Category: Graphic Novels

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Showcase Presents Brave and the Bold Batman Team-ups Volume 1


By Bob Haney, Neal Adams & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-4012-1209-4

The Brave and the Bold began in 1955 as an anthology adventure comic featuring short complete tales about a variety of period heroes: a format that mirrored the contemporary movie fascination with historical dramas. Written by Bob Kanigher issue #1 led with Golden Gladiator, the Silent Knight and Joe Kubert’s now legendary Viking Prince. From #5 the Gladiator was increasingly alternated with Robin Hood, but the adventure format carried the title until the end of the decade when the burgeoning costumed character revival saw B&B transform into a try-out vehicle like Showcase.

Issue #25 (August-September 1959) featured the debut of Task Force X: the Suicide Squad, followed by Justice League of America (#28), Cave Carson (#31), Hawkman (#34), and since only the JLA hit the first time out, there were return engagements for the Squad, Carson and Hawkman. Something truly different appeared in #45-49 with the science fictional Strange Sports Stories, before Brave and the Bold #50 provided a new concept that once again truly caught the reader’s imagination.

That issue paired two superheroes – Green Arrow and Martian Manhunter – in a one-off team-up, as did succeeding issues: Aquaman and Hawkman in #51, WWII Battle Stars Sgt Rock, Captain Cloud, Mme. Marie and the Haunted Tank in #52 and Atom and Flash in #53. The next team-up, Robin, Aqualad and Kid Flash, evolved rapidly into the Teen Titans. After Metal Men/the Atom and Flash/Martian Manhunter a new hero, Metamorpho, the Element Man debuted in #57-58. Then it was back to superhero pairings with #59, and although no one realised it at the time this particular conjunction, Batman with Green Lantern would be particularly significant.

After a return engagement for the Teen Titans in #60, the next two issues highlighted Earth-2 champions Starman and Black Canary, whilst Wonder Woman met Supergirl in #63. Then, in an indication of things to come, and in acknowledgement of the TV induced mania mere months away Batman duelled hero/villain Eclipso in #64. Within two issues, following Flash/Doom Patrol (#65) and Metamorpho/Metal Men (#66) Brave and the Bold #67 saw the Caped Crusader take de facto control of the title, and the lion’s share of the team-ups. With the exception of #72-73 (Spectre/the Flash and Aquaman/Atom) the comic was henceforth to be a place where Batman invited the rest of company’s heroic pantheon to come and play…

This first collection of Batman’s pairing with other luminaries of the DC universe (reprinting B&B #59, 64, 67-71 and 74-87) features the last vestiges of a continuity-reduced DC where individual story needs were seldom submerged into a cohesive overarching scenario, with writer Bob Haney crafting stories that were meant to be read in isolation, and drawn by a huge variety of artists with only one goal: entertainment.

The Brave and the Bold #59 (April-May 1965, illustrated by Ramona Fradon and Charles Paris) found Batman and Green Lantern reliving the plot of the Count of Monte Cristo as they resisted ‘The Tick-Tock Traps of the Time Commander!’ whilst a long-lost romantic interest brought the Caped Crusader into conflict with criminal combine Cyclops in ‘Batman versus Eclipso’ (#64, February-March 1966, illustrated by the great Win Mortimer).

‘The Death of the Flash’ in #67 (August-September 1966) was a terse high-speed thriller drawn with flair by Carmine Infantino and Charles Paris, and the next issue, with visuals from Mikes Sekowsky and Esposito, offered one of the oddest tales in DC’s long history as Metamorpho had to defeat a Gotham Guardian mutated into a vicious monster in ‘Alias the Bat-Hulk!’

Win Mortimer returned to illustrate Batman, Green Lantern and the Time Commander’s fractious reunion in #69’s ‘War of the Cosmic Avenger’ whilst Hawkman’s first Bat team-up ‘Cancelled: 2 Super-heroes!’ pitted the pair against a secret identity collector in a quirky tale with art by Johnny Craig and Chuck Cuidera, and Green Arrow, drawn by his Golden Age illustrator George Papp, helped Batman survive ‘The Wrath of the Thunderbird!’

After the aforementioned hiatus the Caped Crime-crusher took full possession of Brave and the Bold with #74’s fast-paced and funny ‘Rampant Run the Robots’ as the Metal Men tackled prejudice and evil inventors and in #75 The Spectre joined the Dark Knight to free Gotham City’s Chinatown from ‘The Grasp of Shahn-Zi!’ both tales drawn by the new semi-regular art team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito.

Drawn by Sekowsky and Jack Abel, Plastic Man helped solve the mystery of The Molder in #76’s ‘Doom, What is Thy Shape?’ Andru and Esposito illustrated the Atom’s exploits in ‘So Thunders the Cannoneer!’ and Bob Brown stepped in to draw ‘In the Coils of the Copperhead’ wherein Wonder Woman found herself vying with the newly-minted Batgirl for Batman’s affections. Of course it was all a cunning plan… wasn’t it?

Neal Adams was a young illustrator who had worked in advertising and ghosted some newspaper strips whilst trying to break into comics. With #75 he had become a cover artist for B&B, and with #79 (August-September 1968) he took over the interior art for a groundbreaking run that rewrote the rulebook for strip illustration. ‘The Track of the Hook’ paired the Dark Knight Detective with the justice-obsessed Deadman: murdered trapeze artist Boston Brand  who was hunting his own killer, and whose earthy, human tragedy elevated the series’ costume theatrics into deeper, more mature realms of drama and action. The stories aged ten years overnight and instantly became every discerning fan’s favourite read.

