faces a foe he cannot defeat…

‘The Deepest Cut’ begins the end as cashiered Kane – who pluckily stationed himself outside Amy’s home – also falls to the Reaver, but the inevitable attack is abruptly delayed once Azmodus arrives. The devil has been gathering power with each possession and subsequent bloodbath, and now he has found the ideal host in Danny Geller. Drawing The Spectre into the Greater Realms for a catastrophic final confrontation, Azmodus leaves Danny enough autonomy to fulfil his dark dream and deal Amy her ‘Final Fate’…

However, both physical and ethereal demons have made the same mistake, underestimating the victim’s will to live, Madame Xanadu’s need to atone and Nate’s dying wish to save the woman he loves…

…As always The Spectre will be there at the end to scourge the truly guilty…

With a stunning cover gallery by Mandrake, Glen Fabry, Sandy Plunkett, Charles Vess, Garry Leach, Dan Brereton, Matt Wagner, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Greg Hildebrandt & Bryn Barnard, this turbulent tome offers powerful and deviously convoluted tales that go beyond the genre’s usual cause-&-effect, calamity-&-rescue rigmarole to examine the nature of Love and Hate and Good and Evil.

Powerful, scary, sensitive, and often shocking, the intricate developing relationships and interactions also compel The Spectre’s mortal aspect to confront traumas of suppressed childhood as he relives his own death and the ghastly repercussions of his return. With intense, brooding art from Mandrake, this incarnation of the character was by far the most accessible and successful and, if it had launched a year or so later, might well have been a star of the budding Vertigo imprint. Nevertheless, even as a spooky outlier of the mainstream DC Universe it still stands unparalleled in its maturity and complexity.

This is a book no lover of grown-up super-sagas can afford to miss.
© 1992, 1993, 2014 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Spirou and Fantasio volume 23: The Moray’s Lair (A Spirou and Fantasio Adventure)


By André Franquin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-194-1 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book also contains Discriminatory Content included for comedic effect.

André Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd 1924 and died on January 5th 1997. In between there were good times and bad, which he handled by creating the most incredible characters and stories, and by making people laugh and think… but mostly laugh. This is one of the very best you can find translated into English.

Adventure-seeking brave lad Spirou headlined the magazine he was named for from the first issue (dated April 21st 1938). He was devised and realised by French cartoonist Françoise Robert Velter (“Rob-Vel”) for Belgian publisher Éditions Dupuis in direct response to the success of Hergé’s Tintin over at rival outfit Casterman. Originally a plucky bellboy/lift operator employed by the Moustique Hotel (a sly reference to the publisher’s premier periodical Le Moustique), his improbable exploits with pet squirrel Spip gradually but steadily evolved into highflying, far reaching, surreal comedy dramas. That evolution was mainly thanks to Velter’s wife Blanche “Davine” Dumoulin who took over the strip when her husband enlisted in 1939 and Belgian artist/assistant Luc Lafnet – at least until 1943 when Dupuis purchased all rights to the property, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (Jijé) took over.

When Jijé handed his own trainee/assistant total responsibility for the flagship feature part-way through serial Spirou et la maison préfabriqué (Le Journal de Spirou #427, June 20th 1946), André Franquin ran with it for the next 20 years. He enlarged the scope and expanding horizons until the feature was purely his own. Almost every week fans would meet startling new characters such as comrade/rival Fantasio or crackpot inventor and Merlin of mushroom mechanics The Count of Champignac. Spirou and Fantasio became globetrotting journalists, travelling to exotic places, uncovering crimes, exploring the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of exotic arch-enemies such as Zorglub and Fantasio’s unsavoury cousin Zantafio.

