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Star Wars: Tag & Bink Were Here


By Kevin Rubio, Lucas Marangon & Howard M. Shum (Marvel/Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-370-X (DH PB)             eBook ASIN: B00PR4B4I6

Just last week I re-reviewed my favourite Star Wars graphic novel as a lazy way to commemorate (cash in on) the 40th anniversary of the stellar franchise. Star Wars: Tag & Bink Were Here was the missed-it-by-a-whisker other candidate in the final countdown and, as I had so much fun re-reading it and it’s now available in a digital edition as part of Marvel’s Star Wars Legends line, I feel perfectly justified in running it here while I bear down on a looming deadline affecting my day job…

One of the greatest strengths of an all-encompassing franchise such as Star Wars is the ability to accept and of course profit from some occasional fun at its expense. This winning little tome plays with the movies’ magic and still makes me laugh after multiple re-readings, but do be warned; you will definitely need more than passing familiarity with Star Wars IV-VI: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi – not to mention certain lesser, newer films – to fully appreciate all the in-jokes and general jocularity.

In the original Dark Horse 2-issue miniseries Tag and Bink Are Dead, the eponymous zeroes are introduced as two shiftless slacker crewmen (think Dude, Where’s My Car? or Clerks in space) on Princess Leia‘s cruiser at the beginning of A New Hope. When Darth Vader attacks the obnoxious oafs take the places of two Storm Troopers and get sucked helter-skelter into the events of the grand storyline in a classic comedy of errors…

Skilful researcher (for which read “watched the movies over and over”) Rubio manages to insert the hapless duo into key scenes from the films to such effect that it’s safe to assume that whenever you see two faceless guards, troopers or characters keeping still or marching in the background it’s Tag and Bink, and their hapless participation is what actually saved the galaxy, too!

The initial miniseries was followed by The Return of Tag and Bink Special Edition, which embroiled them much more fully in the events of Return of the Jedi, as their hidden interference is instrumental in defeating Jabba the Hutt and costing Luke Skywalker his hand when they undertake a mission for the Rebel Alliance. They’re also there when the Emperor get his final comeuppance…

Star Wars: Tag and Bink Episode One then plunges back into the mists of history to reveal the unlikely origin of the characters in an outrageously hilarious romp set during the last days of Old Republic, where the intergalactic imbeciles were reckoned the absolute worst Younglings at the Jedi School. One notable highpoint is when young Tag gives sullen Anakin Skywalker tips on how to score with hot chick Padmé Amidala…

Irreverent, rocket-paced and genuinely funny – far beyond the films’ broad-based and often perfunctory slapstick – Tag and Bink Were Here is a book to read over and again, especially with the captivating artwork of Lucas Marangon and Howard M. Shum, reminiscent of the great Ernie Colon, which tackles explosive action and subtle expression with equal aplomb.

Only the saddest fanatic could fail to be amused by this terrific tome. Sing along now “♫We’re Off on the Road to Dantooine… ♫”
Star Wars and related text and illustrations are trademarks and/or copyrights in the United States and other countries of Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or its affiliates. © & ™ Lucasfilm Ltd.

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Wonder Woman: Amazonia – A Tale of the Wonder Woman


By William Messner-Loebs & Phil Winslade, with Patricia Mulvihill & John Workman (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-301-8

In its original print release, this slim oversized all-original tale was originally released under DC’s Elseworlds imprint wherein characters were liberated from their regular continuity’s shackles for adventures that test the limits of credibility and imagination.

…And now that it’s available in digital format, hopefully a lot more people will get to enjoy it…

Amazonia posits a world where a tragic fire (suspiciously) destroys the entire British Royal Family in the 1890s and a very distant cousin becomes ruler of Victoria’s Empire. Under this aggressively male sovereign the Empire goes from strength to strength and the rights of women are squeezed, wither and die.

Once more and forever they are playthings and possessions, to the point of having to wear chains in public…

Enter the thoroughly unpleasant Steven Trevor, late of His Majesty’s Air-Marines, and now trying to make a living as a music-hall impresario. His actress-wife is a foreign beauty, dark, tall, statuesque, able to jump huge distances and strong enough to wrestle lions. When she saves the royal heir from an assassin, it begins an inexorable and bloody series of events that will liberate half the Empire and end decades of cruelty, abuse and atrocity.

Effectively evoking the favourite paraphernalia and themes of Steampunk – airships, flashy militaria, Jack the Ripper – this is a powerful and challenging fable of sexual equality, blending the Wonder Woman mythology with modern imperialist fantasy and with cracking and memorable effect. William Messner-Loebs writes with convincing authenticity and Phil Winslade’s Victoriana-styled, etchings-inspired artwork – beautifully reminiscent of both Penny-Dreadful engravings and the lovely sweeping line of Charles Dana Gibson – is utterly captivating.

Often the Elseworlds variations came off as ill-conceived or poorly executed, but when it all comes together as it does in Wonder Woman: Amazonia the result is pure gold…
© 1997, 2014 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Los Tejanos


By Jack Jackson (Fantagraphics Books)
No ISBN

I’m reading lot of graphic novels digitally these days, and what strikes me most is just how much superb classic material – especially genre works with war and western themes – still isn’t available. You try tracking down a The Haunted Tank or Joe Kubert Sgt. Rock and see what joy you get…

Known as ‘Jaxon’ in his underground commix days, Jack Jackson’s infectious fascination with the history of Texas was seeping through into all his work even from those early days. Portions of Los Tejanos first appeared as comicbooks Recuerden el Alamo and Tejano Exile, originally published by Last Gasp in the mid-1970s, which the author dutifully and effectively fleshed out for this extremely early prototype of the modern graphic novel.

