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Captain Midnight Archives volume 2: Captain Midnight Saves the World!


By William Woolfolk, Leonard Frank, Dan Barry & various (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-243-5                  eISBN: 978-1-62115-921-6

Created by broadcast scripters Wilfred G. Moore and Robert M. Burtt, Captain Midnight began as a star of radio serials in the days when troubleshooting All-American aviators were the acme of adventure genre heroes. The Captain Midnight Program soldiered on from 1938 to 1940 until the Wander Company acquired the sponsorship rights to promote their top product: Ovaltine. From there on, national radio syndication led to a newspaper comic strip (by Erwin L. Hess, running from June 29th 1942 until the end of the decade); a movie serial (1942) and – later – two TV serials (1953 and 1954-1956) before being overdubbed, retitled and syndicated as “Jet Jackson, Flying Commando” well into the 1960s). There was also a mountain of now-legendary merchandise such as the infamous Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring…

And there was a comicbook franchise… one recently reinvigorated for 21st century audiences.

The hero’s basic origin related how after the Great War ended, pilot and inventor Captain Jim Albright returned home having earned the sobriquet “Captain Midnight” following a particularly harrowing mission that concluded successfully at the witching hour.

He then formed a paramilitary “Secret Squadron” of like-minded pilots to continue making the world a better place – often at the covert behest of the President – using guts and gadgets to foil spies, catch crooks and defend the helpless.

Captain Midnight truly hit his stride after Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, becoming an early Home Front media sensation throughout the war years. However, his already fluid backstory and appearance underwent a radical makeover when he switched comicbook horses in midstream.

This stunningly engaging full-colour paperback collection (also available as an eBook) gathers a slew of science fiction-themed tales taken from the latter end of the Fawcett Comics run. Captain Midnight #48, 50, 52-56, 58, 60, 62, 64 and 66 spanned February 1947 – August 1948 and with times and tastes changing the venerable title folded with the next issue…

Following a fervent Introduction from Batton Lash discussing the career of the much-travelled, constantly evolving “Monarch of the Airways” and the telling differences between the radio, screen and comicbook iterations, the contents explosively unfold with a tragic dearth of credit and attributions. Much comic material from this era is criminally unattributed but regular writers known to be active on Midnight at this juncture included Bill Woolfolk and Otto Binder whilst artists included the unflagging Leonard Frank and young legends-to-be Leonard Starr and Dan Barry.

From issue #48 ‘Captain Midnight Visits the Golden Asteroid’ sees Albright and his mechanic Ichabod Mudd piloting their newly invented rocket-ship to investigate a new stellar body only to find that the astronomer who discovered it has an ulterior and nefarious motive for getting to the stellar wanderer.

Illustrated by Frank and from #50, ‘Captain Midnight Spikes the Sun Gun’ pitted the modern Edison against devilish Dr. Pyrrho who had found a way to inflict destructive heat on the already sweltering citizens of the American Southwest after which a return prospecting trip to our nearest neighbour uncovered ‘The Moon Creatures’ (Woolfolk) who aggressively resisted all attempts to colonise Luna…

With the solar system now a regular destination for exploration, Albright began an occasional series of sorties to the planets and picked up some new recurring foes. The first was a plundering barbarian from Pluto who raided Earth for its Uranium reserves in #52’s ‘Captain Midnight versus the Space Raider!’ (Binder & Frank).

The resultant chase and recovery took our hero to Mars and first contact with an unsuspected race also under threat of merciless assault by the murderous Jagga…

After driving the fiend off and recovering his ill-gotten gains, Midnight next encountered the ruthless Plutonian inflicting ‘Peril on Venus’ in #53. By sending him packing once again, the inventor consequently aided the long-lost last survivors of Atlantis in getting their failing colony onto an even keel in a world overrun by dinosaurs…

In #54 Midnight and Icky encountered yet another embattled civilisation on Ceres: a literally golden kingdom fending off Jagga’s bacterial onslaught and meteoroid bombardments. With the Air Aces’ assistance, the monster was finally driven off in ‘The Asteroid Battle’…

There’s a double dose of super-scientific spectacle in #55, beginning with Albright’s perhaps unwise invention of a monumental dirigible intended as ‘The Sky Airport’. When common thugs steal the mobile monolith and use it as a base for air raids on banks, the heartbroken genius is forced into desperate action to clear his conscience…

This is followed by another interplanetary incident when ‘Captain Midnight Finds the Lunar Lair’ and finally brings Jagga to justice in the form of a trial in Earth’s courts. Unequivocally guilty, the beast is sentenced to death by electrocution in #56’s ‘The Last Rites of Jagga’ (Frank art) but said execution proves to be a major mistake and Midnight is called upon to deliver the sentence in his own infallible scientific manner…

A new alien threat emerges in #58 ‘On the Planet of Peril’ when an unknown race reanimates Earth’s greatest villains and monsters…

A month later ‘Captain Midnight Battles the Ice Age’ found our interplanetary explorers on Neptune: changing that world’ climate to give its humanoid inhabitants a big step up the ladder to civilisation, whilst issue #60 saw the return of earthly arch-enemy Dr. Osmosis who terrified and tormented humanity with his explosive ‘Flying Saucers of Death’…

Captain Midnight #62 detailed the inventor’s efforts to save America’s ‘Farmers on the Moon’ from sabotage as Earth agricultural entrepreneur Jim Klaw sought to maintain his produce monopoly at all costs…

A new extraterrestrial enemy debuted in #64 as ‘Beyond the Sun’ (Frank) introduced shapeshifting tyrant Xog: a gaseous monster from Saturn who boarded America’s newest spaceships as step one in his plans for interplanetary domination. When Captain Midnight thwarted the scheme and rescued the hostage Terrans, the vile king swore vengeance…

It came in the final tale in this superbly retro rollercoaster of rocket-powered fun – from #66 with art by Frank – as Xog transforms Captain Midnight into sentient gas before invading Earth. Happily, even ‘Without a Body’ Albright was too much for the malign marauder and once more saved the day and the world…

With a stunning gallery of covers by Frank, Charles Tomsey, Dan Barry and Mac Raboy plus cool mini-features such as ‘Captain Midnight’s Air Lingo’, ‘US Army Aviation Badge Insignia’ and ‘Famous Planes’, this fabulous feast of fantasy is guaranteed to satisfy the nostalgic yearnings of every starry-eyed space cadet, whatever their age.
Captain Midnight Archives volume 2: Captain Midnight Saves the World! ® and ©Dark Horse Comics 2014. All rights reserved.