‘And Hellgrammite is his Name’ found Batman and the Creeper battling an insect-themed super-hitman, and the Flash aided the Caped Crusader defeat an unbeatable thug in ‘But Bork Can Hurt You!’ (both inked by Dick Giordano) whilst Aquaman became ‘The Sleepwalker from the Sea’ in an eerie tale of mind-control and sibling rivalry.

Issue # 83 took a radical turn as the Teen Titans tried to save Bruce Wayne’s latest foster-son from his own inner demons in ‘Punish Not my Evil Son!’ but the next team-up was one that got many fans in a real tizzy in 1969. ‘The Angel, the Rock and the Cowl’ recounted a World War II exploit where Batman and Sgt. Rock of Easy Company hunted Nazi gold together, only closing the case twenty-five years later. Ignoring the kvetching about relative ages and which Earth we’re on, you should focus on the fact that this is a startlingly gripping tale of great intensity, beautifully realised, and one which has been criminally discounted for decades as “non-canonical”.

Brave and the Bold #85 is arguably the best of an incredible run. ‘The Senator’s Been Shot!’ reunited Batman and Green Arrow in a superb multi-layered thriller of politics, corruption and cast-iron integrity, wherein Bruce Wayne became a stand-in for a law-maker and the Emerald Archer got a radical make-over that turned him into the fiery liberal gadfly champion of the relevancy generation.

Boston Brand returned in #86, as Batman found ‘You Can’t Hide from a ‘Deadman!’ in a captivating epic of death, redemption and resurrection that became a cornerstone of Bat-mythology for the next three decades, and this spellbinding black and white collection of classic confrontations concludes with a decidedly different adventure written and drawn by Mike Sekowsky and starring the venerable comics icon he had made fresh and exciting all over again.

Entitled ‘The Widow-Maker’, it tells of the son of one of Batman’s foes who attempts to add to his tally of motoring murders by luring the Caped Crusader into a rigged high performance car race until Diana Prince, once and future Wonder Woman, steps in…

By taking his cues from news headlines, popular films and proven genre-sources, Bob Haney produced gripping adventures that thrilled and enticed with no need for more than a cursory nod to an ever-more onerous continuity. Anybody could pick up one of his concoctions and be sucked into a world of wonder. Consequently those tales are just as fresh and welcoming today, their themes and premises as immediate now as then and the glorious variety of artists involved still proves a constant source of joy and wonder. Here is a Bat-book literally everybody can enjoy.

© 1965-1970, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Justice League of America volume 3: The Injustice League


By Dwayne McDuffie, Ed Benes, Mike McKone, Joe Benitez & various (DC Comics)

ISBN: 978-1-84576-887-4

The third volume of the latest Justice League of America incarnation (collecting the JLA Wedding Special and issues #13-16 of the monthly comic) starts with a light touch as the heroes prepare various events for the upcoming nuptials of team leader Black Canary and her long time beau (sorry, I simply couldn’t stop myself) Green Arrow, but tragedy and death are lurking as a team of villains ambushes and nearly kills new hero Firestorm…

Following the events of Infinite Crisis, One Year Later and 52, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman convened as a star-chamber to reform the JLA as a force for good, and now in an eerie echo of that event Lex Luthor, the Joker and the Cheetah similarly sift the ranks of bad-guys looking to build a perfect team to destroy the World’s Greatest Superheroes…

One by one the heroes are picked off and of course things look darkest before the dawn but in most of the ways that matter this is a good old fashioned yarn given a shiny gloss of modern angst and sophistication, wrapped in the sort of bombastic action that modern readers thrive on, so you know all will end well and with terrific style.

Writer Dwayne McDuffie and rotating art teams Mike McKone & Andy Lanning, Joe Benitez & Victor Llamas and Ed Benes & Sandra Hope have concocted the kind of fights ‘n’ tights tale that kids of all ages live for, and the book also includes two short pieces to balance the action and drama.

‘A Slight Tangent’ by McDuffie, Benitez & Llamas, is a teaser to a larger, and presumably forthcoming, crossover between the League and their namesakes from the Tangent Universe (for which see also Tangent Comics volumes 1 and 2) and the book closes with the delightful character piece ‘Soup Kitchen’ wherein Red Arrow sees another kind of Christmas cheer courtesy of a sad old villain and creative team Alan Burnett and Allan Jefferson.

It’s always easy to work on a book with loads of media push and high concept momentum, but the real test is to soldier on when the spotlight turns elsewhere. With the quality of solid tale-telling on view here JLA addicts and fans of great reading clearly don’t have too much to worry about.

© 2007, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Misadventures of Jane


By Norman Pett & J.H.G. (“Don”) Freeman (Titian Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-167-0

Jane is one of the most important and well-regarded comic strips in British, if not World, history. It debuted on December 5th 1932 as Jane’s Journal: or The Diary of a Bright Young Thing, a frothy, frivolous gag-a-day strip in the Daily Mirror, created by (then) freelance cartoonist Norman Pett.

Originally a comedic vehicle, it consisted of a series of panels with cursive script embedded within to simulate a diary page. It switched to the more formal strip frames and balloons in late 1938, when scripter Don Freeman came on board and Mirror Group supremo Harry Guy Bartholomew was looking to renovate the serial for a more adventure- and escape-hungry audience. It was also felt that a continuity feature such as Freeman’s other strip Pip, Squeak and Wilfred would keep readers coming back – as if Jane’s inevitable – if usually unplanned – bouts of near nudity wouldn’t…

Jane’s secret was skin. Even before war broke out there were torn skirts and lost blouses aplenty, but once the shooting started and Jane became an operative for British Intelligence her clothes came off with terrifying regularity and machine gun rapidity. She even went topless when the Blitz was at its worst.