Drawn in a captivating, cross-hatched style evoking plate-etching that simply screams “true story”, Los Tejanos delivers a breathtaking wealth of information, social texture and sheer entertainment. It will even teach you a little history you might not have known.

Los Tejanos tells the story of Juan Nepomuceno Seguin, a “Texian” of Mexican birth who sided with rebels fighting for independence. Before becoming part of the United States of America, Texas was briefly a nation unto itself, having won its freedom from a Mexican empire that was bloated, corrupt and in decline.

How Seguin turned his back on one culture, only to be eventually betrayed by another during a period when Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon cultures constantly battled for hegemony in continental America, seems to echo even now with relevance. If you listen to politicians, that battle still isn’t over…

The eventual fate of Juan N. Seguin makes for powerful reading, rich in fact, well-paced as narrative, and even delivering the occasional solid horse-laugh. But the true measure of a history book – and this most wonderful tome is certainly that – is how the material impacts on the contemporary. Here it also succeeds. The issues were germane in 1840, they were just as much so in 1982, and they still are now.

Why this epic isn’t required reading for every US history or sociology course I’ll never understand. Why it isn’t universally available is even more baffling…
© 1982 Jack Jackson. All rights reserved.

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Amazing Spider-Man Masterworks volume 10


By Stan Lee, John Romita, Gil Kane, Jim Mooney & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2932-5 (HB)

Amazing Spider-Man was always a comicbook that matured with – or perhaps just slightly ahead – of its fan-base. As the Swinging Sixties segued into the Sordid Seventies, that feeling seemed to intensify with every issue…

This breathtaking tenth titanic full-colour tome of chronologically compiling the early adventures of the Arachnoid Amazement sees the World’s Most Misunderstood Hero achieve truly national prominence as the real world intersected with the niche realm of comics…

After a shaky start The Amazing Spider-Man quickly became a popular sensation with kids of all ages. Before too long the quirky, charming, thrillingly action-packed comics soap-opera would become the model for an entire generation of younger heroes impatiently elbowing aside the staid, (relatively) old thirty-something mystery-men of previous publications and hallowed tradition.

Smart-but-alienated Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider during a school trip. Discovering strange superhuman abilities which he augmented with his own natural chemistry, physics and engineering genius, the kid did what any lonely, geeky nerd would do with such newfound prowess: he tried to cash in for girls, fame and money.

Making a costume to hide his identity in case he made a fool of himself, Parker became a minor media celebrity – and a criminally self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief fled past him one night he didn’t lift a finger to stop him, only to find when he returned home that his guardian uncle Ben Parker had been murdered.

Crazed and vengeful, Peter hunted the assailant who’d made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known, discovering, to his horror, that it was the self-same felon he had neglected to stop. His irresponsibility had resulted in the death of the man who raised him, and the traumatised boy swore to forevermore use his powers to help others…

Since that night, the Wondrous Wallcrawler tirelessly battled miscreants, monsters and madmen, with a fickle, ungrateful public usually baying for his blood even as he perpetually saves them…

Re-presenting Amazing Spider-Man #88-99 – originally released between September 1970 and August 1971 – the spider-sagas revel in the fact that Peter and his ever-expanding cast of comrades were practically household names and the darlings of college campuses and the media intelligentsia throughout America and the world. Stan Lee’s scripts tapped into the always-evolving zeitgeists of the times and the deft use of soap opera plots kept older readers glued to the series even if the bombastic battle sequences didn’t. And here a sharp reminder came – that in those days at least – funnybooks were not immune to tragedy…

The wonderment starts to unfold in ‘The Arms of Doctor Octopus!’ (Lee, John Romita & Jim Mooney) with the many-tentacled terror escaping jail and capturing a jetliner full of Chinese diplomats. It all ends with explosive suddenness and apparent suicide after the wallcrawler intervenes but is promptly followed by ‘Doc Ock Lives!’ which heralded a new era of visual dynamism as Gil began a sporadic but memorable run as penciller whilst Romita reverted to inker. The octopus rampages through town causing carnage until Spider-Man again confronts him. The battle took a lethal turn in ‘And Death Shall Come!’ wherein Peter Parker’s attempts to stop him led to the death of a beloved cast member…

With that tragic demise of a cast regular, the webslinger became a wanted fugitive and already fanatical publisher J. Jonah Jameson began backing “Law and Order” election hopeful Sam Bullitt in a campaign ‘To Smash the Spider!’, utterly unaware of the politician’s disreputable past and ultra-right-wing agenda, but the secret came out in #92 ‘When Iceman Attacks’…

The ambitious demagogue convinced the youngest X-Man that Spider-Man had kidnapped Parker’s paramour Gwen Stacy but the Wondrous Wallcrawler’s explosive battle against the mutant exposed the corrupt and explicitly racist Bullit in an all-out action extravaganza featuring some of the best fight-art of the decade by two of the industry’s greatest names.

Romita resumed pencilling with issue #93, which saw the return of an almost forgotten frenemy in ‘The Lady and… The Prowler!’. Hobie Brown was a super-burglar gone straight, but when he saw that the Amazing Arachnid was wanted, he too was all too ready to believe the media hype…

Amazing Spider-Man #94 (Lee, Romita & Sal Buscema) offered a fresh glimpse of the hero’s fabled origin as part of a dynamic dust-up with The Beetle ‘On Wings of Death!’, after which Peter headed for London to woo his estranged girlfriend Gwen, who had fled the manic violence of America.