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Cedric volume 3: What Got Into Him?


By Laudec & Cauvin with colours by Leonardo and translated by Erica Jeffrey (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-081-8

Born in Antoing, Belgium in 1938, Raoul Cauvin is one of Europe’s most successful comics scripters. In 1960 he joined the animation department of publishing giant Dupuis after studying the dying – and much-missed – print production technique of Lithography.

Happily, he quickly discovered his true calling was writing funny stories and began a glittering, prolific career at Spirou.

While there he devised (with Salvérius) the astoundingly successful Bluecoats as well as dozens of other long-running, award-winning series such as Sammy, Les Femmes en Blanc, Boulouloum et Guiliguili, Cupidon, Pauvre Lampil and Agent 212: cumulatively shifting more than 240 separate albums. Bluecoats alone has achieved sales well in excess of 15 million copies thus far…

His collaborator on sharp, witty, kid-friendly family strip Cédric is Italian born, Belgium-raised Tony de Luca who studied electro-mechanics and toiled as an industrial draughtsman until he could make his own break into bandes dessinée.

Following a few fanzine efforts in the late 1970s, Laudec landed soap-style series Les Contes de Curé-la-Fl’ûte at Spirou in 1979. He built that into a brace of extended war-time serials (L’an 40 in 1983 and Marché Noir et Bottes à Clous in 1985) whilst working his way around many of the comic’s other regular strips.

In 1987 he united with Cauvin on the first Cédric shorts and the rest is history… and poetry and science and geography and maths and…

We have Dennis the Menace (the Americans have their own too but he’s not the same) whilst the French-speaking world has Cédric: an adorable, lovesick rapscallion with a heart of gold and an irresistible penchant for mischief. Collected albums of the variable-length strips – ranging from a ½ page to half a dozen – began appearing in 1989 (with 29 released so far) and are always amongst the most popular and best-selling on the Continent, as is the animated TV show spun off from the strip.

This third Cinebook translation – from 2011 and first continentally released in 1992 as Cédric 5: Quelle mouche le pique? – opens with ‘A Pebble in the Shoe…‘: a moving and uplifting generational collaboration as Grandpa tells his daughter’s son stories of his dearly-departed wife that has the eavesdropping household (and you, too, if you have any shred of heart or soul) in emotional tatters…

A return to big laughs comes next as a dose of unwelcome homework results in ‘A Big Fat Zero’ whilst ‘A Lousy Story’ details the pros and cons of a school nit epidemic before pester power is employed to secure an addition to the household in ‘Man’s Best Friend’.

The crusty elder statesman of the family learns a painful lesson as ‘Grandpa Takes a Turn’ finds the creaky reactionary suckered into chaperoning at a school dance, after which little Cedric has a beguiling and potentially life-altering experience when his adored Chen marches through town in the uniform of ‘The Majorettes’…

Grandpa and Cedric unite to shame Dad into purchasing ‘The Board that Skates’ but it’s every man for himself when the kid comes cadging for cash in ‘You Wouldn’t Have a 20?’ whilst ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’ playfully shows that although the boy’s love for Chen is all-abiding and true, it isn’t necessarily reciprocated…

When Chen’s mother accidentally prangs Dad’s car, Cedric goes violently berserk until the families have demonstrably agreed détente and rapprochement and reached ‘An Amicable Arrangement’, before the pesky kid accidentally boosts his hard-pressed papa’s earning potential through inadvertent confidence trickery in ‘Business is Business’.

‘Jealousy’ rears its ugly head when Chen starts ballet and literally jumps into the arms of Cedric’s bitterly despised romantic rival The Right Honourable Alphonse Andre Jones-Tarrington-Dupree – with catastrophic repercussions for all concerned – whilst ‘Short of Breath’ sees the entire family play a mean but hilarious trick involving Dad’s birthday cake…

‘Solemn Communion’ wastes a much-need opportunity to salve Cedric’s already-tarnished soul when the lad’s first Catholic sacrament ceremony devolves into a drunken debacle for the attending adults, after which we come full circle as amorous memories are tickled and ‘The Quarrel’ resumes when Cedric asks how Mum and Dad got together before everything returns to bittersweet tears when the old man is asked for more reminiscences of Grandma Germaine in moving finale ‘Remember, Gramps…’

Rapid-paced, warm and witty, and not afraid to explore sentiment or loss, the exploits of this painfully keen, bemusingly besotted rascal are a charming example of how all little boys are just the same and infinitely unique. Cedric is a superb family strip perfect for youngsters and old folk alike…
© Dupuis 1992 by Cauvin & Laudec. All rights reserved. English translation © 2011 Cinebook Ltd.

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Lightrunner


By Lamar Waldron & Rod Whigham with Susan Barrows (Dover Comics & Graphic novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80841-3

During the 1980s a burgeoning science fiction and fantasy book market, bolstered by cinematic and television blockbusters, fed into the new creative boom in the comicbook market, giving “graphic novels” their first tentative push into the real, bigger world outside established fandom as part of a greater zeitgeist.

There was also a very real entrepreneurial creative buzz which led to many European and Japanese works finally breaking into the US market, and most importantly, a lot of attention was actually paid to new, home-grown material…

Among the important early players was The Donning Company Publishers; a Virginia-based outfit established in the 1970s who briefly blazed a pioneering trail with their Starblaze Graphics imprint.

Presumably inspired by the innovative breakthrough work of Byron Preiss (Starfawn, Empire, The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell) Donning invested in lavish, visually impressive volumes targeting a broad crossover market. They began with a volume collecting the first chapters of Wendy & Richard Pini’s independent comics sensation Elfquest, and went on to produced strip adaptations of popular prose properties such as Robert Asprin’s MythAdventures and the co-operative shared-universe fantasy series Thieves’ World.

Along the way they also brought Colleen Doran’s first iteration of A Distant Soil and Phil Foglio’s Buck Godot to a relatively small but crucially mainstream public.

The company’s output was small but highly effective and although the venture ended badly – in court, as many creators sued to regain control of their works – those beautiful, high-quality works proved that bold, (relatively) expensive, high-quality material was the future for an industry and art form that had always cut every corner, paid poorly and worked on miniscule margins…

Lightrunner was very much a product of its time, a riotous intergalactic rollercoaster rocket-ride which began life as a serial in the semi-pro fanzine Visions, and still packs a punch for any fan of brash, flashy space opera.