Pett drew the strip with verve and style, imparting a uniquely English family feel: a joyous innocence and lack of tawdriness. He worked from models and life, famously using first his wife, his secretary Betty Burton, editorial assistant Doris Keay but most famously actress and model Chrystabel Leighton-Porter until May 1948 when Pett left for another newspaper and another clothing-challenged comic star.

His art assistant Michael Hubbard assumed full control of the feature (prior to that he had drawn backgrounds and male characters), and carried the series, increasingly a safe, flesh-free soap-opera and less a racy glamour strip, to its conclusion on October 10th 1959.

Now Titan Books have added the saucy secret weapon to their growing arsenal of classic British comics and strips, and paid her the respect she deserves with a snappy black and white hardcover collection, complete with colour inserts.

Following a fascinating and informative article taken from Canadian paper The Maple Leaf (which disseminated her adventures to returning ANZAC servicemen), Jane’s last two war stories (running from May 1944 to June 1945) are reprinted in their entirety, beginning with ‘N.A.A.F.I, Say Die!’ wherein the hapless but ever-so-effective intelligence agent is posted to a British Army base where somebody’s wagging tongue is letting pre “D-Day” secrets out and only Jane and her new sidekick and best friend Dinah Tate can stop the rot.

This is promptly followed by ‘Behind the Front’ wherein Jan and Dinah invade the continent tracking down spies, collaborators and boyfriends in Paris before joining a ENSA concert party, accidentally invading Germany just as the Russians arrive.

The comedy is based on musical hall fundamentals and the drama and action are right out of the patriotic and comedy cinema of the day (as you’d expect: but if you’ve ever seen Will Hay, Alistair Sim or Arthur Askey at their peak you’ll know that’s no bad thing) and this book also contains a lot of rare goodies to drool over.

Jane was so popular that there were three glamour/style books called Jane’s Journal for which Pett produced many full-colour pin-ups, paintings and general cheese-cake illustration. From these this book includes ‘The Perfect Model’ a strip “revealing” how the artist met his muse Chrystabel Leighton-Porter, ‘Caravanseraglio!’, an eight page strip starring Jane and erring, recurring boyfriend Georgie Porgie and 15 pages of the very best partially and un-draped Jane pin-ups.

Jane’s war record is frankly astounding. As a morale booster she was reckoned worth more than divisions of infantry and her exploits were cited in Parliament and discussed by Eisenhower and Churchill. Legend has it that TheMirror‘s Editor was among the few who knew the date of “D-Day” so as to co-ordinate her exploits with the Normandy landings. In 1944, on the day she went full frontal, the American Service newspaper Roundup (provided to US soldiers) went with the headline “JANE GIVES ALL” and the sub-heading “YOU CAN ALL GO HOME NOW”. Chrystabel Leighton-Porter toured as Jane in a services revue – she stripped for the boys – during the war and in 1949 starred in the film The Adventures of Jane.

Although the product of simpler, though certainly more hazardous, times, the charming, thrilling, innocently saucy adventures of Jane, patient but dedicated beau Georgie Porgie and especially her intrepid Dachshund Count Fritz Von Pumpernickel are landmarks of the art-form, not simply for their impact but also for the plain and simple reason that they are superbly drawn and huge fun to read.

After years of neglect, don’t let’s waste the opportunity to keep such a historical icon in our lives. You should buy this book, buy your friends this book, and most importantly, agitate to have her entire splendid run reprinted in more books like this one. Do your duty lads and lassies…

Jane © 2009 MGN Ltd/Mirrorpix. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman: The Man of Steel volume 3


By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-4012-0246-2

With John Byrne’s controversial reboot of the world’s first superhero a solid hit, the collaborative teams tasked with ensuring his continued success really hit their stride with the tales collected in this third volume. Re-presenting Superman #4-6, Action #587-589 and Adventures of Superman #427-429 the drama began with an all-out battle against the deranged gunman ‘Bloodsport!’ courtesy of Byrne and Karl Kesel, before Marv Wolfman and Jerry Ordway concocted a longer yarn taking the Man of Tomorrow on a punishing visit to the rogue state of Qurac and a hidden race of alien telepaths called the Circle, in a visceral and beautiful tale of un-realpolitik.

‘Mind Games’ and ‘Personal Best’ (Adventures of Superman #427-428) combined a much more relevant, realistic slant with lots of character sub-plots featuring the staff of the Daily Planet whilst Byrne in Action Comics concentrated on spectacle and reader appeal. ‘Cityscape!’ in #587, teamed the Metropolis Marvel with Jack Kirby’s Etrigan the Demon as sorceress Morgaine Le Fay attempted to gain immortality by warping time itself.

‘The Mummy Strikes’ and ‘The Last Five Hundred’ (Byrne and Kesel, Superman #5-6) introduced the first hint of a romance between the Man of Steel and Wonder Woman before Lois and Clark became embroiled in an extraterrestrial invasion drama that all started half a million years ago, and in ‘Old Ties’ (Superman #6) Wolfman and Ordway revealed the catastrophic results of the Circle transferring their attentions to Metropolis.

This book concludes with a cosmic saga from Action Comics #588-589 as Byrne and Dick Giordano teamed the Caped Kryptonian with Hawkman and Hawkwoman in ‘All Wars Must End’, an epic battle against Thanagarian invaders before the Green Lantern Corps rescued the star-lost Superman in ‘Green on Green’ just in time to join forces with him to destroy an unstoppable planet-eating beast.