Sadly, ‘Trap for a Terrorist’ found the city under threat from a gang of bombers, which apparently only Spider-Man could handle, so she returned home, never knowing Parker had come after her.

Everything was forgotten in the next issue when deeply disturbed and partially amnesiac industrialist Norman Osborn abruptly remembered he once had another more macabre persona before once more attacking Peter in #96’s ‘…And Now, the Goblin!’ by Lee, Kane & Romita.

Lee had long wanted to address the contemporary drugs situation in his stories but was forbidden by Comics Code Authority strictures. When the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare approached him to tackle the issue, Lee crafted the 3-part Green Goblin tale. When it was refused Code approval, the writer-editor went ahead and published it anyway…

Although the return of the madman who knew all Spider-Man’s secrets was the big fan-draw, the real meat of the tale was how Osborn’s son Harry – a perfectly normal rich white kid and Peter Parker’s best friend – could be drawn into a web of addiction, abuse and toxic overdose…

Frank Giacoia began inking Kane with the second instalment, ‘In the Grip of the Goblin!’ as the elder Osborn ran riot, almost killing the webslinger and preparing for his final deadly assault even as his son lay dying, before the saga spectacularly concluded with ‘The Goblin’s Last Gasp!’ as, in the clinch, the villain’s deeply-buried paternal love proved his undoing and Parker’s salvation…

This collection closes with a placeholder yarn designed to set up major events for the anniversary 100th issue.

Amazing Spider-Man #99 portrays ‘A Day in the Life of…’: an all-action, social drama-tinged palate-cleanser with Peter and Gwen finally getting their love-life back on track, only marginally diverted by a prison breakout easily quelled by the Arachnid Avenger, whilst highlighting the growing scandal of prison conditions.

The best was yet to come…
© 1970, 1971, 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Perishers Omnibus volume 1


By Maurice Dodd & Dennis Collins (Daily Mirror Books)
ISBN: 0-85939-031-4

Although written almost entirely by Maurice Dodd throughout its 48-year history, the National Treasure that is (are? am?) The Perishers was actually created in 1957 by artist Dennis Collins, writer Bill Witham (who went on to huge success with uniquely innocent everyman Useless Eustace) and cartoon editor Bill Herbert.

The daily tribulations, ruminations, exploits and misadventures of a bunch of typical kids (for the latter half of the 20th century at least) was first published in the Manchester edition of the Daily Mirror in February 1958. but after only a couple of frankly mediocre months the wacky adventures of Maisie and Marlon were withdrawn and retooled.

Jack-of-all-trades, budding artist and advertising whiz-kid Dodd was then approached by ex-paratrooper service comrade and drinking buddy Herbert. The freelance designer jumped at the chance to reinvent the characters in what was a meandering but beautifully illustrated, all-ages feature simply stuffed with untapped potential.

Drawing on his own life (he would describe it as shamelessly pilfering), Dodd created a plethora of new characters, animal and human – although with this strip the distinctions are loose and hard to defend – and rescued an early 1958 casualty in the unkempt and ill-maintained person of laconic orphan and philosophical dilettante Wellington.

This bewildered and anxious symbol of the post-war era was a street urchin who lived on his wits but still attended school and endured all the daily trials and indignities of British youth.

Relaunched in October 1959 in the London and national editions, the revamped Perishers strip quickly caught on and became a morning mainstay for generations of Britons, blending slapstick and surreal comedy with naive charm, miniaturised modern romantic melodramas (Maisie loves Marlon, Marlon loves fashion and “inventing”, and Wellington loves sausages), liberally laced with sardonic cultural commentary – especially a continuing and wonderfully twisted faux misperception of contemporary politics and the burgeoning advertising and commercial media.

Even in its earliest days the strip was superbly illustrated, conjuring up in a few judicious lines and cannily applied grey tones a communal urban wonderland we all knew as kids: a familiar post-war wonderland of shops and streets, building sites and overpasses, alleys and parks and fields where we could get on with our adventures and no adults could interfere or spoil the fun. The unsavoury old git in me still hungers in absentia on behalf of the youth of today who will never experience such freedom without being labelled “neglected” …or possibly “feral”.

The major protagonists of the series are Wellington and Boot, his old English Sheepdog (sort of: the wily, hairy chancer and raconteur considers himself a Manorial Milord “sufferin’ under the curse of a Gypsy wench”). They are ably unsupported by the formidable Maisie, a thoroughly modern miss torn between her self-delusion (for the utterly non-existent) boy of her dreams); sweets, an unsurpassed capacity for greed and unrelenting violence and a tremendous unslaked passion the aforementioned Marlon, who she thinks is what she wants.