Now, thanks to the sagacious perspicacity of Dover Books and their continued unearthing of lost graphic gems there’s a fresh edition of a compelling modern classic of the Good Old Bad Old Days to enjoy.

Re-presented in an excitingly oversized (278 x 210 mm) full-colour softcover edition – complete with Chris Claremont’s original effusive Introduction – here is a fabulous futuristic adventure to astound and enthral all lovers of epic bravado and boisterous star-faring fun…

In our far-distant tomorrows, capitalism runs the universe in the form of planetary Corprostates held together by a web of trade undertaken by tachyon-driven solar sailing ships plying the perilous routes of the “Star Stream”.

In that tempestuous time and economic climate the Empyrean Alliance is a tenuous association of Free States; restive, politically insecure and greatly dependent on the trustworthy valour of the apolitical Empyrforce: a US Navy-style peacekeeping force and police militia.

Our tale begins with young Burne Garrett, son of a legendary Empyrforce hero, who failed to make the grade and scrubbed out of his military training. Garrett is a pathetic disappointment to himself and everybody else. Now a lowly PR hack, he is filming the initial tests of a radical new type of faster-than-light starship – The Stream Breaker…

When the new super-vessel suddenly comes to eerie life and takes off with him aboard – subsequently vanishing into the unknown – the unwitting fool is suddenly Public Enemy #1…

Framed, lost and desperate, Garrett is soon plunged deep into the seedy underbelly of civilisation; becoming a pawn of pirates and raiders until he is adopted by spoiled, rich wild-child Lanie of Abul Sara (think Paris Hilton in lace-up high heel thigh-boots and a ray-gun… and now stop thinking of that because that’s not how she looks, but what she’s like…).

The fugitive Garrett reluctantly joins the tense and turbulent crew of her beloved star-craft “Lightrunner”… and somewhere along the way he also picks up a pet monkey that might be the mightiest telepath in the galaxy…

Garrett seeks to clear his name, even while simultaneously being hunted by his own deeply disillusioned galactic-hero father and the true culprits of all his woes, who still want the Stream Breaker prototype he has so providentially hidden. Before long, the lad uncovers a clandestine plot of cosmic proportions that might just mean the end of the entire Alliance…

Although the plot and set-up is no longer new or fresh – especially in films and recent shows or in the burgeoning TV SF market – this brash, breezy, spectacle-packed romp still reads incredibly well and looks great.

Fans of this particular form of chase-based science fic-Action will be well rewarded for taking a trip with Garrett & Co courtesy of the fabulous Lightrunner…
© 1983 Lamar Waldron and Rod Whigham. All Rights Reserved. This edition © 2017.

Lightrunner is scheduled for a February November 24th 2017 release and is available for pre-order now. Check out Dover Publications, your internet retailer or local comics-store or bookshop.

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Superman Sunday Classics Strips 1-183 – 1939-1943


By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster & others (DC/Kitchen Sink Press: Sterling Publishing Co. Inc.)
ISBN: 9781402737862(Sterling)                    978-1563894725(DC/KS)

It’s indisputable that the American comicbook industry – if it existed at all – would have been an utterly unrecognisable thing without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s unprecedented invention was rapturously adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation, quite literally giving birth to a genre if not an actual art form.

Spawning an impossible army of imitators and variations within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and wish-fulfilment which epitomised the early Man of Tomorrow grew to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East affected America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

In comicbook terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming the shape of the fledgling funnybook industry, the Metropolis Marvel relentlessly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media. Although we all think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as the epitome and acme of comicbook creation, the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1, the Man of Steel became a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse.

We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, The Avengers and their hyperkinetic kind long ago outgrew their four-colour origins and are now fully mythologized modern media creatures instantly familiar in mass markets, across all platforms and age ranges…

Far more people have seen or heard an actor as Superman than have ever read his comicbooks. The globally syndicated newspaper strips alone reached untold millions, and by the time his 20th anniversary rolled around at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics, Superman had become a thrice-weekly radio serial regular and starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons, two films, a TV series and a landmark novel by George Lowther.

He was a perennial sure-fire success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended that first smash live-action television presence. In his future were three more shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark and Smallville), a stage musical, a string of blockbuster movie franchises and an almost seamless succession of games, bubblegum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even his superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the last century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail that all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and often the planet – it was seen by millions, if not billions, of readers and generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books. It also paid better.

And rightly so: some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture.

Mutt and Jeff, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped their humble tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar.

Most of them still do…

However it was considered something of a risky double-edged sword when a comicbook character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint the strips in cheap accessible form?) to became a genuinely mass-entertainment syndicated serial strip.

Superman was the first comicbook star to make that leap – about six months after as he exploded out of Action Comics – with only a few ever successfully following. Wonder Woman, Batman (eventually) and groundbreaking teen icon Archie Andrews made the jump in the 1940s and only a handful like Spider-Man, Howard the Duck and Conan the Barbarian have done so since.

The daily Superman newspaper comic strip launched on 16th January 1939, supplemented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th of that year. Originally crafted by Siegel & Shuster – whose primary focus switched immediately from comicbooks to the more prestigious tabloid iteration -  and their hand-picked studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring), the mammoth daily grind soon required the additional talents of Jack Burnley and writers like Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz.

This superb collection – doubly out-of-print despite its superb quality and sublime content – opens with an Introduction by occasional contemporary Super-Scribe Roger Stern, recapping the sensation and his creators, before stupendously re-presenting the first 19 complete tales of the primal powerhouse in stunning full colour.

Whether in pamphlet or local periodical, these tales of a modern Hercules exploded into the consciousness of the world. No one had ever seen a fictionalised hero throw all the rules of physics away and burst into unstoppable, improbable action on every page. In fact, editors and publishers’ greatest concern was that the implausible antics would turn off audiences. Clearly, they could not have been more wrong…

Thus most of the early episodes are about establishing the set-up of an Alien Wonder masquerading as an extremely puny human at a “great Metropolitan newspaper” whilst crushing evil as his flamboyant alter-ego. These stories are all about constant action and escalating spectacle, displaying the incredible power of the bombastic hero and man of the people…

On the first Sunday in November 1939 the parade of marvels commenced with a single introductory page describing Superman’s origins in ‘The Man of Tomorrow’ followed seven day later by initial adventure ‘Twenty-Four Hours to Ruin’ which found the Action Ace in a non-stop rush of blood and thunder whilst saving a logging concern from sabotage and hostile takeover by gangsters.