The back-to-basics approach lured many readers to – and back to – the Superman franchise, but the sheer quality of the stories and art are certainly what convinced them to stay. Such cracking superhero tales are a high point in the Man of Tomorrow’s decades-long career, and these chronological-release collections are certainly the easiest way to enjoy this impressive reinvention of the ultimate comic-book icon.

© 1987, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Fantastic Four versus the X-Men


By Chris Claremont, John Bogdanove & Terry Austin (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-650-3

Here’s a good solid yarn from simpler times which serves as the perfect introduction to two fully developed franchises, but still won’t leave you reeling under an avalanche of new names and concepts. Originally released as a four issue miniseries in 1987, this intriguing mystery looks deep into the character of possibly the oldest character in the Marvel universe and turns its most trusted hero into a potential monster.

Everybody knows that Reed Richards is the smartest man on the planet, and how he took his three most trusted companions on a trip into space. Once there the ever-present cosmic rays mutated the quartet into the super-powered freaks now known as the Fantastic Four. How could such a colossal intellect forget something as basic as radiation shielding?

This tale takes place at a time when the mutant heroes and public fugitives called X-Men are being led by Magneto, and is the culmination to a story-arc where young Kitty Pryde is dying: her ability to pass through matter out of control and her body gradually drifting to unconnected atoms.

When Sue Richards finds an old journal belonging to her husband the trust and loyalty that bind the FF together is shattered. The book reveals that the younger Reed had in fact deduced the transformative power of cosmic rays and manufactured the entire incident to create a team of super-warriors. All the years of misery and danger have been a deliberate, calculated scheme by a ruthless mind that could only see life in terms of goals and outcomes.

When the X-Men bring their medical emergency to the FF, Reed, protesting his innocence to a family and team who no longer trust him and with his confidence shattered, falters. He knows that he didn’t plan to mutate his team, but he did make a mistake that altered their lives forever. What if he makes another blunder with Pryde’s cure?

And then Doctor Doom steps in…

This is a superb adventure stuffed with guest-stars that moves beyond gaudy costumes and powers to display the core humanity of Reed Richards and the true depths of evil his greatest enemy can sink to. As an example of sensitive character writing it has few equals and the stylish illustration of Jon Bogdanove is captivating to behold. Long overdue for reprinting this is a tale for all drama lovers, not just the fights ‘n’ tights crowd.
© 1987, 1990 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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JLA: Zatanna’s Search


By Gardner Fox & various (DC Comics/Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-4012-0188-1

With Julius Schwartz and John Broome writer extraordinaire Gardner Fox built the Silver Age of comics and laid the foundations of the modern DC universe. He was also a canny innovator and one of the earliest proponents of extended storylines which have since become so familiar to us as “braided crossovers.”

A qualified lawyer, Fox began his comics career in the Golden Age on major and minor features, working in every genre and for most companies. One of the B-list strips he scripted was Zatara; a magician-hero in the Mandrake mould who had fought evil and astounded audiences in the pages of Action and World’s Finest Comics for over a decade, beginning with the very first issues (to be completely accurate the latter’s premiere performance was entitled World’s Best Comics #1, but whatever the book’s name, the top-hatted and tailed trickster was there…)

Zatara fell from favour at the end of the 1940s and faded from memory like so many outlandish crime-crushers. In 1956 Editor Schwartz reinvented the superhero genre and reintroduced costumed characters based on the company’s past pantheon. Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman and the Atom were refitted for the sleek, scientific atomic age, and later their legendary predecessors were reincarnated and returned as denizens of an alternate Earth.

As the experiment became a trend and then inexorable policy, surviving heroes such as Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Aquaman and Wonder Woman were retrofitted to match the new world order. The Superhero was back and the public appetite seemed inexhaustible.

For their next trick Fox and Schwartz turned to the magician and presumably found him wanting. Rather than condemn him to Earth-2 they created the first “legacy hero” by having Zatara vanish from sight and introduced his daughter, set on a far-reaching quest to find him. Zatanna debuted in Hawkman #4 (October-November 1964) illustrated by the great Murphy Anderson in a tale entitled ‘The Girl who Split in Two’.

Following a mystical trail and wearing a variation of Zatara’s garb the plucky but impatient lass had divided her body and travelled simultaneously to Ireland and China, but lapsed into paralysis until Hawkman and Hawkgirl answered her distress call.

Although nobody knew it at the time she appeared next as a villain in Detective Comics #336 (February 1965). ‘Batman’s Bewitched Nightmare’ found a broom-riding old crone attacking the Dynamic Duo at the command of mutant super-threat The Outsider in a stirring yarn drawn by Bob Kane and Joe Giella.

Current opinion is that this wasn’t originally intended as part of the epic, but when the quest was resolved in Justice League of America #51 at the height of TV inspired “Batmania” a very slick piece of back writing was necessary to bring the high-profile Caped Crusader into the storyline.

Gil Kane and Sid Greene illustrated the next two chapters in the saga; firstly in ‘World of the Magic Atom’ (Atom #19, June-July 1965), wherein the Mystic Maid and Tiny Titan battled Zatara’s old nemesis the Druid in the microversal world of Catamoore, and then with Green Lantern in an extra-dimensional realm on ‘The Other Side of the World!’ (Green Lantern #42, January 1966), as the malevolent Warlock of Ys was eventually compelled to reveal further clues in the trail.

The Elongated Man was a long-running back-up feature in Detective Comics, and from #355 (September 1966, pencilled and inked by Carmine Infantino) ‘The Tantalizing Trouble of the Tripod Thieves!’ revealed how the search for a stolen eldritch artefact brought the young sorceress closer to her goal, and the search concluded in spectacular fashion with the aforementioned JLA tale ‘Z – As in Zatanna – and Zero Hour!’ (#51, February 1967).