Cool, suave and debonair are just three of the many, many words Marlon doesn’t know the meaning of, but lots of the girls at school fancy him anyway. If he grows up he wants to be a brain surgeon or a bloke wot goes down sewers in great big gumboots…

Being on his own, Wellington takes every opportunity to support himself with sordid scavenging and shoddy schemes – usually involving selling poorly constructed carts and buggies to Marlon who has far more money than sense: to be honest Marlon has more noses than sense…

Maisie is a shy beautiful maiden waiting for her true beloved to sweep her off her feet – and if he doesn’t, she gives him a thorough bashing up and nicks his sweets…

Other unreasonable regulars introduced here include Baby Grumplin’ – Maisie’s toddler brother and a diabolical force of nature, Plain Jane – a girl who asks too many questions, and the dapper Fiscal Yere: smugly complacent go-getting son of a millionaire and another occasional sucker for Wellington’s automotive inexpertise. Kids like him are what made today’s world what it is…

On the anthropomorphic animal front the extremely erudite Boot regularly encounters stroppy ducks, militant squirrels, socialist revolutionaries Fred the Beetle and his long-suffering wife Ethel, Asiatic bloodhound journalist B.H. Calcutta (Failed) and, latterly, a nicotine-addicted caterpillar who stunted his growth and became Fred’s inseparable comrade in the struggle against canine oppression. The little Trot is also an implacable rival for any food or dog-ends the Bolshevistic bug might find…

Notable events in this madcap melange include: Wellington gentrifying out of the large concrete pipe that he used to live in to take up residence in an old railway station abandoned after the Beeching Cuts decimated the train infrastructure, and the first couple of kids-only, unaccompanied camping holidays to the seaside (such innocent times).

Here they encounter sun, surf and the rock-pool crabs who worship the uncannily canine “Eyeballs in the Sky” which annually manifest in their isolated “Pooliverse”…

Utterly English, fabulously fantastical and resoundingly working-class, the strip generated 30 collections between 1963-1990, 4 Big Little Books, 5 novels and 2 annuals as well as an audio record and an immensely successful animated TV series.

The tome under review here was released in 1974; the first of a series of extra-sized recapitulations, and containing most of the contents of the first four Perishers collections (covering 1959-1965). It superbly sets the scene for newcomers with a glorious extravaganza of enchanting fun and frolics, liberally annotated by Dodd himself.

Dennis Collins magnificently and hilariously illustrated the feature until his retirement in 1983, after which Dodd himself took up the pens and brushes.

Eventually artist Bill Melvin took over the art chores whilst Dodd scripted until his death in 2006. Once the backlog of material was exhausted The Perishers finished on June 10th 2006.

Soon after, The Mirror began reprinting classic sequences of the strip to the general approval of everyone, so perhaps it’s not too much to hope that eventually – or even SOON – all the classic collections will once more be freshly available to one and all – even if it’s only on that new-fangled, never-gonna-last interwebtoobs…

Quite frankly, it’s what we need and what I deserve…
© 1974 IPC Newspapers Limited.

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Incredible Hulk Epic Collection: Man or Monster?


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9600-6

Chronologically collecting the Jade Juggernaut’s earliest appearances, this titanic tome (available as a hefty paperback and relatively weightless digital edition) gathers Incredible Hulk #1-6, Fantastic Four #2 and 25-26, Avengers #1-3 and 5, Amazing Spider-Man #14, Tales to Astonish #59 and a memorable clash with Thor from Journey into Mystery #112: cumulatively spanning early 1962 to the end of 1964.

The Incredible Hulk was new-born Marvel’s second new superhero title, although technically Henry Pym debuted earlier in a one-off yarn in Tales to Astonish #27 (January 1962). However, he didn’t become a costumed hero until the autumn, by which time Ol’ Greenskin was not-so-firmly established.

The Hulk smashed right into his own bi-monthly comic and, after some classic romps by Young Marvel’s finest creators, crashed right out again. After six issues the series was cancelled and Lee retrenched, making the Gruff Green Giant a perennial guest-star in other Marvel titles until such time as they could restart the drama in their new “Split-Book” format in Tales to Astonish where Ant/Giant-Man was rapidly proving to be a character who had outlived his time.

Cover-dated May 1962, the Incredible Hulk #1 sees puny atomic scientist Bruce Banner, sequestered on a secret military base in the desert, perpetually bullied by the bombastic commander General “Thunderbolt” Ross as the clock counts down to the World’s first Gamma Bomb test.

Besotted by Ross’s daughter Betty, Banner endures the General’s constant jibes as the timer ticks on and tension increases.

At the final moment Banner sees a teenager lollygagging at Ground Zero and frantically rushes to the site to drag the boy away. Unknown to everyone, the assistant he’s entrusted to delay the countdown has an agenda of his own…

Rick Jones is a wayward but good-hearted kid. After initial resistance he lets himself be pushed into a safety trench, but just as Banner prepares to join him The Bomb detonates…

Somehow surviving the blast, Banner and the boy are secured by soldiers, but that evening as the sun sets the scientist undergoes a monstrous transformation. He grows larger; his skin turns a stony grey…

In six simple pages that’s how it all starts, and no matter what any number of TV or movie reworkings or comicbook retcons and psycho-babble re-evaluations would have you believe that’s still the best and most primal take on the origin. A good man, an unobtainable girl, a foolish kid, an unknown enemy and the horrible power of destructive science unchecked…

Written by Stan Lee, drawn by Jack Kirby with inking by Paul Reinman, ‘The Coming of the Hulk’ barrels along as the man-monster and Jones are kidnapped by Banner’s Soviet counterpart the Gargoyle for a rousing round of espionage and Commie-busting. In the second issue the plot concerns invading aliens, and the Banner/Jones relationship settles into a traumatic nightly ordeal as the good doctor transforms and is locked into an escape-proof cell whilst the boy stands watch helplessly. Neither ever considers telling the government of their predicament…

‘The Terror of the Toad Men’ is formulaic but viscerally and visually captivating as Steve Ditko inks Kirby; imparting a genuinely eerie sense of unease to the artwork. Incidentally, this is the story where the Hulk inexplicably changed to his more accustomed Green persona…

Although back-written years later as a continuing mutation, the plain truth is that grey tones caused all manner of problems for production colourists so it was arbitrarily changed to the simple and more traditional colour of monsters.