Crime segued into scientific fantasy as Superman encountered and saved ‘The Mindless Slaves of Dr. Grout’ from forced labour as the villain fomented a coup against America…

The inklings of true comicbook themes and more complex storylines arrived as Clark Kent and Lois Lane were despatched to investigate the ‘Giants of Doom Valley’: discovering a race of hostile subterranean invaders for Superman to discourage…

‘Assassins and Spies’ then took them into the most pressing concern of the era when agents of a foreign power began spreading sedition and terror on America’s shores to bolster a European war.

A mysterious mastermind used super-science, coercion, abduction and giant insects to ensure ‘The Chosen’ carried out his plans of global financial dominance before a more bucolic tale saw Superman helping Lois escape fatal consequences as ‘The Dangerous Inheritance’ left her with 5,000 acres of seemingly worthless scrubland…

Woe in the wilderness gives way to big city bombast as ‘The Bandit Robots of Metropolis’ cause carnage in search of cash, pushing the Man of Steel to his physical and intellectual limits and priming him for a landmark clash against ‘Luthor, Master of Evil’ who turns the weather into a weapon in his ongoing war against mankind.

A cunning murderer attempts to frame a professional automobile driver in ‘Death Race’ whilst a high-tech propaganda campaign seeks to destabilise the city when ‘The Committee for a New Order’ begins pirating the airwaves. As Superman crushes their campaign of terror he is embroiled in a blistering battle against vile enemy agents who know Lois is his Achilles Heel…

Another corporate assault on trade is exposed when freight drivers are poisoned by crooks whose orders are to ‘Destroy All Trucks’ of a businessman’s rivals, before a mirage-making super-villain pillages Metropolis until her galvanic guardian see through ‘The Image’…

When Clark’s ‘Arson Evidence’ convicts an innocent man, his other self moves heaven and earth to exonerate the jailbird and ferret out the true fire-fiend after which – it being almost three years since his debut – Superman spent two weeks reminding old readers and informing new ones why and how he was ‘The Champion of Democracy’.

To a large extent mention of World War II was kept to a minimum on the Action Ace’s funny pages, but now ‘The Superman Truck’ – detailing how a formidable prototype military transport was relentlessly targeted by saboteurs – jumped right in with a subplot about a reluctant taxi driver enlisting in Army Transport Corps.

Tracing his induction and training, this yarn was a cunningly-conceived weekly ad and plea for appropriately patriotic readers to enlist…

Military motifs continued as a ship full of diplomats and war correspondents is set afire by an incendiary madman allied to in-over-their-heads Fifth Columnists. It’s not long before ‘The Blaze’ is in critical timberland, acting on his own deranged impulses and leaving Superman a huge job to save America’s war effort…

Showbiz raised its glamorous head when Clark and Lois were sent to cover the morale-boosting ‘Hollywood Victory Caravan’ tour, only to stumble into backbiting, sabotage, intrigue and murder at the hands of Nazi infiltrators.

Wrapping up the vintage spills and thrills is another fervent comics call to arms as Superman and Clark take a well-intentioned but lazy and perpetually backsliding wastrel in hand, shepherding him through aviator ‘Cadet Training’ to a useful existence as a warrior of Democracy…

Supplementing the gloriously rip-roaring, pell-mell adventure are spellbinding extra features including ‘How Superman Would End World War II’ (first seen in the February 27th 1940 issue of mainstream icon Look magazine), ads and a 1942 ‘Superman Pinup’.

This specific Sterling Publishing volume is a reissue of the 1999 DC/ Kitchen Sink co-production, but either edition offers timeless wonders and mesmerising excitement for lovers of action and fantasy. If you love the era or just crave simpler stories from less angst-wracked times these yarns are perfect comics reading, so this a book you simply must have…
Superman and all related names, characters and elements are ™ DC Comics © 2006. All rights reserved.

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Blue


By Pat Grant (Pat Grant/Top Shelf)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-153-4

As far as the global mass-market is concerned, Australia doesn’t do comics. There’s no home-grown Oz equivalent to Beano or Spirou or 2000 AD, no Akira or Batman to enthral the entire nation.

You don’t hear about their industry bashes such as OzComic-Con and nobody applauds if you say you’ve been nominated for a Stanley Award…

Yet Australia harbours an incredibly potent and dedicated cartooning community, quietly turning out a broad and utterly beguiling range of strips and features from kiddie-comics to strictly adult fare that we seldom get to enjoy in the Northern climes (just check out UK ex-pat Eddie Campbell’s work or Neomad: Space Junk or the precious few titles from Gestalt Publishing that have made it to Britain to see what I mean…).

One of the most enticing and rewarding releases in decades recently came courtesy of cartoonist and passionate surfer Pat Grant. In 2012 his debut graphic novel Blue set tongues wagging not just down under but all over: a superbly realised amalgam of graphic autobiography, socially-relevant historical treatise and fantasy-tinged cautionary tale…

Like so much Australian graphic narrative, Blue owes more to the underground and alternative comics movements than to mainstream. The art is rendered in a muted, limited-colours palette in a style vaguely reminiscent of Peter Bagge, but the storytelling is all original; mixing memories of growing up in small remote company-town with themes of alienation as filtered through a lens of constant, unwelcome change, incipient onrushing maturity and impending humdrum crushing responsibility.

Blue is seductive, familiar, scary and also punishingly funny where it’s most inappropriate…

Bolton is a town by the sea, built a generation ago by the company to house its work force. Years passed and the town stopped being shiny and new. The workers had kids and the kids grew bored. They had school and surfing and no prospects. And then the aliens started turning up. Unwelcome, unwanted, probably illegal and so clearly unwilling to mix. Soon they were everywhere, spoiling everything…

Christian never made it out. He’s a burn-out these days, sucking down bevies when not coasting a dead-end painting gig – and boozing on the job too if no one’s watching – so he’s got time to tell you about those days when he was a kid and lived for surfing…

The day he remembers most vividly is when him and Verne and Muck skipped school to chase a truly massive wave and decided to go see the body of a bloke who died on the railway tracks the night before…

Graphically imaginative, boldly experimental and gratefully expressing his debt of inspiration to the film Stand By Me, Grant has woven here an intoxicating web of intrigue and memory which resonates with the mythic image we all have of life in Oz and the knowledge of what kids ought to be like.