With art from the unmatchable team of Mike Sekowsky and Sid Greene, all the heroes who aided her are transported to another plane to fight in a classic battle of good versus evil, with plenty of cunning surprises for all and a happy ending at the end. Collected here is a triumphant long-running experiment in continuity that is one of the very best adventures of the Silver Age, featuring some of the period’s greatest creators at the peak of their powers.

This slim volume also has an encore in store: after the cover gallery is a never before reprinted 10 page tale ‘The Secret Spell!’ by Gerry Conway, Romeo Tanghal and Vince Colletta, originally seen in DC Blue Ribbon Digest #5 (November-December 1980) which revealed ‘Secret Origins of Super-Heroes’ and explores the hidden history of both father and daughter in a snappy, informative and inclusive manner.

Although a little hard to find now this is a superlative book for fans of costumed heroes and would also make a wonderful tome to introduce newcomers to the genre.

© 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1980, 2004 DC Comics.  All Rights Reserved.

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Voyages – Adventures in Fantasy


By Alex Toth, Rick Geary, Charles Vess, Trina Robbins & others (Nautilus Dreams)
ISBN: 0-913161-00-4

For comics purists and especially fans of comic art few books can match the impact and content of this delightful one-off from the early 1980s. I know nothing about its genesis or editor Howard Feltman, but at the dawn of creator owned-publishing, he managed to compile a truly staggering pool of talent for a (regrettably) single engagement that still resonates with power and charm today.

Behind the Frank Brunner cover and Terry Austin frontispiece, these crisp black and white pages contain firstly two incredible tales of Alex Toth’s Bravo For Adventure; an origin and a truly magnificent, surreal design masterpiece, wherein a blow to the head sends the dashing aviator to the furthest reaches of reality.

Toth was the undisputed god of minimalist line and his breathtaking mastery of dark and light is given full rein in these incomparable yarns. Hard on his heels is ‘Murder in the Garage’, an impressive early crime confession from Rick Geary, whose Treasury of Victorian Murder and Treasury of XXth Century Murder graphic procedurals are a constant source of delight to readers of true crime tales and cartoon aficionados everywhere.

Stardust star Charles Vess follows with the first of two brief vignettes, ‘Sugar in the Morning’ and Howard Chaykin provided an eerie psycho-thriller entitled ‘No Rest for the Weary…’ painted in glorious, psychedelic colour in a special glossy insert, after which Toren Smith and Lela Dowling contributed a whimsical and decidedly different ‘Cheshire Cat’ tale.

Barb Hawkins Karl interviewed P. Craig Russell with a liberal sprinkling of beautiful pencil studies and a stirring fantasy illustration in pen and ink, Trina Robbins brilliantly pastiched the Maltese Falcon in ‘Queenie Hart and the Andromedan Grzblch’ and John Jay Muth traded his signature watercolours for tone and pencil in the pensive picture poem ‘The Ghost’.

This enchanting collection concludes with Vess’ quirky ‘Blimp Tales’ and a Dowling unicorn endpiece. The tremendous outpouring of superlative art and stories that came from the rise of independent publishers in the 1980s seldom reached the qualitative peak of Voyages and this book is still readily available at incredibly modest prices. No true art lover or collector can afford to be without it.

All art and stories © 1983 the respective creators/copyright holders. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase presents Green Lantern volume 3


By John Broome, Gardner Fox, Gil Kane, Sid Greene & Carmine Infantino (DC Comics)

ISBN13: 978-1-84576-853-9

Firmly established as a major star of the company firmament, Green Lantern increasingly became a series which provided conceptual highpoints and “big picture” foundations that successive creators would use to build the tight-knit history and continuity of the DC universe. At this time there was also a turning away from the simple imaginative wonder of a ring that could do anything in favour of a hero who preferred to use his fists first and ignore easy solutions.

What a happy coincidence that at this time artist Gil Kane was just reaching his artistic peak, his dynamic full-body anatomical triumphs bursting with energy and crashing out of every page…

Green Lantern #39 (September 1965) featured two tales by John Broome, Kane and master inker Sid Green; a return engagement for Black Hand, the Cliché Criminal entitled ‘Practice Makes the Perfect Crime!’ and a bombastic slugfest with an alien prize fighter named Bru Tusfors, ‘The Fight for the Championship of the Universe!’ They were mere warm-ups for the next issue.

‘The Secret Origin of the Guardians!’ was a landmark second only to ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ (see Showcase Presents the Flash volume 2 or Crisis on Multiple Earths: the Team-ups volume 1) as Broome teamed the Emerald Gladiator with his Earth-2 counterpart Alan Scott to stop Krona, an obsessed Oan scientist whose misguided attempts to discover the origins of the universe had introduced evil into our reality billions of years ago and forced his immortal brethren to become protectors of life and civilisation in an unending act of group contrition.

Simultaneously high concept and action packed, this tale became the accepted keystone of DC cosmology and the springboard for all those mega-apocalyptic publishing events such as Crisis on Infinite Earths. It has seldom been equalled and never bettered…

Issue #41 featured twisted romance in ‘The Double Life of Star Sapphire!’ as an alien power-gem once more compelled Carol Ferris to subjugate and marry her sometime paramour Green Lantern, and Gardner Fox wrote another cracking magical mystery as the extraterrestrial wizard Myrwhydden posed ‘The Challenge of the Coin Creatures!’

In ‘The Other Side of the World!’ Fox continued a long-running experiment in continuity with a superb tale of time-lost civilisations and an extra-dimensional invasion by the Warlock of Ys that co-starred the peripatetic Zatanna the Magician.