The third issue presented a departure in format as long, chaptered epics gave way to complete short stories. Dick Ayers inked Kirby in the transitional ‘Banished to Outer Space’ which radically altered the relationship of Jones and the monster, with the story thus far reprised in 3-page vignette ‘The Origin of the Hulk’ after which Marvel mainstay of villainy the Circus of Crime debuts in ‘The Ringmaster’. The Hulk goes on an urban rampage in #4’s first tale ‘The Monster and the Machine’ before aliens and Commies combine in the second escapade ‘The Gladiator from Outer Space!’

The Incredible Hulk #5 is a joyous classic of Kirby action, introducing immortal Tyrannus and his underworld empire in ‘The Beauty and the Beast!’ whilst those pesky Commies came in for another drubbing when the Jolly Green freedom-fighter prevents the invasion of Lhasa in ‘The Hordes of General Fang!’

Lee grasped early on the commercial impact of cross-pollination and – presumably aware of disappointing sales – inserted the Jade Juggernaut into his top selling title next.

Fantastic Four #12 (March 1963) featured an early crossover as the team were asked to help the US army capture ‘The Incredible Hulk’: a tale from Lee, Kirby & Ayers packed with intrigue, action and bitter irony as  series of spectacularly destructive sabotage incidents puts the heroes on the trail of a monster when they should have been looking at spies…

Despite the sheer verve and bravura of these simplistic classics – some of the greatest, most rewarding comics nonsense ever produced – the Hulk series was not doing well, and Kirby moved on to more appreciated arenas. Steve Ditko handled all the art chores for #6: another full-length epic and an extremely engaging one.

‘The Incredible Hulk Vs the Metal Master’ has astounding action, sly and subtle sub-plots and a thinking man’s resolution, but nonetheless the title died with the issue, also dated March.

Another comic debuted that month and offered a life line to the floundering Emerald Outcast.  ‘The Coming of the Avengers’ is one of the cannier origin tales in comics. Instead of starting at a zero point and acting as if the reader knew nothing, creators Lee, Kirby & Ayers assumed that interested parties had at least a passing familiarity with Marvel’s other titles, and wasted very little time or energy on introductions in the premiere issue.

In Asgard Loki, god of evil, is imprisoned on a dank islet but still craves vengeance on his step-brother mighty Thor. Observing Earth the villain finds the monstrous Hulk and engineers a situation wherein the man-brute goes on a rampage, hoping to trick the Thunder God into battling the bludgeoning brute. When sidekick Rick Jones radios the Fantastic Four for assistance, Loki diverts the transmission so they cannot hear it and expects his mischief to quickly blossom. However. other heroes pick up the SOS – namely Iron Man, Ant Man and the Wasp.

As the costumed champions on the desert converge to search for the Hulk, they realize something’s amiss…

This terse and compelling yarn is Lee & Kirby at their bombastic best, and one of the greatest stories of the Silver Age (it’s certainly high in my own top ten Marvel Tales of all time!) and is promptly followed by ‘the Space Phantom’ (Lee, Kirby & Reinman), another unforgettable epic, in which an alien shape-stealer almost destroys the group from within.

Ever-changing, the tale ends with the volatile Hulk quitting the team only to return in #3 as a villain in partnership with ‘Sub-Mariner!’ This globe-trotting romp delivered high energy thrills and one of the best battle scenes in comics history.

Three months later Fantastic Four #25 featured a cataclysmic clash that had young heads spinning in 1964 and pretty much ever since. Inked by George Roussos, ‘The Hulk Vs The Thing’ and concluding tale ‘The Avengers Take Over!’ in FF #26 offered a fast-paced, all-out Battle Royale as the disgruntled man-monster comes to New York in search of sidekick Rick with only an injury-wracked FF in the way of his destructive rampage.

A definitive moment in the character development of the Thing, the action amplifies when a rather stiff-necked and officious Avengers team horns in claiming jurisdictional rights on “Bob” Banner (this tale is plagued with pesky continuity errors which would haunt Lee for decades) and his Jaded Alter Ego.

Notwithstanding the bloopers, this is one of Marvel’s key moments and still a visceral, vital read.

Over in Avengers #5, ‘The Invasion of the Lava Men!’ (Lee, Kirby & Reinman) revealed another incredible romp as Earth’s Mightiest battled superhuman subterraneans and a lethally radioactive mutating mountain with the unwilling assistance of the Hulk… his last appearance there for many months…

The next cameo came in Amazing Spider-Man #14 (July 1964): an absolute milestone as a hidden criminal mastermind debuted by manipulating a Hollywood studio into making a movie about the wall-crawler. Even with guest-star opponents such as the Enforcers the Incredible Hulk steals all the limelight in ‘The Grotesque Adventure of the Green Goblin’ (by Lee & Ditko) which is only otherwise notable for introducing Spider-Man’s most perfidious and flamboyant enemy (sarcasm alert!).

The second chapter of the man-monster’s career was about to take off and Tales to Astonish #59 (September) offered a bombastic prologue as ‘Enter: The Hulk!’ (Lee, Ayers & Reinman) sees the Avengers inadvertently inspiring Giant-Man to hunt down the Green Goliath.