However, the most powerful sense is one of constant motion, bolstered by stunning, nigh-abstract seascapes and wave fronts, as his actors move raucously, rowdily and rapidly through their scenes propelled by bad instincts and inexpressible desire for something different…

Although you may not share Grant’s personal background, readers cannot help but be swept away by the author’s utterly convincing immersion in the minutiae of nostalgia and poignant bewilderment in how we all got to here and now…

With an introduction by Dylan Horrocks and text feature ‘Genealogy of the Boofhead: Images Memory and Australia’s Surf Comics’ – an erudite and fascinating extended essay by Grant detailing the history of the nation’s board bound phenomenon – this enchanting hardback tome is a total treat for comics connoisseurs indoors or outside.
© 2012 Pat Grant. All rights reserved.

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Lobster Johnson volume 1: The Iron Prometheus


By Mike Mignola, Jason Alexander, Dave Stewart & Clem Robbins (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-975-8

Lobster Johnson started out as a moody maguffin in the gloriously expansive universe inhabited by Hellboy, the B.P.R.D. and other assorted marvels from the mind of Mike Mignola.

He was initially introduced after his death: the unquiet spirit of a lost and forgotten 1930s hero who solved his last case from beyond the grave. The character was created as an amalgam and analogue of Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Spider and all those other uncompromising, two-fisted pulp crusaders who smashed crime and slew monsters…

Whenever a really talented creator or team pay proper attention to little details, the result can generally stand on its own two feet and, after continuing to pop up in further tales, the craftily-conceived Lobster eventually proved popular enough to star in his own string of miniseries, fabulously celebrating the heyday of mass-literacy fiction and hard-core horror-heroes. This first collection gathers the 5-issue saga of Iron Prometheus with script by Mignola, art by Jason Alexander, colours courtesy of Dave Stewart and letters by Clem Robbins.

Leather-clad, gun-toting and implacably invincible, the Master of Justice and his small team of agents wade through a mountain of enemies malign, mystical and/or murderously mundane; delivering a mesmerising wild ride in the manner of a cliff-hanging movie-serial Chapter Play which opens in New York City in 1937…

A worried young man is being hunted by incredible creatures. However, as a brutal yeti attacks, the Lobster intervenes to save the kid but looks like he’s finally met his match. Happily Jim Sacks activates the incredible armoured suit he’s wearing and fries the beast…

Before the embattled Yanks can catch their breath, German agents move in and a pitched battle erupts with the bewildered Jim again displaying the suit’s incredible powers to great effect.

In a brief lull Johnson astounds the kid with his knowledge: somehow the leather-helmeted mystery man knows Jim was a tailor’s dummy and guinea pig for eccentric Professor Kyriakos Gallergas – but not that the inventor and his daughter Helena were recently attacked and made him flee with the outfit to keep it from unspecified enemies…

Before long Sacks is brought to the Lobster’s underground lair, even as in the city above the hero is in Chinatown consulting prophets. They warn of deadly danger, doom and dragons and offer a name to trace… Memnan Saa…

Back below Jim is telling all he knows about his mighty Vril Energy Suit – which isn’t much – when the Lobster returns with a lead to a warehouse downtown.

Inside it, a sinister mage is indulging in a spot of torture and suggesting to Gallergas that Helena might be next. After Jim, Johnson and his gang embark on their rescue mission, the VES is again the deciding factor in an uneven battle, but only until the inexperienced Sacks steps into a carefully prepared booby-trap.

This leaves Johnson at the mercy of old enemy Doctor Waxman and a terrifying cyborg thug even as Jim finds himself conversing with Helena in a spectral arctic landscape she calls the Grave of the Emperor of the World…

As the Lobster mops up his opponents, in that icy other-place Jim succumbs to arcane assault, but when the sagacious mage turns his attention to the masked man the wizard learns that high explosives carry their own extremely effective magic…

Jim comes to in a Hoboken warehouse and sees with horror what has been done to Professor Gallergas. The monstrously misused scientist reveals the secret of Vril and how his abductors plan to use the ancient energy to awaken an antediluvian evil. The traumatised boy also discovers what has been done to him too, just as Lobster and his team burst in…

As Jim struggles with a brute gradually transforming into a diabolical monster, deep inside that house of horrors Lobster battles a maniac to rescue Helena, but they are too late: the dragon has risen…

The mage wants 368 more just like it but the Vril has unleashed supernatural forces on the side of Good too, and Sacks and the Professor are ready to fight to save their world, even if they are no longer truly part of it…

Johnson is determined to deliver his own harsh brand of justice, but pursuit of the mage leads him into distracting clashes with monsters and zombies which are not nearly as devious as the Nazi agents coolly waiting to ambush him…

Knocked unconscious, the Lobster somehow confronts the mage on an eerie, icy plane before seemingly succumbing to dark rites and awakening in the custody of the German agents who have also been seeking the Vril suit since the beginning. They seem oblivious to the actions of the sinister sorcerer, however, and are far more concerned with taking what fragments of armour they have scavenged and covering their escape by eradicating New York City…

Lobster Johnson has one last play if he is to save himself and the unwitting millions residing in the sleeping city…

Interspersed with compelling faux magazine articles on ‘The True History of Lobster Johnson’ – detailing the various media incarnations of the macabre man of mystery – and topped off with a vast Lobster Johnson Sketchbook section displaying working drawings, roughs, model-sheets and layouts from Mignola, Armstrong and contributing designer Guy Davis; this is a potent and powerful supernaturally-tinged action romp to quicken the hearts of every aficionado of fantastic adventure.
™ & © 2007, 2008 Mike Mignola. Lobster Johnson™ and all other prominently featured characters are trademarks of Mike Mignola.

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JLA Deluxe volume 2


By Grant Morrison, Howard Porter & John Dell with Christopher Priest, Val Semeiks, Arnie Jorgensen, Yanick Paquette, Gary Frank, Greg Land & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3518-5

Solid gold comics-concepts such as the Justice League of America generally wax and wane with terrifying regularity over the decades: constantly being reinvented for fresh generations before tailing off until the next big idea.

After numerous reboots came and went, in 1997 Grant Morrison, Howard Porter & John Dell, took their shot: offering a back-to-basics line-up of heroes battling in cutting-edge conceptual chillers and thrillers.