The top-hatted, fish-netted, comely young sorceress had appeared in a number of Julie Schwartz-edited titles hunting her long-missing father Zatarra: a magician-hero in the Mandrake mould who had fought evil in the pages of Action Comics for over a decade beginning with the very first issue. In true Silver Age “refit” style Fox created his young and equally gifted daughter, and popularised her by guest-teaming her with a selection of superheroes he was currently scripting (if you’re counting, these tales appeared in Hawkman #4, Atom #19, Green Lantern #42, and the Elongated Man back-up strip in Detective Comics #355 as well as a very slick piece of back writing to include the high-profile Caped Crusader via Detective #336 – ‘Batman’s Bewitched Nightmare’, before concluding after the GL segment in Justice League of America #51).

The Flash guest-starred in a high-powered tussle with a new nemesis in the ‘Catastrophic Crimes of Major Disaster!’ in #43 and the next issue provide two tales – a rarity as book-length epics increasing became the action-packed norm. Oddly, second-class postage discounts had for years dictated the format of comic-books: to qualify for cheaper rates periodicals had to contain more than one feature, but when the rules were revised single, complete tales not divided into “chapters” soon proliferated. Here though are two reasons to bemoan the switch; Fox’s ‘Evil Star’s Death-Duel Summons’ and Broome’s Jordan Brothers adventure ‘Saga of the Millionaire Schemer!’, offering high-intensity super-villain action and heady, witty mystery.

The Earth-2 Green Lantern returned for another team-up in #45’s fantasy romp ‘Prince Peril’s Power Play’ by Broome, who raised the dramatic stakes with the hero’s first continued adventure in the following issue. Before that, though Green Lantern #56 opened with a delightfully grounded crime-thriller ‘The Jailing of Hal Jordan’ from Fox, before ‘The End of a Gladiator!’ detailed the murder of GL by old foe Dr. Polaris and concluded with his funeral on Oa, home of the Guardians!

Broome was on fire at this time: the following issue found the hero’s corpse snatched to the 58th century and revived in time to save his occasional future home from a biological infection of pure evil in the spectacular conclusion ‘Green Lantern Lives Again!’

Bizarrely garbed goodies and baddies were common currency at this time of “Batmania” so when gold-plated mad scientist Keith Kenyon returned it was as a dyed-in-the-wool costumed crazy in Fox’s ‘Goldface’s Grudge Fight Against Green Lantern!’, although Broome’s showbiz scoundrel Dazzler didn’t quite set the world afire in #49’s ‘The Spectacular Robberies of TV’s Master Villain!’ The story was still a shocker however as Hal Jordan quit his job as a Coast City test Pilot and went on the first of his vagabond quests across America…

With Green Lantern #50 Gil Kane began inking his own art, lending the proceedings a raw, savage appeal. The fight content in the stories was also ramped up, as seen in Broome’s murder-mystery treasure hunt ‘The Quest for the Wicked Queen of Hearts!’ which was complimented by an extragalactic smack-fest in Fox’s ‘Thraxton the Powerful vs Green Lantern the Powerless’ before Broome took the Emerald Crusader back to the 58th century to battle ‘Green Lantern’s Evil Alter Ego!’ in #52.

Alan Scott and comedy sidekick Doiby Dickles popped over from Earth-2 to aid against the return of arch nemesis Sinestro in the frankly peculiar ‘Our Mastermind, the Car!’ by Broome and Kane, but found a much less outré plot or memorable foe in #53’s ‘Captive of the Evil Eye!’ whilst artists Carmine Infantino and Sid Greene stepped in to illustrate Broome’s thrillingly comedic Jordan Brothers back-up ‘Two Green Lanterns in the Family!’ as Hal took a job as a county-spanning investigator for the Evergreen Insurance company.

Broome and Kane were reunited for the positively surreal, super-scientific ‘Menace in the Iron Lung!’ (#54), and all-out attack on the Guardians in ‘Cosmic Enemy Number One’, which concluded in ‘The Green Lanterns’ Fight for Survival!’ and the appointment of a second Earthling to the Corps.

Fox scripted a sparkling Fights ‘n’ Tights duel in ‘The Catastrophic Weapons of Major Disaster!’ (#57) and a gripping psycho-thriller in #58’s ‘Peril of the Powerless Green Lantern’ wherein the hero seemingly suffered from debilitating combat fatigue. Sid Greene returned with this latter and stayed to ink the last tale in this volume, another continuity landmark.

In issue #59 (March 1968) Broome introduced Guy Gardner ‘Earth’s Other Green Lantern!’ in a rip-roaring cosmic epic of what-might-have-been. When dying GL Abin Sur had ordered his ring to select a worthy successor Hal Jordan hadn’t been the only candidate, but the closest of two. What if the ring had chosen his alternative instead…?

With a superb double page pin-up from GL #46 to end on this book gathers the imaginative and creative peak of Broome, Fox and Kane, a plot driven plethora of adventure sagas and masterful thrillers that literally reshaped the DC Universe. Action lovers and fans of fantasy fiction couldn’t find a better example of everything that defines superhero comics.
© 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman: Annuals volume 1 – DC Comics Classics Library


By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-215-8

¡Perfect Christmas Present Alert! – all ages

Thanks to the recent re-inclusion of the pre-“Batmania” tales into the Caped Crusader’s extensive canon, there’s a lot of 1940s and 1950s Batman material resurfacing these days in a lot of impressive formats. DC’s Classics Comics Library hardbacks are a remarkably accessible, collectible range of products and the best of them so far is this wonderful aggregation of three of the most influential and beloved comic-books of the Silver Age.