Although the Human Top devilishly engineered that blockbusting battle, Lee was the real mastermind, as with the next issue The Hulk began starring in his own series and on the covers whilst Giant-Man’s adventures shrank back to a dozen or so pages.

This wonderfully economical compendium of wonders closes with the lead story from Journey into Mystery #112 (January 1965). ‘The Mighty Thor Battles the Incredible Hulk!’ is a glorious gift to all those fans who perpetually ask “Who’s stronger…?” Possibly Kirby and Chic Stone’s finest artistic moment, it details a private duel between the two super-humans that occurred during that free-for-all between Earth’s Mightiest, Sub-Mariner and Ol’ Greenskin in Avengers #3. The raw power of that tale is a perfect exemplar of what makes the Hulk work and would an ideal place to close proceedings but fans and art lovers can enjoy further treats in the form of assorted House Ads, original artwork by Kirby and Ditko, a gallery of classic Kirby covers modified by painter Dean White (originally seen on assorted Marvel Masterworks editions), plus reproduced Essentials collection and Omnibus covers by Bruce Timm and Alex Ross…

Hulk Smash! He always was and with material like this he always will be.
© 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy


By Tom Veitch, Cam Kennedy & Jim Baikie (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3024-6653-4

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the mythology of Star Wars which – in the UK and thanks to the science fictional nature of time zones – celebrated its 40th anniversary yesterday. What you might not know is that the first sight future fanatics got of its breathtakingly expansive continuity and the mythology-in-the-making way back in 1977 was the premier issue of the Marvel comicbook tie-in.

It hit shelves two weeks before the film launched in cinemas, setting the scene for a legion of kids and beginning a mini-phenomenon which encompassed the initial movie trilogy and expanded those already vast imaginative horizons.

Marvel had an illustrious run with the franchise – nine years’ worth of comics, specials and paperback collections – before the option was left to die.

Comicbook exploits were reinstated in 1993 by Dark Horse Comics who built on the film legacy with numerous superb titles and tales until Disney acquired the rights to Star Wars in 2012.

Around the same time, the home of Donald & Mickey also bought Marvel Comics and before long the original magic was being rekindled…

When Marvel relaunched the enterprise, they included not just a core title but also solo books for the lead stars. Moreover, rather than ignore what had passed between their two bites of the cherry, Disney/Marvel began reissuing the Dark Horse material too.

Amongst the very best of it was a tryptic of miniseries digitally released as one grand adventure under the Star Wars Legend imprint.

Scripted by Tom Veitch, Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy is set after the movie Return of the Jedi and comprises two 6-issue miniseries – Dark Empire and Dark Empire II – plus 2-part concluding mini-epic Empire’s End. Also included in this galactic grimoire is full information on all the characters involved courtesy of Star Wars Handbook 3: Dark Empire.

The drama unfolds about ten years after the Battle of Endor and the death and redemption of Darth Vader. Although the Emperor is gone, the war continues.

The militaristic remnants of the Empire are still battling for every inch of the galaxy. The New Republic is desperately hard-pressed. Han Solo and his wife Leia, although new parents, are as deeply involved as ever, and Luke Skywalker is pushed to ever-more desperate measures as he attempts to destroy the pervasive unleashed evil corrupting the Universe. His solution to rebalance the Force is to revive and rebuild the fabled Jedi Knights…

A mysterious new leader and ingenious new super-weapons are winning the war for the Empire, and the heroes must separate to succeed. As Han and Leia pursue the strategic aspects of the conflict, Luke heads directly to the source and succumbs to the Dark Side when a dead foe returns.

…And Leia’s newly conceived child is destined to become the greatest threat the galaxy has ever faced… Can the heroes reunite before all is lost?

Dark Horse kicked off its entire Star Wars franchise with this supremely moody, action-packed thriller. Cam Kennedy (reuniting with Veitch after previously collaborating on the excellent and peculiar Light and Darkness War), illustrating in his own unique and magnificent manner, provides quirky but reassuringly authentic settings and scenarios for a space opera romp that satisfyingly captures the feel and pace of the cinema versions, whilst building on the canon for Force-starved fanatics everywhere.

Veitch & Kennedy returned in a blaze of glory after the runaway success of Dark Empire with a superb continuation of the further battles of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo and all those other movie favourites…

The ghost of Emperor Palpatine, deprived of the clone bodies he was incubating to ensure his return to chilling physicality, is intent on possessing the unborn child in Leia’s belly even as his Dark Side lieutenants struggle to become his successor.

The Empire’s last infrastructure remnants are producing more diabolical planet killing weapons to terrorise and subdue the battered, war-weary galaxy.

…And Skywalker has flown off on a wild goose chase in pursuit of lost Jedi survivors. How can the good guys possibly win this time…?

With extreme verve, style and panache, apparently, as this big budget blockbuster fairly rockets along full of tension and invention, with action aplenty and spectacular set pieces for the fans – although it might be a tad bewildering if your Star Wars IQ is limited.

Capping off the gusher of cosmic thrills and chills is the final story-arc of the sequence, Empire’s End, with Jim Baikie replacing Kennedy as artist for a much shorter adventure that wraps up all the plot-threads in a fittingly spectacular if somewhat rushed fashion.