Gradually sidelining short, done-in-one gag vignettes in favour of longer epic adventure serials, Franquin’s growing cast of engaging regulars soon included one of the first strong female characters in European comics (rival journalist Seccotine AKA Cellophine in the current English translation) and ultimately led to the debut of a scene-stealing, phenomenally popular apparently-magic animal. Marsupilami arrived during 1952’s serial Spirou et les héritiers and never really left…

Franquin, plagued in later life by bouts of depression, died in 1997 but his legacy remains and still grows; a vast body of work which reshaped the landscape of European comics, and inspiring many others to carry on in his name and manner.

As Le Repaire de la murène this eccentric epic was Franquin’s ninth solo affair, originally serialised in LJdS #871-904 from December 23rd 1954 to August 11th 1955. It was eventually collected as an album in 1957. Here, as The Moray’s Lair it directly follows The Wrong Head, scoping out a soupçon of nautical naughtiness as the freshly minted investigative reporting team tackle scientific quandary and marine mystery all whilst simply trying to earn extra cash by attempting a scientific challenge.

Vacationing with mycoprotein mate Pacôme Hégésippe Adélard Ladislas de Champignac at his ramshackle rural estate in Champignac-in-the-Sticks, the idling lads spot a magazine ad offering a startlingly specific engineering exploit with a hefty cash reward for its completion. “Fabulously rich ship owner” Xenophon Hamadryas seeks someone who can invent a means of descending 650 feet underwater and carry out unspecified tasks at that depth in complete safety, and they are up for it.

Perhaps distracted by the absurd and distressing antics of Spip, local postman Mr. Zenobius and the Marsupilami, our heroes’ usual caution is overwhelmed by greed and they soon convince The Count to use mushroom science to (temporarily) boost his own formidable brainpower. The result is detailed plans for scuba diving gear, unique new breathing gases, underwater communications systems and even personal minisubs to reach the required depths whilst allowing freedom of movement under the greatest most unfathomable pressures ever recorded.

At least it momentarily stops Pacôme from doing whatever it was he had started to “improve” the estate’s chickens…

The brainstorming meets with initial success, but once the team submit their plans and commission construction of the kit, a wave of suspicious accidents and plain sabotage at the factories building Champignac’s innovations put Spirou & Fantasio on high alert, but not as much as when their incredible elastic-tailed anthropoid pal discovers – and brutally chastises – someone closely observing their every move…

Grudgingly accepting that an over-competitive rival inventor must be behind the campaign, the team continue with enhanced security, which only leads to intimidation, explosions and the destruction of their declared competitors’ efforts. Increasingly wary, Spirou identifies his own stalker after the poor villain is savagely attacked by Marsupilami and convinces the comrades to relocate and continue working in hiding. The plan is actually a trap for watching villains and leads to an epic victory using the Count’s other bizarre science weapons on the spies…

Regarding themselves safe at last, Spirou, Fantasio, the Count and the critters relocate to the shores of the Mediterranean to test their completed prototypes in peace. Barring some minor teething troubles, results are ideal and lead to another amazing discovery in the miraculous Marsu’s biological armoury! Soon they meet competition sponsor Mr. Hamadryas: a most untrustworthy, obnoxious individual who clearly has a secret agenda, plenty of personal goons and lots of unspoken pressures of his own to deal with. Unaware that Spirou has already encountered a mystery sub at the specified subsea location, the shipping magnate claims all other teams have dropped out due to the sabotage campaign, before explaining what he needs… but not really why…

Spouting a ludicrous tale of his best ship (The Discreet) and best friend (Captain John Helena) both being lost in those cold dark depths, the money Midas wants our adventurers to locate the wreck in Helena’s honour and memory, but although they accept the task, the lads are on the lookout for sinister surprises…

What follows is epic spectacle as the marine mission trawls up even more deadly traps, a hidden underwater base, lost treasures, what Hamadryas truly needs and the reason why plundering pirate “The Moray” has been plaguing and confounding the entire endeavour all along. That leads to discovering who he actually works for, and what Marsupilami’s newly revealed power means to the bad guys threatening his human friends…