The result was a gleaming paradigm of comicbook perfection which yet again started magnificently before gradually losing the attention and favour of its originally rabid fan-base. Apparently, we’re a really shallow, jaded bunch, us comics fans…

These stories were smart, fast-paced, compelling, challengingly large-scale and drawn with effervescent vitality. With JLA you could see on every page all the work undertaken to make it the best it could be.

This second Deluxe Edition (still readily available in hardback, paperback and eBook form) offers issues #10-17 of the resurgent revival plus material from JLA Secret Files #2, tie-in one-shot Prometheus (Villains) and JLA/WildC.A.T.s #1, collectively spanning September 1997 to April 1998: re-presenting an astounding epic of cosmic wonder that still packs a punch nearly two decades later as old-world goodies-vs.-baddies met contemporary fringe science chic for a rollercoaster ride of boggled minds which only served to set up even bigger conceptual clashes further down the line. That’s the magic of foreshadowing, folks…

Stellar saga ‘Rock of Ages’ starts as the League faces the opening sally from a newly-assembled, corporately-inspired Injustice Gang.

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Flash, Green Lantern and Aquaman are the legends targeted by a coalition of arch-enemies comprising Chairman-of-the-Board Lex Luthor, the Joker, Circe, Mirror Master, Ocean Master and Doctor Light in the prologue ‘Genesis and Revelations’ wherein ghastly doppelgangers of the World’s Greatest Heroes go on a campaign of destruction all over the globe.

Even with new members Aztek and Connor Hawke (a second generation Green Arrow) on board, the enemy are running the heroes ragged, but the stakes change radically when telepath J’onn J’onzz detects an extinction-level entity heading to Earth from deep space…

The action and tension intensify with ‘Hostile Takeover’ as the cabal of killers press their advantage whilst New God Metron materialises, warning the JLA that the end of everything is approaching.

As Circe tries to head-hunt Aztek, Arrow and Plastic Man, Green Lantern and Flash are treated to a mind-crushing and distressing view of the Universes beyond our own reality, after they are dispatched to recover the fabled Philosopher’s Stone in a last-ditch effort to save the worlds.

In ‘Wonderworld’ the fabled last defenders of Cosmic Reality proffer the realm-lost superheroes a grim warning of Mageddon, the Anti-Sun, ender of all things, before, shell-shocked and despondent, they are rescued by Hourman, an artificial time-controlling intelligence who more-or-less returns them to our limited plane of existence.

Tragically, it is fifteen years too late and Earth has been conquered by evil New God Darkseid…

‘Wasteland’ is a bleak, chaotic foretaste of the Final Crisis, with humanity all but dead, and its surviving champions fighting their last battle against the horrors of Apokolips-on-Earth, leading to a perfect Deus-ex-Machina moment of triumph in ‘Twilight of the Gods’ as this wicked universe is un-made and “our” reality triumphantly reinstated.

Unfortunately – if you’ve been keeping up – that was the continuity where the Injustice Gang were beating the stuffings out of the good guys…

‘Stone of Destiny’ brings the saga to a neat and immensely satisfying conclusion as the villains go down fighting and an approximation of order is restored in a cataclysmic clash-of-combat climax.

With Gary Frank, Greg Land, John Dell & Bob McLeod lending artistic assistance to the spectacular proceedings, Morrison & Porter splendidly resolve the epic and close with a perfect example of the maxim “always leave them wanting more” – a shocking twist to make the reader hungry for the next instalment…

Extracts from JLA Secret Files #2 follow, kicking off in full-attack mode with ‘Heroes’ (by Christopher Priest, Yanick Paquette & Mark Lipka) wherein the world’s costumed champions – plus a few obnoxious and/or hilarious hangers-on – gather to officially relaunch the JLA following its formal dissolution…

Then villainous wannabe Prometheus debuts in a chilling origin tale from the Villains Month event. ‘There Was a Crooked Man’ by Morrison, Arnie Jorgensen & David Meikis details how a child born to wicked criminal parents was spurred by their deaths at the hands of lawmen to turn himself into the ultimate enemy of all heroes…

His life’s work culminates in his first public attack. ‘Camelot’ (JLA #16 by Morrison, Porter & John Dell) sees the entire new team – including recent recruits Huntress, Plastic Man, Steel, fallen angel Zauriel and covert information resource Oracle – invite the world’s press to their lunar base. This unwise courtesy inadvertently allows the insidious and seemingly unstoppable mastermind to infiltrate and almost destroy them in their own Watchtower.

Concluding with ‘Prometheus Unbound’ (assistant-inked by Mark Pennington) the heroes strike back, aided by an unlikely surprise guest-star and the last-minute appearance of New Gods Orion and Big Barda proffering yet more hints of the greater threat to come…

Wrapping up this second foray into fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tight fiction is trans-company crossover JLA/WildC.A.T.s by Morrison, Val Semeiks, Kevin Conrad & Ray Kryssing: a frankly less enticing, but still vitally visual fiesta for fans of phantasmagorical fight phenomena.

Here veteran JLA antagonist the Lord of Time begins to rewrite history, causing dimensional rifts and forcing an uncomfortable alliance with parallel-Earth champions the WildC.A.T.s.

The tale is stuffed with guest cameos as all those heroes chase the increasingly ascendant villain through the ages, but – as usually the case with these unwieldy team-ups – far too much time is spent with the heroes hitting each other (presumably because all any comic fan could ever desire is to discover which hero is strongest/fastest/most buff or buxom…) before they finally unite to tackle the bad-guy – who defeats himself when they cannot…

This yarn is a poor example of Morrison’s exceptional talent, but Semeiks, Conrad & Kryssing do a great job keeping everything looking shiny, pretty and scary as necessary.

Compelling, challenging and never afraid of nostalgia or laughing at itself, JLA was an all-out effort to be Smart and Fun. For that brief moment in the team’s long, chequered career these were definitely the “World’s Greatest Superheroes”, in increasingly ambitious epics reminding everybody of the fact. This is the kind of thrill nobody ever outgrows repackaged in graphic novels to be read and re-read forever…
© 1997, 1998, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Galveston


By Johanna Stokes, Ross Richie, Todd Herman & various (Boom! Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-93450-668-4

At the beginning of the 19th century, Jean Baptiste Lafitte was a French privateer based in New Orleans – and later Barataria Bay – who famously turned down a huge bribe from the British and instead stood beside the Americans during the War of 1812. His alliance with General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans is the stuff of American mythology.