After that true Jedi adepts can enhance their SWIQ by memorising a veritable avalanche of new friends and foes in the data-drenched Star Wars Handbook 3: Dark Empire

and also reacquaint themselves with old favourites – everybody and everything from Boba Fett to the Jedi Holocron…

Even more sheer joy can be experienced by viewing the huge gallery of covers from the individual issues as originally painted by Dave Dorman.

Unchallenging fun, beautiful pictures, and an utter delight for devotees of a galaxy not so very far, far away.
Star Wars and related text and illustrations are trademarks and/or copyrights in the United States and other countries of Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or its affiliates. © & ™ Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes


By Geoff Johns, Gary Frank & Jon Sibal (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1819-5 (HC)                    978-1-4012-1904-8 (TPB)

Almost 79 years ago Superman started the whole modern era of fantasy heroes: outlandish, flamboyant indomitable, infallible, unconquerable.

He also saved a foundering industry and created an entirely new genre of storytelling – the Super Hero. Since June 1938 he has grown into a mighty presence in all aspects of art, culture and commerce even as his natal comicbook universe organically grew and expanded.

Long ago and far away a scientifically advanced civilisation perished, but not before its greatest genius sent his baby son to safety is a star-spanning ship. It landed in Kansas and the interplanetary orphan was reared by decent folk as one of us…

Once upon a time, in the far future, a band of super-powered kids from dozens of alien civilisations took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and formed a club of heroes. One day these Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited that legend to join them…

And thus began the vast and epic saga of Superman and tangentially the Legion of Super-Heroes: as first envisioned by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino in the landmark Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958). Since that time, the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and rebooted, retconned and unwritten over and again to comply with editorial diktat and popular whim.

One popular trend is to re-embrace the innocent, silly, joyous, stirring and utterly compelling pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths tales but to shade them with contemporary sensibilities and with this in mind Geoff Johns gradually reinstituted the Lore of the Legion in a number of his assignments during the early part of this century.

Beginning most notably with Justice League of America: The Lightning Saga and culminating in the epic New Krypton and War against Brainiac sagas the Legion were back and once more carving out a splendid niche in the DC Universe.

Along the way came this superb, nostalgia-laced cracker of a tale which re-established direct contact between the futuristic paladins and the Man of Tomorrow…

Compiling Action Comics #858-863 (spanning December 2007 through May 2008), this collected chronicle – also sporting an Introduction from veteran LSH creator Keith Giffen – finds the Legion back in the 21st century, summoning Superman to save Tomorrow’s World once more. Long ago the Legion had regularly visited: spiriting the young Kryptonian to a place and time where he didn’t have to hide his true nature. However, once he began his public career, the visits ceased and his memories were suppressed to safeguard the integrity of history and the inviolability of the time-line.

Now a desperate squad of Legionnaires must reawaken those memories since the Man of Steel is the last hope for a world on the edge of destruction. In the millennium since his debut Superman has become a beacon of justice and tolerance throughout the Utopian Universe, but a radical, xenophobic anti-alien movement has swept Earth, marginalising, interning and even executing all non-Terrans.

Moreover, a super-powered team of Legion rejects has formed a Justice League of Earth to lead a crusade against all extraterrestrial immigrants, claiming Superman was actually a true-born Earthling, and declaring him their spiritual leader…

Of course, Kal-El of Krypton must travel to the future and not only save the day but scour the racist stain from his name – a task made infinitely more difficult because Earth-Man, psychotic xenophobic leader of the Earth-First faction, has turned our yellow sun a power-sapping red…

Bold, thrilling and absolutely enthralling, the last-ditch struggle of a few brave aliens against a racist, fascistic and completely ruthless totalitarian tomorrow is the stuff of pure comic-book dreams. Superman strives to unravel a poisonous future where all his hopes and aspirations have been twisted, with only his truest childhood friends to aid him with the incredibly intense and hyper-realistic art of Gary Frank & Jon Sibal making it all seem not only plausible but inevitable…

Sweetening the deal is a stunning covers and variants gallery by Gary Frank, Adam Kubert, Steve Lightle, Mike Grell and Al Milgrom plus pages of notes, roughs and designs from Frank’s preparatory work before embarking on the epic adventure.

Total Fights ‘n’ Tights future shock in the best way possible
© 2007, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Jonah Hex volume 7: Lead Poisoning


By Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Jordi Bernet, Rafa Garres, David Michael Beck, Rob Schwager & Rob Leigh (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2485-1

When Justin Grey & Jimmy Palmiotti reinvigorated modern Western legend Jonah Hex they deftly blended a blackly ironic streak of wit with a sanguine view of morality and justice to produce some of the most accessible and enjoyable comics fiction available from the period. They also had the services of extremely talented people such as colourist Rob Schwager and letterer Rob Leigh and the pick of top artists such as European maestro Jordi Bernet who illustrates fully half the gritty tales in seventh trade paperback (or digital, should you be so inclined) compilation from 2009. The contents comprise issues 37-42 of the superb and much-missed iteration…

I first recognised Jordi Bernet’s work on The Legend Testers. By “recognised” I mean that very moment when I actually understood that somebody somewhere drew the stuff I was adoring, and that it was better than the stuff either side of it.

This was 1966 when British comics were mostly black and white and never had signatures or credits so it was years before I knew who had sparked my interest…

Jordi Bernet Cussó was born in Barcelona in 1944, son of a prominent and successful humour cartoonist. When his father died suddenly Jordi, aged 15, took over his father’s strip Doña Urraca (Mrs. Magpie).