Soaked in sublime slapstick schtick with gallons of gags throughout, this explosively exuberant exploration is packed with cunning crooks coming a-cropper, animal animosity expressed, angst-free action, thrills & spills. It also offers another early ecological message and an always-timely moral regarding the humane treatment of animals. There’s even a fascinating technical overview of nautical facts at time of printing in back-up text feature ‘A Conference by Mr de Champignac’ answering the most telling questions thrown up the mushroom scientist’s apparent flouting of physical law and engineering expertise…

The Moray’s Lair is the kind of lightly-barbed, comedy romp to delight readers fed up and saturated by adults-only carnage, testosterone-fuelled breast-beating, teen-romance monsters or sickly-sweet fantasy. Easily accessible to readers of all ages, drawn with all the beguiling style and seductive yet wholesome verve and panache which make Asterix, Lucky Luke, and Yakari so compelling, these are enduring landmark tales from a long line of superb exploits, deserving to be a household name as much as those series… and even that other kid with the white dog.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1957 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation 2026 © Cinebook Ltd.

Posted on

I… Vampire!


By J.M. DeMatteis, Bruce Jones, Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, Mike W. Barr, Tom Sutton, Ernie Colon, Adrian Gonzales, Paris Cullins, Dan Day, Jim Aparo, Joe Kubert, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Tatjana Wood, Adrienne Roy & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3371-6 (TPB), 978-1-4012-5507-7 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Scary times ahead so let’s ease in to the season of mists mellow fruitfulness and spine sucking terror! with a guaranteed classic grimoire of reasonably family oriented ghoulish gore and wonder…

When superheroes entered their second decline at the end of the 1960s, four of the six surviving newsstand comic book companies (Archie, Charlton, DC, Gold Key, Harvey & Marvel) increasingly turned to horror and suspense anthologies to bolster their flagging sales. Even wholesome Archie briefly produced Red Circle Sorcery/Chillers comics, diverting a portion of their teen-comedy core gently into superb tales of witchcraft, mystery and imagination.

DC’s first generation of mystery titles blossomed at the end of the Golden Heroic Age when most comic book publishers of the era started switching to Crime, Romance, Western, Sci Fi and Horror genre anthologies to recapture an aging readership which was drifting away to other mass-market entertainments like TV and movies. Intriguingly, 1950’s TV also adopted en masse the anthological mystery tale model as seen in a wealth of repertory company anthology shows like The Veil, One Step Beyond, Tales of Tomorrow, and later, better remembered classics like The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone.

After a few tenuous attempts with supernatural-themed heroic leads in established titles (Johnny Peril in Comic Cavalcade, All-Star Comics and Sensation Comics; Dr. Terry Thirteen, The Ghostbreaker in Star-Spangled Comics) by 1951 National Comics had bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology sans recurring lead stars… which nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles. It all began on October 3rd with the launch of The House of Mystery (cautiously cover-dated December 1951/January 1952).

When a hysterical censorship muck rake led to witch-hunting hearings attacking comic books and newspaper strips (just type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time), the industry panicked and hurriedly adopted a castrating straitjacket of stringent self-regulatory rules and admonitions. Despite mystery/suspense titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority being sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock & Gore, the readership’s appetite for mystery and suspense stayed high, and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected & House of Secrets.

Supernatural thrills and spooky monsters were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, genteel, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles which nonetheless dominated the market until the end of the 1950s when the super-hero returned in force – having begun a renaissance in 1956 after Julius Schwartz reintroduced The Flash in Showcase #4. Revivals of Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom and new costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked myrmidons which even forced these dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with J’onn J’onzz, Manhunter from Mars and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and paranormal investigator Mark Merlin (latterly Prince Ra-Man) sharing space with anti-hero Eclipso in HoS. When caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties, folding with the September/October 1966 issue. House of Mystery carried on with its eccentric costumed cohort until #173, and Tales of the Unexpected endured until #104.