Batman Annual #1 was originally released in June 1961, a year after the startlingly successful Superman Annual #1. This big, bold anthology format was hugely popular with readers.  The Man of Steel’s second Annual was rushed out before Christmas 1960 and the third came out a mere year after the first! That same month (June 1961) the first ever Secret Origins collection and the aforementioned Batman Blockbuster all arrived in shops and on newsstands.

It’s probably hard to appreciate now but these huge books – 80 pages instead of 32 – were a magical resource with a colossal impact for kids who loved comics. I don’t mean the ubiquitous scruffs, oiks and scallywags of school days who read them and chucked them away (most kids were comics consumers in the days before computer games) but rather those quiet, secretive few of us who treasured and kept them, constantly re-reading, discussing, pondering. Only posh kids with wicked parents read no comics at all: those prissy, starchy types who were beaten up by the scruffs, oiks and scallywags even more than us bookworms. But I digress…

For budding collectors the Annuals were a gateway to a fabulous lost past. Just Imagine!: adventures your heroes had from before you were even born…

Those compilations of the early 1960s changed comic publishing. Soon Marvel, Charlton and Archie were also releasing giant books of old stories, then new ones, crossovers, continued stories… Annuals proved two things to publishers: that there was a dedicated, long-term appetite for more material – and that punters were willing to pay a little bit more for it…

This vast compendium gathers the first three Batman Annuals in their mythic entirety: 21 terrific complete stories, posters, features, pin-ups, calendars and those iconic compartmentalized covers. There’re also creator biographies and articles from Michael Uslan and Richard Bruning to put the entire experience into perspective and original publication information and credits (the only bad thing about those big books of magic was never knowing “Who” and “Where”…)

The editors wisely packaged the Annuals as themed collections, the first being ‘1001 Secrets of Batman and Robin’ and started the ball rolling with ‘How to be the Batman’ by Bill Finger, Lew Sayre Schwartz and Stan Kaye, wherein an amnesiac Caped Crusader has to be re-trained by Robin, but as always there’s a twist in this tale, whilst ‘The Strange Costumes of Batman’ (Edmond Hamilton, Dick Sprang and Charles Paris) highlighted the specialized uniforms the heroes used in their outrageous careers.

The self-explanatory ‘Untold Tales of the Bat-Signal’ (writer unknown, Schwartz and Paris) again used past exploits to solve a contemporary case, whilst ‘The Origin of the Bat-Cave’ (Finger, Sheldon Moldoff and Paris) was only revealed by a quick time-trip back to revolutionary war era Gotham and ‘Batman’s Electronic Crime-File’ (anonymous, Sprang and Paris) is a cracking thriller that highlighted the Dynamic Duo’s love of cutting-edge technology.

‘The Thrilling Escapes of Batman and Robin’ (Finger, Moldoff and Kaye) concentrated on their facility at escaping traps and the excitement peaked in a dazzling display of ‘The Amazing Inventions of Batman’ (Hamilton, Sprang and Paris).

‘Batman and Robin’s Most Thrilling Action Roles’ began with a tension-packed mystery: ‘The Underseas Batman’ (Hamilton, Sprang and Paris), then explored the Wayne’s Scottish connections in ‘The Lord of Batmanor’ (Hamilton, with the assistance of his wife Leigh Brackett, Sprang and Paris) and again tapped into the Westerns zeitgeist with ‘Batman – Indian Chief’ (France Herron, Moldoff and Kaye).

‘The Jungle Batman’ (David Vern Reed, Schwartz and Paris) is pure escapist joy and we get a then-rare glimpse of Bruce Wayne’s training in ‘When Batman Was Robin’ (Hamilton, Sprang and Paris) before returning to foiling deathtraps with ‘Batman the Magician’ (Finger, Moldoff and Paris) and this section concludes with a pivotal tale ‘Batman – The Superman of Planet X’ (Herron, Sprang and Paris): one that forms a key thematic plank of Grant Morrison’s epic Batman R.I.P. storyline.

The third Annual (these too came far more frequently than once a year) featured ‘Batman and Robin’s Most Fantastic Foes’ beginning with ‘The Mad Hatter of Gotham City’ (Finger, Moldoff and Paris), special-effects bandit ‘The Human Firefly’ (Herron, Sprang and Paris) and hyper cerebral mutant ‘The Mental Giant of Gotham City’ (Hamilton, Sprang and Paris) before the Clown Prince of Crime stole the show with a team of skullduggery specialists in ‘The Joker’s Aces’ (Reed, Schwartz and Kaye).

Eerie and hard-hitting ‘The Gorilla Boss of Gotham City‘ (Reed, Schwartz and Kaye) was one of DC’s earliest Ape epics, and although the gripping ‘The New Crimes of Two-Face’ (Finger, Schwartz and Paris) starred a stand-in for the double-dealing psychopath the ‘The Mysterious Mirror Man’ (Finger, Moldoff and Paris) was the genuine article and well worth a modern do-over.

For me Christmas is inextricably linked to Batman. From my earliest formative years every Yule was capped by that year’s British hardcover annual, often reprints of the US comics (somewhat imaginatively coloured) but occasionally all-new prose stories liberally illustrated and based slavishly on the Adam West/Burt Ward TV series.