When the victorious Americans then started cracking down on piracy, Jean and his older brother Pierre became spies for the Spaniards during the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821), relocating to Galveston Island, Texas and continuing their trade as freebooting privateers targeting Central American ports.

They established a pirate colony called Campeche to facilitate their maritime activities. Jean died – or at least dropped from sight – sometime around 1823.

Jim Bowie is more myth than man. Born in Kentucky around 1796, he was pioneer, frontiersman, law officer, land speculator and quintessential warrior. After accruing wealth and a certain reputation in New Orleans, he eventually relocated to Texas (whilst it was still part of Mexico), married and settled down.

Of all the legends surrounding him the two truest are his proficiency with the lethal “Bowie knife” (created from the fearless fighter’s design by bladesmith James Black) and that he died in Texas at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836.

With such a historic pedigree and so little verifiable fact, it’s perfectly natural that somebody should place these two bellicose American icons together, and that’s exactly what scripter Johanna Stokes (with input from Ross Richie, Tom Peyer & Mark Rahner) and illustrator Todd Herman – ably assisted by colourists Digikore Studios and Andres Lozano and letterer Marshall Dillon – have done in this light-hearted action-romp which is as much buddy/road movie as pirate yarn or western…

Originally released as a 4-issue miniseries in 2009, Galveston begins in the Gulf of Mexico in 1817, where the infamous Jean Lafitte’s crew are trying to kill him. It’s not personal: they simply heard that he’s hidden a huge stash of gold donated by the Emperor Napoleon for helping him escape from France.

Lafitte’s only ally is a wiry American he’d recently befriended: a man named Bowie…

The greed-inciting gold story was circulated by Cyrus Wesley, an old acquaintance from New Orleans and no friend of the pirate captain…

After escaping certain doom through quick-wittedness and a certain amount of chicanery, Lafitte brings Bowie to the prate colony he built in Galveston, introducing him to the glories of the Maison Rouge and the light of his life: a fiery tongued and ferociously independent woman named Madeline Ragaud…

She seems welcoming but also brings news of a ship full of spies masquerading as traders. All too soon Bowie is experiencing first hand how his pirate pal deals with real threats to his people…

A bigger worry is Wesley. Acting on behalf of vengeful Louisiana Governor Claiborne, the old enemy has brought a small army of bought-&-paid-for “lawmen” into the shady new town, ready to deal with Lafitte on the slightest pretext. A man of absolutely no principles, Cyrus is, however, quite prepared to let the mission slide… if Lafitte gives him Napoleon’s gold…

It would be a sound bargain if there actually was any bullion, but Lafitte swears all he got for his services was a couple of ornamental cannon. They don’t even work…

Temporarily escaping his problems, the wily pirate accompanies Bowie on his own mission to set up trading ties with the Commanches, but Cyrus’ threat to harm Madeline lingers, prompting Jean to bicker with his buddy and storm off in a fury. By the time Jean gets back to Galveston the settlement is in flames and Wesley is ensconced aboard a warship in the bay…

It’s time for old war-hero Lafitte to rally his piratical troops for a showdown, but he might be less fired up if he knew that his aggravating paramour has despatched a message to even the odds. Hopefully Madeline’s young courier can find Bowie and his Indian friends before it’s too late…

Culminating in a classic and epic underdog vs. bad guys showdown and delivering a marvellously traditional twist in the tale, this rowdy, raucous riot of fun is a sheer delight all lovers of straightforward, no-nonsense matinee thrills.
© 2009 Boom Entertainment Inc. and Johanna Stokes. All rights reserved.

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Little Tulip


By Jerome Charyn & François Boucq (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80872-7

Some creative teams spend all their time collaborating: crafting works that constantly remind us why we are wise to await their every effort. Other artisans only link up at agonisingly rare intervals, and when their newest works are finally finished we hungry lovers of their art can only breathe a huge sigh of relief and release.

A sublime case-in-point are the all-too-rarely seen concoctions of American crime author and graphic novelist Jerome Charyn (Johnny One-Eye, I Am Abraham, Citizen Sidel, Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories) and French illustrator François Boucq (Bouncer, Sente, Jérôme Moucherot, Bouche de diable) who together created Femme du magicien/The Magician’s Wife and Billy Budd, KGB: uniquely compelling graphic novels which have won popular acclaim and numerous awards all over the world.

Now their latest dark masterpiece – published in French in 2014 – is at last available in a remastered English translation by Charyn himself.

A ferocious and captivating blend of bleak reverie, coming-of-age drama, noir thriller and supernatural vengeance tale, the action opens in New York City in 1970 where tattooist Pavel plies his trade under the admiring gaze of fascinated teen Azami.

She too is enslaved to the act of drawing, and wants to know everything: how to mark the skin, the secrets of adapting a past design, where and how the master got his own skinful of stories…

The city is in a growing panic. A serial-killing rapist dubbed Bad Santa is terrorising the night; targeting late working women such as Azami’s mother, so Pavel is keeping a quiet eye on them both. He’s actually far more informed than most citizens, as his uncanny ability to draw likenesses from the barest of witness accounts makes the old man a crucial component of the cops’ war on crime.

This almost magical ability has been consistently failing in regard to the Bad Santa killings, however, and the tension makes Pavel dream of his own appalling childhood…

Just after WWII ended, his artist father emigrated from Washington Heights, USA to the Soviet Union to work with legendary film-maker Sergei Eisenstein.

In those constrained environs Pavel absorbed a love of drawing and hunger for creative expression that was not crushed even when a political shift in climate saw him and his family arrested as spies and shipped off to the horrific Siberian gulag of Kolyma.

The daily casual atrocities of the corrupt guards were worse than what the boy experienced at the hands of the rival criminal gangs who actually ran the prisons. Soon he was alone, but his instinct for survival and gifts as an artist set him upon a new path, creating the sacrosanct, almost-holy tattoos the inmates used to define, embolden and characterise themselves.

It was not the only art Pavel learned. As he grew older he became the top gladiator of his gang: a fast deadly warrior with a blade in pitch darkness or broad daylight…

As the wave of killings continue in the blighted Big Apple, Pavel’s thoughts keep returning to the unceasing stream of hardships and atrocities he experienced in the camp. Slowly a grim conclusion comes to him about the nature of the Bad Santa… but too late for him to save the people nearest and dearest to him…

Bleak, uncompromising, seductive and painfully authentic whilst tinged with a smear of supernatural mystery, the story of Little Tulip is an unforgettable peek into the forbidden and the profane that will take your breath away.