However, nothing combats censorship better than plunging profits, and as the Sixties ended the superhero boom busted again. With once-popular titles promptly perishing and many of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain, this real-world Crisis led to surviving publishers agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against horror (and crime) comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at the time, but as this liberalisation coincided with another bump in global public interest in all aspects of the Great Unknown, the resurrection of spooky story comics was a foregone conclusion and obvious no-brainer…

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all, House of Mystery and Unexpected switched back to tales of magic, mystery and imagination whilst already cancelled House of Secrets rose again with #81, (cover-dated August/September 1969), retooled to feed a seemingly insatiable appetite for terror and suspense…

Before long, an expansive battalion of supernatural thriller titles dominated DC’s – and competitors’ – publishing schedules again. This time, however, although the initial impetus died out by 1978, horror comics had secured a dedicated audience, soldiering on despite declines in sales into the turbulent 1980s. During that period, the venerable periodical experimented with varying formats and became a springboard for many creative careers, but never returned to established, recurring characters until the reign of publishing whiz kid Karen Berger who officially assumed control with HoM #292. Some issues earlier, a new longform miniseries (we used to call them “serials”) had debuted, detailing the exploits of a reluctant monster seeking to atone for past sins…

The full groundbreaking, tragic, idiosyncratic saga was gathered into a chilling chronicle recounting the afterlives of the bloodsucker and his human allies and re-presents here pertinent material from House of Mystery #290-291, 293, 295, 297, 299, 302, 304-319, plus a guest-shot in The Brave and the Bold #195, cumulatively spanning cover-dates March 1980 to August 1983. It opens without fanfare or preamble in ‘I… Vampire’ by co-creators J.M. DeMatteis & Tom Sutton.

In 10 tightly-packed yet smoothly inviting pages we meet English noble Sir Andrew Bennett, who died at the hands of a nosferatu during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Beloved by his fiancée Mary Seward, Bennett succumbed to her desperate pleas to be similarly infected, so that their love might last forever. Only afterwards did he realise that the transformation generally creates soulless monsters, even though, somehow, he has retained his conscience and personality…

Over four centuries, “Bloody Mary” becomes a prestigious leader of massed vampires in an insidious, influential covert global cult dubbed the Blood Red Moon. They sow chaos and destruction whilst working towards the ultimate goal of vampires ruling a world of human cattle. Heartbroken and guilt ridden, Bennett has opposed her schemes for all that time, aided by human allies such as his most recent “daywalkers”: aged Russian warrior Dimitri Mishkin and go-getting “Eighties Woman” Deborah Dancer…

Blessed with all the traditional gifts of the undead (shapeshifting, supernatural vigour, hypnosis, etc) and similarly afflicted by their weaknesses (sunlight, crucifixes, Holy Water, stakes, et al) Bennett staves off his insatiable hunger for blood by sheer willpower and the determination that he will not die until he has ended Mary’s depredations…

The introductory episode covers all that even as Mary’s minions lose another running battle with Bennett’s team but escape to instigate their latest plan…

The adventure concludes in ‘Night of the Living Undead’ as team Bennett expose and end a proposed alliance between the cult and New York’s biggest drug dealer, after which ‘The Burning’ sees the hunters scotch a scheme to infiltrate the White House once Mary affiliates with a race-hate spouting demagogue whose influential links include the KKK and US President. The closure of that case tears open old wounds, as Mishkin subsequently clashes with one of Mary’s lieutenants, only to discover a dreaded family connection in ‘Mother Love/Mother Hate’, leading to a look into how Bennett recruited him as a boy just as the 19th century became the 20th…

DeMatteis moved on after the dark heroes foil Mary’s attempt to destroy an ashram and its spiritual guru in ‘Zen Flesh! Zen Bones!’ after which Bruce Jones moves in, offering a more fanciful approach in ‘The Sun Also Burns’. Here Bennett and his human friends are ambushed and left to die in a mine. As time passes, the valiant vampire – deprived of bottled blood – must battle his irresistible thirst before abandoning them. Resolved never to endanger them again, he sets out on a solo quest for vengeance…