As I grew older and became a more serious reader and collector (the technical term is, I believe, addict) I became an avid appreciator of the regular seasonal tales that appeared in Batman or Detective Comics and the “golden Age Classics” that too infrequently graced them.  Over the decades some of Batman’s very best adventures have occurred in the “Season of Good will” and why DC has never produced a Batman Christmas Album is a mystery even the World’s Greatest Detective could not solve…

This book might not actually contain any X-Mas Exploits but it is the kind of present I would have killed or died for all those hundreds of years ago, so how can you possibly deny your kids the delights of this incredibly enjoyable book? And just like Train Sets, Scalextric and Quad Bikes when I say kids of course I mean “Dads”…

© 1961, 1962, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Deadpool: We Don’t Need Another Hero


By Joe Kelly, Ed McGuiness & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-427-0

Bloodthirsty and stylish killers and mercenaries have long made for popular protagonists. Deadpool is Wade Wilson (and yes he is a thinly disguised knockoff of DC’s Slade Wilson AKA Terminator: get over it – DC did), a hired killer and survivor of genetics experiments that has left him a scarred, grotesque bundle of scabs and physical unpleasantries but practically invulnerable and capable of regenerating from any wound.

The wisecracking high-tech “merc with a mouth” was created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza and first appeared in New Mutants #97, another product of the Canadian “Weapon X” project that created Wolverine and so many other second-string mutant and cyborg super-doers. He got his first shot at solo stardom with a couple of miniseries in 1993 (see Deadpool: the Circle Chase & Sins of the Past) but it wasn’t until 1997 that he finally won his own title.

This collection gathers the first ten outrageous fun and fury filled issues (#1-9 plus issue minus 1) as well as the combination Daredevil & Deadpool Annual 1997) and features a frenetic blend of light-hearted, surreal, fighting frolics and incisive, poignant relationship drama that is absolutely compulsive reading for dyed-in-the-wool superhero fans who might be feeling just a little jaded with four-colour overload.

It all kicks off with a extra-sized spectacular ‘Hey, It’s Deadpool!’ by Kelly, McGuiness, Nathan Massengill and Norman Lee which reintroduces the mouthy maniac, his “office” and “co-workers” at the Hellhouse where he picks up his contracts and also affords us a glimpse at his private life in San Francisco where he has a house and keeps a old, blind lady as a permanent hostage. This is not your average hero comic…

The insane action part of the tale comes from the South Pole where the Canadian government has a super-secret gamma weapon project going, guarded by the Alpha Flight strongman Sasquatch. Somebody is paying good money to have it destroyed…

‘Operation: Rescue Weasel or That Wacky Doctor’s Game!’ finds the slightly gamma-irradiated hitman still mooning over lost love Siryn (barely legal mutant hottie from X-Force) when his only friend and tech support guy Weasel goes missing, snatched by ninjas working for super-villain Taskmaster – and just when Deadpool’s healing ability is on the fritz, whilst #3’s ‘Stumped! Or This Little Piggie Went… Hey! Where’s the Piggy?!’ ramps up the screwball comedy quotient as Siryn convinces the merciless merc to turn his life around, which he’ll try just as soon as he tortures and slowly kills the doctor who experimented on him all those years ago…

The turnabout storyline continues in ‘Why is it, to Save Me, I Must Kill You?’ featuring a hysterically harrowing segment where Wilson has to get a blood sample from the Incredible Hulk, and concludes in #5’s ‘The Doctor is Skinned!’ wherein T-Ray, his biggest rival at Hellhouse, moves to become the company “top gun”…

Flashback was a company-wide publishing event wherein Marvel Stars revealed an unknown tale from their past, with each issue that month being numbered # -1. Deadpool’s contribution was a darker than usual tale from Kelly, Aaron Lopresti and Rachel Dodson, focusing on para-dimensional expediter Zoe Culloden, a behind the scenes manipulator who has been tweaking Wilson’s life for years. ‘Paradigm Lost’ looks at some formative moments from the hitman’s past and possibly reveals the moment when – if ever – the manic murderer started to become a better man…

Another extended story arc begins with Deadpool #6 and ‘Man, Check Out the Head on that Chick!’ as the gun (sword, grenade, knife, garrote, spoon…) for hire accepts a contract to spring a woman from a mental asylum. Of course it’s never cut-and-dried in Wade’s World, and said patient is guarded by the distressingly peculiar villainess the Vamp (who old-timers will recall changes into a giant, hairy naked telepathic cave-Man when provoked… cue poor taste jokes…).

It just gets worse in ‘Typhoid… It Ain’t Just Fer Cattle Any More or Head Trips’ as the captive chick turns out to be the murderous multiple personality psycho-killer Typhoid Mary (extra inking support from Chris Lichtner) whose seductive mind-tricks ensnare Deadpool and drag him into conflict with the Man Without Fear in the concluding Daredevil & Deadpool Annual 1997.

Did I say “concluding”? Typhoid isn’t that easy to get rid of and Deadpool #8 (by Kelly, Pete Woods, McGuiness, Shannon Denton, John Fang, Massengill and Lee) found her still making things difficult for Wilson in ‘We Don’t Need another Hero…’ as the merc is forced to confront true madness… or is it true Evil?

There’s a return to lighter, but certainly no traumatic fare in the last tale ‘Ssshhhhhhhhhh! or Heroes Reburned’ (with ancillary pencils by Shannon Denton) as Deadpool reassumes his pre-eminent position at Hellhouse just in time to be suckered into a psychological ambush by utterly koo-koo villain Deathtrap – clearly a huge fan of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones cartoons…

Although staying close to the X-franchise that spawned him, Deadpool is a welcome break from the constant sturm und drang of his Marvel contemporaries: weird, wise-cracking, and profoundly absurd on a satisfyingly satirical level. This is a great reintroduction to comics for fans who thought they had outgrown the fights ‘n’ tights crowd.

© 1997, 2009 Marvel Entertainment, Inc and its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. A British Edition Released by Panini UK Ltd.