Also included in this album-sized (280 x 210 mm) full-colour paperback is a glorious selection of sketches and working drawing in an entrancing display of ‘Artwork by François Boucq’ to inspire you to making your own meaningful marks on paper – or any preferred medium…
© 2014 Jerome Charyn and François Boucq. © 2014 Le Lombard. Lettering © 2016 Thomas Mauer. All rights reserved.

Little Tulip is officially released January 27th 2017 and is available for pre-order now. Check out www.doverpublications.com, your internet retailer or local comics-store or bookshop.

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The Shadow volume 3: The Light of the World


By Chris Roberson, Giovanni Timpano & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-461-9

In the early 1930s, The Shadow gave thrill-starved Americans their measured doses of extraordinary excitement via cheaply produced pulp periodical novels, and over the mood-drenched airwaves through his own radio show.

“Pulps” were published in every style and genre in their hundreds every month, ranging from the truly excellent to the pitifully dire, but for exotic or esoteric adventure-lovers there were two stars who outshone all others. The Superman of his day was Doc Savage, whilst the premier dark, relentless creature of the night dispensing terrifying grim justice was the putative hero under discussion here.

Radio series Detective Story Hour – based on stand-alone yarns from the Street & Smith publication Detective Story Magazine – used a spooky-toned narrator (variously Orson Welles, James LaCurto or Frank Readick Jr.) to introduce each tale. He was dubbed “the Shadow” and from the very start on July 31st 1930, he was more popular than the stories he highlighted.

The Shadow evolved into a proactive hero solving instead of narrating mysteries and, on April 1st 1931, began starring in his own printed adventures, written by the incredibly prolific Walter Gibson under the house pseudonym Maxwell Grant. On September 26th 1937 the radio show officially became The Shadow with the eerie motto “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Men? The Shadow knows!” ringing out unforgettably over the nation’s airwaves.

Over the next eighteen years 325 novels were published, usually at the rate of two a month. The uncanny crusader spawned comicbooks, seven movies, a newspaper strip and all the merchandising paraphernalia you’d expect of a superstar brand.

The pulp series officially ended in 1949 although Gibson and others added to the canon during the 1960s when a pulp/fantasy revival gripped the world, generating reprinted classic yarns and a run of new stories as paperback novels.

In graphic terms The Shadow was a major player. His national newspaper strip – by Vernon Greene – launched on June 17th 1940 and when comicbooks really took off the Man of Mystery had his own four-colour title; running from March 1940 to September 1949.

Archie Comics published a controversial contemporary reworking in 1964-1965 under their Radio/Mighty Comics imprint, by Robert Bernstein, Jerry Siegel, John Rosenberger and Paul Reinman. In 1973 DC acquired the rights to produce a captivating, brief and definitive series of classic comic sagas unlike any other superhero title then on the stands.

DC periodically revived the venerable vigilante. After the runaway success of Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman, Howard Chaykin was allowed to utterly overhaul the vintage feature for an audience at last acknowledged as grown-up enough to handle more sophisticated fare.

This led to further, adult-oriented iterations (and even one cracking outing – Hitler’s Astrologer – from Marvel) before Dark Horse assumed the license of the quintessential grim avenger for the latter half of the 1990s and beyond.

Dynamite Entertainment secured the option in 2011 and, whilst reissuing much of those other publishers’ earlier efforts, began a series of new monthly Shadow comics.

Set in the turbulent 1930s and war years that followed, these were crafted by some of the top writers in the industry, each taking their shot at the immortal legend, and all winningly depicted by a succession of extremely gifted illustrators.

This third volume – collecting #13-18 of the monthly comicbook from 2013 – comes courtesy of author Chris Roberson (House of Mystery, iZombie, Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, Superman/Batman) and illustrator Giovanni Timpano, ably abetted by colourist Fabrício Guerra and letterer Rob Steen. This time the Master of the Dark prowls the bloody streets of New York in search of a fantastic vigilante as deadly and remorseless as himself…

The drama begins as yet another rich, powerful man is butchered whilst secretly indulging in sordid pleasures of the flesh. The perpetrator is rumoured to be a ghostly, sword-wielding “lady phantom”…

Very few know that the black-cloaked fist of final retribution known as The Shadow masquerades by day as abrasive, indolent playboy Lamont Cranston. Most are agents in his employ: all aware of his semi-mystical abilities to detect thoughts and cloud the minds of men. They are about to learn that there are other beings blessed with uncanny abilities, relentless determination and unshakeable agendas…

Cranston and his paramour/top operative Margo Lane begin their investigations at the prestigious Cobalt Club: pumping the wealthy patrons and Police Commissioner Weston in the guise of idle gossip-mongering and scandal-seeking…

The authorities, it seems, give little credence to the testimony of prostitutes – the only survivors of the attacks – and have dismissed reports of a vengeful woman as sole perpetrator. The Shadow’s operatives are far more astute and less prejudiced: information is gathered and soon after the Dispenser of Vengeance is on hand when the woman in white confronts her next victim…

As the first of a series of poignant flashbacks begins to reveal the secret of the bizarrely radiant swordswoman, in the modern moment of her confrontation with The Shadow, the Master of Men quickly realises this seeming angel of death is every inch his equal in the arts of combat. In fact, her ability to cast a blinding glow might well give her the edge…

After a brutal duel he manages to drive her off before she can finish off her latest victim, but, before he or the police can get any useful information from the survivor, the maimed man is silently butchered in his locked and guarded hospital room…

And thus the war between light and darkness progresses with The Shadow losing battles but gradually winning the war: inexorably closing in on The Light by pitting all his resources and risking his greatest assets to trap his glowing antithesis who works for the most pure, if misguided, of causes…

Dynamite publishes periodicals with a vast array of cover variants and here that gallery features a wealth of iconic alternate visions by Alex Ross, Francesco Francavilla, Tim Bradstreet, Paolo Rivera and Jason Shawn Alexander to delight any art lover’s eyes and heart.

Moody and brooding, The Light of the World is a solid pulp thriller with an intriguing history and premise for its “player on the other side” scenario, plenty of action and a spectacular cinematic climax at the top of New York’s steel-&-concrete canyons…

This is another superb addition to the annals of the original Dark Knight, and one no one addicted to action and mystery should miss.
The Shadow ® & © 2013 Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. d/b/a Conde Nast. All Rights Reserved.