In HoM #302 ‘Blood Ties’ sees that lonely walkabout take him to Eudora, Kansas where odd events culminate in Bennett accidentally causing the deaths of an entire family of innocents before stumbling across a predatory circus abducting innocents for profit, and sponsored by Mary. His war against the ‘Carnival of Souls’ lasts until #304 where – with Ernie Colon substituting for Sutton – Bennett learns ‘The Night Has Eyes’ and proves that he has no pity for child stealers…

Jones then offers a lengthy saga in ‘Blood and Sand’ as the still-solo Bennett tracks Mary’s agents to Egypt in the wake of a global anti-cancer vaccine rollout that has the unexpected side-effect of making human blood toxic to the undead. Meanwhile, and for all this time, Mishkin & Dancer have been hunting for their leader, and are finally closing in…

Made unwilling allies by fate, Andrew and Mary invade a lost tomb, where the cult queen steals the time-travelling Rings of Anubis from a mystic mummy before setting off into the past to undo the creation of the vaccine. In hot pursuit, thanks to a second ring, Bennett arrives in Whitechapel, London at the height of history’s most infamous serial killer spree.

Crafted by Jones and the returned Sutton, ‘A Rip in Time’ sees all Mary’s efforts thwarted, and the ancestor of mysterious vaccine creator Dr. Barr escape unharmed, even as the vampires are hurled back into the time stream. Bennett washes ashore in Maine in November 1964, just in time to save a little girl from drowning. ‘Lovers Living, Lovers Dead’ reveals that in the present Deborah Dancer has developed a psychic link and can “see” vampires’ past actions as they happen. She is suitably horrified to observe Mary attack the child and aghast to realise that the child is herself…

After heroic intervention from Bennett saves the child, the time chase pauses as the undead knight battles a crew of revenant Nazi submariners in ‘Mirrors That Look Back’ before his pursuit resumes, depositing him and his quarry in Elizabethan England mere days before their first deaths. A bewildering succession of time-tossed doubles and mistaken identity switches culminates in a deadly ‘Witch Hunt’ with religiously enflamed peasants running riot before the chronal paradoxes dump them both back in the 20th century where new writers Dan Mishkin (no relation) & Gary Cohn concoct a ‘Manhattan Interlude’ (#310, November 1982) foe penciller Adrian Gonzales and ever-faithful Tom Sutton to render. Here Bennett encounters another vampire who has retained both soul and innocence and regretfully helps her meet her final end on her own terms…

Paris Cullins joins Mishkin & Cohn, Gonzales & Sutton for a dark peek at Deborah Dancer’s teen years in ‘By the Time We Got to Woodstock…’, revealing how she “first” stumbled into the Blood Red Moon’s schemes of conquest after losing all her friends to hippy bloodsuckers at the legendary festival, only surviving thanks to an old Russian and an eerie, red-eyed Englishman…

HoM #312 reunites the trio in time to tackle ‘The Thing in the Tunnel’ (Mishkin, Cohn, Gonzales & Sutton), a predatory beast escaped from the familiar-sounding Barr Research Laboratories and leading to a deadly clash with an enigmatic, extraordinarily long-lived (hint, hint) biologist in ‘Side Effects’, before ‘I.. Edward Trane, I… Vampire’ in #314 (illustrated solely by Sutton) sees a tragic reunion for Bennett with one of his own Victorian acolytes who fell in battle, but never fully died…

Mishkin, Cohn, Cullins & Sutton then detail an untitled exploit wherein the vampire hunters are targeted by sanctimonious religious zealots hunting the unholy. Sadly, their leader’s top aide is not only undead herself, but also Dimitri’s mother, and the Presidency is once more the glittering prize being sought…