A huge fan of Alex Raymond, Hal Foster and particularly expressionist genius Milton Caniff, Bernet yearned for less restrictive horizons and left Spain in the early 1960s to chance his hand at dramatic storytelling.

He worked for Belgium’s Spirou, Germany’s Pip and Primo, before finding work on English weeklies. Bernet toiled on British publishers between 1964 and 1967, and as well as the Odhams/Fleetway/IPC anthologies Smash, Tiger and War Picture Library he also produced superlative material for DC Thomson’s Victor and Hornet.

He even illustrated a Gardner Fox horror short for Marvel’s Vampire Tales #1 in 1973, but mainstream America was generally denied his mastery (other than some translated Torpedo volumes and a Batman short story) until the 21st century reincarnation of Jonah Hex.

His most famous strips include thrillers Dan Lacombe (written by his uncle Miguel Cussó), Paul Foran (scripted by José Larraz) the saucy Wat 69 and spectacular post-apocalyptic barbarian epic Andrax (both with Cussó again).

When General Franco died Bernet returned to Spain and began working for Cimoc, Creepy and Metropol, collaborating with Antonio Segura on the sexy fantasy Sarvan and dystopian SF black comedy Kraken. His other job was collaborating with Enrique Sánchez Abulí on gangster and adult themes tales that have made him one of the world’s most honoured artists, and which culminated on the incredibly successful crime saga Torpedo 1936…

The rawhide dramas commence with Bernet in top form as Hex tangles and torridly tussles with a trio of female former circus performers who take up bounty hunting and prove that ‘Trouble Comes in Threes’, after which ‘Hell or High Water’ finds the gritty gunslinger enduring horrific tortures at the hands of a sheriff he once shamed.

The brutal psychopath has no idea what real vengeance feels like until Jonah gives him a fast and final lesson…

Baroque stylist Rafa Garres supplies art and colours for a grim parable examining ‘Cowardice’ wherein a rookie sheriff gets life lessons in doing his job after Hex tracks murderous escaped convicts to a quiet country backwater, after which David Michael Beck depicts a gruesome two-part tale of savage madness.

When Hex and sometime ally/constant foil Tallulah track a serial-killing civil war surgeon teaching other perverts his bloody discoveries, the red-handed butcher displays enough body-shredding acumen to almost end them both. However, even his gory assaults and inclinations to devil-worship of the ‘Sawbones’ are no match for Jonah Hex in a mood to display his all-consuming displeasure and irritation…

Bernet wraps things up in inimitable blackly comedic style as ‘Shooting the Sun’ offers a shocking glimpse at the bounty hunter’s formative years with parental sadist Woodson Hex…

Apparently, the abusive behaviour made Jonah the man he is: someone able to turn an inescapable death-trap into a private shooting gallery offering the added attraction of long-deferred vengeance on the bullies who garnished little Jonah’s hellish childhood with extra misery…

With captivating covers from Bernet, Garres and Beck, Lead Poisoning is another explosively grim, yet bleakly hilarious outing for the very best Western anti-hero ever created: an intoxicating blend of action and social commentary no fan of the genre or cream-of-the-crop comics magic will want to miss.
© 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Last Musketeer


By Jason, coloured by Hubert and translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN: 978-1-56097-889-3

Jason is secretly John Arne Saeterrøy: born in Molde, Norway in 1965 and an overnight international cartoon superstar since 1995 when his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won that year’s Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize).

He won another Sproing in 2001 for the series Mjau Mjau and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels. Now a global star among the cognoscenti he has won seven major awards from such disparate regions as France, Slovakia and the USA.

Jason’s breadth of interest is capacious and deep: comics, movies, music, high literature and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of hierarchy and his puckish mixing and matching of his inspirational sources always produces a picture-treatise well worth a reader’s time.

As always, this visual/verbal bon mot unfolds in Jason’s beguiling, sparse-dialogued, pantomimic progressions with enchantingly formal page layouts rendered in the familiar, minimalist evolution of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style; solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity augmented here by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours. This delicious caper is one of his best yarns ever and even spawned a prequel…

The Last Musketeer is an epic gem rife with his signature surreality; populated with his quirkily quotidian cast of darkly comic anthropomorphic regulars, and downplaying his signature themes of relationships and loneliness to produce a wild action-adventure for a charmingly macabre cast of bestial movie archetypes and lost modern chumps to romp through…

The brief full-colour thriller opens with a drunk in a Paris bar. He claims to be the musketeer Athos, still alive after four centuries… and he is.

The contemplative warrior dreams of past glories and inseparable old comrades but things aren’t just the same anymore…

As he muses on a bench, destructive balls of energy rain down on the city and Athos realises he is needed again and might just have one last adventure in him…

Despite failing to get the old gang back together, he persists in his quest and, after fighting a couple of green-skinned invaders, induces them to take him to their world…

All too soon he is making friends, battling the flamboyantly evil King of the Red Planet, helping a Princess of Mars foment an Earth-saving revolution and encountering an enemy from home he had long forgotten…

And we’re all still here so he must have triumphed in the end…

Outrageously merging the worlds of Alexander Dumas with Edgar Rice Burroughs whilst gleefully borrowing Flash Gordon‘s props and work ethic, The Last Musketeer is a superbly engaging pastiche that is pure nostalgia and pure Jason.

Jason is instantly addictive and a creator every serious fan of the art form should move to the top of the “Must-Have” list.
All characters, stories and artwork © 2007 Jason. All rights reserved.