Although the plot is foiled, the cost is high, compelling Bennett to turn eastwards, and ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’ he uncovers a KGB program to weaponize vampirism and extend the joys of eternity to the aging Politburo. The result is open warfare between Mary’s cult and a Soviet secret army, ultimately proving in ‘Blood is Thicker…’ that not all military spending is pointless, and not every hero gets to ride off into the sunset…

Despite a long run, changing times and tastes were indicating that the title and, indeed, entire genre were not a viable contemporary comics option. With the series building to climax, #318 offered another untitled yarn (with Dan Day pencilling) wherein a freshly bereaved Andrew Bennett employs stolen Soviet technology to force a final confrontation with Mary and the Blood Red Moon, resulting in his final demise and birth of a new kind of hero in climactic last episode ‘Dreams of Death’ by Mishkin, Cohn & Sutton in House of Mystery #319 (August 1983).

Aggravatingly, that big finish isn’t the end here, as there follows a solid but painfully out-of-continuity tale taken from The Brave and the Bold #195 (February 1983). For ‘Night of Blood’ (Mike W. Barr & Jim Aparo) Bennett’s perpetual hunt for Mary brings him to Gotham City after a gangster’s daughter becomes the latest victim of a vampire. Batman is firmly convinced the attacks are fake – and he’s right – until an actual magic-accursed blood drinker shows up. At least this time the standard misunderstanding doesn’t result in pointless battle before reason prevails and the mismatched heroes unite to catch the real culprits…

Graced with staggeringly compelling covers by Joe Kubert, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Aparo, Tatjana Wood & Adrienne Roy, this is a genuine slice of engaging, unorthodox and vastly entertaining horror action that predates – and probably influenced – later hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel. A hugely enjoyable edgy romp, well-scripted, imaginative and gorgeously illustrated I… Vampire is a timeless tome for all lovers of dark delight and one no arcane aficionada can afford to be without.
© 1981, 1982, 1983, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Neill Cameron’s Donut Squad: Destiny of the Donuts! (Book 3)


By Neill Cameron & various (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-390-5 (TPB Standard edition), 978-1-78845-436-0 (Waterstones edition)

Had enough to eat yet? Do You Like Donuts?

Only you can truly answer that question, but if you’re undecided, and dangerously unaware of the ramifications of indecision, then rowdy raconteur and inestimable art fiend Neill Cameron has another batch of artisanal, edibly-edifying arguments you might want to consider before deciding. They’re all jam-packed into a manic new compendium of strips, activities and artificially-sweetened exploits starring a bargain box of comics champions cherrypicked from modern British periodical treasure trove The Phoenix. Since debuting in 2012 and just like Beano, Dandy and other perennial childhood treasures, the wonderful weekly has masterfully mixed hilarious comedy with enthralling adventure serials… and frequently in the same scintillating strip.

Everybody braced in? Got your snacks? Napkins? Sick bags? Right then, let’s go…

Crafted by Cameron (Mega Robo Bros, Freddy, Tamsin of the Deep, How to Make Awesome Comics, Pirates of Pangea), a unique team of toothsome adventurers reconvene here in a world much improved by an absence of bagels. As enny fule kno, Bagels are the arch enemy of Donuts and probably all Life, but you won’t see many here as this time we’re threatened by our own suicidal tastes and unwise behaviour. No change there, then…

As always, we open with a temptingly gussied-up menu reintroducing family favourites like Dadnut & Li’l Timmy; DS commander-in-chief Sprinkles; impetuous Jammyboi; Chalky (ghost of a murdered Victorian Donut); nerve-wracked Anxiety Donut; violent vigilante Justice Donut and potty-mouthed piratical Caramel Jack! (he’s a little bit salty!). There are, of course, more and fresher delights to come…

Old treats like new Official Donut Squad merchandise, Great Moments in Donut History, Classics of World Donut Cinema, ‘Donutiquette (Tips for Polite Donut-Eating When Travelling)’, ‘Ask your Father’ abound, garnished by further examples of senseless violence with Justice Donut, cruel pranks by Jammyboi and whatever it is Spronky does. These are supplemented by developing character arcs like Anxiety Donut going on a life & attitude changing extended adventure, with shocking repercussions…

Other items on view include ‘Legends of the Origins of Chalky the Ghost Donut’, new arrivals like Daddy Donuts (the Donut who is Maybe TOO Rich), The Donut Mysteries and Extreme Donut Eating. These accompany a flurry of new (and even New World!) taste sensations – like the ‘Danger Nuts’ – Spikynut!, Explodonut! & Regular Donut (contains a higher level of saturated fats than is optimal for Heart Health!) – or international embassages Matcha Comin’ Atcha!, Takoyakinut!, Double Ultimate Chili Cheese Corndog and/or Medicinut.

As well as the launch of culinary pastime ‘Danger Donut Roulette’, other premiering attractions comprise New Season British Classic Flavours (Rhubarb Crumble!, Jam Roly-Poly! & Toad-in-the-Hole Donuts) and other themed delights; Legends of the Dark Donut; semi-regular outbursts of enigmatic tragicomedic experimental drama Waiting for Godonut and seldom seen sightings of Jean-Pierre and Albert: French-Canadian Vampire Donuts…

Underpinning regular and fresh features is an eponymous saga of vast cosmic import. Peppering the unfolding nonsense is a series of episodes in an overarching plotline inserting itself across sixteen fearful-future feuilletés designated ‘Destiny of the Donuts’. Here we will see how foolish, health-conscious humans will imbue smart gadgets like fit-bits and heart monitors with ruthless sentience and an programmed compulsion to eradicate unhealthy eating and the weaklings who do it or comprise it.

This will lead/has led to a war of extinction across the ages, with mean, nasty robots stopping the consumption of tasty snacks until human civilisation collapsed. Now with the last humans living in the ruins of what they wrought, the final dregs of indulgent humankind strikes back down the timelines, steered by our sugar sweet stalwarts and ferocious saturated fatties in rather random temporal assaults on the already triumphant terror mechs…

The galvanising sweet survivor who has lived through it all and intends to go back and fix all that horrible healthy history is a grizzled veteran warrior who used to be called Anxiety… and he’s brought the chewed up and spat out leftovers of his old squad who will make themselves known in good time…

Whether this is your first bite or a just another heaping helping, please be warned that although the main enemy of Donut Squad are bready brutes the Bagels, the timey-wimey shenanigans of these tick-tock fit-bit terrors are hard to suppress and – even after the regular activity features – the peril has not parked nor gone into reverse. Thus, Cameron’s ‘Phoenix Comic Club’ art classes on How to Draw Donuts are insidiously infiltrated by the old foe and manifest here as ‘How to Draw Bagels’ (including ‘How to Draw Platoon Commander Poppyseed’; ‘…A Sesame Seed Bagel’; ‘…A Plain Bagel’ and ‘…A Slightly Smaller Bagel’ before an anachronistic Bonus Comics section unleashes manic wildcard mild card Spronky to bizarrely interact with Time, bun/bakery mechanics and the page-count of reality one last bunch of times…

Smart, witty, laugh out loud weird and totally bonkers, the seemingly piecemeal treats contained herein define what kids love without knowing why. They also completely bewilder us oldsters and keep us in our place. Devious, eccentric and captivating, sugar rush all round is guaranteed and if you get toothache it’s from laughing not chronal confabulations…

Moreover, just like cucumber, DONUT SQUAD WILL RETURN…
Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2026. All rights reserved.

Neill Cameron’s Donut Squad: Destiny of the Donuts! is scheduled for UK release on 10th September 2026 and is available for pre-order now; or wait until next year and get it yesterday while walking off all those donuts and bagels…